#wally was just visiting max | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brown-little-robin · 2 years

Text

27: A Packed Suitcase

part one | previous | next | masterlist | ao3

When Wally West carries Thad back into the house, the boy is trembling.

Wally puts him down. Max comes quickly towards them, intending to give Thad some security from Wally, but the boy shrinks back as he approaches. Wally West steps protectively in front of Thad.

Max stops, confused. Helen comes up beside him.

Wally looks down at Thad and says softly: “Go on. I’ll take care of it.”

Thad studies Wally’s face for a moment. Then he vibrates so hard his face blurs. He skirts around the edge of the room and flees into the hallway.

Only once Thad is in his room, perfectly still and therefore almost invisible to Max, does Max look back to Wally West. He can feel his expression going steely.

“Tell us everything,” Helen says.

Wally West tells them everything.

Thad threatened Jai. Max apologizes on his behalf, but Wally says that Thad already apologized. Extensively. Wally is frowning in what looks like anger but Max guesses is actually self-reproach as he admits to attacking Thad, pinning him against a cliff, and shouting at him. Max’s heart sinks as Wally describes a version of Thad that Max has only seen in the boy’s most desperate moments: tense as a coiled spring, half sobbing in fear, pleading for his speed and his life.

Max pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. An entire month of work slowly building trust with Thad… probably erased.

“I’m sorry,” Wally West says. “I didn’t mean to scare him so badly. I was just scared for my kids, you know?”

“I know,” Max sighs. “It’s just a bad situation.”

“Speaking of that, Thad wanted me to tell you something.”

“Oh?” Max asks, surprised again by Thad’s trust in the man who, besides Bart, was probably the biggest threat looming over Thad’s childhood.

“He made me promise to ask you if he can go stay with Joe Wilson for a while. Like a trial run.”

Oh. This. Max has been trying not to think about it… the strong chance that Thad will leave in the near future.

Helen sighs.

They call Joseph Wilson.

“Hello, this is Joseph Wilson,” the slow mechanized voice says.

“This is Max Crandall,” Max answers. “Helen and Wally are here with me, too. We’re calling about Thad.”

“Yes.”

A long pause. Long enough that Max worries that Joseph is trying to find words to say he no longer is willing to consider taking Thad. Maybe he looked up Inertia and decided he doesn’t want to deal with all that baggage. Max wouldn’t blame him… but, oh, how could Max explain it to Thad?

At last, the voice says: “I am sorry for going out of contact. My mother went missing. I had to find her. We got her home a few days ago. But her leg is broken.”

Helen and Wally make commiserating noises.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Max says. “I… suppose this is a badly timed question, then. But Thad has requested to stay with you for a while, as a sort of trial run. I don’t expect you to say yes—”

“I would love to have him,” the voice interrupts.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Max says, and his relief is too strong in his voice. He doesn’t want to weaponize his desperation to make Joseph feel obliged to help. He pauses, and Joseph speaks before he can recover.

Joseph Wilson speaks slowly, even slower than is necessitated by his voice aid. “I would honestly love to have him over. But my life is unstable right now. I don’t know if I can take him permanently. Please tell him that it is not his fault. And I am sorry.”

“I understand,” Max says.

He finishes the conversation with more grace, hammering out the details of the visit and thanking Joseph for his understanding and wishing his mother a speedy recovery from her injury. But half of his awareness is on Thad, on his uneven breathing, his racing heart.

Joseph Wilson would love to have Thad over this week. He could keep him until next Wednesday. When do they want him to take Thad?

Max says he’ll drop Thad off on Thursday, but leaves his agreement on the length of the visit vague. He wants to talk to Thad before he commits to sending him away for a long time.

Wally and Linda make their excuses and leave. By unspoken agreement, Max and Helen head to the couch without cleaning off the table.

They both sigh hugely. Helen laughs a little.

Max says, “I suppose I ought to go talk to Thad.”

Helen sighs again. Max stands up and goes to Thad’s door. Knocks.

No response.

Max calls: “May I come in?”

“Yes,” calls a voice from under the desk.

Max comes in and kneels by the little lump of blankets.

“Thad-boy,” he says. “I’m so proud of you.”

The boy shudders and curls up. The movement shows Max how he’s positioned, like a bat sensing the outlines of a thing with its radar sense; the boy has his back to the opening of the desk, shoulders raised, hands clenched by his chest.

“May I touch you?” Max asks.

No response. Slowly, hoping this is right, Max leans down, reaches into the desk, and touches Thad’s back. Again, a shudder goes through him, but he holds still. So Max takes a bigger gamble.

He leans further in and slides his hand under Thad’s shoulders, pulls the boy with his blankets out of his desk and onto Max’s lap. Thad doesn’t struggle or vibrate away, but he’s very, very stiff.

“Thad-boy,” Max says again.

And the speed force rushes into Thad; Max feels the power slam into his body like a wave, and into Max as well, an instinctive response, although Max is too slow to catch Thad even on a good day. Thad vibrates out of Max’s grip and runs, and Max doesn’t bother trying to follow him. They both know Thad is faster.

Thad doesn’t run far this time. He turns, slows, and slams his back into the corner of the room. His fists are raised. He’s breathing hard.

Oh, Thad.

Max sits there, arms empty in his lap, and looks Thad in the face until the boy’s eyes grow less wild, more present. Thad looks over Max and moves, starts to put his fists down. Then he gasps and raises them again.

Max says, “You’re safe, Thad. It’s over now.”

Thad nods jerkily, but remains pressed into the corner of the room. He bares his teeth and scrubs one elbow over his face in a rough gesture, like he’s trying to wipe away his panic, but nothing seems to come of it; he pants for breath. His cheeks are red.

“You’re safe. I promise.”

Max waits for a while, but the only change is that Thad starts trembling. Slowly, he stands up, and Thad presses himself harder into the corner.

“I’m gonna let you be for a while,” Max says. “Call me if you want me, okay?”

Thad looks at Max with wide eyes and says nothing. Max turns his back and goes out. As he shuts the door, he feels Thad slide down the wall and bury his face in his hands.

Later, Helen coaxes Thaddeus out of the room to watch Star Trek with her. Max doesn’t know how she managed it. When Max comes to check on them, her arm is draped over the boy’s shoulders, and his head is leaning into her shoulder.

After their episode finishes, Max comes and kneels in front of Thaddeus. The boy looks at him, silent and wary.

“You can go to Joseph Wilson’s house for a while,” Max says quietly. “Wally told me you want to try it out… living with him.”

Thaddeus nods.

“That seems reasonable to me. We can talk more tomorrow,” Max says quietly. “I just thought you’d like to know.”

Thad smiles wearily. But genuinely.

Good. It was an awful shock, but Thad is resilient. Max begins to hope that the clash with Wally West didn’t change anything for Thad… that it just tired him out. Helen says, “Here’s hoping.”

But the next day, Monday… well…

Thad eats breakfast quietly. He doesn’t initiate conversation, but when does he ever? When Max asks if he feels up to going out today, he says, “No, thank you.” Max asks how he feels, and he says “Better than yesterday,” pulling a laugh from Max. And then he goes silent, and Max doesn’t press him. He finishes his oatmeal, does his chores, and goes back to his room.

Something is wrong.

Max goes and weeds the garden, giving Thaddeus time to hopefully recover his voice. Then he comes and knocks on the door.

Thaddeus’s rough voice calls “What is it?”

“Just checking if you’re all right,” Max says.

Silence.

“How are you feeling?”

A long silence. Then Thaddeus gets up and opens the door. He looks up at Max.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “Just… tell me the details.”

So Max tells him, “Wally said you’re struggling.”

Thad waits, seemingly unmoved.

“We agreed, Wally and Joseph and I,” Max says, carefully, “That you can go to Joseph Wilson’s place on Thursday.”

“Three days?” Thad asks.

“Yes.”

“Fine. How long can I stay?”

“Let’s talk about that,” Max says.

Thaddeus grimaces slightly.

“I want the best for you,” Max says. “I just need to know some things to make the best decisions for you.”

Thad flares, “I’ll make my own decisions!”

Max is almost relieved. Thaddeus has been so… so calm today. Unnaturally so.

“We’ve discussed this,” Max says. “I’m going to give you as much freedom as I can, but you are a child. I have a responsibility to keep you safe.”

“Whatever,” Thad says. “How long did Joseph offer?”

“Up to next Wednesday.”

“Then that’s how long I’m staying.”

Max hears a familiar stubbornness in Thad’s voice and represses a fond smile. He is so like Bart, sometimes.

“What?” Thad snaps.

“I was just thinking that I’m proud of you,” Max says.

Thad freezes, then looks down, blinking rapidly.

“What else?” he asks, and his voice sounds jarringly normal.

Max thinks about leaving the therapy discussion for later, but… Thad deserves to know. To prepare.

“We’re going to get you into therapy.”

The scowl comes right back.

“No.”

“Thad—”

“Can I not say no?” Thad asks, a note of desperation in his voice.

Max pauses.

Thaddeus could never say no to the Thawnes. Max knows.

“Well, generally, you can say no. But, Thad… think about it, please. Therapy isn’t going to hurt you.”

“I know that,” the boy snaps. “Just stop, okay? Stop. I’ll go when I’m ready.”

Max frowns.

“Thad, what’s wrong?”

“You want a list?” Thaddeus demands.

“Honestly, yes.”

A moment of conflict, and then Thaddeus drops his energetic facade. Max hears all of his six hundred years in his rough voice.

“Max… please. I know what I’m doing. ‘Consistency is critical when dealing with long-term child abuse,’” he quotes wearily. “So I need a therapist in the area I’ll be living permanently. I’ll go once I’m living with Joseph. Okay?”

Ah. Right. Hmm.

“That’s reasonable. But you should know that Joseph’s life is… complicated… right now. He may not be able to host a child long-term.”

Thad’s mouth pulls up for a moment in a bitter sneer.

“He told me to tell you it’s not your fault, and he’s sorry.”

Thaddeus takes a deep breath. The bitter expression fades.

“Acknowledged,” he says. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” Max says. “Thad… you can’t yell at people like you did to Wally West yesterday.”

The boy’s fingers tighten on the doorknob. Max wants to back down, to comfort him, but Thad has to know this.

“I know you’re under a lot of stress, but that’s not okay.”

“He deserved it,” Thaddeus says coldly.

“Whether or not he deserved it is debatable,” Max says, and holds up a hand when Thaddeus starts to protest. “Whether or not they deserve it, you cannot verbally abuse people.”

Thad flinches at the word abuse.

After a moment, he says in a low voice, “I understand, sir. But… how… how am I supposed to make myself understood?”

“There are ways. You can still… make an impact… without being quite so aggressive. You’ll learn.”

For a split second, Thad looks lost. Then he scowls.

“I’m not a nice person,” he says, low and angry. “You can’t expect me to be one all of a sudden just because I’m not Inertia anymore.”

“I don’t,” Max says. “I only ask you to try to learn.”

“Right,” he says skeptically.

“Thad,” Max says. “You are a good person. All you lack is communication skills, and those can be learned.”

Thaddeus’s face grows guarded. Slowly, he says, “Anything else?”

Max pauses. Thaddeus looks exhausted.

“No, that’s about it.”

Thaddeus exhales slowly. His hand clenches on the doorknob like he’s thinking of closing the door but doesn’t know if he’s allowed.

Max reaches out and touches Thaddeus on the shoulder. It might be selfish, to touch him when he’s so clearly struggling to hold himself together. He knows full well how touch overwhelms the boy. But, oh, Max cannot seem to get through to him any other way.

A helpless ‘mh’ sound breaks from Thad’s throat, and he closes his eyes.

Max squeezes his shoulder and it lifts, pressing into the touch.

“Can I hug you?” Max asks.

Thaddeus takes a shuddering breath and shakes his head.

“All right, kiddo, that’s fine,” Max tells him, and removes his hand.

Thaddeus steps backward and closes the door.

On Tuesday, Thaddeus is still… very removed. He refuses to go out again. He buries himself in his books all afternoon. But when Max asks Thad to help him make dinner, he agrees.

Max makes the gyoza wrappers. Normally he’d buy them, but he knows it’ll take Thad a while to make the filling. He makes the wrappers at the counter, allowing Thad to work at the table… where Max can’t see him. Hopefully, it’ll help the boy feel safe. Max pays careful attention to how Thad moves, looking for that slow heaviness or quick skittishness that Thad carries with him on bad days, but he seems… comfortable. He chops the cabbage with a quick, sure hand.

Max even coaxes him to talk about his books, and his voice becomes cautiously animated telling Max about how cleverly Sherlock Holmes solved the case of the blue carbuncle. Thad starts with Holmes’s pure deduction skills in extrapolating from a single hat and follows him through the adventure till he negotiates with a pub proprietor to find the supplier of a goose. Max misses some of the details. Thad gets most of the way through the story before faltering self-consciously and summarizing the rest.

“It was interesting,” he says defensively.

“Mm,” Max agrees.

He glances over his shoulder at him. Thad’s shoulders are hunched. It looks like he’s done mixing the cabbage-pork mixture.

“Get out the garlic now,” he tells him. “Chives and cloves.”

He goes to the spice cabinet for the garlic, and Max lets him keep working in silence. Gradually, the boy’s body relaxes, moves easier. Max grows immersed in the rhythm of cutting the wrappers into circles. He dusts off his hands.

“Get out the big pot now, Bart.”

“Sure!” Bart’s voice says.

The boy turns to the cupboard, the wrong cupboard, the one where the pots were when he was—when—when he was living as Bart.

Max and Thad freeze at the same instant.

Thad recovers first.

“How dare you?”

Max turns. Thad’s face is twisted into a snarl.

“I’m sorry. It was an accident,” and Max knows that calling Thad by Bart’s name by accident is little better than doing it to him on purpose, but he hopes Thad will understand that Max didn’t mean to hurt him—

“I HATE you!”

Max flinches. I would too, he thinks, and you don’t even know how I abandoned you in the speed force—and then he buries those thoughts. That wail of ‘I hate you!’ was the outburst of a child, not a well-considered position.

Max asks, “Do you?”

Thad stares at him for a moment. Then he breathes in deeply, exhales slowly. In that single breath, his rage is replaced by a despairing tiredness.

“No,” Thad says wearily. “I never could.”

And he turns and walks away.

This should feel like a victory, Max thinks numbly, watching him go. That vengeful Thaddeus could take such a grievous wrong so calmly. But it just feels like Thad is slipping out of Max’s reach. All the vulnerability of his early days, that precious rawness that Thad allowed Max to touch and soothe, is being hidden away.

Max has lost his trust.

On Wednesday, Thaddeus asks for his Inertia suit.

Max stares at him over his newspaper and blinks once, twice, three times before it sinks in.

Thaddeus is standing with perfect posture, chin lifted in a determined way. But his right hand is twisting his left wrist with a grip so painfully hard that it drags sharp furrows into his shirt around his fingers. He’s… what, afraid? Self-soothing? Self-punishing? Max can’t tell, and it scares him.

“Your…”

“Inertia suit,” Thad repeats.

Max puts down his newspaper without bothering to fold it.

“Thad,” he says, very carefully. “How are you feeling right now?”

“Irrelevant.”

Max waits. But Thad isn’t Bart to cave under the pressure of silence; he’s patient as a stone.

“Thad,” he says. “You understand how this could be… troubling for me?”

Sounding strained, Thaddeus says, “I have a right to my own posessions.”

“Yes, you do,” Max says. “I’m not saying no. I’m just asking why.”

“Irrelevant,” Thaddeus repeats. “I want my Inertia suit. Please give it to me.”

“No, this is very relevant,” Max says. “Thad… listen to me. Please. I’m worried for you. What’s wrong?”

Thad broke eye contact at the word ‘worried’, and his unoccupied hand clenches.

Max waits.

Slowly, Thad says, “If I said I would tell you, would you give me my Inertia suit and promise…”

Thad goes quiet again.

“Sophos Thaddeus,” Max says. “I promise to listen to you. I promise to take you at your word. I promise that no matter what you say, I’ll still love you. What do you need me to promise?”

Thad shifts his stance a bit, then says, “The suit.”

“And I promise to get you your suit,” Max says, hoping he can keep that promise. Last he knew, it was in the Watchtower.

“Fine.”

Thad’s eyes dart around the living room.

“What’s wrong?” Max asks softly.

“I… I’m just… scared. All of the time.”

His voice wobbles. He pauses.

“Not me. My body,” he clarifies.

Another pause.

He starts more firmly this time. “Everything has changed. And that’s good. But my body is traumatized, and… no one can just talk me out of that. I’ve tried. But I think… having something familiar would help.”

Max waits, in case Thad decides to say more. He waits until Thad adds:

“I am not, and will not be, Inertia.”

“I know, braveheart.”

Thad bares his teeth.

Max brings Thaddeus with him to the Watchtower. Unfortunately, the zeta tubes that bring people to and from the installation use DNA scans to identify people, and… well… Thaddeus Thawne’s DNA is listed as one of the most powerful and dangerous criminals in this galaxy. Max has to call Wally West and explain their mission and get his override code to get the Watchtower to allow Thaddeus in.

It’s very bright, in the Watchtower, and Thad snarls and squints immediately.

Max heads toward the room where Thad slept for that healing trance. Thaddeus’s whole body exudes antagonistic sullenness as he slinks after Max, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets. It’s a good thing the Watchtower is fairly empty. Neither of them, Max or Thad, need someone questioning them right now.

Max remembers Martian Manhunter’s gentle hands removing the deep green boots from Thad’s feet after Zatanna’s spell took effect, then arranging the boy’s body in the bed, checking his sleeping mind to find the best position for the eight-day sleep. He remembers Martian Manhunter putting the boots on the shelf in the shallow closet. So maybe the rest of the suit was there too.

Unlikely, but it’s a place to start. And Max would rather avoid talking to anyone about this if he doesn’t have to.

Max’s phone vibrates. He stops to check it. It’s a text from Bart. He looks down at Thad, but the boy seems enthralled by the open door to medical. Max opens the text.

Heard you were looking for Thad’s suit. It’s in the museum. I can get it for you?

Do that, but do not show yourself. Leave it in the Watchtower.

It’s in the closet in Thad’s Watchtower room now!

Ah, Max smiles at the way they think alike. He didn’t realize that Bart even knew where Thad’s room was. Max never saw him in the Watchtower… he thought Bart was too put on edge by his clone to come visit him while he was sick. But maybe Bart was there and Max just didn’t know it. Maybe Bart slipped into that windowless top-security room in the few hours during that week that Max wasn’t there. What for? Max wonders. Maybe the same as Max… a sense of responsibility. Thad is his clone, after all, despite everything.

Thank you, Max texts, and closes his phone.

Thad follows Max onward without comment.

Max stands on his toes to pull the costume down from the closet. The dark fabric is folded into a neat rectangle with the goggles and earpieces on top, the boots on top of those. No Flash ring to hold it in. Thad sighs and holds out his hands, palms up. Max turns and places the suit in his hands. It looks bulky, spilling over the edges of Thad’s hands, yet so, so thin.

Thad looks at it solemnly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where the ring got to,” Max says.

Thad’s mouth twists.

“A burden it was and a burden it remains,” he says. And that is the only thing he says for the rest of the day.

Helen comes home late that day with a suitcase and a toothbrush and a small grey plush seal. She holds it out. Thad stares at it.

Helen says, “You don’t have to take it, but it reminded me of you, so…”

Thad takes her hand in both of his and kisses her knuckles. Then, in a burst of yellow lightning, he and the things disappear into his room.

On Thursday, Thaddeus comes out of his room at precisely noon with his suitcase packed.

Max laughs a little at the broad hint.

“We should eat breakfast first,” he says. “Then I’ll drop you off.”

Thad pulls his suitcase up beside his chair, places already set. Max opens the oven and pulls out the tray of pancakes he’d put there to keep warm. He sits down. Thad begins to eat… Max can only describe it as efficiently.

Trying to be casual, Max asks, “How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” Thad says.

“Not worried at all?” Max asks.

Thad shrugs.

“Joseph Wilson seems… trustworthy.”

“I think so as well,” Max agrees. “But if you need me, call me, okay? I can always come get you early.”

“I’ll behave, Max,” Thad snaps. “What, you think I’m going to throw away my chance with him?”

What? Oh.

“I’m not worried about you doing something wrong,” Max laughs. “Just if you feel like coming back early or if you forgot something.”

“Oh,” Thad says, and looks a little embarrassed.

“Or…” Max says. “If you’re lonely, or upset in any way.”

Thad’s expression closes off.

“Right,” he says.

“Thad,” Max says softly.

Thad puts down his fork.

“Stop,” he says. “Just stop. Grife.”

Thad doesn’t swear. Not like Bart.

“Thad—”

“You’re making this harder than it has to be,” Thad snarls. “I don’t understand you. I’m leaving! I’m leaving, and soon you won’t be beholden to me anymore. So why—”

Thaddeus shakes his head hard.

“Why keep trying to… offer me stuff? I can’t pay you back! You know that!”

“Because I love you,” Max says.

Thaddeus shakes his head again, slower.

“Thaddeus, listen to me,” Max says, and the steel in his voice makes Thaddeus look up, startled. “I know you don’t know what to do when I say I love you. Maybe you can’t believe me yet. But believe this, Thad: you will always have a place here. Here in this house, and here, too.”

Max puts his hand on his heart.

Thaddeus looks at his hand. Quietly, he says, “A place.”

“A place,” Max repeats. “Always.”

Thaddeus covers his face.

“A place,” he repeats, like a sob, like he can’t believe it, like he believes it anyway.

Oh, Thad. If this is what he can understand, then Max is glad he finally found the words for him, but why, why did it have to be just as Thad went away?

“Thad-boy,” Max says. “Can I touch you?”

And Thad doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no, and when Max kneels beside him and puts his hand on his shoulder, he doesn’t pull away.

Max carries Thad to Metropolis and nearly slams into several buildings and trees along the way. He’s mostly paying attention to the shape and weight of Thad in his arms, trying to memorize the soft hiss of Thad’s lightning and the brush of his hair against Max’s neck and jaw.

Max puts Thad down outside the door to Joseph’s apartment and knocks.

Joseph opens the door with a bright smile and signs Nice to see you!

Thad signs it back, smiling. Max manages to smile, too.

But he misses Thad already.

He tries going on a run, a long, free jaunt around the world to clear his head. But all he can think about is the fact that his arms are empty. He’s weightless. Childless. Again.

He goes to commune with the speed force. He meant to just immerse himself in it, to let the rushing current of the eternal power loosen the knots of conflict and emotion in him; but he’s so upset that instead of loosening himself out, he ends up attracting spirits to the knot he’s made in the speed force.

Barry Allen comes first, silently, a warm bright presence. Then Johnny Quick, his lightning sizzling loudly into a spirit form, and Max opens his eyes to look at them with a sigh.

“Sorry,” Max says.

Johnny Quick says, “You’re gonna break your heart over that kid, aren’t you?”

Oh, Johnny. He’s insightful. But so… abrasive.

Max says, “Johnny, I can’t not break my heart over him. He needs me.”

Johnny Quick says, “Needs you? Thad Thawne is falling apart trying to live with you.”

“That’s not his name anymore. And that’s not true! He’s improved, he’s doing so well—”

Something in Barry’s face makes him fall silent.

“He’s broken,” Johnny says bluntly.

Abruptly, Barry changes positions; he’s facing Johnny now. He’s looking into his eyes, Max thinks. But it’s difficult to read faces made of lightning.

“He’s my grandson,” Barry says.

Max can feel something nonverbal happening between them, a facedown of some kind. He waits.

They both look back at him.

“Max Mercury,” Johnny says, gentler, “You don’t summon the dead for comfort, and you definitely don’t summon me for comfort. You came to me for the hard news. And the hard news is that Thaddeus will never fully recover.”

No, Max thinks. No. But it’s a denial of what he’s suspected all along.

Johnny asks, “Did you feel him in the speed force?”

“I did,” Max answers.

He remembers his sense of Thaddeus hovering in the furthest reaches of Max’s perception, a bright aching knot of lightning curling in on itself.

“He seemed… lonely.”

“He’s feral,” Johnny says. “Frankly, I’m impressed that he hasn’t seriously injured anyone yet. You don’t come out the other side of what he’s been through with a normal mind.”

“He’s not insane,” Max defends him.

Johnny shrugs. “He may not be insane, but he’s sick. You’re not doing him any favors by pretending he can make a miraculous recovery.”

“What do you expect me to do, then?” Max snaps. “Condemn him to despair? He has to have hope.”

“He does,” Barry Allen says softly. “He does. He’s strong, and you’ve given him more hope than you know. But it’s asking too much of him to live with a speedster.”

“Why?” Max asks, ragged. “Isn’t it better for him to be with someone familiar?”

Barry Allen says quietly, “He’s tired. He just wants peace.”

“And he can’t find peace with me?” Max asks, knowing what answer will come.

Johnny says, “No.”

Max chews that over for a while.

“I know he’s afraid, but I’m concerned that he’s going to spiral even further if he gets put into another unfamiliar situation. It took so long for us to build this trust with each other…”

Johnny Quick says, “My cousin once adopted a cat from Mexico. Ugliest thing in the world. And it was racist. Hated black men.”

Max raises his eyebrows. Johnny has an interesting way of making a point.

“But the thing was,” Johnny says, smug, like he’s getting to the punchline, “It used to be a street cat. It loved women, because women coddled it. But the only men it met were black men, and they only ever kicked it around. So of course it was scared of them. It was scared of black men ‘till the day it died. But for whatever reason, that cat seemed to think that white men weren’t quite the same thing as black men, so it could just barely tolerate white men if they were nice to it.”

“What are you trying to say?” Max asks.

“Thad is scared of speedsters,” Johnny says. “Maybe it’s because of those simulations you told us about where he got killed by speedsters over and over. Maybe it’s something else, too. But he’s never going to get over that. I know he’s a human being and the cat was just a cat, and he can control himself a lot of the time. And maybe he thinks of you as not quite the same thing as a speedster. Hell, I used to think that way. But you’re still a speedster.”

Max closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Johnny says.

“He’s afraid of me,” Max says, and a pebble shifts in a wall and a thousand cracks appear.

Barry says, “He trusts you more than anyone in the world. He loves you.”

“But I can’t keep him,” Max says, and tears come to his eyes. “I can’t keep him, because I remind him of the Thawnes.”

“Max,” Barry says, and reaches out and touches his shoulder with a shining hand, sending a jolt of energy through Max’s body. “You’re nothing like the Thawnes. You’ve loved my grandchildren as your own sons… and God knows they’re difficult!”

Max smiles tearfully.

“They’re three handfuls apiece.”

“Aw, you love them,” Barry chuckles.

“I do. I do,” Max says, then bursts out: “It’ll break my heart letting him go! Oh, Barry, are you sure it’s right to send him away? I abandoned him once before. I don’t want to do it again.”

“You won’t be abandoning him,” Barry says fiercely. “You’ll visit him, talk to him, stay in his life. You will, won’t you?”

“I will,” Max promises immediately. There’s pain in Barry’s voice, and no wonder. Only two out of his eight grandchildren are alive, and Barry can’t be there for them.

Max wonders if Barry takes care of the spirits of his five dead grandchildren… if taking care of someone is even something you can do in the speed force. He wonders how many spirits stay in the speed force as people and how many dissolve into part of the force itself. Did Barry help any of them transition to the afterlife? Soothe their frantic souls? It’s a conversation for another day. The living are the living, and the dead are the dead.

And Thaddeus—broken as he is—is one of the living. That is a gift.

The wall crumbles, and Max buries his face in his hands and weeps.

#The Strange Redemption of Thaddeus Thawne #WE'RE BACK!#and I would like to apologize to everyone for the length of this chapter #I think?? it might be the longest yet??#I just wanted to PUBLISH. IT.#I've been working on it for so so long.#Enjoy!#Thad Thawne #dc fanfiction #flashfam

15 notes · View notes

neuromuse · 3 days

Text

FINALLY I CAN TALK ABOUT MY AU

This has been rotting in my head for like a year at this point, and I am not gonna do justice in this one post but!! Let's talk about Percy's Mercury!Bart Allen Au.

So the idea of Bart taking Max's mantle is not my own original idea, I see it all the time on comic book twitter and tumblr and it's a very common concept and it makes a lot of sense. Given how Bart failed Terrifically at being the flash, and so if he were to grow out of the Impulse title and role, I think this would be that story (if that makes any sense??). Cue: my rambles

So there's a lot of parts where I could start this AU, but hear me out, what if we start with an alternate ending to Mercury Falling? Inertia pulls a rotting Max Mercury into the speedforce and Impulse barrels through to try and save his parental mentor figure. Bart canonically wants to save both Thad and Max, and I think at the state Bart was with his training meant that the ability of him saving either of them when all chaos breaks loose in the speedforce is incredibly thin. In a good ending Bart ends up saving Thad and Max and there is a possible start of Thaddeus redemption arc, in the real ending we got Bart saves Max and Thad poofs into speedforce dust, and in a bad ending Bart watches Thaddeus and Max fade in front of him.

Can you take a guess at which one I'm gonna pick for this AU? What can I say, fuckers love angst (I am fuckers).

Ok so Bart crawls out of the speedforce, torn in shambles and in front of him is Helen and Max's colleague who was attempting to treat him. They all stare at each other with thick disbelief of what had just happened, and neither of the adults can find it in themselves to ask the quivering teen in shambles the thick details. All they can manage is to pick up the boy and comfort him, rest assured he is safe at the end of the day. The rest of the details follow out similar to the end of Impulse, where when Max goes missing the Allen family decide to assign Jay Garrick as Bart's caretaker since he can continue mentoring him and be the best fit. When Bart moves in with the Garricks, across the country and away from his school friends and Helen, he is still injured and recovering, which he shouldn't be injured since speedsters usually only take like what? a few hours and they're back on their speedy feet? Jay speculates Bart still has broken bones because they not only settled in the wrong spots, making it impossible to make a proper recovery (unless he wants to repetitively break the same bones until they set them in the right spots) or because the injuries forming in the speedforce threw the body and metabolism in for a loop.

Either way, from this point on the canon stays loosely the same. Bart stays with Jay, learns with him, and some Young Justice shenanigans ensue. Up until we get to around the Flash Rebirth comic, I'm gonna mess around with this point. Wally notices that when Barry comes back the speedforce is acting very strange again, and so does Barry as they both hear the souls of Max and Johnny Quick in the speedforce. This peaks Bart's curiosity, and just like when he was a younger kid he's gonna try to make a run back into the speedforce to check it out. Everyone advises Bart not to run back into the speedforce, a whole dictionary's worth of reasons why it's not a good idea, but Bart will stay stubborn and keep working his way up into breaking that barrier.

Bart eventually enters the speedforce looking for Max, and he enters the speedforce a handful of amount of times before finding him. He treats these visits like entering a containment zone, enter for only a short time and once anything feels funny evacuation ASAP. When he finds Max, on his seventh run through, the man is ethereal, what was a conduit of the speedforce is now a spectral image of what the speedforce captured him as. The two manage to hold conversation in a thick maelstrom of kinetic energy, which now limits their time as Bart is starting to get battered up for being a freshie to the intense form of travel.

It was obvious that Max couldn't go back to earth with Bart, as his body wasn't the same and it would put the two in a whole bunch of unnecessary issues. When it's getting to that point where Bart is hitting that upper limit of speedforce exposure, he asks Max if he could see him soon. In the typical always cryptic Max manner, he just laughs and puts a phantasmic hand on Bart's shoulder and tells him that he'll know where to find him. This is what I'd consider to be the transfer of "zen speedforce master" powers to Bart, and it kinda fucks him up you know, it's a lot of beyond radioactive energy being transferred into one of the most unstable conduits. He's gonna knock out and wake up on the floor of Jay's basement with the ability to feel everything moving, and at what speed they're moving.

The shuffling of Jay and Joan cooking dinner together is magnified in a sense that even Clark Kent couldn't understand it, he could clock down Wally running to the Titan's tower, he could feel Tim Drake grapple building to building. It's a lot to take in, but he could also very faintly feel a swirling force in him, a very soothing force that reminds him so faintly of that house in Manchester, Alabama.

#dc #impulse #max mercury #impulse 1995 #jay garrick #dc impulse #Impulse AU #ohmygod this writing is horrible #i just had to get this out there #i will maybe write a fanfic for this

1 note · View note

silverfox579 · 2 months

Text

mod!harry potter x dc

Death looks away from the universe for one second to take care of some personal business. When they look back, the multiverse is broken. They decide to send their new bridge, the Master of Death, to go and fix it.

Harry did not sign up for this.

---------------

"So, let me get this straight."

Harry tried not to grimace. The blonde Brit who'd had the misfortune to catch Death's eye looked on the verge of an aneurysm—and really, he couldn't blame him. If he'd been told by an interdimensional sort of deity that all the suffering he'd endured throughout his lifetime was actually one giant mistake, he'd want to shoot the messenger too.

John Constantine, occult detective and twice-damned soul, massaged the side of his head. No one else could see Harry, but Constantine had applied a spell to freeze time the instant Harry had been dropped in—literally—so there were no other active humans in the rowdy bar save for the two of them.

"You're saying this," the wizard said, waving his hand to gesture to...everything, "is because your boss...blinked. And their siblings, the 'Endless', fucked over the entire multiverse in the span of that one, single blink?"

"Er," Harry said. "Pretty much."

John leaned backward over the bar. He closed his eyes. "I can't do this sober," he declared, reaching out to rummage through the shelves behind him. "Morgana's left tit!" The bottles wouldn't move. Time being frozen meant that there were some...unique restrictions on the surrounding environment.

John flopped over, splaying out on the bar. "Just kill me now," he moaned. "Why would you tell me that? Are you outta your bloody mind?!"

"I mean, the world was supposed to reach this stage eventually," Harry attempted to reassure. "So it's not really like, forbidden knowledge. The only difference now is that it's reached a point where Death can do something about it."

John shot him a dirty look. "I don't give two fucks. Bugger off, bitch." Then he flipped him off.

Harry sighed again and looked down at his very, very long list of souls. "I'll put you down for an IOU then," he said, scribbling down a note on the weathered parchment. "If you ever want to cash it in, just call for me. A reaper will connect your request to me."

"What do I even qualify for?" John's face scrunched. "A bloody get-well card?"

Harry perked up a little. "I have a brochure here—"

"Never mind." John slammed his face back down onto the bar. "Gewr outd."

Harry sighed.

The next home visit didn't go much better. Probably because he'd directly appeared in the person's home.

"Please just listen to me," Harry all but pleaded. "It'll be quick. Ten minutes, max. I promise."

Wally West couldn't do much more than cross his arms thanks to the sticking charms Harry had cast on him, but his glare was deadly enough to make him cringe.

"You get one," he said in a low voice, his wife guarding her heavy stomach with a wary look in her eyes. "And if it turns out to be bullshit, you won't get enough time to regret it."

"Congratulations!" Harry blurted out. "You're eligible for death benefits!"

Wally punched him.

"He punched you?"

"He punched me."

Superman laughed, his cape swaying gently in the wind of the barren planet Harry had taken him to...to avoid property damage and all that. "You must've really spooked him. Flash usually isn't one to punch and run."

Harry shot him a withering glare. Clark managed a sheepish grin.

"To be honest, there isn't a lot I'm allowed to offer you," Harry admitted, shaking out the brochure with Clark Kent's benefits from his sleeve. "I mean, Ra already pretty much covered everything with you Kryptoninans. Indestructibility, laser vision, flight, the works. Is there anything else you want?"

Clark thought it over. "Not really," he admitted. "I'm happy with what I have. The simple life's all I've ever really wanted, y'know? Well, maybe not all the time, but it's good." He smiled. "I've had a good life."

Harry scrutinized him. Then he snapped his fingers. "I got it. How about this? I can give you this." He summoned a small glass cube, containing a single seed-like core in the middle.

"What's this?" Clark asked, holding the cube up to get a better look at it.

"That's Krypton."

Clark nearly dropped it. Luckily, he caught it before he did. "It's what?"

"To be exact, it's a world seed with a nearly identical formula to Krypton," Harry elaborated. "Here's a manual on how to raise it. Normally, it'd taken a few millennia to grow, but the version I gave you is already mature. It'll be around the size of a small moon, so pick a good spot for it, okay? It won't be big enough to sustain a whole population, but it'll show you some of the sights you missed out on." He dropped a thick tome in Clark's lap.

"I—" Clark stared at the cube in stunned silence.

"If you decide you want to return it, just call my name," Harry informed him. "Since I chose it for you, you'll get a free pass. Otherwise, just follow the manual, and you'll be good. Okay?" He didn't wait for a response. "Great! Looks like we're all done here then. I'll drop you back off."

"Wait—"

Harry snapped his fingers.

"I already told you," Jason Todd glared, "I'm not falling for your cheap ass scam. Go bother someone else. You're ruining my vibe."

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. "I already resurrected your adoptive mom from the dead. How is that not enough proof I'm the real deal?"

"Yeah, for like five minutes," Jason scoffed rebelliously. Harry felt like strangling him. "Any scammer could do that."

Harry wanted to scream. "You know what? Fine. If you don't believe me, I will bloody prove it to you—"

#dc universe #justice league #harry potter #crossover #fanfiction #fanfic #part 1 #i love being an author

1 note · View note

musesbymeri · 1 year

Text

I posted 1,379 times in 2022

That's 1,294 more posts than 2021!

526 posts created (38%)

853 posts reblogged (62%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@musesbymeri

@memesomething

@musesbymeri-a

@rpmemes-galore

@jumaanboruto

I tagged 1,239 of my posts in 2022

Only 10% of my posts had no tags

#alola! [promo] - 189 posts

#memes - 147 posts

#that's personal | asks - 134 posts

#dash commentary - 116 posts

#hoenn's savior: may takagi - 115 posts

#back to reality: ooc - 102 posts

#i'm so glad i got to meet queue - 89 posts

#specify muse - 61 posts

#the quiet storm: lillie aether - 58 posts

#psa - 42 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#look as long as it's not fresh meat and needs to be cooked to a safe temperature or it'll either be undercooked or charred she can survive

My Top Posts in 2022:

consider this an itty bitty starter call! Please specify which muse you want! Mutuals only.

15 notes - Posted May 12, 2022

The Hoenn Pokémon League!

- Trainers register for the Hoenn League at their local Pokemon Center. The Elite Four and Champion keep tabs on the challengers as they move across Hoenn (hence why Steven was able to "run into" May as often as he did after their first encounter in Dewford).

- Trainers may complete their badge journey in any order they choose (Minus Norman. Then he makes you earn four badges before you can battle him)

- The Elite Conference is held once a year. During the time the League is not open, Ever Grande City is a peaceful place, mainly visited by nature lovers who want to see the strong water types that can make it up the enormous waterfall.

- Trainers who intend to enter the Conference must make their way up the waterfall. They cannot fly into the city, like spectators/the press will.

- The Ace Trainers and Experts in Victory Road are paid for by the League. They are the first challenge trainers will face on their way to battle the Elite Four/Champion. Challengers who choose to give up are escorted the rest of the way by one of the trainers and given a ticket to watch the conference.

- Trainers that do make it through Victory Road are given accommodation in the Ever Grande Resort, the biggest hotel in the city.

- The city is flooded with spectators and reporters, and the matches are broadcast worldwide.

- The rounds play out similarly to the anime, where there will be knockout rounds until eight trainers are left standing.

- Those eight trainers will get the chance to battle the Elite Four and the champion. They are also registered in the Hall of Fame and gain access to the Battle Resort (later Frontier).

- Those matches are the most hotly anticipated, because the number of trainers who are able to battle the champion fluctuates every year. Some years, all eight will battle the champion, other years, it's just one.

- May was one of two trainers to make it to Steven (the other was Wally)

- Max was the only trainer to make it to May when he competed a few years later, and he lost.

17 notes - Posted April 2, 2022

Knowledge is Power!

PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE - readily available information to anyone with access to any source of media

- May defeated Steven Stone and retained the title of Hoenn champion for almost a decade

- She has a brother named Max.

- Her father, Norman, is the gym leader of Petalburg City

- She is originally from Olivine City, Johto, and speaks of it often in interviews.

- May was the one to quell Kyogre's wrath

- May was the one to beat the strange space Pokemon while on the back of Rayquaza. This information was revealed by a reporter named Gabby.

- May is poised to helm Hoenn's Battle Frontier, and will battle under the title of Battle Legend.

- She is very warm when giving autographs and interviews. She really does like being looked up to by young children/trainers.

- May is very outspoken about her belief that humans should not, under any circumstance, control Legendary Pokemon. She belives they should be left alone, and humans should only intervene if they pose a danger to humanity. Kyogre just wanted to take a nap there was no need to wake them up TEAM AQUA!!!

SEMI PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE/RUMORS

- May once had a nightmare of her team dying to Kyogre. She woke up panicked about it in the crowded Pokemon Center lobby at EverGrande City, so there were witnesses.

- May is really bad at cooking human food, but is a wiz at making Pokeblocks. No, she doesn't understand how she's accomplished that either.

- The information about May being the one to defeat the legendary Pokemon was actually stolen from the Mossdeep Space Center or the city of Sootopolis by the reporting team of Gabby and Ty.

NOT PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE (unless plotted otherwise)

- May has a deep, deep loathing for Team Aqua, and especially Archie. Despite the façade she puts on regarding them, she wishes she'd been strong enough to tell Interpol exactly what they'd been planning.

- Wallace, Steven, and Professor Cozmo were the ones to hide any footage of May's deeds, at her request.

- May is still severely traumatized by what happened with Kyogre and Rayquaza

- May suffers from aquaphobia (phobia of water) and astrophobia (phobia of stars/space). It can be difficult for her to do things like shower, or have a romantic evening stargazing.

- Flash, her Raichu, very nearly died in the battle against Kyogre, and was the member of her team that dealt the finishing blow to the beast.

- May released Kyogre back into the Seafloor Cavern after catching it. She commanded it go back to sleep.

- She also refused to take Rayquaza with her on her journey, but does still have the ability to call it if need be.

- She never caught Deoxys. She only beat it back into deep space

- Latias is the one legendary she met that doesn't mind.

19 notes - Posted March 18, 2022

I'm checking my vital signs

Drawing my battle lines

Going to w a r again

Independent, semi-selective Pokemon multimuse blog, featuring retired champion May, gameverse Max, and postgame Lillie!

Multimuse + Crossover friendly!

Rules || Muses

21 notes - Posted February 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I need a shot again

That sweet adrenaline

Indie, semi-selective Pokémon RP blog, featuring Alpha Sapphire based May, Gameverse Max, and Post-USUM Lillie.

Crossover friendly. Must be 18+ to follow.

27 notes - Posted May 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

1 note · View note

peterxwade24 · 3 years

Text

Meant for Greatness

"Not Such a Normal Girl"

For Maribat March 2021 day 20 prompt Speed Force (if you squint hard enough).

This is a bio parent au, so if you don't like you don't have to read.

This is also incredibly late but it's the first chapter in a new multi-chaptered fic so, yay?

Anyways, enjoy?

Wally had always known that there was a piece of him missing. He couldn’t explain why but he had this sinking feeling in the bit of his stomach that a part of him was out there. Wally wished he knew why he felt like that but he couldn’t pinpoint the source. Nonetheless, Wally had had this feeling for several years now.

---

Linda Park-West had made several mistakes in her life. However, after marrying Wally and having Jai and Irey, her biggest mistake and her biggest regret was giving away their first child. In Linda’s defense, they were young and had barely started dating when she got pregnant. She had made sure that their baby, a little girl named Minji, went to a loving family. She can’t believe that she just gave away her baby but at the same time, Linda knew she wouldn’t have been able to raise her baby on her own. She could only hope that her baby was being raised right, and that her baby was loved.

---

Marinette had always been a hyperactive kid, almost too hyperactive, and her parents had taken her to several psychologists and psychiatrists before she’d finally gotten a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and a prescription for Guanfacine.

Marinette was a normal girl, with a normal life, or, she claimed to be. Marinette wasn’t even the only kid in her class with ADHD, she was just the only kid in class with ADHD with a prescription. Marinette was always getting into things, she always needed to know everything about everything.

Her parents had encouraged her to sign up for several extracurriculars, including but not limited to a science club and a free running club. They wanted her to get out as much of her excess energy before she got home as possible because they weren’t always the best suited to dealing with her so they kept her as busy as possible while she was awake.

Marinette thrived in her extracurriculars, but she didn’t have many friends in them. Sure, she was friendly with everyone in her various clubs and activities but no one put in the effort to actually become friends with her. However, things would change with the addition of Chinese lessons.

---

Marinette was ten when she found a flyer for Chinese lessons being given by an elderly Chinese man who lived a few streets away from the bakery. She simply had to show her parents the flyer and suddenly she was taking Chinese lessons. She excelled in her Chinese lessons, learning more and more as she continued to visit her teacher, who she called Master.

What Marinette didn’t know, was that she was learning more than just Chinese. Master Fu, her Chinese teacher, was teaching her a much more ancient language as well as Chinese. He was training Marinette to take over for him when he passed. She didn’t know that by the time she turned thirteen she would know more about the beings she was being taught about then he did, she didn’t know that by the time she was thirteen she would be in charge of the beings she currently thought of as simply an ancient legend.

---

Marinette was sitting in her homeroom waiting for class to start, the seat next to her was empty like usual because she was usually very distracted and had a habit of distracting whomever sat next to her. She didn’t mean to, she just couldn’t focus.

Mlle. Bustier, her homeroom teacher, was standing in front of the class with a smile on her face. Mlle. Bustier clapped to get the students’ attention. “All right everyone. This year, things are going to be a little different. First of all, everyone’s switching seats. Yes, I do mean everyone.” Mlle. Bustier surveyed the class and saw the disappointment in their eyes. “It’s for the best, it builds character. Now, everyone up.”

The class stood up, their belongings in their arms and frowns on their faces. They paired up differently than they usually would. Mylène, who would usually sit with Ivan in the back, was now sitting beside Sabrina in the front while Ivan was sitting with Max diagonally behind Mylène. Sabrina’s usual seatmate, Chloè was sitting beside Alix across the aisle from Mylène and Sabrina, with Sabrina and Chloè in the non aisle seats. Kim, who usually sat beside Max or Alix, was seated beside Marinette across the siale from Max and Ivan with Max and Kim in the aisle seats. Juleka sat beside Nino behind Kim and Marinette while Rose and Nathanael were sitting together at the desk behind Max and Ivan. This seating arrangement left the back two desks for any new students but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be rearranged at some point.

What Mlle. Bustier hadn’t thought through was sitting the two students with ADHD beside each other.

Marinette, despite her prescription, was still extremely distracted but her brain seemed to go a hundred miles a minute. She did however, get all of her work done and then immediately start on something else for one of her other classes and suddenly before she knew it the bell was ringing releasing her from her homeroom. She collected her belongings and made her way to Chemistry, however it seemed as though she just blinked and she was there.

---

After school, Marinette has her Chinese lessons. She loves her Chinese lessons, because she can go off on a tangent and learn new words associated with her tangent.

So, Marinette skipped to her Chinese lessons merrily. She couldn’t wait to find out what she was going to be learning today.

“Hello Master Fu.” Marinette called as she entered the massage parlor and slipped her shoes off.

“Hello Marinetta.” Master Fu called from the back room. “Come in and take a seat. We’ll begin in a minute.”

“Yes Master Fu.” Marinette quietly walked into the main room and took a seat beside the table. She noticed that the Gramophone which usually sat on a side table against one of the walls was proudly displayed in the center of the table.

Master Fu joined her a few moments later, a smile on his face. “I know you were expecting to learn Chinese today, but I had something else in mind. I think it’s time you met some friends of mine.” Master Fu pressed some of the buttons on the side of the gramophone and suddenly it was opening and an octagonal box was rising out of the base of the gramophone. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng, may I introduce the Box of Miracles and the Kwamii.” Master Fu opened the Box of Miracles and smiled.

Seventeen small, animal-esque, creatures flew around Marinette with smiles on their faces before they all turned back to Master Fu and it seemed like they forced their smiles.

One of the creatures, who looked like a ladybug, seemed to step into the roll of the leader. “Master Fu. She’s a child. Surely you can’t be thinking-”

“Tikki. I am an old man. I needed a successor and the Universe brought her to me.”

Marinette could only stand in shock. Maybe she wasn’t such a normal girl with a normal life, maybe she was meant for greatness.

#maribat march #prompt: speed force #marinette dupain cheng #guardian-in-training marinette dupain-cheng #bio parent au #bio!dad au #bio!mom au #bio!parents au #bio dad au #bio mom au #adopted marinette dupain-cheng #mari's in a lot of extracurriculars

123 notes · View notes

boldlyanxious · 4 years

Text

None the Wiser 9

Masterlist

All fic masterlist

Biodad Bruce Prompts:

-dating/love

-pets

-identities

-truths/lies (if you squint but that part will continue)

Marinette was waving bye to her friends before heading home. Alya was following her peppering her with questions about what she thought of Noah and what exactly he said to her. She almost pulled Marinette down holding onto her arm begging for details.

"Oh why do you do this to me? Lycée is wasted on you. I should be single and ready to mingle with all these cute new boys," Alya let out an exasperated groan.

Marinette lifted her hand and waved. "Hey Nino."

Alya turned around frantically looking for her boyfriend. When she didn't see him she turned back and slapped Marinette's arm when she saw she was laughing at her.

"You devil brat! I almost had a heart attack."

"Serves you right. Mooning over the new boys when you already have one who adores you."

"Doesn't seem like I would have a chance anyway. None of them look my way when you are standing near."

"That's not true. You're exaggerating."

"Noah just about knocked Max over in the hall the first time he saw you. You didn't notice because You were watching Adrien."

"That never happened."

"No, it did. I thought him and Kim were going to get into a fight but Kim saw where he was looking and laughed it off."

"Also that is definitely one boy, not every boy."

"He is not the only one. Pretty sure Luka is still pining after you. At least 3 other boys that went to different collèges and then of course Adrien."

"Another blatant fabrication. Adrien only sees me as a friend. You can't even say stuff like that. I need to move past that."

"You have been really distracted lately. You've missed a lot. He always smiled more brightly when you were around but now he watches you a lot."

"Stop Alya. He wouldn't want to date me."

"If you say so. But I think sleeping with his arms around you made him reconsider."

"It wasn't like that. Besides I have had a lot on my mind. I don't know that running off to find love right now is the best idea. It's all so confusing."

Their discussion of Marinette's dating life was interrupted when Damian walked up to them and addressed Marinette.

"You need to come with me."

"She isn't going anywhere with you. You've been an entitled jerk to her at every opportunity." Alya said with a glare.

"What do you need?" Marinette said.

"We can do it here but it might be easier if we were seated."

He gestured to some benches nearby and the girls sat. He tapped at his phone briefly and they saw the excited face of Tim who Damian barely acknowledged before turning back to Marinette.

"I am told that you may be visiting our home soon," he stated.

"That has been discussed and I am interested in the idea," Marinette said.

"I also heard you have always wanted a pet but that is complicated by your residence being attached to the patisserie," he continued.

"This is also true."

He addressed his phone, "Can you show her what you found?"

The 3 looked at the phone where they could see Tim turn it around they saw a ceiling and then a floor that looked like a store before it focused on a shopping cart as Tim talked about each thing he focused on.

"Okay this looks like it is the best enclosure it connects to a series of tunnels and a little cubby as a sleeping area. This wheel for exercise the water bottle, dish, food, and bedding material. All that is left is to choose one."

He focused his phone on the enclosures at what she had determined was a pet store. Marinette could see the variety of hamsters available.

"You are getting a hamster?" Marinette asked.

"You are getting a hamster," Damian clarified. "You just have to pick one."

Marinette was stunned with this gesture from Damian but she didn't have time to consider as Tim went through showing them each hamster that was available. Marinette oohed and ahhed at all of them but then she gasped at the smallest one she had seen.

"Oh it's so little and cute!"

Tim reached in and picked it up and it was even smaller than it had looked because there was another matching one huddled together with it. They both squirmed and struggled to get back to each other.

"Oh not that one," Marinette said. "They are together. They need each other."

"Get them both, Drake." Damian said.

"I'm already on it," he replied.

"No, that is too much. You don't need to do that." Marinette said.

"Nope. They need each other and I'm already doing it." Tim said.

"That is settled. I will have him send a picture when it is set up. When I am home I will give you updates as well as pictures and videos regularly."

Marinette's mouth was slightly ajar at his sudden change in attitude. He didn't wait for her to figure out her feelings, he pushed a card into her hands.

"This is my personal contact information. Use whichever you feel the most confident with and I will send the information that way. Good day."

When he finished speaking he walked off without waiting for a response. Marinette and Alya just stared as he walked away.

"Did that really just happen?" asked Marinette.

Alya just nodded before she too said her goodbyes and went home.

---

It was a little over 2 months from when they originally met the Justice League. Ladybug and Chat Noir had discussed it several times and then again with the Justice League members they had been working with. Today was when they decided to meet at a more private place for their reveal. Batman and Wonder Woman were not really involved. They were just there before to set up the meeting with the team but Hawkmoth wasn't considered to be at their level.

The decision of the miraculous users was that they would reveal to the 4 members they had gotten to know but that no one beyond that would know. They were already uncomfortable with the idea of a reveal and they wanted to control the information themselves. Well, Chat Noir was excited about the reveal. Ladybug was terrified what the reaction of her partner would be. She didn't worry about the Justice League group. She thought it was unlikely that they had ever met but Chat had met her as Marinette to rescue her, when he was disappointed with Ladybug not showing up, and then when she claimed to be in love with him.

The building was a gym under construction so no one would see them. When Ladybug entered she saw that Superboy and Robin were already there and talking. She gave a little wave as she approached them. She had grown to like the pair of them very well over the weeks they had worked together. Superboy was very friendly and Robin was very focused.

She looked over at the other side of the building at a new sound to see Wonder Girl walking up with Chat Noir. Based on their conversation they had just met outside while they were walking up. Greetings were exchanged and Marinette started to ask if anything knew about Kid Flash but as she started she saw his blur zip around the space several times before he joined them half a second later. He handed a flower to Ladybug with a flourish causing Chat Noir to glare at him.

Even though the Justice League members had acted as heroes longer Ladybug still took charge. It was her city and they had the experience with the problems there. They didn't like it at first but her no nonsense focus on the mission without being too uptight when they were patrolling together had made her accepted by all.

She took a deep breath. She was the only one very nervous. The others already knew the identities of their teammates. They had spent the last few weeks explaining situations where it had been useful. She thought they were probably skipping over times when it had not been a good idea. She had been talking with Superboy one night and he had almost let a story slip but he stopped himself.

She looked over at Chat. Maybe he was nervous too. But she could still see excitement in his eyes. She just hoped she would be enough. Their relationship wasn't like the others. He knew her civilian identity and they had worked together for 2 years. Ladybug took a breath and cleared her throat. Conversation stopped and she had their full attention when she spoke.

"Before we do this I want to remind everyone how important it is that the information not go beyond those in this room. It is the choice of each person to decide who knows their identity. If anyone disagrees with that they should say so now."

No one spoke but there were nods of agreement.

"Okay, then on three?"

She paused before slowly counting to 3. She closed her eyes as she detransformed and took a breath before she looked up. She looked first to see the fading green light on Chat Noir to meet the green eyes of Adrien Agreste. She was sure his shock was mirrored in her own. They both opened their mouths to speak but turned at another voice.

"Marinette?"

She turned to see Damian in Robin's uniform. Kid Flash and Superboy she had met at the fashion show but she couldn't remember their names. She had been too nervous to retain anything. She didn't think she had ever met Wonder Girl as a civilian. Surprisingly she was the only one. No one spoke for a moment. Adrien had that look on his face that Chat Noir would get sometimes when he looked at Ladybug. Marinette didn't think she could deal with this. Until one of the others opened his mouth and proved it.

"Isn't that your sister?" Jon said.

"Bruce is going to flip out," Wally added.

"You can't tell him!" Marinette screeched. "You can't tell anyone, especially not him."

"Marinette, what does he mean? I've met your parents. You don't have a brother." Adrien said.

"I-uh. It's complicated." Marinette said. "Actually I can't deal with this. It's just--"

She trailed off as she took several steps back before calling for her transformation and running out. She didn't see the fallout from her escape. They all argued over whether they should go after her and who should go. Cassie called for them to be quiet. She said she would be the one to go after Ladybug. Since she didn't know her it would be easier to calm her.

Wonder Girl flew off after Ladybug. She wasn't hiding but when she saw Wonder Girl headed towards her on the Eiffel Tower she stood up as if preparing to leave.

"Wait," Wonder Girl called out.

Ladybug paused as she landed and turned back towards her.

"Are they all upset with me?" she asked.

"I think it's mostly worried. You have a lot of secrets."

"I don't even like secrets. It feels like lying. I hate lies. A temporary secret like a surprise is one thing but sometimes I feel like my whole life is a lie."

Ladybug sat back down with her legs dangling as she had been before, Wonder Girl sat next to her. They sat there for awhile, saying nothing. Eventually Ladybug started speaking. She started back at the beginning when she first met Tikki and how she didn't even think she would be a good hero and tried to give the powers away. Once she started she couldn't stop. All her years of secrets and fears poured out. Wonder Girl sat there stunned realizing that not only had she not had anyone to talk to who knew but she also was at risk of becoming akumatized and endangering the entire city or even the world. She considered the spotted hero before she gave her first response that wasn't an encouragement to continue talking.

"You need to tell your parents."

**I will probably not use and additional prompts for this. I have a few prompts that will be separate but connected but don't fit chronologically (only one posted so far). But I will keep writing without prompts.

Taglist

@theymakeupfairies | @emjrabbitwolf

#maribat #bio dad bruce #bio!dad bruce wayne month 2020 #boldlyanxious

314 notes · View notes

river-bottom-nightmare · 4 years

Note

For some reason BirdFlash gives me the look like nerds but are actually jocks vibe while JayRoy are the look like jocks but are actually nerds vibe. TimKon is the classical jock + nerd and since this came to my mind I can't unsee

At first sight, birdflash gives off STRONG nerd vibes. wally’s actually known throughout the school for his science achievements, trophies, and awards. you don’t stand a chance against him in the science fair, don’t even try. and dick went to a fancy rich prep school where he scored some of their highest grades. just because he doesn’t like school doesn’t mean he isn’t good at it. and whenever they see each other in civvies, wally’s chattering on about this experiment he’s doing for fun and it seems like dick actually understands what he’s talking about, not just nodding along. and with a single visit to wally’s school, he revolutionized the tech department with a few careless suggestions. but really, that’s just their individual interests. wally might like science, but his entire life is running. he trains and trains, both with and without the speedforce. along with being trapped in that thing for years, wally’s pretty sure the reason he’s the fastest speedster is because of his strict track and cross-country training. and no matter what the circumstances, dick’s always happiest when he’s in the air. he possesses a natural athleticism that leaves others in awe along with skills finely honed to perfection for years that very few others could even hope to achieve. the two of them are long and lean and strong, and are in complete control over their bodies. they play different sports for fun, give each other leg warmers, socks, and water bottles for holidays, and go on early morning runs. the two of them are sports culture to the max (i actually made a post about that here)

now jayroy give off just the jock vibe, maybe even running into punk territory. first of all, lets get this out of the way: BICEPS. two of the biggest pairs of guns you’ll ever see, i swear. roy’s got a cocky smirk and he wears threadbare tank tops with dumb slogans on them and he never takes that trucker hat off. he makes his way into the basketball game going on at the courts on the bad side of town with a laugh. he squares up his fists for a fight any time there’s a hint of action. his nose is crooked from all the times its been broken and reset. not to mention his tattoos. and yes, roy loves lian with his entire heart and cares for her with everything he has, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a teenager. now jason, jason just looks the part. he’s huge, and built like a goddamn brick wall. those muscles gotta be used for something, right? he’s always wearing those fingerless gloves, but his knuckles are constantly bruised anyway. you stop and take a double take anytime you see him when his lip isn’t split. almost everyone’s seen him with a gun. but he also spends his free time reading literary classics. his bookshelf is crammed full of old paperbacks, with everything from Frankenstein to Wuthering Heights to Farenheight 459 to The Importance of Being Earnest. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is a guilty pleasure of his. And he’s not just flipping through them either. no, he reads them. poking plot holes and other criticisms faster than a bullet. character analyzations sharper than his jawline. a lecture about the problem with many contemporary and modern novels longer than his dick. yea, jason devours those novels, and can tell you about all of them. as for roy, he’s inventive. always tinkering, always fiddling with a piece of tech, always creating. whether it be a new set of trick arrows or a coffee machine that spits out poison darts of a toaster that has 56 settings or a goddamn bazooka. he loves building stuff with his own two hands, a messy bun on his head, grease on his face, goggles shoved over his eyes as whatever he’s making sparks to life in his hands, bested only by the strike of pure creative passion in his eyes. textbook definition mechanic and geek, and we love him for it.

timkon is definitely the classic jock + nerd pairing. the only problem is that they always switch which is which. kon drapes his spiked leather jacket over tim’s shoulders when he’s cold, and later on at football games, tim cheers kon on wearing kon’s varsity jacket. but tim dropped out of high school because he has “better things to do” while kon just genuinely enjoys learning about stuff. kon does need help with his homework, so he calls tim, who always gives kon the math formulas he forgot the empirical formula of a compund that he doesn’t feel like calculating while simulaneously working on a couple other cases (he bounces his theories for a certain homicide off kon). but half of tim’s closet is made of sports jerseys for his favourite teams that he wears completely unironically even though they practically dwarf him, and he drags kon to all of their games while cheering and hollering, screaming at the tv when he can’t be there live,,,,and it’s not just one sport,,,,,nooo he’s got a good many he’s completely emotionally invested in. tim steals kon’s shirts so often that he just starts giving them to him, and dear god there’s almost nothing kon loves more than seeing tim wearing his clothes, looking tiny and misleadingly delicate and his. but tim carries around a skateboard and uses it practically 24/7, and one afternoon was spent teaching kon how to use the thing, including lots of laughing and falling over and steadying hands on waists, before a break at an ice cream parlour was followed by a sugary kiss. so yea, timkon is jock + nerd culture, with both of them being the jock and the nerd (also sorry anon i know you were thinking of kon being the jock and tim being the nerd, and honestly that’s how i usually view it too, its just this particular idea popped into my head and i had to write it) (also for timkon, i usually go for skate culture, and my hc for that is here)

ok wow this got a lot longer than i expected. i was shooting for a couple lines about my ships, and ended up with a whole new hc list instead. ooooof. tag list: @comicsandhoney @birdy-bat-writes @astroherogirl @anothertimdrakestan

201 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Malignant and Shock Twists That Ruin Movies

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Malignant spoilers.

No matter what you think of James Wan’s Malignant, you have to give him this much: it’s pretty original. The filmmaker behind some of the biggest horror movies from this century—Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring in all under a decade—used that clout to pass on a sure thing like directing The Conjuring 3 and instead created something absolutely batshit crazy. In fact, it is on a hill of that batshit where Malignant will live or die for most viewers.

If you’ve read this far, we hope you’ve seen the movie and it’s not a spoiler to say that Gabriel—the mysterious “imaginary friend” from a forgotten childhood—is actually a parasitic twin. Yes, the monster killing everyone is actually the forgotten sibling of Madison (Annabelle Wallis). He stopped developing early on during their mother’s pregnancy, yet he’s shared literal space in Madison’s head and on her body ever since… and he’s been lying dormant for nearly 30 years until a nasty bump on the head gives him the ability to take over sis’ body and crawl out of her skull!

The concept is pure lunacy, and stranger still James Wan pivots his entire movie around the “reveal” of this image of Gabriel emerging out of the back of Madison’s head. Not until audiences are over an hour in do they realize what kind of schlocky silliness they’ve signed up for. It’s a bold gambit from a filmmaker who has the security of a billion-dollar Aquaman franchise behind him to take big swings like this. It also fails spectacularly on nearly every level.

On paper, the twist of Gabriel’s origin might suggest Wan is attempting to mainstream and revitalize a different type of horror, just as he did with “torture porn” in Saw and modern haunted house movies in Insidious and The Conjuring. In that sense, the image of an underdeveloped “cancer” growing out of a little girl’s back in Malignant is pure body horror. Is this Wan’s attempt at playing in David Cronenberg’s sandbox?

Perhaps. There are definite similarities between Malignant and several Cronenberg horror movies from the late 1970s and early ‘80s, which trafficked all in the shock of physical deformity to get under the skin—and closer to darker thoughts in the mind. Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979) bears particular similarities to Malignant. In that film, a couple’s messy divorce and child custody battle takes on horrific connotations when the wife (Samantha Eggar) seeks experimental psychological treatment from a doctor (Oliver Reed) who convinces her to physically manifest her pain: which involves the shocking ending where she gives birth to a brood of monstrous alien-children who kill her subconscious’ enemies and attempt take her daughter back from her estranged husband.

The revelation of these children is visually more shocking and scarring than any image of twisted, misshapen appendages or opening skulls in Malignant. But then that’s because like all other Cronenberg films, the body horror was merely a means to an end. A metaphor about male-dominated society’s anxiety toward the bonds between mother and children, and even a fear of the reproductive process unto itself, underlies the entire running time of The Brood. It’s the ugliness of this paranoia made visceral.

Yet this comparison shows where Malignant fails. Like the Cronenberg movie, Wan’s film pivots on a shocking twist and an uncomfortable image of physical distortion. Yet that twist and that image are ends unto themselves, divorced from any sort of significant meaning or depth.

The revelation that Madison is attached to a deformed and malicious twin brother who hides, quite literally, inside her head appears to serve no purpose beyond the initial shock of seeing Gabriel crawling out of a little girl’s back like one of the grosser gags in a Troma film. Wan and his co-writers—Ingrid Bisu and Akela Cooper—don’t appear to have anything to say after this other than “boo.” When Gabriel finally reveals himself in the film’s present timeline, it isn’t for anything as loaded as the image of a mother licking her newborn’s afterbirth before the eyes of a disgusted husband; it is just so Gabriel can take over Madison’s body and brutally kill a bunch of other prisoners inside a jail cell. It’s maximum splatter for minimal payoff. As a story, Malignant isn’t really about anything else.

In this way, Malignant falls into the long line of empty calorie “twist endings” that define their movies for all the wrong reasons. These are twists that rather than get under the skin settle for tickling the funny bone.

For better or worse, perhaps the filmmaker most associated with these types of misjudged shocks is M. Night Shyamalan. He’s another undeniable auteur with a taste for the peculiar and daring. He can also lay claim to one of the all-time best narrative twists in a horror movie or any other genre thanks to The Sixth Sense. The realization that Bruce Willis has been a ghost for almost that entire film’s running time, and what it both means for the scenes between him and Haley Joel Osment as well as his character’s own sense of anguished regret, earned Shyamalan a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination.

Which is likely why so many folks still cackle about some of Shyamalan’s attempts to recapture that magic with subsequent twist endings. To be clear, Shyamalan has achieved some great shocks in subsequent movies, from Unbreakable to more recently The Visit and Split. But nothing can forgive the disappointment found in revealing the characters in the 19th century-set The Village have actually been living in the 21st century the whole time—and that their town’s elders have simply been lying to younger generations about monsters in the woods for reasons. Nor can anything silence the giggles that still curl the corner of the mouth when one recalls that “it’s the trees” out to cause humans to commit mass suicide in The Happening.

Twists that exist purely for the purpose of shock are a bit like a camp counselor making up a ghost story as they go along. The results might be amusing (or not), but they rarely make sense.

When the desire to shock becomes the sole reason to tell the story, the “twists” are more often remembered for their absurdity (like figuring out that Matthew McConaughey is a video game character in Serenity) or outright incredulity (such as Robert Pattinson’s coming of age story in Remember Me turning out to be a 9/11 movie the whole time with the final scene occurring on a Tuesday morning in September).

I don’t think the twist in Malignant works. At all. It’s an unsatisfying answer to an otherwise uninspiring mystery, which is unspooled in an obligatory fashion. Since viewers don’t know who most of the murder victims are in the stylish if otherwise uninvolving first half of the picture, Wan’s visual flair amounts to little of interest. The same goes for Wallis’ flat performance.

When coupled with a “reveal” that has nothing meatier to add beyond Madison developing inexplicable super-strength, so as to allow her to punch her fist through other inmates’ bodies, the movie becomes downright laughable. Yet in its way, that laugh will stick out in the memory a lot longer than other failures that are just going through some other movie’s formulaic motions. So maybe Gabriel really will get the last laugh in the end?

Malignant is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Malignant and Shock Twists That Ruin Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3A95wGk

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

2 notes · View notes

blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

Text

The Many Lives of Lee Miller: Surrealist icon who photographed World War Two

If you were one of the few women photographers accredited by the U.S. Army at the start of World War II, chances were you were far from the front lines. Military regulations at the time dictated that female photojournalists, unlike their male counterparts, were not to enter combat zones.

But Lee Miller, the Poughkeepsie-born photographer and noted Surrealist operating as British Vogue’s war correspondent, was not one to be constrained.

Miller had made a habit of not taking no for an answer long before she accompanied American forces to document scenes such as the Blitz; nurses operating hospitals after D-Day; women serving across the armed forces; and just-liberated concentration camps.

Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller was born on the 23 of April 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the middle child of Florence and Theodore Miller, a mechanical engineer and avid amateur photographer. She was something of a tomboy, always ready for the next big adventure and to try the biggest stunt.

Her first coup was gracing the cover of U.S. Vogue in 1927 at age 19. Lee Miller was walking down a crowded street in Manhattan. She was ravishingly beautiful: blonde hair stylishly bobbed, lips painted red, her slim figure clad in the latest fashions from Paris.

Perhaps it was Paris she was thinking about so deeply. Whatever it was it absorbs her entirely that as she stepped off the sidewalk she didn’t see a car speeding towards her.

At the last minute a man whisked her to safety. He turns out to be none other than the publisher Condé Montrose Nast. As soon as he saw the woman he saved, he decided she must model for his magazine.

A few short months later, Lee Miller’s face, drawn by Georges Lepape with the New York skyline for a backdrop, stares out from the cover of Vogue.

That cover launched Lee Miller’s modelling career. Within months she became a fixture on the New York social scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin and the Vanderbilts.

Fashion greats such as photographer Edward Steichen zipped her into Lanvin and Lelong, draped her in pearls, swathed her in velvet. In one picture she models a Chanel evening gown covered with geometric embellishments, her body resembling a glorious art-deco building.

Lee was fêted and pursued by suitors. A glassware manufacturer even moulded a champagne coupe in the shape of her breast. It was all very glamorous but, for Lee, not wholly satisfying. Later, remembering her New York years, she said, ‘I looked like an angel but I was a fiend inside.’

This contradiction – stemming from a traumatising childhood into early adulthood,

Her father, Theodore, was an amateur-photographer and had begun to photograph his naked daughter long before that, in 1914, when she was seven. According to Miller herself, in that year, she, then known as Elizabeth, had been sent to stay with family friends while her mother was in hospital.

During the trip, she had been raped by a sailor; the attack left her with gonorrhea. For the next year, the child was subjected to daily douches of potassium permanganate, and k twice-weekly visits to the hospital to have her cervix painted with picric acid. Everything she touched at home was immediately sterilised.

It was during this year that Theodore had begun to photograph his daughter in the nude, his first composition being a take on the French artist Paul Chabas' September Morn, a painting of a nubile girl bathing, which had caused a scandal when it was shown in New York in 1913.

For his own picture, Miller required his daughter to pose, nude but for slippers, in the deep Poughkeepsie snow: the resulting picture was called "December Morn". Theodore made it using a stereoscopic camera, so that, viewed through accompanying glasses, his naked child appeared three-dimensional.

The early childhood experience would plague her throughout her adult life, and arguably cause her to constantly try to reinvent herself, wondering if she ‘ever was meant to fit together’.

Those reinventions – as a key figure in the Surrealist movement, fashion photographer, muse and tormented war correspondent – have made her the subject of plays, film scripts (Nicole Kidman wanted to play her in a film written by David Hare that was never made).

Reinvention of otherworldly beauty was also so evident in all her photographs. But Lee wasn’t happy as a model. A sketch she drew in her journal in 1930 shows a woman standing against a studio backdrop, daggers pinning her into place, as another woman in a hat looks on. No wonder, then, that she was hungry to forge her own identity beyond the camera’s frame – a frame that, to a woman who had been looked at by men her entire life, represented an implicit power imbalance.

She gave up her modelling career and set sail for Paris, intending, as she provocatively stated, to ‘enter photography by the back end’.

Bags of confidence, together with letters of introduction from Edward Steichen, convinced Man Ray to take her on as his assistant. He was instantly enchanted and their professional relationship blossomed into a love affair so tumultuous that it affected them both for years afterwards.

Miller was to befriend other iconic Parisian artists like Max Ernst and Picasso and intellectuals like Jean Cocteau. She would vacation with some of the most prominent figures in the art world at the time. Picasso would paint Lee six times and the two remained friends throughout the rest their lives. Picasso wanted to bed her but she held her distance.

It was Lee Miller, not Man Ray, who discovered the photography technique known at "solarisation" bu turning on a light in their darkroom before the negatives had fully developed. It creates a dark line around the subject of the photograph and created groundbreaking images at the time. Ray is often credited with this discovery and he used it often in his own work, but it was actually Lee Miller who made the first picture of its kind on accident.

Man Ray’s portraits of Lee are sensuous and romantic, but even he never seemed able to see her as a whole, often depicting her body broken up into pieces.

He painted her lips floating disembodied in a mackerel sky in ‘Observatory Time: The Lovers’, and in his photographs her breasts, neck and eyes are removed from their context, palpably humming with sexual energy, the ultimate surrealist objects.

In December 1930, Miller's father, Theodore, had come to Paris from Poughkeepsie, New York, to see his daughter. Like any good parent might, he had taken pictures of her. Unlike most fathers, these photographs were shot in the nude, in the bathtub of their shared hotel suite. Lee Miller was 23.

The shots Man Ray took of Lee and Theodore Miller, she in a demure print frock and curled, child-like, in her father's lap, are deeply weird. They seem less of a father and daughter than of an older man and his much younger lover.

Perhaps Ray had heard rumours that Theodore had been Lee's actual childhood abuser, or he may have imagined it for himself. (No charges were ever brought against the unidentified sailor-rapist.)

In terms of age, Ray's own relationship with Lee was also ambiguously paternal: he was 17 years older than her, a pattern that would mark all her relationships with men. At any rate, Theodore and Ray seem to have gotten along famously. Together, the two men photographed Lee, nude, lolling on a bed with three other naked women.

It is hard not to see all this in psychological terms, if not in moral ones. Cursed with a perfect beauty, Miller became a focus of Ray’s internal need to violate. For Man Ray, this was aggravated by the masculine drive to compete.

If the countless celebrities photographed by Man Ray – Wallis Simpson, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Picasso, Chanel, Schiaparelli, himself – the one he went back to most obsessively was Lee Miller. You can see why. Miller was a physical ideal, the kind of perfectly moulded, ice-blonde beauty beloved of Hitchcock; flawless, or at least imaginably so.

Lee Miller and Man Ray's exciting, passionate and tumultuous relationship ended and Man Ray did not take it well. In fact, one of his most famous pieces, Indestructible Object, includes her eye ticking on a metronome.

Ray's instructions to fans on how to make their own version of the work suggest the violence of his anatomical method. "Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more," he writes, bitterly. "Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow."

That done, the photographer, ever the drama queen, sat for a self-portrait called "Suicide" with a noose around his neck and a gun pointed at his head.

Hell hath no fury like a Surrealist scorned.

When their affair ended, Lee moved back to New York and opened her own studio, where she worked ‘in the style of Man Ray’, as she advertised in a bold appropriation of his name.

She hardly needed the help. Clients such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Elizabeth Arden paid handsomely for pictures by the woman who was herself ‘one of the most photographed girls in Manhattan’.

But in just a few years the Lee Miller Studio closed when Lee married an Egyptian, Aziz Eloui Bey, and moved with him to Cairo. She felt stunted by Egypt’s restrictive society but produced some of her best work there, driving into the desert with her trusty cocktail kit in the boot to take photographs of the landscape.

Her husband, however, let Lee spend extended holidays in Europe with the Surrealist set, where she met painter and art collector Roland Penrose, the man who eventually became her second husband. They would be happily married for the rest of their lives until death. She at last found someone who accepted her whole. But it still wouldn’t be enough for Lee.

By 1939, it was time for another reinvention. War broke out, the Blitz rained down on London, and Lee, urged on by her friend, the photojournalist, collaborator and sometime lover David Scherman, got accredited as a war correspondent for (of all places) British Vogue.

Her editor, Audrey Withers, expected soft-focus photo-essays about war privation, but Lee had other ideas.

Her reportage was gruesome, intimate and important. On the front lines at the siege of Saint-Malo, Lee documented the Americans’ first use of napalm and described a company ready for action, ‘grenades hanging on their lapels like Cartier clips, menacing bunches of death.’

She shot close-ups of the faces of German Nazis who had committed suicide in Leipzig and took powerful portraits of starving prisoners following the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald.

When she arrived in Paris during the Liberation the first thing she did was go to Picasso's studio. There they are pictured smiling holding each other tight, probably beyond relieved that they were both alive. Picasso is quoted saying in astonishment "the first Allied soldier I should see is a woman- and she is you."

When Hitler fled Munich at the end of the war, Lee and Scherman were the first of the press corps to reach his apartment, where they drank his cognac and napped in his bed. They propped a picture of Hitler on the rim of his bathtub, set Lee’s dirty combat boots on the bathroom rug and took the now-famous photograph of her bathing in Hitler’s tub.

The war made Lee feel alive.

The image of Miller in Hitler’s tub was the one that led to the end of her Vogue career. The public was outraged at what they interpreted as flippant disregard for the ravages of war. Being accused of insensitivity inevitably took its toll, but it was what she saw, felt, and experienced during those years that would eventually send her into a struggle with depression.

She loved her uniform, tailored on Savile Row. She loved roughing it: washing in her helmet and subsisting on K-rations. And for a woman always searching for meaning in her life, documenting the war for readers back home gave her purpose. ‘Believe this,’ she cabled to Vogue, and the pictures she sent back were indeed horrifying. They came at a cost: Lee was never able to distance herself from her subject. She threw her entire self into her work.

Lee suffered mightily postwar.

The trauma of what she had seen haunted her for the rest of her life. Today we would call it PTSD. In postwar England, Lee was told by her doctor ‘we cannot keep the world permanently at war just to provide you with excitement’.

On her return to London after the war, she was feted. "Who else has written equally well about GIs and Picasso?" her editor said. "Who else can swing from the Siegfried line one week to the new hip line the next?"

Desperate to ward off a sense of anticlimax, she returned to eastern Europe. But soon she was pregnant at 40 years old and finding the prospect of motherhood scarier than any front line.

She missed the action, despite suffering post-traumatic stress. She also felt increasingly sidelined: in staid, patriarchal postwar Britain, her husband was the one in demand.

Finding the inspiration to write and take photographs became harder and eventually she gave it up entirely, hiding more than 60,000 negatives and contact sheets in the attic and becoming so tight-lipped on the subject that even her own son, Antony, knew nothing about her war work until he was an adult. An entire piece of herself was boxed up and placed out of sight.

Depressed at her loss of looks and gain in weight, she found solace in drink and cooking elaborate gourmet meals for her guests at Farley Farm House in East Sussex, her home until her death in 1977.

She could have written a very good cookbook by all accounts. She was a virtuoso chef.

She remained friends with the Paris crowd. In particular she was close to Picasso. Lee Miller's son recalls going over to Picasso's home as a child. He even wrote a book about the time he bit Picasso, as a child, called ‘The Boy Who Bit Picasso’.

Lee even reconciled with Man Ray. Lee and Man Ray last met in London in 1975, at Man Ray's retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. By now, he was in a wheelchair and Lee Miller was a drunk.

Lee Miller died of cancer in 1977. By the end she was overweight, an alcoholic, ravaged by depression, and tortured by her husband’s affair with a trapeze artist. Anyone meeting Lee Miller then would have been surprised to know that she was once considered the most beautiful woman in the world, second only to Greta Garbo.

But just as she, and her reputation, went out of sight for years. There has in recent years been a resurgence of interest in Lee’s photography, bringing her legacy, and her enduring appeal, further into the light.

As a female icon she never saw herself as a victim. It's remarkable that Miller was able to delight in her body (and in the pleasure others took from it). She saw sex and love as two very different beasts. She was very comfortable living out the truth as she believed it."Emotionally, I need to be completely absorbed in some work or in a man I love," she wrote, but she didn't see why going to bed with someone should upset whichever man she was currently in love with.

Lee insisted that she couldn’t be kept and that women should be able to be as sexually free as men. She was radical, and people made her suffer for it - Man Ray included.

Strikingly beautiful, she was used to submitting to the male gaze and even subverting it. A less spirited woman might have been crushed by these alpha males, but Miller, unfazed, determinedly transformed herself from passive model to active artist.

Her son, Antony Penrose, observed in his 1998 biography of his mother, The Legendary Lee Miller: Photographer, 1907–1977, her unique background capturing uncanny moments and haunting, bizarre portraits during the heyday of the Surrealist movement served her well in war photography. Penrose wrote:

“Unexpectedly, among the reportage, the mud, the bullets, we find photographs where the unreality of war assumes an almost lyrical beauty....On reflection I realise that the only meaningful training of a war correspondent is to first be a Surrealist—then nothing in life is too unusual.”

But it was the very nature of unconventionality of her career trajectory that hampered her historical reputation.

Her early association with the Paris Surrealists - particularly her role as Man Ray's "perversely enchanting muse" - overshadowed her own artistic accomplishments.

Her abandonment of photography, and the consignment of all her work to her own attic also limited her impact during her lifetime.

Her association with fashion also coloured the interpretation of Miller's work. As her biographer Carolyn Burke states, "to this day, her life inspires features in the same glossy magazines for which she posed...this approach turns the real woman in to a screen onto which beholders project their fantasies", and further perpetuates the legend of Lee Miller as an "American free spirit wrapped in the body of a Greek goddess".

The force of her beauty, effervescent personality and high octane biography will always remain central to interpreting her work.

Today Miller has been recognised as among the most original and ambitious photographic artists of the 20th century, and a subtly transgressive artist, who - as Lynn Hilditch asserts in Lee Miller, Photography, Surrealism and the Second World War - took off from her Surrealist background and "pushed the boundaries both of art and war photography, often using unconventional methods to comment on such multifaceted issues as sex, gender, death, and war"

#lee miller #history #photographer #world war two #art #beauty

199 notes · View notes