#actually that bleeds perfectly into the roles her daughters take up too

[ministarfruit]

love the madrigal triplets there’s just two emotional whirlwinds (literal) and julieta, who’s an angel (figurative)

#encanto #pepa madrigal #julieta madrigal #bruno madrigal #julieta taking on a caretaker role for her siblings? more likely than you think #actually that bleeds perfectly into the roles her daughters take up too #anyway imagine dealing with them as kids #nonstop chaos #and then there's JULIETA. AN ANGEL

[bestworstcase]

farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 5-6

- mixed feelings about eugene’s first impressions of cassandra here. on the one hand, she did make a snide remark about him being a thief, which must sting when he’s already making an active attempt at self-improvement and attending classes in criminal justice. this isn’t tts eugene - who spends 6-7 months loafing around the palace basking in luxury until cass drags him for being self-absorbed and lazy. this eugene has a work ethic and seems to feel some actual responsibility regarding his new role as rapunzel’s consort. it’s not fair for cass to make a snap judgment about him based on his past and decide to be rude to him because of it.

on the other hand… he and rapunzel did just barge into her space against her will and her subsequent prickliness was reasonable, which eugene doesn’t seem to have any awareness of. and taking into consideration the likelihood that this cass is supposed to be about 17 while eugene is an established adult, that isn’t a fun vibe.

- sort of amused by the role reversal of eugene, in the licensed fanfic cassunzel s1 au, is the one who introduces rapunzel to the library. i guess the key to unlocking rapunzel’s romance option is to not show her the books. but also, why is eugene the one showing her around lol

- did he steal from the coronan palace so much that he just knows where everything is

- the dialogue in this chapter is… hm

“You can take these books back to your room if you want,” Eugene said.

“I can?” I said, staring at the stocked shelves around me.

“I think I’ll open a window,” Eugene said. “It’s a little musty in here.”

like what’s going on here? is this a dialogue bug introduced by spot editing that didn’t get patched before publishing? does eugene have adhd? is this a romance novel™ thing to demonstrate that while eugene and rapunzel talk to each other plenty they’re not on the same wavelength to such an extent that raps asks a question and eugene responds with a complete non-sequitur, which will be contrasted with how completely rapunzel and cass ‘click’ together later? hello?

- one point in favor of the romance novel™ theory is that immediately after this eugene conks out instead of sharing in rapunzel’s discovery and exploration of the library and it is implied he is having a fun flynn rider dream ie he’s lost in his own fantasies and oblivious to rapunzel’s. symbolism!

- anyhoo, this is when the plot device of the ‘lost lagoon’ book of poems turns up. i will say that, having spent the better part of my teen years working in an actual library, it beggars belief to say that a book got shoved behind other books in a popular section (sports) by mistake and got left that way for so long that dust blooms out of it when it’s finally cracked open again; likewise, anyone who attempted to intentionally hide the book this way is an idiot. my dude, you are in a palace riddled with secret passageways. maybe hide the secret book there?

like it’s not even well-hidden. rapunzel pulls out one (1) book from the sports section and immediately spots it. which also just feels dumb. like… there’s a million other ways this book could have been hidden. inside another book would have been more believable. rapunzel rips a bone-dry book of census records off the top shelf because she’s insatiably curious about corona’s people and surprise! it’s got this slim little book of poetry crammed inside it. like ??? i know it’s juv fic but make an effort

- coronans canonically speak english according to this i’m die

- rapunzel hides the book from arianna just… because, and i can’t help but feel this is another case of anxiety written by someone who doesn’t quite get it. she’s ‘just not ready’ to share this book of poems that means absolutely nothing to her yet except that she thought it sounded pretty.

but like. this girl grew up with gothel, who made a habit of belittling her interests, thoughts, feelings, and desires. everything rapunzel had she had because gothel deigned to give it to her, and anything she valued could have been snatched away just as easily. in the film it’s made clear that rapunzel hides pascal’s entire existence from gothel, and while the reason for this isn’t spelled out, it’s clear to me that she was afraid gothel might hurt or get rid of pascal should she learn of his existence. so, like. this is all a recipe for rapunzel having this general anxiety about things being taken for her and with this fear being linked to mother figures it makes sense that arianna would tend to trigger it especially. there is a perfectly obvious, understandable reason for rapunzel to be terrified of sharing anything she found by herself and sees value in or is excited about with her new mom, even if she knows rationally that arianna would never take it from her.

as it is, it really comes across more as an arbitrary plot device to keep the lagoon a cassunzel-only thing.

- there’s a lot of odd characterization decisions in this book but i think rapunzel being resistant and reluctant with regards to the idea of having a human companion is probably the weirdest. ??

- arianna feels like she’s characterized the way a lot of fanworks characterize her, i.e. the authorial mouthpiece who (in the case of cassunzel fic specifically) overtly ships cassunzel and does things to facilitate that relationship. don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see her doing stuff at all, but… i dunno, i find this brand of arianna doing things just a little wearying. let her just be her own character.

- implication is that arianna and the captain agreed that cass would be rapunzel’s lady-in-waiting, arianna okays this with rapunzel and then tells rapunzel to announce it to cassandra at this public holiday feast. with no prior warning. wow. i think the kindest possible reading here is that the captain has been telling arianna that cass would be delighted and honored to receive this position and arianna assumes he’ll give cass a heads-up as a courtesy beforehand, but that paints the captain in a pretty bad light on account of him lying and essentially manipulating the queen in order to force his teenage daughter to accept this huge responsibility that she vocally does not want. in any case, absolutely nobody involved in this shitshow gives a damn what cass wants.

- lagoon comes in hard with the saporian!cass symbolism l o l. rapunzel reads a saporian poem out loud, not knowing what it means but loving the sounds, while daydreaming about becoming friends with cass.

- arianna seems to genuinely believe cass will be thrilled to have the lady-in-waiting gig sprung on her, which seems to lend credence to the theory that cap has been talking it up as something cass wants. or the intention here is to paint arianna as an out of touch noblewoman, but i don’t think that’s what howland was going for. i don’t know, it’s an odd conversation.

- eugene calls cassandra “sport” lmfao

- lagoon cass has never read a book in her life, apparently

- i don’t want to keep harping on this too much but it keeps leaping off the page at me; cass’s behavior throughout this dinner scene really just bleeds teenagerhood. eugene and rapunzel both make actual stabs at conversation by asking her about things they know she’s interested in, and cass brushes them off/stonewalls them. in tts, on the other hand, cass is actually pretty open to deep conversations with both rapunzel and eugene—it’s just that they never. ask her about herself. eugene goes 6-7 months before he asks cassandra a personal question in cassandra vs eugene, which if i remember right is the only time he asks her a personal question. rapunzel gets very invested very fast in becoming friends with cassandra, but she does it by strong-arming cass into being her partner in a contest, and when cass decides to open up to her it isn’t in response to rapunzel asking her things. the dynamic is totally different.

- actually now that i think about it - lagoon cass feels a lot like the cranky new dreamer version of cass (you know, the flavor of new dream fans who resent cass for ‘being mean’ to eugene, ‘being controlling’ of rapunzel, and ‘stealing’ eugene’s narrative spotlight). this cass is rude, she does come off as a bit spoiled and very bratty, she is nasty to eugene for no good reason, and while i do sympathize with her on the grounds of her evidently being a child i don’t find her to be especially likable or compelling as a character. if cass acted like this in tts i think the cranky new dreamer contingent of the fandom would have a much stronger leg to stand in - especially if she was still supposed to be 22.

like… this:

“So,” Eugene said, distracting me. “What’s it like to be the daughter of the captain of the guard? You obviously have a thing for weapons.”

“So,” I said.

“Have you been training since you were a little kid?” Eugene pressed on. “Do you have friends in the castle?”

“No,” I said. “Who needs friends?”

“Jeez!” Eugene muttered while Rapunzel whispered with the queen. “I don’t need just any icebreaker here, I need a pickax.”

I rolled my eyes.

this is way more interest in cass as a person than eugene shows in tts… like ever. at this point, eugene has met cass ONCE for a few MINUTES and he already knows more about her than he does in cassandra vs eugene, after six or seven months of frequent contact. yet cass scoffs and gives him monosyllabic answers and radiates way more hostility for way less reason than she displays even in tangled before ever after. i think eugene is totally justified in going, yeesh, what’s this kid’s deal?

- rapunzel goes straight from “i’d like you to be my lady-in-waiting” to “you’re my new lady-in-waiting!” without waiting for cass to answer. and i mean, at this point it is a done deal, queen’s orders and all, so i can’t hold this against rapunzel at all. but man, the adults involved in this decision sure aren’t concerned at all about making sure rapunzel learns how boundaries and consent works.

How was I going to train? How was I going to live the life I was born to live?

Fury heated my blood as I stared down the moon.

heh.

i wonder how much howland knew regarding the planned villain arc, because on the one hand lines like this are drenched in foreshadowing, and she’s done a much better job establishing cassandra’s belief in destiny than tts did. but on the other, had she known about the gothel twist, she would surely have known that cassandra is several years older than rapunzel, and that doesn’t square with how cass… acts.

this is half-remembered hearsay so take it with a grain of salt, but i seem to recall something about cass, in her original conception, being younger than rapunzel (and also aware of her parentage, and secretly villainous all along). could howland have been working from information given to her during the transitional stage between that proto-cass and tts cass? that would explain a lot.

- the last paragraph of 6 is the most effective passage in the book thus far:

This was a decision that had bars around it. I couldn’t protest without falling out of favor with the king and queen, and then there would be no way I’d ever be allowed in the guard. I couldn’t argue my way out of this with my father. A royal assignment was the final word. My fate had been sealed. I fell to my knees and stifled a scream.

#lost lagoon reread #rta #cassunzel

[duskodair]

further Noel lore, by popular demand (with the old bc why not)

The one constant in her life has always been him. One of them was born first, but they're not sure which. Names don't stick to them. Dozens of monikers have come and passed them by. They barely use names for one another, so it doesn't matter. They know vaguely which order the children they might have once been were born and named, but neither of them actually know to which of them each name belongs.

They come to the orphanage as a pair of red headed infants, identical and inseparable. Among the other children, they are easily lost in the muddle. They grow up holding hands and answer to both names. They come to answer to others as well, as staff members forget and rename them from the pool of other children.

The orphanage is a loveless place. They learn of the distant love of a God who has forsaken them from nuns who have no time for them. They learn to walk holding hands and make their own language to whisper the secrets they learn from watching places that the convent do not want them to see.

The nuns can't keep the right names pinned to the right child and by the time they leave the orphanage, their papers are muddled and merged, inseparable in their scarcity. At fourteen, they do honest work for a few months, pulling in a pitiful wage between them. They answer to the names that the nuns told them they were given as decide that it's not for them.

Knowing their letters, at least, gets them into interesting places. Gossip slips by them. They come home with stories and whispers of crimes committed in distant towns. There's nothing truly behind it, but it intrigues them.

They leave the town they were raised in with the collection money for the convent's charity children. They never saw any of it whilst they were there, so they reckon it's theirs to take.

They do it sensible, though, no grand heist and sudden exit. One day two nobodies walk the streets and the next they are gone, notice properly given and a forwarding address passed along to those it may concern. Perhaps they go where they say they are going, perhaps they do not. The convent only realises the theft far later than it could be solved. And by that point, they are dust on the plains.

'New town, new names' is their policy. It gives them something to do on their journeys. Their childhood gives them a wealth of options as they work their way through the Good Book. She chars for a family as Leah, subtly learning to mimic the habits of those born into money as she beats dust out of the curtains. As Mary she is a gentle lady, down on her luck, willing to watch the children.

She never does a con without him. It starts with petty theft, enough to tide them over. But they grow confident as the years pass, and still the sheriffs fail to put out a bounty for names they've left behind.

Both of them claim to do the most work in their enterprise. She scoffs and says he's far too distracted by pretty stable boys and saloon lasses for his case to be true. He argues that she's too busy staring at her own reflection in things to possibly be doing the most work.

She kicks him, out of principle, before grinning. They're nearly done with this town. Regretfully, they're about to have a family emergency and the gentle seamstress' assistant and the errand boy will have to leave. It will be a while before anybody notices that old Mr McCoy hasn't been seen in a while. Well, perhaps the young ladies he used to shout at might notice, but the twins don't think they'll miss him.

Noel swings out her legs one last time before depositing them in Jonah's lap. She leans back as she considers the best way for Miss Miranda DuVal to break her incoming family crisis to her employer to potentially receive offerings of sympathy. In the last town she'd received a lovely pair of hand me down boots. She's hoping to do much better here, and well, there's some lovely stuff in the Atkinsons' unpaid tab.

The breeze picks up a little. Nothing like a peaceful walk and a casual picnic to enjoy their last day in this town. She looks away from the disappointing straggle of houses that make up the town, towards her brother. He's lying down in the prairie grass, staring up at the passing clouds. She thinks he's probably thinking about a barmaid again. He's got that look on his face.

She rips up a bit of grass and tosses it at him, 'keep your raunchy thoughts off your face. I don't want to know'

He tosses the grass back at her, 'I can do what I please. It's my own bleedin face'

With that, he rises, pushing her legs from his lap.

'Now come along, sister dearest, I'm sure we are missed. I must see if Old Man Thomas needs any more of those crates lifting, and I'm sure you have embroidery to do'

She lets him read her disdain before rising and schooling her features into the amiable Miss DuVal. 'Of course, brother, shall we go, then?'

She takes his arm and they head back to finish the performance before the appointed hour of departure. They make their arrangements and say their goodbyes. Jonah receives his kisses and Noel her tea gown.

On the road they pick new names, write a new story. When she stumbles in a gopher hole, he christens her Grace. She makes a hand gesture that the nuns certainly would not have approved of and accepts the name.

Town after town they pass through, weaving their way West, across the country. Their cons become bigger and grander and their budget grows.

For all their griping, they make an excellent team, she thinks, as he combs out her hair for her next performance. Their plan is to land a quiet jackpot in the town of Danser. It's been in their sights for a while, a little passing place, irrelevant. Perfect.

They have a few weeks to go before they arrive, appearances to make along the road. They call themselves Underwood for the branch that Jonah stumbles into as he stumbles around their camp after dark. They turn the branch into a lumber business and laud their wealth to one another.

Noel laughs into the fire as she weaves stories of their loving Papa, whose only desire in life is to see his daughter married off to a reputable man. Jonah grins as he fleshes out the tragedy of their gentle mother, taken too soon.

At least, Noel thinks, she won't have to wear the fashion of a widow too long, as Jonah will, of course, have to return her to the loving safety of her father, if there is nobody left in Danser to provide. She checks the Derringer strapped to her thigh and consigns her new life story to memory. Yes, she thinks, Noel will work as a name for a while.

______

Danser is quiet the day the Underwoods ride into town. On the surface, they bring little change, just a business deal and a wife for the wealthy Mr Tobias Lloyd. Noel rides into town as a bartering token for her family's lumber business, a symbol of an alliance sealed.

Jonah Underwood brings her into town, red hair tousled in the wind as the twins drive, laughing, down the dust scattered road. He's going to stay in Danser as she gets settled.

He'll probably stay longer than expected, loath to leave her. They've never been more than a week apart throughout their short lives. Where she goes, he follows, but this time, he cannot.

Noel is prepared, she thinks, for a husband. Her trunk is packed with all her worldly possessions and the wood of the carriage is steady under her hands.

The town spreads before her, barely a stopping point out from the city. Home, it seems, now. She's a long way from Tennessee. She's a long way from their smaller cons. Jonah meets her eyes. They're ready.

Her fingers dust over the derringer that she carries strapped to her thigh. She smiles. The plan is simple. She can do it. Jonah guides the horses forward into town, nodding to the old man on his stoop outside the general store, before heading to the Emerald Hotel.

She holds her head high as Jonah makes arrangements. The role is easy, she smiles and nods and watches. Noel is quiet and demure, but ever watchful, cataloguing her new neighbours. She plays naive, batting doe eyes at passers by, luring people in to speak with them.

They spend a day getting settled, researching, making appearances. They go to church, make nice. They start tabs and pay them off, respectable like, with the money of dead men. They find out about Mr Lloyd. He's wealthy and removed, just their type. His employees dislike him, after a few drinks, and when Jonah reports back, so does she.

She is all smiles, however, when Jonah presents her with promises of lumber money. She twirls the loose curls that soften her cheeks around a finger, and in that motion, she has him. Soon the hair around her finger becomes a ring and she becomes a wife.

Tobias Lloyd is, fundamentally, a disappointing husband. Everything he tries to teach her, she already knows, and quite frankly, he's barely competent. He tries to run her in circles but his fall short of the ones she's running around him.

Jonah rides between Danser and the city, keeping the financial side of the con running as Noel pushes her hands into the running of the household. She takes control, bringing home arsenic for cleaning and for rats.

She makes appearances with her husband in the Emerald Hotel, a doting wife out for coffee. She wears fine gowns and resists gossip, staying upstanding, but never cold. She likes to think that she's making her mark in the town, becoming known. If she is, she's doing her job properly, settling her character witnesses.

Everything is going perfectly until it isn't. Jonah slips. Noel doesn't even discover how until it is too late and the gunfight is lost and Jonah is bleeding out in her arms, his tab with God unsettled and their victory bleeding away.

She buries him in the churchyard, demure and sweet, watching the stone with the wrong name mark her brother's place. Later, she rides out and screams, hands still stained red with his blood. She remembers his unsettled tab and sets out to match it, so that one day she can join him once more.

She returns to town and puts on her gloves. Tobias loves her, she is the perfect wife, so attentive to his bouts of illness and so concerned.

Noel forms the perfect cover, she plays her part perfectly. With a little sacrifice, she covers for Jonah's slip. She helps collect funds for the new church floor, embroidering kerchiefs with dainty patterns for the pastor to sell. The new pastor admires her faith, he smiles and says one day she'll see heaven. She does her best to ensure that won't be so.

Tobias grows sicker and sicker and Noel worries more and more. At least, in public. Old Man German at the store grows tired of her asking after medicine. There is never any coming in.

Calling for the Doc is a risk, but a necessary one. Fortunately, it pays off, he patiently assures her that he's not a doctor and he cannot cure her husband. He's the best Danser has, however, and all her husband will see. She grows fond of him on his visits, another respectable alibi and connection for when she is alone.

She forges ties and prepares for widowhood. She ties her hair up neat and slips into the saloon instead of the hotel on a Friday afternoon, seeking the Doc, looking to keep herself in his mind. She's going to need a new husband soon, anyway, and it's always a good idea to plan ahead.

#chill to reblog #a town called danser #noel #jonah

[elizabeth-234]

Whumptober 2020

Previous alternate prompt three: Comfort

Summary: When a fire burns away all their hope Peter and his daughter ask the only person he can think of for help. 

Hi all! Had the rough draft for this one for so long and finally happy I finished. This is for day fourteen of whumptober: Fire! Thanks for reading.

His Daughter

He didn’t know why the number came to mind or how after so many years he still had it memorized. The stranger’s phone dangled in front of him, their eyes flat with no room for argument, and with no other options available he typed in the ten digits without thinking. Of course, now the phone was ringing all he wanted to do was hang up.

“It’s Tony, what’s up?”



Absurd. This was how he answered his phone from an unknown number? His voice was low and even; so casual like he was greeting an old friend. His chest throbbed and he rubbed it before answering. He cringed at how he sounded like his teenage self.

“Mr.- Mr. Stark?”

The line went silent. He rubbed his chest again. The man wouldn’t remember his one-time mentee and their short-lived acquaintanceship. Unwanted memories of long afternoons in the lab, sitting side by side working on homework or ‘company bullshit’ as he would call it. Their totality was painfully short but Peter could remember ever last time Mr. Stark greeted him with a smile and drove him home with a wink to May.

All of it was cut short by the ferry incident. The taste of bitter shame was still palatable years later and then like he couldn’t catch a break the fight with Toomes happened. Peter ended in the med bay afterward. Days went by and he didn’t see anyone besides the nurses and doctors. They told him Mr. Stark came to visit but he was always asleep. In time he healed and was sent home. It hadn’t even been a week and the email arrived. He was no longer in the internship program. The program Mr. Stark made up as cover for his Spiderman activities. The program that officially didn’t exist and he was fired.

Peter spent the next weeks locked in his room. His phone stayed silent no matter how much time he stared at it. May tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t respond. He tried to call Happy and Mr. Stark too many times to count but there was no answer. There would never be an answer until now.

Life for Spiderman moved on. His web slinging and crime fighting were no match for the small deeds and neighborhoods disputes. He could handle those himself even if it lacked the spark the patrols usually had. No, it was Peter’s life that crumbled. Late at night when all the doubts began creeping in, he thought how pathetic it was he’d grown so attached to the first father figure who came into his life. It did make sense that figure was someone resistant to the role in Peter’s life.

The consequences bleed into his regular life. He began acting out. May, too kind and compassionate, was there for him through all the slamming doors, backtalk, and lying. She was called franticly when he didn’t come home and was waiting with a blanket when he came home smelling of booze. Even when he dropped out of college, the car loaded with his clothes and news of a child, May smiled and hugged him as he began crying.

She was gone now. Their apartment building was in ashes. Peter was alone.

He swallowed and almost hung up but a small hand tugged on his sleeve. He looked down to see a beautiful mess of curly hair. His daughter all bright brown eyes and smiles even given these circumstances smiled up at him.

Raya.

There wasn’t any other way. The two of them had no one else and although this was a long shot, Peter had to try, for her. He cleared his throat again and began louder.

“Mr. Stark, this is Peter Parker. I’m, ah…”



“Kid.” The man said in a breathy voice. “Peter, I could never forget you.”

Heat stirred in his chest at the lie. Hadn’t the man already forgotten him before? There was a sour taste in his mouth as accusations rested on the tip of his tongue but Raya climbed onto his lap and snuggled into his chest. With his free hand he brushed back her bangs and rubbed her back in circles to soothe her as much as him.

“Mr. Stark, I-”



“Please, it always been just Tony.” 



He was old enough now he supposed. They could be on equal ground now that he was an adult. The name was weird to say but Peter forced himself to say it.

“Alright, Tony then. I have a favor to ask. We’ve been stuck with a bit of bad luck. There was a fire…”



“Anything you need. Anything at all, Peter, I would be happy to help.”




“It’s only until we get back on our feet and I promise we’ll pay you back.”



Tony insisted there wasn’t any need for repayment. He had too much money as it was, he said, but Peter couldn’t help the nagging in the back of his mind. No matter what had happened he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone. Still, there was no use arguing for the time being. Tony was far too stubborn, that Peter remembered well, and in this case, he wasn’t in a position to repay anything so Peter gave the address of the hospital. They went to wait outside.

Raya’s legs swung back and forth on the bench beside him. She wiped a sleeve across her nose, sniffling into the material. The doctor’s said these small side effects of smoke inhalation would go away in time but he couldn’t help the worry he felt. She was still young and although there were no outward signs of trauma from the fire, he knew with time she would begin to focus on what happened. Peter held out his hand and smiled when she squeezed her fingers back.

The fingers on his watch spun on. Mr. Stark – No, Tony – had said he would have someone swing by in…now. A door closed and Peter’s throat closed up. The man did nothing in half measures back in the day and it appeared the trait was still present. He didn’t have just anyone come to pick them up. Tony himself stepped out of the car and was walking over to them.

Peter stood up and brushed down the wrinkles in his shirt. They were a stranger’s clothes and although the shirt was too long and the jacket a bit tight through the shoulders, he was thankful someone in the hospital thought about it. Tony looked much the same. Nice jeans, graphic band tee, and a blazer that was tailored perfectly.

The man hesitated at the hand Peter offered. Some expression passed over his features too quick for Peter to interpret but then his hand enveloped his and they shook.

“Tony, I can’t thank you enough for the help.”

“Nothing to thank me for Peter. It’s good to see you, kid.”

“Dad’s not a kid. I am!”

He held his breath. It wasn’t on purpose that he left the addition of his daughter out of their phone call but, well, he didn’t think Tony was a man inclined to like children. So, if the detail of Raya slipped his mind during his request for help, Peter didn’t care. All he cared about was Raya who, at the moment, was holding onto his leg from behind. She peeked around him to glare at Tony.

“It’s a nickname, sweetheart. Come say hi to Mr. Stark.” He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her around his legs so her heels were stepping on the tips of his shoes. He winced at a particularly hard step as she fidgeted.

Her head was bowed and Peter could see her twisting the sleeves of her shirt in her palms. She sniffled again. Tony’s eyes remained on her unblinking as his mouth gaped open. No wonder she was nervous. Peter was about to break the tension when Tony cleared his throat. All the emotions on his face hidden away behind a smile. He hiked up his pants by the knees and squatted down so he was Raya’s height before sticking his hand out.

“Hello there. I’m Tony Stark, an old friend of your fathers. May I ask what your name is?” 


She leaned back into Peter and he squeezed her shoulders hoping she would be polite. With caution, as if she was measuring Tony’s sincerity, she brought her hand up and his old mentor and daughter shook hands. Tony like everyone else who met Raya couldn’t help but smile at her.

“I’m Raya and I’m seven years old. Dad never mentioned you before but he does that sometimes. I love forests though. Are we staying by a forest? One of my favorite type of tree is a Quaking Aspen or Populous Trembly…”
She trailed off and scrunched up her nose. Her head fell backward trying to look at Peter.

“It’s pronounced Populus tremuloides.”


“Yeah, that!” She said and looked back to Tony for his response.

The man rocked back on his heels but stayed low. Peter couldn’t help but feel like this was important. He wanted Raya to like Tony and vice versa. It wouldn’t do to dwell on why yet, though.

“Not everyone shares your love for trees, Raya.”



“Actually, mine is the Abies Balsamea or Balsam fir. It grows around the cabin I own upstate.”



Raya glowed at his statement. He knew that anyone who respected her love of trees was alright in her book, but someone who knew them and their names. Well, Tony just earned a friend for life. She stepped off of Peter’s feet and toward the man crouching down.

“I like those too.” She said fidgeting with her sleeves again.

“Maybe you can visit one day and see them in person.”

Peter clenched his fists but nodded at the hopeful look his daughter gave him. He didn’t want to get her hopes up but he couldn’t stand for her to be upset so soon. Yes, he wanted them to like each other but he also had to keep what happened in mind. If she grew attached and Tony left again he wasn’t sure if he could take it; if they both could survive another person leaving them. He shook his head knowing he was getting ahead of himself. Raya sniffled, coughing into her hands. Peter pulled out the hand sanitizer and sprayed her hands as Tony stood up.

“Shall we go?”

Raya turned and buried her head against Peter’s thigh for a moment. Tony stretched out his legs in front of them. As soon as he was done his little girl stepped onto the curb and grabbed Tony’s hand. Peter got the bag they had from the hospital and watched from under his lashes as Raya began lecturing Tony about all the different trees they might see on the way to Tony’s cabin. The man helped her up into the car, making sure her legs could reach the step, and she curled up in the backseat like she owned the vehicle.

-

Raya fell asleep to the sound of the engine, leaving Tony and Peter alone.

There were so many things he could say that nothing came to mind. Spiteful words floated around in his skull but he wouldn’t act on them. Maybe it was best to continue the silence.

He had thought he was past the blazing red emotions, that they were left behind in his teenage years, but it turned out some remained, hibernating until such a reunion arrived. He stretched his legs out.

“A kid, huh?” Tony said without looking away from the road.  “I must be getting old.”



Peter shrugged and crossed his legs before uncrossing them again. Tony sighed but he didn’t care. He was acting like Raya did when he sent told her it was bedtime, but he didn’t care. Or maybe it was he cared too much. He startled back when he felt a hand touch his arm.

“Kid, I think we need to talk, but whatever we say I am here to help you through this, whether you want me there or not.”

Peter crossed his legs. He stared at Tony. His sunglasses didn’t hide the wrinkles around his eyes anymore and the grey hairs were much more prominent than before. Time affected them both. Peter knew he needed to let go of these lingering resentments, his fear of rejection.

He and Hannah had tried to teach Raya how to navigate her feelings and what to do with them afterward. First to identify them, if you could, and then figuring out how you wanted to act in a certain situation. Feelings were sticky and sometimes burdensome, leading you astray, but sometimes they were beautiful in their pain or elation. Whatever the feelings were, they told Raya, they were hers and were always valid.

It was time he took those lessons to heart. His heart clenched from the pressure but he began to untangle the mess of emotions he’d carried around for so many years. They would need to talk but he would be ready. Honesty began with oneself and he would try from there. Peter turned to look back at his sleeping daughter before nodding at Tony.

Thank you!

Next: There’s a Light in the Hallway 

#whumptober2020 #whumptober 2020 #no. 14 #fire #spiderman #Spider-man #avengers #marvel #mcu #fanfic #fic #ao3 #peter parker #tony stark #oc #dad peter parker #father peter parker #estranged relationship #mending relationship

[domesticsns]

Honestly if the Uchiha family existed in real life, let's be honest,they would look pretty shady.A man insulted an Uchiha's boyfriend? The next day,he was found beaten up and was placed in a psychiatric ward due to traumatic experience he would not tell.People would probably assume they're the mafia or something.While in reality they are just a family of disfunctional human beings.

Yeah, but they’re a close family. They are broken pieces, but turns out these broken pieces fit together perfectly. 

One time it were just the Uchiha boys hanging out together. Just like the old days before they had jobs and wives and children *for Sasuke just Naruto but it still fits the two latter categories*.

They were having drinks at the bar and were talking and their conversation can be pretty much about anything. Anyway Sasuke checks his phone and says: “The waifu texted.’

And Madara arches an eyebrow and asks what he means with that and Sasuke says that sometimes for fun he and Naruto pretend they’re in a hetereosexual relationship. When Shisui asked what he meant by that. Sasuke says it just kind of joking about being in a stereotypical hetereosexual relationship by pretending their sex life is non-exisitng, the kids are bunch of ungrateful brats and they’re only together for ‘the kids’ but the reality is, is that they are just too afraid to be by themselves that they force them self to stick with the other because those are the norms society pushes on them and they pretend to be happy and to not have an affair. 

This all kinda just started happening when Sasuke and Naruto were shopping and found the typical Kyle and Karin type and they just started cracking about them and it stuck around. 

Madara asks who the Kyle is and who is the Karin.  Sasuke says they switch depending on the situation. If Sasuke calls because he is overworking he is the Kyle and if Naruto hasn’t done the dishes then he is the Kyle. and so on. 

“It almost sounds like you’re making fun of my marriage,” Itachi mutteres. 

“Wait, wait....You pretend to be a straight dude?” Madara asks. 

Sasuke says: “yes.” 

Madara: “You....Straight. I mean Naruto sure but you?” 

Sasuke: “What is that supposed to mean.” 

Madara : “Because he is bi that makes him half straight.” 

Sasuke: “No.” 

Izuna: “I wonder about straight Sasuke now.” 

Sasuke: “Yeah my straight alter ego his name is Chad, he is an investment banker. He is constantly cheating with his assistant and the lady from the lobby, but they don’t know about each other. The name of my wife is Susan. She is home maker and craft fanatic. Her cooking if awful and my house is always dirty. I have three kids and all three are spoiled and call me by my first name. It is like Susan isn’t even trying to raise them but whenever bring it up she ends up crying we get in a big fight. We hand’t had sex in like 3 years. “ 

Itachi, Shisui, Madara and Izuna are staring at Sasuke. 

“What?” Sasuke asks. 

“I wanna meet this Chad character of yours... Can please pretend to be chad for like five minutes.” Izuna beggs.

“No, I am only Chad over the phone. When people call for like the cable or something. So i can make them uncomfortable by secretly asking about the erotic packages and then I tell them about how i paid the doctor to give Susan a  husband’s stitch  after she gave birth to my daughter. Teared her right up. And now, she doesn’t want to have sex with me because it hurts.” 

“Okay Chad is dog.” Itachi says.

“I wanna meet chad.” Madara insist. 

“Pleaseee, I wanna meet chad too! Bring chad out!” Shisui beggs.

“You’re making it sound like I have multiple personalities while in reality I am just really good in role playing...Because everytime I broke character during disguise classes. I got my fingers broken. One by one.” 

“Everything you say is always so sad...” Izuna sighs and everybody looks down. Sasuke killed the mood, he feels kinda bad now. 

“Okay! I will pretend to be Chad!” He turns to Itachi, “Say PeanutButterAsshole in like an hour or else I will subconscious keep thinking somebody will break my fingers and won’t stop pretending to be Chad for like at least 6 months” 

“Okay, guys we shouldn’t be doing this. It sounds like playing with fire-” 

“It is fine, he gave us his safe word!” Izuna shouts. 

“Okay, I am grab a drink and I will chad after I finished it.” Sasuke gets up and goes to the bar orders a shot, takes it back, slams the drink on the table. Turns to the women who is maybe just 20 and says.  “He...” With little head nod and Madara goes: “Oh my god he is chad!” 

“Did anybody else feel like all the gayness around him disappear.” Izuna jokes. 

“I feel like this is going to be troublesome.” 

So they watch him flirt with this women, as Chad. And he is being a fucking jerk. Like he keeps talking about himself (chad)  what he went school he went the sports he played. How awesome he is. How much he makes and how tough he is and the women, sorry for her self-respect, is digging it. Probably because he is good looking.

“Okay I am going to stop this y’all had enough fun.” Itachi says after like twenty minutes. 

“NO he says an hour! I wanna hear about chad!” 

“You know more about Chad than you do about Sasuke.” 

“Fine i’ll go, but I’ll have Sasuke pay for the next round of drinks.” Izuna says and walks up to the bar and says: “PeanutButterAsshole”

And Sasuke turns to him Izuna and says :”Oh I said in an hour, was the fun over so quickly?” 

“Your brother killed the mood, but Chad was amazing. I mean I would have probably slept with Chad.” Izuna joked. 

“No, Chad is extremely homophobic.” Sasuke says, “Also he is like weirdly fascinated by the second world war.” 

“You thought his entire character out.” Izuna says, grabbing Sasuke’s wallet from his pocket. 

“I know I started this as a joke over the phone with Naruto...But I always do this. Like I am not the one to talk about my sex life a lot but every one of my character during role plays has entire backstory. I should stop doing that.” 

“i tried roleplay...Makes me laugh the entire time. Couldn’t cut it.”Izuna says. 

This woman is asking what the hell is going on and Izuna is like, “Oh sweetie, you just go see a therapist because the moment Chad cut you off when you talked about your mother who is in hospital just so he could talk about himself must have been an eye opener for you. Respect yourself, queen.” Izuna says. 

Then suddenly her boyfriend shows up and suddenly they realise where the lack of respect for herself come from because her boyfriend’s name is actually Kyle. And he is super mad. And shouts at his girlfriend and she looks at Izuna and goes: “No I am not going with you. I am breaking up with you.” 

And this guy grabs her arm and she screams and Izuna pushed Kyle away tells him to lay off. Kyle’s frat buddies is walking in and Kyle tells Izuna what he is going to do and called him an old man and Izuna is like: “Old?! Me?!” 

And he turns to Sasuke who says: “Well we are 30s and he is like what...25?” 

Kyle: “22″ 

Sasuke: “You’re just bunch babies. listen, I don’t want to hurt you guys. But I can’t let hit my cousin...Or...drag this girl with you, that is like low key kidnapping. Anyway it is against her will and I might not like but I did take an ought to protect the innocent...Whatever the fuck that means.” 

Izuna: “Yeah fuck off...I am not old.”  

Kyle is ready to punch Izuna in the face, but Sasuke blocks it and sighs as he looks at Izuna who gives Sasuke a little innocent smile. 

“You want me to help you take them down?” 

“Because you caused it and you feel responsible?” Sasuke asks Izuna who shakes his head. 

“He called me old!” Izuna protests. 

“What’s going on?” Itachi asks. 

“Why won’t we all just calm down and maybe not fight-” 

These guys start insulting Itachi and Shisui. Madara is just sitting in the booth, arms behind his head shouting at the others to just sit down and enjoy the show. 

Itachi says no and tells Sasuke and Izuna to just go and these frat guys say a whole ass of offensive shit now even Itachi doesn’t feel bad for them and he just taps Sasuke’s shoulder and says :”Go wild, I couldn’t give a shit.” 

“You heard him.” Sasuke says and that when he skilfully beat up twelve frat guys in a bar fight while Madara is paying off to owner to “break the security camera”. 

Shisui shouting: “No if you do that it doesn’t count as self defence anymore!” 

Sasuke goes: “What if I do this?!” 

Shisui: “Yeah that is okay...” 

Thirty minutes later Sasuke sits back down in the booth. 

“Oh you’re knuckles are bleeding...” 

Itachi pours some vodka on a napkin and cleans Sasuke’s knuckles who then AFTER BEATING 12 GUYS WHO LOOKS LIKE A BUNCH OF BEARS. says :”That hurts...Brother~” And have his older brother blow on it before covering it up with the first aid kit. 

“Is there ever going to be sceneratio where we just go out as a family and not...Y’know get in trouble.” 

(sorry my rambles are just kinda weird these days because idk i am in a rambling mood)

[gothamstreetcat]

oh dude dude DUDE have you...have you finished tlou2 yet? God I didn’t even know you liked the game I’m so excited I have someone to bother about it now 😂 anyways if you haven’t finished yet how far are you? also hope you’re doing well and taking care of yourself while playing the game cause it can be quite a bit on the violent side for some people

dear keeps,

rip to this disaster of a review that took me so long to complete:

So anyway, I was really debating on answering this ask or not for two reasons. One, being I don’t think I’m the best person to be doing this type of thing--I’m too scatterbrained. And two, I admittedly have a lot to say but have trouble putting things into words + this will be a lot of writing on my part that I don’t believe my brain can handle. Nevertheless, here we finally are.

I want to start by saying I have a poor memory and had not played the game in many years. I didn’t even play it when it first came out (even though I was interested in it), but only a year following it’s release. I also had not seen the trailer for the second game but once when it came out, and I didn’t see the second trailer they put out--I actually was just barely paying enough attention to anything to know only when the game was released. I’m certain if I had been up to date on all the leaks and scene changes from the trailers that I too, would have been more upset with the game itself. However, I’m not even going to talk about this beyond this point because I don’t know of the specifics and I’m too lazy to do the research and figure it out. On my own personal level, I did feel a disconnect from the first game to the second--mostly because I had not played the first game in such a long time. However, I have played it again as the time of my writing this, and will be talking about much of it here.

In a certain way, since playing the first game again, I definitely feel as though these two games complete each other on a deep, bittersweet level. It’s not perfect by any means but actually messy, and yet somehow I feel these games go together like Ellie and Joel themselves. There are so many little moments that tie them together that I didn’t realize at first but now, make the game seem very complete for me. Even if I didn’t like the ending.

Things like, Ellie telling Riley the only way she’s going to forgive her is with a dinosaur. Or Ellie telling Joel she wanted to be an astronaut + that he’s “so singing for her” when Joel gets badly injured. Or when Joel tells Ellie he’s gonna teach her how to play guitar following their journey to the Fireflies. We see every following moment to these in the second game. Joel singing to Ellie about losing himself if he ever lost her. Joel, teaching Ellie how to swim and then taking her to a museum full of freaking dinosaurs while also making her dream come true and giving her “the best birthday ever.” I don’t think I’m the one to be saying this, but none of this would have happened to Ellie if Joel had not done what he did. I am not trying to act like he’s perfect. I know he isn’t, and yes, I do think Abby is justified for what she did. Yet, I also side very much with Joel and maybe doing what he did seems very fucking selfish, but I view Joel being selfish not for himself, but instead for Ellie. It saddens me to feel as though Ellie only views her importance and purpose in life as being this “cure” however, in my mind, she’s more then that and I think Joel knows that too. You have no idea the impact you can make in someone’s life--big or small--just by being alive. Ellie surely made an impact on him. 

So yeah, maybe I can see why people are really upset. Is it right? Sure. Am I a little biased because I too, was raised by a single dad and see just a hint of him in Joel? Yes, and if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right. Besides, I think it’s a lot of pressure to put on a little girl to be the cure for mankind (to be frank, we don’t even know if mankind is worth it). Not only when Ellie indeed, was a young girl who still had an entire life in front of her. Maybe, Joel did what he did because he didn’t want to lose another daughter, maybe he saw Sarah in Ellie (I mean, they totally didn’t put that beginning part in with single daddy Joel for no reason), or maybe, as I said, he saw this entire future for Ellie because even he knows this isn’t all she was meant to do. Something I wish I could have told Ellie before Joel’s passing. Because while she has every right to be upset, I still believe Joel had every right to do what he did when he lied to her and stopped everything. 

Let me try and explain, part of me sees some of my dad in Joel. He’s rough around the edges but he’s got soft insides. He feels deeply connected to someone and therefore might become shut-off when he loses them (like my dad losing my mom or Joel losing his daughter). He didn’t have a great start, as I’m fairly sure Joel has killed and done lots of things he isn’t proud of before he met Ellie (for my dad I think it had a lot to do with drugs). However, I do see and believe that Ellie made him a better version of himself and it was clear how much she changed him because instead of pawning her off and shutting her down--he wanted to be with her, and I felt it showed their journey was more about protecting Ellie because he loved her and not just because she was the cure. I pretty sure the games makes it’s obvious enough and I don’t have to point it out because I’m deep in my fucking feelings right now. Yes, Joel is not the only person in the last of us* however, he does get a fucking pass from me for being not only a dad, but a single dad. Single dads do not get enough credit. It hits when we get to part where Joel gets injured and I sit there and think “well, what if that was me and my dad?” Firstly, we’d be fucking dead. There are no five hits in real life and then you restart. Second, my dad would probably fucking tell me to leave him and let him bleed and I’m sure I couldn’t do that. Therefore, I’d try to reason with the bad guys and then we’d be dead, again. 

I also want to talk about how it’s interesting when Ellie makes her first kill and Joel does admit “it was either him or me” how this is such a big theme of the game. So much in fact I think it plays a huge role in Joel’s death. This entire time you’re playing these two characters and having to fight and kill because of just that--it’s either you or them. Yeah, you could try and sneak your way past and whatever, but firstly, that’s never seemed to fucking work for me--I’m not Batman. Secondly, the minute they see you they’re going to shoot you--it’s dog it eat dog out there. Yeah, it’s a game and that’s the way it’s programmed, but in Joel and Ellie’s reality that’s what the world has come to. Crazy enough, I complained a little from the second game that it felt you fought more people then infected, yet you come back to the first game and it kinda seems the same way! Like, maybe mankind doesn’t deserve to be saved. You could argue it’s the circumstances that made them that way--but there is still plenty of good people *and yes, I count Joel as one of them because when you’re going around and the people are just shoot you on sight you have a right to defend yourself.* Then over here, you have the Cannibal-rapist King, David and I guess “his people” going around in a tank mercilessly killing people on sight only to be disappointed they have nothing on them besides the clothes on their backs. ????

Don’t even get me started on those bullshit Fireflies, because first off, Marline does not get to fucking come to Joel and tell him what she’s fucking lost. You don’t get to act like another person has lost more or less then you. You don’t get to talk about how Ellie’s mom left her with you and then taint that loyalty and trust by killing Ellie just because “you just want this all to be over” because, in my view, you are lazy and want to take a cowards way out while other people are over here surviving. Tommy is a good example of this because he part of the Fireflies but now he’s not. He’s got a home, a wife, livestock and grown produce and seems overall very happy. He even talks about how those were things people didn’t think were going to be possible anymore. 

I understand, Marlene is technically Ellie’s guardian, yet who protected her this entire time? Joel Miller. The one person who apparently wasn’t going to stand for any of this. Who called Marlene on her bullshit--rightfully so, and also, did most of what he did for Ellie. Yeah, maybe he’s her dad or whatever, and perhaps he’s just the stranger she got stuck with--but I feel Joel has every right to be a part in all this because Ellie is just a kid who needs adult guidance. I have to cover all my bases and say yes, maybe Joel was out of line--he’s not her dad but he is a dad and I don’t know any parent in the world who would give up their child for the rest of the world. I know my dad wouldn’t. 

Which brings me back to this thing about Ellie and Joel being connected and being puzzle pieces that are different in shape but fit perfectly--more perfect then any of the pieces of the puzzle. Ellie needs an adult figure *which sure as fuck is not going to be Marlene* and Joel I think needs Ellie to be grounded. To be a better person. To complete him--if you will. I say this because I have no problem with Joel taking Ellie’s choice away, even if it wasn’t the perfect thing to do. In his defense however, the Fireflies didn’t give him much choice. They knocked him out while he was in the middle of CPR and a high doubt they pulled Ellie out enough to tell her the full story of the situation--which is not fair to Ellie at all. They would’t even let Joel fucking see her and let me ask, how in the world can you expect Joel or judge him for saving Ellie after they’d been though so much? Ellie is worried about a wasted trip but think of how far you came just to unknowingly die? After having made plans with Joel for a life beyond the Fireflies. 

I do think Ellie would have still chose to sacrifice herself, but again, I also don’t think what was happening to her was fair. And before we get into Joel lying to Ellie, he lied in true dad fashion and did the best he could do at the time. He was right and should say it, killing Ellie because Marlene thinks it’s better for her is not for her to fucking decide. Torn apart by clickers? Honey, I really think if that was the case it would have happened by now (or if you’re me it happened several times). Raped and murdered? We already closed that chapter of the book and in all three cases Ellie was able to hold her own like a pro--this on top of taking care of big daddy Joel after he was injured. So no, you don’t get to make the choice just because you think it’s “better” and those are your only reasons. Mind you, this is also the woman Ellie said would have shot her on sight once she got bit. *Please, don’t even come at me with this bitch in season two. Abby has more validation then her.

Needless to say, but I do not like Marlene however, I do wish he death is something I would have done differently. While I understand Joel doing what he did, I found killing her kinda harsh and is she was going to return I would have preferred to cross that bridge in the second game. I also didn’t agree with killing the surgeon (Jerry) --I just wish that could have been different and less brutal. I think perhaps it might have been a little better if them hunting Joel and Ellie became the second game but hey, I didn’t write it and I’m probably wrong. I did try to go around the doctor but nothing happened so I felt exceptionally bad when Joel killed him the way he did (I mean, when someone screams “you animal” it makes you question if you’ve become everything you’ve fought against). I do wish they could have talked it out and reasoned dad-to-dad but that is probably unrealistic and Marlene would have found a way to stop it. I know Abby said she’d been cool being the sacrifice and all but I think things admittedly been super different it was Abby and her father going through this. Write me a fic of Abby and her dad helping Joel escape, I dare ya. 

*okay, so I totally just just looked it up and you die if you wait too long to kill the surgeon + hitting him with a brick or bottle does nothing*

Now, the reason I wanted to say all this is because right now, my heart burns deeply for Joel. I am not trying to take away from Abby by saying this or seem conflicted or convoluted, but I do believe deep down Joel’s death has bigger meaning because of these past events. We look at the “it’s either him or me” statement but compare that to Ellie and Joel. If Ellie had died then Joel would most likely be alive. However, being he stopped that from happening it ended up in him losing his own life. Now, I understand Joel said if he could he’d have done it differently--but I really do think in the case of saving Ellie, he’s wrong. If we look at the above instead as “it’s either Ellie or Joel” (as the case ends up being) Joel is most certainly going to pick Ellie over himself because that is what a good parent does for their child. Again, bringing me into the whole him seeing a future for Ellie and giving her one. I feel that’s way more important to him and if he had never done what he did then Ellie would not have had the best birthday ever, she would not have had Dina (the dinosaur) or JJ, and she would have never learned how to swim or play guitar or had a cute little farm with animals and whatever. She would not have touched the lives of the people she met. And I feel like, in most cases it is common for parents to want better for their children (like I’m sure Peter wanted for Abby). 

However, Abby is just as justified for wanting to kill Joel and it’s crazy we can justify wanting Abby hurt or dead because she killed Joel. However, things would have been different if we played the first game as Abby instead of Joel. Yet, we have played a game and then some getting to know Ellie and Joel, siding with them and not being able to see the other side where we jump into playing Abby who we only just met. 

There is a good post or two I am going to link here* and here.

I also want to point out that while we’ve been playing with Ellie for one game and then some--where she has only know Joel for X amount of time, yet there is Abby who has known her dad her entire life. Abby who, walked in and saw her dad on the ground in his blood, brutally murdered by a “fucking animal.” I’m not trying to take away from anyone here, this mostly for the people who hate Abby just to do it, and I know I’ve probably said lots of time but I know it’s not easy to see your parent die in front of you and I don’t think a lot of people see that. (There is also a neat post I am going to link here) Now, the circumstances are very different but trauma is trauma no matter how you slice it and while I admire Abby for only going after what she initially came for and nothing else, I do with she would have spared Ellie of the sight considering it wasn’t her fault. Knowing what Abby herself had been through. 

This part of my review/rant/word vomit is probably going to sound a little fucked-up but I really wish Abby and Ellie could have found a way to be together. I know it sounds dumb but they are really two halves to the same coin and I really believe the only one who could help Ellie with her PTSD would be Abby. It isn’t like she can go to a therapist and fighting for Abby’s death wasn’t going to cure it. Abby and Ellie have both experienced loss (and to some degree at each other’s hands). They were brought into this infected world pretty young and lost their parental guidance in the process. I also, wished things had been different with Joel as hard as that is to say, because I’m not saying Abby should forgive Joel but I would want Joel to be sorry and know what he did. I believe having the characters actually confront the issues they faced rather then look at them and kill would bring more peace--which is all I want to ask for. Peace.

Something else I really liked about Abby was her trying to stop the cycle of revenge (I’m not gonna lie, I really not care about anyone else aside from Abby, Ellie, and Joel this game don’t get me wrong about Lev though). Yes, I know she kinda added to it, but once Lev and Yara came around she too, like Joel, was trying to be a better person and I could really see her potential. It became all about saving/helping Lev and Yara (much like Joel and Ellie). And I feel like I sound crazy when I say I didn’t have much issue fighting Ellie as Abby (it’s really sick how I saw most of the fight style like fighting David in the Steakhouse, wtf Naughtydog) but I had a huge problem fighting Abby as Ellie. I feel as though seeing Abby spare Ellie was showing how much she’s grown and how much she understands Ellie. However, I had a tough time fighting as Ellie because Abby was already so fucking beat by the end of the game. She had Lev as her top priority, had lost weight, been out in the blistering sun, probably starving, and the Rattlers had cut her fucking braid (something I see as a way to humiliate her on top of other things they probably did to her and Lev). Not only that but seeing Abby be cut up repeatedly when she could barley fight for herself was tough. 

So yeah, it’s going on one in the morning so now I’m going to talk about some other things... Overall, I really enjoyed the game, I even like the new dodge feature (which I came to realize was not in the first game). I did feel like you kinda had to kill everyone in order to progress the game but to be fair I’m not really good at video games so I don’t really want to count that. 

Even I too, did not like Abby at first. I didn’t like her because she was new and by brain often immediately rejects new. I also didn’t like how she jumped (but then I came to realize that everyone jumps that heavy and acts like they just missed that two foot jump). Lastly, I love how Abby and Joel got muscles, therefore, they don’t really need a knife I guess but I hate crafting shivs and I think it’s a little dumb so I don’t know why Abby never made one after that period of time (like girl, you know you need it). I thought the Rattler’s crew was stupid only because they really just seemed there and like you average neighborhood hoodlums--again, just killing people on sight for whatever reason. 

I didn’t like the dogs in the game because I felt too real. Killing a dog in the cemetery of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness? No problem. Killing dogs in The Last of Us? I couldn’t live with myself. If I accidentally sliced up a dog with my knife or melee weapon, I had to let them kill me? A shotgun? No go. Part of the time I could run away but again, I’m not good at video games so this was a bit of a challenge. 

I do wish they had let us use Ellie’s whistling on the scars, I think that would have been cool, and I want to say I found myself getting lost a lot but I didn’t want to make another paragraph just to say that.

It’s crazy because I was not totally sure how they were going to approach a second game/what they were going to put in it. I was very shocked Joel’s death but not really turned off by it if that makes sense. I am a little sadder now, but will add that with my thoughts during the ending. I also, couldn’t understand why people were so upset because at the time, Joel’s death did not seem like a good enough reason to me. I was more upset over Ellie being upset with Joel for doing what he did even though she’s right and it’s natural but I also don’t think she could see what Joel was until it was too late. Having someone pass away with unresolved issues is not easy and can take a very long time for someone to get over. 

As for the ending, it’s bittersweet. I am a little sad but also a little un-phased--so to speak. At first, I thought Dina had left with JJ, but there was another post (which I didn’t save in my drafts so I’m not going to link it) that explained why Ellie was back at the farm--to possibly close a chapter. She is wearing Dina’s bracelet again (as opposed to in Santa Barbara) that indicates she reconciled and will probably return to Jackson--which is nice. Yet, I am very torn over her giving up playing guitar. Yes, she cannot play the same, but I wish she hadn’t given it up fully. That guitar, which Joel made if I’m not mistaken, was a symbol of Joel’s love. It was something he passed onto Ellie out of love that he wanted to do because he loved her. It was more then a skill to survive and more then a piece of advice given. That’s why it hurts deeply to see her let something like that go. However, I know (as talked about in Ana’s review) that losing her fingers is supposed to show the damage her hunt for revenge caused. She lost her fingers because she begged Abby to fight, can no longer now play guitar the same, Tommy is changed and lost his wife, and Joel is still dead. That is why I wish so much for peace between Ellie and Abby but there may never be any. 

On top of letting go of the guitar, I wanna say that sometimes memories are not enough for people. Sometimes all we have are the things people left behind and it can be really challenging to let go. For some reason it always seemed like my dad used material things in place of what I lacked, so when he passed I didn’t want to get rid of anything and kept almost everything. I got my driver’s license so I wouldn’t have to get rid of his car that’s seen better days--despite my family’s wants. Hell, I even have a container of his cigarette ashes from his bedside kept as well as the container he left in the car. I was so upset when I lose his car key that he always used (despite the fact that I broke it and it kept falling off the ring). Things that just aren’t even that important but they matter, you know? So, I feel bad Ellie left the guitar. 

My (hopefully) final thoughts: David was the only person I do not feel sorry for and deserved to die (he is another fucking rant for another asks, I swear). I really wish we could have seen Abby choke someone out with her muscles but maybe in the DLC where her and Lev get a more finished ending. And lastly, I know I could have just said if I liked the game or not but I do not live in the real world.

I can’t wait to play the games again, they are my salvation right now.

Hope you are well, and taking care of yourself also! 

xoxo 

* since it took me So Long to find that second post, I found another talking about Ellie’s tattoo I’m gonna leave here *

#thank you for all the sweet messages. love #asks #guys. you don't have to read this but if you did or even just part of it I'd be so grateful #I worked really hard on this and it's so fucking late #keeps. I was totally gonna make a video because this is a lot #but I didn't so I hope my humor can come through in text #also I really wanna do an ellie inspired tattoo because I am not original at all #XD

[jojosbizarreadventur]

Time’s Crusade: Prologue (00) and Chapter One (01)

also available on AO3 (under emih)

Summary: Yesterday in 2011, your husband Noriaki and close friend Jotaro were both murdered together just months before your university graduations. The day before yesterday, you discovered that your nerve-wracking IUI procedure was successful. Two months before that day, said close friend made a proposition to the both of you due to your husband’s recently-discovered infertility.

Today in 1988, you’re over 20 years into the past of an alternate universe, suddenly tasked with trailing after different versions of your late husband and close friend as they travel with unfamiliar faces to Egypt, determined to confront the man you now work for.

And in the following days, you discover how easy it was for your sentiments to change.

00

Prologue

1988 || Egypt

“My family back in America has a history of entering politics,” the man with the orange robing concluded after his spiel. His fingernails lightly tapped on the cold stem glass before him. “’S not for me, personally.”

Across from him was his blond, brooding boss— a man far beyond his actual age with an interesting penchant for sadistic activities… if it meant he’d get what he’d expressed a desire for. He was a very persistent man, and though he had only awakened less than five years ago, there was already plenty of time for him to outline his next endeavors. The man in the orange robing did not have much knowledge of his boss’s other deeds or requests, nor did he want to know them.

Except for this one, because he was reportedly going to play a prominent role in its execution. For a new hire, he knew of its impressiveness. It was too early to celebrate, however, as he later discovered that the parameters set for him were quite… particular, and this conversation was supposed to clear a few issues up. This was already confirming that today was going to be a relatively uneventful 24th of November.

His boss let out a hum in content.

“Quite the history your lineage has,” his boss observed, mildly intrigued. “Had I bothered to… ‘survive’ the boat trip to America, perhaps I would have encountered that amusing ancestor of yours someday.”

The man in the orange robing cheekily nodded.

Subsequently, his boss pivoted the conversation.

“Your Stand’s abilities,” his boss reaffirmed with a firm tone of voice. “Last time we conversed you only disclosed a brief overview of them, though I’d like to be enlightened even more.”

“What would you like to focus on?” the man with the orange robing asked in anticipation.

It wasn’t often that he’d have such a thorough conversation on his Stand, Take Five. For years he has benefited from anonymity as he learned and practiced the abilities he was born with and aware of— a slight surprise to his boss, nonetheless. To speak of it so freely is… well, it’s taking a bit of time for him to get used to.

His boss’s sharp golden eyes stayed on him.

“Its limitations.”

Yes, of course.

“…It doesn’t have many restrictions, as far as I know,” the man in the orange robing confessed, pursing his lips afterwards.

His boss let out another hum. “Elaborate.”

The man with the orange robing smirked. “Whatever or whoever travels to a different dimension must have the entirety of their body enclosed between the two objects or surfaces that I choose to use. As I am just about finished with the task you’ve assigned to me, uh… I recently had an encounter with Hollis… Haruo Joestar and his daughter in their home in the previous dimension I visited.”

“Hollis Joestar?” his boss repeated, raising a brow in curiosity. He initially showed no sign of recognition towards the name. That must’ve been that dimension’s one of many descendants of JoJo—  Jonathan… if that dimension’s Jonathan was anything like the one he currently owned the body of.

The alternate dimensions themselves show no restrictions in diversity, as he realized from the man in the orange robing’s accounts the other day. In another dimension, his counterpart was apparently living in modern suburbia with some bastard child of his, left behind by one of his feasts. Imagine him, Dio, being constrained to such a setting! He was connected to a Joestar even then, as a counterpart of Jonathan’s great-great-grandson lived right next door.

The man in the orange robing quickly got rid of that Joestar, per his request. That one didn’t even have a Stand, making the kill effortless. Needless to say, Dio slept soundly that day.

“His wife Sadako Kujo is a jazz pianist, away on tour… his teenage daughter Jitsuko attending school until she decided to ditch,” he sourly clarified, snapping Dio back to  this  account. “Haruo— as he calls himself— tried to fight me with his own Stand as Jitsuko aided in the effort. You know, I don’t think Ms. Sadako would be thrilled to find her decapitated husband and her dismembered daughter left to bleed and rot, upon returning. Haruo and Jitsuko were much too righteous, acting as if following after me would prove something of themselves…”

“As all Joestars are,” Dio mockingly moped, before backtracking. “By any chance, did Hollis have a father named Joseph?”

The name had suddenly clicked.

How could it have escaped his mind? Upon ‘awakening’ near the Canary Islands, he spent the time travelling as he recuperated (gladly with the help of willing candidates). One of his first tasks was to find the outcome of the Joestar lineage— it had been nearly a hundred years since the events on that ship, and surely the country girl that Jonathan ended up marrying would’ve drowned while escaping.

In fact, she did not, much to his dismay. He didn’t know where she was found, but she was found and was pregnant, as she had given birth to a son some months after. That son had married and his wife had given birth to the now-old man that dares to constantly watch him. Of course Dio knew that Joseph was watching him— he had been for some time, now, with the help of his recently-acquired Stand. That old intrusive man had made a name for himself as a real-estate mogul and furthered the lineage with a daughter, who also had a son.

Anyhow, he had been keeping tabs.

Hollis Joestar must have been the counterpart of Joseph’s daughter— goodness, the names were even variations of one another. Likewise, Jitsuko would’ve been the counterpart of her son.

“Uh…” the man with the orange robing trailed off with a pensive expression. “I recall him having a mother named Josephine, if that’s what you mean.”

Of course, the only aspect that was different in that dimension was their sexes. If this holds true, however, Dio would have been a woman. If his counterpart still awakens after a century in the deep depths of the ocean and still feels the need to eliminate the rest of the Joestar family, then at least that dimension was staying relatively faithful to this one.

Though…

“I see,” his boss responded, body staying stiff. “What other limitations are you, at the very least, aware of? For example…you exist in the other dimensions as well, do you not? Your abilities are quite unique, after all…”

“Well, yes, of course, I exist in others too,” the man in the orange robing confirmed as a matter-of-fact. “But I’m the only one that has a Stand, thus I’m the only one who can travel.”

As a young teen, he had accidentally encountered a counterpart of himself while trying out his newly-discovered ability of dimension-hopping. Though, that one showed no sign of being a Stand user. Instead, he was far away, taking no notice of his counterpart’s Stand as he competed in a chess competition with another teen that suspiciously resembled his now-boss. Luckily, he had no interest in meeting that chess-playing counterpart.

He had an inkling that the outcome would’ve been disastrous.

—

[STAND NAME] and [STAND MASTER]

 ???

—

Dio hummed in vague interest now. The man in the orange robing definitely had a peculiar ability. Within a year of possessing his Stand and encountering users that now work for him, he had never seen anything like it before. He was just starting to realize the extent— the wide range of Stand abilities, even with his own recently-realized ability to stop time. Fortunately, the ability of dimension-hopping was being utilized by someone who had the wits to use it to his advantage as he dedicated himself to the mission assigned by his boss, Dio. It was as if the mission was perfectly crafted for a man of his caliber… because it was.

“The task that I’ve assigned to you, I believe, was executed wonderfully.”

Based on the very detailed accounts that the man in the orange robing had been graciously giving to him per day, he was well aware of the man’s success. He should expect to be paid handsomely; he definitely deserved it.

“You should be just about finished visiting the dimensions we’ve targeted, then,” Dio continued. Oh, how much he wanted to gloat! He was already feeling the need to assign him another task. If his dedication to this one was any indication of his loyalty to him, Dio, then surely he’d have the chance to milk him of his abilities. Besides, the man already had his bud of cells implanted in his head, so that chance was for certain.

The man in the orange robing tentatively exhaled, pursing his lips.

At this action, his boss suddenly raised a brow. His back straightened just a smidgen— why had the man exhaled in such a manner? Was he just about finished?

He was, wasn’t he?

Before the flesh bud, Dio had a sudden thought of what would happen if the man had never pledged loyalty to him. There could’ve been a chance that he’d encounter one of the Joestar descendants— Joseph and/or his grandson, maybe— and used his abilities to help them instead of him. He would’ve revealed his abilities to them… he would’ve shown them other dimensions containing their counterparts. The counterparts, after all, typically had similar self-interests amongst each other, as he now remembered another one of the accounts that the man in the orange robing had given him. He was also aware of another ability of his— the one where he’d be able to pull objects or even  people  out of another dimension. Thus, as one of the Joestars here already had intentions of seeking him, then perhaps…

That just wouldn’t do.

After the flesh bud, he made sure to prevent that from happening, let alone by a Joestar that wasn’t even from this damn dimension. He wasn’t really in the mood to personally take care of any other Joestar except the ones from this dimension, the ones he has familiarized himself with.

“I should be, but… um, I digress,” the man in the orange robing announced now, voice tight.

He was feeling guilty. His facial expression was giving those thoughts away— he swore that the dimension with the sex-switched Joestars was the last one— he himself had planned this, as well—  but… there was something about that…

Indeed, Dio was curious about what he was going to say next. At the very least, it would be a nice courtesy to know why he wasn’t finished yet. He was already getting a bit off schedule here.

“…Jonathan Joestar’s great-great-grandson will be having a child in another dimension, and he’s the first counterpart to do so. He served as a surrogate father for his friend’s wife, and only mere hours ago did she discover her pregnancy.”

01

A Promise, Part 1

2011 || Japan

November 25 was when it happened. It hasn’t even been a whole fucking week.

The fact that you were managing to get through studying for final exams with that going on— swimming and flying around your head and its thoughts— was a goddamn miracle. You remembered the few times when your eyes would focus on some nondescript item around you, causing your hand to absentmindedly let go of whatever it held. A few acquaintances innocently approached you, asking if you were alright as you crammed in the library or the dining hall (all on the same day, as after a few hours you desperately needed a change of environment).

Besides those places and the convenience store nearby, you didn’t plan to go out anywhere else in public since it happened. Actually, you didn’t even want to go out and show yourself to all of Tokyo. You didn’t bother to show up to any of your classes today, disrupting your perfect informally-kept record of attendance.

Oh, I understand! Finals’ season is just ridiculous.

Hey, we’re gonna graduate soon, aren’t we? Just need to plow through and the year will be up.

Nah, calm down, no worries.

You’re majoring in engineering! Of course it’s going to be overwhelming as hell.

Shouldn’t you be used to that feeling by now?

You should be used to that feeling.

Actually, you already are. Though, it wasn’t test anxiety or whatnot that was bothering the hell out of you. Well, besides the fact that apparently, you come off as someone ridiculously worried about exams, so much so that no one could really identify any other issues with you…

But it hasn’t even been a whole fucking week. Just yesterday, on November 25.

Friday.

You were barely given enough time to process everything.

You actually weren’t even there when it happened, as that day, you were, well… you were four hours away by plane from Tokyo. Even with the distance, you were still too far and too late.

In no way did you want to spend the hard-earned money you got as a research assistant— which wasn’t much to begin with, but hey, it’s money— on a plane trip. However, nausea was slowly starting to kick in during the days before that, so you had no choice unless you ultimately decided to vomit on the way to or on the train.

Iwami-chō was coastal, located in the western region of Japan, and was where your family home was located. No one was staying there at the moment, but it would be inhabited again if your father traveled home from America, or if you had decided to attend a local university instead. You would normally stop by every few months to tend to the plants around your house or see a few old faces. Your husband was fine with that; he sometimes accompanied you even, when he wasn’t busy.

Yeah...

Your husband.

The first thing you missed was Noriaki Kakyoin’s scent, along with his warmth— physical and/or emotional. Now, you know that probably sounds fucking weird, but you’re already finding it hard to abruptly adjust to the lacked presence after being surrounded by it for a few years. You wouldn’t forget how his embraces felt, how his well-defined arms clad in his usual long sleeves would wrap around you tightly.

Or even in other circumstances, where he’d snake a naked arm around you in bed after sex. He’d pull you to his chest as you both retired for the night, skin still slightly sticky with a thin sheet of sweat on your faces, or cum near your thighs and lower abdomens— both fluids you both tried to clean post-orgasm. Beforehand, though, he always liked to savor the sight of your naked body before he’d help clean everything up and drift off to sleep.

He never hesitated to act so lovingly and genuine to you, even while generally being more on the reserved side. Nor did you ever hesitate to reciprocate those feelings. You remembered when he (abashedly) admitted to you that you were one of the few people that he could genuinely be himself around— this occurred sometime during winter break of your first year at university. That list of trustworthy people to Noriaki wasn’t very long in the first place, he said, and you understood. His past, as he also disclosed to you, definitely had an influence on that. Your heart reached out to him— you knew he was a man that experienced a lot throughout his life. The least you could do was to make him look forward to his future.

Wait.

You’re… getting carried away.

—

What happened yesterday happened at around 4 PM. You were still at Iwami-chō, and… you think you were talking to an old classmate of yours who dropped by. Sitting at the heated low table drinking warm tea, reminiscing about high school before you had moved to Tokyo while she opted for the local university. A small part of you became jealous, nonetheless; you remembered the visits to the vast sand dunes and the coastal inlet a short drive away or the walks to and from school on the pavement near the ocean, whiffing the scent of brine almost daily. Your memories here before leaving for university all came back at once.

Though, you couldn’t remember the events of today so vividly anymore, because upon arriving back to Tokyo late at night, everything that happened earlier was immediately wiped from memory. All you started to remember was what happened the second you arrived. To be so innocent and naïve, speaking with a friend and expecting to return to the small apartment you and your husband both shared later that evening, while said man was getting murdered in said place during that time. There was no doubt that he, too, had the same thoughts on when you’d arrive home before he wasn’t capable of thinking any longer.

…You couldn’t believe it when you found out. There was no fucking way, and yet it still happened…

The neighbors had heard a loud commotion coming from your apartment around that time, first mistaking it as your husband and you having sex (which was strange to think about, but… if you were in a hell of a better mood now, you’d be snickering at that assumption— maybe Noriaki would too as he had a hidden knack for that type of humor). Initially, they were extremely—  and you mean extremely—  pissed off to hear such noises coming from the apartment next door/across the hall, especially as some had children they wanted to protect the ears of. They were just about ready to collectively write complaint letters for the building’s manager on you two.

Though their suspicions became gradually more gruesome as they heard objects break, men yelling, walls banging, floor thudding, and whatnot.

Suddenly, the sound died completely.

It became eerily quiet.

…they didn’t like that at all.

Anyway, it was almost 9 PM when you came home.

You remember collapsing to your knees upon arriving, your kneecaps bluntly coming into contact with the hard flooring. They stung— you remembered, somehow— and the skin covering them probably reddened, but that was the least of your worries.

One could imagine your face when you first saw fucking barricade tape in front of the route to yours and Noriaki’s apartment. At least a billion fucking questions swarmed through your mind, all variations of the same one…

What in the ever-loving fuck happened?

Turns out, your neighbors had been the one to call the police while you were away. Initially calling to complain about the noise coming from the apartment in hopes of some police intervention, there was another reason they decided to call.

The neighbors had reportedly heard three different male voices in the apartment, because maybe the walls were a bit thin in this building. Though, they were aware that a woman lived there too… but why weren’t they hearing her voice? Why were there two more men, also? As far as they knew, one man and one woman lived in the apartment, as they both usually left the building around the same time as the neighbors who were fellow university students, possibly-hungover salarymen, or the mothers taking their children out with her as she did errands.

You weren’t alerted of anything while you were in Iwami-chō, so everything became a nasty surprise for you, increasingly becoming more gruesome as the night went on… increasingly making you in denial. Your train of thought started to shut down, refusing to even acknowledge the circumstances. This wasn’t… this wasn’t what you wanted. Never in your life did you actually want this to happen to you— fuck, no one wanted this type of shit to happen to them— but of course, you were one of the unfortunate ones that night.

Why one of them?

Well…

“Let me see my husband!” you uncharacteristically shrieked, trying to advance to the apartment door and barge through it. Your arms were held back by a police officer who rushed over to you, locking your arms behind your back as you tried to use all the strength you developed over the years to get the  hell out of that strong officer’s hold and see the man you had only just seen this morning.

This morning, like every other morning, Noriaki had his bed-hair— red locks poking out here and there while the voluminous bang hung on the side of his face was unbelievably frizzy. He also had the cases of morning breath and morning wood, which always made you snicker.

This morning, which only happens if he has time, Noriaki offers to cook breakfast. He knows that like him, you usually leave the house at a designated early time for class, grabbing the most convenient food item for your commute from yogurt to pre-sliced fruit. Though, as you had no class today, and you were also traveling back to Iwami-chō for the day, you decided to squeeze in the rare luxury of sitting down to eat breakfast with your husband.

This morning, which he always loves to do, Noriaki plants kisses on your neck and collar bones, everywhere on your face, and on your knuckles. He nuzzles his face into your neck as he wraps his arms around your waist; though, as you’re a little shorter than him, you sort of feel bad by how he has to tilt his head in order for his chin to reach your shoulder. His embraces are usually warm, tight, though this time he’s a little cautious in his hug, knowing that there’s life starting to grow inside you.

This morning, and all mornings, afternoons, and evenings, he tells you he loves you. He can’t wait to be a father. He lightly rubs your lower abdomen; albeit, without any sign of a bump, but he knows there will be one at some point. He wishes you a safe trip to your hometown, wishing that he could go with you, but he can’t. He has class today. He never liked skipping class, despite his close friend opting to do so nearly every day back in high school, as Noriaki recounted.

You understood his wishes, but you knew that he’ll be back for you when you return later. He always was.

He always was, he always was…

But why wasn’t he coming back now?

“Let— me— see— my— husband!” You emphasized even more, now. You didn’t care anymore if anyone nearby found your shrieks jarring. You kept repeating this—  your voice was hoarse, your limbs were getting tired from trying and trying, just hoping you’d get to have even one last look at your husband. It didn’t matter about the state he was in; you barely even considered the chance that there may not even be enough of him left to actually see.

Of course, you fucking sobbed. Your cheeks were damp with tears that just settled on your skin after the rounds of sobs, but even as your eyes stung, you stared at the door. You stared at the door in longing, hoping— just hoping that your husband would be warm-blooded and well, opening the door and sauntering through and over to you. His lean body would be against yours as you both embraced one another, your head resting on his chest.

The front door of yours and Noriaki's apartment opened.

Two body bags were being carried— wait. Fuck, hold on. Why… why were there… two…

Your breath hitched in your throat, limbs freezing in place upon realization.

The other bag contained a body that was quite longer than the other one, as if… as if… no, no, no, fuck no… as if it was meant for a person of uncommonly tall stature.

You were, quite literally, going to have a massive fucking breakdown.

Noriaki wasn’t alone. He wasn’t alone— he wasn’t alone at all. Jotaro was with him— it had to be Jotaro, because who the fuck was as tall as Jotaro here. Jotaro was keeping him company while you were gone for the day… he doesn’t usually have class on this day, either—  oh my fucking God—

The sight of your husband— well, you didn’t really have to see what remained of him to know that it was Noriaki in the other bag— made you queasy. Normally, you could stomach this sort of stuff, but you could zip down that bag if you were permitted to and probably both cry and vomit at the sight.

You didn’t want to believe it.

You didn’t want to believe that Noriaki wasn’t alive, but dead inside a bag and being carried out by gloved and protected individuals. You didn’t want to believe that Jotaro was dead, either. You didn’t want to believe that both of them were murdered at the same time, at the same place. You didn’t want to believe that you’d never see them again…

Your legs felt weak. Hushed conversations and worried whispers from your adult neighbors were all surrounding your ears, but none of their words were distinguishable. You could practically feel the irritation, grief, and impatience radiating off of them. Your eyes didn’t focus on anyone in particular anymore. Law enforcement workers were walking in and out with equipment, and every time you’d see that door open, you’d see varying-sized splatters of blood and broken or fallen furniture through that opening.

Your mind went blank as tears effortlessly flowed down your cheeks.

A lot happened afterwards, but you were pretty much on autopilot for the next few hours.

You wished it was just a mere nightmare.

Yet, you didn’t even sleep that night, rendering that wish useless.

Well, actually, the lack of sleep was common practice for you, as you already had the tendency to stay up late at night just studying or carrying out various projects. Though during these times, you were still able to fit about an hour or two of sleep— it was fine.

This night, however, you actually didn’t sleep.

At all.

Initially, the events you witnessed were replaying over and over again as tears continued to collect, sting, and flow down from your eyes, wetting your pillow and the futon.

Though, eventually, your mind kept rewinding to events that you weren’t bound to forget any time soon.

Fall to Winter, 2008

It was mid-September— the start of the second semester— when you met Noriaki for the first time.

As it was yours and his first year of college, you were both taking an introductory programming class, and by chance ended up sitting next to one another.

By now, you were just about getting used to typical university life— studying, exams, more studying, some use of office hours, more exams, even more studying— with some extra room for clubs, research, and trying not to bawl from stress in your bedroom. As an engineering major, your GEs had much more weight than other majors, so you were frantically trying to keep up with your studies as your high school friends— non-STEM majors now— were going out and not even giving any semblance of a shit about university.

It didn’t help that despite you and your high school friends all coming from Iwami-chō, most of you got into different universities throughout Tokyo. You wouldn’t be able to see everyone else as often due to the distance. Even while cramming, you couldn’t help but feel a bit lonely at times.

That is until Noriaki decided to sit next to you in that programming class. To be fair, he did admit to you later that there weren’t many seats left in the room that day.

Maybe that was a good thing. Whatever those superstitious blog posts you’ve occasionally come across in the past spewed about the existence of fate seemed to come back to memory.

He, too, had felt some inexplicable impulse to sit next to you. Initially, it piqued his interest— he played with the idea of you being like him, but he didn’t mind it any longer as you showed none of the signs.

Anyway, for the first month, neither of you spoke a word to each other. At the very least, you did acknowledge each other’s presence, such as making what-the-fuck side glances at each other when the professor says something out of both of your grasps. It was an oddly comforting coping mechanism to the rigor of the course.

You occasionally glance over at him— his quick hand as he writes notes, or when he puts on his black-framed reading glasses right before class begins. Early on, you did notice the little cherry earrings that he wears, which oddly worked for him. Green seemed to be his favorite color, as different hues of it were often incorporated into his outfits.

Likewise, he notices your fully-focused and pensive expression as you absorb all of the professor’s lecture. He remembered trying to think at one point of just how many oversized flannels you owned, as you wore variations of them a lot— you wearing flannel reminded him a bit of the old grunge fads he remembered seeing in American media as a kid (or, as Noriaki would later joke to you two or three years later, like the other earthy yama girls he’d see around campus), but he doubts you were intending to follow that style so religiously.

One day, however, Noriaki did something that surprised you.

He used some old scratch paper for outlining, but at the top in his  perfect handwriting:

This class is tough  、  right? — Noriaki

He discreetly passes it to you as the professor continues to drone on about the new functions you all had to learn. You’re taking a few notes when you see the paper in your peripheral view, eyes slowly widening. Pausing from writing the next bullet point, you slowly glance from the paper to its sender Noriaki. He was staring back at you with lavender-grey eyes— something you hadn’t really taken the time to notice until now due to his reading glasses, but they were gorgeous.

You wait for the professor to turn to face the screen, which in that case you efficiently take the paper from him. At the top, you saw his words in his handwriting, which frankly made your characters look like shit.

You  do  write back, though:

Definitely! So many functions to learn  。  Syntax is too wordy  。 Headache-inducing  。:( ~  You

You swiftly hand the paper back to him, attempting to make it as unsuspicious as possible. Fortunately, no one really notices, as everyone else around you two is hastily writing down the notes. Anyway, you knew the information would be in the textbook, and you were betting that he probably knew too.

He’s silently snickering at your written response— you see the outer corners of his eyes crinkle as he grins, which was actually really cute— and he’s already writing his own response before handing the paper back to you.

Seriously that man had some nice handwriting.

You were probably blushing already; you lifted the back of your hand to your face as you read his response, feeling the sudden warmth that arose in your cheeks— damnit.

I agree!  (╬ಠ益ಠ)  !!!!!

[LOL]  Anyway what degree are you studying for? — Noriaki

You stifled your giggle at his detailed drawing as you wrote:

Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Yeah I know I’m lame… ~ You

You swore that the professor looked in both yours and Noriaki’s direction right as you were about to give the paper back to him. Though it was merely the glare of light against the middle-aged man’s lenses, and he actually wasn’t looking at you two at all. Slowly exhaling in relief, you hand him the paper, knowing you both were thinking the same thing.

Noriaki’s eyes widened a bit as he wrote another response.

What??? It’s actually cool

I’m pursuing Computer Science  。  I want to do game development one day 。

That’s   lame!!  >:O  — Noriaki

And you both do this for the rest of class, definitely getting noticed by the professor who just decides that it’s really not worth his time to call you both out at that point.

that sounds super cool  、  what are you even talking about? ~ You

You think so?  — Noriaki

Yes!!! ~ You

。

。

。

Hey so I see your name already… my name is Noriaki Kakyoin

You wanna review each other’s code?  

Do you want to be ‘partners’ for the required peer review?

I think it will be really helpful  、  especially since we’re in related majors too

also since we sit next to each other ^_^

You snicker at the first question he wrote and crossed out— due to it sounding more like an innuendo— but you notice at the bottom… wait, oh—

It was his phone number.

Noriaki lets you keep the paper as the class comes to an end, the sound of everyone packing their utensils and whatnot filling the room. He’s going to head to his next class, he says aloud, as you were sliding your notebook inside your backpack, making you realize that that was the first time he had actually spoken to you aloud. His voice had a very warm timbre to it— it was really nice— and you glance up at him.

“Okay,” you responded, smiling at him. “What class?”

He’s lightly fixing the voluminous wavy bang on the side of his face as he answers you. You hadn’t really taken notice of that part of his hair either. Basically, there wasn’t much that you really took the time to observe about him. In the beginning, Noriaki was just the guy that chose to sit next to you in a class, and you didn’t think anymore would come from that.

Yet, it’s as if every feature of his was being thrown at you all at once— his slender body, his defined arms (his slim-fitted sweater was making it so obvious), his angular jawline, his… fuck, don’t look down there.

“Calculus,” he exaggeratedly groaned, snapping you out of your thoughts. Noriaki didn’t seem to notice you eyeing him— well, if he did, he’s definitely not saying anything.

Wait, was he blushing?

You did giggle at his tone of voice, though, as he continued to speak in a relatively calm manner. “I’m here on campus until dinner time. I’ll be exhausted by then.”

“Not doubting that at all,” you cheekily commented. “I wish you luck… Noriaki. Hopefully, you know, our Single Variable Calculus class next won’t kill us before the semester ends.”

You wanted to laugh at his surprise with your words.

—

You met Noriaki’s friend Jotaro Kujo about a month after befriending him.

He wasn’t the most talkative man— something you quickly learned— but you could tell that he and Noriaki were very close. This became more obvious as you realized that it was as if Noriaki could read Jotaro’s thoughts and possible responses to anything he liked or annoyed him, for example.

Of course, Jotaro didn’t like that. Though, as Noriaki explained, it was easy enough to see right through that attitude of his.

On a whim, Noriaki decided to invite both you and Jotaro out to get coffee when you three weren’t busy. You and Noriaki had recently finished working on some coding project together a few days ago— which you both aced— and he thought going out sometime would be a good way to celebrate.

No, not that kind of ‘going out’. Though, you occasionally did play with the idea of you dating him, despite its unlikeliness.

You were certain that he just viewed you as a friend, someone he could rely on while you two were bearing the brunt of heavy workloads. He text-messaged you on his new model of cellphone— a recent birthday gift from his parents— and oftentimes discussed school-related matters. Usually, it was among the lines of clarification for due dates or specific requirements for assignments and projects. Never about anything else. Your relationship with Noriaki was strictly platonic… which was exactly how you tried to convince yourself.

Of course, the ‘what-ifs’ returned when he text-messaged you about something other than… you don’t know, using Swing or complaining about generics. Embarrassment quickly swelled up once you noticed your almost-immediate responses— totally not from surprise because Noriaki asked you to go somewhere with him other than the library— but it slowly dissipated as the conversation went on.

Noriaki: Hey  、  do you want to head out to that café near Rinshinomori Park later?

[Delivered at 16:32]

You: Hi! So you mean the one like 10 mins away from campus?  

[Delivered at 16:32]

Noriaki: Yeah    

[Delivered at 16:32]

You: My friend’s sister runs that café ww but yes sure (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*

[Delivered at 16:33]

Noriaki: That’s good!! Also, I didn’t know that ww

And if you don’t mind  、  I’d like to have a good friend of mine come too

He doesn’t like going out too often  Σ(-᷅_-᷄ ๑ )  wwww but I asked him and he actually said yes

Finally  

[Delivered at 16:35]

You: wwwww I don’t mind

Who is it?

[Delivered at 16:36]

“You said the sister of… your friend runs this place?” Noriaki remembered.

You nodded, silently thanking him as he chivalrously held the tempered glass door open for you. “Yeah— the one who swims for Hosei’s swim team.”

As you both had just finished taking an exam for your damned Calculus class today, you two decided to head to the café together. You waved at the owner, a woman only a few years your senior happily waving back as she held a canister of matcha powder.

Your friend, the sibling of the owner, was actually a friend of a friend; regardless, you all were treated the same by the owner as any other paying customer. There had been several occasions where you were invited to meet up with them and the rest of your friends here, though you had only gone about twice during the previous semester due to your cramped schedule.

On the other hand, were you feeling a bit guilty taking up the first chance of going here— by mere coincidence— with Noriaki, despite that? Was this the best time to start feeling conflicted about showing up in the first place?

“Oh, it looks like he showed up already.”

Noriaki tapped your shoulder, cocking his head a bit in the direction of his friend. Snapping out of your guilt-ridden thoughts, your gaze suddenly followed.

There— he was sitting at the back corner of the café with his shoulders hunched over. You could see the long, large white coat that he wore, along with the white cap that had its bill pulled down to cover the top half of his face. His long legs— clad with black slacks— were stretched out under the table, his feet already reaching the back legs of the chair right across from him. From what you could observe based on how his unruly hair stuck out, the back of his hat was ripped. Surely, it was on purpose.

The last time you’d seen that style was… a long time ago— as in, when you guys were barely born— and you couldn’t help but silently snicker to yourself.

He glanced up, smirking at the sight of Noriaki. However, the fact that his red-haired friend brought company finally registered in his mind, and his stare slowly landed on you— the shorter young woman with the oversized coat. You couldn’t tell what color eyes he had, but you swore that his eyes widened for just a moment before narrowing at the sight of you.

Hm.

You already didn’t know what his deal was, because he did not look anywhere near happy to see you.

Trailing behind Noriaki, you both approached the wooden table. You momentarily stood at a distance and snickered as you saw him and his friend do some handshake involving fist-bumps. It was pretty cute, to be honest. Then, glancing over his shoulder, Noriaki gestured over at you and introduced you to his friend. All that was received in response was some eye-blinking and a curt nod, yet you didn’t hesitate to give him a small wave with your hand.

“This is my friend from high-school, Jotaro Kujo,” the red-haired man introduced him as you both situated yourselves. Incidentally, you had to sit right across from Jotaro, while Noriaki sat on your right. “But he goes to Kaiyodai.”

“Oh, really? What’s your degree in?” you suddenly asked Jotaro in surprise, eyes widening.

Due to entrance exams and research for college prep last year, you were familiar with that school’s engineering departments, despite being geared towards marine technology. In fact, you probably would’ve considered going there if you didn’t pass the exam for your current school. Just your luck that Noriaki was friends with another engineer, though—!

“—Marine Biology.”

“…oh.”

That was how you replied after a moment, nodding slowly as you gave him a dumbfounded expression. You were trying your best to hide your disappointment, but you suppose that it was your fault for jumping to conclusions so quickly.

Jotaro grunted in response.

“You don’t sound too happy about that,” he observed, frowning. His voice was a rich baritone, but his tone wasn’t anywhere near warm like Noriaki’s.

You purse your lips, silently cursing to yourself.

Geez, you were really hoping he didn’t pick up on your underwhelmed thoughts, but you probably weren’t making much of an effort to conceal any corresponding emotions. Your thoughts were not connected to the fact that he was doing marine biology— you thought that stuff was pretty cool— but were, admittedly, teetering towards selfishness.

Jotaro’s impression of you, on the other hand, was quickly souring. Were you going to judge him for his choice of degree or something? People being haughty weren’t foreign to him; Noriaki himself displayed such traits on occasion, which usually just made Jotaro roll his eyes. Though, you probably met Noriaki during one of those occasions.

Suddenly, he’s wondering where the hell Noriaki even met you. He’s not in the mood to deal with some woman who looks down on people only because of their university degree. What else would you look down on?

“Um, no, sorry, that’s not— not what I meant to come off as,” you began cautiously, looking directly into his blue-green eyes this time. “I… I know about their engineering departments.”

Jotaro slowly blinks at you, broad shoulders relaxing all of a sudden.

Perhaps you weren’t regarding the wonderful scientific study of marine biology with disdain. Though, that alone didn’t convince Jotaro.

Your brows furrowed, however.

Did you already offend him to the point of being tense? You barely conversed with Noriaki’s friend for ten minutes, and there’s a high chance you’re already on his hit list. Although Noriaki was friends with the both of you, he had been friends with Jotaro for much, much longer than with you. You were sure that he’d prioritize Jotaro’s feelings before yours solely because of that.

Jotaro cleared his throat, ignoring his previous thoughts towards you. “Oh, yeah. Maritime Systems, Marine Electronics & Mechanical, and Logistics & Information. What they do is pretty interesting. I don’t know too much about it, though.”

“Ah, yeah…” You scratched the back of your neck, nervously chuckling. Maybe it was best to put that slip-up behind you. “I’m doing Electrical & Electronics at Tokodai, so I thought… you know, you’d be doing engineering too…”

Jotaro let out a curt hum in response.

He gestured to both you and Noriaki, though the latter was avoiding your eyes. Albeit, he was giving all of your orders to the server who just appeared— Noriaki knew that Jotaro liked espressos like he did, while you told him what you wanted on the train ride here— but he intermittently gave Jotaro a pointed look.

“So you two met at school…”

“Yes,” Noriaki interjected after ordering, hoping to dissipate the tension between you two. He noticed your surprise from being cut off, as you were going to respond initially, though he chose not to comment on it in the event that he’d worsen things. “Yes, we did. We’re partners for our programming class.”

Jotaro slowly nodded, refusing to take his hardened eyes off of you. You lightly tapped your fingers on the table surface, avoiding his stare.

The red-haired man sighed.

He could already tell that, yet again, Jotaro met someone that ruffled his feathers.

“Ah, anyway, um…” he began, eyes darting between you and Jotaro again. Both of you blinked at Noriaki, puzzled by the hesitant expression he suddenly wore. “Eh… Jotaro. You’re… wearing different pants than the ones you usually wear.”

Jotaro absentmindedly picked at the collar of his black turtleneck. He’s suddenly reminded of eating the tagliatelle al ragù that his mother made and dropped off for him earlier, along with the hissed swears he let out when he spilled some of the noodles onto his pants and the rug beneath him.

“I stained my white pants,” he commented with a sour expression, trying to drown out the sudden sound of Noriaki’s snickers. “I haven’t worn these pants in a while.”

“They look a little like the pants from our old school uniform,” Noriaki observed, quickly glancing under the table to take a look. Jotaro gave him a deadpanned look, though he was even less thrilled when you opted to look under too, noticing how he— for some reason— wore two belts patterned with tessellated triangles. “…they’re not from a school uniform set, right?”

He scoffed. “Of course not. My old man bought these pants for me as a gift for Christmas last year— some designer American brand… you know how he is. I’m only wearing them as a last resort… I had them shoved somewhere in the back of my closet.”

“How thoughtful of you,” the redhead sarcastically complimented.

What Jotaro said made you raise a brow, so you decided to speak up. “You celebrate Christmas?”

Now, the black-haired man’s gaze was directed at you once again. Blue-green eyes pierced into your own, staring for a moment as his face had an unreadable expression.

He sighed.

“Yes.”

And that was all he replied to you, though you expected more of an explanation.

You slowly blinked at him, waiting for said elaboration. It never arrived. Both of you were awkwardly staring at each other until Noriaki cleared his throat to speak in Jotaro’s place.

“Jotaro’s mother’s side of the family— including his grandfather— is American,” Noriaki explained to you softly, briefly giving Jotaro a pointed look yet again due to his taciturnity. “Or, well, eh, American, but natively British and Italian—“

While refusing to stop staring— no, he was glaring— at you (what the hell), Jotaro abruptly and monotonously interjected, “—I’m half White.”

Well, that explained a lot. Like how he seemed like he could tower over every male in Japan, or how his face had hints of Eurocentric features, or how he pretty much seemed like he had the genes of a family that could bench press a fucking airplane.

You blinked quickly at him.

“So you must’ve learned English too when you were younger, no?” you inquired curiously. While living in the old, rural part of Japan for the first few years of being in the country, you haven’t really met a lot of native English speakers— not that it bothered you. You suppose that as alumni of a high school in a major metropolitan area, Noriaki and Jotaro would have more exposure to the language.

“Eh… sure,” Jotaro replied, uncharacteristically offhanded. All of a sudden, his glare was nonexistent, nor was he directly focused on you anymore.

Noriaki rolled his eyes. “He basically never paid attention during English class in high school, nor did he actually do the homework.”

Jotaro irritatedly sighed, and you swore a blush crept on his cheeks. Though, if it did, he was lucky that the bill of his hat covered most of it now that he pulled it down lower. “I didn’t need to,” he gruffly insisted. “I can understand English.”

“We’re speaking Japanese right now and we still had to take classes for twelve years,” Noriaki reminded exasperatedly.

The black-haired man grunted, avoiding both Noriaki’s deadpanned face and your own amused one.

Eventually, the coffee meant for the three of you arrived, its aroma wafting in front of you. As time went on— really slowly, you add— you started to observe a pattern as you all drank.

Noriaki spoke the most as you came in a close second, while all that Jotaro offered in your conversations were nods, hums, grunts, or one-word responses. When you would speak, usually to contribute to whatever Noriaki said before, you could notice Jotaro staring you down like a hawk. As if there’d be a time when you’d slip-up again as you talked, Jotaro was looking for yet another reason to dislike you.

And each time he’d done so, Noriaki would be on the brink of glaring back at him in response.

“I’m heading to the toilet,” you told Noriaki later as you began to stand up from your chair. Your coffee mug was only half-full at this point. “It won’t take long.”

“Alright,” he replied, smiling at you. Jotaro’s brows furrowed as you stood up and walked away. You left your coat and small backpack on the seat of the chair.

Turning his head to see where you were headed, which was the hallway to the bathroom, Jotaro whipped his head back to Noriaki. The redhead blinked back at him. He had been meaning to check up on his friend ever since you and him both arrived, because he clearly looked unsettled by your presence. This wasn’t new to Noriaki, however. Jotaro would easily get irritated by meeting new people the second they spoke, though he’d calm down considerably once he became better acquainted with them. It was a long process, but it happened.

All of a sudden, Star Platinum was manifested behind him.

Noriaki gave Jotaro a look of disbelief. This was a first.

Just how much did he dislike you already? He had never gotten his Stand out while meeting people before— which was already a risk by itself— but today of all days, he decides to summon it in a fucking coffee shop. Who knows if they’d end up getting into a quarrel with anyone else like them here?

“Who is that?” Jotaro hissed, using the purple humanoid Stand to double-check, ensuring that you were actually no longer in their proximity. Luckily, no one else in the shop seemed to notice its presence besides him and Noriaki, so that was one less issue to worry about. Star Platinum didn’t go very far— only to the beginning of the hallway— and noticed your absence. You weren’t lying, after all.

The last thing he wanted was for you to return, however, having forgotten something like— he didn’t know, tampons or some shit— and hearing him talk about you. There was also the possibility of you seeing Star Platinum if you returned, though he knew that his and Noriaki’s abilities were rare. Even if you  were  like them— which you weren’t, as Jotaro has already inferred— you’d probably pretend like you weren’t.

That’s what all the others do, anyway.

Noriaki massaged his temples with one hand. “I already told you— it’s the girl from my Java class. We formally met last month, even though we’ve been sitting next to each other since the semester started  and put your fucking Stand away.”

“Yet you invited her to be… with us.” Star Platinum had already faded out of view, though Noriaki craned his neck a bit to make sure.

Jotaro really hadn’t changed one bit since high school. Granted, it hasn’t even been a year since graduation, and the memory of having to wear tailored suits for the event and celebrating afterwards was still fresh in Noriaki’s mind. He knew that Jotaro wasn’t exactly the type of person to completely change his attitude once he got to university.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” the redhead replied, brows creasing. “I like her and—“

Jotaro interjected with a raised brow, “—you like her?”

“I—“ Noriaki abruptly paused, suddenly realizing how that statement began. His face started to heat, color resembling his own hair. “That’s not what I— eh— um…“

His black-haired friend gave him a deadpanned look before rubbing his face with one hand, his hat being slightly pushed up in the process.

“Good grief.”

The redhead abashedly rubbed the back of his neck.

“Look, don’t ‘good grief’ me—“ Noriaki’s face scrunched up a bit, air exhaling through his nostrils as he silently fumed at his slip-up. “That’s… ugh, okay. I don’t want to, um… I don’t want to come off as some desperate loner to her.”

“Have you already?”

Noriaki rolled his eyes.

“No,” he boldly responded before backtracking. “…at least I hope not. I’d die if I already have.”

Another deadpanned look from Jotaro as he sipped his espresso.

“Jotaro, I’ve only known her for about two months,” Noriaki explained, gesturing with both hands on the table beside his now-empty cup. “This is the first time that I’ve done something with her that  isn’t programming-related. I’m surprised she even said ‘yes’.”

Jotaro merely grunted in response, cueing Noriaki to continue speaking.

“I don’t want her to think that I’m… I don’t know, using her or, eh… leading her on purely for the sake of our grades, or… I guess something like that, you know?” he expressed bitterly.

“Noriaki, you just said earlier that you don’t want to come off as some ‘desperate loner’, yet now you’re saying that you don’t want to seem like you’re leading her on,” Jotaro dryly pointed out. “Those two actions don’t sound mutually exclusive, especially since we’re talking about you— self-proclaimed ‘epic gamer’ here…”

He started to trail off as a smirk arose on his face. Noriaki couldn’t help but titter with an amused glint in his eyes, even while he kicked Jotaro in the ankle right under the table.

“Stop it,” he amusedly dismissed.

“I’m serious,” Jotaro continued, vague hints of amusement still in his tone as he reached down to rub his ankle. “I think you should be honest with yourself, particularly about your feelings.”

Noriaki narrowed his eyes at his friend. “You aren’t even honest with your own feelings.”

“We aren’t talking about me here.”

“I’m not the one who always insulted my mom when she gave her goodbye smoochy to you before going to school, even though she knew you really cared—”

“—shut up,” Jotaro interjected, another blush creeping on his cheeks, though he hid his surprise  and embarrassment with a glare. How he managed to forget that he used to walk to school with Noriaki nearly every day— when he didn’t ditch— was a mystery to him. “That’s different.”

“No, it’s not,” Noriaki simply denied. “But… you’re right, though, about being honest about my feelings because— I mean, eh, I… I do like her. I like her very much— I… she’s smart, funny, warm… she seems like the type of person to really care about everyone, and makes everyone feel at ease… you know?”

Jotaro quirked a brow.

Hearing his red-haired friend speak so… fondly about someone was so strange. That lovey-dovey language… who even was Noriaki? Who the hell was Jotaro speaking with? That same Noriaki, the one who bothered to truly befriend only him in high school because of their shared and shamed ability? The one who turned occasionally up his nose at anyone and anything that didn’t meet whatever standards he had? The one who also liked watching baseball games, jammed out to Sting, and played with fruit every time he’d eat it?

Perhaps.

“Huh… you really do like her.”

“…yeah.”

Noriaki was beyond flustered at this point. Though, he guesses he should’ve expected that he’d be the one to change first upon entering university, between the two of them.

“I mean…” the black-haired man continued, leaning back in his chair as he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I personally don’t know if that’s how I’d describe her— I don’t know her that well. If you see her that way, considering you’ve known each other for a while, well… ah…”

“It’s not weird, is it?” Noriaki suddenly inquired, brows creasing in worry.

Jotaro was caught off guard by his words.

“What? N— no. It’s  not  weird. How the hell is that weird?”

Noriaki backtracked. “No— it’s just… you know. I’ve never… had feelings like this before. I’m not exactly an expert here.”

“Neither am I,” his friend gruffly confessed, absentmindedly playing with a nearby napkin sheet. At least Noriaki was self-aware about his situation, Jotaro thought. “But as I said, I do know you have to be honest with yourself about these kinds of things—“

Another kick in the ankle made Jotaro hiss in pain as he spoke. Noriaki subtly quirked his eyebrows in your direction. He conveniently ignored his friend’s glare and clenched jaw. You had just walked out of the hallway, seeing Jotaro’s head hung a little lower and Noriaki’s warm smile as he folded his arms over his chest.

“Sorry if I took too long,” you apologized as you got yourself seated again. “I was helping this tourist out in the restroom, you know how they are…”

Jotaro lifted his head to eye you yet again.

“No, no, you’re fine,” Noriaki calmly dismissed with a wave of a hand and a smirk. He glanced over at Jotaro again, who resorted to narrowing his eyes at him.

As you settled back into your wooden chair, your eyes slowly traveled from Noriaki to Jotaro, and vice versa. Pursing your lips, you couldn’t help but feel something off all of a sudden. Maybe they met someone they disliked while you were gone? A spilled order? Noriaki’s green utility parka nor Jotaro’s impeccable and long white coat showed any signs of stain. So…

“Ah… did something… happen while I was gone?” you asked cautiously, eyes now darting between the two.

Jotaro merely continued to stare, slowly using his foot to apply pressure on Noriaki’s brown boot. Noriaki pursed his lips, feeling the weight of his black-haired friend’s oxford-clad foot. He knew exactly what Jotaro was thinking… what he wanted him to say, to be specific.

“No— eh, nothing happened,” he hastily responded, quickly lifting a hand to fix his voluminous bang. His hand was starting to tremble; he hoped you didn’t notice his swelling nervousness. “We were just talking.”

After a moment of hesitation, you nodded in response.

You heard Jotaro grunt across from you.

Turning your head to him, you could see that he averted his eyes. He rested his chin on his palm as he propped his elbow up on the table, staring at some indistinct area on the hardwood floor. The indistinct sounds of chatter from the other café occupants filled all of your ears, as the three of you didn’t bother to comment on whatever happened any longer. ‘Just talking’ didn’t cut it for you, if you had to be honest, but you doubt you could figure out what was really going on without potentially making the situation worse. You were sure that it wasn’t any of your business, either.

All of a sudden, you felt as if a breeze had drifted past you. It wasn’t the entrance, however, as you three were all too far from that intermittently-opening door. Your back abruptly started to feel a lot colder, as if you sat directly in front of an open industrial freezer. Though, you didn’t mind it as you chose to speak up again.

“Ah, well…” you began, giving both Noriaki and Jotaro a small smile. “Anyway, uh, about the tourist I was helping out in the restroom. She was very nice— a tourist from Italy, she told me. She was telling me about wanting to bring her uncle Caesar here to Japan, but… he’s quite old, and he’s heard bad stories from his longtime best friend, apparently. So she decided to bring her nephew Bruno— yeah, I know, I see both of your faces. I don’t even know why she bothered to tell me such personal details, what a bizarre woman…”

As the time together went on, there was one thing you had no clue about. Jotaro had manifested Star Platinum with the sole purpose of glaring you down from behind when  he  wasn’t able to.

There was at least one thing you were able to figure out, however.

—

You were certain that Noriaki’s friend didn’t like you very much.

“I’m pretty sure your friend doesn’t like me very much,” you told Noriaki in verbatim afterwards.

You were both walking back to the train station together, where you’d then part ways. At this time, Noriaki already had his own apartment, though he apparently did the apartment-hunting with Jotaro and even took advice from Jotaro’s real-estate tycoon grandfather. On the other hand, you were currently rooming with your old high school friend as it was nearly impossible for you to rent property as a non-citizen. You were a bit embarrassed by your predicament, even if it would eventually be solved in less than two years.

The redhead shook his head, tittering. It seemed like he’s heard those words before.

“No, no, it’s just… give him time to warm up to you. He’s like that to everybody, don’t worry.”

You raised a brow at him.

“Everybody? Even you?” you repeated incredulously. When he merely nodded, your brows creased in confusion. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, no, I am,” Noriaki replied as a matter-of-fact. “We didn’t start off on the right foot— he was a bit of an ass in high school, but not so much anymore.”

“How so?” you inquired, before backtracking. “I mean… how was he an ass in high school? I wasn’t, ah… sorry, I didn’t mean that as if I thought he was an ass  now  because he’s not— um, yeah.”

Noriaki chuckled at the sight of you awkwardly rubbing the back of your neck.

You wanted to waste away at this moment. The last thing you wanted was for him to think that you were blatantly insulting his friend, because you weren’t intending to at all. Though, to be fair, he did seem rather unfriendly to you. Maybe he was just shy or something? You couldn’t blame him for something like that. But if he  wasn’t  shy and  was  intentionally acting like that to you, well…

“No, it’s alright,” he calmly dismissed, throwing you off guard. “Jotaro just… has a hard time communicating with people about how he feels. Instead, he sort of just assumes that everyone can easily read his emotions, so he doesn’t feel like he has to make an effort to be expressive… you know?”

Oh.

Nodding slowly, you replied with an ounce of hesitation. This time, you were really trying to be cautious of your words. “So… is that why he acted so… cold?”

He sighed, quickly rubbing his bare hands together. “Yes— but like I said, just, ah… give him time to warm up to you. Jotaro tends to be pretty paranoid about meeting new people— like when he met me— but after spending time together, we’ve become used to each other’s company and became good friends. He’s a really nice person once you get to know him.”

“…I see.”

Maybe he was right, you were thinking. He had been friends with him for a long time so it made sense that he’d know most— if not all— of Jotaro’s idiosyncrasies. Jotaro managed to warm up to Noriaki, and though you didn’t actually know how long that took, it happened regardless. If the redhead was true to his word— which you couldn’t really doubt— you better be prepared for a friendship with the quiet, buff marine biologist-to-be. He’d better be prepared for one with you too: the currently-broke, immigrant engineer-to-be.

You sighed, shoving your hands into your pockets. It was a long day, and after that godawful calculus test and the coffee break with Noriaki and Jotaro, all you wanted now was to return to yours and your friend’s apartment. Maybe your friend was already home, preparing dinner. You practically had the smell of the same food he constantly liked to grill implanted in your senses.

Noriaki, on the other hand, wished that he’d be able to walk with you for longer. He liked your presence. Your perfume smelled quite nice— that was a weird thought— and he enjoyed seeing how expressive your face was when you would talk. Every furrow of the brow when something confused you, how your eyes seemed to gleam like stardust when you spoke of something that you were passionate about, or the pleasing sound of your laugh as you told him weird and/or funny stories.

At some point, he wondered if you noticed how physically close you both had gotten while walking, elbows nearly bumping one another. In fact, you did notice, and it was making you blush.

That time, you avoided meeting Noriaki’s eyes for a moment.

Little did you two know, however, these walks would be happening much more often, to the point where he’d go the opposite route just to walk you back to yours and your friend’s apartment. Most of the time, your friend would already be home and calmly welcomed you back. He and Noriaki would give awkward but courteous nods to one another.

You recalled the time that Noriaki asked what your friend’s deal was, which made you more amused than offended. It occurred to Noriaki that you were, in fact, aware of the subtle awkwardness between him and your friend/roommate.

“I don’t know… he might just not be used to the sight of me being ‘mushy’ with anyone, ‘tis all,” you casually explained during another one of your walks back home with him. “I mean, I was close to him and my other friends in high school, but not close-close like I am with you now, you know?”

Close like you are with him, now.

Hearing you say that only made Noriaki yearn for a future with you even more.

Gradually, you and Noriaki even got physically closer, as you’d frequently bump elbows when walking or knees when sitting or, in your case, hug his arm if a breeze drifted by. Though you questioned his motives for accompanying you a few times, he’d just brush it off and say it wasn’t a big deal.

The man was lucky he got a free train pass as a university student— he’d easily be reserving over half of his expenses over train passes to where you stayed. If that didn’t show any sort of commitment already, you didn’t know what will. All for the sake of accompanying you home.

During one of your all-nighters at home, you leaned back in your desk chair, blankly staring at the ceiling. Your A818 Walkman had long been done playing the playlist you set up. An obscenely long and unfinished block of code was currently on your laptop screen, the cursor continuing to blink next to the string you recently typed. Yet again, you were distracted. With the same thoughts, no less.

It was a no-brainer, but you also knew better than to quickly jump to conclusions. There was a lot of evidence to prove that Noriaki liked you— beyond your initially-planned arrangement of being reviewers for each other’s programs. Though perhaps, you didn’t know, maybe he was just accompanying you home out of courtesy? To be nice? You two were already friends, after all. Best to look out for one another, right? You’d treat him the same too.

However, in less than two months, you came to realize that you were correct in jumping to such a conclusion.

One of the lightly snowy days in December was when Noriaki first kissed you on the apartment’s doorstep after you almost slipped on the station floor earlier… which you were still incredibly embarrassed about. The onlookers, the sadness knowing that your rubber soles weren’t as sturdy as you thought, the fact that you nearly face-planted in front of a man you liked.

Of course, he did have some help from Hierophant Green while catching you, ultimately preventing you from falling face-first. You were practically holding onto his arm for dear life, feeling a firm hold around your own arm and waist. You knew it was from Noriaki, but… was he really that strong? Were his arms longer than you thought, being able to catch and pull you from that distance?

That no longer mattered to you as you kissed him back now, letting your hands gently cup his warm and flushed cheeks. You were melting into his kiss— his lips were really soft— and as insane as it sounded, you were quite ready to lose oxygen if it meant being able to kiss him for an eternity…

The front door opened.

Noriaki’s hold on you tightened just a smidgen. You were equally frozen in your spots, eyes slowly opening and averting to the perpetrator. Both of your lips had already unlocked.

Your friend held the door open, keys in his pocket and a white garbage bag in his other hand. He merely blinked at the two of you, seemingly unsurprised by what he had just walked in on.

“...we live in front of a park. I believe this is the time all the kids go home; it’s a lot quieter outside now. Also, it’s nice with… the trees. Go there.”

As he sauntered towards the stairwell with the rustling bag, you and Noriaki were silent for a few seconds until you both started to laugh.

Hysterically.

Never in a millennium did you two expect to be caught nearly making out in front of your front door, but it happened. At some point you wheezed out an apology as your friend casually returned to the apartment’s door, scolding you specifically for the growing laughter between you two. Hearing him laugh this hard was completely foreign to you, if you had to be honest, but the way he did it was making yours even more unrestrained. You and Noriaki had already resorted to tightly gripping the railing to prevent yourselves from rolling around on the floor.

Written complaints from your neighbors were certainly going to come in within the next few days.

Eventually, you two did calm down, and Noriaki had his arm wrapped around you due to the cold. You rested your head against his chest, feeling his chin on top of your head. Holding the railing was proven redundant, as you both ended up sliding down to sit loosely cross-legged and rest your backs against the railing. Sure, the thought of going back inside to avoid the dropping temperatures sounded nice, but neither of you couldn’t bear to let go of one another within the next few minutes.

At that moment, as he asked you to be his girlfriend— eventually, wife, a few years later— you knew things were going to look up for the both of you.

November 26, 2011

“[Motherfucker],” you grumbled quietly in English.

Your hand was patting around on the floor next to your futon, hoping to find your phone.

The living room you were sleeping in was pitch black due to the blackout curtains that were installed on the windows, so the chances of you grabbing the familiar device were rather low at the moment. You weren’t even in your own living room, which the layout of was drastically different from the one you were currently on the floor of. To think that yours was currently being investigated because of… that.

You felt yourself wanting to heave at the mere thought of it, but like any sensible person, you realize that this isn’t a situation that you can easily avoid. As of yesterday, you became a widow. The circumstances leading up to that were unclear to you— there were at least a trillion questions that continued to swim around your mind, from the why's, to the how's, and to the what’s and yet none of them had connections to anything resembling an answer. You had no idea, and the problem-solver in you was becoming desperate.

…anyway, where the hell was that goddamn phone? You’re pretty sure you’ve already stretched your arm out an entire meter…

Right now you should be back at yours and your husband’s (clean) apartment. You should be on top of the mattress, sleeping in the arms of your (alive) husband. His bodily warmth should be radiating off onto your back. His fingers should be lightly drumming on your abdomen as he starts to enter that next stage of NREM.

You should be in Noriaki’s arms, having your deep conversations about your futures before you both fall asleep like you usually do. Where you both wanted to travel to next, where you both might end up working, and the recent addition of where you both liked to raise a family one day. However, you two never got the chance to decide. You had an inkling of what Noriaki would’ve suggested— a place with many opportunities for you two and your future family, but probably also a place with many attractions to visit. You knew he developed a love for travelling because of his parents, who would bring him to places like Hong Kong or Egypt when he was younger. There’s no doubt that he, too, would’ve passed the love on to the one inside you— the one who currently couldn’t be bigger than a vanilla bean seed.

The universe worked in ways that seemed unfair, and not to mention morbid.

02:16  

It was about time you found your phone.

You silently cursed upon seeing the time, as in a few hours you were going to be preoccupied with tasks you wished you didn’t ever have to do in your lifetime. Lightly drumming your fingers on the device, which now sat on your abdomen, you continued to stare at the white ceiling. You haven’t moved at all since you landed right on the futon. The sight of this ceiling might as well be something you get used to.

Rapidly blinking, you started to take heavy breaths. You felt tears starting to build up again— perhaps this was going to be a new normal for you too.

Your phone continued to sit on your abdomen as you glared at the ceiling.

Before a tear could fall and slide past the outer corners of your eyes, you gripped it tightly. Suddenly, you felt the urge to dial a familiar number and speak with someone, but you doubt anyone was awake right now. You actually had your chance to be on the phone with someone— several people, in fact— as you were bombarded with calls checking up on you earlier. You didn’t have any willpower to phone any of them back until now.

Unlocking your phone, you headed to the Contacts app with the intention to find a specific person. It suddenly dawned on you that you were just thinking of the wrong friends to call— people who wouldn’t bother to stay up late for any other reason besides hanging out at bars or each other’s apartments. That one person; you remembered that they’ve experienced something like this. Granted, it happened to them nearly four years ago outside of Japan, but he was open to speaking about it if asked.

Hopefully he’d sympathize with you, especially at such an early time in the morning here.

You left one hand to gently rest on your lower abdomen as you dialed.

He picked up almost immediately, and your features softened. Preparation for graduate school must’ve been killing him recently, you had no doubt about it. You didn’t see him as often anymore because of his preoccupation with that. Honestly, you weren’t even sure if his exchange program was still ongoing anymore— it’s been that long since you two spoke with one another.

“[Hey! You’re still up? It has to be, like, some time after midnight where you are…]” he greeted you cheerfully in his accented English, though you knew he must’ve been tired out of his mind. His phone must’ve been next to him the entire time as he worked.

Plus, he must’ve been back in Rome, if his response would indicate anything.

So much for visiting him.

Your breath hitched as soon as you heard his voice, however. Maybe this was a bad idea… were you really going to call someone at two in the morning to relate about dead family? Shit, it was too late now. He already picked up the phone and acknowledged you. You weren’t just going to hang up on the guy after phoning him due to your impulsiveness, and not give any sort of explanation. Surely he’d think you’re a dick for being that way to him after a period of no communication with one another.

“…hello?” he innocently trailed off. “Ah…”

Moving your phone’s speaker away from you, you exhaled heavily before moving it back. You had no choice but to dive in.

How bad could this be, anyway?

“[—Doppio… hey, I know this is really abrupt, and you don’t have to answer anything at all, but I just… I wanna ask you something…]”

—

Dimension #16

2011年11月25日

November 25, 2011

花京院典明死去、16：13

1989年8月2日生まれ、22歳

Noriaki Kakyoin died at 4:13 PM   22 years old,  born on August 2, 1989

空条承太郎死去、16：22

1990年1月20日生まれ、21歳

Jotaro Kujo died at 4:22 PM   21 years old,  born on January 20, 1990

--> To Be Continued -->

Link to the Table of Contents

#jojo’s bizarre adventure #jojo fandom #jojo fanfic #ao3 fanfic #ao3fic #noriaki kakyoin #jojo kakyoin #kakyoin #kakyoin x reader #jotaro kujo #jojo jotaro #jotaro #jotaro x reader #time travel #au #alternate universe #dio brando #funny valentine #just references though #infertility #pining #reader #jean pierre polnareff #polnareff jojo #polnareff #mohammed avdol #avdol jojo #avdol #joseph joestar #jojo joseph

[thelittlestcheshire]

Hello! I’m Katie, and this is my muse Ches. If any of you were in Luxor over the summer, you know this pain in the ass so I’m probably gonna do a quick “here’s where this brat was” recap at the bottom, along with anything I’ve changed between that Ches and this Ches! I’m really excited to be back, and I’m really looking forward to roleplaying with everyone.

I also have the habit of writing crazy long bios when I do bother to write them so there’s a tl;dr for that, also some wanted connections at the bottom. I love plotting so if you ever have any ideas, feel free to come excited scream with me here or on Discord! So without further ado ♥

TWs:  Gun Violence / Murder / Death (not by Ches), Blood, Abuse (Relationship), Cheating, Mental Illnesses, Drugs/Alcohol, Overdoses (also not by Ches / did not result in death)

Is that HAILEY CHESHIRE “CHES” ELSWOOD? Wow, they do look a lot like KATHERINE MCNAMARA. I hear SHE is a SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN year old SENIOR who originally attended CARNIFEX Academy. Word is they are an ARISTOCRAT student. You should watch out because they can be IMPULSIVE and STUBBORN, but on the bright side they can also be ENERGENIC and LOYAL. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself. [KATIE, 23, EST, SHE/HERS]

Last Edit: 8/26/2020

♥ basics; Full Name: Hailey Cheshire “Ches” Elswood Preferred Name: Ches Elswood Age: 18 Birthday: July 19th, 2002 at 03:22 am Sexual Orientation: Biromantic bisexual Relationship Status: It’s complicated ( @ Elliot ) Occupation: Student Nationality: American [with French dual citizenship] Ches’s Car

♥ classes;

Anthropology

Shakespearean Studies

Linguistics

Latin

Music

Advanced Sociology

Advanced Psychology

World History

♥ extracurriculars;

National Honor Society

Theater Club (Actor)

Concert Band (Piano)

♥ background; Place of Birth: Paris, France Hometown: Manhattan, New York, New York Health Issues: Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD, not that she likes to admit to it, however. She’s also highly allergic to the Perciformes family of fish (tuna, mackrel, perch , and bass). While she’s okay with the  salmoniformes (Salmon and Trout), she really doesn’t touch fish outside of... literally salmon she makes herself since that’s all she trusts ok. ((Shellfish is fine though) Traumas: Watching her mother die (mugging gone wrong/shot to death)

♥ physical; Face Claim: Katherine McNamara Eye Color: Green Hair Color: Red Height: 5′3 ½” (not at fc height quick side note) Weight: 115 lbs Tattoos, Birthmarks, Scars, etc: Mole above her belly button, a few moles on her thighs, freckles and face moles. (Face Ref 1, Face Ref 2,  Body Ref 1, Body Ref 2) . She also has a tattoo now.

♥ zodiac;

Tropical

Sun: Cancer Moon: Scorpio Mercury: Cancer Venus: Virgo Mars: Leo Jupiter: Cancer Saturn: Gemini Uranus:  Aquarius Neptune: Aquarius Pluto: Sagittarius Lilith: Aries N Node: Gemini

Placidus Orb

I ASC: Gemini II: Cancer III: Cancer IV: Leo V: Virgo VI: Libra VII: Sagittarius VIII:  Capricorn IX: Capricorn X MC: Aquarius XI: Pisces XII: Aries

♥ relatives;

Father’s Full Name: Edward Valentine Elswood Father’s Status: Alive Father’s Occupation: CEO/Owner of a multi-billion dollar luxury goods conglomerate  (net worth of 50+ Billion in fact - in turn, Elswood kids do NOT bat an eyelash at prices) Mother’s Full Name: Julia Andrieux Elswood Mother’s Status: Deceased [shot by a mugger on the twin’s 8th birthday] Future Step-Mother: Rebekah Carroll (soon to be Elswood, watch this space lol) Step-Mother’s Occupation:  Siblings: 6 brothers and sisters (family page here) Elswood-Carroll Children Oldest to Youngest:

Logan Elswood (24)

Jamie Elswood (22)

Emmett Elswood (19)

Cade Carroll (19)

Jonah / Ches Elswood (TWINS)

Flynn Carroll (16)

Effie Elswood (14)

Ella Elswood (10)

She also has a niece named Isabella (Belle) who’s now almost 8 months (DOB: 07/10/2019). Belle belongs to her oldest brother, Logan (and Belle’s mother isn’t in the picture).

This is a link to the Elswood family page if you’d like to know more about her family.

♥ relationships; Ex-Significant Other(s): Probably a handful of people tbh, hit me up if you want this as a WC Reason for Separation: Stuff not working out, Ches getting bored before she got attached, so on - she’s a flirt tbh, it takes her wanting to get invested for her to stay Current Significant Other: N/A

♥ misc;

Hobbies and Talents: Ches’s main hobbies are playing piano and archery (she forever misses her bow and arrow while she’s at school), as these are also the two things that are best at calming her down. She has an intense love for acting, so it’s not uncommon for her to be one of the first people to sign up for auditions, and she tends to sing a lot so musicals are truly her shit. It’s not uncommon to see her in the library, reading a book late a night.

However, a talent she doesn’t exactly own up to often is her talent for forgeries and lockpicking. While she doesn’t use these skills as they’re intended for often, she does tend to practice them a lot, so she’s not rusty for when they are actually useful.

Pinterest Section // Musings Tag // Playlist (it’s an in general Ches playlist tho)

Ches speaks English and French fluently, her mother was born and raised in Paris so she learnt them both at the same time

DO NOT CALL HER HAILEY unless you really want to end up on her shit list, it’s her biggest pet peeve, she will glare at you for hours.

She’s the mom friend if your mom friend also goes “I HAVE THE BEST IDEA” and drags you into trouble. Literally, the one who frets over you and proceeds to get you into trouble.

This muse does what she wants, I just write it down I apologize always for her

Doesn’t really... seriously date too much because of past situations (Her older brother slept with the first person she truly loved) and she tries to avoid falling in love

That being said platonic I love yous are her shit, she loves her friends a LOT

Ches is very serious about her studying (and wanting to be among the best of the best because - this girl has Ivy league college dreams and she has no intents on fucking those up), so like expect her to do shit like read an entire textbook at the start of school and study at midnight when her insomnia is kicking her ass.

She’s a bit of a closet nerd - if you look under her bed she has a chest of comic books, she’ll just lie if you ask her about them

Ches left Luxor due to a family emergency in October, it was a really hard decision (and it was a really hard decision to come back). She is just now coming back to school.

She got her tattoo while she was away from school, using a forged note of parental consent in New Jersey.

♥ bio;

TWs: Gun Violence, Murder, Death, Blood, Abuse (Relationship), Cheating, Mental Illnesses

Growing up as an Elswood means two things, you have a lot of siblings and a lot of money. Her parents had decided to raise their children in Manhattan, New York, where they could keep a close eye on their multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Her mother, Julia, would take them on trips constantly too - when she wanted to get the children away from the hustle and bustle of the city they’d go to their vacation home upstate, or their private island, or even to visit their family in Paris. At that point in life, Ches was happy. She had a solid group of friends, she had the best friend she could ever imagine having in the form of her twin brother, she had a loving and warm family, and she had a parent who would tell her no.

When she thinks back to her life before the incident, it feels like a completely different story. A fairytale even, perfect and happy in every way compared to her life now. However, it wouldn’t last, after all, fairy tales didn’t exist and reality was a much crueler mistress. One could say Lin-Manuel Miranda described it best; “life doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes.”

Everything changed on her eighth birthday when her mother took her out shopping to get a present for twin brother Jonah at Palisades Mall. A man came up with a gun while they were in the parking lot and asked for all of their money. Julia Elswood compiled but she made one mistake, the simple utterance of “Cours, Ches” as she gave the man her purse.

Ches might have gotten out of the event alive, but not she was not unscathed. Julia Elswood was pronounced dead when medics finally arrived on the scene, her blood coating her daughter’s hands and clothing from Ches’s attempts to stop the bleeding. She might have survived the event without physical harm but she was never the same child she was before after that.

One day she had an intact family, the next day the Elswoods were in ruin. Her father completely shut himself out from the family, only coming out for birthdays and holidays. Her oldest brother stepped up as their parental figure, first starting out with homeschooling before he eventually dropped out to ensure his siblings were getting as much of his time as they possibly could. He tried his hardest to make the loss of their mother easier on the younger girls especially, given how young they were at the time. She helped him with the girls as much as she could (and overtime she slowly started filling the role as their second parent). Because of how busy the younger Elswood children kept him, sometimes Logan didn’t have the time to comfort Ches when she woke up in the middle of the night, haunted by their mother.

That was when Emmett stepped in. It wasn’t uncommon for him to sleep on her floor so he’d be there when she woke up terrified out of her mind, and he was there when she just eventually stopped sleeping like people tended to. Over time she realized that Jonah and her weren’t truly two peas in a pod the way they used to be, that Emmett was the only Elswood who truly got her. He wasn’t perfectly normal either, his thoughts and feelings were flawed like hers.

In a family that made her feel so broken at times, Emmett was a saving grace - a reminder she wasn’t alone.

Going to school in Carnifex was an easy decision when you felt so alone at home, at school she found a close group of people she loved and cared about - she felt less alone and less like her family were judging her, and when the feeling came up - she could always toss herself back into her schoolwork and pretend that maybe, just maybe, she was just a normal kid living a normal boring life. Family issues easily bred vulnerability though, and it was that vulnerability that was exploited not long before she was set to start Carnifex.

Long-distance relationships weren't’ supposed to be easy, but when she fell in love for the first time. At the time, she had thought she was as fucked up as she could ever be, that at this point she was just focused on healing the wounds her mother’s death had left in therapy and after that, everything would be fine. James Ruth quickly showed her how mistaken she had been, even now she doesn’t like thinking about everything he had done to her. She doesn’t discuss everything he had put her through in the time they were together nor does she have any intentions on truly discussing the worst of the abuse she endured while dating him and she was home - even in therapy. It did, however, have an effect on her, it made her terrified of truly falling in love with somebody again.  (Note: James is also a massive reason why she doesn't get along with her brother Jamie, the two Elswood siblings never recovered from Jamie sleeping with Ches’s boyfriend. It causes a good deal of tension in the Elswood home but Ches can’t just forgive him, her brother never even apologized for his actions, she wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t hurt her because her father wanted them to get along for his own sake. They were on the rocks before this and afterward, the tension just got a whole lot worse.)

Going back to Carnifex her sophomore year was a key factor in helping Ches get away from her relationship, and it became as much of a home for her than her actual home was the longer she attended. Sure, she still misses her younger sisters, she misses Emmett and Camellia, and she misses her friends in the city. She also dislikes just how restricted she truly is when it comes to Instagram and trying to grow her influence while she attends Carnifex. Networking had to wait until she was home and sometimes she questions why she decided boarding school was a good idea. And then Ches looks at her friends, at the education she’s receiving, and all the fond memories she’s developing. Carnifex, and now Luxor, was well worth the fear of missing out she feels. 

If you had asked her at the start of this school year, she would have told you nothing could have gotten her to leave school for any amount of time her senior year, she had spent the whole summer at Luxor (even after hearing about her baby niece, that meant a lot) - she finally settled in, she couldn’t imagine anything happening that would cause her to leave the academy. And then, on October 16th at two am in the morning, she got a phone call from Ella. Their oldest brother, Logan, had overdosed. While his drug addiction had never been a secret to the family, his relapse had been a surprise to Ches. Her brother had sworn up and down he was fine, that everything at home was okay. Going back to New York was a no brainer, her family needed her - and she needed them.

Logan, who’d been the closest thing to a parent she had since her mother died, almost died - she almost lost all the parental figures she ever knew. It was hard, getting adjusted back to New York City, she threw herself into her school work and did her best to fill the shoes Logan left open as he went through rehab, and then, adjusted back to being home. While she stayed in touch with the people she had at Luxor, she wouldn’t come back until her brother way okay - until she felt safe about leaving him with his daughter and their siblings without her as a backup. Coming back to school this time was really hard on her, the homesickness is worse than ever and she’s constantly trying to check in on her siblings (because mom!Ches is truly in full force and she’s trying to get it back down) but she’s glad to be back. She’s missed being at Luxor, a lot, so she’s glad to be back.

TLDR / quick important notes bio recap for rereads:

Ches’s mother was murdered on her 8th birthday in front of her

She was raised by her oldest brother, Logan, and is NOT close to her father really. She also helped raise her younger sisters and is very protective of them.

The Elswood she is closest to is Emmett, Jonah and her grew apart after her mother’s death.

Ches’s first real love was James (an NPC), they dated (entire)Freshman-(mid)Sophomore years, it was abusive (much more than Ches will ever discuss unless she gets majorly close to someone and they HAVE to know (cough still hasn’t happened though cough)) and Ches is now terrified of falling in love again. Her messy as fuck relationships & exes all start after this point.

Ches’s history at Luxor is pretty much in-tact, changes will be below in another section!

Ches left Luxor because of her oldest brother, Logan, overdosing. He is alive but she stayed in NYC until he was out of rehab / stabilized in order to take care of her younger siblings and her niece, Belle.

Notable Luxor Notes:

Anything relating to Thomas (for those of you who know what I mean) really hasn’t occurred, so if you mention it she’ll just be like “who?” This seems like the easiest course of action given how things were left off

Other muses of note I’m not going to account for are: Asher (more will be added as needed).

Ches isn’t a member of the Churchill Circle (I’m leaning towards was never one either just because the reasons she joined are no longer a factor so... she probably wouldn’t have ever joined)

If anyone wants to change history and/or keep it intact, feel free to dm me to let me know and I’ll update this accordingly. 

Wanted Connections:

Exes (when Ches dates it’s not for long, but she’s definitely the type to be like “I’ll go out with you” if asked and then... dump you if she thinks she’s getting too attached. So her exes are either on good terms, neutral terms, or they probably dislike her a lot)

Former friends with benefits - while Ches is no longer taking on new ones because of Elliot (and is starting to wean off her current ones), I’m always willing to headcanon past things!

FRIENDSHIPS  (I am weak af for a good friendship plot, never be afraid to be like “hey can our muses be friends” the answer is legit always yes)

Enemies (Ches can... be a lot so it’s not unlikely she’s pissed people off ok)

#luxorintro #so yeah pretty much have a Ches and I am SO FREAKING EXCITED TO BE BACK OK #sorry this is so freaking long too ♥ #also I was excited I revamped the bio and drafted it #it's about my bedtime right now though so not sure how far I'll get with replies I'm gonna try but it's legit the time I pass out right now

[mahreemari]

mari’s collection of perfectly safe 2nu goodness

collection of safe 2nu fics i filtered through both ffn and ao3 to find. will be a total of four to five separate postings. first will be completed works on ffn, ao3, and then the incomplete works in the same posting order. 

if i made a mistake, please notify me asap so i can fix the list, i tried my best but i’m just one person and something might slip my eye by accident. at the same time, if there is a fic that i missed, please let me know so i can add it! as well as new publications. suggestions to improve the list are appreciated. 

noodle must be 19/20 minimal during the romance period in order for the fic to be included. any underage is prohibited. 

here are all the completed works from ffn:

Rated K/K+:

Behind the Mask – Rated K+ –  After a four-year absence, Noodle has finally returned but what is she hiding behind the mask she wears? 2DxNoodle

Black Eyes, Blue Hair – Rated K+ – Noodle's view on her blue haired bandmate. Rated K

Blue Haired, Green Eyed Freak – Rated K+ –  Murdoc may have gone too far. He has made a clone, named Natalie, using 2D and Noodle's DNA, and it's convinced it's their daughter. 2DxNoodle pairing. Be gentle, my first Gorillaz fic. Please read! COMPLETE.

Early Conversations – Rated K – Just a short story that came from I and Cooliochick5 RP. Noodle is six months pregnant and wakes up finding 2D talking to their unborn child. Pure fluffiness!

English Rose – Rated K – "You know very early on where you belong and who you're meant to be with, 'D. That's not something that can ever change. Those people and places will always come back." 2nu.

Far, Far Away – Rated K+ – For a while, both 2D and Noodle have been sad, have been in pain...but finally, after being reunited on Plastic Beach, Noodle confesses to 2D what she's been thinking about for a long, long time...

Nightmare – Rated K+ – Noodle's had another nightmare. And this time, she's made herself bleed. A bit of a 2DxNoodle, but more brother/sister. First 2Nu fic! Noodle's POV

The Steadfast Black-eyed Soldier – Rated K – Some sort of the re-telling of the 1976s cartoon "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", but with "Gorillaz" characters on the roles.

unconventional – Rated K+ – For a couple years and a half, they lived in Honeymoon Avenue until Noodle had to leave again. Almost five years later, she's close to accomplish her mission and more than ready to go home. / An "end of phase 4" family reunion.

You Are My Medicine – Rated K – 2D always needed his pills to take care of his migraines. But someone can also take the migraines away from him too.

Your the Best Present – Rated K – It's 2D's birthday! And of course 2D forgets that it is his birthday. But Noodle is also sad about something. Sorry, summary sucks.

Rated T:

A Midsummer's Wedding – Rated T – Noodle is getting married... but not to 2D. And he's not taking it very well, poor guy.

A Step Too Far – Rated T – Noodle catches the end of an argument between 2D and Murdoc. One that ends with 2D punching Murdoc and in trying to figure out what happened she learns of Paula. Confronting 2D about it seems like the only way to get answers even if they lead to an unexpected ending.

Bleeding Out – Rated T – "FACEACHE! Faceache, holy shit!" Murdoc yelled, pulling him from his bunker to the lift. "What? What's going on?" 2D squeaked, following the bassist. "It's- It's Noodle! Somethin' ain't right with her!" (2nu-centric, but not actually 2nu.)

Blimey, You're TwentyOne Already! – Rated T – It's Noodle's birthday and she has a special request. What on earth is 2D going to do?

En Route to the Vending Machine – Rated T – En Route to the Vending Machine that I'm Pretty Sure Doesn't Even Exist. Yep. That's all.

Fisticuffs And Frozen Peas – Rated T – Murdoc Niccals has the innate ability to get on the wrong side of everyone. Picking a fight is just the way he communicates. But picking a fight with Noodle? that's a different story. Contains some 2DxNoodle fluff, Oneshot. R&R xX

Gravity – Rated T – Oneshot. 6 years have passed since the release of Plastic Beach and the band reunited. Everything is going great and the Gorillaz are enjoying being together again as they prepare to release their new album. But what happens when 2D finds a letter to him inviting him to Paula's funeral? What will he find when he gets there? And more importantly, what had Paula been hiding from him?

I Promise – Rated T – It wasn't until 2D's head began to feel extremely light, and his eyes rolled back until he realized what he was doing, but there was no turning back now. Warning: Suicide Attempt and Aftermath

Just Say The Words – Rated T – 2D has a special surprise planned for his beloved Noodle and something to ask her. But it seems that he just can't find the time or place to tell her.

Louder Than Words – Rated T – '...They both felt safe and happy with each other...But now she was feeling an old worry tug at her mind's corners again…' The small trials and triumphs of a new relationship. 2DxNoodle. One shot, rated due to mild fluff.

May 23, 2011 – Rated T – Her presence in this stoic world he'd created sent him into an emotional spiral that brought about the worst of his migraines. The emotional detachment he'd grown fond of now mocked him, & he was forced to hold his tongue because it was too hard to speak.

May 23rd – Rated T – It's 2-D's birthday, but no one remembers, well, almost no one.

Melancholy Hill No More – Rated T – Noodle had always been good at finding 2D's secret spots... 2DxNoodle

Memories and Chocolate Pudding – Rated T – A short story I wrote as a request from a friend. She wanted a cute story that had to do with Phase 1 Noodle and 2D, something brother and sister like. Of course I added my own 2DxNoodle touch in the end. 10 years later of course. ; Enjoy.

No Rain – Rated T – If Noodle stays with him, then he's really gonna have it made! 2DxNoodle Song Fic.

Nursing a Flu – Rated T – 2D is sick, but he has a certain guitarist to take care of him.

Plastic Beach: Phase Three – Rated T – A 22 page story we had to type for my English class. It could be about anything we wanted so I chose this. 2DxNoodle.

Something's Up at the Spirit House – Rated T – Something is very wrong with the Gorillaz new home, and it's driving 2D mad. Will he and his bandmates be able to handle the mysterious forces at work at Saturnz Barz? A story to tie together the music videos and events of phase 4. Will be a little silly, a little eerie, and contain a dash of 2/nu.

The Meaning Of - Salt Skin Drafts – Rated T - A series of one-shots revolving around 2D and Noodle and the growth of their relationship between phases 2 and 3. Would-be continuations to my discontinued story Salt Skin. Friendship/Eventual Pairing.

Ups and Downs – Rated T – Noodle and 2-D both have strong feelings for eachother, but can there relationship take the challenges life throws at them? 2-DxNoodle COMPLETE!.

When You’re Close to Me – Rated T – Noodle has returned home to her boys, and is ready to face the feelings she'd had while away.

Rated M:

A Look I Used To Know – Rated M – He bit his lip as his eyes returned to her, studying her unsure movements while she tried to ignore his presence as he watched her. He felt his heart ache as she stood to her feet, the dejection in her body unclear to most was a scream in Stuart's ears...

A Simple Understanding – Rated M – Their grief was eating away at them, but all it took to save them was a simple understanding of feelings. 2DXN

Another Story – Rated M – This is not based in kong nor plastic beach. In fact this is just based between 2D and Noodle. Russel and Murdoc are mentioned but not by name. Please read and review!

Awake – Rated M – After a night out, 2-D awakes with a familiar face next to him, and very little memory of what happened the night before. A 2Nu fic. Rated M for strong language and sexual content.

Confessions – Rated M – 2D wiggled his eyebrows, a smirk threatening to break out. "Yeh think yeh better than meh?" Noodle scoffed. "Of course I am, 2D, I could beat you at any game you throw at me." She tried to ignore the fact that he had edged much closer that he was previously sitting. "Well," 2D breathed. Noodle swore she could feel his breath tickling her face. "Wah 'bout this one?" STRONG LANGUAGE

Just Passing Through – Rated M – A reunion between two band members after four years apart. 2DxNoodle. Rated M

Plastic Beach Romancing – Rated M – 1st fanfic ever! Yay. Everyone from the Gorillaz. So Noodle makes it to Plastic Beach and finds 2D just before he overdoses. I'd love to get comments please. Noodlex2D! 3

Reuniting – Rated M – To make matters worse, somehow, some way without Noodle's consent or knowledge, the three men had thought it would be amazing to vacation in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, while staying in a log cabin of all things. This is a gift fic for WreckTangle. Rated M for sex...you've been warned. 2DxNoodle. O.o

She's My Collar – Rated M – Noodle and 2D have a secret that they feel has been kept long enough. They want to figure out a way to tell the others and come up with something rather creative. When Russel and Murdoc hear the lyrics to "She's my Collar" for the first time what will their reaction be? Can 2D and Noodle defend themselves or will their secret affair become just a memory? Rated M.

That One Day – Rated M – This fan fic has the song "Girl Gone Wild" in it by Madonna because it fits the plot lol. There is also an outside character by the name of Marcus that is mentioned. Rated M for lots of sexual scenes lol. Enjoy!

The Rube Goldberg Effect – Rated M – Poll winner! 2D has fallen asleep on Plastic Beach. His back now lobster red, he's in desperate need of relief. A hot summer day, a sunbite, a bottle of Aloe, and a bathing suit covered body. So what's Noodle have to do with this?... Aloe can be fun, too

#gorillaz #2d gorillaz #noodle gorillaz #2nu #2nu athenaeum #fanfiction

[doctorwhonews]

The War Master: Master of Callous (Big Finish)

Latest Review: Written By: James Goss, Guy Adams Directed By: Scott Handcock Cast Derek Jacobi (The Master), Silas Carson (The Ood), Maeve Bluebell Wells (Cassandra King), Samantha Béart (Martine King), Simon Ludders (Elliot King), Pippa Haywood (Teremon), David Menkin (Herschel), Barnaby Edwards (Jaques), Richard Earl (Sassanby), Kai Owen (Porrit), Joe Shire (Calia), Angela Bruce (Mother), Wilf Scolding (First Soldier) and Tom Forrister (Second Soldier). Other parts played by members of the cast. Producer Scott Handcock Script Editor Nicholas Briggs Executive Producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs Derek Jacobi returns to the role of the Master for the second set of stories, this time it is four episodes that follow a single storyline, as opposed to the slightly more episodic nature of the first box set.  The story takes place on a colony planet called Callous, in which a small group of artists attempted and sort of failed to make a home. Their livelihood depends upon a mine, and the story revolves around this mine, its contents, the people who give everything to make the mine viable, the planetary governor who wants to take everything she can from the inhabitants, and the Master who has his own secret plans and machinations.  In short...it is an excellent story. I recommend this box set, there will likely be SPOILERS ahead, so reader beware. The opening episode, Call for the Dead follows Elliot King, the frustrated would-be leader of Callous, whose long attempts to make the mine worthwhile have yielded very few positive results, and the Governor bleeds him dry whenever she gets the chance.  He has spent so much time trying to make the mine earn just enough money to keep up with his payments that he has basically lost his family...his wife and daughter moved off-world, and while his wife is very ill, his daughter misses him daily. Meanwhile, he is being stalked by an odd with a ringing telephone, and when he finally answers the call, the Master is on the line.  Without getting too deep into it, Elliot decides to take his own life not long after his chat with the Master, and whatever plans the Master has are clearly set into motion.  Elliot's daughter Cassie and her wife Martine come to Callous to take over where her father left off.  Only Cassie is more adept with the mine than her father ever was.  He was an artist trying to make a living digging in a mine, as she went to school specifically to learn how to mine properly.  But when she too runs into trouble...another Ood phone call comes her way, only this time the Master offers his help. The set continues with The Glittering Prize, and this time the Master is posing as Mr. Orman, a kindly gentleman helping Cassie to get the mine working.  They strike a substance that could make them all rich...but if the Governor finds out they have it, she is sure to come and attempt to skim even more profits off their hard work.  The Master offers his help yet again, helping them plot to sneak the substance off the planet and hide it from the governor until they can safely make their money off of it.  But the substance has a psychic side effect, as it slowly can drive people mad or hallucinate, and it seems to drive the Ood workers completely out of sorts. The Persistence of Dreams focuses solely on Martine as she tries to keep her sanity guarding the substance.  She is accompanied only by an Ood bt finds herself hallucinating about her late mother, Cassie, Mr Orman and more...never knowing what is real and being driven to the brink of sanity by the awful substance. When the Ood seems to go mad as well and attempt to kill her, she launches herself into space, and hopes that hope can reach her in time...but of course, the Master has other plans. The set is closed out by Sins of the Father which sees the Governor arrive on Callous and demand the substance because someone tipped her off that they had found it.  She has captured and is torturing the Master daily for answers, but no mere Governor can really get anything out of the Master! Cassie has been cast out by most of the inhabitants of Callous, who blame her of much of their current woes, particularly the homicidal Governor who intends to kill them all for answers.  But the Governor didn't count on her prisoner actually being someone of influence.  She didn't count on his control of the Ood, or his ability to escape his chains...and the Master's plan finally comes into focus. He just needed the substance. Callous just happened to be his best route of getting the rare stuff, and he has beaten everyone before they even knew he was a threat. The story concludes with the Master meeting a Time Lord to sell off the substance so the Time Lords can build a new weapon against the Daleks.  It seemed almost odd to me that the Master would do all this for such a petty thing as money and helping the Time Lord cause. Just seemed off...but then a smaller item was thrown in for his payment. The Chameleon Arch.  It nicely tied in with the very item he was using when we first met this Doctor on TV (and actually used at the end of the previous box set, putting this one ahead of that timeline wise), and makes all his efforts in this story seem perfectly worth it for his character.  It may have been a mild hassle putting all those pieces into place, but he got what he truly wanted out of it. An eventual escape from the Time War. This is an excellent set, that somehow managed to top the first War Master set. And that was a tall order, as that first set was wonderful. I am already excited for more, as Big Finish have clearly been chomping at the bit for years to tell Time War tales, and they are reveling in it with every chance they get. Whether they focus on the War Doctor, the War Master, or just seeing the seeds of the war in the Eighth Doctor or Gallifrey sets. In all attempts, they have made some exciting stuff. http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2019/01/the_war_master_master_of_callous_big_finish.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[swans-anime-ramblings]

“Luffy had no reaction to Boa...doesn’t that mean he won’t have romance?”

I’ve been debating about posting this blog because I was hesitant about the kind of reaction it would receive. But I think this topic is worth discussing logically.

Alright, so let’s dig into this thing.

If we’re going to understand Luffy and his actions (or not actions) towards Boa, then we have to first understand him as being a character that fits the Battle Shonen archetype. The genre, despite people’s complaints about it, is the most popular type of manga/anime genre there is. And One Piece, for all its glorious writing, world building and character development, is perfectly happy to sit in its genre, with Luffy fitting right into the hero archetype.

Where did this archetype even come from? It may surprise you to learn that Dragon Ball is in fact the grandfather of modern Shonen. You know what kind of stories were running in WSJ as DB’s contemporaries? Big burley manly men who never changed or progressed like Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.

 And the antithesis of this is Goku, little innocent Goku who takes this character type and flip it on its head.  (Kid Goku is so cute guys! *cries*)

Toriyama’s writing absolutely can’t be understated here. Nobody had ever seen anything like Dragon Ball. It became a cultural phenomenon. It became a blueprint for success. 

The classic Shonen Hero archetype has evolved into the following:

innocent

clueless when it comes to love

loves to fight/ get stronger

has a catch phrase

wants to protect their “Nakama”

thinks before they act

often stupid or a simpleton

gains power ups through training and other means

cute

Within the archetype you’ve got big hitters such as:

Goku— the OG who was so clueless, he couldn’t tell someone’s gender without slapping them in the crotch. Also obsessed with getting stronger to the detriment of, well, everything

Luffy— the uber innocent muffin who will do anything for his crew, and will go out of his way for people if it concerns their dreams. Aware of his weaknesses more than the others, Also really dumb at first

Naruto--- the misfit who starts out peeping at girls but then ends up taking on the burden of the entire world, because he’s THAT concerned about everyone and everything. Definitely the most selfless, has dumb moments, but smarter than the others

Ichigo--- the lovable grump who literally doesn’t give a shit. Coolest one of the bunch

Natsu--- loves his friends so much he gains power ups in the middle of the battle to win through the power of friendship. Probably the funniest one, takes life one job request at a time

Asta— the new kid on the block. Constantly yells to the point of irritation, believes working hard will solve all problems, doesn’t understand how relationships work and that nuns don’t get married

Deku— I know people will ask. Yes, he is a Shonen Hero, But doesn’t fit into the archetype so be will be left out of the discussion (the kid actually suffers from overthinking...complete opposite than these lovable idiots)

So, for fun, let’s throw all these Shonen Heroes into the same situation Luffy found himself in

All of these heroes fall through the ceiling and into Boa Hancock’s bath where they come face to face with the most beautiful woman on the planet who is naked.

Goku: completely unphased by Boa’s beauty. Asks who Boa is, and when she gets pissed, stands there with a “huh?” Look on his face when she shoots the love beam at him. After it has no effect, Goku puts his hand up with a smile and then says, “see ya!” Before flying off. Probably more concerned with where Vegeta went and if he managed to find a new level of Super Saiyan

Naruto: definitely phased by Boa. Would probably turn to stone ahahahaha

Ichigo: after being annoyed because he fell through the roof, would take one look at Boa, and get flustered out of embarrassment. By the time Boa tries to question him, he’s already left and found the exit.

Natsu: upon falling into the bath, he’d also be completely unphased by Boa. Would most likely take note of her earrings and ask about them. He’d probably also end up saying something Boa would find unbelievably rude, but something I would laugh hysterically at. “Woah?! Is that your guild mark?! Cool!!!” 

Asta: I imagine Asta would most likely cover his eyes out of courtesy, and ask for the way out. When Boa gets mad and asks why he’s not head over heals for her, nor why he’s looking at her body, he’d say something like, “sister Lilly is waiting for me” and then leave. *sigh*

So here’s my point. Three of our boys would have the same exact reaction as Luffy. When it comes to the archetype, lusting after girls simply isn’t in their nature. Natsu’s reaction to a naked Lucy was to cover her boobs with his hands “fine I’ll cover them” he sighs in the dub. No lustful reaction whatsoever. I’m pretty sure any normal guy would, um, not react that way. He looks so bored.

Asta refused to peep at a girls bath (way to shut that down buddy), and Goku’s seen plenty of naked people and he doesn’t care. He even has the same reaction in Dragon Ball Super, after he’s married, when he accidentally sees another woman naked (who is very beautiful).

(Harsh reaction there Goku, lmao)

Luffy’s reaction to Boa is completely in line with the archetype. The innocent nature of the main character is extremely important. Oda even says in the SBS that it would just be plain weird for Luffy to get a nose bleed. I agree.

So, do our boys reactions to Boa mean romance isn’t possible for them? Of course not. Goku got married and had 2 kids. Naruto, who is the most interested in women, got married. Ichigo ended up with someone and had a kid. Natsu’s relationship with Lucy isn’t “canon” yet, buuuttt with this sequel coming and all the art Mashima’s been posting, I think we can all just call it and it’ll be happening. As for Asta, the manga is still young so it’s hard to say, but judging how Tabata is treating romance in his manga, I’d say It’s a distinct possibility. Asta does have a low-key herem going on 🤷‍♀️

When Goku was a kid, he came across a foe who could turn evil (ie bad thoughts) into a weapon and kill you. Goku was the only person to ever survive because he has no impure thoughts. It basically works the same way as Boa’s love-love beam.

This innocence is why Goku can ride his magical flying cloud the Kinto-Un, aka the Flying Nimbus. That innocence in Goku stays with him forever, too. Goku can ride the cloud after he’s gotten married and created spawns. The idea is, sex isn’t dirty. It’s just how you treat it may or may not make it dirty (ie unwarranted advances). Master Roshi, Goku’s perverted teacher, can’t ride the Kinto-Un. Using Goku as an example, our innocent muffins can still have romance/make babies. Their highly innocent nature doesn’t stop them, but normally with these types, they will only have romance/make babies if it’s with one very special person.

This is important to remember; for this genre, romance is a part of maturing and growing up. Most of these shonen heroes end up with someone once they’ve passed a certain point. 

In One Piece Specifically 

When it comes to Oda’s writing specifically, romance between characters doesn’t really play a huge role in One Piece like the way it does in Naruto and Fairy Tail. Everyone who reads OP should recognize this. Whatever ends up happening at the end of One Piece, there aren’t going to be a zillion pairings and those pairings staring off into the sunset. 

There’s that famous line from Oda where he answered a question in the SBS (from chapter 317)

D: Doesn't anyone on Luffy's crew fall in love? Will there never be a tale of on-board romance? (Sanji is an exception in this case) I'm just wondering.

O: OF COURSE THEY'RE IN LOVE... WITH ADVENTURE! (← good one)

The SBS is a place where Oda jokes around with his readers. I think his answer is a good answer because it’s true, and when it comes down to it, a deflective answer.  And whatever else Oda has said or hasn’t said in magazines or interviews, Oda can change his mind about what he wants to include or not include in his manga.

The reason I think this is worth bringing up is because I can see a storytelling shift which has changed in his manga. Romance in any capacity used to play almost no role in the early story. Just think about the type of characters he was creating. You’ve got Nolan’s descendant who hangs out with guys that look like monkeys. You’ve got the giants of Elbaf, you’ve got the Galley-Law company guys. There’s hardly any blood families in the first half either. Vivi and her Dad are a notable example, but they are the minority, not the majority. The first half of the story was mostly focused on people who were not blood related and were making their own families, like the Franky family. Like the Strawhats. 

Post time-skip and New World, we’ve got a very different story being told. With Kyros and his wife Scarlet, Oda actually gave us the backstory to their romance! Dressrosa was set up a bit for that type of story, but I still find it notable. It wasn’t necessary for character motivations for Kyros. It felt like Oda wrote it because he wanted to.

You’ve got romance playing a big role in Whole Cake Island, even with Chiffon and Bege. This is a married couple with a young son, and not the type of characters we’d see in the early story. Sanji and Pudding were more of a serious type of relationship, even with Sanji “choosing to feel love” for Pudding. Guys, that’s...mature. We’ve seen a lot more blood ties in the New World, even to the point of the Big Mom pirates, dysfunctional as they are. 

In the end, you write what you know. When One Piece started, Oda was a single guy, now he’s in his early 40′s with a daughter. The types of stories he’s telling now are based on more mature aspects of his own life. 

Does this mean Luffy will most definitely end up with someone? Of course not. There’s a distinct possibility OP will end with Luffy as he is and there be no pairings of any sort.

But to dismiss the possibility of parings based on Luffy’s reaction to women or something Oda said back in some interview, is also too dismissive of a stance to take. Like his Shonen counterparts, romance for Luffy is a possibility. Remember what I said about the genre; romance is sign of growing up and maturing. Luffy is still growing and maturing, so it isn’t out of the cards.

In the end, Only Oda knows. Until One Piece has concluded, we’ll have to wait and see. 

#luffy #lunami #luna #luffyxnami #luffy ship

[thehalfworld]

Fanfic MST: Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation of Edward Cullen, a Twilight fanfic [part 6]

Meant to get this done a while ago, but I’ve got a new job and it’s been keeping me busy. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this chapter; it’s probably the most action-packed one yet. 

Content warnings for this chapter include more (attempted) rape, a consensual sex scene (not described), and some violence. And a hell of a lot of nonsense that may hurt your brain if you think about it too hard.

Recap: Tiaa competed in, and won, a school talent contest. Edward was very impressed with her, but Tiaa was still angry about him rejecting her advances back in chapter 4, so she yelled at him and then went and had a cry.

Chapter 1

Previous chapter

AN - dnt all just attack me for the things writen in this chapter about Tiaas parents, i havent explaned everything yet an it will make more sense later. 

Which probably means it will make no sense now, but we’ll see.

Chapter 6 - the curse

-Oh ewdard with your skin so white Your eyes like amber out of sight Pale angel in my eyes Hair like gold rosy sunrise-

That’s a hell of a poem, but maybe you should stick to prose.

I read the words of my poem out quietly. I had written a poem about Edward, i just couldnt help myself. I hated myself for doing it but i couldnt get him out of my mind and it was the only way i could deal with my feelings. 

Soddenly my mind went black and i felt into a trance. 

In my original version of the MST I made a comment here about Tiaa needing therapy and antipsychotics. I would have reproduced it as-is, but I don’t wanna seem like I’m making light of mental illness; that being said, as someone who goes to therapy and takes antipsychotics, this girl could use some professional medical attention. Like, pronto.

A tall pale man stood in front of me all ghosty and misty like he was only half there. 

It was… VLODEMORT AND DA DETH DEALERS!!11!1

"my daugher? My daughter?" he moaned 

"who are you?" i wispa quietly

"i am your FATHER! 

That’s a real shocker after he just called her his daughter.

I AM CAIUS FROM THE VOLTURI! 

Not positive why he’s screaming this part, but I’ll go with it.

Your in terror and peril my daugher! 

God I fucking love this author’s use of the English language.

Beware the vampire boy called edward!" 

"why?" I said

"you mussent let him sex you or the curse your mother tried to protect you from will fall on you...you'll become a VAMPIRE! 

Uh… what? Lemme dissect this.

Tiaa’s dad is a vampire. Presumably her mom was not, though I get the feeling mom may not have been human either. Human/vampire hybrids are an established thing in the Twilight universe, and Tiaa clearly isn’t one (just for starters, she’s apparently been aging at a normal rate, as opposed to the highly accelerated pace at which human/vampire hybrids mature), so let’s assume her mom has some other supernatural shit going on. There’s a curse involved, so let’s say she’s a witch or similar. 

Why the hell would there be a curse on Tiaa that makes her turn (presumably irreversibly) into a vampire if she has sex with a vampire? Who caused this? What’s going on? Is it specifically Edward who’s dangerous to her, or would any other vampire pose the same threat? What is defined as “sex” here? Vaginal intercourse?

What a weird plot twist. Moving the hell on.

And you will never be safe! Only as a human can you be safe from them..." 

Wait, safe from who? Why would being human make her safer? Would she be targeted specifically for being nonhuman if she were to become a vampire? Why?

then he faded and I was awake and uncle larry was standing at my door.

"take ur clothes off now you moldy slut!" said uncle larry and he smiles horribly with his yellow teeth

Geez, Uncle Larry, at least do something about the mold first.

"no i wont" i screamed but uncle larry came over and hit me. I was strong for my size but he was a huge fat man like 300 pounds in weight and stronger than me. 

Oh, okay, so we finally get a sense of how big and strong Uncle Larry is compared to Tiaa. Presumably Atlantiana “strong and graceful like the running anti-lopes” Rebekah Loren is faster than this guy, though. I feel like she might still be able to outmaneuver him.

He took my clothes off and chained me to the bed. 

Where did the chains come from? Did Uncle Larry bring them with him or do Dave and Marie keep bondage equipment in the house?

I new he was going to rape me again. 

That’s an impressive deduction.

But at that moment someone came running into the room and hit uncle larry across the head with a stick and knocks him out cold. Uncle larry laid there bleeding and i looked up at...EDWARD!

I was gonna make a totally different comment here but it actually just struck me (pun not intended) that this is the most in-character Edward has been yet. If you read Twilight, there’s actually a scene where he saves Bella from a group of guys attempting to corner and assault her. His mind-reading ability and stalker tendencies both come in handy here; it’s not a stretch to imagine he might be hanging about in the vicinity of Tiaa’s house, and he would be able to read Uncle Larry’s mind and know what Larry planned on doing to Tiaa. As ridiculous as him conveniently busting in at the nick of time might seem, it’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do.

"omg my sweet lady" he cried! "what has this frightful asshole been doing to thee?"

Never mind, apparently he didn’t actually read Uncle Larry’s mind, or he would have known what the frightful asshole (great phrase) had been doing to Tiaa. So we’re back to the scene making no sense. 

"he's been raping me and hitting me" i weeped sadly as edward unchained me and i put my clothes on. Edward turned away whale I dressed so he wasnt perving on me, and he looked down at the poem I had wroten.

"for truth!these are the most beautiful words I have ever seen, it makes me feel so very moved" he cried "i wish i wasnt promised to someone else then i could write poems for thee" 

Edward, man, you’re coming up on 100 years old. You’ve been going through the educational system over and over again for decades. Surely you’ve read some good poetry (by which I mean “surely you’ve read the one or two good poems to have been written in the history of poetry, one of which is definitely ‘The Emperor of Ice Cream’ by Wallace Stevens”) in your time on this earth.

"why are u promised to bella anyways" i ask

"Be cause i made a promise and i cant' break it, it would be rude and ungentalmanly. 

Promised because he made a promise. Got it.

Bella never used to be like she is now,when i fist met her she was sweet and shy and was never nasty about everybody but she has changed and so have her freinds. I dont know watt made her change, maybe it is mine fault, she just seems angry all the time now."

That’s what happens when a Mary Sue shows up in your story! Canon characters start acting really weird to allow the Sue to fill a specific role that would otherwise not exist!

"Yah that makes sense I guess" i said.

We left the house and went to walk in the woods. We talked about loads of things and it turned out we had a lot in comnon. We liked all the same music and movies and books and stuff, it was like magic.

I actually think one of the perks of dating a vampire would be being able to pick his brain about pop culture through the ages. Like, it’d be really cool to talk about hip youth culture with someone who has been masquerading as a hip young person for over fifty years; that’s gotta be a unique perspective. But what the hell are the odds of a teenager in the 2000s matching interests perfectly with someone who’s lived through the entire 20th century?

"you know maybe bella is unhappy be cause you guys are not in love like u used to be, and u should brake up with her so she can move on and your can both be happy" i say

…see, now that’s actually completely solid relationship advice.

"she all ways used to say that shed kill herself if I left her. I could not be responsable for her death! 

Uh, her depression (and/or manipulative tendencies?) isn’t his responsibility. On the other hand, though, this is in-character for Edward.

I just don't get what has happened to her she used to be nice and sweet like thou my lady. 

I feel like Edward isn’t very good at judging when a girl is “nice and sweet.”

And now i am falling in love with thou and it is all such a darn mess!" He hit a tree in frustration and it broke. 

This author’s frequent use of purple prose only makes it funnier when she describes something as minimally as this. “It broke.” Brilliant.

He was so strong, i guess cause he was a vampire.

Yeah, could be why.

"your falling in love with me?" i ask, my cheeks going all red and my heart starting to sore

Girl, you okay?

"omg, forget I said that!" he looked relay embarassed and it was so cute. He had a big erection too. 

Did this boy just get a hard-on from punching a tree?

I retched out and grabbed his hard throbbing male object. 

I am literally imploring you to use the word “penis” instead.

We couldn't controll ourselves any more and we both fell down on the floor and got naked and made love. It was amazing and lasted hours and I had never been so happy in my life i felt like i coud die with happines. 

These two have some impressive stamina considering it’s the first time for both of them. I mean, I guess Edward is a vampire, and Tiaa is... Tiaa, but still.

But after a while edward started to freak out and cry.

Yeah, he’s like that.

"I HAVE BEEN SUCH A FOOL!" he screamed "i should not have let that hapen! 

I’ll cut the guy some slack for being eternally seventeen years old, which probably doesn’t come with the best impulse control, but… they had sex for hours, and he only just now started to realize his mistake? 

I hope thee can forgive me, i must return to Bella!" and he ran away.

I could not believe it. It was like my world was caving in all about me. i was so socked and angry i could not even cry or scream. 

It’s not really shocking, honestly. The entire story has been about Edward’s inability to make up his goddamn mind over whether or not to leave Bella. I’d be angry too, because the constant waffling back and forth is pretty annoying, but… oh, hang on, that actually says she was socked, not shocked. Never mind.

But as i lay there i started to fell diferent, like RELAY diferent. I suddenly remembed watt my father had said to me about not making sex with edward or he woud turn me into a vampire! 

Yeah, it’s pretty easy to forget randomly blacking out and having a vision of your vampire dad. That’s the sort of thing that happens so often it’s hard to keep track.

My skin was getting all hard and pale and my eyes could suddenly see a lot clearer than before! I could hear lots of little noises even form relay far away. I even wanted to drink blood!

She’s turning into Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.

and i could smell a human comin closer, he was almost here

"There you are you horrid SLUG" it was uncle larry "where have u been? I'm goin to rape u now!”

Well, that’s some real authentic-sounding rapist dialogue.

Also, if you remember my comment from earlier about placing bets on which chapter Uncle Larry dies horribly in, and you bet on chapter 6, congrats! You don’t win anything. I’m out of confetti.

Something in me snaped. I jumped at him and broke his neck and drank his blood! 

I don’t normally condone vampirism, but in this case — you go, girl! Give ‘em what for!

i had always ben strong for my size but now i was SUPER strong!He looked so surprised and it was so GOOD! Soon i dropped him on the floor and he was...dead!

I woulda thought he’d have died once his neck was broken, but if she has enough technique to keep him alive to suffer even with a broken neck, more power to her.

Next chapter

#forbidenfruit.mst #fandom:twilight #halfworld.mst

[ramajmedia]

Arnold Schwarzenegger's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Famed for his gargantuan muscular frame and his unmistakable Austrian accent, Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the most renowned action movie stars in Hollywood. He may be a legend in the bodybuilding world and he may have served as the Governor of California, but when all is said and done, what Arnie will be best remembered for is his rich history of action cinema classics.

RELATED: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 10 Most Badass Characters, Ranked

As an actor, Schwarzenegger is no Brando, but he is incredibly likable, and it’s this likability that has made him a bankable star with some decent movies (and a couple of great ones) under his weightlifting belt. Here are Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes.

10 The Expendables 2 (67%)

While the first Expendables movie took itself a little too seriously and the third one didn’t take itself seriously enough, the second one found the sweet spot. The 2012 sequel had a plot and some vague character development, but it also dedicated plenty of time to winking at the audience and making thinly veiled references to the stars’ careers.

Although Arnold Schwarzenegger only had a cameo appearance in the first movie, he got a larger role in the sequel, playing Barney Ross’ arch-nemesis Trench Mauser. They don’t make old-school actioners like this anymore, so it’s great to see one, even if it isn’t perfect.

9 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (69%)

Unsurprisingly, the first Terminator movie not have any involvement from James Cameron is nowhere near as good as the first two. It’s actually sort of a slap in the face to fans – Sarah Connor is killed off-screen by a terminal illness, John Connor has grown up into a homeless burnout, and the T-800 wears Elton John sunglasses in the standard-template opening bar scene.

RELATED: 8 Things That Terminator: Dark Fate Could Fix About The Franchise

The latter is actually the film’s greatest strength, weirdly, because some of the self-parodying elements act as a sly, comedic wink to Terminator fans. Terminator 3 introduced a female Terminator called a Terminatrix. Other than the gender switch, however, there’s little differentiating it from the setup of T2.

8 TIE: True Lies (70%)

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, a secret agent who struggles to keep his work life separate from his home life, in James Cameron’s big-budget comic thriller True Lies, which can be filed under “good, not great.” The main downside of the movie is its insensitive portrayal of characters who aren’t white men.

The wife character is depicted in a sexist way, with her husband stalking and then terrifying her using government equipment, and the Saudi Arabian villains are characterized as one-dimensional stereotypes. Still, it’s a rollicking action comedy, which might not make up for the controversial points, but does mean it’s a watchable movie.

7 TIE: Commando (70%)

When most action movie fans picture a thriller in which an A-list star heads to a foreign country to track down his kidnapped daughter, they think of Liam Neeson in Taken. But Arnold Schwarzenegger made one of these movies back in the ‘80s called Commando.

It’s a fun, pulpy, visceral, action-packed cinematic ride about John Matrix’s quest to find his daughter, who was abducted by an old military buddy. The film has actually been studied in relation to queer theory, taking into account the closeup shots of Arnie’s muscles, his indifference to his female co-star, and lines like, “Put the knife in me, and look me in the eye.”

6 TIE: Conan the Barbarian (70%)

In one of the early major roles that made him a star, Conan the Barbarian stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fierce warrior who sets out to avenge the death of his parents at the hands of a murderous snake cult.

There are some big names under the by-line on the screenplay – Apocalypse Now’s John Milius and Platoon’s Oliver Stone – so there’s an elevated grandiosity and a dark thematic undercurrent in the scenes and the dialogue. The movie was a huge box office success back in 1982, but it was an even bigger success on home media, quadrupling its overall revenue.

5 Stay Hungry (75%)

Not a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger fans know the movie Stay Hungry, but it was one of his earlier major roles. Despite the fact that he wasn’t yet the A-list star he would go on to become, it’s almost as if the character of Joe Santo – an Austrian bodybuilder – was written specifically for him.

The movie stars Jeff Bridges as a man whose life is turned upside down when he visits a gym and finds himself falling for the receptionist and fascinated by Joe Santo’s lifestyle. Although it wasn’t technically Arnie’s first on-screen performance, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture for it.

4 Predator (81%)

Paving the way for Jason Statham to fight a 75-foot prehistoric shark and Dwayne Johnson to fight a giant, biologically enhanced wolf, Arnold Schwarzenegger took on a bloodthirsty creature from outer space.

Schwarzenegger teamed up with Carl Weathers, Jesse “the Body” Ventura, and a handful of Hollywood’s other bulkiest men for the riveting tale of a military unit that is attacked by an alien deep into the jungle, where no one can hear you scream. Predator also gets bonus points for giving us some of Arnie’s best-known one-liners, like “If it bleeds, we can kill it,” and “Get to the choppa!”

3 Total Recall (82%)

Fans of Black Mirror will appreciate the frightful social science fiction and shocking plot twists of this Philip K. Dick adaptation. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker in the near future whose friend tells him about a company that implants memories of vacations in your mind for cheaper prices than the vacation itself would cost. When he gets there, he’s told about other simulations, like spy missions.

RELATED: 10 Best Movies and TV Shows Based On Philip K. Dick Stories

Halfway through the simulation, he wakes up, ranting and raving about finishing his mission. They knock him out, and he returns home to a wife who tries to kill him. What follows is a twist-filled ride where you never know who to trust, what is real, and why Mars is so important.

2 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (93%)

A prime example of a sequel done right, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is bigger, bolder, deeper, and more action-packed than its predecessor. It might not quite match the original’s cinematic mastery, but with a film of this scope, a pace that is set this perfectly is practically a miracle.

The sequel differs from the original by reprogramming Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a good guy and bringing in a second Terminator – a more advanced one, played by Robert Patrick – to be the bad guy. Every subsequent Terminator sequel has attempted to match the balance of existential musings and cyber-charged thrills of this one and failed miserably.

1 The Terminator (100%)

It’s not often that Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a villain, but The Terminator shows that maybe he should do it more often. James Cameron’s fiercely original screenplay for the film is built on a spectacular premise: in a future where cyborgs have taken over, the cyborgs send one back in time to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, the leader of the Resistance, so John sends back his best guy to protect her from it.

By pitting two humans – one a battle-hardened fish out of water from the distant future and the other an unwitting waitress in the ‘80s – against an emotionless, unstoppable cyborg, two lovable heroes and one unforgettable villain were born.

NEXT: Sylvester Stallone's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

source https://screenrant.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-best-movies-according-rotten-tomatoes/

#screenrant

[356mission]

Interview with Trisha Baga and Sabrina Gschwandtner

Trisha Baga Interview with Sabrina Gschwandtner

On occasion of Biologue by Trisha Baga at 356 S. Mission Road

January 27 – March 19, 2017

Sabrina Gschwandtner: The title of the whole show is Biologue. Do you consider the longer 3D video the centerpiece of the show, or one element of the show?

Trisha Baga: It’s the centerpiece. It’s on the main stage.

SG: It’s titled The Voice. After watching it, I thought, if this was being shown on Netflix, it would be categorized as a drama. Do you agree?

TB: I thought of it as a mystery.

SG: A mystery! Not a thriller, though?

TB: Maybe like mysteries and thrillers, it would get lumped in there.  I was also thinking of the shape of the whole show as an inversion of the “theater in the round.”

SG: You were just telling me that the starting place for this piece was thinking about the Tower of Babel.

TB:  I initially thought about making a road trip movie because I went on a road trip with my mother and her siblings in the Philippines and I wanted to take footage from that and use my experience of not really understanding anything people were saying, because they were using a local dialect more than the national language. So I went into a pretty abstract thought space, carrying my camera and imagining language and that’s what started all the Babel thoughts.   Maybe with all of my work, but making this piece made it really clear, when making video, it’s usually about some kind of fragmentation of the cinematic body and all the formal elements that create a sense of empathy towards a protagonist.  The drama is the separation and then they live their own lives and congregate every so often.

SG: While I was watching it, I was making a list of different types of communication in the video and noticing how they all seem to fail to provide connection.  On my list was: VR glasses movie film, newspapers, language (in the form of written language and multiple spoken languages) …

TB: And The Little Mermaid, don’t forget.

SG:  Right! I was trying to figure out where the subject was in the piece. You’ve perfectly captured the way we can live split between the physical present and the digital realm at the same time.

TB: Maybe it’s about the expansion of the body?  Or the attempt to through images and media and languages. There’s the narrative of mitosis, which I think is connected to this. It’s a cell body dividing into two daughter cells.

SG: Mitosis is the narrative structure of the piece.

TB: I think its structure is its subject and if that, then I think it makes the video more of an object than a story. I was thinking about, for example, Ariel wants love and to have legs.  And because she wants these promised things of an otherworld culture she’s seen fragments of, like the artifacts that she’s been collecting, she makes the trade to separate her body.  Evidence.  So, it’s like that classic narrative of desire for an imagined whole leading to the fragmentation of the self.   The stolen voice is represented by the pieces of chewed up gum. I think of this video as the voice that’s separated from itself and having to express itself in other ways.

SG: But a desire for wholeness in a new form?

TB: Yeah, and the shape of the hunger. The hunger is actually kind of the same because a lot of times it’s just for an other. And the hunger stays the same. I also think there’s a hunger for productivity too, or movement.  But the shape of it changes through technology and I think this is what the video is looking at.

SG: The shape of productivity changes or the shape of the desire?

TB: Yeah, the shape of the desire. At least what it looks like. I’m just trying out these sentences, I’m not sure if I believe them.

SG: What’s the desire in this case?

TB: I think I’m talking about, in a way, capitalism. And this mentality that it’s actually possible to fill holes.  

SG: What is the role of the body in the work ultimately, or maybe outside of this video in particular? I’m thinking about how people are going to sit here and watch this with 3D glasses but they are also going to walk around the space and see a cleaned up version of your work desk, another 3D video of you at work in this space, seed paintings, sculptures of papier mache newspapers with chewed-up gum, and a video you shot of people walking on a beach in Japan. There are a lot of remnants of you in the space, remnants of your physical body and your labor.  

TB: Maybe for me body is an environment, if the video as an object is a protagonist. Within this construct, as a viewer you become part of the environment. I think this video also tries to make the body feel not only that it fragments, but those fragmented parts are just in the air potentially and in our pockets often, and the collision of those things. And to reach a mass where you can no longer focus on it as a collection of singularities, but as a plural mass.  Also one of the first organizing things I did with editing was collect my shots of audience. And so there’s an audience wearing VR all in a theater together, an audience wearing 3D glasses in a theater together and an audience not wearing 3D glasses in a theater together…and also an audience standing around in a room at a party all wearing VR. And so maybe that’s like…I can’t find the accurate word that names this relationship to the body environment, but maybe they are going through parallel narratives.

SG: So everyone’s just in it together?

TB: Right, a community.

SG:  When I think of community I think of connection, but this show is It’s very dystopian. Is there any out here, or agency?

TB: I think the act of making art is a manifestation of agency. I think for me more so than when I try to instrumentalize art -making for agency. There are other places for that. I was thinking recently about how with all of the shit that’s been happening, a symptom or side effect of it is among my friends and fellow progressive, liberal people, is this sense of self-righteousness and preoccupation with “being right” that bleeds into spaces where they are not so productive.  Like creative spaces.  And it also creates self-consciousness and a lot of boundaries.  And I know that boundaries and being correct is obviously really important in journalism and other places. But I think art should always be protected as a place where you can make a lot of mistakes and feel things out because it speaks from abstraction.  I know that my desire to make art is rooted in a desire to express and see and share something larger than I could understand otherwise.  These other invented languages shouldn’t be oppressed by the counter oppression too.  

#Trisha Baga #Sabrina Gschwandtner #356 Mission Rd

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Favorite 25 Films of 2018

Once upon a time, Derek Smith wrote: “2017 was a year endured rather than lived.” But all due respect to the past, because here we are creeping into this new 2019 and things are so much better than we thought they’d be! True, the year probably felt like 37 years or whatever removed from Rick Deckard’s squared-off tie and malfunctioning memory. And truth be told, the political crisis unfolding in the gray hallways might seem more honest if it resembled the light-starved, gnarled noir of Blade Runner. At least Schwarzenegger and The Running Man promised that 2019’s only choice would be “hard time or prime time,” even if its presentation of a neon capital, corporate-owned world seemed, you know, subtle. And for all the (dead) kids in cages and bodies bleeding out on street corners here and abroad, Michael Bay and The Island had a perfectly-drooped Buscemi diagnosing our humanist crisis: “I mean, you’re not human. I mean, you’re human, but you’re not real. You’re not a real person, like me.” A lot of people were told they weren’t humans in 2018. This isn’t a writerly evasion or poetic epithet designed to elicit righteous ire/compel you to read another year-end list. Because what else could you call the concentrated attempt by some humans to discourage the freedoms of other humans? Our narrative didn’t turn science-fiction to let us off the hook: these non-humans weren’t clones or replicants or estranged Atlantean denizens returning to claim their kingly right. They just weren’t human enough (or the right kind of human) to matter in the eyes of louder, more powerful humans. All of our past’s proposed images of our worst futures pale in comparison to this denial of basic humanity that we see out our windows. It is unsurprising, then, that cinema, our most volatile cultural mirror, began to show the stretch and strain in its images of our species. But what is surprising is that cinema in 2018 retained nuance and compassion as it mediated the cruelties and depravities of its age. Unlike this slab of prose, movies in 2018 moved beyond mediating good and evil in simple, monolithic terms. They attempted to sketch the boundaries of real freedom in an unjust world (BlaKkKlansman). They investigated, more acutely than ever before, the responsibilities of what it meant to keep (Shirkers) and tell (Madeline’s Madeline) another human’s story (If Beale Street Could Talk), especially in remembrance (Roma). They presented distorted genealogies (Hereditary) and fisheye-lens histories (The Favourite) to track the human body’s motion (Suspiria) in and out of comradeship (Support the Girls) and trauma (Burning). In 2018, we hurled our betrayed humanities up against foreign corpses (Zama), scorched country (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), alien twins (Annihilation), and incongruent voices (Sorry to Bother You). We began to see, in everything, something like a way through the darkness. Why else keep watching the past (The Other Side of the Wind) if not to plot something we’d never imagined before (The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl)? Our moving images in 2018 proposed that real love (Eighth Grade) and genuine care (Lazzaro Felice) could stretch impossibly across time to add up to a life steeped in both nuance and compassion (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?). Our love would not look the same (Leave No Trace) nor could it resound in strictly-feasible tones (Mandy), but we would recognize its absence; we could see that sometimes humanness looks like something we’ve never seen before (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). More than anything, as one derelict theory proposed, “Through the negative you could see the real, inner, demonic quality of the light.” In laying the responsibilities of the filmmaker and artist at the feet of a murderer, The House That Jack Built came perilously close to endorsing our worst demons. Those demons shook and raged and hissed at us, urging us to give in to despair and make a world in their image. How did we let it stand? Thomas Merton was a central figure in a figurative, feral lens for our year, and he wrote that “despair is the absolute extreme of self-love.” To levy our humanity so close to inhumanness, suggesting that our better angels are distortions, is dangerous. To know, as these 25 films know, that there can be nothing without despair until there is love is to actually be human. To look, as we did, through our ruinous year and resist the despairs of all our oppressors and lowest urges, to shout, in image and montage and light and shadow, that this is how I deny you is to attain, beyond our humanity and into the future, a new kind of prayer. –Frank Falisi --- 25 Roma Dir. Alfonso Cuarón [Netflix] Roma was Alfonso Cuarón’s excursion into simplicity, a self-imposed challenge that drew back from his earlier, more extravagant films. Cuarón told his simple allegory in a monochrome treatment, but while wearing multiple hats — he also produced, shot, and edited the film. The choice to go black and white not only focused the elements of filmmaking to its barest essentials, but it also emphasized its nostalgic underpinnings. Though it made use of elaborate staging for its more chaotic events, Roma paradoxically found fascination in the quotidian and the mundane. The film was dedicated to the maid that the Cuarón’s family employed when he was a child — realized as the previously unknown Yalitza Aparicio, who brought an indelible humanity to her role — but the story itself was secondary. It was presented more as a series of tableaus, culminating in a climactic sequence at the beach. Here, Cuarón’s camera lingered, unedited, in a harrowing scene that illustrated Aparicio’s undying devotion to the family and revealed the film’s true heart. –Tristan Kneschke --- 24 Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Dir. Morgan Neville [Focus Features] With no dirt to dig up on his subject, director Morgan Neville tended to accent the blue-tinged notes heard throughout the Neighborhood in his Fred Rogers documentary. The director’s seamless cardigan scene-weaving stitched together instances of cluster chords and doubting puppets into a portrait of vulnerability that reinforced one of Rogers’s core motifs: It takes a person, not a hero, to protect children. Not a pie-in-the-face kind of guy, we watched Fred McFeely Rogers ponder in the tall grass in between changing shoes and tackling hard topics like grief, death, and terrorism. Demonstrations of his honesty, inclusivity, kindness, patience, listening skills, and unconditional love revealed the subject as the archetype for a timeless paternal figure. Although his ministry athwart sensationalism took place in the era of broadcast television, we imagined that any younger generation in the history of the world could connect with and feel empowered by his carefully worded and well-tempered mission. –Rick Weaver --- 23 Leave No Trace Dir. Debra Granik [Bleecker Street] Few directors are as curious about or sensitive to alternative modes of existence as Debra Granik, who followed Winter’s Bone and the documentary Stray Dog with this tale of a father and daughter willfully attempting to live off the grid in the present-day Pacific Northwest. Leave No Trace was quiet and deliberate, but not remotely uneventful: Granik showed Will (Ben Foster) and Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) moving through a handful of makeshift, scrappy, and industrialized communities. With minimal embellishments, Granik made each change of scenery feel at once seismic and utterly authentic. Moreover, she guided her two lead actors through agonizing psychological arcs without a whiff of cliché, as a daughter gradually discovered that her life and well-being will be enriched by community, while her PTSD-afflicted father confronted the fact that he can’t abide by the obligations and niceties of modern civilization. Granik’s film had a Bressonian bleakness, but it was entirely heartfelt and so convincing in its particulars that it couldn’t help but realign our sense of the world. –Christopher Gray --- 22 Support the Girls Dir. Andrew Bujalski [Magnolia Pictures] Your workdays don’t end with you back home ready to decompress; they are your back-home and your decompress. Maybe you slept or something like that (scrolled? drank? had a crisis?), but you aren’t really awake till the first table is seated, and you better leave everything else at the door (lol). Your customers are guests, your wage is nil, and your smile is forced by uninvisible hands. Your coworkers are either No Face or your own flesh and blood, the only ones keeping your head from falling off and bursting into flame at the foot of the heat lamp. They get it! They get you. Or they get the gist, which is about as much of you as you get anyway. Because if you actually stopped to think about… No need to pretend: You hate this place, and you find yourself doing anything for it, for each other, because you all know the conditions are absolutely fucked and fuck that. Your favorite regular is here; you’re in a good mood for some reason. You act certifiable, you scream, you screw your head back on. The POS is down. You’re short. You make it. Your coworker says, “[That manager] can suck my dick.” Or, “I am going to murder this couple.” Or, “Y’all come back now!” You loved her for that. This movie loved her for that, through all of it, and it loved you too. A double whammy: Regina Hall et al. returned the workday to life itself and transformed working class unity into grace (laughter), something we could use. You have nothing to lose. –Pat Beane --- 21 Eighth Grade Dir. Bo Burnham [A24] In an interview with NPR, former YouTube star Bo Burnham said he wanted to make a story about the internet and how it feels to be alive right now. OK, sure, he succeeded in doing that by having 13-year-old Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) create and upload vlog entries on how to best navigate the social anxieties of being a young teen. However, by the end of the film, what this angle really emphasized with great nuance (perhaps unintentionally?) is that children of every generation — regardless of the gap — suffer from the same anxieties, sexual insecurities, and self-blame. Identity has always been a fluid performance; the internet has simply made it more permanent. To star a young girl currently living the same age IRL that she portrays brilliantly in the film is in large part what made Eighth Grade not only one of our favorite films of 2018, but also one of the most genuine coming-of-age films, period. This casting decision made it impossible for Burnham to project his experiences and memories onto the story, which fortunately meant it was not biographical or about nostalgia. Rather, Eighth Grade was simply a present-day story about a complex experience that has always transcended the outlets through which they’ve been mediated. –NB [pagebreak] 20 Suspiria Dir. Luca Guadagnino [Produzioni Atlas Consorziate] In 1980, during Italy’s “years of lead,” Bologna Station, built in neoclassical style during the Fascist era, was bombed by neofascist terrorists — 85 died. Today, despite the coffee-drinking herds pouring through it, the station retains a bleak and melancholy atmosphere. Luca Guadagnino captured something of this in his remake of Suspiria. Set in the German Autumn of 1977 (the release date of the original), the poisonous and paranoid atmosphere of Cold War Berlin, when Leftists turned to violence in the face of failed denazification and a conservative establishment, bubbled in the background. To its cold occult decadence, the film added stylized and unforgettable body horror. The whole built to an over-the-top conclusion, which was perfect both as a nod to the campiness of the original (and the giallo genre) and because Guadagnino’s deft melding of physical and emotional horror was a slow-burn that demanded combustion. It was a wyrd companion piece to surreal works grappling and playing with similar legacies, from Bruce LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich (a.k.a. The Revolution Is My Boyfriend) to Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film From Germany. The personal was also political: the original was a masterpiece of style and ambiance marred by subtle misogyny, but in Guadagnino’s vision, this became an exploration of the fraught heat and darkness of dynamics between women in their exercise of power and community. Dakota Johnson lacked fire in the belly, as did Thom Yorke’s anaemic soundtrack, but a subplot some thought needless served up the film’s most appalling moment: a sickening portrayal of the pain of lost love regained, then once more ripped away with casual malice. This was more than a memorial suspiria; it was a wholly worthy rebirth of the Mater Suspiriorum. –Rowan Savage --- 19 Lazzaro Felice Dir. Alice Rohrwacher [Netflix] Alice Rohrwacher’s third feature, the Cannes-celebrated Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro), was built on the many tensions it engendered &mdash namely, between a humanistic premise and the layers of dejection it was buried underneath, the timeless aspirations of a fable and a cynically bitter view of modernity, and the rustic realism of its form and the story’s fantastic detours. The film followed the threadline that, like the wolf, men will exploit men in all spaces, times, levels, and situations: A Marquise keeps a group of peasants working for her in near slavery; they in turn abuse and overwork the titular Lazzaro, a young peasant whose innocence and goodness paint him into the archetype of the “holy fool.” He roams through the story in a perplexity recalling the Christ-like dispossessed of classic Italian cinema. His mission on this earth, it would seem, is to prove that even the lowest of the low, the wicked and the perverse, are capable of gestures of kindness. How enduring, truthful, and integral these were to their characters, to the essence of their humanity, was something Lazzaro must discover at his own expense, paying ever higher costs in this beguiling yet disturbingly recognizable modern parable. –jrodriguez6 --- 18 Night Is Short, Walk On Girl Dir. Masaaki Yuasa [Toho] You wake up after a long night out. You aren’t hungover at all — it’s a miracle, truly a miracle. What do you remember from last night? Not names, certainly. Maybe not even places. It’s all like a strange fairytale, one of glowing neon and drinks that tasted better because you didn’t pay for them, of hilarious characters and absurd triumphs. Did that bouncer really let you in, even though you were $9 short of cover? You feel fantastic. This feeling was alive in Night Is Short, Walk On Girl: an insensible, overwhelmingly jubilant, and optimistic perspective on “a night on the town.” Pulling trade tactics from films like Amélie, El Futuro, and A Town Called Panic, the movie was full of humor, bliss, and no pulled punches (friendship punches or not) when it came to devilish winks. With not a single frame lacking in humor or joy, the film left us feeling like hangovers are something we’ve never experienced, like each night is full of mystery and romance, like our next big moment is waiting just around the corner. Perhaps we’ll make this a big weekend — go out on Friday and Saturday? — who knows… –Lijah Fosl --- 17 If Beale Street Could Talk Dir. Barry Jenkins [Annapurna] Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel was perhaps the most aesthetically accomplished and jaw-droppingly beautiful American film in years. It’s difficult to avoid hyperbole or rampant name-checking when confronted with an opening crane shot and a sumptuous autumnal wardrobe straight out of Douglas Sirk, or with a bracingly musical, time-shifting sense of montage that conjured numerous titans of contemporary Asian cinema, or with a swelling score by Nicholas Britell that exquisitely captured the film’s oscillating currents of unabashed romanticism and great melancholy. Despite the film’s sweeping, sexy, earnest depiction of the bond between pregnant teenage shopgirl Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), a sculptor in jail accused of rape, Jenkins’s adaptation was clear-eyed and anguished about how they have to navigate lives of subjugation, a theme brought to the fore in alternately haunted and agonized performances by Brian Tyree Henry and Regina King. As such, Jenkins remade Baldwin in his image, trying with all his might to conquer fury with love. –Christopher Gray --- 16 Burning Dir. Lee Chang-dong [CGV] Deep under the delicate melodrama of a love triangle, the noir-ish mystery of a disappearing woman, and the moody male rivalry that plays out in its final act, Burning was charged with the same currents that power our defining social divisions: rural against urban, men against women, working class against dubious wealth, connected against isolated. Director Lee Chang-dong’s comeback thriller was a Trojan horse stocked heavy with political anguish, a dense, angular ballet of themes erupting just out of sight under a sensitive character drama that forced three young people of clashing identity and privilege into a pressured environment of overlapping interests and dark secrets. What stood out about Burning was how it probed not these ideological struggles themselves, but the existential uncertainty they inspire, as well as the insidious psychological toll they take on the individual. In all its discomfort and beauty — aided by subtle performances and distinctive cinematography — Burning served as both a careful portrait of a quietly revolutionizing South Korea and an uneasy study of the antagonisms and paranoia gradually tyrannizing the youth of today’s globally tainted age. –Colin Fitzgerald --- 15 Madeline’s Madeline Dir. Josephine Decker [Oscilloscope] From the very start, Madeline, and by extension the audience, was told that performance is not identity, that the emotions an actor renders are borrowed from someone else. This warning was not heeded. We met the eponymous 16-year-old (Helena Howard) as she shuffled through roles: a cat, an actress, a daughter, a sea turtle, an assailant, a pig on the run, a prisoner, a confused young woman of mixed race. Some of these identities played out on the stage of her experimental performance troupe, managed by maternal — and directorial — surrogate Evangeline (Molly Parker), though they inevitably bled through to her “real” life and back onto the stage, forming a tight, indiscernible tangle as this feedback loop began to dominate the production. Driven by the tension between the neurotic, controlling impulses of her mother Regina (Miranda July) and the haphazard psychic excavation spearheaded by Evangeline, the film, cut to the rhythms of a psychological thriller and as improvised as the troupe’s performances, unreeled with disorienting, balletic, colorful, and oftentimes invasive cinematography. Madeline’s Madeline was a complex film of blurred and appropriated identities, one concerned, reflexively (as it is in some sense a retelling of how Decker and Howard came to collaborate and make this very film), with self-authorship, self-ownership, and the power dynamics inherent in representation. “I’m really interested in people who are out of control of their circumstances,” stated Evangeline at a dinner party. But what do we owe these lenders of emotion and what does it mean to tell a story that is not ours? As we move through psychic strata leaving our own fingerprints everywhere, inhabit or direct bodies that look and experience differently than our own, what are our responsibilities? Where is the ethic of storytelling? Of course, no film could satisfactorily answer such questions, but Madeline’s Madeline grappled with them in a dense, dizzying, hyper-expressive, sometimes frustrating, and self-castigating manner that spoke to the immense trust between actor and director. –Cynocephalus --- 14 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman [Sony Pictures Releasing] In an arena that seems to be getting more overstuffed with each passing year, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse surprised us just by being the most fun superhero movie we’ve seen in ages. From the second it revved its engines, Into the Spider-Verse hit a breakneck speed as exhilarating as a web-slinging joyride through the city, its mesmerizing 2D/3D graphics illustrating each thought, sound effect, and surreal set piece with an eye-popping neon panache. Each character was sketched with just the right mix of sympathy and self-awareness, whether it was our immediately relatable hero Miles Morales, the cynical, sweatpant-clad Peter B. Parker, or the wounded, monstrously gargantuan Kingpin. Even down to the music, Into the Spider-Verse kept its pace relentlessly fresh, washing us in waves of Swae Lee and Juice WRLD as we journeyed across alternate Spider-Man histories and dimensions in search of a way to once again save the world from destruction. It all somehow added up to a movie as unexpected and experimental as it was unabashedly pop — a classic, trope-skidding superhero tale that you’ve got to see to believe. –Sam Goldner --- 13 BlacKkKlansman Dir. Spike Lee [Focus Features] In BlacKkKlansman, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) was a man caught between two worlds. Too black to be taken seriously as a police officer, too loyal to his duties as a police officer to be taken seriously as a proponent of Black Power. Naturally, Stallworth did what anyone would do in this situation: become the first black detective in Colorado Springs, infiltrate his local Ku Klux Klan chapter by posing as a disgruntled white supremacist on the phone, enlist his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) to pose as him at Klan meetings, catfish David Duke himself, and foil a deadly bomb plot. The KKK, as portrayed in this Spike Lee Joint, could be best described as a gang of bumbling idiots. Just literal morons who blow themselves up. If the events of the film weren’t based on a true story, they would seem almost too absurd to be true. As racism today threatens to tear the country apart from the inside, BlacKkKlansman did all it could to call out white supremacists and serve them a modicum of justice. But the film also recognized just how dangerous the ideas of these people can be and how imperative it is to keep fighting to bring them down. –Jeremy Klein --- 12 Annihilation Dir. Alex Garland [Paramount/Netflix] There is a common fundamental misconception that Nirvana is either a place, like Heaven, or a state or period, like Peace. In reality, Nirvana means something like “blowing out” or “extinguishing.” Attaining Nirvana, then, isn’t an attainment at all, because it isn’t a summit or a destination or really even a “thing.” It is not, however, synonymous with Annihilation, but just as Gravity housed symbols that could be appreciated as “Buddhist,” Annihilation beckoned us into life’s terrifying glimmer of impartial consequence so that we could assess our way out of it. In The Shimmer, karma accrued, leaving behind not moral threads, but matter in forms as disparate as flowering corpses and a bear made of screams. Locating Buddhist imagery in film is often a sign of clumsy analysis, but witnessing these women worn by this violence of culmination grapple with their own threads of being was like witnessing a hierophany, a horrifying refraction of sacred DNA in a profane plane. It’s enough of a reminder of why we even started making existential art. Awfulness irrupted through Annihilation in that old-school religious studies sense, because it refracted what many of us associate with being human: self-destruction. And whether or not we could explain what we saw when we faced ourselves in that lighthouse, we left changed in a way that only prayer or film could catalyze. –Jazz Scott --- 11 You Were Never Really Here Dir. Lynne Ramsay [Amazon] Adapting a book by Jonathan Ames, writer/director Lynne Ramsay upends the thriller/character study by making a brilliant film about violence without showing the actual violence onscreen. It was a choice born of necessity — the filmmaker didn’t feel comfortable shooting action sequences — but it was completely within the spirit of this bold and haunting look at a man (Joaquin Phoenix) whose sole gift of violence and pain followed him like a heavy shadow. By focusing more on the consequences of violence that weighed deeply on him as he navigated a path of righteousness, Ramsay depicted a compromised world, shattered long ago by a trauma that reverberated louder with every new transgression. The film was angry, mournful, and frightening, but it also pierced through the oppressive darkness without sugarcoating the ordeal. Propelled by Jonny Greenwood’s incredible score, You Were Never Really Here was a gorgeous movie that waded into bleak territory without feeling like tragedy porn, a beautiful tale — even amongst the grotesque — about the inherent need for salvation that drives us forward. –Neurotic Monkey [pagebreak] 10 Hereditary Dir. Ari Aster [A24] Hereditary, the first feature from writer-director Ari Aster was more than just the spiritual descendant of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and Psycho. It was not just the latest addition to the A24 family of slow-building, well-crafted horror films. Hereditary was about the unavoidable legacies that our families leave us, and for this it bore an uncanny resemblance to the bleak family dramas of Bergman or Haneke. Annie (played by Toni Collette in a career performance) said and did unforgivable things to her son and husband (Alex Wolff and Gabriel Byrne), and we squirmed. First out of angst, then disgust, and finally fear. And after being emotionally worn down with 90 minutes of this, the film fully committed to its supernatural heritage and delivered some of the best frights of the year. We loved it because it was an assured first step from a new director and a further commitment to excellence from an exciting young distribution company. We loved it because if the first two-thirds were painful to watch, then the last third offered us the voyeuristic release of a horror film. But most of all, we loved it because it married the visceral and the cerebral, giving birth to an unholy experience that stuck with us, like a tick. –Jeff Miller --- 09 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Dir. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen [Annapurna] The last two decades have had their share, but 2018 was a proper trifecta of spirited, inventive Westerns. Audiard’s Sister’s Brothers was the bitter pill rendered unexpectedly sweeter; Damsel was a triumphant anti-romance (a nice thematic companion piece to 2015’s Slow West); and this anthology gave us a perfectly-blended fun, dark, and heartbreaking (namely the beautiful, merciless “Meal Ticket” segment) genre classic. The tone shifted wildly, well heralded by the eponymous opening tale (cartoonishly musical and silly, but cleverly undermined with graphic violence and grim meta-commentary). We had our requisite rich characterization native to a Coen Bros. film, with strong turns from Zoe Kazan, Stephen Root (natch), Harry Melling, Grainger (“DOG HOLES!”) Hines, and Chelcie Ross, for a start (Brendan Gleeson almost does “The Unfortunate Rake” as well as Ian McShane, but not quite). But there was also a curious, world-weary current fusing the episodes, one of exhausted sadness and a dread-dodging sort of hindsight. Life and its lore as a turgid tangle we’re a little too anxious to leave behind. A long goodbye to the “the meanness in the used to be.” –Willcoma --- 08 The Other Side of the Wind Dir. Orson Welles [Netflix] For all the excitement that it stirred, there was a fear among cinephiles that Orson Welles’s final film, completed 33 years after his death, wouldn’t live up to the story of its own production. These fears were unfounded. Suffused with moments of staggering brilliance, The Other Side of the Wind was a dense, multivalent, sometimes maddening film, one that we are lucky to have in any form. Much like Henri-George’s Clouzot’s Le Prisonniere (and its ill-fated precursor Inferno), The Other Side of the Wind evidenced a master filmmaker pushing himself in his late period to fully explore the visual representation of aberrant psychology through abstraction, deconstruction, and exaggeration. Both Clouzot and Welles amplified color to impressionistic, oversaturated heights, but whereas Clouzot’s experimentation was primarily formal, Welles upended narrative, creating a mise en abyme that was at once hagiography and self-assassination. Even what was clearly intended as pastiche (Hannaford’s film, also titled The Other Side of the Wind, was essentially the De Düva of Antonioni’s then-recent work) was utterly riveting, with balletic mise-en-scène that presaged and rivaled the best of Brian De Palma and Dario Argento. Most impressive, however, was the juxtaposition of the aggressively stylized film-within-the-film and the faux-vérité surrounding it — Hannaford’s film was all propulsive jump-cuts on action in a self-consciously auteurist mode, while the frame story comprised a messy collage of film stocks, focal lengths, and framing styles meant to suggest a polyphony of perspectives, or perhaps a fracturing of one’s psyche; editor Bob Murawski, working from Welles’s extensive notes and workprint, sutured it all into a kinetic rhythm both jarring and cohesive. This was absolutely essential viewing, an invigorating testament to the medium itself and a reminder of how much further it can still go. –Christopher Bruno --- 07 Shirkers Dir. Sandi Tan [Netflix] Shirkers was, among other things, a portrait of young creativity, folklore, fragile egos, self-discovery, DIY practices, and the cultural impact that a film can have on a country. The documentary told the story of Sandi Tan, a Singaporean teenager who set out to make the country’s first notable road movie in 1992. With the help of the “established” Western director Georges Cardona, a gang of dreamy-eyed college kids put their lives on hold for the film (also named Shrikers) in an attempt to write their country’s film history. However, in the final stages of the process, the footage disappeared with Cardona. What followed was a decades-long search for a rebellious movie that was supposed to blow Singapore wide open, its creator, and the man plagued with an imperialistic obsession for fame. It was a real-life story that could only happen in a movie. –Sam Tornow --- 06 Zama Dir. Lucrecia Martel [Strand Releasing] Look: Don Diego de Zama has come unstitched in time. He stands at the edge of earth and sea. Waves are undertow, proof that the future is unfolding somewhere. But time has ripped itself up and away from him. He turns from the waves and walks up the shore, still in frame. He pauses, walks back, trapped. He is not entitled to languish; his days are spent running ruined bureaucracies. He appeals to a succession of fat governors to be sent away or home or anywhere else. But he is here. He is casually cruel and pathetically hopeful that he will be rendered reverence. He will not be. Lucrecia Martel, the master, adapted the fevered anti-history of Antonio Di Benedetto’s prose into transformative euphoria. Her cinematography was for freeing bodies. Zama didn’t represent colonialism so much as it canceled the notion that belonging has a place anymore. By pinning her hero to the same useless hope as he decayed through the years, Martel created a world of unwavering indigenous bodies and mocking llamas. She papered over Zama like an unmoved fungus, reducing him back to ephemera to be fertilized. She said no to his hopes. The corregidor, the man who can’t be king, remained in frame. –Frank Falisi --- 05 The House That Jack Built Dir. Lars von Trier [IFC] Lars von Trier’s movies are not easy to watch, but past the gruesome violence, the fucked-up interpersonal relationships, and the heady themes, there’s always something there. Case in point: The House That Jack Built, a pitch-black film in which a serial killer explains five “incidents” from his life to a mysterious companion. And unsurprisingly, with its aggressive depictions of the macabre, the film enjoyed about as divisive a public response as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring did at its riotous 1913 premiere. At Cannes, von Trier’s film reportedly moved over 100 people to walk out; yet, when it ended, it was met with thunderous applause and, indeed, a standing ovation from those who remained. Yes, it was shockingly violent, but it was also incredibly funny, and as its protagonists traveled through their Dantean hellscape, they offered profound and unique meditations on art, time, and history. In other words, the film’s brutality was in service of something, not just an end in itself. Today, people are obsessed with talking about how everyone should and should not behave, what people should and should not think and say. But they’re far less interested in examining the pathological reasons why we have those urges to say or do the “wrong” thing in the first place. Some would argue that this is the exact reason art exists, to examine ourselves at a deeper level. And this film asked big questions: Can destruction be art? Can murder? Is depicting something the same as validating it? If you don’t want to subject yourself to this movie, my opinion is that that’s exactly why you should watch it. If you get through it, you may learn something about yourself. I did. Lars von Trier isn’t afraid to channel and complicate humankind’s darkest, most sadistic desires, and that’s a good thing. In fact, isn’t that one of the essential roles of the artist? –Adam Rothbarth --- 04 Mandy Dir. Panos Cosmatos [RLJE] Words like psychedelic, hallucinogenic, revenge, rage, and insane got tossed around liberally by those attempting to summarize Mandy, the sophomore directorial effort by Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) starring Nicolas Cage in all his nouveau-shamanic glory and then some. But those were understatements. Mandy was a maximalist assault, a new death yarn whose title screen didn’t even arrive until an hour and 15 minutes in, when protagonist Red went hunting for Lysergicenobites and Jesus freaks. Like antagonist Jeremiah Sand, Cosmatos, Cage, cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and late scorer Jóhann Jóhannsson all weaponized complete sensory overload to mesmerize and capture their audience. But unlike the Mandy character, we could hardly muster a laugh past “Erik Estrada from CHiPs” — we merely watched in wide-eyed, slack-jawed awe at the un(adulte)rated, undefinable phantasmagoria — the bathroom scene, the chainsaw scene. OK, so maybe that wasn’t what Roger Ebert had in mind when he rightly called Nicolas Cage one of the greatest actors of his generation, but then Ebert probably also wouldn’t have imagined the actor spending two nights in his underwear, tied to a fence in a Belgian forest to prep for a scene (apparently, yes, that happened). That’s the point, though. The hype was realer than real. Mandy was a masterpiece beyond what any of us could ever have imagined. –Samuel Diamond --- 03 Sorry to Bother You Dir. Boots Riley [Annapurna] Every day, they take a little bit more. For months, we’ve heard about how Amazon runs its warehouses like sweatshops. A couple weeks ago, it was Facebook selling your private messages. If WorryFree were to step forward tomorrow with a unique, 21st-century approach to living debt-free, would any of us be surprised? For all its detours into the surreal and the absurd, Sorry to Bother You never felt that far removed from the world we inhabit. The questions it asked and dilemmas it presented touched on everything from the changing face of corporate power in the age of tech startups, the challenges of navigating predominantly white spaces for non-whites, and the complicity of individuals in larger systems of oppression. Moving through the world today is an act of gliding from one outrage to the next, and Riley shares our outrage, but he coupled it here with a sense of playfulness and hope that rendered Sorry to Bother You one of the most important films of 2018. –Joe Hemmerling --- 02 The Favourite Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos [Fox Searchlight] Early on, Duchess Sarah admonished her lover, Queen Anne, that love has its limits — to which the queen replied, “Well it shouldn’t.” The story proceeded through a delicious series of political and bedroom maneuvers to prove the queen utterly and tragically wrong. Yorgos Lanthimos has always taken a perverse glee in sticking his movie knife into the banal, received wisdom of Western right-thinking. His trajectory from Dogtooth forward had increasingly tightened the thumbscrews on his audience; The Killing of a Sacred Deer was as muscle-bound and torturous to watch as it was incisive. But The Favourite turned that sensibility inside out, exploding with bright and colorful production design, brilliantly mining 18th-century courtly fashions for visual comedy. Rouged, powdered, and highly wiggy men ponced about like overbred poodles through all the absurd ornamentation, as a raging battle of wills played out among the film’s three towering female protagonists. The script was nastier than Dynasty and invented a patois of 18th-century Queen’s English and contemporary colloquialisms that somehow felt organic, but it had a Shakespearean heft at its core that played out in a perfectly odd and dissonant finale. –Water --- 01 First Reformed Dir. Paul Schrader [A24] 2018 was filled with days when hopping from one social media platform or news network to the next resembled a modern-day Stations of the Cross, with each subsequent click offering something that was somehow more terrifying, depressing, and enraging than the last. With the massive sprawl of readily available information, staying informed was more effortless than ever, yet it could easily, almost imperceptibly, transform from a desire to remain dutifully cognizant of our ever-shifting global landscape into a form of unabated and isolating self-flagellation. In Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, it was this hyper-awareness of earthly perils that plagued Michael (Philip Ettinger), a young environmental activist who believed it immoral for his pregnant wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried) to bring a child into this crumbling world, when he desperately met with Ethan Hawke’s already jaded, world-weary Reverend Toller for counsel. Despite telltale signs of suicidal thinking, Toller found their discussion not troubling, but “invigorating.” And when Michael blew off his head with a shotgun, the good reverend reacted not with sorrow or regret, but by taking on Michael’s all-too-real concerns of potential global disaster, bearing them like a cross upon his shoulders as he confronted the duplicitous evils that have infiltrated both his tiny, sparsely attended church and the superchurch that funds the relic he was keeping alive after 250 years. In this year’s cinema, there was perhaps no greater metaphor for the failure of American institutions to serve the public in any meaningful way (as many have slowly been reduced to thinly veiled money-laundering schemes for the wealthy) than the fact that Toller was stuck in a historically famous church with a broken organ, forced to hawk cheap souvenirs merely to keep the doors open. First Reformed deftly tackled this notion of the individual vs. implacable global forces, with an acute focus on the unsettling merging of ecclesiastical forces with those of an unbridled and amoral capitalist system. Schrader’s ascetic vision, informed most explicitly by Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, and Yasujiro Ozu, offered the perfect aesthetic framework through which traditional systems of belief could collide haphazardly with the ruthlessly unfeeling, profit-hungry, hyper-modern business models that dominate both corporate and institutional cultures. Schrader’s camera was almost exclusively immobile, yet this stillness presented a deeply perceptive gaze and compositions as stark as the cold New England winter. It was a vision of the world as unwavering as that of Toller, who lived a life virtually sealed off from the real world, indulging himself with the sort of small rituals we all tend to hold onto to provide a semblance of order and meaning in an increasingly chaotic world. But for all of Toller’s pain (often self-inflicted), First Reformed offered a vision of grace and tenderness in the heavily symbolic Mary, who prevented the film from tipping into the complete and utter despair that Toller found himself in. In one of the year’s most remarkable sequences, Mary arrived at Toller’s office and together performed a ritual that she often did with her now-deceased husband. As she laid on top of the priest, making as much body-to-body contact as possible and matching his breathing patterns, the two achieved a temporary sense of communal transcendence, slowly rising from the floor as they began to travel over vast mountains and beautiful oceanside vistas. But Toller’s thoughts couldn’t remain fixed on utopic ideals for long before visions of city life and landfills of untold sizes took over. Such incessant and uneasy wavering between hope and despair, sensuality and violence, love and rage, faith in the future and the fatalistic acceptance of our environment’s demise filled First Reformed, which stands as the most eloquent yet soul-shattering microcosm of the world that we saw all year. –Derek Smith http://j.mp/2H7Z1Nd

[paper-moon-pen]

Strigoi Chapter 1

A shattering sound woke me up that morning. I picked up the rock that had flown through the glass in my room. Three letters had been attached to it, I wasn't too curious or concerned about what they might be, yet I trudged out of bed in my robes and picked up the rock among the broken glass pieces. The first letter simply read Strigoi, written in red, a romanian mythological creature my grandmother had told me about. "No, Caulles, it is not the vampire we fear. The children do not cry vampire, it is the Strigoi they fear." so she had said. Apparently the Strigoi were where the idea of vampires had originated from, and were thought to be far more powerful, versatile and evil than the vampires, if anything the vampires served the Strigoi as minions. The second letter had a sentence I could not read properly. There was however one word I knew clearly that was written there, "Impaler.', and the final letter simply read "Leave."

I sighed softly, wincing slightly for a moment as I noticed I'd gotten a cut upon my finger. "Strigoi huh?" I mumbled to myself as I stared upon my finger. A drop of blood fell onto the glass shards below. "A curious thought." I said as one of the maids burst through the door.

"Sir! Are you alright?" said the maid with a thick Romanian accent as she entered the room, staring down horrified at the glass that had been scattered across the floor. She hurried over and quickly began trying to clean up the glass. "My apologies. I'll call for someone to come fix it immediately, please go down stairs and have the nurse tend to your wound." I glanced over at her blinking. I looked down then, and closed my hand with the bleeding finger into a fist.

"No, it's quite alright Angela. It's just a cut. Besides, you won't be able to find a repairman in the village willing to enter this castle. It would take a few hours to reach the next town over. Simply clean the glass and leave it be." I said, stepping over to the broken glass doors. The doors lead to a balcony, overlooking the beautiful lush Romanian village, where I now took residence.

"But sir, it's dangerous to leave it open, not to mention you'll freeze at night, and the bugs will come in and." Angela fretted wildly coming up with a new concern before the first left had out of her mouth. I chuckled softly.

"It's alright. I came to this village to experience a more natural lifestyle, a few bugs and a breeze is perfectly alright. Besides, perhaps a bit of sunlight coming into my room will dissuade the beliefs of the villagers that I'll crumble into ash under it." I said with a jovial tone. Angela opened her mouth to object to my statement, but then simply nodded vigorously.

"My apologies for the disturbance then sir!" she said in a hurried tone, exiting my room. For a girl no older than nineteen, she had already developed quite a few worries with the world she'd never actually seen outside the village. I suppose I should backtrack a bit.

You see, my family has a long and rich history in Romania, always being of a somewhat aristocratic status, even among all the revolutions, my family had always played the part of being a neutral third party that simply held funds and did business without discrimination. Thus we went relatively unnoticed for most of our history, outside of being admired as providers of business and prosperity for a few small villages.

The proud Romanian bloodline split off with my father who'd long grown tired of farm villages, and age old mercantilism. Packing his bags with a few of the family jewels and his wits alone, he immigrated to the United States. From there it was the typical American dream of living an average middle class lifestyle, settling down with his own wife and starting a family. However, my mother was a true American, through and through for generations. Marrying outside the family was rather frowned upon in rural Romanian village culture, and so my grandmother quickly lost contact with my father over it.

I'd amassed a large amount of wealth rather early on in life, sitting financially secure at the age of twenty three, with enough wealth to reasonably provide for myself for the rest of my life. The details of that story and how I arrived to that wealth are not worth going on for the sake of my current narrative.

The point is, just as I had reached this comfortable level of success I received a letter from none other than Angela. I was told that my grandmother had mere weeks, if not days left and she wished to meet with her grandson before she passed on. Apparently, Angela was the only one in the village there who could properly speak English, otherwise my grandmother would have sent for me herself. Angela was the daughter of my grandmothers caretaker, or rather a line of caretakers for that matter. I'd been told that her family had traditionally cared for mine for many years.

When Angela's mother grew too old and feeble, she took on the mantle of caring for my grandmother at the tender age of twelve. It was apparently Angela's mother who had taught my father to speak english and told him of the wonders of America. Angela's mother attempted to escape family life by moving away to the U.S before being pulled back by a sense of duty to my grandmothers failing health. Even as a young woman, my grandmother had a multitude of health issues that required her to have a caretaker.

My father had passed away for quite some time due to an untimely accident, and my mother knew nothing of my fathers homeland, so I had to consult my father's old journals for confirmation about this story. It took a terribly long time, since they were all written in the Romanian language. Nevertheless, his journals had lined up with the story I had read in the letter. So without hesitation, and with a degree of curiosity, I made preparations to visit my grandmother.

Once I arrived in the village, about an eight hour drive from the nearest modern city, I fell for it immediately. The land was so breathtaking, and liberating compared to the life I had lived before. I thought perhaps, I could find freedom and live the rest of my days comfortably here. In the land of my people, in the land my family had owned for generations. The things my grandmother said to me then, and how I came to form my current relationship with Angela is, a tale for another time, yes, one I will address later. In any case, my grandmother wanted me to become familiar with my homeland, and had Angela take me around the village. It was then I fell in love with not just the land, but one building in specific.

At the top of a hill, overlooking the valley and village was a stone castle, it looked a little worse for wear, but I felt a sense of fantasy when I entered, an alluring mystery behind each corner, a place I simply had to explore more. When I had asked Angela the reason for its abandonment, she had told me a former count centuries ago built it as a getaway home, but once Vlad the Third came into power and began impaling the aristocrats, the count fled the country, leaving the castle empty. Naturally, the castle eventually fell under the ownership of the state, giving it the moniker "Castle Of The Impaler." once it fell into the government's hands. From then on, nobody cared to enter, and nobody in the government cared about this rural village off in the corner of the former Wallachia.

A beautiful land, a fascinating castle with a fascinating history, I couldn't help but become enticed by these things. I decided then, that I would completely redesign the castle to suitable living conditions, hire back the servant family that worked alongside my family for so long and spend the rest of my days in this remote village.

I sighed softly, and stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the village wistfully. Unfortunately for me, my fantasy didn't work out as planned. For starters, my father had betrayed the village, leaving it without an heir, and my grandmother too old to produce another child. Even more so, he committed the sin of marrying an outsider. He kept stacking up his sins when he tossed away his history and did not even teach his children to speak the tongue of his homeland or inform them of where they came from. His sins passed onto me, not to mention I inherited the foreign blonde hair, blue eyes and pale complexion of my mother.

Yet! My troubles did not end there.

In this village, while my family was something of the head of the village, it was a typically matriarchal order. There's a saying in the village that goes "Men cannot be trusted to rule. They will drink, fuck, eat and battle the village out of order. It is the orderly woman, who will not kneel to her base desires who must lead." My grandmother took care of all the village affairs, and both the elders and youth came to her for advice in relationships, business affairs, and all conflicts. She was the Great Mother of the village. So while I had resolved to take over the village affairs and become the new head of the town, they would not accept a man as their ruler.

So, a blonde haired, blue eyes, pale, male foreigner who does not even speak the tongue of his homeland arrives, assumes the role of leader without a hint of knowledge about century old village traditions. He then rebuilds a long abandoned castle titled "Castle of The Impaler" and secludes himself within it, taking a young beauty and her family with him.

Of course I am known as Strigoi and a mythological blood sucking creature. To these rural people who have never seen a hint of the outside world for generations, I've trespassed upon something sacred, this result was only natural.

I stared out over the town and bathed in the dawn I'd fallen in love with and sighed yet again. "Really now? Strigoi? I wonder what it must be like to see others in such a manner." After spending a few more minutes to enjoy the fresh air and sunlight, I went back into my room and began to dress myself, in a sort of business casual manner. A simple shirt, dark blue suit jacket and jeans would do for today.

I opened the large creaking mahogany doors to exit my room and stepped out into the cobblestone hall. I did not bother putting on shoes that could potentially stain the velvet carpet. I rubbed my chin in thought, realizing I'd been here so long I'd grown a beard, my hair too now went to my shoulders. "I'll have to ask Angela for a cut later." I mumbled out loud, passing a glance over the knights armor and paintings that were interspersed throughout the castle. "I ought to ask Angela where those came from too, sometime soon." I thought to myself

By the time I'd navigated my way through the large stone castle, I'd found my breakfast along the large dining table had already been prepared. Simple eggs, toast, bacon and tea, all fresh from the village. Angela stood conversing with a male servant.

I gave a nod to both of them, and took a seat. "Good morning to the two of you." I said, taking a seat, feeling a little empty being the only one eating at this large table. Both of them gave a bow to me, saying good morning in their native tongues.

"How goes the village?" I inquired, taking my silverware and beginning to eat the breakfast. The male servant spoke to me for a bit in Romanian, with Angela standing alongside him, nodding.

"Dmitri says that there have been reports of broken windows and mysterious figures leaving scrawled writing across some of the barns and decapitated chickens." said Angela in a soft voice. I raised an eyebrow for a moment, taking a sip of my tea.

"The troublemakers who threw the stone in my window maybe? Or perhaps stones they are getting thrown into my window because of that." I commented. Angela simply shrugged.

"The farmers are shouting Strigoi and pointing the finger to you sir." she said. I rubbed my chin in thought.

"Ask Dmitri if he can draw me a map of the farms that have been attacked. The farmers usually awaken at the crack dawn, and spend two hours after nightfall putting all the animals to rest. Coupled with the strict self imposed curfews here, there's only so much ground a group of troublemakers could cover in a single night. If we pin down which neighborhood they're coming from we can narrow down the suspects from there." I said.

Angela nodded and spoke to Dmitri. "He wants to know if there's anything he should tell the villagers to be aware of." said Angela

"Tell the mothers to keep a closer eye on their children. Tell the farmers I will also personally shoulder the cost of any animals they lost last night." I said

"Won't that provide incentive for farmers to slaughter their animals early?" said Angela.

"Perhaps, but anything like cameras or audio recordings I use will be shunned and ignored by the villagers. If this gets drawn out too long because of that and I don't act to reimburse them, I'll be blamed for this and really "sucking the life" out of the village as it were." I responded, sipping my tea. "Furthermore, pay a few farmers to patrol each of the streets at night. If they really are killing their own animals, the murders will stop when they start patrolling."

"The villagers could be afraid of...working for you sir." she said with hesitance, as if I was going to hit her if she gave the wrong answer.

"Then tell them Dmitri wants to hire them to keep tabs on me." I responded cooly. "If the villagers hear that Dmitri doesn't trust me and wants to hire them to keep an eye on me, it'll incentivize them more. These people will gladly jump at any chance to smear my name"

I finished my tea in a quick sip after that, placing down the cup and standing up after having finished the breakfast. "Furthermore, it will weed out the liars right off the bad. We can mark those who claim to have seen me lurking about as suspects right off the bat." I said, walking out of the dining hall.

"Where are you going?" called out Angela as I began to walk. I waved a hand absentmindedly.

"I'm off to do some investigating of my own. Worry not, I'll be back in time for lunch." I said. Without another word, I opened the door out to the dining hall, and made my way out to the village

#writing #my writing #strigoi #vampire #murder #mystery #thriller #horror #creative writing #please critique #chapter 1 #new author