#or her playing a more active part ; possibly as a vengeful spirit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

arty-shadow-morningstar · 3 years

Text

Graveyard Siblings (3)

Some for revenge and some sibling bonding.

[Masterlist]

(Part 1)(Part 2)

-------

Adrien was next to be visited. Plagg woke him up from his sleep.

-------

“Kit, wake up. I want camembert.”

“Plagg, silence. You are not getting any cheese if you do that.”

“Sorry, Adrien but you are not my ‘master’ anymore.”

“Plagg? Why are you here? Where’s the ring?”

“The ring is as far away as possible and kept safely away. I am here because someone wants to talk to you.”

“Who?”

A cloaked, hooded figure stepped out of the shadows to his room.

“Kitty. My Chaton. Did you miss me?” A sweet, familiar but yet so terrifying voice came from the figure.

She pulled down the hood to reveal Ladybug with a wicked-looking black mask with white lenses.

“What am I talking about? You do miss me. Your Bugaboo. Too bad I don’t feel the same, Adrien.”

Lightning flashed and it started to rain. The mask was gone, revealing his dead classmate, Marinette with chilling red eyes. The pigtails grew longer and curved upwards, giving the illusion of her having horns. Twin blades flashed and she leaped towards him. (Damian gave them to her with some lessons in exchange for spending time with, babysitting, the kwamis.)

Adrien scrambled away from the bed in the nick of time. A sword impaling the spot where he just was.

“Plagg, help. Where is the ring? I need to transform.”

“Sorry, kitten. I am not telling you. Even if you did have the ring, it’s not going to be much help.”

“Kitty, stay still. Then, we can be together. Just like you wanted.”

Adrien continued to dodge.

“What do you mean?” He all but screamed at Plagg.

“Pigtails, here, is a vengeful spirit. She’s not going to stop until she is satisfied. How about asking her what she wants?”

“Ladybug, what do you want?”

“What I wanted was a partner I could rely on, someone I can trust with my life, someone who wouldn’t stab me in the back for his own selfish gain. I wanted a friend who would have my back and not tell me to keep quiet at the price of my mental health and my relationships with people I care about. WAS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!”

She managed to get a cut on his left cheek.

Soon, he was on the ground, bleeding out on the round.

“Tell Hawkmoth that he better watch out. Because-” lightning struck and Plagg and Ladybug had disappeared, “his downfall is coming.” Her voice echoed through his room.

Adrien laid bleeding until Natalie opened the door after hearing a crash from the room and came to check on him. As she called an ambulance for Adrien, she wondered if it wasn’t too late to ask for redemption and be spared from Ladybug’s wrath for her part in her murder.

Adrien had the word ‘TRAITOR’ carved into his back. Forever reminding him of his crimes.

--------

He wasn’t in school for a week after the incident. They all were told that Adrien had an accident while fencing.

Gabriel was a little panicking now.

He hired an exorcist, (John Constantine got a hefty amount and did a few flashy magic tricks to appease Gabriel but he didn’t lift the curse Maria put on the place. She is not someone to be on the bad side of and he thinks that he can’t lift it even if he wanted to.)

Emilie gets a little sus at Gabriel when he brought this strange man with a British accent into their home after their son got attacked in his own room with security tighter than Fort Knox.

She doesn’t buy that ‘accident’ bullshit that her husband, son and even Natalie tries to sell her. She thinks it is connected to what happened while she was in a coma.

-----

Adrien has a curse too.

(Credit to @raeuberprinzessin for giving me an idea)

He couldn’t act like the ‘Perfect Adrien’ in public anymore. Acting more like Chat Noir at first then, later a spoiled brat. His friends thought that he was finally rebelling against his father and encouraged it a lot.

Adrien started criticizing other people, strangers at first then to the people working on the photoshoots to his fans to his other school mates, people in his class and his friends. (The curse planted ideas into his head about what he should say and he said them all without thinking about the effect it has on other people)

People started avoiding him not liking his attitude and his comments about how they should behave and change something about them because he doesn’t like it that way and guilt-tripping them when he doesn’t get his way. Even Nino started to distance himself after he saw how Adrien talked to a fan.

The public thought it was a phase but as he got progressively worse, people started despising him. Adrien doesn’t realize this of course so far, happy that his father let him get away with ‘ruining the Agreste image.’ (Gabriel was worried about a potential vengeful ghost and making sure his wife didn't know about his stint as a supervillain. There was also the fact that the Afterlife made more sales than him again and managed to get on the cover of Vogue when he should have, dammit.) He was finally able to say what he wanted to without repercussions. Until he realized when Nino and everyone else cancelled for a hangout for the third time that week that he was slowly losing his friends.

He panics and tries to fix the situation. He didn’t want to be alone again.

He talks to Nino about it and to his horror, he couldn’t stop himself from saying many things that were a little hurtful. (Second part. The moment he realizes he is going to be alone. He is going to find out that yes, lies can hurt people. He is going to see it happen firsthand.)

Nino moved seats and told Adrien that their friendship was on hold until he apologized.

Soon, nearly every time his mouth opened, lies and insults about his friends or their embarrassing secrets came spilling out. Everyone hated him now and Mme. Bustier tried to give him a reprimand about his behaviour, which when he tried to defend himself, he found himself unable to speak.

He managed to explain to his father what caused his unpopularity by writing what happened to him. Unfortunately due to his poor behaviour before the second part of the curse was activated, his fan base was dwindling and people didn’t like him anymore so there was a hit on the Gabriel brand.

He no longer has to do modeling, clearing his schedule. But no one would spend time with him.

The best solution he could do with his predicament was to keep quiet and endure the loneliness and the glares of his classmates at school. Adrien was relegated to the back and nearly everyone avoided him. He was now a social pariah.

Even Lila avoided him because of her own curse which made Adrien turn into one of her previous victims. (She also didn’t ponder why Marinette rarely appears compared to the others.)

If Adrien felt a tiny bit remorseful or guilty for making Marinette keep quiet or betraying Ladybug, he can gain a little control over what he says.

The curse can be broken if he apologizes to Maria herself or to her grave.

------

The first few months, while Marinette adapted to living with the Waynes, Jason stayed over at Wayne Manor because having Maria living with him at his apartment wasn’t a good idea and he had no clue how to take care of a teenage girl.

On paper she is adopted by Bruce because Jason can’t. (Some CPS reasons.)

Making Jason a little more salty towards Bruce. “I found her first. I called dibs.”

Brought Maria to meet the other Outlaws and they adopted her too. “Hey, guys. She’s my sister first.”

Jason was the one to teach her how to shoot a gun because he was ‘the most capable’ of teaching her.

The first few months were a little tense with Marinette not fully trusting them and the same with the rest of the Batfam.

Jason warmed her up a bit to him by telling a little of why he took her here.

He was also the one to book them flight to Paris with Bruce’s credit card so she can tell her friends that she wasn’t dead in person.

They bonded more after stopping some nefarious plot in Paris while they were there. Let’s say Gentleman Ghost and something involving the catacombs in Paris. (I watched some Batman: Brave and the Bold for childhood nostalgia.)

Kwamis were animal-shaped and they were interesting creatures to be around. And very very curious.

There was a stressful day for Maria when all the Kwamis decided to play hide and seek. Damian somehow got roped into helping her as the only available person in the Manor and he will deny that he enjoyed it.

Damian is the little brother she always wanted and she is more tolerable compared to his brothers. There is also the fact that she trusts him with the kwamis and deep down, he feels super-honoured. (I just love older sister!Mari)

Tim and her being insomniac/coffee buddies. There has been many many interventions to stop this.

I get that Marinette is this selfless person and loves making people happy but she has siblings now and them eating the stuff she made for herself to enjoy, should get on her nerves after a while.

She makes a box with booby-traps in which she puts in her cookies and food.

There are many different layers of traps because this is the Batfam and each of them is non-lethal and more ridiculous.

Okay, I once read a fic about Marinette making a bear-trap style box to hide the Miracle Box so this box is also like that but kept for food. (Traps and Sneaks by quicksilversquared)

Someone (I vote a hungry Dick or Jason, maybe a suspicious Bruce) made a mistake of putting their hand into the box and the first trap activated.

Screams filled the house.

Everyone came down including Marinette.

Bruce asked, “Who did this?”

“It was me.”

“Why?”

“They kept eating the cookies.”

“There are other ways to stop them from doing that you know like a ‘Do Not Touch’ sign not a death trap box.”

“They are non-lethal.”

Bruce locked it away but Tim later stole it to tweak it and store his coffee. ------ (Part 4)

#graveyard siblings #maribat #ml x dc #mlb x dc #adrien salt #adrien bashing #platonic jasonette #platonic daminette

551 notes · View notes

hellzabeth · 3 years

Text

i have opinions about The Prince of Egypt musical adaption and you’re going to listen to them: An Essay

So, quick disclaimer: The Prince of Egypt is one of my favourite movies of all time. The casting, the music, the animation, I think it’s one of the top-tier movies that have ever been made. I went into seeing the London West End production of PoE with a full expectation that nothing I saw on stage would ever live up to how much I love the movie. I was fully aware there are plenty of limitations to what can be shown live on a stage with human actors and props.

That being said, I was enormously disappointed with how the whole thing was handled.

The Good

Now before I launch into a whole tirade of what I didn’t like about the production, it does behoove me to say what I think they did do well.  

The casting of the role of Moses was done fantastically, as was Miriam, Tzipporah, and Yocheved. The swings and the ensemble were really engaged and well placed, going through lots of quick changes to go from Hebrews to Egyptians to Midianites and back. 

The two Egyptian queens, wifes of Seti and Ramses, are actually given names, lines, and character beyond being simply tacked onto their respective kings. We get to see how they feel about the events happening around them, and there’s even a scene where Ramses meets his wife and courts her, whereas in the movie, she stands in the background and says nothing. This is one of the areas I was hoping the musical, which would naturally have a longer run-time, would expand on, and I was pleased to see the opportunity was taken.

Light projections on enormous curtains were used to very good effect, taking us instantly inside the walls of the palace and then out to the desert.  

Over all, the work was really put in to be engaging and emotional, and the orchestra really worked to deliver the right musical beats. 

One of two stand out scenes as being done very well was the opening “Deliver Us”, which included a bone-chilling moment of Egyptians separating a mother and her baby, with her screams as she’s dragged off-stage, and the blood on the guard’s sword. It really brings home the fear as Yocheved tries to lead Aaron and Miriam to the river with her, not to mention Yocheved’s actress nailed the lullaby.  

The second was at the other end of the show, “When You Believe” was beautifully performed by the whole cast, though it was somewhat stunted by what came before...

The Bad

Oh boy.

So the main problem with this show is not the music, not the staging, not even that sometimes the ensemble was a little off-beat (the lai-lai-lai section in Though Heaven’s Eyes comes to mind). Any mistakes there can all be forgiven, since sometimes things just happen in live performance, someone’s a bit off or something’s just not possible to do on the budget allotted.  

The problem is in the script.

The Prince of Egypt movie is a story that stands not only on the shoulders of its fantastic music and visuals, but also on its emotive retelling and portrayal of the characters within - mainly Moses and Ramses. And while the stage musical does spend a lot of time with the two mains, it neglects two other, incredibly important characters.

Pharaoh Seti, and God.  

In the movie, Seti strikes an intimidating figure. He is old, hardened, and wise in the ways of ruling his kingdom - and is voiced by Patrick Stewart, who brings his A-game to the role. Both Moses and Ramses admire him and look up to him immensely as young men, and the relationship he has with both of them deeply informs their characters as the story progresses. It’s from Seti that Moses learns that taking responsibility for your actions is the respectable thing to do (and later, the true horror of having your idol turn out to be not what you think), and it’s from Seti that Ramses takes a huge inferiority complex.

There are two lines that Seti gets in the movie, one spoken to Moses, and one to Ramses. These two lines define Moses and Ramses’ actions later on in the story:

To Ramses - “One weak link can break the chain of a mighty dynasty!” To Moses - “Oh my son... they were only slaves.”

Guess which two lines are absent from the musical?

One Weak Link is turned into an upbeat song, rather than shouted at a terrified and cowed young Ramses. Instead of being openly a traumatic, internalised moment of negative character development for Ramses, it’s treated as a general philosophy that Seti passes down to his son. Instead of a judgement that is hung over Ramses’ head like a sword of Damocles, lingering in his mind through the whole story and coming up in a shouted argument with Moses later, it’s said and then moved on from.  

The “they were only slaves” comment, on the other hand, is absent entirely. This changes Moses’ relationship with Seti enormously, as well as his relationship with the Hebrew people. Upon finding the mural depicting the killing of the slave children, Moses is appropriately horrified, and Seti shows up to comfort him and defend his terrible actions. Moses leaves this interaction... and then sings about how this is indeed all he ever wanted! He has no moment of horrific realisation that his father thinks of the slaves as lesser, as lives that can be thrown away. This means that the scene where he kills the guard doesn’t lead into a discussion of morality with Ramses as he runs away, but rather Moses breaking down about his heritage as though it’s a negative, instead of something he’s realised is just as valuable as his life as an Egyptian. Instead of Moses being shown as having a strong moral core that protests against the idea of any life being lesser, he bemoans his Hebrew blood loudly, and makes little mention of the man he killed. His issue that causes him to run away is being adopted, rather than his guilt that he’s a murderer, and nothing Ramses can say will change it.

Later on, we don’t see Ramses express this opinion either (in the movie - M:”Seti’s hands bore the blood of thousands of children!” R:“Hah, slaves!” M:“My people!”) so it seems the core reasoning for the necessity of the extremes God had to go to in order to convince Ramses to let the Hebrews go is completely gone.

Which leads us into God Himself, as a character.  

God is a tricky topic in general. He is hard to talk about as a concept and as a character, and even harder to depict in a way that won’t offend someone. The Prince of Egypt movie always struck me as a very good depiction of the Old Testament God - vengeful and strong-willed, commanding and yet nurturing, capable of great mercy and great cruelty in one fell swoop. God is incredibly present in the story, a character in and of Himself, speaking with Moses rather than simply commanding him. The conversation at the Burning Bush is bone-chillingly beautiful. Moses is allowed to question, he’s allowed to enquire, he’s allowed to express how he feels about God’s choice, and God is given the chance to respond (and reprimand, and comfort).

In the musical, the Burning Bush scene lasts all of two minutes, during which God (the ensemble cast, acting as one moving flame, speaking in unison) monologues to Moses, and Moses is not given room to question, talk to, or build a relationship with God. Later on, once some of the plagues have gotten underway, Moses rails against God, flinches in his resolve, and tries to back out... and God says nothing. It’s Miriam and the spirit of Yocheved that convince Moses to keep going. As a character, God is nearly absent. Even when it comes to calling upon the Plagues, or parting the Red Sea, God’s voice is absent. Moses does not pray. He does not even use the staff that God encouraged him to pick up as a symbol of his becoming a shepherd of the Hebrews out of Egypt.  

It’s these little changes, these little absences of such vital lines and presences, that ends up changing the whole vibe of the show. Seti is more like a dad than an emotionally distant authority figure, and God is more like an emotionally distant authority figure than a character at all. Ultimately, the whole feeling that one is left with at the end…

The Ugly

… is that the script doesn’t like God, or religion in general.

A bold statement to make, considering the source material is one of the central biblical stories in EVERY Abrahamic religion. Moses as a figure is considered so important and close to god, that The Prince of Egypt, even with its sensitive portrayal, cannot be aired in a number of Islamic states, because it’s considered disrespectful to depict any of the prophets, especially an important one like Moses. Moses is arguably the MOST important prophet in the Jewish canon.

However, I haven’t highlighted one of the most noticeable script changes - the elevation of Hotep, the high priest, to main antagonist.

In the original movie, Hotep is a secondary villain, a crony to the Pharaohs, bumbling and snide and two-faced. He and his fellow priest Hoy are there primarily to juxtapose how charlatans can control power through flattery and slight of hand, reassuring Ramses that Moses’ miracles are merely magic the same as what they can do. They even get a whole villain song, “Playing With The Big Boys” which is a lovely deconstruction of lyrics vs visuals, where while the priests boast that their gods and magic are much more powerful, in the background the staff, transformed into a snake by god, devours and defeats the priests’ snake handily. The takeaway from the song is that God’s power is true, and doesn’t need theatrics.

It’s a good little nugget of wordless world building. And it is completely absent from the stage musical, with only a vague reference to the chant of all the gods names.

Hoy is gone, and Hotep is the only priest. He actively speaks out against the Pharaoh, boasts about having all the power, and is played as bombastic and proud. He’s a wildly different character, even threatening Ramses at one point. In the end, it’s shown that Ramses won’t let the Hebrews go not because he has inherited his father Seti’s cruel attitude towards the lives he considers beneath him, but because he is being actively bullied by the priest, and will lose his power and credibility if he doesn’t do as he’s told. Ramses is even given a whole song about how little power he really has. The script desperately wants us to feel sorry for Ramses’ position and hate the unrepentantly, cartoonishly evil priest.

That’s another matter as well - a LOT of time is dedicated to making the Egyptians more human and sympathetic, portraying them as largely ignorant of the suffering beneath them, rather than actively participating in slavery. Characters speak out of turn without regard for formality and class, even to the royal family. They are casual, chummy even. And this would be fine - in fact, it’s good to have that sort of third dimension to characters, even ones who are doing reprehensible things, to show the total normalcy and banality of evil - if it were not for the fact they still include a completely open-and-shut case of evil right next to them.

Hotep has no redeeming features. And on the other side, God is barely present, certainly not in a relatable context. Moses has several lines about how cruel and unnecessary God’s plagues are - and you know what, in this version, they are unnecessary! Ramses is not the stone-hearted ruler that his movie counterpart is, he has no baggage over being a potential failure, because it was never really given to him in the same way! By taking away Ramses’ threatening nature, numbers like the Plagues lose half their appeal, as the back-and-forth ‘you who I called brother’ lines between Moses and Ramses are completely absent. Moses is faithless, and is less torn between the horror of what he’s doing and the necessity of it for the freedom of his people, and more left scrabbling for meaning that he doesn’t find. And the only thing hanging over Ramses is Hotep nit-picking everything he does and threatening him, which is considerably less compelling than the script seems to think it is.

This is best exemplified at the end, when all the issues come to a head. The angel of Death comes and takes the Egyptian first borns (which was actually a well done scene), and the Hebrews leave to a rousing rendition of When You Believe. But then we cut to Ramses and Hotep, with Hotep openly threatening to revolt against the Pharaoh - whom was believed, especially by the priesthood, to be a living god! Hotep is so devoid of redeeming features he cannot even be trusted to stand by his beliefs! - unless Ramses agrees to chase after the Hebrews. Reluctantly, Ramses is badgered into the attempt.

Back with the Hebrews, Moses parts the Red Sea… not with his faith, not by praying to God for another miracle, not even by using his staff as in the most famous scene of the movie… but by holding out his hand and demanding the ‘magic’ work. Setting aside the disrespect of Abrahamic religions to call one of the most famous miracles “magic” (and my oh my, if there was a fundamentalist of any religion in the audience they might have gasped to hear it), it again belittles the work of God, and puts all the onus on Moses, not as a conduit for God’s work, but as the worker himself. Then, the Egyptians arrive in pursuit, lead by Hotep, not Ramses. Moses sends the Hebrews through first, lead by Miriam, and stays behind with Tzipporah… to offer his life in penance to Ramses! The script has completely stripped both Ramses and Moses of their convictions towards their causes, and Moses cannot even stand by his decision to lead his people.

Then, in a moment of jarring melodrama, Moses has a sudden vision that Ramses, his brother, will one day be called Ramses the Great (an actual historical Pharaoh who reigned 1279-1213 BCE). There is no historical evidence that this was the Ramses that ruled over the Hebrews (there are 11 Pharaohs called Ramses through the history of Ancient Egypt), and maybe if the scene was acted a little better, it wouldn’t have been so sudden or jarring. Even more jarring, is that then Hotep arrives with the rest of the army, and Ramses refuses to lead the charge into the parted sea. Hotep does so himself, and is the one to have the final dramatic moment, being crushed under the water.

The Takeaway

After watching the show, I’m afraid I could never recommend it as either a play, an adaption, or even as a faithful retelling of a bible story. Its character drama isn’t compelling enough to be good as a standalone play, with it two main characters declawed and their core motivations reduced to a squabble between brothers rather than a grand interplay between two cultures and ideas and trauma handed down from their father. As an adaption of the movie it’s upsettingly bad, with grand numbers like the Plagues rendered piecemeal and fan favourites like Playing With The Big Boys missing entirely. As a retelling of the bible story, it’s insulting, completely cutting God out of the equation, taking no opportunity to reintroduce Aaron as an important character (which he was, in the bible, as Moses was a notoriously bad public speaker, with a stutter, and Aaron often interpreted for him) and more importantly, completely erasing God’s influence from the narrative.

I don’t know who this show was… for, in that case. If it wasn’t for drama lovers, movie fans, or people of the faith, then who the hell was it for? Why change such a critically acclaimed and well-beloved story? Why take away all these defining moments? If you wanted to tell a story about how religion is the true evil, how God can command people to do terrible things, and how those who uphold organised religion like Hotep are unrepentant, one-dimensional monsters… why would you tell that through the Prince of Egypt?

Underwhelming at best, infuriating at worst… just watch the movie. Or read Exodus. At least the Bible’s free.

#the prince of egypt #the prince of egypt musical #PoE #review #essay

67 notes · View notes

knowledgequeenabc · 4 years

Text

See No Evil

[alternatively: In Which Kai Really Should Have Brought Sunglasses]

[or Kai gets his eyes stolen by the eye snatcher. Tw for eye horror I’m so sorry I have nothing to say for myself except the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. it’s not even Halloween, what am I doing]

They land up in the unassuming little village, surrounded on all sides by dense forest with only a dirt path winding through it, on a tip to take out some local mafia kingpin.

The mafia ends up being the part of the experience they nearly forget when they look back on the story.

When they anchor the Bounty outside the shadowy thicket and walk in on foot, Kai feels a faint rush of nostalgia for Ignacia, his own dirt paths and straw huts and small storefronts, before he squashes it underfoot and reminds himself to stay focused. Something isn't quite right here; for one, there are no kids playing in the dusty streets.

The villagers here have wary faces, not unfriendly but approaching every interaction like they’re waiting to be jumped by a panther. Every forager, farmer, or shopkeeper they ask about suspicious activity in the area is surprisingly blasé about the prospect of a criminal syndicate under their noses, but their faces go dark when they whisper about something else—the vengeful spirit of a man, one whose eyes were gouged out by highway robbers, that collects the eyes of unsuspecting victims in death.

Cole, never one for appreciating the supernatural, immediately hates it. Jay snorts and dubs it the “eye snatcher”, but there’s a waver to his voice when anyone gets graphic with their rumors. The others are also appropriately spooked, unnerved by the unforeseen threat added to their radars.

Kai, for one, doesn’t think much of it. Yeah, it’s definitely creepy, but quite honestly he’s heard worse from old wives’ tales about creatures in Ignacia. Heck, they used to say that Serpentine would eat your children whole if you whistled at night, and that one was definitely false, so sue him if he’s not entirely buying the story.

As they work their way through the village, asking questions as inconspicuously as possible under the guise of curious travellers, the vengeful thieving spirit is a recurring theme. Jay, with his mismatched blue and brown eyes, is chagrined beyond belief when a caned old man walking the street eyes them suspiciously for a second, before pointing his cane at Jay and stating, “You young ones should probably get off the street. The eye spirit likes odd eyes like yours.”

The thing that solidifies it in their imagination far too vividly for comfort is the shopkeeper who turns to answer their queries about funny business with a colorful bandana wrapped around her eyes. She does the same thing everyone else does, brushing off questions of illicit activity and incidents with the casualness of a Slither Pit fighter, then fusses about why they were stupid enough to come at all.

“Laugh all you want about our tales, they’re borne of truth,” she grumbles. “I used to be one of the best blacksmiths in the village before I had my eyes taken.”

Kai winces. As a fellow blacksmith, he can attest to the fact that you do, in fact, definitely need eyes to forge. He’s had enough dumb mishaps that the burns on his hands and face speak to, and he’s got a perfectly working pair of peepers. (Debatably.)

“It was only a few years ago, and I remember it in my nightmares like it was last night,” the shopkeeper continues, clearing items off the small counter separating her and the ninja with practiced ease. “I needed more metal to smith, and I was foolish enough to set off alone.”

The ninja prick their ears up politely, faces a mix of intrigued and perturbed. Kai stifles a sigh and makes himself comfortable on his feet, knowing full well they won’t be able to stop her now. At the very least, whatever she says will probably be important.

“As the sun set and the shadows started to go long—that’s when they tell you you should never be outside alone, you know—I had only just left my shop, because taking inventory took longer than I planned. I left the outskirts of the village and hit proper forest, and that’s when I heard it.”

Jay gasps a little too dramatically, and Kai rolls his eyes. Lloyd’s looking pretty invested, too, owlish and worried, as if he doesn’t know how this is going to end already. Poor Cole looks ready to puke, and Zane and Nya are divided between sympathetically patting his back and weary amusement at the others.

“I thought the rustling was going to be bandits, except I should’ve known better. I was in my cheapest clothes,” their shopkeeper says wryly. “When I turned, the forest was completely black. There was no moon, just …” Here she shudders, and her voice begins to shake. “Just a sea of eyes, of every color, in a black abyss, staring me down.”

By now, they’re all properly terrified. Kai isn’t loving the imagery, himself; it makes his own eyes twitch uncomfortably.

“I couldn’t think to run. I was too afraid. Before I could even catch my breath to scream it swept in and-” Another shudder. “-and it’s like my entire face had turned to ice. Then it turned to fire. Then I realized I couldn’t see. I put my hands to my face and there was nothing there.

"That, young ones, is why you don’t want to be here. Every second you’re here is overstaying your welcome, frankly; we only remain because we fear subjecting ourselves to the forest long enough to move away.”

A moment of stunned silence. Then, Lloyd steels himself and thanks the woman for sharing her story, promising they’ll heed her warning. Cole pipes up next to ask if she has any other information she’d like to share, and then asks to buy some food. (Fair enough; Kai would want something to compensate for the fact that they had to be here, and he’s seen Cole eyeing the colorful packets hanging off the ceiling and lying on small shelves.) Jay announces he’ll leave them to it after asking Cole to buy him something, then steps back.

Kai, deciding everyone else can handle themselves, follows him.

“Penny for your thoughts? Though,” he muses, “I probably shouldn’t pay, you offer those up for free anyway even when we don’t ask."

“Har har.” Jay isn’t amused.

“Okay, but seriously.”

A beat.

“Sure, there’s a mafia or whatever,” Jay opines at length, leaning against the short counter. “But if you ask me, they don’t seem too worried about it, maybe it’s not as bad as Zane made it sound! Maybe we should just let them loose into the woods and let the eye snatcher take care of ‘em before we hightail our little ninja hineys out of here at the speed of fast because this eye snatcher thing is really creepy.”

“You believe it?” Kai raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t? You heard the lady.”

“I did. It’s awful what happened to her, either way,” Kai concedes, before Jay can accuse him of being a total skeptic. “But you heard her, she was scared stiff when it happened. Sometimes you don’t see right when you’re spooked, I’m just saying.”

“What do you have to be on to make that up?” Jay gapes at him.

“I don’t know what they eat out here, don’t ask me.” Kai puts his hands up. “Wives’s tales and rumors can get crazy in villages, I should know. If you won’t take it from me, ask Nya. Weird stuff happens when civilization is this far out, but that doesn’t mean the stories people tell about them are true.”

"Yeah, but … " Jay idly kicks up a cloud of dust. He's not convinced, Kai can tell, and this mission will be significantly easier if he's not keyed up over something they haven't seen. That weirdo going on about "odd eyes" earlier probably didn’t do anything for his nerves, either.

"Well, either way." He claps Jay's shoulder once as he spots Nya pulling away from the shop window. "We’ll be on our guard when we bust this ring up. Small or not, they probably won't go out without a fight."

Maybe they had something to do with it … it sure can’t hurt, if you’re a crime boss, to have people put up with you because they’re afraid of something worse, after all.

The next day, they finally get a lead after a day of nearly-fruitless interviewing. The "base" for these small-town maniacs is an abandoned rest stop of sorts in a clearing, a ways out from the village.

Kai and Nya, resident village experts and least likely to draw suspicion with their mannerisms, go to ask for directions to "Lala uncle's shop", a codeword they'd managed to deduce yesterday stood for the old rest stop the dacoits were operating out of. The other four are waiting at the Bounty, but Kai and Nya have already given them the go-ahead to raid the place if they don't come back quickly—the four of them can handle themselves fine, and the local jail isn't too far off. The less time they spend in this whacked-out forest, the better.

The entire ordeal of convincingly selling their interest in shady dealings has them both sweating bullets through their old civvies, but Kai manages to pull through in the end by promising the seedy old guy that he’ll hook him up with Venomari spit dealers in Ninjago City for a discount. Kai definitely has to draw on more old knowledge from his Slither Pit days than he’s comfortable with for that one, and Nya’s hard side-eye burns his back when they leave.

Presumably, the thug’s just relieved that someone is willing to risk operating with the eye snatcher (to use Jay’s name) as an occupational hazard, but he eventually nods and tells them how to get there, what landmark will signal the right spot, and a warning to come alone.

Once Nya’s texted the directions to the group chat, along with a warning to stay together in the forest, the two of them start the trek in earnest, trunks towering up above them to stroke against the sky. Kai nervously looks at the orange streaks in the sky, the sun’s low position painting the clouds golden, and the shadows of the trees lengthening, and decides they’d better hurry along before something can pounce on them. Eye cryptid or no, forests are home to plenty of big animals that Kai isn’t exactly in the mood to have a wrestling match with.

The walk is comfortably quiet, at first, both he and Nya having worn out their conversational energy on the low-level mafioso from before. Crickets have started chirping, and the brush shakes with life their eyes don’t see. It’s not so bad, once Kai puts away the paranoid thoughts of the eye spirit sneaking up on them.

Then he turns to ask Nya what to do after they reach the fallen log, and he’s met with empty space instead.

The first thought he has is that he should’ve let her drown in that rice paddy as a kid and saved himself the heart attacks down the line.

The second thought is that this is very bad, and he has to find her yesterday because this forest is dangerous and also not the place to throw caution to the wind. (Rich words coming from him, he is well aware, but Nya is missing and he definitely wanted her to be careful.)

Trying to keep his head on, Kai lights a fist into faint flames and retraces his steps, calling Nya’s name.

No luck, so he searches the areas near their path, then goes back to his starting point and keeps looking slightly beyond that, hoping that she’d just gotten caught up in the moment and forgotten to stop and check the directions. That has to be all. Nya is fine. Of course she’s fine, he hadn’t looked out for her so long only to fail so stupidly at protecting her now—

A faint rustle of grasses behind him shakes Kai out of his worried spiral, and he’s so relieved he almost laughs. There’s Nya, and he should’ve expected that she’d be competent enough to find him-

The greeting dies on his lips.

The forest has gone an inky black, the twilight sky blotted out entirely. The feeble streams of light that are left glint against a carpet of eyes, glittering with malice and pinning him where he stands. They’re all around him, no matter where he turns. Colorful irises, like so many gems, like demented stars in a ghastly night sky, stare straight through him as if to size him up, and it feels violent, somehow. A crushing chill has seeped into his bones, and his brain screaming at him to run doesn’t register to his legs.

Kai moves his arm, to draw his sword, maybe, or to set it alight, to do anything at all, and hundreds, thousands, of eyes immediately fly to the motion as one. The sharpness of the action freezes him in his spot, and his breath is arrested from his lungs.

Kai knows anger like the blood in his own veins, but even he can’t imagine clinging to a grudge this obsessively. The eye spirit is the village’s penance, one unfortunate ghost lashing out hundredfold yet still hungry for more. The shopkeeper’s words are ringing in his ear, mockingly, as if to say, didn’t I warn you? Shouldn’t you have run when you had a chance?

He doesn’t think he can run now.

The spirit in front of him of a thousand and one eyes closes in, and a long, dark shadow falls over his terrified face. A faint beam of light hits his wide eye, illuminating it alone in a warm blaze of amber.

Kai, paralyzed, legs shaking, his stomach violently turning in on itself, cannot quite summon the thought that at least it’s him, and not Nya, that’s here.

“You have quite beautiful eyes, you know.”

His world goes midnight-black.

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

Nya has always liked her brother’s eyes, although she’d rather spray herself with perfume than admit anything so sappy to his face. Ever since they’d been young, warm brown eyes held a promise that nothing would happen to her without his permission. They’d burn furiously whenever she was hurt, and soften to reassure her that they were safe and the world couldn’t touch them. On unlocking his true potential, they’d flashed a bright fiery amber, all the more fitting for the passion he constantly wore on his sleeve around the other ninja. Since then, she’s seen those eyes harden with determination and gleam fondly at their family’s antics, as they had with her so many times. Even now, when she’s nervous that things will break under their feet again, when she feels powerless in the face of the fate her family has taken on, Kai’s warm, determined gaze brings her comfort and strength.

Now, though, she’s afraid, not that she wants to admit it, and she’s got no one but herself. It’s been over half an hour since Kai vanished on her, and if those things the village folk whispered about as they walked by are any indication … they’re both in trouble. The sun has almost fully set, and it’s getting difficult to see under the dense foliage that blocks out the sky. Her phone screen makes decent light for now, but she needs to save the battery on it in case she gets any more texts from the group—

Her phone buzzes, and Nya almost jumps. Right, she’d taken it off silent mode.

It’s Cole, in the group chat. They went on and raided Lala’s shop without her and Kai, and apparently it went without a hitch. According to him, Lloyd and Zane are taking the last few criminals they rounded up to the local jail, but he and Jay are already at the Bounty and they're asking if she and Kai are okay.

Good. If anything ends up happening before she can find Kai, she’ll need the extra hands to help her out once she gets back.

She fires off a couple words about her situation, then walks a couple paces longer before an acrid tinge in the air halts her in her tracks.

Cautiously, she follows it, weapon out in case anything jumps her.

A couple more steps reveals charred bark on a nearby tree, singed leaves and grass in the undergrowth, and the familiar taste of smoke. She strokes the bark gently, feeling it crumble away at her fingertips, and her heart sinks. Her steps quicken, dumping her in a small clearing before she can break into a proper run. For a second, two, three, Nya can’t do anything but stare, unsure how to process what she’s looking at, why it feels so wrong. Then she takes a hesitant step forward.

Kai is sitting in the clearing on his knees, his back to her and softly glowing in the light of dusk. The grass around him is haphazardly burnt, but none of it is on fire, at least. His head is oddly hung, hair messy(-ier than usual, anyway), shoulders low and vulnerable. He looks smaller than she’s ever seen him, she thinks, and her chest squeezes painfully.

Her tentative step crunches on leaf litter. Kai sits still as death—no, not death, she berates herself for even thinking the word—but as he hears her coming, he stiffens, shoulders flying back up and hands at his sides curling into weak fists.

Nya stops again, appraising his reaction.

“... Kai?”

Immediately, his head pops up.

She cuts herself off as she closes the distance between them and catches Kai flinching.

“Nya.” There’s so much relief in his voice it almost hurts, but there’s something else she can’t pinpoint that isn’t quite right. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay!” It comes out harsher than she means, but he’s been gone way too long and Nya’s thoughts have been starting to head pretty unsavory places. “Where have you been? Do you have any idea how long we’ve been out here, the others already finished the mafia raid without us and everything—”

She cuts herself off as she closes the distance between them and catches Kai flinching.

Why isn’t he running to the Bounty by now? Come to think of it, why hasn’t he immediately jumped up and hugged his concern out on her? Kai fusses and she knows it, and he sounds happy to see her, but he’s just been. Sitting there.

Around now is the time Nya’s brain stops letting her ignore the horrible idea that’s been bouncing around inside her skull like an annoying pebble since she noticed Kai wasn’t with her. Her stomach bottoms out.

“... hey, Kai? What’s wrong?”

She’s crouched behind him and is about to reach for his shoulder when he finally speaks up again, low and rough.

“I suppose it’s real, then.”

There are many things she was expecting out of his mouth, but that’s not one of them.

“Huh?”

“The eye snatcher.” Finally, Kai’s head turns towards her, and her heart stops. She swears it stops. “I guess it’s real.”

Where her brother’s fierce amber eyes used to be, there’s nothing. The faint outline of eyelids is obscured by a dark shadowy haze slashing across Kai’s face in a jagged line.

She understands why the shopkeeper wore that bandana now.

Nya’s hand flies over her mouth before she can stop them, except she figures it doesn’t matter if he can’t see her do it.

“Oh, Kai …” she breathes, her eyes welling up. With shaking fingers, she cradles the side of his face; Kai flinches back initially, but reluctantly lets her trail where his eyes used to be with her hand when she tries again. He leans into the touch despite the chill her fingers have picked up from walking outside so long, and she swallows the sob fighting up her tightening throat. Her tears are the last thing Kai needs right now, after all.

With her other hand, she pushes back his more unruly bangs, and examines the awful void left in place of what the spirit stole from her brother as if it might hold any answers.

She might have had somewhere to look, except the spirit took them.

They’re both still like that for a minute or so before Kai tentatively reaches out, feeling for her neck, her shoulders, down her arms, and pulls her into a desperate hug. He’s still shaking, and Nya probably is, too. She’s struck right then by how helpless she is, how little she knows about where to begin fixing this once she leads Kai back to the Bounty, and if there’s one thing she hates, well. That’s it. Seeing Kai so openly vulnerable is breaking her a little.

That’s fine, though, she thinks, tightening her grip as Kai’s shaking intensifies and the shoulder of her dirty robe goes wet. Kai spent so long trying to be tough for them, so … she should be able to return the favor.

Nya just doesn’t know how she’s going to do that, under the crackle of snapped twigs and twisted branches’ shadows dancing in the soft light of the rising moon.

An owl hoots, ominously certain of its place in the forest. Its unblinking eyes, honey orange and piercing, burn against the night.

#ninjago #ninjago fanfiction #kai #kai smith #nya #nya smith #eye horror #ask to tag #no seriously I'm sorry for this and if you need it tagged I'll TAG IT #abc writes #abc arts #bc I have three whole badly-spaced-out drawings in there wheeeeeeee #how do I normally tag my fic uhhh #who knows #fuck it #update: I FUCKING HATE tumblr it scrambled SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS and deleted my read more #I want die

72 notes · View notes

totallyinsecurerobot · 3 years

Text

the only lovers left alive

Summary: Asterix’s history from the moment they meet David. They keep finding each other, they keep ending up together, and maybe it’s fate, or maybe no-one else understands them quite like they understand each other.

A/N: 7718 words. SFW but there’s implied nsfw stuff. It does get a little bit violent at times, and there’s light period-typical (1950s Hollywood) misogyny, implied sexual violence, and victim blaming. It’s all very light, just mentioned in passing, but I thought I should give you a heads up. COMPLETELY UNEDITED AND JUST KIND OF A MESS. PROBABLY OOC. WHATEVER. nb oc & nb marko. poly lost boys at the end there. shut up they’re all in love street smarts.

----

Perhaps it’s that he’s looking to feel powerful, that he sees Asterix, corsetted and well-to-do, taller than most, and he picks them as a victim because they look like a challenge, bragging right to - to who? Their sire perhaps, any others in the area; but Asterix would know if there were others in the area, they’ve been here long enough after all. He’s new to this, Asterix can tell; it seems strange for him to be walking at a normal pace, the movements a little too thought out, where the speed would be second nature to a human. Asterix knows from experience that it takes some getting used to, they’ve been working on it for several centuries already, at the very least.

“You alright, ma’am, you know strange things are afoot in these parts, you should be careful walking around alone at night,” he’s trying to appear charming and nonthreatening, but his clothes don’t fit right; they’re dark enough to hide the blood he hadn’t been able to get out, but nothing could hide the smell from a vampire’s enhanced sense of smell. Asterix plays along.

“Oh my,” Asterix says, eyes wide, hands clutching tight at the silk of their elaborate skirt, “I’d heard rumours, terrible rumours, but I thought this was a nice part of town.” Of course they’d heard the rumours, they’d been the actual source of them, this newbie was just trying to capitalise on how Asterix had normalised disappearances. They weren’t sure whether to laugh or be mad.

“I’m sure you won’t be bothered,” he’s alternating between walking too fast and too slow, trying to keep in time with Asterix’s consistent pace, but not quite being able to hold himself back, “would you allow me to escort you back home, to your- your husband?” He hazards a guess, a product of the time; Asterix, biologically nineteen and dressed to appear feminine, should very well have a husband by now, or at the very least be betrothed; all he’s really doing is determining whether he has to attack before or after they get back to Asterix’s house.

“Oh, I- I’m not... I’m new to town, you see, my Aunt lived here after being widowed at a young age. She passed recently and left me her house, a beautiful property on the edge of town,” Asterix’s story isn’t actually much of a lie, apart from the fact that they’d killed the poor widower who lived on the edge of town and fabricated a new life from her demise, “I certainly shouldn’t be accepting offers from strange men,” Asterix casts what they hope is a nervous glance his way, and the blonde vampire takes an obliging step back, “but I suppose if you really were some dastardly villain, you’d have already seized your opportunity.”

He really should work on controlling his expression, Asterix thinks with heavily veiled amusement; he’s practically telegraphing the ‘this is going to be easier than I thought’ that’s running through his head as he offers an arm for them to take, to be escorted. He’s too quiet, movements too fluid; if Asterix were any other person, they’d find it unnerving, off-putting, in ways they wouldn’t be able to put their finger on. Here and now, as a vampire of several centuries, all Asterix can see his youth in his movements.

Under the guise of small talk, Asterix asks about what rumours he’d heard, and he’s more than eager to warn them of the Devil that’s found a home in town, snatching up young sinners and leaving them dead and drained in the woods.

The Devil... That’s what they’re calling Asterix, they’d heard demon, vengeful spirit, monster, but devil, which had been what they’d been going for initially, was finally starting to pay off.

“Well you’re no devil,” Asterix laughs lightly, giving his arm a squeeze, as if to convey their relief. He doesn’t realise how deliberately they’re playing him, how they’re just waiting for him to reveal himself, and ruin that surprise with one of their own.

“And what about you, ma’am, would you consider yourself a sinner?” His voice is low, intrigued and tiptoeing the line between menacing and thrilling, and Asterix’s throat suddenly goes dry. He wants nothing more than to kill them, they know this, logically they know this, but if he knew the truth, what would their answer really mean.

“It’s just a load of nonsense anyways,” Asterix says, taking a deep breath, leading down a far less lit street. They’re suddenly tried of playing along. But he chuckles, low and rough, and when Asterix turns to look at them, he’s looking back, face twisted into it’s vampiric form, eyes shining bright and golden in the darkness.

“Are you sure?” His voice is a menacing snarl, but Asterix doesn’t flinch in the face of this change, dropping their nervous act in an instant, smirking. Finally.

“Yes,” and he seems confused at their cool, smug expression, their lack of overt reaction, right until they let their own face shift, ridges forming, eyes turning that very same gold, dropping their voice to a growl of their own, “because the Devil’s not a he in this town.”

Honestly, Asterix had kind of been hoping to run this newcomer out of town for trying to capitalize on their good bad name; it’s not easy to make a whole town accept occasional random disappearances, it’s certainly not easy to make them all believe it was divine justice, and to not look for the actual source. What they hadn’t expected was to end up with him apparently living with them.

Like a lost duckling, he still follows them home, and when Asterix asks after his Sire, he gets all broody and angry and admits that he had no idea. They’re in the basement, which Asterix has outfitted for their undead purposes; it’s always cool down here, which also happens to be why they store the excess blood from their victims. No use letting it go to waste, their stomach is only so big after all, and it’s always good to go as long as possible between kills, as to not arouse suspicion. They offer him a jar and he drinks hungrily; he’d been hunting tonight after all, he was probably thirsty, it’s just basic curtesy.

“I’m not going to teach you how to be a vampire... ?” They hesitate, squinting at him, and he fills in the blank with his name.

“Davidson - well, for now it’s Davidson, and I know how to be a vampire,” he frowns, unscrewing the lid of the jar, sniffing the contents doubtfully.

“It’s not virgin’s blood, but that’s an old myth, believe me,” their voice is flatly unamused; the night is young, they had planned to fly a few states over and swim naked in a lake to confuse anyone who happened to see it, not mentor a young vampire, “and boy, I knew what you were the moment I saw you, just because others don’t know what they’re looking for doesn’t mean they won’t be able to tell something’s of. If something’s off about you, soon enough the town starts speculating,” and as they explain, they sit themselves on the velvet sofa, watching him wrinkle his hose as he sips the blood, “and soon enough, the rumours I’ve worked so hard to start, but not be associated with will be linked to you, and once you’re killed or run out of town, I’ll have to start somewhere new from scratch. You’re inconveniencing me by being bad at this,” they tell him, lip curling as they look him over, as if trying to radiate ‘it was fun to meet you and mess with you, but you’re more trouble than you’re worth’.

“I’ll hunt elsewhere, but you don’t get to dictate where I am,” he responded, before raising the jar of blood, licking the excess off his lips, “this is stale.”

“Then give it back and stop being ungrateful,” Asterix held out their hand for the jar, but Davidson quickly scowled, taking another, angry sip, “and if I say I don’t want you to harm a single living person within a fifty mile radius, you’ll damn well do as I say.”

“And what makes you think that?” He sneers, looking over them, in all their silk and finery, on a dainty sofa, his tone derisive and gaze dismissive. Asterix’s lips quirk into a smile that didn’t reach their eyes.

“Because you would not be the first of our kind that I have disposed of,” they’re blunt, unsmiling and unwavering, and Davidson seems to finally start taking them seriously.

But he also stays.

He never hunts within the fifty mile radius that Asterix had set, unless of course Asterix themselves had invited him along on one of the night they hunt in one of the neighbouring towns.

The story has changed too; no longer was Asterix simply playing Lady Estelle, the unfortunate and unwed niece of the widow Sinclair, but now she was actively betrothed to Davidson, the man she’d had to leave behind when she’d accepted ownership of the property. It was the only story that explained their vastly differing looks despite living, and occasionally being seen together.

For the entire first month of the arrangement, Asterix regretted ever agreeing to it. Realistically they knew that if they stuck with the story and the hunting pattern they’d developed, they’d be able to live comfortably here for a very long time, but it didn’t stop them from being irritated by Davidson’s smugness, how bloody and messy he’d be when he came back after feeding, and how he’d roll his eyes whenever Asterix would choose a jar over hunting. They’d icily tell him that it was about now drawing unnecessary attention to themselves; Davidson would simply stick to the rules that had been set, but always chose a hunt over saved blood.

To be fair, he doesn’t see them hunt for that first full month.

When Asterix invites him, Davidson barks a harsh laugh.

“Didn’t think you knew how,” he admits, and says he’s only tagging along to see how a professional does it - his words, sarcasm dripping from them.

And so Asterix takes him to the edge of the outer limit, a sleepy town some fifty miles away, where a man was waiting in a graveyard by the church. Davidson waits out of sight as Asterix directs him to, and he watches in fascination as they approach the man, dressed in silk and lace, and he calls them a name Davidson doesn’t recognize, but Asterix greets him in kind, all quiet and sordid. They kiss like long-separated lovers, and the man, breathless and quiet, talks about running away, about horses waiting nearby, about eloping just like they’d always talked about, and Asterix plays at being thrilled, at tearing up and agreeing, and letting the man slide a ring onto their finger.

It’s it’s own kind of horrifying, Davidson realises quickly, to see how smitten this man is, and to know his fate when the man does not. He follows along, watches them climb aboard a horse that almost bucks the moment Asterix comes close; the man they’re with calms the horse however, and then they’re off. It’s a drawn out process, a slow execution for the man who does not even realise he’s on death row, and it is all but driving Davidson mad as he follows them through the night, through the darkness, for several hours. He’s about to give up, to head home, half convinced Asterix is actually just marrying this man, when the horse stops.

The moon is high in the sky when they stop at Asterix’s insistence, and the man asks what’s wrong when they dismount. Asterix claims to need to stretch, but soon they’re wrapping their arms around him, voice low and intimate;

“It’s just you and me out here, like it should be; you and me for the rest of your life.”

The man doesn’t catch Asterix’s wording as they pull him into their embrace, fingers threaded through his hair, pressing a gentle kiss to his vulnerable throat, but Davidson does. It’s time; he descends from where he’d been circling them like a vulture. The horse spooks and bolts at the sudden newcomer, but this is about the time that Asterix’s teeth sink into the man’s neck, and he tries to struggle, but their grip is unyielding.

He’s begging, pleading, screaming, but as Asterix steps back, they raise their free hand to the wound, as if to stem the bleeding, face transformed and grinning eerily.

“He’s not long for this world, if you’d like to drink it fresh,” Asterix raises their voice, not looking away from the man, though Davidson knows they’re talking to him. The man in their hands screams louder at Davidson’s sudden appearance by his side, but there’s no-one else around to save him. Asterix steps behind the man, fingers still threaded through his hair to hold him in place as Davidson feeds, sloppy, not even half as elegant as Asterix had made it look, but it didn’t matter. Something about the feral, primal way in which he drank had a dark appreciation stirring in Asterix’s chest, and couldn’t help but lean in to the man’s other side and bite him again, to share in this moment.

He’ll lick the blood from their fingers, eyes aglow, and Asterix will remember what it felt like to be newly turned and fearless and reckless, and the power that came with it, the heady sense of invincibility that would surge through them in the afterglow of a kill. They couldn’t begrudge him his cockiness anymore.

There’s a moment, a sense of connection, of understanding, of finally seeing eye to eye, creatures acting on instinct alone in the dead of night. Later, Asterix will explain the countless men they have been wooing in secret, men betrothed or married to other women, men whose families are suspicious of affairs, but with no proof, men who could be called sinners, men who would be perfect targets for The Devil these little towns all feared. Later, they’ll take the body of the man back to their house to exsanguinate him, to not let his blood go to waste, to dispose of him the following night far away from the scene of the crime. Later, Asterix will take the ring off that the man gave them, and Davidson will see the countless other ones just like it in a jewelry box they keep in a dark corner of the basement, and he decides not to ask.

“Even when you kill you’re...” he searches for the words, but they’re not harsh or demeaning like they may have been before this night had occurred, “calculated; men in towns for miles, months of work put in, all so people don’t realise it’s you; it must feel so unnatural to suppress your instincts like that, aren’t you tired of it?”

“I am alive,” Asterix points out, though they grimace at the choice of words, but Davidson understands anyways.

“Next time, hunt with me, let yourself let go,” he urges, teeth sharp and eyes bright. Asterix remembers that tone, his words - and you, ma’am, would you consider yourself a sinner? - as they look at him and agree, exhausted by always playing by the humans’ rules.

It’s freeing to be feral; for the first time in decades, Asterix feels alive.

But still they hold back, terrified of being overcome completely by their bloodlust, too aware of the power they wield to use it to full capacity. Humans only ever require a miniscule amount of power to tear apart, there was no need, they told themselves, for overkill.

The good thing they’ve got going lasts all of five years before people start to get suspicious about how they never age. After a year has passed, they tell other that they’d eloped, if only to keep up the ruse; it would be suspicious if they kept their engagement going on too long in this part of world. They’re both equal parts horrified and amused by it all, not that it changes anything about their dynamic; they’re still free to do whatever they wish with whoever they wish, so long as the people in town never find out.

But still, Asterix gives him the ring that had been given to them by the first victim they’d shared, the night they’d finally started to respect each other. It’s meant partially as a joke, but Davidson wears it nonetheless.

When the time comes, and the townsfolk start asking questions that they can’t answer, they take what little belongings they’ve accumulated - Asterix takes their box of engagement rings - and burn the house they were staying in, no proof of their existence left behind, just the memory of a young couple tragically lost, and they go their separate ways.

Asterix, desperate for a change of scenery, secures passage on a ship headed to Europe, and spends a considerable few decades residing in various bogs across Europe’s various forests, preying on unfortunate explorers, and occasionally towns, if they were close enough. It’s like hibernating, as if turning their brain off to become the instinct-driven creature they truely were. Being away from society, away from humans, away from even others of their own kind, it was the exact reset they needed.

When emerging from their self imposed isolation, there comes news of a war in American having been and gone, and for the barest moment they consider going back, but ultimately decides against it. Instead they take up residency in the heart of London, sleeping in the cellar of a pub they managed to claim ownership of through dubious means. City folk are so desensitized to strange behaviors that they don’t think twice about the pub only ever being open at night, when most others offered a lunch service; they don’t question Asterix managing to be the only employee, it’s a small pub after all. No-one wonders why Asterix is never seen during the day, most assume they’re asleep anyways, since the pub is open practically ‘til dawn.

Sid Priestly, Asterix’s current identity, could be any other human on Earth as far as most of London was concerned. They don’t live in a secluded castle, or hiss, or float menacingly through the air, so none of the humans think to suspect them as anything other than one of their own, albeit one who keeps strange hours.

There’s a few vampires in London, mostly the standoffish types, however there’s a respect and understanding between them all, and they all know Asterix pub to be a place where they will be invited in without question. Asterix, for their part, had reinstated their habit of preserving their leftovers, and finds themselves incorporating blood into one of their dark beers, so their special guests could enjoy themselves as much as the humans.

The pub’s been open for almost nine months when he walks through the doors, looking pleasantly surprised in the golden glow of the overhead lights. One of the other vampires in attendance lights up at the sight of him, waving him over.

“Arthur! Glad you finally made it,” he grins, and turns to Asterix, “two of your finest dark beers, thanks Sid,” and Asterix obligingly turns to fetch two of the blood-infused beers.

“Arthur,” they acknowledge him with a nod and a smirk, placing the beer down in front of him as he sits, giving the other vampire his own, which he sips gratefully while ‘Arthur’ gives the beer a dubious look. His gaze flicks to Asterix, who’s watching with hesitant amusement, not quite sure how to proceed, and then he takes a sip.

“It’s stale,” he says with a knowing smirk, which breaks the tension, and Asterix smirks a laugh, despite the other vampire’s confusion.

“You ungrateful bastard,” Asterix shakes their head, pulling themself a beer and cheersing him.

“Do you two know each other?” The other vampire asks, and Asterix and ‘Arthur’ share a look.

“Sid’s my -” he pauses, giving a look to Asterix, to their masculine presentation and current identity, and he shifts a little, voice growing a little quieter for fear of the human patrons overhearing, “husband.” Asterix huffs a dismissive breath through their nose, rolling their eyes at the memory of their ruse, of their briefly shared life.

“Husband?” The other vampire asks, looking curiously between the two of them, intrigued.

“Wife at the time,” Asterix offers, “I’ve been a lot of things,” is the closest they get to any sort of explanation. It takes a beat for the other vampire to consider, but then he’s shrugging, mentioning that he doesn’t think the beer, or it’s special ingredient, tastes stale; Asterix gives him a toothy, pleased smile, while ‘Arthur’ rolls his eyes despite hiding his grin against the lip of his cup by taking another drink.

There’s an understanding within the community, of outliving the restrictive, human concept of identity, in almost all respects. It’s easier to explore who you are when you literally have all the time in the world; many find labels that fit them, pronouns and names that are comfortable, finding variations of themselves each time they move. Without the pressures or expectations of human society, it’s also easier to be comfortable being with whoever they choose to, especially when they’re more than comfortable ripping apart anyone to cast negative aspersions on them for their choice of partner - or partners.

“You don’t get to claim part ownership of the pub just because we told people we were married fifty years ago,” Asterix closes the pub early that night, finding themself sitting atop the roof with ‘Arthur’. Neither of them is quite sure how to interact with the other, sitting a foot apart, drinking a pint in the moonlight.

“I don’t plan on staying long,” he says, looking out to the city while Asterix is watching him, “thought I’d go be a nuisance around Romania; America’s gotten boring.”

There’s something about him that’s different from when they’d last seen him, something easy and uncomplicated about his movements. His grin stretches wide, leaning back on his elbows, confident, sure of himself. It’s only in seeing him again that Asterix can feel how much his absence ached. It had only been five years, of the few hundred that Asterix had endured at this point, what had been so special about him that they’d been so effected?

He looks at them, smiling sharp and fond in equal measure.

“You’ve gone all soft in your age,” he teases, and immediately Asterix feels themselves growing flustered in their outrage, “serving humans, and not even attempting to court on a single one? How do you ever feed yourself if you’re not stealing the hearts of unfaithful bachelors?”

“I get by,” Asterix tells him, “I’ve got an understanding with some of the others; I don’t have to do the dirty work anymore, my loyal customers provide me with everything I could ever need.”

“Surviving on scraps, always surviving on scraps,” he tuts, “I think you’re scared of yourself, I think you always have been.”

“Arthur,” Asterix warns, eyes flashing a dangerous gold.

“What are they going to do if they figure out what you really are? Kill you, Sid?” He half laughs, and Asterix sits up straighter, tensing at his words, feeling the powers that runs through their blood, their muscles, the centuries of experience built up beneath their skin, “or do you just miss being human that much that you’d do anything to pretend you’re still like them?”

“I am alive,” Asterix snarls, lip curled into something dangerous and menacing, face half-shifted to it’s monstrous form, something they haven’t had to use in what feels like years. He watches them carefully, can see the nerves he’s touched, their button’s he’s pushed, and seems to delight in their indignation.

And maybe it’s that he’s seeing the person he met all those years ago, seeing an opportunity to prove his power; he’d been young then, inexperienced, unsure of his power in relation to them, but his confidence had grown in their absence. He is aware of what he is capable of, and thinks, finally, that he could rival the vampire who’d taken him in all those years ago.

When he pins Asterix faster than a human eye could comprehend, he’s surprised by how easy it is. They’re flat on their back, his knees planted either side of their hips and his hands pinning their wrists either side of their head; for the barest moment, they lock eyes and share in a strange sense of deja vu. Asterix flushes.

“What are you looking to prove?” Asterix asks, turning their head to look at his hand holding their wrist; they flex and unflex their fingers, otherwise unbothered.

“Are you scared of being a vampire? Is that why you try so hard to drink so little? To kill so little? To push down your instincts, deny your nature?”

When Asterix looks back at him, his eyes are aglow, face twisted to reveal his true nature, just like they’d seen countless times before; he thinks he has the upper hand, that like this, he can provoke a reaction from them, get them to fight back.

They’re far too aware of their own capabilities to act so rashly, instead, with surprising ease, they sit up, into his space, surprising him, forcing him back to sit on their thighs, hands raising too, like his grip meant nothing.

“Sweetheart, if I wanted to raze towns, I am more than capable, but if I let myself burn down the world, what would be left? You?” They smiled, but it didn’t reach their eyes. Upon hearing their words, however, their companion actually grins, leaning in as his face changes back to it’s more pleasant disguise, pressing a familiar kiss to their lips.

“I never said to burn the world, but a hundred years ago, people thought you were the Devil; you’re beautiful and terrible, but even then you’d held yourself back,” he’s still holding their wrists, grip loose with their hands in their lap, the two of them nose to nose on this rooftop.

“I’ll always be beautiful and terrible, but I’m not about to sacrifice my comfort for a cheap thrill,” they murmur, lips inches from his, despite their discomfort with the subject.

“You never miss stalking a beautiful lady or handsome gentleman through the night in a quiet town in another country? You never miss...?” And he trails off, fingertips sliding up Asterix’s left arm, their shoulder, to their neck, thumb gentle against their jaw as he tips their head just a little, a gesture they both know all too well, but that Asterix is unfamiliar with being used against them. A shiver runs down their spine.

“Why do you care so much?” Asterix frowned, tipping their head back against his hand, surprised when he holds their jaw instead of moving away. Something unfamiliar began to ache in a spot behind their sternum, close to where their heart should be.

“Because it’s been a hundred years,” and then he’s holding their face gently in both hands, smirking a little, “and you’re still just surviving, I haven’t spent this past century just being afraid, and I’m still here,” he points out, and Asterix bites their tongue on the urge to ask how many of those years he spent on the run, “you’ve thoroughly proven you can lay low, you can live in a bog for decades, so what does it matter if you terrorize a few cities? Burn a few towns to the ground then be a bog mummy, at least some of the time you’d be having fun.”

“I’m having fun now,” Asterix says quietly, blushing a little at the intimacy of it all, but then, as if resentful of his words, “I am fun.” They kiss him like they’re proving a point, something familiar and warm joining that strange sensation in their chest when ‘Arthur’ kisses them back, smiling against their lips.

“How strong are you actually?” He finally asks, pulling back with their hands gripping his hips firmly, still technically in their lap. Asterix’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

“We get stronger with age,” they’d said, though their lack of an actual answer does not go unnoticed.

“You’ll always be stronger than me, won’t you?” He smirks when he looks at them, and their lips twist into a wry, fond smile, leaning into his touch against their cheek.

“‘till we die,” they agree, eyes now sparkling with mischief. This news seems to both delight and disappoint him for very different reasons.

They keep finding each other in the years that follow, always with new names, new lives, new identities. Sometimes they’re together for weeks, for months, sometimes only for hours, but every time it’s like they’d never left one another’s side.

Asterix has conned their way, through both magical and non-magical means, into a life as a Russian noble at the turn of the 20th century, and he finds them at a masquerade. They’d know each other anywhere. They’re meant to be dancing with potential suitors, but the whole night they’re by his side. That night, they kill another member of nobility who had been suspicious of Asterix, who’d been planning a coup against the head of the family who’d welcomed them with only little persuading.

After the carnage of the kill, of the high they rode together, they sleep through the day, silk bedsheets and boarded up windows, a lie on Asterix’s behalf about a rare sleep disorder meaning no-one came in or asked questions, and the following night, he takes off, and Asterix acts surprised when the news of the previous night’s kill finally comes to light.

Wars come and go, and Asterix finds themselves in the middle of them, and sees men a fraction of their age take more pleasure in killing than they’d ever allowed themselves. They fight, and take bullets, and take orders from men who have never known real fear. The humans they fight alongside live like every day is their last in the time between the fighting, lives on the line because someone said it should be, from relative safety.

And they lose humans they considered friends, and they start tearing out throats, they stop caring about what if because everyone here would die quickly, they all knew it. Asterix felt like the only one with half a chance to outlive the war.

‘and you’re still just surviving’

So they start living, start letting themselves be sloppy and angry and give in when they want to fight and break bones and spill blood, because the government comes, and the government doesn’t care, and the government admits ‘we had some like you fighting with Lincoln’ and ‘we had some like you fighting with Washington’ and ‘we always had some like you’ and all they care about it what side Asterix is on.

The War ends, but the next starts in what feels like a blink after the centuries Asterix has been through, and they come out the other side understanding that the things they’d feared for so long don’t matter, that the consequences they feared would not affect them; if they were smart, the government wouldn’t care, and other people were too weak to be a real threat, so they have fun with their identity. They get malevolent after watching their fragile, human friends die, and they learn how to target terrible people, how to find humans more monstrous than themselves, and how to deliver the justice that the justice systems will not give.

In the 1950s, they’re working in the violent crimes unit in LA, focusing on targeting serial sexual abusers in Hollywood, after listening to countless victims teary statements, and hearing the men on their team laugh behind the victim’s back, saying that’s just how Hollywood was. Asterix made sure to remember each man who’d ever said that about a distraught woman, mentally promising to take them each out before they leave for their next identity.

He’s calling himself David when Asterix finds him in a bar on the waterfront, and he’s like a breath of fresh air. He admits to liking how Asterix was operating, how free they seem, and accompanies them when they offer to take him on a hunt.

By now, Asterix’s victims have all been killed in the same way, nothing to denote a vampire, but clearly a serial killer’s work, someone with experience, and within no time it’s thought to be a hitman. David’s more than happy to stick to their MO, especially since they still both get to drink their fill, and he’s delighted with how unhinged Asterix gets in the act.

People started to see the pattern, the connection between the victims, and more people come forward about others in the industry who’ve committed similar atrocities. They don’t quite know who to tell; some go to the police, some go to confessional, some tell their friends, but Asterix seeks out their voices, their testimonies, and their list grows until the word of the victims’ atrocities gets around.

They’re calling Asterix the Actresses Avenging Angel, since most atrocities had been committed against aspiring or active actresses. It’s a new version of the town that believed the Devil killed the immoral few, but it’s a title they wear with pride.

But one of Asterix’s coworkers sees them leave a bar with David, and calls them names that sting, that have Asterix’s blood boiling, all in front of the rest of their team. A team that never took them seriously when they took the assault victim’s side against a powerful man in Hollywood.

They were tired of this town anyways; their list had stopped growing so fast since the Actresses Avenging Angel had become popular folklore.

They’re on the run for almost twenty years after that day, after leaving no-one alive in that evening briefing, after stealing away into the night. The government does tend to care when Asterix, or people like them, kill a whole department of a police force.

So they lay low near Washington state, changing their look, writing ‘*’ whenever their name was required; someone asked out loud if their name was Asterix, and yes, they supposed it fit. They’d always had to be something to fit into society, but they’re tired of being anything when they never felt like anything, so ‘boy or girl?’ is met with a solid ‘no’, and they stop caring about the confusion it elicits. They will outlive confusion. They will outlive everything and everyone. Almost everyone.

In the eighties, they hear a rumour about a beachside town in California having an unusually high death-rate, how strange and unexplained it all was, and perhaps it was loneliness, perhaps it was that they were missing a very specific person, but Asterix travels in hopes of finding David. They are not disappointed.

They meet Max first, their lip curling in disgust at how he holds himself, how he parades himself like everyone else when he’d been just as smarmy and unbearable in the Late Middle Ages.

“You,” he says flatly, nostrils flaring as the only sign of his discomfort at the sight of them. He and Asterix had been sired by the same vampire some centuries ago, within a few decades of each other. He’d always resented Asterix for being simultaneously older and younger than him. Also he’d been the one to kill their sire fifty years after being turned.

“It’s Asterix now,” Asterix tells him, and Max’s lips thin into an unamused line, but before he can say anything, his gaze flicks over their shoulder to the door where there was a sudden commotion, sudden laughter. When Asterix turns, it’s to the sight of a display rack on the ground, and of two blonde boys trying not to laugh, leaning into each other as they insist they found it like that.

The eighties look is certainly kind to David. He’s always been pretty, but now he’s allowed to dress in a way that’s enhanced by his dangerous aura, and Asterix has never been so glad to see him.

And his expression lights up when he catches sight of them too.

“Asterix, do you know these people?” Max asks flatly, and if Asterix didn’t know any better, they would have thought he didn’t have any clue who they were, but judging by the sobering expression on David’s face, they knew each other far too well.

“Of course,” Asterix answers, smile turning cat-like and smug, if only to see Max grow more irritated, working harder to hide it.

“Asterix, this is Marko,” David says, unprompted, introducing the other blonde boy with curly hair and a slight frame; Marko is quiet by David’s side, looking over Asterix with something evaluative in his eyes, something evaluative and intrigued.

“All of you, get out; I told you boys aren’t allowed in here,” Max orders, and Asterix flips him off before making a beeline for the boys, and the exit. Marko stays quiet, but he, like Asterix, is comfortable falling into step by David’s side as the three of them head to somewhere more secluded on the boardwalk.

There’s a streetlight out over a picnic table not too far away, and Asterix is quick to sit, to make themselves a reasonable height out of habit, before David takes their face in his hands. It’s like he’s checking that they’re okay, looking in their eyes, hands on their arms, their hips, coming to rest on their knees, wordlessly checking in.

“Marko, this is Asterix,” David steps out of the way, gesturing to Asterix with one hand while his other still resting on their thigh. Marko steps up, offers his hand for them to shake with a grin. “They’re...” but David trails off, unsure of how to introduce them now, after all the time they’ve known each other, after all they’ve been to one another. But Marko seems to understand; he’s emotionally entwined with David the way Asterix more or less is, and surprisingly, Asterix realises very quickly that they don’t mind.

“Are you planning on staying long?” David asks later in the night, watching Marko as he talks with another pretty, blonde boy who they’ve apparently been talking to for a while, Paul. They’re intending on turning him, with Max’s blessing; Asterix is less than happy to find out that Max is technically the leader of the coven, and is right furious to find out that he’s David’s actual Sire, the one who’d abandoned him all those years ago. But he keeps himself separate from the younger vampires, so Asterix is more than happy to hang with the boys.

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me,” Asterix says gently, and David’s arm snakes around their hips, hand coming to rest on their hip, fingers spread wide and warm and possessive against the edge of Asterix’s exposed stomach beneath their crop top. It’s enough of an answer for Asterix to lean against him, to sling their arm across his shoulders.

Paul, where he’s talking to Marko, casts a dubious look to the pair leaning against the streetlight, arms around each other. Asterix winks at him, and though Paul quickly averts his gaze, his smile widens. It’s easy for them to adapt to this dynamic that Marko and David had developed, so long as there was a place for them. They’re more than happy to make a place for others too.

So Asterix makes a life for themselves with the boys in the abandoned hotel at the edge of the cliff, quickly getting close to both Marko and Paul once he’s been turned. They don’t think about how good it feels to not be afraid of their friends dying, or being killed suddenly. David doesn’t comment on how grateful they seem to have friends at all. Or perhaps it’s more than that, perhaps they’re all more than that; physical intimacy is clearly not a foreign concept.

Marko and Asterix will share an armchair while reading a magazine, cheek to cheek, him in their lap with their arms around his middle, and Paul has a penchant for taking one of the others down a dark alley or to a shadowy corner, only to emerge with kiss bruised lips and a flushed complexion, and in a year they have Dwayne too, who comes across as brooding to anyone who doesn’t know him well enough, never more happy than when he has his arm around a member of their little, insular gang, possessive and proud in equal measure.

Marko’s like them too, more than they realized, they learn, not nothing, like they are, but sometimes he’s both or neither or somewhere in between. Mostly they’re he but he also feels like they, and he doesn’t mind which they’re called, as long as it’s someone they love doing the calling.

Love. He’s free with that word. Freer than Asterix or David ever was, no matter how much either of them thought it in all the years they’ve known each other. But Marko says it and it sounds right. It sounds like the word Asterix was too scared to think back on the roof of their pub in London, a hundred years ago, when David had them pinned and all they could see was him backlit by stars.

“We’re a far cry from your silk bedsheets and Russian nobles,” David’s smirking up at the ceiling in the hours before dawn, stretched out on the moth bitten sheets of one of the hotel’s beds. Asterix is curled up by his side, eyes closed and content. It’s just the two of them in the hotel for now, the other three having gone out to stalk a group of assholes that had been harassing their latest person of interest, a beautiful young woman named Star.

The others don’t quite know how far back Asterix and David’s history goes, but everyone knows they’re close, know they can speak their own language without saying a word.

“You were Svetlana then, weren’t you?” He adds, and Asterix hums in confirmation, and David quietly muses that he’s not even sure if he’d given himself a proper name in Russia, since he’d just been passing through. “Do you still have that box of rings from the eighteen-hundreds?” He asks, half smiling, tightening his grip on them, pulling them a little closer at the memory.

“They were lost when my pub was burnt down,” Asterix told him, though this was new information to David, and came as a shock, “after Bram Stoker published Dracula, someone accused my pub of hosting several vampires; I was never accused directly, but someone noted how my patrons only ever seemed to come out at night, and they thought it would be best if the whole pub was taken out as a precaution. They were right, of course, but it was still fucked; I’m fine, obviously.”

“Do you want mine back?” David asks candidly, “you worked hard for them, you should have at least one as a keepsake,” his words catch Asterix by surprise, and they’re quiet for a very long time, trying to process what this all means, how this makes them feel. He kept their ring. All this time.

“It’s yours, I gave it to you,” they say, soft and gentle, finally looking at his face. He’s still looking at the ceiling, but he’s grinning, “do you not want it?”

“Depends; are we still fake-married?” When he looks at them, he’s grinning from ear to ear, all kinds of mischief and adoration at play in his expression, and Asterix’s expression melts to a sly grin as their tone turns teasing.

“As if I’d remarry after you,” they snort, and David quickly turns back to the roof, though it doesn’t quite hide his flustered grin, as he quietly mutters for them to shut up, voice full of affection -

“Get dressed, Star’s “friends” are having a bonfire and we’re gonna have a feast,” Paul bursts into the room with absolutely no warning, all but crashing through the door mid-landing, too excited to walk anywhere at a half-normal speed. He’s grinning from ear to ear, throwing articles of clothes at the pair like a hurricane localised entirely at the end of the bed.

Once the pair are getting dressed and know where to go, Paul is already gone, leaving them in relative silence, and Asterix glances over to see David patting down his pockets, before fishing a thin, gold necklace from his back pocket, holding it, and the familiar ring that hung from it, out to Asterix like proof, like an offering.

“You’ve gone soft in your old age,” Asterix grins instead, echoing his words back at him from a hundred years ago. David rolls his eyes, but puts the chain around his neck and tucks it into his shirt before they leave.

When they arrive, they let the others take the first bites, pun intended. Lord knows they’ve committed enough destruction to keep them sated for several lifetimes.

“Strange bedfellows we keep,” Asterix voice is low, teeth sharp and eyes ablaze as they drunk in the sound of the carnage. They hook two fingers into one of David’s beltloops while he watches his fellow vampires tearing their victims apart like lions tearing into gazelles. Asterix steps up to him, lets him curl an arm around them as they both watch with hungry expressions as the carnage unfolds.

“Feels good,” Asterix murmurs, locking eyes with a poor human trying to escape; neither Asterix nor David has allowed their face to shift to it’s true form just yet, so the human runs to them, begging for help. Asterix steps forward, is by the man’s side in a blur, too fast for him to get away as they wrap one arm around him, the other in his hand, pulling his head to the side to expose his neck, “though I do miss people thinking I was the Devil,” they call over their shoulder with a sharp smirk, eyes a bright gold.

David’s laugh fills the night air, amid the screams, amid the crackle of the fire, as Asterix sinks their teeth into the man’s neck.

#the lost boys #The Lost Boys 1987 #the lost boys imagine #tlb #the lost boys fanfiction #david the lost boys #dwayne the lost boys #marko the lost boys #paul the lost boys #violence tw

15 notes · View notes

vaguely-concerned · 4 years

Text

Some T.F./Graves thoughts from their bios

I realize what a dumb move it is to base uuuuh basically anything on lol bios, since riot apparently change those like other people do underwear, but if I’m not here to build my castles on sand what am I here for honestly

- I LOVE the description of their first meeting, it’s such a meet cute lol... these two assholes really did just take one look at each other and mutually went ‘so is anyone gonna enter into a life-defining homoerotic partnership with this lying cheating bastard??’ and then neither of them waited for an answer

- Though at times Twisted Fate would blow all their shares and leave them with nothing to show for it, Graves knew that the thrill of some new escapade was always just around the corner…

I am genuinely a little emotional about how obvious it is that at the end of the day the money really is secondary to him - what really drives him is how much FUN they have together. (he seems in general quite driven by that sense of Adventure; if it were just about the cash he had steady work in bilgewater before he took the trip over to the mainland as a kid) it’s like the part of ‘the road to el dorado’ in the boat except more sincere... ‘you made my life an adventure bro’ :’)

(also very funny that graves’ bio is where you learn that t.f. doesn’t always win or get away with his shit hahaha, in his own bio it’s played like ‘oh gotta let people win once in a while to throw off suspicion’ flasdhfjsad. it’s mentioned he gets caught a lot more without graves watching his back too, which also gets me in my feelings a bit)

- one thing I find interesting is that t.f.’s parents aren’t referenced directly at any point (the only family members mentioned specifically are his aunt and grandfather, I’m pretty sure). I’m wondering if they were already out of the picture somehow and that’s part of the reason no one spoke up for him? I mean it’s fucked up either way, I don’t know what’s worse; that his people found it so easy to exile him because he didn’t have anyone to protect him, or that his parents were alive and JUST LEFT HIM THERE. like what the fuck. from how it’s written it’s pretty clear he was still considered a child at the time too, so, y’know. (Graves is described as ‘little more than a youth’ when he headed for the mainland while T.F. seems to have been a kid when he started being on his own, so I’ve headcanoned something like 16-17 and 13-14 for their respective ages of leaving home, with both of them around 19 when they met) I’m quite curious about what kind of internal family politics were at work for them to apparently all agree -- or perhaps be too intimidated to disagree -- to exile a child for life with no recourse and no resources. like yeah okay he messed up but that’s some next level assholery to pull on a kid honestly, no wonder he grows up to have a bunch of abandonment and emotional intimacy issues (and presumably some prime survivor’s guilt as well. oh buddy)

- eternally entertained by how much meeting t.f. is worded like the ‘how they met their spouse’ section of a wikipedia article in graves’ bio

Across one table, he met a deplorable fellow named Malcolm Graves is also *mwha* so good

- for fic purposes I would just like to give a moment of thanks for the paragraph in graves’ bio that mentions a bunch of shenanigans they got up to back in the day, very useful thank you

- from what I understand t.f.’s exile-causing transgression has been changed quite recently from fighting back to running away, which I am so happy about because it makes a lot more psychological sense to me and makes graves’ words in ‘burning tides’ hit so much better.

- I like that their individual descriptions of graves being captured are so indicative of how they each think about it -- namely t.f. doesn’t want to think about it (repress! repress! repress! very relatable) but probably has the more accurate view of it: The exact details of that night remain shrouded in mystery, for neither of them likes to speak of it—but Graves was taken alive, while Tobias and their other accomplices ran free, while graves does think about it but sort of still has his trauma goggles on for it: During a heist that rapidly turned from complex to completely botched, Graves was taken by the local enforcers, while Twisted Fate merely turned tail and abandoned him. t.f.’s is obfuscating and refusing to engage in the emotional aspect of it, graves’ is much more emotive in the language used, like ‘abandoned’. the lol bios often teeter awkwardly between straight biographies and wanting to dip into prose/flavour text, I must say I usually find them very clunky and unsatisfying, but this juxtaposition works for me.

sort of weird the details that don’t make it in, though -- like the fact that they’re both aware that miss fortune was the one who screwed them over in the whole gangplank Situation? (I love that part in ‘destiny and fate’ where graves is gamely like ‘yeah of course I’ve got a grudge against her but that was pretty metal too so y’know *shrug*’ haha)

- it’s interesting how much t.f.’s uh connection I guess to the cards is almost described as some kind of... compulsion/unstoppable drive in the middle of his bio and then fades into the background towards the end (because his priorities have changed to repairing his marriage now that it’s an option and by god I support him in that). I really do wonder how his card magic actually works -- it’s a cool mix of extremely unsubtle and undeniable sorcery (straight up throwing fireballs around) and subtle (’hunches’, being ‘guided’, just knowing things he sort of shouldn’t), which seems to be where it started

also it seems like he can do it with just about any playing card he comes across? would be sort of weird if it’s the cards that are special, considering he keeps throwing them away and also I don’t know a lot about gambling but I distinctly imagine that casinos don’t let you use your own decks haha. and t.f. seemingly can’t do magic just on his own, without them. so it’s a thing that happens very specifically in relationship, when all the elements come together, symbiotically sort of thing? could he do magic without the cards but it’s how he’s trained himself to think of it so he doesn’t realize it (well I honestly doubt that but just for the thought experiment)? is there some sort of spirit behind those cards looking out for him? is it lady luck keeping an eye out for her favorite boy lol? we know this stuff can physically change the cards like when they showed the crown in ‘destiny and fate’, and he seems able to ‘prime’ a card with magic beforehand if ‘double-double cross’ is anything to go by, but even then mf can’t actually use or release it. hmmmmm many questions

- the more of my long fic I write the more I am questioning what the fuck these two DO with all the money they steal -- like they’ve clearly pulled off some HUGE heists, surely it can’t all go into like drinks and cigars and fancy waistcoats and tf’s seemingly unending supply of playing cards

do they have like. a bunch of small caches of gold hidden away all across two continents in case of emergency? are their buried treasures the stuff of runeterran urban legend and people go out hunting for them? Have they invested this stuff in actual banks? (actually no I refuse to accept that as a possibility lol if nothing else this would make it hard to figure out if they were robbing THEMSELVES sometimes, sounds like a lot of hassle)

- His people had always waved away concerns over primitive magic and “cartomancy”, but now Tobias began to seek out ever more dangerous means to bend the cards to his will.

I’m having a little bit of a hard time parsing this -- does this mean his people didn’t believe the cards were magic at all and he’s the only person he knows who can do it, or do they know but just don’t think can be dangerous??? I chose one particular interpretation for my fic, but I honestly can’t figure out what it’s actually meant to mean haha

- T.F. getting a special satisfaction from robbing people who are Assholes is a good character detail (his colour story really goes out of its way to show that the merchant he’s playing against is a real shitbag, for example); there is some lopsided form of righteousness/sense of justice there, I think. and it also ties in with why I like that his exile was because he ran away rather than because he resorted to violence -- there’s this underlying sense that he particularly enjoys outsmarting people who’re dickish to outsiders in precarious situations (like his people) so thoroughly that they don’t even realize it before he’s long gone, without ever having to even lay a finger on them, because that’s a way to fight back while staying out of reach when you come from relative powerlessness. There’s a... lack of malice, I guess, to both of them that I find quite endearing, you can see in Burning Tides that even at his most mindlessly vengeful Graves doesn’t actually enjoy being actively cruel. ‘mutual sense of roguish honor’ is RIGHT they’re bad men but not Bad men you get me

- All in all, Twisted Fate is glad to have his old friend back, even if it might take another job or two—or ten—to restore their once easy partnership.

This probably means nothing because as I said the lol bios seem an endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of canon, but I think it’s so sweet that both of their last sentences/’where are they now’ statements are about them wanting to repair their partnership (and do some Cool Big Stuff together in graves’ case, I do wonder if that’s foreshadowing for the ruined king game or what)

#tf x graves #twistedgraves #league of legends #listen overwatch trained me well in trying to tease something like lore out of the smallest little crumb of detail I cannot be stopped

24 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

American Gods Season 3: Who Are The Orisha?

https://ift.tt/3r2NS26

This article contains spoilers for American Gods season 3 episode 4.

American Gods star Yetide Badaki, known to fans of the show as love goddess Bilquis, has an upbringing as unique as any fictional character from Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel.

She lived in England for three years, has lived in American since age 12, and went to college in Canada, but Badaki’s roots are planted in the soil of the country of her birth, Nigeria. Nigeria, Africa’s largest country, serves as the centerpiece of the larger tribal community known as Yorubaland along with Benin, Ghana, and Togo. Yorubaland is home to 55 million people and was one of the largest sources of the enslaved people to the United States of America. It’s also home to spirit world entities which are now about to enter into the American Gods’ canon: The Orisha.

Far from being a relic of the past, the Orisha still play an active part in African religion to this day, and it was something that Badaki was keen to see brought to the screen.

“There are quite a few fascinating gods and goddesses that I’d like to see, but my answer would be the Orisha,” Badaki said when asked about possible additions to the American Gods pantheon. “I can’t wait for everybody to meet all of them.”

The Orisha are hinted at in episode 2, when a young Shadow Moon stares at a cover of a magazine touting the beauty of Nigeria, with the face on the cover of the magazine speaking to him. Their proper introduction comes at the beginning of episode 4 “The Unseen,” where slaves break their shackles with the help of the Gods of their old world, with the Orisha promising, among other things, freedom and their strong blessing. Four new members of the pantheon of American Gods are pictured: Chango, Oshun, Yemoja, and Aye.

In the original Yoruban tales, the Orisha are spirits sent by Olodumare (the source of creation) to guide all creation, with particular emphasis on the guidance of humanity as seen in the cold opening of “The Unseen.” The number of Orisha varies depending on the telling, with the group being either 400, 700, 1440, or more than anyone can think of, plus one more. That extra plus one, always handy on a guest list, ties the number of Orisha to a sacred number in traditional beliefs.

Orisha straddle the world between the realm of spirits and men, with Orisha being either spirits born into the bodies of humans, or humans who have done such great deeds in life that they become Orisha through the power of their actions. They also serve as intercessors with Oludumare, speaking on behalf of their followers according to their areas of experience.

So just who are these Orisha and what are their particular interests?

The most noteworthy initial appearance is that of Chango, who breaks the chains to free the captive in the fields. Chango, played by Nigerian-American rapper and actor Wale, is the most fearsome and dangerous of the Orisha. An early leader of the Oyo Empire, Chango was a vengeful conqueror whose seven years at the head of the kingdom marked by constant warfare and conquest until his palace was struck by lightning and killed.

Chango is known as the God of Iron who casts down thunderstones to smite those that displease him with lightning, and stones formed by lightning strikes are sacred to his followers, who span across the African diaspora from traditional Yoruba worship to Santeria and both Haitian and Louisiana variants of voudou/voodoo. Chango, as befitting a warrior, is represented by his two axes, the thunder of both sky and drum, and the color red. He is a renowned ladies’ man (he has three wives, after all) and the Orisha known for his ability to dance and love of a good party. Fittingly, his consecrated worship day is Wednesday, a fact that I am certain will be important later.

Alongside Chango is his queen and wife, Oshun, as played by American singer and actor Herizen F. Guardiola. Alongside Chango, Oshun has been widely adopted across a variety of religions, with an especially strong presence in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candombele, where she is revered as the Lady of Gold and is a patron of wealth and prosperity, with the bright yellow of flowers and the ritual fan called the Abebe being associated with her worship. As queen and wife, she is also known as the protector of pregnant women and children, and a powerful goddess of love.

American Gods Season 3: What Awaits Shadow in Lakeside

By Ron Hogan

How American Gods Finds Stability (And More Neil Gaiman) in Season 3

By Ron Hogan

Her name is linked to Nigeria’s Osun river, and in traditional Yoruba beliefs, she is the goddess of fresh water and waterfalls, with her worshippers paying tribute to her at lakes, streams, and canals; as the messenger of the Orisha, she is commonly associated with peacock feathers, having transformed herself to get a message to Oludumare during a great drought. In Cuba, she is celebrated with a type of violin performance known as Violin for Osun, a blend of Western classical music and Cuban popular music; Guardiola’s father is a Cuban reggae musician, making this a fitting pairing.

Yemoja, played by Bridget Ogundipe, is another powerful spirit tied to water and birth, as she is the mother of humanity. When her water broke at the birth of the human race, it created the very waters of the rivers and seas that sustain us. As such, she has a powerful tie to motherhood and is a goddess pertaining to everything related to women, from conception and parenting to love and the “feminine mysteries”. As befitting a good mother, she is very slow to anger, but capable of great destruction as anyone who lives on a flood plane could attest.

As someone tied to both womanhood and the water (rivers in Yorubaland, the ocean and seas throughout the Caribbean diaspora), she is often depicted as a mermaid, or as a nursing mother. (Her name is a contraction for the Yoruban words that translate ‘mother of fish children’.) Her colors are the colors of clean water, blue and crystal, and her symbols are anything related to the ocean, from shells and fish to anchors. Festivals are held for Yemoja throughout the world, particularly in Cuba, Brazil, and Uruguay, with worshippers traveling for miles to congregate at beaches and shrines and send offerings out to sea for Yemoja in small boats.

Last, but certainly not least, is Aye, played by Karen Glave. Of all of the Orisha, who all go by a variety of names depending on what religious tradition they are a part of; she is the one that is most difficult to track down. Yet, of all the Orisha, perhaps she is the most powerful. Aye is the Yoruban version of Mother Earth. More than simply being the planet on which we all tread, Aye is the force of creation given life. More than just a mother figure, she is a creator figure; a Yoruba saying goes “You have Aye; I have Aye; we all have Aye in our pockets.”

To attempt to sum up Aye in a single phrase? She is power. Specifically, the power of Black women. Gestating life, creating a work of art, building a town, organizing a revolution? All of these things fall under the purview of Aye, because she is the great creative force without whom the Earth would have never existed; the male Orisha attempted to leave women out of the creation process and failed miserably until Oshun agreed to participate and Aye was born. As such, it is the labor of many working together who tap into Aye’s great power, a collective greater good in which displays of wealth are forbidden and sharing is not encouraged, but required. If you have ever known a kindly older woman who could cure a cold by administering a hot drink and applying salve, you have known one of Aye’s iyalawo (mothers of mysteries).

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

When your spirits cross oceans and spread out across thousands of years, dozens of countries, multiple languages, and four continents, having accurate information can be an issue. The information presented above is by no means exhaustive, as the Orisha themselves cover many skills and cross many boundaries depending on the belief system examined. As the Gods changed in their time in America, the Orisha have changed throughout history thanks to the power of syncretism with Roman Catholic saints, Islam, Pentecostalism, Chrislam, and many, many other beliefs.

While I have done my best to explain the powers of the Orisha, no mere mortal would ever be able to limit the power of an Orisha to text on a page.

The post American Gods Season 3: Who Are The Orisha? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2Mclc8h

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

2 notes · View notes

wildmagicplant · 4 years

Text

hello who wants a post about my curse sword related dnd-trauma! (i assume the answer is no one, so you all can just move on lol)

a couple years ago, i was playing dnd with some friends. i had some issues with the dm, but overall was willing to go along with it bc i wanted to play and friends and he was a good dm in some ways. so we’re going along, adventuring and having a mostly good time, and we encountered some Loot. might have been in a wight mound? somewhere that definitely involved defeating angry dead people anyway. and we found some cool stuff including a bone white sword. i was playing a rogue at the time, and i thought, ‘hey, i could use a sword, that seems fun’ so i picked it up.

turns out, the sword was cursed.

it’s a standard dnd item- the sword of vengeance (as a short sword). for those who don’t know, the sword of vengeance is a +1 sword, but “This sword is cursed and possessed by a vengeful spirit. Becoming attuned to it extends the curse to you. As long as you remain cursed, you are unwilling to part with the sword, keeping it on your person at all times. While attuned to this weapon, you have disadvantage on attack rolls made with weapons other than this one.

In addition, while the sword is on your person, you must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw whenever you take damage in combat. On a failed save you must attack the creature that damaged you until you drop to 0 hit points or it does, or until you can't reach the creature to make a melee attack against it. You can break the curse in the usual ways. Alternatively, casting banishment on the sword forces the vengeful spirit to leave it. The sword then becomes a +1 weapon with no other properties.” i wasn’t thrilled about this, bc i didn’t think anyone else in the party had encountered any cursed items and i knew none of us could cast identify but i figured it could be fun roleplaying or at least a good weapon, plus i’d already picked it up so the curse had already taken effect.

there were a lot of reasons this didn’t go as i hoped. one, i was a rogue in a group of like six pcs. i fuckin never took damage! if i was even fighting, i just sprinted in, sneak attacked, disengaged, (which was definitely how i designed the character) so the curse almost never kicked in. two, the curse never kicked in, so NO ONE EVER NOTICED. i thought that as part of the curse and not wanting to get rid of the sword, my character wouldn't want to tell anyone, so i the player was increasingly annoyed but couldn’t do anything. three, for a lot of reasons (some to do with how the campaign went and some to do with the personalities/playstyles of everyone involved), our characters never really hit it off. we were mostly just working together, so there wasn’t a lot of emotional connection to other characters, so i never really felt like it was the right place to roleplay the curse in a way that could have been fun and/or led to it getting removed. this was definitely partly my fault! i made a standoffish character who was supposed to open up and become friends but that never really happened and i definitely could have made a much bigger effort to play that, and i think that could have sped up the whole curse-noticing a lot.

this went on for-no exaggeration-over half of the campaign. i never got another new weapon. toward the end, the curse finally kicked in and one of my friends took pity on me and asked the dm if he noticed anything weird. the dm made him roll. he failed. no one noticed. at this point, i think the dm decided something should happen with the sword and i had been complaining about it, so he basically told me, ‘hey you have that cursed sword. you should be playing it. you really want to kill that guy.’ while we were fighting something inconsequential. i was annoyed bc i felt like i had been playing it as told to me, but i did it bc i wasn’t given a choice.

finally someone noticed, and they (again, my friends took pity on me) figured out that maybe something was up with my sword. again, i want to emphasize that i definitely could have played this better- i was fed up with the campaign for a lot of reasons and so i didn’t take this as the opportunity for roleplaying that i could have. once they figured out it was the sword, they tried to steal it from me while i was sleeping. unfortunately i woke up, and i fought back because, being cursed, i wanted to keep the sword. one of them, being a fighter, managed to overpower me and grab the sword away pretty quickly. now, i thought that should break the curse’s hold - it wasn’t in my possession anymore, which was the thing i was being cursed to want. my dm disagreed. he ruled that i was still cursed and wanted to get it back. so, unwillingly, i, the unarmed rogue, tried to grab the sword back. when i inevitably failed, my friend’s character hit my character, which seems like the right reaction honestly.

now here’s the thing that really tipped me from ‘annoyed’ to ‘actually still mad years later’. the dm ruled that i would keep fighting, and when they asked, ‘does she stop when we hit her?’, he said no. so i was in the position of having zero agency over my own dnd character as the other party members bludgeoned my character into unconsiousness, which the dm and a few of the other players seemed to think was funny.

i talked to one of my other friends afterwards about how fucked up i thought that was (there was the added bonus that i was the only female player and female pc in the campaign, which didn’t sit well with me in this particular context at all), and he agreed with me and we basically powered through the rest of the campaign as boringly and as quickly as possible (there was a time crunch for schedules too). i’m never going to play dnd with that person as dm again. as i said a few times, i definitely should have been more active in rping the curse and my character in general, and then maybe this wouldn’t have happened this way, but also, if i ever dm again, i won’t give my players cursed objects unless they express interest in playing that, and i try really hard to give my players options in any scenario.

#i used to have a tag for personal stuff but idk what it was #that one time we played storm king's thunder #me making my own dnd group later: great all of you are invited except him if anyone mentions this to him im gonna be real mad #anyway its possible i do need to learn to get over things

3 notes · View notes

mst3kproject · 5 years

Photo

414: Tormented

When Bert I. Gordon took breaks from attempting to adapt H. G. Wells’ Food of the Gods, he made some half-decent movies. There, I said it. Thing is, half-decent is still not whole-decent.

A pair of lovers, Tom and Vi, meet at a lighthouse on an isolated island – but Tom’s only there to break her heart, telling her that he’s in love with another woman, Meg, and Vi can never see him again. The meeting ends in tragedy, with Vi falling to her death while Tom, who could have saved her, lets it happen. Man, she is gonna haunt the living snot out of you, Tom, and I won’t feel sorry for you at all.

Sure enough, as his wedding day approaches Tom grows more and more paranoid. Everything he sees looks like Vi’s drowned body. Every sound makes him think he hears her calling his name. At first it seems like it’s all in his head, but soon other people begin to notice odd manifestations, too. Either Vi really is back to take some spectral revenge, or Tom’s own guilt over not helping her is quickly driving him mad. In the end, does it really matter which is the truth? There’s only one way this movie can end, with Tom following his lost mistress to a death on the surf-scoured rocks.

This movie had an awful lot of potential. The opening, in which Tom doesn’t actually murder Vi but doesn’t stop her falling, doesn’t try to benefit from her death but certainly doesn’t avoid doing so, is really very effective. The events that follow start off as ambiguous and then it grows more and more certain that Vi’s spirit really is hanging around, perhaps trying to lure others to their doom. At first Tom tries to draw others’ attention to what he is seeing, to confirm he’s not going crazy… later, he starts trying to hide the manifestations from them, because he doesn’t want to know after all. The interplay of fantasy and reality, with the corpse that transforms into seaweed and the footprints that are washed away before Tom can point them out to Meg, feels like a precursor to the layers of unreality Gordon would later explore more fully in Necromancy.

The setting, a beach with vacation houses and a lighthouse, is well-used. There are only a limited number of sets and locations, but that just underscores the smallness of the island and the idea that everybody on it is trapped there with this vengeful ghost. I suspect that the beach itself is the same one that appeared in The Space Children, where it was bleak, featureless, and often deserted. It looks very much the same in Tormented, even when there are multiple people enjoying the waves. Tom feels increasingly isolated as the film progresses, with this terrible secret eating him alive, and the setting underscores that: the beach house and lighthouse both stand alone in establishing shots with nothing but rocks and sand all around them. The island itself is isolated, and the buildings there are further isolated within that isolation.

There are even a few places where the tension builds very nicely. The bit where Vi’s ghost almost lures the landlady to her death is nail-biting, and there’s a moment when the movie teases doing the same thing to Meg’s little sister Sandy, which actually made me whisper, “oh, no!” Vi egging Tom on to commit murder, as a sort of devil on his shoulder transforming him into what he most wishes not to be, suggests that she can be a ghost and a symptom of his mental disintegration at the same time, and the fact that he gives in to her is as terrible as it is inevitable. The sound of him dragging the dead sailor down the steps while the camera remains in the room is one of the creepiest moments in the film.

Even the effects are sometimes quite good. Vi’s body melting away into a mass of seaweed is much better than it has any right to be. Her ghost floating there with a white gown billowing around her like the foam on the rocks is cliché, but that’s intentional – is she really a ghost, or just what Tom thinks one ought to look like? Her spectral interruption of the wedding is cheesy, but in a fun kind of way, and the ending maintains just that slight bit of ambiguity as we are left to wonder if Vi deliberately saved Sandy, or if Tom chose to commit suicide rather than do any more harm to this innocent child.

Yet for all that, this is still not a good movie. It comes closer than a lot of MST3K material, but doesn’t quite arrive. There are several reasons. The first, noticeable right from the opening titles, is the jazz soundtrack. It does have its moments, but it never really feels like it belongs in this ghost story, at least not as background music. A more traditional spooky score would have helped emphasize the front Tom was putting up through his own jazz music by providing a foil to it, and it’s a shame they missed this opportunity.

The second is the acting. Most of the players, such as Lugene Sanders as Meg or Richard Carlson as Tom himself, are pretty bland. Juli Reding as Vi is oddly more believable as a ghost than she is as a living person. Two notable players, however, are very bad indeed. One is Joe Turkel as the sailor Vi goads Tom into killing. I’m not sure how old this character is supposed to be but I’m guessing considerably younger than Turkel, who was thirty-three at the time (and who died, creepily enough, on the day I watched this film for review, December 30, 2018). He speaks Beatnik slang, referring to marriage as ‘getting spliced’ and calling everybody ‘Dad’, and it’s so at odds with his sailor’s clothing and his early-middle-aged features that it’s rather unsettling.

The other is Susan Gordon (Bert I.’s daughter) as Sandy. She’s actually a well-written character, who does very realistically child-like things such as playing Chopsticks on the piano over and over, or asking for a burger with nothing but pickles on it. Her obsession with the idea of marriage is a little creepy, but that was what little girls were taught to aspire to in the 50’s. Unfortunately, Gordon is not a very good child actress. Most of her lines sound grating and false, and this undermines the movie quite badly, because Sandy is a pivotal character. She is the person through whom we see the effect Tom’s behaviour is having on the people around him, and there are multiple points in the story when we’re supposed to be very worried for her, which is lessened when we find her so damn cloying.

The spot where the movie really fails, though, is the sequence in which Vi’s disembodied head appears and has a conversation with Tom. It sounds silly when I type it out and the execution is so awful it’s hilarious. It completely ruins everything the film has built up until that point, and it just gets worse and worse. First we’ve got her head sitting on a shelf like she’s part of Donald Pleasance’s collection, then we’ve got Tom wrapping a mannequin head up in a towel to go do god-knows-what with it. I laughed so hard I inhaled part of a Dorito. It literally nearly killed me. If the whole movie were that bad it would be enjoyable on a whole different level, but having that in the middle of an otherwise fairly effective film is like shooting a hamster with a harpoon. There’s no recovery possible.

On a thematic level, this is obviously a movie both about guilt and about the slippery slope: Tom goes from merely neglecting to save Vi to actively killing the beatnik sailor to thinking about murdering a child. In each case, having done the previous deed makes the next one both necessary and easier to do, and then it piles on the terrible burden of guilt he carries. Tom wants to take responsibility for what he’s done. He straight-up tells Sandy, nobody could help any of it but me, and there are points when he desperately wants to give in to the urge to tell somebody the truth. He doesn’t want that enough, however, to face the consequences. He is as much a victim of his crimes as anyone.

It’s tempting to see Tom as filling the ‘victim/observer point of view’ role we see in so many of Bert I. Gordon’s movies, but he’s not quite there. For most of Tormented there is almost nothing Tom can do about his predicament – there’s not much you can do to argue with a ghost, and so he is stuck passively watching Vi’s reign of terror. But to say he’s the equivalent of Sally from Attack of the Puppet People or Audrey Aimes from The Beginning of the End, we have to ignore the fact that unlike them, Tom got himself into this mess. He could have saved Vi, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to kill the sailor, but he did. He could have come clean at any time, and he did not. Tom himself admits that this is his own fault, even as he continues to compound his bad decisions.

The moment when we know Tom is doomed comes early in the movie, when he goes out to the lighthouse to address Vi’s spirit directly for the first time. The appropriate thing to do at this point would be to apologize to her for failing to save her – but instead he taunts her, telling her he’s going to marry Meg and there’s nothing she can do about it. At a moment when he could have tried to placate Vi, Tom challenges her instead, and at the end of the film he is forced to return to the lighthouse and admit that she has won. The final shot of the film only reinforces this, as Vi (is it short for Vivian? For Violet? Or for Victory?) claims her prize.

I could go for a remake of Tormented. It wouldn’t even be an expensive movie – I’ve seen effects and acting that would do the trick in Nostalgia Critic videos. This one came so close to being effective that it was both very enjoyable and deeply disappointing.

#mst3k #reviews #tormented #mister big #60s

39 notes · View notes

rurukandy · 6 years

Text

Regarding Atalanta and her “obsession with children”

To begin with, it’s not an unjustified “obsession”. In fact, Atalanta has her reasons to be attached to children and to fight for her dream with all her might. She wants a place where all children are loved, as the novel says:

The anime only shows her saying “I want a world where children are loved”, but it’s not elaborated like in the novel. She wants a world where children are loved, and thanks to that love they receive in their childhood, they grow as proper adults who love their own children and don’t abandon them and so on. Like Achilles said: a pure and beautiful wish.

As you might know, Atalanta was abandoned as a child by her father. Her “sin” was to be born as a woman, since her father, king of Arcadia, wanted a son, so he left her to her luck in the wildness, where Artemis took a pity for her and saved her life. Then some hunters found her and raised her. In short, Atalanta grew up without knowing what was parental love. She was thrown away as if she was something disposable, a mere object, and she fights for a world where children don’t suffer the same destiny.

Now, you might wonder (for those who only watched the anime), why does Atalanta want to kill Jeanne so badly? Why did Atalanta kill Jack, who was a child, if she loves children so much? Answers under the cut:

In volume 3 (and the anime), Atalanta is sent by Shirou to patrol Trifas, and when night falls and Jack and her master start with their hunt, Atalanta witnesses everything Jack and Reika have been doing:

Atalanta doesn’t want children involved. Atalanta doesn’t want children to be hurt. And she will do ANYTHING to protect children, those she wants to save, so from the beginning, where Jack started to involve children in her foul play, Jack became her enemy. She and her master were using innocent creatures, so Atalanta had the resolution to kill them without showing any kind of mercy. They had to die. They had to disappear. Atalanta saw Jack and her master as enemies not because they were from the other faction. She started to loathe them, to feel this desire to kill them when they started to involve children.

Sadly, Jack doesn’t disappear. She asks the startled Atalanta why? why did she kill her mother? right before she releases all the vengeful spirits of the children she was made of.

Atalanta is engulfed by Assassin’s illusion, and she (like Sieg and Jeanne) are transported to 1880′s London. You know the drill (the part where she has flashbacks with Medea Lily doesn’t appear in the novel, sorry) and she sees hell.

Hell where children are abandoned, mistreated, murdered, thrown away like she was. This is what Atalanta sees. Instead of seeing a happy memory with Medea like in the anime, what Atalanta sees is something more… hardcore. She sees practically what Sieg saw but a hundred times worse, mostly for her.

Atalanta wants to save them. She understands them. She understands what’s not being loved is like. She understands what’s being thrown away is like. She understands them. And that’s what makes her the perfect target for those spirits.

This leads to the children literally entering her body. The spirits literally enter her skin and possess her arm. That’s the explanation for the blackened arm that never makes it appeareance again in the anime (seriously A1, you had one job). After the children possess her arm, they start talking to her. Her experience in that “hell”, the despair she feels, the horrible things she witnessed, and the spirits of children possessing her lead her to her downfall.

Later, Atalanta shows up when she sees Jeanne trying to purify the spirits in front of her. She has started with the ritual and the children are scared. Obviously, she’s not happy with it, because she thinks Jeanne will kill them. Atalanta is not only angry but frustrated, because since Jeanne is “a saint”, she has the power to SAVE the children from evil, a power Atalanta would wish to possess instead of relying on the power of the grail to make her wish come true. Atalanta would do anything, as I said, to save children from the hell they live in, and she has the perfect person to save them right in front of her, but said person believes that the right thing to do is killing them. And she ain’t having none of that. They’re just children. Victims of the circunstances. Why kill them? why not save them?

(Also, Jeanne notices her right arm, not like in the anime that they made her completely oblivious to something so obvious).

It’s sad to read this part because Atalanta knows she’s powerless when it comes to making her wish come true, so she clings tightly to Shirou’s own wish thinking that it’ll lead to hers and to win the war in order to have the grail grant her wish. What would a mere archer do to save children of mankind? Nothing. But.. if she had the grail. If she won the war. Or even… if she was “a saint”, like Jeanne.

She’s a saint. A saint must save people. Not kill them. That’s what the angry Atalanta thinks. Yet Jeanne doesn’t think of herself as a saint.

The exorcism begins after Archer’s attempts to stop Ruler. The children are exorcised, and thus Jack meets her end. However, Atalanta still has the spirits that weren’t exorcised living in her right arm. The story progresses with Atalanta slowly suffering her downfall, with her right arm becoming rotten and with the voices asking her to kill that fake saint of a woman. Like being brainwashed.

Later, Archer returns to the hanging gardens and her behavior is different, to the point that both Shirou and Semiramis wonder what’s up with her. She responds to their questions in an apathetic, boring manner and claims she’s tired. However, Shirou notes her beautiful face is full of something akin to rage:

Then, she has this encounter with Caster that was completely cut off the anime, that deeply explores her rage, and her resolution to kill Ruler more than anything:

Archer of Red silently walked through the Hanging Gardens. Her pace was quick, as if she was trying to shake off that scene carved into her memories. But before she could go anywhere, a single man came to stand in her path.

“…Out of the way, Caster.”

(…)

Archer grabbed the collar of Caster’s shirt as if she were fed up with him—and pushed him against a wall.

“I’m tired. Very tired. So shut up, you clown.”

But Caster didn’t shut up.

“There is no way you of all people would be tired from a mere scouting mission! And you aren’t tired, but frightened, are you not? Just like a child who’s unable to escape into sleep after hearing a scary story!”

“Shut up!”

Archer’s gaze oozed with killing intent. Her eyes declared that she would kill him if he joked around any further. Nevertheless—Caster questioned her, his smile never breaking.

“—What did you see? What did you perceive? How foolish. No matter what you saw, it is already merely a remnant of the past. We are ghosts of the past, and if ghosts regret the past, they become merely vengeful spirits.”

The words of the clown, who shouldn’t have known anything, gouged the deepest depths of Archer’s heart.

“You bastard…!!”

(…)

“—We must live in the future. To devote our bodies to the yet-unseen world. Archer, you also want to see it, don’t you? A world where all children are loved!”

(…)

“For the sake of that, we must activate the Greater Grail. Through any means possible.”

“…You really believe that it will grant that wish?”

“You heard our Master’s words, did you not? That Greater Grail can certainly grant his and your wish.”

Hearing that answer, distress and conflict filled Archer of Red’s face. Caster’s words were truly like the devil’s whisper.

“I—don’t know. Certainly, if it’s his wish, it might have the power to grant my wish as well. But… but, is it really all right? Is that wish truly… correct?”

“Who knows? I don’t know either. No, let me put it like this. Are you unable to decide unless there’s a guarantee? [To be or not to be]—in that case, a clown can only laugh!”

Archer glared at Caster for a little while—but a little bit of life had returned to her eyes. She silently walked away from him.

Caster called out from behind her.

“By the way, Archer-dono. In the end, just what kind of hell did you see?”

Keeping her back to him, Archer whispered softly.

“…It was a piece of the world’s system. Gods, heroes, magical beasts, evil kings—everything was dead there.”

If an evil being committed a crime, then she would eliminate it.

If a god went on a rampage, then she would search for a method to soothe it.

But there was neither there. It was a part of mechanism of the world, working so superbly well that it created a perfect system that preyed on the weak.

There was only one way to destroy it.

The fulfillment of her wish by the activation of the Greater Grail. That was Archer’s only hope now.

“I couldn’t save them with my own power… But, even though that woman could have saved them, she abandoned them and cut them down.”

Her fists trembled with rage—and, even while understanding that this question was a landmine, Caster of Red asked her without holding back his curiosity.

“That woman?”

Turning around at the question, Archer of Red’s eyes were filled with dreadful glee.

“Jeanne d’Arc. I will kill that woman. I’ll shoot her down with my arrows, and if that doesn’t work, I will rip her apart with my claws, and if that doesn’t work, I will tear her to shreds with my fangs.”

“Oh my, is that possible with your beautiful nails and teeth?”

With unfading madness in her eyes, Archer of Red smiled in joy from the bottom of her heart.

“It’s possible. If it’s to kill that woman, I will even become a monster.”

A foreshadow of her metamorphosis. Everything I mentioned before is mentioned here. Archer is frustrated, enraged, and Shakespeare is only fueling the fire of her wish of revenge. Not Achilles’ deadly honesty; it’s this conversation Shakespeare gives her what makes her hatred even intense. This exchange of words not only gives Shakespeare’s character a bit more of importance (yeah, more than merely being comic relief), but makes clearer the reasons why Atalanta wants to kill Ruler if you didn’t get it when she was in Trifas.

Later, Atalanta goes to her room and we find out this:

However, the interior design of the rooms was quite cold and blunt. To Servants, who did not require sleep or food, personal rooms were simply for protecting their privacy. And even that privacy was almost completely useless considering the role they were summoned to this world for.

However, right now, Archer of Red needed to be alone.

She sat on the bed and threw off her leather gauntlets—and then she looked at her discolored right arm. There was a black bruise like a curled snake twining around the skin of her arm.

It neither hurt nor inconvenienced her movements. But Archer could tell. This was a ‘curse’ of extremely high purity. Most likely, it was from that darkness which had swallowed her up when she killed Assassin of Black’s Master.

Assassin of Black’s repulsive past. The flocks of children, the grudge of the unborn fetuses. Right before Assassin of Black died and dispersed, this curse was probably engraved in Archer.

Of course, it would be easy to cut it off. Though Archer had no means to dispel curses, their group’s Assassin had the abilities of a Caster. There was also the dual Master-Servant Shirou Kotomine to rely on.

If she asked for their aid, it probably wouldn’t be hard to restore her right arm.

But—Archer couldn’t choose that option no matter what. Naturally, she didn’t want to rely on Assassin’s help. The idea of showing any weakness to that woman wasn’t even funny enough to be a joke.

And Shirou Kotomine was technically Assassin’s Master. So she was naturally reluctant to request his help.

…No, those were all excuses. Archer understood. She had to accept this curse. This curse was the resentment of the children she loved more than anything else.

Fortunately, there was little pain since it was merely the work of low-class spirits.

And she didn’t mind even if this curse brought about her own destruction. This was a punishment. A punishment she had to accept.

She wrapped bandages around her rotten-smelling right arm, and decided to leave it alone with that.

There was one thing that Archer hadn’t noticed. It was true that what possessed her right arm were low-class vengeful spirits, too weak to have any effect on Archer herself. After all, Servants were the spirits of heroes who stood at the pinnacle of all spirits.

In the first place, it had been possible for Archer to reject the possession. The moment the vengeful spirits entered her arm, she could have even devoured them as sustenance without any danger to herself.

But she had refused to do that. In other words, she wished for ‘those children’ to maintain their consciousness. Of course, these vengeful spirits did not have any high-level intellect. They simply continued whispering their wish.

We want to go back, we want to go back, we want to go back. We want to go back inside Mother’s belly.

They could only whisper. They were vengeful spirits that should have been completely harmless. But Archer of Red felt ashamed at those whispers and felt compassion and pity.

Those were feelings that one must never have when facing vengeful spirits who only made appeals for their final wish. That compassion stirred up her emotions, and gradually made her hatred swell up towards both herself, who couldn’t save them, and that holy maiden, who didn’t save them.

“I don’t care.”

But Archer of Red accepted that hatred without hesitation. She couldn’t help cherishing those ephemeral, destructive feelings.

The more she hated herself and that woman—the more she could prove and believe in her own love.

So, for now, she would sharpen her fangs. In order to kill that false saint, Archer of Red continued to earnestly nurture her hatred.

As an heroic spirit, stronger that those low-class spirits, they wouldn’t have represented a problem for her, yet she accepted them. She felt compassion for them. The spirits of CHILDREN, the things she loves the most in the world. So great is her kindness, so great is her heart that she didn’t want to erase them from her body and live with them, letting her consume her thoughts, leading her to her downfall. Atalanta might be a bit cruel, she might not care exactly about human life and accept the death of others as something natural and kill with an straight face without any regrets, but when it comes to children, it’s different. She becomes a kindhearted, lovingly person who’s willing to do ANYTHING for them and their sake. She also accepts this as a punishment part of her self loathing for not being able to save them.

“I will bear with this punishment because I couldn’t save them, I will bear with it because they’re the spirits of children. This is the right thing to do”, she might have thought.

Later, when she’s preparing for the last battle, we get this:

At this point she’s completely possessed, full of hatred and rage, and remembering her past doesn’t help either. Atalanta now doesn’t only want to kill Jeanne, but kill everyone who interferes in her path to salvation of children. She will happily become a beast and even kill herself if it means saving them, or that’s what she thinks. Or that’s what the spirits make her thing. As long as she has their voices, she has motivation. She has the will to fight. She has the will to do ANYTHING to protect her wish.

Sadly, it’s a big contradiction. Her wish, so pure, so beautiful, being reached with destruction and slaughter? She doesn’t care. Her eyes are clouded with hate and she’s slowly losing her mind. She’s no longer thinking by herself at this rate and it becomes worse when she activates Agrius Metamorphosis (which, as you can see, has been intending to use after her exchange with Shakespeare)

TL/DR (because I’m tired): Atalanta’s obsession with children isn’t born from nowhere. And it’s not an insane obsession. I wouldn't call it obsession per say. She had a pure intent, she just wanted children to not go through what she had to go through, so she decided to join Shirou’s side, who had almost the same wish as her. She decided to discard her master (mostly after learning he was easily tricked) and follow Amakusa’s path. She didn’t intend to kill Jeanne out of jealously or just because “lmao she went nuts”. She was actually posssessed by evil spirits, and while she could have easily discarded them, she accepted them thanks to the hell she saw back in Jack’s illusory world. She saw her representation of herll. She saw a woman who was known as a saint killing children instead of saving them. She felt horrible with herself, to the point of hating herself for not being able to save them because she was powerless. The spirits simply took advantage of this and added in to her downfall. She fell into despair and the spirits pushed her further and further until Achilles kills her (thus making her reason go back and the spirits and the possession of the calydonian boar abandoning her body; if he hadn’t killed her, she would have killed herself, or Ruler could have killed her. The ending she got was pretty happy in fact, because she dies without being posessed, grateful with Rider’s actions and in peace with the words he dedicates her: “we’ll head to hell together… if you’re fine with a man like me”, and also his tears of sadness while he holds her in her arms and then both disappearing together… SOMETHING THE ANIME DIDN’T SHOW, UGH).

No. Atalanta didn’t want to kill your waifu because she was “plain crazy” or “jealous”. She had her reasons and they’re more complicated than you think. I see a lot of people hating on Atalanta because Jeanne is a big fan favorite and while I do love Jeanne myself, it’s necessary to understand/know Atalanta’s reasons for her hatred to her.

That’s what the anime failed to do. While the novel gave us the chance to emphathyze with Atalanta and her growing feelings of hatred, giving us full insight of what was going through her head and why she was going to do what she did, the anime only showed her being “attacked by children, then coming back with a black arm, then said black arm disappears out of the sudden and now she wants to kill Jeanne because children”.

I’m not trying, with this post, to excuse Atalanta’s actions, though, because she did a lot of things wrong, yet I’d like people to understand why she did this.

I hope it makes sense because I’m falling asleep here.

#long post #fate apocrypha #atalanta #archer of red #i saw a lot of hate against atalanta this week and during the week where she fought jeanne and bruh #she had her reasons #she was literally going insane thanks to the spirits and her own despair #pls read the novel #someone pls finish translating the novel

132 notes · View notes

nfirr · 7 years

Text

High School Musical Theory:

Chad’s basketball has its own consciousness and Chad is simply a vessel for its will. Chad doesn’t go ANYWHERE without his ball; rather, the ball doesn’t go anywhere without its Chad. Whoever lays hands on the basketball forges a bond with the entity and grows progressively more in tune with the basketball’s goals. This begs the question: what is the basketball’s agenda?

to answer this, let’s look at some of Chad’s traits. Extremely loyal to his friends and team, sometimes to a fault (placing the team above his best friend in the first half of HSM 1). He is often forthwith and direct, openly addressing his concerns or beliefs about certain people or events. Sometimes the aforementioned traits waver between movies, and these aren’t exactly unusual for high school students, but there’s something we’ve all gotten to know and love about Chad Danforth: his Wildcat spirit.

Chad is arguably, out of any other student at East High, the most devoted to the Wildcats. He is almost always (save for that one time in HSM 2) the one to start the “WHAT TEAM” chant among his peers. Even when separated from the ball for days or even weeks at a time during the events of HSM 2, he still retains this high spirit. I argue that the ball is the incarnation of the Wildcat spirit, passed on from basketball player to basketball player in a legacy stretching back to East High’s first class. This may explain why Chad places an emphasis on making Troy into the next Wildcat legend in HSM 1, citing previous Wildcat basketball legends as inspiration. I may also argue that Chad may have thought himself as the next incarnation of the Wildcat Champion, but upon knowing Troy’s aptitude for basketball he may pressure Troy to take the mantle instead. But why would the basketball spirit forge such a strong bond with Chad, even though Troy seems to be the next Wildcat champion? The answer: Troy is not 100% committed to the Wildcats. Troy is conflicted, his dedication split between basketball and theater. He can’t even decide when going to college, deciding to leave Albuquerque and study in California so he can pursue both basketball and musicals. Troy’s own future, both with Gabriella and with his interests, play a larger part in his life than his team and the Wildcats of East High. Therefore, I argue that the basketball only forms bonds with those that are loyal to the Wildcats and to East High.

So who else has the basketball forged a bond with besides Chad in the series? Well, although Chad is clearly the most connected to the Wildcat Spirit, I believe that the events of HSM2 concerning Ryan’s relationship with his peers are a result of his contact with the Wildcat basketball. If you watch HSM2, in the opening song “Summertime”, you will notice that Chad throws the basketball back, his excitement for summer momentarily overpowering his attachment to the ball, thus rendering it free to bond to whoever next contacts it. And who is that?

Ryan Evans.

Although his contact with the ball only lasts for a second or two, the bond has already been set in place. In the first HSM film, Ryan was completely dedicated to his sister and to his art, feeling vengeful and betrayed when Troy and Gabriella dared to infringe upon his territory. Of course, he was never quite as hell-bent as Sharpay, but nonetheless Ryan was dedicated to his art. This changed, however, during HSM2.

Throughout the film, Ryan and his sister become more and more distant as Sharpay wishes to perform with Troy rather than her brother. This is, of course, not due to the influence of the ball, but rather a natural human reaction to being scorned by your own family. What is unusual, however, is how he is so quick to reconcile his differences with the other Wildcats and, despite his status as a member of the country club rather than an employee, become a part of their squad (that’s what kids use nowadays to describe their friend group, yeah?). In the baseball game in HSM2, meant only for employees to play, Ryan nevertheless is permitted to join in and become part of the Wildcat crew. This is also where Chad and Ryan have the most direct contact, to the point where I would argue that Chad realizes that Ryan has been influenced by the ball. It is where Chad claims that he doesn’t dance (he does not pursue his own interests over his loyalty to the Wildcats) whereas Ryan argues that both dance and sport are valid activities. And you know what?

He’s right.

Ryan’s dedication to theatre is not out of self-righteous glory (Sharpay) or a desire to fulfill his own fleeting interests (Troy), but rather to uphold a legacy. Ryan’s argument for why he and Sharpay deserve to be the leads in HSM1 and for them to perform together in HSM2 is because it’s what they’ve done for years and years. It’s upholding a tradition. In Ryan’s own way, he is serving the Wildcats not through upholding a sporting spirit, but through preserving the greatness and glory of the East High theater department. Why else would he be so passionate about keeping the most talented theater actors in the lead roles (whom he believes are himself and his sister), and yet so easily supportive of overthrowing his sister once he forges a bond with the other Wildcats in HSM2? It is because Ryan realizes that Sharpay is not serving the Wildcat legacy, only her own. It is for this reason that Ryan is considered a valid vessel for the ball, and possibly why he and Chad have so much chemistry.

tl;dr Chad’s basketball is a sentient incarnation of the Wildcat spirit that is using him as a vessel and is able to have an influence on true Wildcats through physical contact.

#hsm #high school musical #chad danforth #ryan evans #chad's basketball

257 notes · View notes

ecoamerica · 2 months

Text

youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

17K notes · View notes

theridge-rp · 4 years

Photo

Shannon! We were so delighted to see an application for Victoria arrive in our inbox and were even more delighted by the application itself. Please follow the steps on the acceptance checklist and welcome to The Ridge!

O U T O F C H A R A C T E R -

Name/Alias: Shannon

Age: 23

Preferred Pronouns: She/her

Timezone: CST

Triggers: N/A

How did you find us: scrolling through the new rp tag on tumblr :~)

Please describe your activity: I’m going to say 6/10. Because of COVID I have a lot more downtime on my hands, so I should be able to dedicate a good amount of time to being active!

Anything else you need us to know: I’ve been out of the rp world for a long time (like over 5 years, yikes) and I’ve been looking for a great role-play now that I have more free time and this one really caught my eye, and I’m very excited about it!

D E T A I L S -

Character: Victoria Amberstone

What drew you to this character: One, I really love the idea of playing a human in this world where she is surrounded by supernatural forces, and her still being badass and doing her best to survive. Secondly, I have a soft spot for characters that are very independent, and think they don’t need anyone in their life, but then are able to slowly develop relationships and become vulnerable. I just think they are wonderful to develop, and would love to do that with Victoria.

Faceclaims ( Please list at least two ): Phoebe Tonkin or Rachael Taylor

Please include why you chose the faceclaims

Victoria to me gives off a ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe. So I felt like I needed to have a face claim with a little bit of RBF, because I feel like that is Victoria’s de facto setting. She wouldn’t be the type of person who’s body language and persona gives off a “come talk to me” vibe. And I think that both of these ladies have that same energy, but also can be soft.

I N C H A R A C T E R -

Please list at least two headcanons for your character:

1. Victoria hardly ever smiles on her on accord. Sure as a bartender, she’ll flash a smile here and there, give a flirty giggle to reign in the tips. (She has a very clear line of what she will tolerate, and what she will not.) But if you catch her outside of a shift— the odds of it happening are slim. She carries so much hurt and resentment and anger in her heart, she rarely ever is able to enjoy the beauty of it all, never lets people in close enough to be able to make her happy (because it’ll only hurt that much more when they’re inevitably gone.) 2. One of the first things Victoria does when she walks into any location is to note all of the entrances and possible exits. She marks every person that could be a possible threat. In her mind she has what she would do in any worst case scenario. Paranoid? Victoria wouldn’t call it that. She would call it being prepared. She would tell you that strange things happen around here and she goes everything in her power to make sure she’s not in a situation she can’t find her way out of. 3. When Victoria’s parents first died and she was on her own, she made her own boobytraps around the house. Trip wires, simple alarm systems, etc. She would rig them up to her windows, back doorways. Logically, Victoria knew that it wouldn’t do much good against any intruder who was determined to do harm, but it helped her to sleep a little better at night. She has since grown out of it, and puts forth a good amount of her paycheck towards top of the line security systems for her apartment. But on exceedingly bad days, after waking up from a nightmare, or when instead of comforting the emptiness of her apartment is daunting and lonely, she’ll put a few quick ones up by her bedroom door and windows.

4. Her parents call her Tori. She was Tori for as long as she could remember. Her mom’s eyes would crinkle as she said it, her gaze always filled with so much love. She’d say Victoria’s name like it meant something. Like it was a private joke between the two of them. Her dad would say it like it was the most important word in the English language. Like without her name, without her, he’d be lost. The day her parents died she stopped going by Tori. She was Vic to most now, or V. If anyone calls her Tori, she is the first to make it very clear that is not an executable name for her. In Victoria’s head, it is the clearest way to portray that part of her died with her parents that day. That the girl she was, she will never be again.

Please include a list of potential plots for your character:

1. I would love to of course have Victoria start to find a community, or at least one or two people she allows herself to trust. I don’t think she will ever be warm and fuzzy and be the type to befriend anyone and everyone, but I would love for her to slowly let down her walls and allow people in, while still maintaining her independent and fierce spirit. I think it will be fun to develop and allow her to try and find the balance between doing everything on her own and allowing people to help her. 2. I would love to navigate Victoria’s feelings if/when she finds out about other species. I think with her already being untrusting, this would make it that much harder for her to really let anyone in. If she was starting to get close to someone and then found out they were anything other than human, it would just destroy her and reinforce all these feelings that she can’t trust anyone and people who come into your life only hurt you in the end. But in the same realm, if would she get some peace from knowing the true reason behind her parents death? Would she be vengeful? These are all things I would love to explore with her.

Please include an in-character sample. This can be as long as you’d like with a minimum of 400 words:

[Retained]

#theridgeadmin #bio rp #town rp #literate rp #new rp

0 notes

carryonourwaywardoneshots-blog · 7 years

Text

Stalk (part three)

Title: Stalk (part three)

Part One

Part Two

Part Four

Unofficial Chapter

Part Five (Final)

Ship: Dean x Reader

Warnings: mentions of murder

Word Count: 1,746

Masterlist

The trio stayed up late after Sam and Dean returned to do research. Every bit of (Y/N)’s story was used to attempt to figure out what was happening between her and Toby. From what the girl explained, it was as if Toby was a vengeful spirit, only attacking her during the night and in her home. But there was no way that could be possible since the boy was very, very alive. Although, he almost wasn’t once Dean got done with him. But the question was stuck in their minds: How was he doing it and was it really him? It was already debunked that Toby wasn’t a shapeshifter. It’s not too often that you hear about a shapeshifter disappearing right in front of your eyes.

Sam and (Y/N) sat in her childhood bedroom, away from Bobby’s prying eyes. As much help the elder would be, Bobby wouldn’t care to do any research on the thing and immediately charge into battle – all because it was attacking his only child. They all agreed it would be safer to just keep it from Bobby until it was over. Sam sat in (Y/N)’s old desk, laptop in front of him and keys clacking as he searched for the answer. Meanwhile, (Y/N) was on her bed looking through the Winchester’s father’s notebook. Dean doubted they would find anything in the notebook but it didn’t hurt to look. Laying on her stomach, the girl flipped through the pages, trying to find anything that sounded familiar to her.

Looking up from his laptop, Sam got a weird feeling of déjà vu. The last time they were both in her bedroom was when they were children. Sam and Dean’s father dropped the boys off at Bobby’s house whenever he went on hunts that were far too dangerous for children to be involved. Dean was two years older than (Y/N), while in return, (Y/N) was two years older than Sam. The small age differences didn’t stop the three of them from having mini adventures all around the salvage yard. From pretending to go on road trips in decaying cars to making their own club house in an alcove of stacked cars with a tarp covering it (without Bobby’s approval, of course) to searching for random treasures in the trunks and glove boxes of the old cars, the kids had no limit to what they could do around the yard. But on particular days when it was storming, the kids usually sat up in (Y/N)’s room, reading, playing with board games or card games, or just talking.

The times that it was just Sam and (Y/N), they usually just read. Bobby and (Y/N) had more books than Sam could ever imagine. When Dean wasn’t there to judge him, Sam didn’t mind reading all day in (Y/N)’s room – and (Y/N) definitely didn’t mind having someone to discuss her favorite books with. Although they weren’t children anymore and reading fiction novels, it still made Sam’s usual stressed heart slow down and take a minute to reminisce. “You find anything?” (Y/N)’s question halted Sam’s trance, making him shake his head and frown at the girl. “No, I was just thinking.”

“About what?” She held up her head with her hands. Sam hesitated before speaking, fearing making the atmosphere awkward with the mention of their past. “Remember when we were kids and we used to sit… in these exact same spots, actually, and just read all day?” (Y/N) smiled and closed her eyes. “Those were the good ol’ days. Weren’t they, Sammy?” She adjusted her position on the bed, turning on her back and sitting up with her legs crossed. “It was fun growing up here – safe, even. It was like we were protected from all the monsters in the world. Is that why you came home, (Y/N)? Because you feel like home is where you’re safe?”

“I hardly call this place home anymore, but it’s a start to the reason. I miss this place mostly because I don’t have to worry about anything when I’m here, but it’s still just as dangerous as any other place in the world and all three of us seem to forget that.” (Y/N) sighed, picking up the journal and flipping through the pages before speaking again, “I thought when I left for college when I was younger that I was going out into the scary and dangerous world on my own but I seemed to forget that this house – this town – is a part of that world, too. Dad just knew how to kill the fuckers that bothered us.”

Sam was taken aback by her words, but she wasn’t done yet. “Nowhere is safe. You make as many devil or angel traps as you want, you can line all your windows and doors with salt, you can lock the doors and latch the windows but one way or another, something is always going to get in and you will be killed. It’s inevitable.” The door creaked open, Dean stood there with three beers in his hands as he stepped inside and one them both. “Woah, Downer Daisy, sounds like you need this.” A small laugh escaped the three of them as Dean sat down next to (Y/N). “It’s the truth.” Sam frowned as he popped open the beer and took a sip.

“Yeah, but we try to ignore that tiny detail in the hunting life.” Dean attempted to make them laugh again but not a sound came from the two. The three were silent for what seemed like a few minutes before Sam cleared his throat to get their attention, “I think I found something but you’re not going to like this.” (Y/N) turned her head towards him and smiled at the discovery, “Shoot.”

“Ask yourself this: How can Toby be a spirit but be alive at the same time?” Sam’s eyes flickered between the two, who were growing closer and closer by the second. Dean shifted in his spot on the bed, bumping his hip against (Y/N)’s. “I have no idea, Sam. What?” Dean asked Sam with a sarcastic tone. “Well, look no further.” The youngest Winchester chuckled as he opened a tab on his laptop, “Astral projection.”

“Astral what?” (Y/N) asked, leaning back on the bed with her arms, trying to remember where she heard the term from before. “Astral projection is where your spirit leaves your body while you sleep. Toby isn’t necessarily doing it, but his soul is. The only way we can fix this is if we kill Toby and burn his body to prevent further spiritual activity.”

“Wait, you guys aren’t actually going to kill him, are you?” She sat up immediately, looking between the brothers. They didn’t say anything, just gave the girl a sympathetic look. “You can’t be serious. This is murder we’re talking about!”

“Would you rather be felt up by a ghost, (Y/N)?” Dean’s words reached out and slapped her in the face, making tears threaten to break from her eyes. (Y/N) was silent as she stood up from her bed, turning to Dean who now just realized what he was saying. “Fuck you.” With that, she turned and left the room, making her way to the study.

All night long, (Y/N) studied astral projection on her father’s computer, attempting to find ways on how to prevent it. Of course, it’s up to the person who is doing it to stop. If she confronted Toby on what his spirit was doing, he would think she’s crazy. They didn’t exactly have a good reputation with each other and it would probably only lead to further problems if she did it by herself. In the middle of her research, a knock sounded on the study door, causing her to jump in her seat. “What do you want?” She asked as she grabbed a tissue and blew her nose.

“(Y/N), can I come in?” It was Dean. Of course, it’s Dean. After what he said, she was expecting him to be at the door sooner than this. He wasn’t one to say something and not apologize after hurting her feelings, it was the same way when they were younger. Dean was somewhat of a bully towards (Y/N) even though they got along most of the time. It must be something with being the oldest. He was nice at first when they kids, but as the years started rolling along and they got older, Dean started becoming more and more bossy and things always had to go his way. When they would fight, Dean would say things he didn’t mean just to win. This wasn’t any different from those times so, naturally, he came to apologize.

“Depends,” she stood up from her chair and walked towards the door, “Are you going to be a jerk?” Just as the oldest Winchester rested his head on the door, (Y/N) opened it up, welcoming him in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that…”

“Dean, I was scared half to death when that thing crawled into bed with me. I was scared when it was on top of me and I just want it to stop. But, I don’t want some kid to die over it. He can’t control what’s happening to him and he doesn’t deserve to die.” (Y/N) rounded the desk and sat back in her original spot, allowing Dean to close the door and take a seat in the chair across the desk. “That’s your problem, (Y/N),” He chuckled and shook his head, “You have too much sympathy in your heart. Why aren’t you anything like your dad?”

“Because I see the world differently from my dad, as you can probably tell.” (Y/N) smiled and turned back to the computer. “Did you find anything while you and Sam were alone?” She asked, skimming the website she was reading before Dean knocked at the door. “Nothing that doesn’t involve us. We can’t really do anything about it to stop him.” (Y/N) nodded as the description on the website matched up to Dean’s explanation. “So, what do we do?” she crossed her arms and turned towards Dean. The man sighed, lowering his gaze away from her eyes. “We just have to do it, unless you want to live in the safe room for the rest of your life.” (Y/N) thought for a moment just to humor herself but shook her head. “It smells weird in there.” She laughed, “But when do we do it?”

“Tonight.”

106 notes · View notes

20thcentutygeek · 7 years

Text

5 Haunting Horror films based on true stories (aside from Amityville Horror).

When I started researching this I was expecting to find a glut of films that would fit this category in the 70s and 80s. There were a couple but they were a bit tenuous (The Exorcist). It seemed more like a nugget of a real-life event was taken and then turned into something completely different. I suppose this way no one extra had to be paid. This changes in the early 2000’s and from 2005 onwards we have had a continual stream of Horror Movies based on ‘real events’. This has culminated in the Conjuring films, based on the accounts of the Warrens.

Below is a list of 5 films that are based on alleged real paranormal events:

1. An American Haunting (2005)

Events: in 1817 the Bell family started to suffer an alleged haunting by a ghostly witch. It started when the head of the family, John Bell, came across a strange animal in his corn field. Shocked by the animal’s appearance he opened fire, the animal vanished. That night for the first time, the family were bombarded by a beating sound on the side of their home. From that point on the haunting got worse.

The noises continued. Sometimes outside the house, other times in the same room as members of the Bell family. Many people as well as the family reporting the sounds as well as seeing and feeling things within the house over several years.

Whatever the entity was that was haunting the family it made its final attack in 1820, when it allegedly poisoned and killed John Bell. Laughing loudly as he took his final breathes. It is said that the ghost returned in 1828 for a short time but was not heard of again after that.

This is regarded as one of the earliest and most wide spread hauntings in American History.

Film: The film has got an interesting cast with Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek and several up and coming actors at the time. It has an interesting modern wrap around mechanism as access into the period setting. It also maintains the actual, relative down beat, ending of the legend but condenses the haunting period of years to what feels like months. While the film maintains the haunted happenings the scares and tension never really amount to much, it was only a 12 (PG-13).

It was an interesting exercise in period drama horror, however I think this would have been better if it had either been more stylised (ala Sleepy Hollow) or tried for some harder edged scares and content (ala Annabelle Creation).

2. The exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Events: The film is based on the tragic events that lead to the death of German woman Anneliese Michel. She dies in 1976 suffering from malnourishment and dehydration after months of being subjected to exorcist practices.

After suffering a seizure at the age of 16 Anneliese began to suffer increasing periods of depression. These low points and neuroses began to become focused on religious artefacts. A huge concern for a girl that came from such a religiously devoted family. Soon both she and her family became convinced that she was possessed by something evil. After several attempts the family convinced two priests that she needed intervention.

This started the exorcisms that eventually led to her death. Following her death her parents and the two priests were prosecuted for murder. They were found guilty of negligent homicide. This also forced the Catholic church to distance itself from the case and change its stance to state that she had been mentally ill and not in fact possessed by an evil force.

Film: They take a leap with this film as the story is told in retrospect, dealing with the court case that follows the death of Emily Rose. This is not a film about whether they can save the possessed girl, we know the answer is no. The film spends more time dealing with the question of whether she was possessed at all. It’s an interesting conceit and that isn’t fully explored. If they had had the confidence in the audience, it would have been a better film. However, they never want to completely condemn the priest.

In a better film, he would have been played as a more unreliable narrator. There would have been more uncertainty about whether she was possessed or if the priest hadn’t been obsessed due to his religious zeal.

That said, the film is good fun and the core cast are mostly good. This is a solid possession horror film with an interesting concept. The frustration is that this had the potential to be something more and elevate the genre and story into a classic.

3. The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Events: of all the ‘True Events’ on this list, this is the one that has the most holes. This is the first but not the last appearance of the Warrens on this list and their paws are all over this. The haunting was alleged to have focused around the House and son of the Snedecker family, who was suffering from a form of Cancer. Minor events were reported but nothing of great note. That is when the Warrens got involved and the story became ‘clearer’.

The entity harassing the family was supposed to have been linked to the previous use of the house as a mortuary. It was stated that there were several employees of the mortuary that practiced necromancy and necrophilia. It was the spirits of these people that were returning at the heart of the events.

This did lead to several grander events. This included the son attacking his cousin and being held in a mental health ward for a period. However, following Ed Warren’s death in … several people linked with the investigation and the documenting of the events admitted that Ed told them to embellish what they knew in any way they could think of to make it scary.

The House is still occupied and the current occupants have frequently stated that they have never experienced any paranormal activity.

Film: The movie has a couple of well-placed scares and some moments of tension, however the overall film is very pedestrian. The facts from the true events are close enough regarding the house and its history. However, elements of the family are changed for safety. The focus on the main son having cancer is reduced.

There is little to say about this film really. It’s competently made, the acting is sufficient and its creepy at times but it just feels very run of the mill and safe for this genre. It’s a shame really because again, like the Exorcism of Emily Rose, this has the potential to add an element of ambiguity and tension with a just a few changes. Could the son’s illness have been at the root of the events? Could it be suggested in the film that this was a hoax to raise money to cover medical costs.

It’s worth checking out if you are a fan of the genre but there are better films on this list.

4. The Conjuring (2013)

Events: Ah the Warrens. The couple that have now become synonymous with modern haunted house movies, thanks mostly to this film. As is usually the case, the story the Warren’s tell is very different from the truth the family have sated. The Perron family lived in the house at the heart of the story of a decade and the hauntings were spread over this while period.

The haunting was centred around the spirit of an alleged witch called Bathsheba Sherman who died in 1885. There is little evidence that she was in fact a witch, however it was alleged that she killed several infants as sacrifices to the devil. The haunting took on several aspects for the different inhabitants. Some saw apparitions, others were physically attacked but all the heard the noises and voices.

The haunting was never fully resolved. The case may have been closed by the Warren’s however after the Perron’s sold the house in 1980 there were further reports of ghostly activity. This is an event that I think deserves a more attention and possibly a closer adaptation of the story.

Film: Forgetting the alterations of the history this was a return to form for haunted house films. I really enjoyed the tone and feel of the film. It’s has an excellent sense of creepiness and uneasiness running through it. There are some incredibly well placed and paced scares that are incredibly effective.

The strength of the film is in the first two thirds. The build-up of the family dynamic and the relationship that grows with the Warrens. This investment in characters underlines the tension and scares. However, this is partially undone by a clichéd and overly dramatic finale. This will most likely be regarded as a milestone in horror history however it just falls shy of becoming a horror classic. I won’t even go into the dreadful sequel and Annabelle spin-offs. This Franchise has such potential but is being squandered on cheap jump scares and poorly written and preposterous characters.

5. Deliver us form Evil (2014)

Events: The book ‘Deliver us from evil’ written by Lisa Collier Cool, chronicles the supernatural cases of former New York Police officer Ralph Sarchie. It is set up to be like the real life X-files. It covers a number of cases of possession and ghostly attacks that are alleged to be related to crimes that were left unsolved. Of course, they have been solved by Sarchie but the truth would not be accepted by the public.

Sarchie has appeared on several podcasts, radio and TV shows to promote the book and Film, telling his tales of the supernatural that lives in the Bronx. Demon neighbours, ghostly vengeful brides and the exorcisms that were carried out to save the people involved. Its sounds like he was a busy guy, maybe the Bronx is over a hell mouth and they would have been better off with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Film: Eric Bana is a New York cop that starts to uncover a conspiracy of soldiers possessed by demons from the middle east. The plot is a little daft and the direction is not subtle in anyway however this odd combination of horror and cop drama is fun if not scary. Bana is committed to the role and is sufficiently brooding and earnest about it all. It does all fall a part in the finale, as they usually do. If these events are alleged to have happened I am sure that someone in the media would have noticed.

A fun film for Halloween or with a few beers but not a solid recommend.

#Horror #Reviews #Movies #Blogging #History

1 note · View note