#they went through all the effort to color code everyone and then… THIS

[the-ace-reader]

Okay, I’m new to Obey Me, but my inner graphic designer and my OCD are twitching about the colors of the demon symbols.

Why are Pride, Envy, and Gluttony ALL SWITCHED UP?!

Like…. what is this mess????

Everyone??? Is color coded??? And they just??? Messed up??? Somehow???

BUT THEY DIDN’T CHOOSE THE WRONG COLORS. OH NO. THEY JUST GAVE THEM TO THE WRONG DEMON.

THE CORRECT COLORS ARE RIGHT THERE. THEY MAKE SO MUCH MORE SENSE. ESPECIALLY IN LEVI’S CASE SINCE HIS SYMBOL IS LITERALLY A FUCKING HOOK.

And they just IGNORED IT. WHY?

Is this some sort of story integral thing? Please let there be a legitimate reason for this. Please don’t let it just be… like that. It’s been bugging me the entire time I’ve been playing. 🫠

It really isn’t that hard to get it right! Like… HERE LET ME FIX IT FOR YOU!!!!

First born: Lucifer - Pride

Second born: Mammon - Greed (white/yellow)

Third born: Leviathan - Envy

Fourth born: Satan - Wrath

Fifth born: Asmodeus - Lust

Sixth born: Beelzebub - Gluttony

Seventh born: Belphegor - Sloth

It’s a crappy edit but you gET THE IDEA! 😭😭😭

#helpppppp #I HATE inconsistencies like this #they went through all the effort to color code everyone and then… THIS #WHY #SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS A THING PLEASE I AM BEGGING FOR A BETTER EXPLANATION #SOMETHING OTHER THAN ‘THEY WERE DUMB’ #thanks I HATE IT #is this gamer rage? #i don’t think so #maybe it’s gamer rage adjacent? 😭 #obey me #obey me lucifer #obey me beelzebub #obey me beel #obey me leviathan #obey me Levi #obey me demon brothers #obey me game #obey me mammon #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me asmo #obey me belphie #obey me belphegor

[familyagrestefanblog]

Hot take: Toxinelle's design for the most part isnt as great as everyone makes it out to be, much less it being groundbreaking or the best emo design, since it's barely anything new at all:

it's just her head that's amazingly designed and the fact that Ladybug's regular suit honestly couldn't set the bar any lower.

Griffe Noire on the other hand is actually punk through and through. Not giving a single shit what you think of his look and being the punkest bitch by even going with a feminine-coded name in the french original bc he doesn't care about your single-minded bs when you for some reason automatically think he MUST be female just because he has two "e"s in his name:

One of these two got one hell of a save design where barely a single risk was taken so she remains universally pretty for every viewer

And the other one actually was allowed to embody a whole new fashion style and life style, that fits perfectly as an extension of his OG character, merely things went south.

In my opinion there is no competition who got the better character design.

It's the one that actually does something for the character besides looking pretty, cool and being inoffensively save.

I'll give you a hint: it ain't Toxinelle.

edit:

Just to clarify this, I'm not saying I fell out of love for Toxinelle's design to be a b*tch. I'm saying it from the stands of me wanting the show to put the same amount on effort into Marinette's designs as Adrien's.

Griffe Noire is allowed to be straight up punk and yet the most I can give Toxinelle is that her design is Gothic-INSPIRED:

Again, her head is the most well designed part and especially the mask going underneath her chin, the amazing hair style and the conveniently fitting red-black color scheme works perfectly for Gothic.

As are her already incorporated gloves, the fact that she's wearing a mask in the first place and her dark makeup. Especially her vampire red eyes (like Monarque Bug, I love that detail) and I'll also give credit to how the upper red part of her body suit looks like a sleeveless dress and the little Ladybug symbol looking like a necklace.

All that combiened with her overall Gothic-elegance shows how AMAZING Toxinelle could have looked if they had for once taken an actual risk with her and prioritized what the fashion style is actually supposed to be over her looking universally pretty for every viewer.

I'm being nitpicky here because of how frustrating I find it that Griffe Noire has such a phenomenal character design, straight up one of the best in the show, and yet Marinette is still stuck with the same one-layer body suits a la "just this time the stripes go to the left"

Character design is not decided by if EVERYONE thinks they look great. The priority is what the character design does for the character. It's visual story telling.

I personally dress much more like Juleka or Emo Marinette in real life and yet in my opinion it's still crystal clear that Rose as Pigella has one of the best hero character designs because of how unapologetically ROSE it is:

I personally don't have to want to wear it or even like it at all to think it's one of the best ones because of the simple fact that this design embodies Rose's PERSONALITY (as does her whole transformation) and tells me more about her.

Especially in direct comparison with Griffe Noire, or even civilian emo Adrien probably wearing his dead mother's jacket while Adrien HAS TO keep dressing more low-key, Toxinelle barely tells me a thing about this Marinette's personality besides "slay Queen"

Because there IS no personality. The most you can get out of this is her being even more uptight and closed off because of how her collar directly blends into her mask, keeping her in a visual choke hold.

But that's mostly it. For Griffe Noire they explicitly went with punk fashion, meaning everything punk stands for can now be put into new context with Adrien.

But Toxinelle barely embodies a fashion style, she's just Gothic-INSPIRED (at most). And that's such a shame because Gothic, especially if you wanna use it in a darker way, was a PERFECT fashion style to utilize here.

The most common Gothic styles are inspired by Victorian funeral wear and give off an aura of authority, seriousness and melancholic detachment, being kept in the past (this is in no way meant as generalization, fashion is complex)

In what reality COULDN'T we have gone with that for Toxinelle? She would have been the perfect complimentary style for Griffe Noire by her side.

And we don't even need to go with a dress. Gothic women wear pants too:

Can you imagine how amazing she could have looked as an actual goth? How much visual story telling through FASHION they could have put into her design when the evil Ladybug is a vampire goth whose fashion is inspired by funeral wear??

Yes, I AM pissed.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#ml spoilers #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #Toxinelle & Griffe Noire #Shadybug & Claw Noir #ml paris special

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

more tales from the gas station propaganda! i personally would recommend checking out the web series as well as the books honestly - the books are a lot more detailed but the web series is still interesting! if you only read one of em 100% go for the books but they're still pretty neat together and also feature some differences (and an entry or two that didn't make it into the books)! it also felt more immersive to me to read the web series and then read the book, where jack talks about the blog/writing it. i personally started with the web series and moved onto the books afterward, and recommend doing that since it can drag a bit more if you read the books first (since a lot of the web series content is featured in the books). i found it most useful to read the web series + side stories, the books, and then the spinoff/side story bedside manor! the web series is more comedic than horror, though the books also lean more towards comedy in the first half.

anyway, in terms of actual propaganda - alongside the actual plot being really good, the characters are a big highlight! the prev propaganda went into it a bit, but the cast is endlessly fun. jack, the main character, has very dry humor and ends up kind of being "the straight man" of the more eccentric cast, but he's very fun bc unlike a lot of characters who fit that trope, he's JUST as weird and unhinged as the rest of the cast in his own way. his best friend (from book 2 onward at least), jerry (the blonde himbo) is the most chaotically hilarious character - deeply impulsive, wildly overly affectionate with everyone, weird fun fashion, unbothered by functionally everything, and basically just a human puppy given murderous tendencies. he and jack are also deeply pathetic (i say this affectionately).

there's also rosa, one of jack's coworkers in a later book with a massive crush on him (that he's fully oblivious to), is just a ball of sunshine and the only real competent employee; she's also fully unaware of the supernatural shit going on and is Very stressed over it </3 book 4 especially gives her fantastic characterization. o'brien is the local sheriff on gas station duty from book 2 onward (she basically cleans up any shit that goes on at the gas station) and is a little standoffish at first, but gets attached to jack and the rest of the crew pretty quickly (though she tends to show it more through endless nicknames and doing everything she can to keep the cast of idiots safe); she cares a Lot and actually puts effort into trying to keep the town safe and figure out what the fuck is happening

and that's just the main four characters! all of the side characters are also really good - spencer, the murderous stalker who has it out for jack, brick roscoe & brick roscoe, two agents of an unknown organization who cover up supernatural shit, benjamin, an insanely tough monster hunter/survivalist tired of everyone's shit, agatha, a cool old lady with a massive monster truck.. really, there's no shortage of fun characters

also! it's a pretty diverse series, with multiple canonically queer characters (even of the main cast, jack is ace + jerry is bi), physical disability rep, characters of color, and ofc mentally ill characters (again including jack himself) - alongside many people seeing jerry as coded (and potentially canonically?) adhd and jack as coded autistic

i will say that it's important to keep in mind there's a LOT of triggering content - alongside the horror stuff, which includes gore/body horror, unreality, paranoia fuel, torture, kidnapping, stalking, and more, there's also a LOT of discussion of abuse/child abuse and the series doesn't shy away from the bigotry the cast often faces (in particular warning for racism, ableism, and homophobia + slurs), and unfortunately there's also a decent amount of fatphobia in the series. i would 100% recommend the series, but do be warned that it's very heavy, especially towards the end

like the other person said the series is all available in audio format, both through audiobooks and youtube reading of the series! i'm not sure if the books are in any libraries but they're also all available to buy online, and obviously the web series is free to read on reddit and the tales from the gas station website. it's a bit of a long read (i get through books fast and it still took me a good week or two to get through everything even marathon-reading it) but it's worth it imo!

^

#asks #not blorbo poll #propaganda?

[svrpcntine]

(  samantha  logan,  cis  woman,  she/her  )  have  you  met  bellamy  forrester  yet?  you  know,  the  25  year  old  graduate  student  majoring  in  game  design.  ring  a  bell  yet?  every  time  i  walk  past  their  dorm  i  hear  cigarette  by  alfie  jukes  blasting  through  the  door.  everyone  who  meets  them  say  they're  perceptive  but  can  also  be  a  little  fickle.  guess  when  you  meet  them  you’ll  figure  that  out  yourself. 

STATS

FULL  NAME:  bellamy  grace  forrester

NICKNAMES:  belle

BIRTHDAY:  november  12th,  1998

ZODIAC:  scorpio

BIRTHPLACE: seattle, washington

SEXUALITY:  bisexual  /  biromantic

HEIGHT:  5’7”

EYE  COLOR:  dark  brown

HAIR  COLOR/STYLE:  black  & wavy

BUILD:  lithe toned

FAVORITE  COLOR:  emerald green

SPOKEN  LANGUAGES:  english  (  fluent  ) &  italian  (  conversational  )

CLUBS: astrology, opinions columnist on grey wolf gazette, dj on radcliffe radio

MAJOR: game design

BAND: all systems red

BIOGRAPHY

if  you  were  to  ask  bellamy,  it  couldn’t  have  been  possible  to  have  born  as  the  sole  daughter  to  two  people  with  bigger  brains.  her  mother  crunched  numbers  like  nobody's  business  and  ran  the  finance  department  of  a  big  law  firm  back  in  seattle,  while  her  father  practically  knew  how  to  code  in  his  sleep  and  was  contracted  by  companies  to  design  their  expensive  protection  systems.

growing  up,  bellamy  caught  on  fairly  quickly  that  her  parents,  despite  marrying  straight  out  of  college,  never  shared  the  desire  to  desire  to  have  kids .  this  was  cemented  by  the  amount  of  times  she  was  referred  to  as  a  happy  accident,  or  how  her  grandparents  would  say  they  were  expecting  the  family  german  shepherd  dottie  to  always  be  who  they  were  babysitting  when  bellamy’s  parents  were  busy.

her  accidental  birth  aside,  this  never  truly  bothered  her  since  she  got  along  better  than  most  kids  her  age  did  with  their  parents  (  think  olive  in  easy  a  with  her  mom  and  dad  ).  her  parents’  intelligence  was  admirable  to  bellamy  and  even  with  the  amount  of  effort  put  into  studying  for  stem  subjects,  her  stronger  grades  in  history  and  english  never  cause  a  riff  or  an  argument  between  them.

music  always  stood  out  as  an  interest�� to  bellamy,  going  as  far  to  take  up  the  violin  in  her  middle  and  high  school  orchestra,  but  it  wasn’t  until  freshmen  year  in  high  school  that  one  of  her  friends  took  her  along  to  a  local  band  playing  in  one  of  the  iconic  music  venues  in  seattle  that  a  lightbulb  went  off  over  her  head.

from  this  point  on  bellamy  threw  herself  into  learning  the  guitar  and  was  introduced  to  the  band  paramore  (  to  which  she  quite  truthfully  developed  a  crush  on  hayley  williams  ).  pop  punk  would  become  her  musical  inspiration,  her  skills  developing  on  the  guitar  her  father  got  her  for  her  birthday  and  the  classes  he  signed  her  up  for  at  the  local  music  store,  while  she  also  learned  to  find  her  voice  as  a  vocalist.

high  school  for  bellamy  was  all  about  cruising.  she  kept  up  above  average  grades  for  her  parents’  sake  and  knew  that  college  was  most  definitely  in  the  picture  for  her  despite  her  true  desire  to  find  a  band  to  belong  in  and  try  to  make  it  big.  college  was  to  give  her  mom  and  dad  peace  of  mind  in  case  her  music  dreams  fell  short.  high  school  has  her  in-between  different  bands,  trying  to  fit  in  but  never  quite  finding  the  people  who  fit  her  vision  of  what  the  type  of  music  she  wants  to  make.

her  writing  is  important  to  her,  the  ability  to  craft  a  story  within  such  a  short  time  of  three  minutes  or  less,  and  she  found  that  most  of  the  bands  in  her  area  just  wanted  a  girl  as  the  singer  for  looks  rather  than  any  real  creative  input.

never  one  to  hold  back  her  opinion  or  mince  her  words,  it  definitely  burned  a  few  bridges  and  it’s  one  of  her  qualities  that  is  viewed  both  positively  and  negatively  depending  on  who  you  ask.  bellamy  has  learned  to  stand  up  for  herself  and  that  if  she  doesn’t  advocate  for  herself  then  no  one  else  will.

even  with  no  band  behind  her,  she  kept  up  her  writing  and  it  was  her  writing  that  proved  as  her  strength  to  get  her  acceptance  letter  to  radcliffe  university  after  the  encouragement  of  her  mother  to  apply.  the  major  of  game  design  wasn’t  initially  one  that  crossed  her  mind  as  an  option,  but  after  speaking  to  some  of  the  professors  during  her  school’s  college  fair,  it  got  her  excited.  bellamy’s  penchant  for  writing  pushed  her  along,  but  the  creative  aspect  of  creating  a  whole  world  in  a  video  game  is  much  different  than  songwriting.

it’s  around  her  sophomore/junior  year  that  bellamy  meets  who  would  become  her  best  friends  -  the  rest  of  her  bandmates  who  would  go  to  create  their  band  all  systems  red  with.  thick  as  thieves  with  an  undeniable  love  for  music,  they’ve  been  together  since  and  within  the  past  summer  went  on  a  mini  tour  in  american  for  their  first  full  length  album.

bellamy  keeps  busy  with  her  studies  and  band  practice,  ultimately  hoping  that  she  won’t  have  to  put  her  degree  to  use  after  graduating  but  she  supposes  there  are  worse  things  to  do  than  create  video  games.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

a  rebound  bc  bellamy  is  still  feeling  the  sting  of  her  almost  something/ex  bandmate  so  she’s  letting  her  freak  flag  fly  !!  so  someone  who  is  equally  just  in  it  for  the  hookups

maybe  a  lil  study  buddy  who  bellamy  and  your  muse  prefer  to  sit  with  at  the  library  bc  they  know  they’ll  hold  the  other  to  it  and  can  get  shit  down

alternatively,  the  non-studying  study  buddy  who  bellamy  and  your  muse  just  end  up  chatting  together  and  whispering  to  hold  off  the  glares  of  students  at  the  tables  near  them

highkey  a  bit  of  a  nerd  so  someone  who  shares  similar  interests  in  video  games  and  anime  !!  esp  bc  bellamy  majors  in  game  design  so  she  probably  invites  your  muse  over  to  her  off  campus  dorm  to  play  video  games  and  calls  it  studying  bc  technically  it’s  learning  for  her  major

someone  who  mayhaps  has  a  crush  on  bellamy  just  from  hearing  her  as  one  of  the  dj’s  for  radcliffe  radio  or  even  from  seeing  her  and  her  band  perform.  nothing  has  to  come  from  it  if  you  don’t  want  it  to  so  fear  not  bc  i  think  the  obliviousness  of  bellamy  and  them  could  be  funny

someone  else  in  the  astronomy  club  who  bellamy  gets  along  with  and  maybe  the  two  of  them  are  prone  to  oversharing  heart  to  hearts  bc  the  two  of  them  oftentimes  climb  to  the  roof  of  the  townhouse  dorms  and  just  lay  to  look  at  the  stars

mayhaps  a  mistaken  hookup  that  now  the  two  of  them  just  avoid  one  another  for  reasons  we  can  plot  out

someone  who  100%  stands  on  the  opposite  side  of  any  one  of  bellamy’s  opinions  pieces  so  the  two  of  them  Do  Not  get  along

in  a  similar  vein,  someone  who  got  rubbed  the  wrong  way  by  bellamy’s  tenacious  and  outspoken  tendencies  and  now  the  two  side  eye  one  another  when  they  see  them

an  ex  !!  could  be  from  early  undergrad  years  and  be  multiple  muses  for  exes  that  either  ended  on  good  terms,  bad  terms  or  now  things  are  just  atrocious  and  they  run  the  opposite  direction  when  they  see  each  other

going  off  that  …  maybe  even  exes  who  still  have  a  bit  of  chemistry  and  bc  bellamy  is  going  through  a  bit  of  a  tough  phase  rn  they’re  hooking  up  even  though  they  know  they  shouldn’t

i’m  open  to  anything  pls  !!

#radcliffeintro #this kept getting put off bc my attention span is that of a goldfish

[orangetintedglasses]

( Anyway in honor of the dawn of spooky month approaching, have some info about Vampire!Vash and the rules of how vampires work in my brain. Unrelated to the Astarianon stuff but it's something I've had kicking around in the back of my mind for a while. I'm not claiming any of these as particularly original takes in the slightest, either; this is just how vampires worked in the lore I'm recycling because we worked on it too long to let it go to waste. )

General:

Everyone has a gene that essentially acts as a switch if they're turned into a vampire-- literally all humans have this line of code in the genetics. It's what gives them their powers, and no one really knows what they'll end up with until it happens (unless like, your family has a history with it and obviously has a lot of the same power, you're likely to inherit it)

You have to be dying to be turned. No exceptions.

There are a lot of classifications of vampires, here are the ones I remember off the top of my head-- - Trackers (able to drink from someone and sense them up to a certain distance) - Tanks (beef. stronk. big appetite) - Dawnwalkers (don't burn in sunlight but get little other boons, seen as lesser by other vampires) - 'Red' (a genetic mutation thought to be completely culled due to an insatiable appetite, insane strength and aggressive tendencies. it was not culled.)

Certain lines of genetics were culled because of how dangerous they were-- think things like control over elements and anything that could do serious damage over time. This doesn't mean they're gone, but modern day vampires know better than to speak up if they get an ability like this

'Makers' have an innate control over anyone they sire, obviously. It's a tactic to ensure the newbie vampires don't all just go rabid and kill people to feed their new hunger-- this hasn't stopped makers from abandoning sired, though, so it ain't perfect

All vampires have the ability to glamour their prey. It helps make it hurt less (peaceful) or helps make them malleable (bad). Dawnwalkers are suspectible to another vampire's glamour

There's a council, you have to register new vampires and their powers, etc, I don't wanna go into vampire politics

Modern day has a lot of vampire-friendly spaces. Bars, clubs, a lot of restaurants and other faculties will stay open a lot later to accommodate, there are even specific vampire dentists and doctors that don't see humans at all... people even donate their blood to banks specifically for feeding vampires. Some bars even have feeding zones with willing human participants-- though the rules are strict in these places.

Vash specifically:

Vash, Nai and Tesla specifically are part of a line of progenitor vampires. Their genetic 'switch' can be found in a vast amount of the population thanks to some breeding quirks and passing stuff down

They're also more powerful than any vampire that came after them with some exceptions. They have a modicum of control over all vampires, as well, exerting the same sort of 'maker's command' that a sire has over their sired, though powerful-enough vampires can resist it with some effort

Tesla was staked after about 500 years, living in 'harmony' with the humans for only about 200 before it happened. Vash and Nai went into hiding after. Vash eventually decides to try and live among the humans again

His eyes are a very unnatural bright blue, so he wears special glasses to dull the color (obviously)

Vash's skin has a tan look to it compared to Nai's porcelain skin due to how many times he's been discovered and shoved out into the sunlight to try and burn him alive. Also many scars, because healing factor - proper blood amount to burn through it = improper healing and gnarly-ass scars

Obviously the boy prefers to feed off of animals, if at all. In more modern times, he'll drink from purchased blood bags if he needs to. He hates feeding off of live folks now

I like to think the Dawnwalker genetic trait comes specifically from Vash

#manual's in a totally different language;; ( au headcanon ) #creature of the night? horrible and haunting;; // vampire!vash #( WHEW that got long-winded when I realized I kind of needed to explain some shit ) #( I'm sure this pings from all sorts of vampire media idk idc ) #( this is just what me and narc. ex established and i still like it ) #curtains down ✧〗( ooc )

[leonxburch]

leon burch (sloth) is an omega level mutant with the ability of mental manipulation. they’ve been in new york for thirteen years where they spend most of their time as a therapist/government agent. when i think of them, i think of constant scribblings, tricks of the eye, bookshelves full of unread books. they are affiliated with the seven deadly sins.

BASICS

Name: Leon Burch

Nickname(s): N/A

DOB: September 29th, 1963

Age: 35

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Sexuality: Uncertain

Traits: ( + ) Intelligent, Calm, Level-headed, Wise ( - ) Know-it-all, Short tempered, Brash

Occupation: Therapist

Family: Unknown

APPEARANCE

Height: 6′3

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Brown

Ethnicity: Black

Nationality: American

Aesthetic: Sterile rooms, monochromatic, black jackets, silver chain, clean cut, dark neutrals

Tattoos: None.

Piercings: None.

Scars: Scar running through his left eyebrow from combat

BACKGROUND

Leon was born in California, September of 1963. His Mother, a widow, died in childbirth. No immediate family was available or capable of taking in a newborn baby, so into the system he went. 

It wasn’t more than two years before Leon was adopted by, at the time, what he thought were parents. But, he wouldn’t be so lucky. He had become part of some Government underground organization that left him in the grasp of the Government to be trained and molded to their will. 

When Leon was six, his intelligence was starting to show. He was far above the levels of comprehension that he should have been as a child, and put forth little effort in most training session, grasping things on a level even the Government officials didn’t understand. 

Naturally, they had the resources to have his intelligence tested, and it was discovered that he was, objectively speaking, a genius. His IQ was higher than average, brushing similar levels like Einstein, and more greats. They wasted no time putting it to their use, testing Leon on anything and everything they possibly could. 

As he grew, things got easier and easier for Leon, and he found himself growing bored. He preferred to not try, and to be free of the responsibility that came with the never ending effort to be the best. Why try when he just was?

Eventually, Leon was approached by Linda about MRD, and the opportunity it could present him. He was a strong young man, intelligent and bold. He seemed like the perfect candidate for her test. The benefits? He could become a mutant, powerful and nearly unstoppable to most. The possible risks? He could die. Leon felt the odds were worth letting Linda do her experiments. It wasn’t as if he had all that much to lose. 

He was one fo the first few to be experimented on. He watched the others die. He watched how agonizing it was, and how their bodies basically collapsed from the inside as this foreign DNA was injected into them. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t scare him, but there was little chance he could bow out now. When it was his turn, they injected him, and they waited. Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. Nothing happened. Nothing except the way his mind seemed to morph everyone else’s. Suddenly, he was in complete control of every situation, and he loved it. 

His stint with such power was short lived, but they soon trained him to use his new found power. Not for good, no. The MRD was never about doing good that’s what x-men were for. But, they gave him near complete control over his abilities through any means necessary. He was powerful enough to win a fight without lifting a finger. 

The one success story because two, then three, and so on and so forth until Linda had gathered seven of them, and created her own little task force. 

Leon became a therapist. Not necessarily out of passion. He was nosy, he liked hearing about people’s stories, whether they were useful or not. But, he was also a great therapist with minimal effort. He knew, by some moral code kept by society, he wasn’t meant to interfere with other people’s minds in therapy sessions. But, there were times it felt necessary, and so he would wipe their concerns and anxieties from their minds. Mend their depressive episodes with ease, and they’d consider him a miracle worker. All it really was, was. a transferred thought. But, if it kept them coming back and him in business, so be it. 

There’s a new task at hand with the unfolding mutant situation. They’re tasked with, mostly, watching and waiting. Two things Leon is impressively good at. 

@c23intros

#c23intro #death tw #abuse tw #mental health tw #/the dad sin is here!!!!!

[this-is-my-jaam]

Cultural Representation in Fantasy and the Dalish pt 2.

2) Cultural bias and stereotyping in pop media

I think that everyone knows already how Westernized fantasy is as a genre already. The most popular aesthetic is a whimsical version of medieval Europe. The protagonists are usually nobility of a very Tudor English variety or some plucky small town Anglo-Saxon coded peasant with a good and honorable soul. I can think of dozens of Fantasy stories with that set-up and design. 

The cottagecore aesthetic is cute and I do like it very much, but the problem I find with this setup typically comes when the villains of the stories are introduced. Because more often than not, the villains are coded as people of color.

This isn’t Fantasy exclusive, but fantasy tropes are notoriously white coded and very often contain racist undertones, but I’ll get to that later. For now, I want to talk about how these tropes are made in the first place and how the media shapes general beliefs on cultures that they are otherwise unfamiliar with.

As I mentioned in the last post, the Dalish are based on the Romani, the Jewish, and the Native American people. 

I think that if most people were to Imagine what the Native American people are like, they would picture something out of an Old Western, some tragic drama, or Pocahontas. There are fewer depictions of Romani people, but all of the ones that I have seen are either tarot reading mystics or Esmerelda. I like Esmerelda, don’t get me wrong, but that movie is not at all accurate about Romani culture and refer to them by a slur for the whole movie. (btw the term g*psy is a misnomer given to the Roma by Europeans who mistook them for Egyptian when they first came to Europe).

None of those are really accurate to the Roma or any Native American culture from any point in history. The problem is that popular media shapes popular perception of the world and of things that we otherwise don’t understand. When movies about Cowboys vs. Native Americans were popular, those movies depicted the Native people as A) the villains B) through a lens of stereotypes and racism. When movies include Roma culture in them, it’s usually just to do some mystical mumbo jumbo and tarot readings that are not faithful to any actual practices of the Roma people.

The ‘mystification’ of the practices of people of color is also a huge bone of contention for me in pop culture and in Dragon Age. The ‘magical POC’ trope is used very often in a lot of movies in a lot of genres to provide answers, quests, and other bullshit to the white protagonists with no actual basis in the beliefs or practices of the ethnic group being used by the writers for plot progression. That or just as a gag bc ‘haha strange cultural difference isn’t that weird.’ In Dragon Age we get that pretty often with the Dalish as the player character, especially as Hawke. I love sarcastic Hawke, but sarcastic Hawke needs to stop being a dick when talking to the Dalish about their practices and culture. 

So as time went on, the stereotypes surrounding Roma culture and Indigenous culture became the common belief of what the Roma and Indigenous people actually were, which is not correct even a little. The movements for better representation in Hollywood only really gained traction in the 2010s, so people didn’t really bother putting a whole lot of effort into research and realism until then. Prior to, we ended up with nothing but negative stereotypes misrepresenting entire ethnic groups that Hollywood didn’t care to correct because there was already a successful framework for making money off of this preconceived idea of what the culture was like.

And after stories about Indigenous people evolved to no longer framing them as villains, Hollywood still fucked it up by presenting them as victims in need of a White Savior. Which brings me back to one of my biggest issues with Dragon Age and how it writes the Dalish and the Elves.

Solas reads as a White Savior to me. I like Solas, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t deny the very bad qualities that he has that just remind me of lots of old arguments from white colonizers who supported ‘Manifest Destiny’ and ‘civilizing the Native population.’ 

Take this poem from Rudyard Kipling, titled ‘The White Man’s Burden,”

Take up the White Man's burden—    Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile    To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness    On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples,    Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man's burden—    In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror    And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple,    An hundred times made plain. To seek another's profit,    And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden—    The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine    And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest    The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen Folly    Bring all your hopes to nought. Take up the White Man's burden—    No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper—    The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter,    The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living,    And mark them with your dead! Take up the White Man's burden—    And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better,    The hate of those ye guard— The cry of hosts ye humour    (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:— "Why brought ye us from bondage,    Our loved Egyptian night?" Take up the White Man's burden—    Ye dare not stoop to less Nor call too loud on Freedom    To cloak your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper,    By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples    Shall weigh your Gods and you. Take up the White Man's burden—    Have done with childish days— The lightly proffered laurel,    The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood    Through all the thankless years, Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,    The judgment of your peers!

The poem was written about the US acquisition of the Philippines from Spain after the Spanish American War in the late 1800s. America was debating whether or not to colonize the Philippines because of how far away it was. Also because the military had been aiding the Filipino freedom fighters against the Spanish and had promised them freedom when the war was won. 

Spoiler alert, they did not give the Philippines freedom.

But Kipling’s poem is claiming that it is the ‘White Man’s Burden’ to conquer the nations of ‘uncivilized’ people (of color) even if they are hated by the native people of that land. This burden was for the greater good, because the White Man could then civilize the savage ways of those people, and they would be better off for it. 

It’s a load of absolute fucking horseshit and I refuse to read or watch the Jungle book because of it, but the point is that Solas’ mission to return the Elven people to their former greatness reads very ‘White Man’s Burden’ energy to me. 

Solas considers his mission to be his burden because he is responsible for the downfall of Arlathan and destruction of the old elven people. He even tells your Inquisitor (if you romanced and are a Lavellan) not to come with him if you ask because he does not want you to see what he would become. He is willing to take on the role of the villain, hated by the rest of the world, for the greater good of restoring the elves to their former glory. 

That’s all fine and dandy except that by that he also intends to erase the modern Dalish culture and return to the culture and society of Arlathan (minus slavery). And that right there is where the Burden of duty becomes the White Man’s Burden of duty to me.

He repeatedly talks about how he hates the Dalish culture and how their lifestyle is inaccurate to what real elven culture was like in the days of Arlathan. Reminder, he compares the Dalish culture to children playing dress up. The implications that the poc coded lifestyle of the Dalish is inferior to that of the original culture really rubs me the wrong way. Especially because the original society in the days of Arlathan is a much more fantasy traditional, white-coded high elven society. So Solas treating his mission to restore Arlathan as restoring the Dalish and elven culture to what he thinks it should be really just does not sit right for me. And it bothers me that the epilogue has a lot of Dalish people just going along with it because they already have a culture, why would they just let Solas erase all of that because they were different in the past? Like yeah, they want to return to the glory of Arlathan and to stop being mistreated by humans, but I’m pretty sure they don’t want to just toss their entire way of life out the window what the fuck.

Its a very ongoing problem in fantasy fiction that the non-white coded, non-human cultures are either a joke to not be taken seriously, incomprehensible mysticism to solve the hero’s problem, or just straight up bad guys. And after the Trespasser DLC, the Dalish manage to somehow wind up in all three categories. Weeeeeeeeeee are you having fun yet?

to be cont. in part 3

#long post #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dragon age rant #dragon age fandom #i really hate rudyard kipling #dalish #dalish culture #this is separate from Dalish Redux

[grapecaseschoices]

I would love to know some facts about erkan yasar, only if u feel comfy sharing. (:

What can I say about Erkan Andrew Yasar.

He's a bitch. Stay away from him.

No seriously, I can't stand that asshole. Regularly try to kill him but they won't let me! [JK he's my good time cheese. No I do actually do try to kill him tho.]

Pfft, so Andy. I'm going with my most recent RP Andy canons. My original Andys have gone through a few fcs, various ages, different points of his life, and different genres. The main thing about Andy is always: Vengeance and Loyalty. Oh, and he is SUPER Catholic. Sooner or later God's gonna cut you down.

Okay, so Andy:

Andy was born to a very loving family. His parents were in love and they loved him very much. About when Andy was ten his parents went out and disappeared. [Where are they? I don't know. They probably died, eventually. I never thought that far, I just liked the drama of them being missing and no one finding them.]

Andy's life went through two more big moves: 1. After his parents died he stayed with his dad's sister -- and that wasn't ... the best. More or less she kicked him out. Because her new husband was a homophobe. 2. But it was best for everyone that he moved in with his mom's cousin Adrian.

Okay, I'm giving you his history and not FACTS, so below:

Andy is a former marine

He smokes and drinks like it is his job.

His actual job is florist [and bail recovery agent]. He used to work with his uncle who was an event coordinator, had a popular business. But his uncle died. [Do you sense a theme?]

He had some major in landscaping, I actually looked it up but I forgot the title. He does some charity work at times tho. The concept of home means a lot to Andy. So he is good to places that were good to him, to people who cared when they didn't have to.

Andy can schmooze, he can mingle. But he is actually a very private [and paranoid] person.

He is always impeccably dressed. I don't think he has worn anything other than suits in his life. At least not since he hit his late teens, anyway. He loves pastels, actually. And is often dressed in white or light colors. He isn't against patterns either. [You might find him in something like this.]

His apartment by contrast looks like someone barely lives in it. No effort. [TWC Andy apt is def Minimal lmao]

He is divorced. He prefers one night stands, when he bothers. You don't go home to his place. No attachments please.

His platonic relationships mean the world to him. He has no living family left that he knows of [and in his aunt's case, that he acknowledges], so all his loyalty goes to them.

He is loyal like a dog.

I personally put Andy as lawful evil, because he has a Code [also he's very Catholic. I said that right?] But a friend of mine tagged him as True Neutral, and I can see it. I like it.

Andy DOES in fact go to Church. ROFLMAO. I can't remember if I've said if he goes to confession. ahhhh. anyway.

Here is AG Andy's pinboard bc now I'm filled with nostalgia. tw for weapons, blood. Sad shit.

#oc: andy yasar #grapecase answers #anon #thanks for the ask! #ugh i miss him #ask: erkan yasar #i actually got a commission done of him #im just waiting to figure how to credit it #also andy is turkish and spanish. so he is my spicy white in many ways lmao #[also bc he kills people. that's spicy.] #his inspo was marcel gerard [and originally - haha pun - elijah but not really. mostly marcel] -- and sometimes maybe klaus lmao #but mostly marcel. with a dash of frank and matt. i like the idea of someone smooth and all smiles. the affably evil #andy ended up becoming more introverted but he can definitely still do that affably evil face when he wants #he's more of a noble demon these days i think #have to review that trope #he is also very lowkey fidgety but mostly like he often has something in his hand that he's turning around -- usually when he's thinking #or observing

[dark-cynder49]

So wait, what happened to Dark in the deleted au?

Okay... This will be a long explanation, but it gets a bit dark. For everyone and also @occatorcreator ‘s knowledge!

So in the Deleted Au, Showdown happened like normal with Second and the others surviving, but in this version, Second actually went with Chosen to see if Dark survived. Dark did survive, but was badly wounded.

Second, being the merciful guy he was, allowed Dark to continue living with Chosen, as long as Chosen promised to keep an eye on Dark and rehabilitate Dark, make him learn compassion and empathy, to which Chosen agreed.

The color gang left, Chosen took Dark back home after destroying anything relating to the virus making process, and things were going okay for a couple days, with Dark showing legit signs of guilt and reformation.

But then, Second's file was deleted by a lingering Virus. A virus that had been initially created by Dark and escaped being destroyed. Green managed to kill the virus, losing an eye in the process, after stabbing it to death.

The overwhelming feelings of anger, rage, and distraught took over Green's impulsive instincts and he went straight to Chosen, demanding he get rid of Dark. Green screamed that Dark was a danger to everyone, anything and everything of Dark's work had to be destroyed, including Dark himself.

Chosen understood where Green was coming from, being angered by the deletion of Second as well, but he couldn't bring himself to kill his only friend, who DID show immense guilt and regret. So, Chosen and Green reached a compromise.

Chosen took Dark and erased his memory. He wiped all of Dark's programming clean, with no lingering remnant of the old Dark. Chosen was begrudgingly content with the outcome, but Green gave one final warning to Chosen.

If Dark showed ANY signs of his old personality, he will kill Dark without mercy.

That threat lingered in Chosen' mind for days and weeks after. He couldn't lose Dark again. So Chosen put forth an effort to prevent that from ever happening, even changing Dark's name to Maroon.

But slowly, things began to go off the rails.

Chosen would notice small things, seeing Maroon show an interest in arachnids or biology or even how computers worked. At first, Chosen would show happiness, his old Dark would shine through, the one who didn't care about world domination. His sweet nerd who knew the scientific name of any bug you could think of.

Then Chosen would remember Green's threat and panic. He couldn't lose Maroon. So, he would wipe Maroon's program files again, starting everything over again.

This is a process that would repeat, over and over again. Chosen letting his paranoia take over and erase all the progress he had made.

Maroon didn't know any better. He was unaware to everything, but the constant wiping of his memory code was starting to take a toll on him. His eyes had turned a milky white, he's often dazed and confused, suffering from short term memory loss. He was still sweet and naive to Chosen.

The sad thing is... Green had forgotten his threat and he never went back to check on the state of Maroon. Chosen had been wiping Maroon's memory for no reason...

The only good thing now is Chosen can barely bring himself to touch Maroon. He's realized the damage he's caused and is trying to undo it, with little success.

At least his sweet Maroon seems to like arachnids...

#alan becker #animation vs minecraft #animation vs animator #cyn responds #avm the second coming #avm green #ava dark lord #ava chosen one #deleted au

[flowersbby]

Drawn to You | Corpse Husband x Fem! Reader

Warning:  Makeout, This is a lil long (I got carried away)

Word count: 3859

It was a typical night for you. You had your music playing faintly in the background while you were writing notes for your anatomy & physiology class when you felt your phone vibrate violently on your desk, which caused your French bulldog, Royal, to wake up from his snoring slumber on your lap. With an annoyed huff, you pick up your phone and notice your best friend Rae had texted you numerous times.

Rae 😴

Hey!

Among Us!

Now!

Need 10th person!

Pleaseeeeee

You stared at the messages for a minute. You were confused on why she asked you of all people. You were the opposite of the many streaming friends she had who were loud, funny, and all around GOOD at games. Your shy character would not fit well on her stream and you knew that. Plus, the only games you’ve played are Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, which requires no communication with people and you preferred it that way.

You

Why me? I’m in the middle of writing notes.

Rae 😴

There’s this person I want you to meet!

He’s really nice and you’ll warm up to the group in no time, I promise!

I won’t let them be mean to you 😤😤

They’re nice ppl anyway so they wont be mean lol

You

Okay.. let me load up my discord

Rae 😴

Yayy!

I already bought among us for you last time I was over so you’re good to go!

‘What? When did she find the time to buy the game for me? We were literally together the whole time she was here.’ You thought, but quickly dismissed it and loaded up discord. Right as you got online, you got an invite from Rae. You quickly grabbed your headset and adjusted your mic before joining the call. You petted Royal in an attempt to calm your nerves as you saw 9 peoples profile pictures appear in front of you. You only recognized Rae’s, of course.

“Hey, (Y/N)!” Rae exclaimed, “Guys, this is my best friend (Y/N)! Introduce yourselves!”

“Hi, I’m Toast!” Said the man with the toast icon. You smiled at his profile picture. You found it cute.

“I’m Jack!” Said an Irish voice. You know Jack. You used to watch his videos a lot.

“I’m Poki!” Said a girl with a really sweet voice, “Nice to meet you!” You were about to say hello back when someone else chimed in.

“Hello, I’m Felix!” You recognized that Swedish accent. He was the most well known YouTuber, of course.

“Nice to meet you!” Said a really soft voice, “I’m Sykkuno!” His voice reminded you of an anime boy. You smiled to yourself.

“Hi, I’m Lily!” Said a really cute and high pitched voice. 

“Hi everyon-” You went to introduce yourself properly until you got cut off.

“I’m Corpse.” Said a deep, attractive voice. Your eyes widened for a second, his voice catching you off guard.

“H-hello,” You attempt to say hello again but this time you’re a little shaken up by Corpse’s voice, but you get it together by petting Royal once again. “I’m (Y/N). It’s nice to meet you all!”

“Your voice is so adorable!” Says Lily. You smile at the fact that someone who’s voice is equally as adorable complimented yours.

“Thank you!” You respond, “Your voice is adorable too, Oh my God!” 

Lily giggles at your compliment. “Alright!” Exclaimed Rae, “Ready to play (N/N)?” You quickly realized you forgot to load up Among Us before hand. You were silently kicking yourself for not doing such a simple thing. Now they’re gonna have to wait longer to play because of you and they already waited long enough for you to join the discord call.

“Um..” You stall as you hurriedly click on the Among Us icon. “I’m so sorry. I forgot to load it up.. but it’s loading right now!” Your eyes are glued to the screen as if it’ll make the game boot up faster. 

“That’s okay.” Said Corpse in the most kind voice. “It won’t take that long.” You feel heat rushing to your cheeks just by hearing his voice. Who is this man and why is he making you feel like this?

They all agreed with Corpse and continued chatting about whatever they were chatting about before you joined the call. You were half listening as you were trying to figure out what to do as the game loaded up. Just as you were about to ask Rae, Corpse sent you the game code through a private message. You typed “Thank you!” as you quickly entered your name and then the game code.

“Woo! (Y/N)’s here!’ Said Rae happily. “Choose your color and your hat!” ‘Where do I do that?’ You thought to yourself but quickly found it. You wanted to be pink but it wouldn’t let you choose it.

“Why isn’t it letting me choose pink?” You asked. 

“It’s because Corpse is pink.” Explained Lily. “He took it from me too.” She said with a sad, but funny, tone.

“I can be a different color.” Corpse said and quickly changed his color from pink to white. 

“Oh, Thank you!” You said happily and picked a flower to match it.

“No problem.” He said and you could hear the smile in his voice. It made butterflies appear in your stomach.

“Are you kidding me?!” Said a laughing Lily. “I literally ARGUED with you about letting me have pink!”

“I sense something happening...” Cooed Rae in a sing songy voice. The whole group then erupted in “Ooooo’s”. This made you blush. You covered your face even though they couldn’t see you and Corpse chuckled, which only made you blush more.

Before the game started they all explained to you how to play so you wouldn’t be lost. This calmed your nerves a bit and when the game started you were happily going around the ship completing your tasks. Watering the plants was your favorite so far since you found it satisfying how the plants grew. You saw Corpse run up to you and you made your character step away a bit because you didn’t want to get killed. He instead ran circles around you and you decided to follow him for the rest of the game for safety. You both encountered Rae and Toast by the vending machines but didn’t think much of it and waited for Corpse to finish his task. Until Rae killed you and Toast killed Corpse. “A double kill?!” You shouted to yourself, causing Royal to wake up and slowly get off your lap. “I’m sorry buddy..” You said to him as he laid down in his dog bed. You turn your attention back to the screen as someone found you and Corpse’s dead bodies.

“Um, bodies found by the vending machines.” Said Felix who didn’t sound all too confident. “Jack where were you?” He asked.

“I was in..” As Jack was about to explain himself you heard a ‘pop’ emit from your headphones and saw a red dot by the messages icon. You clicked it and saw it was a message from Corpse. You completely stopped caring about the arguing going on through your headphones as Jack was trying to claim innocence.

“I like your flower :)” It read. You smiled big and immediately typed back.

Your fingers hovered over the keys thinking about what to type back but you settled on a simple “Thank you :D”.

After two games or so everyone got tired and decided to head out. You all said your goodbyes and watched as each person slowly began to leave the call. You didn’t want to leave until you were sure everybody was gone. Everybody left but Corpse. “Hey..” He said, sounding a little shy but it was probably just because he was tired.

“Hi!” You said a little too excited. You immediately wished you could reword what you said a little calmer.

“So, uh..” He began, “Could I possibly get your number? For Among Us games I mean?” He didn’t sound too sure of himself but him asking this made you beam with excitement.

“Of course.” You said calmer than before, “But I don’t know what help I’d be as I’m terrible at this game.” You giggled.

You typed in chat your number, your fingers shaking slightly. “Nah, I liked playing with you.” He said more confident, “You make it more fun. Even though I haven’t ever spoken to you before.” He chuckled. You smiled at his words. Butterflies formed in your stomach hearing him laugh.

You and Corpse chatted a bit more until he decided he should go, but you wished you guys could have kept talking the whole night. You felt this connection with him that you couldn’t put into words. It felt so easy for you to talk to him and you didn’t feel as nervous around him as the others you met today. There was something so calming about him that washed your fears away. You shook your head from the thoughts and told yourself that you just met him today, you shouldn’t get ahead of yourself but it was hard not to.

You were laying in your bed scrolling through twitter when you got a text.

xxx-xxx-xxxx

hey its corpse

is this (Y/N)?

Your heart skipped a beat. You were excited Corpse texted you so fast, hoping you two could continue talking.

You

That’s me!

I thought you were going to sleep?

Corpse🥺🖤

nah i hardly ever sleep i just left because i didnt want to keep you up

i really enjoyed playing with you

You

I enjoyed playing with you too

We should play together again soon

Corpse🥺🖤

definitely

You’ve begun to become really good friends with Corpse over the past week. You and him would facetime each other whenever you could. You always were on facetime with him, actually. Whenever you were studying, you guys were talking. Whenever he was editing, you guys were talking. When you were about to go to bed, you guys were talking. 

Right now, you guys were facetiming as you were studying for an upcoming exam and he was trying to stay awake. You liked having him around when you were studying even if it was through a phone. You didn’t feel pressured to talk or have to worry about an awkward silence with him. It was comfortable silence.

You started to worry that you were keeping him up, though. “You can go to bed if you want,” You said softly as you looked up from your textbook to the black screen propped up against a few books. “ I don’t want to keep you up. You need some rest.”

“No..” He muttered, “I like having you around..”

“I like having you around too Corpsie but we can talk when you wake up.” You told him a little sternly in an effort to convince him to go to bed.

“Can I ask you something?” He asked out of the blue.

You paused before answering and shifted your gaze to the black screen once again. “Yeah sure, go ahead.” 

“Do you want to maybe stay over here for a bit?” He asked, “Whenever you’re free, I mean. If you don’t want to I get that too I just feel so drawn to you I want you closer to me. Is that weird? I’m sorry if that’s weird. Actually, forget I said-”

“I’d love to come over.” You told him with a smile. “When would you want me to be there?”

“As soon as possible.” He said in his raspy, tired voice. Butterflies formed in your stomach and you felt your heart skip a beat. This man was something else.

“I can be over there in the morning..” You start, “I just have to pack and everything. Is it okay if I bring Royal? I don’t want to leave him with my sister.” You look over to Royal sleeping peacefully on your bed, snoring away.

“Hell yeah!” Corpse exclaimed, “I love animals! Bring him over.” You giggled at his excitement.

Corpse ended up falling asleep soon after and you ended the call. As you were getting ready for bed you began to think of what Corpse’s place would be like and what you guys would do. You were definitely going to show him Stardew Valley, that was for sure. You pondered the thought of you finally confessing to him that you wanted to be not just his friend, but girlfriend. You’ve been wanting to do it for awhile now but you get too scared and end up chickening out, so you figured if he liked you like you like him, he’d make the first move. You started to make up scenarios in your head about finally hanging out with Corpse in person as you drifted off to sleep, hearing Royal snoring peacefully in the background.

It was the next morning and as soon as you woke up you changed into your favorite outfit and began to pack. You didn’t know how long you were staying for but you decided to pack about 2 weeks worth of clothes just to be on the safe side. Royal was sitting on the floor watching you as you hurried from your closet to the suitcase on your bed. You were happily humming as you were excited about the day. You heard your phone buzz and you quickly grabbed it from your bed as you saw the name pop up on the screen.

Corpse🥺🖤

hey :) 

heres the address:

You

Thanks! and hello 😊

You two texted until you were ready to go. You were definitely NOT looking forward to driving two and a half hours from LA to San Diego but you were so excited to see Corpse that the dread of the long car ride washed away.

You put Royal into his harness and plopped him in the back seat. He looked at you confused since he rarely ever gets to go for rides in the car. “We’re going to see a friend!” You tell him while petting his head. He then laid down and began to close his eyes.

After what seemed like forever you were finally outside Corpse’s apartment. You grabbed Royal and attached his leash to his harness and then proceeded to grab your giant (and heavy) suitcase out of the trunk. You struggled getting the suitcase up the apartment building stairs but you managed. You felt a sense of relief that his apartment building had an elevator so you didn’t have to deal with more stairs. The ones at the entrance were enough. While you were waiting for the elevator to take you to his floor you took this opportunity to text him.

You

On my way up!

Almost immediately after you sent it he read it. He started typing but the three dots quickly disappeared. Before you could question it the elevator doors opened to his floor. “Come on, Bud!” You said to Royal and motioned for him to go ahead. Royal got up from his sitting stance and lead the way. After passing 2 other doors, you were at Corpse’s. You knocked two times.

You heard shuffling on the other side and the door knob turning shortly after. Before you knew it, Corpse was in front of you. His eyes were looking at yours. You immediately smiled. “Hi.” Corpse said with a slight smile as well.

“Hi..” You said shyly. You didn’t know how to react now that he was in front of you and not behind a screen. He stepped aside and motioned for you to come inside. You entered his apartment and set your suitcase by the couch. Royal was pawing at Corpse’s leg, begging for pets.

“Aww, hi buddy!” Corpse said excitedly. “He’s so well behaved.” Corpse was talking to you now.

“Yeah, it took work though.” You laughed slightly. “Your place is really nice.” You said as you looked around. You noticed all of his mirrors were covered up, but you decided not to ask him about that. He probably had his reasons.

“Thank you.” Corpse said as he looked at you. “You look pretty.”

You blushed and turned your head away from him so he couldn’t see your pink cheeks. “Thank you.”

Corpse cleared his throat, “So uh, I don’t have a guest bedroom so I’ll take the couch for however long you want to stay.”

You quickly shot your head at him. “No no no I’m not letting you sleep on the couch in your own apartment.” You argued with him.

“Well, I’m not letting you sleep on the couch.” Corpse stated.

“Then we’ll share your bed.” You said with a shrug and headed towards his room to set your suitcase down, Royal following closely behind you. You didn’t see anything wrong with it. You and Rae share one whenever you guys sleep over at each other’s house and you thought this was no different

“O-okay.” He responded and quickly followed after you, “So, this is my room.” he said as you and him both entered.

“I like it!” You exclaimed as you looked around. You liked how dark it was in there. You smiled at him and he smiled back at you. That smile.. You thought and quickly fumbled with your suitcase as you set it down by his closet. Corpse came closer to you.

“Can I give you a hug?” Corpse said a little shyly, as if I’d say no.

“Of course!” You said and wrapped your arms around his neck. He was taken aback but quickly put his hands around your waist. You caught a whiff of his mild cologne which made you want to stay in the hug a little longer. You didn’t want to be weird though and pulled away from the embrace.

“I’m really happy you’re here.” He said as he looked into your eyes. I could kiss him right now, oh my God. Your mind raced, but you managed to get out some words.

“I am, too.” You said.

It’s only been about a day since you’ve been over at Corpse’s. Sharing the bed seems to be no big deal as he barely seems to sleep. You so far liked being there with him.

Right now, you were on the phone with an overly excited Rae.

“You’re at his HOUSE?!” She yelled excitedly in your ear. Your face cringed a little bit from the yelling.

“Yeah,” You told her, “He has a really nice place.” You said as you scanned his living room.

“I knew you guys would hit it off!” Rae said, “I should be a matchmaker or something.” You blushed at her comment.

“Nothing’s happened yet.” You said quietly, not wanting Corpse to hear you.

“Girl, you’re at his house.” Rae said in a obvious tone. You rolled your eyes.

“This could just mean he likes having me over as a FRIEND.” You told her. You were hoping that wasn’t the case though and Corpse did have feelings for you. You smiled at the thought.

“You are so oblivious.” Rae said with a sigh, “Anyway, I gotta go workout. Love ya! Hope everything goes well!” She said the last part in her sing songy voice.

“Love you too!” You said back and ended the call. What do I do now? You thought. Corpse was streaming so you couldn’t hangout with him right now and your physics class isn’t till a few hours. You were hungry, though, and decided to cook some lunch for you and Corpse. It’ll be a nice surprise for him. You smiled at the thought.

You made your delicious Dorito taco salad that you love so much. You made a bowl for Corpse as well and took it to his room where he resided. He didn’t seem to be streaming anymore and was just scrolling through Twitter on his computer.

“I come with food!” You say as you place the bowl down in front of him. You seem to have startled him as he jumped slightly when you spoke. He examined the bowl suspiciously.

“What is this?” He says cautiously of your creation.

“It’s Dorito taco salad.” You explain, “It has crushed up Doritos, of course, shredded chicken, lettuce, olives, and sour cream in it.” He seemed to be skeptical of it, which was a given every time you made it for someone new, but people ended up loving it when they tasted it. You were confused as to how many people found it weird since your mom made it for you when you were a kid a ton, so you were used to the delicious lunch dish.

“Okay.” He said and took a bite of it. His eyes lit up. “Oh my god, this is so good!” He exclaimed and took another bite. You giggled with excitement that he loved it like you did.

You both ate together and laid down on the bed as you talked about random things that were going on in your lives. You guys were laughing at a joke Corpse said until Corpse got serious.

“I have to tell you something.” Corpse said and looked into your eyes.

“Okay,” You said confused, “Go ahead.”

He took a deep breath. “I like you.” He confessed, “Like, romantically. I have for awhile now actually and I don’t know what it is about you and I thought I was done with love but you make me feel so happy and different from anyone else I’ve talked to. You don’t have to feel the same way but I couldn’t keep my feelings in for any longer.”

You paused for a moment. Is this actually happening? Are you in a dream? “I like you too, Corpse.” You say softly. His eyes beam with excitement..

“Really?” He asks.

You laugh at his bewilderment. “Yes, really!”

He tackles you in a hug on the bed. You giggle from his excitement. He’s on top of you and he lifts his head up from your neck to look you in the eyes. You get a rush of emotions as you see the care and love in his eyes as he’s looking at you.

You blurt out what you were thinking in that exact moment. “Kiss me.”

He leans in and kisses you softly. One hand is holding him up on the bed as the other is cupping your cheek. You take one hand and tangle it in his hair. This causes him to deepen the kiss with you. The kiss turns rough. You’re both so in the moment you don’t want to come up for air but you guys manage to keep going by taking in air when your lips part for brief moments. The hand that was cupping your cheek is now next to your head, taking the responsibility of holding him up. The other hand is trailing up and down your thigh, squeezing your thigh tightly ever so often. You eventually break the heated kiss and look up at him. You were hoping he could see the love you had for him in your eyes.

“I liked that.” You say smiling.

He chuckled at your words. “I like it too.”

#corpse x reader #corpse husband x reader #corpse husband #corpse #fic #fanfic

[starshiningsirius]

Our adorable little junior (Yandere Vice dorm heads x reader)

The dorm heads aren't open to compromise as much as the vice dorm heads who are more civil. Surprisingly I can't find any yandere fics with all the vice dorm heads simping for one darling. Despite them being more scary, manipulative, and having more husband material.

I thank @writer-akihiko for the inspiration I had in the middle of the night to bring you this.

Color coded speaking habits are based off dorm colors and what tumblr had, so keep that in mind.

💝💗HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY 💗 💝

It all started with you wobbling through the courtyard only to bump into someone. They held on to your shoulders to keep you from falling to the floor immediately.

"Woah there! Y/n? What's up with you? You were weaving back and forth through the courtyardwith every step. Your not sick are you?" A slightly worried or rather maybe that was in your head to call it slight, maybe that was a illusion in your mixed up head.

You looked up to see a tuft of green hair with a pair of glasses that reflected golden eyes, and an unmistakable clover on his cheek.

"Ah Trey, no I was just studying for magical history a bit too late last night and now I'm --" Has Trey always felt this warm and soft? What ever the case it made him the perfect pillow as you slumped over toward him, which startled him for a second before he heard your soft snores and he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"Geez don't scare me like that, it's rather worrisome that you'd fall asleep like that out of nowhere." He held her up a bit more to have her leaning on him as support. He was able to see the calm sleeping expression you had on your face.

"Still so naive though, if it was any other guy how do you think they'd react to such a vulnerable girl in this situation." He had a faint blush on his cheeks as he pushed up his glasses and made his way to Heartsbyul with you in tow before lunch would be over.

Thankfully he made a few sweets yesterday giving you one would give you a bit more energy not to mention the look on your face that would light up would be worth it.

The next day Rook had approached you after classes. Before you could say any sort of greeting he dragged you off to Pomeifore without providing an explanation. When you both arrived tea was already made for some reason, and small treats like macaroons were set in the lounge.

"Mon chérie I heard from Rose Chevalier that your in need of some assistance in magical history, I could be of aid to you." She contemplated his words, wondering who he was talking about before immediately assumed Trey. That made sense as they were both in the science club.

The offer he made did sound very tempting, she needed as much help as she could get.

"Yes please I'll be in your care Rook-senpai!" That short phrase did send a few butterflies in his stomach.

She was just as cute as when she slept at night. He did take a few pictures without your knowledge and managed to distribute them out to the others but there were these other expressions he saved in his head that were exclusive for him to see.

The radiant smile and look of triumph you showed toward him when you understood the concept he told you about. It was much more lively, he couldn't choose what he liked more the vibrancy of your smile or the vulnerability of your sleeping expression. Either were just fine afterall you were such beautiful person one that could do anything and would still have shown its beauty in his eyes.

That ended another day for you.

The next had you struck with some bad luck. As your pocket had gained a hole in it. Whatever money you had for lunch had been lost too. If you traveled back to your dorm all the good stuff would be gone, but it would be better than starving so you left the cafeteria. On the way in the halls you saw Jade who inquired where you were off to when lunch just started.

You told him your dilemma and he told you to follow him. After walking all the way to Octanivelle in silence and entering the Mostro Lounge you thought if he was going to try and convince you to sign a contract, but he only asked you to sit at a booth and wait for him.

20 minutes into lunch and he came back with some food for you both.

"Ah, Jade you didn't have to do that! I can pay you back just tell me the cost and I'll-" He leaned over a little bit and held a finger to your lips with a closed eyed smile on his face.

"It's fine, why not enjoy the meal? I made it with your tastebuds in mind. Afterwards preferably after class I can sew up the hole you mentioned." He removed his finger, but it didn't stop your face from heating up and turning red to the tips of your ears.

The reaction was cute in Jade's eyes seeing you nod obediently and take bites of the food he made with an embarrassed expression. It was all too entertaining for him, such entertainment made his heart rate accelerate rapidly and he'd keep sneaking glances while he ate himself. For it was always wonderful to bask in your presence.

Yet another day came to an end and another began. It was on this day that you didn't have to worry about lunch either. Jamil handed to you a bento box. You thanked him with a big smile on your face.

Your bright smile radiated so much energy, it looked like you genuinely appreciated his effort he put into making this. Such a smile made him pull down his hoodie a bit more to hide his blush taking over his face.

"It's not anything impressive, but since you like it just ask and I'll have lunch prepared for us everyday. It's no trouble." For you was what he meant to say. If it meant seeing such an expression again it certainly would be well worth the effort.

"Thank you Jamil! Kalim always says your food is the best I can't wait to try it!" That caught him off guard, hearing his own heart pound and feeling his face rise in temperature he thanked the great seven he wore a hoodie.

He put it over his face and waved it off saying the same response he'd have for everyone else downplaying his own capabilities, but she eagerly denied it causing even more embarrassment on his part. God another thing Jamil couldn't stand about Kalim was when he ran his mouth.

* * *

That very same day that started with luck had dropped significantly and took an opposite turn to bad. The misfortune of bumping into a few Savanclaw students whom find simple reasons to get angry whether they started it or not.

Luckily before they could throw a punch they suddenly started fighting each other for some reason. From their conversation it didn't sound like they were in control of their bodies in the first place. As soon as it started they suddenly stopped and ran off with anger for one another after embarrassing themselves.

A voice came from behind her that startled her for a split second before she recognized it.

"You've got to be more careful, Savanclaw is the dorm to avoid picking a fight with, Y/n." Ruggie came from around the corner twisting his magical pen in between his fingertips before placing it in his pocket.

Before Ruggie could chastise his junior a bit more she ran up and hugged him.

"Thank you Ruggie! If there's anything you need then I'm at your service!" He didn't hug back. For one is was abrupt and when his mind actually processed feeling your warmth radiating off you on to him, his face flared up.

His ears twitched and he tried to occupy his mind with some other thought to preoccupy which only led him to recall your words.

'Anything? Doesn't she know that prey like her shouldn't just say whatever.' He wasn't denying the fact that the offer sounded so sweetly tempting to take her up on, but with the others taking their chances with you and him low on the food chain out of the five others he knew the risk wasn't worth it.

"No it's fine just watch yourself next time. I may not be here to help all the time."

How many times had a student helped you now?

The next morning Lilia had joined you.

The thing is while Lilia was regailing an enchanting tale of his past it kept you occupied in not noticing the five other pairs of eyes that had set themselves on watching mainly you. Whether it was them keeping an eye on their dorm heads, or on their way to their own class they kept their eyes trained for as long as they could before she left their sight.

Lilia had heard the details from Ruggie and out of all the vice heads he was the most free as the others were commanded to do things by their dorm heads or were their unofficial babysitters. Lilia of course was the strongest and most capable by far out of all six of them. So he had jumped at the chance of being able to brighten up your day with many of his travel stories.

Seemed like you were spending more time with the vice prefects more than usual. Though Savanaclaw had none Ruggie was pretty much the unofficial for it.

They were reliable, more so than their dorm heads at times, that could be said for mainly Jamil, Ruggie, and Lilia. But some had proved their skills far exceeded their position and it was known to other dorms as well, like Jade, Rook, and Trey.

But with all these people who adore one so much to the point of doing anything for her, it had to go bad at some point. Obsession festers for many reasons, like worry, denial, or paranoia.

In this case its deemed worry.

The very next day you were offering sweets you made yourself to the six of them to thank them for their aid the past couple of days. They were all so happy, nothing would damper their mood for the rest of day, knowing you appreciated how much effort they put in for you. Well of course it didn't last long it didn't matter who you went to see last, mainly either Jade or Jamil, or Rook too. They were the type to pay attention to the little things. Though this time they were a bit preoccupied with their own deeds. You had found Jamil last as you assumed he'd be busy with Kalim the majority of the day. He was in the kitchen as usual fixing tomorrow's lunch for Kalim and him, and her too.

He was happy to accept the treat until he noticed how you looked. You looked like you were spent. He noticed your smile, one they adored to the point of insanity looked forced. Not to mention it looked like you were wearing make up under your eyes, in which he assumed you were tired and had to hide your eye bags.

He tried to tap you on your forearm before you could go and leave, but when you froze and winced with a petrified look, that's when he began to notice something had been wrong than what he already had imagined. He was worried seeing as the state of your expression was slight fear, but it didn't look to be of him.

When he asked her to tell him what's wrong, you asked to first be brought in private to hear the dilemma. He decided his room would be best seeing as the desert of Scarabia at night got cold.

When they both entered she immediately broke down. Usually she always seemed so positive but this was the complete opposite. He tried comforting and coaxing you into telling him what happened, so he could eventually inform the others in their group chat and eventually you did. Though it made whatever self restraint he had held back within his life snap.

You told him of how yesterday a student came up and flirted with you. You politely disregarded him, but the student didn't get the memo. He had gripped your arm tight enough to cause a bruise. That's when you kneed him in his gut and once he let go, used your leg to make his head hit the floor with a blow to the neck, successfully knocking him unconscious. You ran back to your room after that without looking back. Then you thought back to all the good deeds recently the vice heads had done, and decided you'd haven't been showing enough appreciation toward them. That's why you gave him and the others treats.

He also interpreted that he had touched you where the bruise was located and given you slight PTSD in which he apologized for his earlier actions. You probably didn't get much sleep either. You told him it was fine since he was just trying to figure out what was wrong and that you were just caught off guard. No soon after you finished your statement did he ask to see the bruise in which you received.

Slowly you took off your blazer and uncovered the bandages located where your elbow was on the inner part where the skin was softer and bone was located. That made his heart stop to see the bruise you obtained. His thoughts ran rampant with the thought of what he would do to the person who did it. Surprisingly he was never usually angry for someone else's sake but you had made it that way.

He had to put on a front for you though and he told you to stay while he got a pack of ice to ease the swelling. While away walking through the halls of his dorm he was seething with rage. One would think if someone touched him it would be the end of that person's life when he released such anger.

He started to text in the chat where all the vice dorm heads would inform each other of their encounters and Y/n's problems to find solutions. He told them to gather in Scarabia at the fountain for an urgent situation pertaining to their favorite little junior on his phone, though he would have informed them through the chat, he was more focused on getting the ice pack. They agreed to meet up in said dorm that their junior was currently in to hear the details from him himself.

When he had finally made it back to his room he found the person of their obsession in question asleep on his bed with their blazer still in the same spot and legs dangling off the bed as to not have her shoes touch the covers. Hugging his hoodie as a pillow of sorts. He would have savored this sight if not for the tear streaks that were on your face and the prominent bruise in the same spot.

He gently placed the ice pack on her arm and brushed away the stray tears and streaks with his thumb. The sight was normal for him considering Rook had distributed sleeping pictures to all of them. This was realer than any picture though. Soft breaths rhythmic breaths and silky hair like an angel.Despite that you looked to be uncomfortable seeing as the arm you were using had to replace the other one that was bruised and probably hurt to bend. He softly sighed knowing he had to get ready as the others would arrive soon and that the situation would not be pretty for the misfortune planned that ignorant person who dared lay a finger on their favorite junior would receive.

When everyone had arrived in the meeting dorm all had sour moods to be called a bit late after set curfews in two of the dorms or just the time taking away from their leisure after taking care of tasks that came with their position.

"It seems we're all gathered here now, Monsieur Multi-Compétent why have you called us here in the late hours?" Rook had a smile on his face which was normal but he was intrigued and serious about the matter at hand.

"You mentioned it's urgent regarding to our little angelfish correct?" Jade as well had his usual smile, but the slightest glimpse in his eyes had a rather invited gaze.

"You sure you couldn't have just texted it to us, it woulda saved us the trouble of coming here." Ruggie grumbled.

"I know you all are busy, but tell me did you notice something off about her today?" Jamil inquired to the other five.

"Now that you mention it when she gave me the treats she made it seemed like she was off. I was focusing on some tasks Riddle gave me so I didn't think too much of it." Trey had thought back to hearing her call out to him in a lower tone of voice.

"She didn't seem too energetic either when she gave me mine either. Sebek was a bit of a handful so I couldn't pay attention as much as I liked to her and she said she had to go give out the others." Lilia remembers asking her to stay for a little longer but she put up a facade and said she had other things to do.

The others agreed on the same notion that today she lacked her usual energetic, positive, behavior. Since their dorm heads and first years put them through the wringer today they didn't have time to think much on it. Jamil was used to dealing with Kalim's mayhem and chaos since they were children and had learned to still be skeptic even if he was exhausted or at his wit's end.

"Exactly, seems as though someone laid their dirty fingers on her the day prior and now she's a bit broken down mentally." Jamil had informed them of the situation, fully going into depth and detail seeing their facial expressions change throughout the retelling.

"Right, now I know you all want to see her, I can do that but you've gotta be quiet. She fell asleep in my room because she wanted to talk in private. She and other dorm residents are asleep so try to keep noise to a minimum."

They all had no reservations about that. He guided them to his room in which he did have some irritation toward letting them in. Thankfully he hid the picture Rook gave him so she wouldn't see it unless she looked. Slowly opening the door to see the sleeping girl, they surrounded her unsuspecting figure. They examined her for a moment taking in the sight before noticing the tear streaks on her face and the ice pack placed near her elbow.

Seeing the ice pack on her arm Rook steadily removed it to give the others a glimpse of the injury. Some of them froze while others who usually weren't so expressive of true feelings like Lilia, Trey, and Jamil had a look of anger. The ones who were more prone to dirty methods and violence like Ruggie, Jade and Rook had a look of bloodlust for the person who dared to do such a thing, despite Jamil having already saw it.

They all exited the room and ventured to the common room, closer to the outside section.

"Such a poor unfortunate soul, he doesn't even know the enemies he made."

"How foolish of them to touch something that's ours."

"Oh Rose Chevalier, you've been rather silent, no objection to such acts?"

"Don't get me wrong I'm angry, Rook. It's not as if I can stop you all from doing something horrible to some idiot. Fights happen all the time at this school."

"I'm sure I could find the idiot in no time, it's much easier to catch unsuspecting prey!"

"Since you all have your 'plans' I'll go and make a potion to rid her of that unsightly injury that foo-, I mean so she won't have to feel anymore pain."

"Since that's all finished what do you all suppose we do about her?"

"We've got to keep a better eye on her."

"Yes that much is clear, but with all of us having to be so busy all at once, going about that is rather difficult."

"Especially since she's a lot more frail, if the student were a beastmen then she probably wouldn't have gotten away."

"I propose we reveal ourselves to our angelfish. She may not like it at first, but it's clear that unless we know where she is at all times then we can't ensure her safety."

"Whose dorm is best suited to keep her there?"

"I was going to offer up my own, I'm sure your dorm heads would condemn our act of unsavory deeds, but Azul is different of course. Just let me handle all the details."

"As expected of Monsieur Mastermind, fully equipped to handle the situation."

"While that is going on, Ruggie how about you bring that cretin to Diasomnia, I'd love to have a chat with him. Don't worry I'll make sure no one is nearby to hear his fate."

"Ah, okay. Better than bringing him to my dorm and having to clean up a mess."

"Oh how about you let me in on your conversation, Monsieur Curieux, and I'll bring a few things to aid in the clean up Monsieur Dandelion!"

"Trey I need a favor."

"Depends on what the favor is?"

"I heard you can change the taste of something with your unique magic. Can you cast a spell on the potion before she drinks it? She's already suffered enough a disgusting potion is an easy fix."

"That's nothing, too complicated. Hand it over to me when it's finished once it's done."

* * *

Screams could be heard within the bounds far away from Diasomnia. Near the edge of a cliff stood three people while another person was on the ground. Burned, bruised, and battered not to mention a few broken bones, and loss of some organs devoured. They were proud of what they did to say the least.

Ruggie had the most blood on him mainly around his mouth while Lilia had some on his hands, Rook had a blade coated in it and still managed to get some on him. The lifeless corpse on the ground was where the blood had originated from as they tossed it off the cliff.

Lilia had cast green flames in order to rid the evidence. It was easy for Rook to cast a spell to clean their clothes with. Now they just have to go meet up with the others.

* * *

Based off the decorum of the room, she could only assume she was in Octanivelle. That's where she had woken up, but she remembers Scarabia last. Soft covers on top of her were thrown off as she hurriedly looked around the room to see no one.

She tried to go toward the door and twist the knob only for it to not budge. Using magic as well didn't move the door an inch. Her pen was gone too, so she was limited without its usage. Not to mention first years only knew so much less you came from a country where magic usage was prominent like the Valley of Thorns then it was likely you weren't to know much before entering school.

She sighed and took a moment to sit back down on the bed she woke up on and think why she was brought here. The last person she saw was Jamil, and she was in his room last but that didn't spark anything as to how she ended up here. She hoped at least that Jamil was okay if she was here by force then he might have tried to stop the captors and got hurt in the process.

The door opened after about an hour she heard the key being inserted. It revealed Jade who stepped in the room with a smile and revealed five others who came in with Lilia slowly shutting the door back closed.

All of them she recognized were Vice dorm heads who she had spent time with the past couple of days. She didn't open her mouth yet still trying to piece things together, and the first to come to mind was that they brought her here. Connecting the dots over the past several days she spent time with them more than anyone, and they each seemed to know her problems or were curious about them.

She just couldn't understand why though. Nothing added up and when she glanced at each of them a nervous shiver came through her body.

She finally decided to speak.

"Why, .......... would you do something like this?

"Because prey like you, has to be protected."

"Such a sweet thing could easily be devoured."

"That's why your such delicate and fragile flower."

"Precious and meant to be protected like the most valuable treasure."

"Mon amour we do commend you for defending yourself but fret not,"

"Our dear little angelfish we'll fix all your problems so that you have no worries."

Masterlist

#twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst #my jamil simp hours #my rook simp hours #vice dorm leaders #rook hunt #jamil viper #twisted wonderland rook #yandere rook x reader #yandere rook hunt #yandere jamil viper x reader #yandere jamil viper #yandere jade leech #yandere jade x reader #yandere jade #yandere ruggie bucchi x reader #yandere ruggie #yandere ruggie x reader #yandere ruggie bucchi #yandere lilia vanrouge x reader #yandere lilia vanrouge #yandere trey clover x reader #yandere trey clover

[resusheart]

After surgery (part two)

I raced to cubicle number three once again, her lips and fingernails had a bluish color, I watched her move her chest desperately, using all accessory muscles to breath, but she just couldn’t, the team had already lowered her bed to be totally flat, had taken the pillow from under her head and after tilting her head back, placed the ambu bag over her mouth and nose. She was still awake and I could not sedate her enough because of her weakened state. We had to aspirate her first. After pressing the ambu bag five times, I asked for the suction tube and slid it deep into her lungs, she was shaking as I did this, slowly losing consciousness. Her heartrate was shooting straight up, something I definitely didn’t want to happen to her recently sutured heart. Her blood pressure tanked while I was suctioning. Shit!  I gave the order to start chest compressions. This was going to be a mess. Every time her chest sunk from the pressure, her belly popped out. One could even hear the sound of both sides of the sternum rubbing against each other, and I am sure I heard a rib pop during the maneuvers.

The resident was trying to intubate her and failed, once, then twice, blood was coming out of her mouth so the nurse suctioned her again. Her eyes, open, staring into nothing, pupils sluggish, but I had to do something, this was not over yet. I asked for a pause to feel pulses, but even with chest compressions they were mostly absent. I had to crack her chest and at the same time, get her airway taken care of. So we started doing both things at the same time. While team B was performing an emergency cricothyrotomy to get a breathing tube in, we (team A) were spraying her chest with betadine to open her up. I knew something was wrong inside the cavity because her blood pressure couldn’t hold. The clock was ticking and I had to find out what it was and do it fast.

Her chest was sterile, I couldn’t open her up through her sternum because I had wired it shut just a few days earlier and it would take too long to go in that way, so I placed the scalpel on the fifth intercostal space and made a long incision. I quickly placed the rib spreader and was immediately splattered with blood that had accumulated inside the chest. Blood products were already being warmed and placed in the rapid infuser. I used suction and surgical gauze to try to clear the space so I would be able to see the bleeding site.

It was crazy and things happened quickly. The patient now had a breathing tube sticking out of her neck, two new lines had already been placed and we had asked the OR to be ready for us. The team started the pumps with blood units and I put my whole hand inside her chest. With my fingers, I reached to feel her barely beating heart to position my hand correctly and began compressing it firmly. While doing so, I felt the leak that was causing all these problems. Every time I pumped the heart, blood poured out of one of the veins that fed it directly. I asked for a clamp and immediately closed the hole. I kept massaging the heart internally, sterile drapes wrapped around my arm as the team tried to cover the wound (with my arm still in it) getting ready for transport to the OR. They released the brakes of the bed and we started rolling. I was walking, but my only focus was compressing the heart and getting enough blood flow to avoid any brain damage, if possible, while we got to surgery and I could fix her heart once more. When we got to the operating room, a junior surgeon took over the internal massage while I went to wash all over again and change my clothes. I was practically drenched in blood, so I was looking forward to getting on some clean, warm surgical scrubs. In the meantime, the junior surgeons were placing the patient in a proper position to continue the surgery and placed the lines to bypass the heart and divert the blood flow to the heart-lung machine. I quickly positioned myself in a comfortable position to start the surgery, with the machine now humming. I injected the extremely cold paralyzing agent straight into the heart muscle and began the surgery. Her poor mangled heart has gone through a lot. I was very careful, fixed the tear in the vein and checked that the heart valves had not been dislodged in all the resus efforts.

So now, all patched up, it was time to get that heart beating again. Because blood flow to the brain had been reduced for a long time we were going to do things differently this time. We were going to keep her body colder than average. We didn’t start the process of heating up her body, the fluids that we were introducing were not warmed up. If she was to have a chance at a normal life, I would have to keep her in induced hypothermia for at least 48 hours.

But first, I had to get her heart beating again. With sutures placed in the artery and vein and the removal of the clamps, blood began flowing back into her heart. It didn’t move at all. It had sustained injuries during CPR and was not looking great. It was not swollen yet and that is what I would try to avoid by cooling her down. I massaged it once more, as I had done hours before, but this time, it was colder and not surrounded by a pool of blood. I was hoping to get a small hear beat. I was begging in my head: “Come on, give me something to work with!” But the heart muscle stood still. I injected epi followed by amiodarone and massaged it once more for a while. It began moving a bit. I injected more epinephrine and hoped her heart would pick up the beat. Finally, it began quivering, I waited for it to find a rhythm on its own, but it didn’t, so I asked for the internal paddles, I placed them carefully around the heart and asked for 20 joules. The shock made the heart jump and the rest of her body contract gently but after a pause, her heart kept beating erratically, I asked for 30 joules and another dose of epi. The shock was more visible this time, her whole body shook in a single movement and then stood still. I couldn’t get a regular rhythm though. I decided to max out the epi and another dose of amiodarone before giving it another shock with the maximum dose acceptable for internal paddles, 40 joules. I held my breath and shocked her again. This time her body visibly jumped a bit with the shock. I sighed with relief when her heart began beating softly at a regular rhythm. She was OK…. for now. The junior surgeon proceeded to close the chest and I watched the EKG closely, her heart was beating at a steady pace but the blood output was small. If she didn’t improve we would have to consider using ECMO, but right now my main concern was keeping her at 30° Celsius (86°F) to prevent as much inflammation as possible in her heart and brain. I was trying to give her the best chance to live, but I knew, that right now, her chances of survival without serious brain injury were around 1%. We just had to wait and hope. I thanked everyone and left the room. After I had finished my notes I went into her ICU cubicle. She had a cold air blanket covering her whole naked, mangled body. New electrodes had been attached to her chest, running a permanent EKG, her brain function was also monitored through electrodes placed in her forehead under the cold water helmet the ICU team had placed on her head. Her core temperature was being monitored intravenously. She was heavily sedated. I was just hoping she would make it through the next 12 hours. Then I glanced at the window and realized it was dawn already. I thanked the teams that had worked the code hours before and left the hospital to get some sleep back home. While in the car, I kept remembering her pale skin, cold to the touch, her bluish lips and all the equipment surrounding her that always reminded me of old sci-fi movies. She was now my sleeping beauty, resting in her chilly sleep. And we had to wait and find out, first if she would survive, then, if she would have neurological deficits and what they would be. But, for now, we both needed to rest. I took the coastal highway to my apartment taking in the beautiful views, got home, changed into my most comfortable sweatpants and rested for a few hours, then went to the gym and took a dip in the pool. I had not heard anything from the hospital. No news is good news. I would go back in the evening to check on her again. I trusted the ICU team completely, so I ate a snack, relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon

#openheartsurgery medicalfetish resusfetish icu surgerystory

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

S3 ep5

Current emotional status: FEAR

Cthulu Max has been on the rampage for a whole week!?

Ew, the narrator

Oh man, are they sending the airforce after him?

I really like Cthulu Max's design

Momma Bosco 💗

Oh hey, Norrington and Papierwaite are alive.

Superball are you saying you tried to send the Maimtrons up Max's--

Also he's acting president while Max is... deposed of.

Superball is only giving Sam until 6am :(

Featherly!

"Wandering around the moleman tunnels is no fun without Max."

"You got it all wrong, we're trying to help Max." "We will help him... to a generous serving of ass whooping."

"That is one rabbit who will be multiplied... into 2,000 smoldering pieces."

Carol ran off with Blustet

"I only want her to be happy, is all." Aw, Curt

Superball just admitted to having separation anxiety from Max

Ok Momma can't come but Papierwaite and Norringron can.

I like Norrington :)

GASP

Is it?

It is!

SYBIL!!!!

RETURN OF THE QUEEN

Oh, she is very pregnant

She was a wizard at one point?

She's gonna help!

Superball there's no such thing as acceptable losses

Abe has his body back

"Four score and seven tons of raw power"

HE CAN FLY NOW!?

Sybil, I love you, but why did you mod someone else's car???

Grandpa Stinky I love you

Oh, he just handed us the recipe for once.

Asdfff the spore maxes swarming Grandpa

They stole Grandpa's hotdogs

"We must feed the host! Piglets and sphinkters make us stronger!" "We regret nothing!"

Grandpa hasn't slept in three years

Sam just casually taking the last of Grandpa's corndogs

The spores are trying to get it

Lol Sam slapped them

Sal's alive!

He's hiding from Sam :(

Lol we can control Cthulu Max with Corndogs

Ew, the cornstarch got mixed in with the giant puddle 🤢 Looks gross

Love how Sybil completely ignores the Flaming Max head

Also the look of disappointment on the spore's face made me laugh

Fifth trimester???

The way the one Max spore by Grandpa's truck is bobbing in circles with his mouth open is making me laugh.

Sam showing concern for Sybil because she’s preggers 🥺

Her being pregnant with Abe's child implies that statues have working genital in this universe

She put a weiner scented airfreshener in the desoto

At least Sam and a Max spore seem to like that (of course they do)

"Sybil you're the best!" Hell yeah she is!

Sam's mind went to the color bar codes to prevent being traumatized by Sybil's oversharing

We drowned the desoto

Asdfgh Sam just botched slapped one of the spores for trying to say "that's none of your damn buisness."

Ew, Max's spine is pointing out

Oh hey, Satan and Jurgen

Why is Jurgen wearing his old fashioned clothes instead of his emo clothes?

Lol Sam snuck into frame to shout "Go Mets! New York rules!"

"--besides it's just a good and noble thing to do." "You're not familiar with my previous work, are you?"

"Sam, what happened to you to make you so cynical?" Gee, Jurgen, I wonder what could have possibly happened.

Oh so the water tower counts as vegetable oil because Momma did something to it

Pfft we can replace Satan's microphone with a corndog

Omg they jumped off the building to avoid Max

Oh, they're fine, and the oil is in the giant puddle.

I'm thankful to Featherly for giving us an egg but I'd have preferred not to watch him lay it. Granted it was just in a cartoon way but he still made weird noises

Also TRANS FEATHERLY 2021

"I desperately wanted to see that, sir. Ask him if he'll lay another one."

Oh hey, the Flaming Max heads helped heat up the giant desoto corndog

Since I'm playing this in 2021 the Maimtron's song references are super dated, which defeats Superball's efforts

Oooh! A unique opening sequence???

Oh this music is jazzy af

Sam really doesn't like the Max spores

Sam how do you already know what Max's insides look like???

"Even when he's not a collasal monster Max's food comas can last for weeks."

Ok we wake Max up with the coffee beans, right?

Yup!

The gi Max spore is so sad he doesn't get to come 😢

"But I'm a horrible monster!"

"I suppose Max's brain always looks like a living room?" "Well, Max is host to all kinds of weird parasites, and he likes to he a good host!" WHAT

No really, this brings up so many questions about lagomorphs. Are they some kind of Symbiote or something?

And a previous episode confirmed Max is amphibious

Max has tumors!!!

It shocked Sam!

"Eugh! Get away fake Max!" "Do you find my warmth... alarming, Sam?"

"What do nightmares taste like, anyway?" "Pepsi"

Max wants to be author 💗

He also writes fanfiction about Flint 🤣

I'd unironically read his books.

Tina Belcher voice: Friend fiction

Max has an experimental fusion jazz band???

"He just killed a great white shark--"

Max being completely unable to describe a woman is very gay of him. Good for him.

Max's brain teleported everyone to different parts of the body.

Found Sybil in the gym/legs

The brain is broadcasting Sam's thoughts???

Sam couldn't think of a joke for the medicine balls :(

"Wow Max is looking pretty buff. Would it be too weird if I asked him to turn around?"

Sam! Stop thinking bad things about Sybil's pregnancy she can hear you you putz!

She's upset with him now

"Can you believe this guy?" "I find the entire situation to be very contrived and misogynistic." Same spore Max, same.

Sam stop being so mean omg!

"I changed Sybil, I totally get the whole parenthood thing now." "Really now?" "Tax deductions."

In Max's inventory now

Y'know, I never really thought about it as a storage house

Hit The Road reference :3

Baby roach hatched in

"Pa..papa?" "Now I am little champion, now I am!"

Max has a Maximus shrine

Sam turned into a roomba!

Aw, he named it Sam Jr 🥺

We won Sybil back through his love of Sam Jr

Found the conjoined twins

Huh, Max lost as eye. Does that mean he has a glass one, or do lagomorphs have regenerative abilities?

Pfft we have to play twister to control his arma

The brain is messing with things again

Oh, we need a roach to operate the game because of radiation

Well, let's kidnap Sal

Oh, poor Girl Stinky. She's really going through it

Aw, Sal feels bad

Sal?

Honey, are alright?

He's dying???

He's not immune to irradiation!?

Oh no, he's gone

I'm so sad 😞

Gotta pick up Sam Jr. Before I control Max

They mad Max do a magical girl pose

Ugh the narrator is back

Wait, what?

He's Max's brain??? SUPEREGO???

WHAT

"I was always ignored" Yo if my super ego was as pretentious as you I 'd ignore it too 😤

He wants to kill himself and Max???

I know Max had a self loathing complex but holy shit

The super ego is perfectly fine with destroying half the east coast what a jerk

Just noticed Sam's tie is red. Had no idea about this while drawing PI!Sam lol

We have to help Max get his memories back to use the ASTRO projector

Skunkapes has three Sam clones imprisoned

Sam had canon ocd?

Gasp Gordon???

No, it's Sammun Mak

I love him, little child tyrant

Just make him a mobile brain in a jar and let Sam and Max adopt him

Why is Grandpa here?

He isn't talking like Stinky

Too polite

Sam sees it too

He's a space gorilla

They switched brains?

Found the cloning g chamber

Let's go to Momma's first

CONE OF SHAME CONE OF SHAME CONE OF SHAME

Superball is "wracked with guilt"

"Keep it together Superball. Sam will be able to save the day. He always does."

Ok, let's go to the cloning facility

I'm still thinking about poor Sal yo

FLIIIIIINT!

He's punching space apes!

Girl Stinky really playing up the evil Mistress role

The doggleganger has a bomb on him!!!

Wait so Girl really is a mermaid??? I thought that was just her aestetic

God I love Flint

Haha we tricked Skunkape with scooby doo villain tactics

Got the robot

Her water broke... and it was pennies

Max wants to save Sybil! 😭🥺💕

Super Ego is here

Oh now he wants to save Max

The only thing here are those records

Super Ego waved goodbye

Cthulu Max is cute when he cries

Wait What?

His head is on fire!

The maimtron hit him!

He waved goodbye... and teleported away.

He exploaded!!!!

He promised he'd take Sam with him and he didn't!!!!

AAAAAAH

I thought the dead Max thing was popular angst fanon fic thingy!

We're cloning Max?

It didn't work 😭😭😭😭😭

Superball ran off crying

Oh God the credits are just Sam walking sadly what the hell

He's not even stopping to fight any crime 😢

💔💔💔

God the way he's clinging to himself

What?

The elevator???

MAAAAX

he's back???

Past Max???

He blew his Sam up???

Wait hold on I'm glad they're together again but this doesn't fix anything

There's so much trauma from this season

All the horrible things that happened during 301-304 happened in like 3 days tops, then Sam had to deal with Max being a monster for a week before watching him die!

And the new (?) Max had BLOW HIS SAM UP!!!

And they left the franchise like that for a decade????

What the hell?

I want to be happy but this shit is going to consume my brain for the next week at least what the hell

Aaaaaaah!

Like maybe they really do just brush it off but it feels unlikely

I know Max has a connection with his other selves so it'll be easier for him to adjust but certainly Sam is going to notice the discrepancies since he doesn't get the same deal

Someone told me there were multiple endings hold on

Aw, they walked off into the sunrise together

But still

AAAAAAAAH

#sam and max #freelance husbands #sam and max freelance police #sam & max #sam & max freelance police #freelance police #lee plays sam and max #305 #what the hell #flint paper #agent superball #momma bosco #sybil pandemik #sal s&m #general skun ka'pe #girl stinky #sammun mak #don't @ me I'm crying

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

#film noir #neo-noir #criterion channel

[needs-to-stop-looking-at-yigas]

Say, could we get something painfully fluffy and adorable with Kohga planning something special for his bff Mipha's birthday? 👉 👈

So sorry it took so long to get to you- but let's do it! This was before my stuff closed, so lucky you!

"Higher! I said HIGHER!"

"Unless you throw some weed my way, my ass can't GET HIGHER."

Kohga was about to bark more orders at Von, as clearly the banner wasn't high enough, before he heard the signal of Sooga's whistle. They all scrambled into hiding as Sooga and Daruk walked in, carrying all sorts of bags and boxes while Mipha sat there, nursing some berry ice cream.

"Are you sure Kohga meant for me to get this much? I truly just did want ice cream."

"Kohga insisted we buy you anything you looked at, so we did."

Daruk chuckled, lightly nudging Sooga, almost making him falter.

"Besides! Couple of big guys like us? We can carry all this, not a problem! Whatever on your big day, lil fish!"

She giggled upon recalling it. She looked around, raising a brow.

"Where exactly...IS everyone? I could've sworn Kohga said to be back by now-"

"SURPRISE!!!"

The poor dear nearly jumped out of her scales as everyone revealed themselves from their hiding spots. She laughed in relief upon realizing it was just for her birthday.

"Oh Kohga! I should have known you were up to something! I was WONDERING why you didn't go shopping with me!"

Kohga embraced her, handing some guy her ice cream to hold.

"Trust me, it was hard, really it was! But it was worth it! You like the decor? Cil color coded it!"

"It's quite lovely! Truly I-oh!"

She exclaimed as she was suddenly hoisted off of the floor, into a rather fancy looking chair. Kohga sat in his own chair, and was far more comfortable with the pampering than the princess was.

"I don't want you to lift a FIN, little red. For today, these guys listen to me, AND you! Sooga, put her stuff down, get the gifts from our room!"

Sooga loaded the stuff onto Daruk, before obeying. Mipha tried not to laugh at the even more than usual pampering.

"Kohga, this is a bit excessive-"

"Compared to my birthday, this is mellow. Trust me. Now! While we wait for Sooga to hurry his hot ass up- let's get you some snacks! You look starved!"

Kohga clapped his hands, and right away snacks were brought to them. Roasted lotus seeds, sea salt caramels, blue lemonade-pretty much all her favorite snacks. She accepted them gratefully, and she couldn't help but tuck in. Kohga was a wonderful cook, and he clearly made it all just to her liking. Sooga came in just a second, even more boxes in his hands. Some big, some small- all clearly wrapped by Sooga. Daruk whistled as he leaned against her chair.

"Woah. Don't think the goddess Hylia got half as many gifts."

"Fuck Hylia, only Mipha matters. Go on, pick one!"

She couldn't tell him yet. Maybe just open a few gifts, he clearly went through so much effort. She looked at the gifts, and picked a small box, almost hidden amongst everything else. Kohga grabbed it, and handed it to her.

"I knew you'd pick that one first. You're gonna love it."

He was so excited, it warmed her heart. She opened the box, and pulled out a small, metal yiga symbol. She looked it over curiously, before she saw the little clip.

"Oh! It's supposed to go on my jewelry, isn't it?"

"Yes! You can't get the tattoo, unfortunately. So I decided you should carry the brand a different way! You're a part of us, afterall!"

"Oh...Kohga that's sweet. Really it is-"

"Here, I'll put it on for you!"

She let Kohga lightly tilt her head up in order to clip it on her neck piece. It dangled from her like a dog tag, and despite the obvious color clash, she adored it.

"Thank you. It's very lovely, and I'm quite touched. But uh, Kohga-"

"Hold that thought! You gotta open this one next! Here!"

Kohga put a rather big box on her lap, and she inspected it. She unwrapped it, and pulled out a rather fancy looking tea set. It held the traditional Yiga colors, but she could tell they were quite new. Black, with golden rims, speckled In hand painted red flowers.

"Oh...Kohga. Did you make these yourself?"

"Well, Sooga made the actually pottery, I painted it. I saw your tea set at home- too much silver. Red and black, THATS a good color scheme right there. I even got you just the nicest box to put it in!"

"Kohga, this is absolutely LOVELY. Truly. I adore it and I will cherish it. But, there's something I-"

"Save it, I know what you're gonna say."

"You...do?"

Kohga got up from his seat, and she frowned, thinking she had upset him. He nodded.

"Yep! You wanna tuck into the cake already! I get it, presents totally come after, dunno what I was thinking! Sooga! Cil! Need some big boys to help me out here!"

The three of them disappeared into the kitchen, and Daruk took the opportunity to bend down to her level.

"Wow. I knew he was gonna be kinda much, but this is. Super overkill."

"Oh he just wants to make sure I have a good birthday! Once we have some cake, we'll tell h-oh good goddess in the sky."

Sooga and Cil struggled to push out the biggest cake you've ever seen. As in, the size of her father type of massive. They stared at it in clear shock, basking in its shadow. Kohga gestured to it with a motion of his hands.

"Ta da! Nice, right? I spent SO long on this puppy! I know I call you little red, but I get blue and white are kinda your favorite colors!"

Six giant layers of cake. Wrapped in blue and white lace, flowers, even fishes, all made of either chocolate or frosting. Sooga sighed in relief when he realized he could stop pushing it.

"Kohga spent, quite literally, days on this. He wouldn't cook anything else. I ate frozen fish for dinner last night-"

"Sooga this ain't about you. ANYWAY, I made all your favorite flavors! I couldn't pick just one! First you got cherry and lemon, then you have chocolate with sea salt carmel filling, the tropical cream, I put extra coconut and palm fruit in there for you, key lime, red velvet, wild berry cheesecake, and of course, my banana foster cake! Now I know this is a lot for you, so let's take it one bite at a time-"

"Kohga!"

She butted in. He stopped, turning to her, almost looking...sad. She cleared her throat.

"Kohga. This is...incredible. And all your work is very near and dear to me. But I have a party at Zora's domain, and I unfortunately cannot stay here and enjoy all of this."

He looked confused, before banging his fist on his arm rest.

"W- no WONDER no one I invited showed up! I was thinking your own man wasn't coming!"

"You're...not upset?"

"Pfft! No! Just means we're moving the location! Sooga, Cil, you guys get some ice on this puppy here, foot soldiers, you're all in charge of the presents- rest of you, come on, we're taking this party to the domain!"

Mipha yelped as her seat was suddenly lifted high off the floor, alongside Kohga's.

"W-are they REALLY going to carry us THAT far?!"

"Yep! Enjoy the ride little red!"

Sooga and Cil watched as they were carried off, before looking at the cake.

"Sooga?"

"Yes?"

"Are we really gonna push this thing all the way to the zora's domain?"

"Yep."

"In the desert. Past the woods. Down wet, slippery rocks?"

"Yep."

"For Mipha."

"Yes."

"...I hate my life."

#asks #Kohga #Sooga #Cil #Mipha #Daruk #it was a trip and a half #sooga never felt so exhausted #and mipha never felt so adored and pampered

[btsslowburnfic]

The Arrangement Ch 17

Story summary: Desperately in need of money, you answered the questionable ad. AKA-Arranged marriage AU featuring Y/N and Yoongi

Chapter Summary: Part one of the photoshoot

Previous Chapter here

The work week proceeded as normal. Well, what had become normal. Delivering coffee and reminding Yoongi to eat, answering emails, trying to figure out which meetings Yoongi actually needed to go to and which ones were a waste of time. Of course you always went to the meetings, and holy shit you couldn’t believe the topics couldn’t have been discussed via email. You were looking forward to this particular day because you got to go visit Hoseok in the style department and Jimin had decided he was tagging along “for funsies.”

Yoongi was supposed to go and get measured and try on clothes for his photoshoot. When you reminded him that morning he laughed at you, “Uh no. Hoseok knows what size I wear. He can figure it out. Go look at the clothes and I might try some of them on tonight.”

You and Jimin met up for lunch and then headed up to the styling department.

“I’m excited. I’ve never been to a photoshoot before.” You said bouncing up and down in the elevator. 

“Yeah, they’re pretty boring actually. Like if it’s with some of the hotter models it’s a little fun for the eye candy, but then you feel bad for them because they have to sit for so long  making awkward faces. They are constantly getting their make-up and hair touched up. Touch base with craft services to make sure there’s plenty of water. The lights are bright.”

You took out your phone, “Oh thanks. I wouldn’t have even thought about that. Any other tips?”

“It’s Yoongi. It won’t take as long as it does with the other people. He’ll show up, do it, and leave. JK and Tae, especially Tae, want to chat with everyone on set and if they are together it takes foreeeeevvvveeeeeerrrrr.” 

“Huh, ok. Thanks.” The two of you arrived at JHOPE Fashion and walked through the rainbow vomit doors. 

Hoseok was wearing glasses with yellow lenses today, which made his dramatic facial expressions stand out even more. He immediately rolled his eyes. He pointed to you. “You are not Yoongi.” He pointed to Jimin. “And you are not Yoongi.” He put his hands on his hips. “So why are the two of you here?” 

“I’m sure you can guess why.” You responded dryly.

“Ugh. That ungrateful man. I had lovingly hand stitched these pieces. For him. These patches...” Hoseok pressed his fingers together as though he was praying. “Fine. Fine. You. Y/N. Come. You. Jimin. Wait right there.”

Jimin’s eyes went wide. “Me? Why do I have to wait here?” 

Hoseok turned from where he had started to walk towards the back. “You will thank me in a minute. A certain someone is coming to get his fitting in a few minutes.” He raised an eyebrow and then turned around, his heels clacking against the red tile floor.

Jimin started to blush profusely and before you could ask, Hobi interrupted, “Come new girl. We have work to do especially if that boss of yours refuses to come here and experience these magnificent beauties for himself.”

You followed him through the large door, which led to lime green hallways and then to a quiet, more muted workspace. The walls were lined with fabric bolsters, the middle tables with ribbon, thread, patches, paint. Paint? 

Hoseok sat down. “From what I understand, this album will have an acoustic feel to it versus his previous albums. For that reason I have chosen these natural materials such as cotton, linen, and denim.” He spread out several pieces onto the large table. “I have also opted for a more neutral pallet, as much as it hurts my soul. I have chosen colors found in nature. I have chosen brightly colored accessories such as these silks to stand in contrast with the stiff fabric and more neutral colors he will be wearing. Additionally, I avoided black. We’ll see if he notices.” 

You watched as he draped the red and purple silks over the top of the clothes. For whatever reason, you found it mesmerizing watching the fabric juxtapositioned in such a way.  “It’s so cool to hear you tell a story just using clothes.” You said, somewhat enchanted.

Hoseok flicked his eyes up to you, “Thank you. That is what I try to do with my collections. Everyone’s outfit tells a story, even if they don’t mean for it to. May I?” He asked, stepping back and gesturing at you.

“Oh man. You know I don’t dresses fancy--”

“Shhhh you don’t tell me.” He looked at your outfit. You had opted for an Aline skirt and blouse with a casual blazer.  “You had meetings this morning, that’s obvious by the jacket. You usually dress cuter. Which means you are either sick or not feeling great. You look fine. So I’m guessing...you are on your period. Sorry, this just comes out, I can’t stop it,” he paused for a moment as your jaw dropped open slightly. He stepped closer, inspecting the shoulders of your jacket. “The blazer is at least ten years old but you shouldn’t have had a blazer ten years ago unless it was for your school uniform and that isn’t a school jacket. Which means it probably belonged to an older sister or aunt. You are very responsible and well organized otherwise you wouldn't be Yoongi’s assistant. Therefore you are most likely the oldest or only child so that is your aunt’s jacket. Your blouse is nice. You actually like it, you’ve worn it twice in the week you’ve been working here. You bought it at a thrift store. You don’t spend a lot of money on yourself, but you are very confident. Therefore, it’s not that you don’t think you deserve nice things, it’s just that you can’t afford them so you likely grew up poor and it has continued into your adulthood.”

“Holy shit. You should be a detective.” You said to him.

“The shoes, I gave you last week. They don’t have a story yet, other than a very good -looking man in a suit helped you out because Jimin said you were a nice girl. You wear zero accessories which shows a lack of both funds and sentimentality. Most people have at least one piece of jewelry that means something to them, but if you have one, you don’t wear it.” He smiled at you, his white teeth gleaming. “ Now, how much am I right about?” He crossed his hands in front of his chest.

You clapped your hands as though you were in an audience. “All of it. Although I am still weirded out that you know I’m on my period. Next time I’m going to wear something skin tight to throw you off.” You joked.

“Well,” he started, “At least now that you work here you don’t have to worry as much right?”

Given the shitshow you went through this weekend you weren’t sure about that, but you shrugged, “It definitely pays better. And money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure helps make some things less hard.” You gestured to the pile of fabric on the table, “So...what do I do? Take these clothes with me for Yoongi to try on or will they be at the photoshoot tomorrow? Do I need to bring them to the photoshoot?”

Hoseok sighed dramatically, “I could dress Yoongi drunk, in my sleep. He can just show up tomorrow and I will dress him then. My staff will make sure the clothes and accessories are at the photoshoot. Here,” He walked over to one of the garment racks. “More clothes for you. I know you have a big closet. And if you run out of space, just take Yoongi’s, he only wears like three things despite my best efforts.”

You laughed, “Yeah, you’re not kidding. Ok thanks,” You took the clothing. “I appreciate it.”

“It’s no trouble. Feel free to see yourself out, I’ll see you tomorrow. Oh and please make sure the catering has strawberries.”

“Strawberries? Got it.” You were learning so much today. 

You exited the backroom and saw Jimin over near one of the pedestals. He was chatting with JK who was getting fitted with a corset. What an itty bitty waist, you admired. The two of them seemed to be having a good time and you had a new list of things to do so you waved at Jimin and headed to 1802 to drop off your new clothes. You had forgotten Hoseok knew you lived with Yoongi. The week had flown by.  

You sent a text message to Jiwoo asking if you could stop by her desk and ask her a few questions to make sure everything was set up for tomorrow and then stopped by the apartment.

You conferred with her and learned how to navigate catering requests via the company website; apparently it wasn’t available on the app, good to know. you felt much better about the shoot tomorrow but still nervous and excited.

You knocked on the door to Genius Lab. No answer. Never any answer. You typed the code in and saw Yoongi wearing his headphones, lost in his own world. He had told you to just wait on the sofa when this was the case and that he would eventually notice you. Normally the smell of coffee was what alerted him to your presence, but you had come empty handed today. You sat down on the couch and took out your phone.

YN: I don’t mean to alarm you. But there’s something behind you.

You saw his phone light up. He ignored it for a minute, presumably to finish listening to a song, and then picked it up. You heard him laugh and take off his headphones.  “You are the worst.” He spun around.

“So mean. Hey. Tomorrow is my first photoshoot. I checked on the outfits for you. By the way, Hoseok is like Sherlock Holmes with clothing. I learned I’m supposed to contact catering, I have hair and make-up requests in. Do I need to do anything else?”

Yoongi thought for a minute. He never really participated in that side of the photoshoot, now that he reflected on it. He walked his way through a day on set.  “No. The changing rooms and photography are handled by other departments. Check with Jiwoo or Jimin, they’ve both set up a shoot before.”

“I did. I’m getting ready to send in the last food request. Any requests?”

“Mandarins. I don’t like to eat a lot on set because I don’t want stuff getting stuck in my teeth.”

“That makes sense. Ok. I’ll let you get back to it then.” You got up and stretched.

“Tomorrow will go fine. If you forgot anything, it will be somewhere in this building.” He reassured you.

“That makes me feel a lot better.” You said honestly. “Alright, I’ll see you around.”

“Later.”

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

The next day arrived with Yoongi heading off to the hair and make-up department and you heading to the 11th floor to see what the photo set up looked like. You exited the elevator. Man your hands were sweaty, you followed the sounds of voices and made your way to the shooting location. The lighting crew was checking their overheads, a stand-in was posing on the various props they had set out. It looked as though there were three separate “areas” for shooting photos. One area had a large white couch, complete with coffee table, rubber plant, magazines. The whole set up designed to look like a living room. A second space was a blue sheet with a white background. The third space was a kitchen, complete with an island, stovetop, and refrigerator. Holy moly this space was huge. You marveled at it.

“Hello, can I help you?” An older man walked over.

“Oh hi, I’m YLN. Yoongi’s assistant. I was stopping by to check the set up. It looks incredible.”

“Thank you. Yes. Here, let me walk you through it.”

You received a tour of the set and also an overview of the order of shooting. You also found out that next week, weather permitting, there would be a second shooting at the park across the street. You got catering checked in, or at least pointed to the table and felt like you did a thing. The same happened when the clothing team showed up. You pointed to dressing rooms and the vanity where the accessories trunk should go. You were thankful no one had asked you any questions so far. This was a steep learning curve. You had hoped someone you knew might be here today to help ease your nerves, but so far, it was all new faces.

Finally, you saw one familiar face. Alice walked in, carrying a small case with her. You waved.

“Hey! It’s nice to see you again.” She said. “I had no idea you were Yoongi’s assistant until today.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I didn’t mention that. I was so overwhelmed that first day,” you smiled.

“No worries. He was just telling me and Bongcha that he had an assistant now. He’s almost done. His make-up is setting. I’m on hair today which isn’t my strong suit, but it’s not like he’s needing a fancy up-do or anything and it’s good for me to practice.”

“Ok great. This is my first time at a photoshoot, so if there’s something I’m supposed to be doing but I’m not, can you let me know?” You confided in her. 

“Absolutely. It looks like most of the stuff is set up how it usually is. Just remember,” she got closer to you and spoke quieter, “You are Yoongi’s assistant. Some of these people, especially these older guys will try to get you to do stuff like get their coffee, grab them snacks. That is not your job. It’s not by job. If they have an assistant, it’s their job.” 

“I knew I liked you when we first met,” you smiled at her. “Thanks for the heads up.”

“Anytime Unnie.”

She walked over and took out her hair tools and placed them on the table reserved for hair and make-up. A few minutes later you saw Yoongi walk in wearing a black shirt and grey sweats. His face looked even more beautiful than normal. Next to him was a petite girl with long black hair pulled up into a ponytail, dragging a make-up train behind her.  Yoongi looked around for a second, and then locked eyes with you. You saw the tiniest smile threaten to come out as he walked over.

“Hey. Everything here looks good.” He gestured to the room.

“Thanks. I didn’t do most of it, I just pointed and people seemed to know what to do already. Your face looks good.” 

Yoongi chuckled, “You can thank Bongcha for that. Bongcha, this is YN.”

Bongcha stuck out her hand, “Hi. Nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Nice to meet you as well. You do good work. I give his face a 10/10. Highly recommend.” 

“Well, it’s easy when you have such a great model to start with,” She smiled while looking up at Yoongi.

Yoongi had started to blush between the pair of compliments. “Is Hoseok here yet?”

“No not yet.” You took out your phone to see if you had any messages from Hoseok. Nope. You looked back up, “Bongcha, I’m sure you already know, but the make-up table is over there.  Alice is setting up right now.”

“Great, thanks!” She headed over, her shiny hair swishing behind her. 

Speak of the devil in blue himself, Hoseok strutted in at that exact moment wearing an electric blue suit. His crisp white shirt underneath popped beneath the jacket, and his pocket square had little sunshines on it.

“Wow. You look like the sky.” You said before you could help it.

“Thank you. Indeed. It was my inspiration today. It’s a crime to be indoors beneath these artificial lights on such a beautiful day. Oh well. It can’t be helped.” He laid eyes on Yoongi, like a predator gazing on its prey, “Yoongi. Baby. Come.”

Yoongi scrunched his face. “Don’t call me baby. If you miss the sunlight so much, leave. I know how to dress myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you don't know which pieces go together.” Hoseok grabbed Yoongi by the shoulders and started leading him over to the clothing section, leaving you to laugh at the pair of them. You went over to the table you had set up for yourself between make-up and the food. You had printed off several lists that morning to help you stay focused. You checked off several action items. Satisfied, you sat your clipboard down and looked around. It was a well-oiled machine for sure. You walked over to the hair and make-up table. “Hey ladies.”

“Hey! Have you two met yet?” Alice asked, referring to Bongcha.

“Yep, we just did.” Bongcha confirmed, putting on her make-up apron and filling it with various powders and brushes.

“Ooooo we should do a make-up party sometime.” Alice squealed. “We try to do it with all the new girls. And since Yoongi is” she hushed her voice again “One of our favorites. We have to take care of his assistant.”

You smiled, “Sure. That sounds nice. Excuse me.” You decided to go see how the clothes were going.

“Yes. Yoongi’s assistant. So glad you’re here.” Hoseok turned to you.

“She has a name, it’s YN.” You heard Yoongi say from behind the curtain.

“Yes yes. I know. We talked yesterday, remember? At that meeting I scheduled for me and you that you did not come to. Anyways, here. The outfits are now coordinated. They have tags on them corresponding to their accessory in the accessory trunk. Some pieces have more than one option that the Director of Photography and Yoongi will decide on. Got it?”

You looked over the set up. It seemed simple enough since Hoseok had organized it so well .”Yep. You going out to enjoy the sunshine?” 

“Honey, I am the sunshine. I’m off to get laid after having to deal with this cloudy baby.” He gestured to the changing room.

“Don’t call me baby.” Yoongi shouted from behind the curtain. You just laughed as Hoseok turned around and left. You waited for a few minutes. 

“You ok in there? Need me to come help you put your pants on?” You teased.

“Not necessary.” Yoongi slid open the curtain. Why was everyone teasing him today? He pouted without thinking about it.

You walked over, straightening the collar of his shirt “Hey now, you can’t go around pouting like a baby and not expect people to call you one. Here,” you handed him a mandarin. He scowled at you as he took it. “Such a pretty face” You laughed. 

“Yeah whatever. I can eat this while they set up the white meter. You should be fine to just hang around at this point.”

“Alright. Sounds good.” The two of you walked over to the main part of the set where the Director gave Yoongi instructions about where to sit as they practiced the blocking and softbox placement.

“Oh my god he looks so good eating that tangerine.” You overheard. Your eyes bugged out slightly and you turned around. A group of women from the photography team were looking at the images to check the saturation and focus, as well as apparently the model. Damn. NEXT CHAPTER

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