ʙᴇᴇᴘ ʙᴇᴇᴘ, ʀɪᴄʜɪᴇ (trashing) wrote in valloic, @ 2022-03-14 19:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, angel sanctuary: katou yue, ₴ inactive: richie tozier (2) |
Katou had never had much use for adults. They sure as hell couldn’t be trusted, and he’d taken care of himself just fine the last few years before he died. Kinda. Mostly. Sure, he’d died at seventeen, but that really hadn’t been because he didn’t know how to take care of himself, unless you counted taking weird, unidentifiable drugs from strangers and then getting possessed as ‘not knowing how to take care of yourself.’ Whatever. It was just bad luck, really. The point was, he’d never met an adult with good intentions. At least, not when he was alive. Uriel had been fine, but Uriel wasn’t human, he was an archangel. And Hades and Persephone were fine, but they also weren’t human. Greek gods ≠ humans. And then he’d spent a week trapped in that sphere with Max and those two elves, or fairies, or whatever the hell they were, and he had to admit that Max seemed okay. Ish. Maybe. He was probably also shitty, somehow, but Katou decided that he was probably fine to keep an eye on El. He wasn’t so sure about Richie. Sure, El seemed to like him, and sure, Max seemed to like him and Max apparently wasn’t a piece of shit, and sure, Katou had never seen anything on the Network that made him question Richie’s intentions. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He was staring at him now as Richie read through the scene breakdowns, sitting backwards on a chair, arms crossed over the back of it and chin resting on his forearms, chewing on the filter of an unlit cigarette. He wasn’t about to give Richie the actual script he’d written – it was honestly awful, enough to make Tommy Wiseau look like Shakespeare, and that wasn’t just Katou being hard on himself. The dialogue had been stilted and unnatural, and nothing had flowed right. He might have watched a lot of movies, but apparently that didn’t mean he knew how to write worth shit. He liked the basic idea for his story though, about a zombie who kept dying, and everytime he died, he became just a little more human, and he’d taken to following around the guy who’d killed him the first time, sure that somehow if he did, he’d finally become human again. He’d had each of the scenes penned down, more or less, though he wasn’t sure about the ending: the death that might have made the zombie human just made him dead. It wasn’t sad exactly, but it wasn’t exactly happy, and he wasn’t really sure if it fit with the horror-comedy vibe he was going for. If the movie paralleled Katou at all, he didn’t notice. If there was some metaphor buried in there for addiction, Katou didn’t catch it either. It was just something dumb he’d started writing when Adora had put the idea of making a movie in his head, and he was honestly surprised that he’d managed to get this far with it. The Herald’s Rest, in Skyhold, had a cozy sort of atmosphere - Richie always thought so, anyway. The lighting was both dim and bright, an interesting contradiction, which seemed to be an effect attributed to the low ceilings, lack of natural light, candles, and sconces affixed to each beam above them; the worn and rusted lanterns scattered throughout were more a stylistic choice than anything else and, yeah, the fortress was also electrically wired now. But there was still something cool about that medieval vibe. It was a good place to meet even if he just had soda now - along with a shit ton of candy, since Katou said he liked chocolate best and wanted that for the preferred snackfood. Richie definitely obliged - he knew the kid was friends with El, so any friend of El was a friend of his. He didn’t even care if Kat was a feral cat around adults - Richie had been too, at his age, and that was due to having grown up in a town that was a literal hellmouth so he didn’t take it personally. Earning trust from someone who was traumatized and probably a little bit damaged required effort, anyway (he knew, from personal experience). “This is really cool,” he said about the script concept. Even the ending, which wasn’t sunshine and rainbows but - no one needed a happy ending all the time. An ending that just is worked too - it was relatable. “What are you looking for, in terms of turnaround time? Like how many pages of script per day would you want?” Katou hadn’t yet touched the chocolates and other candies, though his eyes had strayed that way more than once. It wasn’t that he thought Richie was about to poison him or anything – and, in fact, he doubted Richie could poison him. He wasn’t a poison-ologist or whatever, but he was pretty sure most poisons, outside of herbicides, wouldn’t have an effect on him, given his plantly body. But he didn’t particularly feel like letting his guard down enough to snack on something that Richie had bought just yet. Katou frowned, staring at Richie, looking for some sign that his ‘this is really cool’ had been meant as some sort of mockery. He gave that up at the next sentence though. “Wait, I can decide that?” Katou asked, raising an eyebrow. “So I could just be like ‘give me 50 pages a day’ and you’d do it?” How long did it take to write a page of script anyway? Probably not long, Katou decided. “I mean, I guess you could suggest fifty pages a day,” Richie chuckled, pushing his glasses up on his nose before reaching for chocolate for himself - peanut butter cups, they were his favorite and he’d just go ahead and tear into these suckers (because more sugar, yep, that was totally what he needed). He had a bunch of different kinds but these were the ones with pretzels and they were damn delicious. “But I also work a couple jobs so I don’t know if I could adhere to that suggestion.” Now that the floor was open for discussion though, he’d get the ball rolling. And while Richie had never done any script writing himself, he always thought it seemed like a neat gig and he knew plenty of screenwriters back in LA. Something to add to his résumé here, anyway, and he basically just loved being in the entertainment industry regardless. “From what I’ve seen, like, from working on shows and stuff - it’s usually six or seven pages a day, but that’s like a full-time day. Eight hours. Mine might be a little less so, shave a couple pages off of that.” He didn’t imagine Katou’s movie would be pretty long either - though he did want Adora to film it with a random video camera. Amazing. Katou glanced at the chocolates again, and at Richie eating his own, and after a moment of internal debate, he tucked his unlit cigarette behind his ear and grabbed one. Part of him was tempted to give Richie some obnoxious number. Ten pages a day and not a page less or something like that, but after a moment he gave up on the idea and sighed. "Look bro, you ain't getting paid for this," Katou said, and then frowned thoughtfully. "I mean, unless it becomes a cult classic and we actually make money off it. The point is, you might as well just write at whatever pace you want. I don't even know if I'm gonna do the damn thing yet." He probably wouldn't, really. Katou'd never accomplished much of anything in his short life, and his death had all been taking orders, and either maiming people or getting maimed himself. It wasn't like 'make a movie' was in his skillset. He didn't have the motivation or the sticktoitiveness, and the fact that he'd even made it this far was more than he could've expected. There we go - enjoy the chocolates, kiddo, life was short. And the fact that some kids were young and still had crammed in a boatload of adult experiences into their teenage years, experiences that left scars behind, just upped the ante. You definitely deserved chocolate, in that case. “Could become a cult classic here in Vallo,” he allowed, and he had high hopes for that - this was how it started for some, right? Like the people who wrote and filmed The Blair Witch Project? Maybe they were also sitting around in a medieval tavern, stuffing their faces with chocolate and contemplating the success of their screenplay. “You just never know. But while I can’t crank out a bunch of pages per day I promise to write at a decent pace and not take forever. I’m not entirely ADHD, not when it matters. We’ll check in regularly and stuff.” He dusted off his hands before going for the next peanut butter cup in the package (what was dangerous were those king-sized ones, holy shit). “So what inspired you to write the story?” Katou snorted derisively: the chances of his movie becoming a cult classic was slim to none. Unless it was a classic in the same sense as The Room or Silent Night 2, where the fact that it was just bad was part of the draw. He shrugged at Richie’s question. “I don’t know. This chick I kinda know, Adora –” Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure he’d seen Richie and Adora chatting on his post, so Richie probably knew her too – “She mentioned me making a movie a while ago.” He reached for another chocolate, chewed it thoughtfully. “Guys like me don’t usually run around making movies and shit, but…” He shrugged. “I dunno, the concept seemed cooler the longer I thought about it. So here we are.” “Oh, yeah, Adora - I love that lady. She’s like my sister,” Richie said cheerfully. “...definitely was my sister, in that weird Hallmark Original shitshow type of place.” And even out of it too, come to think of it - she’d referred to Richie as her brother a few times and he wasn’t complaining about it. The nickname he’d long ago dubbed for Catra, ‘cat sis,’ also fit the bill - they were family. And it was nice to have family that would be there for you, through all the ups and downs of whatever Vallo had to offer. But it didn’t surprise him that she was also out here encouraging the youngsters to follow their dreams or whatever - or to just try something new. So many people came from depressing circumstances - why not take advantage of everything possible, in what was literally a whole new world (Aladdin references aside)? “You’re in school otherwise? It’s going okay?” he asked. Katou seemed like a good kid - rough around the edges, a lot, but. There was a glimmer of squish in there, Richie could tell. Anyone who was helping to wrangle sheep because it meant a lot to El wasn’t all tough and unreachable. “Yeah, Max mentioned you’d gone there,” Katou said. He’d been there too. Had even run into Adora and Catra, and had thrown water bottles at Adora’s head at Catra’s behest. Well, okay, Catra didn’t tell Katou to throw the water bottles, exactly, but she had made sure to tell Katou that Adora had to stay hydrated, so Katou’d done his best. “Yeah, I go to the same school as El,” Katou said, not bothering to mention that he’d transferred there after El had mentioned it to him. She’d never been to school before, and Katou knew what assholes kids could be. He’d been one of those asshole bullies himself when he’d been alive. Besides, he didn’t do so well with self-study. It was better to have some sorta structure than the loosey-goosey way that the Outlander School handled things. He shrugged. “It’s going better than when I was alive, I guess. I show up most days, sometimes do my homework. Can’t complain.” He frowned, considering. “I mean, aside from the whole school thing, I guess.” Aw, memories. Katou sounded like how Richie had been in school. He was really damn intelligent when he buckled down and actually studied (and he’d been smart enough to get into a good college) but there were definitely times when he blew it off entirely in favor of walking to the arcade to get some Street Fighter in, or because he didn’t want to face his tormentors. Henry Bowers and his scummy ‘friends’ really did a number on him - the other Losers made it bearable, but Derry overall was just such a cesspool anyway that it was difficult to find any true moments of happiness. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially after that one fateful summer where their group had been splintered because Bev moved to Portland to live with her aunt since her dad was a piece of shit. They’d gotten a break when they drove Pennywise into an early hibernation, just not much of one, and had gone into their high school years saddled with trauma that wouldn’t ever leave them. “Definitely hang in there,” he grinned. “I’m glad you and El are friends though, and at the same school. I know it sucks sometimes but even the boring parts are stuff she’s never experienced before.” Having friends to go through it all with was definitely a bonus too. “Yeah, I know. And she needs someone to watch her back before she goes and does something stupid like, I don’t know, join the A/V Club or something,” Katou said, though he said it with a grin. If she wanted, to join the A/V Club, she could. Katou’d make sure to knock some sense into anyone who decided to tease her about it. “Really, don’t know why I’m bothering with all this high school shit otherwise. It ain’t like I’m university material or nothing.” Oh no, not the AV Club. Richie laughed, finding the thought of El in the AV Club to be both hilarious and downright adorable. Honestly, he’d support whatever she wanted to do - chess club or cheerleading or marching band; she could play the tuba, and he’d be there at every football game halftime show and every other performance. “You probably don’t have much longer to go, right?” he guessed. “It’s probably worth sticking through til graduation to have the diploma and then, I don’t know. You can do whatever you feel like doing. Universities definitely aren’t required. There are other ways to make a living, or to be happy.” Plus student loans sucked though luckily Vallo didn’t seem to have the same it’s a trap education vibe that the Good Ol’ US of A did. “Another year after this one,” Katou said, scowling. He’d been nearly done the first semester of his junior year when he’d died, though that probably didn’t matter too much. The only reason he hadn’t been failing all his classes back in Japan was because he’d had some kid doing all his homework for him. He’d been lucky they’d kept him in his junior year instead of knocking him back a year or two, and he didn’t particularly want to coerce some kid into doing all his work for him here, too. He grabbed another chocolate. “What about you? You go to university? That where you did the scriptwriting thing?” “I did, yeah - the day after high school graduation, I booked it out of my hometown. Considering it was a literal hellmouth I didn’t really want to stick around,” he snorted. And even now, all he saw when he thought of Derry, pictured there in the backs of his eyes, was Neibolt - rotten floorboards and the dank interior of a place exposed to plenty of Maine seasons un-weatherproofed, and fetid water that didn’t come quite so far up on his legs as it did when he’d been a teenager. It probably wasn’t as bad now that everything had collapsed and ITs influence was vanquished, but Richie never really wanted to find out for sure. He popped the tab on a soda can (that hiiiiiiss sound, always satisfying), taking a swig. “I studied Broadcast Journalism though. Then moved to LA when I graduated because I wanted to be in the entertainment industry somehow. I didn’t really have much of a plan but it worked out.” Richie had been doing okay for himself - he had a stand-up comedy tour that was going well, or had been, until Mike’s fateful phone call. “Hell really gets a bad rap sometimes,” Katou snorted. Some of the happiest days of his life had been in the upper layers of Hell, at least, though Setsuna hadn’t had much of anything good to say about his trip to the lower levels, when he’d gone to save Kurai. But Gehenna, as much of a dry, desolate wasteland as it had been, had had more than a few decent people in it, and it hadn’t been uncomfortable. “What did you do in LA?” Katou asked, curious despite himself. Some part of him had wanted to move to LA – New York had been first on his list, but LA had been a close second – so that he could make music. Oh man, his beginnings in LA had been a trip, literally. Richie recalled spending a lot of time in Malibu - rocky outcrops and popular with boogie boarders and surfers alike. Nose candy and vegan kale smoothies. Some of the beach bars even had specific coke mirrors next to the sink (he’d taken advantage of those, back in the day). The summers were hot but the sun felt nice, the air dry rather than oppressively humid. Mild winters, very mild - which was good for him, coming from Maine. “At first I was barely making ends meet,” he said, going for a bag of M&Ms next. May as well break into this bad boy. “It was a couple of bartending gigs, going to auditions, that sort of thing. I used to write my own standup material and then I sort of...phased out of that the more successful I got. Probably a lot of other reasons why too, but I was determined to make it and I did but I didn’t start writing my own material again until I got here to Vallo.” And he’d met Max, which helped too - gave him more confidence. Inspiration. Katou held out a hand, wordlessly demanding M&Ms. Now that he’d gotten started on the chocolate, he wasn’t about to stop any time soon. “I always daydreamed about moving to America some day and becoming some big rock star,” Katou admitted grudgingly. “Or better yet, in some badass punk band that never really made it mainstream but was good enough to make ends meet. I mean, it weren’t never gonna happen, but it was nice to think about sometimes.” Gladly, Richie passed over the M&Ms - he couldn’t really afford to consume the whole bag, so, sharing the sugar wealth was a-okay in his book. He had taken a handful though, and he tilted his head back and dropped the colored candies in his mouth (it was true, they melted in your mouth and not in your hand). “That’s a cool dream and I think my friends and I had similar ones - they were definitely nice to think about,” he said. A prime form of escapism, especially when your life sucked and you were stuck in crap-ass circumstances. Or a small town that meant saving up every penny for a bus ticket out of there, blowing all your graduation money on frivolous stuff when you finally found a taste of freedom. “I mean, I know it sounds cliché as shit but you’re still young and here in Vallo, there’s at least a chance for all sorts of stuff you might never get to do otherwise. Live the dreams.” He nodded toward the story outline pages he’d looked over. “Make all the movies too. Whatever makes you happy.” Katou had thrown away his life – his actual life – in Tokyo. He still wasn’t always sure how he’d managed his second chance (or half-dozenth chance, whatever) after his death. He didn’t want to throw it away too, but it was hard to know how to do that, especially in this place, when the only things he’d ever known his entire life was violence and fucking up. How did someone ‘live the dream’ when they’d never really bothered with anything resembling a real dream. But this wasn’t the place to think about shit like that, so he replaced the subdued expression on his face with a smirk. “Probably gonna be more of a pain in the ass than anything, but whatever. Guess it’s something to do in this place.” He shrugged. “So long as the script don’t end up sucking at least,” he added, cheerily. “Naaaah, I got you,” Richie promised with a chuckle. “It’ll be the best damn script ever. We’ll win...whatever the equivalent of Vallo’s Academy Award is.” Actually, he didn’t know what that would be - but it had to be something. He was marginally involved in the entertainment industry, doing his standup routine and writing his own jokes - and in the musicals, which he always planned to support even if he wasn’t in them (like Moulin Rouge - not really his thing, alas). Plus, like he said, making this script happen and watching the movie unfold, take shape, and come to life seemed to make Katou happy - and that was important. He deserved that. They all deserved nice things, and you couldn’t convince him otherwise. “Ugh, I don’t want no Oscar Bait movie,” Katou snorted, but shot Richie a grin that was almost amicable. “I’ma tell you what I told Max,” he said after a moment, popping some M&Ms into his mouth. “I’ll kill you if you try to hurt El, if she don’t get to it first, but you ain’t so bad, I guess.” He held out his hand for a shake. “Let’s make a kick-ass movie.” The grin on Richie’s face, it was an injection of sunshine - like rays right through the ceiling, he had that way about him. When he was happy, it showed. When he wasn’t, that was also obvious - because his brow would furrow and his mouth would turn down and he’d get a wrinkle in the same spot on his brow too, between his eyes. But he definitely wasn’t upset now. He laughed a little, shaking Katou’s hand. “Got it,” he acknowledged the death threat, eyes twinkling. And the commitment to a kick-ass movie too, of course. “Sounds like a plan, dude. I’m all in.” Something new to mix it up here in Vallo and you know what? It was going to be fun. |