#//-to the guy who is damn near second in command on virtue of being so damn ready to help in any way he can?

[mechahero]

//Looking at the doc of Motor City info and small plot beats I have written down over the years and I think it's kind of funny how far Steve has come so far. He went from being just the weird eldritch monster that moves platforms between the top and bottom layers of Motor City like an elevator while being the nicest person ever to the creature to go to for good life advice.

He kind of deserves that tbh.

[awed-frog]

in which caesar doesn’t do anything much and all the women are named julia

[Hi, this is me stanning Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Caesar. I studied Classics, but not this period, so all I can contribute here are squeals of delight, a few mistakes and the occasional witty comment. If you’d like to know more, please buy the book - it’s really good and a fun read.]

PART 2

The thing is - there’s a lot of boring relevant political stuff going on in this chapter, but I’m mostly fascinated by the glimpses we get into the world of Roman women. 

As I said, this is not really my area, so I know random, unconnected facts about how life was like for them; also it doesn’t make much sense to talk about ‘Roman women’, because, as a reminder, ‘Rome’ stretches from the 14th century BC to the 14th century AD, came to include dozens of very different regions, and obviously was home to an incredibly diverse population. And if we’re talking about the late Republican / imperial aristocracy, there’s a sharp divide anyway: on the one hand, the ‘ideal woman’ is the same old model we’re all used to and heard about (silent, obedient, virtuous, chaste, a perfect mother and so on), but on the other, Roman noblewomen had a lot more freedom than, say, their Greek counterparts, so there was usually some political scheming going on - something that in Greece was reserved to a handful of very well-placed courtesans. 

(In this sense, think about the contrast between Lucretia, the mythological wife of Collatinus, whose fridging created the Republic, and Agrippina, mother of Nero, empress and all-round badass bitch.)

Anyway, this chapter made me think about women because it starts with Caesar being born and getting his name - it’s sort of an urban legend, btw, that every single Roman had three names: that was just for the Moste Noblest - and how Goldsworthy casually mentions that, unlike men, women of noble birth would just take their family surname as first name. In Caesar’s family, for instance, all the women were named Julia.

(As a reminder: his given name was Caius, then ‘Julius’ identified the tribe, and finally ‘Caesar’ was a nickname that was possibly given to his grandfather for something elephant-related. 

People whose grandfathers did not do elephant-related stuff generally never enjoyed the prestige of a funny nickname passed down through the generations.)

So it’s bad enough that twins might be named ‘Peter and Not-Peter’ or ‘Peter and Twin’, but imagine going to the park with your buggy and meeting your old friend Oldest She-Jones (daughter of Ferdinand Jones), now married to George David Taylor, and her five kids - Louis David Taylor, She-Taylor, She-Taylor the Second, She-Taylor the Third and She-Taylor Born on Christmas. So damn cute, and also the reason why the Romans never developed smartphones or social media - how the hell are you supposed to find someone on Vultocodex when every single cousin and aunt has the exact same name?

Poor management, that is.

But anyway - as I said, there’s a dissonance here because women being treated like garbage (like, not given normal names and married off at fourteen) also led to the very peculiar phenomenon: generations of (male) politicians and VIPs being raised by very forceful, strong, and ambitious (widowed) mothers. Because if you count old age, wars, trampolining injuries (let’s be honest, men have always been obsessed with attempting dangerous stunts just for the fun of it) and the general risks of Roman politics, it was very usual for a noble kid to not even remember his father at all.

(Nero is a good example of how weird and all-consuming this boy-mother relationship could become - there’s entire books about it, but I’d point 16-and-over readers to Suetonius’ Life of Nero for details.

Keep in mind 95% of it is propaganda because Suetonius hated Nero, but still. HBO-worthy stuff in there.)

All this to say - we know that Caesar had a very close relationship with his mom (named ‘Aurelia’ because - you guessed it - she came from the Aurelii family), who was a near perfect figure of virtue, intelligence, beauty and common sense. Very powerful in her own right, Aurelia raised Caesar basically on her own, because her (much older) husband was either away at war or dead for most of their marriage.

Aside from drinking in Aurelia’s wisdom, Caesar’s education also included the normal lessons noble Roman boys were required to learn: self-worth, narcissism, delusional manias, rhetoric, martial arts, horse-riding, and writing really bad fanfiction based on Greek myths.

And now for the MEANWHILE part.

(I have no idea why this gif was tagged ‘meanwhile’, but I’m not enough of an idiot to let it go to waste, so.)

Meanwhile, all sort of messes were going on.

As I’m sure you remember, at some point the consul was Marius - Caesar’s uncle and a military genius, but not much of a politician. His negotiation tactic of choice was secretly inviting groups of unconnected people to his house on the same night, serving them dinner in two separate rooms so they wouldn’t see one another and try to work out some kind of agreement between them. Whenever a new point came up, Marius would say he had diarrhoea, pretend to run to the bathroom and instead sit down with the second group and see what they thought about the first group’s proposal.

(Isn’t ancient Rome magnificent?)

A big problem Marius had to deal with was how to grant citizenship to the allied tribes in Italy without pissing off current citizens. Basically no one wanted these other guys to be given new rights, but since they supplied more than half the soldiers of the Roman army and got nothing in return, their patience was running a bit thin. At some point, Roman bureaucrats started to erase foreign-born citizens from their lists claiming they were not actual citizens (something so openly dishonest NO OTHER GOVERNMENT would EVER attempt it again), and next yet another tribune working on a citizenship reform was stabbed to death in the street. 

So the allies went to war. 

(This war, confusingly, is known as the Social War, because ‘socius’ means ‘ally’ in Latin.)

As you can imagine, it was a disaster. Most of the allied communities had been part of the Roman republic for I don’t want to check but let’s say decades, they lived side by side with Roman families and fought in the same wars, so it was more of a civil war than anything else. Some tribes chose to remain faithful to Rome, others didn’t. Lots of people died.

Caesar was too young to be a soldier, but this was Cicero’s first taste of war (bet you never thought of that weaselly weasel as a soldier, uh? appearances can be deceiving, folks!). Marius was also involved, but since he was old as shit and had famously weak and leaky guts (hahahhaha), he mostly stayed out of active combat, which wasn’t all that normal for a Roman general. In the end, the whole of Italy, down to defeated tribes, cows, dogs and random patches of mossy rocks, was granted citizenship and everyone went home. Their votes, however, were inserted in the system in such a way that they didn’t count much. 

On the whole, the one winner of this war was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one of the military commanders, who became a consul soon after.

Another war, because this is Rome and Romans were dicks, but! this one was in the East, which means every single soldier would get super rich and also! wars in the East were considered easy because *insert racist trope here* and! Sulla had been promised that, as the big winner of the Social War, he could go there with his legions and basically enjoy this Disneyland of golden cups and ultraviolence but! at the last moment, Marius, who never liked Sulla much, managed to snatch the commandership from him, which! was completely legal but also *insert outraged emoji* and wait for it! instead of going gentle into the good night, Sulla made a fiery speech to his soldiers all like GUESS WHAT FOLKS WE’RE STUCK HERE SCRATCHING OUR TESTICULI AND THOSE IDIOTS FROM THE 25TH ARE TAKING YOUR GOLD AND YOUR UNWILLING WOMEN and! Sulla’s entire army marched! on! the! city! of! Rome!

It was the first time a Roman army had ever invaded Rome. Nobody was expecting it, and people panicked. Sulla’s men won easily, burned down some buildings, killed some people, generally had a great time; and then Sulla announced a bounty for anyone who’d disembowel his political enemies (including Marius) because he didn’t have time to go to Braavos and learn how to do it himself (remember, he still had his war waiting for him in the East).

(This turned out to be a success, btw. One guy was even killed by his slave - Sulla gave him the promised reward, then shoved him off a mountain because duh, slave and “When I said ‘anyone’, I meant people, not IKEA furniture” and “Honestly”.)

As nobody could have imagined and/or predicted, as soon as Sulla left for Greece Weak Guts Marius came back with an army and took back the city, beheading his way to the Senate and leaving a trail of blood wherever he passed. As soon as he got there, however, he dropped dead - heart attack, trampolining, diarrhoea, who can tell - and the city was taken over by his second-in-command, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

(Man, what a ride.)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know what Caesar was doing during this time.

Personally, I like to imagine him in Rome - a well-dressed, grey-eyed 15-year-old, freshly orphaned, horrified and exhilarated by the violence exploding all around him - I see him running down the streets, stopping to watch the corpses float in the dark waters of the Tiber, daring his friends to go and touch the severed heads nailed to the doors of the Senate; recognizing many of those heads as friends and colleagues of his father and uncle (passing a hesitant finger on the cold flesh, remembering how they’d once laughed and frowned and spoken about boring matters from the dais). 

The truth is, Caesar was just a kid. He was supposed to learn about the Republic, and his own role in making it great, by watching his elders. 

God knows what he actually learned, and what he thought, as he was passing through Rome’s paved streets, now shimmering with blood. 

PREVIOUS — NEXT

[missingverse]

Virtue and Venom Chapter One

Virtue and Venom

Note: I took a poll as to what I should write for the HA fandom once Missing was finished, and the votes were overwhelmingly in favour of ye olde medieval romance. That's not to say I won't end up writing the other option eventually, but for now this is my project. Although it is quite heavily inspired by Ever After, it is very much its own egg. Also, the language used will be deliberately anachronistic, because writing in old/middle english is a step too far even for me (unless you have a strong desire to see 'Helge, wilt þū mid mē sealtian?' in which case, you may write your own fanfic and I will likely read it.)

Also, I would like to mention that I now have original work freely available on my archive.

https://ptlikestea.dreamwidth.org/

…..

Dawn had already broken by the time Helga woke up, the smoke from the mostly-dead fire suddenly bringing on a cough. Blinking sleepily in the dim light of the morning, she wondered why the cockerel hadn't crowed to wake her up.

Oh yeah...

She'd sold him.

With a groan, she got up from the floor she'd inadvertently fallen asleep on. Her smock was covered in blotches from the ash of the fireplace, and the one that was hung to dry in the pantry was still slightly damp. Still, she peeled off the soiled one and tugged the damp one on, lit a new fire in the stove and put on some water to boil. It would be a good two hours before anyone else in the house woke up, but there was no harm in getting things started early.

Her kirtle and robe hung by the door and she put them on, but didn't bother with a farthingale or even stockings and shoes. The morning air was just about warm enough, and it wasn't like anyone would see her walking around barefoot. No-one important anyway.

The Pataki estate was vast, even though it was clearly in a state of decay. As Helga walked the trail down to the hermitage, she took note of all the things that needed fixing.

Four fenceposts down.

Ragwort on the tilling soil.

Rotten oak tree near the barn.

New holes in the barn roof, probably rats.

“Hi!”

The cheery greeting came from just outside the hermitage. It shouldn't have surprised Helga that Phoebe would be up early, with or without a cockerel to rouse her.

“Hey Pheebs,” she said with a bone-tired wave.

“Do you need the rent today?” Phoebe asked with a little worried frown she tried to hide.

“No, no,” Helga said, waving her off. “Just bread, if you have any.”

“Of course,” Phoebe agreed, beckoning her into the hermitage.

It was crude, but Phoebe and her mother had managed to make it look homely in their own way. The cave was divided into three separate chambers by thick curtains and their old stove sat in a hollow near the entrance so that the smoke wouldn't billow around their living space. The sleeping pallets were stacked up in a corner with their pillows and blankets, and their looms along with the fabrics they wove took up most of the space during the day.

Phoebe reached into the stove and took out two loaves of bread.

“I churned some butter, too, if you want it,” she offered.

“No, it's wasted on them,” Helga declined. “Sell it, or eat it yourself.”

“You should take a little, for yourself,” Phoebe's mother called from her spot at the loom. “You're too thin.”

“If I had some, I'd have to explain where I got it,” Helga said. “Seriously, keep it.”

They insisted she take two eggs with her, and by the time she got back to the kitchen Helga could hear her father making noises from upstairs. She dropped the eggs into the boiling water along with a shank of ham and set about fixing her hair.

…..

“Where's your coif?” Olga asked when she finally made it down to the breakfast table.

“I have no idea,” Helga retorted.

“You're sixteen, you can't go out with your hair loose like that,” her sister moaned. “What will people say?”

“I don't think anyone will care that much.”

“She's right, Olga,” her father growled over a mouthful of ham. “You have to look respectable.”

Inwardly, she seethed. Somehow they were still under the impression that their breakfast had been delivered to them by servants they no longer had, and didn't raise any objections when Helga had been the one to bring them water for washing and help them dress, but suddenly they were concerned that she wasn't covering her head.

She had worn her hair tied up in two long tails since she was a child, and saw no reason to stop. The coif was itchy, and she wasn't a married woman so there was no real reason to cover her head when nobody stopped by the estate anymore anyway.

“I'll find it after breakfast,” she said, with no intention to actually do it.

“I think we should have duck this evening,” her mother said vaguely. “Tell the cook, won't you?”

Where am I going to get a duck at this time of year?

“Sure,” Helga mumbled.

Miriam would probably forget by noon in any case. They had one scrawny chicken in the larder, and lots of vegetables to stretch it out with. As if any of them could even tell the difference between chicken and duck once it was on a plate...

“I am to be introduced a week from now,” Olga announced over a dainty sip of her water. “My old friend Jane Pomfrey...she's Lady Jane Westbourne now....her husband has a friend who is not betrothed.”

“Oh, that's wonderful dear!” Miriam exclaimed with more enthusiasm than she'd been able to muster all month.

“Who is this guy?” Bob asked. “What's his title?”

“Lord Henry Barker,” Olga proclaimed proudly. “He's the second son of Lord Edward Barker.”

“Is he rich?” Helga asked.

“Helga! What a thing to ask!” Olga scolded, as though they weren't all thinking it.

She rolled her eyes as the rest of her family gushed over this latest possible fancy marriage in a long line of fancy possible marriages Olga had talked about since her debut at court. Helga occupied herself by mentally calculating how much she'd get if she sold off the candlesticks.

…..

“It's beautiful, isn't it?”

Arnold was staring at the portrait as if it was the second coming of Venus. Gerald tilted his head and squinted; as far as he could see it was an average portrait of a pleasant-looking young girl dressed in an austere black gown. Her hair was curled and pinned out to the sides in the usual Spanish style. The rather large white crucifix she wore was the key focal point of the portrait.

“It's nice,” Gerald agreed blandly. “But...that's a really big cross. Just sayin'.”

“I know, but she probably has to wear it for portraits,” Arnold reasoned.

Gerald sighed. Arnold had an unfortunate blind spot when it came to situations like this. First that entirely unsuitable Portuguese princess and now Infanta Lila of Spain, a girl who was notorious for turning down proposals from protestants. Supposedly she was so pious she wore a hair shirt to bed every night.

“She did write back,” Arnold said. “Almost all of my letters got a response.”

Arnold's optimism tended to cloud his judgment, 'almost all' likely meant the Infanta probably wrote back twice. All the same, that same optimism let Arnold's subjects accept Gerald himself as a close friend of the prince, despite his Moorish ancestry. Very few people could deny the prince something he wanted.

He was not going to get this princess, though. That was for damn sure.

“The commandant told me we can cross the border at the eastern vale,” Arnold told him. “After that it's not far to the abbey. She's going to be there for another week at least.”

“Arnold, no,” Gerald sighed. “Just no. She's going to scream if you just turn up at her door, and then all her ladies will scream too, and if we manage to make it back over the border the Spanish will turn it into a story about how you tried to kidnap her and compromised her virtue.”

“Oh, come on,” Arnold moaned. “I'm not going to creep in the window or anything...I'll keep a respectful distance.”

“No,” Gerald said, point blank.

…..

“So remember when I said this was never going to work?” Gerald hissed over at Arnold.

“Yeah,” Arnold admitted mournfully.

They hadn't even made it past the border before bandits on the trail picked up on two young men traveling together, one of them a Moor, both of them richly attired. Now they were tramping across the countryside, hands tied behind their backs, robbed of everything but the clothes on their backs.

“Okay look,” Gerald whispered. “They're going to stop soon, and when they do I'm going to make a break for it. While they're trying to figure out who goes after me, you run the opposite way. Then once you've ditched them, find somewhere to hide. I'll bring back some men to find you.”

It was a good plan; Gerald was well-known for having the speed and endurance of a horse, the same qualities that made his father such a renowned warrior. Arnold did not have these gifts, and was grateful that Gerald had taken his shortcomings into account.

Their bandit kidnappers were clearly unused to having prisoners, luckily for them. They didn't even think to tie them to a tree or something when they did stop, and so when Gerald made a run for it they panicked. While they were arguing, Arnold broke away too and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. Behind him he could hear the shouting of the men chasing him, and in his haste he tripped and tumbled down a hill.

When he finally lurched to a halt, he was staring up at the baffled blue eyes of a young girl. He'd fallen right at her feet.

“What the...” she exclaimed, before being cut off by his pursuers bursting through the undergrowth.

“Please help me?” Arnold begged, though how exactly he expected her to help him he didn't know.

To his surprise, she nodded.

In a movement that was astonishingly graceful, she crouched to pull him to his feet while simultaneously picking up a large rock and hurling it at one of the bandits. It caught the man right in the middle of his forehead, knocking him on his back. Arnold was barely standing before another rock went hurtling towards the other man, catching him in the stomach and bringing him to his knees.

“This way,” the girl hissed at Arnold, dragging him off towards the forest.

He let himself be dragged over a seemingly random expanse of hillocks, forest, streams and marsh. The  hem of the girl's gown and his own breeches were soaked and covered in mud by the time she judged it safe for them to stop and catch their breath. Arnold sank down onto a tree stump, gasping for air.

“The forest is a maze beyond the valley,” the girl told him. “They won't be able to follow us without getting lost.”

“Yes,” Arnold gasped. “Thank you...I owe you my life.”

“Yes, you do,” she replied, flipping one of her long pigtails over her shoulder. “And who are you?”

Despite himself, he grinned. He hadn't seen anyone with that hairstyle, or indeed uncovered hair, that wasn't a child. It was oddly charming.

He supposed she was a peasant girl, going by her familiarity with the land. Her gown was a faded pink, mended with patches and darns, and her kirtle peeked out over the gaps in the lacing. The skirt was shapeless, betraying that she didn't wear a farthingale underneath.

He hesitated to tell her who he was. If she knew he was the prince (and it was clear that she hadn't recognized him so she couldn't be a member of the court) she might turn up at the palace demanding repayment, and then Arnold's grandparents would find out what he'd been trying to do.

“I'm...Lord Arnold,” he said. His full title was His Royal Highness Prince Augustus Philip Joseph Arnold the Fourth, but there was no need to tell her that. “And how should I address you?”

“Helga,” she shrugged.

“All right, Lady Helga...”

“What were you doing out here?” she said, her eyes narrowed. “The borders are teeming with bandits, everyone knows that.”

Obviously not everyone.

“I was on my way to visit someone when my companion and I were taken,” Arnold explained. “He ran off in the other direction to raise the alarm. What were you doing out here, if this place is so dangerous?”

“It's common land,” she said with a scowl. “I've been walking it for years. Even the bandits know to stay out of the forest.”

“Well, Lady Helga, if you would be so kind I would ask you not to speak of this to anyone,” Arnold asked.

“Fine,” she shrugged. “It's none of my business anyway.”

He could have been insulted, but instead Arnold found himself feeling intrigued. At court the women fawned all over him and it was off-putting. It was refreshing to be around somebody who couldn't care less about who he was. Not to mention she had an excellent throwing arm.

“Well then, I'll be off. Thank you for your help, once again.”

He turned and walked in the direction he thought was north, only for her to call back to him.

“Do you know where you're going?”

Cursing under his breath, and with his back still turned, he shook his head.

“Fine, I'll lead you out,” she sighed.

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 15: The Battle of Amlitzer Starzone

October 10-15, 796/487. To the surprise of absolutely no one with any common sense, Reinhard’s admirals make quick work of several of the Alliance fleets, killing a bunch of redshirt admirals in the process. Unable to swallow the humiliation of withdrawal, Lazzll orders the remaining forces to gather in the Amlitzer starzone, where with their powers combined they can...I dunno, kill slightly more people on their way to defeat I guess. Any lingering dreams of a miraculous turning of the tides are crushed when Kircheis uses the newfangled technology of directional Seffle particles to destroy a minefield and bring his fleet of 30,000 ships to the battle as reinforcements.

Poplan!

Olivier Poplan showed up way back in “My Conquest” in the role of a rather dopey comic relief character, one of the tools the movie used to show us a variety of perspectives on the ongoing battles. We’ve glimpsed him once or twice since, but in this episode for the first time we get to focus on him a bit more; and the first thing that the OVA wants us to know about Poplan is that he’ll take any opportunity, even the twenty seconds before his Spartanian fighter is about to launch into battle, to flirt with a cute girl:

To be fair, she is indeed really cute…

There is a lot to say about this incredibly brief interaction. What Poplan actually says is “na, ii darou?” which translates most literally to “hey, isn’t it okay/good?” There are a couple factors that make this incredibly vague phrase feel like a flirtation or come-on: the way he leans toward her with a slight smile; the lowered voice. Her response reinforces this read by treating his actions as inappropriate to the current situation. (What she says is “komarimasu, tai-i, konna toki ni”—”that would be troublesome at a time like this, Lt.”) Is she reading him correctly? Could his question have actually just been about the progress of the repairs on his ship?

Well, yes, it could have been, but the accompanying body language and tone are flirty enough that at the very least there’s innuendo built into his words. Of course as she points out, this is a ridiculous time for him to be propositioning anyone; their interaction is immediately interrupted by an officer berating him for being the last plane out, Poplan takes off, and (spoiler!) we never see this woman again. What on earth, then, was the point of that twenty-second scene?

I’ve mentioned that Cazellnu plays an important role in the show by embodying some of the heteronormative structures of Alliance society: Not only does he himself have a picture-perfect wife and kids (we’ll see them soon I promise!), but we’ll also hear him explicitly voice views about the righteousness of marriage and procreation. Poplan plays a similar and complementary role, giving voice to another side of heteronormativity: the pressure for men to constantly pursue women as sexual conquests. His introduction in this scene emphasizes that sex is so constantly on his mind that he can’t resist flirting even as he flies into battle—and of course that very idea, of men as sex-obsessed and unable to control themselves around women in any situation, is another widespread norm. True to this introduction, Poplan discusses sex constantly: bragging about women he’s slept with in the past; teasing other characters about not sleeping with enough women; pontificating about the virtues of sleeping around (with women). This potentially puts characters who don’t relate to this sort of hypersexualized straight masculinity in somewhat uncomfortable situations.

There’s another angle to Poplan’s strange timing here: The fact that his ambiguous proposition is guaranteed not to go anywhere at the moment makes it entirely performative. In fact if you pay close attention to Poplan (and we will!), something around 95% of what we see involves performing or projecting heterosexuality rather than, well, actually enacting it. Obviously that doesn’t mean that the stuff he says is insincere or false, but ambiguity is always worth keeping an eye on in this show.

...and Konev!

No discussion of Poplan is complete without talking about Ivan Konev, the other star Spartanian pilot of Yang’s fleet and Poplan’s constant companion. When Poplan discovers that the firing sights on his Spartanian are misaligned, Konev covers for him to help get him back to the relative safety of the ship, leading to in my opinion the most intense scene of the whole episode.

We’ve seen Poplan and Konev deal with the stress of battle by treating it like a game: betting on the outcome back in “My Conquest,” and generally keeping up a running tally of their respective kills for bragging rights. But these are in fact life and death battles, not some video game; and faced with malfunctioning equipment that put his life and the lives of the rest of his squadron in heightened danger, Poplan’s fear and frustration come out as anger against the officer in charge of maintenance. It’s Konev who intervenes. 

Poplan’s expression and posture soften the moment Konev puts a hand on his shoulder. Just that one instant establishes Konev as a grounding presence and someone Poplan has a deep connection with.

The unguarded fear that flashes in Poplan’s eyes for just a second here gives me chills.

Shit has gotten serious, and Konev’s words don’t soften that reality; but his steady expression and touch quell Poplan’s rage and help him channel his emotions into renewed focus on the battle.

Interestingly, this exchange comes to us entirely courtesy of the anime team. In the novels it’s Schenkopp who pulls Poplan off of the other officer, in a much more abbreviated version of the same scene. (Poplan actually holds a grudge against Schenkopp for stopping him before he could more thoroughly teach the guy a lesson.) The anime writers made a specific choice to change and expand this scene to show us this different side of Poplan and Konev’s dynamic. Of course we’re not here to catalogue all of the slight deviations from the novels; but a change like this suggests to me that Poplan and Konev’s relationship is one they’re particularly interested in developing, so we should be paying attention.

War

This sentiment echoes Yang’s tea speech from episode 6; finding themselves in this battle, his main goal is to find a way for as many people to survive as possible.

Zooming out from Poplan and Konev’s struggles in their little corner of the fight, the overall battle seems to go exactly how Reinhard drew it up and exactly how Yang and some of the other Alliance commanders feared. Yang places himself on damage control duty as much as possible, knowing from the beginning that their whole fleet is at a huge disadvantage especially after Reinhard’s successful strategy to tax their supplies.

During the various scattered battles we get some fun peeks at the different fighting styles of Reinhard’s admirals, for example when Mittermeyer swoops so swiftly into the midst of an Alliance fleet that he actually has to back up a bit before they can effectively fire at the enemy ships...

...While meanwhile Kircheis just stands on the bridge of his extremely red flagship like the badass he is and calmly encourages any Alliance forces that come near to surrender.

After retreating to minimize losses against Kempf’s fleet, Yang finds himself facing Kircheis and outnumbered four to one; avoiding the temptation to surrender, he concocts some sort of plan involving a U-formation and trying to attack Kircheis’s forces from three sides at once, but since he’s ordered away to Amlitzer in the middle of that fight we’ll never know what the outcome of this tactic would have been. 

This gif is interesting for two reasons: one, everyone’s utter shock at Yang admitting out loud that if it weren’t for concern for the other remaining fleets he’d be tempted to surrender; and two, the ridiculous redraws that keep switching back and forth—Yang’s character design, as well as the entire background, change repeatedly in the course of these few seconds. What the hell.

The main point I want to make about this battle is, well, actually how uneventful it is. LoGH is about understanding cause and effect, inevitability, ways of thinking that lead to different outcomes. We’ve known for several episodes that the Alliance went into this invasion underprepared and for the wrong reasons, while Reinhard has carefully taken steps to weaken the Alliance forces and give himself even more of an upper hand. There are no shocking twists here: The invasion is a disaster, as it should have been, and Reinhard’s (and Oberstein’s) strategy is rewarded with a convincing victory.

Right, Bittenfeld, that's...pretty much what I said.

Stray Tidbits

This brief interaction between Reinhard and Oberstein near the end of the episode is a nice microcosm of the dynamic we’ve seen develop in previous episodes: Oberstein being kind of baffled by the concept of Reinhard fretting about one of his admirals more than the others. Hang in there Oberstein, maybe someday you’ll underst—nah, actually, probably not. Reinhard’s “damn you caught me” expression as he tries to claim he was “just checking” is too cute. 

Don’t worry Reinhard! Kircheis just has to gaze at Alliance commanders with those calm blue eyes and they surrender to his every whim, you know that.

If you’re watching on Hidive, I hate to say it but for once I’ve got to score one for the fansubs: As far as I can tell what Yang says here (after Frederica reminds him that Julian has told him to cut down on drinking) is just “so you two have joined forces?” (The verb is 連帯する, rentai suru, “to have solidarity/share responsibility.”) Cute (if a bit weird) as the Hidive version is, it's a definite stretch.

And while we're at it, here's the original laserdisc version, complete with random blue tube in the background.

Hidive subbers, I would read your fanfic but for the official translations let's stick to what they actually say...

Am I a terrible person if this gif just makes me laugh? 

[kdinthecity]

Fantasy Part II

This is for Zutara Smut Week, “Virginity.” Not so much because it kinda mentions it in the story, but more so because I just lost mine, in the literary sense. This is probably the most explicit thing I’ve ever written. It’s a little suggestive after the cutline, but the real deal is toward the end. If it’s no good, then just remember, it’s my first time! And that’s reality, folks!

There were no boys close to her age in her tribe growing up except for her brother, so Katara didn’t think about dating or marriage that much. It was hard to imagine the future with the war going on, but Katara knew that if she were to find a husband someday, he’d have to come from somewhere else. The Northern Water Tribe, most likely, since she’d probably have to go there anyway to learn waterbending. Gran Gran hinted that their sister tribe may not see fit to train her, though, while stating outright that they would most certainly find her a husband.

That wasn’t a bad thing… or was it?

Gran Gran seemed to think so. With limited knowledge and zero experience, Katara had no idea what to think. Sokka was annoying and stinky and sexist. She could never marry anyone like that. Shouldn’t she find another waterbender—to increase the likelihood of passing on the genes to their children? But Katara didn’t even know all the specifics on how babies were made, not really.

It was her friend, Nutha, who let her in on some fascinating, yet somewhat disturbing details. Katara wouldn’t realize until much later just exactly how Nutha knew so much.

“Does it hurt?”

“At first. It burns. But we’re surrounded by ice, Katara. So relief is readily available.”

“But it’ll feel good eventually?”

“Yeah. There are places, spots to rub that feel really good. You can find them yourself, actually.”

“R-r-really?”

“Yeah, for me it helps to think about something… sexy. Like a really hot guy is rubbing me there instead. You should try it sometime.”

So, Katara developed her fantasy. She’s in an igloo, so there’s plenty of snow and ice for “relief.” And the “really hot guy” is some waterbender from the North, but all she can see is his blue parka as she imagines intense blue eyes adoring her and his fingers furiously working her. Privacy was hard to come by in her small village, though, so she only managed to find the right time and place to experiment with this vision once before her whole world was turned upside down.

 True, an orgasm could do that, too—upend someone to where nothing makes sense, yet the end goal feels so clear, so certain—like destiny. Everything crashes while building at the same time. It burns and it freezes.

 Meeting Aang felt like destiny to Katara. But she wasn’t always so certain with him. And one day, everything they’d built together came crashing down.

 With Zuko, though, she burned.

 But he’s not a waterbender. Not even Water Tribe. It doesn’t make sense.

 That thought remained frozen in her mind, along with a fantasy, long since forgotten.

Several years later, she brought Zuko back to her homeland for his second visit there. Neither of them wanted to acknowledge his first. Katara often wondered if she went back to her innocent, virgin, Fire Nation-hating self that day, would she even believe the words she might say? That she and Zuko had been dating for over a year, and that they’d fucked on Ember Island beaches, near the turtle duck pond in the palace gardens, on red silk sheets in royal chambers, and countless times on the Fire Lord’s desk.

 But never in the South Pole.

 And as circumstances would have it on this particular trip, they wouldn’t get to, either.

 Zuko knew about the igloo fantasy by now, and Katara saw the hungry way he looked at them during their stay. She also shared the depth of his disappointment when they were forced to sleep apart, and his accommodations were none other than the iconic ice hut, of course.

 So when the opportunity presented itself sometime later on Kyoshi Island, Katara created their own igloo in a secluded cove with the sea at her command. Its sole purpose was immediately known when smoldering golden eyes caught hers and then slowly raked across her body.

 His are not blue, though. Like in my fantasy.

 Zuko’s clothes weren’t blue, either, and there was sand instead of snow. And he wasn’t even her husband! Everything was terribly wrong about this picture, and he could sense it, too… and so, because he’s Zuko, he did the craziest thing.

 He proposed.

 Then the igloo melted with a wave of her hand, and her doubts washed away with it. She was ready to give herself fully to this man—her fiancé—and this new fantasy they were creating together.

 The color of the clothes and even the nations they represented didn’t matter once they were stripped from sweating bodies and cast to the ground. Zuko’s half-lidded gaze continued to scale the length of her before his fingers danced across bronze bare skin. She reached toward him to return the gesture, but in a sudden and swift motion, he cupped her breast with one hand and grabbed her ass with the other while claiming her lips with a searing kiss. She pressed herself into him, trapping his erection between them and eliciting a needy moan from his mouth into hers.

 That was all it took for him to lower them to the ground and push her back into the sand. She opened herself to him, so ready and wanting, but he paused to look at her position and frowned. She knew he was thinking of a certain Ember Island encounter and much frustration involving the sand.

 She laughed out loud. All this time she couldn’t imagine anything worse than fucking in the freezing cold snow.

 He quirked a brow at her, and then almost without warning, he encircled her waist with a fiery grip and flipped her over so that she was on her hands and knees. One of his hands slipped down between her legs and found that spot she’d learned about so many years ago, but only he knew how to manipulate until she melted.

 While he teased her clit with practiced fingers, his other arm snaked around her midsection to pinch a pert nipple. She hadn’t exactly been thrilled about the new position since she liked to look at him and well, touch him, too, but the attention he lavished in all the right places had earned him forgiveness for the time being.

 Besides, his throbbing cock pressed into the cleft of her ass served as the ultimate arousal. She knew what was coming, but she didn’t know when. Patience was never the young Fire Lord’s virtue, though, so after a soft nibble or two on her shoulder, he pushed himself inside her.

 He started slowly as if testing different angles. When he hit just the right spot, Katara found herself fisting the sand for some sort of anchor. She clinched around him and let out a half-moan, half-whimper. It was signal enough for him to quicken his thrusts, gripping her hips to guide him as he pulled out and slammed back in, hard and fast.

 So. Fucking. Good. Although at this pace, he probably won’t last long.

 Except that he did. Katara’s knees started to tremble as she felt her climax rising. She leaned over to press her forehead into her folded arms, and just that subtle movement provided a new sensation that sent her over the edge. There was sand in her hair and sand in her mouth, but Tui and La be damned, she didn’t care. She’d find a way to build igloos out of sand if it meant she could ride this wave forever.

 And with Zuko, it felt like forever. Like destiny.

“FUCK. Yes, Zuko! YES!” she cursed.

 His release followed soon after along with his own proclamation.

 “Katara… I love you.”

 And he said it more like a prayer.

This is a continuation of this post, called Fantasy.

It also directly correlates with Chapter 27, “Blue Hunt,” in a multi-chapter fic of mine, The Dragon and the Wolf.

Which also happens to be part of an extensive universe, so there is much backstory to the Zutara relationship and Zuko’s marriage proposal that is not exactly fleshed out here. Just in case you thought that was random...

[sorayahigashikata]

Chapter 87: "Spin spin spin spin spin Spinspinspinspin Spinspinspin AAAAAUGGHH!"