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royallyprincesslilly · 4 years

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Title: Bet You Can’t {1}

Chris Evans x Uriah & Chris Hemsworth x Summer

Crossover-Collab Four-Part Miniseries

Warning: Cursing, Plot, Fun, and Games, Mild Raunchy Talk

Words: 2.2K

Summary: Uriah and Chris are happily married. A night of relaxing with your best friends Chris and Summer Hemsworth brings up “No Nut November.” Once you hear it, you know where it’s leading. IT was all jokes until somehow it turned serious. The Chris’ strike a full-on bet while dragging their better halves into the madness. The rules are simple, for the entire month of November none of you will have sex, none of you will get that nut in any way. Whichever couple makes it get bragging rights, and the 10k pool bet money. Whichever couple doesn’t make it has to change their social media name to “Failed NNN” for a week and post/tweet as normal and go on IG live to announce their failure. The bet is rigged though when Uriah and Summer decide to sabotage their husbands and make a side bet on who could make their husband fail quicker. All’s fair in love and war, and this is war.

Note: Got this idea from a group conversation with my friends, where a debate broke out about women being stronger and more able to survive NNN than men. It got me thinking, hmmm we know Chris has a dirty mind, dirty mind has to equal freak and always wanting to fool around.

It was too much fun working with @oceanscorazon a while back for her part one to out first collab titled Rumors & Waves. Look out for part two coming soon. I had to do it again. Thank you to the beautiful and phenomenal Amber @oceanscorazon for agreeing to this!!!

This will be a four part story to be posted one chapter a week to show what November is like for Chris and Uriah. @oceanscorazon will also write four parts to show that November is like for Chris and Summer.

***So for Chris and Uriah’s timeline, this is before the events of Rumor Has It.

🍁 🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁

“Oh my god, you guys are so dumb. I cannot even deal right now!”

You couldn’t contain your laughter. Perhaps it was you being at your utmost comfort level, or the fact you were genuinely having a great time or the insane amount of alcohol you’d consumed. Whatever it was, your ugly dork laugh had come out of hiding.

“Oh my god, the dork laugh has returned,” Chris teased, pointing at you from across the huge firepit. Everyone laughed louder as you narrowed your eyes at your husband.

“Oh shut up, you know you love my dork laugh.”

“I do, you’re right. I kinda have to though right, we’re married.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing, sweetheart, just it’s very suspect this laugh of yours didn’t emerge until we’d been married for a week.”

You all laughed harder, fully getting the meaning of his words.

“Oh, mate, are you really implying that you’d have had second thoughts marrying her if you’d heard the laugh before?”

Chris shrugged his shoulders with a smirk on his face before he finished his drink. Summer and Hemsworth roared out with “ohs.” You rolled your eyes at him.

“I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I don’t think anything could have stopped me from marrying her. It was inevitable,” Chris clarified, shooting an enamored smile your way.

“It was inevitable. From the night you got between these thighs, your fate was sealed,” you gibed. Again, you all laughed heartily.

“I agree with Riah; everyone saw how captivated you were once you met. We all placed bets on how long it would be until you married her,” Summer announced.

“Yeah, it was record-breaking time too,” Hemsworth slipped in.

You smiled at Chris, making your way around the firepit to sit on his lap. Chris wrapped his muscular arms around you and placed a kiss on your jawline. “When you know you know,” he finished.

“Aww, baby.”

Your lips met his in a sweet kiss, then turned passionate. Chris pulled you closer, and before anything could turn dirty you pulled back. You heard the low grunt that caught in his throat as he gave you a look that spoke of desire. You knew what was in store for you when you got home.

“You guys are so stinking cute. Five years and still acting like newlyweds,” Summer broke in as Hemsworth leaned over to kiss her temple as the words left her mouth. She smiled and turned to her husband and kissed him softly.

“Look who’s talking,” Chris quipped.

“Oh, can’t believe it’s the last of October already,” Hemsworth lamented with a groan.

You all knew what the end of October meant. It meant that you all were now just two months away from getting back to work from your vacations from filming. Hemsworth and Summer were set to get back into superhero mode with Marvel. You’d been signed to two new roles that were set to shoot back to back while you worked on your debut album in between all of it. Chris, on the other hand, was exploring and filming a few new roles since his departure from Captain America. The silence stretched as the threat of work hung in the air between the four of you.

“I saw something funny on Twitter the other day. There are a bunch of people posting about starting and participating in something called “No Nut November,” Chris began.

You and Summer groaned in unison as your eyes met. You knew what your best friend was thinking without a word.

Hemsworth cleared his throat in true Chris Hemsworth exaggerated jokester fashion then began. “Ah, I know this one. It’s when in November, people commit to not having sex.”

“It’s stupid. I never understood why anyone would do that?” Eyes went to you as you finished your bottle of beer. When you realized it you looked at the three of them “What? Sex is a natural, healthy and fun part of being human. Why would anyone want to get rid of it?”

Summer and Hemsworth laughed again.

“Guess we know what goes on behind closed doors now, huh Mrs. Evans,” Summer joked as her husband snickered with her.

“Hey, we’re adults, and we won’t be shamed,” Chris said coming to your defense.

“No shame at all, boo,” Summer piped up.

“I don’t’ see the big deal. I’d be able to handle it easy,” Summer’s husband added as she nodded right beside him.

You felt Chris’ grip tighten around your waist while his other hand dropped to squeeze the flesh where your upper thigh and ass met. His giant hand was blazing hot. Chris only got this hot when he’d gotten some drinks in him, and his body was turning the alcohol into fuel—but fuel for something else entirely. Your eyes locked onto his to see his teeth sink into his bottom lip. You smiled and mouthed, “behave.” He smiled and buried his face into your neck and teased the sensitive flesh there.

“Eh-em!” You turned to find Summer and co looking at you.

“Hm?”

“Guess we got our answer, you and Evans definitely wouldn’t make it. You’re both too weak,” Summer teased.

“Woah, woah, are we forgetting who was the one playing Captain America, the first strongest avenger?”

Everyone rolled their eyes. “Bro, you’re like an old quarterback who just won’t let go of his glory days. We get it sport, you were the best or one of them, but let’s not forget about who the actual god of thunder is,” Hemsworth gloated while flexing his muscle. You noticed Summer’s broad smile as she stared at her husband’s arm.

“I just don’t appreciate being called weak. My wife and I would more than be able to make it because we’re physically and mentally strong,” Chris professed, sitting up in his Adirondack chair. Your eyes dropped to him, trying to give him the signal to abort what he was saying because you saw where this was heading.

“Oh, so you think you’d be able to win this thing?” Hemsworth added.

The two of them always loved to goad each other. One time, Chris had goaded Hemsworth into a beer drinking match while you and Summer were left as the innocent bystanders watching your husbands act like children, then you had to be the ones to take care of them after they’d both surpassed their limits. It ended in vomit, and neither of you were happy, which finished with both of them being in the doghouse for several weeks. Another time Hemsworth goaded Chris into a surfing challenge knowing full well Chris was not a surfer. He grew up in Boston. That resulted in Chris getting stung by a jellyfish and Hemsworth having to pee on him. You and summer laughed your asses off but never heard the end of it from either of your husbands.

Then there was that time they both tricked each other into some whacky challenge to drive for an hour completely naked. That ended up with both of them getting pulled over by the cops who found it amusing and let them go, but they were then spotted by TMZ and ended up being on the show with the headline “Fast and Furious Streaking Chris’.” It was hilarious, but neither of them lived it down for several months. You and Summer knew this was about to get out of hand.

“Guys,” you began, but neither of them batted an eye to your but in into the conversation. They simply continued debating the issue of who had the mental strength to do it.

“Hello! We the wives have something to say,” Summer attempted. Her husband briefly looked to her then back to Chris.

“Hold on, baby, the men--husbands are in the middle of something.”

Summer’s jaw dropped, and you couldn’t help but laugh. You knew when they got like this, neither you or Summer would get a word in. You stood from Chris’ lap and walked over to the cooler where the drinks were with Summer following behind you. They didn’t even seem to notice.

The two of you stood there and watched your husbands, and loves of your lives continue on as if you weren’t even there. “This won’t end well,” Summer began.

“Oh, girl, I know.”

“Why must they always try to do this one up game?”

You shrugged because you honestly didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t a male thing because sometimes women got into it as well, but with men, it was on a whole different level.

“Remember when Chris dared Evans to hold that rattlesnake saying he’d held them hundreds of times?”

You and Summer snickered at the memory. Hemsworth hadn’t touched it but lied his ass off, and Chris fell for it and held it with no problem only when it was Hemsworth’s turn he chickened out, then Chris chased him around with it.

“For a man who lives in Australia, you’d think him, and the rattlers would be best buds,” Summer joked.

“Remember the time they got into a literal race on Sunset?”

Summer rolled her eyes. The four of you were going to dinner together. After leaving your house, Chris and Hemsworth got into a pissing match over who could run the fastest. It went on and on for the whole eight-mile car drive. When you’d gotten to Sunset both of them got out the car and raced down to the restaurant, leaving you and Summer to drive the vehicles there. When you arrived, it was decided that they’d tied, which led to talks of a rematch.

It was exhausting having them together, but it sure was great comedy. Suddenly both of them stood.

“It’s settled then,” Hemsworth said.

“Damn right it is,” Chris repeated. Both of them looked to you with huge smiles on their faces.

“We’ve decided that we’re participating in this No Nut November, and we’re going to win,” Hemsworth began.

You and Summer quickly spat out your mouthfuls of beer and gaped at your husbands. When neither of their smiles faltered, and neither spoke you and Summer looked to each other clearly thinking the same thing.

“What the fuck!?” It came out at the same time, and the confusion and shock you both felt clearly and precisely came across.

“No Nut November, for the entire month of November,” Chris began before you cut him off.

“I know what the hell No Nut November is Christopher. I’m not an idiot! What the hell do you mean we’re participating? Who decided that?”

“We did,” he informed, motioning between him and Chris.

“Oh, so you two are fucking each other?”

“Really, Summer?”

“That is the only way you two could come up and decide something that involves your wives as well,” Summer continued.

“Babe, we’ve got this. We’ve been married longer and have way more self-control than these two noobs,” Hemsworth slid in as he approached her.

“Hey! We have self-control!” Your outburst was not to defend this stupid idea; it was to defend you and Chris as a couple.

“Sure you do,” Hemsworth added with a snort. “Summer, it’ll be easy, like taking candy from a baby.”

“Whatever, you two are the ones who couldn’t keep your hands off each other during filming. Our godchildren were conceived because you couldn’t practice professionalism and control,” Chris dropped in. Your eyes bugged as did Summers.

“Wow, you went there, Evans? Really?” Chris shrugged his shoulders so matter of factly that you had no choice but to laugh.

“Really, Riah!”

“I’m sorry, I really am. You have to admit though, that was the perfect slide in. He read you both.” You did your best to stop smiling, but it was difficult.

“I say we take this bet and show them what winners look like,” Hemsworth added.

“Not a good idea,” Summer finished.

“We already have a bet Summer. The Evans’ will bring this home!”

“Whatever mate, the Hemsworths are going to claim this victory.”

“Rules are simple. For the entire month of November, neither of us will have sex. None of us will get any nut,” Chris explained as his eyes went from Summer to Hemsworth and then to you.

You and Summer were just stunned as to how this happened, especially with them completely ignoring what the two of you had to say about it.

“Whichever couple makes it gets bragging rights, and the pool bet money. I’m putting down five grand Summer, and I have this.”

“Well, I’m putting down five grand Riah, and I more than have this,” Chris countered.

You rolled your eyes and looked to Summer. She was still frozen, just watching her husband speak.

“Whichever couple doesn’t make it has to change their social media name to “Failed NNN” for a week and post/tweet as normal.”

“Easy. I’m gonna raise that bet, on top of changing your name you have to go on IG live and announce that you failed and lost to us,” Chris raised.

“Oh ho, deal!” Hemsworth and Chris shook hands and looked to the two of you. Again, neither you or Summer spoke. Your husbands walked off together, throwing themselves back into conversation as if they hadn’t just committed to a month of torture without consulting either of you.

“What just happened?”

“Girl, we just got fitted for and shackled with our chastity belts for November,” you informed.

“Ain’t that a--.” Summer started, as the two of you just stood there looking at the men you loved who’d just started yet another war with each other, which had the two of you dealing with the fallout.

“Bitch,” you finished.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

***If you want to be tagged please SEND AN ASK SO IT WILL BE EASIER FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF. Thank you for reading!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TagList:

@chrisgalore @chaneajoyyy @rynabarnesrogers @disneysdarlingdiva @bellaamor88 @ab-baybay @sonjashuterbugjohnson @caramara3 @patzammit

#bet you can't fic #Chris Evans #Chris Hemsworth #chris evans fanfiction #chris hemsworth fanfiction #Chris Evans X black reader #chris hemsworth x black reader #chris evans x you #chris hemsworth x you #chris evans x reader #chris hemsworth x reader #no nut november

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stusbunker · 5 years

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Later the Truth Breaks

For Better or Worst: Chapter Six

Featuring: Sam Winchester x Emery Simmons-Winchester OFC

Other Characters: Castiel, Dumah, mentions of Naomi, OC Bandit (their dog)

Season 14 AU

Word Count: 2263

Summary: Mangled magic, dissecting illusions

Special shout out to MJ @thoughtslikeaminefield for beta reading this installment for me.

Series Masterlist

^*^*^

“What the hell?!” Sam snapped, spinning in the driver’s seat to face this, this stalker.

“Calm down. I just want to talk,” Castiel replied brusquely.

“Yeah, well, ever heard of the phone? Or a damn email? Who even are you?!” Sam held up his hands waiting for answers.

“My name is Castiel, and I’m your friend, Sam. You and your brother, Dean, tend to call me Cas, for short. It’s sort of a nickname,” he over-explained.

“I know what a nickname is,” Sam pinched his eyes, the headache had returned full force. Though he felt stable, not close to blacking out again. Not yet at least. “But what I don’t know is how you know me or that I had a brother named Dean.”

“Had? What do you mean had, Sam?” Cas’s jaw jutted out, sitting up to hear what this version of Sam could be talking about.

“Had. As in past tense, Dean died of a heart condition like twelve, thirteen years ago.” Sam watched the weird man process the information. “Why? Does it matter?”

“The spell is more complicated than I imagined, they not only hoodwinked you into being in love with that woman--- they completely rewrote your past,” Castiel peered into Sam’s eyes with the intensity of a microsurgeon.

“Whoa, buddy. Easy there. That woman is my wife, and she’s amazing.” Sam tried to get the man to relax, to realize how insane he sounded. “You okay? You need a ride somewhere? A doctor maybe?”

“No, I am not ill,” Cas answered unironically. “Though, you seem to be quite muddled.”

“Yeah, well, you caught me off guard. Excuse me for being pissed about it,” Sam snapped before locking onto this Castiel’s gaze once more, seeing him completely and with startling familiarity. “How do we know each other? What am I missing here?”

^*^*^

She probably should have eaten something or sipped rather than chugged the wine. Emery was flushed with more than the jets from the tub. Slowly she was able to let the day’s disappointments sink to the back of her mind and just be. No super professor mode, no chipper neighbor filter, no patient and dutiful wife efforts, she was just her. Which wasn’t something she got to do very often, in this life or the life she left behind. When Emery wasn’t working or being for someone else, it got very loud in her head. But tonight, though the thoughts were there, she decided to just push them back, to let them hold her up instead of weighing her down. Emery decided to float above the worries in the fuzzy heat of a drunken bath.

This was ridiculous. There she lay, in a huge tub in a huge house in an overpriced neighborhood. She started to laugh at herself, at Sam, even at Bandit, wherever he had gotten to. She was a freakin’ professor at an amazing school. This was the dream. A dream she got out of nightmares. She didn’t deserve this place, she didn’t need it, it was too much. Suddenly she started to cry, tears leaked down her face, which only made her laugh harder. The absurdity of it all.

Emery inhaled and sank beneath the few remaining bubbles, hovering in stasis until her lungs brought her surfacing. She exhaled. Letting her bangs fall as they may, she hid beneath the mask of heavy, wet reality. Gravity won in the end, and she crawled from the drained tub and burrowed into Sam’s oversized robe. It wasn’t overly soft like hers, though it was thick and comforting, but mostly it smelled like his aftershave. She started working the conditioner into her hair, twisting and pinning it for the night. She was half-assing it and she didn’t care. She swayed absently on the balls of her feet to a playlist as she finished putting her hair up. There, close enough; she had her scarf secured before she scampered downstairs, robe hem dragging behind her like a train.

The haunting blue of the clock above the range glared at her, shuffling into her relaxation like an unsignaled merger. What was keeping Sam?

^*^*^

“Is there somewhere we can talk? I don’t think this is the best place to do this,” Castiel suggested. Sam couldn’t help but agree, a public place would be safer. And much less creepy, as long as the guy didn’t slit his throat the second, he faced forward. Unconsciously, Sam started driving to the bar Cady had suggested, but stopped before the final turn.

He cleared his throat. “You hungry? Emery was going to bring home dinner, but I can just get a drink—if you want.”

“I don’t eat,” Castiel explained.

“Of course, you don’t,” Sam grumbled, pulling into the parking lot beside the chain bar and grill. Appetizers and a stiff drink sounded like manna from heaven at this point in his day. Sam didn’t know why he was hearing Castiel out, but he somehow knew to trust him. To listen, to wait until all the information was explained before deciding on his sanity. Call it instinct or something deeper, Sam wanted him to feel heard.

Once they were settled, drinks in hand, Sam decided to press back. “So, why don’t you eat?”

“This is just a vessel, my grace sustains me and this form,” Cas replied leadingly.

“Your grace?” Sam’s brow furrowed and a smirk played on his lips, despite the constant tension in his jaw.

“I’m an angel, Sam. Much like Naomi, the one who put you in this situation. And apparently buried your memories. Of me. Of Dean and what brought you to this town, away from your family and your calling,” Castiel prodded back, looking for any blip in Sam’s eyes, any wavering, any weakness.

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “My family? I don’t have anyone, man. All I have is Emery and Bandit, and that’s more than I could ask for,” Sam explained. “My mom died when I was a baby, Dean when I was in college and Dad right after that. Why do you think you know anything about my family?!”

Castiel sighed. “I really am an angel, you know. I’m not saying these things to upset you, Sam. I am saying them to see where it started and try and pull back the curtain, as one would say. To reveal what they’ve been hiding from you. I need to search your thoughts and it would be much faster if I could just see what was there.”

“What? Dude. That’s just—” Sam froze, Castiel didn’t wait for an opening, he simply placed two fingers on Sam’s forehead. Suddenly the pain from looking at the self-proclaimed angel started to wane, as their surroundings became overwhelming. The sounds of the patrons and the smells of the food and the beer spattered floor grew too much. Sam hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes, but just as he was about to be sick, Castiel’s fingers spread wider and a deep penetrating chill fell down his back. The nausea disappeared as quickly as Sam opened his eyes.

Perhaps there was something in his drink or maybe he was more exhausted than he thought, but in truth, inevitability had started to creep through the wall of reason and spell work inside Sam Winchester’s mind.

^*^*^

It was fine. There were no problems. He was just going to be late. It was only an hour passed the latest he could have possibly been at work. Things came up. It being his birthday, shouldn’t cause her any more alarm or distress. They were going to be alright. They were safe. Sam would be home soon. Wouldn’t he?

Emery had torn into the bag of caramel corn they’d bought for movie night as she worked through the possibilities in her head. Shoveling handfuls of the tacky sweet kernels into her mouth between checking her phone and looking to Bandit for explanation. The dog, though concerned, had little rebuttal to her teetering train of thought. He did his part by cleaning up after his mama. He was a good boy after all, and she was having a day. She grabbed a fresh bottle from the rack and poured herself another glass. Standing around stewing wasn’t bringing him home any faster and she would not lower herself to be the nagging wife. He was just late.

They had left off in the middle of a season of the latest edgy, politically charged amalgamation of horror and drama on the easily affordable default streaming service. She didn’t want to have to re-watch it when he finally arrived. Which was why, Emery flipped, blazing through the slew of options, from trending to suggested, nothing seemed to hit her fancy. When ‘Touched By An Angel’ appeared from the recesses of heartwarming and nostalgia she dropped the remote and finished her latest glass, tongue worrying over the latest crumb wedged in the back of her gum. She didn’t even want to think that they could be involved.

^*^*^

Three months before

Dumah had her doubts about the whole thing. Naomi using Michael to fuel Heaven and keep the Winchesters apart and isolated, in attempts to keep them from them finding out. It was a knee jerk solution to a problem that was bigger than the few remaining angels could handle. So, she watched the newlyweds go about their days. Invisible, but ever present from their walks to their jobs and home again. She saw how miserable Sam was. How frustrated and untrusting he was of her kind. She also saw Emery, doing everything she could right. It was like the spark that had held them over from their vows never left her. That small dose of true love from the cupids had nestled inside the woman and held firm. Her faith and her determination only fueling the bond that had been formed.

Dumah almost felt bad for her, but she had a stake in the deal too. She had an endgame, or at least a shiny carrot on the end of her stick just as Sam did. Perhaps her naivety helped the disguise, or maybe her need was that much greater than Sam’s. Either way, the angel knew that Emery wasn’t backing down. If this ruse was going to fall apart and leave Heaven at risk, clearly it wasn’t from the wife’s side of things. No, for this to succeed for as long as possible, Sam Winchester needed to be kept in line.

She wasn’t ever there long; Heaven would have noticed her absences if she lingered. Instead Dumah made a game of the randomness of them: length, location, and target all varied. Occasionally it was just her and the dog, sitting in the winter afternoons. It was on the last week of their first month together that she had started hearing the prayers that Emery had been offering up to the Father that never listened.

‘Make this work. Mold us into what is needed for your good works. Let me be enough.’

In the early morning hours, Dumah entered the den and watched Sam toss and turn. He had continued to refuse his wife’s offers to share their bed again. It was there, in Sam’s dreams, the maladjusted angel started building the bridge in his mind, slowly and carefully. She left, just as secretly as she arrived, but not before leaving something upstairs, an innocuous physical aid to bolster the fledgling marriage before it imploded.

^*^*^

“How did you meet Emery, Sam?” Castiel changed the subject on a dime, causing Sam to gasp as he gathered his bearings.

“Uh, a co-worker introduced us,” Sam nodded, a tired smile barely registering on his face. “What does that have to do with anything? Did you see my thoughts or just shove some serious vertigo at me?”

Cas didn’t flinch. “How long did you date?”

“Not long, why?” Sam signaled the bartender for another drink, before realizing Castiel hadn’t touched his.

“Why did you move here? Isn’t it odd to leave one place and pick up somewhere completely different? Especially between terms.”

“Emery got offered a better position,” Sam shrugged. “Listen, I’m all for playing nice here, but you still haven’t convinced me of anything. How are we somehow being used by angels? I mean, you make them sound like the bad guys.”

Castiel didn’t answer right away, instead he grimaced and thought about how to approach Sam, now that he had no history with him. As if he was a stranger needed convincing for the sake of someone, he thought dead.

“You said Dean died while you were in school. Were you with him when it happened?”

“I was—” Sam broke off as his mind reeled, a broken heaving Dean sprawled out on the floor of a stranger’s house. Blood was everywhere, his clothes and his body beneath them, torn to shreds by some invisible force. He closed his eyes, trying to see the memory he thought he knew. Only to be met by another image of Dean, older than he ever could have been. Heavy with anguish and satisfaction, his handsome face mutilated when he looked into Sam’s eyes. A single phrase surfaced, like a fist working against a thick pane, ‘proud of us’ pummeled repeatedly, until it broke through the barrier in Sam’s mind.

The moment Sam was back, Castiel saw it. In his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the tension in his hands. Sam gasped, and gritted his teeth. “Is Dean gone?”

The need to know flooding past the grief and bewilderment.

“I don’t know,” Castiel answered. “That’s what we’ve got to figure out.”

^*^*^

Read On: Older Bonds and Deeper Ties

#supernatural fanfiction #sam winchester fanfiction #for better or worst series #sam x ofc #sam winchester fanfic #sam fic #sam x emery #simwin

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kuragin · 5 years

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be more chill: book versus musical

i very recently (like, friday night) got my hands on a copy of ned vizzini’s be more chill, a novel i have been meaning to read even before i had heard of the musical due to the fact that i have read another one of his novels, it’s kind of a funny story, but i could never get my hands on a copy of due to the fact that the bookstore never had any. being a diehard of the musical, i decided to do a little review of the book, how it compares to the musical, and why it should not be getting all the hate that it deserves. here we go:

I instinctively knew that the original book version of Be More Chill is a wildly different product than the musical. Also, neither one is better than the other considering that they are two very different things. The novel Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini centres on the struggles of Jeremy Heere, a socially inept high school aged theatre kid who takes a pill called a SQUIP in order to be with the girl of his dreams, the blonde, popular, and frankly hotheaded Christine. The musical Be More Chill by Joe Icons and Joe Tracz deals with a similar situation- Jeremy Heere, an anxiety ridden teenage boy who likes video games, takes a pill called a SQUIP in order to be less sweaty and more cool, and to hopefully go out with his long time crush, a passionate, ADHD Asian theatre kid named Christine.

When I see a lot of people on Tumblr comparing the novel to the book, I feel like they’re forgetting the fact that (a) Ned Vizzini wrote the novel in 2004, and (b) The novel is not a hero vs villain story like the musical, but rather the protagonist vs himself. The musical is about Jeremy vs the SQUIP, with some character development for him thrown in. The book is about Jeremy vs his own anxiety, fears, and self-set limits.

When you get into theatre, it’s hard to stay away from well, the theatrics. Adapting anything to the modern stage can be a challenge, especially a stream-of-consciousness book like Vizzini’s Be More Chill. Instead of having your character's thoughts be portrayed through text, they have to be shown through dialogue. Vizzini’s books are projections of himself, his experiences, and a place of vent. The musical is not Ned Vizzini.

Having the SQUIP be villainous makes for a much better show. Motivations are clear, the setup is easy, and the audience reception is much more well-received. However, if you were to novelize the musical version of Be More Chill, I can guarantee that it would be tacky and not very well recepted. And I think that’s a credit to the Joes of the Musical, who managed to pull off such an insane show. The concept is strange and unusual, but the exposition is wonderful. A ballad like Michael in the Bathroom would have absolutely never been well translated into text, because the entire song is pure, raw, unfiltered emotion coming from Michael, rather than it as experienced through Jeremy’s point of view (which is how the novel is written- Note: the novel features 0 instances of Michael freaking out in a bathroom).

Here’s some things I noticed in the novel that made somewhat of an appearance in the musical:

Novel!Michael mentions that his older brother got a SQUIP, and he went from a failing student to attending Brown University, but because it was a SQUIP 1.0, it also made him go insane. In the musical, (the dialogue just before Michael in the Bathroom) Michael tells Jeremy that he couldn’t find anything about the SQUIP on the internet, but he says that, “Finally, this guy I play Warcraft with told me how his brother went from a straight D student to a freshman at Harvard” which is obviously a reference to his novel!brother.

Michael and Jeremy are much closer friends in the musical. In the book they were friends, but they weren’t die-hard-I-would-put-on-pants-for-you friends. They weren’t as dedicated to each other in the novel, which I think, when you watch the musical, was meant to provide a best-friend-who-saves-the-day type situation, a la Lord of the Rings Samwise Gamgee style. Novel!Jeremy is much more isolated from other characters and social situations than Michael is, which is apt for a novel about the individual vs self. Having Michael and Jeremy be outcasts together makes for a much more interesting climax at the end when they’re on opposite sides of the social hierarchy and pitted against, yet still want to care for each other.

The novel was written in 2004, at a time when Mountain Dew Code Red was readily available. In a modern retelling, having Michael be some hipster ass gamer who buys expired soft drinks for his collection is downright hilarious and a wonderful way to explain why it was hard for Rich to get his hands on some, it further asserts the importance of Michael as a character, and creates even more suspense for a climax (as the soft drink was only available in limited quantities, AKA 1 bottle, and it would be extremely difficult to get more).

(Can you notice that I love Michael Mell? Personal bias, I guess.)

One of the things that surprised me the most was that Jeremy’s mom was in the novel. I just figured that she was also absent in the books, and that it was one of the many other things that Jeremy was struggling with. Having his mom absent is a strange decision, but I can see only two possible reasons for it: a smaller cast, because there really isn’t a need for a grown adult woman in the play besides his mother, and Jeremy already has a parent (for reference, the actor for Mr. Heere also plays the drama teacher Mr Reyes and other background characters; Mrs Heere would not have had any secondary roles), and for dramatic situation. Having Mr. Heere a depressed father whose wife left him adds another layer to his character, rather than just having obese divorce lawyer who eats peanut butter oreos. Mr Heere is the one who shows up to Michael’s house and motivates him to help Jeremy, even after he had been a jerk to him. It’s much more suited because the musical has different conflicts and requires different resolutions, including those of background character development.

Despite being written in 2004 and now retold, Eminem is still relevant and mentioned in the musical, and canonically dies in both. I think my favourite addition though is when Brooke says “he was super old and mean to women” just after they all find out he dies.

Also Jenna takes much more precedence in the novel, but in the musical she’s reduced down to the “school gossip”. This is done for a reason though, because she is a main catalyst to how Jeremy keeps spreading the SQUIP to the other students of Middleborough. Brook is also a lot less apparent in the book. Overall, I think the female characters in the musical have a lot more personal development and personality than what the novel reduces them to. In defense of Vizzini, however, the novel is written in the POV of Jeremy and that is how he sees the girls, rather than the omniscient point of view that the musical provides. Ie: Christine, who is a much more likable girl in the musical for her dorkiness and self-aware theatre geekiness.

So overall, the book and the musical versions of Be More Chill are still different things, adapted for different modes of sharing, and for different audiences. One is not better than the other, one is just much more culturally relevant than the other, especially because were in an age where the Teen Musical is increasingly becoming popular and centralized for a pretty specific group of fangirls.

Also jeremy is a furry in the novel ok i said it

#bmc #be more chill #be more chill book #ned vizzini #long text #post

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orangenfrottee · 5 years

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Sweet Water River (WIP, 1/2?)

Sometimes, fire wasn’t the best solution. But it was the first anyone in Riverdale thought of. Things were already pretty out of control when everything started happening at once.

This picks up where chapter fourty-five left us and was meant as a short one-shot. It’s currently at 4000 words and could grow depending on feedback. It still needs some edit work.

Characters: Meant to be full cast. More or less in order of total screen time so far: Betty, Toni, Ethel, Fred, Cheryl, Pretty Poisons, narrator!Jughead, Archie, Veronica, Jellybean, Kevin, Evelyn, Sweat Pea, Fangs, Pop, Ricky, Reggie, Hotdog, Penny, Penelope, Juniper, Edgar, Jughead, FP, Nana Rose, Polly, Hal, Dagwood, Vegas

Relationships: Mostly gen with current canon pairings: Cheryl/Toni, Archie/Veronica, Kevin/Fangs, Reggie/Veronica, Betty/Jughead, past Archie/Josie (mentioned), Edgar/Everyone (somewhat mentioned)

Tags: crack treated seriously, the farm, arson, fire, Serpent Laws

Warnings: canon typical insanity, canon typical self-harm, canon typical drug use, fire, religiously motivated plural marriages, original names for so far unnamed members of the Pretty Poisons, tiny bit of made-up backstory for Toni

Sweet Water River

An alternative chapter fourty-six.

Our story about the small town Riverdale, known as the Town with Pep, took another weird turn. Turns out sometimes just one time too many can have enormous consequences. This time it was as if a single domino stone was tipped that wasn’t meant to and suddenly the whole town fell.

It seems like all of us had this unhealthy fascination with flames. Again and again, it boiled up and over. Maybe the first time it showed its insane face was all the time back then, when we were still young and innocent kids. The weird boy lit a match and believed that was enough to burn his elementary school down to the ground. It wasn’t, but the police took his prints anyway, worrying about a possible arson career in his future. A couple years later, the Southside Serpents tried to set the Riverdale High ablaze in a petty act of revenge but were stopped just in time. These were the times we failed and no flames started licking wallpapers, wood or stone. But with time, we all learned.

The first to succeed was Cheryl Blossom. After she burned a book full of pain with her cousin Betty Cooper, she torched her childhood home Thornhill down to its foundation walls and rid our hometown of its horror house. Later, Betty tried to do the same to her childhood home but forgot to drench the building in gasoline before letting the candle fall. While the house survived, Betty learned. And the next time an occasion arouse, she recruited me, Jughead Jones, and together we set my childhood home aflame. We stayed after to watch the flames over a couple of Pop’s milkshakes.

So, you see, things were already quite out of control when everything started happening at once.

Archie Andrews couldn’t take his eyes off Veronica Lodge. With Josie McCoy gone and their relationship ended the way they did, there wasn’t really anything keeping him away from Veronica anymore. They were endgame, weren’t they? So, when they came way too close to kissing again, he crossed the last few inches. They kissed.

Reggie Mantle saw them.

Ricky DeSantos was angry. Kurtz stopped contacting him, again, and he was on his own, again. Ever since his older brother Joaquin had to leave Riverdale, he was left on his own. Again and again. As much as the Serpents kept repeating their rules, they never seemed to apply to him. Wasn’t a serpent’s family to be taken care of in the case of death or imprisonment? He never was taken care of. He always ended up alone.

That was why he gladly joined Kurtz’ plot to scare the young Jones girl and show her how fake the Serpents were. No one cared about their families. But that plan failed and he was left as alone as he was before. Hands in his coat pockets he walked further down the streets, wondering what to do now, when his hand made contact with a matchbook he took from the diner. The Serpents didn’t deserve a headquarter. But fire was pretty.

Kevin Keller wanted his family with him at the farm. He heard about Josie just taking off at a blink of an eye to tour the states with her father and decided, that if he wanted his father and Sierra with him, he had to act soon. He excused himself from dinner at the farm and went home. Finding the home deserted, he unlocked the front door and sat down in the living room and waited. Surely, they wouldn’t be too long.

Ever since joining the farm, Fangs Fogarty did everything with Kevin Keller. When Kevin excused himself from dinner, so did he. He missed his Southside Serpents just like Kevin missed his Dad and stepfamily. He went to visit their campsite and found Sweet Pea and Hotdog at the camp’s fireside. He was glad he got to see Hotdog again. He missed that dog.

Hotdog lifted his head, when he heard the well-known steps of Fangs and gave a happy bark. Sweet Pea looked up from the pan of beans he was heating over the fire and gave a small smile.

“Hey Fangs! Glad to see you back! Hand me another of those cans, I’ll make us some grub.”

Fangs smiled. He missed this. He grabbed a can of kidney beans and opened it on the way to the fire. Handing the can over, he patted his lap to get Hotdog to move to him, wanting to get pet.

“I missed you Sweet Pea. You should come and join us.”

At the same time, Betty Cooper hid behind some bushes in the snow and peered into a window of the old Sisters of Quiet Mercy and watched the farmies at their joint dinner of drugged goatmilk, savory muffins with their self-grown magic mushrooms and other weird concoctions.

She was waiting for an opening. She wanted one last shot at saving Juniper and ending this crazy cult for good.

Ever since she, Dilton and Ben had gotten so into Gryphons and Gargoyles, everything fell to ruins. Her best friends were dead, she was put on suicide watch, suffered seizures and was sent to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy where her delusions were fed instead of cured. Only saved by a friend, Ethel Muggs spent the last weeks trying to get her life back in order. It wasn’t easy. Her mother wasn’t happy she just fled the Sisters but obviously also didn’t want her daughter drugged. So, she went into helicopter mode. Ethel wasn’t allowed to do anything outside of school but come home straight after her last lesson. No clubs. No school musical. Still, most days she was just picked up right at the school gate. Twice a week she met with a psychologist.

She was healing, but somehow, she felt like something still held her back. Something she had to finally let go to become better. She had to take care of the bunker.

Edgar Evernever was a controlling puppeteer and while she did what she had to; Toni Topaz hated every minute of it. She felt horrible at how she had to betray Betty’s trust after she plotted with her to get the poor Juniper out, but Edgar and his first wife Evelyn knew about it. They had her phone bugged and half the school were their spies. Someone had seen her walk into the bureau of the Blue and Gold and Edgar and Evelyn obviously were able to put one and one together. She hoped she could give Betty a sign, but she knew there were cameras in the corridors and just couldn’t do it. If she failed at proving her loyalty to Edgar, she’d had to leave and Cheryl would be all alone with them.

She felt sick watching Cheryl partake in the goatmilk and the other drugged foods, and she felt sick partaking in them herself. Sometimes she ringed for sanity. She kept seeing her dead mother in the flickering lights in the drowning chamber and repeatedly heard her dead father’s voice advising her to be careful. She clung to Cheryl and the truths she knew. The farm was a cult. Her parents were dead and so was Jason Blossom. She had to keep Cheryl safe. Edgar Evernever was a puppeteer, but she was no puppet.

Fred Andrews was at home, cooking dinner for himself and for Archie. Then the phone rang and Mary surprised him with a call. He was always happy to hear her voice. Listening to her chat, phone held between his ear and his shoulder, he finished cooking and split the food on two plates, making sure to give Archie an extra helping of proteins and greens, to ensure his son had a good sized and proper meal he just had to heat up when he came home later tonight after his boxing practice

Taking his plate in hand, he moved to the living room where he sat down on their couch, setting the plate in front of him. Mary was still going on about shenanigans in her law firm, that made him smile. Chewing a piece of cauliflower, he absently lit a couple candles, to give the room a warmer tint.

Reggie was livid. He did everything for Veronica. He drove over the Canadian border once a week to get illegal alcohol for her illegal speakeasy. He robbed her father’s illegal drug factory for her. He robbed his own father’s car dealership for her. He got his car taken for her, he got beat up for her, he got shot for her. What for? She held him at arm’s length, only letting him near, when she was lonely, constantly letting him know he was only a replacement, calling him Archie and brushing him off whenever she didn’t have need for him.

He was done with Veronica Lodge and her stupid speakeasy.

Jellybean Jones, angry, at her mother who just left town without giving her a good explanation and the rest of her family for always having so much to do and never spending time with her, did what Betty Cooper failed at. After emptying one of Hal’s left-behind canisters of gasoline between the stairs and the living room, she lit a match at the house entry, threw it behind her and left the building. Feeling the heat behind her, proof of her accomplishment, she stood at the road and wondered for a moment where to go now.

Behind her, the Cooper House burned.

Veronica Lodge smiled at Pop and thanked him for the takeout order he just finished for her. It was her rare night off and she would be spending it with her Archiekins.

Penelope Blossom hugged baby Jason Junior close to her. Riverdale only brought her pain and death. This time she would do it right. She set the baby into a car seat and grabbed her last bag. The two of them would leave the town tonight.

Ever since first Cheryl and soon Toni joined the farm, the Pretty Poisons were just abandoned like last week’s trash. But the Poisons weren’t letting them just get away with that. Grabbing bats and pipes, they sat on their bikes and rode towards the Blossom Estate, Peaches at the front. They would trash their stupid poolside that lured them in.

Penny Peabody left Riverdale the day of the fight between her and Gladys Jones. But she wasn’t done with the town, so she didn’t go far. Once her informants let her know Gladys was gone, she was back with a simple plan. She set the Riverdale High ablaze.

Polly Cooper put Juniper to bed, sure the special goatmilk she gave her before bedtime would ensure she slept through the night. After, she joined the other farmies for the trek into the woods, where they would light a huge bed full of coals and walk across it. It was always a special treat.

Chuck Clayton had everything, then Veronica Lodge stepped into his life. And boom, he was left with ruins. When he managed to build up the tiniest bit of a new life, chance happened. He got too close to his art teacher’s daughter, and now he was being kicked out of the program. He lost everything, again. And who’s fault was it? Veronica Lodge’s. He would make sure she lost everything, too. Grabbing some canisters full of gasoline from the back of his truck, he started setting the Penbrooke on fire.

Hal Cooper was dead. Killed off in a freak accident during a prisoners’ transport. But most of all Hal Cooper was angry that someone had the atrocity of trying to use him, the Black Hood, the serial killer of Riverdale, as a chess pawn. But he wouldn’t be one. He was better at this game then Hiram Lodge. He’d take the asshole out. But first he would set his biggest fault right. He should have never sold his baby, the Riverdale Register, to that horrible man. He’d rather see it burned to the ground. Tonight.

Angry at Rosemary, a girl working at the Maple Club, for overcharging him, the random dude emptied his reserve canister of gasoline from his car in the lobby of the Five Seasons and lit a match from a matchbook complementary to the services at the Maple Club.

Archie Andrews was at the boxing gym El Royale getting some training in while waiting for Veronica bringing take out from Pop’s, when one of his boxing members from the juvenile detention center came running in.

“The Gilded Gloves last week was a set up! And I have proof that Hiram Lodge was behind everything!”

He snapped. Hiram Lodge was guilty of pretty much everything. Angry at himself and the stupid gym, Archie trashed what he could and set the rest on fire.

Kevin has been waiting for way too long already. He missed dinner, but he was unwilling to miss the farmies’ nighttime activity in the woods. It was his favorite, walking across burning coals. He acted on instinct and set the old wood structure of his childhood home aflame. If they couldn’t keep living in their house, they surely would come live with him at the old Sisters of Quiet Mercy, right?

Fangs didn’t understand. Why didn’t Sweet Pea want to join the farm? Was it their campsite that held him back? It was winter and way too cold to live outside. Fire would surely help them be reborn. He grabbed one of the bigger sticks they used for firewood and flicked the embers and burning wood pieces from the firepit out and towards some of the tents. They immediately caught on fire.

“What the fuck?! Fangs?!”

“You need to join us Sweet Pea, Serpents. There is nothing left here for you now. Come with me, to the farm. All of us. All our Hotdogs. Joaquin. Midge. They’re all there.”

Fists flew.

Having waited hours in the bushes for all the farmies to leave, Betty opened the badly closed window with a crowbar. Creeping through the long corridors, she made her way up to the same room Toni led her into. Juniper was fast asleep. Betty picked her up and held her close. This time she would succeed. Holding her firmly she walked the same way back, out of the window and back to the car she parked just out of sight. She placed Juniper securely into a baby seat she just acquired that day.

She went to the back of the car to get some of her father’s extra canisters of gasoline she liberated from the Joneses’ garage. Hurrying back to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, she dumped those through the still open window and threw a match. She knew this probably wasn’t enough to rid Riverdale of the stain that was this building or its history or the farm, but her priority was Juniper. She ran back to the car and drove home to Elm’s Street. Whatever came next, she’d need Jughead.

After their laced dinner, it was time for another session of walking through coals. It was cold outside and her girlfriend forgot to take her warm coat, so Toni gave Cheryl her own and went back for the other one. Just inside the door, she heard a soft voice coming from the kitchen.

“It’s going to be okay now, Juniper.”

Was that Betty? She’d love to check but couldn’t risk anything being caught by the cameras. She grabbed Cheryl’s coat from a hook by the backdoor and left.

Ethel Muggs emptied another canister of gasoline into the bunker. She was sad to see it go and sad it probably wouldn’t be enough fire to actually destroy the bunker, just its interior. Still. Throwing the empty canister in, she lit one of the matches she got from Pop’s Chock‘lit Shoppe and threw it in. At the same time, she started running. She wanted the bunker gone, but she wouldn’t burn with it.

Soon she had to acknowledge that while the fire might not be enough to destroy the bunker’s walls, it was enough to catch the trees and brushes around the bunker on fire.The wind helped it spread quickly.

She ran faster through the snowy woods. Thankfully she knew the area and the fastest way to the road. She was lucky. Just as she reached the road a car came near. The window was let down and Betty screamed at her to get in the back while she stopped the car.

“Ethel? What the hell happened here?”, Betty closed the window again, to save Juniper from any ash and put the car back to driving once Ethel was safely inside.

Reggie Mantle was back at La Bonne Nuit. Entering through the backdoor, he made it downstairs without being seen. It was the rare night off, so the place was empty. He wanted to trash the place, but seeing it, made it harder. This place has been so much work. He trashed some of the glass ware and started to empty the high percentage alcohols onto the seating areas and the tables. He dropped a lit match from one of Pop’s matchbooks they had everywhere and left.

When Mary ended the call, Fred stood up to bring the phone back to the station and froze in front of the window. The neighbors’ house was burning. With great presence of mind, Fred grabs their fire extinguisher and runs outside without putting the candles out first and without closing the door behind himself. An unlucky gust of wind brings the curtains too close to the flames. Vegas barks and runs outside, knocking against a side table on his way, starting another fire in the room. Within seconds the whole room is on fire.

Outside Fred has eyes only for the burning Cooper/Jones House and the small girl at the front door, that seems so lost and frightened. He runs over and holds her close.

“Jellybean? Are you okay? Where’s Jughead? And your father?” He tries to steer her away from their house to his and sees his own house nearly as merrily aflame as the other.

Toni and Cheryl were trading coats and kisses at the coal side when Kevin joined them.

“I think my dad and Sierra will be joining us at the farm soon.”

“That’s great Kevin. And you’re just in time to be witness to the newbies’ coal walk, too. It’s a magnificent night. Ma Chérie will be completing her initiation. Wasn’t your boyfriend supposed to as well?”

Toni let Cheryl banter with Kevin and concentrated. It was true. Tonight, she had to complete her initiation. She was supposed to be ready. She had to be. For Cheryl.

It’s not the first time for Pop Tate to hear the fire alarm at the Shoppe, nor is it the first time he smells smoke. Deliberately calm Pop tells his customers to stand up and leave the diner in an orderly fashion. Being the good man that he is, he makes sure all his patrons get out safe and sound and follows behind. Outside he asks for someone’s phone and calls the fire department. Just then, looking at his Shoppe, he realizes it’s really on fire.

Veronica Lodge was never shocked, so she chose to be angry instead. After she gave a short and anonymous call to the fire department about the burning El Royale, she zoomed in on Archie.

“What the hell happened here? Did you just set the building on fire? Archie? That’s stupid! This place isn’t even insured. Do you know how much money you’re just burning for nothing?”

Veronica wasn’t happy with the proceedings at all. And she wasn’t in the mood to listen to Archie’s explanations.

“Let’s go back to Pop’s. Maybe we can hide behind some milkshakes and think of something to do about this.”

They didn’t come far when they met the first scared person fleeing from the Pop’s.

“What the hell is going on tonight? How can the whole town of Riverdale just be on fire?”

Jughead and FP Jones were at the police station to pick up a couple of loose ends left over from Kurtz’ apocalypse and to make it easier for FP’s deputy to take over the position of sheriff for the time being, when suddenly all their phones started ringing at once.

“Pop’s and the Maple Club give matchbooks as freebies. Plus, fire = pretty. I’d say it was just a matter of time.”, Jughead answered between phone calls. When he saw Jellybean’s name light up on his mobile phone, he answered immediately. “Jellybean?!”

It’s a man’s voice on the line. “Jughead, she’s fine. She’s with me.”

“Mister Andrews?”

“Yes. Listen, both our houses are on fire and I can’t reach the fire department-“

Polly saw the flames first. It must be a good sign for their coal walk tonight. The newly joining farmies were surely blessed.

Peaches and the Pretty Poisons were just done trashing the poolside that now, in the winter, hadn’t been looking that inviting in the first place. The ruins of Thornhill loomed dangerously above them, so they decided to smash in the couple of greenhouses they could see on the premises.

“Girls? I guess we’re done her. Let’s go.”

They were just wanting to turn back, when the wind turned and they saw the thick smoke coming from Fox Forest and the town center. The fire must be huge. And it moved towards them. They needed to leave. Walking back to their bikes, she realized old hag Penelope Blossom never left the barn she stayed in to scream at them to leave her property. There weren’t any lights there at all, even her car was gone.

But there were lights in Thistlehouse. With Cheryl and Toni at the old Sisters of Quiet Mercy, was Nana Rose all alone? They couldn’t just leave her behind to fend for herself, she was half blind, couldn’t walk and has been welcoming all of them into Thistlehouse with hot tea or cocoa whenever they needed a little bit of grandmotherly advice.

“Change of plans. Amaranth, Quinoa, check on Nana Rose. Make sure she’s ready to leave. We can’t bring her on our bikes. Barley, Rye, make two teams and check the sheds, barns and the rest of the estate for other wheels. The fire’s coming this way. We have to leave asap.”

Toni was halfway across the coals to her Cheryl who was waiting for her with love and adoration plainly on her face and arms open in wait for her. Two more steps. One. Then her naked feet were finally back in the cold white snow and her girlfriend’s arms tightly around her.

“I knew you could do it, my TT. I’m so proud of you. Now we can all get married to Edgar on New Year’s.”

Reveling in her girlfriend’s tight embrace, Tony was terrified to even think of her feet. Or the new deadline of horrors Cheryl revealed. Looking up to blink away tears and check if Cheryl was really alright, she noticed the thick smoke in the sky. That must belong to a huge fire. A fire.

“Babe? Is the forest burning?”

The only car the Pretty Poisons found was the Blossom Twins’ red convertible. It would do. They helped Nana Rose, who was so excited about their little nighttime adventure together, to sit on the front passenger seat and placed her chair in the back. Peaches slid in the driver’s seat, signaling to the other’s to get going. They were riding to safety now.

Evelyn was the first to act. She clapped her hands twice and rejoiced at how all her sister and brother sheep immediately stopped what they were doing and looked towards her and Edgar for guidance.

“Brothers and Sisters, it seems our night has to be cut short. Please follow us.”

And the sheep did. They left the coals as they were.

TBC

I hope you enjoyed? I’d really apreciate feedback of any kind.

Also, I don’t think anyone will die, but pretty much everything will burn.

#Riverdale #Riverdale Fanfiction #Choni #mine

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evenstevensranked · 6 years

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#9: Season 3, Episode 22 - “Leavin’ Stevens”

It’s the series finale!! Eileen is projected the winner of a major election for Congress, which means the Stevens family will be moving to Washington D.C. immediately. Pretty big deal. Our beloved characters must say goodbye to each other forever, but Louis can’t bring himself to move across the country without telling Tawny how he really feels about her.

Let’s talk about why this cinematic plotline would’ve made an infinitely better DCOM than The Even Stevens Movie.

This one opens with the Stevens family huddled together in the living room, anxiously awaiting the results of Eileen’s election. Riiiiight as the news reporter is about to announce the winner, Beans appears out of nowhere, grabs the remote and changes the channel to... Toon Disney?! They show a legit clip of Teamo Supremo (remember that show?! LOL) instead of some fake cartoon or something which is kinda cool. Granted, it’s a Disney cartoon, so they had the right to use it no problem -- but still! That show premiered in 2002 so I’m sure they threw that clip in there to promote it somehow. Otherwise, it’s just sorta funny to think Toon Disney and ABC (Disney Channel sister stations) exist in the Even Stevens-verse.

Beans, being the nuisance that he is, throws the remote into a skinny vase thing so Ren is forced to ~magically~ change the channel back manually.

Remember when you could change the channel with buttons on the actual TV? Good times. If you lose the remote these days, you’re pretty much screwed.

Thankfully, they turn back in time to catch the results: EILEEN WON! It cuts to her giving a little press conference outside where she announces that the entire family will be moving to Washington D.C. immediately so that she can get to work right away. This is insane news to Louis since he apparently had no idea that Congress was in Washington or that the whole family would need to move there if Eileen were to win.

It cuts to a very depressed Louis at school cleaning out his locker. Tom and Twitty are with him and Twitty is seemingly in denial about the whole situation, explaining that nothing’s going to change and that a few 14-year-olds can hop a flight to D.C., hang out with Louis and be home by dinner time easy peasy! Tom brings them back to reality by calling them “poor delusional fools” and it’s great. Tawny shows up and it’s time for “Romeo to bid farewell to his Juliet” (Tom’s words.) Oh, man. The rom-com drama kicks in here and I can’t get enough of it.

I’m guessing that this moment is the actual very last time they’re ever going to see each other?!?! So, the two of them are incredibly freaking awkward trying to say their goodbyes. I mean, how do you say goodbye forever to one of your best friends who is also obviously your crush in, like.. 30 seconds? They’re stammering and dancing around the idea of simply saying “I’m gonna miss you!” So, what do they do? They end up completely avoiding the situation by talking about how they’re going to miss the school cafe’s chili fries instead of each other. Clearly, that is not the last thing either of them wanted to say. As frustrating as this scene is, it’s pretty hilarious. Louis is all “I’m really gonna miss... y.......ahh... c..hili.... fries on Wednesday!” and Tawny just awkwardly goes along with it, “Yeah. I love those... They’re great.” HAHAHA. They proceed to engage in what’s gotta be up there as one of the most uncomfortable hugs of all time:

One thing this show consistently nails is middle school awkwardness. Louis & Tawny are lightyears ahead of me and my old crush though. He was moving to Deleware at the end of 8th grade and we didn’t even say goodbye to each other at ALL at graduation, omg. We just avoided each other entirely. The worst part is that we were side-by-side PARTNERS for the graduation march and we didn’t even speak to each other. The level of immaturity and awkwardness is unparalleled....

It cuts to Ren talking with Ruby and Monique who are also getting emotional over Ren’s impending departure. (“What are we gonna do without her?!”) Basically, the two of them are completely incapable of organizing their own lives and need Ren’s constant guidance. One of their biggest concerns is that the three of them previously waited 6 hours in line for Peachbox tickets and now they can’t go to the concert together. First of all.... WHAT OR WHO THE HECK IS PEACHBOX? For some reason, I’ve always imagined a knockoff Matchbox Twenty band simply because of the “box” connection lol. Buuuut, I’m gonna guess that it’s just a music festival or something. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things here.

We see Louis and Twitty walking home from school together and it’s a very somber stroll. Twitty says “I know you’re not the most romantic guy in the world (I BEG TO DIFFER, TWITTY!!!) but, do you really want the last thing you talk about with Tawny to be chili fries?” Obviously, Louis says no, but its too late! There’s nothing he can do at this point! Twitty dramatically says “No, it’s never too late...” and just WALKS AWAY!!!! Did he leave Louis in the dust?! Was that the last thing they said to each other?! What?! Did Louis and Twitty’s epic friendship just... end on a cryptic note for dramatic effect? Why am I just realizing this?

I’m laughing at the idea of this being their final exchange. “It’s never too late. Peace out, cub scout.”

Twitty’s dramatic last words kick Louis into rom-com leading man overdrive. As soon as he gets home, he sits down and starts recording a videotape for Tawny so that he can say everything he wasn’t able to in person. (See cover photo.) Oh, my lord. This is incredible. He starts off by saying that he’ll already be 2,797 miles away (he looked it up) in Washington by the time she sees the tape. “I didn’t want the last thing we talked about to be chili fries. So that’s why I’m doing this -- this tape, ya know? To tell you how I really feel...” And Shia is already hitting it outta the god damn park with his acting. The scene cuts after that, so we don’t get to hear the rest. Gotta keep us on our toes!

Louis meets up with Tom later and gives him the tape, instructing -- or rather, threatening -- him to personally deliver it to Tawny... OR ELSE.

“Tom, I’m entrusting you with this tape. Okay? So, if anybody else -- besides Tawny -- gets their hands on this... I will personally track you down and make you pay. You hear what I’m saying?”

There’s a little subplot with Donnie and Coach Tugnut, as well. Every character’s plot in this episode revolves around the Stevens family moving, which is kinda cool. We get to see how the potential change affects all of them! Coach Tugnut was planning on training Donnie for the Olympics, so he nearly has a heart attack when he finds out he’s moving. Steve decides to call his boss, Mr. Kupchack, and cuss him out because he thinks he’s never going to see him again. (Bad idea.) Louis has the Tawny situation. Ren has her friends. And of course, Eileen’s whole career is being uprooted.

Tugnut ultimately decides to uproot his life as well and drive all the way to Washington to continue Donnie’s training. There’s a pretty great final ~adult joke~ here. Tugnut says he talked it over with his wife, Tammy, and they agreed that a little break could be good. He explains that Tammy is busy with her own life, which includes working the night shift at Romano’s Pizza. But, Donnie’s like.. “Uh, Coach... Romano’s Pizza closed, like... 2 years ago” -- Insinuating that Tammy’s been cheating at night. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation!” Tugnut concludes. Wow. I like this joke, though. It’s subtle and smart.

Right as Steve is fervently insulting his boss over the phone, Eileen comes running into the living room in a tizzy. She turns on the TV and calls for the entire family to come watch. In a “stunning and dramatic reversal,” a recount snatched victory away from Eileen and gave the congressional seat to some guy Charles Nuck.

Louis: “My tape!” Ren: “My friends!” Steve: “My job!” Donnie: “My coach!” Eileen: “My seeeeat!”

You can always count on Tom Virtue to go overboard with his performance. To be fair, Steve knows that he totally just lost his job. Soo...

So, yeah! We’re only 9 minutes into the episode and The Stevens family is no longer moving! Wexler is so elated to have Ren back, he’s all “I’d be lost without you!” -- Literally no one can live a productive life without Ren Stevens I guess. He does a little happy dance down the hallway but then stops in his tracks in horror when he sees Louis moving back into his locker. “Noooo!” HAHAHA.

“WHYYYYYY?!” -- I just really wanted to include this screenshot. Notice how Louis is unpacking a giant thing of syrup! Leftover from Lumberjack Club, I presume?

Twitty stops by and Louis is in damage control mode. “I have a problem. I did the worst thing I could possibly do.” Twitty says “Dude, everyone gets gas climbing the rope in gym, it’s okay.” HAHA! For some reason I never really noticed that line before. It’s great. Of course, Louis explains that he gave Tawny a tape telling her how he really feels. Twitty asks how bad it is and if he dropped the “L-Bomb.” (“Did ya tell Tawny that you loved her?”) And Louis is officially freaking out. OHHHHHH MYYYY GODDDDDD. Scenes like this make me think that Even Stevens was more of a ~bro show~ kinda. I wonder if guys across the country related to this or not.

Ren’s little ~storyline within the storyline~ could’ve been a lot better. As usual, she got the short end of the stick for her final hurrah in the series. She ends up finding a replacement of herself for Ruby and Monique named Denise who is seriously controlling and super creepy. After they find out the Stevens are no longer moving, Monique and Ruby really don’t want to go to the concert with Denise anymore. So Ren eventually finds replacements for Ruby and Monique as well so the three doppelgangers can go together instead. It’s trippy. And that’s pretty much it.

Louis talks to Tawny later that day and finds out that Tom already delivered the tape. Yikes! Tawny doesn’t know what's on the tape though and doesn’t think much of it either. She’s assuming that it’s probably a nature special or Doris’ 40th birthday. And Louis quickly interjects “Good party! That was a good--” and awkwardly cuts himself off. Shia’s phrasing. It’s so good. I laughed pretty hard. Anyway, Louis is officially on a mission to retrieve the tape before she has a chance to watch it and calls Beans for help. Beans is at school when Louis calls his cell phone, and um... Beans is 8 years old. Why does he have a cell phone in 2002? Also, he should be in 3rd grade. Does this look like 3rd grade to you?!

That teacher is reading a baby storybook to them. This never seemed right to me lol. Also, that super tall kid in the middle is at least 11 years old. Come on now. ALSO they make a point to show that every kid in the class has a cell phone, too. Perhaps this show was simply ahead of its time AGAIN, showing us that soon technology will consume all of our lives at every age. 8 year olds have iPhones nowadays.

To sum it up, Louis has Beans climb into Tawny’s bedroom window to steal the tape back. This is the only episode where we see Tawny’s bedroom and much like the part of her house we saw in Thin Ice, it suits her personality perfectly and I love it.

Louis is relieved to have the tape back, but once he gets home he notices the tape is actually labeled “To: Louis.” OHHHHHHHH BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! HEREEEE WEEEE GOOOOO! I’ll let you watch this truly iconic and emotionally taxing scene play out for yourself:

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Can you say SOULMATES?! What are the odds they’d both decide to confess their feelings via videotape? Well, besides it being an uber romantic plot device lol.

The episode ends with Louis and Tawny at their lockers, smirking knowingly at each other because they know they’re in love now lol. It’s precious. It’s still a little awkward because it’s like “ok, we love each other or whatever... now what?” So, in true Louis & Tawny fashion Louis says “Soooo... I hear they’re having chili fries at lunch today.” And Tawny whispers “Cool. I love chili fries.” The two of them laugh at how well they know each other and walk off hand and hand into the sunset. All is right with the world.

How sweet are they?! Seriously one of the most underrated pairings everrrrr. Tawny’s jeans though. I never understood the 2000s fashion trend that was distressed markings on the BUTTCHEEKS of pants! It looks absolutely terrible.

The final minute bit is Tugnut crying “DonnnieeeeEE!” all alone at the Washington monument lol.

This is probably the most cinematic episode of Even Stevens. This thing plays out like a freaking movie. Honestly, if they fleshed out the plot a little more and added a few twists and turns that I can’t think of because I’m not a screenwriter -- I firmly believe this would've made for a better and more satisfying DCOM than The Even Stevens Movie. They could've ended the series with an episode built around a wacky plot like the vacation, (I mean, the dismal and beyond outlandish In Ren We Trust was the series’ penultimate episode so that wouldn't be a stretch...) and then have an original movie with heart and a story rooted in the characters. Am I alone here, or? Having the series end with Louis and Tawny getting together and then barely interacting in The Even Stevens Movie always pissed me off. The bit with the videotapes could totally compete with any blockbuster romance film, tbh. MOVIES end with characters finally getting together and it's the big, satisfying moment. Ending a SERIES like that, and then not doing anything with it in the big finale film is just frustrating. I wanted to see what became of Louis and Tawny: The Couple.

This 8-second scene of them in the chair is the extent of their interaction in the movie. Along with two “right next to papa” lines from Louis, which Tawny sorta reacts apathetically/sarcastically to. That’s literally it.

I’ve mentioned before that people tend to write-off Even Stevens as nothing but a wacky show to watch if you want to turn your brain off. But, there’s so much heart here and great characters that are overlooked! Having such a crazy movie for the big ending just solidified that Even Stevens = Dumb and wacky TV show, in the memories of many. Which is perhaps the reason why the show isn’t remembered as widely or fondly in comparison to other live action Disney shows of the era. This could also contribute to its underratedness. It’s just not the DCOM we deserved. Even I remember thinking “this looks stupid” when I first saw the promo trailer for the movie as a kid. But this series finale episode felt more like a movie to me than the DCOM ever did! It almost seems like it was intended to be a film but they cut out a bunch of it. It feels really rushed. One minute the Stevens are moving and the next they’re not. There’s so much more tension and emotion that could’ve been built if the idea of them moving lasted longer than 8 minutes, haha. Idk. This just feels like a plot that deserves more than 21 minutes to unfold and breathe.

I kinda adore this episode. To this day it still manages to squeeze a lil’ tear outta me. I really can’t stress enough how sublime Shia’s acting on the tape to Tawny is. If the scene was longer, it could totally rival his romantic monologue in Disturbia (which some people have performed for acting auditions!!!) I wanna see people do a “Louis Stevens monologue” for auditions, man! lol. The day I see a modern Disney kid pull this sort of scene off with the same level of maturity will be the day hell freezes over. I love that Shia gave his all to this role. Even though ES was “just a Disney show” he treated the material with the weight it deserved and I really appreciate that. It’s what helps make Even Stevens more than “just a Disney show” and why it’s still great, if not better, in 2018.

This episode makes my Top 10 because, like I said, it has such a movie feel to it and one of the strongest/most engaging plotlines in the entire series. I might’ve ranked this one even higher if Ren had a better final plot. They could’ve had a double romance dilemma with Ren and Larry getting together as well or at least a cute moment where they finally end their rivalry, but nooooooooo! The pressure of moving forced Louis & Tawny to confront their feelings, they could’ve done the same thing with Ren and Larry. If this episode had a Ren/Larry subplot of any kind it would probably be my #1 lololol. The episode does have a lot going for it and so much potential though. I had to put it in the single-digits.

The Louis/Tawny content here is OBVIOUSLY of the highest quality. Hands down the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen on the Disney Channel at least. The videotape(s) is like a grand gesture, but also small and intimate at the same time. Per-fect. The acting is especially great here, from both Shia and Margo. I mean, these performances could stand up against any "adult” comedy TV show, heck.. they’re probably better honestly. They’re seriously killin’ the game and they’re both 16/17 years old here. So underrated. Even Stevens deserved to be picked up by a major network. Imagine what it might’ve been like on ABC, CBS, or NBC? Dang. It’d be the cult classic it deserves to be today.

Thanks for reading!!

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thedaveandkimmershow · 3 years

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Well, it turns out once you start noticing things… you keep noticing things. And yeah. This time around, between yesterday and today, there are still a few worthy of mention.

First off, special thanks to the bartenders at Atomic Tonic. They don't even wanna be bartenders yet they have it nailed at an insane level of hospitality, personality, and service. They know the business they're in like you wouldn't believe. They know how to build relationship with customers that translates directly to loyalty.

They really are operating at a level well beyond the job they do.

So… what do they wanna be?

A surgeon. And a pathologist.

No joke. These kids are aiming high. And they've got the bandwidth to do it, too.

On a similar note, the entire crew at The Hideaway Bar & Grill. Not a prestige gig, not super high profile. Just a tiny grill tucked away by the side of a swimming pool with master-level customer service, insanely fast turnaround on orders, and the best.

Tasting.

Burgers.

Ever.

It's one of those experiences where you usually get to have maybe one or two of those things but never three. Yet here it was. All three.

Good grief, we passed our praises along to the cook afterward.

Another thing we noticed was that once you make lounging a way of life it's easy to pass on all the tempting activities it seems we should be doing.

Haha. NOPE. We're in recharging mode… not draining our batteries mode.

It's also nice to see families and friends just enjoying themselves. Having good times together even in the most basic of activities.

I don't know what to tell you. Over the last years, with the narrow view on the world available through the web, it's easy to develop and sustain a pretty dim view of "other people". And maybe seeing such a cross section of humanity all having fun at night at the pool… was just.

Nice. 🙂

Kudos to that dad, by the way, who took his tiny daughter off his wife's hands because this little girl was making these high pitched vocalizations. She wasn't in distress. Not in pain or seeming frustration. Just… making these super high pitch sounds.

So he takes her in his arms and heads purposefully in another direction, bouncing her like a pony as he walks until they reach a huge screen displaying sports graphics that he starts pointing at.

And guess what?

His daughter wasn't high pitching anymore.

Well done, sir. Well done.

'Nother thing we noticed is that faced with a packed crowd in a cafeteria… we're both NOPE. Turned around. Headed out the building. Which is how we ended up by the pool with the best.

Burger.

Ever.

Also during our bouts of lounging in our room, we got a super clear look at the Black Widow movie. We actually saw it celebrating Father's Day… but it was such a bright sunny day we really couldn't get it dark in our living room no matter how many sheets and blankets we hung in front of the windows. We were projecting the movie onto our wall, see, so the resulting image was less than ideal.

So finally being able to see it… underscored how funny and intense and tragic the movie is. How amazing. What great all-around filmmaking.

Noticed this morning that even though the girls are grown and well traveled, we still sweat the details, their travel details, anyway.

The reality, of course, is that they've been there, done this, and can always call with questions or do what adults all over the world do when they run into a travel question: Google it.

A different thing we noticed today (although we already knew it's an ability firmly in our wheelhouse) is that we bussed and walk to Universal's City Walk intent on having breakfast at Antojitos Authentic Mexican Food which I thought opened at 8AM with the rest of City Walk.

Unfortunately… no. No it doesn't. The restaurant actually doesn't open 'til four in the afternoon so we just turned the experience into a photo op and went looking elsewhere for breakfast.

It didn't make long 'cause Hard Rock's bar was on Kimmer's mind ever since we tried to stop in there Thursday night when it was packed.

This time, though, around noon, yeah. No problem. Two seats. Right at the bar where we splurged on barbecue wings. Something else we noticed before even on the first night is that a bar down here's literally just the physical bar and the seats perched in front of it. There's no bar area. Just the stools at the bar.

And the tables just a few feet away along the wall?

Those belong to the restaurant.

Always always always.

We talked nut allergies with Lee from the hard Rock. Then because just then it was metal playing from the overhead speakers we talked a touch of metal and he talked about doing mosh pits in his twenties whereas now whenever he and his wife buy tickets to a concert the first thing they look for are seats.

Yeah.

Time definitely changes you.

And then it's Absanthe and "Dreams" playing overhead and on the video with melodic vocals interspersed with very aggressive vocals and then we're talking music with Sean who's still in his twenties and invincible. Then Paramour hits the air and now we're all talking Paramour and how our daughter took early inspiration from that band in her early days of musicianship and songwriting.

Leaving Universal, we're the first and only ones on the bus with the driver, a man born and raised in Florida whilst we were being born and raised in the opposite corner of the country. A genuinely cheerful man, it was fun to compare notes with him as he made sure to make each and everyone boarding his bus feel welcome.

So like I said, once you start noticing things the more you keep noticing things. Or, maybe a better way to put it is that it becomes super easy to give these brief moments with other human beings...

The credit they deserve.

🙂

#vacation #vacation stories #universal #disney #rest #relax

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ellana-ravenwood · 7 years

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Silly Bat’ - Bruce Wayne x Reader

Just a short silly fic BECAUSE WHY NOT RIGHT ?! I like to imagine that when Bruce doesn’t have the stress of taking care of Wayne Inc or of his nightly activities on his back, he’s just a very funny and kinda weird man...So I wrote something about it, hope you’ll like it :

You can find my masterlist here : @ella-ravenwood-archives

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There were times, when it was just you and Bruce, where you genuinely wondered if your husband wasn’t completely crazy.

Not in a bad way. Not in a “Joker” or “Harley Quinn” way. Nooooo. In a “that man is completely silly, and I’m really starting to question his sanity...is he on drugs ? Drunk ? I don’t know, but it’s funny” way. Yes. Exactly in that way.

Often, when it was just the two of you, behind closed door, he would...loosen up. And not just a bit. He would loosen up completely and go on full “goofball mode”.

You couldn’t count the number of times he started a pillow fight, a war with water guns (though since Alfred yelled at you two as if you were children making a mess, you switched from water guns to nerf guns), a tickle fight or a stupid and ridiculous fashion show etc etc.

You still remembered how your abs hurt after the fit of laughter you had when he came out of the bathroom wearing an awful bright green tuxedo vest a random fashion house send him, without an undershirt, flexing all of the muscle of his chest and all, some sweatpants on of which he tucked the lower part in cowboy boots Clark gave him, and a lampshade as a hat...Where was he even finding those ideas ?

Yes. When it was just you and him, he was a different person. That no one else but you, not even his children, not even Alfred, or any of his close friends would ever see. A Bruce completely carefree, and also slightly insane...but hilarious.

Every time you ended up having the Manor to yourself (which was very rarely, with five children and a butler who almost never took days off), it would even be better, your playground being bigger.

One of your favorite “Silly Bat” time was when you played hide and seek (yes, grown ass adults could totally play hide and seek) and you went to hide in a tree in the garden...And got found by Clark.

The embarrassment on Bruce’s face when he was trying to explain what you two were doing was priceless...In the end, he said that you were playing a “sexual version of hide and seek”, because it was easier to explain than to tell his friend that he was actually playing the actual game, like a damn child, with his beautiful wife...

Clark was impressed. After all, he found you in a tree, so he wondered how you two were going to make lo...Your laughter stopped his trail of thoughts. Your superfriend misinterpreted your laugh, thinking you were mocking him because he was blushing, and that was good (for Bruce). It settled the end of the story.

Soon enough, Superman was laughing too, and it took everything in Bruce to not even crack a smile, to keep his stoic stance, and slightly bored facial expression, so that he wouldn’t get discovered. Ooh you loved that man.

You really loved this kid like part of Bruce, you felt like he deserved to have those moments, because his childhood was ripped from him when he was but an eight year old child...So you indulged him whenever he had one of his “I’m a bit of a weird idiot” time.

Like today.

For the first time in six months, you had the entire house for yourselves, and you took advantage of it the night before (Bruce took his weekly night off of patrol, letting his children and other partners handling things), making love in every single room, needless to say, you fell in a deep sleep when the first light of morning arose...You woke up alone in bed, but Bruce’s side was still quite warm, so he was probably downstairs or in the bathroom.

Bathroom was empty, and you saw only your naked reflection in the huge mirrors all around the room. With a loud yawn, you put on one of your Husband’s sweatshirt, long enough for you to play as a dress, and didn’t bother to put some underwear on. You knew your Bruce, they wouldn’t last long on you anyway.

It was almost noon when you came in the kitchen to get a late breakfast. You definitely had a deep craving for some Cap’n Crunch right now.

Still a bit sleepy, you first thought you hallucinated as your gaze fell on Bruce, standing in front of the kitchen counter, settling the breakfast down (how cute). You rubbed your eyes vigorously and...Nope, the sight was still there.

You took a few more steps, quite confused, and he turned around as he heard you. Smiling widely, he came to you as if nothing, and planted a kiss on your forehead.

-Breakfast ready my love. I made some hashbrowns, bacon, eggs, blueberry pancakes...and of course, a bowl full of Cap’n Crunch and cold milk.

It was really cute, how he made you breakfast whenever it was only the two of you. Contrary to popular belief, he was quite a good cook...But, you just couldn’t wrap your head around what you were seeing right now. Unable to contain yourself, you said :

-Hum...Bruce, what are you doing ?

-Whatever do you mean ?

You approach him, and his smirk convinces you that he damn well know what you mean. Still, you explain :

-I mean...why are you wearing one of my shirt ?

He looks at himself, and gives his person an appreciative look (arrogant bastard), nods a bit, and look back at you, his cocky facial expression making you narrow your eyes in slight annoyance :

-Payback. Cause you’re always stealing mine.

Payb...What ? He gestures to you, and of course, conveniently, you are in indeed wearing one of his shirt. His huge ass shirt that was way too big for you. That served as a dress. You gave him a look, trying to defend yourself, no you weren’t always stealing his sh...his eyes and one of his eyebrow raising shut you up. Yeah ok. He was right. You had the bad habit to steal all of his shirt, to the extent he had to buy new ones often because all of them just magically disappeared (you had a place under your king sized bed where you hid them...Alfred helped, because he thought it was cute).

But still. His shirt were so big you used them as some sort of dresses. They were going almost all the way down to your knees. You could hang around in your house with them, in front of your children and butler, without it being weird. But your shirts ? On Bruce ? You were trying so hard not to laugh. Especially since you knew that’s what he was waiting for. Holding yourself as best you can, you sit next to him and say :

-...You are aware that you’re a giant compared to me right ? It looks like you’re wearing a really strange...Crop top.

-I am aware, and I like it. I’m gonna set a new trend across Gotham.

-One of my extremely small shirt as a crop top, and wearing only boxers ?

-Yup.

-People love you so much that I bet they’d find this idea brilliant...

-You think ?

-Yes, especially since it’d give them a glimpse of your very handsome body. I’m gonna have competition.

-Haha, no one compares to you, you’ll never have any competition.

-That’s cute. But you still look ridiculous.

-Non sense, I look fabulous.

-Fabulously ridiculous.

-You have no fashion sense, wearing such baggy clothes like my shirts. You’re not showing how gorgeous your body look with such things on.

-Oh ?

-Yes. Let me give you a make-over my love.

You smile and roll your eyes. Yes, he was definitely in one of his “Silly Bat” mood. As usual, you were definitely enjoying it.

He raised from the stool he was sitting on, and got even closer to you. Kissed the top of your nose, and with one swift move, took his sweatshirt off of you.

-Here. Fixed it. Now you’re the most beautiful woman in the World.

-I’m naked.

-Exactly. Perfect.

You chuckle a bit, of this little and short laugh he loved so much, and his feature soften even more. He’s unable to hold his sweet smile for you, and the sight of your Bruce, smile out, wearing only his boxers and one of your shirt that was way too small for you, turns into one of the best sight you ever had.

-You’re not too bad yourself.

-It’s because of your shirt, adds character.

You giggle some more, and his hands go automatically on your waist at the sound of your cute laughter. He brings you close from him, and your lips connect with his in the most tender kiss ever. God you loved moments like this, when it was just you and him.

When he could be silly, weird, affectionate, without the fear of someone seeing him, without the fear of ruining his reputation (reputation that was important to keep up for a lot of reasons).

When he could make you laugh to the point that your abs would hurt so much afterward. When he could just be himself a bit more...The thought of some people discovering this facet of his personality was hilarious.

Imagine Clark, on a mission with the dark and broody Batman, being very confused as to why said dark and broody Batman wears a bright yellow suit and a lampshade on his head ? Hilarious.

His kids sometimes saw a bit of that part of him, and Alfred too (he loved it, it reminded him of the boy Bruce used to be before his parents’ murder). Nerf guns wars were a regular occurence this later days.

But most of the time, people only saw his darkest side, his saddest one...And you were honored that he graced you with his childlike side on a regular basis.

One thing was troubling you however :

-Tell me Bruce, my dear heart...

-What my love ?

-How exactly did you put my shirt on ?

-...With great difficulties. That’s how I did it. Your shirts are really small, not easy to slip it on. I learn how flexible I could be thanks to it though.

Your laugh makes his heart fly and sing. Only you could have such an effect on him. Just a smile or a glance...And he’d feel lighter. Like he wasn’t carrying the weight of the World (or at least Gotham city) on his shoulders.

He was thankful that you were in his life. Without you, he would have buried this side of him deep within himself, never to let it out ever. Without you, he would only be the dark and broody Batman, the arrogant, womanizing and cocky Bruce Wayne. Without you, he would be miserable. He was beyond glad that you tumbled in his life one day, and just...stuck around, with your bright smile and sarcastic jokes. You were perfect.

Especially when naked.

He hands were starting to get hungry, and you chuckled a bit more as he tickled you unintentionally.

-Aaah, maybe I could set a trend too.

-Uh ?

-Well yeah, how would I look like if my husband set a trend, the soon to be famous crop top/boxers look, and I wouldn’t do anything ?

-What trend would you set ?

-This one. The Naked look.

-...The Naked look ?

-You said it was perfect.

-It’s perfect for my eyes only.

-Thanks...

-No, I mean, any men, and women for that matter, would think it’s perfect too ! You really are the most beautiful woman on the planet. But...It’s..I...Only for me.

-Bruce, sharing is caring.

-Maybe, but I have no intention of sharing you.

-That’s not very nice, for a self-proclaimed philanthropist. People would be disappointed.

-Fuck ‘em.

-Oh, and he swears. Outrageous.

He smiles wickedly at you, and you return the same smile. He loved when you were messing with him (as long as it wasn’t going too far...then he’d get all pouty and frowny, which was kinda cute, but anti-climatic).

-I can show you how outrageous I can be.

-Oh yeah ?

-Yeah.

-Mr. Wayne, I am appalled by your behavior.

He brings you closer to him, and lift you up the floor, his hands behind your thigh. You automatically wrap your legs around his waist, and peck his lips lovingly.

He kisses you deeply, and you moan lowly in his mouth. You pull away, and rest your forehead on his as he puts you down on the counter.

-Good thing no one will ever know what we’re about to do on the counter.

-Oh yes, they’d be very...appalled if they knew.

You burst out laughing, and kiss him once more. He pulls away, and just before plunging his head in your neck, says :

-I love you (Y/N).

-I love you Bruce.

Your shirt was difficult to put on for him, but definitely easy to rip off of his body.

FIN.

#bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne imagine #bruce wayne fanfiction #batman x reader #batfam #batfam x reader #Batman imagine #batman headcanon #Bruce Wayne headcanon #Batmom x Bruce Wayne #Batmom #Batfamily #batfam imagine #Batfamily x reader #Batman fanfiction #fluff #fluffy Bruce Wayne #also #Silly Bruce wayne

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avanneman · 5 years

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Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: not entirely the all-out misogynistic gore-fest I had been expecting!

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When Quentin Tarantino was a young man, he had dreams, as young men do. These are among the things that Quentin Tarantino dreamed:

That he would kick Bruce Lee’s ass;

That he would save Sharon Tate’s ass;

That he would have a pitbull that would bite people on the ass (also the nuts);

That he would share a “moment”—an extended one, actually—with an insanely precocious eight-year-old girl, like that Eloise of the Plaza girl or maybe that Esmé girl in that Salinger story;1

That he would have maybe murdered someone (like his wife, just for example);

That he would beat the crap out of some dames; and

That he would be a bottom.

Tarantino reveals his dreams in a meticulously tricked out mélange of fake reality, real reality, fake dreams and reals ones, all basking in the warm California sun that shines over the capital of dreams, fake and real, Hollywood, California, the place that makes Oz seem normal. Tarantino subjects us to an elaborate collage of fake and real film clips, fake ads for fake tv shows, fake promos for fake tv shows, fake versions of real tv shows, fake movies, real movies, even fantasy versions of real films, in the service of four separate story lines, all set, naturally, to a carefully honed and seriously swinging sixties soundtrack, much of it heard on car radios, complete with “period’ DJs, jingles, and ads.2 But despite all the artifice, once the narrative gets going, the whole story is very simple, despite all the detours, which generally come off as self-indulgent and sentimental, since Tarantino is self-indulgent and sentimental—except when it comes to dames.

I’m sure that the idea for Once Upon A Time must have been kicking around in Tarantino’s head for years, if not decades, but the film’s basic vibe still seems heavily influenced by James Franco’s recent semi-classic The Disaster Artist, the now-legendary tale of Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero,3 two star-struck shaggy-dog scooby-doo dudes adrift and a-dreamin’ in the LA LA Land shark tank who escape eating only because they aren’t worth the consumption. Tarantino’s leads, Leonardo DiCaprio as “Rick Dalton” and Brad Pitt as “Cliff Booth”, are a little bit further up the food chain. Once upon a time, Rick was a star, with a big house and the whole schmear, the star of the TV western Bounty Law that finished its run in 1963. Six years later, he’s still got the big house, but the career is flagging. In fact, he’s so down on his luck his posse consists exclusively of his main man/stunt man Cliff, who chauffeurs Rick around (because, of course, Rick lost his license), listens to his frequent tales of woe, and tries, ever so gently, to keep him on the straight and narrow, while always assuring him that he’s still the Man, and always will be.

We first pick up on Rick and Cliff, the first two strands of our story, via what strikes me as an, well, insanely unnecessary device—a black and white TV “featurette” on Bounty Law when the show was still running, featuring both men, in which Rick explains to the folks at home just what a stunt man is and why they’re so necessary—as if audiences in 2019 need to know this. The Bounty Law stuff is intercut with the third thread—a Pan Am jet arriving in LAX bearing a pair of obvious big shots, a short dude and a tall blonde who stride through the place surrounded by a crowd of paparazzi before transferring to a cute little vintage MG TF, whose 1250 cc engine bellows like a Ferrari 12 cylinder sans muffler4 when they hit the freeway.

After the black and white clip ends we catch up with Rick and Cliff in real life as Cliff drives Rick to a lunch meeting with agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino, actin’ all Jewish on our ass and clearly having a ball), both Rick and Cliff enjoying lushly photographed mixed drinks in the grand tradition of Hollywood eye-openers while they wait for Marvin to show. When Marvin does, Rick introduces him to Cliff, “explaining” that his car is in the shop, so Cliff is filling in as his wheel man. “A good friend!” exclaims Marvin. “I try,” says Cliff.

Marvin and Rick have a sitdown and Marvin does a lot of talking, his spiel giving us more backstory on Rick, and it ain’t pretty. After Bounty Law died, Rick made a few movies (Tarantino naturally shows us some clips, including one of Rick incinerating some Nazis with a flamethrower) that died at the box office, and we even see a “kinescope” of Rick singing a fifties oldie, “The Green Door”, on Hullabaloo.5 Now he’s reduced to appearing as a “guest star” on other TV westerns, the villain du jour whose job is to be plugged by the real leading man. “Face it, Rick,” Schwarz tells him. “You’re in the rear-view mirror in this town, fading to black. Italy’s the place, and spaghetti westerns are the future! Give me the word and I’ll make it happen! But give me your decision soon, ‘cause I ain’t getting’ any younger, and, more to the point, neither are you!”5

Rick staggers out into a California sun that ain’t so much warm as scalding, throwing himself bodily into Cliff’s arms. I’m fucked, motherfucker! Fucked! I’m a fucked-up fucking former cowboy star who ain’t worth a damn! Italy, for Christ’s sake! Italy! Fuckin’ Italy! That’s all I’m goddamn good for any more! Goddamn fucking Italy!

Gently, Cliff talks him down, as he clearly does once or twice a week. Take it easy, big guy. You’re still the man. You’re still the man! And so they head out in Rick’s Caddy, Cliff at the wheel, a classic case of LA co-dependency, a West Coast version of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo, two guys chasin’ that dream, that dream that don’t seem to be getting all that closer, but, well, when you’re headin’ down La Cienega6 in a sweet Caddy, rockin’ those sweet sixties tunes, it still seems like it could come true.

As they pass down La Cienega, or wherever they are, they pass a bunch of dumpster-divin’ hippie chicks, setting up what will be the fourth strand of the story. After that, well, it seems that time passes, because all of a sudden it’s gettin’ dark, and Cliff takes the Caddy up a winding private drive, dropping Rick off at his big house, giving Rick a chance to fill us in on some more exposition. You know the secret of LA? Real estate, my man, real estate! Own, don’t rent! Then you belong here. Right on cue, the MG we saw earlier rumbles up the drive. It’s Rick’s neighbor, who, unlike Rick, has a gated entrance. See what I mean! You know who that is? Roman fucking Polanski, that’s all! Hottest director in Hollywood! What did I just say? What did I just say? In this town, you’re just one pool party away from the big time!. Cliff nods, as if he hasn’t heard all this a dozen times before, and then lectures Rick on the need for punctuality, for like tomorrow— “7:15! 7:15 out the door! 7:15 in the car”—before taking off in his sweet ride, a Karmann Ghia, which, by the sound, also seems to have had a Ferrari implant, replacing its stock four-cylinder VW mill with a V-12.7

Cliff blasts down the mountain-side in total LA bad boy mode, top down, hair ripplin’ in the wind, and heavy tunes blastin’ on the radio. Fuckin’ LA, man, fuckin’ LA! This is how we roll!

Well, this is how Cliff rolls until he gets out of the car, because LA is all about the wheels. Cliff doesn’t live in the canyon. He lives in the serious low-rent district (that is to say, Van Nuys), in a trailer, with both a pumping oil well and a drive-in movie theater to create a little noise pollution, which he combats, once he’s inside, with a black and white tv featuring Bob Goulet belting out “MacArthur Park”! The horror, man, the goddamn horror!

But he does have some company, in the form of “Brandy”, perhaps the world’s best-trained pitbull.8 To let us know that we’re watching a Quentin Tarantino movie—we were starting to wonder—Quentin ups the grossisity level considerably by having Cliff feed Brandy “Wolf Tooth” dog food (“raccoon” and “rat flavor”, no less), which looks exactly like shit, letting the slop drop plop in the bowl from about waist level. Two cans of the slop, plus a pound or two of kibble, make quite a mess, but real men ain’t neat. Cliff makes himself a saucepan of mac and cheese, pops open a beer, and plops in front of the tv. Life is good!

Life is good because Cliff is really happy that Rick is a loser. If Rick were a star, a real star, he wouldn’t need Rick. He’d use him, because that’s what stars do, but he wouldn’t need him. And Cliff needs to be needed.

Rick, meanwhile, is slurpin’ whiskey sours and learning his lines for the morrow’s shoot, the pilot for a new show called Lancer, while floating in his elegant, kidney-shaped pool, which, remarkably enough, has a killer view,9 as Tarantino’s elegant camera work will elegantly reveal.

Next door, things are a bit more lively. Roman and Sharon (she isn’t named, but of course we figure it out) slip on their glad rags and head for just the hippest place in town, the Playboy Mansion! Which didn’t actually exist yet in 1969, but whatever. One could wish—a little—that poor old Hugh Hefner were still alive (alive and, well, sentient) to see his old haunt pictured as the place where all the cool kids hung out back in the day.10 For whatever reason, Tarantino actually labels some of the big shots present so we’ll know who’s who, including Steve McQueen and Michelle Phillips and “Mama Cass” Elliot,11 the female singers of the sixties group The Mamas and the Papas.12

The shindig at the Mansion turns out to be the most carefully choreographed shindig I’ve ever seen. Everyone can dance—even the folks in the pool—and everyone’s in perfect time! It’s also the most chaste Playboy Mansion shindig I’ve ever seen—not a nipple in sight. But, even more strangely, we get a sour disquisition from wallflower Steve McQueen, no less, staring at Sharon’s sweet, swingin bod and moaning strangely about her strange taste in men, that leaves him shit out of luck. Hey, lighten up, Steve, and join the party! Why Tarantino thought we needed to know all this is beyond me. (Whether Steve really did have the hots for Sharon is also beyond me.)

The next morning, Roman is up, bright and early—at around 7:15, as a matter of fact—enjoying an outdoor French press while Sharon still slumbers—slumbers and snores, actually, because when you get up close, all chicks are just a little gross.13

Rick actually is up at 7:15 as well and heads off to the shoot with Cliff, though he clearly feels, if he does not exactly look, like shit, bent over double with one coughing fit after another and hacking up so much phlegm we figure he doesn’t have to worry about lung cancer because he won’t live long enough to get it. He tells Cliff that, no, he won’t be needed on the set—and he knows damn well why—so he might as well go back to Rick’s place and fix Rick’s tv antenna, because it needs fixin’. Cliff nods and takes off.

Rick stumbles through the set of Lancer looking for wardrobe. When he finds it he soaks his face in ice water—gotta tighten the damn pores, after all. Any star knows that. Plus it might help him remember his name, or even his lines. While Rick is still no more than half conscious, director Sam Wanamaker (Nicholas Hammond) bursts in, maybe not gay, but seriously exquisite. “Rick Dalton! Have I got plans for you! This is going to be amazing!”

Sam rattles and prattles on in a fit of aesthetic ecstasy, while Rick stares in semi-conscious horror. He doesn’t need this much enthusiasm. He’s here for a paycheck and this dude is talkin’ about “zeitgeists”, whatever the fuck they are. Seriously! Zeitgeists! And it’s waaayyyy too early for fuckin’ zeitgeists!

While Rick suffers, Cliff heads back to the canyon, running into the hippie chicks once more before reaching Rick’s place. It what seems like a parody of gay porno, he straps on a tool belt, and then leaps to the top of first one wall and then another until he’s up on the roof, much like a cat and not at all like the 40-year-old man he’s supposed to be. Then he pulls off his shirt, lights a cigarette and dons a pair of work gloves. Ready for action? Hell, yeah!

But before he starts to work Cliff has time for an extended reverie on just why he isn’t welcome on the Lancer set. Earlier, he had a job as Rick’s stunt man in an (imaginary) tv series starring Bruce Lee. Bruce, played by Mike Moh, comes off as a pretentious asshole, prompting Cliff to give him some serious sass. In real life, one suspects, sassing a star would get you not merely booted off the set but out of Hollywood forever, but instead Bruce and Rick agree to a genteel face-off, no punches to the head, just knock the other fellow down, best two out of three. Cliff goes down the first time, but then throws Bruce bodily against the side of a Lincoln Continental, causing a dent that looks like it was made by a 500-pound wrecking ball rather than a 130-pound Asian. That’s what you get for stealing our jobs, hot shot!14

But that isn’t the only reason why Cliff isn’t welcome on the set: there’s this crazy rumor that he killed his wife, which Tarantino encourages us to believe is true by showing us a flashback—whether Cliff “remembering” or Tarantino showing us “the truth” isn’t clear—of Cliff in skin diver gear on a boat listening to his bikini-clad wife bitching her head off about what a loser he is and Cliff maybe pointing his spear gun at her. Uh, so what is the point of all this? It has no payoff in the rest of the movie, leaving us to feel that Tarantino sort of wishes that people, especially women, would be afraid of him. You know that guy, Quentin Tarantino? Oh, yeah, he looks harmless, but I hear he killed his wife! Seriously!

Once Cliff finishes his reverie, he has a glimpse of the future instead of the past: a weird, hippie-lookin’ dude at the Polanski place asking about the previous tenant. We aren’t clued in, but if you know your back story you know this is Charles Manson.

While all this is going on in and out of Cliff’s head, Rick is having multiple adventures on the Lancer set. The whole Lancer episode is a curious mish-mash of fact and fancy. The “real” Sam Wanamaker did direct the pilot of Lancer. Whether Sam was as exquisite as portrayed seems a pretty open question. The actual Lancer series was a short-lived rip-off of Bonanza, which Tarantino sort of follows and sort of not, and sometimes it seems that Rick’s character “Caleb” is the good guy and the Lancers are the bad guys, and sometimes the other way around. We see several large chunks of the show, presented to us as the audience would see them—no crew or equipment visible—and in fact what we see is not at all what a sixties tv series would look like but rather a sort of ideal spaghetti western that Tarantino probably dreamed of making back in the day.

Before we even get there, however, Rick, dressed in character as “Caleb” has several “pregnant” conversations, the first with the stunningly precocious (and precociously PC) “actor” “Trudi Fraser” (Julia Butters), already in character as “Maribella”. Rick can’t eat lunch because of his makeup and “Maribella” likes to stay lean and hungry before a shoot. “We aim for 100% efficiency. We never achieve it, of course. But it’s the pursuit that counts.”

Rick, conveniently hocking up another loogie, looks like there’s nothing he’d like to pursue other than a whiskey sour or two and maybe a nap, but he takes a seat next to her to read his paperback western—a little surprising since I never saw him as having much appetite for print. Maribella, after correcting Rick’s pronunciation of his character’s last name (it’s not “Dakota”) and generally playing the eight-year-old dominatrix to a tee (though, as an “actor”, she would object to the feminine suffix), asks him what his book is about, and Rick launches into an extended précis: see, there’s this guy, he used to be just the coolest, toughest bronco buster around, but now, well, he’s getting’ old, his back ain’t so good no more, and every day he gets up knowin’ that, every day, he’s less of a man.

Rick tears up/chokes up as he’s delivering this thumbnail—because it’s his fucking story, get it? Maribella, as conveniently obtuse now as she was prescient before, misses the subtext. “It sounds like a really good story!” she exclaims, thinking he’s moved purely by the power of art. “In 15 years you’ll be livin’ it!” Rick gasps, and fortunately she doesn’t get this one either. And so she comforts him, not knowing just how very much he needs her solace. It’s sort of ironic when you think about it. But, you know, touching!

Somewhere about this time we cut to Sharon, who’s finally in motion in a spiffy new Porsche, heading to, where else, a book store! To get a first edition of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a gift for Roman!15 Which may be true, or may be the biggest whopper in the movie. Anyway, who would figure Tarantino for a “reader”? Not me!

Once Sharon gets her book, she spots a movie theater showing The Wrecking Crew, one of the “Matt Helms” sixties flicks ripping off James Bond, starring the very tongue in cheek, and semi-over-the-hill Dean Martin, but co-starring, yes, Sharon Tate!16 When she’s inside we see clips of the real film featuring Sharon, first a meet cute with Matt/Dean that features clumsy Sharon falling on her ass and showing us her panties, and later a fight scene between good Sharon and evil Nancy Kwan, with Nancy falling on her ass and showing us her panties! Take that, Asian bitch!

Well, it’s always good to see chicks’ panties, but Sharon’s repeated piano key smiles as the audience conveniently laughs and cheers her on get a little self-congratulatory for my ass. Sharon is clearly depicted as the “new Marilyn,” speaking in the same breathy, little girl voice, utterly stunning and cool, yet innocent and sweet, a combination not often found in the real world.

Rick, meanwhile, is having his second serious sitdown, this time with the budding star of Lancer, Timothy Olyphant as “James Stacy” as gunfighter “Johnny Madrid”, Since James Stacy is supposed to be the new kid on the way up, he might be expected to look younger than Rick, and thus intimidating. In fact, Olyphant is six years older than Leo and pretty much looks it, and Stacy treats Rick with surprising respect. (Surprising to me, at least. Aren’t young actors supposed to be assholes?) But the real point of this is for Jim to ask Rick if it’s true that he was once up for Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape, the film that made Steve a star?17

Rick modestly denies the story, or at least strongly soft-pedals it. Me in Steve’s big part? No, not really. Brief possibility, that’s all. Very brief. But then we see, more or less, “Rick’s dream”—clips from the real Great Escape with Leo/Rick visually dubbed in to replace Steve. It could have been him. He could have had Steve’s career. Bullitt? The Thomas Crown Affair? It could have been him. It could have been him. He coulda had class. He coulda been a contendah.18

The thing is, Rick has never been presented to us this way. He’s been the big, strong, good-looking boy with the big, strong shoulders, who could get on and off a horse without falling on his ass, and that’s it. Rick is the kind of pretty boy who cruises through life as long as everything comes easy and then crashes in middle age, like Erik Estrada, not the relentless egomaniacal striver who never takes no for an answer no matter how many times he gets it, like William Shatner.

In the meantime, finally, Cliff makes actual contact with one of the hippie chicks, the cute ‘n wanton Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), swinging her tight little butt around like she owns the world. The thing is, she probably does.19 He agrees to give her a lift, but won’t let her give him a blowjob, “explaining” that he doesn’t want to go to jail, although we can tell that the real reason is that he’s a gentlemen. Cliff has the definite vibe of the old-fashioned B-movie cowboy hero that I grew up watching on tv, utterly chaste and emotionally devoted only to his horse (Cliff has Brandy, of course), too complete in himself to even consider sharing his essence with anything as, well, as common, as a woman.

Cliff gets a jolt when he learns that Pussycat is living at the “Spahn movie ranch”, where Cliff and Rick used to film Bounty Law. He explains to her that he used to be a stunt man there, allowing her to explain to us that stunt men are the real heroes, because what they do is real, they aren’t phonies like actors. Just in case we couldn’t figure that part out for ourselves.

Well, back to Rick now, I think, and get to see an actual chunk of Lancer, filmed far more extravagantly, and elegantly, than any tv western would have been, yet with a pretty much standard script, though with some pretty spectacular behind the back shooting from Johnny Madrid, putting an uppity “businessman” in his place. Better stick to your ledgers, pencilneck!

The bit rumbles on, with plenty of moody, “intense” attitude from Rick, a seen it all, done it all, existential cowpoke who might remind some us of another Rick, the one who ran Rick's Café Américain down Casablanca way. But midway through the scene he starts blowing his lines and ends up stalking back to his trailer (but would he really have one?) to explode at himself in a predicable yet enjoyable scene. You goddamned asshole! You’re going to quit drinking, you hear me, you goddamned alcoholic! God damn it!

Well, back to Cliff, I think, in what is easily the most impressive section of the film, the visit to the Spahn ranch to see Charlie’s angels. The girls are beautifully creepy, staring at the intruder like so many marmosets, Dakota Fanning particularly memorable as ruthless boss lady Squeaky Fromme, who in real life was not involved directly in any of the murders but became notorious as the “spokeswoman” for the Manson family during his trial, and more notorious several years later when she tried to assassinate President Ford.

Squeaky sends a girl to fetch “Tex”, Charles Watson, played by Austin Butler, who played the lead role in the Sharon Tate murders, to check out the new guy. Tex arrives on horseback, suitably enough, and, in some serious dick measuring, Cliff reminisces about his visit to Houston, where he spent two weeks on a chain gang. “That was the last time I broke a policeman’s jaw, I can tell you that!” Although I expect that if you broke a policeman’s jaw in Houston, Texas back in the fifties you probably wouldn’t live to talk about it.

Pussycat really digs guys who break cops’ jaws, and it must sound good to Tex as well, so he rides off, getting back to his job as guide for dudes who want to visit the mountains. But once he’s gone, Cliff starts to get a little pushy. Is old George Spahn still around? Sure would like to visit old George and see how he’s doing. The girls all tell him no, clearly infuriated by his decision to penetrate beneath the surface of their groupthink. Word gets back to Squeaky, holed up in what Cliff knows is George’s old house, so she sends all the girls away and tries to face down Cliff, but he faces her down instead and finally has a thoroughly creepy conversation with old George (Bruce Dern), blind and helpless and utterly dependent on the girls.

Cliff, utterly frustrated by George’s utter dependence—he can’t be “saved” because he doesn’t want to be—strides out to meet the glaring, feral eyes of the assembled family. As he passes, Pussycat leaps onto the hood of a car and screams “George isn’t blind! You’re the one who’s blind!”

Cliff keeps on walking, only to find out that Rick’s Caddy has a flat, thanks to a giggly, half-naked Jesus clone with hillbilly teeth. Definitely time to kick some goddamn hippie ass! Something Tarantino clearly digs almost as much as smelling chick’s feet.

Cliff grabs the punk by the hair and pummels him half to death. That’ll teach you! Now fix the goddamn flat! “Gypsy” (Lena Dunham) sends one of the girls off on a horse to get Tex—something she might have thought of earlier—and Tex comes riding up in an excellent display of horsemanship, that is as gratuitous as the beatdown Cliff gives the Jesus dude,20 because by the time he gets back Cliff is gone.

Finally (I guess), we cut back to Rick, headed back on the set for one last shot at redemption. Spaghetti western “bullfighter/showdown” music blares operatically on the soundtrack, as Rick walks through the soundstage for the final showdown, the one between Rick Dalton and ... Rick Dalton! Can he cut it, or is he history?

In Rick’s big scene, he’s kidnapped Maribella, holding her on his lap with his six-shooter pointed at her head while he holds forth in a swaggering conversation with “Scott Lancer” (Luke Perry in his last role, as the actor Wayne Maunder). Since Rick/Caleb clearly has the upper hand, fancy-pants Scott (he apparently went to Harvard) can do nothing other than listen to Caleb’s trash talk, which Caleb concludes by throwing Maribella violently to the floor in a display of his ruthlessness. Cut! Cut! Rick made it all the way through the scene! In flying colors!

“I didn’t hurt you, did I, darlin’?” Rick asks.

“I’m fine,” Maribella reassures him, popping up to show him her arm. “See, I have padding!”

Sam Wanamaker (Sam the director) rushes up.

“Rick, you were fabulous! Exactly what I wanted! Evil, sexy Hamlet!”

Rick sits there, a little stunned by the outpouring of passion he’s achieved.

“Rick, Rick, your adlibs were amazing! ‘Beaner bronco-buster’?21 Why, that’s triple alliteration! And throwing the little girl on the floor! Beautiful!”

Yeah, but, uh, if the toss was an adlib, why was Maribella wearing padding?22 Anyway, tossing an eight-year-old around like a ping-pong ball as an adlib sounds a little dubious to me. Good thing her parents weren’t around!

But Tarantino isn’t done gilding the lily. Trudi/Maribella, whose dedication to her craft makes Stanislavski look like a slacker, tells him “that’s the best acting I’ve ever seen!”

Which is all a little silly, because no one, but no one has ever suggested that he had any real talent as an actor, and he’s never expressed any interest in his “craft”, other than not looking like an asshole and not losing his paycheck. But Tarantino somehow can’t resist violating Rick’s real character in order to make him look heroic, a goddamn Laurence Olivier in chaps!

After all this, we have a grotesquely awkward “transition”, narrated by Kurt Russell, about Rick and Cliff’s excellent Italian adventure, which one can very easily believe was originally intended to take up a good chunk of the film, probably extending its running time to something close to three and half hours, but, for whatever reason, that doesn’t happen. Instead, we get a few cutesy movie posters, and a few little anti-PC snickers directed at American Indians, who seem to rub Quentin the wrong way for whatever reason, and also Rick gets married to this Italian broad, who snores a lot, just like Sharon. As for “acting”—evil, sexy Hamlet and all that—well, Quentin seems to have forgotten all about it, and Rick is back in character as the self-indulgent bad boy who loafs through life, traveling first class thanks to his broad shoulders and pretty face, while devoted Cliff sits in coach and chugs Bloody Marys, because, it seems, Rick’s cutting him loose. Can’t afford a wife and a bottom at the same time!

Once Rick and “Francesca” (Lorenza Izzo) are installed in Rick’s old place, Russell continues his tiresome narration, setting up that fateful night when all four story lines will coincide. Rick and Cliff head out for one last celebratory drunk and then head back, Russell constantly stressing to us, for some reason, that Rick and Cliff are like totally blind, stinking drunk, even though they don’t really act that way. Francesca’s already in bed (she stayed home, naturally), Rick’s mixing margheritas, and Cliff’s taking Brandy for a walk. S/He’s there, for some reason (really, of course, for plot reasons). Cliff decides he’ll smoke this LSD-soaked cigarette that Pussycat sold him, even though, the web informs me, “smoking” LSD destroys its hallucinogenic power (because the heat causes it to break down chemically).

While Cliff’s gone, Tex and three of the Manson girls—Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison), Patricia Krenwinkle (Madisen Beaty), and Linda Kasabian (Maya Hawke)—arrive to do the Polanski household in, pulling up in a noisy, busted muffler car. Rick stumbles out with his carafe full of margheritas to tell those goddamn hippies to get off his goddamn private drive and smoke their goddamn pot someplace else. Tex, apparently not wanting to have to kill this guy, backs the car down the drive, while Rick takes his margheritas out to one of his favorite retreats, the chair floating in his kidney-shaped pool.

The hippies reconnoiter. “You know who that was? Rick Dalton!” “Rick Dalton? Rick fucking Dalton?” “Rick Fucking Dalton!” “Fuck! You know what? Guys like that, they taught us to murder. I say, let’s murder the murderers!”

As it turns out, Kasabian bails, driving away in the car,23 but Tex, with a six-shooter shoved in his pants, and Patricia and Susan, armed with knives, head up the drive.

Cliff, by this time, is back inside the house, fixing Brandy dinner when the kids show up. After some cutesy, high on LSD antics, the action finally starts, Tex pointing his six-shooter at Cliff’s head. Brandy, flying through the air, disarms him and then fixes her teeth in his balls while Cliff brains Atkins with a can of Wolf’s Tooth. Krenwinkle stabs Cliff in the thigh, causing him to grab her by the hair and smash her face into a variety of unyielding surfaces, which starts to look a little sadistic on Tarantino’s part after the third or fourth smash. Somewhere along the line Brandy switches from Tex to Atkins, dragging her around the room like the shark in the beginning of Jaws. Tex stumbles to his feet and tries to stab Cliff, but gets stabbed instead, then gets knocked down and then (I think) Cliff breaks his neck. But then Atkins gets hold of Tex’s gun and shoots Cliff, causing him to fall over as though he were dead. The girl staggers to her feet, her face covered in blood and screaming like a maniac, and stumbles out to the pool, waving Tex’s gun and firing off a round or two, finally catching Rick’s attention. Guess what, headphones!

Atkins crashes into the pool, still firing the gun. Rick sobers up quickly and, finding his trusty flamethrower—you didn’t see that coming? Amateur!—roasts the bitch.

The police arrive to figure things out. Guess what? Cliff ain’t dead! Sounding awfully coherent for a guy who’s drunk, high on LSD, stabbed in the thigh, and shot, he tells Rick not to come to the hospital with him but tend to his lady. Because greater love hath no bottom than to give up his life, not for his top, but for his top’s lady!

“You’re a good friend, Cliff,” Rick tells him.

“I try,” says Cliff.

Hey! Didn’t we hear that line before?

But the good news isn’t over yet! Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), one of Sharon’s houseguests, hears the commotion and asks Rick what’s happening. Rick fills him in and, one way or another, Sharon hears their conversation and calls down on the intercom to invite Rick up for a drink. And so the gates to the magic kingdom—the magic kingdom of A-listers and Playboy Mansion attenders—open for Rick. Let the pool parties begin!

Afterwords I Movie Violence

When I first heard that Tarantino was making a movie about “old” Hollywood starring Leo and Brad I was intrigued. When I learned that Leo would be living next door to Sharon Tate, not so much. I hated Tarantino’s chef d'œuvre Pulp Fiction, and I detested Kill Bill Volume I, and one thing I did not want to see was Tarantino’s take on the Tate/Manson murders. When I learned that Quentin was rewriting history—in tune, really, with my own squeamish predilections—I thought I would take a chance. In any event, there are lots of violent films that I do like, including Bonnie & Clyde and Terminator 2. What’s the difference between “good violence” and “bad violence” other than the eye of the beholder?

Well, not much, obviously. The “sword blade through the milk carton and the mouth and out the back of the head” shot from Terminator 2 is “classic”,24 but you wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you, would you?

Much of the violence in Once Upon A Time is gratuitous in that it’s clearly wish fulfillment on Tarantino’s part, but there’s little that I found outright sadistic, which is what I really object to. It’s notably less sadistic than the coming features that I saw advertised with the film—It Chapter 2, Hide and Seek, and Joker. Obviously, audiences like sadistic.

Afterwords II Helter Skelter Despite the “massive” sixties soundtrack, in one sense the silence is deafening, because there is, unsurprisingly, nothing from the “White Album”. Like several million other people, Charles Manson thought the Beatles recorded this famous double album just for him, and that every song had a particular meaning. “Helter Skelter” (in Great Britain, an amusement park ride) was for Manson the signal for the start of a race war in America, which would some how allow him to seize power, in some manner. The Tate murders were intended, more or less, to provoke that war because the police were intended to believe that black revolutionaries had committed them. Vincent Bugliosi, the district attorney who prosecuted Manson and the others, wrote a book, with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter, about the case, which was later turned into a television mini-series.

Esmé was thirteen. Making “Trudi Fraser” eight seems really a stretch to me. ↩︎

Did Tarantino invent “fake” sixties tunes as well? Not impossible, but it seems unlikely. ↩︎

Word can spell “Sestero” but not “Wiseau”? Tommy won’t like that! Greg’s book, The Disaster Artist, which he co-wrote with Tom Bissell, revealed to the world the bizarre backstory behind Wiseau’s cult classic di tutti cult classics, The Room, and is definitely superior to Franco’s film, which derives half its considerable charm by simply recreating classic scenes from Wiseau’s ineffable creation. ↩︎

Dunno if Tarantino just wanted the car to sound cool or if he was parodying this frequent device as used by other directors. Anyone who knows anything about cars knows that tiny, underpowered English sports cars do not sound like this. As dubious car enthusiast Mort Sahl put it, “MGs are great if you don’t mind being blown off by housewives in Plymouth station wagons.” Jews are into cars? ↩︎

Marvin says “kinescope” rather than “tape” because consumer videotape machines didn’t exist in 1969. The networks used tape, but Marvin would have needed a film version, a “kinescope”, which is what the networks used before the development of videotape, to view using a projector. *Once Upon A Time” is filled with anachronisms, but film buff Tarantino gets this one right. However, the “Hullabaloo” clip is filmed in wide-screen, which of course is totally inaccurate. Leo’s performance looks as though it were based on the persona of fifties super-square Pat Boone. ↩︎ ↩︎

I have no grasp of LA geography, so I have no idea of where Rick and Cliff are. ↩︎

The Karmann Ghia was simply an Italian-bodied Volkswagen bug. If Cliff had the “big” engine (presumably, he did), he could hit 90. If not, 75 was probably the top. ↩︎

Brad addresses Brandy as “man” in this scene even though the actual dog, "Sayuri", is a female and is referred to as such in the final scenes. ↩︎

A place like Rick’s would of course require constant upkeep to avoid turning into a mess, but, as is so often the case in film, the place somehow cleans itself. ↩︎

Jay Leno described his one Mansion visit as “a lot of middle-aged men hitting on a lot of young women.” ↩︎

Cass Elliot grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, which is next to Falls Church, where I grew up. On the M&Ps’ cover of the Martha and the Vandellas hit “Dancin’ in the Street”, the M&Ps fade out the song with the list of the cities where they’re, you know, dancing in the street—“Baltimore and DC now”—with the following barely audible dialogue: “Alexandria?” “In Virginia, Virginia.” “Falls Church?” “Never heard of it.” Both are suburbs of Washington, DC. Falls Church is supposedly the setting for at least two tv shows, JAG and The Americans. ↩︎

Three of their songs are heard on the soundtrack, though they only sing one of them—“Twelve Thirty”. Both “Twelve Thirty” and “Straight Shooter” are explicitly about heroin addiction, while the third and most famous, “California Dreamin’”, strongly hints at it. The sheet music for “Straight Shooter” was found on a piano at the scene of the actual Manson/Tate murders. ↩︎

“Stella shits!” exclaimed Jonathan Swift regarding Esther Johnson, his life-long obsessive love, whom he first met when she was eight. Quentin seems to hate women yet want to smell their feet. ↩︎

In an interview, Tarantino has “explained” that in “real life” Cliff would kick Bruce Lee’s ass because war hero Cliff was a Green Beret. Since Cliff, like Rick, is supposed to be pushing 40, he would have to have been a “war hero” in Korea. Combat operations in Korea ended with the 1954 armistice. Special forces troops never wore the green beret until 1955, and it was almost immediately discontinued until revived in 1961. They received enormous publicity in the sixties. I don’t know why they’ve been supplanted by the Seals as the ultimate bad asses. ↩︎

Anyone who likes books likes first editions, but I very much dislike the use of first editions as a way to make books expensive status symbols. Go Kindle! (And, in any event, if I had a copy of a 90-year-old first edition, I wouldn’t carry it unprotected in my sweaty little hand, as Sharon does.) ↩︎

I rented one of Matt’s/Dean’s films for some purpose—I can’t remember why—and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t The Wrecking Crew, but it was so slow-paced and boring that I couldn’t watch it, il Dino wandering around like he’d had more whiskey sours than Rick Dalton. ↩︎

McQueen started out in tv as the star of Wanted Dead or Alive, the very obvious “inspiration” for Bounty Law. McQueen, a very big star in 1969, thanks to Bullit and Crown Affair, which were in fact his only two films to be remembered, was supposedly “targeted” by Manson as part of his plan to cause the U.S. to erupt in a race war. Which may be why he’s such a presence in this film. Or not. ↩︎

“Instead of a bum, which is what I am”—Marlon Brando’s lines from On the Waterfront, once among the most quoted in American film, bitterly complaining to his brother, played by Rod Steiger, that his career as a boxer was ruined when he was forced, by his brother, to throw a fight. ↩︎

Qualley, who has had extensive ballet training, is probably the best dancer in the whole film. ↩︎

It would also likely leave the horse exhausted for the rest of the day. Horse races only last a mile or so because horses can’t gallop for much longer than that. ↩︎

Not exactly that, probably, anyway, three “b’s”. ↩︎

Also, the camera backs up to keep Maribella in the shot, which it wouldn’t have done if Cliff’s action had been an adlib. ↩︎

In “real life”, Kasabian did not drive away but remained behind as a lookout. Kasabian was involved—always as a bystander, she claimed—in many of the murders committed by Manson and his followers, but was able to avoid prison time by serving as the key witness against the others. ↩︎

“God damn it! How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t drink out of the carton?” It’s “nice” that the T-1000 stays in character as the past her limit housewife as “she” pulls her blade/hand from the dumb shit’s head. ↩︎

#quentin tarantino #Once Upon a Time in Hollywood #Leo DiCaprio #Brad Pitt #movies

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