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sprnklersplashes · 3 years

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songwriter!janis fic (unrequited crush, no-very-happy-ending)

also on ao3

It all started because she loved Taylor Swift when she was in middle school. Who is she kidding, she still loves Taylor Swift, but that’s where all this began. A middle school girl’s obsession with Taylor Swift. A confused, sad girl with a broken heart and smudged black eyeliner, finding refuge in lyrics about loneliness and anger and revenge. They became anthems for her, mantras to mutter when the warzone of middle school became too much for her.

“Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city, and all you’re ever gonna be is mean.”

“Cause I knew you were trouble when you walked in.”

“I can still see you, this ain’t the best view.”

It amazes her. It’s honestly as if Taylor Swift has managed to look into her life and given her a bundle of songs for whatever she needs. For when Regina has thrown her one too many snide looks, for when she’s standing at the door of North Shore High on her first day, for when she eats lunch alone, for when her mom is the best mom she could have asked for, for when she and Damian are lying on the grass in her backyard, staring up at the sky, laughing at absolutely nothing. The songs become the soundtrack to her life, the chords and those raw, honest lyrics an emotional outlet she so desperately craves. Taylor, and her songs, become a confidant, almost a close friend who always knows what to say.

With all that in mind, perhaps it was only a matter of time before she asks for a guitar for Christmas. She’s fourteen, braces and a slight lisp, and jumps up and down like a mad woman when she sees it under the tree.

She practices for three days straight, until her fingers bleed, but Should’ve Said No is the first song she learns off by heart. She yells the lyrics with maybe a little too much passion, but her parents applaud her nonetheless.

Like she said, that’s how it all started.

Because that same Christmas, she realises that screaming her feelings while playing guitar actually feels pretty cathartic. And that if it worked for Taylor Swift, it could work for her. So she writes stuff down, plays around with chords and strumming until the beat on the guitar matches the one in her head. She grabs a page and a pencil and writes and re-writes her innermost thoughts and feelings on the page until they sound the way she wants them to. She plays around with rhyme schemes and structure and everything she’s been taught about in English class, and a thrill runs through her as she does so. It’s the same breathless high she feels when she paints or draws, the rush that comes from creating something.

Her parents sit on the other side of her bedroom door, no doubt exchanging worried glances as she repeats the same verse, same chorus, with only a word changed. She watches them when they think she can’t see, peering through the crack in her door. The conclusion they seem to come to is ‘well, as coping mechanisms go, it’s pretty good, and she’s happy, so who are we to stop it?’.

It takes her four days to finish her first song. And it sucks. But she keeps it, writes down the lyrics and chords in one of the few empty notebooks she has, and there’s no going back from it now. She writes, and she writes, and she writes, near enough every day. She likes to think she gets better with each one. She learns more chords, buys a cheap ukulele the summer after freshman year, tries her hand at piano during a particularly difficult few weeks. She doesn’t plan on doing anything with them. They’re just her little pieces to hold on to. Her therapy sessions outside the carpeted office.

No-one knows about it. She has a reputation to keep up, after all. The loner-by-choice, too-cool-for-school, aloof art freak. Everyone has their roles to play in the ecosystem that is high school and, much as she hates the entire system, that is hers to play. And she plays it well, if she may say so. The fact that hardly anyone knows her past that facade suits her just fine. After all, if people think she doesn’t care, she can’t get hurt. No-one needs to know that Janis Sarkisian actually has feelings.

Even less need to know that she writes songs about said feelings.

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By the time she reaches her junior year, she’s onto her third notebook. She keeps them tucked away in her sock drawer, expertly hidden so only she can find them. Damian teases her about it, calling her “the protagonist of a Disney Channel Original Movie”. She just rolls her eyes and reminds him that “if either of us is gonna be Disney’s first openly gay character, it’ll be you”. He can’t argue with that.

It should be noted that when Janis said that no-one knows about her songwriting, Damian was the obvious exception. He found out just weeks after she started. There’s no keeping secrets from him.

Between all her notebooks, she’s written around forty songs.

Then she meets Cady Heron one day. The human embodiment of a labrador puppy, complete with wide, lost eyes. She likes her instantly, decides to take her under her wing because Lord knows the girl needs it. Cady’s smile is infectious, her laugh like a summer breeze. She has dimples and caramel-coloured hair and really likes maths.

She meets Cady on a Monday.

By that Saturday, song number 41-titled “Dimples and Curls” is more or less complete.

She plays it for Damian, hands only slightly shaking as she changes chords, the strumming short and upbeat, the melody strangely happy for such a bittersweet song.

He applauds her, but the subject of the song hangs in the air even after she’s played the last chord and the music fades. Unsaid, but not unknown. Just like her songwriting, Janis couldn’t keep a crush from Damian if she tried.

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“Hey, check it out.”

Cady drops onto the seat across from Janis, the whole table shaking as she does so. Like a small meteor just hit Earth. Janis looks up from her lunch, pretending like she had been doing her own thing and not watching the door until Cady came in. Pretending like her stomach doesn’t do little flips at the sight of her crossing the cafeteria. She pulls the flyer towards her and hums in amusement.

“The winter talent show,” she reads before chomping off a carrot stick. “Oh, is it that time of year already?”

“Seems like only yesterday we was welcoming the young’uns into this brave new world during the harvest season,” Damian sighs, putting on a delightfully over the top Southern Belle accent, no doubt influenced by their reading of Streetcar Named Desire in English class. Janis cackles, and nearly chokes on her lunch as she does.

“And now the cold winds of winter are descending upon us,” she replies, her accent equally heavy. She bats her eyes for good measure, because she can and because it makes Cady laugh. “Oh but I pray the children will survive this season, it is often rough for them.”

“I am never showing you two anything winter related ever again,” Cady says.

Janis just shrugs and runs her hand through her hair before her eyes go back to the flyer. Clearly, whatever sophomore they got to design it this year did their best; found the prettiest looking snowflakes on Google Images to put on the cartoon stage, decided to write in some swirling, slanted font rather than the start-studded block lettering they usually went for. It’s still the same as it is every year, meaning just as mockable, but she’ll give them points for tying.

“Well, anyone here going for it?” she asks. She looks from Damian to Cady and back again, a teasing smirk on her lips. “Last year and all that.”

“Not sure I can,” Damian sighs. “I mean, I’m booked up with Spelling Bee rehearsals and spring cabaret auditions happening next semester.” He drums his fingers against his throat. “Gotta give the little vocal chords some rest, you know?”

Janis’ response is to sing the lowest note she possibly can before turning to Cady and giving her a pointed look, the corner of her mouth quirked up.

“Who? Me?” Cady’s cheeks turned crimson and she shakes her head so much that the caramel curls bounced around her shoulders. “No way. Damian can take the stage, I’m fine with my calculators and textbooks.”

“You could always solve equations in front of everyone,” Janis says. “I could call out college-level questions from the audience and you solve them in under 30 seconds.”

“I think I’ll pass,” she giggles. She leans forward slightly, eyes glittering, and Janis does her best not to squirm. The effect Cady Heron’s eyes have on her should be studied by scientists. “What about you, Janis?”

“I don’t know.” She thinks back to when she helped on stage crew last year, as well as helping out (or taking over) with the set design. It had been fun, the kind of challenge she needed to keep her mind off the slowly-going-off-the-rails plan. And she was told it looked good on her college applications, because all people can think about apparently is college, college, college. “Maybe. They might need another genius stage manager.”

“And you’ll step in if they can’t find one?” She digs Damian in the ribs for that comment.

“But not performing?” Cady asks, and Janis freezes. Performing had never even crossed her mind before. She’s used to backstage, hell, she likes backstage. It’s not that she has stage fright or anything, and if she had, her stunt at Ms Norbury’s little healing session would have squished it. She had just never thought about it.

But Cady had, apparently.

“I-No, I-I don’t think so,” she stammers out. “Um, I might do backstage again, but not actually doing something, you know, talent related.” She bites her tongue and clamps her lips shut before anything else can come out.

“Okay then,” Cady replies slowly. She gets up from the table, her little empty water bottle in her hands. “I’m going to go for a refill, save my seat.”

“No problem,” Janis says, but Cady’s already jogging away.

She doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that Cady’s known her too long to think of her as cool, and so this kind of awkward babbling isn’t really surprising to her. Instead of thinking about it, she just sets her head on the table and lets Damian rub her back.

“You were nowhere near as bad as you think you were,” he assures her.

“Title of your sex tape,” comes her murmured reply. Damian chuckles and runs his fingers through her hair, like she’s his pet cat. It helps.

“So you’re definitely not going for the talent show then?” he asks.

Her first instinct is to say no, because of course she isn’t, because she never has before and she sees no point in breaking a three-year streak, but the answer catches in her throat. At the same time, something begins forming in her brain, pieces of a melody she’s already known, words filling in blank spots in her brain, and her fingers twitch involuntarily, playing the chords on an invisible guitar. Without a word, she grabs a notepad and pen from her bag and scribbles the words down before she forgets them, quickly becoming breathless just by sitting there. She forgets, for a moment, everything else, the talent show, Cady, even Damian next to her, and just revels in the task and the quick buzz she gets just from writing. Just like that she has one eye on the clock, itching to get home and put her notes into the rest of the song.

But with those notes came an idea, an idea so completely out of left field she almost laughs at it.

“Janis?” Damian asks, just slightly unnerved by her. If anyone else were at this table, even Cady (especially Cady), she would have had to excuse herself and run to the bathroom, or just hope the words stayed in her head long enough for her to get a quiet moment. “Did the Goddess of Music just possess you again?”

“Maybe,” is her response. He doesn’t know it, but she answered both the questions he asked in the past minute.

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She sits on her bed that night, her homework half-done and strewn across the desk, abandoned in favour of the guitar sitting in her lap and notebook open on her bed. She’s been working on his song for the better part of a week, inspiration and motivation seemingly striking and then fading whenever she gets a free moment. Abandoning it has crossed her mind-she’s no stranger to abandoning things that aren’t working-but for some reason she hasn’t quite been able to shake this particular song off.

Maybe it is Euterpe, the Goddess of Music, descending upon her because this song has to be finished, it has to be, Olympus willing it so.

Or maybe it’s because this song is one of the most personal things she’s ever written, a love letter she’ll never send, and the idea of it sitting unfinished drives her crazy.

She plays another chord and sings the line again, changing the ending slightly, and makes the adjustment in her notes.

She’s crazy. This is already crazy, her secret double life as a wannabe T-Swift, but now she’s gone beyond that. Thinking of actually playing it. On a stage. In front of people. She doesn’t care what people think of her, she stopped caring about that a long, long time ago, but holy shit what will people think of her after she does this? Life isn’t like the movies, she knows that much. It won’t be some pretty, softly-lit moment where the crowd sits with teary eyes, Cady runs onstage and kisses her and she’s offered a deal by some big shot producer, and they all live happily ever after the end. What could happen is people think she’s even more of a weirdo than they do now.

Or she gets tomatoes thrown at her head and she’s booed off the stage. That’s a possibility.

She calls Damian, because that’s the only way she sees out of her little thought cul-de-sac. She puts the phone on speaker and props it up against a pillow, keeping her hands free for her guitar and her pen. He picks up on the third ring, just as she’s strumming out a G chord.

“Oh, is someone prepping for her Grammy?” he asks. “You’re still taking me as your date, right?”

“Only if my dog can’t go,” she replies. She taps her nails against the wood, the rhythm too fast and frantic to just be a habit. Yes, she can tell Damian anything, and being nervous in front of him is laughable, but sometimes her body forgets that. “So, I was thinking about the talent show.”

“Oh? You’re going for stage crew again? Cool.”

“No-not exactly.” She knows he can’t see the smile creeping across her face, but she’d wager he can hear it through the phone. A small swarm of butterflies flutters in her chest, leaving her just slightly out of breath. “I… I. think I’m going to try performing in it.”

A burst of laughter comes through the phone, slightly tinged with static, and Janis wishes he were here so she could slap him. Even if it’s not malicious in intent at all, and she’s laughing right along with him. Slapping is kind of a love language for them.

“Okay, okay cool. What’re you going to do?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” she says, and then she plays the opening chords to her latest experiment. She doesn’t add in the lyrics, not yet. Still, she sits back and basks in his applause when she finishes, cackling into her hand. He might be one person, but he’s got enough enthusiasm to match a packed auditorium. “What do you think?”

“I’m into it,” he tells her. “So… that’s the one you’re doing?”

“Think so.” She tosses the pick between her fingers. Like he could feel her smile, she can feel his raised eyebrow through the phone, the elephant in the room poking her with its trunk. “Yes, I know.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it,” she tells him, and he doesn’t deny it. She looks back over the lyrics she’s written and re-written. Despite some adjustments, it’s still in essence the same. Still about a girl with pretty hair who smells like vanilla and cinnamon, who has a boyfriend and is unknowingly breaking the heart of a girl with black eyeliner and paint stained fingers. Because her boyfriend is pretty and clean and smells like soap and can do math, and how is the poor art girl even meant to compare to that?

“Yes,” she says after a while. “It is about Cady.”

“Aw, my poor lovestruck songstress,” he sighs. He shifts then, and the air shifts with him. “You sure that’s the one you want to sing? I mean you have dozens of other non-Cady related songs. I’m sure Mr Duvall would love to hear Angry Teenage Lesbian Anthem.”

“First off, I gave that one a title, it’s called Shattered,” she reminds him. “And-” She freezes, the rest of her sentence catching in her throat. He’s right. She could perform one of her other songs, that are already finished and therefore removing the pressure to have this one finished, polished and stage-ready. And of course, it would mean she wouldn’t be standing in front of her entire grade and telling them all how badly she’s in love with her best friend. Showing her deepest secret to the people who have already driven her out of school once. It’s a far safer, potentially less traumatic option for her.

But…

“No,” she says. “I know it sounds crazy but I feel like… I feel like I need to do this.” She swallows thickly and picks softly at the guitar strings. “It’s like… like this way at least I’m telling her, you know? Even if she doesn’t know it.”

Of course, Damian gets it.

“That’s beautiful, babe,” he tells her. “So you’re actually doing this?”

“I’m actually doing this,” she replies firmly. “And tomorrow, I need you to make sure I don’t chicken out before I sign up.”

“Got it. I’ll just order you to do it as Senior Co-Chair of the Student Activities Committee.”

“That’s an abuse of power.”

“Then consider yourself abused baby.” He laughs and she laughs with him, and then she hears something on Damian’s end. “I have to go. A certain little sister of mine has a princess costume that needs attending to. See you later.”

“See you later,” she replies before he clicks off the call. She looks down at her paper, then at her guitar, and thinks about what she just committed to. “I’ve got some work to do.”

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The song goes through four rewrites in the weeks leading up to the talent show. The whole first verse is changed, the chorus scrapped and replaced with a new one, then that one is scrapped and she goes back to the old one. She sits hunched on her floor with a pencil in her mouth, wondering if what she’s written is too personal or not personal enough. If it’s too obvious that Cady, smart cookie that she is, will work it out and that’ll lead them down a new, scary path. She cuts some lyrics that give the game away, opting to replace one about love for numbers with love for learning, because that opens up the pool to half their grade. She writes about Cady’s blue eyes rather than specifically those double dimples that make her melt. Maybe she’s compromising her artistic vision, but it might be worth it if it’ll keep her crush a secret. She keeps the old lyrics tucked in the back of her notebook, just to have them.

Meanwhile, she’s also dealing with the fact that people know she has signed up for the talent show. That Miss Too Cool For School Loner Art Freak Janis is actually performing at a school event. And she doesn’t even get extra credit for it. They’re surprised, and curious, and none more so than Cady. The other girl appears at her side almost instantly after first period, skinny little arms wrapped around her bicep and blue eyes alight.

Oh, the things those eyes do to her.

“Janis!” she squeaks. “I saw-on the sign up sheet-your name! Oh my God, is this a joke? Did Damian put you up to it?”

“No, no, I signed up of my own accord,” Janis tells her. That only makes Cady bounce more, ponytail bobbing up and down.

“Oh wow, that’s amazing!” she says. She stops then, her mouth freezing in its place and her cheeks turning pink. Slowly, she comes down to Earth, like a balloon that had the air let out of it. Janis can almost hear the wheeze. “I mean um, it’s pretty cool, I guess.”

“It’s pretty grool,” Janis replies, and just like that Cady bounces back up again.

“Oh my gosh, what are you going to do?” she asks. “Or do you want it to be a surprise?”

“You think I have some secret knife-throwing talent?” she grins. She hesitates for a moment, looking down at Cady’s excited face, because even if this isn’t telling her… it’s telling her. “I’m… I’m going to sing.” She pulls on the strap of her backpack and avoids Cady’s eyes. “Something I wrote.”

“Okay,” Cady says. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”

“Hey!” she laughs. “I can write stuff. I can be deep.”

“Oh, I have no doubt about it,” Cady says, bumping her arm against Janis’. “But for real, Janis, I can’t wait to see it. I know you’ll be amazing.”

Warmth spreads across her pale cheeks, a pink blush no doubt colouring her face, and she somehow manages to choke out a “thanks” as her brain turns to static. Her only thought is ‘Cady thinks I’m going to be good’, and it’s written in glitter pen across her brain.

“This is going to be great,” she goes on. “Oh, wait until I tell Aaron. He’s got a break in his schedule that week so he’s coming up to see the talent show! Isn’t that great?”

And just like that, Janis’ good mood falls. Her face stays the same, because she’s trained to do it, but everything behind it crumbles.

“Yeah, that’s great,” she replies. Cady squeezes her hand, oblivious, and drags her along the hallway, chatting away about some lion documentary she had watched last night.

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She finishes the song that night. She arrives home with a heavy chest, so full of complicated, messy feelings, and her conversation with Cady still so fresh in her mind, her ears still ringing from the emotional whiplash. Her parents barely get a ‘hello’ as she enters and bolts up to her room, her hands shaking, the thoughts swirling around her brain desperate to be let out.

And let them out she does. She writes so quickly they look more like smudges than words, her fingers flying over rapidly changing chords, her voice broken and panting as she sings. The words almost write themselves, like the song has taken on a life of its own and she’s just along for the ride. She barely remembers to pause, to breathe, so wrapped up in the storm she’s created with just her guitar and pen.

It’s only when she finishes and falls back on her bed that she notices the tears in her eyes. She blinks them away and pulls herself up, her notebook in her hand. It’s done. The perfect blend of her own honest feelings and just enough smokescreen to keep people from knowing who it’s really about.

There’s no backing out now, she thinks. Her stomach drops, like she’s on the top of a roller coaster about to go down. A laugh bubbles up in her throat and leaves her breathless, her head spinning while she’s still laying there.

If holy shit were am adjective, she'd use it to describe how she feels. Because holy shit.

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Being backstage when she’s not on crew is a strange experience. She stands with her guitar slung around her body, in the middle of a current of students moving around her, half with the clunky microphones and walkie-talkies she’s used so many times before. She asks five of them if she can do anything to help-because they’re her people and she needs to do something to occupy her time-until she finally takes the hint and leaves them to it. Stagehands are the most efficient parts of any production, as she told Damian once. They’re a well-oiled machine at this point.

“Yo!” For a second, Janis thinks she imagined the whisper, just one in a jumble of backstage noises, until Damian appears at her side. A tiny ‘shit’ escapes her mouth, her body jerking. Barely anyone bats an eye at her, except him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you.”

“Don’t worry. I think at this point a small breeze could knock into me and I’d crumble.”

“The great Janis Sarkisian gets nervous?” he asks, eyebrow raised.

“Only when she’s doing something incredibly personal and scary in front of her entire grade,” she whispers back. She swallows past the lump in her throat. “Aside from that I’m a beacon of confidence and unshakable will.”

“Hey.” He taps his knuckles against hers. “Remember how scared you were at Norbury’s assembly?”

“You mean after I had my picture all over the school with the d-slur written underneath it?” she mutters. “Yeah, I was shitting myself.”

“And yet, look what you did there,” he reminds her. “You were amazing. And you’re going to be amazing here too. Once you get on that stage, all those butterflies are going to make you fly, kid.”

She smiles, her heart warm, and pressed her face into the crook of Damian’s neck.

She doesn’t know how she got so lucky to have him, but she knows better than to tempt fate.

“Janis Sarkisian?” She lifts her head to find a freshman girl with a headset around her neck looking at her. “You’re up next.”

“Okay.” It’s only now she becomes aware that the last minute of Fairytale Of New York is playing, the notes will soon fade out, and that’s her cue. She turns to Damian and lets him straighten her black cardigan and fiddle with the collar of her shirt. “Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it.” He drops a whisper of a kiss to her nose. “But good luck.”

She holds her half-heart necklace as he goes, the twin to the one around his neck. It’s as close as she can get to having him with her. Her chest tightens as she makes her way to the stage and she tries to breathe through it, because the next thign she knows, Mr Duvall is announcing her name, and she’s being greeted by a blinding spotlight that thankfully obscures most of her peers’ faces.

“Uh, hi,” she says into the microphone placed out for her. It’s just people , she reminds herself. Somewhere in that crowd, second row, seat 14, is Damian, and she breathes easier. And next to him is Cady, the girl this song is about, and for some reason that straightens her spine and irons out the shaking in her voice. She takes the pick out of its holder and tosses her hair back. “This is a song I wrote about being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back.” She blinks and hopes no-one sees the tears in her eyes. “So sing along if you get into it, because we all know it’s a shitty ass feeling.”

She plays the first chord, and then any and all doubts she had about this flee her. As cliche as it sounds, the song takes over her, and she blows through the nerves in the first verse. The experience becomes cathartic instead, like releasing a pressure valve on her soul. Even with the little diversions she threw in, she hasn’t felt this open and god damn free since last year, paraded on her peers’ shoulders with both middle fingers up. Except now she’s not flipping anyone off, or proving a point, she’s just finally telling someone how she feels, and holy shit, it’s amazing. Whatever the aftermath of this is, she won’t care, it’s worth it just for this feeling.

As she sings the last word, and that final note rings in the auditorium, her hands are shaking, her cheeks wet with tears and her hair sticky with sweat. She touches beneath her eye and her fingers come away stained black. She hasn’t cried in front of people since middle school. She doesn’t care.

The cheers of her classmates ring in her ears, Damian’s whooping the loudest of all, and as she takes her bow, she hopes she’ll remember this moment for a long time.

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“Oh my God!” she’s barely into the auditorium when Cady launches herself at her, arms wrapped around her neck and legs circling her waist. Janis nearly topples over, digging her back leg into the ground just in time, and hugs Cady with the same ferocity. “You were amazing!” she yells into her shoulder, the sound muffled by Janis’ hair.

“Really?”

“Absolutely.” She sets Cady down, but the other girl keeps a tight grip on both her arms. Janis wonders if it’s to keep herself from flying away, given the amount of bouncing up and down she’s doing. “I can’t believe you wrote that! It was so good! You need to record it, Jan. Do you have any other songs?”

“Just a few,” she says. “And I don’t know if I’m in the business of making an album any time soon.” She swings her guitar case a little. “This might have been a one-time thing.”

“Well, even if it was, it was awesome,” she says.

“Thank you, Caddy,” Janis replies. “That means a lot.”

Her mouth runs dry as Cady smiles, all baby pink lipgloss and sparkling eyes and full cheeks. If this were a movie, she thinks, this would be the part where they kiss. No need for talking, or an explanation. Because Cady would have just known. The music would turn soft and twinkly, and the lighting would match it and it would look like they’re in a dream and they’d just kiss, and it will fix all of Janis’ problems. Maybe a single tear will run down her cheek. And then they’ll run off into their new lives as the end credits roll.

How sweet that would be.

But her life isn’t a movie. If she wants anything, she has to go for it herself.

And that includes-

“Caddy.” Her name is delicate on her lips, handled with care. Cady looks at her, giving a simple ‘mm-hm’ in response, and Janis’ heart beats out of control. “That song I just sang, it-”

“Hey, guys.”

Also if this was a movie, Cady’s sweet, lovely, nice boyfriend would not be barging in right now. He’d either be a douchebag who she doesn’t feel bad about hurting, or he’d be nonexistent.

Unfortunately, this is not a movie, and Aaron Samuels exists and is the human equivalent of a squishmallow.

“Hey Aaron.” He slings his arm around Cady’s shoulders, and she leans into his touch almost instinctively. “Janis, you were great up there. I didn’t know you wrote songs.”

“It’s a bit of a new hobby,” she says, her voice hoarse. She clears her throat, and finds a bottle of water being handed to-thrown at-her.

“Hydrate those chords,” is Damian’s greeting.

“This is what I get for being friends with a theatre kid,” she sighs before she takes a drink. She hadn’t realised how dry her throat was until now.

“Okay, so we’re all going for pancakes,” Aaron says. “I take it you two are coming?”

“How can I say no to pancakes?” Janis asks. “Uh, you guys go ahead, I have to get my stuff from the green room.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for you,” Cady says. “Aaron brought his car so he can drive us.”

“Grool.” Cady and Aaron turn around together, Aaron spinning his eyes around his finger and Cady lacing her fingers through his, talking about something she can’t hear. It’s like watching them through a sheet of glass.

Not a movie. Not unless it’s one of those really, really sad movies. Sad homophobic movies.

“You okay?” Damian asks. She snorts at the question. Nothing has changed, so of course she’s okay. But then, nothing has changed, so she’s not really okay.

“I did it,” she sighs. “It’s out there. I told her, unofficially. Whether or not she works it out…” She runs her hand through her tangled hair. “That’s something else entirely.” Damian hums in agreement, a sympathetic look on his face that soon morphs into a grin.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks Mom.” They snort, Janis caught between a laugh and a sob, and squeezes Damian’s hand. She’s not optimistic about any romance in her future, at least where Cady is concerned. She and Aaron are still rock-solid and she’s happy for them, whenever she isn’t angsting about it. It’s a weird combination to have.

And at least she’s done this now. Despite a future for her and Cady not being in the cards for now, she’s glad she did it. The secret isn’t out, not entirely. Just written on the walls in invisible ink.

“Come on,” she tells Damian. “I actually do have to get my bag, and you can use this as an opportunity to double check the ghost light is on.”

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Cady and Aaron keep their promise and wait for them, waving off their apologies as they jog across the parking lot. Cady lets Damian take the front seat with Aaron and slides into the back with Janis instead. Janis frowns, confused as to why she isn’t taking her normal seat up front, and Cady rolls her eyes.

“There was a draw on the way here, and we lost,” she explains. “And now Damian has control of the aux chord,” She gestures with her head to the passenger seat, and Janis turns just in time to see him open his Spotify and scroll through his playlists. As the opening notes to Waving Through A Window fill the car, it’s met with three loud groans. Damian only turns it up louder, and adds in his own backing vocals.

“So, that song you sang,” Cady asks, leaning back in the seat. “Was it about anyone in particular?”

Janis looks down, her hands pressed together in her lap. If this is the moment the universe decided to give her, it’s a really terrible moment. Not only is Cady’s whole boyfriend sitting an arm’s length away from her, but she left her nerve back in the auditorium. Clearly, her and fate aren’t on each other’s wavelength.

“You wouldn’t know her,” she says. “She doesn't even go here.”

“Oh,” Cady replies. Her face falls, but she’s not too put out by it. Why would she be? She nudges Janis’ shoulder, a proud smile on her face, and squeezes Janis’ hand. “Well, if she has someone like you into her and she hasn’t taken the chance yet, then she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

Janis only thanks her, and quickly changes the subject.

Someday she might tell her for real, but for now she'll stick to the songs.

#mean girls broadway #mean girls fanfic #cadnis #janis sarkisian #cady heron #cadnis ff #cady x janis #space safari #mean girls musical

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getnight · 3 years

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So, hi, here is the part of my big fic about sons of Mike&Rachel and Harvey&Donna. It's just a little piece. Actually, Chris and Tyler (their sons) are my Original characters, but... I like them) And, yeah, we haven't Marvey at Canon, so i did their children in love. They are cute, I think🌚 Soooo... Maybe you'll be interested. Yeah.

Christopher caught up with Tyler in a few seconds, yanking off his hood and grabbing him lightly by the neck with his forearm. The boy flinched, leaned back and tried to pull his arm away, and when he failed, he tried to fall with his attacker to the side of the road. At that moment, Chris let go.

— Hey, Tyle, take it easy. This is me, — He steadied Tyler from falling and stood beside him, brushing him off.

— You... why did you do that? — Tyler frowned, pulling the headphones out of his ears and pinching a lollipop to his cheek.

— Why are you so cute? You're a formidable genius, but you love lollipops and you frown like you're five instead of fifteen.

— I'm not cute, keep your high energy endorphins with yourself, — Tyler pulled up his hood, turned around, and was about to continue walking when Chris literally dived in front of him, blocking the way.

They faced each other. Chris was literally a centimeter taller, but he had rather broad shoulders, which made him look much bigger than Tyler.

— Hey,— Christopher whispered.

— What? — Tyler replied.

Chris smiled fondly as he pulled back his hood.

— That's better. I love your hair, — he hesitated for a second, then gently took Tyler's hand, the other gently pulling the candy out of Ross' mouth and tugging at his wrist, pulling him into a soft, chaste kiss that Tyler happily responded to. Christopher's other hand went to the back of the boy's head, and he felt long fingers on his waist. When they finally parted, Chris said:

— Good morning, Tyle, — and he smiled sincerely, expecting something like that in return: "Don't call me that”.

— Good morning, Topha, — and the kind of smile that only Tyler Harvey Ross could give. Sincere and pure. The one that no one but those closest to her had ever seen. The one that opened the veil of a brilliant, sullen guy.

The nickname "Topha" seemed strange to Chris. It was indeed a derivative of his name, Christopher, but how Tyler came up with it... no one ever found out. Parents said that as a child, baby Ross could not pronounce Chris ' full name and called him "Topha". And so it turned out. Since then, Tyler only calls his boyfriend that when no one is looking.

Tyler pulled the hood up again. His clothes were no different from what he always wore. Black ripped jeans, a huge black hoodie, and... something had changed that day.

— I'm not going to ask about the paint stain, or what wall you painted on the way here, but do I really see your badge? — Chris stared at the rainbow-colored iron circle attached to the left side of Tyler's chest.

— Exactly one year, three hundred and sixty five days, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty-six hours, five million two hundred and fifty-six thousand minutes ago, I first realized that I was in love with you, — Tyler said calmly.

Christopher choked and blushed. No, no, no, no. Damn, why is he so bad with emotions?

— I'm sorry, I… — Specter whispered, and suddenly felt a warm hand on his cheek.

Tyler looked at him, not affectionately, not solicitously, just calmly.

— It's all right. I know we'll be working on your emotional range, — he said.

— God, — Chris suddenly smiled, — How do you do that? How can you so easily talk about your feelings and understand them, but absolutely not be able to communicate with people? — he abruptly hoisted the thin Tyler onto his shoulder, running ahead of him down the road.

At first there were attempts to resist and shouts that they would be seen, but then the guy just hung on Chris ' back.

— You took my lollipop, by the way, — he mumbled.

— Is that the only thing that bothers you? Christopher laughed.

— No, the fact that you laugh for some reason means that you experience joy, happiness, euphoria, fun or…

The schoolhouse loomed up ahead, and Chris lowered his boyfriend to the ground.

— Here, just shut up, highactivity sociopath, — he said, handing Tyler a lollipop he'd taken from his backpack. Yes, he always had such a supply. It was the most important thing in his things. What Chris checked every day before he left for school. Ever since he had the pocket money. That is, from the age of nine.

Tyler's face lit up with a childlike smile, and he took the candy, opened it, put it in his mouth, and said through it:

— You can't blame my love of Sherlock.

— I'm not blameing.

Tyler's entire room was covered with posters, quote sheets, DVD boxes taped to tape, and other decorations. By the way, the love of watching movies on DVD was instilled in Tyler by Chris ' father.

Christopher never disapproved of posters and things like that, no. Conversely. He thought it was extremely cute. In his room, despite the fact that he had both favorite movies and favorite bands, there was not a single poster. Somehow, he had never been attracted to such a way of designing a room.

A couple in love walked towards the school, holding hands. Tyler, who was always more open with Chris, chatted about how he'd tried to curl his hair again over the weekend, which he did often, and he liked it. Chris, always a sociable bully-athlete in front of everyone and a little modest, relaxed and allowing himself to revel in his mind, not strength, and the mind of the person he talks to, in front of Tyler, listened carefully to his boyfriend, once saying that he wanted to make Tyler's curls himself one day.

Closer to the school, they uncoupled their hands. At school, they are just childhood best friends, close brothers. There may be rumors that will quickly reach the teachers, and from them to the parents. Both Chris and Tyler agreed to hide it from the families at all costs. They didn't know what the reaction and consequences would be, so the longer their relationship was kept secret, the better.

— I have literature, — Tyler said, pulling his hood up again and searching for something in his backpack.

— Math, — Chris said.

— Here. I drew it yesterday. Will you watch it? Tyler waved his hand, closed his backpack, and walked away, putting in his headphones.

Christopher hated painting, drawing, and galleries. But there was one exception. The exception who bore the name was Tyler Harvey Ross. His boyfriend was an incredible artist, he drew a lot of different sketches, gradually a whole pile formed in his desk drawer. These drawings were never shown to anyone other than Chris. Moreover, Specter suspected that even he did not know all of Tyler's works.

— Chris! — a voice called out.

Christopher turned.

— Let's go to class, buddy — said the guy who flew up.

— Where are you going in such a hurry, Jim? Christopher chuckled.

Jim was one of the guys on the football team.

Jim ruffled Chris ' red hair.

— Come on.

They entered the classroom,where there were already quite a few people. Christopher walked past a girl who was eating grapes and brazenly stole one of the berries.

—Thank you, — he chuckled.

The girl said nothing. Everyone is used to it. Chris Specter is a real badass.

The teacher appeared and the bell rang.

When everyone had calmed down, and the rowdy teammates and friends were deep in math, a topic that he and Tyler had gone through with Uncle Mike a year ago, Chris pulled out a drawing, unfolding it.

It was their portrait. Him and Tyler. Just a sketch, not even painted, but Christopher just couldn't look away. The two of them were standing on the pavement of New York City, high-rise buildings behind them, and a car was driving in the foreground. Chris was hanging up the Topha Coffee sign on the stairs. The building he hung it on says "Open," and there are all kinds of cakes and other desserts in the windows. Inside, there are a couple of tables and a counter. On the sides of the picture are depicted tree branches with birds. Tylee himself was standing a little apart from his boyfriend, his index finger outstretched, apparently instructing him on how to hang up the sign. Tyler's self-portrait was perfect. It was the coal-black hair with the little curls, the ice-blue eyes (the eyes of both of them were the only color spots in the drawing), the thick eyebrows, the lean body hidden under a large apron that Chris found charming, wide nose and sharp cheekbones.

Christopher seemed to be busy with the sign, and Tyler was busy with putting it up, but their eyes were only on each other. And there was life in those eyes, real life. Frozen, yes. But it's real. Perhaps such a picture was their dream. Chris wanted to move to New York, and Tyler wanted to open his own cozy little coffee shop with his paintings hanging on the walls.

A couple of times Specter asked his boyfriend if his genius mind would not be bored in such a routine. Tiley just smiled and shook his head. Then Chris realized that the teenager himself did not know. He wants a simple quiet happiness, but at the same time not to lose his mind and genius. He's afraid of society, shuns it, finds it boring and disturbing, but he wants to see people smile when they drink his freshly made coffee or try a piece of that apple pie that Edith Ross, Tyler's great-grandmother, then Uncle Mike, and now Tyler himself, baked. He rushes around, not knowing where to put himself and what to do.

Maybe they should just finish school first and enjoy their youth. And then… Then they will definitely come up with how it will be. They will tell their parents about their relationship, go to university, and who knows what will happen next. We'll see. That was Chris ' opinion.

The bell rang in the hallway, dismissing all the students for recess. Christopher carefully folded the drawing and put it in his pocket. They'll meet at dinner, they always do. And this day will be no exception.

That's what Christopher thought as he walked out of the math room with his friends in his arms. But perhaps this day will be something that will soon change their entire lives and views on her, their family and each other.

#marvey #harvey x mike #darvey #suits usa #mike ross #harvey #donna paulsen #rachel zane

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springfieldblues · 4 years

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my long ass review for S32E03 Now Museum, Now You Don’t

warning: LONG because i rambled about history more than i thought i would

id been looking forward to this one because i like art history, especially after seeing how they tried their best to stick to historical accuracy in the previous episode I, Carumbus. this time however….they didnt try that hard. i dont know why i thought theyd go through that sort of trouble again LMAO

but its okay, i dont really expect the simpsons to be the paragon of historical accuracy or anything. especially in anthology episodes told through a particular character's lens (in this case, lisa, whos already feverish so whatever)

first i just wanna say that this is, i guess, less of a review and more of an accidental list of history fun facts. so im just gonna get my general thoughts out of the way first.

the episode was fun! to me at least haha. i mean it got me to think and do a lot of research on my own so that must count for something. besides a couple of really weird ones, the jokes were good. anthology episodes tend to be….not that good but i thought this one was one of the better ones so far. idk.

anyway on to lisanardo da vinky its the renaissance! jesus christ the italian accents in the beginning of this segment were annoying as hell but i also feel like that was the joke lmao. ill be real i kind of tuned out for a second there when grampa started rambling so idk what he said.

i told myself i wouldnt get nitpicky with historical accuracy if the jokes were funny (final edit: so that was a lie) but this meh bit with the pizza guys and mascots was really not worth ignoring the fact that its impossible for italy to have any tomato-based food in the 15th century (tomatoes were brought to europe from the americas in the 16th century, and pizza as we know it today—flatbread, cheese, tomato—originated in the late 18th century)

oh this next part was kind of legit tho. lisanardo, like the real leonardo, became andrea del verrochio's apprentice at his workshop. i loved this next bit:

"Whoever paints the sweetest cherub will have the honor of having MY name signed on their work. That's what great artists do!"

SO YEAH as it turns out, lisanardo painted the sweetest cherubs. the painting here is called The Baptism of Christ, and the real leonardo assisted verrochio in finishing it. specifically, he painted the cherubs in the corner.

this causes verrochio to quit and go someplace with less talented people: a music school (yes, verrochio did quit painting after getting owned by young leo and his mad angel painting skills. he never did anything with music tho, he was more of a sculptor)

alongside lisanardo, in mr largo-verrochio's workshop we have barticelli (botticelli bart), dolphatello (donatello dolph), ralphael (raphael...ralph) and mediocrito (no one that i know of. sorry milhouse) (and kearney i guess but they dont refer to him by name). botticelli and donatello are said to have also been apprentices at verrochio's workshop, but raphael came a couple of decades later so he couldnt have been there. and donatello was too old so that claim is a bit questionable. but anyway

it IS true that leonardo's peers envied him, to the point where he was anonymously and purposefully accused of being gay (a major crime punishable by death in 15th century florence) while he was still working at verrochio's workshop

we are then treated by what im pretty sure is the fourth time the show has used 'at seventeen' by janis ian, this time sung by a dejected lisanardo (man they really do keep making yeardley sing these days huh) who only wishes to be appreciated and not envied.

"I'll show them all! I'll show them all in a secret diary that no one will decipher for 400 years!"

some of lisanardo's future inventions. who wouldve known

so after barticelli, for some reason (revenge??? or something?? what was his plan here idgi) steals lisanardo's diaries full of blueprints of her inventions and takes them to mr burns who i have to assume is pope alexander VI here, they decide to use her inventions for war.

"With these, we can kill the most evil people in the world!! ....Slightly different Christians."

leo actually did this of his own accord. im surprised this is what they decided to do with lisanardo instead of talking about leo's love of nature and vegetarianism (not a single mention of that in this episode? come on...) then again, trying to do good only to end up indirectly making things worse is a very standard lisa storyline. i guess they didnt want to miss the chance to have evil pope burns (very fitting, especially for that era since they were all about money and controlling the people)

so lisanardo decides to leave for france, unlike the real leonardo who was more or less persuaded by his ultimate fanboy king francis I to move to france.

"Lisanardo, I have many questions. Why are you hitting yourself? A nerd says 'what'? And how is it possible that I am rubber and you are glue? Et cetera, et cetera."

that line may seem a little random, like hes just nelson saying nelson things (and i mean, obviously he is) but the real francis also "had an unquenchable thirst for learning, and Leonardo was the world’s best source of experimental knowledge. He could teach the king about almost any subject there was to know, from how the eye works to why the moon shines." so yeah, he did have many questions and lisanardo, finally being appreciated for her intellect, was happy to answer them all. its very interesting how lisa assigned this role to nelson in her retelling of da vinci’s life :^)

and so she lived the rest of her days in france, nat king cole's 'mona lisa' plays because duh, and they make a da vinci code reference because duh. and the segment ends. and not a single time did they show the actual mona lisa painting. the fuck?

(ngl i was fully expecting bart to say 'leonardo da vinky' for a second here)

so this next segment is about french impressionist painters, most likely the batignolles group, a name adopted by the early representatives of impressionism. its much more vague than the lisanardo segment since no one here is referred to by name (except moe, more on him in a sec) but i dont feel like it really matters in this case. bart is prrrrooobably claude monet but its hard to say, this segment is kind of a mish-mash of a lot of things. also i gotta say i really liked how lisa introduced the story to bart with an 'if you hate the formal study of art' and not 'if you hate art' because thats exactly my headcanon. i LOVE the concept of artist bart and whenever its referenced it just makes perfect sense to me.

anyway the segment opens in 1863 at the école des beaux-arts (back then it was actually known as the académie des beaux-arts), preserver of traditional french art styles. skinner reviews his students’ paintings one by one. praises the plain, unimaginative paintings depicting your typical european countryside landscapes. very run-of-the-mill (haha get it...cuz theres….a windmill) (although the real académie didnt approve of such basic stuff, they wanted artists to draw epic historical and mythological scenes) then he gets to barts painting and he gives him an F- because the painting made him think.

(the paintings in this scene arent real famous paintings as far as i know but they are inspired by real paintings enough to get the point across)

in comes barney dressed as bacchus as a model for the students to sketch, which i just loved:

barney: “You prefer robe open or robe off?” skinner: “Just cover your privates with this walnut shell.” barney: “Whoa!!! So roomy!”

skinner gasps in horror at bart’s sketch, which “looks nothing like him” and bart explains that “it shouldn’t; we’re making the art that we feel because we can’t compete with a camera.” damn, you go bart. take that, realism. draw what you feel!!

(also no, you didnt need to hold still for 17 hours for a daguerreotype. 30 min tops.)

nelson haw-haw of the week: FOIE-gras!

so here they are at the moulin rouge (“enjoy it before baz luhrmann ruins it” hey shut up. i love that movie), which wouldnt be built for another 26 years, but it is the most widely known gathering place for bohemians in the public consciousness so i can understand why they went with the moulin. nelson delivers this anachronistic line:

“This époque keeps getting beller and beller!”

which alludes to la belle époque, the golden age of france usually dated from 1880 to 1914. made me snort so ill let that slide

and heres moe! as henri de toulouse-lautrec, who was actually born a year after the year this segment is set in. yo moe szyslak he was just 1

toulouse-moetrec introduces himself as the chronicler of the demimonde (not an actual job). an iconic figure associated with the moulin rouge (largely due to his affinity for alcohol and prostitutes), toulouse-lautrec was also a painter, having illustrated a series of posters for the moulin himself. he simply had to be in this segment, anachronisms be damned, just because they decided to include the moulin. cant have one without the other.

and yes he did have a walking cane where he kept his liquor.

i love how everyone drinks absinthe in this place. theyre bohemians what else would they drink

toulouse-moetrec points out that barts paintings are the greatest thing hes ever seen (and hes seen like five things!) and that hes a genius. milhouse realizes that they should stop doing what the teacher says and use their own minds to instead...start doing what bart says lmao. to the easels!

next we have skinner hyping up chalmers about the art his students made for the salon de paris, an art exhibition that the emperor of france will attend. he assures him that none of these paintings will encourage debate, provoke thought or be out of place at a dentist’s office. when they unveil the art, theyre both SHOCKED at how scandalous the paintings actually are.

this reaction was kind of accurate. impressionism was severely rejected at the salon de paris, due to paintings not looking finished enough to them, they thought they were ugly and vulgar for depicting nudity in a contemporary setting (historical and mythological nudity was fine). these impressionist paintings were sent to the salon de refusés, which is. yeah. the place where they sent the rejects. the salon de refusés does not make an appearance but this scene makes a reference to it when the artists get expelled from the royal salon. also:

“What about our student loans?” “Oh they’ll be refunded. We are not barbarians, I mean, come on.”

(god if only)

so the painters are down because they want the emperor to actually see their paintings. toulouse-moetrec pipes in once again with an idea.

“There is one thing the emperor loves more than anything.” “France?” “No, he hates France.”

apparently the emperor really loves cheese, which makes sense since its napoleon III (who loved cheese) and homer (who loves cheese.) so the painters roll into the salon inside a giant wheel of cheese (obviously.) as lenny said, “Eh, you know French cheese. Very runny.” napoleon III chases after the wheel into a room, where the wheel falls apart after getting chomped on by the emperor. now that they got his attention, the painters proudly show the emperor their impressionist art, which he couldnt be more indifferent about because he just wants to eat his cheese dammit, and he awards them with the royal medallion just to kind of get them out of his way. skinner immediately starts kissing ass (as he does) until marge’s like ‘hey wait a minute. you expelled these students from the royal salon’ and an executioner immediately starts ominously measuring skinners neck.

“Uh, sir...is your tongue sticking out because you’re dead or because you’re mad at me?”

and thats the end of that lmao (gore in this episode, gore in the last episode, and next week we’re getting gore too cuz its THOH, what the hell is goin on)

we get a short intermission with maggie, who wants a story for her too! lisa tells her that renaissance artists loved to put babies in their paintings, especially baby angels.

here she is showing her The Triumph Of Galatea by raphael:

King David Playing The Harp by peter paul reubens:

and a very simplified version of pretty much any depiction of hell by hyeronimus bosch lmao:

not much else to say about this one, really. but i really liked that sky!

the last segment is about frida kahlo and diego rivera. or as bart puts it ‘the one about a fat guy whos wife is too good for him.’ i was REALLY looking forward to this one because i love frida and i thought itd be a cool opportunity for animators to go bonkers and do really cool shit with her art as inspiration…..but the segment is not about frida, its about diego and his selling out to capitalism. and its also yet another story with homer and marge drama. no funky cool animation here. sigh i guess i’ll take it

the story begins in 1929 at la casa azul, frida’s home (now museum dedicated to her life and work.) frida and diego are getting married. this courtyard definitely did not look this way yet back in 1929. also theres something very cringy yet funny about lovejoy saying spanish words the way he does, i honestly cant decide how i feel about that one

the writers know theyre being cringy with their gringoness so they go along with it.

moe: “Spanish for ‘best wishes’!” mel: “Spanish for ‘congratulations’!” bumblebee man: “Spanish for ‘muy bueno’!”

OH YEAH BUMBLEBEE MAN this is his new voice actor, eric lopez! hes not mexican but its still great to finally have a latino actor voicing a latino character and hes very excited to be part of the show so i hope to hear more of him!! im rooting for him

el barto/zorro makes an appearance which i am very confused about. he has jack shit to do with frida and diego and mexico in the 20s-30s. el zorro was set in the spanish california of the early 19th century. their use of the original theme song makes me think they just wanted to flex their disney privileges tbh

lets not talk about that that whole scene was bad

anyway diego announces he and frida are going to new york, without even asking her first. frida is obviously pissed.

“Don’t worry, as a woman, you’ll be treated with much more respect in America.”

so in new york, diego is having a bit of a business meeting with mr burns as one of the members of the rockefellers, who is commissioning him to draw a mural for the rockefeller center. its kinda funny how he refers to him and frida as socialists even though they were very much communists lmao its okay you can say it. ok so far, but then frida says ‘yes, we hate the capitalists! right now, a young socialist is being born who will take them down! mr. bernie sanders. i hope hes quick about it’ and that was a simple enough joke and couldve been left at that but then its immediately followed by this weird as fuck family guy-esque cutaway gag to bernie as a baby:

“Getting a cootie shot should not cost your lunch money. And if you don’t listen to me, listen to the Bernie Babies! What? Everybody’s got goons.” *larger babies start beating up this other baby* “I disavow that, and welcome it.”

this confused me so much that i had to ask one of my american friends to help me understand, but even she was like ‘uhhh yeah thats a weird joke,’ especially now that hes been out of the race for months (then again these episodes take almost a year to produce. i guess they couldnt be bothered to replace it with something more relevant.) whatever that was weird and confusing and unfunny moving on

frida is pretty irked that diego is going through with this deal. after all, it goes against everything they believe in. im not sure how the real frida felt about diego doing the mural, but she did feel a bit of rage during her visit to the united states, especially the obvious disparity between rich and poor. she hated having to interact with capitalists and found americans very boring. in this segment, frida seems to be acting more like the american communist party, which diego got kicked out of for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons. in any case, frida is pretty upset about this whole thing.

and finally we get the first and only kind of surreal frida moment. kinda. maybe. its more cartoonish than anything but im desperate ok

interesting how they felt like they had to add a “don’t smoke” in big letters after showing patty and selma flying away on their giant cigarettes. i wonder if this is something theyre making them do now? i remember hearing something about them toning down patty and selma’s smoking

diego comes home to frida, drunk as hell, followed by the marx brothers. i cant believe they didnt make a marxism joke come on it was RIGHT THERE. THE MARX BROTHERS. KARL MARX. COME ON

frida paints her feelings.

this makes diego realize that frida is a genius and he is not half the artist she is. he proclaims he will now show his awe of her by sleeping with other women, starting “an hour ago.” to which frida replies, “and i will start sleeping with other women, starting two hours ago.” yes this was pretty much their relationship. though im just wondering how the hell did diego not know frida was this kind of artist until now? i know homers an idiot but jeez. art was how frida and diego met, diego knew from the get-go that frida was an incredible artist. i guess the fame got to his head or something. again, homer just being stupid.

“well enough already, while the art is still deco, okay?”

its time for the mural diego painted, Man At The Crossroads, to be unveiled:

rockefeller examines it. good and great so far, and then...uh oh

“Who’s that fellow…? With the beard, and the bolshevik smile…” “That’s the founder of Soviet Russia, Lenin!”

“B-b-but he’s a communist!” “Oh he just attended a couple of meetings.”

rockefeller will not have this communist in the temple to capitalism that is the rockefeller center, so he orders diego to paint over it. diego stands his ground and refuses. despite rockefeller’s threats, diego says that theres only one person he wants to be proud of him no matter what and in true homer & marge fashion, frida is touched by this. they happily leave the rockefeller center.

now, the real story of Man At The Crossroads and the rockefeller center was actually not that different. as soon as the rockefellers found out diego had snuck in a portrait of lenin into the mural, they ordered him to paint over it, to which he refused. diego even offered to include abraham lincoln and even american abolitionists in the mural as a compromise, but the rockefellers simply did not want any references to communism whatsoever. they did not complain about the hammer and sickle, though. yes, they did know diego was a communist and hired him anyway. what did they expect? lmao. diego said:

"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."

so they decided to destroy the mural before it was even finished and they never talked to each other again.

diego then repainted the mural at the palacio de bellas artes back in mexico, this time known as Man, Controller of the Universe. this new version included even more communist leaders and a depiction of john d. rockefeller jr. drinking at a nightclub, right underneath a depiction of syphilis bacteria. cue nelson haw-haw:

this was the version they used in the episode also, since the original was, well, never finished and also destroyed. only a black and white photograph of it exists, taken by diego before it was destroyed so he could remake it.

right so, homer!diego then pulls a Barthood and finishes the episode with a large mural summarizing the entire episode. he says some rick and morty thing i didnt get because i dont watch the show idk idc

the end

ALRIGHT NOW ITS TIME FOR THE STORY OF VINCENT VAN MOE

#if you read all of this bless you #the imageless gdocs version of this is 8 pages long #hope you...enjoy?!?! these art history fun facts?!?!#dont let me do something like this again but also let me know if i should do something like this again #i was really only motivated to do this because im already passionate about the subject so idk if i could do it otherwise #anyway. this took me all day yesterday because the power kept going out #but im finally done #bye

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kathrynethegreat · 4 years

Photo

Dr.Lecter and Leda and the Swan

The below is from an essay by the artist Anne Shingleton discussing Leda and the Swan, her artwork, and why she believes Hannibal Lecter likes it. The essay was originally provided by the now defunct Hannotations from the contributors BloodandIvory and NyxFixx. Minor content edits by me, but you can read the full essay here. You can also learn more about Anne Shingleton and her artwork at her official website.

[Lecter’s] absentee landlord apparently had a fixation on Leda and the Swan, The interspecies coupling was represented in no less than four brozes of varying quality, the best a reproduction by Donetello, and eight pantings. One painting delighted Dr.Lecter, an Anne Shingleton with its genius anatomical articulation and some real heat in the fucking. The others he draped. - Hannibal, Chapter 97, by Thomas Harris

Ever since the misty dawn of Greek mythology, Leda and her doting swan have lived and loved in countless poets' lays and, less ephemerally, in thousands upon thousands of embodiments in paint, line, stone and metal.

They appear in the arts of Rome and Hellas in a profusion of sizes and materials, from golden bracelet pendants and silver table ornaments to great sculptures cast in bronze and hewn from marble (such as the Great Relief in the British Museum), from delicate drawings on precious ceramics to colourful frescoes on the walls of atria and chambers. But after the decline of Rome they nodded off into the many long centuries of bleak post-Roman Europe, awaking briefly now and then and here there to invigorate some ornamental arts and crafts of the Middle Ages.

(The essay, as well as an image of Anne Shingleton’s version of Leda and the Swan is below the cut. It’s a little bit graphic, so fair warning)

Leda and the Swan by Anne Shingleton

It was the Italian Renaissance with its exuberant rediscovery of classical antiquity & say, from about 1400 or so onward that brought them once again into the limelight of profane (in the sense of non-ecclesiastical) imagery. Nearly all the great Renaissance artists drew, painted or sculpted their Ledas, conspicuous among these being an oil-on-canvas by Leonardo Da Vinci, known only through several copies by his followers, and Michaelangelo’s stunning marble, today in Florence's Bargello. From there they coupled their way through the next five centuries and far beyond Italy's shores and borders, into and out of the Baroque and Rococo, into the nineteenth century to brighten some sclerotic corners of Neo-Classicism, and eventually even into Art Nouveau, there briefly to beguile a languorous Belle Époque. After August 1914 they withered, along with the rest of Europe's humanistic culture.

Nevertheless, even today, in our own age of mostly meretricious rubbish art mass-produced to con newly-rich illiterates, they glow softly still among the now very distant and still receding constellations of our classical heritage.

Who, then, was Leda, and who the swan?

Antiquity sang several different versions of her tale. Most agree that she was the daughter of Thestius, king of Aetola, and the wife of Tyndraeus, king of Lacedaemon. Somehow she inflamed the passions of Zeus, Some said that he saw her bathing in a sparkling sun-drenched stream, others that Hephaistos had told him about her dissatisfaction with her husband's ways in bed, and others still that he was only out to spite his consort, Hera.

In any event, he was smitten and, having just lately visited Danae as a shower of gold, Europa as a bull, Io as a cloud, Ganymede as an eagle and others still in guises no less inventive, he decided to assume yet another one for his tryst with Leda: he would swoop down majestically on snowy pinions . . . as a swan.

Mythology fails to tell us whether these forms were mere travelling costumes, so to speak, and whether, as we may well suppose, upon arrival at the bedside he reassumed his customary and divine semblance of a robust, virile man in the prime of his maturity. I've heard that a swan's penis - to be precise: a cob's - is exactly like a circumcised human one in miniature, and that this gave rise to the amorous-swan legends . . . but I confess that I've never checked it out with a cygnologist, though I should've done so long ago. Perhaps some thoughtful cygnologist will let me know?

In any event, swan or man, he had his way with her, or she with him, or each with the other. Of it came an egg, or, in other versions, three eggs, and in others still seven, and you mustn't act surprised: when a fertile lady mates with a cob she'll lay eggs - faultless logic, that, and winsome science.

One tremendous event that soon followed was to become a bedrock and fountainhead of Western culture: for whilst out of two eggs hatched the twins Castor and Polydeuces.

I relinquish the podium to Homer.

My own versions…. differ a little from the conventional ones. For one thing, neither my painted nor my sculpted Zeus arrives in the form of a swan but rather dressed up as one . . . he's wearing a (rather skimpy) swan costume, under which he is very much the Chief Olympian: strong, handsome, supremely male, his ebullient libido refined by aeons (he being immortal) of experience and divine dedication to his beloved's (not always female) pleasure.

For another thing, most Leda depictions are intra-coital: it's happening, nobody can figure out just how but they're at it. My painting instead shows them as post-coital.

In the painting, the oil lamp on the rocks just right of the love nest is still burning but night is fleeing, crescent Selene is fading, colours are being reborn everywhere. First light is bathing the two dreamy, sated lovers. Birds chirp in chorus. An exquisite post-orgasmic Leda is savouring the last after-tremors of her lique-factions while scenting the dewy flowering of day. Zeus has retired to the top of the bower, his costume all awry, a smile of surfeit on his lips. Post coitum omne animal triste, said Aristotle: after mating all creatures are sad. I think there is truth in that, but it is more complex, less formulaic. The martyrs enter the arena hand in hand but the lions eat them one by one. Lovers in the act dispense with the meum-teum sense (Robert Graves), but after the shared orgasmic heats, the post-orgasmic chills overtake them one by one, and, slowly, deliciously if all went well, they drift apart, sometimes a little numbed, nearly always bewildered, on separate outbound tides. Even, or perhaps especially, if they're gods. My painted Leda and her god are poised over this hot-cold watershed. Until the next time…

Why does the doctor 'delight' in the Leda story? I don't know. Best ask Tom Harris. But I'll have a guess.

As he does in The Silence of the Lambs, as does so much literature both old and modern, Harris draws unconsciously or knowingly - I don't know which - on the world of myth and fable, that genome of the collective human subconscious. The leitmotif in both Silence and Hannibal, not deafening or intrusive but audible throughout from the dark beyond the firelight, is that of The Beauty and The Beast. Since I'm neither a poet nor a scholar I'll refrain from windy disquisitions, but to me the parallels between that fable and the interbraiding of the lives of Hannibal and Clarice Starling seem clear enough.

Clarice-Leda has taken vestal vows, has dedicated her body and soul to the FBI: not for her the traditional role of wife and woman as prescribed by patriarchal orthodoxy. Like the life of chaste and virginal Beauty, Clarice's life, so far as we've been told, is manless, and hence, conventional wisdom would have it, arid. The fable now demands that she be sexually fulfilled, 'sexually' having here a wide, deep, polyhedral meaning far beyond mere genital tiddlywinks.

Lecter-Swan is a beast, no doubt of that, and no need to dwell on definitions. The fable now demands that she make him human, meaning here humane.

And behold, in the book, though alas not in the film, both undergo the magical transformation: Beauty turns the Beast humane, the Beast wafts Beauty to, up and over the moany summit where she is, presumably, fulfilled. Both are reborn from scratch - from the egg, so to speak, through each other.

I think that could well be why the doctor delights in the one painting in the room that he leaves uncovered for Clarice to see.

Anne Shingleton

#leda and the swan #anne shingleton #hannibal #hannibal lecter #thomas harris tetralogy

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asdmumramblings · 3 years

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REBOOT MOVIE RANT

As I sit with my tribe to watch the live action Lady and the Tramp, I am reminded of a conversation I recently had with my best bud. We were chatting about childhood memories, movies we loved and the current remakes/reboots we keep seeing from multiple studios. She said something along the lines of;

“When studios drastically change their source material, we the audience don’t like it unless we are too young to remember the original. People don’t like their childhood memories messed with.”

I think she is spot on and the recent Ghost Busters reboot is evidence of this theory in motion. Famously the main protagonists had a gender swap played by the talented Mellissa McCarthy, Kirsten Wiig and Kate McKinnon. A decision which was not welcomed by fans with enthusiasm. I do not believe this has anything to do with sexism, as some claimed, just that fans of the original felt betrayed. The characters were altered beyond all recognition. Now I have seen the reboot and enjoyed it very much. It was funny, well directed and I felt that the cast had good chemistry. Yet the box office figures were underwhelming. Fact is our childhood favs are precious to us and evoke all sorts of warm and fuzzy memories. So when a reboot is made, we want to see the original honoured rather than a complete annihilation.

For instance Pierce Brosnans Thomas Crown Affair. I enjoyed it, yet If had a pound for each time my mum said the ‘Proper version’ was better, she would have been out of pocket and I would have bought the next lot of cinema tickets. She held fond memories of the original and anything less than amazing just wasn’t going to cut it.

Despite the poor reception many of these movies receive they keep being churned out. It’s as though the industry is starved of ideas (They should ask me I have a few lol). The likely reason though is that those who fund these projects are after sure thing, something tried and tested. If only box office success was that simple but it isn’t. Another Invisible man was on my TV last week. Seriously! Hollow Man wasn’t made that long ago was it?

That said I do find these movies enticing and go to see them. Maybe I am part of the problem. I watched Colin Farrell’s Total Recall twice because I couldn’t believe how bad it was. Schwarzenegger’s was very entertaining and the special effects were great for the time. I was really excited to watch the reboot. Imagine the special effects they could use now but I didn’t even get to see Farrell “Get his arse to Mars”. Although the 3 titted lady made an appearance, as did the ”2 ‘weeks woman.’ A nice little nod to the original but this rendition was underwhelming to say the least. Don’t get me wrong as movies go it’s ok, as long as you haven’t seen Schwarzenegger’s.

When I hear about upcoming reboots/remakes I am often excited just to be bitterly disappointed with the results. So much so I found myself anxious when viewing the live action Beauty and the Beast for the first time. Was this to be changed beyond all recondition? Thankfully not. The score included some nice additions which enhanced the story. We had the first gay Disney character in Josh Gads Lefou and we’re given an insight into Belles early childhood. The changes made enhanced the movie whilst honouring the original. A perfect remake.

Disney’s live actions are now in full swing. Some are truly inspired, while others seem thrown together without much thought. For instance Dumbo, what a disappointment that was. The animation and the live action have only one thing in common, there is an elephant in it. Oh okay two, there is a circus as well.

So now to the inspiration for this rant. Lady and the Tramp. 10 minutes in and not even a musical number worthy of Elsa can save it. Literally all my favourite scenes have been cut and Jock is a GIRL! I didn’t even get to see Lady precariously navigate the large staircase to earn her spot in the bedroom. The movie failed to show Jim Dear and Darlings love for Lady. Or their change in behaviour relating to the baby. The absence of this left a gapping hole which no amount of CGI could fill. In the animation we saw the world through Lady’s eyes which was both heartwarming and amusing. Some ideas were inspired like, Jim Dear and Darling’s names which seemed odd until you realise that this is what Lady hears her humans call each other. Genius. All these little touches have been omitted. Even the musical score is lacking. I was looking forward to the cheecky cats ‘We are Siamese’ and they didn’t even give me that. On reflection maybe this could be considered culturally offensive now like the crows in Dumbo, so it’s absence is forgiven. But that’s where I draw the line. The makers of this live action have succeeded in removing everything which made the original great. Even the dogs are ugly!

#disney #lady and the tramp #reboots #review #live action

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rogueclonesftw · 4 years

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hello! i don't know anything about your OC's, but i saw your post. could you perhaps list all of them with a short summary? 🙏🏻💕

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sorry this took so long to answer. I moved house and it was A Lot. My OCs are legion so for the sake of everyone else’s dashes I’m putting this under a read more

These are just for the clone wars era I’m leaving the rebels out of it

Thanks for asking!! Feel free to ask about anyone if you want to know more.

fair warning this is long af

I’m splitting it into sections to make this easier

Heretics

Jedi

Bela Rant

Togruta Jedi Master and mother Master of four Padawans children. Not a favourite of the Council due to differences in interpretation of the Code. Had an ongoing feud with Qui Gon Jinn that lasted until he died. She died in the war ten years later and Col took over her command.

Alask Racor

Grumpy Twi’lek first Padawan of Bela, had two Padawans of his own but was killed by pirates before the second was knighted.

Reya Meraska

Alask’s first Padawan. A human from Jedha and compassion incarnate. Had an uneventful apprenticeship and grew up to be comparatively quiet compared to the rest.

Ben Edo

Reya’s first and so far only Padawan. The model of a perfect Jedi except for thinking their interpretation of the Code is bullshit. Would have made one hell of a politician if he could stand the Senate. From Dantooine.

Tol Koden

Alask’s second Padawan, a very polite Zabrak. Alask died when he was 17 and Jos took over his training. He and Ben are the same age and were raised basically together.

Jos Vel

Stubborn and opinionated Kiffar. Bela’s second Padawan. Had her own (equally stubborn and opinionated) Padawan and then took over Tol’s training when Alask died.

Harlan Konshi

Jos’s Padawan. Also a Kiffar. Would also make a fine politician because being raised by Jos taught him to argue. He’s a bit of a jackass but in a charming way. Like, he’s a prick but you still like him.

Azaana Tyl

Harlan’s sweet, quiet, shy Togruta Padawan. Jos laughed so hard when she heard about that. Harlan is trying to teach her self-confidence. The baby of the family.

Col Blackmoor

Bela’s third and most disastrous Padawan. The former Temple Problem Child (now Temple Problem Adult). Not that he spends much time in the Temple. Was so far out on the Outer Rim he didn’t find out there was a war on until he had to come back and take over Bela’s legion. The worst case of ADHD the Temple has ever seen.

Lena Sola

Col took her in after an incident with her former Master almost saw her kicked out of the Order. Col intervened. She’s still uncomfortable around most Jedi, but they’re working on it. Sweet kid. Kage.

Aden Jadus

Bela’s final Padawan, knighted just before Geonosis. Yes, she’s from Tatooine. No, that does not mean she knows Skywalker. Stop asking.

Not-Jedi

Vale

The oldest of the bunch, Reya’s Commander. Has enough Big Dad Energy to build a deck at 20 paces. Meat grills in his presence and the shinies all fear his disappointed frown.

Nill

Jos’s Commander. Deeply claustrophobic. A nice, likeable guy unless you piss him off. Caffeine demon.

Jax

Clone Commander and Col Wrangler in Chief, Col regards his Commander with barely disguised awe. He considers him his closest friend. For his part, Jax thinks similarly highly of Col. He likes to draw when he gets spare time (rarely). Grew up with Sonny and Cody. Very protective of Lena.

Crater

Professional Ray of Sunshine, the exact opposite of his twin. Crater and Crash grew up with Wolffe. Crater was assigned to Ben, and he likes his General, really, but the man never sleeps. It’s starting to stress him out.

Click

Professional Salt Mine assigned to the Galaxy’s Politest Jedi because apparently the GAR runs on irony. Makes Wolffe look like a ray of happy, happy sunshine.

Pip

The perpetual optimist to Aden’s incredible pessimist. Remains stubbornly cheerful by choice, because if he doesn’t laugh he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop crying.

Dexter

Professional Grouchy Bastard. Likes Harlan well enough but will absolutely tell him he’s full of shit. If Azaana likes you, Dexter will tolerate your existence. If you make Azaana sad they will never find your body. A training accident left him with scars and a deep growl in his voice that makes him sound angrier than he is.

Stitch

Col’s CMO and the only person Jax legitimately fears. Deeply wishes his siblings and General would get injured less and look after themselves more. Is willing to enforce this with sedatives.

Zip

The Right Hand of God (Stitch’s second in command). He who wields the big needles.

Layne

Cheerful but stressed Captain of a company of reckless idiots who really should know better but apparently don’t. He should be used to it. He grew up with Rex.

Trip and Tap

Two survivors of Krell reassigned to Col. Tap has a nervous habit of tapping his fingers. Trip can trip over thin air.

Jazz, Snap and Void

A trio. Jazz likes to wander off. Void likes to hide. Snap likes to complain they’re giving him grey hair from the stress of having them disappearing all the time.

Ray and Rico

The product of an embryo that split, Ray and Rico lived in fear of being culled as defects on Kamino. They’ve since left Kamino, but the fear hasn’t left them.

Lys

A tired medic who would like Dexter to drink something that isn’t caf please.

Tyke

The medic with the most agreeable Jedi (Tol). He barely has to bully him into seeking medical attention at all. Such a shame that his Commander seems determined to make up for it by being a complete bastard. If Click wants to get tackled in the hallway, that’s his lookout.

Rill

Has a particular interest in medical research. Or he would if he ever had the time.

Corrie

The youngest CMO in the GAR. Just barely 18, only on the field for six months and never meant to be CMO at all. But she’s the only medic Pip’s got left after that clusterfuck, so they’re all doing their best. She might be young but she will absolutely yell at a commander you see if she doesn’t.

New Dawn Crew

Not-Clones

Mira Vin

A female Kiffar former Jedi whose Master died on Geonosis. The Council were going to knight her and make her a General, so she told Windu to stick it up his ass and ran away to the Outer Rim to harass slavers and save “defective” clones.

Kell Vekarr

An Alderaanian former Jedi who was rescued from slavers as a child. Finally took the 20 remaining members of his command and ran when the rest were killed over Ando. Jaster’s boyfriend. Autistic.

Jaster Toran

True Mandalorian bounty hunter who was betrayed by a client and sold into slavery. Joined the crew upon his rescue four years later. Kell’s boyfriend. Autistic.

Riye Toran

Jaster’s older sister who joined the crew to look for him and then stuck around because she liked it there.

Volya’tar

Twi’lek former slave who freed herself and stole a ship. Pilot, mechanic and Mira’s best friend.

Pash Colton

Dyspraxic dyslexic Corellian with more brains than sense. An engineering genius who has wisdom as his dump stat. Also sometimes a smuggler.

Jaina Bell

Tiny and terrifying. Orphaned at a young age and grew up to be a smuggler, mechanic and pilot.

Ela

Nonbinary Lorrdian. Has a long horrendous Lorrdian name they never use. Joined the crew because slavers suck and anything that makes their lives difficult is a good thing. Stuck around for the people.

Black Company

Halcyon

An ARC Captain known for his green hair and endless patience. Considers Kell a close friend but calls him Commander regardless. Used to fight Rex a lot as a kid. Please let this man rest.

Bones

Halcyon’s batchmate and Black Company’s CMO. A cranky bugger, but that’s understandable considering what he deals with daily.

Pax

The peacemaker between his idiot brothers and everyone else for as long as they can remember. A chill guy, but even chill guys have limits.

Tracyn and Carud

Two of the Nightmare Children. Their names are fire and smoke and they cause a lot of both, raising Pax’s blood pressure and driving Bones into apoplectic rage.

Isa

Jaro’s long suffering sister. Usually has to track him down to make him go to sleep. Has a weekly commiseration session with Ari (alcohol optional but recommended).

Jaro

Named for the Mando’a word for reckless and boy howdy is it accurate. The ADHD doesn’t help.

Ari

Rio’s batchmate and she loves her brother dearly but she is so done with his shit.

Rio

The last of the original Nightmare Children, ADHD disaster and source of most of Bones’s workload.

Kee and Jam

Nonbinary comms officers who bicker very cheerfully. Usually with each other. Often at high volume through the halls of the ship.

Torin

Gay artist baby.

Kol

Gay artist bastard.

Charly

Honestly he’s just here for a laugh and his brothers respect him for it. You’ve got to find your joy where you can get it these days.

Dys

Takes great delight in moving Set’s things just a couple of centimetres. Just enough to annoy him. Will deck anyone else who tries the same thing.

Set

Also known as Corporal Square Corners. Everything has to be neat and tidy. He was a godsend before inspections. Now he’s just the reason people have somewhere to sit.

Slip

Known for giving his trainers the slip and disappearing into the bowels of Kamino when they were doing training exercises he didn’t like and then getting stuck and having to be retrieved by Chase.

Chase

More like chase-ing his brother through the halls of Kamino to keep him out of trouble. There’s a running joke that he should have ended up in search and rescue.

Bright

Was he named for his bright red hair or as an ironic comment on his general outlook on life? Who knows? Not him. A pessimist if there ever was one.

Impulse

Full name Have-You-Ever-Heard-Of-Impulse-Control and no, he hasn’t.

Cuyan Squad

Sonny

A naturally blond, autistic, Force-sensitive Commander who survived Kamino by the skin of his teeth. Grew up with Cody and Jax. Hyper efficient Can, will and has broken people’s faces for saying shit about the Coruscant Guard.

Zak

Force-sensitive Captain who despises soup and has incredible claustrophobia. Good with kids though. Autistic.

Force-sensitive autistic Lieutenant. Quieter than Zak, and fully supports his vendetta against soup. Has his own vendetta against food that stabs you in the mouth.

Bang

Force-sensitive bomb-tech. Partially deafened in an explosion which also gave him some pretty intense scarring. Gets nervous when he can’t see people behind him.

Bit

Force-sensitive techie with a penchant for weapons modification and data slicing. Gives the best hugs in the squad.

Tink

If it’s broken Tink can fix it. The resident ADHD Force-sensitive techie. Has a tendency to hyperfocus on projects to the exclusion of all else.

Flow

De facto squad medic because he’s the best at Force-healing of the lot of them. He does not appreciate this, this is not what he trained for, you’re voiding his warranty, vode please. Dyed his hair purple because he could.

Edge

Thrill seeker with electric blue hair and boundless energy. The ADHD doesn’t help with the fidgeting, but he likes to go fast so Force-augmented speed is pretty great.

Ry and Cas

True twins born from the same tube, they’re the Fred and George Weasley of clones. They’ve got the red hair and everything. Judicious use of the Force makes pranks far easier.

Other

Caj, Chess and Blade

The brothers in charge of the homebrew alcohol. The taste is a work in progress, but the last batch didn’t make anyone go blind.

Rictor and Sike

Survivors of Krell who deal with their trauma in very different ways. Rictor is terrified of authority in case they turn out like Krell. Sike figures if he survived that he can survive anything and mouths off constantly.

Kano and Oly

Batchmates who were reconditioned separately (for nightmares and injury, respectively) and reunited upon Kano’s rescue. Oly had been with the crew for months by then. They both cried.

Sitrep, Conn and Sig

Three more nonbinary comms officers. A cheerful bunch who like to argue. Usually with each other. The problems started when they started arguing with their General.

Aran, Orar and Tay

Three heavy gunners who fight TJ a lot because the little twerp is asking for it (literally). Tay is relentlessly cheerful, Aran the exact opposite, and you’re lucky to get three words out of Orar in a row.

Ani, Mirdir and Dajun

Techies and mechanics who prefer wires to people. Mirdir and Dajun have known each other since birth and bicker a lot. Ani mostly ignores them.

Dane

A captain who finally snapped and told his General where he could stick his suicidal orders.

Sprint

Full name Slow-Down-There’s-No-Need-To-Sprint, a six foot ball of energy and barely contained enthusiasm. Usually found hurtling around the place at ludicrous speeds.

Crash

An anxious, autistic pilot who has never crashed his ship. He has, however, crashed himself into doors, siblings, training sergeants.

Rainer

A really chill guy who got shipped off for being too violent after a misunderstanding about a sparring match. TJ’s favourite sparring partner.

Likes to fight, does not care if his opponent could physically snap him in half. Sometimes he just has to beat his brain into submission via getting the crap beaten out of his body. Usually succeeds in provoking the heavy gunners into fighting him.

Zero

TJ’s perpetually worried brother. Really wishes TJ would chill. Dyslexic and has a recurring leg injury that won’t heal. Gets bored easily.

Brook and Storm

A pair of total nerds who get so engrossed in arguing that they don’t realise they’re about to walk into a tree. Frequently wander off and have to be returned.

Jai, Tala, Teek, Niko and Galaar

Five ARCs who got sent back to Kamino for telling their General to go kriff himself. Jai is Force-sensitive. Galaar is just a prick with a terrible sense of humour.

#zay answers #my ocs #oc masterlist #i will update the actual masterlists at some point but for now this'll di #please feel free to ask questions about my babies

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eirian-houpe · 4 years

Text

Prima

Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Belle/Detective Weaver

Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold | Detective Weaver, Wishverse Captain Hook | Detective Rogers, Gaston (Once Upon a Time), Regina Mills | Roni

Additional Tags: Angst, Eventual Smut, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Crimes & Criminals, Organized Crime, Hyperion Heights (Once Upon a Time), A Monthly Rumbelling April 2020 (Once Upon a Time), Woven Beauty

Summary: Detectives Weaver and Rogers stumble upon a crime at a local theater where they meet the Prima Ballerina, Anabelle French in the process of apparently committing agravated assault with a deadly weapon, but as Weaver investigates, he discovers there is far more to it than a simple crime, and he is forced to run to a place of safety with his suspect in tow.

Written for the April, A Monthly Rumbelling - Mood Board.

Read on AO3

Prima

“Look,” Weaver sighed and hurried to keep up with his partner, “I don’t know why you’re getting so bent out of shape. It’s not as if it meant anything is it, you said yourself—”

Whatever Detective Weaver might have been about to say was cut off by the sound of single gunshot. Loud enough to be close, but not out in the open. On instinct he reached for his weapon and saw that Rogers had done the same, both of them looking around for the origin of the sound. They were rewarded by a second gunshot, and alert to it now, both men turned in the direction of the local theater.

“Front entrance,” Weaver ordered, already heading to the alley way that he knew led to the stage door. “And call it in.”

He picked up the pace, hurrying down the alley, already watching as half-dressed dancers were spilling out of a plain brown door. He pushed his way through, jacket pulled back to reveal the badge clipped to his belt, even so, he still announced himself to the stage door keeper as he struggled against the tide of frightened performers.

“Seatle PD.”

“It… it’s Miss Belle,” the man stammered. “She’s lost her mind. Gone mad!”

“Where?” he snapped, not caring for politeness.

“Her dressing room is that way,” the door keeper pointed along the hallway to the left.

He nodded, spotting Rogers as his partner came in the other way, and he signaled to the other man the direction he should take. Rogers took off before anything could be said, and Weaver followed after him, already starting to get an uncomfortable feeling of wrongness in his gut even before he had set eyes on the supposed crime scene.

He barely caught sight of the word, ‘Prima,’ before Detective Rogers kicked open the door so hard he almost took it from its hinges.

“Seatle PD! Drop the weapon!” Rogers’ presence and his words were rewarded with a scream, and as he drew closer, Weaver heard, the rattle of a weapon. “I said, drop it!”

He picked up his pace a little, finally drawing level with the door, and before going through, took in everything he could see. A young - and, he noted, incredibly beautiful - woman was standing at one side of the room. Obviously a dancer, probably the shoes that gave it away, she was in a close fitting costume and already made up for the stage. She had a gun; was holding it, inexpertly, in both hands, and shifting her aim - if it could be called that - between Rogers, and a man at the other side of the room. She was clearly scared. Her hands were shaking, and the safety was off; a terrible combination.

The man that she had presumably shot at, twice, seemed entirely unharmed. Another dancer, he stood maybe six feet tall, was also dressed in his dance gear which was obscenely tight in Weaver’s opinion. His hair short, but not so close cropped as to hide the fact that it was slightly out of place. He’d seen enough, and the entire situation smelled entirely bent.

“I’m warning you—” Rogers’ began, but Weaver cut him off.

“No, no,” he said almost sing song, softly. “You don’t want to do that.” He stepped deliberately between Rogers, who had shifted closer to the man, and the woman with the gun. “I’m sure we can work this all out.”

“Weaver, what the hell are you doing?” Rogers protested, his aim disrupted as Weaver had intended.

“I got this,” he answered, without taking his eyes off the woman who had now shifted her gun to point in his general direction. For the moment he followed protocol and kept his own weapon raised. “Why don’t you take our friend there out into another room; get his statement.”

“I’ll give you a fucking statement,” the man spat, his voice heavily accented, Russian, or else Eastern European, Weaver guessed. “She tried to shoot me. Bitch is crazy!”

The woman let out a snarling scream, shifting her aim only barely, and pulled the trigger again. From the corner of his eye, Weaver saw Rogers and the other man duck, but he kept his eyes fixed on the woman, flinching only slightly when he felt the hot wind of the bullet as it passed his head. She missed again, and the recoil on the gun made her stumble backwards, before she leveled her gun off again.

He didn’t want Rogers doing anything stupid, so he said, “Get him out of here, Rogers, I won’t tell you again,” and moved as Rogers complied, keeping himself between his partner and the woman with the gun.

“Let’s shut this door, shall we?” he crooned once he was alone with the woman. “Have a little talk. See what’s got you so wound up, hmm?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer, just reached out with his free hand, and pulled the door closed; couldn’t latch it, of course, thanks to his partner, but closed was better than nothing. It gave the two of them a little bit of peace.

“There, that’s better,” he said softly.

“You… you can’t let him go,” she said, her voice as tight and shaky as her hands, another accent… Australian? It made him frown, momentarily as a half remembered itch niggled at him deep inside.

“Don’t worry about him,” he answered. “Listen, pointing guns at each other is not the best way to have a conversation, right? Why don’t we just - both of us - put our guns down?”

She shook her head. “Can’t,” she said.

“All right,” he said, “You’re scared. I get that. Tell you what. I’ll go first.” He slowly lowered his weapon, flipping on the safety as he did, before slipping it back into its holster before spreading his arms wide. “There,” he said. “Mind if I take off my jacket? Little bit warm in here.”

She didn’t answer him, just kept her wide, shining blue eyes fixed on his as he slipped his jacket off and tossed it onto a nearby chair. All slowly, carefully.

“N-n-name?” she stammered.

“Weaver,” he answered. “How about you?”

“Anabelle… French,” she answered.

“Now, see, we know each other,” he gave her a careful smile, “Much better than all the screaming and yelling, don’t you think? She barely shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head.

“No one’s gonna hurt you, I promise. You have my word,” he said. “All you need to do is give me the gun, and tell me what happened.”

He took a slow step forward and reached toward her with one hand, but froze as she jerked the gun, not actually expecting that she’d shoot him, more like worried that with the way she was, the gun would accidentally go off in her hands. She was terrified.

“I get it,” he told her. “Not so close. Thing is, Miss French, I can’t help you while you’re pointing that gun at me. I want to be able to help you.”

“He… I… they…”

“Easy,” he sang softly, “Just… gimme the gun, and we can talk.”

He took a step closer, holding out a hand again, and this time she didn’t react. He kept his eyes fixed on hers; took another step and watched as the cobalt blue of her eyes filled with tears, and her grip on the gun loosened.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured as his hand closed over the top of the weapon and his thumb found the safety, flipping it on before lifting the gun from her hands, just in case she changed her mind. He set it down on the nearby dressing table, as he stepped forward again, unsurprised when she threw herself against his chest, trembling as though an earthquake had hit before she burst into tears.

Instinctively, he held her, his arms wrapped tightly around her, tucking her under his chin. He knew he shouldn’t. He didn’t care. She needed it and since when had he bothered about the rules anyway? There was more to this and it didn’t take a genius to work it out.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told her, “but you’re going to have to trust me.”

He felt her nod against his chest, then after a moment, reached behind him with one hand for his cuffs, and taking her hands gently from his chest, turned her around and slipped them onto her wrists.

“Anabelle French, I am arresting you for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present before, and during questioning, now and in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. If you decide to answer questions now without an attorney, you may still request one at any time, and stop answering questions until an attorney is present.” He didn’t usually bother with Mirandizing the lowlifes he usually arrested, just palmed them off on the uniforms and let them do it for him. This was different. She was different. He was going to make this right for her. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He nodded and offered her an almost apologetic smile, then added, “Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer my questions without an attorney present?”

She looked up at him then, her eyes meeting his. “You,” she said barely above the whisper from before. “I’ll talk to you.”

He nodded then, and picked up his jacket and draped it around her shoulders, then slipping her gun into the back of his belt, he almost gently led her out of the room, and out toward the stage door.

It was a throng of chaos out there. Rogers was standing beside the man his prisoner had been threatening with the gun, and a few uniformed officers were milling around in the entrance way, with several more outside standing with their thumbs up their arses, doing fuck all to keep the small crowd out of the alley way.

Keeping a hand securely on Miss French’s arm he beckoned to one of the uniformed officers and when he had his attention, ordered, “You, get out there and help those other tossers get the members of the public out of this alley. Got it?”

“Sir,” he said and nodded in answer. Weaver knew the look on his face, it was the one that told him there were some on the force that understood when to dick around, and when to do what they were told and was gratified to see that he was right as the crowd began to clear.

He beckoned to a second officer and told him, “I want CSU in that room collecting evidence like… yesterday. You got it?”

“Detective,” the man confirmed, and he was about to head out with his suspect when he felt Rogers’ hand drop onto his shoulder.

“What’s going on, Weaver?” the man asked.

“You get his statement?” Weaver ask in response.

“Yes, but—”

“Then give him your card and send him home,” he interrupted, “Tell him we’ll be in touch.”

Trusting that Rogers would do as he was told, Weaver turned, calling the other uniformed officer over, while at the same time turning to Miss French he said, “Go with this officer. It’s all right.”

The officer apparently guessed what the detective was about to ask of him, and slipped his hand under the prisoner’s arm. She stiffened, and winced, even as Weaver said, “Take her down to the precinct and put her in an interview room. I want her seen by the medics and—”

“No!” Anabelle French suddenly started to fight going with the other officer, and Weaver had to break from giving his instructions and take her by the upper arms, leaning down to catch her eyes. “It’s all right,” he repeated. “I’ll be right behind you.”

It looked as though she was about to acquiesce, when she suddenly stiffened again and began to back away a step, almost pulling from Weaver’s grasp. It wasn’t until he felt the presence of someone at his back that he understood why, and releasing her to the uniformed officer, turned to block the male dancer from getting any closer.

“Vy derzhite rot na zamke!” he said, pointing a long finger at Miss French. She whimpered, and it looked like she was about to start fighting again.

Weaver planted both hands against his chest and pushed the man backwards as he demanded, “What did you say to her?”

The man ignored him, fixing an icy stare on Weaver’s prisoner, until she started struggling again with the officer holding her, and threatening to cause the room to descend back into chaos.

“Get her out of here,” he snapped, wincing as the uniformed sergeant all but dragged her away. The other dancer tried to push Weaver aside and follow, and it took both Weaver and Rogers to keep him restrained, pushing him against the wall.

“She tried to kill me,” he protested to Rogers as the taller detective pressed a restraining arm across the top of his chest.

“And we have her in custody,” Rogers reasoned. “All right?”

He struggled a moment longer, before nodding and apparently calming down, and Rogers let him go. Weaver didn’t buy it for a second.

“What. Did you say to her?” he asked again, standing as tall as he could and getting as far up into the man’s face as he could.

The dancer gave him a wintry smile as he pushed at Weaver’s shoulders, and said, “Have a nice day, Detective,” before he sauntered out of the stage door, becoming lost in the encroaching shadows of the late Seattle afternoon.

Swearing, Weaver followed out into the alley, with Rogers close behind him.

“What the fuck, Weaver?” Rogers asked, and even he had to almost trot to keep up, so quickly was Weaver walking.

“I want a statement from every single person that works at that place, even the janitors, and I don’t care whether you do it, or the uniformed attending do, but I want it by end of day. You got that?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Rogers said, “What I don’t get is why? Seems to me that this is pretty straight forward. Probably a lover’s tiff. In his statement he kept referring to her as ‘my Prima,’ and said she accused him of cheating on her, so…”

He trailed off as Weaver shook his head. “There’s more to it than that. Something going on.”

“Like what?” Rogers asked as they reached the car, and he waited for Weaver to release the lock. “She say something to you?”

“Not yet,” Weaver said, shaking his head as he got into the car, then looked over at Rogers as the other man climbed in. “But she will.”

Anabelle French stood mute and listless as the uniformed officer processed her into the precinct, and then took her to an office that had a desk, a computer and an examination couch - much like a doctor’s office. A short while after he’d left her, a woman came in with another, female officer. She had promised to cooperate with the detective who, for some reason, she trusted, even if she didn’t know him from Adam. So when the doctor - as she’d identified herself - asked her to remove the stage make up she wore, she accepted the washcloth and resignedly disclosed the bruises that it covered on her arms and shoulders… disrobed so that she could examine the others that discolored her chest, back and abdomen. Submitted herself to a thorough examination. Afterwards, in borrowed scrubs, she was shown to an interview room. Where she waited.

She had no idea how long it had been, but she felt small and vulnerable. Fasoli’s words echoing in her mind, setting her teeth on edge. She should have shot him. She shouldn’t have missed.

She jumped as the door finally opened, only relaxing when she recognized Detective Weaver coming in beside the man that had been with him when they first arrived.

“This is Detective Rogers,” Weaver said. “You remember who I am?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Detective Weaver.”

He nodded, and then asked, “And we’re still okay to talk, right?”

“Yes,” she said again, then asked, “but… could I maybe get some tea?”

Weaver glanced at Rogers, and the other man turned and walked out. As he left, Weaver pulled out a chair opposite her, and set the file folder he was carrying on the table between them.

“All right, Miss French,” he began, but she interrupted.

“Belle,” she said. “You can call me—”

“We’ll… stick with Miss French,” he said with a smile.

The door opened again and Rogers came back, carrying a steaming cup of tea which he set down on the table and nudged in her direction, also setting down a couple of packets of sugar and the same of the tiny containers of milk.

“There you go, love,” he said, and she wondered if he was actually as hard as she had first thought, and she thanked him softly.

Weaver seemed to be waiting until she’d taken her first sip of tea before he spoke, then he said, “Quite a bruise you have there, Miss French.” He nodded toward her upper arm, now devoid of make up and the livid purple against her creamy skin. Self consciously, she tugged at the short sleeve of the scrubs, failing to cover it. “He do that to you?”

“He?” she asked, even though she knew full well who he meant.

“Gaston Fasoli,” Weaver said. “The man you were threatening with the gun.”

She shrugged.

“We can’t help you if you won’t talk to us,” Weaver said, his tone almost imploring.

“It’s not that I won’t talk to you,” she said, so tired of it all that even though she was so afraid, she was ready to tell them everything she could, just to make it stop; for her… for the other girls.

“What then?” Weaver asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It could have been Fasoli. It could have been one of the others, I don’t. Know. Who.”

“Others?”

Belle sighed. “There are several of them,” she said, “Minders, dance coaches.” She closed her eyes, “They never treat the girls as they should. You think just because I’m the Prima I’m immune?”

“What do you mean, ‘treat the girls as they should,’?” Rogers asked, but Weaver waved the question away, as if he already knew - or could guess.

“Do you speak Russian, Miss French?” he asked.

She nodded, and added, “A lot of languages, actually.”

Weaver’s lips twitched and she thought he wanted to smile, but instead he seemed to catch himself and pressed it into a firm line. “What did Fasoli say to you at the theater.”

“He told me to keep my mouth shut,” she said.

“To keep your mouth shut?” Weaver repeated.

“About?” Rogers added.

Belle closed her eyes and put her head down on her arms, on top of the table… a whimper escaping unbidden from deep within her. She wanted to say. She wanted to tell him everything but a memory suddenly grasped a hold of her, like a icy vice. Lined up… all of them. The sledge hammer a warning blow against the fellow dancer’s knees and ankles. The girl had tried to run, had tried to talk. She was found weeks later where they’d dumped her, in the gutter of the bad side of some west coast town.

Suddenly her body was shaking with all the tears she’d held inside, and the new sobs she fought, her fears for herself, for the others, for everything that suddenly seemed to rest on her slender shoulders.

“I… can’t!” she wept.

“You’re safe here, Miss French,” Weaver told her, just for a moment covering one of her hands with his own.

“You don’t understand.” she whispered.

“So help me understand.” Weaver insisted. “Tell me what happened.”

She sat up, wiping her eyes with her hands, hands which shook almost as much as they had when she had been holding the gun. The thought it made her feel sick to her stomach, but it gave her a place to start.

“It… It was his gun,” she began. “I knew he had it; knew he kept it in his dressing room, hidden in his make-up drawer. The day before I’d heard them talking…” She caught the look of confused query on Weaver’s face, and continued, “Fasoli and Stephanov, the director. I’d been sick a few weeks before, but tried to carry on, and I made mistakes. Fasoli came into my dressing room every day. Told me I wasn’t good enough. Told me that I was getting too old, that I needed to be replaced by another girl, a younger girl. Said I was only fit for the farm.”

“Farm?” It was Detective Roger’s voice, but she saw Weaver throw him a impatient look, so she continued.

“I was scared. He said he was going to come for me and take me there himself if I made one more mistake. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I couldn’t. I know what goes on there, and I… I…” she couldn’t even bring herself to imagine what she would have done. “So when he was on stage with one of the other dancer, rehearsing, with her dancing my part, I went into his dressing room and stole his gun. He’d taken it on himself to decide. Stephanov hadn’t even said anything and Fasoli was ready to replace me. He came in today - told me I was through, not dancing today or ever again.” She looked between Weaver and Rogers, trying to find the courage from somewhere, from either one of them to speak the final sentence. “Girls in our company… if you don’t dance, they don’t fire you. They take you back… to the farm… and use you another way.”

She watched both men shift uncomfortably in their seats; saw the flash of fury that crossed Weaver’s face, the outrage in Rogers’ expression.

“This farm? It a real place or just a euphemism?” Rogers asked.

“Real,” she said. “A place you’re taken to when you first join the company, and never want to end up again.”

Weaver closed the file folder that sat in front of him, for the first time in a long time was actually surprised. No, not surprised, horrified. Horrified that he had stumbled, quite literally, into the middle of something so heinous, so organized.

He reached over and briefly covered Belle’s hand again with his own once more, offering quiet support as he said, “Miss French, I just want to have a quick word with my partner here, and a couple of other people, and then we’ll see how things are, okay?” He tapped Rogers on the arm and then gestured to the door with his head before adding. “We might be a little while. Is there anything you need?”

She shook her head, but in the exact same moment her stomach growled loudly, making her blush, and she gave him an apologetic look.

“We’ll get you something to eat,” he said, as he stood up, adding, “Sit tight.”

With that he led Rogers out of the room.

“I’m not imagining things, am I?” Rogers asked as soon as he closed the door. “She is talking about some kind of trafficking ring.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Weaver agreed, then he slapped Rogers in the chest with the back of his hand. “Come on - captain.”

He started to stride away, heading for the captain’s office, but Rogers caught his arm and tugged him back.

“Wait,” he said, “You’re going by the book?”

There was a note of incredulity in the other man’s voice that set Weavers hackles on end.

“This is bigger than just the two of us, Detective,” he snarled. “You want these bastards to get off on a technicality just because I don’t know when to play by the rules and when to do things my way?”

“No, no of course not, I—” Rogers broke off when Weaver shook off his grasp, and headed once more toward the captain’s office. He emerged to a giant altercation in the bullpen.

“What the fuck!” he breathed, and altered his course to where two uniformed officers were holding a squirming, squealing Tilly between them as she lashed out with hands and feet as she tried to get free.

“Let me go!” she growled, wriggling first one way and then the other, “I gotta tell ‘im. Detective Weaver, ‘e needs to hear this!”

“You’re not going anywhere until you calm down,” another junior detective was saying.

“He needs to hear it now!” she shot back, “Are you stupid?”

He’d heard enough, seen enough, to know that either it really was important, or else she hadn’t taken her meds again and was having some sort of episode.

“What’s going on?” he called across to the others, then added in his most fatherly tone, “Tilly?”

“Oh, thank God,” she huffed, and stopped struggling. “Detective Weaver—”

“Detective Weaver,” She was interrupted by one of the others. “This… young lady turned up at the front desk asking to see you and when we asked her to wait…”

Weaver held up a hand, just as Rogers came out of the interview suites, having stayed to arrange for food to be taken through to Miss French.

“It’s all right,” he said, and nodded his head at the officers that were still hanging on to Tilly as though they were afraid she was going to tear up the room to tell them they could let her go. “She’s one of mine.”

They took a second, but at an added glare, as he drew closer to them, making his way between the desks toward where they had Tilly, they released her arms. He expected she’d pull her coat straight in that exaggerated way she had, and then walk the rest of the way to him with her nose in the air, so he was entirely unprepared when she all but vaulted the desk, grabbed him by the wrist so hard that the links of his bracelet dug into his skin deeply enough to be almost painful, and then started pulling him back to the interview suite doors.

“You have to take her out of here,” she insisted, and though a part of him wondered what she thought she was talking about, another part of him - a part that tapped cold fingertips all along his spine - knew exactly what she meant, even though she shouldn’t know. “Take her somewhere safe.”

He leaned down, twisting his arm around hers until he was the one holding her and and looked right into her face as he asked, “Did you take your medicine today?”

“What?” she asked, looking and sounding as if she didn’t think the two things should go together at all, and then frowned as she obviously realized what he was driving at. “Yes!” she snapped in irritation, “Of course I did. I promised, didn’t I? I’m not having one of my… funny turns if that’s what you think.” She pushed at him then, urgently, almost desperately trying to get him back to the door, back to Belle French. “We were at the theater, Atla, Billy and me, the girls - the dancers - they’re usually good to us, and Atla hasn’t eaten in days, I’m worried she’s getting sick, and we were about to sneak in like we usually do, and I heard the big man - tall, dark hair, ugly eyes… heard him telling some other bloke that she wasn’t going to say anything because there were people coming for her, and that even ‘Seattle’s finest’ wouldn’t be able to stop ‘em. Look, you haven’t got time for this, Detective, I’m telling the truth, you have to get her out of here.”

She was practically hopping from foot to foot, more agitated than he’d ever seen her, almost desperate.

“Did they say anything else,” Rogers asked, but Tilly gave him an almost defiant stare.

“Please, Weaver!” she urged, pressing both hands against his shirt, beneath his open leather jacket. He stared at her for a moment longer, and then nodded once, and she appeared to relax, but only a little. He reached for his wallet and pulled out a couple of twenties and his spare door-key, pressing them into Tilly’s still outstretched hand.

“Get Atla something to eat, then go get yourselves clean, dry and warm. It’s cold, and it’s going to be colder tonight,” he said.

She gave him a tight smile, with worry still crowding her eyes, nodded once and then turned to head toward the exit. Part way she stopped, trotted back to him and then stood on tiptoes to press a swift kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” she murmured, adding, “Good luck.”

She disappeared out of the door before he could tell her, ‘get away with you,’ the affectionate chuckle also dying on his lips as the gravity of the situation descended again.

“You’re not seriously going to—”

Rogers broke off when Weaver pulled his phone out of his pocket, as well as his precinct issued pager, and pushed them both into Roger’s hands.

“Take these, put them in my desk drawer,” he instructed,” then give me as long as you can before you go to the captain. Tell him what we know. Talk to the D.A.; whoever you have to. Work the case.”

“Where are you going?” Rogers asked.

“Better you don’t know,” he said, and turning, opened the door to the interview suite.

“How do I get hold of you?” his partner demanded, clearly vexed, and holding up the hand in which he still held Weaver’s communication devices.

“You don’t.” Weaver answered flatly, stepped through the opened door, and closed it on his partners protests.

He walked quickly, dismissing the the uniformed officer that he’d left guarding his ‘prisoner’ as soon as he stepped up to the door of the room she was in, and then waited until the corridor was empty before he opened up the door.

Belle looked up as he entered, her expression becoming one of tense, extreme fear again as her eyes met his.

“Change of plan,” he told her softly, and reaching the table, unfastened the cuffs she wore securing her to the table, and slipped them into his pocket before hooking her arm with his hand as gently as the urgency would allow, and tugged her to her feet.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice wobbling slightly.

“Somewhere safe,” he answered as he led her out along the corridor, toward the fire escape, as he muttered, “We’d better hope Rogers has the Irish gift of the gab enough to buy us some time.”

It was still too early when he arrived at Roni’s. He tried the door anyway, but it was locked, so he started pounding on it with one hand, the other still tightly holding on to Belle French’s wrist, even as he tried to shelter her from view half in front of him.

The fewer people that saw her, the better. It wasn’t unusual for him to be seen going into Roni’s Bar. It was almost his second home, after all, but for him to go in there with someone else - a woman. It wouldn’t take long for anyone in the know to put two and two together.

After a moment or two of pounding, he was rewarded with an irritated, “All right, All right,” before he heard the lock click. He didn’t wait for Roni to actually open the door, just pushed French in ahead of him, almost taking Roni’s teeth out with the speed at which he got them inside.

“A bit early, isn’t it, even for you?” Roni started, but if she’d been about to say anything else, she swallowed it when he turned and locked the door behind himself. “All right, Weaver, what’s have you gotten yourself into this time,” she asked.

He shook his head, not answering her question, instead pushed French down onto a nearby chair, and gestured with his head toward the bar, taking a moment to pull the key from the lock, not trusting that his charge wouldn’t make a run for it, given the chance.

When they reached it, Roni stepped behind the bar, and automatically reached for a tumbler, and poured a good measure of her best whiskey into it.

“Mind telling me, now, what’s going on?” she asked, sarcastic, true, but with a note of concern too. He was touched.

“I need a favor, Roni,” he answered. “Maybe a few.”

“I’m listening,” she said, but her body language didn’t say the same as she folded her arms across her chest.

“Look the less I actually tell you, the better - safer - you’ll be if anyone comes sniffing around and asking questions… just…” He took a breath. “I need to borrow your lake house,” he said, “Lay low for a while.”

Roni nodded over toward where he’d pushed French down into a seat. He glanced over his shoulder. She hadn’t moved. “She’s in trouble,” she said as much as asked.

“A witness, and she needs protecting,” he corrected with as much of the truth as he dared tell. For all that they repeatedly antagonized each other, he did have a soft spot for Roni that he couldn’t explain, and it went further than the fact that she furnished him with some of the best Whiskey in Seattle.

“Why can’t you use a safe house?” she asked.

“Because safe houses belong to the department,” he said, “and I think someone inside is bent.”

“Tell me something else I don’t know,” Roni said dryly, with a pointed look at Weaver.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “My methods might be a bit… rough around the edges, but bent, I’m not.”

Roni looked at him, long and hard, as if she were searching inside his very soul, until finally she nodded.

“Okay,” she said, “You can use the lake house, but I swear, Weaver, you break it, you bought it, get what I mean.”

He nodded once, sharply. “I promise you, I’ll give it back to you when this is over, good as new.”

“Well, that’s good,” Roni said, “because right now it’s little more than a run down shack, but it’s a roof and four sturdy walls.” She snapped her fingers and pointed at the hand that still held her keys, and began to take a small set of keys from the key chain. “You said a few,” she said as she worked.

“You still have that old banger out back?”

“My car, you mean?” she said sourly. “Yes. Not that I really use it, but I have it.”

“Well… gonna need a way to get to your lake house,” he pointed out, “and I can’t use mine.”

“Fine,” she huffed, pulling off another key from the chain. “What else?”

Weaver looked back at Belle French. She was sitting there, in the scrubs they’d given her at the precinct, all but wringing her hands. “She’s gonna need something to wear,” he said.

Roni looked her over from a distance, and he could see her eyes appraising the other woman, before she sighed again and said, “I’m not sure anything I have will fit her all that well, but… I’ll take her upstairs and we’ll see what we can do about finding a couple of changes of clothes. Will that be enough?”

“It’ll have to be,” Weaver said.

“She have a name?” Roni asked.

“French. Belle French.”

Roni nodded, then calling across to the other woman said, “Miss French?” Weaver watched as the young dancer started slightly, and then looked up at Roni, who said, “How about we leave this miserable old Roller to his whiskey, and go and find you something more comfortable to wear?”

By the time Detective Weaver pulled the car to a stop at the end of a long, gravel road, it was dark and the hour had long since passed midnight. She had been awake at midnight, but only just, having woken up a couple of minutes earlier when Weaver hit the rumble strip at the side of the road, and had jerked the car back into its lane.

“If you’re tired,” she said softly, having long since accepted that the man meant her no harm and was actually trying to look out for her, “I can drive for a while.”

He shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, “Just wasn’t paying attention.”

She had drifted off again a few minutes later, but remembered watching as the dashboard clock turned from 11:59 to midnight.

After she and Roni had found a couple of outfits that would fit well enough, and packed them into a bag, along with something to sleep in, and some jeans and a t-shirt she could wear for the time being, they’d hit the road in Roni’s car. They’d stopped after an hour or so at a Walmart store, where Weaver had bought supplies with the Money Roni had given him from her safe. After that it seemed to Belle that they turned around on themselves and headed back the way they’d come, but bypassed Seattle and kept on heading north.

They’d stopped for something to eat at a roadside diner once they left the highway somewhere around Everett and began heading east, and with a full belly, and the winding mountain roads they turned onto it was hard for her to keep her eyes open, and she had fallen asleep.

The night was absolute once Weaver turned off the headlights of the car, and though not usually afraid of the dark, Belle felt herself fumbling for some kind of contact with the man.

“It’s all right,” he told her softly, “We’ll be safe here.”

“Where is here exactly,” she asked, still clinging to his arm, as slowly her eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

“Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest,” he said. “It’s where Roni’s place is. It’s a bit of a walk from here, but we’ll get you settled first, and then I’ll come back for the rest of the stuff.”

“I can help carry things,” she said. “That way you won’t have so much to come back for.”

The stark flare of the interior vehicle light was almost painful after the pitch black, when they opened the doors, and the first thing Weaver did, as she stood blinking beside the car passenger door, was to go around to the trunk for the flashlights. They each had one, and then loaded up with as much as they could carry.

“Watch the ground here,” Weaver said in a low voice as though he were trying to avoid disturbing the very air around them. “It’s a little uneven.” Then, slowly, carefully, but surely, they made their way out into the nothingness of the National Forest.

It was tough going, even for someone as fit and supple as Belle was, and she was picking her way extra carefully over some of the rockier, rootier patches of ground they traveled. She didn’t want to turn her ankle, of worse, injure herself in a way that would be devastating to her career as a dancer - if she even had a career after all of this was over. She stopped frequently, and was just beginning to worry that perhaps she had read the man all wrong, and that Weaver was leading her astray, when she became aware of a new sound coming out of the darkness ahead and to the side, the sound of water, lapping gently at the shore.

“Almost there.” Weaver’s voice confirmed what she could hear, and a moment later, in the combined beams of their flashlights, a wooden structure up ahead, a log built cabin, began to reveal itself, and soon, she heard Weaver’s heavy, booted tread on the wooden porch ahead of her. She climbed the steps to join him and set down her burdens as she waited for him to unlock the door.

Inside, it wasn’t much warmer than the outside, and she wondered how long it was since Roni, or anyone in fact, had actually stayed there. Even so, as she moved her flashlight around to catch what glimpses she could of the interior, she saw a fireplace, and kitchen appliances, and what she could see of everything looked decent enough, and certainly not the ‘run down shack’ that Roni had named it. She did wonder about power though, or whether they would have to manage their entire stay by candle light and campfire cooking.

Straining her eyes to try and see where Weaver had gone, she barely caught sight of his leather-clad back, as he appeared to be poking around in a closet of some kind. She heard the sound of a heavy switch being thrown, and then a softer click, before light blinked into existence over in the kitchen area, where Weaver was standing.

“Solar power,” he explained as he turned back to her. “There are panels on the roof on the lakeside.”

She nodded. “Useful. I was wondering,” she said.

“Doesn’t power the heat and hot water, though,” he said. “For that…” he nodded over to the fireplace toward which she had wandered as she explored the room, and she moved aside as he came closer, and began to lay a fire in the hearth.

She couldn’t help but shiver, and pull the jacket Roni had given to her more tightly around herself, though it wasn’t entirely from the cold. The thought of a fire burning brightly, the sound of the lake that she could still hear even inside, the quiet, the solitude…

…and the man before her. A man whom, she felt certain, truly cared.

As if to confirm her thoughts, he glanced over his shoulder at her, and said quietly, “This will soon warm the place up, don’t worry. And we have plenty of wood to keep us cozy.”

She smiled. It seemed an odd word to be coming from a man like Weaver; odd, but endearing.

“What?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow as he turned to look over at her properly for a moment. She shook her head, not really knowing how she could say what was going through her mind without embarrassing herself. “Surprised a city boy like me knows how to build a decent fire?”

“You’re… not at all the man I thought you were, Detective,” she told him.

He chuckled softly, and asked, “And that bothers you?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m glad.”

He turned back to the fire, and made sure that it was lit, and burning well enough before he stood up, and wiped his hands on the front of his jeans. She watched him as he looked around the lake house, and the supplies they had already managed to bring from the car.

“If you want to make yourself at home, Miss French, I’ll go get the rest of our things.”

“Belle,” she said.

He regarded her for a moment with a look that she thought showed doubt, even reticence to do as she was asking him, and use her name.

“You… don’t know how long we’re going to have to stay here, right?” she asked into the silent scrutiny he was subjecting her to, which was becoming a little prickle over the surface of her skin.

“No,” he said. “No, you’re right, I don’t.”

“In that case, please,” she said, “I’d rather you not treat me like a stranger.”

Again, he regarded her, that same, penetrating stare, until, finally he nodded. “All right… Belle.”

She nodded her thanks, and said, “I’m pretty sure I saw some cocoa and milk in one of the bags we already brought. How about I make some for us when you get back?”

“Sounds Perfect,” he said, with a nod. “It’ll give the fire a chance to warm this place - reach up to the loft.” He nodded his head toward a set of steps leading up to a second floor that only reached half way across the room. “Bed’s up there.”

The mention of bed made her realize how tired she was, and she stifled a yawn, and then murmured a soft apology. He shook his head then.

“Been a long day,” he said in acknowledgment, then added, “Go on, make a start on that cocoa. I’ll try not to be too long.”

He headed for the door, but she reached out and caught hold of him by the elbow. He turned and looked at her, an eyebrow raised in query.

“Be careful, Detective Weaver,” she said, trying not to let too much of her fear show.

“Ken,” he told her softly, and squeezed her hand on his arm, before pulling away, and heading out through the door and into the night.

Outside, Weaver shivered and pulled just jacket more tightly around himself. It was surprising how quickly the fire had already warmed the lake house, making the change in temperature more than a little noticeable.

Grabbing his flashlight from where he’d left it on the porch, he began to make his way back toward the car. Letting the night swallow him, and trying not to take too much notice of his thoughts, his feelings, the way the woman under his care was getting well and truly under his skin.

Trying to keep it professional was not his strong suit at the best of times. He was willing to admit - to the right person, of course - that he was a bit of a wild card. He did things his way, and if that crossed some lines, well, so long as it got results it didn’t matter to him.

Now though, the result was keeping this beautiful woman safe, and allowing himself to get involved with her - in any way - was not the way to do that, but she’d insisted on removing that last barrier, that last shield against the way he was feeling. Anabelle French had asked him to use her name - and not just her name, but a pet name; one that friends might use. Well that was okay, right? He could be a friend.

Yet… there was something about this woman that touched two side of his nature, both at the same time - the protector, and…

“Not gonna happen,” he told himself aloud, “You’re going to hole up here, until Rogers gets it all leveled out and comes looking for you.” Eventually his partner would figure out to go ask Roni where the fuck he was. When that happened, he’d be able to let Belle go and get on with his mundane detective work, maybe go bend a few heads in the local street gangs, just for good measure. Fucking depressing!

The first splash of rain, when it came, out of nowhere, landed on his right cheek and for just a second he actually thought it was a tear. Then he figured it out and laughed at himself, humorless and maybe even a bit angry, but it hurried his steps all the same, and soon he found himself at the side of the car, pulling open the door and grabbing the rest of the supplies he’d bought - enough for an extended stay out in the middle of nowhere, if it came to it.

On the way back, he had to turn up the collar of his jacket to keep the ever increasing rain from dripping down the back of his neck and soaking his shirt. He knew it was a futile effort, but maybe it would just be a passing shower. At least he had a change of clothes now, and for the first time maybe since he was a kid just out of middle school, a pair of pajamas to sleep in.

It was probably a good job too, since by the time he got back to the lake house, his ‘passing shower’ had soaked him all the way through to his underwear.

“Oh my God!”

Belle’s voice was full of concern as he stepped back inside, and closed the door behind him. “You’re drenched! Here, put that stuff down and come closer to the fire.” As she spoke she started moving the wooden chairs, on which she’d hung the sheets, to give him space to get closer to the hearth. Then she stepped up behind him, and tugged on his jacket.

He let her help him off with that, but then turned and caught her by the upper arms, leaning down to look at her as he said, “It’s okay, I’ll just get changed. We’re going to want to get to bed soon, anyway.” He gestured then at the sheets, and she blushed.

“I found the linen closet,” she told him. “I wanted to get as much ready as I could, but the sheets felt a little bit damp, so…” she shrugged. “I also thought the fire would warm them some.” Then she nodded to a couple of other chairs behind where he was standing, which had thick toweling robes hung over them. “The robes too. I found them in the bathroom and I pretty much unpacked everything.”

He offered her a smile, and teasing said, “I didn’t think I’d been gone that long.” She shrugged, and the blush on her cheeks renewed, and he found himself wondering what the hell was going through her mind to cause it. Instead he said, “Why don’t you go and get changed for bed, then we can have that cocoa right?”

She nodded. “I won’t take long,” she told him.

“Take all the time you need,” he said, “I’ll change while you’re gone, and build up the fire a little bit.”

“Make sure you get properly dry,” she told him, “I don’t want you catching your death on my account. There are towels in…”

“…in the linen closet, yes. I know,” he said, and absently let his hands run up and down her arms, gently, and mindful of her bruises, a gesture meant to comfort. “It’s all right. Go on. I promise.”

He watched as she picked up the smaller of the two robes, and took it, and the bag of clothes that Roni had given her, and headed through to the bathroom. He heard the click of the wall mounted heater that he knew was in there, and satisfied himself that she was getting herself changed before he began to shrug out of his own, wet clothing. He’d hang it by the hearth to dry overnight.

He hadn’t been wrong about how wet he’d gotten, he discovered as he finally peeled off his jeans, and tugged at the boxer briefs he wore beneath that were stuck to his skin, they were so wet. Forgetting himself for a second or two, he padded naked to where he knew the linen closet was to grab a towel. It was only when he heard a click from the bathroom that he realized what he’d done. His heart rate doubled in an instant, and he grabbed a towel, hurrying back over closer to the fireplace, stepping close enough that the hanging sheets shielded the lower half of his body. Then he heard water running from the bathroom.

Get a fucking grip. He toweled himself off quickly, still berating himself for his carelessness. What if she had come out while he was parading around in nothing but his rough-hewn charm. There was unprofessional and there was unprofessional. He growled softly as a stray, rebellious, but honest thought pushed to the fore. Would it have been so bad?

As soon as he was dry, he pulled on the pajamas. The gray and black checks on the pants were subdued, and further quieted by the plain gray, long sleeved shirt, and the soft, brushed cotton felt good on his skin, enlivened by the vigorous toweling he’d just given himself. He’d do, he decided, but as an afterthought, pulled on the robe, appreciating the way it had been warmed by the fire, which he then set about fulfilling his promise and tended it, building it up a little, so that it would see them through the night.

He was just straightening up when Belle emerged from the bathroom. She was swaddled in the robe that was cinched tightly at the waist over… whatever she was wearing beneath. The robe covered her night ware completely, and he could see that her legs were bare beneath the robe, that reached to her knees. He swallowed hard, and clamped down on his vivid imagination.

She offered him a smile, and he held out a hand. “Come and get warm,” he said. “I think we can probably move the sheets now.”

“I need to finish making the cocoa,” she told him, but he shook his head.

“I can do that,” he said. “Wouldn’t be taking very good care of you if I let you get a chill, would I?”

She chuckled a little, and said a soft, “Touché,” before approaching, taking his hand, and allowing him to draw her closer to the fire. He breathed in deeply as she came closer, the soft, clean scent of her reaching deep within him to a place long since buried.

“Why don’t I move these over a bit,” she said, gesturing to the sheets, “let the heat out into the room, and we can sit on the couch and enjoy our cocoa.”

“All right,” he agreed, and realizing he was still holding her hand, he let it go with a murmured apology.

She shook her head at that, and offered even more softly, “It was nice.”

He closed his eyes at that, and kicked himself, realizing, perhaps for the first time since they’d met, that human touch, of a kind that was other than connected with dance, or with the abuse she’d suffered, was something she was lacking. He didn’t know why he suddenly thought he should have known, but he definitely felt he should have picked up on it, and for just a second wondered whether he dare give her more of that kind of solace.

“Cocoa,” he reminded himself after a moment, and then headed for the kitchen area. As he worked, he heard Belle shuffling things around behind him, and risked a glance. She had set the sheets on a single chair off to the side allowing the heat of the fire to reach further out into the room, to the couch, and she had picked up his discarded, wet clothing, and hung it over the back of another chair, set off to the side, ready to move when she went up to bed.

The domesticity of it all, belying the danger she had been in, and probably still was, made him smile. If there were ever a statement on the way his life had been lately, this was probably it. She was probably it.

Lifting the pan with the bubbling milk inside, from the heat, he poured it into the two cups she had prepared, and stirred both vigorously to make sure their was no powder left in the bottom. He almost started when he felt the soft touch on his arm, and felt Belle’s heat against his back.

“What have they ever done to you?” she asked softly, then added, “Come and sit down. It’s been a long day for you too.”

He nodded, and together they walked back to the couch and sat down. He tried not to notice, as Belle curled up with her feet up on the couch at her side, the way the bottom of the robe slipped open to reveal one shapely leg almost all the way up her thigh. She sipped her cocoa, and let out a soft sigh of appreciation.

“It’s good,” she murmured, lapping a splash of chocolate from her lips. He looked away. Looking instead into the crackling fire as he felt himself starting to respond to the thoughts running through his mind at her actions.

“You did all the heavy lifting,” he told her. “All I did was pour in the milk.”

“And beat it to death with a spoon,” she teased and he couldn’t help chuckle.

A silence fell as they both sipped their cocoa, and he figured she must be as lost in her own thoughts as he was in trying to ignore his.

“Thank you.”

Her soft voice drew his attention back to her, and he half turned her way with a frown on his face, and set down his cup. He was about to speak, when she reached out and pressed the tips of her fingers against his lips.

“Don’t tell me you are just doing your job. You didn’t have to do this. You could have just left me there and trusted the law to keep me safe,” she said.

He reached up and took her hand from his lips, stroking the tips of her fingers with his own.

“Wasn’t going to happen,” he told her softly. “They would have gotten to you. I couldn’t allow that.”

“Be honest,” she began, “Because of the case, or…”

He could have lied. He could have told her it was just about the case, that the fact that something in her had pulled at him from the very beginning, like a kind of recognition that he couldn’t explain, meant nothing to him, but she deserved better than that. She deserved the truth.

“No,” he said quietly, then with a expression full of regret, added, “But it would be wrong of me to take advantage of the situation; take advantage of you.”

“You wouldn’t be,” she told him, equally as softly. “To offer a little human kindness? How would have be so wrong.”

He laughed, humorlessly, his voice thick with unrequited need when he spoke. “Oh, believe me, what I have on my mind is far more than human kindness.”

Belle blushed, and he released her hand to reach up and cup her face, his thumb stroked softly over her reddened cheek as though he could wipe away the blush, when all he truly wanted to do was cause her a greater blush yet.

“And if that’s what I want?” She leaned into his hand and shifted closer.

“You say that now—” he started, but didn’t have the chance to get any further.

“I say that, period.”

In one graceful, fluid movement, that served as a reminder that she was a dancer, lithe, supple and flexible, she set down her cup on the floor beside the couch, and moved to sit astride his pajama clad legs. Her hands came to rest on his shoulders for barely a moment while she caught her balance, though almost automatically he brought his hands to rest on her hips, to steady her, and then her fingers stroked upward either side of his neck to cup his face, bringing his gaze up to hers.

“From the moment you walked into my dressing room,” she said, finding his eyes with hers, “I’ve had this overwhelming feeling… as though I know you - somehow - even though I know we’ve never met before. How could we?” She paused as if to give him a chance to answer, but all he could do was shake his head. “I want to know how. I want to know why. I want to know you.”

As she spoke her voice became quieter, and she moved closer still, pressing against him until he could feel the heat of her body close against him, and he let out a voiced breath, not quite a moan, before her felt her breath against his lips in the instant before she closed the final distance and kissed him softly.

It was barely as if a feather had brushed against the soft skin of his mouth, and the intake of breath he gave parted his lips. The feathery touch pressed again, then the warm softness of her mouth tugged against his lower lip, and he was lost.

He tightened his arms around her, holding her closer yet to his body, and the ache he felt in his groin as his already semi-hard cock became fuller, harder and trapped between them. She moaned into his mouth as his arms crossed her back, the fingers of one hand sliding into her hair as he took control of the kiss, parting her lips with his and plundering her mouth for all her sweetness. She tasted of mint and chocolate, and sunlight - somehow sunlight even in this darkest of places.

She tugged open the belt of her robe and shrugged her shoulders to let it fall as far as his hands would allow, effectively trapping her hands and he dragged his mouth from hers. He pressed a line of hot, wet kisses down over her neck to bathe the softness of her skin, left revealed by the spaghetti strap of her pajama top and bare to the upper curve of her breasts and the cleft between, as though he could wash away the bruises still visible there.

She leaned back, her breathing quickening, her fingertips searing scalding lines down over his chest until her palms pressed against his hard nipples through the shirt he wore. He ached to take it off, to expose all of her to his kisses, to take her completely and leave her trembling and breathless with fulfillment.

The thought brought him up short, just as her fingertips skimmed against his belly above the waistband of his pants, right above his heated erection. What the fuck was he doing? She deserved better than this, better than some hurried groping, fumbling around on a couch too small for her comfort. He forced himself to pull away, to tug her away until he could catch her hands.

“Ken?” she whispered, half question, half disappointment.

“Not here,” he said breathlessly. “Not like this.” She tipped her head to the side, regarding him, and he looked upward over her body, over her quivering belly, her breasts - nipples showing through the navy silk of the camisole top - over the beauty of her face until their eyes met, and he murmured, “Come to bed.”

Belle’s entire body was humming with nerves and need, and his words went through her like a bolt of electricity to leave her already soaked and aching core pulsing with want. In answer, she climbed from his lap, feeling the damp silk of her pajama shorts rub against her thighs as she walked to pick up the sheets from the chair, while Weaver moved a fireguard in front of the fire still burning in the hearth.

They climbed the stairs to the loft hand in hand, and together made short work of the mundane necessity of making up the bed, piling on the blankets and the comforter to make sure they would be warm in the night. She was just straightening up after after turning down the bedclothes, when she felt the hot press of his lips on the back of her shoulder, and she moaned, leaning back into him, and reaching around herself to dig her short fingernails into the top of his thighs as his hands came up to cup her breasts through her camisole. His thumbs danced over her nipples.

She could feel him, hard, pressed against the top of her buttocks and lower back, and she let her hips sway, caressing him with her body until his moan vibrated against her skin. One of his hands left her breast and dipped lower, slipped beneath the leg of her shorts and brushed slowly through her tight curls until his deft touch parted her wet folds, and glided through her liquid desire to circle her clit, barely touching, and she let out a whimper, trying to move to catch his hand, his touch, needing to feel it.

“Ken, please,” she gasped breathlessly, but he removed his touch from her body, turning her in his arms to press his mouth to hers, gathering her against him. Then he lifted her in his arms and set her down on the bed, following her down to press his body to hers, but only for a moment.

Resting on his elbows over her, his mouth descended over her neck and his hand pushed aside the top of her camisole to reveal the fullness of her breast to his gaze, to his touch, and to the pull of his lips as he closed them around her puckered nipple, and suckled softly, but without cease or mercy, his other hand cupped her other breast, first through the silk of her top, then slipped inside to pinch and tease her nipple, until she squirmed and moaned out her need for him.

Slowly, he continued his descent over her body, leaving her breasts, he pushed up the front of her top, to bathe her skin with with nips and kisses, leaving her tingling, gasping as he moved lower yet and he nuzzled at her wetness with his nose, his fingers teasing around the waistband of her shorts.

She gripped his shoulders, and at the same time lifted her hips in clear invitation to remove the garment. It seemed it was all that he needed, and almost agonizingly slowly he eased the silk down over her thighs, her calves, tugged them off over her feet as he knelt up to pull off his own shirt.

Belle ran her eyes over his chest and stomach. She ached to reach out and peel the rest of his nightwear from his lean, muscled frame.

“See something you like?” he teased, and she blushed, as he began to kiss his way up her legs, lingering at the back of her knees until she squirmed, and then he ran his fingers over the inside of her thighs, the touch firm, but against her too sensitive skin it felt like hot needles, painful in the most exquisite way, and more arousing than anything she could have imagined.

“You,” she breathed, as his insistent touch parted her thighs, and his hot breath bathed her wet core in the moment before his tongue pressed between her folds, swollen with desire, and lapped upward to flicker against her clit. She cried out, her back arching, trying to catch the fleeting touch more fully and escape it both at the same time.

He moaned, the sound vibrating against her as he lapped and swirled, as he suckled on the aching nub of her clit, leaving her trembling, her breath coming in short gasps as she felt herself, like a spring wound tightly close to breaking. The touch was her undoing. As he closed his lips around her clit, sucking and alternately flickering against her with his tongue, he teased her entrance with a long, slender finger, circling once, twice, before he slowly eased the tip just inside. Her muscles grasped at him, and he moaned anew, easing his touch in slowly, and out, in and out until every muscle in her body trembled on the edge of oblivion before she broke, the wave of her climax swept over her.

He lapped softly over the length of her, the touch inside of her slowly withdrawing as the edge faded, until he left her center and kissed his way back up over her, gathering her close and nuzzling at her hair, his fingers idly caressing the side of her breast.

She trailed her own fingers over his arms, his chest, felt the taught muscles of his belly harden at her touch, and the twitch of his cock against her where he pressed, hard, against her hip. She paused, only barely before she slipped a hand between them and pressed her palm against his length, feeling the heat of him through the cotton pants, but wanting the smoothness of skin against skin she drew away, sat up only to cross her arms and grasp the bottom of her camisole and peel it off. Weaver moaned her name.

“Take them off,” she answered, plucking at the side of his pants, and when he did she tipped him onto his back, and straddled him as she had before, this time with nothing between them - only skin.

Skin on skin, she lay herself down to feel every inch of him against her, then after a time, pushed herself up, her hands on his chest. Her thighs framed his hips and she undulated against him, letting his hardness glide between her folds, against her clit.

“Belle,” he moaned, and grasped her hips to still her. She ran her hands over his chest, his shoulder, to where the puckered circle of a scar lay stark against the tan of the rest of him in the dim and flickering light.

“You were shot,” she said quietly. The though gave her almost a physical pain.

“A long time ago,” he assured her quietly. Then he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her to him and deftly flipped her beneath him, covering her completely, and he kissed her, a deep, consuming kiss. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Ken,” she breathed, and slowly raised her thighs around him, slipped her hands down over his shoulders, down to draw tiny circles in the small of his back; the top of his buttocks. “I want you,” she whispered.

“Are you sure,” he murmured, his voice thick with desire that matched her own. What did it matter they were virtually strangers? And yet… that familiarity swept over her again, stronger than before, as he added, “We haven’t—”

She caught his lips in a kiss, cutting off his words, pulling back only to whisper, “Take me, slowly,” into his mouth.

He moaned into the kiss, and reached between them to guide his cock to find her.

She felt the broad, blunt head of his scalding heat press against her, part her, open her to him as he glided deep into her soaked and needful core. She gave a soft, almost sobbing cry at the sheer rightness of it as he pressed himself to her, filled her, their bodies meeting as he held a moment, buried deep inside of her.

“Oh, Belle,” he breathed, letting his head fall into the crook of her neck, and she ran her fingers into his hair, scraped her nails against his scalp and turned her head to find his ear. Her tongue lapped at his lobe, drawing it in between her lips, before she nipped softly.

“Feel… so good,” she whispered against his ear.

“Perfect,” he murmured, lifting his head to find her mouth with his.

His tongue plundered her mouth, and she tasted herself on him, moaning softly with increased need. It wasn’t enough for him to fill her, she wanted him to lose himself in her; wanted to break apart around him, draw him with her and milk him dry. She wanted to exhaust herself in him and he in her. She lifted her hips and squeezed her muscles around him, and he broke the kiss, gasping, a breath that turned into a low, needful growl as he began to move with her.

He was hot, and hard, thick and long, and she moved with him as though they’d known each other forever. Slowly, lazily at first their shared movements stoked the fires of their need, but with each thrust, each squeeze, each sigh and moan, their desire grew, and they gave their passions head.

His thrusts became faster, harder, deeper as she lifted her legs to wrap them around his back. She wanted all of him, and moaned against his shoulder where she nipped and sucked, as she felt the heat of his balls pressing against her.

“Oh, God!” he gasped. Then, “Belle.”

Her breath was coming in shallow snatches, panting in time with the rhythm of their lovemaking, and she moaned, “Don’t stop,” as she pressed her head back against the pillows, “Please, don’t stop.”

She was close, and she could tell from the trembling in his arms and the look of near bliss on his face that he, too, was hanging on the moment with her, until with a cry, she burst around him and he let out a primal moan as he lost himself inside her, each beat of his heart pulsing hot, thick seed into her. She pulsed and trembled around him, milking every precious drop. Until he sank down onto her, and held her close, tight, breathless together as they each began to calm.

Still shaking he eased from her, drawing her with him to nestle her into his side as though he didn’t want to let her go, and she clung to him, still breathless, still pulsing, still feeling all of him as he held her close, leaned his head down to take her lips gently, softly, in a sweet and tender kiss.

He reached down to draw up the covers over their sweat drenched bodies as they slowly caught their breath. He had never known anyone like her. It was as though she knew every inch of him, and he of her, and together they were only one whole being - lost apart. His throat felt tight with unshed tears that he couldn’t explain. He swallowed hard, swallowed them down.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?” he murmured softly, pressing another soft kiss to her forehead as she rested against his shoulder.

She shifted against him. “Yes,” she whispered, “Better than all right.”

He chuckled softly, and she looked up at him then, an expression he couldn’t quite fathom on her face, and he raised an eyebrow in query.

She shook her head, but he pressed gently, “What?”

“It’s just…” she swallowed hard. “I wondered if it was short for something, or if it is really just Ken. Your name, I mean.”

“Kendrick,” he said, reaching up to run his fingers through her hair, and smooth it back from her face. “It’s short for Kendrick.”

“Kendrick Weaver,” she murmured his full name, and he suddenly felt as though his entire life, past and future were somehow being drawn together in the woman by his side.

“It suits you,” she said, after many long moments of silence, and settled herself against him again, safe in his arms.

#rumbelle #a monthly rumbelling #amr #woven beauty #angst #eventual smut #implied/referenced abuse

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riotwritesthings · 5 years

Text

Origin Stories

Steve/Tony, 1k, Rated T AO3

Prompt: High School AU, found here

“The science building is flooded again,” Clint says by way of greeting as he drops his lunch tray down on the table.

“How is that news?” Natasha asks without looking up from her book, her tone bored. “It would be more surprising if a week went by without something happening to that place.”

Steve isn't really listening to the conversation, more concerned with the scratch of charcoal over paper.

“I'm just saying, I think we have an evil genius in our midst,” Clint says as he starts dumping his fries into the giant pile of ketchup in the center of his plate.

“Or someone who's just really bad at science,” Sam points out, eyeing Clint's plate with disgust.

“Or both,” Steve suggests idly, not looking up from his sketchbook.

“What are you working on?” Natasha asks, leaning into Steve's side.

He scrambles to cover up the page, no doubt smearing the drawing he worked so hard on in the first place, his face flushing. “Nothing,” Steve says quickly, too quickly, and then winces as Natasha raises a pointed eyebrow at him and Sam bursts out laughing.

“Probably just doodling his secret crush again,” Bucky says, looking up from his lunch just long enough to shoot Steve a wide smirk.

Steve glares back, his face probably scarlet by now, and shoves his sketchbook into his backpack as the table explodes with noise.

“I can’t believe you flooded the building,” Rhodey says, shaking his head sadly even as he's clearly tying to fight down a smile. "Again!”

“Well then you have terrible pattern recognition,” Tony says happily, holding one of his soaking wet shoes under the weak air of the bathroom hand dryer. “And I maintain that the smoke detectors in there are way, way too sensitive.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure that defense will hold up with Fury,” Rhodey says with a scoff. “It’s only, what, the third time this has happened?”

“All the more reason they should change them!” Tony says. He shoves his fingers down into his shoe, feeling around, and then holds it back under the dryer again with a huff. “I was really onto something this time, too! And now all of my careful, intricate wiring is ruined!"

“So what distracted you from your soldering this time?” Pepper asks, sticking her head in through the door to smirk knowingly at him.

"Nothing!" Tony insists, and blushes very unconvincingly. "Get out of here, this is the boy's bathroom, and you're supposed to be keeping watch!"

Pepper is laughing as she lets the door fall shut again, and Tony doesn't even need to look over to know Rhodey is judging him, too. If they weren't actively helping him avoid getting in trouble for trashing the science building for the millionth time, Tony might be tempted to call them the worst friends ever.

"You ever actually gong to talk to him?" Rhodey asks and that's it, he's officially the worst.

"I have no idea who or what you're talking about," Tony grumbles, and ignores the way Rhodey snorts with disbelieving laughter, and the fact that he can hear Pepper laughing even from out in the hallway.

Steve is not even a little surprised that the alarms are screaming as he walks past the science building.

The last bell rang several hours ago, and Steve's first thought is that Clint is going to be bummed he missed this latest development. Steve’s second thought is that he’s pretty sure he hears someone’s voice, which is weird, because the campus should definitely be empty by now. Never mind that Steve is still here, himself.

He rounds the corner, looking for the source of the voice, and then stops dead in his tracks, sketchbook clutched to his chest.

"No, platypus, it is not toxic smoke,” Tony says into his phone, and then reluctantly adds “this time.”

Tony chews on his lip as he loiters outside the science building, hoping like hell the smoke dissipates before anyone comes looking to find out what all the noise is about. At least it’s not thick enough to set off the sprinklers this time.

Tony winces when he hears approaching footsteps, and says “hey Rhodey, I think I gotta go. Wish me luck and minimal jail time.” Tony hangs up and spins on his heel, fully expecting to be faced with an angry cop, or worse, Principal Fury. He finds neither of those things, and Tony’s carefully prepared explanation escapes him in a rush of breath.

They stare at each other for an embarrassingly long time, Tony with a smear of ash across his forehead and Steve clutching his sketchbook like a shield, the smoke alarms cheerfully blaring right along in the the background.

“So,” Steve says slowly, surprised at himself even as the words leave his mouth, “are you an evil genius, or just really bad at science?”

Tony just blinks for a second, stunned, and then manages to recover with a smirk that’s only a little wobbly. “Who says it can’t be both? Or, more likely, I’m actually very good at science, not so good at paying attention to boring things like the limits of air filtration systems?”

Steve smiles back, and he’s doing it, he’s actually doing it, take that Bucky. Who can’t talk to their super secret crush now? “That sounds a lot like a super villain origin story, to me.”

“Who knows,” Tony says, a little more confident, “maybe I can still be won over. Prevent world disaster.” Tony has to resist the urge to start texting Rhodey and Pepper right now, because they are not going to believe this, but he can’t risk looking rude. He can’t risk this conversation ending.

“I think I might be up to that,” Steve says, his hands finally relaxing from their death grip on his book, “how do you feel about cheeseburgers?” When Tony smiles wider it nearly takes his breath away.

The alarm finally shuts off. Neither of them notice.

#stevetonyseptember #stevetony #stony #fanfic #drabble #highschool AU

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sssshhhthefilmsabouttostart · 4 years

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The best and worst films of 2019

It was of the general consensus that 2019 was a truly amazing year for cinema, with audiences treated to a wide and impressive array of films. As usual, the year produced a number of sure bets from both well known directors and arthouse favourites, but it also treated cinemagoers to some truly unexpected treats from the cinematic mainstream.

Having watched just over 100 films (released in Australia), those that made this year’s ‘best list’ have been selected on the basis of the lasting impression they have left on this viewer after the lights have come up and the curtain’s been drawn.

So, what succeeded and what failed?

Ladies and gentlemen, may we please offer for your consideration…

50. READY OR NOT

49. GLASS

48. HAL (DOCUMENTARY)

47. STUDIO 54 (DOCUMENTARY)

46. HOTEL MUMBAI

45. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

44. CRAWL

43. MISSING LINK

42. SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK

41. THE CLOVEHITCH KILLER

40. BURNING

39. AVENGEMENT

38. YESTERDAY

37. THE SISTERS BROTHERS

36. BRIGHTBURN

35. FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY

34. HAIL, SATAN (DOCUMENTARY)

33. VELVET BUZZSAW

32. COLD PURSUIT

31. STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

30. SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

29. BEN IS BACK

28. THUNDER ROAD

27. THE REPORT

26. TOY STORY 4

25. MID 90′S

24. LAST BREATH (DOCUMENTARY)

23. VOX LUX

22. GLORIA BELL

21. THE FAREWELL

20. SHAZAM

19. FREE SOLO (DOCUMENTARY)

18. KNIVES OUT

17. BOOKSMART

16. DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE

15. US

14. ROCKETMAN

13. AD ASTRA

12. JOJO RABBIT

11. MIDSOMMAR

10. APOLLO 11 (DOCUMENTARY)

Though this outstanding assemblage of archival footage about the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing featured no narration, interviews or analysis, director Todd Douglas Miller successfully managed to create an amazingly beautiful and surreal experience about one of humanities greatest achievements. Featuring never-before-seen footage of both the launch and the mission itself, ‘Apollo 11′ was as thrilling as any sci-fi and eye-wateringly beautiful to behold.

9. EIGHTH GRADE

It was an impressive year for many ‘coming-of-age’ films (‘Booksmart,’ ‘Good Boys,’ ‘Mid 90′s’) but it was writer-director Bo Burnham’s poignant and sensitive exploration of the challenges of early adolescence in the age of social media that really resonated. Focusing on the socially awkward Kayla - played with exquisite, jittery control by teen actor Elsie Fisher - ‘Eighth Grade’ was a thoughtful observation on the universal truths of growing up in the modern age.

8. FORD V FERRARI

With director James Mangold at the wheel, ‘Ford V Ferrari’ was a highly enjoyable sports car racing movie that left audiences with a lasting and highly satisfying impression all the way to the finish line. Based on the rivalry between the car manufacturers Ford and Ferrari in their pursuit to win the 24 hour Le Mans sports car race in 1966, ‘Ford V Ferrari’ featured heart-pounding racing sequences and impeccable performances from Matt Damon & Christian Bale.

7. THE NIGHTINGALE

Though not a horror film in the strictest definition of the term, you were less likely to find a more horrific cinematic experience this year than Australian director/writer Jennifer Kent’s 'The Nightingale.’ Kent's follow up to her critically acclaimed debut ‘The Babadook' was an extremely unsettling and bleak revenge tale, that relentlessly beat the audience with its unflinching violence and depictions of cruel racism.

6. AVENGERS: ENDGAME

"Part of the journey is the end...” A cathartic and satisfying experience for all MCU fans worldwide, 'Avengers: Endgame' was everything we needed and more than we deserved. Full of callbacks and emotional pay-offs 10+ years in the making, ‘Avengers: Endgame' was a thrilling conclusion and a deeply emotional exploration of loss and love, duty and honour, friendship and family. Just remember to lean into the tears.

5. JOKER

Whether you ended up either loving or hating ‘Joker,’ there was no denying that the landscape of cinematic comic book adaptations had been changed forever. Drawing inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘The King of Comedy’ and featuring Joaquin Phoenix’s magnificently dedicated and exhaustive performance, ‘Joker’ was a truly outstanding cinematic achievement that would be discussed and debated for many years to come.

4. THE IRISHMAN

A magisterial entry in his long and masterful career, Martin Scorsese’s violent yet poignant crime epic featured flawless performances from a stellar ensemble cast (De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel). With a script that was nothing short of a master work, coupled with an intricate production design and stylish cinematography, ‘The Irishman’ felt like an apt end point for Scorsese’s fascination in narratives detailing the ultimate price that comes from a life of sin.

3. PARASITE

Renown South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho already had an impeccable track record (’The Host,’ ‘Snowpiercer,’ ‘Okja’) but really stepped up his game with this brilliant and powerfully revealing social satire. An intricate look at modern-day social hierarchies, ‘Parasite’ kept flipping audience expectations with its radical shifts in tone - from clever comedy to violent, dark tragedy - whilst delivering some brilliant thematic elements.

2. MARRIAGE STORY

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s drama about the pain of the divorce process was a phenomenally crafted piece of cinema. A tragic tale amplified by both Baumbach’s screenwriting genius and tour-de-force performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, ‘Marriage Story’ highlighted the struggles of an everyday situation and the real efforts to maintain it, leaving audiences with heavy hearts and thoughts.

1. ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD

Set against the backdrop of Hollywood’s changing of the guard and the looming large presence of the Manson Family, ‘Once Upon A Time...in Hollywood’ was a melancholy, slow burning, comedic love letter to a filmmaking era long gone, and easily one of Quentin Tarantino’s best films.

As a wonderfully painted portrait of 1969 Hollywood, Tarantino delivered something truly special - a cinematic opus featuring so many film references, both obscure and in your face, that it was an absolute delight for cinephiles everywhere to luxuriate in the sights and sounds of this historical fantasy.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt delivered the most emotionally vulnerable performances of their careers as soon-to-be has-beens, whilst the film’s vibrant production and costume design and playful soundtrack perfectly captured a snapshot of a special place and time in film history.

If Tarantino is still adamant to call it quits on his directing career after his next movie, ‘Once Upon A Time...in Hollywood’ was a timely reminder that we should all definitely try to enjoy the filmmaker whilst we still can.

...AND NOW, THE WORST!

20. UNDER THE SILVER LAKE

19. THE MULE

18. STUBER

17. AT ETERNITY’S GATE

16. IT: CHAPTER 2

15. THE BANANA SPLITS MOVIE

14. HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U

13. ALADDIN

12. ANGEL HAS FALLEN

11. TERMINATOR: DARK FATE

10. CAPTIVE STATE

Director Rupert Wyatt, the brains behind the effective ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ reboot, easily delivered one of the worst sci-fi films of the year. Despite a premise filled with potential and talent both in front of and behind the screen, ‘Captive State’ was a major disappointment. The screenplay (co-written by Wyatt) was an epic mess of confusion that lacked both a compelling narrative and characters to hold it together, resulting in a huge misstep for all involved.

9. RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

It’s ironic a film franchise that started out telling the sad story of a man trying to show an uncaring world he was still a human being should have its final chapter demonstrate the exact opposite. This much touted ‘final entry’ in the Rambo saga was a deeply unpleasant and unnecessary exercise that featured little wit, inventiveness or originality. The character of John Rambo deserved a better swan song than ‘Rambo: Last Blood,’ and so did we.

8. GEMINI MAN

Directed by Ang Lee and starring Will Smith as a government assassin facing off against a clone of his younger self, ‘Gemini Man’ was an empty and tiresome thriller dressed up in a lot of fancy tech, and Smith’s biggest box office flop since ‘Wild, Wild West.’ Despite costing $138 million to produce, all the Hollywood SFX wizardry in the world couldn’t excuse a lifeless picture, with the final result nothing more than a bland action clone.

7. THE LION KING

Soulless was how best to describe Disney's shot-for-shot live action version of the 1994 animated classic. The core failure of this latest incarnation of 'The Lion King' was the studio’s inexplicable choice to go fully photorealistic with the animation. The animal characters may have all been zoologically accurate, but there was absolutely zero expression or emotion conveyed in their faces (let alone the voice talent). Sadly, ‘The Lion King' was nothing more than a cash grab that relied heavily on the nostalgia and success of the original,

6. WELCOME TO MARWEN

Robert Zemeckis, the director behind such cinematic gems as ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Cast Away,’ was also responsible for this woeful and misguided outing. Despite being based on the true story of a man learning to cope with a terrible trauma through the power of art and imagination, ‘Welcome to Marwen’ focused its attention on the visuals of the story instead of its narrative. Our advice? Watch the original 2010 documentary ‘Marwencol.’

5. THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA

Let’s cut straight to the point - the reason Hollywood keeps making cheap, crappy horror films with little, if any, imagination is because they will always make their money back within the opening weekend. And ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ was a prime example of this, a formulaic slab of supernatural dirge destined to be forgotten by year’s end. Filled with jump scares, loud musical cues and devoid of any originality, horror fans deserved better than this.

4. MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL

Despite the box office success of the first ‘Men in Black’ film and its two well-received sequels, ‘Men in Black: International’ was a dull and dreadful reboot that severely tarnished the franchise. There were all sorts of bad things happening in this fourth film, but none were as unforgivable as wasting the talents of both Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thomspon. You didn’t need your memory wiped after this one - the movie did it for you.

3. DARK PHOENIX

The ‘X-Men’ films have been less hit and more miss in recent times and, unfortunately for fans, ‘Dark Phoenix’ closed out the this once-great franchise in an extremely disappointing fashion. Suffering from extensive rewrites and reshoots to the point where not even the film's stars knew which characters they were playing, ‘Dark Phoenix’ was a far cry from the pitch-perfect conclusion James Mangold gave us with the vastly superior ‘Logan.’

2. HELLBOY

Director Neil Marshall’s bloody misfire of the ‘Hellboy’ franchise was a damned mess, undeserving of both your hard-earned money and your valuable time. The film’s storytelling was clumsy rather than clever, the atmosphere oppressive rather than immersive and the characters colourless rather than captivating. Try to imagine Guillermo del Toro’s original two movies, except without any spark, wit, fun, tension and excitement. Absolute hell, boy!

1. CATS

Don’t act as if you’re surprised by this year’s winner of worst film - ‘Cats’ was an epic misfire, deserving of the vitriol it received from critics everywhere (the furry community, however, LOVED IT).

From the initial spark of the thought that turning Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical into a film would be a good idea, the project was doomed. With every single decision involved in this movie more baffling than the last, the biggest and most fundamental problems were the concept design of the cats themselves and there being absolutely no semblance of a plot.

Despite there being pussy galore, ‘Cats’ failed to capture any sense of spectacle or fun, and instead plodded through an inane, boring and predictable story that was used mostly as a platform for some big West End musical numbers and A-list cameos.

Watching your neighbour’s cat lick its own arse was far more enjoyable to behold than this cinematic disaster.

#the best and worst films of 2019

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thunder-the-ranger-wolf · 4 years

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Flowers Flowers Everywhere (except for when it counts)

Well this is a long time coming! Originally planned as a thank you for the cards sent out by @scifigrl47, this is now a birthday present. You asked for Tony getting flowers and I really hope you like how that played out. Happy birthday!

One (Lady's Slipper, among others)

There were enough flowers to fill a shop scattered throughout the lobby. They’d been checked repeatedly for nefarious objects that might have accompanied them, and since there were none, they reached their intended destination without trouble. They started going home with employees, since they always showed up at Stark Industries.

It’d make a nice centerpiece, an HR representative mused as he snagged a pot on the way home after a long shift.

My wife absolutely adores these, a janitor recalled easily when she came in one day to find a particular bouquet she’d only seen in magazine cut-outs.

Some of them went to Tony himself, and Pepper had taken to wearing a different flower in her hair specifically to hear him groan whenever he saw her. It was their newest form of teasing and he loved it as much as she did.

Point being, they had no idea who was giving these flowers. Nobody did. Not the truck drivers who handled deliveries for the building, not the janitors or security guards who had to check each bouquet and clean up after them each nice. They just knew that the building smelled delectable and the flowers came fresh every day.

This first set were numerous bouquets in all colors and shapes. Some were rare and left alone, some were common and more than happy to leave with a coworker. But they were all thoroughly investigated to no end, and everyone was curious as to who could possibly send such a surprise.

Two (Coriander)

"This… whoever's doing this. It's possible they could be a rival.They might see you as an opponent." Steve wondered.

The super soldier left the tower for his early morning run and came back to a lobby full of white. It could have been mistaken for snow, the way petals floated through the air and coated every surface, but a storm had passed through a few days ago and snow wasn't quite on the menu. Rain, on the other hand…

Steve wondered if these flowers would survive a trip outside the building as he joined the security guards inspecting each bouquet. They had the process down, especially since JARVIS was on the case, but they were more than happy to have Captain America's help. Steve was glad to put his nose to good use, and while the flowers reeked, he couldn't detect any of the usual poisons he'd know of and the guards tested each petal they could get their hands on.

"Why a rival?" Pepper wondered.

"Coriander means hidden strength. Everyone knows that Tony is a genius. But what if whoever's doing this thinks the company as a whole is something to stand of its own accord?"

"SI has been standing of its own accord long before Tony or I were born." Pepper deadpanned.

"Oh yeah, definitely." Steve acknowledged, recalling several inventions he'd used during the war bearing the Stark name. "Never did get that flying car, but I guess that means whoever this is, they're new to the game. Scoping out their competition. I mean, SI isn't the only company in the news for this."

"Fair enough…" Pepper admitted. "Whatever they're doing, they best wrap this up. As soon as we figure out who they are, we'll be gunning for them."

"Thought you didn't do that anymore." Steve quipped cheerfully.

"Exceptions, Steve, exceptions. As it turns out, leaving the game doesn't mean burning all your bridges."

Pepper stalked towards the elevators and Steve waited a few minutes before he followed her. Crossing the CEO of anything wasn't a bright idea, but she'd been there long before Stark Industries made the switch to green energy. Clearly, that fire hadn't gone anywhere.

Three (Goldenrod)

Eventually, Tony found the flower shop they were coming from. It was maybe three and a half blocks from SI and it didn’t look all that fancy at all. If not for the logo, no one would know what they sold. A lot of the city was like that, and for good reason: There wasn’t enough space for big fancy signs everywhere and if you sold a good product, everyone would flock to you anyway.

The casier did not expect a billionaire to walk in.

“Good morning, Mr. Stark. She blurted out nervously.

“Good morning, Ms. Delian.” He offered smoothly, having barely glanced at her nametag. Sheila Delian had blonde hair and hazel eyes that went wider than a disco ball when she saw him.

“You must be coming in about the flower order, then. My boss expected someone from SI to send a cease-and-desist order, but we never thought it’d be you.”

“There won’t be a cease-and-desist order.” Tony determined. “Not yet, anyways. People like the flowers and there’s plenty of employees at the Tower. We could easily wait this buyer out.”

“But you want to find him.” Sheila confirmed. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I don’t know how much help the shop can be.”

“Why’s that?”

“The order was sent in through our website through a series of prepaid cards. A different one for each order. And each order insisted on as many arrangements as we could allow per sendout."

"Do you know when the orders were placed?" Tony prompted calmly.

"Oh! That… that's definitely something I can look up. I'm sorry, Mr. Stark, it's just that this is the worst time for such a huge order, I-. Not your problem. Okay, first order came in on a Saturday, I remember that much. It can't have been long after the Spring festival. Everyone gets flowers around that time but this was all to one place-. Okay. February 13th is when the first order for Stark Industries came in."

"How much were they?"

"I can't tell you that. I'm sorry, sir. I'm close enough to losing my job as it is. All you have to do is say the word, I can get someone on the delivery team to spread the message that these flowers are unwanted."

"No need, and I'd rather not stir up anything with whoever's sending these. Thank you for all your help, Ms. Delian. I hope your day gets better."

Shelia nodded and offered the standard thanks as the bell that signaled his exit jangled overhead. He left behind three-hundred dollars in twenties and a goldenrod that she knew for a fact hadn't come from the store. He hadn't even browsed the aisles…

Sheila winced, wondering how this situation got so out of hand, and weaved the flower through her braids. Hopefully its message of encouragement and good fortune would rub off on her.

Four (blue and white Hydrangeas)

It got to be more than a bit ridiculous a few days later, when Security had to go through dozens of notes attached to as many bouquets. All of them were addressed to Tony and each of them were different in some way shape or form. One group of notes was sweet, describing how the flowers smelled and a picnic they'd be good for. Another involved promises of Tony's favorite foods not long after. What made the employees of SI suspicious is that these were foods he actually liked as opposed to something snagged from an interview or a passing remark. Tony has eaten countless meals in front of countless people, so someone was bound to get some of his favorite foods right. But the fact was that many articles in the genius behind SI involved false information or caricatures of who the man actually was. He allowed it in the name of privacy, and it would definitely help narrow down the pool of suspects.

The thing is, it wasn't unusual to find a flower shop bogged down with orders around Valentine's day. The person who'd done this was arrogant enough to wait until the day before and wealthy enough to ensure their orders got through. But considering the date it encompassed, these mystery bouquets weren't very appreciated.

This particular set wasn't exactly his favorite flower. Some of his employees took them home but at the end of the day, he was left with an array of blue and white hydrangeas. A quick search revealed that they supposedly meant frigidity, apology, boasting, and bragging. Tony didn't really know what to make of that. Boasting sounded less like someone's well-wishes and more like he was being played. If this fucked wanted to apologize, the best way to do so would be to quit with the godforsaken flowers and perhaps explain all this. Bit of a stretch, considering this had been going on for a few weeks, but it would have been nice.

Five (Golden Tulips)

They stopped the day after Tony visited the shop and everyone let out a breath they didn't know they were holding.

Nothing was poisonous, nothing was hidden in the notes, nothing about these flowers were dangerous save for the mysterious benefactor.

Plenty of names had been struck from the list. Fans had been contacted, employees vetted, colleagues grilled, to little avail. The answer came one dreary afternoon during a briefing on the Avengers' latest foe.

"You mean to tell me that you still haven't said anything?" Natasha Romanoff was positively whining as she draped herself over a stoic and rather annoyed Steve Rogers. "I thought that big flower show was yours!"

"What? God, no! I heard that was all over the news, but c'mon, Romanoff, where would I get that kind of money? Besides, how could you go wrong with some chocolate and maybe a sketch or two."

"Gonna draw him like one of your French girls, Rogers?" Clint crooned.

"I hate you. I am actually going to take those arrows and snap them all over my knee like a bundle of sticks. I'll strangle you with your own bow for good measure!" Steve snapped.

"Ooooo, someone's touchy!" Natasha snickered. "If you would just tell him-!"

"Whatever it is, it better not involve flowers." Tony deadpanned as he stalked into the room.

"How do you even know what he's talking about?" Clint whined. "You're a genius, not omniscient!"

"I don't. Never said it was me you were talking about, just that I don't want to hear about flowers."

"Unfortunately, you're going to have to." Fury announced with his usual grim look and annoyed drawl. "It's safe to say that Stark Industries has been the victim of an elaborate scheme made by our next villain, but they're not the only ones taking a fall. And I'm pretty sure they got the nicer end of the spectrum."

The wall behind Fury's head parted to reveal a screen full of pictures. Several boxes of chocolates, hundreds of teddy bears, and about as many flowers that Tony could stand were shown in various places.

"Some people got by the chocolates, others had their roses grow far beyond their measure. This was done to a number of major American companies with no true connection to each other. Some employers got away scot-free, like SI and Van Dyne's fashion empire, but others weren't so lucky. This villain calls himself Cupid-."

"Cupid?!" Tony spluttered. "Like the little baby angel guy that shoots arrows at the people they think should fall in love?!"

"That's what this particular pest is calling himself. Only instead of arrows, he's been sending flowers and chocolates and teddy bears to those who prove their worth or earn his ire. SI seems to have proven their worth somehow."

"That doesn't explain everything." Tony noted. "There were notes attached to each bouquet. They had many of my personal favorites, things that few people would know about me. Some things about my employees and those I'd consider respectable colleagues. If any of them are in the line of fire, whatever arbitrary standards he's using to judge us might not apply to them."

"Which is why this unmasking this villain is so crucial. The only reason this isn't considered a form of biological warfare is because no one's died from it yet."

"Who else is in on this? And what can the Avengers' do?"

"As a team? Nothing. We'll need your various individual skillsets. As for who's on this, all the usual suspects, Stark. The CDC Shou be contacting you for a sample of the flowers at some point."

"Alright. And what's this Cupid guy's aim?"

"We're not sure yet. We're hoping you can weigh in on a few comparisons we have so far."

"Alright," Tony exhaled roughly. "Fucking Cupid. Like I need another reason to hate February."

"That's what we've got so far. You all will be contacted by the members of this task force who can best use your services."

Fury left the room without saying anything further, which didn't give the Avengers much incentive to stick around.

"Hey, Tony," Steve caught his partner's arm when the genius passed him heading for the front door.

"Hey, Steve," Tony parrotted. "Got any ideas for all this?"

"I've told what I can. But this isn't the weirdest villain we've come up against, I don't think."

"Just the most annoying. It's a good thing I'm not allergic to flowers, because this past week has already been hell." Tony scoffed, stalking out the door and down the hall.

"I can only imagine." Steve snorted, keeping up easily. "But, uh since flowers, chocolates, and all that stuff is probably way out of bounds for now, what do you say we just go out for dinner?"

"Dinner sounds like the best idea I've heard all day. You gonna cook or should I break out my best disguise?"

"Don't raid the costume department just yet, we could just order in." Steve drawled.

"Depends. Like I said, it's been a long week. I get to be picky."

"I'll make it up to you at some point. Technically there's a bouquet of golden tulips that have been sitting in the fridge since the 2nd, but if you're sick of flowers…"

"I figured you'd have something planned out. And I'll have you know that I love receiving flowers. When I know who they're from."

"Well, at least these weren't… tampered with."

"Yeah, at least the fucker deemed my company worthy." Tony grumbled darkly. "Say, what'd the spies get onto you about?"

"This is so dumb. I absolutely hate them and they ruin everything."

"Okay, now I've got to know. You're keeping something from me and clearly it's on purpose!" Tony crowed, eyes bright with the eagerness of solving at least one mystery.

"I was going to ask you later. I wanted to do this properly."

"C'mon, Steve, we can still do it properly. I'd just know what it is."

"Yeah," Steve grumbled. "And the surprise is gone."

"Well, lemme at it. I'm sure I'll like it no matter what."

Steve rolled his eyes and dug around in his pocket to reveal a small black square nestled in his palm.

Steve stopped when Tony did, and the shorter man gaped at the box that had been shuffled into his hands.

"Open it." Steve groused after a few moments.

Tony did so without question and when he saw what was inside, he buried his face in Steve's shoulder.

"You know what my answer is." He mumbled.

"Yep. Would have been nice to do it elsewhere. Quieter, perhaps. And in private." Steve drawled as the pair entered the mess hall full of employees.

"Them's the breaks." Tony snickered, giving his now-fiance the box. "I'm sorry your surprise got ruined, though I must say I'm looking forward to that dinner a lot more."

Steve slipped the black square back into his pocket and rubbed one of Tony's hands between his own.

"There's that." Steve grumbled. "And there will be more flowers after all this. Proper ones."

"Maybe hold off on those for, like, a year or two." Tony scoffed. "If I never see another petal it'll be too soon."

"This guy didn't ruin the golden ones." Steve offered. "You love golden flowers."

"The ones that mean well, sure. I guess we've still got that."

The ride to the Tower was about as long as it always was, but Steve might as well have given him all the golden tulips he could carry with how pleased Tony was. Steve's goal was to keep that look on his face from as long as they lived.

#tony stark #steve rogers #pepper potts #clint barton #natasha romanoff #bruce banner #thunder attempts to write

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Anger Issues

First proper movie of the year, and it’s Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Look, the DCEU is a dumpster fire, so much so that the WB has basically given up on it. They’ve started doing stand alone films as a way to recuperate their image and it’s kind of working. Shazam was fun as f*ck and Joker is rightfully getting so much buzz, it’s ridiculous. Even Aquaman was decent once it was released from the grimdark Snyder vision. Birds of Prey is not that. It is, at it’s core, a DCEU film. This thing might as well be called Suicide Squad but with chicks. It’s that ridiculous. But is it as bad as that? Let’s get into it.

The Great

The very best thing about this movie is f*cking Huntress. Bro, i LOVED Helena Bertinelli in this movie! Mary Elizabeth Winstead owned this part, one hundred percent! She was the MVP of this whole goddamn sh*t show but she sure as f*ck ain’t get MVP minutes! Huntress is in this thing for a grand total of ten minutes, man. It might be more, it might be less, but it definitely ain’t enough because she has NO time to shine! What little she gets, though, she kills! Talk about burying the lead, man. I understand that certain cuts needed to made in order to give the top-biller in Harley the god shots, but f*ck, dude. You can’t tease me with so much awesome and then just snatch it all away! F*ck you for that, movie. F*ck You!

The Good

This thing was cast incredibly well. I was on the fence with some of the announcements during development, but it came together nicely. There aren’t many weak performances and, overall, you can tell that everyone was having fun. There’s a lot of great chemistry among this group and i can see myself giving a proper BoP sequel a chance.

Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn. She embodies this chick like Ryan Reynolds embodies Deadpool, for the most part. She was my first pick going into SKWAD and it felt right seeing her in those hot pants. There were some issues i had with that character, mostly the vanishing accent, but she’s gotten much better since then an that growth shows here. It’s unfortunate that her character doesn’t grow in this two hour run time, especially considering how much time Harley gets onscreen.

Jurnee Smollet-Bell is probably the best Dinah Lance we’re going to get for a while. he was surprisingly adept at the part, even if everyone is butt-hurt that she was race-bent. Her Canary Cry was absolute sh*t but that was more the effects fault. Them sh*ts is cheap! Jurnee did a fantastic job as Black Canary and i wasn’t even mad she wasn’t rocking the fishnets while doing it. She kicks high.

Rosie Perez was an interesting choice for Renee Montoya but i knew she could be fantastic in the role if they gave her room to breathe. Perez could have brought that Puerto Rican heat to the role, and she did a few times, but not enough to make an impression. Again, that’s because this ain’t a Birds of Prey vehicle so all of the Birds had to kind of curtail their time in the camera, and overall character development, in order to make sure Harley got her face time with the audience. It’s kind of f*cked up and makes the movie less for it.

Black Mask was a goddamn spectacle! He’s smarmy, and arrogant, and flamboyant, and campy, and generally just brilliant. He’s one of the best villains of the DCEU, which ain’t saying much, but i can say just SO much about Ewan McGregor’s performance as Roman Sionis. His mask is stupid though. And he’s definitely Black Mask in name only. Still, for what this version is, McGregor delivers. If you’re curious what a closer interpretation of the comic character can be, check out Batman: Under The Red Hood. That’s a far more accurate representation of what Sidonis is supposed to be but I’m not mad what we got here.

Chris Messina as Victor Zsasz is okay. In the book, he’s out of his mine and ludicrously violent. Like, textbook psychopath crazy. In this, he’s still pretty f*cking nuts but he’s also wildly jealous and crazy possessive? I think that’s because of the insinuated relationship between he and Black Mask but you gotta read real heavy into that relationship to even broach that subject. Like, I‘m reaching with that statement but, for the most part, Messina does an admirable job of bringing this character to life.

The action scenes, outside of the awesome that is Huntress, is the real draw of this movie. Harley’s story is cliche and the Birds don’t get much time to develop so they’re kind of inconsequential but the action is superb. It’s, legit, John Wick levels of awesome most of the time. There is a lot of buzz about that jailhouse scene and it’s totally worth all the talk. That motherf*cker was spectacular!

The art direction is pretty amazing in here. This looks like how i think SKWAD wanted to look, but couldn’t because of Snyder grimdark nonsense. Like, if that trailer house had full reign to actually film that movie, BoP is what we might have gotten and it is a much better look for the type of movie these things are. Certain sets, like the funhouse and Sinonis’ club were awesome and the little flairs for characters were on point. The confetti beanbags were absolutely genius!

I would be remiss if i didn’t mention the costumes. Harley had a ton of costume changes, so much so a character mentions it in the middle of a fight, but i wasn’t mad. They all reflect her character and Margot Robbie is a helluva a Barbie to play dress-up with but so was Black Mask apparently. He had almost as many costume changes as Quinn and they were all amazing. I liked what they had Canary in, even if it wasn’t comic accurate and i absolutely adored what Huntress rocked in the beginning. All in all, pretty legit costuming, i must say.

Another one where the sound design is worth mentioning. The direction didn’t elevate this assblast of a movie but the sound design sure as sh*t did. There are a ton of punctuating songs and effects that give otherwise flaccid scenes, that extra Viagra boost to get them rock hard! It’s amazing what music can do for anything really. Throw a dope ass soundtrack behind constipation and you have a serenade that eases things up to drop that deuce. I say that because that’s how it feels watching this goddamn movie.

The Meh

Ella Jay Basco is probably the weakest part of this movie. She does an admirable job as Cassandra Cain for being so young but there are certain instance where you can tell this is her first big gig. She isn’t terrible by any means, there aren’t any terrible performances at all in this thing, but she was easily the weakest of the lot.

The liberties taken with the characters in this movie are interesting. I’m curious as to see where this version of Gotham can go and what these particular interpretations of such iconic Bat-Characters can go. I don’t think they are great as a direct representations, f*cking Cassandra Cain is a particular sore spot for me because i adore her in the books, but i can give her chance. I can give all of these characters a chance. I rather adored this version of Huntress. Ma might be my favorite one! Well, almost. I’m pretty partial to Helena Wayne but i digress. While i don’t particularly care for how these awesome women are represented in this flick, i can see the potential. There is a unique vision here that is worth seeing through.

The writing is so-so. I can’t say it’s bad because there is a lot of good in there, tons of interesting ideas, but the execution is real poor. Most of these scenes feel like, on paper, they were dope as f*ck. On screen, though? Just underwhelming. It’s like they couldn’t translate what they wanted or needed to film for one reason or another. I feel like that might have more to do with the direction, I’m getting to that, but the core of a flick is the writing. If you’re script ain’t on point, you’re movie can’t be and i can see how dull them pages were to begin with.

The direction in this thing is mediocre. Cathy Yan did a “meh” job with this thing. A lot of that might have been due to the script but a great director can elevate straight schlock. Look at James Cameron. Avatar is an ass of a film that rips of f*cking Ferngully but his vision got it Oscars and the number one, highest grossing, spot on the all-time list until Endgame murdered that sh*t. Yan did not elevate this schlock. They had to go back to reshoots and have Chad Stahleski touch up some stuff. Like, the best parts of this thing, the action scenes, weren’t even directed by Yan. I mean, they were at first, but this thing got screened by the execs ad all of that sh*t was tossed out. Stahleski made them things pop! No telling what else he touched up, or f*cked up, on his way out.

The Bad

This is not a Birds of Prey movie. This is a Harley Quinn vehicle with a Birds of Prey cameo. I can see what they wanted to do with this thing, backdoor origin story for one of Batman’s strongest supplementary teams, but with no Barbara Gordon as Oracle, it feels hollow. Especially considering that the Birds, themselves, have next to no screen time. I get that Harley is the money maker but this should have been a Gotham City Sirens film.

The continuity of this sh*t is dubious. It takes place in the old DCEU. It’s legit a sequel to Suicide Squad. Harley references that sh*t twice. I don’t know what that means going forward, but this Gotham ain’t that Gotham at all. It’s weird to see because you spend a good amount of time within the GCPD and no Bullock or Gordon; The latter of which we’ve seen already. It’s awkward the way WB has decided to play fast and loose with what sticks and what doesn’t. Joker is a stand alone and so is Shazam. The Batman is going to be a stand alone or it’s own franchise. Aquaman and Wondy are still in the DCEU continuity but i don’t know how long they will be, especially considering Wonder Woman’s solos are all prequels that have no ties to that Snyder depression exercise. It’s nothing to just pluck her out and add her to a much better executed cinematic universe. With Flashpoint all but confirmed, It feels like none of this matters. This one, for sure, doesn’t.

The plot is still stupid. The McGuffin is better since the reshoots because dick pics? Really? But the writing is still stupid. The whole center of the conflict is ridiculous and the resolution is just blergh.

The only thing worse than the plot is the pacing. This motherf*cker drags! There are entire scenes where nothing f*cking happens and it’s stupid. Most of the time, it’s the scenes with Harley. Her arc is just so f*cking pedestrian. It’s well acted, i said as much above, but it’s SO dumb and i kind of hate it.

This movie really hates dudes. Like, i get it, right? Respect. Recognition. Women deserve all of everything. Equality, feminism, yadda-yadda. I get it. There are ways to execute that perspective which are good. A decent writer would convey that by actually writing decent scenes, not just turning all of the men in the film into juvenile caricatures of chauvinism. I personally don’t care, I’m not a neckbeard typing with one hand while breathing heavily on my monitor in my ma’s basement, but i had to mention it because everyone is mentioning it and they have a point. This is glorified misandry at it’s finest but, you know, patriarchy or whatever. I don’t care. It didn’t take me out of the movie, the sh*tty plot did that, but it was interesting to see in person. It’s hard to justify this bullsh*t when Atomic Blonde exists.

So the gay-baiting. Like, really, dude? If you’re going to do it, go all the way. I read somewhere that Black Mask was supposed to have a homosexual relationship with Victor Zsasz but nah. None of that is expressed in any capacity. There might have been a line referencing it, maybe, but that could have been in regards to the violent outburst in the club the night before. Ambiguous because you gotta sell this thing in China! Renee Montoya is legit gay in the books and, other than a passing line early on, it never comes up again. I think that might be because of the distinct lack of characterization for literally all the Birds in their own f*cking movie, but still. That’s massive part of her character and no one talks about it. No one talks about any of the LBGTQ bullsh*t they pushed in the promotion.

All of this controversy does this flick a disservice. It doesn’t deserve all the hate it’s getting and it definitely doesn’t deserve all of the praise. This is not some super “GRRRL power”, kickass, gay-loving, action flick. It’s a mediocre break-up story that happens to have some interesting action set pieces but, ultimately, is inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. This is the Ant-Man of the DCEU. I spoke about this at length a few days ago and the nonsense that I was afraid was going to happen, is happening. No one wants to sh*t on this flick because of “Muh representation”. It’s a female lead, female directed, piece of sh*t. It is. But it’s a fun piece of sh*t and easily the best, of the worst, of the DCEU but it’s still a piece of sh*t. It’s not changing cinema, it’s not some great step forward in representation, and it’s not doing women in the industry a great service. It’s a quirky, violent, nonsense of a movie and should be judged as such. Again, Atomic Blonde is a much better example of ho to “GRRRL power” your way in the box office. Go watch that instead.

The ending to this thing feels rushed and super anticlimactic. I felt bad about it. Seriously. The way this movie resolves, after everything that took place, is just whack, man. It leaves you wanting, especially after how charismatic Black Mask turned out to be more than that, there’s no resolution. No one grows. Everyone is exactly where they were at the start of this f*cking thing. Like, what was the f*cking point? I can tell they wanted me to think that these chicks had grown into something more but did they really? Did we really see any growth out of any one of them not name Harley? Hell, even Harley is still the same motherf*cker! Like, for real, dude? Someone read that script and thought, “Okey-Dokey, this is good enough!” I just wanted to punch this movie in it’s face when it was over. Like, f*ck you, movie.

The Verdict

Birds of Prey is a bad movie. It’s gorgeous to look at, the costumes are amazing, and most of the performances are super strong. However, the plot is stupid, the pacing is on drugs, and the best parts of this flick get, like, no screen time to breathe. The Birds are guest stars in what, very obviously, is not their movie. This really should have been called “Harley Quinn and The Tiniest Bit of an Origin Story For The Birds of Prey” because that’s what it is. Technically, this should have been Gotham City Sirens to begin with but i ranted about that before. Margot Robbie is bad at picking movies to produce and she definitely produced this one. Got her unfortunate and inexperienced fingerprints all over it. Kind of doesn’t matter what should have been, though, this is what we got and this is a sh*t time, for sure. But, it can be fun at times. There is about as much to like as there is to hate especially if you’re open to being blue-balled when it counts. If that sounds like a party to you, check this thing out. If not, you can pass on it. That’s how meaningless this thing feels.

#Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn #Birds of Prey #Harley Quinn #DC

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