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preemshots · 3 years

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the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC.

buckle up, gamers. it's time for some lore. this is a very long post.

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore.

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

it would be disingenuous not to preface this with the ways in which cyberpunk 2077's telling of the arasaka assault differ from the version told in the TTRPG books. the books =/= the game. pondsmith acknowledges in the intro of RED that this is a bridge between the old cyberpunk world and the new world of cyberpunk 2077.

we also know that johnny's an unreliable narrator and his memories presented to V are often different than real events. but on top of that we don't know if the reason why many elements are changed is simply CDPR editing/adjusting/condensing the storyline for their own canon, or if it's due to johnny's construct being manipulated by outside influences such as arasaka.

some of the main differences you need to know from cyberpunk RED canon:

in 2023 johnny doesn't bring the nukes to arasaka tower. he's solely there to free alt.

johnny and rogue and their team from the atlantis/the aldecaldos are actually hired by morgan blackhand.

morgan blackhand is the one who plants the nuke, unbeknownst to many members of the team.

morgan blackhand promptly disappears after this event and no one knows if he's alive or dead. (claire confirms this fact to jackie and v before the heist in 2077 canon)

johnny's silver cybernetic arm is its own character, separate from himself. it seems to have a mind of its own and johnny interacts with it and/or is influenced by it.

when he, spider murphy, rogue, thompson, shaitan, and a team of los lobos from the aldecaldos (who are there in place of santiago, as he’s busy as the leader of the aldecaldos at this point) are attacked by adam smasher, johnny and his arm actively choose to draw smasher's fire in a deliberately suicidal move. smasher downs him instantly, but the distraction is enough to also save his friends.

spider murphy shoves a mysterious chip in johnny's dying head as they escape that alt had downloaded to her a long time ago.

johnny's body is later "rumoured" to have been retrieved from the rubble by a full-body borg groupie that was a first responder to the ground zero of AHQ and then hidden away in a nearby garage.

here comes the political lore that makes my eyes cross, so hopefully this accurately summarizes it: the 4th corporate war begins to end. arasaka is ultimately blamed by the NUSA government to have nuked themselves in a political move to protect their secrets and promptly banished from the USA. arasaka denies this all the way back to japan, then eventually returns to “liberate” night city in the unification wars.

but what the public doesn't know is that kei, saburo's oldest son, had actually hidden an EVEN BIGGER MORE DEVASTATING NUKE at the bottom of the tower to, well, do exactly what they were being accused of doing, even though blackhand was the one who actually dropped the smaller nuke on them. and luckily the bigger one didn’t go off.

arasaka tries to find their nuke in the rubble so they don't get in even bigger trouble, only to discover that it was moved and hidden away to... surprise! a nearby garage.

to compare with 2077:

in RED: we have no johnny loading the nukes into the elevator. no johnny being carried off the premises. no meeting saburo. no johnny getting soulkilled.

in 2077: there's a parallel moment to RED's version of events right after johnny uploads "liberator" from alt's old cyberdeck with spider's help into the arasaka mainframe in saburo's office. adam smasher comes for him as he's trying to escape, knocking him off the second floor of the atrium into the rock garden below.

visually this is the same atrium we always meet alt in in cyberspace and also where V meets johnny for the first time. hmmm. meaningful, perhaps.

not unlike what happens in RED, johnny unloads a clip into smasher at that point, but from there the scene instantly cuts to him running to the roof attempting to board the AV with rogue, where smasher shoots him down again. it’s possible johnny actually died to smasher in the atrium and we have some fabricated memories going on.

either way, in 2077, we lose the character beat of johnny dying for his friends, and the current-day general consensus from rogue and others is that he’s perpetually a selfish asshole with ulterior motives.

and, just to wrap up the politics of it all: morgan blackhand is rumoured to have been secretly hired by the militech-backed NUSA government to help end the 4th corporate war by... you guessed it! nuking arasaka.

HERE'S WHERE JOHNNY'S BODY ENDS UP IN CYBERPUNK RED (SPARKNOTES VERSION):

RED ends with a story called "black dog" set in 2045. black dog is the last song johnny recorded right before the assault on arasaka tower, but the final copy is a bootleg copy of the song and only a fraction.

we're introduced to a fun group of cybernetic-enhanced characters that represent the classes in the TTRPG and based on/designed by real people in collaboration with CDPR.

this group includes trace santiago, santiago's son, who is a media that is curious about the mystery surrounding the circumstances around his father and the arasaka bombing.

just connecting lore here: if you talk to saul at the aldecaldo camp in 2077, he confirms that santiago was killed for his involvement with johnny and the bombing, something that rogue and johnny reference when they talk about their now-dead crew from the afterlife, and in chippin in, santiago is a friend that johnny lists as someone he had disappointed.

the group sets off to find any info about black dog, and meet up with a full conversion chrome woman named samantha in a garage who is blatantly a johnny silverhand fangirl. trace discovers she has a history with johnny, having rescued him from a studio fire at some point in 2015 and speculates she could have been a groupie also.

she mysteriously has a more complete recording of black dog, though not perfect, and offers to trade it for a service: she wants the group to transport a large crate to a facility in new mexico, asking them not to open it.

shit goes down. evidently everyone in night city wants to kill them for this package once it starts moving. eventually they open it. it's the arasaka nuke that had been hidden and never went off, emblazoned with warnings.

trace inquires about the circumstances surrounding the arasaka assault with an older member of the lobos who had been present with rogue and johnny. the man mentions that it was weird, because morgan blackhand organized the whole thing and then ran off immediately with a mysterious bag that we now know contained the nuke.

michiko arasaka intercepts the gang, explaining the situation around the bigger nuke, that other factions in arasaka want to utilize it for their own goals (presumably hanako and yorinobu) and her father's legacy, that she feels responsible for. she escorts them to new mexico so that the nuke can be dismantled once and for all.

they meet up with a woman named angel in new mexico that takes the crate from them, at a facility that specializes in nuclear material. she gives the group the full recording of "black dog". the group leaves successful.

this woman is also a johnny silverhand stan. once alone, she calls up samantha, who says, "i promised i would get him to you in the end" and reveals that she had already gutted/dismantled the original nuke and discarded the material into the bay.

angel opens the "nuke" to reveal a hidden cryochamber, and greets the face of the person inside with, "hello, my love."

i mean, holy shit. okay! so that’s DEFINITELY johnny’s body. cool!

now let’s go into all the references to this story in the actual game of cyberpunk 2077 that SUGGEST we are going to pursue this story AND johnny's body since it’s such a HOT FUCKING TOPIC.

and i know many of the following can just be considered easter eggs. but my personal interpretation of this game is that it has a really delightful way of intentionally glossing over important story details—and not by ONLY putting them in shards (which people tend to dislike because lol reading) but by also hiding them in plain sight, constantly deferring to V's own ignorance, distracting us with shallower, shinier things, encouraging us to actually play as the fool hero of this story.

so here's the fun list of “””evidence”””:

this one’s a reach, but fun. in the initial arasaka assault flashback in 2023: we can interact with the groupies at kerry's show as johnny. samantha doesn't appear to be present, but the first person and groupie you can encounter in the flashback has a passing resemblance to angel in that she has a cybernetic arm.

in chippin' in, where we go to johnny's "grave" in the oil fields: if we are to take the 2077 retelling of events as truth, the story could instead be pretty easily be changed that samantha procured his body from there.

mike pondsmith, who wrote these stories and created the TTRPG can be heard on the radio narrating various conspiracy theories. and sure, these can just be easter eggs, intended to reference the differences between the TTRPG lore and the game, so take it with a grain of salt:

johnny. bro. tell him it was morgan blackhand

to top it all off, mike also directly references the actual WORSE nuke arasaka had hid in another arasaka conspiracy:

SPOILERS FOR GAME ENDINGS AHEAD.

in the rogue ending of the game we discover rogue has a son. it's possible her son is trace (edit: nvm NOT LIKELY, since in RED’s black dog story rogue is listed separately from santiago’s mom in conversation) OR possibly one of the other characters. she tells her son to "pull over and look at the stars" or something along those lines. maybe just details, so that screams nomad to me.

rogue also has a photo of herself and johnny with mike pondsmith in her apartment/office in the afterlife. i initially read this as a delightful cameo but it also can mean mike the CHARACTER knew johnny and rogue, and rogue therefore has some kind of relationship to him and these conspiracies on the radio. and why the fuck not make him a full on character? we have a smattering of streamers and personalities already integrated into quests in the game. the creator of all this should be no exception. fuck it!

rogue and johnny constantly dance around this accusation of her “selling out”. it’s repeated over and over that she and adam smasher worked for "the same people". i'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't meant to imply only arasaka since smasher mysteriously disappeared after the AHQ assault in 2023 and returned to SOMETIMES take jobs from arasaka... but possibly morgan blackhand and/or by extension, the NUSA or any other greater influences. (like nightcorp? we still don’t know where all this shit with nightcorp/the peralezes/sandra dorsett’s discovery about their research into mind control is gonna go) this also doesn’t account for the multiple factions inside arasaka with VERY different motives.

morgan blackhand and adam smasher are rivals in the TTRPG, a role that appears to be at least partially filled by johnny instead in 2077. in relation to the arasaka factions, it’s worth nothing that smasher specifically works for yorinobu as his bodyguard at the beginning of the game, in part i assume because yorinobu is avoiding working with arasaka security details as he stole the relic and is plotting against his father. he is then promoted to head of security by yorinobu when yorinobu assumes power.

in the ending as you work your way through arasaka tower with rogue and shaitan and johnny, rogue remarks:

michiko at this point in 2077 is the leader of the more “liberal” faction within arasaka, so it’s possible we’re seeing that while rogue and smasher work for the same people/family, they couldn’t be more different.

you can also encounter rogue more than once on the phone fighting with wakako, who has apparently crossed her. wakako also seems to have her own ulterior motives and works mainly with the arasaka-backed tyger claws. she notably gives v/takemura the parade security info for “play it safe” without asking for anything in return, enabling hanako’s kidnapping. my theory is that yorinobu intentionally leaked the parade info to her to give away to put hanako in danger or at least continue to destabilize arasaka.

in the takemura/devil ending of the game, there is a point where violence breaks out at the arasaka board room meeting when yorinobu-allied security open fire on them. one of the only people that survives along with hanako is michiko arasaka, who was at odds with hanako’s decisions, but very involved in the preceding discussion.

and now for is my favorite detail! in the afterlife AT ALL POINTS IN THE GAME (but it can only really be inspected in the rogue ending when we are allowed behind the bar), we can find a photo of the squad that transported johnny's body from samantha to angel on the shelf below johnny's tequila, of them hanging out in front of the afterlife sign:

this implies rogue has some relationship with them, and sentimentality, if we're to judge by the placement. she maybe even took the picture. i don't know, it's charming, it could be all easter eggs. who fucking knows.

either way, rogue and these kids both have in common that they worked with or at least interacted with michiko arasaka.

and you know what my final evidence is? more wishful thinking! black dog plays on the radio in game. we got a full recorded version of it by refused. if not an oversight, i go ahead and take it to mean the final version was finally released to the public by those kids that were looking for it.

i haven’t the slightest idea how this is gonna wrap up in future DLC. who has johnny’s body now in 2077, decades after it was dropped off in mexico? what is the truth?? where the fuck is morgan blackhand?? from the devil ending, we know that arasaka stole jackie’s body and put his soul into mikoshi, so the idea that they would just toss johnny’s corpse has always been laughable. the “where’s johnny?” promotional comic was even about thompson unsuccessfully trying to find johnny’s body. i know i am biased here but i cannot fathom all this talk about johnny’s body ending off with us NOT finding it, whether it’s just to bury it, shove johnny’s engram back in it, make out with it, or WHATEVER.

if you made it through this slog, congrats. thanks for reading!

#cyberpunk lore #johnny silverhand #spoilers #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk2077 #cp2077 #cyberpunk game #lore post

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felassan · 4 years

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The Hero’s Journey to the West

This post is a mix of meta, speculation/conjecture and headcanon.

I don’t think the Hero of Ferelden is ever coming back as a PC or NPC beyond mentions/rumors and Codex entries/letters, but their quest to find a cure for the Calling fascinates me. It always makes me think about the Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en.

We know that they came back from their trip. We don’t know if they succeeded or not, but since the romanced Leliana epilogues are fairly happy in tone, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to headcanon that they did - at least, in terms of ridding themselves of the Taint. I feel like whether they succeeded in finding a way to allow all Wardens to escape the Calling would be something up in the air, like, kept-back at the moment by the devs; because surely such a revelation would rocket through the Warden order and in a future title might be heard about or alluded to in-game, crop up in a Codex somewhere, color our future interactions with Warden characters on the Wardens’ end, or potentially influence future storybeats relating to the Wardens. (It would be a rather major thing.) In dialogue Morrigan says that if the HoF is successful, it will mean a long life for him/her/them, and perhaps even a long life for all Wardens.

On the ‘when’: Although the Hero was gone by the time Divine Justinia died (per romanced Leliana dialogue), they didn’t leave straightaway after the events of Awakening and Witch Hunt (Heroes who fathered Kieran had not yet met their son at the time of WH), since in DA2 Hawke meets King Alistair and Queen Warden was home at court, and in DAI romanced Morrigan says her partner helped raise Kieran for a time before events transpired to take him elsewhere (which is a reference to his journey).

On the ‘who’: In the ancient novel Journey to the West, the monk Tang Sanzang has powerful disciples who help and protect him on his journey: Sha Wujing, Zhu Bajie and Sun Wukong. In my head there’s a fun parallel here to DA’s four-man parties, and how the HoF is accompanied by - for example - Ariane, Finn and Dog during the episodic DLCs like Witch Hunt. This is purely headcanon, but I always liked to think that some of the Awakening companions that we never heard from again (so not Anders, Justice or Nate) and who in some epilogues mysteriously disappear, accompanied them on the quest for the cure; Velanna, Sigrun, possibly Oghren. (And Dog, of course - Dog in my head never left the Hero’s side after DAO, the notion presented in the games that he sometimes did is odd to me. Why would he, lol?) These characters could easily have a vested interest in wanting to rid themselves of the Taint. And obviously Zevran went with them, if romanced.

There’s plenty of material on which to base speculation about how a cure for the Calling might come about or be obtained, what the cure might involve. You have the case of Fiona, there’s Avernus’ research, there are instances where the Taint was drawn out of living things as with Isseya’s clutch of griffon eggs, the Architect doesn’t appear to be subject to the Call of the old gods and freed some darkspawn from it too, etc. I’m more interested atm in where the HoF went.

Leliana tells us the Warden went "far to the west, to lands that have never known the Blight”. Their search took them out of the area in which Corypheus was operating, and thus beyond the reach of the false Calling that affected other Wardens. During the timespan of base-game DAI, they were still in geographical regions which were reachable in such a way as to allow messages from Leliana’s agents to get to them after Leliana/Morrigan/etc gives the Inquisitor the means to contact them, and for letters from the Hero to be sent back in return. (That could be something essentially handwaved on the part of the devs in order to allow for the mechanic of hearing from the HoF in DAI, though.) Here I’m always reminded of the men of the Night’s Watch taking caged ravens with them in their expeditions beyond the Wall, so that the birds can carry messages back to the manned outposts. I look at the map of Thedas and wonder. Where might they have gone? Where was the western-most outpost of the Inquisition?

West of Ferelden takes you into Orlais, where the effects of Corypheus’ operations were felt. The Hero might naturally have taken the Imperial Highway and passed through settlements like Halamshiral, Lydes, Verchiel, Montsimmard and Val Firmin en-route. Such a route makes logical sense both in terms of convenient travels and the fact that in a war table mission, Leliana’s agents report “scattered references of [the Hero] passing through the area” (said area is not specified, but it makes sense that the Hero would have at times passed through inhabited places, since at times they were sighted). It should be noted however that when this war table mission is undertaken, the card ends up ‘played’ on the western shores of Lake Calenhad. Still, unless you took ship through the Waking Sea, most likely any journey west from Ferelden would have passed through or near that part of the country anyways, due to the sheer size of the lake, the highway following its banks and the fact that Gherlen’s Pass is the only safe route through which to cross the Frostback Mountains, at least in terms of year-round travel.

Anyway, in the western reaches of Orlais is the Western Approach. The Approach was the site of a major battle during the Second Blight - its desolate sands and barren badlands are definitely not lands which “have never known Blight”. And we know from a war table mission that the mines and tunnels of the Gamordan Peaks are infested with darkspawn, that the large darkspawn host that appeared at Val Gamord came from the mountains. Here is where it gets interesting. Were the environs of the Sulfur Lakes, Malcellin Geysers and the Sea of Ash always this way, as in this is the naturally-occurring geological/geothermal profile of the area (volcanic), or are they so wretched because like the nearby Western Approach, the land was corrupted beyond recovery during a Blight? I imagine that the Hero would have largely avoided these areas and the Approach due to this (inhospitable travelling terrain + Blight-touched/probably Blight-touched), and instead at this point struck out more north-westerly for a time.

Doing so would bring someone through or around the Nahashin Marshes. Above we can see the location of Serault in relation to the Approach and the Marshes. There is a crossing point in the Nahashin Marshes used by a merchant in The Last Court, who travelled from Val Chevin through Montfort and Ghislain, before going across the Marshes to get to Serault. Given this and the fact that they’d likely be steering away from the Approach, I can see the Hero following the Highway all the way to Ghislain and then crossing the Marshes on their way to Serault, obviously without going to Val Chevin, which would amount to backtracking.

What then of Serault, the mysterious marquisate located in the far west of Orlais? It’s Orlais’ western-most holding, and per a Codex entry as far west as one can still call civilized. I certainly headcanon that the Hero passed through here before forging further into wilds and lands unknown - here Serault Town has a Tolkienesque “The Last Homely House” feel to it, perched on the edge of it all:

This is the edge of the world. Beyond Serault Town is the Last River, and beyond the river, villages, charcoal-burners, the wilderness.

Per war table missions, Inquisition agents also travel to Serault during the time-frame of base-game DAI - here we have what is likely to be one of or the last place[s] where the Hero could have picked up messages from the Inquisition before ‘jumping off’ into the unknown. Laysh is another possibility, route-dependent (see below).

Serault is a strange place, where “unlikely” things happen. Perchance, was there useful knowledge to be found here? Morrigan herself dwelt here for a time, researching at the Glassworks and working to repair an eluvian. It’s implied she does this regardless of whether the Marquis allows her to or not. Notably, it is Morrigan “who found the lead[s] the Hero now follows in the western lands”. This was probably the “gift” Morrigan gives the Hero in Witch Hunt. She leaves them the stolen Dalish book Ariane was seeking to get back, and "something [else that the Hero] will find of great interest”. (She doesn’t give the something-else gift if he goes with her, but if he goes with her she’d just tell him in-person about what she’d found, so it stacks regardless). That said, when it’s a romanced Warden Alistair worldstate it sounds like he and the Hero found the lead on their own. I enjoy the leads being Morrigan’s gift though as an idea, and as a way of filling in what the heck the gift was.

Courtier’s children in Serault play at “Wardens and Darkspawn”, implying that Serault has either once been touched by Blight or else that tales of Blight and darkspawn and Warden heroics have reached the settlement. “Roads under the earth” (how very Deep Road-esque) are implied to stretch from Seraultine lands to an emergence somewhere in the Vimmark Mountains, there’s a bereskarn in the nearby woods and at one point the Marquis imagines the “tang of Blights” when a bitter wind blows from the north. I therefore find it unlikely that Seraultine surrounds have never been touched by Blight. Suspect the Hero ventured farther still, through the Applewoods - both the tamer Greenwood and the sinister Deepwoods, into the depths of the Tirashan. I’m obsessed with the Tirashan and its enigmatic denizens. What things they must know... mysterious, forgotten things. Are these elves ancient elves? To whom are they calling? These elves seem to guard their lands very fiercely, so it’s not a crazy idea that if the Hero entered the Tirashan they encountered some. Would an elven Hero have had a smoother initial interaction with them? It’s also not a crazy idea that the Tirashan elves might have knowledge that would have proven useful in the Hero’s quest, given the hints that they call to powers we possibly haven’t yet encountered. Their red vallaslin and apparent propensity for sacrificing people make me think of blood magic, and blood magic has practical uses in combatting Taint (Isseya’s spell on the griffon eggs, Avernus the blood mage, the Dark Ritual which was blood magic-based and ultimately caused the removal of Taint from Urthemiel’s soul, etc).

Say the Hero journeyed farther still. Over/through or under the southern Hunterhorn mountains to the forest or continuing forest on the other side (see the map of Thedas with expanded edges given to us in TN), which is inhabited by who knows what. Here the “Beyond Thedas” sections in WoT are of interest:

For many ages, the world that lies beyond Thedas has been largely unknown to us. Rumors and legends exist, tales of hardy sea captains crossing the ocean in search of treasure or ill-fated forays into the wilds, but they have always been buried under hearsay. Any serious attempts at exploration have been foiled by either the devastation of the Blights or the discouragement of waters plagued by both pirates and Qunari dreadnoughts.

The Hero surely would have researched such scattered references to the ill-fated forays, and sifted through hearsay, as 'homework’ before setting off on their trip. Going deep into the wild western wood is tantalizing in a frontier kind of way, but we can’t ignore the following entry in WoT, which I think was included in this manner for a reason.

Say instead the Hero travelled through the Hunterhorns and the Anderfels, maybe with a detour to nearby Weisshaupt to report in, confer with the First Warden and check the archives in its extensive library in case anything in there could prove useful in their quest, much like the recruit Valya did during her own investigation. The Anderfels are super Blight-blasted, so they would not have stopped there. In terms of travels in this area, I think it’s likely they would have joined a caravan being led by the Green Men order through the Wandering Hills to the distant port of Laysh.

The Voshai are yet another mysterious, unknown culture, and have materials and items that are completely unknown in Thedas proper among their wares. They come from a far-flung place and seem to Know Things. The status of dwarves in their society and their interest in lyrium is interesting, given the link both dwarves and lyrium have to underground places and the Blight. Can the reports of the recent return of the Voshai vessels to Thedas be a coincidence? I don’t think so, in the context of things discussed in this post. What powers and potentials are to be found among the wares of the Voshai that these Tevinter merchants were so keen to mount several expeditions into the wild unknown in search of them, even after several voyages never returned? I think the Hero probably took ship at Laysh (either they managed to secure passage on a docked Voshai ship, or there was an expedition vessel the Hero chartered), and went across the Volca Sea to the lands of the Voshai. Here they could have found a cure, and then a Voshai ship to then take them back to the known Thedosian continent.

A final few notes: You have to wonder, the lands which are untouched by Blight, why is that? Is it environmental - natural barriers or environmental conditions inhospitable to darkspawn? Is it magical protection? Are there limits to the darkspawn/Blight’s realm of influence, and if so, why, and how do these limits work? Does the fabled cataclysm in the lands of the Voshai have anything to do with a Blight (you could definitely describe a Blight as a cataclysm, for one thing)? And why on the new map with expanded edges from TN, along all the borders/expanded space, despite the fact that in WoT the “Beyond Thedas” stuff discusses all directions - why on the TN map is there only one place at the edges with an arrow pointing off into the unknown realms? Granted, it’s not the west Tirashan nor is it the north-westerly Volca Sea, but it is notable and worth mentioning. What lies south-west in the Sundered Sea, and why is it marked like this?

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #bioware #tevinter nights #morrigan #alistair theirin #Tevinter nights spoilers #Tevinter nights spoiler #Glynn Mahariel #queen of my heart #mj meta #fav warden #video games #spoilers #spoiler #LeQuinn de Serault

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sdvvillagers · 3 years

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could i get marlon x transguy farmer hcs 👉👈

First and foremost I am not personally transgender, nor do I have any close friends or relatives who are, though I am an ally. This blog will always be a safe space for the LGBTQA+ community. I will do my best to answer this ask as respectfully and accurately as possible, though please understand that I lack proper perspective. If I’ve misrepresented any aspect of being trans or if my answer is unintentionally disrespectful, please reach out to me and let me know. I’m always open to learning new things to be the best ally I can be. Thank you. I didn’t answer this with hcs as much as just a short story so I hope that’s alright.

~*~

Even in a community as accepting as Pelican Town, Marlon has always felt disconnected from the rest of the town. It’s a large reason why he remains in his small cabin for most days out of the year. He goes into town everyso often, but usually only for festivals. He enjoys town events, it’s nice to stand off to the side and watch the residents of Pelican Town interact. It’s not often he participates himself, but it warms his heart to see the town grow and change, along with the people in it. The children have grown, relationships are blooming, and a new resident has even joined Pelican Town. It’s not until the Egg Festival in Spring that Marlon has the opportunity to meet the town’s newest resident; a handsome young man who has taken over the farm to the West of town. New residents always breathe new life into Pelican Town and switch up the dynamic a bit. Marlon was curious to see how this newcomer would shake things up in Pelican Town.

It didn’t take long for Marlon to see the new farmer again. He had found his way into the mines near Marlon’s cabin and seemed very curious to explore the depths below. Marlon could tell that no amount of cautionary tales could stop this determined man and offered him a sword for protection while exploring the mines. If he couldn’t dissuade him, he would at least make sure this young man could defend himself. It wasn’t long until this man had proven himself in the mines and Marlon had to admit, he was rather impressed. It very quickly became a regular thing for the new resident to see Marlon a few times a week, weighted down with treasures they had found in the mine, covered head to toe in bruises, scrapes, and green slime. As the seasons passed, Marlon was starting to take a liking to this new farmer.

One afternoon in early Fall, the farmer had stopped by Marlon’s cabin to purchase a new sword. He was excited to explore the deepest depths of the mines, an area that Marlon knew to be incredibly dangerous. As the farmer left, Marlon felt incredibly uneasy. Of course he knew this new farmer was extremely capable, and yet maybe he didn’t know just how much danger he was about to face. An hour later, Marlon just didn’t feel right and he grabbed his own sword to enter the mines himself. The mineshaft elevator was waiting at the ground level, but already Marlon could tell that something was very wrong. The farmer was passed out on the floor of the elevator, covered in blood. His shirt was scorched with burns and Marlon could see that the skin underneath was burnt as well. Marlon extracted his dagger and cut the clothes away, the wounds needed tending to. He used his cloak to sop up as much blood as he could and it wasn’t until he cleared away the majority of the farmer’s blood that he saw the two scars on his chest. Marlon faltered for a moment, running his fingers gently along the scars. His own body was covered in scars from past trauma, each one a reminder to himself of everything he had been through and overcome in his life. There was little he knew about the farmer’s past, much of it was a mystery to the residents of town. But now was not the time to speculate or wonder, now was the time for action. Marlon scooped the farmer into his arms and rushed him to Doctor Harvey’s clinic. He needed more medical attention than Marlon could give him.

It wasn’t until the next day that Marlon had heard any updates regarding the farmer. It was such a long walk back up the mountain that Doctor Harvey had let him sleep in a hospital bed to be close by. When Marlon awoke that morning, Doctor Harvey informed him that the farmer was stable and had asked to speak with him. Marlon was thankful that Doctor Harvey closed the curtain around the farmer and left the room to give them privacy. The farmer was sitting up in bed, the majority of his body wrapped in bandages from his injuries. He looked weary, but was smiling. The farmer expressed gratitude to Marlon for saving his life, but his smile faded as he looked down at his body, surveying the bandages.

“Doctor Harvey says you’ll make a full recovery,” Marlon said optimistically. He could see how worried the farmer appeared to be. “Though the injuries were severe, they should heal up nicely.”

“What’s one more scar?” the farmer asked darkly.

“Tell me about it,” Marlon chuckled, gesturing to… well, to his entire body. There were too many to pick just one.

The farmer looked Marlon over as though only now seeing him properly for the first time. Marlon was surprised when the farmer reached out a bandaged hand and ran it along a deep scar across Marlon’s chin. He didn’t say a word, but his smile returned to his face.

“I could tell you what happened for each and every one of these scars,” Marlon went on gently. “You never forget, I suppose that’s the nature of scars. You never forget what you’ve been through, not even if you want to. But they’re a good reminder of how far you’ve come and how hard you’ve fought.”

Marlon couldn’t help it, his eyes unintentionally traveled to the farmer’s torso, to the spot where he had seen the farmer’s scars the night before. The farmer flashed Marlon a knowing look and nodded as though to confirm the silent question that lingered between them.

“Thank you, Marlon,” the farmer finally said, a quiver of gratitude and emotion in his voice. “For understanding.”

#sdv villagers #marlon

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dishonoredrpg · 4 years

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Congratulations, MINNIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of THE CHARIOT with the faceclaim of LUMA GROTHE. There’s a sound, sometimes, that I think of often: the thundering of hooves against the racetrack, the repetitive thrum, the thrill of watching beasts run you by knowing that they could in theory mow someone down and do not. For me, you embodied this with Valeria. You had me hooked with by all means, Chariot was bred to rule; it runs in her blood, it rots in her veins, and the rest of your application was held up on the same pedestal. You showed me both the potential to do and the potential to do not. You hit the nail on the head with the balance between duty and the desire to see something through, and their active conflicts with each other in a world that would like to eliminate conflict altogether; I cannot wait to see how Valeria’s story plays out.

Please review the CHECKLIST and send your blog in within 24 hours.

THE CHARIOT

OOC

NAME: Minnie

PRONOUNS: She/Her

AGE: 24

TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL: EST. As for activity, I aim to post one reply every day. That being said, there are certain weeks where my muse is severely lacking due to the demand of my full-time job. I do my best to prepare for that ahead of time, but I will do my very best to follow the pace of the dash.

ANYTHING ELSE?:

IN CHARACTER

SKELETON: Chariot

NAME: Valeria INSERT SURNAME HERE. I imagine that Valeria took on the name of Septimus’ family, partially because I’ve headcanoned that they had to face some general distrust when they first arrived to Tyrholm. To cement their standing, they took on the royal surname — which I think would be acceptable, since their mother was the rightful ruler.

FACECLAIM: Luma Grothe, Hoyeon Jung, Paulina Singer, Ursula Corbero, Fernanda Ly. Faceclaims are listed in order of preference. I tried to include different ethnicities to match potential faceclaims of the others!

Pronouns would be she/them.

AGE: I’d like them to be a year or two younger than The Emperor, to support a headcanon that she wanted very badly to become The Emperor’s friend/chosen sibling. Also because I think it’s a deeper twist of the knife to know that your junior is more suited for the throne, hehe. The youngest faceclaim on the list is 25 and the oldest is 30, so I can range from 25-35. Sorry for keeping things somewhat vague! If you really need an exact age, I can go with 27.

DETAILS: Unbridled potential. That’s the one phrase that best sums up my attraction to Chariot. They have a talent for greatness, an uncanny knack for excelling beyond measure; it’s never meant that much to them. They do not hunger for power, and their ambition is a humble creature — a mouse, rather than a phoenix turning the night sky to an angry orange. Her power clings to her, it emits a glow from within; wherever she goes, people notice. How can they not? Self-possessed and poised, they stink of competence. Whether she wields it as a dagger to one’s throat or holds it leisurely in her hands, it always manages to catch the light.

Chariot’s power, to me, seems like a pendulum; it sways back and forth wildly. By all means, Chariot was bred to rule; it runs in her blood, it rots in her veins. But then there is the madness that tempts her to step from the light and follow it down a long and unending tunnel, into the labyrinth where everything is possible and those closest to you cannot be trusted.

I think, at the end of the day, I see a million different paths for Chariot and I’d absolutely love to follow the trail until I can unveil them in all their glory — whether it be for good or for evil.

BACKGROUND:

Your first memory is of a warm egg in your hands. Your mother curls your fingers over it as if you’ve stumbled upon some great treasure. You know now that it was only an egg, but it felt magical as a child. You grow up in the farmlands, and live a quiet life. You and your father work the fields, and you learn to love the way sweat trickles down from your brow to your chin and the simple camaraderie of coaxing life from the earth. Your father teaches you the beauty of a silent moment and a fully formed thought, told in between hours hard labor and the scorching sun. He is not an overly affectionate man, but he shows you his heart in the way he lets you fail, over and over again, until you finally get it right. When he smiles at you with that look of a shared secret, you swell with pride. Your mother is enigmatic and clever, and tells the best stories. Each one is coated with mystery and ancient legends that you soak up like a sponge. She tells you a hundred stories and each one vibrates deep in your bones, as if you’ve lived it before. But if you’ve lived a hundred lives, then your mother has a thousand inside her, and she is a conqueror in each one. When the two of you venture into town, you feel a thick blanket of secrets settle over you. When you’re a child, it feels like you’re being suffocated. As you age, you learn that it’s possible to breathe and move beneath it; it just takes precision and a finesse you learn by watching your mother interact with other merchants. Your mother disappears only one year after you learn the truth of who you are. You are becoming a grown-up now, she tells you, her eyes unblinking and unashamed. It’s the most unguarded you’ve ever seen your mother; it is a terrifying and glorious thing to see her in all her power and grace. You can picture her with a crown; it does not surprise you when you learn that she abdicated the throne. Of course she did; you cannot imagine her happier anywhere else other than right here in the farmlands where the wind is crisp and the soil is sweet. You are a princess, your mother says. No I’m not, you tell her, I’m a farmer, just like Father. That makes her laugh, but you notice a tear catch in the corner of her eye. First, your father dies. He falls ill, and you learn that no amount of power or royal blood can save a loved one from death. You sit behind your mother. You do not watch, but you listen; to this day, you swear that you heard his last breath. Your mother holds you and tells you that the farm is in your hands. You are the one who inhaled and exhaled the land as he did. Your mother helps, but you can see that you are better at this than she is. So you assume the position of leadership at the tender age of nine, and you learn to push your body and mind to its very limit. You learn that, when you push hard enough, what seems like a brick wall softens and becomes pliable clay. It stretches. You grow. You learn. You excel. When you are ten, your mother disappears. You make do on your own. There is no other option, so you continue working the land. You work twice as long and twice as hard, and you are at your breaking point when Septimus arrives. Your uncle. The king, you realize after you’re already well on your way to Tyrholm. At your heart, you are a farmer. You know what it means to cut your hands in order to grow calluses. You believe that the work will get easier the harder you work, and it comes naturally to you. After a few years living in Tyrlholm, they call you lucky, a natural-born princess. You know the truth: it is the spirit of your mother living on in you, and you find yourself talking to her throughout the day. When you realize it has become something like prayer, you lean into it. This is when you begin seeing your mother in the halls. Another shared secret that will bind you to her side and her heart, forevermore. You relish it. You embrace it. You harbor it like a warm egg in your hands, a sign of life and labor and creation. The people of Tyrholm show only contempt in the beginning, and it fuels you. You dig your heels deeper, grip the handle of your sword tighter, think faster. They only speak of your glory and your skill now, but you remember. You remember the disdain that dripped like venom from their teeth as they said your name. It takes years to undo that first impression: a child with matted hair that sticks up because of the way you sleep, dirt caked beneath your fingernails that took a whole week to scrub out, the smell of fertilizer and manure clinging to you like your home is not ready to let you go. But eventually, it does. You become one of them. More importantly, you become better than them. When they notice, you pretend not to care. Part of you, though, rather enjoys it. It could make your ego swell, if not for your cousin. THe Emperor takes every chance to trim your pride — you suppose that’s a rather kind way to describe the way they sneer at your every accomplishment. As a child, you saw them as the first playmate you could have ever had. Enamored by them, awed by them, you trailed after them hoping to find a sibling — a friend. Once you begin to surpass them in every lesson and every skill, you don’t notice the way their eyes darken as you walk by, or the way your name falls from their lips like blasphemy. It takes many bitter pranks and cruel jokes for you to understand: there is no such thing as family in Tyrholm. There is only you, your power and your secrets. You learn the lesson well — as you learn every lesson. And once you learn it, the door opens to learn more of Tyrholm’s hidden tunnels. There are a million rules no one will teach you, that you must teach yourself; these are the ones you like best. You begin a delicate dance with the integrity and honor you learned from your father, and the cunning you learned from your mother. At times, it is like being pulled in different directions. Eventually, it gets easier. You’re not sure when you stumbled onto this idea that Septimus did away with your mother. All you know is that the years of deception and clever dances and wordplay with nobility have become so ingrained in you that you no longer have to think upon it; and that’s when you consider that there are others who are as practiced with power as you are. The king is no mastermind; he is not a smart man, a clever man, not even a good man. But it’s exactly that talent for foolishness that makes a man bold and arrogant enough to murder his own sister, and take her child in as his own. Once the idea is planted, it is impossible to ignore it. You check on it obsessively, and the visions of your mother become plagued with suspicion. The foundation of who you are and your place in Tyrholm has been shaken, and you are unsettled wherever you go. You can try to hide it, but you have never been able to hide your greatness; you are unable to hide the new jagged edge it’s formed now.

PLOT IDEAS: LET’S GET THE OBVIOUS ONE OUT OF THE WAY, SHALL WE??? I of course would like to see Chariot follow the trail to uncover the truth of her mother’s death — and I’m very much open to it being exactly what she suspects or very not. Valeria has been at court for more than ten years; they have learned the games of both mind and sword, and they are not so arrogant to believe they are the true masters of either. Their mother’s inexplicable disappearance/death has always been a question mark for Valeria; who is to say that it was not another game orchestrated by Tyrholm, by the king? I’d like to explore a descent into madness, whether it’s legitimate or not. Their suspicions have taken a life of its own, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. I’d like to explore the ramifications of people getting a whiff of Valeria’s unrest: Death, the Empress, etc. How will this knowledge live in the Emperor’s hands, or the World’s? I’d absolutely love, LOVE to see how public perception changes of Valeria, who is respected greatly for her competency and respected as the better option for the throne. As they spiral (and I truly hope to see them spiral), how will they contain it? This is just rambling off of the last plot (more of a sub-plot I guess), but Death is the only one who seems to have an explicit understanding of their goals, and THIS, TO ME, IS THE MOST INTERESTING PART OF THIS CONNECTION AND DEAL THEY’VE MADE??? It only serves them if Valeria has an actual change to take the throne. But what happens if she spirals so bad that there’s no WAY she’d be a fit to rule anymore? Would Death preserve their image in order to make them ruler, or would Death cast them out quickly to preserve their own skin? This is perhaps the first time in Valeria’s life that they’ve been helpless to act. It’s precisely because of their royal blood that they are unable to truly enact their quest, and I’d like to explore the implications of that for Valeria’s sense of self. Who are they, if not capable? At her heart, she is a farmer. They are measured by their output, by their productivity, by their crops and their yield. Right now, they are unable to yield anything. They can’t even truly plant seeds, relying only on Death and the Devil to work for them. How will this affect their sense of worth, and how will it influence their descent or ascent? The Empress may be one opportunity to have Valeria do something of her own accord, but it’s a risky confrontation. So what would it take for her to get there? BECAUSE I WANT TO GET HER THERE. I hint in her background this sense of not belonging — of having to fight her way in, versus being raised in Tyrholm. I’d love to explore that further, as well. I’d love to have nobility find Valeria a worthy heir but still not one of them. Or have Valeria be a more accessible figure to those who are of lower “ranking” (oh gosh is that okay to say) than them in a very different way than the World is accessible. Where the World is beloved for their kindness, Valeria is (in my head) more approachable because they don’t have the airs of someone who was born into royalty. It’d be an interesting dynamic to explore, especially to see how it relates to them being seen as a worthy heir.

CHARACTER DEATH: I’d like to see at least Valeria’s great suspicion become public before they die. I’m okay with them never getting answers because angst, but I’d like for their death to make an impact on Tyrholm — rather than just adding to the body count.

WRITING SAMPLE

The life leaks out of them like water from a faucet. With their expression resting like a stone, Valeria watches. There is no feeling to be expressed, no thought to be had but this: death looks the same wherever you go. In foreign lands and in her home country, the last moments of a single life are universal. There is some comfort in that.

“You have the face,” they rasp, “of a ruler.” A traitor to the throne, Septimus sent Valeria to put an end to their life. A strong member of the royal family, they hum like a fat cat who caught sight of a crippled mouse, that’s the last thing I want them to see. So she goes. She ignores the scorn that graces the Emperor's face, the flash of worry in the World’s eyes. She ignores even the look of smug arrogance on her uncle’s, so pleased that the pride and joy of Tyrholm beckons to his every call.

He sees what he wants to see. More importantly, he sees what she wants him to see.

Valeria says nothing. She waits for the eyes of a traitor to lose the last glimpse of light, wondering peculiarly if she is watching her own fate. A sword piercing her chest like a final embrace — perhaps Septimus will send his son to put an end to her life. They’ve been waiting for a long time to do it, she thinks, recalling every furious curl of their mouth and the unforgiving slant of their brow.

The traitor throws one final sentence out, with a great show of struggle: “But you have the hands of a servant.”

It’s then that Valeria affords them a smile. Every traitor they’ve ever killed at the king’s command has been insightful and clever, but never before has one seen Valeria for more than a noble figurehead. They see only the pride and joy of the throne, the deserving heir with no right to the crown.

To thank them, she grants them a secret. “And the heart of a traitor,” she whispers, taking some small delight in the way their eyes grow round with surprise even in their last moments. “Just like you.”

Before they have a chance to grasp the weight of her gift, Valeria pulls her blade from their chest. She waits for the life to bleed out of them. When it does, she wipes her blood clean of their blood and plucks a few weeds from the ground, resting it beside the wound she leaves behind.

“May your treason spread throughout Tyrholm.”

It’s both a prayer and a promise.

EXTRAS N/A

#accepted #accepted: the chariot

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the-canary · 6 years

Text

Sleepless Rainy Nights - B.B

Summary: It’s on these types of night that’s he lets himself dream that he’s closer to her than he should be, where he allows himself some happiness. (Implied!Reader/Bucky Barnes)

Prompt: She’s contagious. A sickness I’m dying to catch.

A/N: this is for @marvelous-avengers‘ writing challenge. welcome to that rare weekend update! i imagine something completely different for this one-shot (and i really don’t know how to feel about it now), but i hope you enjoy it? the gif isn’t supposed to be the reader/mc, i just liked the atmosphere to it! heavily inspired by sleepless rainy night by iu.

Masterlist

Feedback is always welcomed.

He writes the names of the people he has fallen in love in the most beautiful cursive he can manage.

Steve Rogers.

Dottie.

Natasha Romanoff.

He lets her see it in a drunken stupor once, too engrossed in memories to notice the the faded smile on her lips and the broken heart he has left on the floor that night.

The rain patters softly against the large window in his bedroom. It’s one of those nights where Bucky just can’t sleep with all the static and demons shaking in his head. However, that isn’t exactly the problem this time around -- it was more a person, one that had smiled and waved at him before entering the meeting room. Soft smile, bright eyes and Bucky can’t help but wonder when he started daydreaming about them.

Tony.

She knows Tony the longest, a kid that wouldn’t leave him alone whenever their fathers met and then as a young CEO in her mid-twenties with too much in her head and struggling to keep her company from failing. It’s easier now though, she comes when she’s in the city to catch up with Tony, having meetings and lunch dates with Pepper over partnerships and the couple’s upcoming nuptials.

It’s how he meets her the first time.

Bucky, through the years had passed since Siberia, always tried to maintain some level of distance between Tony and himself outside of missions. Things were amiable between them, but there were just some lines --for both their saninites-- that the other man just didn’t cross, though there was one that often happened when Tony worked through the night on the Iron Man suit and Bucky couldn’t sleep due to whatever haunted him. They don’t talk, usually commiserating in silence over their strange choices for breakfast until the other leaves or Steve comes in from their morning run.

It’s 5am when Bucky moves into the kitchen, though there is another voice that grabs his attention before anything. He walks into the room to see three boxes of styrofoam with Tony sitting on one of the highchairs, eating one of his trial mix with a woman standing just a few steps away from him in a dark business suit.

“I even brought you a big breakfast,” she motions to the boxes, as Bucky’s stomach growls, “And you can’t even do one little favor for dear old me?”

Tony doesn’t answer, as the both of them turn to look at the former Winter Soldier dressed in sweatpants and a white tank top. She gives him a tight smile, but her mind is on something else as Stark goes back to looking at her.

“Who exactly are you meeting with?”

“ Donovan ,” she states with a serious look in her eyes, though her smile never seems to fade. Bucky hears Stark curse to his left, before getting up from his seat and moving towards the elevator. She stands there for a moment until Tony motions her to hurry up.

She grins and only spares a glance at him, “It was nice meeting you, Sergeant Barnes. Please enjoy the breakfast.”

Bucky does end up enjoying the breakfast left that morning and thinks of nothing else connected to the mysterious woman.

One of these you’re gonna get tired of hanging with a bunch of old men.

Bucky knows that it’s supposed to be a rib between you and Rhodey, that you have spent too much time --too much of your life-- with men older than you in order to understand your company and the world that was handed to you at a young age. Bucky overthinks on why he hasn’t seen you in days. Maybe, you had realized what your time spent with him was really worth. Maybe, he wouldn’t hear that subtle laugh that followed Rhodey’s comment anymore.

And the raining keeps coming down from outside, as if matching his dark and bitter thoughts.

Rhodey.

With knowing Tony, it only seems natural that she knows Rhodey as well in some capacity. The second time he sees you is in the medical building after the check-up he has every once and awhile for his Vibranium arm. She’s talking to Rhodes this time as he seems to be trying new prosthetics for his legs - thinner and certainly looking less clunky than the last model he was wearing. There’s a frown on his face for a moment, as he gets used to the change in the equilibrium -- unsteady steps become steady as she pump her fist in delight, as the man just shakes his head.

“So, what do you think?” she starts with bright eyes and excitement filtering in her tone of voice, “Give me all the details.”

“Please don’t sound like Tony,” Rhodey laughs, as he starts to go over what feels like an improvement and what could be changed, as she nods taking everything in with him adding as an afterthought, “And you haven’t been sleeping again.”

“Maybe,” she lets out bashfully like a scolded child and Bucky can’t help the shake his head, “But, it was for good cause -- look at you now, Rhodey!”

“But, how long has it been since you’ve last eaten or slept, kiddo,” he comments in that fatherly or even older brother tone of voice that has her groaning, “Remember what happened last time.”

“Yeah,” she can’t help but state sullenly before going through some more minor enhancements, as Rhodey just shakes his head and murmurs something about idiotic genius.

It isn’t until much later that he comes to learn that her company heads most of the medical prosthetics and enhancements that are done and given away by Stark Industries -- and that is changing more one ghost with her life’s work, but for now he keeps moving forward. Though, Bucky’s curiosity is piqued even more when he finds her in the library sometime later in the afternoon, sleeping with multiple books surrounding her that he can’t help the chuckle at the sight.

Bucky stares at the guitar left untouched in the corner of his room, untouched by the person who mainly used it and he didn’t want to touch the last remnants of whatever was left of you there. Sam had always been getting him into trouble in all different sorts of way, but it had been the birdman that had tipped the scales in his interactions with you, though it had been by accident.

If he closes his eyes hard enough, he can still hear the echoing of the guitar.

Sam.

Loud, unfamiliar laughter echoes through the walls, as Bucky comes into the kitchen with the smell of eggs and bacon cooking, though it doesn’t seem right as Sam is standing on the opposite side of the countertop watching her cook. The two of them are too caught up in her story to notice him enter, it takes him a while longer to notice that there is music playing in the background.

“I just don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say the Beatles are overrated and has all their albums at the same time,” Sam shakes his head, as she keeps laughing.

“Okay, okay,” she states while sliding the sunny-side eggs into a plate, “In my defense, I have them all because some guy in college thought he could woo me with his guitar the whole semester.”

“I learned every Beatle song I could,” she starts chuckling a bit at the memory, as Bucky watches the sun hit her figure in the right way giving her a warm glow with her eyes full of happiness, “Dressed up as him for Halloween and serenaded any gal I could find. He never bothered me again and I got a lot of phone numbers that day.”

She winks, as Sam starts laughing louder than before adding, “I am going to have to see that.”

“I would like to see that too,” Bucky finally interjects as Sam gives him a cheshire cat like grin, as her eyes widen for a moment before nodding.

“Sure, I can bring my old guitar and show you the marvel of the Beatles,” she shrugs as if it's the easiest thing in the world, never telling them that she hasn’t played in years. It becomes a habit whenever it’s the three of them, until Bucky timidly asks her if she had any more songs under her arsenal -- trying to catch up with modern day music.

He never tells her that his favorite is her rendition of Norwegian Wood .

Bucky thinks it would be easier during the daytime, there are so many things and people to distract him from the thoughts and wondering that he did when he thought of a certain person. He’s wrong, especially in the mornings after his run with Steve and Sam -- a certain type of music plays from the kitchen as Wanda makes another attempt at making a full blown “American” breakfast. Though, unlike him, she doesn’t seem to mind that you have been gone for close to a month now.

Sometimes, he can’t help but laugh at the memory, he played the genuine pig to your horrible food experiments.

Wanda.

Sometimes, she comes when even Sam and Tony aren’t around, though she is more subdued, stays within certain parts of the Tower that she knows too well -- the library, the lab, Tony’s floor like she doesn’t want to bother the other Avengers, though they could have been family by now. Tight nods and polite smiles are what she gives Steve, Natasha and by extension Clint most of the time whenever she sees them. Bucky has to wonder what makes them so different from everybody else, but he never asks that question.

He comes to slowly realize that the only time she comes out of her cubby holes is when Wanda is trying to learn how to cook. Maybe, it’s because they are around the same age or because they share some similar interests that she is quick to open up with Wanda and visa-versa. Bucky watches from afar as she gets used to cooking what Wanda has eaten most of her life and the Wanda does the same. They laugh and talk, though sometimes the food isn’t the best -- he can see it from the grimaces they share with each other.

Too soon, they run out of things to share with one another. They start asking for other people’s recipes, mostly Sam’s, and then one day bright eyes look in his direction -- and Bucky Barnes is stumped.

“Okay, Barnes,” she asks one sunny morning, leaning onto the kitchen counter top that smells of sunshine and oatmeal, “What’s your favorite food?”

Bucky blinks, not really sure not to answer since he doesn’t really know. He’s lucky enough to be eating and living the way he did now after living through the Great Depression since everything has a taste to it now and didn’t involve hot dogs and dried beef.

“I really don’t know, doll,” he shrugs and she blinks for a moment at the new nickname before giving him an eager smile.

“Well, looks like we’re going to have to work on that,” she says with a loud laugh, as Wanda just shakes her head in the background.

He doesn’t believe her until two days later until he sees a large dish being set down in front of him, and while Bucky hates Corn Beef Hash with a vengeance -- it seems to be a little better when she makes it and the meals just get better from there on. And soon, anything she makes him becomes his favorite meal.

It’s after that in which he feels himself sinking, that old sticky feeling that clogs up his heart -- a telltale sign that he might be falling in love again. Because deep down, Bucky Barnes also falls in love too easily with people -- with their will to survive, with their tenacity and smiles that bloom the right way when all their defenses are laid bare. It had happened a hand full of times before, something that clearly hasn’t gone away even with him losing himself to HYDRA and all the testing he went through in Wakanda.

Bucky Barnes falls in love with people too easily, but it never has a happy ending -- cracked what-ifs and passed moments shared too late.

He should be used to it -- the moment you stopped visiting the Tower as often and smiled less when he was around. He should have known, but he had the heart of a stubborn old fool and thus he kept dreaming of you long after you were gone.

Bucky heard it from Bruce first, well more like the scientist talked to Tony Stark over the comms. They found you and it sends his senses into overdrive -- he hadn’t even known that something that happened to you. Tony lets out sigh of relief, but the rest of the team aside from Steve is confused and full of questions. His heart catches itself in his throat when he sees Stark bringing you into the jet. There are cuts and scratches all over your body and your right arm can’t seem to move without you wincing. You don’t look at anyone, preferring to murmur everything you knew to Tony. Of course, you would -- he had known you the longest and was the most protective of you.

However, that isn’t right when his enhanced hearing picks up the familiar name of Donovan and how the now deceased man had been working with some former HYDRA scientists. Bucky’s heart hitches and deflates and somehow it’s stuck between it’s my fault and let me protect you. Bruce pushes you gently, wrapped in a dry blanket, onto one of the seats as the jet takes off and you end up falling asleep -- blue eyes never letting you out of their sight.

Bruce.

Even though he isn’t that type of doctor, Bruce is the one that was checking her vital signs as some of the Avengers (Steve, Bucky and Tony) sit around her in the medbay. She gives him a tired smile as he goes over the usual check before gives her a clean bill of health besides her arm being on a sling for a few weeks. Tony can’t help but smile at her tenacity and stubbornness, especially when she had told him how she had taken down Donovan with her own hands, though he knew that the adrenaline was just masking the aftermath that might come to her later -- the nightmares and guilt.

“Are you going to be alright?” Bruce asks, as she gives him a tight nod but blue eyes can already see her shaking, but she’s not going to bother anyone of them with it -- she’s just that type of person.

“I’ll be fine, Bruce,” she sighs out softly, as the man nods, “Thank you.”

She looks at Bucky, who gives her a smile, but quickly moves towards looking at Steve because she knows what he wants already. She runs her free hand through her hair in frustration.

“I only want Tony and Bruce in the room right now,” she pleas softly with Steve, as her voice breaks in the end, “They can give you the details later, but please.”

Bucky wants to say no, that he wants to stay with her but the words don’t come out. Instead, he just watches her shoulders tremble close to crying as Bruce comes in silently trying to comfort her like a good friend and his heart drops. He isn’t what she needs at the moment, as he just ends up nodding numbly.

“We understand,” Steve’s voice resonates through the murkiness of his thoughts, as they leave the medbay, “Let’s go, Bucky.”

It isn’t until they are out and he keeps glancing through the glass at just how she collapses into the doctor’s body that his heart lerches like crazy.

“She’ll be okay, Buck,” Steve states, trying to console him in some way. Bucky knows that, but he just wishes that he was there to help her along the way.

Tony lets you stay that the Tower for as long as you need to with your own personal room and you take him up on the offer as you recuperate from your arm trouble. It’s take you awhile, since you end up sleeping through the first three days okay, to form a cohesive routine throughout the day. You do some of the same things as before and at the subtle instance of both Pepper and Tony, you end up taking some counseling to deal with the whole event, as you end up an insomniac afterwards.

However, you haven’t talked to Bucky, much less interacted with him since you started living in the Tower -- the wounds from the last time you had talked were still engraved too deeply, even if he might not remember. You just didn’t know he was dealing with his own wounds in regards to you as well.

Bucky.

The rain is pattering against the large windows of the Tower, as Bucky makes his way through the hallway and into the recreation room where he hears an old Disney movie being played. There is a figure sitting on one corner of the couch. He had seen her waking up and moving around for some time now, though he never moved into her personal space since he was unsure of whether she wanted company as she watched old movies and ate whatever she had made for the night.

“Are you going just stand there or watch the movie with me?” she states, the movie on pause, as she looks over the couch with a timid smile.

“Yeah,” he moves forward without another word. She pats the seat next to hers like there hasn’t been anything awkward between them for awhile now, like they are just friends.

It’s how they watch the rest of the movie, while sharing a trail mix of pretzels and chocolate that she had quickly whipped up. She wipes the tears out of her eyes due to the ending of the movie, but it sends Bucky in overdrive, as he leans into her side and cups her cheeks.

“Are you alright?” he whispers softly, as she confused for a moment, “Is it the dreams?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she mutters, suddenly to aware how close he is to her as she can’t help but pulls back in curiosity, “Oh, but what have you’ve been dreaming about, Barnes?”

He pauses for a moment before taking the chance, before laying out in front of her what he has been thinking about for weeks -- probably since he had meet her.

“You.”

Wide eyes and a confused smile is all that he is meet with, as he tells her --gathering all the courage in him and with the rain gently falling in the background-- that there is a new name half-written in his list.

#marvelous1k #james buchanan barnes x reader #james bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fan fic #bucky barnes fanfic #fabiola trying to write #series: short stories

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loretranscripts · 5 years

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Lore Episode 19: Bite Marks (Transcript) - 26th October 2015

tw: death, graveyards, corpses, details of decomposition, ghosts Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

[Announcement of upcoming live shows (now in the past)]

In 1890, the tiny Greek village of Messaria on the island of Kythnos was plagued by something otherworldly. Whatever it was, the villagers claimed that it would enter their homes, eat their food, break their dishes and then move on to repeat itself elsewhere. They named this creature “Andilaveris”, and they claimed it was a vrykolakas, a close cousin to the traditional European vampire. Andilaveris drank their wine and smashed their belongings, howling like a wolf and making a loud, horrible mess, but the most interesting feature of this story is that no one actually saw Andilaveris do these things. The villagers claimed to witness it all, of course, but they said he was invisible; he was, in essence, a noisy spirit, but the only cultural lens they were able to view him through was as a vampire. And they weren’t the first: between 1591 and 1923, people across Europe told similar stories – an invisible monster that raided their homes and destroyed their belongings. Today, we see events like these play out across the screens of our local move theatre. Hollywood has been fascinated with invisible, violent forces since the early 1980s, when they brought us Poltergeist. What once was looked on as overly spiritual and easily disproven is now attracting the attention of popular culture, but poltergeists have a history that runs far deeper than just the 1980s. From first century Roman accounts to modern newspapers, stories of humans interacting with angry ghosts have been told for a very, very long time. Some are clearly hoaxes; some are misinterpretations of natural events; oftentimes they are a grab for attention or a cry for help; but sometimes, on very rare occasions, a story comes along that is nothing short of haunting. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

The word “poltergeist” evokes a number of ideas for most people. Most think about the movie. Some picture objects being thrown around a room by invisible hands. You might even envision the sound of chains, or doors creaking open in the night. And they wouldn’t be too far from the truth – the word “poltergeist” is German, and it literally means “noisy spirit”. The idea is that, while the typical ghost story only uses one of our five senses, our sight, stories of poltergeists can often tap all five. Most poltergeist accounts reference the same types of activity: objects that are mysteriously moved or broken; noises in and around the house; physical attacks such as biting, pinching, hitting, and even tripping. Some people even claim to have seen objects, or other people, levitated by an unseen force, and unlike some folklore, stories of noisy spirits are nearly universal. Similar manifestations have been reported by witnesses in dozens of cultures for centuries, from Japan and Brazil to Australia and the United States. To those who view widespread distribution as a major sign of proof, poltergeists have become an indisputable fact. One of the earliest records of a poltergeist encounter actually comes from the 1st century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. He recorded an exorcism in 94AD that sounds eerily similar to those of us familiar with modern exorcism tales. In his report, he describes how, as the spirit was being driven from the person, a bowl of water all the way across the room was suddenly overturned by an invisible hand. Jacob Grimm, half of the famous Grimm brothers who recorded many of the stories we remember from our childhood, also wrote more scholarly books. In his book Deutsche Mythologie, Grimm recorded a story from the German town of Bingen am Rhine that took place in the 4th century. According to the story, people were pulled out of their beds by an unseen force; loud noises could be heard, as if someone were knocking on the walls or floor; stones were even thrown, but the person – or spirit – who did the throwing was never found. Gerald of Wales, the famous clergyman and chronicler, wrote in 1191 of a house in Pembrokeshire that was filled with poltergeist activity. Here, the unseen spirit was said to have thrown handfuls of dirt as well as tearing clothing and breaking objects in the house. Most frightening to those who experienced it, though, was the fact that this spirit was also said to vocalise all the secrets of the people in the room.

Similar stories have been recorded countless times in the centuries since Gerald’s day. In one story from the early 1700s, one family encountered unusual activity in the church rectory, in Epworth, Lincolnshire. Reverend Samuel Wesley and his wife, Susanna, had 10 children and had lived in the house since it had been built, shortly after the previous rectory burnt to the ground in 1709. During the winter of 1716 to 1717, the family began to experience regular noises. They would hear knocking on the walls and doors, or the sounds of people running up and down the stairs. The house was searched from top to bottom, hoping to find the person responsible, but no cause was found. They even named the noisy spirit “Old Jeffrey”, and it was said that the spirit made himself visible on Christmas day that winter. Shortly after, the noises stopped, never to happen again. In more modern times, one well-known story is that of the Black Monk of Pontefract. There, in the growing community just outside the city of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, reports began to circulate about the most violent poltergeist in European history. Joe and Jean Pritchard lived at 30 East Drive in 1970 along with their son, Phillip, and daughter, Diane. According to their report, they were plagued by problems in the house from the start: objects were thrown, the temperature in rooms would suddenly drop, and they would even find puddles on the floor. They named the spirit Fred, and soon learnt that Fred was not just mischievous, but also violent. Not only did the spirit throw eggs and take bites out of their sandwiches, but it also dragged their 12-year-old daughter, Diane, up the stairs by her neck, leaving handprints on her skin. After Fred attempted to strangle Diane a second time, this time with an electrical cord, the family asked for help. The police were brought in, as were a number of psychics and paranormal researchers. Even the mayor came by for a visit, but nothing seemed to help. Eventually, the Pritchard’s moved away, and the noises inside Number 30 stopped. But according to the woman who lives next door to the house that’s connected to Number 30, Fred the ghost hasn’t gone anywhere. He still makes frequent visits to her side of the wall, and although he’s usually very quiet, she claims that he sometimes stands in the room and glares at her with menacing eyes. Under the scrutiny of historical research, though, most recorded poltergeist stories have been shown to be frauds. Oftentimes they were nothing more than pranks put on by the homeowner, or the person who stood to gain the most from the attention. But every now and then, a story comes along that defies explanation, and when that story involves violent physical attacks and a serious threat to human lives, it becomes downright chilling.

In 1999, a homeless man broke into a large tomb in a prominent cemetery known as Greyfriars, in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was cold and rainy that night, and the man was looking for shelter. I might have gone elsewhere to find a warm, dry place to sleep, but when you’re down and out, anything will do, right? This man wondered through the graveyard in the dark until he found a large mausoleum, something that looked large enough to allow him to get out of the elements and sleep in relative comfort. This one was known as “The Black Mausoleum”, and it was enormous. It resembles a large rotunda, with the spaces between the pillars filled in with cut stone. When the homeless man stumbled upon this tomb, it was exactly what he had been looking for, and had plenty of room to stretch out and sleep in, and it was dry. So, he did what anyone desperate for shelter would do: he broke in. Because it’s rare to find a tomb with windows, the interior of the vault was completely black. Thankfully, the man had a lighter or some other form of illumination, and he used it to explore. In the centre of the floor was a large, iron grate, similar to what you might find over a sewer drain or in the sidewalk over a subway tunnel in New York City. Beneath the grate was a staircase that curved and twisted its way down to a lower level. I know - this sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, but believe me, it’s real, and it gets worse, because beneath the first level, at the bottom of the stairs, this homeless man discovered four wooden coffins. They were, of course, very old, and the man probably assumed that, because of this, they would contain valuables that he could sell. I imagine he set down whatever it was he was using as a light on one of the nearby coffins, and then began to try and open another one of them. When it didn’t work, he resorted to smashing the lid to break the lock, and that’s when he took a step backward. The boards in the floor must have been very old. The man must have put his full weight in just the right spot. All the possibilities must have lined up perfectly in that moment. A brief groan from the wooden floor was followed by a loud crash, and the man tumbled backward into a long-forgotten pit, some part of an even lower level that dated back centuries. The best guess that historians can make is that the pit was actually used for the illegal dumping of bodies in the wake of the plague, in 1645. What they do know for sure, however, is that the pit was sealed very well. So sealed, in fact, that when this homeless man landed on the pile of 350-year-old corpses, they were surprisingly well preserved. They weren’t skeletal and dry, like you might expect. No, these bodies were wet with something that resembled green slime. The clothing was intact, albeit ragged and torn, and their hair was matted to their shrivelled heads, and of course, there were an overwhelming stench in the air. The man bolted, and I don’t think there’s a single on of us who could blame him for doing so. Fearing for his life, the man climbed out of the pit, up the stone stairs to the main vault, and out the door. He was in such a hurry that he even fell and cut his head on the doorway to the mausoleum. Outside, a security guard was patrolling the area with his canine partner, when the homeless man burst out of the tomb. Now, maybe it was the blood running down the man’s face, maybe it was the white dust that covered him from head to toe because of his adventures… below the tomb, maybe it was just the simple sight of a pale, shrieking figure charging out from a dark crypt – whatever the reason, when the guard saw the man, he turned tail and ran, just as fast as he could, away from the darkness of the cemetery, and into the city beyond.

As difficult as it is to imagine, the frightening events of that night in 1999 were just the beginning. Like a tiny spark igniting an entire barn, the break-in at the Black Mausoleum set in motion something that no one has since been able to adequately explain. It turns out the mausoleum belonged to none other than Sir George Mackenzie, a man who had died in 1690. Along with being a lawyer and Lord Advocate to the crown of Scotland, Mackenzie had been instrumental in sending hundreds of Presbyterian Covenanters to their death in the late 17th century. Today, he is known as “Bloody Mackenzie”, and according to the local reports, this invasion of his resting place set off a series of events that can only be blamed on a very angry spirit, and it didn’t wait very long. They day after the break-in, a woman was taking a walk through the cemetery. It’s unclear whether she was a tourist interested in seeing the Covenanters prison area of the graveyard, or just a local out for a walk, but when she drew near to the mausoleum, she decided to peer through one of the two small grates in the tomb door. As she stood there, a gust of cold wind rushed out of the tomb with such force that she claimed it knocked her backward and off the stone steps, landing on her back. A few days later, another woman was found unconscious on the sidewalk outside the tomb, sprawled out on her back as if she had fallen. She claimed that invisible hands had grabbed her around the throat and attempted to strangle her. When she pulled back the collar of her shit, her neck was ringed by a series of dark bruises, as if fingertips had been driven into her skin. Soon after, another tourist, this time a young man, experienced something eerily similar. For others, though, the consequences of visiting the tomb were more physical and lasting – some people have found scratches on their arms, neck or chest, while others have discovered burn marks. Many of these injuries disappear almost as quickly and mysteriously as they appeared. Some, though, claim to have been permanently scarred. All told, people have broken fingers, felt their hair pulled, been pushed or struck, and all by an unseen force. People have even felt nauseous or numb, or both, and not just one or two people, but hundreds. Sometimes these attacks happen near the tomb, and sometimes they happen later.

One particular story stands out: a former police officer reported participating in a tour of the cemetery a few years ago. After returning to his hotel room that night, he picked up the book he had been given on the tour that covered the details of the haunting. As he did, he felt a sharp pain, as if someone were trying to burn him. When he ran to the mirror to check, he found five deep scratches on his neck, beneath his chin. The following morning, the officer visited his mother and told her what happened. He also gave her the book – according to him, he couldn’t stand to have it around any longer, and so he left it at her house. When he called her later and asked about the book, he caught her in the bathroom. She was standing in front of the mirror, examining five, long scratches on her throat. All told, nearly 400 people have claimed to have been attacked by something other-worldly around the tomb; almost 200 of those people have actually passed out during a ghost tour. Sometimes, every person on a tour will feel the exact same thing. Oftentimes, complete strangers will independently report the exact same experience. The odd experiences extend beyond the tours. An unusually high number of dead animals have been found in the area around Mackenzie’s tomb; unexplainable fires have broken out in nearby buildings; people have reported cold spots, and the usual photographic and electronic malfunctions have occurred there as well. Some have gone looking for an explanation for such a large number of unusual reports, but the theories are as varied as the types of attacks. One idea tries to connect the unlikely dots between the nearby Edinburgh University’s artificial intelligence unit, which uses high voltage machinery, and the sandstone deep undergrown, beneath the ancient cemetery. The porous stone, they say, absorbs the energy and releases it later, causing odd experiences. But this is a difficult theory to swallow, especially for the people who have been physically assaulted by whatever it is that haunts the tomb. The company that conducts the tours through the graveyard is just as interested in finding the cause, though, and that’s why they’ve spent years collecting photographs of injuries, first-hand accounts, letters from witnesses, and other documentation. Unfortunately, most of those records were destroyed in 2003, when a fire swept through their office. Everything inside the tour company’s space was incinerated, but nothing more. Every single nearby building remained untouched. The insurance company never found the cause.

Outside of places with frequent earthquake activity, most people don’t think it’s normal for photographs to fall off their walls, or for a chair to slide across the floor, or to be knocked down by an unseen force. For some, these events are equal parts unusual and inconvenient. For others, though, they are frightening. It’s difficult to say what’s really going on in these stories. Some events can be chalked up to natural causes, or the human tendency to misinterpret the things we see. We are very good at finding patterns, after all – it’s called pareidolia, that moment when we see patterns where they don’t really exist. We do this when we look up at clouds and see the shape of a turtle, but it happens subconsciously as well. Our minds are always searching for patterns – or perhaps there’s something more to the stories. What if there really are sinister, violent spirits that can attack us if provoked? In many stories, priests are brought in to bless the homes and perform exorcisms, a solution that certainly assumed there’s a supernatural source, and sometimes, it’s worked. In the years since the break-in at the Black Mausoleum, there have been two attempts at exorcism. The second of those took place in 2000, just a year after the activity began. Colin Grant, minister of a spiritualist church and professional exorcist, was brought into Greyfriars Cemetery. While standing in front of the Black Mausoleum, he performed his ceremony. While doing so, he claimed to feel overwhelmed by the sensation of oppression, that hundreds of tormented souls were swirling around him, trying to break through into our world. He said that he had feared for his life, and he quickly left before he could finish. Just a few weeks later, Colin Grant was found dead, victim of a sudden heart attack.

[Closing statements – from this episode onward, it seems that the more recent closing statements, including mentions of both the book series and both seasons of the show, have replaced the original closing statements, and so I won’t be transcribing them until I am caught up with the show].

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #poltergeist #grimm brothers #gerald of wales #greyfriars kirkyard #black monk of pontefract #george mackenzie #bloody mackenzie #hauntings #folklore #transcripts #19

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that-shamrock-vibe · 5 years

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TV Review: The Flash (Spoilers)

Season 5, Episode 9: Elseworlds - Part 1

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the day the episode becomes available to stream online so if you haven’t seen it yet or are waiting for the entire crossover to air before watching then don’t read on until you have done that.

Overview:

I cannot tell you how much I got a kick out of this episode. I have not done any TV reviews for a while because of my university commitments but I did partially review Crisis on Earth-X last year and wanted to review this crossover because of what is promised but also because it’s the big superhero event on the small screen. I love an elseworlds story in any genre and show/movie that I watch, I love it when they do parallel worlds and alternate realities, I love it when they have dream worlds and any situation or story where the characters we know and love are portrayed differently. This wasn’t exactly that, but it was still so good. I loved the comedy, the Easter Eggs, the callbacks to previous seasons and the change in dynamic, but also I LOVED the new additions to the Arrowverse and will be talking about them down below.

Freaky Sunday:

So I was going to call this a Freaky Friday before thinking it would be funnier to say Freaky Monday but then realized this episode would have aired yesterday so am calling it a Freaky Sunday. Anyway the movie I am parodying is referenced by Barry because of the situation that he and Oliver find themselves in at the start of this episode.

At the very start of this episode we have that same clip that played at the end of Supergirl, Arrow and The Flash last week, so this is now the fourth time I saw it, which shows John Wesley Shipp’s Flash who he portrayed nearly 30 years ago struggling over a warzone of Easter-Eggs, I mean dead heroes, and speeding away from a weird man with a destiny changing book. This man is called The Monitor and I will talk about him when he is focused on more.

Fortunately this isn’t all of the opening scene otherwise I would have been very annoyed and the rest is Oliver waking up in Barry’s bed with Barry’s wife Iris calling him for breakfast. Oliver is now Barry Allen and has his life including speed, wife, friends and most likely job. The interesting thing is even though this an obvious re-written reality, the same storylines that have been happening in all seasons are still going on. So Oliver has just got out of prison, joined the SCPD as a vigilante and now finds himself as Barry Allen the Scarlet Speedster of Central City. It was funny watching him grasp this realization and to be fair to Stephen Amell he does allow himself to have some much needed fun this episode after all the doom and gloom he has been through this season.

However, because he’s new to the speedster game, he almost screws up in thwarting a robbery attack on Ivo Laboratories. Whether or not this new reality created Ivo Laboratories in Central City or not isn’t confirmed but this is a place that has never been mentioned in previous episodes.

Regardless, despite giving the wrong vigilante line before stopping the bad guys, he does stop them with an impressive trick shot of his lightning throw. How he knew how to do that without guidance is a mystery but I digress. Also for any comic-book fan that knows Ivo is a reference to Professor Anthony Ivo, they’ll know the robot Oliver’s lightning bolt accidentally hits.

But then we arrive at S.T.A.R. Labs, which has not changed, and Oliver is scanned for abnormalities I’m presuming because his takedown of the bad guys was unlike Barry’s normal quality, yet to all the brilliant minds in that room, as well as Iris and Ralph, no one can deduce that Oliver is not Barry. Oliver and Barry are the only two on their Earth that seem to not have had their memories affected by this altered reality...so naturally Oliver goes to find Barry to try and make sense of the situation.

We then cut to Star City and Barry seems to have woken up in the middle of a sparring match with Diggle at ARGUS. I have to say, I am slightly confused about John’s position at ARGUS, I know Lyla is the director but does that make John the Deputy or Acting Director as Lyla never really seems to be there?

Anyway, Dig thinks Barry is Oliver and Barry knows he is Barry but when he discovers his body has been changed by this altered reality due to his tattoos, he too suspects something is up. However there isn’t time to contemplate this fully like Oliver did because he is told to suit up as Green Arrow is needed on an ARGUS mission...Green Arrow who was almost arrested last week for being an active vigilante before joining the police force as their agent is suddenly allowed to join ARGUS in a mission...logic!

As with Oliver, Barry takes to his new vigilante fighting skills rather well, possibly because the basis of vigilantism is training in fighting and coordination, but after subduing the threat he and Diggle are sped away by Oliver. Diggle throwing up after speeding is still funny but just seems like it is in there as a cheap Easter Egg.

Somehow ditching Diggle, Oliver and Barry go to the disused Arrowcave which made a return last week and while Oliver has his serious face on trying to understand their current predicament, Barry is weightlifting up that old bar pole that my sister used to get a kick out of every time Oliver used it...Barry has used that pole before and with super speed so has done it better than how he is doing it now so why he was so happy with it I don’t know.

I did like how Oliver was trying to get Barry to be serious because it is very telling of the tone the two shows have. Arrow has always been rather dark and like a Batman story whereas The Flash has always been more like a Marvel Movie or Superman pre-DCEU. However on this point I have to say I was on Oliver’s side because the situation is these two are currently not themselves and Oliver wants his life back, funnily enough after Oliver lets slip he woke up with Iris that morning Barry gets his serious face on.

This early mid-section of the episode is where I lose a lot of respect for Team Flash because they know of the multiverse, time travel and Flashpoint yet they don’t quite grasp the fact that maybe something happened to change reality so that Barry is now Oliver and Oliver is now Barry...none of them, you have a biochemist, a mechanical engineer, two detectives and a journalist yet no one has the perception to even conceive that what two people they know rather well is telling them is a possibility?

Also, when this is all over and fixed and Oliver is Oliver and Barry is Barry, Iris needs to sit down with Oliver and talk out their differences because I did not know Iris had this much dislike for Oliver. I can’t even call it dislike because she must like him on some level, I mean she openly admitted to fancying either him as Oliver or the Green Arrow during the Invasion! crossover but here, because of what has happened to Oliver recently, she cannot seem to get her head around loving Barry as Oliver because the Oliver she knows who in actual reality is at this point her Barry is a man of pain and vengeance. I do like how this is picked up with the two guys later but I’m getting ahead of myself. Iris needs to sort herself out.

Because of Iris distrusting this situation she drugs the man she supposedly loves while Ralph knocks out the man he believes is Oliver and they are locked in a cell in the Pipeline. I love the fact that because they’re not really catching Metahumans of the week anymore these crossovers are really the only time we see the inside of these cells.

I love how Barry and Oliver interact in this episode and the prison scene is one of my favourites because they have to play to each-other’s strengths due to the fact they have each-other’s abilities. Barry dislocating his thumb was hilarious not just because of how it looked but also because Oliver was so blahzay in telling him to do it just like it was a walk in the park. “Just break your thumb, your body has been conditioned by Anatoly in this reality so you can do it”. Also Oliver’s reaction to actually seeing a broken thumb was slightly bizarre because surely he would have seen his own thumb before. Oliver phasing through the door was slightly overkill because he hasn’t found the breaks on his speed yet, also why was everyone so confused by phasing in this episode? It’s a cool power to have, it can get you out of prison cells, or stop a plane from crashing into buildings. One thing I didn’t understand is Barry said the cell was designed to dampen powers so how was Oliver able to phase?

Anyway regardless of continuity errors they escape and plan to use the only interdimensional extrapolater they have left, despite Sherloque breaking it I’m guessing they fixed it, to go to Earth Thirty-Eight to get Kara’s help. Iris apparently predicts this and beats them to getting the extrapolater...incase anyone isn’t paying attention I don’t like Iris in this episode, I don’t know why but something about her just seems off.

Barry however finally manages to get through to his wife by recalling a memory only they would know and finishing it off by calling her his lightning rod, which he told Oliver to call her and he called stupid, and agree I agree with him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sentiment but I never understood the lightning rod metaphor. I guess it’s how lightning conducts to the rod as an analogy for how Barry would always return to Iris but it just never sat right with me. It does with Iris though and she gives Barry the extrapolater and they go to Earth-38.

I laughed with joy at this moment and this scene because entering Earth-38 the episode has Remy Zero’s “Save Me”, also known as the Smallville theme song playing over it. Anyone who keeps up to date with behind the scenes gossip knows they were using the Kent Farm from Smallville as the Kent Farm for Earth-38′s Smallville but with the theme song playing and I think even the tractor is the same. Although on Riverdale last week they also used the Kent Farm in another capacity so maybe the CW, which broadcasts all the DC shows and Riverdale like that set, I know I do. It’s such a feel-good nostalgia trip seeing it. Also that song, I just love it!

We are reacquanted with Tyler Hoechlin as Clark Kent and, despite not appearing in Season 3 of Supergirl he did easily slide back into the role. I mentioned in my first reaction to seeing Tyler Hoechlin as Superman that I was won over by the acting and look just the choices taken by costuming threw me. Here we see more of Clark Kent then we do Superman and for me it works. However my biggest issue right now is if they are trying to make out as if this Superman is the same one we saw the origin story for during Smallville played there by Tom Welling. With the theme song playing and the same farm being used it does seem that way. I would be very happy if ti wasn’t as that would obviously mean this Supergirl is the same that Laura Vandervoot portrayed and her Kara was more evolved as a superhero than this Kara.

Also, we meet this Earth’s Lois Lane, portrayed by Elizabeth Tulloch. I like her as Lois Lane, I think she has the same level of drive and bite as Erica Durance and Teri Hatcher did in the role and isn’t as wet and dull as Amy Adams. Interestingly enough when it comes to Superman mythos, the small screen seems to get right what the movies get wrong.

Kara is visiting her cousin after being fired from the D.E.O. and is debating whether or not she should have revealed her identity to Clark looking I guess for justification in her decision, Clark obviously tells her she did the right thing because secret identities are there to keep loved ones safe and that is obviously the right thing to do.

Barry and Oliver arrive giving Lois a fright but it seems whatever alternate reality was put in place only affected Earth-1 because Kara still knows them as themselves. Barry and Oliver are formally introduced to Superman at both are a little bit starstruck but handle it in different ways fitting their characters.

Then when it comes to Barry and Oliver training as each other, Barry has to target practice while Oliver runs at him being a moving target.

The only issue with this setup is while is it is done to make an excellent callback to when Oliver trained Barry, Oliver still thinks he is training Barry here and gets very offended when Barry doesn’t take playing him seriously.

Lois is great in this scene as the impartial spectator and calls it how she sees it calling Oliver a dick. Hilarious.

Barry and Oliver then have a heart-to-heart and discover that in order to be each-other they need to embody what makes each other work as vigilantes, Barry is very light-hearted and positive whereas Oliver is very grounded and serious. So for Barry to be the Green Arrow effectively he needs to be grounded and serious while Oliver being The Flash needs to be upbeat. As I said before I love the meta referencing of how the two shows and characters are so different from each other yet exist in the same space, then Kara comes along who is a bit of both, it’s the trinity right here. DC’s original Trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman has been made DOA thanks to the movies so the small-screen has a new trinity of Green Arrow, Flash and Supergirl.

Cisco arrives and tells the group that they need to come back to stop A.M.A.Z.O. and both Kara and Clark tag along for the ride, with Cisco finally meeting Superman.

Ambushing A.M.A.Z.O:

Back on Earth-1 and sure enough A.M.A.Z.O. makes his debut as these crossover events need badly CG’d robots in them. A.M.A.Z.O. as his comic-book counterpart does, is a robot who mimics powers so as he battles he just gets stronger. Here this is done through displaying symbols of each person mimicked on his chest...the only issue with this is while I understand Killer Frost’s symbol I do not get Vibe’s.

After having their asses handed to them, Cisco decides they need Oliver and Barry, but Iris says she let them go due to believing their story and Cisco goes along with it going to Earth-38 to get them. Whether or not the extrapolator knew where Kara was and so ported Oliver and Barry there is one thing but how did Cisco know where they were? I guess he vibed them but it is never shown.

After returning with Barry, Oliver, Kara and Clark what follows is an amazing battle and it’s only the first part of the crossover. Okay yes the CG on A.M.A.Z.O. is shoddy but so was the CG on Red Tornado and Metallo last year, here the focus is really on Barry and Oliver working as Green Arrow and Flash respectively.

They figure out a plan that includes the Super-Cousins as they are used essentially as battering rams to hold A.M.A.Z.O. in place, I am just thrilled to finally see at least 2 members of the original Justice League working side-by-side, I know Martian Manhunter is coming up most likely in the Supergirl part so I cannot wait for that.

Team Flash acquire a virus that would destroy A.M.A.Z.O. because turning him off manually has been made impossible. In order to install the virus, Barry had to shoot the virus at A.M.A.Z.O. but to make sure he couldn’t phase it through, Oliver had to counteract his phasing. So you had Barry waiting for the right shot while the other three held him in place. They succeed and, after a familiar line from the Green Arrow, A.M.A.Z.O. is no more.

Future Repercussions:

This part got me excited, this was Iris, coming round to the idea that Barry is actually Barry, and warning him not to turn into Oliver. Again the girl has some sort of issue with Oliver being dark and miserable all the time and while Barry is playing Green Arrow for the moment, doesn’t want him to become Oliver.

This got me thinking, what if the events of this crossover have a lasting effect on the future of the Arrowverse? What if by learning how to be each other’s vigilante personas, both Barry and Oliver are changed when they return to their respective personas? I would love this crossover to make that possible as I feel it would make both series’ more compelling going forward.

Preluding the Bat:

So at the end of the episode, Cisco mentions a scattered vibe he had earlier in the episode of this mysterious figure who we know as The Monitor. Again I won’t go into much detail here because we are not given much as is but the vibe shows him with this lecturer John Deagan who he gave this all powerful reality writing book to and caused the events of this crossover.

While no one else really knows who the men are, Oliver spotted a key fact as to where they are, a Wayne Enterprises building...tomorrow’s Part 2 episode will bring about Gotham City and more importantly Batwoman who is seen atop a rooftop from a far distance but it is definitely her. I cannot wait!

Easter-Eggs:

So many Easter-Eggs and this is only episode 1. We see a barrage of dead heroes in that opening scene, these include Captain Cold, either Jesse Quick or Speedy, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, The Ray and a Green Arrow who is in the Green Arrow suit used in Smallville.

Smallville is an Easter-Egg cache of itself here due to that cameo plus the theme song and the farm all being used, most likely just fan-service but I loved it.

I don’t really want to rate the separate parts of the crossover and will rate the whole thing at the end of the event but I think this is a great start to the crossover and I cannot wait for Part 2.

So that’s my review of Elseworlds - Part 1, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more DC TV Reviews and well as other TV Reviews and posts.

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batwake · 6 years

Text

Living Room Song - chapter 2/12

No one new ever moves to Derry, Maine.

The worst day of Eddie Kaspbrak’s life is the day that someone does.

read it on ao3

chapter 1

chapter 2: september - timeless

The first day of school comes and goes, and as does the week and the week after. The elusive Richard ‘my friends call me Richie, Mrs. Wakeman’ Tozier has not spoken a single word to Eddie, even though they’re both in Wakeman’s sixth hour psychology, but Eddie quickly decides that Stan was right about the guy being annoying, as he talks to anyone who bothers to look at him. People learned not to spare him the time after the first few days, and though Eddie is one of them, he can’t help but wish that the other boy would seek him out. They sit on opposite sides of the classroom, and Richie is always quick to bolt out the door, so Eddie never gets the chance to talk to him, even if he could work up the courage. His siblings are nice, though, and Eddie talks to them regularly. Neither of them ever bring up each other or their third sibling, so Eddie never asks. The only time he ever sees them together are at lunch, when they sit together in the back corner of the lunchroom.

On September 2nd, two weeks after school started, Sonia sends Eddie in to town to run errands. Since Eddie has gotten older she has become more lenient about her son going to town by himself, although she is wary and double checks that he knows their home phone number and can call if he needs her to come get him.

Eddie can understand the paranoia. It doesn’t bother him anymore.

So he goes into town. Picks up his and his mothers’ prescriptions from the drug store, and ventures into the grocery store. It’s quiet on this Monday afternoon, most people having already finished their shopping for the week. The only people working are the old woman that Eddie sees waiting at the bus stop every Tuesday and Thursday evening and an acne ridden teenager that Eddie vaguely recognizes as the kid from his freshman year world history class.

He beelines for the fruits and vegetables after grabbing a cart, picking four of every produce on the list his mother gave him, each one in their own separate bags. Sonia was always very specific about her grocery shopping, that was something that had not changed over the summer.

The speakers are playing some new radio hit that Eddie has heard a hundred times already, but he still finds himself humming along. He gets so wrapped up in listening to the song he doesn’t even see the cart appear in front of him before he is hitting it.

“Shit-“ Eddie starts, then covers his mouth. “I mean. Sorry.”

Richie Tozier, the man of Eddie’s nightmares, is laughing. His sister is glaring at him.

“Richard can you please pay attention to where you’re pushing this thing?” Eddie’s eyes flick from Richie to Margo. He has never really seen them interact before.

It feels a little like he’s watching two animals at the zoo.

“Margaret can you please explain to this fine gentleman what ‘look before crossing both ways’ means?” Richie shoots back. Margo turns to look at Eddie for the first time, and her face lights up.

“Hey, stranger!” Margo is wearing the same thing she wore to school, a dark blue sweater over high waisted white jeans. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail that Eddie thinks makes her look more like her brothers. Her green eyes stare all the way down into Eddie’s soul.

It’s a little unnerving, but Richie’s gaze saves him, because he speaks up next. “Edward, right? From psych?”

Eddie blinks, looking over to the tallest of the three of him. Richie is almost a full foot taller than Eddie, and Margo is even shorter. Still, Eddie feels smaller under Margo’s strong green eyes than he does with Richie’s warm brown ones. “Eddie,” he corrects, “but yes. I sit on the other side of the classroom.”

“Eddie. Eddie-Spaghetti.” Richie nods like he is making a mental note of it and leans his arms on the cart, bending so he is more at his companion’s height. “Are you that guy who was laughing in the lunchroom the first day of school?”

“Richie!” Margo snaps, elbowing her brother. Richie looks at her and mouths what?

“It’s okay. Yeah, that was me.” Eddie shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “That was the mental breakdown everyone was waiting to see.” Eddie assumes that they must’ve heard the whole story from someone else at school, otherwise Margo wouldn’t be so wary of the subject. He likes that Richie doesn’t seem to care about it so much.

Eddie takes the brief moment of awkward silence to study Richie’s attire. He clearly has a weird sense of fashion, or perhaps a lack thereof. Today Richie Tozier wears black jeans that have random patches of fabric sewn into them, bursts of color like yellow with purple spots on his thigh or rainbow stripes on his calf. His t-shirt says Freese’s in cursive text, and shows off his long arms, the wrists covered in bracelets. A few of his long fingers have rings on them, but Eddie has a hard time focusing on them. His broken-to-hell glasses top off the entire look.

Richie notices him staring and shoots Eddie his lopsided smile.

Warmth spreads to Eddie’s cheeks. “So, where’s Mike?” He says, desperate to change the subject from his mental breakdown and get Richie’s eyes anywhere other than Eddie’s hands, which twitch and fidget with the grocery list in his hands.

He earns two very different reactions from the pair in front of him. Margo rolls her eyes and focuses them on somewhere above and to the left of Eddie. Richie snickers and straightens up.

“Our dad has some conference a few towns over and took Mikey with him,” Richie says, his voice heavy with something that Eddie can’t quite place. “Margo is mega jealous.”

“I’m not jealous-“

“-she’s totally jealous-“

“-I’m just a little annoyed that he picked just him to go, that’s all! I mean there’s three of us. You can’t pick just one.”

Richie’s stance changes and Eddie wonders if Margo notices. He stands a little straighter, crosses his arms. The smile on his face looks tight and fake. “We know all about that-“

“Beep beep,” Margo snaps, holding up a hand. “We don’t need to subject Eddie to our family problems.”

Eddie’s a little lost. He doesn’t say that, though, just awkwardly laughs. “Beep beep?”

“People say that to get me to, quote en quote, shut the fuck up.” Richie throws a hand over his heart and leans over Margo, using his height advantage. “It really hurts mah feelins, Eddie-Spaghetti’,” he says in the worst southern accent that Eddie has ever heard. He laughs, and it is not to break the silence, nowhere near awkward.

“That was awful. And don’t call me that.”

Margo shoots Eddie a look, ducking away from Richie and causing him to stumble. “Try living with it.”

Eddie is smiling, and laughing, with people he doesn’t even know. He hasn’t done much of that in a long time. “Yeah, I hear he never shuts up.”

“Your mom wasn’t complaining in bed last ni-“

“Beep beep,” Eddie and Margo say together, and burst into giggles once more.

The three of them chat for a little while longer before Eddie says that his mother will be worried about him, and quickly departs, his cheeks red and sore from smiling. He does not dislike Richie so much, finds him fascinating. He is still a bit of a mystery, as are the other two triplets. The way Richie got cold when Margo mentioned separating the three of them, and Margo’s apparent jealousy of Mike being with their father. Eddie thinks of the Tozier’s, as he walks home, of Richie. Of his curly hair and stupid glasses and lopsided smile.

Eddie almost drops the bags when his heart speeds up at the thought of the other boy.

He has never walked home so quickly.

Eddie likes to think he is a good son. He doesn’t stay up late or sneak out, his friends are, for the most part, well-liked by his mother, and he has never done any drugs.

(He tried one of Bev’s cigarettes, once, but coughed the second he inhaled, and hasn’t touched one since)

Helping Sonia unpack groceries is just one of Eddie’s many good qualities. There aren’t many, with just two of them, but he worries about his mother spending too much time by herself. He thinks that she worries about him, too.

“I ran into some kids from school,” Eddie comments as he passes her a carton of eggs. “They’re new.”

Sonia hums and straightens, putting the eggs on the shelf in the door. “Derry doesn’t get new people very often.”

“Yeah, I think they’ve probably heard enough of that. They’re triplets.” Eddie pulls out the Froot-Loops and puts them in a cabinet.

Eddie feels his mother's presence next to him, like a hawk. “Bad luck come in threes, Eddie-Bear.”

It just got very, very cold in the room. “I know, Ma.” And he does- Eddie knows this too well. His mother’s little superstitions have always gotten the better of her. No shoes past the entryway, never open an umbrella inside, knock on wood, etcetera. Eddie just entertains her, at this point, afraid of upsetting her more than he already has.

Sonia pats the side of Eddie’s face while he stares straight ahead at the ugly wallpaper. “Don’t talk to them, Eddie, sweetheart. Only bad things can come from it.”

Nodding and swallowing, Eddie looks down at his hands that are holding onto a bag of potatoes. Sonia’s band moves from his cheek down to his arm, hovering over the bare skin. Eddie holds his breath, waiting for her to ask what she always asks when things get too quiet between them-

“How are you feeling, Eddie-Bear? Are you taking your meds? You can always talk to me-“

“I’m fine, Ma!” Eddie puts the potatoes in the cabinet next to the spices. “Really.”

Her eyes start to water, and Eddie immediately feels bad. They’re both still recovering from the summer. “I’m sorry, Ma. I had a long day. I think I’m going to go to bed. Love you.”

Sonia says something, but Eddie is already walking out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom.

The library after school is always quiet. Eddie likes going there to do homework instead of going straight home. It’s quiet, and there is no Sonia Kaspbrak hovering over his shoulder. Usually Stan or Ben are usually with him, but Stan had plans with Bill, and Ben was joining the cross country team this year. Eddie is by himself in the library for the first time of the new school year.

Calculus is hard, especially with the most boring teacher that Eddie has ever had. One thing equals another thing but only sometimes- it’s starting to get jumbled in his head.

Eddie checks his answer for the fifth time, and it’s still wrong. Groaning, he crumples up the piece of notebook paper and tosses it somewhere behind him.

“Hey, that’s littering, Spaghetti-Man.” Richie is suddenly sliding into the spot across from Eddie, holding the crumpled up piece of paper in his hands, reading the failed problem. “You’re using sine. You should be using cosine.”

Blinking, Eddie snatches the paper back, scanning the paper for his error. “Shit, you’re right.” He grabs his notebook and starts rewriting the problem, trying to ignore Richie’s presence. “I’m awful at calculus.”

“Clearly.”

Eddie glances up at Richie’s response. Richie is resting his cheek on his fist, pushing up his glasses just the slightest bit, revealing more freckles splattered across his face. They stand out more on Richie’s pale skin than they do on Margo’s, who is tanner than her brother by a longshot.

If they were not in a public place, Eddie thinks that he may have jumped across the table and began to count each one.

“What are you doing here?” asks Eddie, fighting the urge to say something stupid.

“Mike has AV Club and Margo likes going on runs around the school while we wait.”

There is a beat of silence while Eddie waits for Richie to keep going. He doesn’t.

“I didn’t know we had an AV Club.”

Richie shifts, his arm hitting the table once it gets bored with supporting his head. “It’s kind of Mike’s whole thing. Walkie-talkies and radios and the like. What about you, Eddie-Spaghetti?”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “What about me? And don’t call me that.”

His lips spread in the crooked way they usually do, giving Richie an almost evil look. “Okay, Eds. Why’re you here after school?”

Rolling his eyes and not bothering to correct him, Eddie shuts his notebook, deciding that he isn’t going to get anymore work done with Richie here. “It’s easier to get work done here than at home.”

Richie looks like he understands. “That makes sense. Are you doing anything after this?”

The question is so abrupt and unexpected that Eddie takes a few seconds to answer. His plans were just going home and hoping his mother won’t baby him, as well as waiting by the phone ready for Bill’s call that probably won’t come anyway. “No,” Eddie decides, figuring spending his birthday with a stranger is better than with his mother anyway.

“You are now!” Richie says, all too loudly for a library, standing up and grabbing Eddie’s calculus stuff and his backpack. “You’re going to show me all of the coolest spots around Derry. We have to take Mike and Margo home, first.”Margo and Mike home though. They like you, so they’ll let you sit in the front seat.”

Eddie’s eyebrows raise suspiciously. “You drive?”

The brown eyes behind Richie’s glasses glitter excitedly. “Sure do! Surprisingly I am the best driver in mí familia. They call me baby driver!”

Eddie’s face must read confusion, because Richie deflates. “Simon and Garfunkel? Bridge Over Troubled Water?” Eddie stares at him blankly. “Wowza Eds, uncultured much?”

Scoffing, Eddie stands up and holds his arm out in an attempt to get his stuff back. “Not all of us are music aficionados-“

Richie moves around him like a dancer, twirling and throwing and arm over Eddie’s shoulder. “They call me baby driver, and once upon a pair of wheels, I hit the road and I'm gone-“ he sings, his mouth close to Eddie’s ear. It sends a shiver down his spine.

“Okay, okay. I get the point.” Eddie ducks away from Richie, aiming another grab for his stuff. Richie is too tall and too fast, slipping away and towards the glass doors that lead into the hallway. “You sound like a dying goose.”

That’s not true, Eddie thinks. Richie’s voice sounds like the kind of thing you’d hear on the radio nowadays, on the rock stations his dad used to listen to-

“Spaghetti, you flatter me. Now. We’ll go stop by the AV room where Mike is then meet Margo somewhere outside.” Richie is out the doors within seconds.

Eddie’s head is still reeling from before, but he manages to follow, pushing his way out of the doors and jogging to catch up with Richie.

————————

They don’t quite make twin beds like they used to, Richie decides. When they were kids, the three of them could always squeeze into Mike’s without a problem, on the nights where their parents would fight well into the night and their mother would slam the front door as she headed out to the bar. But now that they’ve gotten older, Richie and Mike taller and lean with Margo curvy and filled out, it’s hard to find the right ways to lay so they can still be close.

The one benefit that they can all agree on is that at least, in the new apartment, they don’t have to sneak into Mike’s room. Margo just slips under the covers next to him. Richie doesn’t even have to touch the floor to squish in next to them.

Still, they all manage to fit somehow. Margo lays between her brothers, on top of them more than anything, her hair in a bun on top of her head so it does not get into anyone’s mouth. Richie’s chin is hooked over her shoulder, and Mike is on his side looking at them, up against the wall.

Richie pulls the blanket up over their heads, blocking out the sounds of the street below their window. All of their bedding are just sheets that they found at some hand-me-down store and quilts made by their grandmother, and no matter how long it has been since she died, Richie still thinks it smells like her.

“It’s weird being under here and not hearing mom and dad fighting,” whispers Margo. Richie has to agree- they haven’t done this since they moved. Since before the divorce, since the court ordeal.

“Dad’s probably glad to finally be getting some sleep,” Mike says into her cheek. “He never got that when he was with mom.”

Richie can feel the small laughs that Mike and Margo give. His blood boils, his skin crawls, the hair on the back of his neck stands up. He doesn’t say anything, for once in his life.

Wentworth Tozier always liked Margo and Mike better, for whatever reason. Maggie liked Richie. She listened to him when he cried and never ever blamed him when he would get sent home early from school because he got in a fight, or cursed out a teacher. Margo never connect with her namesake like a normal daughter did, and Mike thinks that their mother was trashy.

Richie saw her for everything she was, because she was the only one who did the same for him.

The last time the three of them had gathered under Mike’s covers, Richie had told them that he wanted to live with Maggie. Margo had pushed him out of the bed and Mike had started yelling, something that Mike didn’t usually do. Went had to come break them up at three am, and all three of them got grounded.

The judge didn’t allow siblings to be separated, much less triplets, unless it was special circumstances. The Tozier’s divorce was anything but. Maggie had gotten pregnant before she and Wentworth were even married, so they wed a month later and found out they were triplets two after that.

Went and Maggie were never meant to last. That much is true. It’s surprising that they made it sixteen years.

“They were in love, once.” Margo’s hand slips into Richie’s, which was resting against her stomach. It’s as if she can read his mind. Which, Richie reminds himself, she probably can. “At least, I like to think so.”

“Leave it to Margo to be the romantic,” Richie says, his voice soft and earnest. His heart hurts, although his words betray him.

Mike’s fingers find their way to Margo and Richie’s clasped ones, covering them with his own. It is comforting, despite everything.

If he cannot have his mother, Richie thinks that having his siblings isn’t so bad either.

Wentworth greets his kids when they come home from school with a simple hand raise from his paperwork, which is spread on their dining table. Margo greets their father with a kiss on the cheek and a barrage of questions about the work he’s doing. Richie isn’t interested, and plans on leaving the room and heading to their bedroom as quickly as he possibly can, but their conversation catches his ears while he is digging through the empty fridge.

“-nd Richie will have to go grocery shopping while Mike and I are out of town.”

Just catching the end of the conversation, Richie can already tell that Margo is livid. “That’s not fair! Why does Mike get to go?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mike retorts.

“Settle down, Margaret-”

“That’s not my name-”

“-Michael is coming and that’s final.”

Margo growls something incomprehensible and storms out of the room, and down the hallway a few seconds later, slams their bedroom door shut. Mike’s chair screeches against the floor as he stands and leaves, following Margo out of the room. Richie never understood why those two got along better than they did with Richie, except for when it came to their dad. They were always vying to be the favorite, leaving Richie behind in the dust.

Standing alone with his father, Richie looks awkwardly over at him. Went looks exasperated, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his forehead. A million things cross Richie’s mind to ask, but he settles on, “You got a grocery list?”

Wentworth digs through the stacks of paper for a few seconds, looking for a spare piece to scribble down everything they need. He finds it and does so, passing it to Richie, along with a twenty dollar bill. “That should be enough.”

Taking it, Richie nods. “Thanks.” He spares one last look over his shoulder at his father, who has returned to his work, then leaves the kitchen. “Good talk.”

Richie finds Mike standing in the hallway outside of their bedroom, hitting his fist against the door and twisting the knob every few knocks. “Margo you’re being completely unreasonable-”

“Just leave her alone, Mikey, clearly she’s upset that she’s not the favorite today.”

Mike shoots Richie a devilish glare, shaking the knob as he does so. “Just because you and dad don’t get along doesn’t mean he plays favorites.”

“Sophie’s Choice, that’s all I’m saying.” Richie gets close to his brother, talking his own turn at hitting the door. “Are you coming with me to the store or not?”

Neither boy expects it to swing open, but it does, revealing their sister. Margo wipes at her face, shoving past the two of them and out of the apartment, presumably to Richie’s car. The brothers sigh at the same time, then share a look.

“See you, Rich.”

“Bye Mike.” Richie follows his sister out of the apartment, ignoring whatever Mike says after him.

Eddie is visibly uncomfortable in the passenger seat of Richie’s car, having offered the spot several times to Mike and Margo, who sit in the back and chat idly with him. He fidgets with his seatbelt and stares nervously out the window as Richie pulls out of the school parking lot, as if waiting for something terrible to happen.

“I told you I’m a good driver, Eds.”

Margo and Mike both laugh as Eddie whips around to look at Richie, his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide. “Don’t call me that.”

Richie pays extra attention to his driving for once, stopping for longer than necessary at stop signs, staying below the speed limit, and keeping his eyes on the road instead of looking at Eddie, like how he wants. Out of the corner of his eye, Richie can see Eddie’s grip on the door loosen with every passing second.

When they finally pull into their apartment parking lot, Eddie looks up at the building. “My friend Beverly lives here.”

Richie parks and grins wildly. He and Beverly have PE together, and smoke outside during lunch together. “Miss Marsh! I love that girl.”

Margo pats Eddie’s shoulder, signaling that he needs to get out so that her and Mike can get out of the car. Eddie does so, opening the door and stepping onto the sidewalk next to the car.

“Bye, Eddie!” Margo says cheerily after she and Mike have both gotten out.

“Have fun on your date.” Mike winks at Eddie, then heads inside with Margo. Richie can feel his cheeks turn pink, and worries briefly that Eddie is offended.

He doesn’t appear to be as he slips back inside. Richie reaches towards the seats in the back for his cassettes, hiding his pink face for a few moments, looking for one in particular.

“Aha!” He cheers, emerging and holding up his most prized tape.

Eddie takes a second to read it, then smiles. “Bridge over troubled water.”

Richie shifts in his seat and puts it into the player, backing out of the spot as the car processes the tape. “I love this album,” he says, not mentioning that is was a gift from his mother, the day that they moved. “I could listen to it forever.”

Art Garfunkel starts singing the opening verse and Richie hums along, stopping at the turn out of the lot and awaiting Eddie’s directions.

He takes a few seconds to think, then says, “turn left and head down Mile Hill. We can go to the quarry.”

“Sounds exciting,” mutters Richie to himself, doing as he is told. He continues humming, and feels Eddie’s eyes on him.

They pass by all of the stores and enter a more residential area that Richie hasn’t been down before.

“Down that street is 29 Neibolt. It’s totally haunted.” Richie can hear the shakiness in Eddie’s voice.

“Why do people say it's haunted?” Richie glances over at the passenger seat and hopes that Eddie doesn’t chew him out for it. But Eddie isn’t even looking over at him, just out the window.

“When we were like, thirteen, a bunch of us went in there.”

“No shit!”

“Yes shit,” Eddie grimaces, but there is almost a laugh in his voice. They are well past Neibolt street, yet he still seems shaken. “We got seperated and I fell through the floor and broke my arm.”

In an attempt to cheer him up, Richie jokes, “what, did a ghost push ya?”

Eddie just huffs. “No, dumbass.” Finally, he looks back over at Richie. Averting his gaze back to the road, Richie tries to keep his eyes on the road. “It just seems like… the house was purposefully separating us, you know?”

He doesn’t.

“There’s this old science facility in my hometown that everyone says is haunted. Says some crazy experiments on kids and shit went down in there.” Richie glances once more over at Eddie, who is still looking at him. “I was never brave enough to go in. I’ve heard stories from people who did, though.”

Eddie raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Really.”

“Mhm. Mike and his friends went in one time. Found a bunch of old records of these freaky kids-“

“This is so fake.”

“It’s not!” Richie defends, laughing, but is sure that it is. He wouldn’t put it past Dustin or Lucas to pull that kind of shit and swear it's true until the day they die.

Quiet befalls them, after a few moments of laughter. “There’s a dirt road you turn onto, up here.”

The ride gets bumpy as Richie does so, then stops once Eddie tells him to. The duo get out of the car, and the sound of shutting the doors echoes through the trees that now surround them. Richie notices a cliffside, and heads over to it, raising his eyebrows. “You trying to kill me, Spaghetti?”

“If you keep calling me that, I will.” Eddie joins Richie at the edge. “The Losers always come here during the summer to jump off or play loogie. Usually I just go down to that rocky area down there and wait for the others-“

Richie holds his hand up. “Wait, why don’t you ever jump?”

Crossing his arms across his chest protectively, Eddie takes a few steps away from the cliffside. “Because I don’t have a death wish.”

“You’ve never jumped?”

Eddie shakes his head no.

Richie claps his hands together, making Eddie jump. “Well, today is your lucky day, Spaghetti. We are jumping off this cliff right now.”

A beat of silence. Then, “you’re fucking kidding me. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” Eddie turns and starts to walk back to Richie’s car, but stops when Richie reaches out and grabs his hand. Richie notices that it is shaking.

“Come on, Spaghetti-Man. It’ll be like a baptism. New school year, new us!” Richie lets go of Eddie’s hand, reluctantly, and shrugs off the jean jacket he was wearing and starts to kick off his shoes.

Eddie turns slowly, staring at Richie has he removes each layer of his clothing. After the shoes, Richie removes the belt from his acid wash jeans, then his yellow t-shirt. As his hands go to the hem of his jeans, Eddie speaks once more.

“If I jump will you stop calling me those shitty nicknames?” Richie notices that Eddie is looking anywhere other than him. “And don’t tell the others?”

“Sure,” Richie promises, almost letting Eds slip out of his mouth. He holds out a pinkie, keeping his other hand at his jeans.

Rolling his eyes, Eddie steps forward and slips his pinkie into Richie’s. “I hate you.”

Richie grins and pumps their hands up and down once, sealing the deal. “Nah that’s wha I’m talkin abaht!”

Eddie pulls his hand away, his shaking hands going to the sleeves of his t-shirt around his wrists. “That accent is awful.”

Sensing that Eddie is uncomfortable, Richie turns to face he edge and swiftly takes off his jeans, leaving him in just his plaid boxers. He places his hands on his hips and stares out at the glittering water fondly. It is a bright bluish-green underneath the sun, and perfectly flat, like glass.

Eddie materializes next to Richie after a minute, his chest and legs bare.

Richie scans Eddie’s small body. His skin is slightly tan, like he spent the last few weeks of summer outside, and his shoulders and arms covered in freckles that his face lack. His arms are crossed tightly to his chest, hiding the scars that Richie knows are there. They don’t cover the ones on the thighs, which are white against his sun-kissed skin.

“Staring is rude,” Eddie snaps, making Richie avert his eyes.

Richie leans over the side, his cheeks pink and mirroring Eddie’s. “Briefs; I approve.”

“I fucking hate you.” Eddie reidderates, stepping backwards and going towards his clothes.

“Nuh-uh! You promised.” Richie grabs Eddie’s wrist, making him wince, tugging him back to his side. “We can jump together.”

Their brown eyes connect, something passing between them. Eddie sighs, looking away. “Okay. Whatever.” Clasping their hands together tightly, Richie pulls them up to the edge, their toes hanging over. Eddie’s palms are shaky and sweating. “You aren’t going to take your glasses off?”

Richie shrugs, taking a deep breath. “You ready?”

“No,” Eddie says, his voice dripping honesty and fear. “You?”

The distant sound of a highway and birds chipping fills Richie’s ears, but Eddie’s voice comforts him. “No,” he admits. “This isn’t even the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

“I believe that.” Richie feels Eddie squeeze his hand. “I broke my fucking arm falling through the floor.”

A laugh bubbles in Richie’s chest. “On the count of three.”

Eddie nods. “One…”

“Two.”

There is a beat as Eddie hesitates on three. Then a yelp as Richie is tugging them both off the side. Richie doesn’t even get to think about how funny Eddie’s scream is before they’re both hitting the water, shattering the glass surface. It’s cold, Richie realizes first, then, Eddie’s hand is gone. Richie breaks the surface, pushing his hair away from his face and his glasses up onto the top of his head. Eddie is already up, gasping for breath. “You fucking suck, Tozier.”

“Your mom wasn’t complaining about it-”

Richie chokes and sputters on the water that Eddie splashes at him. “I can’t believe you made me do this, I could’ve died-”

“But we didn’t!” Richie says cheerily, staring at the blur that he knows is Eddie. “You jumped off a cliff with someone you’ve talked to a grand total of once before today!” Richie floats on his back, staring up at the shifting clouds.

Eddie’s hands push at Richie’s side, moving them towards the shore where The Losers usually hang out so that they can actually stand up. Richie lets him, closing his eyes and the corner of his mouth turning up. “Can’t keep your hands off of me, huh, Eds?”

“Didn’t you promise to stop calling me that?”

Richie moves to place his feet on the ground now that they can, keeping most of his torso under the water, just his head and shoulders above the surface. He stares up at Eddie, who is still a blur, but Richie thinks he might be almost smiling. “What would you rather I call you? Baby? Dear? Sweatpea, darling, loverboy-”

“Richie, can I tell you something?”

Richie stops his teasing, furrowing his brows. He nods his head aggressively so his glasses fall off his head and down onto the tip of his nose. Eddie pushes them up before Richie can even get to it, then drops his hands so that they rest on Richie’s warm shoulders. “Yeah, of course you can.”

Eddie crouches down so that he is at eye level and is also mostly underwater, keeping his hands on Richie’s shoulders. Richie expects some sort of confession, like about the scars on his arms and thighs or why everyone at school seems to treat Eddie like he’s a glass house just waiting for a rock to be thrown.

The breath that Eddie sucks in is shaky. “It’s my birthday.”

He has to laugh. Richie leans forward a little, not believing that Eddie made a big deal out of that. “Okay? Happy birthday?”

Eddie is moving away before Richie can truly appreciate how close they are. “I just... It feels like a big deal. For some reason.”

Richie can read between the lines, he isn’t stupid. Eddie is telling him, I didn’t expect to make it this far. Eddie is still under the water, but if Richie squints, he can see the lines that Eddie is trying hard to hide from him. Richie has heard some of the things people say about Eddie- but most of them contradict each other. He won’t pry, not yet. Today, he will just support his new friend and call him stupid nicknames.

“Every birthday is a big deal to Richie Tozier!” Richie exclaims, moving to toss an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and begins to sing a terrible rendition of For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow, making Eddie laugh but not shove him away.

They go underneath the water once more, together, and this time, they do not separate.

#reddie #reddiefanfic #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it 2017 #it (2017)#shut up mary

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jinwoowoohoo · 6 years

Text

Astro in DC~

Hello! I’m here to give you my complete fanmeet experience to the best of my abilities~ I’m going to preface this by saying I’d been feeling ill the past few days, so it took a lot of my willpower just to keep myself standing for a fair chunk of the show…. Which means 1) my memory is a bit fuzzy and 2) I just did not have the brainpower to focus on every member, so this is a very Jinwoo-biased fan account (not that any of you should be surprised tbh).

P.S. I’m sorry I wrote a literal novel;;; this is largely to help me remember it all both now and in the future, but I also wanted to share!

(rip mobile users someone please teach how to actually make readmores work on mobile edit: never mind my iPad did the thing! Bless)

The Beginning:

The girl who did the cover dance absolutely rocked it, and the crowd had no problem hyping her up - she performed Again and we were fanchanting and everything~ And then when she finished the lights dimmed, she left the stage, and we all waited very anxiously for the real show to begin.

Now. I knew going in that Jinjin would be the first on stage with his dance solo, but that did not stop him from still completely taking my breath away (like I actually gasped and put my hand on my chest/over my mouth). It was the moment of realization that he’s real! And really here!! And he’s doing his thing!!! Like I’m still processing the feeling of seeing him in real 3D space, seeing his body as a real human body, with depth and warmth, not just a flat image (I hope that doesn’t sound weird??). And man did he kill that solo. I always love when he gets a chance to bust out his house dance skills 💕 (I should actually check cams from the other shows to see if he was doing a set choreo or going freestyle 👀). And then, of course the Rocko man himself came out, and proceeded to just destroy us all (and booooy was the crowd Rocky biased - the screams for him were REAL yall).

Once that section was done the rest of the boys came out and!! Myungjun was in just a black tshirt and jeans!!! How dare he attack me so soon into the show!!!

They performed Again which was stellar as always, and then they segwayed into Baby. And things got LIT. Their demeanor changed, the crowd energy changed, it was just. Exactly the mood you’d expect from Baby~ The boys got really smiley and just looked like they were so happy! Just rainbows and sparkles all around haha

After baby finished they did their intros! Jinjin went first and of course intro’d himself as the leader and main visual. Eunwoo said a good bit in English but so help me if I remember any of it 😰 Moonbin gave his whole intro in English too! And you can seriously tell how hard he worked to be able to do so!! Like he really said a lot and you could tell he was thinking carefully as he was talking, I was so proud of him :’) He’s adorable, his voice is adorable, hearing him say ‘puppycat’ is deadly 😂 Mj introduced himself as the happy virus, and I unfortunately don’t remember the rest of his or Socky’s intros :( After intros, the staff brought out chairs and they sat down for q&a time!

Q&A:

If you had drawn a line directly from my seat to the stage, that’s where Jinwoo was sitting :“”“”“”) So basically I had the perfect view of him (even if I was like 12 rows back). I cant remember everything that was asked/said (im sure there are 100 fancams anyway) but some highlights include:

♥ The first question was who pays for meals the most, and they did the 3-2-1-point thing; everyone pointed to Jinjin. Then they said some stuff I couldn’t hear/catch, but it ended with Jinwoo saying something (in English!) about no longer having access to his mom’s card 😂😂

♥ Someone asking Bin his workout routine, and him genuinely telling us lmaoo And every time he would name an activity (running, weights, etc) Jinwoo would be in his chair just miming it out like a NERD 😂 (Jinwoo was just generally very animated and interactive, and he was smiling soooo muuuuuch you could just tell he was in a good mood!!)

♥ Someone asked what the members needed to have when traveling. Rocky said mask pack, Jinwoo said Arohas love 😑, I didn’t catch what Eunwoo said??, I think Bin also said Arohas love, MJ said contacts and something else genuine, and Sanha said?? He brought Jinjin??? And Jinwoo was just like ???????????????? What are you talking about 😂😂

♥ Someone asked who’s the best cook/who cooks the most and what do they make. Immediately Sanha just goes “not me!” and everyone laughs. They said they really don’t cook much at home, but Bin likes to cook and wants to make food for the upcoming birthdays! :’)

After the q&a they introduced/moved into Run which, again, Jinwoo’s position was DIRECTLY in line with my seat for a lot of the song; I was #blessed. Also at the very beginning when they were passing the mic down the line, Eunwoo teased Sanha and almost didn’t give him the mic in time - the baby got a little flustered 😝 (P.S. Sanha is the most adorable and pure being on this earth, and I’m pretty sure his giggle could cure cancer. I still can’t believe I got to hear it in person.)

So Run was good, the crowd def didn’t know the lyrics as well as the other songs but the spirit was still there! And then then segwayed into Crazy Sexy Cool and for some?? reason??? I have very little memory of it…. I do remember the fanchants being STRONG though, esp for rapline haha

After that I think they took a short break while the MC did his thing, then they brought the boys back out for gaaaaame tiiiiiiime 😀😀

Game Time:

The first game was the mystery box one, and the members were divided by staff into Hyung line vs Maknae line. The grandpas being on the same team were, of course, being goofy and extra af lmao (And Eunwoo just stood there laughing as usual). They r/p/scissored to see which team would go first - it was Jinwoo vs Rocky, and Jinwoo decided to be Extra™ and do it by turning away from Rocko and sticking his arm out behind him. Rocky won, and I’m like 99% sure he totally cheated and waited a split second for Jinjin to throw his hand before showing his own….

But either way, Maknae team won so they made Hyung team go first. Before they brought out the box there was some hyping/smack talk~ Eunwoo said (approximately) in English “Just one thing: we win >:)” and then our precious child Sanha goes, also in English (approximately) “Just one thing: You lose!” It was seriously the cutest ah my heart 💖 So they brought out the box, and the thing they had to guess was…. Raw egg 😫😫 Maknae team peeked at what they’d have to guess and omg their reactions 😂😂 They were thoroughly grossed out and excited for the other team to suffer lmaoo

So Jinjin went first, and he took off his jacket and rolled up one shirt sleeve and he;;;; has a very nice forearm;;;;; You should find fancams for their reactions tbh bc there’s no way I could do them justice, but watching Jinwoo’s face distort in discomfort and hearing him let out a small scream was sure something 😂😂 Because it was raw egg it was suuuper wet and drippy and gross and you could seeee it dripping off his fingers when he took his hand out of the box 😣😝 (the staff had towels at the ready, don’t worry). He removed his hand from the box, wiped it off a bit, and then smelled his fingers and as soon as he did that we was like “…aaaaaaaaah 😈😈” so he probably figured it out right away. Mj was next and of course he had to be a little extra when putting his hand in, walking his fingers around the opening a bit before diving in. And then as soon as he touched it he just full on screamed 😂😂 And he kept screaming and making weird noises for a bit, then he got a little used to it and was like “ooooh 😳” I can’t remember anything he might have done after that 😩 Eunwoo went third and was def the most anxious. He stuck his hand in and I can’t remember if he even touched it or not before he freaked and pulled his hand back out 😂 Again that’s really all I can remember from him 😢 Then they had 15 seconds to collude as a team and settle on their answer, and they guessed it right!! Also once the crowd heard what it was they had touched we were all just like “eeeeww oh noooooooo!! DD: ” And then. And then the Extra Bros™ Myungjin start acting like chickens =w=;;;; There were fair amounts of butt wiggling. (MJ started it of course).

So! They guessed right! Which meant if Maknae line couldn’t get theirs then they would have to do a punishment. So. The staff brought out the next item, which was white and round and squishy. Hyung line snuck a peek and they were just standing there poking it 😂😂 And then freaking troll Eunwoo said to the other team “guys be careful! Its moving! Its alive!!!” And Myungjin went along with him on it lmao Maknae line didn’t really know what to make make of them lol

Rocky went first, and he really Did Not want to stick his hand in there - you could just see the classic suffering smile on his face. He definitely yelled several times when touching it (not a scream, but a very Rocky yell haha) Once he was done he seemed to have an idea what it was, and started whispering in Bins ear. Sanha went second and he was… well…. Sanha lol Very squirmy, very screamy. Bin went last (I think, he and Sanha might be switched aaah I’m so sorry), and I don’t really remember Bins reaction while his hand was in the box at all. I do know that he was like full-on squeezing the thing and the MC was losin it at him, and after he took his hand out he sniffed his hand and then licked it =w=;;;;; and all of us were just like Bin no!!!! Then he went back and there was more Moonrock ear whispering.

Once all 3 went they had their 15 seconds to decide, and I didn’t understand what the answer they gave was (it was hard to hear Rocky and the MC didn’t repeat what he said for us) buuuuuuuut it was wrong! The right answer was a ball of mozzarella cheese~~ Hyung line of course started taunting them for losing (mostly led by Jinwoo) and even got the whole crowd involved 😂😂 And thus the losing team was introduced to their punishment: they had to spell their names. With their butts. Sexily. (And I was like you’re going to make the Maknaes do what?????). So Bin went first and he pretty much died of embarrassment one letter in, but he powered through! Rocko was next and he was also internally dying (and externally yelling 😂) but the dancer part of him took over and booooy does he have balance and body control. I’m pretty sure after he was done he ran and hugged Bin to deal with his embarrassment and the crowd LOVED that 😂 Sanha went last and the MC had to torture him!! And make him do his full name!! 😭😭 Of course it was more awkwardly cute than sexy, and him saying the letters as he went was unbearably adorable. (I honestly covered my eyes/turned away to laugh/cringe for most of the punishments =w=)

The next game was guessing the song based on choreo. They split up into teams by randomly selecting colored papers and somehow!! Binu still managed to be a team!! How many times has this happened now????? The other teams were JinHa and RaMyung. They were deciding who should go first and Bin said the “maknae” team should go first (referring to RaMyung) and literally everyone was just like what are you on about????? 😂😂 Fake Maknae MJ strikes again! They r/p/scissored for team order again and I’m like 80% sure Rocko cheated again 👀👀👀 But either way the order ended up as Binu, RaMyung, JinHa. Binu actually did really well!!! with Bin dancing and Eunwoo guessing, but I have to shame Woo for not getting Sistar’s Shake It like boy come on! I think they got 6+ right? RaMyung were…. less successful, but it was honestly more on Rocky??? I think he just like panicked and couldn’t straighten out in his brain what he should actually be doing with his body, then the ones he did actually do the dance to MJ was pretty hit or miss 😂 But they still got a few!! Aaaand then came JinHa… For some reason they decided Sanha should do the dancing, and well…. He passed like every other one, and I don’t think Jinwoo was able to guess a single one 😂 It was just a lot of panic and failure lmaoo So needless to say their team came dead last.

It was decided both losing teams had to do punishment, and that punishment was 40 pushups per team. However the MC said they could divide that any way they wanted, for example Sanha could do 1 and Jinjin 39. JinHa team went first, and Sanha volunteered to do his share first. And the kid got down, wiggled into position, did 1 pushup, and stood back up like “all done!” 😂😂 We got to witness Jinwoo’s legendary ‘possibly contemplating murder rn’ face 😂😂 But then Sanha got back down - and as he was going of course Jinwoo was starting to take his jacket off to prepare for his half but then we reached 20… And 21… And 22… And Sanha kept going all the way to 40! So Jinwoo didn’t have to do anything, and he seemed really pleased :) and was like *shrugs* alright then and put his jacket back on. Mj went first for RaMyung team and bless his heart he did the whole 40 too so Rocky didn’t have to.

The final game was random play dance and there wasn’t much to it really, they just ran through the point parts of 2 other group songs (BTS Dope and Apink No No No). They all did fine for BTS of course, but Binnie KILLED it with Apink lmao to the point where the rest of the members kinda stopped and just let him shine. The final song was one from Dream Part 01 but I cannot for the life of me remember which one it was 😩 I want to say Dream Night or Dreams Come True?? (Watch it be neither akdbsj)

And that was the end of game time! I think they maybe took another quick break, but maybe not idk;;; and then we segwayed into Breathless!

And boy let me tell you, Aroha get PUMPED for Breathless. Confession too tbh, like I don’t remember much from CSC but I definitely remember people just going hardcore with love for these songs haha And I’m pretty sure the boys could feel the passion for them too~ Also during Breathless when Moonrock have their dance bit and then it switches to a rapline dance bit, Jinwoo’s shirt came up a little bit and idk why that suddenly affected me so much but I literally like gasped said “oh my god” out loud 😳

They then moved into the final ment, which worried me at first as I thought maybe we had to skip You & Me due to time or something, but nope they just did the ment first!

Final Ment:

I don’t really remember much of what they said, but I do know Eunwoo said that when he was younger DC was one of the cities he dreamed of visiting, and that it was a beautiful place~ And I think it was MJ(??) who said DC Aroha are the best of the 3 shows so far of course~ 😂😂 Omg and Rocky, when he was in the middle of his ment (I think that’s when this happened anyway aksbaj my awful memory) he just stops like mid-thought and goes “I can’t see” and does the most epic hair flip to get the hair out of his eyes, then just stands there for like 10 seconds basking in his new-found vision. It was so majestic and unexpected I doubled over laughing 😂😂😂 They also said they know it’s hard for us to see them and they were grateful to us for waiting for them, and they would be waiting for us in Korea as well~

For You & Me they first asked if everyone knew the choreo, and enough people said yes that the were like “alright then, show us what you got!” and the music for the chorus played and we all did our darn best to remember the choreo (I failed, I didn’t refresh my memory beforehand and couldn’t remember it well enough =w=;;;) They seemed genuinely impressed by how we did overall though! After that they had Sanha teach us how it goes cutely, and yeah, it’s exactly what you’d expect from that sentence 😂 Once everyone had learned from Captain Sanha and practiced a couple times, they started the song for real! And I already posted about it, but it really is softest, warmest, sweetest experience. To have everyone in the crowd doing choreo and interacting with their neighbors whether they knew them or not it just, i don’t even know how to describe it, it’s just nice?? And lots of people were giggling and smiling, including my right-side partner, which was so fun to turn to each time 💕💕 I definitely got a little emotional during it (but I didn’t cry! Go me!) Edit: Also I forgot but when Jinwoo started to move to the front to do his rap, MJ pushed him out of the way and did it instead! Jinwoo was hyping him up and laughing his butt off 😂😂 And MJ genuinely did really well

After Y&M they gave their official goodbye and left the stage, and almost immediately the crowd started chanting “encore!” and as expected, after a bit they came back out~

Encore:

Our encore was I’ll Be There and they were throwing out bags of gummy bears. Also for the encore a TON of people rushed the stage, including like everyone to the front and right of me. Soooooooo~ When Jinwoo threw some into our area, there was nobody but me to retrieve it :’) (I maaay have accidentally body slammed the seat in front of me trying to catch it 😅) In my wildest dreams he threw it to me on purpose, but in reality he never actually looked at me so I doubt it (it’s nice to have dreams though 😂) Some people who were up at the stage got some great footage of Jinwoo getting right up into their camera’s business so I look forward to seeing those 👀👀

Once they ran out of candy and the song ended it was officially time for them to say goodbye 😢 They gave their last “Wanna be your ☆” and took a bow, then headed backstage to chill until perks began!

Hi-Touch:

The staff decided to do hi touch first, and since I had both perks it took me a hot minute to realize I needed to get in line too (since I was sitting in P1 and nobody around me was moving lol) The girls I was in line with were very cute and nice - one of them was newer to the boys so she had a hard time telling Myungjin apart haha We tried to help her get them straight~ The line moved really quickly and when it was my turn my brain switched to auto pilot……

Jinwoo was first bc apparently the universe likes to see me Suffer. I don’t even remember what he looked like, all I remember is him seeing my shirt and saying “aaaah, slow~ 😉” and all I could get out was a “yes!” 😂😵😵😭😭 Sanha was next in line but my brain was so busy processing the first interaction I have absolutely 0 memory of him, if I even managed to hi five him at all akdbaj like I completely just blacked out for a few seconds. Eunwoo was third and I regained myself enough to actually start looking at their faces, but I still couldn’t make my own sentences, so instead I started parroting what I was hearing from the members which was “thank you” - which is a fine thing to say and I wholly meant it, but I do wish I could have said a bit more… Bin was third and I also Do Not remember him, like, at all 😣 I’m so disappointed, he deserves better. But then came Rocky. There really must be something just inexplicably striking about Rocky, because I remember him pretty damn clearly all things considered! He had his big Rocko smile and it was strikingly beautiful 😪 Finally was MJ and I remember seeing him and thinking “I have to make sure he knows I genuinely love and support him!!” So I looked really hard at his face, but my brain was still *static noises* so all I could say was thank you :“) I tried to really sincerely say it and show him with my eyes that I meant it though!! And then it was over, and I took a big ole breath as I made my way down off the stage and back to my seat. And thus began the waiting for group pic. (The girl I had been sitting next to laughed when I came back 😂😂

Group Photo:

The line for P2 was pretty much a free for all, but the line for P1 was specifically done row by row. I was at the back of Orchestra Center, so I wasn’t first by any means but I was probably in the first 1/3. The setup was there were 8 chairs, and the boys stood behind the chairs. They were all doing different poses and switching it up for each pic while I was waiting in line (I’ve been told staff made them stop later on which is dumb af if you ask me like people are supposed??? To pose for pics??? Also have you met Astro aksbaj but ANYWAY).

Jinwoo was last this time, which meant if I wanted to be in front of him I had to be #1 in the group of 8. Well, they counted us, and I was #7. The girl behind me was 8, and her friend ended up being #1 of the next batch. The two clearly wanted to go together, and I wanted the #1 spot, so when staff wasn’t looking we quickly switched! And I got to sit directly in front of him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And he of course remembered me from when I did the hi touch like ~10 minutes ago lol I made sure to look at all the members again as I was walking up, esp Sanha since I missed him the first time! And again I’ve got Nothing on Bin (rip 😢), but Rocky’s smile seared itself into my psyche yet again 😂 When I finally walked up to Jinwoo I said “I get to sit by you! :DD” and he was like “yeah!” We sat down (god I wish I had actually clearly looked at his face, I have no memory of it from either interaction 😢😢😢) and I kinda tried to do a hand heart with him but he had other plans and was like “let’s do this instead!” (retrospectively I think maybe the girl behind me was also a Jinwoo stan so he wanted to do something with us both). So he LEANED DOWN BETWEEN US SO HIS FACE WAS SEVERAL INCHES FROM OUR EARS and made finger hearts for the first pics, then he said “cheeeeese!” (or it sounded like that to me anyway) and switched to peace signs for the second. I honestly have no idea what my face was doing the whole time soooo the pics could be fun >w>;; (I WAS JUST FOCUSED ON THE FACT I COULD FEEL HIS PRESENCE/BODY HEAT HOVERING OVER MY SHOULDER AND HIS HANDS WERE RIGHT NEXT TO MINE AKSHAJ). And then we were done! And I think I turned and smiled at him one last time as I was heading off the stage, and I think he smiled back, but who knows!! Certainly not me!!!

And that was that.

I went out into the theater hallway and just….existed for a bit (and yelled into all my chats lol) and more than one fan came out hysterically sobbing :( I think it was a mixture of happy and sad tears, like some people overwhelmed with happiness and others crying cuz they didn’t get the place in line they wanted.

All in all it was an amazing night, and completely worth being absolutely nuts and dropping everything to fly literally halfway across the country to attend. 100/10 would give all my money to these boys again (I mean they already own my heart and wallet anyway)

Also I didn’t know where to fit these tidbits in, but the members overall:

Jinjin - I mentioned it already but he was just a goofy happy boy! So many smiles, so many silly actions. I didn’t think I could love him even more and yet :”)

MJ - He sunshined a number of times but overall seemed really tired, which is COMPLETELY understandable (I really feel like he’s an introvert, and I can imagine how draining an international tour would be) and I just hope he’s feeling ok and was able to enjoy himself!! 😣

Rocky - He was also quite lively and just giving fanservice left and right! I didn’t watch him too much but even then I could see him waving and throwing hearts and smiles to people 💕

Eunwoo - I really didn’t watch him at all but I’ve been told he was also giving out just tons of personal fanservice~

Sanha - My favorite son, he just had us all cooing and giggling the whole night. He really did seem to be in good spirits!

Moonbin - I’m sorry Bin stans….. I’m sorry Bin….. I don’t know why my brain just decided to completely block him out but 😢😢😢 I barely remember anything he said/did besides what I already talked about. His muscles were probably too powerful 😣😣

#astroindc

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its-just-like-the-movies · 7 years

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mother! (17, B-)

Who here can say they knew what they were getting into when they went to see mother!? Maybe you went to see it after it premiered, and after you saw that polarizing responses to it, the mystification and adoration and all of the outright vitriol. The sheer variety of opinions about it is fascinating, and drew a few friends to it, but I went with Tommy the Thursday before its wide release debut, drawn as we were by the savvy marketing. Horror aficionados that we are, we had no idea what the plot could even be but were drawn by the sheer spectacle that the trailers were promising us. Don’t the trailers make it look like a home invasion thriller, where Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer invade the home of this couple living in the middle of nowhere to use them for some satanic ritual? Doesn’t it also look like Javier Bardem may be in on the joke, and that everything seems to be putting Jennifer Lawrence in peril? The Rosemary’s Baby illusions in the marketing certainly give that impression, and I know more than a few people who expected to see Cult Leader Michelle Pfeiffer, going full Ruth Gordon on this nonsense. What we ended up getting is much messier, much weirder, much more abrasive. I’m going to write this out as though you, too, have seen mother!, and are eager for yet another hot take on what this whole thing is an allegory for. Yes, it’s about religion, but how exclusively is it that? How much does Darren Aronofsky and Jennifer Lawrence’s preaching about what their film is about actually matter? It’s amazing that an object this blunt can be so prismatic at the same time. To paraphrase Bardem’s poet, “They all understand it, but each one is interpreting it in their own way”, and that may be the most fascinating thing mother! has going for it. mother! isn’t kind to its characters or its audience, but it’s spontaneous and committed to its own mad rhythm, firmly placing us in the headspace of its central character as she battles against all forms of bullying intruders. mother! is probably the film of 2017 that’s most aggressive to audience sensibilities while also offering a very vicious portrait of that same audience, as well as the figures who make these art objects we’re so ravenous for, and the people who are both idolized and nullified by their support of those figures.

The first thing we see in mother! is a young woman englufed in flames, shedding a single tear, followed by Javier Bardem putting a glass object on a pedestal, and he gleefully watches his house reform as a different young woman solidifies into being with the rest of the house. This scene carries an incredibly different context by the end of the film, but what I admire is how fully we’re experiencing the events of the film at the same pace Lawrence is from the moment she arrives onscreen. Cinematography limits itself completely to the Lawrence character’s POV while editing makes the scenes feel like they’re happening in real time, making cuts to moments even a few seconds away from where we left these characters feel somewhat jarring. You could probably count the number of shots devoid from Lawrence’s perspective on one hand, and they’re all at the beginning and ending of the film. In no time flat we’re firmly in her head, and in even quicker strokes we’re shown a straining marriage that feels as formed from thin air as this house and this woman seem to be.

If the film seems structured to put Lawrence’s character through an increasingly vicious series of confrontations and abuses, I think it’s important to establish that she isn’t exactly some blank, pliant naif. Yes, she’s initally too polite to kick out Harris and Pfeiffer once her hubby invited them to stay without her permission, but Lawrence is frankly too steely not to give this woman some kind of spine. She’s as aware as we are to the fault lines in her marriage, and it’s her silent but unmissable look that eggs Bardem into seeing who this first uninvited guest is. At every moment of this waking nightmare of a plot, Lawrence desperately fights tooth and nail to get a soul on her side, most of all the husband she palpably loves with all her being. We’re not watching ailing Mia Farrow putting up with and excusing her unbearable circumstances until pushed to her absolute limit, until the truth is staring her in the face. We’re watching a woman with much more ballast stuck with equally little agency in a world equally intent on using and abusing her. I didn’t quite believe she built her house, but I sure as shit believed these intruders better get out when she tells them too. She loves her man deeply, but you believe her ultimatums and attempts to flee once everything almost literally goes to hell. The issue here isn’t her own will but the callousness of others, and if we’re going to reduce this character to one thing, let it be her completely refusal to stand idly by while everything is snatched away by intruders when it isn’t willingly given away by her own husband.

Roughly the first two thirds of the film play as a more mundanely unsettling version of what the trailers have been promising. I doubt Ed Harris arrives more than ten minutes into the film’s run time before he starts chumming it up with Bardem. His excuse for stumbling upon them is measly, and we’re as surprised as Lawrence is by her husband’s unusual generosity towards this man. More than that, we’re wounded by his excitement in seeing a real fan and inspiration in this man when Lawrence’s only obvious goal is to help better this schlub. Harris’s character is left immensely thin by design, and I appreciate Harris himself not try to try and grab more of the film than his character necessarily deserves. By design he’s so unknowable to Lawrence and to us, but the real point of him is his relationship with Bardem. The way Bardem sparks to him, acting as though this stranger is the fount of inspiration he’s been looking for in the face of his adoring wife, winds up being an insult in itself. What else has she done beyond fix their house and tend to him however she can?

Michelle Pfeiffer’s arrival is even more bullying, in part because she seems to be the only person to interact with and interrogate Lawrence so directly, and in part because her character is the most enigmatic of the bunch. Tossing out so many questions at Lawrence while changing moods on a dime and very openly inebriated, Pfeiffer’s is in some ways the most personal of the many invasive forces that enter Lawrence’s home. Hers isn’t just the strongest personality but the one that most registers as a person, someone who could exist beyond the clockwork madness of this little yet infinite home. There’s something mournful in her goading of Lawrence into motherhood, and you wonder in that last, enigmatically unsettling close up what Pfeiffer saw in her. Hell, the character suggested such a forceful personality and shrewd awareness of her surroundings I almost wondered if she was somehow outside of the ouroboros narrative engulfing the film and it’s lead characters, her farewell stare packed with the knowledge that, for one reason or another, they’d never see each other again. If she’s meant to be Eve, as so many reviews suggest she is, then it’s a deeply more complicated characterization than I could’ve expected for someone taking on that moniker in such a bluntly Biblical film.

Aronofsky is able to keep throwing his leading lady and the audience for a curve with the sheer scale of the disrespect these home invaders can throw at her. A messy, unclean kitchen and a filled-up ashtray are enough to set us off, never mind the truly unreal spectacle of a mysterious wound on the Harris character’s back and a fleshy, pink, tendriled-and-spiked thing that nearly pops out of a toilet before flying down the pipes, never to be seen again. Still, the waking dream atmosphere the film cultivates so succinctly is even better evoked by the arrival of the couple’s warring sons, and the makeshift wake for one of them only hours later that seems to have an ever-growing string of mourners to set upon and ruin her home. The inevitable fate of an unraised sink generates as much surreal anger and disbelief as the continuous and inexplicable disrespect that occurs whenever Lawrence tries to assert herself in her own home. A couple making out in her bedroom assert they won’t take long and eventually scoff when she says it’s hers; apropos of nothing, that same couple paints part of her house; another man repeatedly tries to get her number and hurls gendered insults when she tells him to go away for about the fifth time; another couple asks which way they should go to get down the stairs after being told to stay on the ground floor. Over and over, until that sink is destroyed, Lawrence is practically an unwanted and ignored presence in her own home. It’s not as though this act of destruction gives her any authority - the whole party flees because of the broken pipes, not because of her - and we’re left with just her and her useless husband to hash things out. Her attempts to stand up for herself are met with the “Life isn’t fair” card, which she hurls back in his face. The next morning, she’s pregnant, and he’s writing his magnum opus.

All of this sets the table for yet in no way prepares us for the absolute onslaught that begins once he publishes his poem nine months later. Looking as though she could give birth at any moment, Lawrence celebrates with a lavish dinner she prepared herself, insisting even now that she take care of him on this special night. Offers to help her are denied and then tentatively accepted, giving him a nothing task he immediately fails to complete as the house is set upon by paparazzi. She pleads for him to come back inside as he cannot help but feed this begging crowd with his presence as people start popping up in their house despite the locked doors and windows meant to stave off the world from entering. She tries to leave, but is barred from exiting as fans literally rip apart every piece of her house that isn’t being converted into an altar for The Poet. “Share, as The Poet says.” cries a woman as she interrupts Lawrence’s call to the police, only to huff at how rude people can be when a young man rips the phone off the wall. The outside world feels infinite as people come to steal whatever they can from the house, wanting a piece of their beloved Poet’s home as proof they met him, with his full permission, and ignoring the wails of his wife that they are not welcome.

From here, things only get worse. A line to receive psalms becomes part of a rave becomes part of a fight as police burst through the windows, shoving Lawrence heaving belly-first into a wall; a once-welcoming figure executes six people and commanding the death of Lawrence before they too are blown up; a policeman is set on fire while segments of the house seem to be taken over by Russian gangsters. The communal murder and cannibalism done to a crucial character leads to the most cathartic stabbings in film history, followed by one of its most ugly beatings, and a plea for forgiveness so pathetic and impossible the entire audience rebelled against it both times I watched it. Absolute destruction by fire is met with an act of complete (re)creation that seems vile and abusive in itself. mother! ends by repeating its first shots with one key change that implies not just impeding repetition, but a kind of actual hell that its protagonists live in and only one actually knows about. The film’s last half hour is somehow even blunter in its religious symbolism than it had previously been, doubling down in its ideological and narrative commitments.

So what does it say about this film that its tactics for evoking these ideas, and all its abuse to both its central character and the audience, have been treated with such a polarized response? I haven’t seen with anyone who was happy they saw it, and my own initial response was sheer anger on behalf of how Lawrence had been treated. I haven’t seen a contemporaneous film be that brutal to a central character or a female character in the ways that mother! is, and even pictures like Elle grant its heroine so much agency, intelligence, and perversity that we at least believe she knows what she’s doing by throwing herself into such murky waters. The whole point of the piece is Lawrence’s lack of agency or authority, the way she’s forced into the role of a spectator as her own life is torn apart. mother! is structured as an escalating torrent of abuse against its lead, not so much until the point where she flees as the point where she starts fighting back with her own scorched earth campaign to match the injustices done to her. Because we’re so crucially in her headspace the whole time, everything she suffers feels like it’s happening to us too. I wonder if audiences would be more or less outraged if the film was outside of her headspace at any point during the film, giving us a chance to breathe even while she keeps trying to endure this shitstorm. Surely mother! would be a less powerful experience if this was allowed, and certainly one that asked less of its audience by not putting them through the ringer. For all the criticism of its brutality, what would it be without this escalation, carried out by these specific techniques? It needs this dreamlike, vicious intimacy between Lawrence and the camera, and putting distance between us and her only seems more abusive if these acts against her are something to be studied rather than something to experience with her.

But what’s it all for? That’s the question everyone is asking and debating and taking for granted. Of course it’s a Biblical allegory, but there’s a strong narrative about the used and abused wives of creative geniuses intertwined with some environmentalist overtones. Take, for instance, that Mother Earth is not actually a personified character in the Bible. Lawrence herself has no actual Biblical equivalent despite the pressure from Aronofsky and Jennifer Lawrence herself that this is an environmentalist allegory embalmed in Old Testament bru-ha-ha. Pardon me for finding the urging by the creators that no, our story is only about this to be wanting, and a little dull. Maybe the narrative I’m choosing to latch on to is simply the one I’m most personally fascinated by, even more so on a metatextual sense, but if mother! gives us anything it’s a pretty scabrous story about the ways women are revered as art objects by their husbands while simultaneous denied the rights to do or be anything that cannot serve him. Bardem values her love, but only seems to care about her in moments where she threatens their established status quo and exert more of her will than he can take care of. “You never loved me. You just loved how much I loved you.” spits Lawrence through tears and oil and fire at Bardem, giving as succinct and powerful a summary of the film’s message as a later speech about the roles of Life and Hope, if not more so. The problem in their marriage isn’t that she wasn’t enough, it’s that she was more than this windbag could handle or take care of.

“God is a gaslighting husband” reads the headline of one review of mother!, and that’s about the best way to sum up Bardem’s talented poet and worthless husband. Of all the characters, few though there may be, Bardem’s is the most blatantly allegorical in construction and execution. All this man has is the love of a wife he neglects, without whom the audience would have no reason to believe him a great artist. Still, even in writing this review Bardem has been the least compelling part of the film for me to try and get a grip on. The swarms of all-consuming fans, in some ways completely following his words while utterly polluting them in others, feel like a more captivating subject than he himself does. It’s not as though Lawrence’s efforts to keep him don’t feel worthwhile, but her devotion to him is simply the best thing going for him, from an audience point of view. Bardem is God, is a shitstain of a husband, is a paragon of our worst, most ravenous instincts towards celebrity, and yet these are perhaps the least arguable aspects of the film to discuss. By design he is thinly sketched, vaguely defined and impossibly finite in his narrative and symbolic value compared to everyone else, an odd combination that makes me surprised I found this much to say about him.

What does it say about Aronofsky that he wrote a film about an artist neglecting his wife for ravenous idolaters, starring an actor his exact age and an actress he began dating during filming? What does Rachel Weisz, Aronofsky’s ex-wife, think of a film that ends with this defiant wife being literally replaced by someone who appears to be even younger? What are we supposed to think about this, given that the film’s intro sequence contextualizes everything we’ve seen as not being the first time this has all happened? Who do we think suffers worse in this Purgatory, the man who fruitlessly forces himself through this cycle again and again, or the partner who never remembers it, and experiences each fresh hell as though it’s the first time? There’s no reading of mother! that isn’t deeply cynical towards its creators and the audience consuming it, that doesn’t amplify the idea that hell is other people and their worst, least considerate intentions. It can coexist as what its creators hope for as well as every interpretation of itself on the internet. I’ve heard nothing but vitriol directed at it from friends and a surprising about of split opinions online, all of which feel like proper responses to all the provocation they’ve witnessed. One friend trashed the film as utterly empty in its escalating violence and didn’t think any of it was plausible; a classmate seemed to take the religious allegory as proof in and of itself the film had something meaningful to say; a few friends were just traumatized by the imagery; Tommy immediately bought a 4Loco and cigarettes, raging against the film all night. I joined in, but stood up for the sound design and technically proficient aspects of the film, for Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance, and the wronged wife scenario. If anything, talking about it out loud has made me more sympathetic to it, so much so that I saw it again with our squad while Tommy got plastered, bragging to our disappointed crew that he made the better choice. Tommy conceded my points and positive aspects but still found the whole thing too vile to root for in any capacity, and would be very happy if the film got no Oscar nominations the morning of. I sincerely doubt that happening, even as I plan on throwing a bouquet at whichever genius was in charge of sound editing at the very least. On all levels mother! is a polarizing and divisive beast, very intentionally so. Nothing has fascinated me more than individual reactions to it, and even if reviews suggest a film you don’t have the stomach for I urge you to go. Yes, this is an unpleasant, difficult film to sit through. People left in both my audiences. Plenty of people hate it with a passion, and plenty consider it Aronofsky’s masterpiece. But no film begs you to take something, anything of value from it like this one. Examine it yourself, test your mettle. See what you’re willing to look up with, and what you can find in the tale of an ignorant man and a neglected woman. Maybe it’s about God, or Earth, or Women and Men, or all of the above. Go for yourself. mother! gives and it gives and it gives and it gives, with something standing defiantly the more viscerally it shoves its beating heart at the audience. It’s an ordeal, but even if it’s one you get nothing out of, it’s still a commanding, singular presence in a way “better” movies can’t compete with.

#mother!#my posts #my reviews #2017 #jennifer lawrence #michelle pfeiffer #ed harris #javier bardem #darren aronofsky

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thursdayplaid · 7 years

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Narrow Line Chapter 12

Edited by Caroline who helped as best she could. Some chapters I write and I high five myself - which admittedly is just clapping - but some I’m unsure of when they’re done. So with that grand introduction! Also this chapter is absolutely massive. So. Sorry?

“Well, that was dramatic,” Greg said. If the fortress house and the posh art hadn’t been enough of a hint. The whole setup felt very BBC. All drama and swelling music. He seemed to have taken the little confrontation well, but then Greg felt like he had taken the whole weird other universe pretty well as a whole. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to be too bothered by the situation last night. If they were there for more than a week he’d have a break down. Until then there was no point in panicking when he could be paying attention.

That show of force aside, he liked Bad Davey, liked something about him. Or maybe just felt sympathetic to him somehow. For one thing the kid looked like he’d just gotten over a ten day flu, for another he had the prickly vulnerability Greg had gotten used to in the Holmes brothers ages ago. David sat down at the table again, his hands tight on the chair arms, too tightly buttoned up to flop back down like a teenager. Sherlock looked pale, like a man pushed to the very, very edge of things. That did bother Greg.

Greg still felt like he was floating a bit, had ever since last night, he had put some things together himself. He might be a low hanging fruit, but he was a regular golden plum.

Despite what Sherlock said, Greg wasn't a DI for nothing. He might miss the sort of things Sherlock stitched together a mystery with, but could still read a room, still could pick things up with a mixture of experience and opening his eyes.

“That’s the only language the idiot knows. Drama,” David’s face seemed to sharpen up into something about twenty years older. “Did he ramble on about our tragic backstories while reclined on a settee with a handkerchief clutched to his bosom?”

“Something like that,” Sherlock said, but he looked like he had to work at it. That was troubling.

The door to the dining room popped open and in marched Timothy Dimmock. Greg had tried to talk to him last night, but the man hid behind that Irene Adler. That woman took special pleasure in her cheek, and under that had the sort of protective streak that could teach a mother bear a thing or two.

“David,” Tim said. The affectionate exasperation in his voice informed Greg all about the relationship between the two of them. Next the man would be telling Davey to eat his fruit and veg.

“Greetings and felicitations, Auntie. I haven’t even killed anyone yet.”

A giant dog bound into the room, its white ears flapping. It tumbled over to John who half stood to block its way to Mary. It pressed its face against John’s chest and huffed.

“H-Hey.”

It let out a high whine.

“Wrong John, sweetheart,” Tim said, patting his thigh. The dog made that tick of movement that trained animals had and trotted over.

“Hello again,” John tried, but Tim just flinched, his shoulder lifting up almost to his ear.

“Are the Nortons still out?” Davey asked, interrupting anything more John might try to say. The whole interaction between John and Tim made Greg sit up and pay attention if only because of how hard Tim was trying not to have an interaction with John.

“You know them,” Tim answered. His hand curled around the head of his giant dog, rubbing its ears while it stared up at him with adoring eyes. “Real Sherlock wants to lead a field trip with the members of the family whose faces won’t get us all killed. Everyone else gets to stay here and eat cake with me.”

That was interesting. Greg would have bet Tim would rather have been on the moon.

“What if we don’t want to eat cake with you?” John asked.

“If you leave the house my brothers’ life will be in danger,” David cut across the conversation again. His hands turned the tablecloth red-pink where they flexed. The plates shivered and clinked against each other. The threat was clear enough that saying anything more would almost be an insult. John and Mary sat up straighter, squaring up somehow. Sherlock leaned forward, his face finally brightening.

Davey turned back toward Tim, wiping off his hands on the white linen serviettes. Greg could practically feel his mother’s ghost rising from the grave in disapproval. No surprise, Tim tutted as well. The man had that look about him like someone who trying to retire from life. Except those moments when Adler or her husband had demanded the man's attention, or when one of the boys’ got a hair out of place. He'd sit up straight at them like he was their mother then go back to his phone. This Tim looked more adult than the Tim that Greg knew too. Something about this Tim made him seem more comfortable in his own skin if only because his suit actually fit to him. He looked a proper adult, not like he was playing dress up.

Greg wondered where the younger Watsons were. Getting into trouble probably if he knew his own Watsons at all.

Roost Greg had liked almost straight off. The young man had something going on with him, but also had that self-sufficiency that showed he knew what he was about and would stand up for himself if it came to it. He loitered by Greg for a short time, going so far as to shake Greg's hand and nick his warrant card. Greg had grown so used to that sort of thing, all it really did was make him feel nostalgic as he scolded the young man. Roost just ducked his head, smiling to himself as though he was used to that sort of treatment. It made Greg feel fond of the boy. Reminded him of Sherlock.

Johnny he wasn’t sure of. The boy had a shifty look about him, like he thought he knew better. Seemed the sort of dangerous little bloke who solved problems by acting good and being friendly. Greg had a flatshare with a bloke like that when he was younger, he’d done all the dishes for six months before he’d realized what was happening

They needed to cooperate with this, the whole plan to divide and conquer. He could see it with the same sort of instinct that had helped him survive so long.

Sherlock needed a break, needed to get away from everything, from John, from the last few months. He’d looked on the edge for a while and last night when he’d been with that kid, Johnny, he’d looked something like happy again.

“Sounds like fun,” Greg said. “What are you going to do about the fact that Sherlock and I look like ourselves?”

“Fast talking, pre-planning, and messing with the CCTV,” Tim said. “The Yard liaison will want to keep the trouble to a minimum. Our Sherlock will give her something to tell her superiors if they ask and you’ll just get out of the way before anyone else who might ask more questions shows up.”

“She lets Sherlock do what he wants then?” Mary asked.

Davey let out a laugh, it sounded like silk that had been dragged across concrete.

Tim smiled, it looked like John’s. Sherlock and Mary both jolted where they sat although Mary hid it better. Greg wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t been looking for that sort of thing. “She likes to get the job done.”

“She does,” said Holmes, looming in the doorway like some great, distinguished crane. He looked both more rumpled around the edges and like he’d been honed somehow. He looked, Greg realized, like a father. “I do hope you’re not just going to rip food up, Davey.” He shifted sideways, pulling his phone out to scroll through it. “Seems wasteful.”

Davey narrowed his eyes and shoved a fruit tart into his mouth.

“Charming as ever,” he drawled in the kind of voice that usually got Greg wound up when it came to kids, but Davey just grinned with stuffed cheeks and started filling up his plate with whatever was closest. Some of the tension that had been in him had slid loose somehow, resettled his face.

Holmes’ eyes flicked to Sherlock, looking him over with a sort of casualness that meant he was up to something.

For his part, Sherlock’s jaw went hard, his back straightened.

“Mm,” Holmes allowed and turned to Greg. “Are you ready then, Greg? Or do you prefer Lestrade?”

“Greg is fine.”

“Very good, we should go before John gets anxious waiting and starts improvising.”

“Does he…?” John started then stopped at the sudden weight of eyes upon him.

“Does he what?” Holmes tilted his head forward, just a bit. Greg had never heard him sound so gentle.

“Does he do that often? Start… improvising?”

“He’s a genius with an overinflated sense of his own responsibility. If you don’t give him something to take care of he goes and makes friends.”

Davey coughed out a laugh into his eggs.

The ride to the crime scene was in the back of one of Davey’s cars. Holmes muttered about how cabs were better while Johnny just jumped right in and started a conversation with the driver.

“This happen a lot?” Greg asked.

“What?” Holmes said, his attention squarely on John via pretending he was reading something on his phone.

“Posh car ride around London.”

“Not unless Davey catches us. Cabs are perfectly respectable and reliable forms of transportation.”

“Unless there’s a car already ready,” Johnny said, still half turned in his seat.

“Yes, yes, you have lots of friends. Still, I’d rather not be associated with your brother if I can help it. It’s bad for business.”

“If you say so.”

“Where are we going?” Sherlock asked, his eyes twitching toward Johnny.

“The aquarium! Someone stole a turtle.”

“Take care of a lot of stolen turtles then?” Sherlock asked.

“Turtles are beautiful creatures,” Holmes answered. “We should all try to be more like them. But if you must know, both the Yard and I suspect it has something to do with another case involving murder.”

“Really?” Greg leaned forward. “How?”

“We don’t know yet, but the other person was stabbed to death with a walrus tusk.”

“Sherlock thinks they were stabbed to death with a walrus tusk,” Johnny said.

“They didn’t fall on that tusk, several times.”

“They looked really surprised. And it didn’t feel like a murder.”

“Evidence?”

“I’m not always good with evidence!”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ll figure it out.” Johnny rolled his eyes and went back to talking with the driver about puppies. The whole exchange had been quick, almost pointed, but both of them had been loose limbed and smiling during the whole thing. They really were work partners, not so much tossing ideas back and forth as lobbing them at each other, trusting each other to keep up.

That had squashed any other attempts at conversation until they came to a stop at an aquarium. “This is it.” Holmes flipped up his collar. “Everyone out.”

By the time Greg was able to get out, last in the proverbial (or rather the literal) line as he was, everyone was pushing for the police line and he’d had to fall in.

“Holmes,” Sally said, then froze when she saw Greg.

“Donovan,” Holmes said, he could hear the tilt up of the smile in the man’s voice. He pulled up the police line to let Johnny under and nodded for Sherlock to go after the kid. Sherlock bristled a bit at being placed at the kid’s table, but Johnny bounced on his toes a couple times and off Sherlock went to try to observe him as much as he could.

“What?” Sally said again.

“Don’t think about it too much, Donovan,” Holmes grinned, he was loving it.

“Just tell me something, I need something to tell my boss.”

“Your boss is an idiot, that’s what their job is, to be an idiot. If they weren’t you would have been a DI years ago.”

She let out an irritated huff, “Who’s that then at least?” She hovered between wanting to point at Greg and Sherlock and seemed to settle on Sherlock. He did have the greatest potential as an agent of chaos.

“Cousin William, clever lad.” Holmes grinned, a silly thing that illuminated his face.

“Part of the family business,” Johnny added.

“Learning the trade.”

“Work experience.”

She looked upward. “Fine. Just don’t blow anything up.”

“No promises!” Johnny said and frolicked. He just looked so happy. He bounced off the pavement and bounced off Holmes’ side, turning as he went to watch Holmes face and laugh at what he saw.

Sally turned to him.

He shrugged, shoulders around his ears, “I don’t know if you’d even really want to know the details of the situation?”

She covered her eyes making a sort of growling sigh. “I really, really do. But I guess I also don’t.”

They’d been escorted past three sets of doors down concrete halls, up some metal stairs, and to a platform around a large tank of water. Both Holmes and Sherlock set to poking around with the pocket magnifiers, bumping into each other until Holmes made a sort of growling sound and motioned Johnny over the railing in front of the tank.

“Oh,” Johnny blinked between them and then down at the railing around the top of the tank, and then at the slow movement of the turtles flapping through the water. “Well, whoever did it was really angry, it was spur of the moment, impulsive. One of the employees, I guess, why he had the sudden impulse I don’t know.”

“There’s no way for you to know that,” Sherlock said. “Transporting a turtle of this size would have taken a lot of planning.”

Johnny’s brows notched, his jaw set. “Because it was one man and he didn’t panic.”

“Don’t look at how he feels,” Holmes said. His voice was slow, patient. He seemed to plant his feet and sink into his roots. “Look at what he did. Let all the residual feelings be a signpost, not the road.”

“Very poetic.”

“I’m a man of many talents.”

“Roost is better at this,” John said like every teenager from the beginning of man.

“Don’t be lazy, John. I’m not interested in teaching Roost right now.”

Greg had never seen anyone more clearly look like they were sticking their tongue out without actually doing it. He projected the idea of it like a physical presence into the room.

Holmes rolled his eyes, “I’m not going to try to decipher your feelings, you can talk.”

“You’re the worst.”

Holmes grinned.

“Ugh, stop it. Here next to post,” John pressed a thumb under some marks on the railing Greg had to crowd up to see. “Someone was in a hurry. Someone who works here definitely.”

“Reasons.”

“There was an effort to avoid something right below that spot there,” he pointed at a spot below the lip of the platform and right in front of a gate. “Even though from up here, from the way the pulley works, it would have made more sense to pull the giant turtle up where there was a gate. The person showed a care to avoid that spot but a lack of care for the railing. Here, you can see a scrape mark as they pulled the chain back in this direction. Look at that.”

“Very good. Why was he avoiding that spot?” Holmes asked.

“Look in the glass at the far side of the tank.”

Greg and the Sherlocks squinted. “I don’t see anything,” Greg finally said.

“I think I might see something. A… hatch maybe?” Sherlock tried.

John let out a little huff of breath, straightening up into military posture again. “I don’t think it’s a hatch.”

He opened the gate, crouching at the edge of the platform. Holmes moved at a speed Greg hadn’t been able to catch, one pale hand around the back collar of Johnny’s coat. The boy acted with the sort of nonchalance about the hand keeping him from tipping into the water that told Greg a great deal about the sort of father Holmes was. Johnny wiggled his fingers in the water and pulled them back just in time for a pale shape to bob up. A turtle stuck its head up, snapping its mouth at nothing, its eyes cloudy with cataracts.

Johnny went utterly still, his face going blank in a way that turned Greg’s stomach into a stone. It looked like Roost wasn’t the only Watson sibling who had something going on. Alerted by the touch against the back of John’s neck, Holmes moved with a fluid immediacy. One large hand covered Johnny’s eyes, while the other pull him back against his chest. “The turtle’s fine, John. John, it’s okay, it’s not hurt. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But-” John twitched in Holmes’ arms, face still scary blank.

“It’ll be confused, that’s all. John. John, you aren’t the turtle. John, you didn’t hurt it by doing that. You didn’t even touch it.”

“It’s helpless.”

The way the kid said the word. It made Greg’s knee buckle a little

“It’s helpless and it thought there was food, but there isn’t.”

Holmes jarred the boy gently, as though he was trying to wake him up. He probably was. “It’s probably a thousand years old and has its own personal chef. It probably has its own personal assistant.”

“It was an employee who stole the turtle,” Johnny said, trying to talk his way back. “They knew the second one was there, that it was blind. They wanted to keep the blind turtle safe, prevent the two from knocking into each other. They missing turtle, the thief is trying to keep it safe.”

“Yes, John,” Holmes said. “Very good.”

“The turtle stays there because it knows that’s where the food comes from.”

“You’re worried about that old thing,” Holmes said voice steady, steady, steady, almost like a metronome. “It gets first picks. What a spoiled turtle.”

Johnny gave himself a little shake and Holmes was up and on his feet, staring at his phone while Johnny staggered back to them. He was bright pink and wouldn’t look at anyone.

Then there was Sherlock at Johnny’s shoulder, not so much bumping against him as drifting through his personal space.

“The only question now,” Holmes said, “is what he used and why he stole the turtle in the first place.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Johnny pressed his lips together, pretending like he wasn’t leaning back against Sherlock. “We could look in an inventory? See if there are any conspicuous things missing in the back room?”

“That’s a very good guess,” Holmes allowed.

“If you know the answer, why bother asking me?”

“I’m not asking you for your professional opinion, don’t be lazy and apply yourself. I’ll tell you my deductions later if you work hard.”

“Fine.” John spun on his heal and grabbed hold of Sherlock’s sleeve. “We’ll split up, Cousin William and I will go one way, you and Lestrade there will go the other.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Divide and conquer.”

“Alright, I’m sure you have some sort of plan and I’ll let you get along with it.”

John nodded, squaring up like a little soldier. “Alright, sync up. We’ll see you at tea time.”

“You don’t need all that time. I’ve already solved it.”

“We’ve got to follow clues,” Johnny said, nodding at Sherlock. “It might take time.”

“Don’t care,” Holmes waved him off, not looking up from his phone.

Popping up on his toes, Johnny made an irritated noise.

“Lunch and dinner.”

“Hmm?” Johnny perked up.

“I expect you to eat both.”

“Ugh.”

“And you’ll be back by ten.”

“Eleven.”

“Good. Ten. It’s agreed.”

“Ugh, I’ll be with you. Sort of,” Johnny nodded at Sherlock who was watching the interaction with open fascination. “He’ll help me reach things on the top shelf or whatever else.”

“Have him back by ten too. And try not to become a nuisance John, I’m not putting up with your whinging if you fall into the Thames again.”

Johnny looked fond for a moment, proud, before darting out the door with Sherlock behind him. His voice trailed after them “Yeah! Sure! Later!”

“He is just a kid,” Greg said, feeling a bit wrong footed. “Wasn’t that a bit… something?”

Holmes actually looked pained, like a parent who was too familiar with their child, as he looked at the empty doorway. “John can’t always discern if he’s in physical danger or why he should stop himself from getting hurt. We have him stuck in a conspiracy of safety, but he still needs to be his own person. Making it a matter of convenience for him to keep himself in one piece gives his brain an idea of what to avoid.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m always serious when it comes to John,” Sherlock said. “John was trained to be a child soldier, programmed like some robot to fulfill certain tasks. He wasn’t taught to understand or respect care directed toward him, not from those who are supposed to take care of him and not from himself. He only learned it later because his father-” His teeth snapped shut.

“Who am I going to tell, Sherlock?” Greg held out his arms to gesture to the general himness of himself. “I’m not even from this universe.”

“Child operatives, children who are trained up to kill and kill well are generally taught to despise acts of softness, of kindness and to respect harshness, authoritarianism.”

“But Johnny seems so well adjusted.”

“Hamish got him out young. And Hamish was… Hamish was authority, he was inarguable, he was a law of the universe. The very symbol of ability and strength. This old souldier. And he was so kind. I doubted him. Because he wasn’t what I wanted him to be.” His hands flinched upward and Holmes finally looked Greg straight in the eye.

“You’ve been crying,” Greg said, then could have kicked himself. He recognized the way the white of Holmes’ eyes had gone pink, but that didn’t mean he should comment on it. Them being here, all it was doing was ripping these people up. Making them stand in a grief they thought they had climbed past.

Holmes shrugged, seemed to notice the open gate and wandered over to it. His hands seemed steady as he shut it, locked it.

“Who was Hamish then? That turned you into… this. If you don’t mind me asking. Since I probably won’t get another chance?”

Greg could hear the smile in Holmes voice. “He was just a man. A stubborn, grumpy, belligerently optimistic man. He just saw your best potential and then he militarized his faith in you and just- He was just a man. Just my friend.”

#the narrow line #wee doctor #wee doctor au

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