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itty-bitty-rampaging-committee · 3 years

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My Top 8 Best Acting Moments from Aidan Gallagher!

Thank You to Anonymous for Requesting

Analysis Below

>>Warning: This is a giant post, so don’t click “read more” unless you genuinely want to read more. Otherwise, you’ll be scrolling for a long-ass time. This analysis covers the acting, psychology, and writing genius of Five Hargreeves.<<

So, this may be the lowest on this list, but it is by no means his weakest acting scene. My god, this scene is incredible because of the accuracy given the age and, henceforth, the experience of the actor.

Acting is effective if the person is able to accurately tell a truth whilst in imaginary circumstances. In order to act powerfully, we are commonly taught to connect complicated emotional situations to something we know well and, therefore, can portray well.

For many, being drunk isn’t anything new. And being tipsy isn’t exactly uncommon to act out. But for a fourteen-year-old, this is awesome to see because it is incredibly accurate. And, given the character’s psychological/emotional status, it’s even more impressive.

Here’s why:

So, right off the bat, listening to Aidan’s speech is something awesome. His clear yet natural slurring, his guttural tone: these two things are perfect indications of intoxication, since volume control is practically gone and drunk people don’t think things through. They just talk, and talk, and stumble because their inhibitions are so low.

It’s can really be heard, best, when he says, “she said it makes me surly” and when Diego whips around, he says, “hmm?”

Another thing that makes this so fun to watch is the fact that Aidan is completely lax. Being carried is one sign of that, yes, but even his subtle movements are loose. He did his homework, not only for the vocalization of someone who is drunk, but also for their movements.

Look how loose his movements are. He just tosses his hand up, lets it drop back down, and his head is too heavy, flopping all around. Completely uncoordinated and smooth, which is a bright contrast to Five’s usual coordinated, sharp, and calculated movements. The character is relatively rigid, which makes sense given his psychology and traumas.

Speaking of traumas.

There is this beautiful, subtle self-soothing movement going on right here. It’s a clear comfort to him, and after the night he has had, and the trauma he has endured, it makes perfect sense for him to be clinging to her as such. Whether Aidan knew what he was doing with this, I can’t say, but what I can say was that it was a fantastic choice of action to follow through with.

KEY NOTES: Acting drunk is all about fluidity. You make yourself as liquid-y as possible. Become one with the water, though not in an elegant way. Rather, become the cup that’s just tipped over. Water is spilling over the side, getting everywhere, aimlessly spreading across the tabletop. It’s a mess, it has no direction nor stability, etc.

Aidan follows through with this beautifully. I could gush about this all day, just as I could with so much of his acting. Acting drunk is hard, even for some adults. Luckily, he has it on his side that Five is so completely opposite of what we see here, that him being so flimsy and giggly is strange as shit.

Additionally, if you’re ever needing to act drunk, do the opposite of your character, given the script allows it. If the character is normally very carefree and lighthearted, become the depressed, crying drunk, or the angry drunk. Or, like Aidan, if your character is normally rigid, become a giggling mess that can’t take shit seriously.

On to the next, where it’s more about the psychology of a character rather than the physical acting of the actor...

This scene. This was the moment that made me realize just how much I adored Five when he’s absolutely batshit. Unlike most of this list, where internal conflict and monologue drives for an impressive performance, in this case, it is the external conflict and monologue that makes this scene fantastic!

Here’s why:

It is an absolute rollercoaster of emotions for Five Hargreeves.

Seriously, this guy is leaping from emotion to emotion, bouncing between frustration to borderline panic to bitter glee to mania to relief. You can practically see the gears turning in Aidan’s head throughout the entire scene as he throws Five through the ringer.

So, from the top, we’re given this glorious moment, both a genius writing move and fantastically acted.

The vending machine.

I know a lot of people are like, “hell yeah” because Aidan gets to say “fuck”, or because he’s just off the shits. There are many reasons to love this scene. But I especially love this scene because it’s really introducing to the audience exactly what’s going to happen: intensity, violence, and Five snapping, losing his cool in a lapse of fear and frustration and desperation. And it’s beautifully encapsulated in this one fucking scene.

Aidan’s acting here might seem easy, and in a sense, it is. It’s easy to ram your shoulder against a vending machine and shake it and get mad. But what isn’t easy is knowing why you’re doing this, and feeling it. Just from observation and process of elimination, Aidan’s likely mostly a method-based actor. He bases his acting, and his characters, in his own reality. That means that, if Five is panicked, Aidan will force panic upon himself. He’ll induce an emotion physically to get a psychological and emotional reaction.

And here, it’s clear that whatever he was thinking out, however he had prepped for this scene, was working. Because you can freeze these frames and, sure, see funny faces. But you’ll also see flashes of fear, of desperation, of panic, of anger. Fear and panic because he may fail his siblings, he may not be able to save them. Desperation because he needs this to work, he is going to murder all these people and so he needs it to work. And anger because the Handler is making him do this again; he’s right under her thumb once more.

All of these emotions, every damn one, is played out in this one. fucking. scene. And that’s insane.

Those emotions come to a head here:

Aidan’s deep, stabilizing breath grounds Five. He has gotten his rage and desperation and fear out. Now, there’s only one thing for Five to do: murder the Board. And it’s an instant click here.

There’s the deep breath. The understanding. The resignation to what needs to be done.

Then a head turn.

Then boom. Look carefully. You can see the light drain from his eyes, see the hesitation bleed out right there. Right there. All within a breath, head turn, a beat, then a face forward.

That is some intense grasp on your physicality, your emotions, and your portrayal of those emotions. Aidan’s always been fantastic at emoting, but subtle scenes like this just prove his class in it. It’s incredible to see.

And then this scene:

This shit is actually an amazing move on Aidan’s part. It holds both literal and metaphorical weight: he sighs, from exhaustion, because Five is fucking tired after jumping that much, expending that much energy in a short amount of time, and narrowly letting his target escape. But it’s also showing a mental exhaustion, a wearing of the mind on the body. He sighs from relief, but it’s ironic, because the fight is far from over.

And you can see that.

Notice how Aidan may be sighing - sighing with his whole body - but the exhaustion is still in his eyes, his brow is still furrowed. There is no relief there, because there isn’t any relief for Five in this moment. His mission has been accomplished, but he has to deal with the Handler, with the aftermath, with the repercussions of his selfish actions to save his family.

And you can see it all in this movement.

KEY NOTES: When acting out internal conflict, be subtle. Obvious movements are made for obvious, external conflicts. A person who punches first in a bar fight as an obvious external conflict. But, like shown here, a person who is breaking from the inside out will have external action, but also internal emotion that comes out in the most subtle of ways, whether it be through expression, through contradicting action (the sigh, but no visible relief), etc.

More often than not, in the arts, less is more. However, you first need to understand the more to be able to do the less. So analyze the scene, analyze the character, understand it fully, and feel it truthfully.

Onto the next!

This scene is quick but beautiful.

I love the entire apocalypse scene, and I’m sure you do as well. But this one moment right here. This moment where he sees Klaus and backs away? Fucking beautiful.

Let’s just zoom in, shall we?

Yes, a lovely grainy gif. But God it shows everything you need it to. This scene is a fucking gutpunch, and here’s why:

You can see every flicker of emotion, every transition. It’s in the way his mouth eventually closes, the way he backs up, slowly. It’s so fucking evident that Five is heartbroken, and you can see the thoughts going through his head. The realization that this is Klaus, that his siblings are dead, that he is alone in this apocalypse and his family is dead. The tears in his eyes...

God, bro. It hits so good.

Not being able to use dialogue can sometimes be difficult, because the actor doesn’t have a key part of their craft with them: words. Being able to emote, to shift from emotion to emotion so seamlessly with just a meager movement of the jaw while backing away. It’s incredible.

That’s literally all this is about. I chose this as my number six because it is so powerful within only a hundred-or-so frames. Having an actor be able to emote to clearly with just facial expression...

Shit, bro. Shit. It’s fantastic.

Like I said, the rest of this scene is amazing, and him finding his other siblings is intense, but this look right here is just...unparalleled.

KEY NOTES: Feel that shit. If you can’t feel it, craft a narrative to make yourself feel it. Again, acting is always about believing and living truthfully in imaginary circumstances, and sometimes it’s difficult to express emotions and feelings as is, let alone without dialogue. To help that, think of something.

For example, in this scene, if I were Aidan, I would think about the fact that these people I love are dead, the world as I know it is destroyed. Sure, I may not know that literal feeling, but I do understand the feeling of hopelessness, of feeling so utterly alone. Make it so that you’re able to live truthfully, however you need to do that. People usually don’t have completely empty heads; they’re thinking of things, of many things, often. So think about those things in-scene and in-character, and feel it.

Additionally, this is going back to the less is more. Aidan barely moves, here. His expression is relatively static but that slow back away, that hardening of his jaw, those things are gentle shifts that drastically change the way Five is in the scene. He goes from shocked, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, to feeling cold realization as he closes his mouth and backs away, the understanding dawning upon him.

I could gush about this for decades...

Next!

This whole barn scene is just...gold as fuck. But this scene in particular, with the interwoven flashbacks of Five’s siblings, his father, his instances with time travel. The realizations that cross his face are beautiful, which in turn, makes this scene fantastic.

Get ready for some awkwardly close close-ups, because I’m about to explain some really cool shit as to how Aidan’s using facial expressions to navigate pain, realization, fear, surprise, etc.

So here’s why:

FEELING THE FEELINGS.

That’s how. A lot of what makes this scene powerful from an acting perspective is because Aidan completely suspends himself in disbelief. There are a lot of surprises that come to Five in this moment, and Aidan feels them all. And he feels them powerfully. He feels the shock around the pain of being shot, on top of it.

So to kick it off! Here:

Aidan’s living in this moment. He’s living in the anger of the Handler, thinking he’s going to die right here. His siblings have just been murdered again, by this bitch. And the audience is able to live in that with him. His eyes harden. His jaw sets. He’s breathing tight around the pain, infuriated, either shaking from the agony or the hatred or both.

Five is so caught up in that moment, and Aidan suspends himself in that moment so clearly, that the next moment is powerful as shit.

The Handler gets shot.

She gets turned to swiss-fucking-cheese right in front of him, and the way Aidan lets Five live in every second is beautiful. He goes from shocked, to confused, to going, “oh shit, that looks painful”. And it’s muted by his pain. Aidan doesn’t need to move much, he doesn’t need to make a grandiose gesture. It’s wide eyes, it’s knitted eyebrows, it’s swallowing around the blood and letting Five be in this moment.

And then Five realizes - Aidan lets Five realize - that the Swede has taken the Handler’s place. That he’s going to die all over again.

There is that anger again. That pure fucking spite. It’s the look of a man who would murder someone if he could sit up. His jaw sets from before, where it was slack with surprise and sympathetic pain. Look how sharp his eyes are. Boy is fucking pissed and it’s beautiful.

Let’s hop back! Back to movement!

Aidan’s squirming around here?

Realistic as shit. Five’s just been shot. That’s absolute agony. And there’s blood coming down the side of his mouth, which means his lungs have somehow been hurt. He can’t talk, breathing must suck, and so of course he’s writhing on the ground.

And this?

Is Five clenching his hands from pain? Is he trying to blink? What’s going on here? I don’t know, maybe Aidan does, but either way, both motivations are powerful. Five may be trying to blink away. He may be trying to tap into his powers instinctively. Or maybe he’s squirming in pain, clenching and unclenching his fists. And that shit punches. It’s so subtle, but so good, keeping the audience in the moment. No matter where you look on his body, whether his hands, his face, his chest - it all shows the agony he’s in, the desperation he’s swimming in.

Which then leads to the coolest fucking moment:

Look at how his eyes shift, only just so. His brows furrow only slightly. He’s realizing what’s going on, what he can do to save his family. Aidan played this perfectly. Again, less is more. These subtle movements make so much sense, because Five has been shot, he’s losing blood fast, and it’s dulling his movements and senses.

And when Five begins turning back the seconds?

The pain, the shock, the “holy shit this is working???” My god, you can see him choking on the blood and around the agony. You can see his hesitation, his being startled by his own powers, by what he is capable of. The rapid blinking, the jumping eyebrows, the gasping for air as the bullets likely begin ripping out of him.

KEY NOTES: Subtle subtle subtle. Live in that moment. Suspend your disbelief. Here, in this scene, there are several key shifts. These shifts are supposed to be a massive surprise to Five. And because Aidan is king at staying in the moment, and letting that moment live in him, he is able to display these shifts perfectly.

1st Shift - Realizing he is alive, and his siblings are dead.

2nd Shift - The Handler getting shot.

3rd Shift - Axel moving to kill him.

4th Shift - The realization of his father’s words.

5th Shift - Holy shit time travel is working.

All of them need to have a shift in-scene/with the tone. Aidan shifts this with pure expression. He doesn’t need to utter a single word because he is able to live in that moment and truly let himself be shocked, scared, desperate, angry, etc. So, in order to do this, live in the moment.

Some people say knowing exactly what will happen helps, because you’re able to time your expressions perfectly. Others say that knowing nothing helps, because you’re literally letting yourself be surprised. This truly depends on the actor, and their style. Aidan has expressed that he waits to read his lines until he’s there, on set, because then it’ll be more of a shock to him. That works really well for him (clearly) but it may not work for you, so test that out how you’d like.

Onto the next!

This.

Shit.

Is so good.

The moment when Five meets with Dolores again after god knows how much time while he was at the Commission-- It’s beautiful. And again, being the king of the subtle, Aidan can display the perfect mix of emotions that are occurring in this scene.

Here’s what’s up:

As many people may have noticed, a lot of these fantastic, key moments for me, in particular, are special due to subtlety. And subtlety is seen in the micro-expressions displayed through the face, mainly. Specifically, the eyes. Aidan’s ability to act solely through his eyes is something I’m going to focus on for this scene in particular.

These are his eyes the moment he sees Dolores again. And what’s really, really fucking cool is that Aidan is completely living in this scene. It shows in his eyes: real compassion, real love, real care. Sure, Aidan may not care about the mannequin in front of him, but he is thinking about something, whether that’s Five’s ties to Dolores, or someone in his life that he truly feels fond over.

You can see it.

His eyes soften significantly as the gif continues, and you can even see the corners of his eyes upturn after he says, “Dolores”. There is real love here. The actor is able to portray true love through just the eyes. And that’s insane. Many actors express love through physical action because they may not be actually feeling it. They’ll say, “I love you” but express flatly, with dull eyes and a forced smile.

But here. No, not that shit. This shit has Aidan feeling everything. And it makes a big difference, makes everything feel so much more genuine. Good acting is through the eyes, not the words. Dialogue enhances the story, but being genuine, and selling that story as “reality”, is done by the actor, through the eyes, the subtle expressions, the minimal gestures and movements.

Let’s look at some more eyes?

Now, I fucking hate looking at eyes. But with Aidan - like with many good actors - I find them fascinating to watch. Because if an actor is feeling it, is living in the moment, they will express fantastically through their eyes. Most human communication is body language/unspoken, and I’m willing to bet a good chunk of that is through the eyes alone.

You can see Five thinking in that second gif, his eyes flicking left, left further, deep in thought for just a second. That is the thing you should be envisioning when authors say, “they could practice see the wheels turning in their head”.

In that first gif, Aidan’s compassion and softness, his quiet eyes, are contrasted by the sharp roll following the “obviously”, which makes the love being expressed to Dolores only that much stronger. It enhances the moment. See, because being too subtle the entire time makes it so the audiences don’t pick up much at all, they don’t feel it. And being too obvious makes you an amateur, makes it comical, almost.

When you’re strong in your craft, you’re able to make every single move in the most calculated of manners, but you make it seem effortless, make it seem natural. That’s incredible shit.

I’m by no means saying Aidan is perfect. He definitely isn’t. But, scenes like this showcase his experience in the field.

KEY NOTES:

Piggybacking off the subtlety discussed earlier, practice living in the moment. There is no real way to practice “being subtle” because it manifests naturally when the actor is living in the moment. Hence why this scene is so high on my list.

So learn to equate the emotions of your characters to your life. Tie your character’s life into yourself, somehow, all while keeping a safe distance. It’s by no means easy, and it takes years to learn how to do that, how to express naturally and not force a single thing. Being vulnerable, and raw, and flawed like that is hard, since so many people are taught that flaws are shameful, that perfection is required for success. But acting, like much of the arts, require you to unravel that believe and be truly vulnerable, exposed to possibly millions of viewers.

So learn to live in the moment. That will shield you all whilst letting you live freely as the character and, therefore, express truthfully and subtly.

Next!

Remember my rant about subtlety?

Yeah, fuck that, because with this, we’re going to talk about going off the rails. But, going off the rails in a tasteful manner. The paradox psychosis scenes were a beautiful contrast to a normally stiff, calculated character. it was satisfying, and entertaining, and so fucking powerful when breaking down the psychology of Five.

So let’s hop into that:

Psychology is everything to a character, because it is everything to humanity, and people as a whole. Every decision made is dictated by psychology, by experiences and how those are compartmentalized and processed in the brain. An action isn’t done without it meaning something to the person.

And the same goes for every character made.

If you are a writer, you need to understand the actions and reactions of your characters based on their experiences and their psychology. If you just...write random shit because you want to, or because it seems funny or creepy, it may be good, but it won’t line up psychologically and it’ll show. It’ll be obvious to those of us that study this day-in-day-out.

The same goes for acting and actors.

An actor will be much more powerful in their role if they can understand their character’s psychology. The amount of empathy going into this is intense, especially for those playing “villains” or antagonists - those with flimsy morals - because you need to be able to break down, understand, and agree with the psychology of your character. It’ll make them so much more realistic and powerful.

That is why seeing Five - a normally calculated, sharp, careful character - off the shits is the best thing ever. And it’s in-character, too! He’s learned over the years that independence is the key to survival, that thought (as opposed to action, or outbursts) yields better results.

Yet here, in the scene, Five is relying upon Luther’s help. He’s trusting his brother. He’s acting irrationally. He’s skittish. And it’s such a beautiful contrast. Admittedly, this scene is more about the writing than Aidan’s acting, but it is still fantastically acted, and that only adds more to the realism, to the intensity, to the fact that it is so not Five to do this, and yet, it is very much so Five.

That! Is because of body language.

We know it is Five, that it is in-character, because it still follows Five’s normal body language, his gestures, his manic buzzing around despite his words sounding paranoid, despite his actions being rash. I’ve already spent a lot of time on this number already, so I’ll just demonstrate with a specific scene:

He’s pensive as hell right here. Shoulders tense, shifting back wards. He knows what’s going on, he’s as terrified as he allows himself to be (because he can’t stifle it, perhaps), and it’s so very Five while also being not Five at all.

Despite the music telling us it’s all gucci, it is not all gucci. Look at his eyes. They harden. They get dark. His demeanor completely shifts into caution. he swallows. Steels himself. This is the Five we know - a paranoid little shit - and yet, there is fear that is so uncharacteristic. All through Aidan’s beautiful acting. All through him understanding the psychology of Five perfectly. This is why it is required that you understand your character’s every move, every action, every line of dialogue, every thought.

So, this kind of shit throughout the entire paradox psychosis scene is just amazing. And it’s exactly for the reasons listed above. Aidan knows Five. Not only is he Five, but he knows Five. Inside and out. And god does it show.

KEY NOTES:

Know your character. Know them better than you know yourself. Deadass. Know them better thank you know yourself so that you can delve into the meat of their psychology and tweeze out exactly what you need to do in order to act them correctly.

Onto the next!

This gourmet shit.

Time to get uncomfortably close once again.

The jaw clench! The cheek tightening! The head tilt! The lips thinning! Look at that beautiful expression. See, acting, like writing, is all based on formula. Now, I’m going to out myself, but I’m autistic. Facial expressions, movements, twitches, etc. aren’t inherent to me, and understanding them and analysis them is a learned behavior.

Actors and writers, like me, need to understand the formula.

Clenched jaw + fidgeting + tightening lips = numerous things, ranging from frustration, to anger, to desperation, to pain.

But when you include the eyes.

The eyes tell it all.

Small, watering, tight at the corners, knitted brows. All of these, plus our formula above, create the perfect mix of frustration, desperation, pain, fear.

He is frustrated with the situation, with Vanya. He is desperate to get her to listen. He is in pain because he hates to do this to her, hates to have to fight her on this. And he is scared because what if he has to fight her?

Actors are usually conscious - at least at first - about these movements. They learn to have complete control of their bodies, their faces, down to the muscle. Or, they should. I can’t speak for Aidan, because I’m not him, clearly. But I can safely say that, if he doesn’t consciously have control of his body and understand exactly what’s going on, then he has some intense intuition about his emotions. He is able to perfectly display a mishmash of emotions, all perfect given the situation, the character, his experiences.

Aidan gives Five the multi-layering goodness that we analysis kids love because Five isn’t just upset. He isn’t just frustrated. He is frustrated on top of being scared, and agonized, and exhausted (you can see the weariness in his eyes; it’s all in the eyes).

KEY NOTES

I’m not sure if this would help, but try making a formula. If you are worried about your character not doing an emotion right, or wanting to do multiple emotions at once, craft a formula or a chart.

So, say you want depression and anger. A basic formula could look like this:

Depression = Hollow Eyes + Monotone Voice + Slumped Posture

Anger = Shaking + Sharp Eyes + Clenched Fists

Then, you can combine the two together. You can have hollowed eyes, and a monotone voice, but also sharpened corners to the eyes, and clenched fists. Here, Aidan is tapping into multiple things, things that have interwoven specifics to their formulas. That’s why it works so beautifully. His eyes scream agony, his jaw tightens with frustration, his eyebrow knit together with frustration--

Bless this kid and his acting.

Anyways, last but definitely not least, here is my final analysis:

Now, this scene may not seem like the most intense acting ever, but in reality - to me - this shit is insanely powerful. It’s not just the acting going into work here; it’s the blocking, the dialogue, the pacing, the atmosphere, the emotional environment, the music and sound engineering...

It’s a fucking cinematic masterpiece.

But, since I am here to talk about just acting, and just Aidan’s acting, let me tell you about how this scene is made so good. There are two reasons:

One, is that Aidan is a master at post traumatic stress disorder and PTSD psychological processes and how that comes out in action, reaction, dialogue delivery, etc.

And two, he acts like a grown-ass old man.

Let’s talk about the second one first, because why not:

(apologies ahead of time for fucked gifs, this scene is impossible)

This scene. It’s just a drink. Chill, whatever, right?

Wrong.

It’s the way he moves. The way he drinks. The way he holds himself when he is around Reginald, another man his age. Around another man his age that had abused him, had done him wrong, but in Five’s eyes, some whom he had done wrong, too.

Luther is the sibling that is always said to be in denial about their father’s wrongdoings, but a lot of people neglect the fact that Five is, too. He is just as much in denial as Luther, if not more so by the time season two wraps up.

And it shows.

It shows in the way he moves as if they were equals, when they are so clearly not. He tils his head, gives acknowledgement in the way old men do. The generational gap is closed by Aidan’s movements, not by his words. It’s incredibly satisfying to see Five’s psychology bleeding through as he instinctively shifts from “I’m dealing with a bunch of kids” to “I’m alongside a man my age, my father”.

And speaking of psychology, let’s please talk about PTSD.

Specifically, subtle show not tell of PTSD, all through the eyes.

Right. Here.

Look, I’m not going to lie, if I analyze this scene, it’ll be the same things you’ve heard before. Everything I gushed about earlier is going to be repeated here for the ultimate finale on this long-ass fucking post.

But, humor me.

Five’s got trauma. Bitch has trauma for days. Though, he doesn’t wear it. He hides it, he buries it, because it is useless to him. Yet, it will always be there. His trauma of abandonment, and survival in the apocalypse, on top of the abuse from his father, the stress of his childhood, and topped off with the murder he had to shoulder for the sake of the Commission. Rarely does this show. Rarely is it seen.

Save for scene likes this. Right. Fucking. Here.

Aidan knows Five. And he knows the traumas Five’s endured.

Five can’t look at his father as he admits his failures, the snide, “I told you so” ringing through his head. He has to acknowledge that his father was right, that he was right all along. This is a burden Five has carried for decades, as seen with his discussion with Diego in 2x02. It’s not something small for him. So, to admit that...

The stare says it all.

His eyes are glazed over, lost in the past. He isn’t looking at Reggie, is looking past him. This is the thousand-yard stare you always read about. These are the eyes of agony, and regret, and a flashback. His eyes flick, flick to the side, towards the camera, as Five remembers something. Aidan knows how to play this. He knows how to play this trauma of remembering, of remembering what he had done to his siblings and how he has failed. And, finally, he is able to look and Reginald but he is choking back something. He swallows thickly, as if it’s almost sickening to do so.

Aidan’s understanding of Five, and his trauma and psychology, and expressing it all through his body language, and expression, and eyes. God, it’s fucking mesmerizing.

SO TO WRAP IT UP

Everything here is purely my opinion, but if I were to leave you with anything, acting (and writing) comes down to three basic things:

--Understanding the psychology of your character, through-and-through.

--Understanding your body, your expressions, your eyes, and how you react and can react to specific emotions.

--Living in the moment, and being present in the character’s life, being truthful to them over yourself.

These are the things that Aidan excels at. God, he is amazing at it. And I appreciate the hell out of it any time I see him. He is so truthful to Five, so honest to the character, that it’s beautiful to watch. Five is so flawed, so hurt, and so complex, and Aidan isn’t afraid to show us this vulnerability. I suppose that should be one last thing that all writers and actors and anyone in the arts should strive for:

--Vulnerability, pain, fear, and raw, oftentimes shielded emotions are not something to hide but, rather, are your greatest strength.

#aidan gallagher #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #number five #five hargreeves #five #acting analysis

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theyarebothgunshot · 3 years

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I’d be very interested in your thoughts on the JIB8 cockles panel. just a suggestion for your rewatch 👀

i’ve seen the jib8 panel so many times, because it’s honestly one of the wildest things i have ever seen and i just never get tired of it.

first of all i want to give you my take on the overall vibe, and then second of all i will get into the details and link to certain timestamps in the video.

disclaimer: i am not gonna be linking to every single thing i talk about, but i will try my best to link to the moments that stand out to me the most. i have read long posts about this panel before, so not everything in this post is gonna be original or said for the first time ever, simply because there is a good chance that information has stuck in my mind and has subconsciously formed my view of this panel. this is also in no way, shape or form gonna be coherent, unfortunately. i’m just gonna hope that the cockles hivemind will be able to make sense of this regardless. love and light. and lastly, this is all in good fun, so don’t come at me if you think this is too out there please and thank you.

fun fact: i was today years old when i found out that the airbnb story took place one day before this panel. what a sexually charged weekend that was for them dude (gn).

the vibe that i get from this panel is that their moods were off before they got on stage, and where misha kind of looks tired and not 100% enthusiastic about things, jensen apparently decided to get drunk and is trying to make it look like he is thriving. yet, a little while into the panel we learn that it has been an emotional rollercoaster of a day for him, which might have something to do with the overall mood. then again, it could be that something else happened in between the autographs and that panel, who is to say?

i have talked about the d/s subtones in their interactions before and this panel makes my radar ping like nobody’s business. if my interpretation of their dynamics is right, then one could assume that jensen was being very bratty on purpose, trying to stir up a reaction in misha, and i think he probably got what he wanted (more or less. maybe he thought misha would find it more amusing than he did, or but honestly, at that point they have already known each other for nearly 10 years so odds are he knew what he was doing and how misha would react to it. it would surprise me greatly if these two didn’t work out their mutual frustrations with the day and each other after this panel ended- in the bedroom.)

i genuinely think i have never seen jensen flirt more openly and aggressively with misha, ever, and i have never seen misha in the state he was in during this panel either: tired, a little annoyed about the fact that jensen was going off the deep end and that he was not able to stop him, to the point where he just gives up and says things like ‘when in rome’ etc. let’s get into it.

the mood is set from the very first second: misha is kinda subdued, and jensen is being a bit of a clown, coaxing misha to join him in the madness, which he does to a certain extent.

we are off to a great start with not just one [0m15s], but two [0m20s] moments in which i just know in my bones they wanted to hold hands. how do i know? because i have been there my fucking self. wanting to hold hands with your crush when you are drunk and acting silly is a love language okay.

as soon as they sit down, misha tries to make conversation and jensen just starts pushing him and pushing him, [1m11s] saying ‘shut up’ and ‘yeah it’s really stupid and it embarrasses me’, but misha tries to ignore it at first and just marches on through. which is probably why i never see people talk about that little comment. it embarrasses jensen when misha sits like that? why would he need to feel embarrassed by his friend’s actions? kinda weird tbh, sounds like husband behavior to me. i have a feeling that when misha said ‘by which he means it’s an innie’, jensen REALLY had to bite on his tongue not to go all ‘you weren’t complaining this morning’ or something like that. look at his face bro [1m55s].

and then jensen opens up his legs like the little tramp (affectionate) that he is and when misha tries to stop him he just TURNS to misha with said open legs like a mad man and goes ‘here’s the thing. pick a leg.’ [2m05s] LIKE? who DOES THAT? that is insane people behavior!!! admittedly i am a cis woman and i don’t have conversations with male friends about their bodily anatomy all that often, but i legit cannot phatom that this is a normal thing to talk about with your platonic buddy. pick a leg for me to rest my dick on, old buddy old pal. NOBODY DOES THAT. it’s not even something that i would consider flirting because even though i am into men, i would not find that arousing? so it’s either an action to provoke annoyance in misha or it’s something they have discussed before or both. because misha immediately understands what he means, starts shaking his head in frustration, and actually turns to jensen as if to say ‘are you fucking kidding me right now? really? you are really doing this?’ followed by a ‘this is making me feel so uncomfortable’ aka one of the phrases they both like to use even though they never mean it.

then when jensen actually goes up to do his ridiculous mating dance and sits back down again, he automatically sits down with his body turned towards misha.

quick side note: if anybody understands what the joke was about when they talked about ‘cas has big dolls’ i would love to hear it, because that has never made any sense to me, but it’s probably a me problem lmao.

when misha goes ‘could you watch your language please’ i think that’s a sign that he is genuinely getting a bit frustrated [4m53s] with jensen even though he is obviously playing it off as a joke. right after he says that, jensen puts his fingers against his mouth, as if to shut himself up. i know that a lot of people don’t wanna read too much into body language but hey, i am writing an analysis here so work with me for a sec: i think that could be a subconscious decision to listen to what misha is telling him to do, which ties into the d/s dynamics i’ve mentioned earlier.

i know people always go crazy when misha goes ‘what did i tell him’ [5m19s] and jensen whispers in his ear. i personally think misha probably told him about the fact that they booked kansas the band, but it’s still pretty telling that that is how misha would react to the question if something he told him is public knowledge. evidently that goes to show that there is enough that misha tells jensen that cannot be shared with the public, which i thought is interesting.

now that i am watching it again, the ‘j*red would have just said it’ comment kind of stumbles around in my brain asking me to dissect it. let’s just say that i wouldn’t be surprised if they were both thinking back on the many, many times that j*red put his foot in his mouth and made a suggestive comment about jensen and misha’s relationship.

god i just cringed [6m14s] watching jensen interact with that first girl who asked a question and he just goes off on her about how twins are cool and misha is shaking his head lord oh lord and that is the minute daniella decides that hey maybe they need even more alcohol lmfaoooo it’s a lot. poor misha i genuinely feel bad for him.

and then he goes ‘real men have twins’ and looks at misha and misha is still not having it so he goes ‘it’s just a shirt’ like girl (gn) pleASE that’s husband behavior, yet again, why else would he feel the need to clarify it. ‘look babe don’t be mad or jealous i don’t mean anything by it, it’s just a shirt’ i hate him.

i just know misha would have wanted to take the apple juice away from jensen lmao.

one of the moments [9m35s] that always stands out to me is when they go ‘that’s why we don’t bring steven’ ‘that’s right, that’s why he’s not allowed’ idk how to explain it but the way that just flows out of them so naturally feels very coupley for some reason.

i think we can all agree that jensen’s reaction [12m22s] to misha’s ‘i always wear orange underwear’ story is completely fake, right? because there is no way he didn’t know that, and his reaction was very exaggerated. plus, the little gesture to make misha show his underwear? bitch, please. whipped. there was also exactly zero reason for him to come that close to misha in order to inspect the color of his underwear.

the one thing that i wonder about, though, is why misha didn’t know jensen was wearing the famous underbear briefs? but as i am writing this i realise that even if they slept in the same hotel room, there are obviously a few different possible reasons why misha didn’t know what underwear jensen was wearing that day: either jensen showered and changed in the bathroom, so by the time he faced misha again he was fully dressed, or misha had to leave their hotel room earlier than jensen, or jensen changed while misha showered, etc etc.

in any case……. jensen dropping trou in the middle of this fucking panel? absolutely batshit insane, 10/10 thank you for your service nesnej.

this [13m54s] is where shit really starts to hit the fan. jensen is OUT OF CONTROL. the long stares??? the ‘rawr’s??? ‘you didn’t even get the full picture’??? (sidenote i would love to know what misha whispered to him right after).

OKAY so. when the girl mentions j*red and jensen goes all Knowing What’s Up and says ‘oh he has had a rough time today. misha kept us up way too late last night. *glances at misha* rrrrrrr’ listen. the only reason i am not reading too much into this is because i do not believe they had a threesome with j*red but also the way he said it was very sus and my mind can’t help but wonder if they were disgustingly flirty and way too touchy feely in front of j*red whilst drunk and honestly that’s probably the case.

of course this is followed [15m15s] by the insane man saying ‘by the way they go down to here’??? and the potentially whispered ‘i’ll show you later’?????? sir i have a lot of questions. number one: how dare you?

bless this next person for this question, because she starts her sentence with: ‘people who have been together for a long time…’ i actually already made a post about this once so i implore you all to read that because i still stand by what i said in there.

it is of course followed by them both not being able to think about ANYTHING appropriate to say to the question if there is anything they only do in front of each other that doesn’t involve pants. and then misha goes ‘why don’t i just share a private moment that we had’ and jensen’s first instinct is to say ‘shit’. i mean. i am merely perceiving.

this is the moment we realise that it has been quite The Day for them, but especially for jensen, because he has been emotional earlier in the day. which, again, could explain his demeanor during the panel. trying to distract himself. notice that he gets up and shakes his legs again and goes for a drink the second misha starts to tell the story: coping mechanisms aka distraction, just like he did at the start of the panel.

the moment where he goes ‘it’s hitting me now. shit.’ really solidifies this theory for me, that he has been acting like a goofy drunken guy all panel, in order to drown out the emotions he felt that afternoon, but alas. once he started to talk about it, it still all came back to him.

i will say this though: it kind of warms my heart that he was so touched by the fact that the fandom spawned something good. makes me feel slightly less dumb for forming parasocial relationships with that man. only slightly, but still.

misha going ‘god he’s so grouchy’ [25m32s]? say it with me, folks: husband behavior. once again misha tries to talk jensen down and jensen listens (sort of). say it with me, folks: d/s behavior. and RIGHT after that jensen walks towards misha with this intense fucking stare in his eyes that makes me feel like i am intruding, and then after he gets another drink (nesnej, why?) he just. gently massages misha’s neck and shoulder before draping his arm around him? and his hand lingers when he goes to grab the keychain? okay.

insert the famous ‘when in rome’ debacle lmao misha was so done with jensen by then it’s so hilarious. the funny thing is that misha says ‘what i mean is show each other our underwear, nothing weird. you can’t look at me like that, because of what you did’, while the question was ‘what would dean and cas do in rome’ and not ‘what would jensen and misha do in rome’ but clearly, once again, the actors cannot make a distinction between the two. interesting :) it also wouldn’t surprise me if jensen has told him to tone down the dean/cas answers but now that jensen decided to fully flash him on stage misha is like ‘sorry but i am not playing by your rules after what you did’ lmao. of course, jensen’s reaction is to go back to parting his legs for misha, like he is challenging him. i mean. you can’t make this shit up.

am i the only one who thinks that jensen might be thinking dirty thoughts when misha repeats ‘what would dean and cas do’ [27m50s]? because like. that’s quite a face he is making.

when he says ‘i don’t know how to answer that’ and misha agrees, idk, for some reason i get the feeling that that’s in the sense of ‘i don’t know how to answer that in a way that won’t get our fans’s hopes up because we know what they would want and we know what we would answer but we can’t go there’.

i really feel like the final straw for daniella was the way that jensen reacted to that last question like he was gonna have another breakdown lmao and that’s why the rest of the cast and crew were pushed onto the stage prematurely. because when you think about it, it’s a pretty rude thing to do when somebody is still answering a question? but okay.

listen - the last 6 minutes of this panel are so chaotic sdjfhsjh the only thing i can conclude from it is that jensen is hella drunk but we’ve been knew. his mood changes by the fucking second. i love him and his little dance and how he sits down on the stage. i feel like i might be jensen coded when i am drunk. i too get slutty and unpredictable.

so anyways long story short: jensen was hella drunk and wanted to provoke misha, it worked, they had hot sweaty sex after this panel, and the fact that jensen got drunk enough to entrust misha with taking care of shit during the panel makes me very emotional for some reason, and i just love them a lot. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#cockles #i am sorry this is such a mess lmao but enjoy i guess?#jib 8 #alsaurus-loves-dean #i edited in the timestamps because apparently the links dont work on mobile and just jump to the beginning of the vid. sigh

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Have you read the short story Norvell Page wrote as a wedding present for a Big Name Fan about Dick and Nita's first meeting? Any thoughts on it? My main is that Page does not go where you expect him to based on that description.

I did! Actually it was one of the first Spider stories I read. And yeah, to an extent, it's absolutely not what you'd expect from something set in The Spider's world. And on the other hand, it's absolutely what makes the most sense for these two characters. Because, yeah, Norvell Page could have done what he usually does, and written some over-the-top action where Dick and Nita happen to meet during it.

But no, that wouldn't work. Because, for all the turmoil and chaos in The Spider, for everything that he and Nita go through, there are many times when, sturdier even than Dick's resolve is their love for each other, the deep understanding and affection that carries them through hell itself time and time again.

And so, when it was time to showcase how such a romance started, Page wisely deviated from his usual narrative style, and instead told a very, very intimate and personal story, a long and extended conversation between the two, and more importantly, between Page and the reader. Between The Spider, and You, peering into The Spider through the eyes of Nita van Sloan.

I think for a start, it's an interesting coincidence that this meeting takes place on a cruise ship, and it involves Dick rescuing Nita from suicide. I say this because Margo Lane's first meeting with Lamont Cranston, in the pulps, was stated to have taken place on a cruise ship, and of course, the first time we see The Shadow in the pulps, he's rescuing Harry Vincent from suicide, and both Harry and Margo are The Shadow's main supporting characters. I'm not saying it was intentional, but it's an interesting fact. And more so because Dick doesn't really rescue Nita.

Her scarf whipped in the wind on deck, and it blinded her... and a hand touched her arm, and a voice spoke to her.

"If it's intentional, don't let me stop you," the voice said, "but you're heading straight for suicide."

Nita looked then at the stop toward which, blindly, she was going, and it was a chain barrier beyond which was the sea. And she looked at the man who had stopped her and it was Richard Wentworth. And his words had been a shock to her.

"You wouldn't try to dissuade me from suicide?" she asked.

Wentworth's brows were tilted whit a hint of mockery, but his eyes were very grave. "Every man is master of his own soul, and hence of his body," he said. "And your eyes are wide open and awake. So it would be a considered action. I'm not sure, under those circumstances, that I would have a right to meddle in another's business."

Nita said, "I think you can help me."

Wentworth shook his head. "Only you can help yourself," he said, "but it may be that someone else could help you find the way."

The whole text is a great example of how wonderfully realized of a character Nita van Sloan is in ways so unlike the typical pulp or superhero girlfriends at the time, because the text is written from her perspective, and half of the text reads like an extended character breakdown of who Nita is as a character and person. And the other half of the text is almost entirely comprised of Dick Wentworth spouting philosophy and talking in-depth about his reading of her and what's upsetting her, talking about God and fate and so on. And like so many other attempts to explore serious theological/psychological/philosophical/etc concepts explored through pulp fiction, half of it is bullshit, and half of it is fascinatingly disturbing and thought-provoking bullshit.

"Self-contempt," Wentworth's words were very quiet now. "Is second only to self-pity among the greater sins. Self-analysis is a dangersous thing. You need so much charity. And any person who is advanced enough to think about himself at all is apt to be over-stern in his judgment of himself."

He said to her, "If you don't honor youself, who will honor you?" And, a few moments later, "There is conceit in ruling others, but none in mastering yourself." And, "There is no arrogance so great as self-righteousness."

Nita clashed with him violently, "You are being self-righteous in judging me!"

Wentworth laughed. "I am speaking only truism. It is you who judge yourself, not I." He was serious, then. "My dear," he said, "I would be presumptuous to try to teach you. No man can teach another. But one who has been along that same trail would be less than a man if he failed to mark certain signposts and certain places where there is water to drink so that another, traveling that same road, may know where another struggled and what he has learned. But, as no man can travel a road for another, so no man can teach another. You must work out your own salvation."

"That sense of separation between the inner and outer self," Nita rushed on, "between yourself and the world ... while you were talking, I could almost feel that difference disappearing. The feeling is gone now, but ..."

"All progress is three steps forward and two back," Wentworth said, slowly, "and this is good because thus all ground is three-times covered and triply learned."

And I should probably clarify by this point that, it's not so much Dick Wentworth talking in this story, as it's Norvell Page himself. In fact, he admits as much in another letter he had sent to his readers that he was prone to talking philosophy by this point.

There was a time when the burden of writing just one more Spider seemed too much to undertake. (After all, the magazine is in it's ninth year!) But I never feel that way any more. I know now that the Spider actually does help people; that there are those who appreciate his idealism even though it is expressed in violence.

Especially in the last half dozen Spiders, beginning with the 100th I believe, I have tried very earnestly to teach a little of the philosophy and faith, of which we all need so much in these days.

Here's the thing about The Spider: It's not that the character is mad. Well, okay, he IS mad, I don't pull these over-the-top maniacal cartoon meme descriptions out of thin air, but that's because he lives in a batshit insane disaster horror world where there IS no sane response other than joining the carnage to overcome it. It's not just that Wentworth who is a madman. It's that Norvell Page was a mad man, and Dick Wentworth was Norvell's Page alter-ego, by the man's own admission.

Friends have informed me that I moved about the company as one in a trance: there were some who were concerned about my health, so oddly did I behave. Of course, only my body attended that occasion. My mind was entirely engrossed in Dick Wentworth's big problem - back in my study on a sheet of paper stuck in my typewriter

I did not dream that night; in the morning I restlessly paced my floor thinking, thinking, thinking. I sat down at the typewriter, stared at the words and the keys. Suddenly, as if by magic, Dick Wentworth seemed to move of his own volition. My hands raised, my fingers literally flew over the keyboard.

No matter how ridiculous it seems, I will always feel that Dick Wentworth, creature of my own fabrication, guided me through that tough scene.

No two people can live together without being influenced by each other to some extent. So constantly has Wentworth been in my mind, it is as if we were roommates - partners in everything.

Page has talked about how close of a connection he feels to the character, about many ways he's emulated his mannerisms, even some pretty embarassing anectodes where he claims to have "accidentally" used the character's "indomitable will" to scare waiters or drawing connections between The Spider's cast and real people he's met. Others who met him remarked that he talked of the "Spider" characters as though they were members of his family, or drinking companions.

Even before I got into The Spider, I had heard of rumors that he used to present or discuss stories in his office by putting on a cape and jumping from desk to desk, swinging a yard stick in his hand, and I can't find any source that confirms it, but I don't doubt it in the slightest. A lot of pulp writers had really weird lives, and Page was no exception. He was a journalist who frequently dug into his newspaper clippings for grisly stories to incorporate into narratives. I mean, just look at the dude's eyes, he's seen some shit.

When he was 3, his mother fell down a manhole while they were walking down a Chicago sidewalk. Norvell, terrified, thought she had dissappeared and never quite got over the experience.

When he was a little older, according to some family members, his parents had tickets for the Titanic and escaped disaster when Norvell begged them to cancel the trip for reasons unknown.

Norvell again played a hand in the family's escaping disaster when, one Christmas the family home caught on fire. Candles on the tree had been left burning. He quite arguably saved everyone's life. Waking first, he threw his mattress out of his window, grabbed his infant brother and sister and ran screaming through the hall as he went back to jump to safety. His screams woke his parents who then jumped to the mattress themselves.

Norvell lied about his age and experience to the Norfolk "Observer", claiming to have been writing for Richmond's "Times Dispatch" and was hired there.

His father managed Thomas Edison & Hugo Wurlitzer's ad accounts, and had always encouraged him to write, envisioning him as another Poe, whom his Great-Uncle had worked with as an editor

It is rumored that, in NYC, while at the "World Telegram", he became involved in fellow editor Varion Fry's effort to rescue artists and scientists from occupied Europe. President of the American Fiction Guild, he edited their newsletter for some time. Among his closest friends were fellow writers Ted Tinsley and L. Ron Hubbard and Surrealist painter Max Ernst.

WRITER'S REVIEW 35.08: Norvell W. Page, whose bloodthirsty Spider novels would do justice to Ghengis Khan, demonstrated his bloodlust the other day by accidentally killing a sparrow.

He wrote until 1943, when he abruptly stopped without warning. He dissappeared, for all intents and purposes, from both New York, the arts world and the pulp world for good.

His wife of 20 years, Audrey, had died and this, along with the U.S. involvment in WWII, led to his returning to VA where he would go on to be an intelligence worker in the Truman, Kennedy and Eisenhower Administrations.

He died suddenly of a heart attack in August of 1961.

Surviving family members do not know where he is buried.

I think this is a story that Page might have told differently had he written it earlier in his career, before he got tired, before he underwent his depression and loss of weight that caused him to briefly stop writing pulps all together, in a time period before the World War had cast an oppressive miasma on the world. In a time period where most of the horrifying nightmares he infused into the stories were really just that, nightmares, that he didn't live long enough to see turn into prophecies.

Because that's another thing about The Spider that makes the character more than just a batshit vigilante: As over-the-top as the stories were, a lot of them also inevitably turned out to predict some form of catastrophe in real life.

Written with an eye to the horrors festering in Germany at the time, The Mayor of Hell now reads as an infernal vision of the Homeland Security Act.

The poisoned products found in The Red Death Rain and The Pain Emperor call to mind the Tylenol killings of the summer of 1982, and the hundreds of poisoned products cases that followed.

Bio-terrorism plays large in the Spider mythos, with bubonic plague in Wings of the Black Death, rabies in The Mad Horde, and cholera in The Cholera King foreshadowing the Anthrax scare of 2001. The same could be said of the terror gases from Kingdom of Doom and Green Globes of Death and the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subways in March of 1995.

Masters of the Death Madness unfolds as a nightmare meditation upon suicide, which has become one of the principal weapons of modern terrorists. One scene involves suicide bombers.

Another scene chillingly presages the Jonestown massacre of 1978: a grand procession lines up to drink from a bowl of poisoned wine while surrounding gunmen pick off anyone who refuses to drink.

The modern reader will recognize the psychological and sociological effects of a citizenry living under the threat of terrorism, so chillingly evoked by Page: the grating loss of safety, the imminent threats lurking in familiar objects, the way security can no longer be taken for granted, the kind of skittishness that empties a building at the first sign of an unknown white powder.

The eeriest of all the modern terrorist parallels appears in a novel called The City Destroyer, originally published in 1936. It features a set piece involving the collapse of a fictitious gigantic building, supposedly the tallest in New York City, called “The Sky Building.” When it fell, it wiped out five city blocks and claimed 1,000 lives. And perhaps it’s worth noting a further parallel that occurred in the 1970’s, when Pocket Books tried to revive the Spider; they repackaged him in a paperback series, striving for an image of what was then cool and thrusting Richard Wentworth into a contemporary setting.

When Pocket Books reprinted and updated The City Destroyer in 1975, the collapse of the Sky Building was replaced with the collapse of the World Trade Center - Stuart Hopen's essay on The Spider

Regardless of how much reality Page was infusing into his stories (because, again, he took a lot of his material from newspapers) or how much he foresaw intentionally or not, writing The Spider definitely took it's toll on him, and as the magazine neared it's final stretch with him on the helm, certain parts did began taking a more philosophical or religious tone, as more of Page's own beliefs, more of Page's attempts to use it as a vehicle to do good, began to bleed through the page.

And ultimately I think that's also what the story of Dick and Nita's first meeting is about, sort of an extended analysis not just of Nita, who Page himself said was a character he conceived as "the epitome of womanhood" and everything he thought admirable about it, but also of Wentworth's own character, and the things Page wanted to get through in his time.

Religion crept deeper into the series with each succeeding year. By all accounts, Norvell Page was a man of deep faith and spirituality who just happened to be writing the exploits of a hero whose idea of mercy was a bullet in the brain instead of the stomach.

In the 100th novel, Death and The Spider, Wentworth battles Death itself - or so it seems - and on Christmas Eve, he is shot so badly while protecting the President from assassination that everyone believes he's dead - including himself.

Dead or not, he forces himself to fight on, sustained only by reciting the 23rd Psalm over and over again.

Nita laughed and accepted a cigarette. "I don't know how to thank you."

"Don't," Wentworth's voice was sharp. "I told you I am only a channel. Don't confuse me with the Source."

It stopped words on Nita's lips, and it gave here a new respect and a new and sudden attitude toward this man beside her, this man who could laugh and jest with everyone about him, and who could teach like a very oracle ... and who carried about him such a sense of dedication to high purpose. He might seem apart from the world, but he was utterly and completely of it.

Nita said, half-laughing, half-serious, "May I like you? And may I admire your ... adjustment?"

"Don't envy my adjustment," he grinned at her. "Have one yourself." He snapped flame to her cigarette with his lighter, and his lean, strong hand was steady and sure as his eyes, as his voice. He was speaking to her but he was looking at the lighter. "I have found my mission," he said quietly.

#pulp heroes #the spider #nita van sloan #pulp fiction #norvell page #it's pretty much impossible to talk about the spider without sounding like a pulp writer yourself

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bnha-mha-imagines · 5 years

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Okay, get this: a new lov member who’s really awkward and shy. Everyone thinks she’s just a normal gal but it turns out she’s absolutely out of her mind? /sigh/ I don’t even know anymore 😔 rip. I’m so bad at requesting it should be my new party trick. Anyways, I hope you have a good day and I love your writing!!

Ahh thank you! :) I’m not sure if you wanted this to be cute or disturbing so I went with the latter because nothing I’ve posted so far is dark themed (all my stuff is like, fluff haha)! :0 Let’s get some well rounded writing up in here!

New LOV member who’s secretly insane

Warnings: DARK THEMES that include but are not limited to: Blood, dead animals, disturbing images, cannibalism, death, hearing voices, sadism/masochism, violence, mentions of self-harm etc. etc. You get the picture.

^^^Don’t read if you’re sensitive to similar topics. I went ham on this, yall.

Disclaimer: The reader depicted in this is chronically insane and is an extreme case. This is in no way a depiction of a person with a mental disorder. I don’t want to spread any misinformation, most people with mental disorders are lovely people and are not crazy/dangerous in anyway

Under the cut vvv

Tomura Shigaraki:

Look, he wasn’t a fan of the whole awkward-shy act, but hey, you were pretty hot and you had a quirk that the League definitely needed

So he let you in, figuring he’d just need to have that timid attitude of yours whipped out of you

But OH. It didn’t take long for him to realize you were completely bonkers.

Dabi was giving you shit like he did everyone, and all it took was a poor comment on his part for your usually pleasant expression to contort into one of malice and...joy? The way your face darkened and your eyes swirled with an unhinged gleam…

Maybe you’d be more interesting than he initially thought~ plus, seeing you threaten Dabi was definitely some brownie points in Tomura’s book

At times it gets frustrating because you can get out of hand, and he honestly couldn’t even handle the League WITHOUT another crazy added in the mix

But you were powerful and an important addition to the team, so you were stuck with this sorry lot whether you liked it or not

Kurogiri:

He was a little surprised, but pleasantly so, when Tomura recruited you for the League. You were actually...rather normal compared to the rest of the bunch, but he was far from complaining!

You were also modest and well-mannered, and Kurogiri especially admired that. The rest of the League was full of squabbling hotheads, so you were a breath of fresh air!

At the bar, he’d talk a lot with you seeing as you were one of the calmer villains, but overtime he noticed that certain comments would raise a few red flags.

One day you bring in the mangled body of a cat and...oh.

The way you casually set it on the bar counter and grin at Kurogiri happily while you ask for a kiddy cocktail… all the while your hands were still soaked in its blood.

Tomura’s decision made a bit more sense now. You were completely off your rocker! He treats you pretty much the same as before, but is usually the one who has to reel you in when you start to show your crazy too much.

Dabi:

When you first joined the League, he couldn’t believe it. Was Tomura fucking stupid? How could a shy, pretty thing like you possibly fit in with the baddest villain organization?

Needless to say, he was kind of an asshole to you. He’d make rude comments, blatantly say you didn’t belong here, condescendingly give you names like “princess”

For the most part you would bear it all with a grin, and though he didn’t exactly understand you reaction, he would scoff and roll his eyes. “Weirdo”

One day he happens to strike a particularly strong chord with you, and suddenly you’ve shoved him against a wall, hands wrapped around his throat

You choking him wasn’t what off put him. It was the demented look in your eyes and the lopsided grin overwhelming your face. You were practically begging him to insult you again.

“It feels soooo good when you call me names!” you giggle, fingers squeezing into his neck. “Maybe you can choke me next?!” Your eyes were excited at the sadistic thought.

He shoves you off rather easily after he gets over his initial surprise, rubbing his neck. “Crazy bitch…”

The fact that he didn’t ignite your crazy ass on the spot means you’d gained his respect, if in the slightest. Clearly you’re a better fit to be a villain than he thought. He still picks on you, but significantly less.

Himiko Toga:

She was excited to have another girl! She flocked straight to you and grabbed your sleeve right away!

“Aiiya! You’re so cute, look at you!” She poked your cheeks and you got a little flustered under the attention. She thinks you’re so shy and adorable!!!!

She makes it her mission to become your bestest best friend! But she can’t help but get a little excited from time to time.

“(Y/n), you’re too cute! Please, can I cut you up!? Just a few slices here and there! You’d look ten times cuter if I do!” And she’s grinning.

Her grin completely falters, however, when you agree. “W-What?” she didn’t expect it at all! She was used to getting brushed off.

But no...the crazed look in your eye at the mention of spilled blood… you were practically dripping with insanity.

Kurogiri stopped the both of you before you both had the chance to completely slice each other up, but from that moment on your were pretty much conjoined at the hip.

Crazy cuties flock together

Spinner:

When a cute, shy thing like yourself joined the League, he was a total flustered mess! You were absolutely adorable!

Like Kurogiri, you were a breath of fresh air, a nice change of pace to the usually colorful bunch that he got to hang around with.

You were nice to him, and he always gets embarrassed when you compliment him! So naturally he assumes that you’re the sweetheart of the bunch!

You’re talking, and finally Spinner outright asks you, “How’d you even get roped into villainy?” because it blows his mind such a normie like you are in the League

And, very casually and chipper, you describe how you murdered your family in cold blood. They hadn’t even done anything to upset you. You just wanted to.

“O-Oh.” He honestly didn’t know what to say...but he didn’t really get a chance to speak as you suddenly pull a necklace out from under your shirt. It was a strange looking thing, a shriveled black lump on a string.

“Look! I even carry a piece of them around with me!” His eyes widen, and you just giggle and tuck the petrified piece of corpse jewelry back into your shirt.

Twice:

Needless to say, Twice had some mixed feelings about you when you first joined the League.

“What the hell is such a prude bitch doing in the League?” “Aww how cute! Finally a fresh face! Happy to meet you!”

He’s honestly probably the first to realize you’re absolutely batshit because he’s always half doubting your sincerity

Let’s just say he isn’t surprised when you’re on a mission and you start gnawing and eating at a fresh corpse on the ground

“Wow, that’s fucking bad ass” “Ew!!! That’s disgusting, what the fuck!”

And hearing his voices go back and forth, you just look up, blood smeared across your face, a strange gleam in your eye and you grin!

“Hahaha! Twice, you always say the funniest things!!!”

After the mission he tries to avoid you as much as he can. Though your quirk and tenacity was something the League definitely benefited from, that didn’t mean he wanted to be anywhere near you after the shit he saw that night

You were fucking wild

Mr. Compress

After Shigaraki let you into the League, he was pretty interested in you. You seemed pretty average and you acted like a timid civilian, so what kind of quirk did you have? Surely something must have caught Tomura’s eye that he wasn’t seeing.

So he, being the man of charisma and mystery that he was, made it his secret motive to find out what you were hiding.

He took it upon himself to show you around the hideout as your own personal guide. Not that you were complaining! Compress is so flashy and entertaining that you were actually enjoying your time with him.

Not gonna lie, he was acting a little too charming and over-confident with you, trying to get you to slip up and spill a secret

And spill you did! Though not intentionally. It sort of all happened at once. Compress was moving ahead of you and all of a sudden he was thrown back against the wall.

He hits it with a grunt and slides down to the floor, looking up at you with a stunned expression. What the fuck did he do to merit that?!

But you weren’t even looking at him. No, you were whispering under your breath, staring at the ceiling and grinning like a madman.

“You’re right! That was fun!” you spoke to the empty room, pausing a moment before letting out a loud, crazy laugh. “You always were good at jokes!”

Slowly he rose and moved away from the room where you stood conversing with your imaginary voices.

Telekinesis was a pretty powerful quirk! Though it seemed your perks also came with some hefty flaws… very interesting!

Magne:

Magne was so excited to have another girl in the League! She loved Toga, of course, but at times Magne found her to be a bit...much

So when you first arrived, seemingly normal, she was so ecstatic! She wanted to do all sorts of girl things with you that she couldn’t really do often in the boy-dominated League

You were so cute and timid, she couldn’t help but want to have a girl’s sleepover with you and Toga!

Your true colors started to show, however, during the middle of a truth or dare game. Magne had asked you what your favorite crime to commit was, expecting something calmer like robbery or identity theft

Color her surprised when your face contorts into the craziest, most terrifying look as you narrate a violent murder and proceed to grab a pillow and rip it to shreds with your hands as a ‘demonstration’.

Cute AND violently psycho. She can roll with that.

#lov x reader #bnha x reader #dabi x reader #shigaraki x reader #tomura x reader #bnha league of villains #bnha lov #bnha villain #bnha magne #bnha toga #bnha dabi #bnha twice #bnha kurogiri #kurogiri x reader #toga x reader #bnha imagines #bnha headcanons #request

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intimidating-fettuccine · 4 years

Text

For the Sake of Science

I hope you enjoy this, because I am incredibly proud of it and I think it’s my favorite work. Under the cut for length.

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My parents were very interesting people. They had odd quirks and a habit of avoiding social situations, as their beliefs had made them outcasts amongst their community. My parents both claimed to be pursuing science for the sake of advancing society, but that couldn't be further from the truth at the root of it. They just wanted to test the limits of their "science", and I happened to be the perfect guinea pig for them.

My father was a surgeon in his day to day life, and my mother had been a chemist before she was abruptly fired one day for making propositions to her coworkers that were most definitely not in the job description. She had proposed that they begin experimenting on humans with various chemical combinations to try and alter the human species to a more evolved state, a "perfect" state, as she called it. She had threatened them when they called her insane, and she was fired for misconduct. My father seemed to agree with her ideals, and soon they began trying for a child, a child that they would make the perfect human being, and that child was me.

I don't remember much from my early years. It wasn't until about the age of five that things began to take a turn for the worst in my miserable excuse for a life. I remember that I was constantly getting sick, and I didn't know why. My parents never took me to the doctor and tried to nurse me back to health at home, and it wasn't until I had overheard my parents speaking one night that I learned that they had been poisoning my food. When I stopped eating any food they would give me, they began to take different measures to run their tests.

When I was eight, they renovated the basement in our house. What was once an empty bland storage room was now a medical lab that would soon become a living hell for me for many years to come. One day my mother led me down into the basement, telling me she was going to give me a physical checkup, something she told me was normal for every child to go through. I very quickly learned this to be incorrect. Once I was in the basement, she led me over to a medical be and had me hop up onto it, and before I was aware of what was happening, she and my father had held me down and restrained me to the bed.

My mother then proceeded to pull out some chemical blend that she had filled a syringe with, and she injected me with it at small amounts at a time. She claimed she was giving me a medicine that would make me better, but in reality, she was drugging me, and she continued to do so for many years. She would restrain me and test out new concoctions, and if the results proved to be unproductive she would start back at square one and begin all over again, never asking me if I wanted it, or how I felt other than if it was making me feel stronger, or more attractive, or more intelligent, to which I always answered no.

I learned quickly to not cry out when I would protest, when I would cry, scream out for help, yank on my restraints or try to bite them. My mother had a temper, and my father seemed to have no emotional attachments to me, so he would let her do as he pleased. She would get angry with me because perfect people weren't supposed to cry and refuse treatment. She would often beat me when I wouldn't listen to her when she was feeling kind. If she wasn't she would inject particularly painful substances or make me swallow them. Other times she would tie me up and whip me until her arm was tired or she was bored.

I hated my mother, but I would take her chemical injections over my father's specialty any day. My father was a surgeon, studied long and hard for it, but he, like my mother, wanted to take his chosen study further than moral decisions would allow him. He often did vivisections of me, sometimes alone, sometimes with my mother. Maybe I wouldn't have minded him poking around in my body so much if it wasn't for the fact that I was awake and had no numbing agents used on me to prevent pain. I would just have to sit there and bear with it as he stabbed and sliced and poked around inside me while I tried not to cry out or squirm in discomfort.

Sometimes my mother enjoyed injecting her drugs directly into specific organs, which resulted in multiple organs failing in my body, and me growing even weaker and even sicker. Of course, once they crossed the threshold of human experimentation they had no issues dealing in the black market, and they were able to procure me new organs whenever I needed them. After all, they would spare no expense in their delirious pursuit of perfection. Thankfully my father stopped cutting me open eventually, although it was only due to the fact that my skin stopped healing back as fast. I was fragile, and my skin would just peel right off in some places. Whenever I showered, which I was made to do quite often, I could no longer use regular loofas or sponges because they would tear my skin right off. Such is the expected result of being drugged on a daily basis.

These issues caused my skin to not only be sensitive but look and smell bad. Nobody wished to be friends with someone so visibly dying. A few of my teachers were quite concerned and tried to get involved and help me, but they all of a sudden stopped, most likely to my parents stepping in. They would ignore me and pretend I wasn't there unless they were passing back a paper or something else of the sort. The other students I went to school with weren't as forgiving. They would pick on me, some teasing and some spitting out harsh and cruel words about my appearance, my scent, my demeanor.

I didn't complain when they mocked me and called me horrible things. I didn't complain when they swapped out my food for stale, gross replacements. I didn't complain when they soaked me in water, or when one boy decided to piss all over me while I used the bathroom because as he claimed, I already smelled like shit anyways. I didn't say anything when they'd hit me like my mother would because I was already used to the pain. Some of them got bored because I wouldn't react, and some of them continued because they used me as a way for them to vent out their stupid bullshit frustrations. One particularly nasty bitch ended up calling me "Freakshow" one day, and the name quickly spread and stuck. I would be known as Freakshow for the rest of my academic career, and I ended up keeping in the afterlife, because why the fuck not, ya know? Nobody gives a damn anyway.

My mother seemed to become more and more distressed at my horrific state of appearance. Perfect people weren't supposed to be rotting corpses, they were supposed to be angelic and beautiful. Well, let me tell you, I was not nor have I ever been angelic and beautiful, and her worried distress only caused me to go even further from that state as she would pump me full of even more chemicals to try and reverse the effects of her years of misdeeds. When she realized that wasn't working, she stopped. She quit her injections and studies and tests and I thought for once in my life maybe she'd come to her senses. What a horseshit dream that was. Turns out she was trying to have me go through a sort of rehab, to try and get my body back to what a normal human was supposed to look like. When my body got back to a semi-normal state, she plunged right back into her experiments.

Now, I never gave a rat's ass about anything in life. I had nothing to live for, nobody to care about, no interests of any kind. It wasn't until I met Jackson that I seemed to change that thought. You see, Jackson accepted me, made me feel loved, and never judged me for any of my weird qualities. He gave me something to live for, something to hope for, something to smile about. I began dating him in secret behind my parent's backs, and he did a whole lot to increase my mental state. He got me addicted, addicted to living that is. Trying new things, having a fun time, living life. Dopamine and serotonin are two pretty addictive drugs, let me tell ya, and once I was used to feeling them, I couldn't get enough of it. When I was with Jackson I wasn't Freakshow, I wasn't Dexter. I was Dex. I was alive. I was his.

When I was with Jackson, I thought that nothing could go wrong, that maybe I could escape my parent's grasp. I couldn't have been more wrong. My parents ended up somehow finding out about Jackson around the time I'd turned 19, and unbeknownst to me, they kidnapped him and tortured him for several hours when I was out of the house one day. When I returned home, my father who had been waiting for me quickly grabbed me and dragged me downstairs to the basement to show me their handiwork. Jackson was gagged, naked, tied up to the wall, and mutilated beyond repair. He was barely hanging on, and when he saw me he was choking out, trying to say my name, to say anything. Well, my mom ended up killing him right then and there, right before my eyes. She claimed it was for the sake of science, as she howled in laughter. Well, let me tell you I had never felt such emotions raging up inside me as I did at that moment.

I went absolutely batshit crazy, and it's not something I'm proud of. I went apeshit and lost it on them, screaming at the top of my lungs as I went through catharsis, releasing all my pent up emotions over the years. They tried to calm me down with my mother's bullshit excuse of a homemade anesthetic and ended up killing me. So what do they do? Maybe cry, feel bad, repent for their mistakes? Nope. They dump my ass in the backyard and act like nothing ever happened. Of course, by some ungodly happening, I ended up waking back up. Except, I didn't feel like me. I felt goddamn amazing. I couldn't feel absolutely anything. I felt free. Well, almost completely free.

I made my way up through the dirt in our backyard, and then inside the house where I found my parents discussing adoption, of all things, planning on taking in another child for this. Well, I strolled right up to them, and ya know what I did? I bashed them right over the head with the very shovel they buried me with. Let me tell ya, the most fun I've ever had in my life was drugging and torturing them the same way they had done to me. They were crying, weeping, begging me for forgiveness by the time they woke up. Asking me to forgive them, to let them make it up to me. When they realized I wouldn't change my mind they changed their tune, screaming out that I was a disgrace, a zombified monster, a disgusting creature that would never know love. I had lots of fun that night, and I did it all for the sake of science.

#creepypasta #creepypasta scenarios #creepypasta scenario #creepypasta original character #original character #creepypasta original story #dex martin #dex martin headcanons #dex martin headcanon #dex martin scenario

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everlarkbirthdaygifts · 5 years

Text

Happy Birthday, sunflowerslyf!

Apologies for the delay on your gift, @sunflowerslyf! We hope you had a wonderful back on the 16th, and got all the presents you wished for! To bring your party back around, @ally147writes has written a story just for you!

AN: Sorry for the delay, @sunflowerslyf! I’ve been pretty sick the past week or so, but I’m kind of on the mend! Full disclosure, I don’t know if this qualifies as a ‘meet-ugly’, but you wanted some smut as well, so I had to make a few modifications. There’s no actual smut in this story (sorry...), and there’s a lot I’d love to go back in and add or flesh out since I did rush it finished a little, but I hope you’ll enjoy this anyway ;)

This story was inspired somewhat by the police station scene between Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’.

Rated M for mostly for language and a little touchy-feely business. Unbeta’d. All errors are my own.

At least, Katniss notes, the whole place smells like bleach and latex.

More than she could say for the parlour Jo dragged her to. She doesn’t remember a whole lot about that night other than the stench of cheap beer, vomit, and unwashed hair.

The only other thing that doesn’t separate this place from the tattoo parlour is the clientele.

Katniss tugs her cardigan tight and crosses her arms and darts her gaze back and forth between the others occupying the seats around her. Between the young girl with the spiked, blood-red mohawk and the two guys who look like they’re members of violent biker gang, she’s the most demure one here, that’s for sure.

“So…” A low, sensuous says from the chair two down from her. “Where’s yours?”

She freezes. The guy’s been watching her since she came in, and she’s been doing all she can not to stare right back, because he’s somehow the encapsulation of all the things your mother warned you to be careful of in a boy. Blond hair styled in an undercut, with the curls on top left untouched; blood-shot blue eyes, lined with something dark that might be smudged eyeliner or the evidence of a good, hard punch, that somehow still hold hers with an alertness she never would have expected; a small hoop glints from his eyebrow, and another two in the ear she can see. His white shirt, maybe a size too small, is a tight fit around his ornately tattooed arms, and it hugs his tapered torso almost obscenely. A leather jacket is slung over the arm of the chair, smooth and old and worn. She wonders if he got it second-hand or stole it, or maybe both.

She lets out a breath and faces him front on. “My what?”

He grins lazily. She crosses her legs. “You’re in a tattoo removal clinic, remember? So, where’s your shitty ink?”

“Oh.” Her cheeks flush. “It’s, uh… not visible.”

He snorts. “No shit, sweetheart, you’re covered from head to toe. So, unless it’s on your tits or something, mind at least giving me a hint?”

Her jaw drops, but she recovers quickly and flashes her most menacing scowl. And pulls her cardigan a little tighter over her chest. “Go fuck yourself.”

He grins wider. She swallows. “You’re kinda pure, aren’t you?”

She swivels forward. “I don’t need to defend myself to you.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing, though, aren’t you?” He stands, and he’s not much taller than her, maybe a couple of inches, but he’s broad, built like a wrestler. He shuffles a little and settles in the seat beside hers and leans in close. She steals a breath and nearly shivers. Cinnamon and dill, fire smoke and something like warm, fresh bread.

And something else a little like whiskey. God, is he drunk?

Did someone turn up the heaters? She was freezing just a moment ago.

“What are you doing?”

He holds up his hands, both large enough to span her waist and then some.

“Nothing at all. Just getting to know you. Can’t do that from all the way over there.” He grins again, and his teeth are perfectly white, though not perfectly straight, which is kind of a relief. “So,” he leans in close, “is it on your tits?”

“What the fu — no! It’s not!”

“Bummer. Thigh? Wrist? Ass?”

“Jesus, why do you care so much?”

“Just making conversation. I’ve been waiting in here over an hour now.” He smiles again, a little more subdued this time. “You’re by far the most interesting thing in the room.”

She watches him stretch his legs out. Those black jeans will be the death of her. “Those lines ever work?”

“I don’t know.” He bats his lashes. “You tell me.”

She rubs at her eyes. “Why don’t you just leave me alone, dude?”

“You’re really not going to tell me where it is, are you?”

“Just not sure why you’re so curious.”

“And I’m not sure why you’re so scared.”

“Well,” she says, swallowing again. “Where’s yours?”

“On my stomach. Wanna have a look?” Without waiting, he stands and whips his shirt up, revealing a set of abs that have no place on a seedy-looking dude at a tattoo removal clinic.

She blinks at the expanse of colour decorating his body; abstract swirls like fireworks, flowers and faces, a bird in flight and wall of flames, every single one so sharp and intricate they look like they belong on a canvas in a gallery, though she concedes this man’s body is a more than acceptable substitute.

“I… which one?”

“This one.” He gestures to a trident slung low on his hip, disappearing into his jeans. Please, Jesus, don’t take those off, too. Or do, maybe, fucked if I know…

“It’s… uh…”

He snorts. “You can say it. Looks like shit. Not my best work, that’s for sure.”

“You did it yourself?”

“Most of them,” he says with a shrug, like it’s no big deal. I frequently stab myself with a needle for kicks. “Just not usually hammered when I do it.”

She breaks her gaze away from the tapered V of his hips and meets his eyes again. “Why were you doing it, then?”

He shrugs again. “Lost a bet to a friend. Tridents are kinda his thing. I might redo it again another time when I’m not pissed as a maggot.” He tugs his shirt back down and sits. “So. Where’s yours?”

She sighs. “Lower back.”

“Ah.” He nods, and God damn, did she just spy a tongue piercing? “Classic. What’s it of?”

“A katniss flower.”

He blinks. “I don’t get it.”

She lets out a tired laugh. “My name’s Katniss. Seems a little conceited, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Depends, I guess. Not like you’d be showing a ton of people anyway, what with it back there and all.” He grins again, and for a moment, he looks so much younger. “Can I see it?”

“What? No!”

He pouts. “Why not?”

“Because,” she mutters at the ground. “It’s dumb.”

“So why’d you get it in the first place?”

She shoots him a wry smile. “Also hammered. My friend got one that night, too. Somehow, drunk me thought it’d be a great idea.”

He laughs. “You make it sound like you’re the only one to do anything dumb when they’re drunk. You should probably loosen up a little. Relax, you know? Not like you’re the first person to make a bad decision before.” He smiles and wiggles his eyebrows at her. “Wanna make another one?”

“You’re not going to let up, are you?”

“Hey, I showed you mine.”

She shakes her head and lets out a long, low sigh, ending on a chuckle. “I really don’t know why I’m doing this.” She leans forward, reaches back to untuck her tank top from her jeans. The chilly air hits the skin of her lower back as she inches it up to expose the ink she first thought was a mutant spider when she caught sight of it in the mirror the day after it happened.

The guy’s hands ghost over her back, radiating a heat that makes her shudder with anticipation of his real touch. “Lean forward a little more, please?”

She does as told, and when his fingers make contact, it takes everything in her not to melt at the gentle, ginger touch she did not expect from such an oddball presence.

“It’s exquisite work,” he murmurs. His blunt nails tracing the design ignite a flood of goose-bumps along her spine. Heat courses through her, enough to fill her cheeks and every part of her. She clenches her thighs together and prays he doesn’t notice. “Gorgeous, really. Whoever did it did a really good job. You sure you wanna go through with getting it removed?”

“Yeah. I mean, I never really wanted one anyway.”

“It suits you. Sexy as hell, too, if you ask me.” She didn’t, but there’s a little thrill coursing through her regardless. “And a namesake tattoo isn’t a bad thing. I’d have a piece of pita bread on me if that wasn’t a totally batshit insane idea.” He removes his hand, and some stupid part of her brain misses it like crazy.

She tugs her tank back down and sits up. Weird guy seems much closer now, or was he always this close?

“Your name’s Pita?” Her voice sounds almost choked.

He smiles again, and she can’t help but stare at his lips now that he’s this close. “Peeta, actually.”

“I probably should have asked that before I let you put your hands on me.”

“If you had any sort of hindsight you wouldn’t be here at all.” He reaches out and tucks a loose piece of hair behind her ear. Why the fuck is she letting him do that again? “Right now, I’m kinda glad you’re an idiot. I probably wouldn’t have met you otherwise.”

She swallows and tilts her head closer, letting him curl his hand around the back of her neck. The scent of him and the sound of his voice is kinda hypnotic… “I kind of don’t hate it right now, either.”

She kind of falls into him then, and she’s got no real good reason why. Because he’s hot? That’s as good a reason as any. All she knows, his hands are mangling her braid and lips are warm and soft on hers, gentle and commanding at the same time, like he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. But there’s something that she wants, too. She wrests control away, and he lets her, like he’d been waiting for her to seize it the whole time. She licks the perimeter around his lips until he opens for her, and yeah, he does taste vaguely like whiskey and smoke that isn’t cigarette smoke, and it’s weird but it’s so flipping good and God, what is with this guy and —

“Katniss Everdeen?”

She rips herself away from Peeta and pushes him hard enough that he falls astride the chairs making up their row. He watches with a quirked brow — the one with the piercing — as she bolts up from her seat and steals her bag from the floor. A bespectacled man in a white coat stands in the doorway leading to the treatment rooms, flashing her a knowing smirk that she kinda wants to slap off. “Would you like to come through?”

“I, uh… sure.”. She looks back at Peeta, who’s still watching her with the most ridiculously amused grin. She can’t help another lazy perusal up… and down. “It was… uh, nice to meet you, Peeta.”

Peeta grins and waves, just a subtle flick of his fingers. “See ya later, Katniss.”

Oh, God, yes I hope so...

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #everlarkbirthdaygifts #everlarkbirthdaydrabbles #fan fic #by ally147writes

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jcmorgenstern · 5 years

Note

Hey kid wanna cry Remember that kiss between Clary and 'Sebastian' in s2, after Clary says that Jonathan deserves to be saved? How desperate that kiss was. Now knowing the that for years Jonathan was clinging to the idea that somewhere out there theres a person who will save him, who will not hurt and abandon him puts the whole scene in different perspective 😢

you’re very right and you should fucknig say it anon!!

I’m trying to get over my annoyance with how much they’ve fucked Jonathan’s storyline (and my god, the timeline)–the demon clary kills in s1 at the EARLIEST appears at the most 2 months ago, which means Jonathan only learned she existed 2 months ago max. He then, in that time, made a deal with Azazel to get out of hell, walked to Paris, kidnapped Sebastian at a cafe, moved to New York, rented an apartment, knew enough about the goings on at the institute to steal the sword (Genuinely blanking on how he got the Cup to summon Azazel–i knew at one point but rn im anxious and caffeinated), summoned Azazel, infiltrated the Institute….like this is fucking insane on so many levels, and now he can’t even find a sword? ??? ?? ? ? ? like damn need me that kind of motivation on my finals

(also im pre sure aline mentions sebastian dissapeared more than two months ago but lmao what’s consistency)

I actually really liked the prince/princess thing, because it flips the very gendered script by having Jonathan wish for Clary to save him. and Clary IS that figure–she goes to insane lengths to protect and save Jace. I don’t think Clary’s horror at realizing she could have but didn’t save Jonathan is her being like “oh damn im a woman therefore it’s my job,” it’s that being powerless or failing to save a life is one of her worst fears, and she’s upset that yet another family member is “lost” to her. Her entire arc is unified by the theme of finding and wanting to keep her family and loved ones (both family by blood or by familial love) safe. It’s also a callback to the books (a thread that is completely dropped) where she writes a comic about a dark prince that she interprets to be “Sebastian.”

When Jonathan calls “you were supposed to be my princess” after her, he doesn’t mean “I was supposed to carry u away at the altar and we’d make babies in heterosexual union,” he means “you were supposed to be my knight in shining armor and rescue me from the dragon/evil stepmother.” In the context of the story as it’s told–Jonathan as Rapunzel (or Fiona LMAOO) in the tower crying for help, and Clary the knight with the sword only the chosen one can wield riding to his rescue–I feel that meaning is fairly obvious if you understand his character beyond “ew incest lol.”

To put it more academically: in the terms of a feminist reading of the fairytale, Jonathan understands himself not as Clary’s possessor, but the “princess” she as the (traditionally male) knight rescuer is entitled to after the rescue. It may actually deliberately echo the book line where Clary asks Jonathan “who do you belong to.” The script of Jonathan as the hyperagressive, masculine aggressor stalking the (artificially) agency-less woman is complicated by his dual role as the traditionally female victim of abuse waiting to be rescued by the traditional male rescuer. In just a quick few minutes we get a whole different dynamic where we realize Jonathan doesn’t feel he is entitled to her–from his (warped) point of view, he feels she is entitled to him. Jonathan views the act of receiving love in terms of his usefulness or how his identity/abilities/whatever can be exploited by whoever loves him (see: his speech to her about Valentine)–his confusion about why she doesn’t “want” him is because well, she defended him once as anon says, she saved him by giving him hope, she must love him–why won’t she take what’s hers?

This is the dynamic I’m fascinated by–I’ve always read Jonathan as an oddly feminized villain considering his other position as a hyperaggressive rapist–if I were to go full batshit on yall I’d bust out a “queer-coded men presented as often ineffectual rapists” reading but. ill leave that for another time. or never. I feel the books made that reading very available by sexualizing his abuse by revealing his whip scars in a situation where he takes his shirt off and Clary is uncomfortably thirsty (and the audience is VERY comfortably thirsty). It’s also very surface-level and never really brought up again–something else you’d expect from a presentation of a female character’s abuse.

The show complicates it by presenting the product of Jonathan’s abuse as something to be reviled and horrific, but also kind of pathetically comedic. A male victim of abuse that actually lets the effects show is clearly something to be othered, pathologized, made into something charred and inhuman. The power and agency expected of a male character is restored to him in his rebirth, when the narrative invites you to consider whether he really could change; as that agency is slowly stripped away through imprisonment, a botched matricide attempt, implied (past) sexual assault, it’s paired with his implied descent into irredeemabe villainhood.

I fully realize I’ve jumped so far off the deep end I may as well have started burrowing into the ground of that metaphorical pool, but I think Jonathan’s dual status as feminized victim and masculinized rapist explains why some female fans find Jonathan deeply and fundamentally abhorrent and others find him sympathetic and relatable. Both, I think, are legitimate readings and reactions made available by the text–it’s a question not of whether people think rape is okay or not, but which of his dual gendered positions each person find more salient.

(I’d also argue the same could be said of Jace–do you see him as the typical heterosexual male jock, or the sensitive victim of abuse who struggles with his mental health? Honestly, this model applies to so many other characters–Tony Stark, for example, or Loki). I think it’s important as fans to appreciate, no matter your position or reading of a character, the alternate readings available–I understand why people hate Jonathan and are deeply uncomfortable with him, even if I don’t feel the same way. I don’t take Jonathan hate as a personal attack against my reading specifically, but against the person’s own particular interpretation of him. (I do often get annoyed if people deny the possibility of alternate readings, and probably get pissy in general, but shh).

anyway tldr this was actually just top/bottom discourse in disguise JONATHAN MORGENSTERN IS A BOTTOM thanks for coming to my TED talk haha gotcha

#i love a crispy boy #this is LITERALLY MY MASTERPIECE #friend anon #cripsy chat #jonathan morgenstern #I FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT THIS ill even put it in the tag #we out there!!!!!#sh spoilers #misuse of gender theory and cultural studies

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sharbat-jaan · 5 years

Text

Azalea Honey (Chapter 1)

Series: Naruto

Pair: Multiship, endgame sasusaku (,,,will likely not be monogamous,,,)

Genre: Drama and Angst, we’re out here exploring the dark realities and dubious morality of actual kunoichi work. This is definitely not one for the kids.

Fic Status: Incomplete

Chapter: 1/?

I just can’t stop thinking about how fucked up ninja politics is!!

Naruto knew he was the golden-boy of Konoha; he knew the combined guilt over his childhood mistreatments paired with his current habit of saving the world from apocalypse ever few years or so, had landed him in a favourable public light. Everyone owed Naruto something, and that debt was all the more important precisely because he wasn't the type to ask for a favour to be returned. So when the Hidden-Leaf prodigy put in a good word for Sasuke Uchiha, clearly guilty of repeated treason, mass-murder and conspiring to literally destroy the world, Naruto knew his good word weighed heavier than any other argument. Naruto felt guilty, using everyone's good will towards him to make sure they settled on the verdict he wanted, but he'd feel guiltier if he dragged Sasuke back to Konoha just to seal his chakra and let him rot in a cell. And so, with a miraculously light sentence, the last surviving Uchiha was yet again roaming the village that had taken away so much from him, cautiously rediscovering his home.

"Stop slurping so damn loud, you idiot," Sasuke grumbled, pulling Naruto out of his thoughts. Naruto took a fresh mouthful of the noodles, slurping and chewing as loud as he could to irritate his friend.

"That's how you're supposed to have ramen you bastard, how else is my man Ichiraku going to know I appreciate the delicious labour of his efforts?" Naruto shot the chef a thumbs up, and Ichiraku returned it without missing a beat. Turning back to Sasuke, Naruto continued to egg him on, taking on a tone of authority.

"I thought you'd have more class than that actually, can't believe you're letting your pride get in the way of proper, ramen-eating etiquette," he said, punctuating his sentence with yet another loud slurp. The last noodle to be suctioned into his mouth whipped around on its way up and Sasuke flinched back, avoiding the spray of broth as Naruto's facade of credibility broke off into muffled laughter.

It felt good, laughing like that, and Naruto let himself indulge in the feeling. This is what it was always supposed to be. No traumatic moral crisis, no divine prophecy, definitely no loss of limbs; just two fools keeping each other good company over good food.

"Don't get too pissed, man," Naruto grinned at his companion. "I'm enjoying the moment."

All that's missing is Sakura.

And suddenly, the air around them grew frigid.

"She isn't missing," Sasuke stated, face carefully blank. "She's at the hospital, and clearly didn't want to come."

Sasuke picked at his bowl, as the barest frown formed on his face, gaze growing distant. Naruto felt his heart drop, landing somewhere between lungs and diaphragm, pulse growing arrhythmic. Not this. The cold new void in his chest sent chills to his fingertips, guilt like a lead blanket smothering him. Not more of this.

Of course he'd felt it; the chasm that was suddenly evident between them. The way she'd been feigning eye contact by looking at the space just between their eyebrows, keeping conversations short and pleasant and meaningless. The smile on her lips and the tensed muscles of her neck. She hadn't spent more than five minutes with them since Sasuke's pardon, always excusing herself with half-hearted apologies and promises to make it next time, all unfulfilled.

"Hey," Naruto retorted, scrambling for words to warm them back up. "Don't be like that. You know Sakura's busy right now, with all her rehab patients and setting up the clinic. You should have seen her before. All she could think about was the three of us together again, like old times."

Like it was before they'd been forced to age decades in the span of a few years; when the worst of their fallings-out lasted a week at most, easily -if reluctantly- reconciled by offering to pay for a meal. Walking side by side through forests, chasing animals for old ladies, laughing at Kakashi's dead-pan humour. The sun that shone in Naruto's memories washed everything a soft pink.

Sasuke scoffed, and shot an incredulous look at Naruto.

"What, so she could watch us fight over ramen? Maybe we throw it back a bit and beat each other up?"

"Hey," Naruto shrugged, "its dinner and a show. You know how Sakura is about bargain deals."

"No, Naruto. I don't. I was batshit insane for three years while you two figured out how to be friends." Sasuke's frown was clearly present on his face now, and fishing the required bills out of his pocket, he left the money he owed next to his half eaten bowl. " I don't know a thing about Sakura. And I think she'd like to keep it that way."

Naruto grabbed Sasuke by the shoulders and leaned into him with the weight of his arms, holding his friend in place. It was maddening, finding the balance between anchor and shackle. "Hey," he started softly, relieved to feel some of the tension leave Sasuke's body.

"You're a bigger dumbass than I thought if you feel like Sakura doesn't want you here."

When Sasuke turned his gaze away, Naruto followed, keeping their eyes locked. The trepidation on Sasuke's face was a new addition to short list of expressions Naruto had seen him make since the end of the war. He didn't like it.

"She has every reason to hate me," Sasuke rued, and the weight of his words were suffocating. "She just can't say it to my face."

Naruto knew Sakura's tears flowed freely. She was generous with them, and they were full of love and frustration. She'd cried on everyone's behalf, feeling pain for them when they couldn't, and burdened herself with a piece of everyone's troubles, shouldering as much as she thought she could. He'd seen it when she thought nobody was paying attention; after long shifts at the trauma center, after shedding the persona of stability and support she put on for the orphans that visited her for therapy. The solitary grief, and the resolution to go back and do it all again.

She'd held Naruto countless times, playing with his hair and whispering soothing words to him when the weight of everyone's hopes and expectations clutched him by the throat and squeezed, tears glittering in her eyes like exposed minerals in cracked ore. But Naruto had never seen her weep with such devastated love and grief for anyone but Sasuke Uchiha, determined to pull as many of his traumas onto herself as she could, all of them even, if only she knew how.

"Trust me," Naruto laughed, giving Sasuke a playful shake. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he teased, "That's impossible. She had every chance to let you bleed out, but here you are, you ungrateful prick. She'll come around, when she's less busy. And if not, we'll just have to take her schedule into our own hands. Granny owes us for saving the universe, so I'm sure we can get a few strings pulled."

Sasuke sighed, resigned, and leaned into Naruto's hold, who in turn obliged his friend's rare request to be supported. Nothing could breach the silence that enveloped them, as the din of the eatery faded away until the only thing Naruto could hear was Sasuke's steady breath.

"Naruto," he whispered, drawing the boy's attention back to their conversation. "She won't let me fix things. Everything's fucked and I don't know how I'm supposed to fix it."

Just stay here, this time.

Breaking from his usual guise of positivity, Naruto spoke frankly.

"She needs us, Sasuke, just like we need her. Nobody's gonna understand how fucked up we are but us."

And Naruto knew that was the truth. He knew that her scaffolding of constant occupation was weakening, that there was only so far she could run before the absurd weight of it all caught up, and Sakura was overdue to collapse any time now. He also knew that this time, they'd be there to pick her back up. And maybe, they could put the pieces together better this time. Make things lighter, mend a few fractures.

"Give it some time," Naruto consoled. "It'll fix itself."

#kebabwords #fic #sasusaku #I know i shouldnt be so emotionally invested in the ptsd of fake anime ninjas but here we are #Sasuke Uchiha #sakura haruno #naruto #naruto uzumaki

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noodlecupcakes · 5 years

Text

Nothing More Contagious Than Laughter - Chapter 23

Warnings: Smut, Sex, Oral sex, Language, Arkham antics, Threats, Emerald not taking Hugo Strange's shit, And my poor writing again :D

Shout at me if you want to be added to the taglist :D

Please reblog your writer friends work, Tumblr hates artists

Chapter 23

Emerald’s P.O.V

After that night we had murdered Galavan, Oswald decided we should take a holiday and get out of Gotham for a little while. A well-deserved break for the both of us. Oswald had taken us to Paris, the world’s most romantic city. One week down and one week left. Oswald took me out for dinner each night, complete with various gifts and romantic gestures. I decided tonight was the night I was going to whip out the black lingerie I had brought with me. I was ready for this. Oswald was currently out getting us more wine so I undressed and put the underwear on, complete with stockings.

I positioned myself on the bed in a seductive pose, propping myself up on my side facing the door and waited. Oswald soon returned carrying a bottle of wine, which he almost dropped when he saw me. I smiled and patted the space on the bed next to me. He put the bottle down and hopped up on to the bed. I pulled him closer, kissing him softly at first. The kisses soon become more heated and Oswald pulled me on top of him, his hands roaming my body. He pulled away from the kiss and held me at arm’s length, looking into my eyes. “Are you sure?” He asked. “I am. I want this, I want you.”

With that Oswald pulled me down for another kiss, his fingers in my hair. Oswald soon rolled us over so that he was pinning me down. He mapped out every inch of my body with his hands and lips, assessing my reactions to see what spots made me moan and gasp. He placed kisses across my neck and collar bones before making his way down to my chest. I arched my back so I could unclasp my bra, removing the lacy material. Oswald took my breasts in his hands, squeezing them gently before taking a nipple between his teeth. I moaned softly, closing my eyes at the pleasure.

Oswald seemed to enjoy taking his time, working me in to a state that wanted more and more. His entire focus was on me and he didn’t seem to worry about his own pleasure at the moment. He continued his descent with his lips until he reached my panties. I lifted my hips to help him take them off. He parted my legs a little, placing feather light kisses on my thighs. I was gripping the sheets, my mind and body screaming at him to get on with it. I needed to feel his tongue. My chest rose and fell quickly as he still kept me waiting.

Finally, his tongue flicked out and connected with my clit. I let out a moan, my fingers in his hair pushing him closer to where I needed him the most. He smiled before continuing. His hands gripped my legs, keeping them open as he continued to gorge himself. I was a panting, whimpering mess, my hips bucking and begging for more. Too soon for my liking he stopped and kissed his way back up to my lips. I began pulling off his clothes until we were both fully naked apart from my stockings of course.

Oswald slowly pushed his way inside me, both of us moaning at the feeling. He began a slow, gentle pace, pressing his forehead to mine. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, pulling him closer. I moaned softly and captured his lips with mine once more. Oswald winced and I knew his legs must be playing up. I smiled kindly and carefully rolled us over so that I was on top instead. I started a faster pace, lacing my fingers with his and using this as leverage to keep my pace.

Oswald relaxed into the sheets, moaning my name as I continued to ride him. His hands went to my hips, as he matched my pace. It had been months since someone had touched me and I craved this attention. I leaned down, our lips connecting while Oswald pulled my hips down flush against his over and over. I moaned into his mouth. It was clear that Oswald was a lover instead of a fucker, the tender touches and kisses gave it away. I was already getting close to my peak, the louder moans giving it away.

Oswald continued the pace, kissing my neck and kneading my breasts until I finally reached my end, gasping and going stiff, my eyebrows knitting together. Oswald then reached his letting out a loud moan. I rolled off him and lay back before he pulled me into his arms. We stayed like this for a little while in comfortable silence while Oswald stroked my hair. “You know what will happen when we go back don’t you?” He asked. “They’ll arrest us and we’ll plead insane and go to Arkham. It’s nothing to worry about Oswald trust me. I’ve been there, it’s not that bad, the inmates pretty much run the place as it is and you’ll have me to look after you,” I said, reassuring him the best I could.

He forced a smile, I could tell it still worried him. We just had to pretend to be sane long enough for the stupid shrink to let us out. “The only thing you need to worry about is the food,” I smiled. He chuckled and kissed my cheek, “as long as you’re with me through all this.” “I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

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Sure enough upon re-entering Gotham the cops arrested us and carted us off to Arkham. This place was going to end up like a second home to me I’m sure of it. I was handed the same black and white uniform and shoved into a cell. I changed into the clothes and sat down on the creaky bed. I smiled to myself. Everything was fine so far. Upon dinner time I was led to the rec room, a tray of food being placed in front of me. I spotted Oswald who looked lost and motioned for him to come over. He smiled and sat with me.

Oswald didn’t like the fact some of the other inmates were already making fun of him. They were just batshit crazy, they wouldn’t do anything. Oswald didn’t see it like that though, he saw it as an invitation to make his importance known to the whole damn room. I hid my face in my hands. He needed to learn that you cannot threaten or intimidate a crazy. The inmates sat there in stunned silence before they began mimicking him once more. The only way you can stop a crazy is by showing them who was more crazy. I locked eyes with one and growled, making them soon shut up.

I took Oswald’s hand in mine and explained my logic to him. He still didn’t seem to get it. I continued to eat my dinner, doing my best to get Oswald to ignore the crazies. He was still clearly upset, looking defeated. “Look, I know this is the last place you want to be, you’re not used to a life like this away from luxury but this is your life for now and you gotta accept that or things will get worse. The more you resist or provoke others the worse it gets. I’m your expert follow my damn lead,” I explained. “You make me sound like a pompous ass.” “That’s because you're acting like one. In here there is no king-“

My attention was averted to a male watching us through the mesh gate. Bald with a beard and round glasses. He was clearly of Asian descent. I didn’t like the look of him, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He began talking to a dark skinned older woman with bright pink lipstick and a silk top to match. A guard came over to me and pulled me out of my seat. I growled but knew it was best not to struggle. Comply or else you end up in the damn chair.

The guard led me down a set of corridors and into an office. They stood with me until the bald guy showed up and sat down at his desk. I read the plaque ‘Doctor Hugo Strange’. What a quaint name he had. He motioned for the guard to leave and then offered me tea. I raised an eyebrow, so either he was stupid or could defend himself. Let’s hope he was stupid. “Sorry to pull you out of dinner like that, but I was hoping for us to get to know each other a little better,” he spoke. “You could have waited till after dinner or anytime between meals. I got plenty of free time on my hands.”

He smiled, “I’m Doctor Strange-“ “I can read thanks.” He raised an eyebrow and I motioned to the plague on his desk. “Now what would you like to know? How stupid you are putting yourself in a room with a dangerous criminal?” I asked. “You won’t hurt me Emerald-“ “Wanna bet?” “If you were to do that I could make your stay...difficult.” “A lot of men have said that to me.”

Strange sighed and placed a cup of tea in front of me. I ignored the gesture, maybe I would throw it at him instead. “I wanted you to know that I will be helping you with your recovery and I think it would be in your best interest to comply with my methods,” he spoke. I yawned, “that’s nice. Good luck with the recovery. You're gonna need it.” “I’m not one for threats Emerald.” I laughed at this, “you think you're scary mister? I’ve seen scary and you haven’t got his smile.”

Strange smiled at this before taking a sip of his tea, “you're referring to the late Jerome Valeska I assume.” “The one and only.” “I would have loved the chance to meet him.” “So would have a lot of people. Now can I go back to my dinner? This ‘meeting’ seems a little pointless to me.” He sighed, “the next one you won’t find so ‘pointless’ I can assure you.” I got to my feet and left his office, the guard taking me back to dinner or what was left of it. Great now it was cold and that made it only taste worse. Oswald looked a little concerned, “well what did he want?” “Oh it's nothing, just another doctor that thinks they can cure crazy. Nothing to worry about.”

Taglist: @belathora, @my-world-of-imagines, @genevievedarcygranger, @warriorqueen1991, @suicidesqwads, @maddybeck01, @musicalcoffeebean, @neganismyobsession, @emoryhemsworth, @just--a--nobody-here

#gotham #gotham fic #gotham fanfic #gotham fanfiction #gotham feels #gotham fluff #gotham smut #gotham angst #Oswald Cobblepot #oswaldxoc #oswald cobblepot smut

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

Text

Rings: A Critical Review (Full of spoilers because how do you actually discuss a movie without actually discussing anything pertinent to the plot?!)

This movie isn’t the movie it should have been. David Loucka and Jacob Estes conceived this movie by thinking, “Hey! Imagine if the video from The Ring were released digitally! Holy cow! It would be like a computer virus!” Ignoring that the entire premise of Kôji Suzuki’s novel is that the video is akin to a biological virus and already, technically, makes that point (I said technically because Suzuki’s virus is obviously not digital! Duh! But it’s still the same concept: technology as a virus that infects biology!), Loucka and Estes never actually make that movie anyway. Instead they simply remake The Ring but bookend it with two other films that would have been much better and more appropriate to the silly sequel title, Rings. Granted, there’s no way they could have made Kôji Suzuki’s follow-up, Spiral, into a movie. I mean, they could have if they wanted to lose millions of dollars asking viewers to believe that the video tape didn’t just kill people after seven days, but it also impregnates them so that they give birth to the nerd that died in the first book. At least I think that’s what happened. It was fucking weird and I read it over a year ago. Too bad I’ve yet to find a copy of Loop because I bet that thing is super batshit insane.

The movie begins with a guy on a plane about to time out of his seven days. He’s super scared because, I guess, nobody watches the tape and thinks, “That was fucking crazy. And a weird robocall that just said ‘Seven days’ immediately after? I’m hungry!” Apparently everybody watches it and thinks, “Oh shit! Does ‘seven days’ mean I’m going to die in seven days?! I bet it does because what else could that video have been about?!” You might be thinking, “Why would you assume everybody gets scared after seeing the video when just the one guy has freaked out so far?” Well, doubter who obviously hasn’t seen the movie yet: a woman on the plane also says, frightened, “I saw that video too!” And since the plane crashes and everybody on it probably dies, I guess they all watched the video at the same time one week prior?

I understand the flaws in my assumption, you jerk! You don’t have to “Actually!” me during my review! The guy who watched the video probably died of scared-to-death face while the other people on the plane just died from sudden impact face. Anyway, the opening scene doesn’t matter. It was probably tacked on because test audiences were all, “You know, there isn’t really any action in this movie? Maybe more high-speed action and less fighting blind guys in the dark?” Then some other audience member was probably all, “Oh! I know! What about a scene where somebody is looking through a keyhole and then — BOOM! — suddenly there’s a scary eye on the other side of the keyhole!” I’m pretending that’s how that scene wound up in the movie to help Loucka and Estes save face as writers. Maybe the third writer credited on the screenplay (but not on “story by”), Akiva Goldsman, was that audience member.

You know what? Stop actuallying me! Fine, the opening scene was needed to explain the entire premise of the death video. The man explains that if you watch this scary videotape, you die in seven days. The woman who also saw it was there to explain that you survive the curse by making a tape and showing it to some other sucker! So, yeah, I guess the stupid first scene carried some water. It was repetitive, Scott Lobdellian water but I guess every Ring movie is somebody’s first Ring movie!

As I was saying about the opening scene before other more important things that needed to be said cropped up, it’s most important purpose was to give the VCR that Johnny Galecki buys one scene and two years later a back story. He’s all, “I’m going to buy this old technology for some reason!” Aimee Teegarden, his student (you can tell she’s his student because she’s young and hot and he’s Johnny Galecki), says, “Whatever, dude! This movie is PG-13 and was also shot in the 21st century so don’t expect me to whip my tits out even though that’s what my character would do at some point during this movie if it had been filmed in the 80s.” Johnny shrugs, takes the VCR home, hooks it up to some old ass television that still uses AV cables, and watches the tape that’s still in the VCR. That’s totally believable because when I die, somebody is going to wind up with a Laserdisc player with Heathers stuck inside of it.

By the time the next part of the story takes place (a few months, maybe?), Johnny has survived watching the video, completely researched the hell out of it, and published a book with the subtitle “the Samara Effect” (or something like that. I only watched it once and I’m not too concerned with going back to check). So he’s a quick worker, ain’t he?! I guess all that time spent not being able to fuck his students wasn’t simply wasted with masturbation.

I’m not going to get into the main character Julia (played by Matilda Lutz) yet because she’s only really important to The Ring remake that comprises the middle section of the movie. This aside was for everybody who has seen the movie who might be thinking, “When are you going to get into discussing Julia and whether it was okay to get a boner during the scene where she’s in her underwear because she’s probably portraying an eighteen year old and not a seventeen year old, right? I mean, yeah, maybe it’s creepy but you saw that butt, right? Also the actress is probably an old person! Whew! I’m not a creep at all! Suck it, mom!” Also, I hope you saw those quotation marks because that indicates that somebody else said that thing and not me. I only transcribed it!

The first third of the movie should concentrate on Galecki’s extra-curricular biology experiment. He’s taking students, showing them the film, and seeing how their lives become completely fucked up from terror over the course of seven days before finding another guinea pig to watch their copy of the film and save them from scared-to-death face. A much better movie than the one F. Javier Gutiérrez chose for audiences would have involved an ensemble cast caught up in Galecki’s experiment. Maybe everything seems to be going okay for a bit until some student dismisses the whole thing and heads back home for a long weekend before being able to get somebody to view his copy. He winds up with scared-to-death face and everybody begins freaking out. The rumors fly all over the school and now nobody can find anybody to watch their film. You now have five or six main characters all trying to find a way not to die. Maybe one of them, suddenly realizing this shit is real, understands the terrible ethical decision and refuses to find somebody to take on their curse. Maybe one of them (probably the frat guy) forces somebody to watch their video without their consent. Maybe one of them (the hot looking, muscular nerd with the glasses) hacks the on-campus televisions and spreads the video across the whole school. Maybe the camgirl creates some clickbait headline about a great video showing her butthole but links to the video and spreads Samara’s video across the entire Internet (this crosses into the other possible movie Gutiérrez might have made but, in the end, it’s what Rings should have been all about anyway, right?) thus saving her life but putting millions at risk.

But no! What you actually get is dozens of students participating in this scary ass project but, in the end, leaving only Julia’s boyfriend at risk once Teegarden dies of scared-to-death face. What could have been a meaningful reason for using the plural of ring for a title winds up being a movie about a single ring: Julia’s boyfriend. And since his time is about up, Julia watches the video to save his life. This brings us to the middle section of the movie: The RIng Redux.

Either I haven’t seen The Ring 2 or I just don’t remember it. Hell, I probably don’t rightly remember the movie, The Ring, as much as I remember Suzuki’s novel. But I feel fairly certain the first movie and the novel retain the same basic plot structure. People watch this video. They die in seven days. Some other person who watched the video realizes the curse and must research it to figure out how to break it. In doing so, they save themselves almost immediately without knowing it when they enlist the help of a friend, making a copy and showing it to them. When they survive but their friend dies, it helps them to make the logical leap needed to understand how to break the curse. In the book, the main characters figure that to break the curse, they have to put Samara’s body to rest. So they go to the cabin, enter the well, get the corpse, take it back to her hometown, and give it a proper burial. Based on Rings, I’m guessing all of that took place one of the previous films. Which is why the middle part of Rings is just a retelling of that story.

Julia and her boyfriend head to Samara’s hometown, learn more about her than even Galecki discovered, learn her terrible secret, find her corpse, and give her, not a proper burial, but a proper cremation. That should do the trick, right?!

Well, no. Because the big twist is that Samara was trying to be reborn and Julia fell for it! Ha ha! Dumb dumb! If she’d only read Suzuki’s follow-up to Ring (no article on the book title!), Spiral, she’d have learned that the big twist was the whole being reborn thing! Also since Spiral was published in 1995, the big twist at the end of that wasn’t that the video would wind up on the Internet to infect everybody in the world. The big twist was that the main character’s published work was going to be turned into a movie which was now the real infection source for Samara’s virus. Millions of movie-goers would be infected! Ha ha! Dumb dumbs!

I wonder how often Roger Ebert wrote “Ha ha! Dumb dumbs”? Probably not enough! That’s why he’s no longer successful!

In trying to be a good and faithful protagonist, Julia just winds up setting Samara loose on the world. That’s a pretty good twist, right?! What the audience realizes if they think about this movie for any amount of time after exiting the theater instead of just saying, “That was a stupid waste of ten bucks!”, is that the real protagonist was the blind ex-priest who kidnapped a young woman and impregnated her many years ago, giving birth to pure evil. This ex-priest then proceeded to murder all eleven or so people who came before Julia, also trying to free Samara. That pervert murderer was the real champion! I knew I like him for more than creepily taking Julia’s hand and doing that weird finger thing on her palm that perverted old people do. I mean, he must have done that or else he wouldn’t have been able to read Samara’s Braille message she burned into Julia’s palm!

Although, I mean, why the fuck did Samara burn “rebirth” in Braille on Julia’s palm anyway? Why would Samara know Braille? Why would she leave a clue to her ultimate goal? Maybe it’s some kind of rule from the afterlife. You have to give the people you’re manipulating a fair chance at defeating your evil plans!

The final twist of the movie is that once Samara is reborn in Julia, Julia’s electronics begin sending copies of the movie to all of her online contacts. Julia’s boyfriend sees it happening and tries to stop it by unplugging the laptop’s power cord and online connection, somehow forgetting that laptops have batteries and WiFi connections. And thus the entire world is doomed to be infected. Of course, how many die from this infection? Maybe half the population of the online world? It doesn’t seem like the best way to kill everybody if the person is infected and saved in one online session. “Hey! A weird video! Let’s watch it. Fuck, that was crazy shit. Let me send it to my friends!” I guess since once person can spread the virus to more than one person, it’ll be harder and harder for people to find a non-infected person to watch their copy of the video. And maybe the point isn’t about death anyway? I think the point in Spiral was that watching the video actually changed the person’s DNA in a way that made them part Samara, or made her more powerful, or something. Anyway, it was less about killing and more about just infecting everybody.

The problem with this ending is that it’s the fucking ending. You’d think the whole point of a movie titled Rings is that it would be about huge numbers of people being infected by the video. Instead, only one person winds up endangered in most of this movie. The real movie only begins when this one ends. Estes, and Loucka should have realized this and thrown out the first draft of the movie. But since they didn’t, audiences were treated to an uninspired remake of the first film but with even more plot holes.

Like how this movie follows the adventures of — apparently — the only two young people who don’t constantly check their phones. Julia’s boyfriend disappears for six days after watching the video because...well, I don’t know why! He just leaves his phone under his bed in his dorm and fucks off on a ski trip or something. Nobody knows where to find him. Why? I don’t know! Nobody else participating in the experiment disappears. They all just seem to hang out in the lab — or is it a rave?! — with all the other participants in a hedonistic display of, well, college youthfulness!

Julia’s boyfriend’s excuse for not talking to her is that he didn’t want her mixed up in this experiment. Although the experiment wasn’t even scary yet. Nobody had died of scared-to-death face but somehow Julia’s boyfriend was taking it seriously from the start? And he thought not being in constant contact with his girlfriend would keep her safe? He definitely wasn’t smart because he was surprised to find out that she was worried about him, enough to seek him out at his college.

But that’s just the tip of his stupid iceberg. He also never checks his phone while searching for Samara, thus missing Galecki’s warning that Julia’s hand has Braille on it (not that this message would have helped because Julia and her boyfriend were stupid jerks). Plus when Boyfriend discovers that the blind guy was the priest somehow involved with Samara, he doesn’t call Julia to warn her. He races back to their bed and breakfast to warn her. When he doesn’t find her there, he doesn’t call her to warn her. He races to the priest’s house to save Julia. Now, maybe I missed Julia leaving her phone in the room. But even if I did miss that and that was the reason Boyfriend couldn’t call her, what fucking young person leaves their phone in their room? I mean aside from Boyfriend when he disappears for six days doing fuck knows what.

In the end, this movie missed out on everything that would have made The Ring modern and updated. I can’t fathom why somebody thought The Ring should simply be revisited as another version of the same movie. Somebody actually thought the twist computer virus at the end was enough of a great idea to greenlight the rest of this turd. How do you make a huge Hollywood movie like this with nobody along the way saying, “This ending here. That’s the movie. What’s with all this other stuff that we’ve already seen before?” I guess people instead read the script and gave helpful advice like “How about a scene where a woman pulls a long strand of hair out of her throat? That’s gross, right? Do that!” and “Did you write a scene where the female lead hops around in bed in panties that go right up her ass so that you can see everything? If not, add that! I’d say show her tits too but this is the age of Maxim, not the age of Playboy! And make sure wardrobe only uses tops that keep any signs of nipples from showing! This isn’t your father’s horror movie! No sir!” and “You took the advice of test audience member Akiva Goldsman and got that keyhole jump scare in, right?! Fuck yeah!”

Ugh. You know what I need to do? Go check with Movie Madness and see if they have Rasen, the Japanese film adaptation of Spiral. That shit will probably be insane!

#Rings #Movie Review #The Ring #Koji Suzuki

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notesfrome · 6 years

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Hange Week, Day 2: Support

one-shot; support pairing: levi ackerman/hange zoë word count: 2046 words note: for Hange Week at @hangelab on tumblr. Prompt for Day 2: Support. I’m crap at writing action-related stuff relating to their gear…but I tried. Minor manga spoilers (equipment related).

Link to fic at AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15852924/chapters/36947985

The forest laid dark and silent, with only the occasional chirp of a bird or the howl of a wolf breaking the eerie tranquility. That, and the incessant grumbling of a certain Survey Corps captain.

“I cannot believe I let you fucking talk me into this,” Levi scowled, securing the belts and straps of his new gear. Despite the intensive amount of training they had on using it, it still felt a bit foreign, to have a gas cylinder secured to his back, and pistols in his hands.

Beside him, Hange laughed, as she performed her own weapon check, counting her bullets. “Come on,” she chirped. “You know you need the extra practice, Captain. You did miss two targets during training today.”

Levi’s eyebrow twitched dangerously as he glared at the laughing scientist. “Shut your mouth, shitty glasses. You missed three.”

“Now, now,” she said teasingly. “Is this the way you talk to your fellow Squad Leader?”

“Tch,” he snorted, carefully strapping his scabbards, with the blades sheathed within, to his thigh. He much preferred the blades; he was always more comfortable with knives and things that were sharp. Guns and pistols seemed so…clumsy, and there was no elegance in using them. But they wouldn’t be using the blades that night. Hange had insisted that they should get some target practice done, using the pistols and the new vertical maneuvering equipment.

Her words from earlier in the evening drummed in his head, when she was trying to persuade him to join her for a practice session. We – all of us – are experts when it comes to the blades, but you know we need more training with the pistols.

Levi didn’t disagree with that – what he didn’t understand was, why it had to be at fucking one o’clock in the morning, and to make it even incomprehensible, she had dragged him outside, beyond Wall Maria, into the forests. He surveyed the hastily assembled training ground before them, numbered targets pinned to trees in a haphazard, uncoordinated pattern that probably only made sense to Hange.

“You do realise that if we meet a bunch of fucking Titans, we’ll be royally fucked and it will be all your fault?” He griped further, crouching low on the branch, pistols in hand. Shooting her a sideways glance, he immediately knew that it was the wrong thing to say.

Hange’s eyes lit up, and he fucking swore that they were sparkling; shit, that look – pure, manic excitement – was written all over her face. “Really???” She squealed. “Do you think we’ll see any Titans? It’s night time – any moving Titan we see may very well be an Abnormal!”

Inwardly, he groaned to himself; great, this was just what he fucking needed, for her to go off searching for some fucking Titan safari. “Wait, four eyes, hold…” The rest of his words were lost as she braced herself on the branch, and with an ear-splitting WOOO HOOOO, she leapt off the branch, hooking onto the next tree as she propelled forwards effortlessly.

“For fuck’s sake, Hange,” he growled, and as his own grappling hook attached itself to a nearby tree, he took off after his batshit insane companion.

BANG! BANG! She took out the first two targets, and then she performed a backflip, firing her hook backwards, where target three was before target two. Her pistol fired again, and unsurprisingly, it was right on target. “Come on, Levi!” she yelled, her voice high and thin, carried by the wind, as she launched herself towards the direction of her next target. “Don’t be such a slowpoke, shorty!”

Scowling and swinging through the empty space and air, he aimed at the first and second target. Firing the pistols on each of his hand, he hit them cleanly, and then he swung flawlessly around and hit the bullseye on the third target. Hange was in front of him, somersaulting as she flew towards the fourth target. There was no way in hell he was losing to her, she’d lord it over his fucking head for the next decade. He eyed the fourth target, he was a distance away, but he was sure he could shoot it from where he was.

BANG! Hange’s head whipped back towards his direction as his bullet found its target, her own aim faltering for a fraction of a second. Smirking, he whizzed past her, as she yelled indignantly. “Oh sure, show off your superior and perfect eyesight!”

As he took out the next two targets, Hange swung and leapt above him, trying to gain an upper hand in speed, which, in itself, was a rather impossible mission. Levi was the fastest in the Survey Corps, this was a known fact. But adrenaline seemed to be giving her an edge, and she was neck to neck with him, as they careened through the forest, taking out all the practice targets.

As the final target loomed, Levi took careful aim, and fired. A split second before he did, he heard her gun sounded, as he watched, her bullet embedded itself in the middle of a target, just a split second before his did.

“YEEEESSSSSSSSS!” She cheered, whooping as she waved her pistols in victory. Scowling, he shot his grappling hook to a nearby tree and swung himself upwards, landing on the broad bough, panting. Laughing victoriously, she somersaulted twice in the air, as he glared at her, arms folded.

“Fine, you won!” He yelled. “Now can we go back? I need some fucking sleep!”

“But, Levi!” She cried. “We haven’t even seen a Titan yet!”

“Does it look like I give a shit about Titans?”

Still laughing, Hange shot her grappling hooks towards the tree he was on. But she was so immersed with smirking victoriously at him that she didn’t notice her hook had tangled itself on a weak branch. As the branch broke, she lost her balance, but before she could regain it, her cable and hook tangled themselves in a mess of branches, pitching her forward. She then slammed face first into the tree, before dropping downwards.

“HANGE!” Levi yelled in horror, and jumped off the tree. He had to get her before she crashed headfirst into the ground. He had to get to her. His grappling hook, secured to a tree bough, gave him a lot more velocity, and he caught her, a metre and a split second before she hit the ground.They landed on the forest floor, her securely in his arms.

“Hange!” he said, scrambling to his feet, looking over her frantically, his heart racing. “Fuck…Hange, are you…” his panic ebbed away a little as he heard her gave a little groan.

He literally thought he was going to collapse in fucking relief, as he grabbed her and hugged her close to him, breathing heavily. After a moment, he pushed her back, looking over her again anxiously. She didn’t look too injured, there were cuts and scrapes on her face, but her arms and legs seemed to be in their rightful positions.

Her eyelids fluttered open. “Did…did a Titan get me?” she murmured, putting a hand to her head.

Staring down at her, Levi felt annoyance gradually replacing his panic, though relief was still washing over him in waves. “No, shithead, a fucking tree got you,” he snapped.

“Oh, did it? Gee, death by a tree would be so embarrassing,” she winced, sitting up. “Imagine that, a Squad Leader of the Survey Corps - the most elite soldiers -, killed by a tree.” She shook her head a little, trying to clear it. “Ow.”

“Does your head hurt?” He asked, looking at her carefully.

“Not really, my face hurts more,” she said, grimacing as she touched her nose gingerly.

Levi snorted in laughter. “Yeah, no shit, you did faceplant onto a fucking tree, after all.” He helped her up to a sitting position, propped against the tree. “Can you try moving your arms and legs?” She nodded, and he watched her as she tested her arms, which seemed to be fine. She then moved her legs, and as she moved her right ankle, a flash of pain crossed her face.

“I think my right ankle is injured,” she said anxiously. “Oh shit, it had better just be a sprain, I can’t have a broken ankle, we have an expedition coming up, and we have spent months planning for it, it couldn’t be delayed while I…”

“Stop blabbering, shitty glasses,” Levi cut her off irritably. “If you had fucking listened to me, you’d be sleeping or performing some shitty experiment right now, and you would have avoided fucking yourself up. Now shut up, and let me look at your ankle.” Carefully, he unlaced her boot, pulling her off and holding her ankle in his hands. He touched it lightly, pressing into it, and Hange bit her lip, wincing a little. He ran his hand over her ankle bone, and then he nodded. “It’s just a sprain. Nothing is broken.”

“Oh great, thank goodness,” she heaved a sigh of relief, as she braced her arms against the tree, trying to stand up. Sighing, he helped her up, slinging her arm around his shoulder, supporting her carefully.

She held onto him, testing her ankle gingerly, before something seemed to occur to her. She turned to him, a huge grin on her face. “Oh hey! I won!”

Levi stared at her incredulously. “Really? Because you really look like a fucking, limping loser right now.”

“Ooooh, grumpy pants is having a bad case of sour grapes,” she taunted, and then her grin faded into a grimace. “Ow, ow, give me a moment.” Sighing, she looked around her. “Boy, it’s going to be a long walk back to camp.”

“Can you still use your gear?” He asked her, his tone abrupt.

She checked her cylinders and gas gauges, nodding. “Well, yeah, they’re still operational.”

“Good,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist, pulling her to his side securely. “I need you to be my left arm. Now, hold on to me.”

“Wait,” she began. “What…?”

“We’re not going to fucking walk back to camp, not with your ankle all fucked up and with fucking Titans possibly lurking around,” he said impatiently. “Let’s just do this the fast way, all right, four eyes?”

“But…”

“If you dare to say you want to catch a fucking Titan, I’ll personally deliver you to one.”

“No, I mean…”

Levi let out a huff of impatience. “Look, all you need to do is to follow my lead. I have enough strength to hold you up, I just need your hook as extra support, because I’ve got one arm around you to make sure you don’t fucking fall off.”

She glanced him skeptically, before seemingly coming to her own conclusion. “Fine, if this was the only way.”

Looking down at her, he felt himself softening as he thought about how close she came to being seriously injured, or, for that matter, how close she came to death. “Don’t worry. I’ll be supporting you all the way. Just hold on to me.”

Trust me, shitty glasses.

She nodded, and gripped his shoulder, as he tightened his hold around her waist. Taking a deep breath, he launched his first hook, and they both shot upwards. Immediately, Hange’s hook sank into another tree, and they moved forward easily. Levi followed up, the grappling hook digging into the bark of the next tree with a satisfying thunk. And on they flew, as it they had been doing it for their entire lives.

“Woooooooo!” Hange whooped in his ear, evidently getting over her apprehension. “This is AWEEEEESOMEEEE!” She yelled happily as her hook caught another tree, and Levi easily swung them forward, whipping through the air.

“Stop shouting in my ear, shitty glasses, or I’ll drop you right now, I fucking swear,” Levi threatened, glaring at her.

She grinned at him, and then tucked her face against the side of his neck, brushing her lips softly against the skin there. “No, you won’t,” she said confidently.

Levi snorted derisively, but all the same, he pressed a quick kiss on her forehead, near her hairline, thanking his lucky stars that he had forced her to wash her hair yesterday.

She was fucking right, of course.

This...kinda got away from me. It was supposed to be short. 300 word short. But I think I am happy with what I end up with, although “support” is really used loosely in this sense, haha.

Feedback appreciated!

edit, 16/09/2018: Made minor edits, because I just realised that Hange wasn't commander when they had the new gear. Oops, my bad. Brain was elsewhere.

#hangeweek #hangelab #support #hange zoë #levihan #levi ackerman #hangeweek2018 #attatckontitan #fic writing

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sotheywrotestories · 6 years

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One Night; Part Ten: Pt. One

Request; None

Pairing; Newt (TMR) x Reader

Warnings; Angst

Summary; No, Teresa wasn’t the first girl in the maze, that doesn’t keep everyone else form thinking so.

Tenth. part in a series!

Part One; Here

Part Two; Here

Part Three; Here

Part Four; Here

Part Five; Here

Part Six; Here

Part Seven; Here

Part Eight; Here

Part Nine; Here

A/N: Also, guys I haven’t seen Death Cure, and I’m no longer following book plot, so don’t @ me on this.

Newt’s POV

It was hell. No, not like we couldn’t agree, in fact, we all agreed on everything. But honestly, we’re just kids, and that’s why we’re having so many issues.

“We can’t do that,” (Y/N) sighed. “There’s way too many guards there and not enough of us.”

I rubbed my hands on my face and watched (Y/N) droop onto the table.

“We need to take a break,” I said.

I watched everyone’s face pop up and squint at me.

“We can’t,” (Y/N) yawned. “We have to get Minho.”

“None of us can do that when we’re this tired,” I argued.

“No,” Thomas spoke up. “I agree with you, Newt. We need to get some sleep.”

Most everyone left the room, excluding two guys and (Y/N).

“(Y/N), come get some sleep,” I walked over to her.

She waved her hand in a dismissive way before turning back to the map. I saw her mark several different routes and make notes all over the place.

“Love, you need to sleep,” I rubbed her shoulders.

(Y/N) sighed and slumped back.

“We need to get Minho back,” she whispered.

“Your mental health is way more important,” I whispered back, placing my lips right next to her ear. “Besides. Who will cuddle with me?”

(Y/N) giggled and closed her eyes. “Okay.”

I smiled and tugged her hands, pulling her up. I tugged her all the way to our tent, her giggling the whole way. By the time we got to our tent, she was yawning uncontrollably.

“C’mon, darling,” I chuckled as she stumbled around.

She struggled to change into her pajamas, but she eventually got it. She shuffled into our sleeping bag (we just zipped two sleeping bags together) and pulled the blankets up to her chin. I stared at her for a long time before she popped one eye open.

“Come cuddle with me,” she whined.

I chuckled loudly again and toed off my shoes. I too shuffled into the bag and pulled (Y/N) to my chest.

I woke up to an empty “bed”. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up and stretched.

“(Y/N)?” I called out.

Her head popped into the tent with a big smile.

“We got an idea,” she grinned. “We know how we’re gonna get Minho back.”

“By stuffing my system with coffee?”

“This is insane,” I laugh nervously. “He’s on a moving train.”

(Y/N) shrugged with a devious smile on her face.

“I don’t like that look,” I frowned.

“We have the perfect plan,” Thomas responded. “We’re gonna grab the car Minho is in by flying a helicopter over the train.”

“Haha, very funny,” I rolled my eyes.

(Y/N) gave me a shy smile. “No, really. That’s the plan.”

“No,” I chuckled. “This is crazy.”

(Y/N) shrugged and some new kid, Frank I think, stepped forward.

“I may not know y'all, and yeah this chick is batshit crazy,” he nudged (Y/N) who gave him a sour look. “But this is the best plan I’ve heard spew out of their mouths.”

I crossed my arms and stared (Y/N) in the eyes. She stared back and raised an eyebrow.

“You down?” she asked, leaning forward.

“You’re both crazy,” I nodded.

“We both know Minho would’ve done something much crazier,” Thomas laughed. “And this was the most chill idea (Y/N) had.”

(Y/N) shrugged. “Whatcha gonna do.”

“But this is dangerous!” I spread my arms out.

“So is living out here, in the Scorch, where literally everyone wants to kill you!” (Y/N) said with a scary smile. “This is nothing. This is sane. This is the only option we have.”

I stared everyone down, trying to find one person who didn’t agree.

But everyone was already moving.

(Y/N)’s POV

I know Newt doesn’t like the plan, and to be real, neither do I. It’s super dangerous and someone could get seriously hurt.

But what else can we do?

“So we’re gonna high-jack a train with a helicopter?” Newt clarified.

I nodded and started to tear up all the maps we had. If someone from Wicked were to find any of these things, we’d be screwed. I mean we’re already screwed, best not add insult to injury.

“I don’t like this,” Newt admitted, snaking his arms around me.

“It’ll be okay,” I cooed.

“And what if it isn’t?” he whispered.

“It will be.”

It was an awful idea, to begin with. Really terrible idea. No one should ever listen to me. Ever.

“All that place is is Cranks,” Brenda said.

“We have to go through it anyway,” I shrugged.

“What?” Newt shouted. “Are you insane? I’ll go through.”

“No,” I laughed. “You go and we all go. All or none.”

“No, I’ll be fine going in,” Newt reassured me.

“Newt, they’re cranks,” I said, very seriously now. “They’ll turn you.”

Netw shied away from me.

“You know that, right?” I laughed humorlessly.

“I’m not immune, anyway,” Newt whispered.

I dropped the gun I had in my hands.

“What,” I spat. “And you didn’t tell me?!”

“You were still on the fact that Chuck was dead, then you remembered a whole bunch of stuff, there wasn’t time!” Newt retorted.

“Whatever,” I rolled my eyes, grabbing my gun.”Let’s just go, then.”

“(Y/N), I’m not letting you risk your life,” Newt said.

“I really don’t give a flying shuck what you want,” I laughed. “If your life is getting thrown away, might as well throw mine away as well.”

“(Y/N)-” Newt started.

“Just back off,” I hissed.

“Dude,” Thomas stepped in. “Let’s just get this done.”

We all moved towards the building.

“Are you sure there’s nowhere else we can get a helicopter?” Newt asked.

“This is it,” Frank nodded. “Any working one, anyway.

“This is kind of sketchy,” Brenda pitched in.

I stood up straight and sighed. “Then don’t go.”

I continued to walk and heard at least two pairs of footsteps behind me. Shortly after, two more followed.

“(Y/N),” Newt said again.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I flipped my hair. “Now shut up, they’ll hear you.”

Our feet made soft pitter patters as we walked. The building in question was an abandoned warehouse with half a wall missing. Two floors with at least two dozen Cranks. Everywhere.

“Brenda and I will go left,” I whispered. “Tom, Newt, Frank, you guys go left.”

“I-” Thomas started.

“Left,” I hissed.

I crouched and tiptoed to the right where something that resembled a door was. I held up three fingers and made eye contact with Brenda. She nodded so I counted down on my fingers.

On one, Brenda and I hit the door (which had rusted hinges) and crawled in. None of the Cranks had seen or heard us. Just across the building, Newt popped into the room with Thomas and Frank close after. Two Cranks looked in their general direction, but they ducked down in enough time.

“Upstairs,” I nodded, spotting the blades of a helicopter.

Brenda nodded and we both started out shuffle to the second story of the warehouse. Frank and I made eye contact and he nodded. He whispered something and Thomas made his way to the staircase.

By the time Thomas had actually made it to the staircase, Brenda and I were at the top. I shot the only two Cranks that were up here.

“Why didn’t Frank come up here,” I growled, eternally in a bad mood. “I don’t know how to fly a shuckin’ helicopter.”

“Give him a second,” Thomas panted.

Brenda stood at the top of the stairs and started picking off the Cranks.

“On they’re way,” Brenda let us know.

I nodded and sprinted to shoot next to Brenda. I shot any Crank that got too close to Newt while Brenda covered Frank.

“Behind you!” Frank shouted as he ran up the stairs.

I whipped around to see that two more Cranks had come out of the helicopter. Thomas was dealing with one but the other was running straight at us.

I pulled the trigger and heard the familiar “click click” of an empty cartridge.

“Shuck off!” I shouted, throwing the gun at the Crank as hard as I could. “Brenda keep shooting!”

The Crank hit me and I fell to the ground.

“(Y/N)!” I heard Newt yell.

“Keep! Running!” I shouted, grappling with the Crank.

Finally seeing an opportunity to move, I snatched the knife out of my belt. I felt a sharp pain in my leg but I fought, still. Of course, I go and slash myself with my own knife. I saw my window, raised my knife, and stuck it into the Crank’s head.

“Are you okay?” Newt rushed to me.

I nodded and hugged him.

“Please don’t die,” I whispered.

Newt laughed and pulled me tight.

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

“Guys, let’s go!” Frank called us over.

Newt was quick to pull me up and he dragged me (while limping) to the helicopter. After shoving me on, he grabbed the track and yelled at Frank to go.

Newt carefully climbed in after Frank took off. He pulled me close and shoved his face into my hair.

“Don’t die,” he teased.

I playfully swat his shoulder before playing with the hair on the nape of his neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, my voice muffled by his neck.

“There wasn’t a good time,” he whispered. “Besides, I’m fine for now, good that?”

“Good that.”

When we landed back at base camp, I went straight to our tent.

“Good work today, (Y/N),” Thomas said while patting me on the back.

I shrugged and smiled. “I need a shower.”

“Yeah ya do,” Thomas teased.

“Shut up ya shank,” Newt pushed Thomas. “I’ll wait for you in the tent, love.”

I nodded and pecked his cheek.

“Ew, PDA,” Thomas gagged.

“Oh, go away,” I laughed walking to the showers.

When I reached the showers, I locked the door and grabbed a towel. I carefully peeled my dirty clothes away and winced when I pulled my jeans down. There was a cut on my leg that wasn’t there before. Probably from my knife, I may have accidentally cut myself.

I was quick to clean off and put on clean clothes. The second I deemed myself presentable, I rushed back to my tent. Newt was already laying on his back with his eyes closed when I got there.

I smiled and lied down next to him, kissing his jaw and making my way to his lips. I felt his smirk on my lips when I finally connected them.

“Hello, darling,” he mumbled.

I giggled and moved to lay on his chest. “Hey.”

His hand automatically moved to my hair and he ran his fingers through the freshly cleaned strands.

“Are you scared?” he asked.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“You run into things head on, no regrets,” Newt continued. “Aren’t you ever scared?”

I tilted my head to look him in the eyes.

“I’m scared all the time,” I admitted. “That’s what makes life so great.”

Newt smiled and rolled his head back again.

“You’re crazy,” he sighed. I smiled and nodded. “You love me.”

#newt x reader #newt (tmr) x reader #newt the maze runner x reader #newt #newt (tmr)#newt the maze runner #x reader #the maze runner #the maze runner x reader #(tmr) x reader

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velcro-rave · 7 years

Text

post-emoji movie Trauma

WARNING: the following text contains spoilers and can be considered disturbing to some readers. especially my brain, because it’s leaking out my ears after typing this.

This is the first movie ever I’ve gone to see on opening night. And let me just say that, for the record, I’m glad I went to watch with friends. Without them, I would have most likely calmly exited the room, climbed up to the roof, and dived straight off.

I’m honestly fucking terrified of how much this shitty movie has pushed me to the edge. I’ve never felt more ANGRY in my life and at the same time wanted to just curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep. This is so fucked up. What made it possible for this level of psychological warfare to be used so casually by Sony? Why did they decide this was ever a good idea to present to the public? I’m still shaking (and not from the overpriced Coca-Cola I was sold). Whether it’s out of rage or fear, I don’t know. Not even throwing myself into the deep fires of hell can attempt to restore the intrinsic warmth I felt before I witnessed this crime of a movie. They say that there’s a special place reserved below for people who cause enough pain to humanity, and it is at this point where I pose this question to the following:

Tony Leondis. Eric Siegel. Mike White. Michelle Raimo Kouyate.

Why?

Did you want this to happen to me? Was this the plan all along? To destroy everything you could possibly love in the process of creating this film, to make the audience suffer without any remorse? You got PATRICK FUCKING STEWART as a voice actor, and what is it you do?

Yeah, you make him play A WALKING PILE OF SHIT!!!!

Someone could’ve ran up to me after I left the theater, put a shotgun directly up to my forehead, pulled the trigger, and that would have still not come close to how much my mind had been blown at the shocking reality that this movie, this spawn, could exist in the known universe and continue to be shown to innocent people. There were kids there. Hopeful, happy, young kids with iPhones who thought it was a great idea to head off to the movies and watch a funny relatable movie about emojis without a care in the world. Communicating ideas without the use of words is the “staple” of their generation, as the movie so proudly portrays (even comparing it to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics!), and there’s no reason a family shouldn’t agree to bring their children to this beautiful, heartwarming adventure, right? WRONG.

Nothing could have prepared me for the horrific amount of groan-worthy jokes this movie tossed out. I’ve been wracking my brain for an entire hour trying to remember the most potent ones, but they were so easily forgettable that I can only recall a few offhand. They were tragic. Whenever an opportunity for a shitty pun showed itself, you can bet your ass the writers took it and ran with it to lengths beyond the realms of humor. From the character known as Hi-5′s nonchalant Bye Felicia! to his two puns about snapping (as if one wasn’t enough), I wanted to get up and scream at the ceiling in the hopes that my cries of agony would disrupt the structural integrity of the building and have it fall on top of me, finally freeing me from the slow-cooker of torture that is The Emoji Movie.

At a certain point, Hi-5 (by the way James Corden, I thought you were cool. I thought you were here for us, for all of us as an entertainer, but you just had to take part in ruining me and the world as we know it by accepting this role. I will never forgive you.) mentions something about his heart beating. His… heart? This walking, talking hand has a heart? Does he have lungs? What other internal organs could fit in there and be capable of being slapped around constantly as a result of his stupid ass decisions? Why doesn’t he have arms like Gene or Jailbreak, does his body somehow take into account that he’s already a living appendage? This movie is making me sit and contemplate the anatomy of a fucking animated HAND, and that’s not even as preposterous as a thought can get while watching.

On multiple occasions throughout my viewing experience, I had to take a break to just lean back and sigh, both in anguish of what was happening onscreen as well as the sheer exhausting aspect of it all. The voice acting couldn’t have been more unreliable. Every other line it was a gamble between it being a poorly executed pun delivered so flatly that not even the 4-year old up front let out a little giggle, an obvious statement about what they’re planning to do next, or the most unremarkable snippet of backstory ever revealed. I’m sure all those scenes between Gene and Jailbreak where they gaze at each other were meant to be construed as romantic, but her blasé response to each of his approaches because she “isn’t some princess waiting for her prince” or how “women are deserving of more respect” completely knocked the mood off whatever pedestal it was stepping up to. I get it, these are actual important themes that need to be recognized, and I would be more than happy to see this acknowledged in a movie built on as many metaphors as Zootopia, but the timing of her commentary was the worst I’d ever seen. The constant interruptions made it seem like her words shouldn’t be taken seriously at all!

Unsurprisingly, character background was virtually (unintentional pun. I’m incredibly sorry.) nonexistent, and everything that’s possible to be wondered about the universe could pretty much be answered with a big shrug. For example, why does Hi-5 have a band-aid? Did he get stabbed or something? When did Gene begin to show signs that he was capable of other emotions? Was the Just Dance girl deleted after the trash bin emptied itself out? We didn’t see any signs of the characters going back for her after Hi-5 had to shake off the troll, so did they just leave her there to die? If Jailbreak had been working for a long time to get out, why didn’t she use more of her hacking skills? She pulled up her hologram window things maybe three times total to escape or hide somewhere, does she seriously not have anything else in her repertoire that could potentially help Gene and Hi-5 get to where they need to be quicker? There’s so many questions that don’t even get passively explained. Then again, I’m arguing against the same people who genuinely advocated for the setting to be called Textopolis.

AND WHOSE FUCKING IDEA WAS IT TO MAKE THE MAIN CHARACTER “MEH”??

The ONE emoji with zero interesting qualities and the most monotone parents that, for some fucking batshit insane reason, were given more than the minute of screentime they deserved. I understand for a quick gag, their emotionless response to everything could be funny, but their conversations would just stretch on and on and on. As for Gene, I trusted you, T.J. Miller. I can’t believe you betrayed me, especially after such a hilariously perfect role in Deadpool. Never in my life have I felt so disappointed in a single person. There is no justifiable reason for you to be proud of what you’ve done here. To be honest, I’m pretty sure I astral projected at least three times as I struggled to repress the memory of this trainwreck before it even ended. When I wasn’t desperately clawing at the armrests mid-convulsion, I was staring vacantly at the center of the screen, wondering how this week could have gone so wrong.

This was basically a 91-minute long advertisement. The whiplash of traveling between product placement to product placement nearly made me throw up, which was ostensibly the only thing that could’ve made this worse. Dropbox, Spotify, Candy Crush, Just Dance, YouTube, Facebook, and the almighty Twitter, I hope you’re happy with what you’ve wrought. The “emoji-pop” dance assaulted my eyes so suddenly, acting as the unnecessary cherry on top of the feel-good ending; I think that’s when I officially lost all hope in enjoying the rest of my night.

It’s honestly taking every ounce of my being to hold onto the little bit of life that I have after the Emoji Movie ripped my soul to shreds. The amount of violation I felt as my ears were subjected to endless pop culture references that were relevant years ago, nightmarish depictions of the content of each app on Alex’s phone, and the fact that the god damn Eggplant was in the Unused Emojis room when everyone knows that’s not the case is indescribable. I now have to live with the fact that every time I switch keyboards on my phone, those blank yellow faces will serve as a dark reminder of what I’ve gone through. To any of you reading this that have also watched The Emoji Movie, I am so sorry. I know how difficult it is to process. My recommendation to each and every one of you who haven’t had the chance to witness this sickening spectacle is to KEEP IT THAT WAY. Don’t give in to the peer pressure; this abomination parading itself around as an endearing motion picture will wholly and truly rattle you to the core. My only solace was the complete absence of dabbing or whipping (apart from hearing the song), and I’d like to thank every deity above and below for that small act of mercy.

Here’s to you, Sony. Thanks for ensuring that I not only sink deeper into my depression, but for forcing my mind to house the images I’ve seen today for as long as I live. I wish I could physically bring myself to chuck my phone in a garbage fire, but my entire body has gone numb. Here’s to you, and to all the writers, producers, and directors of this movie that made me sit in a corner pondering how I can possibly live in a future where this monstrosity exists.

Gravely, sincerely,

fuck you, and goodnight.

🖕

#long post #rant #p #the emoji movie #emoji movie #FUUCKKKKKK.#I feel like banging my head against the wall until I pass out #food mention #I would appreciate it if any of you could recommend a good therapist #god knows I need the help #goodnight #2017 #tumblr keeps getting rid of readmores i'm really sorry if this takes up your dash

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