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rosesgonerogue · 4 years

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I didn’t so much fall in love - It kicked me in the face Chapter Eight

Masterlist

The room seemed empty without the plague that was his brothers. Tim stood silent and still for a few moments longer (long enough to make it awkward) before he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about Damian, he was out of line.”

“He was, but I was a little out of line as well,” Marinette said with a sigh. “But you are also not responsible for your brother. I feel like I need to apologize and let you know that it’s okay if you don’t want to go for coffee.”

“No, we’re still on for that,” Tim said immediately. “As long as you still want to, of course.”

“I’ll be waiting in anticipation. But I’ve held you captive for too long already, I’m sure you’ve got things to do, naps to take. Unless you have any last minute comments or complaints on the suit?”

“Ask me that again on a day when I’ve had more than forty-five minutes of sleep. Then I’ll have an incredibly witty response,” Tim said with a smile. “Aside from the lack of lining, the suit is everything I never knew I needed.”

He carefully took off the jacket while his mind raced. Hearing the way Marinette had phrased her experiences had struck him with the fact that Paris wasn’t nearly as idyllic and safe as they had supposed, and the thought of Marinette in danger was unacceptable. Instead of sleeping, Tim found himself compiling a briefing file on the crime history of Paris, as well as the most important aspects of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Now Tim just had to convince everyone else that some of them needed to go assess the situation in the city itself. There were numerous evidences that Hawkmoth was an issue of the past, but the fact that the whole situation had gone on for at least four years without the League even noticing was… concerning, to say the least.

Privately, Tim couldn’t help but wonder just how Marinette’s name hadn’t been added to the list of “akumatized” victims. From everything he knew of her, she was fueled by love and passion - she was an unstoppable force of emotion. He couldn’t help but respect her all the more.

Ladybug was also a mystery. Paris wasn’t in constant danger like before, but she remained active, helping out in day-to-day crime. Chat Noir showed up occasionally, but she seemed to be the only regular hero.

It was hours before the fittings for Dick and Jason were finished, and then he called everyone in for a meeting. Damian looked incredibly annoyed, a good portion of which was a remnant from his earlier collision with Marinette. Just thinking about the skirmish was enough for Tim to decide he was at least a little bit in love with the woman. Anyone who could put Damian in his place like that was someone to be respected.

“So what’s up, Timmy? Why the family meeting? It must be serious if even Alfred is part of this,” Dick said, sitting down.

“First I have a question for Bruce. Did the League ever get any kind of distress call from Paris between nine and five years ago?”

“From Paris? None that I know of. What’s going on, Tim?” Bruce asked, eyebrows furrowed.

“Sit down boys, there’s been a serious oversight.”

Tim handed them each a file and sat down, settling in to watch their reactions.

*******

“Why do you keep looking in the mirror, Maman?”

Marinette lurched away from the bathroom mirror, cheeks flushing. “I… I was just making sure my hair looked okay.”

“You look pretty, Maman. I’m sure Monsieur Tim will think so too. When this is done you need to invite him to Paris so you can go on a date without me, like it’s supposed to be.”

Choking on her spit, Marinette stared at her child. “Leo! Who told you to say such a thing?!”

“Uncle Kim says that kids aren’t supposed to go on dates.”

“Well, that’s usually true,” she said, massaging her temples. “But people go on dates to see if they like someone enough to see if they want them to be in their lives forever. If a man wants to be in my life forever, I have to make sure that you like him.”

“I told you, we’re supposed to know Monsieur Tim,” Leo said, slightly exasperated. “He makes us both happier.”

“You’re right, and I trust you, but Monsieur Tim and I just need to get to know each other before anything happens.”

“Fine,” Leo huffed, dramatically throwing himself onto his hotel bed. Marinette couldn’t help but shake her head. Her son was incredibly mature, and sometimes it felt like he could practically see into the future. But she loved the reminders that he was still just a child.

“Stop pouting, it’s time to go,” Marinette said, shoving him off of the bed. He caught himself with ease - it seemed that he’d been blessed with a natural athleticism instead of her own inborn clumsiness.

The coffee shop was easily within walking distance, and Marinette held Leo’s hand with the strength of a vice - it was Gotham, after all, and they didn’t have the best track record with the city.

After walking for about a block, Marinette finally brought herself to ask Leo what she’d been wondering since she and Leo had met Tim. “Leo?”

“Hmm?”

“What do you mean when you keep saying that we’re supposed to know Monsieur Tim?”

He turned to her, gifting her with one of his rare full smiles, and Marinette barely resisted the urge to smother him in a hug. His blue eyes sparkled with some secret knowledge before he said, “That’s a secret, Maman. You just have to wait and find out.”

“Leo, that’s not fair,” Marinette said, mock pouting.

“Monsieur Tim is going to be important to us both, but especially to you,” Leo said plainly. “He can understand you in a way that most people can’t, but he wouldn’t try to pity you or something like that.”

Whatever she had been expecting, it definitely hadn’t been a reply like that. Marinette found herself rendered speechless for the rest of the walk, her mind racing with the possibilities of what Leo could possibly mean by that.

They were early, but Tim was actually already inside, remarkably awake for so early in the morning. He sat at one of the tables by the window, and when he caught sight of her he waved wildly. (Marinette couldn’t tease him about it though, she and Leo waved just as enthusiastically.) She couldn’t help but smile. With a start to her day like this, how could it go wrong?

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Note:

Here's the next chapter, kids! I already posted about this, but I want your opinion as well. I have at least two more ideas for Mominette fics, would y'all be interested in me posting them? I'm still trying to ride through quarantine without seeing my nieces and nephews, so I need children in my life SOMEHOW. There’s a Daminette one and a Jasonette one. Let me know what y’all think. Also somehow I’ve almost got 500 followers??! I would like to do something as a thank you, just let me know if you guys have any ideas.

Also I’m totally fine with my brand becoming Mominette. I don’t know how much everyone else in this little niche fandom like it, but I also assume the majority of you aren’t single people in grad school that get lonely.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think, both for the Mominette fics and what you want for the 500 follower thing once I hit 500 followers!

#maribat #timinette #marinette x tim

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sirrriusblack · 4 years

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Okay so even though nobody asked. I’ve been thinking about the whole anti-Snape situation and I just wanted to state my opinion even though, again, nobody asked.

So I don’t like Snape. I don’t think he was a good person and I’m sorry if anyone disagrees with me, feel free to explain why you think he is if you’d like. Honestly, I’m always up for a (friendly) discussion. But anyway, from what I’ve seen, most people that do like Snape justify his actions and why he was rude to Harry by talking about The Marauders, specifically James, and how they bullied him.

So it’s canon that James was a dick. I get that. The Marauders liked to play pranks and cause chaos, and they were kinda dicks. That’s fair. And note here that I don’t in any way condone bullying or abuse or the like. Anyway, it’s also canon that Severus would start fights with them first as well, and that may have been a result of their bullying, and I’m not justifying any bullying with ‘he started it’. That’s not what I’m trying to do. All I’m saying is we know that both James (and The Marauders) and Severus were known for starting fights or the like. Snape was also known to be hanging around a group of racist dicks basically. He thought it was okay to call Lily a mudblood and I understand there’s a difference in actually thinking something and accidentally blurting it out, otherwise I would hate Sirius for telling Snape about Remus’ condition too. And I don’t.

Yet Snape grew up to join Voldemort’s cause and that can’t be blamed on anything but him, really. It’s often said that you should compare Sirius and Severus. Sirius certainly could have been dragged into the wrong side with all the pressure from his family, with everything he’d learnt growing up. If he hadn’t had his friends to keep him in line, he might have. Most people then say that Snape didn’t have that guidance and he got pulled into the dark arts and etc. But he had Lily, didn’t he? It’s canon that Lily disapproved of Snape’s friends and was always trying to steer him away from the dark arts. She still hung out with him and was his friend despite what her Gryffindor friends thought of him. She stuck by him, as any good friend would do, and he stuck by her, but he didn’t take her advice. That’s the biggest difference between Sirius’ and Snape’s future; Snape didn’t take his friends’ advice, and no one is to blame there but him, really.

With that in mind, I don’t think we can say who was better or worse. Because Snape was a victim of bullying, yes, but if he did the same to The Marauders, doesn’t that make them victims too? I don’t like saying that anyway, because really, it was a four against one situation (or at least two against one from what we’ve seen). Honestly, we don’t know how often they fought, who started more fights, what their reasoning was or anything, because we can’t know enough about the situation. So I’m not going to come out here and say The Marauders were perfect, or even better than Snape. No one’s perfect and we should definitely recognise what The Marauders and what Snape did was wrong. I’m definitely not trying to excuse James’ actions by the bad things Snape did to him or the other way around. So let’s just look at them without the war, without different sides, without Lily and everything. Let’s just look at them as two teenage boys. James was a dick. Lily was right in calling him an arrogant toe-rag. He was egotistical too, what with being popular and rich and an only child. (Again, not that I’m not saying this to excuse his actions.) Snape was also a dick. He looked down on certain blood types (with the exception of Lily apparently), he was bitter from years growing up with his father and I mean, he literally came up with a spell that slices people open. So we can come to the conclusion, I think, that the boys kinda both sucked. Obviously, I love The Marauders and I recognise that James was an arrogant dick, but I still think he was a great person because the good outweighed the bad. I’m not going into it but I could write a book just about why I think James was a good person. But I also recognise that I can’t say James was a good person despite his faults, if I don’t so the same for Snape. Because, if we boil down to it, even if I don’t necessarily like saying it, I can understand why Snape could be considered a good person. He helped Lily from the start, and was her friend from the start. He defended her against her sister’s hate and the Wizarding World’s hate. He was still friends with her despite what her other friends thought of him because Lily was his best friend. He was smart and ambitious and yes, he put his talents to bad use, but you could say he was a good person as a teenager. My problem isn’t with teenage Snape, however.

Like I said (probably forty times, I’m sorry) I can recognise that Snape wasn’t a horrible person. I can understand why people like him, that’s obviously not my opinion, but I’m not here to hate on other people’s opinions, I’m just here to explain mine. My problem is with adult Snape. His adulthood is very very different to his teenage years because here, the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. Obviously his bullying as a kid would have affected him throughout his whole life, because it’s how he grew up. And it’s not fair to say that James didn’t turn out that way even though Snape supposedly started things with him just as much as he did so to Snape, because James, all in all, had a better life than Snape. So let’s instead look at Remus. Remus Lupin spent his childhood in fear. He had to sit through DADA classes where he was classified as a monster. He had to walk down the halls with people looking at his scars and judging him for them everyday. He had to keep a secret bigger than any secret he knew from his best friends. He had to think about them leaving him because they were scared, and he had to wait and wait and wait for Snape to act out his threat of exposing him. Both Remus’ childhood and adulthood was plastered with hate and threats and fear for something he couldn’t control. Yet Remus was kind. He carried chocolate around to make people feel better, he wanted nothing more than to help children grow by teaching them all he knew. He loved Harry more than anything. Him and Tonks had Teddy and he was scared he was going to hurt them, but he still stuck by because he loved them. Despite all the hate and bitterness he faced from the whole Wizarding World, Remus Lupin was still a kind, wonderful person. Remus also lost all of his best friends. James, Lily and Peter (at least he thought), were dead and Sirius (at least he thought) betrayed him and he was left with absolutely nothing. Yet he was still so full of love and kindness. I can’t personally say the same for Snape. Especially when Snape, as a very mature, very excuse-less adult, told the whole Wizarding World about Remus’ lycanthropy, which in turn got him fired and caused the Anti-Werewolf Legislation, creating more hate, poverty and difficulty for all werewolves. (I could go on, Remus Lupin deserved so much better). And yet Remus, after losing everything he had, once again, still found more love with Tonks and then Teddy.

Yes, Snape faced ridicule and hate and bitterness as a child and during school too. Yes he lost his best friend (*whispers* even though it was his fault) but if Remus could face all the hate he did and still become a great person, if Sirius could ignore all the pressure he was under to join Voldemort, then those can’t be excuses for Snape. You can’t excuse the fact that he joined a hateful, racist, discriminatory side of the war with him being bullied as a child. He chose hate because he lost something he loved. And from then on, he kept choosing hate. I’m sorry, but becoming a death eater and then changing his mind doesn’t create enough good to outweigh the bad. Changing his mind and joining the good side, to me at least, doesn’t make him good. Not when he singled out children, made fun of them, and did exactly what his so-called ‘excuse for his bitterness’ was (bullying) to hurt 11 year old children. And look, someone might prove me wrong, someone might say something that makes me reconsider the situation, but it boils down to one sentence. I can’t justify Snape’s actions if him and The Marauders were all dicks yet The Marauders (minus Peter) turned out to be a good person and Snape turned out to be… well, Snape.

I’m really not trying to start anything, by the way, I’ve just seen a lot of posts about people who don’t like Snape ‘not having any reasons to back their opinions’ and I wanted to share mine. I have a lot more reasons than this, but I feel like those reasons could probably be excused because he was ‘good in the end’. I disagree, but like I said, I don’t want to start anything. I don’t know. I’m probably going to regret posting this.

#severus snape #anti snape #the marauders #james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #im sorry but like #i just cant find any way to justify him #idek what this is

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apparentlynotreallyfinnish · 4 years

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Experiments - Part 2

If you missed it, you can read part 1 here.

---

Have fun!

Jessie’s parting words rolled around in Rhett’s mind as he parked his car on the driveway of their creative house. She’d kissed Rhett’s cheek and waved from the door as Rhett pulled away from their house. The teasing grin she’d had on her face the whole morning had been a constant reminder that today was the day.

Link’s Audi was already parked on the driveway. Rhett turned off the engine and took a few deep breaths, fingers curled around the steering wheel just to hold onto something real. All week he’d felt like he was in a perpetual dream. The restless nights had settled into the lines around his eyes and painted them blood-shot and glossy. Rhett stared at his reflection from the rearview mirror and tried to forget the dreams that had haunted him ever since Jessie had—a bit too easily in Rhett’s opinion—agreed to loan his husband for Link’s sexual experiment.

Seeing Link in all manner of undress was normal to Rhett. It’s not like he purposefully sought for opportunities to experience his best friend in his birthday suit—it just kept happening. Since their teenage years and the muddy waters of Cape Fear River, skinny-dipping had been a thing they regularly and unapologetically did together. And nowadays, they changed clothes for filming in the same dressing room. So, Rhett had seen his fair share of Link.

But before Link’s request earlier that week, he hadn’t actually seen him. At least his conscious mind hadn’t. His subconscious seemed to have memorized every inch of his best friend’s lean and tight body. That had been more than evident every night after they’d agreed that the deed was to be done on Saturday, at their rented house.

Even that had gotten a chuckle out of Jess.

“I knew it,” she’d said, giggling when Rhett had shown him Link’s messages.

“Knew what?” Rhett had asked, confused and already feeling embarrassed about what she was going to say.

“The house! You got it, so you guys could get it,” she’d said with a silly eyebrow wiggle and a suggestive hip thrust that had made Rhett’s cheeks flush.

To Rhett’s horror, his wife had gotten way too much enjoyment out of his embarrassment over the whole situation. Rhett couldn’t help but wonder whether she knew about the dreams. He hadn’t told her—that seemed like oversharing—but every morning she looked at him with that certain kind of smile and asked a bit too innocently “did you sleep well, babe?”

Rhett shook his head to chase away the dreamy images of Link in a cavalcade of compromising positions and combed his fingers through his messy head of curls. He just needed to get this over with. Then they could go back to their normal life and their normal—platonic—friendship.

The house was not as silent as he’d expected. A slow beat and a soft male voice filled the space. Rhett found Link from the middle room, sitting cross-legged on the couch, bobbing his head in rhythm with the music coming from a Bluetooth speaker. He was scrolling on his phone, his recently trimmed salt-and-pepper hair falling over his forehead. Rhett stood at the doorway and worried his bottom lip, waiting for Link to notice him.

“And when your eyes catch mine, I know I talk too much. So give me your two lips and baby, I’ll shut up…” Link started quietly singing along with the song, his shoulders rolling with his words. A smile tugged at Rhett’s lips.

“Hey,” he said, making Link jerk and blush as if he’d been caught with his hand inside the cookie jar.

“Hi.” Link’s voice was hoarse and he pocketed his phone before getting up. Rhett stepped into the room and tried to not look at the bed in the corner. Jessie had insisted on it when they were decorating. “You’re gonna want a place to nap between all that fabulous creating you guys are gonna do,” she’d said and even though Rhett had tried to reason with her—”we can nap on the couch!”—she’d gotten her way.

“You came,” Link said softly, sounding almost surprised.

Rhett couldn’t help the nervous giggle that burst out of him. “Not yet, but that’s the plan, right?”

Link’s exasperated eye roll was comfortingly normal and the tension between them eased a bit.

“What are you listening to?” Rhett asked, hoping that a simple conversation would help with his nerves.

“Greyson Chance.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s good.”

A silence fell between them and the tension was rapidly building back the walls that they’d managed to bring down. Better to just get on with it, right?

“So, how do you wanna do this?” Rhett asked, trying to keep his voice level and matter-of-fact. Link’s gaze bounced from the bed to the couch and to Rhett’s infinite relief, he nodded towards the latter. For some reason, doing this on the couch felt less intimate.

Rhett walked past him and sat down. He slapped his hands against his thighs and smiled a bit too wide to hide his nervousness. Link was still standing next to the couch, staring at Rhett.

“Are we really gonna do this?” he asked, hands swaying nervously.

Rhett frowned and tried to ignore his gut twisting at the possibility that Link was gonna call off the whole thing.

“If you want to,” he said slowly. “It’s your show, brother.”

Link’s hand rose to his face and he started biting on his thumbnail.

“It’s gonna be weird,” he muttered, glancing away from Rhett.

“Probably,” Rhett agreed, stomach coiling into a tighter knot. “But when are we not weird?”

A surprised chuckle broke from Link’s lips and something seemed to loosen in him. His shoulders came down from his ears and his hand fell away from his mouth. “True,” he said with a smirk before continuing. “Okay. Let’s do this. Take off your pants.”

“Whoa, whoa. Hold on. Where’s the romance, Neal? I’m not just a piece of meat, you know,” Rhett teased but got up and opened the fly of his pants before Link had time for a snarky reply. His hands stopped, though, thumbs slipped under the waistband of his underwear. “Um.”

“What?” Link asked.

“I’m not… You know, ready to go. Should I—? I don’t know, like watch something or…” Rhett was suddenly worried about his ability to perform and unsure which would be the worse option: getting immediately hard when Link touched him or not being able to get hard at all.

“Oh. Umm. No, I—I think I’d like to try and get you there. If that’s okay? Get the whole experience, you know?” Link said, looking past Rhett with his cheeks flushed.

“Yeah, okay. Sure,” Rhett muttered and pulled down his jeans, leaving his boxer briefs on for the time being. He sat back on the couch, legs spread apart, feeling more vulnerable than he had ever felt before. Link sidled up to him and, in a move too fluid for a forty-year-old guy, got on his knees on the floor between Rhett’s legs.

Oh my fucking God.

Rhett’s breath hitched and he had to fight the urge to jump up and run away. Link’s hands hovered over Rhett’s bare thighs.

“Where can I touch you?” he asked, face tilted upwards to look at Rhett.

“Anywhere.” The word slipped out like an exhale—instinctive and needy. The truth of it terrified Rhett and he let out a fake, awkward laugh. “Maybe not poke me in the eye…”

Link huffed a short, humorless laugh, swallowed audibly and planted his hands on Rhett’s legs, bracing himself on them to reach up. Rhett’s eyes widened as Link’s face came closer and closer. Panic made his chest squeeze and his vision blur. If he kisses me I don’t… But then Link ducked under Rhett’s chin and pressed his lips on the crook of his neck. The kiss was soft and quickly followed by another one, that one closer to the collar of Rhett’s shirt. Link’s hand moved away from Rhett’s leg and grabbed the hem of his shirt. Link tugged on it and whispered against Rhett’s tingling skin, “can you take this off too?”

Rhett slipped the t-shirt off wordlessly and tried to reign in his wildly beating heart as Link’s feathery kisses moved down his chest. It had been laughable to worry that he might not be able to get hard. The moment Link’s lips touched his skin, all the blood in his body seemed to migrate between his legs. His dick was throbbing and ready in no time, straining against the fabric of his underwear. Link either hadn’t noticed or chose to ignore it as he concentrated on touching Rhett’s chest.

Both of his hands were now moving on Rhett’s body. He was sliding them up and down Rhett’s torso leaving little burning trails behind them.

“You feel so… sturdy,” Link mumbled, his voice filled with awe. One of his hands was circling up to squeeze Rhett’s bicep and then back down to feel his stomach. The other was concentrating its explorations onto Rhett’s nipple, drawing slow circles around it to coax it to perk up. Link hummed happily, pleased with his efforts before diving down to suck it into his mouth to lick and gently bite on it with such determination Rhett had to wonder how long he’d been wanting to do exactly that. The move dragged a garbled moan out of Rhett that made his cheeks burn and his heart kick up a notch. Link let out a satisfied chuckle and released Rhett’s nipple with one final bite. Rhett’s cock jumped in the confines of his boxers.

“Was that good?” Link asked, voice a little more breathless than Rhett had expected.

“S’fine,” Rhett mumbled and closed his eyes, desperate to find some kind of calm inside himself to survive the onslaught of all the new sensations. He couldn’t watch Link do this to him. He couldn’t even really think about Link touching him. He’d already gone from zero to one-hundred in seconds and coming just from this would haunt him the rest of his life. Link would never let him live that down.

“You can think I’m someone else, you know,” Link said, licking a wet stripe from Rhett’s clavicle to his ear. “If that helps.”

“Mmhmm,” Rhett managed to hum, trying to appear less than affected. It was hard, though. His hips wanted to buck involuntarily. His cock was aching for attention and the thought that Link’s perfect, wet mouth would soon be on it was making Rhett dizzy.

Link’s hand slipped below Rhett’s waistline and his knuckles dragged over the bulge in Rhett’s boxers.

“Oh,” Link breathed in surprise. His head whipped down—Rhett knew that because he could feel Link’s hair brushing against his chest. “You’re so hard,” Link marveled. Rhett didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

��Fuck, that’s hot,” Link mumbled and pressed his palm firmly against Rhett’s erection. Surprised by the sudden change in pressure, Rhett moaned out loud and his hips rose to meet Link’s touch. Link gasped, snapped his hand away and fell backwards, landing on his ass with a nervous giggle.

Rhett’s eyes opened and he stared at the man sitting on the floor giggling like crazy. The watch on Link’s wrist started peeping to tell him that his pulse was too high. It made Link laugh even harder and he fumbled to silence the alarm.

Rhett was thoroughly embarrassed. His face was on fire, only barely won by the inferno raging in his stomach. He grabbed a decorative pillow to hide his erection.

“Stop that,” he snapped, covering his face with his other hand.

“I’m—sorry—But,” Link was having trouble speaking between the guffaws. “It’s just so weird.”

“Shit! This was a bad idea. I’m just gonna—” Rhett mumbled and shot up, trying to escape the torture that this moment had turned into. Link’s hand wrapped around Rhett’s wrist to stop him.

“No! Wait. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s not anything you did. I want you to enjoy it. Otherwise, what’s the point? I’m just…” Link took a long, shuddering breath, finally coming down from his laugh attack. “… nervous. I’m just so nervous. You gotta understand.”

Rhett had stopped but was swaying on his feet, still begging for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“Please, Rhett. Sit back down.”

Rhett drew a ragged breath. He could just go. He could just go and say that it had been a mistake. That he couldn’t do this. That he didn’t want to.

That would be a lie.

Link’s other hand touched Rhett’s knee and started moving up, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.

“I won’t laugh anymore. I got it out of my system, I promise,” Link whispered, crawling closer to Rhett. Rhett let him gently pull away the pillow. He screwed his eyes closed when Link’s palm reached his crotch.

“I need this, bo. Please.” Link palmed Rhett slowly, dragging his hand up and down his length, making Rhett shiver. “You feel so good. Like… even just touching you. It’s so different. I want to know—I need to know what you taste like. How you feel in my mouth.”

Rhett opened his eyes and looked down. Link was sitting on his haunches, looking up at him with pleading eyes. It would’ve required a much stronger man than Rhett to say no to those eyes. He swallowed the last shreds of his pride, sighed and settled back on the couch.

“Okay,” he said to Link. “Show me what that mouth can do.”

#Appa writes fic #rhink #rhink fic #experiments fic #part 2 #mythical wives #Jessie mclaughlin #part 3 is in the works #awkwardness #polyamory

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makeste · 4 years

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what we could have been

this is a post about the similarities between these old farts

and these lil bubbas

but more importantly, it’s a post about the differences.

so! the manga has recently entered the Internships 2 arc, also known as the Child Soldiers/Todoroki Drama 2.5 arc! so far it is very exciting, and I can’t wait to see how Deku and co. will somehow level up by a factor of 11 just in time to defeat Tomura and his new new upgrade. I assume that this will happen though, since the alternative is... [checks] everyone dies a horrible death. well shit.

anyway, we’ve already had like 12 arcs of All Might being a mentor, but this arc features the first time Endeavor has tried his hand at it! this is of course a universally beloved decision by Horikoshi which everyone in the fandom is very happy about! but I actually do like it, because the Endeavor redemption arc is complicated as fuck and endlessly fascinating to me, and because, truth be told, there is something that even a Certified Son Of A Bitch can still teach these young whippersnappers. even if Endeavor is 99.9% a dick, that 0.01% can still impart something of value. but anyways that’s not what I came here to talk about so let’s move on.

what I want to discuss is the fact that Izuku and Katsuki share very obvious similarities with All Might and Endeavor, and there are very obvious parallels between their respective arcs. Izuku is basically All Might 2.0, whereas Endeavor is presented as a version of what Katsuki could have been. but they are not the same people, either of them, and their paths have started to diverge in ways that are very much for the better. and the reasons for that can all be traced to one simple action, which in turn stemmed from one simple, honest impulse. and I have approximately 10,000 thoughts about it, so here goes.

first let’s briefly touch on those similarities. as far as Izuku and All Might go, their backstories very closely resemble one another. they both started out as quirkless kids who nonetheless held a stubborn idealism and were driven to help others. they’re both incredibly determined and remarkably self-sacrificing. both of them spent the first part of their lives overlooked, undervalued, and underestimated, and they both understand the combination of validation and gut-churning pressure that comes with being chosen as the successor to a great power and a heavy burden. the similarities between them are a large part of why All Might chose Izuku as his successor, despite there being other options on the table. All Might sees himself in Izuku, and that’s part of the reason why they share such a strong bond.

now let’s talk about Endeavor and Katsuki, who share absolutely no bond at all (for now, anyway), but nonetheless hold just as much common ground as their counterparts. they are both fiercely determined and have made it their goal to reach the top. they’re also both foul-tempered with notoriously unfriendly attitudes. and last but not least, they’re both loners who have a tendency to push others away.

one thing that’s interesting is that both Katsuki and Endeavor formerly held strong beliefs about quirks being inextricably tied to strength. Katsuki shunned and scorned Izuku for years because he lacked a quirk. meanwhile Endeavor wrote off 3/4 of his own children because their quirks didn’t develop the way he wanted them to. and it’s only recently that each of them has come to see the error of their ways, which in Endeavor’s case is quite unfortunate, because he’s already well into his forties and has only just now started to con on to the fact that he’s an asshole. whereas Katsuki started this process a whole lot earlier, and as a result is a lot better poised to bounce back from his mistakes and make redemption his bitch.

so segueing now into the “differences” part of this comparative essay, that is Key Difference # 1 for you: Katsuki managed to not waste the next 30 years of his life focusing only on Achieving Strength at the cost of destroying every other positive thing in his life. and while I think there is one reason in particular for this, which I’ll get to shortly, I’ll also go ahead and give Katsuki some of the credit here, because what he did is hard. it’s hard to realize that you have had the wrong way of thinking for your entire life, and to take the steps to get it straightened out. many people are not that open to change. rather than admitting their mistakes, they double down on them and stubbornly defend them. but Katsuki was willing to question everything he’d ever known, and look at it with an open mind, and realize that he was heading down a wrong path. and then he was able to course-correct.

and that takes strength. not the kind of strength he’s so preoccupied with, but an inner strength that he might not have even realized that he has. in this respect he is much stronger than Endeavor, who’s had much more difficulty doing his own course-correcting, although he too is finally starting to figure his shit out (too late to salvage some things, but “better late than never” is a term that still applies here regardless). in my opinion, Katsuki’s willingness to accept his own faults, and to try to change them, is one of the most unexpected and remarkable things about his character, because you wouldn’t necessarily see that coming based on his attitude at the start of the series. anyways, I really like it.

but I did say some of the credit, as opposed to all of it. and the reason for that is because in my opinion, it’s actually Izuku who deserves most of it. but before I explain, let me first backtrack and talk about another aspect of All Might’s character, one he does not share with Izuku.

All Might, like Katsuki and Endeavor, is actually a loner as well. we tend to not notice as much, because he doesn’t really seem to fit the stereotypical profile of a loner-type character; he has a very close bond with Izuku, and he speaks with an earnest and straightforward candor about emotions and subjects that most people wouldn’t be able to discuss with the same sincerity. but it’s true nonetheless. even putting aside this moment in chapter 166 where he outright admits it, there are numerous other little details in the series that show this. he has no family that we know of. only one close friend (and a non-hero at that). at the start of the manga, he was estranged from both his mentor (referring here to Gran, not Nana) and his sidekick. he’s close-lipped about a lot of things, including things he honestly should have been upfront with Izuku about much sooner. and he hides his true self from the world in an effort to preserve that unwaveringly steady image that people have put their trust in.

in the very first chapter of BnHA, All Might makes a speech to Izuku about the reason why he smiles: “to stave off the overwhelming pressure and fear I feel.” All Might was the Symbol of Peace, the pillar that society relied on -- but he was a lone pillar. he kept to himself, and made the choice to bear that weight alone. and this had consequences. I’m speaking not only of the chaos after his fall, but of other, subtler impacts as well.

so now, let’s talk about Izuku.

let’s start with Key Difference # 2: Izuku is not a loner. yes, at one point he was alone -- not by choice -- but that isn’t a defining trait of his character. Izuku reaches out. he reaches out to everyone. he makes friends easily. he’s open with his feelings in a way that All Might is not (and which All Might in fact often scolds him for).

boy just puts it out there. he’s not ashamed. but anyways, it’s actually the part about him reaching out to others that I want to talk about. I’ve said in past essays that Izuku has an instinct to save others which surpasses even All Might’s. when he sees someone in pain, his instinct is to reach out. he will do this every time. regardless of whether it’s asked for, and regardless of how often his attempts may be shunned.

and this, right here, is the most important difference between Izuku (and Katsuki), and All Might (and Endeavor). because you see, All Might, for all his strength and sacrifice, always stood alone.

he kept his burden to himself, and never looked back.

but Izuku did.

“I got my quirk from someone else.”

this was in spite of All Might, his hero, telling him in no uncertain terms to not share his secret with anyone else. and in spite of the fact that Katsuki hadn’t been anything close to a friend to him for many years. like, it’s actually wild to think about all of the reasons that Izuku had not to do this. but the fact of the matter is this: that where All Might never turned, never wavered, and never attempted to help anyone else cross that gap, when Izuku saw Katsuki in pain, he acted on the same instinct that has guided him his entire life: he reached.

and that...

...has made all the difference.

Izuku pulled Katsuki across the gap with him. he let him in. he did this with no expectation of reward, or even gratitude. quite the opposite; Katsuki had always rebuffed his attempts to help before, and even in this case, it initially appeared that he had misjudged again, and that he was just lucky that Katsuki didn’t press the matter. it was a move that defied not just common sense, but all of Izuku’s past experience; nothing about their past relationship ever hinted at a hope for common ground in the future. nothing, that is, except a shared dream.

but he reached out anyway. and because of that, Katsuki was eventually able to put two and two together. and when he did, he did something very unexpected: he reached back.

he asked Izuku for help. he did something that Endeavor never managed to do until after All Might had retired and he found himself, at long last, in the number one position, but adrift and without a driver’s manual.

it took a lifetime of failure and the loss of everything he’d been working toward for Endeavor to finally realize he was doing something wrong, and to ask for help. but this isn’t the case with Katsuki. partly because he was able to put his ego aside in this one crucial moment, but even more than that, it was simply because Izuku had never left a gap between them. Katsuki never had to work to build a bridge. Izuku was laying planks behind him every single step of the way. never expecting that Katsuki would actually follow them, but leaving them there for him regardless. leaving this path back open for them to reconcile, should Katsuki ever choose to finally meet him halfway.

and because of that faith, because of his open and giving nature, the end result is that he now has something that All Might never had: a partner. someone to help shoulder that weight. someone else who understands that burden. and someone who is now working together with Izuku with unexpected earnestness.

and so this is Key Difference # 3: whereas All Might and Endeavor were only ever at odds, two opposites on a polarized scale, Izuku and Katsuki are learning to work together. to learn from one another. to share what the other lacks, and to make each other stronger.

incidentally, just in case any part of this essay has come off as me being overly critical of All Might, or pinning the blame on him for the failures of the previous generation, let me assure you that I don’t fault him at all. All Might did what he thought was right, and managed to turn an impossible dream into a shining reality against all odds. the Symbol he became brought about peace for many years and inspired the next generation of heroes. he was not wrong in what he was trying to do; his only flaw was in being so determined to shield others that he ended up taking on too much by himself.

and I’ll say this for All Might too: in the end, he himself realized where he had gone wrong. there’s a reason why, particularly since his retirement, he’s started mentoring Katsuki in addition to Izuku. All Might knows better than anyone else the burden that sits on Izuku’s shoulders, and he knows just how hard it is to go that course alone. I already gave credit to the boys, but let’s go ahead and give All Might some credit as well, because he, too, is now course-correcting. he’s learning from his mistakes, and helping build a new generation that can succeed in building an even brighter future than the one he once sought.

as a certain melty-face scenery-chewing villain once said, “when people know that there will be an end, they entrust.” this series began with the passing of a legacy from one generation to the next. and now in this latest arc, we’re again seeing that theme of entrusting, of the old guard passing down the torch to the young guns. and shockingly, not just with All Might, but Endeavor as well. reluctant though he was at first, he, too, is now doing his best to help guide these kids down the right path. placing his faith in their strength.

I started off this essay by saying that All Might and Endeavor are who Izuku and Katsuki could have been. but now, to conclude things, I think it’s only fitting that I turn that on its head. All Might and Endeavor are not who Katsuki and Izuku could have been. Izuku and Katsuki are who All Might and Endeavor could have been. they are the ideal vision that never came to pass. the brand reimagined. the song remastered. Izuku and Katsuki will be able to reach heights that All Might and Endeavor never achieved, because they were able to shed loneliness and pride in favor of trust and a sincere willingness to learn.

so yeah.

all hail the new kids.

#boku no hero academia #bnha meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #endeavor #all might #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #bakugou meta #endeavor meta

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spiderfan22 · 4 years

Text

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN - 11/24/19

“CHARLIE, OR HOW MEN TALK ABOUT WOMEN” by DJS

So I put more work into this one. Hope it shows. Special thanks to the podcast Slow Burn for the inspiration.

_____________

(November 1995. Late night, White House cafeteria. The place is empty and mostly dark. Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, sits eating a cold slice of cheese pizza, washing it down with a can of Pepsi, the rest of the pizza along with a file on the table next to him. He is alone. Enter Dick Morris, political advisor.)

Clinton: Well if it ain’t “Charlie”. Back from the wars.

Dick: Mister President.

Clinton: (taps file with greasy pizza finger) So camping, huh? They want me to go camping, ‘stead of play golf. Think golf is too what, snooty or something? “How I spent my summer vacation” —

Dick: Mister President, you asked me to put the poll in the field.

Clinton: But I like golfing, it relaxes me. Don’t got a handicap for shit, but—

Dick: Well then, you’ll just have to wait, won’t you sir? I mean, plenty of time after you leave office.

Clinton: Oh, in that case only next year—

Dick: Come on, now don't. You know you’re gonna win re-election—

Clinton: Think so, do ya? After I just got my ass handed to me in the midterms?

Dick: A setback.

Clinton: More’n a setback, Dick. That son of a bitch Gingrich is calling it a mandate on my policies, that I just got my BUTT SPANKED by the American people! You know a Republican hasn’t been Speaker of the House since the fifties? Now what is that?!

Dick: I’m a Republican.

Clinton: And you’d make a shitty speaker of the house, don’t get my started.

Dick: Go camping, Mister President. Show ‘em what a down to earth guy you are.

Clinton: Mosquitoes biting the hell out of your arms and ankles. And you can never get the damn tent put up right, takes half the damn day.

Dick: Think the Secret Service could help with that.

Clinton: (re pizza) You want a piece of this? It’s cold but—

Dick: No thank you sir, I already ate.

Clinton: (big bite) “Already ate...” What are you counting calories now? You on Weight Watchers? It’s called a midnight snack, it DOESN’T COUNT. Just go jogging like I do. (Wipes his mouth with a napkin. Pause)

Dick: So what’s going on, sir?

Clinton: What do you mean? Nothing.

Dick: Okay.

Clinton: Nothing. Just hungry.

Dick: Sure you’re not tired?

Clinton: ‘Course I’m tired, it’s one AM.

Dick: I know the hour, sir, but it’s the only time you seem to wanna meet with me. I tell ya, it makes a guy feel kind of special, sneaking him in, “under the cover of darkness” and whatnot. Though paradoxically one might come to the conclusion you’re embarrassed of me.

Clinton: Don’t inflate yourself, Dick. You know it’s just ‘cause George and those guys don’t like me consulting with you. But can I help it if we’re old friends, that I VALUE your opinion? That a DISSENTING VOICE every now and then might actually be a GOOD thing?

Dick: Aww, sir. Well that warms my heart to hear you say that, bastard stepchild that I am. (Beat) So you really don’t wanna let me in on what’s going on?

Clinton: Jesus, I already said, nothing! Why do you gotta keep hounding me?

Dick: Well, a couple reasons sir. One you don’t like wasting people’s time, so if there was nothing else, you’d just tell me to go on home and call it a night—

Clinton: Christ, go home, who’s stopping ya?

Dick: (continuing over) --which I’d be more than obliged to do, only the second thing is, I know you of course.

Clinton: What do you mean you KNOW me? Like you can read my mind? Get out of here!

Dick: My mistake then, Mister President. Goodnight, sir. (Turns to leave)

Clinton: WAIT, DICK.

Dick: (pause) Yes sir?

Clinton: No, just...hold on a minute.

Dick: Will do.

(He waits. Silence. Clinton sips his Pepsi. Then)

Clinton: Something...something happened.

Dick: When?

Clinton: Today. Tonight.

Dick: Oh yeah?

Clinton: Yeah, I—I met someone.

Dick: Girl? (Clinton nods) Who is she?

Clinton: She’s uh...well I guess you’d call her an intern.

Dick: In the White House?

Clinton: Of course in the White House! What do you think?

Dick: I don’t know, sir. You get around.

Clinton: (a small chuckle) Heh, yeah, spose I do. (Pause) Anyway.

Dick: So, an intern. Where’d you meet?

Clinton: Leon’s office, she’s working out of Leon’s office—for the moment. Ever since the damn shutdown, you know, with the regular staff being furloughed and all—you know?

Dick: I know.

Clinton: Well there’s been an influx of em. Unpaid.

Dick: Free labor.

Clinton: Lots, yeah. Most of them young...just graduated college. (Pause) But men and women, you know?

Dick: What’s her name?

Clinton: (pause) I don’t know if I want to tell you that yet.

Dick: Then tell me what happened.

Clinton: Well, I went in there, to see Leon, you know, for something, and I don’t know if she noticed me first or I noticed her, but she’s just standing there, this young girl. So I introduced myself.

Dick: As if such a thing was necessary.

Clinton: Well, yeah but, you know, for formality’s sake... (Dick nods) So I asked if this was her first day, and she said no, she had started earlier in the week, but it was all still pretty new, you know? Just real sweet. I asked where she was from.

Dick: Small talk.

Clinton: Chit-chat, yeah. Getting to know you stuff.

Dick: Then what?

Clinton: Then...that was it. I went back to the Oval. (Pause) Till later.

Dick: Later?

Clinton: Little bit later, yeah. I found an excuse to pop back in. Leon was I don’t know where, in a meeting or something.

Dick: Makes sense.

Clinton: She was doing some filing, just standing by a file cabinet. Round the corner from the door, so you couldn’t see from the hallway...unless you stuck head all the way in.

Dick: Convenient.

Clinton: So I go over to her, you know? Ask how she’s doing, how her first week is going, anyone giving her any trouble. She says no, in fact everyone’s been real nice, maybe a little stressed with the shutdown, she’s knows that’s, that we’ve all got that on our minds, and how we can end it, but overall still very welcoming despite that.

Dick: A very personable young woman it sounds like.

Clinton: Complimentary, too. She said how it was just so exciting to be around such important people, with an important job to do. (Pause) Then she, she did this thing. I don’t even know how to describe it. She kind of gave me a look, this playful look like DID I WANT TO SEE SOMETHING, and I must have given her a look back like a smile or something that said SURE, I CAN PLAY ALONG. So with this same playful bordering-on-mischievous little kind of smile of hers, she pulled up her shirt, her blouse, you know...and wouldn’t you believe it but she HAD ON THIS THONG, Dick—I mean sticking right up out her skirt, so you could see it. Black, this black string thong, you know, like from Frederick’s of Hollywood, Victoria’s Secret, one of them catalogues. And you know I been around, seen my fair share of...what’s out there. I’m not an easy man to surprise...that way. But to be so direct about it, so confident—to come right TO THE POINT...hell, I think I mighta even blushed, Dick. (Pause)

Dick: Wow. If I may say, sir—

Clinton: But it wasn’t over yet.

Dick: It wasn’t?

Clinton: No, I—I excused myself, after thanking her, and maybe we would bump into each other again later. If she was working late. None of this was planned, you see.

Dick: Yes, sir.

Clinton: And well, you know, you never know what the rest of the day is gonna look like, but just as it happens later that night I’m coming down the hall and she’s coming the other way and as we get closer to each other I sort of motion her to this office no one’s in, it’s dark and we duck in and I, I close the door and the first thing I ask is, you know, if she likes me, which I already have a pretty good feeling about, but she confirms it, looking up at me she says she’s had a crush on me for a long time, she thinks I’m really handsome, from seeing me on TV and, and likes my suits, and I say how I know we just met but I have a feeling I could like her too, that I liked her right off, and I ask if I can kiss her, and she says yes. So we kiss. (Pause) We kissed. And it was very sweet, and very innocent, and I would even use the word chaste to describe it, like we were teenagers or something and this was our first date—which I guess, you know, it was.

Dick: Sounds like quite a night, sir.

Clinton: Haven’t gotten to the best part.

Dick: Oh? Well...

Clinton: We meet up again later. No pretense anymore. It’s late, everyone’s gone home by now—I mean, Betty’s still there but [what’s she gonna do?]—so I invite her to my private office. And it’s like it’s just us alone together in this whole big building. It seems so small and quiet. And she looks up at me—big eyes, glassy, maybe she was crying, I don’t know. But before I can think about it...

(He trails off. Long pause)

Dick: Well, that’s some story, Mister President.

Clinton: I know. I know. What am I gonna do, Dick? I can’t keep seeing this girl! But I want to!

Dick: ‘Course you want to. You’re only a man.

Clinton: She gave me her number.

Dick: Stands to reason.

Clinton: I don’t know, maybe if things were going better with Hillary—

Dick: The question is how much do you trust your security detail. Because IF—and this is a big if—but IF you were going to continue to see this girl, it would really fall under their purview. They’d be your first line of defense.

Clinton: You’re talking about actually having an affair?

Dick: Why not? Your hero JFK did it.

Clinton: But that was a different time! And even then he barely got away with it; everybody knew! And besides haven’t we had enough problems, enough scandals already, what with Travel Gate and White Water, and Vince Foster going and killing himself over nothing!—and that bastard Ken Starr breathing down my neck!

Dick: All good points, sir.

Clinton: I can’t, Dick, there’s no way. It would be putting too much in jeopardy. And with the election next year—

Dick: Say no more.

(Silence)

Clinton: It would be nice though, wouldn’t it? Like a breath of fresh air.

Dick: We can’t always get what we want.

Clinton: Rolling Stones.

Dick: Yes sir.

Clinton: Mick Jagger. You know I met him once?

Dick: No sir, I didn’t.

Clinton: Yeah, back during the campaign, at a stop in Chicago I think. They were on tour. Now there’s a guy who could get any woman he wants, and not have to worry a lick. (Shaking his head) Rock stars, boy.

Dick: You know, politicians have their groupies too, sir. I think we can agree this is a bullet best dodged.

Clinton: No. No. That’s just it. This was the real thing.

(Beat)

Dick: Go camping, Mister President.

Clinton: Yeah. (Pause) Yeah. Thank you, Dick. For everything, the advice and— (Holds up file) These numbers. You’re a good friend.

Dick: My pleasure, sir, anytime. And it’s “Charlie” remember?

Clinton: “Charlie” right. Heh.

Dick: I mean, cool codename, might as well use it.

Clinton: Yeah.

Dick: Well, goodnight, sir.

Clinton: G’night. (Dick starts to exit) Hey Dick, fore you go—the Secret Service. They get you in and out pretty easy, right? No questions?

Dick: Sir?

(Pause)

Clinton: I’m just asking.

#billclinton #dickmorris #whitehouse #westwing #affair #intern #pizza #pepsi #POTUS #howmentalkaboutwomen #ugh

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angelofthequeers · 5 years

Text

That Red Skirt

Disclaimer: I don’t own SPN.

Spawned from this thread. I already made a post for @some-angelic-flowers and @gabrielsbackbitches, but then I figured why not write them a fic? I also thought that @i-miss-balthazar might appreciate a tag as well!

Summary: When Jack realises on a shopping trip that he’s non-binary, leading to a confrontation with a stranger who can’t mind their own business, Dean starts to have a few realisations of his own. And his angel is there to save the day and provide answers and comfort as Dean ends up knee-deep in working out stuff he’s repressed to be John Winchester’s Perfect Son. Sam’s just a little shit but then, when isn’t he? At least the overgrown moose is accepting as well.

AO3 link here

It’s not that Dean’s ashamed exactly. Sure, he doesn’t go around telling people that he likes doing “womanly things”, as John called them whenever young Dean dared to bring them up. It’s clear as day to people who actually know him that he likes cooking and looking after his home and taking care of others – all “womanly things” according to John – but he doesn’t exactly like to parade it around.

At first, it was because John expected him to be the perfect son; “If I wanted a daughter then I would’ve had one,” had been his exact words on many an occasion, until Dean had learned to hide it all under layers of exaggerated manliness. That’s not to say that Dean’s not manly at all…just not to enough of a degree for John’s liking. Hell, probably not to enough of a degree for most men’s liking, judging by all the ‘guy humour’ he’s heard about women “belonging in the kitchen” and “taking care of the breadwinner”.

So he likes to indulge in taking care of people and his home without the need for violence. Sue him. He doesn’t think he’s too ashamed of it anymore, but he just doesn’t see any conversation to slide this information into, or just any people who he’d feel safe enough to tell. Sam and Cas wouldn’t give a fuck for sure – their appreciation of his cooking makes that blatantly clear, although he could do without Sam’s occasional comments about knowing how to do the perfect load of laundry despite having relied on laundromats all his life – but that still involves having a conversation about it. And if there’s one ‘manly’ thing that Dean’s good at, it’s avoiding talking about his feelings.

Actually, that’s probably more from years of trauma and childhood neglect. But whatever.

Dean has always thought that this inner conflict would come to a head in a bar somewhere. A finished case, a bit too much beer, he’d get hit on by some creepy asshole who thinks he’s “pretty” with his “princess lips” and “candy apple eyes” – because apparently even when he’s pushing forty, he’s still pretty enough to get hit on by creeps – and then drama would ensue when he says no. A homophobic slur here, an insinuation about being a girl there, finished with either a nice bar fight or storming off, then Sam’s following attempt at a conversation. According to Charlie years ago, it’s a popular trope in gay fanfiction and usually ends up in hot sex between the two guys, with a lesson about accepting yourself and blah blah whatever.

But no, Dean’s apparently too good for fanfiction tropes, because his moment of epiphany is still dramatic but much less macho manly bar fight. He’s out shopping with Jack one afternoon, since they’re in dire need of food supplies due to being down to a tablespoon of shitty instant coffee, a few slices of mouldy bread, a pack of nearly-expired bacon, and condiments that will probably only make that mouldy bread even worse. Thank god the hunters from the other world are gone now, out inhabiting the other Men of Letters chapter houses around the country so that they’ve got a web across the US. It might be horrible of Dean to feel this way but really, a home invasion was the last thing conducive to recovering from Michael’s possession.

So, anyway. He and Jack have filled the cart with food and are now preparing to brave the clothing department of Walmart, only because Dean had decided that it might be nice for Jack to have more than a few shirts and pairs of jeans for himself. He makes a beeline for the men’s jeans and picks out the first pair he finds in Jack’s size.

“Simple but decent when it comes to hunting,” Dean says, turning to show Jack. “About as tough as you can get for this price – the fuck did you go, kid?”

Jack’s nowhere to be found. Heart starting to race, Dean dumps the jeans and heads off in search of the human naphil, because Cas is going to have his ass for days if he loses their kid. He’s still not adjusted to being with Cas, especially with a kid between them (and between Sam too, but he’s firmly not involved in this Dean and Cas equation), but apparently letting a homicidal archangel possess you while the love of your life pleads for you to not make such a dumbass move is catalyst enough to really get things rolling.

In any case, he knows for sure that he’s going to be in the shithouse if he loses Jack, so he navigates the clothing department with all the grace of a giant tortoise whose shell is made of fraud-funded food. Jack’s nowhere in the men’s department, so Dean checks the kid’s department in case he’s started having a ‘one-year-old in the body of a twenty-year-old’ crisis, but he’s not there either.

“Dean!”

Dean whirls at the sound of Jack’s voice calling his name. He locates Jack in the women’s department, standing next to a rack of discount skirts, and he struggles on over.

“They’re so pretty!” Jack says in awe, running his hand over a white, flowy skirt that looks to be about mid-thigh length.

“Don’t run off on me like that!” Dean snaps, mostly to avoid having to crush the light in Jack’s eyes as he pulls out a long red split skirt to examine it. “Cas would fuckin’ kill me if I lost you. You know how much of a passive aggressive dick he can be.”

The lady at the rack nearby tuts, which Dean assumes is at his foul language. He shoots her a winning smile, but she just tuts again and looks away, so he shrugs and turns back to Jack.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Jack says, his mouth drooping as he puts the red skirt back. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. I just went looking for stuff I’d like, and I found this section and – Dean, look at how pretty these skirts are!”

“They’re for chicks, Jack,” Dean says, painfully aware that Cas is probably going to kill him for instilling human gender roles in their son who’s pretty much a toddler with adult intelligence.

“But why?” Jack says and runs his hand over the white skirt again. “Why do humans insist on assigning gender to pieces of cloth?”

“Okay, for one, you’re human to everyone else, so you might wanna tone down on that alien talk,” Dean mutters. He shoots a look at the lady out of the corner of his eye, who’s so thoroughly invested in the table of T-shirts that it’s obvious she’s eavesdropping. “It…just is, okay? Guys wore skirts ages ago, now they don’t. Shit changes.”

This coming from the guy who likes to wear pink panties makes it incredibly hypocritical. He knows that. But there’s a difference between a sexy kink and just outright wearing women’s clothing every day, and Jack doesn’t seem to be getting it. Dean’s just going to conveniently ignore how the fact that he likes wearing panties is waving its hands to get his attention, like there’s a ground-breaking revelation to be had if he examines it further.

“I don’t understand,” Jack says. “If it’s comfortable then why not wear it?”

“Because you’re not a chick. You’re a guy.”

Jack just frowns as though these are foreign words. “But how do I know that I’m a guy?” he says. “I met someone when I was off training my powers who told me that when he was born, everyone assumed he was a girl because of his body, but he wasn’t a girl. How do I know that that’s not me?”

“Do you feel like you’re a girl?” Dean’s too sober right now. And he’s totally not equipped to handle a conversation like this. Cas is better suited, what with his utter disregard for human gender roles.

“I don’t know!” Jack clutches the skirt, no doubt to stave off the distress spreading across his face. “I like things that people call “womanly”. I like cooking with you and caring for other people just like you do. I like feeling pretty sometimes. I don’t like people thinking that I have to be tough and “manly” and not interact with my emotions just because I was born with a certain set of genitals.”

The woman nearby outright winces, so Dean turns to her with a fake smile plastered on his face.

“Is there a problem, ma’am?” he says. She dithers, like she’s torn between speaking her mind and admitting that she was eavesdropping on another person’s conversation.

“No,” she finally says.

“Good.” Dean turns back to Jack. “Look, kid, I can’t help you there.”

“But you like things that society designates as “womanly”,” Jack says. “Yet you’re comfortable in your masculinity.”

Dean sighs and draws Jack away from the nosy woman. Jack brings the white skirt with him, and Dean’s seriously thinking that he’s going to have to buy the damn thing just to shut Jack up.

“I just don’t understand,” Jack insists.

“Look, kid, I don’t either,” Dean says. “And any time I tried anything, my dad kicked my ass for it. I…don’t want that to happen to you.”

“I appreciate your concern, Dean,” Jack says with that soft little smile of his. “But you and Sam have taught me how to take care of myself. I might only be human now, but I’m sure I can handle negative opinions if I’m not hurting anyone. And I know that you wouldn’t “kick my ass for it”.”

For a moment, Dean sees himself in Jack; his younger self, so fresh and idealistic, unaware of just how horrible a place the world was. He’s got one vague memory from before Mary’s death of her painting his nails for him because he’d seen the bottle of blue polish and wanted to “look pretty like Mommy”, only to result in one of the worst fights between John and Mary about “turning their son gay” while Dean huddled in bed crying.

In that moment, he vows that Jack will never know that pain. He’s never going to be that parent that forces a tonne of bullshit on his kid because everyone else thinks he should. He’s already raising the one-year-old grown-up son of Satan in a hunter life with his angel boyfriend, so there’s literally nothing about this that’s normal in any way. No way is he going to squash that light in Jack’s eyes that John had squashed out of his.

“Fine, whatever,” Dean says. “Get the skirt if you want.”

Jack’s face lights up, and he throws his arms around Dean while thanking him over and over again. Dean pats him on the back, praying that the kid doesn’t suffocate him to death, and thankfully he’s given back control of his lungs after just a few more moments.

“Tsk.” It’s so quiet and barely there, but Dean’s trained ears pick up the reproach from the woman who totally hadn’t started inspecting the next table over just to stay within hearing range.

“You know, it’s rude to listen in on conversations you’re not part of,” Dean says with the most passive aggressive smile he can muster.

“And it’s wrong how you’re raising that son of yours,” the woman retorts. “Especially with your…boyfriend.”

Ah, so she’s one of those ones. Dean’s fake smile just widens. “Well, I don’t see it as any of your business, sweetheart.”

“You’re sending your child to Hell by encouraging him to live in sin!” the woman says. “How can you say it’s not any of my business when I’m concerned for the poor thing?”

“Dean and Cas have always taught me that I’ll never go to Hell if I’m a good person,” Jack says straight to the woman’s face. Ah, Dean’s so proud. “And I don’t see how wanting to wear a skirt makes me a bad person.”

“You gay and transgender people are wrong in the eyes of the Lord,” the woman says. Jack frowns.

“God doesn’t care about that.”

“Just back up,” Dean says. “You can’t argue with crazies like her.”

“She’s insulting you and Cas,” Jack says. “And me. I can’t just let her hate other people when she’s wrong!”

“You’ll never be able to prove it to her,” Dean says. “Trust me, kid, you could have God himself pop in and tell her she’s wrong and she’ll still insist that she’s right and he’s just “pandering” or whatever. They don’t actually give a shit about God. They just use that bullshit so they can act like they got a real reason to hate others rather than having to admit that they’re just assholes.”

“You people sicken me,” the woman spits.

“At least we’re here minding our own business and not going around scaring people into believing our fairy tale,” Dean says. He marches over to the skirt rack and, looking the woman straight in the eye, grabs the red skirt that Jack had also been eyeing. “And you know what? My son can have all the skirts he wants. Hell, I’ll even paint his nails for him. ‘Cause I wasn’t allowed to be pretty as a kid, so Jack’s gonna be the prettiest fuckin’ guy around. You capiche?”

The woman looks like Dean had whipped his dick out and started pissing right in front of her, but Jack looks like Dean had personally hung the stars just for him. Dean drapes the skirt in the cart and nudges Jack.

“C’mon, kid. You still need some good, strong clothes for hu – uh, work.” He wheels their cart back to the men’s section, leaving the woman stewing and Jack bounding along beside him, and he feels in his bones that he’s made the right decision as a parent.

***

For the next few weeks, Dean can’t shake off Jack’s words from their shopping trip. Every time he cooks, he finds himself examining his actions under a microscope, dissecting how much he enjoys cooking for his family and exactly how he feels about it. He does the same thing when tidying the bunker, even going so far as to dust the top of the bookshelves and use some new, tropical-scented shit in their laundry that quickly earns Sam’s seal of approval. And fussing over Sam after the guy had been stabbed by a rabid vampire on their hunt has him spaced out for the rest of the night as he reflects on just how much he mother-hens his brother.

It doesn’t take long for Cas to notice. But then, Cas always notices. However, he doesn’t bring it up until about a month after the Shopping Trip, as the incident has now been dubbed.

“What’s wrong, Dean?” Cas’ voice is thick with the sleep he doesn’t need but enjoys when he can cuddle with Dean all night. “You’ve been quiet for weeks now.”

Dean doesn’t say anything at first, instead running his fingers down Cas’ bare chest and stomach and feeling the muscles spasm under his touch. He can’t help but marvel that, for all his holy angelness, Cas is still so incredibly human in many ways, the biggest way being how he chose to willingly tie himself to a human in the way he’s with Dean.

“Is it about Jack’s skirts?” Cas says into the silence. “You’ve been quiet since then. But I think you were fantastic to buy him those skirts. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him so happy than when he came to show me how they look on him. The red skirt especially suits him.”

“How do I know that I’m a dude if I like chick things?” The question comes out so softly that human ears would have missed it. But Cas doesn’t have human ears.

“Is it really that important that you know?” Cas says. He sighs and shakes his head. “My apologies. That was insensitive of me to say. I just don’t understand humans and their insistence on assigning themselves boxes and roles based on physical characteristics.”

“Look, I know you can like some chick things and still be a dude,” Dean says. “Just like I know chicks who are into cars and other “guy shit” and they’re still girls. But…I dunno. It feels like I’m missing something when I say that.”

“How so?” Cas says.

“Just…somethin’ Jack said about how you know you’re one or the other.”

“It’s not necessarily that simple, Dean. There’s so much more than just one or the other.”

Okay, that makes Dean blink. He’s had some vague knowledge that this exists – how could he not, when assholes everywhere are raising up a stink about “snowflakes” or whatever - but to actually have an angel of the Lord tell him that there’s more than just guy and girl makes his head spin.

“This may not be of any help, since I’m an angel,” Cas says, “but I’m not a man. You see me as such, since my body appears that way, and I’m utterly indifferent to what people call me so my pronouns don’t bother me. I’m not a woman either. I don’t even know if I am anything.”

“That’s literally no help at all,” Dean says. “Thanks, you just confused me more.”

“Eat me,” Cas mutters. Dean snorts at that, because he can always count on Cas to unintentionally lighten the mood. “Talk to me, Dean. Walk me through your thoughts. I don’t know exactly what to say right now.”

“My thoughts are a fuckin’ mess,” Dean says. “Mostly ‘cause this is shit I’ve been shutting down since I was a kid ‘cause you know Dad would kick my ass if I tried. I remember when I was four and my mom painted my nails ‘cause I wanted to be pretty and Dad pitched a huge fit.”

“You were a child,” Cas says. “Children have no concept of gender roles until they’re taught, whether directly or through emulation.”

“I like a lot of “chick” stuff,” Dean says, tightening his hold on Cas like the angel can protect him from his inner crisis. “I like cooking. And I get that a lotta famous chefs are guys but…this is different. It feels more...domestic. I like keeping the bunker tidy ‘cause…it’s home, y’know? I’ve never…had a home before Baby. I just…like things to be nice. I like looking after others. I like listening to Taylor Swift and I’m kinda getting into Ariana Grande.”

The words are spilling out of him like an avalanche as he bares his soul for the first time ever to possibly the only person who would never judge him. As much as he loves Sam, his little brother’s also grown up under the reign of John Winchester, and Sam might be a softer and more emotional guy but he’s still got a lot of shit of his own.

“Sometimes I get sick of bein’ tough and strong and manly,” Dean babbles, burying his face in the crook of Cas’ neck as the deep stuff starts to uncontrollably emerge from years of lock and key. His eyes begin to sting and his lungs are working overtime at this point, but the fingers that start to card through his hair provide a point of sensation that successfully helps keep it under control. “Sometimes I…I wanna be pretty. Like Jack does. I don’t wanna wear a skirt or anything but…I wanna be that four-year-old kid who wanted to wear nail polish like his mom and dress up with her and try to wear her heels but trip and fall flat on his face while she laughs. I wanna be that guy who knows how to braid his younger brother’s hair ‘cause he won’t get a fuckin’ haircut. I wanna wear those flower crowns that Jack makes without feeling like I’m a sissy or somethin’.”

Cas hums, still stroking Dean’s hair. “You can still be a man and enjoy those things.”

“That’s the thing,” Dean says rather bitterly. “That doesn’t feel totally right either. Like…I don’t feel like bein’ a guy fits if I do that stuff. Like if I let myself enjoy that stuff then…not that I don’t deserve to be a guy, but more like…” He fumbles for the right words, wishing he could just let out a long groan and have Cas understand from that, because that’s really the best way he can describe himself. “More like calling myself a guy doesn’t fully describe myself ‘cause…I’m kinda not. But I ain’t a chick either and it feels wrong calling myself that too. If that makes sense?”

“It does,” Cas says and kisses the top of Dean’s head. “I think an appropriate allegory in this case would be nationality. You humans have assigned a label to each other based on where you were born, and you act in different ways according to this label that you were forcibly given. And I’ve noticed how if someone moves to another country, they often face derision for not having been born there like everyone else, especially if they don’t look like the majority or their culture drastically differs from the place to which they move.”

That makes sense. How many times has Dean heard jokes about American stereotypes? Or shitty comments about people based purely on ideas that other people have about where they were born and lived?

“Nationality isn’t anything tangible. It’s more of a feeling and a mutual culture based on shared experiences. And there aren’t just two nationalities or two experiences. There are so many more; some are similar to each other and some are totally different.”

“Nice soapbox,” Dean quips to hide how his head is spinning at this wealth of information. Does that mean that he can just…be neither? That he can let himself be pretty when he wants to while also being the cool tough guy he usually is, and…he can still be Dean? He doesn’t have to be a guy or a girl?

“It’s a very individual experience,” Cas says. “Mine is completely different to yours or Jack’s. That’s why it’s difficult for me to really find the right words for you.”

“Blame Jack,” Dean says. “He’s too pure for his own good. He’s corrupted me.”

“Dean,” Cas chastises. “Don’t talk about our son like that or I won’t sleep with you for a week.”

“You won’t last a week without my dick but sure,” Dean retorts. “So, like…do I have to call myself something since I’m not either? Tell the whole world? Start wearing spandex and dye my hair blue or something?” He looks up just in time to catch the biggest eyeroll Cas has ever given him, so he snickers and nips at Cas’ throat. He refrains from marking Cas up, knowing that if he does then Cas’ animalistic side will come out and he’ll get dicked six ways to Sunday. And while he normally wouldn’t ever turn down some good, hot sex with Cas, he’s also in the middle of an important conversation for which he wants a resolution.

Okay, wow, he’s been talking to Sam too much if he’s choosing a conversation about his feelings over hot angel sex. But it’s worth it, considering that he can feel the chains of another layer of John Winchester’s Perfect Son loosening from around him.

“You don’t “have” to do anything,” Cas says. “You’re still the same Dean Winchester I fell in love with.”

“Hey, whoa, whoa, don’t you dare bring that word up,” Dean protests, but he feels about ten times lighter with Cas’ affirmation that he doesn’t have to do anything different and can just keep doing his own thing while knowing this new thing about himself.

“Oh, shut up, Dean.” Cas immediately contradicts his annoyed tone by kissing Dean’s head again, so Dean decides to lean up and catch Cas’ lips in a proper kiss. Cas hums and cups Dean’s face and their kiss is slow and deep, with small nips and tongues swiping across mouths without dipping inside.

“No but seriously, is there a word for it?” Dean says breathlessly when they separate. “That bitch at Walmart said “transgender” but I don’t feel like that’s me. Others like me might but…not me. I’m still cool with this totally hot body and with people thinking I’m a guy just to make shit easier on everyone, ‘cause I at least know I’m…not.” It feels weird as fuck to say that out loud but also oh so freeing.

“Some might call you egotistical,” Cas mumbles. “It would be totally valid of you to call yourself that if you want, but I understand why you feel it doesn’t apply to you. I’ve heard the term non-binary before, when I was at a homeless shelter as a human and I met someone who referred to themselves as such. After I confronted a bigot and said that I’m utterly indifferent to my own gender, the other person confided in me and non-binary was the term they used. You could try that and research further from there.”

“But…I don’t have to if I don’t want to?” Dean says. Don’t get him wrong, having an actual word that encapsulates him is just…wow. Holy shit. He’s real, he’s allowed to exist, and there are others who are not only like him but also open enough about their identities that other people can find this information and realise shit about themselves too. But he’s literally only just started coming to terms with shit he’s locked deep for the past few decades, so he’s not yet sure if he’s ready to start labelling himself and being so open about it until he’s had more time to work through it.

“Of course not,” Cas says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just because Jack feels comfortable enough to wear skirts doesn’t mean that you ever have to as well. I told you, it’s highly individual.”

“Jack’s non-binary too?” Dean says. “I mean, I ain’t surprised, but…”

“We had a conversation. He told me that you said he should come to me, since you weren’t equipped to talk about it. He also said that he didn’t mind if I told you and Sam, so I won’t ever tell anyone else about you unless you allow me to do so. That would be rude and horrible and downright violent if the wrong person learned that when you didn’t want them to.”

Okay, that’s another weight off Dean’s shoulders. “Like tellin’ others that I’m bi, right? It’s for me to tell.”

“Precisely. And I’m very proud that you felt comfortable enough to tell Sam, Jack, and Mary.”

“I had a crisis back in Purgatory when I was lookin' for you.” Dean kisses Cas’ shoulder and snuggles under his chin. “Then I had years after that to deal with it and work through Dad’s shit. But this is just…new. I think I need a bit more time.”

“You have all the time in the world, Dean.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence, and Dean starts to doze off at the feel of Cas stroking his hair despite having only woken up half an hour ago. But then something occurs to him, and it sets a cold pit of anxiety off in his stomach at the thought of voicing it out loud but…he also kind of wants to say it, if he’s still digging shit up from deep. And Cas won’t judge. This is the same guy who approves of their son wearing skirts.

“Cas?” Dean says. Cas hums in acknowledgement. “I…I just…shit, this is embarrassing.”

“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” Cas says.

“No, I do wanna tell you. I just…bear with me, okay?” Dean pushes himself up into a sitting position so that he can look Cas right in the eye, and what he sees there helps loosen his shoulders ever so slightly. He takes a deep breath and blurts out, “Ilikewearingpanties.”

“Pardon?” Cas’ forehead creases.

“I. Like. Wearing Panties. This one chick, Rhonda Hurley…she made me wear them once. And I liked it. But that’s not even…look, it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a kink, ‘cause loads of dudes – normal dudes – they like wearing women’s underwear too. But only during sex, ‘cause that can be hot.”

“You’re not abnormal for not being a “normal man”,” Cas says. “I know there’s a term to refer to people who aren’t transgender, but I can’t quite recall it.”

“That’s not the point,” Dean says. “I just…nail polish and feeling pretty are one thing, okay? But actually liking pretty, lacy underwear outside of sex, where nearly anything goes…Jesus, Cas, if anything was gonna make me suspect I’m not fully a guy, that’s it. I even…” His voice drops to a whisper as he confesses something to Cas for which John would have probably broken his ribs. ��I even like the thought of wearing a bra. Not ‘cause I need it, but ‘cause I wanna see if it’d make me look nice. And not “goddamn Dean you look so sexy and I wanna fuck you in those girly clothes” nice like other guys would think but…y’know, “Dean you look so soft and happy” nice.” His shoulders slump, and he looks down at his fidgeting fingers. “I just wanna be not-tough for once. I just wanna be pretty without feeling ashamed or like I’m a girl when I’m not. Or that I have to be more like a guy when I'm not exactly that either.”

“I’m not sure I see how women’s lingerie is much more of a deal breaker than other feminine things,” Cas says. “And although I understand why you do so, I wish you wouldn’t attach such shame to it.”

“Yeah, why do you think I felt okay telling you?” Dean mutters. Cas’ eyes crinkle and, with a small smile, he sits up so that he can lean in and kiss Dean softly.

“I’m honoured that you trust me enough to confide in me, even if I don’t understand your social taboos.”

“Again, why d’you think I told you? Sam wouldn’t make fun of me but…he’s also human. He also grew up in this shithole society. He wouldn’t get it like you do.”

Cas’ eyes soften even more, and he gives Dean another kiss. “Maybe you could wear some of this clothing in a non-sexual situation with just the two of us,” he says. “No one else. Or if you would feel more comfortable without me, you could do it yourself.”

“Trust me, dude, I’d be a tonne comfier with you there so I don’t end up spiralling and shit,” Dean says with a dark little laugh. “Just ‘cause I realised all this shit now doesn’t mean I’m cool with it or anything.”

“Like I said, you have plenty of time. Use however much of it you need to become more comfortable with yourself. And you’ll always have my support, Dean. And Sam, Jack, and Mary’s, when you feel that you can tell them.”

A wide smile of relief splits Dean’s face and he pushes Cas to lie back down, then drapes himself on top of the angel. “You’re the best, man. You’re a literal angel.”

“I know. I have the halo to prove it,” Cas deadpans. The fact that Cas has finally grasped things like sarcasm after years of fraternising with humans is possibly the funniest thing Dean’s encountered all day, and it takes a humongous effort to just snicker rather than descend into a fit of laughter.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says, pushing Cas’ chin back to start kissing down his throat. “You’re the biggest asshole around.”

“You –” Cas cuts himself off with a hiss when Dean nips at the skin over his pulse point, sucking to ensure that he leaves a dark bruise behind. “Dean, you know this – that this erodes my self-control –”

Dean gives him a shit-eating grin. “Good.” He bites again, only to blink as the world around him shifts and blurs when Cas grabs him by the hips and bodily throws him back on the bed, then straddles his hips, blue eyes blown black.

“If one thing about you never changes, it’s how infuriating you are,” Cas growls.

“Yeah, but you like me anyway,” Dean says, grin widening. Cas rolls his eyes.

“Sometimes, I wonder why.”

“Hey.” Dean runs his fingers down Cas’s stomach and dips a finger below the waistband of his white boxers. “Less talking, more kissing.”

***

“Dean, you look like you’re gonna puke,” Sam says when Dean corners him after breakfast the next day. “What’s wrong?”

Dean swallows, takes a deep breath, then decides to just go for it. He doesn’t want to have to spend ages hiding something like this from his brother when he can have another person supporting him, especially after everything he and Sam have been through. “I’m not a guy, okay?”

“Uh…what?” Sam frowns. “You’re…uh, wow, that is big. Are you –”

“I’m not a girl either,” Dean rushes to say. “I’m…neither. And kinda both. But mostly just neither. Cas calls it non-binary but I dunno what to call myself yet. If I even wanna call myself anything at all.”

“Huh,” Sam says. “You know, I always knew you were bi, but I never even suspected you weren’t cis.”

“Cis?”

“Not trans.”

“Oh, is that what it’s called? Cas couldn’t remember.” Dean blinks and points at Sam. “Wait, you know about this shit?”

“Of course I do,” Sam says. “The internet exists. And I thought I might not be a cis guy at one point, so I went researching, but I’m pretty sure I am. I did learn a lot, though. I know I don’t really care about gender when I’m into someone, but I have to be close to them to like them like that. That's why I'm so close to everyone I sleep with or get together with. I just never told you because you had your own stuff to deal with.”

“Fuckin’ nerd,” Dean mutters. Sam doesn’t even bitchface him this time, so Dean’s expecting some speech about how happy he is that Dean trusts him enough to confide him and whatever.

“Does that mean you’ll finally braid my hair for me?” Sam says with a smile so innocent that it’s dripping with guilt. Dean rolls his eyes and flips his brother off, then promptly regrets it when the moose turns all touchy-feely and pulls him into a hug.

“Fuck off, bitch,” Dean says into Sam’s plaid shirt.

“In your dreams, jerk.”

#supernatural #destiel #jack is cas and dean's son #dean winchester #castiel #sam winchester #jack kline #bisexual dean winchester #non-binary dean winchester #non-binary jack kline #demisexual sam winchester #john winchester's a+ parenting #season 14 spoilers #supportive castiel #supportive sam

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audreycritter · 7 years

Text

Rehearsal

This fic was written for @byebyeskylark . It’s Alfred and Bruce Gen/Family history and relationship. It’s on AO3 here. Rehearsal

act: present

scene: wayne manor

players: alfred pennyworth, age irrelevant

It might appear to be a sort of magic, the way Alfred Pennyworth positions himself at the east wing ballroom door that leads back into the manor, just as Bruce Wayne flashes a kind, white smile. It is not magic– it is attentiveness. Alfred knew from the way Bruce clasped the gentleman’s hand, said something low and quiet that made the two women giggle and glance at each other, that the evening at the cocktail party was drawing to a close for Bruce.

And as Bruce makes his way across the room, calling out casual farewells and promises of golf games when the weather turns and handing out rueful, half-amused excuses for himself, Alfred feels within himself a minor melody of both pride and sorrow.

He did this to him.

He made him this way.

Perhaps circumstances dictated his actions or perhaps Bruce would have found other methods, but for what it is worth, Alfred played his part readily enough at the beginning.

At the beginning, all he wanted was to help.

He opens the door for Bruce as he approaches, nods once, and follows him into the dim and private hallway. The door locks behind them; it will not allow any to follow without a key or alerting the security system.

And he watches from just a few steps behind and to the left. He does not need to see Bruce’s face to know the change there, the subtle hardening. He has seen it many times. The posture and the gait change, into something more intentional and rigid. And it will change again in mere minutes, when he puts the suit on downstairs.

They are almost to the grandfather clock, still walking without speaking, when a young Dick Grayson slides down the bannister with a loud whoop.

“I thought you’d never get outta there! I’ve been waiting for hours!”

“It was forty-five minutes,” Bruce counters with slight amusement, his voice already changed. It is not Batman’s voice, but it is not Bruce Wayne’s social voice, either. It sounds more measured, more determined, though it is the most natural of the three– it is the Batman and the Socialite Bruce that are actually practiced, calculated forms.

Alfred is aware of this because Alfred taught him how to do it, and he rues and treasures those years by turns. They are full of such bitterness and loss and have led to so much more, but they were also moments of hope for a continued life.

Bruce and Dick go ahead of him into the cave and Alfred is left standing in the parlor, remembering all those years ago with a broken little boy and grief and desperation and the relief of finally, finally having something tangible to do.

act one, scene one: the beginning

setting: wayne manor, one month after wayne murders

players: -bruce wayne, age 9

-alfred pennyworth, age 31

“I can’t do it,” Bruce said, shaking his head and gulping air, frozen in the parlor. “I won’t go.”

“But you must,” Alfred insisted gently. “The memorial service is important for you to attend.”

He wished it wasn’t. He wished so much public and company opinion wasn’t resting on the shoulders of his young charge.

“I’m not going,” Bruce said again, fists clenched into pale-knuckled balls at his sides. “They’ll all be watching me.”

“That they will, Master Bruce. Ought we to give them a show?”

Bruce looked up at Alfred at this, his expression stern and curious and hurt all at once– it was too old for his small face, for the features still edged in childhood.

“What do you mean?”

“If you don’t want them to look at you,” Alfred said, leaning over to match eye-level with the boy, “then you give them something else to look at. What do you think they want to see?”

“They want to see me cry,” Bruce said scornfully. “They want to see…” he paused, and blinked back tears. “It’s mine, not theirs. But they want to see it. And if I don’t, I know what they’ll say about me. About my parents.”

One of the many, many mistakes Alfred had made in the past few weeks was not cancelling Thomas Wayne’s newspaper subscriptions. Bruce had already begun sitting with the stack of them at the breakfast table, holding them open in his too-short arm span and reading them over in conscious imitation of his father.

The newspapers were not kind.

“Grieving but sullen Wayne boy,” “traumatized and stony-faced,” “distant manner often found in the wealthy when surrounded by family staff instead of family,” they’d written, never imagining or not caring that the same nine-year-old might actually read the words about himself.

“Then you will cry,” Alfred said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We will act the part and give them what they want. Consider the public your stage.”

“How?” Bruce asked, sniffling once. “I don’t want to cry in front of everyone. I don’t even want to think about…about…it,” he settled on, instead of ‘my parents’ or ‘the shooting.’ The unspoken words were heavy absences, siphoning air from the room.

“Then you will pretend to be someone who wants to cry,” Alfred said firmly and kindly. “We will rehearse, right this moment.”

“Alright,” Bruce said, considering the idea. “Who will you be?”

“A reporter, of course,” Alfred said, disregarding both the prick of hesitation and the pang of distaste at what he’d need to do to properly prepare the boy.

Alfred changed his posture, he dropped one shoulder a bit, he pretended there was a memo pad in his hands with a pen poised to write. When he spoke, it was with an American accent tinged with Gotham harshness and all the vocal and stage training of another life before the Waynes.

“Mr. Bruce, can I call you Mr. Bruce? Your parents were loved by Gotham; do you think the city has done them justice today with this memorial?”

Alfred pretended to be looking at a notebook that wasn’t there, but he glanced up at Bruce– the boy’s eyes widened in shock and his lips curled in delighted surprise for just a second, until the words themselves hit him and he flinched.

“Don’t flinch,” Alfred advised quietly in his normal voice, “and don’t be stiff. Brace yourself by keeping your muscles relaxed on purpose; give it your time and effort until you can do it without thought. A moment’s pause shows fear if you maintain eye contact, but thoughtfulness if you look up a bit to the left.”

Bruce nodded.

“Again,” he said. “Start again.”

Alfred did.

They worked until Bruce could give the answers to half a dozen prying questions, could cry but not sob at the right break in his replies, and could force a shaky smile and give a handshake.

Bruce was a natural. It took all of fifteen minutes.

act one, scene twelve: the close of the first year

setting: christmas, guest house, kane estate, california

players: -bruce wayne, age 9

-alfred pennyworth, age 31

“I don’t want to be nice to him,” Bruce snapped. “I heard them talking. They’re going to try to keep me here after the holiday.”

“Acting petulant won’t do you any good,” Alfred said sternly, hiding his own inner conflict with a steady voice and hands that did not falter in their ironing.

“He can’t just keep me here like that. This isn’t home.”

Alfred wanted the Kanes to take Bruce in.

He did not want the responsibility of raising a grieving boy.

Alfred did not want the Kanes to take Bruce.

He did not trust Jacob Kane.

“You must show them, then, that you are mature, and well-reasoned,” Alfred said.

“Practice with me,” Bruce begged, tugging on Alfred’s arm while Alfred straightened the collar of the boy’s shirt for dinner later and set the crease with the iron.

Alfred turned the iron off and turned to Bruce with a straight spine, a firm set of his jaw.

“We thought you could stay with us, Bruce,” he said, with a tinge of the coastal nasal in his voice, full of military precision and command. “Kate would love to have you around.”

Bruce took a deep breath.

“I’m terribly sorry, Uncle Jacob, but I’d really rather stay with Alf–”

Alfred raised an eyebrow, just slightly. Bruce stopped and started over.

“I’m terribly sorry, Uncle Jacob, but it was important to my father that I attend Gotham Academy. And Mr. Fox is already helping me learn the ropes at the company for when I’m old enough.”

Alfred gave a single nod.

“Go practice that, without rushing your words. Emphasize ‘uncle’ and ‘father,’ but not too much.”

He returned to the ironing.

Bruce went home with him the next day.

act four, scene nine: summer fete

setting: wayne foundation picnic, publicity event

players: -bruce wayne, age 13

-alfred pennyworth, age 35

“It’ll be hot,” Bruce complained, buttoning his polo. “And if I so much as frown, they’ll say in the papers that I was glum, or sullen, or bored.”

“You are glum and sullen and bored,” Alfred noted mildly, shaking a bottle of sunscreen and squeezing some into Bruce’s outstretched hand. The boy rubbed it over his face and sighed.

“Lucius says it’s bad PR.”

“Then you smile,” Alfred said. “You do remember how to smile, Master Bruce?”

That got a smile out of the young teen.

“I’m rather relieved. What with the raging hormones, I’d rather thought you’d forgotten.”

“Alfred,” Bruce whined, a faint flush in his cheeks even under the white sunscreen.

“We are not embarrassed by science and fact, Master Bruce. Being rattled by the laws of nature shows lack of thought.”

“Just wait until my voice changes,” Bruce grumbled, rubbing sunscreen on his ears. “I’ll wait in the halls when you’re asleep and make you think someone’s broken in.”

“Ah, now that shows foresight and clever planning,” Alfred said, capping the sunscreen. “Just be certain I am not armed. I am rather handy with an epee. Now, your smile. Let me see it.”

Bruce plastered on a smile so exaggerated and forced that Alfred knew the boy was mocking him.

“Keep it up,” Alfred said sternly when the boy’s face began to relax. “You’ve committed to this one now. Maintain it.”

“Al,” Bruce said in a pained tone, through his teeth, after a moment. It was looking more like a grimace with each passing second. “Can I start over?”

“If you think you ought,” Alfred conceded, his own mirth tucked away behind an impassive face.

“Hi,” the boy said, flashing a smile that was both more realistic and entirely unlike him, “I’m Bruce Wayne.”

“Better,” Alfred said. “Now, go drink some warm water to keep those underused facial muscles from seizing up and there’s your summer project.”

“It’s just a picnic,” Bruce protested. “I hate warm water.”

“Learn to like it,” Alfred countered mercilessly. “And there will be many picnic and parties in your future. A good craftsman takes care of his tools.”

“You’re the tool around here,” Bruce muttered under his breath, turning for the kitchen.

“Listen to that,” Alfred said calmly after him. “It’s the sound of a boy doing the dishes for the next two days. That will be a wonderful time to practice smiling.”

Bruce did the dishes after the picnic.

Bruce smiled warmly at the sink the whole time.

Alfred went out and bought an electric kettle.

act seven, scene four: anti-killer contracts

setting: wayne enterprises, research facility, demo lab

players: -bruce wayne, age 16

-alfred pennyworth, age 38

“We can go, Master Bruce,” Alfred assured the teen, who sat in the car with shaking hands. His own heart stuttered and he watched Bruce’s hands for just a fraction of a second. “I’m taking you home.”

“No,” Bruce said, sucking in air and pressing his palms on his knees. “No. Lucius said the investors need to see me more involved.”

“The investors are idiots,” Alfred snapped, meeting Bruce’s startled gaze in the rearview mirror. He gathered his own calm and projected it into his next words. “The technology might be valuable but the demonstration is insensitive. I do not think they will fault you for your absence.”

“I don’t want people to think I can be scared away,” Bruce said, looking out the tinted windows toward the building. Inside, there was a small crowd waiting with the scientists who had developed new bullet-resistant armor WE was about to pour several million dollars into acquiring– the demo, of course, involved several models of guns.

“We cannot rehearse this,” Alfred said gently. He cursed himself for ever teaching the boy such things as if they were viable coping mechanisms. This was self-punishment, it was absurd. He was going to have a private word with Lucius Fox later.

“We don’t need to,” Bruce said, putting a hand on the car door. “I’m ready.”

Alfred went into the building with his teenage charge and watched from behind as the boy’s spine straightened, as the hands stopped trembling.

He watched as Bruce greeted the crowd with false but sincere-sounding ease and warmth, admired the armor on display, and dismissed their awkward worry.

“It’s several years in the past,” Bruce said, flashing a smile. “This is now. Wayne Enterprises is very interested in keeping men and women safe even in dangerous lines of work. Let’s see what you can do.”

Every eye in the glassed-in room was on the armor at the end of the range as each gun was fired.

Except Alfred, who watched Bruce.

The youth didn’t flinch.

The youth smiled when speaking, frowned when considering, looked a bit up and to the left when he paused.

Out in the car, he was silent and his face settled into hard lines.

At home that night, he had nightmares full of screaming, jerking Alfred out of his own light sleep down the hall.

“What have I done?” Alfred asked himself, hurrying toward the room full of muffled cries. He flung open the door and Bruce sat up in the dark, gasping in the aftermath while the confusion faded from his brow.

“I had…” he said.

“I know,” Alfred replied, flicking on the lamp. “Are you alright?”

“No,” Bruce said hoarsely, slipping out of bed. “What time is it?”

“Late,” Alfred said. “Come downstairs. I’ll make you some tea.”

Minutes later, Bruce slumped forward over the cup of tea as the steam pooled around his face.

“I don’t know how I’d do it without you,” he said, sounding for all the world like he was thirty years older. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

Alfred was a tempest: he could do better, he should do better, he had bloody messed this poor lad up. There must have been better ways to cope with the grief, with the haunted darkness that hung over Bruce like a cloak.

“You would manage, I dare say,” Alfred said, sipping his own tea.

“No,” Bruce said, pushing a hand through his stubborn, sleep-mussed hair. “I need you, Alfred. Nobody else understands.”

They were not the kind-of-a-father and not-quite-a-son that said things like “I love you.”

But that was pretty damn close.

“I’m glad to be of service, Master Bruce,” Alfred said with unrestrained feeling.

“I’m going to go run,” Bruce said, pushing the tea back on the table. “You don’t have to wait up.”

Alfred waited anyway, busying himself with cleaning punctuated by yawns and worry, while the thrum of a running treadmill carried through the open office door and down the hall.

When Alfred was in the laundry room later, Bruce found him– the youth’s hair was still plastered to his forehead with shower water and he was in clean pajamas. He held another cup of tea out and Alfred finished folding the last towel and accepted it.

They fell asleep, each sitting up with feet propped on the coffee table, on the couch in the den while watching episodes of an old British novel adaptation.

When Alfred woke, the late morning sun was streaming through the windows and Bruce was slumped against his arm.

He reminded himself that teaching him acting wasn’t the only thing he’d done for the boy.

Their relationship and his influence could not be so easily distilled.

He told himself, anyway, as he rose, carefully easing Bruce down onto the couch and throwing a blanket over him.

Forward was the only direction that wasn’t simply “exit, stage right,” and he couldn’t live with that.

act ten, scene fifteen: the fourth wall

setting: wayne townhouse near princeton

players: -bruce wayne, age 19

-alfred pennyworth, age 41

It had been several hours since Alfred had expected to hear from Bruce. He was a young man, responsible for himself, and it wasn’t unusual for him to spend a night away from the townhouse.

However, it was unusual to not hear from him in some way or another that he had plans.

Still, he was an adult and Alfred was not even in the position to give him freedom– it was just something Bruce had and operated in. It was good and healthy and expected.

But Alfred couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong, as he sat and read.

When the door opened, it was nearly three in the morning and Bruce was already on the stairs when Alfred made it to the foyer.

“Good evening, Master Bruce,” he said, relieved and tired and ready to go to bed after genuinely losing track of the time. There was no rebuke in his tone because it was hardly the place for it.

But Bruce stiffened on the stairs and Alfred noticed.

“Night, Alfred,” he mumbled, like his mouth was full of marbles.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said, a bit too sharply, perhaps.

Bruce straightened and turned, slowly. There was an angry bruise next to the young man’s swollen lip; the dark slope of a bruise beneath his eye. It was then that Alfred noticed the blood on his cuffs.

Alfred was concerned but not angry.

Then Bruce smiled, the perfect flash of teeth and curve cutting across his battered face and he gave a slight shrug.

“It’s nothing, Al,” he said dismissively.

But it was too late. The smile was like a knife twisted in Alfred’s back, a cold blade between his shoulders and pricking dangerously close to his spine. His knees felt weak at the same time his chest was hot and fully of fury.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred snapped.

But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

After all, hadn’t he taught him? Hadn’t he shielded the boy from his own true feelings, over and over, in the name of protection?

He felt suddenly exhausted to his bones and there was still work to do. He dropped his gaze to the floor, away from Bruce, and trudged up the stairs past him. It was like walking through a nightmare, so stiff and sluggish was the silence.

There was a first aid kit in the upstairs bathroom and he retrieved it. Bruce was still frozen on the staircase, but climbed to meet him when he saw the white box in Alfred’s hands.

They sat in that weighted quiet while Alfred looked over the bruises and scrapes on Bruce’s face and hands. Neither of them made eye contact.

“There was a girl,” Bruce said haltingly, when Alfred clicked the clasps on the first aid kit shut.

Alfred kept his silence.

“There was a man harassing her, at the restaurant. The manager called the police. They wouldn’t do anything.”

Alfred put the box away.

“It made me sick. She looked terrified. I jumped him, in the parking lot. I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I just didn’t want him to get away with it.”

It was stupid, but Bruce evidently had come to that conclusion on his own, or so Alfred hoped.

“I cannot continue in your service,” Alfred said, stamping on his own heart. He had made too many mistakes, messed up too thoroughly, and he had decided in the time he bandaged Bruce’s hand that while he could live with that failure he could not live a lie.

“What?” Bruce demanded, sounding more scared and childlike than Alfred had heard for many years. “Al, he was–”

“I can work for a man who desires to right wrongs,” Alfred said, looking into Bruce’s eyes for the first time since he stood at the bottom of the stairs. “But I cannot and will not work for a man who puts on an act for me. That has always been for the outside world. If I am now to be part of the world that demands a performance, it would be wiser and kinder to both of us to make the severance complete.”

Bruce held his gaze for a long time, even with one blue eye partially swollen shut.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You deserve better. Please, stay.”

“Do I have your word?” Alfred asked, watching.

Bruce slouched with his head in his hands. His eyes were closed. There was no look up to the left, no careful pause.

“Yes,” Bruce said, quickly. “Of course. It won’t happen again. I couldn’t get it past you, anyway.”

“No,” Alfred agreed, smiling slightly, “no, you could not. And not that it is quite my place, but I’d rather prefer it if you were more adequately trained before you go attacking bastards in parking lots again.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, looking up with a genuine and rueful half-grin, something apologetic and boyish in it, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I’ve kind of been thinking.”

“Shall we move to somewhere besides the lavatory for philosophical discussion?” Alfred suggested and Bruce stood.

“It might be more than philosophical,” Bruce warned. “And you might not like it.”

“You leave the evaluation of my taste to me,” Alfred said, “and I will forgive your fumbling attempts at philosophy and practical application.”

“Most people think I’m pretty smart,” Bruce said defensively, walking ahead of Alfred down the stairs.

“Perhaps we can attribute that to your having a good acting teacher,” Alfred replied.

“You could stand to eat some humble pie sometime,” Bruce grumbled as they entered the living room. He sat on the couch and leaned back and closed his eyes, as if he was leaning more toward sleep than discussion.

“If only you could bake,” Alfred said mildly.

Bruce’s eyes flew open and the young man snorted in laughter.

Alfred took the armchair.

“So, what have you been thinking about?” Alfred asked, his heart still torn but feeling less ragged. He was at fault, here, but he could live with patching things up as he went.

Bruce talked for a long time.

Alfred listened, a twisting melody of pride and dread inside his chest.

It was too late to turn back.

And he rather didn’t want to.

act: present

scene: wayne manor

players: alfred pennyworth, age irrelevant

Alfred goes to the Cave after seeing off the last of the guests, with polite and smiling excuses for Bruce’s absence depending on the recipient– sometimes it is business, sometimes it is a woman, sometimes it is Dick Grayson’s homework.

He waits, cleaning the motorcycle, for their return.

When they come back, Alfred takes the discarded Robin uniform when Dick tosses it to him from the shower room while chattering excitedly. The boy heads upstairs declaring his intentions to hunt down party leftovers and Bruce calls after him, “Good work tonight, chum.”

Dick Grayson leaves the cave and Bruce’s shoulders sag, just a little, and he sits in the chair in front of the massive, humming computer.

“Hard night, sir?” Alfred asks, shaking out Dick’s cape.

“Yes,” Bruce says briefly. “I don’t know how you always know, before I even say anything.”

“Perhaps I’m a telepath, sir,” Alfred says with a raise of his eyebrow.

Bruce exhales in a way that is almost like curtailed laughter.

“I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind before. And Dick won’t be going out tomorrow night. I need to take care of something.”

This means whatever it is will be more dangerous than usual and Bruce, like Alfred did before him, has his own limits and reservations.

Alfred cannot fault him for helping Dick in much the same way Alfred helped Bruce: the only way he knows how, with his sharpest and most honed skills.

There are many things Alfred is certain of, many things he cannot pretend or act away, and one is that he will always be convinced he did the best he could while doubting if it was enough.

He is so incredibly proud of Bruce Wayne, of the commitment to redeem his city and defend the weak. And he wonders, too often, if he did more harm than help and Bruce grew into the man he was despite it.

When he realizes he is still standing there with the bright cape draped over his arm, he starts, and finds Bruce turned in the chair and regarding him thoughtfully.

“I think I could be doing better with Dick,” Bruce admits after a moment, a frown creasing his brow. He turns from Alfred to the computer and when his fingers are poised above the keyboard, he adds, “I don’t know if I can do half as well as you did. It’s a lot to live up to. And you made it look easy.”

Alfred’s heart is in his throat and there is this boy in front of him, his back to him, his spine straight and his shoulders curved in that way he sits when he is himself. Except he isn’t a boy, he’s a man, a man with his own son and his own doubts that he hides from all the world.

Except Alfred. Because he gave his word.

Alfred puts a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, a rare thing between them when it is not grief or injury forcing it and Bruce stops typing but does not look up.

“It is never easy,” Alfred says, “and we often wonder if we could do better. I do, even now. We don’t get to rehearse. But we do our best.”

“What’s that Asimov quotation? ‘To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.’ You’re a hell of an improvisational actor, Alfred,” Bruce says, sitting back in the chair.

“The trick,” Alfred says, turning away and folding the cape into a neat square, “is that at some point, it ceases to be acting.”

“Al,” Bruce says, when Alfred is halfway across the room and placing the cape in a drawer, “I don’t say this often enough, but I’m glad you’ve stuck around.”

“So am I,” Alfred says, with a quiet and private and real smile down at the cape and then shared with Bruce across the space between them. “It is an honor, Master Bruce. And I hope you know that I see it that way.”

Bruce’s smile is tired, weariness itself, but it is real.

#ficblogging #ao3 link #batfam #batman #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #baby!bruce #fic requests

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

Text

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT SUBURBS

Indeed, I suspect Google has done better than they would have if the founders are still the most powerful people in the company, and judging by Google's performance, their youth and inexperience doesn't seem to have done as well as a duck, it's hard to change something so simple as a name, imagine how hard it is to be the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. Fortunately, I can fix the biggest danger right here. Except he didn't. All users care about is whether your site or software gives them what they want is the development team and the software they've built so far.1 And so it became synonymous with California nuttiness. And that takes some effort, because the younger you are, the more risk you can take your time developing an idea before turning it into a company. In later stage startups the questions are about deals, or hiring, or organization. Any conflicts between them have been ironed out under the very hot iron of running a startup. The second will be easier. It's very common for a group of founders to go through a lot of time on the startups they invest in, not how cheaply they can buy stock in them. Fifty years ago, by spending a lot of time on launch strategies for products, there are no nasty surprises later.

So what makes a place good to them?2 You either have a self-fulfilling prophecy.3 Why? The university is just the seed.4 I know when we started Y Combinator that the most important quality in an investor is simply investing. Stocks will generate greater returns over thirty years, but they didn't actually drop out of grad school and start a company. Because the early problems are so much influenced by other investors' opinions means you always start out in something of a hole. It's the nature of the system you're dealing with, things probably either already are or could easily become much worse than they seem. What does it take to make a silicon valley, if they tried, start successful startups. People who've spent most of their lives in schools or big companies may not have been exposed to that.

Now Palo Alto is suburbia, but then it was a good idea. They just think they need a little more effort expended on sales would carry you over the threshold of saying yes, it will be way too late to change. Reading the Wall Street Journal for a week should give anyone ideas for two or three. But the first is mistaken, the second seems as strong as ever. With respect to the continuance of friendships. People at a startup expect to get rich.5 You also need to prevent the sort of person who gets demoralized easily.

They had to, or we wouldn't have paid for them. So what makes a place good to them? If you're talking to, but you don't need either of those.6 It's easy to start with good people, they tend to be famous on that account should set off alarm bells. The Google guys were lucky because they knew someone who knew Bechtolsheim. Technology tends to get dramatically cheaper, but living expenses don't. So if you managed to recruit, en masse, a significant number of the best young researchers, you could degrade fairly gracefully into consulting by building sites for free, and it causes the audience to sit in a dark room looking at slides, instead of just looking at them on the screen; use simple, germanic words; learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it. It seems quite likely that most successful drug lords are mean.7 But there were moments when he was optimistic. And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way.

The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft.8 But there were moments when he was optimistic. Which means to the extent that income varies simply according to how much wealth people create, the distribution may be unequal, but it's less true now. Late stage investors supply huge amounts of money and help. It's that startups will underestimate the difficulty of raising money. When watches had mechanical movements, expensive watches kept better time. I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous than they seemed. The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, but if your company was making software for building web sites, you could reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it? There are plenty of undergrads with enough technical skill to write good software, and undergrads are not especially excited about being on the Web even now, ten years later.

You can start one when you're done, or even pull the ripcord part way through, like the founders of Twitter have been slow to monetize it may in the long run prove to be an intellectual contrarian to be a 2 week interruption turns into a 4 month interruption. The most extreme case is developing programming languages, which doesn't pay at all, because people like it so much they do it for free. Startup founders tend to get so rich from them. But others are more capable than all but a handful of 30 year olds. To attract the young, but don't expect them to listen to. Thanks to Jessica Livingston and Chris Steiner for reading drafts of this. Forty-two years later. But people don't. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to most people, or someone would already be doing it and it wouldn't be novel.

Big, big, mistake. Four things, I think, all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook. You turn the fan off, and the growth, if any, is in the suburbs.9 Except he didn't. A lot of nerd tastes they share with the creative class—you probably have to ban large development projects. Not those guys are working on a great idea. What seems like it's going to be a starving artist at the time that was an odd thing to do. Shockley. If, as the evidence so far implies, you have to pay as much for that. They just think they need a little more information to make up their minds, lest they lose the deal.

Notes

Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very vulnerable to legal attack. Credit card debt is a down round, no one who's had the discipline to pull it off. So as a single project is a bit misleading to treat macros as a day feels like a probabilistic spam filter, dick has a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, and we did not start to go the bathroom, and they won't make you feel that you're not trying to describe what they claim was the last round of funding.

From the beginning even they don't, working twice as fast is better than having twice as much what other people the first 40 employees, with smiles and laughter. And while it is because other companies made all the time I know this is not so good. You can have escaped alive, or pigs, to mean the company, you can use to develop server-based software will make grad students' mouths water, but for different things from different types of startup people in 100 years will be familiar to anyone who had died decades ago. I've said into something that doesn't lose our data.

One father told me about a related phenomenon: he found it novel that if you tell them to keep their stock. But that was the recipe: someone guessed that there may be whether what you do it to get at it, by encouraging them to be writing with conviction.

See particularly the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression.

When you fund a startup. In many fields a year of focused work plus caring a lot of time, default to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in virtue of Aristotle's works compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes three centuries later. Look at what Steve Jobs doesn't use.

His theory was that there were 5 more I didn't care about, and no one would have been the plague of 1347; the idea that was basically useless, but the problems all fall into a significant effect on the one the Valley has over New York. Cit.

The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator. Some find they have to do better. That's the best intentions. There are fields now in which I warn about later: beware of getting too high a valuation.

If you ask that you're talking to you as employees by buying an additional page to deal with the New Deal was a test of investor behavior. Which in turn the most successful startups looked when they say that any idea relating to the point I'm making, though sloppier language than I'd use to calibrate the weighting of the Facebook/Twitter route and building something for which you are.

While the audience at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they may then, depending on their ability but women based on their companies.

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thenicedolphin · 7 years

Text

Oscars Analysis With Biting Commentary: 2017 Edition!

Better the day of than never, amirite??? The 5th annual Oscars post from The Nice Dolphin (see links here for 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013), where Matt always provides excellent, impressive, insightful, groundbreaking commentary, and Alex comes in flaccid, flubbing around, rambling about James Harden, Andy Dalton, and some scary movie that no one watched. It’s a tradition for the ages! Matt will be in regular font, and Alex will come in with the bold font.

Okay, first of all, say what you want, but if there’s one thing my takes AREN’T it’s flaccid. Anyhow, fun production note: Matt emailed me his musings at like 3am last night in hopes that I wouldn’t have time to take his shoddy, poorly-reasoned, informed-by-Buzzfeed opinions to task. Bad news, Matt -- ya boy is WIDE awake and ready to talk Oscars!

Best picture:

“Arrival”

“Fences”

“Hacksaw Ridge”

“Hell or High Water”

“Hidden Figures”

“La La Land”

“Lion”

“Manchester by the Sea”

“Moonlight”

I’ve seen all nine films this year. I think I once was sorta embarrassed by that, but at this point, I don’t care… I WANT THE WHOLE WORLD TO KNOW. We got some classics in this field, and I would say I generally appreciated all of these films, but we gotta hand some critiques out too. Buckle up.

I’ve seen five out of the nine nominees: Arrival, Hell or High Water, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, and Moonlight. I’m watching Hidden Figures as I’m writing this, so that should tell you all you need to know about my level of interest in Fences, Lion, and Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

First, I want to talk about the 3 films that were originally the top contenders before La La Land took the frontrunner perch solo on a storm of bright colors and happy dancing. Leading into the season, we had La La Land, Moonlight, and Manchester by the Sea.

I watched Moonlight first (out of all of these films actually, cool story bro). Moonlight was hyped in the critic circles and fairly unknown to the public… this made for an interesting watch at a fairly general Regal theater. Let’s just say the crowd was NOT expecting it to be an indie film about a gay black man in Miami struggling with his identity and they were NOT digging it. Sorta a weird atmosphere to sit in, but that didn’t stop the movie from shining through with its brilliance. Moonlight is a great, great film. It’s a beautiful study of a tragically hurt and isolated lead character. It is full of unique, fully-breathed characters.

Moonlight is a film of three acts following the life of our main character Chiron, and in each act, we have Chiron played by different actors portraying different ages of his life. That shouldn’t work as seamlessly as it does, but Barry Jenkins somehow pulled that magic trick off. The actors look enough alike, and they have enough similarities in their wounded souls, to show that they are Chiron. It’s remarkable. As much as I love Boyhood, it sorta makes that film’s structure feel more like a gimmick. Who needs to film scenes over 12 years when you have a vision as strong as this?

More importantly, Moonlight’s story is so powerful, and so well-told. This isn’t just some story about a gay black male who is bullied and conflicted about his sexuality. This is that story, done in such a poetic and powerfully told way. The patience it has telling its story. The way each of the 3 acts ends. Moonlight is a film that haunts me when contemplating its best scenes. I don’t think it’s for everyone. It certainly wasn’t for everyone in that theater when I watched it. But I would vote it for Best Picture.

Moonlight is a FANTASTIC film and if there was any justice in the world (there’s not), it would win Best Picture. Director Barry Jenkins is a master behind the camera, showing the audience everything we needed to see and nothing we didn’t. Moonlight is at once heartbreaking, uplifting, uncompromising, and relatable. Nothing is phoned-in or painted in broad strokes. Jenkins withholds judgment as he lets his characters’ lives unfold against one of the harder backdrops in recent memory. Plus, I’ve always wondered what 50 Cent looked like as a child.

Also, I gotta hand it to the bully in the second act for mocking Chiron’s jeans for being “too tight,” even though they were your typical straight-leg variety. Taking something completely innocuous and turning it into a source of mockery is a classic bully move. Outstanding work here.

NOTE: as I’m writing this, our hip-hop correspondent Kavi D. texted me the following: “Moonlight > La La Land. But like Adele beating Beyonce, we know what’s going to happen tonight. Such a joke.”

But Moonlight probably won’t win. La La Land will. And I’m ok with that too! I really loved La La Land! I love the vision of Damien Chazelle (Whiplash was aces). I love musicals. It was really fun. The love story was pretty good! La La Land has flaws to be sure. The white-man-saves-jazz issue is hard to deny, even if you try to justify it with the fact that well, John Legend’s character is cooler than Gosling’s, and their band’s song is pretty good! Gosling and Stone aren’t Gene Kelly or Rita Moreno in terms of their singing and dancing abilities. In the end, I was still enamored with the film’s joy along with the story’s emotion. And that ending was great. How is Chazelle so good at ending his films?

La La Land’s other backlash is that it’s another movie about Hollywood, appealing to the Oscar voters. Some also think it’s winning on a gimmick, as the first original musical in a while, sorta like how The Artist was the first silent film of note in a while. Well let me tell you something… The Artist? Sucked. La La was way better.

The amount of love La La is getting does annoy me. I mean, I’m cool with it winning Best Picture in the end, but getting like 10-11 Oscars? Some of these other films deserve some love too.

/Locks the door

//Looks out the window

///Takes the phone off the hook (lol landlines)

////Re-checks the locks

I gotta be real here: La La Land SUCKED. Before we get into it, let’s cover the positives:

1. John Legend’s song - that was sick!

2. The montage at the end - that was real!

3. La La Land did manage to be a very serious movie while keeping the tone light and bouncy, which is no easy feat, so I can give it some respect for that. Everything else though…?

The music was terrible. I’m not a big musical guy to begin with, but I can certainly appreciate a catchy showtune. Here? Not a one to be found. Gosling’s creaky-ass voice grinding out a third reprise of “City of Stars” doesn’t cut the mustard.

The dancing was shitty. Whether it was those losers rolling on the hood of their cars in the opening number, Stone’s way hotter roommates bumbling around their apartment, or the leads irritatingly floating in the planetarium, everything looked stilted and unrehearsed. The “Dick in a Box” video had sicker moves.

The leads had zero chemistry and were completely unlikable. Fishface Emma Stone and Jazz Hero Seb were such bores, I couldn’t find it in my cold, black heart to care about either one of them.

Also, do we really need white-as-a-sheet Ryan Gosling lecturing us about saving “real” jazz music? Here’s the thing, Seb: Jazz is/was all about innovation and being on the cutting edge of music. So the fact that he’s obsessed with sticking jazz inside some snow globe time capsule is actually 1000% more harmful to jazz than John Legend freshening things up and pushing jazz into a new, modern direction.

Chicken on a stick up my ass, gump!

Personal note: each year on Christmas, my family goes to the theater to watch a flick. The past few years we’ve seen joints like The Wolf of Wall Street, Django Unchained, Fury, and The Hateful Eight. Real family-friendly stuff. Well, this year we let my sister pick and of course she picked La La Land.

For the record we ALL hated it, even my sister. This is only the second movie I’ve ever seriously considered walking out of (shout out to Adventureland, you piece of crap). Anyhow, I would like to thank La La Land for giving me this nugget to hold over her head for the rest of eternity.

The last of the original top contenders, Manchester by the Sea, made me cry numerous times. I mean, I thought that shit was gonna be sad, but that trailer definitely made me figure there was a little more levity in it than there was. This ain’t Good Will Hunting. I thought Manchester had some great acting, a story that really weighed on you, and had several scenes in particular that really devastated me.

Matt must’ve fallen asleep during the last third of Manchester because for about forty-five minutes it becomes a network TV sitcom, with Affleck helping lil buddy get laid and selling enough pints of blood (BAC .08) to buy a new engine for the boat.

But hey, this is a good-to-great flick, although it could’ve used a re-edit -- what, was Billy Walsh too busy working on the new season of Johnny’s Bananas? Manchester suffers from what I call the “Boston bloat.” Any film set in New England is automatically twenty minutes too long because it has to constantly remind the audience that it takes place in New England. It’s already called Manchester by the Sea! We don’t need close ups of analog TVs showing the Celtics or slo-mo shots of ugly white guys in various shades of grey and khaki shooting Irish Whiskey.

SPOILER ALERT: (Matt’s note: the next paragraph has massive spoilers)

Also, uh, is it just me or does Lee get off kinda light (in reality and in the movie) for essentially murdering his three kids? Like hey motherfucker, you did an awful thing maybe you should at least TRY to atone for it? The cops are like “you burned your house down in a drunken stupor and it claimed the lives of your three children -- we’ve all been there!” “Yeah! I torched my place last spring, lost two kiddos and the dog, a real shame.” I get that you’re tortured bro, but maybe think about someone other than yourself for once?

Also if this movie (and most NE-set movies) are to be believed, women are only good for banging; otherwise they’re shrill nags, out to ruin a good time. Exactly none of the women in this movie are given any sort of depth or character beyond “I want to fuck her” or “She won’t stop bothering me.” The movie even kinda blames Lee’s kids’ death on the mom!

And the climactic conversation between Randi and Lee? The crux is that even after all this time, she still wants to fuck him! She can’t resist his grubby, down-home, chawm! Pathetic.

Arrival is my favorite film that didn’t ever get in the talk for Best Picture. And why the hell not? It’s loved by many who’ve seen it, it was a popular box office hit. Arrival got on my radar early 2016 when I heard about the film starring Amy Adams and the guy (Villeneuve) who did the superb Sicario. I checked out the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, and it blew me away. Arrival takes a pretty challenging high-level concept and somehow manages to portray it well onscreen. When I read it, I thought damn, how are they gonna make that a film? But they did. Villeneueve is a true talent. Arrival is intriguing sci-fi with an ending that truly impacts you.

Arrival was the bomb! Great flick and an amazing adaptation of “Story of Your Life.” Matt’s right about the movie breaking down an insane concept into something that’s easy to understand while still delivering that emotional gut-punch.

Amy Adams had better rapport with the fuggin aliens than Stone did with Gosling, just sayin.

I’ve seen a few pieces mention Hidden Figures as a possible late surprise winner. While there’s no real chance at that, it’s cool to see the box office love it’s gotten. When I first saw the trailer for Hidden Figures, I thought it came off to me like standard Disneyfied civil rights fare (like 42, if you will). But then the critics’ reviews came out, and then my friends spoke of how good it was. And it is good! Hidden Figures has 3 strong leads in Henson, Monae, and Spencer. They have well-developed characters. They don’t need to have strong white heroes saving them – the white characters (primarily Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons), aren’t overly white saviors or overly mustachioed villains. There’s some prejudice. There’s some goodwill from good people like Costner’s character or John Glenn. But these are supporting details surrounding the main stories of these brilliant black women facing the shit they had to deal with at the time. That’s good cinema.

Hidden Figures is sounding pretty good in the background right now, so I’ll probably go back and actually watch it at some point. I was initially put off because it looked like The Help in Space and I didn’t need to see another scene where Sandra Bullock tells a black mother what’s what. Apparently it’s not like that? That’s good.

Fences is a well-acted adaptation of a powerful play by the great August Wilson. Fences covers the story of a black family dealing with their issues, primarily stemming from the father, Troy Maxson, during the civil rights era. Maxson is a stubborn, difficult man, and that causes some strife in the family. It’s uncompromising and tough stuff to watch, and it’s really a challenge, in a good way, to the viewer. I’ll have more thoughts on it below with Best Actor, but I thought that it had a great story and a somewhat limited vision with its adaptation. The direction by Denzel could have been more creative, but its lacking transcendance from the stage reminded me too much of the Doubt adaptation.

Fences looked like Denzel sitting on a porch for two hours. That’s cool for Denzel, but I’d just as soon sit on my own damn porch.

Hell or High Water was a really solidly done film. Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, and Chris Pine basically are the film, and they’re great. Really glad to see Pine get to do something good outside of his always strong role as Kirk. The story’s pretty straightforward - Foster and Pine play brothers trying to rob banks. Bridges and his partner are going after them. But it’s not Point Break, and the nuances of the clever dialogue, the creative characters, and the way the movie builds - that makes the film a special quality film.

This is a movie right here! I love me a modern western, and Hell or High Water delivered! The cinematography was gorgeous and bleak at once, really bringing home the message of the movie. It was good to see Pine bounce back from that atrocious Star Trek 3 film, and the banter between him and Ben Foster really pushed this movie to the next level.

I gotta be real though, the audience I saw this with was laughing a little too hard at Jeff Bridges’ racist-ass character. Kinda uncomfortable.

I was pretty dubious about Hacksaw Ridge. I think I found it to be somewhat cheesy and somewhat excellent. The first half of the film is basically cheesy goodhearted Andrew Garfield as he decides in life that he doesn’t want to hold a gun during WWII but still wants to help, and the struggles he faced trying to convince the Army to let him do that. At this point, it felt pretty cliche and lame to me. Then the battle scenes began, and I was pretty impressed and enthralled… what Garfield’s character, Desmond Doss, did was heroic and incredible. The film is strong when showing those aspects. It’s just a little held back by the stuff around that.

Hacksaw Ridge, the Finest Hours, Deepwater Horizon -- can we tell any of these movies apart? Do we care? Really happy for Mel Gibson though, getting to film another critically-acclaimed gratuitous bloodbath.

Lion was my least favorite film, and I’ve seen a few friends here and there who disagree with that. But I found it to be lacking. The true story is amazing, the emotions of that conclusion are powerful, and Dev Patel is my boy. But the story is poorly paced for me; at times, just a little too much focused on his childhood. At times, a bit slow and clunky in his search. That being said, that film made me cry still, because that story is sad and moving. And I got love for my girl Rooney Mara. But it was the least of the 9 for me.

Just go back and read my rationale for skipping that awful Life of Pi remake. I’m sure all the same arguments apply here.

I can’t speak too much of Best Picture snubs this year. I was pretty content with this field. EXCEPT FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR; WHERE’S DA LOVE.

Captain America: Civil War was great...as long as Cap was off-screen. Dude is the most vanilla-ass leading hero we got out here. More Iron Man, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, really anyone else, PLEASE.

Allow me to play to type and suggest that The VVitch got snubbed! Along with The Lobster and Deadpool, some real contenders got left at the altar. Also, let it be known that Matt had a huge bone for The Accountant despite it looking like trash from day one. Apparently some non-studio-plant redditor promised it would be great. Once the reviews started trickling in though, Matt was inconsolable.

Best director:

“La La Land,” Damien Chazelle

“Hacksaw Ridge,” Mel Gibson

“Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins

“Manchester by the Sea,” Kenneth Lonergan

“Arrival,” Denis Villeneuve

Chazelle is the likely winner here, and it would be well-deserved. He had a great vision for La La Land, and his visuals and energy are such strengths in the film. I would also wholly support my dude Villeneuve getting some love here. He really put together a great film for a short story that deserved it. He has lots of patience getting to the points he wants to make, and he treats the audience as adults, not holding their hands.

Jenkins’ direction of Moonlight leads to some damn good poetry, so I gotta give him props too. Lonergan does good work, but I don’t really consider the strength to be in his direction but more for his writing (to discuss later). Gibson put together some awesome battle scenes, but man, he had some corny scenes building up to it.

If Jenkins doesn’t win this, I’m jumping out my window like dude from the Mad Men credits.

/moves into first-floor apartment

Matt touched on it earlier, but how stupid does Richard Linklater look now? It took him like two decades to make Boyhood, and Jenkins knocked out a better version in like a month! It’s like Linklater, bro, we have actors for a reason..

Apparently Chazelle winning is a done deal, but cmon! Jenkins told three PERFECT stories, tied them together with the exact right amount of narrative tissue and knocked it out the f’n park! But yeah, Chazelle sucked off Hollywood and made the smog-trap that is LA look halfway redeemable.

Lead actor:

Casey Affleck, “Manchester by the Sea”

Andrew Garfield, “Hacksaw Ridge”

Ryan Gosling, “La La Land,”

Viggo Mortensen, “Captain Fantastic”

Denzel Washington, “Fences”

This race has come down to Affleck and Denzel. I haven’t seen Captain Fantastic and have heard Viggo is pretty good. Garfield does good work in Hacksaw, though his accent is a little spotty, and I can’t get over how corny he is at times in the film. Gosling was better to me than Stone in La La Land, but I can’t quite say that either of their lead performances screamed “Best Actor/Actress” to me. I think the race should come down to Affleck and Denzel.

Casey Affleck was the frontrunner for a while until Denzel Washington won the SAG award, which shifted the momentum in people’s mind. Affleck’s history of sexual harassment has come up a bit leading up to the Oscars, and some think that has affected his chances here. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I think the accusations were likely true. I think if so, it’s fair to make the argument that you don’t vote for him here. It’s an award for who’s the best actor, but there isn’t strict criteria, and these are voters who have a right to show support for who they want to. If that means denying a vote to a sexual predator who was privileged in what he got away with, then maybe that’s what people should do. Constance Wu broke it down pretty well, as you can read here.

If I somehow had an Academy vote, I don’t know what I’d do. I think I might vote for Casey in the end. But that debate aside, I wanna talk about their performances now, and I’d say I thought better of Casey’s.

His performance as Lee Chandler really really impressed me. It’s one of my favorite acting performances of recent years. I’d take this role over other recent winners like my boy DiCaprio in The Revenant or McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club. Affleck embodies this character, full of subtle sorrow and guilt and pain. I felt for him every step of the way, and I never felt like it was done with cheap acting or overly acted emotion (see: Sean Penn; Mystic River). Lee Chandler is the film, and Casey Affleck is the film, and he carries it all on his tortured shoulders.

I gotta agree with Matt. The entirety of Manchester by the Sea rests on Casey Affleck’s shoulders and he absolutely crushes his role. The pain and the patheticness that define Lee Chandler come through even in the film’s happier moments and Affleck never fails to show how Lee’s grief is hardwired into his DNA and informs all of his decisions, from where to live, to whether he should punch out the drunk Santa lookin’ guy at the bar (he does).

That being said, Affleck is a sexual harasser! So I’m not shedding any tears if he loses to Denzel, who is great and keeps me in good hands, insurance-wise.

Denzel is really good too. Casey is better. Denzel has a tough character to grapple with here. I think he might be hurt a little for me just because I don’t very much like the character of Troy Maxson. I felt like this when I first read the play for a class in high school, and I feel that way now. It makes it tough. Maxson is not a likable character. I like him less than your usual villain, and I think that’s always somewhat hampered my view of the story. Maxson is not good to his family, and he infuriates me in several ways. I know that in some ways that’s supposed to be showing the effects the time period had on a man like him, but some of his decisions in the story are too much for me to overcome.

That’s somewhat the brilliance of the story by August WIlson. It’s uncompromising and brutal. But it’s always been a tough pill for me to swallow and affects my view of Denzel’s performance. When I separate that take, I do think Denzel was excellent in the role though. One of his best roles in recent memory.

Lead actress:

Isabelle Huppert, “Elle”

Ruth Negga, “Loving”

Natalie Portman, “Jackie”

Emma Stone, “La La Land”

Meryl Streep, “Florence Foster Jenkins”

This category is hampered by the lack of Viola Davis, who pushed to be labeled as Best Supporting even though she’s very clearly a lead. Stone is the frontrunner, and she’s pretty good, but she didn’t blow me away. As mentioned before, I liked Gosling’s work more. I saw Jackie, and Portman was quite good in her portrayal. I would support her getting it too. But I’d be surprised to see the Academy give her a second Oscar this early on.

Amy Adams got robbed of a nomination here. She was the heart and soul of Arrival, and Louise Banks is a great protagonist. I thought she was wonderful in it. Why again is Streep nominated for everything she does? I feel like she could voice a 5-minute role in an animated film and still win Best Actress. Was she really better in Florence than my girl Amy? I’m dubious.

I haven’t made it to Loving yet so I don’t have a take on Ruth Negga. Huppert is apparently a dark horse for Elle; a film I haven’t gotten to yet that has a fascinating premise.

What the hell is always up with the movies the Best Actress noms come from? With a few exceptions, they’re always floating out on their own, like “Best Actress” is its own movie genre. Needless to say, I haven’t seen any of these besides La La Land, and that’s one I wish I hadn’t seen.

Supporting actor:

Mahershala Ali, “Moonlight”

Jeff Bridges, “Hell or High Water”

Lucas Hedges, “Manchester by the Sea”

Dev Patel, “Lion”

Michael Shannon, “Nocturnal Animals”

Mahershala is all you gotta know here. After some solid turns in House of Cards and Mockingjay, this charming-ass mofo is magic in Moonlight. Juan is one of the best supporting characters in recent memory. He has several brilliant scenes, not requiring overacting but just sheer nuance and charm. He makes such an impression on the film in not much time. He’ll win, and he’ll deserve it big-time.

After this year, they should rename this the Mahershala Ali Award for Best Supporting Actor. Ali is amazing as Juan, Chiron’s unlikely father-figure. He commands the screen in every scene he’s in, but like Matt says, it’s not with overacting or scenery-chewing, but with the amount and specificity of emotion resonating from his character.

Bridges is his usual awesome self in Hell or High Water, and I really dug what he brought to the table. Hedges is a quality support role to Affleck in Manchester, and he does good work as the young nephew struggling through his father’s death. He’s Boston as hell and he does it well. Dev is great too, even though he’s clearly a lead role. Glad to see him getting continued work after Slumdog and good to see him knocking it out of the park. Dude is jacked now! He ain’t no babyface lucky punk anymore.

I’ll give props to Hedges for staying focused on banging out two chicks at the same time despite his dad randomly dying. I love that speech he gives Affleck (“I don’t care that I’m an orphan! I can’t move to Boston -- I’m banging two chicks!”).

Bridges was cool; I always wondered what Bad Black would be like if he were on the other side of the law.

I love Michael Shannon. I haven’t seen Nocturnal Animals. But Shannon could make any role magnetic. He’s just sheer willpower tour-de-force. I don’t know what that means, but it makes sense to me.

Supporting actress:

Viola Davis, “Fences”

Naomie Harris, “Moonlight”

Nicole Kidman, “Lion”

Octavia Spencer, “Hidden Figures”

Michelle Williams, “Manchester by the Sea”

Viola Davis is remarkable and is so key to Fences. She’s great. I hope she gets the Oscar. And she probably would have won for best Lead too. Rose is a tough character to portray to me. She’s often reactionary to her husband, and she doesn’t have as much stage presence per se. But Viola brings that necessary gravitas and strength to the role to make it not just a one-person show. She’s lovable, tender, compassionate, etc. AND she does a good job explaining how she deals with/puts up with Troy. It’s a hell of a role.

If not for Viola in supporting, I would give the win to Michelle WIlliams. She’s really good in some key scenes in Manchester by the Sea. She’s emotional, tortured, hurt, and so relatable in the things she says and does. Otherwise, Naomi Harris really nailed it as Chiron’s mom during Moonlight (and in only 3 days of filming apparently!). Spencer was quite good in Hidden Figures (though I loved Monae more; I also just love Monae in general, what can I say). Kidman is good in Lion, but I can’t say she really knocked it out the park for me.

From what I understand, Viola Davis probably deserves an easy win here, but man, Naomie Harris was raw as hell in Moonlight. That scene where she shakes Chiron down for cash nearly made me call in sick to work the next day.

Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea was...not great, though I blame the material more than her. “But but but Lee! I still wanna fawk you! Let’s have lunch! We can get ya favorite chowdah!” She tried her best, but the dialogue was never going to let her rise above Southie Harpy #2.

Adapted screenplay:

“Arrival,” Eric Heisserer

“Fences,” August Wilson

“Hidden Figures,” Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi

“Lion,” Luke Davies

“Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins; Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney

Moonlight is bizarrely marked as adapted even though it was based off an unpublished play. Whatever. It’s an excellent story. I think it’s supposed to win, and I’ll approve of Barry getting his Oscar here.

Damn, I gotta agree with Matt again! This is truly a weird spot for Moonlight to be in. It’s like “oh shit, I adapted this movie from an idea I had once -- okay!”

I do wish Arrival could win too, because Heisserer’s feat is impressive considering the degree of difficulty here. Story of Your Life (Arrival’s short story) is a lot simpler than the plot of the film. Heisserer had to develop more of a global conflict to the story and had to figure out how to take plot elements from the short story and make it work on film (the short story is a lot more first person narrative; he did a lot to adjust that for the screen).

Still, no one has to be madder about Moonlight’s odd placement than the Arrival folks. They took an impossible-to-adapt short story and fuckin flamed it out into an amazing motion picture. Really impressive stuff.

Fences is cool because Wilson had that screenplay around for a while, and it got made after his death once a black director (Wilson stipulated that the director be black) finally was able to put the project together. And it’s a great story. Just not as deserving to me as Moonlight/Arrival.

Original screenplay:

“20th Century Women,” Mike Mills

“Hell or High Water,” Taylor Sheridan

“La La Land,” Damien Chazelle

“The Lobster,” Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou

“Manchester by the Sea,” Kenneth Lonergan

I still haven’t seen The Lobster and want to. I think Alex will vouch for it. Otherwise, this is a category where La La won the award at the Golden Globes, but I really hope it doesn’t win here. Manchester’s screenplay is so good to me. The way it intercuts between past and present, the way it slowly reveals different plot points, and the way it writes dialogue of sad scenes - that’s some good stuff right there.

I gotta go with The Lobster here. To call it’s screenplay efficient is a severe understatement. I previously lauded Barry Jenkins for showing audience exactly what they needed to see. In The Lobster, Lanthimos strips the entire endeavour down to the bare essentials. Why use three words when one will do? Shit, why even use words at all? Beautiful stuff, b.

On the other end of the spectrum is Manchester by the Sea, where every possible scene and/or conversation gets its moment to shine. This leads to a lot of great moments and conversations, but also to a fair number of middling ones.

Cinematography:

“Arrival,” Bradford Young

“La La Land,” Linus Sandgren

“Lion,” Greig Fraser

“Moonlight,” James Laxton

“Silence,” Rodrigo Prieto

Bradford Young can get it.

Dayum.

That Linus dude will probably win for La La, and it’ll be deserved. I just thought Moonlight had some hella cool shots. Also, Silence gets a nom here. I wanna see that at some point, even if it ended up not getting the love it expected to get.

La La Land will win here because Hollywood loves seeing itself glammed up for the silver screen and not as the tepid, plastic cesspool it is (note: I actually love LA, but am I wrong?).

Film editing:

“Arrival,” Joe Walker

“Hacksaw Ridge,” John Gilbert

“Hell or High Water,” Jake Roberts

“La La Land,” Tom Cross

“Moonlight,” Nat Sanders and Joi McMillon

Another La La win, probably suggesting its best picture victory.

I already burned my Billy Walsh joke, so I’ll just say this HAS to be Moonlight, right? I mean, it won’t be, but it’s economy in telling such a resounding tale defines Oscar-worthy.

Best documentary feature:

“13th,” Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick and Howard Barish

“Fire at Sea,” Gianfranco Rosi and Donatella Palermo

“I Am Not Your Negro,” Raoul Peck, Remi Grellety and Hebert Peck

“Life, Animated,” Roger Ross Williams and Julie Goldman

“O.J.: Made in America,” Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow

Really strong year for docs. I still haven’t gotten to the long, really-a-TV-documentary-series OJ, but I’ve heard such incredible things about it. The 13th was brilliant and would certainly deserve a win too. And I can’t wait to see I Am Not Your Negro.

Gotta confess, I haven’t seen any of these, but this looks to be one of the strongest years for docs in recent memory.

Animated feature:

“Kubo and the Two Strings,” Travis Knight and Arianne Sutner

“Moana,” John Musker, Ron Clements and Osnat Shurer

“My Life as a Zucchini,” Claude Barras and Max Karli

“The Red Turtle,” Michael Dudok de Wit and Toshio Suzuki

“Zootopia,” Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Clark Spencer

Zootopia appears to be the winner here, and it really was an impressive animated film to me. As I watched it, I was like damn those themes got a lot deeper than I expected for a kid’s film! Moana was really enjoyable too, though it didn’t quite reach the highs for me that some other recent animated classics have (I would put Frozen ahead of it, for instance).

Zootopia is my JAM. Love that sloth at the DMV. Moana was fine, but did nothing to distinguish itself from any other generic-ass cartoon.

No love for Sausage Party? Damn.

Best foreign language film:

“A Man Called Ove,” Sweden

“Land of Mine,” Denmark

“Tanna,” Australia

“The Salesman,” Iran

“Toni Erdmann,” Germany

The director of The Salesman, Asghar Farhadi, was not allowed to come to the Oscars after the executive order a few weeks ago, and then he decided not to come too out of protest. He also directed the incredible A Separation, which I finally recently saw. That film was so devastating and moving to me, and if The Salesman is comparable at all, it would certainly deserve a win here too.

Toni Erdmann is apparently going to be remade with Jack Nicholson, so I’m for sure curious about that too.

Give it up to Tanna, man. It was filmed in Nauvhal, which has like 4,500 native speakers.

Original score:

“Jackie,” Mica Levi

“La La Land,” Justin Hurwitz

“Lion,” Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka

“Moonlight,” Nicholas Britell

“Passengers,” Thomas Newman

Original song:

“Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” “La La Land” — Music by Justin Hurwitz; Lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

“Can’t Stop the Feeling,” “Trolls” — Music and Lyric by Justin Timberlake, Max Martin and Karl Johan Schuster

“City of Stars,” “La La Land” — Music by Justin Hurwitz; Lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

“The Empty Chair,” “Jim: The James Foley Story” — Music and Lyric by J. Ralph and Sting

“How Far I’ll Go,” “Moana” — Music and Lyric by Lin-Manuel Miranda

La La will definitely win for best score, considering it’s a damn musical. Arrival should have gotten some love here, but the Academy dqed it because they were worried that this brilliant song used in the film would get confused as part of the original score. But the score is great on its own!

La La Land will win, which is garbage! As a Houston native, I will no doubt be pulling for Moonlight, as the whole f’n thing was chopped and screwed.

Two La La songs are nominated here, and City of Stars should likely win. I would love to see Lin-Manuel get the win here and complete his EGOT. How Far I’ll Go didn’t really stay with me the way other classic animated film songs have. Heck, I would rather have seen You’re Welcome get the win here.

Yeah, the two songs in Moana worth a damn (“You’re Welcome” and “Shiny”) got robbed, and both those LLL songs are trash. I gotta take a moment and recognize the special kind of horrible that is “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” I dare you to find a more written-by-committee, “Happy-”humping piece of corporate garbage that polluted the airwaves this year.

Does this mean I’m cheering for Sting? Fuck.

Also, Sing Street should have DEF got some love here. It was robbed. Sting got a nom instead? FOH.

Sound editing:

“Arrival,” Sylvain Bellemare

“Deep Water Horizon,” Wylie Stateman and Renee Tondelli

“Hacksaw Ridge,” Robert Mackenzie and Andy Wright

“La La Land,” Ai-Ling Lee and Mildred Iatrou Morgan

“Sully,” Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman

Sound mixing:

“Arrival,” Bernard Gariepy Strobl and Claude La Haye

“Hacksaw Ridge,” Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace

“La La Land,” Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee and Steve A. Morrow

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” David Parker, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson

“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Mac Ruth

Kevin O’Connell apparently hasn’t won after 21 nominations, and he’ll probably lose to La La Land here. Well, I hope he somehow gets a win.

Let’s revisit a Matt quote from the top of the article: “Matt always provides excellent, impressive, insightful, groundbreaking commentary.” You’ve really outdone yourself here.

Last fall I was at WB Studios and they explained the difference between sound editing and sound mixing and I was like “Finally! I’ll have a real opinion when the Oscars roll around!” Well, I don’t remember what I learned that day, so let’s just give these awards to Arrival for that little pewpew sound of the aliens squirtin’ their ink.

Production design:

“Arrival,” Patrice Vermette, Paul Hotte

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” Stuart Craig, Anna Pinnock

“Hail, Caesar!,” Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh

“La La Land,” David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds-Wasco

“Passengers,” Guy Hendrix Dyas, Gene Serdena

Visual effects:

“Deepwater Horizon,” Craig Hammack, Jason Snell, Jason Billington and Burt Dalton

“Doctor Strange,” Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli and Paul Corbould

“The Jungle Book,” Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones and Dan Lemmon

“Kubo and the Two Strings,” Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean and Brad Schiff

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel and Neil Corbould

Rogue One had some good visuals, bro.

Damn, my X-Men couldn’t get a nod here? I guess the Academy is saving all their mutant love for Logan next year. Hail, Caesar! Is such a joke of a movie and represents Hollywood’s masturbatory tendencies at their worst. So it’ll probably take home an Oscar here.

I’ve heard Doctor Strange is like trippin off acid without trippin off acid, so if you’re trippin off acid when you watch it, it looks pretty normal. Yeah, I’m certain that’s how it works.

Makeup and hair:

“A Man Called Ove,” Eva von Bahr and Love Larson

“Star Trek Beyond,” Joel Harlow and Richard Alonzo

“Suicide Squad,” Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini and Christopher Nelson

Costume design:

“Allied,” Joanna Johnston

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” Colleen Atwood

“Florence Foster Jenkins,” Consolata Boyle

“Jackie,” Madeline Fontaine

“La La Land,” Mary Zophres

Apparently Matt died before he could finish this? Anyhow, Star Trek for makeup and hair? Except for that one chick, who was really lookin all that different? Give it to Suicide Squad, I guess.

Is the real Florence Foster Jenkins still alive? I wonder how she’d feel knowing that, in a twisted way, her awfulness was winning all kinds of awards. She’s probably dead, so it doesn’t matter, but still.

#by Alex and Matt #Oscars #Jimmy Kimmel #Moonlight #La La Land #Manchester by the Sea #Hidden Figures #Lion #Fences #Denzel Washington #Ryan Gosling #Damien Chazelle #Barry Jenkins #Emma Stone #Natalie Portman #Viola Davis #Lin-Manuel Miranda #movies

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