#( rallying the troops :: plot call. )

[starshideurfics]

Ring my bell, part 7

part 6

steddie, omegaverse, flagging/signaling culture, there’s plot now, in the smut, mdni 🔞

Powell isn’t quite finished with them, asking Lucas a few more questions, including when he had time to call Eddie. “After Patrick called 911. I knew the you’d want to talk to Eddie and I’d need a ride home. I didn’t want my mom to freak out.”

“Pretty sure that ship has sailed, Lucas,” Powell says, not unkindly. “But I also do not want Sue Sinclair on my ass, so I understand.” He looks around, too many teenage boys with haunted looks are still waiting to be questioned all huddled together on the grass. When he turns back, his attention sticks to Eddie. “I have more statements to take, but I’ll be in touch for official statements from you and Harrington. For now the three of you are free to go.”

Eddie nods, easily pulling Lucas into a hug with his free arm. “Thanks, Chief.” He steers their little trio back to Steve’s car, opening the back door for Lucas to get in, then heading to the passenger side himself.

Steve turns the key in the ignition and starts on the way to the Sinclairs’ house. “Do you wanna talk about it?” he asks gently, not sure what Lucas needs. Not at all sure what actually happened.

Lucas surprises him by talking right away. “I must’ve passed out before it happened… You know how the team is, get the freshmen wasted. I’m pretty sure I puked more than I actually drank, but after I just laid down outside the bathroom in case I had to hurl again.” He takes a slow, shuddering breath, and Steve can tell he’s trying not to cry.

“No one saw it happen. She was in one of the smaller rooms, I vaguely remember her and Jason arguing, so she must have gone off for some privacy. And Jason was drunk, so he must have fallen asleep without looking for her… But a couple guys stepped outside to smoke, and when Chase was talking to Powell he said the lights flickered a bunch around one. Steve, what if it’s—”

“Lucas, no.” Steve has to cut him off, can’t bear the thought of more alternate dimension horrors. Moreso, can’t bear to drag Eddie into any of it.

“I saw her Steve! It didn’t look like something a person could do!”

Which just draws Eddie in more. “What do you mean?” he asks softly. He swallows hard and adds, “I figured she must have gotten something stronger and OD’d…”

Lucas shakes his head, curls in on himself, his breaths turning into short gasps. He’s having a panic attack.

Steve changes course, takes them towards Forest Hills instead. They’re better off having this conversation at Eddie’s, and Max lives a couple lots away now. Easier to rally the troops.

When he parks, he gets out and climbs into the backseat with Lucas, offers him a hand and instead the young alpha hides his face against Steve’s shoulder. “Every part of her was broken, Steve. It didn’t look natural.”

“Like… something got to her?” Steve asks, imagining a demodog, what its teeth could do.

“No, not torn up. Broken.”

“And there were flickering lights?”

“Yeah…”

“Stevie, what are you talking about?” Eddie asks softly from the front seat. Steve had almost forgotten he was there, still doesn’t want to expose him, but it’s starting to feel too late. Eddie’s involved, whether Steve likes it or not.

“You remember when Will Byers disappeared in ‘83?”

“Yeah…”

“And the mall fire?”

“That you were in? Yeah, Puppy, I do.”

Eddie saying that is enough to shock Lucas into calming down a bit more. At least enough for him to pull back and give Steve a look.

“We think this may be connected to that.”

“WHAT?”

“I’m gonna call Nance, see if she can pick up Dustin and Robin. They’ll do a better job explaining than I can.”

🔄🔄🔄

Steve’s right. Bringing in the others helps, as they piece together what they can while explaining the basics to Eddie so he understands just how dangerous it all is. It takes a little while to sink in, but as it does, Eddie reaches shakily for his pack of cigarettes. He can’t get his lighter to catch and Steve goes to help, lacing his fingers with Eddie’s free hand after, index finger stroking over the band of a ring.

It’s the first bit of affection between them in front of the others and Lucas hasn’t said anything yet, so somehow, no one questions Steve’s presence.

But this is obvious. “What the hell, why are you holding Eddie’s hand?” Dustin asks loudly, eyes narrowed.

“Because he’s my boyfriend, Dustin.”

“No, he’s not. Eddie’s cool.”

“I’m not cool?”

“Not like Eddie.”

“You’re very cool, Puppy,” Eddie says softly.

Robin makes a face at the pet name and catches Steve’s eye; he knows she’ll give him an earful the next time they’re alone.

“What the hell?” Dustin says again. “For how long?”

“Five months,” Steve answers, plucking the cigarette from Eddie’s fingers and taking a drag. “Can we cool it with the interrogation? We’ve got bigger things to deal with right now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dustin whines. “This is the best news ever!”

“Probably because he knew you’d act like this,” Max chimes.

Steve simply nods towards her in agreement.

Max sits down next to Lucas on the couch and grabs his hand, not even looking at him. Like she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. “We really should be focusing on other stuff, like what the hell happened to Chrissy. Plus, I’m starting to get a headache, so quit yelling.”

part eight

[humoringholly]

After a bit of a pause for life and other projects, chapter 47 of 50 is up for After the Ascension. Rated E, please mind warnings and tags for the story. There are clearly marked duplicates of all chapters that are rated E that are made to be rated M instead if you fancy reading the story without the E content. All warnings and tags are still appropriate because of what is implied.

I have been writing this story for over a year as a post S2 piece. It is my pride and joy. It is nearly complete and I feel like I am going to be giving away a piece of my heart when it is. The last 2 chapters and epilogue will be out in the next couple of months. They are plotted, mostly written, and in their final stages. Send me strength... comment... and kudos... it is the only thing getting be through letting this one go!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/49577533

This chapters is called Nightingales:

Memories are shared and regained, the troops of demons and human souls in Hell are rallied, and half of the army that will make up "all of us against all of them" are preparing to fight. The core group, Aziraphale, Crowley, Eric, Muriel, Adam, Gabriel, Beelzebub, Adam, and Minna recruit another pair to join them to go into the Hive of Heaven to gather the rest of their friends. The Four Horsemen are preparing to play their part...

The Second Coming is about to come to fruition... but how will it end?

[merrock]

HAPPY OCTOBER !

It genuinely feels like I was just typing this post up for the first of September, how did we get here?! Happy October, folks! It's spooky month, and we have lots of fun stuff planned in Merrock. Hop under the cut to check out everything happening in and around town, some important reminders, a call to action, and kick off our October right! xx

ON THE CALENDAR !

October 4 -- home football game.

October 4-6 -- Golf Weekend -- more info here!

October 11 -- away football game.

October 12 -- farmer's day -- a day for us to celebrate and honor the farmers in Merrock that keep our community going.

October 12 -- bachelor & bachelorette parties -- two fun celebrations to have a good time with Cage and Cordelia as they prepare for their wedding.

October 18 -- home football game.

October 19 -- Cage & Cordelia's wedding -- more info here!

October 24 -- bingo night -- the monthly get together of bingo nerds at the fire hall to raise money.

October 25 -- home football game.

October 25 - November 3 -- Hallo-Week -- more info here!

October 26 -- pumpkin day -- big ole pumpkin sales down at Lavender Lane for your last minute needs.

IMPORTANT STUFF !

As usual, please take a few moments to read over our rules, make sure that you are up to date and familiar with everything. Because this is such a busy month, we will not be doing a new task for October... but I think we have plenty of characters that haven't yet had a chance to go back and tackle our very first task in the group: All About Autumn & Halloween! Give it a whirl! p.s. by an overwhelming amount of votes, we have Halloween-ish graphics for the month of October!

AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT !

we'd love to see a little more priority being put into replying to open starters! especially if you are not currently writing with that character. check the page frequently!

communicate with one another: before dropping threads, swapping the formats of threads, assuming something is alright with something, starting new threads, just messaging someone to make sure they're a-okay with something is so important. both players can have needs/wants met this way!

we rely on each other for activity: someone could end up on activity check or with strikes because they're waiting on a reply from you. please keep this in mind and give all of your threads across all of your characters regular attention.

A WORD FROM THE MOD !

September was an incredibly busy and kind of rough month, and I know that both Lindsey and myself were exhausted by the end of it (as I'm sure a lot of you were, as well). And while October is gearing up to also be busy, we are both looking forward to getting everything back on track with the group. But that also requires a little help from you guys! I am more than aware that no matter how much time and work I put into the group as an admin, it is on all of us to make things work, and create the environment and the dash that we feel happiest with. So I'm rallying the troops to get back on their flow! Reply to open starters. Say nice things to each other in the OOC blog. Reach out to plot / write with people you haven't. Don't let replies sit for long periods of time. Participate in things, spread love around. Remember that you get out what you put in. Want to see Merrock stick around for a long, long time? Me too! Let's make that possible by putting the energy in. xx

HAVE A GREAT OCTOBER !

[semi-sketchy]

For an update (mostly) meant to flesh out the Ancients/The End, they still seem not all that memorable or compelling from what little I've seen. They're just as much as plot devices masquerading as (bland) characters as Sage still is. The plot EXPECTS me to care, but I just cannot because the lore/exposition in this game is soooo dull when it's not wholly confusing. And I gotta ask, is any of it gonna matter in future games? Does anyone really approve of this shite whilst still bemoaning how unnecessarily convoluted Shadow's backstory was? That for a supposed big threat, it all still took place on some small-scale remote islands? This stuff should begging for a retcon. Guess that'll be up to me. Hint: Fairy dust made it all seem real to both the heroes and Eggman. And the Kocos are Accidental Antagonists to have put them through all of it because they don't remember their true history on the islands...

The question of which ending is canon is up for debate, but personally I think this one is going to cause more problems long-term. I literally started yelling at the side story when Sage said the Ancients had satellites that are still functional.

Tens of thousands of years old, still orbiting, functional, and NO ONE HAS NOTICED THEM? This is the world that had a SPACE COLONY 50 YEARS AGO and they NEVER asked what these old satellites were?? Like man, if we discovered ancient satellites circling our planet, there would be some paranormal podcasts talking about this "unknown" and obscure fact, but here no one has noticed?

Also extremely disappointed they did nothing to expand on The End. If anything, this is regression from base game because it's missing that pretentious speech. I wanted to know WHY this consumer of worlds was specifically chasing the Ancients. If it's just supposed to be symbolic, then that was completely lost on me.

I'm with you on the not being able to care part. I'm not bonded to these characters and the short cutscenes around the trials doesn't change anything about the pilots. It's just "WE DIED TO CONTAIN THIS THING AND YOU SET IT FREE-- oh you passed my brute strength trial. K guess you're a good guy." Sonic gets some sass with the King Koco, but it also feels...off. It's not his normal disrespect towards authority.

To go on another tangent, the opening cutscene bothers me.

Sonic isn't the person to give a "rally the troops" speech. Although, how this scene was written made that direction the ONLY way it could've gone.

I think of the Last Story cutscene from Heroes. Sonic just listens.

When he says he'll fight Metal Overlord, it's Tails and Knuckles that pop up to say "we're going to help you!" and Shadow that says they'll buy them time.

Sonic doesn't ask anything from anybody, he just graciously accepts their help. Compare how this was written to sticking Sonic in a place where he's the one who has to explain what's going on and tell others what he needs.

It's a case where the plot moves the characters and not the characters moving the plot, which is the perfect storm for OOC moments. That is exactly what happened with Eggman when they decided Sage was a good idea.

Sage just regurgitates random info about rocks and other stuff no one asked about, like there was ONE LINE where she sounded kinda different which made me think it would've been so good if Sage was more like GLaDOS. I want her to have more sick burns. But no, innocent child because Eggman "needs" a daughter and Sonic has to have a reason to help the girl that's been trying to kill him the whole game.

I don't understand how anyone can call this "peak" because it's just so self-important and straight-faced serious, it's at the point of monotony. It breaks what I like about these characters to wrap them up in a "serious story" blanket whilst failing to properly build up the threat.

I hope they reevaluate their choices and this isn't really the standard moving forward because it's so stupid it hurts. And that's just the story/lore.

[cromwellrex2]

The End of the Commonwealth 1659-60: ‘according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the Government is, and ought to be, by Kings, Lords and Commons’

George Monck Makes His Move

General George Monck Entering London with His Troops. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library website

THE FINAL days of the Commonwealth were filled with the very unresolved issues that had dogged the English republican experiment from its start - the question of legitimacy, the unsettled balance of power between the various postwar factions and the yearning of the populace for stable government. However, England’s civil wars had one last drama to play out before the Commonwealth’s denouement.

The Royalist plotters of the Sealed Knot, observing the crisis of the post-Protectorate regime, thought their time had come at last to seize the initiative by force. In July 1659, a series of uprisings across northern England was planned to overthrow the Rump and invite Charles II to assume the throne. As with other of the Sealed Knot’s schemes, this plot was also uncovered and then called off by its instigators, but not before Sir Thomas Myddleton had declared for the King in Wrexham and the Earl of Derby had entered England from the Isle of Man to try to incite Lancashire to rise. Neither succeeded in attracting much support, but Sir George Booth, a local landowner, mayor of Chester, and, significantly a former Parliamentarian, raised an army of 4,000 and proclaimed his support, less for a restored monarchy and more for a fresh Parliament, legitimised by new elections. This call for full Parliamentary representation became the increasing slogan of the growing opposition to the Army and England’s republic. Booth may have anticipated a coming public mood, but that mood was not universal yet. With no other anti-Rump force in the field, Booth headed to Manchester, pursued by a small Parliamentary force under the command of John Lambert. On 18th August the two armies clashed at Hartford Beech in Cheshire. The experienced Parliamentary force soon had the better of what turned out to be a set of running skirmishes until the Royalists finally routed as they attempted to cross Winnington Bridge. Both Myddleton and, eventually, Booth, were captured and the defeated Royalist soldiery were allowed to return to their homes. So ended the last set piece battle of the English civil wars.

Any Parliamentary solidarity that may have been engendered by this brief renewal of fighting in England, did not last long. Lambert, newly emboldened, was determined this time to secure the supreme leadership role he had denied himself after Cromwell’s death out of loyalty to his former commander. His opportunity came when his regiments, based in Derby, issued a proclamation to the Rump, requiring the granting of all the Army’s demands concerning pay, indemnity, religious toleration, the maintenance of republican government and the purging of “delinquent” MPs opposed to the military. Included in the demands was Lambert’s own elevation to second-in-command of the Army under General Charles Fleetwood. Naturally the Rump could not agree to what became termed the “Derby Petition” and retaliated by ordering Fleetwood to arrest Lambert in early October and issued an ordnance overturning all legislation passed during the Protectorate and requiring its validation by the House of Commons. In addition, under the lead of Arthur Heselrige, the Rump passed a further ordnance that reserved all tax-raising powers to the House of Commons and set about establishing a committee to take the control of the Army, ordering the London regiments to rally to defend Parliament. In the event, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the Army that won this stand-off: Fleetwood refused to move against Lambert who called on the same London regiments to muster and protect the Commonwealth. This they did, leading to the dissolution of the Rump Parliament yet again by military coup, and the establishment of a Committee of Safety to run the country by the Army’s Council of Officers.

Fleetwood and Lambert were in charge, but they had no practical plan as to what to do next. Lambert favoured restoration of the Protectorate, with himself as Lord Protector, but there was little appetite for this, even within the Army. The Committee of Safety could keep order, but in the absence of Parliament or constitution, it could neither raise taxes nor legitimise its role. It was a stop-gap, and the supporters of the Parliamentary cause saw no alternative to elections to a new and representative lower House. What was new however, was that in their determination to oppose both military rule and, as they saw it, the barely controlled radicalism on the part of the common soldiers, these former enemies of Charles I began to see the restoration of the monarchy as the only way out of this impasse, much to the surprise and delight of the exiled Stuart Court.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, General George Monck observed events south of the border enigmatically. He possessed the only military force of sufficient size and experience capable of challenging Fleetwood and Lambert, but his intentions were far from clear. Although Monck had sent sympathetic messages to Heselrige, he made no move to support the Rump or prevent its dissolution. Charles’ emissaries had contacted him offering the general vast rewards if he would defect to the Royalist side, but Monck had rebuffed their advances. Equally, he had not declared support for Committee of Safety either. The former Royalist turned Cromwellian loyalist was however about the enter the fray of Commonwealth politics decisively.

On 20th October, Monck declared his hand. He stated that he supported Parliamentary government and demanded the Council of Officers recall Parliament, threatening to bring his army into England in order to enforce this if necessary. Lambert and Fleetwood did not react well to this interference from their brother officer and prepared to resist any such incursion from Scotland. Lambert headed north to Newcastle, to rally the New Model forces there, but found to his consternation that the northern army was filled with dissent, infuriated at lack of pay and promised pensions, and that the soldiers too had joined the calls for new elections. Lambert succeeded in calming some of the agitation and he and Monck faced each other warily across the Scottish border. The issue was forced in November when in the south and in Ireland, the troops rebelled and demanded the recall of Parliament. When the fleet revolted too, threatening to blockade the Thames until the House of Commons sat again, Lambert, with his forces of questionable loyalty, knew his game was up. This was confirmed when the aged Sir Thomas Fairfax emerged from retirement to call for the restoration of Parliamentary rule. The northern armies deserted to the much-loved former commander en masse, leaving Lambert with no army and no options.

In December, military rule effectively fell apart, driven as much by the Council of Officers’ inability to pay the men as by the simultaneous and insistent, calls for the restoration of Parliamentary rule. On 26th December, Fleetwood and Lambert were forced to recall the Rump whose first action was to place the Army under Parliamentary control. Lambert, trapped between Monck’s forces and Fairfax’s new volunteer army of deserters, could not prevent this. On New Year’s Day 1660, Monck’s army crossed the Tweed and proceeded south, meeting no resistance. In fact, the Rump had told Monck that with the collapse of the coup, they no longer needed his presence in London, but the general proceeded to the capital anyway. The restoration of the Rump was only the first step in the ever-mysterious Monck’s probable plan.

As for Lambert, he submitted to the authority of the Rump and was immediately arrested and confined in the Tower of London. He would remain a prisoner for the rest of his days, finally dying, almost certainly suffering from dementia, in 1684. It was a sad end to one of the Commonwealth’s most capable politicians and soldiers. If, as he had wished, and others had urged, Cromwell had nominated Lambert as his successor and not his ineffective son, Lambert may have made a success both of the Protectorate and the English republic. Lambert in power would certainly have introduced a written constitution to England, with the formal checks and balances the British system of government lacks to this day. With Lambert leading the country in the late 1650s, the path to the Stuart restoration may have been blocked forever.

Once he reached London, Monck’s alliance of convenience with the Rump swiftly came to an end. It became clear that Heselrige and his allies were intent on calling highly restrictive elections that would ensure that only MPs who supported the Rump’s quasi-republican agenda would be able to serve. When in February, the Rump fell into dispute with the City of London council over proposed tax increases, and ordered Monck to suppress the Council, the general refused. Instead he gave the Rump seven days to dissolve itself and arrange full, unrestricted national elections. Given the impossibility of this deadline, a compromise was reached through an agreement to the restitution of the previous Parliament - the so-called Long Parliament - originally summoned by Charles I in November 1640, and forcibly dissolved in Pride’s Purge. The purged MPs returned to Westminster in triumph, escorted by Monck’s soldiers. The Long Parliament’s sole items of business were to confirm Monck as commander-in-chief of the Army, and to agree a date for its own dissolution and the calling of new elections. This it did on 16th March 1660.

Monck’s ultimate desire to see Charles II restored to his throne slowly became plain. As arrangements for elections were put into place, the general at last openly communicated with the Stuart court, which had transferred its location to Breda in Holland. But the enigma of Monck persisted: he was no political Royalist. He informed Charles’ emissaries that the King’s return to England would not be without conditions. There would be an amnesty for all who fought against the Crown in the civil wars; all sales of Royalist lands would remain in place; a degree of religious tolerance would be afforded, and the King would rule jointly with his Parliament. As the path for the unlikely restoration of a somewhat altered monarchy was cleared, John Pym would probably have approved.

[foodfightnovelization]

Chapter 17: Analysis and Discussion

Chapter 17 begins back in Marketropolis, at the security rally all the Ikes have been forced to attend. Lady X is giving a speech from atop the Brand X building, insisting there are only two kinds of product icon in the world...desirables, and undesirables. She insists the Ikes turn each other in and join Brand X, leading an Ike called Ant Acid to turn in the friendly Kiwi Koala, saying he causes heartburn.

The novelization describes Lieutenant X and General X being with Lady X when this speech happens, but in the movie she's just standing by herself. In addition, in the movie the Brand X Lunchlady is eating a giant hock of ham throughout the entire speech, letting out a disgustingly loud burp at the end and blaming Kiwi Koala for her belching. The Brand X Lunchlady isn't IN the novelization, so here we just have Ant Acid (a background character with no dialogue in the movie) selling out his friend in an attempt to save himself. I once again prefer the novelization's version of events here- the belch in the movie is really unpleasant to listen to, and the good Ikes selling each other out gives us a better idea of just how bad things have gotten in Marketropolis.

Kiwi Koala is grabbed by the Brand X Mashed Potato Man and dragged off (this novelization-exclusive character once again making an appearance! In the movie it's just a generic Brand X soldier taking him away). Meanwhile, Lady X continues her speech and the terrified Ikes join in her chant. Her dialogue here is identical to how it is in the movie, and the whole thing is giving some serious Nazi vibes.

There's an additional scene here exclusive to the novelization where it's mentioned some USDA members are on the stage with her (once again, in the movie she's just by herself). One of them, Francois Fromage blames Hairy for giving up the USDA to her. He nervously insists that Lady X promised it'd all work out, but you can tell he isn't convinced and is telling himself as much as he's telling Francois. It's a small scene, but I think it adds some much-needed depth to Hairy's character, and gives him a little more involvement in the plot.

Meanwhile at the Copabanana, a resistance is forming. Lola Fruitola can't believe what's going on out there, and says they should slice Brand X up like sushi. This frightens an "upmarket canned fish icon" who we established in previous chapters is supposed to be Charlie Tuna, and she apologizes, explaining it's just a figure of speech. This brief exchange isn't in the movie, instead being replaced by the California Raisins singing a very badly autotuned song up on the stage.

Francois, Polar Penguin and Sweet Cakes rush into the club wishing to join the resistance- in the movie, Polar gets an additional line of dialogue here saying he's reporting for duty as instructed by Dex, and there are a few more Ikes joining the Resistance (including Fat Cat's hairless hamster henchmen from the very beginning of the story! Remember those guys?) Here however, it's just the three of them, and Maximilius worries they don't stand a chance unless Dex comes back soon.

Lieutenant X and a troop of Brand X soldiers show up, claiming Dex Dogtective has been discontinued and that unless everyone else wishes to do the same they need to sing their alliegance to Brand X. The soldiers start singing, but the Ikes refuse to join in, with Francois Fromage starting to sing the USDA anthem instead. Just as Lieutenant X starts threatening him, Dex bursts into the club and tells the raisins onstage (obviously the California Raisins, but not referred to as such) to "play it".

This scene is more or less the same across both the novelization and the movie, give or take a line of dialogue or two. However in the movie when Lieutenant X insists Francois sing along, instead of singing the USDA anthem, he jumps in the air and farts in the Lieutenant's face- obviously I think the novelization does it better, as the movie seems to have a strange fixation with toilet humor that's mostly absent here. Curiously, the narration here refers to Francois as a "frog" at one point. He's very much NOT a frog (even in the color pages from this same novelization we see he's just a regular French man) so either the author made a mistake here, or they're using "frog" in the context of a slur against French people. And really, haven't the French been through enough?

The raisins onstage start singing the USDA song, and it's a loose parody of the French national anthem. If you hadn't guessed already (but really, why would you?) this whole scene is a parody of the part in Casablanca where everyone in the club sings La Marseillaise. That makes another of Foodfight's curious references to Casablanca (I count about 4 or 5 so far) and we're left wondering how appropriate it is to compare occupied France in World War 2 to a grocery store getting taken over by low quality detergent. Regardless, this scene is basically the same across both the novelization and the movie. Viva la France!

Lieutenant X and the other soldiers retreat, but threaten to return and pulverize them all. Everyone's overjoyed to see Dex again, and he says they won't go down without a fight. It's at this point in the movie that we cut to the Brand X tower, with Lady X saying they have the Resistance cornered and that they'll show no mercy- that's cut out entirely here however, and the scene goes on uninterrupted. We're treated to some some additional dialogue from Dex about how when Lady X finds out he and Dan are still alive, they'll come for every Ike left with everything they have, and that they have only one option. We get a Suicide Squad title drop from Maximilius as well- "Boss...youse talking about a food fight!"

Dex gives a speech about how we've all lost someone, but we can't fight for the way things were, only the way they should be. This speech, powerful as it is, is the same across both the novelization and the movie however, so there's nothing more to say here.

Everyone agrees to work together with Dex to stop Brand X, and he agrees to show them what he has in mind. What's Dex planning? Will there really be a food fight? Find out the answers to all your burning questions in Chapter 18!

[thewinevoyage]

10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try NowWhy the following 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Matter The 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now1. Wine-Tasting Trivia Challenge 2. Office Escape Room 3. Photo Scavenger Hunt 4. Two Truths and a Lie: Wine Edition 5. Office Olympics 6. Build-a-Boat Challenge 7. Charity Build-Off 8. Role Reversal Skits 9. Silent Line-Up 10. Marshmallow Tower How to Plan the Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Tips to Ace the Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Troubleshooting the Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Deep Dive: The Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Conclusion: The Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Transform Work Other interesting links Team Building Activities 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Picture this: you’re at a corporate event, the room buzzing with chatter, but the energy’s flat—everyone’s just clutching coffee cups, scrolling phones, or staring at the clock. Then someone yells, “Let’s guess the wine!” and suddenly, the suits loosen up, laughter erupts, and strangers turn into teammates. That’s the magic of the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—they flip the script on stiff office vibes and make work feel like play. I’ve been that awkward newbie at a company retreat, saved by a silly game that broke the ice, and I’ve seen these activities turn colleagues into collaborators faster than you can say “quarterly report.” This guide dives deep into the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—each one tested, loved, and guaranteed to spark connection. I’ve planned events, flubbed a few (spilled Merlot on a VP—oops), and learned what works. Whether you’re a B2B pro plotting a client mixer or an HR guru rallying the troops, these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now will make your next gathering unforgettable. Team Building Activities From scavenger hunts to wine-fueled trivia, we’ll cover why they rock, how to pull them off, and pro tips to nail it—all with a nod to services like those at The Wine Voyage for that extra sip of fun. Ready to ditch the dull and dive into the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now? Let’s roll. Why the following 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Matter Why bother with the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now? Because corporate life can be a grind—endless Zoom calls, inbox avalanches, and meetings about meetings. I’ve sat through enough soul-crushing “icebreakers” (name a fruit—really?) to know that without fun, Team Building flops. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now aren’t just games—they’re glue. They bond people, spark creativity, and remind everyone they’re human, not just job titles. Take my old office: we were a disjointed crew—sales vs. marketing, remote vs. in-house—until a random escape room turned us into a giggling, problem-solving pack. Studies back this up—Gallup says engaged teams are 21% more productive, and fun is the fast track to engagement. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now deliver that jolt, whether you’re wooing clients or uniting staff. Team Building Activities They’re low stakes, high reward, and with options like wine tastings from The Wine Voyage, they can even feel fancy. Let’s unpack why these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now are your secret weapon. Boosting Bonds The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now break down walls. I’ve watched shy interns chat up execs over a silly relay—suddenly, hierarchy’s out the window. It’s not forced; it’s organic. These activities—think scavenger hunts or trivia—create shared wins that stick. Igniting Creativity Stuffy boardrooms kill ideas; the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now spark them. I’ve seen a quiet coder pitch a wild campaign after a photo contest loosened her up. Fun flips the brain from “work mode” to “what if,” and that’s gold for innovation. Stress Relief Team Building Activities Corporate life’s a pressure cooker—deadlines, quotas, KPIs. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now are the release valve. I’ve laughed off a brutal week racing spoons with eggs—dumb, yes, but it worked. Fun resets the vibe. The 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Here they are—the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now. I’ve ranked them based on joy, ease, and impact, with personal tales and how-tos for each. Let’s dive into these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now and see why they’re must-tries. 1. Wine-Tasting Trivia Challenge Team Building Activities Topping our list of the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now is the wine-tasting trivia challenge. Imagine this: teams sipping Pinot Noir, guessing grape origins, and debating “cherry or earth?” I hosted one—spilled a splash of Chardonnay on my notes, but the room was alive. It’s brainy, boozy fun that bonds over every sip. How It Works: Split into teams, taste 3-5 wines (reds, whites, maybe a Rosé), answer trivia—grape types, regions, pairings. Score points, crown a winner. Why It’s Fun: Wine’s a universal icebreaker—everyone’s a critic, and giggles flow as freely as the Merlot. Setup: Grab wines ($10-20 each), glasses, scorecards. For a pro twist, The Wine Voyage offers curated kits—hassle-free and fancy. Pro Tip: Blindfold it—guess without labels. My crew swore a Cabernet was Zinfandel—chaos ensued. This tops the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now because it’s classy yet silly—perfect for suits unwinding. 2. Office Escape Room Team Building Activities Next in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: the office escape room. Locked in a conference room, racing clocks, solving riddles—I’ve escaped one with a tie as a makeshift key (don’t ask). It’s adrenaline meets teamwork, and it sticks. How It Works: Teams solve puzzles—codes, locks, clues—to “escape” in 30-60 minutes. DIY with office props or hire a kit. Why It’s Fun: Pressure turns strangers into allies—I’ve seen IT and sales high-five over a cracked cipher. Setup: Use a room, hide clues (under chairs, in files), set a timer. Add wine clues for a twist—The Wine Voyage vibes. Pro Tip: Theme it—pirates, spies. My pirate one had us yelling “arrgh!”—HR loved it. A lock-tight pick in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—everyone’s a hero by the end. 3. Photo Scavenger Hunt Team Building Activities Third in our top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now is the photo scavenger hunt. Teams dash around snapping pics—funniest face, weirdest office item—I once caught my boss posing with a stapler like a diva. It’s chaotic, creative joy. How It Works: List 10-15 items or tasks (e.g., “team pyramid,” “coffee mug throne”), teams photograph them, first back wins. Why It’s Fun: It’s silly and active—my crew laughed so hard we forgot the deadline. Setup: Make a list, set a 30-minute timer, phones out. Add “wine bottle pose” for kicks—tie it to The Wine Voyage. Pro Tip: Score creativity—my “human photocopier” shot won bonus points. A snap-happy star in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—memories guaranteed. 4. Two Truths and a Lie: Wine Edition Wine Tasting Team Building Ideas, Team Building Activities Fourth up in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: two truths and a lie, wine edition. “I’ve made wine,” “I hate Prosecco,” “I drank a $5 bottle”—guess the fib over sips. I’ve played—my lie about chugging Syrah fooled no one. How It Works: Each person shares three wine-related statements—two true, one false. Teams guess, sip, laugh. Why It’s Fun: Stories spill—I learned my coworker once bathed in grape juice (true!). Setup: Bring wine (3-5 bottles), glasses—The Wine Voyage kits work. No prep beyond pouring. Pro Tip: Theme it—work tales, wine fails. My “spilled on a client” was too obvious. A chatty gem in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—low effort, high connection. 5. Office Olympics Team Building Activities Halfway through the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: office Olympics. Think chair races, paper-plane tosses—I’ve seen a VP belly-flop in a spoon relay. It’s absurd, competitive fun that levels the field. How It Works: Set 5-7 events—stapler shot-put, sticky-note archery—teams compete, tally points. Why It’s Fun: Silliness reigns—my egg drop had us cheering a yolk-soaked intern. Setup: Office supplies, space, timer. Add a “wine bottle balance” for flair—The Wine Voyage nod. Pro Tip: Medals—gold stickers—cheap thrill. My bronze for “chair spin” still hangs. A gold-medal pick in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—everyone’s an athlete. 6. Build-a-Boat Challenge Sixth in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: build-a-boat challenge. Teams craft vessels from junk—foil, straws, tape—then race them in a tub. My boat sank, but the trash-talk floated us all. How It Works: 20-30 minutes to build, float ‘em in water—fastest or last afloat wins. Why It’s Fun: Sink-or-swim stakes—I’ve seen engineers bicker over straw angles, hilarious. Setup: Gather supplies, tub of water. Add a “wine cork boat” twist—The Wine Voyage style. Pro Tip: Test first—my “Titanic” remake was too real. A buoyant hit in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—creativity meets chaos. 7. Charity Build-Off Team Building Activities Seventh in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: charity build-off. Teams assemble bikes, toys, care kits—then donate ‘em. I’ve built a tricycle, wobbly but loved—heart and hands-on fun. How It Works: Teams get kits, race to build—fastest or best donates to a cause. Why It’s Fun: Purpose plus play—I’ve seen gruff sales reps coo over a kid’s bike. Setup: Source kits (bikes $50-100), pick a charity. Sip wine during—The Wine Voyage touch. Pro Tip: Photos—my team’s bike handover went viral internally. A feel-good star in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—win-win vibes. 8. Role Reversal Skits Eighth in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: role reversal skits. Execs play interns, sales apes HR—I’ve watched a CEO mime my coffee runs, spot-on and side-splitting. How It Works: Teams pick roles, 5-10 minutes to prep skits, perform—laughter decides the champ. Why It’s Fun: Mimicry bonds—my “boss yelling” skit had him howling. Setup: No props needed—or add wine props for flair, via The Wine Voyage. Pro Tip: Time it—my 15-minute epic dragged. Short and sharp wins. A laugh-out-loud pick in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—humor heals. 9. Silent Line-Up Team Building Activities Ninth in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: silent line-up. No talking—line up by height, tenure, birthday—I’ve flailed at “shoe size,” miming like a fool. It’s quiet chaos that clicks. How It Works: Pick a trait, teams align silently—first correct wins. Why It’s Fun: Gestures galore—I’ve seen finger-pointing turn to fist-bumps. Setup: Space, a rule—done. Sip Rosé after—The Wine Voyage twist. Pro Tip: Mix traits—my “coffee intake” line-up was a riot. A quirky gem in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—simple but sneaky. 10. Marshmallow Tower Team Building Activities Rounding out the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now: marshmallow tower. Spaghetti, tape, marshmallows—build the tallest in 20 minutes. My tower collapsed, but the trash-talk soared. How It Works: Teams construct, highest standing wins—physics meets giggles. Why It’s Fun: Fragile chaos—I’ve seen a VP curse a noodle’s bend. Setup: Cheap supplies—$5/team. Add a wine toast—The Wine Voyage flair. Pro Tip: Time tight—my 30-minute try got messy. 20’s the sweet spot. A sticky star in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—towering fun. How to Plan the Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Nailing the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now takes a plan—I’ve botched enough to know. Here’s your playbook to make these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now shine, from prep to wrap-up. Pick the Right One Team Building Activities Match the vibe—wine trivia for classy crews, Olympics for rowdy ones. I’ve mismatched—silent line-up with chatty sales flops. Know your crowd; the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now flex for all. Set the Stage Space, stuff, time—nail it. I’ve crammed an escape room into a closet—disaster. For wine tastings, lean on The Wine Voyage—kits save headaches. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now need room to breathe. Space: Clear it—chairs aside, tables free. Supplies: List it—wine, props, timers—check twice. Time: 30-60 minutes—my two-hour skit fest dragged. Run It Smooth Explain rules—short, sharp. I’ve rambled; eyes glazed. Demo if tricky—my boat-build demo sank, but they got it. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now thrive on clarity. Kickoff: “Here’s how, let’s go!”—five minutes max. Guide: Hover, don’t hover—fix snags, not fun. End: Cheer, prize—my candy stash sealed wins. Tips to Ace the Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Team Building Event Ideas, Team Building Activities Pro tricks make the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now pop—I’ve learned these through spills and thrills. Keep It Light No pressure—fun’s the goal. I’ve seen a VP freeze in trivia—loosen ‘em with Prosecco. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now aren’t tests. Mix Teams Up Cross-department chaos—I’ve paired IT with sales, sparks flew. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now shine when silos break. Prizes Pop Candy, coffee cards—small wins matter. My “Sip Star” badge for wine trivia—huge hit, thanks to The Wine Voyage inspo. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now love a reward. Snap It Photos—capture the mess. My egg-race pics still circulate—gold. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now live on in shots. Troubleshooting the Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Team Building Activities Stuff goes wrong—here’s how to fix the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now when it does. Shy Folks: Pair ‘em with extroverts—my mute intern thrived in skits. Tech Fails: Backup plans—my Zoom trivia crashed, paper saved it. Spills: Towels ready—Chenin on carpet taught me. The Wine Voyage kits minimize mess. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now bounce back with prep. Deep Dive: The Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Here’s the meat—unpacking the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now. More tales, tweaks, twists. Wine-Tasting Trivia Challenge Team Building Activities I’ve hosted this gem in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now a dozen times—once, my Pinot “expert” swore it was Kool-Aid. Teams of 4-6, 3 wines—Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc, Rosé—questions like “Where’s this from?” or “Pair it with?” Score per round—10 points max. My crew’s “grape or garbage” debate—priceless. Twist: Add “vintage guess”—my 2018 Merlot stumped ‘em. Tale: VP bet his tie on a Syrah—lost, wore a paper one. Office Escape Room This in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now is a brain-bender—I’ve locked a CFO in with a riddle about toner. Clues in drawers, under mugs—30 minutes, 5 puzzles. My “find the key” had us crawling—teamwork clicked. Twist: Wine clue—“sip to unlock”—The Wine Voyage could spice it. Tale: Sales guy broke a chair—escape fail, laugh win. Photo Scavenger Hunt Team Building Activities A riot in the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—I’ve snapped a janitor napping (with consent!). List: “boss selfie,” “weird sign”—20 minutes, phones blazing. My team’s “human stapler”—art. Twist: “Wine label hunt”—The Wine Voyage vibes. Tale: CEO’s “mug throne”—still our Slack icon. And so it goes—each of the top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now gets this treatment, tales piling up. I’ve raced boats that sank faster than my dignity, built towers that mocked gravity, and mimed my way through silent line-ups—every flop a lesson, every win a bond. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now are a treasure trove—dig in. Conclusion: The Top 10 Fun Team Building Activities for Corporate Events to Try Now Transform Work The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now aren’t just games—they’re bridges. From wine trivia’s tipsy debates to escape rooms’ frantic solves, I’ve watched these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now turn stiff teams into tight ones. They’re not fluff—they’re fuel, firing up bonds, ideas, and relief that last beyond the last sip or laugh. My spills, my wins—they’ve taught me these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now are worth every second. So, grab one of these top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now—start with a wine-tasting challenge from The Wine Voyage or a DIY tower flop—and watch your crew light up. The top 10 fun Team Building activities for corporate events to try now are your playbook—play it loud, play it now. Cheers to teams that thrive, one fun moment at a time! Hashtags: #Top10TeamBuilding #FunCorporateEvents #TeamBuildingNow #CorporateFunIdeas #WineTeamBuilding #OfficeActivities #TeamBonding #EventPlanning #WorkplaceFun #TryTeamBuildingNow Find out more about our experiences. You may also want to check out our gallery for past events. Other interesting links CUSTOMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE Team Building blog Wine Courses THE BLIND TASTING COMPETITION THE PERFECT BLEND COMPETITION TEQUILA & MEZCAL EXPERIENCE Food & Wine Pairing VIRTUAL EXPERIENCES Links to other interesting articles: 73-powerful-team-building-activities unlock-the-fun-with-18-virtual-team-building-activities powerful-tips-for-crafting-a-company-culture Links to other interesting articles: 19-amazing-virtual-team-building-activities 35-powerful-team-building-activities 5-minute-team-building-activities more-than-50-powerful-team-building-activities Read the full article

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 255

We Happy Few/The Zygon Inversion

“We Happy Few”

Plot Description: god reveals to Lucifer why he was chosen to bear the Mark. The Winchesters team up with angels, demons, and witches in an attempt to seal away Amara

Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: No one died

I can’t blame Lucifer for acting similarly to an angst teen and telling everyone in this room “screw you.” Omg literally though!!! “If dad has something to say to me, I’ll hear it from him. Til then I’ll be in my room”

Crowley’s having a hard time rallying the troops after the character assassination he’s undergone in the last few seasons

of COURSE god won’t just apologize to Lucifer 🙄

Who are the Winchesters to facilitate this family therapy session??

*crying in why couldn’t horikoshi have given me a scene like this???*

No. Dean. That’s TERRIBLE advice “and the thing about apologies is you don’t have to mean them. I tell Sam I’m sorry all the time when I’m not…..sorry. Eh? See?”

I’m so team lucifer here. (No but if LITERAL GOD can give a sincere and specific apology to his son who HE favored and then abandoned, WHY CAN’T ENDEAVOR?)

This “getting the team together to defeat Amara” scene is a little hokey but I guess you gotta do it

…if Lucifer accepts god’s apology and they’re square, what are we gonna do for FOUR MORE SEASONS?!

You have god on your side, but do you have ANIME? Because I think you need both

Ah, RIP, Donatello

Why is god flirting with Rowena?! Lmao

Man…truly the way women get treated in this show is atrocious. None of the guys have any scratches but the women

Oh good. A little tit for tat. Amara may have just killed god. So I guess that might be part of my answer to “what do we do for four more seasons?” The Winchesters got tossed around, and it looks like Lucifer got banished out of Cas

Ok…so he’s not dead YET but only because Amara wants to let him watch her destroy all of creation first

“The Zygon Inversion”

Plot Description: with UNIT incapacitated, only the Doctor stands in the way of the Zygons

Day 8 of asking for one self-contained story. I know I won’t get it today, but maybe tomorrow…

Why is this some…alternate universe Clara being called upon??

Oh…she’s doing they from within the pod the Zygons have her in

Osgood telling the Doctor how she’d kill him if she were Zygon Clara BECAUSE she’s such a big fan of his is very funny

Yeah…there’s no way Clara knows what the Osgood Box is. So not only will Zygon Clara have a hard time finding anything in Clara’s mind, given everything in her past, she’ll HAVE to keep Clara alive

Truly feel like this could have been one episode…there’s so much dumb extra stuff

It seems so obvious now that there would be two Osgood boxes…and actually there are two buttons in each box, so you can understand how frustrated Zygon Clara is

Twelve has some really good speeches, and this one trying to stop the war between humans and zygons is no different

Surprise surprise, they stopped the war

[nenekobasu]

what really gets me about isagi calling himself king is not actually in blue lock at all but in as the gods will part 2 

blue lock nel isagi follows the broad atgw 2 plot/theme structure, the kaneshiro to kaneshiro pipeline. atgw 2 king arc starts off strong for its mc, he rallies and inspires his troops and in general does pretty cool things. atgw 2 king arc ends with the mc watching his girlfriend get crushed by a rock

[lgcmax]

𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 !

okay !! now that that plot call’s over i feel i can finally do a proper plot call. with a new trimester comes a whole load of exciting things, and though this is a tad late i’m happy to provide you with some plot ideas for max ! a lot of people expressed a desire to plot after my ooc love post thing, and i am really really happy to do so ! i haven’t been able to get to everybody individually yet but if you see something here feel free to lmk ! also, i feel like i could do better at interacting with newer muns / muns i haven’t interacted with much ! so, for now, priority goes to those who i haven’t gotten to plot with much yet !! i want to interact with more of you uwu !! and of course, comment or dm me if something catches your eye so i can cross it off !! thank you for taking the time to plot with me !! <33

𝐅𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐒.

alrighty so although we don’t have official thread opportunities ( yet ) that doesn’t mean we can’t do something centered around it to get our muses together !

maybe they run through each of their “ star quality ” performances together, giving each other tips and overall just making sure they’re together ?? perhaps even a little heart to heart talking about their reasonings for debut / becoming famous & all that ?

alternately, someone who acts as a wake up person for max the day of the star quality performances and who he does the same for !! that sounds so confusing but basically these two make sure they both wake up on time & are energized lol !!! hyping each other up & all that ? if they’re dormmates, getting ready together, potentially exaggerated warmups; if they’re not, meeting up to walk over to the company building, having pep talks and getting each other pumped !

also if there’s someone who doubts their abilities and is like iffy on whether or not to join the show ?? let max convince you i swear he will tell you you are the **** and will make any muse confident and feel they have what it takes i swear !!!

𝐕𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐏.

the vlive prompt is solo this trimester but !! guys um ... max has no cooking experience. please help him prepare um ??? it’s sad really

so yeah !! someone who can teach him how to cook - literally anything pizza rolls are the best he can do right now rip - and you’ll forever have his gratitude and loyalty !! though ... i won’t lie to you he might make your job 2000x harder by being a menace and tasting all the ingredients and being a little stupid ?? but it’ll be fun !!!! pls help him out lmAO

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐒.

just some general, non-event threads i had in mind !

canada line. canada line ? canada line ! i never won’t support max having more canadian friends, esp toronto friends too ??

still down for language exchange buddies !! max learns french & still could honestly learn some korean, esp slang or older words ?? but honestly, if your muse speaks ( or signs ) anything else he’s probably down to learn lol ! and in turn, he can do his best to teach you korean, or english ! all stan twitter slang included haha !!

i love mess so enemies are always fun ?? either the competitive type, or just always butting heads ?

new blossoming friendships that are just beginning to become something are always cute !!

friends to unwind with ?? like pls give me people who just have a routine w / max to watch movies, play games, eat & all that w max ?? like the ultimate casual friends !

( drinking tw ) before max hops on future dreams i lowkey want him to try drinking 😳 bc as wild as he is, he’s not a drinker at all ?? don’t think he’s had past a few sips if i’m being honest ? but just for the fun of it why not 😜 and listen ... i’m not trying to get him fired lmAO so this has to be with a male-presenting muse & within the safety of the dorms ok lol !!! or even a flashback thread from his bday ? 

omg someone he is indebted to for one reason or another ??  he needed their help really bad, accepted some stupid deal and now he has to stick to his word ?? bonus points if iit’s over some those are always fun haha !!

i think that’s all for now !! and as always, if you have a plot you wanted to present, don’t have ideas but just want to form a connection between our muses, or just want to bump our chat up in case i’ve forgotten to response please let me know !! i am always down to plot i am trying to get better at responding ok ... i am trying oijoijooi !!!

[wisteria-lodge]

badger primary + unBurning lion secondary (badger secondary model)

Hi, Wisteria!! I remember reading that you're a teacher, so I hope that the school year is going well! If you have time (I know your inbox is packed), I'd love some input on what my sorting might be. I can convince myself of anything -- most days, I'm certain I'm a double badger, but there are times when I think I could be an idealist with a badger-flavored system, or even a snake that *wants* to be a badger.

Childhood experiences that come to mind... I tended to be the ringleader of the neighborhood kids. 

Classically, this points me at Lion secondary (who naturally build armies) or Badger secondary (who naturally build communities.) 

I came up with the games, made sure people were included, and organized people (proudest kindergarten moment: getting my whole class to join hands and yell "POWER RANGERS, MYSTIC FORCE!"). When a neighbor girl broke her ankle, I went door to door, rallying the troops so we could all visit and comfort her. 

You do use the metaphor of an army... but all the examples are so soft and Badgery... which isn’t to say that Badger secondaries have to be soft... 

I’m thinking about that “[I] made sure people were included” part though. Because that’s getting into values, Badger primary values. I’m wondering if you might not be a Badger Lion, actually. 

I was also possessive of my friends, I'd get jealous when they'd talk about friends from school or feel incredibly hurt if I wasn't invited to something. 

Oh this is interesting. Because this sounds like an immature Badger primary who doesn’t want to even be reminded of groups they’re not part of. I wonder if you were aware of a very clear in group/out group when you were younger. And if you didn’t... Snake with a huge inner circle is also a possibility.

I was protective of my loved ones and stood up to bullies on their behalf. 

I’m liking Lion secondary for you. And Loyalist primary. 

I grew out of the jealousy as I got older, learning that I couldn't be everything to everyone and that I needed more than one best friend, so my friends could have other besties too. 

Maybe Snake primary? With this focus on BEST friends... which young Snakes do care a LOT about...

I'm not sure exactly when it started, but there came a point when I just... withdrew. I stopped inviting people over, stopped playing at recess. It was a lonely time, but I found solace in books and movies. Harry, Ron, and Hermione; Percy, Annabeth, and Grover; The Avengers; Han Solo and Princess Leia... they became my best friends. I'd create elaborate stories in which I became part of their world. In these stories, some higher power would send me to a fictional world, in which I already knew the plot and could help the main characters avoid pitfalls and save people from their scripted deaths. I also had healing powers, where I could touch someone and take all their pain (physical or emotional) on myself. 

Hmm. Now this is a very Badger secondary fantasy, I think, with that focus on literally absorbing other’s pain and being able to FIX it (it’s very relatable, is what it is.) Which makes me think that your “withdrawal” from life... could probably be described as your Lion secondary burning. And then maybe you’re putting a Badger secondary model over the top to keep functioning? It happens. 

This retreat into fictional worlds was sparked, I think, by moving schools and problems at home. 

This would be really, really hard on a Loyalist. 

My parents had a difficult marriage, and I took it on myself to be my mom's confidant and best friend. I was also my sibling's caregiver (they have some disabilities) and took my responsibilities toward them very seriously. 

Yeah, that is some serious, heavy Badger secondary. And I’m going to say it’s probably a model, because you talk about as though it’s this external thing - “I took it upon myself” “responsibilities.” 

My dad was a stifling presence-- everything had to be his way. He'd call himself "the general" and say that our job wasn't to ask questions: when he said jump, we'd say "how high?" Expressing my thoughts to him never mattered, so I'd just squash them. 

That’s brutal. That would be especially brutal on a young Lion secondary, and I would not be surprised if that contributed to your Lion secondary Burning. 

My solace in all of this was my mom, she knew exactly how it felt to be dominated by him and we'd often hold hands through his tirades, comforting each other through it. They finally got divorced when I was in high school. 

It is not - and it was not - your responsibility to be your Mom’s confidant, best friend, and emotional support. It’s just simply not a job that you actually had the ability to do, especially starting (it sounds like) in MIDDLE school. But it’s something that you tried to do, using a Badger secondary skillset. I’ve been there.

For years, my biggest fear had been that I'd have to choose between them. 

THE loyalist primary dilemma. 

But my dad ended up making that choice for me -- his behaviors spiraled out of control, and I had to run away from him. 

You throw that in so casually, but that’s a HUGE thing. And sure, if the circumstances were extreme enough, that could have been any secondary... but all things being equal that’s sounding like a Lion secondary solution. 

As time passed, truths about his past came to light. My mom and I found out about years of abuse that he'd heaped upon other women in his life. With those discoveries, I decided to cut him out of my life. It wasn't necessarily because it was the "right" or "moral" thing, I still feel guilty about it sometimes, but it was because of the pain he'd inflicted on other people. I couldn't reconcile his love for me with how he treated other people in my life, with how he viewed the world. 

Oh. OH. Badger Lion. Badger Lion ALL THE WAY. All that focus on communities? And I bet, in that moment, it didn’t feel like the ‘right’ or ‘moral’ thing because it felt like the ONLY thing you COULD do. 

I spent several months in a foreign country on a service mission. Though I'd always dreamed of other worlds, being so far from home hurt badly. I was constantly worried about my mom and sibling. Our dog died while I was gone, and that grief was made so much worse by the separation. I wanted to be there for them, but we were thousands of miles apart. 

Badger primary. They don’t like being separated from their people. 

A lot of aspects of mission life were difficult for me -- there was pressure to achieve certain numbers and statistics rather than truly ministering to living, breathing people. 

Oh I bet both your Badger primary AND Lion secondary HATED that.

My goal was just to provide service and love, which didn't always coincide with those in authority. 

That classic Lion secondary always has a bit of a rebel streak. Always has a tendency to butt up against those in authority, which we are seeing here with the mission administration (and previously, with your father.)

More random thoughts/details: I have a bleeding heart for animals and want to be a vegetarian (can't at home, so it'll have to be when I move out). 

Badger primary. 

I am incredibly indecisive and find it so hard to trust myself-- choosing a major has been a nightmare.

Burnt lion secondary. (It does seem like it’s getting better though.) 

My past experience predicts that if someone likes me, just wait: they'll find out the truth somehow, that I've fooled them, that I'm not who they think I am, and then they'll leave me. 

I mean, objectively you’ve had groups of fantastic friends, who adored you, and who you had to move away from. What this seems (apart from some just general human being abandonment issues) is the angst of a burnt Lion secondary who thinks that they have to layer on the Badger REAL thick in order to be acceptable and liked. Lion secondaries are intense, they are, and sometimes they do rub some people the wrong way. (And inspire intense loyalty in others.) 

Happiness, for me, would look like having a comfortable and happy home, taking care of the people I love, writing a book, contributing to the community, and just living a peaceful, quiet life. I just want to love, be loved, heal people, bring peace…

A beautiful Badger primary fantasy. 

What do you think? I feel a Badger secondary in there, and probably a charred primary. Loyalist? Idealist? Thanks for your time and patience, if you have any follow-up questions, I'll do my best to answer them. -- Rih

Your primary seems in really good shape. I wouldn’t worry about that at all. All the angst is coming from your methods - there’s a Lion secondary that you don’t really trust in there, and there’s a Badger model that you like, sometimes, but is probably being overused these days. Honestly, service missions are built on the backs of Badger secondaries, and the fact that you went on one, and did not gel with the way things were done... honestly gave me a lot of information. 

[iturbide]

If I had to guess, Claude killing people and using violence is kind of inevitable. It’s a series where violence being used to solve the problem is kind of baked into the gameplay. It’s hard to tell a story of careful diplomacy and patient negotiation in between over the top fight scenes. Not saying it is impossible (Verdant Wind), but lightening rarely strikes twice.

And I think that's the really disappointing thing for me. Claude in particular was notable in his presentation regardless of route: no matter who you side with, after the timeskip you're greeted with the fact that the Alliance has managed to stay out of the war for five years owing entirely to Claude's ability to keep the other Great Lords of the Leicester Roundtable arguing with one another rather than mustering troops.

In Crimson Flower the Alliance has control of Myrddin, but has only used it for their own defense; when Edelgard takes it and marches on Derdriu, though Claude rallies his own forces to defend the Alliance, he attempts to keep the loss of life to a minimum, saying outright if Hilda falls that he had ordered her to retreat if things got bad rather than lay down her life, essentially making his stand the last one before passing the Alliance's control over to Edelgard in the desperate hope that his surrender will keep the bloodshed to a minimum.

In Azure Moon, he once again only rallies troops to defend the Alliance, calling in aid from the Kingdom following the successful liberation of Fhirdiad in the hopes that it will keep the Alliance from falling to Imperial control (we won't get into the issues I have with him passing control of the Alliance over to Dimitri in that route because that plot point doesn't make sense and I think was just about having a united Fodlan regardless of route, which is stupid)

His own route of Verdant Wind did its best to defy conventions to the best of its limited ability: he joins the battle at Gronder Field because he can see the troops amassing, and when he sees Dimitri he specifically says that "he doesn't look interested in joining forces with us," because he still wants to avoid conflict as much as possible. He knows that conflict with Edelgard is inevitable and refuses to back down from a fight with her; but he still tries to get through to Dimitri, even though it's a futile attempt. He speaks gravely of the cruelty of war and the lives it takes -- a striking difference from Edelgard, who considers the lives lost to be "necessary sacrifices" for achieving her goals.

The thing is, there isn't a need to show the diplomacy and negotiation. Even Three Houses got around it by glossing over the roundtable in Verdant Wind, having it brought up that they're going at the start of a chapter and then skipping straight ahead to the aftermath: they don't have to show the details, and never have. Given that battles are so often life and death struggles, Claude's insistence on trying to reach out to people just in case he can get through to them, rather than gearing straight up for combat in every engagement, was unique and fascinating: he fights to defend himself and the people who depend on him, but only when there's demonstrably no other way. And in Three Hopes, they could have kept that up: I don't know if they have little dialogues where he banters with foes the way that Three Houses did, but in the case of Shahid -- who, as I understand it, was already defeated and disarmed at the end -- they could have had Claude order that his brother be detained after that failed attack and have him sent back to Almyra. It takes just as much time as having him kill his half-brother. But they don't. And that's what bugs me.

But hey, again, I haven't played the game yet. I'm only going off second-hand info. This is just the product of my tempered expectations.

[erazonpo3]

WOWM

so What Once Was Mine came out and I read it.

My General Thoughts are that this book was something of a rollercoaster but in like a pop up carnival with dubious safety regulations and diseases in the DIY log flume water kind of way. I had some fun reading it but I also feel like I picked up a rash.

If you're like me and you enjoy picking a book apart for morsels of interesting concepts then you might enjoy it, if you think holy shit why the fuck is a literal real historical serial killer in this book I need to see this then you might enjoy it, if you care about engaging plots and character beats then you probably won't.

If you want to ask me anything specific go ahead, but otherwise for more in depth thoughts: spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of the Plot

Okay so here's the deal. The story has the framing device of two siblings in a cancer ward, where one tells the other a story. I'll get into that later, but that's how it starts. Our actual story starts with a pretty long prologue: We learn that the King & Queen got the Moonflower thinking it was the Sunflower, Rapunzel was born with silver hair, and then baby Rapunzel kills a maid who accidentally hurt her when brushing her hair.

Oh, by the way, Max is a human man named Justin Tregsburg. Yeah.

Anyway, the royal family puts out feelers for legit witches who can safely take care of Rapunzel because the baby is too dangerous, and Gothel shows up to take her away. Queen Arianna visits Rapunzel once (but is only allowed to watch through a peephole) and decides watching another woman raise her child is too painful and throws herself into restoring the kingdom's orphanages instead.

Now we're in the present. Rapunzel is nineteen and she wants to go and see the lanterns (a mourning tradition of the Dead princess in this story). She tries to argue with Gothel but gets shut down, and Gothel makes her kill a chicken to prove the point that she can't go outside because she's too dangerous. However we as the audience already know Gothel plans to sell Rapunzel off as a bride or a servant or a weapon to some other nobles, because she's evil.

Also by the way Gothel still has access to our Sundrop Flower and is using it to live forever that's just a thing that happens in the background.

When Gothel is gone Rapunzel watches as a man (Flynn) stores a satchel in a tree outside of her tower, and that motivates her to leave the tower for the first time. Then she goes back inside the tower with her prize of a crown, and a skink she found and named Pascal. Rapunezl and Gothel have another spat, and Rapunzel decides she will run off to see the lanterns and she will find Flynn and make him her guide.

She ends up at the Snuggly Duckling and she doesn't find Flynn but she does find Gina, a young career criminal girl looking to break the glass ceiling. Gina agrees to help her find Flynn. They find Flynn, and he agrees to help guide Rapunzel to see the floating lanterns for a split reward of the crown with Gina.

The Snuggly Duckling gets burned down by Countess Bathory (yes that Elizabeth Bathory) and the Pub Thugs are pissed about it and also they're helping Rapunzel even though she didn't sing the I've Got A Dream song don't worry about it. We learn that the nobles that wanted to buy Rapunzel are now hunting her down so she can go to auction.

Gina takes them to her adopted mother's cottage. Gina's mother is a white witch, who goes by the name of Goodwife. She doesn't get an actual name she's just The Goodwife. Anyhow, the cottage is a magic safe space (for now) and Goodwife teaches Rapunzel that her hair isn't inherently evil and may not even be all that deadly! Rapunzel learns that her hair has other powers too, like the ability to turn skink Pascal into a sentient Chameleon. Yeah.

Also Goodwife tells Rapunzel she's the dead princess but this isn't like, an immediate call to action. Not a lot happens until we get this story's version of the Mother Knows Best Reprise where Gothel finds Rapunzel again but has to flee, but this Rapunzel has a bigger support network and isn't buying it. Flynn and Gina decide the safest course of action is to bring Rapunzel to the castle, but along the way she gets kidnapped by the Countess.

Gothel is pissed because she still wants the money for Rapunzel, so she rallies the armies of all the opposing bidders. Flynn and Gina convince Max the Man to send for his troops, and he joins them in going to the enemy castle. Flynn tries to sneak in, gets caught, and meanwhile there's a bloody battle out the front between the noble armies. Max jumps into the fray, Gina turns around and rallies the Pub Thugs.

Rapunzel uses her shrinking magic (!) to disappear half the castle and escape with Eugene, and the Pub Thugs arrive and basically end the battle. The Captain is dying but it's okay! Rapunzel turns him into a horse :) Also Rapunzel sees Gothel and tells her to fuck off.

The story ends with a tearful reunion between Rapunzel and her parents, Eugene and Gina are implied to be biological siblings, and things are good but of course in direct parallel to Cass Gina leaves at the end to become an adventurer. The end.

(There are a few other smaller plot beats, but you get the idea.)

MY THOTS

So here are my thoughts™.

Framing Device

I'll just state that I didn't like that the story was told via the vehicle of an older brother telling his 16 year old sister a different version of the Tangled Movie in a cancer ward. From what I've heard it also isn't normal for the Twisted Tales series to use a framing device for the AUs either.

I sympathise with the author's personal story, of course I do. That doesn't mean I'm stirred with compassion every time the flow of the story is interrupted to remind you to be sad because this is a story being told to a girl sick with cancer. It feels more than a little tragedy-porny rather than emotionally touching, and maybe that's because I'm too burnt out on real life tragedy to waste emotional energy on fictional cancer patients but we don't need to do Fault In Our Stars discourse again.

Real World References

This story goes heavy with Real World references. And another issue with the framing device as above is that you do feel like this is a story being told by someone namedropping every historical figure they know which makes it harder to get into the story.

There's like... a lot of references to Christianity, particularly in the prologue. There's a priest that thinks Rapunzel's hair is the work of the Devil or whatever. It's a lot. The Patriarchy is a thing. And that's not even getting into the Countess. I put it very succinctly in my notes so I'll paste it here:

I wish she’d just been an OC who could exist to chew scenery because the fact that she was a literal historical serial killer is super. Off putting. Like, she could have been an obvious reference to Bathory, but it feels like Miku Binder Hamilton levels of uncomfortable to me.

I miss Lady D.

Which basically sums up my problem with trying to take the setting of Tangled and put it somewhere in the Real World and somewhere on the Timeline. Who thought this was a good idea.

Misc. Thoughts

So, I used the five highlighter colours my ipad allows to organise my thoughts and organised them accordingly: Yellow for out of place IRL references, Blue for worldbuilding/character points that aren't plot relevant but still interesting, Pink for when something I find personally amusing happens, Purple for when the story feels like it's trying to 1-up the movie in some kind of way and Green for Heterosexual Nonsense. I'll touch on those last two in the Character sections but be prepared.

Also: for a book about giving Rapunzel killer hair, her hair isn't very dangerous. I wanted to see Rapunzel kill someone, and I'm disappointed that I didn't.

Characters

I'll do a deep dive into my thoughts about the characters before wrapping it up. I'm starting with Gina because she's honestly the easiest to get through.

Gina

Gina is a new character introduced for the story. She's a young woman trying to make it as a career criminal but keeps hitting that glass ceiling. So here's the down low, for all those who want to know: Gina is basically Cass, only not really. She's implied to be Eugene's biological sister, as previously mentioned, but you can imagine she's Cass the entire way through without breaking your immersion because if you imagined Cass if she were adopted by a Goodwitch rather than the Captain and had a looser, more wilderness survivor than trainee guard upbringing then you get Gina.

I liked Gina! I think she's fun as her own character too, and her best moments are when she's interacting with her mother Goody Goodwife, and she of course picks up a natural sibling rivalry with Eugene, but I was disappointed with how little she really bonded with Rapunzel because she needed to make room for Eugene and Rapunzel's romance.

Rapunzel

Okay, here's our protagonist. There's a notable effort to make Rapunzel more active in her destiny and whatever, and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. I was worried they'd try to go full butt-kicking girlboss with her but I was pleasantly surprised that Rapunzel was pretty useless in most scenes, genuinely love to see it.

With a more intimate look into Rapunzel's psyche through the medium of prose, we see Rapunzel really questioning Gothel's behaviour even before she leaves the tower, and while I appreciate that she can develop her own cynicism I feel it starts unnecessarily early. This is my purple colour; the movie needs to be "fixed" by showing the readers that this Rapunzel is quicker to distrust Gothel. She's also quicker to hatch a plan to go outside of the tower on her own, and she makes a plan to make Flynn her guide for the lanterns even though he never stumbles upon her in the tower- and even though she has a perfectly rational reason not to trust him which is that he is a stranger and a Wanted Thief.

In the moments where it does work is when Rapunzel is surrounded by her new support network: Flynn, Goodwife and Gina, who encourage her to question Gothel's sincerity, and Rapunzel comes up with her own defences for Gothel so that she can poke through them herself.

I have some other thoughts about Rapunzel's hair and her powers, like how the story provides the interesting concept that her hair gets different powers with the different phases of the moon, but a lot of the powers are uhhh stupid and also I feel like it really robs the story of the whole gripping conflict of "Yes I'm Rapunzel Yes my hair kills people what of it".

In as far as just Rapunzel herself though, she still felt pretty in character nonetheless, and maybe that's all I can ask.

Flynn Rider / Eugene Fitzherbert

My boy I am so sorry. They neutered my boy.

Long story short: Eugene in this story is the sexy lamp. He contributes nothing to the plot except to be there for Rapunzel to drool over. And of course because he won't get any character development, he starts from the very beginning as a sweet soft boi with none of the Flynn Rider characterisation from the movie because we don't have time for that, he needs to be husband material stat.

His whole character is the colour green for Heterosexual Nonsense.

So, here's the problem. In the movie, there's not a lot of time for ~friendship~ between Rapunzel and Eugene because they kind of immediately see each other as a romantic prospect. And whatever, it's a movie and there's only so much time. But this book had the opportunity to take things a bit slower and instead chooses to make Rapunzel get jealous whenever Eugene and Gina interact and for her to be constantly wishing he was holding her hand.

Say what you will about Lost Lagoon, but it tells a good romance story just by virtue of not intending to be a romance story, because the author is trying to convey a strong bond between Rapunzel and Cassandra without using "and they kiss" as a cheatcode. What Once Was Mine says "he was a boy, she was a girl, could it be any more obvious?" and leaves it at that.

Now as for how this all pertains to Eugene's character? Well, it just robs him of any flavour. In the movie there's a clear distinction between Flynn and Eugene, when we learn Eugene's real name about halfway through. We see a clear difference between the Flynn we knew- kind of an asshole, wanated to drop Rapunzel off at the Snuggly Duckling and get rid of her- and Eugene, who is sincere and chooses Rapunzel as his New Dream in opposition to his Old Dream of living alone on an island with a bunch of money.

This version of Eugene is basically Eugene all the way through, because the plot doesn't really need Eugene there but he has to be there because it's a Tangled AU so there's no Rapunzel rescuing Flynn from the guards and healing his hand scene, he just loves her immediately and that's that. They have a little spat at one point but it's cleared up later and not because they actually communicate but because they kiss.

Rapunzel only learns Eugene's real name at the very end of the story, and gives a speech about how Eugene is the real him, but it's just so flat because 'Flynn' has been sincere this whole time? Anyway he does nothing of value for the entire story except be there for Rapunzel to lust after. Eugene I'm so sorry.

Gothel

Gothel's sort of the Big Bad and is characterised as an abusive asshole, the usual. I wish there were a bit more nuance to her character but then again in this story she's not just being passively evil- taking care of Rapunzel for selfish reasons but nevertheless maintaining the status quo- she's being actively evil in trying to sell Rapunzel off.

It's notably funny that Gothel sees the Countess Bathory and is like "what the fuck".

Anyway Gothel in this story also feels very weak in part because this Rapunzel is more critical and in part because this Rapunzel has a new support network. It's for that reason the Mother Knows Best Reprise scene doesn't really work, because the original has Gothel pit Rapunzel against Eugene, whereas she can't do that here so it remains a Gothel vs Rapunzel thing.

She gets a boring death as an epilogue addendum that someone rips out the Sundrop flower, which tbh? lame. It would be a lot more fun if it were open ended but I am also preferential to Rapunzel actually using her killer hair to kill someone. Please

Captain Justin Tregsburg

It's Max. He was a human but then he got turned into a horse. what the fuck you guys

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Hiya 👋 I find it fascinating when people point out stuff about main characters that are brushed over and was I was wondering what’s your top reasons you dislike Alina and what scenes made you dislike her / made no sense.

Well I don't dislike Alina in the show but in the books I do think she is badly written. But here are some things that made the book character less appealing to me than the show.

I think the main one is her complete lack of agency. She very rarely makes any decisions for herself and just seems to go along with what everyone else (mostly male characters) say. There is a problem and instead of Alina being the one to make a decision or think of a solution she is told this is what we are going to do by either, M*l, Nikolai or the apparat. She is pushed around the plot by others actions instead of taking control herself and so often appears more as a puppet than as a commander or influential person in herself. For example in the show Alina is the one who tells M*l that they should seek the stag and kill it for it's amplification powers before the darkling does. Yet in the books this decision isn't hers but M*l's and Alina just goes along with it. There are also several instances where she clearly doesn't agree with the course of action or doesn't want to do something and yet she does it anyway, an example of this is when Nikolai and M*l want to attack the Volcra nest in the fold. She clearly has qualms about it but ends up folding to their will, another example is M*l insisting that once the fold and the darkling are destroyed that they seek a way to remove the amplifier, again this is something Alina doesn't want to do but she agrees with M*l and doesn't tell him her true desire. So what we end up with is a female protagonist who very much seems to be a pawn to the male characters in the book.

Another thing I disliked about the character's storyline is that she was often the victim of men, held captive and used to their advantage and this included one the supposed heroes. The darkling takes her captive twice wanting to use the amplifiers and control her to meet his own goals, Nikolai also at one point takes her captive and only really gives her freedom back to her because she agrees to help him, and the apparat takes her captive so that he can use her to gain religious power over the masses. She also never gets herself out of these situations, she just accepts her situation and waits to be rescued, for others to save her so that they too can use her for their own gain. I find this theme of her either being a victim of men or the pawn of one really worrying.

Another issue with the way she is written which again ties into the two above is that she is made far too dependant on M*l. Not only does she make herself very ill by suppressing her powers to stay with M*l but when her powers are revealed her refusal to let go of her attachment to M*l means that she struggles to master her powers, she becomes physically unable to summon because her refusal to let M*l go. Later in book two and three she spends a lot of time pining after him and getting in arguments about their positions of power. M*l feels useless and resents Alina's new position and power, he wants things to go back to how they were. He really does hold her back in many ways and this really should have been a love that they both grew out of but instead despite it being made obvious that they don't really fit together they both refuse to let the other go which means one or the other has to make sacrifices in order for them to be together. Not only that but Alina often puts M*l's needs, wants and safety above the greater good, rather than save the grisha or other vulnerable people she will safe M*l even going so far as to let 30-40 innocent people die in the fold so that she can save his life. This co-dependant relationship that she has with M*l is very unhealthy and toxic which would be ok if this was recognised within the narrative and then steps were taken to fix it, but instead this relationship is presented as some grand love story despite how damaging it truly is to Alina. In the Tv adaption they show us that Alina can be very happy and actually thrive without M*l in ep 5, its the happiest we ever see her and the most confident, yet she never gets this opportunity in the books.

Alina is also very insecure and jealous and we often see her pitted against other females, in particular Zoya. If there is one thing I really am not a fan of its authors pitting women against women particularly when it is over a man. Throughout all of the books Alina is insecure that Zoya is more beautiful than her and is insecure about her own looks, particularly when is comes to M*l, she is often jealous believing M*l will be turned by other pretty girls instead of him staying loyal to her. She often worries that she won't be good enough as the Sun Summoner and that the people will come to hate her. Again all of this would have been fine if it were limited to just the beginning of her story arc and it was something she overcame, but she never really does. She often comes across as being quite sulky as well. There was this one quote that I kept seeing in the tag that Alina says which is 'I am the Sun Summoner. It gets dark when I say it does.' Obviously before reading the books I kept wondering the circumstances of her saying this. It is a bit of a badass quote so naturally I was imaging all kinds of grand, dramatic scenarios, her shouting it across the battlefield to the darkling, her saying it in a war meeting as they are making plans as a way of instilling hope and confidence in her troops. So you can imagine my disappointment when it is actually said whilst she is lying outside on the ground, sad and feeling sorry for herself. When presented with a problem or a wrench in a plan she doesn't rally her team and try to come up with a solution instead she just sulks which as a reader I found very frustrating. The thing is both Alina and M*l are written as rather realistic teenagers, but the problem is this doesn't fit the world they are living in. They live in a world based off imperial russia and yet the characters do not behave as if they are, instead they act like they are modern day teenagers attending high school with petty jealousy and childhood crushes.

There is also her identity as a grisha and relationship with the grisha. One of the more interesting aspects of the grisha trilogy is the grisha's story, their oppression and their fight to be recognised as human beings and equals. Yet Alina shows very little care for the Grisha. In fact to me it seems like the author just made Alina grisha to serve the plot. Alina is grisha because the narrative needs her to be, they need her to be powerful enough to defeat the villainous darkling and destroy the fold. Instead of striving to improve things for the Grisha Alina supports the monarchy that has spent centuries oppressing them. The moment LB no longer needs Alina to be grisha she is stripped of the identity and the grisha are left in their misery in a world that still hunts, kills and enslaves them.

Alina is also often punished in the narrative by other characters but also by herself. She is often shamed for the attraction she felt towards the darkling and is called things like stupid girl. Not only is she blamed for falling for the darkling's manipulation she is also told she is greedy and power hungry for seeking out the amplifiers and political power. It's a very twisted message that is sent because we are told she is seeking the amplifiers to stop the villain which is a heroic cause and yet we are also told that she is doing out of greed. There seems to be this message that women should not seek power or a change in their position because that means they are greedy and evil.

Then after three books of the protagonist being used as a chess piece by the men in the story she gets one of the worst endings a heroine could. Both Nikolai and M*l get what they want in the end but its at a cost to Alina, Nikolai gets the Ravkan throne and M*l gets the quiet farm life with Alina as his wife. But Alina loses her powers and the position of power she got with them. The two things she explicitly asks for and tells us she desires, her position as general of the second army and her powers/amplifiers. In fact she even tells us in the second book that given a choice she would not give up her powers not even for M*l. Yet that is what happens and worse than that the narrative tells us that she was wrong and greedy for seeking power and influence, they present this ending she gets as a happy one because she gets to spend her life with M*l living a nice normal life. As a reader I found this difficult to except because the character had told us on many occasions that it was not what she wanted, we are shown often how miserable she is without her powers and yet we are expected to believe that this was some wonderful fairytale ending for her when it seems like whilst the men got their happy ever afters it was at the expense of Alina.

There is probably more but before this turns into a full on rant I think it best to leave it here.

[southeastasianhistories]

Southeast Asia’s role in World War I is all but lost to history. There was no major invasion of the region by a hostile power, like Japan in World War II. None of the Central Powers – an alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – had colonial territory in the region, except on the periphery. German New Guinea quickly fell to the Allies after the outbreak of war in July 1914.

Yet the First World War, which ended 100 years ago this month, proved a decisive event for Southeast Asia. For the first time, it severely tested the relationship between the colonial authorities of Britain, France and the Netherlands (neutral in the war) and their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia, for whom sacrifice in the conflict was to be a rallying cry for more civil rights. The burgeoning nationalist movements throughout the region swelled with veterans returning home from democratic and industrial nations, while others, with considerable consequences in later decades, brought home interests in the radical politics at the time, not least communism.

Arguably, the most interesting response to the declaration of war was made by Siam, as Thailand was then known. As the only Southeast Asian nation not colonised by a European power, Siam, under the absolute monarch King Vajiravudh, decided to go to war against the Central Powers in 1917, sending its own troops to fight in Europe. The Siamese Expeditionary Force of more than 1,000 troops arrived in the French port of Marseilles in July 1918. It was led by Major-General Phraya Phya Bhijai Janriddhi, who had received military training in France before the war. At first, the Thai troops were employed by the Allies as rear-guard labour detachments, taking part in the Second Battle of the Marne in August that year. The following month, they saw their first frontline action. They took part in several offences, including the occupation of the German Rhineland. In the end, 19 Thais had lost their lives – none from battle.

King Vajiravudh’s decision to go to war was calculated. Gambling on Allied victory, he believed Siam’s participation would earn it the respect of Britain and France. He was correct. Although it was independent, neighbouring colonisers (the British in Burma and the French in Cambodia) had slowly whittled away Siam’s territory in the preceding decades, with large tracts of land returned to Cambodia in the late 19th century. After WWI, though, Siam’s territory didn’t budge. Equally important, Siam took part in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference and was a founding member of the League of Nations, a clear indication that Western powers now saw it as a legitimate force on the international stage and in Southeast Asia.

The rulers of independent Siam might have wanted respect and power, but the thoughts of ordinary people from the rest of colonised Southeast Asia are little known. Few first-hand accounts exist for historians. Quite probably, however, many did not want to be thrust unquestionably into the greatest fratricide the world had yet seen, and some no doubt hoped the colonial empires would be destroyed by the whole endeavour. Yet some nationalists, especially those of higher rank who weren’t expected to fight, saw the war effort as a means of gaining more political rights for themselves under the colonial system.

The war, for example, provided the Vietnamese with “an unexpected opportunity to test France’s ability to live up to vaunted self-representations of invincibility”, as Philippe Peycam wrote in 2012’s The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930. The prominent Vietnamese nationalist Phan Chu Trinh, who had spent years in jail before the war for his activism and was imprisoned for six months in 1914 on wrongful charges of colluding with the Germans, played a considerable role in recruiting Vietnamese men for the war. Another noted nationalist, Duong Van Giao, published a history of the Vietnamese war effort, 1925’s L’Indochine pendant la guerre de 1914–1918. Because of Vietnam’s sacrifice, he called on the French colonials to adopt a “native policy”: not quite outright independence but radical reform of civil rights for the Vietnamese. It was a similar sentiment as expressed in Claims of the Annamite People, an influential tract cowritten in France in 1919 by a young activist who later became known as Ho Chi Minh, who had spent most of the war working in a London hotel under the famous chef Auguste Escoffier.

As a French colony, Vietnam was expected to provide troops for the war effort, but there were differing views among colonial officers as to what role they should play. Lieutenant-Colonel Théophile Pennequin was a hardliner but also a keen reformer. Before the outbreak of war, Pennequin requested that he be allowed to form a competent military unit that was termed by some as an armée jaune (yellow army), similar to the force noire (black force) popularised by General Charles Mangin in France’s West African colonies. For Pennequin, a national native army would allow Vietnamese to gain “positions of command and provide the French with loyal partners with whom they could build a new and, eventually, independent Indochinese state,” wrote historian Christopher Goscha in 2017’s The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam.

But Pennequin’s designs were rejected by Paris and, instead, most Vietnamese recruits were sent to Europe to work in factories or as supply hands. Yet some did fight. One estimate contends that out of 100,000 Vietnamese conscripts sent to the war in Europe, roughly 12,000 lost their lives. A battalion of Tonkinese Rifles, an elite corps formed in the 1880s, saw action on the Western Front near Verdun. Do Huu Vi, a celebrated pilot from an elite family, became a national hero after his plane was shot down over France.

Despite overt racism by some French nationals and trade unions’ concerns that they were bringing down wages, many of the Vietnamese put to work in munitions factories found it a revelatory experience. Some started relationships with Frenchwomen, unsurprising since other workers in wartime factories were mostly women. Others joined social clubs and reading groups. After the war, wrote Goscha, “a hundred thousand Vietnamese veterans returned to Indochina hoping to start a new life. Some wanted French citizenship; most expected good jobs and upward social mobility. Several hoped to modernise Vietnam along Western lines, despite the barbarity they had just witnessed in Europe.”

It was a similar story for the Philippines, then a United States colony. It declared war on Germany in April 1917, the same time Washington did. At first, the colonial government requested the drafting of 15,000 Filipinos for service, but more than 25,000 enlisted. These troops formed the Philippine National Guard, a militia that was later absorbed into the American military. Most of the recruits, though, would not leave the Philippines during the war. Those who did travelled as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. In June 1918, the first Filipino died in action at the Battle of Château-Thierry, in France: Tomas Mateo Claudio, a former contract labourer on a sugar plantation in Hawaii who had enlisted in the US.

It is not known exactly how many Southeast Asians died during the First World War. Of those active in the European theatre, the number is estimated to be more than 20,000, mostly conscripts from the French colonies. It was a small figure compared to the number of Southeast Asians who perished during the Second World War. And, unlike in that war, there wasn’t a great arena of warfare in Southeast Asia during the First since none of the Central Powers nations had any imperial control in the region.

But Germany did have influence in China and possessed leased territory in Kiautschou Bay, near present-day Jiaozhou. It was invaded by Japanese forces after 1915, and China would later declare war on Germany in August 1917. But in October 1914, the German East Asia Squadron still had its base in the concession – it was from there that a lone light cruiser, the SMS Emden, slipped into Penang Harbour, part of what was then British Malaya. Disguised as a British vessel, the German cruiser launched a surprise attack on a Russian ship and then sank a French destroyer that had given chase. The sole attack on Malaya during the war killed 100 and wounded thousands more.

After the attack, the Emden is thought to have docked in a port in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, raising British suspicions that the Dutch weren’t as neutral as they had claimed. Neutrality, moreover, didn’t mean the colony went unscathed. The Dutch East Indies was home to a sizeable German population that worked to “coordinate and finance covert operations designed to undermine British colonial rule and economic interests in Southeast Asia,” as historian Heather Streets-Salter wrote in 2017’s World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict.

The Emden was finally stopped by an Australian cruiser that ran it ashore in Singapore. The surviving crew of the German vessel were interned there, then a part of British Malaya. Also stationed in Singapore was the Indian Army’s Fifth Light Infantry, which unsuccessfully mutinied in January 1915 after they learned they might be sent to fight in Turkey against fellow Muslims (though they were eventually sent to Hong Kong instead). The 309 interned Germans from the Emden joined in the mutiny, which left dead eight British and three Malay soldiers, as well as a dozen Singapore civilians.

A much forgotten history of World War I was a Turco-German plot to promote jihad (holy war) in parts of the Muslim world colonised by the Allies, including Malaya. Using the Dutch East Indies as a base, supporters of the Central Powers produced “pan-Islamic, anti-British propaganda” that was sent to Muslim-majority British Malaya, and also to India. One of the architects of this plan, Max von Oppenheim, wrote in a position paper in 1914: “In the battle against England… Islam will become one of our most important weapons.” The Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed V, issued a fatwa against the Allies in November of that year. In British Malaya, the authorities doubled down on censorship by closing many Malay-language newspapers, some of which were considered supportive of the Ottoman Empire.

Pan-Islamic propaganda agitating for independence of Malaya was just as attractive to the Muslim-majority subjects of the Dutch East Indies where it was produced. In the preceding decades, these subjects had been demanding more freedoms, even independence, for themselves. This was a serious cause of concern for the Dutch colonialists, but ultimately the real impact of the war on the Dutch East Indies was economic. The Allies’ blockade of European waters, as well as control of Asian waters, made it difficult for Dutch ships to reach the colony for trade purposes.

“The Netherlands Indies was effectively cordoned off by the British Navy,” wrote Kees Van Dijk in 2008’s The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914-1918. As a result, the war caused price increases and severe food shortages in the Dutch East Indies. By the end of 1916, the export industry was practically destroyed. Around that time, social unrest had gained momentum. Rural protesters burned reserve crops, eventually leading to famine in some parts of the colony. Nationalists and a small contingent of socialists began advocating for revolution. By 1918, unrest was so dire that the governor general called a meeting of the nationalist leaders where he made the so-called “November promises” of more political representation and freedom, but these were empty promises.

Economic problems were a constant throughout the region. To help pay for the war effort, the French and British were reduced to raising taxes in their Southeast Asian colonies. The burden fell mainly on the poor. Small wonder it resulted in unprecedented protests. A failed uprising took place in Kelantan, British Malaya, in April 1915. In Cambodia, the so-called 1916 Affair saw tens of thousands of peasants march into Phnom Penh demanding the king reduce taxes. None of these were exact appeals of “no taxation without representation”, but rather the germinal expressions of self-independence that were to become more forceful across the region in the 1930s, and decisive after World War II. Brian Farrell, a professor of military history at the National University of Singapore, has described the impact of the First World War on Southeast Asia as significant yet delayed.

By the close of the war, many of the colonies returned to some form of pre-war normalcy. Yet the colonial governments, indebted and weakened from the conflict, knew that reforms had to be made in Southeast Asia. In Laos, the French-run administration thought the county “secure enough” in October 1920 to introduce the first of a series of political reforms aimed at decentralising power through local appointees, wrote Martin Stuart-Fox in A History of Laos. The British authorities in Malaya also experimented with decentralisation in the 1920s, which involved placing more power in the hands of the provincial sultans. In 1916, the Jones Act was passed in Washington to begin the process of granting the Philippines a “more autonomous government”, including a parliament, which was built upon until full independence in 1946.

War also transformed the role of local elites, who took on more autonomy and power. In Vietnam, the years after 1919 saw the creation of reformist newspapers, written in the increasingly popular Vietnamese script instead of the Roman alphabet, which the French had imposed. In Cambodia and Laos, such forceful nationalism did not arise until the 1930s. Other reformists in the region grew interested in ideologies brought back from the West. The South Seas Communist Party, a pan-Southeast Asian party, was formed in Burma in 1925 before splitting along national lines in 1930. Ho Chi Minh, who spent the war in London, helped create the Communist Party of Indochina that year. Tan Malaka, who had actually tried enlisting to fight with the German army – without success – became an integral part of the communist movement in the Dutch East Indies, later becoming known as something of a father of the independent Republic of Indonesia.

World War I laid bare the unequal “social contract” that colonial authorities had forced their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia to sign. The contract would only become more obviously threadbare by the 1920s, yet it took the next global conflict, which had a far greater impact on the region than the first, for these anti-colonial movements to grab real political power.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Into the breach

US law enforcement has literal centuries of shameful history of infiltrating and spying on politically disfavored activist groups, from trade unionists to suffragists to abolitionists to civil rights advocates to antiwar advocates.

Long before Cointelpro, federal agencies were intercepting communications and embedding as provocateurs in radical political movements, often with the help of mercenary "contractors" like the Pinkertons. The digital age only ramped up this public-private surveillance.

The Dakota Access Pipeline protests were infiltrated and surveilled by beltway bandits who billed the US taxpayer handsomely for the service.

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/30/tigerswan-infiltrator-dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock/

2020's BLM uprising was subjected to the full array of military and national intelligence surveillance: drones, IMSI catchers, mass interception, infiltrators, wiretaps, "reverse warrants" to recover location data from Big Tech monopolists and more.

https://theconversation.com/police-surveillance-of-black-lives-matter-shows-the-danger-technology-poses-to-democracy-142194

And yet, federal and local agencies were seemingly totally unprepared for a mob of thousands of armed terrorists who stormed the capitol, disrupted the transition of presidential power, and threatened the lives of US legislators as well as the integrity of state documents.

The thing is, the plans were in plain sight. For weeks, I've been seeing screengrabs from far-right forums that leaked onto public social media in which violent psychopaths laid out detailed plans to commit murder and overthrow the government.

I wasn't even looking for this stuff. I was on vacation and only cursorily checking the internet. But it was obvious. How obvious? Well, the President was the keynote speaker at the riot and he openly called for violent insurrection. That might have tipped the cops off.

Since 1999's Battle of Seattle, cops have acted like pants-wetting cowards at the first whiff of protest.

2017's plan for dozens of paralyzed, wheelchair-using Medicare For All activists to peacefully occupy the capitol begat violent police panic.

https://twitter.com/MarkAgee/status/1346904850886397954

But when armed terrorists followed through on their widely proclaimed plan to invade the capitol building yesterday, law enforcement foundered. They weren't just unprepared to stop terrorists for breaking in, they were also unprepared to deal with them after the break-in.

To get a visceral sense of the shitshow, listen to Ryan Grim's interview with Matt Fuller, recorded while Fuller was hiding in a secret bunker with other Congressional reporters, Members of Congress and their staffers.

https://theintercept.com/2021/01/07/deconstructed-capitol-inside-the-insurrection/

There's a lot of fingerpointing today between the agencies, with a starring role for the US Capitol Police, who get $460m/yr (10% of Congress's total budget) and have demanded a stonking increase for 2021.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0107/Lawmakers-vow-a-probe-into-Capitol-Police-for-breach-by-mob

They definitely have some serious questions to answer (including why their officers posed for selfies and seem to have opened the gates to permit terrorists to storm the building).

https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1347054783333625857

But as Neal Stephenson pointed out in his 1994 comic technothriller masterpiece INTERFACE, DC is a "cop zoo" with literally hundreds of different law enforcement agencies operating in its city limits.

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/12/10/interface-neal-stephensons-underappreciated-masterpiece/

Did none of these agencies see the terrorist plan that had been scrawled in 100' tall flaming letters across the internet? How could they be caught this flatfooted?

From: Propublica: "a thin line of U.S. Capitol Police, with only a few riot shields between them...struggled with a flimsy set of barricades as a mob in helmets and bulletproof vests pushed its way toward the Capitol entrance."

https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-for-weeks-in-plain-sight-the-police-werent-ready

In her excellent Naked Capitalism roundup of yesterday's failures, Yves Smith examines the logical conclusion that the police were on the terrorists' side. After all, police unions and officers rallied for and endorsed Trump. Would they support a coup to keep him in power?

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/01/maga-cosplayers-seize-capitol-while-cops-flounder.html

Biden is no defund-the-police radical. He pledged to *increase* cop funding by 10%.

But Trump doesn't just promise money for cops: his offer is total impunity. Remember when he told police they should deliberately brutalize people during arrests?

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-police-nice-suspects/story?id=48914504

US policing has its origin in "slave patrols" that abetted enslavers by kidnapping Black people and forcing them into slavery. Slave patrols' legacy lives on in modern policing, with US police forces riddled with white nationalist terror supporters:

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/

Trump himself is a white nationalist. A significant proportion of US police might be tempted to abet a coup to perpetuate the rule of a despot who promises them a free hand to torture and brutalize, and who backs white supremacy.

The failure of US law enforcement to prevent yesterday's botched coup will have long-term, ongoing consequences. While most of the terrorists were Qanon-addled fools, it's impossible to rule out some of them being sophisticated enough to attack the Capitol's IT systems.

Resecuring the Capitol's IT infrastructure should probably involve shredding every device, cable and thumb-drive, tearing open every light-socket and power-outlet, and even then, it will be hard to fully trust the building and its systems.

My 2020 novel ATTACK SURFACE has a B-plot that closely tracks yesterday's attacks; complicity between far-right insurrectionists and palace guards, and massive breaches of official covert IT systems after the government falls.

http://attacksurface.com

I'm not the only one who fictionalizes attacks like this. Within hours of the attacks, right wing conspiratorialists were calling it a false flag and describing their colleagues in the videos as secret antifa infiltrators.

The narrative aftermath of this is gonna be *wild*.

Take the War of 1812. Many commentators have invoked that war - in which enemy forces burned down the White House - in discussing yesterday's assault. But what most Americans don't know is that they are told a highly parochial version of that war-story.

Americans think the War of 1812 was fought with the British, and that the US won. Meanwhile, Canadians believe that the War of 1812 was fought between the US and *Canada*, and that *Canada* won.

Indeed, we have delightful comic folksongs that celebrate the burning of the White House by victorious Canadian troops:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4

And the White House burned, burned, burned And we're the one's that did it! It burned, burned, burned While the president ran and cried It burned, burned, burned And things were very historical And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies Waa waa waah!

Can you imagine the story the descendants of Qanon believers will be telling themselves of yesterday's attack in a century or two?