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mutantsrisingrpg · 4 years

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Congratulations DEAN! You’ve been accepted as ARIEL.

The themes of illusion and manipulation and perception are certainly not lost in your app, Dean, and how central they are to Lenox is just so, so well written it feels like I could easily fall under the spell of one of his illusions. You’ve shown that this world and these powers don’t always harden those affected, and that spark of whimsy in Lenox really brings him to a new life. Even a simple headcanon as selling placebo drugs and using his powers to create the high gives me such a confidence in who Lenox is as a person, and I can’t wait to see his shenanigans.

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

NAME/ALIAS: Dean

PRONOUNS: She/her

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: GMT, i’m fairly active bean and am always here to plot

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Lenox Syed GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS: This is where you show us who the character is to you! The format of this doesn’t matter, whether it’s in bullet points or in para form, and can be as long as you’d like it to be. Feel free to get creative!

Lenox as a boy’s name is of Scottish and Gaelic origin, and the meaning of Lenox is “with many elm trees”.

Syed or Sayyid or Sayed (Arabic and Urdu: سيدعلی) is a family of Syeds in South Asia, notably India and Pakistan. Syeds are the direct descendants of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

Lenox is lost in his own fantasy world. Creating so many illusions for people each day that he has became lost in one of his own. With a lack of attention through his childhood, he craves the limelight and approval of everyone around him and will do pretty much anything to get it, even if it’s false or trickery.

He’s so painstakingly constructed, he’s his own work of art. Each detail of his personality and appearance delicately manipulated into something strikingly beautiful. Someone you can look at with awe just by the way they talk or move. It’s almost hard to realise there’s another man beneath the mask, someone raw and damaged. Like a bird with a broken wing.

BIO:

Tw: Drug mention

His mother is just fifteen when she gives birth to him, swaddled in a blue blanket and passed immediately to the arms of a doctor; she never held him, never looked at his freshly reddened face as his cries wailed down the corridors. It’s not because of his mutation, not because his birth family couldn’t bare to raise a being burdened with powers. She was a child herself, naivety leaving adoption as the only logical decision.

A foster home decides to take him in, raising him from infancy without any awareness of any abnormality. It’s where he stays for the first nine years of his life, a cosy house in Oregon that housed five other children. But the dormancy of his powers didn’t stay concealed forever. It started with his foster siblings sleepwalking, Lenox’s dreams imprinting on them accidentally as they’d trample through the house enthralled by the vivid illusions of his fantasy worlds. Then it began intertwining into everyday life, emotional outbursts of temper alluding unsafe situations like fire or monsters that hid under the bed. Games became near impossible to differentiate between make believe and reality from the second he joined in.

“You’re unsafe,” it’s a comment he’d gladly wear as a badge of honour once he’d matured. But to the little boy being dragged away from his foster family, betrayed by his caregivers and turned in for research, the words grazed his skin like stinging nettles.

The four plain walls of the room only further ignite an overly active imagination, a tool that was dangerous to have with a power like his own. The eleven years he spends there does the opposite of what society would have hoped, boredom allows for focus and practice, it sharpens his talents and he’s able to put them to good use. By the end of his stay the doctors had favoured him among the rest, because he wills it so. They go easy on him, carefully placed illusions write false notes on his reports. Detailed and intricate enough so that he doesn’t get caught out, handwriting remarkably identical to each nurse or scientist that take their turn testing on him. He starts to admire the way it feels, too chaotic to be part of society and embedded with more potential than anyone could have known.

It’s when that potential reaches a point where imagination can no longer be imprisoned by those four walls that he decided enough was enough. The process of discharging himself was a meticulous operation. Theatrically staged and miraculously timed with an annual cell collecting test. Before he can be sedated he’s enticed the nurses into an imaginary induced coma, deep enough into his intoxication that he can use the poisoned needle on them. The theater only has the two women on the floor when the doctor enters, sly projections manipulating each person he’d bumped into on his way to the exit into that same sleep, a psychedelic world of kaleidoscope landscapes and stained glass colours, once awakening they would never see this boy again.

“You’re unsafe,” the same words, just a different context. An ally ushers him to leave Oregon and head to Chicago. A place where policies were loosened and his own kind somewhat tolerated.

The new city put Lenox’s own fresh start in full swing.

Fragile reality was a vehicle for his reinvention, so easily malleable that to change it was simpler and more natural to him than breathing. He’s masterful in the way it’s applied, diminishing a past life of shame and grit in place of high strung worth and superiority. He’d created himself with utter royalty, his own nobility evident by the way in which he moved, regally eloquent and unmistakably celestial to anyone who crossed his path.

He builds his career on the sins he knows other’s desire. Selling crushed up aspirin as a party drug in the underbelly of the city’s night clubbing scene, using his power to make it seem as if it were the legitimate stuff and not something that cost him a couple bucks from the convenience store across the street. Lenox could make them see whatever he wanted, turn their evenings into a production of his own design and leave with none of the being any wiser. It’s how Benjamin Granger catches word of him, a supposed mutant that was living life as if he were a king. He’s the first person to ever acknowledge his capability, strikes him up an offer he couldn’t refuse. Drawn like a moth to a flame after the minor suggestion of power and the infatuation that he was finally wanted by someone and to belong to something.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Chance Matthews: He’s the face he can’t erase from his mind, the curve of his lips engraved in deep fixations when he couldn’t fall asleep on a Sunday night. Perhaps it’s the fact that he shouldn’t do it that makes it more enticing, a lust to ignite underlying passion to unearth exactly what they had both been burying.

Jordan Rojas: Jordan is somewhat of a curiosity for Lenox to unpick. A closed book that is intriguing because of their close association together. Always keen to show his worth, to prove himself to those around him, perhaps it’s a dangerous combination should Jordan utilise the other’s naivety in combination of his powers in the way that Benjamin does.

Jack Mizuno: He likes that he can get so deep into their head, that he can have full control of a world that wasn’t Jack’s domain. It’s all to do with power and annoyance, a deep craving to see exactly how far he can push people before they hit their breaking point. Even then, it’s fun to flip that breaking point into a place of pure bliss and drop it again just when his subject is at ease. He’s like a lab rat, someone he tries his tricks on before taking them to the main show.

EXTRA:

https://stereotypicalcancerwrites.tumblr.com/tagged/ch:%20lenox%20syed

(tba, watch this space I legit SPAM my character tags hard)

Lenox spends a lot of his spare time writing and doodling. It’s all extremely sketchy, there’s never any sort of final draft. It helps his imagination, which is a much exercised tool in his life.

He is probably more invested in mental health than most. Meditation and yoga being a crucial part of his daily routine after a bowl full of sugar packed cereal.

He’s naive and eager to please anyone that might create a bond with him, he craves companionship after never really understanding it due to the absence of it in his life.

Lenox works as a part-time playwright, using his illusions to improve the production of his stories and only ever receiving the best reviews from critics.

He also works as a drug dealer, never selling legitimate stuff but using over the counter medicines with the combination of his powers to masquerade as the real stuff.

He has an unruly sweet tooth. He keeps lollipops in his back pocket and will order dessert off a menu at a restaurant instead of a main meal. His favourite thing on the planet is warm cookie dough and ice cream.

He listens exclusively to Grunge music. Celebrity Skin by Hole is his absolute jam and he only ever sings Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet is his go to karaoke song.

Lenox is openly proud of his sexuality as a homosexual, though he’ll flirt with anyone and anything for the fun of it.

He prefers tea over coffee.

He’s a bit of a poetry dork, he collects first edition poetry books and his most prized possession is a first edition of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg.

He’s very judgemental of how others present themselves and will tell you if your new shirt is ugly.

Lenox lives in a small apartment, anyone that enters he’s carefully to make them see it as 3 times bigger than it actually is with far more light.

He has a fear of heights.

ANYTHING ELSE: Did you have any questions or any changes you wanted to discuss with us beforehand?

Nope all good!!!

#accepted #accepted: ariel

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cosmosogler · 7 years

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late getting started again. i was faffing about with the images and some video posts that i put in my queue so as not to dominate your dashboards with five posts in a row. those will post in about two days in place of my usual memes.

today ping decided to start yowling nonstop about an hour before my alarm was set to go off. i was so angry that i stayed in bed for an extra 45 minutes, throwing off my whole day plan.

after picking up ping and throwing him out of my room i put my face down into my blanket i had folded up, since i did not pack a pillow and the spare one is... now that i think about it, not actually my pillow, and also it made my face super itchy. i will put it back on the couch where it belongs after i write this post.

it was ungodly hot for some reason. apparently it was like that for my classmates too, i found out later. i took a shower and put on my nice blouse and long skirt. i realized i had forgotten to pack nice shoes so i just wore my running shoes. the skirt was long enough that it wasn’t immediately obvious. also walking around in flats all day would have gotten really old really fast.

the physics student lounge has been relocated to a tiny office in the biology building. so it took me a few minutes to find everyone. it was crowded and hot even with the window open and the nice breeze. everyone seemed pretty happy to see me though. at least, i was happy to see them. i hung out in there all afternoon chatting and reading some articles about internet economics on the side. i also found an interesting series of posts under the title “hipsters on food stamps” that went into why we are encouraged to hate people on welfare and what it means to project onto someone else.

my pain and discomfort didn’t get any better today, but it didn’t get particularly worse. it feels like i got an air bubble in my side right under my ribs.

then we all went to the graduation ceremony and dinner that the department was holding for us. i quickly realized that the ceremony was not for the seniors though. it was to hand out scholarships like free candy to the underclassmen and initiate them into phi sigma phi. i did not graduate with honors.

the dinner was acceptable. the potatoes were really good. the chocolate cake i first described as “decadent” ended up being kinda weird. i split a slice with jay. he wanted the half with all the frosting so i teased him, but it ended up working out in my favor because that extra sugar would have been too much for me.

it was good to hang out with my friends. my classmates were talking about a take-home test they had as half of a final and that they weren’t supposed to work on it together. so cody said “so when are we not working on it together, and where?” and i burst out laughing. it was legit the funniest thing someone has said around me in person in like four months.

i didn’t eat too much. at least, i felt super nauseous, but not bloated. i made it home before getting too sick to be comfortable around other human beings. so then i watched youtube videos all night like a hack.

i also talked to oz for a while when i was on campus and my friends were in class. i hope he is ok.

about the parenting thing. raising children has been on my mind a little bit lately, i’m not sure why. i don’t feel that i could adequately care for a young person as my sense of normal parenting is extremely skewed toward “be an asshole.” i keep running into situations and trains of thought where i come to a conclusion and then decide to file it away for later in case i end up talking to a child about a related topic. this hypothetical child usually, in my mind, comes from my brother or sister. i don’t think my sister wants kids, but i don’t know if my brother has thought about it/made a decision about it. i would say he is pretty young to be thinking about it, but i’ve known since i was like four that i never wanted kids, so it’s possible.

i don’t know why i keep putting this information away with the intent of bringing it up with someone else’s kid. i guess... i want to be a part of my siblings’ lives, and part of taking care of them would involve helping their kids be more thoughtful and well-rounded i guess. i want to be a cool uncle, like my uncle mike. he doesn’t dump advice on me, but he’s always got something to say if i ask or if something important comes up. i would hope to see my niece/nephews a little more often than i see my uncle though. i guess i used to see him at least once a week when i was in grade school so it could happen.

but if i took care of my own kid, i would adopt a million times before i ever had my own biological children. i got too many nasty depression genes to want to force that potential on someone else. and also i have no interest in the processes involved in manufacturing small humans. i keep thinking about parenting strategies i would use and how it would hopefully go better than how my parents treat me, almost against my will. the thoughts come more or less unprompted. mostly in the shower, but, you know. i mean, since i don’t want to make a new kid, taking care of one that already exists is a good idea, right? and the foster system has so many serious issues...

i can’t get a handle on the logistics though. how would i help with schoolwork? emotions and self esteem? how other people treat the kid? the fine balance between freedom and hard rules? how would i balance that with my own job? i couldn’t do it by myself. would i have a spouse? how would our schedules line up to allow us to spend the most time with the kid between the two of us?

adopting a kid isn’t the same as adopting a dog. i could take care of a dog or cat or birds or reptiles. you don’t have to worry about how your dog is going to get through college or find a job or decide on a career trajectory or how to deal with bullies. you just gotta love the dog and care for its biological needs. kids are much more complicated.

i don’t know why i am thinking about that now. i am not in a good life position to put those thoughts into any sort of action. i like to plan ahead, but that turns into micromanaging really fast and really easy if i’m not super careful. i can’t manage and “fix” my friends the way i would a machine, and i shouldn’t. i wouldn’t want to subject a kid to that full-time either.

anyway, that’s what’s on my mind. it’s 12:30 now so if i go to bed soon i will be on a semi-good schedule again. what i want to do tomorrow is go to the financial aid office and work out my tuition refund since i wasn’t even able to start this semester. i hope i did not put it off too long. it is easier to go to the office and waste their time in person than it is to make a phone call. i guess because with phone calls there are bad connections and you get put on hold and it’s stressful. in person i can sit there in front of them until they do something about me.

next week i want to start working on a bunch of short-term goals and maybe one or two long-term goals with my therapist. i need to start doing things again. i will also bake the rest of the cake batter because the other can of frosting expires at the end of this month. and i won’t put too much water in the mix this time. maybe i can trick asher’s dad into taking some of those too. i will also start the group therapy program, though i’m still not sure about what exactly that entails. i know they do workshops for specific topics depending on, i guess, the week? and there are activities, some of which seemed to be outside the hospital grounds. i am right at the edge of the age cutoff so i wonder how well i will get along with younger people. and what the quality of the therapy will be, how guided it’s going to be, whether or not we’ll have someone who launches off topic frequently. no-fun power hours are going to feel like a waste of time to me.

i know that feeling like i need to urgently get my crap together is not actually helpful to the therapy process. it takes time but i am very interested in not having stupid random abdominal pain any more if it’s really caused by anxiety. i will try to convert my impatience into enthusiasm for throwing myself into the activities. taking them seriously will help them help me more. getting frustrated will not help me.

ok it’s 12:40 now, my usual quitting time i guess. i still have to drink another bottle of water to make sure i am not dehydrated in the morning... i’m gonna have to get up during the night as usual i guess.

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canaryatlaw · 7 years

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Today was interesting. Not sure if I'd classify it as good or bad, because it wasn't really either. It was fine, just....interesting. Wake up at 7, go to work. I have literally nothing to do all morning, so I look over my stuff for trial ad tonight, review and edit the mock trial stuff, read fan fic, and finish reading the abuse/neglect section of the juvenile court act (which is the entirety of the law that governs our proceedings). So that was kind of less then thrilling. Eat lunch, and on my way back to my desk after sticking my lunch box back in the fridge (because it still contained my dinner which required refrigeration) the lady that had me on the wild goose file hunt last week passes me and asks if I can order a copy of that birth certificate we couldn't find. I said sure, but that I have no idea how to do that, and she said one of the paralegals can show me. So I go to knock on the paralegal's door, and nobody is there. Ugh. So I'm just kind of chilling out for a little while. I can hear my supervisor getting in and out of phone calls, and I manage to slip in between some and tell him I don't really have anything to do, so he says he wants me to work on this motion for him, saying it's this case where the mom had 4 kids in custody and got them back, then the 4 year old starved to death over the summer and......at this point I go oh, I know this case. It's the child death case that was all over the place in the media over the summer with the super insane set of facts. This is like, a super high profile case. I've actually periodically looked it up online to find out if the murder charges have come down yet, so far nothing but as far as I know they're still in custody for arson/improper disposal of a body. If you don't remember me talking about this case (and I imagine you probably don't because even if you read these I talk about a lot of cases) it was where the 4 year old starved to death and two days later the mom gave birth to twins at 32 weeks, then two days later with the twins in the NICU she goes and wraps their brother's body in clothes and plastic bags and attempts to set it on fire in the basement of an abandoned building, and gets caught doing so, accompanied by her neighbor and lover, who is the father of the twins, and oh yeah, is 17 years old. And of course it's a shit show for DCFS because the kids had been in care and were returned to the moms custody, and then there was a child death, which means there's gonna be a huge investigation into who dropped the ball there, because chances are somebody did. So anyway. This motion is for adjudication coming up. Under certain circumstances, the state can move up termination of parental rights to happen at adjudication (as opposed to having to wait 9 months), and one of those circumstances being the death of a sibling at their parent's hand. So because they're pushing for termination they want the foster parents to testify, but apparently the foster parents are afraid to do so because apparently the bio family has some gang connections and they fear retribution for "taking the kids away." How legit this fear is I have no idea, and in all likelihood they probably wouldn't be in danger, but nonetheless they want to see if they can testify in chambers, so we were writing a motion requesting it. I had a memo of all the related cases that one of the paralegals had drawn up, so I just had to draft it into a motion, which wasn't too hard, so far at least. There weren't any cases exactly on point, meaning there's no precedent for allowing foster parents to testify in chambers, but there's a variety of cases that have pieces of the overall theory, like one that states the absence of the right to testifying in chambers in a statute doesn't indicate it should be denied, and the juvenile court act contains some great language that you can basically make any argument as long as it's framed in the best interest of the child, there's a good chance it'll get through. So I start writing the motion, and I notice myself using the stuff I picked up in LARC, except this was SO much easier because there wasn't a formula I had to follow, I could call the shots and write what I thought made sense to me with the information I had, not squish that information into a preset formula. And like, as glad as I was that it was coming easy to me, I couldn't help being frustrated by LARC being what it is and being so obnoxious, something I'm going to try to bring up with my prof when we have conferences on our assignment next week, and hopefully she'll agree or see some merit to it. I worked on the motion for the rest of the day, getting about 3 and a half pages written spanning 3 cases. There are a few other points I'm planning on making, then it can be finalized and sent to the parties, and will be up for argument at the next court date of February 28th, where I can argue it in court, which is a bit of a scary thought just because of how high profile the case is and how many parties are involved, but it should be a simple enough argument and I have plenty of time to prepare for it, so it should be fine. I definitely got a little thrill from my name officially being on the record on the motion, next to *the* public guardian for the county (like *the* states attorney and then a bunch of ASA's) and my supervisor haha, that made me happy. End of the day I headed out, catching the bus to the train to the other courthouse downtown. I had a different kind of bun for my sandwich this time that made it a lot easier to eat, because it didn't get crumbs everywhere and it also wasn't fucking huge (the last ones legit wouldn't fit into a sandwich bag) so that at least was a nice discovery. The sheriffs at the downtown courthouse are like, so much nicer than at the juvenile courthouse, they like waved me on through and didn't bother checking me even when I set off the metal detector (like I do every single time I go through a metal detector). So that was nice at least. Got to the courtroom and chilled out and waited for our prof. This week was based on objections, and I had been assigned to write two directs and one cross, and to be the witness on one problem, with getting picked for one or two of the directs/crosses (but you have to prep for all of them). The first one took forever to get through, and the girl doing it made some really bad flubs about hearsay like "but he heard it so he can testify to it!" and "it's not hearsay because it was his statement!" and she's also a 3L so that's kind of cringeworthy, lol. Then I was up as the witness for the second problem, and of course as with every opportunity I get to play a witness I'm gonna have a good time with it. It was a pretty basic fact pattern with this lady slipping on ice in a store parking lot and suing the store, so I decide this lady's gotta be like pushing 90, and definitely has an New York Yiddish old lady accent, which came out as a super natural reaction to the problem without me formulating that objective, lol. And oh, it was a riot. Everybody was cracking up, and I got so many good lines in there that were just totally ridiculous but didn't detract from the case in any way (like saying my grocery bags were filled with Cheetos, one for the crunchy and one for the puffs) and I had a very good time with it, so I was satisfied for that haha. Short break, then next problem that I got to watch until the last one where I got to do cross, so I definitely lucked out on assignments there. We were like, really pushing the time limit at this point, and of course our prof is like, breaking down every question on direct and walking him through every step, and I'm just sitting there staring at the clock on the wall approach and then pass 8:30 before I even get to get up from the table....sigh. I mean, it was a complicated hearsay problem with lots of things to be explained, but still, it was getting a little ridiculous. I do like our prof though, this is the female judge since we switch between two every other week, and I can tell she really likes me, haha, pretty much everything I do is met with praise like "excellent" and she got really hyped when there was an argument over admitting a criminal conviction and I was the only one that caught that battery isn't always a felony, and if it's not a felony it's inadmissible. Of course I only knew that because we'd had that exact conversation at the beginning of the year with the mock trial tryout problem, but I still felt successful and smart for pointing it out, and she definitely loved it. I finally got to do cross, kept it nice and short and effective, then continued to bug the other lawyer on redirect with objections (which the prof also loved, haha). After that we finally got to go home. I got home around 9:40 or so, not bad for being held over, and I immediately turn on legends. This may be a somewhat abbreviated review because my eyes want to close right now, but we'll see. It was an interesting episode. I saw at least one online reviewer saying it was the best episode of the series so far, which I don't agree with. It didn't really feel like a legends episode to me, but I still definitely enjoyed it for what it was. I just wanted more of our lovable time losers, of course. But the villain plot between the 3 of them being fleshed out was super interesting, as was the explanation of what Eobard is after and the introduction of the black flash chasing him. I have to ask of course, WHERE THE FUCK IS SNART!?????! I was told he was gonna be a part of this villain group and there's only so many episodes left in the season, ya killing me here by dragging it out this line. But the Stein/Lily plot was adorable and well played, Stein really pulled it off in the end there. And it's good to see the legends are actually figuring out what the legion is up to and make a plan to fight them. Phil continues to slay me, and while I'm sure we'll get Rip back at some point (especially with tonight's revelation that there's a copy of his memories) but I really just want to keep Phil at this point. I giggled at the "fixing Rip's flaws" line, especially when that turned out to mean making him kill George Washington (because ?! Evil bad guys??? This will totally serve their purpose??!!???). So yeah, overall pretty good, just give me Snart already. I did watch the episode of the flash that came out tonight after, but I'm too tired to recap my thoughts on it right now and I didn't have all that many interesting ones anyway, so I'm gonna end this here and get to bed. Goodnight my friends. Keep on keeping on.

#daily journal #January 2017

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briangroth27 · 7 years

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Baby Driver Review

Baby Driver is a blast! After taking on zom-rom-coms, buddy cops, alien invasions, and video games, Edgar Wright’s heist film is my favorite of his movies yet. Wright first played with the idea of a getaway driver who timed crimes using songs in a music video for Mint Royale, and the expanded version is even better. While the broad concepts of the movie: a driver forced to continue working for criminals, “one last job,” etc. are not new, filtering them through music made the movie feel fresh and exciting.

The music, selected before Wright even wrote the film (here’s why he chose a few of the tracks), made for a cool, unique window into Baby's (Ansel Elgort) life. Baby was a solid, sympathetic lead, enjoying his ability behind the wheel even while wanting out of the crime business. From the trailers, I’d expected Baby to have a tortured-if-meticulously-cool personality, but Elgort made him a happy dancing idealist. I was pleasantly surprised. Baby’s tinnitus was a real-world handicap film heroes don't usually have and it provided a smart reason for planning his life around his tunes. An early sequence of Baby getting coffee as the lyrics of the song he’s listening to appeared in graffiti on the streets around him was a great way to physicalize the impact and importance of music on his world: it’s everything to him and it’s the stabilizing force of his entire life. When his songs got screwed up, like during a frantic foot chase or a heist that doesn’t time out as planned, his disorientation was a stumbling block we don't normally see in movies. Baby's hobby of making mix tapes of conversations was a cool connection to his mom's would-be singing career as well as another example of Baby processing and reshaping the world around him with music. Elgort displayed great range with his various scene partners, particularly with his roommate/foster father Joseph (CJ Jones), Kevin Spacey's Doc, and Lily James' Debora.

Doc ran a tight ship and Spacey was great as the ultra-cool (and scary, when need be) crime boss. It was clever to make him a twisted reflection of Joseph as a criminal “father figure” to Baby. Doc could seamlessly segue from protective and respectful of Baby to threatening and casually dangerous, making him unpredictable. With that in mind, I shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction to Baby trying to leave with Debbie towards the end. Still, I bought it and liked that it revealed an unexpected layer of his character. Doc’s nephew Sammy (Brogan Hall), just as cool about crime as his uncle, was an awesome surprise that I didn't see coming at all.

I loved that Baby and Joseph communicated in sign language, neatly displaying the flip side to Baby’s musical life. Even without saying a word verbally, you could feel their familial connection and the strength of that relationship was an unexpected plus. Jones’ expressions spoke volumes about how much he wished Baby could escape the criminal life (or at least do something to help his son) and casting an actor who’s actually deaf was a great move, as representation is important. While Lily James was charming and I was rooting for her and Baby’s sweet love story, I couldn’t help but think “you basically just met” when they were so hot to run away together and leave Atlanta behind. This could’ve been easily remedied by giving us a short montage of their relationship or even just a line that indicated a time jump between (light spoilers) Baby paying Doc back and Doc insisting he continue working for him (“What? I gave you six months off” or something). I also wish we’d learned more about Debora’s dreams beyond just driving west. Debora’s lack of goals outside the diner/Baby and their underdeveloped relationship were the weak points in an otherwise totally solid movie.

On the surface, Jamie Foxx didn't get an opportunity to show much range as Bats, but I didn't need him to be anything more than the total whack job he was. He was great as an unhinged trigger-happy criminal and he was truly scary for pretty much every scene he was in. As crazy as he was, he clearly wasn’t “Joker” insane: he’s a thinking criminal whose self-preservation instincts and impossible standards mixed with his shoot-first tendencies to create arguably the most dangerous character in the movie. We don’t get much background on anyone besides Baby, but I thought it was clever to have Bats reveal a hidden talent for reading people when he accurately guessed Buddy and Darling’s pasts.

Jon Hamm's Buddy probably had the most range of the criminals besides Doc, going from the one underling who seemed genuinely interested in connecting with Baby as an older brother-type figure to a much darker path by the last act of the movie. Hamm played it very well. I thought he and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) had good chemistry and felt like a real couple; a modern Bonnie and Clyde. Her enjoyment of heists and general verve for life made her stand out from the typical gangster’s moll. Gonzalez didn’t play this obvious sense of fun as “crazy,” preventing her from coming off as a Harley Quinn rip-off; she simply enjoyed what she did and who she did it with. While Buddy seems to want to retire at some point (his potential white collar background indicated he might be above this stuff), I could see her having too much fun to stop.

The other criminals, Griff (Jon Bernthal), JD (Lanny Joon), and Eddie No-Nose (Flea) rounded out Doc’s crew in colorful fashion. I’d say Griff was a little too similar to Buddy in terms of style and Bats in terms of how he distrusted and antagonized Baby to truly stand out, but he’s in the film for such a short time it didn’t bother me. JD has some great comedic bits and a totally distinct demeanor from everyone else; I wish we got more from him. Eddie seemed like he had a wealth of character to him and I liked that he kept getting brought up as the inside man on Doc’s various heists (assuming his nickname is the “nasal problem” Doc kept referring to).

The romance is rushed a bit (though Elgort and James’ chemistry saves it), but the pacing is quick and the editing is flawless. I’ve always found Edgar Wright’s ability to choreograph and film much more intricate action sequences than you’d expect from the genres he works in impressive, and this was no exception: most if not all of the action was synched to the music! The car chases and action all felt very real and immediate; as smooth and polished as this movie is, it doesn’t feel like your typical CGI blockbuster because everything is happening for real. I will say that the armored car heist, foot chase, and climax were too loud at points (particularly the crashes) for me to comfortably hear everything, but that may’ve been the theater I was in rather than the sound mix of the film. Nevertheless, I liked that the soundtrack was a mix of familiar and less well-known songs and look forward to buying it.

If you’re looking for something original and stylish to compliment your typical summer blockbusters, take Baby Driver for a spin!

Full Spoilers…

-I was surprised Baby didn’t bristle at all under the paltry earnings he made as a pizza driver—he was just happy to be free and still got to drive fast in his legit job—and it's one reason I can't see Baby getting back into crime in a potential sequel at all. The movie even has Doc point out that Baby won’t be able to give Debora the finer things in life—and she isn’t someone who’d demand them—and Baby doesn’t give it so much as a second thought, so I don’t believe he’d find himself as a criminal again, unless maybe the cops asked him to go undercover. And I don’t think he’d do it even then. As much as I liked this world and these characters, this felt right as a one-and-done with a happy ending and doesn’t need a sequel. On the other hand, I trust Edgar Wright, so if he sees a story I’ll check it out.

-I thought for sure Baby’s tapes would come back and help exonerate him, so when they didn’t pop up at his trial to prove he was coerced into at least some of the heists it felt like a small dangling thread.

-In fact, I was surprised Baby served time at all. I totally expected a generic “he was coerced; let him off with a slap on the wrist” ending, so actual consequences to Baby’s actions was a respectable twist.

-I was surprised Griff of all people survived, but as my brother pointed out he did say, “If you don’t see me again, I’m dead.” haha

-At first, I didn’t like that Buddy went EVIL-evil because Darling died. I’ve gone back and forth as to whether or not she was fridged—killed just to make Buddy angry—but ultimately I think it’s her choice to open fire on the cops instead of standing down (and instead of standing behind cover, just like at the arms dealer shootout), which is consistent with her character in the rest of the movie. She has agency in that moment, even if Buddy pins the blame on Baby. Additionally, (as TV Tropes reminds me) if you take her warning to Bats seriously, Buddy was always this crazy killer and Darling’s death didn’t create it. Again, I feel like she was having too much fun to ever stop and was always headed for this moment.

#baby driver #ansel elgort #baby #lily james #debora #kevin spacey #doc #jamie foxx #bats #john hamm #buddy #eiza gonzalez #darling #cj james #joseph #edgar wright

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