#and made for some epic barricade moments | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

benjaminthewolf · 10 months

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Radi Lol

HAPPY 8/8 EVERYONE!

Sorry this took so long to post, I had to complete this the day of!

WARNING: INJURY, WOUNDS, BLOOD

****

Quite unlike the seemingly magical to an ignorant layperson, yet one hundred percent science-based serums you were known and rather famed to create, this horrific, abandoned, post-nuclear, uninhabitable wasteland attracted very little in the way of duplicitous eyes. This was, of course, mainly due to the fact that whenever someone was interested in learning more about the development of a region after an unfortunate nuclear disaster, the very first region on their list would be either Cernobyl, Hiroshima, or Nagisaki, as they were, naturally, the three most well known. That, in combination with the fact that this particular nuclear region was far, far, far, far, far away from any sort of human settlement to speak of, meant that, ironically, it was quite the perfect candidate for you, in terms of being able to harvest radioactive samples for your serums unimpeded.

“Can’t really get started on a telekinetic tonic without some good ol’ nuclear waste, after all…” you begin to faintly mumble to yourself as you casually stroll your way up to a shiny, silver-y chain-link fence planted in the dirt, surrounding entirely the grassy bounds of the region.

The fence, upon a little cursory examination, had to be at least fifteen feet tall, possessing a sign stating clearly: “KEEP OUT” in bright red uppercase letters, placed upon its height-wise middle. “Guess it's a good thing I managed to finish my anti-radioactivity serum BEFORE I started getting interested in telekinesis…” you mutter to yourself under your breath.

Glancing over to your left and then your right soon afterwards, you were able to see consequently that there were, indeed, more than one of these signs placed across the fence’s hundreds-long feet of protective and barricading length; something which, while it obviously made perfect sense, would ultimately just cause you to let out a snort, one swiftly paired with an excessively raggedly laugh.

“Nice try, at least, but since when has anyone ever discovered something in science by staying within previously established human boundaries? Whether social, physical, or what have you? I’m gonna go scale this fence, and there ain't nothin’ you can do to try and stop me!” you humorously let your voice echo out across the open air, whilst rebelliously reaching up and grasping onto the form of the fence above your head.

Smoothly inserting your left foot into one of the holes made by the namesake chain-links in the fence, you soon after haul up your right foot into another hole on the same level, heaving your body up off of the mutated grass comprising the ground you were standing on as a result. The adventurer-sized, sturdy, lightweight backpack lying over the both of your shoulders bobs its way up and down for a moment from the forces fighting viciously all around it, before it once again stabilizes into stillness. You take a brief second to prepare yourself with a rather hefty, motivating sigh after this; before, consequently, beginning your upward ascent.

Consistently maneuvering your arms and your legs up and over where they’d previously been with each second gone by to your climb, the limbs naturally carrying the body that they were attached to up higher along with them, it would hardly be any time from your perspective at all, before you had reached the very top.

Releasing forth a deep breath within a newfound rising sense of victoriousness, you are resultantly just about ready to either safely climb your way back down upon the other side of the metal barrier, or, far more riskilly yet equally far more epically, leap your way off with great force, and stick a dramatic landing on the ground with a pose.

Maintaining your balance at the top with your right hand, whilst thoughtfully placing a couple fingers of the other underneath your newly downwards-pointing chin, that which was attached onto your low-angled, thoughtful, pondering face, you proceed to stare blankly towards the floor, mentally sorting your way through all of the possible pros and cons of both of the options laden before you. Just as one with such a scientific mind like yourself was naturally predisposed to do.

This would continue to be the case for quite some time, until eventually, after approximately three minutes in this state, you are forced to concede to your decision with a considerably sunken face as well as a head shake. As much as you wished you could stick a dramatic landing without injury, the fact of the matter was, that even just attempting something of that nature could immediately sabotage your mission, and your mission was far more important to you than looking cool would ever be.

Thus, you begin to prepare to climb down, beginning with a firm, decisive nod that this was, indeed, what you had chosen to do. Only to immediately become lurched into a nerve-frying state of utter shock, upon maneuvering your face and gaze up, back to forwards.

There now appeared to be a man standing near one side of a brick building, with a spray paint can in his right hand. The man in question had skin and hair the color of pure white, and wore a black hoodie with a neon green rim, which had a cape-esque flappy bit hanging downwards across the length of his legs past his hips. His shoes were of the same color palette. His pants were all black, and under his hoodie he had a gray shirt with a blue stripe going down the middle. Over his right eye was a purple scar. As for the eyes themselves, the organs’ light blue scleras would continue to narrow even further from the gradual lowering of his eyelids whilst his neon green irises bore deeper and deeper into your own with every single passing second that they were locked into contact with each other.

It was at that moment that you realized, that if you even dared make a movement placing you onto the fencce’s other side, whoever this man staring at you was, he was bound to get you in trouble. Whether by his own hands or the hands of the police, you had no idea. In either case, though, the result would become utterly devastating to your plans of collecting nuclear samples for your serums, and you were just not in a position at all to take that risk.

The man on the other side of the fence proceeded to give his can of spray paint a little shake, before a great, light blue cloud of dense mist was suddenly released onto the wall, and atop a nearly finished work of graffiti. Due to the fact that your eyes had been unshakably fixated on his being for the entirety of the past few minutes, you weren’t exactly able to notice said graffiti until now. Once you finally did, however, you were practically instantly jolted with a quintillion more questions than answers. Those were simplified icons of Boyfriend and Girlfriend he was spray painting, and this most likely meant that he was either an avid follower of the two, or, closely connected to them in some way. If that later option was the case, then, there was now suddenly a very real possibility that Daddy Dearest could get involved if you dared overstep these fence-denoted boundaries.

It therefore nearly came as an act of instinctive preservation, when your right hand maneuvered itself slightly lower so you may climb your way back down the chain-link fence, and into an assurance of safety as a result.

And yet, it was right there and then that an instantaneous shot of purified, jittering fear viciously jerked itself down from your brain and flooded itself all throughout your spinal cord’s form, reaching its way into nerves of all four of your limbs, and causing you to lose your grip a second later.

What subsequently happened after that was naturally wholly indiscernible to you, as you plummeted your way through the air. The one, singular thing you could still take note of before the inevitable collision with the ground was the sense of the spacial descent in and of itself, racing all the way into storage of innate and subconscious sensory memories whilst the consciousness of your falling being, rushing through a seconds-long moment far too quick to react to in proper, stilled itself to calmness from its ignorance, causing hardly a blip of emotional pain as the color was drained from both eyes.

****

“HEY!” a voice from somewhere cries in extremely aggravated vigor, “HEY, COME ON! GET UP!”.

You are inexplicably able to sense a considerable push up against your back and spine, tilting your body slightly forwards, only for it to fall back down to where it was soon after. It was simply moments after this motion that you were able to comprehend the fact that you were laying on your side upon the ground. Flinging your eyes open less than a second after this realization, your brain is resultantly flashed with all the colors, and shapes, and all else possessed onto the far closer-up form of the exact same man who had previously been deterring you from entry.

“Oh…thank fuck, you’re alive…” he heaves out in great relief with a sigh. “Hey, hey, hey! Stay down! Stay down! You’re just gonna hurt yourself further!”

A searing, sharp pain in both your ankles had immediately shot its way through your nerves the mere instant you attempted to put weight on said joints, therefore causing you to collapse all the way back down to the ground, this time onto your front, cueing Radi to begin talking once more.

“...ok look…you’ve almost certainly got a bunch of questions right now, so lemme just tell you…you lost your balance while trying to climb back down the fence……..in a really…clumsy manner, albeit…and then you landed on the ground head first, which is why it's…kinda bleeding right now.”

Seemingly as if it was purely the words of the man before you that had caused this to become reality, you were almost immediately able to feel a blunted, nauseating ache within the volume of your entire head, causing your face to scrunch up tightly in agony, as a high-pitched trill of accented whimpering was simultaneously released from your throat.

“...your…uh…you’ve also got a huge bruise on your knee…umm…your left one…and…there’s a great scrape wound on your hand on the same side.”

Laying your head all the way down to the floor, with your chin placed upon the grass and dirt, so that it would no longer be burdened with the task of pushing upwards and against the force of gravity, you were soon thereafter able to take in a few much-needed deep breaths, although at a far rapid, quivering pace than normal, before at last you had accumulated enough oxygen to where your body could once again speak.

“...are…are you gonna call the police?”

Radi blinks at you in perplexity whilst considerably narrowing his eyes. “THAT’S what you’re most concerned about right now?”

“...jail time, and or fines, would affect my life more severely, and for far longer, than these wounds and injuries ever will…”

In response, Radi only rolls his eyes with a shrug. “...okay, fair enough. No, I’m not going to call the police. Mainly because you technically didn’t actually trespass because you didn’t really go over the fence, but also because you immediately got the hint when I told you you couldn’t go any further, and then you were trying to climb down because of that, so I can’t really be too mad at you anyway.”

As you weren’t exactly able to nod your head for the current moment, you instead responded in affirmation of your understanding with a rather weak, and non-raised-off-the-ground thumbs-up, paired with a very short, graggy, affirming grunt originating from the back of your throat.

Seconds later, you opened up your mouth just a little in preparation to ask if he was going to call Daddy Dearest instead, only to immediately shut your mouth and zip it tight upon giving that idea just the slightest amount of internal scrutiny.

“...I’m still going to have to call 911, though, for an ambulance.” Radi suddenly speaks back up, naturally drawing your attention back towards him.

“...but…” you soon weakly attempted to reply, causing Radi’s eyes to dart downwards towards your form. “...the nearest hints of human civilization to here are farm towns without any real hospitals to speak of…it would take hours for an ambulance from a city to get here…”

Radi consequently gives a soft “Hmm” in response, placing his index finger and thumb under his chin and narrowing his eyes in consideration.

“...that is true…so…maybe we could request a helicopter?”

Blankly staring back at the man, you would take a couple blinks whilst holding the gaze, causing Radi to progressively become slightly unnerved.

“...ehhhhh…so much for getting a bigger apartment…” you despondently think to yourself in your head. “...............WAIT A SECOND!”

“...I…think I have a better solution…” you finally perk up to Radi after over a minute of uncomfortable silence.

Radi immediately takes in a breath and raises up a finger, only for him to awkwardly lower it down rather slowly and close his mouth as realization gradually sinks into his face.

“okayyyyyyy...then…what is it?” he simply asks after a while.

“...if you can get my backpack off my shoulders…you should be able to see some stuff in there that can help…” you respond whilst mentally sighing from considerable relief.

“Well, okay, but you’re gonna have to like, put your arms to your sides so I can slip the loops off your shoulders and through your arms.”

Swiftly doing as you had been told just about as fast as you could physically manage in your state, Radi hastily maneuvers the backpack off your body, before soon setting both it, as well as himself cautiously onto the floor.

Sitting criss-crossed on the grass as he heaves the form of the backpack into his lap, Radi proceeds to unzip the zipper leading into the largest pocket, so he may inspect all the contents within. And that was when a purified glare of sheer confusion promptly settled itself onto his face as he placed three objects onto the floor.

“Uh…well all I see in here are two thermoses, and…a miniature ray gun?”

“Ah, yes! Just what I need! Here, bring them over to me!”

To this, Radi only glances up at you, as his previously confused gaze progressively morphs into that of a rather blank state, as he steadily reaches into his pocket, until at last, he pulls out his phone.

“IT’S NOT A RAY GUN!” you urgently shriek out in utterly undistilled panic. “IT’S A SHRINKING DEVICE! SEE?” and then, just like that, forcefully ignoring your body’s current, compounding, sharpened agony, you swooped over with your right arm in towards Radi, switched the device on, pointed it towards yourself, and finally, activated its power. For you, the process caused your whole world to flash white momentarily, before you instinctively gave a few coughs, and after a minute of mental and physical reorientation, managed to glance forth at the grasses once beneath you, confirming as such that it had worked.

“...see?”

Radi remains purely silent for quite some time, before finally shaking his head.

“Okay, okay, okay, …I’m sorry I over-reacted like that.”

“...oh it's fine! I get that you gotta be careful, especially around people you don’t know very well, but..uh..” your voice trails off for a couple seconds as you glance over at the shrinking device which is now twice as big as your mouse-sized body, and eventually lay yourself back down on the ground on your side. “I…actually need to get back to normal size for right now, because I gotta drink out of one of those thermoses.”

Radi swiftly nods whilst reaching over and bending down towards the shrinking device. “So…what’s actually in those thermoses, anyway?”

“Well…” you quickly begin your explanation as Radi picks up the device. “In that red thermos is an anti-radioactivity serum! I was gonna drink it as soon as I got to the fence, but I was a lot more tired than expected when I finally reached it, and you can’t really drink it when you’ve got a lot of lactic acid in your body, and I didn’t want to lay down there for too long, ‘cause…ya know, I had work to do! So I just decided to start climbing the fence instead!”

Radi glances at you as if he’s going to say something, but once again, ultimately decides to refrain.

“In the blue thermos…” you eventually resume your explaining, once you’re sure Radi is paying attention again,“We have a special substance called ‘Miracle Milk’! It’s basically supposed to heal injuries, everything from external ones like scrapes to internal ones like bruises! It works by supercharging the body’s ability to accurately replicate cells by…well I don’t know the exact number, but you get the point, it’s a lot! And it affects both the person drinking it and anyone else submerged in it, and…………..” It was right then and there that you realized that you had said far too much far too early. “...you’ve probably already figured out where I was going with this, haven’t you?”

Radi is completely stilled in an instant, as are you muted soon thereafter. You manage to let out an awkward chuckle sometime after the first minute of, by now, entirely familiar awkward silence, right before Radi’s eyes are narrowed slightly. Not in a manner of rage or mistrust, as you had initially presumed, however, but rather, consideration. Your own gaze soon begins to soften from one of apprehensive discomfort, to that of slight curiosity, as to what exactly was going on inside the head of the deeply thinking man, as Radi only continues to do so in confined privacy, only to let his thoughts be known to the world upon him choosing to do so on his own.

Ultimately, then, Radi simply lets out an amiable giggle with an eye roll to lighten the air, before finally speaking up yet again.

“...well…I guess you’re rather lucky that I’m far more open-minded than a lot of people first think. …which is…mainly because I tend to be really aggressive around people I don’t know really well, but, in any case, I don’t really think it would be of any help right now to ask further questions about why you want to do it this way, so…” Radi temporarily pauses his talking as he pulls the shrinking device trigger and prompty offers you the red thermos. “...I guess you’re also rather lucky you’ve got an anti-radioactivity serum on you, or else I would’ve said no, no matter what!”

Though you are, naturally, initially quite bewildered by this response, you are swiftly able to come to your senses after a moment of letting reality settle in, giving your head a quick, expeditious shake, before finally, taking a hold of the thermos with a grin. Radi thus forms a grin back in response, before setting down the shrinking device for the time being, and picking up the blue thermos with the Miracle Milk. Now, all that was left for you to do was unscrew both of the lids, and chug all the contents on down.

The both of you then proceed to attempt to unscrew the lids in an, at the very least, somewhat synchronous manner, your own ability to do so being rather impaired due to the fact that you were still on your side on the ground. Nonetheless, it is eventually accomplished with little issue, leading up to the two of you casually and preemptively clanking your drinks together, in a restrained, yet still powerful manner. Then at last, with nothing else left to do, you finally begin the long chug side-by-side.

For you, again, because you were still laying on your side on the ground, plus the fact that with each second that went by, you were progressive depriving your red blood cells of needed oxygen, this action was far more difficult to pull off than you had thought it would be at first. Regardless, the chug could not really last any longer than a minute, since there wasn’t really that much liquid to chug to begin with, meaning it was still certainly far from impossible.

As you gasp out and sputter for precious air the single millisecond you had finished with your drink, Radi wisely decides to not try and converse with you, instead reaching back over for the shrinking device, waiting a minute for you to catch your breath, and at last, upon you giving him a thumbs-up of confirmation, pulling its trigger once more.

It isn’t very long after this that Radi takes a single step towards you, slowly bends down on his knees, cautiously scoops you up by cupping his hands, bringing them in closer together towards your shrunken body slowly and cautiously, and finally, in getting back onto his feet, hauls you on up into the air.

Now that he was certain that you had fully regained your capacity to speak, mainly based on the fact you weren’t panting anymore, Radi forms a warm, calm smile on his face, bringing you closer in as he does, your body now laying on its back upon his two palms, before speaking up at long last in order to ask if you were ready to commence the final step.

“Ya sure you’re ready for this? ‘Cause you’re still bleeding pretty bad, so you gotta get down there as soon as you can, y’know.” his voice subtly quivers as he speaks, with a noticeable undertone of concern.

“I am most certainly!” you reply with a short and simple affirmation, therefore prompting Radi to bring his cupped hands in even closer towards his relatively gigantic face.

“Alright then, I’m ready too.” he confirms his mutual preparedness to you. “I’m just gonna say upfront though, that I’m probably going to have a difficult time swallowing, since ya know, I’m not really used to tasting blood in any sort of overwhelming capacity.” he sheepishly issues a warning with a slightly sunken look in his eyes. “But! that doesn’t mean I won’t try my best!”

And thus, not wanting to drag out the time you went without treatment any further, Radi hastily stretches open his maw.

The very first thing you took note of was the area’s colors. Radi’s tongue was pigmented a bright, luminous green, the saliva accumulating from the salivary glands along the surface of the muscle resulting in it gaining a rather shiny and glossy appearance, to the point where it nearly seemed, to you, to glow. In practically complete and total contrast, however, the rest of his maw, including the cheeks, gums, soft palette, hard palette, and even the uvula, were a quite comparatively dull, opaque dark gray, perhaps even crossing into the territory of being “light black,” instead. Whatever the nature of the colors were, though, they were undoubtedly destined to become brutally splotched with patches of dark red very soon, as the tongue began to extend forth from the mouth of the giant man, sliding its way outwards and towards the cupped forms of his hands where you lay, still and ready.

Soon enough, you were able to feel the muscle slipping underneath you, against the firm support of the hands, attempting to maneuver your body from its tip into its middle as it wriggled about with great caution. This, of course, was to ensure that Radi could easily bring you back into the squishy chamber without any risk of you succumbing to gravity for a second time. Once the far larger man was sufficiently confident that he would be able to retract his tongue without dropping you, then, he began to cautiously lift the muscle into the air, keeping his hands up and at the ready just in case, as you were slowly navigated through his outwardly white lips and over his teeth, inching its way, with you as its passenger, deeper and deeper into the naturally warm, slickened region of his maw.

At last, then, when you on your back could no longer see the slim width of his incisors, nor the glistening tips of his fanged canines, you could feel the tongue beginning to settle into its natural position inside Radi’s maw, just past the forms of the bones. Now, it was possible for the man on the outside to gently close up his maw, and to this task, he finished relatively quickly, bringing the dark gray inner portion of his lips close together, and causing his cheeks to bulge slightly convexly in towards the middle of the maw, before any sort of view onto said muscles at all were promptly blocked off with a painstakingly slow sealing of the jaws.

Radi knew, however, that he couldn’t just let his hard palette lower downwards and stay that way, lest your already very wounded head run the risk of being injured even further; weather by an extremely forceful bonk onto the mucus-membrane covered bone plate, by a rugged, bumpy scraping against the rough ridges at the front of the palette, or by any other means, and thus, swiftly raised up the region just as far as it would go with sealed lips.

This action would naturally cause the soft palate to rise up alongside its hard counterpart, bringing the uvula up into its hanging position, and slightly exposing Radi’s throat as a result, though the area was still mostly covered by the base of the tongue. Nonetheless, the swaying, dampened, bodily chamber’s decorative ornament that was the plump, dangling, squishy uvula immediately captured your attention once it appeared, causing you, in spite of your sore, bleeding head, to momentarily pool all of your energy towards attempting to sit up on the tongue. Not to stay in that position for any significant length of time, but to transition your body into laying down onto its front, so you would be able to keep your head down and comfortable upon the surface of the smoothened, pillowy muscle, whilst still possessing a front-row view of the organ as you now, calmly and silently, waited for Radi to make the next move.

Radi on the outside, however, was currently, and most devastatingly, silently, grappling with the unavoidable fact that he was, for the time being, completely unable to move his tongue. He had recognized immediately after he had opened up his maw that if he guided your form onto his tongue gradually and leisurely, rather than all at once, it would be far, far easier for his taste buds to be able to tolerate the blood. Though this had largely been proven to be true as he had managed to bring you onto the muscle and into his maw in the past few minutes, the metallic, sharpened tang being sprawled across the thing’s entire surface still wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling.

During the time frame where he had needed to be extra cautious in order to not drop you when retracting his tongue back into his maw, then, he had practically no other choice but to force himself to repress the horrid taste that he was sensing, in order to ensure, to the very best of his ability, your complete and total safety at that time. Now that said time frame was finished, however, all of that aforementioned repression had been essentially lifted all at once, and this meant that, for now, Radi would just simply have to stay still, as his brain scrambled about in jittering revolution, in order to process, and accustom itself to the flavor. For you on the inside, this meant that Radi was unable to raise up his tongue in order to direct you towards the entrance to his throat, therefore delaying your submersion into the healing liquid of the Miracle Milk in his stomach; something which you knew could not go on for much longer.

As such, with Radi not moving you to the back of his maw by himself, and with you being unable to know why, you were resultantly forced to take matters into your own hands, before it was already too late. That was when you realized that doing so would actually be relatively easy, considering that you were now laying on your front.

As poor Radi’s brain was still unequivocally preoccupied with the horrifically wretched flavor of your blood, it did not, per say, possess any remaining power at all to sense your labored, yet steady crawling towards the back of its owner’s bright green tongue, where you, on the slow, yet continual journey, would ultimately need to find a way to make him swallow, soon after your eventual arrival.

Inching your way forth, along towards the hypopharynx which would lead you cleanly into the upper esophageal sphincter, you are only able to remain transfixed, with your gaze locked upon the back wall of the orthopharynx behind the swaying, bulbous, wonderful uvula, as your body at last approaches the root of the tongue. Now that you were able to stare directly down into the laryngopharynx, Radi’s heated breath begins brushing its way past your face in a quite steady yet unusually shaky manner, which was ultimately the very first clue you had gotten which would alert you to the fact that something was very much not right with the man which you were currently within. Therefore, whatever you were going to do next, it could not put you at risk of falling down the wrong tube, as that would only put the both of you in a position of grave danger. Thus, you began to examine your options in a state of rational, deep set consideration, in order to decide which one would be the best for you both.

As you were amidst this focus-requiring, thoughtful process, however, it would finally become the case for Radi that his brain had been able to reset itself back to its prior state of functional normalcy, and had somehow desensitized his taste buds to the sharp and metallic prior agony of your blood just as well. For but a singular millisecond after he had realized this, Radi’s immediate bodily instinct was to inhale with a sigh, so he may release it along with his past stress, only for his own rationality to instantly halt him in his tracks a second later, causing a bout of mental whiplash which forced the man to step back, and, in the end, place said rationality front and center in his brain for the moment.

Due to this mental prioritization, then, Radi was soon able to figure out that you were no longer at the middle of his tongue, but rather, towards its slightly downwards sloping back, and very base. That was when he realized, in an only mildly dulled mental jolt, just how much time had most likely passed between his brain tapping out of reality, and now. And so, knowing that you, simply put, just could not wait another second, Radi at last managed to swallow.

You on the inside, meanwhile, still locked in deep thought about what your next action should be, were suddenly able to hear the resulting damp, squishy, great echoing resulting from Radi’s initial swallow, as your body was swiftly squelched downwards and into the very start of the esophagus. There would proceed to be yet another soft gulp and squeezing motion. And then, you finally processed what was happening in full.

The very first thing Radi does, now that you are out of his maw, is take in and release that deep sigh that he had wanted to do a minute earlier, letting all of his negative emotions flow outwards and from his frizzled nerves. The second thing he does is give a couple of hefty, throat-clearing coughs, from the fact that your shoes had been touching the epiglottis for a second back before the second swallow was complete. Finally, then, Radi promptly places his hand upon the slight bulge you are making in his throat, as you are squelched further down towards his stomach. As he does this, he simultaneously turns himself around to face the fence you had climbed up merely less than an hour before now. Swiftly shaking his head in order to acknowledge just how strange this situation really was, Radi could feel the small bulge disappearing as you were finally guided via peristalsis past his collarbone. Soon after this, the larger man at last decided that he wanted to sit down against the fence. He therefore takes a few slow and wobbly steps towards its chain link wiring, before turning his body around, and carefully lowering himself onto the grass. At last, Radi found himself letting out one more heavy sigh, before he placed one of his hands over his middle.

You, now deep inside Radi’s esophagus, are still being uniformly pushed down by the constant, involuntary movements of peristalsis that the organ, whether dark gray or not, was indeed famed and beloved for, entering into the region crossing through with the chest mere seconds after Radi’s heartbeat at last became audible to you. Squelching your way down and past said thumping, vital, powerful organ, you are also soon able to detect the definitively far less shaky reverberations of the man’s much calmer and slower deep breathing, heaving their way in and out of his lungs whilst you pass.

Finally, however, you were able to recognize with reasonable certainty that it was time at long last for you to gradually become healed of all of the wounds you had sustained from your dastardly fall. Ambient gurgling and growling only continues to echo all around you as you are finally delivered down into the natural, dark gray, bodily valve that was Radi’s lower esophageal sphincter. The moment your head was squelched through the powerful muscles, the remainder of your body rather quickly followed suit moments after. And then, at long, long, last, after numerous setbacks and hardships, the specially concocted Miracle Milk which had been sloshing around in Radi’s stomach had finally received its miniature patient within its miniature waves.

The walls of Radi’s slick, squishy, shifting stomach possessed a bright silver sheen and shiny surface, partially due to said color of the muscles comprising the organ, and partially due to the slimy coat of mucosa lightly doused all across its surface area. The Miracle Milk, meanwhile, mixed up with the harmless liquids present inside, produced a mainly clear and watery mixture with a diluted white-ish tint to it, that which leisurely swished its way around the rumbling chamber as it continued to move about deep within Radi’s body.

Calmly and silently wading over towards from the midst of that same liquid pool, in order to squish yourself into the churning walls, Radi on the outside is finally able to confirm your presence inside his guts with near certainty, and is therefore reasonably confident that he can speak up, now that the both of you were finally settled.

“So…is the Miracle Milk taking effect?” he casually asks you down below whilst giving a gentle couple of pats over his middle.

To this, you could only let out a pleased sigh, as now that your lower half was fully submerged inside of the marvelously effective healing concoction, the entirety of your body’s immune system was being rapidly kicked into overdrive, delivering nutrients and resources to the wounds and injuries all across the length of your body, rather than only its lower half.

“...of course!” you eventually verbally confirm to Radi above. “It’s working just as intended, as all my experiments have shown!”

Radi on the outside cannot help but give a friendly chuckle and eye roll upon you subtly sneaking in a slight flex of your scientific prowess into a confirmation that you were okay. He wasn’t, of course, planning to bring that observation up, though, and this was just simply because he honestly felt zero reason to do so. The two of you had managed to complete the task of starting the process of your healing together. And now, all that either of you could do was unwind your respective minds and bodies, and merely let it happen on its own.

Thus, Radi would eventually take in a great bout of air into his lungs, but this time, not to let it out as a relieving sigh or sputtering cough. Rather, as an extremely fatigued, drawn-out yawn. One which would only lead on to him calmly and tranquilly lower downwards his eyelids soon after. Radi had absolutely no idea if he was going to fall asleep, and if so, for how long, but for the moment, absolutely none of that mattered to him at all. Indeed, all that did matter to him was that you were wholly safe at long last. Whatever was going to happen from here, Radi was able to rest, fully calm and fully motionless, knowing that this fact would continue to be true no matter what was going to happen around him.

Back on the inside of Radi’s grumbling and churning spacious stomach, you, too, begin to simultaneously, yet independently develop a similar notion of relaxation after all you and Radi had been put through in just the past hour alone. It was only to be expected, then, that very soon after this thought, your tediously working, rapidly healing, bleeding body began to grow droopy and weary. Surrounded in full by a cushiony chamber of blanketing warmth functioning tirelessly to heal your wounded body as this happened, you would soon find yourself closing your eyes, just as Radi had done a minute prior, something which you did not protest to at all.

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

Text

Okay, long time followers will probably remember having read this, but I can’t find the original post and I’m trying to like.....force-reboot/jumpstart me working on my ‘Kings of the Sky’ AU again because I haven’t touched it in awhile and I have like literally eight different installments in various stages of completion and that’s ridiculous even for me. So here’s a repost of the first part of “Teachable Moments” the canon-divergence point of that AU series, where Jason calls Dick for advice after the Garzonas case and everything changes from there.

******

The way Jason Todd warily eyed the device in his hand, one might think it was an instrument of great and terrible destructive power, rather than just…his own personal cell-phone.

To be fair, he was Robin, and pretty used to the idea that even the most unlikely of things could be used for evil in Gotham. It could’ve been stolen and replaced at some point by a henchperson of Mr. Freeze, and using it could unleash some kind of cryogenic freeze ray that would turn him into a Robinsicle. Mad Hatter could be up to shit again, and dialing the phone at this very minute might mean syncing it up with a remote radio signal that would override his natural brainwaves and turn him into Tetch’s mindless minion of like…doom and stuff. Or…or…

Or sometimes, even in Gotham a phone is just a phone, and Freud is still a dumbass. And neither of the above possibilities had anything to do with why Jason was being a giant freaking pansy about entering the last digit of the phone number he would never ever admit to having had memorized for months now.

Nightwing had said to call if he ever needed to talk. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t actually want Jason to call, right? Like, its not as if Jason had remotely been expecting him to do that, so its not the sort of thing someone did just because it was ‘expected’ or shit. He was pretty sure. Rich people manners were weird though. Had to factor that in.

But Nightwing had also even made a point to say not talking to people about stuff was Bruce’s problem and that Jason shouldn’t let it be his problem too, and even though months ago Jason had been a starry-eyed dumbass who was totally drunk on the Bruce is the Bestest Kool-Aid or whatever, ‘Wing had definitely known what he was talking about there. So maybe he’d get it, and having this conversation with him wouldn’t be. Like. The actual worst idea in the history of ever.

Deductive logic said that Jason was getting worked up over nothing and there was no rational reason for him to be this nervous about dialing a fucking phone number. And he’d gotten pretty good at the whole deduction shit, given all the work he and Bruce had put into training his mind to view the world through entirely new paradigms, so Jason was pretty sure his math on that checked out. But on the other hand, Bruce was a hypocritical asshat that Jason was currently not speaking to, so what the fuck did he know about anything?

Aaaaand he was back to square one. Well damn. This was excellent. Very productive. Good hustle out there, Jay.

Sighing gustily, Jason flopped back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to pretend he hadn’t gotten used to how luxurious and cushion-y his ridiculously expensive mattress was. He’d gotten soft, he told himself. Then he scoffed at the idea that the past year and a half of rigorous Robin training and patrols had made him less tough than the pipsqueak he’d been back when living on the street, getting his ass kicked by bigger and badder on the regular. That hadn’t been hardness, that had been bravado.

But it had gotten him this far in life, so maybe there was something to be said for it after all?

Ugh. Decisions were hard. He objected on principle. He also really wanted to understand why he was this nervous…if he could literally fill the guy’s shoes and kick supervillain ass as Robin, what freaking sense did it make that he couldn’t even call him up on the phone?

Maybe you just know better than to ask him questions you don’t really want to hear his answer to, a smug voice said in the back of his mind. It sounded suspiciously like Willis Todd, which was all kinds of weird and fucked up, cuz Jason was damn sure his abusive a-hole of a deadbeat dad had never said anything that insightful in his life.

Which meant it was his own screwed up subconscious - presenting in the voice of his not so dearly departed douchebag dad, no less - that had Jason reacting out of spite, entering the last number and hitting Talk, all while totally on autopilot. Because apparently we’re all making healthy life choices in this Chili’s tonight, Jason snickered somewhat hysterically while his phone rang once, twice, three times.

Ugh. Was he always this fucked up in the head and he just never noticed, or was it a side effect of running around rooftops in a cape. Inquiring minds wanted to know.

“Hello?” Someone said then, answering on the fourth ring. Jason sat bolt upright, his nervous humor vanishing as quickly and unexpectedly as it’d hijacked him in the first place. For all that he’d only actually interacted with the older man a few times, his voice was instantly recognizable. As was his slight confusion.

Right. Because why would Nightwing have the untraceable number of the latest burner phone Bruce had given Jason, when the ever paranoid Bat had him swapping out phones every freaking week? Duh, Jay.

“Uh, its me,” Jason said hastily, as if he could somehow catch up to and overtake the epically long ten second silence he let lapse before his mouth started making words again. “Jason?”

“Jaybird! Hey! What’s going on?” The older vigilante’s tone instantly morphed into one of surprised delight, so apparent even across the phone that Jason actually pulled it away from his ear and stared at it, as if that could explain Nightwing’s inexplicable giddiness. He’d literally only met the dude three times. Give or take a concussion he was forgetting about maybe? Weird.

Then again, the older man was a circus performer from birth. Might just be good at faking being super excited to hear from people? Whatever. Still weird.

“Uh, you said to call if I was ever having, I dunno, issues with Bruce I guess? So I kinda had a question? I mean, if you’re not busy or anything.”

Just one question? Willis’ voice asked snidely, echoing in time with the rapid tripartite beat of Jason’s heart. Since apparently everything Jason said was trying to come out with a question mark attached to the end of it at the moment. Ugh, fuck you, subconscious, Jason thought forcefully, even as he ransacked the recesses of his mind for that bravado he was thinking about earlier. It had to be in here somewhere…

“No worries dude, I’ve got time. Hit me!” Nightwing said cheerfully. His lighthearted cadences were so at odds with the sweat suddenly breaking out on Jason’s forehead, the younger teen couldn’t help but wince in anticipation of its inevitable change once he got his actual question out. This was a bad idea, he decided, way too fucking late for it to make a difference. He had a hunch Nightwing wouldn’t be content to ‘just forget it’ or whatever even if Jason chickened out now.

So he took a deep breath, shrugged and did what Jason Todd did best. Said fuck it, put pedal to the metal, and drove at full speed for the metaphorical police barricade that was his way of picturing all the things telling him He Should Definitely Just Not.

“Do you think I’m someone who could kill somebody in like, cold blood?”

Aaaaand there went the lightheartedness. Well, he’d definitely stone cold killed that, Jason thought grimly into the silence that followed.

“Huh,” Nightwing said at last. “You’re gonna have to give me a second to switch gears here, Jay. I was kinda expecting something along the lines of ‘how do I avoid Bruce giving me the safe sex talk.’”

Jason flushed and nodded jerkily, not that the older man could see it. Still, it’d been enough of a workout just getting to this point. He didn’t trust what might come out of his mouth next if he kept trying to force it. Thankfully Nightwing didn’t make him wait too long before continuing.

“I think anyone’s capable of killing somebody in the right circumstances,” Jason’s predecessor began carefully. Except that was not remotely what he wanted to hear. Or helpful.

“I’m not looking for platitudes,” Jason grit out, not angry at the other vigilante so much as the whole fucked up mess and his inability to think about anything else at this point. “It’s just a simple fucking question. You’ve met me, do you think like, I’d be capable of just killing somebody or not.”

“I’m not offering platitudes,” Nightwing continued calmly, as if he wasn’t phased by the younger boy’s interruption or sudden aggression at all. “And its not a simple question at all. Speaking from experience, most people wouldn’t think of an eight year old as a cold-blooded killer, but that’s what I could have been if Bruce hadn’t stopped me from killing my parents’ murderer when I first tracked him down. And yet that’s still totally different from when I held a gun on Two-Face barely a couple years later, about to shoot him because somebody else told me to, and because I wanted to hurt him like he’d hurt me. Wouldn’t you agree those are two different situations and two different ‘kinds’ of cold-blooded killer? Context is kinda a big deal here.”

Huh. First off…what the fuck? Jason stared blankly up at the ceiling, trying to hurry up the processing functions of his brain because, again, what the fuck? He was like ninety nine percent positive none of that had been in the Dick Grayson Is The Greatest and Here Are All The Reasons Why brochure he’d had read to him every time someone new found out he was Wayne’s newest stray, and like. Uh. Yeah, that part would have definitely stood out. Because once more, with feeling:

“What the fuck?”

Oops. That hadn’t been supposed to be out loud. Bad mouth. Bad.

Nightwing just did a weird kinda half laugh half sigh combo. Rueful, Jason would describe it, if he were describing it to someone else, which it kind of felt like he was, relaying the conversation to himself now that it’d taken a hard right turn into the surreal.

“Blindsided you with that, huh? Sorry, should’ve figured neither of those are the kinda stories Bruce would want to share with you. Then again, I don’t really have any idea what Bruce has told you about me.”

“Not much,” Jason admitted. Which was a major source of irritation, if he was being honest. The much sung praises of Dick Grayson came from literally everyone he met except for Bruce. Who usually just got a pinched expression whenever Jason brought him up, and a rapid subject change that was not nearly as subtle as Bruce seemed to think it was.

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Nightwing sighed. “I hope you haven’t put too much stock in anything else you’ve heard about me then. I’ll admit to a bad habit of enjoying my mystique, so secondhand hearsay tends to lose my best nuances.”

Despite himself, Jason’s lips curved up and he let out a rueful huff of his own. “I mean, this definitely isn’t where I saw this conversation going.”

The older man chuckled. “Thought I was going to just assume the worst and chuck the book at you?”

“Well. Yeah.” Jason shrugged, even though he knew it wouldn’t come across. “Bruce did.”

Nightwing heaved an exasperated breath. “Yeah, that’s kinda the thing about B. Sometimes, he’s great. Other times, he’s an ass. Its kinda an either or thing. He’s never really mastered the art of finding a midpoint between two extremes. Mostly because he’s never seen the point of aiming for middle ground.”

“Well its not like he’s ever really had to,” Jason griped. It just slipped out before he could stop it, leaving him feeling guilty for bad-mouthing B when he wasn’t around to defend himself. Especially since he knew Nightwing wasn’t the guy’s biggest fan these days. But he couldn’t deny it also felt good, in a way.

To his surprise, Nightwing just laughed. And not even in a malicious, spiteful kind of way, but almost relieved.

“God, thank you. You’d think that ‘hey, so my billionaire guardian kinda has entitlement issues’ would be a water is wet kind of revelation, but try saying something like that to pretty much anyone else…”

“And they look at you like you’re an ungrateful asshole?” Jason finished for him. Not that he’d ever actually tried saying that to anyone before, though he’d definitely thought it a time or two. But he could all too easily imagine the reactions he’d get, which was pretty much why he’d never gone so far as to speak the words.

“Yup,” Nightwing drawled, dragging out the p and popping it with emphasis. “And its not about being grateful or not, its just…there are some parts of everyone that just aren’t up for grabs, for other people to weigh in on or take charge of, you know? And a lot of people just don’t get that…because nobody’s ever tried it with them, or had to deal with expectations that…overstep, let’s call it?”

“Is that why you left?”

Jason winced the second it left his mouth. Too far. Definitely way too far, but he’d just gotten unexpectedly comfortable with the back and forth, and now he’d done the overstepping thing himself and was left with just dead air.

But ten seconds of heavy silence stretched into twenty, and went no further, as Nightwing sighed into his side of the phone again.

“The spiteful part of me wants to say it was more of a push than me just up and leaving,” he laughed again, but this time with unmistakable bitterness. “But even while that’s true, its not really the right answer to your question, because no matter how much of a clusterfuck that was at the time, its not…I mean, I knew at the time how to fix it. Where and how I needed to cave in order to make up with him and let things get back not quite to normal, but at least close enough.”

The pause wasn’t as heavy or tense this time, as Jason could almost sense the older man gathering his thoughts, trying to put them into words. He bit his lip rather than risk any more unexpected utterances escaping. This might not have been where he’d thought his phone call would lead, but now that he was here, hearing the answers to questions he’d wanted to ask for over a year and finding them almost comfortably familiar, he wasn’t going to risk distracting Nightwing or shutting him up for well. Anything.

“But it would have meant me caving. Settling in ways that I just…couldn’t. So in a way, yeah, I did leave, it was still my choice. And all of that was definitely a big part of it. I love Bruce, I do. I just couldn’t live with him anymore. Not without feeling like I had to give up my own autonomy and just be what he wanted. Or what he’d expected me to grow up to be, back when he first took me in. And as grateful as I am to him for that, I can’t honestly say I would have stuck around back then if I knew that was the price tag attached. I’m not…I don’t do well with people trying to force me to stick to one place, one thing. I was born on the road, you know? When I was a kid, I expected to spend the rest of my life living like that. Home was people. Not places. And so Gotham…its never fit me quite right, the way it does him, or even Barbara. Its not like I was miserable there, its just.”

“It wouldn’t have been your first choice,” Jason finished again, quietly. There was silence again for awhile.

“No. No, it wouldn’t have been. Not then.”

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collecting-stories · 4 years

Text

Charismatic - JJ Maybank

Request: hi, can I request a jj blurb with the prompt #1: “There’s so many people looking.” - “Well, they don’t have to look if they don’t like it, do they?” Thank you!

A/N: This is the fic that broke my writer’s block.

Outer Banks Masterlist

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

JJ was in the midst of a hilarious story. Or at least everyone in the room seemed engaged enough that it felt like it must be some kind of epic recounting on his part. He was smiling talking, fast, hands moving, and everyone seemed to have stopped what they were doing to pay attention to him. The nice thing about fall was that parties downsized to John B’s house or some other place on the Cut and generally, you could name every face. Most of them went to school with you.

Most of them had helpless crushes on JJ. And who could blame them. He was gorgeous and sweet in that way that made you feel important when he was talking to you. As if some good fortune had smiled down on you just because JJ was giving you his undivided attention for .3 seconds. Maybe it was a kinda pathetic but you felt for them. You had been them until roughly six months ago when something greater than fortune shined on you and all the years spent being friends with JJ had turned into something more.

“What’s happening right now?” John B teased, grabbing a beer out of his fridge and popping the top.

You were sitting on the counter right beside the open door, goosebumps prickling your skin at the feeling of the cold refrigerated air hitting your legs. It was a little too cold for shorts but you had decided to wear them anyway. The hoodie you were sporting clearly did nothing for you, at least the shorts made your legs look good. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that,” John B waved his hand toward the living room area of the Chateau where JJ was talking. Some girl to his left, was her name Anna, you took calc with her, laid her hand on his arm and leaned in close to him.

“The cleavage shot.” You replied, “It is Anna, she always goes for the cleavage.” You watched her angle just so and JJ’s eyes lingered for a split second before he was looking away, passed his listeners, to you. His eyes met yours and you bit your bottom lip to stop from laughing at him, expression like a puppy that knew he was in trouble though you could honestly care less.

When he wasn’t with anyone he liked to fool around, you knew that well enough from all your years as friend and confidant, but you also knew that JJ was always loyal, sometimes to a fault. In six months, you had never even considered the possibility of cheating. It never crossed your mind, you never worried about it.

“It’s disturbing you know these things.” John B replied, watching the group again.

You shrugged, “you know how much crap I used to pull just to get JJ’s attention? I broke my arm on a skateboard for him.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Oh yeah, the sex is amazing.” You replied, laughing when John half spit out his beer before shoving your leg.

“God, don’t tell me that.” He groaned.

“You asked,” You watched JJ get up, heading over to the two of you while someone turned up or restarted the music, you couldn’t be sure. “Hey tell me,” you said as he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, “does the JJ stand for Jim Jones, cause you’re some kind of cult leader, I swear.”

“You’re hilarious.” JJ muttered, popping the top off his beer and kicking back half of it in a single go.

John B sent you a concerned look, glancing out over the rest of the small pogue gathering, searching for Sarah, “I’ll catch you later.”

You nodded, turning your attention back to JJ. When he tried to move passed you extended your leg, socked foot just barely touching the island as you barricaded him.

“Move.”

“No,” you laughed, dropping that leg and extending your other when he tried to turn around. When he turned again you did the same thing only this time, he pushed your leg down and you gripped the countertop to keep yourself from falling over at the sudden jerk of your leg. “What the fuck JJ!”

“I told you to move.”

“I was just teasing you, god,” you muttered, hoping down off the counter.

“Yeah well, you aren’t funny!”

JJ had never been accused of being patient in his life and you knew how short his fuse could be but when he got angry it was usually because there was something to be angry about. He wasn’t one to be too irrational or get mad out of nowhere though there were times when he perceived something that wasn’t true and flipped out over it. You usually let him calm down before you talked it out, never one to like being yelled at, but tonight you were annoyed.

He had been fine five minutes ago, laughing with everyone and now he was going to act like a jerk to you for no apparent reason. You were not in the mood. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” You tried to keep your voice down so no one would notice the two of you arguing on the other side of the island but that was futile, Anna from calc was already casting glances your way and she motioned to her friends to pay attention too. It was like she was waiting for something, like she’d foreseen it and it was all happening according to plan.

“Wrong with me?” JJ downed the rest of his beer, tossing the bottle in the trash. It clashed against others and you jumped from the sudden noise. “At least wait till I’m out of the fucking room before you start flirting with my friends!”

“What are you talking about? I wasn’t flirting with John B.”

“I saw you!”

“I’m allowed to talk to whoever the hell I want, John B included!” Out of the corner of your eye you could see more people paying attention. You could imagine the residual effects of fighting like this in front of everyone. The gossips in the pogue circles were worse than the kooks. Were you and JJ breaking up? Had you been cheating with John B? And then it would morph into different stories, that you were cheating, that you were stringing JJ along. “Can we talk about this somewhere else? Please, there are so many people looking.”

“Well they don’t have to look if they don’t like it, do they?”

“Please can we just talk in the bedroom?” You could hear yourself practically begging him to have this conversation anywhere else. The crowd and the music and the atmosphere of the party were definitely fueling him.

“I’m sure you’d love that.”

“I’m not cheating on you!” You shouted, catching him off guard. You’d had your fair share of arguments, some of them pointless and silly, some more serious, but you were always level-headed. You talked things out first, you never shouted or raised your voice or even engaged when he was angry. You waited until he was ready to talk or you were ready to talk and then the issue was resolved. Seeing you yell like that, hand hitting the countertop, shocked him.

You pushed passed JJ and ran down the hall into Big John’s office, slamming the door shut and sitting against it on the ground, the music a faint murmur now. You couldn’t tell if you were just crying or hyperventilating but either way that tightness in your chest settled in as you tried to breathe. Everyone had been in the room, you had seen Kiara, Sarah, Pope, and John B in the back, toward the door, a sea away from you. If anyone came it wouldn’t be John B, he wasn’t stupid enough to check on you directly after JJ had accused you of flirting or cheating or whatever with him. And you ruled JJ out pretty quickly too. Maybe Pope then, or Sarah, you were closest to both of them.

Someone knocked, “can we talk?” JJ’s voice came through the door and you reached up, holding the door knob so he couldn’t push it open.

You weren’t sure if you wanted to talk to him. You hadn’t even thought of him as being the first person to check on you let alone thought about whether or not you would want him to check on you. Maybe you did, maybe you wanted to know why he thought that you were flirting with your best friend right in front of him.

“Hold on,” you started to get your bearings, letting go of the door knob and moving so you could stand up. JJ, in his overzealousness, swinging the door opening and banging into you. “Ow, fuck JJ, god.”

“Why are you on the floor?”

“Oh sorry I fucking hit you with the door, let me help you up.” You mocked, getting up and crossing your arms in front of you.

“Sorry,” JJ apologized, though a little irritable.

“What?”

“Don’t day what like that, I came to apologize.” He insisted.

“No, you came in so you could bullshit an apology and get back to the party.” You replied. “I should’ve known.”

“You’re being a-“

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence!” You snapped. “I don’t need to hang on you like your precious flock, god, I’m allowed to just sit and chill with my friends. I don’t know what you expect JJ…do you want me to be jealous? I’m not. I’m sorry if you think I would ever cheat on you or flirt with some other guy cause I wouldn’t. And I would never think that you would either, so I don’t give two shits if Anna from calc wants to hang all over you because until like ten minutes ago I was pretty secure in the knowledge that we were going home together at the end of the night.”

JJ stood there, not saying anything for a moment, the sound of the music seeping in beneath the door. You wondered if everyone else had resumed partying, if your friends were all waiting at the end of the hall with baited breath to see what might happen next.

“I like you so much. I did the dumbest shit just to get your attention. John B is my friend, end of, I don’t care about him the way I care about you…I don’t care about anyone the way I care about you.”

“I just…” JJ paused, running a hand through his hair, pulling at the ends a little as if that would help calm him down, “I don’t know, I just looked over and you guys were talking and whatever, yeah, talk to whoever you want but lately it just feels like everything is about him and I don’t know…I don’t give a shit about anyone else, I just wanted your attention.”

You sat down on the edge of Big John’s desk, “we’re really something huh?”

“Yeah,” JJ sighed, leaving the door he’d been standing in front of and coming over to you, stepping between your legs and letting you wrap your arms around his, holding you against him.

“You always have my attention J, you don’t have to do anything special.” You said, face pressed against his shirt.

“Sorry, for real this time, I shouldn’t have freaked out on you.”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t have.” You looked up at him, biting your lip, “you can make it up to me though.”

“Oh yeah, how’s that?”

“The couch is pretty comfortable in here.” You laughed when JJ scooped you up off the table, hands beneath your thighs. He never had to be told twice.

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equestrianwritingsstuff · 3 years

Text

Blood in the Library

Well, I finished it even though I was planning on posting it tomorrow. Not my grandest piece, but to me it has a delectable taste of whump and a little comfort seasoning. Mmmm yum. You can tell I'm hungry. Anway, this is shorter than normal, but, not to be a spoiler, still has my classic cliffhanger.

Warnings: gorey descriptions of blood, collapse/loss of consciousness, descriptions of murder, begging, descriptions of someone's lack of weight and muscles

Then he just... collapsed?

Fell down the stairs in epic slow-mo, eyes turning white just before his head cracked against the concrete surface. Face growing into a snowy blanch as his injuries caught up to his rapidly tiring body.

Civilian rushed forward in a desperate attempt to catch him, but it was an effort close to pointless. He had already fallen deep into a pit of blackness and painless sleep.

Civilian scooped up his fevered body and hugged him close. His bloody head lolled limply across her chest until it settled in the crease of her shoulder, content to just rest there for eternity.

Civilian's eyes scouted his body, taking in the countless bruises and pools of blood. It was a horrendous sight- one that would make a squeamish person retch with revolting nausea. But she wasn't one for that, so she pressed her hands firmly against the worst of the bubbling blood geysers to staunch the streaming flow.

When the blood flow minimized to a manageable amount, she grabbed her phone and proceeded to call the ambulance, but a weak hand stopped her.

Civilian looked down to see fluttering indigo-colored eyes meeting her own rustic browns. They were, indeed, more than beautiful- dare say, gorgeous to some degree. Civilian couldn't help but admire them. The way green swirled into navy... it was a sight that she didn't want to stop seeing.

But of course, her wish was denied when the poking and prodding of the situation reminded her that the injured man was awake and quite distressed.

"No," he begged. "No...nnn, no stop stop... phsl-phslease please no." His shaky hand floated about aimlessly, but the dark azure eyes guaranteed the intensity of the weakly said plea.

For a split second, Civilian was dumbfounded before realizing that she needed to comfort and soothe the man.

"Hey," she set down the phone. Immediately, the man's anguished features relaxed, looking approvingly at the laid phone.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," she told him, not quite understanding his sudden placidity- the painless look of serenity in those irises. It was as if all agony faded with the simple gesture, but the quivering of his lips and sporadic twitches determined otherwise.

"Not that," he slurred in incomplete syllables, his eyes closing despite his best efforts to stay conscious.

"Okay," Civilian went to pick up her phone again, to call the much needed paramedic, but a sudden outburst from the man made her drop the phone, startled.

"No amb'lanch," he cried, but it was a waste if energy. His head dropped back against her, eyes rolling backwards once again. Civilian shook him to the waking world.

"Who are you?" She asked as if that would give her some clearance about not calling the ambulance.

"Villain..." He mumbled, slurred and incoherent, but Civilian heard it as if it was screamed at her. Then, his eyes shut all the way and he was lost to the world.

Civilian dropped the man and scurried to her feet, hands grappling at her cheeks. It was... Villain. One of the most feared criminals in the whole city. The one who strung people up by wires to slowly kill them in the most gruesome way possible.

The one that even heroes didn't dare to cross.

And he was passed out at her feet, bleeding and barely breathing.

She should've turned him in. Turned him in so that the proper authorities could finally arrest the menace that plagued the city- especially now that he was subdued and probably very compliant.

Yet... he was shivering. Shivering from the cold, exhaustion, and pain. It would be merciless to leave him to suffer- possibly die- alone. Civilian had some morals affer all.

Villain didn't. That much was clear from the way he razed cities to the ground. It was clear from the way he mercilessly slaughtered innocents. And it was more than clear when he threw bombs in front of traffic to kill and destroy everything within a half mile radius.

But he was injured.

But he had killed so many others without even blinking an eye.

No one else had to die.

Now, Civilian was not a model of muscles. She was more accurately described as a "bag of bones". Heck, some people even told her to go to a doctor- she had grown in size since then, but still.

So, linking her arms and dragging the villain a foot unlocked new muscles that she didn't even know she had. Not that she had the muscles, but after walking just a little bit, she was exhausted and sore.

"How?" She sighed and slumped down to the ground. The villain was still asleep, not bothered by the ninety degree turn Civilian maneuvered him in.

The library that Civilian volunteered at was lazily sitting itself against the sunset in a silhouetted painting. The stairs leading up to it- the ones Villain fell down- weren't too tall... ish? No, they towered over the pair, guarding the marbled building. White pillars supported the small tiled canopy with vigor, giving the quaint building a classic Roman Empire vibe.

Inside was a small isolated office where Civilian spent her lunch break. It had an expresso machine to satisfy her zealous cravings for the brunette liquid with white creamer topping.

It also had a couple comfortable bean bags that were perfect for the villain to recline upon until he woke up. It wasn't like Civilian was planning on actually tending to the vibrant red gashes. Dragging him to a heated room was enough- a gifted treasure to the villain, she believed- and it would be unlawful to go any further.

It took maybe an hour until the fit figure and skinny one barged through the glass door- the only portion of the exterior that did not hold that Pompeii look. Civilian was dripping with sweat, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Villain had not moved. His face was still and lubricant.

Civilian laid Villain upon the red castle-like carpet that spread through the hallway of the library before shutting the dark sky out, closing the door and locking it.

She then took Villain to the earlier mentioned office with more ease for the red carpet made him slide like a bolt drenched in WD-40. She opened the office. Thankfully, unlike every other room in the building, the walls barricading it were made of plaster, not transparent diamond-shaped panel windows.

She laid him upon a gray beanbag and assessed his wounds before turning to leave.

But a small whimper made her spin back around.

Villain was awake, taking in his surroundings with dazed interest- not really understanding, but realizing his situation, or dilemma, depending on what his half-delirious mind thought. Finally, after a few slow moments of searching the walls for some hidden answer, those dazzling- and slightly familiar- eyes landed on the tiny body of Civilian.

Civilian didn't know what to say. Any statement her mind conjured was shot down with a contradicting question of "what if he asks this" or "won't that make me seem like I care for him".

So she settled on a simple question that anyone would've ask anyone.

"How are you feeling?"

The villain took a while to make sense of the peculiar question. He was, in fact, never asked that from anyone.

Not even-

He shuddered, not wanting to think of the one person who might've once cared for him.

"Weird," the villain replied, eyes shifting downwards to study the masterpiece done on him. Like paint, once it dried on the flesh-covered canvas, it would be an artist's hard work.

The end result.

"Like how?" Civilian wondered, despite her natural instincts to leave.

"Dizzy? Pain, hurts. Don't know," Villain forced himself to meet those kind looking eyes.

"You lost a lot of blood," Civilian answered, setting her body next to his. "I'm pretty sure these need stitches."

Villain nodded, blue eyes ragged with an uncharacteristic emotion. Fear, almost.

"You... Civ'lian?" Villain slurred, his body threatening to shut down once again.

"Yes," Civilian replied. "I am. And you are Villain." The words tasted like hot sauce in her mouth. She just admitted outloud to herself that she was caring for a villain. The most notoriously evil villain in the city, if that fact wasn't stated enough.

"Know you..."

"No, I think you are delirious."

"No. Know you," the villain asserted.

"Okay... who did this to you?" Civilian asked, watching the rapidly fading Villain's face.

"My boss and m' brother," the villain responded, his eyes slipping shut. "...Hero."

The world seemed to stop as the last word was uttered. Hero?

Those eyes. The familiar captivating gaze held in those blueberry-flavored irises. The notable green swirls, speckles of black dust... those were Hero's eyes.

Those were her boyfriend's eyes.

#villain whumpee #civilian caretaker #hero whumper #villain x civilian #writing #hero x civilian #blood tw #tw death mention #heros and villains

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phoenixflames12 · 3 years

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I was tagged by @kcrabb88- thank you so much friend!

1) how many works do you have on AO3?

100

2) what’s your total AO3 word count?

350,714

3) how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

I’ve written for 31 fandoms (mostly single one shots), but the fandoms at the top of my list are Outlander, The Terror (2018), BBC Poldark, Sharpe Series, Les Miserables and Rivers of London

4) what are your top five fics by kudos?

A Daughter Lost, A Father Found- a retelling of Outlander Book 3 ‘Voyager’ considering if Brianna had gone through the stones to find Jamie instead of Claire.

Vergangenheit- My Outlander WWII AU epic saga that traces Jamie (a captain in the 51st Highlanders Division) return from a POW camp and the ways in which he and his children grow and develop in post-war Scotland.

Someone To Die For- A Pride and Prejudice and Zombies one shot in which Fitzwilliam and Lizzie are separated in the chaos of the final battle and come to a realisation that they love each other- aw.

An Endless Night- The prequel to Vergangenheit- a epistolary fic charting a set of letters between Captain Jamie Fraser of the 51st Highlanders Division and his family during his internment in German POW camps.

Resurgam- A missing moment from Outlander Book 6 ‘A Breath of Snow and Ashes’ where Jamie is comforted by Brianna.

5) do you respond to comments? why or why not?

I do and I love doing it! I love trying to explain why I’ve made a particular choice, or trying to flesh out a character’s backstory. It’s also lovely to create a conversation with readers and build a writers’ and readers’ community.

6) what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

After The Battle (a missing moment from Book 8 of the Aubreyad) ends on a pretty angsty note, as does Facing the Ghosts- my Barricade Day fic from 2017 with all of the dead amis appearing to Marius and Cosette.

7) do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t write crossovers!

8) have you ever received hate on a fic?

I think I got hate (or more of a why have you made character x survive and that how dare I not comply to certain parts of that fandom’s collectively hate for said character for some reason) on A Daughter Lost, A Father Found, but otherwise everyone’s been lovely!

9) do you write smut? if so what kind?

I don’t write explicit smut and I don't intend to. It’s either fade to black or the scene starts afterwards.

10) have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge!

11) have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I would love to. If any translators want to translate my fic, please get in touch!

12) have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not officially, but I have had friends who have beta- read for me, and @pudentilla has been the most amazing sound board/inspiration for some things to do with my most recent WIP Known To Those You Love, so I think she deserves a writing credit, or will do when it’s finished!

13) what’s your all-time favourite ship?

Romantic would be John Bridgens/Henry Peglar from The Terror, platonic would be the triumvirate of Enjolras, Combeferre and Courfeyrac from Les Miserables.

14) what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I have a WIP on fanfic.net titled Out of the Darkness which was a canon era partially survival au for Les Miserables (my first chaptered fic!) that I highly doubt I’ll ever finish now.

15) what are your writing strengths?

Creating backgrounds and strong atmospheres of places. I love grounding characters in a set place and developing their surroundings so they’re not just in a black box in my head.

16) what are your writing weaknesses?

Blocking. Getting characters to move. I’m great with getting in their heads and exploring all of their inner thoughts and questions and turmoil and love etc, but getting them from point a to point b? Agh! Save me!

17) what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’m a fan, but it needs to be done well and not be glaring. I did it with my Outlander stuff with Gaelic because it’s such a big part of the canon.

18) what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter. Definitely.

19) what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I don’t know!! That’s really hard! I’m loving writing Known To Those You Love and I loved writing Vergangenheit because that’s when I really came into myself as a long fic author and got to grips with consistent deep dives into research, plotting and planning as I went along. I also got to write a love letter to Scotland whilst living in Yorkshire, so that was a bonus! I also loved writing On Loving A Wounded Boy, because I got to give Ben Perkins a happy ending (he doesn’t die in this and had the chance to flesh out Miranda, who is barely a character in the film that she appears in at all.) So probably a toss up between those three if I really had to choose.

I will no pressure tag: @pudentilla, @silvermagpies, @boilyerheid and anyone else who wants to have a go!

#phoenixflames12 does memes #q + a #fanfiction writing things

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solalunar-eclipse · 3 years

Text

Scars You Can’t See - Chapter 8

Chapter title: Countdown

Word count: about 3500 words

Author’s Note: I tried to make this one slightly more light-hearted, but we’ll see if that worked out! Also writing fight scenes is difficult.

First | Previous | Next

...

At this rate, it was honestly a miracle that Tails hadn’t had to buy a new carpet yet.

Thankfully for Sonic’s sanity, his little brother’s determination to preserve their house meant that he’d been given lots of free rein to run around outside whenever he felt like leaving. He’d also been given fewer chores lately, as Tails knew from experience that Sonic did not thrive on order and routine like he did.

It had been three days since their visit from G.U.N. and their last contact from Omega- and Team Dark in general. Though he never said as much, Sonic was really having an issue with the fact that Tails had gotten to contact his friend twice by now, while he hadn’t heard from Shadow in ages. He tried his best not to worry, but it had just been such a long time since he’d spoken with the other hedgehog.

And Omega had said that Shadow was struggling...had practically had to relive one of his most traumatic memories….

Sonic decided that he didn’t care about any of the hybrid’s usual thoughts about expressing emotions or vulnerability- the second he got to see Shadow for real, that guy wouldn’t be able to escape the hug he had coming. The hero was practically determined to drag his friend (because they were friends, no matter what Shadow might say) to a therapist, too, since Chaos knew the guy needed it.

The blue hedgehog slowed down considerably and began to stalk through the forest instead, trying to get the majority of his anger out through his legs and movement. It wouldn’t do for Tails to see him like this…

Sonic’s thoughts circled back to how his hands were tied by what he’d promised Shadow- the hybrid had been so insistent, but now Sonic regretted agreeing not to go after G.U.N. Truthfully, the only reason he hadn’t broken his promise already was because while Tails was an incredibly clever and talented person, he could never forgive himself if the young fox got hurt. Otherwise, he would absolutely have long since blasted into G.U.N.’s headquarters, grabbed the commander by the front of his military uniform and told him in no uncertain terms that he had better stop hunting Team Dark and he’d better do it immediately. The hero had had enough of his friends suffering while he was forced to sit safe at home and wait.

His phone buzzed then, pulling him out of his tangled web of thoughts. Tugging it out of his windswept mess of quills, he saw that it was Tails calling and of course picked up immediately.

“Yeah, lil’ bro, what’s up?” he asked, hoping that most of the frustration had left his voice by now.

“Uh, Sonic?” the fox said, sounding pretty tense himself. “Since those agents came to our house a couple of days ago, I managed to hack into G.U.N.’s main server and now I can see some of what they’re doing- mostly where the organisation's sending people and all that.”

“Epic!” Sonic cheered. He began to wonder- could they use this to help their fugitive friends?

“Well, yeah, it would be...except that they’re sending an entire squad to our house. Like, right now.”

His grin froze in place. A squad of soldiers? The hero almost felt a grim sort of delight in that- finally, he’d be able to vent some of his frustration on the organization that had caused this whole mess. He hoped the house would remain standing, though. Tails had built it around a tree from scratch and was really proud of it.

Sonic decided he’d work that out once he got home, and just a moment later, a sonic boom exploded across the landscape as he took off.

…

Once the hero arrived at home, the duo began to set up the house’s various defense mechanisms- since they were a) very famous, b) hated by one of the most powerful supervillains in the world and c) one of them was an engineer, it was only natural that the house would be at least as well defended as a high-security bank vault. Sonic practically bounced around the house as he helped activate certain parts of their machinery, nervous tension running high. G.U.N. wasn’t going to be pulling any punches this time, he was sure of it.

Tails, by contrast, was absolutely calm. The fox was ridiculously mature for his age, and Sonic suspected that he instinctively knew by now when he needed to counteract his elder brother’s wild energy. Once everything was set up, the two built a makeshift barricade as a last resort at the front door, and waited.

Thankfully for Tails’s sanity, it didn’t take long for the trucks to arrive.

As the three trailer trucks parked outside his house, ten soldiers poured out of each one, while several technicians began to set up some sort of weird-looking prototype laser device. The fox laughed for a second at the sight of it in a way that sent a few chills down Sonic’s spine. His brother could be downright terrifying at times.

Tails scoffed. “Please. That laser doesn’t have the power output to break my shields….wait.

“What the heck?”

The four technicians had begun to hook up the laser to- of all things- one of Eggman’s old power cores that he usually used in his bases.

The young engineer tugged at his tails in frustration. “That’s so dumb! Sure, it might boost the laser’s strength, but there’s at least a twenty percent chance it’ll blow up in their faces! A small machine like that wasn’t made to withstand the amount of power it takes to charge an entire Eggman base!”

Sonic blinked and looked at his brother. “Those aren’t bad odds….”

“They aren’t good ones, either! I’d never let someone use a creation of mine with a one in five chance of failure. It’s just embarrassing! And it shows how far behind their engineers are!” Tails’s fur was fluffed up in outrage and irritation.

The hero almost laughed. “That’s what you complain about first? Not the fact that they’re gonna try and blow up our house?” he asked, his tone light. He snatched up the fox and rushed them both away from the front door as a precaution- that was definitely going to be their first target.

Sonic pushed Tails into the highest room in the house, before launching himself out the window and curling up into a deadly sphere of razor-sharp spikes. He vaguely heard one soldier yell something in a panicked voice, but didn’t pay much attention to it. He slammed into the ground, still in a ball, and tore off towards the laser cannon at top speed, leaving a cloud of dust behind him as he went.

Irritatingly, the soldiers’ gunfire spattered all around the cannon, making it impossible to tear the thing apart. Sparks flew across the ground as Sonic careened around it before jumping up into a running stance and taking off in their direction. The air snapped around him as he broke the sound barrier and landed a furious kick on one of the trucks, denting the heavy steel and flipping it onto its side.

Sonic stumbled as a loud explosion rocked the ground, but kept sprinting after a glance assured him that Tails’s shields had held against the blast. The hedgehog smacked one man’s rifle out of his hand, the sheer speed of the blow bending it in half (and was almost certain he heard a distinct ‘why do we keep fighting this guy with guns?’) before he moved on.

A dozen soldiers were on the ground either unconscious or groaning in pain by the time someone thought to radio for reinforcements- which they’d apparently had on standby ready to be helicoptered in. The blue blur wasn’t sure whether this high estimation of his fighting skills was something he should be proud of...or not.

The fur prickled on the back of Sonic’s neck as a humming noise filled the air.

A moment later, he threw himself to the ground as a red-hot laser carved a wide arc above him, slicing through the area where his midriff was a few seconds ago. He heard a faint yell of outrage from inside the house above all the noise, and stuck out his arm for a quick thumbs-up to Tails.

A couple of seconds later, one very familiar and well-used earpiece landed in the dirt next to him as the laser swung back across the battlefield to refocus on their shields. Sonic shoved it into one blue ear before running up the side of the second truck and backflipping to land behind several soldiers. “Miss me, guys?” he asked smugly, before smirking and delivering several well-placed blows to said soldiers’ kneecaps that left all three doubled over on the ground. None of them had even seen him as he moved, which was really a testament to Sonic’s skill.

Tails’s voice crackled to life in his ear as he sent another person flying. “Awesome job! By the way, they’ve already fired the cannon three times, so either their luck is going to be great with this next one, or else…”

The cannon’s shot breached the shields, but Sonic noticed as he ran that its casing was burning red-hot, and-

A shockwave blasted out from the cannon, making all four of its attendants fly into the air, yet in the seconds before they hit the ground, Sonic had time to:

Heave a lengthy sigh at their overestimation of the cannon.

Decide that even if they were working for G.U.N., a life was still a life.

Run around and safely place all four of them inside of a truck...

And avoid the explosion as it tore up the ground within a ten-foot radius of the machine.

(The hero had known for quite some time that being the fastest thing alive meant that he could do some really cool tricks.)

Dirt exploded in all directions, leaving a crater and a smoking lump of metal on the ground. Unfortunately, though, the house’s main defenses were down, and any second now, the helicopter would be there with enough soldiers to take out the rest. And his little brother was still inside...

As though he’d heard the hedgehog’s thoughts, Tails’s voice crackled to life through the speaker. “Sonic! The reinforcements are almost here- we can’t take them all, even if I come out there!”

“Not happening, pal, not unless you’ve got your mech.” Sonic insisted, putting on his ‘big brother’ voice. “Hey, wait- where’re they going?” he asked suddenly, watching as the remaining soldiers retreated to take cover behind one of their trucks. That wouldn’t really help them, but Sonic knew that they knew he couldn’t take the whole organization on by himself.

“They’re waiting it out until the rest arrive...but we won’t be here by then.” Tails said, sounding confident.

“And why’s that, pal?” He folded his arms, keeping one eye on the soldiers.

“Because-” and here Sonic suddenly heard a loud roaring noise coming from the back of the house, “-we’re going to get out of here!”

That was when the Tornado soared directly over their heads.

The G.U.N. soldiers certainly tried to shoot the plane down, but of course, they couldn’t keep up with Tails’s expert flying. Bullets embedded themselves into nothing but trees as it flew away into the forest, a blue streak taking off after it at top speed. Sonic kept up with the red biplane easily, just waiting for the right moment to...there!

He launched himself off a particularly well-placed branch, flinging himself high into the air before landing perfectly on the wing of the plane. “Alright, Tails,” he yelled, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the engine, “where to now?”

The kitsune winced and tapped his ear. “Earpiece, remember?” he asked, and Sonic cringed, realizing that he had forgotten what it was like to wear the little speaker while on the Tornado.

“Ahah, gotcha.” he said sheepishly. “So?”

Tails sighed, but not in an irritated manner. “Angel Island- nobody can find it if Knuckles wants to stay hidden. I called him up while you were out front and he said we could crash there.”

“Oh, sweet!” Sonic said happily. “It’ll be like a sleep...over…”

He trailed off weakly, suddenly remembering their home. “Sorry about the house, pal...I know ya worked hard on it.” The hero ran a hand through his quills, unwilling to meet the other’s eyes.

“It’s okay.” Tails said bravely. “I brought a few things-” he gestured to the backseat- “including all my blueprints, so I can always build us another. And besides…” here he leaned forward, catching Sonic’s eye, “home is wherever we are, so long as we’re together.”

The blue blur quickly nodded before looking down pointedly at the biplane’s wing, hoping strongly that Tails didn’t notice that his eyes had begun to glisten just a little more than usual.

(He did, though.)

…

Knuckles was happy to see them, of course, if a little less obviously so than usual due to the circumstances that had forced the two into this situation. The guardian immediately began to move the island to a new area where it would be hidden from view, while Sonic and Tails just relaxed and looked through the various items that the latter had thought to bring: a spare pair of shoes for Sonic, a toolbox and the aforementioned blueprints for Tails, plenty of food for the three of them, and of course lots of important technology.

As Tails left to go check on Knuckles, the blue hedgehog stretched out on the grass and heaved a deep sigh. What he’d give to know how Team Dark was doing right now…

…

Two days later, he found out.

The very moment that the team released the video, all three inhabitants of Angel Island sat down to watch it on Tails’s screen. The fox had been constantly monitoring the Internet for anything about the other team, especially their social media, so of course he was alerted the second anything came up.

Before they started the video, the hero had been vibrating with energy.

By the end of the section about the ARK, he was completely still, his eyes as wide as they could go.

Tails paused the video there, as the massive wave of responses was already starting to flow. Sonic blinked back to reality to discover that his nails had nearly torn holes through his gloves- that was how tightly he was clenching his fists. He rolled his shoulders, trying to get the tension to leave his body, but he couldn’t stop thinking.

How in the name of Chaos did Shadow watch that?

They agreed that Tails would watch the rest while the other two stepped up to support their friends, and support they certainly did. Both of their tempers were running hot, and more than once the fox, glancing over their shoulders, had to remind them that caps lock was not going to be helpful right now.

Not long after Team Dark had stopped responding to questions, Sonic and Knuckles sat back down to view the other part of the video. They watched in shock as the peace and power of that meeting was violated, people arrested just like that, and yet neither of them had heard anything about this event.

Immediately afterwards, the latter got right back onto his phone and started typing out absolutely vicious responses to some of the more ridiculous conspiracy theorists. His violet eyes were narrowed in anger as he tore into their ideas- while he might not be able to convince the people themselves, he could hopefully stop more from being sucked in.

Sonic, meanwhile, just lay half on his side in the grass for a minute, trying to restrain the urge to scream. Why hadn’t he done more damage to G.U.N. when he’d had the chance? Why hadn’t he been able to see that this ran so deep?

Sonic turned his head to the side to look at his brother. “Tails?” he asked, trying to keep his voice under control. “Where’s Team Dark gonna go next, d’ya think?”

The kitsune frowned. “I don’t know...but if I had to guess, they’re probably trying to figure out how deep this whole problem goes. That’s what I think we’d do if we were in that situation, at any rate. To find that kind of stuff, though, they’d have to head straight to Central City and hack directly into G.U.N.’s mainframe...which would be incredibly risky on a good day.”

Sonic shot upright. “What if they are gonna do that next?”

Tails shook his head vehemently. “After running away from the entire organization for so long? That’d practically be a suicide mission! Even if they somehow managed to escape with the information, G.U.N. would be able to hunt them down in no time!”

The two brothers stared at each other. “But that sounds like them….doesn’t it.” Tails sighed, looking down at the grass.

“Knux!” Sonic yelled, rushing over to where the guardian sat. “We have to hang around Central City, man. If the team’s gonna head anywhere, it’ll be there. And if they’ll be in that much trouble by the time they get out of there, we have to be there to pick them up.”

Knuckles leveled him with a stare so flat it put sheets of paper to shame. “Sonic. Literally three days ago, I helped you guys escape G.U.N. and we have been hiding ever since. And now you want me to move my island, with the last ruins of my tribe’s temple and my Master Emerald, within reach of an organization that would give anything to be able to take it all for their scientists to look at.

“No. Way.”

The hedgehog widened his stance. “Knuckles.” he began, stabbing a finger at the ground for emphasis. “Literally ten days ago, Team Dark escaped G.U.N. all by themselves and have been on their own ever since. And now you want us to leave our friends, and remember, your girlfriend at the mercy of that organization, for the sake of a giant rock.

“Yes way. Absolutely.”

Knuckles scowled and blushed, avoiding Sonic’s stare after that mention of Rouge. “I guess….if we stayed away from the city itself and out of sight….”

Tails decided that this was a slightly safer moment to chime in. “I’ll try and monitor the airwaves in the area- we can move away if we think they’ve noticed us!”

“All of this is assuming that they’re even actually there.” the echidna replied, seeming slightly irritated at being outnumbered.

“It isn’t the most logical place for them to go.” Tails agreed. “It’s ridiculously dangerous, and G.U.N. probably knows that. But, it’s also their most powerful building, which means that it’s going to have all of the more recent files there.

“While this video is some damaging evidence, it’s not nearly enough to permanently damage their standing overall...they definitely have the cash to sneak out of this level of bad press. A bigger release- now that we know this isn’t a one-time event- is definitely the best way to deal with them. And what better way to do it than to find all their super-secret files at the source?”

Sonic sighed. “Plus, I’ve got a feeling G.U.N.’s gonna underestimate that team’s habit of suffering to save others.” His shoulders sagged slightly at the thought, but he felt a little bit of the weight lift off of them when Tails leaned against him slightly with an understanding look.

The echidna watched them sympathetically for a moment before remembering that he was supposed to be arguing against them. “Well, why don’t they just go back to whatever place they busted first? That sure wasn’t in Central City.”

Sonic rolled his eyes. “It’s ‘cause they’d be expecting them there, knucklehead. Never return to the scene of the crime. That’s what they say in all the TV shows, right, Tails?”

“Well, while this is not a TV show, Sonic, you’re right.” the kitsune said, sighing. “That’s another reason for them to go to Central City.

Knuckles gave a mixture of a sigh and a growl, stalking back to the altar where the Master Emerald floated. “Fine. But if this goes south, I am blaming your-” he pointed a vicious finger at Sonic- “spiky butt for all of it.”

The hero grinned at his friend in a way he knew got under his spines, and was rewarded with a huff and another grumble. Yet the island still began to move, shifting eastward from the center of the country towards Central City.

Hold on, guys. Sonic thought, feeling properly hopeful for the first time in over a week. We’re on our way.

#shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e 123 omega #team dark #scars you can't see #sycs #i tend to imagine certain scenes from fanfics as movie scenes #and i think that shows in the fight in this chapter #by the way #i'll try and release a new chapter every two weeks #but that schedule is very #very #VERY tentative #there should probably be about 13 chapters in all #give or take #hope you're having a nice day! thanks for reading!#(and i hope this chapter turned out alright too)#sol’s fanfiction

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thedragonweasley · 3 years

Text

Guys

*wipes laughter induced tears away*

Fred and George swap out the Fire Breathing Chicken out for a Cockatrice. I am absolutely dying.

After the debacle with Charlie's "rescue" of the theiving variety, Hogwarts abandoned any attempt at further field trips and any long term goals the twins had begun devising had to be shelved for future reassignment.

But as luck would have it, they were awfully adorable kids and encountered very little resistance from Arthur when convincing him to bring them to work. He had seen the Chap from Department of Law Enforcement with his little ones, it seemed like a great way to bond. Oh, Arthur.

So they go, and they don't know what they are looking for exactly, but they just know they are going to find it there. The pair are topling over each other with wonder, Fred last second pulling George out of the path of a rather fast moving woman with a box and sticking out of the back of that box is a long reptilian tail that coiled lazily around the woman's wrist.

Target acquired. That was it. Whatever it was.

They manage to peel themselves off of Arthur, unbeknownst to him. George spotting the individual and signals to Fred where to go. I see an almost invisible language between the two of them, something that isn't heard by anyone else, it's just theirs.

Anywayyyy, comence epic kid Fred and George scene, dramatic music, small red heads bobbing amongst dark robed wizards. Im sure they manage to to knick some crazy cool artifact that Fred just thought was shiny. And then the moment of the heist, they swindle the unsuspecting woman and make off with her mystery box.

The boys make their way back towards their father who is finishing up the paperwork to even get them in...because it's the twins. George had swiped a bag of Molly's with an extension charm and stashed the creature. They proceed to act out what I would only assume was one of many scripted acts to ensure they could get out of something.

They feign ill and insist they have to go home to which Arthur precariously agreed, squinting at George and then on to Fred. They get home and the pair convincingly trudge themselves off to their rooms, from where they immediately barricade the door and pull out the box of unknown contents.

Fred had a strainer on his head and George was tightly gripping a beaters bat Bill had made for him to be his size. George was also the one to actually open the box, he lifted the lid slowly.

Out pops the head of a mostly rooster looking chicken. It was the head of a rooster, and some other parts were chicken, but it had a lizards tail that was almost crocodilian in appearance and it's wings were, well, almost dragon like; even its face was sharper and fiercer than even the fire breathing chicken.

And it dawned in them, well Fred first.

"George, we have to-"

"-put it with the chickens, yes, it's perfect!" George finishes.

So they wait and when night falls the twins make their way past the floors of their slumbering family. They have named it at this point, something like Frankenfurth. Something absurd, probably with a suffix of sorts. They release Sir Frankenfurth with the rest of the flock and surreptitiously returned to their rooms. Waiting for morning to come and to see who would win their wager. George had two knuts on hearing moms shrieks before the roosters and Fred's money was on Charlie.

The sun rose and while neither boy won, because the rooster was the first to break the morning silence Molly was the second to follow because they didn't technically have a rooster. There were a few casualties with the FBC before they could catch it and bring it back to the ministry.

Enter Charlie, who hears Molly asking about the chickens all the way from his room and immediately jolts up and out of bed. He haphazardly throws a shirt and shoes on and runs out behind the house to see if his firey friend had somehow returned to him. But instead of the FBC it was the Cockatrice, but Charlie didn't know about this guy, that he existed or that he had been abducted by two dangerously brilliant wizard children.

What Charlie did know, however, was that he had casted a wonky spell on a FBC to make it into a dragon. So sleepy, groggy little Charlie just starts crying and hugging Sir Frankenfurth who has, up until this point been a rather good sport. And as Charlie is sobbing into this dragon chicken who is just letting the boy do it Arthur and Molly are watching and listening to their son thank Merlin for bringing his chicken back and how he couldn't believe the spell really worked. Arthur's fingers were pinching the bridge of his nose and Molly stood in the window, eye twitching dangerously, for at least 120 seconds before bounding her way to the second floor where two smiling little boys whispered "you're welcome" to their big brother from their pillows.

I still don't know if this is a head canon about the twins, Charlie or the chicken.

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creek-cryptid-deluxe · 3 years

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Guys... I nearly committed a murder last night. I would have immediately posted asking you all to be at my trial as a show of support & to vouch for the victim very much deserving it & it being a long time coming.

"Dr. M, just who was this potential victim?"

Who else but my fucking father.

This man text me from the park last night: "We are on our way home. We may have gotten a small dose of skunk, but I can't tell for sure" i quickly let him know that if they did indeed get into skunk turf, that he would be going out for supplies to do specialized repeated washings on them.

So what does this man do? Does he take them into the yard & barricade them back there til I can make an assessment (because it is a WELL established fact that he legitimately can't smell anything. Never has been able to)?

This is my dad we are talking about so no. Why on earth would he do the sensible thing? Instead he RELEASED THEM INTO THE FUCKING HOUSE. I immediately go blind in one eye from the instant migraine & start puking. The Spawn & I heard them outside while googling remedies because OF COURSE Bailey immediately hopped up on my bed. The stench went through the thick dog blanket, duvet cover, duvet, sheets, and into mattress.

The Spawn looks around to give my dad the list of supplies while I throw open windows & authorize her to use whatever candles & incense necessary. He's nowhere to be found.

She tells me to get outside, brings out supplies for me to just camp out front & smash sheets of glass for her project, then goes upstairs to get incense, candles, & anything else she can find. While up there she stumbles upon my father, who is in a bathroom running a bath. She asked what he's doing & his answer made her SEETHE.

"I'm going to wash Bailey & then just ride it out."

This spitfire 17 yr old looked him in the face & said "Are you shitting me? You think you can just 'ride it out'? Are you the only person living here? Because if you are, that totally works since you can't smell for shit. But mom currently is out front vomiting with vision in only one eye & everything on her bed INCLUDING THE MATTRESS reeks of skunk. So yeah you can ride it out. But Mom will live at Grandma's for 2 weeks & you'll be replacing her rugs, couch, chair, mattress, pillows, and the rest of her bedding. OR you can go get these supplies, you and I can treat the dogs out back, as many times as we need, while helping mom put all her stuff through multiple washes to fix what you've done."

He spent the next 3 hrs sulking while getting shit done via The Spawn's instruction. At some point he apologized.

I was up til 3... and still have more washing. PLUS there's some severe storms rolling through tonight thru Thursday so I have the epic pain from that.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. The AUDACITY of that fool.

HOWEVER on the other hand, The Spawn really pulls it out during a crisis. This kid swept in, took charge after seeing the state I was left in, & GOT SHIT DONE. She was NOT here for anyone's shit. Then, around 1130 when all that could be done for that moment was done, she sat out front with me chatting, eating sour patch kids, working on her sidewalk mosaic project while I broke glass for it until about 1 am.

Someone raised that kid right.

Don't appropriate my misfortune. Or I'll murder you alongside my father.

#Adventures of Bailey and Indie #apparently Indie went to inspect a patch of tall grass #she had immediate regrets quickly backing up #but it was too late #after 4 washings her head still smells AWFUL

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cometomecosette · 4 years

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US 3rd National Tour, Los Angeles, February 7, 2000: Part 11 (“Bring Him Home,” “Dawn of Anguish,” “Second Attack (Death of Gavroche),” “The Final Battle” and “Dog Eats Dog”)

Ivan Rutherford as Jean Valjean, Kevin Earley as Enjolas, Tim Howar as Marius, Christopher Carlson as Gavroche, Trent Blanton as Grantaire, Stephen Bishop as Javert, J.P. Dougherty as Thénardier

Ivan’s “Bring Him Home” is beautiful.

I hope that someday, somehow I see a production of Les Mis that includes the “Drink With Me” reprise. It add so much more emotional weight than there is when the women simply hurry off and the battle commences. By the way, here’s a question for people who were fans before the cuts were made. Did the “Drink With Me” reprise always end with Enjolras and Marius clasping arms at the top of the barricade? Was this a universal part of Nunn and Caird’s staging? It’s a beautiful reinforcement of Enjolras and Marius’s friendship and Marius’s now-unwavering loyalty to his friends, but still, if I were to direct a new production, I'd be tempted to have Grantaire share that moment with Enjolras instead. I think it might be a better moment for their reconciliation than “Drink With Me.”

Christopher’s Gavroche is still less vivid than others I’ve seen, and the moment of his death looks slightly unconvincing (he breaks the fall with his hands a bit too obviously), but he still gives a solid performance overall.

To the very end, Kevin’s Enjolras is fully believable as the staunch, dignified, heroic leader, yet still a human being. His slow descent from the barricade after Gavroche’s death – the only movement onstage while everyone else is frozen in shock and grief – and seeming obliviousness to the offstage officer’s voice as he stands and ponders what’s happened and what’s to come is both poignant and true to the spirit of Hugo’s Enjolras. We can sense his pain, yet he faces it with stoic dignity and undying courage. His “Let others rise...” is powerful, even though he neither shouts nor goes for the high note on “...is free!”

And then there’s the heartbreaking moment after Marius falls, when Enjolras hurries to him, throws poor Grantaire aside, and tries vainly and irrationally to revive his seemingly dead friend before rushing off to his own death. Some might argue that this is out of character for Hugo’s Enjolras, and it’s definitely not realistic for the middle of a battle when, as Hugo repeatedly writes, you can’t stop for anything. But it’s moving, although I would have liked a more meaningful last interaction with Grantaire than just a quick glance.

The fall of the barricade and the tableau of Enjolras’s body on the barricade are epic and heartbreaking, as always. No other staging can surpass the original.

J.P.’s Thénardier definitely feels more alive in his sinister scenes than in the comedy scenes. I’m not quite sure why I always remembered him as being mainly a comic Thénardier. It was probably his looks, I’m sorry to say – it was too easy to mentally pigeonhole him as “the funny fat guy.” At any rate, his “Dog Eats Dog” is deliciously dark and mocking.

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xoruffitup · 5 years

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The Report & Marriage Story: Adam Driver at TIFF

(If you just want to skip down to one/both of the film recaps, scroll on down to The Report and Marriage Story bolded headings. :)) There are some pics and vids down there too!)

So my friend Sarah and I spent just over 24 hours in Toronto, and it’s no exaggeration to say that during those 24 hours Adam made us feel the entire spectrum of every single possible human emotion. The Report was a nerve-wracking, intelligent, quick-witted political drama set at a break-neck pace of horrific headline after shuddering truth after sickening revelation. Marriage Story was nothing short of a masterpiece - delivering laughs, heartbreak, emotional turmoil, tears, and aching poignancy. I’m not usually one for romantic or real-life dramas like Marriage Story, but damn if that film wasn’t literally one of the most moving and powerful pieces of cinema I’ve seen in recent memory. The Report rises to the same standards, but for completely different reasons.

The films themselves are so incredibly well made in terms of writing and production, but seeing Adam in two major leading roles back to back that couldn’t have been more utterly different in tone or persona was nothing short of flooring. I know this, and of course most of you reading this also know, but GOD it isn’t even possible to fully describe the breadth and sheer force of Adam’s talent. The performances were light years apart, and yet both seared with completely unique energy that just radiated off the screen. I’ve watched almost everything Adam has appeared in, I know he’s the best actor of his generation, and yet he still manages to completely stun me with his seemingly never-ending ability to reveal an entirely different way of being in a new role. Beyond simply an accent or posture, Adam has this unparalleled ability to not only embody a completely novel persona each time, but to then completely naturally reveal that persona’s deepest, truest essence with the smallest facial twitch, turn of his head, or break in his voice. Watching him in a fresh role is literally like discovering a new facet of the human experience.

Watching these superb films in a setting like this massive film festival, where the audience was riveted and excited to engage with the content, elevated both of the viewing experiences to monumental heights. THEN, there was the fact that before and after each screening, Adam and the rest of the main cast members would come on stage with the director to speak about the film and answer questions. This of course meant – being me – that even the slightest glimpse of him would send me into silent fits of glee and awe. So combine being in Adam’s presence repeatedly and for rather long stretches of time with the emotional hurricane powerhouse of not just one but two film epics, ANNND yup it was a recipe for Biggest Emotional Rollercoaster Trainwreck Ever Known To Man. :’)

I did (somehow) manage to keep myself together! Enough so that I asked Adam a question during the Marriage Story Q&A! ;_____; (Sarah was trying to film covertly so needed a second to achieve that zoom action!)

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I couldn’t even tell you how it’s possible to string two coherent words together while speaking to 6’2” of well-dressed Talented Babe who’s fucking radiant in person, because it’s literally like an out-of-body experience where some alter ego screaming ‘TALK! TO! HIM!’ just takes over my body while the rest of me is floating off into the stratosphere!!!! (Skip on down to the Marriage Story movie analysis for more info on what I was asking about.)

Okay so let me back up and go through the day chronologically so I have SOME organization for my fangirl thoughts!

I got into Toronto from a 14-hour bus ride at 8:30 AM; Sarah got in on a flight at 9:30. We met up at our hotel and went straight to the theatre where the premium screenings would be taking place. We were able to get front barrier spots along the street and who soon arrived but none other than….!

Our lord and savior Rian Johnson, all hail! He directed the movie Knives Out that was playing at 11 AM in the same theatre. We took turns grabbing coffees because brrrr the Toronto morning was a bit nippy. The Report screening was scheduled to start at 1:45, but none of the cast had shown up yet as of 1:00. Shortly after, big cars started to pull up and Annette Bening and Jon Hamm arrived! We started nail-biting a bit at this point, because we needed to get into the theater 15 minutes before the movie started otherwise they might give our tickets away to people in the Rush Ticket line, but Adam hadn’t arrived yet and there was a chance he would sign for the barricade when he did. But once it started ticking below 15 minutes and still no sign of Adam (tension was real – the whole crowd would go quiet every time a car pulled up, then all sigh in disappointment when someone other than Adam got out), we called it and went to join the Ticketholder line to enter theatre.

WELL, good thing we did! Turns out Adam arrived late and had to rush inside right away, and we had the very serendipitous timing of walking past the secret elevator entrance up into the theater RIGHT when the elevator doors opened and Adam appeared, walking out and into the theater auditorium!! My heart slapped me in the face a bit (a lot) when we caught that glimpse of him so close up. I know there are plenty of pics now but he looked sO striking and sleek in that understated, classic blue suit. He’s SO taLL and still so massive when he’s a few feet away, don’t worry guys he looked plenty healthy even if without the Kylo Ren bulk <333 IT WAS GREAT. I COULD CRY ABOUT JUST THAT MOMENT. God help me with everything that would follow :’’’’’)

Before The Report started, Director Scott Z Burns came on stage to give a brief introduction. This was the first time the film was screening outside of the US and he was very much looking forward to the response and a wider dialogue about the issues raised in the film. He introduced the cast, and was joined on stage by the producer, Jon Hamm (who came on stage in a very silly fashion – see vid below), Annette Bening, and then Adam. And damn if that man didn’t look even MORE drop dead beautiful up there in stage lights. Be still, my heart.

…fat chance of that happening, because my heart was about to rev up into breakneck pace for the following 2.5 hours of the film.

The Report (We’re about to get very spoilery, fair warning!)

Movies are often called “important.” This one is more than that; it is imperative. The tragedy that will plague this film is that much like the staffers of the Senate and CIA that bicker back and forth throughout the decade chronicled in this movie; unproductive bickering will continue between those who appreciate a difficult truth-seeking film like this, and those that will disparage it knowing only the bare minimum of its premise. The latter will do so because of their unswerving understanding of American Patriotism to mean that America comes first, that there’s no justification more ironclad and unquestionable than national security, and America wins no matter the cost.

But. If by some miracle, the people of that latter group could be corralled into watching this film, it just might change their minds.

This movie is difficult. It is horrifying, at times nauseating. It challenges you as the investigations and counter-investigations build over each other, as the conflicting characterizations of the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) program multiply, and yet even for all that, its takeaway hits you with clarity that is both sobering and impartial.

“National security” rationales were a chimera for barbarisms that achieved nothing. The US government tortured, degraded, and murdered prisoners at its mercy for no demonstrable reason or result. One of the most on-the-nose scenes where all the many moving parts of this complex, dirty history come together is when Dan meets with a New York Times journalist in his car towards the end, as he debates giving his report to the press to release when he fears government red tape will never let it see the light of day. The reporter asks him something like, “Why did the CIA keep doing it, if it wasn’t working?”

After two head-spinning, sickening, revelatory two hours, Dan compresses it all down to something like: “After 9/11 everyone was scared, and the CIA used that fear to act with impunity. They resorted to illegal means to try to keep some control of the situation. They knew it was wrong, and they knew it wasn’t working, so they became more desperate for results to justify it. And it was easy, because the detainees looked different than us. They spoke a different language than us, with different values.”

And so it spiraled to darker and darker depths, in which one failure to produce information by dubious means was taken to justify the next escalation in interrogation techniques.

This is where I need to warn everyone that this is not easy viewing. This film doesn’t let you shy away from what these interrogation techniques really meant. It doesn’t sanitize. You will see waterboarding happening. You will see people naked and chained in cells. You will see glimpses of even worse depravities. And then you will see the psychologist contractors who came to the black sites and claimed with utterly clueless, infuriating impunity that no, they’d never interrogated a terrorist before; no, they didn’t know anything about international law or the rights to trial and legal counsel. (“You think he’s getting a trial?” one said skeptically when his techniques were questioned.) But what they did know was the human brain and how to break it down. Then, you will see the CIA top brass back in DC who never saw with their own eyes even an instant of the abuses they were blithely and sanctimoniously sanctioning.

This film poses the question of how one defines American Patriotism. Chances are, you’re not going to be much moved by the CIA staff’s understanding - who say in defense of their tactics, “It’s only illegal if it doesn’t work.” Then when it doesn’t work, who go on to baselessly credit their EIT program with the intelligence that led to Bin Laden’s capture.

Then, we have Dan Jones/Adam. Dan Jones, who spent literally five years of his life in a basement bunker researching and scraping details together about a program the CIA did everything they could to keep under lock and key. He persevered when the CIA refused to provide any documents, communications, or witnesses; when the CIA denied that they themselves internally questioned the effectiveness of the program; even when they accused him of stealing the documents he finally managed to get his hands on. When the real Dan Jones was brought on stage after the film ended, he received a minutes-long standing ovation that couldn’t have been more deserved.

Most of the audience would probably find it difficult to identify with that understanding of patriotism that claims “It’s only illegal if it doesn’t work” and “Shouldn’t we be grateful just for the fact that we live in a country where a report like this can be written?” (claimed by Jon Hamm as Obama’s Chief of Staff, when pressed by Bening’s Diane Feinstein about releasing the report before the mid-term shift of the Senate going Republican.) What’s much more moving is Feinstein’s rejoinder that “I want to live in a country that publishes this report.” Or the coup-de-grace scene towards the film’s end that incorporates real footage of John McCain’s speech on the Senate floor against the EIT program, when he introduced the McCain-Feinstein bill that would ban the practice. When McCain called on the US to be better than its enemies, and to maintain a standard of honor worth defending.

Dan puts it painfully aptly in the full monologue teased in the trailer: “They say they saved lives but what they really did was make it impossible to prosecute a mass murderer, because if what we did to him ever comes out in a court of law, the case is over. The guy planned 9/11… (continued from memory) … but instead of spending the rest of his life in jail, we turned him into the strongest recruiting tool for our enemies.”

These moments of Dan’s desperation to make others see the truth so glaringly, shamefully obvious to him are when he delivers his most biting rejoinders. As he questions John Yoo’s legal justification in the Torture Memo of the interrogations not amounting to torture so long as they don’t cause “lasting harm”, Dan points to the detainee who died under the conditions of his confinement and demands, “So how long is he going to be dead?!”

Okay so FINALLY, here’s where I turn to Adam’s oh so stellar performance. Adam mentioned in both the Q&A after this screening and in a previous interview that he had to learn the appropriate sense of “decorum” from Dan Jones that would befit a Senate staffer. Adam nailed it. He was playing a relatively low-ranking staffer, grappling with issues of abuse and mismanagement that would have incriminated all manner of public figures miles above him. He had no real power to do anything about the horrific truths he was unearthing, and yet there were too many moments when he seemed to be the only one who truly understood or cared for the truth. Adam played this tight-knit, occasionally fraying sense of necessary professionalism with just the right amount of restraint and understatement. His performance was never boisterous nor melodramatic. And yet, the ever more desperate edge to his dedication couldn’t have been more palpable. Adam’s performance delivered every bit of impact commensurate to the towering gravity of Dan Jones’ investigation.

And yet, for every bit that Adam’s performance remained appropriately understated (it never felt like anything but a true-to-life depiction; hardly ever making you aware you’re watching a dramatization), the depth and nuance in its subtlety was nothing short of masterful. His brief but singeing moments of frustration are short-lived but strike deeply. What really struck me though were two particularly powerful #King of Microexpressions moments.

When the threat of criminal charges for hacking into CIA records is raised against him and he sees a lawyer for the first time to assess his options. After he has to face the fact that this is more complicated than his repeated assertion that “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” He’s quiet for a moment, then asks in a soft, defeated voice, “How long could I go away?” The camera zooms close on Adam’s face when the lawyer responds “twenty years.” Adam’s face barely changes, and yet you can see that number settling into him with pained horror alongside incomprehension. It’s one of those moments where without saying anything, without barely even a gesture, Adam renders his character so desperately empathetic. As the viewer, you realize at that moment you’ve been building an irresistible and compelling emotional connection to him since the second you saw him the first time, and he didn’t even make you aware he was doing it.

The shot in the trailer of him sitting at a desk between the two giant stacks of his report papers. This is when the Senate Intelligence Committee is taking a vote whether to recommend the investigation for further action. I’m pretty sure Adam didn’t say a single line in this scene. Senator Feinstein called the Committee to vote, and as the voices around the table chime “aye” or “nay,” the camera does a slow pan on Dan sitting there, listening with his hands folded. You can barely trace the shifts in his expression. You can barely see anything discernible in his face, and yet simply by the way his shoulders move, the way his jaw shifts every so slightly, and the way he blinks – you’re right there on the edge of your seat with him. You can feel in your very soul his repressed, barely-controlled sense of desperation as the report that’s become his life’s work is put to a vote of either life or death.

Guys, just in case you didn’t realize this by now… Adam is a wonder and it simply defies my understanding how everyone in the whole world hasn’t come to consensus by now that he invented acting and everyone else can just go home and let him play every role ever.

Okay now the one kind of amusing bit in the film! Sadly most audience members won’t get the same kick out of this that we will, but Joanne is in the film playing a CIA staffer. She and Adam share one scene, in which she walks up to him and says, “Your face and your report are bullshit.”

INCREDIBLE. Roast your man, Joanne.

Although the movie tries to tie things up with the McCain-Feinstein anti-torture amendment that ended the EIT program and shows a quote by George Washington before the credits (in what to me seemed a bit of a forced attempt to put a comforting lid on everything) what left me feeling most helpless and frustrated was seeing how partisan politics repeatedly derailed meaningful action against the EIT program throughout the entire span of the film, and knowing full well that that’s exactly how DC still operates. There’s a scene where the timing of publishing the report is being debated. (“If we push this now, the Republicans will pull gun control. What if they pull healthcare?”) And to me, the most infuriating part is seeing the ethics by which our government runs constantly reduced to mere bargaining chips.

It seems there are no absolute lines of the permissible and impermissible. As we see, the CIA got away with torturing unarmed prisoners for years because they disguised it behind code words, wrapped it in nonsensical legal jargon to authorize it, engaged in some serious doublethink and called it a day. Constant debates that twist and manipulate the issues at stake can reduce every law to subjective application. Fallacies in logic and gruesome vengeance disguised as national security measures are defended without shame. The same modes of thinking that started the EIT program and sustained it for year upon shameful, unsuccessful year continue spinning the wheels of today’s destructive and shortsighted policies of self-interest and American exceptionalism.

OKAY, I’m off my soapbox now. Promise.

But last thing. Think about this for a crazy minute: Dan Jones’s report in full was some 7,000 pages. The only version that was ever published was heavily redacted down to a few hundred. What an incredible feat of scriptwriting that a five-year investigation that produced 7,000 pages worth of text was condensed down into a 2 hour movie.

((Also – I kept thinking at regular interviews during the film that holy shit this is giving me such strong vibes of my Presidential staffer Ben in my modern politics AU and I LOVED IT. I’m so extra inspired to press on writing!!))

End Spoilers: The Q&A afterwards! After the audience spent a few minutes giving Daniel Jones his much-deserved minutes of applause, the panel moderator started with a few questions, and here Jon Hamm and Annette Bening immediately started messing with Adam. (It’s clear they’re all buddies who love each other and I appreciate it so much :3) Whenever questions were posed generally to the cast, they would both immediately start passing the microphones down the line towards Adam, knowing full well that he wouldn’t want to talk but nudging him to do so anyway >:)) At one point he wound up with two microphones at the same time and started desperately shoving one back at Annette! For one question, before the microphones could be thrust upon him, as soon as Jon looked over towards him Adam sidestepped back behind the group and turned to start feeling the screen like he was looking for a way out. Lskdjflaskj DORK <3 Annette immediately teased him like “There’s no door, Adam!” and then on a later question that was also posed to “the cast,” Jon and Adam both started pretending to look for a door together. :’)

When responding to a question about what drew him to the role, Adam made a really interesting comment about Dan as a character who “gets the instructions for something to build, and it turns out he was building his own gallows.” (Video below!) He also spoke a bit as to the fact that he was intrigued to create a clear depiction of the internal effort to fact-find and implement accountability about such a contested, tangled issue for which a whole PR campaign existed to defend, even with misinformation.

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Have I mentioned how GOOD he looked in that suit?! Somehow he looked extra tall, I thought. And again, I know people are concerned about how thin he is right now, but he really looked fine!! His face is definitely a bit thinner, but his face shape has often changed along with his physique whenever he’s buffed up or down. He still looked plenty solid and very very damn pretty. >:3

Being the adoring fangirls we are, we’re well familiar with Adam’s ~discomfort or stiffness when he’s forced to be in public and speak at things like this. (We love one (1) awkward antisocial man.) During this panel, even though his answers had his usual introspection and self-deprecating, unconscious charm, he seemed to have an extra air of seriousness/attentiveness to him when listening to others’ comments or to audience questions. While he was giving the serious topic every bit the gravity it deserved, he also seemed to be conscious of not seeming partisan to any particular political outlook? I mean, the audience would often clap when someone on the panel said something about how the takeaways from the film are still relevant to the dysfunction and hypocrisy in today’s political climate. Adam would join in the clapping, but something I’ve always respected about him is that he never infuses his persona opinions – whatever they may be – with discussion of his work or his approach to it. I think it takes a lot of hubris and self-awareness to maintain that distinction, and resist the temptation to use a public platform to advance your own opinions. But he never seems remotely interested in any such thing. AITAF advocacy is maybe the closest, but even in that context he remains very restrained.

Did I mention he looked Beautiful like a damn vision? ;____;

Okay so leaving the theatre, my and Sarah’s heads were reeling. There was SO much to process and discuss from the film, we were grabbing onto our favorite lines and moments to recall, which launched us into discussion about political affairs today, interspersed with the occasional “Can you BELIEVE Adam’s Power in that one scene?!” and basically it was my absolute favorite kind of impassioned conversation ever. <333

Time was ticking though, and just before 5 we needed to head back to the theater entrance before Marriage Story started at 5:30. Okay and here – as if we hadn’t already endured enough emotional walloping today – came two massive emotional rollercoasters right after the other! With how little time we had between the films, it was difficult for us to get into the red carpet crowd just beforehand. But as we turned the corner, we heard shouts of his name and !!!!!! there he was outside signing!! Bless his heart, he was across the street from the theatre signing for the long line of people on the other side who I hadn’t seen anyone go over to that morning. :’) Sarah and I ran over to try to join the end of the line and he almooooost got down to us, but it was a little too dicey with the line being kind of chaotic where the barrier ended. But WE WERE SO CLOSE TO HIM. HE WAS RADIANT EVEN WHILE LOOKING ADORABLY SLIGHTLY GRUMPY WHILE HE UNCOMPLAININGLY TOOK PHOTOS AND HE’S THE BEST AND MOST EXQUISITE EVER

I can just imagine in his head like halfway down that line: “oh god this was a mistake. Adam what did you do.” <3333

Emotional rollercoaster moment #2: Because Adam and ScarJo were both out signing, the sidewalk right in front of the theater had been barricaded off. This meant that we weren’t allowed to enter the theater until they both went inside, which only left us a few minutes to spare! We rushed to the entrance, but alas there was a problem with scanning our tickets, so we were told to go to the Box Office to get them reprinted. We’re already on edge, afraid we’re going to miss the beginning of the film, when the woman at the Box Office tells us she can’t reprint the tickets because the name on them doesn’t match ours. (We bought them from a resale site so of course it didn’t…)

Even after showing her every email we had documenting payment and that the tickets were transferred through an official sale site, she remained adamant it was policy that she couldn’t print the tickets. Clearly, we were kind of devastated for a moment there, thinking we’d just paid way over face value for these tickets that weren’t even going to work. But Sarah, bless her soul, had the idea to leave, then go back in through a different door with a different ticket scanner person. The tickets still didn’t scan correctly, but we told the woman scanning that we’d already ambiguously “checked” with the box office, and honestly I think she was just a very nice person and could sense our Desperation, so SHE LET US IN. Woman – wherever you are right now, know that we love you and are forever indebted to you. ;___;

By the time we got to our seats, Noah Baumbach was already on stage introducing the film. But luckily we were in our seats, we had caught our breath and clutched each other in rejoicing relief before Noah introduced the cast and brought Adam and Scarlett on stage. Queue lots of enthusiastic applause! Someone in the audience yelled, “We love you Scarlett!” There were some whoops through the theater, then someone else yelled, “And we love you too, Adam!” and he did an adorable awk wave of appreciation and have I meNtiOnED this giant of a man is the softest and most precious being to ever grace this world????? And I’m not sure if it’s come up yet or if maybe I haven’t mentioned? But I really really really love him? ;____;

Thank gosh Sarah caught it! Painfully presh video of our painfully presh man!

Marriage Story: (Again, there will be spoilers)

Oh god, okay. This one was a beast of massively epic proportions that I was not nearly prepared for. It takes you on an intense fucking ride that spans every possible angle of passion between two people, ranging from love to hatred. To be entirely honest, I had gone into the day more excited for The Report because the subject matter was of such interest to me, and because I’m not usually one to really enjoy real-life dramas all that much.

But this fucking movie was Exquisite from the very first shot. The film opens with the “What I love about Nicole / What I love about Charlie” voice overs, and within the span of mere minutes you already feel deeply for these characters. You already feel as if they’ve been your close friends all your life, and instead of just entering your awareness abruptly – they’ve lived entire lives with ups and downs, mistakes and successes for as long as you can remember.

The movie is a sweeping epic, and yet remains achingly resonant and relatable. Charlie and Nicole’s relationship is passionate, fiery, and riddled with both miscommunications and repressed resentments. You rarely see a (doomed) love study played out with such complexity and fireworks. And yet, their frustrations, desires, and victories/losses both large and small are completely credible. Relationships are messy, and this film doesn’t shy away from their absolute darkest and even cruelest corners - even while maintaining sparkling moments of human connection that somehow survive alongside even the most difficult challenges.

The film is a brilliant study of contradictions. As Charlie and Nicole move through the divorce process, their control over it and the very narrative of their own lives becomes appropriated by their respective lawyers. The beginning of the film showed us the tenderness and deep understanding that exists between these characters, so the stories the legal teams spin seem ridiculously far afield from reality. The beginning of the film brought us into a rich world between these characters that was natural and so effortlessly believable (long, uncut monologues of dialogue; characters wandering from room to room as they talk – It’s masterfully and deceptively purposeful filmmaking that completely hides all trace of itself). Then later, listening to the lawyers concoct disingenuous legal narratives to “win” rather than tell any truth of reality is a towering contrast. The lawyers seize on the smallest tiny things Nicole or Charlie did in previous scenes (Nicole finishing a bottle of wine in one night with her family; Charlie forgetting to strap in their son’s car seat once) to paint them as habitual alcoholics or neglectful, absent parents. As the divorce proceedings escalate, things become distorted past recognition – twisted into abstracted and even absurd depictions of these two characters, between which we simply can’t decide whom we feel more sympathy for.

And then, following a gloves-off divorce hearing couched in legalese where neither side gives any quarter, you have a scene that’s quiet and effortlessly heartwarming. Nicole calls Charlie because the power’s out at her house and could he try to fix the power box in the front yard? He comes over, he works on the box, they pass their sleeping son between them (“Maybe he should just sleep here?” “But it’s my night.”), and then they both have to manually pull the gate on the driveway closed from either side – Nicole inside, Charlie outside. They look at each other as they pull the gate, perfectly in sync and their gazes locked, until the gate slides closed in the inches just between their faces. The movie is littered with these tiny gorgeous moments that just tear at your heart.

Or, the moment in the middle of negotiations between their lawyers when everyone decides to pause and order lunch. Charlie is handed the menu and he simply stares at it helplessly, uncomprehending because he’s still trying to work through the shock of their new reality that was just being argued over by the lawyers with such casual cruelty. Everyone stares at him for a long minute, until Nicole gently takes the menu from his hands and says, “I’ll order for him.” She knows just what to order – a salad with a specific type of dressing – and he quietly, almost absently agrees, “Yes, I’ll have that.”

The film takes pains to be even in presenting both sides of the story, and giving Nicole and Charlie equal screen time. I spent the entirety of the movie switching my sympathies back and forth between the two of them. By the film’s end, I understood both of their positions and experiences completely, as well as how much their perspectives on all they shared had come to oppose each other. Even though it’s impossible for either us or the characters to understand how they developed such divergent perspectives on their marriage, all parties involved have to face just how irreconcilable their grievances have become and how differently they each view the fundamental shortcomings of their marriage.

Being the annoying feminist viewer that I am, I was completely absorbed by Nicole’s monologue early on, the first time she meets with her lawyer (Laura Dern). She comes clean with the whole account of how she feels no control over her own life, and the longer she spent with Charlie and living in Charlie’s world, the “smaller” she was becoming. She felt that he didn’t respect her interests or her undertakings, when they weren’t connected to his theatre company. In essence, she feels she never got to be anything other than what he made her.

With that background of her position, I absolutely wanted Nicole to build her own life apart from him and find her own sense of personhood. One where she makes her own decisions and follows her own passions. In her recounting, she keeps saying that she’s used to part of her feeling “dead inside,” in terms of not feeling truly engaged with or in control of what she’s doing with her life. Taking a television acting job in California – separate from Charlie’s theatre company where she was the star under his direction, where he called the shots and she supported “his genius” – was the first time she did something bold for herself. This was also after repeatedly expressing to Charlie that she wanted to spend more time in California (where her family live), and Charlie never seeming to seriously consider the idea. Nicole felt she didn’t really have a voice, living shrouded in Charlie’s shadow.

But also being the annoying Adam fangirl I am, I was drawn in by Charlie’s charisma, by his effortless and guileless charm. I may have “sided” with Nicole towards the beginning of the story, resenting the small ways we could see that Charlie might have unconsciously been controlling (“Did you change your hair? I like it better long.”), but as the story progresses, so does Charlie’s unraveling. His world begins to crumble and fall apart before his very eyes, and even though he tries his best, he’s unable to do a single thing to stop it. Once Nicole gets her high-powered, cutthroat lawyer involved, things escalate beyond all control at breakneck pace. Suddenly he finds himself having to hire lawyers he can’t afford just to prevent the possibility that their 8 year old son Henry might move permanently to California with Nicole and Charlie might not get any custody; or that Nicole will take most of their shared assets and he’ll have nothing left to fund his theatre company with.

Neither of them mean for the negotiations to reach some vindictive heights, but suddenly they both find themselves fighting just to be able to live the life they each think is theirs.

Charlie finds himself having to move temporarily to California and rent an apartment so he can see his son and so Nicole’s lawyers can’t try to depict him as neglectful. We know he’s anything but. The first scenes in the film showed him being so patient and good with Henry that we could just about cry at the injustice.

(There’s the most darling scene at the beginning where little Henry comes into their bedroom, pokes Charlie saying “Dad? I had a nightmare.” Charlie gets up and comes to lay down in Henry’s bed with him. When he tries to get up, Henry asks him to stay, but there’s not really enough space for both of them in the bed so Charlie shifts to sleep on the floor. Queue a shuffling sequence where Henry goes to sleep on the floor next to his dad, Charlie goes up into the bed when it’s empty, then shortly thereafter Henry climbs up on top of Charlie so they both fit in the bed and fall asleep there. Yeah, MY HEART.)

As the accusations start flying when things are on the line during the divorce proceedings, this huge element of performativity comes into play. In a way it’s fitting, since they both work in theater, but these roles of enemies they suddenly have to perform is also terribly heartbreaking. (Also going back to the contrasts I mentioned earlier between the true essence of their relationship and their easy, ceaseless intimacy; vs the cold-hearted narratives forced on them both through the divorce proceedings.)

But in some ways, they’re not just playing the roles. There are two sides to passion, and just like they once cared about and loved each other so intensely (in some ways, they still do), there is also a shadow side to emotions of that intensity. In a catharsis that is much-needed after the austere, inhumane ways their relationship problems were discussed through their lawyers and absolutely devastating to watch in its destruction, their belated attempt to “talk” escalates into all-out war. “Talking” was the route Charlie first wanted to take – no lawyers involved – but which Nicole spurned. I was frustrated with her throughout the film for never fully communicating with him her expectations regarding their separation, but upon further reflection I understand that she might have feared that if they managed it on their own, it would turn into him managing it and her voice would once again disappear. Something along these lines rushes out during this scene of purging their demons and years of budding resentments and secrets all in one near-fatal blow.

(I’m about to quote a few sporadic lines I remember, but I have to say watching this scene with no idea of the savagery that was coming delivered absolutely lethal power, so I kind of advise not knowing the specific lines? Plus they’re a hundred times more powerful on screen, with these top-tier actors delivering them with every bit of feeling they possess. Skip to after both sets of ///// if you don’t want to know! But quoting here for those who don’t know if/when they’ll see the film ☺ These are definitely not in order and they jump around but whew, every moment when they were screaming these lines is simply unforgettable.)

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

Charlie: “Oh you just like to play the victim. We were happy. YOU were happy. Until you decided you weren’t anymore.”

Nicole: “You are just like your father!”

Charlie: “Don’t you EVER say that! Don’t you ever compare me to my father. You’re the one just like your mother. And your sister - you’re the worst of all of them combined.”

Nicole: “You slept with Donna!”

Charlie: “One time! Because you stopped having sex with me! For a whole year you shut me out and I didn’t know what to do. And after I gave up so much for you.”

Nicole: “Oh what you gave up?!”

Charlie: “I was in my 20s! I had my first solo work, I was successful, I wanted to fuck everyone but I didn’t. Because I loved you and I didn’t want to lose you. But I- I missed out on so much.”

Nicole: “You are SO selfish, you can’t even separate anything else from your own self-interest! You can’t even see me as something separate from yourself!”

Charlie: “So you hate me! You wish you’d never married me, fine, but god this last year it’s like you hated me!”

Nicole: “And I did! I do! (Screaming helplessly) I can’t believe I have to know you for the rest of my life!!”

Charlie: (Savagely snarling) “Maybe you don’t because I hope you get sick and die. I hope you get hit by a car tomorrow!”

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

This scene escalates and escalates until they’re both in these uncontrollable, violent piques of rage. Charlie punches a hole in the wall, and things simply get uglier and uglier until they are screaming at each other the most horrible things each can think of with every bit of vitriol they can possibly muster. The build up in the scene is masterful, and the performances are simply stellar. You can feel that they are pissed as all hell at each other – that this is literally years of unspoken, repressed feelings all being torn out. But you can also feel that both of them are in such awful pain. Both of them are actively bleeding as the scene progresses, but it’s because both of them still care so much. It’s because there are still feelings there, and there always will be no matter what either of them do. That’s why the emotions are so desperate and searing off the screen.

After Charlie spits the final horrific line in her face, he sinks to the floor and weeps for it. It ends with her comforting him, and him putting his arms around her knees.

And – just fuck me up completely, why don’t you – if you thought that scene was the biggest beating your heart would have to take in this movie, THINK AGAIN BUDDY.

Because. Whew. My god. Words are going to fail me in describing this scene but I’ll do my best to go for it.

Months have passed since their fight, and grab every box of tissues in existence, because here’s the rumored scene where Adam sings “Being Alive” from Company. Now, I had somehow completely forgotten about this going into the film. So when Charlie stands up in the cabaret restaurant with his theatre group back in New York and starts jokingly singing the words when the pianist starts the song, I was just like ‘oh haha he’s singing! Wow!’

Charlie moves to sit back down after the first verse, still mostly fun and games…. But then the words draw him back as the song continues. He gravitates towards the small stage and the microphone, and little by little the joking edge melts away. Emotional gravity rises behind his voice little by little, until suddenly the words are loud and ringing and gorgeous, and there is palpable heartbreak in his eyes as the words begin to take the exact shape of all he has lost.

Now, we’ve heard snippets of Adam singing in Hungry Hearts and Inside Llewyn Davis and even briefly in Burn This. But. People…. You have never heard or seen anything like this. I don’t even mean from Adam. I mean… in your life. I mean: This scene literally stirred such a profound reaction in me; I didn’t know it was possible for an actor to evoke feelings like this. And imagine, this was on-screen performance. The entire theater applauded when the song ended, and I was in tears.

The song encapsulated in truly heartbreaking beauty the revelation Charlie was having of all he once had – every part of love that is both good and bad; cherished and difficult. And in possibly the most tragic contrast of the whole film: He is singing about love making it worthwhile to be alive – of how he’s now essentially left searching for what will now make his life worth living; while across the country Nicole is finally feeling “alive” for the first time, after years of being plagued by the feeling of part of her being dead beyond reach.

Yeah. I could spend thousands of words just trying to describe the devastating power and beauty of this scene, but no matter what words I use or how I phrase it, I’m going to come up short. It’s simply beyond description. Adam is beyond description. You’d think because I literally couldn’t love him more if my life depended on it that I couldn’t be so stunned by new demonstrations of his talent??? But jesus CHRIST. This man is a force that defies comprehension. To my ear, his voice sounded strong but untrained, and that was what made it so heartrendingly magnificent. In the held notes, his voice will crest into the gentlest vibrato as his emotions build, and I couldn’t tell you whether it’s the song that Adam disappears into, or if it’s Adam purposefully weaving every single element at play here into the most moving minutes of performance you’ve ever seen. Either way: The scene will ruin you utterly, and you will love it beyond comprehension.

I know a clip of this scene will certainly hit the internet as soon as the whole film becomes available, but god I almost wish that everyone has to watch it in context with everything that’s come before it. Because knowing every bit that Charlie has suffered along the way, understanding the way his heart is continuously breaking with each of the words-…. God, it’s too much.

Next up on Adam Driver Eviscerates Your Heart And You Thank Him Profusely For It: The scenes where he cries are just as painful as you think they’d be. Probably even more so, because he’s a talented jerk like that who takes no pity on us at all.

The first major crying scene is when he and his lawyer go off into a side room during a break in the first meeting on divorce terms. It’s just dawning on Charlie that Nicole probably has no intent to bring Henry back to New York, and unless Charlie does something serious, Henry might never live there with him again. While the lawyer’s talking, Charlie silently lowers his head, and suddenly the tears just rise up over him. It’s quiet and he only shakes slightly, but god do you feel for him.

The second time is…. lord, yet another moment that’s utterly heartbreaking and yet one of the most beautiful moments of film you’ve ever seen. This is the final scene in the film, and it references back to one of the first, where Charlie and Nicole try to go to a divorce counselor, who requests that they each write down the things they love about the other and then read them aloud. These are the lists each of them voiceover in the trailer and that play at the film’s very beginning. But during this session, Nicole refused to read her list aloud, because she didn’t “like what she wrote.” So Charlie never heard her list about him.

In this final scene, Charlie hears Henry reading something aloud in his bedroom. Henry had been struggling with reading, so Charlie immediately comes in to listen and help him. Charlie sits down on the bed with him, and realizes what it is Henry’s reading. Charlie helps him with the words he can’t pronounce, and then halfway through Henry hands him the list. “You finish reading it, Dad.”

Charlie continues reading the list, and it goes on much longer than the version we heard in Nicole’s voiceover. As Charlie’s reading aloud, Nicole appears in the doorway and begins to listen without Charlie realizing. He manages to read it all relatively evenly… until he reaches the end.

“I fell in love with him…” Charlie stops suddenly, and in an instant his mouth is trembling, the tears are brimming over, and he is fighting desperately to hold back the onslaught of tears in front of his son, even as it overtakes his entire body. Finally, he is able to finish: “I fell in love with him seconds after I saw him, and I’ll always love him. Even if it doesn’t make sense.” In the door, Nicole fights off her own tears.

This film is cinema at its very best. I know this is an incredibly bold statement, but: It just might be Adam’s best role to date.

End Spoilers: Q&A!

I WAS STILL SO STUNNED BY THE SINGING SCENE THAT I ASKED ADAM ABOUT IT AND JUST TO ROUND OUT FROM THE HAND TAKEN VIDEO ABOVE THIS IS THE OFFICIAL ONE AND THAT’S ME YOU CAN JUST BARELY HEAR AT 17:45!!!!!

youtube

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT HAPPENED??? BECAUSE I CAN’T AND I WAS THERE. BYE I think I’m having an out of body experience taking in the fact that I’m watching this vid of Adam WATCHING ME OMG HE WAS SQUINTING INTO THE AUDIENCE TO SEE ME AND LEANING FORWARD TO HEAR ME SOMEONE HOLD ME I’M WEEPING HE WAS TALKING TO MEASKDFJALKSFJ

Ahem.

From Noah’s comments throughout the panel, it was amazing to hear how much of this movie was truly a collaborative process between him and Adam. In many ways, Noah built this role and film around Adam. He said that he and Adam had focused on the scene of him performing “Being Alive” very early on, and Noah structured the script to work towards that vision. Though he already had the idea of working in themes of performance and theatre, it was Adam’s idea to make Charlie a theatre director. I absolutely love hearing that Noah essentially wanted to make a film where elements of who Adam is in real life or his interests in what he wanted to play in a character were built into the heart of the script.

Someone asked Noah why he likes dysfunctional families so much and he replied “What other kind are there?”

Most of the other things said during the Q&A had already been echoed in other interviews. Plus I sometimes have trouble processing memories while Adam’s talking/standing in front of me because slkdjflsakjfdklsf just taking in the sight of him is a fucking lot to process :’’’’’’’)

“A fucking lot to process” is actually a perfectly apt summary of the day in its entirety! When Sarah and I got back to the hotel, we discovered it had a jacuzzi on the rooftop! That was truly the best soak ever, to soothe away the emotional overload and talk through all of our many, many thoughts on the two stellar films we’d just had the privilege of seeing.

Writing through this entire massive thing was also a huge help to work through all my complex feels about these films. As you might have gathered, I can’t recommend them highly enough. And as you also might suspect – Adam is an absolute force to be reckoned with in both. Seeing two of his most powerful performances ever back to back (and then getting to hear him talk about each in person!) was truly an experience I’ll never forget.

A massive thank you to anyone who persevered through reading all that!! I love writing analyses not only to work through my emotional response to sweeping works like this, but also to remember every bit of the impact. Give it a share if you don’t mind helping a girl out? :) I’m not on twitter at all so it’d be much appreciated!

(...have I mentioned I love Adam and I’m in awe of every single thing he does? Shower this man with Oscars already?!)

#Adam Driver #TIFF #driverdaily #Toronto International Film Festival #The Report #Marriage Story #TIFF 2019

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puroresu-musings · 4 years

Photo

NJPW THE NEW BEGINNING in Osaka 2020 Review (Feb 9th, Osaka-Jo Hall)

Nakanishi Final in Osaka-Jo Hall: Manabu Nakanishi, Yuji Nagata, Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima vs. Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, Ryusuke Taguchi & Toa Henare **1/2

IWGP Jr. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: SHO & YOH (c) vs. El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru ***1/2

Kota Ibushi, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Juice Robinson & David Finlay vs. Guerrillas Of Destiny, Yujiro & Chase Owens **1/2

Kazuchika Okada & Will Ospreay vs. Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr. ***1/4

SANADA vs. Jay White ***1/4

IWGP Jr. HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: Hiromu Takahashi (c) vs. Ryu Lee ****3/4

IWGP U.S. CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: Jon Moxley (c) vs. Minoru Suzuki ****1/2

IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT AND IWGP INTERCONTINENTAL DOUBLE CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. KENTA ****

Photos.

This was a show that got off to a bit of a slow start, but ended incredibly well. It opened with Manabu Nakanishi’s final ever match in Osaka, as his team was victorious when Kojima Lariated his way to victory over Honma at 7:09. The match was nothing really, but ended in Nakanishi bowing to the fans as he exited, getting a good ovation in a nice moment. The Jr. Tag straps were on the line next as Roppongi 3K defended against Desperado and Kanemaru. This was very good, but was missing something I felt. The Suzuki-gunners worked over SHO’s knee they injured at the Korakuen shows mid-week all match, but the champions overcame the odds. After SHO countered a Kanemaru whiskey mist attempt with a big German Suplex, he hit a cross-armed piledriver for a near fall, then the champions hit Strong X for the win at the 16:22 mark. Taguchi came out in the post match and asked Rocky Romero to join him in a challenge for the belts next. So it looks like 3K are getting the Coaches. Tanahashi, sporting one of his more preposterous “do’s” in quite some time, pinned one half of the IWGP Tag Champions when he locked Tanga Loa in a small package to end an average 8-man outing at 10:50, which was more about setting up future programmes. Tana and Ibushi challenged G.O.D. for the next title shot, but former champions Fin-Juice, who only lost the titles last week, appeared upset by this. It looks like it may be a 3-way.

New Japan announced a return to Madison Square Garden in August, as well as the firs two nights of G1 being held in Osaka in September, and a return to prime time Japanese TV in the mini interval. Well thats all newsworthy. Okada, teaming with Ospreay, once again pinned Taichi, teaming with ZSJ, with a Rainmaker to end a good 12 minute tag match. This was a brief sprint, though entertaining as it was, it was pretty forgettable stuff and really just a reason to get all four on the card I reckon. Next up, Jay White took on SANADA. I’m not going to lie, watching live, I fell asleep during this match, and had to go back and rewatch it before reviewing, and I can say that, whilst good, no doubt, it wasn’t anything too interesting. It went on an incredibly long time (22 minutes) and just didn’t feel like they got out of first gear. After Cold Skull kicked the ropes into an interfering Gedo’s crotch, he locked on Skull End, but made the age old mistake of letting go to try the Moonsault. Jay obviously avoided it, but gets caught in another Skull End. This time Jay makes the ropes, but SANADA gets a near fall with the Japanese Leg Clutch. White hits the Sleeper Suplex, a version of the Regal Plex, and finally the Blade Runner to take the win. As I say, this was really good by the end, but has to rank as something of a disappointment.

It was time to watch through fingers next as Hiromu defended the Jr. Title against arch nemesis Ryu Lee. Look, there’s no denying the spectacular nature of this match-up, but it was fucking terrifying to watch. Baring in mind, the last time these two fought resulted in one of them breaking their necks, this was never going to be an easy watch. Perhaps they’d have slowed down, or worked a less crazy style? Nope, it was business as usual, and it was frightening. They started with an epic overhand chop battle, until Lee hit a Frankesteiner out of the ring, sending the champion to the floor, then hitting a frankly insane tope suicida as Hiromu was sat on the barricade, wiping out all and sundry. Takahash followed that up with a Sunset Bomb out of the ring, and hits a nasty Death Valley Bomb into the corner, which Lee landed right on his head for. Hiromu locks in the triangle choke he calls “D”, but the Dragon hoists him up and teases the Dragon Driver, the same move which broke Hiromu’s neck, in a terrifying moment. Ryu Lee hits a double stomp off the top to the floor, then they end up on the apron, where Lee charges Hiromu, but ends up getting overhead suplexed off the apron to the floor. Hiromu goes up and hits his batchit crazy Senton off the top to the outside. Back inside, they trade Germans, and Lee attempts Desnucadora, but Takahashi catches him in D. Lee escapes with a buckle bomb, but runs straight into an overhead suplex into the corner pad. A devastating knee strike from Ryu gets a near fall, then he tries the Dragon Driver again (please stop!), but Hiromu escapes, then counters a Last Ride attempt into a Canadian Destroyer. Another huge knee strike by Lee gets a tremendous near fall, but Hiromu hits another Destroyer, followed by Time Bomb for another super close near fall. Takahashi pulls Lee up and hits a huge elbow strike, following it up with a second Time Bomb, this time getting the win and retaining the title at 23:54. As mind-blowing as this match was, I don’t need to see another between them for some time.

Moxley and Suzuki had a tough act to follow, but ended up being more than up for the task by having a very different, but no less crazy outng for the United States Championship. This was a wild brawl. They started the match by brawling through the crowd, and exchanged hard strikes. Suzuki worked over Moxley’s arm, wrapping it in a chair and bashing the chair clad arm with another chair. Suzuki locks on an arm bar, but Mox powers him up and powerbombs Suzuki through a table at ringside. They go to a close up of Suzuki who has a smile on his face as he lays in the wreckage, which was tremendous. They trade more forearms back in the ring, which Suzuki obviously wins, then locks on a tight rear naked choke, releasing it and getting a two count. A stiff sliding kick from Minoru follows, and Moxley returns the favour by hitting the Regal Knee. The Ill-Natured Man puts Moxley down with a big dropkick, then goes for the Gotch, but Moxley counters into Death Rider. Suzuki actually kicks out of Death Rider, then they had a chair duel, resulting in Mox hitting a DDT onto one of the chairs. They trade again with forearms and punches, before Moxley hits another Death Rider, this time finishing the match at 17:16. This was excellent. Zack Sabre Jr. came out in the post match, nailing Mox with the title belt, then chokes him out, signifying that he’s Moxley’s next challenger. That’s an interesting match-up indeed.

And in the main event, Tetsuya Naito defended both the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Titles against KENTA. OK, so this ended up being really great, but there’s no denying that both have seen better days, physically speaking, and expecting them to go 36 minutes seemed like a stretch. Whilst neither are as good as they were in 2014 say, both have tons of charisma, and that’s what got them by here. Also, some very fortuitous hard-way juice helped make it really dramatic down the stretch. The early going was a hard slog in all honesty, but this really picked up when Naito outlasted a Game Over, and hit Gloria for a near fall. After a ref bump, Jay White ran out and nailed a Sleeper Suplex on the champion, which brought out BUSHI, but he’s inturn taken out with Blade Runner. Hiromu comes running down, and takes care of Jay, dragging him to the back, whilst Naito hits his signature flying forearm on KENTA. From here, KENTA blocks a Destino attempt with a Lariat, then tries Go 2 Sleep, by Naito turns it into Destino. Naito charges KENTA, but the dastardly heel sends him into the exposed turnbuckles, which split Naito’s forehead open, and he juices really heavily. A KENTA Busaiku Knee gets a near fall, but another Go 2 Sleep is turned into a reverse rana, then Naito nails another Destino to end this at the 35:50 mark. In the post match, a bloody Naito calls out Hiromu, and challenges him to their long-talked-about match. Hiromu accepts his mentors challenge, so that shuld be pretty damn great.

NDT

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pilferingapples · 5 years

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Pilf, I really want to hear your thoughts about Les Amis being the heroes of the novel compared to Marius who is not. I know you talked about it a bit and I do have some ideas about it myself. Les Amis for me feel aspirational heroes too even if they don't have a lot of page time but I would very much like a post talking about it someday. Thank you!!! :D

How can I deny you a Commentary Request, especially this one ?

First Part: “Heroes” Aren’t Just “The Good Guys”

Let’s start with introductions:

Les amis de l'A B C étaient peu nombreux. C'était une société secrète à l'état d'embryon; nous dirions presque une coterie, si les coteries aboutissaient à des héros. -3.4.1

or in English

The Amis de l’ABC were few. They were a secret society in embryo; we might almost call them a coterie, if coteries created heroes. -3.4.1

So right from the start, we’re explicitly told that their group is made of/ will end in making heroes; so much so that it changes the very nature of the group and takes it away from other more trivial classifications.

Nice word association, some may say, but so what?

Let’s go back to Waterloo, or at least the Waterloo in Les Mis–the barricade calls back to Waterloo a lot, and for good reason.

I think it’s safe to say there is A Lot Going On At Waterloo, but one of the major things going on thematically is a changing of Eras. Napoleon is Over; Cambronne is In. God, per Hugo, is moving the world into a new act.

To totally get what that means coming from Hugo, we have to go back right out of Les Mis; back to 1827, to Cromwell, Hugo’s unproduceable play, and its Movement Manifesto of a Preface.

The Preface was a rallying cry for a specific moment in time, arguing for the right of the New Art (Romantic art, that is, to exist); boiled down, its major argument is really just that societies change and art changes, and must be allowed to change, to fit the society it lives in. Hard to argue with that!

But this is Hugo and One Thematic Point is never enough!– So what the Preface is (also) really About is Hugo’s whole theory of Civilization Progressing Through Eras (a deeply problematic and loaded concept I know, I know, believe me, but it’s important to understanding Hugo!) .

To hugely summarize: Hugo’s Theory of Eras (in Civilization and thus in Art) breaks everything down into the Ancient (Lyric) the Classic (Epic, and especially Epic Tragedies) , and the new era (which, to Hugo, is among other things the Christian era, but which is of course especially the Romantic age), the Age of Drama (and especially ROMANTICIST Drama, of course!). Cromwell and its preface were very early work from Hugo, and he developed the ideas there a lot over the decades, of course– but he never renounced them.

And one of the Big Ideas in Les Mis , which is most explicitly apparent in the Waterloo section but shows up again and again, is this idea of society moving forward– moving from the Epic era of Great Men and Heroes and Myth and Tragedy to the era of humanity, the people (…and Romanticist Drama).

The Epic Era (per Hugo, always, please take that as a given from here on in) is the era of Great Men, of Heroes and gods and monsters, of grand physical action, and:

…it is in the ancient tragedy, above all, that the epic breaks out at every turn…. Its characters are still heroes, demigods, gods; its themes are visions, oracles, fatality; its scenes are battles, funeral rites, catalogues.

The Era of Drama is about metaphysical action; it’s about the dance and strain between the grotesque and the sublime. And its Big Mood is Melancholy– “a new sentiment, unknown to the ancients and marvellously developed among moderns, a sentiment which is more than gravity and less than sadness” (Preface, of course).

So when Hugo says the Amis are heroes , this is what he’s talking about– they’re like characters out of the Epic age. They’re larger than life, “pontifical and warlike” (yes, Hugo describes the Epic that way too) , Iconic, Great- and implicitly linked to the past. Not all the way back to the Classical Era, maybe, but to the French Revolution and the Republic.

And, of course, they will find their ultimate expression in Tragedy.

Au point de ce drame où nous sommes parvenus, il n'est pas inutile peut-être de diriger un rayon de clarté sur ces jeunes têtes avant que le lecteur les voie s'enfoncer dans l'ombre d'une aventure tragique.–LM 3.4.1

At the point of this drama in which we have arrived, it is perhaps not useless to direct a ray of light on these young heads before the reader sees them sink into the shadow of a tragic adventure .-LM 3.4.1

Skip ahead to the end, to their end: Chapter 5.1.21, Les Héros/ The Heroes. To the end we’ve known was coming since the beginning, because this is how Epic Tragedy goes.

This chapter is pure battle, and is absolutely overflowing with references to Heroic Epics. Titans, gods, Greek-style Heroes of old. We’ve got Troy, we’ve got Ajax, we’ve got gods and mythic legends being invoked all over the place. And Hugo, again explicitly, says that all these epic heroic struggles are no grander -maybe even less grand–than these students and workers fighting and dying on the barricade.

Here is the end the first chapter promised, that prevents them being classed as a coterie. They end as Heroes. And when they die– when the Amis, who have held the center, are gone– the battle changes from Heroic to Monstrous in the next chapter. The Heroes are gone, the Heroic Age dead, the grandeur of the epic is over and only the horror of battle– which Hugo was genuinely familiar with!– remains. The Amis have passed out of the Drama of this modern novel through the Tragedy of the Epic.

But this isn’t the end of the story. The Epic Age of Heroes is over. But this is not Waterloo; these Heroes did not die because of arrogance, or because they were fighting to hold back the change of eras. They died so that a new age would come– and the Republic is the ideal of the new age.

****

part 2 over here!

#good grief me #long post #...to be fair #like half of it is Hugo quotes #but STILL #Amis Talk #Les Héros #aflamethatneverdies #answereds

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

Text

Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Revelations (Ubisoft, 2011)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Ezio Auditore travels to Constantinople to unlock the secret of Altaïr's vault in Masyaf, battling Templars who also want the vault’s contents. In the present day, Desmond Miles is trapped in the Animus and must find a "synch nexus", a key memory that links him with Altaïr and Ezio, to reintegrate his splintered subconscious and awaken from his coma.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 3/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will not be evaluating the multiplayer mode because I don’t like playing video games with other people.

Content Warnings: violence, blood

Story: The main premise of Revelations’ story is that, following the end of Brotherhood, Desmond has fallen into a coma. The stress of being controlled by Juno has splintered his subconscious, so in an effort to save his life, Rebecca Crane and a mysterious figure have placed him back in the Animus. In order to repair his mind and escape, Desmond must “play out” the remainder of Ezio’s memories, so he follows his ancestor as he travels to Masyaf in search of Altaïr's vault, which requires five “keys” to open. These keys have been hidden around Constantinople, and Ezio must race against the Templars during the political conflict between Şehzade Ahmet and Selim I.

Desmond’s plot follows a somewhat natural progression. Though I missed his interactions with the Assassin team, it makes sense that his next big adventure would involve being trapped in the Animus and learning more from Subject 16. I liked that gameplay in Ezio’s world unlocked some puzzles in Desmond’s world (even though he’s trapped in the Animus, he inhabits a little island where he can be himself) and that these puzzles told us more about Desmond’s past. I did not think, however, that Desmond’s past was related in a compelling way. Most of it is told to us through Desmond monologuing as the player completes puzzles that are somewhat reminiscent of Portal. I thought Desmond’s past could have been done better, perhaps by having flashback scenes like how Altair’s past is related.

Ezio’s plot felt like it was lacking, and I think the reason is that the past 3 games have focused on finding and controlling the Apple/Piece of Eden, whereas this game is about opening a vault/library. Ezio’s story also lacks a strong antagonist to tie things together; instead of battling the Borgias, Ezio is competing with general “Templars,” and even though there are some prominent Templar figures, none of them had “stage presence” like Cesare Borgia did. Though I liked the political backdrop, I think Ezio himself was ill-suited for it. It sort of feels like the creators wanted to extend Ezio’s story rather than start something new with a protagonist who was more connected to the setting, and though recovering Altair’s library is a fun goal, I think the story should have revolved around someone who grew up in the region.

I did like that we got to delve a little deeper into Altair’s past and learn more about him. Unless you play the portable Assassin’s Creed games, you don’t get to learn much about what happened to Altair in ACII and Brotherhood, so it was nice to see some exploration of his life in a game that was centered on uncovering his work.

Characters: Ezio, our protagonist and player-controlled character, is a little older in this game, and while he’s still likable, he’s much more serious and down-to-business. I’m a bit torn as to whether his demeanor fits the setting of the game - on the one hand, I loved that the European character wasn’t presented as someone who comes to the Middle East and takes charge. Ezio definitely has much to learn, and his skills are seen as having value without being superior. On the other, I do wish the protagonist had been someone who lived in the area - I got the feeling that Ezio was made the protagonist because of his popularity rather than his suitability for the setting, and while I appreciate that Revelations closed out his arc, I don’t really think it was needed.

The major supporting character in this game is Yusuf Tazim, leader of the Turkish Assassin Order. He shows Ezio around and provides much-needed instructions and lore, and he’s incredibly charismatic and personable. Ezio also encounters historical figures such as Manuel Palaiologos and the future Suleiman the Magnificent, which were fun treats for history enthusiasts, but not extremely commanding personalities. Instead of courtesans appearing throughout the city, there are Romani people seen hanging about, and though I liked that they were included and talked about their oppression, I do think their visual design and function during gameplay were somewhat stereotypical.

Ezio furthermore gets a real love interest in this game in the form of Sofia Sartor, an Italian traveler and book collector who helps him locate the keys. I thought the interactions with her were sweet, but she was a kind of damsel in distress and she didn’t have much personality other than liking books for a large part of the game.

Desmond, for his part, doesn’t get a lot to do, despite this game being about reconstructing his psyche and digging into his past. I liked that we learned more about him, but I do wish the stakes of being trapped in the Animus were higher.

Gameplay: Revelations uses almost all of the same mechanics as Brotherhood. There are armor and weapon upgrades, treasure stashes, upgrades to the city of Constantinople (which stimulates the economy and earns the player more money), etc. Art merchants are replaced with book merchants, so instead of buying paintings, players can purchase codices, but functionally, they were the same. Similarly, instead of freeing areas from Borgia influence, players liberate “Templar dens” and turn them into “Assassin dens,” and while they’re thematically different from the Borgia towers, they’re functionally the same. Players complete assassination missions in which you kill the captain of the guard responsible for overseeing the Templar den, but instead of blowing it up, you trick your enemy by signaling Templar retreat, allowing the Assassins to move in and take over the area. You can also recruit assassins and make use of thieves, mercenaries, and courtesans much the same way as in Brotherhood, though courtesans are replaced by Romani people. There was a moment in Sequence 2 when Ezio had to defend the Assassin safehouse from a Templar attack, and gameplay involved placing barricades, commanders, archers, riflemen, and cannon fire. while balancing morale and damage. I kind of liked the strategy involved and it could have been an interesting mechanic for the rest of the Templar dens/Assassin safehouses, but alas, this moment only occurred the one time unless you’re not paying attention to your infamy meter (which was easy to take care of).

The major weapon upgrade in this game is the introduction of the hook blade and various types of bombs. Bombs ranged from simple noisemakers, to stink bombs, mild explosives, smoke screens, and other useful ranged attacks, while the hook blade enabled faster climbing as well as traveling along zip lines. These weapons were fun, but because so much of the other gameplay was the same as in Brotherhood, they felt like cosmetic patches to an otherwise repetitive gameplay experience.

Visuals: As always, I adored the look of the historical setting. The artists and developers beautifully rendered Constantinople, and I loved seeing more rich colors and details on the buildings and clothing of NPCs than when playing as Altair in the first Assassin’s Creed. I also really loved the look of Ezio’s armor, which forwent the classic white and red palette and opted for a more somber grey. The grey blended with the surroundings a bit better, in my opinion.

What really threw me off was that the facial models for some of the returning characters were altered. Both Ezio’s and Desmond’s face shapes are a little different from how they appear in Brotherhood, and though I do not doubt the change was in service to testing out advancements in graphics, I couldn’t quite shake the uncanny valley vibe.

Animations were up and down; upon starting this game, I encountered a horrible glitch that made the screen flicker and movement impossible, but luckily, I was able to fix it easily using instructions from other players who had the bug. There were some really satisfying combat animations, including finishing moves that upped the level of Ezio’s epic skills, but sometimes they lagged or a bug would make them not connect to an opponent. While not the end of the world, it was noticeable and sometimes took me out of the immersion experience.

Final Verdict: Despite repeating much of the gameplay from Brotherhood and unnecessarily extending Ezio’s story, Revelations presents a beautiful atmosphere and fun adventure to unlock some much-desired background to Altair’s narrative.

#video game review

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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Thank you for the boosting and the donation! Got the rest of the rent there now, which let me sit down and whip out my first commission, yay! Someone who said they didn’t need to be credited asked me for 2K about the idea of “what do I think Dick’s opinion would have been of the Felipe Garzonas situation at the time.”

Which is a fucking awesome premise, and not one I’ve spent a lot of time thinking on, but it hit me right away....like, you know I’m always talking about how Jason and Dick have a lot more in common than most people think, IMO, and also that Dick isn’t nearly as incapable of understanding the impulse to kill as he’s normally assumed to be.....but thinking about Jason as Robin and whose side Dick would fall on that, if he’d been asked to weigh in....and given that he was still on iffy terms with Bruce and thus probably more inclined to side with the kid in his literal shoes, who he could remember being in certain ways, at certain times...

It made my mind jump straight to Robin: Year One, and how when Bruce fired Dick as Robin that first time, after the Two-Face incident, he kinda pinned the judge’s death on Dick, like as a direct result of Dick’s choice there...and this definitely affected Dick throughout the entire rest of the mini...which all culminated in him being trained at Shrike’s Vengeance Academy and literally holding a gun on Two-Face himself, having been ordered to kill him by Shrike, and wanting to...because of how Two-Face had so recently hurt him, and in Dick’s eyes...also been the direct result of his fallout with Bruce, the thing that made Bruce run away.

And so with all that in mind, here’s what I came up with. It’s open-ended, because my commissioner said they would rather me leave it unfinished if I felt there were more places I could take it, if other people wanted to commission further additions to it or I wanted to finish it myself later when I had time.....so here’s 2,695 words of Dick and Robin!Jason in the week immediately following the Garzonas case. I got in a groove with it so went over the commission mark, lol, (I don’t charge extra for that, FYI, lol) but also I wanted to make sure I left it in at least a somewhat place for a break, rather than just in the middle of a thought.

This is definitely something I’d come back to on my own, just to finish it, no further commissions required, but like.....being able to use the commission to pay towards food or rent instead of waiting until I have the time and energy to bang out actual fic, like...definitely would make that a sooner rather than later thing, not gonna lie. LOL. I mean hey, I wrote this in the last hour.

(Which also means its unbeta-ed, but they said that was okay and I think it still reads pretty cleanly as is). Anyway!

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UNTITLED FOR NOW