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itsallyscorner · 3 years

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“Move the plans”

Pairing: Florence Pugh x actress!reader (platonic)

Summary: Florence tells you to cancel your plans when she ends up in New York.

Warnings: Nothing really bad. Mentions lactose intolerance? Idk if that’s sensitive to people. Probably some spelling errors.

A/n: Hello darlings! I’m back from my unannounced break. I decided to write a platonic Florence fic because she’s a sweetheart and I loved her as Yelena! Also for those who follow me, don’t worry, I will be working on a sequel to my Tom Holland “Sour” fic!! But for now, please enjoy this fic!😚💕

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

(Loml)

✧───── ･｡ﾟ★: *. ☽.* :★. ─────✧

You stood backstage in front of a mirror, looking at your appearance and making sure there were no wrinkles on the dress you wore. Your hairstylist was behind you, fluffing your hair and managing the stray baby hairs on your head. You were currently at NBC Studios in New York City, about to do an interview with the infamous, Jimmy Fallon. Tingles buzzed through your skin as you heard the cheers and music from the stage. Jimmy’s voice can be heard faintly backstage, only adding to your growing excitement.

The sound of heels clicking approached you, it took less than a second for you to feel the warm presence of Florence behind you. The both of you were starring in the upcoming Black Widow movie alongside Scarlett Johansson; after months of working together and spending days hanging out, you and Florence had become very close friends. She was, without a doubt, your favorite person in the world. Since the moment you met her, she had always been the most sweetest and caring person you’ve ever met—and you were proud to say you had her in your corner.

You met Flo’s eyes in the mirror and bright smiles were instantly on your faces. Turning around, you open your arms wide, and wrap them around her. Bear hugs were a must in your friendship with Flo, you both just loved receiving hugs from each other.

“Ahhh! I told you that dress would be perfect for tonight, you look stunning!” She squealed, tightening her arms around you. A day before Jimmy Fallon, you and Flo had been at your place with your stylist, picking out which dress you should wear for the interview. The dress was casual, but the color was so ever vibrant that it made the dress pop.

You pulled out the hug and looked at what she was wearing. Her gorgeous blonde hair was curled into loose locks and her dress was just as vibrant as yours. The pink of her dress and the orange (yellowish?) of yours complimented each other. Which coincidentally enough, was a parallel of your lovely friendship with Florence.

“Me? Flo, you look gorgeous! I’m so obsessed with this look!” You help her twirl, hyping her up as she showed off her outfit. After sneaking in a little mirror selfie and posting it onto Instagram, the two of you were given a five minute warning from one of the crew members. You and Flo were moved to stand behind the curtain, waiting for your cues to walk onto the stage.

While the two of you were getting mic’d up, Florence leaned closer to you.

“Can I be completely honest with you?” She mumbled, her stare remaining on the curtain before her. Your brow raises in curiosity as your head slightly turns to look at her.

“Of course, hun. What’s up?” You ask, your attention on her. She sighs and leans even closer so only you can hear her.

“I feel like I’m about to shit my pants.” She admits, swallowing nervously. Your mouth gapes, “Did you have iced coffee too?”

Flo’s face scrunches up in confusion, “N-no! That was me telling you I was nervous! Did you have iced coffee?” She fully turns to look at you and judging by the look of guilt plastered across your face, you did in fact have iced coffee.

“Maybe?” You answer, though it came out more like a question. Florence rolls her eyes at you.

“(Y/n), how many times do you have to be reminded that you’re lactose intolerant?” She scolded you.

You scoff, holding a hand up at her, “Trust me, I’m reminded every time I sit on a toilet.” You shake your head, trying to refocus the conversation.

“This isn’t about my poor digestive system—why are you nervous?”

She sighs, “I don’t know why I’m so nervous, I’m used to doing interviews and stuff. But I haven’t been on Jimmy Fallon, and there’s an audience out there and I don’t want to mess up or accidentally spoil the movie.”

You place a reassuring hand on her shoulder, “You may be British, but you’re not Tom Holland. You won’t spoil anything.” You start. She quickly shoots you a look that screams, “you’re not helping”. You make a gesture physically telling her that you’re getting to the point.

“You’re going to be fine! I mean you did Jimmy Kimmel right? This shouldn’t be that different, it’s the same thing—just different studios, in different states, and different Jimmy’s.” You point out. She nods along as you continue, “Plus, I’m gonna be up there with you. You won’t be alone.”

With the help of your reassurance and witty little comments, Florence felt her anxiousness simmer down. They weren’t completely gone but the fact that you were gonna be up there together made her relax more. Being part of Marvel had its pros and cons. Sure, the movies are spectacular and the actors are outstanding. Though when it comes to doing promo for said movies, it can be quite stressful. It’s a known fact that Marvel and it’s executives can be quite strict when it comes to interviews with anyone involved in the making of their films—their strictness made sense, although for first time MCU members, it took some getting used to.

Florence smiles at you, “Thank you.”

You playfully nudge her shoulder with yours, “Don’t worry about it.” You say with a kind smile.

The wholesome moment was interrupted by one of the stagehands telling you and Florence that the two of you were on in 15 seconds.

“Our guests tonight are making their big MCU debut in the new Black Widow film, please welcome (Y/n) (L/n) and Florence Pugh!”

⚘

“So in the movie, there’s three of you guys—where’s the other one?” Jimmy asked, motioning his hand to the small space between you and Flo.

“She’s at home I believe.” Florence answered, glancing at you. “She’s busy doing stuff, you know—adult things.” She added.

You took the opportunity to make a joke and said, “Yet here we are promoting her movie.” You roll your eyes playfully. The crowd bursts out laughing, along with Jimmy, who smacked his desk.

“You know, we deserve a raise for this.” Flo considers, going along with your joke. She slightly snorts and nudges your arm with her elbow. “We could take Scarlett’s check and just split it in half for ourselves.”

“Problem solved.” You shrugged, high fiving her.

Another round of laughs fill the room as Jimmy says, “So you’re both taking Scarlett’s money?”

Jokingly, you nod in approval, “By the end of this interview? Definitely.”

Dropping the bit, you shake your head with a grin on your face. “I’m kidding! I’m only joking, I wouldn’t do that to her, even if I were forced to.”

Jimmy moves on as a picture of you, Florence, and Scarlett pops up on the screen. The picture had been posted on your Instagram and was taken while the three of you were filming in between takes. You were taking the selfie while Scarlett and Florence were poking their heads out from behind you making funny faces.

“I can’t imagine how exciting it is to be on a Marvel set, and to even work with one of the first ever heroes in the MCU—that must be insane!” Jimmy exclaims, motioning to another picture of the three of you.

“It’s unbelievable. To work alongside Scarlett and to follow this kind of path that she’s paved in the MCU is an honor. She really was like our older sister behind the scenes, because she was always guiding us and taking care of everyone. She’s the best.” Florence responded while you nodded in agreement.

“I watched the movie last night and one of the things I enjoyed the most was the dynamic the three of you had. You guys were like actual siblings.” Jimmy mentioned, motioning between you and Flo.

Florence giggled before squeezing you into a tight hug, “Yeah, she’s my big sister.” You smiled beamingly, patting her cheek before she let go.

“No, really! She’s like my actual younger sister.” You tell the audience, who “awed” at the hug you both shared. “We spent months on this movie and we spent every single day with each other. By the middle of production, we were basically roommates.”

“Roommates?” Jimmy questioned, leaning his elbows on his desk.

“Because I was always at her house.” Florence answered in a ‘duh’ tone. “I’ve actually grown an attachment to (Y/n), she’s like my comfort blanket. So I need to have her with me at all times. If she’s not with me, I just won’t leave the house.”

“Speaking of your attachment to (Y/n), there’s this video of you that you apparently sent her?” Jimmy gestured at you, “And you posted it on your Instagram and now the whole internet is obsessed with it.”

“Yup, that’s the one.” You confirmed.

“I know there’s probably some people who haven’t seen it, so here’s the video.” The video of Florence popped up on the screen and began to play.

(This fic was based on this TikTok😭)

Jimmy looked at you and Florence in amusement, “Can we get some context?”

Florence waved her hand at the screen and said, “As you can all see, I’m very persistent.”

“This wasn’t your first time sending her these kinds of videos?” Jimmy asked. You shook your head, a feign look of annoyance on your face.

“No, she does this all the time.”

“In my defense, I was unexpectedly flying out to New York for a project. I knew I was gonna be in the city for a few days, so I decided to call (Y/n) and make the most of my trip.” Flo defended herself, slightly pouting.

You leaned your head on her shoulder, “To be fair, it was also our first time seeing each other since we wrapped Black Widow, and we really missed each other.”

“(Y/n), did you have to move any plans?” Jimmy turns to you. Florence does the same.

“You know what, you never told me if you had plans or not.” She squints her eyes at you. Your arms crossed while your body slowly sunk into the couch.

You pretend to fix your lipstick, quickly muttering, “I might’ve moved some plans around.”

Florence’s mouth gapes in shock, her entire body freezing. She grips onto your shoulder, “Wait, you actually moved plans for me?”

“I might’ve rescheduled a lunch with someone, but that doesn’t really matter.” You replied, trying to move on from the topic. Jimmy pointed at you, a giant grin on his face, “You actually moved plans for Florence!”

Florence’s mouth was still wide in shock, “I can’t believe you actually moved plans for me—(Y/n)!” She whined.

“I missed seeing you, so of course I had to move them.” You bashfully explained, the corners of your lips turning upwards. Florence pulled you into a hug.

“Gosh, you really do love me!” She exclaimed.

“I really do!” You said, your arms wrapping around her as well.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

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#marvel #mcu #avengers #marvel cast #marvel cast x reader #marvel cast headcanon #marvel cast imagines #florence pugh #florence pugh x reader #florence pugh imagine #Florence Pugh headcanon #florence pugh fanfic #black widow #yelena belova #yelena belova x reader

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maximoffwitch · 2 years

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The Wake Up Call She Needed

pairing: emily prentiss x reader

warnings: slight angst and arguing

summary: emily’s new unit chief position is taking a toll on your relationship

a/n: my first fic posted here! i’m still setting up the rest of my blog so stay tuned for some more stories (criminal minds & marvel rn)

“You ready?” you asked, entering your girlfriend’s office.

Emily looked up from the files she was reading with an apologetic look on her face. Before she could even say anything, you cut her off.

“Seriously, Em? Again?”

This hadn’t been the first time Emily had to cancel one of your date nights for work. Usually, you were understanding, considering you were a BAU agent yourself, but ever since your girlfriend became unit chief, you’ve been seeing less and less of her.

“I’m sorry, (Y/N/N),” Emily apologized earnestly, “but Barnes demanded these papers on her desk by midnight tonight.”

“What? Are we in high school?” you chuckled sardonically. “You know it’s been weeks, if not months, since we’ve had a night to ourselves.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” she repeated, moving to stand in front of you, but by now her apologies meant little to you, “but I can’t do anything about it.”

“You’ve really changed,” you lowered your voice, as you could feel the rest of the team’s eyes on you through the blinds.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

You should’ve known that based on her tone that this wasn’t going to end well, but you were too upset and tired to care.

“What I mean is that,” you sighed, running your hands through your hair, “ever since you became unit chief, you’ve become this different person.”

“I thought you were okay with me taking this position,” Emily argued. “You even encouraged me.”

“Yeah, I did, because you deserve it,” you replied sincerely, frustration still evident in your voice. “But I didn’t think you’d turn into a person I barely recognize.”

Emily parted her lips at a loss for words.

“The Emily Prentiss I know would tell Linda Barnes that she can have those papers first thing Monday morning so that she can spend some needed and well deserved time with her girlfriend,” you ranted. “I understand your workload, Em, I really do, and I know how much the team needs you, but I need you too.”

Emily bit her lip and looked down at her feet, feeling the shame take over her body. Before she could respond, a knock on the door interrupted you two.

“Agent Prentiss,” Linda Barnes stepped through the door and into the office, “may I speak with you?”

Glancing at you briefly, she added, “privately.”

You went to stand up for yourself, wanting to tell her that you were in the middle of an important conversation, but Emily spoke for you, “Of course, ma’am. Agent (Y/L/N) was just leaving.”

“Right,” you scoffed under your breath, pursing your lips. “I’ll see you Monday, Unit Chief Prentiss.”

You emphasized her official title, one that you rarely used, to convey your annoyance. Emily was smart; she would figure out that you wouldn’t be coming home tonight, most likely spending the weekend at Penlope’s.

Slamming the door shut behind you, you missed Emily’s longing eyes following you out.

As you stormed through the bullpen, heading towards Garcia’s bat cave, Spencer called out, “Everything alright, (Y/N)?”

“Not now, Reid,” you shook your head, as you tried to hide the tears pooling in your eyes.

You arrived in the doorway of your best friend’s office, the tears fully streaming down your face, the frustration you’d been bottling up finally boiling over.

“Can I stay at your place for the weekend?”

Looking up from her screen, Penelope immediately softened at the sight of you crying. “Oh, sweet cheeks, of course. Come here.”

You collapsed in her arms, letting the sobs overtake your body.

“Shh,” she cooed and rubbed soothing circles on your back. “Come on, let’s get out of here and you can tell me what happened over a bottle of wine and a pint of ice cream. Sound like a plan?”

“That sounds good,” you gave her a small smile. “Thanks, Pen.”

“Anytime, love bug,” she pinched your cheek, as she gathered her stuff, and the two of you made your way out of Quantico.

Meanwhile, after Linda Barnes exited her office, Emily collapsed into her chair, dropping her head into her hands.

Your argument replayed in her mind, and she was embarrassed to admit that you were right. Ever since she became unit chief, the two of you had spent less and less time together, at least time away from cases.

“Hey,” JJ entered hesitantly, “everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Emily sighed, lifting her head with a forced smile.

“Emily, I know when you’re lying,” JJ took a seat in one of the chairs across from the other woman. “I also know that you and (Y/N) just had an argument and that she stormed out of here. So if you wanna talk about it…”

Emily picked at her nails, trying to gather her thoughts.

“We got into a fight over me being Unit Chief,” she admitted. “I’ve been spending so much time at work that I’ve been neglecting my duties as a girlfriend.”

JJ nodded knowingly, causing Emily to narrow her eyebrows.

“You don’t look so surprised.”

“Well, (Y/N) may have complained to me about it,” JJ admitted. “And it’s not like the rest of us haven’t noticed either.”

“What does that mean?” Emily titled her head. “Are my relationship problems so obvious to everyone?”

“No, of course not,” the blonde reassured. “I just meant…when’s the last time you came to a girls’ night or a dinner at Rossi’s?”

Emily took a moment to think about it before wincing.

Seeing the realization take over her friend’s face, JJ spoke up, “Emily, we all know, including (Y/N) how much this job requires of you, especially now that you’re our Unit Chief, but you’re also our friend and (Y/N)’s girlfriend.”

“Thanks, Jayje,” Emily said appreciatively. Looking down at the paperwork in front of her, she made the decision that you were more important than some silly old reports, especially ones Linda Barnes wanted.

“I gotta go talk to her,” she immediately stood up, grabbing her coat and bag.

“I think she went over to Penelope’s,” JJ informed.

Emily shot her a grateful smile, as she exited her office.

Speeding over to Penelope’s apartment, Emily rehearsed in her head what she was gonna say to you.

The buzz of the doorbell caused you and Penelope to halt your giggling and pause the TV.

“That must be the pizza,” the blonde chirped. “I’ll get it, don’t worry.”

As she swung open the door, the smile on her face was quickly replaced with a scowl.

“You have a lot of nerve showing up here, Emily Prentiss,” Penelope harshly whispered.

“I know, Pen, but I really need to talk to (Y/N),” Emily explained, desperation written all over her face.

“No,” Penelope asserted. “Do you know how badly you hurt her? Just give her this weekend and you guys can talk on—“

“Pen, what’s taking so long?” you asked, as you approached her, stopping as soon as you see your girlfriend standing in the door. “Oh.”

“Hey,” Emily sheepishly greeted. “Can we talk?”

“What about your paperwork?” you retorted.

Penelope whipped around, her eyes wide, “(Y/N)! I told her to leave but—“

“Penelope, it’s alright,” you squeezed her arm assuringly. “Thank you.”

Looking at Emily, you motioned your head behind her, “Let’s talk outside.”

The two of you moved to sit on the front porch, a moment of silence passing between you.

“I’m so sorry, (Y/N),” Emily whispered, still staring out into darkness of the night. “I’ve been a terrible girlfriend lately, and I’m sorry. You’ve been nothing but supportive these last couple of months, and I’ve just turned into this monster workaholic.”

Emily’s voice began to crack, as she quickly tried to wipe away the tears that were beginning to form.

“Emily, look at me,” with one hand, you gently lifted her chin so she could meet your eyes, and grasped her hand with the other. “You are in no way a monster, alright?”

Emily nodded with a sniffle.

“A workaholic on the other hand…” you trailed off, causing the both of you to share a small chuckle.

“Look, Em,” you sighed, as you ran your thumb over her knuckles, “this job is important, to the both of us, but at the end of the day, we,” you leaned forward to connect your foreheads, “are more important.”

“I know,” Emily breathed, “and I’m sorry that I’ve been too wrapped up in work to remember that. I’ve been so worried about trying not to disappoint you guys and fill Hotch’s shoes that I guess I forgot to be Emily.”

“You don’t need to be anybody but yourself, babe,” you cupped her face to wipe her tears. “We are proud to have you as our lead and to be your team. I’m so proud of you, alright? I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Emily leaned forward to connect your lips for a brief but tender kiss. “And I promise to be better, to make more time for us.”

“All I can ask is that you try, Em.”

“Well, I’ve already ditched the work Barnes gave me, so how about we go home and spend the weekend together?” Emily proposed, the light having returned to her eyes.

“I’d love that,” you beamed, bringing her in for another kiss.

A bright flash and a clicking noise caused the two of you to pull apart. Turning around, you saw Penelope standing there with her phone, taking a picture of you and Emily.

“Oops,” she gave you a sheepish look, “sorry. I was just letting the team know that the office OTP has made up.”

You looked at your girlfriend, as the you both were trying to conceal your laughter.

“Come on,” Emily said, squeezing your knee before taking your hand, “let’s go home.”

As your girlfriend helped you stand up, you turned back to your best friend, “Thank you, Penelope, truly.”

“Of course, (Y/N),” Penelope nodded knowingly.

Before you got into Emily’s car, you called back to Penelope, “Oh, and Pen?”

“Yeah?”

“Send me that picture, will you?”

“Duh!”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the other woman, as you climbed into car.

“You ready for a weekend to ourselves?” Emily looked at you with a smirk, starting the engine.

“I can’t wait.”

#emily prentiss x reader #emily prentiss imagine #emily prentiss #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #my writing

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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

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Loki director Kate Herron’s heart was beating fast. She’d already had some surreal experiences during her short time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so a simple phone call shouldn’t make her nervous. But on the other end of the line was Owen Wilson, an actor and writer she admired and hoped would join her on a time-jumping journey through the MCU.

“It was the most detailed pitch I’ve ever done, to an actor, ever. I pretty much spoke through the entire first episode with him,” Herron recalls of wooing Wilson, who wasn’t too familiar with Marvel before being cast as Mobius, an agent for the mysterious Time Variance Authority central to the series.

Wilson instantly put Herron at ease with his laid-back charm as she walked the actor through 10 years of onscreen lore for Loki, the god of mischief played by Tom Hiddleston. She answered his questions about Avengers: Endgame, about time travel, about how this version of Loki was not the one fans knew from films like Thor: Ragnarok, but rather one plucked from an alternate timeline from 2012’s The Avengers.

It was all part of a whirlwind few years for Herron, who not that long ago was temping at a fire extinguisher company and struggling to land directing work even though she’d already helmed a BBC project with Idris Elba. Then Herron finally achieved breakthrough success directing episodes of the Netflix hit Sex Education and soon was hounding her agents for a Marvel meeting.

When Herron finally landed one, the Loki superfan cleared her schedule and spent two weeks putting together a 60-page document, even though her agents tempered her expectations by noting it was just a meet-and-greet.

“I knew I’d be up against some really big directors, and I knew I wouldn’t be the most experienced in the room, so I [said], ‘OK. I’ll just be the most passionate,'” recalls Herron.

Just a few days after officially landing the job, Herron found herself on a five-hour walk through New York with Hiddleston discussing Loki and flying to D23 in Anaheim to be greeted by thousands of screaming fans alongside Loki head writer Michael Waldron.

Herron is now working long days finishing up Loki in Marvel’s production hub in Atlanta, where the British filmmaker has largely lived since getting the job in 2019. Over Zoom from her freezing Atlanta apartment (she still hasn’t figured out the quirks of the air conditioner), Herron dives into Loki ahead of its June 9 debut on Disney+.

What was your process of sitting down with Marvel for this?

I was just so overexcited. [My agents] were like, “Look, it’s just a casual conversation, they just want to get a sense of you,” and basically I was like, “OK, I’m just going to pitch them.” Because I thought, they might not meet me again. So I got as much information as I could, and they sent me a little bit about the show. And I just prepared a massive pitch for it. I canceled everything for two weeks. I made a 60-page document full of references, story ideas, music. I knew I’d be up against some really big directors, and I knew I wouldn’t be the most experienced in the room, so I [said], “OK. I’ll just be the most passionate.”

Was that first meeting in Burbank?

That was in England, in southeast London on Zoom. I had a few stages where I did that. Then after a few interviews with Kevin Wright and Stephen Broussard, two of the Marvel executives who got me ready for the big match, I went in to pitch to Kevin Feige, Victoria [Alonso], Lou [Louis D’Esposito], the whole team there. That was very surreal because they flew me to Burbank and I pitched at Marvel Studios. I didn’t have the job, but I found out they were interested and then I remember Kevin Feige called me, and when he was in London, we had coffee. He was like, “Look, we want you to direct it.” Oh my God. They flew me to D23 and that was crazy because I think I found out I got the job 48 hours before, and then I was onstage. The Lady and the Tramp dogs were in front of me and Michael [Waldron] on the red carpet. “What is going on?” (Laughs.) I met Tom that week as well, so it was a bit of a whirlwind kind of thing.

📷Herron, Waldron and Feige at D23 in 2019.

Where did you first meet Tom?

I had a two-stop trip. I flew first to New York to meet Tom. He was in Betrayal at the time, on Broadway, so we basically went on this amazing walk around New York. I’d never met him before. We just spoke about Loki and what was really important to us about the character and where we thought it would be fun to take him, as well. It was this intense, five-hour conversation with him basically. I met him and then flew straight from meeting him to D23. So it was a lot. (Laughs.)

When did you finally get the scripts? How did that change your thoughts on what you want to do?

They sent me the outline, so I knew the overall story. I also was pitching stuff. “Oh, we could do this with this character.” The pilot was really well written by Michael and I really liked what they were doing with the character and the story. Then it was building upon that and throwing in ideas for where he could go later in the show. It reminded me a bit of improv where you’re always building, always trying to push the story to the best place. So we were always adapting and shifting the story. Our lockdown, during COVID, was a chance for us to go back in. I was cutting what we’d done, so I was like, “OK, this is tonally what is really working for the story.” Then we went back into what we hadn’t filmed and started adapting that stuff to fit more where we were heading.

The Marvel movies have a writer on set to help tweak things. Was that the case with Loki?

Michael [Waldron] was with us at the start, and then he went on to Doctor Strange [in the Multiverse of Madness]. We had a really wonderful writer called Eric Martin from our writers room, and he was our production writer on set. It was between me, him and my creative producer Kevin Wright. We would kind of brainstorm and adapt. I’ve always loved talking to the cast. We had such a smart cast. Owen is a writer as well. If you have that amazing resource, why not talk to them? We were always adapting. Obviously paying respect to the story we wanted to tell from the start, but always trying to make it better.

📷Herron on the set of ‘Loki’ with Hiddleston and Wilson.

Kevin Feige has said Owen Wilson, like his character, is nonplussed by the MCU. Since Owen isn’t necessarily dazzled by Marvel, does that make him all the more perfect for this role?

He is playing a Loki expert, so at the beginning of production, Tom and I were talking. He devised this thing called Loki School. He did a big lecture to the cast and crew. I love the character. This is a decade of fans loving this character and where that character has been. It was talking everyone through that, but through Tom and his own experiences. Stunts that Tom liked or costumes. He ended up doing that same Loki school for Owen. Owen absolutely loved it. Owen has such a writer’s brain. I remember I had to pitch him down the phone. My heart rate [was up].

Was this the pitch to get him to get Owen on board?

Yeah. I love his work. “Oh my God, I’m going to talk to Owen Wilson.” He’s so laid back and nice, it immediately puts you at ease. It was the most detailed pitch I’ve ever done, to an actor, ever. I think I pretty much spoke through the entire first episode with him. You can tell he’s a writer, just by the way he attacks story. His questions about the world and the structure and the arc of the character. It was really fun to work with him.

Was it the most detailed pitch you’ve ever done because you really wanted Owen, or because you knew you needed to woo him a bit to get him to sign on?

It was the questions he asked, and the way he attacked story, in that sense. And also probably because he was newer to the Marvel world, he was like, “OK, how does this work?” I also pitched him Loki’s arc over the past 10 years, where that character has gone, but also explaining our Loki and what happened in Endgame and time travel. There’s a lot to unpack in that conversation.

Sometimes Marvel will give writers or directors a supercut of all the scenes of a specific character. Did you get one of those?

They didn’t actually give me a supercut, but I’m a big Loki nerd. I think his is one of the best [arcs] in the MCU. I really wanted to make sure we were paying respect to that. At the same time, something Tom spoke about a lot was you have to go back for a reason. Let’s be united on what that reason is and feel that it’s worth it.

The reason can’t be, “Well that’s what happened in Endgame,” so the question becomes, “What is the point of revisiting him at this era of his life?”

Yeah. He’s only had — I don’t want to get this wrong — I think 112 minutes of screen time in total if you cut all his scenes together. And he steals the show. We have six hours to really delve into this character and talk about him and go on this completely new story with him. For me, it was making sure that [we’re] paying respect to what has come before — I know as a fan if there is a character I really loved and I found out they are making a show about him, I obviously would be so excited and so happy. I felt lucky to have the responsibility, and I took it very seriously.

Those who have worked with Kevin Feige say he’s someone who can stress test an idea and push things in new directions. What have you found working with him?

Something I always found was we would sometimes pitch something, and it would be at a good place, but he’d always be like, “OK, that’s great, but push it further.” Sometimes I’d pitch stuff and be like, “This is too weird,” and he’d say, “No, go weirder.” He wants to tell the best story and I found it really helpful having his eye across everything and the fact that he does challenge everything. Tom as well, on set. He brings this amazing energy and this great A-game that causes everyone to rise to the occasion.

How do you know when you’ve got the perfect Hiddleston take? Is he asking you for one more, are you pushing him to do one more take?

By the end, it was almost telepathic. We would kind of know. We would look at each other. “We could go again,” or, “We’ve got it.” It’s different with every actor. There are some actors who will come in firing and they just want to go for it. But they don’t want to do a million takes. There are other actors I work with who are very meticulous and they want quite a few to warm up and get into it. It’s actor-dependent. The way me and Tom are similar is we are both very perfectionist. We are both very studious. (Laughs.) We definitely connected in that sense. He’s a very generous actor. I remember one day, we had quite a few of our actors coming in as day players. It was really important for him to be there for them, to read lines offscreen. He would have to be 50 places at once, because he is the lead actor. The most amazing thing about him was his generosity. Not just to the other actors, but also to the crew, to be filming in a time like COVID.

When you make an Avengers movie, you get a big board with every character that’s available, and whether the actor’s deals will allow them to appear or if that would need to be renegotiated. Loki is smaller, but was there any equivalent for you? Was everything on the table? Was only some stuff on the table? I imagine if Chris Hemsworth has his own new Thor movie coming up, he’s not going to be on the table, necessarily.

I felt like everything was on the table if it meant it was good for story, and Marvel would be like, “We’ll work it out.” Me and the writers, we never felt restrained in that sense. Honestly, it always comes back to story.

What is your relationship with your editor as you finish this up?

We have three editors, Paul Zucker, Emma McCleave and Calum Ross. My relationship with all three of them is very different. Emma and me are very close because she was also in Atlanta away from home. I got to know her very well. I love working with the editors because it’s a fresh pair of eyes. You get so deep into something when you are filming, it’s almost like writing it again when you are in the edit. Stuff does change. Even some episodes, we’ve reordered the structure. Or we moved scenes from one episode to another episode. I’ve always loved the editing process. The best thing is someone honest who can be like, “Hey, this doesn’t quite make sense to me,” or, “This isn’t working.”

What are you going to do on premiere day? Will you be on the internet at all to see the reaction?

I’m actually working. I’m still finishing the show. My last day is the day the second episode airs. I’m going to be working that day. Sadly, I’ll probably check in on the internet a little bit, but I’ll probably go to bed when I finish because I think I’ll do a 12- or 13-hour day or something. I can’t remember. I’m really excited for people to see it and just to bring it out in the world, really.

Everyone wants to know about spoilers, but what’s something you wish you were asked about more when it comes to Loki?

Kevin Feige said, “We make movies. We want to run it like a movie.” So unlike a lot of television shows that are showrunner-led, this was run like a six-hour film. As a director, you don’t often get to do that in a television-structure show. I really enjoyed it, having a hand in story and just how collaborative it was. Also, just beyond that, directing the equivalent of a six-hour Marvel movie was incredible for me. That’s something I found interesting about it. Making something the Marvel way.

In terms of the themes, I love gray areas. The show is really about what makes someone truly good or what makes someone truly bad, and are we either of those things? Loki is in that gray area. It’s exciting to be able to tell a story like that. As a director and a writer, you don’t necessarily understand why you are making these stories. Something I keep getting drawn back into is identity. Sex Education, we spoke a lot about identity and feeling like an outsider but actually finding your people. I feel the same with Loki. It’s a show about identity and self-acceptance and for me, that’s also what drew me in.

Gray is a good way to describe Loki. Your version of Loki just tried to take over the Earth not long ago.

Exactly. This isn’t the Loki we’ve seen. How do we take a character that people love, but from a lot earlier, and send him on a different path? That for me was interesting, getting to unpack that. Alongside that, getting to set up a whole new corner of the MCU with TVA. That to me was so exciting.

What about the Teletubbies? You referenced that recently and it made quite a splash. Are you going to leave people in suspense on that?

I referenced the Teletubbies once and people were like, “What, Teletubbies? What does this mean?” Maybe I should leave people in the air with it. One thing I would say is the show for me, stylistically — I wanted it to be a love letter to sci-fi because I love sci-fi. Brazil, Metropolis, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Alien. If people love sci-fi, they will definitely see the little nods we’ve got across the show. People will know what it was a reference for when they see the show. It was a visual reference to something in the show.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity. Loki debuts on Disney+ on June 9.

#Kate Herron #Loki #interview #loki series

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ithehellisbucky · 3 years

Text

Fake Smile

Carol Danvers x Reader

Request: for @marvels-writings

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Hatred, grief, suicide, etc

Author's Note: This is for @marvelxreaderfanfictionfest's contest last year, it's already on ao3 here. They have a great contest opening on may tenth for the mcu ladies, so go check that out! There isn't enough wlw fanfiction in this fandom (or really any).

You could swear her skin was glowing. Or at the very least reflecting the colors around her. Soft golden light shone around onto her face from the cracked window next to her chair, and she basked in the light as if she had just won every award the world had to offer. She didn't have the right to be this fucking pretty.

Her golden hair floated around her head, almost literally, forming a halo that made her look even more like an angel. Her skin was only several shades lighter, and her cheeks scrunched up in a way when she laughed that you could only describe as euphoric. Her piercing blue eyes only complimented her features, and your eyes were instantly drawn to her impossible beautiful cheekbones.

If only the woman below that was as beautiful as the face it belonged to.

Carol was the enemy. Not literally, of course. But she was the enemy. Utterly unsympathetic when you had told her about the death of your best friend in the dusting, you had grown to despise her within mere minutes of a word coming out of her mouth.

She laughed like she didn't notice you glaring. And when she finally locked eyes with you, her lips formed a smirk and kept on giggling.

In the brief days that she had returned to earth, she made it her mission to do everything for the sole purpose of lighting rage inside your chest. No one had the right to make you feel this way, least of all her.

She had returned to earth to "check-in." In the past 3 years since the snap, the world had taken a turn for the worst. Not only was every other person gone, but the death toll was slowly rising. Crime rates were increasing, and the suicide toll was only getting higher.

Every single damn day of your life you had dedicated yourself to helping the people on earth, and the only thing she had on her mind was the big picture. Trying to bring people back that couldn't be brought back. Bullshit.

All you were trying to do was make sure that the people who had left stayed alive.

"Ava? Would you like a scone." She said it in a normal voice, but you could feel the passion behind the words.

"No thank you. I'm careful about what I let others feed me. Because I'm careful. Unlike some other people I know." You say in the most passive and sickly sweet voice you could muster.

"I'm very cautious about keeping myself, and others, safe. I'm just nice enough to do it politely." She responded in the same voice as before.

"Carol, Ava. Do I need to remind you that this is a professional meeting, where we are to talk about important topics only." Nat said in a stone-cold tone. Natasha was never the most playful person, to begin with, but in the past 3 years, things had taken a turn for the worse.

When someone is already flying by the seat of their pants and is about as stable as a bull in a china shop, you tend not to provoke them. And by provoke, I mean of course murdering half of humanity.

"I was being professionally, just Carol here was-"

Natasha sharply cuts you off. " Ava. "

"Fine." You say, internally rolling your eyes.

Carol looks you dead in the eyes and gives you a smirk. Damn this woman.

You had been through hell. You had talking people of bridges, you had stood up for abuse victims in court, you had watched the people you had loved die. You were a stone-cold bitch. But with Carol, you might as well be a 2-year-old with a pair of scissors and a disturbing lack of adult supervision.

Once the meeting was over, you sparked a conversation with Natasha. "Hey Nat, do you wanna get some lunch?"

She looked at you, and then down at her phone, and then at you again. "Um, I can't. Not today." She looks behind her shoulder, and a sinister smirk creeps onto her features. "But I'm sure Carol would love to go out with you."

"Natasha, no. I said no."

Her menacing grin only intensifies. "Oh come on Ava, you could cut the sexual tension between the two of you with a knife."

"It's not sexual tension. It's just tension. Because we hate each other."

"Mm, I don't think so." She turns over her shoulder and calls to the blonde. "Carol, could you come here for a sec?"

Carol's head perks up, and she walks towards Nat, a scowl forming on her face when she sees that you're next to her. "What is it?"

"Do you want to go to lunch. Will Ava and I?" She questions politely.

"That sounds great, but doesn't Ava have to do that... Thing?"

You turn on your sickly sweet smile for what seems like the ten-thousandth time. "No, I canceled it. Just. To. Have. Lunch. With. You."

Natasha is almost guffawing at this interaction between the two of you. "Alright then, lunch it is!" She starts walking right without any hesitation, and both you and Carol have to run to catch up to her.

"I saw this cute little Italian place. Do you want to go-"

"Chili's." Natasha stops her pace and looks back at you.

"What. It's an incredible experience that I'm sure we'll all enjoy."

It's now Natasha's turn to wear the fake smile. "Great."

You reach Natasha's car, and she quickly whips out her car keys.

"Oh, we're riding together?" Carol exclaims with disgust.

"Yeah, saves energy," Natasha exclaims as she checks her phone.

"I call shotgun!" You counter, trying to do anything to get away from Carol.

"No shotgun. I think it would be nice for the two of you to bond. I wish it was in a bedroom, but a car will do." Natasha says, still looking down at her phone.

"What was that?" You asked, hoping that you didn't hear what you thought you heard.

"No shotgun, window's broken." She replies, opening the door.

You and Carol squeeze into the back seat. It wasn't a tight fit, by any means; but anywhere that isn't 50 feet apart from her is hell on earth. How was she so fucking pretty.

Every time your skin brushed together you shot up as if you had just touched a shock wire. The glares passed between the two of you could freeze even the darkest parts of hell.

As you were getting out of the car, you slammed the door in Carol's face. She opening it, and it was obvious she was pissed.

"Oh come on, you're a fucking superhero, if you're afraid of a car door then you're in the wrong line of work."

She doesn't respond to you and instead flashes you one of her infamous fake smiles.

The Chili's is cozy, with only 15 or so booths, less than 5 of them preoccupied. The hostess kindly led you to a booth, in the corner of the room. You slide into the booth first, and your shoulder pushed against the plastic wallpaper when you moved into your seat.

Carol takes her position in the seat in front of you. Natasha doesn't sit down.

She makes deadly eye contact with you as she pulls her phone out from inside her pocket. "Oh look, I just got a text message." She exclaims, not breaking eye contact.

Natasha quickly flashes you the screen of her phone, showing that in fact, she had not gotten a message. "I have to go. Emergency."

"Are you sure." You say, yet again feigning a smile.

"I'm positive, there's an emergency at work."

Carol attempts to get up and join Natasha before Nat gives Carol a disapproving glance.

"There's always going to be an emergency, but there isn't always going to be lunch." You say, cocking your head and putting on a smirk.

"No," Natasha says. And smiles at the two of you. "Have fun."

You flip her the bird, and without even turning around she returns the favor.

"This is going to be fine." You say.

"Yep," Carol responds, popping the p.

The two of you study the menu for a couple more minutes.

You begin to notice that whenever you adjust yourself Carol does the same, and you do as well, subconsciously.

The waitress walks up to you and politely introduces herself. She asked you what you wanted and, without skipping a beat, you ordered yourself the best thing on the menu, and Carol the worst. She looked as if she was going to protest, but at that point, the waitress had walked away. And all you did was sit there and smirk.

The tension in the room was not sexual. The hatred you felt in your heart for her and the simultaneous need to kiss her and have her kiss you back was not sexual, in any way shape or form.

"So." You promptly exclaimed, in the most positive voice that you could muster.

"Yes," Carol responded, deadlocking her eyes onto yours.

The longer you stared into her eyes the more love you felt. You lost yourself in the depths of her eyes as if you were Alice just entering wonderland. The smile lines surrounding her lips were faded and it seemed as if she hadn't cracked a grin in decades. Her fair hair fell into her eyes, and she quickly brushed it out of the way with one unmanicured finger.

"Why the fuck are we doing this?" She asks, avoiding your gaze.

"What do you mean?" You counter, plastering on another one of your on-brand fake smiles.

"Forcing ourselves to sit in this hell-ish place just for the courtesy of Natasha."

You tilt your head slightly and regain eye contact, "oh, so you want to leave?" You politely ask, knowing all to well the stir that you would get from Nat if you left now.

"No, of course not." She said, rolling her eyes. "But, why would she ever think that I would ever want to be around you for longer than the 5 seconds that are already peeling off my eyes."

"It's nice to see how kind you are to the people around you." You respond, attempting to be as harmful as she was even though you were internally hurt.

"But now that you mention it, I'm realizing how shitty it is that I have to engage in conversation with someone as horrible as you." You winced, and you were positive that she didn't notice either, because she was doing the same.

"What are your powers then, fixing computers?" She mocked you with a smile "oh, the world is ending. Look, someone to get rid of a faulty line on my phone."

"Oh yeah, I forgot that you were a dinosaur. I'm sorry, we don't use phones bolted to the wall in national security." You exclaimed. You wouldn't usually be so harsh, but her words were causing you to lash out.

"At least I can hold up in a fistfight." She said, putting on another mask of a hollow smile.

"I can hold up in a fistfight just fine, but can you hold up with a speakerphone button on an iPhone?" Ah yes, another hollow shot at her prehistoric days.

"You know, for someone how talks all this talk, I'm shocked that you can't actually do anything. Oh wait, I'm not. Sorry, Princess, you're all bark and no bite."

"Excuse me, I forget I was talking to someone who flies around in a space-suit and mohawk." Yet again another fake smile.

The two of you continued to bicker for another few minutes until the waitress comes over with your food.

"I can't believe that you would do such an ignorant f-"

"Hi, I have your food." A woman with a positive attitude and a braid crown places your meals in front of you.

You quickly stopped your argument and the both of you put on yet another fake smile to make it seem like you weren't two seconds away from causing an avengers level threat.

"Thank you so much."

"Really, we really appreciate it."

The second the woman walked away you were back at each other's throats.

But, somehow, Carol was still gorgeous all the while she was yelling at you and eating a shrimp on top of a salad drenched in vinegar.

"Seriously, you're so incompetent." You quickly burst out when she notices you staring.

"Maybe you wouldn't worry so much about me if you were actually doing your job." She responds, rolling her eyes.

"I am sweetie; I'm just good enough at it to be able to pay attention to your uselessness."

"You're too kind." She exclaims as she reaches for a napkin that you quickly pull away from her.

"What I find especially depressing about you is that you will never grow. You're the same person. You're stuck in a box. You will never be better than what you are now. And what you are is shitty." She looks up at you, " Princess ."

You pull back from your meal in shock. You couldn't believe that she had said something like that to you. It pointed out everything you had ever worried about yourself.

"I can't believe you. Why are you so relentlessly horrible to me? What have I done to you? I get when you take cheap shots. I take cheap shots all the time. I don't hate you. Why do you hate me?! I don't hate you! I love you!"

Carol freezes up. Everyone in Chili's looks at you. You were screaming. And you had just told Carol you loved her. You told her you loved her. You loved her.

"What?" She says in a meek voice.

"I'm so sorry Carol, I was just-" She kisses you.

Carol kisses you.

Carol puts her lips on yours and kisses you.

And you kiss you back.

She's leaning over the table and knocked both your plates off the table and knocked you drinks over. You feel the liquid on your knees as you climb onto the table and place yourself on top of it. You kiss and you kiss until the rest of the world is null and void.

You only pull away for air, and when you're doing so Carol whispers a careful "I'm sorry."

You keep on kissing and kissing.

"I love you, I love you, I'm sorry, I love you." Muttered between you.

You finally pull away and stare into each other's eyes for a minute, basking in the beauty of her blue orbs.

"I feel god in this Chili's tonight." You breathlessly exclaim.

She laughs a beautiful, glorious laugh, and then leans in to kiss you again.

~Requests are open~

New fics out most Saturdays (check on Masterlist or bio in case the day changes) 💜💜💜💜

~Taglists are open~

Permanent Tags: @natasha-danvers

Marvel:

TUA:

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rhodeys · 4 years

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Loki’s Æsir glamour

I finally found the scan I mentioned a little while back, about Odin being responsible for Loki’s glamour.

So yeah, I take this to mean that Loki can’t actually change forms at will. I do wonder if the “reverts to his birth form when touching frost giants or their relics” thing is triggered by the exposure to extreme cold or is more of a… idk, genetic reaction, I guess?

#loki #marvel #character profile

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imperiuswrecked · 3 years

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To me, it doesn’t make sense to make Magneto the main villain because it has been done so much before and it would connect it so much to the Fox Films. Also I think there is a GREAT laziness in writing Magneto especially in films. He generally didn’t want to kill all humans, subjugate them yes because he doesn’t trust them. Which isn’t a ‘good guy’ move in itself and he slips in and out of.

He legit murdered genocide I think when he was going to kill all humans. Like no.

I also think that the average cinema goer likes Magneto too much… or maybe that is me. It would also require them to recast the most famous faces of the franchises?

Like is anyone going to care if they recast Jean, Scott, Iceman, Rogue, Kitty, Beast even Mystique but Magneto? I don’t know. I have long been a fan of an actual Jewish actor playing Magneto but following Ian McKellan would be difficult for the casual fans to accept. I don’t think Fassbender left such an amazing impression.

Even my most average MCU fans friends (and god they love the MCU 😤 but I see past it) still talk about how much they want to see a Magneto solo film.

To me I would put the focus on their reveal and sentinels. Then again I thought they’ll go through Krakoa stuff. Like it turns out the mutants have been living on this Island etc

With the ‘simpler times’ comment I have to for the sake of my sanity have to think that it was because Pietro knew where he was. Things were clear to him, as much as it hurt he had his sister. The following trauma had not occurred. Again I don’t think this is true but I am trying to reason bad writing. He didn’t doubt his morality but was indebted and controlled. Shitty actions were out of his control.

I don’t read Avengers so I didn’t know he was shelved for so long.

I think the Trial of Magneto is trying to ride on the coattails of Wandavision because even though she’s not a mutant a lot of the internet was wanting Magneto to show up. So what is the best way to get those fans who wanted to see that? Set up a family comic book where they establish the family again because I guess the MCU fans heard they’ve changed their background and themselves didn’t like it.

I see the Trial of Magneto as something poorly thought out as they saw what the audience was interested in. The timeline kind of clashes uncomfortably with Inferno. Which makes me think it was wedged in there to ride the Wandavision train and undo the retcon on the side of the main storyline.

Thank you for reading my essay/rant

Ok so I'm going to first say you have a lot of great thoughts and great on picking up the whole forced feeling. You are right, it does feel wedged in there and it does feel forced because that's exactly what Marvel did.

The Trial of Magneto was supposed to be an X-Factor plot, it was Leah Williams next arc, here's an article link talking about her podcast: link (yes I know it's bleeding cool but I don't have time to listen to the podcast)

Leah Williams tells us that X-Factor was canceled because Leah's pitch for the Magneto/Wanda story for X-Factor, now called Trial Of Magneto, became such a popular pitch at Marvel but they thought the reader numbers for X-Factor wasn't big enough for this story, so they wanted it as a separate comic. And canceled X-Factor #10 rather than seeing it run as originally planned, with the Trial beginning in X-Factor #15. Williams says she only learned about the cancellation of X-Factor when she was writing #9, so as she had to finish the series quickly, squeezing six issues worth of story into those last two issues, calling it "cramped and rushed".

So I'm not a fan of Leah but the way Marvel treats it's writers has always been terrible so this cancellation doesn't surprise me. Could this be about W*ndaVision? It's likely, but it's more likely this has to do with Hickman bowing out. It's no secret literally everyone hated the retcon and I always knew it would be undone but I didn't think it would take 6 years but here we are.

Hickman leaving is a bigger thing, he stated in an interview ( link ) that he had planned Krakoa and X-Men to be a 3 arc story, and he wasn't allowed to move onto the 2nd arc because the clowns at Marvel liked the idea of Krakoa too much and I'm so mad because that's exactly the kinda behavior that annoys me with the fans, them thinking Krakoa is just a fun playground for the mutants to mess around with.

"Oh, plans have changed entirely," Hickman says. "When I pitched the X-Men story I wanted to do, I pitched a very big, very broad, three-act, three-event narrative, the first of which was House of X. And while this loosely worked as a three-year plan, I told Marvel upfront that I honestly had no idea how long the first part would last because there were a lot of interesting ideas that I had seeded that other creators would want to play with, and so, we left this rather open-ended. I was also pretty clear with all the writers that came into the office what the initial, three-act plan was so no one would be surprised when it was time for the line to pivot." Hickman continues, "However, I also knew that I was cooking with dynamite, and it was very possible that what I had written in House of X, and the ideas contained within, was not actually the first act of a three-act story, but something that resonated more deeply and worked more like Giant-Size X-Men, where it would represent a paradigm shift in the entire X-Men line for a prolonged period of time. So, during the pandemic, when the time came for me to start pointing things toward writing the second-act event, I asked everyone if they were ready for me to do that, and to a man, everyone wanted to stay in the first act. It was really interesting, because I appreciated that House of X resonated with them to the extent that they didn't want it to end, but the reality was that I knew I would be leaving the line early."

I'm so MAD because the thing I was predicting, that Hickman would have it come crashing down and everything would be revealed to be terrible and Mutant Death Sex Cult Island wasn't a paradise is never going to happen because the fucking CLOWNS at Marvel don't want him to move past it. I may have my personal gripes about some of Hickman's writing but we can't deny the man wrote one of the best if only the best Marvel Event with Fantastic Four/Avengers/Secret War.

As for the simpler times comment, like I have my theories that I wrote out here, and that's what I think is most likely but I do think Pietro's life has never been easy or simple once his adoptive parents died. Pietro could be drinking to a time before the Brotherhood.

I would love for a Jewish actor to play Magneto and any other characters who are Jewish. I would love for a Jewish writer to be able to write them too. However Ian's performance literally set him in the minds of the people as Magneto, not even Fassbender's bleh one note Magneto could compare. Imo the only reason people liked the younger Magneto was because he was young, handsome (? ig idk i dont simp for him) and they could ship him with young professor X (cowards. where is the old man ship???) But I feel like a new actor could definitely fill the role if they are Jewish and the writing was good.

Magneto's writing in comics... well I just wish we could have a Jewish writer for him. There's some great stuff for him but I feel like characters like him and Doom could be written better by non white/american writers.

Although by today's standards the og X-Men trilogy doesn't hold up I will defend the first two movies with my life simply because after Blade these movies opened up the idea that a good serious, non campy version where characters called Magneto and Cyclops were taken seriously. X2 in my mind was the definitive X-Men movie. Was it totally comic accurate? No, but it doesn't do what the MCU does, it doesn't treat the watcher like they need to have their hand held through all the military propaganda and "hints to the comics". Also side note; the reason no one cared about any of the other X-Men being recast is because all through most of the X-Men movies the focal story point has been Professor X vs Magneto. If they really want people to care about those characters/actors then we would need stories that focused on them. Not like how Storm barely had any character growth or plot in the og X-Men and even young Ororo got mishandled by the script. This is why I feel we should have "origin movies" for the X-Men that don't do what Wolverine Origins did and try to make a whole new cast but instead should use the stories as they are. If it was Kurt's story then we would see him join the X-Men, and have the other actors revolve around that. Same with each of the others, the X-Men work best when they are working off each other and each given enough screen/page time to shine. Unfortunately we all have our favorites, even movies and writers, so those are who are going to be pushed for fans to love.

Thank you for your long rant and sorry for my own long rant/reply.

#xmen #x men #comic talk #xmcu #magneto #erik lensherr #imp answers

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sooibian · 3 years

Text

IRS and Prejudice

Pairing: CEO!Minseok x fem!employee Reader

Genre / Themes: Fluff!!! Frenemies to (maybe) Lovers? Office AU with some references to ‘The Office’, flirtatious, cat-whisperer, Aries Minseok vs Aries reader!

Description: In which Kim Minseok is nothing like other bosses. Nothing.

A/N: happy birthday to mochi ari! @his-mochi-cheeks 💗

Word count: 2.7k (written in a state of delirium eeeek)

You quickly hit Alt+Tab on the resume that you sat updating for the umpteenth time as the sound of heels click-clacking against the floor grew closer.

“My office,” said your immediate supervisor the moment you looked up at her, a well practised unfazed expression crossing your face. If switching between applications at lighting speed were an Olympic sport, you were certain you’d score nothing less than a gold medal. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you had a niggling doubt about having been caught in the act.

You gave her a slight nod in response, lips stretched into a thin line. Smoothing out the wrinkles in your red and black plaid shirt (the one you wore on most casual Fridays since you could hardly be bothered with your appearance at work; despite the feminist within you, the dull back office team discouraged you from making the effort), you followed her into her office with your best businesslike gait while your mind made up a million excuses for what her keen eyes might have found on your 24-inch screen.

“Sit,” the middle aged woman commanded, resting her hands on her hips. Leaning against her teakwood desk, she crossed her legs at the ankles, pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, and cleared her throat. It’s how she’d fidget when she was on the edge about something.

You imagined your expression if a camera was to pan to you, cinéma vérité. Indulging your curiosity, you shrugged your shoulders with a confused look on .your face

“Everything okay?” You mustered in your best Pam Beesly impression.

Your supervisor let out a deep sigh and answered your question with a more awkward one, "When was the last time you submitted cash reports to the IRS?”

You froze into a still frame.

One of the major reasons you wanted to change jobs was because innumerable responsibilities that were entirely unrelated to your department had been carelessly plonked upon your shoulders. Submitting monthly cash reports to the IRS should have ideally been a task of the receivables department and not shifted onto someone incharge of warranties.

“I - I - ,” you started by trying to justify your negligence before even attempting to answer her question but honestly, you didn’t even want to think about when you last submitted those reports and there was absolutely nothing you could say in your defense.

You’d messed up. Big time.

“Ten months. Ten months is not a small amount in penalties,” she said in her quietest tone as you struggled to fight back angry tears. You’d been with the company for over six years now but it was the first time you’d been accused of laxity. It felt like a punch in the gut.

She turned on her heel to take her seat - movements deliberately slow, allowing you some time to regain your composure. With her eyes on her phone, she leaned back in her chair and said with a sense of finality in her voice, “You know what you have to do.”

Head hung low and eyes lined with tears, you walked out of her office muttering all the things you didn’t say in your defense. The long and short of it was that this duty should’ve never fallen into your lap in the first place. As you paced in the direction of your cubicle (with twenty sets of curious eyes on your back), a pair of hands suddenly gripped your shoulders and a dulcet voice sang, “Careful, Warranties.”

At this point, you were ready to rip your hair out. Looking up you met CEO Minseok Kim’s bright, catlike eyes as he stood at a hair’s breadth distance from you, smelling of expensive cologne - the kind that was equivalent to several months of your salary, and coffee. He always smelled like coffee and in your opinion that was his only redeeming quality.

His handsome face that every woman and man in the office fawned over was a source of your annoyance - you didn’t care for cocksure people at all and he was the uncrowned king of arrogance. He took over the reins of a used car dealership from his father upon his retirement - it was nothing too fancy - yet he enjoyed strutting around the office as if he managed a multinational conglomerate.

It was his younger sister that did the real work. She managed the more important businesses while Minseok had been handed the responsibility of just one company and from your (and the Sales Team Lead Baekhyun's) standpoint, he wasn’t doing a marvellous job at it.

Your Aries energy didn’t permit you to apologize for nearly butting heads with him so you feigned a polite smile and side-stepped to your right and he simultaneously side-stepped to his left, his every little wrong move bolstering your frustration level. It happened again and again and again until he bowed ever so slightly, stretched his arm out and said, “Please,” gesturing for you to leave first, the corners of his mouth curled up in a wide, gummy grin.

What was he so happy about all the time?

“Thanks,” you mumbled and he winked at you in response. You immediately made a mental note to find out if you could report the CEO for improper behaviour. You had a full-blown list that started with his attire - should a CEO be allowed to dress in hoodies, skinny jeans, and comfortable sneakers while the rest of you suffocated in the restraints of formal clothing for four days of the week?

Huffing, you slumped in your chair and texted your aunt informing that you wouldn’t make it to barbecue night and immediately flipped your phone to silent to avoid seeing her colourful messages berating you for the last minute cancellation.

Next, you aggressively typed ‘IRS CASH STATEMENTS’ in big block letters into the sticky notes app as a reminder of the humiliation you experienced today.

***

When you last checked time, it was noon.

The sun had long gone down since then as you tried to wrangle customers’ social security numbers out of the ever-so-reticent-to-share-information receivables department who were all packing up for the day. You were this close to socking them in the jaw but you still maintained a courteous smile and pleaded with them throwing in tonnes of cringey corporate jargon, “Please, I just have three more reports to go and I’d really appreciate your prompt help with the information.”

Suddenly, a familiar cheery voice fell upon your ears, “What’s going on?”

You were surprised to find Minseok still in the office but also extremely grateful for his presence because his single sideway glance at Angela achieved what your five emails and three verbal requests failed to.

Furiously typing away on her keyboard, she said through gritted teeth, “I’ve sent them over.”

Minseok gave you a casual two-finger salute and nearly went skipping back to his ...no, not his but to your immediate supervisor’s now empty, glass-paned office - where you could see him directly and he you - the three walls of your cubicle doing nothing to keep you out of the periphery of his blatant staring and his trademark cheeky grin that lit up his ridiculously handsome face.

Shifting uncomfortably in your seat you returned his smile but not with your eyes. You hated the effect he had on you - making you, a grown woman, blush like a schoolgirl under his self-assured gaze. Minseok was nothing like a CEO - he dressed casually, talked to anyone and everyone like he’s known them forever. He’d come into work regularly after prolonged dry spells only to disappear again. His laidback attitude did no favours to your opinion about him.

To pointedly avoid Minseok you put your head down on your desk on the pretext of catching a little break.

… big mistake.

***

You woke up with a start to the soothing and inviting aroma of... home. Opening your eyes to cinnamon bread drizzled with cream cheese on your desk felt like a fever dream until Minseok rolled his chair forward in your direction and you instinctively backpedaled. Clutching his stomach he broke into a vast roar of laughter while offering you a paper napkin with his other hand.

Brows furrowed, you stared at him quizzically as sleep continued to irritate your eyes and the mark of the ballpoint pen you fell asleep on, niggled at your cheek. Hesitantly, you took the napkin from his hand and dabbed it around your eyes and he shook his head in response, pointing to the annoying curled up corner of his own mouth.

“You were drooling,” he guffawed, his eyes twinkling with mischief. Upon noticing that you immediately grew conscious about your appearance, he waved his hands frantically and added, “It’s no problem… I drool too, haha..in fact it’s ...umm..”

You glowered at him and he instantly looked away allowing you to fix your face as his fingers impatiently drummed away on your desk.

The clock struck 7:53 p.m.

Your last meal had been sometime before noon. Under normal circumstances, you would’ve been grateful for the little snack Minseok had brought you - it was an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture from someone like him but you’d been expecting your period in a week’s time which made you unusually ravenous.

Lips pursed and head tilted to the side, he handed you a bottle of water which you gulped down within a matter of seconds while steadily growing wary of your ultimate boss’ intentions. But you pivoted your attention to prioritizing. First, you’d wolf down the delicious cinnamon bread and then think about whether you were going to walk out of this office on your own two feet or as a human-skin suit on Minseok’s well defined back.

“Thank you for the snack,” you said to him with a forced smile, “I’ll get back to my reports now.” As you swivelled your chair to face the monitor, his hand hooked at the armrest and he spun you back around towards himself.

“What’s the rush, Warranties?” Resting his chin in his hand, he wondered with a quirked brow and a smile teasing the edges of his plump mouth.

It was not your place to ask what your boss was doing in his own office at 8 p.m. on a Friday night, especially one that hardly ever came in to begin with. He could clock in and out at his own whim and sit wherever he liked even if it meant being an utter inconvenience to someone on a stringent deadline but you took your shot anyway. Doing nothing to mask the sarcasm in your tone, you said to him, “Minseok, if you came into work everyday, you wouldn’t have to stay back so late, you know.”

Unfazed, he responded, “But my schedule doesn’t allow me to come into work everyday.”

Schedule?

You decided not to stretch this conversation longer than necessary, especially not after his ridiculous response. Drawing in a deep breath, you said, “I just have five reports left to finish, Minseok. Maybe we can talk later.”

“I run an organization involved in wildlife rights and care,” he explained anyway, rummaging the pockets of his jeans.

No shit, you scoffed. If only Minseok Kim could get any more predictable. A not-for-profit organization was every rich kids guide...no facade...no scam.. to make it seem like they actually did something.

Handing you a card, he continued, “It requires me to travel extensively - last month I was in a park in South America, working with this one puma, Elsa. She was a cage cat who got so used to the confines that she wouldn’t come out of the cage for walks in the jungle because she didn’t like anyone touching her collar, so we couldn’t attach a rope to walk with her. But, I think I’m somewhat of a genius and a cat-whisperer. Within three to four weeks, we managed to get her out of the cage.”

He pulled his phone out next, brought his chair closer to yours and started swiping through the picture gallery to show you a magnificent puma walking around the park as if she were its reigning queen. He resumed the story proudly, “Now she walks every single day, without a rope around her neck. And she’s very, very loving and affectionate.” His face lit up with awe and admiration for Elsa.

Probably you'd misunderstood Minseok…just a little. His passion about his organization did something to favourably change your opinion about him but that didn't mean you didn't have your immediate supervisor and the IRS to answer to anymore.

"Why are you telling me all this?" You asked, covertly moving closer to your workstation.

"We have a vacant position in Treasury." He answered and you immediately stopped dead in your tracks.

Mouth agape, you exclaimed, "You did not just try to poach me from your own company! Minseok you don't cease to surprise me -"

With a smirk on his face, he gave you finger guns. "That’s always been the goal, Warranties!"

"I still have five-

"Three..you have only three reports left. How stupid do you think I am?”

Caught in a lie, you could do nothing to save face so you simply pivoted your chair only to be forcefully twirled back by his strong arms again.

“Now what?" You asked, letting out a groan.

With his foot on one leg of the chair base, he pushed you back towards your desktop and said with a voice laced heavily with his trademark sass, "Check your inbox first."

Grumbling under your breath, you said something along the lines of ‘what does a CEO do anyway’. You then refreshed your inbox, impatiently waiting for an email of several MBs to load as Minseok watched you with an expression of victory painted across his features.

Your mouth fell open to find perfect to the t cash reports for the last three months which made you instantly regret your snide remarks.

Minseok snapped you out of your reverie with his smooth voice, “I may not know much of what a corporate CEO is supposed to do but I do how to get work done. Angela was more than happy to do this for a ‘team leader’ nameplate on her desk.”

Struggling to hold his compelling gaze, you muttered, “I don’t know how to thank you...”

“But I do!” He quipped.

“Of course, you do,” you sighed.

“Let me join you for barbeque night at your aunt’s..i’m sure they won’t mind you bringing a friend along?”

Before you could begin looking for a bug in your cubicle, he explained, “I caught a preview of her message on your phone while you were happily tucked away in dreamland.”

“You - you - that’s an invasion of privacy!” You lambasted him.

Stifling a yawn, he leaned back in his chair and said casually, “I was bored. Besides, privacy is a myth in today’s day and age...just like democracy, the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day, the goldfish memory, or the thing about houseflies -”

“Okay, okay! I get it! Privacy is a myth. You - you can join us, I guess,” you interrupted him.

With widened eyes he emphasized, “Unless you don’t want me to -”

No matter how much and how often Minseok irked you, he was a charmer. You knew your aunt and your cousins would love having someone like him join in the get together and it really wouldn’t hurt your reputation to bring your boss, especially one like Minseok, along at a family event. You also couldn’t deny the excitement bubbling in your belly at the prospects of working in an NPO’s treasury department.

“You know that’s not what I meant -” You replied, eyes on the monitor as you double checked the email you’d drafted for your immediate supervisor.

“So you want me to come along?” He asked in his flamboyantly flirtatious tone.

Ignoring him, you hit send only after adding a little smiling emoji. Shutting down your system, you picked up your coat and answered with a genuine smile this time, “I’m driving.”

************

A/N: the story about puma Elsa is real! i’ll link it in one of the rb’s for those interested :)

#exosnet #exowritersnet #exo fanfic #minseok fanfic #xiumin fanfic #xiumin fluff #exo fluff #minseok fluff #exo oneshot #minseok oneshots #xiumin oneshots #xiumin scenario #exo scenarios #exo x reader #minseok x you #exo x read #xiumin x reader #minseok x reader #xiumin x you

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jaedore · 4 years

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BINDING BONDS | 7

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parings: jung jaehyun x reader

genre: ceo!au, arranged marriage!au, angst, consumption of alcohol, asshole/player Jaehyun, swearing, smut

[ ☾ smut (suggestive, slight somnophilia ) | ◇ angst | ☼ fluff ]

note: BB deals with themes of mental and physical abuse, which can be upsetting for some readers. If you feel uncomfortable reading these types of plots, you are advised to not continue

[ 6.6 k words ]

“I know, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m in love with you.” he thinned his lips, showing his deep sets of dimples.

He’s in love with me, you gulped, your throat restricted any words from coming out, so you just gaped at him. You wanted to say something, but your heart knew it wasn’t the right time to do so.

Seeing your nervous state, Jaehyun interrupted your thoughts, “you don’t have to say anything,” he smiled gently, grazing his hand against yours in hopes that gesture was okay, “come on, let’s eat before the food gets cold.” he pulled out a chair for you and you slowly nod as you sit.

Despite you not returning the words, Jaehyun was okay, he wasn’t pressuring you. He just wanted to express his feelings and it was okay if you weren’t there yet because he knew there were so many wrong things in the past he did to you. Every time he’d see just a glint of sadness in your eyes, he hoped that it wasn’t his doing. Every time he’d see a glint of frustration in your eyes, he hoped that it wasn’t because of him. He only wanted to give you love and laughter.

Jaehyun watched you quickly finish a pancake and timidly reach for another with a huge smile plastered on your face. Chuckling at your youthful behavior he asked, “is it good?”

“Oh, yeah,” you gulped, “so good,” you sent him a thumbs up before continuing to dive into the pancake.

“So, I was thinking…” Jaehyun hesitated. You looked up at him, your head still held itself down but your eyes averted to him. Hesitation held his eyes as you stared at him with curiosity wondering what was in that mind of his, “do you want to grab dinner tonight? Or is it too soon?”

Swallowing a bite, “-not at all, we can grab dinner,” you smiled, then turned your attention back to eating.

The silent beat of the music drowned in silence of you two eating, nothing awkward, no tension but only the comfortable presence of each other. Once in awhile, you’d look up to see Jaehyun watching you and you could feel your cheeks heating up from the expression that was happily painted on his face. He thought you looked so beautiful in the morning, your thin t-shirt sliding down your shoulder displaying some skin where the sun hit, making it look illuminated. While you finally decided to put your disheveled hair up to avoid getting in your way and how the morning swole from your face hasn’t faded yet. You were so adorable, yet so alluring to him that he couldn’t even eat.

“Why do you keep looking at me?” You scoffed, lowering your face to hide it from his stare, “do I have something on my face?” you ran your hand across your mouth.

“No,” Jaehyun chuckled, his head bobbing from the vibration of his giggling, “you just look so cute in the morning.”

“Stop,” a tint of whining coated your pleading, “I look a mess,” you turned to run up to the sink and set your plate down, then back to the table to clean up hastily. You wanted to avoid Jaehyun’s gaze even longer, afraid that he’d see how much of a mess you actually were in the morning. That, plus you were never good with compliments, so you didn’t want him to see your blushed out face.

Frantically, you nimbly set the empty plates into the sink as gently as you could, careful not to break any, but when you turned around, Jaehyun’s body stood before you. You gasp from the close proximity, if he took one more step and lowered himself to your level, he’d be close enough to kiss you. The feeling of his lips still leaves a tingling feeling to yours, remembering his warm lips envelop yours, the way his tongue- Stop, y/n.

“W-what are you doing?” You whispered, eyes following his towering figure.

Jaehyun bent down, reaching your eyes, I’m just seeing how much I can make you blush. The innocence your eyes held was definitely a 180 from the other night at his house, but at this moment, those eyes he adored grasped tenderness. He couldn’t help but mentally gush at you, “nothing-” Jaehyun paused, “-angel.”

Your eyes widen in embarrassment from the nickname. He called you that the other night when you two were back at his place when things got steamy. Remembering it roll from his lips didn’t help you calm down, “Jaehyun, what do you think you’re doing now?” you did your best to put on an unbothered facade while raising a brow, “acting all cocky just because I slept with you last night,” you gently pushed him away.

As you walked away, a smirk painted your face as you could hear Jaehyun’s chuckle. You playfully rolled your eyes when the click of his tongue traveled to your ears, afraid you were giving him too much pride.

Since it was the weekend, you didn’t have any plans. You wanted to use this weekend as an opportunity to spend it with Jaehyun, maybe you could get closer to him and get to know a little more about who he was under that cocky attitude and sometimes- but not usually now- cold front.

You peered at your figure in the mirror, scrunching your nose at yourself. You didn’t look pleasing at all, messy hair, baggy clothes, opposite from how he’d usually see you. Maybe I should change into something...cuter? You thought to yourself, but you convinced yourself there was no point in impressing him. We’re engaged. This is what he gets. You smile as you shut the door to your room.

You walked downstairs, meeting Jaehyun who sat on the couch scrolling through his phone. Appearing in the corner of his eyes, he watched as you crouched down in front of the tv drawers looking for a movie and smiled when you fell to the ground, defeated that there weren’t any good ones.

“Do you want to have a movie marathon with me?” You asked, grabbing the remote. It’d be nice if he wanted to stay and watch with you, but he wasn’t obligated to. You just really wanted him to.

“Yeah! What did you have in mind?” Jaehyun asked, sneakily snatching the blanket that hung on off the middle of the couch for the both of you.

“Hmm,” you mindlessly hum as you browse through the movies, “oh! Can we watch all of the Marvel movies in chronicle order?” you beamed.

“Of course, I’ll go get the popcorn and snacks ready.”

You lay the large blanket on top of you, noticing that there was only one. Uh...so we’re gonna share? Your mind wandered off to different ways this could end, but as Jaehyun came back with the bowl filled with buttered popcorn and a couple of drinks in his hand, the thought evaporated into there air. For he looked so lovely, so fully of content and affection, while those loving dimples of his appeared.

“You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Heh, something like that,” you forced a short chuckle, your gaze shifting away from him.

The first movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, played on the screen. It was easier for you to pay attention since Captain America was your favorite. Jaehyun on the other hand didn’t, he’s already seen the movie several times so he gave you his attention instead. Your eyes beamed whenever Captain Rogers showed up on the screen, making you look like a little girl who waited for her cotton candy being made.

You snapped your head to Jaehyun, he sat slightly surprised, “stop looking at me and watch the movie!” you laugh grabbing his chin and turning it towards the tv.

The movies went through like a breeze, you’ve watched all the movies before but never in chronological order, everything made sense now. Until Thor was turned on. You could feel you beginning to feel sleepy, your brain tired from trying to put all the puzzle pieces together, and your eyelids began to feel heavy.

From his peripheral vision, Jaehyun could see your head bobbing time to time as you fell asleep but rapidly shaking it to stay awake. You failed each time. Not being able to help it but laugh, Jaehyun wrapped his hand around your left cheek while the other grabbed your shoulder to assist you. Without disturbing your sleep, he managed to set your head onto his lap.

Jaehyun enjoyed the movie but he liked the view below him more, you were laying on his lap and had peacefully fallen asleep. You two were supposed to go to dinner, but he canceled the reservation, for this was much better. He combed his fingers through your hair, the strands filling the space between his fingers. He always admired the way you looked when you slept, he thought that you looked like a literal angel. Your lashes spreading among the hill of your cheeks, your lips trembling every once in a while, and the cute end of your nose all integrating themselves making you look like the most perfect, precious person he’s ever laid eyes on. He couldn’t resist laying a gentle kiss on your temple, seeing you slightly move.

By the end of the movie, the loud music at the end credits scared you awake. You open your eyes to see the tv screen playing sideways, huh? You blinked, trying to rub your blurred vision away as you groggily sat up, the blankets falling to your sides. Turns out, you fell asleep on Jaehyun’s lap while he eventually did too, his head resting back onto the edge of the couch.

“Jaehyun,” you gently shook him, “Jaehyun”, you did it again but he didn’t budge, so you caressed his cheek with your warm hand, “Jae.”

Jaehyun finally hummed awake, a smile glazing over his pink lips as he leaned into your touch.

“We missed dinner.”

“That’s okay, I canceled our reservations,” Jaehyun sat up straight to stretch, “this was much better.” a yawn escaped from his throat, “let’s go to bed?”

You nodded, turning off the tv. Jaehyun sat before you with open arms and you wrapped yourself around him like you were a koala and he was your tree, giving you the comfort your body desired. You could feel your heart almost leaping, especially when you felt his beating against your chest.

Jaehyun gently sets you onto his bed, changing into his pajamas before climbing beside you. With closed eyes, your arms wrapped around him like you already knew his body. His arms shielded your body from the cold air and you both fell asleep quietly until he heard the gurgling in your stomach.

Jaehyun chuckled, the noise interrupting the solace of the night, “you hungry?” his sleepy voice asked.

“No,” you pulled yourself closer to his chest, “just wanna be with you,” you mumbled, sleepiness in your voice.

Jaehyun kissed the top of your head before finally dozing off, soft breaths filling the air in his room, and the scent of you fragmenting the air.

“Good morning,” you smiled up to already see Jaehyun gazing down at you.

“Hi,” he smiled back, eyes shaped like the crescent moon.

“How long have you been awake?” You yawned.

“Long enough to watch you snore.”

“I don’t snore,” you gently hit his arm, peeling yourself from his grasps.

“Hey-” Jaehyun dragged, pulling back into his chest, “let’s just stay like this for a bit.”

“Fine, five minutes only because I’m hungry.” your morning voice was muffled against the cotton t-shirt that laid on his chest.

“Hm?” Jaehyun pulled back to peer at you, “but last night you said that you weren’t hungry. And that you wanted to only be with me,” Jaehyun wriggled his brows, being too suggestive.

“Okay-” you push onto his sturdy chest to lift yourself, “your five minutes is up.”

“No, no, no. I was just teasing, come here,” he opened his arms to you, begging for you to come back onto his warm body.

You found it hard to resist him, so you complied and fell back into his chest, his arms finding their place around your body. You inhaled the shirt that met your nose, the clean wood smell you’ve grown to love. You’ve grown to find the little part of your heart realizing there were a lot of things you loved. Time by time, you knew Jaehyun was genuinely trying, that he has honest feelings for you and you didn’t need his words to show that. You could just tell from his actions, the warmth in his touch, the adoration in his eyes whenever he looked at you, and his yearning for you. Maybe this time you could finally let him in, let him into the heart you’ve done an awfully good job at caging and protecting.

Jaehyun gently pressed his lips on the top of your head, “what are you thinking about?”

“I-that we missed dinner last night,” you quickly rambled, the thought rolling from your tongue. You didn’t want to say it to him yet, you wanted to wait until you were ready.

“Oh, well if you want, we could go but I thought that we could make dinner together?” His voice rose in an octave, questioning if this was okay. To be honest, he didn’t know if any of this was okay. He definitely didn’t want to make you uncomfortable or feel pressured, so he doubted a lot of his actions, afraid that you’d reject him because of how he treated you in the beginning of all of this.

You hummed, completely satisfied with the idea of being home with Jaehyun and cooking dinner with him. You tightened your hold against him, bringing yourself close to him as possible, “I’d love that.” A smile appeared on Jaehyun’s lips, happy with your answer. He could just imagine how much fun he’d have with you tonight.

You two stayed in bed until the sun was steadily shining in the sky, basking in each other’s heat, bodies, presence. The time brought serenity to your heart and you could feel a smile spreading on your lips. When the clock read noon, Jaehyun figured that it’d be best for you two to finally get up and go to the grocery store.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” You called from his bed.

“Yeah, I don’t think there’d be a lot of people,” he answered from his bathroom.

“Let’s hope so.”

You should’ve stayed home, the anxiety of getting caught by the media planted itself in your bones. You couldn’t help but be paranoid and look left to right multiple times, while Jaehyun held your hand as he grabbed a basket.

“We’ll be fine,” he pressed a kiss to your temple, his free hand grabbing you by your waist to bring you closer to him.

“I know, I know,” you sighed, fumbling with the collar of your jacket.

While your nerves drove you to hastily grab what was needed for dinner, Jaehyun was particularly excited to cook with you. He couldn’t wait to spend quality time with you and only you, but he found it funny seeing you rush back and forth across the store. It made you look like a cartoon character as you sped here and there and dropped things in the cart as you passed him.

“Jaehyun, come help me. I can’t reach this,” you struggled to reach for the can of tomato sauce that sat on the top shelf. You both were going to make pasta tonight from scratch, including the noodles, so because you two sucked at grocery shopping, your kitchen pantry was currently bare and it forced you both to go shopping.

Jaehyun set an item in the cart before walking over to you, deeply sighing, “Only if you stop being so nervous.”

“I just don’t want to get caught,” you mumbled with your eyes on the ground.

Jaehyun stretched to the top shelf of sauces then lowered down, lifting your chin with his fingers and coming as close as possible, “and would it be so bad if we did get caught?” a grin plastered on his face.

“Tch,” you scoffed, pushing him away and walking towards the neglected cart.

That evening the kitchen was suffused with laughter, the soft music filling in the background, and the sizzling of the sauce that sat heated on the stove. You were rolling the dough for the noodles with Jaehyun by your side, while he was in charge of the sauce. With his hands crossed and his back leaning against the counter, he couldn’t help but watch you kneed it. Streaks of flour skimmed your face, Jaehyun found it amusing because you looked like you were struggling from all of your grunts and huffs.

“I can do that,” Jaehyun offered.

“No, I’ll do it! Just take care of the sauce.”

“Okay-” Jaehyun dipped a finger in a pile of flour, “-angel,” then quickly brushed it along your cheek.

“Jaehyun!” You whined, not being able to do anything since your hands were stuck in the dough. Even though you always reacted like you didn’t like being called that, you were lying. You love it so much, it’s like music through your ears. You love the nicknames that he gives you, it makes you feel all warm and your stomach jittery.

Hearing your strained breaths again, Jaehyun just chuckled on his way to stir the sauce. He shook his head, wondering if you were going to do anything back to get at him. As soon as he thought about it, you came to him, wrapping your arms around his waist. You sneakily swipe the flour on his cheek with one finger, getting back at him. Jaehyun shook his head, laughing because he thought too soon.

Jaehyun grabbed your wrist and spun you towards him, now his arms wrapping around your waist while yours found resort on his shoulders. He could see the slyness in your eyes when he looked into those eyes he adored, “don’t you dare.” A devious smile curved his lips, mischief gleaming in his eyes.

“Oh, in that case,” you used your other hand to swipe another on the same cheek, augmenting a pair of dimples. With the same finger, you pressed into the dimple. He looks so cute when he smiles. The familiar look of his whiskers appearing, harmonizing with his deep laughter. You couldn’t help but blush because of how handsome he looked.

You suddenly noticed Jaehyun closing the space between you two. You didn’t dare to move and even if you could, you didn’t want to. You wanted to kiss him, feel him, hold him. He began to get so close that you could feel the heat radiating from his towering body.

Slowly, Jaehyun closed the distance, his lips grazing yours in hesitation for what seemed forever. You admit, you were an impatient person, especially when it came to Jaehyun, which resulted in you tugging on his shirt, bringing him closer to your body, and crashing your lips against his. The kiss was fast, but full of starvation and wandering hands. You let out a quiet gasp when Jaehyun lifted you onto the counter, gripping your waist to hold you down. Letting your heart take control, you wrapped your legs around his waist, which he reacted by caressing your thighs, running those hands of his up and down, creating friction in your legs.

“Eager?” Jaehyun pulled away but was still close enough to touch the edges of your lips, sending shivers down your spine.

“Just shut up and kiss me,” you murmured, pulling him by the nape.

The kiss grew hungrier, clashing of tongue and teeth and the sound of both of your pants grew above the music. Jaehyun’s hands managed to sneak up into your shirt, grasping your waist, feeling your hot skin against his palms. His fingertips grew desperate by how he tightened them against you. Jaehyun wanted more, he wanted you all to himself, but before he could ask you, there was a knock on the door.

You pulled away from him, not expecting anyone at this time, “who’s here?”

“I’m not sure,” Jaehyun removed his warm hands from your boiling body, disappointed to end things like this.

Walking to the door, he looked through the peephole to see someone he didn’t expect. Jaehyun looked back at you, seeing you with furrowed brows as you walked your way to him.

“It’s Chaeyoung,” he whispered.

Your mouth shaped into an ‘o’, definitely surprised that she’d show up, but what was surprising? Her presence or the fact that she’s already been here several times?

“Open the door,” you whispered back, your hand offering him the door. You clearly had no idea what to do. It’d be rude of the both of you to leave her, but at the same time, that’s exactly what you wanted to do. You knew it was wrong, but you wanted to be a good person. That’s why you told him to open it.

Jaehyun did as you said, he slowly opened it to see Chaeyoung standing at the door with her head hung low and a large box in her arms.

“Chaeyoung,”

“Jaehy-oh, good afternoon, Ms y/l/n,” she slightly nodded to you, seeing you standing behind Jaehyun’s figure with your hands wrapped around his arm. Almost as if you were keeping him from her.

“Hi,” you timidly answered back, you severely wished to vanish into thin air. The thin air that held intensity, sadness, and all at the same time, anger. “Please, come in.” you pulled Jaehyun back, making him pull the door more open.

“Am I interrupting something?” Chaeyoung asked, glancing at the roll of dough on the counter and hearing the sizzling of the sauce, which you quickly ran to lower the temperature to keep it from burning.

“No, not at all, we were just making dinner,” you replied, coming back to Jaehyun’s side who managed to stay silent the entire time. You gently squeeze his arm, hoping that he’d say something.

“W-what are you doing here?” his voice strained.

She’s obviously here to drop off your things, dummy. You narrowed your eyes at how oblivious he could be when Chaeyoung was clearly standing at your door with a box filled with men’s clothes and pictures.

“I’m here to drop off your stuff,” Chaeyoung answered, quickly glancing down at the box of Jaehyun’s belongings.

You looked up at him again, but with questioning eyes, he kept his gaze on his former lover as his voice was muted from anything else. “Here, I can take that,” you took the box from her and left the two. The large weight of the box heavied your heart, the box held his belongings and most likely so many memories of their past. You couldn’t help but feel a bit insecure that your relationship with him wasn’t formed from mutual feelings, but more of a mutual agreement.

As you set them down on the carpet in his room, you spotted a picture of them together buried under all of his sweaters. You know you shouldn’t go through his things, his dearest memories with Chaeyoung, but your emotions took over your actions and you picked up the picture. It was a picture someone else had clearly taken. The two of them stood in front of a beautiful scenery of large mountains and the greenest grass on hills as he pressed a kiss to her cheek. You saw more photos in the box, you hated yourself because you couldn’t help it. It was clear to you that he was the happiest when he was with her. And you took that away from both of them.

As you walked back, Jaehyun still stood in the same position like his feet were strongly rooted in the ground, while Chaeyoung struggled to make eye contact with him. You sensed the tension between them and offered her to stay for dinner. Jaehyun furrowed his brows at you, questioning why you would ask her such a thing especially when you knew about them. But as much as you felt insecure about yourself, you felt bad for Chaeyoung, for you took her lover, you took him away from her and the least you could do was to offer her dinner.

“I shouldn’t,” she glanced between you and Jaehyun frantically.

Jaehyun huffed, walking away from the conversation. He really couldn’t believe that you’d just offer her to stay and have dinner. It’s already been enough for what he’s put both you and Chaeyoung through, was this his suffering? He snapped the temperature back on medium-high and began vigorously stirring the sauce.

Your eyes followed Jaehyun’s strides that stenched like anger back to the kitchen, but snapped back to reassure Chaeyoung, “it’s no bother, really! Stay, we’re almost done making dinner.” You smiled, walking over to the dough to continue kneading it.

“Okay,” she faintly smiled.

“You can help us set the table if you want,” you noticed her uncomfortable stance.

Chaeyoung nodded before walking to your cupboards, taking out the dishes. You found it uneasy seeing how she knew her way around your shared apartment with Jaehyun, but discounted the feeling as you knew this was your own doing. As she set the table, you could see Jaehyun glancing at her in your peripheral vision, but you also saw him struggling to keep him from doing so.

With hesitant steps you walked to stand beside him, grabbing his arm, “you okay?”

Jaehyun sighed, “I just wanted it to be the two of us.” Jaehyun turned to you with disappointment in his eyes.

You blinked in realization how important this must’ve meant to him. All he wanted to do was to spend the time with you, only you. He wanted to make you comfortable, wanted you to feel like you were at home with him, that he was your home and that you were his now.

“I’m sorry,” you leaned your head against his arm, hoping it would ease him a bit. You didn’t know if it was you who needed the ease more than him.

Jaehyun hummed, clearly clouded in his thoughts. With his former lover in the same room as the person he now loves, how was he supposed to act?

The three of you ate food silently, not a word popped out of anyone’s mouth. Chaeyoung kept her gaze down at her plate, while Jaehyun did the same, poking at his food. The only thing that kept the silence from eating you up was the music playing in the background.

“So,” you dabbed the napkin on your lips, “how’s the prototyping going?”

“Oh, they’re going smoothly,” Chaeyoung answered, “we’re almost done. We have a couple more outfits to do before completing it.”

“Perfect,” you smiled, your brain running out of ideas on what to talk about other than work. “You graduated at New York School of Design, right? How was that?”

“It was really good! The experience was everything I hoped for. They taught me so much information that I thought I wouldn’t need to know. Landing the job at Audace was my dream,” she gleamed at you, uplifting the mood. You found yourself unexpectedly smiling, she looked at you as if you were her role model.

All of a sudden, Jaehyun abruptly backed up from his chair, creating a loud scraping sound against the hardwood floor. You shifted your stare at him as he walked to the sink, setting his things down and silently walking up to his room to only slam his door without saying a word.

“I’m sorry,” you sighed.

“No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have stayed, but thank you for dinner. It was really good,” Chaeyoung stood from her seat, “let me help you clean up.”

“Oh, it’s fine! It’s not a lot, I’ll handle it. It’s getting late, so just get back home safely,” you reassured her.

You lock the door behind you after greeting Chaeyoung goodbye. You glanced at Jaehyun’s door remembering how angry he was. You didn’t know if you should go talk to him or let him be. You figured he needed space. Shifting towards the kitchen, you cleaned everything up, setting the leftovers in containers, and washing the dishes.

“I’m sorry,” a low voice whispered behind you.

“Jaehyun,” you jumped, dropping a plate in the sink, “you scared me. What are you doing?” You looked back at him. He was already in his pajamas and his hair was wet from his shower. The smell of his body wash made its way to your nose, giving you that cozy feeling in your heart.

“I just wanted to come to you, but I’m sorry for scaring you too,” giving you a small smile, he walked towards you, “I just didn’t know how to act with her around and then with you,” Jaehyun wrapped his arms around you as you continued washing the dishes, his chin finding a place on your shoulder.

You quickly finish the last dish and turn around, still enveloped in his arms, “No, I should be sorry. I shouldn’t have offered her to stay. I don’t know, I just felt bad all of sudden when I saw your things in the box. I know it was wrong to look through them but I just felt sad for-” you paused, taking a breath in, “taking you away from her.”

“Hey,” Jaehyun cupped your face in his hands, “I’m the one who broke things with her. We’re nothing now. I was just uncomfortable, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry, Jae,” you whispered, looking down, face still in his palms.

Jaehyun chuckled at your cheeks being squished in his grasp, not being able to hold in any frustration because you were so lovable, “it’s okay,” he hummed, “how about you shower and then come to bed?”

“Okay,” you brought yourself to his chest, hugging him before departing from his arms.

As the hot water trailed through the valleys and hills of your body, you couldn’t help but regret your decisions. You only wanted to make things right between everyone, but it seems like every decision you made was wrong. When are you going to stop messing things up, y/n?

You walk into Jaehyun’s room, already seeing that he was sleeping soundly. You crawled to him until you were slightly hovering him. He looked so harmonizing when he slept. With Jaehyun’s damp hair splayed on the pillow, his eyelashes kissed the rise of his cheeks, while his lips unconsciously pursed. You let out a content sigh as you press your lips against his forehead, earning an incoherent mumble from him as his tired body reaches for yours, bringing you close to his. You could feel the tiredness of his kiss that he set on the top of your head as you wrapped your arms around his waist to only be lulled to sleep by his soft breathing.

“Y/n, wake up,” Jaehyun gently shook you. He began poking your cheeks after a couple of failed attempts at waking you.

With tired eyes, you opened to the blurry sight of Jaehyun in front of you, a smile painted on his face like he had been watching you ever since he woke up.

“Good morning.” you yawned.

“Did you get a good sleep?” Jaehyun asked, running his fingers through your hair.

“Yeah,” you rubbed your eyes, hoping it’d clear your vision.

“Good. It’s time to get up and ready for work,” Jaehyun smiled down at you, finding your morning face still amusing.

You hummed, enclosing your arms around him to bring him to your chest, “ten more minutes please?”

“Okay, okay. Ten more and then we have to get up,” Jaehyun giggled, relaxing to your touch.

Those ten minutes felt like the shortest time. In that short moment, you felt the warmth radiating from his body, the feeling of his heartbeat quickening then faltering back to normal, and his breath tickling your neck. Jaehyun was so engulfed in you and with your arms around him, he found it hard to just want to stay in bed and kiss you endlessly, making love to you.

“I love you,” Jaehyun mumbled, when he looked up after not getting a response back, he saw you had fallen back asleep peacefully. Without implying anything sexual, he kissed the center of your chest, trailing little pecks up to your collarbone, eliciting a soft sigh from you. He made his way to your neck, making sure to kiss your sweet spot. By this time, you had already been awake from the constant longing feeling in your stomach. You let out a louder sigh, your hands finding their place in his hair. Jaehyun came close to your lips, his almost touching yours close enough that you could feel the heat of his breath. He pecked your lips twice before stopping, “baby, our 10 minutes is up.”

Once again, you blush from the nickname, but a smile grows on your face. You pull him in, locking your hands on his neck and softly bring your lips to his again.

“You’re such a tease,” you chuckled between kisses, your fingers combing through his hair.

“I can’t help it when you look like this in the morning.”

And that’s how you two spent the next ten minutes, just in bed with Jaehyun on top of you and passionately making out with each other. His lips were a constant crave for you, you realized. Jaehyun’s hands found their place on your waist, under your shirt as he firmly gripped the smooth skin. You let out a tired groan when he gently nipped at your bottom lip, earning a low chuckle from him.

“You’re so beautiful,” his lips trailed down to your jaw then neck. You gently pull onto the hair that laid on his nape when he put a little more pressure on your sweet spot again, making you let out a tense breath. Under the covers, Jaehyun grasped your thigh, wrapping it around his hips and unwillingly, you rolled your hips against him, lusting for more. More of him. But he slowly pulled away, looking at you with low, hungry eyes, abling for the both of you to see the string of spit that connected your lips.

Jaehyun pecked your lips before pulling away again, “It’s 7:20, we both have to be at work at 8.” he spoke, pulling away to stroke your hair.

You sighed in defeat, you knew you both should really get ready for work. You looked at him, you looked into those big eyes of him and knew that they held so much love for you. You pecked his lips one last time before leaving traces of you in his room.

“I can drop you off at work, if you want!” Jaehyun called from his room.

“No that’s okay, I’ll most likely not be home until later tonight anyways,” you replied, buttoning your blouse.

“Aww really?” Jaehyun walked to your door, leaning on the frame with a playful grin on his face.

“Jaehyun!” your eyes widen. You turn away from him to finish buttoning before he could see your breasts.

“What? It’s not like I haven’t seen anything before,” he smirked, walking closer to you.

“Nuh uh, not today, I gotta get to work in 15 minutes,” your pointer finger landed on his chest, stopping him from coming closer.

Jaehyun firmly grabbed your waist, “I wasn’t the one that left the door open,” his eyes scanned your figure.

“Oh stop it,” you smacked his chest, turning to slip on your blazer.

Jaehyun bit his lips to refrain him from going further into his actions. He thought you looked incredibly sexy in your work outfit, all he wanted to do was to rip your blouse and hear the buttons hit the ground all at once. You snapped your head back at him, knowing he was daydreaming and waved at him to get out of your room so you could shut the door.

In the parking garage, Jaehyun kissed your temple before walking off to his car, “goodbye, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye,” you strum at his little act of affection as he opens your car door for you.

You walked into an empty office since your mother was gone for a meeting. You sat your purse down and began working on your computer, replying to emails. There were several editorials that were looking forward to your Spring-Summer 2020 collection that either wanted to feature you and your clothes in their magazines or wanted to buy your collection to present them on models for their cover. Either way, it was your product and that was enough to satisfy you, as long as people knew it was Audaces’ fashion line.

After replying to your emails, you opened the files to the prototypes that showed the outfits. Going over them several times became a regular routine, it’s part of the job and you didn’t complain because you love what you do.

By the time lunch time rolled around, your mother finally made it back. She strolled in with a proud smile on her face as she strutted herself to her desk.

“Everything went well?”

“Oh, certainly. Everyone’s on board with our collection. It’s ready to be advertised for its launch in the Spring,” your mother answered.

“That’s great.”

“It’s almost lunch time, are you going to eat?”

“Yeah,” you looked at your phone screen, “I think I’m going to go pick something up for Jaehyun and I.”

“Oh, that’s great! Is everything going well with you two?” her eyes widened in amusement.

“You could say that,” you chuckled, grabbing your purse, “I’ll be back after. Did you want me to pick something up for you?”

“No, it’s okay, I just had a bagel after the meeting.”

With your sandwiches in one hand and drinks in the other, you excitedly walked up to Jaehyun’s office on the top floor. As everyone had questioning expressions as to why you were in Jung Corporation, they still showed respect for you by bowing, but they found it odd because they’ve never seen such emotion on you. You always did your job in showing seriousness and professionalism whenever you went to other business’ headquarters that seeing a smile on you wasn’t the usual.

You could barely hold your nerves down in the elevator, you just wanted to see Jaehyun. You wanted to kiss him like this morning, you wanted to hold him close to your heart, hoping that he’d know how much you have to offer for him. You wanted to give him so much love...and that’s when you realized you were truly, in love with Jaehyun. Your heart was at peace whenever you were with him, you wanted him. You want him in your life, you want to spend time with him. Him, him, him, was all you could think about, Jaehyun and only Jaehyun.

With the realization circling your mind, you sped walked to Jaehyun’s office, not being able to be away from him any longer. You felt like your chest was about to burst from the overwhelming feelings in your heart. You wanted to tell you love him, heck, you wanted to tell the whole building and the entire world.

With hands full, you push the door open with your back only to turn around with the sight in front of you. What you had seen in Jaehyun’s office shocked you that you dropped everything in your grasps at the same time feeling your heart shatter with it. The sound of everything dropping at your feet nudged you to move and with wide eyes and stuttering breaths, you did what you always did best and bolted. You ran as fast as you could away from Jaehyun, away from the building, away from being hurt. The heartbreak came sooner than you thought.

The moment you dropped what you held in your hands, Jaehyun’s head snapped towards you, not expecting to see you. When he saw the hurt on your face, he ran after you, but you were faster than he thought. It was like you were running on your fumes and only on your fumes.

By the time Jaehyun stepped out of his building, his head looked frantically for you, head whipping left and right. Sighing in defeat, he knew there was no way he’d find you, you vanished in the sea of people. With his hands in his hair, slightly pulling his strands in frustration, he had lost hope in finding you.

#jaehyun imagines #jaehyun fluff #jaehyun smut #jaehyun angst #jaehyun series #jaehyun au #jung jaehyun #nct jaehyun #nct 127 imagines #jung jaehyun au #jaehyun scenarios #nct imagines #nct 127 au #jaehyun

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales: The Treasure of the Lost Lamp Movie Reviewcap! (Patreon Stretch Goal)

Hello all you happy people! And we have a special review today for two reasons. The first is that this is my second patreon stretch goal review, having hit the 15 dollar goal back in march thanks to my wonderful friend Emma, the same patreon whose responsible for the Green Eggs and Ham Reviews, who helped me hit the 15 dollar goal. As a result you fine people are getting three movie reviews each based on a Disney Afternoon Movie with Treasure of the Lost Lamp today, a goofy movie at the end of the motnh for a weeklong tribute to my favorite dogmandadguy. Extremley was going to be part of it but the length of this review convinced me otherwise, but I will be doing it this summer so keep an ear out. If you want to help me hit my next stretch goals do yourselve a favor and zip on over to my patreon YOU CAN FIND MY PATREON HERE. My next stretch goal at “OH Look 20 Dollars” would give everyone patreon and not, a monthly review of Darkwing Duck as decided by my patrons, reviews of BOTH season 2 mini series from Ducktales 87, introducing Fenton to the world and blighting it with Bubba before the 2017 series fixed him, and as a brucey bonus added last month a review of Danny Phantom the Ultimate Enemy. And if that wasn’t enough if you help me get to the goal after that at 25 unlocks another trilogy of disney film reviews, this time for the proud family and recess movie and the best kim possible movie, and dcom period, so the drama as well as Bryan Lee O’ Malley’s two stand alone graphic novels, lost at sea and seconds for you Scottaholics in the audience.

The other reason now the shilling’s done. is that the plan WAS to review this back to back with Treasure of The Found Lamp, to the point the orginal review had a whole thing about that, why it was delayed etc... but now that review’s been scrapped all together as something sudden and wonderful happened. After just kinda giving up someone came through with a translation of Della’s first apperance so presumibly i’ll be doing that as part of the build up to mother’s day, and since I still want ot do maternal instincts too, and already had to let the Floyd Gottfredson birthday special slide away as well... it had to go as I want to leave the only open space on the schedule for the lovely person who found the story for me. But this review is still done, i’m very proud of it so join me under the cut won’t you?

Behind The Scenes: Before I get into it i’d just like to note this article from SyFy Wire. It , along with articles I found via wikipedia citations, was an invaluable resource.

The film was an experiment: It was an experiment to see if one of their tv properties could bring in theatrical money, to see if a movie made on a cheaper budget and still rake in decent money, to see if a film could be made being outsourced to several diffrent places, and to see what one of those places, their recently aquiried french stuido, could handle this kind of work.

The film, if succesful would be the first of Disney’s MovieToons line, a series of films based on their shows. As you can tell by the fact only this movie and Goof Troop happened and the Movie Toons label wasn’t applied to that one it very much failed. While the film was warmly recevied by people who liked the show general audiences didn’t turn out for it. As a result the MovieToons label was scrapped, future projects with it were canceled.. but the stellar work put in by the french stuidio lead to it perserviering for several more decades and lead to them working on the Goofy Movie, which we’ll get to later this month but needless to say was a MUCH bigger hit with a much bigger budget.

As for why the film failed... I have two theories. THe first is that parents were stupid back then and didn’t want to pay to see something on the big screen they could see on tv’s. This is a stupid mentality to me as generally a movie of a tv show puts in a ton of extra effort and usually goes bigger and dosen’t go home. It’s a likely theory given most liscened films of the era didn’t do quite well, with all three hasbro films tanking. And look I get Transformers the Movie is cheesy and killed a lot of people’s childhood toys, but damn if it ain’t aweosme.. and also something I need to cover at some point. Thankfully this died out by later in the 90′s with Rugrats getting a hugely succesful if flawed film, a better sequel and a third one that was also a crossover with the wild thornberries.

And even now in 2020 we’re getting the Loud House and Rise of the TMNT movies sometimes this summer, we were SUPPOSED to have gotten the bobs burgers movie this summer but arne’t because Disney is being a dick about it.

And we got a phineas and ferb movie last year. With this trend hopefully thsi means we’ll get a Ducktales 2017 movie at some point since season 4 left a huge sequel hook laying right there to grab for a feature film. One final note: The film was conceptually thought up as a 5 part serial like “Treasure of the Golden Suns”, “Catch as Cash Can”, “SuperDucktales” and “Time is Money, something that DOES show as the movie weirdly has act breaks. In a feature film. Yup.

The Guest Cast:

I won’t go into the full cast since I’ve sung Alan Young and Russi Taylor’s praises PLENTY on this blog before, and I plan to go into Beakly and Launchpad’s actors when they show up in the pilot movie. But i’d be remiss if i didn’t talk about our three guest actors for our three new parts.

First up is Merlock voiced by legend and if I had a hall of fame, hall of famer Christopher Lloyd.. I need to get me one of those. Lloyd is of course known for playing Doc Brown in back to the future but has done countless other films, voicework, and other good stuff. Among his MASSIVE filmography includes The Back to the Future Trilogy (Already mentioned it but it bears repeating), Star Trek III, Who Framed Roger Rabbit as the pants destroyingly terrifying Judge Doom, The Addams Family duology as fester, a role rip torn would ironcially play for the animated series made to captalize on said movie, Hey Arnold! The Movie, The Oogieloves in The Big Ballon Adventure (Look everybody needs money sometimes okay?), and Art of the Deal: The Movie, which was not, thankfully an ego filating nightmare made by trump himself but a film made by funny or die parodying his terrible book and having Llloyd return as Doc Brown. TV Wise he’s known for Taxi, Back to the Future the Animated Series, Cyberchase and he most recently popped up on Big City Greens. How I missed that ep I.. do know as I haven’t watched season 2. Gonna fix that later this month. Lloyd is utterly awesome, a great guy and thankfully still alive at the time of this writing, so I was happy to have him here.

Less familiar to me but still known is Rip Taylor, a comedian known for his flamboyant unique way of speech and his marvelous mustache. He showed up in things occasionally and always seemed like the nicest guy and his passing in late 2019 truly is sad. He does a terrific job here but more on that in a moment.

Finally we have Richard Libertini, a comedian I never really saw in anything besides this who according to IMDB was most famous for his ablility to do a foreign accent. I REALLY hope all of them aren’t as horribly racist as this one. We’ll.. get to that in a sec as it’s time for the plot!

A Treasure Uncovered:

We open our film gorgeously. The animation is great in the film, having some rough edges I chalk up to the film’s hectic production, the studio being new at working at disney properties, and the film not being meant for HD. That being said a few rough spots here and there aside.. the film looks ungodly gorgeous. Like most theatrical films based on a cartoon it takes an already great style and makes it look great. It feels like a more fluid evolution of the cartoons look and it’s a shame we didn’t get more movies in this style for both this show and others, ESPECIALLY Darkwing Duck. Can you imagine a Darkwing Duck movie with this lush animation? Hopefully we’ll get one eventually.

So our heroes are going to somewhere in the Middle East. That’s.. that’s all wikipedia gives me and all the film gives me. As usual Scrooge is after treasure in this case the Treasure of Collie Baba, the greatest thief there ever was based obviously off Ali Baba from 1001 nights and that one Beastie Boys song.

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It’s here we find the WORST thing about the film, the thing that makes this a hard one to watch depsite otherwise being pretty good, and that makes my skin crawl knowing i’m a white man and a BUNCH of white guys, Ducktales series creator who did the voice casting for this character, the writers who wrote him, the direector disney them fucking selves who thought this was okay.

The film has some horrible steroytping. It starts with a bunch of backgorund guys surronding Scrooge, with crooked teeth and steotypical voices. This on it’s own is odious.

It somehow gets worse. Then we meet one of our antagonists. We meet Dijon.

This Fucking Guy

Djon is horribly offensive reminding me of other such luminaries in being ungodly offensive yet somehow getting put to film as Jar Jar Binks (With all respeect to his poor actor Ahmed Best, this is not his fault), Rob Schinder as a Sterotypically asian preist, Skids and Mudflap, Rob Schinder as a sterotypically mexican bandit, The Whitewashed cast of The Last Airbender, and Rob Schinder as a stereotypically asian preist. What i’m saying is Djon is an AWFUL, horribly offensive character.. and that Rob Schinder should be shot up into space, not to watch cheesy movies, he’s not funny enough for that, but instead to be sent to a satlitie that’s liveable, but also filled to the brim with spring loaded boxing gloves. Just tons of boxing gloves that feel like getting punched by a heavewight boxer all hidden... they could hit his legs, his face, his nuts, his face and his nuts, the point is he’s in constnat pain unless he moves carefully.

And lest you think i’m exaggerating for starters this is his design.

It just screams “vaugely but sterotpyically middle eastern” along with cowardly. The fact he’s also a literal rat is just the icing on the cake made of broken glass, shrapnel and broken DVD’s of Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen. They say if you eat a reveng eof the fallen dvd John Tutoro appears at the foot of your bed and watches you while you sleep.. and by they I mean me. It was a bad bet. I got rid of him with some insese and a bribe of five dollars.

Oh but that’s just design.. when he talks it’s MUCH worse. His voice is like if they took Apu from the simpsons and said “This but MORE offensive”, and his perosnality is WORSE. He’s a thief.. and not in the endearing loveable rogue way but he’s a pick pocket and a running “Gag’ is that he’ll often grab eveyrthing within reahc. As the deisgn shows he’s a coward running at every opportunity. Oh and to top it all off he’s the willing servant of the white coded, given all ducks in this series are white coded and voiced bby white actors, big bad. And the actor is naturally VERY white to make this cocktail of offensivness so complete that if Disney ever got rid of this film I GUARANTEE the republcian party would be running in with accusations of cancel culture gone amok and never shutting up about this like they did the muppets. Which for the record THEY DIDN’T CANCEL THEM, YOUR POINT IS ILLEGITMATE, THEY JUST WANTED TO BE SENSTIVE YOU GHOULS.

I do have a reason for bringing up Disney’s content warnings... most damming of all given just how DEEPLY uncomfortbale this character is.. there isn’t one for this movie. I double checked: There isn’t even wanring notes on the website. It’s just.. on there. And given just how ghastly a sterotype Djon is.. that’s not right. Seriously they DID put them on certain episodes of the show, theyk now this sort of thing is wrong and they done wrong.. but for NO reason they haven’t done so for a film released 31 years ago. Around the same time as the series and just offensive as that show at it’s worst if not more so. This is flatly inexcusable.. par for the course for Disney’s incompetence but still horribly furstrating, disgusting and shameful.. which has been the theme of the last three days really. I expect better because when it comes to putting that warning label on this stuff, they usually are better. First the scheduling mixup and now this. You already do a handful of things wrong Disney why add this to the list?!

It’s just draining not only to run into another Disney Fuckup after a weekend of dealing with one of their worst in recent memory, but just to watch Djon. To see this horrible caractrure saunter onto the screen and go on with his harmful schtick, to see that THIS is what Ducktales 87 reduced non white people to more often than not. It’s remarkable just how throughly and awesomely Frank and Matt completely and totally reversed this. Instead of horrible sterotypes in the reboot, we got TONS of loveable people of color, an endearing latino hero, a smart african american buisness woman who takes no shit but is still a consumate professional, and an egyptian HERO with an intresting story and a strong moral code instead of this horrible reminder that racisim in media was such an afterthought not ONE person brought this up during the scyfy wire stuff or in any inteview i’ve seen. No one cared. Djon was POPULAR enough that he got three episode sin the series. THREE FUCKING EPISODES. This film could be GOOD.. but it’s just so bogged down EVERY FUCKING TIME this artists interpreitation of what Tucker Carlson sees when he looks at a middle eastern person I had to pause to compose myself and had to take a break writing this review to avoid tyiping this in all caps and using the phrase YOU RACIST MOTHERFUCKERS every other sentence. And again i’m white, I get this is second hand offensiveness.. I do... but it dosen’t mean I can’t be offended other white people were so callous about other cultures behaviors this happened.

And what makes me feel worse.. is that I just sorta... never thought about white people voicing non white characters. Things like this I noticed sure, I realize now part of the reason I didn’t like this movie the first time I saw it was this alex jones version of a looney tune, but I do feel shame for not noticing or caring long before this. Sure I loved it when a character of color got played by a person of color.. but I didn’t realize just how deep that problem was and how LONG it went on for before the outcry post george floyd and the call to action lead to most shows still going course correcting. It’s why stuff like this extra botehrs me: because THIS was just as okay at the time. No one blinked twice about this and odds are the creators involved still haven’t. And that.. that’s just terrible and it hurts to think about and I still have most of the movie to go.

The Pyramid of Peril:

So we do get a gorgeous unvewling scene of a box Scrooge found out about from Collie Baba’s horde that should lead them to the treasure. This scene reminds me of Indina Jones.. and I bring this up because the poster was specifically made to mimick an indinia jones poster, to the point of getting drew struzan to do it. THe creator of Ducktales objected..l but I do not get WHY. While I”m not sure if he had yet, Speilberg flat out admits the Carl Barks comics were an inspiration for Indina Jones, with the iconic bolder chase coming from a similar scene in one of Barks Stories. Gotta cover that too. So yeah I don’t get not wanting an indina jones style poster when both were inspiried by the same work and it’s just simple logic and it looks so neat. Thank you.

Scrooge finds seemingly just clothes.. and a map. Jeff Dunham’s Most Racist Puppet reports to his master, Merlock. Merlock is a.. meh villian. Christopher Lloyd does try.. but Lock is your standard evil overlord wants to take over the world type. He dosen’t have much depth, or personality and only his style saves him from dragging the film down along with Dana Carvey’s most racist disguise in master of disguise. He does have a deent shape shifting gimick and being played by Christopher Lloyd means he’s acted TREMENDOUSLY. Alan Young was apparently in awe watching him work and that’s wonderful to hear. The guy did his best. Weirdly Merlock would show up in tons of other works, mostly video games.. but even weirder he NEVER showed up in ducktales 2017. Both Djon and Gene would, Djon thankfully renamed we’ll get to all of that tommorow thank god. I need it after this. But Frank has outright said they didn’t use Merlock because there simply wasn’t anything they could do with him they couldn’t dow ith magica. My likely guess is the might of found a way to revamp him EVENTUALLY, it’s not like radical revamps weren’t there thing come on, they just had way more stories with Magica and didnd’t get around to it before the show was canceled. Just make him some sort of evil god or something. it’s what I might do. There’s a lot of angles with him. Though I would’ve still gotten christopher lloyd back. I mean most of the recasting is good but he’s still alive and deserved a better shot at things.

So Merlock sends Djonn to go with scrooge as his guide to find the treasure, as there’s something of imense power within it. And I gotta ask WHY does Merlock need a minon. No really. This isn’t a situation like reboot magica where he’s trapped in another realm. He can shapeshift into any animal. We only see him use falcon, rat, cockroach and bear but theoritically he can become anything and bear alone is still a LOT. Why does he need this sterotype even other sterytopes ar eashamed of? The film dosen’t NEED Djonn. Just let Christopher Lloyd monologue and leave this post 911 propogranda cartoon at home.

So our heroes nad rejected jar jar prototype head into the desert, and seemingly find nothing before finding a small pyramid all while Merlock follows desecretley as a mighty hawk.

Scrooge makes the boys and Djon dig... because they clearly forgot the “work hard” part of his ethos.

Our heroes unveil the pyramid... and while Merlock SAYS he searched the desert and I get it’s hard to see thourgh all of that.. the dude is immortal, had decades to search and had Mickey Rooney there on standby to force him to go comb the desert. I have an artist rendering of that hang on

So our heroes enter the pyramid and it goes.. really how you’d expect: there’s a bunch of traps our brave explorers have to pass, the boys minintpret a juinor woodchuck saying about loosing your marbles to mean using the ones they actually have which geninely comes in handy as they trip the traps and Rob SChinder as a carrot stumbles into one. Also launchpad is wearing a hawaiin shirt and shades. This has no baring on the plot, but it does bring the movie up a notch in my book and I question why the reboot never used this outfit. Then again they also never properly used Donald’s Quack Pack Outfit (Which bad show or not, is objectively awesome), or his Quack Shot Indiana Jones Riff Outfit, so it’s not like there isn’t a presdecnt for not giving a character a cool costume change from a previous medium. I really should do a top 12 missed opportunities list for the 2017 cartoon.. the ideas for stuff are really piling up.

OUr heroes eventually find the treasure which has insidiously clever security the more I think about it: at first I thought it had none, just a pit with some... scorpions? I mean their supposed to be but they look like they crawled out of the same stygian hole in the sky Doofus crawled out of. And if your asking me “wait which Doofus” the answer is both. Both these abominations crawled out of a stygian hole in the sky.

But the treasure is on a platform surrounded by scoprions with the only way out being the trap filled way they came in. Unless someone comes in with a full team and a bunch of lootin sacks, they aren’t getting out with EVERYTHING. They can steal SOME of the treasure but there’s no way to get any signifigant portion... and the team thing itself is an issue, something Collie defintely predicted being a thief himself: while some thieves can work well as a team, hence why we have four oceans movies 3/4 damn good, and for the record 12 is the bad one, 8 is how you do a soft reboot and a female led reboot right, a good chunk of professional crooks will turn on each other or try and swinldle... and tha’ts dangerous in a trap filled temple but hey some criminals ain’t so smart. If they all were Rudy Gulliani wouldn’t have two razzies for preparing to pull his pants down, and have waved his phone around on tv like a dare for future adminstrations to arrest the shit out of him would he?

But Scrooge has his family so they get loading. But not before Webby finds the lamp. Not knowing about it Scrooge has no intrest in it, but Webby does. We also get a really simple but hilarious gag where SCrooge dickers over the idea for a second.. before Webby picks up a Jeweled tiara to possibly take instead. The best gags to me are often the ones that just let the character’s perosnalities take the lead and bounce off each other. It’s why when I reviewed the four lilo and stitch crossovers recently I harped on character interaction as their biggest weakness: it’s what MAKES a good work for me. It’s why my faviorite comics and shows often follow a loveable group of disfunctional misfits. I like a group of big personalities who despite in theory should NOT be able to work making it work anyway. And it’s honeslty what’s made Scrooge last so long: Scrooge on his OWN is awesome.. but iwth the boys, donald, and in the case of this series and the reivival Webby and Launchpad, with people to bounce off of who he contrasts heavily with, from Launchapd’s buffonery to Webby’s inehrent sweetness in both versions, to the boys genuine honesty and sense of adventure.... it makes him truly stand out. He’s a great character on his own, don’t get me wrong.. but it’s the people around him that give him chances to show WHY. A good character on it’s own is fine and dandy.. a good character with other good characters around them is where it gets truly special.

Merlock naturally bursts in and in a VERY Black Heron move needlesly outs what micheal bay sees when he closes his eyes as a bad guy... no really he grabs the guy with his talons as he captures the treasure and reveals he’s a bad guy. I don’t even get why keep Djonn alive. He’s done all Merlock possibly could’ve needed and Merlock is ruthless... this makes no sense and only happens because they need Djonn for later in the plot.

Our heroes barely escape, rafting out on the platform itself in a thrilling sequence.. but it’s the one right after that catches my attention. Scrooge utterly defeated, having searched for this treasure for forty years and unresponsive to everyone else. The anmation, coupled with the incomprable Alan young’s acting makes this the highlight of the film for me. Beneath the armor of wealth and skill.. is only a poor old man who just lost something he’s been chasing after most of his life. Scrooge tries his hardest not to be vunerable and both shows and the original comics all use that so when he truly is devistated like this, and i’ts belivible since this treasure is a personal goal of his and as someone who has had things that they seek out specifically, loosing them always hurts. It hurts to ALMOST reach a goal only to have it crumble out under you

But while this alone is good.. what’s next makes it great. Webby sweetly offers up the lamp. Scrooge turns it down, and her genuine gesture reinvgorates him and reminds us of who he is “I’ll find it if it takes another 40 years”> Scrooge may be bitter, mean and selfish a lot of the time.. but deep down, he’s a good man and one who will not give up, and a momentary setback can only stop him so long as long as he has his family to remind him of who he truly is.. and what’s truly important. It’s genuinely sweet and to me is also a reminder of why 87 Webby is a good character: Shes’ not perfect, her main personality trait is often Girl Sterotype”.. but she’s a genuinely sweet small child with a huge heart. It’s telling that while 17′ Webby is almost completely diffren,t and far better, that heart remains her biggest strength. Sure her reboot self could kill a man nad no one would ever find the body, but it’s her heart and empathy that makes that possible and makes her Webby. That inherent loving nature is what makes Webby webby wether she’s a toddler having a tea party or a tween getting ready to intergoate a guy with a meat tenderizer while saying ‘Cute girl stuff”.

Gene Genie Let’s Himself Go:

It’s a few days later and this is the point where it REALLY becomes obvious this was written as a bunch of episodes. Though to the film’s credit while it does ake this feel like a compliation movie as a result... it dosen’t hamper the film’s quality, condiment from Rush Limbaghs’ hot dog stand does that just fine, but once you notice it it’s impossible to unotice it. Weirdly though it seems chunked up into four episodes rather than the usual five, likely cutting down an episode, though I can’t see where they cut out material frankly if they did and i’ts just as likely they woudl’ve had to make one to fill in the space.

So Scrooge is in a mood, being grumpy with his secretary Mrs. Featherly, quackfaster in all but name, and having to be sent home. So while Duckworth goes to fetch him Webby polishes her treasure at long last readying for a tea party, something the boys roundly reject because their sexist little twits and swo were the writers or executies who assumed all little boys act the same. It’s easily my biggest pet peeve with the series as a whole: anytime this crops up with the boys it turns them into the worst dicks imaginable. It’s telling this, being mean about her wantin ga tea party with her surrogate brothersi s TAME. Normally they’ll say she can’t do things because she’s a girl or mock her hobies outright instead of just be mildly dickish. And while she dosen’t look much younger Webby is VERY CLEARLY, in this series anyway, supposed to be say 5 or 6 to the boys 8-10. 7 at most. SHe’s a small child and while it is realistic for older kids to bully younger ones, it’s not fun to watch. It’s why I get annoyed at all the big sibling bully characters.. some work, but most aren’t fun to watch because there’s nothing funny or intresting about it. It’s the same deal here.

Thankfully that quickly goes away as the lamp moves when Webby rubs it and does so again to prove it did move. Huey finishes it and we’re introduced to Gene, the best part of the film. Gene is a Genie and he takes a second to dart around before messing with the appliances in the kitchen, as he was last around during the time 1001 Nights Came About. Cleverly though, and so we thankfully don’t have 80 dozen fishout of water jokes that have already been done before. As you can probably guess i’m not a huge fan of time travel fish out of water stuff. Now from another dimensoin or planet, i’m on board with with Star Vs, Steven Universe and Sym-Bionic Titan being great examples of this, as is the comic resident alien. (Despite having the wonderous Alan Tuduk the show sounds way more mean spirited and misses the entire point of the comic as given by the author in the credits, i.e. that the alien is supposed to NOT be a threat and just be gently waiting for a ride) The inverse is also good with Amphbia and owl house, taking a human and plopping them into our world. But time travel stuff just usually runs the same beats of “look at the shiny thing” and what not. The only time i’ve sene something SIMILAR work is with thor where their society is SIMILAR to vikings time but still it’s own thing.. it also gave us a classic gag in..

So yeah i’m glad they dropped this and instead had a clever way around it: Gene reads the encylopedia at the mansion. Granted it’s Scrooge so I don’t know how current it is and given this came out in 1990 thus HOW racist it is. It’s not a questoin of IF it was, but how much.

But having caught up the kids confront him with the fact he has to grant wishes. This lamp runs on what I now realize are Aladdin rules: Whoever currently holds the Lamp is the Genie’s master, they only get three wishes, and that dosen’t reset if it changes hands. The only big diffrence from the usual is Gene dosen’t have to TELL them about the wishes like Genie did, and Gene very begrudginly agrees to it. He also seem’s phsyically pained when doing so.

So since all 12 know about him, each of the kids gets a wish though it seems unfair with HDL. Their one person, they shoudln’t get 9 wishes just because their brain is spread out over three bodies.

This film continues the weird simliarties to Aladdin by attaching rules though they instead come up as a result of our heroes talking rather than the Genie just flat out tleling them: both share the “you can’t wish for more wishes” thing, a common rule in these stories and usually only broken nowadays as a clever twist as the rule is SO common place, not having it is a twist. But it is there for a reason: to limit the sheer power of a reality warping wish. The wishes can also only go so far. In a nice line, when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests wishing for peace one earth, Gene says “No pipe dreams’ He can’t bend people or reality on THAT scale. He can bend reality as we find out, but it’s smaller scales like turning someone’s possesions over ot someone else, warping the bin into a castle, or bringing inanitamte objects to limited life. Still HUGE feats worth of a genie, so Gene’s power isn’t so nerfed it’s unusuable, but it does explain why his evil pervious ownder Merlock, more ont hat in a bit too, didn’t just wish to have eternal dominon over the earth or something. Gene can do just about anything but he can’t change the world on a fundemental level.

And I do LIKE having rules in wished based stories like this, I chalk it up to growing up with Fairly Odd Parents... though they eventually went too far in the oppsoitie direction, pulling rules out of their ass to suit the episode, instead of simply having some very standard, very understandable rules that still pose challenges but don’t outright cheat so the episode can happen.

So Webby does her first wish.. and wishes for a Baby Elephant, something Gene is against as he prefers they keep the wishes small: otherwise he gets found out, and the fight over him begins. So one of the boys wishes him away. Or Webby does. Point is it’s gone though not before Beakly sees it and Scrooge smells something is up. Our heroes try to hide gene, but gene thankfully simply dresses up like a modern kid and thus is able to pass as a friend of there staying for the night.

So with the rules established and what not the kids find a clever solution: they simply go a ways away from the mansion into the woods, far enough from town to avoid any suspcion, and same iwth the mansion and just wish for all kinds of stuff: a giant bunch of ice cream toys, standard kid wish fufillment but it’s nice... in part because the kids treat Gene like one of them. Wihle they STARTED asking him about the wishes, this starts the bonding process. Soon he will be part of the hive mind.. SOON.

Until then though after using another wish to make scrooge not mad at them for coming home late and missing dinner, that night we find out Gene’s backstory.... and it’s an utter tearjerker. As it turns out Merlock wants him back because he’s Gene’s former master and as you’d guess.. it was NOT a happy existnace, used contstnatly to do horrible things with no power to stop himself. Pompeii and Atlantis were both directly Merlock’s fault and it was only Collie Baba stealing the lamp that put an end to his hell. He also answers the two obvious questions botht he audeiince and the boys have: How the hell is Merlock still alive and shoudln’t he be out of wishes then? The first is simple. Unlike pretty much every DBZ Villian whose WANTED to do so, Merlock wished for immortality first chance he got, taking the Zamasu route instead and thus leaving him free.

As for the wishes thing it turns out his amulet, in adition to shapeshifting, also gives him extra wishes becuase fuck it.

But the boys sweetly offer to protect him.

The next day, Apu’s Cousin let’s Merlock know the maps in the mansion and Merlock has him help sneak in with Merlock taking rat form. This backfires as Mrs. Beakley notices the form and chases after him with a broom

Meanwhile Webby has her tea party with Gene after he and the boys played cops and robbers earlier, and he’s bored.. though nicely not because it’s a girly thing, but because the stuffed animals aren’t alive and she naively has him fix that. This leads to

Which sadly is jsut scrooge vs a duck toy but admit it, you want that movie for Disney Plus yesterday. Call Charles Band Disney. CALL CHARLES BAND!

Whelp Scrooge Still Sucks:

Scrooge takes for a turn for the obnoxious in the next part, but i’ts fine by me as it’s part of the plot. Naturally this reinactment of Cult of Chucky has lead to Scrooge finding out about the Genie. To his credit, Scrooge is tactical about his wishes. As said by the Duck himself “I could wish for a diamond, no the world’s biggest dimaond, no ten world’s biggest diamond, no a diamond mind, no the MINING INDUSTRY!”

The sheer power this gives him is TERRIFYING, both because of his status.. and because unlike the kids who all wished for simple kid stuff and used up their wishes quickly, he both gets how much he can do with this and could conquer the world economy if he truly wanted to.

The obnoxious part comes in as he treats Gene as not a person, figuring he’s just there and forces him into the lamp despite the kids protests after Gene grants his first wish: Collie Baba’s treasure. It also dosen’t feel like the wishing nor him using the lamp to get the tresure back goes against his hard work ethos: for the former while he is getting all this magically, he’s still having ot use his wits to get the most out of it, and he did earn the lamp itself square. For the latter, he already earned the treasure square too and had it stolen. He’s onlyg etting back what’s by all rights HIS. Granted he plans on giving most of it up for a tax break but still it’s his by right.

However the reason his assholery works is twofold: first it’s Scrooge. While he’s not a TERRIBLE person, in the comcis and this cartoon he isn’t a GOOD person either. He DOES have a good heart and will usually do the right thing, but his first instnct is always to get more money and to be a cantakerous old bastard to eveyrone and everything. While he’s subtly grew out of “I hate eveyrone and everyone hates me” as his guiding principal, it’s still his defualt reaction to most situations. But he first relents by letting Gene attend the party, part of why the Collie Baba thing stung so bad was that he’s told the historical society he’d get the treasure for years only to come back empty handed, if shrunken. But he still manages to have a good time while Asok and Merlock infiltrate.. well I’mRunningOutofINsultingNIcknamesCanYouTell steals the silverware. Yes... that.. that really happens.

Look we’re almost done, i’m almost free of this racist mummies curse. Let’s continue. Gene sees melock and freaks and drags SCrooge with him and while at First Scrooge is cranky...

No but now I want a Donkey Kong Country crossover too dammmit. And to talk about those games. Another thing for the list. But Scrooge is righ tot be a bit surly...

Okay now your just pushing it. As Gene whisked him away without telling him anything other than vauge worries... but then he gets a full idea of why Gene’s so terrified when Merlock shapeshifts into a bear and starts breaking the door down. Eh, could be worse.

Gene shrinks them to escape and Merlock leaves thinking they fled but leaves Skids Minus Mudflap to go look for them. Scrooge sneaks out but bumps into a cart running from the photo you see when you look up stereotype on google. I mean I assume.. let’s try it.

Huh you know I HOPED but I never expected...

So Google Proving My Point plans to give his lamp to the master because of his weird Torgo-Esque obession with helping a man who clearly wants to murder him but takes his sweet time doing so because plot, and Gene figuring this COULDN’T POSSIBLY go as bad as Melock getting him urges the dummy to keep him and make his own wishes.

This goes about as well as you’d expect....

Wiped Out With A Wish:

Scrooge returns home to find Watto has wished to take his poessions, fortune, everything and Scrooge gets thrown in jail for breaking into his own house. We get two great moments back to back. The first is Scrooge lamenting loosing his fortune in jail, and realizing the sheer power and risk of the lamp, especially since he worked hard to earn it, every bit of it.. and Sam Wilson’s 70′s Backstory came in and took it all in an instant.

The second is Scrooge’s family coming for him, including Launchpad , Beakly and Webby obviously and bailing him out. Though Beakly is UNGOLDLY annoying in this scene, sobbing hysterically and adding nothing and it’s not nearly as funny as the film thinks. Turns out Goliath getting buried wrapped in chains threw them out.

Scrooge takes a bit to rebound from all this.. but eventually realizes something: he knows the security of the bin inside and out. He had it put in after all. So it’d be easy enough to break in. So they gotta break in to break out the lamp, undo this nightmare, and END THIS MOVIE. Seriously this review has taken two days as is I do NOT want to miss my invincible review.

So they break into the bin, and it’s a tightly paced Scene, scrooge going in one way while the kids go the other and we even get a nice callback as the marbels come in handy to get past one of the traps. It’s just a good scene. it’s only real flaw is that Launchapd just sorta disappears as does Duckworth despite the fact their in a plane, and the bin later gets turned into a floating castle. Kinda a plot hole to not have Launchpad crash in to save htem just saying.

Scrooge eventually does get to Djonn, whose been ignoring the imminent threat of Merlock while Gene sweats it out... and this backfires horribly as Merlock hitched a ride as a roach (Though there was a hilarious scene of him getting fried constnatly by lasers when Louie went through a laser hallway, as while Louie had the directions, it dind’t take into account passengers on your head.

So Merlock remanifests in full gets the Lamp and unleashes his wrath on Tin Tin in the Congo and turns him into a wild pig.

Not you sweetie. He then forces Gene to turn the castle into a fortress and float it back to his home in parts unknown. It’s a DAMN cool scene with impressive and horrifiing animation as the bin melts and crumbles into thte castle and the kids barely make it up the stares as they shift and disolve. Really top notch stuff.

Scrooge stands up to Merlock... and this naturally goes poorlyw ith Gene begging Merlock not to respond.. and Merlock having him blow scrooge off the top of the forgtess storm eagle style, though scrooge understands. And this is the true reason why scrooge being a dick didn’t bother me so much. Because it helps create a great contrast between him and Merlock. Both thought of Gene as a tool rather than a person.. but Scrooge grew to realize he was wrong and what he was dealing with wasn’t some magical goodies creator.. but a child forced to constantly grant wishes, in sheer agony to do so no less, likely so sick of it because again and again and again people used him as a slave to get what they wanted and to hell with what Gene wanted. He realized he was terrible for making this poor boy into his slave simply because that’s his job. In contrast Merlock could give no shits and is a malevolent monster who glefully uses Gene despite the pain the wishes put him through and his protests. It’s why Gene is the best part.. he’s athroughly likeable, throughly inncoent character with tons of personality and a truly tragic and horrifying backstory and Rip Taylor acts the hell out of every scene with the guy.

Thankfully the marbles come in handy one last time and Huey, Dewey or Louie snipes the lamp away and a struggle for it insues between Scrooge and Merloc mid air. it’s fucking awesome.. and it get sbetter in how scroogewins. He simply gets rid of Merlock’s amulet, taking it then throwing it. Grante dhe COULD’EVE used it for unimited wishes.. but it was too risky to do that and as we’ll see in the ending , Scrooge realized the Lamp was too powerful to keep around for much longer and too much of a tempting target for his rogues.. not that we see them this movie as the crew wanted it to bea ccesaible and thus kept hte cast to the main cast from season 1 and just made new vilians and a new supporting character, but still.

He does use his second wish though to undue the damage Merlock had done and the bin and clan mcduck are returned to duckburg in good condition.

Time for our ending, which is genuinely and wholly touching. With the lamp too dangerous to use Scrooge considers just sending it to the earth’s core, which horrifies the kids as it’d mean Gene would be trapped there forever... if the molten lava iddn’t just outright destory the lamp and probably kill him. But Scrooge.. isn’t the bastard he likes to potray himself as. Instead he makes Gene into a real boy. He gives the poor kid HIS wish, which designrates the lamp and undoes all the spells... so Merlock is PROBABLY dead but he does return for some games so maybe not?

And so we end on two things: Gene happily playing cops and robbers with the boys finally free.. and Birth of A Nation grabbing all the loot he can in his patns and running off. Ha ha ha thank god i’m done with this prick. And no I will not be looking at his ducktales episodes unless I have to.

Final Thoughts:

This movie is OKAY. It has a solid plot, gene is a wonderful chacter, the animatoin is pretty prettay pretty good, and the voice acting as usual is excellent, with Rip Taylor being the standout.

But as my paragraphs of rage shoud’ve made Clear Djonn is just BAD. Easily the worst character i’ve encountered in my year of reviewing and some of the worst writing i’ve ran into. And that writing includes a goblin man voyerstically forcing two teenagers to make out, making jokes about santa renaming himself Clem the sceneafter he tearfully confessed to letting the elves and ms. claus die, accidental transphobia via the u-men, and Bryan Lee O malley thinking we needed more than one volume of Julie Powers being around. This was disgusting, even by 1990 standards and especially by 2021 standards and it drags the film down considerably. Without it the film is okay.. with it the film is just VERY hard to watch any time he pops up. He made getting through the movie a nightmare and while I pause a lot becaue it’s a bad habbit I did so more simply because as I said earlier in the review I could not stand him.

It makes it a hard film to recommend. If you can stomach the racisim, then it might be worth it, but be aware of what your putting up with going in. But if you can’t.. there’s no shame in that, it’s carbombya levels of bad. Which yes was a real fictoinal country. It was so bad Casey Casem quit transformers over it. True story. So yeah, it’s an okay film, on par with the series at it’s best for the most part.. but Djonn just spoils it for me.

If you liked this review, like it, share it around that sort of thing and if you want MORE disney movie reviews, in addiiton to the goofy movie one later this month, if you help me hit my 25 dollar stretch goal on patroen.com/popculturebuffet, i’ll do reviews of the Recess, Proud Family and Kim Possible MOvies (Well so the drama anyway), so help me out would you and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #ducktales treasure of the lost lamp #ducktales 87 #scrooge mcduck #rip taylor #christopher lloyd #launchpad mcquack #webby vanderquack #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #duckworth #bentina beakley #merlock #djon #faris djinn #movies #disney plus #disney

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vanillann · 3 years

Text

dorothea (carrie wilson x reader)

my first fic for the evermore series!!

based on “dorothea” by taylor swift

word count: 1.1k

the evermore masterlist

official gif set

“You’ll miss me by tomorrow!”

I watched the sparkles dance across the screen, watching as each contributed to the dance number with their colorful wigs. I watched Carrie’s pink wig spin perfectly, as it always did.

Her smile was bright under the lights of the stage, her pride showing for good reason. She had made it big, her music so good her own tour was being broadcasted on live television.

She held her arms up, smiling a few bracelets and flowers made into the front of the stage, the millions of screams just for her. I knew she was screaming herself on the inside, I could always read her so well.

I could make out a few of the screams, a few of “I wish I were you” and “I love you” rang through the room as Dirty Candy made their way from the stage to realex before the next performance.

Just watching her walk away on the screen made my heartbreak all over again, how I wish I could have been behind the stage waiting for her.

I played with my phone in my lap, thinking if I should do something stupid or not. The idea of hearing her voice speak directly to me again was everything I wanted, but what did she want?

I was proud of her for getting out of this town and making it big. She did the one thing she wanted and I couldn’t be mad that I didn’t fit in anymore.

I wish I had but I understood, I wasn’t on for change and that was the one thing Carrie needed at this time.

I unlocked the phone, pressing the contact button and scrolling to the “C”’s. Her name was the same as I left, Carrie, with a small pink heart beside it.

I didn’t even think before I pushed the call button, the light ring made my anxiety sky-rocket. I pulled at the piece of my chair, soon standing up when my leg started tapping against the floor and slowly started walking around my living room.

“You have reached the voicemail box of-“ I let my head tilt back, looking up at the popcorn ceiling as I thought over my next action.

I doubt she still had my number and must have deleted it when she moved.

“Please leave a message after the tone.” I wanted to panic, hang up and forget I called, but I waited for the small tone before I started speaking.

“Hey Carrie, It’s (Y/N) from high school. I’m not sure if you remember me, we dated for awhile,” I didn’t know if I really wanted an answer, if I really needed to know the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about stopped thinking of me ages ago.

“Uhm, I saw your performance. It was amazing as always,” my words trailed off, curse me for being so awkward.

“I don’t really know why I called, guess I just wanted to know if you stop and think about me, us.”

Shut up, Shut up.

“I know you hate this town and the people, it hasn’t changed if you were wondering, but I don’t just-“ I took a shaky breath, wondering where I was even going with this message anymore.

“I don’t know,” I rubbed my finger against my forehead, trying my best to think over my next words.

“Did you forget about us? Because I never did”, the pathetic smile slowly drifted to my lips, thinking back to high school.

“I remember you’d sell makeup from your mother's collection when we were kids, no older than 8.”

I probably shouldn’t have been talking about her mom, she took her leaving personal but I couldn’t help but indulge in the past.

“Our when we left prom early, ran around that Target for like an hour and a half, that was the first time I told you I loved you. You told me you were leaving town like three weeks later,” I thought back to her gorgeous pink dress, the way she sparkled and made the whole look like nothing.

She always had that power, the way she could out-shine anyone without even trying.

“I guess I’m trying to say I miss you,” I pushed open the back door slightly, leaning on my front porch railing. I looked out at the sky, the comforting breeze made the next set of words easier.

“I know you're on tour now, but maybe when you’re done you might wanna visit. You could stay at my place if you didn’t want to see your dad, I know you both had that nasty falling out.”

I tapped lightly on the railing, amazed the machine hadn’t shut me out yet.

“Maybe not, oh I sound crazy don’t I?”

The little chuckled feel past my lips, biting down on my bottom lip as I regretted this phone call.

“Well, you’re always welcome at my house just to know. I was just curious if you were the Carrie I fell in love with, but I guess I’m not going to find out,” I turned around, my back down leaning on the railing.

I crossed my arm, looking back into the house as a new network went on about Carrie and her fame.

“Uhm yeah, If this isn’t Carrie Wilson that gets this please just trash it, or trash it if you are Carrie I don’t know. Bye then.” I quickly hung up the phone, hanging my head low as soon as the calm disconnected.

I stood there for a few seconds, listening to the few leaves rustle in the winds and the nice cloud shine down on my sad broken soul. I swallow harshly, finally pushing off the railing and pushing open the door.

The T.V. went on, I didn’t have it in me to actually turn it off as I made a cup of tea, the water boiling as I watched the pictures of her flashes across the screen.

I smiled lightly when I saw an old prom photo, one I took all those years ago. Julie’s band played in the back, Carrie doing her best not to dance to the catching tune but she was failing horribly.

“This news just in, Carrie Wilson just canceled the rest of her tour due to a family emergency.”

I ignored the same whistle of the water, slowly leaving my kitchen to look at the T.V. screen.

As far as I knew her dad was fine, she wasn’t close with her mom, hadn’t been since she had walked out. I felt my phone ring in my pocket, pulling in from it quickly.

I saw the contact name flash across the top, my breath caught in my throat.

“Carrie,” I spoke under my breath, I slowly hit the green button. Placing the phone back to my ear, forgetting every word I had ever learned over time.

“You mentioned staying with you?”

I could stop the little tear that slipped down my cheek, nodding at first before I remembered she couldn’t see my face.

“I did,” my voice sounded gone, but this was the most here I felt in a while.

“Good, I just canceled my tour for you.”

permanent taglist:

@kittykylax @itstaylorcale @head-over-heart @marvel-rhapsody @accioxtina @always-spaced-out @carnations-red @onetoomanyfilms

julie and the phantoms taglist:

@willex-owns-my-heart @sunsetcurvej @g7aesthetic @who-even-is-galileo @fangirlangioma @ifilwtmfc @teti-menchon0604 @spyteens

#carrie wilson x reader #carrie wilson #julie and the phantoms x reader #jatp x reader

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timebird84 · 3 years

Text

🎄 PotO Advent Calendar 2020 🎄

By @from-aldebaran

Snow Angel

As grey dawn broke over the streets of Paris, the Opera Ghost stood high atop the roof of the Palais Garnier, surveying the thick snowfall that had settled over the city in the night, snow still falling, perfect flakes settling on his cloak, their crystalline shapes unmarred, becoming bright additions to the subtle jet beadwork adorning his collar and shoulders.

Erik had suspected this change in the weather when he had completed his rounds last evening with a final stop on the roof. The air had smelled of impending snow, reminding him of days long ago on the road in Russia, where learning the signs and portents of the weather’s whims had been a matter of life or death.

The light-bejeweled city had been beautiful from the heights last night and was even more so now, all ugliness revealed by the daylight hidden beneath smooth snowy white curves, like the mask which shielded the malformed side of his face from the horrified gaze of the world. And this was not winter in Russia. His life no longer danced upon a knife’s edge from day to day. He stood here, atop his Opera House, warmth and beauty and home within, snow kept safely without, waiting for the dancers and musicians and singers to come fill his halls with bright life and music, which he shaped as always subtly from the shadows.

Well, and there was no more time to stand here gawking while snow collected at an impressive rate on the brim of his hat. There was much to be done this day, before the Palais emptied for the Christmas holiday, with a concert by the Opéra Populaire scheduled after, for the holiday season, and a new production starting in the coming year. The day would hold Christine’s early morning vocal lesson, a full concert ensemble rehearsal on stage at noon, with breakout practices and recitals in the afternoon.

The Opera House always bustled with life during the day, but never more so than at the holiday times. The artists, young and old, were caught up in what Erik understood to be the spirit of fellowship of the season, exchanging gifts, holding impromptu gatherings, filled with Christmas cheer, and above all, anxiously awaiting the time away from their work that the Christmas break provided. The days leading up to Christmas were filled with a palpable energy, waiting to be released as the company headed out on holiday.

Then, ah, for him a few days of what had used to be blessed solitude, when he could roam the halls at will, mindful only of the few beleaguered guards tasked to work the holidays. Never very happy about it, they typically stayed close to the main guard station, leaving the gilded halls free for him to enjoy in peace, to marvel at the beauty contained within the Palais and of course to attend to more practical matters, ensuring seldom used secret access points remained in working order. Yes, the holidays were a perfect time for a survey of his Opera House, top to bottom, drifting purposefully alone through the long winter nights.

But this year was somehow different. Sweet solitude held less allure. He had grown accustomed to the new lessons with Christine, their daily interactions. Seeing her progress, shaping her voice into a beautiful reliable instrument to serve her all her days. Speaking with her on matters musical and personal. Using his guise as an angel to gain perspective on facets of human behavior that he had either been unaware of or which had somehow eluded him completely. Not that he truly cared, mind, nor would he have much occasion to put this newfound knowledge into practice, being the solitary creature he was.

Still, she fascinated him…that is, what she had to say fascinated him.

It was a good thing, then, that the work to be done in the Opera House, still and empty and quiet for the next few days, would occupy his time so completely.

Erik turned to go, his footprints from his earlier traverse already erased by the snow, leaving no doubt his new footprints would be obscured as well. He swept his hat off, releasing a sudden tiny blizzard into the wind. He felt the unexpected kiss of snowflakes on his cheek, and a warm flurry of sensation in his chest which he recognized with surprise as anticipation, anticipation of a pleasant day indeed, with all proceeding according to plan.

*****

Christine was late. Very late. Christine had never been so much as a minute late before, not for their morning lessons.

Erik fretted behind the mirror until the moment when the door to the dressing room flew open and Christine burst in, her arms full of bags and parcels, her blue cloak damp about her, her usual outside-of-the-opera upswept coiffure fallen, sending her auburn curls cascading about her shoulders, sparkling with snow. The vacant tableau of her dressing room came to vibrant life with her entrance, her cheeks and lips rosy with color as she spun to close the door behind her, calling for him immediately.

“Angel, oh Angel, I am so sorry! Are you here, did you stay?”

He had not the heart to make her wait a moment for his answer, though her calls for him were their own sweet music.

“My child, I am here. What befell you? And what is it that you carry there?”

“Oh, Angel,” Christine began, as she set her various burdens down on the vanity, easing woolen mittens from her hands, unfastening her cloak and tossing it over the dressing screen to dry. She perched her mittens precariously atop the screen as well. “It has snowed, have you seen, a very great snow, the most here in Paris in years and years!” She pulled a small pair of hair combs from the pockets of her dress, trying in vain to roll the snow-dampened curls of her hair and secure them away from her face.

“I did see, and this delayed you somehow?” He felt like a fool. He seldom had to go abroad from the Opera House in inclement weather, unless he wished to, and he had not even considered the snow as a reason for the lateness of her arrival.

“Well, yes, it is not only snow, but ice beneath and walking is treacherous, especially for those not accustomed to snow! I daresay I spent more time helping people up this morning than I did on my own journey here.” Christine laughed, adding with sudden astuteness, in apparent consideration of his angelic nature and his potential ignorance about the meaning of her northern origins— “I am Swedish, you see, and used to the snow!”

She busied herself sorting various packages that she fished from the bags she had carried, explaining as she worked. “We exchange gifts with each other for Christmas, the ballet girls do, and these are the presents I have brought with me to give.”

Of course. Gifts were customary at this season, he thought, as his chest inexplicably tightened.

Her hair came loose from the combs again and she pulled them free, rummaging in her vanity. “These are entirely too small, they always have been. I simply need to get larger ones, and give these away.”

She pulled a larger pair of combs from the drawer, evidently much used by the battered look of them and was finally able to set her hair away from her face to her satisfaction, though the rest of the snow-swept curls she left free, here in the confines of the Opera House, where the rules governing a young lady’s expected hair arrangement were a moot point at best among the bohemian members of the Opéra Populaire.

His eyes caught on her face as she peered into her vanity mirror, and he was struck suddenly that beneath the rosy glow imparted by the winter weather, she was pale, and somehow drawn, with faint lilac shadows beneath her eyes.

It was not like her to complain about anything, especially something so inconsequential as a set of hair combs. Perhaps…

“Are you well? Are you agreeable to our lesson today?” he enquired.

He drove her very hard, came the abrupt thought, as his gaze traced the stark line of her cheek, with these lessons in addition to the not insignificant demands of her duties in the company, singing in the chorus and dancing as well, under the also quite strict supervision of Monsieur Reyer and Madame Giry respectively.

For all that she held these responsibilities, and for all that she had been through these past years—things she had shared with him during the time of their lessons and on other occasions when she called to him and he was able to answer—she was, he suddenly realized, still quite young.

Young in a way he had never been allowed to be, and with a sudden hollowness expanding in his chest, he wondered if he was complicit in rushing her into adulthood with his stern expectations.

“Oh, yes,” Christine said, shaking her hair back one last time and coming to stand in the center of the room, poising herself for her warmups. “Some of us had hoped…well, had thought, that the day’s rehearsals might be cancelled due to the weather, but—” a look approaching worry crossed her face—“but I would never miss a lesson with you, Angel. And as it turns out, the day’s full schedule remains firmly in place.” Here her lip quivered, just slightly, and she cast her gaze down in what looked very like disappointment.

Oh dear. Abruptly, he was at a loss. He cast about for what to do and decided he needed more information.

“My child,” he said, “you know we have discussed before how I am ignorant of many things in this mortal world, and that I rely on you to be my guide in such matters.”

Christine lifted her head, nodding to the corner of the room where he had sent his voice to speak from.

“You must tell me truthfully, Christine. What had you and your companions hoped for this day? And please, dear one, sit down. Warm yourself before you even think of warming your voice.”

Christine crossed to the vanity and settled upon the little chair there, chafing her hands together and tucking them in the folds of her skirt. “Well, it seems so silly to say aloud, especially to you, Angel. Such trivial matters to concern you with, and really of no importance.”

“We have had this discussion before as well. There is nothing you cannot lay before me. Music is not made just with the voice, you will recall, but with the spirit. If the spirit is troubled or,” and here he paused, to rid his voice of any emotion save comfort, “or the body is tired, you must tell me, Christine. I am not always able to discern these things without your help.”

She shifted on the little chair, and then spoke. “Well, it is just, yes, we are tired, all of us, and we had hoped to be able to go out…and play.” She flushed, her pale features pinking in the soft light of the dressing room to match the high color of her cheeks and lips.

Play. In the snow?

Erik considered her in silence, information and observations assuming new configurations in his mind, Christine again leading him to a new perspective. He had anticipated a high level of energy from the company today, this he had observed before during previous holiday seasons. People with their minds on future plans, on gatherings with loved ones, eager to be done with their work.

But this morning, the Opera House fairly vibrated with the company’s restrained energy, and at last he understood—it was due to the snow!

And Christine—not just his promising student, but a member of that company, a member of humanity in a way that he was far removed from, in a way that he had utterly failed to take into account.

Erik pulled in a deep breath in his place behind the mirror, letting it out slowly and quietly as he gripped his hands tightly together. She would work herself to exhaustion, catch her death of cold, to not miss a lesson from him. Her health could take a turn, due to illness or overwork, two things he himself was never troubled by—and he would be responsible.

He could not and should not hold her to his impossibly warped standards.

And he—he had had no consideration for her at all, none, not even arranging for something as simple as a holiday gift…

It simply would not do.

Perhaps there was something that could be done, to make amends. He addressed her, sending his voice again from the corner of the room.

“Play?” He hoped he did not sound nearly as confused as he felt.

“In the snow, you know. It happens so rarely here!”

“Ah,” he said wisely, feeling thoroughly unenlightened. “And how, exactly, does one play in the snow?”

“Oh!” She leaned forward, clasping her hands, her voice animated and eyes bright. “There’s sledding of course, and snow forts, and snowmen, and snowballs…oh, and snow angels!” Here she laughed again.

“I see,” he said, though he saw nothing of the sort. He remembered looking out of his shuttered window as a child, at a group of children throwing balls of snow at one another in the street, and from his Russian travels he knew what sleds were, but all else was mystery. His tone must have conveyed more than his words, because Christine continued, explaining.

“Well, sledding is riding something smooth down a hillside covered in snow. Snowmen are figures made out of large balls of snow, stacked with a bottom and middle and a top for a head. You can add branches for arms, buttons or coal for eyes, and a carrot for a nose. And then things like scarves and hats if you like. Oh, and snow forts are like walls made of snow, or sometimes square or domed houses. To play in, you see, or hide behind, especially in a snowball fight.”

Christine tipped her chin down, shaking her head slightly, yet still smiling. “Snowball fights sound very mean when explaining them to an angel, but I promise you they are very fun! You make fist sized balls out of snow and throw them at one another. If you are feeling very wicked, you can pack them tightly, so they sting your target a bit.”

She raised her eyes, skin coloring once more, and brought the subject back round to virtue. “Snow angels are when you flop down in a field of soft snow, flat on your back, and then you move your arms and legs to make shapes. The legs, see, make a robe and your arms make the wings. At least—” and she glanced again at the corner his voice issued from “—that is what we think angels look like, though we have no way to be sure they look anything at all like what we have imagined.”

Well, and time to change that topic. It all seemed very silly…but perhaps that was what was needed here. Some time not to be serious. Some time to simply…play. At the very least, he would cut this lesson short and give the girl a break this morning. She had dance practice very soon and then the full run through of the holiday concert with the whole company, dancers, chorus, and orchestra assembled on the stage.

Today was the last day before the brief holiday break, and the show to commence very soon after everyone returned. They were already well practiced though, he had seen it for himself. The management could have made a different decision and called today’s rehearsals off altogether with no harm done. They were clearly as foolish as he himself had been.

It was time for that to change. And, he thought, his mind a whirl of ideas, time to share the lesson he had just learned.

“Christine, a few scales please and that will suffice for today. Warm up properly prior to your rehearsal later this morning. You will want to be well prepared for anything.”

She rose from her seat to move to the center of the room again. “Oh, Angel, are you certain? I can do anything that you ask.”

“I am very certain, dear one. Sing today, then go from here and rest your voice, body and spirit until you return again next week. You have given me the lesson today, Christine, one this angel had not considered, that people need time to rest and play, to stay well for their work. I shall not forget it.”

*****

Erik lounged in casual repose in the flies high above the stage, which hummed with activity dozens of feet below. The flies were empty save for himself; there was only one backdrop needed for the post- Christmas concert the Opéra Populaire was preparing to rehearse, and that already in place, leaving the stagehands to concentrate on ground level tasks. Joseph Buquet’s many little nests of old drop cloths, where he napped away the hours hidden safely from view above the stage, were empty, Buquet himself busy sharing a flask of holiday cheer with the dayshift guards at their station. This set of circumstances had saved Erik quite a bit of time in dealing with unwanted attention, and ensured he had no audience for the completion of the project that had consumed his morning hours, and gave him also an excellent vantage from which to observe today’s proceedings.

He had been right about the effect of the holidays, and Christine’s observations about the snowfall enabled him to see even more clearly…no one wanted to be here today. They wished to be out, in the snow, left to their own devices

Idly, Erik observed the rehearsal layout. The orchestra was ensconced in the pit, doing their warm-ups as the conductor, Monsieur Desplat, presided in dreamy, absent-minded glory, bent over his sheet music, his hair a cottony white nimbus about his head. Desplat lived fully in the world of music, which condition Erik could understand, but alas, the music in Monsieur Desplat’s head often drowned out the real world shortcomings of several members of his orchestra.

As if on cue, the Third Trombone hit a particularly sour note, causing Erik’s fingers to clench. And of course, the Second Trombone’s chair was empty, the man over in the string section, pressing his dubious attention upon one of the violinists—it scarcely mattered to Erik which one, nor, he suspected, did it matter much to the Second Trombone, whose criteria in choice of partners boiled down to alive and available.

Stage left stood the twittering semicircle of the chorus, no uniformity to their dress as they were not yet outfitted in full Christmas costume. Monsieur Reyer as usual strutted before them like a bantam cock, all nervous energy and sharp movement, his incessant frustration confined only by his perpetually too-tight jacket and too-small hat. Erik had to admit that the man knew his business, else Erik would have made it his business to have the répétiteur replaced years ago. No, Reyer was quite competent, and then some, despite a distressing tendency towards favoritism and inclination to fawn over said favorites, resulting in a failure to correct their slide into bad form.

And there stood the favorites themselves, La Carlotta and her partner Signor Piangi, at the downstage end of the chorus’s semicircle. La Carlotta, true to her character, alternated between looking bored and disdainful, while Piangi’s good nature asserted itself as he chatted with chorus members, yet, with the ease of long practice, and perhaps a well-developed sense of self-preservation, he remained constantly aware of and attentive to the ever-changing moods of his lady diva. As usual, Piangi had done a thorough warm-up, his pleasant tenor an accompaniment to Erik’s morning efforts in the flies, and also as usual, La Carlotta found warm-ups beneath her, which contributed to the daily erosion of her once supreme talent.

Stage right, a drift of tulle and satin, the ballet dancers fully costumed in their holiday concert regalia, complete with tall tiaras each adorned at the highest point with a glittering golden star, in sharp contrast to the stern black-clad presence of Madame Giry, staff at the ready. And there, speaking animatedly with Madame Giry’s blonde-haired daughter Meg, was Christine. Erik narrowed his eyes—he had heard Christine warming up as he worked and knew she had no dance role in this concert. If she were not careful, she would risk—

“Daaé!”

And there it was, Monsieur Reyer’s nasal voice rising above the sounds of the orchestra and sending Christine rushing across the stage to her place in the chorus. One would think, Erik mused, that a vocal coach of some renown would have made some effort towards making his own speaking voice less of an assault on the ear, but sadly, this was not the case. One of the ballerinas, a particularly unpleasant girl with dark eyes and scornful brows, far too aware of her own beauty, laughed and muttered something to her compatriots, while Meg frowned fiercely at her. Erik cocked his head, and made a mental note of the scoffer’s position.

All in good time.

He settled back to wait for the rehearsal to begin.

*****

The company was restive, there was no doubt of it. Errors in previously solid performances abounded. The ballet girls had missed their cue again and stood sullenly until a broad overblown note from the First Bassoon, a young man relatively new to the orchestra, sent them into a fit of giggles which seemed to set them more at ease. A deliberately overblown note, thought Erik, knowing a player of that caliber and on that fine of an instrument would have to work at producing such a sound.

Yes, and that reminded him, strings and woodwinds. Special consideration would have to be taken for strings and woodwinds...

The chorus was also off, and Monsieur Reyer was growing more and more heated, stopping the songs, launching into his familiar tirade of “No, no, no! Nearly, but no!” repeatedly, which was ostensibly supposed to be both helpful and comforting and which in reality was neither.

Erik caught sight of Christine’s pale, strained face amongst the chorus as the rehearsal moved forward into the third selection. Three selections out of twenty, and at this rate hours upon hours of work for the beleaguered members of the company, and every bit of this realization showing in her expression.

It was time for the lesson to begin. As taught by Christine to her Angel, thence from Angel to Opera Ghost, and now, with very great pleasure, from Opera Ghost to the whole of the Opéra Populaire…

The ensemble was several bars in, orchestra, chorus, and dancers striving for synchronicity, when Monsieur Desplat was roused from his world of music by the sight and sound of his woodwind section and his string section ceasing their play, and standing to put away their instruments with some haste.

“Here, now,” he sputtered, as the brass played gamely on, the singers and dancers onstage continuing, determined, it seemed, to make it through this song come what may. “What are you doing?”

The First Violin spoke up. “Why sir, only what you told us! You said rehearsal’s off, to pack our things and go!”

“I said no such thing!” Desplat declaimed, as the strings and woodwinds persisted, that no, they had all heard it, plain as day, as though he had spoken right in their very ears…

On stage, the chorus gamely continued, but the lack of complete accompaniment and the distraction of the many standing figures in the pit finally threw them off, and Reyer brought them to an uneven halt as per usual.

“No, no, no! Nearly, but—”

SPLAT!

Seemingly out of nowhere, Reyer was hit in the back of the head by a wickedly accurate snowball, which knocked his hat off amid a spectacular spray of glittering snow.

A second whizzing sphere smacked the headdress off of a particular ballerina, icy cold snow wiping the ever-present smug expression off of her face.

In the stunned silence which followed, an odd sound was heard, dozens of ropes passing through dozens of pulleys, as an equal number of buckets descended rapidly to every far flung area of the stage, coming quietly to rest amidst the company.

Each bucket was heaped to overflowing with snowballs.

And it was on.

High above the fray, Erik rocked with silent laughter as the stage devolved into a battlefield.

The orchestra wasted no time in storming the stage and commandeering ammunition, the strings and woodwinds with their instruments safely stowed (thanks to the early warning they had received) versus the later arriving brass section, all of them at one point joining forces to pelt Monsieur Desplat rather mercilessly until he seized a music stand as a shield and made his way out of the orchestra pit to the safety of the far reaches of the auditorium.

Madame Giry made a small attempt to control the corps de ballet and might have done so, had not her canny instincts led her to glance upward at the flies, where Erik allowed her to see him. He waggled a snowball at her from his own private stash, and she sighed, stepping back and releasing the ballet dancers to do their worst.

The chorus, who rather sportingly had not attacked the still recovering Monsieur Reyer, and who had instead turned gleefully on each other, solidified into a unit when faced with the raging attack of the ballerinas. Reyer’s immunity was short lived as he was caught in a blistering crossfire, not at all by accident, as Erik was able to discern from his superior vantage point. He noted with both surprise and delight that Christine got in a few hits on him herself.

In fact, Erik’s one concern, for Christine’s safety, had dissolved immediately as he saw her good Swedish instincts and good Swedish arm turn her into a smiling yet fierce combatant. She was well-liked by the company and not the malicious target of anyone that Erik could tell, save the scornful ballerina who, while she was a talented dancer, had no arm at all. Her mistaken attack on Christine was decisively countered and Erik added a hard packed ice ball to the middle of her back for good measure as she attempted to flee the stage.

Piangi, an enormous but well-liked target, was spared and used his seeming immunity to shield Carlotta, who huffed in red-faced outrage as he attempted to maneuver her off the stage before the worst happened.

And he would have made it, too, thought Erik, as he considered trajectories for a hit on Carlotta which proved impossible due to Piangi’s intercession—until the stagehands arrived. Arming themselves from a row of untouched buckets at the back of the stage, they fired at will, and with enviable accuracy, at La Carlotta, their bane and tormentor for many long seasons, reducing her despite Piangi’s shielding presence to a sodden bedraggled state in a matter of mere seconds.

Erik sought out a few especially irritating company members for his own strikes from above, and had then turned to amusing himself by lobbing high arcing shots into the orchestra pit, sending snowball after snowball into the bell of the abandoned tuba, when he caught sight of a particular nemesis, the Second Trombone, heading away from the fray towards the far backstage.

The man was a menace, his insatiable nature and never ending supply of willing partners resulting in innumerable trysts, and Erik had grown tired of stumbling across him all throughout the Opera House in the most unexpected places…and positions.

Sure enough, the Second Trombone had again seized the day with one of the violinists, and as the couple prepared to conduct a private symphony of their own backstage, Erik took great delight in dumping a full bucket of icy snowball melt upon them from the great height of the flies, bringing their performance to a chilling conclusion.

Satisfied, Erik returned to his perch above the stage. The battle still raged. Christine had switched allegiances back to the corps de ballet, and stood now shoulder to shoulder with Meg. They dodged and weaved incoming missiles with dancer’s grace, laughing all the while.

Never had he seen Christine so animated, so vibrant. So simply happy. His fingers, icy cold from snow, warmed as he pressed his hands to his chest, feeling his heart alive beneath his palms.

His attention was drawn away to Monsieur Lefèvre arriving stage left. Erik watched in astonished bemusement as Madame Giry made her way serenely from stage right, through the pitched battle, not one single member of the Opéra Populaire so much as daring to dream of throwing a snowball anywhere near her, to confer briefly with him. The two concluded their conference, Lefèvre threw his hands up and stalked away, and Madame Giry turned, striking her staff sharply upon the stage twice, bringing an immediate cessation of hostilities.

“Rehearsals for the day are concluded,” she announced. “We will reconvene next week, after the break.”

She silently surveyed the wet and disheveled assemblage of supposed professionals before her.

“Merry Christmas,” she intoned, and she sighed.

*****

Erik returned to the roof in time to see the liberated company, now hastily clad in their winter gear, spill out onto the front plaza of the Opera House. The snowball fight was quickly rejoined and spread out along the sidewalks and across the streets, and grew in intensity with the addition of staid bankers and stolid businessmen to the combat, grinning madly beneath their top hats and homburgs. Mesdames and mademoiselles joined in as well, in plain spun aprons or hats the height of fashion. Snowballs made equals of them all.

But there—there she was, Christine, with Meg, joining in the snowball fight.

Even at this distance he could see the silver and blue glint in her hair that meant she had found his gift when she returned to the dressing room for her cloak and mittens.

Hair combs, a pair, a design of intricately carved silver set with sapphires that matched her cloak and her eyes.

Erik cast his mind back to the warm Persian night, as far from the crisp air and glittering snow-covered streets of Paris as could be conceived, when he had been gifted the combs. There had been a boy, missing a leg above the knee, and Erik had had a thought of something that could be constructed, jointed at knee and foot, to allow the boy to walk. So simple really, it had taken him mere days to construct. His parents had been overjoyed, and the mother had offered the combs in gratitude. Erik had made to protest but ultimately had been unable to refuse and really, despite their uselessness to him, the combs were so beautiful they were hard to resist.

The combs had made their way back here with him, surviving the travels and adventures he had had since leaving Persia long ago. It had been a simple matter, among his tasks this morning, to return to his home beneath the Opera House and fetch some things away, the combs, a bit of pretty paper to wrap them in and a few other oddments that were here with him now in a cloth bag tucked by his feet.

Writing a note to accompany the gift had been quite a bit harder. He had decided against lengthy explanations of how an Angel could possibly gift a material object…if the subject were broached later, he would come up with something. Disguising his handwriting was old hat—his own handwriting was often rushed and scrawled as it attempted to keep up with the flow of his mind’s ideas. The Opera Ghost had very different penmanship indeed than his own. And so must the Angel, in a hand differing from both.

It was the sentiment that eluded him. He settled upon writing that he would see her upon her return after the Christmas break, to remind again she needn’t show up for their lessons for those few days. And then he thought to finish with “Merry Christmas” and realized he had never written, or spoken those words for that matter, in all the many and varied years of his life…

A sharp gust of wind that threatened to snap the edges of his cloak from his grasp brought him back to the rooftop. Clearly the gift and note had been found and must have been passable, for Christine had already set the combs in her lush curls. She was closer now, on the crowded sidewalk below, snowballs flying as a lone bicyclist, head down, rode close enough to become an instantly popular target, pelted with a will by all parties, save Christine. The cyclist fell, knocking his cap loose, as his bicycle slid beneath him on the icy street.

The bombardment was merciless as he attempted to retrieve his bicycle from where it had fallen…until Christine, arms raised, stepped next to him. The assailants, seemingly chagrined, turned their attentions back to each other as Christine brushed the bicyclist off, retrieved his cap for him and sent him peaceably on his way.

Erik shook his head, his hands unaccountably warming again. He would know her anywhere, he thought, simply by her actions. A merciful, caring young woman, who would forgive her poor Angel for not understanding that people needed to play and rest.

The combs, silver and sapphire, sparkled in her hair.

He was glad to have been able to gift her some laughter today as well.

She and Meg made their way to the front plaza to join a group constructing figures out of snow. Ah, these must be snowmen, and snow ladies as well, for the figures were those of the principals of the Opéra Populaire. Simple shapes, made of three large snowballs stacked atop one another; nevertheless, due to the accompanying accessories it was easy to tell who was supposed to be who. Christine and Meg helped with a figure of Piangi, a very large snowman indeed.

After a time, the girls left the group, and started, he knew, on their way to their homes. Madame Giry drifted gracefully out to join them, and they began their walk. Meg suddenly stopped, pulling her mother’s hands to stop her too, and she and Christine made their way over to an untroubled patch of snow. Laughing, they flung themselves backward, arms sweeping vigorously from their sides to above their heads and the position of their feet indicating that their legs described arcs worthy of da Vinci as well. Carefully rising so as not to disturb the patterns they had made, they hopped back to the sidewalk to admire their handiwork. There, in the snowfield, two angels now appeared. Christine patted at her hair, checking for her new combs, he fancied, and the trio, after some dusting off, continued on their way, to their waiting homes.

Erik watched until she was out of sight, watching longer still as the day began to fade toward evening. The snowfall, which had continued on and off throughout the day, was on again, lazy flakes riding the wind and spiraling down like falling stars.

And now, he supposed, it was time for his own lesson.

For Erik and the boy he had never had a chance to be.

He looked around the snowy expanse of the rooftop, and thought of Christine’s list. The snowball fight had been accomplished. Sledding…was not an option. Oh, it would be quite possible on the higher, steeper pitched portions of the roof of the Palais Garnier, but the inevitable conclusion must give one pause.

Snow forts….again he considered the snow-covered Opera House. Well, and he already had the grandest snow fort anyone could imagine.

That left only two items on the list, and he set to the snowmen with a will that surprised him.

In short order, he had two figures, one tall, one smaller. He eyed the bag he had brought with him. It contained buttons for eyes, blue for Christine, brown and blue for himself. For his own figure, he had brought a hat, unused since a midnight sortie some months back had gone rather awry and he and the hat had had to make a quick detour into the Seine. And for Christine’s, well, he had brought away the small unwanted hair combs when he had delivered his gift to her dressing room. They would be returned of course, as the snow melted.

But…even with these accoutrements accounted for in the final design, the figures struck him as clumsy and unrefined.

If he was meant to be having fun, damn it, it should be fun for him, not an assault on his artistic sensibilities.

He set to the figures again, shaping, sculpting, a dress here, a cloak there, adding snow as needed until the figures took on a fuller semblance of life.

He finished Christine first, her face taking shape beneath his hands, her hair now tumbling about her shoulders, a cascade of sparkling snow. He stepped back, to consider. Yes, this was recognizable as Christine to anyone who had even a passing acquaintance with her. Soft yet strong. Demure yet commanding attention. Graceful even at rest.

The buttons for eyes did not suit this sculpt, but the combs... Carefully, he set them amid the snowy waves of her hair, and was pleased with the result.

His own form took shape even more quickly, lean straight lines, the billows of his cloak, long hands with icy frozen fingers of snow, shining slicked back hair.

The face… He sculpted the left side first, smooth unmarred features, half of a firm-lipped mouth, the long straight line of one side of his nose, jaw and cheekbone and brow sharp and defined.

And then he stopped, eyes closed, brow furrowed and surely it was only melting snow he felt upon his cheeks...

The decision reached, he faced himself again and with trembling hands worked on the right side of his face, sculpting not a mask, but a semblance which matched the left, his face as it should have been, in some world out of time where he had been born a boy who could go outdoors, who had learned how to play, who had known the joys of family and home and love.

Stepping back, he saw a man he did not know, but somehow wished to. And next to the man, the girl who was fast becoming his teacher, perhaps leading him to come to know this strange version of himself at her side.

Shaking his head at his odd evening fancies, Erik delved into the bag, finding the hat, well suited to the figure before him, the hat having seen and been through much and lived to tell the tale. Settling it on the figure’s head, he tipped it low on the right side, as he wore his own, and acting on some instinctual impulse, with his finger he drew a line on the snowy visage, slanting from the left forehead to the right corner of the mouth, which he found comforting in some unknowable way.

Well. That left only one item on the list.

Removing his cloak and hat, he sat in the snow some small distance from the snow people, and laying back, moved his arms and legs in great sweeping, freeing arcs, his length of limb creating a startling large angel when he stood and inspected it.

An Angel of Music.

Something he and Christine genuinely had in common. Long before he came into her sphere, she had been visited by the Angel of Music; it was evident in her talent and passion and power.

And despite the vagaries of his life and birth, one thing he was truly grateful for, one thing that had saved him time and again, one thing that he believed in above all else, was his own visit from the very same angel.

It seemed fitting that these snow versions of himself and Christine had their own angel, as well.

He drew a staff in the snow between angel and student and teacher and with careful touches from the toes of his shoes, wrote a song in the snow for them to share. Although at this point, on this day, on this night, it was really rather moot now as to who was the student and who the teacher.

Erik dusted himself off, donning cloak and hat again, rolling the bag of buttons small enough to tuck into his pocket, and strode to the edge of the roof to look out over the city.

Paris lay covered in an absolution of pure white snow, a forgiveness of drifts that gleamed and glittered in the city lights below.

Snow swirled in the wind, and he knew by morning, his and Christine’s snow features would be blurred into generality, the angel windswept to a soft impression of the powerful muse he knew, the snow song unreadable and unknown except to those who had been there when it was written.

All fading into the past, leaving only tomorrow in view.

He felt again a tingle that he recognized as anticipation. The break would not be too long. Christine would return. Their mutual lessons would resume. Who knew what they would learn together?

Leaning out, over the roof’s edge, he spoke, and watched his words turn to mist, carried off by the ghost of an evening breeze.

“Merry Christmas, Christine…”

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BONUS by @gracie-p8-officialblog

#PotO Advent Calendar #PotO #Phantom of the Opera #Door 23

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