#ic. ( chrisjen avasarala. )

[ironworked]

60 Sec Rec: The Expanse

Hundreds of years in the future, humans have colonized the solar system and Mars has become an independent military power. A missing person links an asteroid belt detective, the captain of an ice freighter and a diplomat trying to avert a war. [Rotten Tomatoes & Netflix]

Detective Miller is in a futuristic-noir, a cop tasked with finding wayward heiress turned political activist Julie Mao.

James Holden and crew are in an action/adventure in space, the everyday guys who go from the frying pan to the fire.

Chrisjen Avasarala, UN Security Council member, is in a political thriller, trying to avoid a war and figure out who she can trust in the government.

A bit of Blade Runner/Total Recall, a bit of Alien, a bit of Battlestar Galactica, as the show progresses these storylines intersect and the genres mix. Characters don't become found family but a forged one; forged in near death experiences, impossible choices, secrets kept and shared, and even some romances (not all requited).

This show can fit SO MANY BLORBOS. Also polyamory! one of the leads has 8 parents, and a recurring character, who is the love of my life, is in a poly relationship later in the show. The actors are fantastic (Tipper has an episode in one of the later seasons that's a tour de force. She's tremendous), and the set design and costumes are gorgeous.

The ship names (I mean actual ships here) are so cool too: Rocinante, Guy Molinari, Scipio Africanus... a nice bit of trivia.

It is so, so, so GOOD. You have to give it some time at the start because you might need a while to 'get settled' in this universe, but don't worry because it's a rich story but not a dense one. It's also not grimdark; bad things do happen, and there are losses and casualties, but it's not a cruel show. It won't laugh at you for caring.

Developed by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Children of Men, Iron Man) based on the book series by James S. A. Corey (pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). Written by the novelists and mostly new writers. Directed by Breck Eisner (Fear Itself), Jeff Woolnough (Vikings), Terry McDonough (Better Call Saul)... Starring Thomas Jane, Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Florence Faivre, Shawn Doyle, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Frankie Adams, Cara Gee, Keon Alexander, Jasai Chase Owens, Nadine Nicole, David Strathairn, Jared Harris...

Trailer for s1

Previous: Deadloch - Dead Boy Detectives - The Tick - This Close - Kung Fu - Nancy Drew - Kevin Can Fuck Himself - Silo - The Flight Attendant - Severance - Hacks - Hit The Floor - Black Sails - 12 Monkeys - T@gged - The Diplomat - The Mick - Timeless - UnReal - Kings - All Rise - Barry - Halt and Catch Fire - Resident Alien - Santa Clarita Diet - Claws - Roswell New Mexico - Upload - Rutherford Falls

[briannysey]

I got tagged by @arianwells, and thank you!

Make a poll of your favorite female characters (no limits – as many or as little as you want) and see which your followers like the most

I'm limiting this to 1 woman per Story (excepting A Song of Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time b/c good lord are they replete with great characters)

I'll tag @gunktuationmark @staticvoicebox @terramythos @pillowfriendly @gallopinggallifreyans and @highladyluck to do your own polls. (Although no pressure!). Also if you see this and you want to do it too, feel free to say that I tagged you!

[kadytimberfox]

Kady's Expanse (Re)Watch Blog

Episode 1.01 - "Dulcinea" (Pilot)

And here we go for my...fourth time I've watched this episode I think? It's a really wonderful pilot that does so much work with introducing you to the world, our cast of characters, and setting up the threads of the main plot and does it all perfectly in a very tight 45 minutes. It reminds me a lot of Deep Space Nine's pilot "The Emissary" which is similarly a masterclass in tight storytelling and how to properly kick off a new series.

And speaking of kicking off a new series, hey! I'm watching this show that I absolutely adore again and I'm going to take the time to spout my thoughts about it on the internet because that seems like a fun idea! I really enjoy thinking about media critically but I've never taken the time to write down my thoughts before. It's a style of writing I've always wanted to try so where better to do that than a Tumblr blog? I'll try to keep these Brief and Not Boring but no guarantees on either. Especially on this one. It's the pilot, after all.

I also want to keep this as light on spoilers as possible; again though, no guarantees. Also if you haven't seen this show yet just go fucking watch it it's so good.

Later in this post is a description of torture that happens in the episode. I marked it with a TW and formatted the text to make it distinct from the rest of the post.

With that out of the way, there's nothing left to do except pick apart this pilot!

---------------------------------------

Summary

We kick off with a bang (and then some more banging) as we see a young woman named "Julie" fight her way out of a locked compartment, explore the darkened hallways of her Completely Fucked Spaceship, and watch her friends get eaten alive by some evil blue space goop. Surely none of that will be important later.

Cut to the adventures of hard-boiled Belter detective Joe Miller and his new Earthling partner Dimitri Havelock. They're private cops for an Earth corporation who theoretically maintain order on Ceres Station in the Asteroid Belt, the biggest shithole this side of pretty much anywhere. They go to a murder scene and do basically nothing, antagonize and then arrest people minding their own business at a bar, and take a bribe to half-ass a health inspection. Y'know, classic cop stuff.

Back at the precinct, Miller gets an off-the-books job from his boss to find one Juliette Andromeda Mao, daughter of megacorp magnate Jules-Pierre Mao and coincidentally the spitting image of "Julie" from our opening scene. Apparently, her pro-Belter activism is starting to piss off dear old dad and they want her to come home before she embarrasses the family any further.

In the middle of his investigation, he finds out that those air filters he "inspected" earlier crapped out and poisoned some children. Instead of taking accountability for not doing his job, he decides to throw the sleazy air filter guy into an airlock and only lets him out after he promises not to fuck it up next time. And also to pay Miller double. I'll let it slide though because Sleazy Air Filter Guy is an asshole.

Back on Earth, United Nations Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala shows up for about five minutes in this episode. The only thing she does is torture a guy. End scene.

Meanwhile, the good ship Canterbury is on its way to Ceres with a big haul of space ice that the station needs to turn into water. Second Officer James Holden gets immediately promoted, much to his dismay, because his previous boss Mike Ehrmantraut went insane from being out in space too long.

Mystery strikes when the gang gets a weird distress signal from a ship called the Scopuli. Captain McDowell, probably having watched enough Star Trek episodes to know that this can't be anything good, decides to ignore it. Holden just can't stop himself from doing a good thing, though, and secretly reports the signal, officially making the Canterbury Legally Obligated™ to investigate.

He picks his away team (unknowingly also picking the people he's going to spend the rest of this show with) and takes a shuttle to investigate the drifting Scopuli, where they find everything shut down except for the beacon that brought them here. "Pirate bait", or so it seems.

Suddenly, McDowell advises the away team that a very scary ship has appeared out of nowhere and that they need to get the hell out of there. The gang gets back on the shuttle just in time for the mystery ship to fire not just regular torpedoes, but nuclear torpedoes at them. The torpedoes close to zero...and then continue streaking towards the Canterbury.

Holden tells McDowell to eject the space ice to form a protective barrier, but he refuses, apparently willing to die rather than lose his payday. The payday (and everything else aboard) is lost anyway, however, as the Canterbury erupts into the most beautiful supernova I've ever seen.

"She's gone. They nuked her. She's gone."

-----------------------------------

My thoughts

So this is where I actually have to do the analysis thing. Since the beginning of this show is split into three primary subplots that all deal with a different piece of the Julie puzzle (a narrative device that I fucking love, by the way), I'll divide things up by talking about each one individually because that just makes sense.

Before I do that though, I just want to briefly say that that opening scene with Julie on the Scopuli is just the perfect opening to this show. It immediately gives us a very brief glimpse inside the puzzle box that our main cast is going to spend all of this season (and most of this show) trying to open. It's quick, it's tense, it's completely terrifying, and it's unforgettable if you've seen it.

------------------------------------

Miller on Ceres:

And we follow up that perfect opening scene with a perfect choice for which of these three main threads to start with. The thing that's great about dividing up the characters like this is that each of them only has a piece of what's going on with Julie and the Scopuli, but no one has the full picture. Miller, though, gets the most information off the bat and is the only person in the main cast who's looking for Julie specifically, so it's only natural that we should start with him.

His story is also the inspiration for the title of this episode, "Dulcinea". For those of you who aren't big Don Quixote fans, it's a reference to Quixote's fantasy lover that he invents because he styles himself as a knight and, of course, every knight needs his damsel. He describes her in excruciating detail; she's royalty in a far-off land who is the epitome of feminine beauty, the ideal of Womanhood Incarnate--or his vision of it at least.

And the deeper Miller goes in his investigation, the more quixotic he gets with his idea of who Julie is. He's never met or spoken to Julie, but as he unravels her activities prior to departing on the Scopuli, he becomes increasingly obsessed with her, imagining what kind of a person she must be, picking apart every little detail and transposing it onto his vision of what her life must be like. I'm sure he would call it "being a good detective", but it's much more than that to him.

Throughout Miller's jaunt around town with Havelock, they banter back and forth, and through their conversations, we get a great sense of their personalities. Whereas Miller is the grizzled veteran who's had his morality thoroughly beaten out of him, Havelock is a by-the-book rookie cop who seems genuinely interested in learning about Belters, if only so that he can police them more effectively.

It's a very tried-and-true buddy cop pairing, but it works really well here. Havelock gets to be our audience surrogate for this story as we learn more about how Ceres and Belters operate.

This thread has the biggest worldbuilding burden out of the three and it pulls it off so well. We get so much about life in the Belt, the politics of the Solar System, the Outer Planets Alliance, or OPA (who will definitely be showing up later), and the logistics of maintaining a huge population of humans on a space station. And none of it feels clunky or awkward in the slightest. It's exactly the style of worldbuilding I loved in "The Emissary" from Deep Space Nine.

Ceres itself also has huge DS9 vibes, and not in a good way. The set design team did such a good job making this place look old, weathered, and completely falling apart. Except, of course, for the nice apartment buildings where the cops, off-worlders, and everyone else rich enough to ignore the seedy underbelly get to live.

There are a ton of fantastic, evocative lines in this arc, but I think my favorite is Miller's deadpan proclamation that "There are no laws on Ceres, just cops." A perfect summary of everything we see on screen about how power is wielded in this place.

-------------------------------------

Chrisjen on Earth:

This is the shortest thread where the least happens, but it will grow into one of my favorites. We don't get too much additional insight into what's going on, but we do get two important things: 1) Chrisjen Avasarala is a stone-cold bitch who thinks the OPA are terrorists, and 2) the OPA are apparently trying to get their hands on illegal stealth technology, which doesn't help with the whole "terrorism" thing.

This links up to both Miller's and Holden's subplots: we know about the OPA from Miller, and the ship that eventually blows up the Cant was using Martian stealth tech. Of course, since Holden and crew have no idea about the OPA, they immediately start thinking that Mars is out to get them, which will continue to play into the story going forward.

!-- TW: DESCRIPTION OF TORTURE --!

Also important to note is that Chrisjen is getting this information through the most brutal torture I've seen on TV in a long time: forcing a Belter whose body can't handle Earth's gravity to stand for hours on end by holding him up with hooks under his arms. After Chrisjen goes on and on about his "weak Belter lungs and brittle Belter bones", she coldly turns around and tells them to hold him up for another 10 hours. "If he survives, call me."

!-- TW ENDS --!

Fucking ghoulish, and definitely not a good look for Madam Undersecretary's first appearance. You're gonna have to trust me now when I say that she becomes one of my favorite characters in the main cast. This is about as bad as she gets, but she continues being manipulative and cold-blooded for most of this show. That's just who she is. To me, it's part of what makes this subplot of scheming at the UN so engaging.

We'll be seeing a lot more of Chrisjen going forward, and she'll get much better. At the very least, she will stop torturing this guy. But only because someone will tell her not to.

-----------------------------------

Holden on the Canterbury:

If Miller's story shows us life in the Belt and Chrisjen's shows us the politics of the Solar System, Holden's thread is all about life onboard a spaceship, which is important because we're going to be spending a lot of time on spaceships. This is also the part of the episode that has the most CG and honestly it holds up really really well. I know it's less than a decade old and they probably got a lot of money for the pilot but still! It looks great!

I'll drop a brief shoutout here as well for the ship designs in this show. They knocked it out of the goddamn park with the Cant's design: it's a big, boxy, dull gray, ugly thing that looks designed to haul ice and do literally nothing else. Everything is so practical and, above all else, plausible. They look like humans from the near future built them and that's the highest compliment I can give them.

There are shades of the first act of "Alien" here as we are essentially dropped into the Cant in the middle of its mission and get to see the camaraderie and hierarchy between all the members of the crew. We also get to know more about Holden, and immediately he begins showing us his defining character trait: he wields a lot of authority and respect, but he hates being in charge.

We see this in the very first scene onboard the Cant when one of the ice haulers, Paj, gets his arm severed while working outside the ship. He seems completely unfazed by this, though, since the company will send him a prosthetic and he's been working for them long enough to get a really good one.

Not only does this happen often enough that the company just buys prosthetics as a cost of doing business, there are literally tiers of coverage depending on years of service. What an optimistic future this is turning out to be.

Paj pleads with Holden to make sure the company doesn't send him a "used" arm (a frightening thought), to which Holden replies with something that he will continue to say, in so many words, over and over: "I'm just another clock-puncher like you." Holden knows he has authority on the Cant, but all he wants to be is a clock-puncher, which he makes very clear to pretty much everyone he talks to, including Captain McDowell when he essentially forces the XO job onto him.

Later on, we get our first glimpse at Holden's other primary personality trait, that being that he is The Main Character and therefore the most kind-hearted soul that can exist in this cold, selfish world. He logs the distress signal they received from the Scopuli, thereby ensuring that they'll have to divert from Ceres (and lose their on-time bonus) in order to investigate.

He shares this privately with Chief Engineer Naomi Nagata before the shuttle mission, to which her only reply is to tell him to keep that to himself. Fair play, considering she was just talking about how she wanted to strangle the little fucking do-gooder before she realized it was her new XO. Excuse me, Acting XO.

Before the shuttle launch, we're briefly introduced to the rest of the away team: the aforementioned Naomi; her mechanic Amos Burton, whose defining character trait is doing whatever Naomi tells him to do; ship's pilot Alex Kamal, who we previously saw being an annoying blabbermouth on the Cant; and Med-Tech Shed Garvey, who sewed up Paj's arm and wants everyone to know that he does not want to be here. Yes, his first name really is Shed.

Most of this part of the episode is setting up what'll happen next so we don't get a lot of time with any of these guys, but we'll have time for some great character work in the coming episodes.

----------------------------------

And that said, what a great setup for what comes next! Nearly all of the people we just got to know on the Cant are vaporized by a mysterious ship, there's a cloud of space debris hurtling toward Holden's little shuttle, and we have a hell of a puzzle box to dig into. Did Mars blow up the Cant? Did the OPA? Why would either of them want to? What does it all have to do with Julie and the Scopuli? And what the hell was that fucking space goo??

Despite covering so much ground in this pilot, The Expanse makes it very clear that we've barely scratched the surface. And even though I've already seen this whole show and know where it's going, it took everything I had to not hit the "next episode" button.

I will be doing that very soon though because I had a blast writing this up and I definitely want to keep doing it! Apologies that this one ran so long -- I assumed I was going to write a lot with this being the first episode and everything but I had so many thoughts that didn't make it into this post. I'm sure I'll be refining the format as we go along as well.

If you read all the way to here, I'm genuinely flattered and I hope you have a wonderful day.

~ Kady <3

[femslashrevolution]

Popular Pairing List Update

The following pairings have more than 10 recent posts in their pairing tag, and are therefore too popular to be posted on Rarepair Thursdays:

Alex Vause x Piper Chapman (Orange is the New Black)

Aloy x Seyka (Horizon: Zero Dawn)

Barbie x Gloria (Barbie)

Becky Armstrong x Freen Sarocha Chankimha (RPF Actors)

Betty Cooper x Veronica Lodge (Riverdale)

Cassandra Cain x Stephanie Brown (DCU)

Celia St James x Evelyn Hugo (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)

Cherine x Meena (Show Me Love)

Cleo de Nile x Frankie Stein (Monster High)

Cleopatra Philopator x Frida Kahlo (Clone High)

Corky x Violet (Bound)

Cosima Niehaus x Delphine Cormier (Orphan Black)

Diana x Leona (League of Legends)

Elphaba Thropp x Glinda Upland (Wicked)

Esther Warner x Max Chapman (Amazon A League of Their Own)

Geeta x Rika (Pokemon)

Jane Rizzoli x Maura Isles (Rizzoli & Isles)

Jester Lavorre x Yasha Nydoorin (Critical Role)

Kitty Song Covey x Yuri Han (XO Kitty)

Laurie x Mira Harberg (Irma Vep)

Lottie Matthews x Natalie Scatorccio (Yellowjackets)

Misty Quigley x Natalie Scatorccio (Yellowjackets)

Paris Geller x Rory Gilmore (Gilmore Girls)

The following pairings have been posted less frequently recently, and have therefore been removed from the popular pairing list:

Alicia x Leighton (The Sex Lives of College Girls)

Amy Silva x Kirsten Longacre (Vigil)

Andi Agosti x Emília Alo (Rebelde)

Aneela x Delle Seyah Kendry (Killjoys)

Anissa Pierce x Grace Choi (Black Lightning; DCU)

Aster Flores x Ellie Chu (The Half Of It)

Bobbie Draper x Chrisjen Avasarala (The Expanse)

Bonnie Bennett x Nora Hildegard (The Vampire Diaries)

Carol Aird x Therese Belivet (Carol)

Clary Fray x Isabelle Lightwood (The Mortal Instruments)

Cristina Soto x Joana Bianchi (Skam Spain)

Dani Núñez x Gigi Ghorbani (The L Word)

Dina x Sydney Novak (I Am Not Okay With This)

Dorothy Gale x Ruby (Once Upon A Time)

Emily Prentiss x Jennifer Jareau (Criminal Minds)

Eve Polastri x Hélène (Killing Eve)

Fatou Jallow x Kieu My Vu (Druck)

Fleur Delacour x Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

Francesca Findabair x Fringilla Vigo (The Witcher)

Ginny Weasley x Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

Joann Owosekun x Keyla Detmer (Star Trek: Discovery)

Jules Thomas x Ophelia Mayer (Sweet Vicious)

Kaioh Michiru x Tenoh Haruka (Sailor Moon)

Lauren Bloom x Leyla Shinwari (New Amsterdam)

Mace Brown x Marie Schmidt (The 355)

Margaery Tyrell x Sansa Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Mia Reed x Vada Cavell (The Fallout)

Nicole Haught x Waverly Earp (Wynonna Earp)

Nyssa al Ghul x Sara Lance (Arrow)

Raiden Ei x Yae Miko (Genshin Impact)

[graveexcitement]

Make a poll of your favourite female characters (no limits - as many or as little as you want) and see which your followers like the most!

Not tagging anyone, but consider yourself tagged if you want to do this! (that's what I did lol)

[tinykings]

”fire and ice” by robert frost

[prophecyread]

@magicandsciencemuses takeshi gets a lyric starter from chrisjen!

             “There was a time that I could stand here, looking out on this place I’ve called home my entire life, and think, ‘what a wonderful world’.  And I wonder -- has it changed, to become this ... waking nightmare?  Or was I simply blinded by hope.  Or perhaps it was merely arrogance, hm?”  A glance, given, over her shoulder towards the man that had been allocated to protect her -- from the very people she in turn wished to eradicate, the threats against humanity, the rebels that would strip the very core of human existence away into nothing more than scrabbling for scraps.   The fact that once upon a time, she and he might have been at odds, and now, he seemed to be all that stood before her and certain, final death .... had not escaped her.   

[tuppencetrinkets-a]

      @nomadshield liked for a starter from chrisjen / expanse.

             The moment of their reunion had been unsettling for her -- she was unaccustomed to being caught off guard, and of all of the people that she might have expected to see in Johnson’s employ on Tycho station.... Steve Rogers would have been at the bottom of her list.  She had made a point not to look for him, to watch his movements after his departure from the U.N.’s employ.  She was many things, but she had no desire to add stalker to the list.  Or desperate. 

     She had wondered, from time to time, when her thoughts wandered, or when she saw an almost familiar build, where he had gone.  What he was doing with his life.  If he was happy.  If he regretted his decision to leave the U.N. behind.  To leave her behind.  But his life was his to live, and she had a husband, a daughter in law, grand children, and more than her fair share of political intrigue and corruption to entangle herself in.

     Treason to commit.  She wondered, when Johnson had introduced Rogers and his team as those that would ensure that no rebel OPA members might bring her to harm, if he knew that Rogers had once served in her U.N. security task force.  If he had taken some small delight in watching her, when Rogers was ‘introduced’ as if they had never met.  As if they didn’t know each other.  She wondered, if Johnson, if Steve, had noticed the momentary reaction, the slight pull of her shoulders, the tilt of her jaw, the press of lips.  Oh, but he was as handsome, and regal, as ever.  Those brilliant blue eyes, haunted, as ever. 

     Now, in the luxurious stateroom that had been provided for her, the silence between them seemed heavy, and painful, but all she offered was a quiet smile, passable for serene, for those that did not know her.  She wondered, too, if the rooms were under observation and so, for the moment, she kept her words tame, rather than tender, or aching.  “It’s good to see you again, Steve.”  Fingers, still nimble, caught at the tie of the shawl around her shoulders, shedding it and her consoles aside, shedding the emerald earrings after.  They were ornate, but heavy, and the journey had been long.  “You seem to have done well for yourself here.”  She refrained from the obvious.  That of all places he could have gone, how it had to be here, among those that -- at least some of which -- were responsible for the death of her only child.  He wouldn’t have done it only to hurt her, no.  He must believe in something, or someone, to have come here, to have become this.

[ultimatemilvesbracket]

THE MILVENING CONTINUES

THERE ARE ONLY FOUR MILVES LEFT‼️

we (the gay council) sincerely thank you all for the enthusiastic participation, and hope you will join us for rounds five and six of the ULTIMATE MILVES BRACKET. pastramis has updated the bracket above to show the latest results.

we are literally soooo behind but we are SO back baby! all brackets will be updated below as the results come in hot.

milf lovers grab your therapist's number!

ROUND ONE MATCHUPS

ROUND 6 / BRACKET 1

Evelyn Wang (Everything Everywhere All at Once) vs. Lwaxana Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine)

ROUND 6 / BRACKET 2

Morticia Addams (The Addams Family) vs. Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary)

--

ROUND 5 / BRACKET 1

Queen Clarisse Renaldi of Genovia (The Princess Diaries 2 & 2) vs. Evelyn Wang (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

ROUND 5 / BRACKET 2

The Xenomorph Queen (Alien Franchise) vs. Morticia Addams (The Addams Family)

ROUND 5 / BRACKET 3

Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary) vs. Yennefer of Vengerberg (The Witcher 3)

ROUND 5 / BRACKET 4

Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager) vs. Lwaxana Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine)

--

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 1

Queen Clarisse Renaldi of Genovia (The Princess Diaries 1 & 2) vs. Barbara Howard (Abbott Elementary)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 2

Penelope (The Odyssey, Greek Mythology) vs. The Xenomorph Queen (Alien Franchise)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 2

Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil: Village) vs. Evelyn Wang (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 3

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones) vs. Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 4

Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager) vs. Rebecca Welton (Ted Lasso)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 5

Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials) vs. Lwaxana Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 6

Yennefer of Vengerberg (The Witcher 3) vs. Cat Grant (Supergirl)

ROUND 4 / BRACKET 7

Seven of Nine (Star Trek: Voyager, Picard) vs. Morticia Addams (The Addams Family)

--

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 1

Regina Mills (Once Upon a Time) vs. Queen Clarisse Renaldi of Genovia (The Princess Diaries 1 & 2) QUEEN CLARISSE WINNER

Barbara Howard (Abbott Elementary) vs. Taissa Turner (Yellowjackets) BARBARA WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 2

Catelyn Tully Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones) vs. Penelope (The Odyssey, Greek Mythology) PENELOPE WINNER

The Xenomorph Queen (Alien Franchise) vs. Jean Milburn (Sex Education) XENOMORPH QUEEN WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 3

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones) vs. Queen Calanthe (The Witcher Netflix) CERSEI WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 4

Eda Clawthorne (The Owl House) vs. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager) JANEWAY WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 5

Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials) vs. Addison Montgomery (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice) MARISA WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 6

Yennefer of Vengerberg (The Witcher 3) vs. Melissa McCall (Teen Wolf) YEN WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 7

Mon Mothma (Star Wars) vs. Seven of Nine (Star Trek: Voyager, Picard) SEVEN OF NINE WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 8

Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada) vs. Evelyn Wang (Everything Everywhere All at Once) EVELYN WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 9

Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil: Village) vs. Fairy Godmother (Shrek 2) LADY D WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 10

Pyrrha Dve (The Locked Tomb) vs. Morticia Addams) PYRRHA WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 11

Cat Grant (Supergirl) vs. Beverly Crusher (Star Trek) CAT WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 12

Lwaxana Troi (Star Trek) vs. Zelda Spellman (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) LWAXANA WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 13

Rebecca Welton (Ted Lasso) vs. Jocasta (Greek Mythology) REBECCA WINNER

ROUND 3 / BRACKET 14

Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary) vs. Chrisjen Avasarala (The Expanse) MELISSA WINNER

--

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 1

Regina Mills (Once Upon a Time) vs. Marge Simpson (The Simpsons) REGINA WINNER

Queen Clarisse Renaldi of Genovia (The Princess Diaries 1 & 2) vs. Olivia Crain (The Haunting of Hill House) QUEEN CLARISSE WINNER

Barbara Howard (Abbott Elementary) vs. Ambessa Medarda (Arcane) BARBARA WINNER

Helena "HG" Wells (Warehouse 13) vs. Taissa Turner (Yellowjackets) TAISSA WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 2

Catelyn Tully Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones) vs. The Black Fairy (Once Upon a Time) CAT WINNER

Penelope (Greek Mythology) vs. Siobhan Sadler (Orphan Black) PENELOPE WINNER

The Xenomorph Queen (Alien Franchise) vs. Goldie O'Gilt (Ducktales 2017) XENOMORPH QUEEN WINNER

Bella Goth (The Sims) vs. Jean Milburn (Sex Education) JEAN MILBURN WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 3

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones) vs. Valka (How to Train Your Dragon 2) CERSEI WINNER

Queen Calanthe (The Witcher Netflix) vs. Nancy Botwin (Weeds) QUEEN CALANTHE WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 4

Eda Clawthorne (The Owl House) vs. Aunt May (MCU Spider-Man) EDA WINNER

Joyce Byers (Stranger Things) vs. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager) JANEWAY WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 5

Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials) vs. Bette Porter (The L Word) MARISA WINNER

Addison Montgomery (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice) vs. Laura Roslin (Battlestar Galactica 2004) ADDISON WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 6

Deborah Vance (HBO Hacks) vs. Yennefer of Vengerberg (The Witcher 3) YEN WINNER

Camila Noceda (The Owl House) vs. Melissa McCall (Teen Wolf) MELISSA WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 7

Serena Campbell (Holby City) vs. Mon Mothma (Star Wars) MON MOTHMA WINNER

Seven of Nine (Star Trek: Voyager, Picard) vs. Abigail Pent (The Locked Tomb) SEVEN WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 8

Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada) vs. Queen Elinor (Pixar's Brave) MIRANDA WINNER

Evelyn Wang (Everything Everywhere All at Once) vs. Annalise Keating (How to Get Away with Murder) EVELYN WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 9

Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil: Village) vs. Celeste Wright (Big Little Lies) LADY D WINS

Fairy Godmother (Shrek 2) vs. Marcia Roy (Succession) FAIRY GODMOTHER WINS

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 10

Shauna Shipman Sadecki (Yellowjackets) vs. Pyrrha Dve (The Locked Tomb) PYRRHA WINNER

Olivia Benson (Law and Order: SVU) vs. Morticia Addams (The Addams Family) MORTICIA WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 11

Cat Grant (Supergirl) vs. Melanie Cavill (Snowpiercer) CAT GRANT WINNER

Beverly Crusher (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Picard) vs. Laura de Mille (Doom Patrol) DR. CRUSHER WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 12

Lwaxana Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space 9) vs. Alicia Florrick (The Good Wife) LWAXANA WINNER

Zelda Spellman (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) vs. Tsunade (Naruto Cinematic Universe) ZELDA WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 13

Rebecca Welton (Ted Lasso) vs. Esme Cullen (Twilight) REBECCA WINNER

Abby Griffin (The 100) vs. Jocasta (Greek Mythology) JOCASTA WINNER

ROUND 2 / BRACKET 14

Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary) vs. Eve Fletcher (Mrs. Fletcher) MELISSA SCHEMMENTI WINNER

Chrisjen Avasarala (The Expanse) vs. Tiffany Valentine (Chucky Cinematic Universe) CHRISJEN AVASARALA WINNER

[r6shippingdelivery]

Ten characters, ten fandoms, ten tags

Tagged by @simonxriley, thank you!

Tagging (no obligation) @laminath @rejected-beater @tauruscookie @l3r40l @smokedetected @sgtnicoloff @urgothgamergf @encunto and anyone else who wants to do this!

Maxim “Kapkan” Basuda (Rainbow Six: Siege)

Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect)

Anders (Dragon Age)

Corvo Attano (Dishonored)

Sansa Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Chrisjen Avasarala (The Expanse)

Thanatos (Hades game)

Isaac Clarke (Dead Space)

Artyom (Metro series)

Spock (Star Trek)

[rpmemesbyarat]

Hello friends! I know I often post writing advice, but today I’m asking for some instead. What tips do you have for writing a mean, witty, ladylike-yet-blunt ice queen type personality who is very politically savvy and manipulative? Like Emma Frost and Miranda Priestly sorts, crossed with Lady Murasaki. I never saw The Expanse but I get the feeling that Chrisjen Avasarala is also a good example of what I’m talking about.

I really love these sorts of characters in media, but I find I’m poor at writing them and I’d like some advice if you have it!

[moocowmoocow]

Tagged by @rebeccafronts

favourite colours

I love blues and purples, from light to dark. I’m rediscovering my love for purples as I get older.

last song listened to

Shitloads of Money - Liz Phair

favourite musician

Do I look decisive enough about music to have a favorite musician? I do not. I can’t even come close to thinking of one. It’s like asking me my favorite food. I LIKE MUSIC. I can tell you what I don’t like - whiny voice dudes with guitars. Fuck that noise.

last film watched

The Promise and because Shohreh Aghdashloo is unable to receive or choose light-hearted roles (at least that I’ve been able to get my hands on) it was about the Armenian genocide.

last tv show watched

Depends what you mean by TV show. I watched Aces vs. Mercury basketball game and fuck, I hate Diana Taurasi. The last TV show TV show I watched was Killjoys, which I am enjoying. EVIL QUEENS IN LOVE, you guys.

favourite character

As of right now, Chrisjen Avasarala. Morally gray women with political power are my absolute weakness and then insert one in a show with a wide-ranging plot that intrigues me, there’s no way I can resist. Plus, her clothes are really, really pretty and her voice is the best.

sweet/spicy/savoury

I don’t even know. I’m white and from the northern Great Lakes region of the US, so I cannot handle even mild spices. But I like sweet and savory, so let’s go with that.

sparkling water / tea / coffee

I do not like sparkling water. Water should not have bubbles. I switch back and forth between tea and coffee, depending on my mood. But during the summer, I really like an iced coffee, so I guess I’ll go with coffee.

pets

I have a 13 year old Australian Shepherd who likes to herd me around the house and remind me to eat (and of course, give her some of my food.)

I tag anyone who would like to participate!

[kasuaalipelitelevisio]

Tagged by @syntisetsukat

Name? Niilo

Nickame? Papu (mom sometimes still cals me like that), Nipsu, Pörde (idk how to explain that) Pöde, Pödetsö

Zodiac sign? Leo? I know zero about zodiac stuff

Heigth? 174 cm? Im the shortest in my friend group. Forgot to put this here, this is edited.

Languages? Finnish, English, German barely and swedish is hopeless

Nationality? Finnish

Favorite season? Spring

Favorite flower? I dont have one

Favorite scents? Grass, forest, fresh buns, botanical garden

Favorite colors? Blue and dark green. Black and gray

Favorite animals? Dogs, cats, hummingbirds, hamsters,

Favorite charector? Isak Valtersen 🥰, Community cast, Chrisjen Avasarala, Sander Driesn, Robbe Ijzermans, Jonas Noah Vasquez, Ismo Laitela, Seppo, Gary Godspeed, Ice bear, Nuuskamuikkunen, the whole Roci crew, Dirk Gently, Im gonna stop listing now.

Tea, coffee or hot chocolate? Tea and hot chocolate. I dont drink coffee

Cats or dogs? I want both

Averege hours of sleep? About 8 hours

How many plankets do you sleep with? One blanket, one body pillow (blank one, Im not a weeb) and one normal pillow

Dream trip? I just wanna travel around Finland and the world

Blog established? 2019ish? Or end of 2018?

Followers? 30 😌

Random fact? I havent done anything productive for most of the summer. Im a slob.

Tagging @snorbs @28shoes @sundaymorninghangover @bleachblondebitches @1havenoidea

[kadytimberfox]

Kady's Expanse (Re)watch Blog

Episode 1.02 - "The Big Empty"

Hey all -- doing the second episode writeup quite a while after the first one I did (sorry about that giant delay but I've been quite busy recently!). This one and the ones going forward are hopefully going to be a bit shorter now that all of the table-setting is more or less out of the way.

I'm going to go ahead and limit myself to the summary and then highlight one or two of my favorite/least favorite things about each story thread. Once again, I'm intending this to be a companion rather than a comprehensive look at the show as a whole, so we're keeping spoilers light.

Strap yourselves in -- this is going to be a REALLY long summary.

------------------

Summary

We open on a very sweet scene between Holden and his girlfriend on board the Canterbury as she teaches him how to make the perfect cup of coffee. He's quickly wrenched back into reality as the crew of the shuttle Knight, the only survivors from the Cant, fight their way through the storm of debris peppering their little ship in the aftermath of the ice hauler's destruction. An infuriated Holden has to be talked down from shooting his own crew as he's forced to watch the mystery stealth ship disappear from view, gone forever after getting away with the mass murder of everyone he's ever loved.

Meanwhile on Ceres, Detective Miller has much worse problems: his water ran out in the shower and now he has dried shampoo in his undercut. Since Julie Mao's off the station, Miller can use her shower to wash out his hair and look for more clues about her disappearance while he's there, I guess. He deepfakes Julie's voice in order to hijack her Alexa and finds some scathing messages between Julie and her father Jules-Pierre, who's apparently fed up with sponsoring her racing career.

While Miller scrubs all the shampoo out of his hair, we get our actual introduction to Chrisjen Avasarala, who gets told off by Undersecretary Sadavir Errinwright for torturing that guy from the last episode. "No, Chrisjen! Bad!" he says, wagging his finger at her. "No war crimes! Put him in the tank if you want to talk to him!"

Chrisjen begrudgingly agrees and, amazingly, her prisoner is actually starting to talk now that his lungs aren't being crushed. He decides he doesn't have to tell her shit about the OPA and whatever connections they might have to Mars, which he is correct about. She says she can send him somewhere much worse than this. He says do your worst.

Back on the Knight, the crew take stock of their situation. Drifting in a leaky lifeboat with no radio, a blown airlock, and bleeding more atmosphere every second, things look sufficiently dire. Holden quickly takes charge -- the thing he hates doing, remember? -- and makes a simple calculation: no radio, no rescue, and everyone slowly suffocates to death. Since the airlock is busted and opening the door now would suck all of their oxygen into space, the crew vent the cabin, don their space suits, and Holden and Amos take a nice walk outside to fix the antenna while Naomi takes charge of the repair job inside.

Miller has finally finished his shower and links back up with Havelock to jump on a top-priority mission: some rich Earth guy's lawn is turning brown. Miller thinks it's a local gang, the Greigas, who've stolen water before but aren't usually this obvious about it. It ends up being a bunch of upstart kids selling water out of a warehouse, and Miller gets his third shower of the episode as he's drenched by a falling water barrel. He captures the lead kid, but decides to let him go after telling him to stay away from Da Akwa!

While being stranded in space is terrifying, it does give everyone onboard the Knight time to get to know each other better. Holden asks Amos what the hell is up with him and Naomi (valid question), and Amos replies by telling him that the only thing keeping him from ripping Holden's helmet off and kicking him into space is that Naomi wouldn't like it. He then calmly asks Holden to pass him a drill.

After a lot of swearing, a lot of suffocating, and a lot of kicking, the radio finally crackles to life. All they have to do now is sit around and wait to be rescued by someone who's okay with losing their on-time bonus. The irony is not lost on them.

After her failed interrogation of her OPA friend, Chrisjen tells Errinwright that she needs to move him from her Top Secret Torture Chamber to an Even More Top Secret Torture Chamber on the moon. She shares her fears that Mars is supplying the OPA with stealth tech, but Errinwright is skeptical; the cold war helps Mars more than Earth, so they have little motivation to rock the boat. She tells him to keep an eye on their weapons facilities anyway.

Later, she gets a message on her iPad that her prisoner killed himself on the way to the moonbase by denying himself an injection of medication designed to keep him alive through the hard G's he pulled during the ascent. A message to Chrisjen after she used that very same gravity to torture him earlier. As far as ways of dying go, that's pretty badass.

Back on Ceres, Miller chases down the last of his leads and goes to the dock master to try to find the Razorback, Julie's racing ship. The dock master doesn't know anything about the Razorback, but he does remember Julie fondly; he tells Miller how he saw her kick some creep's ass after he hit on her. He also tells Miller that Julie shipped out on the Scopuli, giving Miller one more key piece to the puzzle. He ends up scrolling through her Space Tinder in a definitely-not-creepy way and finds someone she matched with, which is basically what qualifies as a lead for him right now. His ex-partner (in both senses of the word) Octavia finds him and clearly thinks he might be a little too invested in this case, which she's right about.

After some tense waiting on the Knight, the crew's distress signal is picked up. Unfortunately, it's received by the big, badass pride of the Martian Navy, the MCRN Donnager. Given that the Cant was lured to the Scopuli using a Martian beacon and blown up by a ship using Martian stealth tech, Holden and company are less than enthusiastic about their rendezvous with the Mickies.

Holden flexes his home video skills with a desperate recording explaining everything they know about what happened, saying that their deaths will only confirm that Mars was responsible for the attack. He broadcasts the signal only to learn that the Martian warship's jammers were in range, leaving it unclear if anyone even heard his transmission.

As the Donnager tractors the beat-up shuttle and Martian marines cut through the hull, the crew try to make peace with their apparently impending deaths as a swarm of laser sights find their chests.

"You are prisoners of the Mars Congressional Republic. Move and you die."

-----------------

Unless it wasn't clear from the size of that summary, HOLY SHIT SO MUCH HAPPENED IN THIS EPISODE. Miller basically has two full separate story arcs, there's plenty of character moments and good tense action in the Knight crew's fight for survival, and Chrisjen's story finally gets started in earnest. There could've easily been two full episodes' worth of story here, but the pacing doesn't feel too fast, either. It's just delightfully dense. Let's dig in!

-----------------

Holden and the Knight

In any show about space, space needs to be really scary. You can say "life in space is hard and dangerous" all you want, but unless you show the audience the perils of space travel, they'll never take it as a serious threat.

This part of the episode is about establishing that threat. Most of the danger happens after the stealth ship leaves and before the Donnager arrives, when the crew is alone with nothing but the titular Big Empty to contend with. And we spent a good chunk of the last episode getting to know a bunch of characters who just got nuked, so the audience knows that no one here has plot armor (except for maybe Holden). It makes for an absolute rollercoaster of a sequence as the crew jumps from one crisis to another.

Easily my favorite scene from this episode is Holden and Amos' conversation as they're trying to fix the radio. Amos is one of the most fascinating characters in this show, and we get our first good look inside his head here. What we seem to find, initially, is that he's a sociopath, but it's more complex than that. He simply appears physically incapable of comprehending morality or ethics. It's not that he doesn't care about people; it's that he lacks the ability to think about people in anything except purely rational or practical terms.

He doesn't think that it would be "wrong" for him to kick Holden off the shuttle, just as he doesn't think it would be "right" not to, because his brain isn't wired to think about things in terms of "right" and "wrong". The reason he doesn't do it is because of Naomi's disapproval. He's aware that he doesn't have a moral compass, so his solution is to use Naomi as a barometer against which to measure right and wrong behavior.

And suddenly, so many things about him click into place: why he listens to everything Naomi tells him, his deadpan demeanor, even why he might take a job as a mechanic on an ice hauler; less of a chance of doing something wrong if you interact with other people as little as possible. Naomi being his direct superior is also a plus.

This will come up again and again as we continue to dig into Amos and as he begins to form relationships with the rest of the crew. What I love about him is that a set of less capable writers could've easily written him as a character who struggles with a lack of humanity because of his mental illness, but he's one of the most fundamentally human characters I've seen on television.

It's not even necessarily framed as a bad thing; it just makes him different from the rest of the crew and creates some fascinating relationship dynamics with Holden, Naomi, Alex, pretty much everyone he interacts with. For mental illness to be treated with this level of care and nuance is so rare on TV and it's wonderfully refreshing.

-----------------

Miller and Ceres

Remember the conversation we had last time about Julie being Miller's Dulcinea? Yeah, this is what I was talking about.

I actually want to focus more on Miller's B plot this episode, since the Julie investigation is only the focus of about three scenes that I basically covered in the summary. Before we move on though, I wanted to point out that Julie's dating profile confirms that she is canonically pansexual! It's more of an easter egg than anything, really: the only on-screen or referenced relationships she has are with men, but it's still a nice touch.

With that aside, the main thing I wanna talk about this time around is the scene with Rich Earth Guy as he's complaining to Miller and Havelock about his lawn. My favorite tiny detail in this scene is the way Miller takes a drink of water. He takes the tiniest sip out of the glass and swills it around his mouth, savoring it for as long as possible before pouring the rest of the glass carefully back into the pitcher. The opening text of "Dulcinea" told us that water is more valuable than gold in space. Miller, the only Belter in the room, treats it as such. It makes Rich Earth Guy's complaining about his lawn water seem ludicrous by comparison.

As a good leftist, I'm definitely a sucker for anything that lets me hate on a guy who's basically the space-age equivalent of an HOA board member, but this is also a great example of the absolute disdain off-worlders on Ceres have for Belters. It's not enough that Rich Earth Guy gets to live in the only part of this station that looks like utopian paradise, surrounded by beautiful green spaces and observing his kingdom from his massive balcony; no, those filthy Belters have to know he's up there. They have to appreciate him, respect him, thank him for being so generous as to use his lawn to cycle the air that they breathe.

He's not this callous with his language, of course, but you can feel the sentiment dripping from his words. And we can immediately tell that he doesn't really care that his lawn is important to the station; he just gets off on feeling important.

Havelock, to his credit, is still naïve enough to try to call Rich Earth Guy out on his bullshit. This place you live in might as well be an alien planet to Belters. And maybe if Belters weren't down in the shit fighting for their fucking lives day after day, they'd have a little more time to appreciate your lawn. Again, he's a little more subtle than that. But not by much. Rich Earth Guy hands him a cactus and tells him, politely, to fuck off.

As we're going to find out, Earth is basically run by thousands and thousands of Rich Earth Guys. And every single day, whenever the Belt reminds them that they never get to see Earth's lawn, that they're too busy breaking their backs for Earth to ever even dream of having a lawn of their own, Earth hands the Belt a cactus and tells them, with varying degrees of politeness, to fuck off.

------------------

Chrisjen and the UN

And now it's finally time to see what's got Chrisjen worried about her lawn. We still don't spend too much time with her this episode considering all the madness going on with the Knight, but we still get our introduction to Errinwright, who's going to be a key player at the UN going forward.

My favorite Chrisjen scene in this episode has to be her conversation with Errinwright after her failed interrogation of the OPA prisoner. As she's talking about shuffling her secret political prisoner between black-site interrogation facilities, Errinwright openly wonders how no one is keeping tabs on this woman. His answer is self-evident: he's appointed himself as Chrisjen's watchdog.

Their relationship appears mostly transactional: Chrisjen allows Errinwright to keep an eye on her and shares information in him in exchange for his support in the government. It's clear from the jump, however, that both of them are using the other to achieve their goals. Chrisjen's goals are clear: she wants to figure out what the hell's going on with Mars and the OPA. Errinwright's motivations remain unclear at this early stage, but it's clear that Chrisjen trusts him, at least as much as she trusts anyone.

Without spoiling very much, Errinwright's character is defined by his relationship to Chrisjen, and he helps develop Chrisjen's character in turn. The thing that becomes clear in this episode is that he and Chrisjen are so close to each other because they speak the same language and play the same game. I'm very much looking forward to seeing them play that game in future episodes.

------------------

If you're here, thank you so much, again, for bearing with me through this ludicrously long post. I'm trying so hard to work on being brief, and again, there was a ton of stuff I didn't talk about in this episode that I really, really wanted to.

Happy holidays to you all! I'll be picking up the story with "Remember the Cant" in hopefully less than a month -- sorry about that delay again. See you starside!

[mysticandskepticmuses]

ALTERED CARBON VERSE SUMMARIES.

Adolphus Murtry. - Corporate mercenary / captain.

Alex Kamal. - Space pilot & navigator. 

Amanda Waller. - Director, Protectorate spec ops division.  (runs a protectorate kill squad made up of elite soldiers & criminals tasked to the purpose of doing the dirty deeds that need done behind the scenes.)

Amos Burton. - varies / verse; mercenary or mechanic.

A.N.N.A. (private muse.). - Artificial Intelligence, 

Bucky Barnes. - Winter Soldier, ex spec ops, private stack, brainwashed. (an elite protectorate operative who remembers very little, if anything, of his life before the military; his stack is kept on ice and dumped into whatever sleeve is available or needed for a wet work job before he is once again returned to the ice.  (multiple plot options available re: true identity and restoring his memory, etc.))

Cal Lightman. - Deception expert, known to work w/ Bay City PD & others.

Carl Hickman. - BCPD. (a beleaguered grounder cop, has worked a number of departments over the decades, has settled into organic damage.  possibility of captaincy in his future if he wasn’t just quite so outspoken against the corruption and injustice that plagues the bay city police department & oversights.)

Chrisjen Avasarala. - Methuselah, UN ambassador / secretary general.

Clarice Starling. - Protectorate special investigator.

Clementine Pennyfeather. - sex worker / Earth, Bay City. ( a sex worker by trade who sends the majority of her funds off world to support her parents and her young siblings.  clementine worked various brothels on the ground but has recently been hired to work at the head in the clouds; her stack was backed up without her knowledge by rei and her back up / stored memories have been used to revive her several times in a cloned sleeve with no knowledge of any previous deaths - she is the favorite of a particular few clients who are willing to pay the cloning costs for the repeat performance.)

Dig 301 (Annabelle Lee). - Archaeologue / co-proprietor of The Nevermore.

Emily Lightman. - student, daughter of Cal Lightman.

Enchantress. - Elder.  SEE VERSE.

Frank Castle. - ex Protectorate / Wedge. Retired.  Vigilante.

Galen Erso. Protectorate scientist.

Hanna Heller. - (the product of a secret protectorate project to craft supersoldiers from birth; when the project was blacklisted, the majority of the subjects were destroyed to prevent leakage of classified information; hanna was rescued by her ‘father’ erik heller.  her life has consisted of learning to live off the grid while learning tactics, combat training and more to enable her to not only survive, but take down the elements in the protectorate and un that could prove a hazard to her continued existence.)

Hannibal Lecter. - Meth. Serial killer, cannibal, etc.  (an intelligent social deviant with sadistic tendencies, whose intelligence and savvy, and now, his wealth and influence amassed over the last several hundred years enables him to toy with and take the lives of those around him that cause him displeasure, or are simply offensive to his sensibilities, with little to no fear of being incriminated in any of his many illegal activities.  by day, a very well renowned psychiatrist and chef, social artiste and culinary master; by night, a man lacking any true moral boundaries, master manipulator, murderer and cannibal.) 

Inara Serra. - Companion to the Meths.

John Robinson. - Retired Protectorate general, explorer.

Jessica Jones. - private investigator.

June Moone. - Meth, Elder archeologist; SEE VERSE. (june is the daughter of a 250+ old meth, daniel moone, and his wife, maria devlin-moone who is a meth and also uses her contacts to enable black market drugs, flesh trade, arms & artifact smuggling on and off world.  june is (usually) oblivious to her mother’s dealings, though there is a great deal of not so subtle animosity between mother and daughter with a clear preference in her mother’s eyes for june’s older brother, jacob.  june is a renowned Master Archaeologist and has run a number of dig sites across the universe.  her specialty / obsession is the martians / ancients.  she’s still on the ‘young’ side for a meth, coming in at 69 years old.)

Kaylee Frye. - spaceship mechanic. (she’s always had a way with machines, particularly anything with an engine, ancient or new.  she works at her dad’s shop off one of the main spaceports on earth.  she dreams of seeing the universe for herself, but without formal training and education, she hasn’t had much hope of that outside of virtual vacations (which she scrimps and saves for every chance she can get).  )

Kristin Ortega. - Bay City police detective. (a bay city police detective, organic damage division, bay city, earth, kristin is typically overworked, tired, and dealing with way too much paperwork.  her father was a detective, killed on the job and now her dad’s old partner is now her official partner after elias ryker, her partner and lover, was framed for murder – and dealing with a corrupt captain isn’t helping her uncover the truth behind ryker’s framing, or getting to the truth of the murders that ryker was investigating before things went south.  (other timelines etc available, before and after season one, this is just the starting point for default.))

Laura Kinney. - (the product of illegal genetic experimentation by the protectorate, laura is typically on the run and trying to steer clear of the protectorate and or anyone else that might want to get their hands on the regenerative / healing abilities that her genetic code grants.  she has a stack but it isn’t encoded / doesn’t register as anything / anyone in particular when it’s scanned which means any encounter with police, security, anything that requires registration is a threat to her and flags her location in the system.  off the grid is her friend.  )

Laurens Bancroft. - Methuselah; varies depending on verse/ timeline.

Malcolm Reynolds. - ‘retired’ Quellist, ship captain, smuggler etc.

Naomi Nagata. - space ship engineer.

Natasha Romanoff.- ex spec ops.  ‘retired’.

Padme Amidala. - retired world governor, ambassador.

Penny Robinson. - explorer, travels w/ John Robinson.

Poe. - AI, proprietor of The Raven / The Nevermore.

Quellcrist Falconer. - leader of the Quellist rebellion.

Reileen Kawahara. - crime syndicate boss & more. (she’s got her fingers in all the black market / illicit trade / arms dealing / drug trade pies, she has blackmail and leverage on a ridiculously high percentage of those in the UN and the protectorate, on earth and elsewhere, and will do anything, literally anything, to get what she wants.  yakuza era, envoy era, post envoy merc era, and kingpin era / season one era available.  (more info available on request for any of these.))

Rick Flag. - spec ops, Protectorate special division.

Riddick. - sole survivor of planet Furya, criminal, rogue. (  murderer, escapee from a dozen max security prisons, somehow still in his original sleeve (what can he say, he’s attached to it), riddick is a genetic aberration, one of the few survivors of an off shoot of humanity from the now desolated planet furya.  he exists off the grid, in the shadows, and if you see it coming it’s probably because he wants you to.  (various plots available.))

River Tam. - Protectorate experiment; psychic; super soldier. SEE VERSE. (varies for plot.) (an elite soldier, gifted from birth and augmented further by the protectorate, river was one of the few that survived the process that created the elite unit crafted to hunt and track the envoys during the quellist rebellion.  her ability to adapt, to absorb, to blend, to merge efficiently in any sleeve rivals that of the envoys, and she has altered abilities - precog and telepathy, though some say it’s just intuition and being able to predict the variables of any given situation, given enough data.  envoy era & ‘modern’ season plots available.)

Rupert Giles. - historian.  

Takeshi Kovacs. - ex Protectorate spec ops; Quellist. ( leveraged into service into an elite protectorate black ops squad at the tender age of ten, takeshi spent the next 20-30 years killing, torturing, decimating rebellious forces and or whomever the protectorate sent him after.   when reunited with someone from his past, he fled the protectorate and went on the run, joining the quellist rebellion until that too, was destroyed.  he spent the next handful of years on the run and doing various degrees of merc / wet work until he was gunned down and put on ice.  250+ years later, he gets pulled out to solve the murder of a methuselah - a 350+ year old man who promises him a fortune, a sleeve of his choice, and a clean slate / pardon if he can find the truth behind the murder… but there are so many more things at play than either of them could guess and it takes all of a night for things to go from bad to worse.  (protectorate, envoy, merc, season one & post season one plots available.))

Winifred Burkle. - (a skilled astrophysicist and virtual reality coder, fred was recruited into the protectorate in her university years.   it took her almost a decade for her to discover what the protectorate was truly using her work for and she waited for the opportunity to not just sabotage her research and the protectorate’s work, but to flee.  backing herself up, she’s double-sleeved.  she exists in the forays of the web, keeping herself mostly out of trouble, just wanting to try and find a way to undo the damage that her work was used for (brainwashing & torture).  her second sleeve is root, @magicandsciencemuses who has, unbeknownst to fred, made a triplicate, whiskey, who uses her wiles and skills to ferret information and blackmail visitors of some of the elite brothels of earth.)

Villanelle. - assassin for hire.

Wilson Fisk. - crime lord.

Alena Mayberry. - SEE VERSE.

Alexander Petrakis. - Methuselah.

Ariel Hayden. - Meth’s daughter; runaway; high bounty on head.(the daughter of a methuselah who has left her world behind; traveled in cold storage in slow lanes to minimize risk of discovery.  has a small fortune at her disposal that she squirreled away but knows she has to make it last.  has an altered identity stack and is in a new, black market sleeve.  can be on earth or any world really.  just wants to see the universe without her father’s restrictive / protective rules in place.  probably has a bounty for her SAFE return to her homeworld._)

Ashen Zenon. - High level merc / assassin for hire.

Belle Duponte. - Earth grounder, works to pay off father’s debt / sleeve. (the daughter of an once highly regarded scientist who has been shunned for his studies, she struggles to keep food in their stomachs and a roof over their head.  she works several part time jobs, including at an antique book store that also specializes in luxury station, ink, quills, etc. and works part time as a waitress and as a ‘lab tech’ aka grunt labor at the local prison / re-sleeving facility.  she is in her first, and likely, only sleeve.)

Felicia Adams. - geneticist, emergency care doctor / works at psychasec. (a doctor and geneticist, felicia plies her trade at psychasec modeling and crafting the elite and bizarre sleeves designed for the methuselahs of earth.  the health insurance and re-sleeving package perks are the only reason that she continues to work there as she has a young daughter that suffers from a genetic disorder and requires constant care until felicia can afford a complete genetic makeover and re-sleeve into a healthy clone.  (definitely options for her to get dragged into illegal / black market schemes for a quick buck.  also possibilities for the Trouble that is the daughter’s dad to show up and find them too.))

Laurel Isley.. - Meth, brothel owner, sociopath; SEE VERSE. (a meth with her feet on the ground and her fingers in the muck, laurel runs several elite brothels that cater to the worst of the worst desires of the meths that want to play at being bad and the few grounders that can afford her services.  her brothels also serve as anonymous meeting grounds for certain clients vs. service providers - mercs, assassins, etc. that she arranges for a ‘small’ fee.  she also is a pro at creating false idents, which is no easy feat in this day and age. she is very much a sadomasochist and indulges her desires in the real and virtual whenever she finds a suitable playmate (willing or otherwise).)

Petra Nikonova. - verse dependent.

Rori Dearing. - bartender, tattoo artist.  SEE VERSE. ( a young and rebellious meth, a social warrior, rori is the younger sister of @magicandsciencemuses ‘s claire dearing.  she is a human rights / sleeve rights activist and is often found at rallies and protests regarding various lack of rights for prisoners, military service members, victims that are given the worst of the sleeves available, and in general, the money making machine that is the protectorate’s prison system, and the utter lack of opportunity for reform and education.  she works as a 3-d / interactive tattoo artist and a part time bartender. )

Saori Dearing. - daughter of planetary governor, Quellist. SEE VERSE. ( the daughter of the lord governor on harlan’s world, saori is a secret ally and informant to the quellist rebellion.  most of her plots take place during the envoy era where she works with quell to provide military information, travel codes, and helps supply weapons, food and basic supplies to the rebellion on harlan’s world / elsewhere.   (I have verses where she is involved romantically with Quell and or Takeshi but that isn’t a necessity for plots!) she is primarily envoy based but aus / plots can be worked out for ‘modern’ day plots.)

[redwhale]

Rules: List 10 of your favorite female characters from 10 different fandoms and tag 10 people.

I was tagged by @zutaralesbian - thank you! ❤

Miranda Barlow - Black Sails

Trixie - Deadwood

Katara - Avatar: The Last Airbender

Korra - The Legend of Korra

Eve Polastri - Killing Eve

Chrisjen Avasarala - The Expanse

Laura Moon - American Gods

Buffy Summers - Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

Michonne Hawthorne - The Walking Dead

Daenerys Targaryen - A Song of Ice and Fire

(Choosing between the women of Black Sails, Deadwood, The Expanse and ASoIaF was like having to pick a favorite child, oh god.)

Tagging @sidewaystime @drivingsideways33 @pirateshelly @selfconsciousfangirl @squid-inspiration plus anyone else who is interested - things like this are always a great way to get more tv/film/book recs!

...I need all the female characters I can get in my life, y’all.

There can never, ever be enough. neveeeeeeeeeerrrrrr