#she is tough as nails and has such a strong internal sense of her self worth | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thesedangeroustemptations · 3 years

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Decided to post one of my OC’s on here, so I hope y’all like her

( the devil's match ) ┊ ❛ ya know, being a dick will not make yours any bigger, so can we skip that step and get to the part where I break your neck? ❜

character name . . kyomi tausa'afia ka'uhane.

title / ring name . . ms. ka'uhane / 'the goddess of volcanoes and destruction, pele!'

meaning of names . .

kyomi: "pure and beautiful, to cleanse." named after her paternal grandmother, it was one handed down every few generations to those who seemed to shine bright with purity from birth, which was exactly what she appeared to have done. as she grew, she always had a shining glint in her eye, though many would say it's one of mischief while others see differently.

tausa'afia: " pleasant, lovable " in the first few days of her life, she didn't have a middle name as their family reserved it for when their personality began to shine through, that way they had a name that fit them that emerged later on. kyomi was a sweet and adorable baby, capturing the hearts of anyone who held or even looked at her, hence why her middle names meaning reflects just that.

ka'uhane : " soul, spirit " the surname is from her father's family line, having been derived 1500 years ago to distinguish his family's martial arts as users of spirit and soul, versus just muscle and occasional mind.

nicknames . .

" i can't believe you'd put yourself in danger like this, kyo, do you thrive on getting your head kicked in that badly? " — wakatsuki takeshi, seething, after winning her battle against saw paing but sustaining major injuries.

" pele, you'd better not fucking lose, fuck him up! " — adam dudley and cosmo imai yelling at her from the stands during her match.

" the strength of your spirit never ceases to amaze me, tausa, but remember, even the strong need to rest sometimes, and you need to realize that doesn't make you weak. rest now, get your revenge when you're healed. " — sawada keizaburo, attempting to comfort his best friend after being unsure of whether her unborn child will survive due to being forced to fight in the kengan annihilation matches despite her condition.

" you still haven't figured it out yet, 'omi? you cannot love both of us and act like it's fine and dandy. fucking pick or i'll kill him right now. " — ohma tokita confronting kyomi after finding out that she's been sharing a bed with Ichiro Nakata as well as him, ready to kill the supposed 'superman'.

age . . kyomi is is twenty years of age

gender . . she was born of the female gender.

height/weight . . she stands at 5'2'' while weighing 155lbs of pure muscle.

appearance . . " oh, but that's the irony, broken people like her are not fragile. "

kengan match records . . 46 wins, 0 loses.

physical scent . . kyomi's natural scent is one of the saltwater and sandalwood, with hints of plumeria flower.

sexual orientation . . she is bisexual, biromantic.

marital status . . currently not married.

" i can't believe your sweet-tempered father was reincarnated into that girl. she's tough as nails. "

occupation . . kengan fighter, personal body guard / assassin, head of the ka'uhane clan with the inherited abilities of her ancestors. *

personality type . . enfj-t — the protagonist.

[ positive ]

‣ motivational, inspirational; bring out the best in others

‣ very perceptive about people's thoughts and motives

‣ fun to be with - lively sense of humor, dramatic, energetic, optimistic

‣ strive for "win-win" situation

‣ loyal and committed

‣ warmly affectionate and affirming

[ negative ]

‣ tendency to be smothering and over-protective/manipulative and controlling

‣ doesn't pay enough attention to her own needs

‣ critical of opinions and attitudes which don't match her own/sometimes unaware of social appropriateness or protocol

‣ extremely sensitive to conflict, with a tendency to sweep things under the rug as an avoidance tactic/blames herself when things go wrong, and not give themselves credit when things go right

‣ her sharply defined value systems make her unbending in some areas/she may be so attuned to what is socially accepted or expected that she's unable to assess whether something is "right" or "wrong" outside of what her social circle expects

personality description . . ❛ part of her mystery is how she is calm in the storm and anxious in the quiet. ❜

‣ kyomi is a typically bright, energetic and friendly individual, radiating warmth and acceptance to all those who come in contact with her. her kindness is talked of in abundance with her people, as well as her humor that can at times have the entire tribe rolling about with laughter. exceptionally considerate of others feelings, she will often force hers down to where she no longer has to deal with them so she can focus on the tasks/needs of others at hand. despite all of this, she is a skilled warrior who’s talents outshine those who are double her age and trained every moment of the time, leading to her confidence in her abilities to border on cocky. with these abilities however, she is able to defend her tribe and grow an ever expanding bodyguard service from those she’s trained, hiring them out to the highest bidder with these skills. her intelligence is what helped her launch the idea, her mistrust and misjudgement will end up being her downfall; getting her into situations where she’s forced to be the compeditor for Omni Air International, who threatened to level her village if she didn’t comply. over her family and fellow villagers she is fiercely protective and thoughtful, willing to lay down her life if need be for them so they could continue to live in peace. aside from that, she at times can be extremely angry and resentful of the hand she had been dealt, knowing that it was beyond her control and that was what bothered her the most. in competition, she is a blood thirsty and calculating competitor, who would rather break necks than ask or answer any questions directed at her. when pushed to it, she will shut down the side that everyone knows and loves entirely, revealing a murdeous monster who would tear down anyone in her path.

likes . . relaxing in the sun, training, eating exotic and new foods, spending time with her twin children.

dislikes . . being told what to do/forced into situations where she has no control, arrogant people, disloyalty, early mornings.

skills . . healing by meditation, knive throwing, rock/ice climbing, cooking, drawing/painting, ballet, hula dance.

any flaws . . she can be very critical of others with no real cause, her jealousy is out of control, she’s got a large scar on her back, left hip and left thigh from when she was attacked by a shark at the age of 12.

personal phobias . . deep bodies of water, dark spaces, being alone,

habits . . nail biting, smoking, constantly triple checking her surroundings, self isolation when feeling vulnerable.

weapons . . seismic senescing through her hands and feet, pressure point and medical knowledge, garrote, knive throwing, judo, kenpo, jujitsu, grappling, wrestling.

family or blood relatives . . — akela ka’uhane | father, 39 years old | alive | intermediate chief along side his wife in his daughters absence/guardian of his grandchildren.

— makani ka’uhane | mother, 37 years old | alive | intermediate chieftess alongside her husband in her daughters absence/guardian of her granddaughter/healer

— noe olina ka’uhane | daughter, 3 years old | alive | living with her grandparents while her mother is away, training in meditation and energy control with her grandfather.

—- kanoa haikili ka’uhane | son, 3 years old | alive | living with his grandparents while his mother is away, training in meditation and energy control with his grandfather.

affiliated company / empoleeyer . . omni air international

friends . . — miyuki dotokayashi | best friend | alive | daughter of naga dotokayashi, ceo of Omni air international

— sawada keizaburo | best friend/unofficial bodyguard & uncle to her children | alive | kengan fighter/employed by murder music.

— wakatsuki takashi | best friend/father figure | alive | kengan fighter/empoyed by furumi pharmaceuticals.

— saw paing yoroizuka | close friend | alive | kengan fighter/employed by village of the dawn.

— adam dudley | close friend | alive | kengan fighter/employed by boss burger.

— imai cosmo | close friend/brother figure | alive | kengan fighter / employed by nishihonji security services.

— okubo naoya | close friend/ex-lover | alive | kengan fighter.

— himuro ryo | close friend | alive | kengan fighter.

— kaneda suekichi | close friend | alive | kengan fighter.

— gaolang wongsawat | close friend | alive | kengan fighter.

romantic interest(s) . . ohma tokita & ichiro 'lihito' nakata — ❛ you’re selfish, is what you are. making us both love you and then refusing to choose, what the fuck is your game? ❜

— ohma 'the ashura' tokita : my, oh my. the relationship between ohma and kyomi began when they first encountered each other during her first trip to japan 2 years prior, representing Omni Air International and winning 27 consecutive matches before the annihilation tournament took place. they met in a coffee shop, he decided to stop in and devour whatever pastries they had on display for the day, and due to his large, intimidating frame, most people were afraid of him and kept his distance; not kyomi. she found his seemingly brooding and potentially aggressive nature comical in contrast to the sweet treats he was eating, so she being the outgoing individual she was, went up to him and asked him how the desserts tasted now that he'd robbed everyone else of the chance. her boldness and confidence in the way she carried herself was enough to catch his attention and intrigue, so he invited her to sit with him and try the remains of what he hadn't inhaled just yet. it was in that sit down, taste testing the different assortments that laid in front of them, that a bond was formed and only grew with the more time they spent together, finding more commonalities than initially suspected. as close as they got, there was still a wall put up between the two of them, set up unintentionally by both parties to refrain from either getting hurt. this didn't stop jealousy and possessiveness to overwhelm the 'relationship' that they had developed, resulting in it's momentary end in an explosive way. now, two months later, they met once again at the kengan annihilation tournament representing their respective companies, which was a shock to them both, especially on her end. the greatest shock for ohma was when the new 'superhuman' he had been introduced to a little while prior to this, was now following around his woman like a puppy, only sparking the killer instinct within him that lie just beneath the surface. that, and the hickies and love marks that covered her body in the most obvious and infuriating places. now aggressive and hostile toward the woman who somehow held a vice grip on his heart, he couldn't help but blame himself at the same time for allowing her to slip through his fingers, however he will be damned if he lets 'lihito' steal what's his. with kyomi seeming to decide that she was fine with loving the both of them, fucking the both of the, that was when he snapped and would become a much more outwardly angry person than his usual calm demeanor, lashing out at any person who happened to make the wrong comment in his presence. despite his feelings of rage and hostility toward the situation, he couldn't help the fact that he loved her, and he would continue to love her even if he hated the choices that she was making, and the fact that even though he knew her for two years time now, it still felt as though she was hiding a part of herself from him, which was frustrating for the fighter, because in their long nights together, he had spilled his guts to her, given her every part of him, and he was met with this.

— ichiro ‘lihito’ nakata : meeting this goddess was a complete accident, one that ichiro was more grateful for than he cared to admit out loud- scratch that, he'd happily yell it from whatever roof top she requested. having met after he was observing his competition for the next few matches, he quickly took notice of the seemingly unbeatable 'pele', swiftly deciding two things: that she would soon be his, and he did not want to fight her in any upcoming matches, because he knew he would get his ass handed to him, and that wasn't something the self proclaimed superhuman could afford to his ego or image. after she mopped the floor with her opponent, he approached her and asked if she would like to get something to eat, explaining he knew just how strenuous and appetite increasing these matches could be, it didn't take much pressure to get her to agree. the two went to an authentic japanese ramen shop, as she had never been before and had only been in japan for a few days, which was mostly spent fighting or training, this being the first time she actually had a moment to herself to breath. they ate bowl after bowl, stacking the piles high as they could go before ichiro realized that this woman had not only stolen his heart, but emptied his wallet as well, not that he minded. her smile and full belly was all he cared about at that moment. over the next few months, the two became closer and closer, though there was weeks where she would pull away and disappear, for reasons he did not know of; come to find out much later, she was spending the other parts of her time with the infamous ohma tokita, his self decided rival in the kengan matches. this discovery once they had arrived at the tournament only fueled ichiro's rage and desire to win, to prove that he was the better man, the stronger man, the one for her. though the two decided amongst themselves that they would compete for her heart, they were infuriated to see that she decided that it was fine to simply love them both, which wouldn't have been too terrible for him if it wasn't for the fact that ohma made it abundantly clear that he wasn't okay with that, and would repeatedly threaten ichiro's life, which was met with the response of 'try it' every single time. the relationship that they have is a rather lax and easy going one, though at times he can be a bit smothering and over-protective, that's only because he doesn't want to lose out on what he sees as his one chance at happiness.

backstory . . kyomi was born the only child to a long line of renowned martial artists, one that had developed it's own style that included many aspects that weren't included in the traditional way of teaching. over 1500 years ago, her ancestors figured out how to manipulate matter and atoms, giving them partial manipulation over their surroundings as well as a physical power up. they also figured out the ability to heal themselves faster through the power of meditation, which came in handy for those who chose to be warriors, such as kyo. the longer the line, the more ancestors that could be called upon for assistance in a fight, using their knowledge and own distinct styles of fighting, the stronger the power up, making kyomi at the time, the strongest ever of her line, surpassing that of her past life and previous tribal chief by what seemed like miles. from a young age, she displayed strong discipline and technique, mastering things thrown at her within a few days time and leaving her teachers in absolute awe, as well as her parents, though they also beamed with happiness. the ancestral spirit didn't manifest in every generation, it only happened when the current host dies, so it can be passed to the new one, which so happened to be a feisty, strong-willed and opinionated young woman who was more than willing to kill for her goals and those she cares for. at the age of 16, she made the mistake of getting too attached to a tourist visiting one of the vacation spots on the main parts of her island, resulting in her losing her virginity and discovering she was pregnant a few months later. with the support of her family and village, she had her children and would not have been able to handle it without the backing that she had. as chieftess in training, her father and mother handled most things for her while she focused on her own children, but also growing up still given she had them so young. it was during this time that it became apparent that she was suffering from post-partum-rage, which was honed and harnessed into a deadly weapon to add precision and greater force behind her strikes. at the age of 18, she was brought to omni air international headquarters by her best friend, being told that her father wanted someone strong to represent his company in what was known as the kengan matches in japan. this didn't appeal to her too much, initially she refused, but when her home and tribe were threatened with extinction, her own children who were innocent, she had no choice but to comply. her best friend had no knowledge of this, and was unable to stop her father from forcing her companions hand, but it was no use, he would not budge on his decision. she was the strongest by far that he had come across, and he wouldn't let her slip through his fingers when he had the power to bend her to his will, no matter the rage and resentment he was building within his fighter. after saying her goodbyes to her one and a half year olds, her parents and her village, she set off to japan, where she found it hard to adjust to the culture and the language, resulting in many fights and brawls due to misunderstandings. it was during this time that she met several people who would become close friends and mentors to her, the relationships forming due to their close proximity from the kengan matches, as they were all participants in some way or another. the romantic relationships she did not plan for, and being the privileged person that she was, assumed that she would just be able to have both of the people who had captured her heart, not taking their feelings into consideration whatsoever. this was a result of no one taking hers into consideration for bringing her there in the first place, forcing her to fight for the lives of her people and not being allowed to lose no matter what. she cared very little for what people viewed as 'fair', even if she did love them.

extra . . — kyomi is ambidextrous, though the punches from her left hand hurt far more than the ones from her right, she believes most of her past lives were prodominantly left handed, which she finds awesome as hell.

— even after two years, the people closest to her, aside from sawada and wakatsuki, known nothing about her life back in hawaii, which is something that she prefers to keep due to her not knowing who she can truly trust anymore.

— though both ohma tokita and ichiro nakata have perminent places in her heart, if she was forced to choose, she would have to drop them both because she couldn't bear hurting one by choosing the other

— sawada interestingly enough knew kyomi before she came to japan, having met her a few times when he and his employer made trips to hawaii to open new stores there for murder music, as he was her body guard as well as fighter. the two clicked while she was pregnant, he was very kind and thoughtful when interacting with her, never once judged her and was there when her twins were born. he's a brother that she never had, acting as her protector and best friend all at the same time; the relationship she has with lihito makes him sick to his stomach but it's her life, and he refuses to say anything for fear of getting his face kicked in.

— she and raian have an unspoken rivalry, due to them both having destructive power, and her being referred to as 'the devil's match'. kyomi finds his blood lust entertaining and would love to fight him, him feeling the same with her, but having a bordering obsession with her as well, having to keep constant tabs on her and be aware of where she is at all times, something he does his best to keep hidden from everyone, including those in the kure clan. If anyone is going to beat her for good it would be him.

#kengan ashura #kengan omega #kenganverse

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nonbinaryparent · 5 years

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https://amp.mindbodygreen.com/articles/one-habit-for-raising-children-who-actively-question-gender-stereotypes

The One Habit To Teach To Raise Kids Who Actively Question Gender

By Bobbi Wegner, Psy.D.

June 10, 2019

Last night I walked in late from my clinical practice and grabbed a quick dinner before bed. My kids were amped up and excited, and my son (Tyler, age 8) and daughter (Eve, age 5) played on the couch. They are like little puppies, often jumping all over each other and constantly touching, talking, and engaging, for better or worse. I mostly try to quiet the constant buzz of noise that too easily seeps into my brain, but last night I caught wind of a statement and then a question directed at me.

"Eve, you are tomboy. Mom, Eve is a tomboy, right?"

Eve continued pouncing on her brother unaware of the implication, but it gave me pause. I listened, thought, and noticed my own internal reaction.

By all outside accounts, I guess Eve is a "tomboy." She is tough as nails, rides dirt bikes, wrestles (and sometimes dominates) her big brothers, and often takes her T-shirt off when she’s hot.

I am proud of her. I was a "tomboy" too. What I wanted to say in that moment was, "Yes, Eve is a tomboy, and she does whatever the f*ck she wants." My friends joke that she is my feral child, fiercely independent. If I were to disappear for a week or two, it would be Eve who figured out dinner for everyone. She would probably ride her dirt bike to the local coffee shop and negotiate an IOU contract with a confused yet impressed barista.

The thing is, she is not a tomboy. Or a boy at all. She is herself. She is a girl. She likes dirt bikes, wrestling, winning, and can weather physical injury better than a cage fighter. She also loves puppies and playing house, and her most favorite thing is cooking with me. We share a deep love for beautiful napkins, dinner parties, fancy flowery perfume, and cool heels. She is Eve. She is cool. And she is all girl.

I push them to ask themselves: Why do we say what we say? How do we know that to be true? Where did that come from? Where did we learn that? What are we actually trying to say?

I know this personality makeup well as we share passions that are often paradoxical and opposing to the outside world. I am a woman with varied interests, and I feel all woman. Eve is a girl with varied interests, and as far as I can see now, she is all girl. It is that simple.

Although in my own inner dialogue, I want to say, "Yeah Ty, Eve is a tomboy, so watch out," that would undermine everything about those qualities being feminine, too. I would be gendering behaviors that aren't inherently gendered. My automatic response is not appropriate for the current culture anymore. And the responsibility falls on me to notice my automatic thought, process it, and say something different.

Although it might seem that I am advocating for gender equality for my daughter, this is a direct message to my son, too. The message I want all my children to hear loud and clear is that you are you. There is no expectation from me around how you should behave based on your gender. Of course, there is an expectation to be kind, polite, welcoming, hardworking, and courageous, to name a few, but those are expectations I have across the board for all of my children.

Teaching the art of questioning.

Gender stereotyping is reductive and limits the horizons of possibility, and denying expression is only harmful to our kids' health and well-being in the long run. One of my parenting priorities is to offer as much opportunity as possible so my kids have the freedom to choose their path themselves. I want to build self-efficacy. Ultimately, my hope is that they lead an empowered and self-led life. Training starts now, not in adulthood. We need to be helping our kids build a sense of self from the inside out.

So, in the moment, I teach Ty that tomboy is a dated word that doesn't apply anymore. But what I am really saying is it is OK to be you—in whatever form that is. I constantly challenge them to think critically about the language they use. So much is absorbed from school and the outside community, and the best defense I have is to teach intellectual and emotional curiosity.

I push them to ask themselves: Why do we say what we say? How do we know that to be true? Where did that come from? Where did we learn that? What are we actually trying to say?

For example, any time they say, "that is a girl toy or a boy toy," I ask them to think about what makes it so. Inevitably, they can see the flaw in their assumption; they learn to self-reflect, wrestle with meaning, and what I love the most—it removes me from the often annoying power position of teacher saying yay or nay. I can join them in an intellectual exercise rather than impose a way to behave.

Much of the meaning we create as a culture is so nuanced and implicit that we all participate in perpetuating ideas that we do not even buy into it. The first step in teaching kids to be open is to notice our own bias and challenge ourselves. We need to ask ourselves the same questions we ask our children.

Why do we think this? Where did it come from? What are we actually trying to say? It not only combats gender inequality and toxic masculinity, but it pushes kids to be more self-aware and tighten the language they use, not relying on automatic (what I call) "lazy language." Say what you actually intend to say.

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Taking small steps.

Listen, some parents will be far more comfortable and at ease dispelling gender than others, and that mostly has to do with our own progress toward questioning and deconstructing gender, a process that many adults are still going through themselves. That's OK. Some parents are bravely raising "theybies" and "gender-creative kids," for example, and that's amazing; meanwhile, for many other parents, that's just outside the scope of what they're capable of right now, no matter how much they want to support gender diversity.

But all parents can teach their kids the art of questioning gender. If you want to raise kids who feel free to explore their identity with complete freedom, it starts with raising kids with access to the tools of curiosity and open-mindedness. Raise kids who are open to following their interests, willing to explore, and committed to noticing the meaning embedded in our culture. Although those may seem like a tall order for such young kids, these are traits that are easiest to internalize the younger they are.

Here are a few simple habits to consider introducing in your household and parenting style to encourage a culture of questioning gender:

Notice any gendered language (i.e., anytime someone says someone did something because "they are a boy or a girl"). Notice it, name it, and encourage your kids to get curious about what that means.

Offer all options to all children. Boys are welcome to play house, and girls are welcome to play in the dirt. If the children naturally segregate, split time in both activities.

Create mixed-gender groups at home, with friends, and at school. Avoid the desire to tease your kids about "having crushes" on their friends of other genders.

Especially with boys, empathize and validate emotion. Positively reinforce sharing of all emotion with words. Help boys build a strong sense of identity that includes caring for and loving others.

Manage your own discomfort when your child wants to explore something outside of their culturally prescribed behavior (i.e., Eve wanting to take her shirt off, or Ty wanting to sit on the toilet to pee). Children are honest and will give feedback if it makes others uncomfortable. Your job is not to promote or rescue but rather to follow your child's lead.

Notice how work is divided in your home. What nonverbal messages are you sending? Be self-aware and reflective and see if your behavior matches your intentions.

Lastly, be self-compassionate. Know you will make missteps. So will your kids. Be honest. Be curious. And create an open dialogue.

#parenting #nonbinary

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gumnut-logic · 5 years

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Gentle Rain (Part Eighteen)

Title: Gentle Rain

Warm Rain Series

Author: Gumnut

28 Feb – 1 Mar 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: Sometimes it is so gentle, you don’t realise it is happening.

Word count: 3119

Spoilers & warnings: Virgil/Kayo, Scott/OC, Gordon/Penelope, spoilers for Warm Rain up to this point in the timeline.

Timeline: Six months after ‘The Proposal’, almost a sequel.

Author’s note: For @scribbles97 Oh, this was fun to write. It may be called a trope, but I don’t care, it was fun :D Nutty got to blow something up, mwhahahahaha! I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

She eased herself slowly back into her life. She worked through a list of shocked friends, the necessary sympathy regarding her latest injury, questions about where she had been, how she was and what she was going to do next.

There were catch up lunches, new clients and Uncle Crispin.

He cornered her as soon as he could, which considering the state of the Siberian gas fields, wasn’t anywhere as soon as he would have preferred. He finally made it to her house two weeks after her month of seclusion.

The fact he actually visited the house was an indication of how worried he was. He hated the place, given all the memories of the family he had lost echoing through the hallways. His relationship with her deceased grandparents probably didn’t help either.

He hugged her the moment he saw her.

“How are you, honey?” He was the only person she would allow to call her ‘honey’.

“I’m getting there.” She smiled.

“What about the Tracy boy?” Sure enough, straight to the point.

“What about him?”

“You seemed pretty set on him at Christmas.”

“Yeah, well, that was Christmas and a lot has happened since.”

“Sally says Virgil is doing well.”

It took her a moment to connect the dots. Sally was Grandma Tracy. “As long as he gives himself the time to recover, he should be fine. It was close.” She shifted in her ‘scoot. “So, what’s the deal with you and...Sally?”

She couldn’t help but grin at the shy smile that spread over his face. That was the thing about Uncle Crispin. He was all tough adventurer on the outside, tough as nails, but on the inside, he was really just a soft, goofball.

Life had been as hard on him as it had been on her and his demeanour reflected that.

Sally had obviously wormed her way under his leathery defence system.

“She and I...Em, she makes me happy.” He grinned. “And I like to think I make her happy too. I can’t really ask for more than that.”

That sparked off a little self-reflection. “No, that’s exactly how it should be.”

Her uncle frowned. “Do I need to go park some dynamite under his ass?”

“You and your bloody dynamite.” An exasperated sigh. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Sally says he’s pretty messed up.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Some big effort to decentralise International Rescue, expand the service somewhat and take the strain off the Tracy family. He’s not sleeping and not talking. She’s worried about him.”

A stare. “He took my advice?”

“Your advice? No idea. But the man is obsessed. Sally reckons you should check on him.”

“She does, does she?” She eyed her uncle. “What do you think?”

“Em, I’m with you. Whatever makes you happy.”

Whatever makes her happy? She had a list, but only a few of those listed things were entirely in her power, so she would focus on those.

“I’m going to give it time.” The words were said quietly and slowly.

His hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed.

Uncle Crispin inevitably couldn’t stay long. It was a reminder of how close his job was to that of International Rescue as he was called out to Siberia yet again. She missed him, but it was necessary. Besides, she had her own life to get back to.

She closed up the house in Margaret River, moved back to Perth and back to work.

It was a lunch date with a colleague that saw her on the pedestrian bridge right at the moment it exploded.

-o-o-o-

Scott hit the comms room at a run. “Report!”

John’s hologram was in the centre of the room. He had only returned to TB5 three days earlier after an extended training session with his extremely small team. Gordon had snorted loudly when Scott commented on the personnel involved. He must remember to ask him about that.

“There has been an explosion on a pedestrian bridge across the Swan River. Em is on the bridge.”

“Explosion? How do you know that Em is involved?” He felt like grabbing his brother and shaking him.

“Kayo, put a tracker in her hoverscoot.”

“What?!” This came from both himself and Virgil behind him.

“Regardless, the bridge has been destabilised at one end. We’re needed.”

Scott didn’t hesitate, heading towards his chute. Virgil didn’t either and that was enough to bring him to a halt. “Virgil!”

“You’re going, I’m going.” And he didn’t stop moving.

Damnit! “John, get Alan and Gordon to Thunderbird Two.”

“Already on their way.”

He yanked the fake light fittings down just that bit harder than usual just as Virgil tipped up backwards on his painting and disappeared.

Fear churned in his gut.

Em.

-o-o-o-

Virgil’s chute, by the nature of its design was rough on his body. It had been at least a couple of months since he’d flown down it, so along with the adrenalin that always accompanied the ride there was a pleasant sense of accomplishment when it didn’t actually hurt.

His feet hit his ‘bird’s deck with a reassuring thump and no pain ricocheted anywhere. His heart was thudding and his breathing had spiked, but that could be considered normal.

Slipping into his seat, he automatically started pre-flight, the sequence so familiar, he didn’t even have to think.

The selector trundled out the modules and TB2 settled on the familiar Four. Moments later he heard Alan and Gordon rise up into the cockpit.

Kay sat down beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. What?

“Before you say anything, my presence is non-negotiable.”

Her eyes pinned him. “Okay.”

And his attention was taken with the launch. Thunderbird Two rolled out of her hanger and he opened the runway to let her through. Her familiar rumble vibrated through his bones, the adrenalin still pumping, his heart-rate matched her thrum.

Loaded onto her ramp, he pointed her towards the sky.

The clunk of external machinery.

An indrawn breath.

He fired her thrusters and she leapt off the platform, clawing her way into the blue.

-o-o-o-

There was a flash of light and a wall of sound hit her.

Her ‘scoot slid sideways and the people around her screamed as the bridge beneath her suddenly tilted sideways towards the water below.

At the far end of the metal and concrete structure a cloud of smoke was rising into the air.

Dust and debris rained down around her. Time froze in shock.

It started again as a woman to her right suddenly went down with a scream, clutching her arm. More screams erupted as the walkway wobbled again.

The only escape route was the other end of the bridge.

“Move! Move!” And she was grabbing people and pushing them in the direction of land. Em lowered herself to the woman who had fallen. There was blood pouring down the sleeve of her dress and she was terrified, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. She got her to her feet and hurried her across the paving. “Run!”

The bridge shook again and there was an almighty screech of stressed metal as one of the spans arching over the structure broke off at its base. The sharp ping of support wires snapping and the massive arm of steel pendulumed, swinging down and along the edge of the walkway. The concrete groaned and cracked under her ‘scoot.

“Move!”

They ran.

It was a busy bridge in the middle of the day, even more so because a local market had been set up along the length of it. There would have been at least a hundred people walking across or browsing the stalls. As the walkway tilted further, craft items and marquees began to slide across the paving. Em used her ‘scoot to her advantage. It had grip where feet may not have had and her arms were strong.

She sped up, darting to grab a child falling towards the railing. She hustled people along, supporting them if they fell. As a whole the crowd moved at a frantic pace down the length of the bridge.

Until the other end of the bridge exploded.

She couldn’t help it, she screamed.

The whole structure shuddered and a large portion holding many of those fleeing people collapsed into the river below.

“No!”

She struggled to keep her ‘scoot steady as the walkway shuddered and tilted even further. She looked behind her. Both ends of the bridge had been destroyed. There was no way off the structure.

A man not far from her slipped and fell, the tilt of the bridge saw him slide all the way to the railing. He screamed as his foot caught in the grill and twisted, taking his weight.

Her hoverjets whined, struggling with the heavily angled surface.

Only to be joined by the sudden roar of rocket engines.

Thunderbird One tore up the Swan River, screaming to a halt above the bridge. Her underbelly opened and a grapple shot down and caught the walkway as it teetered further. VTOL roared.

And she heard his voice.

“Please keep calm. International Rescue is here to assist.”

-o-o-o-

His heart leapt into his throat.

The bridge had been decimated. Two explosions, one at each of the main pylons had mangled the steel spans that supported the bridge. The pylons themselves were fairly secure, but the walkway was swinging loose, its structure never designed to take its own weight without the support spans.

Wires were snapping and springing apart.

Human figures were falling into the water below.

“John, tell me what caused this.”

“Initial results still coming in.” A pause. “Incendiary. Likely a bomb or a series.”

“Shit.” A breath. “Tell me there are no more.”

“In depth scan in progress.”

“I need that information now.”

“Working on it.”

He bit his lip as numbers spun across the space between the bridge and the Thunderbird in orbit.

“No further explosives detected. Eos is repeating the scan as we speak.”

“Thank you, John. Advise the GDF. Thunderbird two, we need you here now.”

“On approach.”

And she was. The great green behemoth swooping low over the river, her VTOL churning the surface below. She came to an abrupt halt and released her module. She waited long enough for Thunderbird Four to dart into the river, before gathering the module back to her belly once again. She was going to need it. A flare of VTOL and she rose up and over the bridge.

“Virgil, deploy rescue rafts and stabilise the walkway. Gordon, you’re on victim retrieval. Watch for falling debris. Alan and Kayo, send down TB2’s grabs and start picking people off the bridge. I’ll be doing the same once you have the walkway stable.”

Virgil’s baritone followed by the rest of his family’s voices were a chorus of FABs.

Thunderbird Two quickly dropped a series of large self-inflatable support rafts onto the surface of the river on both sides of the bridge, before deploying her grapples to secure the walkway. The whole structure straightened under the strength of the Thunderbird.

“Scott, it’s too heavy for Two. We lose much more structural support, it’s going to drop.”

“FAB, Thunderbird Two.” Time was crucial.

The green ‘bird lowered her nosecone grapples geared with her rescue rig. The small figures of Alan and Kayo leapt off and started gathering people.

Scott disengaged his grapple and began deploying harnesses. As he was working, he couldn’t help but ask. “Where is she?”

John answered without hesitation. “On the main walkway, near the centre. She appears unharmed.” A hologram flashed up and there she was, her ‘scoot shooting back and forth gathering people and ushering them towards Two’s rescue rig. Something in his gut clenched. “Keep an eye on her.” And he resisted the urge to swoop down and grab her immediately.

“FAB.”

And the rescue effort began in earnest. Fly down grab a victim, reassure them, assess for urgent injury, harness them, transport them to one of the rafts, make sure they are secure, grab the next one. It was simple pick and grab. Thunderbird Two was filling Module Four with rescuees, Alan and Kayo darting across broken concrete and gathering people to the rig.

Gordon had the hardest job. The majority of persons who had fallen off the bridge were injured, and there were a lot of injured.

Fortunately, some more help arrived.

“International Rescue Australasia Oceania reporting for duty.” They arrived in a GDF flyer, but they had their uniforms and suddenly there were more hands to help. Gordon was joined by several of the aquanauts he had been training on the other side of the continent just the previous week. Figures supported by jetpacks not unlike his own darted out from the carrier’s underbelly and began snatching survivors alongside him. Field Commander Davis flickered up on his holographic display. “Commander, thought you could use a hand.” She didn’t smile, she was too professional for that. “IR AO is supplemented by several of our other recruits so we have more hands. Your orders?” The grey of her baldric sash shone dully in the holographic light.

Scott, however, couldn’t help but smile. “Pick and grab, Lauren. We’re on a time limit, so make it fast. Thunderbird Two can’t hold the bridge forever.”

“FAB.”

It was odd hearing that response from a voice outside his family.

The rescue sped up after that.

But not enough.

“Scott, we just lost a crucial support! It’s going to go!” Virgil’s voice wasn’t panicked, but it was damn close. Far above him Thunderbird Two’s VTOL screamed as his brother desperately attempted hold so many tonnes of bridge.

“Slave TB1, use her grapples.”

“FAB.” It would give them a few more minutes at least.

They almost had it. As John called the final evac, the rafts had been dragged to a safe distance, there were only a handful of people left on the bridge, several of them IR personnel attending to victims with life threatening injuries...

Em.

He caught sight of her just as Virgil swore over comms and Two plummeted several metres, the bridge sagging.

One of the support wires near her snapped under the sudden strain and whipped around... “Em!”

He was moving before thought, but still it played in slow motion just out of his reach. The wire slashed through the air, missing her, but catching her hoverscoot. A spray of sparks and she was flung sideways and over the edge.

-o-o-o-

It became a blur of terrified people.

When the rescue rig landed on the tilting deck, she took only a moment to acknowledge Kayo and Alan. Both attempted to evacuate her, but she knew she was useful where she was and refused. There were others who needed help more than she.

That didn’t stop them from trying several more times, each person she delivered to that rescue rig was accompanied by a visual plea from Kayo. Perhaps she had suspicions why, but this wasn’t the time to think about it.

The Thunderbirds above were joined by a GDF flyer and suddenly there were more IR personnel on that bridge. Her heart leapt as a man in blue swooped in to land, but it wasn’t Scott. He wasn’t even a Tracy and she realised that this was the embodiment of Scott’s strategic plan.

She handed him a baby along with the boy’s mother and she darted off to grab another child clinging to a crumpled market stall.

More and more terrified people were airlifted away. Soon it was down to the critically injured, those who couldn’t be moved without further injury. She and another IR operative had a teenage girl showing all the signs of a spinal injury when Kayo called out for final evac. Far above, even Em could hear the sudden strain of Thunderbird Two’s VTOL as the bridge trembled.

The concrete beneath her shifted and fell and her ‘scoot lost traction for a split second. She grabbed for purchase, but her fingernails scraped useless across the pavement. A screech of metal, movement, and she was thrown sideways. A blur of bridge railing, the world spun...

And she was falling.

Fast.

She may have screamed, but the rush of air stole it from her throat.

Her hands clawed at nothing. There was nothing, nothing-

She was surrounded by blue fabric. Warm, strong, breathing and, oh god, so familiar. It enveloped her, slowing her plummet, saving her.

She gasped and it came out a sob.

“It’s okay…okay, I’ve got you.”

She looked up and there were those eyes. Those gorgeous blue eyes that haunted her dreams.

Furrowed in fear.

“Scott?”

He didn’t answer, just pulling her in closer as if he was clinging to her as much as she was to him.

-o-o-o-

He caught her mid-air, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her close, slowing her spin and her fall. Oh god, he had caught her.

His breath hitched as she let out a frightened sob. “It’s okay...okay, I’ve got you.”

As he shifted into a hover, she looked up, ice blue eyes fixing on him. “Scott?”

Such hope and fear in his name.

He didn’t answer, just pulled her closer, holding on so tight, he felt he may never let go.

“Scott! Get out of there! It’s collapsing and I can’t stop it!” Virgil’s voice in his ear was drowned out by a roar and the shadow of the bridge above fell towards them.

Shit!

Holding Em close, he accelerated away from the tangle of falling steel and concrete. The shift in air pressure threatened to drag them in as the mass gained speed as it fell. Scott spun, darting to avoid the steel span that was following the walkway into the river. Em clung to him and he wished he’d had chance to harness her to himself.

He had never held anyone so tight.

Thunderbird One loomed, no longer attached to the falling bridge, her hover unaffected by the now churning river below. Flying through her open hatch, he was finally able to draw in a breath as it closed behind him.

He lowered her gently to the passenger seat. “Are you okay? Are you injured?”

Em didn’t answer and he realised she was trembling. He crouched down, his gloved hand reaching for her.

She stared at him for a moment, but still didn’t say anything, her hands going to the harness holding her to the ‘scoot.

Her fingers fumbled with the buckles until he reached in to help. Without a word, she slid herself free and he lifted the dead piece of equipment away.

Something dark glistened in the empty seat.

He spun back to find her staring at a spreading red stain on her skirt.

-o-o-o-

End Part Eighteen.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #virgil tracy #scott tracy #kayo kyrano #virgil/kayo #scott/em #scott/oc #warm rain #gentle rain

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gillytweed · 6 years

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Why Indiana Jones is a Mary Sue/How I Ruined My Friend’s Childhood

Alrighty, cause a couple people want to read it, here’s the paper I did for my Cinema class. I’m gonna put it under a cut because it is ridiculously long (2000 words not including the sources section). Couple things tho: the assignment wanted us to work within what is presented on screen, so any form of interviews, deleted scenes, or extra content isn’t taken into account. It also generalizes what a male power fantasy is. If I see one ‘not all men’ I will come for you, I swear to god. Anywho, please enjoy my paper ‘Indiana Jones is a Mary Sue/How I Ruined My Friend’s Childhood’

The film Raiders of the Lost Ark is a film meant to call back to the action serials of the 30s and 40s such as The Phantom or Zorro. This call back includes the creation of a roguish hero, who turned into a model of what attractive masculinity was assumed to be, taking part in a glorious adventure to save the world. However, Indiana Jones and his adventurous ways explicitly presents the idea of a male power fantasy to it’s viewers. A male power fantasy being a piece of media that prioritizes the male character’s presentation, goals and desires over any sort of realism. Indie himself, in the simplest terms, can only be described as a ‘Mary Sue’. The definition of a Mary Sue is “a fictional character who is portrayed in an idealized way and lacks noteworthy flaws. [1]” The term originated from a character in a fan work based on Star Trek in 1973. A Trekkie’s Tale, by Paula Smith, satirized such characters found in other fan works and spawned the term that described them. As of today, the general understanding of the term is that a character called a Mary Sue is not well developed or thought out, is too perfect, and or lacks realism. Mary Sue characters are often associated with wish fulfilment on the part of the writer. It is also sometimes taken synonymously with what is known as ‘self-insertion’ in fan circles, or the author writing themselves into a work as an idealized character, so they can fulfil a fantasy of some form. In the context of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indie fills the majority of this criteria. He has no active or debilitating flaws, the stories elements work to support a male oriented fantasy, especially the character of Marion, and Indie is written in a way that a viewer can easily imagine themselves in his place, all of which support the idea that the film is an idealized fabrication that caters to the desires of the men watching it. Indie as a character is portrayed as the perfect form of masculinity. He is a handsome roguish hero with a stable job working as an archaeology professor. He can take time off that job to go adventuring, even being asked by the government to go retrieve artifacts for them, showing he has a level of respect, and thus success, in the archaeology community. He has women pining after him, seen in the scene of him teaching with a room filled with multiple women gazing at him adoringly, as well as with the student who literally wrote ‘love you’ on her eyelids. He also somehow has perfect vision even when he takes his glasses off. He can read hieroglyphics up close in the map room scene just fine, meaning he is near sighted, and he can shoot a gun accurately from far away without missing, so he is also far sighted, which ultimately makes his vision essentially fine. While the choice to give Indie glasses could have just been for aesthetic purposes, the disregard for the props meaning and intended use supports the idea that his character was poorly developed, or at least not entirely thought through. Lastly, he is also hinted at being psychic. In the climax of the film, Indie tells Marion to close her eyes before anything happened that could imply that the spirits of the Ark were not supposed to be looked at. Add in that he was also portrayed to be a sceptic, as seen in the scene with the government intelligence agents when he says, “if you believe in that sort of thing,” it makes the chances of Indie looking away from the Ark unlikely. He was speaking about a religious Christian artifact and the story behind it, and by saying “if you believe” it implies that he does not believe. If he really was a sceptic as implied, it would be doubtful that Indie would look away from something that would prove whether there is a reason to believe or not, add in that there was no explicit hint of danger, there would be no logical way to deduce that looking at the spirits would be dangerous or cause harm. The only thing that could be claimed as a flaw would be his fear of snakes, which ultimately is performative as it fails to actually hinder him through the course of the film despite being mentioned explicitly several times. In concerns to the elements of the plot supporting the idea of a male oriented fantasy, the character of Marion is the biggest example. She is introduced as an ‘independent’ woman, strong and tough who is able to drink fully grown men under the table, however beyond punching Indie in the face, hitting a man on the head with a flaming piece of wood, and saving Indie from being shot right after she was introduced, her characterization fails to continue. She is quickly captured and assumed dead when they reach Cairo, before Indie even has a clue about where to find the Ark, and after that point she has nothing to contribute to the story beyond being someone for Indie to save and romance. Once the medallion was passed to Indie, she could have just disappeared, and nothing would have changed drastically in concerns to the movies events. If she had remained dead, she could at least have been used as a motivating factor for Indie to complete his mission other than ‘because the government told him to’ or because of his own interest in ancient artifacts. It could have made Indie’s quest have an element of personal investment, increasing the emotional payoff for when he ultimately succeeds. Another way that Marion could have been written as a more rounded and useful character would be if she had been the one to climb the statue when she and Indie were trapped in the snake pit. Had she been the one to do so, it would have reinforced her initial characterization of being able to take care of herself, and it would have been a perfect place to prove that Indie’s fear of snakes was not performative and an impactful flaw. If he had been the one too scared to do anything, his fear being treated and shown as an actual fear, and Marion being the rescuer, it would have made their dynamic more of a supportive partnership, covering for each others’ weaknesses, rather than a shallower hero and damsel relationship. The fact that she was shuffled to the side as a character who needed to be rescued continuously only supports the idea of the story being a male power fantasy as it prioritizes the male hero’s success over the development of the stories other elements. While having an essentially flawless character and having the stories elements actively support the fantasy presented, the final nail in the coffin that makes Raiders of the Lost Ark full blown fantasy material is the fact that Indiana Jones does not have an actual character arc, which makes immersing a viewer in this idealized narrative very easy. In the journal article The physical and emotional threads of the archetypal hero’s journey: proposing common terminology and re-examining the narrative model by Craig Batty [2], a character arc, or a characters journey, is described as a characters movement from one place to another – a journey—both in the physical and emotional realms. While Indie does go travelling and moves from place to place, he ultimately returns home once the adventure has concluded, putting him back where he started in the physical sense. In concerns to an emotional journey, he also does not change. He does not learn a lesson, he does not lose anything during the course of the adventure, and he remains the same rogue character that he was from the very beginning. This, paired with not having a tangible past, makes Indie a character that is easy for a viewer to immerse themselves in. The only hints of Indie having a past that are given in the context of Raiders of the Lost Ark is that he is, and studied to be, an archaeologist, he was a student of Marion’s father, he had romantic relations with Marion which resulted in a falling out with her father, and previously being friends with Sallah. Each tidbit of his past that is revealed is so the story can move forward or adds to the idea of the story being a male fantasy. The absence of character change also does this, keeping it consistent and forcing no revelations or lesson on the viewer. Without any evidence to say otherwise, a viewer can create their own ideas of how Indie is feeling or reacting internally. In Peter Dixon’s book Psychonarratology : foundations for the empirical study of literary response[3] section on characters and characterization, there is an example of a character assumed to have an Oedipus complex due to having no concrete evidence to say otherwise. However, there was also no evidence to say that the character had the complex either. The lack of conveyed internal thought and background for the character made it easy for readers to come to their own conclusions and create their own version with complex motivations and drives based on their own assumptions and ideas. This is the same with Indie. He has a minimal past, leaving it open for the viewer to create, and absence of any change in character makes it difficult for the immersion to be broken because there is no fundamental change that may deviate from a viewer’s own fantasized version. In conclusion, Indiana Jones is a character written as an idealized form of masculinity meant to be easily identified with and immersed in, and the film Raiders of the Lost Ark is written as an idealized fantasy for the men viewing it. The story itself is a ‘hero saves the world and gets the girl’ narrative. Indie is portrayed as an idyllic version of a man with a perfectly tailored life meant for a hero; successful at work, respected in his field, and desired by those around him. He has no meaningful flaws even when they are implied or explicitly stated, such as needing glasses or his fear of snakes, and his implied perfection reaches ridiculous heights when he somehow knows things before they happen, such as with telling Marion to close her eyes before any danger became apparent. The entire story is about his success and acquiring his desires. Marion is used as an object of desire once her initial purpose of providing the medallion was over, and her characterization suffers for it, but it gives Indie something to gain through the course of the story. Indie also happens to have allies, such as Sallah, from before any of the events of the film, something that is not gained through any action taken on screen but is vital to Indie’s success. Both Marion, the provider of the medallion, and Sallah, the person with the resources to dig up the Ark, were known by Indie before the film making the means of his success provided from the beginning thus guaranteeing it. He is created as fantasy material for men who want to pretend to be a dashing hero guaranteed to save the day and get the girl. It is easy for a viewer to create an idealized background for him because he lacks one. A viewer can immerse themselves, and remain immersed, because his character does not change in any drastic way that could clash with the viewers personal interpretation. Thus, Indiana Jones is a Mary Sue, a character who is essentially flawless, underdeveloped, lacking in realism and is created for the purposes of wish fulfilment, and the story of Raiders of the Lost Ark is written in a way that it tailors itself and prioritizes the fantasies of men to the point that it’s elements are used for their pleasure, making it a male power fantasy.

Sources [1] Chander, Anupam, and Madhavi Sunder. “Everyone's a Superhero: A Cultural Theory of ‘Mary Sue’ Fan Fiction as Fair Use.” California Law Review, vol. 95, no. 2, 2007, pp. 597–626. JSTOR [2] Batty, Craig. “The physical and emotional threads of the archetypal heros journey: proposing common terminology and re-Examining the narrative model.” Journal of Screenwriting, vol. 1, no. 2, Jan. 2010, pp. 291–308., doi:10.1386/josc.1.2.291/1. [3] Bortolussi, Marisa, and Peter Dixon. "Characters and Characterization." Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, pg 135.

#mun mumbles #Indiana Jones #My writing

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selgraysons · 7 years

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Mystery Incorporated: A Scooby Doo! Series;

I really love how Riverdale took the characters from the Archie Comics, modernized them and added the gritty murder factor, making the show somewhat how I imagined a modern and gritty Scooby Doo (Netflix? CW? ABC?) television show. Much like Mystery Incorporated, a different monster each episode but have a serial format with an ongoing story arc.

Fred, the fearless leader. Daphne, the resourceful one. Velma, the brains behind the group. Shaggy, the best friend and Scooby-Doo, their trustworthy Great Dane. With this team together, these 'supernatural' criminals do not stand a chance, and they'll discover the mystery that lies hidden in Coolsville.

CASTING!

Freddie Stroma as Fred Jones;

THE LEADER. 18. Fred is the self-appointed leader of Mystery, Inc. He's skilled mechanic and the star player on the Coolsville High School Football team, but he's not your typical jock. His leadership and trap expertise helps the group solve their mysteries. Often seen driving his old van, Fred truly is loyal to his teammates.

Oblivious to the fact Daphne has a crush on him.

Van is a Chevy G10 passed down from his father.

Holland Roden as Daphne Blake;

THE RESOURCE. 17. Daphne has a lot to offer the Mystery, Inc. gang having been trained in the dramatic arts. Far from a damsel-in-distress, she has a purple belt in karate and she's on the cheerleading team. She comes from a wealthy family and exhibits a wicked fashion sense. Daphne is quick on her feet, she's tough-as-nails and tries to help whenever she can.

Has a crush on Fred.

Parents disapprove of her friends and mystery solving antics.

Ellen Page as Velma Dinkley;

THE BRAIN. 16. Velma is a true genius. She has a photographic memory, and she's highly skilled in computers, often helping the team decipher the clues to their mysteries. She can easily see through people’s personalities and can sometimes come across rather bluntly. And although she can be a bit sarcastic, Velma keeps the team focused when solving various cases.

Bisexual and in the closet.

Has an IQ of 140.

Andrew Garfield as Shaggy Rogers;

THE FRIEND. 17. Shaggy is a loyal friend to everyone in the group, constantly wanting Mystery, Inc. to hang out. His best friend is his dog, Scooby-Doo; the two are often seen eating everywhere around Coolsville. Shaggy has a never-ending appetite and reluctantly goes on mysteries with the gang despite being scared so easily.

Hardcore stoner.

Vast culinary skills.

Frank Welker as Scooby Doo;

THE COMPANION. Scooby-Doo is Shaggy's Great Dane, his bestfriend and the mascot of Mystery, Inc. He is often seen showing enormous amounts of excitement, which sometimes gets him into trouble. He also gets scared very easily, but his emotions can be tamed by eating numerous amounts of dog treats. Scooby-Doo loves everyone in the group and will always look out for his friends.

Real dog with CGI talking.

Only the gang can understand him.

SUPPORTING CAST!

Kiersey Clemons as Marcie West;

THE LONER. 17. Marcie has a very no-nonsense personality, and shares many of her traits in common with Velma such as skills with computer infiltration and research. Unlike Velma, she has a knack for engineering. Her father owns the Coolsonian museum, which is where she spends most of her days reading or inventing something. Velma is her only friend, though over the years Marcie has developed a crush for Velma.

Out and proud lesbian.

Jealous of the gang.

Emilia Clarke as Delilah Blake;

THE SNOB. 22. Delilah Blake is Daphne's only and oldest sibling. She's condescending and snooty, and pays no attention to Daphne or her friends. Living a life of luxury, Delilah was always a spoiled child, which in turn carried into her adult years. Having a high IQ of 195, she graduated High School at only fifteen; she's the Blake's star child, always outshining her younger sister.

Graduated from Coolsville High School at only fifteen.

Nurse at St. Bernard's Memorial Hospital.

Ana De Armes as Camila Wallace;

THE HBIC. 17. Camila is a generally manipulative person, always using people to her advantage. She's the captain of the cheerleading team. She's admired as the beautiful, charming, and most popular girl at Coolsville High School. She is very competitive with Daphne, the two sharing a mutual strong disliking of one another and a rivalry for Fred's attention.

Pining after Fred.

Self-proclaimed Queen Bee at Coolsville High School.

Ryan Potter as Tashiro Sudarso;

THE SLACKER. 16. Once a Japanese exchange student, he moved to America full time for his Junior year. Although he can be very sweet and kind, he's lazy and has no motivation for much. Shaggy was his tour guide his exchange year, making him a very close friend of his. He can be very insecure and shy.

Goes by Tash for short.

Shaggy's stoner buddy.

Jordan Calloway as Ethan Dempsey;

THE RIVAL. 19. Ethan is a top athlete at Coolsville High School, and being the co-captain of the football team, he's envious of Fred and would love more than anything to take his place. Ethan is very competitive, thinking Fred is his personal 'rival'. He is very hostile and arrogant. If he decides he wants something, he stops at nothing.

Pining for Daphne.

He was held back a year.

Ashley Benson as Alice May;

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. 17. Alice just moved to Coolsville and is already considered 'the artsy and alternative girl'. Not much is known about Alice; except for the fact that she moved to Coolsville from New York with her mother, and that her father is now incarcerated. While mostly a mystery, Alice is secretly manipulative with the boys at Coolsville.

Displays an interest in Fred.

Annoys Daphne.

PARENTS CAST!

Freddie Prinze Jr. & Sarah Michelle Gellar as Fred's parents.

Fred Jones, Sr. | Mayor of Coolsville.

Judy Jones | Assistant District Attorney.

Kevin McKidd & Jessica Chastain as Daphne's parents.

Dan Blake | CEO of Blake Global.

Dorothy Blake | Real Estate Agent.

Nolan North and Linda Cardellini as Velma's parents.

Dale Dinkley | Coolsville Bank Branch Manager.

Pam Dinkley | Coolsville Police Department Intern.

Matthew Lillard and Paige Turco as Shaggy's parents.

Casey Rogers | Police Officer.

Pam Rogers | Manager at Rogers Malt Shoppe.

TOWNIES!

John Hamm as Sheriff Bronson Stone; Coolsville's Sheriff.

Patrick Dempsey as Coach Chiles; Coolsville High School's Football Coach.

Jessica De Gouw as Janet Nettles; Principal of Coolsville High School.

#scooby doo #myedit #netflix #tv pilot #fancast #brilliant idea

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redantsunderneath · 7 years

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An explanation of the end of Twin Peaks that provides closure

Short version, unpacked below: The story in the World of Twin Peaks has its end mid part 17 when the lights go out in the sheriff's station (with a farewell coda at the boiler room door). Coop’s face superimposed on the screen indicates a dissociative episode, one foot on the denouement of the TP story and one in the temptation of solving the only unresolved issue: Laura. The remainder of the show is a “last temptation of Cooper” fantasy/nightmare where the lesson metaphorically learned through his 25 years in the lodge is played out in the real world and demonstrates the horrific consequences of wasting your life in an obsession with solving other’s problems without facing your own. After Coop’s nightmare climax winks out, leaving us in the real world as pre-season Coop returns to the lodge. As farewell, we get the lingering lesson of the whisper, “you can never save me,” which brings us around to the fact that this has been learned before Coop leaves the Lodge – we end at the beginning, and this 1.5 episodes really belong before the first (holla, Infinite Jest fans) and is placed here as a remembered lesson, a real world version of 25 years in the lodge.

So, biases on the table – I needed an explanation that accomplished 3 things:

1. Provides closure – it has to work as a series finale without all the “there has to be a fourth season now”

2. Allows for Coop to not have to have, after the last 25 years, not learned his lesson – no cycle of “never learn” purgatory allowed

3. Saving Laura is bad because it robs her of agency and redemption and Coop’s desire to do it is damaging and reflects his deepest flaw

I bring a couple of preconceptions to the table that are, for certain, not universal.

1 Coop lost his confrontation with his shadow self (s2e22) because of his tainted savior complex. This is due to the nature of white knight-ism itself (reducing women to grail objects), his repeating pattern of his relationships being structured this way (he tried to break this pattern with Annie, but Windom Earle placed her back in this context, setting him up for a fall), and a general fascination with the dark/morbid aspects of humanity/sexuality (grinning inappropriately at Fleshworld, desiring to see dead bodies at a young age, job enabled obsession with victims of sexual violence after it is too late). But also, the problem to be solved is that of a system that he has internalized, a kind of “bad” pattern of the way males and females relate, and he has not really taken a look at himself (or the FBI for that matter). Going back to save Laura is the direct but wrong way to deal with his deepest desires and the problem with the world and not only would rob her of her own salvation but has the same cosmic wrongness that is demonstrated by the zombie Kahl Drogo sequence in GoT (has anyone compared that yet?). This is bad Coop – ends justify the means, playing with dark forces, trucking in life and death. Mr C, another words.

2 In the World of Twin Peaks, things work like TV (the OS like nighttime soaps the Return like prestige drama) but with the symbolic aspects manifested as a psychological space of archetypes spilling in to the ground reality. Thus, conflicts are played out metaphorically, but one can imagine the real world analogue to any of these. Coop’s confrontation in the (s2 last episode) Lodge becomes him losing himself to his darker impulses given the situation (Annie possibly being killed like Caroline), killing Earle in rage, and this changing him, his demons taking over. The current season does a lot to define the TP world against our world, both in implicating a dreamer (not just Lynch and Frost, but the audience which includes “real world” Coop/Richard, see below), placing Audrey/Sherlyn Fenn there (this only makes sense but is too much to broach here), including a real world city limits sign to contrast with the TP sign, and casting the owner of the house as the owner of the house.

3 The ring represents responsibility for your actions. Choosing to put the ring on is an act of radical self-determination, taking responsibility who you are and what you have done, enabling a choice whether to succumb to your demons, and dangerously stepping into the unknown world where the will meets the real (as opposed to the self-imagined or the civilized-symbolic). Having the ring put on you is forcing responsibility and exposing someone to judgement. I’d love to see a Green Lantern that took this view of the “ring of will,” the unworthy burning themselves out. Cooper telling Laura “don’t take the ring” is a mistake of someone who has yet to learn the lesson (see savior complex above). She and maybe some element of the world is saved by her sacrifice which is enacted by owning her actions.

4 I haven’t seen mentioned that, with everybody noting the Wizard of Oz nature of the “last scene in the world of TP,” the superimposed face is an element of going from Kansas to Oz. Dorothy’s face doubles and the double hangs superimposed over the cyclone. This is that in reverse, going from the “dream” to the real world.

5 Remember when Laura not only screamed at Cooper in FWWM (in black and white, Oz dudes) but then every line she says after that works as if addressed to him? “Your Laura is gone, there’s only me now” “you want to take me home now.” That was awesome

6 Naido is only revealed to be Diane in the dissociative space while Coop’s real analogue views the dream, starting (seeing Naido is the first “split off” moment). Until then she is the injured, unaware, incoherent feminine who makes monkey noises, firmly in the symbolic space, rescue bait for old Cooper, the agency-less victim. Coop maps her to Diane but also to the red room (face, Diane’s nail and hair choices). The red room is a feminine space – vaginal red curtains, Venuses (note the replacement of the Venus DeMilo with no arms with the Venus of Arles with the arms ripped off, a change of nature, Naido to Judy), and the fact that the trial of the masculine entails facing the feminine. Naido is a figment of the male imagination and being turned into the 3d Diane is the moment Coop shows he has learned.

7 Judy is tough to talk about, but we are gonna. The FBI men have clearly been on a search for something wrong with women (OK, the feminine) they can fix. Being less charitable, the function of the FBI in Twin Peaks the Return is to investigate what went wrong with women since WWII… what with the acting like men, gaining subjectivity, being less nurturing, and all. Charitably, something is wrong in every generation with the masculine and the feminine and the wish to try to find a solution. Judy as the goddess of negative feminine energy makes sense, but Coop seems to be looking for something more like “the daughter” (Naido identifies Judy as mother just as Sarah is Laura’s mother), the woman in trouble to be saved from her Judy-bred impulses. This is kind of hard to articulate but this goes to my “TP is about Boomers” theory where there is a post war problem with the feminine associated with inattentiveness (Judy and Naido have no eyes), a replacement of the maternal succor with aggression, and a putting a part of its nature asleep. Naido is the vulnerable, underdeveloped, defanged product of this.

8 Coop’s 25 year period is a metaphor for the problems of America but, more importantly, is a metaphorical story of a man at war with himself. Cooper’s fireman nature (strong, silent, problem solving, scrupulous, doing what needs to be done, productive of joy – in the lodge) has been suppressed in favor of his Bob nature (a taker, end justifies the means, all goal - doing what he wants, leaving destruction – Mr C) but it is Dougie (the original) that is the “real” Cooper in that this is the identity that has been manufactured to cover the deeper faces, the one he shows the world. When the “mid-life crisis” hits, the good starts to reassert, there is a fight, the return of the good fixed the world, and the identity is recreated as a better person. Note this is the metaphor I’m not claiming this is what “actually happened,” whatever the hell that means.

9 I think Mr C was on a mission to do what the Blue Rose task force set out to do - find Judy – he just didn’t care who died in the process and was an adversary of anything that would get in the way. He had the same goal as OG Coop did. He needed the coordinates because he wanted Naido who, as above, is a sort of contrapositive of Judy. The giant flips between the location of the TP embodiment of Judy (Sarah) and that of Naido. The white lodge was another trap.

10 Diane has, this season, lined up to represent the relationship Coop really needs. He realizes Mr C has raped her, and the seeing her in Naido is a demonstration in mastery, by making her her in his mind, not a victim. All the stuff at the end is the failure of this mastery previously in the lodge which maybe “flits through" Coop's mind while the face is up (though the face disappears during the true healing/win moment of the kiss, real recognition, and affirmation of memory).

So away we go. It works like this: In the “world of TP” Coop has gotten right with his identity (Mr C and Bob gone) and relation to the world (Dougie) has been restored. Mr C has been brought down by an avatar of weaponized innocence (Lucy) and Coop has faced Bob who has been brought down by an avatar of, well, gumption (determination, enthusiasm, taking a leap of faith). Then he sees Naido, an avatar of the helpless traumatized woman, the thing his trial is based on.

This brings about the superimposed face – this is a diffracted reality: “Coop” as a real world manifestation as part of the audience (see below) witnessing the end of the show he and all of us are dreaming. From a TP plot perspective, they have rescued Diane from Mr C’s victimization (rape) and contact with the good Coop brings her back to herself. He demonstrates that he has learned his lesson by making her a human in his mind. He sees in her the red room - in Naido/Diane is the nature of his trial, the ugly thing in the room that has a distorted, covered Diane and Judy as part of it emblematic of the taint he has to banish. He has triumphed, they are both whole.

The dreamer turns away just long enough to miss the real reconciliation and affirmation that they remember what happened. Everyting is finalized, everyone has arrived, Coop says hope to see you again, and the lights of the world of the show go out – the end.

Lynch and his two lead actors of his career go to the Great Northern boiler room door, Kyle says he must go alone, and goes through. This is Lynch, finished with his film career, saying goodbye as Lynch’s representative in the world of the show must go it alone. The face is gone, the dream is over, see you at the curtain call. One could stop here as the show world is over. Note that the idea of going to get Laura or going to get Judy has never even been broached (it seems like it, but it hasn’t - there is no indication that that's why he is going through the door).

We go back to the past (and I mean Dale in the lodge past), to the fantasy that will haunt everything retroactively. Dale is allowed to experience his rescue Laura but loses her to the ratcheting sound of the compulsive attempt (the B&W slipping into color, the white lodge being lost). He should not be doing this and he needs to become the guy who doesn’t. This is happening again and again while Dale is in the lodge – he is tested, and fails. This failure causes the loss of Laura (to a similar “woosh”) in the red room. Dale has to ignore Leland (the clear eyed one that killed his daughter, not the dopple white eyed one that never killed anybody) and leave Laura’s redemptive act intact. We witness one such failure in the fantasy space followed by the same in the room itself (shown extended in episode 1, again Dark Tower and IJ). But there is a version we haven’t seen, the “real world” one that the others have been analogies of.

OK, we’ve reached a part that has multiple layers going on at once. The rest of the episode shows a “real” version of Coop living the fact that he will never be the savior, a demonstration of how his obsession drove away the real love of his life, a representation of the time in the lodge as really just 25 years wasted on a tainted dream, a presentation of what the complete un-metaphorically split Coop would have been like those 25 years, and a symbolic depiction of (and middle finger to) fandom. You could read it as a coda which goes back to dramatize the lodge or a moment of Cooper in Twin Peaks (when the face is up) having the “lesson” flashed through his mind.

It begins. After a third repeat of the red room stuff with Leland, etc., the room appears to let him out into the world, our world. He gets to live the life he would have lived, beginning with a symbolic marriage to Diane - they say are you sure you want to do this, kiss, and cross the threshold, risk be damned. The “honeymoon” sex really represents their entire marriage/relationship… he commands, she obeys, their closeness slips into alienation, she loses who he is, as the Mr C part of him is dominant. There is no rape per se, he violates her spirit. There is no tulpa, just a person she becomes as a result of the general trauma of being with him. This is what being married to old Dougie was like for Diane’s “sister,” except she was the fantasy version that could tough it out with resilience, spunk, and good spirit. After 25 years, she leaves (the hotel is the same one 25 years later, but that’s just shorthand for he’s stuck, never "home" the whole time). They are literally different people, now.

Coop is going to finish this. He shows off how he’s Coop, Mr C, and Dougie at once in the Judy’s diner scene. Finding Laura is the one thing that gives his life meaning (fandom alert). He finds her, still trapped in the life/cycle her resolve and death freed her from, takes her “home” where the RR is closed (or is it the real diner -Norma's place never closes) and the Laura’s house is owned by the real house owner. He lets out a wail of wasted time “what year is it?” as she suddenly wakes up to the vast degree of her (and everyone like her)’s pain. He has done nothing but create more suffering. The lights go out, simulation over, and he returns to the red room.

The cycle starts again. Laura whispers “Jackass, you cannot save me/women in trouble because the problem is in you” and he makes the face of horrifying recognition. Start the season over, this is just the setup.

Hope this helps.

#twin peaks #david lynch #lynch #mark frost

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ladyimaginarium · 5 years

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💛 + striker/beretta

Send a SHIP + 💛 and I will tell you my thoughts on a child of theirs.

STRIKER &&. BERETTA.

NAME: Aella / Panther ( codename ).

GENDER: Cisgender Female.

APPEARANCE: Inherits the majority of Striker’s features, especially with her dark skin and silver hair which she often keeps short, but has Beretta’s facial structure and a darker hue of her blue eye color. Very slim, well toned yet curvaceous after over a decade of brutal training by the government. Has a navel piercing and several ear piercings, a tongue piercing and a tribal tattoo on her back. Likes to wear floral print, loose clothing - particularly qipaos - and leaving her arms and midriff bare. Has her hands embroidered with henna tattoos and her nails painted gold.

FACECLAIM:

PERSONALITY: Ambitious. Assertive. Adventurous. Alluring. Astute. Adaptable. Animated. Bubbly. Brave. Capricious. Careful. Charming. Compassionate. Comforting. Considerate. Courageous. Courteous. Curious. Cultured. Creative. Cunning. Clever. Determined. Devoted. Dominant. Durable. Daring. Daydreamer. Decisive. Empathetic. Efficient. Emotional. Excitable. Expert strategist. Erudite. Feminine. Fearless. Free-spirited. Frivolous. Flexible. Fun-loving. Generous. Sisterly. Family oriented. Hard-working. Headstrong. Imaginative. Impressionable. Independent. Individualistic. Intuitive. Insightful. Intelligent. Loving. Loyal. Mature. Musical. Observant. Passionate. Playful. Proud. Persistent. Percipient. Pragmatic. Professional. Protective. Punctual. Polite. Regal. Reliable. Resilient. Relaxed. Responsible. Resourceful. Sincere. Sentimental. Selfless. Strong. Suave. Tactical. Tender. Thoughtful. Versatile. Trustworthy. Tough. Unrelenting. Well-intentioned. Whimsical. Willful. Apathetic. Cynical. Good liar. Dangerous. Deceptive. Derisive. Devious Enigmatic. Fixated. Forceful. Grim. Greedy. Holier-Than-Thou tendencies. Imperious. Impulsive. Manipulative. Moody. Nefarious. Obsessive. Passive-aggressive. Sassy. Satirical. Scandalous. Secretive. Resentful. Ruthless. Self-conscious. Sly. Stoic. Stubborn. Temperamental. Tenacious. Wicked. Withdrawn. Vain. Vengeful.

POWERS / ABILITIES: Enhanced strength, speed, stamina, reflexes, agility and durability as well as well as an enhanced immune system and metabolism, exceptional night vision, enhanced senses, synthetic blood and regenerative capabilities, thermoregulation, echolocation, greatly improved olfactory sensation and auditory perception capabilities combined with more than a decade of advanced training in martial arts, close quarters combat, sharpshooting, firearms, stealth maneuvers, infiltration, espionage, communications, languages, electronic-hacking, and computer technology. Was trained as a supersoldier and assassin since childhood.

MISC:

Multiracial ; predominantly Eurasian.

A human/animal-transgenic hybrid.

Inherits her father’s sadistic nature and desire for chaos and destruction under layers and layers of calm collectiveness and a snarky, playful and whimsical nature.

A proud and shameless bisexual who flirts with both men and women.

Practically adores her father and mother, borderline worshiping them and one day wants to be as powerful as they are, if not surpass them.

Has a irreversible love for desserts ; a sweetooth that’ll never come loose.

Once broke a cookie jar with her bare hands at five years old when she really wanted a Oreo cookie.

Has had multiple homes in childhood due to being transferred to different international top secret research facilities.

Was a tiny terror to the Corsica Family mansion ; Svetlana still shudders thinking about it.

Anarchic Bohemianesque outlook on life - cares nothing for rigid law and order and desires freedom - and chaos - above all else. Anyone attempting to control her will be sorely disappointed.

Ripped a Twilight’s head clean off its shoulders during her first practice hunt.

Despises being ordered around by her normal overseers.

Doesn’t need to sleep.

Excels in parkour.

Loves to make.

Down With The Memes.

Intrigued by the occult and secret, hidden knowledge.

An eclectic witch.

Uses Indian chakrams as her weapon of choice which can be used as a throwing weapon but also as a hand-to-hand weapon.

#A SHADOW IN THE DARK. ( ANONYMOUS. )#THE GODS HAVE SPOKEN. ( ANSWERED. )#!!!!!!!#i don't currently ship with a striker so this is like purely conceptual AGJAGAJGAGAJ #she's pretty cool tho :OOO #tysm for sending this in nonnie!!

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belovedblabber · 7 years

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On Fury Road and the value of non-threatening male heroes

So I’ve been re-watching Fury Road and something struck me;

Tom Hardy’s Max is just really non-threatening. Now, that’s weird on a surface level because in story he’s presented as very dangerous. But here’s the thing about the kind of men we’re used to seeing in action movie; They are threatening in their masculinity.

The capitol A Action hero is a fixture in our cultural awareness. Almost without fail this hero is a man (if you have a woman in the role of action hero, it’s almost always proceeded by her gender. She can’t just be the action hero, she is very clearly cast as a FEMALE action hero.) So our male Action hero is a badass. He’s dangerous, he’s brooding, he’s tough as nails. Sometimes he’s sarcastic and witty, sometimes he’s a moody stud. Point is, despite cultural changes that we see with our Action heroes as different pop culture trends change the flavoring, these men are all pretty much cut from the same mold. And here’s the thing about your typical Action hero; They have this underlying current of threatening masculinity. To put it bluntly, your typical Action hero is really all about cock. They’re intimidating to both their male peers and the women who are cast opposite them. They are toxic masculinity distilled onto our screens.

Now, in recent years we’ve been seeing more varity in our Action heroes. More emotion. Of course, there have always been exceptions (Luke Skywalker is one of the most note worthy male heroes to break this mold, and I think it’s worth noting that he’s often called whiny. Hell, when I was a little kid I loved him, but as a young teenager I thought he was lame. Now I realize that this might well have been because he wasn’t acting like your typical male hero. Maybe that scared me on some level) Anyway, let’s get back to Hardy’s Max. In story he starts out as frightening, but he is never threatening in the way of your usual Action hero. He’s feral, dangerous, and unpredictable at the start of our story, but he doesn’t have any of that toxic masculinity. So, we have a mad Max who is dangerous, and seems mad, as it were. But there’s none of that hyper male Action hero posturing.

Hardy’s Max is a flawed man whose past has almost driven him past the point of no return. To the other characters in the movies he initially seems to be feral (they don’t have the benefit of hearing his inner thoughts) Max is a frightening, but he’s not a masculine he-man. In fact, the characters in the movie who fall close to what we’re used to seeing in Action heroes are the warboys and their leader. The culture espoused by Immortan Joe is hyper masculine and toxic. The young men who idolize him seem like extreme versions of what we’re used to with our heroes. They’re brainwashed into a society built on toxic masculinity and objectification, and the heroes of the story are the ones fighting against this idea. Interestingly, Furiosa has a lot of traits of your traditional Action hero, but it’s coupled with compassion and self reflection, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a person. Like Max, she is fighting to regain her humanity through helping a group of young women fight for their freedom from a world of toxic masculinity.

So, again back to Max himself. As the movie goes on he regains his sense of self. A big theme int he movie is the objectification and commodification of human life. We see this with Immortan Joe’s ‘wives” as well as with the brainwashed warboys and the use living humans as ‘bloodbags’ and ‘milkers’ Max starts the movie literally strapped to the hood of a car as a hood ornament/living blood bag. Max is reluctant to help Furiosa and the ‘wives’ at first, but we see him change in a brief period of time. He regains his humanity through helping others and coming to terms with his own demons. Hardy’s Max is dangerous, but he’s also vulnerable, undeniably so. We see his fear, we see what haunts him, and we see him struggle to survive, and then struggle to come to terms with his past in order to help others have a future. This sets him apart from Mel Gibson’s Max, and in my opinion makes him the better of the two. By the time Max starts really showing his human side, we see a man who is compassionate and half broken, a man who relearns himself by helping others.

Another notable aspect of Max is his relationship with Furiosa. Usually when your typical Action hero is paired with a STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN in a movie, there’s this ongoing dynamic of ‘but you’re a girlllllll’ There isn’t respect, because the heroes of the story are acting out the deeply felt internalized misogyny of our own society. They can’t interact as equals because in our cultural minds they are inherently unequal. They are defined by their rigid gender rules, and they act this out like they’re children on a playground crying about cooties. And of course, there’s usually the sexual element, with the heroes constantly griping at/disrespecting one another while it’s played off as repressed attraction all along.Fury Road never once does this. Max and Furiosa are two flawed and broken people trying to survive. There isn’t a split second where Max stops to wonder how a GIRL can be so tough. Once they’re established as allies, they immediately move into a working relationship built on mutual respect and trust. Two scenes come to mind. Firstly, the initial canyon chase when Max first shows himself as an ally. There’s one notable moment where Furiosa is standing up out of the roof and Max hands her a gun. That doesn’t seem important, but there’s something about that gesture that’s very c cinematically important. It shows us that they’re a team now, and it shows us that they trust each other. The second notable scene is the “Don’t breathe” moment in the night bog. Max has previously seen that Furiosa is a good shot. He knows that she is the one to trust with this task, so he hands her the gun and lets her use him as a rifle stand. It’s a moment with no dialogue that speaks volumes.

All of this goes to Max as a nonthreatening hero. He never objectifies, disrespects, or distrusts his counterpart. He’s never an alpha male. He’s part of a story that he doesn’t need to dominate with his manly male maleness. Hardy’s Max is a dangerous, vulnerable, and quietly compassionate man who gives respect and trust where it’s due. He has no need to parade and prove his masculinity. In fact, the people doing that are the villains, and isn’t that telling?

#mad max fury road #mad max: fury road #max rockatansky #furiosa #mad max meta

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justanothercinemaniac · 7 years

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #130 - Veronica Mars

Spoilers below (for the TV show too).

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes!

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes. #283.

Format: Blu-ray

This post is dedicated to @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer, the best Marshmallow I know.

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

1) Veronica Mars - this film - exists because of a Kickstarter campaign that went live on March 13, 2013. The series ran for three seasons before being cancelled but gained an incredible cult following. Series creator Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell, and the rest of the cast had been hopeful about a movie being made for years before turning to Kickstarter. Their goal was 2 million dollars, they got that in less than 24 hours (breaking most of Kickstarter’s records at the time). They ended up with five million total dollars by the end of their campaign (which was broke the REST of Kickstarter’s records at the time). This movie is made by the fans, for the fans basically, and that’s awesome.

2) I first started watching “Veronica Mars” on Netflix DVDs AFTER the Kickstarter had come and gone, meaning I did not have to wait the seven years many fans did for a resolution to the series’ cliffhanger ending. I fell in love with the show instantly. I binged it as quickly as I could with Netflix DVDs (ie: not very quickly but passionately) and love almost every twist and turn. It is an excellent show and my love for it definitely in part fuels my love for the film.

3) The opening, “I need your help Veronica,” montage is a great way of starting off the film. For fans of the original series it reminds us of everything we’ve been missing for a while, and for people who have never seen a single episode it gives them enough info to understand the movie and its characters. And it has this wink to the fans of the show:

Veronica: “New me? People say I’m a Marshmallow.”

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

For all you newbies, fans of “Veronica Mars” refer to themselves as Marshmallows because of this line from the pilot. It was either that or “twinkies” and you can spell “Marshmallows” without “Mars”.

4) Kristen Bell as Veronica Mars.

It’s difficult for me to talk about Veronica as a character because most of my understanding of her as a character comes from both the film AND the TV Show. A lot of what I have to say is really going to be echoes of what @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer has said in her fantastic recaps for the series. Veronica is strong willed, fiercely loyal, but she’s got some blinders on. If she decides you’re guilty or innocent, it is fact. That is just the way it is and she will not recognize the notion otherwise. But see, that does not come into effect in as huge a way in the film as it has in the show in the past.

Veronica is incredibly sharp. I will speak later on how physical strength is not one of her greatest attributes, but she more than makes up with it in wit and the ability to think on her feet. Tough as nails, with an incredible sense of humor (which in and of itself is probably a defense mechanism of some sort), Veronica is amazing. And Veronica would not be the Veronica we know and love if it were not for the truly perfect Kristen Bell.

There are some character who are just defined as much by the actors who play them as the writers who craft them. Veronica Mars is one of those characters. Kristen Bell inhabits all of Veronica’s qualities perfectly. Her contradictions, her strengths, her weakness, her love, her aggression, her need for intimacy with some people, her ability to be independent with others. Honestly in the same sense that Sarah Michelle Gellar IS Buffy or that Robert Downey Jr. IS Iron Man, Kristen Bell IS Veronica Mars and no other actress could ever play her with the same perfection as Bell.

5) Jamie Lee Curtis.

Understand that even though this film made more than twice what it was asking for in the Kickstarter campaign, five million bucks to make a movie these days is close to nothing. Comparatively speaking at least (although recent best picture winner Moonlight only cost 1.5 million so...). Most of the famous faces in this film - the small bits here and there like Jamie Lee Curtis in the very beginning - have some sort of working relationship with those involved in the movie (usually the actors). For example: Curtis worked with Bell in 2010′s You Again. I’m sure this most be some sort of favor to her.

6) This flip off is very Veronica. You can tell a lot about her way of handling jackasses and her sense of humor from this moment.

Gayle: Fifteen separate articles or briefs in cases ranging from multiple homicides to dognapping.

The season one episode “Hot Dogs” involves Veronica helping what was one of the kindest and most sincerely uncorrupted characters on the show (Mandy) help find her missing dog which she loved so much. I like to tell myself that is Veronica thinking fondly on this case which means little to others (especially when compared to multiple homicides) but one where she helped this really kind girl with something that really mattered to her.

8) Let’s talk briefly about the film’s “sex tape” references. Towards the end of season 3 a “sex tape” was released of Veronica and her then-boyfriend (and current boyfriend, at the start of this film) Piz. Except Veronica said she and Piz were just fooling around and didn’t actually have sex. We see the sex tape very clearly later on in the film, that has clearly been retconned. Painfully, too, as Piz is not exactly the most loved of Veronica’s boyfriends.

9) On that note...Piz.

I cannot get into the intense dislike people have for Piz without getting into how he was written and portrayed in the final season of the TV show (which was the season he was introduced in). In a nutshell, Piz was the Nice Guy™. As in the character who in reality isn’t really a nice guy, but is sort of a privileged manipulative white dude bro who thinks he deserves to be with a woman he basically sees as the female lead in his own personal romantic comedy. But the writers still write him as the “nice guy”. The movie does not have as much of that Nice Guy™ vibe to Piz though. It’s definitely still there though. He tells Veronica that he oversold her to his parents. That, “They cannot believe I landed a creature such as the one I’ve described.” But mostly Piz is kinda sorta not an awful dude. He seems to have some genuine feelings for Veronica but you can tell Veronica is with him just because he’s the safe choice. Because this is the clean life she wants. And that’s never who she was and so Piz isn’t dating the REAL Veronica. Piz is not interested in the REAL Veronica just the kind of girl he expects her to be and wants her to be. Even if he’s not a total dick about it in the film, that’s still what their relationship is.

HOWEVER I will say even though I may have issues with Piz as a character I do truly enjoy Chris Lowell as an actor. My distaste for how Piz has been written in the past is not a reflection on his performance.

10) Veronica talks about how Bonnie DeVille used to be known as Carrie Bishop. Carrie Bishop was featured in a few season one episodes of the show played by “Gossip Girl” actress Leighton Meester. Meester had scheduling conflicts with the show so they recast her part.

11) Never ever think too hard about the timeline or continuity in the Veronica Mars universe. Like...Logan is supposed to be a different age than her but they were still in the same graduating class or his dead girlfriend was a different age because she went to school with her brother who was...just, it’s confusing to think about it too hard. Just know that this film - while released in 2014 - takes place in 2016. Because the characters graduated high school in 2006 and their ten year reunion is featured in the film.

12) The theme of addiction is heavily featured throughout the movie, mainly throughout Veronica’s internal monologue. She constantly mentions her alcoholic mother while comparing her return to Neptune and the world of a PI to that idea. Not to mention Veronica described her past self as a, “possible adrenaline junkie,” within the first five minutes of the film. It’s a neat idea that gives the film a unique arc and helps it feel more than an extended episode.

13) Logan Echolls, ladies and gentlemen.

(GIF originally posted by @veronicaneptunes)

With most of (if not all of) these characters, it is difficult for me to talk about them ONLY as they are presented in the film. Logan is someone who throughout the TV show had a very troubled life. His father beat him, his mother committed suicide, his girlfriend was murdered, the murderer turned out to be his father, he had been manipulated by many people he considered family, but he was good to Veronica (for the most part) when they started dating. He cared for her, truly. There was an honesty to their relationship, an ability to be himself, which he lost when she left. I think the second Veronica Mars book Mr. Kiss & Tell goes into this more (I read it two years ago), but Logan needed to get his life together post-Veronica. So he joined the freaking Navy. That first image of Logan already sets him up as a clean cut, mostly kept together man that is FAR different from the, “obligatory psychotic jackass,” we met in the pilot of the show.

Much like Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring gives Logan a lot of depth. The reason the character was given such a prominent role and more layers - initially - was because of Dohring’s skill as an actor. He is able to present Logan as mostly collected but still vulnerable. Still with a deep sorrow in his soul, still with a darkness to him. But we as an audience are invested in him as a character. We understand Veronica’s trust for him because we see just who he is around Veronica. The chemistry between Dohring and Bell is incredible. It is not just hot steamy chemistry (although it can be, more on that later). It’s a trust, it’s friendship, it’s an ability for these two to truly be themselves around each other in a way they can’t be with pretty much everyone else.

It is a truly wonderful performance and character we get to see in the film and I think the entire franchise of Veronica Mars would be far less without Jason Dohring and Logan Echolls.

14) It is fun how to see how easily Veronica slips into her old routine at her dad’s office. Also it goes into the idea of how an addict is more easy to fall into their addiction when they get into a certain habit. Veronica was addicted to being a PI when she was in Neptune, working with Logan, and helping at her dad’s office. Is it any wonder she can’t fight off the need to go back to that life when she’s in the town for less than a day and all these things have happened already?

15) Keith’s face when he sees Veronica!

We don’t get AS good a look as Keith’s relationship with daughter Veronica in the film as we did in the TV show (we got three seasons to examine it, after all), but it is still one of the best parent/child relationships to ever grace screens and the chemistry between Enrico Colantoni and Kristen Bell is great.

16) Although the film only had a budget from Kickstarter of about five million dollars, Warner Brothers studio was comfortable enough with the film that they paid an extra million (I think it was a million) for some reshoots to help make the story more understandable. The most noteworthy of these reshoots is the scene where Keith and Veronica are driving through town and discover a bunch of kids being framed up by the police, tazzed, basically abused for being “riff raff” and Keith being able to extort the police into letting the kids go by taking a video of them abusing their power. This was all told to the audience in the original shoot at the office scene, but the use of “show don’t tell” not only paints a grim picture of what kind off corrupt place Neptune is but also what kind of man Keith is. He really is - as his daughter says - the George Bailey of Neptune.

17) Mac & Wallace!

Again, if you like what you see of these two in the movie and want more...GO WATCH THE TV SHOW! The friendship Veronica forges with Wallace is one of the strongest in her life, second only to her father and even ahead of her relationship with Logan I think. He is there through it all. Through all the boyfriends, all the drama, all the times she’s a pariah, he is there for her. He helps her out, he does favors with her, and it is just such a beautiful and loving friendship.

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

The relationship Veronica has with Mac - while not necessarily as strong - is still great. Tina Majorino breathed such life into this character from season 1 who could’ve easily been a one off but ended up being second only to Wallace when it came to Veronica’s friends. The trio of them are great, and they’ve always got each other’s backs.

18) Dick Casablancas.

(GIF originally posted by @veronicaneptunes)

Otherwise known as: your problematic fave! Man, I don’t even know where to start with Dick. He’s...well...he’s a dick! But like a likable dick! Somehow Rob Thomas gets away with Dick doing some really awful shit in the show and still have him be Logan’s best friend. Dick in this film is - I think - mostly comedic relief (and, at one point, a suspect) and Hansen is just a lot of fun in the role.

A little note about Dick though. This line has way more significance than you would think:

Dick [after Logan’s potential lawyer makes a remark about his pot brownies]: “Medicine, man. I got my card. Chronic depression. You wouldn’t think, huh?”

That’s actually very telling about Dick. Season two ended with his younger brother being revealed as a mass murderer before killing himself, and there was some fair amount of time devoted in early season three to examining how Dick dealt with this.

19) This scene alone shows a lot of fun back and forth between Veronica, Logan, and the idiots of Neptune.

Logan [after these two Canadian drunks call a girl a crazy bitch at karaoke night]:

(GIFs originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

20) Again with the theme of addiction:

Veronica [internal monologue]: “You know what? It’s a one time deal. A farewell tour, if you will. [Sees hot as fuck Logan] Then again, you ever hear the one about the junkie who was satisfied with just one more taste of the good stuff?”

(GIF originally posted by @veronicaneptunes)

Veronica: “Neither have I.”

21) Chekov’s random trucker hat line...

Veronica [about being able to hide cameras in anything]: “My dad has a trucker hat that’s rigged with a camera -”

22) There’s this rule Pixar has with writing: a coincidence that gets the character into trouble is plot. A coincidence that gets them out of trouble is cheating. The fact that Veronica is able to get into someone’s house by saying she’s doing a location scout for a Clint Eastwood movie only for that person to have a connection to Clint Eastwood falls into the former of those two categories.

23) This film THRIVES on fan service which also serves the plot. For example, Veronica - like she did all the way back in season one - calls Wallace for a favor.

Veronica: “Hey Buddy! I need a favor. Can you get me a student’s permanent file?”

Wallace: “You do realize that I’m a teacher now, Veronica? An educator? This is a position of responsibility.”

Veronica: “So you’re saying it’s gonna be super easy. Good. I did NOT want to put you out.”

The theater I saw this in - with quite a few Marshmallows - all found this scene hysterical.

24) The inclusion of Deputy Sacks is a nice way of bringing in even what some would call the smaller characters into the film. AND it ends up working out really well.

25) Jerry O’Connell as Sheriff Dan Lamb.

The perfect personification of slime and corruption in Neptune. Lamb’s brother Don Lamb was the incompetent (and assholish prick of a) sheriff throughout most of the show, and somehow they made his brother even worse. At least Don Lamb would OCCASIONALLY do his job if presented with enough compelling evidence. Meanwhile Dan is even more egotistical, even says at one point he doesn’t care if Logan is innocent or not, and later in all likelihood tries to have Keith killed. Jerry O’Connell plays Lamb as wonderfully vile. A villain you love to hat.

26) I love that this film brings in so many memorable characters from the TV show, even though some are limited to one scene. But that one scene is enough for us to remember why we love them. This is very true for Daran Norris as Cliff McCormack, Neptune’s resident public appointed attorney.

27) It is interesting seeing how these characters have grown in the seven years since the TV show ended. For example, Veronica is able to show off QUITE clearly that she spent a considerable amount of time at law school when she’s defending herself at the police station.

28) The whole scene at the 09er is very entertaining, if for no other reason than a trio of fun cameos we get. We see exactly the stupidity of the “cool kids” at Neptune, we get the series’ first use of the word, “fuck,” AND we get Veronica’s trademark sass. Also we get this nice moment between husband & wife:

youtube

29) But the 09er scene is NOTHING compared to the reunion at Neptune High.

The entire graduation scene perfectly shows off the film’s ability to balance out fan service AND move the plot forward. It brings back almost all the memorable characters from the TV show, friends and enemies a like. And for you who haven’t seen the show, we get a very clear picture of just how much Veronica “enjoyed” high school.

Veronica: “In a lesser known epic poem, ‘Dante’s Inferno 2: Hell Freezes Over,’ ten years after escaping the nine circles, Dante returns. You know, for old times’ sake. Have a couple shots, catch up with the gang...”

Madison [as Veronica approaches]: “Name?”

Veronica: “See if Lucifer’s still a bitch.”

We get a see of characters in this scene.

Madison Sinclair is still an entitled, judgmental, condescending asshole.

Gia Goodman (played by the incredible Krysten Ritter of “Jessica Jones” fame) is REMARKABLY different from the last time we saw her. Back then she was a chipper, positive (if a little naive) young woman. Then Veronica exposed her dad as a pedophile to the world, he was killed by Dick’s brother in a plane explosion, and some really awful psychotic shit went down where she is basically owned by a man named Cobb (Martin Starr). Gia is likely the most changed character since the TV show and Ritter’s amazing range supports that.

Eli ‘Weevil’ Navarro has gotten his life together, which is an incredible thing to see from the former member of a bike gang. He has a daughter, he has a wife, he is reformed! But of course Neptune is gonna tear him back down.

We even get a chance to see Horny, the recurring comic relief and nice dude from the show, in a little moment which I as a fan appreciate.

Edit: I have had it pointed out to me that the character’s name is Corny, not Horny is I’ve thought for four years. You can find the reply in notes, but I’m going to leave the name as I originally thought so you all know my shame.

30) The high school reunion also serves as a turning point for the story. Veronica realizes that Carrie’s death is tied to the death of her friend Susan Knight YEARS ago on Carrie’s father’s boat. And now her investigation has some more direction.

31) When you watch the works of Rob Thomas (the writer, not the singer) you find he is wonderfully aware of his famous name-twin.

Piz [about talking about some 2006 music]: “Maybe some SOLO Rob Thomas.”

That’s nothing compared to what we got on “iZombie” though.

32) I love this.

(GIFs originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

33) A great peek at how Veronica is not as alone as she may think is after Madison (asshole) shows Veronica’s sex tape at the family reunion. For one thing Wallace is immediately at Veronica’s side, running to turn it off. Then Wallace, Logan, Weevil, Dick, and Piz (at least. Maybe Horny too, I’m not sure.) all jump into a fight with the assholes who want to put the tape back on. A great recall from this line:

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

34) Principal Clemmons is another example of a great supporting character from the show making a brief but appreciate appearance in the film.

35) Veronica at the reunion’s after-party is very much her being in her natural environment. The scene where she’s dancing and it cuts to slow mo is very predatory to me. She is a lion ready to pounce on its prey. This is her in her element and its great to watch.

36) Martin Starr as Cobb is a...unique new character in the film. He was not in the show at all and now he’s part of the group of established characters. In hindsight it’s obvious that he’s the evil mastermind of it all (spoiler alert).

37) Veronica impersonating Martina Vasquez to get info out of Lamb is as nice callback to the series while also showing new viewers just how crafty she can be.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

38) Leo!!!!

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

Leo was like the best boyfriend Veronica had on the show who wasn’t Logan, an actual nice guy and not Nice Guy™. Max Greenfield has gotten a lot more recognition lately for his memorable turn as Schmidt on “New Girl” but he’s GREAT on the show and in this film. He only has one scene but it’s a bit bigger than say Cliff’s scene or Clemmons’ scene, and him screwing with Veronica by pretending to not remember her is a lot of fun.

39)

Leo: “By the way, I didn’t know the FBI was looking into the Bonnie DeVille case.”

Veronica: “I’m not with the FBI.”

Leo: “You sure? I could’ve SWORN I heard somewhere that you were in the FBI.”

Veronica: “Another life maybe.”

Rob Thomas pitched a drastically altered version of the show which would have seen Veronica join the FBI in season 4. I’m kinda glad it didn’t work it, but they shot this pitch:

youtube

40) So James Franco is in this movie.

Rob Thomas said in an interview:

"My producing partner, Danielle Stokdyk, her husband is an Academy Award-winning visual effects artist who happened to have just done 'Oz the Great and Powerful.' He had become friendly with James, and it really was easy as this: I emailed a script and said we'd love you for this part and honestly five minutes later, five minutes later, he emailed me back and said, 'sounds fun, I'm in.'"

41) Add Vinnie Van Lowe to the list of fun appearances from the show!

42) According to IMDb:

In one of the shots, a man dressed like a gorilla was needed to dance in the foreground while Kristen Bell and Ken Marino played a scene on a bench. Ryan Hansen had just wrapped his last scene in the film a few hours earlier and was hanging out on set and agreed to do the scene. Rob Thomas and Ryan then decided to prank Kristen and Ken, who didn't know it was Ryan in the gorilla suit. The stint made the DVD bloopers reel.

43) Veronica cannot say, “I know what happened,” without me thinking of this:

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

44) Chekov’s random trucker hat line.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

45) This line that Deputy Sacks has is very telling about who he is as a character, his conflict, and what is up in Neptune.

Sacks: “I saw this thing on, uh, YouTube a few weeks ago, Keith. It’s a funny video. A...uh...two nazi they’re uh...looking at the skulls on their insignias and the piles of dead bodies. And they have this moment of clarity. Wait a minute...we’re the bad guys.”

46) Deputy Sacks’ death is a surprisingly powerful moment. This is a character who has been around since the pilot in 2004. Someone who was always there and who Veronica or anyone else never got super close to. But he was always there, always a good cop, and the sorrow of his loss is seen in one simple unanswered question:

Doctor: “Was he a friend of yours?”

47) The following LoVe love scene (LoVe is the ship name for Logan + Veronica) really shows off how these two not only have a chemistry built on being able to be themselves, but also the fact they’re each INCREDIBLY attracted to each other and just have this raw sexy passion. There is a tenderness, a connection, a heat to them that is just unmatched by any of her other boyfriends.

48) Remember how Veronica is sort of an addict?

Veronica: “The only way I’m not going to spend the day obsessing about my dad is by nailing Gia and Luke to the wall.”

49) One of Veronica’s most defining character traits is that when she decides a person is guilty, they are guilty. And it takes a lot for her to alter her theory or her idea of what is going on. This is seen when she is watching Gia and Cobb hook up, and she comments...

Veronica: “Gia seduced her lap dog into killing Carrie.”

There is NOTHING about that scene that shows Gia initiating sex with Cobb, it’s totally Cobb doing it. But Veronica can’t see that, she only sees what supports her theory. And then there’s this line that shows what she thinks of Gia.

Veronica [after Logan warns her to be careful]: “Child please, it’s Gia Goodman. The day I can’t handle Gia Goodman...”

This is very much a line that would be applied to high school Gia, not this new Gia. Veronica has little to no idea who this new Gia is.

50) The following scene between Veronica and Gia is a great character moment for Gia. Krysten Ritter’s skills as an actor show us just how tortured and trapped this once kindhearted and positive girl was, and it’s heartbreaking.

51) The entire climax (where Cobb has Veronica trapped in Gia’s apartment building) is very tense. Cobb has the upper hand physically and Veronica knows that. She has to play this confrontation by hiding, being patient, and outsmarting Cobb. And she does! It is wonderfully paced and choreographed and just a great moment of tension.

52) My biggest criticism of this film is that I’m always surprised by how quickly it wraps up, but it’s also something I’ve gotten more comfortable with in repeat viewings.

53) The metaphor of Veronica as an addict has never been clearer than her last lines of the film (an internal monologue).

Veronica: “My name is Veronica, and I’m an addict. Hello Veronica.”

54) Logan often had inspirational messages on his voice mail in the show. This message which plays over the end credits is very nice.

Logan: “This is Logan reminding you: if you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask which seat, just get on. Sheryl Sandberg said that. So don’t leave a message. Go get on that rocket ship. Or, leave a message. Your call. Your decision will tell me a lot about you.”

That - to me - seems very telling about the film. They took a chance on asking fans to finance it and it turned out wonderfully! They got on their rocket.

This recap ended up being much longer than I intended. And there’s still a lot here I can talk about which I haven’t. And that is very telling of the film. There is a lot to dissect, a lot that works and is going on in the movie. The writing is incredible, with a good balance of fan service and plot. The acting is as good as it ever was on the show, Rob Thomas’ direction is great, and it is just what fans who were waiting seven years for closure deserved. A great, great film and a fantastic potential finale to the series.

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hellstate--rp-blog · 7 years

Photo

↪ b a s i c s ;

N A M E: Nikita Lauren Charles A G E: 33 P L A C E O F O R I G I N: Dallas, Oregon G R O U P: None F C: Sonequa Martin-Green

❝ The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind. ❞

↪ p e r s o n a l i t y ;

P O S I T I V E T R A I T S: straight-shooter ; heroic N E G A T I V E T R A I T S: sardonic ; self-deprecating

↪ b i o g r a p h y ;

L I F E B E F O R E T H E O U T B R E A K:

The one thing that young Nikita knew, when she was asked as a girl what she wanted to be when she grew up, was that she wanted to save lives. A serious and inquisitive child with a lot to say, she was still plagued by inattention and, though a smart girl by all means, she was not always the best at scoring high in classes. Her stoicism made the ADHD a tough diagnosis and it wasn’t until she hit fifth grade that anybody suggested it to her mother. Classes demanded that she focus, sit still, and keep her eyes front–difficult tasks for a young girl. In her age, they didn’t make special dispensation for kids with attention issues. Ethel Charles would sure as hell have no daughter of hers hooked on those drugs, but that resolve faded as easily as the breath that carried the promise as years went by.

Adderall helps. It’s Nikita’s dad, Ferdinand “Freddie” Charles, who finally caves. Nikita focuses. Her grades aren’t perfect, but she makes an effort. She plays some sports, does a school play or two, but nothing seems to stick. She’s always felt like there’s nothing in the world she’s perfect at and her varied interest pull her in a dozen different directions. It isn’t until she takes the ASVAB that Freddie considers the benefit a military career could have for her. He loved his time as a marine. He knows the kindness in her heart that lurks beneath a strong face and clenched fists. The more they talk about it, the more excited she gets. Who wouldn’t want to save lives for a living? They talk all night while, Freddie gets out his old photo albums of his time deployed and Ethel braids her hair. It’s only in retrospect that Nik can remember how perfect that moment was.

Navy Corpsman: a five year enlistment obligation. It’s an easy thing to do and when she graduates in 2003, she follows the ceremony with a straight shot to bootcamp, She wants to be where the action’s at and so she grinds through corpsman school. It’s not glamorous, but it’s good work and it’s practical ( it means something ). She doesn’t believe in the war when she goes in, but she believes in honor and she believes in saving lives. ( At the end, she’ll wonder what she believes ). She does two tours in Iraq. It’s a mess of a place of hot sand, smart asses with unintelligible accents like Gambit from the xmen cartoons she grew up on and angry men whose adopted families can never fill the hole of birth parents in a land so far away. These men do more for her then she could ever ask. It’s through thick and thin. She’ll miss them most when she gets home and things fall apart.

When she comes home for good, it’s not like Vietnam, but it sure as shit isn’t WWII either. The mother, who had sent her cookies on her birthday to some burning desert where her daughter sometimes laid awake wondering if she’d die, has early onset alzheimer’s. She can’t keep her hands on a job, but her parents don’t mind. As Ethel gets worse, Freddie needs the help more and more. So Nik stays and does what’s right and Freddie tries not to let his heartbreak when he hears her reassembling her guns in the middle of the night. He tries not to let it bother him when he wakes up and she’s standing over their bed, seeing him but not truly seeing him, hoping to protect them from invisible threats ( family comes first of course ).

The first time he wakes up to her in the room with a knife, he makes her go to the VA for a mental health evaluation. She’s honest there, but guarded. She thinks if she hasn’t fallen apart, she’s got her shit together. Christ, she takes care of her mother well enough, doesn’t she? Nik thinks all they’ll do is refill her adderall and send her on her way. Instead they brand her with new letters. PTSD. Chronic Pain Syndrome. These are conditions from which there is no cure.

Nik’s from Dallas, Oregon and if she wants something she can find it. First it’s just the adderall ( she won’t be going back to the VA or any other doctor for that matter, they don’t know what the world is really like and she doesn’t know how to live in theirs ). It migrates to other things depending on the severity of her pain that day. Some days she just wants to feel something other than the hell she’s made for herself. It turns out that heroes are Greek tragedies more oft than they are GI Joes. At least methamphetamines can make that reality a little more dull around the sharp edges ( they really do cut too deep ).

L I F E D U R I N G T H E O U T B R E A K:

Ethel passes away and Nik shoots up for the first time, assaults her dad while hallucinating and confused ( it’s not him she thinks, but an imposter sent to harm her ), and is brought it for meth induced psychosis during the outbreak and locked in seclusion. Her dad is treated for a laceration to his eyebrow ( he’s lucky ) and doesn’t press charges. Instead he goes to Ethel’s grave with a bottle of her favorite wine and cries himself to sleep. Ethel would’ve loved the sunflowers he sets on her grave. By the time he wakes up to the chaos, the petals are wilted and stuck with a cold sweat to his cheek.

Nik doesn’t remember much when she finally settles down–something about some guy named Raul hassling her, a concern that her mother is really alive and is stealing her money, and something about aliens and the ‘fake army’ or some crazy shit. Dirty, short cut nails dig through the paper scrubs they’ve changed her into and Nik ignores the sensation, which feels weaker than shame and stronger than any sense of self she might’ve had in awhile ( it’s hard to know yourself, when your mother hasn’t known you in years ).

After the Zyprexa wears off, she finds herself looking out the small plexiglass window through streaks of blood. Eyes play tricks on her–the mind plays tricks–and it took a long time before she realized what she saw and two days before help arrived on the vengeful wings of Azrael ( an angel of death ). The staff is gone. No nurses, none of the techs, no security or doctors…hell, not even another poor soul stuck in the room across from her.

It’s a day and a half before the men come. They’re tall and broad shouldered men with hard eyes–the kind that don’t have creases in the corners ( men who never smile ). She’s starting to feel normal again, but run down–exhausted. The men aren’t unkind, but they don’t let her out either. They’re the kind of survivalists she expects were prepared for this sort of thing. If they believe her about having served their country, they don’t care ( men like them aren’t interested in supporting the troops unless they can leverage them as some sort of agenda ). She listens, says little, and doesn’t mind that they don’t trust her or let her out. There’s hints of the outside world, others fill up the two other secure rooms. They’re other people deemed untrustworthy. Nik figures she can’t trust them either. Some of them look like they’ve been dead for weeks.

It’s months that she’s locked up with no explanation. She figures it’s because they can’t trust her. She can see the seclusion signs on the other doors. It’s clear by the paper scrubs and the foam mattress that she wasn’t able to be trusted before whatever happened happened. It’s months before she notices the infighting on her regular trip to the bathroom under armed guard. In the other room one of the men is standing halfway in the door. Inside something inhuman snarls and screams. It sounds like a cougar and sets the hairs on the back of her neck on edge before she hears the man put a bullet in whatever it was. The screaming stops.

L I F E A F T E R T H E O U T B R E A K:

Men fight and things fall apart ( the center cannot hold, as Yeats would say ). Whoever her captors or protectors are, they don’t last long. A coup takes place. She’s seen the threads of it being woven over several months, biding her time. If she can wait in the fucking Iraqi sun then she sure as hell can survive this tomb. The guards are spread fewer–farther between–and soon they only send one. She’s never caused them trouble before ( has she? )–silent listener, cooperative and calm. She dispatches the man with the same ease, a muscle memory from long ago. She doesn’t save his life; if he’d wanted to save hers, he would’ve let her out a long time ago. It’s not until she gets outside that she wonders if she was wrong.

The shock of the world she’d missed fall apart spilled from her lips like a last meal. There’s nothing so shocking as having spent an eternity inside a box only to find your home set to ruin. Nik goes home, but her dad’s long gone. She thinks maybe he could’ve survived. It’s hard to tell anymore. The sick lump in her stomach hardens like cement as she remembers their last moments together. She’ll never get another chance to make it right, but she sure as shit knows she’ll never touch crank again.

Nikita is hypervigilant, claustrophobic, but stoic. Her anxieties are hidden well–an internal panic that she hides behind a strong face. A black woman in the military, she has lost any shred of the privilege of vulnerability. Dallas, Oregon was hardly kinder to her than Cheyenne, Wyoming. After escaping the hospital, Nik cut all of her hair off and did her best to disguise herself so that she could travel alone with less trouble from the living ( unwilling to become another prisoner ). Hair grows and roots do too. Cheyenne doesn’t promise her anything, but she needs the structure of a real place; she’s never known who she was without structure.

#sonequa martin green #rp #rpg #zombie rp #zombie rpg #a.#f.#30 #rogue.#bea.#nikita charles.

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duaneodavila · 6 years

Text

The Valenti Mystique

One of the shrillest and least rational of voices for feminism emits from Jessica Valenti’s fingertips. Yet, even Valenti has the occasional point.

On Thursday, Gina Haspel, President Trump’s choice to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, was confirmed by the Senate, making her the first woman in that position. That same day, Fox News announced that Suzanne Scott would be the company’s first female chief executive.

There is a distinct lack of feminist celebration over these women ascending in these jobs — an absence that Republicans have criticized as hypocrisy. Shouldn’t we feminists be pleased by these shattered glass ceilings?

Stop it. You have to wait for Valenti’s answer before you can start screaming at the screen that she’s full of it.

While groundbreaking in the literal sense, there is nothing feminist about a woman who oversaw a site where detainees were tortured, someone who refuses to say whether she believes torture is immoral. In the same way, there is nothing “empowering” about Ms. Scott, a media executive who reportedly enforced a “miniskirt rule” for female on-air talent, and who was cited in two lawsuits for contributing to a toxic work environment and retaliating against a sexual harassment victim. (Ms. Scott has denied these reports and the lawsuits were settled.)

So feminism isn’t to be taken literally? There’s a lot of that going around.

Feminism isn’t about blind support for any woman who rises to power. The real political duplicity here is Republicans’ continued efforts to co-opt feminist language while actively curtailing women’s rights.

And Valenti is right. Not so much about the concept of feminism, about equality, agency and opportunity, but about what it’s morphed into in its latest iteration. Valenti’s feminism has no more to do with women than torture has to do with feminism.

You cannot be a feminist and support an immigration policy of taking children away from undocumented immigrant mothers. You cannot be a feminist and go along with the White House’s newly announced domestic gag rule, a mandate that would withhold funding from any health care center that helps patients find abortion services.

When second-wave feminists sought the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, the goal was equality for women, without regard to where that would take them. They understood they could end up dead on a battlefield. They understood they could lose their children to their husband. They understood they could be the breadwinners while hubby changed diapers. That was what equality meant, and it covered the good and the bad, but it was equal.

Valenti’s flavor of feminism has nothing to do with equality.

The good news is that real feminism is doing better than ever. Millions of women marched across the country in response to Mr. Trump’s election, more feminist-minded women are running for office, and younger women are increasingly passionate about social justice. This is a direct result of the last decade of feminist work.

And what Valenti calls “real feminism” is an ideological bundle wrapped up in rationalization for special treatment for the favored. Like New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, it evokes a belief that women, at least the ones who aren’t feminist pariahs, are inherently above reproach.

If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters we might not have had the financial collapse.

Because women can’t be greedy, can’t be foolish, can’t be crazy. Unless they fail to adhere to Valenti’s ideology. There are smart women and less smart women, rational women and less rational women. Just like men. Just like everyone. There are women who proclaim their feminism, from Christina Hoff Summers to Cathy Young, but their feminism isn’t Valenti’s feminism, so they are traitors to the cause.

And that’s what Valenti gets right in her op-ed explaining why the mere fact that the success of Gina Haspel and Suzzanne Scott in rising to positions of prominence aren’t proper celebrations of feminism, just because their women.

Feminism isn’t about blind support for any woman who rises to power.

For those of us who supported equality for women long before most of today’s feminists were born, who understood that it came with benefits and detriments, because that’s what equality brought to the table, and were prepared to suffer the consequences of equality as well as the freedom it provided women, Valenti’s feminism is a betrayal of every strong, tough, smart woman who burned her bra, got an education, braved bad elevator jokes and would not let the boys crush her dreams.

No, Valenti is right. It’s not about blind support for women, it’s about blind adherence to an ideology that forgives women their shortcomings and rationalizes away the weaknesses rather than applauds their strengths. That’s today’s wave of feminism, and Valenti is certainly a fine choice of role model for it.

There was no Lehman Sisters back when the House folded. There’s still no Lehman Sisters today, but at least now we have an excuse for it, and if you challenge the excuse, you’re just a misogynist or self-loathing woman suffering from internalized misogyny. Feminism once aspired to roar. Now it aspires to cry. Valenti’s feminism is grounded in excuses, which makes her the right spokesperson for the time.

Because if feminism means applauding “anything a woman does” — even hurting other women — then it means nothing.

She nailed it.

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selgraysons · 7 years

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i really love how Riverdale took the characters from the Archie Comics, modernized them and added the gritty murder factor, making the show somewhat how I imagined a modern and gritty Scooby Doo (Netflix? CW? ABC?) television show. Much like Mystery Incorporated, a different monster each episode but have a serial format with an ongoing story arc.

It would be set in 2017 Coolsville, Ohio. The gang are celebrating their final year of High School, their senior year, but things get strange when residents of their beloved town start disappearing and monsters, ghosts and ghouls start appearing and menacing the town. Luckily for the residents of Coolsville, the best supernatural detectives in the tri-state area are on the case. Mystery Incorporated, a ragtag group of teenage sleuths, will discover the hidden truth behind the missing townies and the newly appearing monsters. The crime-solving gang includes Fred, the fearless leader; Daphne, the resourceful one; Velma, the brains behind the group; Shaggy, the best friend; and Scooby-Doo, their trustworthy Great Dane. With this team together, these 'supernatural' criminals do not stand a chance, and they'll discover the mystery that lies hidden in Coolsville.

CASTING!

Freddie Stroma as Fred Jones;

Oblivious to the fact Daphne has a crush on him.

Van is a Chevy G10 from his father.

Holland Roden as Daphne Blake;

Has a crush on Fred.

Parents disapprove of her friends.

Ellen Page as Velma Dinkley;

Bisexual and in the closet.

Has a 4.0 grade point average.

Andrew Garfield as Shaggy Rogers;

Hardcore stoner.

Vast culinary skills.

Frank Welker as Scooby Doo;

Real dog with CGI talking.

Only the gang can understand him.

SUPPORTING CAST!

Kiersey Clemons as Marcie West;

Out and proud lesbian.

Jealous of the gang.

Emilia Clarke as Delilah Blake;

Graduated from Coolsville High School at only fifteen.

Nurse at St. Bernard's Memorial Hospital.

Ana De Armes as Camila Wallace;

Pining after Fred.

Self-proclaimed Queen Bee at Coolsville High School.

Ryan Potter as Tashiro Sudarso;

Goes by Tash for short.

Shaggy's smoking buddy.

Jordan Calloway as Ethan Dempsey;

Pining for Daphne.

He was held back a year.

PARENTS CAST!

Freddie Prinze Jr. & Sarah Michelle Gellar as Fred's parents.

Fred Jones, Sr. | Mayor of Coolsville.

Judy Jones | Stay at home mother.

Kevin McKidd & Jessica Chastain as Daphne's parents.

Dan Blake | CEO of Blake Consolidated.

Dorothy Blake | Real Estate Agent.

Nolan North and Linda Cardellini as Velma's parents.

Dale Dinkley | Coolsville Bank Branch Manager.

Pam Dinkley | Coolsville Police Department Intern.

Matthew Lillard and Paige Turco as Shaggy's parents.

Casey Rogers | Police Officer.

Pam Rogers | Manager at Rogers Malt Shoppe.

#scooby doo #warner bros #riverdale #sd #TV show

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