#fuck you vizzini
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Me dealing with a sexist jackass that most definitely does not provide my salary no matter how many pennies he throws at the evil corporation I'm employed by trying to use fear tactics against me (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I was abused most of my life by my mother I KNOW FEAR TACTICS WELL FUCKER)
Sj:If this is how you act (I'm paraphrasing I was shaking after dealing with vizzini) they I should talk to your manager
Me:she's over there gesturing around the corner
Sj: *surprised I called him on it* what's his name
Me: HER NAME IS TAYLOR SHE'S RIGHT OVER THERE SHE HAS RED HAIR
Vizzini storms off I see my boss come around the corner less then 5 minutes later sees its me cause I gave him my name as a "fake name" sees its me and peels back around the corner like nope she looks pissed
Apparently he stormed into the back and asked to speak to her was taken aback when he realized my boss was a pretty girl who was even younger then me yeah not a happy man
All this because when I was doing my job he moved his cart blocking me from moving cause I only had so much space to get out and there was also someone in front of me and asked to get behind where I was which I said I was trying to get thru where he'd just blocked me and if he hadn't he'd never had to say anything at all told me to go ahead
Then proceeded to berate me because I should have let him get his cookies instead of being concerned with idk getting out of his way so he COULD get his cookies and I could do my job and he's a customer so he's the one paying my salary
My coworker described him as an unsuccessful mafia boss and thus I'm dubbing him vizzini
#fuck you vizzini#my story#i love my job#my boss still backed me up#plus every boss i have in the chain of command is a female#no matter how high he would go its women all the way up man#trying to teach the female employee a lesson isn't gonna work especially not with fear tactics#the customer is always right#was made by a customer
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ive always loved how they love
#this video has been making me cry for 2 days im so obsessed with it#sawyuh art#margherita vizzini#dr jackall#jackall x margherita#I GUESS . love wins#on a random side note i never call jackall by his first name since he doesnt have one in canon and i think its also funnier to just#call him jackall forever. you get called by your last name sir#as for a headcanon first name ive always run with Henry since thats the first name of jek/yll in the source material. on the same token#hound’s first name is Edward just like hy/de’s first name#its like in that fucking monster heart song video. eddy hound </3
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the princess bride explained badly and also from memory
buttercup: i like playing in the mud and being dirty raahhhh
wesley: i brought you a pail of water
buttercup: kill yourself farm boy
wesley: as you wish
buttercup: i’m really pretty now and i have a crush on farm boy, many men are coming to be my suitor but i have only eyes for this boy who lives in a little mud hut outside of my house
prince guy i forgot his name: fuck you and your farm boy i’m going to torture your boyfriend to the brink of insanity so that you will only be mine
buttercup: noooooo aaarrrggghhhh
hunchback vizzini guy: we are going to kidnap the princess
andre the giant: i like to rhyme and i also like peanuts :))
hunchback: kill yourself
inigo montoya: you’re a dick and you keep using words wrong
buttercup: why did you kidnap me that wasn’t nice
vizzini: shut up or i’ll cut your throat
man in black who’s definitely not wesley: i’m gonna kidnap the princess from you kidnappers
inigo montoya: fight me first and then i’ll have a really cool flashback scene where i kill the guy who killed my dad and then i also discover you’re a master swordsman which is craaaazy cuz i thought i was the only master swordsman and then i lose but don’t die because i’m pretty and also need to be used for plot later on
man in black(not wesley deffff): poggers
andre the giant: i’m going to wrestle you and then get trapped under a rock but live also for plot later on
man in black: poggers
vizzini: we are going to play a game of luck and if you lose i kill this bitch, one of the cups are poisoned
MiB: i will drink this one
vizzini: dummy, don’t start a land war in asia and don’t play a game of luck with a sicilian! dies
MiB: i poisoned both of the cups with iocane powder cause i built up a resistance. come here princess
buttercup: get away from me you creep
MiB(wesley????): assss youuu wiiissshhhh…… falls off a cliff
buttercup: aw fuck. also falls off a cliff
wesley: now we’re both fucked, i would have been able to climb back up cuz i’m a big strong testosterone man and you’re not. oh well looks like we’ll have to go through snake forest and poison quicksand desert to get back to the city
prince king guy: loser i’m stealing her again
wesley: ahhhh i must be dead
inigo and andre: hey witch man bring this dude back to life
witch dude: shit man sure i’m good with dead people and i hate my hag wife
buttercup: i’m going to kill myself and have repeated dreams of my tit milk being so sour my children die
wesley: nooo aha your boobs are so sexy don’t kill yourself
princess: we must run away
inigo: wait maybe this is actually the moment we’re i get the cool fight i kinda forgot??
buttercup: wesley we must ride away together and end the story in a way that’s a little bit confusing but we’ll probably have a happy ending weeeeee go horse goooo
#the princess bride#princess bride#buttercup and wesley#inigo montoya#you killed my father#prepare 2 die#i love this movie and book they r so good
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The Princess Bride Musical Dreamcast
The fact that with all the new broadway musicals are adaptations and NO ONE has done the Princess Bride yet is absolutely criminal, so if that were to hypothetically happen, here's my dream cast list.
Framing Device:
Grandchild: I can't really put anyone for grandchild, since I don't know many child actors, but I do think there should be a rotating cast, like they had with Mathilda on Broadway.
Grandfather: Mandy Patinkin, aka the original Inigo Montoya.
Mother: Robin Wright, aka the original Princess Buttercup.
I think it would be really sweet and fun to have two of the original movie's cast play parts in the framing device, almost like they're passing the baton of telling the story to the next cast.
Main Story:
Westly: Joshua Henry
I don't know if this is a controversial statement, but Westly is a baritone, and I think Joshua Henry would be absolutely perfect. He's charming as fuck, he's a phenomenal actor and vocalist, and he's absolutely gorgeous. Perfect leading man for a story that is about telling the best story ever.
Buttercup: Maria Bilbao
I think Buttercup would be a legit soprano, and as a big fan of Sweeney Todd and the recent revival, Maria Bilbao, who played Johanna, would be absolutely perfect for it. Just go listen to her Green Finch and Linnet Bird and you'll get it.
Inigo Montoya: Colman Domingo
Does Colman Domingo sing? I don't know. Could he act the absolute SHIT out of the confrontation between Inigo and the Six-Fingered Man? ABSOLUTELY. I have this vision of how to adapt the scene, which would also kinda translate Inigo's arc to a musical version. So in the original, the Six-Fingered Man trying anything to manipulate him, mocking him, that great "you have an overdeveloped sense of vengeance line, and Inigo is just not having it. He just keeps repeating the iconic line over and over again. In the musical, I would have the six-fingered man sing, like he's trying to get Inigo to sing with him, to give in to the performance, but Inigo won't sing, he just keeps repeating his line over and over. He refuses to conform to the typical "rising above" narrative and leave the Six-Fingered Man alive, he will be true to himself and his mission and won't let himself be distracted. Anyway, I don't know if this is a good idea, but Colman Domingo would be amazing either way.
Prince Humperdink: Aaron Tveit
I think Prince Humperdink should be the archetypal tenor boy and who is a better representation of current archetypal tenor boys on broadway than Aaron Tveit? Also he's really talented and I think he would act the shit out of this smarmy bastard role.
Count Rugen aka The Six Fingered Man: Josh Groban
I need Josh Groban on Broadway more, and I think he would do great at a quieter villain role, especially coming off a more angry and bloodthirsty role like Sweeney Todd. Also he looks a bit like the original Count Rugen, so that's a bonus.
Vizzini: Alex Brightman
I don't really have much behind this one, other than Vizzini is a weird little guy and Alex Brightman plays weird little guys really well.
Fezzik: Jason Segal
So ideally, I'd actually be able to cast an actor with gigantism to play the part, but I don't know of any, and couldn't find any while googling, so this is my backup essentially. During the lockdowns, a bunch of celebrities did The Princess Bride over zoom, and the scene with Rainn Wilson as Vizzini, Pedro Pascal as Inigo and Jason Segal as Fezzik is genuinely really great, but Jason Segal's Fezzik impression is spot-on and actually amazing. Also, we know from the Muppet Movie, How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall that he can sing so, I think he would do great.
Miracle Max and Valerie: Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez
I assume posting this to Tumblr, more people would know who Joey Richter and Lauren Lopez are than the average social media platform, but they are part of Team Starkid and Tin Can Bros and do some fantastic original musicals (please look up the Hatchetfield Trilogy and Spies Are Forever if you haven't seen them yet). They're both extremely talented performers, and also married in real life, so they would absolutely kill this.
Clergyman(Mawage guy): Brian d'Arcy James
I don't really have much of a reasoning behind this, I just think he'd do a good job.
Backups/Close Calls:
Denee Benton as Princess Buttercup
She's one of the best parts of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, and that's saying something because that musical is (in my opinion) one of the best of all time
Pedro Pascal as Inigo Montoya
I don't know if he sings, and he would be amazing for this, but I wanted to challenge myself to think outside the most obvious choice. However, sometimes the obvious choice is a good one.
Bernadette Peters as Valerie
If the Witch from Into the Woods found love and inner peace
#broadway#fancast#musicals#team starkid#the princess bride#mandy patinkin#robin wright#joshua henry#maria bilbao#colman domingo#aaron tveit#josh groban#alex brightman#jason segel#brian d'arcy james#joey richter#lauren lopez#broadway adaptation#dreamcast#these are just my thoughts#these are just my opinions#please don't hate me#i do take criticism
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WIP game:
Princess Bride AU???
as i wish
As you wish, my friend! <3
I haven' written much yet, but the idea for this came from spite. Someone said something on Tumblr about a Princess Bride AU with Eddie as Westlesy, Steve as Buttercup, and Billy as Prince Umperdink and my brain went full on
HOW
FUCKING
DARE
YOU!
Because no, I absolutely cannot see Eddie "I'm a coward, I run" Munson as the fearless adventurer who goes and travels the seas to make a fortune to one day return to his inept guy whose sole job in life is being pretty. And using Billy as Umperdink made me so incredibly angry! You have Vecna, master manipulator, and still you cast Billy as the shitty prince who marries just so he can start a war?! Again, HOW DARE YOU!
So, yeah, this is a spite fic.
And also a crack fic, honestly, because when I'll write it, it's probably gonna take the form of the Dread Pirate Roberts' crew reading the book (the unabridged one!) and spending their time ragging on how terrible it is, how much it distorted the facts. Why is Brenner suddenly called Vizzini and Sicilian?! Wh- What do you mean the writer turned El into a giant Turkish man who talks in rhyme? Where's Steve in all this?! He was there all along, he's the one who talked El into not killing the two of them! And oh my god, Billy has never ever ever EVER wanted to kiss, let alone MARRY!, Chrissy, she's his best friend, no, no!, this is a travesty, he's not the captain anymore but there must be some rule that allows him to get his title and powers again for the time needed to go and find the pathetic hack writer who penned this pile of drivel and make him eat his book one page at a time!
No, Steve, the fact he kept the "to the pain" part and Eddie's quest for revenge do not escuse the rest! This whole thing is inconceivable!
So, yeah. One day I'll write it. Right now, it's still percolating. The brain weasels are still working on the finer details. But it's not gonna be a serious affair! :P
#wip tag game#tag game#thanks for asking!#robthegoodfellow#princess bride au#harringrove#still haven't decided if there's gonna be some hellcheer or some munver#who knows#but chrissy is buttercup#spite & crack#my wips
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2023 Reads
This year I've read 24 books - I had only planned to read one book per month, given that I've barely read since leaving highschool. But my old bookworm self is re-emerging! As I write this, I'm on my 25th lol.
I decided at the start of the year that I wanted to try an read a wide variety of genres, which I did. Didn't love everything I read, but such is life. Below are all the titles and my terrible attempts to summarise the plots. The ones with a heart were my favourites and ones I highly reccommend.
My full list in order:
No Destination by Satish Kumar
Autobiography of the life of a pilgrim who left his family at 9 years old to become a Jain monk, then left that to become an activist and walk across continents.
Not the kind of life story you hear everyday, that's for sure.
How to Invent Everything by Ryan North
(Nonfiction) An in depth guide for the stranded time traveller that needs to recreate modern technology from scratch.
Funny, easy to understand, and bitesized sections that can be read when you've got a spare 5 mins.
Moral Compass by Danielle Steel
A girl who experiences sexual assault while at a private school that newly became co-ed, and the resulting court case/investigation into what happened.
Personally I felt this read like a case-study more than a story, and the message was very heavyhanded.
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero ❤
A horror comedy about a group of adults that used to be sleuths in their teens reunite to solve a case that everyone thinks has been wrapped up.
This was recommended to me by a librarian that said it was like "if the scooby doo gang all had trauma and fought eldritch beings" which perfectly summed it up. Also, if you shipped Velma and Daphne... you'll enjoy this book 👀 The writer randomly switches to a script-like format at times, some people hate that but I personally like when an author does whatever the fuck, just because he can. Delicious dark humour.
The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott ❤
About a woman who lives alone in the mountains in a country devastated by a coup, and is sought out by a soldier in order to find the mythical Rain Heron.
Nice prose and descriptions, and the other character's pov chapters have some great suspense.
The Mark and The Void by Paul Murray
An office worker meets a novellist who wants to write about his life.
I was really into the first half of the story, but the second half became boring as the plot stagnated
Resistance by Samit Basu
People have superpowers corresponding to their innermost desires, and we follow the life of a billionaire who is the leader of a mecha group and the lives of their enemies.
I accidentally picked this up at the library, not realizing it was a sequal to Turbulence, but it read okay on it's own. You'd like this if you're into My Hero Academia or other shounen anime.
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North ❤
Set in the distant future after an apocalypse, an archivist is forced to translate documents from the "burning age" for the Brotherhood
I still think about this story daily. The writing has an interesting style and rhythm and the plot is packed with intriguing developments
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins ❤
There's a library with the secrets to the universe, and several people, called Pelapi, grew up learning a unique catalogue of skills using its books, taught by Father, who might be God? But he's gone missing lately.
If you like The Umbrella Academy you'd like this. Like Meddling Kids, it's also dark and funny.
The People we Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
A journalist and her old friend go on holiday in a last attempt to rekindle their friendship.
I found this book on a train, then left it on another. Hopefully it got a new home! The story was sweet, especially the ending where the journalist spent some time on herself.
It's Kind of a Funny story by Ned Vizzini
A teenage boy suffers a mental breakdown and spends a week in a psychiatric ward.
Given to me by a family member, I am now a bit concerned for her. It has a happy ending, at least. There was a transphobic depiction of a character that was mentioned in the blurb, but she doesn't even stay for the whole story.
The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason
A body is found on a mountain in Iceland, reopening a cold case from 30 years ago, bringing the detective in charge of it out of retirement.
The prose isn't great in this due to a poor translation. The plot/characters are a bit cliche but not too bad overall. The ending was unexpected yet also expected in the best way?
Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree ❤
Cosy fantasy about an orc who retires from adventuring to open a coffee shop/cafe.
Bought this after seeing it recommended for people that like Stardew Valley. I liked the amount of detail that went into just building the shop. The prose is simple, but I find that fits the main character, Viv, well, and there were some really good lines/messages in the story. I have adopted Thimble.
Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession
Two unremarkable irish men consider their lives and place in the universe.
This would've been one of my favourites had it not focused so much on Paul's sister's wedding. The book should've been called Leonard, Hungry Paul, and Grace. I did enjoy the conversations in this book, and the attention to the mundane.
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
Southern Gothic queer supernatural story about a college student trying to solve the case of his best friend's death, while being haunted by Revenants.
This took me ages to read because it was so emotionally heavy and the plot moved slowly. Like it had some incredibly good prose and relationship dynamics, but I couldn't force myself to read it again.
Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
Solar punk story about a (nonbinary!) person who suddenly switches jobs to become a tea monk, then leaves that to visit a hermitage and meets a robot along the way.
This is a short book because the sequel is the second half of the story. £13-17.99 seems too expensive for half a book. It was recommended as a cosy fantasy but the MC is existentially unhappy with their life for most of it, so the story doesn't quite fit in that category.
A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill ❤
Noah, the youngest child of his family, narrates the life of his parents: a bookish mother and a Lovecraft-horror lover father, and the monsters they all encounter
Phenomenal prose, characters, themes, and plot. Lots of psychological trauma and inner demons.
Those People Next Door by Kia Abdullah ❤
A family moves into a suburb and a war begins between them and the neighbours after he knocks down their "black lives matter" banner.
Oh boy, it sure escalates to become way out of hand. It has a mystery element to it which I enjoyed trying to figure out. Lots of tension between plot points. The last line! Agh!!
The Fall by Louise Jensen
A girl falls off a bridge and the family/police try to uncover who pushed her, but instead uncover secrets about the family.
There were some parts that didn't make sense to me, and there was a lot of characters to keep track of. Not a bad book but it just didn't have that extra spark.
Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree
Prequel to Legends and Lattes (but can be read on its own) where Viv has recently started adventuring but has to recover from an injury before she can return to her group. She helps out at a bookshop and gets caught up with a necromancer.
Preferred the first book as it felt cosier, but the action in this book is fun too.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
A woman leaves her office job after a breakup to live above her uncle's bookshop and helps out, but she hates books.
Too short for my liking, and the main character was difficult to connect to and the relationships/conversations seemed shallow. the second half of the story centres on the uncle's wife and while it had a valuable lesson it just wasn't as good to read.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Childhood friends meet again in college and design a game together, which changes their lives/careers.
This was not a terrible book, but it did have some strange descriptions, and the author doesn't understand how the game industry works.
The Hike by Lucy Clarke
4 women who have been friends since highschool go to Norway to climb Mount Blajfell, but they are not prepared for the trek
I felt this had some cliches, but a pretty decent suspense novel
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
10 people are invited to Soldier Island for various reasons, only to find they all have one thing in common... murder.
I was theorizing like crazy during this, trying to guess whodunnit. I felt like the reveal was a bit disappointing because how on earth was anyone meant to guess that??
Library books: 9
Given to me: 5
Favourites: 7
If you have any recs for me I'd love to know, just message me!
#book review#bookblr#reading#books#novels#book recommendations#book reccs#lbrary#book list#literature#fiction
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Ghost of the Ten
Horizon: Forbidden West
Hekarro x Fem! Old One OC
Action/Adventure/Romance/Hurt/Comfort
Chapter 7
Part 2: Ghost of the Ten
~~
"I woke up into nightmare." - Ned Vizzini
~~
Awareness came with pain.
And not even the good kind of pain. Where she could pat herself on the back for a good workout session or having survived another three-day boozefest. No, this was the worst kind of pain imaginable. There were parts of her body hurting that she wasn't sure existed before. She felt like she was on fire with how much her muscles ached, and the more her muddled brain became aware the more she noticed it agonized right down to her very core.
She struggled to think, to push past the fog in her head. She tried to move but only managed a pathetic twitch, her hands gripping the rough, threaded blanket beneath her palm. She could feel the weight of another blanket across her torso, pulled up snugly around her shoulders to keep her warm against the cool air that brushed her face. There was the sound of faint voices somewhere nearby, nearly incomprehensible to her fucked up head.
Where the fuck was she?
Victoria tried to move again. To force her body to do anything other than lie there in excruciating agony. She somehow managed to prop herself up on her elbows, exhaling a low sigh that transformed into a pitiful whimper. Silence descended in the room, then gentle pattering followed by a tender touch of someone's hand on her shoulder.
"You should lie back down." one of the voices whispered. Soft, definitely younger.
"Where...am I?" Victoria slurred through the pain, her tongue feeling like a lead weight in her mouth. She gritted her teeth against the gentle squeeze of the hand on her shoulder, twitching as if struck, until she found the willpower to sit herself up. A frown deepened on her face as she slowly opened her eyes. But nothing but an expanse of unending darkness greeted her sightless gaze.
A chill of terror coiled around her spine, bile rising in her throat as the dread realization took hold: she was blind.
"Hey, it's okay." The voice came again, this time desperate and loud over the mounting buzz of Victoria's gasps for air. Left, right, every place she looked was nothingness. She felt her hands were trembling in her lap but couldn't catch sight of them.
"Who…?" Her words were broken by frantic breaths and quivering lips as a hand landed on her shoulder. She recoiled, slapped it away and screamed, "Fuck off, get away from me!"
Suddenly, there were more voices and more hands attempting to hold her down. Her heart pounded in her chest as confusion and panic set in. No matter how hard she tried to make out their words, they were lost in the fog of fear that had enveloped her. She yelped at the feeling of a sudden pinch in her arm before a nauseating wooziness filled her head and she collapsed back into the blankets beneath her.
"Get the chief, now." It was another voice, female, definitely younger like the other but rougher around the edges. Eerily similar, but Victoria couldn't think straight enough through the sedative to figure out why.
"Will you be--" Male, rough and soft. Victoria scowled and tried to fight the drug.
Fuck this... fuck this... fuck this!
"Kotallo, now!"
Victoria felt a sudden rush of panic as whoever was in the room disappeared with the sound of hurried footsteps. She heard two girls whispering frantically to each other before Victoria felt the presence of one of them at her bedside. She scowled when she felt careful fingers grab her wrist and take her pulse.
"Are you awake?" The softer-spoken girl's tone betrayed an undertone of nervousness.
"Fuck you..." Victoria slurred her reply, though her voice sounded more scared than angry.
"I'll take that as a yes." The other woman replied with a dry laugh. They descended into an awkward silence, Victoria struggling in vain against the sedative as it coursed through her system. Bouts of indignant anger flared in her chest every so often, spurring her to scowl whenever the mysterious hands tried to comfort her.
"I know you're scared," the young girl whispered, "But you're safe here, I promise."
"Y-you drug...p-people you... try to k-k-keep safe?" Victoria sneered, her words twisted.
"To keep you from hurting yourself, and to help with the anxiety." The voice assured, "I can't imagine how terrified you must feel."
"S-stuff it, k-kid." Victoria snapped, and groaned as a wave of exhaustion washed over her. She tried to focus on her breathing, slowly letting her body drift into an uneasy slumber. It was a half-sleep; she was aware of the voices around her but too tired to fully rise from the black abyss of her doze.
"Are you still with us?"
Victoria groaned quietly as she was stirred out of her nap, blinking at the ceiling and huffing when her eyes failed to focus. She twisted her head towards the voice, the young girl from before. She was somewhere close, hovering just out of reach, but beyond her, Victoria could sense the presence of more people in the room. Though she was sightless, her glare shot to her right, where she could sense someone lingering at the foot of her cot. Their gaze so intense she felt it like a burn.
"What now?" Victoria snapped, her words a little clearer this time. The nap had at least allowed her to sleep through the effects of the sedative. "Looking to pump more drugs into me?"
"Not unless you give me a reason to." The girl said evenly, "I just... wanted to ask you some questions, that's all. Is that okay?"
Victoria didn't bother to respond, but she managed to clench her fist when she tried to wiggle her fingers. A vast improvement from earlier, and one she wasn't keen on letting her captors see.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
She remained silent, turning her head defiantly to face the ceiling. She clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes as if trying to shut out any other voices in the room. She could feel them all waiting for an answer, suddenly conscious of how carefully they were watching her every move. Even through the haze of drugs and exhaustion, Victoria knew she was being studied like an animal in captivity—dissected without mercy by their collective gaze. After a few moments of tense silence, movement from the edge of her cot caught her attention.
She couldn't make out any shapes, but she could feel them carefully gravitate toward her, their overwhelming presence softly crouching beside her. Victoria gulped nervously in an effort to conceal her unease, her blank stare still focused on what she assumed was the ceiling above her. Then, they-he-spoke. His gentle baritone rumbled through her chest, comforting like a summer's day. Strong, yet tender as he whispered.
"What's your name?"
Victoria clenched her jaw. His voice sounded oddly familiar, but she couldn't remember where she might have heard it before. Without meaning to, she turned towards him, sightless but still desiring to discern some shape of a face in the blackness of her blind vision.
"I know you're very scared," the man said, "but we cannot help you if you don't let us."
"And why should I trust you?"
He laughed much to her surprise, "You would be a fool to trust someone you can't see."
Victoria scoffed at that. She still had yet to place his voice, and despite its eerie familiarity, it wasn't enough for her to open her mouth and answer his questions.
"Then I guess we're at a crossroads here," she finally said, shifting slightly on the cot to try and get more comfortable.
"We don't have to be." The man replied, his tone gentle yet firm.
Victoria quickly realized she was in the presence of someone who seemed to be very assured of his place in the world. The stark silence of the room told her that their audience was either afraid of him or respected him enough to remain quiet, and since she didn't sense any nervousness in the room, she opted for the latter observation. Which meant that the man talking to her was in charge.
Victoria considered her choices. Part of her wanted to remain defiant; at least until she could regain her sight and reassess the situation. But another part of her quietly recommended cooperating. She had no idea what was going on and no assurance that she would ever recover her vision. If she wanted a shot at survival, she had to try to work this group in her favor.
"My name is Victoria," she eventually said, returning her gaze back up towards the ceiling, "but that's all I'm willing to tell you right now."
"As you say, Victoria."
A wave of calmness filled the room. Victoria detected a faint murmur nearby, and the girl next to her backed away, leaving her alone with the man. Victoria felt the man's eyes on her and she turned to face him, despite the fact that she couldn't see. She knew he was studying her.
"Where am I?" she asked in a low murmur.
"What do you remember?" He replied, his voice low and controlled.
Victoria scoffed at his response. "I think I reserve the right to ask some questions of my own here."
He chuckled at that and said, "A trade then. A question for a question. Does that sound fair?"
She clicked her tongue, mildly unamused. "Yeah, alright," she said eventually, "I'll give ya an easy one: what's your name?"
"Hekarro."
The simplicity of his answer stunned him just as much as the strangeness of his name. "What kinda name is that?" she blurted out irritably, to which he hummed,
"I believe it is my turn for a question." He prompted gently.
She scoffed at him again but nodded curtly and waited for him to ask his next question.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"This is the third time you asked that question," Victoria observed, "Why do you want to know so much?"
He didn't answer her, but she felt his gaze as he waited patiently. Victoria sighed in exasperation, annoyed by her own affliction. Not being able to see was a tremendous disadvantage, and it grated on her nerves. Hekarro had been so elusive with his answers that she wasn't sure if he was trying to be intimidating or just playing games with her. Either way, she had no choice but to answer his question, if only to try and gain some advantage of her own.
Victoria closed her eyes to think, even if her blindness made it a useless gesture.
"I remember... talking to Colonel Faraday. She was taking me off the frontlines. We got into an argument, and then I blacked out."
It wasn't the answer he wanted, she could tell by the soft hum under his breath. Even still, he didn't offer her a retort. Victoria nodded to the voices near them,
"Who's the peanut gallery?"
"They are two sisters, Beta and Aloy, and my Marshal, Kotallo. They have all been seeing to your care."
What little patience Victoria had finally stretched to its limit and snapped. She was tired, confused, and hurt, and his silence only served to anger her further. It wasn't merely infuriating, it was exhausting.
"Look, if you're just gonna sit here and fuck with me, you can leave." Victoria scowled, "How stupid do you think I am to believe names like that? Are you serious?"
For a moment, Victoria thought he wouldn't respond, but then he spoke in a measured voice that betrayed no emotion. "I assure you they are all genuine names."
She bristled at his condescending response, but before Victoria could lash out further, Hekarro continued with his next question.
"Is Anne Faraday your mother?"
The explosion of righteous indignation at the sound of that woman's name was beyond description, and Victoria couldn't contain the disgusted sneer on her face,
"Why do you care?"
Her anger was palpable when he disregarded her waiting for a response. She pushed herself up with her newfound strength, and as she turned her blind gaze on Hekarro, the room filled with frantic voices.
"Who are you, really? Did the Colonel put you up to this?" Victoria's dark eyes narrowed, and her fists clenched.
She felt a hand reach out to grab her arm, but with lightning speed, she swatted it away. "Don't you dare touch me!" she spat. "Answer the question!"
His lack of response was maddening to her, and the fact that he spoke in a calm and level tone only added to her ire. "I would rather avoid having to sedate you again, Victoria. Please--"
Her jaw clenched so tightly that she felt her teeth creak. "No," she snarled, "I'm done playing games; it's my turn to ask the questions. Who are you? Where exactly am I? And where is Colonel Faraday!?" Her fists were clenched in her lap, her anger slowly bubbling to a boiling point.
There was an awkward silence before another girl, somewhere further than the bed, spoke, "Our names aren't a lie, Victoria." Footsteps brought the woman closer, and at her bedside, "My name is Aloy, and... right now we're in an abandoned facility beneath the Mojave Memorial Museum."
"And the Colonel?" Cold dread ran up her spine as she spoke the words, feeling as if someone else had taken over her body and spoken them instead of her. There was a dawning realization that pulsed within her, a wave of emotion that brought tears to her eyes and made her breath catch in her chest.
"Where is my mother...?"
The girl, Aloy, spoke again, "We... found you. In a cryostasis chamber assigned to Anne Faraday."
Pain...
Terror...
Anguish...
It crashed into her like a wave, feeling as if they would crush her, consuming all sense of hope until she was gasping for air. Victoria's voice trembled, "How long?" She asked, dreading the answer but needing to hear it nonetheless.
"How long?!"
"Almost a thousand years." Aloy's soft reply hit her like a sledgehammer, delivering a crushing blow that felt like it tore through her entire being and brought the tears streaming down her face.
The world suddenly shattered around Victoria, its fragments cutting into her heart like a million sharp blades. She opened her mouth to scream from the pain, but no sound escaped—only a silent flood of tears and anguish filled the air. Denial, anger and sorrow converged in her mind, pounding against her chest with such force that it felt like she was drowning.
It was all gone
Her mama, her papa. Her cousins, aunts and uncles. Everyone whose love had been the foundation of her life - gone forever. And the sheer finality of it all crippled her, sending tidal waves of despair crashing through her soul until there was nothing left but desolation.
The voices that surrounded her faded, silenced by the sobs that shook her being. Victoria felt strong arms wrap around her shoulders, and despite the comfort they offered, she curled into a tight ball and cried out with every ounce of strength she had until it felt as if her lungs would burst. Nothing could undo what had been done, and yet here she was—still breathing, still living in a world where nothing but loss remained. It felt wrong to even exist.
A sudden wave of wooziness washed over her, following the mild prick of another needle. Victoria had no fight left in her, not anymore. As she felt herself start to slip under the black sea of unconsciousness, a deep, dark part of her hoped-prayed-that she wouldn't wake up.
Yet somewhere deep in her slumber, her memories began to play out in her mind's eye like a broken film reel. Corridors of cold steel and shadows, convoluted and desolate. Familiar faces, now lost in the fog but etched deeply into her memories; people she'd spent her entire life around—comrades in arms who had stood beside her to stare death in the face, knowing they all would perish anyway.
The world had come to its end, a self-inflicted extinction. Human hubris had been their undoing; life on earth extinguished. With every ounce of strength they had, they fought against it, giving their all in a futile attempt at redemption. In their darkest hour, they held onto that small fragment of hope—that Project: Zero Dawn could be their salvation.
And to Victoria? That was a cause worth dying for.
Victoria woke again with a soft gasp. The sedative was running its final course; the tips of her fingers were numb as she flexed them. She paused, struggling to remember how she had gotten there. It was only when she opened her eyes that she realized she could make out silhouettes in the hazy blur of the far wall. Not very clear—if the dizzying fog of the distant wall was anything to go by—but enough to distinguish people lingering nearby.
"It can't be helped. I need that medicine, Aloy; it could make a difference in restoring her vision.”
The other woman, Aloy, softly exhaled and shifted her weight between her feet, “Alright. But at least take Kotallo with you. Will you be okay flying the Sunwing?"
The other girl nodded, "I've been practicing." She said proudly, "You'll gather the machine parts I need?"
“Don’t worry, Beta. I'll take care of it. Please, just… stay safe?”
"I always am."
Victoria closed her eyes as the shadow of one of the figures turned to approach. She lay as still as possible, feigning sleep as gentle fingers checked her wrist for a pulse.
"She's stable for now," said the softly spoken girl, whom Victoria assumed was Beta, "You think she'll be okay?"
"She'll be fine. No one knows she's down here, and if she somehow does manage to get up, she's not going to get far, being blind."
Victoria resisted the urge to roll her eyes and waited until she heard the footsteps of the two people fade away. Eventually, all that remained was a dull buzz of silence. She adjusted her position so she was lying on her back and peered at the ceiling above her, struggling to make out its shape as her vision blurred in and out. It was nauseating, but better than being completely blind.
She slowly shifted herself to a sitting position on the cot, fighting off the dizziness that threatened to send her toppling back down. Still groggy from the sedative they had given her, she could feel its lingering effects in her fingers. She flexed her hands again and wiggled her toes, somewhat confident that she had some of her faculties left.
Even with her partial sight, she could still make out a few details - but nothing that felt right. She narrowed her eyes, squinting in the darkness of the unfamiliar room. It was far more unsettling than she was willing to admit.
Victoria shuddered with rage as the voices of the strangers filled her mind, their words like daggers in her heart. Impossible, she thought; Cryogenic stasis, passed out for a thousand years like she was some kind of Sleeping beauty? The absurdity of the situation was enough to send a chill down Victoria's spine.
The red-hot anger bubbled up inside her until she felt no more than a seething furnace of fury and hatred. They had to think she was some kind of idiot if they thought she'd believe any of this. There had to be something else, a deeper purpose behind all this. Her mother Anne must have been involved somehow, but what possible motive did she have in playing such an elaborate game? Whatever it was, Victoria knew she now needed to escape and find a better hiding place before hunting down her mother and uncovering the truth for herself.
Victoria's veins were blazing with a fiery and unstoppable determination. She could feel the potent surge of adrenaline, and she almost welcomed it -- an embodiment of her fierce resolve to escape. Her aim was clear and sharp as she pressed her fingers against the IV that had been inserted while she was unconscious. With one swift motion, Victoria pulled it from her arm, uncaring of the pain it caused, and threw it aside. Steadying herself against the wall with her shoulder, she pushed off the floor and stood on shaking legs.
She took a moment to collect herself before focusing her attention on the open door at the other end of the room. Her vision was limited, but if what Aloy said was true—that Victoria was beneath the Mojave Memorial Museum—she'd be able to escape once she got above ground. This thought was enough to provide Victoria with enough strength, and she steeled her resolve and began feeling her way along the wall until she reached the door and peered into the hallway.
Victoria strained her hearing in both directions, but all she could hear was silence—and feel a faint draft from down the hall on her right. She forced herself to remain calm as she inched forward along the wall, remaining as silent as possible with each step. The draft grew stronger the further she walked until it became a gentle breeze. It smelled cool and sweet with the faint taste of rain in the distance.
Victoria’s footsteps echoed off the metal walls as she followed the cool breeze through the winding tunnel. The floor slowly shifted from a cold, hard surface to gritty sand and hard stone. She stumbled through the dark passageways, her calloused fingertips running over the rough stone walls. Her breaths were ragged from exertion, but she kept walking until a tiny glimmer of light appeared in the distance of her impaired vision.
She felt a surge of overwhelming hope well up within her as she approached the mouth of the tunnel, and then despair hit like an icy wave when she saw a figure silhouetted on the other side. They were average height, slender, their back turned to her as they looked out into the darkness beyond her vision. She allowed herself a low curse in frustration, sinking down to her knees as she weighed her options.
No way was Victoria agile enough to sneak by, as her clumsiness would give her away easily. She didn’t want to turn around and find another exit, since she wasn’t sure there even was one. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, hands pressed against the loose sand and stones beneath her. Her lips pulled into a tight grimace as she clutched onto a decent-sized rock. It was a risk, but what other choice did she have? She couldn't see anything past the range of her blurry vision, so there was no way of being certain that throwing the rock would be enough of a distraction, but at this point she had nothing to lose. She wasn't going down without a fight.
Victoria wound her arm, the tension in her muscles coiling and ready to launch. The rock flew with a satisfying swoosh, slicing through the air before finally crashing into something beyond what she could see. A loud crack echoed from the impact and the guard immediately whirled around and scurried off. Taking no time to hesitate, Victoria fled the tunnel, her hands feeling along the wall for guidance in the darkness.
She eventually came upon another open doorway and hesitated. There was no guarantee it would lead to freedom, and if she made a wrong decision now, all of her efforts might be in vain. Fear and uncertainty warred as she took a tentative step forward, then plunged into the darkness. Further and further she descended, the sand swishing beneath her boots. Every couple of feet or so, she passed a lit torch, but it gave her little idea of where she was or where she was going.
Victoria's heart thudded louder and louder with every step she took, fear driving her forward. Her adrenaline was fading fast and exhaustion was beginning to set in, but still she kept going. It was only a matter of time before her absence was discovered, and she needed to get as far away as possible.
"Fuck!" Victoria's loud curse pierced the silence as her knees buckled beneath her, sending her flying through an open doorway. She slammed into the ground with a grunt, inhaling sand as it billowed up around her. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to her knees and fought for air, feeling the grains burn her throat.
"Fuck!" she spat again as she scrambled to her knees, blinking in the darkness.
Then, she realized with horror, that she had no idea where the wall was.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Victoria clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, but the pain was too much and tears streamed down her cheeks. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, make the world hear her cries of desperation and helplessness. Her fists curled tighter until her knuckles turned white, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't stop the flood of sobs that wracked her shoulders.
Exhausted and beaten, Victoria dragged herself across the floor until she eventually found the wall again. With tears streaming down her face, she wrapped her arms around her knees and dropped her head in despair. Despite all the effort, there was nothing to show for it.
There was no way to tell how much time passed there in the darkness. Be it hours or minutes, Victoria sat there sniffling until she felt it. The faint sensation of being watched migrated across her skin like a breeze drifting over tall grass. She lifted her head and glared into the darkness where she could make out the faint silhouette of a figure. Victoria's heart paused for a moment before beating frantically in her chest. Her lips trembled as hot tears dripped down her face, and she scowled at him through the uneasy silence.
"You know," she snorted, "For someone so big, you sure are light on your feet."
Victoria's cheeks grew hot as she heard her own biting words echo. She had not idea where the sarcasm had come from; either way, it was enough to make them-him-laugh.
"Experience is the best teacher," He replied soft, "The Marshlands devour the loud and the careless."
The sound of his deep baritone voice was unmistakable—it belonged to the man who called himself Hekarro. His form emerged from the shadows, taking calculated steps in the sand until he sat down just outside her reach. She could make out his broad build, cascading hair hanging over his shoulders, and a relaxed posture with hands folded into his lap. Yet, she couldn't shake the heavy weight of his gaze upon her. She could tell he had questions but kept them to himself for now.
What was he waiting for?
Her heart raced as she watched him, wondering why he hadn't already taken her away. He had found her, so why the hesitation? Every second that passed felt like an eternity, and she finally lost her patience and shattered the uneasy silence between them.
"What now?"
"I'm not sure," He admitted, "I had hoped to have a few more days to decide what I was going to do with you."
She scoffed at him, but the silence afterwards was damn near suffocating. Victoria couldn’t help but feel uneasy as she stared at him. He carried himself with such confidence, yet there was something off about him that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. The cryostasis lie, a thousand year time jump - was he seriously expecting her to believe that?!
What did he and her mother have to gain from such a bullshit story?
"Please tell me it's a lie..." she whispered desperately, a silent plea to just tell her want she really wanted to hear.
"I have nothing to gain by lying to you."
Victoria allowed her head to hang low once more, her arms wrapping tightly around her legs in a desperate attempt to keep the fragments of her life from shattering into a million pieces again.
"You'll see the truth of it yourself when you've recovered."
She couldn't decide which was worse: the fact that he wouldn't give her the answer she wanted.
Or her growing realization that this nightmare scenario might actually be true.
#horizon forbidden west#hekarro#chief hekarro#hfw#hzd#horizon zero dawn#ghost of the ten#my writing#hfw fanfic#hfw writing#kotallo#aloy#beta hfw#old one oc#Spotify
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“i didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
-Ned Vizzini
I did it again.
i fucked up plans again.
because that’s what i do.
i fuck things up.
i can’t do things right. i can’t make people happy without making them sad too.
being around me zaps people happiness. i could meet the most wonderful person who is happy constantly, and after about an hour of knowing me, they’ll become sad.
maybe i deserve the things that have happened to me.
maybe i deserve the things that will happen to me.
i get bored of people too fast. i could be obsessed with you one day and then a week later i could want nothing to do with you.
i make myself sick.
if you feel like i’m pulling away from you, i probably am. i say don’t let me pull away, but i’ll resent you if you keep me trapped.
there’s no right or wrong, there’s no gray area. i’ll be sad if you stay but i’ll be sad if you go.
i’m fucked in the head.
i get so excited planning things with friends. i haven’t been able to see them or even write because of my job for almost a month. and yet when i finally get a chance to see one, SURPRISE! i fuck it up.
we had a great plan.
work caused me to miss their birthday, so tomorrow was going to be the makeup day. we were going to finish packing and then go out to eat and go to the mall. and then i didn’t fucking feed my dog.
like the fuckup i am.
and it will happen. again and again and again, to the point where no one will ever want to make plans with me. because i will always fuck it all up.
because that’s who i am.
that’s what i do.
i’m the fuckup.
and i’ll fuck you up too.
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The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
Uh, so I reread this and accidentally wrote a rough draft for an academic essay on the satire and differences between the book and the movie. It's long... Sorry!
Most of the time, the book is better than the movie. It's inevitable, really. You get more of the story, more time with the characters, more of the why.
Sometimes, the movie is better than the book. I personally like the movie versions of Bridget Jones's Diary and The Shawshank Redemption more than the books.
And then you have things like The Princess Bride where the book and the movie are almost like the storytelling equivalent of divergent evolution. Both sprang from a common source (the imagination of William Goldman) but slot into separate niches. I'm of the opinion that it isn't fair to compare the one against the other to decide which is better because that's like comparing riding in a car to riding a horse. They can both be enjoyable, and get where you need to go, but they are fundamentally different experiences.
You can, however compare and contrast the two to analyze both.
So, I think that's how this one will go.
The bones of the book and the movie are the same.
Boy is sick, family member (grandfather in the movie, father in the book) reads the boy The Princess Bride by S. Mortensen.
The Princess Bride follows the beautiful Buttercup and her love, the farm boy, Westley on their journey of fencing, fighting, true love, and adventure.
The book, however, takes the framing device of a sick boy being read to a lot farther than the movie with Goldman inserting a fictionalized version of himself and his family in there. He was the sick boy, and when he realized that his father only read him the good parts of The Princess Bride, he decides to abridge it.
Goldman says that in the unabridged version, Morgenstern was satirically commenting on the royalty and general attitudes in Florin (which is a real place in this universe).
I think what Goldman is actually poking at is the archetypes and tropes of fairytales.
We have Buttercup, our damsel in distress, who has been in plenty of distress, but most of it, not coming from the villains.
We have Westley, our hero who spends very little time actually being heroic
Inigo Montoya, who is sort of cast as a sidekick, but if you really look at it, does most of the heavy lifting and has the only true hero arch in the whole story.
Fezzik, who is cast in the role of Inigo’s sidekick, but the action would have gone nowhere without him.
Count Tyrone Rugen, Vizzini and Prince Humperdinck who, are all deeply fucked up, but have to be taken together to make one fairytale villain.
And all of these are complemented but slightly contrasted in the movie to really shine a light on Goldman skills as a writer.
In the movie, Buttercup is beautiful, and that is just taken as a given first because Robin Wright is playing her, also, of course she is beautiful, she’s going to be our princess.
However, in the book, beauty is the first concept to be lampooned. The reader is told about the most beautiful women in various years of Buttercup’s life. The worlds women are ranked, and someone somewhere is keeping track.
The year Buttercup was 15, she was barely in the top 20 most beautiful, on potential alone. Of course, she didn’t really notice when the boys started flocking to her. And she would have been baffled if she had known that, two years later, the reason that Count Rugan visited her parent’s dairy farm was because of rumors of her beauty.
It was only when she and Westley fall in love that her potential starts to be realized (It should be noted here that Westley only seems to love her for her beauty at this point since he calls her “not the brightest”). Westley, immediately after they declared their love for each other, decided bugger off to America to make money for their life together. Buttercup decides to start taking care of herself and began climbing the ranks.
By making beauty the focus around Buttercup, Goldman is making an interesting commentary because at this point, there is nothing special about Buttercup, other than the fact that she is beautiful. In all other ways, she is fairly unremarkable. She does her chores, and she likes nothing more than to ride her horse. Think of the classic fairytale heroine, they don’t display any particular aptitude for much of anything, they are just pretty things to be rescued. They don’t need to develop anymore. And Buttercup is fitting into this mold well.
Then news comes of Westley's death. Her heart is broken, and she grieves, and she makes a vow to never love again.
She now has aptitude at something, being brutally practical. She made the decision after she lost Westley to carry on and that's just what she does.
So, when Humperdinck decides he wants a beautiful wife, the Count, remembering Buttercup's potential, turns the prince's head toward her.
Humperdinck asks her to marry him and she refuses until he makes it clear that she will die if she doesn't, and that he isn't looking for a love match, only someone agreeable to make an heir.
So it's either marry the Prince or die. Since he doesn't want her to love him, that would mean dying for no good reason, and that would be stupid, so she agrees.
Even after Westley returns, this doesn't really change.
In the movie, when Westley and Humperdinck face off for the first time and Buttercup agrees to go back to the castle as long as Westley isn't hurt, she says: "I thought you were dead once, and it almost destroyed me. I could not bear it if you died again, not when I could save you."
Romantic and self sacrificing.
In the book, the same scene goes like this:
“The truth,” said Westley, “is that you. would rather live with your Prince than die with your love.”
“I would rather live than die, I admit it.”
“We were talking of love, madam.”
There was a long pause. Then Buttercup said it: “I can live without love.” (pg. 191, Kindle edition)
Oof, harsh. In fact, Westley who doesn't give up, seems to spend the rest of the story, until their reunion, thinking that she did this for money and power.
It is clear, however, that Buttercup doesn’t care about either of those things, never has. She's willing to be queen, but doesn't lust after the power it would give her, and she never mentions money.
She says she can live without love, because she already has.
Westley's reality of the three years they are separated is not the same as Buttercup’s. He never utterly lost her, his vision of the future with Buttercup never changed.
Buttercup’s reality had a grenade thrown into it. Westley was dead, nothing was going to be like she thought, and she experienced pain she had never been through before. Love was off the table after that.
When Westley returns, she is happy, yes, but when faced with the prospect of both of them dying, that brutal practicality came out.
Living without Westley was nothing new, so she would just be continuing on the same path. This would be better though because at least Westley would be alive. She learned to live without love, Westley could do it too.
She does have a change of heart later, and that triggers the unhinged rescue mission that is my absolute favorite part of either book or movie. But even with this veering back on to the path of traditional princess narrative, she ignores the typical princess trappings.
Buttercup also manages to turn the damsel in distress role upside down.
She doesn't suffer all that much at the hands of Humperdinck, or even Vizzini, Inigo and Fezzik when they kidnap her on Humperdinck’s orders. in fact, the prince goes out of his way to be nice to her until toward the end of the book. And the kidnappers are pretty respectful of her, even while they talk about killing her.
No, our Princess suffered most before she ever put down her milk pails, and this suffering and some that she would endure later didn't come from our villains, it came from our hero.
Ah Westley, in the movie, lovely. In the book, sort of annoying.
In the movie, Westley comes off as alternately confident, and lovelorn. He is always intelligent, and other than when he thinks Buttercup threw their love away (the first time), a generally sweet guy.
In the book... Well, he’s not unlikable, but he is arrogant. Very intelligent, but not so much in the emotional department.
In the movie, the way it comes across, is that the two leads fall in love over a period of time, spend a period of time being in love together, and *then* Westley goes off to make his fortune.
In the book, Buttercup realizes she loves him, tells him, then he confesses that he’s always loved her *and then he leaves*. Less than a night between “I love you” and “Bon Voyage”.
Cary Elwes manages to make the attitude The Man in Black has toward the now Princess Buttercup, come off as anger inspired by hurt.
I don’t get that in the book. I mean, yeah, he’s hurt, but he’s mostly just pissed.
We find out how he survived being attacked by pirates in much the same way in both book and movie, eventually becoming the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Here’s a question I have always had no matter which version of the story I am thinking of: Three years, it takes for him to come back to Florin as The Man in Black. He couldn’t have dropped a letter to his girlfriend in all that time? He steps on shore for supplies, never once thought: “I should probably tell my one true love I’m still among the quick” ?
Yeah, yeah, secrecy and all of that, had to keep being the Dread Pirate Roberts. But movie Buttercup is bright enough to know not to say anything, and book Buttercup wouldn’t have needed details. And yeah, it would be a challenge to get letters back to him, but considering this is a world where miracle men can bring a dead man back to life with a chocolate pill, you would think that the most feared pirate in the world could figure out some kind of relay system. And then, when Humperdinck says “Marry me or die” she could use that relay system to get a letter to Westley and maybe things would be delayed what with one thing or another, and the whole kidnapping plot and stress can happen, but with the added benefit of Buttercup not being emotionally traumatized and Westley not acting like a dick.
But, the way the plot and his character is set up, this is a case of Goldman going after the classic hero.
The swashbuckling saver of ladies and practionor of daring dos are never in doubt of whether they are in the right and doing what is best for all, and because the narrative is on their side, they are not burdened with the needs of others, because the will align with his.
Westley is this hero, which is why he is able to hold fast to his romantic (in the literary sense) ideals. Life hadn't emotionally knocked him around. That's why when Buttercup leaves him after the fire swamp, he can't even compute things not going his way. It's not until he is actually killed and brought back does he have a crisis of faith. His doesn't last as long as Buttercup’s, because Westley has Inigo and Fezzik to shake him out of it, while Buttercup worked through her's alone.
This is another subversion of the normal fairytale. The men in this book need a lot of help and the women really work stuff out. Namely Queen Bella and Miracle Max's wife, Valerie. Things wouldn't have happened at all without the former, and would have come to a screeching halt without the latter screeching at her husband.
Westley really learns humility at the end of his journey rather than having his wonderfulness confirmed.
And two characters in particular help him get there.
Inigo Montoya and Fezzik are without a doubt my favorites. The Inigo and Fezzik are more fleshed out in the book, but are fundamentally the same characters. Both of their backstories are awesome and worth the read all on their own.
I mentioned earlier that Inigo has the only true hero arch in the book. Here's what I mean: He has an origin story that makes us care about him (losing his father to the six fingers man, over a sword) he works hard to learn sword play, devoting himself to it utterly. His quest is clear, avenge his father by killing the six fingers man. He loses his way, has a crisis of confidence, and finally completes his quest.
Although arguably somewhat amoral, he is kind to Fezzik and is generally loyal. He is not presented as our main protagonist, yet he spends more time doing things that would eventually rescue Buttercup, than Westley does.
But he lost to Westley, and heros don't lose!
Well, a big theme in this book is that life isn't fair, and I would argue that that is only half of the message, the rest is: and hubris will kick your ass.
Westley is a master swordsman, but if you read the scene in the book, you will see that he is not better than Inigo.
Inigo starts the duel left handed, for more of a challenge. Westley also does this, and that makes for the wonderful "Got'cha" moment where Westley beats him.
What you have here is two over confident people meeting at the same time.
The reader is told that Westley does his best fencing on open terrain, When Inigo gets him in the trees or around rocks, he wasn't as formidable. Inigo, by contrast, is an expert no matter what ground he is fighting on. By time both fighters are using their dominate right hands, Inigo is shaken - someone who pulled his own trick on him! This shock made him a fraction off his game, and meant that he was not able to maneuver Westley into terrain where Inigo would be able to get the upper hand.
If Inigo would have simply used his right hand at the start, it is possible that the fight would have been over as soon as they made it to the rocks,and long before Westley would have had a chance to switch to his right hand. But, he didn't, and he lost.
And he does learn this lesson, as hard as it was, and he didn't have to die to do it.
Fezzik is presented as the sidekick's sidekick
But, if it weren't for him overcoming self doubt and fear to simply survive, nothing would have worked out.
Growing up a giant with a gentle heart wasn't easy for Fezzik, especially because he had to learn to fight, not just for defense, but for a living, but he did what he had to for survival. In this way, he is very much like Buttercup.
When Westley bests him, he doesn’t have a crisis of confidence, instead he's afraid because Vazzini is dead, and he assumes Inigo is too.
But he knows he has to carry on, so he joins the Brute Squad that was formed on command of Humperdinck before his wedding. And that's how he found Inigo. If he hadn't figured out a way to live without being on Vizzini 's crew, Inigo would have been blind drunk when the count killed Westley and Humperdinck would have won the day.
Humperdink, the Count and Vazzini are fairly straightforward villains in my view, though fairy ineffectual on their own. Humperdinck has the power, and the means. He wants Buttercup dead so he can blame Guilder and go to war. Vizzini is seen as having the brains, he Inigo and Fezzik are hired to carry out the plot. Vizzini is an assassin, he does what the money tells him to do. When Westley cocks that up (and to be fair Westley does out smart him) Humperdinck decides to just do it himself.
The six fingered man is just interested in pain, as a hobby. He's not looking for power or gold, he has what he needs there. If he could hire people to hurt and study, he would. Also, he puts no thought into the consequences of his actions. He's a noble, there won't be any.
These three, are a commentary on power. Those who have it want more and also will abuse it, and will use those without it to meet their ends, and while the characters are different from book to movie, they seem to be making the same point, and in the end it is the people they abused that wind up being their undoing.
What's interesting between book and movie is that Goldman's outlook seem to have softened a little. There is a lot of pointed sarcasm and sharp satire in the book that is mostly subtext in the movie.
The true love through line feels more developed than it was meant to be in the book. In the book, up until the middle, Westley and Buttercup represented a literary ideal more than an actual fleshed out relationship. To be blunt, there isn't a lot of chemistry between the two until after the second reunion, and considering the way the other characters are written, I have to think this was deliberate. It's a commentary on the fairytale "I've known you for 17 1/2 minutes, let us spend our lives together" love story.
Not so in the movie.
Was this change just because Goldman didn't feel like the edged stuff would translate well to screen? Or did he decide, like his fictional father in the book, that a little high adventure and true love can make you feel better?
I don't know, but what I do know is that I love both versions.
If you want satire, and comedy with a lot of heart and just enough darkness to keep you grounded, go for the book.
If you want adventure and laughs, that keeps a wry smile and a wink turned your way watch the movie.
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hellooooo okay so I do have a book rec’s list but I thought I’d give you a list of books I gave a 4-5 stars that really are more like 100000 stars and I loved them so much I can’t stop thinking about them and I want you to read them as well..
this is thatsdemkos’ all time favorites
1. It’s kind of a funny story by ned vizzini
- this book got me to realize I love reading. I can’t describe how personal it is to me and why I love it so much because to me it’s indescribable.
2. bad girls don’t die series by Katie alender
- the twists and turns of this book had my middle school mind in a CHOKEHOLD. this is defs YA but defs worth your time if you love a good mystery/thriller.
3. Dune (specifically dune messiah) by frank Herbert
- if you know me, you know my love for dune runs as thick as the spice. messiah RUINED me and I think about the ending more times than I think about anything else.
4. call me by your name by Andre aciman
- okay another book that if you know me you know my love for this book is strong. I think about how elio and how he so desperately wanted love and it changed the way I look at love. I cried so much.
5. the seven husbands of evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- I think about the plot twist at the end a lot. I think about how she only ever really had a couple of true loves. it changed how I view celebrity relationships.
6. Verity by colleen hoover
- listen I HATE colleen as much as everyone else but THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD. THE PSYCHOLOGY MIND FUCK I WENT THRU!! MIND BLOWING!!!
that’s all thank youuu!
- If you have any book suggestions I am ALWAYS looking for more! let me know your thoughts on these books as well! 🫶
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ML Princess Bride AU
Of course the easy way to set up this AU is Marinette=Buttercup and Westley=Adrien. Wesley very much has a similar personality and has the all black outfit with the mask and the fencing training. However, I raise you Princess Bride AU with the opposite.
Adrien=Buttercup- Renowned for his beauty, Marinette literally refers to him as Buttercup in canon, socially inept-ish, doesn’t get romantic signals (”every time he said as you wish, he meant I love you”) but falls very hard and does not want to move on from romantic interest, Adrien doesn’t want to be a model, Buttercup doesn’t want to be a Princess, Adrien is a depressed fuck right now and almost cataclysmed himself in Guilttrip, Buttercup considers suicide.
Marinette=Westley-“normal” lower class person, the replacing Dread Pirate Roberts every so often is just the kind of shenanigans that she would be involved in, very smart, strong as hell, stubborn as hell, would be willing to flirt with Mr. Bug when she accepts that she is in love with him. (see Passion)
Humperdink=Lila-manipulative, intelligent, person that Adrien is being set up with but does not want to be with, sees the relationship with him as a means to an end.
Inigo=Felix- intelligent, in some ways is on par with Wesley (fencing skill), open for redemption, has trauma (I assume at least) due to the passing of his father that he is seeking revenge on
Six-fingered man=Gabe/Hawkmoth- mostly because this is the person Felix is seeking revenge on, escaped and no one knew he was HM but now is hiding.
Fezzick- Kim, just for the himbo energy..
Vizzini- Max-sorry, just the only character I didn’t use already who could hold up to that over complicated poison drinking scheme.
The couple that bring Westley back to life-Fu and Marianne, older couple that somewhat serve as mentor figures, the cure for Wesley is a parallel to Fu’s knowledge of the miraculous.
The torturer- Chloe, as she is written in canon currently would love to hurt Marinette, seems like she would be willing to work with Lila, is definitely not trusted to be in charge.
Plot: A kwami swap-post Hawkmoth defeat-didn’t know each other outside of the masks-it's us against the world, my lady-Fu is still gaurdian-AU. Mr. Bug and Lady Noire successfully defeated Hawkmoth. Lila takes over as the next butterfly miraculous holder and Mr. Bug and Lady Noire fight her for a while. At some point, Lila gets close to figuring out Marinette’s identity so Marinette pulls a Chatwalker and shows up as a new persona to throw her off (also the angst and shenanigans that she gets to see Mr. Bug, knows he’s ok but can’t have a relationship with him like she had before because he doesn’t know it’s still her and that she can’t reveal that because of her identity but like squared.) (This is her version of the Dread Pirate Roberts) They’re making this work until somehow Lila finds out that Adrien is Mr. Bug and decides to kidnap him to get his miraculous, and also assumes that he will know the identity of Lady Noire, but he doesn’t. Marinette saves him and says something that makes him realize it’s the original Lady Noire (their version of as you wish) and the rest of the plot essentially moves forward as the movie does. Lila promises to not pursue Lady Noire if Adrien decides to team up with her but doesn’t actually fight on her side of an akuma battle. Their version of the wedding in the Princess Bride is Lila going silent for a while like Monarch did in season 5 and then gearing up to some plan to use Adrien as bait to catch Lady Noire but she instead teams up with Felix and Kim and rescues Adrien instead. Marianne and Fu equip Felix snd Kim with miraculouses. When the subdue Lila they also get the butterfly miraculous. Their version of riding off into the sunset on horse back is returning all the miraculous to Fu and going off to be in love(possibly entrusting the miraculous to new holders or one of them preparing to take over guardianship, idk)
To clarify on the identity shenanigans its Adrien=Mr. Bug the whole time. Marinette=Lady Noire then Marinette=new persona but reveals herself to be the same person as Lady Noire when rescuing Mr. Bug.
#miraculous ladybug#ml#ml season 5#the princess bride#ml au#sucide tw#suicide mention#I'm going to make an au that is so doesn't make sense#I'm going to make an au that is so self indulgent
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Man Me A Slime (Reprise)
Fuck it, gonna keep posting chapters from my book Obnoxious for giggles. I’m in a body horror mood and honestly enjoying knowing my work exists outside my Google Drive for its own sake.
Do you like slime? Do you like science? Do you like soap??? Consequences of a guy getting slutched below:
So here we are again, in the van with the radio at max volume and Alan’s knuckles white against the steering wheel.
His foot covers the brake. No one can know what happened tonight. Hell, Alan doesn’t even understand what happened himself. The facts he does have are these: Nick fell, and when Alan scrambled down to the factory floor to find an opening he burned his hand on the metal siding. Alan had no way to get Nick out. His best friend of twenty years had fallen into a vat of boiling hot cleaning fluid and had to be dead.
Alan couldn’t believe it. He ran back up to the catwalk, to go and see if anyone could help from the office building, when he caught a glimpse of the fluid in the vat. It had changed color. Something shifted on the fluid’s surface.
And then Nick emerged from it, and Alan froze in his tracks. His friend, alive, but floating and so covered in the stuff from the vat that Alan couldn’t see a trace of the man underneath. Nick, talking and laughing like this accident was nothing more than stubbing his toe on a chair.
The guard taking his attention was a relief, really. It got Nick from his line of sight and allowed him to make small talk with Ronny Vizzini’s father. Not that they’re more than acquaintances, but it let Alan forget what happened long enough to construct some story to deny it, scabbing the memory clean over.
Until Nick reappeared and ripped it clean off. Now he’s got to drive because Nick can’t, unsure of where to go. His first thought is home, to Cleary Street. With Mary-Anne and his nice quiet job and his nice quiet house, where his nice quiet life fits together like a puzzle. Maybe a tedious puzzle some days, but something that ultimately makes sense when he lays it all out and puts it together.
Headlights pass again. What if they get pulled over? He’ll be recognized as Mary-Anne’s husband immediately. There go any dinner plans with Sheriff Harrington and his wife for however long his sentence lasts. What charges are passed for trespassing in a soap factory and falling in a vat of toxic waste after hours?
Okay, it sounds silly when he puts it like that. He didn’t do anything wrong. But he was seen alone in the factory, by a guard he talked to who definitely knew who he was. They could be in trouble for tampering with private property. What if Nick gets fired?
He can’t think clearly with the audio bombast. “Nick, you need to turn it down,” Alan says.
The bounce of Come On Eileen quakes Nick’s toy collection on the dash. “It’s gonna be fine, Mo,” he says, and holds up his hand to the speaker. The slime on his skin wriggles with the vibrations from the music.
“Fine? We need to get you to a hospital,” Alan says. But they can’t. The nearest hospital is out in Baker City. Mary-Anne can see Nick here in town, but she’s hardly a specialist in chemical burns or mysterious anti-gravity goop. The longer Alan waits to find an answer, the worse Nick’s condition could become, though. “How are we going to fix this?”
Nick mumble-sings the next verse, then goes all out in the chorus. “I’m fine!” he says when he gets to the next part he doesn’t know. Then he goes right back to too-rye-aying.
Alan shivers. His adrenaline’s coursing like there’s a gun to his temple, except it’s Nick’s head instead of his own on the chopping block. “What if this got inside you?” he asks. “You could be burned under all this. You could be poisoned even if you feel fine now, Nick. We have to get you to Mary-Anne. You need a doctor.”
“I am a doctor.”
“In biochemistry!”
Nick shimmies to the music. “I’m gonna be fine.”
Alan turns the radio down. “You need help! We have to fix this before it gets worse.”
The radio’s turned right back up. “Just take me to my lab,” Nick says, arms crossed. It looks like they’re oozing together when Alan sees it, but he blinks his focus back onto the road.
“What are you talking about?” Alan asked. “Do you see yourself? I don’t know if an MD can help you with this. There has to be someone who knows how to get this stuff off of you safely. Maybe we should turn around. We could talk to whoever designed this. An expert.”
The too-rah-loo-rye-ays get louder, thunderous in the small cab. Whatever Nick says is lost in it and Alan turns it down.
“What did you say?”
“I said, I’m an expert! Take me to my lab and I can analyze it there. We good?”
Nick dials up the music. Alan dials it down. They tousle a second before the wheel jerks and Alan’s grabbing at it again with slippery hands.
“We are not good! This is not good. There has to be a way to get this stuff off of you.” Alan’s all for hosing Nick down if it gets his skin out from whatever this is. Just the sample alone seems to have burned him on the catwalk. What if leaving it on so long makes the damage it’s doing permanent?
“This stuff is me,” Nick says. He reaches for the volume but Alan bats at his hand again.
“Stop that! Nick, you can’t actually think this floating thing is permanent. If we don’t do something about this, you could die.”
“I already died!”
Alan stomps the brake.
Nick’s thrown forward. Yellowish fluid makes a sickening splat across the windshield and dash, the majority of it pooling into the floorboard.
Alan looks at the floorboard. He looks at the empty seat. He can’t breathe.
The goo wiggles. Nick’s yell bubbles out if it. The puddle on the floor sloughs back into the seat in a Nickish shape. His hands pat over his body, but nothing seems to be missing other than a thin layer of clear soap.
“I am okay!” he announces. Nick gives a thumbs up. It’s like watching a flattened cartoon character peel off the pavement after an anvil.
Alan twitches. Maybe there’s a laugh in him somewhere, but it’s buried deep right now. He puts the van in park. He leans back, knotting his fingers and forcing himself not to strangle his sweater vest. That’s. That’s a lot to look at.
Nick examines his hands. “Sorry, babies,” he croons to his stuffed animals, all dripping with a thin layer of slime. “D’you think we can wash this off ‘em alright?”
“You don’t mean that. What you said,” Alan says. He couldn’t have. Nick had come out of that vat laughing. Excited. Ghosts don’t bounce back from death and throw a party.
Well, Nick’s ghost might. Alan sits back.
Nick’s booped the nose on a frog. The slime on the frog absorbs back to his finger with the touch. He grins. Looking at him, really looking at him, Alan can see the details he missed. The eyes, and Nick’s mouth, and how the opaque goo he’s made of has a jello-like translucence if you look too hard.
What looked skin deep at a glance is too strange to ignore now. Nick catches him looking. He winces.
“My body fuckin’ dissolved back there. Poof. Gone, Mo.”
There’s a beat of silence. Nick collects the rest of the slime from the dashboard, then the windshield. The big splat sucks back to his hand. He’s avoiding Alan’s eyes. He’s known this whole time, and let Alan go on talking like he has. “Nick,” he says.
Nick shuts his eyes. “Shit. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” he cries. “I just want you to know I can’t just. Take this off. It’s not so bad, I promise! If you just wanna drop me off, I can figure it out myself.”
Alan shifts back into drive. The radio fuzzes back to life. Nick turns it off.
Alan lets out a rattled sigh. He sets his hands at ten and two. Somehow, horribly, the reality sinking in is a relief. He’s not going to stop worrying about Nick. But having even this impossible certainty is a lot better than before. He can handle what he knows.
He takes a deep breath. “So. Where’s your lab?”
***
Nick’s “lab” is easy to find. It’s an old diner off the downtown strip, abandoned as the Flour Pour factory once was. Geena’s came up in the fifties, before the weight of the A&W and other, better burger joints sank it. Alan had never been inside when the place was open, but he’s familiar with the whitewashed stone box and its neon red, yellow, and blue facade above double doors. Nick has him pull around to the back, where a door waits beside a dumpster full of old fixtures and signage.
Nick’s got to be let out of the car and into the building, not that he doesn’t make an attempt with his sudsy hands. He’s delighted to find he can flip the light switch on his own. “Sorry about the mess,” he says, floating into a small hallway. On his left is the door to a darkened kitchen, on his right the door to a bathroom. Then they’re in a spacious dining lobby. The L-counter and its rows of upholstered stools are intact, along with one of the dining booths right off the door. Grimy chrome, yellowed linoleum, and checkered tiles glint in the bright tube lights. Where one of the dining booths used to be rooted now holds a tower of boxes and a red couch.
Alan takes it in with a smile. He can see how benches could be made from the counter, where equipment can be stored if they reuse some of the old shelves he saw out back. The thought of the place restored through his tidying calms him.
Nick tests the plastic wrap still coating his couch. He flops down against it. “So what do ya think? It’s a dive, but I think it’s groovy.”
Alan shrugs. Now that he’s exhausted his ability to be physically anxious, all he can think about is what he’ll tell his wife. He takes a seat at Nick’s side, avoiding the translucent ooze now stuck to the plastic. He rubs his eye on his forearm, since there’s still some soap on his hands.
“I should call Mary-Anne,” he says. “Got a phone?”
“By the soda fountain,” Nick says.
Alan moves behind the counter. The soda machine against the wall has Coke logos on its taps. He fiddles with a Dr. Pepper tap while he dials the clinic.
“Perkins Primary Care?”
His relief almost knocks him off his feet. It’s a wave so palpable he grips the tap and steadies his feet. “Mary-Anne? Christ, you will not believe the night I’m having. I love you.”
“Al, it’s only six. Where are you? The house?”
“No, I just,” Alan says, and squeezes his eyes shut. That opener hardly inspired confidence and calm. “I’m just not going to be home tonight. I’m staying over at Nick’s.”
“Yeah, he dropped by. Is everything okay? I told him you needed a night out, but if you two got into anything too-”
“No. Mary-Anne, we’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
“You only say that when things aren’t fine, Al.”
“I do not!” Alan cries. Nick flinches. “I’m with him right now. He’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’ll be home in the morning but he,” he says, and falters. Telling her Nick died is the exact opposite of fine. “He just needs me right now.”
She yawns. “Do whatever you got to, sweetheart. Just be careful, whatever you’re doing. I better not catch either of you in here on a gurney.”
Alan smiles, despite everything. “I’m fine. That part’s true.”
“Alright. See you tomorrow.”
“See you. I love you.”
Her chuckle’s like an oasis. “You said that already. Love you, too.”
Alan hesitates putting the receiver down. He just stands there with the phone beeping in both hands. He presses the speaker to his forehead with his eyes closed. Mary-Anne at the nurse’s station, bedecked in solid print scrubs and slouching while Rhoda does up the last of the paperwork so they can all go home. Only getting one real rest every few hours and having to spend it on him.
“Is everything, uh, okay?”
“Eh.”
“Eh?”
“Eh,” Alan says, with emphasis, and presses the phone until it makes a dotted mark on his brow. His mouth twists before he puts the receiver back up. The silence left behind is deafening, widening the distance between the two men trapped inside it.
“I love you, Mo.” Small and quiet.
“Nick.”
“I do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I am so sorry this happened.”
“Nick, it’s okay. It’s just going to be hard to explain this. I don’t know what we’re going to do. But I’m not leaving you. Okay?”
“You don’t have to stay.” Nick’s curled up into himself on the couch. “You got me home. I can do the rest from here.”
Alan smirks. “Huh. Might end up with biased results, studying yourself all alone. You can’t drive, Nick. I’m going to stay and help you.”
Nick’s dripping shape sharpens up and glows bright orange like when he’d come out of the vat. Seems to be his happy color. “Can’t argue there. What do you want to do?” Nick asks.
Alan yawns. He’s got no energy for unloading the van or unpacking Nick’s boxes, as much as he wants to organize their resources. His head still spins like he’s the one dissolving, or maybe like his body’s still there but he’s stepped out to the side for a second.
Finally, he comes back to his senses. “It’s your lab,” he says. “Do you need anything? Are you…” He glances at the hand-off window looking into the kitchen. “Hungry?” Oh god, what if he is? Alan doesn’t even know where he would begin with that.
Nick brightens. His slime does a little dance across his body, flushing orange again. “I don’t know yet! Maybe I don’t have to eat anymore. I mean, I don’t exactly have the plumbing for it.” He opens his mouth and points inside. “See in there?” he says, even as his mouth doesn’t move. The sound just radiates out of him, like a speaker. “No hole! Nowhere for food to go!”
Alan sees what he means. He takes a deep breath as he stares. “Right.”
“My eyes don’t look like my old eyes, either. But I still need glasses for some reason? How’s that even work? I don’t got retinas to be myopic.”
“I don’t know,” Alan says. “Who says you don’t? There looks like two layers of this stuff. Soap’s not supposed to separate like this does, so why do you?”
“I don’t know!” Nick says. “Huh. If there’s two layers, they’re gonna need different names. We need names for this.”
“Yeah.” It’s going to get confusing if they don’t develop a taxonomy. Alan’s brain would also love to stop snagging like a belt loop on a fence when he calls these materials Nick. Naming all this strangeness makes it less strange, or he can hope it might.
“Can we do that?” Nick asks, squishing his fingers into his belly. His fingers go through the translucent layer into the next, absorbing into his inner one. Alan’s mouth tests out a number of responses to this, but none of them quite capture how he feels beyond another ‘eh’.
“It’s your you,” he decides, voice chipping instead of fully cracking. “You name yourself.”
“True!” Nick says, and pulls his hands from his own guts without trouble. The holes from his fingers fill in. “I think I’m goo- the me stuff that moves and talks- and then this drippy stuff on the outside is gunk. Not sure what it’s for just yet. Oh, and my eyes are my eyes.”
Alan leans against the counter. “And your glasses are your glasses.”
“That, too! Those are in one of my boxes.” Nick floats to the stack for his backup pair. Alan rips open the one he indicates. Among what looks like the contents of an old desk is a pair of glasses with a cracked lens.
Nick places them on what’s left of his nose. He blinks. “Whoa.”
“Same prescription?” Alan asks. “Maybe the vat copied human you, and that’s why these eyes are like your old ones.” There’s a sentence Alan never thought he’d say.
“Maybe! If it copied my eyes, I dunno what made it copy those and not everything else, though.”
“What do you mean?”
Nick waves sharply downward with both hands, mouth in the closest thing to a frown that Alan’s seen from him all day. Alan’s ready to go into one subject, before Nick narrows his brows and pulls his feet up, sitting in midair. “I don’t got toes, Mo,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And I’m smooth as a Ken doll now. So we’ve got that. But, come on, I got fingers but my other digits didn’t get copied? What was that vat thinking? I’m gonna look like I’m wearing socks forever now.”
Alan takes stock as Nick mourns the loss of his toes. Aside from the obvious missing parts- skin, bones, teeth, organs, and most other human components- Nick looks the same in build and proportion. It’s like the goo was poured into a Nick-shaped mold and he popped right out, unless he melts to a puddle like he did in the van.
Which he agrees not to do again, for Alan’s sanity. Nick says splatting on impact doesn’t hurt, but Alan isn’t spiritually prepared to see his friend as a stain tonight. Tomorrow, maybe. It’s not like they can’t learn a lot from Nick just floating from room to room. There’s technically four, including the storage room in the kitchen. Said kitchen contains a stovetop, several dishes including a stockpot, a fridge, and a three compartment sink. The fryer’s ripped from the wall, but the prep tables and other fixtures are in good repair.
Exploring the storage room is where Alan has to draw the line on melting. The room is locked, and before Alan can get Nick’s keys from the dining room, Nick’s already on the floor like a spill and creeping under the door itself. Alan rattles the handle. Then he hears behind the door, “I’m good! Not much to see in here! Just junk.”
Alan yelps. He’s about to run for the keys, but he hears a sizzle.
Under the knob fizzes. Orange fingers push through the metal like wet clay. Then the whole hand makes it through, giving Alan a cheery wave.
“Check it out! I’m corrosive! That’s cool.”
The door falls open. Nick’s on the other side, grinning at his fingers.
“I don’t think you should make a habit of that,” Alan says.
“Wonder what else I can corrode.”
“Nick, no.”
“What’s my pH then?” Nick asks, smearing his hand down his belly. How his glasses aren’t fizzling is a mystery, too. “Probably super basic, knowing detergents, but most detergents don’t do that kinda corrosion. What if it’s selective?”
“Who knows?” Alan says.
The storage room is stacked with trash and boxes of offal. Not much of it is usable, but Alan thanks his lucky stars none of it’s perished food. At least they know they have the dumpster out back to get rid of it.
They go from the storage room to check out the bathroom. Alan washes up, then they try to rinse the gunk from Nick’s goo so they can get a sample. They’ve already collected some gunk in a tupperware for study, but getting underneath Nick’s outer layer proved tough. Nick sticks his hand under the tap to test it out.
It burns him at the touch, even if it’s set to ice cold. “Turn it off, turn it off!” he cries. He fumbles at the knob before Alan shuts the water off. Can’t help but wonder why he didn’t pull his hand out the moment he was burned, but Alan shivers at his idea of hosing the goo off him earlier.
“I don’t think water likes me anymore,” Nick mumbles, eying his fingers slowly reforming from the goo pooled in the sink.
Alan drags him from the bathroom from then on. Nick avoids the sinks like the plague, which the bathroom’s might have if it’s been abandoned this long. There’s not much mold to be found in the building, but it’s still been at least a decade since it was in regular use. Begs the question of if the goo can contract illness, but because Alan definitely can he makes a note to scour it later.
It’s two in the morning when they finally throw in the towel. Alan pulls off the plastic wrap and crashes on the couch with a Hudson Bay blanket, Nick on the floor with his mattress from his van. It’s oddly cozy in the quiet of the diner. Headlights flicker through the windows overlooking the street, still painted over from the original closure. It’s not the worst place to wait out this weirdness.
#been thinking about this book after wendell and wild got me into X Ray Spex#germ free adolescent fucks actually#obnoxious#the book itself got wrote pre-pandemic and should get an edit phase down but hey listen#i've got cottonwood on the brain lately so one book at a time eh#body horror#transformation#uhhhhhh slime? man???#why are there only slime girls and no slime bears :pensive_goo:
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I think you should write a whole novel about the cast of COD as the Princess Bride characters! You should you should you should!
WELL IF YOU INSIST *pulls up notes*
The original idea I had was for screenshot redraws and it was because I thought that Gaz would look good in that, and I quote, "Cunty little black number" and since he already has the right mustache, you just know he's the right man for the part. Also, like Early said, he's definitely an As You Wish kind of guy.
I'm putting this under a readmore because it got kinda long lmao
Soap as Inigo Montoya - I think it's a perfect fit, and I was fresh off of finishing the 09 MW2 where he fucking pulls a knife out of his chest to kill Shepherd with?? Like I know that's Captain Soap and not Sergeant but if that's not a parallel to Inigo getting run through and still chasing a man down to kill him I don't know what is.
Ghost as Fezzik - Huge scary guy with a penchant for jokes? That's our Simon. Not to mention he's got to be the other half of any dynamic duo that Soap's in. It's only right. Do Not Separate.
Graves as Vizzini - "You fool! You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this: Never go up against a SicilianTexan when death is on the line!" *dies* (Need I say more? Honestly Iconic moment)
Now for Buttercup there are two perfect choices, coming down to whether I'd be playing this for maximum laughs or taking it slightly more seriously:
Farah: I feel like she gets left out a lot and she's like, ridiculous pretty and I love to draw her. This would be the slightly more serious version. The main downside to this is I don't really see Farah and Gaz having any particular chemistry, which leads us to our next option...
Price: OKAY LISTEN you can't tell me that you wouldn't like to see Price's big hairy tits in a dress I refuse to believe it. And my friend Lisa brought up the "There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world, it would be a pity to damage yours." line and like. That's hilarious. Also canonically Price is the guy that Gaz is at his most As You Wish for so it really just makes sense.
Makarov as Prince Humperdink - This is another point for Buttercup Price because lmaooo.
Also if Farah isn't Buttercup she and Alex can be Mad Max and his wife. Or maybe Nik and Kate could be? I do think Kate chasing Nik around a table and saying "Makarov" over and over at him would be pretty fucking funny too. Probably funnier. Hard to say.
König as Count Rugen/The Six-Fingered Man - I'm pretty sure Makarov has some little sidekick guy that maybe would be a good choice for this guy too, but since it was Early's post that reminded me of all this nonsense I think König should play one of the few characters that actually dies, as a treat. I'm pretty sure he owes them $50 so Soap can collect that off his corpse for her.
If I went with the Farah Buttercup, Price would play the Grandpa and also every random bit background part while wearing different hats. I think this is a funny gag, and I did this once for a cheap rendition of Hamlet to great effect. Between three wigs, a couple of construction paper mustaches and a paper crown, I was able to really fill out the cast. Price is at least as good an actor as I am, so I have faith in him.
So yeah! There are a few other rando characters but I'd just choose random guys from the multiplayer probably. Roll a dice on them mfs. This was a very long answer (Although not quite a novel, I have failed you) and it's a very silly idea that I still might tackle one of these days. At the time I didn't have a working digital tablet so I thought it would be like, a lot of work for what amounts to a gag, but now that I DO have a working digital tablet the only thing stopping me is that I haven't had the whim to do any art recently. But I might today while I'm thinking about it.
#Thank you for asking this and giving me an excuse to ramble on for a hot minute#stuffIreadandenjoy#Cave Answers#I am willing to throw down with anyone who disagrees I will back up these choices
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what are your top 5 colors and also do you have any book recommendations?
Blue, purple, green, brown, yellow
the girl who navigated fairyland series is literally so incredibly good. So is the Inheritance Cycle. And This Is Where It Ends (tw for violence and school shootings in that one, but the whole story lasts less than an hour), symptoms of being human (tw for attempted sexual assault), be more chill by Ned vizzini is actually really fucking funny (censorship has never been better! /ref) and eyes of the dragon
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"I feel my brain on top of my spine and I feel it shift a
little bit to the left.
That’s it. It happens in my brain once the rest of my body has moved. I don’t know where my brain went. It got knocked off-kilter somewhere. It got caught up in some crap it couldn’t deal with. But now it’s back—
connected to my spine and ready to take charge.
Jeez, why was I trying to kill myself?
It’s a huge thing, this Shift, just as big as I imagined. My brain doesn’t want to think anymore; all of a sudden it wants to do.
Run. Eat. Drink. Eat more. Don’t throw up. Instead, take a piss. Then take a crap. Wipe your butt. Make a phone call. Open a door. Ride your bike. Ride in a car. Ride in a subway. Talk. Talk to people. Read. Read
maps. Make maps. Make art. Talk about your art. Sell your art. Take a test. Get into a school. Celebrate. Have a party. Write a thank-you note to someone. Hug your mom. Kiss your dad. Kiss your little sister. Make out with Noelle. Make out with her more. Touch her. Hold
her hand. Take her out somewhere. Meet her friends. Run down a street with her. Take her on a picnic. Eat with her. See a movie with her. See a movie with Aaron. Heck, see a movie with Nia, once you’re cool with her. Get cool with more people. Drink coffee in little coffee-drinking places. Tell people your story. Volunteer. Go back to Six North. Walk in as a volunteer and say hi to everyone who waited on you as a patient. Help people. Help people like Bobby. Get people books and music that they want when they’re in there. Help people like Muqtada. Show them how to draw. Draw more. Try drawing a landscape. Try drawing a person. Try drawing a naked person. Try drawing Noelle naked. Travel. Fly. Swim. Meet. Love. Dance. Win. Smile. Laugh. Hold. Walk. Skip. Okay, it’s gay, whatever, skip.
Ski. Sled. Play basketball. Jog. Run. Run. Run. Run home. Run home and enjoy. Enjoy. Take these verbs and enjoy them. They’re yours, Craig. You deserve them because you chose them. You could have left
them all behind but you chose to stay here.
So now live for real, Craig. Live. Live. Live. Live.
Live."
-It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
I think one specific experience I can point to fucking me up in my early adolescence was reading this, and then learning that the author killed himself seven years after this novel was published.
Being happy when you're mentally ill, to me, feels like you have to have the same epiphany that things can be okay over and over again. And the fact that you have to do it over again shouldn't undermine the joy you get every time it happens. But sometimes it feels cruel to pretend like the epiphanies last forever
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Oxide of chromium, idk if you've ever said this but you have impeccable taste saurrr👀👀
oxide of chromium; what’s your favorite book?
AHHHHH U THINK I HAVE GOOD TASTE 😩😩😩 thank u my lover. here are a few that i really really adore:
normal people by sally rooney (really anything by her, but this one made me book a therapy appointment LMFAO)
we were liars by e. lockhart (plot twist had me GAGGED)
one flew over the cuckoos nest by ken kesey (read it in high school, such a good story!! really had me invested)
it's kinda a funny story by ned vizzini (major trigger warning as it talks heavily about suicide and other tough mental health issues, but it is actually funny in a fucked up way???)
ask me a watercolor :)
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