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spectoris · 2 years

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devil in disguise

pairing: eddie munson x reader

contains: slasher!au, mild swearing, horror elements, (one) non-consensual kiss

word count: 1.6k

a/n: inspired by luversify’s scream!au with eddie 🫶

The fall season has your days filled with nonstop buzz. School in the morning, then work right after until the sky is dark and the moon shines through. With the leaves changing from green to golden yellow and soft orange, people stream through the video store in search of something to watch while they curl beneath warm blankets in the comfort of their homes. You have the pleasure (and disdain) of serving them.

The horror section has grown quite popular with Halloween around the corner. There’s always some guy every other day grumbling about a specific film being rented out, and the parents who push their kids towards something more family friendly.

This week’s popular picks are Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, fitting for the season. You’ve just informed the most recent customer they’re unavailable when Eddie appears from the break room. He catches the plastic smile on your face as you apologize to the annoyed customer, rolling your eyes when their back is to you. Once the little bell above the door jingles, signaling their departure, you and Eddie are the only living bodies left in the store. For once, your shift is quiet. The rest of Hawkins is prepping for the fall fair; the most lively place right now is probably the grocery store.

“You alright?” Eddie asks. He’s crouched by the front display with a box of fresh tapes, laying them out for others to see through the window. Hopefully they’ll be tempted to rent something other than another gory slasher.

“Yeah. Just a few hours left and I’ll get to go home.”

“Excited to leave me for closing, aren’t you?” Eddie smiles at you over his shoulder. You scoff back, unable to fight a similar expression growing on your face. You like his smile. It always reaches his eyes and takes a while to fade. He’s never in a sour mood, you realize, even when dealing with shitty customers.

You never took notice of Eddie at school until you began working at the video store. His name was always followed by some nasty comment; Eddie “the freak” Munson, held back more than once, didn’t have a bright future. Once you became coworkers, you learned how kind he truly was. Always asked if you were okay, buys you soda without asking, takes over your spot when you need to do homework. At some point, you realized he was cute, which eventually led to your face heating when he’d crack that famous smile, and your heart spiking when he tapped his silver rings against your cheek after a bad joke.

After setting up the display, Eddie walks towards you, brushing his hands together. “Are you going to the fall fair after work?”

You shrug. “Maybe. If I wake up after a big nap.”

You catch something in his expression. The slight drop in the corners of his mouth, him looking off to the side. Something’s itching his mind.

“What about you?”

“Nah,” Eddie replies. “After closing, all the fun stuff will probably be over. No more candy apples.”

You rock back and forth on your heels, thinking. “You know, I could do closing.”

Eddie perks up. “Really?” He catches himself in his excitement. “You don’t have to. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s alright. I’m probably won’t even go.” You poke him in the shoulder. “You can get two candy apples. One in my honor, of course.”

His grin returns. “Okay, fine. I’ll even ride the ferris wheel with a teddy bear and pretend it’s you.”

You fiddle with your fingers at the thought, cringing at how quickly Eddie has you melting to the floor. You have no idea if he does it on purpose, or if his charm comes as naturally as breathing does. It’s almost a curse, how potent it is.

By the time Eddie leaves, darkness has filled the sky. White stars dot its surface, and the moon’s face looks down from above. The parking lot is practically empty; only a few remain from the pizza place in the same plaza, the only store closing later than you. One more hour, then you’ll be home. All of the day’s tasks are done, and you doubt anyone else will come in. You could clock out early, but your manager will surely be on your ass about it.

Your book manages to keep you company. A novel for class you’re finishing up, which successfully curbs your boredom. You eventually lose yourself in the pages, tuning out the quiet sounds littering the store⏤water dripping from the tap, the rustle of leaves from outside. You only look up when a tape falls from one of the shelves behind you. Setting your book down, you leave the register to place it back in its display, thinking nothing of it.

Another thud breaks the silence. This time, your heart quickens its pace, pushing against your chest. You shake it off with a deep breath; things happen. They scare you, and your body reacts⏤not a big deal. Still, your legs wobble as you walk to the other side of the store, deep into the horror section where a poster of Freddy Krueger grins maliciously at you. You gulp, turning your eyes away, then place the other tape back where it came from. Friday the 13th.

When you return to the register, your book is gone. Crouching to the floor, you don’t see it under the counter, or around your backpack. With three strange occurrences in the span of minutes, a cold sweat starts to form. Your breathing grows heavy, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand tall.

“Hello?” you call out. “Anybody there?”

As you scan the store, most of the lights go out. You shriek, ducking under the counters. Each corner is dark, leaving only the entrance and register dimly lit. Fuck it. There is no way in hell you are spending another minute inside. Whether it’s the Halloween season playing tricks on you, or there’s actually some poltergeist in here, you need to leave.

You stuff everything you have left into your backpack. Your book can be salvaged another time. Last, are your keys⏤the ones to close the store, for your car, and your home. You typically keep them in the shelf under the counter, and⏤

The tray where they rest every day, every shift, is empty. Your hands rummage through the darkness, hoping you tossed them in too far. But it’s empty, save for dust and a few cobwebs. Your eyes begin to sting under the growing weight of your frustration. The last place to go is the pizza shop, still open at this hour. You’ll call your mom to take you home and come back tomorrow when it’s bright out. Eddie will help you look for your things. You think about calling him instead, but deflate when you realize he’s at the fair right now. He’d make you feel better about this.

Slinging your backpack over your shoulder, you briskly walk to the door. Your hand wraps around the silver handle, ready to yank it with all your might and meet the cool night breeze. The door doesn’t budge. Another yank, and all you hear is the rattle of the hinges fighting against your strength. Tears finally fall on your face, turning into a sob as you desperately pull with two hands.

“Please!” you scream to no one. “Let me out, please!”

It takes a moment to register the man looming before you⏤face cloaked by a dirtied hockey mask mask and a shiny knife in hand. A whimper, then a scream. You don’t run in fear of the blade piercing right into your gut, nor do you have the strength to. You continue pulling at the door, praying for a miracle, until his other hand silences you, knocking you to the ground in shock. Your legs flail at him, but he stays a distance away. You’re dragged across the dirty carpet, choking on your saliva as his hand remains, suffocating you.

He manages to pin you in place, straddling you to cease the movement of your legs. When he leans down to inspect your face, twisted in torment, you take the opportunity to hook your fingers under his mask. He pulls back, but you’ve already undone the straps, able to throw it to the side.

Your heart freezes. His long, unruly hair falls across your shoulders. Disappointment crosses his face, aimed towards you and partially at himself. Not one hint of panic. His hand, weakened in the moment, comes off your mouth.

“Eddie..?” you whisper. He shakes his head, tutting. His weight still makes it difficult to crawl away, though the lack of feeling in your limbs prohibits it, anyway.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he sighs. He readjusts his grip on the knife. “What am I gonna do with you now?”

You swallow thickly, unable to produce any words. Your betrayed expression draws a strange look from him, as if he’s trying to comfort you in this time. His head comes down close to yours, nose skimming your cheek. You hold your breath, glancing at the large blade to make sure it hasn’t struck you yet. You don’t expect his lips to touch yours. Brief, and featherlight you almost can’t feel it, but you taste a hint of caramel and apples. Eddie grins at you, though there’s darkness behind it. In the little light left, his teeth shine like fangs.

“Keep this our little secret, will you?” he whispers in your ear. “Then I won’t have to hurt you.”

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson imagine

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steelycunt · 1 year

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I’m not saying that a lot of Regulus fans are only interested in him because they picture him as a Timothee Chalamet insert and wouldn’t give half a fuck about the character if that fancast didn’t exist but… oh wait that is what I’m saying.

yeah i mean. i definitely think there's something in that lol honestly. as ive said before i never really got the interest in regulus i just couldnt care less about the guy he genuinely has zero canon character but. simultaneously i can see how the little that we do know about him makes him an interesting character and i can see why people enjoy the idea of him as a blank slate that you can superimpose nearly any traits you want on to--treating regulus as essentially an oc gives you lots of room for creation. its for these exact reasons that he is of no interest to me personally, and i really don't like the common conceptualisation of him that has emerged from popular headcanon consensus (especially when it involves stripping his character of all agency and half the things that could arguably make him compelling in order to gloss over the fact that he was a death eater) but thats a matter of opinion i suppose. thats a me problem. its just not my cup of tea.

the timothee chalamet thing irritates me for the same reason the ridiculous instagram model/influencer/celebrity fancasts for most characters irritate me, because one of the ONLY things we know about regulus is that he is 'less handsome than sirius'. like ok why not work with that. especially with a character like him where there is virtually nothing to work with. like please explain to me why you refuse to accept that im genuinely curious. why is that the aspect of his character you are so firmly refuting lol.

all in all, if the character is only likeable or interesting or a convincing love interest if you have to pretend they were actually super conventionally attractive, maybe they're just not that likeable or interesting or well-suited to the character you're trying to pair them off with. its a personal thing again i am just not interested in reading/writing about a cast of characters who are all meticulously tailored to conform to beauty standards i do not respect. the minute u try to convince me all your characters are super hot n yassified it all feels less real to me sorry i care less about them. im bored of hot characters i think all fictional characters should be made to look like normal everyday people and i think everyone should be less afraid of so-called ugliness i triple dog dare u

#the 'you' here is just a general vague you btw it is not directed towards any one person and obviously not you anon we're in agreement #and reading it back i fear i may come off a little more aggressive than i intended so psa this is all my opinion like. do what you want #i am not the final word on this issue or any other. i am just a guy no 1 is obligated to listen to me if they dont want to. except about r #anyway remember talking to liv about the whole regulus thing and how. the personality that has been invented for him just seems like #people were bored of r/s they wanted something like r/s but new so they superimposed remus' personality onto him and then added a #few bits of sirius. and this is all me ranting about my opinion mindlessly now but i think #its reflected in those stupid terrible incorrect quote joke posts and how you see one of them where its remus and sirius and then see the #exact same post remade except remus has been changed to regulus and sirius has been changed to james. like yeah because regulus #is just a carbon copy of remus except if he was goth lol. we've done this one before its the same thing #and absolutely regulus can be done well and absolutely i am not a definitive judge of what is 'doing regulus well' just as no one else is #but i think if u want to do regulus well u have to make him less likeable. like he cant be ur soft loveable fav. girl he was a death eater #same as i think the whole barty / evan / regulus / pandora gang is just people refurbing the marauders. same thing different colour #anyway. i feel about regulus the same way i feel about dorcas or mary or marlene. they are not really characters #they dont have any definitive canon traits and i am not really interested in creating ocs. but other people might love that idea!#which is fine!#whew. love it when i get asks about things im scared to talk about of my own accord like i cant get in trouble if you guys asked me first x #anon #telegram #the brothers black #also girls he is a product of generation after generation of inbreeding. the black family should look like the windsors sirius was an #outlier.#oh also sorry i thought i was done but i want to clarify that i am no way saying you cannot be interested in morally grey characters or #find them compelling. instead what i am trying to say is that pretending a morally grey character actually isnt morally grey #in order to justify the fact that you are interested/fond of/compelled by them is boring and a disservice to your fav. hope that makes sens #within what we do know about regulus there are things that make him GOOD but not really anything that makes him likeable. and so much #of popular headcanon seems to be bestowing a ton of likeable traits upon him in order to redeem him despite there being no canon basis 4 it #like. we know regulus was a death eater 'it wasnt his decision he was forced into it!' we know regulus was less handsome than sirius 'no he #wasnt he was also super hot!' do you see what you're doing. you're losing me.

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channeleven · 1 year

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My Problem With Ed, Edd n’ Eddy’s Fifth Season

Okay, this isn't the first time I ever talked about the fifth season, but chances are it was a very rough take that I will only now put right. I used to be a big fan of Ed, Edd n' Eddy, well I still am, though I don't tune into old episodes. The show is over, the fandom is surprisingly well behaved, and I believe the show is superior to the shit people latch onto these days, for one thing it's not corporate, and no I'm not gonna explain what I mean by that.

But it's not all perfect, obviously. Nobody is reluctant to bring up any of the show's shortcomings, but there was one hangup I have with the show that persisted for so long. It seems like a petty thing to complain about, but the last season of Ed, Edd n' Eddy was so... not good, it actually convinced me that I just wasn't a fan of the show, when that is not the case.

To be fair, I'm not saying one season is better than the other, bad episodes are evenly spread out between seasons, and this wasn't necessarily out of Danny Antonucci's control, he went along with what seemed to be right, I mean aside from going digital, go drawn or go home. I really don't like the fifth season, and I feel it not happening would be inconsequential, and it seems I may not be alone with that, as most EEnE diehards actually liked my Tumblr post with the same opinion, and a common consensus is that it has some good episodes, some bad ones, or they're just happy to get more out of their favorite show.

I'm gonna go over why I don't like the fifth season of Ed, Edd n' Eddy, and why I believe it is expendable.

My Experience

I watched Cartoon Network during the early-2000s, so I was able to catch episodes of the fifth season when they were out. I have seen plenty of the older seasons' episides, I played Candy Machine Deluxe and Spin Stadium whenever I could, and I was basically ready for the long ride with the show.

When I saw the episodes new, I'll admit, I did like some of them, even those that would go on to be criticized later on, but even as a kid, something about most of the episodes felt... off, and this had stuck with me ever since then, to the point I found myself avoiding reruns of episodes I didn't like.

So no, I'm not doing this just for some contrarian cred, even as a kid I didn't like the fifth season that much, and that hasn't changed frankly.

Last Season Curse

People have often used the term seasonal rot to note shows that gradually began to crumble in its later years, and yes, I know this point is used ad nauseum, but for ever common complaint lies a kernel of truth. For every final season, it often reflects a lessened budget, like with ChalkZone or Real Ghostbusters for instance, or a creative director change, like the Chris Savino seasons of Dexter's Laboratory and PowerPuff Girls, not counting the Games era of Ren and Stimpy because let's be real, they didn't need John Kricfalusi, well, after he made the charaters. It's not always gonna be bad, but if you've been watching the show for a while, you're bound to pick up on a few differences. Seasonal rot does not always mean a show's last season sucks, it means this is a sign that either the creatives were worn to the bone with it, or the networks wanted it off as soon as possible, with a creative change only occurring if the original one steps down.

Danny was with the show all the way to the end, and that was for the better, he was always around to direct the episodes, but the one time he didn't during this season, we got what is often considered to be the worst episode of the entire series, or at least one that lands somewhere in the top five.

Some of the spirit of the previous seasons has been kept intact, but it is mixed in with some very noticeable tweaks that take away from that experience, often trumping what made the show so popular in the first place, and falling into the same trap that most shows do with new writers going off of notecards or struggling with ideas or stripping character personalities away.

The Little Differences

Now what do I mean by spirit? I mean the slapstick comedy in an otherwise normal setting. Danny, or someone, has said they avoid the prospect of characters growing up to preserve the timelessness of the series, which makes sense. The summer setting may also play into the timelessness by ridding any prospect of time moving forward, this shit could happen in the span of a few days or so and none would know the difference.

So obviously I object to the school setting.

I'm not gonna go all Mario fan on this, but I do have my complaints. That timeless setting, by implying that summer is over and having the kids go to school, it sorta takes away from the timelessness the writers were going for. If the show got more seasons, maybe we would've seen the parents, then you realize The Eds are Coming and Mission Ed Possible did the latter to a degree, Rock a Bye Ed doesn't really count as it was some depiction of Jonny 2x4 for the sake of the plot.

It's such simple things that were unfortunately cast aside, and so close to the finish-line too. Now look, I know this may sound like I'm making a big deal, fine, but I dunno, what do these changes add to the show at large? Granted, it's not just throwing in new characters on a whim, I like how creative they got to avoid showing any new characters, but if anything this marks a contrast between this and earlier seasons because you rarely saw any other instances in the older episodes. Keep this in mind.

The football episode shows the best and worst of making use of a limited cast for so long. While the Lemonbrook football team are depicted by shadows, we see shots of a crowd barely shown in, with the Kankers singled out. It just looks awkward, but like, did we need a football episode in Ed, Edd n' Eddy? That episode sucked balls, I'm sorry.

Our Friends in Name Only

And of course I need to get into how the characters feel just as off. To its credit, the characters have more consistency than other characters from shows that slipped into its terminal days, either that or they were more subtle about it. About the only major change I noticed was Ed, who turned out to be far more annoying than he was in the past, either because he tends to speak louder or may have lost more braincells than we were led to believe.

The big problem with the characters, at least for me, is the writing. The stories they are put into either drive them to over the top extremes rarely or never seen in previous seasons, and of course those on the lower end suffer the worst. Nobody likes Sarah, and of course she pulls a devastating fast one in "The Ed is Falling" or whatever the sky is falling episode name was. It's a Sarah plot without anything more to make it stand out, basically the 55% people don't take away from episodes like that.

And I gotta ask, why are Sarah and Jimmy in the same grade as everyone else? Otherwise why have them go to school if you're gonna treat it like it's still summer? It's almost as if this makes no sense even by an over the top cartoon's standard.

All I can say about Kevin is that he is a contributing factor to Smile for the Ed being seen as one of the worst episodes in the show, and yeah, seeing it brand new as a kid, all I can say is you had one job. On the other hand, maybe this was Danny's way of messing with the network, showing them what would happen if you separate him from the show. If that's true, that is clever, but it may've worked far too well.

But the one character I feel that suffered the worst because of the writing, was Edd. Much like how the season convinced me I didn't like the show, this season convinced me I didn't like Edd. The biggest draw here is when Edd smugly leaves Eddy to suffer for what he did or was associated with, even being involved with most of Eddy's misfortunes, or at least the no neck chump business. If you want to quit, just do so Edd, you're supposed to be the smart one right?

You may think 'oh, you see though, it's his way of showing he has backbone, just like in Momma's Little Ed.' And I can understand where you're coming from, but Eddy deserved it at the end, more importantly because he targeted Edd directly.

Really, the best way to compare Edd in most season five episodes is Sorry, Wrong Ed, the similarities are astounding, namely Edd's I don't give a shit about a guy I'm possibly friends with. If this was to set up some big argument, like in Big Picture Show, it wouldn't work because what set him off there was Ed and Eddy screwing with him during the journey to Bro. If it was as you thought it was, the series proper would've ended with Edd joining the Cul De Sac kids, arguably darker than the fourth season finale, because at least there the trio was still in effect.

It feels like sometimes the writers had it out for Eddy. We had some more brutal takedowns by the Kankers, even his own friends would turn against him, something was definitely not right with this, but what do I know?

The Core Element

I'd like to touch upon the slapstick real quick, I'm sure someone is gonna bring that up as a consistent element to the show. Yes, the sight gags and slapstick are here, but compared to those in the older seasons, even these feel off. Sure, they do happen, but... best way I can put it is that the older seasons had some slight restraint, pulling it off when you'd least expect it or having a really good gag pulled. Somehow, the fifth season feels even more cartoony, with faces and gags done that I would have never expected to see in older episodes.

It doesn't feel like they were included because they suited the series they were part of. In this season, it felt like they were included for the sake of being included, but it's as if the writers forgot their own work, or the network demanded more of it that we go overboard most of the time.

Check out an old episode, then one of the fifth season episodes, and tell me if you see something similar.

Its own

Interestingly, it was here that the show transitioned to digital animation, so me going on about the little differences hones in on how alien this season feels compared to others. With the gag execution, the treatment of most characters and the common setting, you can remove this season from the show and, really, what harm would it do? Anything new that occurred had done so in this season anyhow.

But you may be thinking, well without the fifth season, we wouldn't get Big Picture Show. Okay, maybe you have a point, but by then Ed, Edd n' Eddy was still very popular so I'm sure we would've gotten the movie regardless of the fifth season occurring or not. Especially so, since the movie occurred in the Summer, when the older seasons did. The use of digital animation in it helps make the spectacle more believable and feel like a grand finale. For one thing it looks better than The Loud House Movie, possibly even the Casagrandes Movie.

The fifth season has similar animation to Big Picture Show, and that dulls the spectacle aspect just a tad. The fact the fifth season throws in a new setting placement and hints of other characters ruins the mystique the movie would offer, in terms of the Eds exploring the world outside of the Cul De Sac, seeing small hints of new people, especially Bro at the end. Now, of course the kids make peace at the end, so that is a good thing at least, but we could've come to that without the fifth season.

If anyone was gonna bring up releasing the movie earlier because there would be no new content between when the movie came out and the fifth season did, how about a compromise? They could waste less time on a, quite frankly divisive season and just produce the holiday specials and participate in CN Invaded, new content in small increments, building up to a grand finale. I won't say some traces of the fifth season's writing didn't get into this movie, but at most it feels like the spirit of the older seasons was kept. Hell, even the over the top gags make more sense as this was a TV film with higher ambition than the previous seasons.

And I'm sure someone is gonna say if we didn't have season five things would end on a very dour note thanks to Take This Ed and Shove It's ending. But let's be real, you can wonder about that. It's not tragic, just a sarcastic yearn for lost youth, by this point everyone was on good terms and just got old. People say the last episode of the fifth season was a good finale, but honestly it felt kinda forced, and it was as if Danny gave an exasperated sigh of relief that he was finished with it. It was like a wet fart basically, especially since, lol, that wasn't even the last episode, and I don't mean Big Picture Show, I mean the lost episode that came from the proposed sixth season, of course they were planning more, but something happened and we never got it. Maybe somewhere, it was because the fifth season was such a groaner that people feared what other seasons would entail.

Final Thoughts

I understand Ed, Edd n' Eddy is a heavily respected show, and I can certainly agree with it. But even as a kid, I didn't like the fifth season's episodes very much. It felt like the show in name only, and it made me feel like I wasn't a fan of the show anymore. It has in quality what it has in expendability, and had this never come out, beyond the holiday specials, I think it would've made Big Picture Show a hell of a lot more satisfying.

#ed edd n eddy #review

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coinnewz · 9 months

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ERC-20 inventor discusses origins, new blockchains, BRC-20 and

In 2018, Ethereum lead developer Fabian Vogelsteller contacted the community for a new standard for smart contracts he created alongside co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Dubbed ERC-20, Vogelsteller, at the time, only wished for input regarding the novel idea. Little did he know that ERC-20 would ignite a wave of initial coin offerings (ICOs) shortly after its inception to become the industry gold standard for issuing tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Just as ERC-20 tokens were gaining traction, Vogelsteller left the Ethereum Foundation the same year to focus on developing a new blockchain, Lukso. In an interview with Cointelegraph, the ERC-20 inventor discussed his motivation for creating his multiverse blockchain, as well as the latest token standard developments in the sector. Let’s pump that creator economy they are currently rekt. pic.twitter.com/tIGiGjTpYn — Fabian Vogelsteller (@feindura) July 20, 2023 Cointelegraph: Currently, ERC-20 is the gold token standard in the ecosystem. But in 2018, you left Ethereum to develop Lukso. What was the motivation behind that? Fabian Vogelsteller: The human story behind it is that Marjorie , my wife at the time, had an idea of creating a blockchain for lifestyle and fashion. And I thought that’s a great idea. So, the story evolved to create a blockchain specifically focused on more mainstream use cases, such as for lifestyle, fashion designers, social media, content creators and YouTubers. Anything that's more like what the internet users today would use rather than the token, finance or DeFi world. CT: What inspired you to create the ERC-20 standard? FV: I proposed the ERC-20 standard based on a concept from Vitalik. We discussed this, and it became the first smart contract standard. I called it an Ethereum Request for Comment because I just wanted to have comments. And I thought we’d issue a number randomly, like 20. This was never really thought out. So everything was just us going with the flow and figuring out how we use this stuff. CT: How does the traction currently look for Lukso? FV: Basically, we built out this smart contract account completely over the last five or six years. On May 23, we launched a mainnet that’s exactly like Ethereum. It’s the same tech and the same consensus algorithm. We started with 10,300 validator keys that are only community members. Now, the network has been running for one and a half months, and we have around 23,000 validators and growing. CT: So, if it’s so similar to Ethereum, what was your rationale for spending all these years to create your own blockchain instead of just launching it as a layer-1 or layer-2 on Ethereum? FV: There are multiple reasons. Number one, we are trying to attract a new crowd, a new group of people, a new ecosystem — an ecosystem that doesn’t currently exist — to create our economy. But the main reason is to get people to adopt these new building blocks. You could never do this on Ethereum. If I would go and propose an ERC and say, "Here’s a super smart contract account system," everyone will say we have ERC-20 already. You know, nobody would do anything; nobody would adopt this. And the other thing is when you are proposing a base account, you have the problem that you need to pay for the deployment for users, and they also need to pay gas fees. In order to solve this problem, we basically create a new chain to subsidize early users. CT: Another token standard that’s getting very popular recently is BRC-20 tokens. What are your thoughts on the future of Bitcoin or Inscriptions and Ordinals? FV: The fact that it’s called BRC-20 makes it already a joke. Obviously, he means that as a joke. It’s good if people like us to create new standards. That said, Bitcoin is extremely limited; it’s not a generic programmable blockchain, and it’s slow. I stopped using Bitcoin in 2014 because it’s just slow and outdated. CT: You’ve been focusing your attention on Lukso for nearly six years now. How are you guys doing in terms of the runway? FV: We did an ICO in 2019-2020, kind of kicked off the ICO wave. I made something called a reversible ICO. What we did is that people had eight months to buy LYX tokens with refunds. So, for example, after four months, if they realize, “Oh, Fabian is an idiot, and this project is shit," they could have gotten their money back. Out of the 42 million LYX in circulation, the foundation holds about 26% of it. We are building everything from the LYX we have. And we are operating from that. Fabian Vogelsteller (center). Source: Fabian Vogelsteller on Twitter Magazine: ‘Elegant and ass-backward’: Jameson Lopp’s first impression of Bitcoin Source link Read the full article

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x-chubby-reader · 3 years

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Hey, how about hcs Ushijima,Terushima, Bokuto and Kuroo getting jealous when their chubby s/o being hitting on right before their eyes 🥴 what would they do? Might as well do nsfw a lil' bit? 🥺

Thank you! I love your works ❤🥰

Jealous Haikyuu Boys + !NSFW!

Ushijima, Terushima, Bokuto, and Kurro x Plus size reader

A/N - Hope I brought this to justice. I loved this idea a lot but I think they might have made them a little toxic- Also sorry for this being very overdue with writing, but as most of you know my motivation for lots of thing is shit. Also Thanks to @livieeee for basically helping to edit and give ideas for this. I also may add to the other characters NSFW as I accidentally gave Bokuto the most detailed part

Lowercase intended

Not proof read

NSFW included

Cursing

The Characters are all aged up for this Headcannon

Ushijima

we are all very aware about how blunt he is with things

not one to bottle things up

if he doesn't like something, he will voice his opinion

ushijimas blunt ass will sat whatever he wants if he deems that its true

doesn't everyone want to know the truth about things?

he also isn’t one to be easily jealous over things too

his confident ass knows that he’s got you in the long run anyways

he has complete trust in you, your his rock

ushi knows that you wouldn’t go off to flirt with some douche just for the fun of it

the first time that he had ever found himself jealous was when you had dragged him out to your friends birthday party in college

he wouldn’t of even gone if you hadn't forced him out to be social and to make some friends with people his own age and should get out of the house for something other than practicing with the volleyball team he was on

since the party had been for your friend finally becoming of legal drinking age, of course there had been alcohol

oh i wonder how this liquid luck could get you into a predicament?

you had needed to go to the bathroom, so you gave your boyfriend a little wave before leaving

it should of only taken you about five minutes, and ushi knew that

so when you took over twenty he decided to go looking for you

while he was searching for your thicker frame, you had been quite preocupied with something else

there was this guy, completely drunk off of his ass, who wouldn’t leave you along

“are you lightning? because your my mc-queen”

just really icky and shitty pick up lines

homeboy was so touchy too omfg like back up ass hat

you hadn't even noticed the amount of time that had passed until you felt a strong hand on your shoulder

boy did that make you jump

and he looked pissed

~Nsfw~

homeboy really said posessive~

ushi literally ripped you away into the bathroom as you had been stuck in the hallways for god knows how long

for once his touch wasn’t gentle with you, it was more rough and less caring

he’s so rough with you right now oml

to make the story short, you won’t be walking easily later

he wants to make you yell out, to show everyone in the premis know that you are his

“how about you let everyone know who you belong to, sweetheart~”

his buff ass literally is holding you up, just fucking railing into you

only stops when he deems that you are done

he even apologizes if he hurt you too badly

cleans the both of you up with one of the guest towels hanging, before walking you ever so gently out to grab a cab and make your way home

Terushima

while the two of you had been out shopping for god know what, you happened to spot an old friend

he was ole of those guy friends that were overly touchy, but you never had really minded it since he was just being nice

your friend had been very high energy and affectionate, but they always meant well

so your boyfriend, terushima, had just smacked a smile on his face and acted as friendly as could be

But he was jealous of all the attention you were giving him

hey you couldn’t help it, you haven’t seen the guy in years

hello? teru is your boyfriend, not this guy!

the look on his face when you exchanged numbers to meet up later

you would of thought that you had just shot his puppy dear lord

he was so god damn sad

“he’s totally trying to get into your pants y/n!”

“no he isn’t teru, he’s just being nice”

“y/n, no-”

your so oblivious to it

terushima has two levels jealously

he goes from pout-y little kid to complete asshole in a matter of seconds

homeboy is black and white with his personality, there is no gray area with him

even though he isn’t one to keep quiet about something he doesn't like, he did it anyways for your sake

though he glared holes into him

eventually when he had left ho boy did terushima give you an earful

you heard even more when he found about how you made plans with before mentioned friend to have dinner

it was just so the two of you could catch up after the many years that you haddn’t seen each other

“its just dinner”

“y/n its like he’s trying to date you

“can you chill out?”

“no! what? are you dating him now???”

okay he can be a little high strung sometimes, but its something you can tolerate

~NSFW~

remember how you had given him your phone number?

yeah, that may be important

while you had been getting ready for your little ‘dinner date’ with your friend, teru had still been glaring at the back of your head

you could see his annoyed look from the mirror, but you payed him no mind

hey, he would get over it sooner or later

your phone decides to start ringing, and its the guy

teru looks at it, then at you, then back at the phone

he hits answer before handing the phone to you

you decide to start talking, everything is in a friendly tone

and then he decides to play around a bit

a little nip here and there, nothing more nothing less

just to see what his little doll face can handle

then soon he escalates it more and more

soon lurking hands become groping and nips became hickeys

though you had to pretend that everything was hunky dory on your side of the phone

homeboy on the other line didn’t even think anything of it

“hey are you okay?” he had asked once when you particularly couldn’t handle his stimulation

“y-yeah i’m great right now...”

his hand would slip and dip into places that you had forgotten about until now

just the smooth and slick friction would bring heat to your face, though

that’s when teru had taken the phone back

“screw off your asshat, never call her again!”

and he never did, even if you say him in public, he would walk the other direction

Bokuto

the two of you had just been out window shopping and peaking into stores on a saturday

when a store employee had started talking about a popular television show that had aired yesterday, you hadn't thought anything of it

in your mind it would of been rude to ignore them completely,

what if they were just having a bad day and you little small talk and brightened it just a little?

you didn’t want to have something like that on your consensus

bo had been standing beside you the entire time, and you hadn’t even noticed the way he had stiffened and almost seemed to puff up, like an owl

there had been one person who did notice bokuto’s uneasiness

baby boy had thought that the two of you had been flirting when he walked by

omg he looked so sad

he went from being all perky and happy to looking like a deflated balloon

it was pretty pathetic

sooner or later the worker had felt so awkaward that he left, that’s when you had noticed his discomfort

he had waved if off until the two of you had gotten home, then you finally cornered him and asked

“whats wrong?”

he just rolled his eyes to himself, “you should know!”

yeah just the buffering circle above your head for that one

you really had no idea

“i seriously don’t bo...”

“yes you do, in the store that worker was totally flirting with you!” he had finally spoke out

oh...

that had made sense you guessed

even though you had apologized to him, he had still been down, even needy

~NSFW~

bo had just been clinging on you for the past hour

if your standing, he’s right behind you, just looming

he became a shadow or a lost puppy, following you everywhere

his arms always found their way to your generous waist, holding onto you as if you would be blown away if a gust of wind decided to make its way though your home

as you had tried to walk down the short hallway that connected your bedroom to the living room, bokuto had stopped the both of you

he looked down to you before grabbing your wrist

bokuto half dragged and half lead you to the shared room you both shared since you moved in together

he had pushed you, not carefully may I add, onto the futon bed

koutarou soon climbed on top of your plush frame, his face lightly dusted in a red hue

one of his hands wandered down towards the plush button that resided between your thick thighs

the other had cradled the back of your head, pulling you back lightly so he could have more access to your neck and collarbones

bokuto lightly kissed your skin, it didn’t matter if imperfections or not

now this would have been more of a sweet moment if you hadn’t noticed the almost mocking circles you felt at your core

“am i good enough for you now baby owl?”

you would of answered him if you were able to form words, but the amount of stimulation that he was able to give you simply from the tips of his fingers was astonishing

damn boy he got magic hands

you had opened your mouth but no words came out

that had made the two toned haired boy let out a laugh

the only thing that you thought to do was to wrap your arms around his broad back

“speechless, huh” he had taunted you, a smirk on his face

he just kept up his happy little circles, the stimulation bringing a warm, almost butterfly like feeling to your abdomen

it was if he filled an empty part of you, and you needed him to survive

the tightness in your core had started to bubble, feeling as if you were going to top off the edge and boil over

your former speachless self was soon a babbling mess, telling bo how much you did need him

and even after you had reached and passed your high, he hadn't stopped, he loved the way your words flowed from your mouth in light, breathless pleas

oh he wasn’t even done

play nice you two

Kuroo

out of the two of you, kuroo had always been the more jealous one

baby boy is passive aggressive about it too

he doesn't do the keeping it to himself kind of bullshit

just completely straight to the point

he dosent often become jealous either

kuroo trusts that you wont get flirty or ‘advance’ on anyone else, because you have him for that

why would you need anyone else when he’s right there?

he has the confidence that all of us are jealous of

you and i know that this boy gives little insults to almost everyone

just in a joking and playful way, because that’s just how he communicates to people

but if someone decides to push it

ho boy

mr. rooster man slowly gets more and more passive aggressive

literally they turn into thinly veiled threats

you could practically see the steam coming out of his ears

so imagine his reaction when the waiter at a restaurant had decided to get a little too cozy with interacting with you

kuroo had been sitting right across from you, a pissed off look slapped over his face

who was this asshole and why the fuck was he going after his little kitten?

he had kept his mouth shut but raised an eyebrow at your plush form

it was as if he was asking if you were going to let this guy keep his shitty advances up

you just thought he was being friendly, but according to kuroo he wasn’t

when he had figured that you weren't going to stop him, he spoke up

“lay off dickwad” his voice had been laced with the utmost hate, you had never heard him ever use that tone before

with that, he had grabbed you by the arm before leaving, not paying for the two glasses

~NSFW~

the two of you had gone home in his car

no words had been exchanged between kuroo or you

“you were so into that, weren't you y/n” the bed-head boy had muttered to you, almost in a mocking way

you couldn’t think of a reason on why he was acting like that, so you had just kept your mouth shut until he would drop you off at your apartment

his hand that usually resided on your plush thigh while he was driving was currently white knuckled on the the steering wheel

even though he was looking at the road, he looked completely pissed

no plea for him to talk to you would make him speak up, it was as if he was stuck in thought

even when he had dropped you off at your flat, he seemed to still loom over you

when you took out your keys, he took them from your hand and opened the door himself as if you were suddenly incompetent of doing anything for yourself

“need someone to do everything for you huh? just too dumb in the brain to do anything...” kuroo had sneered to himself

“okay what the fuck is your problem you asshole?” you had finally spoken up, really what was this jerks deal with you?

homeboy had glared at you before pinning you against the wall in your own home as if he owned the place, “oh so now you talk, you were so fine with that guy in the restaurant huh? completely preoccupied with him to forget that i was there...”

suddenly everything is making sense right now, the puzzel pieces are fitting together

homeboy was jealous and you had no idea, you just though he was being pissy for no reason

he just sighed, putting his head in the crook of your neck, “idiot...”

kuroo had finally turned his head to look up to you, a slightly sad look on his face

oh you felt like complete shit, homeboy looked so down that your heart hurt

you leaned your head slightly down so you could give the top of his head a lil kiss kiss

homeboy almost seemed to purr from the affection

he slung his arms over your shoulders, it was as if he was leading you into the minimal living room that you had

the two of somehow ended up on the crappy couch you had, him on top humming happily down below at you

sandwiched happily together

“i’m still disappointed in you...” he muttered, looking down at you

“oh bite me” though you paused before thinking, “how about i make it up to you?”

kuroo had smirked, “and how are you going to do that?” he questioned you

it was as if you had suddenly forgotten how to speak, a burning heat spreading from your cheeps to the bridge of your nose

lets just say that you did not expect that answer from him in the slightest-

his slender hand ran up the side of your torso, as if he was memoriizing the peaks and valleys of your figure

“i’m the only one who can make you feel like this,” kuroo had muttered cockily, staring into your eyes

he had no shame making comments like these, why should he?

his fingers snuck under the elastic material of the underthings you had currently been wearing, teasingly testing the waters and rubbing fether-like circles over your sensitive bits that were located on your chest

“are you ready?”

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lorebird · 2 years

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For There's Something Under Boatem, do you think things from previous seasons could carry over in some form? I may or may not be thinking abt the mycelium resistance again and trying to put it into every au I can think of

Also the Boatem creature spreading a trail of mycelium under it or with patches of fungus on it could look cool

I HAVE NO CLUE WHEN I GOT THIS IM SORRY

BUT ANYWAYS . OH MY GOD. YOUR BRAIN IS MASSIVE AND IM LOSING MY MIND this is so good I'm coming up with a narrative excuse for this asap

If the void itself is an entity, with the beast being just one physical manifestation of it, that leaves me w a ton of open doors (considering how all the stars in the void are other worlds which is 100% true btw I'm commanding as such ❤️). Could anything that's fallen into the void in any world be amassed into the boatem beast??? I don't see why not <3

I wouldn't consider this idea """canon""" to the au, which I'm saying very loosely bc there isn't a strict canon at all -- almost every separate artwork I've done is in its own isolated bubble of ideas that conflict w other artworks. Like the whole Watcher Remembering idea vs that comic where mumbo comments on the beast having tons of eyes. All this to say I'm using this as an excuse to throw in whatever the hell I want from any previous season and possibly other series as well........... this au is pure self indulgence I have no shame! Also I think it'd be Very Fun to call this sorta sub-au "there's mushrooms under boatem" /hj

Ideas under a cut bc oh no this is getting long

OFHRJGDJGJKDG OK SO . I FUCKING LOVE FUNGI SO DAMN MUCH THEYRE SUCJ COOL IMAGERY SO I AM LOSING MY MIND . And now I'm having some Thoughts about the mycelium resistance n how I can thematically tie it into the void bc...... idk themes my beloved I guess<3 also it's like 11 pm here so don't expect coherence I'm so sorry

I wasn't really Online and active in the hc fandom during the mycelium resistance plot, so I don't know if there's a popular consensus on headcanons there -- this'll all be following my own takes (unless other people wanna add in!! I'd love to hear if you have any other ideas anon bc I am !!!!!!!)

The things I feel the mycelium and my Void Lore have in common are 1) being the original state of something, whether the shopping district or existence itself 2) a penchant for spreading and subsuming 3) a massive, but less tangible, body (hyphae, the void under the world) and a much more noticable + physical offshoot (mushrooms, the boatem beast). Idk if anyone broke through bedrock in the shopping district? But if the void was somehow introduced there, that could kick things off. It wouldn’t be able to form a physical body of its own like the boatem beast, not without the egg to jumpstart things, but could maybe corrupt the mycelium to propagate bc uhhhh. Idk void mushrooms are cool dw about logic. Personally I love the idea of the mycelium resistance being a little bit mind controlled and this can contribute to it <3 call of the void but it just tells you to grow mushrooms

I think it’s a neat concept just as is!! The 2 forces are both trying to bring the shopping district to its “original” state, but both have wildly different perspectives of what things were originally like. When the mycelium is finally wiped out, the void loses its hold on both on the resistance and in a more physical sense. I’d have to go rewatch the turf war to come up w ideas of what the void actually Does up on the island — one of the shops had end crystals + their Beams, right?? Maybe smth with that?? Idk, there’s not quite as much Weird Stuff for me to work off of as there was in s8. My worldbuilding with void + the end is incredibly loose and vague anyways which doesn’t help /lh but anyways. That all is my excuse to throw some mycelium resistance flavoring into the something under boatem au

As for how the beast is shaped by this . Oh My God fuck yes mycelium trail oh my GOD...... imagine if plants around boatem were dying mysteriously, which turned out to be a fungal infection. Poor mr peace love and plants 💔 omg and the return of Void Fungus Team Up would give the boatem beast an even more powerful Physical Foothold bc it could get into the earth itself!!! Holy shit imagine the boatem hole slowly overrun by mysterious mushrooms that shimmer like the void AHHHH it’s getting late and I need to sleep before a long ass car ride tomorrow so. Leaving it there for now but. God I am Rotating

#there’s something under boatem #rambles #god I can’t believe ppl are like. Actually Interested I’m the au #makes me endlessly happy #I DO have an excuse to incorporate 3l/ll if I come up w ideas for what to do with it................#I imagine that the worlds were temporary and a little unstable #after everyone dies they finally fall apart #and everything’s dispersed into the void #so. there’s my excuse <3 #haven’t thought of anything for that yet but I am so very self indulgent and leaving the opportunity there

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hongism · 4 years

Note

Do you have any good ateez X reader fanfics Recs? I’m in need of a good long fanfic If not long Then a really really good one lol I just have a hard time finding some lol

BOY HOWDY IM FINALLY HERE okay but fr tho i’m sorry this took me Lightyears to do im so bad at remembering what fics i read and how i tag them so i lost my mind while trying to find them all and i’m sure i missed a lot of favs so i Apologize in advance asiodjfosijdf some are kinda popular so you might have seen them before but some do not get the credit they deserve and i could sit here and sing the praises of these fics and their authors for years but i won’t put y’all through that ._.

You can’t even reach my neck - @kpopscenario - seonghwa

summary: They’re best friends and have feelings for each other but they both don’t know about the others crush, Seonghwa comforts her after another bad date. (Basically friends to lovers college!au)

yes i am a Sucker for a damn f2l college au on occasion and this is one of those Incredible and Well Written occasions i love this fic and the length is perfect and long in the best way 10/10 would recommend and it’s great

such a good girl for me - @starrychannies - mingi

summary: no summary but the warnings should tell you Everything you need to know wink wonk skljdlkdfj

warnings: harddom!mingi, sub!reader, size kink (its mingi duh), choking, sir kink, pet names, mix of praise and degradation, oral (receiving), unprotected sex, slight overstim, slight humiliation (?), a lot of fluffy aftercare.

i find it Uber hard to write smut that is well written in all honesty like i can’t read my own smut bc i can’t Stand It i just think it’s awful but there are so so many authors out there who can write smut and write it well and i admire starrychannies so much for such incredible writing talent with smut yesyes

Alone - @actuallythatwaspromise - san

summary: again n/a but good lord royalty au prince san, princess reader, smack me over the head because i really adore this 2.2k fic and good lord this fic gets me emo and i dont even know why??? the angst is soft and barely there but i’m still over here sobbing for no reason oisdfoaijdiof

detention - @/starrychannies - wooyoung

warnings: badboy!wooyoung, goodgirl!reader, smut, voice kink, corruption kink, fingering, dirty talk, public sex, exhibitionism kink, wooyoung has piercings and reader is a Big Fan, mention of gags, light degradation.

this, this shit right here, this is so good WHEW i dont really have the words but hot damn, i just love this fic and i love love love the way the author wrote the the fic and it’s Hot:tm:

violet roses - @/starrychannies - yunho

warnings: F L U F F, college!au, s2l, first meeting, yunho is a soft babie, yunhos pov!!, love at first sight, pining, bit of slow burn, yunho is Whipped, suggestive teasing, hyunjin is mentioned briefly in the beginning, protective yunho, mingi makes an appearance, mentioned that mingi’s gay, san is mentioned, smut, softdom!yunho, sub!reader, praise, car sex, SIZE KINK!!!!, vaginal penetration, fingering, finger riding, penetrative sex, daddy kink, yunho lowkey has a corruption kink, multiple orgasms.

did i die? yes but only a lot. ahhhh i LOVE me some damn s2l slow burn and pining that shit hits the spot and this fic has it wrapped up in a nice and lovely package pls read pls pls pls read

lover boys - @/starrychannies - seonghwa + hyunjin

warnings: smut, wet dreams, poly relationship, boy x boy, non idol verse, ateez x skz crossover (yay!), harddom!seonghwa, softdom!hyunjin, sub!reader, threesome, reader is Needy, hyunjin is Sleepy, seonghwa is Amused, pwp, light somniphilia, dirty talk, petnames, some degradation, early morning sex, oral (giving), throat fucking, reader has no gag reflex and hyunjin is In Love with it, fingering (receiving), spanking (like twice), unprotected sex, light cum play, cum swallowing, little bit of praise, cuddles!

i really just need a minute whenever i think about this fic bc i highkey die every time i think about it??? two of my ults??? i can’t??? i really can’t handle this honestly like woW osdijfoijdfoi the way i melted we love to see it 🤩

entanglement - @sanduction - wooyoung

summary: when the boy who had explicitly spelled out his implausible hatred towards you on every possible occasion tells you that he’s a dog, who would’ve guessed that you possessed the other half of his soul? not you, at least. life sure had a shit-load of guts to pull a twilight on you like that.

okay so deadass if you know me you know that i really am not the type to read werewolf/hybrid fics. i just typically don’t go for them or read them but this fic. this fic. oh my god. the way it’s so seamless and works so perfectly, i’ll never recover like W O W i love this fic that is all honestly i have mad respect for all writers who do werewolf/hybrid fics bc i can’t write them at all, so sanduction huge major props to you i love your work!!!

who catches the alpha? - @teeztheflag - hongjoong

summary: „You don’t want to break the rules, am I right?“

aka another phenomenal werewolf fic with alpha hongjoong that made me fall over in a totally great way. the angst the fluff the little suggestive bits it all flowed and fit together perfectly and i am still in love with this fic no matter how much time passes

bite me - @atinyidea - yunho

summary: vampire!au, vampire!yunho, vampire!reader, female!reader established!relationship / warnings! angry s*x?, biting, blood, sir k*nk, consensual s*x, teasing, begging, rough play, overstimulation

this fic is ~spicy~ and whew it is good wow just the idea of yunho and reader being immortal together was like awww then it got spicy and i went to o_o real quick but it is such a good fic and wow i love it i dont even have words bc im Dumb but wow

You Got It Like That? - @kimnamshiks - wooyoung

summary: You just needed to get through this week at the resort at the hands of 20 coworkers and Wooyoung; the Sales Department Supervisor who got some raunchy photos of you the day prior.

honestly wow sodifjoisdjf i love this fic so much i just wow honestly the reader is a whole mood when wooyoung texts about the pictures and i was reading like ‘ahahaa me.’ oisjdfoij god the back and forth between wooyoung and the reader just had me rolling legit i got flustered like pls wooyoung just HAAHHAHA WOOYOUNG IN THIS FIC GETS ME FLUSTERED AS FUCK it is all because tay is a Stellar Writer and makes those emotions come to life in amazing ways and i’ll never ever get over it just whew banter in fics is legit one of my favorite things ever and tay does it with such beautiful ease that i am Enamored but i am also Rambling just pls read this fic oh my god it’s so good

be my neighbor - @jeonginks - seonghwa

summary: seonghwa moved into the apartment next to yours, and he stumbled into a situation he didn’t expect to face.

wow i l o v e this fic it’s just a perfect blend of angst and fluff and it sends me to space every time i read it soidfjoidjf don’t ask why space but it just does i kinda ascend okay? anyway wow this fic is such a gem and it is sO underrated in my opinion. the dialogue is written so beautifully and with an ease that i think is often times hard to capture?? wow just amazing

Cheat Codes - @serendipityunho - seonghwa

summary: “This party’s boring, wanna get out of here?”, may have perhaps led you to make the biggest mistake of your life by sleeping with your best friend’s other best friend, your best friend who happens to be in love with you.

me: wow i never read college aus hahhaa

also me: reads a shit ton of college aus sodifjodijf

honestly this fic is 100% fantastic from start to finish, it’s 5.3k of pure greatness and i just really love this fic altho my heart broke at the end it still fit perfectly and was amazingly written ;-;

that is all i have for today slkdfljdlk however i will be shameless and say that if you would like some Long Bois for ateez i have a few but i’ll link the fics i loved writing the most and am v proud of :3

storge - mingi

liquorice and ivories - hongjoong

#fic recs #ateez #ateez x reader #ateez smut #ateez fluff #ateez angst #seonghwa x reader #hongjoong x reader #yunho x reader #mingi x reader #san x reader #wooyoung x reader #great reads #wow #i made this too long oml #anon #ask #queue queue queue queue baby baby baby

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duketectivecomics · 4 years

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You might've answered this already and I just didn't find it, but one thing that always perplexed me about Duke was how old he was in comparison to the other Batkids. It's obvious he's younger than Dick and Babs, and I pretty sure he's younger than Jason and Cass, and older than Damian, but I cannot tell if he's meant to be Tim and Steph's ages, younger, or older. Could you help me?

You’re all kinds of good here, anon!!! I answered a similar ask abt the Order of Adoption but didn’t dive into specific ages on that post BECAUSE well they didn’t ask lmaooo but ALSO:

Comic ages are very fluid usually! While Years™️ might pass in the canon proper, or while time seems to slow to a crawl, having a character’s age outright stated is something that occurs very rarely for most characters, if at all!

Because it’s always much easier to have a floating age range to work and play around in! It’s easier to keep a character Perpetually 12 or 16 or 25 or mid-40s or- you get the idea. SO, with that in mind. Let’s do our Best to Break Down What Age Duke Might Be Currently A N D how it might interact with the Other Batkids!

(Warning for a Very Long Post, lots of issue citations, and a LOT of comics terminology regarding specific runs/events/continunity. I’m gonna try to keep it as clear/concise as possible ofc but plz keep these things in mind! If you’re not at least marginally familiar with Bat-Comics, you might find yourself feeling a little lost here!)

So from the Zero Year arc we see a common Trend that plays out pretty consistently with Batfam comics: a Life-Changing Event Occuring while the protag is Young™️.

(Batman (2011) #30)

With how Duke is drawn in these particular issues, and given the trends of the past, I’d place him in the 8-12 range. The historic precedent being ofc that that is the same range that canon usually places both Bruce and Dick at for their Tragedies™; the more benign reason being that he... just very much Looks to be drawn in that Range. He’s very clearly an Older/Prepubescent child here.

Fast Forward to his Next Appearance in the Endgame arc and-

(Batman (2011) #37)

He’s definitely older! He’s wiser! And he’s giving Batman a fistbump lmao. Again, no strict age given here BUT, since they condensed each Robin to a Year or Two tops with Bruce (its n52 and its fucked up is what it is), we can assume it’s been at least 4-5 since Zero Year (which would mean if we go off the age range I proposed for that year, then theoretically he could be anywhere from 12-16 here, and I think that tracks pretty well. Not Perfectly and Certainly Not so well with Pre52 continuity ofc, but I’ll talk about that later!)

In We Are Robin, while its not stated Directly In The Text, it IS given as an Informational Tidbit that Duke is 16 (specifically this can be found at the end of issue #4)! (Sweet sweet canon confirmation FINALLY)

We know that WAR takes place Fairly Soon after Endgame (almost immediately, give or take a month or two given that Duke’s been placed in a few foster homes at this point and has racked up Quite A File) now, again id like to remind y’all that while this is a NICE starting point to have, keep in mind that comics are fluid and this may be retconned slightly/ignored in later stories bc Keeping Duke 16-ish is in DC’s Best Interest at the moment. (Having Relatable Teen Characters afterall is a Good Marketing strategy™️. And the longer they can Keep them Young, the Better)

With that in mind let’s take a moment to Highlight the fact that Duke and Damian have crossed paths at this point AND the storylines that have occurred during this year that were meant to be in conjunction with one another!

Because Prior to Endgame, Damian had Died! And just a year (in real, meat-space time) before We Are Robin, he was resurrected and had begun his “Year of Atonement” in the Robin: Son of Batman maxiseries. Midway through both this series and WAR (and, we can assume, midway thru this “Year” for Damian) the Robin War begins/ends and we see at least one major Moment between these two boys who will soon call one another brothers:

(Robin War #2)

Given that R:SoB is followed up VERY quickly by Teen Titans Rebirth (in which Damian celebrates his 13th birthday), we can conclude that Damian would be 12 during this time (well, 12 and 1/2 to play it safe lmao). That being said, this Confirms about a 4yr gap between Duke and Damian! (One Batkid down at least! but he’s the key to the others so put a pin in him!)

As We Are Robin draws to its conclusion, DC was releasing another arc that would eventually flow into the Rebirth Era, by the end of which, Bruce would approach Duke with an Idea (which involves Bruce becoming Dukes temporary guardian & as he states Many Times “Trying Something New” with Duke).

And thus the Rebirth Era begins, and Duke began his Year of training (most directly encapsulated by the Cursed Wheel arc in the All-Star Batman run:

(All-Star Batman #1 (back-up story))

Bruce introduces Duke to a training regimen that Alfred has named “the Cursed Wheel”. It encompasses all the training Bruce and the other bats have undergone and condenses it down into color-coordinated segments that will take Duke a Year to Complete.

It can be assumed that by the End of this Year Duke will somehow miraculously still be 16, despite, again, an entire ass year passing.

There’s one story that takes place mid-year in All-Star Batman, and the Cursed Wheel is meant to be capped off by Duke’s first Official Day as the Signal (in the titular Batman & the Signal ofc) BUT, near as I can tell after this story, Dukes age is not brought up again. So until they DO bring it up either in Batman & the Outsiders or whatever future run Duke becomes involved in, we can assume DC will be working with the idea that he’s meant to be in that 16-18 range from here on out (ie still a minor).

But, dear anon, you might be saying “okay, that’s cool, but how does that relate to my question abt how he falls in with the other Bats?” You’ll have to be a little patient with me here, but I think I may have cracked the code!

Keep in mind I’m gonna be addressing both the Post-Crisis to Flashpoint Continuity (ie mid-80s to 2010 in comics history) and the N52-slash-Rebirth Era (2010-Today). Its generally agreed by fandom and DC alike that these points of rebooting &/or Major Events constitute the era of “Modern” comics, and that everything from the 80s-on might more or less be canon on some level, even if not All of it is.

(Plus, most of fandom usually likes to borrow elements from both eras and much more rarely from stories before it, SO-)

Lets do a quick rundown of how everyone who’s Closer to Duke’s Age, Relates to each other first, age-wise:

Given that Jason was 15 when he died, in A Lonely Place of Dying its established that Bruce had become increasingly reckless since his death, and by the end of the story, Tim has stepped in to fill Robin’s shoes (he states that he’s 13 during this story btw). Pretty soon after, Stephanie Brown is introduced & established to be about a year older than Tim (wish I could pin-point a specific issue BUT, i unfortunately haven’t read any Tim OR Steph-involved comics that predate No Man’s Land... Besides the aforementioned Lonely Place and Young Justice technically, but im working on remedying that soon!)

NOW, during the No Man’s Land event, Cassandra is introduced, and pretty soon into her Batgirl run, its revealed that she’s around the same age as Jason (or at least how old he Would Have Been, had he not died.) Now, given that Jay has an August bday and Cass has a January one, fandom sometimes likes to play around with the idea of one being older than the other (OR even speculating/placing them in an AU as twins/siblings, given that Lady Shiva (Cass’ mom) was a Possible Candidate to be Jason’s biological mother but that’s a Whole Other Thing i wont get into here.)

The point being, Cass, in this era of comics, IS slightly older than Tim and Steph. At Tim’s start as Robin, their ages could either line up like: Tim-13, Steph-14, Cass-15 (being a few months ‘behind’ Jay), then Jason at 15/16 (depending on how soon Tim filled the role after Jay died in April) OR Jason-15/16, Cass-16/17 (in this case she’d be a few months ‘ahead’ now instead)

So brief detour to talk New 52, however! Because Tim, Steph & Cass all got switched around from where DC originally left them prior to the reboot! Now I haven’t read much of them in this era, other than Batman & Robin: Eternal, so my Understanding of their current ages is Spotty at Best. The general consensus seems to be that while before N52, Stephanie had been attending her first year of College (& doing VERY WELL i might add), with the reboot she was set back a few years alongside Tim to a vague Late-Teen state (so 16-18-ish, instead of a Very Clearly Established 18/19). Cass is probably the worst off for this reboot, given that B&R:E basically constitutes her new origin for the new continuity, and does nothing to confirm her age (all I really know is that she’s a Vague Late-Teen too... Probably? Maybe?), given how much they infantilize her, and subsequently how fandom in turn has taken to infantilizing her too, theres a semi-popular fanon that places her Younger that Tim and Steph. And I, for one, propose that we ignore that bc its Weak Sauce my dudes.

Some fans chose to ignore N52 continuity due to this vagueness, and will stick to the ages established before the N52/Rebirth reboots. But its something to keep in mind regardless bc we’re all obviously going to pull from what’s most familiar to us!

But WHERE could we place Duke with regards to them, then? Because them being “Late Teens” is certainly much too vague to work with!

This is Where Damian is the key!

Because Damian is one of those rare exceptions to the Reboot Rule. His story flowed almost seamlessly over from before to after. While he was made a Robin at the age of 10, he continued to grow and learn even after the universe was being rewritten to suit the whims of DC editorial.

If we choose to ignore how everyone else’s ages and origins were swapped around, and stick with the growth that was presented before the reboot, then we can draw some interesting conclusions!

Firstly, though Stephanie also had Died and subsequently Returned, she hadn’t lost much, if any time, from the Ordeal. At the start of her Batgirl run, she is enrolled at a Gotham university and making headway with a more firm foot in the Batfamily (even to the point that she and Damian spend a few issues bonding. At this point in time, Damian is definitely 11, and again, Steph can be assumed to be 18/19 during the course of her run. We’ll assume 18 for clarity’s sake.)

So, then when Damian is 11, now our line up is as Follows:

Dami - 11, Steph - 18, Tim - 17, Cass 19-21 (the range depending again, if you subscribe to Cass being either older/younger than Jason).

WHICH MEANS, If during Robin War Damian is 12 (and a half) THEN We’ve got an age line-up that Potentially looks Like This:

Dami -12(and 1/2), Duke - 16, Tim - 18, Steph - 19, Cass - 20-22 (And Obvsly Jason, Babs & Dick at their varying Older Ages than everyone here)

and im just now realizing i Didnt include Harper in this line-up, but thats bc she’d also throw a big wrench in all this. I’d personally throw her in with being Steph’s age, but I’m pretty sure she was supposed to be either that, or between Steph and Cass (again, since its N52, i believe Cass was/is assumed to be Younger than Steph, but that contradicts the assumed following of pre52 canon that we have for the above line-up, obvsly, and so we ignore that lmao)

All this to say, however, that canon and fandom is what you make of it, and if you want to wiggle these ages around a little, you’re more than allowed! God Knows i usually like to skew the Tim-Steph-Cass age group to be a tad older than this in my own fic writing, and I like to have Duke start as a Robin at 14/15 instead of 16, but that’s just bc I like the dynamic potential it could bring with them being Definitively Older that him, and thus in a more secure place to be Mentoring him right alongside Bruce & the others.

But you might see these age ranges and want to do something Different (say, making Tim, Steph, Cass, & Duke all the Same Age at 17 instead! And that very well tracks with how current comics kinda looks right now!) and you’re absolutely valid to do so! Because again, comic character’s ages are meant to be fluid, not fixed!

And at the end of the day, its all about wanting to see these teen heroes kick serious ass haha

#duke thomas #guest starring:#batfamily #damian wayne #tim drake #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #randywrites #randys meta #meta #asked and answered #anonymous asks #this was A LOT and i tried to throw some humor where i could #but uhhhh yeah!!! i hope this helps anon!!!#also just realizing its TWO AM WHERE DID THE TIME GO #ah well. Worth It

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captain-jinguji · 4 years

Note

Hi, I love your posts so much! Can I request Sumeragi Kira NSFW Alphabet? Thank you =D (sorry if I submitted twice)

Hey love! Im glad you like them :) sorry it took so long !!!

KIRA SUMERAGI NSFW ALPHABET

Aftercare: how do they take care of their s/o after the act? Are they really into it?

Listen. Everything in his life is neat and organized and that includes you and him after sex. He will put you in the shower while he gets some fresh sheets ready and then welcomes you back with a glass of water. Makes sure you stay hydrated and have a comfy bed to sleep in.

Bondage: what's the furthest they would go in bed?

I low-key think he wouldn't go very far past vanilla. I just dont see him as an extremist or anything.

Cum: where is their favorite place to cum? Are they messy?

Inside you because it feels too good to pull out and that is facts. Also its the least messy.

Dirty secret: what's something they'd never admit to their s/o?

He really wants to try voyeurism but he has no clue how to tell you that and has no idea if you'd even be down to try it.

Experience: have they done this before? Are they a virgin?

Contrary to popular belief, i actually think he is NOT a virgin. I feel like he had a rebellious phase in his teens and just went out.

Fantasy: what's their ultimate fantasy?

To have an orgy. Like literally. He just wants to experience the group love and the feelings of several bodies. Its more about the constant skin to skin contact than the actual act itself.

Good girl: are they into the reward and punishment system? If so, more on his s/o or him?

Hes not really into it. Not really into voicing his thoughts and opinions but if you do choose to praise him, he does appreciate that.

Hair: what's it like down there?

Neatly trimmed. Shaving clean is too much of a hassle but he does like to keep it organized

Intimacy: how are they? Is it sensual? Rough?

Hes actually quite rough alright 👀 dont know if it's from the lack of love or what but homeboy can WRECK.

Jackoff: Do they do it? How often?

Doesn't do it a lot. Like even before you, he just kind of did it when he needed to but not excessively.

Kink: what's their biggest turn on?

Skirts on a woman and or tight boxers on a man. Anything that has his eyes on your legs and ass.

Location: where's their favorite place to do it? Where's a no?

Likes to have shower sex actually ~ he likes the feeling of the water hitting your skin and making the wet sound of your hips meeting even dirtier

Motivation: what gets them going?

It's actually kind of hard to get him into the mood but caress his chest a little and start kissing his neck and he'll be yours in a few minutes

No: anything they wont do?

Public humiliation. He's thought about it but came to the conclusion that he hates the thought of being caught.

Oral: receiver or giver?

Neither actually. He doesnt lile Oral a lot. If he had to choose, probably more of a giver since he your pleasure is his top priority.

Pace: fast or slow?

Again, rough and fast. Hes honestly a beast in bed.

Quickie: would they do it ?

Has done it before but he doesnt like to do with you because you're special

Risk: are they into getting (potentially) caught?

No. Hes thought about it but doesnt like it. It should be consensual even when someone is just watching

Stamina: how long can they last? How many rounds?

He lasts average but can go a couple of rounds if youre up for it.

Toys: are they into toys?

No he doesnt see the point of them.

Underlying motive: Do they have one?

No, this is all just intimate time with you, which he values.

Volume: how loud are they?

He actually moans during sex and you swear its the most beautiful sound ~

Wish: what do they want you to do to them?

Tie him up and use him as you please ~

X-ray: how big are they?

Average but more long than thick

Yearning: how badly do they need it?

Average. Hes a man in his prime but hes not as needy as some others

Z-ZZZ: how fast do they fall asleep after

Again, he makes sure everything is clean and youre okay. Afterwards he just likes to stare at you and if you want pillow talk, he can do that too.

#uta no prince sama #uta no prince shining live #utapri starish stillnotsorry #quartet night #starish #utanoprincesama #utapri headcanons #heavens #kira sumeragi

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smallmediumproblems · 4 years

Link

The archive could never be empty.

It was an unwritten rule of the Magnus Institute, and it was about the only thing that gave Michael Shelley comfort while working there. There was always the possibility of researchers to help, statements to take, visitors to welcome, and occasional officers of the law to politely but firmly turn away. Michael hadn’t encountered the last category himself yet, nor taken a live statement, but he was well informed of the procedures. This wasn’t his first time being left alone in the archive. The department needed someone to be its face as much as it needed a heart or a head.

For most of Michael’s time there, that someone had been Eric Delano. He hadn’t had the same rigorous curiosity that drew Gertrude and Emma (and, by association, Michael) out of their workplace. Instead, he had been more than happy to spend the day actually getting work done in the office, puttering through the shelves while the others were out. There was something domestic about it that Michael always found pleasant. Like having someone to come home to. He liked to think that he provided that to others now that the role was his.

Which is why, when he found a young man sparking at a cigarette in the main office, his first reaction was to put on a smile.

“Excuse me?” Michael said brightly. The young man - really, he was a boy, if a very tall one - the boy looked up with no particular amount of alarm. “I’m sorry, you can’t really smoke in here.”

The boy looked skeptical, but stowed his lighter. “Uh-huh. D’you work here or something?”

“Yes, my name’s Michael,” Michael informed him. “I’m one of the archival assistants. Can I help you find something?”

“Sure,” said the boy, “I’m looking for Gertrude.”

As Michael approached, he got a better look at his guest, from the shoulder-length black hair to a long black duster jacket that didn’t really match the weather outside. His boots were planted firmly on either side of a shoebox. The cardboard had been reinforced to an almost comical extent, ribbed with strips of duct tape and bearing a haphazard line of staples along the edge of the lid. It looked like it had been sat on at some point.

“She’s not in at the moment,” said Michael. “If you need to drop that off, I can put it on her desk and tell her you came by. What’s your name?”

“Err… Gerry, but I shouldn’t leave this unsupervised,” Gerry said nervously. As he spoke, a soft thump came from inside the box at his feet.

“Is something in there?” asked Michael. His voice jumped up about half a very alarmed octave.

“Well, yeah,” said Gerry, who seemed more perturbed by Michael than whatever was in the box. “What, you thought I just brought her an empty box?”

“No, I- something alive,” Michael protested.

Gerry puffed out his cheeks with an exaggerated sigh. “Wow. That’s actually a really neat philosophical question. I’m gonna say no, for most textbook definitions of ‘alive.’”

“Something moving, then,” said Michael. He took a step forward, and Gerry leaned away as though he wanted to retreat but was rooted to the spot around his charge. “Why don’t we get that somewhere more secure? Whatever it is, I’m sure artefact storage will know how to keep it safe until Gertrude gets here.”

Gerry eyed him suspiciously. This was a new experience for Michael, who had long since resigned himself to looking like the kind of person who confused strangers could approach for directions.

“...fine,” said Gerry, “Just don’t touch it, alright?”

“That is more than alright with me,” said Michael. Even he knew better than to touch foreign objects in the Archive. He stood at a safe distance as Gerry awkwardly managed to pick up the box without relinquishing his stance.

Gerry stared at it for a long moment.

He shook it slightly in place.

He flipped it over to reveal a large hole torn in the bottom.

“Well, shit,” he concluded, "You wouldn't happen to know what time Gertrude's coming back, would you?"

"Not for another hour, I think," said Michael. He peered inside the box to see that the inside had been padded with some sort of steel wool. It was smeared with a dark, glistening substance that might have been blood. Something inside smelled like an electrical fire.

“Great!” Gerry said brightly. “That means we’ve got one hour to find the thing before she comes back and kills me.”

“What exactly did you bring in here?” Michael demanded.

“Funny story, that. It acts like something Dark, but it’s more along the lines of Beholding,” Gerry explained. Seeing Michael’s blank look, he changed tactics. “Ahh. You’re that assistant. Tell you what: It’s a little hard to describe. You should probably just look behind you.”

This backfired somewhat, as Michael let out a yelp and immediately crashed into Gerry when he whirled around. Across the room, something darted into a wastepaper bin and upturned it over itself, hissing angrily.

“What was th-”

“Keep your eyes on it,” Gerry screeched, “I don’t bloody know what it’s called, now get off!” He struggled to navigate Michael’s flailing limbs until they were both standing. Michael stared dutifully at the overturned bin, waiting for some noise, some movement, some indication of threat.

“I didn’t get a good look at it,” he said rather aimlessly, “It moved like a… rat? Or a lizard? But the legs were wrong, how- how does it have legs like that?”

Even that wasn’t accurate to what he’d seen. His mind scrabbled at physical descriptors that didn’t quite fit, and quickly settled into more visceral ones. The thing in the bin looked like the sensation of finding one more step than you expected at the bottom of the stairs. It looked like the silhouette of the laundry bin just after the lights were turned out, transformed into something monstrous and alien.

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Gerry cautioned him. “The only people who know what it looks like are really, really dead. What it is isn’t important, it’s where it is.”

Michael was not comforted by the fact that it had managed to find an even more flimsy containment than a cardboard box with some metal in it

“Okay,” said Michael, “Okay, what does that mean?”

Gerry grimaced at the bin, unwilling to break his gaze for a proper eye-roll.

“It means,” he said slowly, “That it’s where we think it is, until it isn’t. You saw it go under there, right?”

“Right…?”

“And as long as we don’t see it leave, it’s still there, right?”

“...right.”

“But if we look away, then we can’t see whether it’s left, so it could be anywhere.”

“So we’re hunting… Schroedinger’s lizard-rat,” Michael summarized. The bin gave a taunting little rattle to punctuate his statement.

“Sure, brilliant,” said Gerry. “You should write a book.”

“Hang on, does that mean you used me as bait?” Michael asked.

“How d’you mean?” Gerry replied. There was a hint of a smile in his voice that answered the question.

“When you told me to look behind me,” said Michael. “It wasn’t actually there, was it?”

There was a short pause. Michael wished that he could have looked sternly over at Gerry.

“It was there after you looked,” said Gerry. “If it makes you feel any better, you saved us loads of time trying to find it. Plus, like, some moderate to severe skin lacerations.”

“Great,” Michael said glumly.

“Speaking of which, have you got any knives?”

“No?” Michael exclaimed. “I mean, not personally.”

“What-?”

“Probably in the break room, alright?” said Michael. “We’ve got one for cutting birthday cakes, I don’t know if it’s sharp enough to- Are, are you planning to kill that thing?”

“Yeeeeah,” Gerry said, drawing the word out reluctantly. “I was really hoping to show it to Gertrude. It’s right weird and I figured she’d be interested. Probably not so much if it’s loose in her office. You go get that knife, I’ll stay here with the liz-rat.”

“No!” Michael protested. “No, what if it gets out? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

That threw him off guard. “It’s totally safe. As long as I’ve got my eyes on it, I’m good.”

“But-” Michael took a second to try and come up with an argument. “It’s already escaped once. N-no offense, but- But what’s going to happen if it escapes again? What if you need help?”

“Hey,” said Gerry, “Look at me.”

“Um-”

“Nope, right, don’t look. Listen,” he continued. He sounded like he was trying to be reassuring but not very practiced in it. “Listen to me. I’m good. I’ve wrestled worse stuff. Go get me a knife, and I’ll prove it to you.”

Michael kept his eyes on the bin until he had to turn towards the break room.

He wasn’t sure why he’d argued. Gerry seemed to know what he was doing, enough to explain while he was doing it. And shouldn’t Michael be mad that this strange young man used him as bait? The thing was, though, that he was quite young. As Michael rummaged quickly through the silverware drawers, he wished he could convince himself that maybe Gerry just didn’t look his real age. Maybe he was imagining the teenaged squeak in his voice. His stomach had begun to churn at the idea of leaving him alone with a monster, and now that he had done it, he couldn’t help but picture himself returning to the main room to find the creature missing and Gerry bleeding out on the floor.

As Michael’s hand closed on a large kitchen knife, something crashed to the floor from the main room, followed by a string of curses. Michael bolted for the door to find Gerry standing on top of his desk looking frantically around him.

“What happened?”

“Damn thing cheated,” Gerry muttered. He looked up at Michael and gestured accusingly into thin air. “I heard it halfway across the room, and it buggered off when I turned to look.”

“Did it hurt you?” asked Michael. Gerry stopped being frustrated and embarrassed for long enough to look genuinely surprised that Michael cared.

“No,” he said, “I’m fine. Pass me the knife, alright?”

Michael formulated a plan on his way to the desk. Despite what he feared was popular consensus, he was not a stupid man. He just ended up missing a lot of information he needed to make smart decisions. It was his own fault, really, for not asking better questions, or maybe for not paying enough attention. He wasn’t sure. It was part of the reason he’d gone into research in the first place, which he’d been informed was yet another of his not very smart decisions. As he handed the knife over to Gerry, he resolved to make this time turn out differently.

He cocked his head sharply and grabbed the wastepaper bin. Gerry tensed, raising the knife.

“What, what is it?”

“Shh,” Michael said with easily twice as much confidence as he actually had. He approached one of the other desks, turning so that Gerry couldn’t see his face. Then, with a deep, bracing breath, he closed his eyes.

“Seriously, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I heard something,” he lied. He surreptitiously nudged at the desk with his foot until he found the corner. “I think it’s- there!”

He dove to the ground, slamming the bin over something that was probably there. His eyes snapped open in time to catch Gerry vaulting off of his desk towards him, knife poised at the ready. Quickly, Michael began to shake the bin as if something was trapped underneath. He worried that his expression wasn’t quite panicked enough, but honestly he was starting to panic simply because he couldn’t tell what Gerry thought of his acting.

Something that was very suddenly under the bin growled. Michael’s brain went sort of blank for a second; later, he would remember freezing up and screaming something that may have been words. He was briefly aware when the knife plunged directly between his hands, and when something else started screaming along with him, but the next thing he remembered after that was blood spurting from the bin like a clogged fountain pump, and something inside making a noise to match. He nearly screamed again when a hand settled on his shoulder.

“Deep breaths,” Gerry cautioned him. Michael took some deep breaths. “It’s alright, you can look now.”

“Is it-” Michael’s gaze snapped immediately to Gerry’s face. “Did you-”

“Yep,” Gerry confirmed. He wiggled the knife proudly, splattering around some of the blood that coated the lower half. If he noticed, he didn’t seem to care. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the moment, but Michael nearly felt angry at just how calm he looked. “Told you, way easier with two people.”

They decided to slide something under the bin so that Gerry could take it outside without actually touching it. Michael produced a thick manilla folder for the job, then a second one when blood soaked completely through the first. Not for the first time in his career, he worried that whatever the cleaning staff was being paid to venture down into the archive, it wasn’t enough. They paused at the door to the stairs, and Michael considered walking Gerry out to the front entrance.

“How are you planning to, erm… Get rid of it, if you can’t look at it?” he asked.

“Ehh, you know,” Gerry shrugged. “Set it on fire, I guess. I know a girl who could get it into a trash compactor, but then it’s a whole thing, and she’s got enough on her plate as it is.”

“Do be careful,” Michael told him one last time. Gerry smiled, looking almost guilty.

"Thanks," he said, "For everything, I mean. These things are nasty to deal with on your own, and… This was cool. How’d you catch it, anyway?”

“I didn’t,” said Michael. "Not until you thought I did." Gerry's smile grew immediately less awkward.

“Oh, you prick!” he laughed. “I take it back, I'm leaving you a bad yelp review. You specifically."

“Now who’s going to be in trouble with Gertrude?” said Michael, exactly as Gertrude Robinson opened the door from the other side.

Michael stared at her.

She stared at Gerry.

Gerry stared at blood-soaked paper that covered the wastepaper bin he was cradling

“For both your sakes,” Gertrude said after a long few seconds, “It had better be someone not in this room.”

To his credit, Michael waited a solid ten minutes to confront Gertrude after she’d finished escorting Gerry from the building. Gertrude never got into the habit of announcing her assistants before they entered her office. She found it terribly childish whenever James did it to her, and suspected that she would have come to the same conclusion even without the poor example. She did, however, give herself a leisurely minute or two to shuffle away some sensitive documents when she clocked Michael bearing down the hall towards her.

“It’s open,” she called out when he knocked. As he entered, Gertrude noticed a particular nervous energy that meant he was upset about something, like there wasn’t room for all of his emotions inside of his preposterously tall body.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. So. I think it’s about time we had a chat about the elephant in the archive.”

Gertrude adjusted her glasses at him. “Would this elephant happen to be a young man with a talent for property damage? Possibly of the gothic variety?”

“Yes,” Michael hissed, as though it was some kind of secret. He nudged the door mostly closed behind him. “Gertrude, you have- There’s just, a child, around, setting things on fire.”

“You know, I’m surprised that you went through the trouble of making me tea if you’re really that cross with me,” said Gertrude. Michael stood dumbly for a moment, the two steaming mugs in his hands held steadily as anything.

“Of course I made tea,” he said, scowling. “I’m not an animal.” He pushed Gertrude’s mug across the desk, sitting across from her with his own.

“Gerard is an associate that I picked up outside of work,” Gertrude explained calmly. Michael looked confused at the name for a moment, briefly enough that Gertrude didn’t feel the need to clarify. “It suits my needs to have contacts with different areas of expertise. I fear the Institute attracts a specific type of employee.”

“I get that,” said Michael. “I’ve met Dekker, he’s… very Dekker. What’s concerning is how this one’s barely old enough to buy beer.”

"And I suppose you think I'm taking advantage of that?" asked Gertrude.

"No, I- I just have a lot of questions," Michael said adamantly. Gertrude smiled at that. A very specific type of employee, indeed. "Where did you find him? Where are his parents? Do they know he's working here, with you? Does anyone know?"

It took some reasonably complex maths to determine what Gertrude could tell Michael without breaking him. The illusion of her own innocence was too precious to give up over an argument like this, and if he really pressed the matter she could just put a little more effort into keeping Gerard out of the archive. Michael was easy to lie to. He wanted to believe whatever Gertrude decided to tell him. It was, at the end of the day, the crux of their professional relationship.

All the more reason to use up her goodwill sparingly. Besides; the truth would be just as easy to believe, filtered properly.

“That is Eric Delano's son,” Gertrude told him. “His mother passed away recently. I was in a position to help, and he's been quite eager to return the favor. I doubt very much that he'd stay if he didn't enjoy the work.”

Michael’s mouth actually popped open in surprise. “That’s little Gerry?”

“I suppose,” said Gertrude.

Michael was the only one in the archive who had actually liked Eric Delano personally. On some level, Gertrude was aware of that. She hadn’t disliked him- had even mourned him, in her own way. But she wasn’t in the business of fostering friendships under the best of circumstances, which this was most certainly not. In that respect, Michael was her exact opposite. Eric had been content to let him show it. It had seemed a cruel joke to Gertrude after Eric died, but seeing the spark of hope in Michael’s eyes now made her reconsider.

“He’s so tall,” was all Michael could manage to say, as though that was some deeply impressive accomplishment.

“Yes, that does tend to happen,” Gertrude said mildly. “I won’t try to keep you away from him. Not unless he asks me to. But I would suggest you be a bit more careful. He’s rather forgetful, and if I've given him particular safety precautions for an assignment, I wouldn't trust him to pass them on to you."

“Wh- um. I sort of feel like I should be the one keeping him safe?” Michael stammered.

Gertrude surveyed Michael thoroughly. He had clearly not brushed his hair in several days, opting to run his fingers through it until it was as distractingly large as it was yellow and curly. His faded blue sweater vest had only barely enough professional weight to conceal the fact that the button-up shirt underneath was decorated with very small cartoon puppies. There was a blood splatter on his sleeve that he either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t been able to wash out.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

#the magnus archives #fanfiction #hiiiii guuuuuuys #fair warning the timeline I've approximated here kinda puts gerry/Michael off the table #but if all goes well I'll get to some Jon/Gerry and it'll be cute as hell

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too-many-baes · 5 years

Text

Moonlit Escapades

Pairing: fem!reader x Jack Kline

Warning(s): Nudity?? Is that a warning??? IDK is now

Word Count: 1.7K

Summary: Reader invites Jack out for a midnight adventure

A/N: So I know I’m sorry this is not on the request list, but lemme tell you I am soooo fucking sick, I’ve got a real nasty chest infection, and writing this was the only thing making me feel better. Forgive me x (also I am like low key really proud of this one???)

My requests are definitely still open xx

**********

The crisp breeze bites at your face, a constant reminder of its cooling presence. You’re in an open patch of grass, a rare spot amongst the trees that has a direct line to the sky above.

“That one there”, you point up to a collection of stars, “is the little dipper and that one just underneath”, you point at the stars directly below it, “is the big dipper.” You’ve always had a fascination with stars. The way they twinkle up above as if the cosmos is winking down at Earth’s inhabitants. There’s a magic to them, as much as science loves to deny it. How could things that sparkle like faraway fairies not possess unearthly magic?

The way you cherish the stars is how you convinced your midnight partner to sneak out with you. The moment you met Jack you knew there was something different about him. The way he spoke about the world and the things around him made you curious. You’ve met plenty of souls, old and young, but you’re convinced Jack must be the only brand new soul you’ve ever encountered. He’s sincere and unassuming, looking at everything with fresh eyes, untarnished by popular consensus and usual perspective. Everything is just what it is to Jack, everyone worthy of a chance and opportunity.

You had been right in assuming that he would have wanted to come stargazing. Admittedly the concept confused him at first but when you’d explained you could see pictures hidden in the sky he leapt at the idea, saying he wouldn’t miss it for anything.

“What about this one?” Jack questions, pointing above. You trail your eyes up to follow his arm, seeing he’s pointing to a particularly bright star.

You’re lying side by side, heads almost resting upon one another and feet pointing polar opposite directions. Your current position had been Jack’s idea, insisting he’d be able to tell which stars you were pointing at more clearly after struggling to pick them initially.

“Well I don’t know much but that one star, but it is part of a constellation.”

“It is?” He says cheerily, as if had won a prize. You nod at his enthusiasm.

“That one is Pegasus. In Greek mythology it’s a horse with wings. He carried thunder and lightning for Zeus, ruler of Olympia.” Jack remains staring in wonder for a long while as you pointed out the constellations head, body and legs.

“How do you know that’s what the stars are?”

“Well, I don’t. No one does really”, you reply while also searching for a good answer, “but that’s what people saw them as thousands of years ago.” You let yourselves sit a while in the not quite quiet of the night before continuing. “That’s part of the reason stars are so amazing Jack, they tell us stories that are thousands of years old. It’s our connection to a world we’ll never know.”

You turn your head to look at the boy beside you. His dazzling eyes constantly dart back and forth, trying to simultaneously take in every little star on its own and then all of them as a whole. The moon casts a silver shine upon the soft smile on his lips, his silky locks comfortably framing his forehead.

He’s a vision in the moonlight, more so than under the sun if that was even possible. He seems ethereal, eternal. Like he was made from moon rocks and star dust, born to live under a soft glow amongst the whispers of the night. You get so lost in his grace that you realise too late his entrancing eyes are on yours, causing you to jump slightly.

“Did I scare you?” His question seems serious although you see mischief in his eyes. That little glint of playful trouble gives you an idea, something you’ve always wanted to try but were too scared until now to do.

“Are you tired yet Jack?” You ask, wanting to make sure he was up for more midnight ruckus. He shakes his head vigorously.

“I don’t get tired very often. Even if I was I’d want to stay out with you.” And there it was again, that unabashed way he says what he means. He doesn’t hide or squirm away from anything and you find it impossible not to admire him for it. You stand swiftly, walking over and offering your hands which he accepts, allowing himself to be yanked to his feet.

“Come with me, I have an idea.” You start off into the surrounding trees, making to release Jack’s hands. To your surprise as you lead your way through the night in the tight knit clan of trees he does not relinquish your hand, tightly holding your right in his left. Not that you mind, quite the opposite. His soft skin on yours is calming, much like his presence but in a way being with him could never quite provide. It’s like being anchored, knowing no matter what you’ll be safe with your hand in his.

You reach your pre-thought destination, a lake on the other side of the trees with a mossy wharf leading part way in. The sight is as beautiful as you’d pictured it would be, the sharp intake of air beside you showing Jack agrees.

It’s as if you’d placed a giant mirror on the ground. The sky reflects so clearly in the still night water that if you jump in you might just be able to make your way to Mercury, or even further. You intend to see. With Jack still holding your hand you lead him to where the ground meets the old splintering wood of the wharf.

“Have you ever heard of skinny dipping?” You ask, breathless at the notion you’d just proposed. The quirk in his eyebrows tells you he hasn’t. “It’s when you take off all of your clothes and jump in the water.” He looks at your face, trying to process the new concept you’ve relayed.

“I thought people didn’t like to be naked around each other?” His query makes you laugh, with him though, never at him.

“A lot of people don’t. That’s why it’s so thrilling.” You’re unsure of yourself as you reach down and pull off your thick sweater, throwing it to the ground. The singlet underneath leaves you still completely clothed, but your heart pounds in your chest as if trying to escape its cavity. “Do you want to try it?” You don’t want to make uncomfortable and you definitely don’t want to scare him away, but as you keep eye contact while discarding your singlet you see no judgement or apprehension in his starry brown eyes, only curiosity.

This is never normally like you, you think as you stand and wait for the next move. You’re usually reserved, the last one to agree to anything and the first to leave. It’s this boy, his magnetic force and the stars impulsive light compelling you to be daring. And who are you to deny the stars, to turn your back on mother moon?

The smile that appears on Jack’s face tells you the night didn’t lead you astray. You’re both taking your clothes off now, quickly hopping out of pants and throwing pesky cotton aside until you are standing face to face, baring all.

“You sure you want to do this?” His smile simply widens at your question, holding a hand out in between your naked forms for you to take. You happily accept his mooring hand as you make your way to the edge of the wharf, peering down into the icy still water.

“It’s going to be really cold.” You whisper, suddenly a little unsure despite the fact your clothes are gone and his hand is holding yours.

“Wouldn’t that be part of the thrill?” His question was not intended to act as affirming, yet that’s exactly what it was. You offer up a count of three, every number you count you inch your toes more off the edge.

You scream the final number, both of you leaping forward in unison to disrupt the still of the quiet lake below. The water is freezing just as you’d assumed, feeling like small needles cover every inch of your bare body. When you emerge from beneath Jack is already above, swiping his hair from his eyes.

“I told you it would be really cold.” You shiver out, moving your limbs about to encourage warmth to your appendages. He nods his head, agreeing you were right. You start to swim away from the wharf, blurring the perfect picture of the night with every movement.

You turn to face Jack seeing steady brown eyes on yours, that mischief unknown to him blatant to you. Impulsively you splash a small wave of frigid water over him, causing a splutter of complaint. He retaliates on a larger scale, eliciting yelps of excitement from you as you try to evade the icy onslaught. It’s no use. Eventually he is upon you, ceasing your wrists in his grip to prevent further attacks, locking you in his gaze.

“Have you ever seen a shooting star?” You ask seemingly out of the blue, earning a shake of the head from Jack. “I think two must have fallen the day you were born Jack.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re here.” You gently tap under his eyes indicating your meaning. “Either that or you stole them from above.” He smiles once more, a genuine, sincere one at your allusion.

Not long after your bodies can take no longer and you’re forced to emerge from the grips of the lake. Jack walks you home, refusing to let you go alone. When you reach your door he insists you have another night to watch the stars and you have no inclination to deny him.

“So you know Y/N”, he whispers during his goodbye, “I think you’re just as much as a thief as me.” He delicately touches the space under your eyes, keeping gaze as he does. He shifts his finger and gently touches your nose as a goodbye, turning to make his way back home

What would the stars have thought watching you tonight, you wonder? Would the moon have been frowning while the dippers laughed at your antics? Would Pegasus have been stern while Aquarius admiring your youth?

You’re not exactly sure the stars appreciated you as much as you and Jack them, but you can’t find it within yourself to care, the entrancing retreating boy’s acceptance more than making up for any judgement the sky could give.

*********

Supernatural Taglist

@hobby27 @musiclovinchic93

#jack kline #jack kline x reader #jack kline reader insert #jack kline one shot #jack kline imagine #jack kline fanfiction #jack kline fanfic #supernatural #supernatural reader insert #supernatural one shot #supernatural imagine #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #writing #mine #too many baes

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thephantomporg84 · 5 years

Note

[REDACTED] be complaining reg. the reactions of having "placed the cultist island Fortuna off the coast of Florida" while having the gall of "It’s the story & the way it’s told that should fucking matter" & "Who cares? It’s fictional geography, you idiots." Feels a bit like failing World-Building 101. I mean, Red Grave based on London would also be a callback to Dante's early concept of being a Brit.

Someone already sent me the whole post of hers that I’m pretty sure you’re referring to lmao. I’m in a particularly cunty but pleasant mood rn, and analysis is kind of my thing, so lets’s break it down, shall we?

Maybe someone can send this her way and… learn that tiny little brain of hers a thing. 😉

It’s fictional geography called world building, you idiots Karen after the cut:

‘I love how a number of shitheels have screeched amongst themselves on this hellsite about how I had placed the cultist island Fortuna off the coast of Florida or somewhere around the Gulf US states (re: the fanfic & project link in my header), whining that it should’ve been in Europe, namely Italy.’

An admission to stalking profiles is not exactly the best way to start a self-righteous rant or advertise your… magnum opus, but go off, I guess.

‘Not only that, but they whined about “plotholes and inconsistencies” without elaborating on what the latter are. The asshole who made the rant was annoyed when I used a poem as a spell in the story (“if I heard that, I’d turn off my PS4.”), but I’m sure she didn’t bitch about the cutscene before the last Agnus boss fight in DMC4.’

Like the movie The Room (2003), it’s just easier to say “all of it” is bad because “all of it” contains plotholes and is inconsistent in tone, has terrible half-baked ideas and plot threads that remain unresolved and/or do nothing to further the plot, is rife with poor + inconsistent characterization, has a lack of any knowledge how the medium it exists in is made, and in general makes me wonder how much pottery enamel you’ve been huffing to think any of this was a good idea. Howeverrrr, in contrast to you, Tommy Wiseau is kind of odd and weirdly charming both in general and about his terrible movie — he’s found glory and success in its terribleness. You, in contrast, remain a miserable cunt with delusions of grandeur.

Dante and Agnus’ Shakespeare bit is actually a pretty well known trope called Ham-to-Ham Combat. Dante and Agnus are both ridiculous Large Hams in DMC4, and when two Large Hams meet, in general, they are likely gonna try to ‘out-over dramatic’ each other. This can lead to a scene becoming either really funny or really corny (or both) really fast. If things go too far — and they do, in this case — the scene can become a Hormel Event Horizon.

‘…but they LOVE the plotholes & inconsistencies if Capcom makes the latter, and writes a terrible story! And Crapcom’s canon for DMC is as straight as a paperclip or a dog’s hind leg. Hypocritical pricks.’

Subjective opinion is not, and never will be, objective fact. People are, as of when I checked again in the last ~5 minutes or so, absolutely able to enjoy whatever media they want regardless of what the general consensus on the quality of that media is.

As an example, I enjoy The Room (2003) despite its terribleness and it never fails to make me laugh, while your magnum opus makes me want to huff pottery enamel so the pain will stop despite you thinking it is the work of an idiot savant.

‘They were also mad that I wrote Dante as a wiseguy who is a little more low-key about it due to the circumstances— instead of being a pathetic manchild airhead that tries too hard.’

You didn’t write Dante.

You wrote Reboot!Donte — a fucking terribly out of character version of him, at that.

‘I was primarily concerned about moving the story along. I didn’t care about where a fictional island is supposed to go.’

You literally had one (1) job, Karen.

‘…Meanwhile, not a single character in DMC4 had an Italian accent, so uh, why should I give a flying fuck where I put it?’

Haven’t you been like… shitting on the DMC staff… for terrible writing… this enti— You know what? You’re obvs way too dumb to notice that contradiction, so I’ll let it slide.

Just… a word of advice, if I may? Don’t ever watch dub TV shows. That last brain cell would fuckin’ just burst all over your carpet.

(Actually, don’t watch subtitled shows either. An extremely popular anime that was set in Italy just wrapped and all the characters — le gasp! — spoke fucking Japanese. You would shit.)

‘I wasn’t paid to write any of what I wrote, but be my guest & send a PM if you want to throw money at me. By all means, do that.’

Oh, thank fuck, because they would have been ripped off, big time.

[ btw, you sound p. jealous of people that write/do creative work/commissions for ko-fi/payment tho. Not a good look tbbh. If it’s any consolation, though, I don’t get paid for making fun of you and/or analyzing your dumb bullshit, either. :( ]

‘The pricks at Capcom didn’t even bother giving us a proper DMC4 and it was a half-assed game, with the latter half being hasty filler material. The “special edition” they coughed up in 2015 was just glorified overpriced DLC.’

Ya know, you gotta be pretty far up your own ass to think this much of your opinion. And I’m saying this as a person that’s pretty far up her own ass like 85% of the time.

‘And another thing, Redgrave City in DMC5 seems to be in England, yet no survivors speak with English accents or slang/dialects.’

Pretty sure no survivors had speaking roles.

If you played the game you’d know this.

‘Meanwhile, Dante and Vergil had lived there when they were kids (until age 8), but they both have ordinary American or Canadian accents. Furthermore, how did the twins make it to the USA or Canada? According to the little booklet in the DMC1 game case, Dante’s office is in modern America.’

You know that invoking the imagery of a specific place without naming your location is normal and standard practice, right? Overwatch even does this (For Ex: Byōdō-in (平等院), Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan is the inspiration for Hanamura, Château de Duingt, Duingt, France for Château Guillard, etc.)

Furthermore, you know the original DMC was a rejected first draft of Resident Evil 4, right? This is what retcon is for. You at least know what retcon is, right?

‘…That information isn’t very important, but I’m bringing it up to illustrate a point that being a fucking pedant about geography in a fantasy game is idiotic, even if the setting is akin to modern Earth.’

So is freaking the fuck out and sending death threats over a fantasy game but you didn’t let that stop you either lmfao.

It’s actually super important to establish your scenery and the way your world operates, especially in a written work in which readers are dependent on your vision and your descriptions, and if you were a decent writer, you’d know this.

‘It’s the story & the way it’s told that should fucking matter.’

YOU HAD ONE (1) JOB, KAREN.

‘What US states are the Arklay Mountains located in?’

General description puts them in the U.S. Midwest. Raccoon City itself is stated to have a population of ~100,000 at the time of outbreak, and the only city in the Midwest that matches that population in 1998 is Springfield, Missouri, with a pop. of ~110,000.

Springfield is on the Springfield Plateau of the Ozarks region of SW Missouri. So they’re part of the Ozark Mountains.

This all took less than ~3 minutes to google, btw.

‘Where is “Zanzibar Land?”’

I actually just wrote a comprehensive answer to an ask a few weeks ago about this. It’s actually stated to be in Tselinoyarsk (Целиноярск), the (fictional) area of the former USSR in which Big Boss carried out the Virtuous Mission/Operation Snake Eater in 1964. Tselinoyarsk itself is heavily implied to consist of parts of Kyrgyzstan and/or Tajikistan. If you played MGS3 you’d know how important the setting and the varied environments/climates are to the game mechan-

oh yeah wait you believe in segregation of story and gameplay mechanics. I forget you’re completely tone deaf sometimes lmao.

How far is ‘Salem’s Lot or Derry from Bangor? Who cares?’

Stephen King does, quite a bit. He even has a map on his website of ‘his’ fictional version of Maine:

My disappointment is immeasurable, Karen.

#anonymous #replies #porg drama #derelict-stranger #derelict stranger #dmc #devil may cry #dmc5 #devil may cry 5 #dante #dmc dante #dmc fanfiction #dmc meta #writing #ao3

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chiseler · 5 years

Text

The Madness of Ken Russell

Critical thinking in Britain has always taken the view that Ken Russell was a wild, ill-disciplined talent who ultimately went artistically mad: this was also the view in the film industry. The only major disagreement was about when he went from being merely excessive to being balls-out crazy: different parties chose different tipping points.

(WAIT! WHO CARES ABOUT CRITICS?)

(Bear with me: in Russell’s case, the critical consensus serves as a valuable reverse barometer.)

Russell, a suburban boy, former merchant seaman and Catholic convert, made a few brilliant short films with his wife and fellow genius, costume designer Shirley Russell, before landing a job at the BBC’s flagship arts program, Monitor. His stint here taught him to fight, and placed him under the stern patronage of producer Huw Weldon, probably the only authority figure he ever respected. Many good fights were enjoyed. When Russell joined the program, there was an absolute ban on dramatization and re-enactment: the most he was allowed was to show a composer’s hands at the piano. By the time he finished up on the show, he’d managed to twist it out of shape to the point where he’d been allowed to make complete dramatic works in the guise of documentary. These TV plays are highly cinematic, kinetic and bold: like Kubrick, Russell had a love of both stark symmetry and dynamic movement. Control and its opposite.

Russell found actors he liked, including Oliver Reed, with whom he enjoyed a strange kinship: both were heavy drinkers, both affected a casual attitude to their work, though Russell was never ashamed to call himself an artist. Ollie became the John Wayne to Russell’s Ford (in a roiling, nightmare vision of classical cinema).

The point when Russell moved out of TV is the first moment his detractors choose to mark his decline into self-indulgent craziness. He made a modest, eccentric comedy, French Dressing (with mounds of inflatable girls piled up like Holocaust victims) and a wild, idiosyncratic spy movie, The Billion Dollar Brain, a Russophile anti-Bond movie full of flip humor and Eisenstein homages. Critics saw these films as work-for-hire, as perhaps they were, and largely discount them. They are quite brilliant.

Women in Love is counted by others as the last pre-madness film, and its relative sanity can be attributed to the control exerted by its writer-producer Larry Kramer. Russell’s excesses are held in check, it is argued, and the tension between its creators was productive. It’s a very good film, but I find it too sedate in places, though the vivid color and Shirley Russell’s bold designs, and some scenes of genuine wildness and invention stave off actual boredom.

The Music Lovers, his dream project, expanding the TV composer film to the big screen and color, is where a real case for craziness begins to be made: the choice to explore Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality now seems mature rather than lurid, but Ken is undeniably pushing the biopic into unfamiliar terrain: fantasies of decapitation by cannon-shot, a filthy madhouse, a demented honeymoon on a train rocking like the Starship Enterprise, complete with crotch shots. Maybe even worse, from the critics’ viewpoint, Russell, who had directed one TV commercial before walking away from that business in disgust, co-opted the visual language of the shampoo commercial to depict the images conjured by the composer’s music. Russell was in love with romanticism but saw through it too. Ironically, the filmmaker constantly castigated for unsubtlety injected an irony into the film that critics missed, taking the soppiness at face value and not seeing how the concealed satire blended perfectly with the overt caricature and phantasmagoric visions.

Still, the subject was respectable, but with The Devils, Russell managed a film maudit that took decades to be reappraised, and earned him criticism of a uniquely vociferous sort, admittedly in keeping with the hysteria of the film itself. An account – or channelling – of a 16th Century witchcraft trial in France, the movie didn’t so much push as cremate the envelope as far as sex, violence and blasphemy were concerned: Russell, who had converted to Catholicism in his youth, lost his faith while making this one, converting to an animist worship of the Lake District, a religion of his own devising. Well, he did have a substantial ego.

Russell was upsetting: apart from the torture, abuse and madness, the film threw in discordant tonal shifts, creative anachronisms and deployed all of his cinematic influences, which prominently featured Orson Welles, Fellini, Fritz Lang’s German silents, and the musicals of Busby Berkeley, which supplied the top-shots used to depict the rape of Christ on the cross, a scene cut by the censor and lovingly preserved by the director for a future restoration, still explicitly forbidden by the film’s backers, Warner Brothers.

Asides from his crisis of faith and crises in his marriage and his dealings with the studio, Russell was also knocking back the wine. “Better before lunch,” was his prop man’s characterization of the director. Production designer Derek Jarman recounted Russell asking him, “What can I do that’ll really offend the British public?” “Well you could kill a lot of people,” mused Jarman, “but if you really want to upset them you could kill some animals.” A plan was then devised to have King Louis with a musket blowing the heads off the peacocks on his lawn: the birds were to be fitted with explosives at the neck, like Snake Plissken, but Russell backed away from this extreme, even by his standards, approach, and instead had the target practice performed with a man dressed as a blackbird, and the King saying “Bye-bye, blackbird,” and Peter Maxwell-Davies’ remarkable score quoting the popular twenties song, and that infuriated the critics just as much as actual bird-blasting would have.

Less amusingly, Russell was also guilty of unsafe practices involving the naked girls and rowdy extras: the stories here get really dark. As does the film: a demented masterpiece that shows Russell for once engaging with the political: a film about corruption that uses physical disintegration alongside social and spiritual rot.

Just to confuse us even more, Russell made The Boy Friend the same year, an epic music and a miniature at the same time, allowing him to recreate Busby Berkeley’s pixilated fantasias in a seedy English theater. It’s light and charming, but Russell’s version of these qualities was not recognized by the critics, and it’s true that his wit is clodhopping, his whimsy grotesque, everything is overplayed, in your face: but you have to climb aboard the film, get into its spirit, and then it really is a very lovely reversal of the usual nightmare.

The seventies brought more composer films, Mahler and Lisztomania, and also the rock opera Tommy, which earned Russell slightly better reviews as his boisterousness was judged more in keeping with the material (critics, it seemed, could not stand the idea of a filmmaker responding to classical music for its passion and energy, its rock ‘n’ roll qualities, rather than for its assumed civilising effect). Russell got away with showing Ann-Margret humping her cushions while slathered in feculent chocolate sauce, shot Tina Turner with a 6mm lens to uglify her as she thrashed around a steel sarcophagus studded with hypos, and put Elton John on ten-foot platform shoes.

Lisztomania is another movie that’s seen as marking the decline into lunacy: its producer, David Puttnam, hugely impressed by Russell’s flare and his ability to shoot Mahler after half the budget fell through, felt that ultimately the relentless negative press knocked his enfant terrible off-balance. Instead of rolling over in submission, Russell perversely doubled down on the excess and became a parody of himself. And he had already been a parody to begin with (but a parody without an original, unless we take him as a combined burlesque of all his cinematic influences). I’ve always adored Lisztomania, which knows it’s going too far, knows its japes and conceits are ludicrous and indefensible, knows it can’t get away with Roger Daltrey as Liszt and Ringo Starr as the Pope. And just. Doesn’t. Care.

Valentino, which marked the end of the Russell marriage (there would be a bunch more), was dismissed by Russell as the fag-end of his first British period, “everything about it was bored and boring, including me,” but it’s actually rather good. Nureyev as Valentino (well, he was used to being called Rudolph), Russell as Rex Ingram wielding a megaphone the size of a cannon. The twenties, as lived by Rambova, Dorothy Arzner, Fatty Arbuckle, or as dreamt by Mad Ken.

Russell had made his career in Britain at a time when the industry was in collapse: he largely missed the explosion of energy that marked Swinging London, the British new wave, and the only kitchen sink he liked was the one he was always throwing in. Now, the domestic business seemed to have expired of ennui, senile dementia and blood poisoning, but Hollywood beckoned. Russell was bottom of a long list of directors who all turned down Paddy Chayefsky’s Altered States, a late-mid-life crisis film about sensory deprivation tanks and psychedelics which takes John C. Lilley and fuses him with Dr. Jekyll. Russell took it on despite being forbidden from changing a line of dialogue, but got his revenge by having his actors speak fast -- like Jimmy Cagney fast, not so much throwing away their lines as firing them like tennis balls. And by having them eat at the same time. And by expanding the hallucination sequences until they took over the movie, so that they were all anyone talked about. Druggie audiences would hang out into the lobby, Russell gleefully reported, posting a sentry in the auditorium who would yell “Hallucination!” whenever one was starting, and everyone would rush back in to get a hit of audiovisual delirium.

A bit like Women in Love, Altered States benefited from the creative clash between director and writer (who took his name off the script in protest at Russell’s backhanded fidelity), but the reaction among respectable types was mainly a theatrical eye-roll: the maniac was up to his old tricks. Crimes of Passion, starring Kathleen Turner and Anthony Perkins, was next, with she as a Belle de Jour career girl by day, working girl by night, he as an insane sex-obsessed preacher, some forgettable soap opera type as leading man, the whole thing soaked in neon colors and spliced full of Bearsley and Hokusai, whom the American censor duly deleted in horror. “They cut out anything to do with art,” observed the filmmaker.

And that was it for America, save occasional pieces for HBO, progressively more televisual, the locked-off symmetrical winning out over the kinetic. Russell returned to the UK to make theatrical features, and again you heard the cry off “Whatever happened? He used to be good!” Gothic dealt with Byron and the Shelleys and the birth of Frankenstein, and was fruity, literate, dirty good fun. The Rainbow was a return to Women in Love territory, on a lower budget and with less energy and star wattage: Russell declared it his best film since that imagined zenith, and a few critics wanly agreed. The Lair of the White Worm was another journey beyond the pale, thrusting some of the same actors into a ludicrous vampire and snake goddess phallic farrago with Hugh Grant and a kilted Peter Capaldi attempting to snakecharm with bagpipes. A vampirized policeman gets his head impaled on a deco sundial. Marvelous. And the sequence was rounded out with Salome’s Last Dance, which stages Oscar Wilde’s biblical wet dream in a Victorian brothel, an inspired no-budget solution and a film which, unlike Altered States, really respects its words, lingering over them, rolling them salaciously over its tongue. Add in also Ken’s episode of Aria, in which he stages Nessun Dorma as an accident victim’s operating room hallucination, with porn mag model Linzi Drew, a new Russell favorite, in the lead.

Time was running out, the budgets shrinking like a Fu Manchu death chamber, the ceiling pressing down and clearly constraining what Russell could achieve, despite his continuing ambition. Lady Chatterley’s Lover for the BBC scored huge ratings, and he was never asked back. Commercial television’s top arts programme, The South Bank Show, run by Russell’s old screenwriter from Women in Love, Melvyn Bragg, kept him going with more-or-less annual commissions: he’d come full circle, or did when he moved back to home movies, shot in his garden or in his favorite Soho pub, which he hoped to “flog on the internet.” The symmetry of the career, its ourobousness, is more pleasing to contemplate than it must have been to live, though the last marriage lasted and was happy, and the ever-moving critical pendulum had reached the place where people were starting to say that The Devils and some of the other seventies work was really good, actually.

I can admire everything up until the final home movies, and maybe I’ll come round to them: Russell was right to admire all his earlier films. He spent decades more or less brushing off French Dressing, then saw it on TV and thought, “This is a masterpiece!” which it is. But only a minor one compared to what was those around it. Seaside-postcard humor, musical comedy performances, pop art imagery, Wagnerian and Stravinskian soundtracks, a defiant rejection of subtlety. “I don’t believe there’s any value in understatement […] This is the age of kicking people in the balls and telling them something and getting a reaction […] Picasso was not restrained, Mahler was not restrained!’” His detractors thought he should be, possibly in a straitjacket and with megadoses of Thorazine, but Russell was a volcanic eruption in cinematic form, a purple-faced tyrant of the Stroheim school, a demonic force driven to possess reels of celluloid and make them glow in the dark with a sugar rush radiation that has yet to decay. He was too big, too vulgar, too beautiful, too nasty and too beautiful for a national cinema mired in lethargic literary-theatrical respectability. “The visual arts have never had a foothold in England,” he sneered.

Ken!

Life is not a Ken Loach movie. It is a Ken Russell movie.

by David Cairns

#David Cairns #The Chiseler #Ken Russell

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coinnewz · 9 months

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