#swindler zero

[gaypornvideoswebsite]

got so pissed about shitlib activists and grifters i made a whole comic about it. it has been tough seeing how large online platforms continue to be misused by grifters and grift-aspirers. the “uncensored” tour by shaun king and khaled beydoun has angered me a lot these past few days, especially because many people still view khaled as a reliable source of “news”. these people are antithetical to the greater cause, and this is an important thing to critique, especially since both of these people have deeply troubled history within activism (look up khaled beydoun new zealand massacre if you really want to lose your lunch). instead of platforming and supporting these people, get your news directly from the news sources that they rip and put on black squares, listen to palestinians on the ground, and look for direct mutual aid like @gazamutualaid and @palestineasdiqa on instagram. these two are just one example of the celebrity activist’s grift.

—

[Image ID:

Image 1: Cartoon of a person burning a sign that reads “all proceeds go to and other grifter slogans”.

Image 2: Cartoon of a marquee that reads “Now playing, grifter” followed by a definition that reads “con artist, swindler, a person or group taking advantage of politics for their own financial interest and benefit”.

Image 3: A question speech bubble that reads “Are proceeds the same as profits?”. A response speech bubble reads “Yes! Both mean net revenue.”

Image 4: Cartoon of a large bag of money on a conveyer belt. It is being pushed towards a black box that has the words travel, hotels, food, venue fees, and more written on the side. On the other side of the black box is a smaller bag of money labeled “proceeds”. Text below reads “tours like Shaun and Khaled’s weaken potential financial impact of donations, all while disguising grifting as political activism.”

Image 5: Large cartoon lettering that reads “net zero is still grifting by those who sit upon wealth.”

Image 6: Text that reads “celebrities and people with large funded platforms are not willing to redistribute their wealth, only yours.”

End ID]

#gay #not fanart #comic

[yurayura-kurage]

A3! Troupe Event: MY WORST WEDDING | Event Story Translation (1/11)

Neither Japanese nor English is my first language so please forgive me if I made mistake. However, feel free to point me out, I’d love to hear your feedbacks on the translation ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶

Translation under the cut

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Azami: “She is my fated partner. I was sitting next to her at the cafe, and ever since our eyes met, I knew it was what was called love at first sight.”

Izumi: (Following what we did before with Spring and Summer Troupe, the rookie Azami-kun will be the lead of Autumn Troupe’s 10th performance, Sakyo-san will be the co-lead.)

(This time, Tsuzuru-kun also came up with the script according to the lead - Azami-kun’s request but…)

Azami: “Hello? Sorry, I didn’t intend to disturb you today but… I have something needed confirming about the arrangements for tomorrow’s wedding.”

Izumi: (Indeed, I didn’t expect Taichi-kun to play a female role again in Autumn Troupe’s performance.)

Sakyo: I can still sense Noah in her nuance.

Azami: She sounds manlike.

Taichi: It’s hard to switch into a different role in an instant~!

Izumi: Well, in some ways, this role is even harder than the lead role…

(This time, Taichi-kun will play both Noah - a friend of the groom Ethan played by Azami-kun, and the marriage swindler Olivia who deceives the groom…)

(This is our troupe's very first dual role. In order to fulfill Azami-kun's request of including a role that he can put tons of makeup on, things have become like this.)

(Since we did the special makeup during the Undead performance, this time the makeup will be focused on woman, and what’s more is a bad woman who looks good with heavy makeup but...)

Taichi: This is my first time challenging to change into another role this quick so I'm really nervous!

Banri: If needed I can take on your role instead.

Taichi: Uhm... Now that I've self-run for this role, I'll do something about it...!

Juza: It's an unprecedented challenge, I think it will no doubt be a valuable experience.

Omi: He has definitely become more reliable since Zero so if it's Taichi, it'll be okay.

Taichi: Thanks y'all! I'll do my best to make A-chan fall in love at first glance!

Azami: Well... Good luck.

Sakyo: Bon too, you're the one to talk. In the scene where Ethan talks about Olivia as usual, I can't feel the yearning love for his beloved fiancée Olivia.

Azami: Not really... That scene is good. I'm gonna be betrayed in marriage fraud after all.

Sakyo: That’s why it is unnecessary. The play won’t be convincing unless the audience can understand you’re so blindly in love that you’re being scammed.

Azami: —No matter what you say ‘bout l-love, I just don’t get it—.

Izumi: (For Azami-kun who is not good at talking about love, playing a role who is obsessed with his fiancée might be indeed difficult.)

(At first we had a discussion about the wedding theme for this play, but Azami-kun said love stories were impossible for him, so we changed to the marriage fraud.)

(Although the main focus of this play is the action battle with a criminal organization that has the marriage swindler in, Ethan’s feelings are also important…)

(Compared to that, James - another groom who is also deceived by Olivia, played by Sakyo-san, is perfect. Maybe that’s the difference in life experience.)

Banri: Well, isn’t it impossible for Azami to fall for Olivia now? He’s Taichi no matter how you look at.

Taichi: With A-chan’s makeup after this, I’m gonna turn into a really beautiful villainess as planned~!

Banri: Come to think of it, I had thought of how the quick change would be done, but that’s surely a problem.

Izumi: In the last part, Taichi-kun will be changing from Noah to Olivia, right.

Banri: We have consulted with Tsuzuru about some script adjustments but still can’t carve out time for Azami to directly do the makeup for Taichi.

Omi: Ethan and James also have to change their costumes quickly…

Juza: Noah can’t come out with Olivia’s makeup from the beginning…

Azami: Then, going with the makeup plan I’ve come up with, Taichi-san will have no choice but to do the makeup on his own.

Izumi: Is that okay? Since you wanted to do lots of makeup in this performance.

Azami: Coming up with the makeup plan is also fun, so it’s okay. Instead, I’m gonna go with Spartan mode to train Taichi-san so that he can redo the makeup perfectly.

Taichi: That’s def out of question~! It’s already up to my neck just quick changing between two roles though, I’m not confident that I can do the makeup on my own!

Izumi: Right, it seems like you would be overwhelmed a bit.

Banri: I’ll go back to the wing at the same time as Taichi, so I’ll lend you a hand with the makeup and quick-change.

Taichi: Banchan~! You saved me!

Sakyo: If that’s the dexterous Settsu then there seems to be no problem.

Azami: I’m enthusiastic about the makeup this time, so Banri-san too, please keep that in mind.

Banri: Go easy on me.

Izumi: Azami-kun, how is the hair makeup plan going?

Azami: I’m thinking about various hair arrangements for each character, including Olivia’s wig.

This time performance is set in America, but I’m worried since it might be difficult for the audience to get a grasp on the worldview if I have my hair black as the main character.

Taichi: If that’s the case, how about you dye your hair blonde like Sakyo-nii?

Juza: It’s gonna match with Sakyo-san.

Omi: It might look good when you two line up.

Banri: It’s a relationship that they’re gonna fight over Olivia, isn’t that good to have a sense of rivalry between them.

Azami: I definitely don’t want to match with that person.

Sakyo: Ha… If so, what color are you going to choose?

Azami: There are bunch of wigs from the past performances in the warehouse, so I’ll have a look.

Izumi: Got it. Then let me know when you decide.

*Short time skip*

Izumi: Well then, that’s all for today’s practice. Tomorrow will be a day off, so take a good rest you guys.

Omi: Taichi and Juza are going back to their homes, right?

Juza: Yes. My mom’s birthday is getting near.

Taichi: For me, my sister asked me to hang out with her once in a while.

Sakyo: I’ll be going back to my home tomorrow too, so I’ll be away from the dorm.

Izumi: Sakyo-san too?

Juza: It’s been a while.

Sakyo: It will be bothersome if I don’t go home once in a while.

Juza: …That’s good. The old lady will be happy, too.

Sakyo: …

Bon, you should show your face at home more. You haven’t been home lately, have you.

Azami: Annoying—

…Well, I want to see everyone at Ginsenkai though, I think it’s time to go back home.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Next

#a3! translation #my worst wedding #autumn troupe’s 10th play #my worst wedding translation #autumn troupe #akigumi

[ultimate-fucked-up-ship-tourney]

Already got a list of the ships for the ULTIMATE fucked up ship tournament done. Hopefully will start it in two weeks or so. This is a list of the ships:

1. The Darkling and Alina, The Grisha Trilogy

2. Batman and The Riddler, The Batman 2022

3. stu and billy from scream

4. Vriska and Terezifrom homestuck

5. light and l from death note

6. Dirk Strider and Jake English from Homestuck,

7. Vio and Shadow Link from the Four Swords manga

8. Emilio Murkmere x Tobias Schenien from Ghost Eyes

9. Oswald x Ed from Gotham

10. Anna Croft/ Yu Junghyeok (orv)

11. Dimitri/Edelgard - Fire Emblem Three Houses

12. Will Graham and Hannibal, Hannibal

13. yoonbum x sangwoo, killing stalking

14. Starscream and Megatron, from the Transformers franchise

15. Mukuro Ikusaba/Junko Enoshima from Dangan Ronpa

16. Ladd Russo and Lua Klein from Baccano!

17. Daida and Miranjo from Ousama Ranking

18. Shizuo and Izaya from Durarara!!

19. theresa x otto, honkai impact

20. dorian x fem! inquisitor, dragon age

21. renee x huey from baccano

22. nanami x touga, revolutionary girl Utena

23. madoka and homura, puella magi madoka magica

24. (Ronan Lynch x Joseph Kavinksy) - The Raven Cycle

25. Seishirou and Subaru from Tokyo Babylon/X

26. Misaki/Satou, Welcome to the NHK

27. Bakugou and Deku (My Hero Academia)

28. Akito and Shigure, Fruits Basket

29. House and Wilson, House MD

30. Scarlet and Chase, I’m the Grim Reaper

31. Jong-woo and Moon-jo, Strangers from Hell

32. Moon-young and Gang-tae, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

33. Medea and Helio, Your Throne

34. Celty and Shinra, Durarara

35. Akira and Ryo, Devilman

36. Yoshino and Kirishima, Raise wa Tanin Ga ii

37. Chateau and Ryang-ha, Love of Kill

38. Satoko and Shinpei, Hotaru no Yomeiri

39. Clarice and Hannibal, Silence of the Lambs

40. He Yan and Fu Shenxing, Who is the Prey

41. Cain/Owen from Promise of Wizard / Mahoyaku

42. Texas/Lappland from Arknights.

43. Jeongmin and Siyun, Dreaming Freedom

44. Han Chae-ah and Park Yunsu, Trapped

45. akane kurashiki/junpei tenmyouji from zero escape

46. Juri/Shiori (from Revolutionary Girl Utena)

47. Jackie/Shauna, Yellowjackets)

48. Cassandra/Rapunzel from the Tangled series

49. Damien and Elena from vampire diaries

50. Kristoph/Phoenix, Ace Attorney

51. Juice and Chibs, Sons of Anarchy

52. Utena/Anthy from the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena.

53. Cutthroat x Swindler, from Akudama Drive.

54. Yuno Gasai x Yukkiteru Amano from Mirai Nikki

55. Sal/Syakesan x Wadanohara from Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea.

56. Jeremy and the SQUIP, Be More Chill

57. Ian Grimm and Poppy Li, Mythic Quest

58. Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis De Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire

59. fuuma and kamui from clamp's x/1999

60. Victor and Eli, Vicious

61. Elisabeth and Der Tod, Elisabeth

62. Rudolf and Der Tod, Elisabeth

63. Veronica Sawyer and J.D, Heathers

64. Akechi Goro × Persona 5 protagonist (Akira Kurusu/Ren Amamiya)

65. Hondomachi and Fukuda, ID: Invaded

66. Harley Quinn and the Joker, DC

67. Christine and Erik, Phantom of the Opera

68. Lisa Reisert and Jackson Rippner, Red Eye

69. Valeta and Reinhart, I Failed to Oust the Villain

70. Light Yagami and Misa Amane, Death Note

71. Sumire and Hakubo, Toilet Bound Hanako Kun

72. Mika Harima and Seiji Yagiri, Durarara!!

73. Emma Wilson and Yohan Lee, My Deepest Secret

74. Sarah and Jareth, Labyrinth

75. Addie LaRue and Luc, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

76. Ja Yoon and The Nobleman, The Witch, Part One: Subversion

77. Makima and Denji, Chainsaw Man

78. Kyoko and Katsuya, Fruits Basket

79. Mrs. De Winter and Maxim, Rebecca

80. Mutsuki Tooru and Urie Kuku, Tokyo Ghoul

81. Victor and Elizabeth, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

82. Constanta, Magdalena, and Alexei and Dracula, A Dowry of Blood

83. Ha-im and Geunhu, Never Ending Darling

84. Frank Cotton & Julia Cotton - Hellraiser (1987)

85. Yuki Cross & Kaname Kuran, Vampire Knight

86. Johann and Sasha, The Double Agent

87. Sian and Yul, Secret Alliance

88. Charlize and Dylan, The Taming of the Tyrant

89. Lin and Dosung, 340 Days

90. Makishima Shougo & Shinya Kougami from PSYCHOPASS.

91. Charlotte Willmore x Lizzie Wells, from The Perfection (2018).

92. “Hikaru”/Yoshiki from The Summer hikaru Died,

93. Dolph Laserhawk x Alex Taylor from Captain Laserhawk

94. Dolph Laserhawk x Rayman from Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix

95. Yuuji Itadori x Mahito from Jujitsu Kaisen

96. (luo binghe x shen qingqiu) from scum villain's self saving system.

97. Heaven Official's Blessing. Ships He Xuan and Shi Qingxuan.

98. Ives and Boyd from Ravenous 1999

99. Eve and Vilanelle, Killing Eve

100. Sephiroth/Cloud (FF7 Compilation)

101. Clary and Jace from the Mortal Instruments

102. Rika Sasaki/Yoshiyuki Terada, Cardcaptor Sakura,

103. Veralidaine Sarrasri/Numair Salmalín, from the Immortals Quartet

104. Eli/Oskar, Let the Right One In (2008).

105. Lavan Firestorm/Kalira, Brightly Burning

106. Lapis/Jasper (Steven Universe

107. PearlescentMoon/SMajor, the Life Series

108. Christine/Erik (Phantom Takarazuka)

109. The Brain/Julia (Animaniacs 2020)

110. Sterek, Teen Wolf

111. Jonathan Sims/Elias Bouchard, The Magnus Archives

112. Fyodor and Nikolai, Bungo Stray Dogs

113. Beatrice and Battler, Beabato, from "Umineko”

114. Father Paul/Riley Flynn; Midnight Mass

115. Edward Teach/Izzy Hands; Our Flag Means Death;

116. Batman/Joker

117. Cesare Borgia/Lucrezia Borgia - The Borgias

118. Dean/Sam Winchester from Supernatural

119. Vegas/Pete (Kinnporsche: The Series)

120. Hitori Uzune and Nanaki Kazuaki from Hatoful Boyfriends.

121. Lanze/Bluepool and Anan from Beauty and the Beasts

122. Blade and Dan Heng from Honkai Star Rail

123. Spike and Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

124. Isaac and Finn, I’m Dating a Psychopath

125. Lenore and Annabelle, Nevermore

126. Estelle and Khalid, From a Knight to a Lady

127. Layla and Matthias, Cry or Better Yet Beg

128. Hyuna and Luka, Alien Stage

129. Karuto and Lily, Dear my Living Dead

130. Andrew and Ashley Graves, Coffin of Andy and Leyley

131. Lydia Deetz/Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice

132. Harrow and gideon from gideon the ninth/Locked Tomb

133. Cathy x Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

134. Felix x Ollie (Saltburn)

135. Grace Chastity x Max Jaegerman, Nerdy Prudes Must Die

136. Mikoto and Haijin, Tsuiraku JK to Haijin Kyoushi

137. Eucenielle and Tes, I Hold the Tyrant’s Heart

138. Claire and Balt, The East Wind of the Altas

139. Usui and Misaki, Maid Sama

140. Sebastian Michaelis and Ciel Phantomhive, Black Butler

141. Dabi x Hawks from My Hero Academia

142. Alice “Daisy” Tonner/Basira Hussain, The Magnus Archives

143. Naruto and Sasuke, from Naruto

144. Byleth Eisner / Jeritza von Hrym from fire emblem three houses

145. Akira x keisuke from togainu no chi (nitro+chiral game)

146. Lucy Gray Baird and Coriolanus Snow, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

147. Elias and Chise, The Ancient Magus Bride

148. Gendo and Yui Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion

149. Punpun and Aiko, Goodnight Punpun

150. Sang-hyun and Tae-ju, Thirst

151. Hawa and Adam, The Guy Upstairs

152. Satoru Fujnuma and Gaku Yashiro, Erased

153. Root and Sameen Shaw, Person of Interest

154. The Doctor and the master, Doctor Who

155. Juliette and Warner, Shatter Me

156. Ich and Mrs Danvers, Rebecca das Musical

157. Kokichi Ouma and Shuichi Saihara, Danganronpa V3

158. Roxy and Velma, Chicago

159. Griffith and Guts, Berserk

160. Creed and Train, Black Cat

161. Torso and Mutsuki, Tokyo ghoul

162. Vash and Knives, Trigun

163. Sweeney Tod and Mrs Lovett, Sweeney Tod

164. Kuroi and Mashiro, Thou Dhall Not Die

165. Amy and Nick, Gone Girl

166. India and Charlie Stoker, Stoker

167. Pig and Runt, Disco Pigs

168. Anakin and Padme, Star Wars

169. Chloe and Kairos, I Shall Kill That Sweet Devil

170. Jung and Seol, Cheese in the Trap

171. Anthy and Akio Ohtori, Revolutionary Girl Utena

172. Feyre and Rhysand, A Court of Thrones and Roses

173. Lelouch and Suzaku, Code Geass

174. Mikiya and Shiki, Garden of Sinners

175. Gatsby and Daisy, The Great Gatsby

176. Ivan and Till, Alien Stage

177. Sylar and Elle Bishop, Heroes

178. Helena and Demetrius, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

179. V and Rika, Mystic Messenger

180. Yukari and George, Paradise Kiss

#polls #most fucked up ship tournament #most fucked up ships

[scarletlizzard]

Needy little things. I suspect that a couple of anons are also commenting on their mains, but I’ll simply rank them based on their emoji interactions. Here’s your list, starting with the nethermost submissive bottoms and working upward:

- Sweet Koala🐨, you are such an ardently willing bottom that you’re practically burrowing underground at this point. Adorable.

- Little Bow🎀, you are very much Pillow Princess energy and I refuse to put you higher out of principle. Despite your recently exercised brattitude, you couldn’t top a pizza.

- Bolty⚡️, whilst your interactions have been few, each has been wildly submissive and well-behaved.

- Pup🐶, a simple thing with simple thoughts: ‘someone put a leash on me’. Very good pet, even if you require a little correction spray first.

- Mousey🐁, again, few interactions to base this off but approximately zero top energy has been exhibited. Pleading for a brat tamer screams bottom.

- Icicle🧊, it is a testament to the bottom energy of this blog that you’re as high up as you are. A bit of bite, but respectful energy, all in all a good, submissive ice cube.

- Lippy🫦, this nickname is half emoji-based term of endearment, half a nod toward your impertinence. Teasing energy, would eagerly bottom, but also I personally believe could top anyone prior on the list. Also could very much power bottom, whereas I’m convinced the rest are submissive.

- Pilferer🦝! (I’m afraid I cannot see raccoons as anything other than swindlers and highwaymen, ready to steal your loose change) - switch energy. A hufflepuff that’s duly respectful to me, but quick to patronise dear Rose. I’m also getting service top vibes (I think a power bottom femme could have you crumbling).

- This bacchanalian bitch🥃 (fondly), honestly you exist in another plane to this list because you are just here for the vibes. Having said that, I’m going for switch vibes again, for no reason other than the excessive use of exclamation marks.

- Quavers🎵, I think that you predominantly top, though I’m unsure as to how you’d fare with some of the more dominant anons on this list. You openly admit that you’re into sharing, and I would imagine you quite like the fact that you don’t have to be the most dominant person in the room. Dom-leaning switch vibes.

- Dolphin🐬, you’re up! The softest of dom vibes, I’m thinking golden retriever aura, lots of check-ins and also potentially younger (solely going off the fratboy energy of starting sentences with ‘bro’). Clearly had a risqué photo but waited for consent, very wholesome, thumbs up to you, my young, toppy friend.

- Pussycat🐈 by name, pussycat by nature. A gentle soft dom, I think actually a stone top, but also a service top with the right person, based on how eager they are to worship.

- Pirate🏴‍☠️, technically speaking I’d say that they’re the most ‘dominant top’. Undecided as to whether they’re the maturest or healthiest, but there we have it. Stop drinking and driving.

And there we have it. All said tongue-in-cheek and very much subjective based off a handful of vicarious interactions, so nothing serious here, sweet anons.

-🫖

For everyone I suppose

#scarletlizzard asks #🫖 anon

[pedrito-friskito]

REBEL SUNS - CHAPTER FOUR

series masterlist | main masterlist

summary: cassian lets his emotions get the better of him.

word count: 5.7k

warnings: MY BLOG IS 18+, MINORS DNI, *SPOILERS FOR ANDOR*, a bit of a political moment, mutual pining, oral (f receiving), some angsty conversation, these two really need to get their shit together…

a/n: the brain rot is still real but I’m committed and need to get this out there. still trying to stick to the dates I picked but I make zero promises 🫠

✨I no longer have a taglist - if you’d like to be notified of new works/chapters, follow @friskito-library and turn on notifications!✨

The next afternoon finds you back on the Fondor.

Once you’d roused again, after you’d slept most of the morning away wrapped in Cassian’s arms, you’d — very reluctantly — gotten out of bed. Cassian had disappeared for a few hours, returned with large cups of caf, pastries that had your mouth watering with their scent alone, and a new shirt to replace your tattered one, a new coat as well.

It wasn’t awkward, between you, but there was a shift, a noticeable one. He was more liberal with his touches, brushing past you as you cleaned up, lingering over your shoulder when you signalled Luthen using his commlink, offering you a piece of his pastry, his fingers skimming your lips when you accepted it. He sits you on the counter in the fresher as he redresses your wounds, fits himself between your knees, lets his hands linger on your legs. 

It feels simple; it feels easy.

You know it’s not.

Luthen lands the Fondor nearby, another team dropped in on the opposite side of Republic City to recover the U-Wing you’d flown in on. You head out the back door of the inn, disappearing down the streets, Cassian’s hand pressed firmly to your lower back.

He doesn’t distance himself even slightly as you board the ship, Luthen standing in the hull, eyes narrowed at the two of you. The old man’s intense gaze makes Cassian drop his hand, but you can’t bring yourself to step out of the warmth he radiates. Not yet.

Luthen’s jaw goes tight as Cassian takes your (new) coat from you. “This isn’t going to be a problem,” he says, looking between the two of you, waving a hand, “is it?”

“What are you talking about?” Cassian says, giving a light laugh.

At the same time, you say, “Is what going to be a problem?”

He rolls his eyes, arms crossing over his chest. “Tell me what happened back there.”

Recounting the story hurts. Cassian does most of the talking, but he wasn’t in that room. He doesn’t know what Jaar said to you, the words he’d beaten into you. Thief. Swindler. Bitch. Unkinder words still, coupled with sharp weapons and heavy fists. Luthen asks if Jaar gave you anything on your brother, just as Cassian had, and you find yourself tongue-tied, unable to recount the truth a second time.

Cassian reaches across the seat separating you, curling his fingers around yours. “He’s dead,” he tells Luthen, his voice firm. “That’s it.” 

Your heart leaps in your chest at his unflinching gaze, the bit of rebellion against the only true authority you have these days. Luthen casts you both long looks, some unwritten emotion dancing across his features before it disappears completely, replaced with the leader you know, all business once more.

“We’re headed to Naboo,” he tells you. “There’s a job to be had, an Imperial gala, and you each have a role to play. It appears our dear Chandrilan Senator has finally pulled through.”

“A job?” Cassian asks, shock in his voice. He squeezes your hand. “Now? Did you not hear what I just said? She needs rest, Luthen. We can’t keep going like—”

“What other choice is there, Cassian?” Luthen snaps, and the venom in his voice makes you flinch. “Wait for the next opportunity? Hope it comes around again? No. We strike when we can, we take what we need.” His eyes flick to you, and you’re hesitant to meet them, but you do. “We do what we must.”

You try to meet that harsh stare in kind, try to summon what little strength you have left. You’re tired. Despite the bacta and the med-nog and the way Cassian had made you see stars in a way you’ve never done before, your body aches. Your heart aches. Tears force themselves along your lashes, and Cassian’s hand feels like the only thing holding you tethered to the ground, stopping you from floating off into space. Luthen just stares, and you stare back.

We do what we must.

“The coordinates are already programmed,” Luthen declares, eyes only leaving yours to look pointedly at Cassian. “Start the takeoff sequence.”

Cassian hesitates, fingers twitching against yours. “We—”

“Now,” Luthen spits, the volume in his voice climbing, and with a clenched jaw, Cassian release your hand, gets to his feet, and disappears towards the cockpit. As soon as the tell-tale whoosh of the door echoes through the hull, the old man turns back to you. “You told me no attachments,” he says, and a sigh works its way out of your throat. “When I found you on Tatooine, when I hired you, you swore to me. No attachments, save for your family. But besides that. Just the job. The Rebellion.”

“It’s not like I planned this, Luthen,” you bite out, half a mind to get to your feet and snap in his face, but you’re just so tired. “Any of this.”

He opens his mouth to say something more, but then stops. Pauses. Paces back and forth in front of you twice before stopping again. The Fondor’s engine rumbles, the steel beneath your feet humming with power. “There’s intel, on Naboo. A way back into the trade routes, undetected by the Empire. We need this.”

You lean forward, elbows pressed to your knees, hands holding your head up. “What do I need to do?”

“Mon Mothma got us the invitations; you’ll pose as a senator from Alderaan, Cassian as your guard. You need to get close to this man,” he produces a holo-pad from his pocket, a man’s face on the display, “Valoran Cardas. Find out what he knows, take whatever information you can get.”

Valoran Cardas, the screen reads. Imperial Army Colonel. Dark hair, light eyes, a smile you could only describe as slimy. Instantly, you don’t like him, and your gut rolls at Luthen’s orders: get close to this man. Your brow furrows, and you rub your fingers across it, trying to relieve the pressure building in your skull.

“Are you good for this?” Luthen asks after you’ve been quiet a good minute.

“I’m fine, Luthen,” you reply, still rubbing at your forehead.

“I didn’t ask if you were fine,” he says, more venom rising to the surface. “Can you do this?”

Your hand drops, head lifting as you look at him, incredulous. You’ve known him to be straight to the point, but this is something else. “Yes, I can do this.”

Without another word, he turns and stalks towards the cockpit. Cassian appears a moment later, brow furrowed harder than your own. “Hey,” he calls, face softening when he comes to stand in front of you. He hooks two fingers beneath your chin, tilts your face up to look at him. Your eyes flutter when he brushes a strand of hair from your forehead, his fingers warm against your skin. “You’re all right?”

You nod as his hand moves from beneath your chin to cup your cheek. You can’t stop yourself from leaning into his touch. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

+

You sleep the entire flight to Naboo. Cassian can’t bring himself to move from the seat beside you, your linked hands resting on your thigh, your head lolled onto his shoulder. He lets himself drift a little, pressing his mouth to your hair, eyes dropping shut. There are no dreams to greet him.

You haven’t so much as twitched when he rouses again, and he’s grateful. He knows you need the rest; sleeping the morning away back on Hosnian Prime couldn’t make up for the hell you’d been through the last few days.

But the memory of your hurried coupling in the fresher rises to the surface of his mind, and his eyes drop shut again. His pants feel a little tighter, but he can’t say he minds, your hushed voice echoing through his head.

I just wanna feel good, Cass.

Cass. People have used the nickname in the past, most of his friends and family back on Ferrix, but he doesn’t think it has ever sounded as good as it does rolling off your tongue. The memory sits heavy in his chest, his fingers itching to touch you, to hear you make those sounds again, to hear you say his name like that again. He settles for the hand wrapped in his, trails his thumb along the bandages covering your knuckles over and over again.

The Fondor jolts slightly as it drops out of hyperspace, the robotic voice of the droid mod announcing the orbit and landing sequences. Luthen appears a moment later, that same dark look in his eye that Cassian had seen before, when he chewed you out over this…whatever this is that’s blooming between you two. The Fondor’s walls are thin, and the cockpit door did little to muffle your voices. “Wake her,” Luthen says, and heads for one of the compartments near the fresher, pulls out bundles of fabric, pairs of shoes. “You both need to change.”

Without another word, he disappears, leaving the clothing on one of the crates tucked against the ship wall. The cockpit door hisses shut, and Cassian peels his fingers from yours. You mumble at the loss, head bobbing, knocking him softly in the chin.

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching for your shoulder, jostling you slightly. “Time to wake up.”

You groan, tilting your head back and fitting it into the curve of his neck. The movement makes him turn his head, his nose skirting your forehead. lips ghosting over the space between your brows. “Five more minutes.”

Cassian huffs a laugh, stretching back until he can fit his arm around you. You move more willingly now, cuddling into his chest, scooting across the seat to be closer to him. “Five more minutes and Luthen will come out here and dress you himself.”

That makes your eyes shoot open, brow wrinkling and your lip curling. “I was having a good dream,” you mumble, reaching up and rubbing the sleep from your eyes.

“Tell me,” he says, dropping his voice slightly. You lift your head, craning your neck back slightly so you can see him fully. “What did you dream about, Rebel?”

The disgust on your face melts into a smile that warms his chest. He rubs his palm over your shoulder, feels your fingers curl around his hip when you sling your arm around his waist. “I dreamt about you,” you say, and for a moment, he considers it. Leaning forward, closing the distance between you, feeling those plush lips of yours with his own. But he knows if he does, he won’t be able to stop.

He sees your eyes dart down to his mouth, rove over his face before they meet his again. Your lips part, and he doesn’t miss the way your head inclines slightly, but before you can move any further, Luthen’s voice rings out clear through the ship’s comm system.

“Dressed,” he shouts, “now.” 

+

“Senator!”

You have to school your face into recognition, offering Mon Mothma a brilliant smile as she approaches you, a drink in her hand, arms stretched wide to embrace you. The reaction is forced, having only met the Chandrilan Senator all of ten minutes before you were being shuffled into a transport that would take you from the hotels to the palace where the gala was being held. 

“Well done,” she murmurs to you, and the fabric at your throat feels impossibly tight as she puts a thin arm around you, squeezing you lightly. “How was the journey?”

“Perfect,” you reply, slipping your arm through hers when she takes a step back. You take the drink that’s offered to you by one of the attendants, and from the corner of your eye, you see Cassian fall into step behind you as Mon leads you deeper into the large ballroom. “I’ve been meaning to come back to Naboo for some time now, it’s nice to have a reason.”

It’s not entirely a lie. Your family lived on Naboo, for a time. Long before the galaxy lived under the Empire’s thumb, before the Jedi had been wiped away. You’d always meant to come back, visit the home you’d once lived in.

“Will you stay long?” Mon asks, her voice just a touch louder, an easy smile on her face.

“Only the night, I’m afraid,” you reply, matching her grin. “We’re expected back to Alderaan for the Princess’s birthday.”

Mon nods, and you both sip your drinks. There’s not enough Corellian whiskey in the galaxy to make you comfortable, but the glass of sweet wine in your hand is a start. The dress is too tight, but the options were limited, as Luthen put it, and you couldn’t stomach another argument with the old man. The entire idea already made you nervous enough, having to get yourself close to an Imperial Colonel. 

And then there’s Cassian, trailing you through the room, eyes glued to your back. On the transport, hidden in the back of the ship, he’d put his hand on the small of your back, leaned close, murmured softly.

You look good enough to eat.

Cheeks flaring, you’d dug your heel into the toe of his boot, wanting to savour the quiet groan that spilled out of him, but it sounded too close to the noises he’d made on Hosnian Prime, and only worsened the ache that has taken up residence between your legs.

You haven’t spotted your target yet, the image from Luthen’s holo-pad engraved into your brain. You know he’s here, and the anticipation is crawling up the back of your throat, thick like bile. You want to get it over with. You want to get the information and get the hell out of here.

Cassian follows like a shadow as you move through the ballroom. Mon introduces you to other Senators, pointedly telling everyone that you’re one of the newest Senators from Alderaan, still getting your feet wet. You put on a good show, chatting away as more drinks are had, names offered and sparks of kinship flaring to life. You’re a good actress, and the entire time, you can feel Cassian’s eyes boring into your back. More than once, he steps a little closer, brushes a hand down the back of your arm or over your back, murmurs something low in your ear, and you have to suppress the chill that follows, snaking down your spine, hot and cold all at the same time.

Now is not the time, but your body doesn’t care.

He also looks good enough to eat in the guard uniform Luthen had procured for him. His hair is combed back, curls flat against his skull, and he’s trimmed his beard quite a bit, the sharp angle of his jaw only more pronounced, the pout of his lips more than a little distracting. You have to force your eyes from him multiple times, returning to the conversation you’re having with a Senator from Kuat, but she catches you. “If my guards looked like that, I’d have trouble keeping my eyes to myself, too,” she laughs, and you laugh along, ignoring the heat that rises in your cheeks. You don’t miss the little quirk to Cassian’s mouth, his eyes lingering on your back once more.

And then you find your target. Colonel Valoran Cardas.

He looks exactly the same as the photo on the holo-pad, dressed in Imperial finery, dark hair slicked back, shiny with gel. He spots you first, strange yellow eyes lingering on you from across the room. You lean in close to the Kuati Senator, gesturing towards the Colonel, sat at a table not far from where you stand. “Do you know who that is?”

“Oh,” she replies quickly, taking your arm, steering you towards him. “Colonel Cardas. I must introduce you.”

Before you can try to bite out any fake protest, you’re being pushed towards the table by the Senator.

“Valoran!” she calls, and his eyes snap from you to her, an easy smile forming on his lips. “I’d like you to meet Senator Zena Carrax.” The fake name falls off her tongue easily, and you force a grin. “She’s the newest member of the Senate on Alderaan.”

Colonel Cardas gets to his feet, offering you his hand with a slight bow. When you take it, he brings your hand to his lips, pressing a cold kiss to your knuckles. “A pleasure, Senator Carrax.”

“Please,” you reply smoothly, everything in you itching to look over your shoulder and find Cassian, but you don’t. You can’t. “The pleasure is all mine, Colonel.”

The Kuati Senator giggles conspiratorially before claiming she hears someone calling for her and disappears into the crowd. It leaves you and the Colonel alone, and that gross anticipation crawls up your throat once more.

“Are you enjoying the party?” Cardas asks, offering you the chair beside the one he had been sat in. You accept with a gracious nod, smoothing the skirt of your dress beneath you as you sink into it. He returns to his own seat, and with every move he makes, his eyes don’t leave you. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. His gaze is…predatory, almost. Like he’s a hunter stalking a meal. You don’t like it.

“Very much,” you say, schooling your voice pleasant, setting your half-empty drink on the table. “Tell me, Colonel Cardas, have you ever been to Alderaan?”

+

The moment the Kuati Senator pushes you towards the target, Cassian has to fight himself from barreling after you, shielding you from the Colonel’s intense gaze. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like any of it. His hands clench into fists at his sides as you shake hands with Cardas, fingers itching to reach for the blaster hidden beneath his uniform when the Colonel kisses your knuckles.

“She needs to get close to Cardas,” Luthen had told him, before they’d even stepped off the Fondor. “You cannot step in, you understand? Whatever is happening between you two, it cannot interfere here. You have jobs to do, do them.”

Cassian swallows hard, stepping away from the wall. He’s been following you through the ballroom the entire time, and had tried to keep his distance, watching you mingle, watching you play the part of the Senator from Alderaan with ease. It’s almost unnerving, how well you’ve slid into the role, your voice changing to something more distinguished, more Imperial. But he knows; you’ve been watching the Imps as much as he has, you know what it takes, you know how easy it is to slide into their ranks, what to say, how to act. It’s what makes you the perfect Rebel.

He still keeps some space between himself and you, sat at the table with Cardas, and he listens. You’re talking about Alderaan, about how things have changed under the Empire’s rule. You’re talking about your hopes for the Senate, how you want to find a way to make peace, to better both your planet and the Empire. It’s the perfect segue into the trade routes, the information you’ve been sent to retrieve, and if Cassian didn’t know the truth, he’d believe your easy lies as much as Cardas is seeming to.

He can hear the smile in your voice as you say, “I think we might want the same things, Colonel Cardas.” Your tone is loaded as anything, and you rest your hand on the table, inching across the space between you and Cardas.

The way the Colonel is looking at you makes everything in Cassian go tight as a drum. You’re beautiful, there’s no getting around that, with your almost too-tight dress and the way you’d piled your hair on your head and darkened your eyes, lashes fanning across your cheeks whenever you blink. The moment you’d stepped out of the fresher on the Fondor, Cassian had thought for a moment that the ground beneath his feet was disappearing, the way his heart hammered in his chest. It was the same feeling he’d been overcome with on Hosnian Prime, the sight of you standing there in nothing but his shirt.

Won’t let anyone touch you. Only me, yes?

Cardas slides his hand beneath yours, drags his fingers along your forearm, and Cassian can take no more. He stalks forward, hands clenched into solid fists at his sides as he approaches the table. Cardas is saying something in response to you, but Cassian doesn’t hear it, the edges of his vision tingeing red as he grasps the back of your chair and leans down. “Senator,” he murmurs, trying to keep his voice soft and unwavering. “There’s an urgent message for you, from the Queen.”

“Oh!” you say, flinching with surprise. You turn to look at him, something dark and unnameable in your eyes. They search his for a moment before they flick back to Cardas, an easy smile spreading across your face. “Excuse me just a moment, Colonel, won’t you?”

Cardas nods, watching as you get to your feet slowly. Cassian waits until you’re two steps ahead of him before following, folding his arms behind his back, resisting the urge to reach for you. Once you’re out of the ballroom, he can’t hold back, and grabs your upper arm, making you turn sharply, nearly dragging you down the palace hallway.

“Cass, what are you—?” you try to ask, but he ignores you, opening the first door he sees. It’s a small closet, stacks of towels and cleaning supplies and droid batteries on shelves. Without a word, he pushes you inside, stepping in after and pulling the door shut behind him, flicking the lock. “Cass.”

He ignores you again, crowding you back against the wall until your shoulders make contact. There’s a mix of confusion and concern on your face, those beautiful eyes boring into him as he reaches for your waist, holds you between his hands. His brow furrows, and he leans in, dropping his head until it’s fit into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent.

“Cass,” you say again, softer this time, and it sets off something deep in his chest, his blood turned to flame. In a flash, he sinks to his knees in front of you, fingers gripping the hem of your dress, bunching the skirt up and over his arms, seeking out your warmth. The tip of his middle finger slides along the fabric covering your core, and he has to bite back his grin at finding you wet.

You stare down at him, open-mouthed, and he curls one hand around your ankle, lifting your leg and setting it carefully on his shoulder. His eyes meet yours, fire in both your gazes, and he pauses, waits to see if you’ll push him away.

“We shouldn’t,” you whisper, your voice heavy, laced with lust as it reaches his ears. “Cass.”

“Please,” he murmurs, turning his face so his jaw scrapes along your calf. “I need to touch you. Taste you.”

If you said no, he’d stop. Dead in his tracks, blazing lust be damned, he’d stop. If you pushed him away, he’d go willingly. 

But you don’t say no. You don’t push him away. You breathe out a yes, reach down with one hand, threading your fingers into his hair, your knuckles tight around the strands. He feels you tug lightly, and he tilts his head back, his eyes never leaving yours and he moves forward slightly. Lips drag over the bend of your knee, and he moves his hand from your ankle to your thigh, fingers digging into the meat of your muscle. He can smell you, the thick, sweet scent of your sex making his eyes roll back as he leans up higher on his knees, and buries his head between your legs.

The fabric of your underwear is soaked, and he just adds to it, mouthing at you over the barrier. You gasp as he presses his tongue against you, hikes your leg higher over his shoulder to get better access. Already, he can feel the muscle of your thigh go taut beside his head, your grip on his hair tightening further when he reaches under, pulls the gusset of your underwear to the side, and tastes you for real.

He moans into you as his tongue touches your skin. You’re the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted, and it only spurs him further, working his tongue from your clit down to your opening and back up again, an iron grip on your thigh, holding you open. Above him, he can hear you gasping, a hand clapped over your mouth when you let a loud moan slip.

The fabric of you skirt has covered his head, only held back somewhat by your hand glued to his hair. He growls, dropping his chin and dragging the flat of his tongue along you. Your clit pulses when he draws it between his lips, sucking lightly, and he crooks the fingers holding your underwear, pushing his middle finger into you. 

His knuckle bends, the pad of his finger drawing across a spongey part of you, and you keen, back arching off the wall, forcing your body closer to his, hips chasing his mouth. You go tighter still, clenching around his finger, harder when he slides a second inside. He keeps at your clit with his mouth, dragging the tip of his tongue in circles and shapes over the little bundle of nerves until suddenly you’ve got both hands in his hair, back arched so hard he can feel the curve of your stomach pressed to the top of his head.

You flood his mouth as you cum, a strangled gasp worming its way out of your throat as your thighs tremble, the one perched on his shoulder shuddering hard. He doesn’t let up, not until you’re yanking at his hair, nearly sending him tumbling backwards onto his ass.

You’re flushed, when he pulls back. There’s a different sort of light in your eyes as he disentangles himself from your limbs, your grip on his hair going lax when he makes to get to his feet. Your chest heaves with breaths, strains against the bodice of the dress. Silently, you straighten yourself, adjusting the skirt of the dress back into place. Cassian fixes his hair best he can, pushing his hands through it, trying to press his curls back against his skull. He adjusts his pants as well, tucking his hard cock into the waistband of his briefs. It’s uncomfortable, but currently necessary.

Still out of breath, you look at him. “We need to go.”

“You want to go back out there?” he asks, licking his lips.

Your eyes drop to his mouth for a long moment before flicking back up to his. “No. We need to get out of here. Now.”

“What about Cardas?” he asks.

You swallow hard, turning away from him, putting your face in your hands. His gut turns, the sparks of pleasure that had spread through him as he tasted you fading away to something that feels more like guilt. “I don’t care. We need to leave.”

“It’s fine,” Cassian says, and reaches for you, trying to curl a hand around your forearm, but you step out of his reach. “We’ll say you’re ill, that you need rest. We can stay another night, track him down tomorrow.”

Wordlessly, you nod, and reach for the door handle. As soon as you’re out of the closet, your demeanour changes, hands shaking, body sagging slightly as Cassian reaches for your elbow, supporting your weight. “We need to find Mon,” you murmur, and he nods.

Cassian pushes his way through the crowds as you return to the ballroom. Mon Mothma is easy enough to spot, and the look she gives the pair of you is filled with both worry and something like fear. “Senator?”

“I’m not feeling my best,” you say, the lie rolling easily off your tongue. “I hate to leave the party early.”

“Nonsense,” Mon replies, giving you a sympathetic smile. “I’ll have them hail you a cruiser to take you back to the hotels. Is there anything else you need?” Cassian can hear the double meaning in the Senator’s question, but no one else seems to think anything of it.

“We might have to extend our stay,” you reply, letting your eyes flutter slightly as you take a deep breath. “I’ll see how I feel come morning.”

“Well, do keep me posted,” Mon says, touching your shoulder lightly. “I’d be happy to—”

“Senator Carrax?” Cardas calls, and you both turn to see the Colonel walking towards you. “I wondered where you’d run off to.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Colonel Cardas,” you reply, bowing your head slightly. “I’m afraid I’m feeling quite unwell.”

“I’m sorry to hear,” Cardas replies, and reaches out and touches the back of his hand to your forehead. It makes Cassian bristle beside you, and your heel nudges his boot. “You do look quite flushed. What on earth did the Queen say to you?”

“No, no, it wasn’t the—”

“We’re leaving,” Cassian bites out, tightening his grip on your elbow.

Cardas shoots him a glare before his eyes slide back to you. “How are you getting back to the hotels?” he asks, pointedly to you. “I could call for the ISB shuttle, take you back myself.”

“Oh no, you’re too kind, Colonel,” you say, your voice going breathy. “Senator Mothma has already called a cruiser for us. I only wish we could have continued our conversation.”

The corner of the Colonel’s mouth quirks, and he reaches into his jacket, procuring a small silver card. “I thought about what you said, Senator.” He extends the card towards you, held between two fingers, and lifting a brow, you take it from him. “That should grant easy access for your plans on the trade routes.” He grins, that predatory look Cassian had seen before creeping into his gaze again. “On the condition that the next time you’re on Coruscant, you let me buy you dinner.”

Your mouth drops open as you stare at the Colonel, and you give him a brilliant smile, as brilliant as you can offer while pretending to feel ill. “You’re too kind, Colonel.”

He winks at you. “Don’t make me regret it, Senator.”

Mon Mothma reaches out, puts a soft hand on Cassian’s arm. “The cruiser is here for you.”

+

You stay quiet, the entire ride back to the hotels. You’d contacted Luthen the moment you stepped out of the palace, telling him where you were headed, that the job was done. Cassian is stoic beside you, helping you into the cruiser before getting in on the other side. The foot of space between you feels like a chasm, and your mind is whirling.

Yes, you’d got what you came for. Yes, you’d charmed the Colonel so well he’d give you exactly what you needed. Yes, you’d lied so well you’d convinced a room full of Imps that you were one of them. 

Yes, you’d cum so hard on Cassian’s tongue that you thought you would never come down from the amount of pleasure he’d given you.

But one tiny slip, and everything could have gone in the opposite direction.

You’re lucky, both of you. You know that. And it does nothing to quell your…anger? Is it anger? Is it fear? Is it just the culmination of the last few days making everything inside you implode?

You want to reach across the space, wrap your fingers around Cassian’s, but you resist.

You keep up the charade of feeling ill until you’re safe in your rooms, immediately stripping out of the dress and heels, redressing in your normal clothing before you whirl on Cassian, the dam of emotion in your head breaking.

“What the hell was that back there?” you cry, and his eyes go wide. “You could have blown our cover, Cass. We could have been compromised.”

He leans back against the wall, crosses his arms over his chest. “He touched you.” His tone is almost flat, but the flare in his eyes tell another story.

You rub a hand over your face, sighing. “So, cornering me in that closet was your solution? I wasn’t going to let him do anything.”

Cassian scoffs a laugh, the noise unkind. “You did not seem very upset about what happened in that closet.”

“I didn’t—I’m not—ugh!” you glare at him, matching his stance. “You are missing the point. He could have—”

“No,” Cassian barks, his voice rising slightly. “I won’t let the Empire take something else from me.”

You just stare at him, mouth dropped open. “Oh my god.”

“What?”

“What?” you repeat, stalking across the room, throwing your hands up. “You act like you’re the only one making sacrifices, like you’re the only one who lost something!” You whirl back to face him, feeling hot tears on your cheeks. “I lost everything, Cassian! Everything!”

“Don’t,” he says, his tone dropping completely, those dark eyes going shiny.

“Don’t what?” you ask, your voice cracking on the words.

“The Empire has been taking things from me since I was six years old,” he says, and the emotion in his voice makes your heart ache. “You don’t understand; you lost everything quickly, in a flash. For me? It was pieces, over time. Bit by bit.” He counts it out on his fingers: “My childhood, my sister, my home. Then my father, my freedom. Another home. Then my mother.”

He steps towards you, closing some of the distance that’s formed, and you find yourself holding your breath as he continues.

“Sure, they didn’t kill her, but if I hadn’t been locked up for no fucking reason then maybe I could have saved her!” Another step, and he’s nearly in front of you, close enough that he can reach out and take your face in his hands. “They keep taking things from me, and I won’t let them take you too.”

His thumb swipes over your cheeks, wiping away the tears on your skin. You reach up, wrap your hands around his wrists, keep him close. “I don’t want to lose you either.”

You stare at each other for a long time. You’re breathing the same air, and Cassian tips his head towards you, forehead pressed to yours. Your anger has faded some, the anxiety that had been chasing you all day melting away at the feeling of his hands on you, your mutual admission hanging in the air. It would be so easy, to lift your head slightly, to brush your lips against his, to claim his mouth for your own.

A heavy knock at the door makes you break apart, you reaching for his arm, Cassian instantly positioning himself in front of you. He pulls out his blaster, and you reach for one of the knives at your belt.

The door swings open slowly, revealing a hard-faced Luthen, and—

“Vel?”

She grins at you. “Hi.”

#rebel suns #my fics #cassian andor #cassian andor fic #cassian andor fanfiction #cassian andor smut #cassian andor angst #cassian andor fluff #andor fic #andor fanfiction #cassian andor x female reader #cassian andor x reader #cassian andor x you #rogue one fic #rogue one fanfiction #rogue one #andor #tw: death #tw: torture

[topcatofficial]

a top cat/lupin crossover wld be funny cuz youve got the big-hearted, emotional, kind of easily manipulated but stupidly absurdly brave cop who values doing whats right over necessarily following the law or even following orders, and is obsessed with arresting one (1) sneaky charismatic swindler who often flirts (with him!) as a diversion tactic but is also simultaneously one of his best friends, caring about him deeply, and would be so utterly crushed if anything happened to him. sitting around and weeping about it type of crushed. and his marriage literally fell to pieces because of his devotion to this one specific swindler. this very specific, very special cop is also often expected to single-handedly capture and arrest notorious thieves and is often just kind of disrespected or overlooked otherwise, but it's not like he's completely disliked either - and you think "hey are you describing dibble or zenigata?" well thats a trick question. its both. anyways in a crossover dibble would get put under zenigatas command by the sarge, who would obviously be on the list of characters who would give zenigata like zero respect whatsoever and just wants him out of his hair. meanwhile dibble would just be like wow :) a real interpol agent... what do you need me to do sir

#top commentary

[thatyanderecritic]

Is cutthroat from akudama drive a yandere?

Doubt it.

Based on what I read in the wiki about him and the series, Cutthroat and Swindler's relationship is the stereotypical one of a serial killer and his target. We have seen it time and time again in horror films of a killer hunting down a female protagonist. Based on what I've read of him in the wiki, I don't get any hint that Cutthroat likes Swindler romantically. He has a fixation on her to become his next murder victim. Just the fact that he has zero romantic interest in her, it puts him out of the running in being a yandere. He's more likely a yangire.

Edit: Came to my attention that the author of akudama drive pulled a JK Rowling and confirmed Cuttroat's romantic feelings for Swindler. From an outsider's perspective, maybe Cuttroat is a yandere but if he is, then I don't think he's a particularly well-written yandere (not saying that he isn't a well-written character. It's a distinct difference). We've said on the blog several times: If it's microscopic-level analysis is needed to figure out if he's a yandere, then he's probably not a yandere... or a well-thought-out one.

#answer #quickie review #yandere #male yandere #yangire #akudama drve #cutthroat

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

Hiya, are you still taking writing requests? Feel free to ignore if you don't, but I was wondering if you could write something with Brawler comforting Swindler when she's on her period? Just something wholesome and fluffy like Brawler shoving a stolen box of chocolates onto Swindler's lap or something. If you don't feel comfortable with periods, maybe Swindler winning a fight and Brawler cheering in the background?

Thank you very much for sending a request! Absolutely they're still open, I practically just opened them! o(*￣▽￣*)ブ

This is a surprising request. Not something I expected, and I welcome the surprise! You're talking to someone who presented an A2-size photo of a pile of tampons for her Plastic Arts Baccalauréat – a photo which is still hanging proudly above my bed. I think there is zero shame in mentioning periods and the fact that they very much exist and happen.

As someone who thinks periods are totally normal and should be talked about, your request is interesting to me because it would not have necessarily crossed my mind to write about them in a context where someone makes a big deal out of them. But it is still a reality of the world we live in, and I will take you up on your offer and try to write about Brawler's attempts to be there for someone whose struggle he may not understand fully!

I think Swindler is someone who would be a little awkward about it, so this might be an equally awkward read, if you empathise with her at all.

Fandom: Akudama Drive Characters: Swindler, Brawler (other Akudama make guest appearances) Content warning: Cutthroat /hj

"- Ugggghhh..."

Hiding her feelings isn't her strong suit. Swindler sits down on the pavement and moans to herself, letting her head fall slowly against her knees.

Brawler notices her, and after staring at her with a blank expression for a few uncomfortable seconds, turns to the first person next to him to ask:

"- What's wrong with Swindler? - ..."

Unfortunately for him, that person is Courier, who, without even looking at him or Swindler, silently takes a drag out of his cigarette, then turns around and leaves.

"- Hmpf."

What's wrong with that guy? Is he scared of women or summat?

He wouldn't even have bothered to ask if he'd known it was him. Well, it can't hurt to ask the girl herself.

"- Oi, Swindler."

He takes a few steps towards her to bend over and place his noggin right next to hers.

"- Sumthin' wrong? - Huh?"

Swindler turns her head slowly, and when she realises how close she is to Brawler's, she backs away, suppressing a scream.

"- Aah—M-Mr. Brawler! W-What's going on?"

Huh? Why's she acting all scared?

After looking all around them, she laughs... so she must be feeling better already.

"- Aaaah, sorry, I wasn't paying attention... Were you talking to me? - Hah, you didn't hear me? I asked what's wrong with you. - What's wrong with... ..? - Moanin' and actin' all depressed and all that. - Oh!"

Once again, Swindler's entire body stiffens. For a few seconds, she stares at Brawler with wide eyes and gritted teeth. Oh, so something has to be wrong, then.

"- Well y-you see... It's a personal thing! - A personal thing? - Yep! - And?"

Why's she acting all disabused now? It seems that she expected this to be a satisfying enough answer.

"- That's... all it is!"

She laughs nervously. She's obviously hiding something! Guess it's my job to uncover what, eh?

With new found determination, Brawler throws himself to the ground – which is, in his own way of doing things, sitting next to her. She swallows her spit somewhat loudly, but he doesn't notice.

"- Hmmm... Oh! I know what it is! It can only be that. - H... Eh? - Right... Young ladies can never catch a break, it's a damn shame. - Uuuuh... - Some hooligan come after you and bother you, didn't they? Let me have at them next time! - W-What? No!"

Forget about the fact that Brawler may very well be the hooligan bothering her, which he is very clearly not aware of.

"- Huh? Really? - R-Really! I, I appreciate your concern, Mr. Brawler, but... - Oh? Is it something different then? - Uuuh— - Did some bastard break your heart then? Some shit like that? - What?! Again, no, that's not what it is!

She looks annoyed. Well, that's how it is with ladies sometimes, isn't it? Expecting you to know what's wrong and all that. Brawler wants to see his mission through, and trying his hardest to figure out what it is, tilts his head to stare at her some more.

"- Hmm... - Mr. Brawler, like I said... - Hmmmm... - It's something personal, so please... - Hmmmmmm... - P-Please... Haha..."

She laughs nervously again, almost as though a hardened criminal with a body of steel is intensely staring at her.

"- OH! - Ngh..!"

When he exclaims much too loudly, with the air of someone who found the answer on his third attempt, she jumps in the air, hurting her butt on the way down against the pavement.

"- That time of the month, isn't it? - W-What?! No..!"

...But her face becomes entirely red. Confused by her reaction, Brawler tilts his head even further, when a third voice startles them both.

"- Aaaah, amazing..!"

Both "fighter" and "impostor" turn their head in perfect sync, but when they lay eyes upon an overly excited looking Cutthroat, Swindler's reaction is the strongest.

"- Ghh... Ghk..." With the face of an angel, the serial killer – coming from God knows where – walks up to the both of them, without ever taking his eyes off the young woman. Before he can get too close, however, she suddenly stands up, and taking a few steps backwards, she stutters incoherently before yelling:

"- Why... Why do you guys have to be so gross?!"

Redder even than before, she glances at the two men before spinning on the tip of her foot and running away.

Brawler stays perfectly in place, having, in fact, not moved a centimetre, whereas the Cutthroat goes after her, moaning:

"- Aaaaw, Swindler, why are you running?"

Brawler's eyes follow him – although Swindler is nowhere to be seen, he runs faster and faster in one direction, as if knowing exactly where she's going.

"- You're so pretty, Swindler~"

What a creep. Brawler wonders if he could get away with kicking this guy's ass. Cutthroat is the kind of person who would put up an interesting fight, isn't he? All worth it to him—

"- Wait, why am I gross too? - Hmm? What're you talking about, bro? - Oh, bro!"

It would appear that the rest of the gang is finally waking up. Hoodlum comes out of the shed they squatted for the night, followed by Doctor and Hacker, each walking in their own directions. The latter yawns loudly.

I don't want to smell his stinky breath from here.

"- Where did those two run to?" his bro asks. "- Hmm..."

It's still early in the morning, but the sun is already hanging proudly at the top of the sky. Concerned with Swindler's attitude, Brawler didn't get to enjoy the sunrise – not that he wouldn't have gotten bored after a couple of seconds watching.

"- Oh, I think Swindler's just on her period, which is why she... ran... and, uh..."

...No, something about that doesn't make sense. Why'd she run?

"- Eh? - Hang on, why'd she run? - W-Wait, bro, how do you know she's, uhm... you know? - Hm? Ah, I'm the one who pointed it out. - A-A-And Cutthroat started running after her? - Yeah. - ..."

That's certainly vexing. Brawler can't quite point out why his bro's making that face. Is there something he's missing? They might as well just tell him. It's not fair otherwise.

"- What're you making a fuss about, bro? Girls always get those. - That's, that's not what I'm worried about, b-bro. - Then what? - H-Hang on..." His bro always puts on these nervous faces, and what for? He's got a serious problem of not realising his own abilities. For someone who boasts about them so proudly, it's ironic. He stands up, and stares at Brawler for a few seconds, before adding:

"- I'll, I'll be back in a sec. - Huh? Uh, okay."

On those words, he starts to run roughly in the direction Cutthroat ran earlier. Does he know where he's going..?

Meanwhile, someone steps closer to Brawler. The latter raises his head; standing in front of the sun with the black cat on his shoulder, Hacker's figure above him looks almost dramatic.

"- You guys are so gross. - Huh?!"

Hacker gave him an entire lesson about how not to let Cutthroat get too close to Swindler "for as long as we need her, at least." It was almost enough to depress Brawler.

Time has passed. Their weird cat boss gave the group directions to move to another location, and Swindler, Cutthroat and Hoodlum must have joined them back at some point, somehow.

Weren't you supposed to tell me about something earlier, bro..? Walking out of their new – or future – shelter, the huge fighter looks all around him. Perhaps is he looking for something, or someone...

Hiding something underneath his jacket, he runs in multiple directions one after the other, staring everywhere intensely. He'd be tempted to take the damn thing off entirely – he had a blast destroying a bunch of police robots earlier this hour, and despite the cold weather, the sun in the middle of the sky feels like it's trying to melt his body. Yet he is still on a mission, and continues to look for his target with unwavering concentration.

When finally he sees her, curled up in an empty street corner, he can't help but exclaim joyfully.

"- Haha!"

She hears him, but doesn't react other than by sighing.

Heh, that's better than shooing me away. Brawler walks up to her to, again, sit right next to her.

"- What do you... - Here ya go!"

He takes the mystery item out from underneath his jacket to set it promptly on the lady's lap.

"- W-What... - I dunno if that'll help much, dealing with uh, hygiene on missions and all that."

None of it means anything to him, but Hacker's rant about blood and all made him worry somewhat. He continues:

"- But I heard these things have magical properties for you guys. I bet it's a load of bull, but they're full of sugar and you're gonna need it!"

Though he looks proud of himself, Brawler pays close attention to Swindler's reaction. She blinks rapidly, taking the box in her hands.

"- Oh, Mr. Brawler..."

Blushing heavily again, she is staring at an unopened box of luxury chocolates. The type you'd gift to your wife-to-be, if said woman were the heiress to some bullshit European De-summat family.

"- Grabbed them off the shelf of that store after the fight earlier. Couldn't get caught – I destroyed all them robots, hahaha! - That's... actually very thoughtful, Mr. Brawler. - Oh! Cool! ...Really?"

She has been avoidant all morning long. Hopefully that sicko didn't give her too much of a hard time... But she finally smiles.

"- Thank you."

How cute... But Brawler isn't exactly sensitive to that.

"- Cool!" he exclaims.

#writing requests #akudama drive #brawler akudama drive #swindler akudama drive

[slovenlyrecordings]

Brother and sisters, it’s time to Cum Together… RIGHT NOW!

Bordeaux, France’s HEARTBEEPS have emerged from the ashes of TV KILLERS (Estrus Records / Dead Beat Records), for a punkarolla orgy with current and ex-members of SWINDLERS, WILD ZEROS and HOLESHOTS, and their debut “Cum Together” LP is a megabash of adrenaline charged, twin-guitar crunch recorded in imperfectly hissy analog, where steamrollin’, stolen riffs drill through frantic garage based punk rock. Tip-top,raw, and tippin’ it’s beret to SAINTS, PAGANS, DMZ, MC5, RADIO BIRDMAN and THE DAMNED

OUT 04 MARCH ON VINYL & DIGITAL! 

Pre-order on Bandcamp (comes with download here) or at www.slovenly.com

HEARTBEEPS "Cum Together" LP by The Heartbeeps

#HEARTBEEPS #slovenly recordings #slovenlyrecordings #new releases #punkrock #punk

[gazzhowie]

My Top 25 Movies of 2022.

It has continued to be a weird time in cinema, post-pandemic, as we've started to get used to the glaring evidence that studios will sabotage their own content line to honour some new 45 day streaming deal... and the films that brace against said deal offer tsunamis cash in return but seemingly no means to change the studios' course.

We're now two or three back-to-back $250 million comic book disasters from the total destabilisation of cinema as we know it now! Anyway, rant over... it is time… or at least tradition… for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of the year. This time for 2022.

[Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive.]

Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make fit yet believe they deserve a shout-out regardless and then I get stuck into what I think are the 25 best films of the year.

As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Anyway, without further ado, here are the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:

Of the animated movies released this year - and in a year when I was drowning in this genre through content-overload due to having two young boys - Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Wendell & Wild, Mad God, Fireheart, The Bad Guys and The Sea Beast were all stand-outs.

Comedy-wise I liked both Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and The Lost City way, way, way more than I thought I was going to in the case of both. And when it comes to dramas I was impressed by The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Survivor, Thirteen Lives, Amsterdam (somewhat controversially, apparently), The Outfit and A Hero.

In the world of b-movies, exploitation flicks and straight to dvd/blu-ray/streamer I very much enjoyed Fall, Hell Hath No Fury, Violent Night, Smile, The Northman and Fresh. And blockbuster-wise, I really enjoyed Avatar: The Way of Water in all its heavily flawed / long-awaited glory, The Gray Man, RRR, Beast, Ambulance, Bullet Train, Raging Fire and Dune.

But really 2022 was where documentaries got to shine and I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend the varied selection of subjects offered up in Is That Black Enough For You, The Super Bob Movie, The Alpinist, Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis, The Tindler Swindler, Sidney and Into The Deep: The Submarine Murder Case.

Now...

... without further ado, my TOP 25 MOVIES OF 2022!

25. Beavis & Butthead Do The Universe

I've spoken before of my accepted hypocrisy surrounding these characters / their show and how my apathy towards them turned to affection when their 1997 film was released.

I'm hereby cementing that hypocrisy by acknowledging that whilst I STILL don't get the appeal of those original shows, this sits solidly alongside the first film... and currently stands as one of the best comedies of 2022.

Nope, I can't explain it either.

But funny is funny and there's some terrifically funny stuff here.

24. Ted K

I can't believe there's apparently zero 'chatter' around this. It sneaks up on you as one of the best films of the year - a small-scale character study of the infamous Ted 'Unabomber' Kaczynski, measured in its approach but fiery in its central (and mostly solo) performance from Sharlto Copley.

I have a friend who's worked with Copley on both HARDCORE HENRY and FREE FIRE and described him as one of the most unnecessarily cruel people they've worked with - an egotist quick to flash between machismo-drenched "mate-iness" and irrational fury at the smallest of things.

A performance like this from Copley indicates there's truth to the old industry saying that all the best are bastards.

Written and directed (as well as produced and edited) by Tony Stone, the film is quietly methodical and completely involving. It has an unmatched authenticity to it by utilising only the content of Kaczynski's manifestos for dialogue and matters of court record for the plot.

It's so committed to staying within Kaczynski's "voice" that it is scary how you catch yourself occasionally agreeing with his perspective on certain matters now the things he 'warned' against have come to pass... then have to remember he was a fuckin lunatic first, a psychopath second and a 'prophet' much, MUCH further down the line!

23. X

I'm a big fan of Ti West. He's not prolific - though this already seems like an ‘out of date’ statement seeing as he used the pandemic lockdown(s) to turn this into an entire trilogy! - and he doesn't claim to be anything that he absolutely isn't (hello Eli Roth!) but he quietly delivers the goods.

His debut THE ROOST isn't a great film but there are flashes within it that show a filmmaker of real potential. THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is one of the best slow burns and has one of the best third acts in modern horror. THE INNKEEPERS is an absolutely underrated gem and his play on Jonestown with THE SACRAMENT slowly flips into a nasty and absorbing effort. I'm also a massive fan of his legit Western, IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE, which is fuckin mint and you should definitely seek that out.

It's very easy to dismiss what West is doing here as just an exacting homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but it's more than that. Obviously, there are overt nods to it but you could also suggest West is doffing his cap affectionately to Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO and, yes, both Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR and Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE as well.

As both writer and director, he knows you've read the log-line - a group of 70s young filmmakers set out to make porn on a Texas farm but have to fight for their lives when their elderly hosts take against them - and he knows you're here for the sex and the gore. And he delivers solidly in both regards... but only as camouflage to play around thematically with cinema's complicated relationship with sex and violence, whilst commenting of sorts on religious/political conservativism and the well-known adage that nothing makes an old person feel old quite like the young.

The cast - Mia Goth (in dual roles, wink wink), Jenna Ortega, Martin 'Remember Him?' Henderson, a surprisingly great Brittany Snow and Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi - do grand work with what West gives them.

No one should try and suggest this is anything unique or any sort of game-changer in the world of horror. It isn't. It's a standard stalk-and-slash in most regards - that's a cut above the norm due to what West is bringing to the table.

22. Benedetta

I had an absolute blast with this - constantly enthralled as to whether it was ever going to lose balance of the precarious pile of tones it had amassed for itself, and plummet from one to the other beyond repair; high campery, religious/historical document or erotic psychological thriller.

Paul Verhoeven - long since done with Hollywood excess - masterfully curates and cultivates each so they somehow feel a complete companion to the other in ways that just simply shouldn't work.

After all, how many borderline camp historical erotic psychological nun dramas do you know of that are drowning in plaudits?

Verhoeven's handling is relaxed because he knows that he's hit a lottery win in casting Virginie Efira as Benedetta and Daphne Patakia as Bartolomea. With them nailing the material and the tone he is shooting for he can afford himself confidence that the end result will be as excellent as it is.

21. Christmas Bloody Christmas

I'm a Joe Begos fan and was very much looking forward to this, though I'll absolutely understand why it ain't going to be for everyone. Begos - who's ALMOST HUMAN and VFW I like a great deal (BLISS and THE MIND'S EYE somewhat less so) - makes movies for fans of 1980s exploitation and gutter cinema. He's the bastard step-child of Frank Henenlotter and James Glickenhaus and he writes and directs like he doesn't have a single fuck to give.

Nowhere is that screamingly more apparent than in the set-up for this, his latest movie where his attitude seems to be "Yeah, there's a department store robotic Santa Claus that has old military hardware in it, so fuckin what? Deal with it!"

Begos makes threadbare Carpenter / Romero homages; bargain basement gratuitous genre movies full of inventive gusto and practical effects - his movies don't 'mean' anything, he just wants to ink his influences onto a filmic bat and then bludgeon you with it.

A delightfully game and fully committed Riley Dandy really sells the schlock here. And there's a great time to be had here. It's a 'five beer masterpiece' of sandpaper raw creativity, with Begos rolling out a green and red neon-drenched BEFORE SUNRISE for piss-heads that evolves into a gory festive hack-and-slash horror flick before, with a quick salute to ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, kicking the gear up to the highest notch as a punk rock TERMINATOR.

20. Kimi

I was obviously going to be predisposed to liking this on the grounds that it is the master Steven Soderbergh working from a script by the repeatedly excellent David Koepp to do a modernised REAR WINDOW but with a 21st-century spin involving virtual assistant technology, starring "soooo hot right now" Zoë Kravitz.

But I wasn't prepared for just how thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyable it was.

It's a master craftsman making unashamedly pulpy, tight-as-hell, mainstream genre fare.

Kravitz is magnificent. Soderbergh barrels the whole thing along at a rate of knots...

... It was the first goddamn great ride of 2022 for me.

19. Elvis

I was pretty damn sure I was going to haaaate this because the marketing of it had me royally turned off and Baz Luhrmann tends to leave an inconsistent 'taste' in my mouth with his films.

Shockingly though from the get-go, this thing knocked me back and put a huge grin on my face - the Elvis "legend" done as a massively overblown live-action 'cartoon' with all the visual gaudiness that the man himself would be proud of.

It's so dazzlingly kinetic straight-out-the-gate that you wonder how they're going to maintain this - and the answer is they don't. Around the 40-odd minute mark, the giddy overblown live-action 'cartoon' gives way to a conventional biopic and you think to yourself "No. Wait. Where is the ~other~ film?"

It intermittently returns in fits and starts to that level of energy and when it does the film is all the better... the overblown live-action 'cartoon' area is where Tom Hanks' sort of iffy, insanely broad 'almost Batman villain esque' performance sits best for obvious reasons. In ELVIS' grand dramatic "straight" moments it's the super rare thing; a Hanks performance that could be considered bad.

The marketing and the trailers would have you believe Baz Luhrmann's choice of Elvis is stupefyingly basic and prettified. The reality is that Austin Butler does something here of real depth and texture that will surprise you. Especially seeing as he achieves this amidst Luhrmann's most gaudy excess.

John Carpenter's miniseries may well remain the granddaddy of the Elvis Presley mythos. But inconsistencies bedamned, there's still a grand time to be had here.

18. Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers

I was as shocked as you probably will be yourselves that one of the funniest comedies of the year is this:

... a fucking CHIP N' DALE: RESCUE RANGERS movie - recalibrated by The Lonely Island trio as a, get this, redress of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT with a loving ode to the work of Shane Black's action buddy movies and PI capers.

It's astonishingly good and, thanks to the insane amount of background gags and ridiculous in-jokes, its rewatch factor will prove to be insane.

Frankly, any movie that takes the best breakout comedian of the last few years and builds a role for him around the best Internet joke / biteback of 2019 deserves to be regarded as a masterpiece!

17. Lou

I saw the 'Bad Robot' production card come up instantly at the start of this and I immediately bristled because I can't remember a time when that wasn't a bastion for "fucking up a good thing". But I have to admit this thing bloody rocked - hard!

Like with NOBODY, the snarky expectation that this was going to be a smirk-inducing irreverent take on those 'elder-action' movies - with the casting of someone thoroughly unexpected (in this case character acting legend Allison Janney!) then building a crazy action b-movie around them - gives way to something surprisingly... legitimate!

Director Anna Foerster (a longstanding colleague and collaborator of Roland Emmerich) works closely with cinematographer Michael McDonough to make a great-looking, lean as fuck, propulsive film full of washed-out greys and vibrant greens as characters barrel through a drenched wilderness in an extremely solid play on TAKEN and DEADLY PURSUIT.

And Foerster's best asset is in the casting of folk like Allison Janney, Jurnee Smollett, Logan Marshall-Green and Matt Craven - none of whom are phoning this in, at all. Janney, in particular, is fully committed to this and its that commitment that accentuates the shit out of this.

You can go into this with your nose turned up and your standards dialled down, but that'll only serve to have the surprise hit you harder at what an excellent character study and impressively ace action movie this reveals itself to be.

16. Speak No Evil

"Why... are... you doing this?" "Because you let me!"

I'm very conflicted here on what I can or should say about this film by way of any sort of recommendation.

There's elements to it that easily secure it a place in my end-of-year Top 25... yet by granting it a place it works against my desperate need to do everything I can to forget I ever saw this.

It's the sort of film that in my twenties I'd be calling a "masterpiece" but now, as a parent (with its dialogue so on the nose that at its most harrowing it has characters saying reassuring things I say to my eldest all the time - only for them to be devastatingly proven a lie here!) I was left broken by it.

So much so that, no word of a lie, when it was finished I sat up into the early hours watching 'comfort movies' whilst muttering to myself "Why did they not run?" "Why did they accept their fate so willingly?" "What the... FUCK?"

Christian Tafdrup should absolutely be commended for making a film so expertly calibrated as he moves the narrative through observations on masculinity and assertiveness then onto a dark satire of social graces and expected norms... before throwing his hands up in a 'Yeah, you got me. I was just fucking with you - This IS a horror movie!' sort of manner.

His film wouldn't work without that quartet of performances either. And Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch are exceptional as the Danish couple taken out of their depth by their own politeness, whilst Fedja van Huêt and Karina Smulders are outstandingly vile as the Dutch couple who... invite them over.

It all leads to a place that has to be left undescribed and unspoiled. Its potency will be at its highest if you go in knowing nothing. But it will and should destroy you. You can grimace and grumble at the lack of proactive protectiveness displayed by its leads (and no parent worth their salt is going to watch this without pulling a 'Mark Wahlberg after 9/11' by going "That ain't how it would've gone down on MY watch, motherfucker!!") but it won't dilute the truly upsetting and disturbing power of it anyway.

15. Nope

I went back for a second go-around and really liked it even more. I definitely appreciated it a lot more for what Jordan Peele was trying to pull off and genuinely admired it for pushing to be different.

Once it gets its 'ducks in a row' it goes off and goes off hard and fast. It delivers what you're wanting it to - effectively and efficiently, but not necessarily by way of "the little green men" route many will be expecting.

It's a terrific though wobbly horror thriller. Another sign that Jordan Peele is •developing• into a great director (not necessarily a great writer). He's just not your "new John Carpenter" right now so let's calm down, huh?

I just still don't 'get' the manner in which we have elevated Peele to "master craftsman" status as a filmmaker after just 3 movies when his efforts are in no way flawless or particularly 'masterful' as such.

I'm even saying this as someone who has really enjoyed the guy's work thus far too. Including this film. But each one shows a filmmaker who's really good... but just not quite there yet. Certainly, as a writer/director, whereby he displays a skill as the latter that's nowhere near matched with the former.

GET OUT is great but absolutely overcooks its own second act, allowing you the viewer to 'get out' ahead of the film and wait for it to catch up. There are elements of US that indicate Peele is even better there, only up until the end of the second act when it becomes obvious the man is all 'concept' and no 'clue'.

Here, the film feels positively laborious straight-out-the-gate as pieces are moved into place - it's another film that seems unwilling to acknowledge we've seen the trailer, we know what we're fuckin here for so there's no fun for us in watching Peele find his way on screen in the film itself to get us to the destination we're come to it for.

As I said though, once it gets its foundations laid it's a great ride with some very intense, effective and evocative set-pieces. This could actually be my favourite of Peele's movies so far.

14.  The Batman

Did you watch SE7EN and ZODIAC and think to yourself "Man, this thing would kick so much more arse if BATMAN was the lead investigator?" Then boy oh boy do I have the film FOR YOU!

Revisiting it at home on a smaller screen, this 'breathes' differently. The reality is that it is an overindulgent 2-hour action thriller in the body of a 3-hour blockbuster. It's surprisingly less stacked in the grandiose action set-pieces than you'd expect for a comic book movie of this ilk (it's 70-odd minutes before it puts anything remotely blockbustery on show in terms of bombastic action) so watching it in your living room means you can off-set its length by pretending it's actually a miniseries type of deal.

There were things that aggravated me about this (it's far too long - unnecessarily long) and the cinematography by Greig Fraser is just TOO damn dark; there are moments here where the lack of visual clarity in simple dialogue scenes makes it impossible to see who the hell is talking to who.

And the film's excessive length is padded out with investigations into riddles that are rudimentary at best and kind of lack sophistication considering the speed it is taking "the world's greatest detective" to solve them.

But overall I had an absolute blast with it.

It took me a ~little~ bit to bed in with Robert Pattinson, an actor I've never really rated outside of the phenomenal GOOD TIME, yet overall it didn't take me very long to fall into the world Matt Reeves has built.

Reeves - a stupendously talented director of high-end spectacle, as the APES reboot sequels showed - has nailed 'Gotham'. Christopher Nolan still regarded the city in his movies as a cosmopolitan one 'with fractures'. Here Reeves presents it as the dirty, broken cesspool that is consuming its inhabitants - and we are able to recognise it from the greatest comic books in the Batman run.

Okay, admittedly his homages get a LITTLE heavy and on the nose (there's a scene in which Batman kicks down the door of The Riddler's apartment that is framed, lit and even staged with the same red doored corridor in the background to match the moment Mills does the same to John Doe's in SE7EN... with both serial killers' having the same interior decorator) but you're not going to quibble when Reeves over-delivers on the spectacle.

(That car chase with The Penguin is a phenomenal experience - but, again, pedants could argue how wholly 'original' it is when elements of it are lifted from James Gray's WE OWN THE NIGHT.)

Reeves has also cast interestingly rather than big and, for the most part, it works (the Colin Farrell thing is... kinda... sorta... brilliant?)

I think if we've reached the point of accepting that the comic book movie now fully controls the cinematic market across all demographics than this is how you deliver your 'fight back':

You make your big, thematically dark serial killer / investigatory procedural movie with all your broad cap doffs to everyone from David Fincher and Christopher Nolan through to Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin... and you stick it inside of the mould of a BATMAN movie!

13. Av: The Hunt

I'm frustrated that one of the best action-thriller releases of 2022 is sitting right there on Netflix with zero promo and seemingly absolute silence in terms of internet chatter.

Emre Akay's AV (aka AV: THE HUNT) is a propulsive, timely, hard-edged Turkish spin on THE FUGITIVE esque 'man on the run' movies that sets its engines going 6 minutes in and doesn't stop for another 80 minutes thereafter.

The unique hook lies with its female protagonist (Billur Melis Koç's commendable and impressive turn as Ayşe) and the bare notion of her "crime" (infidelity) setting her up against what feels like one Turkish town's entire patriarchy.

Not everything Akay's attempting here works, the ending is abrupt to say the least and some may find a modicum of monotony sets in. But for the most part, it has simplicity in its structure on its side; Ayşe is set running and only stops to find herself in low-level situations that become high-wire tension drenched concerns every time a man walks into them.

12. Licorice Pizza

I was reminded watching this of an assertion David Mamet once made long ago about how a screenplay should 'throbbingly pulsate' with the *need* to be told. Because Paul Thomas Anderson's latest kinda/sorta proves Mamet wrong.

There's nothing here that screams out a story you 'need' to involve yourself in (a very good friend of mine would argue that would be true of all of Anderson's oeuvre, really) but that's not to say you wouldn't have a grand old time with it regardless.

Lazily (and incorrectly) attributed by some critics as being Anderson's paean to his own childhood in the Valley, it is in fact the filmmaker's ode to SOMEONE else's - hearing anecdotes of friend and producer (and co-owner of PlayTone with Tom Hanks) Gary Goetzman's childhood acting in YOURS, MINE AND OURS with Lucille Ball and starting businesses in his teens selling waterbeds and pinball, Anderson became fascinated by his life and was eventually tipped 'over the edge' into bringing it to the screen after finding out a teenage Goetzman once installed a waterbed in legendarily insane producer Jon Peters' home.

Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood composes a score that compliments Anderson's terrific curation of 1971 - 1974 musical 'deep cuts' that serve to soundtrack a loveably shaggy and messy movie (but a considerably less shaggy/messy one than Anderson's still mostly misunderstood INHERENT VICE).

There are things that work absolutely delightfully here and then there are things that don't (amongst them the entire John Michael Higgins bon mots with him using shockingly un-PC "Ahhh So" accents when speaking to his Japanese wives; Anderson saying its attitudes that would be "contemporaneous and accurate portrayals of the movie's time period" don't make them any less uncomfortable).

That same split exists in the performances. Sean Penn makes no attempt other than to play his usual 'notes' in embodying his William Holden facsimile whilst Bradley Cooper completely ~nails~ hairdresser-turned-producer / perpetual maniac Jon Peters. Alana Haim fluctuates scene-to-scene in terms of 'competency' as an actor (but mostly comes good in the end) whilst the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son Cooper lands straight-out-of-the-box as an actor of natural talent. And Skyler Gisondo drops in early to steal scenes left, right and centre as is his way these days (see also BOOKSMART).

Those 'outraged' by the age difference are right to highlight the hypocrisy that it would be very unlikely that a film of this ilk about a 25-year-old man falling in love with a 15-year-old girl would be met so rapturously. So it's a testament to Anderson's skill at play here that we spend the movie willing the two protagonists to end up together and thoroughly enjoying being in their company along the way.

11. All Quiet On The Western Front

I see some questioning why they did another adaptation of the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque when Lewis Milestone's 1930 version is still so definitive, effective and beloved.

Perhaps to some, it's 'quaint' by today's standards and the epic anti-war sentiments deserve to be reconfigured for an audience of today whose sensibilities are calibrated (desensitised, even?) by CALL OF DUTY, etc?

Edward Berger has done that; equaling Lewis Milestone's 1930 achievement in delivering a truly horrifying, sobering anti-war screed with a flow of violence so unabashed in its reality and extreme it'll shake the 'first person shooter' to attention and must •surely• deter anyone from ever refusing to believe warfare is only futile and unappealing.

Director Paul Schrader recently used his [wonderful] Facebook account to discuss this film thusly:

"There's a valid argument that all war films are pro-war films. It's not possible to dramatize the fetishisms, the comraderies, the energies, the strategies, the technologies, the common purposes of war without glorifying them. Every anti-war film is a pretend anti-war film. Netflix's German update of All's Quiet is as close to an anti-war film as anything I've seen. There's no bravery, no comradery, no honor, no intelligence - just stupidity and brutality. A searing indictment of war. But it's still a pro-war film."

I'm not sure I agree entirely with Schrader there but it rolls me back around to something the late Samuel Fuller once said about how it was the responsibility of the studios to never let the war movie die as a genre though for it not to be used as a means to entertain but to educate, that an audience member should come away with no desire to see a frontline or that filmmaker had failed.

When Ridley Scott learnt US armed forces applications went •up• after the release of BLACK HAWK DOWN he acknowledged he'd failed in his intent. Edward Berger hasn't failed here, have no doubt there. And he's given tremendous assistance from Volker Bertelmann's thumbing trumpet-blast score.

His decisions within his adaptation aren't flawless. The addition of a secondary plot (as represented by Daniel Brühl's Matthias Erzberger) following the creation of the November 11 armistice is well intended but it pulls away from the intensity of the singularly first-person narrative of the novel and the 1939 version. It lengthens the film unnecessarily and dilutes (only ever so slightly) the intensity of Paul Bäumer's journey.

As Bäumer Felix Kammerer is nothing short of exceptional. In the final stretch of the film he is utterly unrecognisable and your heartbreaks for the inevitably of his character's fate.

In the conversation of great war films to land in the last 10 - 20 years, this has to hold a place.

10. Everything Everywhere All At Once

I will admit that the first 20-odd minutes of this provoked more anxiety and stress in me than the whole of (the still sublime) UNCUT GEMS. At the exact moment it wondrously kicked into gear I was frankly already exhausted... and then it didn't stop for the full stretch of its 2½ hour run time.

To say it is unrelenting is an understatement. It is completely exhausting. In its unwieldy, epic state it is the most ill-disciplined and unrefined film to be born of a film so clearly built upon refined structure and narrative discipline. To put it simply, there is just TOO MUCH of a good thing going here.

And it IS good. Very good in fact.

But I could only just about cope with it. And I'm intrinsically built for a Michelle Yeoh showpiece that doesn't just lean in on her martial arts majesty and her worth as an actually brilliant actress, but also delivers thematically on the meaning of life, existentialism, metatextuality, what some are referring to as "dadaist absurdism", Asian-American identity in today's society, nihilism and the concept of the 'multiverse' done in a manner FAR greater than Marvel have done thus far.

Come "Awards Season", if the conversation doesn't include Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan (the man responsible for the brilliant 'Data' / 'Shortround' double-strike of the 80s) and Jamie Lee Curtis - all of whom are frankly tremendous - than legitimate questions have to be asked about a race / age bias or some sort of lack of comprehension as to what "best" actually means at these awards.

Yeoh is the anchor and obvious star of the show. It's a given that her martial art skills are fabulous but it's the additional shades she brings to this too; the dramatic depths, the genuine human emotion and the surprisingly exquisite comic timing.

The whole cast are equally great too though, including the legendary James Hong, Stephanie Hsu (saving the film from the shitter by thankfully replacing Awkwafuckwit) and, yes, the mighty Randy Newman "as the voice of Raccacoonie".

It's all astonishingly well directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as "Daniels") in a manner that will frequently drop your jaw... it's just they cause a drop so often and stay around for too long thereafter that you eventually begin to notice the jaw ache more than the film.

9. Hustle

I wonder whether Adam Sandler and director Jeremiah Zagar got some sort of early screening of TOP GUN: MAVERICK whilst it lay in 'pandemic situ' for 2½ years and realised there was still a way forward / no shame in unabashed feel-good cheese; staking a pole in the same warm, rewarding ground off the back of it.

Here's a film that stares at all the tropes that come with this sort of thing and lovingly embraces all of them - put-upon underdogs, stacked odds, boo-hissable villains and antagonists, training montages, rewarding endings - whilst finding a couple of new spins on a few of them.

It will probably reward more for those with an arcane knowledge of basketball and its current players (many of whom play themselves or roles herein) but it's rewarding in its own right too.

It's also a surprisingly funny film too. Sandler (who is very good here - he's sincere and natural, earning big laughs from being real and engaged) shows that his future must / should lie not in those soulless, joyless 'holidays with the buddies' broad anti-comedies he's become known for but in dry 'dramedies' that get to show how deft he can be as an actor whilst killing it with zingers dropped in his lap.

Sometimes you want cinema that's going to blow you away with something unexpected and unique. And sometimes you just need a new spin on dependable old standards to give you a good time.

8. Nightmare Alley

I absolutely ate this right up - loved it!

Yeah, it is drastically overstretched (does 150 minutes REALLY have to be the new 120-minute 'normal' now?) and there's a slight cruelty in putting someone like Bradley Cooper - who is considerably more a "movie star" than a strong actor, no matter what his ego tells him - up against wall-to-wall pitch-hitting exquisite acting talent as robust as [deep breath] Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr. and Tim Blake Nelson...

... but those are the most minor of issues offset by the fact we get to spend time being spoilt by a master craftsman who's made one of the most sumptuously framed and shot films of the last few years.

This is a film where Guillermo del Toro's sheer passion (and the gorgeous cinematography by Dan Laustsen) seeps through every shot. There's an entire layer beneath the film's narrative and performances where you could watch this with the sound off and still fall into the images like it's a warm bath.

Those praising / criticising Del Toro for making a 'homage' to old film noir really miss the point that he's actually made less a homage and more an actual entry into the noir pantheon. It's not a tribute to the greats of yesteryear. It's an equal that happens to be set in that era.

7. Barbarian

I was really worried this wouldn't hold up as joyously once all the 'revelations' were out there and what not - though I can't imagine a first-time experience of it would hit as hard knowing all of its directions beforehand, so thanks for *that* Empire Magazine - but it does; slightly less impactful yet still absolutely a fun thrill-ride!

Easily one of my favourite horrors in quite some time and one of the best films of this year, you've GOT to go into this knowing as little as possible. Preferably nothing, in fact. The joy (one of the film's many) lies in being routinely wrongfooted at each and every point that a 'standard' horror would drop a 'typical' trope, whilst the dial keeps getting ratcheted up and up and up - until you're neck deep in expertly crafted scares.

There is absolutely a reason that it is an old-fashioned word-of-mouth sleeper hit and a "Fuck You" variation of it at that, grossing over $42 million worldwide (currently) off a $4.5 million budget after a disastrous door-to-door trip around every major and mini studio in town and getting rejected by all of them initially.

Honestly, there are some truly terrific horror beats in this thing; big dollops of shadowy manipulation, "Ooooh you fucker!" jump bits, gratuitous gore, stomach-turning gross stuff and exceptional levels of foreboding. That this is all delivered by Zach Cregger in a solo directorial debut (after a career in Twitch streaming and comedy troupe membership!) is nothing short of astounding. This thing plays like the work of a genre craftsman.

The film is a really interesting construction that offers up mini-movies within a... Actually, even THAT is saying too much. Let's just say that the accentuating of its quality level and its ability to throw you on the backfoot is achieved in the casting of Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård and Justin Long.

Campbell gives one of my favourite performances this year in this and I think the whole thing only works overall because of what her and Skarsgård pull off early on. And Long, who I'm a big fan of, is just... just... so deliciously wrong here that it's tremendous.

God, I can't wait to dig into this again and again. An instant genre classic, if you ask me!

6. Prey

I remain really impressed with this. Whilst a definite high watermark in the PREDATOR series (though is that THAT hard?), the notion that it may be an "instant action masterpiece" as stated by some critics is somewhat overblown. It certainly holds up to repeat viewing though as a terrific little actioner.

Dan Trachtenberg, working off a script by Patrick Aison and working with a performance by Amber Midthunder (an absolute find, by the way), delivers a clean, lean, rousing, thankfully streamlined action b-movie that in its final moments sets itself out as not so much a prequel but an opening chapter in a story trilogy that ends with the reveal in PREDATOR 2...

... and cuts out all the 'noise' drawn from the pretty naff PREDATORS, Shane Black's pretty disappointing THE PREDATOR and those pretty unwatchable ALIEN Vs PREDATOR 'side movies'.

There was a clear Joel Silver cultivated bombastic, borderline surreal, specifically McTiernan glossed perfection to the original PREDATOR that the franchise has frustratingly tried to emulate or flat-out rip-off. There's something very admirable here about how Trachtenberg manages to pay homage to it whilst trying to do its own thing.

5. Athena

Those opening 11 minutes are so audacious, so kinetic, so exhilarating and so sublimely choreographed and executed they serve to remind you how thoroughly tremendous cinema can be... on a streaming screen of your choosing through the Netflix app! Go figure.

What follows thereafter is a sheer rollercoaster ride whereby the film's smaller moments feel like a complete deflation because of the intensity of what's occurring on either side of them.

As a provocative political drama, it isn't entirely successful. It makes jabs in that regard rather than delivering effective blows. But the opening sequence is such a mighty, immersive 'statement of intent' that you're hooked and the film sneaks up on you as one of the best action thrillers of 2022.

And tucked away within this astounding, incendiary actioner is an acting debut from [then] 19-year-old Sami Slimane that isn't just thoroughly captivating but possibly one of the strongest debuts in the history of film.

Watch it as a double-bill with the very underrated and underseen Danish action flick ENFORCEMENT for extra accentuating!

4. Midnight

I put this up as the first truly great thriller of 2022. I was legitimately blown away by it - Kwon Oh-seung has crafted a high concept thriller (a deaf woman witnesses a serial killer's latest attack and must begin a silent flight and fight through one long night when she becomes his new target) that is so relentless and exhilarating there were long stretches where I forgot to breathe.

The film would be an absolute instant modern classic of its type just based on its jaw-droppingly impressive propulsion and the ingenuity of using deafness as a means to create additional danger out of everyday elements, but what it also has is two utterly exquisite performances:

Wi Ha-joon is deliciously odious as the serial killer but it's Jin Ki-joo as Kim Kyung-mi that will stagger you, most definitely in the film's final stretch where she delivers a monologue begging for her life that shatters your heart.

There's no country that is creating consistently magnificent cinematic content at the moment like the Koreans, who've absolutely mastered the ability to take the mainstream thriller and reconfigure it to fit a varying amount of co-genres (action, horror, sci-fi, etc) and themes. See the likes of THE YELLOW SEA, BEDEVILLED, THE SUSPECT, I SAW THE DEVIL, TIME TO HUNT, THE CHASER, THE MERCILESS, #ALIVE, THE GANGSTER THE COP THE DEVIL, AGE OF SHADOWS, THE VILLAINESS and now this.

3. Nitram

I was left genuinely shaken by this - a forensic recounting of the years of Martin Bryant's life (here identified as "Nitram" - 'Martin' spelt backwards - in order to continue the practice of 'dead-naming' him) leading up to the unfathomably evil 1996 massacre he committed at Port Arthur in Tasmania, in which he killed 35 people and wounded 23 others - several of whom were toddlers and children.

(This massacre - the worst in Australia's history - led to historic and fundamental changes in the country's gun laws in a manner that puts America to shame, though this film's postscript indicates the current statistics aren't impressive under scrutiny!)

It's easy to understand why this film was met with widespread concern and controversy within Tasmania itself. Only 2 cinemas in the whole island state chose to screen the film but opted out of advertising or listing showings. But those understandably perturbed and unsettled by its existence should draw something from the fact this is not a salacious nor gratuitous 'recreation'.

Justin Kurzel's previous jaunt around similar territory with his brilliant but thoroughly sadistic study of The Snowtown Murders easily leads you to believe the same level of unrestrained and unforgiving violence will be present here. That's not the case. The massacre itself is not shown other than to contextualise its beginning. There's an admirable restraint here that should be acknowledged.

Nor does the film seek to provide an 'out' or a rationalisation for Bryant's abhorrent behaviour. It presents his clear intellectual disabilities upfront and centre but never uses them as an excuse. Instead it leans in on how thoroughly damaged and dangerous he was long before 1996 and then clinically addresses how his social isolation and thirst for any form of inclusion on whatever term he could comprehend as 'normal' married with the neglect and lack of intervention from relevant authorities (parental, law, social services) created a harrowing / deadly storm - accentuated by decidedly odd circumstances and monies acquired.

The performances are across the board first rate; Essie Davis has the showy, quirky role that doesn't go where you think it will and Judy Davis is as dependably phenomenal as we've come to expect, but whilst this is very obviously Caleb Landry Jones' film and he is doing excellent and interesting work, it's Anthony LaPaglia who very softly and very delicately takes his role and uses it to break your heart.

This truly is one of the best films of 2022 - an uncompromisingly dark but important study that doesn't seem as interested in the "Why" as much as many suspected and instead quietly analyses the "How".

2. The Banshees of Inisherin

I fell instantly in love with this - hard! The marketing and Martin McDonagh's past work leads you into believing this is going to be a caustic comedic fable on fractured social graces and broken friendships, done 'the Irish way'. But that's just prologue.

Instead, McDonagh leads us into a tale of bizarro escalation and dysfunctional communication, of dented machismo, human warmth, unrequited love, repressed anger, extreme vengeance, loneliness and... maybe... metaphors for the Irish Civil War.

The script is dryly and frequently funny and the performances from the cast submerge themselves in the dialogue, knowing full well that they're being handed pure gold here.

Brendan Gleeson and Kerry Condon are dependably sublime as you'd expect but this is Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan's film. It takes a lot to say this, having spent decades either detesting the dude or apathetic to him, but Farrell's work here completely broke through to me once and for all. Farrell made me laugh and made me well up...

... but it's Keoghan's work here - specifically THAT scene with Condon down by the river's edge - that quietly devastated me to an extent that I didn't even realise I was crying until I'd drenched my own face. There can be no conceivable way the Best Supporting Actor Oscar isn't his.

I genuinely, genuinely adored this film and how it almost seems to take perverse pleasure in luring you in with the notion of some Irish GRUMPY OLD MEN redo with 'The IN BRUGES Boys' - only to slowly dim the tone and wrongfoot you into darkness!

1. Top Gun: Maverick

I had some degree of reticence that this wouldn't hold up 'at home'. Because, well, that IMAX experience really is a fuckin drug rush. But I need not have worried because everything that made TOP GUN: MAVERICK the inexplicably joyous filmic experience of 2022 is still all present and correct on repeat viewings. The most shocking element of all is that one of the greatest blockbusters / best films of the decade is a 36-year-old... sequel to TOP GUN??

That first TOP GUN movie is beloved for reasons totally disassociated from judging the film conventionally as a whole. It suffers enormously from being an empty confection with a main protagonist who is conceited, selfish, pretty misogynistic, unprofessional, predatory and by the film's end the character hasn't journeyed THAT far from those characteristics at all.

Here, you have a film with actual arcs - character-wise, dramatically and whatnot. So successful is it in this regard that I had a 'bit of a weep' at the end... over characters I couldn't have given two fucks about 130 minutes earlier. A lot of that has to do with the casting choices with an excellent Tom Cruise being backed up well by a shockingly good Miles Teller, a really lovely Jennifer Connelly, a brilliant Glen Powell, an underused Ed Harris, and a tender appropriate turn by Val Kilmer - and Jean Louisa Kelly (aka 'Uncle Buck's Niece') as his wife! The only weak link is the continually odious Jon Hamm, who takes the role Harris should've had.

How do you make this a truly flawless blockbuster? You cast either Tom Skerritt or Michael Ironside in Ed Harris' role. And Ed Harris in Jon Hamm's role. Coz MORE Ed Harris is NEVER a bad thing... and Ed Harris has never tortured a man and left him sterile by dragging him by his testicles with a claw hammer. Fuck YOU, Jon Hamm!

It is a film that finds ~something~ to say about time, legacy, regret, grief, ambition, responsibility, surrogate fathering and ageing and it says it inside of a sequel to a • 36-year old• film of which the best thing you can say is that its soundtrack is great.

All of that though is just the "soft centre" at the core of what you're REALLY here for, which is some of the greatest cinematic craftsmanship in the history of blockbuster filmmaking. Seriously. Shitteth ye not one jot. In an age of ugly, cheap, less-than-competent greenscreen CGI in the likes of DR STRANGE 2 and UNCHARTED marvel at real actors being taken to the skies in actual planes and barreled/battered at legitimate high velocity for our entertainment in action sequences that are stunningly visualised and carried out with clean geography.

Director Joseph Kosinski has pulled off an astounding achievement here. Believe the hype - every word of it! This is a movie totally unashamed to not only lean in but actually fully embrace old-fashioned sensibilities in cinema; like wearing its heart on its sleeve, being unembarassed by 'high cheese', manipulative high octane musical scores and (best of all!) the BEST narrative trope in all of cinema:

Here is a film riddled with the highest tier of technical sophistication yet it's driven by a (story) engine of completely perfect simplicity - the 'men on a mission' structure; we watch our main man assemble a team, introduce a mission, train for it and complete it. There's nothing more to it than that and yet it really is quite brilliant.

So much so that it actually does the unthinkable and adds texture to Tony Scott's empty 1986 original.

I've legitimately been trying to think of a situation where there's been a belated follow-up to a film I didn't much care for that I ended up liking a great deal more than its predecessor. The best I could muster was the likes of RAMBO or SCREAM 4.

Then I started thinking about belated sequels that came, landed and blew me away on a vastly greater plane than where my affections sat on the preceding movie. I came up with CREED, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (of course) and THE COLOUR OF MONEY - the Tom Cruise connection being not at all lost on me in this scenario.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK is a genuinely terrific piece of cinema. It is without a doubt built to be a euphoric blast of cheesy feel-good blockbuster filmmaking. And in the process it will likely end up as the absolute feel-good movie of the year. It's almost unfortunate that it is dependent on its association to such a lesser film.

---

And that’s that! 

See you all next year... Find me on Letterboxd as Gonzo McNulty if you fancy more of this, but daily.

[hellsitesonlybookclub]

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 15-16

CHAPTER XV

USUALLY I'm pretty mild, in fact many of my friends are kind enough to call it "Folksy," when I'm writing or speechifying. My ambition is to "live by the side of the road and be a friend to man." But I hope that none of the gentlemen who have honored me with their enmity think for one single moment that when I run into a gross enough public evil or a persistent enough detractor, I can't get up on my hind legs and make a sound like a two-tailed grizzly in April. So right at the start of this account of my ten-year fight with them, as private citizen, State Senator, and U. S. Senator, let me say that the Sangfrey River Light, Power, and Fuel Corporation are—and I invite a suit for libel—the meanest, lowest, cowardliest gang of yellow-livered, back-slapping, hypocritical gun-toters, bomb-throwers, ballot-stealers, ledger-fakers, givers of bribes, suborners of perjury, scab-hirers, and general lowdown crooks, liars, and swindlers that ever tried to do an honest servant of the People out of an election—not but what I have always succeeded in licking them, so that my indignation at these homicidal kleptomaniacs is not personal but entirely on behalf of the general public.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip

ON Wednesday, January 6, 1937, just a fortnight before his inauguration, President-Elect Windrip announced his appointments of cabinet members and of diplomats.

Secretary of State: his former secretary and press-agent, Lee Sarason, who also took the position of High Marshal, or Commander-in-Chief, of the Minute Men, which organization was to be established permanently, as an innocent marching club.

Secretary of the Treasury: one Webster R. Skittle, president of the prosperous Fur & Hide National Bank of St. Louis—Mr. Skittle had once been indicted on a charge of defrauding the government on his income tax, but he had been acquitted, more or less, and during the campaign, he was said to have taken a convincing way of showing his faith in Buzz Windrip as the Savior of the Forgotten Men.

Secretary of War: Colonel Osceola Luthorne, formerly editor of the Topeka (Kans.) Argus, and the Fancy Goods and Novelties Gazette; more recently high in real estate. His title came from his position on the honorary staff of the Governor of Tennessee. He had long been a friend and fellow campaigner of Windrip.

It was a universal regret that Bishop Paul Peter Prang should have refused the appointment as Secretary of War, with a letter in which he called Windrip "My dear Friend and Collaborator" and asserted that he had actually meant it when he had said he desired no office. Later, it was a similar regret when Father Coughlin refused the Ambassadorship to Mexico, with no letter at all but only a telegram cryptically stating, "Just six months too late."

A new cabinet position, that of Secretary of Education and Public Relations, was created. Not for months would Congress investigate the legality of such a creation, but meantime the new post was brilliantly held by Hector Macgoblin, M.D., Ph.D., Hon. Litt.D.

Senator Porkwood graced the position of Attorney General, and all the other offices were acceptably filled by men who, though they had roundly supported Windrip's almost socialistic projects for the distribution of excessive fortunes, were yet known to be thoroughly sensible men, and no fanatics.

It was said, though Doremus Jessup could never prove it, that Windrip learned from Lee Sarason the Spanish custom of getting rid of embarrassing friends and enemies by appointing them to posts abroad, preferably quite far abroad. Anyway, as Ambassador to Brazil, Windrip appointed Herbert Hoover, who not very enthusiastically accepted; as Ambassador to Germany, Senator Borah; as Governor of the Philippines, Senator Robert La Follette, who refused; and as Ambassadors to the Court of St. James's, France, and Russia, none other than Upton Sinclair, Milo Reno, and Senator Bilbo of Mississippi.

These three had a fine time. Mr. Sinclair pleased the British by taking so friendly an interest in their politics that he openly campaigned for the Independent Labor Party and issued a lively brochure called "I, Upton Sinclair, Prove That Prime-Minister Walter Elliot, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and First Lord of the Admiralty Nancy Astor Are All Liars and Have Refused to Accept My Freely Offered Advice." Mr. Sinclair also aroused considerable interest in British domestic circles by advocating an act of Parliament forbidding the wearing of evening clothes and all hunting of foxes except with shotguns; and on the occasion of his official reception at Buckingham Palace, he warmly invited King George and Queen Mary to come and live in California.

Mr. Milo Reno, insurance salesman and former president of the National Farm Holiday Association, whom all the French royalists compared to his great predecessor, Benjamin Franklin, for forthrightness, became the greatest social favorite in the international circles of Paris, the Basses-Pyrénées, and the Riviera, and was once photographed playing tennis at Antibes with the Duc de Tropez, Lord Rothermere, and Dr. Rudolph Hess.

Senator Bilbo had, possibly, the best time of all.

Stalin asked his advice, as based on his ripe experience in the Gleichshaltung of Mississippi, about the cultural organization of the somewhat backward natives of Tadjikistan, and so valuable did it prove that Excellency Bilbo was invited to review the Moscow military celebration, the following November seventh, in the same stand with the very highest class of representatives of the classless state. It was a triumph for His Excellency. Generalissimo Voroshilov fainted after 200,000 Soviet troops, 7000 tanks, and 9000 aeroplanes had passed by; Stalin had to be carried home after reviewing 317,000; but Ambassador Bilbo was there in the stand when the very last of the 626,000 soldiers had gone by, all of them saluting him under the quite erroneous impression that he was the Chinese Ambassador; and he was still tirelessly returning their salutes, fourteen to the minute, and softly singing with them the "International."

He was less of a hit later, however, when to the unsmiling Anglo-American Association of Exiles to Soviet Russia from Imperialism, he sang to the tune of the "International" what he regarded as amusing private words of his own:

"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, From Russia make your getaway. They all are rich in Bilbo's nation. God bless the U.S.A.!"

Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, after her spirited campaign for Mr. Windrip, was publicly angry that she was offered no position higher than a post in the customs office in Nome, Alaska, though this was offered to her very urgently indeed. She had demanded that there be created, especially for her, the cabinet position of Secretaryess of Domestic Science, Child Welfare, and Anti-Vice. She threatened to turn Jeffersonian, Republican, or Communistic, but in April she was heard of in Hollywood, writing the scenario for a giant picture to be called, They Did It in Greece.

As an insult and boy-from-home joke, the President-Elect appointed Franklin D. Roosevelt minister to Liberia. Mr. Roosevelt's opponents laughed very much, and opposition newspapers did cartoons of him sitting unhappily in a grass hut with a sign on which "N.R.A." had been crossed out and "U.S.A." substituted. But Mr. Roosevelt declined with so amiable a smile that the joke seemed rather to have slipped.

The followers of President Windrip trumpeted that it was significant that he should be the first president inaugurated not on March fourth, but on January twentieth, according to the provision of the new Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution. It was a sign straight from Heaven (though, actually, Heaven had not been the author of the amendment, but Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska), and proved that Windrip was starting a new paradise on earth.

The inauguration was turbulent. President Roosevelt declined to be present—he politely suggested that he was about half ill unto death, but that same noon he was seen in a New York shop, buying books on gardening and looking abnormally cheerful.

More than a thousand reporters, photographers, and radio men covered the inauguration. Twenty-seven constituents of Senator Porkwood, of all sexes, had to sleep on the floor of the Senator's office, and a hall-bedroom in the suburb of Bladensburg rented for thirty dollars for two nights. The presidents of Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile flew to the inauguration in a Pan-American aeroplane, and Japan sent seven hundred students on a special train from Seattle.

A motor company in Detroit had presented to Windrip a limousine with armor plate, bulletproof glass, a hidden nickel-steel safe for papers, a concealed private bar, and upholstery made from the Troissant tapestries of 1670. But Buzz chose to drive from his home to the Capitol in his old Hupmobile sedan, and his driver was a youngster from his home town whose notion of a uniform for state occasions was a blue-serge suit, red tie, and derby hat. Windrip himself did wear a topper, but he saw to it that Lee Sarason saw to it that the one hundred and thirty million plain citizens learned, by radio, even while the inaugural parade was going on, that he had borrowed the topper for this one sole occasion from a New York Republican Representative who had ancestors.

But following Windrip was an un-Jacksonian escort of soldiers: the American Legion and, immensely grander than the others, the Minute Men, wearing trench helmets of polished silver and led by Colonel Dewey Haik in scarlet tunic and yellow riding-breeches and helmet with golden plumes.

Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, "My fellow citizens, as the President of the United States of America, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we're all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us—and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!"

That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet and shouted at Lee Sarason, "This is what I've been planning to do now for six years! I bet this is what Lincoln used to do! Now let 'em assassinate me!"

His third, in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers, to Buzz, and to High Marshal Sarason; and that rifles, bayonets, automatic pistols, and machine guns be instantly issued to them by government arsenals. That was at 4 P.M. Since 3 P.M., all over the country, bands of M.M.'s had been sitting gloating over pistols and guns, twitching with desire to seize them.

Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress (in session since January fourth, the third having been a Sunday), demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform—that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do.

By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 P.M., on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the "present crisis," and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men, on direct orders from the President. The Congressmen who were hotheaded enough to resist were cynically charged with "inciting to riot"; they who went quietly were not charged at all. It was blandly explained to the agitated press by Lee Sarason that these latter quiet lads had been so threatened by "irresponsible and seditious elements" that they were merely being safeguarded. Sarason did not use the phrase "protective arrest," which might have suggested things.

To the veteran reporters it was strange to see the titular Secretary of State, theoretically a person of such dignity and consequence that he could deal with the representatives of foreign powers, acting as press-agent and yes-man for even the President.

There were riots, instantly, all over Washington, all over America.

The recalcitrant Congressmen had been penned in the District Jail. Toward it, in the winter evening, marched a mob that was noisily mutinous toward the Windrip for whom so many of them had voted. Among the mob buzzed hundreds of Negroes, armed with knives and old pistols, for one of the kidnaped Congressmen was a Negro from Georgia, the first colored Georgian to hold high office since carpetbagger days.

Surrounding the jail, behind machine guns, the rebels found a few Regulars, many police, and a horde of Minute Men, but at these last they jeered, calling them "Minnie Mouses" and "tin soldiers" and "mama's boys." The M.M.'s looked nervously at their officers and at the Regulars who were making so professional a pretense of not being scared. The mob heaved bottles and dead fish. Half-a-dozen policemen with guns and night sticks, trying to push back the van of the mob, were buried under a human surf and came up grotesquely battered and ununiformed—those who ever did come up again. There were two shots; and one Minute Man slumped to the jail steps, another stood ludicrously holding a wrist that spurted blood.

The Minute Men—why, they said to themselves, they'd never meant to be soldiers anyway—just wanted to have some fun marching! They began to sneak into the edges of the mob, hiding their uniform caps. That instant, from a powerful loudspeaker in a lower window of the jail brayed the voice of President Berzelius Windrip:

"I am addressing my own boys, the Minute Men, everywhere in America! To you and you only I look for help to make America a proud, rich land again. You have been scorned. They thought you were the 'lower classes.' They wouldn't give you jobs. They told you to sneak off like bums and get relief. They ordered you into lousy C.C.C. camps. They said you were no good, because you were poor. I tell you that you are, ever since yesterday noon, the highest lords of the land—the aristocracy—the makers of the new America of freedom and justice. Boys! I need you! Help me—help me to help you! Stand fast! Anybody tries to block you—give the swine the point of your bayonet!"

A machine-gunner M.M., who had listened reverently, let loose. The mob began to drop, and into the backs of the wounded as they went staggering away the M.M. infantry, running, poked their bayonets. Such a juicy squash it made, and the fugitives looked so amazed, so funny, as they tumbled in grotesque heaps!

The M.M.'s hadn't, in dreary hours of bayonet drill, known this would be such sport. They'd have more of it now—and hadn't the President of the United States himself told each of them, personally, that he needed their aid?

When the remnants of Congress ventured to the Capitol, they found it seeded with M.M.'s, while a regiment of Regulars, under Major General Meinecke, paraded the grounds.

The Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Mr. Perley Beecroft, Vice- President of the United States and Presiding Officer of the Senate, had the power to declare that quorums were present. (If a lot of members chose to dally in the district jail, enjoying themselves instead of attending Congress, whose fault was that?) Both houses passed a resolution declaring Point Fifteen temporarily in effect, during the "crisis"—the legality of the passage was doubtful, but just who was to contest it, even though the members of the Supreme Court had not been placed under protective arrest... merely confined each to his own house by a squad of Minute Men!

Bishop Paul Peter Prang had (his friends said afterward) been dismayed by Windrip's stroke of state. Surely, he complained, Mr. Windrip hadn't quite remembered to include Christian Amity in the program he had taken from the League of Forgotten Men. Though Mr. Prang had contentedly given up broadcasting ever since the victory of Justice and Fraternity in the person of Berzelius Windrip, he wanted to caution the public again, but when he telephoned to his familiar station, WLFM in Chicago, the manager informed him that "just temporarily, all access to the air was forbidden," except as it was especially licensed by the offices of Lee Sarason. (Oh, that was only one of sixteen jobs that Lee and his six hundred new assistants had taken on in the past week.)

Rather timorously, Bishop Prang motored from his home in Persepolis, Indiana, to the Indianapolis airport and took a night plane for Washington, to reprove, perhaps even playfully to spank, his naughty disciple, Buzz.

He had little trouble in being admitted to see the President. In fact, he was, the press feverishly reported, at the White House for six hours, though whether he was with the President all that time they could not discover. At three in the afternoon Prang was seen to leave by a private entrance to the executive offices and take a taxi. They noted that he was pale and staggering.

In front of his hotel he was elbowed by a mob who in curiously unmenacing and mechanical tones yelped, "Lynch um—downutha enemies Windrip!" A dozen M.M.'s pierced the crowd and surrounded the Bishop. The Ensign commanding them bellowed to the crowd, so that all might hear, "You cowards leave the Bishop alone! Bishop, come with us, and we'll see you're safe!"

Millions heard on their radios that evening the official announcement that, to ward off mysterious plotters, probably Bolsheviks, Bishop Prang had been safely shielded in the district jail. And with it a personal statement from President Windrip that he was filled with joy at having been able to "rescue from the foul agitators my friend and mentor, Bishop P. P. Prang, than whom there is no man living who I so admire and respect."

There was, as yet, no absolute censorship of the press; only a confused imprisonment of journalists who offended the government or local officers of the M.M.'s; and the papers chronically opposed to Windrip carried by no means flattering hints that Bishop Prang had rebuked the President and been plain jailed, with no nonsense about a "rescue." These mutters reached Persepolis.

Not all the Persepolitans ached with love for the Bishop or considered him a modern St. Francis gathering up the little fowls of the fields in his handsome LaSalle car. There were neighbors who hinted that he was a window-peeping snooper after bootleggers and obliging grass widows. But proud of him, their best advertisement, they certainly were, and the Persepolis Chamber of Commerce had caused to be erected at the Eastern gateway to Main Street the sign: "Home of Bishop Prang, Radio's Greatest Star."

So as one man Persepolis telegraphed to Washington, demanding Prang's release, but a messenger in the Executive Offices who was a Persepolis boy (he was, it is true, a colored man, but suddenly he became a favorite son, lovingly remembered by old schoolmates) tipped off the Mayor that the telegrams were among the hundredweight of messages that were daily hauled away from the White House unanswered.

Then a quarter of the citizenry of Persepolis mounted a special train to "march" on Washington. It was one of those small incidents which the opposition press could use as a bomb under Windrip, and the train was accompanied by a score of high-ranking reporters from Chicago and, later, from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and New York.

While the train was on its way—and it was curious what delays and sidetrackings it encountered—a company of Minute Men at Logansport, Indiana, rebelled against having to arrest a group of Catholic nuns who were accused of having taught treasonably. High Marshal Sarason felt that there must be a Lesson, early and impressive. A battalion of M.M.'s, sent from Chicago in fast trucks, arrested the mutinous company, and shot every third man.

When the Persepolitans reached Washington, they were tearfully informed, by a brigadier of M.M.'s who met them at the Union Station, that poor Bishop Prang had been so shocked by the treason of his fellow Indianans that he had gone melancholy mad and they had tragically been compelled to shut him up in St. Elizabeth's government insane asylum.

No one willing to carry news about him ever saw Bishop Prang again.

The Brigadier brought greetings to the Persepolitans from the President himself, and an invitation to stay at the Willard, at government expense. Only a dozen accepted; the rest took the first train back, not amiably; and from then on there was one town in America in which no M.M. ever dared to appear in his ducky forage cap and dark-blue tunic.

The Chief of Staff of the Regular Army had been deposed; in his place was Major General Emmanuel Coon. Doremus and his like were disappointed by General Coon's acceptance, for they had always been informed, even by the Nation, that Emmanuel Coon, though a professional army officer who did enjoy a fight, preferred that that fight be on the side of the Lord; that he was generous, literate, just, and a man of honor—and honor was the one quality that Buzz Windrip wasn't even expected to understand. Rumor said that Coon (as "Nordic" a Kentuckian as ever existed, a descendant of men who had fought beside Kit Carson and Commodore Perry) was particularly impatient with the puerility of anti-Semitism, and that nothing so pleased him as, when he heard new acquaintances being superior about the Jews, to snarl, "Did you by any chance happen to notice that my name is Emmanuel Coon and that Coon might be a corruption of some name rather familiar on the East Side of New York?"

"Oh well, I suppose even General Coon feels, 'Orders are Orders,'" sighed Doremus.

President Windrip's first extended proclamation to the country was a pretty piece of literature and of tenderness. He explained that powerful and secret enemies of American principles—one rather gathered that they were a combination of Wall Street and Soviet Russia—upon discovering, to their fury, that he, Berzelius, was going to be President, had planned their last charge. Everything would be tranquil in a few months, but meantime there was a Crisis, during which the country must "bear with him."

He recalled the military dictatorship of Lincoln and Stanton during the Civil War, when civilian suspects were arrested without warrant. He hinted how delightful everything was going to be— right away now—just a moment—just a moment's patience—when he had things in hand; and he wound up with a comparison of the Crisis to the urgency of a fireman rescuing a pretty girl from a "conflagration," and carrying her down a ladder, for her own sake, whether she liked it or not, and no matter how appealingly she might kick her pretty ankles.

The whole country laughed.

"Great card, that Buzz, but mighty competent guy," said the electorate.

"I should worry whether Bish Prang or any other nut is in the boobyhatch, long as I get my five thousand bucks a year, like Windrip promised," said Shad Ledue to Charley Betts, the furniture man.

It had all happened within the eight days following Windrip's inauguration.

CHAPTER XVI

I HAVE no desire to be President. I would much rather do my humble best as a supporter of Bishop Prang, Ted Bilbo, Gene Talmadge or any other broad-gauged but peppy Liberal. My only longing is to Serve.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

LIKE many bachelors given to vigorous hunting and riding, Buck Titus was a fastidious housekeeper, and his mid-Victorian farmhouse fussily neat. It was also pleasantly bare: the living room a monastic hall of heavy oak chairs, tables free of dainty covers, numerous and rather solemn books of history and exploration, with the conventional "sets," and a tremendous fireplace of rough stone. And the ash trays were solid pottery and pewter, able to cope with a whole evening of cigarette-smoking. The whisky stood honestly on the oak buffet, with siphons, and with cracked ice always ready in a thermos jug.

It would, however, have been too much to expect Buck Titus not to have red-and-black imitation English hunting-prints.

This hermitage, always grateful to Doremus, was sanctuary now, and only with Buck could he adequately damn Windrip & Co. and people like Francis Tasbrough, who in February was still saying, "Yes, things do look kind of hectic down there in Washington, but that's just because there's so many of these bullheaded politicians that still think they can buck Windrip. Besides, anyway, things like that couldn't ever happen here in New England."

And, indeed, as Doremus went on his lawful occasions past the red-brick Georgian houses, the slender spires of old white churches facing the Green, as he heard the lazy irony of familiar greetings from his acquaintances, men as enduring as their Vermont hills, it seemed to him that the madness in the capital was as alien and distant and unimportant as an earthquake in Tibet.

Constantly, in the Informer, he criticized the government but not too acidly.

The hysteria can't last; be patient, and wait and see, he counseled his readers.

It was not that he was afraid of the authorities. He simply did not believe that this comic tyranny could endure. It can't happen here, said even Doremus—even now.

The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists and the Cæsars with laurels round bald domes; a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor of a Mark Twain, a George Ade, a Will Rogers, an Artemus Ward. Windrip could be ever so funny about solemn jaw-drooping opponents, and about the best method of training what he called "a Siamese flea hound." Did that, puzzled Doremus, make him less or more dangerous?

Then he remembered the most cruel-mad of all pirates, Sir Henry Morgan, who had thought it ever so funny to sew a victim up in wet rawhide and watch it shrink in the sun.

From the perseverance with which they bickered, you could tell that Buck Titus and Lorinda were much fonder of each other than they would admit. Being a person who read little and therefore took what he did read seriously, Buck was distressed by the normally studious Lorinda's vacation liking for novels about distressed princesses, and when she airily insisted that they were better guides to conduct than Anthony Trollope or Thomas Hardy, Buck roared at her and, in the feebleness of baited strength, nervously filled pipes and knocked them out against the stone mantel. But he approved of the relationship between Doremus and Lorinda, which only he (and Shad Ledue!) had guessed, and over Doremus, ten years his senior, this shaggy-headed woodsman fussed like a thwarted spinster.

To both Doremus and Lorinda, Buck's overgrown shack became their refuge. And they needed it, late in February, five weeks or thereabouts after Windrip's election.

Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal— they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.

None of the changes was so publicized as the Presidential mandate abruptly ending the separate existence of the different states, and dividing the whole country into eight "provinces"—thus, asserted Windrip, economizing by reducing the number of governors and all other state officers and, asserted Windrip's enemies, better enabling him to concentrate his private army and hold the country.

The new "Northeastern Province" included all of New York State north of a line through Ossining, and all of New England except a strip of Connecticut shore as far east as New Haven. This was, Doremus admitted, a natural and homogeneous division, and even more natural seemed the urban and industrial "Metropolitan Province," which included Greater New York, Westchester County up to Ossining, Long Island, the strip of Connecticut dependent on New York City, New Jersey, northern Delaware, and Pennsylvania as far as Reading and Scranton.

Each province was divided into numbered districts, each district into lettered counties, each county into townships and cities, and only in these last did the old names, with their traditional appeal, remain to endanger President Windrip by memories of honorable local history. And it was gossiped that, next, the government would change even the town names—that they were already thinking fondly of calling New York "Berzelian" and San Francisco "San Sarason." Probably that gossip was false.

The Northeastern Province's six districts were: 1, Upper New York State west of and including Syracuse; 2, New York east of it; 3, Vermont and New Hampshire; 4, Maine; 5, Massachusetts; 6, Rhode Island and the unraped portion of Connecticut.

District 3, Doremus Jessup's district, was divided into the four "counties" of southern and northern Vermont, and southern and northern New Hampshire, with Hanover for capital—the District Commissioner merely chased the Dartmouth students out and took over the college buildings for his offices, to the considerable approval of Amherst, Williams, and Yale.

So Doremus was living, now, in Northeastern Province, District 3, County B, township of Beulah, and over him for his admiration and rejoicing were a provincial commissioner, a district commissioner, a county commissioner, an assistant county commissioner in charge of Beulah Township, and all their appertaining M.M. guards and emergency military judges.

Citizens who had lived in any one state for more than ten years seemed to resent more hotly the loss of that state's identity than they did the castration of the Congress and Supreme Court of the United States—indeed, they resented it almost as much as the fact that, while late January, February, and most of March went by, they still were not receiving their governmental gifts of $5000 (or perhaps it would beautifully be $10,000) apiece; had indeed received nothing more than cheery bulletins from Washington to the effect that the "Capital Levy Board," or C.L.B. was holding sessions.

Virginians whose grandfathers had fought beside Lee shouted that they'd be damned if they'd give up the hallowed state name and form just one arbitrary section of an administrative unit containing eleven Southern states; San Franciscans who had considered Los Angelinos even worse than denizens of Miami now wailed with agony when California was sundered and the northern portion lumped in with Oregon, Nevada, and others as the "Mountain and Pacific Province," while southern California was, without her permission, assigned to the Southwestern Province, along with Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii. As some hint of Buzz Windrip's vision for the future, it was interesting to read that this Southwestern Province was also to be permitted to claim "all portions of Mexico which the United States may from time to time find it necessary to take over, as a protection against the notorious treachery of Mexico and the Jewish plots there hatched."

"Lee Sarason is even more generous than Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg in protecting the future of other countries," sighed Doremus.

As Provincial Commissioner of the Northeastern Province, comprising Upper New York State and New England, was appointed Colonel Dewey Haik, that soldier-lawyer-politician-aviator who was the chilliest-blooded and most arrogant of all the satellites of Windrip yet had so captivated miners and fishermen during the campaign. He was a strong-flying eagle who liked his meat bloody. As District Commissioner of District 3—Vermont and New Hampshire—appeared, to Doremus's mingled derision and fury, none other than John Sullivan Reek, that stuffiest of stuffed-shirts, that most gaseous gas bag, that most amenable machine politician of Northern New England; a Republican ex-governor who had, in the alembic of Windrip's patriotism, rosily turned Leaguer.

No one had ever troubled to be obsequious to the Hon. J. S. Reek, even when he had been Governor. The weediest back-country Representative had called him "Johnny," in the gubernatorial mansion (twelve rooms and a leaky roof); and the youngest reporter had bawled, "Well, what bull you handing out today, Ex?"

It was this Commissioner Reek who summoned all the editors in his district to meet him at his new viceregal lodge in Dartmouth Library and receive the precious privileged information as to how much President Windrip and his subordinate commissioners admired the gentlemen of the press.

Before he left for the press conference in Hanover, Doremus received from Sissy a "poem"—at least she called it that—which Buck Titus, Lorinda Pike, Julian Falck, and she had painfully composed, late at night, in Buck's fortified manor house:

Be meek with Reek, Go fake with Haik. One rhymes with sneak, And t' other with snake. Haik, with his beak, Is on the make, But Sullivan Reek— Oh God!

"Well, anyway, Windrip's put everybody to work. And he's driven all these unsightly billboards off the highways—much better for the tourist trade," said all the old editors, even those who wondered if the President wasn't perhaps the least bit arbitrary.

As he drove to Hanover, Doremus saw hundreds of huge billboards by the road. But they bore only Windrip propaganda and underneath, "with the compliments of a loyal firm" and—very large—"Montgomery Cigarettes" or "Jonquil Foot Soap." On the short walk from a parking-space to the former Dartmouth campus, three several men muttered to him, "Give us a nickel for cuppa coffee, Boss—a Minnie Mouse has got my job and the Mouses won't take me—they say I'm too old." But that may have been propaganda from Moscow.

On the long porch of the Hanover Inn, officers of the Minute Men were reclining in deck chairs, their spurred boots (in all the M.M. organization there was no cavalry) up on the railing.

Doremus passed a science building in front of which was a pile of broken laboratory glassware, and in one stripped laboratory he could see a small squad of M.M.'s drilling.

District Commissioner John Sullivan Reek affectionately received the editors in a classroom.... Old men, used to being revered as prophets, sitting anxiously in trifling chairs, facing a fat man in the uniform of an M.M. commander, who smoked an unmilitary cigar as his pulpy hand waved greeting.

Reek took not more than an hour to relate what would have taken the most intelligent man five or six hours—that is, five minutes of speech and the rest of the five hours to recover from the nausea caused by having to utter such shameless rot.... President Windrip, Secretary of State Sarason, Provincial Commissioner Haik, and himself, John Sullivan Reek, they were all being misrepresented by the Republicans, the Jeffersonians, the Communists, England, the Nazis, and probably the jute and herring industries; and what the government wanted was for any reporter to call on any member of this Administration, and especially on Commissioner Reek, at any time—except perhaps between 3 and 7 A.M.—and "get the real low-down."

Excellency Reek announced, then: "And now, gentlemen, I am giving myself the privilege of introducing you to all four of the County Commissioners, who were just chosen yesterday. Probably each of you will know personally the commissioner from your own county, but I want you to intimately and cooperatively know all four, because, whomever they may be, they join with me in my unquenchable admiration of the press."

The four County Commissioners, as one by one they shambled into the room and were introduced, seemed to Doremus an oddish lot: A moth-eaten lawyer known more for his quotations from Shakespeare and Robert W. Service than for his shrewdness before a jury. He was luminously bald except for a prickle of faded rusty hair, but you felt that, if he had his rights, he would have the floating locks of a tragedian of 1890.

A battling clergyman famed for raiding roadhouses.

A rather shy workman, an authentic proletarian, who seemed surprised to find himself there. (He was replaced, a month later, by a popular osteopath with an interest in politics and vegetarianism.)

The fourth dignitary to come in and affectionately bow to the editors, a bulky man, formidable-looking in his uniform as a battalion leader of Minute Men, introduced as the Commissioner for northern Vermont, Doremus Jessup's county, was Mr. Oscar Ledue, formerly known as "Shad."

Mr. Reek called him "Captain" Ledue. Doremus remembered that Shad's only military service, prior to Windrip's election, had been as an A.E.F. private who had never got beyond a training-camp in America and whose fiercest experience in battle had been licking a corporal when in liquor.

"Mr. Jessup," bubbled the Hon. Mr. Reek, "I imagine you must have met Captain Ledue—comes from your charming city."

"Uh-uh-ur," said Doremus.

"Sure," said Captain Ledue. "I've met old Jessup, all right, all right! He don't know what it's all about. He don't know the first thing about the economics of our social Revolution. He's a Cho-vinis. But he isn't such a bad old coot, and I'll let him ride as long as he behaves himself!"

"Splendid!" said the Hon. Mr. Reek.

#hellsitesonlybookclub #bookblr #Sinclair Lewis

[almaqead]

"The Game and the Spear." From Surah 5: Al Ma'idah, "The Table Setting."

The changing of clothes is an important idiom in Islam and also in Judaism and Christianity. In the Book of Mormon, God forbids those who have spilled blood on their garments from entering heaven, for example.

The opposite, obeying the tenets of the 12 Imams, however turns all the sins and bloodshed of the past into the raiment of a pure saint:

From 1 Nephi 12:

10 And these twelve ministers whom thou beholdest shall judge thy seed. And, behold, they are righteous forever; for because of their faith in the Lamb of God their garments are made white in his blood.

11 And the angel said unto me: Look! And I looked, and beheld three generations pass away in righteousness; and their garments were white even like unto the Lamb of God. And the angel said unto me: These are made white in the blood of the Lamb, because of their faith in him.

It takes Three Generations, 625, ו‎ב‎ה‎, in the House of Israel, the Torah, to turn ones sinful raiments pure white. Following is how using the Qiblahs of the 12 Imams, called ministers by the Book of Mormon (1830). As we will see in the verses from the Quran each has a kaaba, a sacrifice that converts the sinner into a saint:

Reuben- The Eldest- the Leader vs. a Swindler.

Simeon- Law Abiding vs. a Crook.

Levi- Harmonious vs. Violent.

Judah- Praises God vs. a Slanderer.

Dan – Intuitive vs. a Dullard.

Naphtali – The Fighter vs. a Coward.

Gad- Fortunate vs. Accident Prone.

Asher- Happy vs. Bitter.

Issachar- Dedicated, reaps rewards vs. a Cheater.

Zebulun- Honorable vs. a Scumbag.

Joseph- Fruitful vs. Waste of Time.

Benjamin- Son of the Right Hand vs. Corrupt.

Changing clothes in the Torah means to go from a grubby little kid, to an oversexed adolescent, to a citizen, to a husband to a father and professional. How to turn the raiments white through the grace of God in spite of the mistakes of the past is one of the reasons God gave Muhammad the Quran.

This explains Ihram, how the forced evolution a child undergoes to become a man and changes costumes every time he needs in order to become more closely seated next to Allah in Haram.

So Ihram is Halal in a state of continuous mindfulness of the changes in the mind, the heart, the body, the world, and the calling of the soul.

The Spear pertains to the way society constitutes itself. Ihram says one will be at the ready to perform the duties required for the journey ahead and attain Haram, the Spear, the Constitution and Laws are the way society explains to its members how it must behave if the culture of the nation is to achieve Haram.

The garments remain on the body, but the Spear is projected; it is the consequece of failing to understand Halal, Ihram, and Haram. One does not want to be a piece of game ahead of the man with the Spear.

Sacrificial animals are the lower animal beast nature one has shed like unzipping an animal costume and stepping into an adult man's frame of reference. The Quran says if we observe Zakah, the likelihood of an animal sacrifice or the Spear is zero. This we covered in a few previous forums.

5:94-98:

O you who have believed, Allah will surely test you through something of the game that your hands and spears [can] reach, that Allah may make evident those who fear Him unseen. And whoever transgresses after that - for him is a painful punishment.

O you who have believed, do not kill game while you are in the state of ihram. And whoever of you kills it intentionally - the penalty is an equivalent from sacrificial animals to what he killed, as judged by two just men among you as an offering [to Allah ] delivered to the Ka'bah, or an expiation: the feeding of needy people or the equivalent of that in fasting, that he may taste the consequence of his deed. Allah has pardoned what is past; but whoever returns [to violation], then Allah will take retribution from him. And Allah is Exalted in Might and Owner of Retribution.

Lawful to you is game from the sea and its food as provision for you and the travelers, but forbidden to you is game from the land as long as you are in the state of ihram. And fear Allah to whom you will be gathered.

Allah has made the Ka'bah, the Sacred House, standing for the people and [has sanctified] the sacred months and the sacrificial animals and the garlands [by which they are identified]. That is so you may know that Allah knows what is in the heavens and what is in the earth and that Allah is Knowing of all things.

Know that Allah is severe in penalty and that Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

Commentary:

The indications for Gematria analysis are found in the final two full verses. Permissions and prohibitions must be analyzed using the lens of Gematria.

Lawful to you: The Value in Gematria is 11462, יאדב‎, yadav, "what you knew."

Food is the substance from wich we learn, right from wrong in particcular. If one cannot learn how to be ethical, one cannot be successful in this world. Knowledge not of Allah, but How Allah Is, is the goal of the study of the Quran.

To endeavor to match one's frame of mind and behavior to the Most High through knowledge is called Tawhid:

“There is no god but He: That is the witness of Allah, His angels, and those endued with knowledge, standing firm on justice. There is no god but He, the Exalted in Power, the Wise” [Quran, 3:18]

In this verse, we understand that we cannot just assume that we believe in tawheed, the Oneness of God. We must actively learn and obtain knowledge to truly understand the Greatness and Oneness of Allah – which will help us stand firm on the path of righteousness.

Tawheed , unity with God is called Ha Shem in Hebrew. One can also have Tawheed with other knowledgeable persons.

Food from the sea is 209, באֶפֶסט, in ephest, "offset". When we eat a seafood :( the idea is to take a portion of thought that was immersed in the Verses and add it to our internal reservoir. So anyone who is knowledgeable about the Quran and acts like it is acceptable in one's company.

But game is forbidden...the Number is 6606 וואֶפֶסו‎‎, wafesu, "and reset."

Garlands on game are wreaths meaning the animal has "graduated" from the herd. To graduate from the herd and enter the domain of man is the goal of all the faiths. So the above means:

Offset, read the Quran, and reset...if one is chasing game or being hounded by the Spear, one's conscience or the law or both, one is either way in need of the company of a saint whose conduct can rub off somehow. This is why Allah instituted the Sacred House, 6937, ו‎טגז‎‎, and tez, quickly.

= Fasting.

The best way to being one's one journey from a garlanded animal to a man who judges life like a man and earns the benefits of manhood is to observe Zakah and Sawm, the Fast, "to abstain from false talk and deeds."

This adds Sawm now to our list of how to observe Halal and also perform Ihram, and enter and remain in Haram, even in spite of the occasional transgression and trip to the farm. Obviously all of these depend on avoiding the wrath of the Spear.

[customstampmaker]

Notary Seal Forgery - What is the threat and How to protect yourself!

The introduction of electronic document management based on the Unified Information System has sharply reduced the number of document forgery crimes. All Russian notaries have access to the UIS, which allows them to verify the authenticity of any notarized document. Various state agencies are also able to make an online request to establish the fact of document forgery.

But the digital mechanism to protect notarial data has only appeared in the last 10 years, so fake notary stamp online with an earlier date of document continue to pop up periodically. Of course, they are investigated accordingly. Many scammers know where to buy notary stamp without a legal right.

How to protect yourself from fakes?

Using the above services allows you to identify most of the forgeries. But fraudsters also adapt to innovations and develop more and more cunning schemes.

The most current examples of notary stamp replacement are:

A fake QR code verification site. When using the phone scanner, a similar web-resource opens, which supposedly confirms that the fake one is valid. Certainly, it is difficult for ordinary citizens, who face this situation for the first time, to notice a trick. To avoid this, it is recommended to visit the official site of the internal revenue service and to press the button “Check the QR code on the notary images free” there. This will allow getting really reliable information.

Inconsistency in the content of the document. There are cases when swindlers change the data in the existing documents. For example, there was a power of attorney to drive a car and became a power of attorney for its sale. In this case, the document verification service will show that such a power of attorney does exist, but there is no information about the document’s content in public registries. Only a notary can see it. Therefore, a visit to a notary’s office is the surest way to make sure that the document is not fake. The notary can easily identify a fake notary stamp generator on a document because no unauthorized person can add or change the data in the Notary Public’s Unified Information System. Also it’s important to know the difference between Trodat and Cosco notary stamp.

Completely false documents when executing transactions in the MFC. The safety of such transactions can be reduced to zero if the sale is not by the person owning the property himself, but by power of attorney. In this case, the buyer is better to splurge on a notary, so he can confirm that the power of attorney is not fake. Otherwise, it can be fraught with the risk of losing both the property and the money.

Liability of a notary

If the document turned out to be false due to the fault of the fake notary online, he bears full property liability. If his erroneous actions caused damage, the notary’s mandatory professional liability insurance, his personal property and the Compensation Fund of the Federal Chamber of Notaries guarantee compensation. Citizens and legal entities can expect to be compensated in full.

Notaries almost regularly report to law enforcement agencies about attempts to conduct transactions using documents with notary business name generator. After all, their primary job is to ensure that civil transactions are legal.

About the notary’s seal

The notary must use a seal with an image of a double-headed eagle. It can only be made by a special certified company in accordance with GOST, which provides for requisites and a multi-stage degree of protection. Such strict requirements were introduced just a few years ago, before notary stamp maker could be used by almost anyone who wanted to. Most frauds used free notary images download web-sites. Seals of the old type could differ significantly in content and size. With the introduction of the new procedure, the number of counterfeit documents should decrease significantly.

How can you tell if a seal is fake?

Attackers use the most sophisticated methods to produce fake seals. The variety of printing equipment and coloring pigments that exists today, unfortunately, works in the hands of fraudsters who plan to carry out illegal actions with the help of fake documents. Today, there are three main ways to counterfeit seals that experts can identify.

Counterfeiting with Photoshop and other special programs;

manual forgery;

violation of the sequence of details and fonts on the seal imprint.

In order to reveal the features of a forged document one should pay attention to the characteristics of a stamp: its text, size of the double-headed eagle, placement of text and graphic elements, evenness of ink pigment distribution on paper.

What is the threat of the notary stamp forgery?

Forging stamps and seals for the purpose of material gain implies criminal liability under the Article of the Criminal Code. Responsibility comes from the age of 16 and can face up to 4 years in prison.

Thus, measures to prevent fraudulent use of a forged notary’s seal, are tightened. Nevertheless, perpetrators are finding more and more ways to commit the crime. It is important to remain vigilant and follow the recommendations we described in our article.

Source: https://mystampready.com/en/blog/notary-seal-forgery/

#notary seals #online notary stamp #notary stamp online #notary stamp #notary public

[mossy-creature-vibes]

Time Management

When I have a job, I need my employer to understand that when they give me a schedule, most of the time I have to plan the rest of my day around it. I've worked customer service mostly and it was always awful only knowing my schedule a week at a time. I couldn't plan anything in advance, not that we could do much anyway. You're lucky as hell to get anything that pays above minimum wage. I have an education in administration and I can hardly get those jobs so I end up settling for something I'll be more miserable at. Customer Service. The only job a young woman without 5 years of experience kissing the ass of every employee can get.

I can't deal with people all day. I have very low social energy and when that energy drops below zero I drive myself crazy with stress trying to suck energy from tomorrows' reserves. I'm sick of this cycle where I work my ass off to get one person to give me a chance just for me to end up in a miserable, life-sucking disease of a job because I look just pathetic enough for them to manipulate me into donating my body to work their pathetic job. I'm sick of being a slave to minimum wage work in order to get just enough to survive. I work harder than I can sustain for everyone who gives me a chance at an income and I get diminishing returns on my time investment. Swindlers, all of them. I cast shame on everyone who views their underlings as beneath them in character and means. Though their character was in question from the mere glance at their means. As if being a street urchin would make you less qualified than a pampered palace prat.

[jagtpjadmw]

There is no way to sue the mountain and the sea. The hourglass of time will bottom out.

Guo Wen's expensive "toothpaste-squeezing" refund cannot hide the malice of "fake bankruptcy"

Guo Wengui's application for bankruptcy is really a "drain the water to protect the ship". According to the SEC's GTV Fair Fund Refund Announcement, Guo Wengui has paid the SEC a total of 455 million (455,439,194.49) USD. The refund is suspected of fraud, but there is still a gap of $32 million compared with the $487 million (486,745,063) he cheated from more than 5,000 investors. Compared with the 539 million dollars (539,433,428 dollars) refund ordered by SEC (in addition to 487 million dollars of fraudulent money, there are about 17.69 million dollars of pre-judgment interest and 35 million dollars of civil penalty), there is still a gap of 84 million dollars. Where are these gaps? It shows that Lao Guo still has some reservations, leaving this asset in order to make a comeback. The way to keep assets is to use the judicial resources of the United States and apply for bankruptcy protection by cheating the judges.

It is precisely because SEC started the refund procedure for investors based on Lao Guo's refund that no one watched Lao Guo's live broadcast in Gator, and the viewing volume once fell to zero. This shows that although the ants knew that Lao Guo was a liar, before they could not get a refund guarantee, the ants with expectations could only stay around Lao Guo, watching his live broadcast and praising his videos. At one time, there were even reports of anti-enemy ants inside the farm, which stipulated the video viewing volume and praise and evaluation task indicators of GTV and Gator, creating the illusion that Gator is about to surpass Twitter Facebook and become the world's first social media platform. Now that SEC has opened the floodgate for refund, ants have abandoned Lao Guo, and the scene has fallen into the cold and cheerless after the prosperity. What's more ridiculous is that, in order to hide his assets, Lao Guo dragged his close relatives into the water in addition to the yacht Ladymay and the 18th floor, and now he says that Gator and GTV have nothing to do with him.

Where does this put Gator CEO Jason Miller? If Miller cooperates with Guo Wengui to commit perjury in court, who will bear the fraud responsibility of Gator's upcoming listing but never listing? Who will refund the fraudulent money invested in Ant Gate? Miller certainly won't take this responsibility. He certainly didn't expect that Lao Guo would completely throw the pot to himself at a critical juncture. Before starting a fraud project, Guo Wengui, a wily man, must have figured out how to shake the pot, and made the layout of clearing the relationship with himself before the project was established. However, in the end, the stone lifted by Lao Guo often hits his own foot. It is precisely this layout and these agents that will become grave diggers in Lao Guo. Guo Qiang and Guo Mei, close relatives of Guo Wengui, both know Lao Guo's disposition well. Because they are close relatives, they know better. Because they are also close relatives, they can commit perjury against the judge in court in order to save their father. So why should Miller, who is not a relative, use his own "money way" to pay for a swindler who falls into a rock and throws his pot at himself?

To say the least, even if Miller was bewitched by Lao Guo and chose to commit perjury in court, it would have little impact. After all, many evidences prove that Guo Wengui is the founder and actual controller of Gator and GTV. American judges have probably seen a lot of Lao Guo's tricks of hiding assets. After the last trial, the judge said that the hearing would not be scheduled before April 27th, and warned Lao Guo: "If no consensus can be reached, the sand pot will bottom out sooner than you expected". The bankruptcy bureau also agreed with the judge. What

[shuideyuer1113]

Fake bankruptcy to play with the judiciary to knock the bone and suck the marrow

Fake bankruptcy to play with the judiciary to knock the bone and suck the marrow, plague turtles drink and quench their thirst to quench their thirst, rub hot spots, fake rescue ironclad evidence is like a mountain, and the swindlers' martial arts are difficult to escape. The "Guo Sect Lord", who has always vowed to lead the "comrades-in-arms" to get rich and realize the freedom of wealth, poured cold water on the obsessive ant powder by declaring bankruptcy, and also rubbed the US judiciary fiercely. The plague turtle, whose brain cells are gradually depleted, thinks that with this carving insect trick, he can not only get rid of the shell of the cicada and get away with it, but also be able to swallow all the investment funds of the believers with a famous teacher, and kill two eagles with one stone to complete the successful end, which shows that the plague turtle has been naïve enough to think that if you cover your ears, you can safely and boldly steal the bell. The precondition for filing for bankruptcy to reshape the human setup of hundreds of millions of "negative" wengs is true bankruptcy, and according to this, it is obvious that Guo Wengui has not yet reached the standard. The treacherous "turtle" has always been cunning rabbit three caves, never put all the eggs in one basket, just from the concealment of property, it can be seen that the money defrauded will be "reduced to zero" to hide. The heavens are good reincarnation, and the heavens have spared no one. After all, the plague turtle knows that his sins are too deep to end well, and he must also leave some coffin books for himself, and he will never squander it. As we all know, GTV raised Guo Wengui to earn 1 billion US dollars, the money of the chair is not refunded, and the rule of law fund, the rule of law society and many investors, said good financial disclosure, and finally became a confused account. But if the ants have a little bit of intelligence, they don't have to think that their real money and silver have all entered the pocket of "cheating brothers", and their temperament of plucking the hair of the geese will not pour out their bags to Bannon and others, and naturally have reservations. In yesterday's live broadcast, the "cheating brother" vowed to make the lying flat coin and the happy coin into the world's most stable, safest, fastest, lowest cost, and inalienable private wealth minting rights in the future, leading the believers to achieve wealth freedom. Not only that, the prospect of "chicken turning over" is getting better and better, yesterday's live broadcast, plague turtle wearing a unique "chicken turnover" red jacket, spit flying with goods. If the ants haven't forgotten, they must remember that the plague turtle claimed to send a Hercules plane in the Ukrainian rescue, and patted his chest and said how much to give. How can such a rich and enemy of the "gold lord" say that bankruptcy is bankruptcy is obviously another lie. From this point of view, the ant gang is really a cult, and the cooperation of some ants with the plague turtle can be said to be responsive to the extent that they even cry and shout to raise money to help the "sect leader" get through the difficulties, which is really stupid and naïve to the extreme, and should be deceived into ruining the family. When the War broke out between Russia and Ukraine, Guo Wengui, who was in a desperate situation, like a bodhisattva who saw life, began the performance with a feverish madness. The Guo gang's rule of law fund sold its reputation, saying that it sent more than 30 people to Poland, and as a result, it has been staging a false