#raised by bikers. in my dna!!

[zarie13]

Family/relationship BMFM headcanons that live rent-free in my head:

- As much as Throttle and Carbine liked each other in their teens, she was never the "love of his life" nor did she remain with him as his girlfriend. Neither were passionate enough to fill the emptiness in each other's heart. They remained best friends and occasional lovers though.

- Besides, Carbine is childfree by choice. She understood from a young age that with her ambitions to bring peace and life back to Mars, she would not have time to raise kids and to give them enough attention. She is happy with her choice, and is a great untie to the children of Freedom Fighters and the youngest members of the rebellion.

- Throttle, on the other hand, who lost his entire family to the war with Plutark, always wanted a big family which he can take care of. Modo, coming from a loving and extremely caring family, wanted a big family as well.

- All three Biker Bros are excited when Charley tells them she is pregnant for the first time.

- Yes, I do believe that humans and cave mice are DNA compatible. Otherwise, how would they be able to not die from blood loss or medicine unsuitability during all those years on Earth.

- Bros become 500% more responsible the moment they are given their first borns to hold.

- Mice having the dominant gene in this interplanetary cocktail, most of their kids are mice.

- At one point, bros help Charley rebuild her apartment above the garage. With four of them sleeping together (with boys only going to the scoreboard to chill and smash things while Charley works), they need something bigger for a bed. They end up having a futon type of bed which covers the entire bedroom.

- For the first time since the Plutarkian war started and since the Catatonians first attacked Mars, there was a growing clan.

#bmfm #biker mice from mars #charley davidson #vinnie #throttle #modo #headcanon #I love writing these #and I got more coming soon

[mittentroll]

favorite social distancing activity ♥️

#personal #wow ive been so busy living lately #sorry for the lack of interaction and posting here #I think Im getting an 80’ yamaha xs650 #been learning to ride on a Grom and Monkey #theyre perfect for learning but its time to get on something bigger #you have no idea how long Ive been waiting for this #raised by bikers. in my dna!! #gif #irl life #classic late night post #bike dyke

[readinginthereadyroom]

okay I don’t buy it. ben braeden is dean’s biological child.

I mean, look at it from lisa’s pov. her one night stand from 8, 9 years ago shows up on her doorstep. the guy she brags to all her friends about. on her son’s birthday to boot.

and she’s jumpy. rightfully so. dean’s basically a stranger...but she invites him in anyway. she could’ve been upfront. it’s my son’s bday, bye bye. but she let’s him come in, meet all the kids, all the neighbors. meet ben.

but what if she’s also jumpy because ben is dean’s kid. we see dean do the math and panic. she had to know he would. I think she’s getting a feel for him. trying to decide if his showing up on today of all days is providence or coincidence.

it explains the kitchen scene. she’s super nervous. she’s tries to laugh him off, is visibly startled when he asks directly. if she’s trying to convince dean (and by proxy the audience) that dean is not ben’s biological father, she’s doing a very unconvincing job.

which is why later, at the end of the ep, he asks again. dean is not convinced. and lisa appears to have an answer—bartender at a biker bar. a blood test. she has a type.

except she’s very low on details. she’d have to get random bartender’s dna to get a paternity test. and we need to remember that lisa still doesn’t know dean. so far he’s a) shown up outta the blue, b) got her kid to punch someone, and c) tried to send them to six flags with a fake credit card in the middle of the night. all that screams shady and irresponsible.

and yeah, dean comes through. saves ben and all the other kids kidnapped by the changeling. lisa is grateful, but not stupid. and dean just told her his job is hunting the supernatural.

I think she assumes he doesn’t want to be ben’s dad. most one night stands from 8, 9 years ago wouldn’t want to be. hence her surprise when he seems dissappointed. and you can see the gears turn in lisa’s head. maybe the bartender story wasn’t the right move. maybe dean is more than he originally looked.

and he kinda says as much. it wouln’t make sense to her, but we know what dean really wants is a home. a family. he’s already been a parent to sam, maybe this time—when he is an actual adult—he could do it right. better.

“ben may not be your kid, but he wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for you.” this is lisa’s olive branch. it’s also a test. because she offers to let him stay. to see him as he really is. then she could decide to offer him the truth.

except. dean says no. and he looks quietly resigned when he does. lisa says he’s not ben’s dad. insisted. has a nice little story and a smile to sell it with. and here’s the most important part—dean hasn’t yet internalized that “family don’t end in blood.” so right now, so early on in his story, he only has john winchester’s version of family to go on. and it’s nuclear, in more ways than one. and that means if ben isn’t his biological son, he has no right to stay and play house.

granted, there’s that year prior to s6 where dean comes back and moves in with lisa and ben. where he becomes ben’s de facto step dad. it raises questions. like why let a man you have seen 3 times in the last decade move in with you unless there was more to your story together? like say a kid. and why not say anything after a year together? are you worried from the get-go that he’ll eventually leave? do you want an out if things go south?

can’t wait for s6 to answer those speculations, but until then, I’m pretty convinced that ben is biologically dean’s.

#let’s be clear this is my headcanon #and even if I thought ben wasn’t biologically dean’s kid #he’s still his kid like claire and jack are his kids #dean and his ever growing collection of stepkids #dean winchester #lisa braeden #ben braeden #spn

[thegreatobsesso]

Okay. It’s time to quit overthinking it and just put something out there.

Here’s a bit I quite like, and yeah, it’s totally out of context but so will anything I post from my massive WIP. I’m just gonna do it. And I’ve got a lil’ bit of art for this one too. :)

-----------------

- Callie -

They called this place Charlie's Recovery Room. It was hardly a place to recover; just a dingy dive on the corner with with neon outlines of women’s bodies in the windows and signs advertising cheap beer, but they knew her here, and she liked that.

As Moira, of course. Moira, the mousey brunette who either went home after a long day of lying to old people on the phone to the peeling tiles and clanging radiator of her apartment, or she came here, to kick back a cosmo or two or seven.

The red Christmas lights stapled around the top of the bar were anything but festive, casting a feverish glow on the regulars - bikers, mostly, and a few old married couples who seemed to like it here because they didn't have to talk to each other.

The red light, it would have looked good on her before, back before she had to glamour herself within an inch of her life before being seen in public. But if she wanted to be herself, well, she shouldn’t have killed someone, should she?

The thing was, she fucked up last night. Not in like a gotta-get-outta-town way. In more, like, a hurt-herself-and-now-she-needs-distracting-before-she-hurts-herself-worse kinda way. She needed alcohol and someone to talk at and a warm body to drive herself into before the thing that was always waiting inside her ate her alive.

Not one of the bikers, not for this. She knew them and liked them. Someone else, but pickings were slim tonight. There was a couple down the bar smoking cigarettes together, two guys drinking beer (one of whom had already rejected her once), and a woman by herself who looked too neatly-pressed for this place.

She could just go somewhere else. Except, no - no getting on her own bike because she was already feeling pretty slippery. She'd have to walk home. Why was she drunk already? Had she eaten today?

Fuck it. She'd just go home and pass out. She fished for her wallet to pay her tab when the bartender brought her yet another pink drink in a plastic martini glass.

“No no no,” she said. “I don’t want it.”

“Lady down there bought it for you.”

He nodded down the bar and she frowned, following his gaze - the neatly-dressed lady was looking her way, and lifted her own drink in acknowledgment.

Callie’s confusion must’ve shown, because the woman gave a sheepish smile and looked down at her lap.

Well, hell. She didn’t mean to make to make her feel bad, she was just… surprised.

Their eyes met a second time, and the lady looked away a second time, clearly embarrassed.

Unexpected but delightful. Okay, she could work with this. She wasn't gonna look a gift horse in the ass, or whatever.

“This isn’t the kind of place people buy each other drinks at,” she said, sliding into the stool next to her. 

The woman gave a demure smile. “You looked lonely.” 

She had a soft, deep voice - sexy.

“Are you lonely too?” Callie asked her.

“Kind of,” she said, lifting it at the end, like a question. “I’ve been here about a week and I’m not… great at meeting people.”

She was attractive in a not-so-obvious way Callie failed to notice from across the room. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled back into a lazy bun, and she wore a crisp white blouse covered by a modest denim jacket. She was rail-thin but looked strong, and her grey eyes were sharp behind her wireless glasses.

Not bad at all.

"Well, welcome to town," Callie said, swiveling on the stool to face her. "This is the bar. Across the street, there’s a gas station, and down the road from that, there’s a shopping plaza. Now you're an expert on town.”

She took another sip of her drink, not because she wanted it but for the tipsy hope it made her look alluring.

“What do you do?” the woman asked her.

“No,” Callie said.

“I’m sorry?”

“No, it’s, it’s so boring I literally can’t make a single sentence about it,” she said, and she wasn’t trying to be funny but the woman broke into a bright smile anyway. “And I hate small talk, you know? Like, I make boring words, and then you make boring words back at me, and we’re not saying anything, not really. When’s the last time you did something crazy? Like, really crazy, like you were watching yourself do it and you couldn’t even believe it was you? That’s something fun to talk about, where you’re actually saying something, you know?”

Oh wow, she had those last few too fast. Her filters were almost completely disabled. A voice in the back of her head was reminding her of the inherent danger, but it was faraway and stuffy and annoying to listen to. As long as she didn’t start running her mouth about being a fugitive, she’d be fine.

“Something crazy?” the woman said, and it look Callie a moment to remember what she had asked. “I guess it’s a been awhile.” She shrugged, self-deprecating, shy, and took a sip of her pink drink and cleared her throat, like she didn’t like the taste. “I’m pretty boring.”

“You’re pretty pretty,” Callie quipped, proud of herself. “You wanna go somewhere?”

She raised a single eyebrow.  “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“I don’t do anything but waste time.” She leaned forward on the barstool, careful not to go too far and face plant. “What do you say?” she purred, and put her hand on the woman’s knee to see if the sweet thing would shy away.

She didn’t. She only angled her body closer, meeting her gaze without embarrassment this time – warm grey eyes, like a summer storm. "I never do this sort of thing," she admitted.

Oh, of course not - they never did. "Don't you worry, baby," she hummed, enjoying the dance. "You just follow my lead."

--

For someone who didn’t “do this sort of thing,” whatsherface was a fast learner. So much so that Callie was so thoroughly spent afterward, she didn’t even care if the lady spent the night, so long as she didn’t snore - and that was the whole blessed point, to get the feelings fucked out of her so she could get some fucking sleep.

That was the last thing to flit through her head until she woke, sometime later, to something hard and cold closing around her wrists. It stuck her hands together behind her back; a hand clamped over her mouth.

Panicked, she reached reflexively for Peter’s magic to defend herself. Nothing happened – nothing – except an explosion of pain in her chest like she’d backfired on herself. Someone pushed her onto her stomach, planted their knee between her shoulder blades.

“Easy, Callie,” said the same soft voice from the bar. “I’m gonna put a needle in your arm, and if you struggle, you’ll hurt yourself. Nod if you understand.”

Her own name shocked her into stillness, more than the pain, more than anything. No one had called her her name in years. No one should know it.

She nodded.

“Good,” the woman said.

There was a sharp pinch, and then nothing at all.

.

.

.

- Riley -

Given all the fuss about Callie Ray, it shouldn’t have been this easy. 

The sensationalized portrayals from the news were all wrong - this was not someone ruthless, calculating, or even particularly competent.

The original plan was to obtain new samples to work with - hair, skin, saliva, blood. Peter’s DNA was only half the puzzle. Could anyone do what she did? Or was she uniquely capable of it and if so, why?

Her plan had expanded in scope, but this small part, sample collection, was still relevant. It was now undoubtedly Callie Ray lying unconscious, her glamour fallen away, red hair spilling like rivulets of blood over the dull, dirty sheets. She’d be out for awhile.

Riley grabbed the keys Callie had thrown onto the junk-strewn table on their way in and went to get her bag. She let herself back in minutes later and cleared a space for herself to work.

She got the woman dressed - it was the decent thing to do. There wasn’t much around in the way of comfortable clothes, but she managed to find a t-shirt and pair of worn leggings that would do the job. Callie didn’t seem to own pajamas.

Riley wasn’t out to frighten or torture the woman - in fact, now it’d be best if Callie felt safe with her. A tall order, given what she’d just done, but when she woke up with her magic dampened, they'd have a proper, civil conversation.

#AAAAAA I'M DOING IT #oc: callie #oc: riley #my ocs #writebrl #my wip #original novel #original fiction #original writing #my art #original art #writing excerpt #writing #writing community #THIS IS SUCH A LIL BABY PIECE BUT IT'S THE BEGINNING OF ONE OF MY FAVE ARCS #tw: alcohol #tw: sex #tw: swears

[mk-wizard]

Transformers’ Hair: How does it work and who has it?

Hello, fans.

Today, I am getting into a fun obscure fan theory which is all about the hair. Do Transformers have actual hair and if they do, who has it?

It may seem like a small thing, but considering people debate a lot on whether Transformers are robots or not (even though its been confirmed that they aren’t), what’s up with the hair really?

Transformers with hair isn’t a new thing at all for one thing. Since G1, Alpha Trion was the first Transformer to display facial hair and since then, other notable cases were the Decepticon Scourge and the King of the Wreckers Wreck-Gar. As for hair on the head, the closest thing we have seen to hair on Transformers is the helm being shaped to resemble a hairdo and recently, Windblade with her flaunting actual hair. Since then, other Transformers have sported facial hair, but how does it work? Does it grow or is it a cosmetic? Well, my own fan theory is this: it’s both.

As mentioned before, Transformers have several body types and each body type has unique features that go beyond just appearance. In the case of doll types (the bots who look incredibly human with rounder and “fleshier” appearances with lips, curves and more), it is hinted that they actually can grow hair meaning that for bots like Alpha Trion, it’s all natural and they don’t just grow it on their faces. Underneath their helmets, doll types have actual hair growing on their scalps, but this only raises two other questions in the case of doll types and hair: how come more mechs who are dolls don’t have facial hair and why is Windblade the only doll to flaunt her hair so far?

Well, you need to understand something very pivotal about Transformers society namely, Autobot society; they are very big on tradition and their beauty standards are different from ours. In their society, the more mechanical you look, the more beautiful you are considered as being, so dolls either shave their heads or simply cover their hair. In other words, when you’re a Transformer, bald is beautiful on all genders though sometimes, you get spirited bots who say “to hell with society’s beauty standards” and flaunt their hair shamelessly like Windblade. I am also thinking that growing out and flaunting hair is also kind of an act of rebellion against the rigid ways of tradition that don’t make any sense. I mean, how is it so different than how we as humans sometimes debate our mentality towards hair anywhere on the body on any gender when at the end of the day, everyone’s body and their hair is their business? I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other dolls who don’t shave, but we just don’t see it.

As for bots who aren’t dolls, I am guessing their hair and facial hair is solely a cosmetic. Yes, I admit that hair is generally not considered as attractive in Transformer society, but then again, we don’t generally consider scars as attractive, but in some specific cases, they can be. Also, it’s like an act of rebellion and self-expression through fashion kind of like goth, hipster, punk, street or biker. They do it because they either want to make a point or they just like to dress that way. It’s just who they are.

Or in the case of beast types, growing hair is a side effect from having animal DNA. In this case, they wind up growing hair in many places not just the head or face and most beast types are ashamed of it. However, I am thinking that among Predacons and Maximals, because they are natural beast types, having hair is just natural to them and don’t have a problem with it.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with Transformers having hair because I’m also one of the fans who accepts they are not robots, but living organisms so really, why shouldn’t they be able to grow hair? And I think Windblade look lovely with her hair.

What’s your opinion on Transformers having hair? Like it? Hate it?

If you have a Transformers theory or character analysis you want explored, please let me know in my ask box. And please, support me through Patreon or Ko-fi if you want me to make Transformers merch and videos. Or if you want a commission of your favourite bot, let me know in my shop. All links are on my profile page.

Thanks for reading and as always, stay safe.

#transformers #transformers fandom #transformers fanfiction #transformers fanart #fandom #fanfiction #fan theory #fanart #transformers windblade #windblade #hair #art #concept art #beauty standards #body acceptance #body positive #body diversity

[mediocremountainbiker-blog]

A socially distant birthday

So....this blog was supposed to be about my life as a mediocre mountain biker and why adventure is important whether you’re riding remote terrain in the Himalayas or you’re cruising on your local paved trail. But yesterday was my birthday and because of the uniqueness of our current world situation, I thought I would write about a birthday in isolation.

First off, I’m very lucky. I live in a place that is surrounded by wilderness. Fresh air and trees are part of every moment. But like most people, I’m a social creature and thrive on the after ride beer with my riding companions. Yesterday I did one of the things I love most to do alone.....trout fishing. It seemed natural to explore the water and focus on the beauty of the stream. It’s something I often do on my birthday. I was raised on a trout stream and the sound of the water is in my DNA. Its a calming place for me and on the day that I turned 45 it seemed fitting.

Honestly it brought a lot of normalcy to a day that could have been lost in anxiety over the world. Instead it created space to think about this moment in all of our lives. How we are all being effected in similar ways and ways that are very different. I am very fortunate, I’m able to work from home and for now my job is very stable. But for many others, that is far from the case. The uncertainty in some lives is extreme. A lot of my day job is trying to find assistance for small businesses that are suffering and I worry about about our little town. We are a budding outdoor recreation community that has made significant strides over the last several years. With a reviving downtown and more adventure access, things were going well. As we quickly approach the summer season, all that is in question now. 

Right now finding adventure is more important than ever. In an uncertain world, adventure grounds us. It brings us into the moment. Its something that we always need, even before COVID-19, but now its more obvious. When I say adventure, I don’t mean taking up a new extreme sport. It means allowing the outside world in. Going into the woods and letting the smells, views, and textures steady us in this moment. That was my birthday present....observation, and for me fly fishing is the pinnacle of observation. You spend every moment studying clues; water temperature, insect activity, seams in the river, tree cover, and if you’re lucky, a rising trout. 

So after a few hours on the stream I went back to the truck to check on the dog (he couldn’t come along because of a cut on his leg, future blog post “why some dogs suck as backcountry ski companions”). When I got to the truck an older gentleman drove up, and we chatted about the river and how special of a spot it was and how we were both excited for the season to come. The social interaction was refreshing and rounded out a birthday well spent. I still got my tailgate beer and enjoyed the solitude of a spring dirt road in the remote UP.....no complaints.

Get out there. Get on the trail, or on the bike. Explore the woods and rivers in your community. Even if its a place you’ve been to before, there is always something new. Spring is here and everyday is a new world full of new life. For us the waterfalls are full and the spring wildflowers are around the corner. Take care everyone. Stay healthy and sane. Fun mountain bike talk to come!

#findyournorth #ironwoodmichigan #upspring #patagoniaflyfishing #stcroixrods #bakesuperior #mountainbiker #coldironbeer #driftnorthIPA

[tvdversefanfiction]

Canary Carnage

Fandom’s: The Originals, Arrowverse, TVDverse and DC Universe.

Chapter One: Earth Blood

Warnings: I don’t own any of the rights, content or characters belonging to any of the DC content I use within the story along with not owning any rights, content or characters within The Vampire Diaries, Originals or Legacies.

15+ Rating: Moderate/Graphic displays of violence, sexual innuendos, sexually charged scenes, strong language and potentially triggering scenes.

Pairings: M/M, F/F, M/F.

Laurel Lance was a powerful district attorney within Star City, a job she had well and truly earned through dedicating her life to her work but something which wasn’t very well known as Star City’s D.A. was that by night she was someone else entirely Black Canary.

Laurel had been a meta-human her entire life without knowledge of her special DNA until the day she learned her first love Oliver Queen and her sister Sara Lance died the day the Queen family’s boat Gambit crash and sunk within the sea which is when she released her first canary cry.

The joint death and betrayals from her lover and her sister could’ve sent Laurel down a wayward path but instead she chose a path of heroism as she became the Black Canary vowing to make sure her city was safe from any further tragedies knowing her city needed saving from its dark underworld.

Laurel’s younger brother chose a very different path to his sister following the deaths of Oliver Queen and Sara Lance. Laurel’s brother Lucas Lance struggled to cope with his sister Sara’s death especially after their father Quentin Lance passed away and decided to start impacting suffering on others instead of having to feel it himself therefore becoming Red Canary.

After one too many run ins with his older sister Lucas moved to Gotham City knowing he’d have more fun there torturing the bat family and making alliances with the likes of The Joker, Harley Quinn and Bane before being ran out of the city by the bat family not long after a brief stint in Arkham Asylum pushing him towards a reunion with his sister back in Star City where a years long feud would conclude in a very unexpected way forcing both Lucas and his sister Laurel to become allies in a very different world to which they were used to.

“Why couldn’t you just stay away?” The Black Canary asked her brother the Red Canary while the two stood in an alleyway within Star City as Red Canary snapped the neck of a random man before throwing his lifeless body to the ground.

“Gotham was fun and everything I just missed my big sister I mean sure Bats and his family of do goodies are a good challenge and everything, but nothing quite beats your own family you know what I mean.” Red Canary explained to his sister while walking towards her.

“I see you’re just as psychopathic as the last time I saw your crazy ass!” Black Canary snapped at her brother while the two began walking closer and closer towards each other. “I know my brother is still in there somewhere and I know you’re the last of my family, but I can’t let you harm anymore people.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that.” Red Canary replied as the brother and sister stopped walked as the brother and sister now stood in front of each other.

At the exact same time both Black Canary and Red Canary began to shriek releasing their sonic screams at the same time both screams in the direction of the others forcing windows, buildings and the earth itself to begin shaking underneath their feet as their screams grew louder and louder until they ripped open a dark red portal appearing in between the two of them much to their own shock as each found themselves stopping their canary cries to look on in shock.

They had each seen portals before to other worlds within the multiverse which they both knew existed but none quite like this but before they could properly examine the mysterious portal they both found themselves pulled flying into the red portal from different directions before the portal closed itself taking the Black Canary and the Red Canary to somewhere totally different to where either had ever been before.

The Black Canary and the Red Canary found themselves falling from the sky before crashing through a series of branches before eventually crash landing onto the grounds of the bayou within the city limits of New Orleans, as the two slowly raised to their feet they had no idea where they were world or city.

“What the hell just happened?” Black Canary asked her brother.

“I think we must’ve screamed ourselves a portal to somewhere...although I have no idea where.” Red Canary replied while looking around the bayou.

“Typical I tried to get rid of you once and for all and you pull me into another earth.” Black Canary snapped at him.

“Oh, please Dinah it took two cries for this to happen not just one.” Red Canary told her. “I know it’s easier for you to blame everything on me, but you fuck up just as me sis.”

“My name is Laurel.” Black Canary reminded her brother as she punched him across the face. “But it’s Black Canary to you jackass and I’m not your sister…not anymore!”

“Fine then get your own way home or not…Star City would be much more fun without you.” Red Canary replied before super speeding out of sight only to super speed back onto the same spot. “Okay that’s new…what the hell was that?”

“I guess this earth has different rules to the others.” Black Canary said before she super sped out of sight for a moment before returning to the same spot just like her brother just did. “I guess our meta-human abilities are different on this earth.”

“Cool,” Red Canary said with an excited smile on his face. “I wonder what else this earth has to offer.”

The Red Canary looked around the bayou for a moment before releasing his shriek causing his sonic scream in the process as his Black Canary cry grew louder and louder before the entire earth began shaking viciously as the wind grow more chaotic and trees began being pulled from their roots before flying and crashing into other trees the very earth itself rising as this part of bayou was left completely destroyed by his scream unearthing all dirt and destroying everything within distance before Red Canary stopped his scream.

“I guess we’re stronger in every way in this earth.” Black Canary stated while being left in shock by the carnage her brother had just created before the Red Canary super sped out of sight. “Which isn’t good for anyone on this earth with you on the loose.”

Laurel found herself back in normal clothes thanks to a quick stop/break in to a closed down clothes store on the outskirts of New Orleans managing to find something acceptable to wear before stealing a car and driving her way towards New Orleans.

She didn’t know much about this earth, but she knew if she could get to a city she could hold tight there why trying to work out if this earth’s versions of her allies could be trusted and if they couldn’t then she would just have to make New Orleans her base of operations until she worked out how to get home choosing not to think about the carnage her brother would cause in the meantime and Lucas was definitely living up to his reputation.

Just like his sister Lucas had found himself a change of clothes although he chose a much more violent approach in doing so as he attacked a man in a nearby bikers themed dive bar parking lot located within the outskirts of New Orleans knocking the man unconscious and stealing his clothes before walking into the bar for a drink expecting plenty of carnage to follow knowing by the end of first drink he was going to blow the roof of the dive bar.

It didn’t take Lucas long upon walking into this dive bar to notice that most of the people in there already didn’t like the look of him but it’s not like he cared in fact it just gave him more reason to kill them all not like he needed a reason.

“I’ll have a Pina Colada please,” Lucas ordered from the tall body builder-built bartender who laughed at his choice of drink. “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time around…so I’ll get a little louder.”

Lucas released a canary cry aimed directly at the bartender’s forcing the bartender backwards before his entire head exploded with an explosion of blood which found itself falling on the counter and Lucas himself before the headless bartender’s body fell to the ground gushing out more blood onto the floor.

“Now is someone going to make me a god damn Pina Colada or am I going to have to kill every last one of use?” Lucas shouted to the entire bar who were shocked by his act of inhuman violence, demanding their attention. “Because honestly I do love my Pina Colada’s but killing everyone in here would give me just as much joy.”

Lucas did get his Pina Colada after a few more canary cries killing half of the people in the bar only to thank the survivors by using his enhanced canary cry to turn the bar into nothing but rubble after finishing his drink only to walk out of the rubble beyond happy with himself knowing the carnage he created as he began to love this new world he had found himself in and began feeling invincible even to the likes of a certain bat family.

Several Days Later

Rebekah Mikaelson had agreed to accompany Marcel Gerard back to New Orleans as she tried her best to convince him to give up his ties to the city forever so the two could start a new life together knowing her family couldn’t intervene due to the fact neither Rebekah, Klaus, Elijah or Kol could be anywhere near each other without the hollow which was within the four original vampires trying to escape and find it’s way back to possessing Rebekah’s niece Hope which neither she, her brothers Kol or Elijah, her mother Hayley Marshall and especially her father Klaus would dread.

So with her brothers especially Klaus no longer having control over her life or threatening to murder yet another lover Rebekah was determined it was time for her to finally have the life she had always dreamed of one filled with love, laughter and the possibility of children however she knew if she was to have it with the upgraded original Marcel then he had to give up on New Orleans a city she was once it’s queen.

This particular visit to New Orleans didn’t end well for her as the girl who fell in love too easily once again found herself drowning her sorrows within Rousseau's following heartbreak as she called time on her relationship with Marcel following his refusal to give up on New Orleans and her refusal to give up on getting him to give up on the city.

“Well if it isn’t Rebekah Mikaelson what has it been 5, 6 years since you came anywhere near New Orleans?” Hayley said after vamp speeding herself into the bar to stand next to the original woman vampire.

“Well if it isn’t my brother’s baby mama Hayley Marshall.” Rebekah replied as she stood up and hugged her friend. “What can I say New Orleans just doesn’t have the same appeal as it used to.”

“Yeah I must admit it’s a lot quieter in this city since you and your siblings left…how is Elijah?” Hayley asked her.

“Last time I heard he was a pianist in a delightful bar somewhere in France I may have visited him once or twice from a distant of course over the years. He seems happy the lucky sod doesn’t remember any of us.” Rebekah revealed to the mother of her niece.

“I hope he gets to live a peaceful life at least one of us should.” Hayley told Rebekah. “I guess by the fact you’re here means Marcel’s back in town too?”

“Yeah and he’s going to be staying here.” Rebekah admitted as she sat back down at the bar and ushered the bartender to fill up her glass. “I however intend to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, I see I guess he made the wrong choice then if it helps any, I’d choose you over a city any day.” Hayley said, trying to reassure her friend as she sat down at the bar next to her. “Anybody not willing to give up everything to be by your side is a fool and we’ve both been with too many fools to suffer any more of them.”

“You are as always correct,” Rebekah laughed as she downed her drink in one go. “Tell me where I can find my sister Freya is, she still staying at the compound with you?”

“Yes and she’s still pretty relentless in finding a way of removing the hollow but getting nowhere although she’s getting somewhere in her personal life as Keelin’s moved in too between them and Hope when she’s on holiday from the Salvatore Boarding School the compound still has some life left in it.” Hayley replied while ushering the bartender to get her and Rebekah drinks. “Have you heard from Klaus? Hope really hears from him and even when she does it’s a card or present on special occasions and I’m growing quite sick of him not being a part of her life I mean sure he can’t be in the same place as here but picking up a phone isn’t the hardest thing in the world I mean at this point even Kol keeps in contact with Hope more.”

“Niklaus is a stubborn old fool at the best of times I don’t think he’s taken this whole separation thing too well I’ve not heard from him or seen him since the day we took in the hollow he’s cut off ties from us all.” Rebekah told Hayley. “Kol’s the only brother I actually hear from and all he ever wants to talk about is his broken heart over Davina…I guess she really is Marcel’s daughter after all.”

After a few drinks in Rousseau’s with Hayley, Rebekah decided to take it to the streets to get her next drink although this one was admittedly bloodier as she found herself in a nearby alleyway fangs deep into a compelled woman until suddenly she heard a piercing scream which was met by a gust of wind sending the original female vampire flying across the air before hitting the ground breaking her compulsion on her victim at the same time who began running away as Black Canary dropped from the sky landing on both feet.

“Since when did witches start wearing masks?” Rebekah asked her as she rose back to her feet. “Oh well that doesn’t really matter since I’m about to kill you.”

Rebekah vamp sped hallway towards the Black Canary before the Black Canary let out her canary cry once more causing the entire alleyway to shake by the vibration of her powerful scream as Rebekah was put to a halt unable to move further as the scream grew louder in her ears until the force of it made her drop to her knees as blood began pouring from her eyes and ears before the Black Canary stop her canary cry and began to walk towards the original female vampire.

“Vampires are different here although it makes sense considering I’m different here too.” The Black Canary told Rebekah as she continued walking towards the original female vampire who was severely weakened by her canary cry. “Doesn’t seem to be any heroes around here however, maybe that’s why I’m here.”

“Who the bloody hell are you?” Rebekah asked the masked vigilante in between her groans of pain.

“I’m the Black Canary and I’m here to save this city heck I’m here to save this world.” Black Canary declared before releasing another canary cry this time directly aimed at the original female vampire’s head, her cry growing louder and louder until Rebekah’s head exploded in a burst of blood and guts which is when the canary cry ended. “Guess decapitation still works for vampirism in this bloody earth…hmm Earth Blood welcome to Earth Blood Laurel Lance.”

The Black Canary wasn’t the only Canary who had worked out this world played by different rules bloodier rules than any earth he had been to before but unlike the Black Canary the Red Canary loved the violence in this world with no heroes to get in his way or at least that’s what he thought until his latest act of terrorism on a little magic shop had him coming face to face with the self-proclaimed king of New Orleans himself Marcel Gerard.

“You’re going to want to let that witch go before you piss me right off!” Marcel warned the Red Canary after vamp speeding his way into the magic shop within the French Quarter of New Orleans to find the Red Canary choking the store owner.

“And just when I was starting to have my fun.” The Red Canary replied before snapping the store owner’s neck, throwing her body to the ground and turning to face the upgraded original. “Please don’t tell me you’re this city’s hero where’s your mask?”

“I think the better question is why are you dressed up like some bad BDSM Halloween combo?” Marcel asked the Red Canary while looking his red leather jacket, trousers and mask up and down before laughing at his look.

“Okay now you’ve pissed me off.” The Red Canary stated before super speeding over to Marcel and punching him across the face.

Marcel vamp sped a punch in the canary’s direction only for the Red Canary to block his punch before kneeing Marcel in the stomach and headbutting the vampire once more before kicking him to the ground.

“This city’s answer to a hero is a vampire,” The Red Canary scoffed. “I guess I’ll call this earth: Earth Blood.”

Marcel vamp sped his leg to trip the Canary up before throwing himself on top of The Red Canary and pinning him to the ground.

“What the hell are you?” Marcel shouted at him, while keeping the canary trapped under him.

The Red Canary released his canary cry straight upwards towards Marcel who due to him being so close to the canary felt the full pain of the canary’s cry as it grew louder and louder until Marcel’s head exploded within a burst of blood that completely covered the Red Canary’s face and body.

“Ugh, yup Earth Blood really does fit this place.” The Red Canary mumbled to himself as he threw Marcel’s headless body of him, throwing it across the shop floor and getting back to his feet. “I guess this means this city’s mine now.”

“Yeah I wouldn’t get too ahead of yourself there his head grows back and when it does, he’s going to be super pissed.” Hayley revealed to him after vamp speeding into the store. “No matter how cool it was your days are now limited after pissing off my friend the only reason I’m even here to warn you is because I really want to know what the hell is with your red leather style?”

“Why do people keep asking me that?” The Red Canary snapped at her. “Does nobody hide their identity in this world? Seems highly idiotic to me but hey that’s not my business.”

“What do you mean by this world?” Hayley asked him.

“What do you mean by his head grows back I thought he was a vampire? Only person I know whose head grows back is clay face and this really annoying elongated guy.” The Red Canary replied with another question.

“Okay you’re just giving me more questions, why don’t you try answering some before his head grows back and your too dead to talk to me.” Hayley snapped at the Red Canary.

“Hmm so this guy is really hard to stay dead you say?” The Red Canary said with a twisted sense of intrigue while walking towards the headless body of Marcel Gerard. “Means I get to keep killing him over and over again.”

“What have you got against him anyway? I know he has a thing for pissing people but the same could be said about anyone from around here.” Hayley asked, determined to get some answer from the mysterious masked vigilante.

“He just got in my way is all kind of like you are now.” The Red Canary replied before turning to walk towards Hayley only to be stopped by The Black Canary who super sped her way into the store and in between her brother and the original baby mama.

“We need to talk now!” The Black Canary snapped at her little brother before grabbing him and super speeding out of sight with him.

“Oh, great there’s two of them,” Hayley sighed as she pulled out her phone and dialed Rebekah’s number only for it to go to the answer machine leaving her no choice but to call Klaus whose phone also went to the answer machine but this time she decided to leave a message. “Klaus I know you listen to these so listen up there’s two god knows what arrived in New Orleans and one of them alone took down Marcel without any trouble I don’t know who they are or what they want but my guess is probably you so you should get to New Orleans and fix this mess before Hope comes home for the holidays.”

“So, I’ve got myself a bloody sore headache thanks to some bitch witch in a mask, but I think she did something else and I need you to check for me.” Rebekah told Freya after vamp speeding into her room in the compound to find her sister sitting on the edge of her bed reading a book.

“Hello sister nice to see you again too.” Freya greeted her younger sister as she placed the book on her bed and stood up to face the original female vampire.

“Sorry sister I’m beyond happy to get to see you again.” Rebekah said as she walked over and briefly hugged Freya. “Now can we get to this masked witch who blew my head up.”

“There’s two of them.” Hayley revealed after vamp speeding into the room. “One man and one woman but I don’t think their witches or at least not just witches.”

“I guess you encountered them too but here’s the thing despite the rudeness of having my head explode on me and having to grow it back giving me one hell of a headache they could come in useful.” Rebekah replied to Hayley.

“I’m glad we’re not jumping straight to bloodshed well more confused than glad how can these maybe witches come in useful?” Freya asked her sister.

“Well that’s where I need you to check for me the thing is after the literal scream from hell which blew my head right off the bloody witch may have done something right.” Rebekah revealed to them both. “I think that scream destroyed the part of the hollow inside of me which means if it did…”

“Then we have just got to make one of them do the same three more times and we finally get rid of the hollow pending of course if we can convince Marcel not to kill one or both of them beforehand.” Haley answered.

“Pending of course if the part of the hollow inside you has been destroyed which seems unlikely considering we’ve literally tried everything.” Freya stated, making clear her disbelief of a sudden cure to her family’s dire situation.

“That’s exactly why you’re going to get your witch on and tell me if I’m finally free from this bloody witch or not because if I am I’m heading to Mystic Falls to see a certain niece of mine face to face for the first time in half a decade.” Rebekah demanded.

“Look my darling sister I get this world is new and anything but I’m still playing by the same rules.” The Red Canary told his sister as the two of them stood within an abandoned building near the docks of New Orleans.

“If you put your stupid pride to one side for a minute then you would realize this earth is unlike any other there’s no doppelgangers no Star City no Gotham City nothing that is on any other earth it’s like we along with everybody we ever knew doesn’t exist here.” The Black Canary informed her brother.

“This world just keeps getting better,” The Red Canary said with a sinister smirk. “No Batman or bat family no Joker or Harley nobody gunning for me except a restorative vampire and you.”

“Okay you realize that’s not a good thing, right? We have no ideas of the dangers of this world…what do you mean by restorative vampire?” The Black Canary questioned him.

“Apparently the vampire I took down today can grow back his own head which I was about to see for myself until you took me to this hell hole which is so like you always going out of your way to spoil my fun!” The Red Canary moaned at his sister.

“Listen you idiot if we don’t tackle this cautiously then we could wind up dead very quickly now what the hell do you mean by restorative vampire?” She snapped at her brother, sick of him not taking their situation seriously.

“Wow you’re really scared, aren’t you?” The Red Canary scoffed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you scared before. That vampire I left headless back at the store according to the she-vamp who was also there his head’s going to grow back.”

“How many special vampires are there in this city because I may have blown a head or two off myself?” The Black Canary wondered.

“Who knows probably a few…you’re really worried about not getting out of here aren’t you?” The Red Canary questioned his sister.

“I guess she’s the brains of this little two masked vigilante operation.” Marcel said to the Red Canary after vamp speeding into the abandoned warehouse. “Unlike you.”

“I don’t know if we’re calling anyone stupid it should be the one who came to find two canaries alone when one canary already took them down by themselves.” The Red Canary tormented the upgraded original.

“Speak for yourself I’m not helping you for all I know this guy could be innocent and has every right of killing you!” Black Canary snapped at her brother.

“Two canaries got us here maybe only two canaries can get us home.” Red Canary replied to his sister, twisting her arm to convince her to help him

“What the hell is a canary other than the bird of course?” Marcel asked them both as The Black Canary looked at her brother, clearly frustrated to be forced into taking her brother’s side before the Black Canary and the Red Canary released their canary cries at the same time forcing the whole building to shake viciously before the ground beneath them and the roof above them began to collapse into itself.

Marcel tried to vamp speed towards them both but it was taking at his strength just to stand still where he was without being thrown across the warehouse as his ears and eyes began to bleed as he began coughing up blood and fell to his knees as the canary cries grew louder and louder.

“Stop!” Rebekah screamed as she sped into the crumbling warehouse vamp style, stopping the two canaries crying at the same time. “We want to offer you both a deal pending of course you stop trying to kill us both.”

“Yeah not interested.” The Red Canary stated before super speeding out of the still crumbling warehouse, as Rebekah helped an injured Marcel to his feet.

“What kind of deal?” The Black Canary asked the original female vampire, eager to find any ally she could trust more than her brother.

Klaus Mikaelson hadn’t been back to the city he called home since he was forced to say goodbye to the hollow following the spell Vincent Griffiths cast to expel the hollow from his daughter Hope and store parts of it in him, his sister Rebekah and his brothers Elijah and Kol and a part of him wondered if he’d ever return to New Orleans over the years but all that changed when he listened to his baby mother Hayley Marshall’s voice message and the several later left by Rebekah who promised a way to get rid of the hollow forever.

For over half a decade Klaus had lost hope in ever seeing his sisters, brothers or daughter even again but now he had finally been given a chance at reuniting his beloved family and he was heading home to do just that not allowing anything to get in his way and god help anyone who wasn’t cooperative with the original hybrid’s plan.

#laurellance #laurel lance #klaus mikaelson #klaus #rebekah mikaelson #rebekah #marcel gerard #marcel #hayley marshall #hayley #freya mikaelson #freya #marbekah #haylijah #redcanary #blackcanary #theblackcanary #dc comics #dc #dc universe #dc univerise online #the originals #ORIGINALS #dcfanfiction #dcfanfic #the originals fanfiction #theoriginalsfanfic #the originals fandom #the originals fic #TVDfamily

[kpopisthereasonihavenolife]

Off Limits

Monsta X

Im Changkyun/Reader [F]

Genre: High School AU, Rebellious, Drabble

Warnings?: Smoking, Disregard for rules, Swearing, Inappropriate language

Words: 1.5k

“Hurry your bitch ass up, I’m not getting any younger out here while your dick is stuck in some Spencer’s purchased, unsanitized fleshlight.”

“I’ve never been more offended or proud of you for your onslaught of insults lately,” Changkyun said back to your obviously fake rage over the phone.  “Besides, if anyone’s bought anything from Spencer’s, we both know it's you.  How else can we explain that kinky set up in your closet, hmm?”  He chided as you promptly hung up on him without a word. 

Slotting his phone back into his ripped jean pocket, he stuck his AirPods in his ears, blasting whatever edgy band he was into these days.  He found himself listening more to edgy American labels more than most these days, his time in America really laying into his DNA, despite not being born there. That is one more thing you never let him live down, his Western like behavior. 

You’ve claimed to be ‘scarred for life’ when you walked in on him in the middle of a keyboard smashing, screeching deathmatch in Overwatch while he was stark-ass naked at 3 AM. In your house mind you. Seeing his fake American Tit-Tat was one thing in life you never planned on seeing.  

You had to buy a whole ass new computer chair after that night, too traumatized with the imprint of his naked arse in your sweet leather seat to ever sit in it again.  You had half a mind to call a priest and have it excised, but you couldn’t afford a whole Holy Man in garbs, so new chair it was. Thankfully, as compensation, Changkyun pitched in on half the bill for it. 

He walked a bit further down the ever darkening roadside as he soon watched light post after light post flicker on.  Some with working lights, some with new LED lights that not only allow you to see below you but apparently 30 feet in every other direct resulting in direct blindless for 5 minutes if stared directly into. 

He soon rounded a corner as he saw your silhouette not too far off.  He watched your arm raise to your mouth, stay for a moment only to drop and a puff of smoke push past your lips.  It looked like you were wearing a jean jacket he got for you for no other reason than you looked good in it.  Jeans that nicely rounded your ass, even from his distance, and he could guess what shirt you were wearing.  Probably something about aliens if he had to guess. 

He reached for his phone, just before stopping and plucking one AirPod from his ear to hear his footsteps.  He had to be quiet; yes, very very quiet.  He moved along a barely holding together brick wall and slid along it, looking like a blond fool at dusk where he was still pretty much 90% visible.  

Taking step by step in his torn up, ankle black Harley Davidson biker boots, he held his partially painted finger in front of him.  Tiptoeing like some cartoon character, he stood nearly directly behind you now.  He waited, watched you take a breath of your nearly finished cigarette and once your hand was dropped to your side, he jumped into action.  

“HOWDY!”  He screeched into your ear as you whirled.  You swung your arm behind you, your stupid best friend ducking down, safely out of the way while your unfinished, but small cigarette fell to the ground. He looked up at you, seeing your shirt.  Black with white writing saying “I bEliEvE” in a pretty awful font.  Not at all pleasing to the eyes.  “Alien shirt, I knew it.”  You were quick to kick out your converse covered foot and push his squatted ass into the ground. 

He teetered over as you stood over him with your arms cross.  Hair hanging in tangling in front of your chest as you looked down at him. To any stranger, you would seem to be bullying the blond high schooler, but you two were fairly well known in your small town.  He pushed himself up on his elbows.  

“I always knew you were the ringleader of every relationship you’ve been in.  PUshing people down, oof.”  You rolled your eyes as you stepped over him. Not quite disregarding his chide. 

“This is why you can’t get a girlfriend.  You suck,” you groaned back as you stepped on your still smoking cig with the toe of your shoe. He hopped up like he wasn’t on the ground to begin with. 

You and Changkyun have known each other since middle school when you first showed up in his rinky-dink little town. Officially attached at the hip when you flashed your chest to some stuck up jock and got picture proof to frame him for sexual harassment, all because he kept making jabs about your ass. 

If one were to drive through your town and blink, you’d be in and out in a flash.  Population a whopping 500.  Everyone knew everyone, stories of “I taught so-so’s parent in school too” coming from every old and rotting teacher on school property.  

Not that either of you heard it much.  Neither of you really care much for the school scene.  Not fitting in with the small school system.  You’d think such a small town would go to a bigger town for schooling via bus, but no.  School houses were built, and by houses I mean houses.  You swore they held lectures in superstores, they were that small.  

It’s not like school was important.  Even in a small town, no one cared about grades or success.  It was all about who was wearing what.  The TV programs on the night before. Jocks trying to win over hearts of adolescent girls thirsting for whatever they could get for a night and $20. Or who was fucking who in the public bathroom at lunchtime. 

So, you both stayed in your world.  A world of bad choices, smoking, drinking having the time of your lives regardless of the opinions around you.  Some adults couldn’t wait for you both to just up and vacate town.  Maybe then they’d stop hearing about what you both did the night before.  

One time it was graffiti on the side of the doctors building.  Another it was tying every cart in the supermarket together with zip-ties.  One night you both decided to paint on your face and start a bond fire in a vacant abandoned lot and acted like fools.  Life was never dull with the two of you, that's why it was thrilling. 

“What’s the plan tonight then?” 

“Fuck if I know.  You’ve killed my last cigarette and I can’t afford another pack right now.”  You whined as he plucked a fresh pack from his back pocket.  

“Ah, my mistake.  Madam Piss-Poss needs a cigarette like an alcoholic need beer.  Just where have my manners gone to.” Packing the box in his palm you rolled your eyes.  

“you’re just as bad as I am.  Shut your mouth before you choke on my fist.”

“I’m not into  your kinky stuff, Y/n.” 

“You’re pushing it.”

“Pushing what?  Your buttons?  I suspect you only have 2, and they’re named as such:” He poked at your breasts. “Nip and Nap.”  

“You are such a pig!”  You whack at his head.  He swirls around completely unbothered as you fix your shirt he had bunched up. He tore off the plastic around his pack of cigs as he pulled one to place between his lips and offered you one more. 

“Pig that you can’t stand to be without.  How precious, you might be pulling at my heartstrings.” 

Although you gratefully accept the toxic stick of tobacco, you still get in one last jab.  “Don’t imply I make you horny,” you finished.  He chuckled as he plucked his lighter from the side of his boot.  You never understood why he kept it there, it always smelt of feet. He offered you the light, but you shook your head.  “I don’t want your smelly foot lighter.” 

Changkyun rolled his eyes.  “Then let me light it, baby.”  He stepped closer to you as you tipped your cigarette between your lips up with your tongue.  He always does this.  He grabbed the back of your neck with one hand as he steadied his light with the other between his black-tipped fingers. Pushing the fiery ash against the tip of your cigarette, it took a moment but soon you were huffing in the toxic fumes, same as he. 

It was stupidly intimate, but it was your thing. It was the thing between you two.

You refused to label it, as did he.  There were no titles, no distinguished relationship status: they were off limits.  You two were the pair who did everything together.  You’d hold hands, you’d hold each other, you’d ugly sob and get drunk together in an abandoned building.  You’d even get lost in lust from time to time; greed and lust were no exception to human nature. 

You both even sat at each other’s side and hyped one another up when you both got your first tattoo’s and piercings that continued to grow in number as the years ticked by.

Yet, you were also the pair who would call each other ‘pussy’ just because someone didn’t make a crumbled up burger wrapper into the nearest trash can.  Insults were compliments, and if a compliment was truly shared, then your bond grew tenfold.  There were no hurt feelings, no titles, no words to describe you both. 

You were just Y/n and Changkyun, just two humans living their lives. The words ‘I love you’ were strictly off limits.

#this is actually really lame i'm sorry lol #this only happened because of changkyuns hair and nails and i'm suffering #im changkyun #changkyun #IM #monsta x #monsta x im #monsta x changkyun #high school au #high school #au #disregarding rules #swearing #a lot of swearing #rebel #rebellious #bad students #smoking #changkyun fic #changkyun fanfic #changkyun fanfiction #reader #reader insert #female reader #x reader #changkyun x reader #im x reader #rated m guys #lol #m

[grailacademy]

Welcome To Grail Academy - Chapter Twenty-three: Between Youth

Voshkie sneezed into the patterned handkerchief he’d had folded neatly in his breast pocket. He should make a point to call the maid and have her clean all this dust and cobwebs in the archives hall once he returned to his office. When he ran his finger across the countertop of the abandoned reception desk, a visible trail showed the grime still left on the table. This portion of the city hall was built like a mausoleum, with file cabinets lining each wall and reaching all the way to the high ceiling. He had no interest in this place. It was old, empty, it reeked of rotted and moldy paper. People still used the archives hall from time to time, but only as often as one would use a library when one could just as easily look it up on a scroll. Voshkie pulled on the small chain attached to a desk lamp, and watched the yellowing source of light until a hand was placed on his shoulder.

“This way, sir,” Reed motioned, his hand sliding down the governor’s shoulder to straighten out the handkerchief Voshkie had haphazardly stuffed back into the pocket of his suit. Voshkie didn’t mind his associate’s unhealthy attention to detail; it was actually refreshing to him. Someone still cared about political manners. Voshkie followed Reed down through the maze of file cabinets, drawing further and further away from the light of the desk lamp. Their journey ended at an innocuous looking beige drawer, where Reed tugged the handle forward and handed off a series of manilla folders to the governor. “That is everything we’ve compiled on Kuro and the Hedge Witches,” Reed began, “I’m sure you’ve noticed how light the files are.”

Voshkie opened the files and skimmed over the smudged letters. Threat to the city….acts of terrorism….experimental narcotics….gene-splicing….grimm DNA….border control….stunting the growth of Calicem…. All the newspaper clippings and police reports were thin. None of them had the full story.

“This is all of it?” Voshkie closed the papers and waved the files above his head. “Every mention, name drop, crime report, sighting, everything?” He wanted to be sure. Reed nodded, clasping his hands together in front of his stomach. The files made their way to rest under Voshkie’s arm as he turned around and walked out of the archives hall. “Good.”

“KNOCK IT OFF, BLAINE!” A muscular woman with a red bandana tied around her head shouted, inserting herself in the middle of the brawl on the dance floor. Another beer bottle shattered on the floor when she shoved what seemed to be the instigator of the fight away from the rest of the bikers, dragging him out of the bar by the back of his jacket. He yelled out a few obscenities, clearly drunk, before stumbling out onto the sidewalk. “I’ll be back for you, dickheads!” he called out, “You’ll see!” The rest of the bikers simultaneously flipped him off, and the one standing in the center of the group, with perfectly quaffed hair, responded by hollering, “Eat shit, Blaine!” The woman slammed the door to the bar shut, and the bikers turned to laugh amongst themselves. The chaos of the space had died down, at least for now.  

Esmerelda made a motion with her hand, turning her finger in a circle, to signal that the trio should spread out and see what they could find. Nico skipped away to the bar while Bernard headed towards the jukebox. Esmerelda snapped her game face on, and approached the behemoth of a woman who had tossed the drunk biker out of the bar.

“Excuse me,” Esmerelda inquired with a honeyed tone as a slender finger tapped her shoulder, and the woman looked down at the girl the way a wolf looks at an injured deer. “You need something, honey?” The woman quipped.

“I was wondering if you had seen anything suspicious around here in the past few weeks?”

The woman laughed heartily, crouching down to meet Esmerelda’s eye level. “Honey, do you know where you are? You see the kinds of folks we get?” She motioned to the populous of the pub’s customers. “Suspicious activity is how I keep my job.”

Bernard watched the discs in the jukebox with an intense look. His finger continuously pressed the shuffle button on the machine that flipped one record to the next. Over and over, quickly, taking only milliseconds to read the title of the song, album, and artist. Standing in a corner, pressing a button. It was all he was capable of doing until he found an agreeable song. A man in a tan jacket looked up from his game of pool, the brim of his hat just low enough to hide his face. He set the cue down and snuck up behind Bernard, who jumped from the sudden contact. “You’re a long ways from home, ain’t ya?” He smiled warmly, ignoring the boy’s compulsive shuffling on the jukebox. Bernard was frozen, staring into the face of the man next to him.

“What are you-”

“-Wow, look at this! Such a stroke of good luck. Here I am, sent all the way from Vocatus to find you, and I thought I’d have to search the entire city. But I didn’t have to lift a finger! It’s as if the gods dropped you right into my lap.”

Bernard opened his mouth, but closed it again, clenching his jaw to stop himself from speaking. He looked around the bar, wary of the eyes that fell on him. He kept his back to the patrons, and spoke under his breath in a language he was sure nobody but the man next to him would understand, taking every precaution to keep their discussion hidden.

“Todavía tengo un mes.”

“Queremos asegurarnos de que está utilizando su tiempo en ese mes con prudencia. Y si me preguntas....” The man gestured to the sleazy bar they stood in, and then to the jukebox that Bernard had stopped methodically flipping through. “....Esto no parece ser un uso sabio del tiempo.”

“Estamos buscando a mi amigo.”

“¿Estamos?” The man tilted his hat up at the mention of other people, and his eyes searched the establishment until they fell on two people of similar age to Bernard, both standing out in the crowd. He sighed, “....Por qué no estoy sorprendido.” Bernard stood stiff as the man stroked his trimmed goatee.

“No me digas que realmente te preocupas por ellos.”

Bernard tried to bring himself to speak, but he was once again cut off. “No, claro que no-”

“No son la razón por la que estás aquí!” The man raised his voice, garnering attention from a few of the surrounding bikers and patrons. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and spoke in a low voice, “We sent you here to train, not to be in some cheesy after-school special.” The man pulled the brim of his hat down and buttoned up his jacket, preparing to leave. Before he disappeared into the night, he gave Bernard a word of warning. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint El Santo Diablo. He expects big things from you.” Now that he was alone again, Bernard hunched over the jukebox and tried to hide his anxious, frustrated wheezing by furiously flipping through the discs.

Night on the Grail Academy campus was strange. Especially for those who didn’t actually attend the school, like Lolanthe and Aurum, and the Herculean figure standing behind them in a large black cloak made from boarskin. As he stepped forward, the breeze blew under the flaps of his cape and partially revealed a sliver of something sparkly underneath. Lolanthe complained, “Does you really need to wear that?” The man grunted and flared his nostrils, the tusks of the boar pelt that functioned as a hood on his head shifting as he did.

Aurum ran his hand over his cleanly shaved head. “I don’t see a problem with it. Let the man play dress-up if he wants to,” He said, his thumb running along the side of the envelope he held. He looked over the blueprints: the school, the dorms, the arena, and the clocktower. Lolanthe snatched them out of his hands and inspected them herself, disgruntled. “This is why nobody takes us seriously.” They both looked back to the man who towered over them, his arms crossed and his expression hidden under the shadow of his hood. Then they returned their attention to the school whose lawn they stood on, uncomfortably silent with all of the students away on Winter break. “Let’s get this over with….”

Nico spun on the stool at the bar, his back against it with his elbows on the counter, spreading out as much as he could sitting between two other people. To one side, a man with a loose tie hanging off his neck sipped at his drink. To the other side, a young woman in a flowery dress chatted with the bartender. Nico leaned towards the man, sticking his chin out with a smirk.

“Hey there, gorgeous~”

“Hey.”

“Have you ever hooked up with a rock star?”

“....No?”

“Would you like to~?”

Nico waggled his eyebrows, the smirk on his face growing. The man rolled his eyes and shook his head, finishing his drink before standing up and leaving. Nico frowned for a moment in disappointment, but just as quickly as it fell, the sly smirk rose back across his cheeks, and he swiveled around to the other side to lean towards the woman.

“Hey there, gorgeous~” He was about to use the exact same pickup line, but the woman held up her hand to stop him. “Nope.” She huffed and walked away, leaving Nico in the dust.

Rejected. Twice. It knocked Nico down a few pegs, for sure. He sat alone at the bar, wallowing in his sadness until he heard the raucous laughs of the bikers who had been in the fight when he first entered the pub. They were cackling over some dirty joke that their leader had made, drinks spilling out of their glasses as they clapped while the leader combed and smoothed back his hair with a grin. A plan was brewing in Nico’s brain. They seemed like reliable sources! Maybe they had some information about Yorick’s whereabouts. He drifted over to the group and tapped the gang leader on the shoulder. The men fell silent and stared at Nico. Or rather, they stared at his fingertips grazing the precious leather of their leader’s jacket.

“Are you sure?” As Esmerelda interrogated, her bangs fell in front of her face. “There’s been no Boost deals here? Nothing?” The woman scratched the side of her head under the bandana, shrugging. “Not for a few months. Too many cops patrolling around the bar for anything to happen.” Esmerelda sighed, arms crossing over her chest as she tapped her finger against her forearm, thinking. The music bouncing in the background made the ice cubes on some of the drink glasses rattle, and she could feel the bass pulsing in her chest. “Very well. Thank you for your time….” She turned to walk away, but what the woman said next stopped Esmerelda in her tracks.

“You Grail kids been poking your noses around here a lot lately. I’d watch out if I were you.”

“Grail kids? Do you mean there have been other students in here recently?”

“Well, yeah….not many, mind you. But it’s easy to pick ‘em out in a crowd.”

“What did they look like?” Esmerelda lurched forward with intent, listening.

“There’s this tall girl who’s a regular here. Letterman jacket. Usually has a blue haired chick and a cat faunus following her around, sometimes a kid in a lab coat too. Buncha’ weirdos.”

“Anyone else you can remember?”

“Hm….I think, yeah. New one been tagging along with them, ponytail and goggles. Real fidgety.”

Esmerelda had to hide her glee as she shook the woman’s hand. “Thanks, you’ve been a big help.” She snaked away with a keen smile, slipping up to Bernard’s side, who was startled and hugged his shoulders to his neck when she arrived. “He was here,” She murmured, “With Queenie and the others.” Bernard nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a cacophony of hollers and grumbles that erupted from the group of bikers that formed a huddle on the dance floor. Nico stood at its middle.

“Boys, boys, boys! Please! No autographs, I’m a very busy man”, Nico tittered. One of the bikers shoved him in the shoulder, making him fumble backwards into the arms of another biker. This one shoved Nico back into the center of the huddle. “Listen here, ya gutterpunk,” the gang’s leader spoke out, combing back his hair into place, “Nobody touches Morado’s jacket. Nobody.” His goons repeated him with cackles, “Yeah, nobody! Morado’s king ‘round here!”

“Are you seriously talking in third person?” Nico raised a brow at Morado before turning to address his underlings, “And you guys let him do that?” Morado snarled at him. Nico threw his hands up and looked off to the side. “Jeez, you are a stereotype. But hey, I don’t judge! You do you. I can see you don’t want to answer any questions, I get it, I got it. Now, I’m part of a very famous and influential musical group, don’t bother looking us up, I’m sort of a celebrity.” Some of the bikers stepped backwards out of the huddle, not wanting to have to add assault and battery of someone famous to their criminal records. There was no humanly possible way to become more smug than Nico was at that moment, his smile stretching the corners of his mouth like rubber bands. “Yeah, that’s right, VIP coming through. So I’ll just squeeze past-” Nico began to slip through, but the biker’s hand that pushed his chest and thrusted him backwards stopped him. “Not so fast.”

Nico’s artificial smile quivered. “You’re in a band?” Morado glanced at the other two people standing by the jukebox. “Prove it. Play something.”

The sweat was starting to drip down the side of Nico’s face. He laughed nervously, “W-well, we don’t have our instruments, and we still have to do our vocal warm ups, uh-” Morado lifted Nico off the ground by his jacket collar. His arms flexed underneath his jacket sleeves, and Nico squeaked when he feld his feet swinging back and forth, a yard above the floor. “SING, LITTLE MAN!” The man roared in Nico’s face, shaking him. His goons closed the circle around them and whooped and cheered, excited to watch their boss in action. Nico swung his leg upwards like a hatchet, nailing Morado in the crotch with the heel of his boot. He let out a wail and dropped Nico to the floor, and the boy scrambled to his feet. Esmerelda and Bernard rushed to his side when he was assaulted, but Morado easily stepped between them once he recovered.

The gang leader cracked his knuckles with a menacing glare, the other bikers pulling out an array of weapons from their pockets and forming a wall behind their king. The reflections of their switchblades glinting in the overhead fluorescent lighting, Morado hissed, “See, Morado was just going to give you a quick pummeling and send you on your way. But now? Now, you’re dead meat.”

The music from the jukebox stopped. Esmerelda and Bernard pushed themselves past the barrier of bikers, and Nico braced for the impact of Morado’s fist in his face. But it never came. His clenched fist was raised in the air, his arm wound back and ready to launch, when the bouncer burst into the pub and yelled, “IT’S THE PIGS!”

Almost on cue, a drunkard sitting at the bar screamed out “SCATTER!” and threw the bottle of beer he was drinking from on the floor. The glass exploded like a small firecracker, and in a chaotic flurry, all of the bar’s patrons flew off in separate directions, breaking more bottles and flipping tables as they all made their escape before the police arrived. The biker gang dove through the exit in the kitchen, Morado warning the trio, “This ain’t over” before fleeing the scene. The lights flickered off. Esmerelda grabbed Nico by the arm and hefted him up, the three of them crawling out through the overhead window in the women’s bathroom.

“Great, now we have another enemy”,  Nico growled. Esmerelda brushed snow off her coat, the flakes sprinkling to the ground like powdered sugar, and she held up a finger in front of his face. “Correction. You have another enemy.”

Voshkie dialed a number on his scroll and listened to the dialtone. He stared into the embers that sizzled in his office fireplace, stoking it ever-so-slightly with a metal poker. He glanced down at the files in his hand. The building’s maid picked up the line. “Yes, Kelly? Could you to come in to the office early on monday? The Records Hall needs a good cleaning….yes, of course….yes…” Voshkie let the files fall into the fire, page by page, watching them turn black and disintegrate. Everything on Sable. Everything on the Hedge Witches. Everything that could compromise his position in office. “....Yes. That should be fine. Just make sure it gets taken care off. I have a mess of my own to attend to.”

#rwby #rwby oc #grail #grail academy #welcome to grail academy #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #oc fanfic #oc fanfiction #rwby fanfic #rwby fanfiction #rwby oc fanfic #rwby oc fanfiction #punk #ebny #esmerelda #bernard #yorick #nico #team ebny #tw #violence #alcohol #drugs #drug tw #violence tw #bisexual

[epicfics]

Humans Fic: 15 After Zero - 1) Know My Name

A/N: I wasn’t sure whether I should try this, as it’s so unorthodox. But my blog was feeling stale, so I did it anyways!

I’m sorry if I get the British educational system messed up, I tried to be as vague as possible but some things you can’t fake.

My name is Louisa Bell. I like football and electronica, and my favourite colour is red.

I recite these things like an actress, loud enough for a fly on the wall to hear, but not my mother. But even as I speak to the girl in the mirror, she mocks me with silence, her dark curls and hazel eyes stripping every word of it into a lie. Even the last bit – I doubt you’ll ever be so unfortunate to need to lie about your favourite colour.

But for me, the world is held together by a connected sharpness; the pitch of black, the blinding of white, and every vivid detail in between. There is no simple answer for anything.

Tension clenching my shoulders like claws, I close my eyes and allow my mind to run backwards in time. Memories flicker like brief commercials, until I settle upon one of Sophie Hawkins. Her medium-length hair is plaited back, displaying the silver chain around her neck – I’d given her the heart charm myself just before she left for university. With a wistful smile, she says, “This planet doesn’t need more people like me. It needs more like you.” Easy words for a girl who grew up like a flower under a sunbeam. I had about all the optimism of a lemon. And there isn’t enough sugar in the world for Sophie to sweeten that into lemonade.

I open my eyes to a bedroom that looks like the aftermath of a disaster film, surrounded by clothes that haven’t yet made it to the wash, and unlikely ever will. Household-cleaning Synthetics had stopped being manufactured altogether when I was seven. When the war hit its peak.

Mum reminds me it’s not safe to start attending school now. Some groups of Green-Eyed Synths are more radical than others, and I cannot speak against them or I will be in danger. I cannot speak for them, or I will be in danger.

“Lou?” Mum’s distant summons from the foyer is expected, as is what follows. “I’m not kidding around – if you want to stay home, feel free to just ignore me.”

Understandably, the situation has made her a bit terse. The news has never been easy on us, but when justice for Day Zero had at last been fully served two years ago, we’d needed to relocate to Bristol. In London, our name has spread like a virus through every district, and my last act before we moved away had been to temporarily paralyse a boy in another class that was organising a guerrilla-style revolt on a Synth army. Undoubtedly, here as Louisa Bell I would be commended for using my skill with pressure points to prevent tragedy. I would be famous as a holistic medicine practitioner rather than a crossbred creature.

“Louisa!”

I sigh, looking at the face in the mirror one more time. My father’s face.

My favorite colour is a prism. I like sharp objects and fire, and the sound of water crashing with the wind makes me feel alive. My name is Louisa Hawkins, and when I grow up I want people to know it.

 *** 

From Google Maps, Bristol looks largely like one large postcard-ready suburban utopia. Our neighbourhood seems to have sprung up out of a golf course. The school is a pile of neatly-stacked copper coloured bricks on a patch of black concrete. Mum sits in the driver’s seat of our parked compact car, shaking her head.

“What?” I ask her, ready to get out.

She mutters, “It looks like Waltringham.”

Waltringham, one of the earlier Synth free communities in England. Or as my grandmother calls it, Pleasantville 2020.

“Cool,” I say, blatantly nonchalant, opening the door with a click and a punch.

“Lulu?” I turn my head at the sound of my nickname. She uses it whenever she’s thinking about my father. But I know what she’s worried about.

I step out of the car and say, “I promise, Mum. I know what’s at stake this time.”

“Actually, I was gonna say…” she drew a breath. “It might not be worth it. You shouldn’t have to force yourself into this other person. It’s not healthy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell her, although I also want to laugh. Does anyone tell a chameleon not to change.

It’s only the third time we’ve been through this. Each year I make a mistake that pushes me further towards prison. And my father is not in prison anymore.

I can’t meet him if he doesn’t know where to find me.

I slam the car door shut and make my march toward Pleasantville 2.0.

 *** 

Contrary to my mother’s anxiety, the only fear I really had for today was being underdressed. I was expecting tidy jumpers and slacks, rather than biker jackets and jeans. Thankfully, I’m not entirely out of place here.

My classes run by quietly. Only when teacher announces discussion groups for current events does a knot in my stomach start stretching, waiting. We’re to choose a freestyle debate topic – an insane idea, really, as a band of fourteen-year olds might not grasp logic before passion in arguments better than some college kids can.

To my right, Owen is scribbling our ideas onto scrap paper. “New taxes. Continuing effects of Brexit. Copyright rules on fan-generated media.” He frowns. “No one’s gonna suggest resolution for the Green-Eye War?”

Well, I’d known that was coming. To be cool, I raise my eyebrows patronisingly and say, “I’d rather avoid starting a war in here.”

Clearly confused, Owen asks, “But who here’d want to side with the Synths?”

“You tell me, if you’re the one who wants to do a two-sided debate on it.”

“She’s got you in one, Owen,” says the girl on my right. Veronica. Striking, with dark red hair, and fair skin surrounding ruby lips and eyes as blue as a swimming pool. “Although, I don’t know why we’d rather spare this box of morons when anarchy is so much more fun.”

Her eyes catch mine, and she winks. And…I’m in love.

“Right, well because you said it,” sighs Owen, circling a topic. “Copyright issues it is. “Veronica will be on the side of the Internet, I’ll take on the concerns of the copyright - .”

She warns, “I will slaughter you.”

Showing no sign of fear, Owen then points at me, “Louisa, is it? You’ll play moderator.”

I twist my lips in frustration. I should be used to this designation as my former classmates refused to allow me more active participation, but still. New school, new rules.  “You reckon I’ll be better at listening to you both argue than having my own say?”

“What, you know right now already you’ll be good at this debate?” says Owen, pushing his glasses to the bridge of his nose. He stares at me in doubt.

“Probably. I’m good at everything.”

“Bully for you.” He groans, and then says to Veronica, “I suppose that’s the real debate right here.”

Veronica laughs, the sound bearing the carefree joy of a child. “Can you blame her though? You just went about putting us all in our places without any help.”

Looking as helpless as though Veronica paralysed him with pressure points herself, Owen snaps, “Okay. It’s Anarchy, 1 at Law and Order, 0. Little Miss Good-at-Everything gets to play the side of the copyright holders.” Then he leaves us to report our decision.

I smile sweetly in his direction and say softly, “Such a nice guy.”

Veronica snorts at this. “You can take the position of the content creators. I don’t mind a challenge.”

“Neither do I,” I confess. And while her smile warms me, I also think, I have no experience with the subject. I’ve never done anything creative in my life. In truth, I would be better moderating the debate between Veronica and Owen. But I hate it when my choices are made for me.

“By the way,” Veronica interrupts my thoughts. “That classroom war over the Synths? Already happened last year.”

I take care to ensure my tone is neutral before asking, “How did it end?”

Veronica smirks. “Bloody. About half of us wanted to crack down and use government resources to research a way to shut down all of their systems externally. Of course, there’s no telling how such a hack through that electronic network would affect other co-existing electronic networks. Your smart microwave could turn on and blow up your house!”

I shudder at this, but Veronica continues, “The rest of us, being the awesome freaks that we were, suggested looking for a truce with Leo Elster. Since, you know, he’s got some sway for all of it, being the son of the man that created them ,and the mastermind of Day Zero.”

Mastermind? There was no mastermind of Day Zero. Only a girl trying to save a Synth’s life, and later on a boy trying to save hers.

Does he have that much influence over the warring Synths, though? Doubtful, or there would be nothing to fight about now. But then, he’s only been out of prison for two years, thanks to my grandmother Laura’s strenuous efforts to get his sentenced reduced. For all I know, he could be starting a change.

I’ve never met Leo Elster. He was arrested before I was born. He claimed responsibility for delivering consciousness to every Synth on the planet so my mother didn’t have to. I’m not supposed to see him yet, not until Mum has deemed us safe. With who we are haunting our shadows, we’ll never be safe. Yet still, Veronica’s endorsement on his behalf makes me want to run out and find him. And maybe grab her by the arm and take her with me?

I want to say all this aloud and more. But with Owen returning, I shrug instead. “I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

Inwardly cringing from Veronica’s crestfallen expression, I open my notebook and write, Why Copywriters Should Negotiate a Truce –

I stop, rereading what I’ve just jotted down.

Maybe Leo Elster can negotiate a truce. Or maybe I can. With him. Because with the girl sitting next to me as living proof that there are humans with goodwill towards conscious Synthetics, I realise I may be able to reach people in a way that he, closed off as he is, cannot.

Forget what Mum said. By the synthetic additive in my DNA, I’ll find my father all on my own.

to be continued

#humans #humans fanfiction #leo elster #mattie hawkins #leotilda #humans predictions

[theliterateape]

Culture in Real Time

by Don Hall

“I have a surprise for you in honor of February!”

Dana and I have this thing we can’t quite find common ground upon concerning birthdays. She is a minimalist from a wholly unsentimental Pennsylvania family. I’m a materialist raised by a mother who calls presents “prizes” and gives gifts as a part of her love language.

While I’m old enough not to care, I still want my birthday to be a celebration of me. It’s small in spirit but, in that self-diagnosis we all attempt on our own psyches, I was the child of a beautiful woman who attracted men who wanted her but tolerated me. Birthdays were my mother’s way of reminding me that, at least to her, I was someone of note.

“I’m putting the blue in the toilet!”

Another unusual record skip in our marriage is those Tidy Bowl tablets you put in the tank and turns the water blue. To her, they are a sign of white trash, low culture, unnecessary expense. To me, they are an odd bluish signal of semi-wealth and extravagance. 

For the most part, the toilet remains clear. She likes it that way because she can then examine the color of her urine to see if she been hydrating properly (too yellow and she’s not). Once in a moon, she indulges me with a tab of unnatural blue with a hint of ammonia. It’s stupid but I love it every time.

We are both Aquarians which means we both are almost zealous in our personal independence and the sight of her in the bedroom and I on the couch, doing our separate things in the same space, is common. We do well together.

Our differences—in terms of how we view money, consumerism, art, reading, politics—are bizarrely cultural.

My DNA is mostly Irish. Some British, a bit African American, some Native American, but mostly Irish. I have the fair skin and propensity to addictive behavior of someone Irish but culturally I’m not one who embraces Ireland or her ways. Culturally, I’m a bit trailer trash, a dash biker gang, a sprinkling of Southern United States with a Midwestern sensibility.

I’m an American mutt.

A child of the seventies, a GenX guy who came of age in the 80’s, I’m the archetype of classic rock and slightly retrograde sexist attitudes that almost every Motley Crue and Scorpions song conveys. I still call women I meet “darlin’” and “honey” as a sign of friendliness. I prefer to throw the rock and roll horns to a thumbs up. I have tattoos but most are quotes from my favorite authors.

Culturally, I’m a fucking mess, man.

I have friends who live a more culturally identifiable life. I’ll admit to being somewhat envious of them.

Arlo is black. I mean, black black. He is originally from a tiny county in Georgia and laughs as I tell him how much he fits the stereotype of a sixty year old black man from Georgia.

"You could be played in a movie by Louis Gossett, Jr." and he cackles.

Arlo has a love/hate relationship with his cultural bedrock. He loves the food. "Barbecued pork, collared greens, black-eyed peas. My gramma's kitchen table was what I think Arab suicide bombers dream of instead of virgins." He loves the music. "Mississippi John Hurt, John Hooker, Buddy Guy? Sh-eee-it." He hates the drug culture which he was surrounded by growing up. He hates the idea that all black people can dance. "No one in my family had any of that. No dancing."

Jim (his Korean name is Junghoon but everyone who knows him calls him Jim) tells me he feels out of place when he sees his family. "I guess I'm like a self-loathing Jew in that I'm Korean but by way of Decatur, Illinois." Culturally, he is a "no zone" in that his parents tried to instill the cultural markers of a second-generation Korean kid but he was never really into it. "I always hated kimchi. Hot Pockets. Pepperoni. Keep your Bibimbap to yourself. Give me a bag of Doritos, please."

Culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values.

What the three of us all have in common is comic books. All three of us claim to have learned to read courtesy of Stan Lee.

The Fantastic Four. The Avengers. The Amazing Spiderman. The X Men.

The difference between the DC world and the Marvel world was that the heroes in DC were gods and the heroes in Marvel (mostly) were humans with godlike power.

These were the legends and fables of growing up. These were the morality tales of my youth.

From Peter Parker I learned that with great power comes great responsibility. From Logan, his mantra that "The pain let's you know you're still alive" resonated. Daredevil showed that any liability can be overcome (with the help of some radiative waste). 

Bruce Banner instructed that anger can be managed. As an angry Irish-esque kid in Nowhere, Kansas during high school, I needed that lesson. Arlo loved Luke Cage ("But not the Netflix one. The one with the chains and the afro. I was country-black but he made city-black look cool.") and Jim was a huge fan of Ben Grimm ("He always felt like a freak but had his family to give him a purpose.").

I had girlfriends who had broken my heart but nothing I could compare to Peter Parker's grief from Amazing Spiderman #121-122 ("The Night Gwen Stacy Died"). Not only did he lose his great love, he snapped her neck trying to save her. Holy fuck! I was seven years old when I read that and the gravity of a beloved hero failing so horribly was traumatic and took me years to process.

Iron Man #120-128 has Tony Stark dealing full-bore with his alcoholism in "Demon in a Bottle." 

The entire early X Men storylines find an incredible synthesis of the civil rights issues of the late sixties. While the debates about discrimination, non-violent vs violent protest, and inclusion bypassed my ten year old brain, the ideological battles between Charles Xavier and Magneto set the groundwork for when I started reading James Baldwin in high school.

Even more pervasive in the Marvel Universe was the idea that heroes were as flawed as the villains. Doctor Octopus was the bad guy but not evil. Galactus was not evil but simply trying to survive and his means of staying alive involved eating planets. The crossover of villains to heroes was commonplace in the Marvel Universe cementing an ethic that anyone—even Magneto—could find redemption.

My friend has a kid who loves his superheroes. His introduction to them was the MCU and the films of the Avengers. One day, he and his kid were watching Captain America: Civil War and the child wanted to know if Tony Stark was a good guy or a bad guy. My buddy had a bit of a conundrum because in this case there was no easy answer.

This is a bedrock principle of Marvel: there are no good guys or bad guys. Every character is flawed and can make mistakes. Every hero gets to take turns being selfish, afraid, greedy, and enraged. Every villain has a tortured past and is only the villain out of misguided and traumatized perspective. Like the Netflix Daredevil series when Kingpin doesn't realize he's the bad guy until the thirteenth episode and then is astonished by it.

“Culture is how you were raised,” a friend tells me.

Comic books and the desire to be one of these flawed superheroes are culturally important to me. They are as defining of who I am and who I wish to be as natural hair on a black woman working in an office defines her or traditional prayer rituals are to someone raised in a church. These heroes have been a part of my life since I can remember having memories and I've been engaged with them since that nebulous time.

Isn't that culture? My cultural identity?

We GenX types were raised, in part, consuming pop culture in ways previous generations did not. Hours upon hours of televised stories infused into the soft tissue like an army of Manchurian candidates waiting for the buzzwords to activate our consumerist triggers. The advent of VHS tapes made viewing movies the ultimate babysitter. While a kid born and raised on the streets of Detroit might have very little in common with another born and raised in Idaho, both had cultural roots in their mutual boners for Jill Munroe and devastation over the death of Lt. Colonel Henry Blake. A black kid in Birmingham, Alabama could be as racially different from a white kid in Salt Lake City, Utah but both could bond over Star Warsand Nintendo.

As I read it, culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values. By that quite academic frame, it seems that as we parse out our differences in our current multi-cultural war in America, it is a fixation on the symbols that trip us up. Skin color, hair, clothing and style, food, language, sexual proclivities and the presence of certain genitalia are all surface-level identifiers. They are the symbols of each human on display. 

I knew a (white) guy who grew up on the South side of Chicago, went to predominantly black populated schools, had mostly black teachers, and whose only friends were black. He dressed black, spoke black, acted black. Did any of that make him somehow less white and does that make any difference? I know a (black) woman—you'd know her, too, if I shared her New York Times Bestselling name—who, if you talk to her on the phone sounds like the secretary from Ferris Bueller's Day Off but looks like Weezy Jefferson from Good Times. Did her accent and nerdy mannerisms make make her less black and does that make any difference?

“Culture is how you were raised,” a friend tells me. “A lot of it is hidden in the back. It’s not just the food you ate growing up but why that food and not something else. It’s what your family decided to spend money on and what they wouldn’t spend money on. It’s those weird rituals you’d practice every holiday. It’s the clothes you wore but more deep than the fashion is why you wore those specific clothes.”

He tells me a story about clothes. His family didn’t have a lot of money so they saved cash by handing clothes down from one sibling to the next. It was frugal and smart with five kids. By the time my friend got the clothes (he was number four of the five) the strain of wear, the places his mother had stitched up, was obvious. And his little brother then got new clothes because four was the limit of the physical shirts and pants.

My friend spends a lot of money on fashion. He wears the latest trends and has a closet full of suits. He says he spends maybe a third of his take-home on shoes. “That’s culture in real time.”

I don’t dress up for much. I own no suits. I have ties but they’re mostly Marvel, Star Wars, and Beatles ties. My dress shoes are either decent tennis shoes or boots. When I was a kid, my mother wanted to please her aunt. Her aunt was a church-goer so we joined her church. I remember the day she told me I couldn’t go to church because my clothes weren’t up to snuff. “You can’t go to church dressed like that!” she guffawed.

I recall being embarrassed. I didn’t have anything nicer. She laughed at my best clothes. It obviously stuck because I still cringe at the memory. As a result, I bristle at the idea of dressing up for anything or for anybody and I do not go to church. “That’s culture in real time.”

While a follower of The Avengers as a kid, I was never a fan of Captain America. No good reason for that. Steve Rogers just never did it for me. That is, until Chris Evans portrayed the character in the MCU movies. Maybe it was my time to appreciate his retro-goodness; maybe I needed to be a bit older to fully appreciate his specific kind of superhero.

Perhaps I needed to live some life before the ideas that the “I can do this all day” persistence did me any good. The belief in something so strong that he’d go against all of his friends in a fight. His loyalty to Bucky despite the fact that his childhood friend had become a villain. His enduring love for Peggy Carter. His stalwart acceptance that he is almost a century older than he looks and most of his friends are long dead.

I didn’t need those values as a kid. I need those values today.

Dana is fourteen years younger than I am. No, I wasn’t looking for a third wife who was born when I was entering high school. It just worked out that way. The age difference feels sometimes like I was encased in ice for seventy-five years only to be resurrected long after the war was won.

The differences we have are bizarrely cultural. She is a free spirit. I am a worker bee. She is a poet in need of inspiration and subject to the mood swings of that breed of writer. I am an essayist who approaches writing like the laying of bricks to build a house who becomes more a follower of Stoicism the older I get. She grew up in the same house she was born in. I grew up moving from place to place with no true sense of a physical grounding. She is relentlessly frugal. I am an impulse buyer.

But we make it work.

Once in a while I wake up in the morning to take a leak and the toilet water is blue.

#culture #comic books #race #class

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/review-black-mirror-season-4-part-episodes-1-2/

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

Black Mirror Season 4 dropped on December 29th, on Netflix.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

Watch it. Oh my God, watch it. Now, then; Spoilers ahead.

EPISODE 1: USS CALLISTER

The aspect ratio of the opening sequence matches the aspect ratio of the old Star Trek television show. It’s little things like that keep my coffee hot and get me up in the morning.

“USS Callister” really tells two stories: the first is the tale of a loser computer programmer named Robert Daly, who’s created a groundbreaking Virtual-Reality-based game that lets people fly around the universe in spaceships, explore planets, battle each other trade, etcetera. The guy he started the company with is a dick who doesn’t appreciate his contributions to the company. His coworkers think he’s weird and awkward and kinda creepy sometimes.

The second story is that of a sadistic and cruel God named Robert Daly. Daly has created a parallel Virtual Reality that allows him to play out his fantasies of being a Hero in Charge, based on a retro science-fiction television show he loves. (Think Star Trek.)

The twist of the knife is that he has peopled this game with digital copies of coworkers he dislikes, generated by stolen samples of their DNA. They have all their memories and personalities from the real world. They are sentient, thinking and feeling as their real-world selves.

What “USS Callister” asks us is (among many other things), are they alive?

Not that episode one is all scowling and torment. Brooker mentioned that Black Mirror would ‘explore a little more comedy in this season’, and there is certainly a strong heartbeat of humor here. It’s the best kind of laughter, too, for the series: black humor. Hangman’s jokes. The dry British chuckle in the face of the abyss.

Watching the tortured, terrified digital clones of the USS Callister unwind while Daly is logged out of the game reminds one of London in the Blitz. Sure, there are bombs and blood and rubble everywhere, and things are pretty awful, but at least the bottles behind the bar survived.

When the newest digital clone, Cristin (played by Nanette Cole) finds out that nobody has genitals in Daly’s digital world, her battle cry is priceless:

Okay. Stealing my pussy is a red. Fucking. Line.

“USS Callister” is like a great Doctor Who episode that just happens to be Rated R.

When the trailers for Season 4 dropped, the teaser for “USS Callister” left out the real world entirely. It was a move of twofold genius. First, it saves the surprise of our first, bleak glimpse of the real world. Our introduction to neurotic weirdo Daly (an absolutely stunning performance by Jesse Plemons) feels like a nihilistic sigh of relief. It doesn’t have to be full dark 24/7, but there’s something in the uncompromising, unblinking hardness of Black Mirror that has always set it apart. A certain bleak jouissance that no other show delivers.

Second, it works as a commentary on the episode itself. In our little taste of “USS Callister,” the real world isn’t there at all. The trailer promises pure sci-fi. Pure escapism. Fun. Adventure. There’s no trace of the sinister sadism of Daly, or the suffering of his comrades. There’s no sense of true tragedy or actual stakes.

Just like the immersive, next-gen VR in the episode.

“Callister” examines the more disturbing elements of the AI and VR booms we’re seeing right now. Ten years from now, if we have a bad day, put on our VR headsets, and kill a hundred digital people in Call of Duty online, what will that mean? In a world where code is ever-improving, at what point is a program as nuanced and multifaceted as us? We don’t feel anything drowning Sims or making them wet themselves…but should we? If not today, when? At what point does simulated suffering cease to be Catharsis and become Sadism?

With the advent of technology like CRISPR, perhaps we aren’t so far from Daly’s nightmare after all.

  EPISODE 2: ARKANGEL

The obvious big-gun episode of the season is “Arkangel.” There’re no scrubs in the directorial talent of Black Mirror, but Jodie Foster (four Oscar nominations, two wins, Silence of the Lambs, ‘nuff said) is clearly the Heavy Hitter.

She swung for the fences.

She knocked it out of the park.

I don’t even like baseball.

“Arkangel” tells the story of a mother and daughter. When her daughter Sara (Aniya Hodge, Sara Abbot, and Brenna Harding) goes missing, Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt, Cinderella Man, Mad Men) has a monitoring system implanted in Sara’s head. It’s called “Arkangel,” and gives Marie access to Sara’s location, biological vitals, and even a direct feed from her optic nerve. Marie can see what Sara sees.

But “Arkangel” isn’t really about the creepy sci-fi stuff. None of the best episodes of Black Mirror are, and this is one of the best in the series. No. “Arkangel” is about what happens as Sara grows up. It’s about the Helicopter Parents of the future. About how far Marie will go to keep her safe, and how much of herself she’ll compromise to do it.

And the inevitable price to be paid.

The brilliance of Foster’s episode is (to borrow from Blake), its fearful symmetry. Its balance. Each element dances with another, each character reflected darkly in the actions of others. Sara and the all-seeing eye in her head are like a weight in the center of the episode. On one side is Marie and her Orwellian baby monitor. On the other is Trick (a superb performance by Own Teague), the Cute Drug Dealer from the Wrong Side of the Tracks, and all the rebellion and danger he represents.

Every line, every interaction in the episode shifts that weight, tilts the precarious position of the scale. Structurally, it’s breathtakingly beautiful. There is no wasted moment.

I don’t know whether to give the nod to Brooker (who has sole writing credit on the episode) or Foster for the delicate dance of these threads. The interplay between the writing and directing style is an elegant pas de deux, each word and element circling the others, and pulling the weave ever tighter.

Brooker understands Irony in a way that few shows do, and utilizes it like the keen, heartrending edge that it can be. And he knows Tragedy. The Capital-T kind that the Greeks told us so much about, all those years ago. He knows it intimately. Knows that the key to Tragedy is Hamaratia: the Fatal Flaw.

There are several Fatal Flaws in “Arkangel.” They run (appropriately) in arcs through the episode. Tracing those threads back reveals the subtlety and nuance Foster and Brooker actually manage.

Almost everything Marie does throughout the episode is countered or echoed elsewhere: when she reactivates the Arkangel unit in Sara’s teens, she sees her having sex with Trick, the “Dangerous Bad Boy.” Yet, that same night, she met up with one of her patients from physical therapy: a devil-may-care biker who injured himself driving his motorcycle recklessly, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Marie sees Sara experimenting with cocaine in Trick’s van. The effect of the drug is that it raises Sara’s heart rate. A few days later, Marie grinds some drugs into Sara’s morning smoothie. The effect of drugging her daughter is the spontaneous abortion of a pregnancy Sara didn’t even know about.

It’s ironic that Marie should confront Trick, condemning him as “a junkie.” Throughout the episode, Marie treats the Arkangel parent unit as a junkie treats drugs. She hides the unit upstairs, laments over whether to use it or not. Okay, just this one more time. Uses it just a little. Just a few functions. Starts carrying it with her. It’s clear that she’s addicted to it.

There’s even a brilliant reversal of the classic “Parent finds drugs in the kid’s room” scene, where Sara rifles her mother’s room and discovers that she’s still using the Arkangel parent unit. Sara is horrified and tosses it down, the perfect picture of a parent discovering their child’s dangerous addiction.

Marie is the first victim of Arkangel, and in her victimhood, she stands for all of us. I don’t mean the program itself. I’m talking about the sentiment behind it. Beneath the eerie veneer of the invasive surveillance of tomorrow, “Arkangel” is quietly commenting on something we’re experiencing today.

Safety. In excess. In extremis.

The opening scene of the episode doesn’t just establish the characters and set the stage. It holds up a mirror. Marie is giving birth: after complications during natural birth, the doctor is performing a C-section. “Arkangel” opens with Marie looking away from the things that frighten her: the doctors, the nurse, the procedure she’s undergoing. When Sara is finally born, the doctors whisk her away to a table nearby. There is no sound. No cry. Other doctors gather, and Marie becomes afraid: afraid her baby is dead, that she’s lost her little girl, and is powerless to help.

“Tell me she’s alright,” she says.

The nurse holds her hand, tells her to calm down. Comforts her. Then Sara cries and is brought over, and she’s fine, and everything is fine. We get the sort of close-up maternal scene we’re accustomed to seeing when babies are born on television. Lots of nuzzling and happy tears and lifelong bonds being wound between mother and child.

And then, brilliantly, brutally, honestly, Foster shows us what we seldom see these days, too busy cooing over the microcosm and the close-up.

She shows us the big picture.

On one side of the curtain, Marie is bonding with her little girl. Her daughter is alive and well. Everything is fine. Nurses smile and nod and congratulate her. And on the other side of the curtain, her body is open and bloody. Doctors work quietly to stop the bleeding and make her whole again. Though a routine procedure, Marie has experienced massive trauma, could conceivably die if things go wrong…but she’ll never know. The sheet protects her. She doesn’t feel a thing: the doctors have numbed her to the trauma she’s experiencing. All that’s left is bliss.

(By the by, I’m not suggesting we force new mothers to watch surgeries performed on them without anesthetic. I’m not a monster. I am an observer of metaphors.)

The “parental control” of the Arkangel unit is obviously the darkest, most troubling of the sci-fi elements of the episode, but it raises some interesting questions about what safety might mean, in the long-term.

When Sara’s grandfather has a heart attack, she can’t see what’s happening to him, and can’t hear his pleas for her to get help. She’s shielded from the trauma by the unit. But there’s a parallel in our world, here: if we crumble in the face of fear and trauma, shutting down and closing it out, refusing to look, what are the consequences of that willful blind eye?

Later, as Marie grieves over her father’s grave, Sara can’t see her mother’s face. Grief is uncomfortable. It has been censored out.

Again, there are real considerations for us in the real world. If we turn our backs on grief and powerful, negative human emotions because they make us uncomfortable, what does that mean? The end of empathy? A society that must grieve alone and uncomforted, with no community to feel and grieve with us, no strength to be lent to us because we are, in our sadness, upsetting?

Just something to think about.

Sara’s grandfather speaks for some us, after Marie has the Arkangel implanted in Sara’s head:

“I remember when we used to open up the door and let the kids be.”

It provokes an interesting thought. The difference between opening a door and a locked one can be the difference between a home and a prison. Between a conversation and a censure is the difference between a parent and a warden.

And once you’ve escaped a prison, why would you ever go back?

  Overall

There’s a common thread between “USS Callister” and “Arkangel.”

Hope.

When Cristin and company break out of Daly’s digital world, they have a whole new universe to explore. They’re in charge of their own destinies again. They have free will, and the will to live.

Once Sara escapes her mother’s smothering safety, she has a whole world to explore. She’s free, finally, with her whole life ahead of her.

Watching these two episodes, I noticed something for the first time. In the opening credits of Black Mirror, just before the screen goes dark, and we stare into the black possibilities of the onrushing technological age…

The Black Mirror always cracks. The mirror Brooker holds up is not impervious. We can escape.

There’s always hope.

#black humor #black mirror #Brooker #charlie brooker #emmy #horror #horror 2017 #horror 2018 #horror news #horror review #horror tv #humor #jodie foster #netflix #new horror #oscar #sci-fi #scifi #Season 4 #tv

[radical-conceptual21-blog]

The Transformative Power of Metal Music

I'll never forget my first death metal show, I went with Mike “Kenshin” Muhlbauer. Don’t ask me why he called himself Kenshin. I think it was based on an Anime character, probably had something to do with honor or dignity or whatever. Mike was a never ending fountain of information and media.

You think you’re an expert on literally anything? Well, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself, because Mike was never beyond proving you wrong. Did you just find out about an underground band that you think nobody knows about? Well, Mike had already owned every album, EP, single, interview, and a DNA sample of every member and their mothers before their name even first entered your subconscious.

These delusions of grandeur didn’t limit themselves to music. Oh no. Movies, plays, literature, video games, even his food turned into a piece of art that needed to be criticized. He was a jerk, but he was my jerk. He invited me to what he guaranteed would be "the most brutal show you've ever been to," (referring specifically to me because he was assured he was on a higher tier of brutality than I would ever achieve) I decided to oblige. I coughed up the fifteen bucks for the night in Hell.

Have you ever seen the movies where the scraggly protagonist walks into a saloon full of biker dudes? Well, imagine that saloon, with all of it's intimidation and lack of cleanliness, and with pentagrams all over the walls. The room was no bigger than your living room. There was a bar to the right, and to the left, a merch stand for t-shirts with blood n' guts designs that cost more than the tickets did. In the far left corner, there was a stage that could barely intimidate a picnic table. Me, Mike, and three of his lackeys that we brought with us were quite the motley crew with our t-shirts and shorts.

We were the only ones that stood by the stage while everyone else, with their patched jean jackets, spiked leather vests, and builds like bulls, conversed about some pretty normal things like renovating houses and craft beer. At one point in the show, I was coerced by Mike to partake in what is called a "silent wall of death." A wall of death is where the band splits the audience down the middle and when a certain breakdown or heavy part in the song hits, everyone runs at each other and chaos ensues.

This wasn't good enough for Mike. This wasn't good enough for the technical death metal band "Origin" either. Origin does what is called a silent wall of death, where "you motherfuckers are so crazy that you don't even need music to lose your minds," so on the very silent count of three, after I had sized up the bull that was waiting for me at the other side of the wall, I felt like a bullfighter with no sword. I ran with faux aggression and whimsy only to be knocked right to the ground the minute my skin touched another body.

It was the scariest eleven seconds of my life before someone helped me up to my feet where I thought I was going to die by being trodden underfoot by a legion of cold blooded Vikings at hunt. I waddled my way back to my group. Mike exclaimed, "what did I tell you? That was sick, wasn't it?" At the time, I had the sudden urge to kick him in the teeth. However, in retrospect, this chaos must have had an impact on me.

See, while the eleven seconds on the ground was certainly scary, after this eleven seconds was over, two of the strongest arms that I ever felt heaved me up off of the ground and shoved me out of the veitable pit of chaos as if to say "you knew you weren't ready, and you did it anyway just to make your friend happy." Even though I was angry at Mike for making me do it, the aggressive act of grace  that the bodybuilding stranger gave me left me feeling fickle and exposed, but at the same time, part of me must had been knocked off of me and left in the carnage of the silent wall of death. It was almost as if catharsis was working overtime and fired off on all cylinders and left my colors jumbled and warped. It took the throwing around of my body to get the Catholic raised middle class white boy that I was to breathe some uncertainty into my lungs. The pit floor was the lake and the arms that saved me were my baptism. I believe that everyone should have an experience like this. I believe that everyone should experience the transformative power of metal at least once in their lives.

`You may also be wondering to yourself, "why would I listen to a genre of music that sounds like a cat in a blender? It just sounds like a bunch of screaming! Why would I want to listen to this?" Well, first and foremost, not all metal music, in fact, a great majority of metal music, doesn't have any "screaming", and there are tons of different subgenres. Not all metal sounds like absolute insanity like the aforementioned night from Hell.  There's thrash metal (Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax), power metal (Helloween, DragonForce), doom metal, (Candlemass), among many, many others. All of these subgenres branch off into different subgenres. The family tree seemingly never ends.

Bands like Avantasia, TesseracT, Helloween, and many others are well known for their soaring choruses, uplifting lyrics, and happy melodies. Metal covers the depressive spectrum as well. Type O Negative and My Dying Bride illicit a sense of sadness in the listener, and of course, metal has no shortage of angry bands for the folks who love breaking things. If this sounds like you, then death metal bands like Cannibal Corpse, Aborted, or Dying Fetus should do the trick. I guarantee you that if you're willing to open your mind do a little bit of digging, you'll find something within the metal genre that you'll like one way or another.

What about the screamy stuff, the stuff that sounds like a family reunion of chainsaws? The stuff that sounds like your little sister when she's crying about losing her blankie? Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on your outlook on life, I can't use words to turn you onto music with screaming, It's simply an acquired taste. At first, I hated screaming music too, but again, it took another intervention from the metal Gods.

It was 2:54 PM on a Friday afternoon. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and mentally, I was in a different place than the school bus on the way home sitting next to Mike. As I sat on the sauna known as "bus 132", I sat watching a video that Mike promised me was "kickass." I had no say in the matter, so I obliged.

*WARNING, THIS VIDEO CONTAINS OFFENSIVE AND VULGAR LANGUAGE, SUCH AS F***, B****, AND WH***. WIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED... YOU CHEEKY BASTARDS.*

What followed this edgy intro was the most inhumane disregard for human health and lack of personal dignity I had seen in my entire life. A drunkard with a microphone shouted obscenities at a preteen audience of snotty brats. This drunkard was backed with four human mops with electric instruments.

Following this trauma, I wanted nothing to do with bands like this anymore, until the December of 2014. It was sometime during this time that a small spark was lit inside of me that Mike's video was initially unable to do. This spark will ignite anger or frustration that you didn't even know you had, and once you've felt the first spark, let me tell you, there's no going back. So listen to the madness and enjoy, because you might just become one with the madness, and boy, is it a beautiful thing once you've found it. I have the metalcore band For Today to thank for this spark. Mike had been trying to turn me onto screaming music for quite a while and had given up a while ago before I made the decision to listen to a random song from a band that was playing a music festival I wanted to go to. Not long after the music video started, and the intro guitar riff started, I knew things were going to change. The way this riff danced menacingly over the growled vocals and the pounding kick drums all in tandem, it was as if a war drum was calling me in the distance. All of this raw emotion that I never knew how to express was suddenly laid in front of me like a fiery magic carpet, and I was about to ride it through the great beyond. There was no turning back.

So, you probably have a couple questions about the journey you're about to take, right? The most prevalent may be "Who in their right mind would actually elect to partake in extreme acts of concert aggression where people have died before? How messed up do you have to be to want to do this?" Among other questions like "Do I have to become a Satanist in order to listen to metal music? Do I have to grow my beard like Dumdledore and wear jean jackets and ride motorcycles? Do I have to crush beer cans on my forehead and drink goat blood?" Thankfully, the answer to all these questions is no. While these are all things that some metalheads choose to do for their own personal reasons, the image of the hardened macho man with spiked clothing is very quickly starting to loose it's relevancy. The truth of the matter is that metalheads come from all different walks of life. True metalheads do not discriminate based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc. Metal music seeks to find the sufferers of the world, the outcasts, the misfits, the degenerates, the losers, and the scum of the earth. However, the cool thing about the metal community is that metal is not exclusively for these so called degenerates, it's for happy people, sad people, angry people, and everything in between and surrounding. As long as you're not judgmental, there's no reason for anyone to make fun of you or beat you up. In reality, your choice to wear shorts and a t-shirt is only agonizing because you make it agonizing, nobody really cares except you.

Ahh, here we are. At the end. All your life now leads you to this moment. Are you ready to take the plunge? The metal lifestyle is no small feat, as I'm sure you've grasped by now. As with most other big decisions or changes you make in your life, this will strike you when you least expect it. The spark of aggression that comes when you hear guitar riffs and drum fills that resurrect past angers. The feeling of rejuvenating energy, but at the same time, overwhelming fear that hits when you stare down your burly opponent in a silent wall of death. These are things that will change your life if you let it, and it will reach in and touch parts of your heart and mind that you didn't know existed. If you're anything like Billy, then you understand the heartache, the pain, the futile feelings that come with living life the way everyone else wants you to, and that's where metal music comes in to shake up your entire existence, to the point where you'll wonder why you even lived a normal life in the first place. Just be real, carry on, and metal will always be with you. This I believe.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/review-black-mirror-season-4-part-episodes-1-2/

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part I - Episodes 1 & 2)

Black Mirror Season 4 dropped on December 29th, on Netflix.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

Watch it. Oh my God, watch it. Now, then; Spoilers ahead.

EPISODE 1: USS CALLISTER

The aspect ratio of the opening sequence matches the aspect ratio of the old Star Trek television show. It’s little things like that keep my coffee hot and get me up in the morning.

“USS Callister” really tells two stories: the first is the tale of a loser computer programmer named Robert Daly, who’s created a groundbreaking Virtual-Reality-based game that lets people fly around the universe in spaceships, explore planets, battle each other trade, etcetera. The guy he started the company with is a dick who doesn’t appreciate his contributions to the company. His coworkers think he’s weird and awkward and kinda creepy sometimes.

The second story is that of a sadistic and cruel God named Robert Daly. Daly has created a parallel Virtual Reality that allows him to play out his fantasies of being a Hero in Charge, based on a retro science-fiction television show he loves. (Think Star Trek.)

The twist of the knife is that he has peopled this game with digital copies of coworkers he dislikes, generated by stolen samples of their DNA. They have all their memories and personalities from the real world. They are sentient, thinking and feeling as their real-world selves.

What “USS Callister” asks us is (among many other things), are they alive?

Not that episode one is all scowling and torment. Brooker mentioned that Black Mirror would ‘explore a little more comedy in this season’, and there is certainly a strong heartbeat of humor here. It’s the best kind of laughter, too, for the series: black humor. Hangman’s jokes. The dry British chuckle in the face of the abyss.

Watching the tortured, terrified digital clones of the USS Callister unwind while Daly is logged out of the game reminds one of London in the Blitz. Sure, there are bombs and blood and rubble everywhere, and things are pretty awful, but at least the bottles behind the bar survived.

When the newest digital clone, Nanette Cole (played by Cristin Milioti) finds out that nobody has genitals in Daly’s digital world, her battle cry is priceless:

Okay. Stealing my pussy is a red. Fucking. Line.

“USS Callister” is like a great Doctor Who episode that just happens to be Rated R.

When the trailers for Season 4 dropped, the teaser for “USS Callister” left out the real world entirely. It was a move of twofold genius. First, it saves the surprise of our first, bleak glimpse of the real world. Our introduction to neurotic weirdo Daly (an absolutely stunning performance by Jesse Plemons) feels like a nihilistic sigh of relief. It doesn’t have to be full dark 24/7, but there’s something in the uncompromising, unblinking hardness of Black Mirror that has always set it apart. A certain bleak jouissance that no other show delivers.

Second, it works as a commentary on the episode itself. In our little taste of “USS Callister,” the real world isn’t there at all. The trailer promises pure sci-fi. Pure escapism. Fun. Adventure. There’s no trace of the sinister sadism of Daly, or the suffering of his comrades. There’s no sense of true tragedy or actual stakes.

Just like the immersive, next-gen VR in the episode.

“Callister” examines the more disturbing elements of the AI and VR booms we’re seeing right now. Ten years from now, if we have a bad day, put on our VR headsets, and kill a hundred digital people in Call of Duty online, what will that mean? In a world where code is ever-improving, at what point is a program as nuanced and multifaceted as us? We don’t feel anything drowning Sims or making them wet themselves…but should we? If not today, when? At what point does simulated suffering cease to be Catharsis and become Sadism?

With the advent of technology like CRISPR, perhaps we aren’t so far from Daly’s nightmare after all.

  EPISODE 2: ARKANGEL

The obvious big-gun episode of the season is “Arkangel.” There’re no scrubs in the directorial talent of Black Mirror, but Jodie Foster (four Oscar nominations, two wins, Silence of the Lambs, ‘nuff said) is clearly the Heavy Hitter.

She swung for the fences.

She knocked it out of the park.

I don’t even like baseball.

“Arkangel” tells the story of a mother and daughter. When her daughter Sara (Aniya Hodge, Sara Abbot, and Brenna Harding) goes missing, Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt, Cinderella Man, Mad Men) has a monitoring system implanted in Sara’s head. It’s called “Arkangel,” and gives Marie access to Sara’s location, biological vitals, and even a direct feed from her optic nerve. Marie can see what Sara sees.

But “Arkangel” isn’t really about the creepy sci-fi stuff. None of the best episodes of Black Mirror are, and this is one of the best in the series. No. “Arkangel” is about what happens as Sara grows up. It’s about the Helicopter Parents of the future. About how far Marie will go to keep her safe, and how much of herself she’ll compromise to do it.

And the inevitable price to be paid.

The brilliance of Foster’s episode is (to borrow from Blake), its fearful symmetry. Its balance. Each element dances with another, each character reflected darkly in the actions of others. Sara and the all-seeing eye in her head are like a weight in the center of the episode. On one side is Marie and her Orwellian baby monitor. On the other is Trick (a superb performance by Own Teague), the Cute Drug Dealer from the Wrong Side of the Tracks, and all the rebellion and danger he represents.

Every line, every interaction in the episode shifts that weight, tilts the precarious position of the scale. Structurally, it’s breathtakingly beautiful. There is no wasted moment.

I don’t know whether to give the nod to Brooker (who has sole writing credit on the episode) or Foster for the delicate dance of these threads. The interplay between the writing and directing style is an elegant pas de deux, each word and element circling the others, and pulling the weave ever tighter.

Brooker understands Irony in a way that few shows do, and utilizes it like the keen, heartrending edge that it can be. And he knows Tragedy. The Capital-T kind that the Greeks told us so much about, all those years ago. He knows it intimately. Knows that the key to Tragedy is Hamaratia: the Fatal Flaw.

There are several Fatal Flaws in “Arkangel.” They run (appropriately) in arcs through the episode. Tracing those threads back reveals the subtlety and nuance Foster and Brooker actually manage.

Almost everything Marie does throughout the episode is countered or echoed elsewhere: when she reactivates the Arkangel unit in Sara’s teens, she sees her having sex with Trick, the “Dangerous Bad Boy.” Yet, that same night, she met up with one of her patients from physical therapy: a devil-may-care biker who injured himself driving his motorcycle recklessly, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Marie sees Sara experimenting with cocaine in Trick’s van. The effect of the drug is that it raises Sara’s heart rate. A few days later, Marie grinds some drugs into Sara’s morning smoothie. The effect of drugging her daughter is the spontaneous abortion of a pregnancy Sara didn’t even know about.

It’s ironic that Marie should confront Trick, condemning him as “a junkie.” Throughout the episode, Marie treats the Arkangel parent unit as a junkie treats drugs. She hides the unit upstairs, laments over whether to use it or not. Okay, just this one more time. Uses it just a little. Just a few functions. Starts carrying it with her. It’s clear that she’s addicted to it.

There’s even a brilliant reversal of the classic “Parent finds drugs in the kid’s room” scene, where Sara rifles her mother’s room and discovers that she’s still using the Arkangel parent unit. Sara is horrified and tosses it down, the perfect picture of a parent discovering their child’s dangerous addiction.

Marie is the first victim of Arkangel, and in her victimhood, she stands for all of us. I don’t mean the program itself. I’m talking about the sentiment behind it. Beneath the eerie veneer of the invasive surveillance of tomorrow, “Arkangel” is quietly commenting on something we’re experiencing today.

Safety. In excess. In extremis.

The opening scene of the episode doesn’t just establish the characters and set the stage. It holds up a mirror. Marie is giving birth: after complications during natural birth, the doctor is performing a C-section. “Arkangel” opens with Marie looking away from the things that frighten her: the doctors, the nurse, the procedure she’s undergoing. When Sara is finally born, the doctors whisk her away to a table nearby. There is no sound. No cry. Other doctors gather, and Marie becomes afraid: afraid her baby is dead, that she’s lost her little girl, and is powerless to help.

“Tell me she’s alright,” she says.

The nurse holds her hand, tells her to calm down. Comforts her. Then Sara cries and is brought over, and she’s fine, and everything is fine. We get the sort of close-up maternal scene we’re accustomed to seeing when babies are born on television. Lots of nuzzling and happy tears and lifelong bonds being wound between mother and child.

And then, brilliantly, brutally, honestly, Foster shows us what we seldom see these days, too busy cooing over the microcosm and the close-up.

She shows us the big picture.

On one side of the curtain, Marie is bonding with her little girl. Her daughter is alive and well. Everything is fine. Nurses smile and nod and congratulate her. And on the other side of the curtain, her body is open and bloody. Doctors work quietly to stop the bleeding and make her whole again. Though a routine procedure, Marie has experienced massive trauma, could conceivably die if things go wrong…but she’ll never know. The sheet protects her. She doesn’t feel a thing: the doctors have numbed her to the trauma she’s experiencing. All that’s left is bliss.

(By the by, I’m not suggesting we force new mothers to watch surgeries performed on them without anesthetic. I’m not a monster. I am an observer of metaphors.)

The “parental control” of the Arkangel unit is obviously the darkest, most troubling of the sci-fi elements of the episode, but it raises some interesting questions about what safety might mean, in the long-term.

When Sara’s grandfather has a heart attack, she can’t see what’s happening to him, and can’t hear his pleas for her to get help. She’s shielded from the trauma by the unit. But there’s a parallel in our world, here: if we crumble in the face of fear and trauma, shutting down and closing it out, refusing to look, what are the consequences of that willful blind eye?

Later, as Marie grieves over her father’s grave, Sara can’t see her mother’s face. Grief is uncomfortable. It has been censored out.

Again, there are real considerations for us in the real world. If we turn our backs on grief and powerful, negative human emotions because they make us uncomfortable, what does that mean? The end of empathy? A society that must grieve alone and uncomforted, with no community to feel and grieve with us, no strength to be lent to us because we are, in our sadness, upsetting?

Just something to think about.

Sara’s grandfather speaks for some us, after Marie has the Arkangel implanted in Sara’s head:

“I remember when we used to open up the door and let the kids be.”

It provokes an interesting thought. The difference between opening a door and a locked one can be the difference between a home and a prison. Between a conversation and a censure is the difference between a parent and a warden.

And once you’ve escaped a prison, why would you ever go back?

  Overall

There’s a common thread between “USS Callister” and “Arkangel.”

Hope.

When Cristin and company break out of Daly’s digital world, they have a whole new universe to explore. They’re in charge of their own destinies again. They have free will, and the will to live.

Once Sara escapes her mother’s smothering safety, she has a whole world to explore. She’s free, finally, with her whole life ahead of her.

Watching these two episodes, I noticed something for the first time. In the opening credits of Black Mirror, just before the screen goes dark, and we stare into the black possibilities of the onrushing technological age…

The Black Mirror always cracks. The mirror Brooker holds up is not impervious. We can escape.

There’s always hope.

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