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fortune-fool02 · 4 years

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The Beast

Werewolf Speedwagon x female reader

Continuation of: Autumn Moon

Warnings: angst

Please enjoy.

Ever since they returned from the Gypsy camp, [Name] was unable to look at Speedwagon the same way. She had been so blind to all the evidence that laid around her but now she could see it clear as day. Speedwagon was the beast that has been terrorising the streets of Ogre Street for the past seven months.

How? How could he be that monster? Speedwagon was, despite his reputation, one of the sweetest men she has ever had the pleasure of meeting, to imagine him transforming into a merciless, ruthless beast every full moon was something that made her heart clench and her eyes prick with tears. There was an air of denial about it all that [Name] wanted to wrap herself in, not wanting to believe it but, with all the evidence laying before her, that sense was ripped away from her.

She hadn’t told him she knew, she didn’t know how to. Or maybe, she just didn’t want to believe it. Instead, she drowned herself in that book she was given, searching through each and every page for anything that could indicate to a possible cure or anything that could help him. Nothing of such a thing turned up. The closest it offered was a silver bullet to the chest or head, and that made the tears spill. No. There had to be another way that did not involve Speedwagon’s death. He may have killed others but [Name] refused to believe he did it willingly.

Closing the book, [Name] buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shook with soft sobs.

***

It stung lightly now. The imprint of the rosary burned into his palm was fading but it still stung slightly if he clenched his hand but the fact that it was there hurt more than one would think. Speedwagon did not ask to be this.... animal. He was not a religious man but he often wondered what wrong thing he did in his life to deserve such a horrific curse to be forced upon him.

He could still recall that night so vividly. The fog that engulfed the air, shrouding him entirely and robbing him of his sight. The bright glow of the autumn moon hanging over his head. That cold sensation of being watched. Then, that thing. It lunged at him from the fog, eyes burning with an animalistic hunger and rage that he had never seen before. Scorching agony struck his shoulder as the beast’s fangs sunk into his flesh, hot blood spilling down his arm as he tried to free himself from the monster’s grasp. The blade he kept tucked away in his coat drove through the side of its head, burying deep into its brain until it fell motionless.

Speedwagon remembered watching that thing change, the large beast breaking down into a man. That was what scared Speedwagon the most. That the man that laid where the monster once did was someone he knew. It was one of the guys of the Ogre Street gang, a new one who had recently moved to England from America. The shock and fear that consumed Speedwagon that night, though, was nothing for what was to come for him in the approaching weeks.

Images of those horrific nights plagued his dreams, the faces of those he had mercilessly slaughtered screaming out at him, their hot blood coating his body as he tore them limb from limb. Each time he awoke from those awful nights coated in blood that didn’t belong to him, he always feared who’s blood it was. And each time he feared he would go home to find his beloved nothing but a mangled corpse in the centre of the room. That was what he feared the most.

There have been too many nights where he has awoken in a cold sweat, gasping for air and almost chocking on tears as he was blinded by those nightmares. He would search for [Name] to often find her laying beside him peacefully. With that, he was always afraid of waking up one night to find her gone or a bloody mess.

The torment that he had endured had gotten to the point where he felt he could take no more. The barrel of the gun would be pressed against his forehead and his hands would shake violently as he wrenched his eyes shut, trying to force himself to pull the trigger and end all the torture. But he never could. He would always end up throwing the gun across the room and breaking down, cursing himself for being too weak to do anything. So if he was unable to do anything then he went to someone who he knew could. Johnathan Joestar.

With no way out of this Hell, Speedwagon had begged Johnathan to promise him that if he started to get too out of control, started killing too many people, then Johnathan would draw his weapon and kill him. The man was reluctant at first, the mere idea was horrible but the desperate, pleading look in Speedwagon’s eyes was enough to make him promise. So that was secured for Speedwagon if it became too much. He would rather be dead than kill his friends and the love of his life.

However, as he gazed out the window, watching as the sun slowly inched closer to the horizon, he could only pray that he didn’t kill someone he cared for. God, have mercy on his soul.

***

[Name] watched as the sun began to fade off in the distance, her fingertips gently brushing over the ring that he had given her long ago. A tightness clenched her chest, everything was so much brighter then. With a deep breath to calm herself, she turned and turned her gaze towards the stairs, knowing that Speedwagon was up there. She had to do this. She needed to let him know that, no matter what happened, she would still be there for him. Regardless of the situation, she loved Speedwagon with all her heart and the idea of him suffering was painful.

She made her way up the steps, each step making her heart clench more but she ignored it. She needed to be strong for both herself and Speedwagon. “Robert?” The blonde male looked up at the sound of his name to see his [Hair colour] lover standing in the doorway, a solemn expression on her face. His immediate instinct was to approach her and take her into his arms, the need to comfort her guiding his actions to do so.

She stood there, still as stone, which made him unsettled. “What’s wrong, darling?” he asked softly, gently rubbing her back as a gesture of comfort. She took a breath,

“I know.” Speedwagon’s eyes widened slightly, his heart drummed against his chest. No, wait, maybe she was talking about something else entirely. “I know... what you are.” Any hope that flickered in his body shattered at that. Cold, grasping fear took its place, spreading its branches throughout his body as he tightened his hold on her. Why? Why did he have to be the one who suffered?

He felt her arms raise up his body, pushing him away slightly only to cup his face softly. Their eyes locking. There was no fear in her [Eye colour] orbs, only a spiralling concern for him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked softly, her voice trying to remain calm in hopes to soothe Speedwagon. He tore his gaze away from her, forcing it to the floor with his head hanging in shame. A weight dropped on his shoulders that could have easily broken his spine if it wished to.

“I couldn’t....” he forced out, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m afraid, [Name]. I’m afraid of it.” He wasn’t just afraid of it, he was terrified of the monster that lurked beneath his skin, lingering in the back of his mind waiting to be freed as it scratched at his head. [Name] furrowed her brow with concern, she could hear the fear in his voice. She wrapped her arms around him again, holding him close.

“Robert, I love you. I will always love you no matter what, and I will do everything I can to help you through this.” she told him, pressing a kiss on his lips. Tears pricked his eyes. She was such an angel, he must have been blessed to have her in his life. She has been his light, his hope and his world long before this curse was inflicted upon him.

As the two held each other, a sudden piercing pain struck Speedwagon’s chest, forcing the blonde man to release her and clutch his chest. His eyes widening at the pain. No, no, no, no, not now!

“Robert?” [Name] took a step closer to him only for him to push her away, pained groans slipping his lips as a light sheen of sweat began to form on his brow.

“[Name]... go please...” he force out, his words mixing with low growls as he fell to the floor, curling up on himself in an attempt to almost hold himself down. The beast within has awoken and it was going to free itself. Nails sharpened into claws as his bones broke apart just to reform. [Name]’s eyes widened at this, fear flooding her body. Speedwagon groaned in pain, his head snapping up at [Name] as his chocolate brown eyes melted into a bright golden glow.

“Go! Get outta here! I-I can’t....” He forced his head down, feeling his teeth sharpen into fangs fit for a predator. “F-Find JoJo... H-He’ll protect you!” That snapped her from her trance and she did as he told her, and ran. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her, the pained screaming echoing behind her. Speedwagon could feel his humanity slipping away, the animalistic instincts taking its place as his transformation continued until there was nothing left of the man who was there. Only the beast.

The path was anything but smooth for the [Hair colour] female as she sprinted down it, hearing the bone-chilling howl of the beast. Find JoJo, Speedwagon’s voice echoed in her mind. [Name] knew where Johnathan lived ever since his manor burned down, and it wasn’t too far from there; but with the creature on her tail, it didn’t matter how close he was. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of a large, light furred creature giving chase after her. Golden eyes piercing through the darkness with snapping jaws that could crush bones with ease.

Fear ensnared her body, tears pricking her eyes as she ran. Her mind unfocused and all she could do was run, and shout for Johnathan, hoping that he would hear her. That just seemed to encourage the werewolf to catch her faster as it lunged at her, knocking her to the ground and pinning her there. The large clawed hand pushing against her chest and earning a crack from the bones, tears trickled down her face. Sharp fangs hovering dangerously close to her face.

“Robert, look at me,” she spoke, hoping that some part of the man she loved was in there somewhere. He had to be. [Eye colour] eyes looked into the golden eyes of the wolf, searching them for any trace of her Speedwagon. “Robert, please, look at me. This isn’t you.” A low growl rumbled from the beast, his jaws lowering closer to her face but [Name] refused to avert her gaze. Claws dug into her flesh and she cried in pain but remained strong.

“Please, Robert, please.” For a moment, the claws digging into her skin lightened along with the crushing pressure on her chest. The beast’s golden eyes softening slightly, filling [Name] with a new surge of hope. He could hear her. Her Robert was still in there! A weak smile lifted her lips. “T-That’s it, that’s it Robert. I know you’re in there.”

The beast gave a low sound that could be similar to that of a whine. An almost pained expression tracing the creature’s face. The crunching of footsteps caught their attention, growls spilling from the wolf’s jaws at the approaching figure. Johnathan’s eyes widened in horror at the sight.

“Speedwagon, no!” A threatening roar escaped the beast, any traces of that momentary softness of humanity vanishing far away. With a heavy heart, he drew his sword, resulting in the creature growling at him, aware of the threat being posed. The creature abandoned its intention to harm [Name] as its focus was now on the male. Johnathan brought his blade up, the wolf’s jaws clamping down on the metal as it forced him backwards, the inhuman strength proving to over-power Johnathan somewhat.

The creature claws sliced at Johnathan’s side, giving it the opening it needed to force the man down to the ground, and ripping the sword from Johnathan’s grasp. Johnathan’s hands pressed against the beast’s jaws, avoiding the fangs but trying to keep it from biting down at his throat. As the beast’s jaws threw back and aimed for his throat, a pained howl ripped from it, making it throw its head back.

Tears spilled down [Name]’s cheeks, Johnathan’s sword in her hands as the blade dug into the creature’s abdomen. Blood trickling from the wound,

“I-I’m sorry, Robert.” [Name] chocked before pulling the blade from his abdomen, with nothing to support him, the creature fell to the ground beside Johnathan. The sword fell from her hands as she fell to her knees, watching as the creature reverted back into the man she loved. She took him into her arms, tears trickling down her face.

Speedwagon coughed, his chocolate brown eyes looking up at [Name], a weak smile lifting his lips as he took her hand into his. “T-Thank you, love.” She had done it. She had stopped him from hurting others. She had saved him from the beast.

[Name] sniffed lightly before leaning down and pressing a kiss on his lips, and feeling his last breath brush against her lips. Sobs shook her body as she lowered her head into his neck. Johnathan also felt tears prick his eyes for the loss of one of his dearest friends. He kneeled beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder in comfort.

***

Johnathan returned home after helping [Name] bury Speedwagon. It was no easy task but, then again, when is burying your friend? As Johnathan removed his jumper, a sharp pain struck his shoulder. He lowered his shirt and felt his eyes widen.

A bite mark.

#speedwagon #robert e o speedwagon #jojo bizarre adventure #speedwagon x reader #robert e o speedwagon x reader #jojo bizzare adventure x reader #jojo #jojo x reader #speedwagon jojo #phantom blood #phantom blood x reader #jojo phantom blood #werewolf au #werewolf speedwagon

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lets-talk-story · 5 years

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Pied Piper of Hamelin

Hamelin town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The River Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see townsfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity.

Rats! They fought the dogs, and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats, By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: "'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation -- shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease? Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sate in council, At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain -- I'm sure my poor head aches again I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber-door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "What's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle, green and glutinous.) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

"Come in!" -- the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red; And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in -- There was no guessing his kith and kin! And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!"

He advanced to the council-table: And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep, or swim, or fly, or run, After me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole, and toad, and newt, and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper." (And here they noticed round his neck A scarf of red and yellow stripe, To match with his coat of selfsame cheque; And at the scarf's end hung a pipe; And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying As if impatient to be playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture, so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; I eased in Asia the Nizam Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats: And, as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!" -- was the exclamation Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling: Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives -- Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped, advancing, And step for step, they followed, dancing, Until they came to the river Weser Wherein all plunged and perished -- Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider press's gripe: And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And the drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks; And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, Oh rats, rejoice! The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon! And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, All ready staved, like a great sun shone Glorious scarce an inch before me, Just as methought it said, 'Come, bore me!' -- I found the Weser rolling o'er me."

You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles! Poke out the nests and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in our town not even a trace Of the rats!" -- when suddenly up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation, too. For council dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But, as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Beside, our losses have made us thrifty: A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!"

The Piper's face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait, beside! I've promised to visit, by dinner-time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: With him I proved no bargain-driver, With you, don't think I'll bait a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe to another fashion."

"How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I brook Being worse treated than a cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe there till you burst!"

Once more he stept into the street; And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering, And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running. All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to move a step, or cry To the children merrily skipping by, -- Could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. But how the Mayor was on the rack, And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, As the Piper turned from the High Street To where the Weser rolled its waters Right in the way of their sons and daughters! However he turned from South to West, And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, And after him the children pressed; Great was the joy in every breast. "He never can cross that mighty top! He's forced to let the piping drop, And we shall see our children stop!" When, lo! as they reached the mountain-side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say, all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say, -- "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! I can't forget that I'm bereft Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the Piper also promised me; For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, Joining the town and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new; The sparrows were brighter than the peacocks here, And their dogs outran our fallow deer, And honey-bees had lost their stings, And horses were born with eagles' wings; And just as I became assured My lame foot would be speedily cured, The music stopped and I stood still, And found myself outside the hill, Left alone against my will, To go now limping as before, And never hear of that country more!"

Alas, alas for Hamelin! There came into many a burgher's pate A text which says, that heaven's Gate Opes to the rich at as easy rate As the needle's eye takes a camel in! The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South To offer the Piper by word of mouth, Wherever it was men's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And bring the children behind him. But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor, And Piper and dancers were gone forever, They made a decree that lawyers never Should think their records dated duly If, after the day of the month and year, These words did not as well appear, "And so long after what happened here On the Twenty-second of July, Thirteen hundred and Seventy-six;" And the better in memory to fix The place of the children's last retreat, They called it, the Pied Piper's Street -- Where any one playing on pipe or tabor Was sure for the future to lose his labor. Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern To shock with mirth a street so solemn; But opposite the place of the cavern They wrote the story on a column, And on the great church-window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away, And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe Of alien people that ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbors lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they don't understand.

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers Of scores out with all men -- especially pipers; And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise.

#pied piper #pied piper of hamelin #poem #nursery rhymes #poetry #mice #children #music

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dorkforty · 6 years

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Art by Tom Kelly: https://tomkellyart.deviantart.com/gallery/

So it’s been a while since we did any Fantastic Four Re-Mix. A full year, in fact. What can I say? I hit a snag in the plot and let myself get tripped up on it. And I’ve always felt just slightly silly doing these things, anyway, so it seemed better to just wander off. But I re-read the earlier chapters recently, and realized that I liked them quite a bit. That lead me back in, and I had enough story left to tell that I decided to unsnarl my plot and keep going.

(And then, of course, they announced this week that they’re finally launching a new Fantastic Four book this summer. So I figured that, if I was going to finish this thing, I needed to go ahead and do it.)

But like I said… It’s been a while. So I suppose some explanations are in order. If this is your first time encountering the Fantastic Four Remix, for instance, I’m sure you have some questions…

WHAT IS IT? A far-more-complicated-than-I-imagined working-through of some ideas I had to relaunch the Fantastic Four from scratch, in the present-day.

WHY WOULD ANYONE DO SUCH A THING? Because I love the Fantastic Four. And since there hasn’t been an FF book in a while, I figured I might as well fill the gap.

WHY NOT JUST WRITE STORIES THEN, YOU FREAK? Because I had a lot of ground I wanted to cover, and wasn’t willing to devote that much time to writing characters I don’t own without getting paid for it. I love my readers, but I don’t love them THAT much.

IF YOU REALLY LOVED US, YOU’D WRITE MORE FUNNYBOOK REVIEWS! Piss off! I’m just having fun here, okay?! Gahd! Get off my back!

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT. SO WHERE COULD I READ THE REST OF THIS NONSENSE? IF I WAS INTERESTED? WHICH I’M NOT. Nope. Sorry. Not gonna tell ya. You were rude.

OH FOR GOD’S SAKE! I’M SORRY, OKAY? I’D REALLY LIKE TO READ THEM. IF ONLY TO SEE HOW STUPID YOU ARE. Well… Okay. Previous chapters of the FF Remix can be found here:

https://dorkforty.wordpress.com/tag/fantastic-four-remix/

ALRIGHT, THEN! Alright!

Ahem. Sorry about that. These new readers can be SO touchy. For the rest of you, though…

WHAT HAS COME BEFORE: Oh, lots of stuff. I am nothing if not a complicated plotter. To really steep yourself in all the various details, you’d have to go back and read the whole thing. I’ll try to fill in background where I can, but here’s a rough overall picture to get you started:

Reed Richards put together a team for a mission to explore the Negative Zone: Ben Grimm (pilot)! Johnny Storm (mechanic)! Susan Storm (the journalist who tells their story to the world)! But upon arrival, they collided with an alien artifact and were bombarded with THE POWER COSMIC! This gave them their familiar powers as the Fantastic Four. They uncover a SECRET INVASION plot by the shape-shifting alien SKRULL, which is an on-going subplot. Reed’s friendly rival VICTOR VON DOOM hires the team to test his experimental TIME PLATFORM, and in the process, Ben becomes Blackbeard (dubbed THINGBEARD by Johnny)…

…an incident that’s still echoing through the story now. Doom is a continuing character in the Re-Mix, a villainous foil to the team, ala John Bryne’s Lex Luthor. He has an on-going scheme to wrest control of Latveria from the tyrannical regime that killed his gypsy family, and a growing suspicion that the FF represent a dangerous threat to mankind that must be eliminated. Likewise, PRINCE NAMOR the SUBMARINER is a continuing character, a noble-but-arrogant anti-hero type who has until recently been romancing Sue. As in the original story, he was discovered as a wandering amnesiac, who’d been missing since the end of World War II. But he’s since found lost Atlantis, saved it from the barbarian Attuma, and been rejected as their monarch (they adopted democracy in his absence). He’s currently serving as Atlantis’ ambassador to the UN, and is romantically entangled with the Lady Dorma.

Re-Mix Dorma is the former consort of Attuma, a fierce barbarian woman tossed aside in favor of “soft Atlantean women” when Attuma conquered Atlantis. She helped Namor defeat him, and has since been wrapped up in a quadrangle of sorts with Reed, Sue, and Namor (weird romance having become an unexpected theme of the Re-Mix). That’s all ended recently, and Reed and Sue are finally starting to look like they might get together after all (though throwing roadblocks in front of that inevitable relationship has been perversely pleasing, and I’m not quite done doing it yet).

But, Dorma. I’ve been struggling to find a decent image that matched the slightly unearthly look I wanted for her (and the Atlanteans in general), but here’s a Photoshop job I stumbled across recently that does a fair job of it. I couldn’t find reference to the artist, unfortunately. But the eyes are really striking, I think:

At any rate.

In recent issues, the Thing was captured by THE INHUMANS, who want to put him on trial for the murder of a crew of Inhuman scouts back during the THINGBEARD INCIDENT. That murder didn’t happen, however, so the rest of the team freed him, causing incredible strife within the Inhuman ruling class in the process, and then escaped from the SECRET CITY OF ATILLAN with the queen’s little sister CRYSTAL in tow. They were pursued by KARNAK and GORGON, but then there was a whole huge incident with the newly-awakened FIN FANG FOOM, and everybody teamed up to deal with it. In the aftermath, Karnak shook Ben’s hand… AND SPLIT HIM IN HALF WITH THE DEADLY ONE-INCH PUNCH! Quickly teleporting out with the aid of Lockjaw, Karnak informed the team that they were welcome to offer up a defense of Ben at his trial, in one week’s time. And that’s where we pick the story up now…

ARC FOURTEEN: THE TRIAL OF THE THING!

This will be a two-pronged arc, with one side giving a more realistic picture of Inhuman society as Crystal and Johnny return to Attilan to prepare for Ben’s trial, and the other following Reed and Sue as they search for evidence of what happened to the Inhuman scouts. But first…

PART ONE: INTERLUDE

After the all-out action of the last story arc, we take an issue to catch up with the supporting cast and our various subplots:

When last we saw Frankie Raye (Johnny Storm’s girlfriend/rival on the outlaw racing circuit)…

…she’d had a drunken make-out session with rival driver Tura. Frankie broke it off before things got too heavy, but she’s still a little shaken up by it. For one thing, she’s surprised at herself for showing such loyalty to Johnny. I mean, they’re just havin’ some fun, right? RIGHT? Hurm. Heading to the garage the next morning, she hopes to commiserate with her BFF/mechanic Wyatt Wingfoot, but instead walks in on him in the aftermath of a night of passion with Jean-Paul Valley, driver for the Northern Lights racing team (who, in another world, is the mutant super hero Northstar). This is primarily a comedic scene, but Frankie’s confusion and frustration plays off Johnny’s increasing infatuation with Crystal, setting up the inevitable triangle.

Meanwhile, Namor sponsors the Latverian rebels in their bid to be recognized by the UN. It’s a controversial choice, considering Namor’s attack on the country’s legal government alongside Latverian expatriate Dr. Doom. But Namor handles the situation with an uncharacteristic elegance, explaining that his attack is what first brought the rebels’ plight to his attention. “My actions were misguided, based on poor intelligence about a Latverian attack on Atlantis. But the Hammerfell government is tyrannical nonetheless. And just as we in Atlantis have learned to embrace democracy, I believe that the Latverian people deserve the same chance.”

Alicia Masters (blind sculptress, lady friend of the Thing, and possible Skrull) gets a visit from her father Phillip (aka the Puppet Master, a famous stage puppeteer, and a secret Skrull agent).

As he promised he would, Phillip asks Alicia if she’d have a word with the FF about making a public appearance with Gabriel (charismatic evangelist and anti-Skrull activist). Alicia looks suspicious (“Dad, what are you up to?!”), but he assures her it’s all on the up and up. “Nobody wants the Skrull off Earth more than me, honey. You know that.” The two of them exchange a meaningful look, but Alicia remains ill at ease.

Of course, WE know that Masters only met with Gabriel to give his psychoactive clay time to bond, so that he could make a puppet of the man, under orders from the Skrull high command. But Alicia evidently does not. How much she knows or doesn’t know is – hopefully – the subject of much reader speculation at this point.

We also get back to the mysterious Men in Black (who’ve been going around asking questions about the FF for purposes unknown). Somewhere in the American Midwest, the dark-haired Man in Black (the one who seems to disapprove of the team) approaches a tidy home in a small town. The name on the mailbox reads “Grimm.” A sturdily-built elderly woman answers the door. Tall, with steel-gray hair, she’s a handsome woman in spite of her age (think Big Barda as somebody’s grandma). She’s wearing a leather workman’s apron, with a pair of leather gloves tucked into the waist and a pair of safety goggles resting on her head. “Miss Petunia Grimm? I’d like to ask you some questions about your nephew…”

CUT back to Namor, relaxing in his chambers with Dorma after his speech. He expresses distaste with it. “Embracing Democracy,” it seems, is not really something he’s very interested in. Dorma (ever conniving) soothes him, reassuring him that the deception, though necessary for diplomacy, will only be temporary. “If Doom can really deliver on his promises, darling, you’ll be back on the throne again soon. And then you need never worry about lying again.” They kiss, but their embrace is interrupted by a call from Hong Kong. Namor’s annoyance turns to shock, however, when hears a voice he never thought he’d hear again: his cousin Namora, ruler of the Atlantean splinter city of Pacifica, and protector of the Pacific Rim!

(She was introduced in the Fin Fang Foom arc, but that’s wwaaayy too complicated to explain here.)

The issue closes on Dr. Doom, watching news coverage of Namor’s UN speech from multiple different international sources, to gauge world-wide reaction to his scheme. His phone rings (though a phone seems like an awfully prosaic device for Doom to be using – maybe it’s some kind of cell access built into his mask?). It’s his lawyers, telling him that his strategy for dealing with the charges against him for his part in Namor’s attack on Latveria (long story) has worked. There are a few details left to clean up, but it looks like he’ll walk away clean. Pleased, Doom turns to a computer screen and opens a document labeled “Time Drone Analytics: Latverian Overthrow Stage Two.” His reverie is interrupted, however, by an unexpected visit from Reed Richards and Susan Storm!

REED: “We need your Time Platform, Victor! Lives may depend on it!”

TO BE CONTINUED!!

TWO: HOMECOMING

This issue deals with Crystal and Johnny, returning to Attilan to prepare for the trial. Its events take place over the course of a week, as they get things in order and await Reed and Sue’s return, hopefully with evidence that will clear the Thing.

It’s an awkward homecoming for Crystal; when she fled the city with the FF, she flouted generations of cultural tradition, and abandoned her duty to Inhuman society, as well (she was betrothed to Triton, Lord of the Undersea, and Black Bolt’s only equal). If it weren’t for Karnak’s judgment of her moral superiority in the Fin Fang Foom incident, she might be tossed in a cell upon her return. But Karnak’s word holds much sway, and so she is tolerated, if not welcomed back with open arms. Her sister Medusa, in particular, treats her coldly.

Visual Note: I haven’t found many Inhumans redesigns I liked all that much, but here’s a Crystal design I stumbled across that I do like. It’s alien, but still attractive, and the pose gives her a bit more fire to boot:

It’s through these various conflicts that we gain a more balanced view of Inhuman society. Black Bolt is far from the tyrant he seemed in the first Inhumans arc. He actually rules wisely and justly, and is beloved by his people. Gorgon is revealed as a melancholy poet, rather than the brute he pretended to be in pursuit of the FF. And Karnak… His final attack on the Thing has filled him with guilt and (worse for a man of his station and abilities) doubt. He spends every minute in deep meditation, emerging only to tend Ben’s wounds.

Ben, for his part, is doing as well as can be expected. After the attack, he’s undergone a shocking physical change: his rocky outer shell having been split in half by Karnak, his body shed it like a crushed fingernail, revealing a soft “nail bed” beneath. His exposed flesh is reddish-orange and very sensitive to touch. Inhuman medicine has helped as much as possible, but he’s still obviously quite uncomfortable. He faces it with a surprising humor, however, and little of the self-pity that’s haunted him since his transformation. Over the course of the week, he endears himself to many in Attilan, and eventually confesses to Johnny that he feels comfortable there. “For once, I’m not the ugliest guy in the room.”

Part of Ben’s change stems from the time he spends with Karnak. He applies healing unguents to Ben’s sensitive flesh, his abilities allowing him to apply the medications with only the slightest discomfort. But he also teaches Ben some of his meditative techniques, teaching him how to mentally overcome the pain, and in the process, helps him find peace within himself. (Note: this is a good opportunity for some cool trippy visuals. Specifically, some of Ben’s meditations could be built around the patterns of the Thing’s rocky hide.)

Meanwhile, Medusa, Crystal, and Johnny travel with Lockjaw to contact and gather witnesses. Black Bolt (speaking, as always, through Medusa) places a strict limit on the number of outsiders allowed into Attilan, however, and vetoes any of Ben’s military buddies, arguing that agents of human governments would be beholden to reveal Attilan’s existence to their superiors. That leaves them with three options: Alicia Masters, Ben Baxter (builder/owner of the Baxter Building, and mentor to Reed), and (gathered at Ben’s suggestion) his Aunt Petunia. Alicia and Petunia come immediately, with the others agreeing to testify on the day of the trial.

We see Johnny and Crystal grow closer through all of this. His attraction is obvious, and he makes her laugh in a situation that’s otherwise very difficult for her. Triton (to whom Crystal is still technically betrothed) stands between them, making Johnny reluctant to act on his feelings. But Triton hasn’t been seen in the upper city since the confrontation in Black Bolt’s throne room, and Crystal hasn’t attempted to contact him. Her desire for freedom has only intensified since her Terrigenesis, her emotions coming more and more to mirror the tempestuousness of her elemental powers. Eventually, as the week is winding down, she makes the first move. They kiss… And are interrupted by Medusa.

In a cold fury, she informs them that, even though Reed and Sue have not returned, the trial will go on as scheduled. And Crystal has been assigned to speak for the defense.

TO BE CONTINUED!!

THREE: PLUNDER

So where the hell are Reed and Sue? The next two issues answer that question.

We open with the two of them, and Dr. Doom, preparing for a jaunt into THINGBEARD TIMES to discover the fate of the Inhuman pirates Ben is accused of murdering. They’re dressed in clothing appropriate to the era, with Doom in his more subdued “Phantom of the Opera” style mask (Re-Mix Doom has several different costume variations to suit various social situations), and a few subtle accouterments that function like his full armor, but at only a fraction of the full suit’s power level.

(I’m told these are props from one of the bad FF movies, but they give you the general idea.)

He’s also improved his Time Platform since the last time we saw it, moving on from the prototype to something more streamlined and easier to control. He’s agreed to let them use it, but only on the condition that he himself goes with them, to ensure that they do nothing to alter history… “this time.”

(In flashback, we see how Reed and Sue got from Hong Kong to New York so quickly: they hitched a ride with Aged Genghis, who transported them magically back to the Baxter Building. When they thank him for his aid, he just smiles a vacant smile and says, “Anything for Wise Grimm.” Then he disappears in a puff of smoke.)

And so they’re off! Reed has brought along a sensor device that he’s attuned to detect Terrigen energies, which he hopes to use to find the Inhuman ship and its cargo. But first, they need some idea of where to start looking. That trail begins with the historical Blackbeard, Edward Teach (who capitalized on the fear surrounding the Thingbeard Incident to take the name for himself). Teach has no idea where the Inhuman crew is, but he gives them the name of another pirate who might: Lord Plunder, who’s most likely to be found across the Atlantic along the Gold Coast of Africa.

(Plunder is, of course, a long-standing Marvel name. If you want to assume this guy’s an ancestor of Ka-Zar, I’m not gonna stop you.)

They find Plunder freshly-returned from a trip to the Savage Land, selling live velociraptors to the highest bidder. They attend the auction, hoping to use it as an in to get information out of Plunder. Reed places bids (much to Doom’s chagrin – that could alter history, after all). But luckily, he’s outbid by… THE BLACK PANTHER! This is our first glimpse of the Panther, an ancestor of the modern-day T’Challa (who we’ll see in a later arc). He uses the raptors to destroy a slave port and free some captured Wakandans. Our Heroes get swept up in that action, aiding the Panther, but being helpless to stop the carnage he unleashes in the attack. Once that’s resolved, Plunder tells them what he knows. He has done business with the Inhuman crew in the past, but last he knew, they were heading round the Cape of Good Hope and back up toward Singapore.

An aside: Among Plunder’s crew is a Savage Land native who bears a striking resemblance to Reed’s mother. Reed (who spent time in the Savage Land when his parents took him there as a child) speaks to her in her own language, asking about her heritage. She tells him that her grandparents came to the Savage Land mysteriously one day, and disappeared just as mysteriously when she was a child. And Reed, she says, looks a lot like her grandfather… (TO BE CONTINUED!!)

(Note: Other Marvel Comics pirates who could be in Plunder’s crew: Patience Drew (aka the Queen of Spiders) Jebediah Fate (an immortal) Long John McGurk (a stranded space alien) Raza Longknife (another stranded alien, posing as a Pacific Islander) Jim Spliny, Black Mike, Maura Hawke, Slug McCarthy, Fredric Falkon, Heinrich Von Grubb

Most of these would just be easter eggs, names assigned to various background characters. But since I crawled down an interweb rabbit hole to get them, I thought I should share.)

FOUR: SHIPWRECKED

Plunder’s information leads Our Heroes to the South Pacific, and the Terrigen detector leads them to the future Monster Island, where they find the Inhuman ship run aground. There’s no sign of life, or of the ship’s Terrigen cargo.

Reed, Sue, and Doom split up to search the island for clues. Reed heads immediately to the volcano at the island’s center, and confirms his suspicions: the Terrigen has already been dumped inside. Searching for the cave the team found in the last storyline, he also finds the dormant Fin Fang Foom slumbering in peace, the Terrigen’s mutagenic effects not yet birthing monsters from his flesh.

Doom, meanwhile, finds a survivor of the shipwreck in the jungle. He’s just finished covering up a mass grave, in which he’s buried the bodies of his fellow crewmen. Delirious and half-crazed, he tells Doom the story of how the ship came to be there. They were caught up in a vicious storm, the worst any of them had ever seen. Conditions were so bad that communications with Attilan became impossible, and they feared they might be lost at sea. Struggling to keep afloat, they were then set upon by an armored warrior who came out of the storm itself and slaughtered everyone. This lone survivor lived only because he was pulled overboard during the attack, and brought to the island. He was delirious through much of the experience, but he claims that his benefactor was the man who helped them retrieve the Terrigen cargo in America: Benjamin J. Grimm, the man they dubbed Blackbeard!

Because, again, I can’t post this picture enough.

Elsewhere, Sue explores the wreck of the ship. Using her ability to make other things invisible, she looks around for secret compartments, or even just things they might have overlooked on their quick initial search. After poking around a bit, she finds the ship’s log tucked away in the captain’s quarters. It confirms the FF’s departure (Reed coming off far worse than Ben), then reveals the same story just told to Doom, but (crucially) ending before the arrival of the armored warrior. She finds a knapsack among the captain’s gear, puts the book in it, and is about to leave, but stops when she hears something. Turning toward what appears to be an ordinary part of the ship’s hull, she reaches out to make it invisible. We don’t see what’s inside, but she gasps as we…

CUT to the jungle, where Doom pumps the pirate for more information. But, exhausted from his exertions and nearly dead from exposure, he instead collapses into Doom’s arms. Doom lowers him to the ground and, holding him in a soothing manner, calmly snaps the pirate’s neck.

CUT back to Sue as she exits the ship, carrying the knapsack, but nothing else. She seems pensive, but none the worse for wear. Reed’s arriving on the beach at the same time, and, brandishing the bag, Sue tells him that she thinks she’s found what they need to clear Ben. Doom, however, is nowhere to be found.

CUT to Doom, emerging from the Time Platform back in his Time Lab in the present. Stepping calmly to a computer console, he begins reviewing records of previous time jaunts, revealing that he was the one who killed the Inhuman crew! He was positive, in fact, that he’d gotten them all. But his review of the tapes reveals something he’d missed in the heat of the battle: a scaly orange hand pulling one cowering pirate overboard, and away from Doom’s wrath.

“Grimm,” he says. “Obviously more resourceful than I gave him credit for.”

He pauses, thinking. Weighing his options. Then he goes over to the Time Platform control panel, and cuts the tether to Reed and Sue.

CUT to the two of them on the beach, at the exact moment we last saw them. Suddenly, they’re ripped out of spacetime, screaming in a psychedelic void.

TO BE CONTINUED!!

FIVE: MADNESS

A Few Words on Inhuman Justice: In a society that regularly spawns psychics and empaths, it strikes me that trials would work a bit differently. The truth of any testimony could be determined on the spot. But because memory is faulty, truth is relative. Two different people can testify to the same events, tell different stories, and both be truthful according to how they remember things happening. So the Inhumans depend on something I’m calling “Psychic Forensics.” A jury of psychic sensitives listens to testimony from as large a pool of witnesses as possible, and collates all the various stories into one narrative that’s then accepted as truth. Hard evidence trumps this, of course, and the arguments of the prosecution and defense can help shape these narratives, as well. But in a case like Ben’s, where there is no hard evidence due to the great length of time that’s passed, testimonial truth is enough to convict.

That would seem to make this a simple matter, then. Both Ben and Johnny were there when Reed forcibly removed Ben from the Inhuman ship, when the crew was still very much alive. But things are more complicated than they appear…

(Storytelling Note: We get varying degrees of detail on all testimony, seeing it filtered through the lens of the psychic jury. This allows for some trippy visuals (always a good thing), but also for us to avoid going into too much detail about things the reader already knows. So it’s conveyed through snippets of dialogue, flashback, and warped, hazy remembrances shaded by each speaker’s own perspective.)

The trial begins at dawn. Black Bolt serves as judge, with Medusa as prosecutor, and Crystal on defense. Karnak sits at the head of the jury, vigilant for flaws in their understanding of events. The prosecution goes first, establishing their case against the accused, leaving the defense to argue against once the case has been laid out.

Medusa opens by calling Ben and Johnny to the stand. They testify to their leaving the ship, and are found to be telling the truth. But Medusa seems unperturbed, and presses on to establish Ben’s history of violence, arguing that he is not always in his right mind, or in complete control of his own actions.

Petunia fills in some childhood background on Ben. She raised him from around age 10, when his parents were killed in a car accident. Young Ben struggled with depression and anger throughout his adolescence, constantly getting into fights and becoming increasingly aggressive before finally finding an outlet for it in football. Johnny and Bob Baxter pick up the narrative with the Breach Craft team, and Ben’s history as The Thing, with Medusa emphasizing his erratic behavior throughout.

She finishes this line of questioning with Ben’s most recent rampage, when he was (unknown to anyone) under the control of the Puppet Master. Ben himself testifies to that incident, and his memory of it is fractured and hazy. He remembers only parts of it, and in those memories he’s like a spectator to his own actions, watching impassively while his body does things of its own accord.

We give special focus to Karnak during this testimony. Something is troubling him, but he’s not quite sure what. Everyone else, though, is shaken. The team’s been buffeted from adventure to adventure so much since this last rampage that none of them have taken time to really think about it. But when it’s laid out like this… There’s clearly something wrong with him. Even Ben himself starts to wonder if he’s too unstable to be allowed to roam free.

Her argument having been rather convincingly made, Medusa then closes the first day of the trial by lowering the boom: her ally Victor Von Doom (who, like Reed and Sue, is unavailable for testimony) has given her Time Drone video footage, which she shows to the court. It mirrors that of the footage we saw at the end of last issue, with the Inhuman ship in the midst of a terrible storm. But instead of Doom slaughtering the crew, it’s Ben!

This, Medusa argues, is incontrovertible proof. Not that Ben killed their scouts during the Thingbeard Incident, but that he WILL do so, in some future time jaunt rampage that’s yet to happen. The question before the court, then, is not one of guilt or innocence. It’s whether they will execute him for crimes he has yet to commit, or prevent him from committing them in the first place, by simply imprisoning him in Attilan… forever!

SIX: REVELATIONS

We pick up the night after Medusa’s devastating prosecution argument. The first day of the trial has ended with things not looking good for Ben. Alicia tries to comfort him, but he’s fallen into despair. He no longer trusts his own sanity, and tells her to leave. “I might hurt ya, baby, and not even know it. So scram. Get outta here. Go back to New York and forget you ever knew me.” But she’s not having any of it. She knew the risk when she started dating him, and honestly kind of likes it. “So you don’t get to push me away, you big orange bastard. Not over this.”

CUT to Crystal’s chambers. Medusa comes for a visit, and they have it out over Crystal’s abandonment of her duty to Attilan (and Triton) over what Medusa calls “lust for a pretty young human boy.” Crystal bristles at that (visual note: her elemental powers flare up around her dramatically when she gets mad), but ultimately Medusa’s concern is well-intended. She doesn’t want to see her sister become an outcast because of a youthful indiscretion. They part on better terms, but Crystal is left confused and upset. She doesn’t want to marry Triton, but should she really throw her lot in with a bunch of outsiders because of that? She worries about her sympathies in her upcoming defense, as we…

CUT to Karnak, deep in meditation once again, replaying Ben’s testimony in his head with the aid of an elderly Inhuman named RANDAC the ORACLE, an experienced and highly-skilled psychic. Karnak doesn’t believe that Ben was lying, but he noticed something, and its exact nature escaped him. But now, with Randac’s aid, he spots it: a flash of something, just as Ben is talking about blacking out in advance of his last rampage.

Visual note: the “flash” could be expressed as a very narrow panel, showing a sliver of whatever it is he gets the impression of, but not enough to identify it. They continue working to uncover it, through the night and all the way until…

DAWN! Though Karnak has sent word that he is unable to serve with the jury, the trial continues, and Crystal begins her defense. She starts by casting doubt on Doom’s video. Johnny testifies to the bad intelligence Doom gave Namor (which caused Namor’s ill-advised attack on Latveria), and Baxter reveals Doom’s threat to “deal with” the FF if he ever deemed them too dangerous to live. “Without this man here to submit to questioning, the truth of his work can’t be confirmed! So can we really condemn Benjamin Grimm to death for a crime that even the prosecution admits he has not yet committed?”

CUT to Karnak, zeroing in, the narrow flash panel getting wider… wider… but still not wide enough.

BACK to the courtroom! Crystal cites Ben’s many acts of heroism, and explains the torment his transformation has caused him (something the Inhumans, whose entire culture is built around such transformations, don’t really understand at all). Johnny and Bob Baxter act as character witnesses, guided now to discuss Ben’s positive qualities. They admit to Ben’s instability, but stress the great good he’s done, and can still do. This terrible future – if that video does, indeed, show the future – can still be averted with the support of friends and advisors, and a woman who loves him.

That’s Alicia’s cue to take the stand, and she gives eloquent testimony to Ben’s heroic soul. Even Medusa seems moved by it. In the background, we see an Inhuman court official conducting a genetic scan on her (as he’s done for every other witness), looking first puzzled, and eventually alarmed. Just as she finishes her speech, the Gene Lord leaps to his feet, and makes a shocking proclamation: “THIS WOMAN IS A SKRULL!”

CUT to Karnak. Finally, something clicks, and the flash panel stands fully revealed: it’s Alicia’s first statue of Ben!

BACK to the courtroom! Alicia tells her story. Sent to Earth as a far advance scout decades ago, Phillip Masters (the Puppet Master) settled, married a human woman, and gave birth to a daughter: Alicia herself. Her parents kept her father’s true nature from her until she hit puberty, when her Skrull genes began to manifest. Full shape-shifting isn’t possible for her, but she can slightly alter her form by shifting mass from one part of her body to another. It’s useful for retrieving things she’s dropped into tight spaces (and for her love life with Ben), but otherwise it’s not something she even thinks about very much. As far as she’s concerned, she’s human.

She knows nothing of the Skrull beyond that. As far as she knows, her father severed ties with his people after she was born, and hasn’t worked for them since. She doesn’t know the details, but he’s told her not to worry. His loyalty lies with her, and her loyalty lies with Earth. The jury verifies the truth of her statements, but the revelation still unsettles the courtroom. Alicia looks plaintively at Ben, but his expression is impossible to read.

Black Bolt signals for a recess, but before court can adjourn, there’s a flash of energy as a portal opens in the center of the room. Out of it step an elderly Reed Richards and Susan Storm, dressed in primitive tribal garb, and seeming to have aged 40 years since their departure. With them is a strange young woman, tall and thin, with pale green skin and bulbous black eyes. Reed is holding a device that looks like a modified version of one of Doom’s Time Platform remotes. He turns a dial on it, then looks around and smiles. “We made it, Sue! We finally made it!”

The portal collapses behind them, and Sue steps forward, holding the knapsack she collected from the Inhuman pirate ship. “Lord Black Bolt. We apologize for our tardiness. There were… difficulties on the road. But we have important information for the court!”

TO BE CONTINUED!!

And that, believe it or not, concludes The Trial of the Thing. Yes, there are still issues to be resolved. But the story goes somewhere else for a while first, so that’s what we’ll deal with next time. For now, though, all we’re left with are…

ARC FOURTEEN NOTES

The long break between posts masks this somewhat, but I’m slightly concerned that I may be giving the audience “adventure fatigue.” I very much wanted to emulate the great Steve Ditko Dr. Strange run through this part of the Re-Mix, with its string of endless cliffhangers, new creations, and excitement. But readers eventually need an ending, and we’re now roughly 26 issues into never-ending adventure. Seriously. We’ve gone from the introduction of the Frightful Four (6 issues) to the introduction of the Inhumans (6 issues) to Fin Fang Foom (8 issues) to the trial (6 issues), with each arc rolling right into the next, and the only true resolution being the defeat of Foom.

Even I’m getting tired at this point, which may be an additional reason I stalled out on the series last year. So I think it may be time to wrap things up a bit. I still have a good bit of story left to tell before I’m done with my ideas for the Re-Mix, but it might be wise to have some clear beginning-middle-and-end arcs before we launch off into the grand finale.

(An aside: I just went back and did a rough issue count for the Re-Mix to date. This arc takes us up to issue 82! Insanity! I had originally thought this might take around 100 issues total, but I’ve got enough for another 50, easy. More, if I explore a few half-formed side concepts along the way. Hmm. Maybe I should go for 200 instead. Hmm…)

One last thing: In re-reading the previous installments of this series, I became acutely aware that I haven’t focused enough on Sue. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s our narrator, so we’re getting her perspective on everything as we go. But I had this idea at the outset that she would become more self-confident as time went on, and that her powers would grow accordingly. But she doesn’t even have her force fields yet! So I need to give her some attention. And soon.

But speaking of the future…

In Our Next Exciting Episode: Adventures in Time and Introspection! Past Peace and Future War! Politics! Wakanda! Plus… INFINITE THINGBEARD!

Fantastic Four Re-Mix, Part Seven: The Trial of the Thing! So it's been a while since we did any Fantastic Four Re-Mix. A full year, in fact.

#comic books #Crystal #Dr Doom #fan fiction #Fantastic Four #Fantastic Four Remix #Inhumans #Lord Plunder #Namor #The Thing #Thingbeard

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ageeksnerdyworld · 7 years

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I have to rant about WWII movies. Specifically Holocaust movies. You know what we need? Holocaust movies not about Jews. They weren’t the only people to go through it. They weren’t the only people to die. Most of the people who went through the Holocaust were actually Romani gypsies. They suffered the exact same prosecution that the Jewish people did. Were considered not even human and worse than garbage. Hitler targeted them in his speeches too. They also were sent to the death camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor & Treblinka. They were also sent to concentration camps: Buchenwald, Dachau, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, & Begern-Belsen. Same went for any other minority group: the disabled, mentally ill, twins, dwarfs, Slavs, blacks, LGBTQA, autistic people, priests, anarchists, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles & resistance fighters.

And does anybody care?!?! No.

Why?? Because most people believe Hitler only targeted Jews. Most people don’t know that all these other groups were also targeted. That black people also suffered under the Nuremberg Laws. Hitler targeted every minority group. Targeted anyone and everyone who was different.

5 million total non-Jewish people died during the Holocaust. (That is the official number but many historians believe it should be more closer)

Do their stories get told? Do you learn about them in your history classes? Are movies made about the Slavic people who were in the camps? Are books written about the Romani who were at Auschwitz-Birkenau? Were museums dedicated to all of the mentally ill who died? What about the disabled? The autistic? The LGBTQA? The countless twins who were operated on and literally torn apart and cut open without any anesthetics just because they wanted to see if the other twin could feel the pain as well? The dwarfs who were also horribly experimented on?

Known records tell us that 19,000 Romani died at Auschwitz. 30,000 were shot and killed in the Baltic States when the Einsatzgruppen and other mobile killing units went around. Numbers of other mass deaths are estimated to total up to 35% of Europe’s Romani population; speculated to be somewhere around 1.5 million. Many historians believe the numbers & percentages are alot larger. Ceija Stokja was 10 years old when she was sent to her first of three camps. Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and then Bergern-Belsen. Her brother died of Typhus while at Auschwitz and her and her mother were sent to Ravensbrück. There was a female guard there who would sick her dog on people. Stojka and her mother fled on train headed to Bergen-Belsen when the guard threatened to submerge the mom in ice water. They hid amongst the dead bodies until Allied forces attacked the train and freed them. Give me a movie about her.

60% of the LGBTQA who went to the camps died. Pierre Seel, a homosexual Frenchman, was 16 when he was sent to a camp. When they arrested him they raped him with a block of wood. While in the camp he had to watchcas his boyfriend was killed by being eaten by German Shepherds. He was released (reasons unknown) and forced to join the German Army. He ran, survived, and spoke about his time in the camp in a documentary as well as a memoir called I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual. (English translated title of course.) In the film he says: “Why did I not speak for 40 years? I am 90 percent disabled from the war.” He died in 2005. Give me a movie about him.

200,000 handicapped and mentally ill were speculated to have been killed during WWII. The euthanasia program was the first plan of mass-murder the Nazis committed. It broke the ground for all the others. They started it in 1939 with disabled children. Children were killed either by starvation or forced overdose of medication. At first it started with strictly infants but then the scope was widened up to the age of 17. In the autumn of ‘39 Hitler secretly signed an order to further it & protect the doctors whom performed the killings. That same autumn the Nazis began to kill handicapped and mentally ill adults. Everything was very secret and all the death notices were doctored to say the people died of natural causes. Hitler publicly stalled the program in 1941 but behind closed doors it still continued. Give me a movie about this.

Give me a movie about Josef Mengele. The Angel of Death. Garrison physician of Auschwitz he was responsible in all medical matters in the camp. But he’s most famous for his experiments with twins. The man who tore twins apart and stitched their bodies together. Who drugged one twin to see if the other would be affected. This is the man who collected and saved the eyes of his victims for “further research”.

Give me a movie about the man forced to work under Mengele. Prisoner-physician Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was imprisoned at Auschwitz along with his wife and daughter in 1944. This man was forced against his will to help Mengele perform his sick twisted experiments on twins and dwarfs. He was also forced to perform autopsies on those who died of infection. A man who, before working with Mengele, tried to help the ill and wounded.

Give me more movies like Der Utergang. Or Downfall which is the English translation. It’s a German film about Hitler’s last ten days of life. The movie shows a different side of Hitler than ever before. It’s the source of the rant that has since become a meme.

#jrants #im tired of all the same stuff #wwii #world war ii #world war 2 #holocaust #movies #also this just kinda got away from me

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alltimebestbooks · 4 years

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Must Read Books

1. Ignited Minds by A.P.J Abdul Kalam

Authored by the most influential Indian President yet, this book delves into the obstacles that are preventing India from rising up to the challenge of development. India has unmatched talent and ambition with an inherent tendency to work hard, then what is it that keeps India from overtaking the world. Why does India as a nation settle for the ordinary when the extraordinary is well within the reach?

Dr. Kalam shares his dream of a nation that is unrivaled, he discusses how he has, from his experience, met such skilled people whose visions can transform the nation. It is imperative that one searches for own solutions and find role-models in countrymen instead of looking towards the other nations. India must not strive to be the next America or Japan but has to be the strong nation that she is capable of becoming. For this, all the trapped energies and initiatives need to be freed instead of suppressing them.

In the book, we are introduced to numerous role models that are hiding amongst us. Words of wisdom from saints and seers that the author encountered through his life have been quoted. The book proceeds to address the issues at hand and mentions some reforms that have to be incorporated in politics and policies. The policy making procedure of the nation requires major reforms. The youth has to be given a stage and the reins of the nation need to be passed on. The book motivates the young minds and forces the positive auras together to build the face of a new nation.

2. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY The Ultimate Guide to Supernatural Single Issue Magazine

ALL 12 SEASONS inside every episode - EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS with JENSEN, JARED and MISHA

3. The Maga Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

The movement that brought Donald Trump to the White House has better ideas than the old right or the new left. Its time that the rest of America started listening.

The Tea Party began as a protest for patriots who feared Big Government. President Trump has become a hero for patriots who are against Big Everything.

Fed up with Silicon Valley, the media, liberal higher education, the military-industrial complex, Twitter mobs, swamp monsters, Big Pharma, out-of-control prosecutors, and gun-grabbing fascists, ordinary Americans miss the days when America cared about rule of the people, by the people, and for the people. Remember when you didnt feel bombarded on all sides by coastal billionaires and their government stooges? The MAGA Doctrine urges an overdue restoration of self-rule by a populace long taken for granted by its rulers.

Turning Point USA founder and social media superstar Charlie Kirk explains once and for all why a New York real estate magnate found an audience among young conservatives all over the country. Trump and his allies are working to protect all the small things that both parties dismissed: local businesses, families, churches, and the rights of the individual. Kirk explains why it took a reality TV superstar to see past the sclerotic and power-hungry institutions, from the United Nations and Google to Harvard and Viacom, working to crush real America. The Trump Doctrine is all about giving you a say in the future of America and a hand in making it happen.

As the mainstream media keep churning out lies about the real reasons behind the new conservative agenda, Charlie Kirks The MAGA Doctrine is a powerful reminder of the true narrative of freedom and greatness that swept Donald Trump to the presidency.

4. Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling

A beautiful boxed set containing all seven Harry Potter novels in paperback. These new editions of the classic and internationally bestselling, multi-award-winning series feature instantly pick-up-able new jackets by Jonny Duddle, with huge child appeal, to bring Harry Potter to the next generation of readers. It's time to PASS THE MAGIC ON .

5. Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare - poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him The Fittest (Real) Man in America. In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.

6. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself

7. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

As in the Obstacle is the way, Ryan holiday delivers practical and inspiring philosophy, this time exploring a powerful concept that runs back centuries, across borders and schools of thought: Ego. Ego is our biggest enemy. Early in our careers, it can prevent us from learning and developing our talents. When we taste success, ego can blind us to our own faults, alienate us from others and lead to our downfall. In failure, ego is devastating and makes recovery all the more difficult. It is only by identifying our ego, speaking to its desires and systematically disarming it that we can create our best work. Organised into bite-sized observations featuring characters and narratives that illustrate themes and life lessons designed to resonate, uplift and inspire, Ego is the Enemy shows how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures. It is an inspiring and timely reminder that humility and confidence are still our greatest friends when confronting the challenges of a culture which tends to fan the flames of ego and encourage the cult of personality at all costs.

8. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

An Inspiration

The Holocaust was one of the most horrendous and terrible eras in history. Innumerable books have been written describing the horrors of the Holocaust; but nothing beats the documentation of a family who had gone into hiding in the diary of a little girl, Anne Frank. Honest, lucid and empathetic; The Diary of A Young Girl deserves a read by everyone who has ever questioned mental strength of humans and also by those who cannot come to terms with the cruelties that could be inflicted by humans upon fellow humans. The first entry in the diary is on June 12, 1942 by Anne Frank, who had received it as a birthday present and the entries in the diary end abruptly on 1 August, 1944.

The Underlying Themes

Anne Frank and her family lived a peaceful life in Frankfurt, Germany but they had to escape to Amsterdam with fellow Jews and go into hiding, as the Nazis took over Europe. Anne writes in her diary the tribulations her family had to face living in hiding, because they knew if caught, they would have to suffer horribly. The sufferance of the Jews during the Holocaust is known to all; yet a thirteen year old feeling the impact of intolerance and racism makes readers realise how profound the impacts of the World War II was.

What is most captivating is that amidst the terror and the fear, Anne manages to remain a cheerful girl full of life, who loved to talk and observe. Still a teenager and unaware of the horrors lurking behind their hiding space, Anne fails to realise the fear trapped within the hearts of elders initially and describes everyday events from the view of a teenager. As the story develops, Anne develops and realisation comes over her. The Nazis are getting more stringent and oppression rises; there are certain places in the book that leaves readers sad and distressed. One day, Anne's entire family including her, gets captured and the diary ends abruptly with the promise of a new day that never comes in the life of Anne Frank. Anne's father, Otto Frank, was the only one in the family who had managed to escape the concentration camps they were taken to and went on to make Anne's diary into a book.

Conclusion

The story of Anne Frank and the Frankfurt family is considered one of the most insightful accounts of the World War through the eyes of a young girl. The Diary of A Young Girl has been the subject of innumerable plays and movies. The original diary was published by Otto Frank in Dutch in 1947 and it was first translated to English in 1952, as The Diary of A Young Girl. Since then, it has been translated to more than sixty languages and people all over the world have read, loved and cried over the memoirs of Anne Frank.

9. How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life by Lilly Singh

*Winner of the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards: Non-Fiction Book of the Year!*

The official debut book from YouTube phenomenon Lilly Singh.

'The ultimate no-nonsense manual for millennials how how to make it to the top' Marie Claire

From actress, comedian and YouTube sensation Lilly Singh (aka Superwoman) comes the definitive guide to being a BAWSE - a person who exudes confidence, reaches goals, gets hurt efficiently, and smiles genuinely because they've fought through it all and made it out the other side.

Told in her hilarious, bold voice that's inspired over 9 million fans, and using stories from her own life to illustrate her message, Lilly proves that there are no shortcuts to success.

WARNING: This book does NOT include hopeful thoughts, lucky charms, and cute quotes. That's because success, happiness and everything else you want in life needs to be fought for - not wished for. In Lilly's world, there are no escalators. Only stairs.

10. Who painted my money white: When greed drives everything else and everything has a price by Sree Lyer

A ship carrying 2 containers, each containing Rs.5000 crores in 500- and 1000-rupee notes, docks in the dark of night at Kochi. The money is quickly distributed to members of a minority community using a network of 100 Chartered accountants. The bulk of the money finds its way back into fake firms, shell corporations, and charities with the sole aim of destabilizing the country. A DIABOLICAL PLAN BY THE FREEDOM PARTY TO WEAKEN INDIA Greedy politicians of the Freedom Party want to ensure that the opposition can never come to power. Pander to the largest minority, enrich them beyond their expectations and ensure they will be with the party. To this end, a plan is hatched to print high denomination money and try and increase the velocity of money, thereby creating the illusion of growth. A compromised Finance Minister is forced to buy paper from the same sources as India’s rival Pakistan. Their intelligence wing gets hold of the security threads being used in Indian notes through honey trapping and comes up with notes that are almost as good as the real ones. The fake money brought in slowly starts moving around the country, driving up inflation and real estate prices, mixing with good notes. Because of a series of scams, the government gets voted out and a single party (People’s Voice) gets an absolute majority. The new party responds to a terrorist attack with a surgical strike deep in the enemy territory. Pakistan decides to retaliate by flooding India with fake currency, by tripling its fake currency production. India responds by demonetizing the 500- and 1000-rupee notes and printing new notes of a different size. But despite the best attempts, a porous border with Nepal and Bangladesh results in a significant amount of the fake currency entering Indian banks. When the notes were tallied, instead of 87% of printed notes coming back to the Reserve Bank, 113% comes!

#mustreadbooks #books #best books #bestbook #read

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jackfollmanwriter-blog · 6 years

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Detroit

The sight of my father’s Detroit PD uniform always made me feel like a child, but seeing it there lying on the floor it made me feel even more helpless than I when I was five years old. It was funny to think how intimidating the navy blue garb could be when put upon the sinewy frame of a man with a badge when it looked so harmless and pathetic, crumpled up next to a dusty fireplace, looking like any old piece of dirty laundry.

I stepped up to the uniform with a tremble and knelt down to take it in my arms. Knowing that the sight of the uniform meant I would never see my dad’s body again, I took its collar up to my face and inhaled and hoped the fossilized scent of his Old Spice might somehow make me feel safe in a darkened place.

The little fucker’s tip was spot on. There was a cop’s uniform lying in an abandoned house at the end of Baker Street. What the little fucker didn’t tell me was the uniform belonged to Amit Patel. My father.

The little fucker I refer to is a 17-year-old borderline criminal I interviewed a few times in pursuit of a story for the Detroit Free Press before I got laid off and before I decided that he was mostly full of shit. He usually hung around the edge of an abandoned cul-de-sac pretending to sell weed and flagged me down as I was on my way to an interview with someone who I hoped was more honest.

My story was about “Zombie,” a new drug that had hit the streets of Detroit, but that was still so underground only those heavily entrenched in the world of hard drugs and law enforcement knew about it. Those privy to information about Zombie knew it was a liquid drug of unknown ingredients usually cooked up in one of the countless abandoned houses that haunted Detroit. The users shot up the stuff in the back of their neck and it’s heavy hold led to them joining a marauding group of addicts rumored to be eating people, particularly their brains (hence the name Zombie). Whether the drug made you crave eating people or if it was just a group of people who liked to eat people who just happened to really like the drug was the subject of hot debate.

I was privy to this information because my father and my brother, Az, were in the Detroit Police Department. The two of them had pulled some strings and gotten me behind-the-scenes access to the department as I pursued the first media story about Zombie.

The department labeled me as a bad omen, because as soon as I showed up, officers started going missing. Three cops disappeared within my first month of hanging around the station and all in the same way my father eventually would. They went out on a domestic disturbance calls in one of the many cul-de-sacs littered with the shells of abandoned house that dotted the city like dead insects in a spider’s web and never came back. Their uniforms were always found in a different abandoned neighborhood than the one they had been sent to investigate. The trend put such a scare into the department my father and brother worked at had been reduced to just four officers after a rash of retirements and resignations.

A big reason why so many of the guys were giving it up was the entire Detroit police department had zero leads on breaking up the Zombie clan or tracking down any of the missing officers, dead or alive. I think the idea of being eaten had particularly created a flight in the officers and I believed the cannibalism rumors because nearly every house that was searched after Zombie groups had been reported there had included at least one human skeleton which was partially eaten with hacked upon bones and empty skulls.

Another key factor to the mysteriousness of the disappearing cops was, despite their uniforms always being left behind, their hats were always never recovered. The main theory connected to the permanent disappearance of the hats was because they housed a new piece of the technology, the “cop cam.” Forced on officers due to a never-ending rash of horrible PR, the GoPro-style cameras recorded everything the officers did and were monitored back at the station.

After my dad went missing, Az and his six-year-old son Cale moved into my one-bedroom apartment in the heart of the city. Az and Cale lived in a larger house on the edge of the city and we figured with all of the officers going missing, a cramped apartment downtown was a safer environment. Az and Cale had been sleeping on my couch, but the night that I had discovered my father’s uniform we all slept together in my bed with Az and I crying, Cale too young to really absorb exactly what happened.

I had an interview set up for the next week I thought about cancelling but decided to keep after days of mourning. My father’s disappearance encouraged me to double down on my pursuit of tracking down the members of the Zombie group, even if the newspaper I had initially planned on submitting my story to no longer employed me. This was no longer about reporting, this was my own personal investigation and about being able to hold a proper funeral for the man who raised me.

My interview took me out to Stoepel Park, a neighborhood ravaged by urban flight more than any other in the city. Desolate, crumpling and deserted, the burg reminded me of the Emerald City in Return to Oz.

The mother of a young man who had joined the Zombie gypsies responded to my Craigslist ad that advertised for those with information about the group to come forward for a documentary. The mother claimed her son joined the group for a few weeks, but came back home to get clean a couple of days ago. This was potentially huge. In the few months the group had been growing, there was not a single report of a defector.

I headed to Stoepel alone as the presence of anyone else, especially those that looked like law enforcement, could result in those who may have been loose-lipped clamming up. Absolutely no one wanted to be connected in any way to the Zombie group, so those that may have had information were reluctant to come forward out of fear of being accused.

My interview took me to a dilapidated manor that could have belonged to a big wig at General Motors decades ago, but was now home to single gray-haired woman with cigarette smoke-tanned skin, recessed gums and eight cats.

She spoke out of the side of her mouth with cracked lips as an ash gray feline rubbed the side of its head against my calf.

“And I thought he was gone. I thought he was gone forever.”

I could feel the immense weight of the woman’s life in every word she spat to me from her broken easy chair in the middle of a living room that was heated by three space heaters and the body heat of a handful of felines.

“Then one morning I heard that ol’ familiar rumble of his ol’ Chevy Luv in the driveway and I couldn’t believe it. I looked out the window and there he was behind the wheel, sleeping in the breeze of the air conditionin.”

The woman couldn’t have felt more genuine and sweet. She seemed like one of those women who looked on the verge of 65, but who was actually barely 40 and had lived about three lives already, but I just couldn’t get comfortable in the house. An open floor plan, where the living room we sat in could be entered through four different openings, I never felt secure and I was perpetually overcome with the feeling that someone was watching me.

The woman told me her son went upstairs once she brought him in from the driveway and had been up there sleeping ever since, but I kept hearing shuffling sounds from the door behind me. A clear cough from behind the door was all I needed to hear to fully tune myself out from the woman’s story and start to try and wiggle myself out of the situation.

“He said that they tried to get him to do things he just wouldn’t do.”

I stopped the woman with a stiff hand.

“I’m sorry, but I…

I bit my tongue harder than I ever had in my entire life and tasted the tinny spice of blood drift down my throat while I stared at something that made me want to swallow my tongue…

A gaunt, young man, clad in dirty overalls with splotches of what looked to be white paint checkered clumsily across his face emerged from a door behind the woman’s chair. He skulked around the back of her chair with his eyes locked on me while I struggled for words.

Cold hands clamped down on the back of my neck. I was lifted up off of the couch for a moment, but squirmed as hard as I could and freed myself for a miraculous moment.

Everything became a blur – the woman screaming, my neck burning, the man in overalls descending upon me. I bolted for the front door. I dashed across the dirty carpet, slammed myself into the heavy wood of the door and pushed my way out with the presence of whoever had picked me up by my neck breathing upon my back.

I burst out onto the open porch of the house and into a shaken snow globe of a world. Fat, fresh flakes of powdery white snow stuck to the black fleece of my jacket when I ran out onto the icy sidewalk and almost fell upon my ass.

Luckily I parked my car on the street right in front of the house and never locked the doors of the 1999 Oldsmobile so I was able to slide ride in with the ice still melting upon the bottom of my shoes. I locked the doors and fired the engine just before a dark presence overtook the passenger side window. I saw the outline of an immense man out of the corner of my eye for just a sliver of a moment before I drove off down the street with my wheels skidding on the ice rink that was the pavement.

I called Az as soon as I was far enough away from the terror of the house from which I escaped.

He picked up and spoke before I even had a chance to get a word out.

“You have to come down to the station. Dad’s camera is on.”

***

I stood with Az and the three other remaining police officers in his station watching surveillance style videos on four monitors propped on top of a long desk.

“His came on about an hour ago. About the same time the others did,” Officer Turner explained and pointed to the monitor which broadcast the dated interior of a car.

“Do we have tracking on these? I asked.

“We don’t have like a GPS in them, but we can follow their location by any surroundings we see,” Turner answered. “Other than you father’s they all seem to be inside homes right now. Your father’s is going somewhere in a car, but I haven’t gotten a good look out the windows, so I don’t know where they are driving.”

Turner was clearly the alpha of the remaining group. Round, bald, mustached and gapped-toothed, he always reminded me of the dad from the show Family Matters.

“Great fuckin time for a migraine,” Turner announced and then got up from his chair and walked away to the bathroom.

The faint sound of trickling urine was interrupted by gasps escaping from the two other officers’ mouths.

“We got movement over here,” Officer Lind said after gulping down a mouthful of coffee sooner than he had planned.

Officer Lind was the youngest of the group and the rest of the guys always made fun of him for his long hair, even though it couldn’t have grown more than an inch from his scalp in any direction.

“Here too,” Officer Washington chirped and adjusted her glasses. “Getting into a car.”

Officer Washington had been the lone woman in the station before everyone else left and bucked any stereotypes about female cops, she would have been considered the most attractive woman in just about any office she worked in, had two kids and was a gentle soul that actually reminded me of my grandma even though she was barely 40.

All four screens we were monitoring now showed the inside of cars.

“Looks like everyone’s got some place to go,” Washington said quietly just before Turner came back from the restroom and took a seat next to her.

“Still don’t recognize any locations though,” Turner noted.

“My dad’s stopped,” I pointed out with a finger.

The car in my dad’s cam had come to a stop. We watched the cam turn to the right and look upon a palatial but crumbling estate that lurched over the sidewalk the car had parked next to.

“Anybody see an address?” Turner called out.

“Wouldn’t matter unless someone knows what street this is,” Lind replied.

Turner was going to continue, but was interrupted by the sound of Az vomiting upon the floor.

“What the fuck Patel?” Washington groaned.

I patted Az on the back as he knelt over his golden vomit that smelled of light beer and splashed across the floor.

“I didn’t know you were sick man,” I said before Az interrupted me.

“I’m not sick. I puked because that’s Emily’s house.”

****

Emily was Az’ ex-girlfriend and the mother of Cale. I didn’t know much about her, but I did know she lived in a rundown old mansion not too far from where I had just been in Stoepel Park that Cale was scared to stay at because it reminded him of a haunted house.

I was commanding Az’ squad car on a residential street at freeway speeds while he sat in the passenger’s seat with sweat dripping off his brow and dried vomit crusted upon his lips. We had dispatched officers from other nearby stations hoping they might somehow beat us to Emily’s house, but it was likely that Az and I would be the first responders.

Both of us had blue tooth speakers sticking out of our ears connected back to the station where the other officers were monitoring our father’s cop cam and relaying what they were seeing. My heart fluttered with every detail they described, but the breaks in their descriptions were actually much more heart-stopping, my brain always assumed that they were seeing something too horrible to tell.

“It’s somewhere in the house, but I haven’t seen any people yet,” I could hear Washington’s voice in my ear as I mashed the pedal and tore down a street that Az told me connected to the street Emily lived on. “I sometimes hear other noises in the house though and it seems to follow those.”

“Where is it in the house?” Az asked.

“Not exactly sure,” Washington said. “It’s going through a hallway slowly, but I don’t know the layout of the house so I don’t know where that is.”

“Do you know the house?” I asked Az.

He hesitated for a moment, clearly disappointed with himself.

“No, I’ve never actually been inside, just on the porch.”

We screeched up to the house, parked behind a rusty Chevy and sprinted up to the front porch. Az handed a gun to me as we ascended the steps even though he knew that I had never touched a firearm in my life.

“You check upstairs, I have the main floor,” Az screamed at me and tore off into the guts of the house.

I couldn’t believe how brave the adrenaline had made me. I had been the kind of person who changed the TV channel during horror movie trailers and now I was climbing stairs in a dark old house chasing after a potential cannibal with a pistol in my hand.

“I think I hear something in the basement,” I heard Az’ disconnected voice speak into my ear. “Have you seen it go down any stairs?”

“No,” Lind answered back instead of Washington, who had been talking to us.

“Lind? What the fuck?” Az spat.

“Washington left. One of the other cams just showed up outside of her house,” Lind said in an unemotional flash. “Same with Turner.”

“Holy shit,” Az exhaled. “Where the fuck is it now?

“I missed some shit when Washington took off, but I think I saw it go up some stairs…

I stopped at the top of the stairs when Lind finished his sentence and lifted the gun up in front of myself.

“But now it’s in what looks like a kid’s bedroom,” Lind went on.

“Shit,” Az yelled making me jump in my stance and drop the gun. “The noise I heard down here was a fucking dryer.”

I dropped down to pick up the gun with my eyes steadied on the darkened hallway that was in front of me.

“Where is the last cam?” Az whispered. You said one was at Washington’s, one was at Turner’s and one is here. Where is that stray one?”

“Uh, it was just in a backyard somewhere. It just went in a backdoor of some house. Now it’s heading down a dark stairway,” Lind answered.

“Where is the one in here?” I called out but was interrupted by the sound of Lind yelling into the speaker in my ear.

“Oh my God. It’s in the basement. Patel. Patel. Patel.”

Lind’s shouts were drowned out by the sound of gurgling screams.

I decided to turn back around and head down the stairs to help Az, but stopped when I saw a shadowy figure descend from an attic staircase that was at the end of the hallway in front of me.

It was Cale. He scurried down the steps and started creeping towards me in the dark hallway.

I should have been paying complete attention to his lurking, but I was more than distracted by the horror broadcasting in my blue tooth…

Whatever Az had encountered in the basement was destroying him in a horrible manner. The sounds of my brother’s screams and Lind’s prayers to God pounded in my ear.

Interrupting the horror in my ears, a figure had stepped out of one of the doors in the hallway and had pursued Cale back up the attic’s ladder.

I snapped back to life when the sounds of my brother’s disembowelment quieted.

“He’s following the kid up into the attic,” Lind’s voice announced in my ear.

I started shuffling to the attic ladder just as the figure’s feet disappeared up into the hole in the ceiling.

“I don’t think it saw you,” Lind added. “The kid is hiding somewhere in the attic.”

I climbed up into the attic ladder with the gun limply held out in front of me.

“Where is the other one, the one in the basement?” I whispered.

“He’s still in the basement,” Lind stammered, clearly not wanting to give any details about what was going on down there.

I tuned Lind out when I climbed up into the attic and saw no signs of life, just scattered dusty boxes and lines of clothes hanging from the rafters that had turned the attic into a bit of a library of faded fabrics and forgotten styles. The hanging outfits concealed almost everything in the space and were strung up all around me dully lit in a beam of soft light that came in through a single window.

“Where is he?” I whispered.

“I can’t tell, somewhere in the clothes.”

The gun still in my hand, handle slicked by nervous sweat, I started combing through the clothes, throwing them down the metal rods they hung from, revealing more and more cobwebs and dusty wooden beams.

Until…

The moving of a rack of clothes revealed Cale. Tucked up into a ball and crying, he looked away from me with his arms out in a pathetic defense.

“We have to go,” I whispered.

I grabbed Cale’s hand and started to lift him up out of his tuck on the floor and felt a presence step up behind me. Its weight sent a creek from the floor into my ears that were also occupied by the sound of Lind’s voice…

“It’s right behind you…

I turned around in a whirl to see the blur of a figure descending upon me with a hideously long knife.

I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

I was suddenly on my back lying next to Cale on the floor with my hand throbbing. I looked down to see the gun still in my hand and I looked forward to see the figure in a gasping clump on the floor a few feet in front of us.

I stared at the mound of motionless human matter for a few seconds before the sounds of Cale’s cries turned my attention to him. I pulled Cale close and just sat there crying with him for a few moments with my eyes glued to the prone figure on the floor in front of us and my finger on the trigger of the gun I had just fired.

After taking a few more deep breathes, I spoke.

“Where is the other one?”

“It’s gone,” Lind chimed back.

I didn’t bother asking any more questions about what happened in that basement, my brain assumed the worst. I pictured my brother’s uniform lying crumpled on a dirty basement floor just like I had found my father’s.

I turned my gaze to the body that lay in front of me on the floor and caught something I recognized. Perched on top of an oily mop of dark hair was a scuffed and faded Detroit Tigers baseball cap adorned with a few silver pins.

During the 80s, the Detroit PD tried to connect to kids by having officers where special police hats that were basically Detroit sports team caps. My dad had loved the Tigers one that he had so much he demanded to keep wearing it even after they quickly disbanded the idea. It was pretty much his calling card.

I could never look at a worn out Tigers cap and not think about my dad and now I was staring at his very navy hat pinned with his department pin and cop cam resting on the head of the person that had likely killed him, and possibly eaten him. It made the bone-chilling winter air that seeped through the thin walls of that attic that much more cold.

I sat shivering on the frigid curb outside of the house with Cale wrapped in a blanket next to me. I felt like I wanted a cigarette even though I had never actually smoked one.

I watched the various crews that show up after an emergency file about the stiffly frozen front yard of the house – the paramedics, the cops, the firefighters – all milling around behind the backdrop of flashing lights that seemed to light the snowy world a shade of pale pink. I put my arm around Cale and pulled him close.

I audibly groaned when an unfamiliar officer walked up to me. I was still far too shaken to be questioned about anything. I put my hands up in a dismissive posture, but the officer ignored me and started firing away with words.

“This was all bullshit.”

“What?” I shot back in disgust thinking about how what the guy was referring to as bullshit had just cost my brother his life.

“This was all just a calculated distraction to get what few cops are still around here out of the way. Those fuckers just attacked every house in the neighborhood the last few hours.”

I didn’t really care. It was my time to be selfish. I didn’t care if the savages had gone into hundreds of homes and pulled away helpless people, I only cared about my brother and I didn’t want to hear any more about anything, just hold Cale and wallow in sorrow.

It took a little while, but I think the officer finally picked up on this. A sheepish look washed upon his face.

“I found this in there and I thought you might want it.”

The officer pulled my father’s Tigers cap out from his back pocket and stuck it down upon my head.

“I think it fits you good.”

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com

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sending-the-message · 7 years

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The Moral Dilemma of Having Multiple One-Night Stands Over the Course of a Few Years, and the Consequences It Can Have on One's Body by MikeyKnutson

I was never one for serious dirty talk...but it worked for me every time, so I never saw a reason to change it. All part of the charm. We have so many bars in Rocky River that the odds of talking to a woman that knew of my infamy and terrible lines was quite unlikely. Sure, there could be a friend of a friend of a friend who hooked up with "Donald the Dick King," but in the couple of years I had spent getting my cock wet every weekend, it never happened.

Not until Mya.

We met at Riverwood Tavern, a small bar just on the border of Yuppie Town and Hipsterville. It was known for it's affordable drink selections, shitty pool tables, and basic college girls. The best type of place for an easy score. When I walked in that night, Mya had her eyes locked on me before I could even make my way to the bar. She nestled into my side as I sat at the bar waiting to order a drink.

"Jacob, two Sapphire lemonades and two Jagers!" She called out to one of the bartenders. He nodded in her direction and promptly made the drinks for us while ignoring the other patrons.

"Pays to fuck the manager." She winked at me. "Mya. Who are you?"

I was taken aback by her forwardness. Typically, the girls I hit on were a bit...coy. "Donald. Or Don. Big D. Whatever makes you happy." I winked back obnoxiously, mimicking her.

"Well, 'Big D,' I hope you got that name for a reason." Mya grabbed my crotch with her left hand and took her shot with the other. "Let's hope you can keep up."

We drank at the bar all night, slightly past last call since she had the manager in her back pocket. Typically, I wouldn't get that drunk when I'm trying to seduce someone. If I got sloppy then I couldn't realistically expect to enjoy the sex I was going to have. Whiskey dick is a very real thing and Viagra mixed with alcohol isn't a smart idea, trust me.

Mya eventually took me back to her place, to experience a sex in a way that I don't think I will ever be able to forget.

She threw me down onto her bed with an intensity I had not seen from any lover in my past. The passion in her eyes was deeper than a professional athlete determined to win the championship. My world was spinning as she straddled her legs over my pelvis and began grinding hard. This woman was determined to get me going despite the copious amounts of alcohol that were attempting to hold me back.

"You like that?" Mya whispered into my ear before nibbling on my ear lobe.

I smacked her ass, "Of course. It would be better if you didn't have that top on, though." She giggled, and let her small breasts free from their confines. I grabbed them without hesitation. They were oddly firm, but in my inebriated state it didn't bother me.

After a moment, she hopped off of me and laid on her back.

"Come here, 'Big D.'" She said while removing her shorts and thong. I climbed over top of her, kissing her neck and clavicle. I pulled back, starting to remove my pants when she put up one finger.

"Not just yet, lover boy. You've got to warm up the engine first." She spread her legs a little wider.

"Not a problem at all." I said as I started kissing down her leg from her ankle.

When my tongue first touched her vagina she moaned in such ecstasy that I was sure she had to have been coming out of a serious dry spell. Her body writhed like a worm on concrete. Mya ran her fingers from both hands into my hair and I felt like a fucking champion.

Once I felt like it was time for business I tried to pull my head up but Mya kept it down. She was into it. I assumed she wanted more so I went again for a minute or two before attempting to come up again. No luck. Her finger nails were digging into my scalp now. I panicked and tried to yank my body completely away from hers to no avail. My screams were muffled as I felt her nails pierce into parts of my skin. She never stopped moaning.

Out of desperation, I kept my mouth moving. Hoping that if I finished what she wanted that I could be freed from this twisted woman's sexual fantasy. I started going harder and faster, forgetting about the stinging sensations all over my head. Mya kept moaning louder and moving even more intensely than before.

"Yes! Yes! Oh my god, don't stop. I'm cumming!" She yelled.

Mya's body was convulsing and I felt a warm liquid coat the insides of my mouth. Assuming she was adequately satisfied I tried pulling away again...and met the same resistance.

"Oh, you're not done here, 'Big D.'" She laughed as she held my face against her vagina. "Maybe this will teach you a lesson about fucking with naive girl's heads."

My blood ran cold. It finally happened. I met someone who knew about my whore-ish tendencies. I tried to plead but all of my words were unintelligible due to the position of my head.

"Remember Stacy, Don?" She asked. I nodded in affirmation. "Good, good. Because her and her daughter certainly remember you."

Time froze.

Stacy had disappeared a few months after we hooked up a couple years ago, right at the start of my hobby. I would usually Facebook creep on my temporary lovers just to admire what I had accomplished but Stacy...she simply vanished one day. I assumed she maybe wanted a fresh start. Her timeline showed that she did had some home life drama going on. I never thought twice about it.

After the few seconds spent contemplating my unknown fatherhood, an intense burning sensation overtook my mouth. It was worse than any hot liquid I had ever ingested before. I could feel my skin melting away section by section as the taste of blood consumed my tastebuds. I was now the one writhing, but in pain instead of pleasure. I heard clapping over my screams. Mya laid back and let go of me. I leapt off of the bed to the floor.

"Hey there, 'Big D.' It's been a while, hasn't it? How's the dick? Still STD free?" A woman's voice mocked from across the room. My mouth was in too much pain for me to care to turn towards it.

A foot kicked my side, knocking me onto my back. It was Stacy.

"Hi, 'Big D.' Miss me? I didn't think so." Stacy said. "Don't worry, your daughter is doing just fine without you."

I cried. I'm not sure if it was the pain, fear, my newly discovered kin, or all of the above. I rolled onto my side, blood and tears pouring from my face onto the hardwood floor.

"You know, with the right amount of passion and money you can achieve anything. Did you know that, 'Big D?'" Stacy sat on the side of the bed facing me. "She's a pretty convincing robot, isn't she? My parents had to die for me to be able to afford her. Inheritance, you see. Someone cut their brake lines at a truck stop during their semi-annual trip to the Outer Banks. Shame, shame."

I began vomiting. The alcohol and stomach acid burned worse than whatever hit my mouth from that sex-bot.

"Don't you worry, though. It was just some basic acid. Nothing too strong. If anything, it should help you. Your tastebuds will be completely gone, and probably any feeling you had in there. You can eat all the pussy you want now." She stood up, putting one foot on my neck. "That's all you've ever wanted, isn't it?"

Stacy kept putting pressure on my neck until I fell unconscious. When I woke up a few hours later I had a note safety pinned to my right nipple. I was too afraid to remove the pin, so I tore the paper away.

Donald,

You should know that I never wanted any of this to happen to you. I know deep down that you're a sweet, loving guy who turned to disgusting acts to hide the pain from losing me.

If you'd like, I'm willing to give you a second chance. On two conditions.

One: you promise to never drink or go to a bar ever again.

Two: you share what happened to you with anyone who will listen, so no one has to go through what I went through with another man.

Meet me at Gypsy Coffee in two weeks to the date at 11a.m.

Your mouth should be working by then.

Love forever, Stacy

I can't remember the last time I had a sip of alcohol.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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wbwest · 7 years

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New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/03/03/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-3317/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 3/3/17

Sometimes life gets in the way, and you just can’t get a post out on time. That’s what happened last week, but I’m here now, so let’s get on with the pop culture, shall we?

First, I guess we’ve gotta talk about the Oscars, huh? I didn’t watch them. I don’t really do awards shows anymore unless someone’s getting slimed, so this wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. The big moment of the night, however, came at the end when La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner for Best Picture when it actually lost to Moonlight. And social media went wild! It’s been a crazy few weeks, as the Best Picture predictions had come down to those two films, but neither of them really appealed to me. I’m probably more likely to see Moonlight than La La Land, as the latter just doesn’t sound interesting to me. But having seen neither of them at the time of the awards, I really didn’t have a dog in that fight. I figure they gave the award to Moonlight to shut us up for a few years about #OscarsSoWhite. I mean, racism’s over now, right? Does Hallmark sell cards for that? A “So Glad Your Racism Cleared Up” card?

Anyway, from one controversy to another. I’ve never understood people’s disdain for The Big Bang Theory. It’s not reinventing the wheel or anything, but I find it to be an enjoyable half hour every week. I think people got too comfortable with their single cam Arrested Development and Modern Family that they just couldn’t deal with a multicam, studio audience sitcom anymore. OK, cool. But as the mainstream response to Arrested Development showed us, not everyone wants their shit to be smart. Sad, but true. For all the people loudly calling The Big Bang Theory “blackface for nerds” (which is itself offensive, and clearly exhibits a lack of understanding of blackface), it’s still the number 1 show on television. So, just like Trump voters, your friends and neighbors are watching and enjoying it in secret. And with those ratings come big paydays. The 5 principal actors on the show currently make $1 million an episode, while Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch make $250,000 per episode. Considering their roles have expanded greatly since joining the show in season 3, it can be argued that they deserve pay more inline with their costars. Well, the 5 principals (Galecki, Parsons, Cuoco, Helberg, and Nayyar) have each offered to give up $100,000 per episode so that money will be freed up for their costars to get raises. I don’t care how you feel about the show, but that’s pretty cool move on their part. Sure, they’re making a fuckton of money, but this is something they didn’t have to do. They realized they’re stronger as a unit, and they’re making moves to preserve it. Not everyone in this situation would do this. While The Simpsons has had negotiation shakeups in recent years, the last time a cast really came together like this was when the Friends stars negotiated for season 10. If CBS and the studio don’t agree to these terms, however, they’ve got an ace up their sleeve.

What started as a mere rumor is now actually gearing up to film a pilot: a prequel of The Big Bang Theory, focusing on Dr. Sheldon Cooper as a child. It’s being reported that Iain Armitage of HBO’s Big Little Lies is being courted for the role of Sheldon. The most interesting casting, however, concerns Sheldon’s mother. You see, on The Big Bang Theory, his mother is played by Roseanne‘s Laurie Metcalf. Well, Metcalf’s real life daughter, Zoe Perry, seems to be the frontrunner for the role of young Sheldon’s mom. So, daughter will be playing mom’s younger self. My head hurts! Anyway, I kinda love when Hollywood does stunt casting shit like that. Now, CBS hasn’t placed a formal pilot order yet, and I feel like a decision is hinging on how these contract negotiations turn out. I mean, The Big Bang Theory is an aging sitcom in its 10th season, and a renewal would only be for 2 more years. CBS has got to start thinking about the future, but this is clearly a franchise they’d like to keep around in some capacity sheerly for the ratings it brings in. So, it looks like y’all might be hating The Big Bang Theory for many years to come! Or it could just fall apart like How I Met Your Dad did (which, oddly enough, is being revived by the This Is Us team at the moment). Only time will tell.

Just as I like something you hate, I also hate something you all seem to be excited about: ABC’s Marvel’s Inhumans. As the show that I’m almost sure will be the nail in the coffin for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., I just don’t see how this is a good idea. Marvel keeps trying to “make ‘fetch’ happen” when it comes to the Inhumans because they want their own robust mutant franchise, but nobody gives a shit. At least, I didn’t think so. However, with each casting announcement, y’all seem to get more and more giddy. Last week, they announced that Iwan Rheon of Misfits/Game of Thrones fame had been cast as Maximus. Anton Mount, from Hell On Wheels, has been cast as the Inhuman king Black Bolt, while Graceland alum Serinda Swan has been cast as Queen Medusa. Finally, Lost/The Night Shift alum Ken Leung was announced yesterday as Karnak. That’s great. Actors are working. I still have no faith in the show, however.

It’s no secret that The Inhumans were Marvel CEO Ike Perlmetter’s pet project because he wanted a stable that Marvel could exploit where they still owned all the media rights. As far as he was concerned, the Inhumans should be the new X-Men. In the comics, they’ve received quite a push over recent years, but it feels more like Marvel is shoving them down our throats than actually giving the audience what it wants. That’s why, once Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige wrested control of the film division away from Marvel, the announced but delayed Inhumans film was demoted to a TV series. They’re really trying to make this a production, by releasing the first two episodes in theaters in IMAX, but it just feels desparate. Nobody cares, dude. The numbers on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. right now are terrible, and I’d be really surprised if it got renewed. Considering it’s the show that introduced the Inhumans to the MCU, and has had them as something of a plot device since that introduction, yet it’s done nothing for the ratings, I don’t think the Inhumans are ready to stand on their own just yet. The argument could be made that the audience didn’t like how AoS was handling the Inhumans, and that they actually wanted the Royal Family Inhumans, which this new series is giving us. OK, but I still don’t see how that’s gonna be cool on a weekly TV budget. Then again, I never found the Inhumans to be the least bit interesting, so this project just isn’t design to appeal to me at this point. I honestly don’t know what they could announce to get me excited about an Inhumans series.

In other Marvel TV news that I couldn’t give two shits about, there’s been a ton of casting news for Fox’x untitled mutant-centered pilot. Yeah, I’m being contrarian, but I just don’t see this being great. First, it’s on Fox. This is the kind of show they pick up solely to cancel. Second, it’s gonna be expensive, which is why Fox will not hesitate to cancel it. Third, I still remember the Generation X TV movie/pilot and Mutant X. Fourth, it’s gonna be directed by Bryan Singer – a man who, despite 16 years of familiarity with the X-Men franchise, really needs to go somewhere and take a seat. Anyway, Jamie Chung has been cast as Blink, which won’t cost too much as they really just have to come up with a cool-looking, yet affordable, portal effect. Yesterday, it was announced that True Blood‘s Stephen Moyer and Angel‘s Amy Acker had been cast as the leads. The show follows the Stewart family, who are forced to go on the run from the government when they discover their kids are mutants. They link up with an underground network of mutants, and ugh, I’m exhausted already. So, they’re basically on the run the whole time? And you’re gonna be holding out hope for some kind of mutant of the week cameo, who’ll be someone they’d never put in a movie. Or maybe it would be. It’s not like the X-Men franchise has ever given a fuck about continuity. Since this is still at the pilot stage, I’m not gonna let it get my blood pressure up until it’s officially ordered to series.

Across the aisle over at DC, they announced a Nightwing movie, to be directed by The LEGO Movie‘s Chris McKay. If you don’t know who Nightwing is, here’s a crash course: remember how Batman has a sidekick named Robin? Well, the very first Robin, Dick Grayson, grew up, got sick of Batman’s shit, and struck out on his own as the hero Nightwing. That pretty much catches you up. Right now, DC is that deadbeat dad who makes a bunch of promises that he can’t keep. “Sure, I’ll be at your dance recital!” and then he shows up when it’s over, and the janitor is collecting chairs. They need to stop being so future-focused, and deal with the now. Word on the street is that Wonder Woman has problems, The Batman seems to be falling apart, and they still have to promote Justice League. Worry about 2017, and stop making all these promises for tomorrow. Anyway, I’ve seen an online campaign about how they should keep Nightwing’s Romani origins (for the uninformed, they’re what we call “gypsies”, even though we’re, like, not really supposed to use that term anymore. Whatever) in the film. Apparently, this is important for Romani representation and whatnot, but it’s kinda tough to swallow since some of the same folks saying this also come from the camp that said Nightwing should show up in the DCEU and be cast with an Asian actor. I’d be fine with Asian Nightwing, as I honestly don’t see what his Romani origin brings to the table. Like, it’s nice trivia, but does it lend itself to his character? As long as he’s a former circus brat who flips off shit, he’s Nightwing. Maybe I’m being glib, but I just don’t really see the argument here.

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I was kinda worried about the DuckTales reboot when we saw the character designs. I was also confused as to why they went for “names”for the voice cast, when there are perfectly capable voice actors working out there. Then they released the trailer for the show yesterday, and I am worried no more. While the animation style took me a few seconds to get used to, I really like what’s going on here. Apparently, Disney does too, as the show has already been renewed for season 2, before the show has even premiered.

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We also got a new Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 trailer. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t need to see single bit more of footage. I’m already a guaranteed ticket sale, so I really hope they don’t spoil us with drips and drabs for the next few months. I’m excited. My body is ready. Don’t overdo it.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

You’ll soon be able to get all your diarrhea in one place, as Burger King owner Restaurant Brands International (what a lame name!) is buying Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen for a reported $1.8 billion.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. kicked off what may be its last storyline, “Agents of HYDRA”, just before going on hiatus for the month of March

Cloverfield director Matt Reeves has signed on to direct and produce The Batman, presumably still starring Ben Affleck

I can’t stand the dude, but I know some of y’all like him: Chris Hardwick will be getting a new weekly talk show, Talking with Chris Hardwick, which will air on AMC as a year-round extension of his Talking Dead show.

The Nintendo Switch comes out today, so brace yourselves for socially awkward people playing it in public places.

Fox renewed freshman series The Mick (yay!) and Lethal Weapon for second seasons.

After nine seasons, SNL cast member Bobby Moynihan might be leaving the show, as he’s currently up for the lead in the CBS pilot Me, Myself & I.

Scientology traitor Leah Remini is set to star in NBC’s What About Barb? pilot, itself a gender swapped reboot of the Bill Murray/Richard Dreyfuss film What About Bob?

For its 9th season, RuPaul’s Drag Race will be moving from Logo TV to VH1. Considering this was Logo’s last bit of original programming, I wouldn’t be surprised if Viacom phased out the channel in its upcoming reprioritization.

Dr. Julian Bashir himself, Alexander Siddig (or Siddig El Fadil for you old heads), will be joining Gotham as R’as Al Ghul. Nope, still not gonna watch that show.

Soap opera Days of Our Lives was renewed for a record 52nd season, as cast member Arianne Zucker (who was at the heart of the Billy Bush/Donald Trump scandal) has announced she’s leaving the show.

So I saw Logan last night. It’s funny – I’ve been looking forward to the film since seeing the first trailer, but last night I had a sense of dread. I mean, the movie looked so…heavy. And was I ready to see Hugh Jackman give up a role he’s portrayed for the past 17 years? It all felt so final, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to say goodbye. Leaving the movie, my friend “Special Forces” said “That was damn near perfect”, and I have to agree with him.

Now, it’s easy to get caught up in the comic book movie hype. I mean, even I’ve come on here fawning over the latest Marvel film, only to see its flaws once the hype dies down. I can admit Age of Ultron was something of a chore to get through. And while The Winter Soldier was something of an MCU masterpiece, I’m afraid to revisit Civil War for fear of realizing it didn’t live up to its predecessor. The Fox X-Men films have established an even lower bar of quality, so you basically go into those now with lowered expectations. Logan, however, is a film that I don’t think I’ll have regrets about in the future.

First of all, it’s not a “comic book movie”. If anything, it’s an indie drama whose characters are taken from comic books. As much as folks wanted this to be the cinematic version of the now classic “Old Man Logan” storyline, this film has no real source material other than the characters. It doesn’t devolve into standard superhero hokeyness. It eschews every opportunity to turn into a “comic book movie”, as any opening for that is quickly supplanted with high intensity violence. There’s no Stan Lee cameo, there’s no post credits scene, and there are no costumes. Director James Mangold knew what he wanted to do, and he knew the tropes to avoid in order to be successful. The violence – my God, I lost track of how many times I gasped “Jesus Christ!” during the +2 hours. It earned its R rating and then some.

I won’t get into plot details, as I want you to see it for yourself. It truly is a beautiful movie, which isn’t something you’d typically say about a film with Marvel roots. Dafnee Keen as Laura is incredible, both in how she emotes, as well as her action scenes. It’s also a fitting coda to Jackman’s turn as Wolverine. I don’t know if he’ll ever come back. I mean, he says he’s done, but you can’t count anyone out in the world of comics. Then again, this ain’t a comic book movie. So, if this is it, he’s going out on a Hell of a note. He leaves behind one totally imbalanced trilogy, as the first film is maligned, the second film was serviceable, but this one is quite the mea culpa for all we’ve had to put up with over the past almost two decades. People are talking about award potential, and while it’s certainly good enough, I’m not holding my breath. It might win an Oscar for sound mixing or something, but I’m scared those folks won’t appreciate it for what it truly is. Logan is a moving experience, and it deserves all the praise the early reviews have been giving it. That’s why I have no hesitation in saying that Logan had the West Week Ever.

#Batman #Comics #DC #Marvel #Movies #Politics #Race #Television #West Week Ever #X-Men

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alltimebestbooks · 4 years

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Must Read Books

1. Ignited Minds by A.P.J Abdul Kalam

2. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY The Ultimate Guide to Supernatural Single Issue Magazine

ALL 12 SEASONS inside every episode - EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS with JENSEN, JARED and MISHA

3. The Maga Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

The movement that brought Donald Trump to the White House has better ideas than the old right or the new left. Its time that the rest of America started listening.

The Tea Party began as a protest for patriots who feared Big Government. President Trump has become a hero for patriots who are against Big Everything.

4. Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling

5. Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

6. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

7. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

8. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

An Inspiration

The Underlying Themes

Conclusion

9. How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life by Lilly Singh

*Winner of the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards: Non-Fiction Book of the Year!*

The official debut book from YouTube phenomenon Lilly Singh.

'The ultimate no-nonsense manual for millennials how how to make it to the top' Marie Claire

Told in her hilarious, bold voice that's inspired over 9 million fans, and using stories from her own life to illustrate her message, Lilly proves that there are no shortcuts to success.

10. Who painted my money white: When greed drives everything else and everything has a price by Sree Lyer

#must read books

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