#the revolution racket

[mariocki]

The Saint: The Revolution Racket (3.5, ITC, 1964)

"The Saint's reputation has not been exaggerated, he just come in - and he has a prisoner with him."

"One of the Enriquez brothers?"

"Haha, no, that would be too much to hope for, however, everything seems to be working: from merely being intrigued, the Saint is now involved."

#the saint #the revolution racket #1964 #itc #leslie charteris #terry nation #pat jackson #roger moore #suzanne lloyd #eric pohlmann #peter arne #ed bishop #michael godfrey #hal galili #alec mango #clive cazes #ricardo montez #michael lynch #reginald jessup #walter randall #billy dean #terry nation hadn't written for the saint before s3 and yet this is his third episode of the first 5; presumably he gelled well with #the production team. this is a neat little episode; a slight but solid plot which involves a shipment of dodgy weapons and a little conning #it's well executed and with a fine guest cast; Pohlmann is an old favourite of mine and he's having a whale of a time here as a chief of #police who has finally worked out how to manage Simon: just let him do all the work for you and don't interfere too much. also great is #the ever wonderful Peter Arne‚ as a gangster with delusions of class (only betrayed by his consistent use of double negatives; it's a nice #subtle touch). ed bishop looks positively babyfaced while Lloyd was a repeat guest star (she'd make 6 eps in all). Simon's characterisation #here feels just slightly more ruthless‚ or at least a little more dangerous‚ and so closer to book Templar than the series often is #he also uses the Sebastian Tombs alias again (understandable) and puts on another american accent (inexplicable) #a good solid episode which wisely avoids any overt patronising comments about its (fictional) S American setting

[invisibleicewands]

Bringing revolution to Port Talbot - by Michael Sheen

On a recent February morning, I woke up to find I was wrong. Not a particularly uncommon experience in itself, but unusual to discover that on this occasion I was being publicly accused of it by the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. “Michael Sheen has said that ‘the people of Port Talbot have been let down’,” Kemi Badenoch wrote in the Daily Mail. “But he is wrong.”

It was a big day. I spent all of last year directing a three-part drama series for the BBC called The Way, which was to air that night. It begins in my hometown of Port Talbot, where a strike at the local steelworks becomes the spark that ignites a violent descent into national chaos. Clearly, Ms Badenoch had been given a sneak peek of the series before forming quite a strong opinion on it. But no: reading her article, Ms Badenoch admits that she hadn’t watched it at all. Why let a total lack of information prevent a full-throated denouncement, eh? Presumably, she also assumes that we managed to write, film and edit the entire series after Tata Steel announced the imminent loss of some 2,500 jobs at the steelworks mere weeks ago.

While the winds of change have only been blowing in one direction for many years, the events in our story were dreamed up some years ago and act as a fictional catalyst for all that follows. Surely even Tory ministers understand there is no VIP fast lane for making a TV series. This isn’t a PPE contract, after all…

Nothing to see here

After that episode aired, it occurred to me that such shenanigans in the right-wing press could have been about a couple of things. Since the ITV drama about the Post Office scandal, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, caused public outrage, I imagine the government has a new fear of the impact a TV show can have. A pre-emptive strike against a series it perceives to be criticising its actions around the steel industry must have seemed a useful tactic. And, having seen Breathtaking – based on Rachel Clarke’s memoir of how the Covid crisis unfolded in the NHS, which aired on ITV the same night as The Way – I wonder if her piece was an attempt to distract attention away from more dangerous territory.

It gave Ms Badenoch a chance to trot out her line about how the people of Port Talbot should be grateful for all that the government is doing to save the steel industry, not moaning about the impact job losses will have on their community. But the people of Port Talbot have been let down, no matter what Ms Badenoch wants us to think. Not by any single entity, but by years of neglect. That she immediately assumed my comments referred to her and her government tells its own story. In the words of a much older drama than mine: the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Then and Nye

“This crisis is a privateering racket with your friends lining their pockets!” No, not an accusation against Boris Johnson, but something I currently say to Winston Churchill every night. We opened a new play called Nye at the National Theatre this week. I play Aneurin (“Nye”) Bevan, who attacks the prime minister for turning a wartime crisis into a money-making scheme for him and his cronies. It’s one of many moments in the play that seem to speak to past and present at the same time.

The entanglement of “now” and “then” is heightened by the fact that I am wearing pyjamas. Nye is lying unconscious in his hospital bed at the end of his life, and we follow him through a dream of his past. He wanders from childhood memories of overcoming his stutter in Tredegar library to his meteoric rise through local politics, to becoming the youngest member of Clement Attlee’s pioneering postwar cabinet. And, of course, as minister for health, his tumultuous birthing of the NHS on 5 July 1948. It’s an extraordinary, surprising and moving experience telling this story on stage each night. That shared space between actors and audience, where all is felt but unseen, crackles with electricity.

Once more, with feeling

It seems that exploring the motives of politicians, the uses and abuses of political power, and the quest for justice that saw the creation of the NHS taps into deep wells of emotion. Like the pockets of gas that miners feared within the coal seam, their release brings risk and reward. At a recent show, we had three instances of people needing to be helped out of the theatre, the final one forcing us to pause the show moments from its end. Thankfully, it was nothing more serious than someone fainting. But emotions are running high.

I’m more than happy to invite Ms Badenoch to a performance. But I realise, of course, there’s no guarantee she would make it to the end.

#Michael Sheen #The Way #Port Talbot #politics #Nye #the man knows how to write

[lesmissocials-fuckedup]

Les Mis socials : 2023 hall of shame tournament - Round 2

Rules

Links to the posts and propaganda can be found under the cut !

Propaganda :

The "Who should Marius choose ?" question - source : Twitter - January 29

For many, many years, this fandom has been arguing that neither Cosette nor Eponine could be reduced to simply being love interests for Marius, that we shouldn't call their relationship a rivalry and that the Marius x Eponine relationship was way too toxic to be defined by love. Well, the musical's social media managers seem to disagree, no to mention that the picture is made to make it seem like Eponine is the only thing keeping the two lovers apart. Featuring an uncanny use of emojis you can find in every single one of their posts.

Mother's day post - source : Twitter - March 19

The one thing to be said in favor of this post is that they actually meant it as a joke and understood that Madame Thénardier was not a good mother. On the other hand, why not simply go along with the concept of Mother's Day and post a picture of Fantine, a mother who cared deeply about her child ? But they gave us an abusive mother instead. Again, very uncanny use of the laughing emoji.

The Wimbledon one - source : Twitter - July 15

Have you ever seen a post in which everything is wrong ? well this one is for you. Starting with the words they chose because no, there should not be a Cosette for every occasion. Putting a tennis racket in the hands of a starved and abused child ? To promote rich people's sports ? They also edited her arms to make her look more muscular. Also I know nothing about english sports but there is a strawberry emoji ? And finally, cherry on top of the cake... they messed up the colors of the french flag. Which, let's be honest, is an easy one to get right.

Cosette celebrating Thanksgiving - source : Twitter - November 23

Our only contestant left for the US team ! And... it's a bad one. Without even going into what is wrong with the concept of Thanksgiving itself and promoting it, why would you ever put Cosette in front of a Thanksgiving meal ? The gril who is famous as an icon of starved and abused children ? Not to mention how disturbing it is that there is so little to eat in the pate in front of her. And finally, on a purely cultural level : 1- Thanksgiving became a federal holiday years after Les Misérables was published and 2- most french people could not care less about when Thanksgiving is celebrated.

Christmas Eve - source : Twitter - December 24

To be honest, this one might by far not be the worst they have done, but it is undeniably very disturbing. And the way the edited the "One day more" quote may be the least uncanny thing here. They also edited snowflakes in the picture, a Christmas tree on the barricade and a Christmas hat on (I think ?) Enjolras's head... knowing that the men on this barricade are throwing a revolution. In which all of them will die painfully. What's more, this revolution canonically and historically takes place at the beginning of June. Which means this picture is the worst thing they could possibly have chose to illustrate the Christmas spirit. Also, as many people have mentionned, this year was the 200th anniversary of Valjean meeting Cosette in the woods, so... perhaps they could have done something about that instead ?

#les mis #les mis socials fucked up #les mis socials fucked up 2023 ranking

[elektramouthed]

 In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. What spark of humanity, of a possible creativity, can remain alive in a being dragged out of sleep at six every morning, jolted about in suburban trains, deafened by the racket of machinery, bleached and steamed by meaningless sounds and gestures, spun dry by statistical controls, and tossed out at the end of the day into the entrance halls of railway stations, those cathedrals of departure for the hell of weekdays and the nugatory paradise of weekends, where the crowd communes in weariness and boredom? From adolescence to retirement each 24-hour cycle repeats the same shattering bombardment, like bullets hitting a window: mechanical repetition, time-which-is-money, submission to bosses, boredom, exhaustion. From the butchering of youth's energy to the gaping wound of old age, life cracks in every direction under the blows of forced labour.

Raoul Vaneigem, from Revolution of Everyday Life (tr. John Fullerton, Paul Sieveking)

#raoul vaneigem #john fullerton #paul sieveking #revolution of everyday life #translations #nonfiction #essays #on labor #on alienation #on grind culture #2022 reads

[verdantcrimson]

Gourmand Fragrance / Wagashi Revolution - 4

(Unproofread)

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Nazuna: Keito-chin, what are you getting? I think I'll have that limited time chocolate strawberry drink after all!

Nazuna: Ah, and also... I'll have this chocolate parfait!

Nazuna: Since we came here to do research, we ought to eat as much as we can, right? ♪

Keito: You don't actually care about our goal. You just wanted to eat a parfait, didn’t you? Nito.

Nazuna: Th- Th-That's not what it is! More importantly, what are you going to get, Keito-chin?

Keito: Hm. I'll take the chocolate cake.

Nazuna: ... That's all? Don't you want any of the other delicious looking treats?

Keito: You aren't plotting to sneak a bite of mine, are you?

Nazuna: N-No, that isn't why!

Nazuna: ...... Well, it might be?

Keito: ... I see. In that case, I'd like to order an additonal chocolate ganache pudding.

Keito: You seemed like you were having trouble deciding between this and the pudding earlier.

Nazuna: No, I really didn't mean to make you do that... Are you sure it's fine?

Keito: Truthfully I'm a little concerned about the calories, but I'll burn them off on the walk back.

Nazuna: Ah, I guess I wasn't really thinking about the calories.

Nazuna: I've gotta be careful about eating too many sweets and gaining weight...

Keito: We've decided on what we want, so let's call the waiter over and place our order.

[A few minutes later]

Nazuna: Ah, here it comes, Keito-chin. Uwah, this chocolate parfait is so cute ♪ I almost can't bear to eat it!

Keito: Stop, Nito. Let me take a picture of that parfait before you start eating.

Nazuna: Whoops, that's right. Photos are important for reference purposes.

Nazuna: The chocolate strawberry drink looks pink and cute, just like how it was on the menu... Um, huh?

Keito: Hm? What's the matter, Nito? Did they get the order wrong?

Nazuna: No, I don't think so...

Nazuna: Hey, Keito-chin? What do you think this straw is?

Keito: ...... Yes. This is what is known as an 'Avec straw'.¹ They often appear in romantic comedies and other adjacent manga.

Nazuna: Wh- What does 'Avec' mean...? Actually, what do you mean by 'they appear in romantic comedies'?

Keito: It’s likely that the waiter mistook us for lovers and tried to set the mood.

Nazuna: I'm not a girl! Where and how could Keito-chin and I ever get mistaken for a couple!?

Keito: Oi, Nito. Don't make a racket, you'll disturb the people around us.

Keito: You might not want to hear it, but you do have a feminine looking face, Nito...

Nazuna: Even if that is true, you can tell I'm a man by the way I speak, right?

Keito: They probably weren't listening in on a customer's conversation too closely. On the contrary, it would be disturbing if they did eavesdrop...

Nazuna: Ugh... Good point.

Keito: Additionally, if you were to assess it with a clear head, it isn't a particularly surprising misunderstanding. Valentine's is a couple's event, generally speaking.

Keito: Since we entered the store together, it wouldn’t be odd for someone to presume that we were a couple.

Nazuna: That might be true, but that's one thing! This is another!

Nazuna: Jeez, this makes me want to start stuffing my mouth from despair! I'm going to drown these icky feelings in sweetness now!

Nazuna: Munch, munch... Mm~ It really is so sweet and delicious. I feel like I can forget all my troubles like this. ♪

Nazuna: It doesn’t just taste good, it's also sooo cute that just looking at it makes me happy.

Nazuna: Your chocolate cake has a heart shaped mark drawn on with a chocolate pen, Keito-chin.

Nazuna: My parfait also has a heart shaped cookie on top. Every single part of it really is cute, down to the smallest details. ♪

Keito: Yes. In spite of being advertised as being a richer chocolate flavor, this chocolate cake is also quite sweet.

Keito: ... It's so sweet that I've gotten a bit of heartburn.

Nazuna: Hey now, are you doing alright, Keito-chin?

Keito: I'll be fine. However, you should eat this pudding, Nito...

Nazuna: R-Right. You were kind enough to order it because I wanted to eat it in the first place, after all...

Nazuna: In that case, I could eat the chocolate cake too...

Keito: Just that much is enough. I've already had a bite, so I'll take responsibility and eat it all.

Keito: However, it'll be difficult to go to another shop after this...

Nazuna: I got too greedy, so my stomach's gonna be full...

Nazuna: Ahaha. I ended up losing sight of our goal and enjoying the chocolate instead.

Keito: Yes. However, you'd be wrong to underestimate me, Nito.

Keito: I was still able to do a bit of research by walking around the shop and trying some of the goods.

Keito: As it turns out, Valentine's day is associated with cute things and giving out love.

Keito: The trend these days is that cuteness is justice.²

Keito: With that in mind, don't wagashi have a reputation for being little more formal?

Nazuna: Ah, that's true. When I think of wagashi, they feel strongly associated with being elegant.

Keito: There are wagashi that look cute. However, the association between those two concepts hasn't been conveyed to the world.

Keito: ... Yes. I feel like I can finally see a way out.

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Translation Notes

The 'Avec' in avec straw is actually French for 'together'. I guess these would be called sweetheart straws, or couple straws?

The phrase 'cuteness is justice' is popular slang that basically means 'if something is cute, it's justified'.

#Gourmand Fragrance #Keito Hasumi #Nazuna Nito

[ceph-the-ghost-writer]

18 for the spotify wrapped game, please and thank you!

#18 - "Black No. 1" by Type O Negative

For the Spotify Wrapped Snippet Game

This is definitely an Ollie song/band (though, actually, she doesn't dye her hair fyi). I don't have her "voice" figured out yet, so this also made for a fun way to give it a try. Thanks for sending the prompt in!

Dysthanasia Taglist: @thecyrulik @theimperiumchronicles @k--havok (Sorry, I forget to do this so often that a couple of you might have no idea what's going on in this ^^;)

Words: 1,008

Content Advisory: Swearing, (mostly) joking references to violence

“Ollie?”

She was pretty sure she’d never heard Mergus shout before, actually. It was impressive he could make himself heard over the aneurysm-inducing volume of her stereo at all.

“Ollie!”

She kept ripping the stupid sticky notes from her bedroom wall, wadding them up and hurling them to the carpet, but with only a fraction of her attention.

“Oleander Blume.”

Oh, well, golly gee. Guess she was really in for it now. Smirking, she turned and spotted Mergus standing in front of the stereo set-up, hands shielding his ears. He’d lived through the Black Death, Industrial Revolution, and the Break, but couldn’t find the pause icon on a control panel. She strolled over and slid the volume bar down until only the tinny ringing of temporarily damaged hearing remained. With a sigh, Mergus lowered his hands.

“How on Earth could playing racket at that level be enjoyable?”

“Oh, what, you never cranked your hurdy-gurdy as hard as you could just to forget about the world for a while, old man?”

For that, he looked up at her with his Fledglings These Days Face. Though she rolled her eyes, Ollie pulled the hood of her sweatshirt back and swiped stray wisps of blonde hair away from her cheeks.

“Fine. I’m listening, okay?”

Rather than come right out with what he wanted, Mergus went and perched on the end of her bed. A vision of order and dignity in his flawlessly pressed suit against the backdrop of her tangled pentagram-pattern bedspread and a pile of black and red laundry she still hadn’t hauled to the washer. He plucked a pair of ripped jeans and a fishnet shirt out of the way so he could pat the spot next to him. Damn, it was going to be that kind of night then. Ollie dragged her combat boots as she walked, but parked her ass where told to all the same.

“Whatever it is, just say it. That fucking ghost got into my room again, so I’m not in the mood for a long fireside chat.”

His gaze flickered over to the remaining collage of sticky notes that had spelled her name out in spiky, three-foot high letters. “I thought one of Hawthorne’s aides warded your suite recently.”

“Well, that crusty ass zombie obviously didn’t send one of his best or brightest because the stupid haint made a mess.” Added to it. Whatever.

“Ceph only acts out for attention. They’d leave you be if you acknowledge them once in a while.”

“They’d be out of my hair permanently if I torched their room too.”

He didn’t dignify that with more than a raised eyebrow. He didn’t have to. Not when the memory of Wes Mayer attempting to do the same thing was still a household punchline. Of course, the ass-dragging mutt didn’t have enough brains or subtlety to fill a thimble either. Ollie, on the other hand, made a living on sneaky strategy.

“I stopped by,” Mergus said, “because I have an assignment out on the coast for you.”

“With who?” She already saw it coming, of course. The second he mentioned where they’d be going she knew.

Ollie still let out an agonized groan and flopped back on the bed, arms straight out to the sides as if she’d been crucified, when Mergus answered, “Renato.”

“Why don’t you just send a fluffy little dog along with me instead? Would be about as useful.”

The fine lines gathered in the corners of his eyes and lips deepened with the onset of his I’m Really Quite Serious Face. “I’ve considered the requirements carefully. This is the best way to meet all of them.”

“The best way to finally drive me bugfuck, you mean.” Sweet Satan on a stick. She could already imagine it. Having to watch him preen in the visor mirror every thirty seconds. Controlling her gag reflex while he flirted with every stranger from there to the Pacific. Listening to him bring up that goldfish for the billionth time. She’d beat his perfectly-shaped skull in with a tire iron before they got halfway to their destination.

“I already took into account your history together,” Mergus said. If bloodborn could develop gray hairs, his neat curls and close-cropped beard would’ve had new streaks. “You’ll be taking separate cars, staying in separate accommodations for the most part—but you will work together if it comes down to a fight. Is that understood?”

Ollie lifted her head enough to meet his stern gaze, her eyebrows and curiosity raised. “Who are we fighting?”

“If all goes well, drastic action won’t be necessary.”

“Is it Grandpa Ghoul or Muttley Mayer? Or both?”

He surrendered with a sigh. “Hawthorne and I have…not yet come to an agreement on how to best handle the matter.”

She grinned. “So, keep our heads on a swivel and chainsaw any ouroboroi that get in the way in half.”

Fledglings These Days Face made another cameo. “I’ll stress again that violence is a last resort. And you are not packing a chainsaw.”

“Fine.” She stuck her tongue out.“Spoilsport.”

“Can I rely on you to be civil in a meeting with Renato when I give you both your instructions then? Say, nine o’clock, my office?”

Propping herself on her elbows, Ollie made a show of considering it. “I’ll try to keep the biting and stabbing to a minimum. Sure.”

The smile that made his eyes glitter was worth any future headache. Mergus patted her knee and stood, smoothing his jacket and tie into place. “It means a lot, coming from you, my girl.”

Once alone again, Ollie glanced over at the small hill of laundry. With only a slight scowl, she got up and started stuffing it into a bag to take to the wash room. She was going to need clean clothes to pack soon. Good thing ninety-nine percent of her wardrobe consisted of black. When she made a mess with that chainsaw she planned to buy on the trip, the stains would never show.

#dysthanasia #writeblr #writing prompts

[fantomcomics]

What's Out This Week? 11/15

Upcoming events:

11/19 - Anti-Imperialist Collage Workshop!

11/20 - Scott Pilgrim Book Club & Netflix Watch Party!

Alien #1 - Declan Shalvey, Andrea Broccardo & Javier Fernandez

EVERYONE WILL HEAR YOU SCREAM! •  In deep space spins a world infected by the universe's greatest killers. Most people - sane people - would construct a barrier thicker than the hulls of ten Nostromos and leave it to rot. •  But where most people see a death trap, Weyland-Yutani sees the biggest payout in the history of civilization. And if it costs a few human lives to secure? Those come cheap here. •  Corporate corruption, personal betrayals and extraordinary violence - Declan Shalvey and Andrea Broccardo's next and greatest Alien story starts here!

Catians #1 - Cortney Cameron & Luyi Bennett

Stray cat Felix leads a happy life skimming milk from his human friend Rose's convenient store, until the local protection racket turns violent. To save Rose's life, Felix breaks his vows and shares an ancient secret. Unfortunately, Rose uses her newfound knowledge to mix revenge and forbidden magic, unleashing a monstrous abomination that forces the mysterious Council of Cats to launch a global quest for the Relics of the divine Great Cat.

Deadpool: Seven Slaughters #1 - Rob Liefeld & Greg Capullo

Seven kills in seven days! Welcome to a week in the life of Wade Wilson, the best mercenary Marvel's ever had (just ask him)! From facing off with rival killers to top secret assassinations, DEADPOOL has a lot of work to do in this blood-soaked oversized issue full of fan-favorite creators past and future!

Dungeons & Dragons: Fortune Finder #1 - Jim Zub, Joe Jaro & Max Dunbar

In the city of Sigil, an amnesiac hero only known as "Finder" tries to uncover who they are and why they're being chased by planar beings intent on capturing them-or worse. But as their tumultuous journey unfolds, they discover that their fate is tied to grand forces that dictate reality itself throughout the planes! A shocking surprise lurks around every corner in FortuneFinder, a miniseries inspired by the new Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse.

Speed Force #1 (of 6) - Jarrett Williams & Daniele Di Nicuolo

Wallace West and Avery Ho: the young speedsters have been Teen Titans, Justice Leaguers, and above all, members of the Flash Family. As they become aware of mysterious changes happening to the Speed Force, they race to Keystone City, where they encounter old friends, new threats, and a chance to forge their own paths.

Geiger: Ground Zero #1 (of 2) - Geoff Johns & Gary Frank

The saga of THE UNNAMED continues! GEOFF JOHNS and GARY FRANK return to the apocalyptic world of GEIGER for a special explosive two-issue origin epic.

What happened to Tariq Geiger in the days after the nuclear bombs first dropped? How did mankind survive the UNKNOWN WAR? Who is the mysterious Russian scientist Dr. Molotov and why is he hunting Geiger? And how does this tie all the way back to the American Revolution? Get ready to put on your hazmat suit and find out!

GI Joe: A Real American Hero One-Shot - Bob Mcleod & Herb Trimpe

Celebrate the return of G.I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO with the definitive edition of its historic first issue! This issue restores Larry Hama's original, unedited dialogue, which has never before seen print!

Godzilla Rivals VS Mechagodzilla #1 - Mark Martinez

IS YOUR CITY BESIEGED BY KAIJU? DO YOU LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT ANXIOUSLY LISTENING FOR THE MONSTER SIRENS? HAVE YOU HAD ALL YOU CAN TAKE OF GIANT LIZARDS, MOTHS, PTERODACTYLS, AND SHRIMP? THEN CALL TRACER TECH TODAY! OUR STATE-OF-THE-ART ANTI-KAIJU TECHNOLOGY HAS ALLOWED DOZENS OF CITIES AROUND THE WORLD TO FEND OFF THE THREAT OF MONSTER ATTACK.

San Palomar, California. It's a sleepy city with not much going on. That is, until Tracer Tech built their new corporate headquarters there, displacing lifelong citizens and forcing out local businesses. But what is the source of Tracer's amazing, almost alien technology, and why has it put San Palomar in Godzilla's sights? And what can a couple of local kids like Alex and Jaz do to protect their city when the King of the Monsters and its robot doppelgänger clash?

Lotus Land #1 (of 6) - Darcy Van Poelgeest, Caio Filipe & Alex Eckman-Lawn

In a Vancouver of the future painted with ultramodern decay, a groundbreaking advancement in technology promises an end to entropy itself.

But when an attack on this mysterious "Keeper Program" threatens the lives of everyone tied to it, retired Police Detective Bennie Strikman is called to investigate one last case.

The Ministry Of Compliance #1 - John Ridley & Stefano Raffaele

Thirty-seven years ago, Earth was secretly invaded by an alien force known as the Devolution, and they have been shaping the direction humanity has been going in ever since to prepare us to be assimilated into their empire.

The Devolution has thirteen ministries, each responsible for manipulating a different aspect of human life. The Ministry of Compliance, the most feared of all the ministries, led by the fierce Avigail Senna, makes sure all the ministries stay in line and remain focused on the Devolution's mission. As it appears the Ministry's mission is on the verge of being completed and Earth will be assimilated, things begin to go terribly wrong, and a conspiracy among the ministries breaks out that Avigail must deal with head-on.

Outsiders #1 (of 12) - Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly & Robert Carey

Never the End. A universe of secrets is about to come to light. Batman protects Gotham City from evil. Batman Inc. protects the rest of the known world. But what of the unknown world? What of the ancient evils in hidden tombs and forgotten tragedies from a magic-and-mad-science fueled super-heroic century? Using his fortune, Luke Fox launches a new organization dedicated to shining light into the world's darkest corners. His first recruit: Kate Kane, the Batwoman--who will re-embrace her military background to protect Luke's dream and encounter every bit of strangeness the DCU has to offer. And just wait until you meet the Third Man...or learn what universe-shattering secret they've discovered buried under Antarctica. Outsiders is the return of comic book archaeology, digging into all the forgotten corners of DC's history to preserve, record, and better understand the true nature of the DC Multiverse...and the forgotten stories that make up its fabric.

Red Light #1 (of 4) - Sarah Cho, Priscilla Petraites & Jeff Dekal

Lacy is an A.I. sex worker in a futuristic Red Light District. And Lacy knows exactly what her clients want - better than they know it themselves. Housed in a high-tech brothel under the watchful eye of the mysterious Mister, Lacy has little in her manufactured life besides work. All that changes when she befriends Natalie, an orphaned child who comes into her care. Now Lacy and Natalie are on a mission to escape the Red Light District, only to find themselves flung headlong into the mystery behind Lacy's creation.

Superior Spider-Man #1 - Dan Slott & Mark Bagley

A Superior Reckoning! SPIDER-MAN faces a NEW VILLAIN from his SUPERIOR past. As she fries New York with all the power of a living star, DOC OCK makes a life-changing discovery! MARK BAGLEY and DAN SLOTT continue their Spider-Man run with this 10th-ANNIVERSARY celebration of everything that made Spider-Man Superior.

Street Fighter 6 Evolution Special #1 - Capcom, Matt Moylan, Hanzo Steinbach, Tovio Rogers, Jeffrey Chamba Cruz & Genzoman

The new era of fighting games continues with three short-stories starring six World Warriors! Featuring Rashid, Cammy, Dee Jay, Luke, Jamie, and the debut of an all-new Street Fighter 6 character.... the deadly A.K.I.!

365 Days To The Wedding GN Vol 1 - Tamiki Wakaki

A sweet "fake engagement" romance about quiet coworkers by the creator of The World God Only Knows! The J.T.C. travel agency is looking for someone to manage its brand-new branch in Irkutsk. But for employees Oohara Takuya and Honjouji Rika, they'd rather just stay home in Tokyo! Thankfully, they've discovered a way out-their manager has narrowed down the recruits to bachelors, so what if they just... got married? The problem is they barely know each other at all! Can they convince their office they're engaged just long enough for the transfer to finish up?

Cat On The Hero's Lap GN Vol 1 - Kosuke Iijima & Shiori

In this hilarious fantasy adventure, will the hero triumph against the evil demon king, or face defeat... because he can't fight with a cat on his lap?! Our brave hero, Red, has embarked alongside his companions on a journey to defeat the great demon king. Or at least, that was the plan. But then a cat sat on Red's lap and fell asleep. There's no way he can fight monsters like this! As it turns out, Red's greatest enemy is right on top of him!

Curses GN - George Wylesol

"Sometimes I think I see things. Out of the corner of my eye, behind a door, I catch a glimpse of something. It's like a curtain caught in the wind, and then it's gone." From hospitals to hell to the wilderness, George Wylesol's short stories take place in liminal spaces where nothing is as it seems; the surreal becomes real; and something is lying in wait around every corner. As our main characters navigate through corridors, passageways, and highways, they sink deeper and deeper into everyday strangeness that slips into peculiarity, creating an internal journey from normalcy to the supernatural.

Dai Dark Box Set Vol 1 - Q. Hayashida

Introducing the first box set for this hilarious, gruesome, unforgettable tale where dark magic and space action collide! Zaha Sanko's body has great and terrible powers-they say that possessing his bones will grant you any wish, even the desire to become ruler of the universe. But Sanko is still a teenage dude with his own life, and he isn't about to let every monstrous lowlife in the galaxy rip him limb from limb. He and his skeletal buddy Avakian will use their dark powers to fend off any murder attempts while they search space for whomever put this curse on Sanko's bones... because killing them might end the madness. (And then Sanko can celebrate with his favorite spaghetti.) This beautiful box contains Vol. 1-4 of the manga and one double-sided poster.

The Dangerous Convenience Store GN Vol 1 - 945/gusao

This hit Boys' Love webtoon/manhwa (comic) is coming to print in English for the first time! Yeo Eui-joon needs cash, so he works part-time at a convenience store-where the clientele includes hoodlums and mobsters. He's tired of being yelled at while ringing up booze and trying to talk his way out of extortion, but he's not tired of seeing a certain good-looking gangster walk in the door. Gunwoo is huge, gruff, and intimidating at first... but he seems to care about Eui-joon's well-being, and is quick to knock aside anyone giving Eui-joon a hard time. After Eui-joon gets a peek at the enormous condom size Gunwoo buys, a little spark of attraction might just grow into a big, fiery love story!

Disturbed: Dark Messiah TP - Tim Seeley, Angel Hernandez, Esau Escorza & Ryan Christensen

In the not so distant future, firefighter Griffin DeSanto has found himself a man out of time, stumbling into a harsh world of poverty, automation, and subjugation. Technology rules and a tech empire built on suffering keeps the population in check through surveillance and mechanized policing. Though lost, Griffin is never alone, he was brought here for a reason, and The Vengeful One is his guide.

Gunhild GN Vol 1 - Fred Tornager

Her travels lead mainly to many foes, but a few enemies become friends, persuaded by Gunhild's unwavering determination and burning passion for her own cause. Being a tiny Jotun against a big, powerful world, Gunhild must fight smart and learn a trick or two from Loki to earn the title of godhood. Certainly, Gunhild will stop at nothing to forge her own fantastic path and make her dream come true.

The History Club HC Vol 1 - Bret Baier & Marvin Sianipar

From Bret Baier comes the first book in a thrilling new time-bending graphic novel series about kids who use their love of history to thwart an evil time traveler's scheme to change the past! Becca, Zack, Cam, and Thomas are best friends who may seem like an unlikely group on the surface but who have something very important in common: a love of history! Together, they make up their school's history club that has an all-important secret mission: stop the villainous History Twister's plot to destroy the past, forever altering the future. Knowledge of history is their superpower as they chase the Twister through time. After all, who knows what would have happened if Alexander Hamilton had lived and Aaron Burr had died in their infamous duel? It's up to the History Club to save the world from utter destruction!

Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Beyond The Goblin City TP - Delilah S Dawson, Gustavo Duarte, Jeff Stokely, Ross Curry, Jonathan Case, Adam Smith, Lara Elena Donnelly, Sas Milledge, Daniel Bayliss, Pius Bak, French Carlomagno, Jeff Stokely, Kyla Vanderklugt, Samantha Dodge, Gustavo Duarte & Mike Allred

Featuring the secret history of Sir Didymus and the untold story of one of Jareth's Masquerade guests, in addition to stories featuring fan-favorite characters like Ludo, Hoggle, Sir Didymus, and the Goblin King himself.

This epic collection showcases imaginative tales from critically acclaimed writers and artists, including Jonathan Case (The New Deal), Delilah S. Dawson (Star Wars: Phasma), Gustavo Duarte (Bizarro), Roger Langridge (Snarked), Katie Cook (Star Wars: ABC-3PO), Jeff Stokely (The Ludocrats), S.M. Vidaurri (Labyrinth: Under the Spell), Sina Grace (Superman: Kal-El Returns), Michael Dialynas (Wynd), Sarah Webb (The Storyteller: Sirens), Boya Sun (5 Worlds), Lara Elena Donnelly (The Amberlough Dossier), French Carlomagno (The Dead Lucky), Pius Bak (Eat The Rich), Samantha Dodge (Catwoman: Soulstealer), and many more!

Collects Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Shortcuts and Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Under the Spell.

No Touching At All GN - Kou Yoneda

On the first day of his new job, the shy and introverted Shima suddenly finds himself trapped in an elevator with an extremely hungover man, who turns out to be none other than his new boss, Togawa. Though Shima is initially put-off by Togawa's rude and shameless behavior, he can't help but be drawn in by the man's compassionate side, and he soon finds his thoughts are completely consumed by the charismatic man. Unfortunately, painful experiences from his past continue to haunt Shima, and ultimately prevent him from taking the first step. Even when Togawa makes his feelings for the young man blatantly clear, despite also having agonizing memories and an unpleasant past of his own, Shima still hesitates to open himself up to the man. How will things turn out when a love is so obvious that it can felt, but the individuals in question can't express it directly?

Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human GN - Osamu Dazai & Chika Ito

This manga version of novelist Osamu Dazai's masterpiece No Longer Human, the #2 bestselling novel of all time in Japan. Yozo Oba, a young man growing up in Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II, is tormented by a failure to find any value in himself or in human relationships, despite being surrounded by women who love him. He creates the persona of a buffoon who mocks himself while entertaining others. But inside he is tortured, and as he moves from childhood to adulthood he becomes addicted to sex and alcohol. Largely autobiographical, No Longer Human explores Dazai's own sense of failure and alienation which drove him to self-destruct with alcohol and numerous suicide attempts.

Power Rangers Universe TP - Nicole Andelfinger, Simone Ragazzoni & Derrick Chew

WHAT IS THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE PHANTOM RANGER?

On a journey across time and dimensional space, writer Nicole Andelfinger (Dragon Prince: Bloodmoon Huntress), artist Simone Ragazzoni (Odessa), and colorist Mattia Iacono answer the questions fans have been asking since the beginning!

A mysterious pod crashes to earth, while the Legendary Ranger Teens take on thrilling new forms, powerful against their foes and dangerous to themselves, and even contend with a corrupted former ally. Can they save their friend and protect the Morphin Grid from destruction?

Discover the truth behind the Phantom Ranger, the Morphin Masters, Power Rangers, and the Morphin Grid itself in the series that will unlock the secrets of the Power Rangers Universe!

Saigami GN - Seny

The girl known as Ayumi is a troubled European teenager who feels lost, like a stranger in her world. Her father left when she was little, while her mother's work means she is never around. A love of manga and books keeps her happy, while honest-to-goodness friends seem to be something only other people have. But this is not the case in the fantasy land known as Aesztrea. In this strange new world, there are dragons, creatures, and warriors who can wield power beyond our wildest imagination. When Ayumi arrives in Aesztrea, she learns that she may also be a Saigami. This warrior class of supernatural and superhuman abilities is one of the most honored and respected people in this new world. For the first time in her life, her potential is limitless, and she has seemingly found a place and a people where she can belong. But not all is right in Aesztrea, Ayumi will have to face her own demons to get to the bottom of this and determine who she wants to be.

Sakura Saku GN Vol 1 - Io Sakisaka

Saku Fujigaya would like to thank the boy who helped her, but all she has is a note signed "Ryosuke Sakura." She discovers that a boy at her high school, Haruki Sakura, has an older brother named Ryosuke. She asks Haruki to deliver her thank-you letter to Ryosuke, but why does he refuse?

Sheep Princess In Wolf's Clothing GN - Mito

In this beautifully illustrated yuri/Girls' Love fairy tale, a wolf-woman butler must tutor a sheep princess who's not as soft as she looks! Aki Rikujo, a Wolfa, works as a butler at the royal castle in the land of Sheepa. Her quiet and peaceful days get shaken up when she saves the life of Princess Momo Shiudafaris. The shy sheep princess immediately latches onto Aki who, before she knows it, becomes the princess's private tutor. Momo wants more than just math lessons from Aki, and even sneaks into the wolf-woman's bedroom to seduce her! Aki soon realizes that, under the timid woolly exterior, Momo is a wild animal!

The Star Seekers GN - HYBE & Tomorrow X Together

When assailants interrupt Star One's comeback stage, the boys spring into action...all except Eugene! Though he helps as best he can, his lack of magic limits what he can do. That is, until the strange stray cat he picked up appears in a flash of light and offers him power...

Whatcha snaggin' this week, Fantom Fam?

#comic books #wotw #comics #comic book #comic #what's out this week? #manga

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 3, Episode 16, The San Lorenzo Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Marc: Hi I'm Marc Roskin, director of the season finale.

John: John Rogers, executive producer and co-writer of this part of the season finale.

Scott: Scott Veach, the co-writer of this part of the season finale.

Aldis: Aldis Hodge, actor, Hardison, yeah that guy.

Christian: I'm Christian Kane, I play Eliot Spencer.

Chris: Chris Downey, executive producer. And this is part two of our season three season finale, The San Lorenzo Job.

John: Starting with the brief flashforward, which I think has become the kind of signature of the season finale.

Christian: I like it.

John: The little jump forward, the little ‘this is what you're gonna see.’

Aldis: Yup, yup.

John: And this is the reset scene, this is the last time you guys are in the bar for the year.

Christian: Yup.

John: And just to remind everyone - cause we didn't know if they were gonna show them back to back - exactly what we're doing, what the stakes are, and why they're going.

Chris: Now the origin of this one was Scott, you came in with the one liner, where they steal a country?

John: Well it was two, because I had that saint story, remember when I was a kid?

Chris: Oh, right.

John: And Scott had come in nicely enough with the exact same he wanted to do, which was-?

Scott: Yeah, when I was a computer scientist, I had a friend from Nigeria, who told me that in Nigeria, when they were kids, one of the things they do is they sit around and argue about who could coup the country if it came to it.

[Laughter]

Scott: And they used twinkies, and they'd put twinkies down and argue over what the right pathways are. And I was telling John this and we were saying it would be great for Leverage to coup a country, and that dovetailed with something you'd already been thinking of.

John: That dovetailed with the saint story, the Simon Tepler story about The Revolution Racket, which I read when I was 12. And the whole idea of somebody taking over a country just because somebody pissed them off just stuck with me for 30 years.

Christian: Right, yeah.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And so that was- alright, well that's insanely ambitious and impossible to write, let’s bang that out in a week.

[Laughter]

Marc: And you believe it!

Christian: Yeah, you do.

John: And that's the fun of having, you know, Scott is experienced in computer science and technology and I'm a conspiracy geek, you know there’s- we don't do anything in this episode that you couldn't really do.

Christian: So let me ask you a question, you're saying that someone actually stole a country before?

[Laughter]

John: It’s come close.

Christian: There you go, exactly that’s what I'm- yeah.

John: And then- it was picking the country, making sure we found it. What was great was we found- like, don't want to go Africa, can't shoot in Africa, can’t duplicate it. Can't go to Latin America, can't shoot the geography. So finding a European country, and it turns out I knew somebody who specialized in journalism of small countries. She had written about the smallest countries in the world, and so I knew there were some countries kicking around that were this small.

[Ice rattling in a glass]

Chris: And there was another source- piece of source material for this that was very helpful, which was a documentary called Our Brand Is Crisis. Which was a great- if you get a chance, a great documentary about how James Carville's team went down to Bolivia, I guess in 2002?

John: I think so.

Chris: And basically won the Bolivian election for an ousted president, and there were kind of horrible consequences that followed from it.

Scott: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Chris: And we got a lot of great stuff from that.

John: Yeah. And that's the trick is to just, you know, you don't really have to make stuff up, the real stuff out there, you just gotta dig deep enough. This actually is great- this is digitally treated, you just shot the footage.

Marc: Yeah. I mean every time you're in this room and you see these screens, it’s always green screen, so the visual effects department having to labor.

Christian: But it's great, it really shows the distance between us and him right there, you know.

Aldis: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah, we gave it that glitchy techno feel.

John: It was also nice how you dropped in, “At ease.”

Christian: Yeah.

John: That was I just-

Christian: Thanks man.

John: No, I noticed that, my brother would do that when-

Christian: You know, I used- I was talking to you, I used kinda a little bit of George Clooney in The Peacemaker for this scene. I just kinda-

John: You know what? Underrated movie, by the way.

Scott: Very true, very true.

Chris: That is, it’s true, it’s a really good movie.

Christian: Absolutely, absolutely, it's one of my all time favorites.

John: I love that flick.

Christian: And I just used the fact that it doesn't make any sense to- anyway.

Chris: It’s one of the first times we saw somebody from Eliot's past, and I thought- and we’ll get to it later-

John: Who's not dead.

Christian: Right.

[Laughter]

Chris: But the camaraderie, it was like it opened up the character in a lot of ways. I thought it was great.

John: Yeah, this guy met bad guys and good guys. It’s interesting, cause we wanted to crack open Eliot for this season, but the character doesn't lend himself to long bits of exposition.

Christian: Right.

John: So we had to do it through indirect means. And then we find out Hardison was a ninja next season.

[Laughter]

Christian: That's right.

Aldis: Yes we do.

John: Raised by his nana, his nana was like a shogun. No, that was all a nice beat. And considering you guys were all acting to a green screen that was very emotional, very nicely done. This staging was a bitch, by the way, cause you had three and two.

Marc: Three and two, and a lot of page count.

John: Yeah.

Marc: A lot of page count.

John: And it's tough because page count- shooting a lot of pages in here means it's not a place you have to go to that you have to light, that you have to shoot in a different way than you're used to, you know the set. But this set requires you to have five humans in it.

Marc: Right.

John: And so there's this sort of cancellation of the advantages. No, nice beat by Tim there, just “Oh, we fucked up.”

Christian: And by the way, Goran was nice enough to come in that day and sit over to the side; he's actually in the room with us reading.

John: That was his first day!

Chris: Yeah, I think that was his first day.

Marc: It was his first day during his wardrobe fitting.

Christian: Yeah.

John: Yeah, and we had not met him, and he came in and sat off to this side and did the mocking speech, and I remember thinking, “Ah that’s it! That’s it right there!”

[Laughter]

Christian: No, it was perfect.

John: You could actually see the whole cast like, “Oh, I get who this guy is.”

Aldis: Ahhh.

John: No, he's fantastic in this.

Scott: Yeah, he looks the part.

John: Absolutely you could do him with Saint.

Scott: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, you could [unintelligible mumbling] absolutely.

Chris: Yeah, he hasn't really played bad guys. I mean the most-

John: No, this was his first real bad guy.

Chris: First real bad guy.

John: He said it was why he took it, so he could get a chance to do it. It's also nice why he said, “You used to,” to Eliot, just a reminder again to the audience of some history there, some past there. And, you know, kind of a center of gravity of emotion there.

Christian: Yeah. This was actually really tough.

John: Yeah, cause he’s not- he’s holding it in.

Marc: Yeah, cause you feel at fault.

John: No, it was a- Hardison kind of playing straight ahead, Parker not dealing with emotion well, and then straight to the “ciao.” And then the hatred. The hatred.

Chris: And we did it a bunch of times, too, cause I remember we did it a number of times.

Christian: Yeah, it was tough.

Marc: Beautiful San Lorenzo.

Christian: I didn’t want to screw it up.

John: Beautiful scenic San Lorenzo.

Christian: That was actually before the first episode- that was one of the first scenes up, it was like we just had-

Chris: Yeah.

John: It was a cold start.

Marc: See the digital background there, beautiful stuff.

Chris: And great music here, that we’re not listening to.

John: Yes.

Marc: Oh yeah.

Chris: But I've been hearing it in my head from Joe LoDuca.

John: What was really fun was that Joe LoDuca, because I said this was the Mission Impossible episode I always wanted to write-

Chris: Yeah.

John: He put a little Schiffer in the score here. It was really- he put a little 1960’s Mission Impossible in the score.

Scott: Yeah.

Christian: I gotta be honest with you though, her in that dress, I don't think people are gonna be listening to the music.

[Laughter]

John: You know the people who care are. And this is the Schnitzer Theater.

Marc: Schnitzer Auditorium.

Aldis: Yeah.

Marc: Downtown Portland.

Chris: Oh boy, does that look great.

John: And this was the location that kept on giving.

Christian: Yup.

John: We walked in here on scout and at this point the finale- this part of the finale was not yet written, because I knew- we'd done the rough draft, but I was up in Portland scouting locations. And I knew we had to do it- we had to rewrite based on what we could get, and that was the layout of the original script.

Scott: Yeah.

John: We were just so lucky to get that auditorium. And this was great, James Draper from Mad Men, kind of the vibe there, that was the name check.

Chris: Sure, and the suit is very much Our Man In Havana.

Scott: Yes, it really sells it.

John: Our Man In Havana is definitely- that's one of the movies we talk about that nobody ever has seen. Alec Guinness, Our Man In Havana is a great flick.

Christian: Again Nadien Haders, but I gotta believe Tim had a lot to do with this as well.

John: Yeah, Tim likes a hat.

Scott: He does.

Aldis: Likes a hat.

Marc: And this guy was great. Humberto.

Scott: He was amazing.

Aldis: Yeah, he was.

Marc: He was just fantastic. Again another tall guy between Alistar, Humberto, and Goran, Nadine went through every extra large dress shirt and coat in Portland.

Christian: Big and tall.

Aldis: Big and tall store.

John: About two days in I was like “Humberto, with 8 months and 2 million dollars, I could make you governor of Oregon.”

Christian: Yeah, right, exactly.

[Laughter]

John: He's got that- and he's a local Portland actor, he showed up for auditions it’s like, wow this guy has got it!

Chris: Well I think Lana had been sitting on him for a while, she was waiting for the right part.

John: And this was a ton of fun, this is of course, all the people who work on the show we’re taking photos of.

Aldis: Yup.

John: And also again, the two of them as peers, you know, planning it. We don’t show you what's on the screen, it’s horrible. Assume it involves half of a clown outfit.

[Laughter]

Chris: The wrong half.

John: What's the right half? 

[Laughter]

John: And this was great cause when we were shooting this Tim was like, “What is this?” And we said “The Music Man” and he said, “Ahh, The Music Man.” And he got it, he really laid into exactly how to play this. Because it’s not mocking, he’s not joking.

Christian: Right, right.

John: He's gotta sell this guy on this.

Chris: Come along with me, I'm gonna take you.

John: Absolutely The Music Man in this scene, and Girl Friday in the later one.

Chris: Yeah.

John: When they're trying to get rid of Ralph Bellamy.

Scott: And it’s this guy's reaction that really sells it, too. He believes it so we believe it.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: No, and then the sort of pitying looks from Aldis and Gina are lovely.

Aldis: The sparkle in his eye.

John: There you go, now we make a dream in order to betray people. This is the most deeply cynical episode we've ever done.

[Laughter]

John: Even I was morally troubled by this episode.

[Laughter]

John: Because I realized about three quarters of the way through, I said, “Wait, we took the only decent man in the country and we corrupted him in order to get- to win this election.”

Christian: Right, right.

Chris: Watch the documentary, man.

[Laughter]

Christian: You know what, don't forget, though, we're still criminals. That's the whole thing.

Aldis: We do.

John: I know. I'm always the first to say the Leverage crew are not good guys, they are protagonists. But there are times even I am like, “Wow, I found this amusing, there's something wrong with me.”

Christian: Yeah. [Laughs]

Marc: This is the lovely library room in the Governor Hotel.

Aldis: Yup.

John: Beautiful ceiling.

Marc: Beautiful ceiling.

John: Comes dressed with books, nice.

Marc: And Alastair Duncan is just fantastic.

John: Oh man, and that was- we were really lucky, cause we were so focused on Vittori, and so focused on Moreau. This isn't a big character role, and he anchors it, he really nails it.

Chris: And I always love the “Just sign it.” That’s my favorite bit.

Scott: Oh yeah.

Marc: This was- if you remember John, this was a ten page day.

John: Yes.

Scott: Oh my god.

John: Yes, this was a ten page day. Other shows do not shoot ten pages. Movies shoot three.

Christian: Yeah.

John: But average on other shows is five, six?

Marc: This was just a bear. But these guys were all just so prepared.

Christian: You know, it was just one of those things where we said, “Ok look, we got the two scripts came together, we got the first- the first and second part of the season finale,” and everyone said, “Let’s just buckle down and knock this out of the park.” And everyone ran full speed ahead the whole time, nobody fell, nobody slowed up. For three weeks straight.

John: You guys absolutely proved yourself. And that's the thing the boys, Goran, Tim, and Alastair showed up with the blocking kind of in their heads, cause we had that room-

Marc: When you get to that moment I said, “How do you want to do this? Tim, do you want to do this in pieces?” And he said, “Let's do all five pages.”

John: Yeah, so we shot like a play.

Christian: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah, so each take was five pages.

John: And just shot from different coverage. Yeah, incredible.

Marc: It was brilliant.

John: No, great local actors. By the way, I like to say, this is some of the best extra acting work I've seen in a television show.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: All the extras are fantastic.

Chris: And here's a pairing I always enjoy.

John: You love a good Parker and Eliot.

Chris: You guys together.

Christian: Yeah, it's fun.

Marc: Another high angle on the tombs, another great set that we built.

Christian: Like Hardison just makes me mad, but she actually, like, annoys me.

[Laughter]

Marc: This is the Frankenstein set reconstructed.

Aldis: Oh, yeah.

John: And she enjoys annoying him. Actively.

Christian: Yeah, that's it.

John: Hardison doesn’t, Hardison doesn't realize what he's doing to piss you off, she actively enjoys annoying you.

[Laughter]

Chris: And you'll tease her, that's what I like, too.

John: And the funny thing is the off screen thing is reversed. No one makes Beth crack up like you do, because I was there when you shot that god damn fashion thing.

Christian: It’s true, it’s tough for us to do a scene together, we always end up laughing.

John: And that was the little frustration bit where she doesn't understand humans can't crawl through steam.

Christian: Right, right.

John: Very nice beat. I forget where the bit that she can tell how deep she is by echo came from, but-

Scott: Right here, oh yeah.

John: It's one of those bits that I think we threw as a joke in the room and then it wouldn't go away.

[Laughter]

John: Like no, no, that's how she works. She's not totally human. She's got some manticore DNA in there. Exactly.

Scott: Echolocation.

John: She's got some echolocation going on.

Marc: This is a great scene. I loved how you guys wrote Sophie just getting more involved and involved in playing a part.

John: Watching someone-

Christian: Sophie always gets over involved in everything!

John: But this is unique in- we talked about when we were plotting out the scene, it wasn't just the rescue. It was the idea that this actor and this character had to be super sympathetic, but also when you're someone who can win strangers over, watching someone do it this badly is like watching someone play solitaire and not seeing the red ten.

Christian: Right.

John: You know, it's like how can anyone suck this much, and that’s what really sucks her in.

Christian: Right, and that's why everyone loves Sophie, is the simple fact-

Aldis: She has a heart.

Christian: That like- it's like Angel, it’s the vampire with a heart. She's the world's best grifter, you can't be a grifter and have any sort of a heart, and she has a heart. And it's a beautiful character.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Goran plays this perfectly. This is a great pairing, Alastair doing the comedic sort of classic British character actor thing.

Marc: Right.

John: And Goran starting to play the chess game. Starting to realize something’s wrong. This was lovely. Just this little- and we tried to figure out what would she do that isn't overly intimate, that's just right?

Marc: Enough to give you a sense.

Chris: And they have really nice chemistry together.

John: They have great chemistry together, great chemistry. When he calls her “dear” later in the script you totally buy it, that he’s just sucked into the con.

Chris: Yeah.

Marc: And this is, of course, Moreau-

John: Nice crane up there.

Marc: Yeah, realizing that something’s up.

John: And it's interesting, cause we'd originally put them way farther back in the room, remember? So you had to pick them out. But that close up actually works better, cause it just announces to the audience that the game is on. And this again, this is our fable, okay? This is us taking every element of real elections that we don't like and exaggerating them that little bit more. But the idea that they would fixate on the beautiful girl touching him? Absolutely believable.

Christian: Right.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: And the fact that you could sweep up a media by announcing, sort of, a glorious engagement? Absolutely believable.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: You know, it’s all about controlling news cycles.

Marc: That’s my first toilet shot.

[Laughter]

Christian: Nice.

John: First one?

Marc: Yeah, very clean toilet.

Aldis: Is that a first for Leverage as well?

Marc: Yeah, I think so.

Aldis: Congratulations, Roskin. Boom.

John: That was also a lot of fun, is we designed the tombs, and then realized we hadn't figured out any way to get stuff back and forth.

Christian: Right.

John: So yeah. But that's always the better way to start, write backwards. He's great, by the way, absolutely fantastic.

Christian: He's great.

John: And believable as a military man, and somebody that he could have known.

Marc: There's just a subtle moment here that's just so great. You know, when the general says, “Would you leave your people behind?” And this exchange between you and Beth, it just- my eyes always well up, right here. Just, she has no idea what's being said, but it’s just so effective.

Christian: Wow.

John: Yeah, you should do this for a living.

[Laughter]

Christian: I know.

Aldis: You awed yourself, didn't you?

Christian: I did, a little bit, yeah.

Aldis: Do it again, dammit.

Christian: I hadn't seen this yet, and then she comes in.

John: And also you've forgotten. I mean that’s the thing, these things ran at ten pages a day, sixteen hours, it's blinding.

Christian: Yeah, that's exactly it.

John: And her play there, that- the little scene out on her, just she’s bugged.

Christian: Yeah.

John: That is not the Parker from first season.

Christian: No, it’s not.

John: Beth’s done a really great job of modulating Parker forward through all three years.

Scott: Without losing the core, which is always tricky.

Aldis: She has some of the best facial reactions, too, to express her character.

John: Yeah. It's never not Parker, but you can see Parker evolving. 

Scott: Evolving, yeah.

John: This is fantastic, he's so hapless.

Marc: And Gina did a great job here.

John: With the accent and just dropping it in.

Marc: Yeah. “We're getting married!”

John: And look how delighted-

[Laughter]

John: And the extras sell it. They really do, like, “Everyone loves a wedding!”

Christian: That's so great.

John: “It’s so delightful, that nice boy is getting married.” You know, it absolutely works. Love the smiles, love those people.

Marc: What I love about a lot of this episode is the pairing between Tim and Aldis, and not having him in a van.

Aldis: Thank god!

Christian: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: Yeah, there was no van here.

Aldis: Thank god.

Marc: There are so many great moments-

John: You're in a suit looking fine.

Scott: Yeah, yeah.

Aldis: That van, boy.

Scott: An expensive suit.

Aldis: Rented it out for the day.

John: And this was a lot of fun, too, was the controlling information through the phones, through the screens people got their information from.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And it actually was started because Bill Cosby had been announced dead on Twitter for like the third time. And for, like, four hours I was going, “Oh god, Bill Cosby's dead!” 

[Laughter]

John: And I realized like, “Wait no, Bill Cosby’s not dead.”

Christian: Right.

John: But he is actually, for all intents and purposes, dead to everyone who's reading those.

Scott: For those four hours.

Christian: Yeah, wow.

John: For those four hours, until he makes the announcement.

Christian: Wow.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And that's really what bore part of- the birth of part of this episode.

Scott: Well he even has that line: “I only need them to believe it for a few hours,” or something.

John: Yeah, exactly, that's why we threw it in. We only need it for ten minutes. And this speech is fantastic, and this is- Goran did a lot of work on this speech.

Marc: Yes.

John: And this is also one of the reasons I love you guys is, this is not fancy directing. This is just park on the actors, and let them work.

Marc: But of course we had to have a crane to reach them.

[Laughter]

John: Well, that's not my problem.

Aldis: Oh that's right, you guys were downstairs while we’re upstairs.

Chris: Well there's the crane, that's right, that’s right.

John: Yeah, because you had the crane up from that shot up to him, and then you shot it with that, oh wow.

Marc: We got it.

John: And just Nate running an enormous bluff here.

Marc: Yes.

Chris: And also, this is a rare episode because it’s two adversaries in the show; usually we’re in the shadows, we’re undercover, we’re playing somebody. Here it's just out in the open a chess match.

Marc: Yup

Chris: Between these two people. Which is not something we’d done before.

John: Yeah, the first one, they stayed under until they could get the Davids. The second one, he got busted by Shepard, but he was playing from an underhand.

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah, this is the first time it’s like, yeah this guy could serve us our lunch.

Christian: That's what I was saying; it was very strange for me, because I came up to John I was like, “Dude, what am I gonna- how do I play it?” Cause he knows Eliot’s in town. He knows what I do ‘cause I used to do it for him. He's gotta be scared a little bit, and that's what- Goran was and his character was not. And he knows we’re there, and it's very much out in the open and we've never done that before.

Scott: And we always called it a chess match, but what's kinda cool about it is that when it's out in the open it kinda has the flavor of a slug fest, too.

Christian: It does, exactly.

Scott: Toe to toe, just taking swings.

Christian: That’s exactly what it is, a street fight.

Chris: But the great thing is we had a political campaign. So we had rules, we had a clock, I mean, it gave us a structure for the whole con.

John: Yeah, I love that acting beat there. Just the little look away, the down- also I like that hat a lot, I'm not gonna lie.

Christian: Yeah.

Marc: And the campaign’s growing, we have more posters and people.

John: We had a very specific timeline on the campaign room. We had three phases: the despair phase, the growing phase, and the triumph phase. And we had to make sure- because we have ADs, first ADs work hard. They have to pack that room to make it look different each time. Yes, and this is Girl Friday. He's Ralph Bellamy, and he's just gonna be pushed around and manipulated.

Chris: That's a great line.

Christian: Wow.

John: And again, the campaign promise: “How is a campaign promise not like a lie?” “It's complicated!”

Aldis: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Deeply cynical, deeply cynical stuff.

Chris: Great comic timing on that.

John: Yeah well, Tim’s a funny guy, That’s why we’re very blessed, all you guys can land a joke. You know, that's- you don't get that lucky all the time. And then the little snarky look from her. And again, that attitude that character would not have had first or second year. Really both the characters, and the actors have driven the characters. This is what- by the way, what he's- the rough estimation he’s doing is called the Fermi Problem, something that I was taught back in my physics days, is you just do order of magnitude guesses.

Scott: Right.

John: And it allows you to just make good, order of magnitude guesses without having to grind out the actual math and boring the audience. Like I am right- now!

[Laughter]

Marc: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: And now you've hit stop, and now you're back in it.

John: There's some physicists out there in their underwear just freaking out because I said Fermi Problem.

[Laughter]

John: This was a ton of fun. That was a street in Portland!

Marc: This is all exterior Portland, yes.

John: Yeah that's done on Ankeny. That's fantastic! That's done on cobblestone! That's fantastic, yeah. And just putting up posters. And we got a lot of photos of the Italian elections actually, and used those as the models for the poster style and density and stuff. And this was Aldis working hard, second unit.

Aldis: Yes, indeed.

John: “Now loosen the tie, it's later!”

Aldis: Yeah, small little room, dig it. 

Chris: And there's his- what's in his cabinet? Incoming cabinet?

Marc: Yes, incoming cabinet.

John: Yup, doing the JFK short sleeve thing. It was great, it was a ton of fun.

Christian: Was that supposed to be me putting that poster up?

John: No, no, no, that is the locals who are so filled with joy at the chance to be liberated.

[Laughter]

John: It also had a really pretty light cause we ran out of light and blew it out from the side.

Marc: This is a great graphic that Derek built for-

[Laughter]

Marc: For the campaign.

Aldis: Light it on fire!

John: What's crazy is it should be over the top, but if you looked at this year's election, it wasn't!

Scott: Yeah!

Marc: It wasn't as bad!

Chris: No, not at all.

Christian: I was just gonna say it's totally, exactly what's going on.

Scott: Not even this year’s election-

Chris: This is very restrained.

Scott: Yeah, like even the 60’s there were the nuke- the kid- the little girl with the flower ad.

John: The daisy ad, only aired once.

Scott: Yeah, and then the nuclear bomb explodes, it’s crazy.

Chris: Oh, and child labor!

John: By the way, that was great casting, that kid. “Alright now look sad, now look like they beat you! Alright, that's perfect.”

[Laughter]

John: No, we're not gonna beat him, no, sorry.

Christian: Such a beautiful shot, by the way, Roskin.

Marc: Thank you.

Christian: And again were back in that-

Chris: Oh, that made me laugh.

John: That's a great joke.

Chris: That made me laugh very hard.

Aldis: That kid had fun that day.

John: That's a lovely joke.

Marc: And Alastair plays that well.

John: And this was a ton of fun, figuring out exactly what Parker and Eliot were up to, their two cons.

Christian: Yeah.

John: And I'll give Chris- Chris was the one who came up with the scandal, this scandal right here. Cause we couldn't figure out what this scandal could be.

Scott: Yeah.

John: The conversation between Vittori and Nate is basically the conversation we had in the room. And then Chris said, “I got what’s worse than sex.”

Chris: What’s worse than money or sex?

John: Yeah, the only thing that America can't forgive.

[Laughter]

Scott: That's right.

John: And this puppy was found on the street, right?

Christian: Yup, yup,

John: And then was - rubber glass by the way - and then was adopted-

[Laughter]

Chris: You don't see it bouncing.

John: Yeah, you don't- yeah.

Christian: Yeah.

John: This is a great scene. Goran is- what I love is Goran-

Marc: The Canadian accent is really nice.

John: [Doing a Canadian accent] It was really nice, oh jeez.

Scott: This got a huge reaction in the screening.

Christian: Did it really?

John: Yes.

Marc: Huge.

John: Well because it’s-

Christian: Such a good little puppy!

[Laughter]

John: Just the boldness of it, just the sheer stones of it, yeah.

Marc: And the reactions of either of the guys playing on the other side.

Chris: When you put the glasses on, I always have fun playing with the glasses.

John: Well, what I love is Goran is playing it actually kind of amused at the move that's being made.

Christian: Yeah, cause he's well he's looking at Eliot!

John: While Alastair is freaking out. Yeah, he's like this is actually-

[Laughter]

Scott: This is great, that's great.

John: Yeah. “I think I hate you.” “I'm ok with that.” No Nate is- Nate Ford is not a good man. We've said this. And this was actually Goran’s favorite piece.

Marc: Yeah, this was like great. This was like ok, it's a game of chess match, but here are the questions to all the- yeah, this was great.

Christian: You gotta feel like he’s- you gotta feel like Moreau’s like, “Wow, after all these years, an adversary that's worth the fight.”

Scott: Yeah.

John: That’s kind of it, you know.

Christian: You know, like how many times he's just run over people, all of sudden: hey, we get to fight.

John: That's what he says to Nate, he says, “Make it interesting.” He's kinda looking for this.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

John: It's not until it starts to go against him.

Christian: Out of sheer boredom of the other people he's just rolled over.

John: I adore this scene.

Chris: I love this scene between these two so much.

John: They play it so well. You could do a series with these two, absolutely.

Marc: Yes.

John: You could do a series of the American con woman who helps the guy get elected and then helps him run his tiny European country.

Scott: Oh yeah, let's go sell that!

John: We’ll sell that, done!

Chris: And John where did the whole handshake bit come from? Cause I know I had written it a bit differently, that opening- but the handshake paid off so well. Where'd you come up with that? The western gesture and all that.

John: I had read a book by an FBI- this is what you do on Leverage. I had read a book by an FBI profiler, and he also did some hostage negotiation. And it- in the book it talks about always gesturing with an open right hand. Because you just trust it, you know, and it always just stuck with me.

Chris: It plays so well here as a, you know, getting the guy up scene. And it paid off so well at the end.

John: Yeah, it really- big applause when he does it at the end. We did a live screening, which is when we talk about applause.

Chris: And this obviously is our homage to the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960.

[Laughter]

Scott: Yeah, right.

Chris: Which was famous.

John: If we could've had him sweat, we would've.

Marc: Again in the Schnitzer Auditorium, same building.

Christian: Yup, late night.

John: Yeah that was the last night of shooting, right?

Aldis: Yeah, it was.

Marc: And Alastair again, is just fantastic with this.

John: Bailing this.

Marc: And so is Humberto. But him playing the- taking the effect of the nicotine cream was just classic.

John: And the list of ways to kill people, don't do that. If you ever think about doing that, the nicotine thing, don't. That’s very dangerous.

Christian: Yeah, very dangerous.

John: Leave it up to people who are very good at almost killing people like Eliot Spencer.

Chris: Would it kill you?

Christian: Oh god, yeah.

Chris: Too much- the nicotine?

John: Oh yeah, fuck yeah.

Aldis: Oh, yeah.

Chris: Wow.

John: Absolutely. This- we probably should have changed this a little more.

[Laughter]

John: We usually change it in the show. This one we were kinda moving kinda fast, we should've done-

Marc: Look at that crowd there.

John: How many people are in that crowd?

Marc: About 80.

[Laughter]

John: And we turned them into 2,000; that’s Mark Franco, doing visual effects.

Marc: Doing some tiling.

Christian: That's not our biggest one, our biggest one was the baseball game.

John: Yup. Biggest one, we filled it with like 30,000 people.

Aldis: Oh, yeah.

Christian: Baseball game in season two.

Marc: “Vote for me!”

[Laughter]

John: So delightfully cheesy.

Christian: Parker.

John: And then the match cut over, that’s nice.

Marc: Yeah.

Aldis: Eliot almost killing a guy with nicotine.

Marc: He's got rubber gloves on, though.

John: He does, because he's careful.

Chris: That's right.

Marc: This is my favorite look.

Scott: He plays this perfectly.

John: And again it's one of those, one of the reasons doing the television is, you're moving so fast the actors have to create a lot, and there you go!

[Laughter]

Chris: “Wait who's that? I wanna talk to you later.”

Christian: Hey c'mon man, that's my move!

John: He’s charming, you know, but that’s- having a charming bad guy, ‘cause you need to like him for the end.

Christian: Oh, yeah.

John: No the- and this local, again local- almost all local actors in this one.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: That’s fantastic.

Chris: And they had to make up an accent for a non-existent country. Which folks, for an actor, is not the easiest thing in the world.

John: Yeah we actually wound up- I'll say it, we wound up basing it on Malta, which was a British colony until the 60’s, and really filled- the government structure filled a lot of requirements for us. But we made it Italian, because it's kind of a good European accent. So we made it close to Italy.

Chris: Oh, this is great.

John: Yeah, this is great. Huge- tell me you couldn't make that guy governor.

Christian: Oh absolutely.

John: Absolutely, maybe that'll be my hiatus project.

[Laughter]

Scott: Why do I think you're not kidding?

Christian: “Listen, we've got another job for you.”

John: No, this- and him storming over. Now it’s not fun anymore, now he's gonna kill you people.

Marc: Yes.

Aldis: Ah, he's breaking the rules

Scott: Yup.

John: And wow, without that staircase? What a great set.

Aldis: It was all right there.

Marc: Chandelier, staircase.

John: That looks like Europe. And then it had the matching mini balconies here to shoot across, it was great.

Marc: Yeah, it just gave us so much. This was just the- I love this, just the unspoken-

John: He's not gonna threaten them.

Marc: Just “I'm here.”

John: Just- and that's what also is kinda fun is when we talk about Hardison wanting to run his own crew sometimes, he's still being schooled; these are the rules we play by.

Christian: “Hey, how's it going.”

John: “How's it going? Sup!” Now these are the rules you play under. Nate is trying to tell him if you're gonna run a crew, these are the stakes.

Aldis: Yeah.

Christian: Look at how beautiful that is.

Aldis: That is. Where are those actually captured from?

John: I dunno, that's stock- from Stocksylvania.

[Laughter]

Scott: Stocktopia.

John: Sanstockington. Yeah, no, and this was a ton of fun. And of course the UN is always this effective when they monitor elections. They are pretty tight, actually, when they do it; they're pretty effective.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And this sort of walk by. Yeah, that's not a friendly look.

Aldis: “I'm still gonna kill you.”

Marc: Campaign’s growing.

John: Yeah, phase three, this was great. And this was also kinda the- we had to show that Sophie was genuinely interested, she wasn't just game invested.

Scott: Right, yeah.

John: She's actually come to like the country and really believe in this guy. Cause he- and we lucked out, the actor was really super charming; Humberto was fantastic.

Scott: And this fits perfectly with her ambition; she easily could've been a princess of a country in an alternate life.

John: And then we establish in the backstory.

Chris: Well we play her, we play aliases of her as princesses, so yeah.

John: Backstory explained she was married to royalty at one point; she knows this world better than he certainly did. That's the first time you see Moreau pissed off. And the president actually, he's a results-oriented guy.

Chris: Oh I love this shot. This is just great, the two of them, the expanse of the office.

John: This looks like West Wing.

Scott: Yeah, it really does.

John: It's gorgeous.

Christian: People have to understand- and this is the scariest moment because if he starts losing it, he starts pulling triggers. It’s a very, you know, Moreau doesn't lose it. He's losing it.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And that's when he realizes, “Oh, I know how to handle this.”

Marc: Dave Connell did this beautifully.

John: Yeah, the- and this was a lot of fun. Also tracking exactly what information Hardison leaked at any given time. We had a whole timeline of who knew what, and when the people of San Lorenzo knew, when Nate knew it. Not quite as complicated as some of the other ones, but pretty brutal. And here we go, I love the starting gun.

Marc: That's a oner! Pressed for time.

John: Just the- we stuff on the TV, we see the reaction, and then Nate steps in the foreground.

Marc: Boom, we told that story.

John: Yup, that's all the information you need to know. And peek around, and just- and again, it was important in the writing - reset to the audience what every character's goal is, and where you see them next so you don't have to do the math.

Christian: Right.

John: And “age of the geek.”

Chris: In the story development process, at one time they won the election, and part of the episode was them governing. And John, I think what you struggled with in kinda figuring it out, was making the election the ultimate end.

John: Yeah, the election was a big enough story and that's something we hit every now and then in the writers room. You don't know how big the story actually is until you actually outline it. And then you have eight acts worth of cards up there and then you go, “Oh, alright.” The story has told you how long it needs to be. This was a ton of fun, the idea that he'd be doing press conferences from in prison - that delighted me to no end.

Marc: Right.

Chris: And very Mission Impossible.

John: Very Mission Impossible.

Chris: All the scenes with him, every time I see that, it takes me back to Mission Impossible.

John: I'm not gonna lie, this is our Mission Impossible episode, absolutely. And yeah, he's venal, this- Alastair is great.

Marc: Alastair, yeah, this is the bad side of Alastair, really bad, you know, take them all out.

John: And this was part of the fun was figuring out how the ending unrolled, was the chess match of what would a bad guy do to control information? And how would you use control of information against them? Using your opponent's strength against them is great. And by the way, big ups to these actors who were working background here, because the little look he throws, just a reminder this is not a good thing. It's a nice choice, nice choice picking up the single on that. 

Marc: Yeah.

John: Oh and this was a ton of fun. Whenever you have- I think a lot of the Leverage audience knows at this point, whenever you see people and you can't see their faces? We’re in there somewhere.

Scott: I think we need to do a double reverse reverse, just to reset the clock.

Chris: We may need to go the other way on it.

John: Yeah, maybe in season four.

Chris: Oh and once he brings Nate in here, this- the scenes with the three of them coming up are some of my favorites in the whole two part finale.

John: Well again, that was right there when he says, “We're not gonna release the results.” You have to set up each time, you know, exactly how the mechanism of the con is gonna work.

Marc: Here Sophie's first instinct is to call for Eliot for help.

Aldis: Boom, ting!

[Laughter]

John: There you go, I've actually seen somebody knock the top champagne glass off a stack of champagne glasses with the champagne like that.

Christian: Oh, yeah.

Aldis: Wow.

John: And we had a big discussion that day of exactly how this would happen, exactly how she would do it. And we were like, “We'll just put the cork in the dude's eye and swing to him.” And it looks great!

Christian: It does look great, absolutely.

John: And then she just brains the dude, no elegance on the second one.

Marc: And now we're back to our opening scene.

John: Yup, which is- you know, there was a time we talked about doing every episode like that.

Chris: I- you know I like it when it’s the finale, I like when we make it special.

John: Yeah, for a while we kinda did that jump.

Chris: You see it a lot, it's in The Hangover, it’s in, you know what I mean? It's done a lot now.

John: Yeah, but you know there is something for promises.

Christian: I enjoy it, like John says, it’s become a signature for the finale.

Chris: Yeah, I think so too.

Marc: This was a great speech. The writing on this was great, and she really delivered it.

John: That was Scott, that was the writing- he was the one who really dug in on who her character was, you know, while I was mucking around with plotting.

Scott: And taking over Oregon?

John: Oh, yes.

Scott: I mean San Lorenzo.

John: San Lorenzo. While I was doing my how you would actually take over a government thing. He was doing the- well you were the one who came up with the whole idea of she's Avita.

Scott: Yeah, right.

John: And that's exactly how she would go about winning their hearts, and what speeches she should make.

Scott: Yeah, cause having the chance to be Avita, that seems like the one thing that would be a true draw for her.

John: The one thing she wouldn't be able to resist.

Scott: Yeah, right.

John: And this is- now of course the audience knows she's not dead, but the fun of it is playing it out.

Marc: And these three just killed this scene.

Chris: So you said- you did all- all of this- all five pages?

John: We pretty much did the entire half act in one take, every setup.

Marc: Every set up. They went through five pages of dialogue each take.

Chris: Wow.

Scott: That’s crazy.

John: Just- and that's why you have such great coverage of this. You just kept parking the camera, moving it around and parking it. And they found this, I mean we got in there at lunch that day, and just walked the scene.

Christian: Oh this is the one you were talking about where they had their blocking down when you got there?

John: Well they had a good idea, and then they saw the room.

Marc: But it was really- you know, instead of- we do so many bits where we break things up in our show, cause we’re always cutting away to somewhere else, but you know, Tim said, Let's go through all five,” and these guys were like, “Alright, I'm in.” And they just fell into stride.

John: That was kinda those great actor- cause actors are all a little competitive. So when Tim said, “Let's do all five pages,” you saw Goran and Alastair look at each other like, “Alright yeah, yeah, we’ll do all five pages, yeah we’re prepped.”

[Laughter]

John: “We don't need sides, I'll see your five.” It’s great, and it really comes across in this scene. And that little smile.

Scott: Isn't that the speech that got a huge spontaneous applause in the screening?

Marc: Yes.

Scott: Yeah, that was awesome.

John: The- oh no it's coming up, the “I have the guns, I have the government, I have the-”

Scott: No, “I bought an election.” Isn't that coming up?

Marc: Yeah.

John: The- yeah, the “I have the guns, I have the government.”

Marc: Right here.

John: It’s like “No, no, I have a 24 year old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority.”

Scott: That’s it! That’s it.

John: That got a giant applause break.

Aldis: That guy! This guy!

Scott: Who is that? Oh it's you.

Christian: Nice.

John: And I'll say actually, it's heavily influenced by Cory Doctorow's book, Little Brother. 

Aldis: Oh.

John: About teenagers in a near future America who are oppressed by Homeland Security and strike back by using teenage geek culture and technology.

Christian: Wow.

Marc: It’s like our own little book club here.

[Laughter]

John: What do you guys think I do?

Chris: Read books.

John: What do you guys think I do? While you’re off touring the fucking world with your guitar, meeting beatiful girls. And you’re off doing your own thing?

Christian: Yeah, I get real quiet when all that stuff comes up.

John: I fucking read all the time, that’s my job.

[Laughter]

John: Some of us have homework forever, that's our job, that's our life.

Christian: I read two books, which is Call Of The Wild by Jack London and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

[Laughter]

John: That was it.

Aldis: Everybody’s read The Alchemist, it's a great book.

John: Well there you go, there's your books from them.

Aldis: I'm rereading it for like the third time!

Scott: Marc, what did you think of The Alchemist?

Marc: I loved it.

John: No, this was a ton of fun.

Aldis: Age of the geek!

John: Age of the geek. You know, as we established, there's only, you know, X number of people in the country; it's not that hard to email all of them.

Chris: Right.

Aldis: Yeah, no.

John: Particularly since these small countries have controlled ISPs. Or governmental ISPs. This is a great show down. And sitting Tim here is actually great staging, cause it gives you three levels, three eye lines. Playing with information, playing with access to information is a crucial part of this. Alastair’s turn here, by the way, as he starts to slowly panic is kind of what anchors the scene.

Christian: Yes, he did such a great job.

Marc: Now it's like, “Where the hell did he come from?”

John: Yeah “Oh hey, yeah I fucked you.”

Marc: “Oh, and we stole your security.”

John: Now this was tricky, cause this was a series of nested flashbacks, and the first time we did post, we put the flashback process on the big Guillermo scene.

Christian: Oh yeah?

John: When he does the speech after Sophie’s been assassinated.

Christian: Oh, right.

John: But it made- it took all the emotional weight out of it.

Chris: Right, cause it felt like it already happened.

John: So it's actually one of the few times we do a flashback without this filter on it.

Chris: Yeah, that's true. And it works.

John: Yeah, it absolutely works. And also the line from season one: “We be the cavalry.” You're giving it, like, an Eliot signature here.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

John: Something that Eliot says all the time. That's the fun of season three is you get to start to fill out the previous lives of these guys that they've had in the past.

Chris: And down.

Christian: That’s awesome.

Aldis: If you're asking, we hit them really hard.

Christian: Yeah, we did, we hit them really hard.

John: Yeah, you beat the hell out of the stunties.

Chris: You hit them hard?

Christian: We hit them hard.

John: Well they were wearing those things!

Christian: They were wearing helmets, and if you hit them softly you couldn't see the movement. So I said alright- they can't see it coming, so I was like, “I'm gonna have to hit ya.” And they were like, “Alright.”

John: Oh and this is Gina, by the way, wearing the pack.

Christian: Yeah.

John: Gina took the squibs.

Scott: Oh really?

John: Yeah, that's why she has the dress on, and that's why we could do it in closeup. Cause if it was a stuntie, we could do it with just the dress, but with Gina we could put the packs under the sweater, and we just ruin the sweater.

Christian: Yeah, she did the stunt, I was very very proud of her.

Scott: And those hurt, right?

Christian: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah those things are scary.

Marc: This was a great speech.

Christian: You turn them around, you’re dead. People don't realize that, that's actually a bullet coming out.

John: No, Gina was a fucking trooper. Yeah, this was a great speech, he nailed it. The slow push in on him. We were joking the night we were shooting this, like, “This scene will be recreated on San Lorenzo television, like, 20 years from now.”

[Laughter]

John: With actors when they do the documentary. And there will be people like, “You know Rebecca Ibanez wasn't alive.” “Oh you're one of those people are you?” “She wasn't a real person!”

Chris: This guy has a real arc in this show.

John: Yeah, he does.

Chris: This is not something we typically do.

John: This was the thing, it's like and now he is complicit in our crime. We’ve taken the only-

Chris: No, no, but it takes the fact that he has this arc, that he's become worthy of the office that we've manipulated. I think it really takes away from the fact that the mark in this episode are the people of San Lorenzo. That's the difference!

[Laughter]

John: But we’re doing it for them!

Chris: It's not right, but we've given them a worthy leader.

John: We were actually joking about the fact that after he did that scene, I said, “Michael Vittori’s reign of genocide began that night.”

[Laughter]

John: “Oh, oh we didn't think this out at all.”

[Laughter]

John: “20 years of terror.” “Oh, that was a bad move on our part.”

Chris: Well, watch the documentary.

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

John: This is great, this was the chess match.

Marc: Yeah.

John: Where it literally became Alastair is the chessboard, and the two of them squaring up on him.

Scott: Yeah.

John: And the two windows behind them.

Chris: And there you go! there’s the shot, what's he gonna do? Who’s he gonna go with?

Scott: Bachelor number one or bachelor number two?

[Laughter]

Marc: “How big of an estate?”

John: “How big of an estate?” No really, I've been watching a lot of noir lately and he's just doing it perfectly, he's just doing a throwback to a 40’s character actor here. Just playing- really underplaying it.

Chris: Yeah the, “I'm shocked! Shocked that there's gambling in this going on here!”

John: “Gambling in this establishment!” He's absolutely playing Casablanca.

[Laughter]

John: He could not be more Claude Rains at this moment. No, and then the flashback to the very beginning of the episode to set it up. This law was in place in the United States up until the 1830s, by the way.

Marc: There you have it.

John: James Madison actually considered using it at one point. Seizing the assets of his political opponents.

Scott: Really?

John: Yes, absolutely.

Scott: Very useful law.

John: Not one we have now, thank goodness. Very useful law for us.

[Laughter]

John: And that moment kinda blows by, actually.

Christian: Yeah, wow.

John: “The guys coming in are honest, so I need a corrupt man.” The entire plan depends on using the most corrupt man.

Marc: Bye!

Chris: Waving goodbye.

John: This is great. And what I love also here is they're playing it like, “We will gun your ass down if you don't give up the desk.”

Christian: Yup, it’s strong arm, it is.

John: What I also love here is the moment, like, “Wait, did we just spring a war criminal in order to win?”

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, kinda. But he's our war criminal.

Scott: Yeah, he's a good war criminal.

John: Yeah, exactly. The blood on the shirt is a nice touch. Nadine really killed that.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And the reveal. And now the gloat, the crucial gloat.

Marc: Bad guy has to suffer.

John: Bad guy must suffer, our guys must gloat, we must see the victims rewarded. She looks great in that shot, that’s again, very classic 1960’s.

Aldis: When does she not look great?

Scott: I was about to say, unlike usually?

John: Well just, you know, she looks very exactly that 60’s spy vibe there, you know.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Also fun, we stumbled across that last line of, “Damien Moreau will never leave San Lorenzo.” I think we actually wrote it on the set.

Chris: Well she says it in the garage.

John: Yeah she says it earlier, and I think we were on set going, “Oh wait.” And we tossed it out, yeah.

Marc: This is our first scene we shot with Goran, and that's what we see.

John: We locked him in a cell.

Christian: For some reason I'm just unconvinced that a little cage like that is gonna hold Damien Moreau, I'm just saying.

Chris: Nooo.

John: What? No. By the way, this- I love this. This is just so over the top and perfect and right.

[Laughter]

John: I was actually in New York when Princess Di died, and I remember going-

Chris: But look how much information you pack in one shot here.

John: Yeah, exactly. You know she's been sainted.

Chris: You have a shrine to her, everyone knows she's dead, you have what's happening in San Lorenzo, we pan up and-

Aldis: Yet again, she's at her own funeral.

Scott: Yeah that's a great one.

Chris: And we begin our scene. I mean that is a great shot.

John: That is a great shot.

[Laughter]

John: And there she is, in the ridiculous hat.

Christian: Wow.

[Laughter]

Christian: Really a great shot.

John: That’s- well that's the trick, we expect the audience to keep up on these episodes.

Aldis: Yeah.

Christian: She has a habit of showing up at her own funerals, doesn’t she?

Aldis: Yeah she does, bad habit.

John: It’s a character trait now; it's a feature, not a bug. No, and it's a lovely speech.

Christian: It's the actress, it's the old off broadway actors. “Do they like me? Do they love me? Who showed up?”

John: Exactly. This was great, by the way, was finally take the sting out of the relationship, only to utterly subvert it 30 seconds later. But the two of them are such good friends, and the characters had come to a new parity this season, they really acted the hell out of this. She's wonderful in this.

Aldis: By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, there goes Tim's hat again. Another hat.

Marc: And again a oner.

John: And a oner.

Scott: Yeah, that's right.

Marc: Gary Camp walking backwards.

Aldis: Yeah, the work that Gary Camp actually does.

John: Yeah, we should pay him more than you, is that what you're saying?

Aldis: Nah, I'm saying the audience-

Christian: I'm pretty sure he does.

Marc: This is a great line.

John: The “I don't travel with luggage.”

Marc: “I don't travel with luggage.”

John: All right-thinking men don't travel with luggage. Luggage is for women. Men buy shit when they get there, I'm just saying.

Christian: Oh Parker does.

John: Yeah this was a ton of fun, figuring out what everyone's tie up for the season was.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: Of course Parker stole shit, she's Parker! Not gonna leave the country and not-

Aldis: Kinda a shame that Hardison didn't steal gold bars.

John: Actually in the original version of this we were at the estate.

Chris: Yeah.

John: When we originally broke it, we wound up going to the estate, and then we realized we couldn't find an Italian estate in Portland, that was a little tricky. Ton of fun, was this just a random room? This was a meeting room we made a bedroom.

Marc: Yes.

John: And at one point we had Gina outside the window.

Marc: Yeah.

John: That was not such a good idea.

Marc: Well.

John: Well there's a tiny ledge out there.

Aldis: Ahaha, and wait for it, wait for it!

Chris: Oh this is a classic.

Aldis: Boom! Knocking the boots! [Sing-songy] Bow chicka bow bow.

John: The little zoom in there you go.

Christian: Bwooooo!

Aldis: Bwooo!

[Laughter]

John: And fans across America scream.

Scott: Yeah.

John: That’s great. No, they didn’t have sex, they just cuddled.

Christian: Right.

Aldis: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

Scott: Didn't you tell me she read that and she thought it was a joke, she didn't think it was real?

John: Yeah she thought we were giving her a fake ending.

Chris: Oh c’mon.

John: Like nope, you guys did it!

Aldis: You did it!

Chris: Season three, we’re moving on.

Christian: Season three! Thank you so much guys, some of the best writing, the best directing I've ever had man, it's just unbelievable.

Aldis: Thank y’all for staying until the finish.

John: Marc, you directed the hell out of those, that was fantastic.

Chris: Yeah, these are-

Christian: Awesome!

Marc: Had a lot of help.

Aldis: Roskooni!

Chris: These are -

John: Alright, season four coming up.

Christian: Come on!

Aldis: Peace, people!!

Marc: Stay tuned.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Devereaux #Season 3 #Episode 16 #Season 3 Episode 16 #The San Lorenzo Job

[vostok3-ka]

For the tag game, I have to immediately go for Killashandra because it just sticks out so much. What happened in Ireland, Aisha???

Ahhh my favourite WIP! Thank you so much for the ask Max! I love this work so much, I'm so in love with the concept and idea and vibe and playlists and everything and yet- I have only written two google docs pages for it... This fic is about Steve and Bucky's Irish history and their relationship with the Irish revolution and the troubles, and the Irish mob in NYC. It is supposed to be really Irish-based, and explores the Soldier's involvement with the Troubles in Ireland. This one is fairly new, and I am so excited to work on it (after my exams, crying shaking sobbing) Here is a little snippet:

Gentle flowers rolled across the hills, blanketing the little country road with their sweet smell. A carriage, horse-drawn, held together with haphazard pieces of nailed-in wood, creaked and groaned its way along the path, large stallion bobbing his head as if in tandem to the noise. "We're almost there," the driver yelled over the racket, tilting his head backward slightly, addressing the man huddled between the bales of hay the back. "Thank you," the man muttered and hunched deeper into his jacket. His face was flushed a gentle rose, dark hair barely reaching the tips of his ears, and he bore the expression of a person who wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else. Beside him, to his left and close to the back of the carriage, was a large bag, wedged in between two particularly sturdy bales of hay. Loose straps, clearly made to be fitted around a torso or shoulders, fluttered in the breeze, buckles clicking against each other on the occasions they met. Sighing deeply the man let his head fall back onto some hay, squinting up at the bright sky. It was shockingly clear, with not a single cloud to be seen, and the sun smiled cheerfully down at his inquiring face. He raised an arm, and threw it over his eyes, blocking out the brightness. Next thing he registered was the chattering sound of a young girl, as well the lack of rolling wheels and clobbering hooves. Something banged against the side of the carriage across him and he shot into a sitting position, left hand making an whirring noise. He shoved it beneath his jacket across his torso, and glared at the offending source. A bright eyed girl, no older than twenty, laughed at his expression, before directing her gaze at the driver. "Where'd you find this one?" "Picked him up somewhere between here and there." "That doesn't answer my question," she whined. Hopping down from his seat, the driver clapped his horse on the back. The animal huffed, and the girl turned back to the man in the back. "What's your name?" "Slavik" "No last name?" "Morozov." The answer was curt, and Morozov stood up in the back of the carriage, tugging his bag free and slinging one of the loose straps over his shoulder so that the entire thing hung down at his hip. He slung a leg over the side, and leapt down in one smooth motion. The ground felt oddly still beneath his feet, and he swayed slightly. The girl laughed again, and he shot her an annoyed look. "Not used to carriages?" "No." The driver watched them with an amused smile. "Eh, Morozov," he grinned. "You'll get used to them soon enough living here." Morozov's face twitched at the mention of the word "living" and he peered around him. They were in what looked like a farm's courtyard a way away from the rest of the little town. Behind them, a farmhouse with an astonishingly large chimney cast shadows over the courtyard. A barn stood a little distance out, along with some other scattered buildings that disappeared behind the farmhouse. "He's going to live here?" the girl asked, surprise coloring her voice. "No." "Down in town," the driver clarified as he went round to the front of his horse, gripping the reins he had thrown forward.

Thank you so much for the ask and have a lovely day!!!

#vostok answers

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

IS THIS REAL LIFE?🤡🌎

Embattled Georgia prosecutor Willis will not recuse from Trump election case amid affair allegations, sources say

The sprawling racketeering case still has no trial date, and Willis and her team are keenly aware that the window to go to trial before the 2024 election is rapidly shrinking. Any change in the team handling the prosecution would likely delay the proceedings, and it’s unclear if another prosecutor in Georgia would even be inclined to take up the case, given its political and legal challenges. Willis has faced immense public scrutiny since allegations first surfaced that she has benefitted financially from a romantic relationship with lead prosecutor Nathan Wade. Despite calls by some legal experts to recuse herself from the case to protect its integrity, she is not expected to do so, the sources told CNN.

Instead, Willis is preparing to counter arguments from Trump and other co-defendants, not by necessarily disputing claims about the relationship but by arguing that defense attorneys seeking to remove her are wrong on the law, sources said.

Norm Eisen, who served as White House Ethics czar during the Obama administration and is a CNN legal analyst, has called for Wade — but not Willis — to voluntarily step aside from the case despite arguing that neither are disqualified under Georgia law.

“I think it is the wise thing to do, but it is not legally required for him to step aside,” Eisen told reporters last month, referring to Wade. Eisen said the allegations do not concern him about Willis’ ability to try the case.

Ethics Czar HA! Try Colour Revolution Leader working out of the Brookings Institute.!

#Fani Willis #atlanta #fulton county #soros #dirty cops #Norm Eisen is a DEMON #CREW #marc elias

[adamwatchesmovies]

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

There are only two good things about Creature from the Haunted Sea. The first is its laughably stupid-looking monster, whose comedic appearance was used in the opening credits of Malcolm in the Middle. It brings back warm memories. The second is that it’s in the public domain. This means you can easily find it for free or packaged together with 49 other horror films for less than $20 - like I did. That price tag is a valuable lesson, which we’ll get to in a bit.

During the Cuban Revolution, American gambler and racketeer Renzo Capetto (Anthony Carbone) is hired by deposed General Tostada (Edmundo Rivera Alvarez) to smuggle the national treasury out of the country. Capetto and his criminal crew, which include his girlfriend Mary-Belle Monahan (Betsy Jones-Moreland), her brother Happy Jack (Robert Bean) and animal impressionist Pete Peterson Jr. (Beach Dickerson) come up with an idea. They will murder the General and his loyalists, then keep the gold for themselves. To avoid suspicion, they will convince the Cubans they are being stalked by a sea monster. Little do they know a real-life monster is following their ship. if the secret agent onboard, XK150 (Robert Towne) had any kind of brains, he’d be able to figure this out quickly and put an end to it.

Even though this is a horror comedy and that much of the criticisms that could be thrown towards Creature from the Haunted Sea were likely intentional, the movie’s not funny so they turn into marks against it anyway. The characters are flat, uninteresting and annoying, with Pete Person Jr. easily winning a gold medal in irritation. Speaking almost entirely in animal noises thanks to a brain injury, his schtick gets old immediately. You’ll spend the brief 75-minute running time wishing he would shut up or get torn apart by the sea monster, which is obviously a scuba diver covered in seaweed (or something that looks like it) with toothpicks glued on the end of their gloves, vampire teeth, and ping pong balls for eyes. Go into any Halloween store on November 1st and you could piece together something better.

Even before the dreadful creature shows up, this premise is just dumb. I know if my shifty shipmates told me two men were just murdered by a sea monster I wouldn’t believe them. No one with their head on straight would. What’s much more likely to happen to Capetto is that the Cubans will see right through his dumb scheme and chop him up into shark bait.

It’s a bad movie and would’ve been bad even in 1961 when the Get Smart comedy thing was popular. If there was any kind of justice in this world, this desert of laughs would’ve been forgotten to the ages. Instead, it made its way into the public domain and regularly finds itself for sale/viewing. The problem is that no one cared about this movie then and they certainly don’t now. Every print you’ll see is scratchy and dusty, with muddy sound that will require you to crank up the volume just so you can understand what the hell is going on. Worse, you won’t find any subtitle option anywhere. You practically have to read the Wikipedia article just to understand what’s happening. It got so bad with the disc I was watching that I actually wound up going on Tubi, hoping that a better print would be available there. I got “lucky”, starting watching again. In no time, I was looking forward to the commercial breaks. At least those were lively, professionally made, colorful and audible.

Suddenly, it hit me. The only reason I was watching this movie is because it came in a box set I bought years ago. I would have to do this 49 more times to “get my money’s worth”. Meanwhile, there are thousands of other movies I could be watching. Even a horrible film like The Snowman or The Love Guru didn’t make me exhausted because I was able to passively absorb them. This was work. A job I wasn’t going to get paid for so I’m cutting my losses. I might've wasted my money, but I'm done wasting my time.

Even if you were sent back in time to see Creature from the Haunted Sea in a top-notch theatre with impeccable audio in the most comfortable seat ever made, I still wouldn’t recommend it. Today, presented like this? It would take all the gold in Cuba to convince me to hit "play". (On DVD, September 13, 2021)

#Creature from the Haunted Sea #Roger Corman #Charles B. Griffith #Antony Carbone #Betsy Jones-Moreland #1961 movies #1961 films

[drawthething]

Timeless item as the fashion revolution goes. Notorious weapons feared by many. And if you're enough of a crackhead to figure it out they can be badminton rackets too.

I'm talking about flip flops.

#well duh you've never seen two college girlies playing indoor badminton with flip flops before? #well you ain't living that fulfilling of a life like i do #my mom would never understand why i ain't 'properly dressed' for classes just because i made an oath to always wear these #it's how i fit in mom #half of these bastards wear them to classes like it's a 90s trend cuz really they're just more comfy to wear especially on rainy days #AND IT SHOULD BE NORMALIZED-

[elektramouthed]

 Let nobody underestimate power's skill in stuffing its slaves with words to the point of making them the slaves of its words.  What weapons do we have to secure our freedom? We can mention three:  1. Information should be corrected in the direction of poetry, news deciphered, official terms translated (so that “society”, in the perspective opposed to power, becomes “racket” or “area of hierarchical power”) ─ leading eventually to a glossary or encyclopaedia (Diderot was well aware of their importance and so are the Situationists).  2. Open dialogue, the language of dialectic; conversation, and all forms of non-spectacular discussion.  3. What Jakob Boehme called “sensual speech” (sensualische Sprache) “because it is a clear mirror of the senses”.

Raoul Vaneigem, from Revolution of Everyday Life (tr. John Fullerton, Paul Sieveking)

#raoul vaneigem #john fullerton #paul sieveking #revolution of everyday life #translations #nonfiction #essays #2022 reads

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.9 (after 1950)

1952 – Hugo Ballivián's government is overthrown by the Bolivian National Revolution, starting a period of agrarian reform, universal suffrage and the nationalization of tin mines 1952 – Japan Air Lines Flight 301 crashes into Mount Mihara, Izu Ōshima, Japan, killing 37. 1957 – The Suez Canal in Egypt is cleared and opens to shipping following the Suez Crisis. 1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven". 1960 – Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid, narrowly survives an assassination attempt by a white farmer, David Pratt in Johannesburg. 1967 – The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) makes its maiden flight. 1969 – The first British-built Concorde 002 makes its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford with Brian Trubshaw as the test pilot. 1980 – The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kills philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Bint al-Huda after three days of torture. 1981 – The U.S. Navy nuclear submarine USS George Washington accidentally collides with the Nissho Maru, a Japanese cargo ship, sinking it and killing two Japanese sailors. 1989 – Tbilisi massacre: An anti-Soviet peaceful demonstration and hunger strike in Tbilisi, demanding restoration of Georgian independence, is dispersed by the Soviet Army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries. 1990 – An IRA bombing in County Down, Northern Ireland, kills three members of the UDR. 1990 – The Sahtu Dene and Metis Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement is signed for 180,000 square kilometres (69,000 sq mi) in the Mackenzie Valley of the western Arctic. 1990 – An Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 over Gadsden, Alabama, killing both of the Cessna's occupants. 1991 – Georgia declares independence from the Soviet Union. 1992 – A U.S. Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of drug and racketeering charges. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison. 1994 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on STS-59. 2003 – Iraq War: Baghdad falls to American forces. 2009 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, up to 60,000 people protest against the government of Mikheil Saakashvili. 2013 – A 6.1–magnitude earthquake strikes Iran killing 32 people and injuring over 850 people. 2013 – At least 13 people are killed and another three injured after a man goes on a spree shooting in the Serbian village of Velika Ivanča. 2014 – A student stabs 20 people at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. 2017 – The Palm Sunday church bombings at Coptic churches in Tanta and Alexandria, Egypt, take place. 2017 – After refusing to give up his seat on an overbooked United Express flight, Dr. David Dao Duy Anh is forcibly dragged off the flight by aviation security officers, leading to major criticism of United Airlines. 2021 – Burmese military and security forces commit the Bago massacre, during which at least 82 civilians are killed.

#Events

[scotianostra]

On December 27th 1734 Scotland’s famous outlaw, Rob Roy MacGregor, died at home in his bed.

Sir Walter Scott, portrayed Rob Roy as a dashing and chivalrous outlaw. Of course, the truth was a little less glamorous. Robert acquired the name of ‘Roy’ early in life due to his mop of red curly hair. In the early eighteenth century, Rob Roy MacGregor had established a protection racket, charging farmers an average 5% of their annual rent to ensure that their cattle remained safe. He had complete control over Argyll, Stirling and Perth and could guarantee that any cattle stolen from his customers would be returned to them. Those who did not pay regretted it …as he had them stripped of all they possessed. Rob Roy was not a man to argue with!

He was certainly no Robin Hood character.

Robert MacGregor, was baptized March 7th, 1671, at Buchanan, Stirlingshire. His parents were Donald Glas MacGregor and Margaret Campbell. He was also descended from the Macdonalds of Keppoch through his paternal grandmother. Rob’s father, Donald MacGregor, a younger brother of the chief of the clan MacGregor, received a military commission from the deposed King James II after the Glorious Revolution.

Rob was a freebooter with uncertain loyalty to James VII and was also engaged in cattle stealing and blackmail. When the penal laws against the MacGregors were reintroduced in 1693, Rob took the name of Campbell. Since his lands lay between those of the rival houses of Argyll and Montrose, for a time he was able to play one off against the other to his own advantage. James Graham, 1st duke of Montrose, succeeded in entangling him in debt, and by 1712 Rob was ruined. So Rob embarked on a career of brigandage, chiefly at the expense of Montrose. During the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, he was distrusted by both sides and plundered each impartially. After the rebellion was put down, he was treated leniently because of the intercession of John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll. In his old age Rob became a Roman Catholic. His letters show that he was well educated; the view of him as a mere brutish highwayman seems not to do him justice.

In January 1693, at Corrie Arklet farm near Inversnaid, he married Mary MacGregor of Comar, who was born at Leny Farm, Strathyre. The couple had four sons: James Mor – big Jimmie -MacGregor, Ranald and Robert, violent men in their own right, but that is another story

The most controversial claim concerns Roy’s behaviour during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 when he allegedly betrayed his clan by acting as a paid agent to help the Hanoverian army. Previously, he had been regarded as a staunch supporter of the Jacobite cause and led his clan during the first uprising at the Battle of Killiecrankie. His involvement led to government mercenaries burning down his house.

The sept of MacGregor claimed a descent from Gregor, or Gregorius, third son, it is said, of Alpin King of Scots, who flourished about 787. Hence their original patronymic is MacAlpine, and they are usually termed the Clan Alpine. They are accounted one of the most ancient clans in the Highlands and it is certain they were of original Celtic descent.

Rob Roy was eventually caught and imprisoned,. thrown into London’s Newgate Prison to await transportation to the colonies as a “bonded servant,” in other words, little more than a slave. In 1726, whilst still at Newgate he received a full Royal pardon and returned to Scotland there to live out his last few years. This he did and lived the rest of his life as a peaceful, law abiding citizen… apart from the odd duel or two.

Legend has it that when Rob was lying on his death bed awaiting his maker an old foe-man of his came calling upon him. Upon hearing this Rob rose from his death-bed and armed himself to the hilt.

“Never let it be said that any enemy of MacGregor ever saw him defenceless and unarmed,” were purportedly his words. When the offending person had been shown the door, Rob is reported as supposedly saying: “Now it is all over - let the piper play "Ha til mi tulidh (we return no more),” and before the lilt of the tune had drawn to an end, he slipped away…………

I know many people see Rob Roy, as I said above, as some sort of Robin Hood, but others see him as a traitor and a spy, the truth is we will never know the full story, the Walter Scott version is in my opinion romantic tosh, but it sold books for the man and gave Rob Roy and legendary status in Scotland and around the world.

Every telling of Rob Roy’s story I read nowadays has a different slant, as the years roll by I try to give a slightly different slant on his life, it is up to the reader to believe their own version and to seek out more about the Legend.

#scotland #scottsih #outlaw #legend #rob roy #macgregor #rob roy macgregor #history #scottish highlands

[shootybangbang]

[Talking Bird] 20: In which serendipity requires a helping hand

[Ao3 Link]

[content warning]: implied sexual assault, implied incest, suicidal ideation, gore. this one's a bit of a doozy.

As always, immense thanks to @verai-marcel and @reddeaddufus for wrenching my words into an actual chapter.

[Verai on Ao3]

[RedDeadDoofus on Ao3]

————

At the start of all this, with the shine of those halcyon days not yet gone from your eyes, he’d tried to convince you to run.

You don’t even like her, Trelawney had said. And it’s not as if you’re obligated.

I have to, had been your helpless response, citing some outrageous promise made to Feng. It was awfully shrewd of the man, Trelawney supposed, to put that impossible task on the shoulders of the one person who never could refuse him anything. Even if it kills me, you’d said, and it had been like watching the decaying revolutions of a spinning top. With the hand that set it into motion gone, all that is left to teeter on an increasingly uncertain axis, trying vainly to stay upright in spite of the inevitable pull of gravity. The inevitable pull into the grave.

But for a while now, he’s suspected that it was something even deeper than Feng, with the intimacy of blood. Something unsaid and not for him to know.

From inside his caravan comes a loud sloshing sound and a muffled “oh no”, and Trelawney quietly thanks god for wood sealant, high shelves, and other Lee-mitigating measures. A category which, he considers as he eyes the outlaw beside him and the fading flush of residual embarrassment on the man’s face, Arthur may very well be included in.

“She works for one of those Chinatown tongs. That’s what they call gangs in their tongue. Tongs. Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, but one gets used to it.” Trelawney tells him. “But they’re city gangs. And city gangs— particularly the immigrant-led ones— they’re a different breed altogether. Less gangs than they are a kind of local government for the enclaves they occupy. The tongs run Chinatown. The mafiosos run Little Italy. The mob has the full run of the Irish slums. You get the general idea.”

Oh, they are scum of the highest degree, you’d told him once. Jade bracelet on your wrist like a green shackle, the swipe of rouge on your lips poppy red. All of them. Me included. But without the gangs, all us foreigners— we’d be living lower than dogs.

“It means they don’t rob the same way you lot do. No, city gangs do business. Racketeering, mainly, with a few other things to supplement. All of them ventures that you’d typically need a decent amount of violence to back up for things to run smoothly. Some big bruiser type that’ll smash heads in.”

Arthur crosses his arms against the thin metal railing. He watches the men grouped by the fire, warming themselves like strays. One of them has begun to sing a tuneless version of Greensleeves. The words come warbled through a bourbon-soaked voice roughened and cracked from decades of drink. The singer clears his throat with a noise like a fish bone being dislodged, and starts, “Alas, my love you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously…” 

“And… that was her husband?” he asks. “Some Chinese big bruiser type who’d smash heads in?”

Trelawney nods and through the catalog of lost years, the past peeled back in a sheaf of departed days, stands a scruffy, dark haired man with an easy smile and bruised knuckles. The collar of his shirt a little askew, as if he’d gotten dressed in a hurry, and along the edge of his sleeve a faint stain like a spray of brown droplets— the blood that would not wash out. He’d had the pleasant demeanor of someone who might offer you one last cigarette before apologetically cutting your throat. “Though you’d never know it from looking at him. Very affable, very polite. Went by Feng. Once shook my hand so hard he nearly wrenched it from the socket. Lee was head over heels for him.”

Sometimes it’s almost possible to see the mechanisms working in a man’s head as he cogitates. As Arthur struggles to process what exactly “head over heels” behavior would entail with you as its actor, Trelawney can nearly hear the clank-clank-clank of gear teeth interlocking and spinning apart. After a few seconds, he appears to have reached some sort of conclusion that utterly repulses him, judging from the vaguely nauseated expression that momentarily darkens the man’s face, brief as cloudcover.

Hm. There is potential here.

“But truth be told,” Trelawney continues. “I didn’t know the man well. Never did do much business with him… never did do much business with any of them, really. Not directly, at least. That’s what Lee was for. The front end”

“The hell does that mean, ‘the front end?’”

“Errands you’d need a decent English speaker for. From what she’s told me, she took care of little things, mostly. Bribes and police liaisons and poker.”

“You’re lucky that it’s me who caught you trying to fix that game and not him,” you’d said that first time, smiling brightly in the dim stretch of alley behind the parlor. Younger and bolder and the persistent mar of cynicism just a whisper back then. “Because otherwise your kneecaps’d be looking a lot like broken dinner plates right about now.”

“Poker?” Arthur puts his cigarette to his mouth and takes a long, hard drag. The fragile strip of ash clinging to the cherry sizzles as it eats yet further into the paper. “Half the degenerates I’ve played poker with barely knew words outside of ‘check’ and ‘raise’’, let alone proper English. And those were Americans.”

“My apologies. I forgot for a moment that your experience with cards only extends insofar as playing for pennies behind the saloon. No,” Trelawney says. “Poker in St Denis is in a category all by itself. Because it’s the gangs who control the gambling circuit there,” he explains, in response to the blank look on the other man’s face. “So they can afford to run much higher stakes. And they’ve split the profits among themselves quite evenly. The Italians run the racetracks. The Irish, the roulette tables. Dice goes to the Foreman Brothers. And card games? That’s Chinatown.”

It’s been months since he’s walked down those lantern festooned streets, alternately garish and destitute. In the smoky evenings, their thin paper skins light up like hellish pomegranates, glowing too weakly to do much more than cast a red distortion on the faces of those passing underneath. The hand-painted porcelain cups in the parlor, the scent of sandalwood incense heavy in the air in an attempt to overpower the cloy of piss and rotting fruit outside. Even after the torrential rinse of southern rains, the cobblestones still filthy as if with some kind of uncleanliness inherent to it. A humus of anise and coal dust and chicken droppings.

“They’ve got the usual setup there. Communal halls for the poor sods gambling away the day’s wages, and a few private parlors for those with fatter wallets and more discerning tastes. But if it’s high-stakes poker you want and you’ve a couple hundred dollars to burn— well, for that you’d want the Martin Street parlor over the gunsmith’s shop.” Trelawney jerks his thumb in your direction. “She used to host there on weekends.”

Jasmine tea served in an imported French teapot. A selection of croissants and biscuits laid out neatly on a red-lacquered tray. A pretty Oriental girl speaking unaccented English, repeating niceties like a talking bird. Every bit of that parlor’s decor a carefully engineered slice of exoticism, tempered just enough by middle-class American sensibilities to be palatable.

“Yeah, I can see it. She definitely seems the warm, welcoming type,” Arthur says. The sarcasm rolls off him in waves. “Real friendly, that woman. On the way here, she told me she wouldn’t mind getting shot so long as I took a bullet first.”

“She’s… always been Lee at her core, but before Feng died she could nearly pass for charming, when she had to.”

Trelawney blows a white ring of smoke from his mouth that flattens to a fragmented ellipse as it wisps apart. Its edges ripple as if undecided, then fade in resolute surrender to what feeble breeze manages to stir through that soupy Lemoyne air. “One thing I did know about Feng,” he says. “What he made sure everyone in that district knew about him… was the fact that he had a wife and son. He had a photograph of the three of them that he’d pull out at a moment’s notice…”

The second time they’d met, Feng had clapped him jovially on the back and shown him a well-thumbed daguerrotype of three people: himself, a seated young woman, and the wide-eyed toddler balanced on her knee. “Here my wife,” he enunciated, beaming, the words stilted the way that rotely memorized syllables produce. The Oriental man had practiced them diligently, the English terms only a collection of sounds to him in that foreign tongue, but clearly no less dear to him for it. “Here my boy.”

And as Feng had pointed out his loved ones, you had stood close by with a carefully composed mask of indifference, clearly just as practiced. Eyes delicately turned aside, but your apparent jealousy obvious to anyone who cared to see it.

Arthur pauses mid-drag. He lowers his cigarette and starts to say “She—”, then immediately chokes on wayward smoke and coughs like a failed fire-eater. Trelawney eyes the thin railing he grabs for support with some anxiety. Italian metalwork is lovely, but hardly load-bearing.

Once he’s recovered, Arthur manages a weak, “Lee has a son?”

“She doesn’t. She’s never had any children, as far as I know. Because our dear friend Lee (Arthur seems personally offended by this descriptor), you see, wasn’t the woman in the photograph.”

Feng’s mistress, had been the resounding whisper raised among the other parlor patrons, but the label had never made much sense to Trelawney. The man had regarded you with a sort of haphazard kindness given offhand and inattentively, but met with the keen reception so particular of abandoned children and dogs. 

“Feel like I’m reading a dime novel,” Arthur says, voice still hoarse. “A bad one.”

A diffuse and forlorn indigo is descending over the horizon, dulling what pinks and reds have bled from the setting sun into the bright lining of clouds. Darkening, deepening into tepid evening warmth. Slats of lamplight flicker segmented from the shuttered windows of one of the other caravans, drawing a scatter of thin golden lines over the furrowed grass.

Trelawney continues. “About a year ago, one of the tongs— let’s call it Tong A, for simplicity’s sake. God knows I can’t pronounce the names. Anyway. Tong A went through some sort of succession crisis, and as a result ended up bringing in new blood from some chapter in Chicago to lead. An unsavory character, from what Lee’s told me. Made most of his money through managing brothels. A week after he arrived, he put in a formal complaint to Lee’s Tong— we’ll call them Tong B— regarding stolen goods. The pimp’s best whore, as it turns out, had run away with a customer some six years past. You can probably guess the direction this is going. This is a dime novel, after all.”

“That’d be Feng and his… wife.”

“That’s right. The pimp put in a claim to Tong B, demanding that Feng either return his property or pay compensation. And Feng’s wife, she was… let’s say, quite an expensive piece of property.”

“Two thousand goddamn dollars, you’d said in that bleak, bleak voice. Glaring down at your bourbon with a tight, angry grimace of a smile. A wet and vivid blur of red beneath your eyes, and in that naked grief the aching, awful potency of a wound newly inflicted. “Can you fucking believe it? That much money for just a whore.”

“Tong B processed his claim— oh yes, apparently they have a system for this sort of thing— and sided with the pimp. Feng refused, of course. Ended up killing two of Tong A’s men when they came to collect, then got himself shot dead in the street a few days later.”

“He shoulda run,” Arthur says, his voice so quiet that it’s unclear whether he’d meant for the words to be spoken aloud at all. He holds his cigarette so tight between his fingers that the paper crinkles. The grave, furious grain of his expression is stark as rough hewn wood, faceted raw. “Shoulda taken his wife and kid and gotten them the fuck outta there the second any of it was in question.”

It’s not the first time Trelawney’s seen him react with such odd intensity to someone else’s tragedy. The outlaw carries in him the layers of intentional desensitization without which a man might break from the prevalent brutality of his occupation, but the veneer at times wears shallow with surprising sentimentality. Areas where the scar tissue still puckers shiny and new, tender to the touch. Prone to recoil with direct contact.

(Once, just once, Trelawney had gone so far as to offer you his personal assistance. “Lee, if there’s something I can do—” he’d said.

You’d cut him off almost immediately. “It’s gauche to offer help that we both know you can’t give.”)

“The rest of it’s mostly hearsay,” he says. “Some of it from Lee, some of it from the rumor mill. It sounds like Tong B was all set to send the poor girl back to the brothel when Lee stepped in and pulled out a marriage certificate. Turns out she’d been Feng’s real wife this whole time and the other girl had been the mistress. Lee took on his debt, got into opium to pay it off, and has to this day adamantly refused to explain to me, or any of our mutual contacts for that matter, how any bit of what I’ve just told you makes any sense at all.”

Arthur finds himself caught in the strange shift from anger to a state of confusion so complete that it seems almost a transcended state of understanding. He holds his hand out as if hoping to receive some sort of physical confirmation of the other man’s explanation. “...s’cuse me?”

Trelawney shrugs. 

“You’re tellin’ me that this woman…” Arthur points towards the caravan door with an accusatory finger. “That Lee is runnin’ opium for the benefit of her dead husband’s— the dead husband you say she was ‘head over heels’ in love with— for the benefit of her dead husband’s mistress?”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

“I believe her exact words to me were: ‘Out of the sheer goodness of my heart’.”

“Somehow I can’t quite see it,” Arthur says dryly.

“You might try asking her yourself,” Trelawney replies. “She seems to like you quite a bit.”

At this, Arthur barks out a short, incredulous laugh. “That a joke? It ain’t hardly been a full day since the last time she tried to shoot me.”

“Would this have been before or after the incident with her bloomers?”

A spot of color rises in the other man’s face. Either embarrassment or irritation— both states that carry a considerable amount of personal risk when it comes to Arthur. This is highly dangerous territory to be treading, but his reaction all but guarantees the promise of something sleeping there beneath the bluster. “Dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” he growls, and the blue of his eyes is slitted narrow and fierce.

“Oh, you know,” Trelawney remarks. He casts the statement out like bait. “What she said earlier about you trying to sneak ‘another look at her bloomers’. Had you all but bolting to the door afterwards.”

Arthur glowers beneath the eaves of his caravan, scowling as he cobbles together a selective account of the previous day’s events in his head. It’s not until the cigarette clamped between his teeth is burnt nearly to his lips that he offers a reply. “It rained,” he grits out, voice clipped and terse. “We got wet. I got a fire goin’ and we both dried our clothes. I mighta seen her bloomers in the process. That’s all.”

God is walking hand in hand with his sinners. France has become a new Atlantis. Somewhere over the murky horizon, pigs have sprouted silver wings and have discovered the gift of flight.

“A few years back, she nearly got herself flattened by a carriage because she jumped into the road when I tried nudging her away from it,” Trelawney says. “That’s the Lee I know. Skittish as a cat and pricklier than wild briar. She was practically clinging to your shirt when you rode in.”

Arthur shakes his head. He crushes the blackened nub of the cigarette against the bottom of his boot, and it imprints a dark circular crust like a Catholic smear of ash. “She was just scared,” he says. “Had a near miss yesterday and she cried the whole time after.”

It’s the second time he’s alluded to an unspecified act of violence, and the second time he’s neglected to provide any details regarding it. He’s speaking quieter now than before, subdued with abrupt but definitive conclusion. Not even a passing insult to set the mood back in place. This is probably the last of what information might be teased from him… for today, at least.

The quiet thump of what sounds like minor property damage thuds through the closed caravan door, followed by a small, pained ow. 

Arthur straightens up and turns towards the noise as though it were a personal summons. “What’s she…” Impatiently, he knocks a quick staccato against the door and cups a hand to his mouth, shouting, “What the fuck are you doin’ in there?”

“Slipped and fell,” comes the distant reply. 

“Dunno why you weren’t taught this, but the soap’s supposed to go on you, not the floor.”

The “what the hell would you know about baths?” that filters across in reply probably carries a lot more vitriol from your side of the door. Bellowing through wood makes for a poor medium for communication.

(“Unless you’ve got a couple thousand dollars you can spare me, or the means to put a gun to Huang’s head and pull the trigger, there’s not a thing you can do for me, you’d said.)

There is a kernel of possibility here. A glimmering speck of convenient resolution. And if not, at least an anthropological opportunity to witness the serendipitous course of what is rapidly developing into quite possibly the most confusing and contradictory definition of compatibility he’s had the privilege to observe. And its potential aftermath is as good a justification as any for purchasing an entirely new set of bedsheets.

But sometimes serendipity requires a helping hand. 

Trelawney pulls out his wallet and checks the sum of his immediate finances, then glances at the position of the setting sun. Somewhere around seven, probably. He clears his throat. “Well then,” he says. “I’ll meet you both back here bright and early tomorrow morning. Let’s say… 8:30?”

Arthur frowns, uncomprehending. “You’re leavin’?”

“It’s not like you two can camp anywhere else for the night, considering the Raiders you’ve so conveniently knocked off. And besides,” Trelawney punctuates his next words with an ambiguous sweep of his hands. “Three’s a crowd. No, I think I’ll rent a room in Rhodes for the night. The suppers at Stonewall Inn are shockingly decent.”

“It ain’t like that. Whatever fool notion you got between me and her.” 

“I’m sure,” Trelawney says.

Arthur motions towards his gunbelt and says, “Trelawney. I’m kidnapping her.”

“Yes, yes. I believe you.” In the absence of his hat, Trelawney gestures doffing one in farewell. “Give my regards to Lee, and ask her to please mop up anything she’s spilled. A good floor polish can only do so much.”

And he departs into the bluing evening dark, leaving Arthur standing speechless and solitary on the stairs of his caravan.

———

Come tomorrow morning, you’ll probably have an array of lovely, sunrise-colored bruises spanning your backside. There are a few sources to thank for that. First, the unceremonious drop from Morgan’s arms to the ground after you’d been sick. Then the muddy crash landing when he’d thrown you both from his horse. And now this— an injury you have nobody to blame for but yourself. 

It’s the years since you’ve had to draw your own bath that account for the quantity of water accidentally sloshed over the side of the tub, between bucketfuls. The intelligent thing to do would have been to mop up the mess before attempting to get in. But you’ve never been one for smart decisions, and as such had slipped on a puddle and fallen on your ass.

You wince as you shift against the upright back of the copper tub, searching for a comfortable position to lie scrunched inside what is in truth nothing more than a fancy metal bucket. Then you swallow hard, bracing yourself, and inch yourself deep into the steaming water until it laps over your breasts and submerges the unbandaged cut on your arm. The fuzzy sting of pain that it triggers sends goosebumps up your spine, and it has in it that peculiar sensation that so often accompanies day-old wounds. A hurt that is nearly sweet. Tenderness like a match held lovingly to skin.

It’s probably a good thing. Pain means healing, sometimes. Or at the very least, it offers the assurance that you might still heal, because what is dead no longer has the capacity to draw even that from itself.

But jesus christ is this agonizing. When you trace the soapy washcloth over the cut to disinfect it, you have to squeeze your eyes shut and clench your teeth to trap the very loud “OW” you’d have let out were Morgan not on the other side of the door to berate you for it.

Fucking asshole. Probably bathes twice a year, from the looks of him. The man seems to be perpetually covered with a layer of roadside dust and dried sweat. Travel-stained clothes, greasy hair that badly needs to be cut, dirt under his fingernails— if someone would dunk him in the river a few times and scrub him like a lard-caked dish, he’d probably come out an entirely different person. Might even be handsome, in a battered, sunburnt sort of way. And maybe if he shaved, and wore something not covered in horse shit, or even nothing at all, he’d…

…

…Soap. Yeah. This is nice soap.

Nicest soap you’ve used in a long time. There are tiny tufts of lavender embedded in the cream-colored tallow like limestone fossils. 

The inscription on its waxy surface reads Harrod’s, and you have to roll your eyes. Not even when you’d been dumb enough to consider yourself high society had you dared step foot in that shop. The place had been extravagant enough to have a doorman, and the one time you’d timidly approached, the man had given you a silent, scathing look that screamed “chink” in every way other than aloud.

So this is what their wares are like. Very decent. Trelawney has his flaws, but his eye for small and necessary luxuries has always been impeccable. Likely born from the kind of attention cultivated from a childhood spent using caustic lye soap and sleeping on the floor. Nobody who’s grown up in the class he purports to belong to knows anything of the precision of want. 

He plays the masquerade well, Trelawney does. If you hadn’t learned the same pantomime, you’d never have seen it in him. But stray cats, even when introduced to luxury, retain their old habits. Having known hunger, he finishes everything on his plate. He flatters with the false alacrity of someone who’s learned firsthand that a well-placed compliment can stay a beating. And the English accent… it’s near perfect, actually. But you know what real Englishmen are like, you acknowledge with a bitter pang of amusement. And he is very decidedly not one of them. Thank god for that.

Grime is eddying off your skin in discolored swirls like dirty smoke. Rust tinted, and you’re not sure if it’s from red Lemoyne clay or dried blood. 

You take a deep breath and dip your head below the water for a moment, then resurface with wet hair clinging to your face like overzealous seaweed. Lathering your hands with lavender soap, you begin washing away the netted mud and yellow prairie dust. 

And the blood, every bit of that blood.

When Morgan had shot the boy on the bridge, his head had shattered like a glass. Fragmented him in a vivid, warm splatter that had tasted like iron and salt where it rained against your lips. His collapsed corpse lay there in the dirt like a broken-off wine stem, everything upwards of his jawbone blasted to variegated red pulp. The formless gore of sharded bone and soft tissue eluding identification like the assortment of curved slivers first swept up, and the droplets on your neck and shirt and hair like the glittering dust that makes up the last, faint echoes of a glass. What’s left behind after everything else has been cleaned away, to be found later in places overlooked, cutting anew every time.

And Danny. Shattered glass in the mud, by your hand. Died too far away for the spatter of him to reach you, but thinking of it now you feel suddenly sick. After you rinse your hair clean, you begin scouring at your skin with the soapy washcloth as if it’ll clean the sin of it from you, as if by washing away any proof you had lived that day you might erase its existence.

But the deed is in you now, and you can no more wash it away than you can deny the blood in your veins.

“He owes me for that one, too.” Huang had said, sitting at the banquet table with old Sam Wah. When he’d pointed at you, Feng had clenched his fists so hard that both his palms had bled. Shaking with fury on your behalf, and you’d never loved him more than you had that day. “You can see it in her face. She looks just like her mother, but she has my eyes.”

I’m nothing like him, you tell yourself fiercely, scraping the cake of soap against the washcloth so vigorously that it leaves pieces of lavender strewn behind. I’ll never be anything like him.

One dead gangster is a grain of sand when weighed against what Huang did to your mother. And what he’s done to every other girl who’s ever passed through his hands, Mei included. And what he’d do to you if given the chance.

And yet.

And yet perhaps you’ve nursed the germ of him in your chest your entire life, because look at yourself, look at the hypocrisy, the petty jealousy, the hate and deliberate indifference that you’ve always had in you, because hadn’t you felt a little flash of joy at the very possibility of Mei gone at last, and haven’t you been content to live off the glut of the tongs knowing full well that its sustenance comes from your own countrymen, and wasn’t what you blurted out drunk last night right after all, you don’t care about the addicts and you don’t care about anyone else and—

A muffled hey comes from the other side of the caravan door, then a quick knock. Morgan again.

You snap at him, still caught in the current of your personal damnation. “What do you want?”

“Just checkin’ that you ain’t died,” is his answer. “Haven’t heard anything fall or break for a while, so I thought you mighta drowned.”

Strange that just the sound of him centers you, rips you from that circular, racing despair to a grounded irritation. He’s something to be mad about that doesn’t have yourself at its root. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“You ain’t any use to me dead,” he says, and it shouldn’t sound as comforting to you as it does, more a pat on the shoulder than the threat he clearly intends it to be.

No use in you being dead. Well, it’s certainly nice for that to be the case for someone, isn’t it?

You slide deeper into the bath, skin skidding and squeaking against copper as you sink down until you are submerged just below your nostrils. Soap suds dot the murky water like bubbled lily pads.

What would he have done if you hadn’t answered? What if you open your mouth right now and take in avid lungfuls of dirty bathwater? Slip completely under the cooling surface as you suffocate, and god would it burn at first, like hands clawing your throat and chest to pieces, but when you’re far enough gone there’s supposed to be a kind of overwhelming calm as you accept at last what you can’t outrun. 

You hadn’t found it.

If you drowned yourself right now, like a poor man’s Ophelia, would Morgan break down that door? Would he drag you out and lay you flat on your back and in his panic crack three of your ribs as he’d pump the water out of your lungs with his bare hands, put his mouth to yours and breathe life back into you, the way Feng had when he’d met you so many years ago. That black river, that lukewarm water with its foul taste of mud and fear, that sightless span to die in, its every molecule turned to the agonizing, helpless horror of irreversibility. Indecision come ten seconds too late.

You sit back up and wrap your arms around yourself, shivering. The bathwater’s gone cold. And you’re as clean as you’re going to get with just a single wash. 

As you step out of the tub and drip your way to the towels you’d forgotten to bring, you take care not to slip. It would be hilarious in the dumbest way possible if you were to crack your head on a corner and die just moments after you’d decided not to. Morgan would see the humor in it, for sure. Or maybe not. He did say that he needed you alive.

For what, though? you wonder, toweling your hair. You’re boarding the train tomorrow, and you’re going to banish Morgan and Rhodes out of sight in the haze of steam and dust churned by its wheels like one of Trelawney’s magic tricks working in reverse: the reviled thing there one second, then disappearing forever in a white puff of smoke. 

Or maybe he’s going to try and ransom you after all. You moron, did you forget that this was a kidnapping? Morgan’s probably shaking down Trelawney for information on Chinatown right now so he can work out who the highest bidder might be. And then he’ll probably try to tie you up again. But you’ll struggle and he’ll be forced to pin you down again, lying atop you with his chest pressed to your back. Yank your arms back and hold your wrists together with just one of his hands, his breath hot against the back of your neck, and…

…

…this is a very nice towel. Very fluffy. Very soft. Is it from… yes. Of course it’s from Harrod’s. Why wouldn’t it be?

You wrap yourself in it like a badly swaddled baby, tucking one corner into the swathe wrapped around your chest. Then you pick up the (very decidedly not from Harrod’s) bucket by its wire handle, and set it below the pump, which creaks like a sore-throated banshee when you push down on its handle. It’s certainly enough noise to let Morgan know that you’re yet among the living. 

When you’ve about half-filled the bucket, you drag it away with a wincing groan breathy enough to be a gasp— the weight of the water tugs at the edges of your cut as you strain your arms, and when you glance back at it you find that it has again begun weeping something clear and sticky between the cracks of what has scabbed over, welling where the skin is still raw and marbled pink.

So long as it bleeds clear like that, you’re fine, Morgan had said when he’d inspected it earlier. You’d been standing barefoot behind the door, towel pulled tight over your body then much the same way it is now, your face hot with embarrassment and the whole time asking yourself, what the hell am I doing?

Had it been nearly anyone else, you’d have immediately slammed the door shut. But with Morgan… there’s no longer any jump from his incidental touch. Not even a flinch when he goes so far as to elbow you in the back. And it’s not like you particularly enjoy being prodded and nudged and rudely shoved in the mud, but that knee-jerk wariness, that urgent spike of apprehension— it hadn’t been there. Just a touch, and nothing else. A rare thing.

The natural consequence of weathering two near-death experiences together, you suppose, clanking the kettle down below the pump. Nothing sentimental about it at all.

You fill the kettle until even its spout brims with water. The stove is still lit, crackling vermillion bright between the teeth of its grate. You gently set the kettle on its iron lid to warm.

An alligator-toothed washing board is propped up diagonal beside the folded towels in the cabinet, and when you grope underneath its hypotenuse, you find the weathered cake of lye soap you knew would be there. Old habits die hard, even for Trelawney.

Cold rinse first, then. You plunge your shirt into the water, watching as the billowing fabric darkens and sinks, then you dredge it up like a drowned rat and smear wide, white streaks of soap against the dark cloth like cheap paint. You lean the blunt edge of the washboard against your ribs to hold it steady, bunch up the drenched shirt in your hands, and begin to scrub.

The soap suds foam up red-brown as they stream and catch against the washboard’s teeth, and the scent of old blood, that thin and coppery tang, rises into the air so strong that you can nearly taste it.  The stains hadn’t shown up well against the shirt’s faded black dye to begin with, so you hadn’t been sure exactly how much of the boy’s blood you’d been wearing. From the smell, quite a lot. Enough to warrant a second wash.

You unlatch the back door of the caravan, swing it just far enough to poke your head out, and are greeted by nothing but a dark thicket of trees like haphazard sticks shoved into the earth, blue-black in the gloam. Two floating circles flash amber in the face of a passing doe, then nothing but her melting shadow as she turns her head and bounds away. Not much in the way of possible voyeurs, so you open the door wide to pitch the contents of the bucket into the grass. The cold broth of blood and soap and water arcs in the glint of amber light before it splashes and disappears.

A second wash, a third, and a fourth, until the leftover suds are clean and white. The bones of your hands ache, both from the subterranean chill of whatever aquifer the pump draws its source from, and the fatigue of labor done well. 

Don’t use the washboard for satins and silks. Scrub bloodstains out with cold water first. Hot water for muslin and cotton, cool water for everything else. Funny how quickly it all comes back, those lessons gleaned from a past life. Hard-learned, most of them. The one time you’d ruined silk by rinsing it with hot water, you’d only just begun losing your milkteeth. Huang hit you so hard that day that your loose front tooth had skidded across the floor like a jagged pearl.

The cracked, red hands of an old woman at age eight. That young, you hadn’t a firm enough conception of death to wish it upon him. But with age comes wisdom.

In the year since your life’s gone to shit, you’ve played out the hypothetical countless times. Walk into that office and, instead of handing over the proof of sale, take out the Mauser lent from the gunsmith, level it at Huang’s head, and pull the trigger. Then put the gun to your own head. Exeunt Lee.

But you’ve never been able to summon the nerve. Unable to commit to life, unable to commit to death, and so you tread that middle path. Half-wishing with each trip from that reeking city into the wilds that a very large boulder might fall on you, or some benevolent soul take the whole matter out of your hands completely by granting you a quick and painless execution. 

And yet at that first taste of real danger yesterday, with the riders fast approaching and the black particulate of gunpowder hanging in the air, it had been like falling back again into that dark water. The ripple of moonlight a sifting grid of void and white from beneath its surface. The useless no, no, no bubbling soundless from your throat. God, you coward.

The boy on the bridge. The view down the bore of his gun had been so foreign that you’d forgotten to be afraid. A lapse of a few seconds on Morgan’s part and it would have all been over. It wouldn’t have been such a bad way to go.

The bloodstains on your pants won’t wash out clean. Umber rimmed, saturated droplets— you scrape the canvas cloth against the washboard until they fade at last to nothing but a trace embossment of previous violence, too faint to pick out save to those who know to look for it. Feng’s shirts had stains like this. So do Morgan’s, probably.

It’d all be so much easier if you were the same species of man as either of them. Someone with an impulse to violence, the solution to any given problem just a bullet away, and—

Oh. 

———

By the time the lock finally unlatches, it’s well into twilight and Arthur’s on his fourth cigarette. The sun has long since sunk into the earth, entombed beneath the weight of that encroaching black like something dead and buried. All that’s left is its trailing, violet edge like an afterimage, dissolving into the horizon. The night is young enough that when he picks out the Pleiades, only its brightest five stars are visible, their faded sisters overshone by even the ghost of that departing light.

Moonflowers unfurl in their spiral shapes, fluted throats wide open to drink in the dark. Their greenery so lost in shadow that the blooms seem to float soft and pale as phantoms. A coyote yips anxiously not far off, over and over again, calling on something that will not respond. No pack and no mate, but that loneliness is new still, else it would not cry out with such hopeful persistence.

You open the door and stand on its threshold like a figure mired in liquid gold, the glow of the fire and lantern inside pouring sudden into the gloom. A luna moth catches in that radiance and careens into the caravan like a lost kite. “Sorry,” you say. Your clothes are still damp, and your loosed hair hangs dripping over your left shoulder. Lavender. Why the hell do you smell like lavender? “Took longer than I thought to wash out all that blood, and… hey.” Brow furrowed, you peer up at him, puzzled. “Where’s Trelawney?”

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #red dead redemption #rdr2 #fic #my work #talking bird