#i’ll see you european folks soon too

[katelynnwrites]

All I Want For Christmas (Is You) | Laura Freigang

warnings: f for fluff and c for christmas

word count: 2176

summary: you surprise your girlfriend for christmas

a/n: merry christmas folks, have a good one 🎄❤️

Lucas thinks his sister is sulking. Correction, he knows she is sulking.

The blonde has been sitting at their family table, staring at her phone silently with a small frown on her face.

Her breakfast has been left untouched and he kicks her shin under the table to get her attention.

‘What?’ Laura snaps, setting her phone down and leveling her brother with a glare.

He simply asks, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Lau come on.’ He tries although he’s already pretty sure he knows what’s wrong.

His suspicions are confirmed when his sister lets out a quiet sigh.

‘I miss her.’

The forward looks so sad at the thought of your absence that Lucas can’t help but feel sorry for her.

Luckily, he knows something she doesn’t, something that will definitely make her feel better.

******

Letting your girlfriend think you both would be spending Christmas apart has been one of the hardest things you’ve ever done.

The German woman had been eagerly planning on spending her holiday with both you and her family back in Kiel when you told her about your grandmother asking you to go home to Sweden.

Laura knows how close you are to your grandmother and with you playing in Frankfurt with her, knows how much you have missed her.

So she had insistently told you to go despite your protests that you didn’t have to because you’d already promised to go to Kiel with her.

At the very beginning of your relationship, the blonde and you had already decided to take turns spending Christmas with each other’s families.

It was meant to be Laura’s family’s turn to have you both over this year.

Celebrating the holiday apart had never been an option until now.

It still isn’t to you.

But you had let the striker believe that you were going back to Sweden, taking the chance to surprise her.

Surprising Laura is a rare thing for you. It’s not for a lack of trying but rather your girlfriend simply knows you too well.

It’s awfully hard keeping your secret, especially when the Eintracht Frankfurt player was nearly in tears as she saw you off at the airport.

‘I’ll miss you so.’ She had whispered, tucking her face into the side of your neck and holding you close.

You had given her heaps of kisses, pressing them onto her cheeks, her nose, her forehead and her lips.

Enough to cause the German woman to smile when you finally stepped back.

‘I’ll see you soon Lau. Promise.’

‘I’m going to hold you to that.’ She’d softly answered, linking her pinky with yours for a brief moment.

Then it had been time for you to go and Laura had stood at the departure hall as you went through airport security till she couldn’t see you anymore.

Her brother had been right when he said his sister was a big ‘anything for my person’ kind of girl.

******

Lucas had been brought into your plan as soon as you had thought of it and he had readily agreed to help.

He did however, count it as his Christmas present to Laura.

Your time back in your home country was enjoyable, filled with helping your grandmother to bake Christmas cookies and spending time with your other family members.

Your girlfriend video called every day, blowing kisses hello and pouting a little every time the call had to end.

She sends you photos of everything, be it the small snow man she had made or the supermarket nearest her family home, all decorated for the holiday.

It’s sweet how much she tries to make sure you don’t miss out on anything.

As the days go by back in Kiel though, Lucas does begin to get a little annoyed at his sister’s ability to look at virtually anything and think of you.

But he cannot fault her for it, not when you both have been together for six years already, ever since Laura had asked you out shortly after you met on Penn State’s college team.

Being the only Europeans on the team, it made sense for the two of you to bond. What you hadn’t anticipated was how quickly the blonde had made herself a place in your heart.

Now you can easily say that your heart belongs to her.

Your girlfriend says the same for herself, occasionally dramatically claiming that you stole her heart the second you walked into the locker room back in Pennsylvania.

She’s a unique one for sure but she is your Laura and you wouldn’t change her for the world.

******

If Lucas thought his sister had been sad on Christmas morning, it’s nothing compared to how she is now.

It is nearing evening and she’s quietly sitting on the couch, holding her phone in her hands and staring at it’s blank screen.

You haven’t called or answered any of her texts and frankly, that is so unlike you that the blonde is seriously considering getting on a plane to Sweden.

She is weighing the pros and cons of the decision when her mother sits down beside her, pulling her into a side hug.

‘I’m sorry. I know the holiday doesn’t seem right without her.’

‘I miss her. More than I ever thought possible.’ Laura chokes out, tears springing to her eyes at the admission.

‘I know honey I know.’

The older woman strokes her hair gently and the striker sniffles.

Your girlfriend is subdued as she mumbles, ‘I wished her Merry Christmas hours ago and she still hasn’t answered…’

‘She’ll reply to you. You know she will. Now why don’t you come with me and your father to the Christmas market while you wait for that? You’ve always liked it there and you can pick out a little something for my future daughter in law.’

The Eintracht Frankfurt forward is not upset enough to miss her mother’s less than subtle way of distracting her.

She rolls her eyes, wiping at them with her sleeve as she composes herself.

‘Is Lucas coming?’ She asks after a moment, her voice significantly steadier.

Laura’s mother keeps her smile hidden as she answers, ‘No. He has an errand to run.’

******

His errand is in fact, to pick you up from the airport and smuggle you into his bedroom before your girlfriend gets back.

Lucas manages to do so and you thank him gratefully, only for him to teasingly say that he only did so because his sister wouldn’t stop moping.

‘She’s making Christmas depressing.’ He complains.

You laugh.

‘I miss her a lot too. She’s my other half and I don’t remember how to properly celebrate Christmas without her.’

‘Oh not you too.’ Lucas groans.

‘Sorry.’ You say, with a grin.

‘My sister should be back anytime now so just wait here for a while, until I can sneak you down as my present.’

Hugging your girlfriend’s brother tightly, you murmur your thanks again before he leaves.

******

You know the moment Laura comes back because your girlfriend is far from the quietest person. Even with the room door closed, you can hear her.

The sound of her laughter makes you smile softly. It’s only been a week since you’ve last heard it in person but that’s too long.

You swear that even in the midst of a crowd, you’ll be able to pick out your girlfriend’s laugh every time.

It is your favourite sound.

You have missed the blonde so much that having her just downstairs and not being to go to her immediately makes you impatient.

Fiddling with the gift you had chosen for Laura seems like a good distraction.

You hope she likes it because it certainly wasn’t easy to find.

******

Just when you are beginning to wonder if Lucas is ever going to come back, the door opens.

‘Come on. Mom’s in the kitchen distracting Laura.’

He hurries you down and leads you through the living room and out the front door, which he promptly closes in your face, with a mischievous smile.

You giggle softly when seconds later, his raised voice can be heard ‘Laura! My Christmas present for you is outside!’

You can picture your girlfriend’s suspicious look and know that she’ll be grumbling to herself.

There’s a little smile on your face as you hear her footsteps as well as a not so quiet, ‘I swear Lucas if this is some joke of yours…’

The striker is taking her time and her brother tries to get her to speed up.

‘Laura, your present is getting cold out there!’

‘How can it possibly be getting-’

The door opens and your girlfriend’s words trail off.

‘Merry Christmas schatz.’ You greet cheekily, holding out the wrapped gift you had brought for her.

Your favorite person flings herself at you and you giggle as you catch her, stumbling backwards slightly.

The blonde wraps her legs around your waist, pressing her face into your shoulder.

‘Lau. I love you but you gotta get down. I’m going to drop your gift. You breathlessly say.

‘Drop it.’ She mumbles.

Even with the German woman’s hair in your face, you can see her parents chuckle. They’re watching you both from the doorway, along with Lucas who rolls his eyes fondly.

‘You really don’t want me to do that. It’s fragile.’ You try but your girlfriend stubbornly refuses.

‘Schatz just a second okay?’

Laura frowns but relents reluctantly.

Her beautiful claret grey eyes are sparkling and you lean in to kiss her gently.

‘I love you.’

‘Love you too.’ She whispers.

The striker is still in somewhat of a daze, staring at you in disbelief.

‘How are you here? Why are you here?’

Her family laughs at her words and you shrug with a smile.

‘Couldn’t spend Christmas away from you. Also your brother mentioned something about you being a bit of a Grinch?’

‘Was not. And I was only sad because I missed you so much.’ Laura defends.

You chuckle, placing another delicate kiss onto her lips.

‘I’m here now.’

******

Your girlfriend sticks close to you, absolutely refusing to let go of your hand.

The only exception is when she opens the present you give her.

She’d been eyeing the box ever since you passed it to her.

‘Is it a camera?’ The blonde hopefully asks.

‘Possibly.’ You smile.

Laura’s excitement increases and she carefully undoes the tape holding the wrapping paper close.

Your grin grows as she opens it, the striker’s jaw practically dropping open as she sees it.

‘I’ve been looking for this forever.’ She whispers.

‘I know.’ You tell her.

It’s a vintage Leica analog camera. One that your girlfriend has been searching for to add to her collection.

‘You’re incredible. Thank you.’

Your girlfriend can’t stop smiling long enough to kiss you properly but she tries to anyway.

‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’ She says as she peppers your face with kisses.

‘You’re welcome.’ You get out, in between bright giggles.

Laura’s happiness is radiant and you find yourself captivated by it.

‘I love you.’ The German woman tells you.

‘I mean it.’ She adds after a moment.

The way your gaze on her softens lets her know that you get it. That you get what she’s trying to put into words.

It’s a moment that you want captured, one that Laura’s father is more than happy to help with.

******

Your girlfriend pulls you out onto the porch of her family house after the rest of her family have finished opening their presents.

‘You okay?’ You ask in concern.

‘Yeah. More than okay. I just wanted to be alone with you for a while.’ The striker explains.

Your heart practically melts and that reflects in your body language as you lean into Laura’s arms, letting the German woman press your back flush against her front.

She kisses the shell of your ear affectionately before resting her chin on your shoulder.

‘Are you sure that your grandmother is okay with you being here?’ She murmurs quietly.

You squeeze Laura’s hand lightly, ‘She is. She even insisted on me packing you a box of the Christmas cookies that we made together. It’s in my suitcase upstairs.’

‘Oh good. I like those.’

You laugh a little and soak in the embrace, the blonde’s presence alone, making you feel content.

She smells like home, home is wherever she is.

Your girlfriend takes in a deep breath before letting it out in a huff.

‘I left your present back home in Frankfurt.’ Laura dejectedly says.

‘That’s okay schatz. I was meant to surprise you after all.’

Your favourite person kisses the top of your head.

‘You’re the best Christmas present I’ve ever received.’

‘Does Lucas not get credit for it?’ You tease.

The forward sighs, ‘I’ll thank him but can we please have a few more minutes where it’s just us first? I don’t want to share you yet.’

You giggle, turning around to kiss her senseless.

‘Of course. I love you Lau.’

‘I love you too.’ She breathes, pulling you impossibly closer and pressing her own lips onto yours.

German Translation:

schatz - sweetheart

#laura freigang #laura freigang x reader #laura freigang imagine #woso #woso x reader #woso imagine #gerwnt x reader #gerwnt imagine #dfb frauen #gerwnt #dfb frauen x reader #dfb frauen imagine #uswnt x reader #uswnt imagine #katelynnwrites

[gabbiani-ipotetici]

Today we’ll take a step back to the Risorgimento and Italian unification. We’re going to travel forward until we reach Fascism and WWII again, but I think it’s important to understand what happened before that, what kind of people were the ones that were 30, 40, 50 years old in the 1920s, what was their cultural context. And also, where did all that Communism and Socialism come from?

You probably know that Italy, as a State, is pretty young: 1861 is the official date, but depending on what you’re focusing on you could say it’s a process that took from 1815 (Congress of Vienna) to 1918 (end of WWI). Almost everyone agrees on the 1848-1871 period as the most topical one, spanning from the First Italian War of Independence to the capture of Rome.

In case you’re interested to learn more, the English wiki page is well done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unification

You can see how summarizing a century of messy politics and wars is next to impossible, so I’ll assume that you know the gist of it. I’ll just point out some facts that usually aren’t taught in schools starting with the most important one: the Italian unification was (mostly) a drawn-out conquest and colonization. At the time the country was fractured into several kingdoms, all of them fighting against each other and other European countries. Italy was woefully late to the creation of a nation-state, and many intellectuals pushed for an Italian unification to happen. Of course, no one could agree on how it should happen, who should lead it, what kind of rights and ideals espouse, and so on. Some of them looked at the French Revolution as an example, others wanted a clerical State led by the Pope, others wanted a king; some wanted one nation, others a federation of kingdoms; some wanted to take back Lombardy and Veneto from Austria as soon as possible, others thought they had to establish the new state first, and so on.

In the years leading to the First Italian War of Independence, a lot of people felt restless, unsatisfied with the status quo, and tried to do something, anything. Carboneria was one of the most widespread revolutionary groups: starting from Southern Italy, they soon had many local cells working in secret to organize similar-minded folks, often finding recruits among the middle class and intellectuals. They were strongly inspired by the French Revolution and its ideals and by Freemasons, and they were quite anti-clerical. They hated Napoleon III, considering him a traitor of revolutionary ideals, and once almost succeeded in killing him! While some historians think they didn’t actually do much when it comes to results, they surely played an important role: many future leaders of the new Italy were part of Carboneria at some point in their lives, and their own ideals were a direct consequence of Carbonari ones.

There was in general a strong push towards more rights and equality. Apart from the influence of the French Revolution (remember that a sizeable piece of Italy was conquered by/decided to join Napoleon and became the Kingdom of Italy for ten years), many intellectuals were exiled and so found themselves living all across Europe, learning about other countries’ ideas and politics.

There was also a strong romanticization of the Roman Empire and of the Renaissance, often getting historical facts quite wrong (sometimes because history was less accurate at the time, sometimes due to propaganda). Many of the writings of the time are almost ridiculous now, talking about a mythical Italy that never existed. This constant looking back at past glories further showed how many people agreed that Italy should be one country again, but exactly what kind of country would it be was unclear.

The 1820s and 1830s saw a lot of uprisings across all of Italy, but they all were unsuccessful. In the South, revolutionaries often failed to get the populace’s approval, while in the North the Austrian army proved too strong and organized to be beaten. I do want to point out that Southern Italy did have its share of intellectuals and regular folks that wanted a better life and more rights and hated the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, contrary to the popular belief that they were lazy, complacent, or scared and thus had to be “freed” by the oh so progressive Northern army.

This is one of the worst and most widespread myths about the Italian unification: that the good, progressive King of Sardinia fought valiantly to bring progressive ideals to underdeveloped Central and Southern Italy. It was one kingdom conquering another, imposing its own ideas and customs on the conquered, and treating them as second-class citizens.

The “fight against brigands” that happened after the Unification was, at times, really a fight against Borbone supporters that rejected the new Savoia government, or people who simply didn’t like the reforms of the new government (especially army conscription). Sometimes, well, they were common criminals that saw an opportunity and took it. What’s sure is that many people weren’t happy with the new government, and were quite vocal about it.

I need to point out that the Borbone weren’t good kings. Their court was considered intellectual and refined, they had some excellent universities and the nobles enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, but their kingdom was quite behind when it came to people’s rights, agriculture and economy. Field workers had few rights, were tied to their land in a way similar to serfs, and the fabulous life of the elite came at the expense of the many.

However, what the Savoia did, especially how they did it, shows us that they just wanted to erase a dangerous enemy and acquire Southern Italy’s resources for themselves. Garibaldi said, later in his life, that he had regrets about helping conquer Southern Italy and that those folks were right to despise and oppose him because he too understood that he just helped replace one king with another.

Another big issue was the so-called “Roman Question”, aka: what to do with Rome? At the time it was a powerful, separate state. Many intellectuals had already planned to make it the new capital due to its position and cultural relevance, but there was the itsy bitsy matter of conquering it, and what to do with the Pope. Many wanted Rome to be conquered, while others felt the Pope’s dominion shouldn’t be questioned (in part to avoid diplomatic issues with other countries). Meanwhile, the Pope carefully avoided recognizing the new Italian State, but in 1871 (so 10 years after the Kingdom of Italy was born) Rome was conquered at last.

Of relevance is the “Non expedit” policy that Pope Pio IX promoted: it basically said that if you declared yourself catholic, you couldn’t take part in Italian parliamentary elections, thus creating a difficult situation for many Italians. Many catholics didn’t like nor understand this and it was softened during later years, but until its complete abrogation in 1919 you couldn’t be a catholic and be an active citizen. It created an ideological rift that only ended with Fascism.

The Pope wasn’t the only one that didn’t like the outcome or the Unification: many of its supporters were anticlerical and so were bitterly disappointed by the Pope being allowed to live and hold lands inside the Italian country, seeing it as an unnecessary compromise. Others didn’t really approve of a monarchic State, wanting instead a republic. Others didn’t mind a monarchy but realized that the Savoia weren’t as progressive as they hoped.

Plus, the country was a patchwork of different cultures and languages, with wildly different needs. Massimo d’Azeglio famously said: "L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani" (Italy has been made. Now we have to create Italians), and that’s a painfully true statement. Living conditions were often difficult for working-class folks, the government decided to joint the other European states in Africa's colonization and claim its share (requiring soldiers), some areas that were considered culturally Italians were part of other nations, and when folks revolted they were often met with harsh repression (which sometimes led to civilian deaths).

It was clear that having a national state wasn’t a magical cure-all, so soon people’s unrest started again, and this time many of them looked at socialism and anarchism for answers.

#ora e sempre resistenza #italian history #risorgimento #long post

[pinoy-culture]

before I ask my question, I just wanted to say thank you so so so much for keeping up your blog and consistently giving out information where its readily accessible!!!

maybe this will make me sound like an idiot but to preface, I’m a mixed filipino american. My mom is filipino and some chinese and my dad is some sort of european and puerto rican. i was wondering, in your opinion, do you think it’d be okay for me (eventually) work with diwata and anitos? And how can I start? Ive been trying to communicate with my ancestors and I’ve been looking for books to one day buy (im extremely broke so your blog and any filipino witches i come across is all the info i can get) but i honestly have no clue where to start other than with my ancestors (weird dreams lately but nothing ancestor related i think). i took a DNA test as a gift and it pointed, predominantly, to the Western Visayas so im assuming i should study more on pre-colonial Bisayan culture (my lolas from iloilo so it makes sense i guess) but i also know that “blood quantum” is a colonizer concept so i dont wanna rely on it too much :/ sorry to ramble but pls help lol

First, I'd like to say thank you for following the blog! It really does mean a lot to me to hear from others over the years on how much my blogs have helped them learn about our history and culture.

Now as for working with our diwata and the anito, that is completely ok. The whole blood quantum thing among some Filipinos I honestly don't agree with. As long as you have a family member who is Filipino, you are Filipino regardless of your "percentage" and of how you look. If you have Filipino blood in you, the ancestors are there with you. Even if you weren't raised within Filipino culture or a Filipino household because your parents never brought you up in it, or you are an adoptee like some I've met over the years. Your ancestors are your ancestors regardless. They see you and know you and that is all that matters.

Now there really isn't any book focused specifically on reviving our precolonial beliefs and practices. Yes, some did survive and some even blended in with a form of Folk Christianity in the Philippines. You can see many of the older practices and beliefs still alive, but they have been replaced with Catholic imagery and Saints.

But, in regards actually believing in and worshiping our old deities, doing rituals dedicated to the deity, or even some rites of passage like the Tagalog first menstruation rite of passage, or making carved figures dedicated to the diwata and anito, or performing maganito/paganito or atang to the diwata and anito, majority of Filipinos don't do this, or even know it.

So for being an Anito Reconstructionist, which is a label I personally use for my spiritual beliefs and others have adopted, there really isn't a book for it. A Reconstructionist in other ethnic spiritual paths, such as the Celtic, Roman, Aztec, Kemetic, Greek, Norse, etc., are those who look at historical records to try and piece together what was once practiced and believed in prior to Christianity. Over many years, these different spiritual paths have eventually come together, formed a community, and have resources like books and teachers. They have had the time to do all the research and put together a more formal spirituality based on those Pre-Christian beliefs and bringing it to the modern day where they have hundreds to thousands of people who have gone back to those beliefs. With some, they have even created temples, shrines to their deities, and even have celebrations.

Unfortunately that is not the case for us. However, due to the growing interest in our precolonial beliefs and practices over the years, I can see Anito Reconstructionism growing within the next several years. It already has, with many people actually trying to learn more about these beliefs and our old deities. The amount of people of people I've seen and talked to who have expressed their interest to reclaim these precolonial beliefs and practices is nothing compared to 10 years ago when it was hard to even find one or two people who did.

It is why I've been writing this book for a few years now dedicated to helping others in wanting to reclaim our precolonial beliefs and practices as a starting point in their research. For now though, I always recommend those who are starting to simply just read the historical texts. Grab a notebook and write down notes. Organize your notes into deities, rituals, how to make an offering, any prayers to a specific deity, how to set up an altar, etc.

Seeing as your family is from the island of Panay in the Western Bisayas, like my moms side are from, I would start with looking at the Bisayan precolonial beliefs and practices. A really good reference is reading Francisco Alcina's History of the Bisayans (1668). Volume 3 is available online in English which you can find here. Volume 3 goes into a lot of detail in the beliefs and practices. The Boxer Codex, if you are able to get a copy of the English translation, is also really good reading material.

Getting Started:

In terms of getting started, keep in mind that there is no one monolithic belief system or practice in the Philippines. Before there ever was a Philippines, we were different nations with different beliefs and practices. It is important to know your ethnic groups beliefs and practices and know their history. For example, I am Bisaya (Akeanon specifically) and Tagalog and that is what I work with. Others who I know follow the Bikolano, Kapampangan, or Ilokano beliefs. Though there are some similarities, each ethnic group had their own set beliefs and practices.

I often tell people that you can't just mix and match between them. For example, though I work with both the Tagalog and Bisayan pantheons, I wouldn't dare do a ritual offering to both a Tagalog or Bisayan deity at the same time. It's always separate. You also can't combine 2 similar deities together from different ethnic groups just because they share similar attributes. It's just rude and disrespectful.

Start out small. Set up an altar dedicated to your ancestors. If you have any family members who have passed, put a photo of them on the altar. Leave offerings of rice cakes such as suman, food like chicken adobo, or even a cup of drink such as tuba, lambanog, or even Red Horse beer. But if you can't get access to an alcoholic drink either because one you are a minor or 2 it's not available where you live, you can simply replace it with a non-alcoholic drinks like coconut juice. Get a coconut shell or a seashell to either place these offerings as bowls/plates or even use them to put your kamangyan or incense.

Then start researching how our Bisayan ancestors worshiped and practiced. Study the history and read historical accounts, books, and articles about them. Write down what you have learned on these precolonial beliefs and practices and reconstruct or revive them. This is what Polytheistic Recinstructionists do. I have listed links to these texts here.

Ask questions to your family, particularly your elders. See if they know of anything or if they can share some traditional practices and beliefs they know of have heard of. You would be surprised how, despite some families being really religious, many still believe in the spirits, do some form of ancestor veneration, believe in omens that are being told to you by the ancestors or spirits, etc.

If you can, try to go back to the Philippines and see your family's ancestral home, see where they grew up, etc. Ask about family stories and folk stories. For example, my mom grew up in Aklan and has always told me stories of the aswang and certain omens. She also constantly talks about the mischievous "little people" who play tricks on you (for example putting something down like your keys and then it goes missing, until you find it again somewhere else). In the Western Bisayas, they are known as kama-kama. There is also a story of how her grandmother's cat visited her during her wake. The cat was missing for years, but it came back and stayed sleeping on top of the casket for days before it left. My mom told me that it was the cat paying their respects to her grandmother.

Keep in mind also and acknowledge our indigenous communities who have kept their beliefs and practices. Don't try to take them into your own. I have seen people cherry pick things from the Manobo of Mindanao or the Kalinga in the Cordillera, which is just disrespectful. Many of the IP, though some still have kept their beliefs, it isn't the most important aspect to them. What they are most concerned about are other issues such as losing their homes due to occupation by oil or logging companies, other settlers such as the Tagalog and Bisayans (especially in Mindanao), getting targeted as "rebels" by the Philippine military and often getting killed. But, by cherry picking beliefs especially of the IP groups, it's just disrespectful.

I will be teaching classes on Anito Reconstructionism soon and will have my first class possibly at the end of the month or next month. I decided to do these classes seeing as there is a growing community who are interested, but don't know where to start. I'll be doing a proper announcement on these classes real soon so look out for the announcement and hopefully you will be able to join!

#filipino #diwata #anito #anito reconstructionist #polytheist #polytheism #precolonial philippines #faq #question #long post

[link4eva]

Kiro’s Work Visit Date (探班之约) Translation [CN]

Hi! Just a couple of notes before you begin reading...

This fluffy and wholesome date was just released (March 11, 2021) in the CN server and will eventually be released in the ENG server sometime next year.

I also don’t know any Chinese myself so all of this translation was done through the power of Google Translate and with help from the lovely @keliosyfan​ .

You can read his Couch Potato call that comes with this date here!

Hope you enjoy!~

*Spoilers ahead for future content!*

[First Part]

MC: So now the question is….

Kiro: Wait a minute! I didn’t seem to understand too much of what was said. Let me take a look!

During the video call, Kiro suddenly moved his face close to the screen with excitement.

Kiro: Miss Chips, do you mean that….you’re going to go in person and be a host on the show?

MC: Pretty much….

Some time ago, I did a variety show about a certain European town called “Cloud Tourism”.

The reason it’s called “Cloud Tourism” is because I’ve never been to this small town before. I only got a preliminary understanding of the traditional customs there through a novel.

Out of an abundance of interest, I consulted a lot of relevant sources and finally released a program with the concept of “seeing words as faces”.

Originally it was just an experiment inspired by an idea that didn’t really make any big splashes in China.

Unexpectedly, an internet celebrity from the small town recommended this program on his personal blog which led to it becoming popular very quickly.

Kiro: Oh….slowly but surely, I figured it out.  Not only has this show received great praise, the local TV station also sincerely invited you to come and do some interviews. Even in the form of a reality show, I must say that Miss Chips is amazing!

MC: ......

MC: I think you understand it pretty clearly but some parts are exaggerated….

Kiro: Congratulations, MC!~

Kiro: If I wasn’t shooting abroad, I would definitely take you there to celebrate! But we can celebrate like we did before….

MC: Wait! Wait a minute! I haven’t decided whether to go or not yet….

Kiro: This is a great opportunity to promote the company. Why are you so hesitant?

MC: Although I have previous experience, this would be my first time shooting as the host….

MC: What if I’m too nervous in front of the camera? It’ll affect the shoot.

Kiro: Miss Chips.

On the screen, Kiro sat upright and pushed his glasses up that were nonexistent.

Kiro: It seems that you’ve forgotten that there’s an experienced acting teacher right in front of you.

MC: Pff….I would like to ask Mr. Kiro how I can act natural in front of the camera. 

Kiro: It is very simple. Step one is to do the warm-up exercises in advance. Your shoulders should also be really relaxed. Then imagine the camera as a friend who can’t speak and has big eyes….

A few minutes later, Kiro was still ��teaching” very professional acting techniques on the phone screen.

Kiro: Hello, MC, are you still listening?

MC: Um….I don’t think I can do this.

His bright eyes suddenly crinkled upwards, hiding a triumphant smile.

Kiro: I’m just teasing you. In fact, you only need to remember the first few steps.

MC: But I’m worried that if I get nervous, I’ll forget those first few steps. I hope that I can become Kiro that day!

Kiro curled his lips up again when he heard those words.

Kiro: Then close your eyes and hypnotize yourself….

Kiro: “I am the superstar Kiro!” 

[Second Part]

At five o’clock in the morning in the dressing room at the local TV station.

I tilted my head to face the makeup artist and held back yet another yawn.

The makeup artist whispered a few words to the accompanying translator and then left the dressing room.

Translator: Miss MC, the makeup artist has finished your makeup. The director will be here shortly. You can rest for a while.

I nodded gratefully. This country’s language is one that I’m not familiar with so the TV station specifically hired an interpreter.

As soon as I closed my eyes, I felt my phone vibrate.

Kiro: MC, are you still in makeup?

MC: Just finished. Are you ready to start work too?

Kiro: I’ve already been working for an hour.

MC: Why so early? It’s only five o’clock where you are!

Kiro: Don’t worry, I’m used to this kind of shooting routine.

Although I’ve known before that Kiro started almost every filming session in the morning, this was the first time experiencing it for myself. It’s hard work getting up early and putting on makeup.

What’s more, he often works overtime to catch up on his other stuff and rarely has enough time to rest.

MC: Then you must take time to rest!

Kiro: It’s okay. If I’m tired, I just close my eyes and think of Miss Chips’ smile. 

Kiro seemed to take a deep breath on the other end.

Kiro: Hmm~ Charging is complete!

I seemed to see him being content and I couldn’t help being amused by him. 

Kiro: By the way, what is your shooting schedule today?

MC: It’s sightseeing shooting. The director arranged to take me to several local attractions and I can also choose places of interest. 

MC: The first stop on the agenda is to explore the shop on the pedestrian street.

Kiro: Great! I heard from the crew that there is a famous cake shop on the pedestrian street of that small town. I will send you the address.

Kiro: Only by filling up your stomach and replenishing your energy can you be in the best state!

(Cut to the street)

MC: Well….

I watched my stiff expression and rigid body in the video replay. I couldn’t help but curl my toes and pick at the ground.

Director: Take it easy, alright?

I nodded slowly.

The director looked at me with sympathy and discussed some things with the translator for a while.

Translator: The director wants to know if you have anything you want to do. He suggested that if we start with one of your interests first, you’ll get into the right state of mind faster.

MC: Well, there is one place….

I almost immediately thought of the cake shop that Kiro had mentioned.

(Cut to cake shop)

Because of how early it was in the morning when we arrived at this cake shop called “Flipped”, the first batch of pastries had just come out of the oven. 

I was standing in front of the shop window outside the store while the director was preparing for shooting and I made adjustments for myself. 

Shoulders down, jaw relaxed, a smile appeared on my face. I recalled the formula Kiro taught me.

Close your eyes. Look into your heart.

“I’m the “not afraid of anything” Kiro!”

A burst of mellow sweetness lingered wantonly in the air. I opened my eyes and focused on the window again.

A pair of bright and familiar smiling eyes appeared in the window. The owner of these smiling eyes waved to me.

I felt my heart jump out of my chest.

Kiro: Hello, Miss Chips~ 

Looking at the two intersecting faces on the window glass, I finally couldn’t help but smile.

Oops, I really did become Kiro.

[Third Part]

I didn’t expect Kiro to have secretly been planning to see me on set. I was pleasantly surprised and realized that I was deceived by him during the morning call.

I made a “follow me” gesture to him through the glass.

(Cut to alleyway)

In the alleyway next to the cake shop, I wiped away the shock in my heart and checked, again and again, to make sure that no one else had followed us.

Kiro: Don’t worry, MC. Almost all the folks in this small town will have no idea who I am. And….

He pointed proudly to the sunglasses on his nose.

Kiro: I also came prepared.

I looked around and around and deliberately put on a face of worry.

MC: Why are you here? Weren’t you filming in another country?

Kiro: Actually, I don’t have any shooting arrangements today. It only takes an hour and a half to fly to this country from the shooting location. And it only takes two hours to take the train from the town’s airport.

MC: No matter how easy you make it sound, that was no easy journey….

MC: And with this time off, you should be resting in the hotel.

He pulled down his sunglasses aggrievedly. 

Kiro: But I really wanted to visit you at work for once, and give you encouragement at your side, just like what you did for me last time.

Kiro: And more importantly, I really missed you…. 

(Here’s a cute little clip of this dialogue uploaded by @cheri-translates​  !)

MC: Kiro….

All of my pretentious arrogance dissipated in an instant and I was about to reach out and hug him. But, he crossed his arms in front of him.

Kiro: But speaking of shooting, I just observed it secretly and your performance does have some small flaws.

Kiro: Your expressions are small and stiff, your movements are rigid and tiny, and your eye contact flutters from time to time….

Kiro: Also, you can walk without looking at the camera…. If I look at the camera while walking, [robot noises] don’t I look like a robot?

The more he talked about it, the more he assumed the coach position. He made a great show of it too.

I was so embarrassed that I nodded my head to accept the criticism with shame.

Kiro: Hahahaha--I’ll stop teasing you. 

He leaned over and squished my cheek and curled his lips again.

Kiro: Although, I can see that you are a bit nervous. I’m used to seeing your confident working style as a producer on set….

Kiro: It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this nervous. You can do it, love! *Did my own interpretation of what he said here cause I had no clue what Google was trying to say lol.*

He opened his arms and the morning sun fell on his shoulders.

Kiro: Come on, Miss Chips.

Kiro: Thank you for your hard work. For that, you get a rechargeable hug from Kiro.

I nodded my head hard and as soon as I took a step of joy, the director poked his head out of the alley. 

Director: Stand by, sweety!

I slammed the brakes and took out my phone, pretending to take a call. I shook my head slightly at Kiro.

He immediately showed me an aggrieved expression and I gave him a wink.

MC: It’s okay, I’ve already learned a recharging trick from Teacher Kiro.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, sketching a picture of bright, smiling eyes on the pitch-black canvas.

When I opened my eyes, those smiling eyes gradually merged with Kiro’s in front of me.

MC: Charging is complete~

(Cut to inside cake shop)

Under the guidance of Kiro, “the super professional”, I calmed down and tried to get into the shooting state.

However, in order to not affect my shooting state, Kiro pretended to be a stranger and waited silently near the shooting location.

When I don’t know which dessert to choose, he would raise his voice and give me a hint.

With pastry crumbs hanging on the corner of my mouth, he pointed at the corner of his mouth and winked at me until I understood what he meant.

During the filming, there were children running around noisily, so he used the tablecloth on the table to do some tricks to attract their attention.

Perhaps because of his “invisible” companionship, I really became more natural before I knew it.

Translator: The shooting in the store is OK! The director said that we are going to shoot some scenes on the pedestrian street next. Miss MC just needs to walk around the street casually.

After checking the route with the director in the cake shop, I realized that the table where Kiro was sitting was empty.

(Cut to the street)

I walked out of the cake shop and looked around but did not find him.

Without giving me too much time to think, the director shouted to start behind the camera.

I tried to walk the streets with peace of mind but my eyes subconsciously looked for Kiro.

Although the sun is shining in the early spring, there is still a bit of a chill in the air that has just warmed up.

Inexplicably, my heart is a little empty.

There was hustle and bustle on the other side of the street and my gaze followed the prestige in the center surrounded by a group of local children. The familiar blonde hair was dazzling and shining.

Kiro was holding a few yellow balloons in his hand with the children cheering around him as if he had helped them stop the balloons from flying away.

He squatted down and handed them the balloons one by one.

As if he could feel my gaze, he turned around and gave me an unreserved smile.

The empty part of my heart instantly filled up at this moment.

I retracted my gaze and found that the director was gesturing at me to continue walking. I quickly continued to walk.

When I pretended to spontaneously look to the other side of the road, I found Kiro with his hands in his pockets walking at the same pace as me.

Although separated by the road, he walked with me in such a special way.

The approaching noon sunshine finally had the temperature as spring.

[Fourth Part]

The shooting had finally come to an end before dusk came.

But Kiro disappeared when I was filming the last scenic spot.

As soon as I had finished work, I took out my phone to check it and found that Kiro had sent me two text messages half an hour ago.

Kiro: MC, I will have filming tomorrow so I have to rush to take the last train.

Kiro: Also, you performed well. I know my MC is the best.

I hurriedly called Kiro but the call informed me that his phone was turned off.

I took a look at the time and it was about 20 minutes away from the shooting location to the train station in town.

Maybe Kiro has boarded the return train and even arrived at the airport….

However, before I could think rationally, I didn’t hesitate to reach out and stop a taxi.

(Cut to the train station)

Due to the small population of the town, the train station at dusk is deserted.

I couldn’t understand the local language on the big screen at the station so I stood on tiptoe and looking into the waiting area in the hall.

Benches in the waiting area, a window for manual ticket purchases, on both sides of the platform, beside the vending machine.

Kiro wasn’t there.

My shoulders drooped in disappointment and I walked slowly towards the station gate.

The setting sun gives off the last bit of its light and the half-curved dome clouds shroud half the station hall in the shadows.

A slender figure stepped out of the shadow and looked at the phone in his hand, his face was as disappointed and lonely as mine.

The sunset gradually kept coming down for another minute but it just happened to pass through the windows around the station, covering the entire lobby with a layer of gold.

I looked at the young man illuminated by the golden light and couldn’t help but shout.

MC: Kiro!!!

He raised his head with a surprised expression.

Kiro: MC?

I waved at him frantically and ran in his direction.

He regained his senses after a brief moment of disbelief and then opened his arms wide like everytime he hugs me.

The moment his breath came to my face, my heart was filled with contentment.

Kiro put a hand around my waist tightly, lowered his head, and rubbed my forehead.

Kiro: Why are you here?

MC: I remembered that I borrowed something from you today, so I ran to pay you back.

Kiro: What’s that?

I tightened my arms around his neck.

MC: Isn’t this for you?

His breathing seemed to be slightly stagnant. He slid his hand on my waist to my hair.

Kiro: Then I’ll gladly take it.

MC: I….

He bowed his head slightly, and put the words that I was eager to confide in between his lips.

.

.

.

Trains in foreign towns are always prone to delays. Thanks to this, Kiro has been at the station until now so we now have the opportunity to be alone outside of our schedules.

As soon as the setting sun fell, the stars scrambled to fill the sky.

We were dressed in starlight, sitting side-by-side on the benches outside of the station, waiting for the late train. 

Kiro: How was the last scenic shoot? Did it go well? 

MC: OK! But when I was eating a snack, I poured all the ingredients inside by accident.

MC: But in fact, you’re just supposed to pick a flavour and eat it as a dip. The director laughed and shouted “CUT”....

Kiro: Pff….hahahahaha! Fortunately, I wasn’t there or I would’ve been laughing even louder!

MC: And there was….

I counted all the interesting things about today’s shooting, and laughed happily with Kiro.

Kiro: I’m glad I was able to come to the shoot today. Otherwise, I would have missed so many interesting things about MC.

MC: Kiro, do you feel that our current conversations seem to have the roles reversed?

MC: I used to visit you at your shoots, and you talked with me about all the interesting things that happened during them.

MC: Today, we “swapped” identities, and I feel a little delicate.

Kiro: Can I interview the delicate mood of Miss Chips?

He held his hand out to me as if he were holding a microphone and placed it in front of my mouth.

MC: Well, when I was shooting before, I could always feel your gaze. I felt it a lot today.

MC: It turned out to be difficult to stop myself from gazing back.

MC: Obviously, I saw you all day, but I had to hold back from looking at you.

MC: Obviously, you are by my side, but I have to resist the urge to hug you….

My cheeks were slightly hot and I avoided Kiro’s gaze. I lifted my head to look at the stars in the sky when I heard a “click”.

I turned my head and found that Kiro was taking pictures of me with his phone, the power bank that I had given him was still hanging from it.

MC: !

I took a look at the phone in his hand and saw the picture.

MC: It’s ugly! Delete it quickly!

Kiro: How is it ugly? The most natural MC is obviously the most lovely MC!

MC: I’m not letting you keep the power bank to charge your phone as revenge. Delete it quickly!

I struggled to snatch the phone from him, only to find that all the pictures he had taken today were of me.

I randomly clicked on a picture Kiro had taken of me eating a grilled sausage with an exaggerated expression, with me nervously facing the table in the background.

MC: You little….!

I glared at him angrily then clicked on other photos.

I frowned and watched the replay. I was stubbornly asking for another shot and I looked at him in the distance.

Kiro: Miss Chips….

He prolonged the ending, slowly coming closer to me.

Kiro: Don’t delete them. They’re all my precious memories of you. I want to keep them.

MC: No wonder your phone is out of power. You took too many photos!

He heard the relaxation in my tone and happily took the phone from me.

Kiro: Is this really too much? Compared to all of the photos of me on your phone, this is nothing out of the ordinary.

I blushed and tried to retort.

MC: Well, that’s because you are Kiro!

Kiro: But to me, you are MC.

He said this in a sincere tone.

Kiro: Just like you said, I also felt MC’s unusual mood today.

Kiro: I was worried whether you would be thirsty after talking for so long. And worried that you’d be tired after shooting for so long.

Kiro: You did well. I'm proud of you.

Kiro: The most important is….

He slowly came closer to me. I was the only thing in the reflection of his eyes.

Kiro: Although the scenery of this small town is beautiful, your shooting content is also very rich.

Kiro: But just like this moment….

Kiro: Under the starry sky, I can only see you.

Kiro: You are the unique star in my world. 

[END]

#mlqc #mr love queen's choice #mr love game #mr love kiro #mlqc kiro #date translation #mlqc spoilers #zhou qiluo #AAAAAAAAAA #HE IS SO PRECIOUS #I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!!!! #WHY ISN'T HE REAL?!?!?! #周棋洛

[victoria-daydreams]

Till Kingdom Come

Chapter Thirteen: A Simple Lover’s Quarrel

AN: Can’t believe I abandoned this story for two, three months. Then again, I only got three notes on the last chapter so that was a little disheartening which made me want to take a break. But I’m back now and slightly reinvigorated to write again.

Word Count: 4.0k

Trigger Warnings: offensive language, racial slurs, racism

Taglist: @nerds4life246, @leahnicole1219​

Chapter Fourteen: Welcome Home, Sabine Freemen

"Really Miss Jones, you didn't have to go out of your way to check on Mama," Emile stated.

In all her years, Sabine had carried out worse plans before than the one she hastily concocted last night in bed.

Sabine smiled a little, "I was concerned, your mother seemed so wound up yesterday and I felt obligated to check on her well being," she explained.

"How did you find our home?" Emile asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Well, your mother had said your first name and then your surname. I put two and two together and... " Sabine answered, before trailing off as Emile raised her eyebrows in anticipation. "Let's just say I'm an extremely determined young woman," she finished, with a nod and smiling slightly.

Just then, a maid entered the parlor room holding a silver tray in her hands. Another maid followed behind her, with saucers for milk and sugar. Emile had them place the trays on the table and dismissed them with a gracious smile.

"Miss Jones, would you care for tea?" she asked, taking the teapot in her hands.

"Yes, please," Sabine responded.

She looked around the sitting room, the home seemed quite similar to their hideout in some aspects. And in others, well, it was quite clear the immortals didn't have a decorator come in and acquire furniture in some expensive European store in Philadelphia.

"You have a lovely home Miss Freemen," Sabine commented, bringing her attention back to her older sister.

"Actually, it's Mrs. Freemen," she corrected, a soft chuckle escaping her. "You wouldn't believe how many other Freemen's you'll meet in New York," she added, as she finished pouring the amber liquid into their cups. "Thank you though, this home is big enough for Mama, Papa, and my family," Emile stated.

"Your father?" Sabine questioned, trying to keep her best poker face at the revelation.

"Mhmm," Emile hummed, stirring her sugar and milk into the tea. "It is quite an improvement from a raggedy slave shack, wouldn't you say?" she asked, lifting her cup to her lips and Sabine could only nod. "Papa didn't think he would live to see the day that colored folks would be able to live as dignified citizens of this country, and hold a dignified job being dressmakers," Emile explained, bringing her cup down.

"And here you are,"

"And here we are,"

"Do you have any more family?" Sabine asked curiously, as if Emile wasn't literally talking to her sister.

"I have a husband named Lee, he's out of state on a business trip. I have two sons, Jimmy and Phillip. My oldest, Phillip, lives in Chicago and practices medicine. Jimmy, he's about your age. He's down in D.C. studying at Howard University, he'll be home soon. Lastly, I have...had a..." Emile said, her voice lowering.

"A younger sister?" Sabine supplied quietly.

"Yes," she whispered, placing her teacup and saucer down onto the table with a soft clack. "Sabine, she was only five when she was taken from us, Mama never forgave herself," Emile stated.

"But why? Your mother can't possibly blame herself for her child being ripped away from her," Sabine said.

"You see, the day that Sabine was taken, we were supposed to runaway at night and go up North," Emile explained. "Mama has agonized over the question of 'what if we left the night before?' ever since," she finished, her mouth drawn into a thin line.

"I'm sorry about your sister," Sabine said softly. "Do you think she's alive still?" she questioned, trying to gauge Emile's reaction.

"In my heart, I want to believe that's she still here, that she escaped. But, my mind is also telling me to be logical, and that is no, little Sabine didn't survive enslavement," she replied. "She could be a feisty five year old, you know?" Emile said, a watery smile on her face. "And feisty slaves don't last long on plantations," she reminded grimly.

It was quiet after Emile's haunting statement, Sabine felt as though she lost her appetite. A feisty slave she was, and Emile was right, they don't last long. Sabine knew from firsthand experience. Suddenly, the door opened and Emile and Sabine both jumped back from the table slightly.

"Mrs. Freemen—"

"Goodness gracious," Emile breathed, placing her hand on her chest. "You scared the living daylights out of us," she laughed, and shook head.

"A'm sorry ma'am, but there's an ofay-I mean, white man at the door," the maid announced. "He said he's here to collect Miss Jones and return her home," she continued, glancing over at Sabine.

"Thank you, I'll see my guest to the door," Emile responded, the girl bowed her head and left the room again.

"I presume that this is the same ofay from yesterday?" Emile questioned, a knowing smirk on her lips.

Sabine laughed softly, "Yes, it is," she admitted. "But in his defense, Mr. Greene is alright for an ofay," she joked, standing up from her seat.

"Is he your husband?" Emile inquired, lifting her brow as stood as well.

"No," Sabine answered quickly, a nervous chuckle coming from her. "Thank you for hosting me Mrs. Freeman-"

"Pfft," Emile said, waving her hand. "Please, call me Emile,"

She smiled, "I know I showed up to your home uninvited and completely unexpected," Sabine stated, offering her hand for Emile to take.

Sabine waited for the woman to take her hand, but instead Emile softly grabbed her by the shoulders and kept her at an arms length.

"You know, I can see why Mama could mistake for you for our Sabine," Emile commented, tilting her head to the side. "You do have my sister's eyes," she mused, sighing wistfully. "Do come back and visit us again Miss Jones. I would love for you to meet the rest of my family and reintroduce to Mama when she's less hysterical," Emile joked, removing her hands from Sabine.

"I would like that, very much!" Sabine stated, vigorously nodding her head. "And please, you can call me Edith,"

~~~x~~~

Josef and Sabine strolled through Central Park arm in arm, passing a duck pond as they went. The park was fluttering with life: little girls playing hopscotch, children rolling hoops, nannies pushing baby carriages, couples walking together, and a policeman patrolling the area. Silently, he sent Josef and Sabine a pointed looked as if to wordlessly say, he's watching them.

"How did it go yesterday?" Josef asked, directing his attention towards Sabine. "Was it bad? You practically locked yourself in your room once you got back," he pointed out.

Sabine twirled her parasol, "No, actually it all went really splendid," she answered, smiling wistfully. "It was just a little overwhelming, as one could imagine. I needed some time to myself, that's all,"

"And did you tell Booker about your plan before you took off yesterday morning?"

Sabine shook her head, "Look, I came back in the afternoon and he wasn't there-" she started.

"Yes, because he was searching like a madman to find where you gone," Josef cut in, lightly chuckling.

The sound of a crack of the bat could be heard far off in the distance, a game of baseball was being played as spectators cheered in encouragement.

"I wrote down my sister's address and handed it to Nicky for when Bastien inevitably came back home," Sabine continued, tilting the parasol to shield her eyes more. "And he did," she finished.

"That must of been an interesting walk back home," he commented, with a grin.

"I told him, if he had nothing nice to say then I rather not hear him say anything," she replied. "I suggested he air his grievances elsewhere," she said.

"Oh, he did," Josef smiled, nodding his head.

"What did he say about me?"

"In short, he said what you did was rash, irresponsible, and above all else," he listed, lifting a finger in the air. "He was afraid that your expectations were set too high and that you would be heavily disappointed with what you found,"

"Aww," Sabine smiled. "Even when Bastien is angry with me, he still looks out for my best interests. It warms the heart," she said, giving her parasol another twirl.

"Of course he would, he does love you, you know," Josef replied.

"Yes, I know," she laughed softly.

"Now, I'm going to go that ice vendor to see if I can convince him to let me buy two lemon ices," Josef stated.

Sabine followed his stare to a plump, middle-aged man that had a straw boater on top of his dark hair. A handlebar mustache adorned his face and was waxed to perfection.

She looked back at Josef, "I bid thee good luck then," Sabine joked, as she unlinked her arm for his.

Shooting her a grin, he tilted his brown hat towards her before walking off to the vendor leaving her to her own devices. Sabine subtly rocked and forth on her feet, watching people moseying about on the promenade. She made the unfortunate mistake of making eye contact with an older woman who scowled at her almost instantly. Sabine averted hers eyes away and in the direction of little boys playing marbles, the last thing she needed was some old, white woman making a scene over a supposed slight against her.

Suddenly, a grimy hand gripped Sabine by the wrist and she whipped her head around.

It was a haggard man dressed in a tattered Union army uniform, his hair matted and she could see a wild look in his eyes.

"Spare a penny for a vet ma'am?" he asked, his gray irises boring into her.

Sabine glanced around in a futile effort for help, even if "help" did come, she would not be on the receiving end of it. She returned her stare towards the vet, her eyes widening when she realized the left sleeve to his soiled jacket did not house an arm in it, he was an amputee.

"I-I uh, don't have anything to spare, I'm sorry sir," Sabine said, trying to wrestle her wrist from his grip.

His grip tightened, "What do you mean you don't have change to spare?" he questioned, growing angry. "I fought for your people to be free and this is how you repay me!" he snapped.

"I'm sorry sir but I don't have anything to give," Sabine repeated, successfully snatching her wrist away.

The vet sneered, "Uppity negro bitch!" he spat, before hobbling away to beg elsewhere.

Sabine placed her hand on her chest to still her pounding heart, briefly closing her eyes and exhaling deeply.

"Look at what I got!" Josef cheered happily, his voice approaching her. "Two lemon ices, I think my Italian impressed the vendor, he's probably never seen a colored man that spoke the language fluently," he chuckled, as Sabine reopened her eyes. "It's not Delmonico's, the lucky bastards," Josef continued, referring to Nicky, Andy, and Bastien who were meeting someone that had work for them. "Sabine, are you alright?"

"Better now, I was accosted by a man-"

"Where is he?" Josef cut in, his expression turning serious.

Sabine closed her parasol and hanged it from her wrist, "Don't," she warned, taking the frozen treat from him and linking arms. "He's a homeless war vet and white, you're not going to win this fight," Sabine stated, patting his bicep.

"I was just goin-"

"No, what we're going to do is imagine all the meals we would be eating right now if we were allowed into Delmonico's," Sabine corrected, looking up at him expectantly. "I'll start, I want lamb chops, whole plates of them,"

Josef turned away from her and looked down the path in hopes of finding the assailant, but he was long gone, lost within the crowd of people.

Sabine tugged on his arm, "Indulge me, please," she said softly.

He sighed heavily and began leading her away, "I want a steak," he stated, making Sabine giggle. "A big, juicy steak,"

"And what would you have with that steak of yours?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, the creamiest mashed potatoes one could dream of,"

~~~x~~~

Within the time frame of less than a week, this evening marked the night that Sabine was going to meet the rest of her family. During her afternoon tea with her sister yesterday, Emile had told Sabine that her husband and son were both coming home today and she wanted her to meet them. Not to mention, Emile had also believed that enough time had passed that Mama had recovered from the shock of seeing Sabine, and they could be properly introduced now.

"Can you tie this?" Sabine asked, looking over her shoulder.

Her bedroom was illuminated by the few kerosene lamps that sat on top of her dressers. Sabine heard movement behind her before feeling fingers slowly trail down her back and began to lace up her corset.

"You never dress this way for me," Bastien complained.

She chuckled softly, "We don't go anywhere that I'd have to," Sabine pointed out, feeling him tug on her from behind. "Plus, you're dressed to the nines yourself," she reminded, glancing over her shoulder. "You never dress this way for me either," she added, wincing a bit when Bastien pulled the laces tight around her torso.

"Sorry," he apologized immediately, noticing her body tense. "I wish we could dress up more like this," Bastien stated, finishing his work.

"Technically, we could," Sabine responded, affixing a bustle to herself.

Bastien made his way towards her bed where her evening gown was laid out. The dress was green and made of silk taffeta, the neckline was round and the sleeves short. Making his way back towards her, Sabine raised her hands in the air as Bastien lifted it over her head, careful not to mess up her elegant updo. The dress slid on easily and a vast of silk fell onto the floor, covering her feet and trailing behind her.

"Yes, but I want to actually take you somewhere," Bastien said, buttoning the back of her dress. "I want to take you somewhere special, to show you off to the world, without all the stares and scowls," he finished, kissing Sabine's neck.

Sabine turned around and faced Bastien, "Like the two of us being able to sit together in box seats at the opera?" she hinted, with a slight chuckle as she smoothed the dress down around her undergarments.

"Sabine if I could, you know I would," he insisted, grasping her waist.

"I know, I know," Sabine replied, nodding her head understandingly. "This job is a 'whites only' type of a job, meaning Josef and I are out commission. While you three get to infiltrate high society and all the luxuries that come with it," she continued, lightly gripping onto the lapels of his tailcoat. "Have fun with all those stuffy, rich ofays," she wished, a smile peeking from her lips. "Josef and I will enjoy dinner with my family," she finished.

"About this dinner..."

Sabine looked downward, "You don't agree, I know," she said, finishing his sentence with a sigh.

"It's not that," Bastien corrected, lifting her chin to look at him. "I'm worried you're moving too fast, that you're losing yourself in the moment," he explained, enclosing his fingers around her biceps.

"Well of course I am," she agreed. "This is a second chance at being a family-"

"Sabine you're immortal," he interrupted softly, Sabine's mouth opened to argue. "Please let me finish," he requested. "You cannot recreate or rebuild the relationship you once had with your family," Bastien stated firmly, shaking his head.

She looked away from him, biting down her lip. Sabine felt her nose burn with the tears she was holding back from Bastien's bluntness.

"I can try," she countered, her voice cracking.

Bastien took her chin in his hand again and turned her face to him, "I'm sorry, Sabine. I'm so, so sorry, but you can't," he said, cupping her cheeks in both his palms.

"It's not fair," she choked, tears threatening to fall.

Bastien wrapped his arms around her, holding her head to his chest while he stroked her back.

"I know you want this reunion to be like a fairy tale, where you get your happily ever after," he began. "But we don't get those, and I'm sorry fate has chosen this path for you, because you don't deserve it Sabine. You don't," he finished, looking at her sadly.

Tears that she promised herself wouldn't show start to flow down her cheeks and he wiped them away with his thumbs. Sabine let her forehead rest against Bastien as he held her. She was sure Bastien could feel her crying. They stood in silence for several minutes, save for the occasional sniffle from her. When she shed her last tears, she removed her head from his chest slightly.

"I just want this so badly, Bastien," Sabine said, her voice above a whisper. "It's a bittersweet dream come true,"

"I know," he murmured, kissing her forehead.

Sabine sighed, resting her head on Bastien's heart, her grip tightening a little around him.

"I know I don't express my love verbally," she began, slowly bringing her gaze upwards to Bastien. "But I do love you, Bastien," Sabine stated. "And I'm grateful that you're being supportive towards me, even if you disagree," she finished.

Bastien let out a soft exhale, his eyes shining in such a way that Sabine never seen before. Cupping the back of her neck with his other hand, Bastien leaned down and placed a light kiss on Sabine's lips, so tender. The kiss was not deep, they only moved their lips against each other’s slowly. After a few more sweet kisses he pulled back once again to rest his forehead against hers.

He smiled warmly, "Say it again," Bastien said.

"I love you Bastien," Sabine repeated, softly grinning. She kissed him again on the lips. "I love you," she kissed him on his right cheek. "I love you," she kissed him on his left cheek. "I love you," Sabine stood on her tiptoes, kissing his nose and forehead. "I love you..." she whispered, capturing Bastien's lips once more.

Tilting her head, Sabine deepened the kiss and Bastien returned the gesture in equal vigor. His hand traveled from her neck and down to her waist, lightly wrapping around it. Slowly, they parted from one another and she stared into his blue orbs, seeing them gleam. Sabine wondered what it was about Bastien that made her feel this way, was it his loyalty, his compassion, or his devotion. Whatever it was, Sabine hoped that it would last forever for she had never been so happy, content, and in love than ever before.

"I will never get enough of you," Sabine said, nudging her nose against his with a contented hum.

"Neither will I," Bastien whispered, almost non-audible. "Now, go enjoy your dinner,"

~~~x~~~

Hearty laughter echoed in the dining room along with the clinking of utensils on dinner plates.

The first course, a soup of creamed mushroom, had been served and conversation at the Freemen table had flowed pleasantly, giving controversial topics a wide berth. Thankfully, Sabine and Josef were seated next to each other, putting her at ease that she was close to a familiar face. On her left, sat Jimmy, a charming young man. Sabine could tell he was a bit of a rake due to his constant double entendres that were just enough to remain both humorous and respectful. Despite all of that, she found herself feeling refreshed at his conversation. He talked of his various travels and the people he met with great excitement.

"Miss Jones," a booming voice called, causing Sabine to look up from the rim of her wine glass.

She met the eyes of her father, who sat at the head of the table. Fine, gray hair haloed his head, instead of the thick curls he had passed down to her. His face was lined with heavy wrinkles, an indicator of the hard life he had been through, but there was one thing about him that hadn't changed. It was his eyes. Those same kind eyes sparkled with spirit even though forty-four years had passed since she last seen them.

"Emile has been telling me that you're a ward to a white woman," he stated, just as the second course was being served.

A hush fell across the room, everyone's attention turned towards her awaiting her response.

Sabine briefly glanced at Josef, "Please, call me Edith, Mr. Freemen," Sabine said, placing her glass down onto the table. "And yes, it's true, I'm Mrs. Scott's charge," she answered.

Emile's husband, Lee, raised his eyebrows. "I'm curious as to why she would take a colored girl into her care," he said.

"Maybe she wants to relive the glory days," Jimmy suggested, before sipping from his wine.

"Jimmy!" Emile admonished, glaring at her son.

Sabine shook her head, "It's fine Emile, I wasn't offended," she reassured. "My parents died when I was very young, I believe sickness took them both," Sabine said.

"You poor child," Mama commented softly.

"I was in a orphanage when she found me," Sabine informed. "She was a lonely, childless, war widow and wanted a companion. I don't know what made her go to a colored orphanage, but I suppose it was just luck of the draw for me," she recounted. "She has treated me as if I were one of her own ever since, and for that I am grateful," Sabine finished, telling her "life story" to everyone.

"Quite the life you have lived," Papa said, Sabine only nodded in agreement. "What about you, Mr. Campbell?" He asked, turning his attention to Josef. "How did you come to meet Edith here?" he questioned.

"I'm the family doctor," Josef replied, sitting up in his chair. "Mrs. Scott knew how white doctors would treat Edith, or should I say, wouldn't treat her. So, Mrs. Scott employed me for my services," he explained.

"An excellent profession Mr. Campbell!" Jimmy cheered, sending a smile his way. "We need more colored doctors in America," he added.

"I've been meaning to ask Mr. Campbell," Emile began. "Are you from this country? I've seen hundreds of colored men and none look quite like you," she pointed out.

"No," Josef responded, shaking his head. "I'm from Africa,"

"The Motherland," Mama hummed, her lips curving upwards.

"What about that man you left with Edith? One of the maids noted he had a slight accent," Emile recalled.

"Oh, that's Mr. Greene," Sabine named. "He's French,"

"You have a white butler?" Jimmy asked, chuckling in amusement.

"Now that, would be a sight to see, but no, Mr. Greene is not our butler," Sabine clarified, laughing herself. "He's my guardian, a second pair of eyes for Mrs. Scott, if you will. He makes sure that I don't get myself into trouble," she explained, which wasn't a complete lie.

"You keep quite the company, don't you?" Lee asked, with a smile. "Anyone else noteworthy?"

"Well there's an Italian," Josef chimed in.

A slight laugh escaped Lee, "My god, all you need is a Chinaman and you all would make quite the colorful party," he said.

"We would, wouldn't we?" Sabine responded, joining in with his laughter. "That's actually why we moved from our previous home to New York," she stated. "Less stares here and easier to get lost in the crowd,"

"How long do you all plan on staying here?" Mama asked curiously.

"Just until the beginning of next year," Sabine answered. "Mrs. Scott wants to go Europe,"

"It seems we have no choice but to treasure every second we spend with you, Edith," Mama declared, smiling warmly at her.

Sabine grinned back, "I wouldn't have it any other way," she agreed.

"Plus, it would do you some good wouldn't it Edith?" Jimmy began. "Spending time with folks who look like you,"

"We'll be your home, away from home," Emile said. "A second family," she finished.

"Oh, if they only knew," Sabine thought.

Sabine picked up her wine glass, "Emile, words cannot describe how happy that would make me," she grinned, before raising her glass. "To the Freemen's!" she cheered.

"To the Freemen's!"

Chapter Fifteen: A Journey’s End

#the old guard #the old guard fanfiction #the old guard fanfic #the old guard fic #sebastien le livre #sebastien le livre x oc #booker #booker x oc #black!oc #black fanfiction #andromache the scythian #andy #nicolo di genova #nicky #yusuf al kaysani #joe #quyhn #lykon #booker x reader #the old guard imagine #black!reader

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Smalltown Bringdown 1

Warnings: blood, violence, more to be added.

This is dark!biker!Bucky and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You live in a smalltown run by a biker club. When your boss gets into debt, you find yourself drawn into the crossfire.

Note: Yesterday I tried writing Sugar, Sugar. That didn’t work out. I had a migraine on Monday that I’m still tiptoeing around. I wrote this a week ago but wanna continue it. Well, if there’s any interest in my doing so. So to those who take the time to read, thank you. Love you guys!

Please, leave some feedback, like and reblog if you can <3

Birch was a small town, named for the line of pale tree at its heart. The streets were built around it. It had stood for centuries like a guardian over residents. Like a harbinger of their eventual fates. White as a ghost, looming like the reaper.

And death lived in Birch. It rode the streets on iron steeds. The apocalyptic horseman roaring down the roads in leather. Oblivion was the bar on the main road.; The Asp was a remnant of the town’s birth. An inn for those who claimed to discover this “new world”. Cleopatra reclined along the sign’s moniker, a snake around her arm, poised to sink its long fangs in her throat. 

Further down was the Chipped Saucer. The British were the first Europeans to settle here and when they supped with the Natives, they found their dishware cracked from their long journey. The tale outlived those early townsfolk painted across the window of sleepy old diner. The history of the forgotten town was long remembered because there, time didn’t seem to move very fast.

The town was more purgatory than hell. Few ever escaped it. You were among the trapped. A waitress in an aged yellow uniform and frilly white apron at the old diner. Sundays were busiest. The older folk were hungry after the weekly service and the younger residents were trying to caffeinate their hangovers.

You did your round of refills and returned the carafe to the machine. You took your time replacing the filter and adding the grounds. The rusted jingle of the bell above the door barely registered in your head. But the decisive stomp of boots did. Not just one set, not two, but more than you could count. You looked up as you closed the lid on the machine.

The diners sat frozen as if in a tableau. Not a single breath was drawn as you watched the leather-coated men walk between the tables. You didn’t need to see the patches on their backs to know who they were. Everyone knew who they were because they owned everything and everyone. The police, the town council, the mayor, and any who called Birch home.

Every small town has its dark secrets but the club had never really been a secret. The Howling Commandos had reigned since the boys returned from the war in 1945. Since, their mantle had been taken up by sons, nephews, cousins. Those glory days loomed as if it were only yesterday that the newspapers declared victory in Europe! Victor in Japan! Korea! Vietnam! Iraq! 

You skirted behind the counter as Lillian, the oldest of the waitresses, stood by the kitchen window. Artie, the cook, neared the other side and gave a grunt at the bikers kicking around the diner. 

“From what I heard,” He said loud enough for them to hear. “They serve hash down at The Asp, don’t they?”

“Artie,” Lillian hissed under her breath as she touched her immense bosom.

The diners, the servers, the bus boys, all exhaled in communal dismay. Mr. Elrich watched as Danny, the boy he’d once taught, took his mug of coffee and emptied it in a single gulp.

“Where’s Jimmy?” A golden-haired man stepped forward. 

You knew him. Knew of him. He had been a few years ahead of you in school. He was held back and sat beside you in math and copied off your tests. Steve Rogers was too much trouble for a browner like you.

“Jimmy’s out,” Artie waved his spatula. “Can’t you see these people are tryna enjoy their breakfast?”

“Jimmy’s out,” Steve repeated slowly as he neared the counter. “Well, that’s a first. I always thought he slept off his Saturday nights in his office. Least I always found him half-asleep at his desk. Definitely wasn’t working.”

“You come back later when he’s in,” Artie shook his head. “Goddamn, boy, my eggs are burning.”

“Artie,” Lillian and several other waitresses wailed at him.

“How long you worked here, Art?” Steve was close. You could smell the leather and smoke as he passed you. His hand was on the door as he glared at Art through the window.

“Be thirty years, soon enough,” Artie answered defiantly. “Since you were a kid tossing your pancakes at the wall, you brat.”

Steve chuckled and pushed through the door. Several women screamed and men shushed them at the flurry that followed. The crash of pans as Steve grabbed the old man by his collar and pushed him against the window. You stepped through the door before it swung shut.

“Don’t.” You pleaded. “Don’t hurt him. Jimmy’s not here. None of us have seen him since yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve shrugged you away. “Loyalty is admirable. The man pays your check, so I understand your insistence on protecting him. I only wish he was as diligent in paying his dues.”

“St-stop,” You squealed as he his hand wrapped around Artie’s thick throat. “Goddamnit, you know Artie. You know he means no harm.”

“I know he’s always had a mean mouth,” Steve snarled. “Where’s that spatula now, hmm? You gonna give me a swat, Art?”

You looked around. The waitresses gaped through the window as the men loomed around the tables. Amused, they crossed their arms and watched the helpless old cook struggle. On the long steel table behind Steve was a large knife. Your heart pounded as you inched around him.

“Steve, come on, you can wait around for Jimmy,” You offered. “I’m sure he’ll be in. Hell, you’ll have more luck heading down to his. I’m sure he’s sleeping it off there.”

“I came here to get the money and I’m not leaving without it.” Steve snarled. 

You bent slowly and took the knife, careful not to drag the blade on the floor. You stood and came around Steve. He glanced over as you pointed it at his neck. He chuckled as his eyes flashed.

“You don’t wanna do that, girl,” He warned.

“I don’t so long as you let him go,” You declared. “You go sit down, we’ll get you coffee, Art will cook you some bacon, and we’ll wait for Jimmy.”

“Don’t think I will.” Steve squeezed tighter as Artie turned red.

“Oh yeah?” You touched his neck with the blade’s edge. “You want Jimmy, no one’s keeping you from him but we can’t help you if you throttle poor Artie.”

A chuckle came from behind you. Deep and venomous. You looked slowly over your shoulder as the back door whisked shut. The knife slipped from your hand as you were faced with the barrel of a gun. The metal clattered to the tile as you dropped your arms and stared at the pistol’s mouth.

“You grew some balls since grade school,” Bucky remarked. 

Him and Steve had always been inseparable. You should’ve known he wasn’t far. And as the main shareholder in the Asp and therefore the club, he was owed more than any. It would be a mark on the crest not to collect the debt himself.

“Wish I could say the same of you,” You retorted. “So, you gonna shoot me?”

He laughed again and Steve did too. “Let the man go,” Bucky said. “There’s a safe in the office. If there’s not enough in there, we’ll empty the till.”

He lowered the gun. Slowly as if taunting you. You turned to check on Artie as he leaned heavily on the wall. Steve headed for the door to the back hall where Jimmy’s office was. 

“You okay?” You helped Artie stand straight. “You need some water. You should sit down. I’ll get Billy to finish service.”

“You are going to go out there,” Bucky said as he holstered his gun. “With the rest of the girls and stay away from sharp objects.” He grabbed your arm and dragged you to the door. “Artie, you get back to your tickets. These people look hungry.”

He shoved you through to the dining room and you stumbled into the counter. Artie coughed and wiped his sweaty hands on his apron. He waved at Billy, his sous chef, and ambled back to the grill.

It was a few minutes of tense silence filled only with the sound of pots, pans, and plates. As Artie called out an order and Lillian loaded her tray, Steve emerged from the back. Donny stood at the front door and kept any from leaving. Not than anyone had the strength or courage to even stand up.

“I don’t think we’re getting that thing open.” Steve said. 

“Hey!” Donny shouted and the door chimed as he pulled it open. 

Everyone watched as he raced out and chased Jimmy past the window. The small, greasy-haired man put up little fight against the burly biker and was dragged inside. 

“There you are, Jim,” Bucky swung the door open and brushed past you. “We were starting to get impatient.”

“Bucky,” Jimmy’s voice cracked. “What are you--”

“Jim, let’s not play this game,” Bucky snapped. “I think you know I haven’t brought everyone here for breakfast so why don’t you help us crack the code and we’ll be on our way.”

“Crack the code?” Jimmy whimpered.

“We found the safe,” Bucky crossed his arms. “So, you open it up and we’re on our way. I only came for what’s mine. For what you owe me.”

“I-I-I--” Jimmy stuttered.

“Grab him,” Bucky ordered and Steve was quick to grab the thin man by his scruff and drag him across the diner.

Bucky led the way into the kitchen and the weak struggle could be heard as they disappeared through the back door. Artie called another order and Kimmie balanced it on her tray. When the three men returned, Jimmy had a bloody lip and Steve carried a black bag of what could only be the safe’s contents.

“Well, you see, we still got a problem here, Jimmy.” Bucky hauled him over to the window by his arm. “That’s not even close to what you owe and you’ve got late fees on top of it. Dodging me all week like this.”

Jimmy looked ready to cry as Bucky took his hand and slammed hit flat on the window’s ledge. He held his wrist down as he reached to his waist. “Check the register.” Bucky ordered.

Steve went to the till and hit every button until it opened. He emptied the drawer and shook his head. “Not even a hundred.” He scoffed.

“Pity,” Bucky pulled a knife from his belt. “Well then, Jim, there’s only one thing for you to do; pick a finger.”

“Wha--” Jimmy yelped. “What do you--”

“You pick a finger or I will find something worse to cut off.” Bucky lowered the blade and Jimmy flinched away.

“Please,” Jimmy begged. “I’ll get the money. End of the week, I promise.”

“You said that last week,” Bucky countered. “And I can’t gamble my integrity as lightly as you do, Jim. So hurry up or I’ll make you pick two.”

“Uh…” Jimmy quaked and went pale. ‘Th-the pinkie.”

Bucky was quick. The knife cut easily through flesh and bone and blood pooled beneath Jimmy’s hand in second. You covered your mouth as your stomach flipped and several people wretched, some followed by sloppy splats onto the floor. 

Bucky held up the finger and admired it before he tucked it into his pocket and patted Jimmy on the back. “One week for the rest of it, Jim.” He strode through the door and stopped just beside the counter. He turned to you and smirked as he took the cloth from your apron pocket. “Get some pressure on that before he passes out, will ya?”

He handed you the cloth and winked. He nodded to his men and they filed out the door without another word. You blinked and shook yourself from your shock. You pushed through the kitchen door and grabbed Jimmy’s hand as he held his wrist. You pushed the rag to his severed pinkie and he hissed.

“Someone call an ambulance,” Your voice seemed to break the pall that had fallen over the diner. “Please!”

💀

By Tuesday, it was as if nothing had ever happened at the Chipped Saucer. The usual customers stopped by for their breakfast or lunch and Artie was back to his grumpy ways. The only thing that remained was the blood stain on the window ledge. And the bandage on Jimmy’s hand.

When you were done your shift, you hung your apron on its hook in the back and clipped your name tag on it. You covered up your hideous yellow dress with your black cardigan and grabbed your purse before you headed out. Your mother texted you to grab some cheese on your way home and a sixer of Blue for good measure. 

You stopped by the grocer first and added a box of oreos to your bill. The liquor store was just next door and the after work crowd strolled its aisles. You traipsed to the back, the paper bag balanced against your hip as you browsed the cans and bottles. You grabbed some Blue and turned to head to the check out. You were the only person left in the aisle, well aside from one. Likely the reason for the sudden desolation.

Bucky Barnes stood before you in his leather jacket. You hadn’t noticed him there at the end of the shelf, watching you, arms crossed. You sighed and walked towards him, deliberately sidestepping him. You stopped short as he blocked you with his arm.

“Not even a hello?” He mused.

You scoffed and shook your head and stepped to the other side. He blocked you just as quickly. You tilted your head wryly and he smiled. 

“What do you want?”

“To talk.” He said evenly.

“Mmhmm,” You rolled your eyes. “Forgive me if I’m not up for it.”

You tried to shake him again and he caught you around your waist. “Honey, honey, honey.” 

You wriggled away from him and almost dropped your armful. 

“You had a gun in my face two days ago. I have nothing to say to you.”

“You had a knife to my man’s throat.” He said. “Think we’re even.”

“Just say whatever it is you want so that I can go home.” You grumbled.

“How you like working over there at the Saucer?”

“What?” You shook your head.

“Seems slow. Tips any good?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” You challenged.

“Well, we got an opening at The Asp and you’ve got experience serving.” He shrugged. “Figured I’d put that out there. Not many ways to move up in this town.”

“I don’t wanna work at a dive.” You said through your teeth. “You done?”

“Sure.” He backed up and turned so he was almost against the shelf. He waved you past him. “Go home. Relax.” You began to step by him and he spoke again. “Say hi to your ma.”

You stopped but didn’t look back at him. You swallowed and carried your sixer to the counter. You set it down and dug for your wallet with one hand. 

“It’s been covered.” Larry said as he scratched his thick mustache and glanced at Bucky. The biker pretended to peruse the white wines.

“No, it hasn’t.” You slammed a bill on the cans. “You give him his money back. Or keep it. I couldn’t care less.”

You waited for your change and grabbed the beer. You kept your head high as you swept out onto the street and past the motorcycle parked across two spots. You’d have to barter a can off your mom when you got in.

💀

On Friday, Jimmy called you to his office. He never called anyone to his office. Well except Kimmie but that’s because everyone knew what was going on between them. So you punched out and headed to the small back room with the dented metal desk from the 60s and the cinder block wall poorly disguised with flowery wallpaper. You knocked then entered when he replied.

You sat in the small chair with the orange cushion. The same one you’d sat your interview in. Jimmy spun his pen in his hand. He was jumpy. More than usual. The small safe hidden beside his filing cabinet was scratched but still in tact. He dropped the pen and twined his fingers together.

“So, uh, yeah,” He blinked and sniffed. “Well, this isn’t… easy. Not quite sure how to say it really.”

You were quiet. Confused. You scrunched your lips and listened. You had a bad feeling. Unusual things didn’t happen for no reason. Not in a small town.

“Heh, well, I’m sure you know I’ve come into some financial hardship and, well, it looks like...uh,” He sat back and smoothed his greasy, thinnng hair. “I’m gonna have to let you… go.”

“Let me go?” You repeated. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“I need the, uh, cash,” He turned back and forth in his chair. He was nervous.

“Cash. Sure. You couldn’t sell that heap of junk parked outside?” You sneered. “I have no doubt this has something to do with those goons but I don’t think you’re being honest about the why.”

“Look, I’m real sorry. You’ll get severance.” He sputtered.

“You can’t afford to keep me on but you can afford the pay out?” You scoffed and stood. “Let me ask you, have you received any other visits from your friends at The Asp?”

He shook his head frantically.

“Yeah, you haven’t been around Larry’s to grab a mickey at all? Or passing by? Maybe Tuesday night?”

“It’s a small town. I got nowhere to hide.” He cowered.

“Suppose there’s nothing else to say. Nothing I can say.” You threw up those hands. “You tell Bucky you were a good boy, okay?”

“I…”

“I get it. You owe them.” You started to turn away. “When should I expect my cheque.”

“Usual,” He answered glumly. “I really am sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah,” You stopped by the door. “You remember how sorry you are the next time you pick up a cue, eh.”

💀

Another trip to the liquor store, this one unimpeded. A bottle of wine from some unheard of vineyard on some distant island. You carried it home in the bag, its shape visible beneath the wrinkled paper. You went in the back way, as you always did. Your mother’s dog, Ash, wiggled his bum as you stopped to pet him. You let him inside as you entered the kitchen.

Your mother was at the counter, working on dinner. You set the bottle on the table heavily and sat. You let your purse fall to the floor and sighed.

“Hey, hon,” She said. “How was your day?”

You grumbled and unsheathed the bottle. You crumpled the bag and tossed it in the middle of the table. You unscrewed the lid and drank from the long neck. Your mom stopped her chopping and turned with a hand on her hip.

“Rough one?” She asked.

“I got fired.” You said numbly.

“Fired? For what?”

You shrugged and took another drink. She huffed and set aside her knife. You listened as she opened and closed a cupboard and crossed to you. She set down a glass. 

“Pace yourself.” She reproached.

You frowned and filled the glass to the rim. She tutted and went back to the counter. 

“It’s because of them.” You said at last.

She looked at you but kept quiet. She knew who you meant.

“Some kind of game.” You muttered.

“Oh, Lillian told me about your heroics.” Your mother sighed. “I knew you weren’t telling me something.”

“Christ, ma, they were gonna give Artie a heart attack,” You exclaimed. “What was I supposed to do? He’s a defenseless old man.”

“And? The Commandos are thugs. They have no qualms against old men and young women.” She dumped her cutting board in the pot and covered it. “Losing your job is nothing. You could’ve lost a lot more messing around. You know how things work.”

“Not as well as you, yeah?” You drank deeply. “Dad learned it the hard way, didn’t he?”

“That he did,” She assured you and took a glass of her own from the cupboard. She sat with you at the table. “You’ll find something else. Something better than the diner. That little tourism place, they need a new receptionist.”

“Great, I’ll get my resume printed tomorrow.” You poured her a more modest glass. “It’s a show. Don’t worry, ma. They just want to wave their-- well, you know.”

“You just stay clear of them. Let them find bigger fish to fry,” She advised. 

#bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes #dark!bucky barnes #biker!bucky barnes #biker au #bucky barnes x reader #dark bucky barnes x reader #dark!bucky barnes x reader #biker!bucky barnes x reader #ft steve rogers #au #series #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #mcu #marvel #captain america

[be-ready-when-i-say-go]

Thought about something cute like reader and 5sos singing on the same festival and she’s dating cal 😭 and they switch with her guitarist and drummer boy and at first she didn’t notice but they they start to have so much fun together at the stage dancing together and doing stupid shit them following her around as she tries to prevent herself from giggling too much and actually singing 🥺🥺 and later she walks down when 5sos are performing with crystal Kay and Sierra omg 😳

+ I’m sorry I’m annoying but part two to my last asks!! I just imagine calum being all heart eyes for her minding his own business tho playing his guitar but every time he doesn’t have to use vocals or his bass he caught her hand or keep her close and ahh singing wildflower to her!!’ When at first the girls just wanted to have fun on stage with them but Calum just keeps her close the whole time singing to her and her singing back with him and being all funny and giggly together ooof

Thanks for your suggestion! It took me a minute to get to it. I did combine it with a few other suggestions. One person asked for drama and someone asked for angst. And viola! Here it is.

This is the last part of the Distance series! I’ll do an epilogue if folks want to send in some suggestions for it! HUGE thanks to everyone that sent me ideas! This series wouldn’t be what is it without you guys! 

Find the Distance series masterlist here!  Here’s my main masterlist! CW: 18+ (Smut). Angst. Lots of Fluff. 

Songs I played: Woman and From The Dining Table by Harry Styles!

Here it is at a WHOOPINg 9.6k. Enjoy!

_____________________________________________________________

The release of her album is followed by a tour. At first, she’s excited. Her mind runs wild with possibilities. Her fingers can’t keep up fast enough with every wonder and question she sends to Calum and thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind the incessant buzzing. He takes each question in stride. It’s nice, in a way, for him to have the wisdom to give her. Like she doesn’t have to go in blind like he did, especially since it’s just her. He hopes he can make her feel a little less alone on the road. It can be a hard road to travel alone.

 The glimmer starts to wear off fast. Rehearsals turn her into a zombie. She’s up fairly early stretching, taking her dog for a walk, trying to remind herself that everything’s going to fall into place like it needs to, but the second she walks into the rehearsal space it feels like everything is going to fall apart. That somehow everything she’s ever wanted on tour is just too much, too much out of the budget, too much because she doesn’t have the weight to her name just yet. And maybe it’s a lot of glitz and glamour. Maybe she is asking for too much. Maybe that would be her downfall. 

Her phone buzzes. And she pauses, sitting on the floor with her mic in hand, and glances over to it. It’s Calum again. Another message that she won’t actually read until some ungodly hour in the night. He’s got to be up to his throat in worry. She can’t seem to think enough to text him back during the day. Too much is going on. She feels like she’s going to sink, just through the carpeted floor and through the concrete foundation and bury herself into the dirt. Maybe that would be a better fate for her. 

She turns her attention back to her notebook, with the crude drawing she made when she was trying to set the stage. “Let’s just,” she sighs. “Let’s start from scratch.”

And it works. Though it’s long and arduous, she’s able to figure out how to set the stage, finalizing the neon design. There’s a rough draft at the video that will be playing behind her for a wardrobe change. By the time she’s able to crawl into her sheets, it’s nearly 1 am. There’s barely enough energy to keep her eyes open to send Calum an apology text. When she wakes, she grins at her dog waiting patiently at the side of her bed.  “Ready to go, bubs?”

They give a tiny whine and rest their snout on the covers. She laughs, “Yeah, you’re ready to go.” She manages to brush her teeth and slips into a change of clothes before going out for a run. 

Between showering and getting dressed, she checks her messages. Happy to hear that you got things straightened, baby. Reach out whenever you get a breather, reads the text from Calum. 

She responds with a good morning text and then switches over to her email. At the top is an email with ‘urgent’ in the subject. She’s praying it’s not more bad news. She doesn’t quite have the heart to withstand more bad news after the progress they made yesterday. It’s details about a festival date in LA. That perfectly lines between her break between the European leg of the tour and the North America dates. She doesn’t even think twice about agreeing to the festival show. 

Right as her day winds down, from a shockingly smooth day of rehearsals, Calum calls her. And though she’s drenched in sweat from the light choreography and running it for hours, she stops and answers. “Hey, baby.”

“Oh, she lives!”

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

“Only kidding. I know you’re hard at work. It’s just really good to hear your voice. How are rehearsals?”

“Really good now. Once we got over the hump, it’s like smooth sailing.”

“Good, I’m glad. I was calling. We got word a couple days ago about a festival show right when you’re on break between legs. And I was hoping you had some free time, just to hang out.”

She can’t contain the smile, leaning her head against the window. The evening twilight has already settled outside. “I’m joining that festival too. And we’ll be hanging out in LA for a few days for rehearsals and then shipping out. So absolutely, we can hang out. I miss your face. And Duke. God, I miss Duke.”

He laughs. Of course she emphasizes her longing for his dog over him. But he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I really can’t wait to see you.” It falls from his lips in a whisper, a secret between the two of them that no one else can be in on. But the boys see it. Everytime his phone buzzes he does his best to look at it as soon as he can just in case it’s her. It’s harder to get out of bed, especially when he hasn’t talked to her in a while. “Can’t wait to kiss you again.”

“You’re a sap, you know.”

“But I’m your sap.”

She giggles, softly, watching cars whizz by. “Yeah, you are my sap.”

_________________________________

Her tour starts off well. And even though it’s her first time being out on the road like this, a constant bouncing around, and completely flipping her normal routine, she manages to cope pretty well. And it helps of course when she calls her friends, or talks to her dog. But it’s still definitely draining, pouring every bit of herself out on stage and then having just enough time to recoup before doing it all over again. There’s value in it, when the lights lift, and she can see the crowd that’s gathered just for her. It’s surreal and makes her feel like she could do this all the time. That the only thing she’d ever need is the sound of a crowd singing her songs back to her. 

In her dressing room, she swaps the gold earrings for a pair of acrylic ones, these jade green. “You’re too quiet on me,” she says, flicking her gaze down to her tablet. 

Calum picks his head up. “It’s hard to say much when perfection’s staring you in the face.”

She grins, hooking the earring back on. “Thank you, but that’s not what I meant.”

“We just got word about two more festivals in the same week you have your break. One’s in LA still, the other one’s a little ways out.” There’s no need to fake the funk anymore, or hide it away. She has another three weeks of shows before her break. And maybe he expects her to fly off the handle. Maybe he expects her to throw a fit, about how they had made plans, and it’s the only time they’ll get for each other for months. 

But she doesn’t. She nods, fingers twirling over her rings. “What are they others saying?”

“They’re itching to get back on stage. And from a business standpoint, it’s money in the pocket of course. But I know we made plans and I feel like an ass. But there’s also the band, too.”

“Our jobs aren’t easy,” she sighs. “Take the gigs.” Calum can see her eyes tearing up just a little. “Mind if tag along on the LA show?”

“Of course not. I’m really, really sorry, buttercup. I’m so sorry.”

She waves her hand, trying to keep the tears back. If they fall, they become real. It’s his job. Just like it’s hers. “I get it.” It’s tight as it leaves her throat. And it takes her a second, plus a few sips of water to get control of her emotions, and clear out all the tears that threaten to fall. He wishes he could say more, or do more. But it’s like the words die in his throat. And he’s left, mouth gaping, wishing and wanting, but unable to do anything. 

“Does it look bad if I just forgo my heels tonight from the start? They’re killing my feet on stage,” she laughs. 

It’s a small grin, upturns a corner of his mouth but doesn’t keep it up for long. “You usually end up kicking them off anyway, halfway through the show.”

“Someone’s been scrolling through my name on Twitter, huh?”

He does. Watching her is mesmerizing and he’s sad that he can’t get the chance to see it in person, so he resorts to the fan videos. But he’s yet to admit to it. “I do not do such a thing.” And there’s giggles. A fit of laughter as she looks over the outfits and plucks her oversize denim jacket and figures even in the shorts, she can make the docs Calum surprised her with work. So she slides into the worn red leather shoes and starts lacing them up. 

Calum whistles, heart racing just a little. He didn’t know those shoes had made the cut. “Look at you.” 

She strikes a pose but laughs. “Do I look good?”

“You look fucking amazing, buttercup.” 

__________________________

The sound of the crowd roaring before her ears turn on will always make her heart race. Calum said he would try to sneak side stage, but considering that he had to play on the mainstage right after her set on the side stage, it might not be for long. She didn’t mind that. But she hadn’t seen him. Not a blond crop in sight, of course if he hasn’t changed his hair since the last time. Her bassist strums the opening cord and it sends the crowd into a tizzy. With her guitar strapped around, she rolls out her neck, lining up. 

As they walk out onto the stage, they launch right into the first song. She feels her fingers buzzing as she strums. But it feels good. The LA sun is hot but she kind of welcomes it versus the heat of the stage lights. There’s still a small breeze. It comes in waves for sure and she can tell that her pits are going to be soaked by song three. “How’s everybody doing?” she shouts into the mic. 

There’s cheer in response and she laughs, hearing it reverb for just a moment. “That’s what I like to hear. Just want to say thank you for coming to see me play today. Your support truly means a lot to me.”

She continues on for just a few more seconds and right as she goes to introduce the fourth song of her set, everyone in the crowd starts to get rowdy. She thinks nothing of it, as the song starts. But she knows something is happening and she turns to check her drummer and in her spin, there’s Calum, her bassist’s bass slung over his shoulder, fingers sliding over the frets, plucking at the strings. Not that she doesn’t think Calum would go for a mint green bass on his own, but she hasn’t seen one in his collection just yet. 

If it weren’t for the verse coming back up, she knows she would just stare. Singing into her mic, she throws a few glances over to him. Waiting as the harmony comes in and Calum slides up to the music, voice smooth in her inner ears, she almost melts right there on the spot. She hadn’t quite thought about the way his voice would sound with hers, but god, he harmonizes like an angel. She finishes the verse, with a small break before the chorus again. The stage is kind of small but while facing the crowd, she can’t quite see to her sides. 

She knows though. She can almost sense when Calum approaches her. She giggles just a little into the mic, watching him smile at her. His head bobbing like it always does when he gets into whatever he’s playing or listening too. Calum plays next to her, watching the way the sweat trails down her forehead, but doesn’t streak an ounce of her makeup. He almost gives in, almost bends in to kiss her on the cheek, but he doesn’t. He lets her voice and the song carry him away, into his spin and up to the drummer’s stand. One foot on the riser, Calum bobs along, laughing at his expression, the raised eyebrow that says it all. 

She gets a small break to watch the way Calum interacts with her band. Almost as if he’s known them just as long as she has. And in some ways, he probably has. She talks about Calum to them and talks about her band to Calum all the time.  Once the song ends, Calum throws one hand in a tiny wave, before smiling over at her. “Didn’t scare you, did I?” he asks, away from the mic. 

She shakes her head, sure that her cheeks will hurt after this. Laughing, she thanks Calum as he walks off stage. And she knows, she knows she shouldn’t. But she jogs after him, as her bassist comes back on, sending a smile over her shoulder too. It’s in that moment that it becomes clear, this was planned. Catching Calum right in the wings, she catches his wrist, tugging him in close before kissing him. It’s quick, but Calum’s heart races in his chest. She runs back out. “Sorry about that guys. I did not expect that.” 

And as they get back to their set, Calum watches her for one more song, the way she dances around the stage. Their gazes lock just before he leaves and he blows a quick kiss, before his security are running him down the stage steps and across the festival grounds to get back to the mainstage in time. “How’d it go?” Michael asks.

“Well,” Calum grins, throwing his brown and black bass over his shoulder. 

“Get any smooches?” Luke teases, smacking his lips together, while his arm is slung over Sierra’s shoulder. 

“And if I did?” 

“On stage?” Michael screeches. 

“No, side stage. I almost kissed her on stage. But I didn’t want that all over the internet.” Considering that they aren’t official publically in any capacity, it would just cause more headache. Their set begins and Calum knows she has to run across the festival, so he’s not worried when by the time they step out and get three songs in, she hasn’t shown up at the side of the stage. And by the time, Calum regains consciousness enough to check again, there she is, standing off to the side, still in what she performed and breathing hard but she waves, gently from the side. 

Out of reflex, once the chords are played, he gives a small wave in return. She returns the blown kiss from earlier and the other girls laugh softly at the action. “God, you guys are so fucking smitten with each other, it’s insane,” Sierra jokes.

There’s no denying it she knows. They’re like lovesick puppies and though it would normally annoy her, it’s nice. Without another word, she sips at her bottle of water and watches Calum, with all the laughs and grins he gives, pouring his soul out onto the stage. 

And though the video calls, and the calls, work. They’re not quite enough. Her tour comes to an end, but just around the corner is Calum’s tour with the band. She think she might be able to sneak another week away before she starts working on her album, but then she gets asked to perform at some more festivals in her home country. And, who is she to turn that down? The more shows she plays, the more her name is out there, the more streams, and the merchandise is purchased. It becomes an endless wheel. Things just keep going, and going, and going and the whole time, she keeps looking for the breaks. For the thing that can put her life on pause and let her feel normal again. 

Everytime she thinks she can get real time with Calum, it ends up short. He has something that comes up. She has something that comes in. It was the festival in LA and now her festival run. It’s his tour and her sophomore album. Why had she met Calum when she did? Was the universe playing a cruel joke on her? Was it taunting her that it could give her everything she wanted and then threatening to have it crumble? Sitting her hotel room, her phone shakes, another call from Calum. She doesn’t answer it, staring at the fridge in her room. She could get a drink. Wouldn’t be hard just take it from the mini fridge. 

Her phone stops shaking. And then a minute later, it chimes, letting her know that a voice message has been left behind. The third one and more likely than not it’s from Calum. She wants this. She wants the relationship, but lately, it felt like there was no time. There was no time for anything. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t pause. And that’s all she wanted. That’s all she wants right now. She doesn’t want to open that voicemail to Calum pleading with her to answer. She wants to get back to when things were easier. And obviously, they were easier because they both had nothing to do. 

Swiping her room key and her wallet, she heads down to the bar in the hotel. She orders herself a glass of wine. The glass makes a soft click as it settles down in front of her. She takes one sip. And it’s a little bitter, the red drier than she remembers it being. Soon the glass stares back at her and she can see her warped reflection. Would it just be easier for them to take things down a level? Is she afraid of hard work or more afraid of heartache?

With another two glasses of wine in her, she climbs back into the elevator and it takes her up, floor by floor until it digs and the doors slide open. The room is dark when she reenters like she left it the AC blasting. But she can see the blue light of her phone, on the desk, lighting up that corner of the room. Is it fair? If she wants to bolt, if she wants to cut ties so it makes things so much easier for them? Why couldn’t it be easy?

Calum’s sure he’s going to pull all his hair out. One moment, things are going good. They get a little tight for sure with their schedules never quite lining up to allow them more time together. But this is the third day in a row that he’s gone with nothing from her. No texts, not a returned call. Not even a meme in their Twitter thread. Nothing on her finsta. Her regular account post mainly about her upcoming shows. But he is as closed to being blocked without actually being blocked. 

“Hey, I-I don’t know if something’s gone wrong. But please, please call me back. Or text me. Or send me a voice message. Something. Anything. Please? If I did anything, please let know what it was? I’m worried. Am I losing you?”

He ends the recording and sends it. Maybe he ought to stop reaching out so much. Should he wait for her to respond before sending more? But he doesn’t want to lose her? He doesn’t want to lose what they have. He hasn’t found it with anyone else in all his searching and even in his not searching. This fell into his lap and he can’t stand to lose it. Not when there had to be something to do to save it. 

His phone sits for another day and half before she calls. He hands shake as he goes to answer it. He almost doesn’t want to answer it. His vegetable stir fry even threatens to come back up his throat. It’s not even burnt this time. But somewhere in his mind, somewhere deep, he had figured she wouldn’t ever call him back. He would be cursed to always wonder what went wrong. “Hey,” he breathes as he answers the call. 

“Hey.” It’s croaky, like she might’ve been crying. And then it’s silent. Neither one of them are sure how to bring it up. Neither of them know how to ask what’s lingering between the two of them seems almost too much for words.

“Did I do something?”

“No,” she sighs. It would be easier if he had. It would be easier if she had. It would be easier if both of them were just bad for each other. “It’s just hard.” 

“Talk to me. Let me in. We can figure it out.”

That’s the whole crux of her issue. She had let Calum in. She had let him so far in that it was starting to seem impossible to stay in her country and work. She had let him so far in that she wasn’t sure it would be possible to go months without seeing him properly. He was in everything, her bookshelves, her closet, her studio, her lyrics, her studio, in her sheets. Everything reminded her of him. And it just hurt in a way that she didn’t think being in love could hurt. In her silence, Calum continues on, “Let me look at something.” He scrolls through the emails, looking at the dates. 

“How? How do we figure it out? On your tour, the only break you have in my country I’m in promo. And after that, you only get a day here or there. Everything’s so mismatched now.” 

Calum blinks the tears that are stinging at his lower lash line. “Something’s gonna give.” Something has to give. There has to be something. Calum goes back to emails. What would be the magic code for them?

“I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

His throat jumps at her words, heart racing. “No, don’t say that. If you say that, I know what comes next.”

“Maybe it would just be easier, Calum.” 

He is sick of it. Sick of things always blowing up in his face. But he can’t make her do something. He can’t make her take the words back, even if he wants her too. “We said there was an us.” It’s not accusorary as it falls from his lips. It just hurts. Things were going so well for so long, until time proved herself the ultimate judge yet again. “So what now?” The walls of his house start to push in closer on him. 

“I’m not saying I never wanted more for us. I’m not saying that I want to cut you completely out of my life, Calum. I wanted so much more for us.”

“Me too. I want more for us.” 

“Is now a good time though? Is now going to allow us more?”

Calum wants to laugh, it bubbles in his chest and he knows it’s delivery would be dry but he swallows it back down. “If you’re always waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll be waiting for a long time.”

“Maybe there’s a better time for us. Not a perfect one. Just a better one.”

“Maybe,” he whispers. 

“You know, you’re in everything right? When you said to let you in, I couldn’t help but think that was my problem. You’re in my goddamn sheets. You’re in everything. When the sun rises, it’s like watching you smile. If you think I’m shutting you out, that I’m trying to save myself, I want you to know that I’m doing the exact opposite. I am drowning. In everything. In you. In whatever the fuck it means to be a musician. I am drowning and I can’t bear taking you down with me.”

He couldn’t possibly be in everything, not when she was in everything for him. In his journals, in the strings of his bass. When he sits down at a piano, he can’t help but think of the throaty notes that start the song she wrote about him. He can’t help but hear her voice, Brown irises and black tattoos. Maybe they were both drowning and couldn’t see anything but the water invading their own nostrils and lungs. “You’ll always be there,” Calum says, sniffling. The tears shock him, he hadn’t felt them until they’re running down his neck. He doesn’t even know where there is, but he feels it in the cavity of his chest.

_________________

That video is going to haunt him. And it’ll haunt her too. Whenever they see the videos and pictures of when Calum surprised her on stage it always shows just how fucking happy they were with each other. How things really were working for them. But right around the corner, right as she runs behind the edge of the stage, the world doesn’t see the kiss. They don’t see the tears that followed phone calls. They don’t see how schedules always seems to be running in parallel but never fucking intersectiong. That’s all they needed. Just one point to intersect, to meet again at, and maybe they would still be tagging each other in stupid memes. Maybe they would still be talking until crazy hours of the morning. Maybe they would still be writing small poems about each other and always posting them, but never saying who they were about. 

Maybe if they just had the one chance to intersect again, her second album wouldn’t be about him. Maybe she could’ve talked about the way the clouds surf in the sky. Maybe she would have pondered the questions of existence without it being tied up in lost love. Maybe Calum would’ve had more to say in interviews. Maybe then, no one would ask him about his love life and it wouldn’t hurt to goddamn bad every time one of the other boys would jump in to save him. Maybe Calum wouldn’t feel like a rock sinking to the bottom of the river and seeing the sunlight just above him, but never having the willpower to push back up. 

He hadn’t removed her number. Hadn’t unfollowed her on her finsta. Hadn’t blocked her on a goddamn platform. Because somehow that felt like a harsher step. Like a permanent close, like he was trying to erase who she was and what she had meant to him. It’s stupid, he knows. It’s insane and it’s not helping him in the slightest, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Maybe part of it was that natural and sometimes detrimental curiosity if that person was suffering just like you. He wanted to know if she bled just like him, if her pain was just as vicious as his. 

Calum watches the video loop back again. The way she bites her lower lip but runs after him. The crowd is still screaming. They are still cheering. They are still buzzing. After saving the tweet, he drafts a message to her: I know you’ve moved to New York. I hope you’re enjoying it. City makes you feel anonymous doesn’t it? I have two days off during this tour. Maybe we have our better time now? I’m sure by now you know all the best places in town for pizza. I could be down for some cheesy delights. 

Should he send that? His fingers shake. What’s left for them after a year and a half? They’ve still supported each other. He retweets about all her singles and videos. She praises the band’s new music in interviews. They aren’t unknown to each other. But somehow they feel like two ghosts. There’s a glass wall between and they look at each other just in passing. They never touch. They never intersect again. Instead, he exits the messaging app, but doesn’t actually delete the words. 

When he goes back to the message thread, about a week from their dates in New York, there’s no shock that the app hasn’t saved it. And he feels partially relieved. He exits the app again and goes back to his mindless scroll through Instagram. An app saved him this time. 

There is nothing to save him though, when he walks into the green room and spies her shrugging a coat on. The New York mornings are a little cool to the start. His heart is now in his throat. He’s not sure if he should swallow it back down. “We can go,” Ashton says quietly, taking him back his arm gently.

And somehow, like her ears are tuned in on everything, she hears something like her name, something like a soft wisp of a voice. When she looks up and sees Calum, donned in all black, though his long lined jacket has some white stitching and embroidery, she’s sure she could melt into the floor. He still looks good. Still has the same quiet pout to his face that makes him look slightly less approachable but it changes in a heartbeat when he smiles. She grabs the strap to her bookbag purse. 

She knows it was her that ended things. She knows that seeing Calum here in front of her, should make her feel embarrassed. But somehow, all she wants to do, all she’s ever wanted to do since that phone call is embrace him one last time. Tell him that he’s still handsome as ever. Promise him that she meant what she said, that he was and still is in everything. “C’mon. We gotta go,” her security tell her. 

But all she can do is stare at Calum. Unzipping her purse, she finds the note, the letter she never had the courage to send him and with a deep breath, she walks over. Ashton looks like he could probably murder her. And she doesn’t blame him. She could never blame that instinct to protect the ones you love especially from the ones that hurt them the most. “I’m sorry,” she says, holding out the white envelope. “For everything. And if we don’t ever get that better time, know I’d only ever wish the best for you.”

Calum’s fingers barely grasp onto the note before she’s sidestepping him. The boys circle around him, like they’re just waiting for his word to pounce. She steps through the heavy glass door. And she’s leaving him again. She’s going to slip through his fingers. Again. Pushing through Luke and Michael, Calum swings open the door. “Wait!” he calls out. 

She stops, spinning on her heels to face him again. Calum jogs down the corridor. All the offices have windows. Everyone is probably watching. With both hands cupping her face, letter between his fingers and all, he pulls her in close. “You’re not leaving me again. You’re not going to walk out my life a second time. Not without me putting up a hell of a fight.”

“You shouldn’t fight for me. Not after what I did.”

“Meet me tonight. Let’s actually talk about it. I’ve been holding so much inside and if, god forbid, if it’s not now if we had our shoot and we fucking blew it, at least I’ll know for sure.”

“Does 8 work for you?” She tries so hard not to wrap her hands around his wrist, not to slide it up his forearms and tug herself into his chest. And god, he still smells the same. Old Spice and Gain. It feels so right to press herself into his chest. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles into the top of her head. It’s still the same scent as before in almost two years, he can’t even believe it.

She takes a step back, patting at her pockets and pulls out a pen. Pulling the envelope from his fingers, she scribbles down a name and address. “If this place is too far from your hotel, just call me.” He watches her, jotting down more numbers. “It’s my new US number.” While handing the infor back to him, she grins just a little. “Don’t lose it now.”

Calum laughs, remembering the first time she delivered that line to him. “I won’t. Promise.”

Dear Calum, 

There’s no real way to say this that doesn’t make my chest feel like it’s been punched  in. I shouldn’t have let you go. There was a way to make it all work. There was a way so that you and I could’ve pushed through. I was just too scared of things going too right, going too well. Maybe that sounds dumb. Or maybe that sounds insane. But the truth of the matter, I messed up. I’m sorry. And you don’t have to ever forgive me. You deserve the ability to move on. You deserve everything good that comes to you in the future. I want you to be happy. Even if it’s not with me. Even if our better time has passed. 

You deserve to be happy. 

Calum reads over the letter again. Still not sure how his lungs are still operating because he was positive all the air had been exhaled. It’s the fourth time he’s read it today. Since he had Michael read it out to him in the green room. He would’ve asked Ashton, but knew that Ashton would’ve told him not to worry, to keep moving forward. Because he had, in a way. He had thrown himself into music. He had tried to chase after her in other people. He had read all the books on poetry, and love, and philosophy. But something down in his gut told him that he would never let her go again if he got a second chance with her. 

He looks at the date. She wrote it six months after everything went south. Maybe she forgot to send it. It had his name on it--just never fully addressed out though. She could’ve messaged him. Emailed. Called. Literally anything and he would’ve answered. But hadn’t she? What held her back? And just as he goes to read it over one more time, the door chimes open. He looks at his phone. Just as the time ticks over to 8. And when he glances over his shoulder, there she is. In the same jacket from before. 

The little pizza shop isn’t too loud. Most people come in just to get their few slices and then dip right back out. She smiles, waving just a little before sliding onto the stool next to him. She points to the letter, that he hasn’t even moved to put up, “Sorry it’s not my best work. I thought about finding a synonym for happy but nothing fit right.”

With a breathy chuckle, Calum folds the letter up, slipping it into his pocket. “What do you recommend off the menu?”

“God, with this place, anything.” 

They settle back down on the stools, paper plates not fully supporting the extra large slices and a stack of napkins between them. The grease runs down his chin and Calum feels it rolling too. But his hands are full trying to keep his slice from falling. She laughs, dabbing at his face with a napkin. “I still see you’re the messiest eater around.”

“Hey, hey, it’s not my fault,” he grins. Their giggles dissipate as the bell chimes again, a signal of another patron entering. “What happened?” The question doesn’t feel full enough, doesn’t feel like it fully encapsulates all the confusion he holds. But yet, those are the only words he has.

“A lot started happening all at once. Your tour, my second album. More shows. It just-I felt like I couldn’t breathe. That I wasn’t a person. And maybe part of it was selfish. Maybe I was trying to save myself all along and I was just telling myself and you that I wasn’t selfish. I really am sorry. Like, if I had known, god if I had known that doing that would’ve caused all the pain it did, trust me, I wouldn’t have. If I could go back and tell myself, that crazy shit happens and you just gotta learn how to keep your cool, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It was a mistake letting you go. But at the same time, reaching out felt wrong too. Like I would’ve been ruining the peace you had created for yourself. And I didn’t want to do that either.”

“You know, I felt like we had something different. Like that was really going to be it for me and I had finally figured out this whole being in love thing. That I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. And maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I saw something happening and didn’t do anything.”

“We were living continents away. With everything happening, you weren’t seeing all of it. No need to blame yourself.” She takes his hand, slipping her fingers between his, twisting at the silver band around his middle finger. “I do want you to be happy, Calum. I want you to be so happy it just can’t be contained.”

“I was with you.” He squeezes her hand, willing her to look at him and not the street in front of them, through the glass. 

“I’m still not in L.A.”

“But you are in the same country as me now and I will take that.”

“You’d still take me back after everything?” When she looks at him, brows furrowed together, Calum knows he’s a goner. He always was with her. 

“I would.” 

“You’d be crazy.”

“I am already crazy. Because I’m tempted to ask you where you’re staying and if I could stay the night.”

He’s leaned in to her, just a hair. And she leans in too, resting mostly shoulder to shoulder. “You are crazy,” she laughs softly, taking in the reflection of the neon lights on the street. “But maybe I’m also crazy too.”

The night is cool again. Both of their boots scuff the concrete. She doesn’t stay far from the small diner, a ten minute walk really. With fingers threaded through each other, they walk huddled close up the sidewalks. The wind whips across their faces. They dodge piles of trash on the edge of the sidewalks and they keep their heads down so as to not attract a crowd. “How do you like New York? Got to be a huge shock?”

“It most definitely is. I like feeling anonymous here. With so many people around.”

“I know you said you don’t do well with people and New York feels like the opposite of the place you want to. Especially not in the city.”

“I mean, I still don’t do great with people. I’m in the city for the time being. But I have my eye on a few places further out. But after everything, I felt less lonely here. I don’t know. No one cared about who I was. No one cared what the fuck I was doing here. And I liked it better that way. Back home, everyone knew. Everyone looked at me like I was a broken vase. Here, no one gave a shit. It’s move or be moved here. Forced me to come to terms with everything. Forced me to accept everything I was trying to hide.”

“Do you need to go to your hotel? Grab or bag or something?” She asks just before they pass the opening for the subway. 

“I have my roomkey. It’s all good. All the interviews were today.” 

“As long as you’re sure.”

He gives her hand another squeeze. “I’m sure.” They reach the door to the complex and she digs out her keys, opening the front door. Calum follows her through the second set of doors. The elevator is a little janky as it carries them up, and definitely tiny. In the space, they’re pressed chest to chest. There are a few extra lines around her eyes, he notices and runs the pad of his thumb over the skin. It’s just as soft as it’s always been. She feels so familiar under his touch, yet so new. 

It’s not a far ascent and she laughs when he pouts as she pulls away. “Just like four more steps.” 

It’s true to word, when they step out of the elevator, her door is directly in front of it. Her keys jingle just a little as she works the lock and pushes into the chipping red paint of the door. Her dog leaps from the couch, greeting her and then barking just a little when they spot Calum. He laughs, kneeling to hug them to his chest. “You still remember me, huh?” he laughs, as they attempt to lick his face and jaw. “Oh, too long, I know. Sorry, bubs. Didn’t forget about you.”

She takes his jacket, hanging it by the door. “Want anything to drink?”

Calum shakes his head from her couch, working at his shoes. “No, I’m good, thank you.”

She nods, watching as her dog claims Calum’s attention. But she can’t find an ounce of herself to be mad or annoyed. So she slips out of her shoes and puts them up, before getting herself a bottle of water. When she settles onto the couch, she just laughs at the antics. Calum keeps trying to say something but at every twist, her dog is right there, plopping themselves in his lap. Calum eventually gives up and wraps his arms around their body, scratching lightly at their fur. 

“Someone missed you too,” she teases, putting her two fingers really close together. “Just a tiny bit.”

His laughter echoes in her head. “Yeah, clearly just a little.” He lifts his head just a little when he feels the wet tongue at his chin. “So, you’re working on your third album?”

“On and off,” she admits. “Playing more shows than anything for the time being. I don’t have to think. Everytime I think too much I end up fucking something up. So I’m just taking it easy for the time being. Taking some brand deals.”

“You’ve got a collab coming out soon, right?”

She nods at the question, laughing as her dog finally settles down. “Yeah, next month. I’ve always lived kind of a boring life, you know that.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know.” He can finally shift, as her dog wanders over to the water bowl, so that he can sit in front of her. It’s a dangerous game. He’s played it before with her. But he takes her chin into his hands. “We haven’t really talked in a while.”

“Is there something you want to say, Calum?”

“Yeah,” he returns simply. Her breath hitches, eyes searching his brown ones for something, anything that tells her what’s going on. “I wonder if your lips still feel the same. I always thought about the way you’d laugh sometimes into a kiss. And it used to haunt me. But right now, I want to find out if anything else has changed.”

She wastes no time, pushing up and sealing her mouth around his. His hand slides to the back of her neck and she pulls at the collar of his shirt. They fall into each other, then falling into the arm of the couch. She exhales her laughter, still pecking at Calum’s lip. Her fingers tease the skin of his upper chest and neck.

“I was right,” he grins. 

She hooks her finger around the gold plate. “I guess you were.” She pulls him back in for another kiss, slipping her hands into his hair. 

As his lips trail over her jaw and down to her neck, she thinks about the time at her apartment back home, Calum woke her up with kisses down her jaw. They still feel the same. Maybe even a little bit better. His finger push up the hem of her shirt, squeezing at the flesh of her side. She sighs and Calum groans at the sound. It sets off everything in his body when he hears her quiet noises of pleasure. 

“Is this okay?” he asks, pulling away to look at her as his fingers brush over her skin. “I don’t want to push you or take things too fast this time.”

Being with Calum feels like no time has past, if she’s honest. She doesn’t have the butterflies, just the comfort of someone she’s known for a year. And it sort of feels like they’re picking back up from where they left off. “I’m okay with it.”

He grins and she sees it--that rising sun in the gleam. His forehead rests against her. “I kinda feel like we have a lot of lost time to make up for.” His lips brush just over hers as he speaks. 

She exhales her laughter again, but agrees. “Just a little bit. I really am sorry.”

“We all make mistakes. You just have to communicate with me, okay? That’s all. Talk to me this time. If you feel like you’re drowning, let me help. Please.”

She pushes up and Calum settles back down into the cushion, taking her hands into his. “I know things won’t be like, perfect now. But I guess, it’s really important that we do get to spend quality time together.”

“It is. And I know my tour schedule is pretty packed right now, but there’s another longer break in about three weeks. They’re LA shows. I don’t know if you have plans, but if you do, we can hang out then.”

She has to laugh because here’s the trouble all over again. “Booked recording sessions then.”

“Okay, well, the week after that is the break between legs. What are you doing then?”

“Nothing.” There’s a break between sessions, and she had just planned to use the time to breathe. 

“I’ll fly you out then. Just you and I and my rehearsals. But that’s besides the point.”

Laughing, she rests her head into his bicep. “Just you, I, and your rehearsals. Got it.”

“We’ll have to better plan out things, that’s all. We’ll have to look at both our schedules and make sure that there’s sufficient breaks and time together.” He guides her head up. “I want you. And I mean all of you. I can’t stand to lose you again.”

“I just have to make sure Ashton doesn’t kill me.”

“He’s protective, yes. But not an evil. I’ll talk to him. Don’t you worry.” 

“He did write a whole song about how he’d bury a body for you. So I think I have a little bit to worry about.”

Calum laughs, shaking his head. “Maybe just a little bit.” Her grin makes him want to bottle it. He wants to carry it with him in his pocket. Leaning closer, he kisses her again. “But right now, it’s just you and I. There’s nothing else but time for us right now.”

She hums. “I like the sound of that.”

Fingers trail back under shirts. She drinks down his moans as they tease, barely touch. Calum’s shirt is discarded in the living room and her is pulled off in the hallway. Calum holds her face in his hands, memorizing the way her teeth sink into his bottom lip in the gentle nip. He moans. Fuck, she feels so good against him. 

Her spine shivers as his fingers trail to her back and unsnap the band of her bra. As the fabric falls from her shoulders and she tosses it somewhere, Calum takes a hand just to cup her. His fingers roll the erect bud and she sighs again, mouth falling slack against his. He laughs. “Hmm, that’s right. Someone does like their nipples played with.”

She grins though, blinking open her eyes. “Don’t think I forgot that you don’t listening to rules and like a little pain.”

Finding her waist with both hands, Calum holds her in close. “You wouldn’t dare.”

She bends her knees, just a little and with hot and open mouth kisses she trails down his chest before taking her teeth into the meat of his peck. Calum jolts, a grunt falling over his lips and throat. “I would dare,” she returns. 

They fall into her sheets, the same golden ones from before. They’re just as soft against Calum’s skin. It’s warm, as their skin heats up. Her skirt has landed somewhere to the floor and Calum pushes his hips up as she shrugs the denim down. She kisses over his thighs, moaning just a little. Calum lets his eyes flutter close at her soft kisses. 

Everything just feels right. Even as Calum takes a nipple into his mouth, tongue teasing her just a little. Or when she kisses over his length. But right now, she tosses her head back when Calum pries her legs open kissing up her inner thighs. “I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispers, watching as she clenches, more of her arousal leaking from her. 

She huffs, pulling a hand through her hair. “You sure do know how to make a girl sweat.”

“It’s a speciality,” he laughs with a wink before kissing her clit. She balls on fist around her sheets, stomach completely clenched. The last thing she wants is to have to wait much longer for anything. The anticipation can be a good thing, though she’s doing everything she can to keep her cool. That is, until Calum finally takes the first lap from her and she unravels, a moan leaving her throat as it mixes with a whine. 

He takes his time, pushing her thighs and knees to give him all the access he could ever want. Calum licks another stripe over her, before sucking her clit into his mouth. She taste better than he could’ve ever imagined. Every sound she gives--moans, groans, or a whine--rattles in his brain and spurs him on. One of her hands finds it’s way into his hair and she tries to push up with her hips and his face down into her core. But it’s not like he needs the assistance or the reminder. When he trails down to her opening, his nose brushes over her clit and her body is reeling. 

“Oh, fuck,” she whines, feeling the coil in her lower gut tightening. 

Calum hums at the sounds, and when she praises him, tells him that he’s the only one to make her feel this fucking food, he rewards, slipping a finger into the mix, pushing up into her. “Is that so?” he asks, watching her head dive deeper into the pillows. 

“God, Calum,” she huffs. 

Another finger finds it way inside, pushing and curling in all the right places. Her body feels like it’s on fire. She feels like she’s a coil so tightly wound she’s going to break. His tongue flicks across her click, lapping at her. And that’s it, that’s the right combination to send her over the edge. Over she goes, with a yelp, her orgasm rocking her frame and toes curling as she cries out for Calum. 

He keeps her going, keeps curling his fingers at her. So lost in the way she sounds. And when the huffs turn into a hiss, he pulls back. She beckons him up, kissing him and tasting her own arousal coating his lips and tongue. He’s careful not to settle fully against her, but it’s quickly changed when her legs come up and lock around his waist. “I’m not gonna break,” she laughs, when he finally let’s go and sinks into her. 

She swallows his response with a kiss but it doesn’t matter anyway. Her hips come up and Calum rolls onto his back, letting her settle atop him. Her nails rake down his skin and she sucks at his neck, he’s sure it’ll bruise just a little but it’s okay with him. His nails dig into the flesh of her hips, not sure if he wants the friction right now or if he just needed to revel in the feeling of her against him. 

“Shit,” he whines when she rocks over him. “I-fuck.”

She laughs, pulling away to reach into her drawer. “That sounds about right.”

Calum delivers a swift swat to her ass at the joke, but laughs anyway. “That is not funny.”

“Then why are you laughing.” When she turns her attention back to him, condom in hand. She stretches down to kiss him again. “Did I ever tell you you’re not the only one that likes a little pain?”

His eyebrows arches and he smooths over her ass before delivering another spank to her opposite cheek. She sighs, eyes fluttering close just a little. “Oh, buttercup, you should’ve never told me that.” 

“We can save it for another time? Because right now the only thing I can think about is riding you until the sun rises.”

Kneading at her breast, Calum grins. “Now, that sounds about right.” 

There’s a moment, right as she settles down on him fully, that they both moan at the feeling. Calum because of the warmth and slickness, her because of the stretch. Her head is dizzy again with need. She steadies herself with her hands planted on his chest and rocks. All she can focus on is the girth of him, stretching her completely open. It makes her toes tingle and she falters, falling into his chest, but starts a new cadence, pulling up and settling back down on his length. 

“Holy shit,” he huffs. She buries her face into the crook of his neck and Calum coaxes her out, to look at him. “You don’t get to hide from me, not again. Wanna see that pretty face when you cum.”

Her hips are still rocking but she nods, eyes fluttering close just for a moment. Calum kisses her, and it’s his turn to swallow down the moan she feeds him. She pushes back up, pulling her own breast between her fingers. Calum loses the top of his head, he’s sure, watching as she rides him. His fingers trail over her hips, up to her stomach. “Why’d you have to be so handsome?” she teases breathy. 

He’s not sure how to respond. Unsure of the heat he feels is a blush or the sweltering of arousal flooding his body. She takes one of his hands, trailing it towards her heat. And Calum takes the hint, thumb circling the bundle of nerves. Her head falls back on her neck as a hum builds in her chest. Calum kneads at her right breast, pulling and pushing at every button he can to have orgasm again for him. 

A high pitched squeak falls from her. The bed taps against the wall, but neither one of them really cares. Her orgasm washes over it, like a wave crashing into the shoreline. She shudders, clenching around him and falls again into his chest, but pushes up onto her elbows, remember Calum’s early demand. “Fuck,” she whines when he starts to fuck up into her. He pulls her body up and she’s useless, body still like jello from her orgasm. Her words catch in her throat. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her ear when she bites down onto his shoulder. “You know I like the pain.”

“Feel so good,” she returns. “Calum, shit, you feel so good.” His hips start to stutter, trying to ride out for longer, but knowing that inevitably he’s at the end of his rope. She kisses over his neck. “Cum for me, yeah? Please.”

Who is he to deny her? Who is he she to defy her? He ruts up once, twice, and she clenches hard, taking most of the wind of his third thrust but he cums hard, arms squeezing her to his chest and he knows he’s loud in her ear as he groans. Though, it’s suspected that’s just the sound she wanted to hear as she seals his mouth with hers. 

Calum wraps the towel around his waist. She’s already under the cover, with them flipped down for him. She pats the spot in the mattress. He can see some of the hickies covering her chest that he left behind. Without much thought, Calum dries off a bit more and then slips between the sheets. “Hey,” she whispers. “Come here often?”

“My first time actually. But the first of many, I hope.”

Her nose scrunches as Calum taps it. “Yeah, of many. I brought your phone into the room. Put it on my spare charger. And I know that it’ll go off at 5:55 AM. No, you don’t have to turn it off. I know it’s important to you.”

“You--you still remember that?

“I don’t know if you really remember. But when I said that you were in everything, you were everywhere. I meant it.” She turns to her back, the sheets tucked up to her chin. Both of them are bare beneath them. 

Calum’s taken up drawing random patterns on her stomach as he holds himself up on his elbow, facing her. “I remember. Could never forget that.”

“Guess we might’ve meant for something more, something better.” Her voice is soft. The blinds in her window let the lights of the city in. Nothing about it is quiet as sirens pass by. Calum lets his head fall into her pillows. She turns, both of them now facing each other again. Her arm slides over his waist. He throws one of his legs over hers. 

She’s content like this, where she can kiss across the tattoos on his chest. Though she can’t really see the one just under his peck, she thinks about the question poised there. Why would she choose anything other than Calum? It remains quiet for a while and she thinks he’s fallen asleep until his chest rumbles. 

“We were. It was just a matter of getting there. Finding the right path for us.” He’s positive, as she shuffles in a little closer that this is it for him. And if he has to fight hell, heaven, or high water, he’d do it all for her. 

#calum hood #calum hood fanfic #calum hood blurb #calum hood smut #calum hood fluff #calum hood angst #calum hood fic #calum hood imagine #calum 5sos #5sos #5sos fanfic #5sos fic #5sos imagine #5sos smut #asks #answered #h writes #distance series #calum hood x famous singer #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer fanfic #5 seconds of summer fic

[sanstropfremir]

ok alright alright alright kingdom episode two

kinda disappointed that they only showed half the stages, but that's just an editing thing to draw out the content so you can air for longer, i'm not super surprised about that. i would have liked to evaluate them all at the same time, but at least this gives me time to go more in depth for all of them since they're full stages this time and I wrote 3000 words for last episode when they only had 100 secs. so this format will probably keep me sane for longer, i think. 

solid stages all round for them, none had especially glaring flaws on the whole. i'm not gonna do a full ranking for this episode since we haven't seen them all, but i will say that btob’s was my favourite from this set and both ikon’s and tbz’s stages were about equal; they both had things i liked and disliked in equal measure so i'm tentatively giving them the same ranking. full opinions and analysis on each stage below the cut, plus another section of general notes because hey what the fuck did you do to that stage mnet???

and for anyone that’s wondering yes i do have the qualifications. also seriously grab a drink or something because this is LONG.

some general notes

and here i thought this section wouldn't be as big as it was last time because mnet was going to get their shit together about the stage design, but noooooooooooo they had to go and make it worse! thanks mnet i hate it! remember how i said you shot yourself in the foot last time? well ya fuckin kneecapped yourself AND all your idols with this one ya dumb fuckin idiots. alright folks welcome back to stage design 101, my recurring segment where i explain the different types of stage layouts and their effectiveness for kpop idol survival shows, i guess.

ok so last week i covered the basics on theatre in the round and traverse staging, which i’ll link here if there’s anyone new or just wants a refresher. i mentioned that its likely that mnet will switch to an in the round style staging because it offers a lot more freedom for camera movement and also for directional blocking. well, i was wrong. so i'm gonna give you a quick rundown of prosceniums. a proscenium, proscenium arch, or just prosc, is an architectural feature that sits around the front ‘opening’ of the stage that delineates the stage from the audience. if you've ever been in or seen any pictures of old european style theatres it can be quite ornately decorated with scrolling, but it's almost always there in most western theatres. it basically provides your ‘wings,’ which are where you exit off into to get offstage, they provide cover from the audience sitelines. pretty much any theatre where the audience is directly opposing the stage across the 180 degree line is a proscenium stage, even if it doesn't physically have the arch. hell, movie theatres are prosc stages. now, there's a secondary architectural feature/device called a false proscenium, where you set a second, smaller archway inside the first prosc, usually done for a specific effect. think of it like a literal framing device; it's often used to visually signify that ‘this is a play, we are telling a story, please be aware that this is a play thank you.’ but sometimes, it can be a semi-permanent structure that’s set in place to narrow the prosc opening. we had this at my university, there was a false prosc set just inside the actual prosc because the stage had a hilariously big prosc opening for a university that never had casts larger than 24 people. so they set false prosc in to make the stage slightly narrower and to widen the wings, because it doesn't matter what size theatre you're in, you always need more wingspace. makes sense? ok, now here’s a very quick drawing of what i'm pretty sure the kingdom stage looks like:

before you get lost: stage directions are oriented to a person standing on the stage, hence SL and SR being reversed. a quick tip for remembering which way is upstage and which is downstage: if you go too far downstage you fall down (most stages are raised between 2-4’ from the floor, so if you step off the end you will actually fall.) the arrows on here signify the entrances i observed during the performances, which is not necessary in this explanation but i just thought it was interesting to note. still not entirely sure what the surrounding architecture is but it appears that the stage is a raised platform inside a room, and not actually built as part of the building. the ‘house’ is just a technical term for where the audience is, and in this case it's where it looks like most of the film crew and the producers/staff are. there’s pretty clearly a platform upstage centre, and i think there may be some others but i don't care about those right now. what i want to talk about is this dumbass false prosc they set IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE. now i suspect that they did this to solve some problems that they could have had that i don't know about, since i don't know who the stage designer was and what the actual limitations of the space are. but basically they've built two stages and stacked them on top of each other to create one very deep stage, and then separated it off with a false prosc in order to control the size of the space a little better, and possibly to add some visual interest. this stage is functional for its purpose, absolutely, and i think, if mnet actually gave a shit about point of view and camerawork, it could produce some really interesting performances. however, because this stage is so deep, it kind of has the same properties as the traverse stage from before, but just with some big led screens in the middle for reasons. you extra have to pay attention to the directionality because you have all the staff and cameras concentrated in one specific cardinal point, so you have to get creative if you want to crossover between the two sides frequently. again, this is not necessarily bad; restrictions often produce some of the most creative decisions.  but! we have not seen a lot of consideration for camera and sightlines and audience pov, hence why i think this setup is dumb: it’s not facilitating the best performances it could.

ok now to the actual performances

btob

this is my favourite of the group because it's very clean lined and utilizes a few simple devices to pretty good effect. i realize these reviews are making me sound like i only like simple performances but i promise this is not at all true i'm just very critical and very picky. let’s start with the costumes, because why not. 

costumes

i like these very much, i love modernized traditional clothing in all forms, and these are very well tailored and well coordinated. they do the bulk of the work establishing the theme for the performance, along with the costumes on the backup dancers. personally i would have liked them to be a bit more colourful, à la the teal detailing that was on minhyuk’s final look. i'm getting a bit tired of the whole trend of having groups only wear all dark or all white, or maybe sometimes red if they're feeling spicy. obviously uniform colour is the easiest way to tie a group together visually, but on a show like this i think the groups would actually benefit more from looking distinct from each other internally rather than establishing the group as whole.

i liked that minhyuk had a costume change but i didn't really care for how it was how it was broken down. this is a very personal quibble because i literally have spent years prepping quickchanges but the method it broke down wasn’t the most visually compatible with the garment and felt kinda clunky. please ignore this anecdote it's just me being picky.

set

i loved the forest! a very excellent way to divide the stage area and obscure the weird stage lines/architecture that mnet has made. plus the snow, flowers, and fog? makes a really sharp and immediately indicative atmosphere, a very good use of visual shorthand to establish place.

i didnt love the screens, they reminded me a bit too much of rolling whiteboards from grade school, but they are thematically relevant. also, i feel like we didnt actually get to see about half the choreo for them? fuckin mnet and idiocy again. fun use of rear projection with the dancers’ shadows, and also good use of them to direct traffic, if you will. 

personally i think that the sheet gimmick from tbz’s performance would have been a better fit here instead of the screens, especially since the fabric motif was already established at the very beginning of the performance. plus you can do some really fun shadow work with a stretch fabric screen. 

personally i think there could have been a little bit more integration between the forest area and the screen area, or they could have done the whole thing in the forest space, but that would require a bit more consideration of camera and choreo maneuverability

sound

really liked this arrangement, obviously the song is iconic but they added a more traditional instrument sound. has good structure for the loose narrative that they had and they were well to label this as ‘theatre’ version because this did follow very closely to a traditional musical theatre sound and style

lighting

no complaints. the overall theme for this episode is apparently blue and red? again with them i like their dedication to a limited colour palette and i especially like the blossoms at the climax

staging

there was pretty clear camera choreo and a minimum of nausea inducing moves. i think some of the effectiveness of the staging got chopped by the editing but that’s not really btob’s fault.

i was just saying i wanted them to give minhyuk some time to shine, i was not expecting to get it so soon! this is a very smart choreo that proves you can be interesting without doing a lot of tricking. minhyuk obviously did a lot of practice and work with that sword, his movements are very fluid and he knows how to handle it. and it looks like its either a blunted proper blade or a correctly weighted replica. a lot of the times when sword choreo looks fake it's because the person either hasn't had enough practice or the weapon is not weighted/weighted incorrectly. only complaints are that you would never hold your fingers/palm that close and un-anchored over the edge of the blade, which is just a safety thing. also you would never scrape your blade on the ground like that, nor toss the thing like dead fish but that's a respect thing with a live blade and this is clearly done for dramatic effect so i’ll forgive it. please ignore this anecdote also it’s just my third dan getting uppity.

ikon

costume/set

smart thematically to go with the sort of miscellaneous 30s-40s (western) aesthetic because it's the fastest way to make it look like you built a theme with mnet’s weird pseudo art deco nonsense they've inexplicably got going on in the set dec. however, they should have stuck the theme all the way through, it would have been more visually cohesive and more interesting. we expect more hiphop/electronic sounding songs to come with these kinds of 4th gen costumes, it would have been anachronistic in a fun way to have them do that second half in 40s style suits. here’s a performance from sdc3 that uses that kind of anachronistic play (this was a combo stage with two ballroom dancers and it has a 20s aesthetic but close enough.) also here’s another routine from sdc3 that does a similar effect on a much more abstract scale, and also it’s a fucking incredible performance and it got slept on by the captains. also yes i know these are incredibly experienced career dancers but they way they construct narrative within their routines and their stage presence is SO GOOD. 

do not speak to me about the backup dancers costumes, holy shit i hate them. i hate them so much. how do you manage to hit too shapeless AND too fitted in the same fell swoop? i'm so mad at these. i'm neutral on bodycon dresses on the best of days but these were absolutely the wrong choice for this stage. generally kpop has abysmal costuming for female backup dancers on the whole but this is just like.....especially lazy. the point of the costume are to help give an indication of where and when you set your performance. they started off with a vaguely 40s theme and then jumped abruptly modern. why? also skirts like that are the literal worst choice for dancing in, hello?? the men’s looks are just sloppy, when you have a garment that big you want it to serve a purpose within the choreo, whereas with this it's just hiding the dancers’ movements.

as for ikon themselves, see everything ive said about black on black on black styling in the previous two reviews. 

the actual set is minimal and that's tragic. i mentioned mnet’s weird art deco theme and it was smart of them to try and play off that with a lack of stuff. definitely a mismatch of stuff pulled from yg’s prop storage, but they made it work as well as they could. no other meaningful comments i’m just kinda sad about it.

sound

the arrangement is fine, no complaints from me. they keyed up the old hollywood style musical theatre sound in the beginning which i really liked. i didn't mind the song/tone switch, i think they pulled it off.

staging

same as btob they learned more towards a theatrical style, which is smart for this particular format of show. i think this was the smartest staging of these three, and also i think the only ones to not get the crew in shot.

despite seemingly leaning into a more old hollywood style the narrative was a bit too loose for my taste. i'm not sure what i would have done to make it clearer at this moment since they had so little to work with, but i did get by on my previous knowledge of the songs. that shouldn’t be the only indication of narrative though! all elements need to support it!!

also like btob they had a pretty intentional point of direction and there weren't a crazy amount of spins. they also used the camera cuts the most effectively that i've seen so far. the first half is actually all in one take!!! incredible!!! thank you!!!! this is how you do it!!

the lighter flick gimmick was well pulled off and a good example of how to use a couple of simple tricks to good effect.

ikon as a whole has really great stage chemistry with each other, and they're extremely cohesive performers. this is a really strong physical performance from them, the dance was very solid and clean. good use of levels without verging into acrobatics. this might be the best group choreo i've seen so far, but we’re not very far so that's not a very high bar to clear.

it's a shame they had the budget of 1 banana.

tbz

i liked this stage better than their intro stage, but i still think they have a long way to go and they're still over ambitious. personally i find stages based on specific pop culture properties to be kind of twee and ineffectual, because it requires a specific knowledge of that pop culture property to work. sometimes the specificity can help with a narrative but you're at risk of alienating a larger portion of your audience out of sheer non-knowledge than anything else. 

costumes

again, interesting garments physically, but not much clarity of relation to the theme other than the colour. also the backup dancers???? another case of backup dancers being from an entirely different stage, what is up with those coats/dresses? looked more like they belonged in either sweeney todd or a vampire movie. 

hands in front of the camera again, but these were used much more effectively.  i'm not the biggest fan of mixing metals and i’m partial to silver on the whole so i didn't love the jewelry, but at least it was vague and stereotypical enough to denote ‘fire magic’ even if it does rely on a derivative middle eastern shorthand.

set

the stage set itself is fine, although definitely feels a bit haphazard to me. doric columns and frozen rocks and whatever that cover for the pyrotechnics was at the front, combined with the candles and the chaise lounge? like ikon, it felt a bit like they were pulling out of the props/set storage. not that all these things do not work together, it's just that you need a thread to tie them together, and this didn't have that for me.

sound

it's a crime they have a song called ‘no air’ and its not a jordin sparks cover. just saying.

i didnt really like this arrangement, again like their intro stage it didn't have a strong structure that suited the narrative, because they were pretty clearly trying a narrative on this one. also were most of the adlibs playback? they were singing live but there were so few shots of anyone specific singing. 

lighting

probably the weakest of the three. the projection design was a bit too tacky for me, and although i appreciated the small amount of variety in colour, it felt way too concert-lighting for me.

staging

the editing on this stage is wack and did no one any good. the hands leading/pov was a really smart device and they should have stuck out the one takes like ikon did, it would have made the whole stage feel a bit more cohesive. a lot better directional camerawork from them this time around, well done. again with the hands in front of the camera gimmick which i actually preferred this time, since they were a part of the narrative. the stretch/silhouette fabric i think they pulled off quite well, even if it didn't really fit thematically with the piece. i actually worked on a show a very long time ago that used this exact same effect with dancers and also rear shadow projection, and it requires a lot of rehearsal and trust to pull off well, so props to them. i think it was the wrong choice because there isn't an established motif for the fabric, so it kind of appears out of nowhere for one specific visual moment and then disappears, and i think that time could have been better served for something else narratively relevant.

again, these 4th gen groups are overly focussed on gimmicks as a way to make up for the lack of experience. personally i think this will be detrimental in the long run, and a reliance on gimmicks means that you don't trust your performers. tbz have the manpower to be doing some pretty cool collective dance work and i dont think its being trained or utilized correctly. they are suffering from a lack of cohesive stage presence right now and that can be fixed with training and time.

this might be because the group sizes are so different between these three but this choreo is very directionless. mnet is also providing to be absolute garbage at editing and i feel like i can't see the choreo at all.

this is a thing i've noticed with kpop camerawork in general, there’s very little regard for actually viewing the choreo as a singular work. and for some reason the camera always needs to be moving???? people do actually want to see what’s happening on the stage. the choreographer can only see from one spot, so from that spot is how they are intending it to look. you wouldn't need to upload full cams of every music stage if you just filmed the choreo properly in the first place. if you watch the two sdc3 clips i linked you can see a clear difference in maintaining the integrity of the choreo, even though both shows use several cameras and a lot of cuts.  obviously for kpop you want the money shots of idols’ faces but i definitely think there’s a healthier middle ground than what we have now.

ill wait for full subs but i want to know where in the fuck in sk you can rent a tank thas clearly been custom made for underwater photography, because that’s extremely cool even if it was absolutely unnecessary to the actual stage itself. i can think of several ways off the top of my head that would have achieved that same freezing effect without any of that wasted time and effort.

mnet decided to drop full cams while i was writing this and despite watching those my opinions are the same.

in conclusion, some more general thoughts:

i think ikon and btob got it right by leaning more into the theatrical than the cinematic, if that makes sense. i might be talking up my own ass here but these are theatre performances, and they should be treated as such. trying to do things that you can do on film isn't going to do you any favours in the long run, and it makes it harder to make a cohesive performance. i’m harping a lot about narrative but it is so important to performance. although it is not technically necessary, when doing big theatrical performance stages like this it does help with clarity of intent and general success. humans have brains structured around storytelling, it is literally the way our history has been passed down for tens of thousands of years. the atlantic published an article recently on narrative and memory, and it's a really excellent read for maybe after you've taken a break from this behemoth, oh dear god. 

tldr: the stages were good but disappointing in their own ways. mnet continues to sabotage via weird stage design decisions and bad editing. see you next week! (or in my ask box if you have questions)

#kingdom review #kpop analysis #kingdom #oh dear lord this is almost 4k #to anybody that actually reads this thank you and im sorry #text

[rpmemesbyarat]

RP Meme from "Chapter Two: Nine Tribes" in the Bastet breedbook from "Werewolf: The Apocalypse" Part Two of Two

I am darkness and light, the shadow hunter and king of the sun.

My claws hold the earth, my tongue tastes the sky.

I am steadfast and strong, compassionate and caring.

They’re solid, dependable, smart and strong.

Their weaknesses, such as they are, come from being too trusting or too sure of themselves.

And who would deny a tiger’s friendship?

They made too many of the wrong kind of enemies.

Time, however, showed what wonders the people offered.

A warrior’s rage is his curse.

Human hunters killed them in such numbers that the great cats themselves court extinction.

In the last two centuries, many of them have gone west, or have sired European children.

Those who court the darkness must die.

No king is so mighty, no priest so holy, no virgin so pure at heart that their blood would not freeze before the face of a tiger.

I am the battler of dragons, the son of the dawn.

Look upon me and tremble.

Before me, you are as nothing.

There has to be a trick, and I would like to know what it is.

I feel sorry for them — we have much in common.

I would gladly smash them into pulp, but their blood would burn my hands.

Dead and buried. Let them lie.

Perhaps some day they will find what it is they seek. Until

then, I wish them well.

I am not as ignorant as I might seem, nor do clever words make a clever mind.

Bloody claws and a bloody crown are your legacies, false kings.

But he liked humans, and there were some he especially liked.

It was always the humans who made dumb mistakes.

They sneaked around and watched, all quiet and silent.

They thought they were the only tricky ones.

This is always their undoing.

That is one story. There are others.

There are many stories. Each person will tell you a different one, and each story will be the truth.

We are what we are.

You do not need to ask why.

Race was not to be an obstacle.

Any trail he shares will be a short one.

The elements are his kin. The road is his home.

Any trip overseas is bound to be a short one.

No whiners are accepted.

They have no great love for magic, and consider those who follow it to be dangerous.

Immerse him in its toxins and he will quickly perish.

No horse will bear him, no dog will follow him.

If you didn’t talk so much, you might hear a great deal more.

Good Folk. Talk too much, though.

They’re our brothers, and we fought the same war. They’re still fightin’, and I wish ‘em luck.

Don’t like ‘em. Not at all.

Are they dead? Nothing is dead. Not forever.

If you meet one, walk away but don’t ever turn your back.

Rotten bastards.

I’ve never been close enough to one to form an opinion about ‘em.

Trouble was, snow was all around.

It’s also a hungry sight, always searching for new things, spying out secrets.

It’s no wonder they live alone!

A person or animal in need will be sheltered and fed for months at a time if necessary.

Guests will be asked endless questions which seem to make no sense, will be given equally nonsensical answers to their own queries, and have to endure long periods of empty silence.

Clever people are valued companions, while dolts who must be spoon-fed are quickly driven out the door.

Sooner or later, a guest moves on, if only out of sheer frustration.

There’s wisdom in a hawk’s cry and serenity in moose turds

Animals, at least, are more honest than people.

Confront her with their names and faces, and she will be confused for days.

If I were to change my face, would it alter what I am? Appearances are deceiving, my brother; the heart sees better than the eyes.

Your future is shattered glass.

Fishes die. They float for a while, then sink and decay. Then they are eaten by little fishes. There’s a lesson in this if you care to look.

Dreams never die.

Like attracts like.

A hero does not need a parade, only a blanket and silence.

What? You claim you’ve heard this one? Well, that’s nice. However, if you interrupt me while I’m speaking again, I’ll tear your throat out.

Everyone knew his place, and our place was at the top of the heap.

So we were installed as rulers of our kind, though not without some grumblings.

We told them; If you’re better kings than we are, come and take the crown. To their credit, they tried.

Listen to the consequences of that error.

Such an auspicious occasion, and yet we were not invited.

We would not have old quarrels prevent us from our duty.

From this we learned the bitter lessons.

We learned that it is as much their failures as our strength that gives us the right to rule, and we can trust nothing but that strength.

We do not permit interlopers, for who has proved himself trustworthy?

All things have a place and an order and rebels must be reminded of this fact.

Things are simply out of order.

Warfare is the sport of kings.

Their purposes have been forgotten in their shame.

Many kings came and went.

He’s a monster, of course, but a successful monster

Few make the mistake twice.

Sultans and kings have always canceled each other out before.

To defeat a lion, steal his roar.

Survival, after all, comes through strength.

I like their style, but they’re far too refined to be true leaders.

How amusing. If it could speak well, I might adopt it.

I pity these wretched would-be sorcerers.

They claim they want our throne. Well, my boy, feel free to take it. If you can.

Pathetic. And dead. Too bad.

Self-important and obtuse, but too strong to be allowed to live.

Survival takes strength, child, and I cannot see yours.

Cowards, every one.

This world is but one of many. I have walked the secret worlds, and soon you will, too.

Once, all worlds were one world.

Many animals suffered as well as the jungles grew brown and dry.

Why do the spirits die?

There’s much good eating to be had.

All around, people ran in fear.

I am fast, but not as strong as they.

If my brothers and sisters perish, what chance do I have?

Be still, and do not fight

You are too fleet and nervous

You must learn patience and observation.

Traitor!

Fear them, child, and watch behind you.

Your speed is the one thing upon which you can depend.

To them, everyone in the world is corrupt or getting that way

The lesson, driven home by a year of dark tales and a lifetime alone, is that the world is going to hell, and that it has been for some time.

Wisdom is not poisoned by the eyes or ears, but by the heart.

Their extreme xenophobia makes settling anywhere difficult.

The world is hostile, so avoid it when you can.

Mix it into his drink, and he will dance and laugh for days.

Are you blind? How can you see the world around you and not insist that we’re living in the final days?

Their cultured speech hides keen, conniving minds.

I like their words, but do not trust their hearts.

Dead and gone, like so many of their dreams.

I want to trust them. Really. They would make fine friends, I think. Perhaps I’ll speak to one someday.

Them, I would call friend. Too bad they are so scarce.

Someday we must fight them. I do not look forward to that day.

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay meme #roleplay memes #roleplay starters #bastet #werecats #werewolf the apocalypse #world of darkness #owod

[happikattwuzheere]

the one where gansey befriends a deer: the au

hey remember that time ronan dreamed up a deer that was described with language suspiciously similar to how adam’s described, because i sure do!!! anyway

OK.

ok. so. this au’s actually evolved a lot since its initial already-pretty-fleshed-out inception one sleepless night, so me talking about it’s gonna be more than one post, but here’s the first one well actually the second technically yesterday’s warmup doodles were also from this au but i didnt talk about it at all so

and I’m gonna start with more or less the same pitch I gave to a couple people on discord

SO. starting out: it’s standard fantasy times, vaguely medieval but no specific time period because I don’t care enough to be digging into that quite frankly, but it is somewhere in England where this is happening. Story starts with just Gansey, Ronan, and Noah. Fey are very real and known entities and there’s been a conflict in England between the fey and humans, if not in the whole country then at least in the lands that the Ganseys are the lords of but probably the whole island tbh, and Gansey’s not inherited the lands yet but he’s going to and wants to maybe find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. It’s not open warfare by any means but it’s been a big problem. 

To the effect of solving that, he heads to some little village that I haven’t named but it’s right next to a known fey forest called Cabeswater. This village has avoided being stomped by the local fey because, despite witches not being particularly liked by the nobility of the time, there’s a big old coven (the psychics of Fox Way, essentially) situated right by this village that’s kept things in check. Gansey’s made his excuses to his parents about why he’s officially going there but really he wants to talk to the witches and get a better grasp of the conflict from the people actually dealing with it.  He and Ronan set out from home together, pick up Noah along the way--who is not a ghost in this AU, he’s a fey who owes Gansey a life debt, that’s a whole other post and THIS post is mostly about gansey and adam--but anyway they get to this village and NOBODY gives gansey the time of day. 

the witches don’t let him into their house because they don’t like the nobility right back thanks and the next time he tries to visit Cabeswater won’t even let him get to the coven’s dwelling, the one witch’s daughter who regularly stops by the village for supplies and to check if anyone needs anything has a big argument with him the first time he talks to her so that’s going nowhere, and, well, the villagers are polite, but they clearly don’t take him seriously. He’s just the lordling playing at things and potentially meddling in their business to them.

So he starts hanging out just barely within Cabeswater, even though he knows that’s not wise, because he finds this perfect spot by a stream, and he’ll sit out there and think and work on the journal he keeps of all his thoughts and plans, and one day while he’s there has a straight up Disney princess experience when a deer stops by the stream and seems incredibly unafraid of him. he cherishes the experience but accepts that it probably won’t happen again.

and then it does. several times. gansey’s losing his mind. this deer??? apparently likes listening to him info dump?? it’s very therapeutic and also very magical and he’s amazed 

a few times in, he names the deer “Pryderi” after a character from a welsh legend, because “such a handsome creature deserves a princely name,” [[muffled blue laughing and whispering “princely” in the distance]], and he tells ronan and noah about this experience but ronan doesn’t believe him at ALL. 

one time after gansey’s particularly upset at how bad his attempts at getting along with the villagers, Pryderi actually lets Gansey touch him for the first time and gansey cannot shut up about it to ronan who’s finally like “i think you’re bullshitting me about this deer thing. im coming with you next time” and gansey’s like “well he’s a deer he might not show up if a stranger’s around and he doesn’t come every time i go down there anyway” and ronan’s like “this sounds like a lot of excuses, dick, you’re not making me believe you any more with this” and gansey’s like “>8\” 

but pryderi does show up, and gansey is delighted, and ronan stares really hard at him and then goes 

and gansey’s like what? nooo. but ronan keeps arguing it for the duration of the visit and the deer actually starts to look annoyed and at the end ganseys like ok maybe but i doubt it. and then hes like “well since you are a fey apparently (/sarcasm) i ought to say farewell with respect” and bows very mockingly and then the deer makes direct eye contact with ronan and bows back and gansey loses his shit

gansey continues meeting up with pryderi but even while his infodumping still happens it does so now with the knowledge that He Does Actually Understand What Im Saying, he may be a fey but he seems like a friendly one and hey that’s way more than gansey thought he would get out here, and also this deer is his friend now thanks, 

he, ronan, and noah (who’s amused by Pryderi but keeps his main thoughts to himself for now) make some excursions into cabeswater, but the thing is noah’s not really native to england, he’s from the european mainland, again i’ll get to it in another post sometime, but. he can sort of help navigate cabeswater but not all THAT well so they get lost a couple times, and every time it does happen pryderi shows up and helps guide them out. there’s some very funny moments of a very jealous ronan getting into weird conflict w/ a very smug deer 

anyWAY one day there’s like a festival, everyone’s drunk because its the middle ages and there’s not really a drinking age, gansey’s making another effort to make friends with anyone, and this one guy about his own age is like “ok look here i’ll teach you the folk dance everyone’s doing ok?” and gansey spends the night dancing w/ a handsome stranger, yes he will recognize the irony in the morning, but for now it goes. well badly because they’re both drunk but it’s fun, and then the guy says “ah, fuck it, i’ll finish teaching you next time we see each other” and gansey’s like “thats a little forward but ok!” and the guy (adam. its adam) panics and leaves while gansey’s back is turned and gansey doesn’t remember that last snippet of conversation the next day nor can he quite recall the stranger’s face. ronan does, because he was watching and not sure which of the two he was jealous of, but neither of them has any idea who the guy actually was. 

and then like, 3 days later, gansey falls asleep at the spot he usually hangs out in in cabeswater and wakes up in the early evening just in time to hear people yelling and for Pryderi to burst into view with an arrow in his flank. he collapses in a bush. gansey snaps into “protect friend” mode and gets the hunters off his trail by being all “oh a strange buck? i saw it pass that way over there friend!” and then when they’re gone he comes back and is all “alright pryderi they’re gone, let me just--” except pryderi’s not a deer anymore. it’s a boy. 

(Adam. its adam. the deer is adam.) 

gansey takes him home, gets the arrow out, noah’s like “i mean he’s not a fey, i dont know what turning into a deer is about but if he were fey the iron in that arrow would already have him dead. he might be partially fey but so little that he’s human in the ways that really matter”, over the next couple days they figure out that pryderi is in fact from the village and is a young man named adam parrish who’s been labelled a changeling and is assumed dead since he was yknow shot, gansey decides for now its probably best to keep him that way, but adam’s not getting better--apparently even having had the arrow in him as briefly as he did has poisoned him, he’s desperately ill and on the third day is finally like “get persephone” so gansey tries again (he’s tried several times over these days, they’d worked out that to have survived this long he must have someone else with a small degree of fey blood teaching him the ropes and the most likely suspects are the witches, but he’s hoping adam specifically asking him to will grant him permission enough to go in) and runs into a very frantic blue en route who as soon as he makes it clear he’s got adam is like “move your ass over on that horse im climbing on too” 

they get persephone, who turns into a fox rather than a deer, she saves adam, everythings cool except adam’s pissy now because he cant go back to the village and he has to give up on the attempts he had in the works to get out of town by working his way out and he takes it out on gansey who doesnt deserve it because this friendship is a mess, he’ll feel bad and take it back eventually but thats yet more posts ANYWAY YEAH theres our starting point 

(also worth noting: due to cabeswater being Right There,  p much everyone in this village actually has a small degree of fey blood, adam just won the genetic lottery) 

tl;dr adam’s a fey-blooded witch’s apprentice and he’s been the deer the whole time and thats the start of this au ty for coming to this ramble 

#longpost #trc #the raven cycle #lolsketch #gonna make separate posts w/ just the art in a sec #anyway i love this au with all of my heart its extremely self indulgent #deer boy au #because thats what ive been shorthanding it to

[thenixkat]

Voltron notes 1 (edited?)

Ep 1

No spoiler opening theme

Those are some skinny ass space suits. Shouldn’t they have like tethers and shit to keep them from accidently floating off?

Harvesting ice cores on Pluto or Kerberos or whatever

They wanna meet aliens

No one notices the ship until its right on top of them. Shiro just assumes its a hostile ship

Bullshit and lazy. Fuckin aliens speaking and understanding English

Also Shiro looks so much better with the darker skin. Like, bring back this look.

This ship is very green and that’s unusual compared to later lighting schemes 

Lance is a dick to his friend

Also, you’d think an air and space program would weed out the folks with motion sickness

Lance is overestimating the abilities of himself, the crew, and the ship

Welp, Hunk fucked up the electronics with the barf. Pidge fell from not using her seatbelt. 

Mutanious comments.  

Lance got the team killed

Iverson called them jackasses

I know I shouldn’t be mentioning stuff that hasent happened yet but like? How the fuck does Iverson not recognise Pidge? She looks just like her brother but tiny and that didn’t raise any alarms? She didn’t even dye her hair or anything? Also is her mom ok with this? Is she skipping out on her classes that she should be having as Katie?

Vomit is not an approved lubricant. Heh 

One of those chicks has green hair

Military exploration school

Pidge doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut

Lance is a fuckin bro

Why is Iverson chewin out Lance for something Pidge said?

Poor Lance

Lights out by five? And it's already getting dark?

Ok but Lance and Hunk in civilian clothes makes them stand out so much while they’re trying to sneak around. WHy not carry backpacks with their regular clothes in them while they wear the uniforms until they find a safe place to change. 

Lance is that friend who gets everyone into trouble

Have I mentioned that I hate fat jokes?

Also these kids are shit at sneaking. They didn’t even wait a minute to make sure the patrol dude couldn’t just turn his head and see them. They also made a shit ton of noise.

Pidge is bad at sneaking too, didn’t make sure she wasn’t followed and didn’t keep an eye out for anyone who might spot her on the roof.

Hunk is scared of heights

Pidge is bad at lying

Hunk is nosey af

Lance is trying to be a good team leader

Pidge is trying to uncover a government conspiracy and picked up alien radio chatter. 

If a teenager with little funds and homemade equipment can pick up alien radio chatter than the people who listen to the stars for a living sure as shit picked this shit up.

Lance doesn’t believe in aliens.

Hunk is scared of aliens

School is on lock down

Holy crow. Lance is a potty mouth

Hunk didn’t believe in aliens either

Pidge and Lance jump at the chance to go check out a crashed alien ship. Hunk doesn’t like this.

How the fuck did Pidge remotely hack a camera feed?

Ok but like it makes total sense for them to quarantine Shiro. He might have space pox.

Also Shiro’s skintone changes between 2 dif frames

Hunk neither knows nor cares who Shiro is. And is trying to be the voice of reason

I’m taking that as a fat joke. So fuck you show.

Where’d Keith get the hover car?

Where does Keith get all the explosives? Does he make them?

Lance spotted his eternal rival and doesn’t want to be beat in rescuing the hero. Hunk knows who Keith is

Pidge doesn’t know who Keith is

Why’d they choose that ugly ass tone for Shiro there? He looks kinda grey

Lance was not important enough for Keith to remember him

They’re making Keith take them along for the ride. Also that is not a vehicle designed to carry so many people.

Keith’s got snark.

Pidge yer not doing anything else the least you can do is be useful and keep Shiro from falling off the bike.

Hunk can identify every teacher chasing them

Keith is having fun driving while everyone else screams in terror

So Shiro’s just wearing Keith’s dad’s clothes

Convenient amnesia

Also Shiro’s got a generic ass masculine face

Keith can sense energy

So, those markings and paintings had to have been made by some Native Americans. Which group? What’s the timeframe? Those paintings are showing Blue do stuff so how long was her pilot still around and kicking for? Did she have other pilots before going into lockdown and just chose to stay on Earth? How’d she get to Earth in the first place if fish dude probably died in battle with Galra forces?

Lance hesitates b4 shaking the mystery alien cyborg hand

Hunk is nervous that there might be an alien invasion soon.

Hunk is nosey as hell and a bit of a dick

If I point out everything that is or probably is a fat joke I’ll be here forever

Hunk is smart as hell

Matching a wavelength of an element to a terrain carved by erosion? What? That’s not how anything works

Wait, if Keith has pics of the murals why didn’t they start looking there?

Yeah no those kids are hurt, possibly dead from that fall

The Voltron

The eyes have no pupils and the head isn’t moving, how can you tell the eyes are following you?

So did all of the lions pick these kids and college student from seeing them through Blue’s perspective? How does the lion choosing thing work?

Hunk states the obvious

How is Lance supposed to read the screen when the text is constantly changing. That’s not how computer.

Lance takes Blue on a joy ride and even Keith is not having fun

Also Blue is just fucking up the poor desert

Hunk is a little bitch who thinks giving people what they want will stop them

Holy crow. Hunk has a potty mouth.

So there’s just like a Galra ship right at Earth. The Galra know where Earth is and probably invade it. We just gonna forget about that? Like yes that ship is chasing the lion but nothing is stopping more galra going to Earth.

Shiro is the senior officer so Lance defers to him

So the lions can open wormholes on their own.

Hunk vomits inside Blue

Lance why?

How did none of them notice the castle. Like that is a massive ass castle

They just didn’t check to see if the air was human breathable

Pidge, why the fuck would the steps be bigger if the control seat of the lion was human sized?

Alien tech speaks english

Why do they reuse Cree’s voice for so much

Why do aliens from 10000 yrs ago fucking speak english

Also fucking elves

Also fucking Europeans

Rude. Allura’s first response to meeting an alien is insulting his species looks

Quiznak. Coran has a potty mouth

Also how the fuck do you know anything about this alien’s biology? Why the fuck would a sleeper hold fucking work?

SO why didn’t Alfor use the ‘strongest weapon in the universe’ to fight Zarkon? What, did Black not want any other paladin than Zarkon?

Alfor lies to children.

So how did they send away the other 4 lions? Alfor probably got caught and killed but like from that flashback ep the other three og paladins weren’t in their armor nor shown near the lions or anything. Did the lions hide themselves? Did they have other paladins that piloted them away?

King of the Galra? Bitch he was an emperor well before his fall you should know this.

Convenient amnesia.

How long is the average Galra lifespan?

Could Haggar not? Sense the Blue lion on Earth? How?

Also Haggar really went and got herself a whole ass monster husband

Zarkon calls in the squad. Sends Sendak to fuck shit up

Lance is not good with numbers

Sigh

How do yall even know the food in the castle is safe for humans?

Coran how the fuck u know yall the last Alteans left? Did ya fuckin look?

How the fuck did some nasty ass mice get into the fucking cryopod? How did they survive in a cryopod calibrated for an altean? Why are the mice necessary to the story?

How do the alteans recognize a galra battleship after 10000 yrs?

Lance starts a fight with Keith for no reason. Shiro breaks up the fight.

Did I mention that I hate body functions humor? 

Why and how did Alfor connect the lions to Allura’s life force?

Coran just straight up called Pidge a slightly less stupid than average primitive. Racist as fuck.

Lion’s choose their paladin so Allura just fucking assigns lions to aliens she’s known for less than an hour.

How does she know anything about these aliens? Its been less than 5 mins since she met them.

How the fuck does Allura know here all the lions are but the red one?

How do we know Voltron is the most powerful in the universe? They ain’t seen the entire universe

How do the Alteans know how long an earth hour is?

So an altean brought Green to this planet?

What the fuck kinda dumb ass rabbits come out of hiding when they know strange creatures are near?

To be fair, peaceful might mean something else in Altean. They are fucking space Brits

Hunk asks good questions when he’s not stating the obvious

Also that is a barren ass planet. But it was formerly inhabited.

Hunk rewires alien machinery while under heavy fire

Why does it take so long for yellow’s murals to start glowing? Was Yellow thinking about whether or not she wanted Hunk as her Paladin? Yellow really said if you want me you gotta put in effort.

The Galra were this close to getting Yellow too.

Pidge asks questions.

Who built that pyramid for Green and why did they let it get overgrown?

Pidge somehow didn’t break a leg from that jump

So I’m gonna assume that Blue told Yellow what was up

How well can Yellow move through rock?

Green really wanted Pidge. Like she was lighting shit up immediately.

So Blue actually got pretty damaged from regular ship fire and hiding the ground wrong

Hunk would apparently have let Lance die

Pidge and Shiro are some lyin ass bitches

Lord of the Known Universe. Most of the Galra empire is empty space

It took 600 yrs between a grandfather and grandson altean?

Lance and Hunk vote run

Pidge votes stay and fight

Um. Why would the Galra fuck up Arus when yall are the top priority? Like, sure they can come back for it but the lions are a bigger deal and thus they would chase yall over take Arus

Hunk is making very good points

Also Keith, while Sendak could destroy Arus and then come after yall. It’d be a waste of time and resources. 

Keith votes stay and fight

Shiro chooses not to vote

Alfor’s hologram admits he fucked up with sending the lions away

Allura votes stay and fight and I guess Coran isn’t voting like Shiro

Fuck you show. Why did we need eighteen thousand fuckin fat jokes?

Coran is an asshole

Ok but like that doesn’t look like a good chest plate? Like it looks like if they bent over they’d get poked/stabbed by it? And what’s up with the high sides of the belts?

What the fuck Pidge?! That coulda killed Lance or taken him out for a good while?

Wait, if the ship has a thing that can like just fucking make suits? Why can't they just make more bayards? Why wouldn’t Alfor design something to make more bayards?

Why doesn’t the galra ship have rear view cameras?

Wait! How the fuck do you cut a hole in a space ship and that not fuck with pressurization or set off any safety allarms?! The fuck kinda bullshit is that?

Sendak? Why do you expect aliens to know what that beam was for if you didn’t tell them?

~False surrender is a fucking war crime b/c it removed the option of surrendering for real if the need arrives so it leads to more fucking people dying~

No they didn’t Shiro. Battleships are things that get mass produced. If this is the exact same ship u got put in after the green one then that is bullshit on a cosmic scale.

Shiro is ok with letting prisoners die. Pidge is not, granted it's probably b/c she thinks her family might be on there.

Poor Mrs. Holt. She just got fuckin forgotten by everyone.

So Pidge has an outburst and fucking disobeys the mission leader. Shiro decides to help her just b/c he might know one or two of the people he was willing to let die. And they leave Keith with no fucking backup.

Keith would have legit died if the guards remembered that they have fucking guns and can shoot him when he dropped his shield. Which means Keith would have died if not for plot bullshit b/c his teammates don’t particularly care about his health and safety. Pidge and Shiro care more about the male Holts than Keith and all of the other prisoners that might be on the ship.

Wow.

How does Keith not hold this against them?

No the mice were not necessary, not if either of these dunces whent and opened the control panel from the other side.

That sounds like bullshit. 

Ya know I didn’t have any problems with Hunk the engineer being able to operate an alien elevator or drill by hotwiring shit. But I do call bullshit on Pidge reprogramming a sentry pod thing by changing the connection of one wire.

I still call bullshit on aliens speaking english and all atmospheres being 100% agreeable to humans. B/c that is bullshit

And why the fuck would the color of Rover’s lights fucking change?

… they only checked one fucking room for prisoners but that’s  it I guess? The fuck

Why did the Red lion let the Galra take her? Did she consider that one of the galra on the ship might make a good paladin for her?

Keith gets caught b/c his dumb ass starts shouting on a stealth mission

Keith, they already have the lion. Yer the one trying to take it

Like I said previously the guards forget they have guns and thus Keith lives.

So… how did Keith impress the Red lion? He fought people, lost and blew out the airlock. Which is still a loss if the lion didn’t feel like saving him.

Vore

Guards continue to forget they have fucking guns for plot reasons.

Hunk and the gang leave without destroying the enemy ship or making sure that its irreparably damaged

Coran, Lance, and Hunk have foul mouths

And this is why you fucking confirm yer kill

Why isn’t there a combine button?

Heh, Yellow’s face after slamming Red. Also Red looks so offended about being rammed. 

What the cheese

Hunk’s gone into panic mode and Keith has accepted death.

Shiro gives a speech and they form Voltron

Why are the bad guys giving them the time to form voltron?

Why doesn’t Voltron have a tail? Where does Black’s tail go? Voltron should have a tail.

Any other prisoners on that ship are dead as fuck

How did I watch this show  the first time? It's not good. It’s pretty but it is not good.

#nix watches vld #voltron #notes #long post

[imnotwolverine]

Ready, set, …

Henry Cavill x OC Lisa - multi-chapter fic

Author’s note: Set life has its quirks and challenges. A fluffy, smutty Henry fanfiction to get you through the week. Bedroom fun found at the end. Ps. I should start thinking of a name for this series, any good suggestions?

Word count: 5.832

Disclaimer: smut and fluff

---

This is part 3 of the Tea for Two story. 

Find the masterlist here.

---

< Back to part 2

An early alarm clock went. 5 am. I heard Henry groan as he rubbed his eyes. ‘Fuck.’ He moped softly, pushing himself off the bed and silencing the alarm. I looked at his naked, muscular, slightly hairy form, grasping for clothes. Kal got up yawning and stretching in turn. The morning ritual. I looked at Henry sleepily. ‘Early shoot?’ I whispered. He rumbled. ‘They changed lines. I forgot that meant an early day.’ He sat on the edge of the bed, wiping some hair from my face. ‘Hello princess.’ He said softly. ‘Well, you go do your Witchy things then. I’ll see you soon.’ I rumbled. He smiled, bending over to kiss me. ‘And we might need some new condoms at your place…just in case.’ He nodded at the dusty pack of condoms that lay discarded on the night stand. I chuckled as he kissed me more deeply. Tongues fighting. He moved on top of me, his weight pressing me down. ‘Mmpff.’ He huffed in frustration. ‘Alright.’ He sighed and nodded while unwillingly getting up. ‘Time to go. Come on Kal. See you dear.’ He blew a kiss and left. Moments later I heard the door closing behind him softly.

The first few days flew by. It was less erratic at work. Much more hectic personally. Somehow press really got air of something happening. We saw tele lenses sticking out of bushes, the odd journalist jumping us when we were drinking tea outside of the warehouses in a short break. ’Mr. Cavill. Who’s this? Are you dating?’ The loud shrieky voice sounded in my neck. I had difficulty not showing utter disgust when a camera was pushed in our faces. ‘Good sir,’ Henry said, getting up, placing his hand on the journalists chest. ‘This is private property. I must ask you to leave and request permission to shoot at the Chamber of MM Media.’ ‘But are you dating?! Mr Cavill?!’ The journalist continued, while one of the security men came strolling in, grasping the man by his shirt and pulling him away. ‘How do you stay so calm?’ I grinned, taking my last sip of tea, watching Henry sitting back down. People around us didn’t even seem very impressed, already having continued with their activities. ‘It gets easier.’ He gave me a sweet smile, which truly was creepy when he was in full costume. ‘What’s the planning for the rest of your week?’ He asked, fetching his phone from his pocket. It was Wednesday. ‘Free Friday afternoon, shopping materials for Poland on Saturday, which we’ll probably discuss on Sunday, then free again on Monday.’ He scrolled through his agenda. I took the hint and grabbed my phone as well, moving it around on the table so he could see my schedule. He grinned, looking up at me. ‘Let me get to the wardrobe department and see if we can get you off the hook on Sunday. I want to take you out for a trip.’ I raised my eyebrow. “CAST CALL, RUN THROUGH IN 5, HALL 2.4..” He looked up, then quickly returned my phone. ‘Would you like that?’ ‘Yea. Sure.’ I said, not quite sure what trip meant in this case. I shrugged as he gave me a quick peck on the lips and rushed off to hall 2.

It sure was magical, how quickly he could fix such things. Within the hour, my manager dropped by to tell me I could take the Sunday off - which usually was out of the question. I looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. ‘Orders from above.’ I squinted my eyes in disbelief. Above? But there we go. It soon was Saturday and I was in the minivan with the department, getting back from a successful shopping trip. Everyone made sure to quickly move all materials to the shipping boxes, ready to go to Poland, snipping off little bits to use for the mood-boards. After that I walked to the hall where they were shooting the last few scenes. I sat down in a director’s chair and sipped on some green tea, looking at the hustle and bustle.

Anya plopped down in the chair next to me. ‘His kisses are different now.’ She said abruptly. I looked up, raising my eyebrows. She smiled an endearing smile, then studied me for a bit. ‘Had a good shoot day?’ I asked. She shrugged. ’Twas okey. Yours?’ ‘Got some pretty materials for your future dresses actually’ ‘Mmm! Cool. Hey, but about those kisses. I think he really, really likes you. He seems different..’ He cocked her pretty head, pouting in thought. ‘Really…’ I smiled, then looked at my cup of tea. ‘So are you joining him to the premiere?’ She asked in girlish curiosity. ‘The premiere? Oh, no. I’ll let you have the honours. Don’t want to have fans going wild over some casual girl on his arm.’ She squinted at me. ‘They first thought I was the worst choice EVER for Yennefer. Now they make fan porn of me. Fans are so weird.’ She shrugged giddily. ‘I’ll let them have the illusion of Hollywood for a moment longer.’ I winked. She laid her hand over mine. ‘He accidentally grunted your name when we shot a make out scene.’ We both snickered. ‘This conversation is so weird.’ I said, laughing at her. She shrugged. ‘Actors life.’

Not much later the last scene was cut and a flurry of set members once again flew out. Anya plopped out her chair, wrapping her arms around a tall man with full sleeve arm tattoos. She kissed him with childish excitement. Without looking back they walked out together, in full conversation. ‘Ready?’ I shot up in shock from his voice. He had sneaked up behind me and was standing there with his coat flung over his shoulder. He had already changed into his regular attire. ‘Ooph.’ I laughed. ‘You are quiet as a mouse.’ I wiggled out of the chair and smiled at him. He pecked me on the lips before holding out his arm, inviting me to take it. We walked out to his car as it was just getting dark. 8.30 pm. ‘Now for our trip. I’m invited by my horse riding trainer to a farm, just squeezing in a few hours in the saddle before Poland. I figured it’d be a nice outing.’ I looked at him. ‘Horse riding?’ ‘Like all fair knights do!’ He grinned. ‘Alright. Fair prince.’ I slithered. ‘Let’s fetch stuff at our houses, walk Kal, then drive there.’ ‘This evening still?’ ‘Yep, might as well get the drive over with. Can you drive?’ ‘Yea, want to switch?’ ‘No no. Just. Curious. Shift?’ ‘Of course. European remember?’ He snickered. ‘Americans ARE lazy.’

We had some quick food, fetched our things, walked Kal, then jumped into the car to drive north. It was deep in the night when we arrived. About 1-ish. And there was nothing around except for this romantically lit farm house with some barns. We jumped out and walked up to the house, some dogs greeting us with loud barks, tails wagging. A man came out in his night shift. ‘Ey ey. Easy boys…. Mr Cavill!’ A gruff, smoke-heavy voice sounded. ‘Mr. Games!’ The men greeted with loud pats on each others backs. ‘And ye brought a sweet thing with you.’ Henry moved aside, smiling at me. ‘Lisa. And careful. She can be feisty.’ Mr Games rumbled a loud laugh and hugged me tight. ’Welcome dear. Ai that wonderful smell about you. Honeysuckle?’ I looked at him in disbelief. ‘Actually yes. I don’t like perfume’s sold on the market so I wear..honeysuckle.’ ‘Such fine smell.’ He folded his arm around my back and guided us to the main house. ‘I got ye a nice little bed made. And ye know where everythin’ is. Make yourself at home. Me wife already hit the hay, so I’ll  join ‘er if ye don’t mind.’ He chuckled with insinuating tone. ‘Of course.’ Henry said, winking. Mr Games prodded him playfully. ‘HA HA HA.’ He laughed a little too loudly, then nodded at me, before holding the door open for me. We walked inside. It was dimly lit. A wooden structured house with heavy beams, the smell of hay and horses protruding from its very core. The furniture was old english style. ‘Yer room is upstairs, hallway, far left. Bathroom right across. Sleep tight good folk.’ He whistled and his dogs eagerly followed him up the stairs, his short stubby legs making the stair steps creak heavily.

Henry yawned. ’Night cap?’ I looked at him. ‘Sure, why not. We’re off for 2 days, gods be blessed!’ I exclaimed. ‘Are you religious by the way? I’ve never asked.’ ‘Nope. You?’ ‘No, raised Christian, but not following.’ He pulled open some cabinets in the kitchen and pulled out two small brandy glasses and a bottle of strong liquor. ‘He makes his own, so, fair warning: it is strong.’ He put the filled glasses on the table. ‘Do you believe in a God?’ I asked. He sat down opposite of me, looking out at the dark fields outside. ‘I think it would be practical if there were a God. But never have I seen or heard him. So no, not a believer.’ We clinked our glasses. ‘And when did you learn to ride horses?’ ‘At my parents actually. We grew up on the Jersey Islands and our neighbours kept two ponies. Darling horses, but also so darn stubborn.’ He grinned. ‘Could you tell me about your sweetest memory of your youth, living there?’ I asked. He rolled around the drink in his glass, thinking. And so we talked for another hour or so. Eventually so tired, all we wanted to do was sleep.

It was around 10 when we woke up. And made love, as morning Henry so enjoys doing. I felt my innards burning from his pounding, laying on my back heaving heavily. ‘Goodness me.’ I laughed as he rolled over and supported his head, letting a finger travel over my body. He was panting slightly. I finally opened my eyes, seeing he was looking a bit pained. I reached out to him. ‘Hi.’ I said. ‘Hey.’ He returned, his eyes twitching between loving and regretful. I looked down at his glorious body, noticing something… missing. ‘C…ondom?’ His face broke in agony, his gaze looking at something on the bed table. ‘It broke.’ ‘Wow..you..’ I got up in shock, looking at rubber, then at him. ‘Do we need to get you a morning after pill?’ He said meekly. ‘Hopefully not, I am pretty steadfast with the pill.’ I looked at him in disbelief. He sighed, ashamed. ‘I’m so sorry.’ I let out a breath I was holding. ‘Oh I’m so glad I use the pill. Please tell me next time. Oh my..this could have gone wrong.’ He sat up, looking apologetically at me. ‘I’m so sorry.’ ‘It’s okey. I just..didn’t notice.’ I sighed, then looked at him lovingly. ‘It should be alright.’ I continued, cupping his cheek. He smiled weakly, then pulled me close. ‘Ohhh. I’m such a fool!’ He said melodramatically. I snickered as I pulled his heavy body on top of me, hugging intently.  

The day was filled with horses. Saddling horses, walking with horses, riding horses, combing horses, haying horses, moving horses from field to field. Henry clearly got the knack for it, gently and without force leading the horses around. ‘It’s all in the hips and eye contact.’ He said, leading a mare ahead, with a few horses following. It was just the two of us, as Mr. Games was drying off some horses at the stables. The day was running late and food smells were flowing out of the kitchen. ‘Mares love good hips huh?’ I joked, earning a cocky smile from him. ‘Well all joking aside, my hips are …sore.’ I said, somewhat surprised by that. He laughed at me sweetly. ‘Then let us rest.’ He said. ‘I thought you’d never say it.’ I grinned with a mocking tone. He raised an eyebrow at me, smirking.

The days flew by and before we knew it we were driving back to the Hollywood Hills. The return of bright lights, stressed out honking cars and general mess that was the city, I couldn’t help but sigh. I loved my work, my friends, the closeness of everything you need, but there sure were downsides to living in the city. He squeezed my leg while he drove south to drop me off at home. Our goodbye was sweet and relaxed. It had been good to be with each other for longer then just a few minutes. The eraticness was gone and had made place for trust and comfort. We kissed a long while in front of my door, Kal waiting impatiently to go in like he usually would. But this time we really said goodbye at the door. I stood and watched while Henry made his way down the stairs, Kal following with wagging tail. Down the stairs he turned around to look up, waving at me one last time before disappearing. We were getting better at it, I smiled, walking inside of my dark apartment. I didn’t even bother turning on lights, just dropping my stuff, brushing my teeth and heading for bed. It would be another busy week. And, the last week here in the US, which made shooting all the more crazy.

—

I was exhausted by the time it was Saturday. I could sleep anywhere, anytime. And yet I had to pack my stuff for my flight tomorrow evening. It was only now I really started to miss Bib. Usually it would be a whole hustle to get my way too old cat in the plane, having to do all these health checks, her being completely paranoid for the rest of the day. No more of that. I plopped on my bed. It was 11.30pm. I opened my Whatsapp to check on any messages. No message from him yet. I sent him a kissing emoji, followed by a sleeping emoji. ‘Flying tomorrow. When do you get to Poland?’ I fell asleep and only woke up again when the alarm clock buzzed 8 hours later. I groaned. He had responded. ‘Sleep well dear. Probably arrive there on Wednesday evening if all goes well. Wish I could travel with you :) Safe travels and contact me when you arrived!’ Followed by a picture of all his stuff being packed. All the picture frames, dog toys, some workout gear, put into boxes. I snickered. I didn’t bring quite as much with me. Just clothes and a few books. I owned this home and kept all my valuables in a locked closet, then rented out the apartment to colleagues who worked here off and on as well. I had to miss my stuff for these months, but oh well.

We were flying. I was completely dazed, barely striking up conversation with colleagues flying with me. I was too darn tired and all I wanted was that day off after landing. If anything I realised full well I wouldn’t be able to keep up this lifestyle forever. It made good money, which I invested wisely just so in a few years I could settle down and pick a more quiet hobby-that-made-some-money and live off the earnings of my investments. Always better than what most colleagues were doing; blowing through the money like there was no tomorrow. Expensive cars, clothes, going out for dinner every single night and then complaining they couldn’t go to the dry cleaners multiple times a week. Silly folk. I watched a simple romcom, listened to some music, tried to sleep in the rather uncomfortable seat I was situated in (squeezed in between two sizeable ladies who were talking extremely loud and were sweating like whales). I couldn’t describe the happiness when the captain announced we were starting to land.

*Lapalice caste*

It was morning in Poland, the sky and buildings as grey as last we were here. The communist building style really didn’t do any good for this culture. Nevertheless, it was a relief when the crew’s bus arrived and we were transported to the countryside. We were starting the set build at a castle, an artistic 20th century interpretation, absolutely lovely. A small encampment had already been made with running water, hot showers and a large food area. This would do for the next month. Our manager immediately started with nudging us to come up with ideas for the brainstorming session tomorrow, but I, like everyone else, simply ignored her. ‘Tomorrow Lazz. Don’t want to have more of us burned out.’ One of the men said, tapping her on the shoulder. We were escorted to our quarters. Shamefully..it were small bunk beds. I rolled my eyes. Well, no privacy then. Trying to stay awake for a little while longer I walked around a bit and sent a selfie with the set in the background to Henry. ‘Smells medieval to me!’ I added. ‘Gonna switch to European SIM. Add my number: 316123456789.’ Also, being back in Europe, and having switched sim cards, I took the opportunity to give my mother a call. She answered after some waiting. Always a busy woman.

‘Dear! How are you? Oh such things I’ve heard! Are you sleeping well?’ She rattled in dutch. ‘Hi mom. I’m pretty good. Kind of jet-lagging. Just arrived in Poland. So, mostly trying to stay awake now haha. How are you guys?’ ‘So good! Oh, exciting news. We got permission to start rebuilding the back of the house. It’s gonna be so pretty. I’ll send you the drawings.’ ‘Cool! With the wooden porch?’ ‘Yes. Oh it’s going to be lovely. Hey but what did I hear..or read. Are you pregnant?’ ‘What? No mom. Who told you that?’ ‘Oh my sister, you know she loves following your work. She told me you were seen with this actor and he was touching your belly and all.’ ‘If I would be pregnant I’d surely not forget to tell you mom. No. No babies coming. But I am dating, yes.’ ‘Is he good to you? Or is it a she? That’s fine too.’ ‘It’s a guy. Actor yes. And he’s a darling.’ ‘Oh so maybe babies at some point then?’ ‘Mommm.’ ‘What?! I had babies by your age.’ ‘You’re insufferable at times mom. So how are grandma and pa?’ I diverted the conversation. ‘Not great, you should call them. They have moved to a senior house and they absolutely detest it. Poor folk.’ ‘Ay…’ We chatted for a while longer. It was good to speak to her again, her voice rattling happily through the phone. At times it’s hard to remember how important family is, until you reconnect.

I ended the call and saw some more messages coming in from Henry (seen as an unknown number, since I switched SIM card). A whole selfie diary of what he had been doing that day. Working out, walking the dog, some more firewood with a shrugging emoticon (definitely hinting at jerking off) and finally a selfie of him having lunch with some of the cast. I snickered. ‘Busy man! And miss you a lot :) Especially seeing the tiny, tiny bunkbeds they got us xD Goodbye privacy..’ I typed. He responded. ‘We’ll make up for that on Wednesday then.’ Wink. I smiled, then wondered if they had installed the trailers yet for the lead actors. I started strolling around the area, and sure enough the shiny aluminium trailers appeared at the far edge of the campsite.

The next few days was mostly just scouting the area for good shoot locations, collecting material and starting the build of the set for the first week. It was decidedly more relaxed then the previous weeks. To which I was glad. It also did wonders for the team spirit. Many nights we were huddled around campfires, drinking hot wine and making music. It sure felt like a small holiday. And I got to know my colleagues a whole lot better. We worked in a team of 15 for set design. 2 Of them were apparently going to get married in a month’s time, right after our crew was let off, 5 of them had gone to the same college, and most of them were utterly curious about my relationship with Henry. I kept it a bit under the wraps, but spoke honestly about how much fun we had. And how normal it felt. And yes, we were all official. ‘You are..so lucky. Urgh.. Why not me?’ One of my gay colleagues blurted out. We all snickered. ‘It’s the vagina I’d say..otherwise you surely would have had a shot.’ I winked. He warped his mouth in oo-ing shape. ‘Oh Hell! I’d let myself be rebuilt if that means I’d have a shot.’ We all belted out a loud laugh.

Wednesday came. The sun was starting to break through the grey clouds for the first time these days. How suitable, I thought, sipping my morning tea while looking over the hunting grounds that were being prepped for a scouting scene. More bushes, white biodegradable dye after which fake snow would be added. We were sitting around a large wooden board on two scaffolds, serving as huge meeting table. Materials for clothes were splayed out. I wasn’t really paying attention, since this part of the production would be running when I was already off-duty. ‘Hey, whatcha think, light or darker blue for him?’ One of the ladies woke me from my day dreaming. I stood up and looked at the scraps of fabric. ‘Darker. Besides the bias works better on this fabric.’ The lady smiled contently. ‘I told you.’ She said, looking at the other dressmaker who shrugged in slight annoyance. ‘Like she knows anything about cloth making.’ She shot me a dirty look. I shrugged in return, smiling. ‘Who knows!’ Which annoyed her even more. ‘It is indeed a better fabric to cut on bias though.’ The other woman retorted, nodding at me to acknowledge me. After they wrapped up their little meeting, the woman came up to me. ‘You sew?’ I looked up in confusion. ‘A bit. Made some costumes for fun before I got this job actually.’ ‘Good. And you helped buy they fabrics too right?’ ‘I was more a dumb force dragging along fabric rolls, if that counts as helping.’ She smirked. ‘Well silly questions maybe. But..Any chance we can borrow you for a few hours tomorrow and stand in for some fittings. Much better then that Polish girl they found. Can’t speak english, doesn’t understand fit..Urgh. And can’t have Ciri look like a mess.’ I raised my eyebrow, surprised by the request. ‘Uhmm..I’ll have to check my schedule. We’re doing a run-through around 12. And..and I’m not sure we share the same..build…Freya and I’ ‘That’ll be fine. Both small figure. We’ll do a further fit when she arrives - she got delayed…actresses…’ I shrugged, looking at my phone to check my schedule. ‘Alright.’

Not much later the main crew arrived in a large black bus. The first one getting out was Kal, who sprinted out like he hadn’t seen daylight in days. He sniffed and peed everywhere and greeted people with great excitement. The crew gladly petted him and started helping unpacking. Henry and Anya were in conversation when they got off the bus, joking around. Freya indeed wasn’t there. Hmm.. Then Henry noticed me and smiled an even broader smile. He walked up to me, carrying some of his luggage which he dropped to the muddy grass to give me a deep kiss. ‘Hi princess.’ ‘Hey you.’ I said with cheeky smile. He looked up to see what Kal was doing, now playing with one of the camera guys. He sniffled. ‘Good to be here. How are you?’ ‘Good actually. It’s been some lovely relaxed days, just building up, having campfires and the weather’s getting better too. How was your trip?’ ‘Decent. Some turbulence which got the ladies screaming.’ He rolled his eyes with amusement. I snickered. ‘But all went well…’ He fell quiet for a bit and looked at me. And I just returned his quiet stare, smiling. ‘Already found my trailer?’ ‘In the back, far right. A trailer with a view of the lake.’ I winked. ‘Best view in town.’ He smiled in return, folding an arm around me. The very weight making me have to shift my feet in the slippery grass. He stared out over the fields around him, looking at the crew walking around with set pieces, smiling proudly. I just took the moment to wrap my arm around his lower back, leaning into him.

‘Yea let’s get my stuff to the trailer and find something to eat. I’m starving.’ He said, his stomach rumbling. I snickered, diving away from underneath his arm and walking to the bus to grab some of the stuff I knew to be his. We walked up to his trailer, his PA already waiting there to hand him his key and schedule for the first week. ‘Argh..and back to dehydration nightmare again.’ He said, glancing over the schedule. We moved his stuff in, unpacked all his picture frames and put them on top of the floating kitchen cupboards and set up some dog food and water for Kal. He walked back to the door, pulling it closed. I could see his eyes darken with lust while he pinned me against the kitchen block. ‘No bunk bed here.’ He growled. ‘Mmm I have to do a run-through in 10. Later.’ I whispered in between his shower of kisses. ‘Mmpff.’ He cupped my jaw in his large hands. ‘I can’t wait.’ ‘I know.’ I snickered, giving him a quick peck on the cheek before moving to get back outside. He stopped me with one arm, grabbing me around the waist. He bit my neck playfully. ‘Rrr.’ He growled into my ear. I giggled, squirming in his arm. ‘Let me go!’ I puffed, pushing down his arm. He turned me around with great ease and looked at me, this time more sweetly, then smiled sheepishly. ‘Come look for me when you’re done.’ He said. I nodded, then pried myself out of his iron grip and made way for the set.

The camp fires were lit again and dinner was served. With the crew slowly growing in size it became more rowdy. I joined Henry and some stunt men around a fire, huddled against him while forking around in a plate of Chinese food. It was rather bland shamefully. The men were enthusiastically talking through some of the stunt work that had been planned. Burning building jumps, fighting with dogs, monster fights, the whole shebang. Henry was joining in with great excitement. He loved doing as much stunt work on his own as he could. A little boy’s dream of his. His arms flexed while he talked, his eyes gleaming. After dinner however, he soon lost out to his jet lag. He poked me out of my dreaming stare into the fire and whispered. ‘Join me?’ I nodded and smiled a tired smile. Without further ado we excused ourselves, I brushed my teeth and went to his trailer, Kal already sleeping on the floor, only his ears twirling up in curiosity.

Just moments after he turned the lock on the door I could feel his hands roam over my body. He pulled me flush against his chest, my back towards him as he sniffed my hair. ‘I missed this smell of you.’ He rumbled, lust trailing his voice. I sniffled, turning my head slightly so I could kiss him. ‘I’ve missed YOU.’ I whispered against his lips, a smile on my lips. His arms folded around me, squeezing me even closer as his head dipped down, his lips blazing a trail on my neck. ‘Very funny..Now..I would like to be patient, but…’ He swirled me around with a force I had not experienced of him yet. I barely had time to register what was happening when he swooped me up in his arms, needing just a few long strides to lay me on the bed at the back of the trailer. He quickly stripped off his clothes as I stared at him, my dazed head needing a good moment to take in what was happening while my gaze fell on his rushed striptease. I didn’t even think about undressing myself. He took my breath away as he had done a dozen times by now. That hair tumbling in unruly curls around his face, his flexing muscles, the slight smirk on his lips and that godly chest hair. By the time he looped his thumbs around the waistband of his boxers, he raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Undress.’ He simply commanded, his voice dark. I obliged gingerly, quickly wriggling myself out of my comfy outfit as I laughed at his impatience.

I was just about to unclasp my bra when he pushed me down on the bed, crawling on top of me. I gasped as one of his hands slipped around my throat (even though he was careful) and I immediately halted any further attempts to remove my underwear as his heavy body pushed me down, his lips meeting mine. Eager hands slipped down my panties, feeling how wet I already was for him. He rumbled a low chuckle as he reached his arm out towards a small drawer next to the bed, his eyes not leaving mine. I raised an eyebrow as he rumaged around in the drawer, finding what he was looking for: a condom. He kept his eyes trained on me as he ripped the packaging with his teeth, not looking away once. I felt myself get wetter by the second as I looked in his lust-laced eyes, hearing  his ragged breath. He pumped his erection a few times before putting the condom on, his eyes finally trailing away. He looked down at his erection, now eagerly pressing against my hip. And he sure liked what he saw, because when he looked back up there was that all-familiar question in his eyes. I took a shallow breath, which was apparently enough of an answer as he pressed his lips against me more feverishly.

He was..impatient..to say the least. His lips bruised mine deliciously, making me moan and groan in response while his right hand moved aside my panties. He guided his erection to my folds, rubbing it generously against my core - earning another longing moan from me. Then he got up a bit, making eye contact once more. DO IT - I thought, but he waited, just tilting his head slightly. And so I wrapped my legs around his hip, pulling him inside of me. We both gasped, savouring the feeling of becoming one. He slumped forward a bit, leaning heavily on his arms as his head dunked down to bite the soft skin of my neck. Without breaking contact, he slowly pumped out, before pushing all the way back in. I groaned. He was so big. And hard. I scratched at his back as he started to slowly up his pace. ‘That smell.’ He rumbled, lowering it to a tone that sounded more like Geralt then Henry. I groaned and moaned as he started a frantic speed. ‘Oh gods.’ I moaned as his lips attacked my neck, jawline, cheek, forehead, eyelids. He did not leave one bit of skin untouched.

I felt he was getting closer to his release and tried to pry one of my hands in between us, to stimulate myself. He groaned, realising he had neglected my needs. I opened my eyes, seeing he gave me a pleading look before he pulled my arm away, pushing me over on my belly before pulling my hip up. My head still pressed to the mattress and my butt in the air, I felt a bit vulnerable. I tried to turn my head to see him, but he pushed my shoulder down. ‘Like that.’ He said darkly, and before I could protest he pushed back inside of me again. I groaned. He could reach even deeper in this position, hitting my cervix in a way I wasn’t sure I was enjoying fully. I wanted to sit up, change the position, but his strong arm kept pushing me down. He started to push into me again, something I wasn’t so very much enjoying. ‘Babe..’ I gasped, my voice laced with pain. He folded over me, pausing his thrusting as he finally touched my bud. I could feel his lips on the skin of my naked back. ‘That better?’ He asked, a touch concerned. I immediately felt that all familiar electricity coil up inside. I gasped again. He bent over further, involuntarily moving inside of me. I squealed it out as he hit an unfamiliar place inside of me, an orgasm bursting through me making my whole body shake. Was that my g-spot? I thought after some seconds. I had even forgotten about Henry’s heavy body pushing into me, only realising he was asking me if I was okay when the haze lifted. ‘Baby? Hey?’ He was holding himself still, his lips next to me ear. I finally managed to turn my head towards his face, a smile on my lips. ‘That was..’ I started..but couldn’t finish. I burst out into laughter. He nuzzled my cheek, finally understanding. A husky laugh rumbled through his chest. ‘Are you okay?’ He finally asked, his face more serious now. I nodded, closing my eyes and wiggling my hips, immediately feeling his erection hard inside me.

Staying folded over me like he was shielding me from the world, he started pulling and pushing into me. Again and again..and again. And boy. Did it feel good this time. His hand once more circled my nub while he played around with the angles of his thrusts. The higher he moved up my body, the more frantic were my shivers. I wasn’t even sure if it was just one very long second orgasm bursting through, or several. Not that I could even care anymore. I groaned, moaned and shivered while he pushed into me, his orgasm finally taking him over the edge as well. He groaned as his seed spilled inside of me, releasing the hand from my nub to steady himself. He took a few deep breaths, stilling himself, before gently pulling out. I flopped down on my belly, still shivering, while he rolled on his side. Our eyes met, a smirk on his lips. ‘I’ll remember that.’ He finally said as his hand travelled over my slightly shivering body. I sniffled, moving closer to kiss him. ‘Hi.’ I smiled, still dazed from my orgasms. ‘Hi.’ He responded, smiling a broad smile, pulling me even closer, folding his arms protectively around me. He nuzzled me, taking a calm breath. ‘How I missed you.’ I nodded in agreement, too spent to talk and instead just enjoying laying there in his arms until sleep overtook me. I had missed this indeed.

---

Part 4 >

#henry cavill #henry cavill smut #smut #fanfiction #henry cavill fanfic #poland #travel #setlife #fluff #teafortwo

[bluewatsons]

Claudia Roth Pierpont, A Raised Voice: How Nina Simone turned the movement into music, The New Yorker (August 4, 2014)

Simone with James Baldwin in the early sixties. Her intelligence and restless force attracted African-American culture’s finest minds. Photograph courtesy New York Public Library

“My skin is black,” the first woman’s story begins, “my arms are long.” And, to a slow and steady beat, “my hair is woolly, my back is strong.” Singing in a club in Holland, in 1965, Nina Simone introduced a song she had written about what she called “four Negro women” to a young, homogeneously white, and transfixed crowd. “And one of the women’s hair,” she instructed, brushing her hand lightly across her own woolly Afro, “is like mine.” Every performance of “Four Women” caught on film (as here) or disk is different. Sometimes Simone coolly chants the first three women’s parts—the effect is of resigned weariness—and at other times, as on this particular night, she gives each woman an individual, sharply dramatized voice. All four have names. Aunt Sarah is old, and her strong back has allowed her only “to take the pain inflicted again and again.” Sephronia’s yellow skin and long hair are the result of her rich white father having raped her mother—“Between two worlds I do belong”—and Sweet Thing, a prostitute, has tan skin and a smiling bravado that seduced at least some of the eager Dutch listeners into the mistake of smiling, too. And then Simone hit them with the last and most resolutely up to date of the women, improbably named Peaches. “My skin is brown,” she growled ferociously, “my manner is tough. I’ll kill the first mother I see. ’Cause my life has been rough.” (One has to wonder what the Dutch made of killing that “mother.”) If Simone’s song suggests a history of black women in America, it is also a history of long-suppressed and finally uncontainable anger.

A lot of black women have been openly angry these days over a new movie about Simone’s life, and it hasn’t even been released. The issue is color, and what it meant to Simone to be not only categorically African-American but specifically African in her features and her very dark skin. Is it possible to separate Simone’s physical characteristics, and what they cost her in this country, from the woman she became? Can she be played by an actress with less distinctively African features, or a lighter skin tone? Should she be played by such an actress? The casting of Zoe Saldana, a movie star of Dominican descent and a light-skinned beauty along European lines, has caused these questions—rarely phrased as questions—to dog the production of “Nina,” from the moment Saldana’s casting was announced to the completed film’s début, at Cannes, in May, at a screening confined to possible distributors. No reviewers have seen it. The film’s director, Cynthia Mort, has been stalwart in her defense of Saldana’s rightness for the role, citing not only the obvious relevance of acting skills but Simone’s inclusion of a range of colors among her own “Four Women”—which is a fair point. None of the women in Simone’s most personal and searing song escape the damage and degradation accorded to their race.

Ironically, “Four Women” was charged with being insulting to black women and was banned on a couple of radio stations in New York and Philadelphia soon after the recording was released, in 1966. The ban was lifted, however, when it produced more outrage than the song. Simone’s husband, Andrew Stroud, who was also her manager, worried about the dangers that the controversy might have for her career, although this was hardly a new problem. Simone had been singing out loud and clear about civil rights since 1963—well after the heroic stand of figures like Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis, Jr., but still at a time when many black performers felt trapped between the rules of commercial success and the increasing pressure for racial confrontation. At Motown, in the early sixties, the wildly popular performers of a stream of crossover hits became models of black achievement but had virtually no contact with the movement at all.

Simone herself had been hesitant at first. Known for her sophisticated pianism, her imperious attitude, and her velvety rendition of “I Loves You, Porgy” (which, like Billie Holiday before her, she sang without the demeaningly ungrammatical “s” on “loves”), she had arrived in New York in late 1958, establishing her reputation not in Harlem but in the clubs of hip and relatively interracial Greenwich Village. Her repertoire of jazz and folk and show tunes, often played with a classical touch, made her impossible to classify. In these early years, she performed African songs but also Hebrew songs, and wove a Bach fugue through a rapid-fire version of “Love Me or Leave Me.” She tossed off the thirties bauble “My Baby Just Cares for Me” with airy insouciance, and wrung the heart out of the lullaby “Brown Baby”—newly written by Oscar Brown, Jr., about a family’s hopes for a child born into a better racial order—erupting in a hair-raising wail on the word “freedom,” as though registering all the pain over all the years during which it was denied. For a while, “Brown Baby” was as close to a protest song as Simone got. She believed it was enough.

And then her friend Lorraine Hansberry set her straight. It speaks to Simone’s intelligence and restless force that, in her twenties, she attracted some of African-American culture’s finest minds. Both Langston Hughes and James Baldwin elected themselves mentors: Simone, appearing on the scene just as Holiday died, seemed to evoke their most exuberant hopes and most protective instincts. But Hansberry offered her a special bond. A young woman also dealing with a startling early success—Hansberry was twenty-eight when “A Raisin in the Sun” won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, in 1959—she had a strongly cultivated black pride and a pedagogical bent. “We never talked about men or clothes,” Simone wrote in her memoir, decades later. “It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution—real girls’ talk.” A milestone in Simone’s career was a solo concert at Carnegie Hall—a happy chance to show off her pianism—on April 12, 1963, which happened also to be the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested with other protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, and locked up in the local jail. The discrepancy between the events was pointed out by Hansberry, who telephoned Simone after the concert, although not to offer praise.

Two months later, Simone played a benefit for the N.A.A.C.P. In early August, she sang “Brown Baby” before a crowd gathered in the football stadium of a black college outside Birmingham—the first integrated concert ever given in the area—while guards with guns and dogs prowled the field. But Hansberry only started a process that events in America quickly accelerated. Simone watched the March on Washington, later that August, on television, while she was preparing for a club date. She was still rehearsing when, on September 15th, news came of the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young African-American girls who had just got out of Bible class. Simone’s first impulsive act, she recalled, was to try to make a zip gun with tools from her garage. “I had it in my mind to go out and kill someone,” she wrote. “I didn’t yet know who, but someone I could identify as being in the way of my people.”

This urge to violence was not a wholly aberrant impulse but something that had been brewing on a national scale, however tamped down by cooler heads and political pragmatists. At the Washington march, John Lewis, then a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was forced to cut the word “revolution” from his speech and to omit the threat that, absent immediate progress, the marchers would go through the South “the way Sherman did” and “burn Jim Crow to the ground.” James Baldwin, in a televised discussion after the bombing, noted that, throughout American history, “the only time that nonviolence has been admired is when the Negroes practice it.” But the center held. Simone’s husband, a smart businessman, told her to forget the gun and put her rage into her music.

It took her an hour to write “Mississippi Goddam.” A freewheeling cri de coeur based on the place names of oppression, the song has a jaunty tune that makes an ironic contrast with words—“Alabama’s got me so upset, Tennessee made me lose my rest”—that arose from injustices so familiar they hardly needed to be stated: “And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam!” Still, Simone spelled them out. She mocked stereotypical insults (“Too damn lazy!”), government promises (“Desegregation / Mass participation”), and, above all, the continuing admonition of public leaders to “Go slow,” a line that prompted her backup musicians to call out repeatedly, as punctuation, “Too slow!” It wasn’t “We Shall Overcome” or “Blowin’ in the Wind”: Simone had little feeling for the Biblically inflected uplift that defined the anthems of the era. It’s a song about a movement nearly out of patience by a woman who never had very much to begin with, and who had little hope for the American future: “Oh but this whole country is full of lies,” she sang. “You’re all gonna die and die like flies.”

She introduced the song in a set at the Village Gate a few days later. And she sang it at a very different concert at Carnegie Hall, in March, 1964—brazenly flinging “You’re all gonna die” at a mostly white audience—along with other protest songs she had taken a hand in writing, including the defiantly jazzy ditty “Old Jim Crow.” She also performed a quietly haunting song titled “Images,” about a black woman’s inability to see her own beauty (“She thinks her brown body has no glory”)—a wistful predecessor to “Four Women” that she had composed to words by the Harlem Renaissance poet Waring Cuney. At the time, Simone herself was still wearing her hair in a harshly straightened fifties-style bob—sometimes the small personal freedoms are harder to speak up for than the larger political ones—and, clearly, it wasn’t time yet for such specifically female injuries to take their place in the racial picture. “Mississippi Goddam” was the song of the moment: bold and urgent and easy to sing, it was adopted by embattled protesters in the cursed state itself just months after Simone’s concert, during what they called the Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer, and what President Johnson called “the summer of our discontent.”

There was no looking back by the time she performed the song outside Montgomery, Alabama, in March, 1965, when some three thousand marchers were making their way along the fifty-four-mile route from Selma; two weeks earlier, protesters making the same attempt had been driven back by state troopers with clubs, whips, and tear gas. The triumphant concert, on the fourth night of the march, was organized by the indefatigable Belafonte, at the request of King, and took place on a makeshift stage built atop stacks of empty coffins lent by local funeral homes, and in front of an audience that had swelled with twenty-five thousand additional people, drawn either by the cause or by a lineup of stars that ranged from Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis to Joan Baez. Simone, accompanied only by her longtime guitarist, Al Schackman, drew cheers on the interpolated line “Selma made me lose my rest.” In the course of events that night, she was introduced to King, and Schackman remembered that she stuck her hand out and warned him, “I’m not nonviolent!” It was only when King replied, gently, “Not to worry, sister,” that she calmed down.

Simone’s explosiveness was well known. In concert, she was quick to call out anyone she noticed talking, to stop and glare or hurl a few insults or even leave the stage. Yet her performances, richly improvised, were also confidingly intimate—she needed the connection with her audience—and often riveting. Even in her best years, Simone never put many records on the charts, but people flocked to her shows. In 1966, the critic for the Philadelphia Tribune, an African-American newspaper, explained that to hear Simone sing “is to be brought into abrasive contact with the black heart and to feel the power and beauty which for centuries have beat there.” She was proclaimed the voice of the movement not by Martin Luther King but by Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, whose Black Power philosophy answered to her own experience and inclinations. As the sixties progressed, the feelings she displayed—pain, lacerating anger, the desire to burn down whole cities in revenge—made her seem at times emotionally disturbed and at other times simply the most honest black woman in America.

She recalled that racial anger first arose in her when she was eleven. Born Eunice Waymon, in 1933, she was the sixth of eight children of John and Kate Waymon, who were descendants of slaves and pillars of the small black community of Tryon, North Carolina. Her mother was a Methodist preacher, a severely religious woman who made extra money by cleaning house for a white Tryon family; her father, who had started off as an entertainer, worked at whatever the circumstances required. Even during the Depression, the Waymons made a good home. Simone’s earliest memories were of her mother singing hymns, and both the house and the church were so filled with music that no one noticed little Eunice climbing up to the organ bench until, at the age of two and a half, she played “God Be with You Till We Meet Again,” straight through.

Yet as rare as the little girl’s musical gifts is the way that, in that time and place, those gifts were encouraged. She began playing for her mother’s sermons before her feet could reach the pedals, and was soon accompanying the church choir and Sunday services. She especially enjoyed playing for visiting revivalists, because of the raptures she discovered that she could loose in an audience with music. At the other end of the spectrum, she was five years old when the woman for whom her mother cleaned house offered to pay for lessons with a local piano teacher, Muriel Mazzanovich. The British-born Miz Mazzy, as Eunice called her—and also, later on, “my white momma”—inspired her love of Bach and her plans to become a great and famous classical pianist. Giving a recital in the local library, at eleven, Eunice saw her parents being removed from their front-row seats to make room for a white couple. She had been schooled by Miz Mazzy in proper deportment, but she nevertheless stood up and announced that if people wanted to hear her play they’d better let her parents sit back down in the front row. There were some laughs, but her parents were returned to their seats. The next day, she remembered, she felt “as if I had been flayed, and every slight, real or imagined, cut me raw. But, the skin grew back a little tougher, a little less innocent, and a little more black.”

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Her skin was very black, and she was made fully aware of that, along with the fact that her nose was too large. The aesthetics of race—and the loathing and self-loathing inflicted on those who vary from accepted standards of beauty—is one of the most pervasive aspects of racism, yet it is not often discussed. The standards have been enforced by blacks as well as by whites. Even Harry Belafonte wrote, in his memoir, about his mother’s well-intentioned counsel to “marry a woman with good hair,” and he added, in unnecessary clarification, “Good hair meant straight hair.” (Reader, he married her.) But Nina Simone, strong and fierce and proud Nina Simone? “I can’t be white and I’m the kind of colored girl who looks like everything white people despise or have been taught to despise,” she wrote in a note to herself, not during her adolescence but in the years when she was already a successful performer. “If I were a boy, it wouldn’t matter so much, but I’m a girl and in front of the public all the time wide open for them to jeer and approve of or disapprove of.”

Countering the charge of physical inferiority, in her youth, was the talent that her mother assured her was God-given. Music was her salvation, her identity. Thanks to a fund established by a pair of generous white patrons in Tryon, she was sent to board at a private high school—she practiced piano five hours a day, and graduated valedictorian—and then to a summer program at Juilliard, all with the unwavering aim of getting into the Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia, where admission was terrifically competitive but tuition was free. Her destiny seemed so assured that her parents moved to Philadelphia before she took the Curtis exam. The fact that she was rejected, and believed that this was because of her race, was a source of unending bitterness. It was also a turning point. In the summer of 1954, in need of money, Eunice Waymon took a job playing cocktail piano in an Atlantic City dive—the owner demanded that she also sing—and, hoping to keep the news of this unholy employment from her mother, turned herself into Nina Simone, feeling every right to the anger that Nina Simone displayed forever after.

At times, it seemed that she could outdistance her feelings. In 1961, after a brief marriage to a white hanger-on at the Atlantic City club, she married Stroud, a tough police detective on the Harlem beat whom she initially sized up as “a light-skinned man,” “well built,” and “very sure of himself.” The following year, she gave birth to a daughter, Lisa Celeste, and Stroud left his job to manage Simone’s career; they lived in a large house in the leafy Westchester suburb of Mount Vernon, complete with a gardener and a maid. Although she complained of working too hard and touring too much—of being desperately exhausted—her life was not the stuff of the blues. And then, before a concert in early 1967, Stroud found her in her dressing room putting makeup in her hair. She didn’t know who he was; she didn’t quite know who she was. She later remembered that she had been trying to get her hair to match her skin: “I had visions of laser beams and heaven, with skin—always skin—involved in there somewhere.”

The full medical facts of Simone’s mental illness became public only after her death, in 2003, thanks to two British fan-club founders and friends of Simone’s, Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan, whose account of the singer’s career was aptly titled, after one of Simone’s songs, “Nina Simone: Break Down & Let It All Out” (2004). Subsequent biographies—the warmly overdramatizing “Nina Simone,” by David Brun-Lambert (2009), and the coolly meticulous “Princess Noire,” by Nadine Cohodas (2010)—have filled in terrible details of depression and violence and long-sought but uncertain diagnoses: “bipolar disorder” appears to be the best contemporary explanation. Excerpts from Simone’s diaries and letters of the nineteen-sixties, published by Joe Hagan (who got them from Andrew Stroud) in The Believer, in 2010, added the news that Simone’s personal hell was compounded by regular beatings from Stroud. The marriage dissolved in 1970, but it was many more years before she received any helpful medication.

All the more remarkable, then, the strength that Simone projected through the sixties. As the decade wore on, she began to favor bright African gowns and toweringly braided African hair styles; she became the High Priestess of Soul, and though the title was no more than a record company’s P.R. gambit—Aretha Franklin was soon crowned the Queen of Soul—she bore it with conviction. It would be wrong, however, to give the impression that her songs were mostly about civil rights. Stroud, with his eye on the bottom line, was always there to keep her from going too far in that direction. In concert, she even pulled back on “Mississippi Goddam,” singing “We’re all gonna die, and die like flies” in place of the gleefully threatening “You’re all gonna die . . .” Although she did record the classic anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” in 1965, and she could give the most unexpected songs an edge of racial protest (listen to her harrowing version of the Brecht-Weill “Pirate Jenny”), she had a vast and often surprising musical appetite. By the late sixties, she was so afraid of falling behind the times that she expanded her repertory to include Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein, and, covering all bases, the Bee Gees. One of her biggest hits of the era was the joyously innocuous “Ain’t Got No—I Got Life,” from the musical “Hair”—which, in her hands, became a classic freedom song.

But womanly strength was in everything she sang: in the cavernous depths of her voice—some people think Simone sounds like a man—in her intensity, her drama, her determination. It’s there in the crazy love song “I Put a Spell on You,” in which she recasts the crippling needs of love (“Because you’re mine!”) into an undeniable command. It’s there in the ten-minute gospel tour de force “Sinnerman,” when she cries out “Power!” like a Southern preacher and her musicians shout back “Power to the Lord!,” and especially when she takes the disapproving voice of the Lord upon herself: “Where were you, when you oughta been praying?” If you’d never before thought of the Lord as a black woman, you did now.

The civil-rights songs were nevertheless what she called “the important ones.” And the movement is where she gained her strength. It’s also where her private anger took on public dimensions, in the years when patience gave way entirely and the anger in many black communities could no longer be tamped down. Onstage in Detroit, on August 13, 1967—two weeks after a five-day riot had left forty-three people dead, hundreds injured, and the city in ruins—Simone, singing “Just in Time,” added a message to the crowd: “Detroit, you did it. . . . I love you, Detroit—you did it!” She was met with roars of approval, which one Detroit critic said he presumed had come from “the arsonists, looters and snipers in the audience.” Another critic, however, wrote that her show let white people know what they had to learn, and learn fast. Was she the voice of national tragedy or of the next American revolution?

And then King was shot, on April 4, 1968. Sections of Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, and more than a hundred smaller cities went berserk. Despite her rhetoric, Simone was profoundly shaken, and her views of what might be accomplished in this country only grew more bleak. At an outdoor concert in Harlem, the following summer—it’s available on YouTube—she went for broke.

Majestically bedecked à l’africaine, she opened with “Four Women,” singing now before a crowd where an Afro was the norm. After several other stirring, politically focussed songs—“Revolution,” “Backlash Blues”—she closed with something so new that she had not had time to learn it, a poem by David Nelson, who was then part of a group called the Last Poets and is now among the revered begetters of rap. She read the words from a sheet of paper, moving across the stage and repeatedly exhorting the crowd to answer the question “Are you ready, black people? . . . Are you ready to do what is necessary?” The crowd responded to this rather vague injunction with a mild cheer, prompted by the bongos behind her and the demand in her voice. And then: “Are you ready to kill, if necessary?” Now a bigger, if somewhat incongruous, cheer rose from the smiling crowd filled with little kids dancing to the rhythm on a sunny afternoon. It had been five years since the Harlem riot of 1964, the granddaddy of sixties riots; New York had largely escaped the ruinations of both 1967 and 1968. “Are you ready to smash white things, to burn buildings, are you ready?” she cried. “Are you ready to build black things?”

Despite her best efforts, Simone failed to incite a riot in Harlem that day in 1969. The crowd received the poem as it had received her songs: with noisy affirmation, but merely as part of a performance. People applauded and went on their way. There are many possible reasons: no brutal incident of the kind that frequently set off riots, massive weariness, the knowledge of people elsewhere trapped in riot-devastated cities, maybe even hope. Simone had her unlikeliest hit that year with a simple hymn of promise, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” based on the title of a play that had been put together from Lorraine Hansberry’s uncollected writings. Hansberry, who died in 1965, had used the phrase in a speech to a group of prize-winning black students, and Simone asked a fellow-musician, Weldon Irvine, to come up with lyrics that “will make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever.” Indeed, it is a children’s song (or it was, until Aretha took it over). Simone’s most moving performance may have been on “Sesame Street,” where she sat on the set’s tenement steps wearing an African gown and lip-synched her recording to four enchanting if slightly mystified black children, who raised their arms in victory toward the end.

It was not a victory she could believe in or a mood she could sustain. By the end of the sixties, both Simone’s career and her marriage were in serious trouble. Pop-rock did not really suit her, and the jazz and folk markets had radically shrunk; the concert stage still assured her income and her stature. And if the collapse of her marriage was in some ways a liberation she was also now without the person who had managed her finances and her schedule, and who had kept her calm before she went onstage (by forbidding her alcohol, among other means), and got her offstage quickly when the calm failed. She was left to govern herself in a world that suddenly had no rules and, just as frightening, was emptied of its larger, steadying purpose. “Andy was gone and the movement had walked out on me too,” she wrote, “leaving me like a seduced schoolgirl, lost.”

Looking back on the historic protests and legislative victories of the sixties, one may find it easy to assume a course of inevitable if often halting racial progress, yet this was anything but apparent as the decade closed. When, in 1970, James Baldwin set out to write about “the life and death of what we call the Civil Rights movement,” its failure seemed to him beyond contention. As for the black leaders who had “walked out” on Simone, they were in cemeteries (Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, King, Fred Hampton), in jail (Huey Newton, Bobby Seale), or in Africa (Stokely Carmichael), or else had “run for cover,” as she put it, “in community or academic programmes.” White liberals had diverted their efforts to Vietnam; this was now the war being fought on televisions in living rooms every night. According to Simone, “The days when revolution really had seemed possible were gone forever.”

She left the country in 1974. Travelling to Liberia with her twelve-year-old daughter, she stayed for two years, during which she performed hardly at all. She left Liberia for Switzerland in order to put her daughter in school there. Eventually, she moved to France, alone. It seems to have been only the recurrent need for money that spurred her to perform again in the United States, although she took great pride in an honorary doctorate that she received from Amherst, in 1977, and insisted ever after on being called “Doctor Nina Simone.” Meanwhile, her concerts tended increasingly toward disaster. As she now sang in “Mississippi Goddam,” “the whole damn world’s made me lose my rest.”

The remainder of her life, some twenty-five years, is a tale of escalating misery. At the worst, she was found wandering naked in a hotel corridor brandishing a knife; she set her house in France on fire, and once, also in France, she shot a teen-age boy (in the leg, but that may have been poor aim) in a neighbor’s back yard for making too much noise—and for answering her complaints with what she understood as racial insults. Yet the ups of her life could be almost as vertiginous as the downs. In 1987, just a year after she was sent to a hospital in a straitjacket, her charmingly upbeat 1959 recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was chosen by Chanel for its international television ad campaign. Rereleased, the record went gold in France and platinum in England. In 1991, she sold out the Olympia, in Paris, for almost a week.

She toured widely during her final years. In Seattle, in the summer of 2001, she worked a tirade against George W. Bush into “Mississippi Goddam,” and encouraged the audience to “go and do something about that man.” She was already suffering from breast cancer, but it wasn’t the worst illness she had known. She was seen as a relic of the civil-rights era, and on occasion she even led the audience in a wistful sing-along of “We Shall Overcome,” although she did not believe her country had overcome nearly enough. Once she became too sick to perform, she did not return to what she called “the United Snakes of America.” She died in France, in April, 2003; her ashes were scattered in several African countries. The most indelible image of her near the end is as a stooped old lady reacting to the enthusiastic cheers that greeted her with a raised, closed-fisted Black Power salute.

Thirty-four years after Simone released “Young, Gifted and Black,” Jay Z reused the title for a song that describes the fate of many of those gifted children—“Hear all the screams from the ghetto all the teens ducking metal”—in twenty-first-century America. The rap connection with Simone is hardly surprising, since rap is where black anger now openly resides. Simone disliked the rap she knew, however, in part for displacing so much anger onto women—or, as she put it, for “letting people believe that women are second class, and calling them bitches and stuff like that.” Back in 1996, Lauryn Hill rapped an anything-you-can-do retort to a male counterpart, “So while you imitatin’ Al Capone / I be Nina Simone / And defecatin’ on your microphone,” but no one has really taken up the challenge of Simone’s example. There was a minor uproar last year over Kanye West’s sampling of phrases from Simone’s recording of “Strange Fruit” (with her voice speeded up to an unrecognizable tinniness) in “Blood on the Leaves,” in which Simone’s evocation of lynched black bodies is juxtaposed with West’s personal concerns about “second string bitches,” cocaine, and the cost of paying off a baby mama versus a new Mercedes. Some people have seen a social statement here, but one can’t help recalling Simone’s broader reaction to rap: “Hell, Martin and Malcolm would turn in their graves if they heard some of this crazy shit.”

As for jazz, Simone was largely excluded from the history books for decades. Will Friedwald’s seminal “Jazz Singing,” of 1990, mentioned her only in passing, as “off-putting and uncommunicative” and as the center of a cult “that only her faithful understand.” But Simone’s eclecticism has slowly widened the very definition of jazz singing. And, ever since Presidential candidate Obama listed her version of “Sinnerman” as one of his ten favorite songs of all time, in 2008, the cult has gone mainstream. There’s now a burgeoning field of what may be called Simone studies—Ruth Feldstein’s “How It Feels to Be Free” and Richard Elliott’s “Nina Simone” offer two highly intelligent examples—and Friedwald’s even more authoritative volume of 2010, “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” includes a lengthy entry on Simone that pronounces her “more important than anyone” in her influence on twenty-first-century jazz singing.

Last year, two Broadway shows depicted Simone as an inspiration for a couple of unexpected figures: in “A Night with Janis Joplin,” she helped to provide her white soul sister with the gift of fire, and, even stranger, in the crude but enthusiastic “Soul Doctor”—which reopens Off Broadway this winter—she was the force behind the “rock-and-roll rabbi” Shlomo Carlebach. Nutty as it seemed onstage, Simone’s acquaintance with the rabbi appears to have some basis in fact, and helps to explain the Hebrew songs she performed at the Village Gate (where he also performed) in the early sixties. While it may be a show-biz exaggeration to suggest that the rabbi and the jazz singer had an affair—the show featured an Act I curtain clinch that, on the night I saw it, had its largely Orthodox audience literally gasping—the point was the universality of Simone’s message about persecution, the search for justice, and the power of music.

Back in 1979, at a concert in Philadelphia, Simone followed a performance of “Four Women” by scolding the black women in the audience about their changes in style: “You used to be talking about being natural and wearing natural hair styles. Now you’re straightening your hair, rouging your cheeks and dressing out of Vogue.” In 2009, the comedian Chris Rock made a documentary titled “Good Hair” because, he explained, his young daughter had come to him with the question “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” For an African-American child, nothing had changed since Harry Belafonte’s mother’s advice, more than half a century earlier. (According to one contented businessman in Rock’s film, African-Americans—twelve per cent of the population—buy eighty per cent of the hair products in this country.) As for skin tone, the cosmetic companies have been expanding their range ever since Iman established a line of darker foundations, in 1994, although in March, 2014, a former beauty director of Essence, Aretha Busby, complained to the Times,“The companies tend to stop at Kerry Washington. I’d love to see brands go two or three shades darker.”

The question of skin tone and hair and their meaning for African-American women exploded on the Internet with the announcement of the casting of Saldana in the Hollywood bio-pic about Simone. When the idea for such a film was initially floated, in the early nineties, Simone herself gave the nod to being played by Whoopi Goldberg. When, in 2010, the present film was announced in the Hollywood Reporter, Mary J. Blige—the reigning Queen of Hip-Hop Soul—was announced for the lead. Once Blige was replaced with Saldana, however, a woman whose skin tone is more than two or three shades lighter than Simone’s, the cries for boycotting the film on the basis of misrepresentation—on the basis of insult—were instantaneous. Why not cast Viola Davis? Or Jennifer Hudson? Production photographs showing Saldana on the set with an artificially broadened nose, an Afro wig, and—inevitably, but most unfortunately—dark makeup that is all too easily confoundable with blackface rendered any hope of calm discussion futile. It’s been suggested that the filmmakers might as well have cast Tyler Perry in full “Madea” drag.

Simone’s daughter has come out against the film because its story focusses on an invented love affair as much as for the casting of Saldana, although she is quick to point out how much her mother’s appearance shaped her life. (Lisa once told an interviewer that her mother would sometimes “traumatize” her because she is light-skinned—“and I’d remind her that she had chosen my father, I didn’t.”) The fight over the film ultimately extended to a lawsuit filed by the director, Cynthia Mort, against the British production company, Ealing Studios Enterprises, on the very eve of the screening at Cannes. Since then, though, the suit has been dismissed, so “Nina” may yet show up in a theatre near you. And Saldana may give a compelling performance—may well prove that she can play not only women who are sci-fi blue (as in “Avatar”) or green (as in “Guardians of the Galaxy”) but real-life black. Still, there is no escaping the fact that her casting represents exactly the sort of prejudice that Simone was always up against. “I was never on the cover of Ebony or Jet,” Simone told an interviewer, in 1980. “They want white-looking women like Diana Ross—light and bright.” Or, as Marc Lamont Hill writes in Ebony today, “There is no greater evidence of how tragic things are for dark-skinned women in Hollywood than the fact that they can’t even get hired to play dark-skinned women.” Well beyond Hollywood, these outworn habits of taste reverberate down the generations, infecting all of us.

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Simone’s favorite performer in her later years was Michael Jackson. She brought cassettes of his albums with her everywhere, and recalled having met him on a plane when he was a little boy, and telling him, “Don’t let them change you. You’re black and you’re beautiful.” She anguished over his evident failure to believe what she’d said: the facial surgeries, the mysterious lightening of his skin, the fatality of believing, instead, what the culture had told him, and wanting to be white. Simone appeared onstage with him just once, amid a huge cast of performers gathered for Nelson Mandela’s eightieth birthday, in Johannesburg, in the summer of 1998. She was sixty-five years old, and photographs of the event show her standing between Mandela and Jackson, overweight yet glamorously done up, her hair piled in braids and her strapless white blouse a contrast to the African costumes of the chorus all around. But she was also very frail. In one photograph, Jackson—in his glittering trademark military-style jacket, hat, and shades—holds her left hand in both his hands, in a gesture of affection. But in another shot he has put one steadying arm around her, and she is grasping his hand for support. Few people seem aware of what is happening. The stage remains a swirl of laughter and song, a joyous African celebration. And at its center the two Americans stand with hands clasped tight—one hand notably dark, the other notably fair—as though trying to help each other along a hard and endless road.

#nina simone #greats #performing artists #civil rights #embodiment #culture #the black experience #art #music #self-expression #self-image #civil rights movement

[rapeculturerealities]

“BUTCH” HAS LONG been the name we’ve given a certain kind — that kind — of lesbian. The old adage applies: You know her when you see her. She wears men’s clothing, short hair, no makeup. Butch is an aesthetic, but it also conveys an attitude and energy. Both a gender and a sexuality, butchness is about the body but also transcends it: “We exist in this realm of masculinity that has nothing to do with cis men — that’s the part only we [butches] know how to talk about,” says the 42-year-old writer, former Olympic swimmer and men’s wear model Casey Legler. “Many people don’t even know how to ask questions about who we are, or about what it means to be us.”

Many of us wear the butch label with a certain self-consciousness, fearing the term doesn’t quite fit — like a new pair of jeans, it’s either too loose or too tight. The graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, 59, doesn’t refer to herself as butch but understands why others do. “It’s a lovely word, ‘butch’: I’ll take it, if you give it to me,” she says. “But I’m afraid I’m not butch enough to really claim it. Because part of being butch is owning it, the whole aura around it.”

What does owning it look like? Decades before genderless fashion became its own style, butches were wearing denim and white tees, leather jackets and work boots, wallet chains and gold necklaces. It isn’t just about what you’re wearing, though, but how: Butchness embodies a certain swagger, a 1950s-inspired “Rebel Without a Cause” confidence. In doing so, these women — and butches who don’t identify as women — created something new and distinct, an identity you could recognize even if you didn’t know what to call it.

By refuting conventionally gendered aesthetics, butchness expands the possibilities for women of all sizes, races, ethnicities and abilities. “I always think of the first butch lesbian I ever saw,” says the 33-year-old actor Roberta Colindrez. “This beautiful butch came into the grocery store and she was built like a brick house. Short hair, polo shirt, cargo pants and that ring of keys … It was the first time I saw the possibility of who I was.” And yet, to many people, “butch style” remains an oxymoron: There’s a prevalent assumption that we’re all fat, frumpy fashion disasters — our baseball caps and baggy pants suggest to others that we don’t care about self-presentation. But it’s not that we’re careless; it’s that unlike, say, the gay white men who have been given all too much credit for influencing contemporary visual culture, we’re simply not out to appease the male gaze. We disregard and reject the confines of a sexualized and commodified femininity.

ETYMOLOGICALLY, “butch” is believed to be an abbreviation of “butcher,” American slang for “tough kid” in the early 20th century and likely inspired by the outlaw Butch Cassidy. By the early 1940s, the word was used as a pejorative to describe “aggressive” or “macho” women, but lesbians reclaimed it almost immediately, using it with pride at 1950s-era bars such as Manhattan’s Pony Stable Inn and Peg’s Place in San Francisco. At these spots, where cocktails cost 10 cents and police raids were a regular occurrence, identifying yourself as either butch or femme was a prerequisite for participating in the scene.

These butches were, in part, inspired by 19th-century cross-dressers — then called male impersonators or transvestites — who presented and lived fully as men in an era when passing was a crucial survival tactic. We can also trace butchness back to the androgynous female artists of early 20th-century Paris, including the writer Gertrude Stein and the painter Romaine Brooks. But it wasn’t until the 1960s and early 1970s that butches, themselves at the intersection of the burgeoning civil, gay and women’s rights movements, became a more visible and viable community.

From their earliest incarnations, butches faced brutal discrimination and oppression, not only from outside their community but also from within. A certain brand of (mostly white) lesbian feminism dominant in the late ’70s and early ’80s marginalized certain sorts of “otherness” — working-class lesbians, lesbians of color and masculine-of-center women. They pilloried butchness as inextricably misogynist and butch-femme relationships as dangerous replications of heteronormative roles. (Such rhetoric has resurfaced, as trans men are regularly accused of being anti-feminist in their desire to become the so-called enemy.) Challenged yet again to defend their existence and further define themselves, butches emerged from this debate emboldened, thriving in the late ’80s and early ’90s as women’s studies programs — and, later, gender and queer studies departments — gained traction on North American and European college campuses.

The ’90s were in fact a transformative decade for the butch community. In 1990, the American philosopher Judith Butler published her groundbreaking “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,” and her theories about gender were soon translated and popularized for the masses. In her academic work, Butler argues that gender and sexuality are both constructed and performative; butch identity, as female masculinity, subverts the notion that masculinity is the natural and exclusive purview of the male body. Soon after, butch imagery infiltrated the culture at large. The August 1993 issue of Vanity Fair featured the straight supermodel Cindy Crawford, in a black maillot, straddling and shaving the butch icon K.D. Lang. That same year, the writer Leslie Feinberg published “Stone Butch Blues,” a now classic novel about butch life in 1970s-era New York. In Manhattan, comedians such as Lea DeLaria and drag kings such as Murray Hill took to the stage; it was also the heyday of Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For,” the serialized comic strip she started in 1983. In 1997, Ellen DeGeneres, still the most famous of butches, came out. Two years later, Judith “Jack” Halberstam and Del LaGrace Volcano published “The Drag King Book” and the director Kimberly Peirce released her breakthrough film, “Boys Don’t Cry”; its straight cisgender star, Hilary Swank, went on to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, a role that still incites contentious debates about the nebulous boundaries between butch and trans identity. These artists and their legacies are the cornerstones of our community. As Legler says, “This is where we’ve come from, and the folks we look back to. If you identify with that lineage, then we’d love to have you.”

LIKE ANY QUEER subculture, butchness is vastly different now than it was three decades ago — though the codes have been tweaked and refined over the years, younger butches continue to take them in new and varied directions: They may experiment with their personas from day to day, switching fluidly between masculine and feminine presentation. There are “stone butches,” a label that doesn’t refer to coldness, as is often assumed, but to a desire to touch rather than to be touched — to give rather than receive — and is considered slightly more masculine than “soft butch” on the Futch Scale, a meme born in 2018 that attempted to parse the gradations from “high femme” to “stone butch.” (“Futch,” for “femme/butch,” is square in the middle.) And while there remains some truth to butch stereotypes — give us a plaid flannel shirt any day of the week — that once-static portrait falls apart under scrutiny and reflection. Not every butch has short hair, can change a tire, desires a femme. Some butches are bottoms. Some butches are bi. Some butches are boys.

Different bodies own their butchness differently, but even a singular body might do or be butch differently over time. We move between poles as our feelings about — and language for — ourselves change. “In my early 20s, I identified as a stone butch,” says the 45-year-old writer Roxane Gay. “In adulthood, I’ve come back to butch in terms of how I see myself in the world and in my relationship, so I think of myself as soft butch now.” Peirce, 52, adds that this continuum is as much an internal as an external sliding scale: “I’ve never aspired to a binary,” she says. “From day one, the idea of being a boy or a girl never made sense. The ever-shifting signifiers of neither or both are what create meaning and complexity.”

Indeed, butch fluidity is especially resonant in our era of widespread transphobia. Legler, who uses they/them pronouns, is a “trans-butch identified person — no surgery, no hormones.” Today, the interconnected spectrums of gender and queerness are as vibrant and diverse in language as they are in expression — genderqueer, transmasc, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming. Yet butches have always called themselves and been called by many names: bull dyke, diesel dyke, bulldagger, boi, daddy and so on. Language evolves, “flowing in time and changing constantly as new generations come along and social structures shift,” Bechdel says.

If it’s necessary to think historically, it’s also imperative to think contextually. Compounding the usual homophobia and misogyny, black and brown butches must contend with racist assumptions: “Black women often get read as butch whether they are butch or not,” Gay says. “Black women in general are not seen, so black butchness tends to be doubly invisible. Except for studs: They’re very visible,” she adds, referring to a separate but related term used predominantly by black or Latinx butches (though, unsurprisingly, white butches have appropriated it) who are seen as “harder” in their heightened masculinity and attitude. Gay notes that “people tend to assume if you’re a black butch, you’re a stud and that’s it,” which is ultimately untrue. Still, butch legibility remains a paradox: As the most identifiable of lesbians — femmes often “pass” as straight, whether they want to or not — we are nonetheless maligned and erased for our failure of femininity, our refusal to be the right kind of woman.

ANOTHER LINGERING stereotype, one born from “Stone Butch Blues” and its more coded literary forebears, particularly Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness” (1928), is the butch as a tragic and isolated figure. She is either cast out by a dominant society that does not — will not — ever see her or accept her, or she self-isolates as a protective response to a world that continually and unrelentingly disparages her.

When a butch woman does appear in mainstream culture, it’s usually alongside her other: the femme lesbian. Without the femme and the contrast she underscores, the butch is “inherently uncommodifiable,” Bechdel says, since two butches together is just a step “too queer.” We rarely see butches depicted in or as community, an especially sobering observation given the closure of so many lesbian bars over the past two decades. But when you talk to butches, a more nuanced story emerges, one of deep and abiding camaraderie and connection. Despite the dearth of representation, butch love thrives — in the anonymous, knowing glances across the subway platform when we recognize someone like us, and in the bedroom, too. “Many of my longest friendships are with people who register somewhere on the butch scale,” Peirce says. “We’re like married couples who fell in love with each other as friends.”

Legler, for their part, recognizes a “lone wolf” effect, one in which some young queers initially love “being the only butch in the room.” In organizing the group portrait that accompanies this essay over the past months, Legler was curious “what it would be like for butches to just show up together and to be able to display all of their power, all of their sexiness, all of their charisma, without having it be mitigated in some way.” And not only for butches of an older generation, but for those still figuring things out, transforming the scene in ways that both defy and inspire their elders. “It’s been centuries in the making, the fact that we are all O.K.,” Legler adds. “That our bodies get to exist: We have to celebrate that. You can do more than just survive. You can contribute.”

#trans #transgender #butch #gender roles #Gender essentialism #gender binary #LGBTQIA

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/13/20: FREAKY, THE CLIMB, MANK, HILLBILLY ELEGY, AMMONITE, DREAMLAND, DOC-NYC and MUCH MORE!

It’s a pretty crazy week for new releases as I mentioned a few times over the past couple weeks, but it’s bound to happen as we get closer to the holiday movie season, which this year won’t include many movies in theaters, even though movie theaters are still open in many areas of the country… and closing in others. Sigh. Besides a few high-profile Netflix theatrical release, we also get movies starring Vince Vaughn, Margot Robbie, Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Mel Gibson and more offerings. In fact, I’ve somehow managed to write 12 (!!!!) reviews this week… yikes.

Before we get to the new movies, let’s look at a few series/festivals starting this week, including the always great documentary festival, DOC-NYC, which runs from November 11 through 19. A few of the docs I’ve already seen are (probably not surprisingly, if you know me) some of the music docs in the “Sonic Cinema” section, including Oliver Murray’s Ronnie’s, a film about legendary jazz musician and tenor sax player Ronnie Scott, whose London club Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club has been one of the central cores for British jazz fans for many decades.

Alex Winter’s Zappa is a much more satisfying portrait of the avant-garde rocker than the doc Frank Zappa: In His Own Words from a few years back, but I was even more surprised by how much I enjoyed Julien Temple’s Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan, because I’ve never really been a Pogues fan, but it’s highly entertaining as we learn about the chronically-soused frontman of the popular Irish band.

I haven’t seen Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete’s in My Own Time: A Portrait of Karen Dalton, a portrait of the blues and folk singer, yet, nor have I watched Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider’s Los Hermanos/The Brothers about two brother musicians separated from childhood after leaving their native Cuba, but I’ll try to get to both of them soon enough.

Outside of the realm of music docs is Ilinca Calugareanu’s A Cops and Robbers Story, which follows Corey Pegues from being a drug dealer and gang member to a celebrated deputy inspector within the NYPD. There’s also Nancy (The Loving Story) Buirski’s A Crime on the Bayou, the third part of the filmmaker’s trilogy about brave individuals in the Civil Rights era, this one about 19-year-old New Orleans fisherman Gary Duncan who tries to break up a fight between white and black teens at an integrated school and is arrested for assaulting a minor when merely touching a white boy’s arm.

Hao Wu’s 76 Days covers the length of Wuhan, China’s lockdown due to COVID-19, a very timely doc that will be released by MTV Documentary Films via virtual cinema on December 4. It’s one of DOC-NYC’s features on its annual Short List, which includes Boys State, Collective, The Fight, On the Record, and ten others that will vie for juried categories.

IFC Films’ Dear Santa, the new film from Dana Nachman, director of the wonderful Pick of the Litter, will follow its Heartland Film Festival debut with a run at COD-NYC before its own December 4 release. The latter is about the USPS’s “Operation Santa” program that receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa every year and employees thousands of volunteers to help make the wishes of these kids come true.

Basically, there’s a LOT of stuff to see at DOC-NYC, and while most of the movies haven’t been released publicly outside festivals yet, a lot of these movies will be part of the doc conversations of 2020. DOC-NYC gives the chance for people across the United States to see a lot of great docs months before anyone else, so take advantage of some of their ticket packs to save some money over the normal $12 per ticket price. The $199 price for an All Access Film Pass also isn’t a bad deal if you have enough time to watch the hundreds of DOC-NYC offerings. (Sadly, I never do, yet I’m still a little bummed to miss the 10Am press screenings at IFC Center that keeps me off the streets… or in this case, sitting on my ass at home.)

Not to be outdone by the presence of DOC-NYC, Film at Lincoln Center is kicking off its OWN seventh annual “Art of the Real” doc series, which has a bit of overlap by running from November 13 to 26. I really don’t know a lot about the documentaries being shown as part of this program, presented with Mubi and The New York Times, but check this out. For just 50 bucks, you can get an all-access pass to all 17 films, which you can casually watch at home over the two weeks of the fest.

Okay, let’s get to some theatrical releases, and the one I’ve been anticipating the most (also the one getting the widest release) is Christopher Landon’s FREAKY from Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. It stars Kathryn Newton as Millie Kessler, a high school outcast who is constantly picked on, but one night, she ends up encountering the serial killer known as the “Blissfield Butcher” (Vince Vaughn), but instead of dying when she’s stabbed with a ritual blade. The next morning Millie and the Butcher wake up to discover that they’ve been transported into the body of the other. Oh, it’s Friday the 13th… oh, now I get it… Freaky Friday!

Landon is best known for writing many of the Paranormal Activity sequels and directing Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. Msore importantly, he directed Happy Death Day and its sequel Happy Death Day 2 U, two of my favorite Blumhouse movies, because they so successfully mix horror with comedy, which is so hard to do. That’s what Freaky is all about, too, and it’s even harder this time even though Freaky has way more gruesome and gory kills than anything in Landon’s other films. Heck, many of the kills are gorier than the most recent Halloween from Blumhouse, and it’s a little shocking when you’re laughing so hard at times.

Landon does some clever things with what’s essentially a one-joke premise of a killer in a teen girl’s body and vice versa, but like the Lindsay Lohan-Jamie Lee Curtis remake from 2003, it’s all about the talent of the two main actors to pull off the rather intricate nature of playing humor without losing the seriousness of the horror element.

It may not be too surprising with Vaughn, who made a ton of dramas and thrillers before turning to comedy. (Does everyone remember that he played Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho and also starred in thrillers The Cell and Domestic Disturbance?) Newton is a bit more of an unknown quantity, but as soon as Tillie dawns the red leather jacket, you know that she can use her newly found homicidal attitude to get some revenge on those who have been terrible to her.

In some ways, the comedy aspects of Freaky win out over the horror but no horror fan will be disappointed by the amount of gory kills and how well the laughs emerge from a decent horror flick. Freaky seems like the kind of movie that Wes Craven would have loved.

I’m delighted to say that this week’s “Featured Flick” is Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin’s indie comedy THE CLIMB (Sony Pictures Classics), a movie that I have seen no less than three times this year, first when it was playing Sundance, a few months later when it was supposed to open in March… and then again last week! And you know what? I enjoyed it just as much every single time. It’s an amazing two-hander that stars Covino and Marvin as best friends Mike and Kyle, who have a falling out over the former sleeping with the latter’s fiancé, and it just gets funnier and funnier as the friends fight and Kyle gets engaged to Marisa (Gayle Rankin from GLOW) who hates Mike. Can this friendship possibly survive?

I really had no idea what to expect the first time I saw The Climb at the Sony Screening Room, but it was obviously going to be a very different movie for Sony Pictures Classics, who had started out the year with so many great films before theaters shut down. (Unfortunately, they may have waited too long on this one as theaters seem to be shutting down again even while NYC and L.A. have yet to reopen them. Still, I think this would be just as much fun in a drive-in.)

The movie starts with a long, extended scene of the two leads riding bikes on a steep mountain in France, talking to each other as Kyle (once the athlete of the duo) has fallen out of shape. During the conversation, Mike admits to having slept with Kyle’s fiancé Ava (Judith Godréche) and things turn hostile between the two. We then get the first big jump in time as we’re now at the funeral for Ava, who actually had been married to Mike. Kyle eventually moves on and begins a relationship with his high school sweetheart Marisa, who we meet at the Thanksgiving gathering for Kyle’s extended family. In both these cases, we see how the relationship between Mike and Kyle has changed/evolved as Mike has now fallen on hard times.

It's a little hard to explain why what’s essentially a “slice of life” movie can be so funny. On one hand, The Climb might be the type of movie we might see from Mike Leigh, but Covino and Marvin find a way to make everything funny and also quite eccentric in terms of how some of the segments begin and end.  Technically, it’s also an impressive feat with the number of amazing single shot sequences and how smooth some of the transitions work. It’s actually interesting to see when and how the filmmakers decide to return to the lives of their subjects – think of it a bit like Michael Apted’s “Up” series of docs but covering a lot shorter span in time.

Most importantly, The Climb has such a unique tone and feel to other indie dramedies we’ve seen, as the duo seem to be influenced more by European cinema than American indies. Personally, I think a better title for The Climb might have been “Frenemied,” but even with the movie’s fairly innocuous title, you will not forget the experience watching this entertaining film anytime soon.

Maybe this should be called “Netflix week,” because the streamer is releasing a number of high-profile movies into theaters and on the streaming service. Definitely one of the more anticipated movies of the year is David Fincher’s MANK, which will get a theatrical release this week and then stream on Netflix starting December 4.

It stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the Hollywood screenwriter who has allowed himself to succumb to alcoholism but has been hired by Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to write his next movie, Citizen Kane, working with a personal secretary Rita Alexander (played by Lily Collins). His story is told through his interactions with media mogul William Hearst (Charles Dance) and relationship with actress and Hearst ingenue and mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).

It I were asked to pick one director who is my absolute favorite, Fincher would probably be in my top 5 because he’s had such an illustrious and varied career of movie styles, and Mank continues that tradition as Fincher pays tribute to old Hollywood and specifically the work of Orson Welles in every frame of this biopic that’s actually more about the troubled writer of Citizen Kane who was able to absorb everything happening in his own Hollywood circles and apply them to the script.

More than anything, Mank feels like a movie for people who love old Hollywood and inside Hollywood stories, and maybe even those who may already know about the making of Welles’ highly-regarded film might find a few new things to appreciate. I particularly enjoyed Mankiewicz’s relationships with the women around him, including his wife “Poor Sarah,” played by Tuppence Middleton, Collins’ Rita, and of course, Seyfried’s absolutely radiant performance as Davies.  Maybe I would have appreciated the line-up of known names and characters like studio head Louis B Mayer and others, if more of them had any sort of effect on the story and weren’t just

The film perfectly captures the dynamic of the time and place as Mank is frequently the only honest voice in a sea of brown nosers and yes-men. Maybe I would have enjoyed Oldman’s performance more if everything that comes out of Mankiewicz’s mouth wasn’t an all-too-clever quip.

The film really hits a high point after a friend of Mank’s commits suicide and how that adds to the writer’s woes about not being able to save him. The film’s last act involves Mank dealing with the repercussions after the word gets out that Citizen Kane is indeed about Hearst.

Overall, Mank is a movie that’s hard to really dig into, and like some of Fincher’s previous work, it tends to be devoid of emotion. Even Fincher’s decision to be clever by including cigarette burns to represent Mank’s “reels” – something explained by Brad Pitt in Fight Club – just drives home the point that Mank is deliberately Fincher’s most meta movie to date.

You can also read my technical/crafts review of Mank over at Below the Line.

Ron Howard’s adaptation of JD Vance’s bestselling memoir HILLBILLY ELEGY will be released by Netflix into theaters ahead of its streaming debut on November 24. It stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close, but in honesty, it’s about JD Vance, you know, the guy who wrote the memoir.  The film follows his younger years (as played by Owen Asztalos) while dealing with a dysfunctional white trash family in Middletown, Ohio, dealing with his headstrong Mamaw (Close) and abusive mother dealing with drug addiction (Adams).  Later in life, while studying at Yale (and played by Gabriel Basso), he has to return to his Ohio roots to deal with his mother’s growing addiction that forces him to come to terms with his past.

I’m a bit of a Ron Howard stan – some might even say “an apologist” – and there’s no denying that Hillbilly Elegy puts him the closest to A Beautiful Mind territory than he’s been in quite some time. That doesn’t mean that this movie is perfect, nor that I would consider it one of his better movies, though. I went into the movie not knowing a thing about JD Vance or his memoir but after the first reviews came out, I was a little shocked how many of them immediately went political, because there’s absolutely nothing resembling politics in the film.

It is essentially an adaptation of a memoir, dealing with JD Vance’s childhood but then also the past that led his mother and grandmother down the paths that made his family so dysfunctional. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between the older Vance and his future wife Usha (as played by Freida Pinto) earlier in their relationship as they’re both going to Yale and Vance is trying to move past his family history to succeed in the realm of law.

It might be a no-brainer why Adams and Close are being given so much of the attention for their performances. They are two of the best. Close is particularly amusing as the cantankerous Mamaw, who veers between cussing and crying, but also has some great scenes both with Adams and the younger Vance. The amazing special make-up FX used to change her appearance often makes you forget you’re watching Close. I wish I could say the same for Adams, who gives such an overwrought and over-the-top performance that it’s very hard to feel much emotionally for her character as she goes down a seemingly endless vortex of drug addiction. It’s a performance that leads to some absolute craziness. (It’s also odd seeing Adams in basically the Christian Bale role in The Fighter, although Basso should get more credit about what he brings out in their scenes together.)

Hillbilly Elegy does have a number of duller moments, and I’m not quite sure anyone not already a fan of Vance’s book would really have much interest in these characters. I certainly have had issues with movies about people some may consider “Southern White Trash,” but it’s something I’ve worked on myself to overcome. It’s actually quite respectable for a movie to try to show characters outside the normal circles of those who tend to write reviews, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie might be able to connect with people in rural areas that rarely get to see themselves on screen.

Hillbilly Elegy has its issues, but it feels like a successful adaptation of a novel that may have been difficult to keep an audience invested in with all its flashbacks and jumps in time.

Netflix is also streaming the Italian drama THE LIFE AHEAD, directed by Edoardo Ponti, starring Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren, who happens to also be the filmmaker’s mother. She plays Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor in Italy who takes a stubborn young street kid named Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), much to both their chagrin.

I’ll be shocked if Italy doesn’t submit Ponti’s film as their choice for the Oscar’s International Film category, because it has all of the elements that would appeal to Oscar voters. In that sense, I also found it to be quite traditional and formulaic.  Loren is quite amazing, as to be expected, and I was just as impressed with young Ibrahima Gueye who seems to be able to hold his own in what’s apparently his first movie. There’s others in the cast that also add to the experience including a trans hooker named Lola, but it’s really the relationship between the two main characters that keeps you invested in the movie. I only wish I didn’t spend much of the movie feeling like I knew exactly where it’s going in terms of Rosa doing something to save the young boy and giving him a chance at a good life.

I hate to be cynical, but at times, this is so by the books, as if Ponti watched every Oscar movie and made one that had all the right elements to appeal to Oscar voters and wokesters alike. That aside, it does such a good job tugging at heartstrings that you might forgive how obviously formulaic it is.

Netflix is also premiering the fourth season of The Crown this week, starring Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth and bringing on board Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher, Emma Corin, Helena Bonham Carter, Tobis Menzies, Marion Bailey and Charles Dancer. Quite a week for the streamer, indeed.

Another movie that may be in the conversation for Awards season is AMMONITE (NEON), the new film from Francis Lee (God’s Own Country), a drama set in 1840s England where Kate Winslet plays Mary Anning, a fossil hunter,  tasked to look after melancholic young bride, Charlotte Murcheson (Saoirse Ronan), sent to the sea to get better only for them to get into a far more intimate relationship.

I had been looking forward to this film, having heard almost unanimous raves from out of Toronto a few months back. Maybe my expectations were too high, because while this is a well-made film with two strong actors, it’s also rather dreary and not something I necessarily would watch for pleasure. The comparisons to last year’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (also released by NEON) are so spot-on that it’s almost impossible to watch this movie without knowing exactly where it’s going from the very minute that the two main characters meet.

Winslet isn’t bad in another glammed-down role where she can be particularly cantankerous, but knowing that the film would eventually take a sapphic turn made it somewhat predictable. Ronan seems to be playing her first outright adult role ever, and it’s a little strange to see her all grown-up after playing a teenager in so many movies.

The movie is just so contained to the one setting right up until the last 20 minutes when it actually lives the Lyme setting and lets us see the world outside Mary’s secluded lifestyle.  As much as I wanted to love Ammonite, it just comes off as so obvious and predictable – and certainly not helped by coming out so soon after Portrait of a Lady. There’s also something about Ammonite that just feels so drab and dreary and not something I’d necessarily need to sit through a second time.

The animated film WOLFWALKERS (GKIds) is the latest from Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, directors of the Oscar-nominated Secret of the Kells (Moore’s Song of the Sea also received an Oscar nomination a few years later.) It’s about a young Irish girl named Robyn (voiced Honor Kneafsey) who is learning to be hunter from her father (voiced by Sean Bean) to help him wipe out the last wolf pack. Roby then meets another girl (voiced by Eva Whittaker) who is part of a tribe rumored to transform into wolves by night.

I have to be honest that by the time I got around to start watching this, I was really burnt out and not in any mood to watch what I considered to look like a kiddie movie. It looks nice, but I’m sure I’d be able to enjoy it more in a different head (like watching first thing on a Saturday morning).

Regardless, Wolfwalkers will be in theaters nationwide this Friday and over the weekend via Fathom Events as well as get full theatrical runs at drive-ins sponsored by the Landmark, Angelika and L.A.’s Vineland before it debuts on Apple TV+ on December 11. Maybe I’ll write a proper review for that column. You can get tickets for the Fathom Events at  WolfwalkersMovie.com.

Next up is Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s DREAMLAND (Paramount), starring Margot Robbie as Allison Wells, a bank-robbing criminal on the loose who encounters young man named Eugene Evans (Finn Cole) in rural Dust Bowl era North Dakota and convinces him to hide her and help her escape the authorities by taking her to Mexico.

Another movie where I wasn’t expecting much, more due to the generic title and genre than anything else, but it’s a pretty basic story of a young man in a small town who dreams of leaving and also glamorizes the crime stories he read in pulps. Because of the Great Depression in the late ’20, the crime wave was spreading out across the land and affecting everyone, even in more remote locations like the one at the center of Dreamland.

The sad truth is that there have been so many better movies about this era, including Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde, Lawless and many others. Because of that, this might not be bad but it’s definitely trying to follow movies that leave quite a long shadow. The innocent relationship between Eugene and Allison does add another level to the typical gangster story, but maybe that isn’t enough for Dreamland to really get past the fact that the romantic part of their relationship isn’t particularly believable.

As much as this might have been fine as a two-hander, you two have Travis Fimmel as Eugene’s stepfather and another generic white guy in Garrett Hedlund playing Allison’s Clyde Barrow-like partner in crime in the flashbacks. Cole has enough trouble keeping on pace with Robbie but then you have Fimmel, who was just grossly miscast. The film’s score ended up being so overpowering and annoying I wasn’t even remotely surprised when I saw that Joris-Peyrafitte is credited with co-writing the film’s score.

Dreamland is fine, though it really needed to have a stronger and more original vision to stand out. It’s another classic case of an actor being far better than the material she’s been given. This is being given a very limited theatrical release before being on digital next Tuesday.

This might have been Netflix week, but maybe it could have been “Saban Films Week,” since the distributor also has three new movies. Actually, only two, because I screwed up, and I missed the fact that André Øvredal’s MORTAL was released by Saban Films LAST week. Not entirely my fault because for some reason, I had it opening this week, and I only realized that I was wrong last Wednesday. Oh, well.  It stars Nate Wolff as Eric Bergeland, an American in Norway who seems to have some enigmatic powers, but after killing a young lad, he ends up on the lam with federal agent Christine (Iben Akerlie from Victoria).

This is another movie I really wanted to like since I’ve been such a fan of Øvredal from back to his movie Trollhunter. Certainly the idea of him taking a dark look at superpowers through the lends of Norse mythology should be right up my alley. Even so, this darker and more serious take on superpowers – while it might be something relatively unique and new in movies – it’s something anyone who has read comics has seen many times before and often quite better.

Wolff’s character is deliberately kept a mystery about where he comes from, and all we know is that he survived a fire at his farm, and we watched him kill a young man that’s part of a group of young bullies.  From there, it kind of turns into a procedural as the authorities and Akerlie’s character tries to find out where Eric came from and got his powers. It’s not necessarily a slow or talkie movie, because there are some impressive set pieces for sure, but it definitely feels more like Autopsy of Jane Doe than Trollhunters. Maybe my biggest is that this is a relatively drab and lifeless performance by Wolff, who I’ve seen be better in other films.

Despite my issues, it doesn’t lessen my feelings about Øvredal as a filmmaker, because there’s good music and use of visual FX -- no surprise if you’ve seen Trollhunters -- but there’s still a really bad underlying feeling that you’re watching a lower budget version of an “X-Men” movie, and not necessarily one of the better ones.  Despite a decent (and kinda crazy) ending, Mortal never really pays off, and it’s such a slog to get to that ending that people might feel slightly underwhelmed.

Seth Savoy’s ECHO BOOMERS (Saban Films) is a crime thriller based on a “true story if you believe in such things,” starring Patrick Schwarzenegger as Lance, a young art major, who falls in with a group of youths who break into rich people’s homes and trash them, also stealing some of the more valuable items for their leader Mel (Michael Shannon).

There’s a lot about Echo Boomers that’s going to feel familiar if you’ve seen Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring or the heist movie American Animals from a few years back, but even with those similarities, Seth Savoy has a strong cast and vision to make more out of the fairly weak writing than another director might manage. Schwarzenegger, who seems to be pulling in quite a wide range of roles for basically being another generic white actor is only part of a decent ensemble that includes Alex Pettyfer as the group’s ersatz alpha male Ellis and Hayley Law (also great in the recent Spontaneous) as his girlfriend Allie, the only girl taking part in the heists and destruction. Those three actors alone are great, but then you add Shannon just doing typically fantastic work as more of a catalyst than an antagonist.

You can probably expect there will be some dissension in the ranks, especially when the group’s “Fagan” Mel puts Lance in charge of keeping them in line and Allie forms a friendship with Lance. What holds the movie back is the decision to use a very traditional testimonial storytelling style where Lance and Allie narrate the story by relaying what happened to the authorities after their capture obviously. This doesn’t help take away from the general predictability of where the story goes either, because we’ve seen this type of thing going all the way back to The Usual Suspects.

While Echo Boomers might be fairly derivative of far better movies at times, it also has a strong directorial vision and a compelling story that makes up enough for that fact.

In theaters this Friday and then On Demand and Digital on November 24 is Eshom and Ian Nelms’ action-comedy FATMAN (Saban Films/Paramount), starring Mel Gibson as Santa Claus and Walton Goggins as the hired assassin sent to kill him by a spoiled rich boy named  Billy (Chance Hurstfield) who unhappy with the presents he’s being brought for Christmas.

While we seem to be surrounded by high concept movies of all shapes and sizes, you can’t get much more high concept than having Mel Gibson playing a tough and cantankerous* Kris Kringle (*Is this the week’s actual theme?) who is struggling to survive with Mrs. Klaus (played by the wonderful Marianne Jean-Baptiste from In Fabric) when they’re given the opportunity to produce military grade items for the army using his speedy elf workshop. Unbeknownst to the Kringles, the disgruntled hitman who also feels he’s been let down by Santa is on his way to the North Pole to fulfill his assignment.

You’ll probably know whether you’ll like this movie or not since its snarkier comedic tone is introduced almost from the very beginning. This is actually a pretty decent role for Gibson that really plays up to his strengths, and it’s a shame that there wasn’t more to it than just a fairly obvious action movie that leads to a shoot-out. I probably should have enjoyed Goggins more in a full-on villainous role but having been watching a lot of him on CBS’ The Unicorn, it’s kind of hard to adjust to him playing this kind of role.  I did absolutely love Marianne Jean-Baptiste and the warmth she brought to a relatively snarky movie.

I’m not sure if Fatman is the best showing of Eshom and Ian Nelms’ abilities as filmmakers, because they certainly have some, but any chance of being entertaining is tamped down by a feeling the filmmakers are constantly trying to play it safe. Because of this, Fatman has a few fun moments but a generally weak premise that never fully delivers. It would have thrived by being much crazier, but instead, it’s just far too mild.

Malin Åkerman stars in Paul Leyden’s CHICK FIGHT (Quiver Distribution) as Anna, a woman unhappy with her life and inability to survive on the little money she makes at her failing coffee shop. When Anna’s lesbian traffic cop friend Charleen (Dulcé Sloan) takes her to an underground fight club, Anna her trepidation about joining in, because she has never been in a fight in her life.  Learning that her mother has a legacy at the club, Anna agrees to be trained by Alec Baldwin’s always-drunk Murphy in order to take on the challenges of the likes of Bella Thorne’s Olivia.

Another movie where I’m not sure where to begin other than the fact that I’m not sure I’ve seen a movie trying so hard to be fun and funny and failing miserably at both. Listen, I generally love Akerman, and I’m always hoping for her to get stronger material to match her talents, but this tries its best to be edgy without ever really delivering on the most important thing for any comedy: Laughs.  Sure, the filmmakers try their best and even shoehorn a bit of romance for Anna in the form of the ring doctor played by Kevin Connolly from Entourage, but it does little to help distinguish the movie’s identity.

Listen, I’m not going to apologize for being a heterosexual male that finds Bella Thorne to be quite hot when she’s kicking ass in the ring. (I’m presuming that a lot of what we see in her scenes in the ring involves talented stuntwomen, but whoa! If that’s not the case.) Alec Baldwin seems to be in this movie merely as a favor to someone, possibly one of the producers, and when he disappears with no mention midway through the movie, you’re not particularly surprised. Another of trying too hard is having Anna’s father Ed (played by wrestler Kevin Nash) come out as gay and then use his every appearance to talk about his sex acts.  Others in the cast like Fortune Feimster seem to be there mainly for their bulk and believability as fighters.

Ultimately, Chick Fight is a fairly lame and bland girl power movie written, directed and mostly produced by men. I’m not sure why anyone might be expecting more from it than being a poorly-executed comedy lacking laughs.

And yet, that wasn’t the worst movie of the weekend. That would be Andrzej Bartkowiak’s DEAD RECKONING (Shout! Studios). Yes, the Polish cinematographer and filmmaker who once made the amazing Romeo is Bleeding, starring Gary Oldman and Lena Olin, has returned with a movie with the onus of a premise that reads “a thriller inspired by the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.” No, I did not make that up. It mostly takes place in Nantucket, Massachusetts, which I guess is sort of close to Boston, but instead it focuses on the relationship between teens Niko (K.J. Apa) and Tillie (India Eisley), the latter whose parents died in a plane crash that might have been caused by a terrorist. It just so happens that Niko’s brother Marco (Scott Adkins) is an Albanian terrorist. Coincidence? I think not!

Once you get past the most generic title ever, Dead Reckoning is just plain awful. I probably should have known what to expect when the movie opens with Eric “Never Turned Down a Job” Roberts, but also, I strong feel that Scott Adkins, better known for his martial arts skills, is easily one of the worst actors ever to be given lines to say in a movie. And yet, somehow, there are even worse actors in this movie. How is that even possible?

Although this presumed action movie opens with one of three or four fight sequences, we’re soon hanging out on the beach with a bunch of annoying teenagers, including Tillie, who is drowning the sorrow of recently losing her parents by literally drinking constantly in almost every single scene. When she meets the handsome Eastern European Niko, we think there’s some chance of Tillie being saved, but it isn’t meant to be.

Part of what’s so weird is that Dead Reckoning begins in territory familiar to fans of Barkowiak’s movies like Exit Wounds, Cradle 2 the Grave and Maximum Impact but then quickly shifts gears to a soppy teen romance. It’s weird enough to throw you off when at a certain point, it returns to the main plot, which involves Adkins’ terrorist plot and the search by FBI Agent Cantrell (played by James Remar) to find the culprit who killed Tillie’s parents. Oh, the FBI agent is also Tillie’s godfather. Of course, he is.

Beyond the fact that I spent much of the movie wondering what these teens in Nantucket have to do with the opening scene or the overall premise, this is a movie that anything that could be resembling talent or skill in Barkowiak’s filmmaking is long gone. Going past the horrendous writing – at one point, the exasperated and quite xenophobic Cantrell exclaims, “It’s been a nightmare since 9/11... who knows what's next?” -- or the inability of much of the cast to make it seem like anyone involved cares about making a good movie, the film is strangled by a score that wants to remind you it’s a thriller even as you watch people having fun on the beach on a sunny day.

Eventually, it does get back to the action with a fight between Cantrell and Marco… and then Marco gets into a fight with Tillie’s nice aunt nurse Jennifer where she has a surprisingly amount of fighting skills. There’s also Nico’s best friend who is either British or gay or both, but he spends every one of his scenes acting so pretentious and annoying, you kind of hope he’ll be blown up by terrorists. Sadly, you have to wait until the last act before the surfboards are pulled out.  (Incidentally, filmmakers, please don’t call a character in your movie “Marco,” especially if that character’s name is going to be yelled out repeatedly, because it will just lead to someone in the audience to yell out “Polo!” This is Uwe Boll School of Bad Filmmaking 101!)

The point is that the movie is just all over the place yet in a place that’s even remotely watchable. There even was a point when Tillie was watching the video of her parents dying in a car crash for the third or fourth time, and I just started laughing, since it’s such a slipshod scene.

It’s very likely that Dead Reckoning will claim the honor of being the worst movie I’ve seen this year. Really, the only way to have any fun watching this disaster is to play a drinking game where you take a drink every time Eisley’s character takes a drink. Or better yet, just bail on the movie and hit the bottle, because I’m sure whoever funded this piece of crap is.

Opening at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday is Manfred Kirchheimer’s FREE TIME (Grasshopper/Cinema Conservancy), another wonderful doc from one of the kings of old school cinema verité documentary filmmaking, consisting of footage of New York City from 1960 that’s pieced together with a wonderful jazz score. Let me tell you that Kirschheimer’s work is very relaxing to watch and Free Time is no exception. Plus the hour-long movie will premiere in Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema, accompanied by Rudy Burckhardt’s 1953 film Under the Brooklyn Bridge which captures Brooklyn in the ‘50s.

Also opening in Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema Friday is Hong Khaou’s MONSOON (Strand Releasing) starring Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) as Kit, who returns to Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since his family fled after the Vietnam War when he was six. As he tries to make sense of it, he ends in a romance with Parker Sawyers’ American ex-pat and forms a friendship with a local student (Molly Harris). Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to watch this one before finishing up this column but hope to catch soon, because I do like Golding as an actor.

I shared my thoughts on Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARK WORLDS, when it played at TIFF in September, but this weekend, it will debut on Apple TV+.  It’s another interesting and educational science doc from Herr Herzog, this time teaming with the younger Cambridge geoscientist and “volcanologist” to look at the evidence left behind by meteors that have arrived within the earth’s atmosphere, including the races that worship the falling space objects.

Opening at the Metrograph this week (or rather on its website) is Shalini Kantayya’s documentary CODED BIAS, about the widespread bias in facial recognition and the algorithms that affect us all, which debuted Weds night and will be available on a PPV basis and will be available through November 17. The French New Wave anthology Six In Paris will also be available as a ticketed movie ($8 for members/$12 for non-members) through April 13. Starting Thursday as part of the Metrograph’s “Live Screenings” is Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher’s Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists from 1980. Fischler’s earlier doc Frame Up! The imprisonment of Martin Sostre from 1974 will also be available through Thursday night.

Sadly, there are just way too many movies out this week, and some of the ones I just wasn’t able to get to include:

Dating Amber (Samuel Goldwyn) The Giant (Vertical) I Am Greta (Hulu) Dirty God (Dark Star Pictures) Where She Lies (Gravitas Ventures) Maybe Next Year (Wavelength Productions) Come Away (Relativity) Habitual (National Amusements) The Ride (Roadside Attractions, Forest, ESX) Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (Netflix) Transference: A Love Story (1091) Sasquatch Among the Wildmen (Uncork’d) All Joking Aside (Quiver Distribution) Secret Zoo (MPI Medi Group/Capelight Pictures)

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, I think you’re very special and quite good-looking. Feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#Movies #reviews #Mank #TheClimb #Freaky #Fatman #Heartland #Mortal #EchoBoomers #VOD #Streaming #TheLifeAhead #HillbillyElegy