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jojo-reader-hell · 4 years

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Idea: The users get a bit jealous over their stands being affectionate 😳

Welp, rest in pieces Leone Abbacchio, because no matter how many times he gripes and bitches and moans about you holding a generous handful of Moody Blues buttcheeks every minute of the day it doesn’t mean you’re going to stop anytime soon. He probably will get nasty with you, saying you’re being gross and going after something that isn’t even human. Why are you even with him to begin with? If he’s in a particularly sour mood he might threaten to make sure you’ll never touch either one of them again. But remember this one thing: he’s going to stop whining if you just take a moment to beckon him over, and take one Abbacchio buttcheek in your right hand and a Moody Blues buttcheek in your left. God gave you two hands for a reason. And that reason is so you can squeeze those love filled booties and so I can write the word “buttcheeks” four times in one paragraph.

I think you’d have better luck with Bruno Buccellati, considering he’s stopped you once before and asked you what it is that makes you so crazy to shower Sticky Fingers with affection. Your answer was simple: it is just the most endearing thing in the entire world that the manifestation of your lover’s soul is completely and unabashedly in love with you. Of course you understand that Bruno loves you whenever he holds you or you both share an intimate moment. Never once do you doubt Bruno’s affections for you. How can you when Sticky Fingers can hardly stop kissing you for a minute?? But sometimes it’s thoughtful to just let your boyfriend be jealous and pull you away from your petting sessions with Sticky Fingers. The Stand won’t mind one bit since he can still feel your kisses even if you’re macking on Bruno. He won’t even complain once if Bruno decides that he wants a little bit of the action you were giving to his Stand.

Get in the bomb shelter because Pannacotta Fugo will absolutely EXPLODE in a rage if you’re getting too friendly with Purple Haze. Dammit HE’S your boyfriend, not the fucking Stand! The blow up happens when you’re tangled up romantically with Purple Haze, letting the Stand lick languid wet stripes up your neck. Fugo will yank you out of Purple Haze’s grasp, screaming at you for getting so close to something dangerous. If you talk to him calmly and reason with him, Fugo will probably reveal to you that you being so close to an ugly part of himself makes him so uncomfortable, he wants you to only see the good parts. Which is understandable, I don’t think anyone of us wants to be that vulnerable to anyone, not even if it’s someone we trust wholly with our own lives. But you need to reassure him that you love every part of him unconditionally. That’s why Purple Haze is so precious to you.

Narancia Ghirga is more perplexed than anything when he sees just how affectionate you are with an airplane. He will sometimes get loud and complain about you neglecting him, but then he gets so warm and fuzzy inside when you tell him what a kind and generous soul he has. Mr. Smith and his plane are just as important to you as Narancia. As far as you were concerned, you holding Aerosmith in your hands tenderly and planting kisses on the glass of the cockpit is the closest you can get to trying to kiss away the heartache that still scars him to this day. But he will gently remind you that you can always kiss him, he is right there after all. Narancia will smile like there’s no tomorrow when he pulls you away from Aerosmith to give you deep, romantic tongue kisses, because he can see Mr. Smith giving him a thumbs up through the glass.

As if it wasn’t bad enough having to contend with six other jealous boyfriends, Guido Mista’s jealousy can really start to grind on your gears after a while. You often get tired of hearing the Sex Pistols arguing back and forth with Mista every time he just wants you all to himself, isn’t it enough that you love all of them equally?? No you do not love anyone else more than the others. Sorry but if they can’t handle the fact that they all are loved equally, they’ll just have to suck it up. Every single one of the Pistols will try to convince you to love them the best, but you’ll refuse. Out of all the Users and Stands, you’ll probably find yourself getting the most strict with Mista, frustrated to tears because you just want them to be happy with the fact that they ALL have your heart. You love every single part of Mista, Numbers 1 through 7 included. That will really shoot them all in the chest when they hear you cry out that they each have a hold of your heart, and that it hurts you when they fight over you. Expect lots of kissies from your smol boyfriends and a great big ol’ kiss and a spank on the booty from your big goofy boyfriend Mista.

Honest to God, the only one who doesn’t throw a massive fit every time you shower his stand in affection is Giorno Giovanna. If we are being totally honest with each other, Giorno is thankful to have any kind of positive attention. And if the roses and the violets and the multitudes of other flowers that Gold Experience showers you with are any indication of how the both of them feel, then there’s something to be said about the understanding they share. Giorno if anything is a little surprised that Gold Experience sometimes does things for you of his own free will. Sometimes the Stand will pull you a little closer to him away from Giorno, or he will turn your head to him if you’re going to kiss your boyfriend. That’s about the only time you’ll see a struggle between the two, and each time you reassure them you’re in it for the long haul. You belong to both of them.

#LET ME KISS THE STANDS #LET ME LOVE THEM #bruno buccellati #headcanons #purple haze #guido mista #leone abbacchio #vento aureo #moody blues #sticky fingers #aerosmith #sex pistols #stand x reader #jjba stands #jjba hc #jjba headcanons #jojo’s bizarre adventure vento aureo #giorno giovanna #gold experience

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stormyblue90 · 4 years

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Remembrance

Decided to write a bit of a bittersweet Kassidas ficlet. I have another, happy idea to write later, but I wanted this one out of the way first. You can get a palate cleaner whenever I end up writing it!

Pairing: Kassandra/Brasidas Assasins Creed Odyssey

warnings: canon character death... and possible tears reading this...

Golden light from the evening sun glinted off the edge of a bronze shield, set beneath an old willow tree. Kassandra sat before the small memorial she had built in front of her childhood home. It was small, simple, and centered around an old, battle worn Spartan shield. A small engraved plaque lay before it, reading the name "Brasidas of Sparta, Son of Tellis and Argileonis of Sparta".

It was the anniversary of the Battle of Amphipolis and Kassandra spent much of the day mourning the loss of the great general, her love. She remembered their last night together before the Fates so cruelly snatched him away, sending him to Hades. Tears threatened to fall, as they always did when she thought of him on this day.

"And what of these?" Brasidas asked, tracing the prominent scars on Kassandra's right arm. She had nestled herself in his arms, head under his chin. Both in a state of undress due to their earlier lovemaking.

"A very nasty pack of wolves on Kephallonia." Kassandra replied, "They were terrorizing a small farm. I think I was only sixteen at the time. Before I really made a name for myself as a Misthios. Another, more experienced mercenary WAS going to hunt them down, but he was a braggart and I beat him to it."

Brasidas laughed lightly at the thought of a teenage Kassandra taking on a pack of wolves, no doubt determined to prove herself and show up an older prideful mercenary, and too stubborn to back down from such a challenge. "Why am I not surprised you started such a life so young?"

She shrugged. "Not much a choice really. When you've been trained to fight, and your...'caretaker' is a bumbling idiot, you learn quickly becoming a Misthios is your best option."

He gently nuzzled into her loose hair, kissing the top of her head. Both were silent for a moment, before Kassandra spoke up.

"But... I do sometimes wonder what a simpler life would be like." she admitted.

"Is that so? And what kind of life do you dream of?"

Kassandra thought about it for a moment. In truth she wasn't sure she'd ever have such a life. A lifetime of fighting, surviving, and since she left Kephallonia, on the run from all manner of enemies.

"I'm...not entirely sure." she answered, "I just know one things family, my family."

Brasidas smiled, "Well, you've already started on such a path. You have your mater, your old house."

Kassandra sobered, "Just...need to bring my brother back. I promised Mater after all."

They both knew that would be no simple task, if it could be accomplished. Alexios suffered a lifetime of torture and brainwashing at the hands of the Cult, to be twisted and warped into their weapon, Deimos. However if anyone could do it, it'd be the Eagle Bearer Kassandra. Brasidas was confident she'd fight the entire pantheon if she had to.

"You will. I know it. You're too strong and stubborn." he replied, causing a small chuckle to erupt from Kassandra, lightening her mood. "But... perhaps you could have more." he added, a sense of unsureness in his voice as he trailed off.

Kassandra lifted her head to look at him, "What do you mean?" she asked.

Brasidas momentarily averted her gaze, suddenly seeming nervous. Rather uncharacteristic of the brave and confident Spartan she knew.

"Well, perhaps in the future, when this is all over of course... and you've reunited your family, we- I mean you..."

"Yes?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He swallowed the nervous lump in his throat. "You... would choose to be my wife?" he finished, finally meeting her gaze again.

Kassandra's eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up at his proposal. His eyes looked so nervous and vulnerable, afraid she'd say no and break his heart.

"I-I would not stop you from taking contracts, and I understand if you don't want to-" he quickly stammered, feeling like she'd reject him, she was a misthios, always on the move after all. Settling down just didn't seem like something she'd WANT; dream of perhaps, but not actively pursue it.

Brasidas' fears were quickly expunged from his mind as Kassandra's lips slammed into his own, her hands cradling his face.

"Yes! By the gods YES!" She answered when she pulled away, a huge smile beaming on her face.

Brasidas returned with an equally bright smile of his own as she pressed her forehead against his. He kissed the tip of her nose as she laughed joyfully.

"I love you." He whispered.

"And I love you." Kassandra replied, kissing her lover once again.

A single tear fell down Kassandra's cheek at the memory. That had been their last night together. The Battle of Amphipolis tragically ripped him from her life.

While she had succeeded in bringing her brother home, she'd be lying if she said there wasn't a small part of her that wanted to kill him for taking Brasidas from her. However Kassandra pushed that thought out of her mind. It was the monster Deimos and the Cult that killed her lover, not her brother. Not Alexios.

She did promise Myrrine she'd do whatever it took to bring him back. Kassandra also had other reasons for sparing him, one BECAUSE of Brasidas. She learned from him that not every solution has to end in death when she spared Lagos and saved his family. However one she had yet to reveal to her mother at the time. A reason she only discovered shortly after finding out Aspasia was the Ghost of Kosmos, and killing her. After that, she refused to spill any more blood if she could avoid it.

"Mater!" a small voice called, pulling Kassandra out of her memory and back to the present.

A little girl of six came running out of the house, carrying wooden dolls in her hands. Kassandra turned towards her daughter. Every time she looked at her, she saw Brasidas, their daughter looked so much like him. She had his pale, hazel-brown eyes. However it wasn't just the color that was the same, but the compassionate nature he possessed in them as well; but like him could be filled determined ferocity.

"Yes Phoibe?" Kassandra answered as the little girl ran over and settled herself in her mother's lap.

"They're finished!" Phoibe exclaimed, holding up the little wooden dolls she carried.

"Oh did Grandmater help you with those?" Kassandra asked.

Phoibe nodded, "Uh-huh. And Grandpater too!"

Of course he did. Kassandra thought, it seemed Nikolaos was doing everything possible to be the father he couldn't long ago for his granddaughter. From the moment he first held little Phoibe, he vowed he wouldn't make the same mistakes again with his family. He'd make it up to the children and wife he failed a lifetime ago.

Phoibe showed off the dolls as she placed them on the memorial, in front of Brasidas' shield.

"Here's Pater!" she explained, placing a wooden doll depicting a man with a shield, spear, and red cloth for a cloak wrapped around it. "Aaaand you Mater..." she continued, this time a figure of a woman with a broken spear in hand. "Then ME!" she exclaimed as she placed a much smaller child figure in front.

Kassandra smiled warmly, Phoibe loved making little dolls and other toys with her grandparents. "Aren't you forgetting some?" She asked.

"Oh yeah!" Phoibe dug into her pocket and pulled out a tiny, bird shaped carving. "Ikaros!" She cried, as the the eagle himself cheeped happily from the tree branch he was perched on.

"I didn't have enough material to make everyone else though... But I will!" she admitted. "Uncle Alexios said he wanted to help this time when he comes back."

"Did he now?"

Phoibe nodded. Alexios always left Sparta on this day, likely the guilt and shame he felt was too much to stay around his sister and niece. He still blamed himself for Kassandra losing her lover, for his niece never knowing her father. Even if Kassandra eventually forgave him.

She still remembered the look of intense pain and guilt on his face when Phoibe asked why she didn't have a father like her friends. She was four at the time. There was no point in lying to her. They told her the truth, that her beloved uncle killed him before she was born. However Alexios said it was a monster called Deimos inside him that killed the girl's father. He wasn't wrong, but when he admitted it he was terrified the niece he came to love would hate him. She never did. When she asked if the monster was gone, he nodded, saying he and his family killed it a long time ago. It was then she hugged him tightly, saying he wasn't a monster, he was her uncle, and she still loved him. Alexios broke down in tears and hugged her back when she said it.

Phoibe spoke up again. "He said he wanted to help because he wanted to make sure I made him look really strong and powerful... and to make Uncle Stentor ugly enough."

Kassandra snorted as she laughed, hugging her daughter close as she giggled back. "I see then." she answered.

For a few minutes she just held Phoibe close, admiring her daughter's handiwork. She was getting better at making her little toys. Her daughter was a fast learner both in creating toys, and in fighting. Kassandra made sure to keep with the family tradition of training her daughter to fight as well as the Spartan boys, better she hoped.

"Do you think Pater would be proud of me? I pray to Hermes all the time that he gets my messages." Phoibe asked innocently.

Kassandra kissed the top her head. "He IS proud of you Phoibe. And he loves you so much." She answered.

"Really?" Phoibe replied, looking up.

"Yes. He lives in Elysium now, and Hermes brings him ALL of your messages." Kassandra answered. "And one day, a loooooooong time from now, after you've had thousands of adventures, you'll get to see him. You'll get to tell him everything yourself."

"And Great Grandpater too!" the little girl added.

"Oh yes, him too. In fact I bet your Pater and he are fishing together in Elysium."

"Catch a big one Pater!" Phoibe called out towards the sky, causing another laugh to erupt from her mother.

While Brasidas had been taken from her life, he was not truly gone. He still lived on in her memory, in their daughter. It was during these moments, as Kassandra held her daughter in front of his memorial, on this day every year, she felt his presence beside her. Enveloping her as if hugging her and their daughter. As if his spirit was granted a brief visit from Hades on this day, to spend a small moment with his family until the day they could be reunited in Elysium.

#Assassins Creed Odyssey #Assassins Creed #Kassandra #Brasidas #Kassidas #my writing #oneshot #Let's see if I make anyone cry from this...#please let me know what you think #Don't worry I'll write a MUCH happier fluffier one soon.

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thecloserkin · 6 years

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Short Story Review: “A Love Match” by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Genre: Literary-ish

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Eminently so

Bottom line: Read it and thank me later

Praise be, it’s a published story about a pair of happily married siblings! Not legally married yet it’s a nonetheless a successful decades-long relationship with its ups and downs. And they ain’t even fresh young things experimenting with their sexuality! They stay together through midlife crises and menopause and eventually die in each other’s arms.

Celia and Justin Tizzard live openly as brother and sister and privately as husband and wife. It started back when he was on leave from the front lines during WWI and his PTSD was so bad that he woke up screaming in her bed— she flew into the room to comfort him and they “rushed into the escape of love like winter-starved cattle rushing into a spring pasture.” She had just lost her fiancé, you see. Justin notes that the welcome she prepares for him — the drawn bath, the hot supper, the real bed — was all meant for the fiancé who was blown to smithereens in the killing fields of France. By the end of his furlough, of course, Justin has slipped seamlessly from the role of “brother” into the role of “lover.” It’s cute because people in London see a conscription-age young man accompanied by a young woman and assume, quite reasonably, that they are sweethearts:

many people glanced at them with kindness and sentimentality, and an old woman patted Celia’s back saying, ‘God bless you, dearie! Isn’t it lovely to have him home?’

But Justin doesn’t have a sweetheart, and Celia’s is dead, and with their mother having remarried they are now the most important person in each other’s lives, and that’s who you want to spend your leave with, right? When the incest happens they don’t even make a big fuss about it:

‘Now we’ve done it,’ he said; and hearing the new note in his voice she replied, ‘A good thing, don’t you think?’ … They were mated for life, that was all … At the end of his leave they parted in exaltation, he convinced that he was going off to be killed, she that she would bear his child, to which she would devote the remainder of her existence.

Well he doesn’t perish in the war, and she’s not pregnant. The story opens with Celia and Justin moving to a sleepy little village where they proceed to settle comfortably into boring, unremarkable routines and tread “hand in hand down the thornless path to fogydom”:

Never again did Justin see Celia quivering with beauty as she had done on the day she came to him in hospital. But he went on thinking she had a charming face and the most entertaining eyebrows in the world. Loving each other criminally and sincerely, they took pains to live together happily and to safeguard their happiness from injuries of their own infliction or from outside. It would have been difficult for them to be anything but inconspicuous, or to be taken for anything but a brother and sister—the kind of brother and sister of whom one says, ‘It will be rather hard for her when he marries’. Their relationship, so conveniently obvious to the public eye, was equally convenient in private life, for it made them unusually intuitive about each other’s feelings. Brought up to the same standard of behaviour, using the same vocabulary, they felt no need to impress each other and were not likely to be taken aback by each other’s likes and dislikes.

This is such a perfect paragraph that I had to quote the whole thing. It features one of my favorite aspects of incest-shipping — they know each other’s foibles inside-out. Also, there’s a difference between developing feelings and making a relationship work and it’s great we get to see Justin and Celia doing the latter. The hospital visit Justin refers to is when he was sent home with a wounded leg that festered into gangrene:

I shall be a peg leg, he thought. It’s not decent for a peg leg to make love; even to his sister. He was ravaged with fret and behaving with perfect decorum when Celia was shown in—dressed all in leaf green, walking like an empress, smelling delicious. For a moment the leaf-green Celia was almost as much a stranger as the Celia all in black had been. When she kissed him, he discovered that she was shaking from head to foot. ‘There, there,’ he said, patting her. Still holding his hand, she addressed herself to charming Nurse Painter. Nurse Painter was in favour of sisters. They weren’t so much trouble, didn’t upset a patient, as sweethearts or wives did—and you didn’t have to be hanging round all the time, ready to shoo them off.

Two things: First, bystanders taking pains to draw a distinction between mere sisterly affection and romantic attachment is a running gag in this story, even as the narrative clearly demonstrates that Celia loves him because she’s his sister, not in spite of it; it’s just that society at large has this wrongheaded idea about what love looks like. Second, I want you to conjure up the leaf green dress Celia showed up in, the dress that took Justin’s breath away and laid his gnawing self-doubt to rest. I’m thinking Keira Knightley in Atonement - not because it was green, because it was i c o n i c. No, of course Celia would not have worn anything nearly as revealing, but the feeling you get from seeing her in it for the first time? That is what must have come over Justin.

There are a few hiccups as they settle into village life. Their decision not to hire a live-in servant—from whom their sleeping arrangements could hardly be kept secret—is met by general consternation until Justin hits upon the brilliant tactic of pleading straitened circumstances. Poverty is an ungenteel subject and well-bred people give it a wide berth. That takes care of one line of potentially damaging inquiry, but the imperative to behave inconspicuously remains uppermost in their minds:

Celia grew alarmed; if you make no friends, you become odd. She decided that they must occasionally go to church, though not too often or too enthusiastically, as it would then become odd that they did not take the Sacrament. No doubt a great many vicious church attenders took the Sacrament, and the rubric only forbids it to ‘open and notorious evil-livers’, which they had every intention of not being; but she could see a scruple of honour at work in Justin, so she did not labour this argument.

Is that not the sweetest thing! Celia knows Justin would feel weird about taking the Sacrament, what with the two of them living in sin, thus she is careful to calibrate their church attendance such that they fall within the category of “casual” churchgoers. And it pays off! At church they are recruited into a weekly whist club, and pretty soon the Tizzards are throwing dinner parties. Everyone finds them “agreeable, if slightly boring.”

Returning from their sober junketings Justin and Celia, safe within their brick wall, cast off their weeds of middle age, laughed, chattered and kissed with an intensified delight in their scandalous immunity from blame. They were a model couple, the most respectable couple in Hallowby.

That’s definitely part of the thrill of it, pulling the wool over their neighbors. Both the ones who pity him for being under her thumb, and the ones who pity her because it’ll be hard on her when he marries: they’re all projecting their own preconceptions onto this couple. Well, maybe there’s a grain of truth to it — Celia is three years older and she has always taken the lead when it comes to most matters, and Justin has been happy to leave them in her capable hands. Then comes a series of nasty, insinuating, anonymous letters, calling Celia a “hag” and accusing her of “keeping such a tight hold on him.” At this point she and Justin have been living in Hallowby for over a decade. The most upsetting aspect of the letters is how vague they are in their denunciations. There are no open threats or demands for hush money, just a list of people in the community who “know all about your loathsome performances.” The letter-writer “taunted Celia with being ugly, ageing and sexually ridiculous … ripped through her self-control and made her cry with mortification.” Guys, this is awful. It’s the worst thing that could happen to them, to be exposed and have the life they’ve built together burnt to the ground. Celia stoically determines to keep the matter from Justin, which is a mistake because one glance and he tells her exactly who sent them:

‘Justin! Have you been carrying on with Mary Semple?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that. She’s got white eyelashes. But ever since she came home Mary Semple has been doing all she could to carry on with me.’

So this girl half Justin’s age carried on a one-sided flirtation until it got on his nerves. She was soundly rebuffed, and decided to deal with her rejection by sending Celia hate mail. It doesn’t matter if she thought the rumors of incest were true; the point was to hurt Celia and through her, Justin. That’s the kind of threat the Tizzards will always be vulnerable to, unfortunately.

Whatever danger might lie ahead, it was the thought of the danger escaped that made her tremble. If she had gone on concealing those letters—and she had considered it her right and duty to do so—a wedge would have been driven between her and Justin, bruising the tissue of their love, invisibly fissuring them, as a wedge of ice does in the living tree. And thus a scandal about their incest would have found them without any spontaneity of reaction and distracted by the discovery of how long she had been arrogating to herself a thing that concerned them both. ‘Here and now,’ she exclaimed, ‘I give up being an elder sister who knows best.’ Justin, on his way to the Semples’, was muttering to himself, ‘Damn and blast it, why couldn’t she have told me sooner? If she had it would all be over by now.’ It did not occur to him to blame himself for a lack of openness. This did not occur to Celia, either. It was Justin’s constancy that mattered, not his fidelity.

I know I’ve quoted at length from what is really not a very long story but I felt justified in doing so because it is objectively such a well-constructed story, all about finding happiness where you can and accepting love as it is, in whatever guise it comes to you. Celia could have thrown a jealous fit over the Mary Semple incident—or any number of other incidents, Justin’s considered quite a catch by the single ladies—but she chooses not to. It’s not like their relationship is all smooth sailing; the regretful decision to forego children is a painful one for both of them. The Tizzards just truck along into middle/old age, and keep on loving each other, and once in awhile there may be a big shift like the above where Celia decides to cast off the mantle of Big Sister Who Knows Best, but these are merely different seasons of love (like the night they first became lovers) and they’ve successfully weathered them together. I want to end by quoting a line from near the beginning, where Justin returns to England on leave from his regiment and Celia meets him at the station:

a strange woman in black came up to him, touched his shoulder, and said, ‘Justin!’ It was as though Celia were claiming a piece of lost luggage, he thought.

Celia is both a stranger and as familiar as a long-lost personal possession. This right here is what I love about incest shipping. Part of what makes her “strange” is being dressed in full mourning, but now that the fiance is out of the way she belongs to Justin again — except he’s forced to view her as someone’s potential romantic partner, and seeing her in a new light his eyes are opened. There shouldn’t, in the normal course of things, be anything particularly romantic about reclaiming lost luggage, but for the two of them it’s such a relief to fall back into the familiar rapport of two people who’ve known each other all their lives, it really is exactly what they need. They are exactly what the other needs.

#book review #sylvia townsend warner

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chiseler · 6 years

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JEAN HARLOW: Bombshell

Her mother Mama Jean called her “The Baby” during her short life, and Jean Harlow did exhibit a babyish sense of delight when she smiled in her films and in stills, but the men who looked at her on the movie screen saw not a baby but a babe that they wanted in their arms. She was the successor to Clara Bow and a kind of bridge to Marilyn Monroe, and she was more good fun than both of them combined. Very few film stars made such an impression in such a brief time as Harlow, or grew as a performer so quickly.

Notoriously, Harlow didn’t wear underwear, and when James Cagney asked her on the set of The Public Enemy (1931) how she kept her breasts up and at ‘em, she good-naturedly replied, “I ice ‘em!” Harlow had hair so bleached blond that it was nearly white, and her legs were Dietrich-level beautiful and shapely. When she died unexpectedly at age 26, rumors ran rampant and ugly about why and how this had happened to her, culminating in the 1960s with a nasty and inaccurate biography by Irving Schulman and two equally inaccurate movie biopics, one with Carroll Baker and one with Carol Lynley. Thankfully, David Stenn’s biography of Harlow in the early 1990s set the record straight just as Stenn’s 1989 Clara Bow book gave the It Girl a fair shake.

Harlow was born Harlean Carpenter in 1911, and she married at 16 to a society boy, but she worked for a while as an extra at star-struck Mama Jean’s urging, getting her skirt caught in the door of a car and walking away with her black underwear showing in Double Whoopee (1928), a Laurel and Hardy short where childlike Ollie seems genuinely hot and bothered by this cotton candy blond looker. She posed for beautiful semi-nude shots for Edwin Bower Hesser in Griffith Park with her body covered only by a wet piece of fabric, showing off her curves for him with joy and abandon, but Harlow was still stiff in front of a moving picture camera. Bit parts proliferated, including one with Bow in The Saturday Night Kid (1929), where Harlow had one line of dialogue that she delivered in an amateurish way as she looked at her watch.

Harlow fell under contract to breast-obsessed Howard Hughes, who put her in his aerial epic Hell’s Angels (1930) as sexpot relief. He had a party scene shot in two-strip Technicolor in order to show off the pearly beauty of his new star’s skin, her breasts barely covered by her backless dress, and though Harlow delivers dialogue in a very stilted way in Hell’s Angels, she already had a way of looking at men that was unmistakably carnal.

“Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” she asks Ben Lyon in Hell’s Angels, taking joy and pride in the way she makes his temperature rise. The distinctive thing about Harlow is her total lack of shame about sex on screen, her sheer anticipatory enjoyment of it as an idea, and an ideal of pleasure, a force that totally loosens her up. Harlow’s relation to sex in her movies makes Bow seem slightly jittery and insecure about it in comparison, and makes Monroe look like a sexual basket case.

“I want to be free, I want to be gay and have fun!” Harlow says in Hell’s Angels, leaning back happily on a couch to be admired. “Life’s short, and I want to live while I’m alive.” No bra, no panties, no problem! Her smile is so open, so inviting, as if to say, “Come on, let’s enjoy ourselves,” and she wants to take that enjoyment to the limit, and beyond that limit. Harlow in Hell’s Angels is the kind of person who will make out with you in a bar and won’t care how many people are watching. In fact, she obviously gets a kick out of being watched, in the bar on screen and from the dark of the movie theater, because that attention adds to her pleasure.

Luscious and so gracefully knowing, with her fantasy hair and her freely moving and nearly exposed body, Harlow tries to sound ritzy and classy in her first few talkies but she has a nasal, funny voice that keeps betraying her sense of humor. Hughes loaned her out and kept her working, paying her little and pocketing the rest of her salaries. Expected to play disparate roles in her 1931 movies, Harlow became mainly chastened and inhibited, though she has a brief moment of connected wisecracking with Clark Gable in The Secret Six.

Harlow is embarrassing in The Public Enemy with Cagney, descending to an Ed Wood level of wooden dialogue delivery, and she tentatively played Louise Brooks’s part in a remake of A Girl in Every Port (1928) that was renamed Goldie for her hair. “Men don’t marry carnival girls,” she earnestly tells Warren Hymer in that movie. “They think we’re all bad.” Harlow had trouble seeming like a manipulative society girl in Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde, even though she had moved in society circles herself during her first marriage. She knew she wasn’t cutting it as an actress and even told her agent that she would try to get work in a department store if her acting didn’t improve soon.

MGM producer Paul Bern, who had been instrumental in shaping many careers for women at his studio, got Harlow a very good part in The Beast of the City (1932), and she’s much improved in that due to the gentle Bern’s coaching, closer to the magnetic tough-girl style of her star period (seen in a line-up, she gives a raspberry to the cops who are grilling her). When a tough guy grabs her hard and she says it hurts her, he asks, “You don’t like to be hurt, do you?” She looks at him steadily and says, in her “ritzy” voice, “Oh, I don’t know…it’s kinda fun sometimes if it’s done in the right spirit.” Harlow on screen knows or senses that sex is partly theater, and theater is best, or “kinda fun,” when it’s boldly rough and dramatized in terms of fluctuating power dynamics.

Harlow keeps her hands on her hips and does one helluva seductive dance for a copper in The Beast of the City, filling her undulations with that distinctive “sex is fun!” spirit she had, rubbing her hands down her gyrating body and fluffing her hair. She harnessed all of her sexual energy and put it on screen without any inhibitions, and it still makes for a hackle-raising spectacle. “Are you gonna try and reform me?” she asks the copper breathlessly, after they kiss.

Bern convinced her to go titian for Red-Headed Woman (1932), where we see her hair being dyed in the first scene. “So gentlemen prefer blondes, do they?” she asks, in that pinched voice, before looking at herself in the mirror. “Yes they do,” she drawls, smiling and giving a pure 1930s sock-it-to-‘em nod. “Can you see through this?” she asks a saleswoman, striking a pose against a window in a new dress. “I’m afraid you can, miss,” the prim saleswoman informs her. “I’ll wear it,” Harlow cheerfully replies.

Her ruthless and hotheaded Lil goes through five men in Red-Headed Woman, and Harlow gets away with it because she is so funny and so good-humored about her man-eating. Bern told her that if she made the part funny that the audience would forgive her anything, and he was right about that. And she gets away with a lot in this movie. When Chester Morris smacks her, Harlow lets out a growly little noise of excitement and approval and says, “Do it again, I like it! Do it again!” and then kisses him, which goes shockingly further with her “kinda fun” rough sex formulation from The Beast of the City. Her growl of S&M excitement is not to be forgotten once heard, once she has let it out of its box, so to speak.

There is no part of sex or the sexual instinct that Harlow doesn’t openly enjoy on screen, and that’s what made her such a radical presence in the early 1930s, and that sexual radicalism hasn’t dated; it would still cause an uproar today if done in the swaggering way she does it in Red-Headed Woman. And she is not made to be redeemed or reformed or even punished at the end of that movie, where her designing woman winds up with a rich older protector and still gets to keep her handsome chauffeur lover (a young Charles Boyer). Screenwriter Anita Loos gives Red-Headed Woman the essentially French and Colette-like morality and frankness that went into her classic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and you can see why moralists in America at the time were outraged and alarmed by Lil, who is a truly amoral, even homicidal wretch but so filled with Harlow’s saucy pep that she still winds up being somehow attractive.

Yet this brazen woman on screen was living with her mother off screen, obediently following Mama Jean’s wishes. (Mama Jean had wanted to be an actress herself, and she lived vicariously through Harlow’s success.) Compliant in some ways but also rebellious, Mama Jean’s “Baby” got into big trouble off the set. Harlow married the gentlemanly Bern, and shortly after that marriage Bern shot himself, leaving behind a cryptic suicide note. Their marriage had not been consummated, and Bern had in his past a mentally unstable common law wife named Dorothy Millette, a woman who was still obsessively attached to him. Millette confronted Harlow and Bern one night, and whatever transpired between them led to his suicide. Millette killed herself a few days after his death. This was a rare mess, and it was feared that it might ruin Harlow’s career.

She was midway through shooting Red Dust (1932) with Clark Gable at that point, and she returned to work under duress. To the studio’s surprise, public sympathy was on her side during the Bern suicide scandal, and it helped that she was at her very best in Red Dust, with all her sexuality and humor at her command but a new shading of vulnerability, too, just enough to make her irresistible to just about everyone. Look at the pained way she stares after Clark Gable and Mary Astor as he carries Astor out of a storm, which reveals the strength of her feelings for him underneath all the other slangy “I like it!” sexual fun she still offered us. This scene proved that Harlow’s on screen persona could handle a show of hurt feelings, and it also showed that she could be appealingly stoic about them, too, and toughly gallant and magnanimous. In the scene where she good-naturedly pours a drink for her love rival Astor and gives her a little advice, Harlow is one of the most appealing of all American screen women.

Red Dust was perhaps Harlow’s zenith, but she advanced even further in three more films the following year. She turned to rat-a-tat-tat verbal comedy in the very knowing, often scathing Bombshell as movie star Lola Burns, who is “born for men,” according to salacious studio advertising, but mainly born, it seems, to support a family and retinue, just as Harlow herself was. “You’re a boon to re-population in a world thinned out by war and famine!” cries Lee Tracy’s publicity man, and that’s certainly one way of looking at it.

Role and star get deliberately confused in Bombshell, for Lola is called back to shoot retakes of Gable catching her nude in a rain barrel in Red Dust, as if she and Harlow were the same person. “You can get another ‘It’ girl or ‘But’ girl or a ‘how, when and where’ girl, I’m moving out!” Harlow’s Lola cries toward the end, saying that she wants to retire to domestic life, but Bombshell knows that some people are just more charismatic than others, and some women would be imprisoned by the threat of home and babies. Harlow was certainly one of those women, at least on screen.

Cleverly, shortly after filming, Harlow married her much older cameraman, Harold Rossen, who did much to shape her visual image (Mama Jean put the kibosh on that one after only eight months). And then, for director George Cukor, who egged her on to just the right degree, she was Kitty Packard, a gutsy trophy wife putting Wallace Beery in his place in Dinner at Eight, a monument to the enriching vitality in unabashed sexual vulgarity.

Sitting up in her absurdly billowing white bed, taking bites out of chocolates and then throwing them back, ringing out her powder puff, Harlow gets laugh after laugh in Dinner at Eight, one after another, like she’s ringing gongs. She throws herself into her scenes with both abandon and accuracy of expression and timing, a very different style from Clara Bow or Marilyn Monroe, much brassier, more self-sufficient; if she talked baby talk, as Monroe did, it was in a very knowing, parodic way.

Harlow is the only big female movie sex symbol who never seems dazed, never seems really out-of-control. “I’m gonna be a lady if it kills me!” she tells Beery in Dinner at Eight, standing up to him all the way down the line and applying more lipstick in between. (She was sown into her gowns, so that she couldn’t even sit down on set but had to resort to a slant board.) Harlow throws some left hooks and gets caught in her bath again by Gable in Hold Your Man. “Yes sir, that baby’s got rhythm,” Gable says appreciatively as he watches her walk away from him at one point, after she visits him in prison. She is at her toughest in Hold Your Man until a redemptive ending, a harbinger of worse to come.

“The vulgar, cheap, and the tawdry is out!” promised Joseph Breen, the new chief of the Production Code censorship bureau, in a newsreel from 1934, and that meant that proudly vulgar, cheap, and tawdry Harlow was hardest hit by the new Code. Her first film under the Code was supposed to be called Born to Be Kissed, but the title was changed to The Girl from Missouri (1934), and it made Harlow stuffy and bent only on matrimony in a way that feels very constricted and depressing.

They even began to darken her platinum hair to a light shade of brown in Riffraff (1935), where she played another virgin holding out for marriage and sparred with Spencer Tracy. Harlow was at least somewhat brassy again as good-time girl China Doll in China Seas (1936) with Gable, but in Wife vs. Secretary (1936) she played a true-blue stenographer who wouldn’t dream of putting the moves on Gable’s boss, a far cry from the rapacious Lil of Red-Headed Woman. Even her car horn voice got tamped-down and refined back to the level it had ludicrously sought in her first awkward years in movies, as if speaking quietly were some sort of triumph for the “good taste” that now reigned on film.

In Reckless (1935), Harlow was asked to talk her way through a risible song and act out a suicide drama that was exploitatively close to her own ordeal with Bern. She is made to defend herself from a stage, confessing to an audience her dead husband’s unhappiness and how she tried to make him happy, and the result on screen feels very punishing and unfair, so that there was no star who was so humiliated and ruined by censorship as Harlow, not even Mae West. She got one more chance at rapid-fire comedy in Libeled Lady (1936), where all she wants to do is marry Spencer Tracy, and she has her moments in that, but the great sexual thrill of Harlow is confined to Hell’s Angels and her movies from 1932 and 1933 only.

She really did want to marry her Libeled Lady co-star William Powell, but he kept putting that off. Harlow looks and seems ill and low energy in Personal Property (1937) and in her last film, Saratoga (1937), which was finished with a stand-in after her death at 26 from kidney disease. She collapsed on the set and was attended by physicians for eight days before she died, contrary to the stories about her never seeing a doctor because of Mama Jean’s Christian Science leanings. MGM chief Louis B. Mayer had Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy sing “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” at her funeral, which certainly would have made the screen Harlow guffaw. It was a short career, but her initial impact is still fresh, and it can still be felt as liberating, sexually and otherwise.

by Dan Callahan

#Dan Callahan #Jean Harlow #The Chiseler #pre-Code #Bombshell

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smartalker · 7 years

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3% Margin of Error

ENTITLED: 3% Margin of Error FANDOM: Mass Effect Andromeda LENGTH: 3k.5 SETTING: Basically the Kadara arc. I didn't follow original dialogue because THAT'S BORING. NOTES: Guess who hasn't written fanfiction in over a year! Glad to know my coping mechanisms are still there for me.

He'd heard the new Pathfinder was young. But this seemed excessive, ridiculous. She had the same loping, lanky body found on a teenager. She couldn't have been older than her mid-twenties. He must have been a decade older. Why was he thinking that?

Reyes was good at reading people, and better at picking up on the things others wouldn't consider. People liked to talk about "the look of the killer" (had she killed before?) or a "battle-weary stare," which was bullshit. This was Kadara. Either you'd seen a fight or you never left your squat.

He was good at working out who was vulnerable, who needed to be complimented, who was a bully. He had to know these things. People were simple, they had their vanities and their secrets. The Angara were surprisingly harder—so open, so emotional. They didn't hide things. Keema, then, became essential.

But: the Pathfinder. Did her youth make her naïve? Incompetent? She had inherited the position from her father, a decision that couldn't have been made without sentiment. Alec Ryder was a legend, true, but legends were frequently failed by their children. It wouldn't have surprised Reyes to learn that the Nexus had appointed her as a figurehead, a distractor to cloak their scrambles. People were desperate for hope.

The Pathfinder liked whiskey. She drank it funny, held it in her cheek. He could almost hear her pushing the stuff through her teeth. She was eyeing the room's Angara, her expression tranquil. Too casual? He couldn't tell. She was direct. She moved a lot, shifting her weight like that—meaning what? Restless? Impatient? Driven.

Reyes held his breath. He was projecting. He wanted her to be something.

She hadn't noticed him yet. He felt old.

More people should have noticed her. She was pretty—but everyone was pretty in their early twenties, that wasn't anything special. Physical beauty began mattering less once humanity merged with aliens and lost a common point of comparison. The bar's patrons had looked at her when she came in—but she had a funny kind of emptiness, a shield of regularity. He could recognize this ability, because it was one he also possessed. Her fame made it more impressive.

She spoke, "So. You like bartending?" Even her goddamn voice was young, sort of flippy. Casual. Like someone who always sounded as though they were about to laugh, but never did. What the hell was wrong with him?

"I hate it. It pays," replied the Asari bartender, continuing her streak of bitter, half-haikus.

"I like it." The Pathfinder leaned more heavily against the counter. "You're like alcohol. So painful, so good. I can see why this place is popular."

"Ugh," said the bartender, but she poured the Pathfinder another drink. "Drink this and die."

"Well, don't get me too excited," said the Pathfinder. As the Asari moved away, and the girl looked down into her glass, something happened. Her body shrank, now slumping. Reyes watched her chest rise, and expel, so slowly. She rubbed one of her eyes, too hard. And she drank like an old soldier.

Now.

He approached her, spoke to her, revealed himself (sort of). He watched her eyes, how they flickered and widened. She could be coy, and was surprisingly good at it—past relationships? He could see why. He wondered if she flirted with everyone. He watched her smile, those perfect teeth the military had paid for, and wondered why he couldn't nail down anything for sure. Why was she so good at revealing nothing? Was it the rumored machine in her head, the AI that could scan him and code him and predict—with an accuracy containing a 3% margin of error—the likelihood of his next move?

No way. No way could she hear all that, and still be able to function. Maybe she could turn the bot off.

"You're awfully handsome for a convenient informant," the Pathfinder grinned. "Does anyone ever tell you to tone down the suspicious?"

"You're pretty young for a Pathfinder. Does anyone ever tell you to grow up?" he didn't say.

The Pathfinder was eyeing his glass. He'd ordered the second best whisky the bar had, hoping to learn something about her by doing so. Would she refuse to pay, or politely endure? "My dad used to drink that," she said, suddenly. "I used to steal it when I was a teenager. I don't think he really noticed for a while but when he did, he sat me down and blindfolded me. I half-thought I was going to be shot, but instead he had me do a taste test. Platinum brand versus bottom shelf. My brother got it right away, he was all 'I see what you mean about the barrels, you can really taste the way the wood interacts with the sugar.' But I didn't have a clue. Worse, I couldn't tell the difference between whiskey and bourbon." She paused. She stopped. She wanted to say more, he could see it on her, but she stopped. She shrugged. Her smile was painful, fake. "I guess the good things are wasted on me."

She felt inferior to her brother, sensing a bond between father and son she'd never been a part of. Her brother was in a coma, Reyes knew. The Pathfinder suspected that her father would have preferred Scott inherit his title. In spite of this, painfully, she loved them. She missed them.

Unexpectedly, she was vulnerable. Her genuine confidence had mislead him from the obvious. She was alone.

"Welcome to Kadara," Reyes said. "There are only bad things here."

But that wasn't true, because she was good. All he had to do was point her towards calamity, and off she ran—the most effective, most destructive hunting dog he could have asked for. That first time he'd sent her off into the wastelands, a large part of him had wondered if he'd killed her. A bigger part thought she'd make it.

But he wasn't a gambling man, and he didn't like believing in things.

"I thought you said this job was a hard one," Ryder said. Dead bodies, everywhere. He didn't think of her by her title anymore, not now that she was building the habit of doing him favors. Her cheek was bruised, because of him.

"I said that because I wanted you to bring back-up," Reyes replied, honestly.

"Too slow. I need another homestead." She paused. "As you may know, people are counting on me. So many people! You'd think the other Pathfinders could help me pull some weight around here."

"And I am among the dependent," Reyes said. His gut twisted. "Maybe you shouldn't be so good at your job."

"You're right. I should get fired." She squatted down, digging a pebble out of her leg plate's grooves. He just stood there, frustrated, watching her. He should kiss her. She should want him.

Ryder sniffed. She winced when she rubbed away the dust on her face, skimming the bruise. "Why don't you?" he asked, "Why don't you just leave?"

"Who knows?" she laughed. "I guess I started thinking I had to save people. What happens if I leave? I mean—maybe everyone dies. Or maybe it's fine. What's worse?" She sniffed again, that low-level kind of sick you get from constant stress. He knew it well.

Moving on. "Have you tangled with Sloane yet? She can't be happy you're here fixing the things she couldn't." As though he hadn't heard, word for word, their nasty exchange. Was Ryder as soft as she looked? So tempting to damage?

Ryder glanced up at him. He hadn't thought she'd look so wary—no, wry?—no—?

"So I guess you're not big on Sloane?" she asked. He didn't reply. Poker face, poker face, half smile, toes pointing to her, interested, keep talking—

"Well," Ryder mumbled. "I mean. Hell, if she's still alive I'm guessing her reflexes are killer. To be honest with you, I don't think she knows her own people. Or her enemies. Or anyone."

"It's easier to seize power than to keep it," Reyes murmured. Ryder smiled.

"You sound experienced."

"That's another way of saying old." Reyes joked. He couldn't see her face. The sun backlit her, throwing her into shadow, hiding everything. She knew. She couldn't know. He'd gotten too close to her, exposed too much in the process of winding down her own defenses, he was wide open, she was—

"I don't think you're old," Ryder said, and suddenly, as though it were wrenched from her, she blushed. He stared. She was—

"Don't tease me," she growled, and stomped off.

—young. She was young.

"I've told the Pathfinder how much you like her," Keema drawled. Keema was more human than Angaran, a cultural chameleon, a born liar. Everybody liked Keema. Reyes glanced up at his partner, his face. They'd been discussing a forced siege of the north Krogan mine—one way to get prices down.

Keema was smiling, catty. She could be furious. Reyes looked back down at the papers he didn't need. "Such a gossip."

"You're an idiot," Keema said, voice tight. She wasn't teasing him. "Don't fuck this up."

Reyes surrendered his papers, his paper-thin nonchalance. "I'm not fucking up anything," he said evenly. "What's got you so rattled?"

"Because it isn't a lie," Keema said. She was staring at him, daring a contradiction. "You're smart, and you're selfish, but you aren't unfeeling. I've never minded that about you. The Angara don't have—what do you call them—sociopaths. Not like humans do. I wouldn't be able to work with you, if you were one. I've noticed that humans like to give labels to things, to separate themselves from it. Sociopath, murderer, monster. But that is ridiculous. There is an ugliness in each of you, just as there is beauty."

"Why are you telling me this?" Reyes asked, voice flat. He tried not to be threatening. Keema would never tolerate it, he would lose her respect almost immediately.

"Because the Pathfinder is a hero, and she is the daughter of a martyr. When she bleeds, her pain is not lonely. Right now she is the most important human in our universe. If things go badly because of you, we will be destroyed."

"They don't know us, Keema," Reyes pressed back. A small voice just behind him whispered concern: what was he doing? As though he actually wanted to hurt The Pathfinder—Ryder—that girl. That girl. "That's our power, the power of the Charlatan. We are anyone."

"We are Kadara," Keema retorted coldly. "Could the Nexus destroy their outcasts? Maybe, maybe not. But I don't want a war, Reyes. I'm actually very simple. I want money. I want power. I want to own this land, and I want a cut out of every deal that happens on this beautiful, vicious place. What is it you want?"

His fists were tight. He made them open. He stood from the table, stretching the muscles of his back. They snapped, popped. He and Keema always met publicly. They were only common citizens, out enjoying a drink. Kadara had more bars than cafés but the patios, if you could find them, were something special. Especially on the windy days, with the sulfur smells diluted.

Keema was right. She had the distance, the perspective. Reyes exhaled.

"No one wants to fight the Pathfinder," he agreed. "She's proven herself to be a considerable force. Behind the name, she has ability to make real progress with settling Kadara—not to mention the other outposts. More outposts means more trade, more customers, more exchange. And Kadara is at the heart of that. If the Pathfinder succeeds, we can only profit."

"Don't forget that she's all that stands between us and the Kett," Keema snorted. Reyes stared at her. Keema smirked, "You now, I think I might like her better than you."

"She doesn't have to get involved with the Charlatan," Reyes stressed. "Or Sloane. She doesn't need to know. She just needs a settlement."

"I agree to some extent," Keema rose to join him at the railing, now sipping her choice Angaran drink. "Most people seem to prefer you without the lies and murder. But be careful, Reyes. She's not stupid, and neither is the computer in her head. No matter how much she might want to believe you, it's in her nature to be honest. She won't lie to herself for long. Get close to her, but not too close."

"You don't need to tell me that."

"Don't I?" Keema glared at him. "You aren't seducing her. You're restrained. That's new."

Reyes looked away.

The hope of humanity kissed like her job was not establishing sustainable life for mankind and associates. She kissed as though her primary occupation was tricking scheming murderers into humanitarianism.

And she was convincing.

She broke away from him, to glance over her shoulder. "I think they left," she whispered, and then punched his shoulder. She could hit pretty hard. "I can't believe you're stealing in front of me."

"What I do, I do for you," Reyes protested, reeling. Ryder glanced back, narrowing her eyes.

"If that were true, you'd owe me less money."

"I thought we put these things behind us," Reyes brushed past her, just happening to find her waist, just happening to pull her along. The Pathfinder had a way of stealing his momentum. "Won't you join me?"

"I guess this is the real date," she almost purred. He smiled. Little cat.

He led her upwards, as high as the buildings in Kadara would go, which helped with the smog and the fumes. The sunset was spectacular—a poisoned atmosphere would do that. Ryder sat next to him, swinging her legs through the open air. She said, "I'm not sure I believe that you stole this for me, the way you're holding that bottle."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It's indecent." She made a show of averting her eyes. She liked him—but how much? When was it not enough, and when did she come too close? "Anyway, I told you. Anything in a bottle costing more than twenty credits is wasted on me."

"Nothing is wasted on you. Nothing is too good." Reyes said sharply, so intense that she flinched, and looked away. Lies could be honey, but kindness turned violent. Reyes pulled back. "Go ahead," he said, more gently. "Drink."

She drank, repeating the same funny gesture as before. Holding things in her cheeks, straining through teeth. She swallowed, and looked at him. For approval? The liquor had made her eyes burn, they shone in the twilight. So close to him. "What do you taste?" he whispered.

"The same as always. It's awful and it burns going down. It's hot in my mouth." She looked at the bottle, sniffing. "500 years old and I still can't get it."

"No," he reached for the bottle. His hand felt hers, but didn't hold it. He drank. "It's a full throated taste. The sugar has almost rotted, it clings to your teeth. I think someone added cloves, at some point."

"Well, well," she murmured. She pulled her knees up against her chest, now looking even younger. He wondered if she got cold easily, or if she was just running away from him. "I should have known you had a discerning palette."

"You have no idea." He handed back the bottle. Her fingers were frozen, now that he noticed. He kissed her. What he really wanted was for her to kiss him. Her skin was as hot as a baby's, an oven. Her life boiled inside her. He wanted all of her heat.

"Would you like to know what's special about you?" he told her. Seduce her, Keema had said. "For you, it only tastes like poison. But you keep drinking anyway."

500-year-old whiskey, aging slowly as Reyes and Ryder slept their way through space. Some lonely soul, alive only to keep things from going to shit—chose whether to brew with wheat, or corn, or rye. Like a gift from the past, set aside for someone else.

And now, his.

"I knew you liked me," the girl said, bright-eyed. She touched his face. Her hands weren't cold anymore.

"Did Keema tell you?"

"I knew before that."

"I was obvious."

"No, you wanted me to know." She looked straight at him, something serious and unknown lurking in her tone. Something analytical. Not human.

"Do you know what I like the most?"

"What?"

"You like me back."

His relief, when she smiled.

(His desire: pathetic and childish and hateful, to ask, "Would you still want me, if I wasn't the person you thought I was?" Infantile and embarrassing. He refused to ask. He deserved her hatred. He deserved it.)

His girl, watching Sloane die. Her expression had shutters. She could ruin him. "You lied to me," she accused, with resignation. She couldn't leave him now. "You're the Charlatan," she concluded. She knew. She knew. She had seen the things he did, or ordered. All the things he'd warned her of, coming true in an instant. Uglier than expected.

"Nothing has to change," he tried not to beg. He had never thought he'd beg. She watched him, hand on her gun. He stepped nearer. It didn't matter if she shot him. Without her, it was over. All cards on the table, all bets riding on the heart he couldn't read.

She looked young, and crumpled, and bruised. Because of him.

"I'm sorry," he said. His heart, slamming on his ribs, trying to escape.

"You lied to me," she said again, "About everything. I trusted you. Actually—you knew how I felt. You used me."

"I thought that if you knew, you would feel differently about me," Reyes begged. "I was afraid. You could have destroyed me. You still can."

"I won't destroy you, Reyes," she said quietly. He felt no relief. Sometimes, he had dreamed about hurting her—dreams that he woke from feeling sick, disturbed. He had hurt a lot of people. It could become satisfying.

"Nothing has to change," he said again. He took her hands—icy. "We'll remake Kadara, together. Your outpost will have my complete support—and you'll have a center for trade. You know I can manage that. You know I can help you."

"I know," she answered, after a brief pause. Had she run the statistics? Did she see the things they could achieve? She drew into herself, then faced him. "You're right. We could do a lot together."

"There are things you shouldn't have to do," Reyes said quietly, with meaning. "Not in your position. But I can. I can help you in ways that nobody else could. You know it's true. You can trust me. There's nothing left to hide."

She drew back still further. "I don't believe you."

"Then leave me, and do it now." Reyes said. "If something's over, you should end it. I'm not a good man, Ryder. I won't give up on you, and I won't change. You'll have to deal with me eventually."

She bit her lip, shaking her head, until eventually, she snorted. His grip on her hands tightened. He'd pushed too hard. "You're such a manipulative shit," she mumbled, then added in a clearer voice. "My AI wants you dead."

He'd won.

"Do you agree?"

"No," she faced him, her face blazing. "Even now, I want to believe. If not in you, then in your ability. Your desire to see things improve. I was doing great things before I met you, and I did those things myself. You should see that."

"I want you to believe in me too," Reyes said, meaning it.

"I do. But I also know better." She sighed, now staring at Sloane's corpse. The body was still bleeding. He waited for her to say something. She didn't. He had made her older.

"When you were young, did you think you'd be stuck with someone as terrible as me?" he asked, tone light. Her hands were warming, the longer he held them. Did he want to drag her down, or have her pull him up? He thought, suddenly, of a game he'd played when he was very small—when he and a friend had joined hands, and leaned as far backwards as their arms would stretch. Only the other person's support kept them from falling.

Ryder's lips twitched. She was still looking at Sloane. "I wanted someone handsome and kind and rich, but mostly, I hoped I'd meet someone exciting."

"I can be exciting."

"You're too exciting," she snorted. He had won, he had won.

"You have no idea." He pulled her to him. "Believe in me."

"Absolutely not." She'd forgotten Sloane. Her heart was young and alive. She had too many things to do.

"You will." He promised her mouth, her frozen hands. "You will."

#mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #sara ryder #ryder #reyes #reyes vidal #reyes/ryder #ryder/reyes #grosscreations

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sztcov · 5 years

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Kimlascan Adventure 2

Theme

Action/Adventure

This is the most common and straightforward sort of adventure there is. In the Action/Adventure scenario, you present your characters with a task and then confront them with obstacles to overcome in order to accomplish the task successfully.

Goal

Thwart Monstrous Plan

This is a classic fantasy-adventure plot: The characters learn of some horrible plan made by a monstrous enemy, and must thwart it before the kingdom is lost or the world is destroyed. This is an epic goal, and usually requires that the characters go to all sorts of places, rounding up allies and artifacts, before being strong enough to face their enemy.

Story Hook

Dying Delivery

On some occassion when the hero is out wandering the streets or is otherwise all alone, a dying man bumbs into him, hands him something, says a few words, and dies.

Plot

Geographic Progression

This is the simplest sort of adventure plot. The heroes have an area to investigate or travel through; they have encounters based on where they are. For instance, the traditional dungeon, where monsters are tied to specific rooms or areas. Or, if the heroes are travelling along a narrow valley or through an enchanted forest, they might suffer ambushes and other encounters fixed to various points along their travel plan. The plot, then, is getting to the villain by surviving the intervening obstacle encounters.

Climax

Prevented Deed

Here, the heroes have been defeated -- captured by the Master Villain, or so thoroughly cut up by his minions that all believe them to be dead. And the heroes have learned, from the bragging of the villain, loose talk of his minions, or examination of clues, what is the crucial event of his master plan. In any case, the battered and bruised heroes must race to this site and have their final confrontation with the villain, bursting in on him and his minions just as the knife or final word or key is poised, and prevent the awful deed from taking place -- and, incidentally, defeat the master villain and minions who beat them previously.

General Setting

Cosmopolitan City

Most of the story takes place in a large, sophisticated city; center the villain's plot and activities around that city. This setting is best suited to adventures involving more people than monsters; most of your villains should be human or demi-human.

Specific Setting 1

Shacktown of the Oppressed

Part of the action centers around the tenements or shacks of the worst part of town; perhaps an allied NPC lives here or the characters are fugitives hiding out in the nasty part of town.

Specific Setting 2

Lost City

This is the remnant of some lost civilization or expedition, still thriving in some forgotten corner of the world. Remnants of lost civilizations can even inhabit cavern systems beneath campaign cities, preying on the above-worlders for their goods, slaves, and sacrifices.

Master Villain

Sufferer

This Master Villain disguises himself as some other sort of villain. Long ago, he was given an ugly curse -- he longs for death but can never die unless slain by heroes unaware of his curse. (Naturally, the way the curse works, he has to defend himself when attacked by the heroes.) So this villain works hard to make sure the best heroes in the world have sufficient cause to want to come and kill him. He'll insult them, ruin them, kidnap or murder their loved ones, whatever it takes to bring them against him. Often, he can only die -- his curse can only be undone -- in one specific holy place, so he'll have to lure the heroes to that place to face him. If the heroes are doing research on the villain all this time, they may find out his secret, leading to a sad and painful end to the episode as the unkillable villain has to leave and find someone new to kill him.

Minor Villain 1

Inquisitor

This villain is the one who interrogates the heroes and NPCs captured by the villains. He accompanies the other Minor Villain out into the field and works on anyone captured; he enjoys inflicting pain and suffering.

Minor Villain 2

Mistress with a Heart of Gold

This character is much like the "Lover or Daughter of Villain" type of Mystery Woman from the Story Hooks section. In this case, she usually accompanies the Master Villain, but sometimes goes on missions of her own, where she runs into and develops affection for one of the player-characters.

Ally/Neutral

Grumpy Old Professional

Again, the heroes need an expert in a certain field -- this time a craft or art, such as blacksmithing, engineering, horse-training, or whatever. The only or best professional they can find is an aged expert. He's grumpy, cranky, and sharp-tongued; he constantly complains about the food, the weather, his companions, the decline in skill of his co-workers since he was a young man, the road conditions, the rotten pay he's receiving, and so on.

Monster Encounter

Assassin Monster

This mosnter, at some time in the adventure, is sent by the Master Villain to attack one or more heroes when they're at their most vulnerable -- asleep, enjoying themselves, etc. Usually, the Assassin Monster attacks, but the hero, though injured, is able to hold it off long enough for his friends to respond to his shouts. The Assassin Monster is usually killed by his friends, who can then speculate on who sent it and why.

Character Encounter

Belligerent Soldier

The billigerent one has just had his ears pinned back by his commanding officer and is anxious to take it out on some hapless civilian. If this is a city gate, he claims that the hero's papers are wrong or that he recognizes the hero from descriptions of a wanted criminal; if this is the streets, he insults the hero's lack of military bearing, pretty looks, clothes, smell, companion, or whatever it takes to provoke a reaction.

Deathtrap

Rock and a Hard Place

This trap starts out as an Animal Pit, Pit and the Pendulum, or Tomb Deathtrap, but an obvious escape suggests itself very early on. Trouble is, it leads into even worse danger. The hole out of the animal pit may lead to the lair of an even worse animal; it may lead through a succession of dangers (collapsing old catacombs, into an underground river, into a den of zombies) before the heroes reach the light.

Chase

Footrace

The chase involves the characters on foot, probably through such terrain as city streets or the corridors of a palace. One hero may realize that the's being pursued by a party of enemies and choose to run for it; the heroes may have caught up to the Master Villain, prompting him to run for his life.

Omen/Prophesy

Hero Fulfills Prophecy

This is the most useful sort of prophecy. In the early part of the adventure, one of the heroes discovers that he fulfills some ancient prophecy.

Secret Weakness

Secret Embarrassment

Finally, the villain may have some aberration or secret shame that will force him to flee when he is confronted with it. It could be something as simple as the fact that his nose is too big, or that he is a small and nebbishly wizard pretending to be some vast, powerful demonic power. When his shame is revealed, he is too humiliated to continue; this is a good option for comedy adventures.

Special Condition

Magic Doesn't Work Right

If the adventure is taking place on an alternate plane, then that plane's magic works oddly or not at all. (A spellcaster will find that just making himself useful is a challenge when none of his spells works.)

Moral Quandry

Honor Quandry

You want to use this on the character with the most strongly developed sense of personal honor -- someone who has lived all his life by a strict code. Toward the end of the adventure, this character realizes that the best way to defeat the Master Villain is a violation of that code. For instance, the character might be a paladin, who discovers that the only possible way for the heroes to defeat the Master Villain is to sneak up on him and stab him in the back.

Red Herring

False Path to the Artifact

Once again, if the heroes have had too easy a time finding the artifact capable of destroying the villain, give them trouble this way: When they get to the place where the artifact is supposed to be contained, they find the coffer or chamber or whatever empty, obviously looted by robbers, who have scrawled such remarks as "Kelrog was here!" upon the walls.

Cruel Trick

Villain Accompanies Party

In this distressing situation, the Master Villain, in disguise or his secret identity, accompanies the heroes for much of their quest. He gets to know them, learns their strengths and weaknesses, learns their plans, and just as soon as it's most efficient for him, he thwarts their current plans and leaves. Alternatively, the Master Villain might be with the heroes all along, up to the very end; the heroes know that one of their companions is the villain, and the whole thrust of the story is finding out who he is. This is the whole purpose of most Mystery-type adventures.

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

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TIFF 2018: Donnybrook, 22 July

Tim Sutton’s “Donnybrook” wants to shine a light on the “forgotten” America, to give a voice to the people that have been economically and culturally left behind by a rapidly developing country. It’s set in the rural Midwest and focuses exclusively on the white communities that have been ravaged by poverty, addiction, and abuse; “Donnybrook” repeatedly and insistently signals that it’s a film for and about white people and their anger. Putting aside the obvious glaring issue that many parts of America, including and especially those dominated by marginalized communities, have also been “left behind,” so to speak, Sutton’s project isn’t invalid. White resentment is a genuine issue in America, and I have no doubt that there are plenty of approaches within narrative film that would examine such a topic with intelligence and tact. All I know is that “Donnybrook” doesn’t rise to the challenge. Instead, it revels in white rage, fetishizing the real problems that exist in vulnerable communities in order to tell a stupid story that says and reveals absolutely nothing about anyone’s situation. If Sutton’s aim is to give these people a voice, he has not only failed, but he has gone further and reduced them to inchoate caricatures.

The plot in brief: Jarhead Earl (Jamie Bell), a veteran struggling to provide a better life for his family, wants to compete in the Donnybrook, a no-holds-barred bareknuckle brawl with a cash prize of $100,000. Meanwhile, the psychopathic Chainsaw Angus (Frank Grillo) deals meth in Earl’s community with his sister Delia (Margaret Qualley), whom he has trapped in an abusive, semi-incestuous relationship. Angus commits grotesque acts of violence almost every time he’s on screen either because of circumstance or his nature (Sutton never makes this clear), but he’s destined by fate (or, more realistically, the script’s demands) to meet Earl in the ring. Also, James Badge Dale plays a police officer that blurs the line between cop and criminal (to quote Charlie Kaufman in “Adaptation,” see every cop movie ever made for other examples of this) who’s technically on Angus’ trail but really just spirals.

Sutton fails to provide any of his subjects with three dimensions, coding them in black-and-white conceptions of “good” and “evil,” but never letting the audience forget that good guys sometimes have to be bad in order to survive. He neither invests any real emotion in their pain nor explores the reasons for their suffering, except in the most offhanded of ways, instead choosing to dispassionately marinate in their misery. Moreover, “Donnybrook” traffics in insultingly reductive ideas about, as Sutton describes in a recent LA Times profile, “where we are right now.” He contextualizes his characters’ desperation in no deeper way other than platitudes about “the world going to hell,” assuming the audience will understand what that means but presumably ignore the ugly implications/connotations of such a statement. (The conspicuous absence of anything related to race or racism speaks loudly about Sutton’s naively idealistic view of these grievances.) I’ll take Sutton at his word that he honestly wanted to make “a horrible opera of destruction” about a “huge population of people in the middle of the country who feel like they are dispossessed,” but “Donnybrook” treats the upsetting reality of white rural poverty like it’s just grist for the mill. It’s a film that gets off on appalling violence purposefully designed to provoke but mostly just inspires eye rolls, which would be bad enough if it didn’t also have “political” aspirations.

In an attempt to center an underrepresented community, Sutton has reduced their plight to nothing more than a pulpy masquerade. In the process, he has also possibly confirmed some people’s worst assumptions and, worse, validated others’ toxic beliefs. “Donnybrook” makes no attempt to even nod at a nuanced depiction of “the dispossessed” because it wouldn’t fit into its sledgehammer approach or over-the-top beak tone. It’s just a broad canvas of despair that demands its audience fill in the gaps about its causes and the identities of those responsible for it, mostly because Sutton doesn’t really care to do so in his film. Sutton has no moral responsibility to point fingers and name names, but given that he trades in real-life distress, it’s telling that he doesn’t even make an effort. Maybe because doing so would take a full leap into truly nasty territory Sutton isn’t prepared or willing to broach.

I’m personally uncomfortable with depictions of real-life mass shootings on film, mostly because I think there’s rarely an artistic or political utility to employ that kind of violence in a filmic context. The first act of Paul Greengrass’ “22 July,” about the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks and their aftermath, with its suspenseful dramatization of Anders Behring Breivik’s mass murder doesn’t dissuade me of this belief. After briefly psychologizing a few of the victims, primarily Vilijar Hanssen (Jonas Strand Gravli) whom the film follows after the attack, Greengrass shows Breivik’s mass shooting of 66 innocent children at the Utøya summer camp in intimate detail. It’s terrifying and graphic, but doesn’t exactly prove its necessity, especially because Greengrass is more interested in Breivik’s trial and the lingering traumatic effects. Greengrass puts its audience through the ringer for little reason other than to prove that he can effectively dramatize such a horrible event.

Following the attack, “22 July” settles into more of a respectable, conventional approach. Greengrass follows three narrative strands: Lawyer Geir Lippestad’s (Jon Øigarden) defense of Breivik (Anders Danielsen Lie), which begins with an insanity plea and ends with a guilty admission; Hanssen’s slow but miraculous recovery from his severe injuries as well as his prolonged PTSD; and, briefly, the public inquiry into the governmental failure to identify Breivik as a threat from the perspective of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Ola G. Furuseth). The script spreads itself too thin and none of these threads can really make much of a potent impact. However, Hanssen’s story appropriately receives the lion’s share of the film’s attention, including a close consideration of his frustration, guilt, and fear. Gravli invests Hanssen’s fraught mental state with real emotion, which goes a long way to keeping “22 July” from being a completely exploitative mess. (It should be noted that Greengrass’ choice to have Norwegian actors speak accented English is dispiritingly predictable, given that it will go a long way to securing an international audience when released on Netflix in October.)

At the same time, “22 July” doesn’t really have anything to say about the Norway attacks. Greengrass’ commentary mostly amounts to the undoubtedly accurate point that Breivik’s abhorrent nativist beliefs have proliferated around the globe, and attacks in their name continue to this day. To me, this seems almost painfully obvious, and anyone who pays even the mildest attention to the news can see this play out in real time. As such, that’s not enough of a reason for Greengrass to pay lip service to Breivik’s extremist beliefs, even if it’s to showcase their poisonous nature. I don’t believe Greengrass gives Breivik “a platform,” necessarily (he provides the victims with the vast majority of speech and restrains himself from over-psychologizing Breivik), but his presence is still discomfiting and unproductive. It’s not clear if there’s a way to depict these types of attacks without unintentionally reducing them to the stuff of thrillers, but Greengrass at least tries to provide a fuller picture. To be clear, he doesn’t succeed, but his interests lie in those who are alive and their attempts to honor the dead rather than the murderer in question.

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