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stranger-fanfiction-n-things · 1 month

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CHAPTER 2: THE WEIRDO ON MAPLE STREET

This is an Original Character fanfiction. All Stranger Things characters and content are owned by Netflix and The Duffer Brothers.

a/n: I accidentally deleted the original post. :( But we move! Here we have (again) another Eddie and Diana moment. Slow Burns FTW. What do you guys think about the Uptown/Downtown scene? Foreshadowing anyone?

Word Count: 3633

Masterlist

PART I || PART II || PART III || PART IV || PART V

CORNWALLIS AND KERLEY

When I told Barb I was going to walk home, I really didn’t think about how far the walk would be, especially in the cold. I tuck my chin beneath my coat bracing myself against the wind. I have been walking through the neighbourhood for what feels like an hour but is probably only 20 minutes, based on the fact I passed Barb’s car not too long ago. The neighbourhood is quiet, apart from the wind rustling through the trees in the surrounding forests. I speed walk pass the large, extravagant houses with my hands bunched into tights fists inside my pockets.

Tonight was a nightmare. I still can’t believe the way Nancy was acting in front of Steve and his friends. In front of me and Barb…to blatantly dismiss us like we were servants done with our nightly duties is so…I don’t have the words. To top it off, Barb still stayed behind to make sure Nancy doesn’t do anything stupid, meanwhile I’m walking all the way home in the middle of the night, at god knows what time. Will is still missing and whatever is out that may have taken him— A sudden gust sends a flurry of leaves spiraling upwards off the ground. I flinch, tripping over my foot.

This is so stupid, Diana.

I push my legs to walk faster, nearing Benny’s Burgers. There are no police officers lingering around the premises anymore, but the diner is still closed. I slow down, lingering in front of the building wishing I could use the phone to call my parents to pick me up. It would take hours for me to walk back uptown. I take a deep breath and count down from five to calm myself down. I was stranded. Frustrated tears brim my eyes. I should’ve been home or actually at the assembly on the field for Will. I wipe my tears with my cold hands and continue to walk.

Maybe this was karma for lying.

Ten minutes later I am approaching the intersection of Cornwallis and Kerley. My ears perk up as I hear a low rumbling sound in front of me. A jolt ripples through me. I see a large van driving and I squint, covering my eyes at the headlights. The van stops at the stop sign before driving down the street behind me. I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and continue to walk. After a few minutes I hear the same low rumbling behind me. I turn my head and realize it’s the same van that passed me not too long ago.

A tight knot forms in my stomach, but I push it down and walk faster. The van lights grow bigger and bigger on the pavement as it draws closer. I want to run but I would be foolish to think I can out run a moving vehicle. And where would I go to hide? There are no houses between here and the train tracks. I bite my lower lip hard to stop my chin from trembling. I hear the van drive up until its beside me. I pretend not to notice and continue walking straight. Maybe if I pay this person no mind, they’ll leave me alone. The lights turn off and I hear the window roll down.

“Diana?” A voice says from inside the van.

I let out a high-pitched scream and quickly cover my mouth. So much was happening in town, I didn’t want to add to it. My heart is beating so fast in my chest and so loud in my ears, I feel like I might pass out.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” the person giggles. Giggles! “It’s me, Eddie.” Eddie?

I press a trembling hand to my chest as if that would do anything to slow my racing heart. Bracing myself, I take a cautious step towards the van. I peer through the open window. Sure enough, it’s Eddie, from Hawkins High. The boy I bumped into in the hallway yesterday.

“Oh, h-hi, Eddie.” I sniff, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks, brows furrowing in concern.

“I was on my way home.”

“Home? You live around here?”

“N-No,” I stutter. “I live on Dearborn and Maple.”

“Are you walking to your car?”

“I-I don’t have a car.”

“So, you were—” Eddie stops. He licks his lower lip and rubs his chin. “You were going to walk all the way to Dearborn and Maple from here?”

I shrug my shoulders, crossing my arms above my chest. “It’s not that bad.” It’s actually much worse.

“Not that bad?” He looks at me like I’ve grown another head. I notice by his tone he seems…upset. “Do you know what time it is?”

I pout shaking my head, feeling like I’m being scolded. I never checked the time when I left Steve’s house. It must’ve been after 10pm now. Eddie looks at me, dark brown eyes roaming up and down and side to side. If my cheeks weren’t cold from the wind, it would be on fire. I shift from side to side, biting my lower lip.

“You know what, never mind.” He says, shaking his head. “Just get in.”

“No, really. It’s okay, I can walk.”

“I’m not going to let you walk all the way home by yourself in the middle of the night. Especially with that kid missing.” He says reaching over to open the door. “Get in. I’m taking you home.”

I slide inside the car closing the door behind me. I quickly roll up the window savouring the heat. The van is wide and spacious from the inside and I feel extremely small. I secure my seatbelt on, pulling my hood off my head. I shiver, defrosting under the newfound heat.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks. I nod my head, sniffing softly. “I’m sorry about the mess.” He says, putting the car in drive.

I look around the van. It looks pretty clean to me. The trunk had an array of pillows and carpeted flooring. It felt homey and personalized.

“It doesn’t look a mess to me.” I say, quietly. “Thank you, for doing this.”

Eddie nods his head and I lean back in the chair playing with my fingers. The van is quiet apart from the heater blowing. I’ve seen this van around in school—well I heard it before I saw it because of how loud it was. Never did I think I’d be inside the car with a boy I met 24 hours ago.

“Where are you coming from?”

“A house party.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “On a Tuesday?” Exactly what I said. He takes his eyes off the road for a moment to look at me. “I never took you to be the partying type.”

I’m not sure if I should take offence to that remark or not, but nonetheless, I shake my head.

“I’m not.”

“Why did you go then?”

The question weighs heavy in my chest. From the embarrassment to the shock of what happened tonight. I don’t know how to answer Eddie.

“I went for…” I think of the right words to use. “Moral support.”

Eddie nods his head, leaning back in his seat. One hand remained on the wheel while the other stayed perched on the centre console. I envy how relaxed he looks while driving. I had to have two hands on the steering wheel at all times and I sat so close to the dashboard, Dad asks me if I’m trying to drive or go through the windshield.

“Where was this party? I didn’t see any cars parked on the road when I was driving down the street.”

I rub my lips together, sinking deeper into the chair.

“Steve Harrington’s.” I mutter.

“Hm.”

I don’t know what’s worse. Telling Eddie I went to Steve Harrington’s house or Eddie’s response.

“I-I honestly wouldn’t call it a party. It was more of a hang out.”

“Did you have fun as at least?”

I shake my head. Eddie snorts.

“Figures.” He says. “Why not?”

Everything that happened tonight flashes in a blink of an eye. I take a deep breath and speak.

“Tommy H and Carol were there. I don’t feel comfortable around that group, but my best friend, Nancy does. At least I think she does—” I frown shaking my head. “I don’t know…it was all so bizarre. I want to be there for her. We both did, Barb and I, but I couldn’t stay there any longer.”

“They’re still at the party.” I nod my head. The weight in my chest feels heavier. “Why would they stay knowing you felt uncomfortable being there?”

The car is quiet again as we pass over the train tracks. I turn to Eddie; he’s looking straight at the road. Again, I don’t know how to respond to him. It’s a question I honestly don’t have an answer for. I swallow down the lump forming in my throat.

“I don’t know,” I respond. My voice sounds hoarse. “It’s complicated.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Doesn’t sound complicated to me. You didn’t want to go to the ‘party’ but did anyway to support Nancy. I’m sure she seen how uncomfortable you looked, but still decided to stay and left you to walk across town in the middle of the night by yourself.” He sounds upset again and I’m not sure why.

“Well, I wanted to leave and Barb wanted to leave too. I know she did.”

“If Barbara wanted to leave, she would’ve. With you.” He was right. Barb would’ve, but I don’t need to confirm that.

“But then Nancy would be by herself.” I answer, with the same approach as Barb.

Eddie glances at me. “Trust me. Nancy would not be by herself.”

I frown at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s with Steve Harrington.” He said, matter-of-factly. Though I know what he’s alluding to and I go over what he asked and how I replied. Did I suggest Nancy is having sex with Steve?

“Nancy isn’t like that.” I defend.

“You don’t sound too sure.” Eddie responds.

I open my mouth to speak, but the words don’t come. I close my mouth and look at the road. I feel like I’ve betrayed Nancy’s trust, even though I know I didn’t say anything. This is the first time I’ve spoken to Eddie and he’s managed to read my mind in the matter of minutes. Was it written all over my face? Or was I just that easy to read? I pout, removing my hair from inside my jacket. My waves fall down my front and the faint smell of coconut and vanilla lingers in my nose. I decide to change the topic of conversation.

“Where are you coming from?”

“The Hideout.” I arch my brow and Eddie smiles. “It’s a bar on Mulberry and Cherry Oak.”

“Aren’t you too young to work at a bar?”

“If you wanna get all technical, yes. But, it’s the only place in this town that’ll let me and my band play.”

“You have a band?” I say, smiling. “That’s cool. Really cool actually.” He looks like he’d have a band.��“What’s the name of your band?”

“Corroded Coffin.”

“Does it mean anything?”

Eddie approaches a stop sign and looks at me. “It’s just metal, sweetheart.” He says softly.

My heart beat picks up speed. Sweetheart. My mom calls me sweetheart all the time, but hearing Eddie say it, makes me feel airy and light, yet heavy and fast. I don’t know. Eddie’s eyes roam my face again and I wonder if there’s something on it. The back of my neck feels hot and I break eye contact, playing with the ends of my hair.

“What instrument do you play?” I ask, breathless. Eddie continues straight.

“Lead guitar. I also sing a little.”

“Oh wow! Do you write your own songs?”

“Not really. Just sing covers. Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, KISS. All the greats.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“What kind of music are you into? Actually, let me guess. Madonna. Cyndi Lauper. Billy Joel—”

“You name these people like they make bad music.” I interject.

Eddie wrinkles his nose, shrugging his shoulders. My jaw drops.

“They all make good music!” I defend, sitting up. “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun? Holiday? Uptown Girl!”

“Meh.” I gawk.

“I bet your sister likes Uptown Girl.”

“Sister?” Eddie queried. I suddenly feel cold. Eddie glances at me again and smirks. “Do you know something I don’t know? Find out I have a secret relative lurking around Hawkins.”

“Oh, I-I thought the girl you’re always with was a relative. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“Ronnie?” Eddie makes a left turn on Cherry Oak. I nod my head.

“You both look alike.”

“Yeah, we get that a lot,” his eyes light up. “But no, she’s not my cousin. She’s my best friend, like a sister to me.”

“She’s very tall.”

Eddie laughs and my stomach feels like it’s full of butterflies fluttering all at once. “That she is.”

“What’s wrong with Uptown Girl?” I continue. “A sweet downtown man trying to court an uptown girl. I think it’s romantic.”

“It’s cliché. In real life, an uptown girl would never pick a downtown man.”

“You don’t know that.”

Eddie gives me a look. “If an uptown man was trying to court her as well, she’d pick him instead of the downtown man.”

“You don’t know that either.” I counter.

“Would you date a downtown man?”

“If he was sweet and kind. Why not?”

“Even if he couldn’t afford to buy you pearls?” He arches his brow playfully. I grin.

“So, you’ve listened to the song.”

Eddie smiles back, his dimples appear on his cheeks. “I never said I didn’t.”

I ignore the butterflies. “Admit it. You like the song.”

Eddie shakes his head, but his smile remains. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sweetheart.” Sweetheart.

“I wouldn’t discriminate a person because of how much money they don’t have. It’s not about the money. It’s about love.”

“It’s always about the money.” I shake my head. “You’d live in a box with a downtown man, all for love?”

I scrunch my nose, shaking my head. “No…”

“Exactly. It’s all a cliché.”

“If I had a house, he’d just move in with me and the house will become ours.”

The expression on Eddie’s face makes me wonder if he’s trying not to laugh at me or not. It reminds me of Erica yesterday at breakfast forcing herself to refrain from laughing out loud when Lucas teased me about my driving.

“What about everyone else?”

“What about them?”

“Assuming you’re the uptown girl, what if your uptown friends disapprove of the downtown man?”

“If the downtown man treats me well and loves me as much as I love him, their opinions won’t matter.”

“Hm.”

I don’t know if hm is a good or bad.

“So, what about you?” I ask. Eddie looks at me with a slight frown. “Would you date an uptown girl?”

The frown smoothens between his brows and Eddie’s eyes roam my face again. I don’t know if I’m overheating or not, but my cheeks feel hot and I want to ask him to turn down the heat. His dark brown eyes linger on my lips for a split second before flickering to my eyes. I rub my lips together to feel if something were on them. I feel nothing.

“If she’ll have me.” he murmurs.

“Maybe she can buy you pearls.” Eddie laughs and I laugh too.

“I wouldn’t mind. Enough about me though. Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do?”

“Um…Dance. Ballet to be specific, though sometimes I want to try jazz.”

“Explain jazz to me. I only know it to be a music genre.”

“Jazz is like…a mixture of ballet and modern dance. That’s the best way I can explain it.”

“Are you going to do it? Jazz dance, I mean.” I shrug my shoulders.

Transitioning from ballet to jazz was going to be an adjustment and a big step outside of my comfort zone. Sometimes before rehearsals, I’d watch the other classes of the girls and boys dance to funk and pop music. I am always in awe of the way they moved their bodies. It looked so…free and unrestricted. Less technical than ballet. I dance to Prince and Rick James in my room all the time and these classes immolated what I felt when I do. But telling my parents I want to switch over to jazz would be another hurdle to jump over. I will need to ease them and myself into that.

“If you’re interested in it, I think you should.”

“Maybe one day.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“The Nutcracker season.”

“The Nutcracker?”

Unlike Tommy H, Carol and Steve. Eddie didn’t make fun. He seems genuinely interested in what I had to say. And for the first time, I don’t feel…embarrassed to talk about myself.

“Every year at my dance studio, we perform The Nutcracker. It’s a two-act play by Tchaikovsky and this year I got one of the leads in the second act.”

“Congratulations.” He says with a smile.

“Thank you.” I blush. “All my time and energy is put into the performance but with Will’s disappearance, classes are cancelled.”

Just like that. All the light and life in the van disappears like blowing out a candle. I breathe deeply, sitting back into the seat. The car is quiet for a few minutes. I’m lost in my thoughts of Will, Lucas and the boys; Miss Byers and Jonathan. I need to talk to Jonathan tomorrow and check in with him.

“Do you know Will?” Eddie speculates.

“He’s my little brother’s best friend.”

“I’m sorry.” I blink and glance at him. It’s the first time anyone said that to me and I realize, I never thought about how I’ve been affected by Will’s disappearance.

“I just hope we find him.”

“Me too.” Eddie murmurs and deep down inside me, I know he means it.

I peer out the window just as we pass Dustin’s house. I pray I don’t see three boys on bikes riding down the street and tell Eddie to make a right on Elm Street and then another right on Gloucester. As we approach my neighbourhood, I begin to take my keys out of my pocket.

“My house is just around the corner near the end of the cul-de-sac. Blue with white shutters.”

Eddie eases inside my driveway. Thankfully the house lights are off which meant everyone was asleep. It would be easier to sneak in. I can’t believe I’m plotting how to get inside my own house.

“You don’t have to drive me to my door. I can walk from here.” I say, taking off my seatbelt. I don’t want to draw too much attention to the house in case my parents are awake for some reason.

“I already drove across town to get you home, the least I can do it drive you to your front door.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.” I assure him with a smile.

Eddie reluctantly puts his car in park and shuts off the car. I am surprised when he takes off his seat belt to twist his body to face me. It creates a little distance between us.

“Why?” he asks, somewhat defensively. I don’t want him to feel like I’m using him so I tell him the truth.

“I’m not supposed to be home,” I answer, sheepishly. “I’m supposed to be at Nancy’s house up the street but—”

“You were at Harrington’s.” Eddie finishes. I nod my head.

Eddie relaxes his stance, resting his arm on the steering wheel. He gestures to my front door.

“I’ll wait here and watch you walk to your door.”

“Thank you for driving me home.”

“Please don’t walk around at night by yourself again.”

I tuck a loose curl behind my ear. “I won’t, I promise.”

“I won’t leave until you’re inside.

I open the door, stiffening at the cool wind blowing past. Closing the door, I begin to walk towards my front door. I am just passing the front of his car when I hear my name.

“Yes?” I say, approaching Eddie.

“Listen to “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” by KISS. It’s a hard rock song with disco influences. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

I blink, not expecting him to say that. “Okay!” I answer with a smile. When he smiles back and his dimples show, I can’t help but grin and lean forward.

“Listen to “Candy Girl” by New Edition. It’s my favourite song right now.”

“Candy Girl,” he muses. I notice a slight flush in his cheeks and lean back. “Okay.”

I bite my lip, tucking my hair behind my ear. I know I have to go inside, but part of me wants to stay with Eddie and talk all night in his van. I enjoyed our short conversations and how at ease I felt talking to him.

“Thank you again, Eddie.”

Eddie looks in my eyes this time and I force myself to keep eye contact. “You’re Welcome, Diana.”

“See you tomorrow.”

I feel his stare at the back of my head, as I walk to my front door. I quietly enter my house but don’t close the door all the way, peeking through the crack. As promised, Eddie pulls out of my driveway and even kept his headlights off until he was out. I close the door completely and lock my door, but instead of walking through the foyer, I linger, touching my lips. I can’t hide the smile on my face even if I wanted to.

CHAPTER 3: HOLLY, JOLLY

#stranger things rewrite #black fem reader #stranger things fic #stranger things #dianasinclair #eddie munson x black!reader #steve harrington x black!reader #eddie munson x female reader #steve harrington x fem!reader #sinclair!reader #eddie munson x reader #steve harrington x reader #accidental delete

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wagner-fell · 8 months

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Thank you thank you thank you you're greater than the catedral de sevilla and yeah I remember when you got spoiled lol

So, let me start by saying that Mrs Woolaham is a tad too mentally unsound, probably partly due to drug consumption (though I'm still devating this). The thing is: she's not fine up there and that led her to fixating on Agnes. Now, why Agnes and not Madeleine? For once, Agnes had a very frail, meak, weak personality that made it easy to rope her into a psychologically abusive relationship. Meanwhile, Madeleine had an odder, not so victorian-friendly personality from the very beginning. That's why she had a harder time making friends than Agnes did.

Mrs Woolaham saw Agnes as a means of returning to her youth: Agnes couldn't choose what she wore, liked, how she behaved in public, who she was friends with or eventually married, etc. because otherwise Mrs Woolaham would confine her to a tiny, unlit room where she could 'reflect upon and better her actions'. All without the rest of the Woolahams, especially Madeleine, knowing what was happening. The only thing that hinted at it was Agnes's terror of the dark.

As a result of all the abuse, Agnes became a very very introverted and private person and she felt lonely all the time even if she was surrounded by people who adored her (aka a persona of her). No one truly knew who she was, although Madeleine came somewhat close.

And the thing is, when Madeleine is outed and *gaylord* happens to her, Agnes desperately wants to help her, but she can't by mere virtue of how terrified she is of her mother. Mrs Woolaham's abuse becomes way more latent; she confines Agnes to the unlit room more often and on top of that grows obsessed with making sure Madeleine doesn't 'infect' her precious Agnes --thus she gives Agnes a new bedroom (she'd been sharing rooms with M), burns all the clothes A might've shared with M, etc. Mrs Woolaham is sickening and A is so terrified of it all that she even ~convinces~ a man from Prussia to propose to her, so that she might get away from England altogether even if living separately from M hurts her more than she cared to admit at the time.

Anyways, when Madeleine disappears and is subsequently pronounced dead, Agnes's already-frail mental health plummets. The shock and the guilt is so big that she stops eating, talking, etc. She just seats behind her desk in full-mourning regalia, all stiff, 24/7 until Marcus one day goes to her, tugs at her skirts and her corpse falls on top of him (is Marcus traumatised? Yes ofc). Long story short: Agnes is then buried, the Woolahams actually mourn for her and because the have to put up a show, all her tomb to be beside Madeleine's, and then everyone moves on. Agnes's fiancé, who's a Jerk, makes a ton of complaints but eventually finds himself another bride and forgets all about her.

Fast forward to book 2, Madeleine and Diana get together and the later, super well intentioned, proposes they go on a date. Now, this happens at the end of the book so ofc stuff needs to go awry. As a result of having been Simone's host, Madeleine developed an insignia that rendered her capable of controlling gravity. That insignia can only be known by Simone and her cult (the curia regis), so they decide that madeleine needs to be captured on her way to the date. Problem? Diana would know something's wrong if Madeleine doesn't show up. Solution? Simone forms a symbiosis with Agnes's corpse --bringing her back to life in the process-- and uses her as Madeleine to fool Diana; then alive!Agnes returns to the curia regis's headquarters to be put in a cell.

Luckily, Madeleine is able to get the curia regis off her back, which Cal isn't able to do lol. The Curia Regis went after her and kidnap her and put her in the same cell as Agnes. Agnes, who:

Thinks she's dead and in hell

They've dressed in Madeleine's would-be dressing gown + blindfolded to further worsen her already comatose mental health

Now has an insignia of her own; her blood can speed up time or turn back time depending on whichever part of her body it is drawn from

And, Warner, it may be my bias speaking, but Agnes's insignia is *so cool* (she's Lotte/Izarius):

Here she's helping Cal flee from the curia regis's headquarters. I'm saying 'helping' because Agnes thinks she's in hell and deserves to remain there. Also, for shipping purposes she had to stay so that arash can save her because he's her prince in shining armour lol

At the end of book 3, arash's and sohrab's older sisters are going to be killed (and xuegang's finally going to kick the bucket I think) and as a result, the two are going to end up looking for vengeance. In the process, they're going to find Agnes and they're going to save her ofc. Then the shipping will commence

Anyways. Agnes is a very complicated character. It'll take a lot for her to open up and come to terms with her insignia and her relationship with arash will be really sweet because arash is the sweetest and she's great, too. It'll give day x night and they're going to help each other so much. Arash will show Agnes what it is to be loved and understood for what she really is because he can see beyond her facade. Meanwhile, Agnes will help arash weather the feelings of loss *in a positive way* and she's just so in love with him ffs the woolahan twins are hard-core simps

Agnes's journey is going to be focused on accepting herself and recognising that she *was* abused since she was very very very little

And ofc Agnes's relationship with madeleine post-1864 is going to be Rocky but it'll essentially be resolved by Agnes being the biggest madiana supporter (she made them their wedding dresses!!!!!) and by Madeleine wanting to kill her mother all over again

Idek where this went I'm sorry I needed to rant

CK don’t apologize i really enjoyed reading Agnes’s backstory since you haven’t told me a lot about her, just her and Madeleine as a unit!!!

My first thought was that the Blond Man was Marcus and I 100% was about to start sobbing at the dinner table

I high key miss the 19th cenqueery gang

Poor Agnes oh my God. If I was able to kill fictional characters you created, I would be a serial killer fr. Im so happy she got the happy ending she deserves with Arash

Oh!!!!! I also saw the ask you sent to Riley explaining TKC and it made me so happy that you now included my headcanon about Genevieve to be canon now!!!!

#it’s a good week to be the president in both of yours and rileys fan clubs #ck’s ask #ck💙#tkc

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blee-bleep · 3 years

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diakko's size-difference got me WILDING TONIGHT SWEET BABY JESUS THIS TYPE HITS DIFFERENT

#ok so im not over that scene where akko fits 11 yo diana's dress #like akko is already 16 or smth and fits something a of a 6th grader hshdhd hdjdh #MEANWHILE DIANA PROBABLY STILL GROWING #and im like YES #make diana big as hell i guys i dont fuckinng care fgfgsjfhdjfgsjd #lwa #little witch academia #diakko #diana cavendish #atsuko kagari #dianakko

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randomfandomimagine · 3 years

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Love’s Worth Running To. Chapter 5: Hero Work

Pairing: Barry Allen x Stephanie Williams (OFC)

Fandom: Justice League / DCEU

⬅ PREVIOUS CHAPTER • CHAPTER INDEX • NEXT CHAPTER ➡

AO3

A/N: Another chapter! I think this one as very interesting stuff, and it’s finally starting to move on to my favorite part of the story, I can’t wait to post the few next chapters!

Also, and as always, remember to give this some love! Please reblog and leave feedback if you’re liking it, it would help me out a lot and it’d mean the world to me!! 🙏 Thank you so much to everyone that’s supporting this series 🥰💜

With the excuse that she needs to face it sooner or later, Stephanie starts trying out her powers. She promises herself that it means nothing, only a way to ensure they won’t become something dangerous because she can’t control them. It doesn’t mean she will recklessly go out trying to be Wonder Woman. But the improvised hero outfit still lays on the ground. She hasn’t put it away. Keeps glancing at it.

Meanwhile, as her eyes are fixed on the costume, a light crackle of electricity hovers over her palm. Stephanie sighs and focuses her attention on it, watching how the small force field slowly grows. The semi-transparent sphere, at first as small as marble, has reached the size of a football ball now.

Stephanie tells herself that big progress has been made, as at least she is now in control of it even if the force field isn’t big enough to really protect anyone. Its surface is also irregular and unstable. She grits her teeth, frowning in confusion, but the very best she can do is maintain the current state of the force field.

“Ah!” Stephanie suddenly yelps when her phone buzzes. The force field in her hand crackles, creating a mild disturbance in the air, before completely fading.

Promising to keep working on her newfound abilities after checking her phone, she picks the device up and looks at the screen. Her heart halts in anticipation as she reads the text. It’s from Ben.

While it isn’t the person she was expecting, it still warms her heart that Ben is reaching out and checking on her. For that reason, she proceeds to read the message and a small smile finds its way to her lips when she does.

Good morning, Stephanie! How are you feeling? I hope you’re well and recovered. There is no rush to return to work, but I must insist that you rest and properly look after yourself. I’m your boss, so you have to do as I say.

Best regards, Ben.

Stephanie chuckles, endeared by his thoughtful message and amused by the fact that he signed it like he would a written letter... despite the fact that the phone already showcases the sender. Grinning, she starts typing to reply to him.

You may be the man in charge for the project, but shall I remind you that you’re not my boss?

Best regards, Stephanie.

However, and despite the lighthearted interaction, a void settles in her chest.

For a moment, Stephanie had hoped it was Barry contacting her, only to remember that she had been ignoring his many calls and messages. He has probably given up on talking to her, figuring she will do so when she feels comfortable with it. And she misses him. For that reason, she dials his number while Ben types back.

Barry takes a few rings to answer, but when he does his warm and familiar voice is filled with excitement. It makes Stephanie smile as soon as she hears it.

“Steph?!” He answers. “Oh my gosh, hi! How are you feeling?”

“Hi, Barry” The girl can’t stop smiling now, while at the same time wondering how she had survived so many days without him. “I’m feeling better, thank you”

“That’s great, I’m so glad to hear it!” He sighed from the other end, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Um… did you need anything? Or did you just call to chat?”

“Well…” Stephanie awkwardly chuckles, feeling embarrassed for isolating herself. But now that she has her powers mostly under control after that long week, she feels like she can talk to him again. “Actually, I wanted to apologize… I know I’ve been very distant, but…”

“Hey, no” He gently interrupts her. “Steph, you don’t have to apologize, don’t say a word. I understand that you needed some time, anyone would after what you went through!”

Stephanie pauses for a moment while the nerves suddenly stir in her stomach. In the end, noticing his silence as well, she pipes up once more.

“I’m sorry for worrying you, Barry”

“I’m always gonna worry about you”

She smiles to herself, knowing that he means that in the best way possible. The nerves disappear, replaced with a wave of warmth that fills her. Suddenly, all those negative emotions she has been experiencing for days are gone. All thanks to his magic.

“Listen, I’m in a hurry. I’m so sorry, I really can’t talk more” Barry mumbles. “But, uh... how ‘bout we meet this evening? I’ll take it easy on you, I promise, I just want to hang out with you for a bit”

“Sure” Stephanie chuckles. “I’d love that”

“Cool!” She hears him happily chuckle as well. “Pick you up at 7?”

“Yeah, see you later” And Stephanie hangs up, unable to erase the smile from her face.

When Barry arrives to the place of reunion, he heaves a big sigh. The sky suddenly looks bluer, the birds are singing louder and the sun shines brighter. Everything is okay.

“There you are” Clark pats his shoulder, warning him of the team’s presence. They had been waiting for him. “How can a speedster like you be late?”

“Right, sorry about that” Barry grins instead of taking his words as a scolding.

“You look happy…” Diana tells Barry, kindly nudging him a little.

“Yeah, well” The boy suddenly feels slightly flustered by everyone’s gazes on him. “I talked to Steph”

“Your friend?” Bruce pipes up, the hint of a smile peeking in the corner of his lips. “We told you she just needed some time”

“She doing okay?” Arthur asked, frowning slightly in concern.

“Yeah, she’s fine… she’s fine” Barry sighs like that again, feeling lighter. “Phew, it was such a relief”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, Barry” Victor gravely tells him. “But we have work to do”

“You’re right, I know” The boy nods to himself. “I’m ready, let’s go”

The silence settles for a moment. Overlooking the city from their high spot at the top of the skyscraper, the six pensively observe the atmosphere beneath their feet. There is the usual busy sound of traffic, of the crowd’s murmuring and the occasional ambulance or police cars sirens in the distance. Other than that, there are no signs of an imminent threat.

“What are we doing here again?” Arthur pipes up. “Everything seems calm”

“Too calm” Bruce grimly replies, glancing at the rest. “I know something’s wrong”

“I can feel it too” Victor adds. “The electric devices feel erratic, like a virus is slowly poisoning the city”

“What we can do about it?” Diana stares at the cyborg, whose eyes are fixed on the city underneath.

“Can you do something to stop that virus?” Barry suggests to him. “Get into their systems or something?”

“I can’t” Victor gravely says, locking eyes with the speedster. “That’s how I know something’s wrong”

“I can feel it too” Clark admits. There are no traces of his usual smile. “Maybe it’s just an intuition, but-”

Before he can even finish his sentence, a loud ruckus startles them all. Something has changed right under their field of vision. An automated train, moving on its own and filled with thousands of innocent passengers, is violently wavering and making the people inside it scream and panic. It moves at a vertiginous speed. More strange noises ensure that the train isn’t the only electronic device malfunctioning there.

“You wouldn’t be doing that, by any chance?” Barry asks Victor, who slowly shakes his head.

As on cue, everyone moves at his denial. The six seem synchronized as they throw themselves down the rooftop. Diana uses her lasso to soar through the air, Bruce glides with his cape and Barry speeds leaving behind a faint blue tail. Clark flies, followed by Victor with his propellers, and Arthur throws his trident and rides it like a surf board.

In the blink of an eye, the six have landed on top of the train. More panicked screams fill the interior with the loud thud of their landing. They struggle to maintain balance in the speeding train. Moving quickly, Clark tears the metallic top of the train open and so everyone drops to the inside.

“Please stay calm” He kindly says to the terrorized passengers.

“We’re here to help” Bruce assures them with his deep voice.

“We’re saved!” A blond woman exclaims. “It’s Superman!”

“And Wonder Woman!”

“And The Batman!”

Although a warm welcome, the Justice League focuses on the mission ahead: saving those people. They exchange quick glances between them and get to work. There is no time to lose.

“Barry” Bruce lowly tells him. “Get rid of all the electronic devices as soon as possible”

“Before they overheat and explode” Victor urges him, his red eye seeming to recognize the extent of the danger they present. “They’re malfunctioning just like the train”

“Copy that!” And with that, the speedster is gone in the blink of an eye. With shocked gasps, the people find that their phones, tablets and any other electronic devices are taken from them. Some explode as soon as they’re thrown out the window, causing an even further outrage.

“I’ll try to stop the train” Victor closes his eyes, focusing his mind on the electric system.

“I’ll do that too” Clark nods, helping the cyborg by flying to the front of the vehicle. As soon as he disappears, the train produces a strident creaking as it drags along the rails. Carefully. Very slowly, it starts losing speed. He can’t risk harming the people inside with a violent halt.

“We’ll get the people safely off” Diana taps Bruce, who doesn’t lose one second to go with her.

“And I’ll help you out” Arthur throws his trident to the doors, breaking through them to allow them an exit.

Soon after, Barry has returned and instantly goes with Diana, Bruce and Arthur to help them move the passengers out of the speeding train. Clark seems to continue his part of the rescue, because it loses speed by the second. Slow and safely.

While Arthur breaks open all the doors he can to create more exits, the rest gets ahold of as many people as possible. The train hasn’t quite stopped yet. Bruce carries three grown men, using his grappling hook to swing to safety. Diana has picked up a group of four children while Barry puts their parents to safety. Perhaps they can’t quite understand and solve what is happening in the city yet, but in the meantime they can always protect the people.

Seven o’clock can’t come soon enough. Time passes slowly, and Stephanie’s eyes keep landing on the discarded outfit on the ground. She bites her lip. Knowing she is meeting Barry later seems to fill her with courage. Hope. Maybe she can be like their heroes, like Wonder Woman and Superman. At the very least, she can try.

“Maybe I’ll just try it on…” She mumbles, trying to get rid of her impatient energy, and as though they outfit would have changed sizes during those few days she hasn’t touched it.

Telling herself that it’s only a way to stay distracted and busy while she waits for Barry to arrive, although that isn’t for two more hours, Stephanie gets changed. The tight leggings slip on easily, like a second skin, like they’re the right thing to wear. After she puts on the tank top as well, she stands before the mirror once more. The same sense of excitement and wonder settle in her stomach, taking the form of butterflies that take flight inside it.

The look is almost complete. Just when she is applying the eye shadow like the other day, a sound interrupts her. Several police cars pass by her apartment at top speed, illuminating the streets with their blue light. A test. A call to adventure. Will she answer?

“I can do it” She whispers to herself. “I want to help, I can do it”

Anxious as the police cars wail in the distance, Stephanie nods in resolution. After such a long time of inactivity, her muscles complain at the sudden energy bursts. Ignoring the light aching of her body, Stephanie runs. She leaves her apartment, leaves behind her building and runs in the direction the police cars took. After days if inactivity, she feels alive again. Her lungs urgently fill with air, her heart begins beating so fast that it throbs in her ears.

Stephanie doesn’t stop running, chasing the call to heroism and smiling widely.

She gasps for air as she watches the scene before her in confusion. The streets are total chaos. Even the few policemen that have stayed seem to have lost their minds. All the people, from ordinary bystanders, to service workers that have left their establishments, are running aimlessly and screaming in a panic.

“HEEEELP!!! He will kill us all!!” A shrieking voice gathers her attention upwards. A man is teetering at the very edge of a ledge, at the top of a building. He seems about to jump. Stephanie can’t get there in time to save him. Where is the Justice League when you need it?!

Trying to make herself audible among the shouting of the panicked people around her, she focuses on the man whose life is in immediate danger.

“Stay where you are!” She shouts at him, but he only dedicates her an absent glance.

Stephanie frantically looks around, searching for something that can help her. Nothing of use is in sight. What can she do? An idea suddenly pops up in her brain. Wiggling her fingers, she tries to create a force field around herself. If it’s stable enough, maybe it can lift her off the ground and transport her to him.

But it’s all for naught. It’s too late. Her heart skips a beat.

The man has walked off the ledge.

“NO!” Stephanie screams, so violently that she hurts her throat.

On an instinct, she reaches out in his direction despite the big distance that separates them. Her head fills with uneasy thoughts, all of which are focused on helping him. Saving him! Her first attempt can’t end like that, she needs to do something!

Just as the man is about to step into the air and commence a free fall of several stories high, a bubble creates around him. The man gasps, suspended in the air by a wavering force field.

Realizing it is her doing, Stephanie clenches her jaw and focuses all her might on it. Although it quakes with her effort, the bubble carefully glides downwards until it touches the pavement. As soon as it does, the man looks around in a daze and begins to walk away.

Stephanie finds that such small deed was too great for her. All her energies abandon her and she suddenly falls to the ground. She sits there helplessly. Her heart has recovered that unforgiving pace and she breathes heavily again, even worse than after her dash.

In a daze, feeling how her brain slowly fills with fog, Stephanie watches the scene. Two men are fighting close to her, shouting as they’re convinced the other is a threat. A woman and her baby run aimlessly, wailing as each make more noise than the previous. All around her reigns absolute chaos. Panic. Terror. The reason? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand.

A man runs for his life, anxiously looking over his shoulder as though something or someone is chasing him. Stephanie can’t see anything behind the man. Just as he passes her by, she weakly holds on to the leg of his pants.

“Sir, sir!!” She calls out, trying to get through to him. Fighting his panic, he nervously turns to her. “What is happening?!”

“T-The scarecrow!” The man gulps. “We’re all going to die!”

And with that her breaks free from her grasp with one simple jerking motion and continues on his escape from an invisible foe.

Stephanie frowns under her eye mask. There are no signs of any scarecrow, and even if it was… what would a scarecrow be doing in a city? Why would an inanimate object be a threat? These people seem to be frightened of an imaginary foe. The only thing different aside from the panicked people is a strange ambiance. Although slightly similar to the way her force fields change the air, this once it feels heavy. There is a mild odor of something burning, like popcorn that has been on the microwave for too long.

But… there is no fire. Stephanie suddenly gets an urge to leave. She makes to stand up, but she remains too weak to move. Anguish overcomes her. Something is happening in that place, something that she cannot comprehend but that is starting to take over her too.

She doesn’t know what, but something is wrong. Something is about to happen. Something bad. Something terrible. She can’t stop thinking about it. A feeling of dread overpowers any other rational thoughts. Now Stephanie understands how all those people feel. Panicked She does too.

Her eyes frantically travel all around her, expecting hidden enemies in every corner. Her powers are useless, even if she could use them. She can’t protect herself, or anyone else.

Static-like void fills her brain, causing her to push her hands against her ears when it feels like her head is about to explode. Her temples throb. Her heart thumps. Her breathing quickens.

Just as she feels herself about to completely lose control, a figure appears in front of her as though it has fallen from the heavens. Stephanie yelps and whimpers, shielding her face with her hands and leaning backwards to get away.

“Hey” A deep dark voice approaches her. “You okay?”

Stephanie dares to peek through her fingers, only becoming more frightened when she actually sees the person… the… creature? It looks like a man, but her panicked mind can only see an enormous bat standing on two legs with its wings wide open.

“Ah!” She screams, so the figure folds the wings and cautiously approaches her. She still doesn’t trust him. “Please don’t hurt me!”

He can hurt her. He will. Anyone can. Anyone will.

“I’m not going to hurt you” He slowly crouches down to be at eye level with her. She can see his worried brown eyes through the mask that covers his features. “Look at me”

“You’re… you’re…” The world seems to spin around her, and Stephanie is out of breath. “You’re The Batman”

“That’s right, I’m here to help” He reminds her, offering her his hand. “What’s going on?”

Stephanie gulps as he pulls her to her feet. It comes to her attention that he looks her up and down, reminding her of the outfit she’s wearing. A hero… she failed. The reason why she went there on the first place was because she wanted to help those people, but… reality becomes a little more stable as she realizes… not even the police stuck around.

“Can you hear me?” The Batman tries again. “What is happening?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know” All her thoughts are scrambled, too fast to stop as they slip through her lips. “Something… is wrong… I can’t explain it...”

A sudden urge to cry causes her to stare at him, begging for help. Maybe he knows what strange occurrence takes place in that street, or how to stop it, or how to end it. He doesn’t seem to, but his eyes are filled with compassion.

“I assume you wanted to help, but you can go” He tells her, supporting her as she feels herself swaying. “Don’t worry, everything will be alright”

Stephanie slowly nods, taking a deep breath and making an effort to fight through that strange trance of terror. No one has attacked her yet, despite her irrational conviction that they would.

“Go, get to safety” The Batman insists, gently letting go of her. “I’ll take care of this”

She opens her mouth. To warn him. He doesn’t know. Since he has just arrived, he has no idea what he will soon experience. But Stephanie can’t speak up. She barely has the strength to stand.

Stumbling and in a daze, she takes a step. She needs to get away from there, breathe a different air. Clean air, not contaminated with whatever is hurting her so. For that reason, she takes another step. And then another. Little by little, she gets away from there. The safety of her home has never felt so distant.

When she wakes up, Stephanie can barely remember how she clumsily plopped on the bed and fell asleep. She had nightmares that are impossible to remember. The fact that she is still wearing her hero outfit is proof that it really happened. She still feels feverish and exhausted from her attempt. Something out of the ordinary was happening there. She can only hope The Batman helped those people, and that he himself was safe after all of that.

Remembering she is supposed to meet Barry when he texts her a quick ‘omw’ that lets her know he will arrive soon, Stephanie gets up. She gets changed and stumbles through her own house as though the ground is shaking under her feet.

Her mind seems to clear up as the minutes pass. When she is done getting ready, she goes to the door where she is supposed to meet Barry. He isn’t there yet. At least, her thoughts feel more coherent and ordered now.

Even after that strange effect has passed, adark feeling stays with Stephanie, like a black cloud that stays with her. At first she assumed it was the rare burst of adrenaline traveling through her veins. Now she’s not so sure. Her heart hasn’t stopped beating erratically ever since then, and although there is no more danger she feels on edge. Frightened. She wonders if she really wasn’t as brave as she though she was, or that she abused her still recovering body too much, or if the experience was too harrowing to easily leave behind. Whatever the case, a sudden presence forces her away from those thoughts.

“Hi!” Barry jumps into place in front of her, bearing a wide grin that seems to brighten up the subtle darkness that has clouded her heart. “I’m here”

“You’re late again” The girl only says, even if she’s already smiling. Barry’s feeling has a healing effect that cures her lingering restlessness.

“I know, I’m so sorry” He dramatically sighs, although he does look a little tired. “Busy day”

“What did you do today?” Stephanie asks, trying to start a conversation while at the same time distract herself from her unease.

“Uh….. you know...” Barry shrugs. “Run around, do some errands, save the world…”

Stephanie laughs out loud at his joke, and he grins widely in return. However, the gesture vanishes from his face immediately after. He is staring at her with his brow knitted in concern.

“Steph, you look pale…” He whispers, rubbing her arm. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah” She chuckles, internally panicking at the mere thought of him finding out about her powers and her little adventure. “I just… went for a walk to kill time… Guess I’m a little tired”

Barry pauses. She can almost see the wheels turning in his head. He is about to tell her that she should rest and take it easy, but he doesn’t. Instead, he dedicates her his best encouraging smile.

“I’m gonna spoil you today” His hand lingers on her arm. “You’re still recovering and you deserve to be spoiled”

“So it was a trap” Stephanie smirks, playfully rolling her eyes at him. “I should have known”

“There’s no escaping now” Barry offers her his arm, which she links with his. He then playfully arches his eyebrows. “Shall we?”

The pair smile at each other as they begin to walk. Barry immediately goes on about what they can do. They can get some snacks and take a little walk. Since she’s been locked inside for so long he wants her to get some air, but he’s stern on letting her rest, so maybe they should sit at a terrace. She doesn’t care what the plan is, she’s just happy to be with him. His presence is reassuring, silently reminding Stephanie that there is nothing to fear.

It has returned. That feeling of dread, of imminent danger. It isn’t nearly as strong as before, it merely feels like a shadow of its former self. Nonetheless, it is barely enough to make even breathing exhausting. Stephanie can’t focus.

Night is slowly falling as the sky turns a slightly darker shade of blue. It has orange and purple tinges as the last traces of the sunset erase from the horizon. The early night breeze envelops them, gentle like a caress.

Barry has been talking almost all evening, but Stephanie is no longer answering him. She is absently playing with the paper that the hot dogs they ate came in.

“What do you say?” Barry is saying then, but she’s not listening. “Steph?”

Stephanie is so out of it that she can’t answer. She grits her teeth, trying not to wince, when her temples begin throbbing. Her entire body is giving her signals. All she wants to do is rest. Sleep. Sleep for a really long time.

“Steph” He sternly calls her, taking her free hand when she feebly leans on him. “W-What’s wrong?”

“Nothing…” She gulps, avoiding his gaze as she lowers her head in the hopes that the stillness can level her dizziness. “Just got a bit light-headed”

“You sure you’re okay?” When she doesn’t answer, he continues. His voice carries a hint of panic. “You’re still recovering, maybe you should have stayed-”

“I’m okay” She rushes to say, trying her best to smile at him. “Just a bit tired”

“Steph, you almost died not that long ago” Barry gravely says, subtly sinking his fingers into her arm. “And you don’t look so good”

“Barry” She begins to say, tiredly tilting her head as she peers at him. Her vision blurs, but she tries to fight through her unwell. “I’m just… a bit weak…”

He doesn’t reply, only furrowing his brow and feeling a pang of concern in his chest. He had been scared enough to find her after the accident, it only makes it worse to see her in that state still. He doesn’t think he could take the idea of her not being alright.

“And…” Stephanie gulps, wobbling slightly. “V-Very dizzy…”

Barry wraps an arm around her. His heart is racing in unease. Just as he supports her, Stephanie falters. The breath hitches in his throat as he tightens his hold on her and presses her against his side.

“Steph?!” His voice breaks as the concern completely takes over him.

For a few seconds she doesn’t reply, only limply lying against him. Memories of finding her after the accident return to Barry, and he grimaces at the mental image. Luckily, she reacts in time to pull him out of those dark thoughts.

“I’m… okay…” She tells him in a daze, voice weak.

Still firmly holding on to her, he presses his free hand against her forehead. Stephanie’s skin feels warm, confirming his suspicions that she was still sick.

“I’m taking you home” Barry states. “No buts, you need to rest”

Stephanie babbles, opening and closing her mouth. If only he knew the true reason behind her state. But he can never know. In any case, she doesn’t feel lucid enough to speak. The mere idea that she has a secret identity feels far too surreal at the moment, even to herself.

“Can you walk?” Barry tenderly moves the hair away from her face, trying to take a good look at her. She only shakes her head, frowning as she tiredly puts her head on his shoulder. “Okay, up you go”

Straining a little, he grunts as he sweeps her off the floor and into his arms. Stephanie suddenly feels incredibly safe and comfortable in his embrace, and the deep unwell lessen slightly.

“You’re strong…” She chuckles, and she briefly wonders why she’s tilted to the side even though her head is still resting against his shoulder.

“See? You’re clearly delirious” They peer at each other for a moment.

The slight motion of picking her head off his shoulder sends a wave of vertigo through her. She whimpers, closing her eyes tight and gingerly resting her head on his shoulder again. Then, a sudden change of position startles her. When she opens her eyes, they are already at her place. Baffled, she feebly glances around. A moment ago they were… and now… she must be really delirious...

“We’re here” Barry carries her inside. “Do I need to take you to the hospital?”

“No, I just…” She starts to say, but her voice then becomes urgent. “Put me down”

Confused, Barry does as she says. When she is on her feet again, Stephanie presses her hands over her mouth. The wave of nausea soon passes, much to her relief. However, everything else does too.

Barry exclaims as he throw himself forward to catch her. Stephanie drops down, falling limply to the ground. His arms break her fall and he nervously scoops her into them again.

“Oh my gosh…” He mumbles as he rushes her to the bed. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh…”

He shakily sighs to himself as he carefully lies her down. The girl’s arms stay locked around his neck even when he lets go of her. Barry stops to intently watch her. She now looks peaceful, as though she badly needed that rest. She’s resting, he tells himself. Yeah, just resting. Her chest softly moves up and down with her calm breathing.

“She’s okay” Barry assures himself, although he begins pacing up and down her room.

Thousands of terrible thoughts battle in his brain. She’s sick again. She hasn’t recovered. She’s dying. The accident was too much for her, she will never fully recover.

“Okay, calm down, Barry” He takes a deep breath, even if he still paces. “She’s fine, she’s gonna be alright”

He tells himself that all those thoughts are lies. They are just fears, not reality. Interrupting himself, Barry stops and looks at her again. Stephanie lies motionlessly in the bed. She is still pale, but she doesn’t look terribly sick. He sighs and resumes his pacing.

“She’s not as bad as she was in the hospital” Barry whispers, trying not to wake her. “She looked much worse then. Besides, Steph’s strong, she’ll be fine, she’ll be-”

Barry’s phone rings, startling him so much that he yelps and jumps in place.

“H-Hello?”

“Barry?”

The boy finally quits his pacing for good. His hand flies to his forehead. He had totally forgotten he was supposed to return to the Batcave after being with Steph. Things had seemed to gotten worse. After their rescue on the train, panic had seemed to reign on the streets for several hours. There was no explanation, but they knew it had something to do with the rest of strange events. And maybe a villain was behind it all.

But now… Stephanie needs him. She is sick. Now he can’t leave her.

“Bruce! I’m so sorry” Barry rapidly says. “I know I should be there, but Steph got really sick and…”

“Is she alright?”

“Y-Yeah, yeah… I think so…”

“And you?”

“I’m fine, I just got scared…” He sighs, settling his nerves. “Really freaking scared”

“So you can’t make it?” Bruce asks him, but at least Barry is relieved that there is no anger or annoyance in his voice.

“I’m afraid not… I’m really sorry, I just…”

“I understand” The man replies. “But we have to check that out”

“Sure, yeah!” Barry nervously ruffles his own hair. “You guys be careful out there, okay?”

“We will” Bruce gently says. “Take care of your friend”

“Yeah” The boy absently hangs up, turning to her once more. She is now lying over her side, having turned slightly in her sleep.

Barry watches her, wondering how he can contain such an immense amount of fondness for her. Just the sight of her pale face was enough to break his heart. If he could, he would hold her tight and never let go, protect her from everything.

When he slowly walks closer to her, a board of the wooden floor creaks. Barry freezes, but it’s too late. Stephanie groggily turns around, opening her eyes moving her head to look around her.

“Barry?” She mumbles, looking around, disoriented. “What…?”

What is Barry doing there with her? However, she quickly forgets about him when her eyes fall on the window. It’s almost dawn. An alarm blasts in her head as her usual routine occupies all her thoughts. She needs to get ready!

"I gotta go to work!" Stephanie makes to stand from the bed, but Barry is faster. He pushes her by the shoulders and forces her to lie down again.

"What?” He exclaims, feeling that anguish that he had just gotten rid of creeping up again. “Are you… are you serious?"

"Barry, I’m gonna be late! Our investigation is very important, it will help so many-"

“Oh my gosh, Steph!” He exclaims, in a surprisingly loud and exasperated voice that instantly silences her in astonishment. “Can you stop thinking about everyone else and take care of yourself for one minute?! Don’t you remember what happened to you?!”

And suddenly, with his words, Stephanie does remember. The accident, the hospital, the heroic attempt, the inexplicable dread in the air… Everything. She relaxes, forgetting about work. She now remembers she hasn’t gone to the lab in a week. But it’s too late for Barry.

Stephanie gawks at him, having no words to retaliate. His sudden outburst is so unexpected that she is utterly speechless. A second after he finishes his sentence, however, his eyes widen in surprise as well. They silently stare at each other.

“I’m so sorry” He utters, averting his gaze in shame. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you, I just…”

“You’re right… I just got a little disoriented” Stephanie reaches out to delicately take his hand, which he reluctantly allows. “I’m going to lie down, okay?”

The boy nods his head, and he doesn’t move at first even as she insists. When Stephanie tugs at his fingers, he starts to move slowly. Barry turns, hesitantly facing her. Stephanie only pulls a little harder, inviting to sit with her as she returns to her previous spot. Exhaling all the anguish in a shaky breath, Barry joins her in the bed.

No more words are spoken for several seconds. Stephanie doesn’t let go of Barry’s hand. His eyes are watery. Even as he looks away again, she knows, and that is why she tugs at him until they’re both lying down. Resting on their sides, they’re now facing each other. They just rest there for a moment, letting all the tension in the air to vanish and lingering on their positions until Stephanie’s soft voice breaks the silence.

“Are you okay, Barry?”

“Yeah...” He takes a deep breath in. “Just a little shaky”

“I’m sorry…” She mutters, and her hand is delicately pressing against his cheek before she can stop herself. “I really hate to worry you”

“You can’t scare me like that again, okay? Ever” Barry replies, taking her hand off his face and clutching it between both his palms. “Just when I thought you were out of danger you faint on me like that and…”

“I’m okay, Barry” Stephanie assures, chuckling a little when his eyes fall upon hers in a skeptical manner. “I’m better now, really, I just need some rest”

“I can assure you, you’re getting some rest” Remnants of that exasperated tone linger in his voice. “I’m making sure you get some sleep even if I have to lie all day here with you!”

“Is that a threat?” She tenderly smiles, and the callback causes Barry to chuckle.

He pauses, taking a moment to sigh and calm himself.

“Are you really feeling okay?” He lovingly presses her hand against his chest. His heart is drumming underneath it. “Don’t lie to me, Steph, I’ll know”

“I am, I promise” Stephanie snuggles closer to him, embracing his warmth and comforting presence. “Just a little tired”

“What happened to you?” He whispers in concern, even if his arm automatically falls over her frame. “I thought you had rested a lot, that you were recovered. Did I overdo it today? I really tried to…”

“No, no, it’s not that” The girl locks eyes with him, biting her lip as she wonders if she should tell him. In the end she partially does, thinking that he doesn’t need to know the true reason behind her little adventure. “When I went for that walk earlier I… I don’t know… Something affected me… It was like the air was contaminated… It made me feel scared and horrible”

“What was it?”

“I have no idea… I just know there’s something strange going on in this city”

“Yeah, I know…” Barry somberly mutters. After a brief pause, he feels his shoulders relaxing the closer she is. “Try to get some sleep, okay? I’ll watch over you”

Stephanie breathes in, just at the same time that Barry does, and peacefully exhales with him. She hasn’t been feeling safe ever since that awful experience from before. Now, next to Barry and enveloped by his arms, she feels the safest she’s ever been.

Tag list: @scared-to-be-lonely345 / @ocfairygodmother // Ask to be added to be notified when I post for this series!!

#loves worth running to #lwrt #barry allen #barry allen x reader #barry allen x oc #barry allen imagine #ezra miller #justice league #justice league imagine #justice league series #dc #dc series #dc imagine #oc #series #original character

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grigori77 · 3 years

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2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10. WOLFWALKERS – eleven years ago, Irish director Tomm Moore exploded onto the animated cinema scene with The Secret of Kells, a spellbinding feature debut which captivated audiences the world over and even garnered an Oscar nomination. Admittedly I didn’t actually even know about it until I discovered his work through his astonishing follow-up, Song of the Sea (another Academy Award nominee), in 2015, so when I finally caught it I was already a fan of Moore’s work. It’s been a similarly long wait for his third feature, but he’s genuinely pulled off a hat-trick, delivering a third flawless film in a row which OF COURSE means that his latest feature is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, my top animated feature of 2020. I could even be tempted to say it’s his best work to date … this is an ASTONISHING film, a work of such breath-taking, spell-binding beauty that I spent its entire hour and three-quarters glued to the screen, simple mesmerised by the wonder and majesty of this latest iteration of the characteristically stylised “Cartoon Saloon” look. It’s also liberally steeped in Moore’s trademark Celtic vibe and atmosphere, once again delving deep into his homeland’s rich and evocative cultural history and mythology while also bringing us something far more original and personal – this time the titular supernatural beings are magical near-human beings whose own subconscious can assume the form of very real wolves. Set in a particularly dark time in Irish history – namely 1650, when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector – the story follows Robyn (Honor Kneafsey, probably best known for the Christmas Prince films), the impetuous and spirited young daughter of English hunter Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean), brought in by the Protectorate to rid the city of Kilkenny of the wolves plaguing the area. One day fate intervenes and Robyn meets Mebh Og MacTire (The Girl at the End of the Garden‘s Eve Whittaker), a wild girl living in the woods, whose accidental bite gives her strange dreams in which she becomes a wolf – turns out Mebh is a wolfwalker, and now so is Robyn … every aspect of this film is an utter triumph for Moore and co, who have crafted a work of living, breathing cinematic art that’s easily the equal to (if not even better than) the best that Disney, Dreamworks or any of the other animation studios could create. Then there’s the excellent voice cast – Bean brings fatherly warmth and compassion to the role that belies his character’s intimidating size, while Kneafsey and Whittaker make for a sweet and sassy pair as they bond in spite of powerful cultural differences, and the masterful Simon McBurney (Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) brings cool, understated menace to the role of Cromwell himself. This is a film with plenty of emotional heft to go with its marvels, and once again displays the welcome dark side which added particular spice to Moore’s previous films, but ultimately this is still a gentle and heartfelt work of wonder that makes for equally suitable viewing for children as for those who are still kids at heart – ultimately, then, this is another triumph for one of the most singularly original filmmakers working in animation today, and if Wolfwalkers doesn’t make it third time lucky come Oscars-time then there’s no justice in the world …

9. WONDER WOMAN 1984 – probably the biggest change for 2020 compared to pretty much all of the past decade is how different the fortunes of superhero cinema turned out to be. A year earlier the Marvel Cinematic Universe had dominated all, but the DC Extended Universe still got a good hit in with big surprise hit Shazam! Fast-forward to now and things are VERY different – DC suddenly came out in the lead, but only because Marvel’s intended heavy-hitters (two MCU movies, the first Venom sequel and potential hot-shit new franchise starter Morbius: the Living Vampire) found themselves continuously pushed back thanks to (back then) unforeseen circumstances which continue to shit all over our theatre-going slate for the immediate future. In the end DC’s only SERIOUS competition turned out to be NETFLIX … never mind, at least we got ONE big established superhero blockbuster into the cinemas before the end of the year that the whole family could enjoy, and who better to headline it than DC’s “newest” big screen megastar, Diana Prince? Back in 2017 Monster’s Ball director Patty Jenkins’ monumental DCEU standalone spectacularly realigned the trajectory of a cinematic franchise that was visibly flagging, redesigning the template for the series’ future which has since led to some (mostly) consistently impressive subsequent offerings. Needless to say it was a damn tough act to follow, but Jenkins and co-writers Geoff Johns (Arrow and The Flash) and David Callaham (The Expendables, Zombieland: Double Tap, future MCU entry Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings) have risen to the challenge in fine style, delivering something which pretty much equals that spectacular franchise debut … as has Gal Gadot, who’s now OFFICIALLY made the role her own thanks to yet another showstopping and definitive performance as the unstoppable Amazonian goddess living amongst us. She’s older and wiser than in the first film, but still hasn’t lost that forthright honesty and wonderfully pure heart we’ve come to love ever since her introduction in Zack Snyder’s troublesome but ultimately underrated Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (yes, that’s right, I said it!), and Gadot’s clear, overwhelming commitment to the role continues to pay off magnificently as she once again proves that Diana is THE VERY BEST superhero in the DCEU cinematic pantheon. Although it takes place several decades after its predecessor, WW84 is, obviously, still very much a period piece, Jenkins and co this time perfectly capturing the sheer opulent and over-the-top tastelessness of the 1980s in all its big-haired, bad-suited, oversized shoulder-padded glory while telling a story that encapsulates the greedy excessiveness of the Reagan era, perfectly embodied in the film’s nominal villain, Max Lord (The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal), a wishy-washy wannabe oil tycoon conman who chances upon a supercharged wish-rock and unleashes a devastating supernatural “monkey’s paw” upon the world. To say any more would give away a whole raft of spectacular twists and turns that deserve to be enjoyed good and cold, although they did spoil one major surprise in the trailer when they teased the return of Diana’s first love, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) … needless to say this is another big blockbuster bursting with big characters, big action and BIG IDEAS, just what we’ve come to expect after Wonder Woman’s first triumphant big screen adventure. Interestingly, the film starts out feeling like it’s going to be a bubbly, light, frothy affair – after a particularly stunning all-action opening flashback to Diana’s childhood on Themyscira, the film proper kicks off with a bright and breezy atmosphere that feels a bit like the kind of Saturday morning cartoon action the consistently impressive set-pieces take such unfettered joy in parodying, but as the stakes are raised the tone grows darker and more emotionally potent, the storm clouds gathering for a spectacularly epic climax that, for once, doesn’t feel too overblown or weighed down by its visual effects, while the intelligent script has unfathomable hidden depths to it, making us think far more than these kinds of blockbusters usually do. It’s really great to see Chris Pine return since he was one of the best things about the first movie, and his lovably childlike wide-eyed wonder at this brave new world perfectly echoes Diana’s own last time round; Kristen Wiig, meanwhile, is pretty phenomenal throughout as Dr Barbara Minerva, the initially geeky and timid nerd who discovers an impressive inner strength but ultimately turns into a superpowered apex predator as she becomes one of Wonder Woman’s most infamous foes, the Cheetah; Pascal, of course, is clearly having the time of his life hamming it up to the hilt as Lord, playing gloriously against his effortlessly cool, charismatic action hero image to deliver a compellingly troubling examination of the monstrous corrupting influence of absolute power. Once again, though, the film truly belongs to Gadot – she looks amazing, acts her socks off magnificently, and totally rules the movie. After this, a second sequel is a no-brainer, because Wonder Woman remains the one DC superhero who’s truly capable of bearing the weight of this particular cinematic franchise on her powerful shoulders – needless to say, it’s already been greenlit, and with both Jenkins and Gadot onboard, I’m happy to sign up for more too …

8. LOVE & MONSTERS – with the cinemas continuing their frustrating habit of opening for a little while and then closing while the pandemic ebbed and flowed in the months after the summer season, it was starting to look like there might not have been ANY big budget blockbusters to enjoy before year’s end as heavyweights like Black Widow, No Time To Die and Dune pulled back to potentially more certain release slots into 2021 (with only WW84 remaining stubbornly in place for Christmas). Then Paramount decided to throw us a bone, opting to release this post-apocalyptic horror comedy on-demand in October instead, thus giving me the perfect little present to tie me over during the darkening days of autumn. The end result was a stone-cold gem that came out of nowhere to completely blow critics away, a spectacular sleeper hit that ultimately proved one of the year’s biggest and most brilliant surprises. Director Michael Matthews may only have had South African indie thriller Five Fingers for Marseilles under his belt prior to this, but he proves he’s definitely a solid talent to watch in the future, crafting a fun and effective thrill-ride that, like all the best horror comedies, is consistently as funny as it is scary, sharing much of the same DNA as this particular mash-up genre’s classics like Tremors and Zombieland and standing up impressively well to such comparisons. The story, penned by rising star Brian Duffield (who has TWO other entries on this list, Underwater and Spontaneous) and Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Dora & the Lost City of Gold), is also pretty ingenious and surprisingly original – a meteorite strike has unleashed weird mutagenic pathogens that warp various creepy crawly critters into gigantic monstrosities that have slaughter most of the world’s human population, leaving only a beleaguered, dwindling few to eke out a precarious living in underground colonies. Living in one such makeshift community is Joel Dawson (The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien), a smart and likeable geek who really isn’t very adventurous, is extremely awkward and uncoordinated, and has a problem with freezing if threatened … which makes it all the more inexplicable when he decides, entirely against the advice of everyone he knows, to venture onto the surface so he can make the incredibly dangerous week-long trek to the neighbouring colony where his girlfriend Aimee (Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick) has ended up. Joel is, without a doubt, the best role that O’Brien has EVER had, a total dork who’s completely unsuited to this kind of adventure and, in the real world, sure to be eaten alive in the first five minutes, but he’s also such a fantastically believable, fallible everyman that every one of us desperate, pathetic omega-males and females can instantly put ourselves in his place, making it elementarily easy to root for him. He’s also hilariously funny, his winningly self-deprecating sass and pitch perfect talent for physical comedy making it all the more rewarding watching each gloriously anarchic life-and-death encounter mould him into the year’s most unlikely action hero. Henwick, meanwhile, once again impresses in a well-written role where she’s able to make a big impression despite her decidedly short screen time, as do the legendary Michael Rooker and brilliant newcomer Ariana Greenblatt as Clyde and Minnow, the adorably jaded, seen-it-all-before pair of “professional survivors” Joel meets en-route, who teach him to survive on the surface. The action is fast, frenetic and potently visceral, the impressively realistic digital creature effects bringing a motley crew of bloodthirsty beasties to suitably blood-curdling life for the film’s consistently terrifying set-pieces, while the world-building is intricately thought-out and skilfully executed. Altogether, this was an absolute joy from start to finish, and a film I enthusiastically endorsed to everyone I knew was looking for something fun to enjoy during the frustrating lockdown nights-in. One of the cinematic year’s best kept secrets then, and a compelling sign of things to come for its up-and-coming director.

7. PARASITE – I’ve been a fan of master Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho ever since I stumbled across his deeply weird but also thoroughly brilliant breakthrough feature The Host, and it’s a love that’s deepened since thanks to truly magnificent sci-fi actioner Snowpiercer, so I was looking forward to his latest feature as much as any movie geek, but even I wasn’t prepared for just what a runaway juggernaut of a hit this one turned out to be, from the insane box office to all that award-season glory (especially that undeniable clean-sweep at the Oscars). I’ll just come out and say it, this film deserves it all. It’s EASILY Bong’s best film to date (which is really saying something), a masterful social satire and jet black comedy that raises some genuinely intriguing questions before delivering deeply troubling answers. Straddling the ever-widening gulf between a disaffected idle rich upper class and impoverished, struggling lower class in modern-day Seoul, it tells the story of the Kim family – father Ki-taek (Bong’s good luck charm, Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Train to Busan’s Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (The Silenced’s Park So-dam) – a poor family living in a run-down basement apartment who live hand-to-mouth in minimum wage jobs and can barely rub two pennies together, until they’re presented with an intriguing opportunity. Through happy chance, Ki-woon is hired as an English tutor for Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), the daughter of a wealthy family, which offers him the chance to recommend Ki-jung as an art tutor to the Parks’ troubled young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun). Soon the rest of the Kims are getting in on the act, the kids contriving opportunities for their father to replace Mr Park’s chauffeur and their mother to oust the family’s long-serving housekeeper, Gook Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), and before long their situation has improved dramatically. But as they two families become more deeply entwined, cracks begin to show in their supposed blissful harmony as the natural prejudices of their respective classes start to take hold, and as events spiral out of control a terrible confrontation looms on the horizon. This is social commentary at its most scathing, Bong drawing on personal experiences from his youth to inform the razor-sharp script (co-written by his production assistant Han Jin-won), while he weaves a palpable atmosphere of knife-edged tension throughout to add spice to the perfectly observed dark humour of the situation, all the while throwing intriguing twists and turns at us before suddenly dropping such a massive jaw-dropper of a gear-change that the film completely turns on its head to stunning effect. The cast are all thoroughly astounding, Song once again dominating the film with a turn at once sloppy and dishevelled but also poignant and heartfelt, while there are particularly noteworthy turns from Lee Sun-kyun as the Parks’ self-absorbed patriarch Dong-ik and Choi Yeo-jeong (The Concubine) as his flighty, easily-led wife Choi Yeon-gyo, as well as a fantastically weird appearance in the latter half from Park Myung-hoon. This is heady stuff, dangerously seductive even as it becomes increasingly uncomfortable viewing, so that even as the screws tighten and everything goes to hell it’s simply impossible to look away. Bong Joon-ho really has surpassed himself this time, delivering an existential mind-scrambler that lingers long after the credits have rolled and might even have you questioning your place in society once you’ve thought about it some. It deserves every single award and every ounce of praise it’s been lavished with, and looks set to go down as one of the true cinematic greats of this new decade. Trust me, if this was a purely critical best-of list it’d be RIGHT AT THE TOP …

6. THE OLD GUARD – Netflix’ undisputable TOP OFFERING of the summer came damn close to bagging the whole season, and I can’t help thinking that even if some of the stiffer competition had still been present it may well have still finished this high. Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love & Basketball, the Secret Life of Bees) directs comics legend Greg Rucka’s adaptation of his own popular series with uncanny skill and laser-focused visual flair considering there’s nothing on her previous CV to suggest she’d be THIS good at mounting a stomping great ultraviolent action thriller, ushering in a thoroughly engrossing tale of four ancient, invulnerable immortal warriors – Andy AKA Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), Booker AKA Sebastian de Livre (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe AKA Yusuf Al-Kaysani (Wolf’s Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky AKA Niccolo di Ginova (Trust’s Luca Marinelli) – who’ve been around forever, hiring out their services as mercenaries for righteous causes while jealously guarding their identities for fear of horrific experimentation and exploitation should their true natures ever be discovered. Their anonymity is threatened, however, when they’re uncovered by former CIA operative James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s working for the decidedly dodgy pharmaceutical conglomerate run by sociopathic billionaire Steven Merrick (Harry Melling, formerly Dudley in the Harry Potter movies), who want to capture these immortals so they can patent whatever it is that makes them keep on ticking … just as a fifth immortal, US Marine Nile Freeman (If Beale Street Could Talk’s KiKi Layne), awakens after being “killed” on deployment in Afghanistan. The supporting players are excellent, particularly Ejiofor, smart and driven but ultimately principled and deeply conflicted about what he’s doing, even if he does have the best of intentions, and Melling, the kind of loathsome, reptilian scumbag you just love to hate, but the film REALLY DOES belong to the Old Guard themselves – Schoenaerts is a master brooder, spot-on casting as the group’s relative newcomer, only immortal since the Napoleonic Wars but clearly one seriously old soul who’s already VERY tired of the lifestyle, while Joe and Nicky (who met on opposing sides of the Crusades) are simply ADORABLE, an unapologetically matter-of-fact gay couple who are sweet, sassy and incredibly kind, the absolute emotional heart of the film; it’s the ladies, however, that are most memorable here. Layne is exceptional, investing Nile with a steely intensity that puts her in good stead as her new existence threatens to overwhelm her and MORE THAN qualified to bust heads alongside her elders … but it’s ancient Greek warrior Andy who steals the film, Theron building on the astounding work she did in Atomic Blonde to prove, once and for all, that there’s no woman on Earth who looks better kicking arse than her (as Booker puts it, “that woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn”); in her hands, Andy truly is a goddess of death, tough as tungsten alloy and unflappable even in the face of hell itself, but underneath it all she hides a heart as big as any of her friends’. They’re an impossibly lovable bunch and you feel you could follow them on another TEN adventures like this one, which is just as well, because Prince-Blythewood and Rucka certainly put them through their paces here – the drama is high (but frequently laced with a gentle, knowing sense of humour, particularly whenever Joe and Nicky are onscreen), as are the stakes, and the frequent action sequences are top-notch, executed with rare skill and bone-crunching zest, but also ALWAYS in service to the story. Altogether this is an astounding film, a genuine victory for its makers and, it seems, for Netflix themselves – it’s become one of the platform’s biggest hits to date, earning well-deserved critical acclaim and great respect and genuine geek love from the fanbase at large. After this, a sequel is not only inevitable, it’s ESSENTIAL …

5. MANK – it’s always nice when David Fincher, one of my TOP FIVE ALL TIME FAVOURITE DIRECTORS, drops a new movie, because it can be GUARANTEED to place good and high in my rundown for that year. The man is a frickin’ GENIUS, a true master of the craft, genuinely one of the auteur’s auteurs. I’ve NEVER seen him deliver a bad film – even a misfiring Fincher (see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Alien 3) is still capable of creating GREAT CINEMA. How? Why? It’s because he genuinely LOVES the art form, it’s been his obsession all his life, and he’s spent every day of it becoming the best possible filmmaker he can be. Who better to tell the story of the creation of one of the ULTIMATE cinematic masterpieces, then? Benjamin Ross’ acclaimed biopic RKO 281 covered similar ground, presenting a compelling look into the making Citizen Kane, the timeless masterpiece of Hollywood’s ULTIMATE auteur, Orson Welles, but Fincher’s film is more interested in the original inspiration for the story, how it was written and, most importantly, the man who wrote it – Herman J. Mankiewicz, known to his friends as Mank. One of my favourite actors of all time, Gary Oldman, delivers yet another of his career best performances in the lead role, once a man of vision and incredible storytelling skill whose talents have largely been squandered through professional difficulties and personal vices, a burned out one-time great fallen on hard times whom Welles picks up out of the trash, dusts off and offers a chance to create something truly great again. The only catch? The subject of their film (albeit dressed up in the guise of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane) is to be real-life publisher, politico and tycoon William Randolph Hurst (Charles Dance), once Mank’s friend and patron before they had a very public and messy falling out which partly led to his current circumstances. As he toils away in seclusion on what is destined to become his true masterwork, flashbacks reveal to us the fascinating, moving and ultimately tragic tale of his rise and fall from grace in the movie business, set against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. Shooting a script that his own journalist and screenwriter father, Jack, crafted and then failed to bring to the screen himself before his death in 2003, Fincher has been working for almost a quarter century to make this film, and all that passion and drive is writ large on the screen – this is a glorious film ABOUT film, the art of it, the creation of it, and all the dirty little secrets of what the industry itself has always really been like, especially in that most glamorous and illusory of times. The fact that Fincher shot in black and white and intentionally made it look like it was made in the early 1940s (the “golden age of the Silver Screen”, if you will) may seem like a gimmick, but instead it’s a very shrewd choice that expertly captures the gloss and moodiness of the age, almost looking like a contemporary companion piece to Kane itself, and it’s the perfect way to frame all the sharp-witted observation, subtly subversive character development and murky behind-the-scenes machinations that tell the story. Oldman is in every way the star here, holding the screen with all the consummate skill and flair we’ve come to expect from him, but there’s no denying the uniformly excellent supporting cast are equal to the task here – Dance is at his regal, charismatic best as Hearst, while Amanda Seyfried is icily classy on the surface but mischievous and lovably grounded underneath as Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies, who formed the basis for Kane’s most controversial character, Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Moneyball) brings nuance and complexity to the role of MGM founder Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey (Banshee, Ozark) is understated but compelling as Mank’s younger screenwriter brother Joseph, and Lily Collins and Tuppence Middleton exude class and long-suffering stubbornness as the two main women in Mank’s life (his secretary and platonic muse, Rita Alexander, and his wife, Sara), while The Musketeers’ Tom Burke’s periodic but potent appearances as Orson Welles help to drive the story in the “present”. Another Netflix release which I was (thankfully) able to catch on the big screen during one of the brief lulls between British lockdowns, this was a decidedly meta cinematic experience that perfectly encapsulated not only what is truly required for the creation of a screen epic, but also the latest pinnacle in the career of one of the greatest filmmakers working in the business today, powerful, stirring, intriguing and surprising in equal measure. Certainly it’s one of the most important films ABOUT so far film this century, but is it as good as Citizen Kane? Boy, that’s a tough one …

4. ENOLA HOLMES – ultimately, my top film for the autumn/winter movie season was also the film which finally topped my Netflix Original features list, as well as beating all other streaming offerings for the entire year (which is saying something, as you should know by now). Had things been different, this would have been one of Warner Bros’ BIGGEST releases for the year in the cinema, of that I have no doubt, a surprise sleeper hit which would have taken the world by storm – as it is it’s STILL become a sensation, albeit in a much more mid-pandemic, lockdown home-viewing kind of way. Before you start crying oh God no, not another Sherlock Holmes adaptation, this is a very different beast from either the Guy Ritchie take or the modernized BBC show, instead side-lining the great literary sleuth in favour of a delicious new AU version, based on The Case of the Missing Marquess, the first novel in the Enola Holmes Mysteries literary series from American YA author Nancy Springer. Positing that Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) and his elder brother Mycroft (Sam Claflin) had an equally ingenious and precocious baby sister, the film introduces us to Enola (Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), who’s been raised at home by their strong-willed mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) to be just as intelligent, well-read and intellectually skilled as her far more advantageously masculine elder siblings. Then, on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Enola awakens to find her mother has vanished, putting her in a pretty pickle since this leaves her a ward of Mycroft, a self-absorbed social peacock who finds her to be wilfully free-spirited and completely ill equipped to face the world, concluding that the only solution is sending her to boarding school where she’ll learn to become a proper lady. Needless to say she’s horrified by the prospect, deciding to run away and search for her mother instead … this is about as perfect a family adventure film as you could wish for, following a vital, capable and compelling teen detective-in-the-making as she embarks on her very first investigation, as well as winding up tangled in a second to boot involving a young runaway noble, Viscount Tewkesbury, the Marquess of Basilwether (Medici’s Louis Partridge), and the film is a breezy, swift-paced and rewardingly entertaining romp that feels like a welcome breath of fresh air for a literary property which, beloved as it may be, has been adapted to death over the years. Enola Holmes a brilliant young hero who’s perfectly crafted to carry the franchise forward in fresh new directions, and Brown brings her to life with effervescent charm, boisterous energy and mischievous irreverence that are entirely irresistible; Cavill and Claflin, meanwhile, are perfectly cast as the two very different brothers – this Sherlock is much less louche and world-weary than most previous versions, still razor sharp and intellectually restless but with a comfortable ease and a youthful spring in his step that perfectly suits the actor, while Mycroft is as superior and arrogant as ever, a preening arse we derive huge enjoyment watching Enola consistently get the best of; Bonham Carter doesn’t get a lot of screen-time but as we’d expect she does a lot with what she has to make the practical, eccentric and unapologetically modern Eudoria thoroughly memorable, while Partridge is carefree and likeable as the naïve but irresistible Tewkesbury, and there are strong supporting turns from Frances de la Tour as his stately grandmother, the Dowager, Susie Wokoma (Crazyhead, Truth Seekers) as Emily, a feisty suffragette who runs a jujitsu studio, Burn Gorman as dastardly thug-for-hire Linthorn, and Four Lions’ Adeel Akhtar as a particularly scuzzy Inspector Lestrade. Seasoned TV director Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag, Killing Eve) makes his feature debut with an impressive splash, unfolding the action at a brisk pace while keeping the narrative firmly focused on an intricate mystery plot that throws in plenty of ingenious twists and turns before a suitably atmospheric climax and pleasing denouement which nonetheless artfully sets up more to come in the future, while screenwriter Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, The Scouting Book for Boys, Wonder) delivers strong character work and liberally peppers the dialogue with a veritable cavalcade of witty zingers. Boisterous, compelling, amusing, affecting and exciting in equal measure, this is a spirited and appealing slice of cinematic escapism that flatters its viewers and never talks down to them, a perfect little period adventure for a cosy Sunday afternoon. Obviously there’s plenty of potential for more, and with further books to adapt there’s more than enough material for a pile of sequels – Neflix would be barmy indeed to turn their nose up at this opportunity …

3. 1917 – it’s a rare thing for a film to leave me truly shell-shocked by its sheer awesomeness, for me to walk out of a cinema in a genuine daze, unable to talk or even really think about much of anything for a few hours because I’m simply marvelling at what I’ve just witnessed. Needless to say, when I do find a film like that (Fight Club, Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road) it usually earns a place very close to my heart indeed. The latest tour-de-force from Sam Mendes is one of those films – an epic World War I thriller that plays out ENTIRELY in one shot, which doesn’t simply feel like a glorified gimmick or stunt but instead is a genuine MASTERPIECE of film, a mesmerising journey of emotion and imagination in a shockingly real environment that’s impossible to tear your eyes away from. Sure, Mendes has impressed us before – his first film, American Beauty, is a GREAT movie, one of the most impressive feature debuts of the 2000s, while Skyfall is, in my opinion, quite simply THE BEST BOND FILM EVER MADE – but this is in a whole other league. It’s an astounding achievement, made all the more impressive when you realise that there’s very little trickery at play here, no clever digital magic (just some augmentation here and there), it’s all real locations and sets, filmed in long, elaborately choreographed takes blended together with clever edits to make it as seamless as possible – it’s not the first film to try to do this (remember Birdman? Bushwick?), but I’ve never seen it done better, or with greater skill. But it’s not just a clever cinematic exercise, there’s a genuine story here, told with guts and urgency, and populated by real flesh and blood characters – the heart of the film is True History of the Kelly Gang’s George MacKay and Dean Chapman (probably best known as Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones) as Lance Corporals Will Schofield and Tom Blake, the two young tommies sent out across enemy territory on a desperate mission to stop a British regiment from rushing headlong into a German trap (Tom himself has a personal stake in this because his brother is an officer in the attack). They’re a likeable pair, very human and relatable throughout, brave and true but never so overtly heroic that they stretch credibility, so when tragedy strikes along the way it’s particularly devastating; both deliver exceptional performances that effortlessly carry us through the film, and they’re given sterling support from a selection of top-drawer British talent, from Sherlock stars Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch to Mark Strong and Colin Firth, each delivering magnificently in small but potent cameos. That said, the cinematography and art department are the BIGGEST stars here, masterful veteran DOP Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner 2049 and pretty much the Coen Brothers’ entire back catalogue among MANY others) making every frame sing with beauty, horror, tension or tragedy as the need arises, and the environments are SO REAL it feels less like production design than that someone simply sent the cast and crew back in time to film in the real Northern France circa 1917 – from a nightmarish trek across No Man’s Land to a desperate chase through a ruined French village lit only by dancing flare-light in the darkness before dawn, every scene is utterly immersive and simply STUNNING. I don’t think it’s possible for Mendes to make a film better than this, but I sure hope he gives it a go all the same. Either way, this was the most incredible, exhausting, truly AWESOME experience I had at the cinema all year – it’s a film that DESERVES to be seen on the big screen, and I feel truly sorry for those who missed the chance …

2. BIRDS OF PREY & THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN – the only reason 1917 isn’t at number two is because Warner Bros.’ cinematic DC Extended Universe project FINALLY got round to bringing my favourite DC Comics title to the big screen. It was been the biggest pleasure of my cinematic year getting to see my top DC superheroines brought to life on the big screen, and it was done in high style, in my opinion THE BEST of the DCEU films to date (yup, I loved it EVEN MORE than the Wonder Woman movies). It was also great seeing Harley Quinn return after her show-stealing turn in David Ayer’s clunky but ultimately still hugely enjoyable Suicide Squad, better still that they got her SPOT ON this time – this is the Harley I’ve always loved in the comics, unpredictable, irreverent and entirely without regard for what anyone else thinks of her, as well as one talented psychiatrist. Margot Robbie once more excels in the role she was basically BORN to play, clearly relishing the chance to finally do Harley TRUE justice, and she’s a total riot from start to finish, infectiously lovable no matter what crazy, sometimes downright REPRIHENSIBLE antics she gets up to. Needless to say she’s the nominal star here, her latest ill-advised adventure driving the story – finally done with the Joker and itching to make her emancipation official, Harley publicly announces their breakup by blowing up Ace Chemicals (their love spot, basically), inadvertently painting a target on her back in the process since she’s no longer under the assumed protection of Gotham’s feared Clown Prince of Crime – but that doesn’t mean she eclipses the other main players the movie’s REALLY supposed to be about. Each member of the Birds of Prey is beautifully written and brought to vivid, arse-kicking life by what had to be 2020’s most exciting cast – Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, is the perfect character for Mary Elizabeth Winstead to finally pay off on that action hero potential she showed in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, but this is a MUCH more enjoyable role outside of the fight choreography because while Helena may be a world-class dark avenger, socially she’s a total dork, which just makes her thoroughly adorable; Rosie Perez is similarly perfect casting as Renee Montoya, the uncompromising pint-sized Gotham PD detective who kicks against the corrupt system no matter what kind of trouble it gets her into, and just gets angrier all the time, paradoxically making us like her even more; and then there’s the film’s major controversy, at least as far as the fans are concerned, namely one Cassandra Cain. Sure, this take is VERY different from the comics’ version (a nearly mute master assassin who went on to become the second woman to wear the mask of Batgirl before assuming her own crime-fighting mantle as Black Bat and now Orphan), but personally I like to think this is simply Cass at THE VERY START of her origin story, leaving plenty of time for her to discover her warrior origins when the DCEU finally gets around to introducing her mum, Lady Shiva (personally I want Michelle Yeoh to play her, but that’s just me) – anyways, here she’s a skilled child pickpocket whose latest theft inadvertently sets off the larger central plot, and newcomer Ella Jay Basco brings a fantastic pre-teen irreverence and spiky charm to the role, beautifully playing against Robbie’s mercurial energy. My favourite here BY FAR, however, is Dinah Lance, aka the Black Canary (not only my favourite Bird of Prey but my very favourite DC superheroine PERIOD), the choice of up-and-comer Jurnee Smollet-Bell (Friday Night Lights, Underground) proving to be the film’s most inspired casting – a club singer with the metahuman ability to emit piercing supersonic screams, she’s also a ferocious martial artist (in the comics she’s one of the very best fighters IN THE WORLD), as well as a wonderfully pure soul you just can’t help loving, and it made me SO UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY that they got my Canary EXACTLY RIGHT. Altogether they’re a fantastic bunch of badass ladies, basically my perfect superhero team, and the way they’re all brought together (along with Harley, of course) is beautifully thought out and perfectly executed … they’ve also got one hell of a threat to overcome, namely Gotham crime boss Roman Sionis, the Black Mask, one of the Joker’s chief rivals – Ewan McGregor brings his A-game in a frustratingly rare villainous turn (my number one bad guy for the movie year), a monstrously narcissistic, woman-hating control freak with a penchant for peeling off the faces of those who displease him, sharing some exquisitely creepy chemistry with Chris Messina (The Mindy Project) as Sionis’ nihilistic lieutenant Victor Zsasz. This is about as good as superhero cinema gets, a perfect example of the sheer brilliance you get when you switch up the formula to create something new, an ultra-violent, unapologetically R-rated middle finger to the classic tropes, a fantastic black comedy thrill ride that’s got to be the most full-on feminist blockbuster ever made – it’s helmed by a woman (Dead Pigs director Cathy Yan), written by a woman (Bumblebee’s Christina Hodson), produced by more women and ABOUT a bunch of badass women magnificently triumphing over toxic masculinity in all its forms. It’s also simply BRILLIANT – the cast are all clearly having a blast, the action sequences are first rate (the spectacular GCPD evidence room fight in which Harley gets to REALLY cut loose is the undisputable highlight), it has a gleefully anarchic sense of humour and is simply BURSTING with phenomenal homages, references and in-jokes for the fans (Bruce the hyena! Stuffed beaver! Roller derby!). It’s also got a killer soundtrack, populated almost exclusively by numbers from female artists. Altogether, then, this is the VERY BEST the DCEU has to offer to date, and VERY NEARLY my absolute FAVOURITE film of 2020. Give it all the love you can, it sure as hell deserves it.

1. TENET – granted, the streaming platforms (particularly Netflix and Amazon) certainly saved our cinematic summer, but I’m still IMMEASURABLY glad that my ultimate top-spot winner FOR THE WHOLE YEAR was one I got to experience on THE BIG SCREEN. You gotta hand it to Christopher Nolan, he sure hung in there, stubbornly determined that his latest cinematic masterpiece WOULD be released in cinemas in the summer (albeit ultimately landing JUST inside the line in the final week of August and ultimately taking the bite at the box office because of the still shaky atmosphere), and it was worth all the fuss because, for me, this was THE PERFECT MOVIE for me to get return to cinemas with. I mean, okay, in the end it WASN’T the FIRST new movie I saw after the first reopening, that honour went to Unhinged, but THIS was my first real Saturday night-out big screen EXPERIENCE since March. Needless to say, Nolan didn’t disappoint this time any more than he has on any of his consistently spectacular previous releases, delivering another twisted, mind-boggling headfuck of a full-blooded experiential sensory overload that comes perilously close to toppling his long-standing auteur-peak, Inception (itself second only by fractions to The Dark Knight as far as I’m concerned). To say much at all about the plot would give away major spoilers – personally I’d recommend just going in as cold as possible, indeed you really should just stop reading this right now and just GO SEE IT. Still with us? Okay … the VERY abridged version is that it’s about a secret war being waged between the present and the future by people capable of “inverting” time in substances, objects, people, whatever, into which the Protagonist (BlacKkKlansman’s John David Washington), an unnamed CIA agent, has been dispatched in order to prevent a potential coming apocalypse. Washington is once again on top form, crafting a robust and compelling morally complex heroic lead who’s just as comfortable negotiating the minefields of black market intrigue as he is breaking into places or dispatching heavies, Kenneth Branagh delivers one of his most interesting and memorable performances in years as brutal Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, a genuinely nasty piece of work who was ALMOST the year’s very best screen villain, Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Widows) brings strength, poise and wounded integrity to the role of Sator’s estranged wife, Kat, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets to use his own accent for once as tough-as-nails British Intelligence officer Ives, while there are brief but consistently notable supporting turns and cameos from Martin Donovan, Yesterday’s Himesh Patel, Dirk Gently’s Fiona Dourif and, of course, Nolan’s good luck charm, Michael Caine. The cast’s biggest surprise, however, is Robert Pattinson, truly a revelation in what has to be, HANDS DOWN, his best role to date, Neil, the Protagonist’s mysterious handler – he’s by turns cheeky, slick, duplicitous and thoroughly badass, delivering an enjoyably multi-layered, chameleonic performance which proves what I’ve long maintained, that the former Twilight star is actually a fucking amazing actor, and on the basis of this, even if that amazing new teaser trailer wasn’t making the rounds, I think the debate about whether or not he’s the right choice for the new Batman is now academic. As we’ve come to expect from Nolan, this is a TRUE tour-de-force experience, a visual triumph and an endlessly engrossing head-scratcher, Nolan’s screenplay bringing in seriously big ideas and throwing us some major narrative knots and loopholes, constantly wrong-footing the viewer while also setting up truly revelatory payoffs from seemingly low-key, unimportant beginnings – this is a film you need to be awake and attentive for or you could miss something pretty vital. The action sequences are, as ever, second to none, some of the year’s very best set-pieces coming thick and fast and executed with some of the most accomplished skill in the business, while Nolan-regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar and Dunkirk, as well as the heady likes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, SPECTRE and Ad Astra) once again shows he’s one of the best camera-wizards in the business today by delivering some absolutely mesmerising visuals. Notably, Nolan’s other regular collaborator, composer Hans Zimmer, is absent here (although he had good reason, since he was working on his dream project at the time, the fast-approaching screen adaptation of Dune), but Ludwig Göransson (best known for his collaborations with Ryan Coogler Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, as well as career-best work on The Mandalorian) is a fine replacement, crafting an intriguingly internalised, post-modern musical landscape that thrums and pulses in time with the story and emotions of the characters rather than the action itself. Interestingly it’s on the subject of sound that some of the film’s rare detractions have been levelled, and I can see some of the points – the soundtrack mix is an all-encompassing thing, and there are times when the dialogue can be overwhelmed, but in Nolan’s defence this film is a heady, immersive experience, something you really need to concentrate on, so these potential flaws are easily forgiven. As a work of filmmaking art, this is another flawless wonder from one of the true masters of the craft working in cinema today, but it’s art with palpable substance, a rewarding whole that proved truly unbeatable in 2020 …

#wolfwalkers #wonder woman 1984 #ww84 #love and monsters #parasite #parasite movie #the old guard #mank #enola holmes #1917 #1917 movie #Birds of Prey #birds of prey the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn #tenet #tenet movie #2020 in movies

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supermanshield · 3 years

Text

Naps are overrated, anyway

~~~

There is a picture in the watchtower cafeteria of Superman and Batman, asleep on the Javelin.

This is the story of how it came to be, and why Batman let it be.

~~~

Words: 4,092

Relationship: Clark/Bruce

A/N: I had the idea for this story a year ago. For the longest time, the summary you see right now was all I had typed out. Only now, after reading a bunch of JLA vol. 1 did I finally find the right characters, the right feeling and overall vibe, and wrote this in the past three days.

It doesn’t completely comply with continuity, because while I imagine this set somewhere in the 1997-2006 JLA run, Bruce mentions 6 kids (he would have only had 2 at the time + a dead Jason), although they don’t make an appearance. And I'm actually not sure if the Javelin is a thing in that run, maybe that's just a DCAU thing. Just go with it.

Also, Bruce is a bit of a boomer in this. idk, I had fun writing him.

Read on AO3

______________________________________________

Batman doesn’t nap.

However, that is not to say that Bruce doesn't. He's nearing 45 years of age, not a grey hair on his head, but if he were to grow a beard now, or a moustache like his father, it would show a mix of salt and pepper, so he shaves it off, vigorously and every day. Moustache and beard, those are the first things to turn grey. Then the eyebrows. When that happens, Bruce will lose. He will give in to his age and keep his beard. Not yet. If Clark ever walks in on him during his morning ritual (probably soon), he will look at him with that forgiving smile. He will say what he thinks of it, because that's what he does. (Keep it, I like it, Bruce hopes secretively, but there is a sadness present in Clark's eyes that he will never completely understand, and that's exactly why he shaves).

Clark has seen it already though, he's sure. His 5 o'clock shadow must look like a foggy forest to Clark’s microscopic vision, and even worse in the morning, right before his shave. Clark hasn't mentioned it. A conversation for another day.

If his children ever found out about this particular insecurity, all 6 of them would laugh.

Bruce never really napped, or took time out of the day to simply rest, but now, Clark is there. To pull him onto the couch in the study when he's on his way to his desk. To keep him in bed after sex and before patrol. To fly through his window at WE at 50 floors up and pat next to himself on the couch in Bruce's office, door locked, and red cape hung up in the corner.

"It's time," he says. Every time. "You need one."

Bruce will raise his eyebrows. "Already, hmm?" he asks, almost every time.

He's made the mistake of sending him away before. (He won't do that again). Clark is the most stubborn man Bruce knows. He will say the same thing about Bruce, but that's beside the point. And It's not as if Clark distracts him from a case or work; he knows exactly when he has some time and is unable to make excuses.

Bruce is used to taking 20-minute power naps in uncomfortable positions on his desk chair, at the kitchen table behind the newspaper, with his feet up in the batmobile.

Clark sets the alarm for one hour. He pulls Bruce into a horizontal position against that broad chest, either spooning him or facing him, encasing him in his large arms (there are still 76 ways out of his hold, but Bruce can't think of a single one worth a try). They sleep.

Apparently Clark needs naps too, even though he doesn’t need sleep. Bruce has been meaning to ask him about that, wonders if it's a mental thing, a kind of meditation. Therapy.

His naps are dreamless. Afterwards, his return to consciousness is quick, he reorients on the surroundings, on Clark. Kissing him is a good strategy for grounding, Bruce has found. And just like that, they get on with their day again, because there is no time for dwelling, for another moment together. Nevertheless, Bruce is happy with what he does get. It’s more of Clark - and more time with him - than he deserves already.

So, Bruce naps.

---

After a long mission off-world, the league is on their way home towards the watchtower in the javelin. Diana is flying, with J’onn at her side in the co-pilot chair. The rest of them are hauled up in the back of the vehicle, they’re tired, exhausted, just trying to get some rest. Even Wally sits still. Only Batman is pacing up and down, his mind already on Gotham, on home, the cases that were open, the ones that he was *this* close to cracking. Batman doesn’t nap.

His mind is wandering, going at a speed that would make even Clark dizzy, but the puzzle pieces don’t make sense. Yet. His heavy boots are silent on the metal floor of the javelin, his cape a mere whisper of wind behind him as he turns to pace the other way again.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Hawkgirl’s voice cuts through the relative silence of flying through space (beeping, machinery, turbines, the jet - there’s a lot). She holds up one of her large wings, cutting Batman off from his path. “Sit down.”

He does. Next to Superman. A big mistake, although he doesn’t realize it until much later. No need to upset his teammates. He can meditate instead, stay awake. The noise of the jet doesn’t make it easy, but it can be done. Clark smiles calmly at him.

He sits straight, eyes open, breathing focused, and the turmoil in his brains slows down. Soon, they’ll reach Earth’s solar system and he’ll have access to the batcomputer. Not soon enough. Next to him, Superman is a steady support of a brick wall, but his shoulder feels warm and soft against Bruce’s, even through the suit. Underneath the cape and hidden from view, Clark’s thumb rubs circles into his side, lower back. He knows exactly what he’s doing. A Pavlovian effect has Bruce relaxing his shoulders, if only slightly. None of his teachers ever taught him how to deal with a superman when trying to meditate. His superman. His annoyingly super man.

His last thought is of Clark, and that it must be irritating to have a bat ear poking into his cheek. But then again, rarely anything physical ever annoys the Man of Steel. Then, finally, he dozes off, the roar of the jet diminished to a distant snoring.

---

Bruce is proud of the watchtower. His watchtower. It stands erect on the bright side of the moon, pointing towards earth. Always looking out. Within such an enormous structure however, some simple rules are needed. There is a long list next to the fridge in the break room, and one in the meeting room. No running unless there is an emergency. Masks on outside of one’s own room. Food is to stay in the cafeteria (he’s found everyone and Clark with various wrappers and chips bags in the monitor room, so he gave up on that – it’s crossed out). Training gear stays in the gym. The coffee machine has to be cleaned once every 2 days - the stuff isn’t that good, not what Bruce is used to, but it has helped him through several meetings and dull monitor duties in the past.

A couple days after returning from their outer space mission on the javelin, Bruce returns to the watchtower. There are several new members to have a meeting about. He has made up his mind on all of them already, the meeting is merely a formality.

Connor Hawke runs past – one of the new proposed members, codename Green Arrow after his father – and Supergirl flies over his head. “No running.” He stops them both with one move of his arm and a line on a batarang.

Kara turns towards him and slips out of his trap easily. “I wasn’t even running, B,” she says while she floats down. Connor has crossed his arms and looks out the window, Batman’s line still taut around his upper arms.

“There are rules. If you want to be in the Justice League, behave like it.” He reminds her of the proper use of code names too, for good measure, and unties Connor.

With a sigh, both young heroes are off, making their way towards the break room. Bruce follows them and finds Wally and Kyle already inside, but as soon as they see Batman turn the corner they scurry out through the door on the other side.

It’s the first clue that something is amiss. The newer heroes standing around the fridge and chuckling, the second. Bruce lays eyes on the offending appliance and feels his body tense. If smoke could come out of his ears, it would.

“Flash!”

---

The standard size piece of paper lies on one of the metal surfaces in the computer area of the cave. Bruce tries to ignore it while he works, but the primary colours of Superman’s suit in the image are a thorn in his peripheral vision. With a swift move and a smack, he turns it around, and gets back to his files. He has sent his notes for the meeting to the watchtower, reported that he’s too busy to attend.

He works on some of his own active cases, gathering data and looking at evidence. Most of it is paperwork, boring but necessary. He slowly makes his way through every file, meticulously and efficiently. Everything gets reported and written down in case a pattern reveals itself later. The puzzling can be done when he’s more focused. Meanwhile, the cases that are solved and closed get a little custom-made bat-stamp on the front of their manila folder before they get filed away. Alfred brings down coffee, the good kind. Time passes quickly and he’s still busy when Clark flies in.

“Hey,” he walks up to Bruce and bends down for a quick kiss. “I thought you’d be at the meeting today. Diana said you were busy.”

Bruce points to the piece of paper in explanation, Clark turns to grab it. “Wally happened. And I’m always busy.”

“I see. He seemed almost unnaturally giddy today. Oh hey, look.” Clark holds up the picture of Batman and Superman, asleep on the javelin. In it, Clark’s face is peaceful, his mouth open, despite one of the ears on the cowl that is indeed poking his cheek. “We look cute.”

“Batman doesn’t do cute, Clark.”

Clark sighs. But you do, his eyes seem to say. No, I don’t, Bruce replies with his. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

“Wally put it up on the fridge in the watchtower cafeteria. You didn’t notice him taking it last week?”

“Clearly,” Clark points to the Clark in the picture. “I fell asleep.”

“And here I thought you always listened to your surroundings.”

“We were in space. Not exactly much I can hear out there.”

Bruce gets up from his chair. Having a Superman has once again proven useless. Only Clark can do something so silly and time-wasting as sleeping, on purpose. Naps are overrated, anyway. They’ve had this discussion many times, Bruce knows the outcome. *Always* be on high alert, he will say. Clark will push back, it’s not that simple, he will say. Everyone needs sleep, his eyes pleading, apologetically somehow. They do. But it has taken Bruce obtaining Clark’s powers in a freak magic accident and chasing after the sun and every criminal on the planet for 72 hours straight to realise that. Now he knows the desperation, the feeling that it will never end, the knowledge that in the end, not everyone can be saved, even if you try.

Everyone needs sleep, even Superman.

Clark watches him milling through these thoughts, it must be written on his face, and holds out his hand when Bruce’s features finally relax. He’ll just have a stern talking-to with Wally and Kyle next time he’s on the watchtower.

If only it were so simple. The next time he’s on the watchtower, the picture is back on the fridge. And in the main hallway. And in the transporter room, the trophy room, and the ground level bathroom. Bruce groans, suppresses the urge to face-palm. He takes the things down one by one, systematically going through the entire watchtower. Then, he has that talk with Wally. And with Kyle. Best to keep them separated. They snicker that it wasn’t them *this* time, and don’t seem scared of him at all.

He’s either gone too soft in his old (not old, mature) age, or he should have designed the watchtower with a lot more corners for menacing shadows.

Wally and Kyle are both telling the truth, Bruce finds out in the next couple of days when more pictures return while Kyle is off in space and Wally is busy on earth. This time, it’s not just the one of them sleeping on the Javelin. A bunch of pictures have been put up in the break room. There’s one of Clark, asleep on monitor duty with his feet on the console (Bruce makes a mental note to talk to him about that). There, right there, that’s the reason why there always have to be two leaguers watching the screens. J’onn looking desperately at a small pile of Oreo crumbles on the floor of the meeting room. Diana vigorously devouring a tub of chocolate ice cream. And Batman, pointing at the camera, the other hand on his hip.

He has no idea who took it, but it has to be one of the speedsters. All he knows is that this has to stop. No matter if one finds this kind of thing funny, there are rules, privacy issues, secret identities and all that.

The security footage that Bruce watches back in the cave that night reveal some of the newer, younger members of the league sneaking around the watchtower with a roll of tape. They don’t know where all the cameras are, clearly. They don’t know the rules, clearly. Wally and Kyle have to have set them up to do this, clearly.

Clark watches with him over his shoulder. He chuckled when Bruce showed him the evidence earlier, but now his face is serious. He mouths an Oh. “This is getting out of hand. I’ll organize a meeting tomorrow.”

---

The next day, in the biggest meeting hall on the watchtower, over 30 faces stare at them from across the large round table. Diana and J’onn are seated on their side, for good measure. They’re victims in this too. It’s intimidating to be called to the watchtower by Superman and Batman for a meeting on professional conduct, and even more intimidating to sit across four of the original members, especially for the new ones in the crowd. Good, Bruce thinks. He stands up, and so does Clark.

“Welcome, everyone,” Clark starts, the warm and commanding baritone all Superman. “We’re glad you could all make it on such short notice…” While Clark talks, Bruce regards the crowd of heroes standing nervously, or sitting on the few available chairs. Firestorm’s flame burns smaller than normal, the new Green Arrow has his bow clamped between both hands, and even Plastic Man seems to genuinely pay attention to Superman. Wally has his chin in his hands on the table, pretending to be interested, and Kyle only seems to pay attention to a scratch on the table’s surface. “…today is not an emergency, but it is important nonetheless…” Get to the point, Clark. “It seems that whilst we acquire more and more members for the JL, some of you think this is some sort of club and not an international organization to protect the earth,” he drones on. Arthur sighs, and for once, Bruce agrees with him.

“I will not tolerate this any longer,” Bruce cuts Superman off brusquely, in his most serious bat-voice. “Take all pictures down. And if I see another one…”

Wally huffs, interrupting him. “No fun allowed on this godforsaken rock.”

Before Bruce can retort, Clark puts a hand on his tense shoulder. “What Batman is trying to say, is we can’t do this. Even if it seems harmless. Because if we get careless about the little things, we get sloppy, and if we get sloppy, the wrong information might fall into the wrong hands.”

“You’re just as paranoid as he is,” Plastic man points at Batman. “It’s a couple of harmless images.”

“And what did I just say?”

“You’re saying no fun allowed,” Kyle supplies this time. Once again, Bruce takes tremendous effort to suppress a face-palm, and crosses his arms instead. He grunts. Really, they have 37 children here. Not just the 6 back home – a rookie number. 37, except maybe not Diana. Maybe. “Man, we bust our butts for you guys. I’m behind at work, barely get any sleep or free time and you’re getting on our case for something as dumb as this!” Kyle throws his arms up in anger. Behind him, Connor tries to shush him.

“This is work just as much as your civilian job. And more important on top of that. If you want to slack off, you can do that back home. Not here.”

“Grumpy much, bats? Someone missed their morning coffee today…” Wally mumbles.

They continue staring at each other, but it’s Superman who breaks first, uncrosses his arms and sighs. “You can have a couch in the break room… and a tv.” he looks at Bruce. At his expense, of course. “That’s it. No more images of JL members. Leave your personal lives at home.”

“Fine,” Wally sits up. “We’ll take them down.”

---

A couple days later, Bruce is back on the watchtower. No weird pictures greet him this time. Much cleaner. He steadily makes his way to the break room to grab a coffee before the current meeting, but only because he didn’t have time to wait for Alfred’s Italian brew anymore. Clark is with him, already more cheerful because of Bruce’s relatively better mood.

The cafeteria is still empty, the little kitchen still clean. Save for the fridge. There, prominently in the middle of the door, the original picture of Batman and Superman on the Javelin stares him squarely in the face. It’s held up by a pair of small Wonder Woman magnets this time. Clark says something behind him, but Bruce isn’t paying attention. As he gets closer, he can tell it’s different. The paper is thicker, a nicer quality. The image is not a print, but hand-drawn in a mix of coloured chalk and high-quality pencil. The lighting, especially, is magnificent. Kyle Rayner. A new addition is the caption in curly handwriting underneath the image:

Even the world’s finest heroes need to sleep

Now, Bruce face-palms. Hard. Clark mutters a fuck, but regains control quickly. “I’ve got to hand it to them; they have nerve.” Bruce ignores him as he opens the fridge to grab the milk for Clark’s coffee. “It’s a good quality to have.”

“Or a bad one.”

Clark shrugs. His face breaks out into a grin. “And, I have them on my side now.”

Oh, no. Bruce whips his head up from the coffee machine to look at Clark. “Batman doesn’t nap.”

Clark inclines his head, raises an eyebrow. But *you* do. It’s so goddamn frustrating when he’s right.

“Hn. You already have Alfred on your side, that’s enough. And I’ve been good about it.”

“According to your standards, sure. Don’t you think it’s time for one later today? After the meeting?”

“Not here,” Bruce whispers.

“Back home.”

Home. It’s a good thing the security cameras don’t record sound. “Okay,” he mumbles. “I’ve got some time before patrol.”

Clark’s grin turns victorious, and Bruce burns his tongue on the coffee while he tries to hide a smile himself. He’ll decide what to do about Kyle’s art project later. Right now, they have a meeting to attend to.

---

The next morning, Bruce wakes up to Clark kissing his jaw, his mouth. He tastes like Alfred’s coffee. Too early, as always. Not early enough, as always, because Clark is already getting up for work. He considers pulling him back into bed and just straight up explaining to Perry that Clark is late again because he’s fucking the owner, but then he remembers yesterday’s incident. He’ll have to do something about it, obviously, but he’s not looking forward to acknowledging the whole thing yet again, maybe even admitting that the younger members are right, if only a little bit. Stupid watchtower clubhouse. His foul mood must be showing on his face, because all he gets is a “Let it go, Bruce” before Clark disappears into the bathroom. He comes back out in record time, fastening his tie. “Just, let it go. Let them have a little bit of fun. They’re young.”

But not doing anything about it is not an option. Not for Batman, and not for Bruce. “If I don’t retort, they’ll keep going. This won’t die out.” He sits up in bed. At the foot end, Clark is putting on his shoes.

“It will. You can’t fight fire with fire, sweetheart.” He walks over to Bruce and kisses his cheek. That’s it.

“That’s it. I’m going to fight fire with fire.” Get down to their level. He has kids, knows what teenagers and twenty-something year olds think like.

“No,” Clark groans. It turns into a sigh. “I’m going to be late.”

Bruce gets up. “Then go. Have a good day at work, honey.”

Clark clenches his jaw, and swings his messenger bag over his shoulder, giving up. “I’ll meet you for lunch,” he says, already halfway out the window.

Bruce closes it behind him, and then quickly makes his way down to the cave. He lets Alfred know he’ll have breakfast on the watchtower, dons the batsuit, makes a quick stop at his desk in the cave, and beams up to the watchtower. 9 am. He’s still on time.

---

At lunch time, the cafeteria is buzzing with excitement, more and more heroes gathering around the fridge as they point and whisper Really? And Do you even think it was him? And Wally, this must be another prank of yours. Bruce hears shushing and He’s right there while he drinks his coffee on the other side of the room. Finally, Clark walks in and takes a second to behold the spectacle, his brow furrowed, listening in. He clearly gives up on going to the fridge to get food, and instead makes a beeline to where Batman is sitting at one of the tables. “What’s going on? Did you remove it?” he asks as he sits down across from Bruce.

“I did not.”

Wally sticks his head out of the crowd and looks at the two of them. “Hey Bats! Does this mean we can keep it?”

Calmly, Bruce sips his coffee, pointedly ignoring the younglings and the little victory he supplied for them. But of course, and without skipping a beat, Clark notices his smug mood. He leans closer across the metal table. “What, did you put your bat-stamp of approval on it?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

Clark looks back over at the fridge with his spectacular vision to see what Bruce has done earlier, before anyone else was in the vicinity; his bat-symbol stamped onto the lower right corner of the caption. Later, he’ll add a rule to his original list next to the fridge. Only approved art and trophies allowed on the watchtower.

“I also hacked their phones and made sure there are no digital copies anymore,” he explains. “That should teach them to think twice next time.”

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

Bruce shrugs. After all, he’s heard it all before. Only this time, Clark is unable to suppress a smile, he puts a hand over his, and adds “I love you.” Even that is nothing new, he knows it already, but it hasn’t happened on the watchtower yet. He allows a smile to form on his face while Clark holds his gloved hand. The rest of the league is too busy with the commotion around the fridge, anyway.

A few days later, he finds a copy of the drawing in the cave, this one with a small Superman stamp in the lower-right corner. It may just be exactly what he needs to see after a long night of patrol. Alfred seems happy about it too, and not just about the two people in it. He now simply points to the text with a stern face instead of obnoxiously and repeatedly clearing his throat whenever Bruce comes back from patrol battered and bruised or refuses to go up to the house and his bed.

There is another one in the fortress, although Clark doesn’t spend much time there. Bruce figures he can use the reminder whenever he does go there, so far away from humanity, to work on a case. And in Blüdhaven, Dick has one on his bedside table. The last time he visited Titans tower he noticed one in the hallway. Both of those not Bruce’s doing. He lets it slide, right of his cape and cowl and cool exterior. He just hopes everyone can keep it within their inner circles and that Batman and Superman won’t get turned into one of those ‘memes’.

#superbat #write write #humor #jla

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melodious-madrigals · 4 years

Text

“person A grows a beard; how does person B react?” -wondertrev edition

***

It's almost midnight, but Diana is just getting home. She's been on a business trip for the better part of a week, and is endlessly relieved to be back. She opens the door, already feeling the tension drain from her shoulders at the prospect of seeing Steve, and makes her way to their bedroom, where she suspects Steve will still be up, reading.

She enters, drops her bags, and when she finally focuses on him, blinks in dismay.

"What is that?"

Steve looks up from his novel. "Hello to you too."

Diana just stares at him in abject horror.

"Your face," she manages, inelegantly.

"Oh," says Steve, reaching up and running a hand over the several day old stubble now adorning his chin. "Something new I'm trying."

"No." It falls out softly, reflexively, without her brain's permission, and immediately her hand comes up to cover her mouth. "Sorry," she says, at his amused look. "It's your body."

"How do you really feel?" Steve asks, mirth in his eyes. The war inside her is evident: she clearly hates the beard, and is also not willing to insert herself into his bodily autonomy, something she feels strongly about on every level. He chokes down a laugh at the expression on her face, tries not to betray how funny he finds the whole situation.

"That it's your body, but I'm the one who has to look at it," she says finally, her bluntness winning. Steve's pretty sure it's a subtle mark of trust that she's willing to say it aloud.

He's not offended in the slightest, and doesn't pretend to be. "Noted," he says, "So far it's working for me, but I'm still experimenting."

"Hmm," Diana says, doing her best not to be too disapproving. She drops the subject, but takes another moment to glare at the beard before proceeding on to more normal conversation.

"It's itchy," complains Diana the next day, as it scratches against her cheek in an unfamiliar way.

"You're telling me," says Steve. "The first few days were hell." It was only after everything grew in that the itching stopped.

Diana, trying hard not to be petulant in her dislike for Steve's beard, once again moves on, silencing her misgivings and resigning herself to the ticklish sensation of the scruff scraping across her face and neck when they kiss. She'll get used to it.

Probably.

Perhaps her vendetta against the beard would not be nearly so pronounced if there weren't so many people remarking on how much they like it.

"Oh, Steve, you look so handsome," coos their eighty-something year old neighbor, Mme. Giraudet, when they run into each other in the hallway, and Diana bites her tongue as Steve grins and thanks her.

"Your new beard suits you," comments Diana's colleague, Inès, when Steve stops by the Louvre for lunch one afternoon. The interns, meanwhile, titter amongst themselves, and Diana's sure they're also talking about the beard too, given that they gossip about everything else.

"Love the beard," says Arthur at the next Justice League meeting, and Diana huffs as they talk about the best trimming techniques and Arthur asks if Steve plans to grow it any longer. (The answer is no, thankfully.)

"Maybe I should grow one too," says Barry thoughtfully, and Diana rolls her eyes, because Steve has officially crossed the line into bad influence.

"I know an excellent styling product should you wish to give it a little panache," says Alfred, and under her breath Diana mumbles, "Don't encourage him."

"You are lucky my skin heals so quickly," Diana grouses one evening, as she examines the inside of her thigh, where there's a light trail of irritated skin, already starting to fade.

"Perk #327 of dating a literal goddess," Steve quips jovially. They both know her skin will be completely unmarred in the next quarter of an hour, as if there had never been even the slightest bit of beard burn.

Diana shoots him a dirty look, vaguely annoyed at his flippancy and simultaneously charmed by his infectiously good mood.

"Shall I take a look for you?" he asks, far too innocently.

She can't help it; it makes her laugh.

"Maybe I can kiss it better," he continues, as though that isn't exactly what precipitated this situation in the first place.

But honestly, the red is entirely faded now, and his smile makes her feel warm, as does the way his pupils are suddenly blown wide. She just might let him.

It's been a couple of months since Steve grew the beard, and Diana has resigned herself to its permanence. He likes it, and there's no getting around that.

So when Diana comes home one afternoon, she's treated to a proper shock, one that makes her freeze upon entering the room. Steve's focused on the computer, typing out an email, and she stands there staring at him an obscenely long time, because his beard is just...gone.

"Your beard," she manages finally, slightly strangled.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I shaved it," says Steve absently, casual as anything—like he didn't care about it, like it wasn't secretly the bane of her existence—still focused on whatever he's writing.

"You shaved it," she repeats faintly.

"Eh, it stopped being exciting," he admits, then looks up at her. "Besides, you hated it. It was a little funny at first, but ultimately not worth it."

"Right," she echoes, "I hated it."

He grins at her, soft and sweet, and closes the computer in front of him.

"Seriously, I wasn't trying to torture you or anything. You know that, right?"

Finally, something else that she can latch onto. She laughs at its absurdity. "Of course I do," she says. "A beard is hardly a torture device, no matter what I wanted you to think."

She leans in to kiss him, and touches his face lightly as an anchor, taking a moment to feel the now-smooth skin of his jaw. He laughs, taking it as another retroactive indictment of his beard, when in fact it's anything but.

She finds herself conflicted; she spent so much time thinking she hated his beard, and now that it's gone...she misses it. Objectively, it did look good on him—didn't soften his jaw too much or make him look scruffy in an unappealing way—and as much as she complained about the beard burn, it wasn't actually as annoying as she'd made it seem. In fact, it became a rough sensation she finds she may have liked, not that she'd admit it. And she liked how much he liked it, the way he smiled every time he decided that nah, I'm still keeping it for today, that she'd have to try to convince him to get rid of it tomorrow, instead. He clearly enjoyed having the beard.

Which leaves her in a quandary: she can be silent, or she can set aside her pride and do an about-face on her opinion of the beard.

"Steve," she says hesitantly.

"Yes, Angel?"

"I just...I do not want you to go without a beard because of me." There. Perhaps there's a middle path.

"It really doesn't make that much difference to me; I'm happy to be clean shaven if it matters to you." (Or maybe there isn’t a middle way. Drat.)

"It doesn't, really," she admits, almost too softly to be heard.

"What was that?" asks Steve, the sneaking start of a smile edging along the corners of his lips. Shit, he knows. She rarely gets anything by him, and today is no different; he knows her too well.

"I did not really mind the beard, after all."

Steve opens his mouth to say something, but Diana gets there first.

"Not a single word," Diana warns, face hot.

"No, ma'am, not a one," agrees Steve, but his smirk—wide and mischievous and knowing—says it all.

Oh, she's in for it. One way or another, that damn beard is going to be the death of her.

***

#wrote this awhile ago and wasn't gonna post it but in a 'why not' sort of mood tonight so #wondertrev #diana prince #steve trevor #wonder woman #diana x steve #steve x diana #wondertrev fanfiction #lenci writes #lenci's tumblr ficlets #am i going to regret posting past midnight? almost certainly #does my post-midnight brain care? not at all

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joealwyndaily · 4 years

Link

Sometimes the best Christmas presents are the ones we don’t think we need; a new Christmas Carol, for instance. Indeed it may be indicative of a certain unappreciated vacancy around the Christmas tree that in discussing the BBC’s new version of the Dickens classic both its director and leading man refer back to The Muppet Christmas Carol made way back in 1992.

“I was sent the script,” admits Nick Murphy, best known for directing the Rebecca Hall ghost movie The Awakening, “and my first thought was, ‘For God’s sake! The Muppets! They nailed it. What’s the point?’ ”

Joe Alwyn, who plays Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit in the BBC three-parter, has meanwhile posted a trailer on Instagram with the caption: “Hard to fill the shoes once worn by Kermit. But I tried.” The self-deprecation was quickly “hearted” by the singer Taylor Swift, who is the actor’s girlfriend and who will be watching the mini-series with Alwyn and his family in London in the final days before Christmas.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is probably in most people’s top three adaptations of Dickens’s masterpiece (alongside, I would say, Alastair Sim’s 1951 version and Scrooged). Its endurance does suggest, however, that it may be time someone did something a bit more serious, a little darker and a touch more grown-up with a tale that excoriated Victorian neglect and associated Christmas with the relief of poverty for ever more.

And this is exactly what Nick Murphy has achieved with a bracingly fresh script by the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. Guy Pearce’s Ebenezer Scrooge is still a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner”, but since Pearce is only 52, there is rather less of the old. At the end of the novel, Dickens wrote that “ever afterwards” — that is after Scrooge’s Very Bad Night — “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well”. That is rather more of an achievement when, as in this version, you may have 40 Christmases, rather than a couple, left to you.

Equally remade is Cratchit, who in Alwyn’s incarnation is far from the bashfully gulping frog thanking his master for granting him Christmas Day off before scampering back to Miss Piggy’s fleshy arms. Although Alwyn grew a rough beard for the part, his is also the best-looking Bob Cratchit you have seen. As the actor and I talk at the Picturehouse Central cinema in London, I find him as mesmerising off screen as on.

“Bob is trapped by Scrooge,” Alwyn says. “He’s abused by him. He’s not treated fairly. He’s there only because he has to be. He’s treated like shit.”

I’d say there’s a definite feeling in their shared scenes that Bob might just snap and hit Ebenezer over the head with a poker. “That was the intention. He’s at breaking point. He’s pushed right to his limits and Scrooge, I think, relishes winding him up. All Bob can do is hold his ground and fight back as much as he can — but he isn’t such a sap in this version.”

Scrooge and Cratchit’s relationship so much resembles an unhappy marriage that the niggling, bitter exchanges invented by Knight, with very little reference to Dickens’s dialogue, resemble Steptoe and Son rewritten by Strindberg. The easy contrast would have been with the Cratchits’ poor but happy marriage, but this too comes under scrutiny. There is an acknowledgment of the challenges a disabled child can bring to a household, and it is somehow emphasised by Tiny Tim being played by Lenny Rush, an extraordinary young actor, aged ten, who has a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, the same condition as Warwick Davis.

“It really mattered to me that nobody was photo-fit,” Murphy says from a studio where he is dubbing the last episode. “Bob Cratchit is always a winsome, put-upon nice guy and the Cratchits themselves represent this idea of an ideal, working-class, lovely family. So we looked into their relationship on the page and there seems a genuine tension between Bob and his wife. Things are hard. It isn’t easy to have no money and a disabled child, and they lean on each other and they’re not straight with each other and there is a genuine antagonism between them.”

Knight has written into the narrative a family secret that connects the Cratchits to Scrooge. The secret belongs to Mrs Cratchit, played by Vinette Robinson, whose part is greatly expanded; indeed, the novella does not even grant her a first name, although the Muppets, and other adaptors, opted for Emily.

“Inevitably the secret begins to surface and cracks appear in the family,” Alwyn says. “Something has to happen. I think what Steven has done is take the story and drill deeper. He hasn’t taken too much liberty. It’s not bending the truth too much from what Dickens would have wanted. Or I hope not.”

Murphy insists that worthwhile adaptations of classic texts should be “edgy” and have “a good bite to them”. “If you absolutely don’t want any variation from the book then I strongly suggest you sit in a corner at Christmas and read it again. But if you want to see it used as a prism through which we can see a broader and slightly different subject explored, then this one’s for you.”

Alwyn’s performance is part of the iconoclasm. “Joe’s instinct as an actor is always to push away from the obvious and into ambiguity,” Murphy says. “He’s very quietly spoken. He’s not brash at all. He’s a gentle, intelligent guy, but he just simply wasn’t interested in fitting a Dickensian cliché.”

“I’ll take that,” Alwyn says when I pass on the compliment, having not considered his technique in such terms. He is 28 and would probably accept that he is best known for two facts: the first is that he is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend; the second that, aged 25 and with no professional acting experience, he won the title role in an Ang Lee movie.

He is from north London, the middle of three sons. Their father is the television documentary-maker Richard Alwyn, renowned for making The Shrine about the public reaction to Princess Diana’s death.

“He was away a bit,” Alwyn says. “He made quite a lot of films in Africa when I was growing up. He was often in Uganda, Rwanda at one point, South Sudan. So he’d come back with stories and artefacts from all over the place. He made a great documentary in Liverpool during the World Cup about two kids on an estate growing up there.”

His mother, Elizabeth, is a psychotherapist. So, I say, although his family were comfortably off and he was sent to the fee-paying City of London School, he knew something of other people’s lives?

“All different kinds of people, all different kinds of stories,” he says. “Obviously, she couldn’t share them with me in the same way that Dad could, but both their jobs take an interest in other people and are about how to empathise, understand, and listen to stories and tell stories. I suppose it’s not a million miles away from an actor’s job; listening to other people, understanding them, trying to tell stories.”

I ask about the contemporary political resonances of A Christmas Carol. I cite the wealth of certain members of his profession and of Swift’s. Only the other day I have read that she has a private jet so she can visit Alwyn on a whim. He promises me that 99.9 per cent of what the press write about them is false, and this is an example.

I ask if he finds it embarrassing.

“Find what embarrassing?”

The disparity between the amount some people earn and the wages of workers in, say, Amazon fulfilment centres.

“I saw something in The Guardian the other day, I think, saying that the top six richest people in the UK accumulate the same amount of wealth as the poorest 13 million. I think that was the figure,” he says.

And politics today?

“It’s bigger than Scrooge, but it’s the same thing amplified; not being able to see beyond yourself, building walls, cutting yourself off from other countries. If there was ever a story to counter that, featuring someone who epitomises that and then who remembers who he is as a human being, it is A Christmas Carol.”

Unlike the young Dickens, Alwyn was not a boy to stand on a table and sing and dance. As a child he auditioned to play Liam Neeson’s son in the Richard Curtis film Love Actually, but didn’t get it. He harboured ambitions to act, but pursued them only later at the University of Bristol, where he took plays up to the Edinburgh Fringe. One night he acted before an audience of one: the writer’s mother. Undeterred, he went on to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, joining the scramble at the end to find an agent. Weeks later, his new agent rang to say that Ang Lee was working on a new film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and wanted to see an audition tape.

“I got some mates to film me in a lunch break and then my dad filmed another scene, and we got a call that night saying, ‘He wants to meet you this weekend. He’s saying, we’re going to put you on a plane and take you out of school. Come for the weekend. Learn these scenes.’ ”

As Billy, a young US Marine fêted for killing an enemy assailant in Iraq, Alwyn was painfully believable; a virgin solider returning home to be exploited for an act that had devastated him. The film did not do well, mainly because it was shot at a hyper-reality frame rate that few cinemas had the technology to show, but Alwyn was on his way.

“Things only evolve by change and people taking risks,” he says. “And Ang Lee is someone who I admire for that. None of his films are the same. Maybe thematically they draw on the same things, but he’s always pushing the boundaries.”

The same can be said for A Christmas Carol and, even more, about Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which Alwyn appeared alongside Emma Stone and Olivia Colman. It applies less so to his other recent films, Mary Queen of Scots, Boy Erased and now Harriet, a faithful biopic about the slave liberator Harriet Tubman in which he played a slave owner’s son. What he has managed to do consistently is work and learn from some seriously good actresses — Colman, Stone, Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Erivo. “I know. I am targeting them,” he jokes.

I tell him my daughters have insisted I ask if he minds Swift writing songs about him (whole albums, actually, but check out London Boy if you are in search of a little cringe). “No, not at all. No. It’s flattering.”

Does it matter to him that the press — it’s a bit metatextual this, I admit, for I’m probably doing the same thing — make it obvious that they are as interested in his girlfriend as they are in him? “I just don’t pay attention to what I don’t want to pay attention to,” he explains tolerantly. “I turn everything else down on a dial. I don’t have any interest in tabloids. I know what I want to do, and that’s this, and that’s what I am doing.”

The boyf, described only the other day as “mysterious” in one of those tabloids, is no mystery at all. He knows what he wants for Christmas, and it is the career he is already forging.

A Christmas Carol begins on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday

#joe alwyn #the times #taylor swift #interview #a christmas carol

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pluckyredhead · 4 years

Text

Daredevil 101: The Devil in Cell Block D, Part 2

That sweet sweet Matt-in-jail-and-suffering goodness continues! Reminder: this is DDv2 82-87, by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark.

Last time, Foggy was stabbed and killed while visiting Matt in prison, and the supporting cast is determined to figure out who ordered the hit - Matt from inside Riker’s, Ben and Dakota from outside.

But in this story, EVERYONE GOES TO JAIL, and we haven’t stuffed enough people inside Riker’s yet. Enter the Punisher!

That couple in the last panel are a pimp and a prostitute. Frank looks at his newspaper, goes outside, and kills the dude. (I will spare you the panel of Frank murdering a black man with his bare hands.)

Okay, but why on earth would Frank get himself arrested just because Matt is in jail? Was he lonely or something?

UM YEAH, APPARENTLY HE WAS. This is just endlessly hilarious to me. THEY AREN’T EVEN FRIENDS, but Frank was so worried about Matt’s delicate psyche that he DELIBERATELY WENT TO PRISON to give him Mufasa’s “remember who you are” speech from The Lion King. BRING BACK THE NETFLIX SHOWS JUST FOR THIS. PLEASE.

Alternately, maybe he heard about Foggy’s death and thought there was an opening for a new best friend. Quick, Frank, put on a bowtie!

In more serious news, the prisoner who stabbed Foggy is found hanging in his cell (notably, before Matt can get to him). It’s staged to look like a suicide, but it’s clearly murder, and rumor around the prison is that Fisk was behind it. This was obviously always Matt’s first guess, so he confronts Fisk about it:

To be fair, Matt, it’s been firmly established that Fisk isn’t 100% sure who Foggy is. (“Is he the reporter? The blond girl? That twin brother of yours?”)

Anyway, Fisk didn’t have Foggy killed and doesn’t know who did, and aside from the anguish it’s created in Matt, he doesn’t really care. What he does care about is getting out of Riker’s alive:

Fisk tells Matt that there is a riot planned soon. The ringleaders plan to take the warden hostage and demand an escape helicopter. Oh, and in the chaos they also plan to kill both Fisk and Matt - Fisk as competition, Matt for putting so many of them behind bars. But, Fisk proposes, if he and Matt team up, they have a chance of making it out alive.

Matt doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t see another alternative, so he tentatively agrees.

When recess is over (okay I don’t know what they call it in prison), he discovers that he has a visitor: his wife. And she’s worried:

“REMEMBER WHO YOU ARRRRRE.” This storyline loves Mufasa.

Anyway this is probably why Foggy’s will has a line that says “I leave everything to Matt if he’s not dead already. Matt, please don’t go feral if I die first.” (Matt will go feral.)

Milla leaves just in time, because the riot is popping off. And Matt, just like Simba does, decides to thwart it by rescuing the warden:

Matt’s going to get the eff out of here, even if that means teaming up with Fisk. Meanwhile, another volatile element is about to be added to the fire:

Hey, Turk is here! I told you everyone was in jail in this story! Anyway maybe don’t let Bullseye out?

(He’s gonna let Bullseye out.)

EVERYONE IS IN JAIL. I literally don’t even know why Melvin is there. He hasn’t done any crimes in a really long time! Maybe he got himself arrested to hang out with Matt too.

Matt fights his way through to where Fisk is taking on all comers:

Part of what makes this story so good is how viscerally satisfying and downright thrilling it is to see Matt and Fisk fighting a sheer wave of opponents side by side. It’s never happened before or since, and there’s something about how very surprising and badass it is that is absolutely Diana in No Man’s Land, Nightcrawler in the White House, Avengers vs. Chitauri levels of cool. It just makes me want to yell (in a good way!).

AND THEN THEY UP THE ANTE! Because Bullseye comes to join them, gleefully firing rifles into the crowd - and that’s when Matt hits his line. Even for his freedom, even to avenge Foggy, he can’t team up with Bullseye. He can’t be party to this. That’s not the man Milla and Foggy love.

Lol whoops. Matt knocks Bullseye out, and just like that, his two greatest foes are incapacitated.

But Matt’s got one more trick up his sleeve:

Frank, hilariously, has just been calmly sitting in his open cell, shooting anyone who attacks him and reading in between. Presumably said reading material is a script for a porno set in a prison, because “You plannin’ to use that thing?” while Matt waves a rifle around at crotch height is just. *chef kiss*

See, the rioters have already gotten the prison to call that escape helicopter. So for the benefit of the security cameras, Matt and Frank make it look like Frank has taken poor innocent blind Matt hostage in order to commandeer said helicopter. This means that theoretically, once this is all over, Matt still has enough plausible deniability to return to his old life - something he hadn’t cared about between Foggy’s death and now.

Thus Matt and Frank escape:

Still so fucking funny to me.

Matt’s next order of business? Figure out who the hell the Fake Daredevil is (remember him?). So Matt confronts him and it’s...pretty clear right away:

It’s Danny!!! Did you guess it?

Danny’s confused that Matt’s confused, because he thought he was working for Matt. Or, more specifically, he was hired to be Fake Daredevil by a lawyer named Alton Lennox, and assumed Lennox had been brought in by Foggy, to cast doubt on Matt’s identity while keeping Foggy’s hands clean. Alton Lennox, remember, is also the man who hired the man who killed Foggy:

Matt and Danny try to track down Lennox and run into Dakota and Ben, who are doing the same thing. It turns out that Lennox has fled the country and gone to Monaco, so Matt decides to pursue him. Ben thinks this is Matt being an idiot and throwing away what’s left of his life:

“It’s already cost more than I could bear.” ABLUBLUBLU ;_______;

So Matt heads off to Monaco, hot on the trail of the one man who can tell him who ordered the death of his best friend in the world, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. And meanwhile...

GASP!!! Foggy’s alive!!! And he’s in the witness protection program somewhere in the suburbs (Matt’s worst nightmare, obvs).

Now, obviously you and I, 15 years or so in the future, knew he wasn’t really dead, but the readers at the time did not. This final page of the storyline is the first indication. I cannot imagine how livid I would have been while reading this comic, and how relieved at the end.

Next time: Why is Foggy in witness protection? Why hasn’t he contacted Matt? Why did he grow that luxuriant mustache? All will be revealed in...Matt Murdock’s Monaco Madness! (Sadly not the actual name of the storyline.)

#daredevil #daredevil 101

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a-recovered-sugar · 4 years

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Bruising of a Brotherly Bond

Diana begged her boys to look out for each other for life but, as RICHARD KAY reveals, the whole family are worried about a widening rift between William and Harry No picture says more about the natural bonding of brothers than that taken of Princes Harry and William at Harry's wedding last year.Their affection and mutual support for one another on the most public of stages, yet most personal of occasions, was both poignant and compelling.How utterly tragic then that less than 18 months after that joyous day at Windsor Castle, all the talk now is of rift and division between the two princes.

Stories of bad blood had been circulating for months but, with one extraordinary intervention, Prince Harry has given credence to the rumours by admitting there have been tensions between the pair.

No picture says more about the natural bonding of brothers than that taken of Princes Harry and William at Harry's wedding last year (pictured during Harry's wedding in May last year) While a family row of this nature is by no means as constitutionally dangerous as the upheavals over the Abdication and the Duke of Windsor, the implications could be just as damaging, not least because the monarchy is arguably more vulnerable to criticism than it was in the Thirties. The early signs are not encouraging.

Within hours of Harry's candid interview in an ITV documentary, during which he said he and his brother are travelling on 'different paths', William was concerned enough to permit aides to speak of his worries about Harry's and Meghan's welfare.

According to a Kensington Palace source quoted by the BBC, William had expressed the hope that his brother and sister-in-law 'are all right'.

It is highly unusual for officials to voice such personal views on a private family matter. But I understand the 'Sussex problem', as Harry and Meghan are referred to within royal circles, has dominated family discussions in recent days.

There is no disguising that the views articulated by William are shared right across the Royal Family. While sympathy for a couple struggling to adjust to royal life under a media spotlight does still exist, it is draining away.

How utterly tragic then that less than 18 months after that joyous day at Windsor Castle, all the talk now is of rift and division between the two princes (pictured together in July 2018)

Prince Harry has given credence to the rumours by admitting there have been tensions between the brothers (pictured, the Cambridges and Sussexes together for a Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey in March)

But the family are desperate not to be seen driving a deeper wedge between them and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Certainly, the Queen and Prince Charles had hoped that the challenges of fatherhood following the birth of baby Archie would have overcome the differences that existed between Harry and William. The Princes are acutely aware of the importance that their late mother placed on them looking out for each other — something she wanted them to do all their lives.

Of course, it didn't help that stories of differences first began to emerge during Meghan's pregnancy.

What was being said was that William had earlier questioned the haste with which his younger brother was wanting to marry the American actress.

William, of course, dated Kate Middleton for eight years before giving her an engagement ring.

Harry, on the other hand, had made up his mind almost immediately after being introduced to the star of the American TV legal drama Suits — a divorced woman three years his senior — at a London dinner party in 2016.

To William, advising caution was common sense. But Harry, ever sensitive, is understood to have interpreted his brother's words, as well as those from others in his circle, as an implied criticism of his choice of bride.

He also apparently accused his older brother of failing to offer support, while Kate was said to be struggling to get on with Meghan. To some extent, this explains Harry's touchiness in the run-up to his wedding, which included a row over Meghan's tiara.

The brothers played polo against each other in Wokingham in July this year, which was also the last time they were pictured together

But after the wedding came two further shocks. One was the announcement that the Sussexes were decamping from Kensington Palace where they lived next door to William and Kate, and moving to Windsor.

The other was that the two brothers, whose public lives had been so entwined, were splitting their joint household, with Harry setting his up separately in Buckingham Palace.

It then emerged that they were also parting ways over their charity work with Harry and Meghan set to launch their own royal foundation next year.

But if these were the highly public examples of Harry's march towards princely independence, there were other, equally significant moves behind the scenes. Throughout his troubled 20s Harry had a close network of reliable friends.

But after the wedding came two further shocks. One was the announcement that the Sussexes were decamping from Kensington Palace where they lived next door to William and Kate, and moving to Windsor

Many of them are no longer part of his magic circle. They include school friends, vital support after Princess Diana's death, whose services are apparently no longer required. Many have been left hurt and baffled. The father of one told me: 'Harry has stayed in our house and been a very welcome guest over many years, then one day calls went unanswered.

'It was always pretty much on his terms. He was the one who usually got in touch, but there was no explanation, just silence.' Other friends say Harry complains they don't understand him.

Of course, he won't be the first married man to find new companions after taking a wife. Closer to home, I am told Harry left family members puzzled after changing telephone numbers without immediately telling them.

If this sounds familiar it is because we have been here before — with Diana. She regularly changed mobile numbers as an effective way of dumping friends she no longer wanted. Within the family, however, there has been growing anxiety. Harry's failure to spend time with the Queen at Balmoral during the summer was a strategic mistake.

Family business is usually taken care of during the long summer break in Scotland, and countless intractable conundrums have been resolved in the civilising atmosphere of Royal Deeside.

However, despite his absence from Balmoral I understand the Queen has spoken to Harry in the past month and offered to help.

Courtiers, meanwhile, were uneasy about the timing of Harry's television cri de coeur in the documentary broadcast on Sunday.

Not only did the advance publicity for it last week threaten to upstage the final part of William and Kate's highly successful trip to Pakistan, it also overshadowed a moving visit by the Countess of Wessex to Kosovo, where she met survivors of sexual violence.

Sophie, Countess of Wessex meets with sexual assault survivors in Kosovo 'It is the reason why royal diaries are so carefully co-ordinated, to avoid the risk of clashes between the various households,' says an aide. 'Quite simply, you don't rain on someone else's parade.'

Sunday's broadcast also revealed Harry's wish for the couple to be seen as hard-working members of the Royal Family. So it was hardly helped by his announcement that they now plan a six-week holiday.

So what about William? He is certainly perplexed by his brother's behaviour and believes he has handled some of the issues unwisely. He, too, has had some difficult moments in the media spotlight, including Kate being photographed topless before they married and the ensuing legal fight with the paparazzi.

'He dealt with these matters in a mature and considered way,' says a friend. 'He didn't allow them to become psychodramas in the way Harry seems to.'

The fact is, William is the same figure who looked out for his younger brother at school. And as uncomfortable as he has clearly found Harry's outburst, he will always be there for him.

Not long before she died, Diana talked to William about the kind of woman he might marry. She told him that the most important thing was that they should be best friends.

The tragedy of her own marriage, she said, was that she and Prince Charles barely knew one another, and had they been friends first, they would never have separated.

Diana later said that William 'got' this. According to one of the Princess's circle, William's concern about Harry marrying Meghan so quickly was probably because of that maternal advice about marrying someone you know well.

But then there is also the contrast in the way the brothers are going about their royal lives. While Harry has been criticised for using private jets while preaching about climate change, William and Kate have been seen carrying their own bags onto a budget airline flight to Aberdeen.

Instead of criticising the media as Harry did during his tour to southern Africa, William stopped to speak to them during his trip to Pakistan.

And while he protects his children from publicity, he also knows when to relax — and to be seen relaxing with them — as he did at an Aston Villa football match recently with Kate, George and Charlotte.

There is, of course, sympathy from the royals for Meghan's difficulty in adjusting to her new status, and because of her relationship with her father and other dysfunctional family members. No one more so, perhaps than Harry's own father, the Prince of Wales. But while he can offer help — and he has — Harry has not been inclined to accept it.

It is a shame. For the Duchess of Cornwall — Harry's stepmother — is familiar with the dramas of royal life. No one endured more criticism than Camilla, yet she has built a remarkable relationship with the public who admire her quiet contribution to public life at Charles's side.

For the Queen, 94 next birthday, this is no ordinary distraction which can be dismissed as mere gossip. Harry has seen to that by addressing it directly on camera. Indeed, it is a family drama that many close to the royals fear could unravel with further damaging revelations.

_________________________________

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the number one tactic of emotional/mental abusers is isolating their target away from their friends and family until you are the only person they have left or feel that they need. I learnt this the hard way in a particularly abusive relationship in my early 20′s, and it’s been really alarming seeing the same sort of patterns with M & H’s relationship. There had already been the obvious rumblings of Tom Inskip being ghosted and now even more school friends are admitting they have been put by the wayside is bloody concerning, particularly for someone who seems increasingly emotionally fractured. All of that conjecture aside, they would have known and had access to the Court Calendar. They would have KNOWN that Countess Wessex was meeting with sexual assault survivors in Kosovo. If you were truly about “empowering women” and wanting to “shine a light” on causes such as sexual violence against women, maybe wait a fucking week or two to release Panorama 2.0 so that these women had the chance to have their plight put on a world stage? You didn’t have to publicise it during the Pakistan Tour. You didn’t have to air it during the Kosovo tour. But you did. And this is why people are finding it really bloody hard to keep swallowing the gold pill. Even people such as myself, who were absolute balls-to-the-wall diehard supporters of the two of you right from the beginning but now feel like we’ve been played like fucking idiots.

#megxit #harry and meghan #william and kate #unsussex #prince harry #prince william

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lilaswordsandthings · 4 years

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My interpretation of the Season 15 opener and the implications of Jeid

Ok, so I have thoughts and it took me a few days to be able to sift through them. I honestly think that very early on, like seasons 1 and 2 Reid had a crush on JJ that (at the time) she didn’t catch onto right away. JJ might have returned his feelings at some point in that timeframe but didn’t admit or act on them, I think, because she was embarrassed about screwing up their “date” at the baseball game. Then she met Will, and made a life with Him.

Fast forward to season 7, JJ and Reid’s friendship is on the rocks because of the whole debacle with Emily, plus at this point he’s probably realized that the likelihood of anything happening there has dropped nearly to 0. It’s at this point that Reid first connects with Maeve and through what starts out as his request for her help, they realize they have much more in common than either probably thought possible. I do think they genuinely loved each other (I know some of us are a little divided on that but I’m fairly certain it was real). However, I also think that both Reid and Maeve were in an emotionally vulnerable position when they made and built their connection. Think about it, Maeve is relatively recently out of the most serious relationship of her life, on top of that she’s being stalked, she’s scared (and rightly so), and very, very lonely. Meanwhile, our favorite genius has had to come to terms with the death of a good friend, the reappearance of that friend, and a painful betrayal by another, that being JJ. She may have been doing what she had to do but she still hurt him, badly, by keeping her mouth shut about Emily being alive. They do grow closer again over the season, but if you pay close attention, it’s clear they don’t repair their relationship back to its former glory for several years (and whether they have even now is something that could be debated). So under those conditions, his romance with Maeve makes sense even if he did carry a torch for JJ at one time. It also makes sense for Spencer’s character, someone who clearly values emotional attachment over physical intimacy, to rekindle that desire for an already established friendship to turn romantic after Maeve had been gone for several years and he’d been given some indication that JJ returned his other-than-platonic affections.

PS. Diana is probably going to either die or be so far gone that she and Spencer are unrecognizable to each other by the end of the season if now sooner, I’m calling it now, and I’m better sooner rather than later based both of what the lady from the care center said and my suspicion that Spencer coming to terms with that will have something to do with the new love interest they’ve been teasing.

I have more CM analysis posts planned, but that’s all for now, Goodnight all.

#Criminal Minds #Season 15 #spencer reid #jj #maeve #Diana

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wolfpawn · 4 years

Text

I Hate You, I Love You, Chapter 51

Chapter Summary - Tom and his family start to worry about Elle.

Elle meanwhile, has made it to hospital, shocked at who her doctor is.

Previous Chapter

Rating - Mature (some chapters contain smut)

Triggers - references to Tom Hiddleston’s work with the #MeToo Movement. That chapter will be tagged accordingly.

authors Note - I have been working on this for the last 3 years, it is currently 180+ chapters long. This will be updated daily, so long as I can get time to do so, obviously

tags: @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @jessibelle-nerdy-mum @nonsensicalobsessions @damalseer @hiddlesbitch1 @winterisakiller @fairlightswiftly @salempoe @lys-syl @youcantcatchafallingstar

If you wish to be tagged, please let me know.

“There’s no answer from Elle’s.” Emma declared as she came back into her mother’s, “And I don’t think Mac is there either.”

“It’s getting close to darkness, she will have to be home soon.” Diana dismissed.

“Yeah, maybe.” Emma went to Tom’s room and knocked on the door. When he came out, he was only in a towel, his hair dripping wet. “Have you spoken to Elle this afternoon?”

“I haven’t spoken to her since last night,” he rubbed another towel over his face. “Why?”

“She’s not home, and Mac isn’t there.”

“She’s been gone all day?”

“Could she have gone for a drive?”

“Her car is in a garage in London, all the other cars are here, what would she have driven?” He walked into his room and grabbed his phone, going straight to Danielle’s number and pressing the call button.

The number you are calling is not accessible at the moment…

Tom hung up again. “Get mum’s key to Elle's.” He instructed, grabbing a pair of sweatpants, a hoodie, socks and shoes; he threw them on and rushed out his bedroom door and down the stairs. “Em?”

“Have them.” she threw them to him and without waiting, he ran out the door and to Elle’s.

The house showed no signs of life, but he banged on her door anyway, “Elle? Are you home?” he banged a few more times, but again, there was no sign of his girlfriend. He used the key and walked in, the house was silent bar the sound of the antique clock Danielle had brought from her parents home. “Elle?” Tom looked around downstairs. “Mac?”

“Tom?” Emma and Diana came to the door, “anything?” Tom shook his head and darted upstairs. He glanced into Elle’s bedroom to find her clothes readied for when she would come out of the shower on her bed, telling him she had not returned from wherever she had gone on the bike. “She never came home.” He informed them as he came back downstairs. “Where the fuck is she?”

“She would not be cycling still,” Diana became worried. “Try her phone again.”

Tom did as she asked and got the same result, hanging up when the automated answer came on. “I’m going to drive around and see if I can find her,” he stated, his own concern growing. “What colour was the bike, mum?”

“Black and grey.”

Tom paused, “She doesn’t have a black and grey one, she has the green and black and a red and black.” He walked to the back kitchen, and sure enough, both bikes were there. “Shit!” He ran out to the large shed in her garden and noticed the lock on it was open, looking in, he realised the other, lesser-used of Danielle’s bikes was not there. He walked back into the house, “She is gone trail biking.”

“And that is what when it’s at home?” Jack asked, having joined his wife and mother-in-law, wondering what was going on.

“She has a mountain bike she likes to use in woodland, on trails.”

“It’s a bit wet for that, isn’t it?” Jack looked outside, the heavy rain the day before had turned to a light drizzle, but overall, the ground was still soaked.

“I’m going to see if she is on her way back from it,” Tom declared, running back to his mother’s to get his car keys.

“Where the fuck is she? Why didn’t she tell anyone where she was going?” Jack pondered aloud, beside him, his wife bit her lips together sheepishly.

Danielle groaned as she tried to fill in the form in front of her, utterly bemused at the irony of trying to write her name with her suspected broken wrist. Her phone had been water damaged in her fall, and it was by sheer luck another dog walker had decided to investigate a barking dog nearby and came over to her. Thankfully, her arm seemed to take the brunt of the fall, and she had been close enough to a side gate of the woodland, she had made her way to the road easily enough and the kind man had waited with her until an ambulance arrived, to her relief, it was Dave, one of the workers that she had been partnered with when she was with the Emergency services, and he allowed Mac Tíre ride with her, and promised to return him to her house when his shift ended, since hers would be his last callout. “A change of perspective,” he had joked when she sat on the gurney, waiting to arrive at the hospital.

That had been a couple hours ago, she was still waiting to be seen, her wrist hurt and in truth, she just wanted to go home and shower. Her clothes were after drying, but as a result, she was shivering next to a radiator, nowhere near warm enough to heat her. Finally, she was called by a nurse to be assessed and to be given a gurney to wait for a doctor on. She didn’t care if there would be a pissed off orderly that would have to remake the bed, she immediately took the sheets off and wrapped them around her, they were rough and not very thick, but they were better than what she had, so she was happy with that much, it made the following hour and a half easier to bear.

“Your next patient is at the bottom there,” The nurse finally referenced her, so Danielle waited for the doctor. “Here’s her chart.”

“Thank you, I…wait the last one?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

The sound of fast footfalls caught Danielle’s attention. When the curtain pulled back, it took only a moment for her to recognise the man in front of her. “Danni?”

“Hey, Paul.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well I decided I wanted to do nothing more than check out how the NHS is doing on Christmas Eve, and sure, no better way to do that than falling off a bike.” she smiled as she held up her arm.

“That desperate to see me?” he joked back.

“That obvious?” she grinned. “How are you?”

“Good, well better than you apparently. What happened?” He placed the chart on the bed and gently took the injured arm. “Sore?”

“Tender, I don’t think it is broken, maybe a tiny fracture at most, but I think it is a sprain. A biking accident slipped on mud and fell. So I thought it might need checking out, better to be safe than sorry, though, right?”

“Yes, I’ll get you sent for an x-ray.” Paul agreed, checking her eyes, “Concussion?”

“Nope, I didn’t hit my head, my arm and shoulder took the brunt of the fall,” she replied as she followed his finger.

“How are you in general? How is life?”

“Good, tired, I have never thought I would ever see the end of my paperwork before Christmas,” she laughed then, “Probably a good thing I got it all done before I had this happen.”

“Probably.” Paul agreed.

“What about you? What’s new in your life?”

“I am moving to Surrey soon.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah.” his smile did not reach his eyes.

“You’re not happy about it?” she frowned.

“Closer to London, far busier.”

“Was it of your choosing?”

“Sort of.”

“That’s a no then,” Danielle informed him.

“Well it’s the right thing to do,” he commented cryptically. “I will have you brought down right away, and then you can get whoever is here with you to bring you home.”

“I came alone.” he frowned. “I’ll get a taxi.”

“I can’t let you go home alone Danni, you fell off a bike, you don’t have any signs of concussion, but it is too dangerous, it’s not like Mac can call an ambulance if you need it. What about Diana?”

“She is gone to her family for Christmas.” Danielle fibbed. “So what happens now?”

“I’ll have to admit you.”

“Paul…” She pleaded.

“I cannot risk you going home and getting into trouble Danni, I’m sorry, I have to admit you.” He stated sternly.

“I’ll leave.” She threatened.

“Danni, I am begging you, don’t do something stupid.” It was his turn to beg.

“Fine, whatever.” she readjusted the blankets on her, looking at the floor.

“Do you want me to call anyone for you?”

“No one to call,” she stated downtroddenly. “It’s just me and Mac for Christmas.”

Paul looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry.”

“What can you do, right?”

“I’ll have an orderly wheel you to X-ray. I’ll check on you after I speak with the radiographer.”

“Thanks.” she gave a pathetic smile. “I am keeping the blankets, by the way.”

“How long have you been in those clothes?”

“Since I fell, about three-ish.”

Paul looked at his watch. “That is six hours ago.”

“Well they’re dry now.” she shrugged. “So let’s get this show on the road.”

“Right,” Paul nodded, though there was concern in his eyes. “I’ll get someone now.”

“Mac is in the garden.” Emma declared walking into the kitchen of her mother’s.

“What?” Tom rushed into the room, having checked every side road next to the woodlands for Elle until after dark.

“Mac Tíre is in Elle’s back garden.” His younger sister repeated. Tom rushed out the door to check, sure enough, as soon as he opened the divider between the two houses, the dog barked excitedly at him before going into Diana’s and shaking his wet fur.

“The side gate is closed over,” Tom stated as soon as he came back in. “I need the keys again.” Jack grabbed the keys off the counter and threw them at him and he walked out again rushing to Elle’s door. He rushed in, only to see the house was in darkness with no sign of her having returned, scared, he ran up the stairs three at a time to find the bedroom as she had left it. Mac Tíre may have returned home, but it was clear that Danielle had not.

#I Hate You I Love You #chapter 51 #tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston fic

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hefners-au · 4 years

Photo

Before I knew it Tara’s teen birthday was upon us. Brace yourselves my dears, she rolled the evil trait.

The party was a blast. Just wait for it. Lisa Froots got invited too this time and even got a slice of the coconut cake Hattie made. Lucky you, Froot, because the cake was gone in a blink

Tara befriended Cassidy Mitchell. I wonder if this friendship will last. Tara’s an evil sim after all. Those make enemies not friends.

And then I caught this special moment between Froot and Tony. They bonded over cleaning the Stiles’ bathtub. I’m telling you this was the highlight of the whole party for me.

Just look at them. I can’t even tell you how this sight made my heart melt. (And yes, I still giggled at the thought of this when I was in bed.)

Yes, yes, Tony, your Watcher saw it all and is proud of the both of you.

That smug face on Froots. She’s totally checking Tony out. Or did she put a spell on him?

And speaking of checking out...

Yes, that did happen. Knowing Froot, she’d probably explain it as Arthur thinking about the times when Hattie was breast-feeding their children. Totally legit.

Meanwhile in the kitchen Mayua was pouting over her plate of cheese bread. She was probably bummed that Froot ate the last piece of the coconut cake and she didn’t get any.

...

Diana: “There will be enough cakes when our twins have their birthdays. I’ll make sure you’ll get a piece, May, I promise.”

Mariella: Can’t Tony buy his wife a cake? I’m sure he’s loaded even though he tries to fool us with his poor taste in fashion. Who wears only black all the time anyway?

Not sure what was happening here between Justin and Mayua. He doesn’t seem to like her. I wonder why? Maybe he’s still traumatized by the memory of her wedding dress?

Somebody had to keep an eye on the kids once in a while. And who’s better for the job than Terry. Here he’s probably instructing Honor not to dress like the hoe next to them detective Alvarez when she grows up.

And here he’s of course sharing an important piece of advice regarding proper paperwork filing with Mariella.

All in all, the party was a success.

#the stiles #the mitchells #the heffners #the corleonesi #the murdock #arthur stiles #tara stiles #wagonfruit #cassidy mitchell #justin mitchell #diana mitchell #honor mitchell #anita murdock #mayua corleonesi #tony corleonesi #mariella heffner #heffners au

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fancoloredglasses · 4 years

Text

Dungeons & Dragons episode review Module 1-5: In Search of the Dungeon Master

(Thanks to Jenny Saqua)

The DM decides the players are getting spoon-fed hints way too much (and the players are bitching that the DM is letting the NPCs hog all the XPs), so the DM takes his favorite deus ex NPC out of play for an adventure...

Where the PC are: The entire party has reached level 4 two adventures ago, but received almost no XP from the last adventure, so they’re still a ways from level 5.

The party is in the middle of a swamp, hopelessly lost (probably because no one’s bothering to map their progress) Hank is going on about Dungeon Master’s latest clue to getting home: “Look in the forest with no trees” (so...a desert?), but Diana realizes he meant KNOW trees (AKA Treants)

(Thanks again to Jenny)

Meanwhile, we see that Dungeon Master has a life beyond teleporting in, giving cryptic advice, and teleporting out, as he’s in that same forest hanging out with a sprite and riding around on the back of a racing snail...

(Thanks to SyFy Wire)

...when he is attacked by Bullywugs, the amphibian flavor of D&D cannon fodder. Dungeon Master is obviously overconfident and has some fun with the Bullywugs instead of driving them off (since he can’t kill them due to this being children’s programming) Suddenly, a warrior who goes by the name of Warduke encases Dungeon Master in a block of ice and has his amphibious minions haul Dungeon Master off.

(Thanks to MakeAGIF)

(Quick note: an online search has Warduke as an 8th level fighter, which puts his XP at 600. Is it just me, or are the monsters getting weaker as the campaign progresses?)

Meanwhile, the party is apparently playing trivia night with the Treant Know Tree when they should be asking about how to get home, when the tree lets them know Dungeon Master is in trouble, so naturally they forget about getting home and rush to his aid, only to be ambushed by Bullywugs!

The party easily handles the Bullywugs, but Eric is content with cowering behind a rock with Presto (Presto I at least understand; wizards are notoriously weak in hand-to-hand combat) Eric tells Presto to conjure a tank, but Presto instead summons a swarm of giant flies. This proves to be more effective than you think, since the Bullywugs are evolved frogs. The Bullywugs are too busy catching dinner to notice the group sneaking by. I count this as a defeat and worthy of XP. I counted 15 Bullywugs in the encounter (some may have been repeated images, but I’ll give them the benefit). I quick scan of the Fiend Folio lists Bullywugs as...18 XP each?!...for a whopping 270 XP

Unfortunately, the trail grows cold during the fight, and the party tries to figure out how they can find him (isn’t Hank a ranger? They’re supposed to be expert wilderness trackers) except Eric, who decides to use American money to hire a guide to any way home (with American money? All that’s good for is kindling in a D&D setting!) when the sprite shows up and startles Eric (making him my new favorite NPC) The sprite starts gibbering, but apparently Sheila is the only one who picked Sprite as one of her languages and can understand him. Evidently, the Sprite knows where Warduke took Dungeon Master, so the party follows (for once, this doesn’t smell like a trap since the sprite is apparently Dungeon Master’s friend. Though Warduke could have captured Dungeon Master to lure the party in...)

However, it appears that Warduke isn’t interested in the party, but rather Dungeon Master himself as he sends word that he is prepared to sell Dungeon Master to Venger (who else?)

Meanwhile, the Sprite leads the party up a narrow mountain ledge with a bottomless drop. Unfortunately, the ledge dead ends. Fortunately, the Sprite says all they have to do is fly across the ravine. Unfortunately, the party can’t fly. Fortunately, the have Presto to conjure something that can help them fly. Unfortunately, a breeze grabs the hat and blows it away. Fortunately, something brings it back...

(Thanks to Pinterest)

A pride of Lammasu, who are friendly to the Sprite and carry the party across. The Sprite then leads them to...

(Thanks to Dungeons & Dragons - the Complete Animated Series)

...Warduke’s lair, which doesn’t look at all menacing. Eric takes this moment to decide he’s better off without Dungeon Master and leaves (good riddance), once again splitting the party (something tells me the DM is not gonna make Eric’s life easy)

Hank leads the rest of the party into the mouth of the cave (so to speak... sometimes these jokes write themselves) Soon, the Sprite flees, and then the party realizes why...

(Thanks again to Jenny)

An Earth Elemental! I don’t think the Sprite is leading the party into a trap, but just didn’t expect anything like this.

Hank tells Presto to summon something to stop the Elemental, so he pulls a stop sign from his hat. I gotta admit, I chuckled a bit at that.

Anyway, either the Elemental can’t read or doesn’t care about traffic laws since he charges past the sign and toward the fleeing party. The party runs straight into a dead end as the Elemental closes in!

Thinking quickly, Sheila distracts the Elemental as the rest of the party runs, using her cloak to evade it, then reappearing elsewhere. Once the party escapes, she does the same. I would say the party defeated the Elemental, as the challenge was to get past it. A quick bit of research (The size of the elemental depends on how it was summoned. Assuming Warduke summoned it, he likely used some sort of device), I would say the Elemental is worth 2850 XP

Unfortunately, before Sheila can rejoin the party, they are captured by orcs and taken to the slave mines. Sheila manages to sneak into the mines after the Orcs and plans her next move. I gotta say, the DM has upped his game this adventure.

(ERIC: What about me? I’m getting bored over here! DM: Then you shouldn’t have split the party...)

After the DM calls for a food run, uses the restroom, and discusses the latest episode of Happy Days with the group (and after a ton of obscenities from Eric about being bored), we eventually get back to the Cavalier.

Eric suddenly realizes there’s safety in numbers (as well as danger in pissing off the DM) as he’s attacked by a giant purple tentacle, a giant fly (what? the Bullywugs missed one?) and a zombie. He quickly runs away.

Meanwhile, in the slave mines (ERIC: That’s IT?!) the party befriends a Dwarf who promises to tell the party where to find Dungeon Master in exchange for freeing his people from the Orcs. Fortunately, he’s just on the other side of the wall they’ve been mining near. Unfortunately, they’ll never get through the wall without their weapons, which the Orcs currently have (they also have Uni in a cage and threaten to eat her).

After listening to Eric complain some more, the DM switches back to him (after meticulously consulting his notes for 10 minutes) He is frightened by a snake and runs away again.

Back in the mines, (ERIC: Now wait a goddamn minute! PARTY: Shut the hell up, Eric!) Sheila frees Uni and instructs her to create the mother of all diversions. Uni disrupts the guards’ dinner while Sheila steals the party’s gear.

(Hi Jenny)

The DM determines that Sheila’s plan defeated the 4 Orc guards, so awards her (and only her) does quick research 10 XP per Orc (ERIC: WHAT? I’m risking my neck in the swamp-- DM: Where you’ve done nothing but run away like a scared girl) Sheila returns the party’s gear, and Hank’s bow and Bobby’s club make short work of the wall.

The party discovers the Dungeon Master-cicle and debate how to free him when Warduke shows up...with Venger! Venger fires an energy bolt that snuffs out Dungeon Master’s “life force”, then sics Warduke’s Bullywugs on the party!

After getting sick of hearing Eric bitch, the DM sics a giant snapping turtle on Eric (I would say these are lame grudge monsters, but then again Eric is a pretty lame adventurer), then falls into a hole...

...that conveniently leads to Warduke’s lair (I guess the DM was sick of dealing with Eric) Eric unceremoniously lands on Warduke, giving the party the opening to attack. The party manages to neutralize 10 (for 180 XP) before Venger and Warduke decide to step in.

Warduke charges Hank, but Hank rolls well on his attack and sends Warduke’s sword flying, shattering the ice imprisoning Dungeon Master (who apparently was fine all along) Venger attacks Dungeon Master, but Dungeon Master manages to reverse Venger’s attack, causing Venger to explode (which somehow doesn’t kill him; also, no XP for the party since Dungeon Master did the heavy lifting). Dungeon Master and the party take the opportunity to escape.

However, Hank remembers the deal with the Dwarves and calls out to the hole for them to join the party. Naturally, the Orcs aren’t happy about this and join Warduke and his Bullywugs in pursuit. Dungeon Master then casts a spell that causes Warduke’s lair to explode, scattering his forces and saving the day (but no XP).

OK, due to the party being split glaring at Eric and Sheila’s solo work, XP will be a bit trickier to compute.

The total party XP was 3300. For the portion Eric was involved in, he gets 75 XP (ERIC: That’s IT?! DM: Next time, don’t run off!), leaving 3225 XP to split among the rest of the party, or 645 XP (Sheila gets 685 for defeating the Orcs on her own). Still not enough to reach level 5.

#d&d #animation #Fan Colored Glasses

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chvrrybaby · 5 years

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*itzy vc* hey hey hey ! ( i see that i’m icy ) what’s up, i’m diana, i’m nineteen, and i’m ur resident girl group stan. i reside in the est timezone & go by the pronouns she/her. now, finally introducing ... loona !! jk, her name is blair & u can learn abt her under the cut ! my discord is lana del rey is coming <3#5522 ( stream her new album august 30th ), so feel free to message me there or through tumblr im’s if u prefer that ! otherwise, i’ll come to u <3

— kim doyeon. she/her. cis female. | was that blair ryu i just saw in the hideaway lobby ? i hear the nineteen year old spends most of their time working as a sugar baby/studying classic literature and women’s studies, but i’ve always just seen them writing in her dream journal. they live in 5A and i often see them in the halls. they always give me a vibe of loosely curled hair, cherry lip gloss, the lingering scent of vanilla in the air.

( 𝑩𝑨𝑪𝑲𝑮𝑹𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑫. )

born on october 5th, 1999 ( this is literally a day before my bday ooc but anyway ajkdhsjdh ) in rochester, new york, blair’s first impression of the world was a crisp autumn day

she was her parents first and only child. her mother was an elementary school teacher, while her father worked at a nearby power plant in ontario

the family never made too much money, but they were able to get by, at least at first

she had a fairly happy childhood, though it was a lonely one. her father was always working odd hours, and with her mother gone during the day, she spent most of her time with a babysitter and the family golden retriever

eventually, she herself started going to school. she immediately excelled in the english department and fell in love with reading. blair realized early on how much she enjoyed escaping reality with a novel, immersing herself in a story so exciting compared to her dull life

almost everything was fine until her high school years. aside from the fact that she never had a present father figure, she was closer to her mom and still loved by both of her parents. however, when her high school years came around, her father lost his job

her father was the families main provider, and her mothers salary alone would not be enough to take care of the entire family. while he searched for another job, they had to give away the family golden retriever to one of blair’s aunts because they couldn’t afford the extra cost :(

on top of losing her beloved pet, the loss of her father’s job prompting the family to pick up and move their entire life

already in the midst of high school, blair had to leave her life as she knew it behind. the family moved to statesboro, georgia, and her father found a job at the nearby power plant

the transition to life in georgia was not easy for blair. though she didn’t exactly have trouble making friends, she didn’t feel like she could truly connect with anyone

once again, blair turned to losing herself in a book to pass the time

shortly after the move to georgia, her parents experienced some difficulties within their marriage. they ended up separating, and blair spent the remainder of her high school years living with each of them for half of the time

she did not mind her parents separating, as she knew it was for the best. however, her father found a girlfriend fairly quickly, and blair would eventually find out her father had been having an affair

her father spent most of his free time with his new girlfriend and her family. blair was upset at how he prioritized his the new people in his life over her when he was barely ever around for her growing up

meanwhile, her mother was having trouble adjusting to being alone, so she moved back to new york to live with her sister

blair stayed behind in georgia to finish high school, but knew she wanted to go elsewhere for college. she wanted to get as far away from her father and his new life as possible

once blair turned eighteen, she began to sell pictures for money. she wanted to earn as much as possible so she could afford to go away for university. she created an alias and began to sell pictures and videos of her feet. eventually, she expanded her horizons once she realized how much money she could earn

she never went as far as sleeping with her clients, but she would go on dates with them and spend the days with them to earn more money ( kind of like ludovica/chiara in the italian show baby on netflix minus sleeping w them )

she dated a few people throughout her high school years, and began to more “seriously” date a guy during her senior year in high school, though she knew the relationship wouldn’t last. despite appearing as a more serious relationship, to her, it wasn’t really anything of the sort, and she mostly wanted a relationship for senior prom and other trivialities

after senior year ended and she had accepted admission into uni in seattle, she basically cut ties with everyone in georgia aksdjskdjh she said good bye forever ! rip poor unnamed boyfriend he didn’t see it coming ...

her father also did not see it coming because she didn’t even tell him where she applied. but at the same time, did he ask ? no :/

once she left for uni, her relationship with her father became very very estranged. she still speaks to her mom on a pretty regular basis, but even then, she has a whole secret life and doesn’t feel particular close to either of them sjkdfhskdjh

and that’s that for background !

( 𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑶𝑵𝑨𝑳𝑰𝑻𝒀. )

blair is a libra sun leo moon ( rising sign & other placements tbd )

she is definitely a friendly/sociable person. she can be pretty outgoing and loves to be around people. idk her mbti yet but she is def an extrovert ! ( she does tend to keep her feelings to herself tho )

despite her friendly demeanor, she does have a fiery spirit. if u wrong her she will hold a grudge against u until it gets settled/sorted. she can be more on the mean side when she’s upset, but even then she does not have a bad heart at all

when it comes to relationships, blair is all over the place. she can be very flirty/charismatic and is constantly hopping from one relationship to the next. she hasn’t quite been able to settle down, but it is possible. she kind of thinks being in a real relationship means losing her freedom, because that’s kind of what she saw happen with her parents, so she doesn’t really want to be tied down to someone in fear of losing herself in a way. does this make sense ? maybe ? ok !

blair has a fairly strong sense of self, but she’s still very young so she’s still growing and changing. she is the type of person to know what she wants and go after it ( yes, even with ppl ! ). she will stop at nothinggg to get what she wants ( oop ). u could say she loves the chase, but kind of gets bored afterwards unless u have more to offer !

omg she literally loves 2 be the center of attention. i mean, who doesn’t love attention ? but blair takes it 2 another level. she gets all :( if she’s being ignored or isn’t receiving enough attention

kind of bouncing off the whole attention thing, blair loves a good party ! she’s young and here for a good time. she def loves to drink at parties and stuff even tho she isn’t legal here in the us, why should that stop her am i right ? when it comes to drugs, she’s a veryyy casual user and doesn’t do anything crazy. a social weed smoker n will do pills here and there

being a libra sun with a leo moon, i think it’s safe to say she can be a bit dramatic at times ( i mean, as a libra sun with a leo venus i am not one 2 judge xx ). she reads 2 much and watches 2 many movies like ajkdhsjkhd life rly isn’t that serious but she can b a lil overdramatic sometimes whew ! we told u this was melodrama ... lorde stans make some noise !

blair’s fav books are anything by jane austen and les liaisons dangereuses by pierre choderlos de laclos, aka the book cruel intentions was based on ( which happens 2 be one of her fav movies )

shows she loves: gossip girl ( she shares a name w blair so she probably used 2 call herself queen b in high school or something ), desperate housewives ( no wonder this binch is so dramatic ), big little lies, pretty little liars ( the early seasons only ), the netflix show baby, and buffy the vampire slayer

movies she loves: clueless, almost famous, thoroughbreds, moulin rouge, palo alto, marie antoinette, coyote ugly, american beauty, cruel intentions, and valley of the dolls ( to name a few )

her fav colors are pink, red, and white !

u can find her pinterest board here.

she is bisexual babey !!

( 𝑾𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑫 𝑪𝑶𝑵𝑵𝑬𝑪𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺. )

party buddies - this is pretty basic and self explanatory, but someone blair can go out and have fun with. their friendship might be more surface level, or started that way at least, but it’s possible they’re closer friends ( maybe she opened up under the influence and it brought them closer aksdhsdjh drunk blair def would )

ex-fling/gf/bf - blair relationship hops, so she could have quite a few of these. we can plot it however, there can b feelings there, they can hate each other, of they can be just friends now, u name it !

unrequited crush - ur character could have feelings for blair, but maybe she doesn’t feel them back or is unaware that they like her. this could develop into her eventually having feelings for ur muse or not, whatever we want ! OR blair could def have a crush on someone who does not like her back. maybe that person is super non-committal, or they simply do not like her back. we could plot this out however <3

current fling/friends w benefits - someone she is currently seeing/sleeping with. could be no strings attached, or there could b some feelings there. maybe they don’t want to make it anything serious, or maybe they’re ready to take it to the next level. maybe one person is ready to go further, and the other isn’t.

enemies w benefits - imagine the tension!!! they started out hating each other, but ended up hooking up. maybe it was a one time thing, or maybe they can’t stop going back to each other. i think it would b cool if they kept it a secret, they don’t want anyone else to know. this could develop in soooo many ways !

ex-friends - someone she used to consider a close friend, but they had a falling out for whatever reason n maybe they hate each other now. maybe they want to re-kindle their friendship but don’t know how

sibling-like friendship - someone she sees like a sibling. they’re there for each other and look out for one another, always have each other’s backs. being an only child and not really close to her parents, blair would love a friend that she could basically call family !

dynamic duo - basically like her current best friend. this person is prob one of the closest people to her and knows her very well ! they could b a power duo, always looking out for each other

take care - someone who kind of looks after her ?? maybe when she parties a lil too hard and drinks a lil too much, someone who kind of takes care of her n makes sure shes ok ! they would be someone she trusts a lottttt

confidant - someone who confides in her or someone she confides in, or they confide in each other. they don’t necessarily have to be the closest friends ever, but they get along, trust each other, and maybe they talk more in private

rivals - they hate each other for whatever reason. maybe it’s jealousy or their personalities just clash, but for whatever reason they do not get along. i love a good enemies plot. they can just b nasty to each other !!! maybe they bring out a really bad side to blair that most ppl dont see. someone who makes her act like blair waldorf ( i’m def kidding abt the blair waldorf part )

bad influence - blair isn’t a goody-two-shoes by any means, but doesn’t really do anything crazy, so i’d luvv for someone to kind of influence her to do shit she normally wouldn’t on her own

these are all the plot ideas i can think of for now, but i’ll prob make a plots page later on and add more stuff !

so this is everything !! this has taken me longer than it should have but i’m finally done whew,,, cheers 2 me <3 anyway i would absolutely luv to plot, so feel free to hit me up on discord or tumblr im’s, or i can also come to u ! i’m so excited to get started <333 i’m gonna b logging off now most likely, since it’s 3 am my time, but i’ll be back in the morning

#hide.intro #✧.° ░ 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒏𝒂 ╱ ooc.#i finally did it !!!!#pls someone tell me ur proud of me... <3

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