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write-and-buried · 2 years

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Part 6 - Waning Gibbous

Summary; Whatever happened to that guy anyway?

Warnings; jesus christ listing them makes me want to hide my face under pillows. Oral sex (m!receiving), excessive rimming, cum play, dirty talk, very messy sex, cum eating, spitting, and some discussions of toxic workplaces

A/N; This got filthy... fast. Huge thanks to @astroboots @the-ginger-hedge-witch @radiowallet and @jazzelsaur for encouraging every single whore thot I've ever had

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Whatever Happened to Derek Brown?

You couldn’t go to the movies without seeing his face. From the round cheeks and eyes filled with wonder as a child discovering life on other planets from his backyard telescope to the chiselled jaw and sharp cheekbones as a peasant teen in the period drama that won him an Oscar at only 14, Derek Brown was a staple of early nineties cinema.

A clean-cut heart throb, the duelling box office titans of Eric Webster and Derek Brown plastered the walls of teenage girls (and boys) across the nation.

But while you only have to scroll through Twitter to catch a glimpse of Webster’s latest escapades (yacht orgy, need we elaborate?) Brown has been absent from public life for almost two decades. Emancipated at sixteen, running wild through Hollywood throughout his late teens, he suddenly vanished after the death of his parents. What was assumed to be a brief period of quiet mourning has since turned into a mysterious disappearance, fuelled further by Eric’s locked lips on the subject.

“I wish him happiness, wherever he is” the only official statement he’s ever given, referring all other questions about him to his publicist, who parrots the same line.

His sizeable talent notwithstanding, Derek’s disappearance has sparked numerous conspiracy theories about the cocky young stars whereabouts. Every few years an unconfirmed sighting emerges along with a new theory, a monastery in Brazil, a surf instructor in Australia, an extra in the background of Marvel’s latest release. The lack of tax returns, public filings or holdings make most believe he has left the United States and lives a quiet life of anonymity out of the public eye.

With the twenty-year anniversary of ‘Rebel of Owls’ on the horizon, his last, and most famous film, many fans have wondered…

Whatever Happened to Derek Brown?

Buzzfeed News.

“Here it is” Dieter grunts, the sound of falling debris as he pulls a box from the back of his closet. Shining in the lamplight, the statue doesn’t look real. He tosses it on the couch next to you as your eyes scan the slideshow. You barely recognise him, your brain only tickling familiarity as the quintessentially 90s photos scroll across your vision.

Red carpets, cigarettes tucked behind his ear, set photos with the young face of Eric Webster, one of the most famous celebrities in the world, their arms linked around the others neck, brotherly love in all its glory.

ACADEMY AWARD

DEREK BROWN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

‘FOUNDERS AND PEASANTS’

“I never saw it” you say, running your thumb across the grooves in the metal.

“Don’t bother. It’s not very good” Derek replies, sparking a joint held between his lips. The flame illuminates his face, and you see the ghost of the boy on the screen.

“I had to wear these stupid lifts in my shoes. I hadn’t had a growth spurt yet, and my voice cracked all over the acceptance speech. Hackman should have won it, for Unforgiven, but I guess the voters thought I was a cute kid with a good story, and that’s what they vote for anyway”

He flops down on the couch next to you, peering at your phone screen to see Eric Webster and him, linked together in the past.

“I met Eric a few years before that. We both auditioned for Judgement Day, but obviously didn’t get it. Became friends and stayed that way. Roared through Hollywood like a couple of young-dumb-full of cum idiots and caused havoc for our agents.”

“That’s why everyone recognised you at the party” Your voice is quiet, the realisations coming to you in waves as he blows smoke rings to the ceiling.

“It happens. But I do have one of those faces, and nobody thinks they’re gonna meet a child actor one day”

“It’s been a secret? This whole time?”

“No… not really” he says carefully. “I don’t hide it. I never legally changed my name, so my accountant knows. My old agent knows, Owen and Molly know. Eric, obviously, he knows too. He visits at Christmas once every few years”

“But I didn’t know” your voice cracks for the first time.

“Hey, no, hey hey” grabs your cheeks, your phone falling into your lap, the screen illuminated as he scrambles toward you.

“How did I break my nose?” he asks, swiping tears from your cheeks as he tilts your face upward.

“You got punched in the face in a bar fight you thought you could win”

“What’s my favourite movie snack”

“Kit Kats”

“What’s my favourite medium?”

“Charcoal… or acrylic depending on the canvas” you’re sobbing now, reaching to touch his wrist as he looks at your face.

“Why do I paint so many stars?”

“You think stories are told there”

“Including ours” he says, brushing a kiss across your mouth. “I didn’t tell you, because that isn’t important to me. That’s a life I left behind, I shed my name and everything about it. It wasn’t me Lou. It was something I did, not who I am, remember?”

You take a deep breath, forcing the tears back as you circle your fingers to feel his pulse.

“Why did Eric call?”

He sighs, pressing his forehead to yours as you stroke his skin.

“He calls whenever he gets a weird question. They ask about me whenever an anniversary is coming up, or when nostalgia is going to help them get more clicks on an article. Usually its just the vague, where is he, stuff that he never answers. But they asked him, through his publicist if he spends a lot of time in New York, and where his favourite coffee shop is. He thinks they might know I own this place. He wanted to warn me.”

“And what happens if they find you?”

“Mayhem, I would guess. If I could do it over, I wouldn’t have vanished, just publicly stepped away. Let it fade in people’s memories and have an ending to the story. That’s what they’re looking for, a satisfying conclusion to the Derek Brown ‘mystery’” he scoffs.

“They’ll come here”

“At least, trying to get a photo. They’ll want interviews and canned sound bites and all that fake bullshit. When they don’t get it, they’ll start digging. Derek Brown might not exist anymore, but Dieter Bravo has been thrown around enough that they’ll get some good stories out of it”

“What are you going to do?”

“What I always do” he grins, “whatever I want”

The scent distracts you, an acrid burning as your eyes flick to the threadbare rug under his coffee table, currently smouldering from a half smoked joint. He follows your gaze and smothers it with a military green croc. When he turns back to you he shrugs, an apology on his face.

You reach out, hooking your pinkie with his own.

It takes four days. A weekend of waiting in an anxious puddle, two days of staring at your spreadsheets with Twitter open on your phone, refreshing the top trending stories and TMZ between each click of the mouse. There aren’t enough interns left for you to fade into the background. Your co-workers ask you repeatedly if you’re okay. Your boss makes you take a COVID test in the bathroom, when it comes back negative, she rolls her eyes and tells you to get back to work.

The first photo of him is grainy. Tousled hair and mismatched socks, sweats rolled over one knee. It’s outside the café, leaning against the brick with sunglasses hooked into his threadbare shirt. You sleep in that shirt sometimes.

It takes an hour for the internet to catch fire. More recent photos appear, Molly and Owen in the background as blurry ghosts as his form is shown painting the walls of the café, or as a hunched figure carrying a mustard yellow armchair down a busy street.

The stories come that evening. People that have slept with him, done drugs with him, snorted lines off his body or had him snort lines of theirs. A woman who shared tabs of molly with crushing kisses in the middle of a silent rave. None of the stories surprise you, he’s told you most of them. They’re good experiences, memories he laughs at, turned suddenly sinister.

His first naked photo hits the internet less than 24 hours later. He’s sprawled on his round bed, cock laying thick and imposing on his thigh as he grins into the camera, offering a cup of unknown liquor to the taker. More follow. They begin to form a narrative, one of a life of pleasure and excess, of unconcerned privilege and recklessness.

Your co-workers begin to whisper that afternoon. You had always assumed watercooler gossip was a trope, overused and never actually happening, until you caught your name in a hushed tone as you walked back to your desk with your fifth, shitty, coffee. There are glances, out of the corner of their eyes you can feel them, pinpricks all over your skin that make you feel itchy, under hot lamps.

You ignore a colleague when he calls your name at 5pm, packing your journal into your handbag you spill into the anonymity of the street. You keep your eyes glued to your phone as you walk, the first of many think pieces about Dieter beginning to appear on TMZ and Buzzfeed, asking what happened to give him such a fall from grace.

You’ve seen the photos from the café, texted by Molly in a moment of peace, full to the brim with fans holding DVDs of his movies, paparazzi with jiggling knees and separate flashes, people taking photos of the paintings on the walls. You haven’t heard from Dieter since it broke, your phone silent except for the reminders for meetings, deadlines, notifications that you once lived by now causing you to grit your teeth as you felt a flush of disappointment.

Your apartment is quiet. The dead plant in the corner seems to mock you as you microwave a poor imitation of macaroni and cheese, your shoes kicked haphazardly across the rug. The sunset is beautiful across the windows outside your apartment, streaking purples and oranges that remind you of his paintings.

Everything feels uncertain. You hover over his contact in your phone as you settle on your couch, too rigid to truly be comfortable, but a stylistic choice in the space. Your phone screen goes dark, giving you a glimpse of your pinched face, the teeth burrowed into your bottom lip. You grab your laptop instead, dragging it and a blanket over your knees as you scroll through the list of classic movies Dieter has mentioned in passing, organised into a spreadsheet.

Selecting one at random, you feel a tug of loneliness at his absence, the stream of consciousness commentary that’s always accompanied these black and white pieces of history.

The colours aren’t mixing right. The contrast not dark enough to make the light glow, dimming the image on the canvas in front of him. He can taste the splinters of his paintbrush as he stares at the unsatisfactory image, the purples in the palette on his arm seeming suddenly wrong. The sunset had looked so beautiful tonight, reflecting off the shining concrete buildings as he sat on the overgrown balcony, listening to the cacophony of the street.

Usually, it was anonymous, the noise below. Horns and screaming and laughter and crying, floating up to him like a symphony he could view from afar, enjoy while staring at the blankness of the universe and wondering how it all came to matter so much it hurts.

But today, his name is the primary noise. Owen and Molly had told him to stay upstairs, as if he had any intention of going down, of allowing them to split him open and feast on the aged flesh. Find a story that only mattered because of a life he willingly gave up.

He wanted to create. It burned like a dying sun inside him for as long as he could remember. Everything itched and scorched until he had a pencil in his hand or a play to perform. Drama club, into auditions, acting into stardom. It was a round peg in an oval hole… right enough to think it worked.

Worked for his parents, anyhow. Supportive but distant, they enjoyed the high society of their sudden famous surname. Never pushing him, never encouraging him, they just were. He can hardly remember their faces now, the scent of his mother’s perfume sometimes caught and followed on the summer air.

Eric had always understood. Standing in line in the same auditions, the blonde hair in perfect spikes, his eyes somehow smouldering at the tender age of fifteen. They ran along parallel lines, his parents shaving down his edges until he was round enough to slide right through the hole. They would sneak off the back lot at Warner Brothers and smoke clove cigarettes, drink whiskey until they were sick and shaking, a makeup artist with glassy eyes giving them eyedrops, breath mints.

Nobody cared, until they did. Until the photos hit the papers, glossy and high def, Dieter on a bar top at eighteen, loops of women’s lingerie collected around his wrist. Eric sucking tequila out of a Victoria’s Secret models bellybutton. Fame and excess rolled together until they were packaged together, saran wrapped for consumption.

They never showed up drunk or high to interviews, they toed the line of playful bad boy together, always yanking the other back by the collar until it stopped being enough. If he dug deep enough, he’d know why he stopped when they died, taken within months of each other, cancer and a stroke. He’d proved enough, they loved him enough, and they were there. Until they weren’t.

He read some of the coverage about his parents’ deaths. The family photo’s he doesn’t remember posing for in contrast to the questions about his morality. Everyone expected him to go off the rails, to join the elusive 27 club and sell pictures of his coked-up face. Everyone would have been sad, and moved on.

Instead, he picked up a paint brush, and bought a cheap canvas at an art supply store. He sat in the back of a rented limousine and ruined the seats with shitty acrylics and painted what the world looked like behind tinted glass. When he left Hollywood, he never had the urge to look back.

He saw this place on the 8th of August. The flat brick exterior with no windows, an old oak door with rusted hinges, tucked between new developments like the least appealing fruit at Whole Foods. It was owned by an estate, nobody wanting it and nobody offering enough to take it off their hands. A grimy shop with a small apartment overhead, the balcony overrun with weeds. His skin had hummed when he touched the brickwork, a promise zapping through his skin.

He didn’t know what it was until you had walked through the door.

Dieter wasn’t expecting you to call. He knows the story has broken, can only imagine what is being thrown around about him on the internet, the conclusions people are jumping to as they dig up more, and more again. He stayed upstairs for most of it, hearing Owens voice boom out against the brickwork, insisting that he wasn’t here, that they didn’t know where he was and wouldn’t say even if they did. He snuck a muffin up an hour later.

He could imagine you now, sitting in your apartment, an empty microwave meal next to you on the couch. Maybe you were watching a movie, you might have been consuming every new article about him – continuing on the trend of the day he assumed. He wondered what you were watching, if his not-so-subtle steering towards Bette Davis had taken root yet, or if you had chosen something mindless, something you’d seen a thousand times and could recite from memory, its words etched on your brain, a script nobody asked you to memorise.

The stories about his family start the next day. Innocuous enough, his parents, his upbringing. They have him in their teeth, it seems, unwilling to let go as his silence begins to annoy. Undeterred by the swirling uncertainty they speculate wildly. His relationship with his parents picked to shreds, interviews and DVD extras dragged forth from memory and replayed on loops. TikTok analysis of his body language, a livestream of someone getting coffee from the shop, the line now snaking down the street.

Owen and Molly are next. A photo of Molly flipping off the paparazzi sparks a new wave of speculating about his chosen family. You giggle when you see she makes it her Instagram profile picture. They find Owen’s friend in L.A – the one who works in porn. Not as an actor, but a makeup artist, and that’s enough for the morality police to come down even harder on Dieter.

They’re ripping him limb from limb, an evisceration in 180 characters, each pillar of his personality smashed to dust with memes and jokes and vicious hatred. Eric cops some of the blowback as well, refusing to distance himself from his friend. There’s a clip of him, drunk at a party, shouting support for his former partner in crime, daring anyone to question him. In a room full of glitzy yes men, nobody does.

It tickles beneath your skin. That everyone cares so much about him while knowing very little. None of the articles mention his paintings. None of them talk about his apparent connection to the human spirit, his obsession with the stars and their stories, classic Hollywood. He could recite the general principles of the Hays code from memory, and he liked to explain all the ways you’d broken them while he licked cum from between your thighs.

He talked until you fell asleep every night, a soothing rumble of a story you’d have never known otherwise. It’s the same feeling from the party, a thousand years and barely a fortnight ago, where they fell in love with an image, only this time it’s the reverse. You haven’t watched his movies, no morbid curiosity to see the cheekbones that could cut glass. It was something he did, not who he was, and it became clearer with every tweet that it wasn’t who you know.

It settles like a dull ache, a burning chasm of loneliness that drags you from your desk at 5pm that day, again. Committing cardinal sin as you close your laptop and leave, not looking over your shoulder for what you once considered vital additional responsibilities. You’re wearing heels today, and the bones of your feet hurt when you reach the building.

There’s still a crowd outside, despite the door being closed. People are taking pictures against the brickwork, jostling for the best light, the capture of the frayed cardboard closed sign that greets them. A few men in jeans with expensive cameras mill off to the side, glancing upwards to the light just visible through his heavy curtains.

You don’t think before you hit his contact. If you strain over the noise, you can hear the foghorn alarm, his ringtone before he picks up.

“I’m outside”

It’s pandemonium when the door opens. Flashes blind you as you feel fingers lace into your own, tugging you inside the door before shutting it with a slam. It barely dims the noise. The bell falls from overhead, cracking into three pieces on the ground as you feel his arms wrap around you, the tension draining from your body for the first time in days as he squeezes your waist, pressing his face into your neck.

“Missed you” is all he says before dragging you upstairs.

He’s covered in paint. Muddy browns cover his hands, sticking through his hair and smeared on his cheek. The canvas in the corner is dripping, long sludgy trails of paint on the floor. You can see the stubs of three joints in it, his palette peeling from the weight of it.

“Couldn’t get it right” he shrugs, following your eyeline to the ruined canvas. “It will happen when it’s supposed to”

His thumb brushes your cheek as you take him in fully. His hair is unruly, his eyes creased deeper than you’ve seen them, his clothing creased and stained. You can smell paint thinner, weed and Makers Mark on him, and you wonder if he’s showered since the story broke.

“Want to take a shower?” you ask, feeling his fingers round brush against your skin

“Together?” he asks, a grin that makes your chest crack breaking his face.

“Wash the paint off first, then we can talk” you reply, the laugh he lets out a shaft of sunlight through your skin. He nods, pressing a brief kiss to your forehead before turning towards the bathroom.

You know where his things are. You know where yours fit in this space, where you leave your bag, kick off your shoes, shed the corporate layers. You know which drawer to dig through for his softest shirts and you pick one that smells just like him to slip on. Your clothes tangle with his in a laundry basket. You know there’s a pile that has clean ones somewhere. You grab fruit from his fridge, a punnet of blueberries and misshapen plums, setting them on the edge of the coffee table as you hear him through the wall, humming under the spray of the shower.

You pick a movie, something in the endless queue and wait, checking your phone and not worrying about its dying battery. You respond to Molly’s questions about her aid relief form, you double tap Owen’s picture on Instagram, the caption something witty about being famous and wanting his dick sucked. You check your email. The sharp one from your boss demanding a meeting in the morning barely makes a dent as you toss the device on the table, stretching your limbs back into the deep couch, waiting for him to emerge.

He brings a cloud of steam with him. His hair damp and curling around his neck, a towel slung low on his hips as he continues humming to himself. His rings catch the light, throwing silver across the walls like stars as he comes to you, seemingly distracted, to grab your wrist and pull you to your feet.

“You forgot this” he says, bringing his mouth to yours.

You’d always broken this into body parts. Lips touched lips, hands clasped hands, the rhythmic sectional breakdown of affection, neatly categorised and labelled as one progressed to another, switched their categories to explore further.

Kissing Dieter is a full body experience, you’ve since learned. From lazy and slow and sleep heavy, to frantic and primal, he kisses you with his whole body. His hands roam your back, tangle in your hair, grab your ass and squeeze your flesh. He mumbles into your mouth, feeding you words like candy as he hovers indecisively between your neck and earlobe, fluttering between the two to scrape his teeth and make your knees tremble.

The towel loosens under the growing erection beneath it as he walks you backwards to the bed. His hands slide under your shirt, tracing over the lines left by your bra as his mouth travels down your throat. He’s consuming, the familiar feeling of being completely overwhelmed by him settling like a weighted blanket on your soul as the damp towel falls free, his encouraging hands pulling his shirt from your body.

“Really fuckin’ missed you” he moans, his mouth travelling across your chest as he backs you right against the rounded edge of his mattress, the sheets and blankets tangled in the middle.

You need more. The days without him have rubbed you raw, left you feeling adrift and furious on his behalf, and feeling his skin on yours, so warm and soothing sparks something deep inside your gut you’re unwilling to name.

“Can I taste you?” you ask, the question feeling ridiculous on your tongue. His hands dig into your skin, you hear his sharp inhale around your chest as his beard scrapes the sensitive flesh.

“As if I’m ever going to say no to that” he says, grinning up at you with a wink.

For all you’ve done together, this is a rarity. He tends towards worship, the focus of his body seemingly on yours alone, save for moments where you manage to catch him off guard, your teeth scraping his hip as he orients his hands on your body, prying you open for spit slicked fingers as you lick the weeping head of his cock.

He throws pillows to the floor before you sink to your knees, his aim precise enough to ensure a soft landing as your hands trail his thighs, encouraging him to sit, the softness of his stomach, the warmth of his skin making you catch alight. His hand is confident, trailing your cheek to the crown of your head, settling comfortably with a broad palm as he watches you, gasping lightly at the scrape of your nail along the sensitive skin of his thigh.

“You can’t fit it all Lou… But I’d love to watch you try”

Heavy. It’s the word that always comes to mind, whenever you take him in hand or feel him thicken beneath or behind you. The veins that run the length of him, pulsing inside you, the drips that leak from the fat head of his cock whenever he looms over you, watching your cunt pulse in wanting.

It flushes darker than his skin, like a storm on the horizon, swollen and tempting as you watch a single shining drop of precum appear at the head, sliding to drip sticky on his thigh. His hand tightens in your hair when you dart your tongue to taste it. Salty and hot, the heady feel of the weight of it on your tongue makes you squirm, your thighs pressing together as you guide him between your lips.

His hand tightens in your hair, a groan escaping his lips as you stretch your mouth around him. He fills you everywhere. The press of him on the roof of your mouth, immediately filling with saliva as you dig your nails into his strong thighs, shuffling closer as he spreads them for you, a low curse and a shifting of the sheets as he grips them in a wide palm.

“Fuck, yes… that’s it” he’s breathless.

You manage a third the first time, your throat protesting the attempted intrusion as you swallow around him, pulling off to watch the thick spit drip from the sides of your mouth, feeling your eyes prick with tears as he reaches to curl a hand around the base of it, holding himself steady for you to resume.

He watches you. His eyes only squeezing shut each time you choke around him, the depraved groan he lets out as you watch his hips twitch, suppressing the urge to fuck into the tightness of your throat, to apply a little more pressure to the back of your head. You’d let him, you’d like it.

Instead he lets you lead, a pool of your spit now dripping over his knuckles as you take as much of him as you can, a steady, slow rhythm as you synchronise your breathing, enough to stave off the tears in your eyes, focused only on the salty, hot taste of him as you feel his skin heat under your palm.

Your jaw aches, the unnatural stretch of him in your mouth as you pull off him, watching as he twitches, the thick vein pulsing as he grips himself tight around the base. With a gentle tug he pulls your head back, makes you meet his eyes as he strokes his length with a lewd squelch of spit and precum, his own wide hand barely fitting around the thickness of him as he squeezes more the swollen tip. You kiss his thighs, his skin still warm and clean from the shower as you scrape your teeth along the soft skin.

“Look at me” he says, his voice gravel rough as you stare past his lazy strokes to meet his eyes, blown dark and focused on you as your mouth travels further up his thighs.

He can do this, he knows how to control himself, has had this same sensation enough times. But the feeling of your breath, ghosting lightly over his skin makes him feel fevered as he shifts, allows your cautious exploration of the crease of his thigh, your cheek brushing his balls as he lifts his foot onto the bed.

You look like you want to ask, as if he’d ever say no to you, and he nods his head before you can find the words. This is new to you, not something you’ve ever ventured towards, despite a forbidden thrill at the thought. Dieter tries to relax, tries to breathe as your mouth travels lower, as the first cautious kitten lick of your tongue flicks across his hole.

The sound he makes is broken, ripped from his chest without permission as he half strangles his cock in response, the sudden locking of his muscles as he sees your eyebrows raise in a smile. You liked it. Slowly, torturously you explore him, every ridge of furled muscle, the sensitive skin of its surrounds as Dieter feels his hair begin to stick to his forehead with sweat. He can’t breathe for how good it feels.

You’re so careful with him, gently coaxing him open with your mouth as he pants and groans, finding exactly what way he likes to be touched, shifting lower to get enough access. He can still see your eyes, watching him as you lick and trace his glistening hole.

“You want to see me lose it don’t you?” he asks, braving a single stroke of his cock, his whole body shuddering from the searing pleasure that races up his spine.

“You’d like it, wouldn’t you, to watch? Or do you want to do it yourself, you want to have me like this, loose and begging for it, fucking myself back onto something just as thick as I am. You want to watch my face? Want to see what it looks like when I get fucked just as hard as I fuck you? I can tell, I can fucking smell your cunt right now, you’re soaked you filthy perfect thing. Don’t you dare stop”

You’re squirming, shifting your slick thighs together as he talks, his hand squeezing his cock in an unsteady rhythm, drops of sweat rolling down his chest as you breach his ass with the tip of your tongue, enough to feel the tight ring of muscle give under your ministrations, swollen and sensitive from your mouth.

“Fuck, don’t fucking stop, please, so good, fuck”

Dieter can’t help it, the barest scrape of your teeth around his fluttering rim and he sees stars. It explodes from the base of his spine with shocking force travelling through his limbs and robbing him of his senses. He comes thick and heavy splattering his stomach and chest, flowing over his knuckles as you lick across his sac, drawing it further, making everything oblivion as he half screams your name.

Your lips are swollen, wet with his cum. Its on your cheek, sliding down in a thick river as you watch him come back to himself, squeezing the last drops from the thick head of his cock. His hand is still in your hair as his eyes swim back into focus, watching you lick the taste of him from your skin. His knuckles are covered in it, and you watch as he releases himself with a wet smack, bringing his hand to his own mouth, collecting it on his tongue.

He leans over you, close enough for his nose to brush your cheek as your lips part for him, feeling him spit his own cum into your mouth as he follows it with a messy kiss. He drags you onto his lap with surprising strength and shaking fingers, and you feel your slick cunt graze against his cock as he tastes himself on your teeth.

You’re desperate, rutting yourself along the underside of his twitching length as you feel his hands grip you, guide your rhythm as your swollen clit catches on the slick head of him, making you gasp into his mouth.

“That’s it, there’s my girl. Use me, get yourself off on me, I want to see you cum on me. Got so wet, so needy from sucking my cock. Wasn’t enough for you was it, next time you want to, I’ll plant this pretty cunt on my face as well, so you can drip down my throat while you choke on me. And I want payback, I’m going to spread you wide open, show you just how good it feels to cum that hard with a tongue in your ass. I’ll stretch you enough to take me one day, get you nice and open and begging for it, hm?”

His hand slips between your own cheeks, slick still with spit and cum as he brushes lightly against your ass.

“You want that? Want me to fuck you here as well, treat me to the sight of your ass swallowing my fat cock while I make you cum on it?”

“Dieter… fuck”

“I know, you’re right there aren’t you. I can feel it, you’re soaking me, you always get so wet for me, just desperate to be filled up properly”

He holds you close when you come, wrapping his arms tight around you and holding you firm to his lap, so that every shudder passes through him as well his mouth claiming yours as you scratch down his spine, seizing in place as he spreads his hands wide across your spine. It’s those same kisses. The lazy, long and slow ones that bring you back to him, each gentle pass of his hands on your skin as he chases your mouth, catches his own breath in between.

“I need another shower now” he says, grinning as he presses his forehead into yours. “You’re coming with this time” You squeal when he stands, wrapping an arm under your ass as he lifts you both with seeming ease.

He’s had less sleep than you, you can tell. His arms wrap around you from behind as he buries you both in blankets, freshly showered on clean sheets as he kisses behind your ear. He insisted on you naked, cupping at your breasts, his hands sliding over your stomach as his breathing slows, the lazy circuit of his hands becoming heavier.

“Dieter…” you whisper, feeling him scoot closer to you, a half-conscious hum of acknowledgement.

“You could leave for real you know.”

“Mm, no” he says, nuzzling closer into your neck. “Your job is here”

“They’re eviscerating you, going after your family, and Owen and Molly and… I don’t know, if you went away for a while, maybe it would die down”

“Won’t” he grumbles, “Do you want me to?”

“No” you answer, the thought of it pulling gravity from your stomach as you feel him smile into your skin. “But you don’t have to put up with it, and if you wanted to… get away from it… I’d understand”

You feel him huff a laugh into your neck.

“They’ll get bored eventually. Find some other scandal and leave me to fuck you in peace. Besides… I’m not going anywhere without you”

It makes tears prick the back of your eyes, some swelling bursting feeling you can’t name erupting in your chest as he kisses your neck again, finding your hand to lace your fingers together.

“I watched Jezebel” You say, clearing your throat of a warm, soothing blockage that heats your insides.

“Oh, that’s a good one. Bette Davis did that one because she didn’t get to play Scarlett in Gone With the Wind. It’s funny though, it’s the first real link between her and Tallulah, because she originated it on the stage. Then there’s Dark Victory, and of course, The Little Foxes. They had these mirrored careers, one on stage and one on screen, and even though Bette had bad things to say about everyone, she never really did about Lou…”

His voice lulls you to sleep. You’ll hear the rest in the morning.

#dieter bravo #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo x female reader #dieter bravo smut #the bubble fic #pedro pascal character fanfiction

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chaplinfortheages · 2 years

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Photocard of Charlie Chaplin as pictured in 1921, Part of the Famous Cinema Star Series.

#charlie chaplin #beagles postcard #circa 1920's #famous cinema star series

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alecmagnuslwb · 6 months

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Friday Night Big Scream

Read on AO3

The too long laces of her converse shoes bounce against the concrete as they walk down the street Zatanna’s arm linked with John’s. The ground’s a little wet the rain ending just in time for Trick or Treating to begin as a thin layer of fog crawls along the ground giving just the right amount of spooky to the crowded streets.

They weave their way through hundreds of other costumed folks, dodging a line of little Power Rangers high on sugar who rush past them.

John and Zatanna come to a stop in front of the Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema, a small local theater she’s always been partial to, the marquee glowing proudly with tonight’s fare.

“Are you sure a movie marathon will satisfy your Halloween needs?” John says dropping her arm to twine their fingers together.

Zatanna smiles up at the marquee then at him. “Absolutely, Dinah and Ollie are out of the country so there’s no party worth our time and I already dragged you to three haunted hayrides this year,” she pauses with a smirk. He just scowls playfully in return; those hayrides were not as family friendly as he was told they would be. He had nightmares dammit, less terrifying than the one’s he usually has, but nightmares all the same. “Our costumes are top notch and their showing three of the finest slasher classics ever to exist. It’s gonna be a nice, easy Halloween.”

John nods his head satisfied with her answer. They step forward about to enter the theater bumping into another couple.

“Sorry, mate,” John says as one of the men looks at them.

“You two look fantastic,” he says as the pair saunters off not even missing a beat.

“Hell yes we do,” Zatanna says with a smile pulling John forward into the theater. She has once again gone all out on their costumes. This year opting to be Grace and Daniel from one of her favorite recent movies Ready or Not, it gave Zatanna an excuse to look damn pretty in white while John looks hot in a brown suit and teal shirt and has an excuse to carry around a whiskey glass all night that she can magically refill.

They give their tickets to the girl dressed as Batgirl in the booth and make their way into the massive theater. They skip the concession line for now, though Zatanna will be needing some popcorn soon enough, and head into screen room four. They’ve gone all out for the night, the lights are all lit up red, the walls covered in fake cobwebs and spiders and everything in between. A few animatronic slashers are set up here and there in the halls and at the edges of the seats.

John and Zatanna pass by screen room three where Freddy Kreuger stands and is having his own marathon, two young girls who look barely old enough to have bought their tickets tonight screaming in delight when he swipes out at them.

Their trilogy of choice isn’t quite as famous as that man of nightmares but it’s Zatanna’s hands down favorite.

The Killer Blade franchise is a blatant mish mash rip-off of Texas Chainsaw and Friday the 13th. The killer, quite obviously, carries a chainsaw in one hand, a machete in the other and sports a scarecrow like mask as he terrorizes young campers in the dead of the southern summer.

They’re corny and ridiculous and only get more so as the films progress, by the third film the killer has blatant healing powers that are never explained and the machete has become molded to his arm in a practical effect that’s essentially just duct tape. The final girl from the first film is portrayed by four different women across the movies, yes that’s right four. They couldn’t even keep one actress around to finish an entire film in the second installment.

They’re not great, but Zatanna has such fond memories of the schlocky 80’s slashers. They were the first horror movies she stayed up way too late to watch and couldn’t take her eyes off of. She remembers dressing up as Star Bradford, the series final girl, the first Halloween she was able to pick out her own costume and a few years later showing Zachary the first film and giving him nightmares for a month.

When she heard they were doing a big screen showing for one night only, she couldn’t think of any other way to spend the night.

Their screening is in the smallest screen room unsurprising considering Killer Blade isn’t exactly as popular as many of the big franchises.

They settle into their seats, unfortunately at the front of the theater. Zatanna hadn’t heard about the showing till it was almost too late snagging two of the last four tickets. She discreetly moves her hand a silent little spell under her breath that moves all the seats back subtly making it so their necks don’t have to crane uncomfortably up at the screen.

They settle in lifting up the armrest between them, John wrapping his arm around Zatanna’s shoulders his fingers softly running over her lace covered collar bone.

The first film breezes by a 90-minute gore fest that Zatanna delights in every second of. It’s been a while since she’s seen the movies, really sat down and watched them full through and she loves it just as much now as she did at 12 years old.

“Well,” Zatanna says slipping out from under John’s hold turning to him excitedly. He’s never seen the movies in their entirety only bits and pieces when he’s popped up and interrupted her viewings. “Incredible right?”

“That’s one word you could use,” John says with a snort.

“Oh, come on,” she says standing up and stretching out grabbing John’s hand and pulling him along with her into the lobby for the fifteen-minute break between the movies. “I heard you laughing at the jokes, even felt you jump a couple times.” She teases pushing open the door to the ladies’ room, John doesn’t even bat an eye as she drags him in along with her.

She steps over to the mirror adjusting her bandolier and fixing up her hair where the braid has loosened a bit from resting against John’s shoulder all movie long. John leans against the wall beside her and shrugs.

“I guess it was pretty fun,” he concedes pushing off the wall and wrapping his arms around her waist. Eyes meeting in the mirror with a small playful smile. Zatanna smiles back continuing to fiddle with her hair.

“I hate to say it, since we’ll never be getting married,” Zatanna says leaning back into John looking at the image they make in the bathroom mirror. “But damn do we look good like a bridal pair.”

John smiles at her pressing his face into her neck. A few other people move behind them clearly unbothered by the couple hogging the bathroom mirror. If the sounds from the second stall are any indication they’re definitely not the only couple in this bathroom anyways.

“A bit of a bloody wedding,” he comments brushing his hand over the blood splatter across her waist, his fingers fiddling with the bandelier of empty shotgun shells across her chest.

“Well if we were to get married, it’s safe to assume there’d be some bloodshed at the ceremony,” she muses.

John hums in agreement trailing his lips along her shoulder his hands moving in directions not appropriate for public viewing.

“And where do you think these are going?” she says lacing her fingers with his stopping his movement in its tracks.

“We can’t let those two have all the fun,” he says gesturing his head back for a beat towards the second stall just as a very loud moan comes from behind the door.

Zatanna chuckles pulling his hands around her tight before pulling them away and twisting to face him.

“I am not fucking you in a movie theater bathroom stall,” she says kissing him once quick on the lips before pulling away and heading for the door. John trails along behind her.

“We’ve done it in worse places,” he grumbles under his breath.

“We have not,” she laughs as they make their way back into the lobby pulling John by his undone bow tie into the concession line. She absolutely needs popcorn for the second movie.

“The basement of that haunted sanitarium in DC was way worse,” John argues.

Zatanna looks up contemplating. “Okay, maybe, but,” she defends. “We thought we were gonna die, dire circumstances makes one forget about germs.” She pauses once they get to the front of the line ordering a large bucket and paying, tossing an extra hundred into the tip jar with a wink to the girl behind the counter. “Also, the second movie starts in about five minutes and we will not be missing it.”

John dips his hand into the popcorn bucket taking a large handful and shoving it into his mouth. “Fine,” he says muffled through the buttery snack.

“Later,” she says with a flirtatious smirk backing into the doors and going back inside the theater. She reaches out running a finger along John’s lower lip licking the remnants of salt and butter off her finger holding his eyes the entire time.

John swallows the last of the mouthful of popcorn hard. “How long are these two left?”

“Three is the longest, just a little over two hours,” she says with glee settling back into her seat tapping John’s whiskey glass to fill it automatically. “Two is another cool 90 minutes. Think you can hold out?”

“I am a man of strong will and great endurance,” he says taking another handful of popcorn, setting his glass aside.

“I mean I don’t know if I’d call the endurance great,” she teases hooking an ankle around his.

“Rude,” John says shoving at her playfully. The lights go down, the movie starting to roll on the screen. “I’ve never heard you complaining.”

“Well now that you mention it,” she chuckles clearly just messing with him.

“I cannot believe you,” he says with a laugh throwing a little bit of popcorn at her. She tosses it back at him just as the production company insignia crawls across the screen.

She shushes him as she settles back in comfortably underneath his arm.

The first twenty minutes are pure trash attempts at being cinema all shot in black and white telling the loose origin of Killer Blade that makes not one ounce of sense and isn’t referenced ever again. Things get really good in Zatanna’s opinion when things go back to color the camp counselors of the second film, including final girl Star, now played by a different actress, who for some reason decides it’s a good idea to help reopen the camp where her friends were all murdered two years prior by a madman with no motive other than to kill that disappeared into the night without a trace.

It’s a rapid ride that she falls into easily forgetting how much time passes watching with rapt attention as if she hasn’t seen it dozens of times before. So of course she notices something wrong with the film in an instant. At first the screen crackles a bit, a passable glitch she brushes off, but then it happens again. This time along with the screen warping unnaturally. She sits up straight, John taking notice their eyes meeting for a beat before returning to the screen.

Zatanna scans the audience as the ground shakes, light bursting out of the screen. No one else seems to notice; all just happily watching the film without a care in the world.

The screen morphs again, Zatanna pushes the popcorn out of her lap her hands at the ready, magic just at her lips. But she’s not quick enough two hands still showing the movie across them reach out grabbing each of them by the neck.

They both fight back John biting at the hand while Zatanna kicks at the one holding onto her. They don’t so much as flinch pulling the both of them in closer and closer to the screen till they’re going straight through it. The sounds of a chainsaw and the blood spatter of the unsuspecting gas station attendant enveloping them.

Everything goes dark for a moment, a scene change, then they’re both being thrust hard onto the ground landing face first into dewy grass. Gone is the just right temperature of the movie theater, replaced now by the warm breeze of a summer evening. The darkness of the theater no longer surrounds them instead the slow burn of a summer sundown.

Zatanna sits up with a groan. “John,” she says shoving at his back, he groans in response slowly lifting himself up. Zatanna looks around the trees swaying in the wind, she shifts the other way and there she sees it the bright red Camp Crystal Arawak sign she currently has a replica of hanging over her big screen tv at home.

“Holy shit,” she says. John twists looking the same way she is.

“Are we-“

“We’re in Killer Blade 2,” she says half in awe that she knows she shouldn’t be feeling. “We’re in Killer Blade 2,” she says again lifting up from the ground, a little more enthusiastic this time. She knows this is probably bad, but she can’t help it.

“Probably not a good thing, love,” John says lifting himself up from the ground trying to reign in her excitement.

“I mean, yeah, probably not. Probably a villain did this to mess with us,” she says eyes looking all around taking in the scenery like she’s never seen it before. “But come on, I mean who hasn’t wanted to live inside their favorite movie?”

“I haven’t,” John says dusting the grass off of his suit.

Zatanna turns giving him an eyeroll over her shoulder. “Well, that’s because your favorite movie is A Clockwork Orange.”

“And your favorite movie is about a man with a machete for a hand,” he shoots back.

“Not until the third one,” she says reaching back. “Come on, the massacre hasn’t started yet, that’ll give us time to figure out how to get out of here.”

“Oh goody the massacre hasn’t started,” John says taking her hand.

They walk under the large arching sign and it’s almost as if the air shifts, the warm summer night giving way to a cooler breeze as if the space knows it’s about to become a wasteland of death. Zatanna points naming out cabins and which characters will perish where as they walk through the campgrounds. Her hand reaching out every now and then to run her fingers along the set she’s memorized every inch of.

A few teens portrayed by twenty and thirty somethings come barreling out of a cabin laughing.

“Shit,” John says trying to pull Zatanna behind one of the cabins so they’re not spotted. He assumes that will just make things more complicated.

“It’s fine they probably can’t see us, they’re scripted they can’t move off of it,” Zatanna says continuing to move forward.

“Hi, y’all!” one of the campers shouts. Zatanna and John freeze in their tracks.

“Or maybe they can go off script,” she swallows turning around. Janet, the films signature slutty girl, is waving at them frantically not a care in the world.

She’ll have cares soon enough when her macabre ending comes because she just can’t resist running off to the woods for one quick blow job with mega jock Brad who will die with his pants at his ankles.

“Hi!” Zatanna waves back a corny smile across her face. She nudges John with her elbow and he joins along a little less effort put into his smile.

“Are y’all lost?” she says that thick southern girl accent she’s putting on mixing with the actresses’ natural valley girl cadence.

“Sort of,” Zatanna says putting on her own little southern twang. John looks at her wide-eyed mouthing a question of what she’s doing. “Roll with it,” she whispers under her breath as Janet makes her way towards them, perky and practically bouncing with every step. Brad and a few of the nameless body count stroll along behind her.

“Oh, no!” she says rushing right at Zatanna giving her a hug not questioning their outfits or the bandolier of shotgun shells she’s wearing. Bless this sweet, horny girl.

“What’s up with the get ups?” Brad asks, at least having a little more sense to question their presence.

“You see we were at a costume party at the old West-Cain cabin on the other side of the lake and it got broken up by the cops,” Zatanna says coming up with a quick story using her knowledge of the movie’s landscape to her advantage. A party occurring prior to the events of the film at the cabin they’ll spend the entire movie trying to get to is a passable excuse for their presence. Especially for this crowd.

“And our ride ran off without us and left us stranded in the woods,” Zatanna continues with an overdramatic rolls of her eyes. “We just started walking and luckily stumbled upon y’all.”

“Well thank goodness you did; those woods get really spooky after dark. Especially after what happened,” Janet says with a shiver. She reaches out grabbing Zatanna’s hand pulling her along not giving any further information. That’s okay Zatanna knows better than her what happened. “I’m Janet and this is my boyfriend Brad.” She says pointing to the blonde walking alongside them. The nameless body count characters have peeled off ahead of them heading towards the dining hall.

“I know,” Zatanna says accidentally, Janet giving her a funny look. “I mean it’s printed on your shirt.” She quickly corrects, Janet looks down at her shirt like she’d forgotten that fact and possibly even forgotten her own name.

“Oh, yeah,” she says with a giggle.

“I’m Zat-” she starts deciding her name might be a little too complicated for this group. “Zee,” she says instead. “Just Zee,” she smiles at Janet throwing a hand over her shoulder. “And this is my boyfriend John.”

John snorts. She never calls him that, it’s what he is technically speaking, but the word never seems to fit for them. “Good to meet you,” he says.

“Ooh,” Janet says shimmying her shoulders. “From jolly old London are we?” she says putting on a god-awful British accent, mixing terribly with the two she’s already battling.

“Liverpool technically.”

“Like the Beatles,” Brad says with a nod of his head slapping his hand down on John’s shoulder with a loud clap. “Cool.”

John just gives Brad a thumbs up and a slightly grimaced smile rubbing at his shoulder as they walk up the steps to the dining hall.

“We’ll get you guys all set up in here,” Janet says dropping Zatanna’s hand and pushing open the double swinging doors. “Anton is the only one with a car, he doesn’t love driving at night, but I’m sure he’d be able to give you two a ride into town. He’s too nice to say no.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Zatanna says emphatically looking over at John. “Truly we can just get a little water and head back out there.” Look for magic signatures, find a portal or some sort of tear they can slip through to get back into their reality. Anton will be a hindrance to that.

“Nonsense,” Janet says dragging them along and introducing them to other counselors in the room. They may be going off script here, but Zatanna can’t help but notice she only gives names to the characters who are given them in the movie.

Anton is happy to help, a do gooder who will lose his head in act three, twirling his keys around with a wink before heading out to his car. Zatanna knows for a fact he will find his tires slashed, the night of terror truly about to begin.

“You two just sit here and drink these,” Janet says settling them at a table. Brad sits two glasses of water in front of them. “I’ll be right back.”

She won’t, if the leer Brad gives her as she walks away is any indication.

“So what’s the costume?” Brad asks turning the chair on the other side of the table backwards and sitting down in front of John.

“It’s from a movie,” John says not going into further detail.

Brads hums. “I don’t watch a lot of those.”

“Ironic,” John says leaning back.

“Yeah, totally,” Brad says absolutely not knowing what the word ironic means. He gets up with a nod jogging over to Janet wrapping his arms around her waist, shoving a hand down the front of her tiny shorts.

“Well that’s subtle,” John says watching them slip out of the side door.

“Yeah they’re about to die,” Zatanna says using her normal voice turning her body towards his. “Look, we’ve got to get a move on and find our way out of here, cause shit is about to hit the fan.”

She lowers her voice leaning into John. “Us being here isn’t affecting the plot all that much, Anton is going to go to his car and find the tires slashed. Then on his way back he’s gonna find Janet and Brad’s bodies. It’s pretty much a non-stop kill fest from there.”

“Let’s try and not be a part of that,” John says getting up from his chair. They make their way to the little backdoor they watched the couple slip out of moments ago when the kitchen door swings open blocking their path.

The walking epidemy of the 1980’s teen dream steps out. He’s got that same curly hair like the boys in Nightmare on Elm Street, rocking a crop top and denim shorts, baseball cap clipped to one of his belt loops. It’s a look she has managed to wrestle John into a few times and it delights her to no end.

“Oh my god, that’s Ray Bronson,” Zatanna says excitedly twisting them away from the door a bit.

“Who?”

“Ray Bronson,” Zatanna says sounding half in love. John tries not to be jealous. “He was a bonafide scream queen in the 80’s and 90’s. His character, CHARLEY, was originally supposed to survive this movie alongside Star, but he was dating Sidney Strode at the time and when she quit the movie he refused to be in the third film so they rewrote the ending.”

She steps away from John lingering near Ray Bronson as he shares high fives and bro hugs with a few other guys in the room. John follows after her.

“You could tell production was mad at him for bailing cause his ending is grisly,” she sighs quietly looking the man up and down.

“How grisly?” John says trying not to get the guy’s attention, keeping his voice low.

“Him and Star get split up and first one of his arms goes through the meat grinder in the cafeteria, he gets away bleeding like crazy. Then he gets his legs chain sawed off and as he crawls away somehow still conscious the killer picks him up and ties his only remaining limb to the back of a truck and does doughnuts in the field till CHARLEY smacks into a tree and basically his whole body explodes. It’s disgusting,” Zatanna says with a delighted grin.

“You look far too happy about that,” John says with a chuckle.

“Don’t get me wrong CHARLEY is dreamy as hell and you root for him in a way you don’t root for anyone but Star cause he’s a genuinely a great horror movie boyfriend, but the FX team goes all out for his big death scene,” she says with a fond nostalgic smile. She can be a real freak sometimes, John loves it.

The front door swings open again and the music swells. Zatanna and John look up finding no plausible source for the music, the generic 80’s pop playing from the radio is gone, the score taking over welcoming its final girl back to the screen.

The room freezes all eyes on her as she makes her way over towards CHARLEY.

“Star 2.0,” Zatanna whispers watching as a tall tanned woman flips her long black hair over her shoulders. Her outfit is different than a lot of the others, the blue and white polo replaced with a red t-shirt sporting the name of the camp, a little white washed denim jacket on top of it. It’s the outfit Zatanna sported for Halloween all those years ago. “She’s not my favorite Star, but she has the best final girl scream. This is so cool.”

John gives her look.

“Okay, potentially extremely dangerous, but also,” she pauses gesturing wildly to their surroundings. “Camp Crystal Arawak. I wanted to go here so bad when I was a kid, I was bummed when I realized it wasn’t a real place.”

“You wanted to come to the murder camp?”

Zatanna just shrugs with a little smile.

“You were a twisted little one, weren’t you?” John says fondly.

“Maybe just a little bit,” she says with a playfully tilt of her head. “Come on, Anton’s about to bust in it’ll be a good distraction for us to get out there and investigate.”

***

Night has fallen completely by the time they slip outside and out on the ridges of the camp not far from Anton’s car Killer Blade is waiting, lurking. Zatanna guides them in the opposite direction, better to avoid the killer for as long as possible.

The woods are quiet, largely carnage free for now as they make their way through the trees. Zatanna snaps her fingers trying and failing to find magic at her fingertips.

“Dammit,” she says a flicker of light coming from her fingers for a second, immediately expunged. “My magic is on the fritz.”

“Same here,” John says tapping at the exposed sigil on his collarbone, it doesn’t even flicker to life for a full second.

They continue walking along looking for some sort of magical energy signature until a rustle comes from the right. They briefly stop, but Zatanna keeps them walking along as if nothing has been heard.

“White guy, pony tail,” Zatanna says under her breath keeping close to John. She watches as he dives behind a tree thinking he’s gone unnoticed.

“There are several of those here,” John murmurs back. Zatanna looks the way of their potential bad guy again, the goatee man sneaking his head out from behind it for a second. For a bad guy capable of something this elaborate he sure is acting like a cartoon villain in the moment.

“That one,” she says inclining her head towards the tree line. “He’s not in the movie,” The man slinks back behind the tree disappearing into the background of the movie.

“You sure?”

“You saw his outfit, all black, long jacket; that’s out of place at a summer camp. Plus I’ve seen these movies a hundred times, I know every detail down to the background actors and he’s not one,” she says stepping towards the tree, John following right behind her.

Zatanna attempts to ready her hands with magic, but it flickers out once again. The man behind the tree snarls when they make eye contact and immediately twists making a run for it.

“No you don’t,” John says chasing after him.

He doesn’t get far, John may smoke a pack a day, but when he’s stubbornly determined enough the man can run. He catches up to the guy tackling him to the ground the two struggling with each other rolling on the grass. Zatanna comes to a stop in front of them watching as John gets the upper hand pushing the man into the grass.

“You cannot hold the demon of illusion!” he shouts ripping his hands into the grass a flickering beam of bright white light coming up through the ground. He sinks his hands into the light disappearing in an instant the light closing up right behind him causing John to fall face first into the grass.

“Fuck!” he shouts his voice lightly muffled by the grass.

“Demon of illusion,” Zatanna says. “I appreciate that demons have just started introducing themselves with job title cards, it really cuts down on the research time.”

“Doesn’t help us get out of here though,” John says getting up from the ground.

“Illusion explains why no one else in the theater reacted when we got sucked in. And it explains why his powers work, but ours don’t he’s in control of the whole thing,” Zatanna puzzles with his reasoning though. “Did we do something to this guy? Did you beat him in a poker game?”

John just shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t think so, of course some of those games are a bit of a blur.”

A piercing scream sounds in the distance.

“Did you hear that?” John says looking up from where he’d been scuffing at the grass the demon had disappeared through.

“The massacre has started,” Zatanna says grabbing John’s hand. “We should head back.”

“We should?” John says incredulously running alongside her.

“The demon probably wants to see us go through it and we can’t do that if we’re just wandering in the empty woods,” Zatanna says increasing her pace. “Plus I kinda want to see it if we’re being honest,” she adds on with an apologetic smile, gritting her teeth.

The screams get louder as they get closer, the whirring sound of a chainsaw slashing through the night air.

Zatanna skids to a stop, John crashing into her back. Her eyes are locked upward and John follows her line of sight. Before them stands a behemoth of a man clad in a white long-sleeved shirt and dark overalls, heavy work boots caked in mud and a lightly burnt scarecrow mask over his face. He sheaths the machete in his right hand into his blood splattered overalls choosing instead to rev his chainsaw back to life.

Zatanna backs up as Killer Blade takes a slow step their way. She and John end up side by side backing up slowly. John reaches out an arm ready to block Zatanna and take this chainsaw for the both of them if he has to.

Zatanna raises her hands, “Kconk siht rellik otni eht eerts!”

Nothing happens. Killer Blade just tilts his head inquisitively at her.

“Shit!” Zatanna says dropping her hands pulling at John’s back. “Not just a glitch, magic definitely doesn’t exist in this world.”

She pushes John down the both of them just narrowly keeping their heads as Killer Blade swipes the chainsaw at them. They take off in a run faster than either of them have ever run heading back in the direction of the cabins.

“I thought the killer had magical powers?” John asks as they run looking over his shoulder. Killer Blade is catching up somehow despite the fact he’s walking at a snail’s pace compared to them. Slasher movie logic hard at work.

Zatanna shakes her head pulling John to the right away from the dining hall. There’s nothing but abandoned dinners in there and within the next few minutes Killer Blade will find his way inside and give Marcie the cook a new haircut. Scalp free. “Not until the third movie and it’s never explained as magic so kind of a grey area anyways.”

She rushes them to cabin 28 pushing at the door that blissfully hasn’t been barricaded yet. Not that the barricade does much good.

Star screams high pitched and perfect for the silver screen; Zatanna screams right back on instinct. John pulls her back the screaming settling down.

“He’s back,” Star shudders pushing past Zatanna and John to pull at the screen door tight as it slaps in the wind.

“We noticed,” John says and CHARLEY gives him a questioning sharp look that John just ignores.

“If we stay put and wait Freddy will be here soon,” Star says pushing a dresser in front of the door. CHARLEY rushes over to help her. God, Zatanna loves her, but she doesn’t utilize a single thing she learned from the first movie for the first two acts.

“Freddy’s not coming and we need to get out of this cabin,” Zatanna says putting her little accent back on. She doesn’t want to bring on questions about her lack of cute little southern accent distracting them. They need to get out of here, they need to find the illusion guy and they need to stay alive. She also knows that Freddy is not coming, the owner of the camp is very, very dead broken into two over a tree stump outside the West-Cain cabin that only Star will reach in the end.

“She’s right,” Anton says. A voice of reason for at least the next five minutes. “We need to get to the phone in the craft cabin.”

It’s broken, not even by the killer, just by poor maintenance. But it is logically where the story goes next. The script finds a way.

A quiet scratching comes from the outside, the metal of a machete running along the jagged wood outside.

Everyone in the cabin freezes for a beat, screaming when the machete pushes through the screen door.

“Out the window!” Zatanna shouts shoving her way to the back. She’s slightly stealing Anton’s final attempted hero moment, but she can’t be bothered. Killer Blade slashes at the door shoving at the dresser blocking his entrance.

She takes a breath cringing a bit before she crashes her elbow through the glass of the back window. She knows for a fact it’s stuck and there’s no time to waste for her and John. John comes up beside her helping clear the shards before hoisting her up and out of it.

He follows her, Star and CHARLEY sliding out behind him. Anton, Zatanna knows is scuffling inside with the killer and he won’t be making it to the window.

“Anton,” CHARLEY shouts about to reach back inside, but Star pulls at him to run.

The craft cabin isn’t too far, but the killer is nice and distracted hacking Anton to bits right now and soon he’ll mow down a line of nameless camp counselors while Star finally re-finds her gumption. They have time and they’ll find two other survivors there.

***

The craft cabin is playing out exactly as it should. The phone doesn’t work, everyone panics and unbeknownst to the characters in the room, they’re the last five standing.

Star meanwhile is quietly finding her strength, building a weapon that will take her further than you’d ever expect out of a shovel from the gardening supplies in the back, loading her pockets with toxic spray paint that will save her life when she and CHARLEY get separated on their way to her salvation.

“We have to get out of here and find that illusion demon fast. He can’t be far, he’ll want to see us get chopped up,” Zatanna says talking to John but watching Star as the music swells her moment of power coming to a head.

“Out there doesn’t seem so safe,” John says ignoring as the room around them descends in to mild chaos. Star announces her plan to run to the West-Cain cabin, but the arguments end quick, CHARLEY taking hold of his girlfriend’s hand, nothing but a sharp pair of scissors as his weapon, as they confidently storm out of the doors.

“We’re running out of time, that was Sidney Strode’s last scene, when Star walks back through that door,” Zatanna says turning to the big green swinging door with the bloodied handprints on it the couple just walked out of. “She’s gonna be Renai Lambert who plays her for the remainder of the film which is only about twenty minutes.”

“What do you think happens to us if the movie ends and we’re still in it?” John wonders.

Zatanna shrugs. “There’s only one ever one final girl in the Killer Blade films,” she says ominously.

“Let’s go then,” John says rushing for the still swinging doors. Faint protests from the remaining survivors huddled in the corner call after them, but they ignore their pleas. They slip around the corner, off to the side away from where the moonlight catches on the killer’s rusty blade.

They make their way back into the tree line, John letting Zatanna be his guide. She knows exactly where the killer will be.

“I have an idea,” she says stopping when they find a patch of well grown earth. She reaches down taking a clump of dirt in hand along with some ivy and flowers. “Magic in our sense doesn’t exist in this universe. It’s born out of myth and humanity that doesn’t exist in this world, but magic of the earth? That exists in nature, in all nature.”

“The green,” John says watching as Zatanna closes her eyes and focuses. The green isn’t an expertise either of them have, but they’ve been friends with Swamp Thing long enough to know a bit to get by. Tracking using the earth is easy if you have the right belief, attitude and intentions. And Zatanna is filled to the brim with all three as their clock starts to run out of time.

John keeps watch as she centers herself the dirt falling through her fingers, the flower and ivy glowing a bit to life. She doesn’t understand the green, she never could she isn’t connected to it in the way people like Alec are, but she knows how to respect it, how to ask for its help in small ways. A tracking spell for a man that’s clearly set them up for a grisly movie worthy demise she believes isn’t asking too much.

The dirt swirls in the air drifting out on the wind like the living thing it is, the flower and ivy following along.

“John,” she says opening her eyes pointing forward. The little bit of earth moves fast in the air and they follow behind it quickly.

The earth leads them right to their target, sporting an evil smirk.

“Your end is near,” he says.

“Nah,” Zatanna says simply rushing at him. She rams at him knocking him into a tree hard. She struggles with him for a moment pressing her knee into his stomach holding him in place. He moves his hands about to pull the same trick he did before, but John’s quick to their side stamping hard down on one of his wrists and grabbing the other hand tight.

“You can’t stop me, you can’t break free,” he spouts. “You wronged me and you’ll pay.”

“We don’t even know you,” John says twisting the wrist in his hand. The demon grits his teeth.

“Of course, just another demon who’s crew you banished to hell. Just another on your laundry list of banishments. Well you won’t forget me now, when you burn in hell you’ll remember my name. You’ll remember the demon of illusion who ended your life through the plot of a silly little human film. You’ll remember Choronz-“

“Are you actually doing a big villain speech right now?” Zatanna says with a sigh cutting him off.

The demon looks taken aback. “I was trying to,” he says angrily.

“You really shouldn’t, it’s very generic of you,” she says angering him further. He blasts a shot of magic at John knocking him back a few feet, using his leverage to kick up at Zatanna. He scrambles upright, but Zatanna is on him once again, swinging a fist that connects right with his jaw. He twists around John landing another hit to the other side of his face. They don’t always need magic to win a fight.

He fights back, or tries to at least, every attempt he makes at waving magic their way they duck, quicker than him. Catching him hard in the gut or the neck or wherever they can reach with every movement.

Zatanna shoves him back to the ground John kicks him hard in the chest, a few times over for good effort and that’s when Zatanna spots it, a burst of light like the one the demon had created in the ground when he disappeared earlier.

“John get him up,” she says and John does so lifting the demon by the collar of his coat. His power might be impressive, but his endurance is not. He clearly relies on his illusions to do all the work and when he tries a different way he loses his grip on even that.

John hits him hard and square in the eye and the crack in the scenery grows, more light pouring out of it. The sounds of thunder rumble in the distance, a crack of lightning too bright and violent to be real. The music swells again, this time some 80’s metal hair band ballad playing.

Zatanna looks up just a John punches the demon hard in the gut again, a slow crawl of words coming down at them. The credits are rolling, their time is up.

She wastes no time tackling both John and the demon through the crack of light. They land hard on the floor, the sticky carpeted stairs of the theater not having the gentle give of the summery grasslands.

The demon tries to scramble away put John pulls him down by his long coat. Zatanna brings her hands at the ready her magic tingling at her fingers, regaining its strength in the world where it belongs.

“Hsinab siht owt-tib wohsedis nomed ot lleh,” she says a wave of burning hot fire leaving her hands and hitting the demon head on as he attempts to knock John with his elbow. The demon goes up in a cloud of burning flames, screaming for a moment before he’s nothing but ash falling to the ground.

John and Zatanna’s eyes meet the two letting out a synchronized breath of relief.

“Ummm,” a voice sounds and Zatanna turns. The credits stop rolling the room going silent, just the blank, confused faces of their fellow movie goers staring at them.

Zatanna bites her lip a forgetting spell at the front of her mind, before her stage presence kicks in bowing to the people with a wave instead.

“Happy Halloween!” she says in a cheery voice nudging John with her foot encouraging him to give the audience a wave as well. He does so, just not quite with the flair she possesses.

They all begin clapping immediately none the wiser that what just happened was real, even if they all still look a little confused what any of it has to do with the movie. It’s Halloween, weird shit happens all the time. She hears a couple near the front whisper to one another about how realistic practical effects have gotten.

“Let’s go home,” Zatanna says pulling John up and hastily down the aisle and out of the theater.

***

Zatanna runs her fingers along the contents of the closet adjacent to her bedroom a tired smile on her lips as she hangs their freshly magically cleaned costumes up alongside the collection of previous years.

She closes the closet door with a flick of her wrist before gliding down the stairs to her recently magically built entertainment center. She’s traded in her lacy dress for an old Killer Blade t-shirt she’s had since high school and some little jack-o-lantern shorts.

“You sure you’re not too disappointed we didn’t finish the trilogy at the theater?” John asks lying flat on his back on the couch a bowl of popcorn resting on his stomach. He tosses a few pieces in the air, only actually catching one in his mouth.

“After the hands-on experience we had tonight a comfortable at home viewing is more than enough,” she says tapping her Camp Crystal Arawak sign before making her way over to him. She picks up the bowl of popcorn just as he grabs another handful once again largely missing his mouth sitting it aside on the floor. She ignores the mess nudging his legs, he gets the message making space for her. She climbs on top of him making herself comfortable against his chest letting her hands drift up under his sleeveless Hellraiser shirt.

John hums bringing one arm around her and reaching into the pocket of his skeleton sweatpants Zatanna bought him earlier in the month for the remote. He presses play the opening title card of Killer Blade 3: The Final Stab splashing onto the screen.

“You enjoyed being in the movie too much,” he says with a smirk tossing the remote on the floor beside the popcorn bowl laying his hand none to discreetly on her pumpkin clad butt.

“I think I enjoyed it the exact appropriate amount,” she says scratching her nails at his sides playfully. He squirms moving his other hand to the small of her back pushing her shirt up dragging his fingers across her skin.

“You reveled in being chased by that psycho,” he says moving his fingers up higher along her spine.

“I didn’t revel, I simply partook with a normal amount of horror fan enthusiasm,” she corrects lifting up her head digging her chin into his chest with a smile. “Now shush,” she says turning her head back to the tv. “I’m watching the movie.”

John chuckles tilting his own head toward the screen, a perfectly timed rumble of thunder sounding just as Killer Blade, now equipped with superpowers and a poorly structured machete hand, takes over the screen. Blissfully just on the big screen this time, right where he belongs.

#my fic #john constantine #zatanna zatara #johnzee #magicblazersource #magicblazer

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hotvintagepoll · 23 days

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Propaganda

Marpessa Dawn (Black Orpheus)—She's like. fairy tale princess etheral pretty. truly eurydice realness. AND she's a singer AND she's a dancer. she used to be a governess/nightclub dancer, which isn't hot per say i just thought it was an interesting job combination. If you want to hear her sing just look up the Black Orpheus soundtrack

Margaret Lindsay (Frisco Kid, The House of the Seven Gables, Scarlet Street)—she was born in Dubuque, Iowa, then moved to England to make her stage debut. She framed herself as a British actress and moved back to America to try Hollywood, then starred with James Cagney in a bunch of movies. She was in the Ellery Queen movie series and The House of the Seven Gables. She never married (I suspect lesbian stuff) but lived with her sisters. She dated Cesar Romero and Liberace (I told you. Lesbian stuff.) Please include the pic of her in the tie [included above]

This is round 3 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Margaret Lindsay:

Marpessa Dawn:

Marpessa Dawn was an filipina/african american who became well known as an actress, singer and dancer in France. She is most famous for her role in 'Black Orpheus' in which she played Eurydice. It's difficult to find a picture where she and her husband, the actor Eric Vander, aren't kissing or hugging or laughing together, they are incredibly cute (and hot).

basically everyone and their mother will agree that marpessa dawn was one of THEE og vintage black women working in cinema (even if it was mostly in french cinema! the cross language barrier slay). mostly did her work in french cinema, and her smile in black orpheus is literally like the sun breaking over the sea

#margaret lindsay #marpessa dawn #hotvintagepoll #fuck that old woman #ladies 3

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opalrosechalydra · 4 months

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Emesis Blue & Postmeta Art

We live in a media driven society. Our most famous celebrities star in our favorite movies and TV shows, our politicians are elected by whose propaganda-adjacent advertising campaigns were the most effective, even our youngest children are put in front of screens which permanently alter their brain chemistry. In a world where all of us must abide by systems that force us to sacrifice our whole lives at jobs and all of our free time managing our non-guaranteed shelter, food and health, we have to find solace in something easy to consume and easier to distribute. When your work day is done, what better way to wind down than by putting something on the television for your tired mind to be lost in?

The history of media is almost as old as our most ancient civilization. It has evolved to become a very complicated, interconnected system of referential pieces. Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses critiquing the Catholic church in 1517. Papers at the turn of the 20th century critiqued films of the blossoming industry of cinema. Musicians preached an anti-war message throughout the US invasion of Vietnam and Korea. Now, there is an entire video sharing platform where independent videographers, filmmakers, editors, artists, and thespians may share projects with their own views and opinions. YouTube is home to a number of genres as defined by the internet communities who participate in them. Critiques, reviews, essays and more, all in video form by people who are unbound by contractual restraint and free to express their personal feelings.

Those who rise to the top of this massive, competitive industry are those whose feelings resonate with the most people. Oftentimes, it can be difficult to pin down exactly what something is saying, but the fact that it invokes a primal emotion tends to indicate that it resonates with the experiences of the viewer. Many experimental films have stood the test of time despite having unclear messages, or perhaps being made with no intended message at all. Eraserhead, The Holy Mountain, A Serbian Film and more are difficult for viewers to get through due to their subject matter and presentation, but have remained among the most influential movies ever produced. Many analyze them, try to derive meaning from sequences of abstract or even nonsensical images. These things disturb us on a greater level than just their superfluous design. There is a deeper message that these films convey which lets them stay with viewers for longer than just the night they watched it. This, obviously, brings us to…

Team Fortress 2.

It’s a silly game, truly. It detaches itself from its predecessor with a cartoony artstyle, quirky dialogue and somewhat developed characters. Each of the nine playable classes is fleshed out in a series of, “Meet the…” videos released by Valve. These little nuggets of cinematic gold characterize each mercenary through an expert use of comedy, receiving further depth in the official Team Fortress 2 comic series for fans hard enough to the core to read through. However, this content was sparse and separate from the main game. Players who wanted to experience more stories involving these characters had to make some themselves.

Fanfiction is a very common aspect of any online community surrounding media. People will inevitably want more from products than its producers can produce. The one thing that set TF2’s fanbase apart from others is that Valve released a tool that allowed users to stage scenes using assets from all of Valve’s games: Source Filmmaker. Valve has famously stopped releasing accessible mainline entries in their franchises for a decade now, with Dota 2 in 2013 being their last non-spinoff/non-VR release. Their older releases still maintain a decently high level of popularity despite minimal updates. One of the main reasons they stay so loved is because of Source Filmmaker. SFM gave fans a creative outlet to contribute to their favorite Valve games when Valve themselves weren’t. These videos can be indistinguishable from the professionally made animations Valve produced if given enough time and effort.

Something happened to Team Fortress 2’s mercenaries as the fans took the creative reins from Valve. The same thing happened to many other IP’s, most famously Sonic the Hedgehog and Garfield. When an internet community puts their twist onto a neglected franchise, it usually turns out experimental. There are things that small internet communities can get away with that large publishers seeking the widest audience can’t risk. TF2’s characters took on insane personas that spoke in broken sentences edited together from their existing voice lines. For every SFM video there was, there were two Gary’s Mod videos with rougher animation and wilder content. These videos broke every law of physics that these characters should abide by for the sake of surreal, mildly horrific humor. Fans eventually stopped associating TF2 characters with their in-game personas, replaced with odd inside jokes like Sandvich, Spycrab and Surprise Buttsex.

As public perception of TF2 became altered by these niche YouTubers, the game itself underwent a bit of a crisis. Blizzard released Overwatch in 2016 as a much larger, more diverse Hero Shooter heavily inspired by Team Fortress 2. It had the cartoony artstyle, quirky dialogue and somewhat developed characters. Each character was fleshed out in video packages released by Blizzard and an Overwatch comic. Essentially, a much larger company just made a fresh game that represented more people that the company would pay more attention to than Valve had with Team Fortress 2 at that point. This revitalization of the Hero Shooter genre pushed other large developers like Respawn Entertainment and Riot Games to come out with their own. TF2 was seen as the old man game with all these young upstart series doing what TF2 did with a more effective understanding of the, “video games as a service,” trend that continues to dominate the market.

Players moved from TF2 to these alternatives over the next few years. This depopulation made two existing problems within the game worse: Bots and hackers. Bots made up such a large portion of the player base that #SaveTF2 went viral among fans wishing to combat the issue. Updates would come out tackling random exploits, but no progress on the bot issue was ever really made. These bots have been reported to spam hateful rhetoric including homophobic and racist slurs in game chat. Given how progressive Overwatch and its new wave of Hero Shooters presented themselves, these bots made TF2’s community seem like an even worse haven of bigotry. The hacker issue is mainly rooted in the Valve Anti-cheat (VAC.) It had been around since 2002, meaning that players had over a decade to figure out ways to get around its archaic system. Less players meant that a higher ratio of them were these hackers who dedicated too much time to learning how to mess with the game to leave now. TF2 seemed unplayable in comparison to the more well regulated alternatives throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s.

What seemed like the final nail in the coffin for TF2 was a source code leak that occurred in 2020. On top of all of the other factors pushing players out from TF2, it was revealed that simply playing the game could expose an unwitting player to malware. Team Fortress 2 became this wasteland of godlike cheaters among mindless zombies that worked together to attack people and invade their privacy, represented by twisted corruptions of the game’s original cast. All of the fun times that people had with the game years prior seemed to come to an end in a cataclysmic sequence of events worse than the last.

TF2’s reality was completely distorted. Players could look back at a golden age over a decade ago where these problems could barely be conceived of. The game could still be fun if you went through the effort of finding servers unaffected by its litany of issues. As established, this world is one that leaves people with little energy. Why waste time trying to find safe servers to play on when there are so many alternatives with modern solutions which avoid these problems? It comes back down to ease of access, which is very important to most of the working class laborers of the world.

This frustration, combined with the disruption of realism within the community’s fan-made content, inspired a group to action. There is a massive history known to millions of people, a history that ~100k people still partake in daily, which had never been put to art. It is only collectively archived in the minds of those who partake in the game’s legacy, be it playing the game itself or following the animators who made content for it long after Valve’s abandonment. These all collectively made up what people thought of TF2, but were never combined in a meaningful way. There was SFM/Garry’s Mod, then there was the game itself. This is what Fortress Films wanted to unify in their impressive passion project:

Emesis Blue

Emesis Blue is a fantastic representation of the progress fanmade media has made. People have been making their own video game content since before the internet gave it a worldwide platform. Players on old school cartridge based systems would tinker with their favorite games to create ROM hacks that completely changed its content. Sprites would be ripped by early 2000’s Newgrounds users who would create astounding animations with them. Even Valve chose to publish Gary’s Mod six years before they released Source Filmmaker because players could not stop themselves from trying to make their own content.

Not only does it show how far the quality of the tools has come, but it raises the bar for the artistry that these pieces are made with. Emesis Blue is art. Many people have claimed that it’s a cinematic masterpiece deserving to be played in theaters. As much credit as Emesis Blue deserves, it is the natural next step in a further industrializing YouTube. Channels continue to make longer and longer videos, providing aspiring filmmakers with a space to release passion projects that would never be picked up by sound of mind producers. YouTubers have to make the most emotional pieces that they can to stay afloat among the 500 other hours of content uploaded to the site every minute. This crushing amount is supposed to be compartmentalized by the YouTube algorithm, though many professional YouTube content creators have claimed that it is a wildly irrational system that cannot be tamed. In place of trying to master the system, the best channels master their craft.

Following the human desire to organize, a genre began developing among the most experimental of these art pieces. Fans produced content for their favorite franchises, some of which evolved to accommodate all the angst that came with being fans of these series. Sonic the Hedgehog has perhaps the most famous fan community of any video game in history for this reason. Many young artists growing up into a confusing world used Sonic as a tool to vent their frustrations. It often came out very cringeworthy, giving Sonic fans the reputation they have today. However, the outlandish behaviors of the Sonic community have been deconstructed through comics like Tails Gets Trolled and games like Sonic Dreams Collection. Despite not being official, fans used canon characters to provide a meta commentary on the original piece.

This occurred again with Garfield. Though most people wouldn’t consider themselves fans of Garfield, there was something to be said about the success it received. That little orange cat is perhaps one of the most recognizable characters globally. The lack of depth compared to its astounding success inspired observers to create pieces that commented on Garfield's indomitable presence and the shadow it cast over Jim Davis as a cartoonist. The characters of Garfield and John Arbuckle are featured prominently in fan works like Lasagna Cat and those posted in r/ImSorryJon. Yet again, artists used pre-existing characters to create a meta narrative of their source.

Three for three, Emesis Blue followed this trend for Team Fortress 2. The chaos occurring in TF2 during the production of Emesis Blue was captured in the aggressive non-linear pacing. The unnecessary brutality of bots was captured in the hyperviolence of the film's most gruesome moments and in the throngs of mindless zombie-like monsters that pursue the main cast. Many entities, such as the Medic, defy the laws of the world to gain an unfair advantage like the hackers that plagued servers. 2020’s source code leak could be felt when Scout’s home was invaded and the multiple unsolicited phone calls Blu team received. All the while, the game being abandoned for fresher titles inspired the decrepit look of the classic 2Fort map.

Emesis Blue captured TF2 fans' frustrations and insecurities through a surrealist psychological horror. It was an unofficial piece of brilliance that added lore to a game that had been mostly forgotten by the people who made it and departed fans. Emesis Blue has the supreme luck of being provided assets directly from the games to express feelings about its greater existence outside of just its canon. It is also significant as a milestone in a new medium that seems to be taking off. There will be many more projects inspired by it utilizing the same core principles. As such, these pieces must be compartmentalized into their own genre:

POSTMETA - Being composed of storytelling elements belonging to a medias canon, such as characters and settings, which produces a narrative which provides commentary to the reputation the source media has in reality

Emesis Blue obviously is not the first Postmeta piece, but it marks a point where a coincidence becomes a trend. These works are indicative of the place that media has in our lives. Passionately followed media are taken from the hands of neglectful producers by an online fan base too vast to stop. Where companies fail to provide, the people will make up for it. They will also use that opportunity to capture the reality of that product as it influences people's lives, not just providing more escapist fiction to be consumed mindlessly. As people have sacrificed their time and money to make art more prosperous, it is able to say more about the human condition. Even through something as silly as a cartoony Hero Shooter, Fortress Films is able to bring out emotions within us that spark questions about our society. There’s something beautiful to that.

A miraculous thing has happened with TF2 in 2023. Though its player base was slowly decreasing in numbers since the release of its competitors, only a few months after the release of Emesis Blue did Team Fortress 2 break its peak player count at 253,225 in June of 2023. In a combined effort with fellow enduring YouTubers like Uncle Dane and Elmaxo, Fortress Films helped to bring TF2 to a level of popularity far surpassing that of its golden age. As of the time this essay is being written, Emesis Blue itself has over 8.7 million views and TF2 averaged over 100k players throughout the entirety of 2023, almost twice the number of players in its darkest periods. Art resonates with people, and it inspires people to action. No matter what the source is, how abstract it becomes, or even how relevant the subject is anymore, there is something to be felt in every corner of the world. Art about art does not devalue it, but simply gives it a value we couldn’t rightly calculate in a world where that didn’t happen. And a video about a game almost 2 decades old got that sentence to be written. Watch Emesis Blue, play Team Fortress 2, and enjoy the new wave of Postmeta art that it and pieces like it will inspire.

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #emesis blue #essay #meta

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absolutebl · 1 year

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BL for Feb 2023

2.14 Moments Of Love (Thai - Foremorfilm Production) cinemas Was originally Golf (Director of 609 Bedtime Story & The Eclipse) to direct stars SmartJames (LeonPhob from Don't Say No) in a series. Is now something totally different and a movie. We are all confused.

02.16 Boyband the series (Thai - World Star) YouTube - Thai idol boy band BL.

02.18 Bed Friend (Thai - Domundi) Viki, YouTube, iQIYI? Adapted from a Y-novel (same setting as Middleman’s Love) about Uea (reserved and shy and hates players) and King (a big time flirt) who work in the same office and share a best friend. Despite the fact that they don’t really like each other they end up in bed together. This pair was originally supposed to be just side dishes for Middle Love, but it seems they got their own series. Not sure if this is a lesson learned from Why R U?, a lockdown necessity, a shifting to an En of Love model, or if NetJames did so well in rehearsal they earned their own series. They are crazy beautiful together. Domundi will use these two to bring higher heat, just like they did with FighterTutor. This series could be good, especially as it is based on a book, so hopefully it has PLOT. James was Gui’s best friend in Oxygen and one of my top picks at the time to get his own BL. Net was an established actor prior to BL. I am VERY excited about this pair.

02.18 Chains of Heart (Thai - Gaga) trailer Suspense thriller about a forest ranger, smugglers, memory loss, and lost love. Stars Haii (Cirrus in TT2) + ?, with Poppy as a side character. Adapted from a Y-novel of the same name by TJ Tommy.

02.28 Tin Tam Jai (Thai - MFlow Entertainment) Gaga also iQIYI Adorable Tin has a life-long dream to marry an older boy in his neighborhood, Park. Adaptation of y-novel of the same name, from same production co as Coffee Melody & Ai Long Nhai. I'll likely binge it.

Supposedly releasing in Feb, no fixed date

The Promise (Thai) YouTube - Follow up to a pulp that I didn't see and never even heard about, Phupha | Nanfah.

Heart by Heart (Thai - Half Toast Production) YouTube trailer. From the y-novel of the same name, the trailers are GOOD. I’m more excited for this one then I thought I'd be. Has a bit of Tasty Florida, bad boy/good boy, high drama going on. Stars all unknowns but they look like decent actors.

Jack Frost (Japan) After saying goodbye to his friend, Ritsu has an accident and looses his memory. His roommate, Ikuya, struggles to rebuild their relationship. In the process, Ritsu falls in love with Ikuya, unaware that they were already in a relationship.

Egoist (Japan) cinema - One of my absolute favorite Japanese actors Hio Miyazawa (from His the movie) has the lead in this movie adaptation of Makoto Takayama’s autobiographical novel Egoist. He’ll be opposite super famous actor Ryohei Suzuki. This is about an openly gay but vein and superficial man (Hio) who falls in love with a personal trainer (Ryohei) who is stuck taking care of his sick mother. It’s not BL, it’s gay coming of age and we can’t expect it to end happily. Still, I’ll probubly try to watch it. Japanese movies are notoriously difficult to get ahold of, tho.

Marry My Dead Body AKA Ghost and I Becoming Family (Taiwan) - police officer forced to marry a ghost.

More on many of these from BL Express. And here.

(source)

READ THIS BIT:

This information is to the best of my knowledge as of 02.02.2023, will NOT be kept updated after that date. Leave and read comments for updates! Crowd source that shizz.

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misterivy · 3 months

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In MEMORY of RUTGER HAUER on his BIRTHDAY - (January 23, 1944 - July 19, 2019)

Career years: 1969 - his death

Born Rutger Oelsen Hauer, Dutch actor. In 1999, he was named by the Dutch public as the Best Dutch Actor of the Century.

Hauer's career began in 1969 with the title role in the Dutch television series Floris and surged with his leading role in Turkish Delight (1973), which in 1999 was named the Best Dutch Film of the Century. After gaining international recognition with Soldier of Orange (1977) and Spetters (1980), he moved into American films such as Nighthawks (1981) and Blade Runner (1982), starring in the latter as self-aware replicant Roy Batty. His performance in Blade Runner led to roles in The Osterman Weekend (1983), Ladyhawke (1985), The Hitcher (1986), The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988), and Blind Fury (1989), among other films.

From the 1990s on, Hauer moved into low-budget films, and supporting roles in major films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Batman Begins (2005), Sin City (2005), and The Rite (2011). Hauer also became well known for his work in commercials. Towards the end of his career, he made a return to Dutch cinema, and won the 2012 Rembrandt Award for Best Actor in recognition of his lead role in The Heineken Kidnapping (2011).

Hauer supported environmentalist causes and was a member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He also founded the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, an AIDS awareness organization. He was made a knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2013.

Early life -

Hauer was born in Breukelen, in the Province of Utrecht, while the Netherlands was under German occupation during World War II. He stated in a 1981 interview, "I was born in the middle of the war, and I think for that reason I have deep roots in pacifism. Violence frightens me." His parents were Teunke (née Mellema) and Arend Hauer, both actors who operated an acting school in nearby Amsterdam. He had three sisters. According to Hauer, his parents were more interested in their art than their children. He did not have a close relationship with his father, and writer Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema later became a father figure to Hauer after they met during the filming of Soldier of Orange.

Hauer attended a Rudolf Steiner school, as his parents wanted him to develop his creativity. At the age of 15, he left school to join the Dutch merchant navy. He spent a year travelling the world aboard a freighter, but was unable to become a captain due to his colourblindness. Returning home, he worked odd jobs while finishing his high school diploma at night. He then entered the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam for acting classes, but soon dropped out to join the Royal Netherlands Army. He received training as a combat medic, but left the service after a few months as he opposed the use of deadly weapons. He subsequently returned to acting school and graduated in 1967.

Career:

Early works -

Hauer had his first acting role at the age of 11, as Eurysakes in the play Ajax. After graduating from the Academy for Theater and Dance, he became a stage actor with the Toneelgroep Noorder Compagnie. Hauer made his screen debut in 1969 when Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role of the television series Floris, a Dutch medieval action drama. The role made him famous in his native country, and Hauer reprised his role for the 1975 German remake Floris von Rosemund.

Hauer's career changed course when Verhoeven cast him in Turkish Delight (1973), which received an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. The film found box office favour abroad and at home, and Hauer looked to appear in more international films. Within two years, Hauer made his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy (1975). Set in South Africa, the film was an action-drama with a focus on apartheid. Hauer's supporting role, however, was barely noticed in Hollywood, and he returned to Dutch films for several years. During this period, he made Katie Tippel (1975) and worked again with Verhoeven on Soldier of Orange (1977), and Spetters (1980). These two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé. At the 1981 Netherlands Film Festival, Hauer received the Golden Calf for Best Actor for his overall body of work.

American breakthrough -

Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone film Nighthawks (1981) as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named Wulfgar. With his sights set on a long-term career in Hollywood, Hauer worked with an accent coach in the early 1980s to develop a convincing American accent. Unafraid of controversial roles, he portrayed Albert Speer in the 1982 American Broadcasting Company production Inside the Third Reich. The same year, Hauer appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric and violent but sympathetic antihero Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller Blade Runner, in which he delivered the famous tears in rain monologue. Hauer composed parts of the monologue the evening prior to filming, "cutting away swathes of the original script before adding the speech’s poignant final line". He went on to play the adventurer courting Theresa Russell in Eureka (1983), investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in The Osterman Weekend (1983), hardened mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood (1985), and knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke (1985).

He appeared in The Hitcher (1986), in which he played a mysterious hitchhiker tormenting a lone motorist and murdering anyone in his way. He received the 1987 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the television film Escape from Sobibor. At the height of Hauer's fame, he was set to be cast as RoboCop (1987), but Verhoeven, the film's director, considered his frame as too large to move comfortably in the character's suit. Also in 1987, Hauer starred as Nick Randall in Wanted: Dead or Alive as the descendant of the character played by Steve McQueen in the television series of the same name.

In 1988, he played a homeless man in Ermanno Olmi's The Legend of the Holy Drinker. This performance won Hauer the Best Actor award at the 1989 Seattle International Film Festival. Hauer was chosen to portray a blind martial artist superhero in Phillip Noyce's action film Blind Fury (1989). He initially struggled with the implausibility of the character, but learned to "unfocus my eyes, to react to smells and sounds" after meeting with blind judo practitioner Lynn Manning during his research for the role. Hauer returned to science fiction in 1989 with The Blood of Heroes, in which he played a gladiator in a post-apocalyptic world.

Commercials and later roles -

By the 1990s, Hauer was well known for his humorous Guinness commercials as well as his screen roles, which had increasingly involved low-budget films, such as Split Second (1992); The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1994); Omega Doom (1996) and New World Disorder (1999). In 1992, he appeared in the horror-comedy film Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the main antagonist vampire Lothos. He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video "On a Night Like This" (2000). During this time, Hauer acted in several British, Canadian and American television productions, including Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994) as Earhart's navigator Fred Noonan, Fatherland (1994), Hostile Waters (1997), The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon (1997), Merlin (1998), The 10th Kingdom (2000), Smallville (2003), Alias (2003), and Salem's Lot (2004).

Hauer played an assassin in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2003), a villainous cardinal with influential power in Sin City (2005) and a devious corporate executive running Wayne Enterprises in Batman Begins (2005). Also in 2005, he played the title role in Patrick Lussier's film Dracula III: Legacy. Seven years later, he portrayed the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing in Dario Argento's Dracula 3D. Hauer hosted the British reality television documentary Shock Treatment in 2005, and featured in Goal II: Living the Dream (2007) as Real Madrid coach Rudi Van der Merwe. He also recorded voice-overs for the British advertising campaign for the Danish butter brand Lurpak.

In 2008, Hauer received the Golden Calf Culture Prize for his contributions to Dutch cinema. The award recognised his work as an actor as well as his efforts to aid the development of young filmmakers and actors, through initiatives such as the Rutger Hauer Film Factory. In 2009, his role in avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch's Dazzle received positive reviews; it was described in Dutch press as "the most relevant Dutch film of the year". The same year, Hauer starred in the title role of Barbarossa, an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. In April 2010, he was cast in the live action adaptation of the short and fictitious Grindhouse trailer Hobo with a Shotgun (2011). Hauer played Freddie Heineken in The Heineken Kidnapping (2011), for which he received the 2012 Rembrandt Award for Best Actor. Also in 2011, Hauer appeared in the supernatural horror film The Rite as an undertaker named Istvan, the protagonist's father.

From 2013 to 2014, Hauer featured as Niall Brigant in HBO's True Blood. In 2015, he starred as Ravn in The Last Kingdom and as Kingsley in Galavant. In 2016, he joined the film jury for ShortCutz Amsterdam, an annual film festival promoting short films in Amsterdam. Hauer voiced the role of Daniel Lazarski in the 2017 video game Observer, set in post-apocalyptic Poland. Lazarski is a member of a special elite police unit that can hack into minds and interact with memories within. Hauer also provided the voice of Xehanort in the 2019 video game Kingdom Hearts III, replacing the late Leonard Nimoy and was himself replaced by Christopher Lloyd following his death.

Personal life -

Hauer was married twice:

Hauer and his first wife, Heidi Merz, produced Hauer’s only child, Aysha Hauer (born 1966). An actress, she gave birth to Hauer's grandson in 1987.

Hauer was with his second wife, Ineke ten Cate, from 1968, and they married in a private ceremony on 22 November 1985. Cate was the daughter of Laurens ten Cate, the editor-in-chief of the Friesland-based newspaper Leeuwarder Courant.

Although born in Utrecht, Hauer had strong links to Friesland. He once stated in an interview with the Algemeen Dagblad that he "needed to feel the Frisian clay under his feet".

Hauer was an environmentalist. He supported the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and was a member of its board of advisors. He also established an AIDS awareness organization called the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association.

In April 2007, he published his autobiography, All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners (co-written with Patrick Quinlan), in which he discussed many of his acting roles. Proceeds from the book go to the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association.

Death -

Hauer died at his home in Beetsterzwaag, following a short illness. He was 75 years old. A private funeral service was held on 24 July. On 23 January 2020, which would have been Hauer's 76th birthday, a ceremony was held in Beetsterzwaag in his honour. Attendees included Sharon Stone, Miranda Richardson, Diederik van Rooijen, and Prince Pieter-Christiaan of Orange-Nassau, van Vollenhoven.

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