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justinmoviereviews · 1 year

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The Class of 2022

Bringing this feature back out. Some pretty good films this year.

Dog - Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum

If a movie about a damaged guy getting saved during his darkest night by a dog doesn’t make you weep, you don’t have a dog.

Barbarian - Zach Cregger

This movie slaps so fucking hard.

Don’t Worry Darling - Olivia Wilde

Basically I think this one was killed by its press tour. I think the critic class decided liking this wasn’t worth the risk so collectively expelled it, but going in without any idea anything had even happened I thought it was the best movie so far in the nascent Deconstructing Toxic Masculinity genre that’s become one of the few acceptable avenues for mainstream films. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the twist is so much more interesting than the Stepford Wives aura that hangs over this suggests it will be. And it’s a pretty good looking flick.

Bros - Nicholas Stoller

A very sexually explicit, funnier than average romcom. Allison’s take: I can’t tell if he’s making fun of romcom tropes or just using them.

The Banshees of Inisherin - Martin McDonagh

More than any movie he’s ever made, this one invites interpretation. I’m still working on it, and I don’t imagine there’s a definitive explanation, but right now the one I like is that this is a movie about death. I’m not sure whose death. I look forward to watching this several more times.

Confess, Fletch - Greg Mottola

Has there ever been a talented actor worse at understanding his gifts than Jon Hamm? The dude is an unknowable phantom with the face of Adonis, not an Apatow comedian. This is not a bad movie, but the guy at the center of it doesn’t fit and never feels natural. They would have been better off with just about anyone else. Even an unknown would have worked better than our man.

Amsterdam - David O. Russell

For awhile this movie has a Thomas Pynchon quality to it, where a ragtag group of goofuses stumble into an evil global shadow conspiracy they’ll never defeat or understand or even directly encounter. Its so good for a minute that I wondered if Thomas Pynchon was somehow involved (maybe he is, I didn’t look into it). The end wraps everything up too neatly to really spin into anything great, and it ends up as an enjoyably forgettable ride, which I guess befits David O. Russell’s late career stage as a guy living in the purgatory of Netflix after missing a bunch of Oscars he still can’t believe he didn’t win.

Prey - Dan Trachtenberg

I don’t know. It’s solid, I guess.

Emily the Criminal - John Patton Ford

This is a B action movie that caught extra attention because it stars Aubrey Plaza. A lot of people liked it. I’m happy for them.

Nope - Jordan Peele

Let’s see here. My first take was that it was his weakest movie because it didn’t have any neat core conceit at its center. Get Out was a revelation, and Us was I thought basically a perfect movie, a really cool idea from a filmmaker very good at realizing his cool ideas. Nope is more of a regular old flick. But the more I thought about it the more I saw that as a strength. I think most movies are not as good as Us, but it’s ultimately kind of a very expensive Twilight Zone episode. This movie is doing something he hasn’t done yet, which implies he’s going to continue to grow and get more ambitious. I still think there’s something a little undercooked about this one, and the mystery at the center is a little less cool than I think he wanted, but its beginning to seem very clear that greatness awaits.

Men - Alex Garland

If this guy wants to spin conceits out for awhile and then have his movies devolve into lunatic madness, I’ll come out for it every single time. The title and current political moment made me think this would be more of an indictment of the gender, another in the series of aforementioned Deconstructing Toxic Masculinity movies, and it’s sort of that, but its much more elemental, personal, and bizarre. I fucking love this director.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - Rian Johnson

Like most sequels, some of the plot points go over the top as the movie attempts to outdo the original, and the billionaires are actually dumb plotline feels ripped directly out of leftist Twitter, but as long as Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig are involved I’ll watch every Knives Out movie they make. This is what happens when you let talented people do their jobs. Also as far as I know this is the first movie that includes Covid as a central life event. I love that for some reason. It is a central life event, its like making a movie about World War II.

Bodies Bodies Bodies - Halina Reijn

I’ll be honest, I was pretty drunk when I watched this on a plane. So this will be an impressionistic review. I thought it was pretty fun. There’s one scene that feels like it was written by people outrightly mocking woke culture. Pete Davidson is in it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once - Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

For the first hour I thought this was the Matrix, and wished that, as a movie about the literally unlimited nature of the universe, it was a little more creative. The second hour changed that thought. It is basically the Matrix, but while that movie was drab and minor key (by design) this movie is colorful and kaleidoscopic and wild and never ever ever not fun. The moviest movie I’ve seen in a long time, by which I mean a piece of art that could only be a movie, and one that pushes into new places what a movie can and should do. It’s big and beautiful and weird and exciting, and at 139 minutes it whooshes by. We’re in a weird place with representation at the moment, but this movie doesn’t feel like its correcting an error about who gets to star in Kung Fu movies, instead the Chinese heritage of the family is a natural part of the plot and makes the movie more than it otherwise would be. It’s hard to imagine this isn’t the best film of the year.

The Northman - Robert Eggers

The verisimilitude alone is worth the price of admission. I can’t think of a movie that’s setting feels so real since the Revenant. This is, and I guess I mean this as a compliment, the most normal movie Robert Eggers will ever make. If the Lighthouse was pure uncut Eggers, just a gonzo madhouse of his shit, this is basically Gladiator with a couple of spirit visions, which come to think of it Gladiator also had. I looked into it and learned that his compromise with the studio to make a big budget picture was to sacrifice final cut, which makes a ton of sense in retrospect and which I’m guessing is responsible for the movie’s worst parts, like when the main character monologues to himself about his motivation and plans for no reason. This is my take: the whole time I watched it I wanted it to be weirder. But as a bloody Viking flick, it’s a good movie.

The Menu - Mark Mylod

A movie about a great chef who got so tired of cooking for shitheads that he went insane. Pitched at a tone that, for me, made any level of insanity make sense. The characters in this movie aren’t unlikeable so much as they are urgently deserving of death. And you’re never, for a minute, worried they aren’t going to receive it. It’s been a good year for fun horror flicks.

X - Ti West

Except for the obvious reason--they’re both primal feelings--it’s never been fully apparent to me why these movies are always structured to be one half sexual titillation then one half slasher-horror. But while in the 80s they just pumped them out cuz they made money, now we’re getting all sorts of deconstructions and meta commentaries and sex as terror merges. Anyway, this is the most cerebral sex ‘n’ death horror movie I’ve ever seen; the most knotty, the most intellectualized, the most constructed in its creators’ heads. I felt a sourness at first--Barbarian and The Menu are two brilliant horror movies that do something genuinely new rather than comment on the old method in increasingly myopic ways--but that’s gone now. The things this movie does are just too fun and smart. I guess every one of these flicks is in one way or another punishing you for enjoying the T&A it gave you in its first hour, but this is the first to make you watch its monsters actually fuck. The final line is both a compliment to the movie I’m not sure it deserves, and an objectively fantastic last line.

White Noise - Noah Baumbach

Nothing says Fuck It Netflix money quite like the existence of this movie, an admiring adaptation of a book that’s essentially a novelization of Jean Baudrillard’s ideas. I remember liking the novel a lot, and finding it, for a book about mass hysteria over everyday life, oddly soothing. This movie is mostly faithful to the book, but it isn’t soothing. Baumbach uses chaos and claustrophobia to convey the story’s existential anxiety rather than the artificial feeling of meek contentment that is DeLillo’s chosen mode. The movie is noisy and full of static and incredibly ugly, like watching an 80s sitcom through a fishbowl. Interesting choices, but not pleasant ones, which matters when you’re watching a movie. But Noah Baumbach is an obvious fan, and he understands the ideas he’s working with. He even gets in some pretty good Noah Baumbach jokes. It’s an amazingly timely story too, as we head into the fourth year of a global pandemic that has foregrounded our collective anxiety and shrunken our worlds to a degree that can’t not be causing long term damage. There’s a scene here where a guy in a quarantine camp riles the crowd by demanding his fear not only be recognized but made the center of the public’s attention, which if anything is quaint when put up against what the MAGA mutants in this country actually want. But here’s what I kept thinking about while I watched a movie that I liked but that never truly distinguished itself from its very good source material: in 1985 Don DeLillo wrote a book about the fear of death as a uniquely modern condition of our sad and shrinking reality. These days, that condition gets called anxiety and we validate it on social media. Our culture sucks now.

Father of the Bride - Gary Alazraki

Shit! I watched this right before I got married. I didn’t realize it was a 2022 release. It’s pretty good! Nice and warm. Andy Garcia is a boss. Recommended for right before you get married.

Elvis - Baz Luhrmann

- Here’s a movie I thought of when I was watching this one that I think would be good: young Elvis spends all his free time watching the black people in his town make the music he loves. Most of the movie takes place in churches and after-hours clubs. It’s musical performance heavy. It ends right as he’s being discovered.

- Here’s what I assumed this movie would be: A shy kid with a lot of talent gets discovered by a sleazy manager. He rises to the top, meets a girl, then money, fame, ego, and the influence of shady characters bring him down. A lot of musical performances.

Baz Luhrmann likes his spectacle, but I can’t believe how shoddy and lazy this movie actually is. There’s no structure, no real story, no actions of consequence. It's a three hour montage of events I don’t even believe really happened. Did Elvis really feel strongly about Bobby Kennedy’s death? I sort of doubt it. Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman were trite, but here’s a director looking his audience in the eye and saying “I know you hogs like this shit.”

Tar - Todd Field

This movie is such a slow burn I didn’t even realize she kept two houses until it was almost over. It doesn’t tell anything and it takes its sweet time showing. Some of its early scenes feel largely pointless. I wasn’t sure why at first, other than the fact that it’s a type of storytelling, but upon consideration I get it: the movie is told in the first person. It doesn’t tell you anything for the same reason I don’t wake up every morning and tell myself the address of my house. This is the story of a monster told from her point of view, and as the movie progresses you start to see the cracks in her self-image. Its slow and controlled and quiet, with an intensity hovering offscreen that peaks its head in just enough to let you know its there. Because of the narrative style there’s a ton of stuff I missed, and more than any other movie I’ve seen this year I look forward to watching this again.

All Quiet on the Western Front - Edward Berger

It felt for awhile like we were done with old fashioned war flicks, and modern war movies would all have some kind of stylistic or thematic bent. But this is about as simplistic and plain a story as you can come up with. So maybe the lesson is you can do whatever you want as long as you do it really well. This is an incredibly effective movie. A battle scene where the French close in on the Germans like an unfeeling horde of aliens will stay with me for a long time. A scene at the end which exposes the brutal evil of men who control the lives of other men will as well. Maybe I’m getting softer, but this is the most haunting and disturbing war movie I’ve ever seen. We can do terrible, unspeakable things to each other, and we can do them for no reason. One way of understanding this movie is that it’s about the humanity of a nothing special enlisted man, and follows him until he finally loses it. It’s also about the machinations of power that control his life from afar without any humanity at all. Also, it looks and sounds incredible.

The Fabelmans - Steven Spielberg

At this point, you should know what you’re getting from Spielberg. His movies are impeccably made, stories told seamlessly with warmth and craftsmanship. He’s the ultimate major key filmmaker, with an intuitive understanding of how to compel audiences that the movie says he’s had since he was a kid. The Fabelmans is, for better or worse, a Spielberg movie. My sense is that how you feel about it will be determined by how you feel about him. If you think he’s the best to ever do it, you’ll probably appreciate this career retrospective about how he discovered the power and joy of cinema. If you’re cooler on him, maybe you’ll wonder why he gets to do it but Martin Scorsese or Federico Fellini, two guys who also probably grew up with cameras attached to their hands, don’t. I guess the obvious answer is that those guys never would, which is probably one of the reasons I like them more.

Black Adam - Jaume Collet-Serra

Jaume Collet-Serra is responsible for two of the best schlock masterpieces of the century, the Shallows and the Commuter, so I am hopeful he’s just paying his dues now before they’ll let him go back to cooking those up, and not that he’s been swallowed by the Comic Book Movie Industrial Complex, which really does gobble up everything cool or interesting or unique about filmmaking. That said, like most of them are, this is a perfectly fine beer watch. The Rock, who is straight up one of the most likeable people on the planet, has been a real life superhero ever since he didn’t care what your name was.

Triangle of Sadness - Ruben Ostlund

I got big The Lobster vibes from this one. Both from the structure--part 1 takes place in a hospitality center, part 2 takes place in the wilderness--and from the overt strangeness that keeps you on your toes the entire time; both movies could go anywhere. Ostlund makes so many choices that are so fun; one highlight being a drunken mock debate over economic policy between the ship’s raging alcoholic captain and a Russian oligarch who accidentally became incredibly rich and now lives with an acutely Russian nihilistic joie de vivre. The movie begins as a pretty open satire of wealth and grows increasingly hysterical until it suddenly transforms into something else--something smarter and more deft. A bunch of seemingly useless rich people are all forced to pivot into a society where none of their material gifts will benefit them at all, and do better than expected. What is Ostlund saying? I’m not sure. But another way he reminds me of my man Yorgos is that he sets up a wild premise and then explores it as he thinks it would go in real life. Its a fun way to make movies.

Bullet Train - David Leitch

So you’re an excellent filmmaker, just dripping with talent, but you’d rather make snappy action flicks than three hour Capital-F Films about classical music conductors (I loved Tar, just making a point). I can’t believe how good this movie is. Fast, witty, bouncing through timelines and stories with a throughline that keeps expanding and gets fuller and more fun as it chugs along. This is like if Guy Ritchie took better drugs, or if Tarantino didn’t have final cut. Brad Pitt is one of the best actors on the planet if you can find interesting things for him to do. Here he plays a reformed underworld professional who speaks almost entirely through New Age self-improvement jargon as he tries to find a new life path for himself. And that’s maybe the fifth best thing this movie does.

Argentina, 1985 - Santiago Mitre

This is a pretty downbeat movie. The dialogue is spoken at a low tone, the color palette is dark and brown, it never gets too loud. Knowledge of the country’s history would help--I needed Google for things every Argentinian already knows. Otherwise this is a very straight trial movie, all the way down to the verdict resting on the prosecutor’s ability to give a sufficiently inspiring speech. Most of the movie takes place in the courtroom or a law office. One of the protagonists comes from a comfortably fascist background and at one point has to attend the world’s worst family gathering, but otherwise there’s very little on the periphery.

Nanny - Nikyatu Jusu

The structure is fucked. This movie takes ages to get started and then rushes its ending. It feels very messy and less clear than it wants to be. I'll need to chew on it some more, but I think the idea here is the titular immigrant nanny is carried through a consuming anxiety about the family she left behind by an African spirit that is committed to her survival but isn’t necessarily benevolent. It’s really not a horror movie, and the beats it hits in service of the genre are largely unnecessary and fairly lame--I think we can go ahead and put a period on scary dream jump scares. But despite its flaws, which are all just novice direction shit, I really liked this. It looks great, and it has a control over its tone that makes it consistently engaging even if it doesn’t ever really cohere. I’m starting to think the reason why there are so many good horror movies now is because they’re cheap to make and aren’t beholden to existing IP--essentially they’re a bush league for promising young filmmakers. I suspect Jusu is more interested in exploring the African experience in America than she is in the genre. It will be interesting to see what she does next.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair - Jane Schoenbrun

I should say that the Internet didn’t invent loneliness, and things like these online sinkholes are just a new outlet for an old problem. If more people are isolating and detaching from reality, that has more to do with our culture and our politics (which the movie knows. A shot of a boarded Toys ‘R’ Us is as grim and unsettling as any of the webcam freakout scenes.) This is an incredibly effective film about a culture I don’t understand and have anxieties about. It seems pretty documented that more people are in fact isolating and detaching, and if they’re leaning into the type of solipsism that creates this stuff, that’s a fertile topic for new filmmakers. Maybe too fertile. Jesus Christ, this movie.

To Leslie - Michael Morris

The thing is, she’s really good in this! She’s not a sympathetic character for most it, she’s a full on addict, using the people who care about her and taking advantage of the Samaritans dumb enough to feel empathy for her. She’s resentful of the help she needs and then livid when people stop helping her. This is a movie I would not have heard about were it not for the insurgent Oscar campaign, but am glad I saw it. Sometimes its nice to watch small, universal stories play out. The third act redemption maybe comes a little too easily, and I’m not sure I buy what inspired it (a Willie Nelson song, apparently), but I’m just noting that for my own memory’s sake. This is a good one.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths - Alejandro Inarritu

There’s a scene here where the main character climbs up a giant pile of dead bodies until he reaches the top, where Spanish conquistador and founder of Mexico Hernan Cortes is waiting for him, and they get into a conversation about heritage. It’s a ripe scene, and its been set up perfectly, but the conversation isn’t as profound or layered as it could be, or that the height the director is reaching for suggests it should be. Then after a few minutes, some ash from Cortes’s cigarette falls on one of the dead bodies, who sits up to complain about it, and it’s revealed the whole thing is a scene from a film someone is making. Its not the first time and not the last time you want to throttle Inarritu. You’re one of the best filmmakers currently working, why do you keep fucking up your own good ideas with this jokey shit?!

I want to take my time with this movie because it deserves to be carefully considered. It is, without hesitation, the most ambitious movie of the last few years. My theory on Alejandro is that his life’s goal is to be Fellini; both this and Birdman shoot for the same surreal modernism that the Italian legend mastered back in the ‘60s. This one doesn’t get there the same way Birdman didn’t, and one of the reasons, at least in this case, is that he keeps telling us what he’s thinking instead of showing us. This film looks incredible, and the camera moves with the same fluidity it did in Birdman, but he runs out of tricks sooner than he should. His ideas could be conveyed visually, but instead he just has his characters say them out loud.

All that being said, I loved it. I loved it more than I loved Birdman when I first saw it, before I decided it was a failed version of 8 1/2. This is also a failed version of 8 1/2, but it’s playing with a different set of ideas. Instead of being a satire of the industry, it’s considering Mexican identity, and its ultimately more interested in mortality than in the morass of being alive. It’s incredibly rare to get a director who swings this hard, who’s given the space to work out his ideas like this, or who even has the balls or vision to try. A lot of this movie doesn’t work. But the parts that do are incredibly good, and his visual sensibility is unparalleled. This should be a -10,000 lock for best cinematography, but it won’t win because no one saw it. Which is to the detriment of the discourse. This movie deserves to be debated and raged over. It deserves to have partisans and detractors who crucify each other online. The culture would be infinitely better if we got three of these a year.

Vengeance - B.J. Novak

Parts of this movie are so good I had trouble believing the bad parts could be as bad as they were. A New York journo douchebag goes to deep west Texas for the funeral of a hookup he barely remembers because she’s told her family that they’re in a serious relationship, then stays because he thinks he’s found a podcast. The parts about Texas are fantastic; his dialogue is sharp and interesting--down here we don’t have police, we have Mike and Dan--and incredibly well observed. During a scene at a rodeo somebody is eating a giant barbecue chicken leg, someone else is eating potato chips covered in queso. But B.J. is playing a guy so cartoonishly dopey it feels beamed in from a different, much worse movie (sample dialogue: “Have you ever been in a fight?” “Like a real fight, or like a Twitter fight?”) Scenes where he’s on the phone describing the story to his incredulous producer give off Hallmark Christmas movie vibes. It’s so much worse than the stuff around it that I figured it had to be intentional. Maybe he’s the villain or something. But no, he just learns to love these simple people and their small town. One other thing, Ashton Kutcher, playing a sort of deep Texas ghost, is legitimately amazing here. Easily the best thing in it. If people had seen this he’d have been nominated. It’s that kind of performance.

Babylon - Damien Chazelle

Damien’s learned how to direct. Watching the guy who’s floundered (in my opinion) ever since his his tiny little arthouse flick about ambition put him on the map get these giant scenes to work makes me legitimately happy for him. There’s a moment during the party scene at the beginning where he turns the bacchanalia into an organized dance sequence, which feels like a guy making a choice; we’re going to stick classic film elements in the middle of this chaos, because we like them and we can. As far as I can tell the idea here is simple--turn the end of the silent film era into the fall of Babylon, or the Weimar Republic, or Vichy France, or any other era of decadence that was always going to be on borrowed time. Was it really like that? Is this a story that needed to be told? Who knows? And who cares? Unlike with First Man, he’s justified his decision by doing it well. There’s a scene here where a cruel and careless death cuts to a giant party, and its more effective--drunk and sobering--than when Scorsese did it in the Wolf of Wall Street.

RRR - S.S. Rajamouli

Maybe I’d feel differently if I was better versed in Bollywood; as it stands this film represents the entirety of the industry to me. Maybe this is like showing a person who’s never seen an American movie before the Avengers, and an Indian friend who liked it tells me it is not representative of Bollywood. But it ultimately doesn’t matter. First of all, I think it’s genuinely awesome that this has become such a crossover sensation, and that more people are getting exposed to world cinema. Second of all, this movie whips so much ass. It took me a minute to get used to the style, but once I did I was all the way in. The first film ever to get me pumping my fists in my living room. And a thing I’ve always believed is that being good at dancing is incredibly manly.

KIMI - Steven Soderbergh

There are two ideas in this that I like a lot: 1. what would the kind of trauma most thrillers like this are about do to a person after the movie ends?, and 2. what does a corporation that has to pretend it cares about ethics after #MeToo and Believe Women even though it obviously doesn’t look like in the year of our lord 2022? More than any other top shelf filmmaker I can name, Steven Soderbergh doesn’t seem to have any throughline other than that his movies are all made with a certain level of quality. There’s no thematic cohesion that I can find, other than a healthy dislike for companies and governments, and not really any stylistic one either, other than that his movies are all really neat and tidy. And while he used to get nominated for Oscars, for the past few years he’s seemed to be content pumping out genre flicks like a gun-for-hire Woody Allen, which I wonder if is just him being prescient about the state of the industry now. This is a quick little film, something that comes out by the truckload in the era of Netflix, but if you watched it without knowing who Steven Soderbergh was you’d be surprised by how good it is.

Watcher - Chloe Okuno

Didn’t really respond to this one. The acting’s not great, the pacing is off--she gets pretty scared pretty quickly--and beats that should hit hard land harmlessly. High point: Bucharest seems like a cool city.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

Guillermo is very good at putting the things he likes in movies that are ostensibly pretty one-for-them--some of these images belong on his highlight reel. There’s also a sweetness here that’s got his name all over it. This was apparently a years in the making passion project, and I have no doubt the animation is a triumph, but its a status as a Kids Movie papers over some storytelling messiness that bothered me as a person who doesn’t care about kids movies. At its best this movie makes me wish he’d gone full tilt into del Toro creature madness. Fuck the kids, man.

Women Talking - Sarah Polley

My take on this movie was that it’s the first piece of art to explicitly lay out the tenets of modern feminist philosophy, like a No Exit for the 21st Century American leftist political moment. I have never felt less equipped to give my opinion on a film, but suffice to say I liked this and thought it was intellectually interesting. Here’s the best I can do: this is an interesting one. Less interested in anger or revenge than in compassion and the value of forgiveness, and by value I mean worth, as in what do we gain by forgiving and what is the toll that forgiving will take on us? It’s that kind of a movie, managing emotional states with a philosophical detachment. Deal with the problem first, figure out how we feel about it later. Every atrocity visited upon these women is described in a matter of fact way. Nothing is shown.

The Good Nurse - Tobias Lindholm

This is firmly in Movie of the Week territory, all the way up to a soundtrack and establishing shots straight out of Law and Order, elevated slightly by its inclusion of two of our better actors.

Top Gun: Maverick - Joseph Kosinski

Loses points with me because it sags in the middle; I don’t care about Maverick’s guilt over his friend’s death or his romantic life. It’s great when he’s in the air. This whole movie should take place in a plane. Late period Tom Cruise is beloved by many, but not by me. I feel like he should have more to say at this point in his career than lying about his age.

The Whale - Darren Aronofsky

A very strange film. I’m not sure what to say about it. I wouldn’t call it pleasant, exactly. The main character’s morbid obesity seems almost like body horror at times. The plot seems simple enough; a guy makes the decision to remove himself from life after he loses a loved one, but it’s never quite that movie. I’m not sure if he’s a good person or not, or if he’s meant to be. He left his wife and daughter for someone else and was never in their life afterwards, though if you listen to him, he tried to be. I wondered if he’s someone that seeks out the good in others and extends that to himself even if he doesn’t deserve it. But if that’s the case, why is he killing himself? There’s also a religious element that fits in somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I thought about this movie the whole car ride home. I’m still working on it.

Empire of Light - Sam Mendes

Sam Mendes makes almost comically beautiful movies. This one, about a ragtag group of theater employees in England in 1981, takes place mostly in a movie theater, which is lit up and shot to look like a museum exhibit. This is a perfectly decent flick. It’s well paced, a simple story told well, emotional in the right places without being manipulative. It’s pleasant when its over. Not gutting, but pleasant.

Spiderhead - Joseph Kosinski

Quick, self-contained, well made, not too expensive, fun and kinda trippy, with a neat little twist at the end. I remember watching The Discovery a few years ago and thinking it was going to be the ur-text of a new genre called the Netflix Movie, and buddy was I right. These things now are being assembly-lined out by the dozen, and most of them are largely decent if a little bloodless. Sooner or later they’ll feel so packaged AI will start writing them, but until we get there I’m fine recommending a movie like Spiderhead. It’s a little bloodless in a way the similar genre grind-out KIMI isn’t, but it’s eerie while still being fun, holds its tone almost the whole way through, and includes the best Chris Hemsworth acting I’ve ever seen as a jocky nerd charming sociopath.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Ryan Coogler

The first one isn’t perfect, but like a lot of people I walked away from it thinking I’d just seen Marvel’s highwater mark. This one is even better. While the original stood above the rest by looking at real racial politics through the lens of a comic book movie, this one doubles down by bringing in a second superhero-ized colonized civilization with its own ideas about how to respond to the world at large and has the two of them meet and discuss. It even throws in for good measure a complex political dynamic at the top of the Wakanda power structure where every argument makes sense and is defensible. And while my biggest issue with the first one was that it could have used more world-building, some of the scenes here look genuinely great. All the standard Marvel movie objections apply--the dorky jokes, the dumb action scenes, the weirdly dark color palette these things are apparently mandated to have--but Ryan Coogler is possibly the only director franchised into the MCU who seems interested in making or allowed to make real movies.

Pleasure - Ninja Thyberg

A thing I learned the other day is that the movie Deepthroat was one of the highest grossing films of 1975. It is amazing to imagine the families of America lining up en masse to watch a movie, the premise of which is that a woman was born with her clitoris inside of her throat. I wouldn’t call Pleasure a return to a more sex positive past, exactly, but it’s explicitly sexually graphic in a way I’ve never really seen before outside of an actual porno. Parts of it are about the dark side of the porn industry, but other parts are about the light side, or the harmless side, and most of the characters are basically decent people. In fact one case this movie is making, maybe unintentionally, is that the ugly parts of the porn star life aren’t really any different than the ugly parts of the Hollywood life, or the sports life, or the investment banking life. The cost of success in this economy is your humanity, whether that means getting double-raw dogged in the ass or outsourcing a factory to Pakistan.

Ambulance - Michael Bay

Worth watching. Pretty fun. Basically incoherent. I will use this space for two observations: 1. Michael Bay has a fully singular visual style that if I had to give name to I would call Saturday afternoon barbecue full of hopefully not racist white men getting weepy after the fifth round of Coors Light, but its his, and as far as I can tell he created it, which means he fits my definition of an auteur. 2. Jake Gyllenhaal might actually be my favorite actor. He is incredible in this movie. I want to call it my second favorite performance of the year after Cate Blanchett in Tar. He’s not the most naturally gifted actor, it will never come as naturally to him as it does to, for instance, Cate Blanchett, but he makes up for that by going completely in on every role. He slips into raw nerve-ending panic within the first five minutes of being on screen in this movie. I think he also might be one the smartest actors in Hollywood. He has one particular line reading in this about a collection of plush flamingos that is so good, and so indicative that he knows exactly what he’s doing and what makes what he’s doing good, it singlehandedly bumps the movie up a letter grade.

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lovecolibri · 3 years

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SaL anon here my friend hoping that your on-point sparks posts have helped exorcise some of the finale bitterness. But if not may I offer up my RNM salt: science/sci-fi edition for your enjoyment (warning, this may get long). If so, read on! 1) Remember the super important sound-power discovery that separated cells made in 3x08 that made Jones stealing Liz's poorly concealed notes so devastating?? Glad to see that was SO useful in developing the serums in the finale so they didn't have to TBC.

invent new made-up science to bore the audience with. Way to embrace continuity writers. Also, nice to see instead of calling back to this when you had to have an obligatory last-minute snag, you utilized a dirty bandana, which would be impossible to get a pure sample off of with 2 other people's DNA on it, instead. 2) How do shotguns work in RNM? To my knowledge it doesn't just fire whatever you put in it, it needs a live shell. Which magically didn't destroy the glass test tube nor cause a giant chest cavity in Jones when fired at close range. Guess that's a good thing, would have made Echo love affirmation scene 133 where she extracts adrenaline to rapidly pump the serum through Jones's body pretty irrelevant if he has a gaping chest wound. 3) Prior to initiating shotgun Jeopardy, Isobel says she Can't use her aura powers since they both have so much fear. Soooo, are we just ignoring her mindscape powers now, the thing she's strongest in? Are we ignoring Michael's new mindscape powers he used just last episode to read his Dad when weakened, which he almost certainly is after the body-swap battle with Max and losing the superpowered sword?? Or that even if Jones was strong enough to keep both of them out, Max, their BROTHER, would not??!! Shotgun Jeopardy is neat, but it's setup is complete BS. 4) Remember in 3x08 when Jones said explicitly his and Max's DNA was psychically bound? Should that not require the solution also be part psychic?? Like wouldn't this have been a great time for the aliens to participate in making the serum controlling their fate, not just be bystanders? I guess it's just lucky they landed on Earth, where the means of breaking a psychic alien connection can be found in the off-the-shelf chemicals of Deep Sky. 5) Its more of a plot issue but wasting so much time on the tropey "but what if a lose my superpowers" storyline with Max, only for that entire thing to be resolved in the exact same episode??!! Seriously so much screen time was spent on Max's therapy sessions and no time spent to let the significance of that sink in, only for it to literally go nowhere. Was this really necessary? Anyway, that's most of the list without me starting to get technical with "the science". I'll give you my S2 Buddie thoughts later, at least after Monday's episode which sounds intense. Fingers crossed it delivers friend!

Ok but YES to all of this!!! Why do all of that with the sound frequencies as the way to sever the connection and Jones finding this out being A Big Bad Thing, only to have it NOT be the thing that severs the connection?! Also as someone else pointed out, why give Michael the power to yeet Jones from the Sheriff’s mind only after we spent several episodes trying to *checks notes* remove Jones from m*ria’s mind because she was actively dying. Why didn’t they go that route to begin with? Why didn’t they use the sound frequency not just to switch Jones and Max’s bodies (which, WHAT?!), but to sever their connection? And why did they HAVE to use the radios and infrared to do that? Liz certainly didn’t when she got Jones out of m*ria’s head!

Also, nice to see instead of calling back to this when you had to have an obligatory last-minute snag, you utilized a dirty bandana, which would be impossible to get a pure sample off of with 2 other people's DNA on it, instead.

Right?! Like, it was an old one? That Alex had been carrying around in his pocket and was handling it and putting it on the Lockhart Machine, and clearly someone took it from him to give to Liz because we didn’t see him bringing it in! Also, they’ve known Michael was related to Jones for quite some time so how did that question not come up earlier as something to look into?

Guess that's a good thing, would have made Echo love affirmation scene 133 where she extracts adrenaline to rapidly pump the serum through Jones's body pretty irrelevant if he has a gaping chest wound.

Yes, yes, yes to all of this, but also didn’t they JUST in the same episode deal with Eduardo trying to shoot Jones and failing? Like, we literally just talked about guns being a useless weapon against someone with telekinetic powers!

Shotgun Jeopardy is neat, but it's setup is complete BS

Absolutely! I liked the set up with them not knowing who is who and the True Soulmates moment of recognition, but this specific moment should have happened waaaaay earlier, and with less aliens around who could get into the mind of the Real Max. This should have been like, early Jones impersonating Max stuff.

Like wouldn't this have been a great time for the aliens to participate in making the serum controlling their fate, not just be bystanders?

We were ROBBED of seeing more of Michael and Liz working on The Science together, especially because we found out several episodes before this that Michael was related to Jones! That should have been the trigger for them to work together on this! And yes, I love that Michael wanted to work with Alex on the machine but we just got told that and didn’t actually see much of it happening. So I’d rather have SEEN Michael working with Liz and Kyle helping Alex with the machine.

Seriously so much screen time was spent on Max's therapy sessions and no time spent to let the significance of that sink in, only for it to literally go nowhere.

Uuuuuugh, this was season 2′s “oh no I’m going to come back as Evil!Max, just let me die, only for it to be resolved in 3 minutes” all over again. Maybe, instead of wasting 5-ish episodes on a plot that went nowhere and impacted nothing, they should have spent more time stretching out the Jones plot so there was time to hit those emotional beats and let the characters sit with the uncomfortable things, and actually show us some of those big moments and conversations instead of throwing them out in passing.

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! I’m always so excited to hear from you! I’m so excited to hear your Buddie thoughts. I’m soooo hoping Monday’s episode delivers some good hostage content but I’m also wondering if it got shuffled around with some of the other stuff! I look forward to reminiscing about season 2 Buddie though because whoooo boy have some Choices been made even from the very start! I hope you have a fabulous day my friend!

#my sweet nonnie friends #sleeping at last anon #roswell nm #roswell nm my behated #that vision plot ruined the who season and you cannot change my mind #what an absolute waste of screen time #which ultimately left the rest of the season feeling rushed and incomplete #fingers crossed they worked out some of the kinks for season 4 #but i am...not holding my breath

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shizukateal · 3 years

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I really appreciate your analysis on designs 'cause I've learned a lot and gotten better as a result so, regarding the last ask, what are some of the top tier magireco designs you mentioned? I wanna see your opinion :)

Ok, I’m doing this.

On first place, the single best Magia Record outfit I’ve seen so far is...

Aimi Eri!

Not only does she respect my 3 rules perfectly, but if she were drawn in Ume Aoki’s style you would be forgiven for mistaking her as part of the Holy Quintet, since her look goes so well with theirs’. Sadly, she seems one of the more unpopular characters in the roster, since I’ve seen so little about her, so I guess she won’t be the redemption her creator needs for being the artists of Oreimo and Eromanga-sensei. I’ll be damned if the dude didn’t delivered on this job, though.

Below her I’d put (in a very tentative order of quality) Touka Satomi, Livia Medeiros, Valentine’s Day!Nagisa, Tsukasa Amane, Sasara Minagi (if I don’t discount points for being a blatant Asuna SAO ripoff), Tsukasa Tatsuki, Nanaka Tokiwa, Umika Misaki, and Manaka Kurumi as the other 10/10, completely flawless designs. Below that we get to the 9.9′s, those designs with maybe 1 or two flaws that aren’t as important in the big picture like Sana Futaba, Shizuku Hozumi, Iroha and Ui Tamaki, and the rest of the main 5 in magia record, Konomi Haruna, Karin Misono, Tsukuyo Amane, Mito Aino, Rika Ayano, Riko Chiaki, Ren Isuzu, Sunao Toki, Hinano Miyako, and Tart.

After that we get slightly more complicated cases that don’t fit squarely into a numerical value, including those outfits which are perfectly fine but just don’t quite appeal to me like Mellissa de Vignoles, Temari Kira, and Mayu Kozue’s. To make things quick, here’s all the other characters which I consider on the upper side of the spectrum, in no particular order:

Meguru Hibiki

Alina Grey

Nemu Hiiragi

San Kagura

Yozuru Asame

Emiri Kisaki

Ria Ami

Seika Kumi

Hotori Yuzuki

Ashley Taylor

Oriko Mikuni

Kirika Kure

Kaoru Maki

Matsuru Hinata

Haruka Kanade

Tsubaki Mikoto

Suzune Amane

Holy!Alina/Mami/Momoko

I probably forgot someone and I reserve my right to change my mind on any of them, but these are more or less my impressions so far. Aimi is still pretty settled on the first place spot, though. Also, some of the girls mentioned here also may be dangerously skirting the middling territory of the spectrum. I’m really bad at categorizing my opinions in a neat scale.

#magia record #magical girl fashion

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lights-up-divine · 3 years

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For a Soul

A young soul-eater comes across what it thinks is a perfect target. After a bit of observation it decides that the time has come to make a deal.

~3k

After school Ria liked to decompress, I learned that quickly. Taking off her shoes, lying on her bed still all dolled up and just taking a moment to exist. Her parents thought that she was just procrastinating on starting her homework, but I could see that for Ria it was a necessary process.

The day I made contact with her she was doing just that. Lying in bed, backpack out of sight, out of mind under her bed, just scrolling through Instagram. And while she was technically unwinding, Ria was anything but relaxed. It was the jealousy, that burning envy that made Ria fume that afternoon. Every girl or guy she followed seemed hotter, happier, more skilled, more successful. That was the reason she followed them after all, because they seemed so much better than her. So unreachably amazing that she just couldn’t take her eyes off of them. One post especially got Ria’s blood boiling. A woman, a black woman just like her, standing in front of a store. She owned it, she had just opened her own business.

“Of course,” Ria scoffed to herself, she didn’t really like letting anyone in her bedroom, “Look at her, pretty, well connected, I bet she’s fucking ivy league. Black girl magic? Fuck her, if I had everything she had I could do that too.”

Ria hearted the post and continued scrolling, each posting evoking this kind of response from her. Eventually she turned her phone off and got out her backpack, finally getting to her homework. It was crunch time, as her dad called it. She put her blonde wig up into a bun and sat down at her desk. Five minutes choosing what song to listen to and then she actually got started. A shaky start sure but it was a start. If someone knocked on her door now she would have to stop for the day, her concentration broken. Ria secretly hoped someone would.

But no one did, her mom wasn’t back from work yet and her older brother was probably practicing for the chess tournament that weekend. Her dad was sleeping, he worked nights so he had to get his sleep. Ria wondered as she was filling out graphs for math, what would happen if she woke him up. He would probably yell at her and that would be another excuse not to do her homework. She didn’t though, dinner was already going to be hard so why would she make it harder.

Dinner eventually came, it was nothing special just leftover pasta from the previous day. Ria’s mom came back from work, her dad woke up to have his before work meal, and her and her brother left their rooms. Ria was done with math and science, but she hadn’t even begun to tackle her history yet. Picking out a new playlist to listen to had taken up a lot of time so by the time dinner was ready Ria wasn’t even close to done.

The dining table was crammed into the entryway between the stairs and the front door, somewhere more for guests than for the Bryan family. There was a table in the kitchen that they usually ate at but Ria’s mom had been on a family unity kick, that’s why they were even having dinner together in the first place. Ria hoped that her mom moved onto something else soon, maybe that anti-sugar thing that took over her mind every couple of months, because she hated sitting around the table. They all barely had anything in common so it was silent most of the time.

Ria ate her pasta quickly, school lunch was terrible so she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. The pasta was good, red sauce that wasn’t spicy, box pasta that wasn’t overcooked. But the green cushions on the chairs were cold and the atmosphere at the table awkward in a suffocating way. Ria definitely wasn’t getting seconds.

“Do you need a ride to the tournament on Saturday?” Ria’s dad asked her brother.

“No,” Samuel responded, “Lin and I are doing a carpool, she’s picking everyone up.”

Their dad nodded and everyone continued eating their meal in silence. Their dad because he was thinking of work, their mom because she was tired from work, Samuel because he was thinking of the tournament, and Ria because she just didn’t have anything to say.

“Have y’all finished your homework?” their mom asked?

Samuel responded yes immediately, like it was an insult to ask him. While Ria took another forkful of pasta and realized that she had never in her life said ya'll.

“Have you?” her mom asked again.

Ria thought about how to phrase it, “I just have history left.”

Her mom shook her head, “You need to be more proactive, you can’t do extra credit if you don’t do all your homework. If you work harder this semester you can get all As, colleges will be looking at your grades Ria.”

Her dad joined in but Ria wasn’t listening, she had become a master at tuning out lectures. In middle school it had been get better grades, join the debate team, join the soccer team, you need to prepare for college. And now in highschool it’s been get better grades, do more volunteer work, join an honor society, prepare for college. When the lecture ended, with Samuel saying nothing, Ria nodded and said that she would work harder. She finished dinner, not too fast, she didn’t want them to think she was mad at them, and then went upstairs. Her parents thought that she was going to do the rest of her homework, but she had already resolved to do it in the morning. Her parents berating her had already provided her the perfect excuse not to do her homework.

Instead she plopped down on her bed and started scrolling through Instagram. I got to see the pattern in who she was following then. Models, students, hiking pages, along with a lot of flower arrangers. That made a lot of sense, Ria cared a lot about her appearance and even though she hated doing her homework she wished that she was a better student. And while she wasn’t on instagram she was hiking through the woods behind her house, looking for flowers she thought was neat.

Between the study inspo and the delicate vases of flowers Ria came upon one of her favorite influencers. A girl, a senior in highschool in fact, living in New York City. She was holding up a college acceptance letter, several in fact. Columbia, Harvard, Yale, this girl was definitely Ivy League. “Guess my hard work is paying off lol, don’t worry with a little dedication I’ll see you guys there soon!”

This caption put Ria over the edge. She didn’t throw her phone across the room, her parents wouldn’t pay if she broke it, but she closed the app and put it down slowly. Head on her knees she started laughing, those angry, jealous, emotional tears were running down her face.

“Hard work?” Ria yelled just quiet enough that her family wouldn’t hear her, “Hard work? Bitch your parents are engineers, you live in New York City and you’re skinny as fuck. Hard work? Give me a fucking break! If I could just, if I just had....”

Ria was crying too much to rage anymore, her envy at the Instagram girl and her anger at her own poor performance spilling over into just pure emotion.

I had been keeping track of her for a while and I had decided that it was time for us to make our deal. She was bunched up on her bed so I manifested a form I thought she would like and came up behind her, brushing her shoulders in a way that I hoped was reassuring. Ria turned around quickly, as anyone might turn around when someone touched them when they thought they were alone.

Finding no one behind her, Ria just faced forward again and was about to continue crying. And she almost did, until she saw me. Ria didn’t cry out immediately, I had a calming effect on people by design, instead while I studied her up close she studied me. Watching people on the metaphysical plane was nice but it tended to blur out some of the color, some of the details of looking at people with eyes. Now that I was actually standing in front of her I could see that her long curly wig was dirty blonde, and her eyeliner was running. She sniffled and tried to clean up her smudged lip-gloss, taking all of me in. My form was a bunch of Instagram models that Ria had seen with skin darker than hers and short curly black hair. Ria started playing with her hair, and I laughed. It was adorable that she found me attractive.

I sat down on the foot of her bed and smiled, “What if you could.”

The mixture of her attraction to me and my natural calming factor was working wonders, “Could what?”

“If you could have that, if you could do that, if you could be that?” I asked her, “What would you do then?”

Ria sniffled but I think she got it, “I would relax.”

Relax, she wanted to relax. I resisted the urge to smirk. If she wished to relax then there would be a lot of room to play around with that. Have her sleep forever, in a coma that is, like sleeping beauty? Or maybe I could just kill her and take her soul that way. After all death is eternal rest.

“I can give you that, you’ll be able to relax as long as you want.”

Ria thought for a second then shook her head, “I don’t want to just relax, I want to be able to relax. To not have to work hard, to just be able to relax and still excel in life. I don’t want to have to break myself in order to succeed.”

I cocked my head a bit, “But working hard gets you what you want in life, you need to work hard in order to succeed.”

“Do you think half the millionaires in this world worked hard!?” Ria exploded, “Why do they get to relax and have everything while I need to. I need to work 10 times as hard in order to just get a fraction of what they have! Mom works 50 hours a week and I never see Dad during the day.” Ria’s tears were hot and free flowing by this point. I scooted closer to her and rubbed her back a bit, “Samuel never has time to hike with me anymore, he says he needs to constantly be practicing in order to be captain of the chess team. And the only thing Jonathan can say about law school is how little he sleeps nowadays.”

I could infer that Jonathan was her oldest brother, already in law school while his little siblings were still in highschool. I wondered what the story was about that. Ria dissolved into tears, tears for her family that didn’t have time for her anymore, tears for her parents that were working hard for a daughter that didn’t want to, and tears for her siblings that were missing out on life.

She leaned into my chest, she must have been really sad. From what I understood the targets normally didn’t let their guards down that much.

“I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” she whispered, “I wish I could but I can’t. Mom always tells me to work hard and Dad is already suggesting majors to me. I don’t want to be the disappointment, that’s why I still get As, but I can’t keep doing this.”

“Tell me what you want, Ria.” I whispered into her ear, I was fully hugging her at this point, “Tell me and I can give it to you.”

She broke away from me at this point, her cheeks were wet but the black shirt I was wearing wasn’t. This I think tipped her off, but still somehow she wasn’t panicking.

“Who are you?” she said softly, I think all of the crying had worn away at her voice.

I petted her head, listing what I was could be scary and I wanted to keep her relaxed in my presence.

“I am the eyes you know are in the darkness, the teeth in the shadows, the one watching you from the starless sky.” I said softly, and she didn’t seem to panic, “I am the thing in the darkness and I know you.”

“How do you know me,” her dark brown eyes looked into mine. In that moment I put something behind the infinite darkness of my eyes. I wondered if she would ever stare long enough to find out what it was.

I laughed a bit, trying to get her to think I was a little embarrassed, “I’ve been watching you for about a week now Ria, I noticed that you have something that you really wanted in life and I wanted to give that to you.”

She pulled on her hair, it seems like she really was embarrassed, “You didn’t need to do that, you could have just asked me a week ago.”

I brushed her face with my hand, it was still wet and a little sticky but she had stopped crying at least, “I wanted to get to know you Ria. And now I do. What do you want, tell me and I can give it to you.”

She thought for a second, it was more like she was thinking about how to phrase it. Ria already knew what she wanted, she just didn’t know how to wish for it.

While she was thinking her mom came upstairs, wanted to ask her if she had finished her homework. With just a thought I put some darkness around the door, nothing big, just enough to deter any normal human being from approaching it. I wished that I could control her mind, manipulate her limbs, or make her just disappear. But at this point I was still a young soul-eater, Ria would be my first soul. Once I had eaten her soul I would get more power, and it seemed like I was almost there.

“I want to be irresistible and for everything I make or put effort into be irresistible as well.” I smiled, she had really put some thought into it, “I want everything to give me what I want and think of me positively. This goes especially for job and college applications as well, no matter what I always want to be accepted.”

That sounded like hell, how would you know if you are actually good at something or if it was just the wish? I didn’t even need to put a negative spin on Ria’s wish, give it three months and she would be begging me to take away her soul. An amazing deal for a brand new-soul eater. I had worked hard to become who I was, and I knew that without hard work, without that feeling of accomplishment life would be nothing.

“Alright,” I said, “I can give you that. But I do need one thing from you.”

“What is it?”

This was where I could lose her, “It's really the promise that I need. The energy of you promising something important to me is what will give me the energy to grant your wish. Don’t think too hard about the sticker price, think instead about what you will be getting.”

She nodded, “What do you need me to promise you for it to work?”

Again I petted her hair and the look she gave me was so trusting. I guess an attractive wish granter promising the world, promising everything she knew could never happen, would put anyone in a state of complete bliss.

Technically what I told her was true, the energy from her promise would power the wish. But what I didn’t tell her was that I needed to eventually get her soul. The potential energy needed to be converted to kinetic energy for it all to work. I would need to get her soul. She hadn’t thought enough about her wish, I could almost feel the slippery, sunlit energy of her soul.

“I need your soul, Ria.”

I must have done a good job talking to her, she didn’t jump away from me just looked a little concerned. Like she had cracked her phone screen and was worried about the price.

“But what will I do without a soul?” she asked.

I shook my head and for good measure laughed, “It's just a promise remember. Like how even though Audible could take away your books for any reason it doesn’t. Think of it like signing a contract, it's just paper. Don’t worry, just think about how great your life will be. No need to work for anything, you’ll have the space to relax.”

This seemed to bolster her confidence, “Alright, you can have my soul-”

She stopped and for a second I thought she had rethought everything, “Actually what’s your name?”

I knew that some of the older soul-eaters had names, names that would send shivers down your spine, names that would blind you just for thinking of them, names that would make you melt. But when Ria asked me that I didn’t have anything to say to her.

“Call me whatever you wish, Ria.” I smiled.

“Alright,” she said, but she didn’t even suggest any names, “I’m ready to promise me your soul.”

As much as I wanted her soul I was shocked and intrigued at how little she was thinking of this. What was she thinking? Was I missing something? It was my first deal I didn’t want to get tricked.

“Would you really promise your soul just so you don’t have to work hard?” I asked her, then, pushing the boundaries a bit I cupped her face, “You’re smart, you’re pretty, you could get far in life if you worked hard. Is this promise worth it for you?”

She laughed bitterly, her sadness having seamlessly converted to anger, “Nathaniel’s in law school now. He doesn’t have friends, he has connections, he’s studying 12 hours a day after his 5 hours of classes, he has like two side hustles. And I know that he thinks it's worth it, but I don’t. I don’t want to be exhausted when I grow up, I want to live, not just hustle.”

Even if she didn’t want to be exhausted I thought that she was underestimating how much the satisfaction of hard work played in her life. She was angry, just thinking about what she didn’t want instead of what she actually wanted her life to be. I could have talked her down, could have reminded her how amazing life could be with that satisfaction. But I wasn’t there to be her therapist, I was there to get her soul.

“Alright, how long do you want the wish to last?” I asked her, in order for it to work every promise would need to have a time limit. Some predestined date where all of the potential energy would start to convert.

“Forever,” Ria responded.

I laughed, “Nothing can last forever, Ria.” And then seeing that she was getting apprehensive again I decided to go for a compromise, “But things can last a lifetime, things can last ten years, however long you wish Ria.”

She nodded, “Alright I want it to last the rest of my life.”

I had the promise, the time frame, and what she wanted. It was ready, I could almost taste her soul. Before Ria had any more time to think I grabbed her face, sinking my fingers into her cheeks. I looked deep into her eyes, deeper than any human could. Her retinas, her optic nerve, I saw her brain. When I could see the lighting jumping between her neurons the deal was sealed and I disappeared.

Ria was left lying on her bed, feet dangling over the edge, with a light buzzing in her head. She got up to do her homework, wondering if it had all been real.

I recently read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and it kind of inspired this story. I’m trying to put more emotion into my stories. Please tell me if Ria’s character felt believable or if I got her emotions across. Have an amazing weekend!

#amwriting #writing #creative writing #short story #writers #My writing #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #demon #deal #original #story #My Story #My characters #historical fiction #original writing #original fiction #Original Work #etddivine

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konpithepuppy · 3 years

Text

[TRANSLATION: WiNK UP 02.2021]

7 MEN SAMURAI CROSS TALK

Scans not mine

Neither an English or a Japanese native speaker

Feel free to correct me, thanks

WHAT SHOULD WE DO TODAY?

This month, images of before going in a date with the girlfriend who works in the same company were photographed. With the 6 of them in a round table discussion, they talked about the theme 「7 MEN 侍 Popular Guy Championship 」. The member who shined as the most popular is...?

If you date Katsuki, it feels like all her data will be gathered by Katsuki...

Yabana: Today's theme is "7 MEN~ Popular Guy Championship"! The winner is Reia-kun!

Nakamura: Thank you very much!

Sugeta: Wait, wait a minute! After taking time away from the topic, I think that Rinne is also popular!

Nakamura: What do you mean by that? LOL

Sugeta: I think each member is popular. But, in the end, it makes me think that Rinne is the most popular after all. Moreover, if we probably do a "the member you want to be as your lover" ranking, Reia would be in the 1st place. Well then, since we answered the question so fast, shouldn't we add some variations?

Nakamura: I see. How are we gonna expand it?

Sugeta: Like "Who is the リア恋枠?" Rinne thinks it would be these two (Motodaka and Rinne). (T/N: リア恋枠 = ria-koi-waku; a term for the idol who you want to be your bf/husband, he doesn't have to be good looking or your favorite member)

Konno: To be in love with Yabana?

Yabana: Am I not kind of like that? Since it seems like there's this sense of closeness with me. But, I think it's different with Daka-san. Since he is super smart, it seems like there is a high hurdle so I feel like the girls will have a hard time approaching him.

Motodaka: I think that's not true.

Nakamura: No, if you date Katsuki, I feel like all her data will be gathered by Katsuki...

Konno: He'll make his partner something like a report card LOL.

Sasaki: That thing that looks like a hexagon (radar chart), right? LOL!

Nakamura: Yes, that. Look, during the end of the year, we get a report card from Katsuki every year, don't we? He'll do that to the girl too LOL.

Motodaka: Stop it, people will probably really believe in what you said! To the readers, I don't do that kind of stuff! I don't do assessment of other people!

Konno: Then, who is the リア恋枠 (ria-koi-waku)?

Sasaki: Isn't it me?

Nakamura: Well no, since you (Taiko) are still a high school student. I think it is still early to be a partner for that.

Sasaki: So what you mean is that I should not yet talk about love, right? LOL

Nakamura: Yup. When you graduate from high school, I will let you join in this theme.

Sasaki: That means I'm on hold for now LOL.

Konno: But, I feel like older girls think that Taiko is cute.

Yabana: Nope, I think the the one who the girls think they want to protect is Konpi. Your atmosphere too provides healing.

Sugeta: What? There's no doubt that the guy who you want to protect is Rinne, right?!

Yabana: You can run for this position thoughtlessly, but wanting to protect that kind of body...it's impossible! Since the one that you would like to protect is a guy who is like a puppy LOL.

Konno: Rinne is rather a Tosa LOL.

Yabana: Exactly! Since his muscle is amazing LOL. That's why, ain't Rinne-kun No. 1 in popularity in "girls who like strong men"?

Sugeta: No, I am thinking that I want to be popular so I am doing muscle training, but a person who doesn't like that kind of person will not like him/her after all...

Nakamura: Ah, you were told about that on YouTube. Someone said "I don't like that much guys who are macho."

Motodaka: That can't be helped. It's just natural that there are also people who are like that.

Yabana: Since it is impossible to be popular to everyone.

Konno: But I definitely think that there are people who are "I like those well-built type of guys."

Nakamura: Certainly. It will be impossible for the other 5 of us to be popular to people who like that type of guys.

Konno: But, me being want to be protected is somewhat...

Motodaka: Konpi, I understand!

Konno: Coz I'm a guy.

Sugeta: Actually, you're probably the manliest among us, right?

Yabana: He is like a good old Japanese man.

Sugeta: That-is-why!! The person who you want to protect is Rinne!!

Nakamura: Okay, I get it LOL. Well then, when you (Rinne) see this girl, what would be the thing where you would think that you cannot compromise?

Sugeta: I don't like people who gives in to temptation too fast~

Yabana: You're stoic after all!

Sasaki: Maybe that not all you want to say but you can't get your words out LOL.

Motodaka: There's no concrete words for what you want to say?

Sugeta: There is! Colored contact lenses are iffy~ right?

Motodaka: That is very specific LOL.

Sugeta: In make-up and fashion too, I think it is better if it is natural.

Nakamura: You want someone who looks neat and clean, right?

Sugeta: Yeah! That was what I wanted to say!

Konno: Reia-kun is difficult on the contrary. Since he is cute that even girls look jealous of him.

Yabana: Since his disguise already came off in front of us so we are really not affected by that LOL, but maybe for people who don't really know him will see him like that. For Reia-kun, what kind of girl is okay for you?

Nakamura: An omoshiroi person I guess. Even though I said "omoshiroi", I don't mean someone who is laughable, but the type "the more you know that person, the deeper you feel for that person" is good. (T/N: omoshiroi can either be "funny" or "interesting")

Motodaka: Ah, someone you'll have fun with when you're together, right?

Nakamura: That's why I think I like someone who is well-mannered.

Motodaka: Well-mannered, or rather, someone who is refined, right?

Sugeta: Rinne also like that type of girl! I like someone who will not say "umai" but "oishii" during mealtime. (T/N: umai and oishii both mean "tastes good" but umai is an informal/slang kind of saying it, while oishii is the standard/formal way of saying it)

Motodaka: The words they use, right? That's important.

Yabana: I also like a person who is polite. Like someone who will not cause a trouble in store. But, I don't mind if she is being sarcastic if she is only in front of me.

Nakamura: Well then, is it okay if she is like Katsuki who can get hold of himself when she is outside but she is like Taiko when she is inside the house? LOL

Yabana: I'm okay with that LOL. Rather, with that, I think I will be glad that she is a careless grace at home. Also, a cheerful one is better after all.

Nakamura: That cheerfulness may help you, right?

Yabana: Yeah. Since I am already gloomy, if I go out with the same type, we will become gloomier LOL.

Motodaka: Me too, I'm about the same with Yabana.

Yabana: Yey! (Did an air hightouch with Motodaka)

Nakamura: What type do you like, Taiko?

Sasaki: Someone who looks clean and tidy is second to none I think. If I talk about visuals, more than being pretty, I prefer someone who looks cute.

Nakamura: How about Konpi?

Konpi: I like someone who is pretty. But it's not about visuals, it's about fashion. Her sense with clothes is quite important.

Yabana: What will you do if that person is your super type but her fashion is different from your preference?

Konno: I'll give her clothes as a present.

Other 5 members: Woah~!

Yabana: That is so manly!

Konno: Ah, but, saying something like this, I think I will be disliked by girls who are thinking of wanting to protect me LOL.

Yabana: Or perhaps I should say, if we put in total this discussion, the member with largest gap is Konpi, right?

Motodaka: Certainly. It seems that there are a lot of people who go "kyun" with that gap. (T/N: kyun = momentary tightening of one's chest caused by powerful feelings)

Nakamura: Well then, all in all, it is decided that Konpi is the No. 1 popular guy.

Konno: Really? Yey!!

Nakamura: Rinne, are you okay with that?

Sugeta: I'm fine with that. Here (Sugeta did an air pass).

Yabana: Just now, you (Rinne) handed over to Konpi the trophy that looked like it was in your possession until now but you really don't have one LOL.

#translation #7 men 侍

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thefairywithdrawings · 4 years

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My Transformation Rankings (PART 1)

Hello, it is time. I will now be ranking all magical girl transformations. Firstly, I will not be rating the ones featuring characters specifically made for the main story, or are a part of the original anime, or are an anime property like Monogatari. Of course they have the best transformations lol. A transformation here is defined as “going from one outfit/state-of-dress to another”. In addition, I will sort transformation videos into categories:

Category 1: There is no actual outfit transformation. They’re in their outfit at the beginning of the video, or don’t appear in two different states of dress.

Category 2: There is no actual outfit transformation, BUT they summon their weapon.

Category 3: There’s an actual outfit transformation! However they don’t summon their weapon (they already have it on them in most situations, Melissa does not have it at all)

Category 4: An actual outfit transformation, and they summon their weapon.

Category 1:

Asuka Tamaki, Nanaka Kokoro, Natsuki Utsuo, Sasara Minagi, Nanaka Tokiwa, Shizuku Hozumi, Akira Shinobu, Natsume Kokoro, Ayaka Mariko, Masara Kagami, Aimi Eri, Seika Kumi, Mito Aino, Mayu Kozue, Hiro Chiharu, Nanasa Yukika, Mihono Seira, Mikuni Oriko, Maki Kaoru, Suzune Amano, Hinata Matsuri, Azumi Hagumu, Yukine Maria, Riz Hawkwood

Category 2:

Meiyui Chun, Kokoro Awane, Mel Anna, Kanae Yukino, Sarasa Hanna, Komachi Mikura, Chizu Ranka, Suzuka Sakuya, Kirika Kure, Elisa Celjska, Narumi Arisa, Kanade Haruka, Megumi Moka

Category 3:

Hinano, Emiri Kisaki, Manaka Kurumi, Rika Ayano, Kuroe(?), Toki Sunao, Kira Temari, Natsu Ryouko, Melissa de Vignolles, Tsumugi Wakana

Category 3.5: Summon one PART of Their Outfit:

Chitose Yuma, Leila Ibuki, Konomi Haruna, Corbeau, Mizuki Rui

Category 4:

Ren Isuzu, Konoha Shizumi, Hazuki Yusa, Ayami Mikuri, Karin Misono, Himika Mao, Ria Ami, Riko Chiaki, Ryo Midori, Ikumi Makino, Fumino Sayuki, Miyabi Shigure, Kazumi, Misaki Umika, Tart, Shion Chisato, Rika and Ren, Izumi Kanagi, Hibiki Meguru

My favourites for each category: I will be grading these based on how they use what they are given. If they have weapons, how do their weapons add to the scene? What does it tell us about the magical girl? For instance, category 1, instead of transforming, what makes it interesting to watch, how do the girls appear?

For Category 1: Riz Hawkwood – music is cool and reminds me of a witch burning at the stake, relevant to Tart’s story. I like how she emerges from the shadows and her animation is pretty stylized in terms of shading and shine. Suzune Amano – the fire is cool and has a similar style to Riz’s, she’s swinging her sword and moving. Ashley Taylor and Ayaka Mariko – both of them emerge from smoke. Ayaka’s is relevant to her theme of performance, and I like how she transitions into the last frame by turning the thing into her hammer. Fun and upbeat energy. Ashley and her bear both mimic each other and it’s ADORABLE.

For Category 2: Megumi Moka – It tells us a lot about her: she likes sweets, is clumsy but a good sport about it (considering her axe almost cut her foot off), and is honestly a sweet-heart *ba-dum-chiss*. The videos are supposed to be an introduction to their character and I’m already in love with this cutie pie. Kirika Kure - the animators embraced the crazy and I will forever love them for it. Kokoro Awane - fluid animation, moves with her weapon in a dynamic way.

For Category 3: Melissa de Vignolles - This introduces us to her backstory as a maid, and how she was raised to act well-mannered. Everything is perfected by her little curtsey at the end, she’s just adorable! Rika Ayano - First we see her reflection, then it cuts to her. I enjoy how her compact mirror is used to transform her, similar to one of Sailor Moon’s or Pretty Cure’s transformation items. Kurumi Manaka - I appreciate that the fire from her frying pan acts as a transition into her outfit, a few frames dedicated to highlighting her chef’s hat. Toki Sunao - This is one of the more detailed transformations in this category, and I enjoy how the glass ball remains as a constant, slowly moving her arms up at the end. The music fits well, and it’s one of the better animations overall, personal top 3.

For Category 4: Karin Misono - music gives you a sense of that halloween feel they’re definitely going for, and the transformation sequence is timed to it. It’s satisfying to watch the hat fall on her head and how she cheekily sticks out her tongue as the music dings. I love how they add on her outfit items as the camera zooms out farther. Emiri Kisaki - Very well timed to the music. Mizuki Rui - She starts off confused “What’s happening?, transitions to “Okay! I guess we’re doing this”, to “Yeah! We’re doing this!”. The emotion tells us a story, and I love it! As well as being timed to the music, the items appear as she twirls her weapon, wrapping the whole thing up in a neat bow and gives us a satisfactory conclusion. Sayuki Fumino - Her transformation reminds me of a mix between something I’d see in Mermaid Melodies and Sailor Moon with the whole singing and catching the twirling microphone in her hand as she glides through the air, magic wrapping around her whole body. It’s very well done, even if her end pose is a little suspect, she still looks adorable. Izumi Kanagi - the PRESENCE this one has. She is a fighting commander and you WILL follow her orders. Less emphasis is put on her face, as we see the cape flapping behind her as she braves the harsh wind. As she struggles to summon her eye glass, we get a sense that she cares less about herself and more so the cause she fights for and the burdens she carries. If this technically bends the rules, I DON’T CARE.

I will probably do a ranking for the worse transformations in a seperate post. When I do, you will be able to find the link HERE.

If I do one on all the main cast ones, the link will be HERE.

#magia record #magireco #riz hawkwood #suzune amano #ashley taylor #Ayaka Mariko #Rika Ayano #Karin Misono #Emiri Kisaki #Mizuki Rui #Sayuki Fumino #Melissa de Vignolles #Tart Magica #Suzune Magica #puella magi madoka magica #madoka magica #fairytalks #fairytalk

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agent-murica · 5 years

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RvB Rec Day: May

Thought I’d forget to do this, huh? Well, guess again, because here I am to recommend stuff for the best month of the year. Oh yeah, let’s get on this.

Fic Rec’s:

Speak No Evil by @riathedreamer : I’m always a fan Grif whump (as everyone should know by now) and this story has my absolute attention because while it is only three chapters in, they’re a glorious three chapters and I’m dying to know what’s gonna happen next. The already hinted dynamic shift between Grif and Simmons is going to be fascinating to watch play out in the fic, what with Grif being rendered incapable of speaking, so I’m excited for the chapters to come!

Hit and Run by @riathedreamer : Another one of Ria’s fic’s but this one is just so wholesome and every time it updates I get so happy because it’s seriously so good. The premise behind it so beautifully unique, I mean, who else out here is writing stories where the Grif sibs grow up in Project Freelancer- no one else that’s who, and that’s why Ria is the strongest out of all of us for writing this amazing fic. (Also there was a very ominous warning about how this- amongst her other fics- were going to take a turn towards angst and that caught my attention faster than whiplash could’ve and now I’m invested because chapter twelve ended on a cliffhanger and why would you do that RIA WHY-)

The Best of Carolina the Teenage Witch by @cinaed : This is a series of fics that I saw a while ago but finally was able to read recently and like it’s so good! It’s essentially an AU Fusion for RvB and Sabrina: The Teenage Witch from the perspective of being a real aired sequel to S:tTW so the plot summaries are written like plot synopsis, which is something I can appreciate on a meta-writing level. I’ve never watched S:tTW but it’s not even necessary to enjoy the series because everything you’d need to know is explained in the fics itself. I love all the character interactions and how each fic is like an episode and I just think it’s really neat and well written. I can’t wait to see what else happens in the series!

Art Rec’s:

@hamsburger : Hams recently posted this absolutely amazing and adorable pic of Huggins wearing a sailor outfit and I just... my mind expanded out of pure love because their art style is so good and that pic combined my two great loves: Huggins and sailor aesthetics. Definitely check out the rest of their art because it’s always amazing!

@creatrixanimi : They recently posted this screencap redraw from the newest episode and it’s just- w o w. The coloring is just so nice and vibrant, I love how they did the background of the canyon, and of course, I just love their Grif facecanon. I also love this pic they drew of Donut because their Donut facecanon is my absolute favorite and the lighting/coloring in this pic is just spectacular. Check out all their art you won’t regret it!

@veni-vidi-acdc : They posted this really pretty Grimmons pic and it’s just, mesmerizing. The colors are so soft and it’s wonderfully painted. I could stare at this for hours because of the way it was done.

#rvb rec day #red vs blue #rvb #fic rec #art rec #guess who's back back again #guess who's back and actually managed to write this out #ok to be fair however I prewrote this yesterday and am now posting it #because I am currently on a trip write now #I'll let you guys know if my bad poetry wins any prizes #it won't but if it does by mistake I'll let you know #oh fuck there's technically a spoiler pic in this #hm I'll add the tags just to be safe #rvb17 #rvb17 spoilers

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aly-the-writer · 6 years

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To be Family

Read on Ao3 | My Ao3 | Word Count: 1300 |

Fandom: Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

Characters: Vilkas, Arainna (female Imperial Dovahkiiin)

Pairing: Vilkas/Arainna (pre-relationship)

Description: Set immediately after "The Silver Hand" quest, Vilkas finds himself taking care of the Jorrvaskr's newest werewolf as she processes what happened and tries to sort out how she feels. Meanwhile he contemplates his own changing feelings towards the Dragonborn Arainna.

Vilkas set the bowl of water on the table in front of the girl, setting himself in the chair in front of the one she sat in with a heavy sigh. Then he pressed a cup into her hand.

She accepted it with a nod and drank a little, shivering despite the cloak around her shoulders and the fire in the hearth. Neither of them was willing to break the silence that stretched between them.

Aela had retreated to mourn Skjor in private. She would need time and space before she could face the rest of the Jorrvaskr – and the ghost left by her lover’s absence.

It had left the newest member of their misguided little family looking lost and staring empty-eyed around the hall on her own. She’d still had blood at the corner of her mouth. Caught and tangled in her hair. Staining beneath her nails with what was left of the Silver Hand the two women had found in their hunt. Dressed lightly in only loose pants and a shirt too large to fit with the sort of modesty the woman usually preferred.

Arainna was a small woman – completely dwarfed in his fur cloak that he’d wrapped around her after getting her to sit – with her long black hair tangled rather than in its usual neat braided bun. Her blue eyes still lost in the distance of her thoughts as she focused on the fire rather.

It was a good thing Aela had returned them in the dead of night. The guard would not have overlooked the state of either of them in better light. Particularly not with so many stories of vampire attacks.

It’s not been an easy change and she’s even worse than your brother was, Skjor had said before he’d gone to follow Aela in protecting the newest werewolf in their pack – Vilkas had gone to confront them for making her one of them at all.

And she was being left to process it – and her grief - on her own.

So he had brought her to the privacy of his own room, wrapped her up in his furs because he hadn’t thought to stop and fetch her own belongings from the room she shared with the other whelps and set about doing what he could to make it easier.

Taking up the cloth from the bowl, he dipped it in the warm water and wrung it out before dabbing it gently where blood had dried on her lips and face.

“Your control gets better,” he knew his tone was still rough, a little too harsh with his frustrations at the situation. Not that gentle was something he knew how to make his voice but he still tried for his shield-sister.

“I didn’t just dream that did I?” she finally spoke, though her voice was barely a whisper.

“No.”

It wasn’t a comforting answer but there’s very little that’s comforting in being a werewolf.

The blood in her veins is still too new for her to sort through the scents in the air the way he can – The scent of lavender soap still clinging stubbornly to her hair beneath the rest of it. His brother’s snoring in the other room too soft to be heard through the thick walls by a human but clear and comforting in its familiarity. Kodlak’s pacing as he turns over how to respond to what has happened. The sounds and scents of the Jorrvaskr and its inhabitants signaling home to him as they had since he had first been gifted the Beast-blood.

It will take some days for her to learn to sort through the new sensations.

She was a fine Companion but not every Companion was suited to controlling the blood. And Aela and Skjor had not consulted Kodlak on that question as tradition called for. Some part of him suspected, though, that she would learn that control swiftly enough.

“What were you thinking, Arainna?”

He took her hands in his to clean the blood from them next, gently as he could, and to pretend not to notice the regret caught in those blue eyes.

Vilkas remembered spotting the pretty Imperial in the shadows of the Jorrvaskr what felt like an age ago as he spoke with Kodlak about his own difficulties with the beast-blood.

She’d smiled and barely stopped herself from curtsying in greeting when Kodlak had spoken to her. Like some kind of proper Cyrodiil lady from the empire’s capital. He’d seen the aborted movement and frowned at it.

A bit of dented armor and a sword barely sharp enough to cut couldn’t make a pampered lady into a Companion.

Back then her hands had still been soft. The starts of the callouses he felt beneath his own fingers had begun to build but her fingers had still not the rough swordswoman’s that he was so carefully holding now.

She’d even apologized for wasting his time in the training yard before they’d begun when Kodlak asked he test her.

He’d expected to see a few clumsy swings and have it end with him telling the old man that he’d been wrong about the stranger having any potential. Instead she had shown herself to be adequate.

Her technique more unsteady by a lack of confidence than an absence of skill. She had a few of those poor habits that some developed when they had a teacher unfamiliar with teaching (he’d guess someone much larger and with a preference for two-handed weapons) but nothing that could not be corrected through training.

And he’d insured the newest whelp got plenty of it with her sword and shield too.

Still, it had been the side eye the whelp had given when he told her to fetch his sword to Eorlund that had earned her a real chance at his respect though. She’d known she was being hassled but still opted to say nothing at being made to earn her place further.

She was an easy woman to warm to, even with his misgivings at bringing a stranger into the Hall at a time when the Circle itself was split. He’d liked the way she smiled and ducked her head to laugh when he made some jest.

The way she’d thrown up on his shoes when he’d walked her back from the Bannered Mare the night after she’d slain the dragon at the watch tower had been a little less charming.

“Don’t know that I was,” she finally answered, drawing her hands back from his. Some foolish part of him wished to keep hold of them but she needed to be allowed her independence now that she was reacting again, he knew that. “I wanted to prove myself – to show that the Companions really are my family now.”

He glanced up to her expression - something in her face suggested she wasn’t trying to prove that truth to them so much as to herself.

“You’re a fool,” he informed her.

She’d been their Shield-Sister for some time now, being a werewolf wasn’t going to make her more family, all it did was get her entangled deeper in the problems at the heart of the Circle…though, perhaps that is what family was supposed to mean?

A tiny smile graced her lips – weak still but it was honest – “You’re probably right.”

“You should go wash your hair,” he said, sitting back. “And get dressed properly. I’m not explaining to Ria why you’re in my room dressed like that. Come back once you’ve done that – I’m sure you have questions. I’ll see if I can’t find where Tilma hid the sweetrolls this time.”

This time there was a slightly larger smile and what might qualify as almost half a laugh, her gaze lingering on his for a moment before she nodded, “…thank you, Vilkas.”

#Skyrim #elder scrolls: skyrim #Elder Scrolls OCs #Vilkas #CW: blood #OC: Arainna #Ari has a rough time adjusting to being a werewolf

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ellebeebee · 7 years

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Day 5 -- Growth

Sabine and Zarad have a fight.

3316 words, Zarad/Widow, general rating, warning for alcohol

A knock rang outside her door and forced Sabine from her intent focus. She snapped shut the bulky leather portfolio before her and called out, “Come in.”

She felt, rather than saw, Sayra and Ria enter on their trained servants’ feet, quiet and measured. Sabine pulled a card from one of her desk drawers as they closed the door.

“Good evening, Lady Sabine,” they both greeted her, no doubt curtsying as well.

“Good evening. When I finish this, can you take it to Jasper, please, Sayra? And tell him there’s a change of plans.”

She added a flourish to her script, pressing a bit harder than usual. The card done, she stood with it and blew across the wet ink as she finally looked at her maids. Sayra stood some paces away, while Ria had paused, hovering, by her wardrobe.

“It’s short notice, I know,” Sabine said, “but I’d like to invite Prince Zarad to a private dinner instead of dining with the others tonight. I’m sure Jasper has worked greater miracles before.”

“Yes, my lady,” Sayra said with her quiet assurance. “Do you have any particular instructions for the dinner?”

“No. As long as Zarad is there, I don’t care if we sit out in the rain with a stalk of celery each.”

Sayra took the note from her and left silently. Sabine turned to Ria, who stared back with light concern.

“The dark blue jacquard, dear,” she told the girl, moving to the mirror in the dressing area. She frowned and turned to look herself up and down, hands running down her curves.

“I suppose I ought to eat more celery anyway,” Sabine sighed, her voice sour.

Ria had her out of her day dress and into an evening gown with practiced speed. Soon after, Sayra returned with Jasper.

“His Highness accepts your invitation with pleasure,” the butler said. He spoke with his usual professional coolness, but Sabine could tell he and Sayra had been talking by the way he studied her. He handed her a card with Zarad’s seal. She stared at it for a moment, running her thumb over the wax seal, until she glanced up at the portfolio still sitting on her desk. Jaw twitching, she lay the card down unopened.

“Did you have trouble arranging things?” she asked Jasper lightly, donning her usual society smile.

“Nothing insurmountable, my lady,” he answered.

She nodded. She would have to thank him properly tomorrow, as well as apologize to the girls.

“I see I shall have to invest in a smelling salt mine-- do smelling salts even come from a mine? Nevermind. I must find some way or other to have some on hand at all times when dealing with you, because, frankly, your behavior is becoming more and more shocking.”

Zarad swept into the room with his usual grace and teasing statements.

“Really. A sudden, desperate summons! My maid was swooning!” he exclaimed, grinning as he bowed to her.

“Oh?” Sabine said. She remained seated. “And you, kind soul that you are, caught her. Tucked her pretty little head right into your bosom.”

“I do have a nice bosom,” Zarad agreed. “But no fear, my dove. I will always make room for you on it.”

“That’s sweet of you,” she replied.

Something in her tone, in the way she cut short the banter, caused Zarad to study her. He paused, but if he was going to say something it was interrupted by the entry of the soup course through the door. Between them grew an uncomfortable silence peppered with the soft clinks of the servers laying down their dishes. Sabine sipped at the wine and avoided his eyes.

When they were alone again (or as alone as anyone on this isle could be), Zarad cleared his throat.

“I certainly have been waiting for the day you’d be dazzled into silence with my mere presence,” he said lightly. “But I do so prefer to hear my praises on your tongue.”

She studied him for a moment. He was smiling, but for the first time since she’d known him, he seemed nervous. Neither of them touched the soup.

“Did you get a chance to look at my accounts I sent over?” she finally said.

Zarad raised a brow. “I glanced over them. Very neat and tidy.”

She stared at him. “That’s all you have to say?”

“I’m not sure what’s the matter, Sabine,” Zarad said slowly.

“Your books are a complete mess,” she said sharply.

Now that their engagement was solidifying, the time to address the business aspect of marriage had come. Both of them had collected their records to send to the other with an appointment scheduled later to go over the details of consolidating the households. However, when Sabine had seen the disorganized and haphazard mix of receipts and incomplete documentation in the portfolio now sitting on her desk, she had not been able to remain patient.

She threw the napkin on her lap back onto the table where it dipped sadly into the soup. She straightened to stare fully at him, shoulders stiff and coiled with tension.

“Where should I even start?” she asked. “For one, your household currently subsists on your imperial stipend. In entirety. Which would not be terrible if your rate of spending did not consistently outstrip that very generous amount year after year. Of course, I might be unfairly forgetting your one other source of income: personal loans from your friends. The funds from which seem to trickle around to pay off other personal loans.”

Zarad said nothing as she continued this tirade, his usual smirk gone and nothing floating up to the surface to replace it. His walls had crashed down, his face blank. Even if he attempted to say anything, she did not allow it.

“Perhaps you might defend your expenditures?” Sabine asked, choking out an insincere laugh. “Gambling dens, clubhouses, the races, parties, and loans. My word, if you charged interest at least you could register as a bank. But that would require to you to actually collect on those loans. The current outstanding debt owed to you is obscene. The debts that you owe? It doesn’t bear polite conversation.”

She snorted and shook her head. “Really. Heavens know I have never exactly lived frugally, but I certainly don’t go beyond my means. And you have not made a single wise investment since you reached your majority. There are no ships sponsored, no land bought, no-- no anything. For god’s sake, you don’t even use a double-entry booking system.”

“I didn’t realize my imagined solvency was what attracted you so to me in the first place,” Zarad said coolly. His expression remained blank, but his eyes were retreating further and further away.

Sabine raised her hand dismissively. “Do not give me that. That is not what this is about.”

“No? It seems exactly what it’s about.”

“I have my hold to think of,”she said acidly. “My tenants. Even with my returns from Namaire and all of my investments, at the growing rate of your spending my wealth would be bankrupted within ten years. I’d have to sell the barony-- and I will not do that. Not for anyone.”

Zarad’s jaw clenched as he looked down, idly smoothing out his robes across his lap.

“Well, my lady, you certainly have a route to prevent such a tragedy.”

Sabine suddenly stood, her chair screeching behind her. Her voice turned tight and rough and touched with tremors.

“For years, I watched my father do this to his family. I will not see my future children go through what my siblings and I did.”

With that, she jerked away from the table and turned away. Realization crashed onto Zarad’s face, and he shot to his feet.

“Sabine, wait--”

“No.”

“Listen to me--”

At that moment, the door to the private dining room silently opened and Jasper entered.

Thus, the butler’s pointed stare deflated the tension between them, and they parted in silence without meeting the other’s gaze.

Sabine dismissed Jasper and told him not to send in the girls to help her undress. She could manage on her own. He seemed to want to say something, but at her expression he merely nodded his assent.

She slumped at her vanity and impatiently pulled out her dangling earrings, tossing them down. Her reflection in the mirror stared back at her. She wasn’t seventeen anymore. How long could she keep doing this? She turned away from the mirror.

Sabine stood and crossed the room to a trunk storing various gifts and some books. She pulled out a bottle of authentic Revairan red another delegate had given her. As she stood at her writing desk and used the letter opener from Ana to pull out the wine’s cork, the leather portfolio and the unopened card sitting on it caught her eye.

Having no glasses at hand, she took a swig straight from the bottle and stared at the source of her current dilemma. Sighing, she took the portfolio and the wine to her sitting area, kicking off her slippers along the way. She popped open the portfolio.

It was ridiculous. Crumpled up receipts were crammed into the wrong year’s records, contracts involving exorbitant sums were wadded up and stained, the records wandered around mathematically in lazy routes and sometimes fell off into obscurity. Really, if he wasn’t good with finances, that was fine, but he was completely capable of hiring someone who could handle it.

She nursed the wine.

“I mean, who in the world are all these people?” she sighed.

Many of the personal loans were to other nobles in the Corvali court, and she either knew of them by name or could guess with her own familiarity with the different holdings and positions in Corval. But so many others were unknown to her. And the justification for the exchanges were scrawled in the margins as ‘seed money for Jadet’s mole trainer,’ ‘Ulden proved he could get drunker than a donkey,’ ‘twinkle toes,’ etcetera.

Suddenly, Sabine sat up.

She frowned, putting the bottle down. Her fingers flew through the tattered pages of the portfolio. There was a certain loose thread. And as she flipped through the annotations and the figures, she pulled on this loose thread. The more she pulled on it, the more she began to unravel a pattern she had not seen before. A logic woven coyly through the apparent disarray of the accounts.

Sabine sat back, breathing deep and closing her eyes.

“They’re fake,” she said softly. “These books are fake.”

She shoved the portfolio off her lap, bits of paper fluttering to the floor. Stumbling a bit, she went to the desk and snatched up Zarad’s card.

As the stars must follow the lovely glow of the moon, so I must follow your every dear command.

Ever yours,

Zarad

Overwhelmed, Sabine put down the card and held herself against the desk’s surface.

“My god,” she groaned. “I am an idiot.”

She banged her head against the desk.

“My lady. My lady.”

Sabine shot upright.

“What, what?” she croaked.

Jasper stood at the foot of her bed, eyeing her.

Her head pounding, Sabine peered around. She was still dressed, and had somehow ended up on her bed with a good portion of the portfolio’s contents surrounding her on the coverlet. In fact, her room’s floor was littered everywhere with scraps of paper. The first bottle of wine was rolling around, empty, beside her while a second one sat opened on her nightstand.

“Uhm,” Sabine murmured, putting a hand to her head. “Jasper…”

The butler shifted. Almost imperceptibly, he gentled his tone. “Shall I have a bath drawn for you, my lady?”

“No,” she cleared her throat and looked up at him properly. “I have something I need to do. Right away. I can dress myself. I’ll need all this cleaned up, though.”

She gestured around her.

“Someone discreet, please,” she added softly.

Jasper nodded and gave her a hand as she pushed off the bed. He looked her in the eye.

“I shall take care of it myself, Lady Sabine.”

She squeezed his hand for a moment. “Thank you. I will need that bath when I come back.”

“Of course.”

As he exited silently, she went to the mirror to see the damage. Good lord. She sighed. Today was not going to be easy.

After untangling some of the worst snags in her half-undone hair, washing away the streaks of kohl on her cheeks, and throwing on a new dress, Sabine went on a search.

She found him in the gardens, tucked away in a small shady corner that smelled of dew and jonquils.

It was a rare thing that she could find him so quickly when it seemed the norm for him to dissipate like mist whenever her thoughts turned to him. Perhaps-- and she may frankly be flattering herself with this notion-- but perhaps he had sensed the direction of her heart’s change overnight. It would be nice to think so.

He watched her approach with quiet eyes. He seemed much the same except for the lack of mirth and the quietude. And it gutted her that she was the cause of this change.

At a few paces away she stopped. She gestured behind him to the ornate stone bench set against a smooth-faced hedge.

“May we sit?” Sabine asked.

“By all means,” Zarad replied.

They sat down in tense silence, but she did not allow the tension to last overlong, drawing herself up and clearing her throat.

“I owe you an apology,” she said, turning slightly to look him in the eye.

He gazed back. There was a shift in his expression. Relief, uncertainty, contrition: all of these or maybe none and something she couldn’t define at all. Anxiety leaped into her throat. She leaned closer.

“Zarad, I’ve been an idiot. An absolute idiot. I did not see your books for what they were.”

Her hand nervously swept a curl from her face, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on his.

“Even so, I should not have overreacted the way I did. I should have had faith in you and discussed it with you like an adult. Not fly off into a rage. I should have trusted you,” she said, her throat tightening. “I feel as if I’ve hurt you, and I am sick over it. I am sorry.”

Zarad’s gaze dropped. He raised a hand to shield his eyes. His mouth worked around several emotions, words that wouldn’t come, until he put on a flimsy smile to cough out an awkward laugh.

“Sabine, how do you do this? Where did you even come from? What horrible, wonderful fairy magicked you into my life?”

She remained silent, watching him. He finally looked up.

He shook his head. “I should have apologized first. I was the first to show you distrust.”

He pulled a slim dark volume from somewhere, a sleight of hand that she hadn’t caught.

“I should have given you this to begin with,” he said quietly, pushing it into her hands. “I could say that the habits of the Corvali court are hard to forget, but that would be making an excuse. The truth is I was careless and thoughtless. I didn’t think about the way you would think of this money-- not just the money, but the partnership we should be building.”

She did not open the book, running a hand over it slowly. “Or perhaps I am just not as clever as you may have believed me. Did you think I would figure it out quicker?”

“Sabine, that’s not true. And you shouldn’t have had to figure it out, anyway,” he said firmly. He sighed and adjusted his robes. “It’s a… new feeling. Wanting to trust someone completely, wanting to be trusted completely. Hiding all your cards-- like your money and what you’re doing with it-- is just second nature at home. Really, it’s the difference between surviving and…”

He shrugged.

“I am sorry. I should have considered your feelings more.”

She smiled and slipped a hand into his. “We’ve both behaved badly.”

He smiled back and his fingers wrapped around hers to squeeze lightly. They stayed like that for a moment, simply enjoying the rarity of a moment to themselves. The intimacy of knowing each other better, and committing themselves again to the idea of them.

After a while, Sabine pulled her hand from his and flipped open the slim volume he’d given her.

“Now,” she said brightly, “Let’s have a look.”

She carefully inspected the records, following columns of figures with her finger lightly ghosting down the page. Zarad watched her, a smile tugging at his lips. As she poured over the numbers, her brow arched up and she made little sounds of interest.

“You know,” Zarad said musingly, “You’re very attractive when you’re angry.”

She glanced at him and rolled her eyes. Her attention drew back to the book.

“This apologizing thing is quite useful,” he went on. “If I ever want to see that lovely visage of you again, thunderous and stormy like the righteous heavens, I can just apologize to put things back in order.”

“Why don’t you try it sometime and we’ll see?” Sabine said, eyes on the ledger, but her tone a little dangerous with too much sweetness.

“Didn’t we already have a discussion about open-ended invitations?”

“Yes,” she said, pulling her head up. “You invite too many of them.” Shutting the book, she slapped it into his chest.

“If these numbers are true, then I’m impressed.”

“So it was my imagined solvency that led you to me. Madam, you are shamelessly using me.”

“Not the amount,” she said with mock-hauteur. “The finesse and skill with which the amount was handled.”

“And the double entry system?”

“Quite tidy.”

“Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

She sighed in exasperation and reached up with both her hands to cradle his face.

“Yes, Your Highness. You are very handsome and dashing and very, very intelligent,” she cooed in grinning his face. “You must be the smartest creature I’ve ever met. Wonderful and splendid in every aspect. From the glossy curled top of your head to your precious little piggies.”

A snort of laughter sputtered behind her.

Sabine leapt to her feet, startled. Hamin and Clarmont stood only a few paces away, having come upon them with Sabine completely unaware. Beside her, Zarad bent over, helpless with laughter.

“You--” she started, irritated.

She stopped, turned her back on him, and curtsied to the sudden intruders.

“My lords,” she said coolly.

Clarmont recovered his surprise, and even minimised his amusement by biting on his lip, and returned to her a proper bow. Hamin, however, was sniggering too much to manage more than an awkward bend.

“What was that, Sabine, p-precious little piggies?” Hamin gasped out.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied calmly.

“Don’t be like that, we’re friends, right?” Hamin said, his grin far too wide for her liking.

“Well, I’m sure I’d only be friends with gentlemen. And gentlemen would surely never eavesdrop on a private conversation.”

Clarmont elbowed Hamin to keep him quiet and smiled at her. “You are too correct, Lady Sabine. We’ve been unpardonably rude.”

Zarad cleared his throat. “That’s right. Run along so she can continue wooing my precious little piggies.”

Both Hamin and Zarad howled.

“I’m done with this,” Sabine snapped. “And I’m done with you. I’m not marrying you.”

She whirled away and began marching back toward the castle. Zarad followed easily with his wider stride.

“Again? Wait, Sabine, I apologize! At least let me walk you back, I can tell you’re hungover.”

“How dare you! I am a lady. I don’t get hungover.”

He laughed, and she took his arm, trying and not very much succeeding at hiding her own smile.

#7kpp #7kpp week #7kppweek #revaire!mc #alcohol tw #fanfiction #my writing

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