#as it is what guarantee do we have that your not just throwing storytelling and clues in the background in the fan
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Another thing that doesn't make sense: if Mike's reason to struggle with saying ily is because he's scared of El not needing him anymore, wtf did he not say anything when she was BEGGING him to say it, crying. His actions don't make any sense. When she was fighting Vecna, why did he only say it after Will told him to say something. All he said are lies, shit he came up with on the moment. He cares for her, he loves her platonically, but FUCK, that's not romantic love. Their relationship is build on lies, manipulation, arguments, spying and pressure from others. If they're so good for one each other, why are they always arguing, why are their best interactions platonic, why do they always have to be apart for the narrative to progress, why does Mike has more romantic chemistry with Will. Duffers, if your plan is to make Milkvan endgame, making a queer character feelings for his best friend as the instigator to the cishet romance is NOT it. El didn't commission the painting, those are Will's feelings, El doesn't NEED romantic love, especially from Mike, to grow. Otherwise, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS SEPARATE THEM FOR HER TO GROW. Why whenever they're together they're just garbage shells of themselves. This is NOT a healthy relationship. Why have Mike have such a meaningful relationship with Will, which is shown to impact both their lives, to throw it all away for the sake of a cishet romance. Is just INFURIATING. And ik this is set in the 80s and what not, and maybe that's how queer romance would end up, but this is a show you're making in 2022. What message are you giving to the public? That queer people are just meant to suffer and be unhappy? That if you're in a relationship you're allowed to have that as your sole personality trait, all that while treating your gf badly (only saying you love her in life or death situations) and destroying your relationship with your bff? That if your a girl that went through shitload of trauma, that instead of needing professional help for it and support and love from your friends and family, all you need is for your bf to say he loves you and all the problems from the relationship that were making you miserable will magically go away?!? Yeah that's a happy ending, that's the sort of message we should tell others.
#byler#as an educator this sort of storytelling is so damaging#like fuck being your own person all you need is a cishet romance and everything will be solved#how pretty#ugh i'm so pissed#duffers i hate you#and if your plan is to make byler endgame#my dudes you should've at least gave us some undeniable evidence that that's the way#as it is what guarantee do we have that your not just throwing storytelling and clues in the background in the fan#cus mate this is not it#give us something to show that you're not actually going to ignore the sibtext#that you didn't just destroy mike's character for a relationship#that will is not gonna end up being the sad gay trope#that jane is actually gonna be an example of finding your own identity after so many people trying to tell her who she is#or at least that what we got until now is not supposed to be seen as a happy ending#as goals#just anything#stranger things#mike wheeler#will byers#eleven#jane hopper#stranger things s4#stranger things spoilers#stranger things volume 2#wow that was a rant#tw caps
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i hope you know you are driving me & my friends up the walls (in the best way) with your comments on our gifsets about emhyr and cahir. you get them, truly.
tell me more pls 👀
Thank you, I'm so happy to torture you with my tags.
I do want to give major credit to both actors, because the physicality in their scenes is *phenomenal* visual storytelling. The delivery of their lines, from their body language to the tone of voice and the microexpressions, has so much nuance that it creates a really compelling dynamic between the two of them. In every interaction between the two of them, there is purpose behind everything, and it elevates the scenes.
In terms of the characters themselves, vengeance is an ouroboros, and I think this shows in how both of them navigate the world.
What fascinates me about Emhyr is how he weaves the illusion of the White Flame- this untouchable leader who is not only certain in his plan, not just guaranteed to succeed, but he acts like he's already won. His posturing is so cleverly constructed to manipulate the person(s) in front of him. We see this in how he interacts with the dwarf bladesmith, sharing drinks but reminding her of the fact they are not, can not, and will not *ever* be the same. The dwarf says as much, blatantly stating he'd kill her if the sword was faulty. And he doesn't shy away from the admission. He leans into it, cultivates that quiet fear that makes people obey. We never see Emhyr without a signifier of his position. He welcomes Cahir back in armour, as the army leader. He wakes Cahir in elaborate dress, as the emperor. Emhyr is always performing, even when he is alone, and that is his tragedy. He only ever dares hesitate when he is alone, but even as he burns the remnants of his old life, he is not allowed to be himself. He is not permitted to be Emhyr. Emhyr is the ashes of a portrait he threw in that brazier. He is the White Flame, because *that* is who will get him what he wants.
And the show emphasises how everything around Emhyr is cyclical. He condemned Fringilla to unending wine, letting her poison herself just as she poisoned his trust. He drinks with his weapon crafter, in moderation and in good spirits. He banished Cahir to the border, where he had to fight tooth and nail for his life, because he sought to cut Emhyr away from his goal. He asks Cahir to kill the only friend he has, knowing Cahir forgets the word "no" around him.
Cahir, on the other hand, is grappling with his sense of self. The only constant in his life is his king, and his king has no mercy for Cahir. Cahir cannot see choice past yearning for Emhyr, because all he has known is loyalty to him. And this hesitation, this doubt, it's apparent. And Emhyr does not hesitate to exploit it. He understands, I feel, on a fundamental level, that Emhyr understands the fact Cahir treads a fine line between his loss of self and finding one that doesn't need a king. Everything Emhyr does, from rousing Emhyr and using the advantage of his still-hazy mind to feed him crumbs enough to satisfy the ache in his heart before he asks the impossible. Something Cahir is more than willing to do, because it's for Emhyr. And this is validated- brilliantly portrayed- by how Emhyr uses language to alienate Cahir from the Others, effectively telling him things like "do it for us" because he KNOWS how desperate Cahir is for there to be an "us"
And I don't necessarily mean a romantic or sexual us here, it's more that Cahir at his core has a need to belong. So what does Emhyr do? "I wanted to welcome you back myself." Entering his room, throwing him his trousers and sitting with him, shoulder to shoulder, looking him in the eye, and telling him what he wants to hear, all the while affirming his standing as the arbiter of life itself. "Fringilla is dead. You are here," he says, meaning "You are here because I have permitted you to be."
Cahir shatters the mirror, whereas Emhyr burns the portrait. One has potential for introspection. The other is a cut link. We see how killing the elf affects Cahir, how he crumbles inward from the act. There is no one to catch him, and he doesn't recognise who he sees in the mirror, but he's not able to let go. And who would? When you have that security, that fragile peace where all you need to do is obey and you'll be rewarded, why step out of line? He tried it, and it almost got him killed. That is what makes this riveting. Cahir is painfully aware of the danger his doubt brings. And he still voices it anyway, sat side by side with the White Flame, he asks "How do you know when someone's a good leader" but he means "How do I know you're what's best for me?" And Emhyr deflects, using Cahir's need against him to placate him.
Emhyr communicates his inner world beautifully - he lays out expectations rather directly, like when he told Cahir "You did as I asked without hesitation." Hesitation is crucial to Emhyr's character, because it is his weak spot. He clutches the portrait of baby Ciri in his arms as he walks away, carrying only his agenda into the future. He buries anything that will not further his obsession, letting it suffocate and rot, instead of killing it outright, because he fears its ghost too much.
Cahir's woe is intelligence, in that he is aware of it all. He's aware of his need, of his desperation, but he's too afraid to break the cycle. The gravitational pull of Emhyr's influence keeps him in this unending loop of doubt and breakdowns and having his faith affirmed, and he's not allowed to change, because if he regains his sense of self, he will no longer be a malleable asset. Cahir can't seem to fix himself up, which shows in how he has looked throughout the season. Hair and clothes unkempt and rough, the most he managed was washing his face. Compare that with the jewellery and velvet Emhyr wore to wake him, and you get two very different worlds that mirror each other. Emhyr is scared to be himself, Cahir is scared of not being who Emhyr wants him to be.
#thank you for giving me a chance to infodump on them#I've hyperfixated so so badly#the witcher#emhyr#cahir
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for all that it's very clear RWBY took influence from a lot of anime, the writers sure don't seem to have learned much of anything from it. i'm watching the redub of the classic sailor moon anime right now, and it's insane to me how much better this thirty-year-old anime packed with filler was at things like character arcs and believably redeeming villains and having a main character that is at once childish and yet a great leader who, when the chips are down, could talk some of the worst evils in the universe down from their plans.
if anyone could talk salem out of her plans for world annihilation by just being able to love her, it's usagi tsukino.
Right? Man, I'd pay for a high-budget, animated version of that crossover lol.
That's one of the big arguments of the Why RWBY is Disappointing vid though, using Cowboy Beebop as an example, if I remember correctly. There's no doubt that RWBY has been influenced by a number of classic series, but deliberately mimicking something that worked in another show doesn't guarantee success, particularly if you don't understand why it worked in the first place. I'm constantly emphasizing that stories are whole products made up of a thousand smaller pieces, like a puzzle or a patchwork quilt, and simply slapping one piece down because it looks good in another story isn't enough. You have to carefully build everything around that piece so that it fits into the unified whole. Continuity, world building, characterization, setup... RWBY is very good at throwing out those "cool" moments, but it does none of the work ahead of time (or, just as often, after the fact) to make those moments satisfying outside of the initial adrenaline rush of watching.
Plus, RWBY is over-crowded nowadays. Characters, mysteries, real world issues, and those "cool" ideas have populated like bunnies until, I think, it's easy for a lot of fans to just get swept up in the spectacle of it all. The simpler your story is, the less there is to hide behind, which is why I think a lot of manga like Sailor Moon still rings true 30+ years later. If you do right by your core concepts and prove to the reader (often subconsciously) that your storytelling skills are strong, it will resonate even after new generations have different expectations in their media, or these ideas have become "cliche" in wake of that initial popularity. If we go with a food comparison (always my favorite lol) Sailor Moon makes me think of something like good home cooking. Looking at it now it's simple, it's straightforward, it has some technical flaws, but the comparatively low number of ingredients have all been treated stunningly well and there is an insane amount of love poured into the dish. Meanwhile, later seasons of RWBY feel like a semi-successful restaurant serving a special so long it took the server a week to fully memorize it, rattling off an absurd number of ingredients and fancy techniques used until you're not even sure what the dish is supposed to be anymore. Some diners go, "Wow, what an amazing, clearly high-end dish! And they've included this super rare ingredient which means it must be good." Meanwhile, others are going, "... Honestly, that sounds like Too Much. I'd have preferred a simple, well-done pasta." And all the while the restaurant—which is pretty big and popular now, garnering a lot of critical attention—is trying to pass this complicated, fancy-for-the-sake-of-fancy dish off as the product of a humble, mom-and-pop establishment. No, you used to serve that kind of food: simple, technically flawed in a lot of ways, but with so much love poured into the dish that most diners didn't care. Now people suspect that your chefs are miserable and we definitely know they're overworked, so even if that insane dish would have tasted great to certain pallets, it was doomed before it even left the kitchen.
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Hi, I just finished my outline. It's a minimalist bullet point outline. What do I do after I outlined my story?
Start writing! You don't have to start with the very first line if you're having trouble with it, but I would recommend starting somewhere in the beginning. Sometimes when we start writing, even if we have outlined, we might tweak things as we go if we discover that somethings needed to be fleshed out more, so if you skip straight to the middle or end, there is no guarantee that you will use those scenes down the road, so you could end up having to rewrite your ending later. Which isn't the end of the world, per se, but it will save you time to start around the beginning.
For me personally, if I can get the first line of my story out, I can usually get the rest to flow pretty easily after that. Your first line is what's called your hook. It's the very first thing people will read of the actual story, so you want to make sure that the first line will encourage the reader to keep going. There are a lot of different ways to start a story, my personal favorite is to start on a line of dialogue, but I've also started plenty of stories in other ways too.
A few examples of some of my first lines:
"The courtyard was empty when Chat Noir landed on the asphalt."
"Marinette smoothed her gray blazer in front of the mirror, picking at loose threads, and adjusting her hair for the dozenth time. A worried crease set over her brows and refused to leave, threatening to become a permanent part of her face."
"“Okay, girl, no chickening out this time,” Alya said."
"It was a bet.
A stupid, crazy, idiotic bet."
"“Ladybug, have I ever told you how pretty you are?”"
You get the gist. Your first line can convey a lot about the mood of your opening scene. It can tell how your characters are feeling, what kind of situation they might be in, it can even serve to characterize them and help us get to know them. First lines can be tricky, but writing a good one can be the difference in people continuing to read or not.
A few things to keep in mind with your opening scenes, you want them to be an introduction to your story, but you don't want to dump everything the reader needs to know in them. Think of storytelling as leaving a breadcrumb trail for the reader. If you dump all of your crumbs at the beginning of the trail, there isn't much incentive to keep going. Sprinkle a few details upfront, enough to create intrigue, then add the rest in as you go. I talked a little about this before about buildind as you go. Find more organic ways to introduce information into the story, let the characters discover things or show the audience things as they become relevant. This will keep readers engaged and help immerse them in the story.
Your first chapter or two, depending on the length of your story, should do a couple things:
1. introduce your main character and a few supporting characters. Fanfic is a bit different on this front. Usually I try to avoid introducing more than 3-4 characters up front if it's an original work because people aren't familiar with them yet, so throwing a bunch of unfamiliar names at them can be overwhelming. But with fanfiction, it's presumed that everyone already knows these characters, so you can get away with having more of them in the beginning.
2. Introduce us to the general plot. What kind of adventure is our main character going on? Why are we here? What's the point of it all? What's at stake here?
3. Your introduction should build and lead to the inciting incident (the place where things start to change and your character is propelled into the plot).
In some cases, you can start with the inciting incident. Just hit the ground running so to speak. It just depends on your story. If your story is fast paced and action packed, then that might be an option. If it's a slower burn, you may keep it light and simple.
Story beginnings can be tricky, but it's incredibly satisfying when you nail them. Use your outline as a guide, and just remember: it's okay if your first draft is bad. You can fix it later. Spit the words onto the page. Write badly. Tell and filter if it makes it easier and quicker to get the words out of your head. You can go back and edit later, and as you start to see some common mistakes you make while drafting, you will start to autocorrect yourself when drafting in the future. So in short:
#cat replies#asks#writing#writing advice#writing tips#writing help#writing ref#writing reference#let me know if you have any more specific questions
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Sparking Joy Fanfiction!
a cozywithjoy stream series
Gather 'round, my fellow wordsmiths and creative chaos gremlins!
Starting on Sunday, April 14, 2024 10:00 AM PST, we're introducing a new cozywithjoy stream series: Sparking Joy Fanfiction, over on Twitch!
Shoutout to MudkipNinja for this wonderful creative idea!
🖋️ What is Sparking Joy Fanfiction? 🖋️
A collaborative experience where you and chat become the authors, weaving tales that’ll give us plenty of belly laughs or unexpected woes or the tasteful cringe. 😂
🎙️ Sparking Joy Fanfiction Reading 🎙️
But wait, there’s more! 🎤 We’re not stopping at just writing. Oh no, my cozy gremlin friends!
After each fanfiction writing session, we’ll vote on which of our super talented streamer friends gets to lend their vocal talents to our masterpiece. 🎭
Our cast will read and voice act chat's masterpiece fanfiction in a separate but equally fun and chaotic stream, bringing the fanfiction that sparks joy for you to life.
Picture this: cozy fireside vibes, a cup of virtual cocoa, and the soothing sound of our tale unfolding. Bliss! ☕
🌈 How can YOU help? 🌈
Whether you’re a seasoned scribe or a first-time storyteller, this is your chance to let those creative sparks fly!
You can actively engage in the writing process during the writing streams, throwing out ideas, using channel points to include your OC or scenarios, and more!
You can also add suggestions in my discord if you're not able to make it to the writing streams!
We will include everyone's creative input as much as possible!
Topics may vary through each "episode," but for now, we'll mainly be concentrating on games for Twitch TOS purposes.
So, mark your calendars, summon your muse, and prepare for an adventure that’ll echo through the ages! ✨
If you would like to be a part of the writing and/or voice acting process of this fun fanfiction stream series, please consider joining my discord! <3
🗓️ Scheduling 🗓️
Fanfiction Streams will be scheduled accordingly, so make sure to keep up with discord announcements to make sure you don't miss out on any stream!
The quills are poised, the inkwells are full, and the magic awaits. Let’s create something legendary!
💫 For those interested in being considered for the Voice Actor (VA) pool, continue reading ! 💫
Chat will have a chance to vote for a VA for certain characters for each stream, and I will cast any additional characters as needed.
Any interested, to voice/read in the final fanfiction that is written by chat in these streams, is welcome to be a part of the pool!
You do not need any prior experience voice acting as this is meant to be a very adaptive fun project with chat. (Common stream courtesy will be expected.)
All interested VAs cannot be guaranteed a role for every fanfiction stream, but you will be part of the pool for voting and casting.
I will reach out before every stream to confirm any roles, and you can also be a part of the writing process.
Discretion advised though if you don't want to be spoiled. 😆
If there are any specific roles you wouldn't want to be a part of the pool for, please feel free to DM in discord me.
The goal in the end is for everyone to have fun and freely express their creativity.
Excited for this and ready to have fun! :3
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#spirit city#spirit city lofi sessions#fanfiction#writing#twitch streamer#twitch series#writers#discord#voice acting#voice act#va#va fandub#chat interactive#chat engagement#collaborative#collab#collaborative writing experience#cozy with joy#cozy#cozy gamer#cozy streamer#cozy vtuber#vtubert#aesthetic#amateur writing#beginner writing#writing for fun#fanfiction sfw#fanfic#one shots
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dear anon, sweet anon, thank you so much for requesting this <3 i didn’t know that i needed it in my life and now...here it is;) IT WAS SO FUN hehe
melt in your mouth | reader x jisung
Pairing: self insert, gender neutral reader x han jisung
Genre: that good good smut
Summary: After hearing a rather interesting story about a certain brand of chocolate aphrodisiacs, your curiosity gets the best of you and your friend’s roommate, Jisung.....a spin off of bites like bittersweet
Word count: 3.7k
*photocreds to OP!
{see below for tags, nsfw and warnings!}
Tags: aphrodisiac au, somewhat friends to lovers, hints of mutual pining, bestfriend!seungmin, seungmin’sroommate!jisung, hardswitch!jisung, hardswitch!reader, explicit language, mentions of food/eating, hand stuff (r &m), degredation, petnames, dirty talk, unprotected sex (stay safe cuties), creampie, voyeurism, and we love a plot twist ;)
~💋~
two flavors seemed excessive. one flavor seemed like just enough. you didn’t want to break the bank or anything on something that was likely crappy quality or potentially psychedelic; even worse, it could be both.
“and you want to try these with me why?” seungmin pushed his wire-framed glasses up his nose bridge and scrunched it up. he inspected the paper wrapper with a skeptical glare. the design itself was anything but trustworthy: in swirly cursive pink font, the name Cherri Amore and under it, a absurdly large lipstick mark with the outline of a couple doing what must have been fucking “spread eagle.”
seungmin muttered, leaning over the counter of the dingy kitchen he shared with his roommates, “proven aphrodiasiac and libido booster...? y/n, sorry, i just--i’m fucking lost here--”
“--ever heard of trying something for the hell of it seung??” you snatched the bar from his hand. “the review that i read online said that it made them crazy fucking horny, so much so that they fucked their best friend of something like five years or something like that. isn’t that insane?!”
your best friend’s eyes blew out with his mouth aghast, “what the hell?? shit--of course you’d find something insane on the internet like this and drag me into it...”
in your incredulous laugher, you threw your neck back so hard it hurt a little. “loosen up! it’s probably a scam or something. plus...if it does work on us...don’t act like i haven’t caught you in the act before...”
seungmin, ever the angel, flushed a shade of fuchsia you thought inhumanly possible for someone to attempt. “that-that wasn’t--that wasn’t what you thought it was!!!” he cast away the chocolate bar as if it were his dick on the very night that you had walked in on something that was supposedly not what it looked like.
“relax!” you punched your embarrassed friend on the arm which he dramatically rubbed into. “it’s not a sin to jerk off or anything. hell, i do it....obviously.”
seungmin chuckled out unsteadily, “well, um, what if it does work then, what do we do?”
you snickered, “ha! hell if i know. cross that bridge when we get there?”
“so what you’re saying is...this could either be a massive waste of our time, or, both of us get so stupidly turned on that we decide to have sex....with eachother?”
“that’s the gist i’m getting.” you took to the corner of the shiny pink paper wrapping at the corner. “but...who said that we had to fuck or anything...?”
from fuchsia to nearly scarlet, seungmin averted his eyes at the speed of light.
“seung!!! do you have something to tell me?!” your teasing grin spread wide and you lifted your hand to give your adorable friend a clap on the back.
“i’m just repeating what you said!!”
you broke the bar open, cracking off the first square on the counter with a solid snap. with a smirk, you offered it to your friend. he reached out, only to nearly jump out of his skin when the old-timey ringtone from his phone erupted in the hollow kitchen.
“shit.” he murmured under his breath, pulling it out and immediately pressing the call button upon seeing the caller. “h-hello? yeah? wait, wait...slow down...the cultures did what?! and you have to start over?? shit--”
before you could have anything to do with it, your friend was already throwing on his sneakers and sky blue raincoat. “sorry, y/n but i have to go. that was my co-worker, they said that something went bad with the incubator, and all of the cultures are ruined, and there’s the stupid lab meeting in the morning--”
“i’m gonna pretend that i understood everything you said.” you hung at the doorway to the kitchen, observing him trip over pairs of shoes and other random-ass college-aged boy items. “you only get a pass because i have a feeling that the coworker we’re talking about here is the cute one.”
your friend rolled his eyes, mouthing a reluctant, “yes.”
“fine then. we can try the chocolates another time.”
“fine--sure--” seungmin grabbed for the handle, “sorry. again.”
~💋~
you felt like the chocolate bar was taunting you, just sitting there opened with two squares all ready for the eating. oddly, you really couldn’t figure out exactly why you had wanted to try them in the first place. for a second, the guilt and loneliness started to seep through and it felt sticky, pathetic, and stung like thorns right into your breaths.
“fuck it.” you whispered under your breath, swiping them all up and walking over to the trash can.
“whatcha got there?” a voice entered the room attached to one of seungmin’s roommates, jisung.
the two of you had met many times in passing, and you had shared enough small talk to consider him somewhat of an acquaintance. from what you had gathered about the boy, he spent much too much time in his room working on his animations and was the dictionary definition of one of those cocky-assholes you had a soft spot for.
“jisung--hey. it’s...it’s nothing. something stupid that i blew my money on.”
“let me see.” he crossed the room, looking wired and overtired as usual.
from staring at his screen for so long his eyes bagged with dark circles, but somehow it made him look mischievous, or something like that. his muscle tank had been cut low to reveal his sides and ribs which flared when he grabbed for the bar of chocolate.
“huh.” he scoffed, “i’ve seen like, infomercials for these things. you were going to try it?”
“yeah...i-i mean--no...i was.”
“what’s stopping you? not curious anymore?”
“window of opportunity passed.”
“i don’t think so.” he grinned, matter of a fact. “i like chocolate.”
you couldn’t quite believe what was being said to you at first. jisung, the boy that you barely knew, was standing there with his goofy heart-shaped smile and all, holding libido boosters and asking you to take them with him.
“you do know what those are, right? what they could do?”
immediately, he popped one in his mouth, nearly like it was a challenge. “empahsis on the “could.””
he held them closer to you, prompting you to take the remaining square which was flecked with little red hard-candy looking bits.
“fine then. you’re right. what they could do.” you downed the candy, crunching it and finding that the quality was certainly not a guarantee. the thing itself tasted halfway between a tootsie roll and cold medicine. “fuck.”
jisung laughed, throwing the rest of the bar away.
“what did you that for?”
“i’m guessing whether they work or not, you might not need them anymore.”
your friend’s roommate slicked his hair back, and ruffled it over his dark eyes. his face was slightly puffed with exhaustion, but it didn’t make him any less handsome.
“so we wait now?” you asked, glancing at the clock.
“wanna order some food or something?” he smacked his lips, “i need a fucking chaser after that.”
~💋~
you didn’t know what time it was; late, probably. after a couple hours of realizing that nothing was really going to happen to you or your friend’s roommate, you had decided to stop expecting it. although, you had kind of hoped...
the sofa that the boys shared was just about as comfortable as you had remembered it. it was large enough to hold you and seungmin’s two roommates on better days, but, once again, random-ass college-boy stuff cluttered at least half of it. it was one of those “dumpster finds” and kind of smelled like a grandma’s house, but honestly, that was what made it so comfortable.
the tv carried on, playing some kind of animated movie that jisung had chosen claiming that the director was some kind of “god of animation and storytelling.” you liked the colors, but soon you felt yourself being lulled and drowsy: your head felt heavy simply resting on your shoulders.
your eyelids fogged, and the sounds from the tv set started to fade into inexistence. beside you, jisung had crossed his arms, but the lack of space had pressed both of your thighs together, and the warmth from his leg started to wash over your drowsy state. your head bobbed, swayed...then fell, directly onto his shoulder. had you been more lucid, you would have cared more.
“oh--” he jumped slightly, and shifted awkwardly.
the room darkened and soon all you could see was the thin line of light that your half-open eyes allowed.
“this-this can’t be comfortable for you.” jisung hushed and clicked the tv off. “hey, you should be heading to bed anyway, it’s late.”
“are you kicking me out, jisung?” you babbled, not really aware of your own words.
your friend’s roommate chuckled, straightening his posture to support you. “i’m not gonna make you walk back to your place at this time of night.”
“it’s only a couple of blocks--”
“--you’ve slept over here before, haven’t you?”
you stretched out your arms with a little squeak.
“yeah. on the couch.”
“you...can’t do that. you’d have to sleep in a fucking corkscrew if you did that.”
“yeah, i know.” you giggled, now finding yourself in a kind of stupor that made you wonder if the chocolates really were doing their job. “i’ll just take seung’s bed then--”
“--he’s! not back...yet.” jisung hugged his arms to himself. “i dunno, shouldn’t he have his bed when he comes back?” he cleared his throat, composing himself. “of course, there’s space in my bed if you’d like.”
“me? sleep with you?”
“yes, with me.” just as he had before, that little challenging edge coated his tone, “only if you’re comfortable i mean. i guess that i’m forgetting that the most that the two of us have shared yet is some wack-ass chocolate so, i shouldn’t be making any assumptions.”
“no, no!” you pounced off from the couch, reaching high to the ceiling to stretch out your sore back next. and, perhaps to let your shirt tuck up just a little bit as you did so. “i don’t have a problem with it.”
jisung nodded, grinning in the half-lit room, cleaning away to-go boxes. you had noticed before, but the way that his triceps tensed when he moved around was really just a little too distracting.
“you can head on in, but--be quieter about it. jeongin is sleeping in here.”
you clicked off a sleepy salute, following the hall down exactly where you had known his room to be, but you had never entered it before. it didn’t surprise you, but it was just as messy as the rest of the place was, and you had to tip-toe around god-knows what to find your way.
after tripping on something soft and sort of damp, (which you prayed was a shower-towel) you made your way to jisung and his face illuminated by the blue-glow of his phone screen where he had immediately jumped in bed after navigating through the room much more skillfully than you had.
“you have an issue if i sleep in my underwear?” you asked, realizing.
jisung paused, wide eyed, but quickly fell back into his casual and cocky smirk. “i mean, that’s basically what i’m doing so...”
“scooch over. i hope you’re not a blanket hogger or anything.”
the bed was already pleasantly warm from jisung having occupied it. it would have felt amazing if you had been as tired as you had been moments ago, but now your entire body felt horribly wide-awake.
“--and if you start to snore, i’m leaving you for the couch, got it?”
jisung let out an airy laugh, shifting and creaking the bed a bit under him, “i don’t snore...for your information.”
with the blankets pulled up to your nose, you turned to lay on your back, eyes finally adjusting to the darkness of the room. above you, the faint green glow of glow-in-the-dark stars sprinkled across the ceiling, making up constellations: from what you could make out, the big dipper was above jisung’s bed, and the little one was above jeongin’s, who peacefully slept with tiny breaths.
jisung rolled to the side, accidently brushing his bare leg against yours.
“night, y/n. sorry the chocolates didn’t work out. would’ve been kind of hilarious if they did.”
“psh.” you rolled over too, closing your eyes, “you saying you would’ve taken up the opportunity to get in my pants?”
“guess we’ll never know.” he sighed.
~💋~
birds chirped, signaling the coming sunrise what was nearly breaking upon the horizon, and filled with deep blue sky with a type of orange-glow. the room was dim and stuffy, and noticeably much hotter than you remembered it being before. over the course of the night, you had tangled your legs with the sheets, finding them trapping you between them, and you shuffled to escape them and feel the air hit your skin. they shifted, letting you feeling the sticky mess between your legs.
“what the--” the aching and heated desire made itself painfully obvious, soaking directly through your underwear, making a wet mess of them where you throbbed with an utterly unexplainable arousal that reverberated in your core.
the friction from your legs only heightened the sensation, and you found yourself unwillingly rutting down into the mattress just to feel an ounce of relief.
fuck, the chocolates, you recalled. while you had expected to feel something from them, this was twenty times more intense than anything you could have planned for.
you were like an animal in heat, vulnerable, weak, dazed. your body set ablaze, and it only made sense to strip of any and all clothing that held you back. in your own desperation, you had completely forgotten about the man resting next to you.
“y/n? what's--what are you doing?” jisung groggily croaked in a tone several octaves lower than you were accustomed to. your brain could only calculate it is as downright, unbelievably sexy.
“jisung, i’m fucking burning up, an-and, i think i’m finally feeling something....are you?”
he hadn’t noticed it at first until he did, but from where he could see where the blanket dipped all the way down to your waist, you were completely bare. with fluttering eyes, he gulped down dry. you noticed the way that he took you all in, looking at every inch of you. you reveled in how he greedily and shamelessly didn’t stop.
under the covers, his own legs twisted.
“me too.” he answered gravely, speaking with a low whisper.
carefully, his tentative touch advanced under the covers, slowly reaching to your bare hip, where he settled a testing caress, squeezing harder, then cascaded down the small of your back to make you shiver. your own hand did the same, instead finding his leg and creeping your hand up and under his shirt. little space existed between the two of you, and only the panting of your heavy inhales and exhales could be heard.
your eyes glued to his, beautifully brown and dilating, trembling a little while holding yours. from his light touches, it took every bit of your will to control yourself from launching over him. jisung’s hand fell lower, and toyed with the elastic band of your underwear which had started to feel painfully confining. each of your own fingers traveled up his torso, brushing over his chest which made his whole body shake.
“sh-shit, i’m so fucking--” jisung started, dropping off his words to let out a wavering sigh. you didn’t need to guess any further.
jisung slid two fingers under your elastic band, and it became too much to handle.
“please, touch me jisung.” you whined out pitifully, clawing directly into the soft muscles of his back.
you were shocked how quickly he had given into you, immediately crashing his lips against yours first, then using both arms to pull you into his chest so close it stole all of your breath away. you kissed him back roughly, ravenous to feel the sensation of his mouth against your own. he growled out a small groan directly into your lips, sloppily working every single corner and edge of your mouth with a devilish smile curling his own.
lower, both of your hips met flush, grinding and twisting to create the kind of pressure that the both of you craved. limbs twisted, sweating and heated skin mingled, and you could feel every bit of his hardened cock right against your own arousal and how his shaft throbbed helplessly.
“you taste so good.” he murmured between haphazard kisses, letting his low tone vibrate against you.
“take these off.” you ordered, tugging at his boxers, nearly taking them off yourself.
“take yours off.” he echoed, and you did.
curious hands plunged deeper, delighting fingers in the slick of the other’s cum.
“fuck.” jisung dragged the explicative over your lip where he lapped lazily into you. “don’t stop.”
you gave him a moment’s pause, stopping to wet your palm with saliva, then met it with his cock. you worked his length with the sharp and twisting turn of your wrist, causing him to whimper out shamelessly.
“shhh.” you hissed, pulling his lip with our teeth, “don’t want to wake up your roommate do we?”
he nodded, biting each and every tantalizing little sound into his lip instead. your own breaths grew shallow feeling the pressure from his hand between your legs and how he had grabbed into your thigh to swing it over his hip for better access.
“wouldn’t you like me to fuck you out, baby? fuck you like the good little cock whore that you are for me? i’ve seen the way that you look...you’ve wanted this...haven’t you?” jisung’s words were slick and luxurious despite their bite.
to suppress the begging moan in your throat, you cupped your hand over your mouth, and pressed hard into it.
the blanket tented from your pulling at his cock and how you rubbed over his slit: it was an ethereal sight even in the blurriness of the room.
slowly, you leaned over to his ear, waist rocking back and forth over the sensation of his hand rubbing into you relentlessly. “don’t lie baby, you want my ass bouncing on your cock...don’t you?”
in one movement, he swept his full body weight over yours and harshly pulled your legs back to open your entrance just for him to tease with his tip. he guided himself in slowly and meticulously, bottoming out once you had sunk your fingers into his shoulders to manage some of the screams you would have let out otherwise.
“fuck yes, baby.” jisung growled, finding an animalistic pace that burned your whole body with white flames of pleasure.
you grew impatient wondering furiously what his cute little pouty cheeks would look like when you fucked him from above, riding his dick. you wouldn’t wait any further, taking your grasp on his shoulders to then flip him, settling your hips over his dick which you pounced on to the tune of one of his moans slipping past, loud and guttural.
“shut. the fuck. up.” you scolded him, throwing your hand over his pretty mouth. he whimpered out once again, eyes rolling feeling the tip of his dick reach as deeply inside of you as you would let it. “cum inside me sungie, i won’t stop until I have every last drop.”
jisung nodded, chest flaring as his breaths quickened.
“cum for me baby, and i’ll cum for you...got it?” your breathy whispers scratched your throat, but you needed him to hear.
you held his eyes which glistened with two pretty little tears that fell as he came hard, shaking with his whole body and letting each of his gleeful moans come spiraling into your hand.
your own heat came surging, right at your core, growing....growing...
a lamplight flashed on.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? WHAT THE--WHAT THE--”
jeongin threw his sheets over his eyes, while shuddering. “I WAS FUCKING SLEEPING!!”
his shrill scream sent you jumping out of your lust, and you scrambled off jisung’s throbbing and pink cock, and forgetting the force of gravity, which sent his cum dripping out from inside of you. in your panic, you grabbed at anything to cover up your body and his, only to get so tangled that you lost your balance on the edge of the bed and.....
~💋~
THUMP
your body hit the wooden floor of jisung and jeongin’s room, right on your butt where you knew that it would be hurting for weeks.
as disoriented as you were, it took you a good few minutes to realize what had actually just happened.
“y/n?” jisung called with his groggy half-awake, half-asleep tone. “did you just fall out of the bed?”
on the opposite side of the room, you whipped your head over to see jeongin still peacefully sleeping with his back turned to jisung’s bed.
“fuck--um, yeah. i did. shit...”
jisung chuckled in the dark room just barely peeking with the first bits of the sunrise in streaming into the room.
“i don’t know how you did that considering i gave you plenty of space. get back up here.”
still dazed and brain overheating, you could have sworn you felt the little aftershocks of the orgasm that felt so real still coursing through your body.
you felt it too: the way that your underwear had slicked. some part of it all must’ve been real.
“jisung--” you started, not even sure if you wanted to tell him in the first place. “are you certain that you didn’t feel anything?”
jisung turned to face you and shook his head, “no, you?”
you hesitated, holding his eyes to see that he must have been telling the truth.
“i just...i just had this insane dream...”
“dream? about what?”
“it’s hard to explain...” you trailed.
“you look kind of shaken up, are you sure that you’re okay?” jisung extended a careful hand, and smoothed down the side of your face in the way that had felt frighteningly real only seconds ago. his hand lingered, falling down your neck and giving you goosebumps. your eyes fell to his lips, and you wondered if they would taste like you had imagined them to be.
you leaned in closer, closing the gap.
“it went something like this.”
~🌹~
Bunch of (Ro)ses!
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Yup, Sure Was a Finale
I had an epiphany. The reason why I never re-watched the final two parts of Sozin’s Comet even though I’ve popped in episodes at random many times over the years isn’t that I can’t bear the sadness of seeing one of the best, most engaging narratives out there come to an end.
It’s simply that the finale isn’t all that good.
Some honorable mentions of what was enjoyable.
(+) This
Just this.
(+) The Church of Zutara has another convert
“Are you sure they don’t get together?” Hubster, 2020
(+) The tragedy of Azula
And the fact that it’s acknowledged as such. I hope Zuko will do his best to get her help and have a relationship with her…
(+) Sokka being a big bro
And the whole airship sequence in general. It’s wonderfully paced and plotted, with moments of humor, real stakes, Toph being both badass and a scared crying kid, Sokka strategizing and protecting, Suki saving the day, and non-benders being instrumental in thwarting the bad guy firebender’s plans. Would be shame if Bryke never portrayed them this capable ever again…
And now for the main course.
(-) Blink and its over
The wrap-up feels too quick (hashtag Needs More ROtK-style False Endings). A part of this is due to how fast the story goes from the thick of the action to hastily tying up a bunch of loose ends, but the larger issue is how Book 3’s uneven pacing comes home to roost. After spending half a season on filler episodes that at best subtly flesh out established characters while dancing around a huge lionturtle-shaped hole, and at worst contradict the theme of “no one is born bad” with “you’re a hot mess because your great-grandfathers didn’t get along too well”, the frantic “go go go” rush of the second half screeches to a halt with “they won and everyone was happy because now the right people have power and it will be all good from now on yup nothing more to deal with baiiiii”.
Yes, I know, it’s a kids’ show. But goddamn, this particular kids’ show has proven so many times it can do better than the expected tropiness. Showing the characters in their roles as builders of a new world was the least that could have been done.
Oh well!
(-) Ursa
We’ll never know. There will never be a story that delves into this. Yup. Shall forever remain but an intriguing mystery. Is good, though. Mystery is better than a story where Ursa shares her son’s penchant for forgetfulness. Imagine how embarrassing that would be. Speaking of which…
(-) What does Mai see in this jerkbender?
Look, I like to harp a lot on the mess of inconsistent writing that’s Mai but let’s unpack this scene from her perspective, shall we?
Zuko forgot about her! It totally slipped his mind that the one person who prioritized the safety of his dumb ass was rotting in the worst prison in the Fire Nation—because of him! And she was rotting there long enough after the final Agni Kai for the news of Zuko’s upcoming coronation to spread and her uncle to feel sufficiently secure to release her. But then the coronation scene is attended by every single member of Gaang & Friends that was imprisoned?
So what this tells me is that either a) the invasion force had the ability to break themselves out the whole time and for some reason decided not to exercise it until after the war was over, b) Zuko forgot about them as well and no one thought to remind him there were prisons full of POWs until Mai arrived, or, and that’s even better, c) Zuko took care to free every single resistance fighter while making sure Mai would be the one to stay behind bars.
Never thought I’d say this but Mai? Honey? You deserve so much better.
(-) “What does Katara want?”
Asked no one in the writers’ room ever, apparently.
This is not so much anti Cataang as anti romance stories that pay attention to the needs, opinions, and wants of only one partner in general. Over the previous 60 episodes, Katara actively expressed romantic interest in Aang exactly, wait for it,
Once.
And it got retconned out of relevance by the following two interactions where the possibility of a romantic relationship came up, making the Headband dance pretty easy to reclassify as just one of those examples where Aang “teaches” Katara to have fun (as if one of the main obstacles to her having fun wasn’t him constantly fooling around and offloading his duties). And because the writers not only didn’t succeed in portraying Katara’s internal state of mind, but also failed to root her reluctance to pursue a relationship in outside circumstances that could change, her sudden state of unconfused once Aang steps into the spotlight has a single canonical explanation that as much as approaches coherency.
The fact is, though, that trying to interpret canon Cataang from a Watsonian perspective is an exercise in foolishness. Because there is no Watsonian justification for the ship and never has been. Bryke simply conceived of Katara as nothing but a tropey prize for Aang, never saw her as anything beyond that, and were perfectly happy to go on and immortalize her as a passive broodmare for the rest of her life.
And I fully intend to die mad about it.
(-) Iroh dips
OK, it’s been long apparent that the show doesn’t intend to do anything about Iroh’s complicity in AzulOzai’s regime in any meaningful way, and that his sole motivation for doing anything whatsoever is Zuko whom he views as a replacement son which is supposed to be good for some reason. But the finale has him abandon even that, and instead turns him full-on YOLO, idgaf anymore. It really throws Iroh’s supposed love for Zuko into doubt when his last act in the entire show is to take a half-educated 16-year old with no political savvy or an heir to secure a dynastic continuity and plomp him on the throne of a war-mongering imperialist regime where the entirety of the militarist and ruling class is guaranteed to fight him tooth and nail for power.
(I sure hope Mai’s ready to start popping out babies by tea-time otherwise the whole country is fukd in about a week)
Christ, how hard would it be to have Iroh keep the throne warm for a few years while Zuko is getting ready to succeed him? Not only would it make the whole FN reformation bit quite likelier to occur, it would require Iroh’s hedonistic ass to actually sacrifice something for once. And not having Zuko ascend to power, instead spending some time bettering and educating himself first, would be a wonderful message that no matter what you endured and overcame, you never stop growing. A kids’ show, remember?
(-) The conquering of Ba Sing Se
Gee, I feel so blessed to have my attention diverted from battlefields which actually matter to an old dude vanity project I would have been perfectly happy to assume resolved itself off-screen.
The White Lotus in general just bugs me. I was fine with the individual characters and their overall passivity when they were portrayed as lone dissenters living under circumstances where it wasn’t really possible for any single person to mount a meaningful resistance. But as members of a far-reaching shadowy organization that’s left the real fight to a bunch of kids for 59 episodes straight and didn’t turn up until a perfect opportunity presented itself to take control of the largest city in the world and bask in the spotlight?
Yeah, no.
Similarly to the lionturtle-ex-machina, the White Lotus represents a huge missed opportunity for a season-long storytelling. Here’s just a brief list of what they could have been doing throughout Book 3:
orchestrating a Fire Nation uprising;
gathering those directly persecuted by AzulOzai’s regime to help Zuko keep his hold on power once he’s crowned;
establishing themselves as a viable alternative to Ozai;
sabotaging Fire Nation’s war efforts from the inside;
countering Fire Nation propaganda (Asha Greyjoy’s pinecones, anyone?);
running a supply network to alleviate the suffering of Earth Kingdom citizens.
Instead, they sit on their asses until the time comes to claim personal glory.
You know what, good on Bryke for making me conclude that in comparison, the Freedom Fighters were perfectly unproblematic, actually.
(-) Fire Lord Dead-by-Dawn
Yes, a kids’ show, I know! But ffs, this is the same kids’ show that came up with Long Feng and portrayed courtly intrigue, kingly puppets, secret police, spy networks, and information wars. Was it really too much of me to expect something other than “enlightened despot solves everything”? Especially if said enlightened despot has persisting anger issues, no personal support system, no base of followers, and no political experience whatsoever?
If Zuko’s actually serious about regaining the Fire Nation’s honor (i.e. by dismantling the country’s military machine, decolonizing the Earth Kingdom, paying reparations to everyone and their lemur, and funding any and all cultural restoration projects Aang and the SWT come up with), then there is no way, no way in the universe that he doesn’t face a civil war, deposing, and execution within a month.
One reason why his future as a Fire Lord seems rather bleak is that little’s been shown about the actual subjects of AzulOzai’s regime. While we get a vague reassurance that “no Toph, they’re not born bad” (le shockings), they largely remain a voiceless uniform mass of brainwashed clapping seals. What is their view on the Fire Nation’s crimes? Do they associate their condition with their country’s war-mongering? How will they react when Zuko starts dismantling the country piece by piece to rebuild it, bringing it to economic ruin? What will they do when noble Ozai loyalists come out of the woodwork and begin rounding them up under the banner of “Make the Fire Nation Great Again?”
I have no idea, and Zuko doesn’t either because he’s unironically more qualified to rule the Earth Kingdom than his own people.
You know what would have been better? Fire Lord Iroh, White Lotus pulling the strings to maintain the regime, and Crown Prince/People’s Champion Zuko travelling the Fire Nation with Aang and an army of tutors to promote the new boss, only to realize that absolute monarchy is kinda crap for the people he’s one day supposed to rule and gaining their support by ceding some power to them.
I’d laser holes into my TV due to how much I’d enjoy watching that.
(-) All hail Avatar Rock
Literally and metaphorically. Aang doesn’t sacrifice anything, gets everything, and the clever solution of going about getting said everything is handed to him on a silver platter, requiring no active participation on his part whatsoever.
He doesn’t work to unblock his chakras, spiritually or physically.
He only speaks to his past lives to get a pat on the back and a bow-tied solution he could mindlessly follow.
Energy-bending doesn’t require any sacrifice from him, leaves no lasting marks, and only serves for the narrative to praise him as the rare individual that’s unbendable and thus so very very special.
The most infuriating thing is, however, that Aang is clearly shown as being able to beat Ozai without either the Avatar state, or energy-bending.
And he chooses not to. From this moment on, Aang no longer fights to save the world. He fights to preserve his beliefs, going directly against the instructions of his past lives and effectively reneging on his duties as the Avatar.
Again.
It’s not like you can’t portray Aang’s faithfulness to his spiritual beliefs as the key to beating Ozai and saving the world. But that’s not what the show did. There is no link between Aang sparing Ozai and securing a better future, quite to the contrary—Ozai’s survival ends up being a massive problem for the continuation of Zuko’s rule, and consequently a threat to the world at large. His survival benefits Aang and no one else.
Aang’s spiritual purity and his status as a savior of the world are allowed to coexist only due to a deliberate stroke of a writer’s pen.
And I hate it.
Welp, nothing to do about it now except to bury myself up to my tits in fix-it fics I guess.
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Seven Fundamentals to Writing Better Yu-Gi-Oh Duelfics
Ever wanted to write a duelfic just as good or better than canon?
Done right, duels are memorable action scenes.
Done wrong, duels shatter the suspension of disbelief. It’s already a big ask to imagine the world revolving around a card game.
You don’t want the tragedy where your readers yank the scrollbar past your duel, or worse, close your tab. Even the small pool of duelfic readers/writers like me will skip huge chunks of your chapters when the duels sag.
By implementing basic storytelling techniques tailored to dueling, you can hook your readers into following the play-by-play.
High Stakes
Consistent Rules
Sneaks Checked
“Balanced” Gameplay
Foreshadowing Victory
Engaging Description
Dramatic Tension
1. High Stakes
When you advertise your story as a duelfic, your first duel tells readers whether or not what you wrote is worth their time.
If your characters duel without a concrete reason to rip the opponent’s throat, readers already know the outcome:
You lose.
Why? The game is pointless. Who’s dropping whatever they’re doing just to read the equivalent of your characters sipping afternoon tea? If you’re introducing the setting and characters, why can’t you introduce exciting threats?
No reader expects your first duel to decide the fate of the world, but your characters still need to bet.
Characters wager life chips.
If your character loses, they suffer death or suicide-inducing despair.
Is it too much to start with life-and-death? No. Think of the life chip as the culmination of hopes and dreams.
As the story progresses, the stakes will rise, must rise. How? Others will entrust the main characters with their own life chips, and/or the life chips acquire additional meaning. Consider this loose analogy: at the end of a poker tournament, gamblers sit at the final table with stacks built from the chips of others.
Life chips mean different things to different characters. Let’s take the Duelist Kingdom arc.
Yugi’s life chip is the hope to save his grandfather (and later, his own soul)
Joey’s life chip is the hope to win the prize money to fund his sister’s medical operation
Kaiba’s life chip is the hope to save his little brother (and later, his own soul)
You don’t even need your final showdown to revolve around the fate of world; it just has to be one or more things that matter to your characters.
Also, make sure to communicate the stakes, or why the characters accept uneven bets.
If you have the chops, you can also play around with disguising the stakes. As in, your character thinks they’re wagering something small, but it’s actually their life chip. However, your readers still need a vague reason to believe that a defeat will devour the character.
Always make sure the characters stake one or more life chips!
2. Consistent Rules
If you watched the Duelist Kingdom arc and tried to understand the moves everyone made, your head exploded.
Ask yourself: will the clever scheme that your hero invented drive readers crazy?
If I write a magic system that requires a wand, this applies to all. I cannot become a genius and suddenly wave my hands to cast magic.
Demonstrate the rules early, preferably in the first duel, and keep them sacred.
If you must make an exception, establish it early. In that case, the exception becomes a well-defined branch of the rules that the readers can anticipate.
Can the players magically draw the card they need, whenever they want?
If you can establish the when and why, by all means. The readers proceed with the understanding that the players can reach into their deck like a glorified toolbox.
For example, Duel Links has a concept called “skills” that function like a player’s special ability. At the time I wrote this, Yami Yugi’s “Destiny Draw” skill lets the player take any card from their deck once per duel after losing 2000LP (and even if they stacked the top of the deck earlier!).
Card should also have the same, predictable effect. If the card prevents attacks, I doubt the text discusses physical properties or mentions holding things in the air. But you knew that, right?
The rules are the laws of the universe.
3. Sneaks Checked
I love duels. I also love getting what I want.
Why does getting what I want have to be through a duel?
If we talk, maybe we can come to an agreement. If I blackmail you, maybe you’ll give in to my demands. If I shoot you, I can loot your corpse. Give the readers a good reason as to why your characters would bother with the hassle of honest dueling and can’t wiggle from the consequences of losing.
Often, the duel takes place in the context of a tournament. Hopefully, the tournament officials are keeping a good eye on the players and cracking down on cheaters.
However, even that’s not a guarantee. What’s the key concept?
Power.
The competitors have equivalent capacity for coercion (usually violence) or have a neutral referee presiding over the match with the most capacity for coercion (shoutout to gambling manga Usogui).
Anyone who enters a game otherwise has lost before the first move.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, magical and sci-fi enforcement are common. The Shadow Realm can trap the loser in a desolate hell. In a digital world, the loser suffers deletion. Or just have good tournament officials.
Be vigilant when your duel doesn’t call upon these tropes.
Your amoral characters won’t mind blindsiding your other characters, and they won’t mind blindsiding you with a plot hole.
If you’re not careful, the readers will ask you why they played uncharacteristically fair.
4. “Balanced” Gameplay
Duels should be fair and fun…for the villain.
Ostensibly, everyone plays a balanced game, designed to give both sides a sporting chance. In reality, the villain tilts the field to their favor with one or more tricks up their sleeves. Why would your villain ever fight fair?
But that’s fine. We love rooting for the underdog and watching the villain get their comeuppance.
Overpowered ability to let the villain read minds? Deck full of unbalanced cards that makes the villain’s monsters invincible with no drawback? Creator who knows every strategy in the game? Readers will turn the page as they wonder how the hero will prevail.
The more obstacles you can throw in the hero’s way, the better.
Got custom cards? No problem, just follow a couple guidelines. After all, some duelists are more equal than others.
The hero’s deck is full of regular cards that have a cost to use. For every play they want to make, their cards insist that they give up their attack, discard to play, etc.
The villain’s deck is full of rare cards that power up their game for free. So long as you can justify why the card made it to print, the villain can play whatever they want.
For every step your hero takes, the villain gets two.
5. Foreshadowing Victory
How many times have you watched a duel where the protagonist comes up with this never-before-seen card that does exactly what the protagonist needs to clinch the win? In the final showdown, no less? It’s like the writers begged to be called amateurs and idiots.
No other genre tolerates such laziness.
However, readers don’t want an infodump of the characters’ decks. Show the cards in action. To cover the deck, you'll probably need multiple duels.
This also implies you have more freedom in how your character defeats their early opponents in the duelfic.
Does that previous statement contradict what I said about never-before-seen cards clinching the win as the mark of laziness? No, because here’s the rule:
Tolerance for the hero’s new cards decreases as the story progresses.
(Notice that I specify the hero’s new cards; your villains exist to make life harder by inventing unfair tricks.)
When you must include new cards for the hero late in the duelfic, at least find a way to make them first backfire.
Now, some writers have lots of knowledge about the card pool and metagame. Can they assume the readers a priori know the hero has access to any of the available cards in a given archetype?
I’d err on the side of caution and properly foreshadow the cards before they appear late in the duelfic. Not every reader is a walking card database. They have no reason to assume something exists unless you show the card.
Take the tolerance rule into consideration when planning your duels. If you know the awesome combo you want to use for the final turn in the duelfic climax, that’s your cue to scatter the cards into the earlier duels.
Plan the last duel first and your early duels last.
6. Description
Every reader wants a front-row seat to the action.
They’re paying you their time, so make it worth the admission: sleek combatants & budget-busting fights. Kaiba invented Solid Vision technology for a reason, so help readers envision your duels.
Who’s fighting? Describe the point-of-view’s impression of the monsters’ appearances. Red-Eyes Black Dragon should be self-explanatory.
What about a decorated monster like Time Wizard?
You could go into detail about how the red clock humanoid has yellow gears that form epaulets and purple, pointy boots and a green mustache made from clock hands and so on, but such a level of minutiae bogs pacing and invites skimming.
Readers just need to hear about a purple-caped, red clock humanoid with a wand to form an image. Their imaginations can handle the little details.
Paint appearances in broad strokes and one or two brief sentences.
How are the monsters fighting? Duel Monsters is a game where the target takes the aggressor’s attack like a champ. That doesn’t mean you can’t spice it up.
For example, my opponent’s dragon attacks my weaker knight with a fireball. My knight, interested in not dying, raises his shield. Unfortunately, he screams as the flames engulf him.
You wouldn’t just stand still with a straight face if someone armed with a knife lunged for your gut.
A fight scene is a string of action and reaction.
Most people also experience life in more senses than just sight.
A dragon’s fireball is a bright reddish-orange, hot, dries the air, smoky, and explodes with a boom on impact. I never tasted a fireball, and I hope I never do, but that’s still four senses: sight, touch, smell, and sound.
Include multiple sensory details.
Let’s spare a moment to talk about the heads-up display (HUD).
In Yu-Gi-Oh, cards have multiple stats and abilities. You’re free to mention whatever you deem necessary. No set formula exists. On one extreme, you can mention nothing to keep the narrative clean at the risk of confusing the readers. At the other extreme, infodumps about the monster’s abilities provide great detail but wreck the pacing. But there’s a cozy middle.
State only what you need from the card.
If your duels occurred before the era of Synchro, you don’t need details about levels. You can just display the basic stats to determine the stronger monster. If a deck has Pendulum monsters, just mention the scale numbers when they're played as scales. And so on.
You can also make an index of new cards at the end of a chapter.
BONUS TIP! Understanding show, don’t tell.
What is show, don’t tell? At its core, this concept refers to immersing your readers in the senses and feelings instead of exposition. Unfortunately, that definition is a bit vague to execute. After writing for a while, I had my lightbulb moment.
Don’t TELL the readers how to think or force-feed them a conclusion.
SHOW your readers the evidence.
Here’s a written example from Joey vs. Rex in Duelist Kingdom. See if you can spot what makes this prose telling instead of showing.
“Joey watched nervously as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!”
You can see two failures: “nervously” and the second sentence.
Adverbs like “nervously” and other “-ly” friends get a bad rep because rookies tend to use them as telling crutches (especially beware adverbs after dialogue tags!). “Nervously” tells me how Joey reacts. But what does “nervously” look like? One character might bite their thumb. Another might fidget in their seat. The adverb in this context lacks nuance.
We also have the second sentence: “He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!” When you’re explaining the “why” to something, you’re telling. It’s like talking down to your readers.
Contrast with the next example.
“A bead of sweat rolled off Joey’s face as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.”
The first sentence shows me Joey’s physical reaction. I see him sweating, so I think he’s nervous.
We also see a second physical reaction: “He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.” This comes on the heels of the first sentence, and I also have knowledge of when Joey used the Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo in a prior duel. Combined, I think Joey is ruminating about a missed chance.
Readers are smart; they’ll catch your intention if you show the proof.
7. Dramatic Tension
I bet you know what it's like to draw a bad hand.
Imagine: The hero staggers into the arena, and the villain just needs to win one duel to take over the world. The villain draws a bunch of powerups with no monster, but the hero draws a one-turn-kill combo.
Anticlimactic. The readers throw that duelfic straight into the trash.
Don’t just write real-life duels. “It really happened” doesn’t mean it’s emotionally satisfying.
That’s why we have literary structure.
Success and setback pace together with progressive intensity to maximize dramatic tension and emotional payoff.
I’ll spare the nitty-gritty theory detail, but your duels should look like this on a basic level:
Part 1: Villain’s basic threats. Introduces the villain’s deck and style.
Part 2: Villain’s minor strategy. The villain’s first serious attempt to defeat the hero.
Part 3: Villain’s major strategy. The hero’s reversal! But the villain has worse in store.
Part 4: Hero’s imminent defeat. The hero must break through, or else will instantly lose!
Ideally, you’re also integrating the story itself into the duel; themes and duels synergize to create a stronger effect.
You may notice how the format resembles the three-act structure.
Act I is Part 1
Act II until the Act II midpoint is Part 2
Act II midpoint until Act III is Part 3
Act III is part 4.
I’ll use Yugi/Pharaoh vs. Pegasus in Duelist Kingdom as an example.
Part 1: Mind scan. Pegasus can read minds to counter combos.
Part 2: Toon World. Indestructible, cartoonified monsters attack.
Part 3: Shadow game. Toons destroyed! But playing a shadow game weakens Yugi.
Part 4: Yugi passes out. The Pharaoh must find a new way to stop Pegasus’s mind scan!
Figure out each part of the structure for your duels before writing the turn-by-turn plays.
By the way, modern real-life Yu-Gi-Oh duels don’t suit drama because the rules provide weak constraints to creating strong boards. A good modern deck usually establishes a scary turn one board and jumps straight into Part 4, whereas other card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone force the powerhouse cards to wait several turns until the player builds the mana to pay costs.
You can still write a good modern duel. Here’s a basic outline of Arc-V’s duel between Sora and Shay. Technically, “tragedy” is the structure of this duel, so I’ll make Shay the “hero” to flip it and keep matters simplified.
Part 1: Basic monsters. These clash before a monster appears from the Extra Deck.
Part 2: Frightfurs. They come one after another to crush Shay’s Raidraptors.
Part 3: Sora’s wrath. Rise Falcon survives! But Sora’s malevolent nature comes to light.
Part 4: Frightfur Chimera. Sora chomps candy and summons his biggest fusion horror!
If following the four parts is too difficult for you, that’s okay. They're just logical extensions of one basic concept. Keep the following in mind, and you’ll never go wrong:
The villain’s subsequent threats become increasingly overwhelming.
Conclusion
Much of writing a duel boils down to storytelling technique.
Let’s tl;dr the main takeaways.
High Stakes: Minimum ante is the life chip, worth a character’s hopes and dreams.
Consistent Rules: Everyone plays by the same logic.
Sneaks Checked: Characters can’t skip the duels with violence and coercion.
“Balanced” Gameplay: Villains enjoy advantages.
Foreshadowing Victory: Readers have a chance to predict the winning combo.
Engaging Description: Immerse senses and invite reactions.
Dramatic Tension: The villain makes progressively stronger threats.
As a duelfic reader/writer, I can gauge a writer's ability by measuring their duels with the fundamentals. Many fan writers struggle; even the canon writers struggle.
But writing a duelfic isn’t rocket science. With practice, minding the fundamentals will become second nature.
And don't forget to tag your story as a duelfic. It's a whole genre in fanfic, so sort it properly and help readers from the future find you.
May the heart of the cards be with you.
…
Want to see in-depth examples of my advice? I rewrote the Orichalcos arc to reimagine its untapped potential without the failures of the canon presentation. You can find it on FFnet and AO3.
#yugioh#ygo#yugioh fanfiction#yugioh fandom#fanfic writing#duelfic#writing#writing tips#writing advice#writing help#how to write#listicles
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An Unlikely Befriending
Summary: Jon gets kidnapped. Jon gets bored. And Jon makes very unlikely friends because of it. Aka: Pen and Paper saves the day (world) and Jon finally gets to have a band.
A/N: This is pure fluff, no warnings apply I think.
___
The worst thing about being kidnapped by a crazy mannequin murder clown monstrousity and sitting in a cold, room with creepy wax works, tied to a chair was not the ever present terror. True the fear of Nikola finally deeming his skin good enough and skinning him alive was quite potent, but it wasn't as bad as boredom.
Jon had never taken well to waiting. His mind needed to be occupied 24/7, needed something to latch onto, to obsess about. It's why he became a researcher in the first place. Having most of his freedom taken from him made occupying himself very hard.
At least they still let him eat and drink here and there. Nikola always visited personally, her overly cheery voice bubbling forth as she chattered away while slathering him with lotion or shoving bits of take out food in his mouth. His diet those last two weeks had been very varied and healthy and he had never drank so much water before.
He still probably looked a mess, what with no access to a shower and barely being able to sleep at all. And the constant terror. Oh yeah and the boredom.
Oh the boredom.
Jon was currently sitting in his chair as he was wont to do. Thankfully not nailed down despite all the nagging from Sarah Baldwin. The coffin was singing or moaning with a slight melody behind it, depending on who you asked. And somehow Jon found himself humming along, trying to find a good melody to go with the haunting tune. It wasn't like he had anything better to do and if he didn't start doing something creative his mind would start eating itself soon.
So he hummed, experimenting with the notes, twisting them into something that was reminiscent of circus music and airships. And then he kept humming the melody over and over, forming words in his mind to go with the tune. Once the spark was lit a fire started to burn, the story branching out and out into a twirling mass of chaos and fire.
He had gotten lost in his imagination, hadn't noticed how loud he had become, hadn't heard Nikola approach. Jon screeched when she leant down over him and grinned at him upside down, nose nearly touching his.
Nikola had the gall to laugh at him, no breath fanning over his face as she did so.
"Awww Archivist! I didn't know you had such a nice voice!"
"Hrmph."
"Yes your singing was also quite good!" She straightened herself, back cracking in several places. Striding around his chair she towered over him, tattered, bloody ringmaster uniform filling his field of vision.
"I'm glad you feel comfortable enough to sing, of course! And the broken repeat is lovely."
"Hm."
"Anyway water time!"
With gleeful cackling she ripped the tape from his mouth, amused enough to not immediately shove the bottle between his teeth.
"There are words to it, too." Jon rushed to say, not exactly sure why. What was he offering her here? A solo performance?
"Oh?" she at least didn't tape his mouth shut again. For now.
After waiting several beats where both stared at each other and nothing else happened Jon dared to speak up again.
"I ah... well I wrote it myself? Not wrote, of course. My hands are tied at the moment-" He was rambling. Nikola had given him the freedom of speech and he was off like a shot, telling her everything about what he had been thinking about before she had interrupted his impromptu jamming session, terror completely terminating his brain to mouth filter.
Nikola, for her part, took it all in stride. She even settled on the floor in front of him, blinking every now and then to indicate that she was still present.
"It's such a shame." she finally spoke, holding the water bottle to his mouth, letting him drink of his own volution for once. "You would have made a perfect piece for the choir. Hm maybe what will be left of you will do."
"I could sing for you now." Jon offered as soon as his mouth was free again.
Nikola startled at the offer and Jon just shrugged as much as he was able to. He'd rather sing to a creepy murder doll than spend one minute longer alone and bored out of his mind. And if he could delay the Unknowing (and the violent removal of his skin) by keeping Nikola entertained than even better.
That sounded like he almost had a plan. Which was untrue. He only had a very strong desire for entertainment.
"No sneaky questions." Nikola warned.
"Promise. I can't guarantee good quality rhymes, though. I'm still workshopping."
Singing out loud what had been in his head was always an awkward affair. He had wanted to start a band with Georgie in uni. But it was exactly because of this that he had never bothered.
"That was fun!" Nikola screamed after he was finished nontheless. Clapping her hands in delight, which created a horrible cracking noise.
"I'm glad? I also DM."
She tilted her head at him. "What's that?"
Jon explained the concept of pen and paper games to her while she rubbed lotion into his skin and had her hooked immediately.
Later that day (or maybe the next day, really Jon had no concept of time anymore) Jon was for the first time allowed out of his chair, carefully rubbing circulation back into his hands. Nikola had only briefly left him alone after watering and lotioning him. They had hashed out what kind of world and system they wanted to use (a horror setting, of course) and then Nikola was off and dragging Breekon and Hope back into the room so they had enough people to play.
Either Breekon or Hope sat down behind Jon, large hands lightly clasping his arms, squeezing every once in a while to remind him that should he try and escape he would only end up in pain.
Jon shifted awkwardly in the grip, unused to gentleness even if it was supposed to be threatening.
"Alright. First, character creation. Who do you guys want to play?"
It became a daily thing. The three beings in his group quickly became addicted to his story telling and to the characters they were allowed to play. Nikola tore through characters, trying on different personalities like pieces of clothing. She had a beautiful eery singing voice, Jon was surprised to find out when she had decided to play a member of a steampunk band.
Breekon and Hope were less manic, too attached to their twins to play anyone else. They changed voices and accents every session, though. Jon deigned to ignore their shenanigans, scared to make them angry. He hadn't had this much fun in ages, he didn't want to loose that.
The two delivery men took turns holding him down while they played, Hope holding onto his arms and Breekon using him like a child would a Teddy bear.
Eventually the three lingered after their sessions had ended, the ropes that tied him to his chair less tight. Jon tried to keep the conversations casual, to not ask all the questions that burned at the tip of his tongue. He found that he didn't need to. Tongue loose from goofing around Nikola was often chatty, Breekon and Hope throwing in their two cents every once in a while.
Eventually the topic about Tims younger brother came up.
"Danny Stoker? Grimauldi skinned him? Hm..." Nikolas head nearly dislodged as she stared at the ceiling in thought. "Noooo." She giggled. "We didn't skin anyone that night, silly! We were scoping out locations for the dance! Danny's little group stumbled into us and got a little confused~"
"But Tim saw Grimauldi rip Dannys skin off of a puppet."
Nikola shrugged. "An illusion. We're good at making you people see things that aren't really there. Yet."
"So Danny is alive?"
"I believe so!~ If he didn't die in a ditch somewhere."
Jon was very careful to keep his voice as soft as possible with the next question. "Could you find him again and bring him to the Institute? To Tim and... I don't know... maybe that's a stupid idea given that he can't be sure it's really him..."
"If I track him down do I get inspiration for my character next session?"
"That's cheating." Breekon complained under his breath behind Jon.
"I... yes?"
Nikola grinned. "Wonderful! I see what I can do!"
Days went by like that, Nikola or Breekon or Hope updating him on Dannys search, which had turned out to be harder than they had thought. Well at least Jon was keeping them busy.
They were in the middle of racing a burning train into the central bank of London when a door creaked behind Jon, bathing the room in technicolour and spiral shapes.
"That is not what I thought I'd find here." A voice that wavered between confused and gleeful mused.
Jon twisted in the grip Breekon had on him. "Hello Michael."
"Hello Archivist. You've found yourself in an interesting situation." The grin Michael shot him was a knife glinting in the light before striking.
"Yes. Why are you here?"
Nikola had let him practice after Jon had explained his lack of training, much more lax with her hostage now that he fed her fascinating stories of blood and gore. So there was no trace of compulsion in his voice when he asked the question.
Michael answered truthfully anyway. "I came to kill you of course!"
"I have dips on that!" Nikola said, voice pleasant and grin feral.
"I'm sorry about that. Would you like to join the game instead?"
Michael stared at him as though he had grown mad. Impressed, curious and lightly terrified. Then it laughed that horrible, headache inducing laugh.
"There's a lot of lies and delusion." Jon coaxed, heart beating out of his chest with nerves.
"He's a good storyteller." Hope added, Nikola and Breekon nodding along.
"Hm alright. I guess I can play for a bit."
It didn't stay just for a bit. Michael stayed through the finale of the story and then demanded to start another, their little ragtag group of definitely not heroes causing more chaos than any other player group Jon had ever DMed before. And that was saying something. Hours upon hours passed, Michael disappearing and reappearing to get Jon coffee and tea to keep his voice from giving out.
In the middle of it all Michael began twitching and twisting, glitching in and out of sight before slumping to the ground with a groan, form for once near comprehensible. Another door opened and out walked Helen looking down at the Distortion in disappointment.
"Oh that didn't destroy you. Shame."
"Helen?"
"Hello Jon! I was coming to rescue you given that Michael got a little distracted. Do you want to come to the archives with me?"
Honestly Jon should have been shocked, probably angry. He was definitely sad. And yet the most he felt was just an overwhelming sense of whelp.
Jon vaguely gestured towards Nikola, as much as Breekons hold allowed him to. "Ask her."
"We're not done yet."
"Later then?"
Nikola considered Jon for a long moment, both staring unblinking at each other. "Give us an hour."
To Jons great surprise Helen just nodded and delicately sat on the chair Jon usually frequented in his "freetime" all prim and proper except for the long sharp fingers curling at the edges like corkscrews.
"Now where were we?"
Michael groaned from the floor for once not smiling. Jon felt a twinge of sympathy for him.
"Are you alright?"
"Been better. Been worse. Let's burn this village down!"
There was no end to the tale they had been playing, not with just one session of playtime. Jon felt a bit bad about that, especially because he had left it at a cliffhanger. No one seemed to be angry at him for it, though. Michael had recovered fast and was again his usual ominous cheery, albeit lightly aggressive self. He poked and prodded at Helen like a curious cat while Nikola massaged lotion into Jons skin for the last time and handed him several expensive looking bottles, rattling down a step by step skin care routine he was to follow to the t or else she would break into his house and do it herself.
Hope patted him on the head. "See you around, Archivist."
"You're really letting me go? Just like that?" Jon still couldn't believe it.
Nikola shrugged. "I found another option. And I'd like to keep doing this after the Unknowing."
"Will that be even possible?"
The grin he got from was not at all reassuring. "I don't know~"
Well that was probably the best he would get from her. Jon gave a hesitant tiny wave and, flanked by both Michael and Helen stepped through their door.
Back at the archive no one had even questioned his disappearance. A fact that made Michael and Helen laugh, even though they both refused to leave as Tim, Melanie and Basira questioned him about his whereabouts.
Martin was the only one who took Jons forced vacation in stride. Maybe he even was a little too happy about a group of mannequins harassing him to take better care of himself.
"You're not compromised now, are you?" Basira asked when Jon had settled back into his office after a long shower.
"No? Because I still don't want the world to end?"
"Good."
Somehow Jon knew that she would still keep an eye on him from now on.
~~~
When the day came to blow up the ritual site Jon hadn't slept a wink in three nights and was overcome by guilt. Despite how aweful his initial time at the circus had been and despite him knowing what horrible things Nikola and her kin did in their freetime, Jon still felt bad about probably killing her.
He tried to rationalize his feelings away, connecting his rising anxiety with the fact that Danny still hadn't been found. It was a flimsy denial.
Tim stayed by his side the whole time, resolute in his burning desire for vengeance. Jon was scared that he would loose him to this, too. Had confessed as much to Michael and Helen, who had taken to keeping at least one door manifested somewhere in the tunnels at all times. The two had started to get along well after some initial disagreement. The Spiral, split as it was between the two of them, was weaker in its influence now, leaving more of Michael Shelley and Helen Richardson to make decisions.
They weren't here now. Daisy, Basira and Tim were, setting up explosives and arguing about rescuing people that were already long dead.
And then Nikola appeared and the dance started and nothing made sense anymore.
Jon woke up six months later, Georgie calling him a monster and Basira giving him a statement to "eat" catching him up on everything he had missed. Tim had miraculously survived, having been dragged through a door by either Helen or Michael. Daisy and Basira had encountered Breekon and Hope, who had argued about what they should do with "Jons feral friends" and in the end had led them savely out of the building before it could go boom, muttering about possible inspiration points.
The only one who hadn't been saved was Jon. He tried not to feel too hurt about that.
Coming back to work was as anti climatic as it had been after the kidnapping. The only one who seemed happy to see him was Martin. He had apologized profusely for the hug and promptly stopped doing so when Jon dashed forward and back into Martins warm embrace, finally breaking down.
He had been too caught up in his crying to make a note of the little kiss Martin pressed into his hair.
They all were a little lost after averting the apocalypse, normal everyday life eluding them. Elias might have been out of the picture for the moment, but Peter Lukas had taken over and fighting against the isolation was taking its toll on everyone.
They were all huddled in the breakroom, faces grim and stewing in silence so as to not break into an arguement when they got their delivery.
Breekon and Hope stepped into the small space with their usual nonchalance dragging a scared young man between them, who had a lot of resemblance to Tim.
"Delivery for Jonathan Sims. Nikola says hi."
Tim was the first one up. "No... No no nononononono that can't be. He's dead. Jon. Jon tell me is that really him?!"
Jon looked at the scared man, who had his gaze locked on Tim, recognition slowly dawning on his face. He Looked and he Knew.
"Yes. No one was killed the night Danny disappeared. His group encountered Nikola and her troupe during a rehearsal, got confused and then lost. And was lost ever since. Nikola told me of this. She promised to find him for me, for you."
That was all Tim needed to rush forward, catching his brother in his arms and hugging him close. "Danny!"
Danny clung back just as tightly, awareness barely back. Still obviously shaken and confused.
Jon smiled at the two delivery men. "Thank you. Will he... will he be alright."
Hope shrugged. "Dunno. Nikola said to make him remember bit by bit. Been not Danny for a long time. Might need to get used to it again."
"We'll take it slow." Tim promised, silent tears streaming down his face.
"Good luck. Hey Archivist, do we get inspiration, too?"
Jon laughed, incredulous. The others in the room watched the exchange with varying degress of exasperation and outrage.
"You know what? Yes. Yes you have. And I'll give you all advantage on your rolls next session. Only that one session, though! Same for Nikola. How is she, by the way?"
Breekon made a so-so sign. "Restless. We've waited over six months to find out what happens after that cliffhanger you gave us."
"Right." He still couldn't believe it. "Tonight 8 o'clock, my flat?"
Twin grins, the most excited he had ever seen them. "See you then, Archivist."
Tim was still gently hushing his brother, rocking back and forth on his feet to try and calm him down a little. And he still had tears streaming down his face, looking like an absolute wreck. But he still managed to join the unimpressed stares that were thrown his way by everyone but Martin, who at this point had just started to roll with the punches.
"You really befriended the clown club and made them rescue literally all of us?" Basira asked in a deadpan voice.
"I kind of feel cheap now." Daisy muttered. "As though those clowns let us win."
"Look, what can I say? Pen and Paper games are fun. I can't blame them. And Nikola did want to start a band."
"Oh my god." Melanie groaned, her head thunking onto the table. "I can't believe it."
"A band?" Basira asked, suddenly much more alert. They really had gotten quite desensitized to the whole monster thing, hadn't they? "What, you can sing?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. But really. Shouldn't we... I mean shouldn't we focus on Danny? There's a cot-"
"I know." Tim interrupted. "We all know there's a cot. I'll take him home, you keep talking about your weird band plans. Monster boss? We talk later, but... thank you."
Silence reigned long enough to follow Tim out of the Institute before Martin piped up, cheeks reddening before he had even opened his mouth. "Could we... Could we have a taste?"
"A taste? Of what? My voice?"
"Hold up, if Sims is going to sing I'll have to record it." Melanie tapped on her phone and held it into the room as one would do a microphone. "Alright go."
Jon sighed, what he didn't do to keep up the group morale.
"Aww shit." Was Basiras conclusion when he was done. "What kind of music were you thinking of playing?"
"Steampunk."
"Count me in."
~~~
Today had been weird, Jon thought, mind reeling from the whiplash of... kindness? That had happened after the delivery of one Danny Stoker. Granted the last month, no
year
had been weird. But this had topped it all. At least it had been a nice weird.
Jon had nearly forgotten about his appointment with a certain group of Strangers when he got back to his flat, overworked, hungry and still processing. So he should be forgiven for the scream he let out when he saw three large figures huddling on his too small couch.
"You haven't been taking care of your skin at all!"
There was no time to duck away from the cold, hard hands that fluttered all over his body. Nikola squished his cheeks like a proper grandmother, clearly unhappy about their elasticity.
"I was in a coma for six months."
"And awake for a few weeks now." A cheerful male voice said from behind him, bringing the smell of pizza with it.
"We were there he didn't take care of himself at all!" Helen added, putting down several cans of soda and what looked to be instant coffee.
"You're horrible!" Nikola wailed, manhandling him until he was squished between Breekon and Hope. "All my beautiful work! Ruined!"
"Uh... sorry?"
"You can make it up to us with weekly sessions." Michael suggested with a grin.
"Both on Saturday and Sunday!" Helen added.
"I actually planned for Sunday to be band day." Jon lied. "Basira wants to join, by the way."
They were all settled around the small coffee table now, food and drink on the floor so they had enough place to roll their dice.
"Wonderful! What did you think we'd name it?"
Jon tilted his head given the illusion of thinking it over even though he had known what to name his band since highschool.
"The Mechanisms."
#tma#jonathan sims#nikola orsinov#breekon and hope#michael the distortion#helen the distortion#kidnapping#fun times#humor#fluff#fanfiction#my writing#everyone lives cause i said so#even danny#enemies to friends
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Spark of Stardust
Chapter 1 : An Interstellar Quest
It's not a date. Vergil insists upon it, even when he doubts himself as he asks Lyra to accompany him to search for a perfect birthday gift for Kyrie. But just like the dying star that sparks its undying stardust; the "date" is just a start for him to get to know more about Lyra, as the librarian reveals her "little, deepest and darkest secrets"
Warning : implied psychological and drug abuse
Part 6 of Tales of Apotelesma
You can also read this fic on AO3
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
~~~
It starts with a soft hand that brushes his face. The fuzzy sensation wakes him up. The lamp on the ceiling is the first thing he sees when he slowly opens his eyes wide awake. His eyes linger to his surroundings— and that shocks him because he’s no longer in his bedroom at Devil May Cry. He’s awakened in someone else’s bedroom. The wall is painted with warm colours and there is a large bookshelf besides the bed. When he turns his head to his left, he spots toys and trinkets which supposedly belong to a little girl, and there sits a young woman who smiles at him.
Where am I?
“How was your sleep?” she asks him. Her soft hand ruffles his hair gently. “You look so peaceful.”
He’s speechless. Not because he doesn’t want to answer, but his mouth won’t cooperate with his head. His survival instincts scream at him to get away from this situation, but all he could feel is numbness.
“I brought you dinner,” the beautiful woman continues. He observes her cautiously; she is approximately in her thirties, with long brunette hair and brown eyes. She looks like the kind of woman who looks absolutely harmless. The way her body moves is delicate. Her voice sounds appealing as she tells him the menu and hopes he will like it. She gives him the same warm impression as his own mother, but this woman seems shady. Her eyes remind him of someone... but he couldn’t remember the person. The same cold, void eyes...
“The nurse said you haven’t eaten since last night. You refused to take your medicines. Why? Don’t you want to get better?” Her voice turns colder. “When I heard that you refused to eat, I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I’m afraid you won’t get better. Now you will eat and take your medicine for me, okay?”
He can’t follow everything she has said just now. Who is this woman? What medicines? What nurse? But his head nods automatically as if his body is controlled by someone else, and that little gesture makes this woman’s warm smile appear on her pretty face again.
“Good. Let’s eat! After that, I’ll read you something exciting. How’s that sound?”
He nods obediently, opening his mouth to eat the porridge. He can’t feel the taste, nor can he sense the texture of the food. But the woman looks at him as if she would blast if he didn’t eat. The sound of friction between the spoon and the bowl drives him crazy. She’s making sure that he swallows the food as she cleans up his mouth. After the bowl is empty, she proceeds to pour something from a bottle—medicine— on a small spoon and look up at him, opening her mouth as a command for him to mimic her gesture. She seems delighted when he swallows the medicine.
“Atta girl.”
What is this nonsense? What is that thing she put inside me?
But he knows he won’t get the answer.
It’s all just a dream, right?
The woman walks to the bookshelf. Her fingers run through the book until she finds the one she desires. She sits back besides him again and opens the book, her fingers scan through the pages.
“You don’t like Cinderella, so I picked up this one,” she shows him the cover of the book. “I guarantee you’ll like it! It’s called The Hobbit, an adventure story. Your favourite, right?”
I do like adventure stories. But it isn’t my favourite. It’s Dante’s…
She starts her storytelling in a clear voice. “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit...”
There’s something in her face when she reads. She seems more relaxed and softer than before, as if she got lost in the story. His suspicion is surprisingly gone while he listens to her and the familiarity strikes him again. She reminds him of his own mother when he was a child, reading him bedtime stories. Cambions in their early childhood needed a lot of sleep just like human children, but Dante and he always refused to sleep early and asked for more stories. There’s something peaceful about this familiarity. It calms him, then he decides to close his eyes again whilst the woman’s voice slowly fades away.
---
The dream shatters as Vergil’s cell phone rings loudly.
The hybrid lays still on his bed. He was sleeping for two hours just because he had no other options left to do aside from sleeping. Yet, even though his body doesn’t particularly need to sleep, he hates it when his slumber is interrupted. His hand reaches to find his phone and immediately pick it when he finds it on the desk beside his bed without seeing who’s calling him because he doesn’t bother to open his sleepy eyes.
“Dad?”
That familiar voice forces Vergil to open his eyes.
“Nero?”
“Yeah. You busy?”
“No,” Vergil throws a blanket from his naked chest as he moves his body to sit and brushes his hair. “What’s wrong, Nero?”
Nero doesn’t reply immediately. Vergil can hear a heavy sigh from his son and that makes him a bit anxious.
“Nothing wrong. Just...” The young devil hunter lets out another sigh. “Today is Kyrie’s birthday. She invites you and the crews for dinner at six. Uh… six as in Fortuna time, which is an hour later from Red Grave time. Just in case you got lost in time again.”
“Of course. We will be attending the dinner. Thank you for the invitation.”
“It’s Kyrie who invites you, not me.”
“...”
“... but having you around here is not so bad. The kids were always whining whenever you and Dante left the house.” Nero’s response is almost excited and eager, much to Vergil’s relief.
The picture of Julio, Carlo and Kyle somehow makes Vergil grins. “You did very well taking care of those little rascals.”
“Thanks,” there’s a pause before Nero continues. “Anyway, I should get going. Nico needs my help to do some crazy shit.”
“I hope all is well for you.”
“You too, I guess...” the young man clears his throat. “And... thank you. For accepting the invitation.”
“It’s the least I could do,” The blue devil smiles, his anxiety is gone as their interaction goes smoothly. “Carry on, son.”
“Y-yeah— bye, then.”
Warmth fills Vergil’s heart as he cleans up his bed and folds the blanket neatly. Never in his life would he have thought that he’d become a father. Even though it was unplanned, having a son does change his life. He has no parental figures to ask advice from and those parenting books are not helping at all, but he learns at his own pace. Two years of effort of atonement is nothing compared to his sins, yet he wants the very best for Nero and is very protective to him.
Then the word stings him.
Birthday, huh?
Ever since he was a little boy, Vergil has never understood the concept of celebrating birthdays. For him, birthday is just another day to pass. If anything, it seems like people love to celebrate the day when their life spans decrease. People are getting old, so what? Why do we celebrate that irony? Is that because of the presents and cake? Little Vergil never found the answer, but he did feel happy whenever he received presents and ate his birthday cake, even if that means he had to share it with his twin, Dante (he had given up the dream of having his own cake, since being twins means sharing almost everything). He didn’t even think about birthdays until Nero reminded him.
I wonder if he knows his birthday...
Vergil walks to the bathroom and washes his face. He looks at the mirror and the man guy in the mirror stares back at him. His reflection somehow reminds him of the strange dream. What was that dream about? It seems visceral, like it was my own memory. His heartbeat gets faster when he has a dreadful negative thought that it could be Mundus’ mind manipulation. If that was Mundus, it’s too pointless. He’d use my own memories to torture me, not with some kind of irrelevant vision.
“Mornin’,” Dante shoves himself besides Vergil and yawns. “I’m hungry.”
“Pleased to meet you, Hungry.”
Dante bursts into laughter. “Since when are you into dad jokes?”
“I’ll take the shower first.” Ignoring Dante’s question, Vergil picks up a dry towel and gets inside the shower cubicle.
Dante takes off his shirt and stretches his muscles. He washes his face and begins to shave his beard. “You said you fought Angelo demons at last week’s gig, right? Heard from Lady the same Angelo demons got sighted at another city. We still don’t have any information on who created and summoned them.”
Vergil wipes the droplets of water from his face. “It seems like those Angelo demons were none like all the artificial demons we have ever seen before. Their form, their abilities, their durability. They looked rather... futuristic, I'd say. I got an impression that the new Angelo was created mostly by advanced science rather than magic.”
“Another thing happened these past weeks. There are three outbursts at restricted medical facilities in different cities.”
“What medical facility?”
“Trish said that the three of them were research laboratories owned by Ravenhill Corporation.”
“Isn’t that the same corporation that won a peace award or something like that?”
“Yeah. The Ravenhills are an influential aristocrat with power over the health and security industry. Most of the health facilities in this world are sponsored and if not, owned by Ravenhill Corporation. They have a branch company here in this city too.”
“And do you think those incidents have a connection with the appearance of Angelo demons?”
“Just a gut feeling, but that’s worth investigating, better safe than sorry, aight?” Dante brushes his hair and flips it back like Vergil. “Hey, I look just like you with this hairstyle! Perhaps I should go with this style from now on.”
“If you’re done talking, get out of the bathroom.”
“This is MY bathroom!”
“And I’m the one who cleans up the mess you’ve created in this house, Dante.”
“Fine~!” Dante chuckles as he cleans up the remaining shaving foam from his jaw. “Have you bought something for Kyrie’s birthday? Got missed calls and a text about the dinner party from Nero.”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve been thinking of giving her a fancy revolver. Heard from Nero that she’s quite good at using guns.”
“... do you really think that women fancy weapons as a gift?”
“Trish and Lady do. But hey! You can go ask our clever librarian!” Dante's face lightens up in exhilaration.
Vergil turns off the shower and wraps a towel around his waist as he opens the cubicle. “What do you mean by ’our’?!”
“Yours, then. She’s a normal civilian woman. Perhaps she can recommend you a perfect gift for Kyrie.”
No, if only you know that she’s not normal! “... you’re probably right.”
A teasing whistle comes from Dante as he takes off his pants and walks inside the cubicle. “As Yoda said, Verge, ‘ do or do not. There is no try ’. Call her and ask her out for a date.”
“I’m not taking any advice from a man who has rotten luck with women. And who is Yoda?”
“Call it what you want it. If you’re not asking her out, I’ll go ask her by myself.”
“Not before I step over your dead body.”
“Ha! Someone’s jealous for realsies~”
Vergil walks away from the bathroom before his inner turmoil tempts him to try to kill Dante… again. His insolent brother might have been teasing him too much, but in a way he’s right. He needs to find someone trusted enough to help him buy the perfect gift for Kyrie.
But she’s on duty today is her work day. I won’t make it right on time to the party if I have to wait for her shift to end.
He’s still thinking about it when he enters his room on the second floor and grabs his phone. Lyra’s contact name is showing up, but he hesitates. It’s still 9 o’clock. The library must have just opened.
After having a quite long internal battle with himself, he decides to call her anyway.
It takes a little bit long for Lyra to finally pick up her phone. Vergil catches the sound of her voice and a man’s laugh who Vergil assumes is Nate. “Bugger off for a minute, will you? — Clayton here.”
“Lyra.”
“Oh, hello Vergil!”
“Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all! Is there anything I can help you with?”
“... yes.”
“Are you okay? You sound like you want to cry.”
“I am certainly not,” Vergil groans at Lyra’s giggle. “Yet, I do believe I need your help.”
“Name it!”
“... it’s about a birthday present.” Vergil clears his throat. “Do you remember Kyrie, my son’s fiancée? She will be celebrating her birthday this evening. She invited Dante and I to her house for dinner.”
“I see.”
“Kyrie has always been there for Nero,” he continues. “She helped guide him to become the person he is now. She took care of him while I wasn’t there for him. She’s an important person to my son. That’s why... at least I have to show her some respect.”
“By giving her a decent birthday present.”
“Yes.”
“I think she will appreciate everything you give to her.”
“She will, certainly. She’s too polite to reject a present, but I don’t want her to think that I’m a careless father-in-law by giving her a gratuitous gift.”
“You’re right. I’d be delighted to accompany you to buy the present, but…I’m on duty right now. I’m afraid I couldn't help you any further.”
“That I know. That’s why I call for your advice.”
“I suggest something small, but meaningful. You told me she love to sing, right? Maybe a vinyl of classical music would — what in the bloody—! Nate! Give me back my phone at once!”
Vergil hears them grumbling and arguing at something. He considers to just hang up the phone given to his hunch that Lyra and Nate are probably having a fight right now, but suddenly he hears Nate’s voice as the young librarian speaks to him.
“Mr. Vergil? It’s Nate!”
This scoundrel's audacity...! “I recognize your voice, Nathaniel. What are you doing with Lyra’s phone?”
“Err... sorry for the interruption, but Lyra forced me to tell you this myself, or else you won’t believe her! I told her that I don’t mind if she wants to go on a date with you! My father won’t be checking on the library today!” Nate lets out a dry chuckle to break the ice, but since Vergil says nothing, Nate continues to speak. “She insisted on at least working today, so I told her to finish the duty earlier so she could spend her time with you. That’s all! Oh yeah, a little advice here; Lyra has a terrible sense of direction, means that you should hold her close— ouch!”
A sound of a book slapped on Nate’s head comes to Vergil’s ear. The next is Lyra’s nervous voice talking to him. “Vergil? You heard Nate. So... we meet at three. How’s that sound?”
“I’ll pick you up at the library.”
“Okay!”
“Then... I’ll see you around.”
“Cheerio!”
Vergil hangs up the phone, unexpectedly feeling the queasiness after he recalls the word ‘date’ as Dante and Nate said earlier. Foolish. We are not dating. We are just going to buy a birthday present. That’s all. Stop this unnecessary disquietude. It’s just Lyra—
“Tell me you’re not gonna go on a date with your boring clothes!”
Vergil hardly glances to his side and sees Patty’s figure standing by his door. The twenty years old girl is wearing an apron and holding a broom in her hand. “At least wear something stylish! You and Dante are all hopeless! No wonder the two of you haven’t gotten married yet!”
“I believe that’s none of your concern, Miss Lowell. And although I lack what humans would consider common sense, the last time I know about human norms and etiquette, that it is rude to trespass on someone's private space and eavesdrop on other people’s conversation.”
“I’m not eavesdropping! I just happened to pass this room while cleaning this house because lately you are not present in this house and Dante is being a lazy bastard as usual! Show some gratitude!”
“Thank you for your help. But as you can see now, I am here and that means I will do the household job while you can go disturb Dante’s peace now.”
“Hey! I heard that!” Dante shouts from the first floor.
“Anyways, let me help you to choose better clothes for you!” Patty insists. “I don’t know who this girl is because Dante won’t tell me, but she seems special to you. You need to dress at your best! Impressing a girl on their first date is a must!”
“I’ll forgive your impudent attitude this time if you kindly close the door, Miss Lowell. I need to put some clothes on.”
Realizing that Vergil wears nothing but a towel wrapped on his waist, Patty flusters as she looks away and grabs the door knob violently. “Fine!”
The blue devil chuckles softly when he hears Patty goes downstairs and screams at Dante for whatever antics that he does right now. He searches through his wardrobe, pondering if Patty was right. And maybe she is. He’s about to blend into society, that means he needs to look less suspicious. He should wear something casual and humane.
Humans and their fashion. Even demons are much simpler.
He picks some clothes with a hope that he won’t look too ridiculous.
---
“Do you think he’s the type of person who brings flowers for a date?” Nate throws paper planes at Lyra’s direction, which she blocks it all with a book.
“Why do you insist that this is a date? We are friends. Friends go hang out sometimes.” Lyra says.
“Dammit, Lyre! You are older than me but I can’t believe you’re so clueless about this. Even idiots could tell that he likes you!”
Lyra groans desperately. “That’s it. That’s the problem of modern society. People nowadays confuse politeness with flirting!”
“Sometimes both work simultaneously! And that’s the case of Mr. Vergil. Sure, he’s polite to everyone even though he always looks like he wanted to kill someone. But he’s different with you; he’s not just polite, but kind. That’s two different things!”
Lyra half-heartedly listens to Nate’s babble; despite she already knows what is inside Nate’s mind. She knows what he means about Vergil being kind only to her, and Nate’s mind interprets how soft Vergil is whenever he’s around her. The thought of those forms of romanticism confuses her. Being a telepath, she has seen and listened into people’s minds for almost her entire life. She’s no stranger to the concept of love according to universal belief, yet she still doubts its existence.
Sometimes, what people think about something isn’t always synchronized with how they feel about it.
And speaking of which, I haven’t heard Nate’s thoughts since fifteen seconds ago...
“He’s here!” Nate declares as he looks up at the window near the front door. “Wait, uh... is it really him?”
“What?”
“He looks... different.” Nate mumbles. “And he didn’t bring flowers. Guess he’s not the flower type of guy.”
“On the contrary, he is.” Lyra takes a brief look at her appearance in the mirror and puts on eyeglasses before giving a wink at Nate. “See you tomorrow!”
“Now who’s excited about the date!?”
She giggles throughout her journey to the front door, only to be surprised when she opens the door and finds Vergil standing in front of her and about to open the door too. But today he looks stunningly different; he is wearing as black shirt beneath a navy-blue casual coat. His dark trousers make him look taller than usual. He changes his footwear into a pair of black chukka boots. Even with his usual warrior clothes, Vergil Sparda is already breathtakingly handsome. His casual look just enhances his majestic stature.
Lyra has never really given any attention to fashion, but now she can’t take her eyes off of him. “What’s with the sudden change in your sense of fashion?”
“You don’t like it?”
“I like it!” she blurts. “You look… so… normal”
“Is it just me or does it sound like an insult?”
“It’s a compliment!”
“... thank you, I suppose,” Vergil reluctantly scratches his nape. “Shall we go now?”
“Let’s!”
Lyra glares at Nate who’s giving her double thumbs up and loudly wishing her good luck before she closes the door.
“So,” the librarian walks side by side with Vergil. “Do you remember I mentioned that I purchased my devil arm at an antique shop?”
“Yes. What’s with that?”
“I think it’s a good place to start our quest. The shop sells antique weapons, jewelries, old books and trinkets. Perfect collection for Kyrie.”
“Very well. Where’s this shop located?”
“Nova Town.”
“It’s too far from here.”
“Lucky for us, you have Yamato.”
“I’m beginning to think that you see me as a mere means tool of transportation.”
“Maybe,” she winks playfully. “But you are too decent to be a mere tool, my dearest friend.”
The hybrid rolls his eyes, “Let’s find an empty alley first.”
---
“That was the first time I saw Lyra smiling like that,” Nate mutters at himself as he taps something on his cell phone. “Good for her! Ever since I saw their chemistry on the murder in the library weeks ago, I know they’re going to form a relationship soon!”
The twenty four years old librarian giggles at his own fantasy while drowning himself further into a mobile game he always plays whenever he has free time. He almost startled himself when the bell rings and a customer comes in. Nate abruptly pauses the game and greets the guest. “Welcome to The Literarium!”
The guest — a tall and ginger-haired man — returns Nate’s greeting with a nod. A suspicion arises in Nate’s head as he observes the man’s eyes that are covered with sunglasses. Why the hell does he wear sunglasses indoors? He continues to follow the man’s movement, which is also suspicious. The man seems detached from reality as he stares at one of the shelves quite long without really doing anything, not even touching the books. He walks slowly to another section, again without any interest in the books. The man seems eager to look for something as he repeatedly tilts his head to look outside the window, but Nate is certain that he’s not here for books. Then why bother coming here if he’s not interested in books? Nate clicks his pen anxiously. Paranoia begins to consume him. What if he wants to rob this place?!
The ginger-haired man approaches the sale section and finally picks a book. He looks at the cover briefly before heading to the counter. Nate fakes a polite smile when he scans the book— Lord of the Flies by William Golding— and forces himself to make a small talk. “Fine day, isn’t it?”
The man nods while giving Nate his money. “I agree.”
“You like allegorical one, huh?”
The man furrows his brow. “Sorry?”
Nate lifts the copy of Lord of the Flies . “You don’t know that Golding wrote one of the best allegorical novels all the time?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I only recognized it as one of the bestseller books,” the man chuckles. His laughter surprisingly sounds very friendly. “I picked it because the synopsis reminds me of the past.”
“Jesus, what a chaotic past you must have back then.” Nate gives him the book and his change.
“Quiet so,” the man flips the page, but Nate can sense he’s focusing on another thing. “By the way, the woman who wears eyeglasses… She came out from this place with a man about five minutes ago. Does she work here?”
Shit, another Lyra’s admirer. That explains my suspicion! “Yeah. You know her?”
“She looks like a person I used to know. Quite different, but I spot some similarities.”
“Maybe they are the same person?”
“The same person?” the man chuckles again as he closes the book. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“She died years ago.”
“Oh, man… I’m so sorry...”
“It’s fine. She wasn’t related to me, just a person I knew. At first glance, your friend looks eerily similar to her,” the man’s face abruptly turns into doubt and anxious. Nate swears he can see his hands tremble. “I was terribly surprised when I saw your friend out there. I thought the woman I knew was alive again. What is the name? Your lady friend, I mean.”
“Louisa.” Nate lightly says his lie as soon as he’s aware of the man’s intention. I’m not doing anything wrong. Lyra told me to fake a name in case some flirty bastards ask me her name.
“Louisa, then. Pretty name,” the man seems pleased at Nate’s answer. “Thank you. Lovely library, anyway. Good day for you.”
“Thank you. Happy reading and have a good day!”
He’s different from any of Lyra’s secret admirers, Nate feels uneasy about the man’s strange attitude even though the man has already taken his leave. He makes a mental note to contact Lyra soon after he closes the library. “That guy looks like he’s about to plan something fishy. But I can’t disturb Lyra and Mr. Vergil right now.”
Nate grabs his cell phone and restarts the game with a hope that nothing bad would happen.
---
She’s strangely quiet today.
Ever since they arrived at Nova Town, Vergil catches something unusual from Lyra. She guides the way to the antique shop without talking to him but carefully watches her surroundings. But at the same time, she seems to lose her focus and sometimes stares blankly at something. They have been walking for almost 30 minutes and they haven’t arrived at the antique shop yet. Also, that’s not the only thing from her that is unusual... “You wear eyeglasses.”
“Huh?” Lyra automatically touches her eyeglasses. “Why? You don’t like a girl with eyeglasses?”
“I don’t dislike it.”
“You have a funny way to compliment others, don’t you?”
“I have never seen you wearing eyeglasses before. I thought I was looking at a completely different person when you opened the door earlier.”
“I always wear eyeglasses whenever I’m out to shop, just for aesthetic purposes. I’ll take it off if that makes you uncomfortable—”
“Please don’t. You look lovely with that.”
“Thanks!”
“You’re welcome. Are we getting closer to the shop?”
“… I think so?”
Vergil stops abruptly, “Tell me we are not lost.”
“W-we’re not!” she stutters in panic. “I’m just having a little confusion here, because this town looks different from the last time I came here. It has only been two years and the town is already changing...”
“Are you even certain that we are in the right town?”
“One hundred percent certain!”
“Then tell me,” Vergil curves a devilish grin. “Is Nathaniel right? That you have a terrible sense of direction?”
A light blush blooms on Lyra’s face. “Uh... yeah— but we are in the right town! For real! Just because I have a terrible sense of direction, doesn’t mean I’m an idiot!”
“Yet we are lost, aren’t we?”
“We are not! See that monument over there? It’s the town’s icon. We just have to turn left to that road and the antique shop should be on the right corner.”
Vergil watches the monument that Lyra mentioned before he glances at her again with doubtful looks. “Alright, then. But why don’t you use… what is it again... GPS?”
“Later. I’m practicing my sense of direction by practicing my telepathic ability.”
“Does your telepathic ability have something to do with your sense of direction?”
“Since the murder in the library, I’m practicing to read people’s mind whenever you’re around me because your magical defense blocks my telepathic ability. Normally, all I need to do is just focus on their minds and find out if some of them have knowledge of the place I’m about to go.”
“Why bother? You still can read minds by touching their body parts.”
“That’s impractical! Not everyone wants to be touched. Just imagine if I need to touch a person with haphephobia.”
“I thought you like it when you don’t have to read minds anymore.”
“Just in case of an emergency. Who knows if we would find any strange cases again, or if I’m stuck with Dante and there’s an urgent situation where I’m required to smuggle into someone’s head.”
“Hold on. Your telepathy doesn’t work on Dante too?”
“I guess the power of Sparda includes protection from telepaths.”
“I see. Now I understand,” Vergil scoffs. “The reason why you were awfully quiet since we stepped in this town is that you tried to practice your telepathic ability to find out the antique shop’s direction, so you won’t embarrass yourself in front of me because you have poor sense of direction and you think having to use GPS would make you look unreliable as a guide.”
Lyra hides her hands behind her back and stares at the ground, which to Vergil indicates that everything he said is true and that she’s embarrassed to admit it. To be very honest, he doesn’t think that Lyra does something wrong. He just wants to clarify things behind her unusual behavior, but it unconsciously sounds like he’s scolding her for her little secret.
“Just use the GPS if you need it. You have nothing to be ashamed of. That won’t make me think less of you.”
Lyra seems to hesitate at first, but eventually shrugs and takes her phone out from her bag. Vergil quietly smirks at her surrender.
“Fortunately, we’re on the right track!” She shows Vergil the map. “Thank you for your encouragement, Vergil. That’s the longest advice you ever said to me.”
He shrugs it off. “I guess that’s what friends are for.”
“Still, that means a lot to me.”
“Just forget it. Then how’s your practice going?”
“Still doing my best. The first time I tried to read someone’s mind without touching them whenever you were around me, it was all nothing. But now I can see blurry images and hear buzzing sound!” She smiles at him, her eyes beam as she points at the rustic shop at the corner of the street. “Look! We've arrived!”
When Vergil enters the antique shop, he expects the shopkeeper to greet them with unstoppable pestering offers like all the shopkeepers normally do. That’s why he hates shopping. Thankfully the shopkeeper is sleeping on the counter, like she doesn’t care if someone steals one of the items. The shop itself is quiet and the goods are all unique. The problem is, Vergil doesn’t know where to start searching. There are many items that Vergil puts a certain degree of interest in—necklaces, bracelets, clocks, paintings—but he doesn’t think that it would be useful or meaningful to Kyrie. He starts to think about Dante’s suggestion to give her a weapon for self-protection. It seems easier than this endless searching.
“Do you know the biggest dilemma when it comes to shopping? You expect to find a certain thing, but when you’re in the shop, suddenly you’re not sure what to buy anymore.” Lyra chuckles at Vergil’s confused expression.
“Evidently,” Vergil picks an antique revolver. “I think I want to give her a weapon.”
“Is Kyrie an excellent combatant?”
“She can take care of herself, though she still needs a lot of practice, but she won’t survive a second if she had to fight multiple opponents.”
“Mmmm... okay but... how about something for protection from the demons?”
“That will do. It’s way more practical and useful.”
“Alright. Let’s ask the shopkeeper.”
Vergil points his chin at the counter. “She’s sleeping.”
“I’ll wake her up.” Lyra fixates her focus on the shopkeeper until she slowly raises her head from the counter table and rubs her eyes.
Vergil almost couldn’t hide his amusement. She can wake someone up from slumber? How advanced is her ability actually?
The shopkeeper yawns loudly. “Welcome. How can I help y’all?”
“We’re looking for an item for protection from demons. Do you have anything suitable for that?” Lyra asks.
The shopkeeper looks straight to Lyra’s eyes, then to Vergil’s. She sighs as she walks to the weapon cabinet. “I don’t have much of that, but I have this one. Take a look.” she mumbles, handing Lyra a red music box. The music box looks captivating with a rose pattern carved on the box. When Lyra opens the music box, Vergil recognizes the box is playing Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.
“Lovely, but I don’t see what’s so special about the music box,” Vergil mutters his doubt.
“Easy, dude. Push the button near the mirror to open the secret room behind it.”
Lyra does the exact instruction until the secret room is opened and reveals a golden bracelet inside.
“What’s that for?” Lyra asks.
“It will glow red whenever there's demons nearby,” the shopkeeper lights her cigarette and walks back to the counter. “When the bracelet glows, you press it and close your eyes, because it will cast a very blinding light. It’ll blind and burn demons and that’s the best time for you to run away.”
Lyra glances at Vergil, who’s examining the music box and the bracelet. She holds her giggle when she notices that the bracelet glows in red when Vergil holds it and abruptly puts it back to the secret room behind the mirror before the shopkeeper notices it.
“I guess the bracelet couldn’t distinguish demons and cambions,” she whispers to him.
“This should be fine,” Vergil forms a satisfied grin. “It has both protection advantage and aesthetical function. Perfect.”
“You take that?!” the shopkeeper shouts eagerly.
“Yes,” Vergil replies. “Is there a money-back guarantee in case the item doesn’t properly work?”
“This is an antique shop, dude. Some items might not working at all—”
“I believe I don’t have to repeat myself.” Vergil insists.
The shopkeeper gulps at Vergil’s unspeakable death threat within his icy eyes, knowing that there’s no use to argue with a man like Vergil. “Dammit, fine! Now can I get my money?”
Lyra howls with laughter, “Blimey, you are a terrifying customer.”
Vergil grins in pride as he heads to the counter.
---
The birthday party will begin in an hour, but Vergil chooses to spend the rest of the time with Lyra at the Sparda Manor. During the day time, they only meet in the library. That makes their little adventure today seem rare... and fun. Lyra buys them ice creams at the end of their journey in Nova Town. She can’t hold her laughter when she catches Vergil’s eyes sparking in childish interest as he holds his ice cream once the magic portal opens its way to the Manor.
“The shopkeeper was different from the one whom I met two years ago. He was nice and helpful,” Lyra murmurs, licking her bubblegum ice cream. “Guess he didn’t work there anymore. We get a sleepyhead instead.”
Vergil says nothing as he examines his blueberry ice cream cone. His memory of V eating cheeseburger hits him. “Why do humans think that creating something messy is a good idea?”
“It’s called innovation, Vergil.”
“Messy innovation.”
“As long as people like it, it is considered as a great innovation.”
He finally gives up and chomps his ice cream. “This is not bad.”
“Tell me this is not your first time eating ice cream.”
“I might be inexperienced in human lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean I never tasted ice cream.”
It’s strange, Vergil recalls the moment when they used to be strangers before Almagest helped them to get closer. Now they stand side by side and talk about stuff like old friends to the point where he could never get enough of her companionship. He lets her wander around his childhood house, even if he barely calls it a house now. He lets out a silent chuckle when she lifts a pile of rocks up to the air just to see what hides behind it, only to find another ruins and she’s slightly disappointed.
“For a second I thought your father was Johann Sebastian Bach.” Lyra looks up at Sparda’s family painting.
“You are not the first person who said that.”
She laughs. “Oh look at you… stoic since you were born. And I already got a picture on Dante being impatient while the painter kept asking him to stand still.”
“Pretty much correct. He complained how itchy his feet were at the end of the session.”
“Your mother was gorgeous,” Lyra admires Eva’s angelic stature. “No wonder Sparda fell for her.”
Vergil forms a wistful smile. “She was.”
“This painting reminds me of The Picture of Dorian Gray .”
“Pray tell, why?”
“Dorian sold his soul to the devil for eternal youth, and it decayed his self-portrait painting every time he did a sin. Of course your family portrait is a different case, but you see, your mother’s face is the only one that didn’t get burned by fire. It’s like a sign that she was the only human in the family…”
“And the rest of the family members were cursed by the evil blood that ran in their veins. That’s why the faces of the three of us were burned. That’s a picturesque perspective.”
“I didn’t say that demon is always evil—”
“I know. Still, it’s a good metaphor. Haven’t thought of it myself.”
“Why don’t you take the painting with you? People keep their family portrait in their house.”
“Dante and I agreed to leave it here as a sign that this mansion once belonged to our family. Besides, I can’t imagine such a painting to be hanged on the shop’s soiled wall. It would be a disgrace for the painting itself.”
“Now that you mentioned it, I think you are right.”
Lyra continues to lift some rocks and put it back carefully once she finds nothing interesting.. “Have you been in there again after you escaped the Underworld with Dante?”
“To collect mementos, yes. Though, as you can see, nothing much was left since Urizen destroyed the whole city. Not to mention almost all parts of the house were destroyed or blocked by pillars and huge stones. We tried to remove them, but it’d cause a domino effect throughout the manor and demolish it completely.”
“How did it feel to visit your childhood home again?”
Vergil swallows his ice cream at once. He puts a handkerchief out from his coat and wipes his lips. “It felt mostly heartbreaking.”
“I see,” Lyra nods and gives Vergil a light pat on his shoulder. “Not everyone could even come back to the place where their trauma began. Not that it’s necessary. I just found it encouraging.”
“Speaking of memento, what was the most valuable present you had ever received?” Vergil curiously asks.
“Oh, we start to have a small talk now?”
“I thought we agreed to trust each other, don’t we? Then we should start from mundane things.”
“Alright. Make sense. Let me recall it… mmmm… oh right! A lyre!”
“You play lyre? Amazing.”
“I thought you were about to say ironic.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“You know, a lyre plays a lyre.”
Vergil smirks, recalling her remark on their previous little adventure, “You’re right. It’s ironically amazing.”
The librarian rolls her eyes as she bites the ice cream cone. “My mum bought me one for my fifth birthday. It only lasted for two months before I asked her to give me a harp for the next birthday.”
“Did she finally buy you a harp?”
“She didn’t.”
“Why?”
“She died before my next birthday.”
Vergil immediately stared at Lyra’s sullen eyes. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay,” she smiles at him, chewing the last part of her cone. “It was a long time ago.”
Lyra has so many things she hides behind her amicable demeanor, and Vergil should’ve feel relieved because after all these months, Lyra finally opens up a little bit about her family, yet he doesn’t feel it at all.
“Were you close with your mother?” Vergil’s tone is full of consideration.
Lyra taps her fingers on her chin. “I guess so. We only had each other.”
“… How did she… die?”
The librarian smirks at him. “If I told you she fell from the tree, would you believe me?”
“Only if that’s the truth.”
She goes silent for a while, seeming unwilling to continue her story. She opens an empty drawer, looking at nothingness for a while. “You might’ve heard about her.”
“Your mother?”
“Uh-uh,” Lyra nods calmly, but Vergil senses a slight hesitation. “Her name was Asteria Crescent.”
Impossible! “The award-winning astronomer?”
“Astrobiologist, yes.”
“I see. That explains your fondness of astronomy.”
The first time Vergil heard about Asteria Crescent was when he was eleven years old, still homeless and constantly moved out from place to place in search of power. Asteria’s groundbreaking research of modern astrobiology broke the news. Her discovery led the scientists to rethink human’s position in this world and question the exact location of the Underworld in the known universe, considering demons as an extraterrestrial creature with its own origin and evolution. Demons and magic are inseparable, but Asteria Crescent was brave to make a further step to explain demonology in a scientific approach. Science and magic are two sides of a coin , Vergil recalls her statements. Science just has yet to understand magic.
“Asteria was a Titan goddess of falling stars and nighttime divinations. That suited her very well,” Lyra chuckles bitterly, swinging her hand to lift a pile of ruins back to its place. “I once wondered why she didn’t name me Hecate, daughter of Asteria and goddess of witchcraft. Maybe at that time, she didn’t have a thought that someday I’ll develop this… psychic ability.”
“The media never reported anything regarding her cause of death. It happened all so sudden, they said.”
“They always spoke highly of her. But when she died, they turned the story into rumors and gossip.”
“So did she fall from the tree?”
“She did fall.”
“But not from the tree.”
Vergil’s demonic eyes catch Lyra’s body slightly flinching, but she maintains her calmness and fakes a smile. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you further about your private life.”
“You entrusted me your biggest secret. I intend to do so. I’m just… not ready to open up, but I know that I want to.”
“When I said that we should try to trust each other, I didn't mean that you should abruptly open yourself to me.”
“Too late. Now you know I’m the daughter of a dead astrobiologist.”
“Why did you change your surname then?”
Lyra stops and gazes at Vergil. She seems anxious while glancing at her surroundings carefully, as if she’s afraid that someone else would hear them. Vergil slightly bows his body when Lyra whispers in his ear.
“I’m being hunted.”
The furrow on Vergil’s brow is going deeper. “By whom?”
“Someone who wants to abuse my power. That’s why I need to change my surname and hang out around wearing eyeglasses, so people won’t find out about my identity.”
For a moment, they stand still there, staring at each other’s eyes to find some clues. It’s logical that Lyra’s unique ability would attract power-seekers, be it humans or demons. Vergil knows it too well; the danger of possessing a greater power. A part of him wants to believe her words…
If only he failed to spot a subtle grin on the corner of her lips.
I would be absolutely fooled by her deception, Vergil grunts discontentedly. "You are lying, aren’t you?”
Lyra’s laughter echoes throughout the lake.
Vergil snarls at her unstoppable giggle. "Quite a jester, I see.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
Vergil doesn’t bother to reply, because he knows it would lead to another bickering. He doesn’t try to hide his amused smile too, even though Lyra teases him about the ‘sly devil smile’. To be honest, he couldn’t care less. He just wants to see her smile, her true smile.
Like the way she’s smiling right now.
“Do you want to have a look at the lake?” Vergil offers, trying to lift the mood. “There’s nothing left to see here.”
“Sure!”
They sit on the cobblestone pier in the lake while admiring the twilight sky. It’s Vergil’s favorite place, ever since he was a child. This place has changed; there are no more Qliphoth roots left and there are several trees and wildflowers growing on the land. The lake no longer contains human blood. It’s mesmerizing how fast time flies and changes the entire city.
“I used to spend my days here, reading and playing with Dante,” Vergil says. “We loved being here more than staying indoors.”
“I can see the reason. It’s bloody beautiful here.” Lyra mutters her admiration. She taps her fingers on the cobblestone playfully, causing a small rift in the lake.
“Dante once pushed me to the lake because we fought over a chocolate bar,” Vergil recalls one of his precious memories. “I pretended to be drowned. He pulled me out of the water and cried, pleaded to me for not leaving him alone and that he’s sorry. Promised me that he won’t disturb me again. Right when he shook my body to wake me up, I pushed him to the lake but he managed to drag me with him.”
Lyra can’t hold her howls of laughter. She chortles until her stomach hurts and her throat gets sore. Vergil swears he never saw her laughing like this. “I’m sorry— I— HAHAHAHAHA!”
“Lower your voice,” Vergil grunts. He starts to regret his decision for rambling about his childhood antics just to get rid of Lyra’s gloomy face. “You might end up choking yourself to death.”
“ Pfffftttt!”
“Will you shut up?!”
“Sorry!” Lyra bites her thumb to hold her cackle but fails. “I just… bwahahaha! It seems that ‘never hold a grudge to the people who wronged you’ is true!”
Vergil pulls her thumb away from her teeth, caressing her reddened thumb. “A little deeper, you would bleed your thumb.”
The careful touch from Vergil distracts Lyra for a while. It’s the first time he holds her without gloves on, and it surprises her how soft his palm is despite the fact that he is a warrior who wields various weapons. Her thumb slips lightly from his palm. “Even if I bleed, I got your Lucy Pevensie’s cordial to heal me.”
Vergil sighs heavily as he removes some strands of Lyra’s hair from her forehead. “I gave it to you for an emergency case only. The cordial was made mostly from demon’s blood, mixed with rare herbs and some complicated spells to make it suitable for human’s bodies. Even the bottle was made from demon’s materials to prevent physical damage. Trish produced only a few bottles of cordial, so use it wisely.”
“I will,” Lyra picks out the cordial bottle from her bag and shows it to Vergil. “See? I haven’t used it since Capulet.”
“Put it back into your bag before it slipped from your hand and fell into the lake.”
“Alright alright! Why do you sound a lot like my mother?” Lyra puts the bottle back into her bag.
“You are clumsy and easily distracted. I have to keep my eyes on you every time. It’s rather distressing.”
“I can take care of myself!” Lyra lays a punch on Vergil’s chest. “Remember, I weakened Phantom last week, so you devil twins could kill that spider easily!”
The cambion smirks disdainfully to her weak strike. He puts something off from the back of his coat and hands it to Lyra. It’s an old book with a black leatherbound with the title engraved in a beautiful golden emboss. “Your payment for escorting me today.”
Lyra observes the front cover with beaming eyes. “The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe...”
“It’s one of the mementos I brought from the Manor. I reckon you would love Poe, given to your fondness of horror and mystery.”
“Then I have to refuse! It’s yours!”
“I believe I made myself clear when I said the book is for you.”
Lyra was about to refuse again, but quickly zip her mouth when Vergil glared at her with his terrifying and undeniable gaze. He won’t take any ‘no’ from her. She flips the pages, and something almost falls from the book before Lyra catches it quickly; an antique necklace with an obsidian pendant. She takes a closer look at the pendant and recognizes the familiar white, shiny dots pattern on it— the Lyra constellation.
“… did you pick this one too from the manor?” Lyra asks carefully.
“… it was from the antique shop.”
“I didn’t see you strolling around the jewelry section.”
“It was displayed on the counter. Nothing special. Just normal jewelry. The pattern just reminded me of you—”
Vergil can’t finish his sentence because Lyra wraps her arms between his waist, locking him in a tight embrace. He can feel the strange, but comfortable warmth fills his body as he returns to hug her without hesitation. Her body is so small and shorter compared to his height that he needs to bow slightly in order to balance the embrace. He loves her scent— a strange mixture of peach, black tea and old roses— and quietly inhales the intoxicating fragrance from her hair. He feels like he could do this all day.
“Thank you,” Lyra’s murmur vibrates his chest. “I’ll cherish this forever.”
“It's just a book and a necklace.”
“These are the best presents since the lyre from my mum!” she chuckles. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually hug people around.”
“Neither do I.”
“So let us hug a bit longer, shall we?”
“It looks like I have no choices but to comply.”
For a moment, they banish their distrusts about each other, breaking the adamant barrier and wishing the time to stop ticking.
---
Yesterday, Lyra dreamt of a boy who wanders around a big house.
She thought it was just a meaningless dream, at least until she realized that she was the boy himself. She looked at her— his — reflection in the mirror; the little boy was handsome with swept back silver hair and a black pajama. His serious and grumpy expression reminded of someone she couldn’t remember yet. She— the boy —wandered off around a big and dark house. It wasn’t her own intention; like her movement was controlled by someone else. She opened a chamber and let herself in. There was a woman who lay unconscious on the bed. Lyra could see traces of tears on the woman’s sullen face. Her body forced her to lift the quilt to cover the woman’s body and tip-toed herself out from the room.
When she was about to go back to her room, she heard a wheezing cry and followed the voice to the main hall. It didn’t take her too long to find out the source of the voice as her hand reached to open a white drawer, where another little boy with the same silver hair cried inside it.
“Vergil…” that little boy stared at her with a turbulent sob coming out from his mouth. “Father… you… you d-d-don’t believe that he died… r-right?”
I am…Vergil?
Does that mean that this crying boy… Dante?
The next thing Lyra remembered was she woke up with tears stream down her face like a waterfall, soaking her pillow. She was sure the sadness she felt in the entire dream wasn’t hers, but Vergil and Dante’s. She was going to tell Vergil about her strange dream when she saw the exact same white drawer in her dream at Sparda Manor, but she thought she was biased. Vergil had told her about how devastated his family was when they heard that Sparda was deceased, and her dream must be just her brain playing a trick to her.
But then she thought, Vergil never told me that he found Dante hiding and crying in that draw…
Tonight, Lyra falls into another strange dream. Even weirder and scarier. A titanic, god-like demon tortured her in the most unimaginably painful way. Her entire body was chained and spiked. The demon was merciless. His face was full of disgust and hatred as he spat her insults and penetrated her head with dreadful illusions she couldn’t even envision. He kept calling her “disgraceful offspring of the traitor Sparda”. It was only then she realized that she wasn’t herself, but Vergil.
Lyra fights herself to wake up, and is barely successful. The dream is too visceral that she almost still can feel the pain all over the body as she opens her eyes. Her back is wet from her own sweat.
Why do I keep dreaming of him? Moreover, I never experienced this kind of pain…
Does it have something to do with our accidental mind link on that day? Strange things have happened since then...
Her wave of thoughts are interrupted by the sudden thirst in her throat. She snaps her fingers and the light from the lamp brightens the bedroom. The door cracks slowly to open its way for Lyra. The librarian walks with leaden steps as she rubs her sleepy eyes. She almost stumbled upon a chair when she entered the kitchen.
“A cuppa sounds delightful to cure nightmares,” Lyra mumbles at herself, swinging her hand to summon a cup from the drawer. The cup flies and lands right in front of her, but she makes no further movement but staring blankly at the cup. Her body is still shivering by the imaginary pain from her nightmare.
“From all the people in the world, why does it have to be Vergil? This mind link is vexing me...”
The harsh cry of a raven causes Lyra to glance over the kitchen’s window. She curves a light smile while opening the window and lets a little raven enter her house. The raven lands on her shoulder for a while before flying around the house and lands on the kitchen counter.
“Where have you been, Corvus? Haven’t seen you for days!” Lyra greets the raven.
The little bird tilts its head and squawks. Lyra giggles as she pats the raven’s head. “Hey look. My friend gave his poem book to me and one of the titles is The Raven. I like it, by the way. And I’ve been thinking about him lately, even dreaming about him. To be honest, it’s disturbing. Do you think I should invite him here and tell him the truth?”
The raven gives her a nod.
“You are right. A cuppa is best served with a friend, don’t you think?”
Corvus flaps its wings eagerly. The black bird flies around Lyra’s head before making its way outside the house.
“Leaving already? You haven’t eaten yet!” Lyra shouts at the raven. “Alright then, send my regard to your girlfriend!”
Corvus squawks something like a curse, causing Lyra to barks in laughter. She heads back to the counter as she turns on the radio to entertain her confusing state of mind, picking the channel telepathically until she finds her favourite channel. She listens to the song while summoning her phone from the bedroom, tapping the screen until Vergil’s contact name pops on the screen.
Down in the willow garden
Where me and my love did meet
As we sat a-courtin'
My love fell off to sleep
I had a bottle of burgundy wine
My love, she did not know
So I poisoned that dear little girl
On the banks below
I drew a saber through her
It was a bloody knife
I threw her in the river
Which was a dreadful sign
“By Jove, that song is sinister,” Lyra chuckles darkly. Her solemn face is turning pale. “As for the poisoned little girl… well…”
She clicks Vergil’s name, waiting for the devil to answer with fingers tangled between the black pendant on her neck, hoping half-heartedly that he wouldn’t pick her call.
~~~
A/N : the song mentioned at the end of the chapter is “Down In The Willow Garden” by The Everly Brothers.
Tagging : @drusoona @harlot-of-oblivion @queenmuzz @shiranyaaww @andieperrie18 @rubixa-seraph @blooddrop-palace (I honestly forgot who to tag, so if you want to be tagged just send you reply or DM me! XD)
Masterlist | AO3
#devil may cry fanfiction#vergil x reader#vergil x oc#vergil x lyra#vergil#dante#nero#lyra#vergil x original character#original character#developing relationship#mystery#tales of apotelesma#spark of stardust#night writes
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une nouvelle vie, chapter 5
AO3 | @frogsmulder + @freckleslikestars
The Seldens’ honeymoon goes by in bliss across the Atlantic among the French, and they return to their lives irreparably changed in some ways while immutable in others. “It shall be a new adventure,” Lily declares, referencing their relatively new attempts at procreation. Lawrence agrees. But as the months start to go by, leaving them unexpectant of a bundle of joy, their happiness starts to dwindle. “I am sorry I cannot do this for you.”
Lily’s face is tucked against her husband’s sternum and her voice is whisper-soft. “Oh, Lily...” Selden sighs, tucking her further against him as her tears wet his chest. “We will find happiness in the two of us if our efforts do not come to fruition, I can guarantee it. We have not weathered tumultuous storms in our lives to lose sight of ourselves now.”
“But what if I am unable to bear children? That is all women are meant for, do you not see?”
“Do not let those words reside in your mind, my love. You are much more than your ability to have children.”
“If I am not a mother, then what am I meant to be? I have unintentionally hinged the purposes of my existence on ensuring your happiness and bringing forth children into the world. What should I do with my time if it is not spent rearing our children?”
“Lily, please, it is alright. You have talents—you are excellent at storytelling, for example.”
She sniffles and raises her eyes. “Truly?”
“Yes, truly. You could write them. Even if they are stories meant to entertain children, your stories are of value. Do not despair, my love. You are worth more than your value to society. No matter what, you have my love to see you through every hardship.”
Lily nods and presses a kiss to her husband’s clavicle. “Alright.” She takes a shuddering breath. “I shall sleep on this.”
—
In the proceeding months, the Seldens finalize their purchase of a townhouse with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, deciding to leave two of the three undecorated. Lawrence suggests making one of them into an office and the other into a guest room a several months later, his voice soft and casual to convey that he is not attached to his proposals, and that what they hope the rooms will be used for will come in due time. Their anniversary passes with little fanfare, only a private dance in their sitting room used to mark the occasion. Lily throws herself into writing exercises to occupy her time, spending hours at her desk in the sitting room planning and writing down ideas. Some days, Selden has to retrieve her from her stupor of inspiration and guide her back to their bed, where they reconnect.
They know one another with the truest of intimacies now, and it shows in how they anticipate the other’s actions with frequency.
“I shall be leaving for a few months,” Selden reveals during dinner one day in the fall. It has been a year and a half since they married. “I have been chosen to work on a case in England. You could come with me, if you’d like, though you would not know anyone there.”
Lily shakes her head demurely. “I shall stay here and look after the house, avidly awaiting your return,” she decides, placing her hands over his.
They both smile; a small happiness has started to bloom in the house born of small concessions of acceptance. One day, Lily knows, they may fully bloom, but there is still hope for another way. All is not lost just yet. Selden bids her farewell the next day and she watches him exit the door and catch a hansom with a wistful look on her face. Perhaps some time apart—time during which they must halt their attempts at procreation—is what they need. Hope is a dangerous, feeble thing sometimes.
—
“Lily!” Gerty wears her surprise openly and her friend wears her worry the same way. “Has something dreadful happened?” She ushers Lily inside her flat with a tender hand.
“I am well, Gerty, only—something has happened. But it is not dreadful, it is wonderful.” Lily sits down on her friend’s couch, her hands fluttering around each other.
“Then why do you look worried?”
Lily bites her lip before sighing heavily. “I strongly suspect that I am pregnant at long last. But this could not come at a worse time; Selden is off in England, as you know, and I cannot decide if I should write to him about this as he would want. I should like to surprise him with the news in person, and if I wrote to him not only would that not be possible but I know that he would travel home as speedily as possible to the detriment of his career. He shall make it back with plenty of time to spare before the birth if he sees the case through.”
Gerty lowers herself onto the couch as she ruminates on Lily’s words. “Well, if there is time enough for the case and the birth, I believe that you should wait to surprise him when he arrives home. It would be the loveliest of surprises.”
“So I shall omit this wondrous development? I would be stronger in my convictions if not for the notion of lying to my husband sending my stomach into knots.”
Gerty’s hands envelop Lily’s and she meets her dependable friend’s eyes. “It is not a lie. You are planning a surprise! What could be more innocent than that? It is the most spectacular of surprises, at that. He will forgive you immediately, if he even views the situation as having something to forgive as a part of it.”
Lily offers her friend a small smile, tears of joy gathering at her waterline. “What would I ever do without you in my life, Gerty? I owe you.”
“We are friends; friends support each other in times of need.”
“Nonetheless, I appreciate the time you have taken throughout our friendship to help me. It is unparalleled.”
—
Carry Fisher is the third person to be made aware of Lily’s pregnancy, and only on the condition that she keep it to herself. Lily enlists her help in having new dresses made to accommodate her slowly-expanding abdomen and bustline. By the time Carry declares that she has “popped”, she has a whole new wardrobe. And now Selden is set to return.
Lily sets about checking the windows for a sign of his returns after breakfast but finds herself tiring easily from her rounds through the front rooms. She sighs and sits down to write, hoping to distract herself from the anticipation of her husband’s arrival. Fortunately, Lily is able to lose herself in the story (her first is set to be published soon!) and separates from her desk only to eat, relieve herself, and exercise—the last of which is a thinly veiled excuse to check outside the house.
When ten o’clock in the evening rolls around, Lily resigns herself to the fact that Selden’s traveling is delayed and readies herself for bed. She smiles as she brushes her hair, the baby moving inside of her. She has gotten to know her and Selden’s child thoroughly since the flutters started; it’s most energetic in the morning, acting as if Lily has starved it by not eating at five o’clock. She cups her belly and feels the baby’s foot.
“You are so loved, little one. So loved.”
—
She wakes up in the middle of the night, frowning and tired. Lily snuggles into the bed in an effort to fall back asleep when she hears Selden quietly clear his throat in the bathroom. She opens her eyes and sits up, her suspicions confirmed when she sees the glow of a candle through the cracks around the door. She grins and adjusts the pillows behind her back as she waits for her husband to return.
After a few moments, he pushes the door open, pausing in the doorway when he realizes she is awake. “Apologies,” he says, making his way to his side of the bed after putting the candle in the secure holder at the foot of the bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Come to bed,” Lily tells him, offering him her hand. “I have much to tell you.”
As they situate themselves in bed together, he eyes her distended abdomen, and she cannot help but grin again. “You are...”
“With child, yes,” she finishes for him, pressing her forehead to his as she brings his hand to her belly. “I wanted to surprise you in person. We have a while yet before the birth—at least two months. I knew that if I wrote to you of the news, you would put your entire being into traveling home unnecessarily quickly.”
“It would not be unnecessary, Lily. You and the babe are the lights of my life.” Selden slides down the bed and presses a kiss to her belly before returning back to his original position. “I won the case, as well. You two are my lucky charms, too.”
Lily laughs at that as she nuzzles her husband’s face. “Nonsense, Lawrence. You are an excellent lawyer; you won the case because you are intelligent and dutiful, not because we are lucky. Luck had nothing to do with it.”
“We shall have to agree to disagree,” Selden says, his gaze sliding down to her belly again. “Please write me next time, my love. This is a wonderful surprise, but I feel that I have missed so much. This first child of ours shall be a learning experience. Next time we will both be much more prepared, and I would be less anxious towards getting home.”
“If you happen to be traveling during, I shall write you a letter once a week of the elder child and the one growing in my womb by then. You would feel as though you had not missed a day. But it is late, my dearest, and the babe takes much of my energy for its own.”
Selden nods before starting to pull the fabric of her nightgown up until her belly is exposed. She places his hand where the baby is poking at her and revels in his expression of awe. He presses a slew of kisses to her skin before resting his forehead against her belly. “You are wondrous, my dear,” he tells her. “Absolutely spectacular. You have only become more radiant as time goes on. Selfishly, I am glad that no one else sees you in all your glory.”
“I do not mind, Lawrence. Yours are the only eyes I would wish to have on my body.” Lily watches as her husband slides up the bed again with hooded eyes, and lets them slip closed when he eases a hand beneath her abdomen and between her thighs. “Your fingers are the only ones I would want to touch my body, as well.”
“I love you,” he murmurs against her lips.
“I love you, too.”
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[purple heart] [ring] [baby]
(This is coming so late, I’m sorrrry, haha)
💜- top 3 favorite lines
In Weird News, my book went to print last week (!) and so basically everything in my head at the moment has been related to that and not to fic, so I suddenly can’t remember a single thing I’ve written in this fandom, haha.
Soooo, I’m going to share an excerpt of my novel I really love instead. It’s actually a scene that wasn’t in the earlier drafts and was something I wrote during the last round of edits as my editor thought that I needed to feed a little more context to a particular dynamic. She thought there was enough on the page to get by, but with the way the story is structured, the timeline starts late in both of these relationships, and she said that she was hungry to know more of the history of them as both an editor and a reader.
I wrote this scene pretty quickly (it just sort of tumbled out of me), and it’s since become one of both my editor’s and my favourite scenes in the whole thing. I’m not sure if it’ll stand so well on its own here without the rest of the story, but what the hell.
-
It happens like this:
Ed leaves and Delia throws herself into work.
Ed leaves and Delia picks up more classes at the college and loses herself in study plans and marking and guiding the work of her students – the vulnerable new talent and the amateur egos and the kids who want the aesthetic but not the grind, who want awe not help, praise not critique, the ones who aren’t up for the challenge and the ones who are, and it works for those first six months.
It works because Delia’s been a lot of things, but she’s never been the sort to languish for days unoccupied, and it’s easy to forget Ed’s not at home when she’s working or managing the school run or fighting her mother’s memories and her own at Saint Anne’s, and the nights she can’t forget are so few that she doesn’t need anything but her own hand or her showerhead or her vibrator to find a peak she can tumble over, and it works.
For six months.
Because Ed left before he leaves, and they hadn’t made love in months anyway, and when they had it hadn’t felt like them, and he hadn’t touched her like she’d wanted him to, and she hadn’t kissed him because of that. Because it hadn’t felt right.
Because, because, because.
But then it’s six months later and Ed has left her, and her daughter feels like somebody else’s and her sons are growing up too fast and Ed’s cagey about coming over now that he’s shacked up with his girlfriend, as if the kids might find out he was fucking her before he stopped fucking Delia, and so Delia works more, and she’s helping Griff – a tender talent, not one of those students fantasising about futures that’ll never happen – and he’s in her office one night and she’s just helping him with his second-year folio, and it’s not – it’s nothing like—
But he kisses her.
He kisses her and oh.
Maybe she’d been lonely after all.
💍- your most underrated story
I talked about On a Balcony with Champagne Lips here, but I’m actually always a bit surprised Get Your Kicks Driving Me Down isn’t more popular than it is? It’s not that it’s unpopular at all, but it’s definitely one of my least popular Brio one-shots, which is always a little bit of a bummer because it was a story I put a lot of work into. I hadn’t really written many fight scenes before, and writing Rio trying to teach Beth self-defense after 2.07 and it ending in messy sexy times was something that was both challenging and a lot of fun to write, haha.
👶- advice for new writers
I’m a very firm believer that you have to know the rules of writing before you can decide to break them.
I think when writers start out (me included!), they tend to jump in with both feet and can passionately fall into this idea of writing, more so than the writing itself. The process becomes a sort of aesthetic one where the goal isn’t creating a story, but of creating a transcendent work that connects with people far and wide, but that’s not really how it works.
Writing’s a trade.
I think a natural affinity is definitely a part of it, sure, but only so much as it is for any trade. I swim a lot, for example, and as a result am a pretty strong swimmer, but I’m not fast and I’m never going to win any prizes for it. I don’t have a natural affinity for it, but the hard work got me pretty good. At the same time though, no naturally good swimmer gets in a pool with no training and wins gold at the Olympics.
They work and learn and train.
Understanding things like building setting, cause and effect, character motivations + arcs, beginnings, middles and ends, hell, even sentence and paragraph structure, might all seem like things you inherently know (and I think we do, to an extent. I think people are natural storytellers), but writing is a craft and like any other craft, you still need to study up on the basics before you can start playing with those things in a way that’s effective and compelling.
You need to learn how to swim before you can start inventing your own strokes.
Learn the rules of storytelling, then do whatever the hell you want with them, but I can guarantee you that if you decide to jump in and immediately decide you’re going to write a story with no setting or no ending, you’re going to look like you’re splashing around in the shallows.
I know I did! I read some of my first short stories where I obviously knew next to nothing about story structure, and they are. Um. Not good, haha.
Natural talent gets you nowhere if you don’t put the work in to learn what came before you and besides, breaking the rules is a lot more fun when you know what it is you’re breaking. ;-)
Writer Ask Game
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so the story behind this is that @sreppub arrived in my dms saying “sitcom starring two uppity, former rich guys and a regular poor college kid who follow up an online ad and become roommates” and i said something along the lines of “your MIND” and here we are. she does the art, i do the fic, and we both yell a lot along the way. read it on here or ao3 and enjoy!!
The Sitcom Supreme
If Peter or Stephen were around to hear Tony tell the story of how they all ended up rooming together, they would have plenty of objections, to which he would call them both dirty liars, to which they would gang up on him because they’re terrible and like that, to which he would probably throw up his hands in exasperation and/or make the mistake of engaging them in a debate, to which they would grin like wolves because, once again, they’re terrible and like that, but Tony’s the asshole who put up the Craigslist ad, so he gets to start—because he’s terrible and like that.
It’s a common trait amongst the three of them, what can he say?
The beginning of the story does not involve either of the other two, however. It begins with Rhodey, who is only occasionally terrible and like that. Rhodey has been Tony’s best friend since the tender age of fifteen. Considering Tony at age fifteen was a greasy little douche bag with too much money and a whole bunch of daddy issues that were somehow more obvious then than they are in the present, this is an impressive feat.
Where things start, Rhodey and Tony are roommates at MIT, which is Howard’s school of choice to shove his problem child onto. Tony is supposed to get a single dorm room, but there’s a cockroach problem in that building. Administration has to get creative, which is how Rhodey, fresh out of boot for the fall semester, gets saddled with approximately one hundred and fifty pounds of neglected teenage boy who has only kind of gone through puberty.
The first words out of Tony’s mouth are blunt: “Any chance you have plans to drop out?”
And Rhodey looks at him with a raised brow, efficiently unpacked and totally unimpressed with the enormous stack of Tony’s things wavering in the doorway. “You have any plans to quit being annoying?” he retorts, which set the tone for their entire relationship.
Tony loves him to pieces.
He’s the older brother he never knew he needed, yanking him by his collar from frat parties on the weekends and to his house for holidays because getting swamped by Rhodey’s six younger siblings is infinitely better than having to wear a suit and tie for Christmas dinner with six CEOs and maybe some senators, depending on the year. In return, Tony sees him through every finals week of his collegiate career, during which Rhodey gets so nervous he usually pukes at least daily and pulls so many all-nighters Tony memorizes the exact shade of red his eyes are at the end.
So, it’s safe to say they get along well. They get along so well, as a matter of fact, that when they stare at each other after their graduation ceremony for their Masters—a two-year process for both of them, and Rhodey receives two degrees to Tony’s four—surrounded by Rhodey’s family and Jarvis, Tony’s lips curl in a smirk Rhodey knows spells the best kind of trouble. “What do you say we keep the roommate streak alive, yeah? Howard’s building an office in New York, and I’m thinking of doing a doctorate at NYU.”
Rhodey’s brows raise, but he’s grinning, so Tony already knows his answer. “Depends. Are you still gonna’ snore?”
“Are you still gonna’ have a stick up your a—”
Mama Rhodes shoots Tony a look from where she’s trying to corral the rest of her kids.
“—butt?” he finishes with a sheepish glance her way.
Rhodey does not even remotely have a stick up his ass, but of the two of them, he features in tabloids far, far less, which Tony somehow uses to his advantage.
“You know it,” Rhodey replies, and so they find a fancy penthouse that Tony mostly pays for, with the excuse of Rhodey satisfying his part of rent via generally covering Tony’s ass to the best of his ability. And he has a lot of ability, honed from years upon years of Tony self-destructing at the drop of a hat, but there’s only so much he can do, especially as his military career just keeps flying higher and Howard just keeps pushing Tony harder.
A few sex tapes, especially wild benders, and crashed cars later, when Howard cuts Tony off and tells him, quote, “I won’t speak to you until you learn to do something other than disappoint me”, Rhodey very gracefully still shacks up with him in their considerably less fancy apartment.
This is all important to know, contrary to what someone whose name may or may not rhyme with Tephen Trange might say about Tony’s “long-winded” and “overly-complicated” storytelling tendencies because it explains exactly why Rhodey is a traitor.
Is Carol a very cool lady who could kick Tony’s ass? Yes. Is she sickeningly cute with Rhodey and not just because a smile from her makes him melt into a pile of fucking goo on the floor? Also yes. Does it probably make more sense for Tony to find roommates who will actually be around to monitor his—allegedly—poor mental health and self-care habits? Okay, fine, yes, but the bottom line is, Rhodey is moving in with Carol and abandoning Tony, and nobody said he had to like it.
(This is not strictly true, what with the approximately ten conversations Rhodey and he have had about his happiness and how, if Tony needs him, all he has to do is say the word and he’ll be back, but Tony has always had a flair for the dramatic.)
The whole idea is that Tony will find someone gone less than Rhodey with all his military business to enjoy having around the apartment. It’s technically a three-bedroom, but he and Rhodey use the extra one for storage. Fortunately or unfortunately, that storage area has become a lot of junk they go through before Rhodey makes his grand exit, and Tony suddenly has the option of having two roommates.
The ad is a low point, he can admit that, but there is a flaw in what Tony loudly calls Rhodey’s master plan to leave him alone to wallow in misery: Tony doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends, nevermind people who he’d want to live with.
“Rhodey. Honeybear. Platypus.”
“The nicknames are old, and you need to stop using them around Carol. She called me Platypus last night during sex, and it ruined the whole mood.”
“You poor thing.”
“She thought it was hilarious.”
If Tony has to lose Rhodey to anybody, by God, Carol is his first choice by a long shot.
“Anyway, as I was saying, Sourpatch—”
“I hate you.”
“—how am I supposed to find someone else to live with?”
Tony is thirty-two and regularly speaks out with all of four people: Pepper, Rhodey, Carol, and Happy. Unfortunately, Happy works in Stark Industries’ California branch and has stated rather firmly that he’s not interested in transferring to the city, Pepper wouldn’t live with another person for love or money, and the other two are spoken for.
It’s a terrible situation to be in, honestly.
“Craigslist,” Rhodey deadpans, fighting with some packing tape.
Tony feels his heart stop beating in real time from his place folding some of Rhodey’s clothes into a plastic tub. His head snaps up, and his jaw drops, absolutely affronted. “You would suggest that I, even disowned and stripped of my former glory—” Tony has several million dollars in the stock market, but that’s neither here nor there and isn’t much compared to the fact that he was supposed to be a billionaire. “—would stoop to looking for live-in friends on Craigslist?”
Rhodey looks up to meet his eyes, unfazed. He’s used to Tony’s antics after nearly two decades of friendship. “Well, I’m not moving out until you have at least one person guaranteed to take my place, so unless you have any better ideas, yeah.” He shrugs—just shrugs, as if he isn’t advising Tony to scrape the bottom of the fucking barrel in terms of reliable people to regularly fall asleep around.
It’s insulting.
“I’m not putting out an ad for a roommate on Craigslist,” he protests, shoving the next horribly colored polo into the tub with disdain.
That night, he tears up thinking about stopping Rhodey from being happy with Carol, and the post is up by the time Rhodey gets up—stupidly early, like normal—for his morning run. Along with his contact information and a few blurry pictures of the place, it includes a blurb about the circumstances.
Best friend moving out. Need a roommate or I will die of Sadness. His girlfriend is cool but hewas mind first. Carol, I am watching you. Two rooms open for business. But not sketchy business. You can just lve there. Current resident (me) is cool and very charming. I am a man. No dumb fuck offers. Thanks.
It could use some work, but Tony’s never been great with words, even less so when he’s crying to rock ballads at two in the morning. He edits it when he wakes up, and by noon that day, it’s looking better.
At seven o’clock that evening, he receives one of two messages that actually work out.
Enter the first offender: Peter Parker.
Peter, Tony will learn, is nineteen, attending NYU—like Tony did, which is a sign, really—for a double major in biochemistry and physics, and has the worst luck of anyone Tony’s ever met.
Rhodey’s moving out in a week—he’s been putting off finding a roommate for a while, alright—and Peter has to legally be out of his dorm in three days. That is quite the predicament, and Tony, by nature, is a curious creature. He is not, however, one for beating around the bush. That results in a text that reads exactly this.
Tony: What the hell did you do?
He could hack through the university files, but explanations are always more fun with a personal touch that’s lacking in, say, an incident report. Tony watches a bubble with three blinking dots for a long, long time, and the reply is surprisingly sparse—sparse enough, in fact, for Tony to have more questions than answers when he receives it.
Unknown Sender: theres been a few things but the kicker was the fire
Tony: The fire?
Unknown Sender: i tried to make popcorn and the microwave blew up
Now that is some problematic behavior Tony can get behind. He amends the kid’s previously non-existent contact information.
Tony: How can they kick you out for that? That’s not your fault.
Roommate (?) Peter: it blacked out the power on the entire first floor
Tony: And?
Roommate (?) Peter: last month i got the blame for contaminating half the campus water supply
Roommate (?) Peter: so i was already on thin ice
Tony: Accidentally?
Roommate (?) Peter: idk sometimes things just happen to me
Tony doesn’t know how to respond to that. If Rhodey knew, he’d never let him live it down. He can hear his annoying laugh in his ears like a premonition—“Hah—Tony, speechless?”—but then there are the dots again and a simple message to follow the last, a touch pathetic.
Roommate (?) Peter: please let me move in
Tony likes him.
Peter shows up on the stairs of the complex thirty-six hours after Tony posted the ad with a backpack and a meager total of six beat-to-shit boxes. The backpack holds nearly all of his school supplies, which makes Tony, in retrospect, genuinely fearful for the integrity of his spine, and the contents of the boxes are sorted, as Tony will learn, into three categories that each have two boxes in them. The categories are fairly simple—clothing, necessities, and whatever other shit he could fit from his dorm—and leave Peter with thrilling possessions such as an entire collection of truly atrocious shirts with science puns on them, a gallon of hand soap, and any food he had in his cupboards.
Thankfully, Rhodey is out furniture shopping with Carol when Tony goes out to meet him, which solves the problem of Rhodey going into overbearing caretaker mode at the sight of a beanpole of a kid failing to manage their life successfully. As someone who has been made many a you-haven’t-eaten-a-meal-in-two-days-and-I’m-secretly-a-panicking-mother-hen casserole, Tony counts his blessings.
Tony waves. “Peter?” he asks, reluctantly changed out of his pajamas for the day.
The kid nods. “That’s me. And you’re Tony?”
“Guilty as charged. Want a hand with those boxes?” he asks, watching Peter lift three at a time.
“No, I got it,” he insists, and then the box on top slides out of his grip and onto the sidewalk.
Peter stares at it for a second before he lets out a long-suffering sigh.
“Maybe I could use some help,” he admits, and with much struggle, the two of them, each with three boxes, waddle inside. There is a moment and only one moment where Tony thinks that it might be nice to have some extra assistance, but with another thought of the things Rhodey would do at the sight of a woefully inept college kid, Tony decides it’s for the best.
Tony leads the operation, considering he has the key and also knows explicitly where they’re going, and he would have to say his biggest complaint about the ordeal is that Sam, who lives in the apartment below Tony and Rhodey with Steve and Bucky, happens to open his door as they walk by.
Being an asshole, he has something to say about it. “Need some help, shellhead?” he crows.
Tony wishes he had a free hand to flip him off.
“Watch your back, Wilson,” he growls in return, a continuation of the beef the five of them have maintained since they met approximately seven years ago, when they all moved in on the same day and kept knocking into each other’s shit in the halls.
When they reach the top of the next flight of stairs and Tony starts to fumble with the key, Peter asks about it. “So—uh—who was that?”
“That was Sam. Part of the deal with moving in is that you harass him and the other two idiots who live with him. He also responds to jackass, douchecanoe, or birdbrain.”
“Birdbrain?”
“It’s an old joke. He had a rather—” Tony grunts, forced to set down his load to unlock the door, “—spectacular run-in with some pigeons a few years ago.”
“Oh.”
“They shat on him. A lot.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a good nickname,” Tony assures him, throwing open the door with his arms flung wide for dramatic flair. “Welcome to Casa Stark. I mean, I guess it’s Casa Stark-Parker now, but if we’re hyphenating, my name goes first because I lived here first.” He holds up a finger as if to stall Peter, who has yet to speak from where his mouth is decidedly blocked by the aforementioned three boxes he is carrying. “And I know what you’re going to say—that Parker-Stark works better because it’s alphabetical—but that is where you are wrong because letters have no place in this house. Numbers are much preferred, and we play by seniority here, anyway.”
He gives Peter a meaningful look that he cannot see because, once again, boxes.
“More on that, by the way—”
“Hey, Tony?”
He cuts him off which is, objectively, rude, but Tony rarely gets along with people who aren’t a little curt with him from time to time. This is a positive sign, really, so he allows it.
“Yeah?”
“This can be Casa Stark-Parker, but can we get to somewhere I can set these down? My arms are, like, going to give out on me.”
Not even ten minutes in, and he’s already learned the art of bargaining. Tony’s proud, and he ushers him inside without any more monologues and a grin stretched across his face.
Peter, by virtue of moving in before Rhodey is out, ends up with the room that is no longer being used for storage. Tony has several questions for him, beginning with the fact that, despite the six packets of instant noodles he bothered to bring, he does not appear to have a mattress. Or a desk. Or a dresser. Or anything that’s supposed to go in a room.
His solutions for Tony’s concerns are as follows.
In place of a bed, he has two blankets, one to put on the floor and one to cover himself with. He was planning on sitting on the floor to do schoolwork instead of using a desk. And finally, he was going to leave his clothes in the boxes.
This is all relayed to Tony with an earnest gleam in his eyes and a smile.
Tony blinks in disbelief. Then, very eloquently, he says, “Kid, that is the saddest shit I have ever heard. Aren’t your parents helping you with the move to an apartment?”
The kid shifts from foot to foot, shoving his hands in his pockets and glancing to the side.
Tony’s eyes narrow. As someone who is extremely well-versed in avoidance tactics, he feels very confident in saying that is definitely a fucking avoidance tactic.
“About that,” he begins, “first of all, I’m an orphan.” Jesus Christ. “Second of all, my aunt doesn’t exactly—uh—know I got kicked out of the dorms.”
That is all interesting information, to say the least, but luckily, Tony thrives under pressure.
“Alright. I can respect that.”
It’s not like he never hid anything from his parents. Evading his aunt is Peter’s problem, not Tony’s. None of this is Tony’s problem, really, except then he looks around the room and wonders which of Peter’s boxes are holding his two blankets.
Tony was concerned about Rhodey, but he can’t stop himself.
“But I’m also gonna’ level with you—you’re not sleeping on the ground. You can take the couch.”
The until I get you a proper bed frame and mattress goes unsaid, but sometimes things like that are better as surprises. It’ll be a fun housewarming gift, Tony thinks, and by the time the shipment from IKEA arrives containing both of those things and the aforementioned missing dresser and desk, there will be a third roommate to help put it all together, not that either of them know it yet.
That night, Rhodey and Carol show up with enough ingredients for lasagna to serve four, and Tony delights in showing off Peter as they cook because now he has a “super cool roommate too! Take that, Platypus.”
Rhodey glances to Peter. “If you’re being held hostage, blink twice.”
“Hey!” Tony protests. He is a perfectly lovable roommate, thank you very much, and he’s so offended, he’s not even going to let Rhodey know about his mission to furnish Peter’s room.
God bless her, Carol just laughs.
The four of them get along with surprising ease, considering Peter’s only been around for a few hours. Peter even tries to help with the lasagna, but Tony has a near-photographic memory and has not remotely forgotten the popcorn incident, however vaguely it was described.
“You just sit there and be a nicer person than Rhodey,” he urges him, and Peter nods, hiding his grin behind his hand at the argument that starts.
Once everyone is done, he and Rhodey get suckered into dish duty while Carol spirits Peter off to the living room, claiming she has to warn him about what he’s getting into. Tony doesn’t care enough to complain, and when her back is turned, he splashes a plate of suds onto Rhodey’s front.
Rather than rise to the bait, however, he raises his brows, slipping into what Tony affectionately calls his big-brother-giving-a-stern-talking-to mode. “You have to be a good example for him, Tones.”
Tony blinks. “I’m sorry, did you just say—”
“I’m serious!” They keep their voices mostly down, but Rhodey’s rises a bit with the declaration.
“He’s nineteen—an adult, in case you forgot. He signed the lease all on his own and everything,” he hisses back incredulously.
He thought he dodged the bullet by not disclosing just how underprepared Peter is to live in an apartment, but Rhodey’s head dips. Tony braces himself for the part of his big-brother-giving-a-stern-talking-to mode where he tells Tony he’s making a bullshit excuse and needs to get it together. “Don’t give me that. He’s a baby adult at best, and you know it.”
Yep, there it is.
“That’s still an adult!”
It is! Tony was on his own way earlier than nineteen. This is not a big deal, no matter how outlandish Peter’s circumstances are for moving out of NYU’s dorms.
“Watch his back.”
Tony scoffs. “It’s not like I was going to feed him to the wolves. I’m barely thirty—I’m not his dad.”
“Tony.”
Ah, the final, crushing blow of this version of Rhodey: his name—but with emphasis.
Tony sighs. “Fine,” he acquiesces. “I solemnly swear I will not let him get up to no good.”
A beat. Rhodey squints at him, slowly lowering the plate he’s holding into the sink. “You told me you refused to read Harry Potter.”
Shit.
Back when the books were first coming out, Rhodey was insufferably obsessed with them, and Tony loves him, but emotionally, he couldn’t handle having Rhodey think he was willing to discuss anything having to do with the series for longer than thirty seconds. Thus, he read the books—everyone in the world was doing the same, okay, and he cannot stand being out of the loop—but lied to Rhodey about it.
And now, he’s been made.
Rhodey and he launch into a very spirited discussion that draws Carol and Peter back to the kitchen, and despite the vein throbbing dangerously in Rhodey’s forehead, the promise has been made.
The day after Rhodey moves out, he and Peter manage to flood the bathroom.
In Tony’s defense, he only promised to look out for Peter. He said nothing about curbing his own dumbass tendencies, and it’s not like Bucky’s bedroom is all that damaged by the leak that Tony fixes before it’s really even a problem.
He and Peter settle into a nice sense of camaraderie, and Tony, content with his situation, forgets to take down his Craiglist ad that, logically speaking, someone would have to dig to find at this point, over a week after initially posting it.
Then, he receives a text that is as simple as it is effective: Is there still an available room in the apartment?
Enter the second offender: Stephen Strange.
Ahem, Doctor Stephen Strange, technically, but Tony has six PhDs. Nobody sees him going around making people call him Doctor Stark, and that’s because it makes him sound pretentious and stuffy, both things Tony prides himself on not being. However, Tony likes to push buttons, and very little gets Stephen worked up as fast as someone ignoring his credentials.
It’s a fun set-up, really, but annoying the piss out of Stephen is something that comes a little later—Tony’s not there yet in the story.
He humors the text, and after getting a read on things, he bursts into the living room, startling Peter nearly off the couch. He’s been doing his homework there and on the coffee table in front of it because the Swedish have many things but fast shipping is, apparently, not one of them, not that Peter knows there’s anything to be waiting on, but he’s getting off-topic.
Peter lets out a short yelp and presses a hand over his heart, both things that Tony ignores.
“We have a situation,” he announces.
“I swear I didn’t do it,” Peter defends pleadingly.
Tony is trying to teach him that messing things up is expected and, especially in particularly magnificent cases, admired in Casa Stark-Parker, but it’s a work in progress.
“I know you didn’t—don’t be ridiculous,” he waves his concerns off. “We are talking bigger than setting things on fire by accident. I bring you, my young protege, the proposition of—” A pause for dramatic effect. “—another roommate.”
“Ooh,” Peter says appropriately, setting his textbook down to examine the texts Tony brandishes. He begins to scroll, but while he does, Tony figures he can go ahead and fill him in on the essentials. It’s a very juicy situation, after all, and he can’t help himself.
“His name is Stephen Strange. He’s a neurosurgeon, but he got into a pretty bad car wreck that messed up his hands. He’s trying to save money while he goes to physical therapy—he apparently has a chance of recovery, but it’s a ways off—and that includes downsizing on where he lives.”
“I mean, yikes, but that’s an oddly specific backstory.”
“I’m glad you think that too, but I am intrigued. I looked him up, and he’s a real person—has a basically flawless reputation, or at least he did before his accident. Thoughts?”
Please say yes, please say yes, Tony thinks. The chance of a competent human—not including Rhodey, who looks more put together than he really is next to the chaos Tony perpetually dwells in—choosing to live with him is too fascinating to pass up, and he needs Peter to see that too.
Peter shrugs. “I’m down if you are. How old is he?”
Victory!
Satisfaction floods Tony, but he tries to maintain his cool.
“Thirty.”
Peter blows out a long breath, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. “I didn’t anticipate moving into a nursing home,” he remarks dryly.
What a little shit.
It’s worth noting half the reason Rhodey left so easily is because he said he trusted Peter to keep Tony on his toes. Then again, that Tony likes being snarked at is a large part of why they get along so well despite only knowing each other for a matter of days.
“You’re the worst, Parker. I’m going to feed you to the hooligans downstairs. Steve has a monster appetite, you know.”
Peter hums, picking his textbook back up. “Not if I feed you to them first. And, Tony?”
“What?”
“Only old people say hooligans.”
Tony thinks about that one book, Give a Mouse a Cookie or whatever. Except in his case, it’s Rent a Teenager an Apartment, and Tony doesn’t have to adhere to the literary equivalent of a G-rating.
His response to the dig is creative and colorful, and Peter laughs.
Four days and a brief conversation at a coffee shop later—a formality he and Peter did not do and probably something Tony should’ve thought of as the older adult before giving him the address—Stephen’s team of movers invade the apartment.
The man himself stands like a drill sergeant at the last flights of stairs it takes to get to the apartment, arms crossed, beard wild, conducting activity.
Peter and Tony share their evaluations, peeking their head out from the doorway when it’s unoccupied by movers and Stephen isn’t looking their way. This involves quite a bit of ducking, but they are very careful not to be caught.
(Someone’s whose name may or may not rhyme with Tephen Trange later informs that “they were not at all subtle” and “were, in fact, very embarrassing”, but that’s how things with the three of them generally are, so Tony figures it was a good crash course to how life together goes.)
“He’s kind of scraggly,” Peter whispers, his head under Tony’s because he’s the shorter of the two of them, something Tony delights in refuting Peter’s quips about his age with.
“Kind of? He looks like a hobo.”
It’s true, okay? Facially, at least, the guy is a wreck. He’s not quite to Einstein levels of bad hair day, but he’s getting there.
“Be nice,” Peter chastises him. He’s gentler than Rhodey when he does it, but considering neither of them ever shut the hell up and they have thus bonded very easily over the course of their short relationship, it’s gotten to feel as natural as most of their interactions.
“All I’m saying is that I am happy to retain my place as the most attractive person in the apartment, okay?”
They’re forced to retreat from the entryway as another load comes through, and Peter looks at him disbelievingly. “Dream on,” he replies bluntly.
Tony gasps in offense.
Peter shrugs. “Look, I’m just gonna’ say it—you knew Rhodey before me, and now that I’m here—” he trails off, looking at Tony in faux-sympathy that doesn’t match the mischievous glint in his eyes.
While it is true that Rhodey is a fine specimen of a man—yet another reason Tony can’t, in good conscience, be truly angry Carol mooched him away from the bachelor lifestyle—Tony can’t cede that easily for the sake of his pride, and he scowls. “I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
They’re still bickering as the movers finish up and Stephen enters the apartment, dressed in what Tony recognizes as the latest from Armani and Tom Ford.
He may not get invited to fashion week anymore, but he still has taste, alright, even if Rhodey limits him to one designer purchase a month.
(Rhodey isn’t around to see what packages he orders now, Tony thinks but shelves the thought for later.)
Tony and Stephen met over coffee, and all three of them said hi to one another before the moving business officially began. However, there is a little stiffness in the air, make no mistake. It’s not Stephen’s fault, exactly, because he’s just kind of a foreboding guy, but still.
It figures that Peter would break the ice. As Tony’s found and will continue to discover, Peter is just as talkative as him. Granted, that trait usually appears in the form of rambling about something from class, but it’s not surprising that his natural passion for life comes through with someone about to be very, very involved in it.
“Hi!” he begins. “Are all of the movers gone now?”
Stephen raises an unimpressed brow. “Yes.”
His reply is seriously lacking enthusiasm, but Tony isn’t allowed the opportunity to jump on that as Peter keeps going.
“Sweet! Okay, so welcome to Casa Stark-Parker.”
Woah, woah, woah—timeout.
Tony frowns, raising a hand in a motion for Peter to stop. “I thought that was my thing?” he interjects.
“Well, it has my name in it, so it gets to be both of our things,” Peter replies, then furrows his brow, looking to Stephen. “Actually, since you’re here now, I guess it’s Casa Stark-Parker-Strange. Order’s based on who got here first, sorry,” he explains with a smile that Tony, now familiar with the fact that Peter has more to him than meets the eye, notes is a touch impish.
Tony is pleased to see, despite his generally wholesome appearance, the kid has at least picked up on the power of staking a claim.
Stephen blinks. His hands, Tony has noticed, don’t stop shaking, not even when he folds his arm across his chest, like a physical barrier between him and Peter’s excitement. “Okay?” he drawls slowly, confusedly.
“Tony’s rules, not mine,” Peter assures him as if he doesn’t just want the satisfaction of having his name not be the last in the line-up.
Tony scoffs. “Oh okay, so now we’re throwing me under the bus?”
“You have to take responsibility for your actions, Tony.”
“Oh, sure thing,” he replies, tone betraying that he does not, in fact, think any responsibility is at all necessary. He looks to Stephen, rolling his eyes. “Can you believe what I have to put up with? And it’s barely been a week.”
Stephen blinks again. “I see it’s a lot,” he says measuredly.
Peter gasps, unaffected. “Oh my God, we should make a sign for it,” he enthuses. “We can put it up on the door, and we’d be so much cooler than Sam and them.”
To say that Peter rose to the challenge of bothering their downstairs neighbors with zeal is something of an understatement.
Tony is, honestly, a fan of the sign idea, especially if it were to light up, but that is where Stephen cuts in, his hands still trembling as he gestures. “Can we slow down for a moment?” He looks carefully from Tony and Peter and back again, bearing the appearance of a man in the throes of realizing he has made a bad decision.
Tony knows that look well. It usually shows up when Rhodey agrees to one of Tony’s ideas and doesn’t realize just how badly constructed it is until it’s too late.
“First of all, I am fairly certain my car is parked illegally, and before we get too far, I need to fix it before I get towed. And secondly,” Tony watches Stephen’s lips curl in a self-satisfied, I-totally-think-I’m-better-than-you-even-if-I’m-not-technically-saying-it smile, “I am not here to be part of any Casa. I am waiting for physical therapy to work for me, and then I will be out of your hair. I appreciate being able to live here, but—”
Yeah, Tony’s had enough of that. Personally, he would like to thank Rhodey, who, in a way, begins and ends the story, and truly is the greatest best friend a man could have for teaching him how to properly deal with pompous rich people.
“Nuh-uh, none of that. If you’re living here, you’re a part of Casa Stark-Parker-Strange whether you like it or not.”
Stephen looks downright appalled that someone would dare to interrupt him, which, Tony knows from experience, is exactly the kind of shock rich people need to go through. He splutters for a second before he manages to get out a reply, “That was not in the lease.”
Tony spreads his hands as if to say what can you do? “And you didn’t mention in your texts that you were going to try to be a bump on a log, but here we are.”
Perhaps sensing the mounting animosity in the room or maybe just as excited as Tony to have someone to bother, Peter takes advantage of Stephen’s overwhelmed and bewildered state.
“First day with all three of us!” he shouts. “Picture!”
And before anyone can protest—including Tony, who would prefer to be documented in something other than a Black Sabbath tee and his work pants—Peter leans in with the camera on his phone ready to capture the moment.
In the resulting photo, Tony looks vaguely alarmed, Stephen looks pissed as hell, and Peter wears a grin that stretches across his whole face. The whole thing is blurry, and they eventually get it framed.
It’s a beautiful and fitting start to their time as roommates, and in the humble eyes of the asshole who posted the Craigslist ad, that is how the story of how they came to live together went.
#tony stark#stephen strange#peter parker#supreme family#iron dad#spider son#fic#tss#ambivalentmarvel#if you tag this st*rker you die by our blade
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it’s baffling to me that tumblr and other degraded areas of the internet have suddenly decided that 14 year old girls writing gay fanfic and drawing gay fanart of two fictional men is equivalent to guys who demand their girlfriends make out with other girls cuz it’s “hot” or constantly beg for hot FFM threesomes on Tinder.
How fucking often do you really think a teenage girl is going to pressure an adult/ teen gay couple to make out in front of them?
What, at a con? You’re more likely to run into a furry with nipple clamps and a dog collar. Also, it’s a fucking con, no one with any social grace goes to a con.
What, in public?
How many gay men in the world of gay men have ever had a girl, or even a grown ass woman, come up to them and said omg you two are so hot? Let me watch you two FUCK.
Basic human behavioral etiquette would step in, I’d fucking hope.
At a bar?
Maybe it happens, but most women, when they know a man is gay, are gonna say aw shucks.
I don’t have the fucking stats, but I’d wager more straight men would beg lesbians or even straight women, to make out for them than women would ever do vice versa.
Is watching guys make out so universally popular to all women ever that it’s going to oppress every gay man in existence?
I don’t get it.
I don’t get this sudden reactionary hatred. You remember 2005-2014 yaoi fandom where girls said some of the cringiest shit ever about how hot it was when two guys make out...and now you’re like that’s WRONG.
And sure, it is.
But ye of little mercy.
Those were fucking teenage girls. With a smattering of cringier adults, sure, but for the most part, teenage girls who had just been exposed to an alternate form of sexuality, who had mostly grown up in Western spaces and grown discontent with the trappings of boring heterosexual relationships in TV shows that consisted of hot guy and his hot sexy lamp of a love interest.
Additionally, some of these girls exploring gay content found that they weren’t straight, and different gender identities as they grew older.
That cringy boy x boy yaoi lemon culture at least had the effect of showing young explorers of the internet that here’s storytelling, but if it was more suited to this specific taste you never knew you had.
And then they grew up.
(And maybe not all of them grew up, maybe, but that’s not the point.)
The point is you assume this weird niche internet thing is somehow mainstream and a big Problem.
It’s fucking not.
It’s bigger than it used to be, sure.
But i’d argue in most spaces, including this one, no one says “omg my sexy gays” anymore.
And if they do, other people will typically say hey we don’t do that anymore.
It’s just so dumb to me.
You’re going to act like the internet “fetishizing” gay relationships by drawing a lot of Kiribaku medieval fantasy AU is more harmful than executing gay people, corrective rape, bans on gay marriage and gay adoption, honor killings of gay relatives, etc., all that shit?
Or are you gonna say, well, not WORSE THAN, but still bad-
I’m sorry, how?
Again, how?
If it makes you uncomfortable, if you’ve had an instance where one woman made you feel gross cuz she was fetishizing your boyfriend and you or whatever, or straight women immediately assume you’ll be their gay best friend, YEAH.
I agree, cringy as fuck and annoying and bad.
But what the fuck is this tumblr trend of equating social awkwardness and shit like that to just, Homophobia worldwide, in general?
Even in America, there are a lot of places where they don’t serve gays, where you can’t walk hand in hand with your gf or bf safely.
And I can guarantee you that those evangelical Christian moms throwing tomatoes at your house are not the fucking same as teenage Tumblr girls obsessed with destiel.
Really.
It’s fucking baffling to me.
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Hello Mal, how are you doing? I hope things have gotten better for you on the real life side of things. I'm going through some rough times too, so at least the company is good! I wanted to start by saying that your fics have single handedly gotten me through the most turbulent transition period of my life. I'm almost completely finished with your works on AO3 and your storytelling... *many many many chef kisses*. You are easily one of my favorite writers. I love your writing style, ...1/2
...2/2 your characterization, and how well thought out each story is. Each fic is like a decadent treat for my brain. I was curious, as a fellow writer, what your writing process is like. I've tried a few different methods but was wondering what works best for you! I hope the rest of your 2020 is full of peace and love. Also, I apologize in advance for the spam of comments you are about to receive on AO3. I finally have enough spoons for it!
I’m pasting these into one so I can put the answer in one place! (Tumblr is so awkward sometimes.)
Sorry to hear you’ve been going through rough times too! There’s a lot of it going around this year, so I think we have plenty of company. In fact, I think the whole world just needs to lower its expectations and standards this year. Woke up? There’s the first gold star of the day. It's only up from here.
I’m so glad that you’ve been enjoying my stories and so flattered that you say they’ve helped you so much...*insert feelings gif* I always tell myself when I write something: It’s okay if not everyone likes it. It’s okay if some people hate it. Nothing is for everyone. I just want one person to *love it*. Then I’m totally at peace. Now, if that person is just me? If I’m the only one that loves it? That’s also cool. Each story comes from a different place. My long-winded point, though, was that you basically just validated the existence of my entire catalog of fics so far, so thank you xD
Your question about my writing process though - I’m happy to answer. But of course, first, I have to insert the usual disclaimer that as with most creative endeavors, there is no ‘right’ way to do it. I’m sure you know that, but sometimes I think people underestimate the depth of that truth. Each person has their own unique way of doing things. The struggle is sometimes finding the particular way, or combination of ways, that work for you. There’s definitely no harm in sharing what works for me though, in case anyone else can take anything from it.
I’m someone who writes multiple things at once. Some people can’t do this or don’t want to, which I totally understand. For me, this is how I (mostly) avoid any kind of writers' block. If I’m stuck somewhere, I switch projects for a day or two. I do usually still have one main project I’m working on, but I usually have at least three others, often at various stages of the writing process. This keeps me in more of a flow state so I keep going with things, and allows me to write every day. It’s a habit. Now, I’m not saying breaks are bad, and everyone should write every day. I just find that for me, breaks should be deliberate. They should be true, chosen breaks, not because I just...drifted into one.
As you can probably tell from all that, I’m very much a planner and outliner. I outline...a lot. I’d be happy to talk more about my particular outlining process on Tumblr someday if anyone wanted. But, basically, I start with a general idea, then break it down into different story beats, so I can see if there’s something missing or too much of one thing. Then I fill in the gaps, then start breaking each overall ‘part’ of the plot into scenes, etc. Chapters come last. In terms of numbers (I get asked this one a lot), it does not matter how long your chapters are. What matters is that the chapter length feels right for the pacing of the fic, in my opinion, and I really think that is something that just comes with practice and knowing your own writing. Shitty advice maybe, but just the truth as I see it. A lot of it comes down to practice and finding what works for you.
Once I have an outline, I generally write linearly. Some people can jump around a lot. That’s a bit of a last resort for me if I’m stuck on something, or alternately if a scene steams into my head fully formed I will write it...with the understanding that I will probably have to change chunks of it when I reach it. It’s just the way it goes.
Now, when I say I outline in detail (there are literal spreadsheets) that doesn’t mean that I magically only write exactly what’s in the outline and I stick to it. An outline can be a guide, not a rule. Sometimes stories take you places, and generally, I find it's better to listen to what the story wants. If my story starts going somewhere else or introduces something I don’t expect, I often revisit my outline and think, “Okay, how can I work in this new thing so that it follows the plotlines and arcs I already have? Am I adding to what I have or just distracting from it?” Most often those answers are obvious to me, but sometimes it’s good to ask someone else. A friend, a trusted beta. (I could talk a whole lot about betas and how that works for me, too, in addition to outlining).
I pretty much zero draft my fics. By that, I mean that I will start writing, and I won’t go back and do very much editing until the end. I will, each writing session, go back and read what I wrote the day before. Get into the zone. And sure, I’ll fix something if it jumps out at me - but that isn’t the purpose at that point, and most things won’t jump out, because it's too fresh. My brain knows what I meant, so it autocorrects for me.
Leading into editing, it’s a two-step process for me. Once my zero draft is finished, I go back to the beginning and go through. This is where most of my developmental editing happens. (Another thing that probably needs more detail...different types of editing.) Once I’ve done that (usually during that pass, I’ve added words) I then put the fic aside. For as long as possible. At least a month, if I can swing that. (Bang deadlines sometimes cause issues if it's a fic for a bang, but I try).
Once that time has passed, I can come back to it with fresh eyes. I’ll see the mistakes much more easily, then. This is where more intensive line edits happen, where SPAG happens, where I insert anything I made note of during my first pass if I needed to foreshadow anything more, that kind of thing.
For a WIP, I do these edits chapter by chapter as it posts. For a Bang fic, obvious I have to do it all in one go. Due to the way I write, if you see me start posting a fic -- that fic is already finished, or in rarer instances (for work that was more time-sensitive) partway through the second draft or so. Oneshots are a little different (and I’ve had some oneshots that turned into chaptered fics of their own accord) in that they are just shorter and less intensive and often only have one main plot thread, so they’re a lot easier to do. I can get one drafted, edited and posted within a few days usually, depending on length.
How much do I write? Depends on the day. I have a high-stress finance job, two kids, and write a mixture of original fiction and fanfic stuff. So sometimes it's more than others. Bad day? Maybe 1,000 words. Good, average day? 3-6k. High pressure? Well, last year's DCBB I wrote in just under three days. It was 25k at that point. I have no tips for speed beyond learning to type fast, LOL!
Okay. I’ve probably bored you, and anyone else who had to scroll past all this, to tears. This is way too long. But even so, more specific questions, I’m happy to answer.
Good luck! Best advice? Just write. Write. Write. "Write a million words, then throw them away” is a changeable quote attributed to several authors but all it comes down to is...practice. Find your own vice and way of doing it. In a million words time, you will be a different writer than you are now, guaranteed.
Mal <3
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The Best Films of 2020
I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.
GARBAGE
93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.
That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.
92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.
91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?
90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?
On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.
89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.
88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.
87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.
ADMIRABLE FAILURES
86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.
85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.
I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.
84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.
83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.
So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?
Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.
82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.
There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."
81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.
80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.
Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.
79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?
The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.
To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.
78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.
Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.
77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.
At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?
76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.
Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.
75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.
The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.
My daughter loved it.
74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.
*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.
73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.
72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.
Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.
71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.
70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".
69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.
68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.
If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.
67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.
For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.
ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS
66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.
Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.
65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.
I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.
64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.
The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.
63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!
62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought."
"America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!"
"At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience."
"Fifty percent, Captain!"
"The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext."
"No subtext to be found, sir!"
61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.
Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.
60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)-
"You live inside your head."
"Doesn't everybody?"
As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.
59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.
That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.
58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.
Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.
57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.
Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?
56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.
Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.
55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.
Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.
54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.
53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.
Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.
PRETTY GOOD MOVIES
52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."
There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.
There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.
51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.
But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.
50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.
I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.
49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")
What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.
48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.
To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.
47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.
46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.
45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)
If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.
44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?
When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.
43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.
I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.
42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.
The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.
41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.
Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.
40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.
A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.
GOOD MOVIES
39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?
At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.
38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.
By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.
That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.
37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.
36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.
Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."
35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.
34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.
In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.
33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."
This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.
I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?
32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."
Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.
31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.
*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson
30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.
I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.
29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.
As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.
28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.
27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.
Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.
26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.
25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.
It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.
24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.
(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)
23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)
But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.
I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.
22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.
You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.
21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.
20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.
Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.
19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.
18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.
17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.
GREAT MOVIES
16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.
Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.
15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)
Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.
14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.
This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.
13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.
I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.
12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.
It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.
11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.
10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.
To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.
If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.
9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.
Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.
But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.
8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.
Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.
7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.
In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.
6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.
If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.
5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.
In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.
Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.
4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.
3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.
An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)
Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.
INSTANT CLASSICS
2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.
Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.
There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.
1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.
The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.
A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.
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