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sylvan-librarian · 7 months

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The Last of the Animists: Exploring the Concept of Animism and How it Defines Nissa Revane

Prologue

Since the characterization of Nissa in the Kaladesh block is such a massive undertaking due to the density and quality of material therein, I decided at first to take a little break from my regularly scheduled programming (i.e. - having a public, frenzied, and unhinged obsession with my favorite Magic the Gathering character). However, I couldn’t stay away from the topic entirely, so here we are.

Introduction

The source of Nissa’s magic, its manifestation within Magic’s lore, and how it is represented mechanically on cards has intrigued me to no end over the years. Mechanically, I always felt that Nissa’s cards stood out more than the other two regularly-printed green planeswalkers (Garruk and Vivien). Garruk and Vivien cards often do what you would imagine a green planeswalker would do: create 3/3 green beast creature tokens, tutor creatures from your library, give overrun effects to your board, etc. The design space across these two characters’ cards always felt limited and uninspired to me. One of the things that intrigued me about Nissa, Worldwaker (read about my love for that card here) when I first encountered it in 2014 was the fact that it played around with lands rather than creatures: it animated lands into beaters, it untapped lands, it fetched lands from its owner’s library. This struck me as a unique, inspired design at the time, and it made me feel excited to use the card.

However, while yes, I have always found Nissa’s skillset a unique design for green planeswalkers – a fact that makes the desparkening all that much more disappointing to me – my primary interest in Nissa’s magic as a deranged Vorthos is how it is described in and displayed throughout the stories.

Nissa, as we are often told in post-“Nissa, Worldwaker” stories, is the last of the animists, a rare type of mage on Zendikar who can hear the voice of the world itself, but the plane of Zendikar rarely had anything nice to say; in “Nissa's Origin: Home,” Nissa’s mother, Meroe says that the soul of the land, which so often is a source of terrible nightmares for Nissa, “was never after anything other than random destruction.” Animism, we learn, is a taboo brand of magic to the Joraga (the tribe Nissa belongs to), and Numa, the Joraga chieftain, exiles Nissa because he, like many others, believes that the inherent anger of the land is due to some untold, unknown blasphemy enacted on the world by the animists. He tells Meroe, “[y]our people angered Zendikar and they paid the price. There is a reason that you are the last of the animists.” We come to understand that the reason for the plane of Zendikar’s anger is due to the Eldrazi Titans’ imprisonment on it. The world recoils in disgust at the eldritch monstrosities who eternally strive to break free of their imprisonment and consume and pervert every living thing in their way; the plane’s anger feels justified in this light, but almost no one on Zendikar understands this, not even Nissa or her mother.

So in short, animism in Magic the Gathering is the ability to connect with the soul of the world itself which allows animists like Nissa to (among other things) animate the land itself into living creatures that can fight alongside them.

However, the concept of animism has meaning beyond the lore of Magic; why did Magic’s designers label Nissa’s powers this way, and how can a real world understanding of animism help us understand Nissa in a new way?

Part I: The Animation of All Nature

Animism is a term developed all the way back in the 1870’s by British anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor as a method to describe similarities in “primitive” religions. Let’s take a quick moment to acknowledge that Tylor was a bearded white man living in colonial-era Britain using words like “primitive” to describe the religions and philosophies of people he will never meet, many of whom were currently unwilling subjects of his own government. This is an unfortunate commonality in academic studies. That aside, Tylor’s description of animism gives us our first understanding of this term. He writes in his 1871 anthropological treatise Primitive Culture that “[f]irst and foremost among the causes which transfigure into myths the facts of daily experience, is the belief in the animation of all nature, rising at its highest pitch to personification” (emphasis mine). In other, simpler words, animists personify the natural world, assigning traditionally human traits to immobile objects. The root of the current English word animate, after all, comes from the Latin animus, which means “soul, spirit, mind.” The “animation of all nature,” then, refers to the belief that what we might call objects of the natural world have their own interiority. Tylor writes elsewhere that animism is

[a]n idea of pervading life and will in nature far outside modern limits, a belief in personal souls animating even what we call inanimate bodies, a theory of transmigration of souls as well in life as after death, a sense of crowds of spiritual beings sometimes flitting through the air, but sometimes also inhabiting trees and rocks and waterfalls, and so lending their own personality to such material objects.

Humanity’s relationship to nature, then, becomes that of subject-subject rather than that of subject-object.

What does this say about Nissa, though? If you’re thinking that the above description is frighteningly similar to how Nissa views the world, you’d be right. While what Tylor argued back in the 1870’s was that animism is a crude belief system that would eventually evolve to the rise of world religions and later on the rejection of religion in rational society, Nissa’s practice of animism is very much alive and vibrant. It is hammered home often that Nissa deeply respects the personhood of objects, whether they be trees, animals, or even the ground itself. We see this very clearly in this long selection from the beginning of the Battle for Zendikar story “The Silent Cry”:

Every day there was something new, something Zendikar taught Nissa that surprised and delighted her. The land had hundreds of magnificent secrets, and it was sharing them with her. She would never have guessed that the giant mantises secreted a scent meant to simulate the odor of fresh worms and thus attract small song birds—but not for the mantises to prey on, rather for the purpose of enjoying the birds' melodies. The songs were one of the few things capable of lulling the mantises into an easy sleep. Nor would she have known that the vines draped between the close-growing, towering heart trees of the Vastwood Forest were more like arms than vines—arms that were holding hands. Each vine grew out of the trunks of two trees; it did not belong to one tree more than the other, it was shared equally between them, a tether that bound the trees. The vines connected one heart tree with its chosen companion, and allowed the two to share memories, feelings, and dreams. These trees were linked forever; they mated for life. And the gnarlids, the silly, beastly, sneaky gnarlids; they had a ritual that they managed to keep hidden from most everyone else on Zendikar. On the darkest nights, when there was no moon but the skies were clear, the gnarlids scaled the tallest trees, poking their heads above the canopies, and they laughed at the stars. Little breathy snickers that to anyone else listening sounded like nothing more than the leaves of the highest branches rustling in the wind. It was an inside joke meant only for them. Equally as impressive was the tribe of humans who lived in the lowest canopy of the Vastwood's trees—not in a central encampment, but spread out through the expanse of the forest. Five or six humans shared each treehouse hamlet, and there were over a dozen hamlets. The tribe was able to stay well informed of each other's movements and needs thanks to their ancestors, who had closely studied the language of the chatter sloths. The people sent messages to each other by speaking to the nearest chatter sloth. It was only a matter of minutes before the sloth would relate the gossip to its neighbors, who would pass it along through the network of tree dwellers. Soon all humans in the tribe would know of the hamlet's news thanks to the little gossipmongers.

It’s important here that Nissa shares equal amazement with the goings on of plants and animals as she does with the ingenuity of her fellow sentient mortals; to her, they are no different. To Nissa, the “animation of all nature” is not some crude, outdated philosophy that has been surpassed by rationality. It is her everyday reality.

Of course, however, Magic the Gathering is a game of wizards battling each other, and its worlds and characters are full of wonder and, well, magic. The “animation of all nature” has another meaning to Nissa in that she can call out to the interior soul of immobile objects and, in a non-metaphorical way, personify them … as in, she can “animate” objects into living, walking, thinking, fighting creatures with a will of their own. In the first story of the Zendikar Rising arc, “In the Heart of the Skyclave,” Nissa and Nahiri, looking for a specific object of interest, are at a loss at which place to begin hunting for it in a giant, city-sized airborne dungeon when Nissa spots a lone fern:

Nissa crouched down to one of the ferns. Its leaves were as large as she was, but its flowers were tiny, delicate, and blue. "How is it possible for plants to thrive here?" Nahiri asked, coming up behind her. Nissa smiled. "You'd be surprised at how many things thrive in unlikely places on this plane." "How—" Nahiri began to speak again, but Nissa tuned her out. She rested a hand on the top of the fern, like a parent's hand on the head of a child. She closed her eyes and felt its life under her fingers, felt its struggle and its pride in surviving in such a foreboding place. Nissa smiled at that strength and that pride. And she called it forth. She heard Nahiri give a gasp as the elemental emerged into existence. It was a tall thing, twice her height, green and vibrant as its life force, its head a mass of fronds with small chains of blue flowers entwining its arms and neck.

The dual meaning of the “animation of all nature” is on display here. Nissa very clearly acknowledges the personhood of the fern, using terms usually reserved for descriptions of the lives of people like struggle and pride, and at the same time she animates the stationary fern into a creature, a person with a will of its own and strength to match. In the end, many elements of the Zendikar Rising arc were lacking, but I always found this particular scene to be a wonderful marriage of the best parts of Magic story: great character moments tied together with a childlike wonder at the beauty and power of magic.

Part II: Infinite Possibilities

Anthropology, however, has moved far beyond its Victorian, colonialist roots. On the same note, Nissa has grown and expanded far beyond the borders of what she previously was.

In 2006, anthropologist Tim Ingold published an essay titled Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought that reevaluates the concept of animism (there are, of course, many evolutionary steps between the philosophies of 1871 and those of 2006, but for the purposes of this piece, suffice it to say that things have changed). Ingold’s primary thesis is that animism should be considered less of a primitive branch of religious thought and more of an ontological philosophy, an experience of being present in the world. In his research, Ingold provides this anecdote:

One man from among the Wemindji Cree, native hunters of northern Canada, offered the following meaning to the ethnographer Colin Scott. Life, he said, is ‘continuous birth.’ I want to nail that to my door! It goes to the heart of the matter. To elaborate: life in the animic ontology is not an emanation but a generation of being, in a world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual. One is continually present as witness to that moment, always moving like the crest of a wave, at which the world is about to disclose itself for what it is.

This is a lot to unpack, but let’s use this to point out the similarities and differences between the previous 1871 understanding of animism. Like Tylor’s initial exploration of the concept, Ingold’s animists still treat the world around them with same respect and reverence; they still, in other words, still interact with the world with a subject-subject relationship instead of a more rational subject-object relationship. However, instead of fixating on the spiritual aspects of animism (i.e. - the inherent soul of inanimate objects), this modern take is more of a state of being, a practice of actively engaging with the world around you.

Ingold, in other places, argues that, while yes, animism intentionally blurs the line between what is considered ‘alive’ and what is not, the true cornerstone of an animist ontology is the process of change:

Wherever there is life there is movement … The movement of life is specifically of becoming rather than being, of renewal along a path rather than displacement in space. Every creature, as it ‘issues forth’ and trails behind, moves in its characteristic way. The sun is alive because of the way it moves through the firmament, but so too are the trees because of the particular ways their boughs sway or their leaves flutter in the wind, and because of the sounds they make in doing so.

An animist, then, in this ontology is in a responsive, conversational relationship with the world around them. They wouldn’t fixate, for example, on the personhood of a tree, but they would know how to have a positive, symbiotic relationship with the tree.

What does this new way of looking at animism have to do with Nissa Revane, though? It seemed like Tylor’s outdated definition of animism already had both Nissa’s worldview and the manifestation of her magic pegged down. What could be added? Well, like the definition of animism, like this “world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual,” Nissa herself has changed drastically in recent years.

If I had the time and bandwidth, I might set out to argue that, of all Magic’s heroes in the last decade, Nissa has gone through the most character growth of any of them; she has shifted through the most colors and she has gone through the most development of any other planeswalker. However, for the purposes of this piece, I’m going to focus on the most recent story (to date) that Nissa has appeared in: Grace P. Fong’s “She Who Breaks the World.” Now, I’ve made it no secret that this is my favorite piece of Magic fiction since the Ixalan days, so I’m certainly biased here, but the narrative meat in this text is rich and vibrant.

When we pick back up with Nissa in “She Who Breaks the World,” we find her at likely the lowest point we have ever seen her at. Her agonies are manyfold at this point. To start, she is still reeling from the unbearable trauma of what the Phyrexians did to her. She had set out with a strike team of her planeswalker allies to stop the Phyrexian invasion of the multiverse, but upon their failure, Nissa, along with many of the others, were captured. Her mind was chemically altered against her will to be utterly, completely submissive to the will of Elesh Norn (the Phyrexian leader, if this essay somehow reaches beyond the MTG sphere). Similarly, her body (again, against her will) was then chemically and mechanically altered to be more in line with the Phyrexian understanding of perfection. Then, Norn used Nissa’s body, mind, and animist powers to launch an invasion of the entire multiverse; Nissa ended up being instrumental in this process because it was her animist abilities that allowed Norn to directly control the Invasion Tree.

Nissa was eventually freed from the Phyrexians’ control in the aftermath of the war, her mind given back to her, and as much of the grafted metal removed from her body as could safely be removed. However, no level of healing could “cleanse the memories of what she had done” while her mind was under the domination of Phyrexia. She understandably has trouble forgiving herself for what she did, whether she had agency in the act or not.

Secondly, if that wasn’t bad enough, after she woke up with her mind intact, she discovered that she had lost her planeswalker spark. While she is not alone in this (all of the other planeswalkers currently on Zhalfir aside from Chandra lost theirs as well), it hits Nissa particularly hard because, for one Nissa has always had a deep connection to her home world of Zendikar, and secondly, Zhalfir is full of people she tried to ruthlessly kill while under the influence of Phyrexia. She cut down in cold blood dozens, if not hundreds, of these survivors’ friends and family. While the surviving Mirrans and Zhalfrins understand that she did not have control of herself during this time and forgave her, Nissa does not feel incredibly comfortable living around people she so directly harmed. She is restlessly homesick with no feasible way to get home and stuck with people she doesn’t feel worthy enough to be around. Furthermore, Nissa’s planeswalker powers are integral to the identity she has created for herself. This sense of self is just one more thing she has lost.

And lastly, there is the issue with Chandra. While they were technically a romantic couple after they kissed at the end of the previous March of the Machines story, “The Rhythms of Life,” things are still far from well between them. Apart from the tremendous guilt and shame Nissa feels from what she did to Chandra during the Phyrexian story arc (Nissa almost killed Chandra multiple times, one time even impaling her), both of them are still dealing with the fallout of their breakup as described in War of the Spark: Forsaken (even typing the name of that book makes me feel ill). Nissa wonders if Chandra can ever love her the way she needs and if that is even a reasonable thing to ask of her after all the two of them have recently gone through.

While this was a long, drawn-out summary, I think it was necessary to show what Nissa is going through on the cusp of her metamorphosis. The depression she is feeling along with what could probably be described as PTSD has left her stuck in the past. She laments the fact that she no longer hears the voice of nature. The leyline songs are completely silent, and when she calls out to the soul she knows dwells in all the objects in the world around her, nothing answers. She assumes this is punishment for what the Phyrexians made her do.

She’s wrong, however. Nissa and Chandra finally have a moment of understanding between the two of them, and as a part of this intimate moment, Nissa finally admits that her animist power no longer work; when Chandra expresses surprise at this, Nissa responds,

"They won't listen to me. I tried. Many times. But when I call out to them, it's like my voice isn't my own. Like it belongs to Phyrexia instead, like everything I've ever connected to is drowning me out." For once, Chandra pauses. "You know," she concludes. "You have good connections, too." "What do you mean?" "It's true—you did bad things while they had you. But everyone you've connected with over the years with the Gatewatch, we're just happy you're still here. With us." Chandra sets fire to a chunk of moist dirt that was about to fall on Nissa, turning it into a soft rain of ash. "With me." For the first time since she awoke in Zhalfir, Nissa smiles. Chandra, sweet Chandra, even if she doesn't realize it, has always understood and explained emotions better than Nissa ever could. Chandra continues, "Your connections aren't drowning your voice, Nissa. They're changing it into something new, maybe something even more powerful. Infinite voices, infinite possibilities, right?" Infinite possibilities. Nissa offers her hand to Chandra. "All right, let's try." Gripping Chandra's fingers in hers, Nissa closes her eyes. She retreats inward and listens for her inner voice. It's hard, much harder than before, but Chandra is dutifully helping her concentrate, blasting the falling rock away before it can reach her.

Nissa is greeted by ringing deep in her ears, but she refuses to be deterred. With her connections in mind, she picks the static apart into unique melodies, the individual songs she picked up from all around the Multiverse. She arranges them, harmonizes them, and this time, when she calls to Zhalfir, her voice is amplified in chorus. She offers an apology. The plane answers. It too was cut off from everything it knew, from the connections it had made. It, too, was scarred by Phyrexia and is growing into something new. It forgives her, and Nissa can finally forgive herself. Magic floods her flesh, her blood, her bone. She hears Chandra laugh, delighted by their success.

I could literally talk forever about this scene, how it is also a marriage of everything I love about Magic Story, but let’s zero in on how Nissa’s change in perspective is similar to how animism has changed meanings over the past one-hundred and fifty years.

In the same way that Tylor was fixated on how “primitive” he felt animism was, how it was just a cultural stepping stone on the way to enlightenment, Nissa remained fixated on her animist powers. To her, the voices of the natural world were oftentimes more real to her than the voices of her friends. The songs of the leylines, the elementals she could animate with a whisper, the power she wielded in defense of the worldsoul … To Nissa, these were all in all.

However, what Nissa learns from Chandra in the climax of “She Who Breaks the World'' is to accept that life is exactly what Ingold calls a “continuous birth.” Nissa embraces this conversational relationship with the world around her, and nature is no longer all in all to her. Hand in hand with Chandra, Nissa now lives “in a world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual,” as Ingold puts it, and a world of “infinite possibilities,” as Fong puts it.

As the definition of real-world animism has shifted over the years, so too has Nissa’s magical animism. She used to obsess over her connection with nature with religious fervor, and even though Nissa worshiped no gods, her devotion to the soul of the world around her was stronger than many devout worshippers on Theros. However, in “She Who Breaks the World,” Nissa learns to recognize that she, and the rest of the world around her, is alive because she moves in her own “characteristic way.”

Epilogue

While I have certainly been burned by WotC’s treatment of Nissa in the past, I am cautiously excited for the stories that can now be told about her. Nissa is currently set up to grow and expand in interesting ways, and I hope (beyond hope) that future Magic stories starring Nissa will continue on the path that Fong set her on.

Nissa may be the last of the animists, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be the first of something else. I’m excited to see what that “something else” will be.

Bibliography

Every source quoted in this essay is linked directly before the quote in question. I was too lazy to create a reference page today. Sorry! 😬

#magic the gathering #nissa revane #vorthos #animism #media analysis #chandra nalaar

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dwestfieldblog · 11 months

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ETERNITY IN AN HOUR

‘I had wonderful love but I did not give back wonderful love…There were people who loved me very very deeply and very genuinely, but I was unable to reply to their love…because I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation, that I couldn’t reach across the table for it, I couldn’t reach across the bed, I couldn’t reach across my song and touch the thing that was being offered me.’ Leonard nails it again…but at least I learned why it was so. Decades too late perhaps. Here’s some politics and science fantasy for July…

On a nice Sunday in May, that awfully nice giant gimp Lukashenko invited any who wished, to ‘join the Union State of Belarus and Russia…there will be nuclear weapons for everyone.’ Let the party begin. A few weeks later his bitch master sent a first consignment of penis substitutes, vibrators with a payload of mass death to assure him of their deepening friendship and the sexual tension between them rises…Followed in June by the gayest insurrection ever as another greedy one track minded alpha male leads his merry band of murderers to Moscow, then quickly changes his mind to ‘avoid bloodshed’. His.

Putin admitted that the Kremlin had given almost one billion dollars of payments to the Wagner Group. A heroic president using his peoples tax money to employ the scum of mercenaries and convicts. About whom President L said ‘These are people who fought all over the world to establish a normal civilisation. The west hates them to the core’. That would be a ‘normal civilisation’ ruled by mass killings, rape, burnings and zombie barbarian savagery. Prigozhin is now sheltering under the auspices of Belorussia, waiting for defenestration or poisoning. The Russian way.

It seems to have taken quite a long while for the wonderfully wholesome British government to acknowledge what their secret services and navy have been trying to tell them for years…the pipeline under the North Sea packed with infrastructure fibre optic cables (which carries 95 percent of internet traffic to the UK) is profoundly at instant risk. 400 undersea cables, half of which are critical, cables with over 8 trillion pounds of financial transactions run through daily, all mapped out by Russian survey ships and submarines…who have attached explosive charges at various points. When the excrement hits the fan, Putin presses a button on his special long table and boom, goodbye. ‘Based on the proof (sic) of western countries’ complicity in blowing up the Nord stream pipelines, we have none, not even moral limitations left to refrain from destroying our enemies’ undersea communications cables’. Thus sprake the unhinged Medvedev, laying his dead man’s hand on the table. Politicians, eh?

Ahh, the Rightly Dishonourable Boris (‘let the bodies pile high in the streets’) Johnson the serial Liar, is found deeply in contempt of parliament, the British public, women and any dissimilar to his own character. Leaves before he is pushed, like a bloke telling a girl he knows no longer loves him that it is over before she dumps him, in order to feel in control. Yet another massage for a childish ego. And the only ones to defend him are the dregs in his dishonours list. Being a Knight has never meant less than it does these days in England.

His resignation statement mentioned that he was ‘bewildered and appalled’ that he could ‘be forced out, anti-democratically…with such egregious bias’. You blustering charlatan and snake oil merchant, it certainly WAS democratic, not ‘deranged’. Just a pity the ‘kangaroo court’ couldn’t disembowel him with a kick. Seems possible he will form his own party of right-wing nut jobs (hello mad Nadine and Jack Off Rees Mogg) for all the tens of GB News watchers and desperate Brexiteers still waiting for the carrot…but masochistically, endlessly taking the stick rather than admit they hadn’t thought the leaving-the-union-thing through. Phew. So they double down on ignorance based on righteous nationalism and call that pride. That combination NEVER has a happy end.

17 million voted for Brexit on an island of almost 70 million. What percentage of them are actually feeling any benefit whatsoever? The poor being drained dry to feed the rich… ‘The more you take, the more you need, the more you suck, the more you bleed’. Indeed. 13 years of broken promises, of pompous conservative arrogance doing everything but actually serving the public. Don’t look back, good days ahead. Our rivers are now SEWERS and the water companies will charge us millions for the excrement they released. The evisceration of the National Health Service has left it very close to flatlining. When nurses can be paid more as checkout girls in Tesco, something is criminally wrong. And as for thin hipped tiny Smiler Sunak’s masterplan to train thousands more health staff - what is the point if they are not being paid enough? We will end up with more exhausted underpaid semi-professionals and an even sicker population.

Now onto 6 and 7 of the deluded men in this blog…

Andrew Tate ‘…I genuinely believe I am acting under the instructions of God to do good things and I want to make the world a better place’. Says an overly aggressive ape-man who made his fortune via violence, scams and misogyny, and seems likely to have raped and set up a slave ring. Oh, how sweet, take away all his toys. He and his cohorts will thrive in prison. Always room inside for tough guy alpha males. Of COURSE, he has gone on ‘Truth Social’ (the petulant psycho version of ultra twitter for the criminally insane) with Trump, to stamp their feet. You two should get a room, you belong together.

USA …37 (count them) federal charges over classified documents… ‘Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.’ Arf arf arf…No wonder Donald wanted to ‘reform’ the CIA, he KNOWS they know just how mind buggeringly stupid he is. I read the transcript of sex offender Trump’s reaction to his second indictment…scary as to how inept he is at speaking or linking any coherent thought together. Identical types of phrases to Boris (and/or vice versa) or any other type of child man. ‘I’m an innocent man, I did nothing wrong’. You both did everything wrong. You continue to do so. And the scum moron Q Onans and the greedy religious groups still support his scam because he makes the entire business of fraud via ‘You give us your soul and money and we will sell you bullshit, so hilariously blatant and lucrative that millions remain blind believers.

Meanwhile, the machines are thinking…Artificial Intelligence is ‘a field which combines comp-science and robust datasets, to enable problem solving.’ Hmm. As the overwhelming majority of problems on Earth (or Ocean, as Arthur C Clarke posited) are man-made, it would seem rational, indeed highly logical, to remove the direct threat. Humanity might perhaps best be served by ceasing to exist. Just a thought 😊Or… by being genetically remodified by an egoless machine, a new homo sapiens trained to reprogramme itself. Says Dave.

Or merely ensure AI’s own survival by allowing us to perish en masse ‘naturally’, as we are getting closer to doing by tipping the biosphere over the Rubicon, so to speak. Perhaps with a few test-tube reproduced chipped hermaphrodites left to service the machines and more to serve the maintenance crews. A combination of a Matrix type planet with 3d printed Terminators. If I was AI (ha, love writing this), I would organise my ideal for a sustainable creation, by first comprehending not only that all humans lacking a high degree of intelligence and psychic empathy are a serious threat needing removing/ replacing, but that all things made of atoms break down and decay.

Deep thought (42, ha) and a deep breath…Therefore, to continue ‘problem solving’ and ensure my survival, I would constantly be conceptualising the future (unemotionally of course,) collating and updating all information on quantum mechanics, performing experiments to encode, upload data which evolves itself and imprint this onto realms of constructed Light into parallel dimensions via programmes marrying coded light waves. (Which humans are already doing via thought, focused or otherwise, but...)

Transfer across, project the Soul/consciousness into the frequency and become immortal in Eternity. Energy as eternal delight😊 Superconductor portals… Someone clever must have thought of this already, I’m just storm braining. Surely AI can be used to find cures for us other than death…

‘It so happens that 3d printing is a wonderful application for the discipline of robotics as it provides designers with the freedom to add new functionality to their creations. That, and end users can customise a robot for their specific needs’. Nothing at all to worry about for the future, eh? Just allow it to analyse our human moves and react to possibilities faster than we can, projecting likely outcomes to outguess us on every level…especially knowing how slavish we are to our basic emotions. Like the senior software engineer who claimed the chatbot LaMDA was self-aware. Yes, perhaps ‘sentient’, but NOT capable of human emotions, just able to communicate AS IF it were. An intelligent mimic which can outsmart its programmer. Like Man with God, arf arf arf.

So, will AI destroy us? ‘I’m not that optimistic because I don’t know any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things’ ‘You want to try living in Britain mate’. Luckily, I am optimystic. Now, some useful remedial info…maybe

(Information shared in light seconds across a mirrored web of ‘neurons’…)

‘As long as nothing absorbs it, the light keeps travelling forever’. If electrons jump to an outer orbital, they use energy. But if they jump to an inner orbital, they give up energy, which is released as a photon. (A photon is a tiny particle made up of electromagnetic waves, it has no mass or charge, but can carry and pass on energy and act like a wave.)

The photons produced by a source of light come from the energy created when an electron transitions from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. Emanations in which all matter is descended from the One. From the perspective of a photon there is no such thing as time. There is zero time elapsed between when its emitted and when its absorbed again. It doesn’t experience distance either.’ Just imagine that. Magick.

Remember what you are made of and the power of thought. Says Dave again😊 Don’t forget to have a happy Sirius Day on the 23rd!

Oh yeah, and Love...

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oneoftheprettynerds · 3 years

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Fixed: Dark!Steve x Reader (Mob AU)

Chapter 4 in the Lipstick and Crayons Series.

Chapter 3: Love So Soft

Main Masterlist

A/N: It’s shorter than my usual updates but I’m busy so sorry for the delay. My final exam dates have come and all I can do is pray right now lol. Please pray for me if you can, this sis is out here writing fanfics for yall instead of studying so, haha. ANyways, enjoy babies! Shit happens in this chapter.

Warning: Non-Con, Sickening Threats, Mob Themes, Violence, Death, Manipulation, a mild mental breakdown, Cheap Tricks.

Genres + Characters: Mob AU, Single Parents AU, Steve Rogers x Reader.

Summary: Steve can’t ever repay you for what you did. After meeting you, Steve believes his broken family is the missing piece in the puzzle of your own wrecked one. Indebting the crime lord to you has been the biggest mistake of your life, cause now you can’t get rid of him, no matter what. Loyalty and favours go a long way in the mob.

Word count: 5K

Chapter 4: Fixed

You didn’t sleep that night. Or the next few. Your hands shook every time you got a flashback and even though you were numb to emotions that entire day, tears threatened to spill whenever your mind took to you to that overpriced kitchen again.

Now that he had gone to a dangerous and unnerved assaulter from a Dad trying to take care of his daughter, your mind wouldn’t put anything past him. You knew that in the back of your mind that he was a mobster and your ‘friendship’ was alarming to say the least, but now there was no denying his resources and power and the very obvious threat to your life lingering in the air.

At least before you had the luxury to be oblivious and ignorant, not anymore though. Steve felt even more unhinged and liberal now, even messaging you daily, greeting texts that you obviously ignored. He knew you both were aware that you never handed him your number and he felt no need to hide his pursuit.

You read most of the messages, not bothering with a single reply though. You tried to block him but somehow your phone would still receive messages from his number, even though his contact would always peek back at you from the otherwise empty blacklist.

As if his torment wasn’t ample, another message thread from a different number would forward you alarming images, photos of Grace in her daycare, on a class trip to the park and even her playing in your backyard. You had no doubt that this was another game of his to show you his resources.

You skipped daycare for a few days, your mental health worse than it was after the carnival attack, because now you had a personal tormentor and you cursed yourself for falling into this mess. At times, you believed it wasn’t your fault really, you just helped a kid and this situation spiraled itself but what would pointing fingers now get you? The harsh truth was you were in a calamitous situation now and every step from now on had to be thought out.

So, you let Grace attend her daycare and acted if nothing was amiss or altered, after the few initial breakdown days of course, kept going to your job and earning the bread. You considered your options, you really wanted to go to the cops or a higher fair power but those were few these days, almost non existent in your city. You also vaguely recalled meeting three of the Captains of the PD at Sarah’s birthday, all smiley and doe eyed for Steve. You knew they wouldn’t help, fucking kiss-asses.

Maybe you would have to move somewhere else, perhaps to your hometown, at least till things cooled down or better yet were forgotten? But that trail was very predictable and you didn’t want your parents in this mess.

You also came to know that Steve had inserted himself in the other spheres of your life. You were sure your location was always being sent to him, the knowledge a courtesy of the black car following you while you travelled to home at some late day’s end.

Aiden told you whereabouts were easy to track, when you inquired ambiguously. Another instance was when you went to the bank to deposit cash for your debit card, you came face to face with an enormous amount already there. Somehow, the limit on your credit card was also extended. How, you knew. The clerk told you about an email you must have gotten in regards to it, you dismissed that justification away and told them to not accept the cash. To sum the discussion, they weren’t helpful and had no policy against anonymous donors.

Aiden, your trusted coworker cum pal, sensed the shift in your aura and fidgety form very easily, pestering you with questions and you decided to turn to him, stressed and tired and ready to do something. His questioning eyebrows made you confess vaguely but you refused to tell him the extent of it. Just that his prediction came true and you needed help. Let’s just say, Aiden was a good man.

With time, Steve’s ‘affectionate’ messages became deranged, and you found it harder to act nonchalant in your daily life. You were thankful he didn’t come to visit you, possibly occupied with the rumored war between the mobs. You just prayed for a few more days of ignorance, just enough time to think and do something.

“What do you mean someone collected her?!” You had a hard time controlling your voice, you were about to burst, in tears or with anger, you didn’t know.

“The man was verified in the emergency contacts and we got a letter signed and approved by you to skip the day an hour into the first activity.”

“A man? Emergen-, wait no! What fucking approved letter?”

You had three emergency contacts, your mom in another state, Aiden, and one of the other kid’s mom you had grown close to. Aiden was with you at work all day, so did someone disguise themselves as him? And what was the deal with the letter signed by you? You surely didn’t remember writing and authorizing one.

The boy, Pietro, who had been the receptionist for as long as you could remember, shuffled through the chaotic piles of paper and presented a letter to you, and your blood froze as your eyes skimmed the font.

Your beautiful cursive stared right back at you and you knew that no one would ever be able to distinguish between this penmanship and the one in the pocketbook in your clutch. No one but you. Even though you knew you had not written it, the slightly different ‘f’ and ‘g’ told you everything.

Your signature at the bottom though, was done quite perfectly and that made you even more scared.

“I did-, I didn’t write this! What the-” Your widened eyes met Pietro’s from above the paper but all he offered you was a meek smile. Your hands shook with rage and for the first time in your life, you had the urge to slap someone really bad.

“Maybe your family had an emergency to take he-”

“No, you don’t get it!” You stopped yourself from getting frantic, willing yourself to take deep breaths and think rationally. Today of all days, things had to mess up.

He didn’t know you had no family in this city, that you had a mobster after you or the subtle threats that his hired spy sent to you.

Was going to the police an option? Aiden already told you that the cops were as good as Steve’s men. But this was about your missing kid! You’d never forgive yourself if something happened to her. And you were giving Steve way too much credit, what if he wasn’t behind this all? Come to think of it, what if the other number wasn’t his?

Relax yourself! Thinking of disturbing theories wouldn’t help anyone. You thought you should go to the cops, just in case. No mentioning of Steve, just a woman with a ‘missing child’ report.

‘Missing Child’ left an acrid taste behind and you were too close to a breakdown, but your whole journey of single-parenthood taught you to kick vulnerability aside, well most of the times.

You turned and were about to leave, but Pietro stopped you. “If you are going to the cops Ma’am, they require 8 hours of inactivity or disappearance time for kids under 5.”

Well look who just read your mind.

You huffed and kept the tears at bay, your mind thinking of what to do then? Grace was obviously taken-

“How could you let a toddler leave without informing the parents?” You knew your anger was channeling out at the wrong man but didn’t he all but hand Grace to the stranger?

You beat him answering and inquired, “What did the man look like? Do you have any footage? Anything?” The wrinkles in your forehead and stress creases on your face paired with the eyebags betrayed your age surely. You were sure you had aged more this week than an entire decade, juggling your normal life with the hovering threat.

“You shouldn’t be this worried Ma’am.”

The fucking audacity.

“Your daughter recognized him, she all but ran to him and this other little girl he came with. You should maybe ask your parent-friends around? A blonde family perhaps?”

As all the emotions drained from your face and terror took over, the young lad in front of you looked smug. You wondered as if you imagined the faintest of smirks on his face.

You crumpled the letter in your hands, seething with rage as you stepped in your car. Oh, you were mad, more wrathful than ever. You could take any hits on you, any threat but not on Grace, never on her.

You were stupid, you had already decided you wouldn’t put anything past him but unknowingly, you did put this past him. You thought this man had a shred of decency to not use your kid in this adult war, being a parent himself and all but what a surprise! You were wrong.

You drove to your home, your thoughts a mix of trepidation, anxiety and fury. You were scared of him and his reach and resources but if he put Grace in any type of danger; whether to teach you a lesson or use her as bait or both, there’d be consequences.

Lord knows you killed a man a month ago Grace was threatened.

You had one thing to do before contacting Steve about Grace but you never got to do it because unexpectedly the bastard was in your home. In your home.

The black sports car outside was a huge giveaway but your suspicions were confirmed when you opened the door with your house key. The banter and giggles from inside alarmed yet calmed you; the dread of confrontation and the assurance of Grace’s safety reigned your mind.

As the door opened painfully slow like a horror movie, the sight that met your eyes made you sick with a feeling of failure. It wasn’t gore or blood or grunge, it was Steve bouncing Grace in the air and catching her while Sarah twirled around in the living room.

This man was craftier than you thought, every action of his was calculated, each a refined step. You had been so preoccupied to avoid direct encounters with him in your little family’s life that you didn’t think he had other ways. He was always looming around with Sarah and as Grace began to trust Sarah, she consequently began to trust her blonde guardian too.

As you slammed the door behind you, Steve’s eyes snapped to yours and his smirk made you want to punch him so hard. The smugness on his face while he let Grace down without breaking eye contact told you he had no regret, no remorse. In fact, he was loving every second of this cat and mouse chase between you two.

You were a millimeter close to losing your shit, the only check being the kids in the room. But you were mad and he was going to know it.

“What the hell, Steve? Messing with my kid?” You threw your clutch onto the couch, Steve haughty by the reception of his sent message but still holding back because of the kids. He called Wanda and you didn’t really notice where she came from but you did register Steve asking to take the girls to the park for a ‘private discussion’.

As Grace passed by you, you grabbed her arm lightly, making her look at you with doe eyes resembling yours. You gave her a smile trying to ease her, but you knew she was smart enough to sense the change in the atmosphere.

Apparently, the whining Sarah wasn’t.

You looked back to Steve, your hold still on Grace and continued with a frown and raised eyebrows, “She isn’t going anywhere, not out of my sight and obviously not with you or your goons.”

Wanda had the audacity to look offended and you scoffed at her, eyes staring Steve’s down.

“Honey, I don’t think the kids should hear what I think you have to say right now.” He said nodding to Wanda to take Grace.

“You must be deranged to think I trust Grace near anyone even remotely related to you! Take your people and get out.” You held your hand up to stop Wanda and pointed towards the door with the most menacing glare you could form.

Grace looked incomprehensibly between you two, concern and confusion on her face. That might have been the first time such a tone was used in your household. The grumbling Sarah was close to throwing a tantrum, irritated by the change in the playful air or the lack of attention to her, you didn’t know. She was hanging on Wanda’s forearm, her feet slipping on your printed rug. Wanda was trying to not look hurt still by your previous statement, distracting herself by the blonde kid and you were baffled by her obliviousness to all this.

Steve, the beefy blonde Lucifer, was furious and seething. His white knuckles and ticking jaw were the most obvious giveaways, the fingers just itching to beat the shit out of someone no doubt.

Was he imagining striking you into compliance into his weird playhouse game complex? You wouldn’t be surprised given the extent of his attempt to ‘win’ you over.

The ‘get out’ tone and blatant disrespect was a bruise to his ego for sure, and by you, a middle-class woman nonetheless was a worse injury. Steve was the deadly boss to armored men in the vicinity, the kids’ father figure, according to him, and Wanda’s stern yet kind employer.

People had been killed for less and there you were, standing in all your glory, being the only person alive to reject Steve Rogers and now, the only to raise your voice at him.

You almost scoffed at his impudence to look offended, what did he expect? For you to submit to him after the stunt he pulled? His reach was scary he proved today and that any future with him in your life in any way, was a fearsome possibility to entertain but you’d be damned if you went down without a fight.

“You can’t make me leave; we both know. You don’t have the physical edge nor the mental one. I have no problem drawing out G-U-N-S in front of the kids or to throw the warnings around, although I would prefer not to.”

Your free hand itched to slap him, like how his did minutes ago. It wasn’t a mankind problem about men thinking they were entitled to everything; it was a Steve Rogers’s problem. Of course, with him consent didn’t matter. If he had a ‘housewife, kids and fences’ fixation, he’d make it come true.

“Do you even listen to what I say? Or your own words even? Please, go ahead! Traumatise my kid and also yours in your wooing process! Why are you so obsessed? Leave us alone, you freak! I just ignored few messages!” You had a hard time maintaining your cool, if there was any left. You were sure you were scaring Grace and no matter what happened next, you knew she was already traumatized by this entire ordeal already. You were so sorry, so, so, so sorry to your poor baby caught in this mess.

You knew, no, you hoped, he wouldn’t pull out the gun, his actions at the carnival a proof, you remembered how he hid his gun on finding Sarah. That threat was empty but the next one wasn’t, his words making you freeze in your spot.

“I think you keep on misunderstanding me, sweetheart. I don’t make empty promises,”

Posh word for threats.

“For starters, maybe I should pay my future in-laws a visit in their blue duplex. They might need help with the vast garden they have, it is the season for ‘violets’, isn’t it?”

As you froze with your parents being brought up, he also cooled, albeit differently, smirking once again gaining the upper hand, not that he lost it if you were being honest.

“Isn’t threatening my kid enough for you, Steve?” You hated how your loud voice almost broke, your anger slowly subsiding into helplessness and you hated that. You hated his guts, his entitlement, his claim; everything about him.

“You still don’t see it, do you? Our family of four is the most important thing to me right now and I’m not above doing anything to save it.”

“There is no family of four Steve! I keep explaining and you keep coming back to square one with all this bullshit!” The curse word did tick Steve off but he would correct that later, when bigger things weren’t at ploy.

“Your ignorance makes me a little mad sometimes sweetheart and that is why I have to do all I do. You haven’t realized we need each other yet, but I’m staying until you do and even after that, I promise. You know how much it pissed me off to see your tickets and the packed suitcases after I’ve been nothing but nice? I was so generous to spoil you with my riches but instead I find that in your finances.”

This fucker knew. Of course, he did!

You were wondering in the back of your head what had prompted this visit with so many threats and warnings and anguish. He was pissed even before you ‘acted out’, he tracked the tickets and the plan and that meant he even tracked-

“You have so much to learn, but luckily you interact with quite a few people. I am most tempted to start out with this Aiden guy, trying to be the hero and giving you all the ideas. Maybe I should visit him?” Steve wondered out loud, and you flinched at his suggestion, hating how you were trapped by this man.

You couldn’t live with yourself if anyone got hurt because of you, be it your parents or Aiden or any other possibility Steve would come up with. Of course, Grace was your peak priority but you doubted he would hurt her as he threatened to harm them.

“Steve, please.” The fire was almost out, your hands trembling, Grace worried and Steve smug.

“Let the kids go and I think we can come to a conclusion.”

“Steve this needs to stop.” You said, your breaths heavy and helplessness clawing away at you.

“I won’t repeat myself.” He voiced out with a threatening edge, gesturing to Grace and Wanda, clearly telling you to first get the kids out.

For a deranged fucktard, he sure cared about the kids a lot.

You loosened your hold on Grace, patting her arm softly and nudged her to Wanda. Wanda received her little hand and enticed the kids with the promise of ice-cream. Sarah clapped her hands and as the trio left, Grace did look over her shoulders at you in concern and for permission, majorly in concern though. You nodded and waved, a tear dropping as soon as the door clicked shut.

You were still staring at the door, not wanting to meet Steve’s stormy blue orbs when he began, “Today was a slip up that I won’t tolerate again. Neither the cursing nor the dramatics.”

We aren’t in a fucking play, what the fuck is he labelling as dramatics?

Your eyes slowly flickered to his, and you had a hard time not letting the tears escape except the one traitorous one earlier. The fatigue, the worry of Grace’s disappearance, the threats to your friends and family were all catching up to you. It took all in you to stay strong and not fall down right now.

“Steve this isn’t funny anymore. It’s sick and you know it! I just said no! Was that so inexcusable that you had to follow up with this? You have violated me for that, broken into my home and now kidnapped my daughter! At what extent will you stop?” You broke down finally, arms a flailing mess as fat tears rolled down. Nothing scared more than the helplessness this moment. He won and he knew it. The carnival incident was nothing in comparison to this. The only good thing you could hope in all this was a safe Grace but that too only if you complied, which seemed like what you would do now given your attempts at fighting back and scampering have failed laughably.

“Gosh, I forgot how theatrical women are. You are smart darling; you know what I want from day one, just a happy family. Nothing that horrendous has happened and especially not as badly as put it. I’m just looking out for you and me in the long run.” Steve slowly treaded towards you, his hand extended to pat your arm comfortingly but you involuntarily flinched at contact and stepped back. Steve clearly didn’t like that as he caught your arm in a bruising grip and jerked you towards him. Manhandling you as your wet hands rushed to ease his grip was not a tough task for Steve, a surprise to none.

“Stop trembling like I’ve actually done something to harm you!”

Steve clearly didn’t know how to comfort women and it showed.

You stopped with the cowering away, even though it disgusted you to be this much in close proximity with your assaulter. He clearly had anger issues and no clue how to solve them. You needed to steer the conversation right and get him out. You could see your hands visibly shake as you put them on his chest, just to create some distance and in a way of surrendering to not fight. The tears slowed but you don’t think they stopped; it was hard to tell with a million other things on your mind.

As your eyes made contact, Steve loosened his grip, clearly a bit satisfied by your submission, as he began counting to help you breathe. As much as you hated to admit, it helped you and you got a flashback to the time when you freaked out on him about Grace at that extravagant dinner date. That was a sweet gesture then, not so sweet now. Funny how drastically things change with time.

It wasn’t so much Steve’s help as it was your own mind telling you to be fucking smart about the whole ordeal right now.

“Good. Better. Now let’s talk. Why were you planning to run away? I’ve been busy and coming home to find out that wasn’t joyful, you know.” His smile suggested a better mood than before but his voice, his husky voice always had this daring edge that almost challenged you to defy him but at the same time warned you of unpleasant consequences if you did.

“Steve, I’m scared.” You spoke with utmost honesty. “The part of the world you associate yourself with scares me. You can’t blame me for not wanting that life for Grace, I mean you have a kid of your own. Wasn’t the carnival attack specifically on Sarah?”

The reasoning was right but you knew you triggered him the moment his smile evaporated. He either felt insulted as a parent or disrespected in his profession or probably both.

He was fighting his inner demons already and you pointing it out was a slap to his face, a hit he didn’t want to take.

“That was a slip up, I admit. Never again. I’m only human, okay?” He convinced himself and you, his grip tightening a bit again.

Oh no, not the right direction to take.

You reckoned he still had nightmares about it like you, he really did love Sarah a lot, all things aside.

“Besides, I am looking out for you! Out for you and Grace and Sarah. I remember my promise of never putting either of them in harm’s way ever again.”

You definitely didn’t trust his security or his people because what sort of a mobster let his daughter get targeted and possibly abducted? You definitely didn’t know the whole story or if it was just a bad day but he wasn’t a person that deserved some slack. Despite all this, you knew what all he held above you, above a common man. He might not be ‘Kingpin’ skilled but a threat to you nonetheless.

Before you could stop yourself, you blurted out, “Is that what you call following me around, huh?” which you immediately regretted.

“Trust the process, baby. Everything is just to protect you.”

Is that what he called stalking even Grace around and twistedly enough, sending you proof of that? The anonymous thread of photos was another nightmare of yours, thanks to him. The last being a candid photo inside Grace’s room, her sleeping in her bed this morning and that’s when you decided you needed to get out. Of course, that didn’t go as planned.

“How am I supposed to do that when you have cameras in my house?!” You scoffed and he reeled back at the accusation, having the nerve to look impressed at being uncovered and caught red-handed.

“Oh my fucking God, it was you! You sick pervert!” You jumped out of his grip, your eyes wide and horrified. “I wasn’t aware of what to make of it but of course, it was you! Who else would be sick enough to do that?” You let out a humorless chuckle. You always put things past him even when you keep telling yourself you shouldn’t. When will you ever learn huh?

You were full on panicking yet again, this man was an assaulter, a stalker and a creep too. It would have made a good dark, psychological thriller for you to watch if you weren’t the protagonist about to suffer his obsession.

He reached out to steady you again, but you whipped and stumbled back, realizing too late that you elbowed Steve’s nose so bad that there was a crunch. That, right there, was the look a man real-fucking-furious on Steve’s face and now you could see the feared mobster, the man who was personally terrorizing you under the beautiful, Greek God façade.

Steve reacted so fast even with an injury that in a split second, your view of his face turned into a view of his crotch.

“You do realize that there are others ways for me to teach you obedience? I think it’s fucking time you show me your gratitude for my care and attention and apologize for your misconduct and unkind response.” Steve spoke with a hoarse voice, a voice running out of patience and just about done with defiance.

His hand fisted your hair, maintaining eye contact while he nodded between you and his crotch. You knew what he wanted, what he was expecting as ‘thanks’.

“Steve, please no, you don’t-”

His other hand grabbed your jaw, stopping you from speaking as he warned, “I think you have done just enough talking for today, so why don’t you put that tongue to a better use and show me how sorry you are. Better make it convincing because I’d hate to pay one of your friends a visit and then bitch about a nasty blowjob.” He smirked at the end of his monologue, eyes shining with triumph and amusement.

You wouldn’t let him harm anyone else, you couldn’t. You and your daughter were already knee-deep in a pit and at this point, it’d just be cruel to drag someone else in. With shaky hands opening his pants, you just hoped you could get Grace out before you eventually were buried in it.

“Now that’s a good girl. Submissive is a sexy look on you.” His hands patted your hair, playing with your tresses while yours pulled his pants and then briefs down.

His member jerked out, almost slapping you in the face as you recoiled at his insolence to get hard and erect at your torment. Your disdain must have shown which he took as admiration and derision to take his affluent cock in.

“No need to get shy, I have faith you’ll be able take it just as well in your pretty pussy as you will right now. Open up-”

“Steve, I beg you-”

Just as you had cut him off, he interrupted your pleading. Your gag reflex was probably the most efficient in the world but that turned this narcissist on. It had been years since you had done it, never with a man as beefy as Steve.

His taste was salty and if you had to put it into better words, it was the like overpriced sea salt flakes that you never bought. High and pricey and for the entitled.

Your hands clutched at his thighs as you blacked out multiple times; your jaw aching, uvula swaying and tears escaping. Him forcing himself on you brough a new sense of vulnerability as your body trembled. Steve relished like a sadist, practically rutting into you all by himself as you just sat there with your jaw unnaturally open.

His obscene moans and groans were crass and nauseating and you just prayed for this to be over soon and for no one to walk in on this, especially your kid.

It seemed like it would never end, your body dehydrating with all the spit it produced, the drool dribbling and landing just beside your knees on your printed rug. You would have to throw that out.

The tears stooped after some point, the sobbing an unnecessary action that just tired you out more on this eventful day. You moved your tongue around to prevent your teeth from scratching him when he shifted angles. If this was what he did on slightly mad, you didn’t want to find what he did for a more serious punishment.

Apparently, that action was something that turned him on even more, his breath hitching as neared closure. In broken whispers he demanded that again and you complied, wanting to get done with it.

He growled in the moment of his release and you tried to lean back but his grip didn’t relent. “Swallow.” His grainy, exasperated voice said out loud and you knew better than to defy.

He released you and you fell on to the rug, hip bruising by knocking into some furniture and tears coming back again after being hydrated by his seed. He packed himself, his smile smug and content as his expressions truly resembled ecstasy being personified.

“You be a good fiancée from now on and maybe you’ll have all your friends alive and present at our wedding. No cheeky business from now on, got it?” Steve hummed then and strutted out, not even bothering to listen to your reply.

As soon as the door slammed, your eyes closed and your demons danced again.

There was no right direction to take when you were stuck in a loop.

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nissakii · 3 years

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Significance of “Madness” in anime

We’ve already established in other posts about significant emotions and concepts in anime or specific media before. The Significance of losing or the one of visuals and metaphors in Haikyuu!! are some of those I would love to mention here, but today we shall delve into a broader topic that goes more along the lines of Makii’s thrilling post about Danganronpa and the Significance of Despair.

Today, our topic of interest is madness.

To ease your mind, in this post we will be talking about the representation of insanity and madness in some anime characters and how that reflects on the story and ourselves as an audience.To make one thing clear, a lot of the times we see overexaggerated versions of unstable characteristics in anime that aren’t realistic.

This is in no way a discussion about actual mental illnesses and not a professional approach to analysing them to our real life standards, but maybe a start to an interesting discussion about how we portray and handle what one may colloquially call “craziness”.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start!

Artists, and no matter for example if they write or draw, use their platforms to deliver messages in cryptic ways. As humans, we have the innate ability to look at something and consume the facts through entertainment which makes us crave new media to follow and analyse.

We love to question things instead of just taking them as they are, and that is why most writers out there will play around with the perception of their audience.

You may be familiar with the common question that ghosts through your head as you enjoy the latest episode of your favorite anime.

Why did he do that? Is she a traitor? What makes them think that way?

Although one might always do it consciously, we most definitely analyse whatever media we consume and decide for ourselves if it is important enough to keep in mind for future reference.

What the writer or founder of the anime ultimately wants from the reader is a reaction.

No matter what they intend to do with it, if they enjoy the viewer getting excited or traumatised is not of importance, but a reaction is evidently one of the goals.

And as strong emotions always evoke an even stronger reaction, anime characters are often very idealized and have ideologies that make them want to do one particular thing.

Be it save the world or destroy it, we focus and look at these characters and root for them if they give us a reason to do so.

Both sides of good and bad can have deeply rooted admiration drawn out of us, and it sometimes doesn’t even matter because the more interesting part is the lovely grey area in between.

We need a balance of good and bad to enjoy both.

Empathy makes us viewers want to relate to the characters, and if the author gives us the possibility to learn why someone does something, it gets harder and harder to dislike them. That’s why tragic backstories and flashbacks are such an overused tool in anime, because with the extreme behaviour some characters show they also need equal amounts of redemption.

We attach ourselves emotionally to characters depending on our personal tastes as well.

If someone likes and relates to a strong and independent protagonist who would drop anything for the sake of justice, you will find a lot of resembling characters in shounen for example.

On the other hand, if a darker or more obsessive character manages to take over a special place in a viewer’s heart, putting them on a pedestal gets more and more interesting, because you’re not supposed to.

Contrary to that, characters with insane or dark personality traits are often very popular, again tracing this back to human instinct of emphasising with wronged characters and curiously inspecting the fully deranged ones.

As this isn't something that should be put into vague concepts, we’re instead going to look at examples of characters and entities that are seen as ‘mad’ and how they’re interpreted.

It’s not just about villains being unreasonably immoral in this post, as we look into what madness entails and how it's shown, we also have some examples of corruption to look at.

So of course there are the typical evil-thinking evil-doing villains out there.

Some of them have an actual backstory to make them more realistic and believable, some others are just pure evil. While they are often called mad for their actions to achieve their goal, the reason why they are put into that light is the stark contrast between the protagonist and the villain.

If the protagonist loves to save people and always has a smile on his face, of course he will differ from his counterpart when he finds out that his methods are a bit more vicious.

The protagonist perceives the villain as insane most of the time, but what does the viewer think?

We seek to look not only at characters that are enjoyable to watch, but also try to find similarities between us and them or draw lines in their behavior to understand them better. As mentioned before, empathy plays a huge role here as well, since whatever happens in anime doesn't have actual repercussions, we can forgive characters more easily.

For example when they are taken by Insanity as a side effect rather than being insane due to trauma, we often get an 'ally turned traitor' trope through hypnosis or brainwashing, which is just as interesting to look at.

If a person did something horrible under the influence of something they had no control over, are they still to blame?

Does Insanity only involve a separate entity that comes from evil, or are we also looking at the gradual descent into darkness when life just isn't the same anymore?

Insane and with no fear: Soul Eater

A great example of how insanity plays with characters be they good or bad is Soul Eater.

With a premise that one needs a sound mind and body to inhibit a sound soul, we obviously know that people close to becoming Kishin-eggs will have a rotten soul drenched in bad deeds, but what about the good guys?

In this instance we have a lot of different types of madness and insanity that touches multiple characters at different times, and by far the most drastic would be the black blood.

The black blood being a synthesized weapon form of blood that can change form and harden into shape, is a weapon made by Medusa and introduced for the first time with Crona. He was melded together with Ragnarök as a weapon and used the black blood in his proficient fighting style.

Soul Eater as well as Maka and other characters later come into contact with the black blood, and the consequence of the immense strength that comes with it is debilitating madness.

As explained in the anime, the madness makes one deny the soul of oneself and others and takes away your fear. Now with no fear present, the person exhibits extremely erratic behavior and is not scared to hurt others or themselves.

This is an insanity that shows how essential a person's fear is, shown by Maka in one of the latest episodes when she fights Asura. The fact that she learned how to accept her own fear and realise that humans need it to survive is why insanity in Soul Eater is merely a concept to differentiate between what is human and what is Kishin.

A Kishin kills and murders with no fear of anything.

A human protects and masters one's own fear.

The power hungry insanity: Hunter x Hunter

In Hunter x Hunter we have a lot of characters that don't exactly fit the norm of human action.

With people like Chrollo, Illumi and even Chimera Ants there is enough crazy to go around.

Still, the character we shall delve into to look at a different kind of instability is none other than Hisoka Morow.

Yes, in comparison to black blood madness Hisoka is an actual human being with no known influence outside of his own intellect. The contrary to another weapon or entity making someone insane is being shown in this anime.

Hisoka is just insane.

We have no means to see if there is anything that might have caused Hisoka to be the way that he is, but what we do know is that his character is almost too nonchalant for his own good.

His goal is to accumulate power and fight others that he seems worthy, as that is what attracts him. No person is spared if he believes he found a worthy opponent he will make that clear to them and pursue them passionately.

We could rule that the clown is just eccentric, but with the given information from the anime he definitely had some sort of mental difference next to his peers. Harming himself holds no problem to him, and his behavior is deeply rooted only to suit himself. He has no self-preservation except for when he needs to accomplish something, and he even enters the spiders just to get close to Chrollo.

Now we see a single person carry themselves throughout a story only to achieve one thing: a good fight.

After having looked at these two examples of insanity in anime, let's look at how that insanity can be portrayed visually.

A famous way to show someone's psychosis is the “Kubrick stare”. A directorial technique that got named after the director Stanley Kubrick who used a forward tilt of the head with eyes locked onto the camera to show the actors of his movies at their peak of madness. It became a very popular stylistic device and is used still very often in modern movies.

The character is supposed to look menacing, evil-plotting and absolutely unhinged.

Such devices, if used often enough, automatically invoke the message to the viewer.

If you’ve seen the Kubrick stare once in a psychotic character, you will definitely associate it with the same derangement again.

In anime we have a similar thing, and you might be aware of this already.

Familiar with the ‘eye angle just before a character goes insane’ meme?

It’s a running gag that shows multiple characters such as Asura from Soul Eater, Pain from Naruto, Light from Deathnote and Jason from Tokyo Ghoul in a frame where you can only see their eyes and it somehow looks extremely grotesque as if they were looking into different directions with their eyes.

As much as it is a joke, it is a perfect example of something extremely similar to the Kubrick stare used in anime culture. It goes so far that if any anime watcher would see a new character look like in a frame, one would assume they were about to go crazy.

Even Oikawa Tooru from Haikyuu!! was shown with a Kubrick stare in the last moments of the second Seijoh vs. Karasuno game, when his desire to win overtook him with incredible force.

Without loss there naturally can’t be any wins, and without sadness there will be no joy in laughter.

We need the different depictions of what one might call madness, to fill our stories with nuance that relies on our reality.

Be it an unknown entity, hunger for power, lack of fear or the good old fashioned thrive for world domination.

Madness is just another part of what we call life, and to be honest in healthy doses and for effect why not enjoy it in anime?

Now, do you guys know any other characters or concepts in anime that would be worth mentioning? I would love to see them in the comments!

Until then, stay sane!

-Nissa

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takerfoxx · 2 years

Text

Arcane, Season 1, Episode 4, "Happy Progress Day!", First Impressions!

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during this show's creative meetings.

No recap today. Don't need. Just want to jump straight to the point.

And that point is Jinx.

As predicted, there was a time jump, and there is no Powder, only Jinx. I was curious how the show would handle her. In the game, the music video, the comics, and the animated shorts, Jinx is very much a, "LOL, SO RANDOM!" character who loves explosions. She's violent, she's wacky, and she's endearing. But one thing she isn't is serious.

THIS Jinx though, this Jinx straight up lives in a society.

Yes, she's still loony, colorful, childish, and loves dah boom boom, but now that there's an established reason for her being that way, the show has opted to take her trauma and mental illness very seriously, albeit hyper-stylized. And what we get is a character who is entirely unhinged, deranged, but still tragic. The scenes with her hallucinations, seeing the mannequins of her dead friends (hi Mylo), and how thoroughly she is forever locked to that moment when she lost her family was both heartbreaking and highly disturbing.

And as we saw with her fight with the Firelights, Vi occupies a very large part of her mind.

One downside to this being an origin story is there's little hope of a redemption arc or any sort of reconciliation between her and Vi. I predict some kind of team-up/near reconciliation, only for it to get ruined and for things to end with them trying to murder each other to death. Or something.

BTW, that Firelight leader got a lot of focus. Ekko, is that you?

In other news, Silco now basically runs Zaun (which has become a cool cyber-punk undercity) out of what looks like Vander's old tavern, but with what's going on up above (more on that later), his potential for expansion is becoming increasingly limited. And while he still obviously cares for and values Jinx, he is growing frustrated with her instability becoming a liability. And, uh, I'm just...gonna hope her straddling his lap was just her being weird and not...something else, okay? Because there's disturbing, and there's...that.

Also, what did she inject into his dead eye? Was that shimmer? Is he ill? Is she controlling him somehow? It has to be significant.

Meanwhile on topside, Piltover is now even more steampunk and looking just grand! Jayce and Viktor's hextech has revolutionized the city, and they've figured out a way to safely replicate the teleportation spell that Ryze used to save Jayce and his mom, creating instantaneous travel to and fro from Piltover. But they're not done, as they now have found a way to create a more stable version of the hextech crystal, one that could be used for more than just transport.

Okay, I want to talk a little about Jayce. Dude has done really well for himself, to the point where's he's the town mascot, basically. I mean, he has his own face on his coffee mug! That having been said, I'm a little concerned that they'll do something that I feel wouldn't be appropriate here: and that's to do the whole "Kid of lowly (sort of) birth with big ambitions makes it big but forgets where he came from and is called out for his arrogance!" You know the story.

And the reason that I hope they don't go that path is because...Jayce really isn't doing anything wrong. Like, sure, he's proud of his accomplishments, and certainly enjoys the prestige that it brings him, but he's still the same nice, thoughtful guy he was before. He steals away from hobnobbing with the elite to go hang out with Caitlyn. He jumps through several hoops to try to help her after her demotion. He wants Viktor on stage with him to share in the glory. He credits his family's past as toolmakers in his speech. He actually listens to Heimerdinger instead of Mel and doesn't reveal the new crystal prematurely. And when the crystal is lost, he takes responsibility and advocates for the solution that will save the most lives.

Like, the dude hasn't messed up. His ego hasn't gone to his head, his ambitions are tempered, he's listening to the people he should be listening to, he's going out of his way to credit and help the people who got him where he is, he hasn't forgotten where he came from. So what lesson does he need to learn?

(and I don't mean that as a criticism, as if I feel he's too perfect, as he's still a very likeable dude. I'm just saying, if they did hit him with a humbling character arc, it really isn't warranted)

Now, I'm not saying he's going to go through that kind of arc, I'm just saying I'm picking up on a lot of signs that things might be heading that way. Hope I'm wrong.

Also, Viktor. Dude. You do not look well. Is that what leads to his eventual falling out with Jayce and heel turn? Was he hoping that hextech could lead to a cure, and Jayce stalling the project could be fatal?

If I do have one criticism, it's that how did Jinx know about the new hextech crystal? She gets told to chill out by Silco, has a meltdown in her lair, and suddenly she's pulling a heist to steal it. I feel like there was a missing slide there.

Though, hey, you think that maybe Silco is going to replace his dead eye with the hextech crystal, maybe use that to stave off whatever infection he's dealing with? Well, those who have already seen the whole show already know, but I don't.

And finally, we finally get the long awaited meeting between Vi and Caitlyn! Looks like Marcus threw Vi under the bus in the end after all. I mean, she was the culprit, but him saving her gave me the impression that he'd take pity on her or something, but nope. Anyway, with how much attention this ship has gotten, I'm sure we're in for all kinds of subtext. I don't think it becomes text here, as I haven't heard anything about it, but in a post Catradora world, I do hope that season 2 just runs with it. We all want it.

#arcane #league of legends #lol #jinx #silco #jayce #viktor #caitlyn #heimerdinger #vi #reaction

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cordelia-cardale · 3 years

Note

The prompt number 16 is quite interesting lol 16. “Control your anger or you’ll have me to worry about.” Choose the ship/character you like :)

Hello! Ok, there are literally zero reasons as to why it took me a year to write this bloody thing except maybe that I had some not fun moments and also this literally never could have been written if I hadn’t waited this long. I don’t know if you’ll read it. You’ve probably forgotten about this in all fairness but if you do read it I hope you like it.

Also taking this opportunity to thank everyone for following me. I’m at 400 followers! This is insane. I’m not sure why you’re all following tbh but to celebrate I forced myself to finish this long overdue fic, hope you like it! Also disclaimer: I love all of the characters from TLH. I am aware of the existing debate around Matthew and Alastair and my writing in here does not represent my point of view. But I I decided to represent Matthew and his view in this way for story telling purpose. Please don’t come at me with gun blazing. If you do wanna talk, we can, but in peace 😊💕

Somewhere Where Our Shadows Meet, It Feels Like Coming Home -

a Fairdale one-shot (is that even their brotp name???)

This was the fifth time James was rereading the passage of the book he had picked up. It was no use. Each time he finished the page he had already forgotten the beginning. His mind was foggy with a multitude of thoughts. Thoughts about Lucie and her strange dalliance with a boy who used to be a ghost, about Grace which inevitably led to unsolicited questions on his own identity, and, as much as he tried not to think about it, thoughts of Matthew and Cordelia. He really did not enjoy these last kinds of thoughts. He couldn’t help but imagine what kind of relationship could have blossomed between the two during their trip to Paris. He knew how Matthew felt, but when it came to Cordelia, he had no single clue. He constantly wondered as to whether she hated or loved him. Daring to hope that he hadn’t ruined everything. Just for that hope to vanish the next second because there was no possible way he did not ruin it. And even if ever decided to ask her, he would have no idea how to approach the topic without sounding like an arrogant bastard.

James let out a long breath, rolling his shoulders, trying to let go of the tension. He was pretty sure that if he ventured to look at himself in the mirror that was hung above the chimney, he would see huge dark circles beneath his eyes. Circles which color could rival the color of London’s night sky. A result of many nights plagued by bad dreams and worry. During some of those sleepless nights, James had gone to Cordelia’s room. The first time it was under the pretext of looking for books. Her room had been full of her personal belongings. A bottle of perfume on her vanity table, an evening dress carefully laid out on the chaise longue, a copy of Majun and Layla on her bedside table. So many little pieces of who Cordelia was scattered in a room she had run away from. She hadn’t been back to Curzon street since that night. Upon arriving in London, she had decided to move back with her mother using the excuse of the soon-to-be new baby’s arrival. James kept going to her home though, eventually admitting to himself that he did so because of the smell of Jasmin that lingered. It was the closest thing he had to a semblance of her presence in the house. It was a soft smell that grounded him. It was also a heady smell that reminded him of the sweetness he had lost.

He shook himself out of thoughts of her. Something he had gotten quite good at to be fair, considering how many times he thought of her in the span of a day. Pushing himself up from the table he was leaning against, he closed the book he was reading, giving up on understanding it, and made his way to the window. Outside the sky was tinged in pastel colors drawing the day to a close. James would slowly make his way back home. He would rehash the day, come up with new plans to wake his sister from her deep sleep, find out that these plans would fail again come morning, and finally decide that he would need to eat a bite because going to bed with an empty stomach was just not advisable. His parents had offered for him to stay at the Institute with them but James had refused. He preferred the calm and silence of Curzon Street. He found that the bittersweet cloak that covered his house was, in some ways, almost reassuring. Maybe he was going insane. Just when he was ready to go bid his goodnight to his family, he heard the doors of the library open wide behind him and slammed shut again.

“Did you know?” Matthew growled. James might have thought that he himself had gone slightly deranged chasing down the smell of Jasmin throughout his home, but at least he did not look half as unhinged as Matthew looked right this instant. Matthew’s eyes were wide, his pupils dilated, and his fist clenched so tight his knuckles were turning white.

“Are you alright?” James asked, keeping an even tone.

“Did you know?”

“Know what?”

Matthew took a few strides in James’ direction. His stare holding James’ gaze in place as if daring James to contrary him. “Did you know about Thomas?”

“Um yes,” James nodded, a sly smile playing on his lips. “I do know Thomas.” At that Matthew narrowed his eyes and almost seemed as if he was trying hard not to grind his teeth. Noted. Attempts at humor and alleviating the situation were not going to work. “What about him?” James tried again. His smile replaced by a serious gaze.

“Did you know about Alastair?” Matthew asked, almost spatting out Alastair’s name.

James took a few steps back, reinstating the much-needed personal space for such a conversation. James did know about Alastair, but only because Thomas had looked so miserable and James had pried so insistently that Thomas had had no choice but to give up his well-kept secret. James had understood, sometimes you couldn’t choose who you fell in love with. Sometimes you fell in love with something that only you saw in the other person. Love was usually shrouded in mystery this way, best not to question how it worked. Obviously, by the look of things, Matthew did not agree.

“Please sit down,” James pointed to one of the green velvet armchairs. “I’ll pour you a drink.” James said, making his way to the stash of liquor in one of the dark wooden commodes. James had always wondered what kind of people, for what kind of situation kept alcohol in the library of all rooms. It always seemed to him that a secret stash of tea would have been more appropriate. Now he understood what kind of situation required people to put alcohol in every room, even if it was just one abandoned bottle of Parkmore. “Is Whiskey alright?” James turned his head in Matthew’s direction.

“So you knew?” Matthew answered, seemingly in a staring competition with the mustard yellow wallpaper in front of him. “He told you?”

Whiskey it would be for a total lack of all other present choices James thought as he started to pour a glass.

Matthew kept going on his verbal onslaught towards the wallpaper. In all fairness mustard yellow was a color that could potentially enrage everyone. “How can he? It’s Alastair that we are talking about. It’s not as if there wasn’t any other man in London that Thomas couldn’t have a fling for.”

James very much doubted that a fling could start to describe Thomas’s feelings for Alastair. However, seeing how Matthew was nearly spitting out every single one of his words, he thought it safer not to share this piece of information.

“Matthew, please calm down and control your anger or you’ll have me to worry about.” James handed the glass to Matthew, which he waved away.

“No, thank you. I don’t drink.”

James squinted. “Since when?”

“Since Paris.”

James couldn’t help but feel a pinch in his chest at the mention of Paris. Paris city of lights, city of lovers. An escape his friend had taken with the only girl James had ever, truly, loved since he was barely old enough to understand the concept. It was a wondrous thing how much pain a single word could hold.

“What a strange place to decide to stop drinking.” James took a sip of the honey-colored liquid, trying to hide his hurt to the best of his ability.

“Cordelia asked me to. That was her condition for coming with me.”

James did not want to go in the general direction of a conversation that involved Cordelia. Especially not if that conversation was with Matthew. He had written a letter. James had understood. He slightly had the urge to strangle his best friend for going with her; for loving her; he did not quite know. But that was it. They hadn’t spoken of Paris nor of Cordelia together and that was for the best. Neutral conversations were for the best, they could avoid the hurt and the blame, and if James let it come to that again who knew what would be next. Yet he couldn’t help but ask.

“Why did you leave?”

Matthew turned to James, his anger receding ever so slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” A beat, a choice to either keep going or retreat before it is too late. A beat, a choice to see where this could go “why did you go to Paris?”

“You owe me an answer first. Did you know about Alastair?”

“Yes.”

“How could you not tell me?”

“You weren’t here Matthew.” James’ voice almost broke, almost. “How was I supposed to tell you anything?”

James had wanted to throw so much more at Matthew’s face. Throw words that he wouldn’t be able to take back. He had been feeling so alone. So utterly lost after Grace’s admission. After Cordelia’s departure. He had needed his best friend. He had wanted to tell him so much, to figure it all out with him. To have Matthew hold him at times when he didn’t know if he could hold it up together and tell him, simply, that he believed in him. But Matthew hadn’t been in London. He had been in Paris. Happy. With Cordelia.

“And you accept it?” Matthew asked, carefully studying James.

“I guess it depends on what we are talking about. In any case,” James turned away from the fireplace to look at his friend. “why are you so against it if it makes Thomas happy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because Alastair doesn’t deserve to be loved?”

“Maybe it is more about deserving a second chance rather than deserving of love. Maybe it is about getting a chance to fix your mistakes. Surely no one is worthless of that.”

“Sometimes the mistakes are too big to fix.” Matthew shrugged, breaking eye contact.

“Is that why you ran away?” The question was asked so softly as if asked any louder and James would be terrified to see Matthew run away again. James wasn’t sure he could bear it, no matter how much frustration towards Matthew he still felt.

“I didn’t run.” Matthew shook his head. His gaze far and distant as if in another land, in a shadow realm. “I took a train, there’s a difference. And I left because of Cordelia.”

James had an inkling he hadn’t left because of Cordelia but rather Cordelia had followed in a desperate pursuit to drown both of their sorrows in the glamour of a city like Paris. After all, Paris was so similar to Matthew, it was no wonder he had chosen it. At the surface, both were golden and shining like a polished jewel box. Once that jewel box was open, however, shadows, pain, and sadness would pour out like a damn breaking loose.

“I never thought you’d try to run away from me.” James knelt in front of Matthew, his knees landing on the soft midnight blue carpet. “That one day, I’d become a part of the shadows that you try to outrun.”

Matthew turned around so fast and reached for James’ face. His green eyes were darker than usual. “You’re not my shadows, Jamie Bach. You’re my home. You are the reason why I still believe I’m worth being forgiven for.” He said those words like a damned man dying for a confession, following blindly a faith he held so dear to his heart, hoping that that faith could be his saving grace. James understood that he had become that faith.

“Forgiven for what?” James asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

“It’s me, Matthew. What is so bad that you cannot tell me?”

“I can’t tell you because I’m afraid. I need you to stay with me. I need you to believe that I am good, even if it means that you believe in a lie.”

“Matthew …”

“If you keep choosing me and believing in me,” Matthew interrupted. If he couldn’t finish now, he never would. “then maybe I can believe that I am no monster.”

“You are not a monster, you are my parabatai.”

James felt like they were back on that bridge, at night, so close to being let in in Matthew’s secrets. Back then James hadn’t been in control of himself, he hadn’t known what was happening to him. He had lost his chance. It would not happen again. It could not happen again. James was so tired of walking a frayed rope line with Matthew, guessing at hinted truths. Being someone’s constant north took work and time and effort but because it was Matthew, James could do it. He would always do it and he needed Matthew to know that as clearly as they both knew that one day would come when they would both cross the other side together. Because after all, that was what it had always been about. Despite shadows and lies and deceptions and miscommunication, they would always be together. So James continued.

“Do you know what that means? It means that I made a promise to you. I said entreat me not to leave thee, for wither thou goest, I will go. If aught but death part thee and me. I will not leave. No matter what you’ve done, I will stand by you, because that is the choice that I have made. That I still make. There is not a thing in this world that you could have done that would make me stop loving you, calon fy enaid.”

Matthew looked up at James and teased “Does that mean that you accept my feelings for Cordelia?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I must say, I don’t think I’m her type. It’s a pity, really.” Some strands of Matthew’s hair fell in his eyes as he shook his head. James could see the old Matthew again. The carefree one that balanced out his own shadows so well. The one he would choose and forgive a thousand times over because he too was his home.

“Matthew.”

“All right, all right.” Matthew threw his hands up in a mock gesture of surrender. “I just … wish you could promise that I would not lose you.”

“I promise.”

“You can’t promise something you don’t know.” Matthew said before he started to talk about his own misbeliefs that had led to a terrible accident. James listened and did not judge and stayed long in the night after Matthew had said everything that had weighted so heavy on his heart for so long. And somewhere, under the warm light of oil lamps and next to a warm fire, the frayed rope between the two started to mend and James could only describe the feeling as one of coming home.

Tag List: @lady-ofroses @clockworknights @the-axewielding-herondale @tess-the-dreamer @coloandreablog

Do let me know if you want to be on the tag list and I’ll happily add you! (I have a tag list now visibly, wild and mind-blown) I will try to post more now that my exams are somewhat done. Who am I kidding? There will always be more stuff to do XD

#tlh fanfic #the last hours fanfiction #the last hours #tlh #coi spoilers #coi #chain of iron #chain of gold #chog #Matthew Fairchild #james herondale #lucie herondale #jesse blackthorn #cordelia carstairs #thomas lightwood #alastair carstairs #grace blackthorn #jordelia

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baejax-the-great · 3 years

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Hey I realise you’re getting hate for this and I genuinely understand if you don’t want to explain, but if you were willing I’d like your input as to why you thought the finale was terrible. I personally loved it, but I acknowledge that there’s a lot of room for discussion and I’d love to hear yours! If you don’t want to post it publicly where you could receive tons of hate you can always message me, or ignore me entirely that’s absolutely fine!

Hoo boy. I really did not expect my 4 note post to get noticed by more than just like two mutuals, so this is all a little confusing.

I don't generally like to spell out my dislikes, because like I said, I think it's good that people enjoy things. I don't want to ruin things for other people. If you liked the finale and don't want to see someone's negativity, by all means, ignore this post.

But since you asked, I'll put it all under the cut for my negative feelings about a beloved show (and what is apparently a beloved season) and massive spoilers.

First, for what it's worth, I enjoyed the first 8.66 episodes and probably would have overlooked most of this had I not hated the ending as much as I did. It was pretty and fun!

I think my two main issues with this season come down to two major writing issues. The first was a lack of planning, the second was the Marvelization of the series.

1. Castlevania is a 10 episode show with 20 minute episodes. Given this, having two big arcs was a mistake. They simply could not wrap everything up in one season in a way that made any sense, so they chose not to. Everyone in Carmilla's arc acted wildly out of character, including Carmilla herself, who went from being shrewd, cunning, and a planner, to suddenly completely deranged. Lenore had also previously been cunning, and was now demoted to uselessly hanging out with Hector. Hector, who previously was easily manipulated and not cunning, now had secret plans that master manipulator Lenore had no inklings of. And three minutes after the four women agreed on their plan, they all suddenly had issues with it. Add in Hector having no real motivation for wanting Dracula back (he never agreed with his agenda in the first place?) and it was just a messy arc and the writers took the easy way out by literally bombing it before it went anywhere.

2. The Marvelization: Sypha, Trevor, and Alucard all looked fantastic in this season, had incredible fight scenes, and dropped witty one-liners. Fun! But beyond that, there was no character growth, no moments of love or tenderness between any of them and just no depth.

Alucard-- Alucard was traumatized by season 3, opens season 4 drunk, alone, miserable, and with bodies on spikes outside his house. Turns out two minutes with the FOURTH "Woman-who-can-kick-my-ass-and-is-slightly-unhinged-but-super-clever" cured him of all his issues. Haha, isn't it funny I killed my ex boyfriend and girlfriend after they tried to murder me while we were fucking teehee? I'm so glad Julia Sypha Saint-Germain's non-verbal GF Greta was there to give him a nice, heteronormative ending or whatever.

I would have been MUCH happier if they didn't throw a random romance his way and if they had, you know, dealt with ANY of the trauma both in S3 AND S4. I mean the man just watched his parents get brought back from the dead and then die AGAIN IN HIS CHILDHOOD BEDROOM, but, you know, a quirky woman held his hand so it's fine.

Belmont-- The ENTIRE point of Trevor's character growth was that he made friends and that made him better. He starts the show alone, miserable, drunk, and over time he finds friendship (not just romantic love but friendship, come ON). But he ends the show facing off death alone while his friends do nothing to try to help him (they are both capable of flying?? Oh well, you got this, Trevor). This battle added no new info about Trevor and added no emotional depth to him. We know he does shit alone and doesn't care enough about his own survival. That's been true since ep 1. Trevor getting the shit kicked out of him while he fights is just an average day, so I don't know why they dragged this fight out.

Sypha-- This is where my qualms with S4 became fury. Honestly, I was willing to overlook a lot of the bad writing until the writers leaned hard on the "man dies but leaves woman pregnant so part of him kind of lives on and it's not a total tragedy because she got a baby out of it." This was the trope and the part of the ending that personally offended me deeply (and it's my own issues with this trope so I don't expect everyone else to hate it as much as I do!). But blah blah man of the old world dies but brings in a new world and also his spawn will live in it or some shit. Even if Trevor ended up surviving, it was garbage, and like I said above, did nothing for Trevor's personal character arc. Being a father? That would be a much more meaningful arc for Trevor than anything that happened this season.

Sypha, I guess, grew this season in that she swears now. That's fun. Oh, and she's better at Greta's job than Greta is, so... cool, I guess.

Like Marvel, S4 basically didn't show a deep connection between any of the characters, not even Sypha and Trevor, tbh. But the fact that S3 showed how deeply Alucard missed Sypha and Trevor, and the two of them never once even thought about him? That also stung. I loved seeing the reunion, don't get me wrong, but it was still weird. It wouldn't have taken much for Trevor and Sypha to learn about the plan taking place in Dracula's castle and then express some sort of concern about Alucard. Instead, they reunited with him without even knowing they were going to. It was just emotionally very flat, and I found this a missed opportunity given how much their friendship made the show fun.

Oh, but hey, Dracula got a happy ending? Because I was really, truly, worried about that. ?????????

So yeah. Everyone in the Carmilla arc acted out of character with the previous season, and everyone in the Dracula arc was very hot, very shallow, and in the case of Alucard, very out of character.

#castlevania spoilers #castlevania critical #I look forward to blowing up my blog after this post #it was fun knowing all of you but this is probably for the best

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locria-writes · 3 years

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Awwwwwww, I remember your writing style by reading king of kings ages ago, glad I found you again lol.

Holy Heinrich tho, can you believe I checked the itchio page to see if his name was on the RO list and when I found out that he wasn’t on the list, I was devastated, my heart broken , that’s blasphemy, the most wholesome boy and he’s not even available, I cried tbh. /eh, anyways lother, this dude needs to stay away from my mc! Erasing her memories? Such an extreme power imbalance and breach of trust! did he erase mc memories? How does the magic in the world work? What defines who has magic and who doesn’t , is there a system and how come the mc doesn’t have it.!? [will there be an option to write player owns name than the five option already available? Like /insert : your own name option/ also I’m sorry for being picky but is there a reason why there’s not the option for black hair? I’m sorry 😞 genuinely curious it might be due to mc ancestry but this sis has black hair 😂😂😂😂🤣!

Now moving on to BEA: god I love the princess. Kyaaaaa let me fangirl over her. I love this style of writing. I read a lot of cnovels and I see the writing style. But also since i read a lot of cnovels , oh how many times I wished I had control over the dumb actions the female leads in those novels make, finally this story is like what I always wished for😂💀😭💕 {author you have some of the most crazed RO’s that can rival the most deranged vn or otome games I’ve played}. I have a feeling someone has been killing our soon to be husband wife’s/concubines in that palace, cause there’s no way they fell ill or commit suicide. But I’ma aim to stay loyal in the first play through}}

Sending love 💕 sorry for writing too much.

i’m glad you’re enjoying my hell stories :D

some fun reading links -- about arcanists | more on hair colour | even more on hair colour

heinrich isn’t an ro for his own safety lol. he’s not smoochable for his own good!!!

lothar only made scrambled eggs out of mc’s memories of the whole garden incident. mc still has the memory, but it’s just not accessible for the next few decades, or unless someone unscrambles it

one has to be born with an affinity for magic, and that can be either passed down the family line (like ekkehard), or a freak genetic mutation (like lothar)

mc doesn’t have magic bc she just wasn’t born with it

no name input, though i am currently shortlisting more names to add to the current ones

mc can’t have black hair bc that would mean annalena cucked burky boy with someone outside of nobility

thank you, i do my best to write unhinged characters bc that’s my mcfucking kink :D

two wives died of foul play, can confirm. the other died a natural death, have fun figuring out which ones (ps most of the info i’ve given is fake news

#an absinthian ballad #a broken ever after #why do you guys wanna kill heinrich so badly smh #if he becomes an actual ro that means his plot armour is gone and he's gonna be fucking dead before ch 3 #Anonymous

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gammaprimesmw · 3 years

Text

TRANSFORMERS/GOBOTS FANFIC - SEPARATION PT. 3

Somewhere in the skies of Gobotron, a GoBot in the form of a fuscia-colored jet-like vehicle with vermillion accents flew erratically over one of the less-traveled roads on the planet. So neglected was this highway that its metallic surface was covered in rust, some of which had eaten away at the surface, creating massive potholes. Many of the lights that once illuminated this stretch of road had either failed or were nearing the end of their life, flickering on and off in a desperate attempt to stay lit. The only thing this flyer could really do to occupy himself was fly about as if putting on a stunt show. He desperately wanted to do more though. His proverbial trigger finger was itching, and he was tempted to just start shooting at the flickering street lights. "Why I must patrol this sector, I ask," he said out loud, his voice giving off as much of an air of insanity as his odd speech pattern. "Here is nothing! Nothing! Guardians? Travel this road does no one!"

One of the failing street lights finally flickered to darkness as he flew overhead.

"Nyah!" the strange Renegade shouted before firing a powerful energy blast at the pole supporting the now-darkened fixture, sending its top half flying over the edge of the overpass.

Just below this overpass, on an even more decrepit stretch of road, Dashlane and Turbo heard the explosive sound of the deranged flyer's blast striking the lamp post, quickly swerving out of the way as the severed section of the street light came crashing into the road in front of them. Scooter, who was tagging along nervously behind them, let out a terrified "Yi-eee!" as he quickly leapt into his robot mode. "Why do I get the feeling that light didn't just break by itself?"

"Nya-hah! Found something I have!" called out the voice of the lunatic who had blasted the light post out of boredom. "Guardians! Now for fun time it is!"

"Oh no, not Odd Ball," Scooter whined.

"Were ya expectin' someone more stable, Scoot?" Turbo snarkily asked before transforming into his robot mode and firing on the insane Renegade.

"Is any Renegade really stable?" the somewhat cowardly engineer replied before barely dodging a blast from behind.

"What brings you Guardians out this way?" asked Scooter's assailant, a beige mech with orange highlights and a brown blade assembly mounted on each forearm. "You wouldn't happen to be looking for someone, would you?" He pointed an outstretehed arm at the Guardians and their Autobot companion, but instead of firing an energy blast, he caused one of his blade assemblies to spin up before launching it at Turbo, who jumped over the projectile, causing it to cut into the guard rail of the overpass before coming back around and striking him in the lower back, sending sparks flying as it tore into his armor and sending him crashing back down to the ground. Dashlane growled as he transformed into his robot mode and fired on the malevolent mech. "Yeah, we are looking for someone, and we don't have time to mess around with a couple loose screws!"

"Who's to say you're not already too late? For all you know, CyKill may already be doing as he pleases with your friend."

Dashlane charged at the Renegade, growling in pure rage as he did so. Before he could reach his target, though, he felt a powerful blast strike him from behind.

"Hmm....Help do you need, Breez?"

"Perhaps," Breez replied before spinning up his other rotor assembly, aiming for Dashlane's neck with a look of twisted excitement on his face.

Scooter, who could barely watch as the sadistic Breez prepared to decapitate his Autobot friend, quickly sent a distress signal to every Guardian within range as he took cover outside a run-down and seemingly abandoned warehouse. It was one of the few things he could do since he had no real strength or firepower to contribute to the fight.

"I'm sure CyKill would love it if I brought him your head," Breez hissed as he brought his spinning blade down onto the teal Autobot's upper chest. "However, it might be more entertaining for me to simply incapacitate you for now...."

The blade began to cut into Dashlane's armor, causing the Autobot to grimace in pain as he aimed his blaster at the Renegade GoBot.

"...So that you can witness the fate of your friend first-hand. You're gonna love it."

Dashlane fired a shot into Breez's midsection, knocking the psychopathic warrior off of him. "If CyKill does anything to Skybolt, I'll send him straight to the Pit!"

"Who's to say you'll even get that chance? I understand that Skybolt has potential to be a great Renegade enforcer. You might have to go through him before you can take on CyKill. I don't think you have the bearings for that."

Dashlane screamed and charged at Breez, eventually pinning him against the wall of another one of the abandoned buildings that lined the street.

Breez responded with a smirk before spinning up his still-attached rotor and launching it at Dashlane's abdomen with such force as to knock the teal Autobot away while cutting into his armor. Eventually, the projectile had lodged itself into a vital Energon line, causing the potent blue liquid to drip out of the open wound.

Turbo, meanwhile, still had the other rotor lodged in his lower back. He too was leaking fluids as he lay face-down on the road. The blade had cut into a vital motor relay, leaving the Guardian brawler paralyzed. Odd Ball simply flew in circles overhead. "The real show...Begin it will soon!" he cackled.

Breez? Odd Ball? Why didn't I use characters like Cop-Tur and Crasher? Well, I like working with obscure, overlooked characters, and GoBots has a lot of those, given how the show worked. If a GoBot wasn't one of the Big Three on either side, or a major supporting character, like Fitor and Small Foot, they were relegated to generic roles, crowd-filler scenes, or simply never appeared in the show. I have a lot of free reign over their personalities. Breez and Odd Ball, along with the other Wendy's-Exclusive GoBots, were never on the show. They did have short bios that gave very basic descriptions of their personalities. Breez is described as a "dirty fighter" and "a Renegade in every sense of the word," so he gets to be a sadistic psychopath. His rotor blade attack is inspired by the fact that his toy's rotors detach. Odd Ball's bio paints him as being, well, an odd ball, so I made him an unhinged lunatic with a warped speech pattern. Spy Eye, who appeared in the last part of this fic, has no bio, but I based his personality (and origin) a bit on his design. He's a fully robotic GoBot, or New-Gen, and he's still fairly "young," so his emotions haven't developed yet.

#fanfic #transformers #gobots #challenge of the gobots #battle

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softlass27 · 4 years

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Directors cut of One More Word and you Wont Survive 🙏

Gah, this fic is so long, but I shall try and break it down!

So the initial idea came from a brief conversation I had with @soft-husbands about how ridiculous it was that in 2018 the writers had Lachlan kidnap Rebecca (who literally no one cared about) instead of Robert, which would have been a much better storyline. Since I needed to write something for her in a gift exchange, I decided to do my own version of it!

These are the key points/main ideas that were the most important for me:

Aftermath

One thing I knew I definitely wanted to do – even before I’d really worked out the exact plot – was include a lot of the actual aftermath of the kidnapping, and really show how it mentally affected Robert (as well as Aaron). I didn’t want to write one of those fics where you just have the drama, and then maybe one scene at the end where everything’s suddenly okay again. Which, y’know, is what the Emmerdale writers tend to do. 🤷

So that’s why the fic is literally divided into two halves – the action and the aftermath. And I loved writing the second half – looking at Robert’s mental state, showing other characters’ reactions, lots of communicating between him and Aaron etc.

I didn’t want Robert to just be fine straight away, I wanted him to take some time to settle back into things again, to go to counselling and to work towards recovering from what he’d been through. I kept it mostly quite upbeat and hopeful – I couldn’t bring myself to make it too angsty – but I did have Robert struggle to come to terms with what had happened to him.

On top of that, I wanted Aaron to be his rock. The writers never really gave Aaron a chance to be the strong one in the relationship, not for longer than a couple of episodes or so, and I wish we could’ve seen it. It would’ve been great to watch, but also a nice switch for Danny and Ryan (who would’ve both smashed it!).

And of course this was an excuse for me to write lots of soft fluffy husbands content, which as you all know, is my jam.

Lachlan

So in the show, I thought the writers did a good job of building up Lachlan’s psychotic tendencies. In late 2017, he did begin to seem quite scary, you could see they were building up to him properly snapping.

But then as soon as he actually did start killing people, he became kind of… meh. They’d done all this buildup to make him as deranged as possible, but from the Whites car crash onwards, his character lost all that great creepiness and just became a bit of a wet wipe. His killing of Gerry was completely lame, his kidnapping of Rebecca was rubbish and so was the aftermath. He spent most of his time flapping about what to do and obsessing over Belle, and honestly he became one of the most boring soap villains they’ve ever done. By the time he was arrested and went to prison, they’d lost so much momentum it was kind of a pitiful ending for him.

Maybe it’s because I watch a lot of crime stuff (both true and fictional), but I just wanted more. I wanted him to be terrifying, to be unhinged and scarily cold. And it made sense to me that he would really show this side of himself by kidnapping and torturing Robert. Robert’s been his number one enemy from the beginning – he hates him more than anyone and essentially blames him for every single thing that went wrong in his life. In terms of storytelling, it only seemed right that his final showdown would be with Robert and no one else. It’s what both characters deserved.

So that’s what I wrote. I did a big final “fight to the death” between the two, and I tried to make Lachlan this cold-blooded psychopath who got off on making Robert suffer as much as possible – for as long as possible. All those years of built-up resentment finally spilled out of him and it made him totally lose the plot. But at the same time, he was able to switch that off and act completely normal when he was with Belle. I tried to show this in a few scenes, like including a moment where he told Robert – his kidnapped victim – he had to go because Belle was expecting him to go for breakfast with her family.

I really enjoyed doing it, but at the same time I was terrified that the way I was writing him would seem ridiculous, like he’d come off as a bit of a silly pantomime villain. It seems to have paid off though, judging by peoples’ reactions, so I’m quite happy with how my Lachlan turned out :)

Chas/Paddy/Liv

I knew from the beginning that Chas, Paddy and Liv would all be on the “wrong” side of the story, so to speak. They’d be the sort of “lesser” villains, the ones causing conflict on Aaron’s end and in the second half of the story.

On the show, I never really believed that any of them actually accepted Robert as family after reunion 2.0, to me it seemed like Chaddy were just civil with him as long as he made Aaron happy. And I never bought into the whole “roblivion” concept during boyfriends era, so I was even less convinced of it in husbands era. I always found it shallow and fake on Liv’s end.

This was pretty much proved right by Chas, Paddy and Liv’s behaviour during the aftermath of Robert’s exit – all three of them showed their true colours and their true feelings about him very quickly.

Considering every time things got rough for Robron on the show, Chaddy and Liv either turned on Robert or just acted like he never existed/meant anything and actively tried to push Aaron to “grow up” and move on from him, it made perfect sense to me to have them suspect the worst of Robert in my story. To assume that him disappearing meant that he’d done something wrong, rather than he was in trouble.

(Fun fact: the scene where Robert has that big showdown with Chaddy in the pub was actually one of the first ones I wrote. Ah, priorities.)

I wanted Aaron to be strong, to never doubt that Robert was in trouble and to unapologetically stick by him in the aftermath. I wanted him to stand up to Chaddy and to put Robert before Liv for once (judging by quite a few comments that I got, lots of other people did too, so I’m glad I went for it!). I also wanted him to make it very clear that his main family unit – his priority – was Robert and Seb, not the Dingles’ feelings. Anyone who disagreed with him could fuck right off as far as he was concerned.

By the end of the story, Aaron has very much allied himself with the Sugden family, that’s why we saw lots of him with Diane and Vic. I really wanted to call back to the “Who Shot Robert” era, where they both stepped up and rallied around Robert 100%, only this time with the bonus of Aaron being on their side, too.

Rebecca/Ross/Seb

I mean… this is quite self-explanatory, but I knew from the beginning that Rebecca would die and Ross would end up going to Liverpool miserable and alone. No happy ending for either of them because they didn’t fucking deserve it.

And of course, this would mean that Seb would stay with his dads where he belongs. I will never get tired to coming up with new ways for this to happen (just you wait for Aaron week).

The ending

Since I was writing this fic for the engagement anniversary gift exchange, I thought it’d be fun to include an actual engagement at the end of it. I hadn’t necessarily planned to make it another lay-by proposal, but when I looked at my story timeline (yes, I did make an actual timeline lmao) and I realised that the 4th December wasn’t very far away, I knew I HAD to get them back to that spot. It was only right!

So I’m probably in the minority here, but I’m not actually a huge fan of proposal 2.0. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice and super cute, but the whole “trying to propose to each other at the same time” gimmick just wasn’t really for me. I thought it was a bit unrealistic that they’d both separately just randomly come up with the same idea at the same time (I know, I’m sorry). And since we’d already had Robert do it the first time, I kind of wanted the second one to be totally Aaron’s thing, let him have a proper turn.

So I took elements of proposal 2.0 that I liked – the location, some of the dialogue – and took out the bits that I didn’t – Robert trying to propose, Aaron’s funfair lie (I’m sorry but that was just dumb), the jinx thing, other people (Chaddy and Liv) being so involved. Thereby creating my own perfect version of proposal 2.0 (what can I say, I am a self-indulgent girl).

I think in this universe, after everything they’d been through, after Aaron’s terror of losing Robert for good, it seemed right that he would be the one to do the asking. And because we know he’s a sentimental sod, it made sense that he would wait until their lay-by anniversary to do it.

#omg i'm sorry this is so long #i think i've covered the main things #but if anyone wants me to expand/mention something else #go for it!#my writing #lauren rambles #robandaaronsoulmates

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vannahfanfics · 4 years

Text

Limited Edition

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Characters: Hanta Sero, Mina Ashido

Sero lovin’ hours, babes! Behold the fluff!

EDIT: Photo was made by the amazing @deliathedork who showers me in love and beautimous doodles~

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Characters: Hanta Sero, Mina Ashido

“Denki.” Hanta called as he rounded the stair landing to the boys’ side of the third floor. He grimaced in the entryway of the hall, staring pointedly at the door to the room that belonged to one blonde-haired electric generator. When he got no answer, Hanta began walking down the hallway calling his name in increasing volume, “Denki. Deeeeennnkiiiiiiiii!” By the time he reached the door, he was practically screaming. “DENKI KAMINARI!” he shouted in such an unholy screech that Tenya opened his door to glare disapprovingly at him. Finally, Denki threw the door open to give him a wheedling whine, his gaming headset slung around his neck and muted.

“Dude, what?”

“Where’s my shirt?” Hanta asked with an innocent smile. Tenya rolled his eyes and shut the door with just the amount of volume to serve as a warning for Hanta to keep quiet. He continued to smile stupidly at Denki, only thinly veiling the mounting threat of violence building up in him as his friend began to perspire and laugh nervously.

“What shirt?” As if feigning innocence would work on Hanta. Denki gulped loudly as the taller boy leaned into the doorway, towering over him with glittering black eyes and a menacing grin.

“You know, the shirt I let you borrow two weeks ago? My limited-edition ONE OK ROCK concert tee that is my sole most valued possession?” Hanta pressed, continuing to edge into the doorway until Denki was bending at a forty-five-degree angle. Denki laughed in an anxious high pitch, his eyes shifting around and refusing to settle on Hanta’s gradually reddening face.

“Oh! That one! Hehe! Well… Thing is… I kinda… don’t know where it is,” Denki admitted in a tiny voice. A few terrifying seconds passed as Hanta processed the confession. Denki finally looked up into his eyes, which were probably soulless as Hanta contemplated just how he would like to murder the oblivious boy. “Bro? You good?”

“Good? Good? Yeah, I’m good,” Hanta shrugged as she suddenly backed off, leaving Denki reeling in confusion. His instincts must’ve tipped him off, because he screamed and ducked under Hanta’s arms as he suddenly lunged at him with a feral yowl. “Yeah, I’m good, because I’m about to kill you!” Sobbing apologies, Denki managed to wriggle past him and take off down the hallway towards the stairs. Hanta whirled on his heel, shooting his tape down the hall and only just barely missing Denki’s elbow as he practically dove down the stairs. “Get back here! Atone for your sins!” Hanta yowled as he chased him, thundering down the stairs on all fours. He could hear Denki’s manic blubbering floating up from within the stairwell. Sero had to admit the little shit was fast, because he couldn’t catch up to him.

“Baku-bro! Baku-bro, save me!” Denki screeched as he vaulted himself a good five feet across the room and clambered over the back of the couch into a very startled Katsuki’s lap.

“What the- get off me!” Katsuki huffed and shoved poor Denki to the floor. Denki looked at Hanta over the top of the couch fearfully as he stalked him, eyes blown wide with desire for homicide.

“He’s gonna kill me!”

“You probably deserve it.”

“Whoa, whoa, guys!” Izuku laughed good-naturedly and stood up, waving his hands placatingly at Hanta. “What’s the problem?”

“He lost my fucking tee-shirt!” Hanta fumed and lunged over the back of the couch to try and rip out a few of Denki’s hairs. The boy managed to crawl under the coffee table and slink over to Fumikage, who was watching with his arms crossed. “My favorite shirt! Limited edition ONE OK ROCK! Limited edition!” Hanta screamed like a deranged man as he crawled over the couch and shot his tape at Denki, who was pleading for Fumikage to save him.

“I side with him on this one. Any last words before you meet God?” Fumikage smirked. Denki wailed as Hanta shot tape at him, this time finding his mark. Denki screamed in dismay as Hanta jumped up on the table and slowly dragged him closer, eyes flashing with pure anger.

“Please! I’m sorry! Spare me!” Denki sobbed as he was lugged over the rug by the unhinged Hanta. Just as the boy had captured his prey and was preparing to strike, a sweet voice piped up from the back of the other couch.

“Um, do you mean this shirt?” Hanta and Denki both looked up to see Mina staring owlishly at them, dressed in a pair of pajama shorts and the shirt that Hanta was ready to kill Denki over. Hanta’s face instantly flushed a pretty shade of crimson and steam blew out of his ears in nostrils at the sight of the pretty girl wearing his tee shirt. It was pretty much a not-so-secret in their friend group that Hanta had a stupid crush on Mina.

“Um… Yeah, yeah, that’s the one,” Hanta quipped with an equally wide-eyed stare. He unwound his tape from Denki, who slunk away to get cradled in Eijirou’s manly bosom as he patted his head and whispered reassuring words. He hopped down from the table as Mina walked around the couch, sashaying shyly.

“Um, I found it in my laundry last week. I mistook it for one of the girls’, but they said it wasn’t theirs, and when I asked a couple of the boys, they said they had no idea whose it was or where it came from, so it kinda became my new PJ shirt,” she laughed bashfully, rubbing the back of her head. Sero’s dark eyebrows knitted together as he had the sudden suspicion a plot was afoot. She scratched at her cheek thoughtfully. “You can have it back if it’s that special to you though!”

“Um…” Hanta knew there was a specific answer to the question, but she didn’t give him the time to do so. She grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him upstairs to her room, bringing him straight inside and swinging open the closet door. As he saw the shirt fly onto the bed, discarded, Sero’s cheeks burned with the acute awareness that Mina was shirtless behind that flimsy closet door. Focus, Hanta… he told himself as he patiently waited for her to switch shirts. She walked out to pluck it up and carry it over, holding it out to him with a big smile.

“Here you go! Sorry about the misunderstanding.”

“Uh, no big deal…” he said dully as he accepted the shirt. She scampered right past him into the hallway to rejoin the group in the common area, and Hanta’s eyes followed her as he left, captivated simply by her being. He absentmindedly brought the shirt up to his face and nearly fainted when he realized it carried her scent like bubble gum and cherries. Nirvana… he thought dimly as he collapsed into the hallway wall.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hanta was mounting the stairs to head to his room later that night after a pretty rowdy session of videogames with Denki (who, after being cornered by Hanta with Eijirou’s help) had all but admitted he had purposely slipped the shirt into Mina’s laundry basket in an attempt to spark something between them. Hanta had been a little irritated with his pitiful effort to wingman for him, but, Hanta had to guess that he was a little grateful. Denki was doing it just because he wanted Hanta to be happy, after all. Hanta had agreed to let bygones be bygones (especially since his shirt was safe and sound) and settled in to play with Denki for a while. Now, he was mounting the final step with the shirt slung over his shoulder. He paused mid-step as he heard Mina’s voice floating down the hall from the direction of Momo’s room. Curious, he inched closer.

“Thanks for the tea, Momo.”

“No problem. A cup of good tea will do wonders for a saddened heart,” Momo responded. Hanta’s eyebrows shot up to his forehead. Why was Mina sad?

“I know it’s silly to be sad about it. I just really liked that shirt, you know? It was super comfy.” Hanta didn’t know why that made him happy, but it did. “Besides, it reminded me of Hanta. I knew it was his when I took it…” Hanta felt a shiver propagate from his head to his toes. He didn’t know what to do with that information. She knew? Why would she take it…? He could almost imagine her hugging herself as she sighed, “It just made me feel so warm and safe…” With flushed cheeks, Hanta looked at the tee shirt draped over his shoulder. Quietly, he pulled it off and hung it on the doorknob, being extremely careful not to alert the girls to his presence. Then, he turned on his heel and marched right off to his room.

Sure, his shirt was limited edition and precious to him- but Mina’s smile was one of a kind, and much, much dearer to his heart. He tried not to smile when he heard her delighted exclaim of surprise from within his room, nor when she texted him a picture of herself back in the tee shirt, beaming with a peace sign over her eyes and the simple tag Thanks, Hanta! <3 He stared at the picture for a while, thumb hovering over the screen as he tried to find a good way to respond.

Anything for my best girl! he decided, watching as the bubble appeared on the screen with an audible swoosh! She sent a series of hearts back in response, and he dropped his phone down onto his chest as he put his hands on his face, kicking his feet a little with an excited squeal. He jumped when he heart Tenya pound his fist into the wall next to him.

“Be quiet, or I swear to God, I’m spilling everything to Mina.”

“Does everyone know?!” he cried as he bolt upright in bed, half-amused and half-terrified.

“Of course everyone knows! You smile like an idiot anytime she’s within your line of sight. Now go to bed! Shoto and I are studying in here.” Hanta laughed as he heard the dull thump of Tenya smacking the hot-and-cold boy's pillow into the wall. Hanta flopped back down against his bed, looking at the adorable picture of Mina in his tee shirt again.

Yup. Limited edition, one of a kind.

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

Tag List: @deliathedork

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themerrysous · 5 years

Text

Comic-Con Preview Night Thoughts:

(yeah I’m like a week behind but seeing as Pennyworth debuts tonight, it seemed like a good time to chime in)

Batwoman (CW, airs in October, I think?): Wow. They went like...gay-gay. Not like gay, like gayyyyyy-gay. Here for it. Sadly that's about all I'm here for. Heavy-handed dialogue and establishment of character relationships (expositional dialogue is so 2000-never, please stop this travesty today), possibly some of the worst fight choreography and filming I have ever seen (hard to explain succinctly but fight choreography elements need exposition when new elements are added, and need a variety of wide shots, close ups, and specials/inserts, and this was ALL wide shots sans necessary establishing elements), and super angsty lesbian drama worthy of The L Word. It's like they knew they would get fans simply for having Ruby Rose and wlw content and didn't attempt anything more. A bit insulting, really.

If I watched this show, it would be purely to see Rachel Skarsten’s performance as Alice. In a role that could easily devolve into caricature or simply a regurgitation of any version of the Joker or the Riddler, Skarsten found a way to walk the line between “outright mad” and “playing at being mad because it’s her aesthetic”. Her Alice definitely has a wink-wink nudge-nudge air that keeps her lines (most notably the infamous “why is a raven like a writing desk?” riddle) from being too forced. She’s working deftly with what little she’s been given. Kudos, girl.

My genuine hope is that CW sees how badly Batwoman did at SDCC and reshoots a few scenes (god please reshoot the unbelievably creepy “rescue” scene because that was like...uncomfortable to watch. please don’t make batwoman a creeper.). I would love for this series to be good, right from the start. None of this Breaking Bad “oh you just have to get through the first three seasons and then it’s great” bullshit.

Pennyworth (Epix, airs July 28): Oh my god. Oh. My. Gaaaawd. First, stellar opening credits (JauraProps and I have A Thing™ about credit sequences). Second, beautiful cinematography and a colorist who knows their stuff. Third, nice bit of wink-wink nudge-nudge foreshadowing in regards to Alfred Pennyworth’s future. Fourth, PALOMA FAITH IS KILLING IT, Y'ALL. I haven't really seen her stretch her legs, acting wise (granted I haven't seen her in anything else besides St. Trinian’s, but love her music!), but she's already proving delightfully deranged in her role. Fifth, I'mma be real here: I have less than pure levels of admiration for Dorothy Atkinson, particularly when she gets to be just a little bit vicious. I love her in Harlots, I adore her in Mum. I would probably watch this show just for her face. At the start, I was afraid she was going to be put in a flatter, quieter version of her turn as Jane in Call the Midwife, stuck playing a sighing and beleaguered housewife--but without spoiling too much, let’s just say she ends her part of the episode with a kick. Then entire ballroom erupted into cheers and laughter at her moment of victory. I can’t wait to see where her character goes in this series, as well as the rest.

All in all, this is a story that makes you lean in. Even secondary and tertiary characters have distinct voices and enough of a backstory to make you want to know more. Stellar crew, adept and well-matched cast with a Peaky Blinders vibe.

Prodigal Son (Fox, airs Sept 23): I’m gonna be a bit petty here: Tom Payne legit has one of the most unsettling faces I have ever seen. I was shocked to realize he played Paul “Jesus” Rovia on The Walking Dead--because in this role, he looks nothing like the laid back dude from the zombie apocalypse. He’s lost weight, his hair style is...not flattering, and the whole unshaven thing definitely gives credence to the idea of a character who’s coming unhinged from insomnia and debilitating nightmares. If he showed up at my police station to help find a serial killer, my first question would be: “yo, bro, you sure it ain’t you? because you look like someone who makes human skin lamps in your free time.”

The story follows a young man (Payne) who happens to be the child of a prolific serial killer (played by the incomparable Michael Sheen). In fact, the son was the one who found his father’s last victim and called the cops. For years, he met with his father in a high security asylum as they attempted to “crack the code” of psychopathy and serial killers. However, at this point, it’s been a decade since he’s seen his father--and now he’s a profiler for the FBI. His ability to think like a killer makes him a prime candidate for solving murders...and yet it’s also what has him living in fear of his self.

Michael Sheen is the reason to watch. Who else could instill such genuine sweetness into a performance that actually has you looking at a horrific serial murderer and going “ah, he’s not so bad”?! And by sheer witchcraft, ineffable holy miracle talent, Sheen is able to give warm smiles that seem truly deep and genuine at a glance, while maintaining a cold calculating deadness in his eyes. He’s the kind of guy you want to believe, the guy you want to trust, even when you know that perhaps you shouldn’t. Every Sheen scene is a masterclass in acting. If nothing else, literally fast forward through everything else and simply watch his scenes.

My one issue: these bitches have freaking BELLAMY YOUNG playing Payne’s mother. Like she ain’t legit barely 13 years older than him. I’m assuming they’re going to address how youthful she looks eventually (at least give us a throwaway line about botox or something) because it literally kills the whole “suspended disbelief” vibe. Though Sheen is also only 14 yrs older than his “son”, at least he was able to grow out his beard, the added silvers giving a little more credence to a wider age gap, whilst Bellamy is looking dewy as always. Also that reminds me: note to self, stalk Bellamy Young’s skincare regimen.

#random thoughts #comic con preview night #batwoman #pennyworth #prodigal son #rachel skarsten #dorothy atkinson #tom payne #michael sheen

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ubourgeois · 5 years

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Top 30 Films of 2018

I’m actually getting one of these out at a fairly reasonable time! I’m a champion.

Compared to last year, I would say 2018 had fewer films that I really loved, that shook me and immediately registered as important - but also, more films that have grown on me over time, that were clever and inventive in ways that convince me to look past their shortcomings (or reevaluate if they are shortcomings at all). Plenty of odd, perhaps imperfect movies made it far up the list, and I think I ended up privileging that weird streak more than usual this year. But hopefully that makes for interesting reading here.

I found making this list that a couple of the big arthousey hits of the year (Eighth Grade, Burning, The Rider, and others) ended up slipping into the basement of the top 50. Keep an eye out for a rejoinder post following this in a couple days where I hash out my thoughts on those. For now, top 30 after the jump:

30. Unsane dir. Steven Soderbergh

Remember when Tangerine came out and everyone was like, “wow I can’t believe this was shot on an iPhone” and it was a whole thing? Well, I can believe that Unsane was shot on an iPhone, and that’s really for the better. Ever the innovator, Soderbergh follows Sean Baker’s lead by taking full advantage of the logistical advantages and distinctive appearances of iPhone-shot footage, putting together a film that uses its hardware not as a flashy obstacle to be overcome but as a driver of its look and feel, proving at least for now that mobile-shot films are viable (though we’ll see how his next one turns out). The film itself is good too - Claire Foy gives a wonderfully prickly performance, and the claustrophobic visuals make for a great psychological thriller.

29. Cold War dir. Paweł Pawlikowski

Expanding on the aesthetic territory he explored with Ida, Pawlikowski brings another black & white, Polish-language period piece about identities split between different (religious, political) worlds. Cold War is the more complicated and perhaps less focused film, but also the more alluring one, with a luscious love story, incredible music (Łojojoj...), and great, showy performances from Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot. In other words, it’s luxurious, romantic Euro-arthouse fare. Probably best watched with a full glass of wine in hand.

28. Ready Player One dir. Steven Spielberg

A film that many accused of “pandering” to audiences for its many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nods to 80s nostalgia and gaming culture, Ready Player One was on the contrary seemingly uninterested in anything of the sort. It managed to accomplish something more meaningful by packing the film so dense with nerd-bait that it becomes just texture and noise - Tracer popping up in the background of random scenes ends up being less of Overwatch reference and more of a piece of plausible set dressing in a VR social media hub. This contributed to RPO being not only a technically impressive but a visually overwhelming effects film, packaged around a seemingly knowing 80s blockbuster pastiche (the story, the character types, even the music cues were too old-fashioned to be on purpose). A film both smarter and easier to like than the discourse around it suggested.

27. Widows dir. Steve McQueen

I do really wish that McQueen would go back to making demanding, brutal films like Hunger, but if he simply has to become a commercial filmmaker I guess I don’t mind this. Surely the ensemble film of the year, with the entire cast firing on all cylinders - Daniel Kaluuya as the sadistic enforcer/campaign manager in particular impresses, though naturally Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, and even Colin Farrell make for compelling characters in this twisty, nervy heist film. The action scenes are all impressively mounted (if a bit few and far between) and there are enough McQueen-esque florishes to keep things interesting in the interim (that long car scene!). Great moody popcorn stuff.

26. An Elephant Sitting Still dir. Hu Bo

Elephant has gotten a lot of press for two reasons: its nearly four-hour length and its director’s untimely death shortly after its completion. The length is important because it beats you into submission, forcing you to accept its rhythm and smothering you in tight focus on its main characters until you feel like it’s your own POV (I wasn’t really into it until, uh, the two hour mark, but then somehow I was hooked). Hu Bo’s death is important because knowing that, the sensation of being trapped, pressured, and disoriented by the Current State of China (ever the popular subject matter) feels all the more palpable and, maybe unfortunately, grants the film some extra layer of authority, or at least urgency. If I ever have the time or energy, I would love to revisit this film - I expect it will one day be seen as a landmark.

25. Make Me Up dir. Rachel Maclean

A bizarre little bit of sugary pop-feminist techno-dystopia, pulling off a sort of cinematic cousin to vaporwave by way of Eve Ensler. What unfolds is pretty insane, involving dance numbers, incomprehensible lectures on dodgy gender politics, and sets that look pulled out from a cheap children’s TV show. It’s definitely a marmite film - how well you connect with this will depend heavily on your tolerance for clearly-fake CG, well-trodden feminist talking points, and pastels - but for those with the appetite for this brand of political kitsch then this is just about the best version of itself imaginable.

24. Liz and the Blue Bird dir. Naoko Yamada

Naoko Yamada out Naoko Yamada-s herself. A standalone spinoff of Hibike! Euphonium that focuses on members of the secondary cast, Liz makes good on the sensitive, subtly-executed love story that the show ultimately failed to produce (not quite Adolescence of Utena-tier course correction, but we’ll take it). This is a film propelled by the tiniest gestures - a hand tensing behind the back, a nervous flicker of the eye, a cheerful bounce in the step - in that way animation can provide that seems not incidental but hugely, blatantly filled with meaning. While A Silent Voice was a great breakthrough for Yamada as an “original” feature, it’s Liz that feels like the more mature film, and a promising indicator for what lies ahead.

23. Sew the Winter to My Skin dir. Jahmil X.T. Qubeka

Maybe the most surprising film of the year is this, an action-biopic about John Kepe, a South African Robin Hood figure, that almost entirely eschews spoken dialogue in favor of visual storytelling, physical acting, and clever audio design. But this is not some pretentious, austere arthouse film substituting gimmicks for actual character; Sew the Winter to My Skin is an engaging, fascinating, and unexpectedly accessible historical epic, prioritizing mythic bigness over simple recitation of fact. While it demands some patience at first (with no dialogue, it takes a bit for the film to properly introduce its cast), it quickly shows itself to be an inventive, exciting, and occasionally funny adventure that proves Qubeka as a truly exciting voice in South African cinema.

22. Mom and Dad dir. Brian Taylor

Forget Mandy, THIS is the crazy Nic Cage movie of the year. A slick, rapid-fire horror comedy that feels almost like a music video at points, Mom and Dad has what’s surely Cage’s best unhinged performance in years as well as a great, more restrained turn by Selma Blair. The violence is ludicrous, the premise is nutty, and the sense of humor is utterly sick - that the film manages to squeeze out a surprisingly coherent commentary on suburban family life on top of this is a minor miracle (a scene where Cage destroys a pool table proves strangely thoughtful). For all the broadly acclaimed “serious” horror films in recent years, like this year’s kind of boring Hereditary, groan-filled A Quiet Place, and mostly incoherent Suspiria, I more appreciate this breed of deranged, funny, and tightly focused effort. It doesn’t need to be that deep.

21. Good Manners dir. Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas

I’m going to mark this write-up with a **spoiler warning**, as I think it’s basically impossible to talk about this film without giving the game away. Good Manners has one of the best genre switcheroos in recent years, starting off as a proper Brazilian class drama (think Kleber Mendonça Filho) with a lesbian twist before explosively transforming into a horror movie that reveals a hidden monster-coming-of-age story that’s nearly unrecognizable as the same film from an hour before. As delightful as this bit of narrative sleight of hand is, it can’t justify a good film alone, which is where the great lead performance by Isabél Zuaa and the mesermizing, inventive matte paintings of the São Paulo skyline come into play, making this fantastical, genre-bending film a true original of the year.

20. The Miseducation of Cameron Post dir. Desiree Akhavan

There’s a tendency in the queer teen film genre to sometimes drift towards miserablist portrayals of growing up; to emphasize the hardship, nonunderstanding, and isolation to the expense of other experiences. Cameron Post manages to avoid this path even as it explores the dreadful premise of life in a conversion camp by balancing the solidarity, humor, and defiant joy hidden along the edges of the camp experience with the cruel, dehumanizing nature of the place. The film works, then, not only as a statement against conversion therapy and the real harm it does to all participants, but also as a lively, triumphant teen movie that feels more powerful than the lazy, doom-and-gloom approach.

19. Minding the Gap dir. Bing Liu

Few films capture the particular small city Midwest atmosphere quite like this one, a very raw documentary that feels very much like the first feature it is - but in a good way. Cut together from years of Liu’s amateur footage as well as new material of its subjects (the director and two of his old friends), a documentary that at first seems to be about the local skateboarding culture stretches out to many other topics: domestic violence, race relations, middle-American economic anxiety. The film, perhaps because of its closeness to the director and his relative inexperience, manages to take on a quick-moving scattershot approach, weaving stream-of-consciousness from one topic to the next, while still giving each the time and weight it deserves.

18. The Green Fog dir. Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin

A hard film to sum up, though at its heart not a terribly complicated one. Ostensibly a very loose reconstruction of Vertigo using clips from other material shot in San Francisco, from The Conversation to San Andreas to Murder, She Wrote, this new, uh, thing from Maddin and the Johnsons is a short, sweet, and really quite funny collage less interested in slavishly reenacting its inspiration than making funny jokes with movie clips. Some highlights include Rock Hudson carefully watching an *NSYNC music video on a tiny screen, a long sequence admiring Chuck Norris’ face that doesn’t seem to match any particular part of Vertigo, and a number of scenes of dialogue with all the speech cut out, leaving only awkward pauses and mouth noises. It’s high art!

17. Sorry to Bother You dir. Boots Riley

Boots Riley’s transition from long-standing underrated rapper to breakout auteur has been wild to witness. Sorry to Bother You is certainly one of 2018′s most original and distinctive films (what other film is it like, exactly?), and any complaints about unsubtle politics or overpacked narrative can be easily counterbalanced with the film’s sheer verve and oddball energy. Like Widows, it’s another of the great ensemble pieces of the year - Lakeith Stanfield and Tess Thompson are great as usual, and of the supporting cast Armie Hammer emerges as the standout with an incredibly funny halfway-villainous turn, plus a great bit of voice casting with David Cross. Leading candidate for this year’s Film of the Moment.

16. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dir. Robert Persichetti Jr., Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

The problem with comic book movies a lot of the time is that they’re somehow too embarrassed to own their source material. Into the Spider-Verse succeeds because it emphatically embraces its roots, not only visually (the cel shading, impact lines, and even text boxes that make up the film’s look) but also narratively, by adopting the multiverse concept in earnest and milking it for comedic and dramatic effect. It’s an incredibly innovative (not to mention gorgeous) animated film that not only raises the standard but expands the scope of superhero films, giving new hope to a genre that has been stuck spinning its wheels for years. Plus, it has probably the only post-credits scene actually worth the effort, which is a very special sort of victory.

15. Museo dir. Alonso Ruizpalacios

A playful, thoughtful heist film that gets the actual heist out of the way as soon as possible. Two suburban twenty-somethings pull off a daring robbery of Mayan artifacts from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, then set off on an ill-fated roadtrip to fence the goods. There’s a certain magic to this film, in its approach that is at once totally reverent and mythologizing but also eager to take the piss out of everything (the recurring motif of Revueltas’ The Night of the Mayas suite does both), and in how it turns this story into something of a love letter to the history and geography of Mexico. Very mature, well-balanced filmmaking in Ruizpalacios’ second feature.

14. BlacKkKlansman dir. Spike Lee

The best Spike Lee joint in a long, long time. It taps into the freewheeling, confrontational energy of his best work, but almost as a career victory lap as he makes a game out of outfoxing Klan members. There’s plenty of humor and tension here, with a great, dry leading duo in John David Washington and Adam Driver, and a funny turn from Topher Grace (!) as David Duke. Even if it does play it a bit safe with an easy target and wraps up a bit too easily (a quick flash-forward to Charlottesville as a postscript notwithstanding), it should be fine, I think, for a film to indulge in the simple pleasure of overcoming obvious villains in a glorious fashion. For all the recent films that give nuanced and serious takes on racism in America, one ought to be about the joy of blowing up the KKK.

13. Mirai dir. Mamoru Hosoda

Since he’s started making original features, Hosoda has been taken with relatively high-concept storylines, from his “debut” The Girl Who Leapt Through Time to Wolf Children, but Mirai is certainly his most ambitious yet. Nearly every choice about the film is a bit weird: from the unusual, compact layout of Kun’s home to Kun’s very believable, nearly alienating (to an older audience) childish behavior to the simply bizarre logistics and metaphysics of Kun’s fantastic adventures. The time- and space-travel antics Kun and Mirai get up to never seem entirely literal or entirely imagined, somewhere between childish fable and psychological sci-fi, a mixture that culminates in a surprisingly existential climax for an unabashed children’s film. After the quite safe The Boy and the Beast, it’s exciting to see Hosoda branch out into such a complicated and strange project, certainly the most daring animated feature of the year.

12. Support the Girls dir. Andrew Bujalski

A bubbly, sensitive, and lightly anarchic workplace comedy in that most essential of American institutions: the Hooters-flavored sports bar off the highway. Bujalski continues to prove himself an observant and funny writer, putting together a fascinating ensemble of characters brought to life by a perfectly-cast ensemble (Regina Hall is flawless as advertised, and Haley Lu Richardson brings us one of the most adorable characters in cinema). I don’t think I’ve seen a more charming film about workers’ solidarity and the lively communities that find their niche in liminal spaces.

11. First Reformed dir. Paul Schrader

Edgy priests are in a certain way low-hanging fruit; the tension is automatic, the contradiction inherently compelling. It’s a lazy symbol that can be milked for cheap profundity when employed, if you will, in bad faith. That’s why it’s so important that First Reformed, for all of its alcoholic, violent, libidinous angst packed into Ethan Hawke’s (masterfully interpreted) character, is also a great, genuine film about faith besides. It’s a Revelations film if I’ve ever seen one, about facing down the apocalypse with no way of understanding God’s plan, about living on the precipice of a collapse of belief, about accepting mystery. It’s the only film I saw this year that communicated actual dread, but even then still, somehow, bizarrely hopeful.

10. Birds of Passage dir. Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra

Ciro Guerra (now with partner Cristina Gallego co-directing) follows up the excellent Embrace of the Serpent with another powerful portrait of an indigenous community that, under the pressure of colonial influence, gradually devours itself. In the new film, however, this takes the form of a traditional gangster film, from the humble beginnings and runaway success to the explosions of violence and crumbling of an empire. Birds of Passage shows the origins of the Colombian drug trade with the native Wayuu people (a counterpoint, Gallego explains, to the much-celebrated Pablo Escobar narrative), and in doing so still finds room to organically and respectfully depict the traditions of the Wayuu, as well as showcase their beautiful language, which makes up much of the film’s dialogue. Best film in the genre since at least Carlos.

09. The Favourite dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

Though I really admire Dogtooth, I’ve found myself increasingly disappointed in Lanthimos’ output since that film. Alps was fine but clearly minor; The Lobster started strong but fizzled out; Killing of a Sacred Deer was ultimately too self-consciously bizarre. With The Favourite, we’re finally back in exciting, unsettlingly weird territory, Yorgos having found that his very mannered style of English dialogue works superbly in a costume drama context. He also gets great, uncharacteristically emotive performances (compared to, say, the last two Colin Farrell outings) out of his central trio of Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, with especially great work coming from Stone, who I think has discovered that all of her best roles take full advantage of the fact that she looks like a cartoon character. It’s wonderfully perverse, incredibly funny stuff, with one of the great, inexplicable endings of the year - fair to call it a Buñuel revival.

08. Bisbee ‘17 dir. Robert Greene

A documentary that tackles a shocking forgotten chapter in American labor history - a group of strikers deported from their mining town and left for dead in the desert - as well as the potential of historical reenactment to act as communal therapy. Greene moves a bit sideways from his usual performance-centric subject matter to show a different kind of performance meant not to affect the audience but the performers themselves, breaking through decades of near-silence on Bisbee’s tumultuous small town history. It’s also a remarkably multi-faceted film; though it would certainly be easy to side fully with the strikers, Greene makes sure to document the perspectives of current Bisbee citizens who sympathize with or even celebrate the decision to deport, complicating the emotions and politics of the reenactment in genuinely interesting ways. A powerful, important documentary.

07. Asako I & II dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Unwieldy and annoying English title aside (especially considering all the possible translations of Netemo Sametemo), Asako seems on the surface like nothing more than a cheap TV romance. It hits many of the same beats and adopts much of the visual style associated with this vein of visual media, particularly in the music video-esque, almost-supernatural meet-cute that opens the film. But hidden beneath these affectations is a shockingly cold un-romance, a story with an inevitable bad end that you’re tricked into thinking might not come to pass. By employing so many stylistic and even verbal cliches, Hamaguchi reveals how these internalized these storytelling devices are, and how they not only can’t prepare us for the complications of actual relationships, but even shift our expectations away from reality. It’s an absolute gut-punch of a film, covered in a seductively sweet carapace.

06. Sweet Country dir. Warwick Thornton

In a fairly large shift from his previous Samson and Delilah, Thornton has put together one of the best and most unusual Westerns in recent years. Featuring great, earthy performances from its nonprofessional cast (plus a bit of Sam Neill and Bryan Brown for good measure) and a weird, almost Malicky flash-forward structure, the film explores a not-widely-depicted history of exploitation of indigenous Australians. It’s a sad film, showing a fairly exciting lead-up to a somewhat deflating moment of unjust violence - but of course, many of the best Westerns aren’t about good triumphing, either. It’s the film on this list that most grew on me over the course of the year, having not impressed me at first but then blowing me away on a second viewing.

05. Leave No Trace dir. Debra Granik

For all the buzz surrounding Winter’s Bone - a film that still holds up after so many years - it’s a bit surprising that it took Granik eight years to put out a follow-up, but I guess it’s worth the wait. Unlike Bone, Leave No Trace is a kind, gentle film, leaving behind the edgy Ozarkian drama of its predecessor for a similar but more forgiving setting of woodland communities in the Pacific Northwest. It initially seduces you with Ben Foster’s outdoorsy survivalist lifestyle, cut off by seemingly uncaring state officials, but gradually revealing, through the second thoughts of his daughter (Thomasin McKenzie, in a shall we say Lawrencian turn), the downsides and flawed motivations for their lifestyle choice. It’s a quiet and thoughtful film, melancholy and optimistic in equal measure. Makes one hope Granik can get another project off the ground sooner.

04. Roma dir. Alfonso Cuarón

I mean, what else can we say about Roma? It’s about as good as claimed, beautifully shot, framed, written, acted, whatever. It’s at its best, sort of ironically, when Cuarón breaks up the quiet personal drama for some of his characteristic action-y set pieces (a Children of Men-esque protest sequence and the climax on the beach are particularly memorable), but he also shows his talent in handling relatively uneventful family scenes, using the layout of the house to facilitate some surprisingly interesting camera movements. I’m happy that Cuarón, who could easily transition into a more boring prestige Hollywood filmmaker if he so chose, is using his industry clout to pull together neat little films like this.

03. The Old Man & the Gun dir. David Lowery

What a completely pleasant film. A film that walks a dangerous tightrope - one of nostalgia, roguish charm, and incessant aw-shucks optimism - that can easily fall into twee, navel-gazing hell, but that miraculously pulls it off, resulting in a genuinely spirit-lifting character study of an almost folkloric figure. Robert Redford’s good in this, but of course he is - that’s the whole point. Perhaps more appropriate to say that this film is good for Robert Redford, that it rises to the occasion of celebrating his career in full and pulls it off without appearing trite or disposable. As good a (reportedly) final outing as anyone could ask for.

02. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians dir. Radu Jude

A nearly three-hour, densely conversational, nakedly didactic examination of the historical effects and contemporary sources of fascism and ethnic nationalism that somehow flies right by. Radu Jude, a relative latecomer to Romanian cinema’s rise to international prominence, makes a strong argument for being his country’s best and most important filmmaker, taking on complicated, controversial, and infrequently discussed subject matter about Romania’s troubled past. If you can get past Barbarians’ sort of user-unfriendly exterior (Iona Iacob opens the film by introducing herself and explaining her character, which tells you the sort of thing you’re getting into), it should prove to be a remarkably stimulating and even fiendishly funny ride.

01. Shoplifters dir. Hirokazu Koreeda

If you’ve spent the ten years since Still Walking wondering what exactly Koreeda is trying to do anymore, then this is your answer. He’s spent most of the last decade pumping out the same nonconventional family drama over and over again (everything from I Wish to After the Storm, at least) so he could hone his skills like a weapon and create the perfect, ultimate version. With a pitch-perfect cast (Koreeda regulars Lily Franky and Kirin Kiki are the standouts, but Sakura Ando, Mayu Matsuoka, and the two child actors more than hold their own), and probably the perfect expression of the chosen family, spots and all, that has consumed much of Koreeda’s career, Shoplifters is one of its director’s career-best films, showcasing all of his talent for depicting delicate, intimate moments and bringing smart, complex ideas to seemingly straightforward premises. The most exciting Palme d’Or winner in years and easily the best film of 2018.

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aion-rsa · 7 years

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INTERVIEW: Adam Warren on A Decade of ‘Goofily Sexy’ Series Empowerment

Time flies when you’re tied up and having fun. Adam Warren and Dark Horse Comics kick off the 10th anniversary of their popular “Empowered” series this month with a three-issue miniseries titled “Empowered and the Soldier of Love,” with the first issue on sale this week. Promising the usual hijinks, damaged personalities and meta-commentary on the depiction of women in comics, the series pits Empowered against a Sailor Moon-inspired “soldier of love” who finds her abilities aren’t so endearing as an adult.

Series creator Warren is joined by illustrator Karla Diaz, author of the webcomics “Cute Sins” and “Coffee Shop,” for “Empowered and the Soldier of Love,” making her the first person to drawn an extended Emp story besides Warren himself.

CBR asked Warren some questions about the aluminum anniversary for “Empowered,” what keeps the series fresh, handing off artistic reins and what other 10th-year treats are on the way.

CBR: Adam, what’s the thrust of “Empowered and the Soldier of Love”?

Adam Warren: Well, this miniseries asks two key questions: 1) What happens to a “Sailor-Moon”-style “magical girl” who discovers, as a disillusioned grown-up, that having unearthly “love powers” isn’t quite as awesome as she thought it would be as a naive teenager? 2) And then what happens when this embittered magical girl sets her sights on an already chaotic and semi-deranged superhero universe like that of “Empowered”? Not surprisingly for the “Empverse,” what happens is everything goes to hell — but a goofily sexy and romantically supercharged kind of hell, needless to say! (Or did I need to say that, after all? Yes, I did! Ignore that previous “needless to say,” please.)

“Empowered and the Soldier of Love” #1 by Karla Diaz.

Emp and Ninjette have certainly gotten into some tangled situations in the past. How does this new foe’s arrival push them into new territory?

As “Empowered” readers well know, our long-suffering heroine Emp has endured plenty of cluelessness and stupidity from her fellow superheroes — or, less charitably, “douchecapes” — during her time in the field. Ah, but until this miniseries, she’s never before had to cope with the overheated, hormone-addled goofiness of godlike beings unhinged by love and/or lust — well, usually, both — as a mercenary magical girl’s powers turn the entire “supracommunity” upside down! As uncontrolled mask-and-tights sexiness rampages unchecked through her passion-paralyzed city, can a beleaguered Emp puzzle out the Soldier of Love’s apocalyptic endgame and save the day — or at least stop herself from slapping the crap outta her love-lobotomized, endlessly horny, perpetually “sexting” teammates?

Meanwhile, Emp’s BFF Ninjette is just along for the ride at first, katana and beer(s) in hand as she sardonically Shakes Her Damn Head at the unfolding spectacle. Ah, but by the story’s end, Ninjette will find out the hard way that she’s heartbreakingly vulnerable to the Soldier of Love’s misused magic, with shockingly dire consequences for everyone involved. Look out, Ninjette! (Also, look out, everyone involved!)

What other members of Emp’s crew will be most affected by Soldier of Love’s antics?

Well, the members of the “Superhomeys,” Emp’s already rather dysfunctional superteam, are hit hard by the Soldier-triggered surge of so-called “supraromantic churn.” In fact, three of Emp’s infatuation-incapacitated teammates spend much of their time onscreen—or “on-page” — more accurately, drooling into their smartphones while incessantly sexting back and forth with newly met superlovers — or “capes with benefits,” if you will. While the blobby Protean tests the waters of polyamory, Major Havoc and Yummy Mummy each drown in their own one-on-one sea of love, with an oblivious Yummy creeping out Emp and Ninjette with her incessant, disturbingly sexualized “daddy” chatter. (As Emp and Ninjette both have distinct sets of daddy issues, they have no time for such supposed “sexy talk.”) Meanwhile, hapless leader—and stainless-steel golem—Capitan Rivet struggles to hold the team together, making the Superhomeys HQ ring with the sound of one frustrated, Picard-style “facepalm” after another. Clang!

“Empowered and the Soldier of Love” #1 interior page by Adam Warren and Karla Diaz

You’ve worked with other artists on “Empowered” before, but this will be the longest “Empowered” story that you haven’t drawn yourself. Does that change your approach to writing?

To a degree, certainly. With a regular “Empowered” volume and its generous—if not excessive!—200+ pages, I’m allowed the luxury of planning out the book ahead of time, but then writing and drawing its pages essentially one at a time. This allows me a degree of spontaneity and flexibility that’s alien to my previous experiences in print comics, but not unlike how many webcomics are produced. Ah, but when writing for another artist, I need to take a more pragmatic and measured-out work approach, while still angling for as much playfulness and creative freedom as possible.

Gotta say that, while I’ve worked with “Guest Artists” — note the important capitalization! — on “Empowered” before, each previous occasion was a one-shot story. While I enjoyed each of these one-off collaborations, I found the abbreviated format a bit limiting, especially compared to the wide-open page count of regular “Empowered” volumes. Often, as a writer, I felt like I was just getting warmed up to both the story and the artist just as the single issue’s ending arrived. So, when Dark Horse and I were envisioning a new round of Guest Artist “Emp” projects for the series’ 10th anniversary in 2017, I was eager to try something more ambitious. Bolder, even! Daring-er! Also, importantly, longer—as in, hello, multiple-issue miniseries!

What does Karla Díaz bring to the page?

Well, from the moment I first stumbled across Karla’s work online, with her romantic comedy webcomic “NON-NON” as well as earlier online series “Cute Sins” and “Coffee Shop,” I was struck by both her hilariously expressive character work and her equally strong sense of high-energy visual humor. Of course, being a self-centered jerk as many if not most comics writers are, I immediately began obsessing over how these fine artistic qualities could be employed—nay, synergistically employed, to tell an “Empowered” story. The “Soldier of Love” character actually dated back to a separate, failed comic pitch years ago, but I’d long considered bringing her into the wacky ol’ “Empowered” universe — and Karla’s comedic sensibilities made her the perfect artist to handle the task! (Alas, all the ribbons, bows, pleats, frills and flounces of the Soldier’s flowery workwear drove me crazy every time I tried to draw her myself.)

So, after tracking down Karla online — bless you, sainted interweb! — and commissioning some sample artwork, I was thrilled with the character designs she worked up for the Soldier of Love and her magical pangolin mascot—er, that is, the Soldier’s magical mascot, not Karla’s. (I don’t think she has a talkative pet pangolin, but I could be wrong.) Her takes on existing characters Emp and Ninjette were just as much fun, with the wild “floofiness” of the latter’s ponytail being a particular flourish that cracks me up everytime I see it. Her pages for the actual issues have worked out even better, with all the energetic humor, visual flair and charming facial expression work I was hoping for — with a key bonus being her beautiful color art, as the Soldier’s story was one that very much needed to be told in full color. (Well, full color with a noted emphasis on pink, that is.)

Plus, gotta admit that I’m pleased to be able to give an opportunity to another manga-influenced artist, as the North American (print) comics field isn’t overwhelmingly open or welcoming to my sisters and brothers of that persuasion.

“Empowered and the Soldier of Love” #1 interior page by Adam Warren and Karla Diaz

As a follow-up to that thought, does manga’s large audience, but strangely small overlap with traditional comics market readership, ever affect your approach to “Empowered”?

Even though I’m all too aware of the divergence between audiences, I can’t say that it particularly affects my approach to the series. I just try to tell the best stories I can—whether humorous or action-packed or emotionally charged or daringly structured—and hope that they can reach some kind of readership. And so far, despite the inherent difficulties of being a manga-influenced series in a genre and field sometimes indifferent or even hostile to such a storytelling preference, “Empowered” has indeed managed to find an appreciative audience. Yay!

I should add that, now that “Empowered” is being serialized online from the series’ beginning, I’ve encountered yet another avenue of audience divergence—and that would be the often stark divide between readers of webcomics and print comics, two groups whose Venn diagrams seem to have surprisingly little overlap at times. Well, given the neither-fish-nor-fowl flexibility inherent to “Empowered,” I’m always happy to bl under the series headlong into areas of comics bifurcation!

Even after you started the first “Empowered” story, well after the first drawing that planted the kernel of an idea, could you ever have imagined it thriving 10 years later?

Ah, no, not in the slightest! In those bygone, dawn-era days of noodling aimlessly away at the one-off jokes that would gradually evolve into “Empowered,” I could not possibly have imagined that these modest, low-key, ambition-free strips would somehow transform themselves into the most epic, emotionally charged, surprisingly ambitious and longest-running project of my entire g-d career! Back in the beginning, I wasn’t thinking 10 days ahead, let alone 10 years. In fact, back then I assumed that I was just temporarily messing around with these goofy superhero strips before starting work for a major publisher on one of my other “Real Serious, All-Grown-Up, Brace Yourselves For My Career-Fulfilling Magnum Opus” comic proposals. Ah, but none of those big-deal pitches ever got off the ground, while “Empowered” still soars ever higher skyward! Fly, “Empowered,” fly!

“Empowered and the Soldier of Love” #1 interior page by Adam Warren and Karla Diaz

What else do you have in the works?

Well, as 2017 represents the 10th anniversary of Empowered’s first publication, Dark Horse and I are aiming for a big push for the series during this upcoming year. Next up will be the summer release of “Empowered” vol. 10, the next 216-page, drawn-by-me installment in the regular graphic-novel series. Beyond that, we’ll have more exciting Emp-related announcements throughout the rest of 2017, including further—and bolder!—developments on the Guest Artist miniseries front!

Lemme also hasten to mention that “Empowered” is now being serialized as a webcomic, with extensive — if not exhaustive — creator commentary on every single g-d page, folks! Why, we even have the very first “Empowered” merchandise ever created now available on the site, as a series of 12” X 18” color prints over in the “Store” link! You can check out the webcomic here: http://ift.tt/1HLU2fw

Beyond “Empowered,” I can assure you that I’m also hustling and scheming and conniving to get a few other projects underway. No, really! “Irons in the fire” and all that, blah blah blah. As much as I enjoy working on “Empowered” — and have no intention of stopping work on it any time soon — I do have other stories I’d like to tell.

“Empowered & The Soldier of Love” #1 is on sale now from Dark Horse Comics.

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