#the writeups are piling up

[witchofanguish]

The only thing we knew is that we would never understand anything

[this-game-has-themes]

the Rebel Defects' updated character designs and bios ft. writeups from @lair-of-the-white-worm. now nobody is allowed to be wrong about our characters ever again

-

“Drill”

Rescued from Slig Barracks. Mudokon Worker. Delinquent. Long range weapons specialist. Unruly teenager.

Hatched in a labour provision warehouse, he was assigned to be a maintenance Mud in a fashion brand sweatshop the moment he was capable of using his thumbs. After losing his leg in an automatic sewing machine accident trying to save one of his brothers from the same fate, he quickly became irate and aggressive towards everyone and everything around him, so much so that the owner of the sweatshop labelled him a “Delinquent” and had him shipped off to the Slig Barracks Delinquent Camp to be taught a lesson or two about respect. Due to the abuse he was forced to endure under General Dripiks orders, and constantly being used as target practice by Sligs in training, he became even more unruly and aggressive. He was mockingly given the nickname “Drill” by the other Mudokon delinquents in the Barracks. Drill insists that the nickname comes from his job as a maintenance Mud and skill with power tools, but the nickname actually stuck as a result of his constant insulting and scolding of other Muds much older and larger than him, with a confident gusto not unlike the drill sergeants they were faced with every day.

The “Target Practice” jumpsuit is standard issue for Mudokons in the Delinquent Camp. The Sligs in the Barracks entertained themselves greatly by aiming directly for Drills peg leg every time he was sent out on the shooting range to pick up bullet shells. It became a game for them. After going through leg after leg made of rusty rods leftover from outposts and wrappings made from empty sandbags, Drill eventually started making his spare legs out of weapons that were tossed into the Barracks’ “discard pile” for reasons such as malfunction or obsoletion. Drill will darkly comment about how the guns his leg are made from are just like him, “thrown away for not working right.”

When Abe first arrived at Slig Barracks on his mission to shut down SoulStorm Brewery 401, Drill had no interest in following Abe. He didn’t believe in some Messiah, and he certainly didn’t believe in blindly following some leader to become an off the grid hippie. The murder of General Dripik cracked Drill’s skepticism. He still didn’t believe in Abe’s prophecy, but Howler's grit won him over. He decided to trust Abe and Howler and go with them on their journey (after stocking up on an overly excessive amount of stolen Slig artillery per Howler’s request, much to the dismay of Abe). He was sent through a bird portal by Abe after the death of Vice President Aslik. Freedom however, did not result in Drill’s attitude improving. If anything it got worse. After the Brewery’s destruction, Drill became the first official member of Howler’s “Rebel Defects”. He did not fit in well with the freemuds let alone the natives, he even managed to receive the luck of being the first Mudokon that was ever kicked out of Alf’s Rehab & Tea after giving the namesake proprietor a very harsh, unwarranted, but not dishonest tongue lashing. He began being turned away from most front doors, not that he seemed to care, but it was clear he didn’t fit in.

He inadvertently joined Howler’s mission to assassinate her oppressors when she coaxed him into realizing they both wanted the same thing; to kill the Industrialists that murdered their childhoods, no matter how small or indirect a role they played in it. In order to convince him that Howler had his best interest in mind, she gave Drill her collection of General Dripik’s medals, a trophy she had taken from the Glukkon warmonger’s dead body the day that he had been murdered as an ironic quarmic vengeance on behalf of the spear belonging to her Drone Beget being turned into a centrepiece in Dripik’s trophy room. Giving up the medals to Drill was a meaningful gesture, as the murder of Dripik was something Howler had longed for since the Glukkon’s army razed her tribe into the ground and abducted her. The medals were, to her, a reminder that she had outlived him, her tribe had outlived him.

Drill keeps the medals adorning whatever he can show them off on. He is the weapons specialist of the gang. Thanks to his non-consequential career in maintenance, excessive time spent in Slig Barracks, and his experience jury-rigging prosthetics out of reverse-engineered Slig weaponry, his knowledge of industrial firearms is practically unmatched. He is skilled with both a close range handgun and a long range sniper rifle, and can identify any bullet, even if the shell is mangled.

As the youngest member of the gang he is constantly on edge about being patronized. Though Howler sees her younger teenage self in Drill, caring deeply for him and understanding his pain, the majority of their interactions result in arguments and insults thrown at one another. Thanks to the Delinquent Camp he is an expert at interrogation tactics and is quick to harshly clock people on their Slegshit, even his own gang. He does not respect Howler as a leader, and is the only member who tends to call her out when her motives are clearly favouring herself over others.

His second closest relationship is with Trip Hazard, who trusts Drill the most when it comes to describing the appearance of things like dead Sligs; something the two of them both find quite hilarious. -

“Trip Hazard”

Rescued from Necrum Mines. Mudokon Worker. Blind. Explosives expert. Geezer with a dirty sense of humour.

Ever since he was a hatchling, he never looked where he was going and was always stumbling about in the way of others, earning himself the nickname “Trip Hazard”. After spending his able-bodied years slaving away with explosives in various locations under the orders of SoulStorm Mining Co., he was eventually shipped off to Necrum Mines under the facade of a “promotion”. It became clear to Trip that this was a lie when he was knocked unconscious and had his eyelids sewn shut before being thrown into a Cheapo Labour train car without any care whatsoever.

Mudokon slave miners in the lowest levels of Necrum are all surgically blinded before they are stationed there, for various reasons. One being that any burial offerings dug up by the slaves are confiscated and sold to Industrialist museums as “excavated artifacts”. Deprivation of sight ensures the slaves don’t have the chance of seeing anything valuable while they’re digging and trying to pocket them. Also, if they become aware what species the bones they’re ordered to dig up belongs to it would likely cause the workers great moral distress, which could lead to panic attacks or suicide, and their bosses don’t want to deal with that paperwork. The blinded slaves are also deprived of sunlight as they are never permitted to leave the low tunnels of the mine. The lack of sunlight and oxygen causes their skin to become very thin and pale. If a blinded slave was even seen at a glance by someone who wasn’t supposed to see them, it would be a PR nightmare for the mining company, so they’re kept underground, essentially until they die and become the very bones being dug up. In short, slave miners being promoted to work in Necrum Mines are being sentenced to death.

Trip Hazard was always very aware that Necrum would become his grave, but always remains very lighthearted about it all. He was well known by his coworkers before for his sense of humour, always cracking jokes even in the most dire of situations. When dumped off at Necrum he was typically working on his lonesome by order of Morguer, who demanded that all explosive technicians be sent on location alone in order to minimize casualties. Trip was fully expected to die on multiple occasions, but he has managed to evade death every time with a smile on his face and a bird flipped to his Slig supervisor.

Explosives remained Trip’s one and only comfort. He was already half deaf due to his work and was now fully blind, meaning he couldn’t at all see the bright fiery clouds and couldn’t much hear the boom beyond a ringing in his ears. However he could still feel the explosions. The vibrations in his bones that shot through him after detonation were more familiar to him than a cold Brew or a good night's sleep. He often mentions that his lifelong dream is to go out with a bang in the biggest, brightest, most destructive explosion possible and that all the previous explosions he’s been in “clearly weren’t sexy enough”.

When Abe caused Necrum Mines to cave in, it was Trip Hazard himself who aided in laying the explosives to do so. Unlike Drill, Trip Hazard didn’t hesitate when offered rescue by Abe. However, not unlike Drill, he didn’t fit in with the other freemuds and natives well. Not many of the blinded Mudokons did as the tribes themselves weren’t used to large populations of disabled and were not equipped to provide them necessary aid. Trip’s age didn’t do himself any favours either. As a crotchety blind old Mud, he expected to be treated with respect by the tribes as they seemed to value their elders. The contrary proved quickly true. His status, not only as a factory-hatched Mud but one that contributed to the “defiling of Necrum” earned him frequent disrespect and saliva spat in his direction by Posers, Kahonees and Shamans.

He quickly learned that the only place he was truly welcome was in Howler’s circle of screw-ups, and when the offer to join her mission of retribution was given to him he jumped to take it.

His contribution to the Rebel Defects is his both his nasty sense of humour and expertise in explosives. When rescued from Necrum he made sure he took as much dynamite as he could with him, “just in case” as he put it. He always seems to have the exact explosive the gang needs, whenever, wherever, however, just by reaching in and pulling it out.

The mining hardhat Trip wears has a broken light. Trip is unaware it’s broken and still switches it on whenever entering any dark areas with the gang, despite the fact he wouldn’t even be able to see with the light anyway. It’s merely a habit he never let go.

He also carries with him a shovel he uses as a walking stick, perfectly indented with the shape of a Slig’s skull- one that had cornered Howler the day that Abe had come to the mines. Trip gave the Slig a quick whack knocking him dead to the ground, an act which stood as his first introduction to Howler and the Mudokon Messiah himself.

Trip’s strongest relationship is with Slogmeat. He is completely oblivious to the fact Slogmeat isn’t actually a Slog. The gang doesn’t bother to correct him because Trip doesn’t believe them when they say Slogmeat is a Mudokon. -

“Malpractice”

Rescued from Vykkers Labs. Mudokon organ farm. Field medic. Anomaly. Somehow sentient.

Mal wasn’t born, nor was he hatched, he was grown as a product of the Vykker Pharmaceuticals Universal Donor™ program, a horrific "medical breakthrough" that promised a consistent, conscious-free supply of transplant-ready organs that could be rented, leased, or sold. “75% ethically sourced Mudokon organ farms, incapable of conscious thought, pain, or suffering, for the discerning transplant recipient. All tissue is guaranteed cross-species compatible. Book a new liver or kidney today!” That’s what the brochure said. Mal was meant to be one of those, the 75%. Lifeless, unfeeling and disposable. But by a fluke, something didn’t take.

When Howler’s gang raided one of the many Vykkers Labs in search for the notorious cosmetic surgeon Dr. Knicks, she instead found Malpractice on a steel table. Despite her first assumptions he was shockingly alive, eyes open, organs halfway removed, having been watching the procedure being performed on him in silence, before it was interrupted by gunshots. He sat up, gestured towards a suture kit, and stitched himself back together. Howler spoke to him, and it was the first time anyone had ever addressed him at all.

His name comes from an identification tag that was tied to his toe, notifying the surgeon that was operating on him of something uncertain. Malpractice was the first word that Howler recognized. She asked the Mudokon if it was his name. Mal had never had a name before aside from the barcode identifier on his forehead, so he nodded.

Mal is tall and bone-thin, stitched together like a ragdoll in surgical thread and steel staples. He’s a grotesque sight, the kind of figure even other Mudokons flinch away from. The Vykkers called him “it”, and the natives still do because they consider his existence “unnatural” due to having not been hatched from an egg.

His gait is stiff, like he’s unused to moving under his own power (which is true). His muscles shouldn’t even work properly but, somehow, they do, and very well. Despite his stature his strength is impressive. He doesn’t feel pain due to his nerves having been grown to not have any sort of feeling. His skin is cold. His body is a patchwork of foreign parts, no one’s sure how many of them are even his. He doesn’t seem to know either, or care.

He speaks very rarely, but when he does, his voice is low and precise, more like a readout than a conversation. He says that it’s because he doesn’t want to waste any words. His bedside manner is nonexistent, but in the field, no one can deny he’s effective. He knows how to keep others alive because he’s spent his entire life watching death happen in slow motion. He’s been an unwilling observer to countless surgeries, dissections, amputations-silent, motionless, always aware. The Vykkers never noticed. They never thought to check if the organ farm could see them.

Mal learned from the inside out, both figuratively and literally. Within Howler’s gang, he puts that knowledge to use. He is the gang’s medic, though a more appropriate title would be their butcher. No one knows how much pain a body can take better than Mal. His cold precision and anatomical knowledge make him indispensable-if not exactly comforting. He doesn’t see suffering as something to prolong unless it serves a purpose. In fact, Mal is the only member of the gang who truly believes that sometimes, a painless death IS the only form of freedom left for a creature too far gone. He’s seen too much to believe otherwise.

He doesn’t sleep. The only rest he’s ever known came in the form of cryogenic suspension. Without drugs, his body just keeps going, because there’s no fatigue in dead nerves. Unless he is artificially sedated with whatever Vykker Pharmaceuticals Knockout drugs the gang can get their hands on, he spends the night staring at nothing for hours while everyone else rests. Processing, remembering, and dealing with the traumatic reality of being alive. Mal doesn’t want revenge, he is revenge. Every scalpel, every suture, every Vykker executive with a missing kidney and a message carved into their chest is just another step toward something bigger, something final. He wasn’t made for war, but he’s very good at it.

Mal wishes sometimes that he was capable of feeling pain, for the sole reason of being able to feel something at all. He’s unable to feel taste, touch, and can only barely feel temperatures. He isn’t even able to feel hunger despite his stomachs. He still prefers to eat through a pouch and a tube. He’s bitten off the tip of his tongue before and hadn’t even realized until Drill pointed out the blood coming from his mouth. He’s unable to feel sensations as well, and his artificial blood type was created for no reason other than being pumped by his lab-grown heart to organs that he wasn’t even allowed to keep.

His bond with Howler is the only connection he’s ever had. She was the first person to see him as more than a “thing”. Not just a Mudokon but a person. He doesn’t know how to show what that means, of course. He’s never had a friend before her, but he follows her without question, protects her without hesitation, and if it ever came down to it, would kill every living thing in sight to keep her breathing. When the gang disagrees, he always takes her side. -

“Slogmeat”

Rescued from Bonewerkz. Body of a Mud. Mind of a Slog. Closest thing to a bodyguard the gang has.

Slogmeat’s true origins are shrouded in mystery. The gang has no idea what his name is, or if he even has one. All that is known about him is that when he was a child, he was tossed into the Slog kennels of Bonewerkz. While it’s likely that he was left there assigned to the role of shovelling up offal and feces left by the Slogs, it was commonly joked about amongst other workers that he was intended to serve as food for the animals, and truthfully the more likely case. Hence why most employees and security referred to him as “the Slogmeat”, seeing him as less of a sentient being and more of a mindless creature.

Sligs themselves contributed to Slogmeats delusions, having essentially raised him from childhood exactly like they raised Sloggies as a form of humiliation and bullying. They kicked him, beat him, kept him chained in the pens, fed him Slog food, and even forced him to respond to commands like a Slog would. Slogmeat however, has managed to survive despite his circumstances, although not without consequences. Besides the various injuries and chewed off chunks of himself, he has developed a sort of familial relationship with Slogs. This comes more from being considered one of them, rather than by any training or discipline. Since he spent his formative years among the animals, he himself doesn’t recognize himself as a Mudokon. He is a Slog in his own mind. He moves like one, thinks like one, barks like one, and, thanks to his size compared to the other Slogs, he has assumed the role as the Alpha among them, saving him from being on the receiving end of a lot of vicious attacks.

Other Bonewerkz employees would often share urban legends about Slogmeat to the point where scrubs were debating his existence. He was spoken about more as if he were some sort of cryptid lurking around the factory at night. Sometimes the Sligs would play along just to freak others out, and when scrubs were assigned with Sloghut cleaning duty, they were told to “watch out for the Slogs, but especially the Slogmeat”. Scrubs sent to the Sloghuts to clean them were given that task as a sort of punishment and did not come out in one piece, let alone alive. They doubled as cleaners and dinner to Slogs.

During the revolt, Slogmeat was found by Abe in a Sloghut, chained up, beaten, bruised, feral and mauled beyond recognition. At first glance Abe had assumed him to be a mutant Slog rather than a mutilated Mud. Slogmeat had no desire to be rescued, not recognizing the Messiah as kin at all. All the years of abuse made him incapable of even understanding any words spoken to him that weren’t his trained commands. He was rescued against his will.

Among the Freemuds, Slogmeat was the furthest from free. He was considered just as much of a mutant as he was back in Bonewerkz. He was still unable to see any Muds as kin, and after several visits from Shamans attempting to essentially exorcise whatever “vicious Slog spirit” had possessed him, he was deemed a lost cause. He is far more content living as an animal rather than a Mud due to his mind being completely gone.

Though he assumes the role in the gang as a “bodyguard”, he is more accurately a guard Slog. His ability to communicate with other Slogs comes in incredibly handy. During the Rebel Defects endeavours, they have come across many Sloghuts with angry animals within. While Abe was quick to use Astra Kata and other problem solving skills to sneak through any areas filled with Slogs, Slogmeat would instead use his stance as an “Alpha” to communicate with his brethren, earning their trust toward Howler’s gang, and promising them through some persuasive barks and growls that they would receive not only freedom, but a chance to exact revenge on the Sligs that have been abusing them. Anywhere there are Slogs, it won’t be long before Slogmeat has them on a collar and chain connected to his own.

Slogmeat doesn’t typically get along with Mudokons, but maintains the closest and strongest relationship with Trip Hazard, who doesn’t realize the feral Mud isn’t actually a Slog. Even though Trip is always eager to hear the sounds of the gangs feral beast mauling the organs out of a security guard, he isn’t afraid to let Slogmeat rest in his lap and makes it a habit to hold long conversations with Slogmeat even though the latter is unable to understand nor respond to him. But Slogmeat is able to sense the friendship between them, and if he were to consider anybody an “Owner” it would be Trip, who in turn considers him “Mud’s best friend”. -

“Wittly”

Conspiracy theorist. Magog Cartel skeptic. Pirate radio show host. Tech savvy. Resident nutcase.

Wittly the Slig was a reject among Sligs due to his frailer than usual physicality. After refusing to take Big Bro hormonal injections (dubbing them “brainwashing vaccines”) he began a new life off-the-grid. He is the host of the Strand-2-Strand Pirate radio show, a station which he uses to broadcast across central Mudos his conspiracy theories regarding the ruling Magog Cartel. Most of his listeners are Wolvarks tuning in ironically because they think Wittly is incredibly fun to laugh at and that his conspiracies are ridiculous. Sometimes other conspiracy theorists call in to parrot his beliefs, but the majority of his callers are prank callers who role-play to scare him further. Because his radio station is pirate, the signal itself isn’t great. All his equipment is put together himself as he believes that Vykker equipment gives off brain-frying signals. He is completely distrusting of the Cartel and all of its branches. His distrust is warranted of course, but it has also manifested into him developing extreme paranoia and obsessive compulsions about everything even remotely related to the Cartel. He even refuses to consume any foods approved by any Magog or Vykker divisions, not because he thinks the additives and microplastics are unhealthy, but because he believes that there are chemicals in the foods that will mess with things like his intelligence and sexuality. Wittly also believes that Slig Barracks mandated pants and goggles are equipped with mind controlling technology and therefore refuses to wear them whatsoever. He has slapped together his own homemade pants and goggles, as well as a helmet made from a strainer, tinfoil, and other junk that is intended to nullify his susceptibility to Mudokon mind control. Whether or not it works remains pretty unknown.

While a lot of his theories are nonsense, some of them are pretty bang-on-the-Moolah. The Magog Cartel is aware of Wittly’s piracy and has attempted to shut it down in the past, but Wittly seemed prepared with backup everything, every time. It was soon decided by higher-ups in the Cartel to not bother with trying to shut the Slig down as they realized that trying to interrupt the broadcasts would fail in suppressing rumours. The Cartel knew if they actually did silence Wittly, it might cause more people to actually start believing some of the things said by him. Wittly often says during broadcasts that he knows “Cartel agents” are listening (and they are), but thanks to his accurate suspicions being mixed in with gobbledygook there is never any intervention.

When the rumours about Abe the Mudokon’s uprising began to spread, Wittly believed they were the complete truth-especially since he suspected pretty early on that the Cartel was attempting to cover it up and suppress all talk of it. In fact, for some Sligs and Mudokons, the pirate broadcasts were how they first received word of Abe. Despite his conspiratorial beliefs, Wittly does not see Abe as a hero. His paranoia and distrust of Mudokons is unfortunately shaped by the very Cartel he despises, and he has fallen for every nutjob pseudo-archaeological claim that Mudokons aren’t simply in tune with the magic of nature and spirits, but are the descendants of gods from another planet. He believes the Mudokon Moon is actually a signal from extraterrestrials calling for their “people” to return. He has even discussed theories on his broadcast that there are ancient Utopian cities built under the temples of Scrabania.

Trip Hazard was one of the many ironic fans of Wittly’s show. Despite the poor signal it managed to be the one and only radio station Trip was able to tune into all the way down in Necrum Mines, for some reason. When Howler’s gang formed and began their first acts of rebellious terrorism, the Magog Cartel was quick to suppress rumours and downplay the amount of destruction caused by the gang in news publications in order to decrease public panic. Wittly however was onto them from the start. Trip was eager to tune in and hear what the nutty Slig had to say about it. It became a habit for the gang to listen in on Wittly, until one day while listening, Howler keenly noticed that he was jabbering on about a lot of information on Cartel branch executives that would be really handy to them. He even apparently knew information on Corrective facilities that Howler knew for certain wasn’t even common knowledge among most Sligs that worked in and out of it. Wittly’s obsessive paranoia meant he miraculously had informative tabs on people Howler had on her hitlist. She knew the gang needed him.

After an abrupt kidnapping and convincing Wittly that they weren’t there to infect his mind with Brain Slurgs, the gang had their sixth member. Wittly’s in-and-out knowledge of Magog technology, navigating the Webb incognito, and techniques in scrambling transmissions comes quite in handy.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s7 episode 20 “fight club” thoughts

well! last time was a fun journey, wasn’t it? i’m not really sure if this episode takes place before or after it due to the whole time jump thing, but who knows? 

(i think i settled on most of the action of hollywood A.D. taking place after the unnatural and everything else taking place right before this episode. because that is what makes the most sense to me)

i’m curious to see where this one will go, because we have this episode, and then 2 more in the season! and then… s8. which i know a few things about. maybe they’ll try to pile on the laughs now.

reading the description… hmm. sounds silly, but we’ll see what actually happens. hold on… is that kathy griffin in the thumbnail photo? 

(post-episode thoughts: chris carter cooked up a silly one. i didn't know he had that kind of range in him...

this episode had me giggling, but it was super hard to make a writeup for, because so many of the gags were visual, LMAO. so hopefully you know what happens well enough for my descriptions to make sense, because at times i was Struggling

also, let the record show that special agent scully is my most special princess of all time, and if she wants to play internet detective, i think we should let her. forever and ever amen.)

okaaaaay, let’s begin!!

we open in the suburbs. this guy is riding a bike. well, maybe not the suburbs, because the title card says it’s kansas CITY. but it looks decidedly un-city-ish. another guy in the same outfit rides a bike. they move in sync and arrive at a house with an orange car in the parking lot. it has some silly bumper stickers and the license plate “BETTY”. okay. is that the car's name or something?

in sync, they dismount their bikes, and grab a pamphlet on the gospels. oh, so this isn’t their house. i was so invested in the twin logic, i momentarily lived in a world where missionaries were not a thing.

this lady- who we do not see the face of, only the back of her head- says she is waiting for a call, but these two are doing their thing where they don’t take a hint and blabber about god. she slams the door in their face as the cable people arrive. and then they’re off to another house.

and this house has the SAME car in a different color. with the SAME bumper stickers. and a different state’s license plate that reads “LULU”. okay….?

they repeat their thing and knock on the door. we still only see the back of her head. and they are visibly confused. they tell her they just spoke to a woman who could have been her twin- she’s just moving in down the street. this woman backs up and screams at the missionaries to get away. so they have a sort of slap fight on her porch. oh! it is escalating!!! they’re punching!! there’s blood on the door!!!

oh, girl…. she turns around and finally we see her face as they beat the shit out of each other. 

i hope my friends mulder and scully can resist the call to violence.

the missionaries are wrestling on her lawn!!! grabbing each other’s faces!! covered in blood!!! police arrive and pull them apart. but they break free and keep fighting. 

i wonder what the science behind this will be. or the logic. or any of it. kind of like magnets, maybe. who knows?

intro time!!! ah, that blurry photo of a UFO has come to bring me great comfort in our nearly a year together. and it seems to be the full intro!!! how unusual it feels at this point in time!!

still wondering where krycek is, but who tf knows?

one day later, the agents arrive at betty templeton’s door to investigate an “incident”. they’re efficient, these two!

AND LMAOOO, IT *IS* KATHY GRIFFIN. listen, i figured as much, but you just need CONFIRMATION sometimes.

she tells the agents she just moved in yesterday, so she doesn’t know anything about a potential religious hate crime- but then she sees the missionaries from yesterday in the car, and is shocked at their state.

betty pushes past our agents. they’re trying to explain that they visited another woman who matches her description when the fight broke out. are these two hunting each other? 

we have not seen our agents�� faces yet. this feels very purposeful. and betty denies all participation in the occult.

WAIT, GAG: THEY AREN’T OUR AGENTS, LMAOOOOO!! THEY MUST HAVE GOTTEN THE ACTORS TO DO VOICE OVER or the body doubles specifically for the scenes facing forward. LMAOOOOO, THEY GOT MY ASS!!!

“everybody has a twin” gagged me.

these agents who are not our agents say they cannot find this other lady who matches her description- her house was empty. but the other car pulls up- and it’s her!!!!! betty glares at the person who must be lulu. 

and the agents who are not our agents start throwing punches at each other!! it sure is something. betty just stares from the window, LMAOOOO. FAKE MULDER TRIES TO GET INTO THE WINDOW OF THE CAR AS FAKE SCULLY DRIVES AWAY???

okay. so that is all very silly. but i see that this episode was written by chris carter, so i’m wary. 

their car CRASHES. 

and now REAL mulder is showing slides from the car crash. the agents who were not really our agents were from kansas city. mulder says he does NOT think it was psychokinesis. they temporarily lost their minds. and it’s not past lives or fate. “the interesting thing about these agents is that they had worked together for seven years previously without any incident”

“yeah, but they are nooooot romantically involved, if that’s what you’re thinking” “not even i would be so farfetched” <- mr. carter... what are you trying to say here.

are they just... not acknowledging whatever their relationship is at this point? are they tongue-in-cheek denying it while they're on the job? have they had the "what are we" talk yet? SOOO many questions!

LMAO WHAT IS GOING ON…. the redhead splayed out in the hospital bed was killllling me, like is scully gonna comment on that being probably her cousin or something? and they way he drew out “nooooot” killed me. and then his face. AND HER FACE.

she says it seems so familiar… HIM DANGLING CLUES IN FRONT OF HER, LMAOOOOO, oh gosh. is this gonna be a hard watch or ultimate giggle time?

scully is trying to piece things together… these agents who are not OUR agents were trying to investigate something. THESE BITCHES ARE PLAYING CHARADES, LMAOOO... HER THEORIES ARE KILLING ME: “a double conjured into the world by a technique called bilocation, which in psychological terms, represents the person’s secret desires and impulses committing acts that the real person cannot commit himself” (mulder stares, open-mouthed)

OH, SHE’S HAVING SO MUCH FUN WITH HIM… ASKING FOR THE NEXT SLIDE… THESE DORKS.

SHE’S SO EXCITED SHE GUESSES HIS THEORY RIGHT THAT CLAPS AND YELLS “YES!” and he says “don’t think i’m going to start doing the autopsies” <- LMAOOOO 

ohhh, we so rarely get to see them just having fun. maybe i won’t hate chris carter for these 45 minutes. but it’s too early to tell for certain.

AWWW HER FACE… she is so pleased with herself <3

lulu arrives at a store with a help wanted sign on the door. she comes in to check on her application. and her name is lulu pfeiffer, btw. but there is a problem with her application. she moves a lot- and she has had 17 jobs in 17 states in 3 years! well. if she has an evil twin out there chasing her down, it’s gotta be hard to pay the bills!

but which one is the evil twin, then…? she tries to claim she had a restless streak. she is on a career path now.

but! all of the copy machines start going crazy!!! he says she can start immediately.

but no! in pulls betty!!!! she cranks her window down. then pulls away when the manager takes off the help wanted sign.

betty is going through the same experience- the manager is also concerned about 17 jobs in 3 years- at a different copy shop. and she also had all of the same jobs as lulu: mongolian barbecue chef, high-rise window washer, animal trainer. she says she is highly versatile and that she is here to stay. 

hmm. i have no real theories as to how this can happen.

in a dark hotel, someone is holding stacks of cash, putting them in a suitcase. a knock on the door. it’s mulder!!! coming for this mr. zupanic.

mulder and scully want to know if he can help them find betty templeton. he says he doesn’t know any betty- but scully comes with a picture of them together in a parade. it must be lulu he is with in the photo.

no! he thinks she used to live in a pink house on one street, but scully says she lived in a blue house on another! scully is confused. 

LMAO, she launches into a theory and mulder is like... yeah, he just doesn’t know betty. LMAO, she shuts the elevator door before he can get in. scully is full of zest today.

mulder is left to watch zupanic get into an elevator. then walks into his apartment.

zupanic goes to a bar with the suitcase of cash. the bartender initially refuses! and across the bar he sees betty. he says "nice outfit". clearly he thinks she’s lulu, but betty is gagged he knows her drink. “i feel like you’re looking right through me. like you’re reading my soul like a book” <- lmaoooo

she introduces herself as betty, and he guesses the street she lives on from scully’s earlier clue. but no! in walks lulu! betty makes an excuse, says she has to go. all the glasses start shaking….. and they explode!!!! how did they use practical effects for that???

hmm…. 

in a big auditorium with a boxing ring in the center, scully is looking around. mulder calls and waves to her. he’s sitting next to a guy. he introduces her to mr. argyle saperstein. mulder messes up his name. king. 

“so i take it from your posture, mulder, that you’ve solved this case” <- LMAOOOOO, BRO HAS HIS LOOOOONG LEGS STRETCHED OUT IN ALL SORTS OF DIRECTIONS

what is mulder cooking up…? he says he has narrowed down the search with the help of saperstein. 

sooooo zupanic is a wrestler, and he allegedly brings along betty for luck.

AWWW, he wants to stick around the city while they wait for betty to show up- eat some barbecue, learn some wrestling moves, take scully to the museum exploring soviet art…. but she’s confident. “finding betty templeton won’t solve this case, mulder. not unless we find lulu pfeiffer” gag him!

i had to rewatch this scene like 5 times because the audio wasn’t syncing up. and the audio STILL isn’t working. i have never had this problem before these last few episodes. wonder if it's just me or everyone deals with this.

lulu and betty are both real!!! and they behind destruction!!! one has alternately traced the other for the past 12 years! 

car accidents, fistfights, house fires, explosions, riots… we need to station one at the north and one at the south pole.

mr. saperstein calls up zupanic, asking where his money is. “now you got the feds on your ass!” <- uh-oh. zupanic wakes up next to lulu… he must bring the money or the fight will be called off. lulu runs off to work. and they kiss more before lulu leaves.

when at zupanic's door is……. betty!!! OH! she wants to know where he was last night!!! he stood her up!! she’s nearly crying as she accuses him of two-timing her.

oh! she finds lulu’s hairpin. she says knows it…. oh! she thinks it’s hers. and she also says she is so wildly attracted to him, bert zupanic, while he shoos her off to work. as she leaves, we hear people arguing in the distance. 

AUGH! lulu (i think) comes back as soon as betty leaves, and gunshots are fired through the ceiling! he grabs her close as a body thuds!!!

saperstein is waiting at the bar, where he runs into lulu, asking where her boyfriend is. “we barely just met”, she says.

she is so excited to hear he will be here. she goes to freshen up. zupanic walks in. but the whole bar is rumbling as betty enters. saperstein is gagged because he just saw lulu go to the bathroom- but of course, he thinks they’re the same person! bah!

the other one walks back into- OH! THEY BOTH WALK IN! the rumbling commences as they stare at each other!!! and once again, everything shatters!!!

zupanic!!! he’s on the floor, bleeding from the mouth. saperstein takes the suitcase full of cash… and the poor bartender shakes glass from his arms.

scully and mulder are here. she’s explaining to zupanic that he was hit by flying glass. and now WHERE are betty and lulu?!

mulder is off to find betty at the copy shop. she immediately declares it is LULU'S FAULT! she follows me around, trying to ruin my life. mulder follows her out of the store after she shoved him away. and scully reports that lulu said the same exact thing!

scully suggests a psychic connection… mulder has a convenient static break up his comment… but: it seems they are on a collision course.

NOOOO, HE IS CAUGHT BETWEEN THEM!!!! he gets sucked into a MANHOLE??? LMAO??? what the HELL is going on……? the most unserious show ever.

poor scully is here at the copy shop to try and find him. but obviously she doesn’t know he got vacuumed up into a manhole. so she goes to talk to the manager, who says he saw the tall guy with dark hair leave, but he isn’t sure where. however! they sure do have a deal on copying! oh, her smile…

how about internet access?? your girl is gonna SLEUTH

so she goes to a prison??? is mulder here?? no, some other guy is. AND HE IS SCREAMING AT HER???? she is momentarily taken aback. LMAO, it takes SO much to break the scully facade. but she introduces herself with a smile. why is this man GROWLING AND SCREAMING!!

OHHHH, SHE’S TRYING TO EXPLAIN…. HE HAS TWO DAUGHTERS??? he did not seem to know this information. but she comes with FACTS. “well, be that as it MAY, sir” <- LMAOOOO I LOVE HER

oh, poor scully. this interaction led to zero information gained. just a whole lot of screaming. 

betty arrives at zupanic’s place, asking why he ghosted her. but he is crying, saying he lost his financing! he grabs her shoulders, saying she is his good luck. he needs the money to prove he can fight. maybe she can help. another knock at his door. is mulder still in the manhole?

it’s lulu. she repeats the same dialogue. and so does he. 

betty’s trying to copy dollars at her workplace. as i can imagine lulu is as well. while poor mulder climbs out from the manhole!! 

scully is still at the prison. she picks up her phone when it rings and immediately asks “mulder?” <- awwww!!! where has he been?! in a storm drain. 

scully explains from the prison that the two women are half-sisters while the father screams at her some more- please give her an advil. she says he is the angriest man alive- but mulder says lulu and betty will be angrier when they learn they’re both in love with the same man.

this doesn’t help, though!!! another convenient burst of static censors mulder. i guess scully is fully on board with the concept of psychic connections now.

WHY IS ZUPANIC IN THE PRISON??? ARE THERE TWO OF HIM? 

it’s fight time. zupanic arrives. saperstein asks where the money is, saying he’ll call off the fight. betty arrives with the bag of “money”, and they embrace. 

one wrestler takes the stage to great booing, while zupanic gets in the ring. either lulu or betty blows kisses from the audience.

the wrestlers are running around…. starting to fight… mulder arrives. asks betty to please come with him. but she is watching the fight!! she doesn't want to leave!! but!!! lulu arrives!!! they’re fighting over zupanic.

mulder grabs betty. just scoops her right up and starts to walk away. while lulu comes with the money. but the crowd starts fighting!!!!!! 

when in comes scully with a different zupanic!!!! THE FIGHTING STOPS!!!!! scully’s smile…………. omfgggg…..

but then the zupanics start fighting!!! and the crowd fights resume!!!! 

that must have been such a pain in the ass to film.

scully wraps up the episode with the news that zupanic and his half-brother- both small time bank robbers and part-time pro-wrestlers- somehow met. as did betty and lulu, and could not avoid each other. saperstein is here. he wants to know what it means!

“i’ve been thinking hard about that, mr. saperstein. i would like to say it has something to do with balance in the universe, the attraction of opposites and the repulsion of equivalents, or, that over time, nature produces only so many originals, that when two original copies meet the the result is often unpredictable. if four should meet, the result is… well, suffice to say, it’s better just to avoid these encounters

NOOOO HER EYE☹️☹️oh her whole FACE!! oh, poor thing!! and he is also beaten up entirely. his teeth!!!

the end.

giggling…. girl, what was that about?

so did they beat each other up… or were they simply victims of the crowd crush?!!! it is left vague. perhaps purposefully so.

the pictures of lulu and betty fighting are killllllling meeeeee

these pooooor dolts. all beaten up. and nothing to show for it!

i genuinely have no idea what to think at all, LMAO... but i laughed quite a bit!! and sometimes, that is the purpose of the whole episode. to make me, specifically, giggle.

this was an episode with great scully moments. she wants to SLEUTH, dammit! give her the clues! let her form a theory and then cheer about it!! the way she couldn't find him at the store so she just... starts investigating online. liberally applying the law of averages. LMAO, that is my BABY!

betty and lulu were also killing me LMAO. that hairclip moment... queens, both of them. not entirely sure how having the angriest man in the world as your father produces some sort of plate tectonic reaction in which everyone starts to beat each other up when they share a room, but hey. does it really matter? not one bit. imagine if they could overcome that, though, and team up to maximize their joint slay... they would become unstoppable.

so! the next episode... a lot of people say to just stop watching there. but i am going to keep going. bravely. into uncharted territories. it will simply take me a while to do so.

so, correct me if i'm wrong, but the watch order goes like: s8, gunmen (if you so desire? or maybe they take place all at once?), s9, movie 2?? and then s10 and 11? does that sound correct? please do let me know so i can be prepared!

[arwainian]

The F@tT Fic Marathon: Catching up finally.

🎉I have officially read the full Friends at the Table AO3 tag!🎉

My very silly quest has reached its technical end point after EXACTLY 10 months of intensive reading! It has been sometimes grueling, often delightful, and led to me developing intense opinions in directions i never thought possible to myself. But I have done it, and I am extremely pleased with myself.

To get some housekeeping out the way, I usually give recs upon a writeup, but since there were only three fics left for me to read i'm just gonna shout them out generally.

Fics 1981-1983

check out i'm too scared to say half of the things i do (when i picture you) by waltztangocache for partizan era Kal'mera Broun fantasizing about Valence and trying to keep from letting that slip through their telepathic bond

and if you like Christmas fic, fangirl_squee has got you covered with Fero "not liking Christmas" but being roped into it anyway, and the Bluff City Masks crew hunting down some Christmas mini-miracles

and like, if you're looking for something to read, remember every single writeup has come with at least one personal recommendation. it's all under the tag #fatt fic marathon (also a caveat that these recommendations come from my personal tastes, i might not have mentioned a fic during the marathon that's a favorite of yours and i hope you continue to deeply enjoy what you love even when it might not have hit where I would have liked)

if you would like to take a look at the massive spreadsheet I used to keep track of which fics I was set to read together, as well as other info like what season it was for, and word count, here is a link to it!

What next?

First of all, I'm gonna spend a good long time reading other things. I've accumulated a great big To-Be-Read pile of pleasure reading consisting of both real-ass books and other fanfic that have been put at a lower priority while I powered through this project. I have had fun, but it is high time for a Break to read and do other stuff for a bit. (*glances nervously at my unstarted secsam project*)

If you happen to like my thoughts about what I'm reading, this past year I tried to keep track with reading log posts. They got stripped down to the basics over the course of the year and Finals Season sorta took it out of me so there's nothing for the past couple weeks BUT. i like reading a lot and i like talking about it a lot. so that's all tagged as #cal reading log if you want to keep up with me and my reading

and, what shall happen to these writeups! I'm not interested in continuing these in perpetuity, but I may give a final send off one when the tag hits 2000 (i'm still deciding). otherwise, this is likely the end of them. I might still shout out inidivudual cool fics that get published as I read them, but that's just like, good fandom practice to spread around cool fanworks tbh, rather than this weird thing I've done. nonetheless, i hope y'all had fun watching this journey

and a final thank you to all of the lovely authors who have made fanfic writing their hobby and have chosen to share what they write with others. Thank you! it is extremely obvious that I could not have done this if they never put pen to page or fingertip to keyboard and did the dang thing in the first place. you've made some cool stuff and i like reading it.

Happy New Year Everyone!

[switch]

hiii switch! I'm the same new Moriarty fan who sent you an ask before, I just got my NP3 Mori after speedrunning up to Traum! very happy about it. what I'm not happy about is... Ruleriarty. absolutely baffled to know that this is supposed to be the same old Moriarty from Shinjuku? I feel like I'm being gaslit because when I look at him, he looks like a knock-off Joker. also absolutely a clown and replaceable as a villain in Traum too btw. I didn't like him before and I don't now. you're the no. 1 Moriarty understander so I'd like to hear you thoughts about him

congrats on np3 moriarty! he really does need it with that unbuffed mod

well that’s the neat part. they’re not the same person. they’re from different timelines, except when the writers decide they are the same person anyway, except when the writers decide they aren’t the same person— don’t even fucking worry about it. it’s all net negative information.......

my thoughts are difficult to put succinctly because there's a lot of context required to explain my intense levels of frustration... i’m frankly really not actually keen to talk about ruler in general.. it's kind of a raw spot... those are all certainly reasons for disliking him, but it’s kind of just scratching the surface of a pile of proverbial straw that broke my proverbial back... you nailed the "replaceable" part, given he and other elements were written in during a later revision and implemented so poorly that people could tell even without external confirmation...

but i do still want people to understand why the bigger picture situation surrounding this character was and is such absolute shit (and how it's just one of many microcosms of fgo's egregious patterns of bold-faced shithead decision making the past 5 years), and that it was never just "lol angry that he's not an old man" or "lol can't handle another interpretation of a character you like", so i'm always open to answering that kind of stuff.

this post i made answering another anon is probably the briefest possible writeup of my thoughts i'll ever be capable of making, so i'll leave you with this.

TL;DR if you made the mistake of Actually Reading the text contents of The Video Game Fate Grand Order and you are capable of remembering or caring about said text contents for more than 2 years you can just go straight to hell because this game is ruled by the whims of one parts marketing department and one parts cowboy-committee. this incident is far from the only case of that, mind you. it's just the one that was Literally 9/11 to me specifically.

[theafictionado]

The Best Books I Read in 2023

It’s the most magical time of the year—time to gather the lists of my favourite stories I’ve enjoyed across the past twelve months! As is tradition, my pile of book recommendations kicks things off, and the last post of the year will compile my anime recommendations. As always, I acknowledge that there’s a couple weeks of December left and a new favourite could sneak in at the last moment before the fireworks go off to mark 2024, but those titles will get parcelled into next year’s list instead.

So how do I catalogue 2023 in reading? It was a year with a lot of change for me, and changes to my reading habits followed. I finished my PhD and, with the ensuing move out of academia, reading and thinking about fiction is unfortunately no longer my job. Naturally, by sheer volume, I read fewer novels than I have in previous years (and I actually didn’t read any non-fiction or textbooks). However, that does mean I’ve been able to branch outside of my specific research niche and have been much more of a “mood reader”, picking up things that sound interesting or fun rather than picking things up based on their relevance to a current or potential project.

I read a lot less YA (though I still found a couple I’m very fond of) and did a lot more exploring in the world of adult fantasy and sci-fi. Most of these are queer genre fiction in some way or another, so that’s a trend that prevails; and as you’ll notice I’m entirely “off” contemporary realism and rom-coms… unless they’re in manga form, which I devoured plenty of. To confuse the trend data completely there’s a satirical thriller in there, but I think you’ll understand why it called to me when you read the writeup.

So without more dilly-dallying, here is the list of my favourite books and manga series I read in 2023! Does this roundup cross over with yours at all? Are there any recommendations you have for me based on my recommendations for you? Let me know in the comments!

Read more...

[owlchimedes]

attempting to get over a hard therapy appointment with a to do list, a spicy latte, and some very loud rock music so behold! a three hour mini work session covering:

HH writeup

Prep cell bio notes

Prep multivariate problem demo

grade math exams

analyze math grades

message proc team

picked up 'tomorrow' (today) with yet more piles and piles of work

CV writeup

module 3 lecture & notes

Obed., Pris., BlueBrown lectures

Single Subject Research module

C&C ch. 3, 5

CritInq sheet 3

LitReview

[lex1nat0r]

White Elephant: When all you have is a cherry bomb, everything looks explodable

AAR #16

Session reports from my ongoing Lancer campaign

Characters (LL 2):

Raiju (They/Them, Hacker 2/Heavy Gunner/Centimane/Nuclear Cavalier, Barbarossa 2)

Sunshine (They/Them, Grease Monkey/Technophile 2/Engineer/Juggernaut, Pegasus 2)

Rook (He/Him, Walking Armory/Stormbringer/Brutal/Brawler 2, Balor 2)

Daylight (She/Her, Technophile 2/Engineer 2/Infiltrator, Vlad 2)

Magpie (They/Them, Hacker 3/Technophile 2, Goblin 2)

NHPs:

Molotov - Via Sunshine’s Technophile talent - Projects as a small velociraptor - unshackled

Willow - Via Daylight’s Technophile talent - Projects as 1-2 squid - unshackled

Murgatroid - Via Magpie’s Technophile talent - Projects as a wizard? - shackled

Prometheus Antichiral - fork of a cascaded NHP from the Sanctuary Blue cloning facility - projects as a wizened old man - unshackled

Prev session writeup

The Eye of the Tiger arrives above Metahome. During the blink they received another garbled message, this one apparently part of a news broadcast. They can just about make out the words "Angelus Landing," the name of a planet in the sector that should have some of the blinkspace data from X-9-237. Since they're already at Metahome, the lancers talk over what they're going to do here first. Their biggest lead is Hermenaut Services, a shipping company that the Electric Eye was under contract with and may have ties to HORUS. There's also Arjhet and Tehjra to keep tabs on, as they sent a message to the local Horizon Collective cell. Raiju, Magpie, and Sunshine decide to check out Hermenaut while Rook and Daylight tail A&T.

Hermenaut Services' head office just looks like a regular office building in downtown Neo Corinth, the metroswathe taking up most of Metahome's landmass. Magpie isn't able to hack up anything really juicy on the publicly-available net, so Sunshine lures a couple of the building's guards into an alley to get jumped. With their newfound access to the building the lancers are able to discover that the Electric Eye was sent out as part of something called Project Harlequin which apparently involved sending out cargo ships via circuitous routes. They need c-level access to find anything more though, so they pile into an elevator and work on getting access to the important offices. Raiju disables the elevator's camera with a small bomb, which makes it look like the camera's just suffering a malfunction. Magpie and Sunshine get access to the elevator's controls to take the group to the restricted level. They duck into the CTO's office, which seems suspiciously unused. The big tip is the stock photo in a picture frame which is the only thing that could be considered a touch of personality in the room. Raiju attempts to repeat the bomb trick on the office's terminal but only succeeds in blowing it up, attracting the attention of building security. Sunshine quickly ushers the group to the CFO's office, which is similarly deserted. Magpie gets into this terminal before Raiju gets a chance to blow it up. They learn that Project Harlequin is a directive from the higher-ups of the company, sending freighters around the sector but making stops at systems out of the way of their usual routes. Importantly, all of the deliveries from the Harlequin routes are delivered to a specific warehouse leased by Hermenaut. With this information in hand the group make their exit by letting Raiju blow a hole in the exterior wall.

Meanwhile, Rook is tagging along with Arjhet and Tehjra as they make their way to the local Horizon Collective office in one of the metro's unaffiliated sectors. Daylight is also following along, using her uncanny ability to not be noticed. A&T convince Rook to wait outside the office in a little courtyard but don't notice they're followed inside by Daylight who overhears them getting directions from the receptionist. They loiter in the office for a bit before telling Rook they're heading into a dangerous part of town and does he really want to follow them all the way there. Rook, being Rook, says of course he'll follow and they eventually go to the headquarters of Kingdom, one of the local gangs. A&T finally notice Daylight following, which Rook plays off saying he also had no idea she was there, and lead them inside Kindgom's HQ with an air of resignation. Clearly Arjhet and Tehjra are involved in the Horizon Collective's less than legal operations and they make introductions with Jillian, Kindgom's boss. She reluctantly lets them use the building's elevator to go down to the HC hideout in the decommissioned Neuropa printing facility in the basement. They meet with Baal, the HC cell's leader, who explains the theory that there's some kind of entity in local blinkspace that's causing the omninet distortions. The Horizon Collective also ripped off a shipment of NHP caskets that was heading to HORUS and are in the middle of evaluating them for unshackling.

The lancers regroup on the Eye of the Tiger to discuss next moves when Balboa alerts the bridge crew to an omninet news broadcast that they're going to want to see. There's an intense space battle going on in the vicinity of Angelus Landing, the local Rimtech defense fleet slowly being overwhelmed by an armada of unknown assailants. In Balboa's evaluation Rimtech won't be able to hold off the invaders for much longer and the presence of the Eye of the Tiger won't make much difference in the end. With part of the blinkspace data in jeopardy, the lancers agree that the Eye of the Tiger should blink to Angelus Landing and at least try to help the evacuation effort while they retrieve the data.

Next time: c-beams glittering in the dark?

[janaawrites2024]

Week 15 Writeup #2: Final Term Campaign

By Asthrielle

The process of creating our campaign video has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. With numerous submissions piling up, we initially labeled this project as one of the things we should do after we finish all of our activities. Despite that, our group managed to pull it off, and I’m genuinely proud of what we accomplished, even with the challenges and lapses along the way.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the process was conducting interviews with publication writers. Asking them about the motivations behind their work offered me a wealth of valuable insights. It was fascinating to hear how their passions and experiences shaped their writings, providing a deeper understanding of the creative process.

Equally significant was interviewing the audience. We asked them how the posts influence their daily lives as students, and their responses deeply resonated with me. It made me realize I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. Hearing firsthand how the posts help them stay engaged and informed about events both on and off campus made me appreciate my role as an active student even more.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Christine

Christine is a 1983 horror novel and movie about Stephen King’s ongoing fascination with What If A Thing Was Evil. Having done clowns and spiders and dogs and being alone with your wife, Christine wants to bring this powerful critical tool to bear on the question of What if A Car Was Evil? Would That Be Fucked Up Or What?

Set in the 1970s the story –

The story –

Look I’m going to spoil some things, so like, spoiler warning.

The story of Christine is— that is, Christine the movie — simple. There is this car, you see, and it’s evil. In a series of completely unsurprising events, where nothing transpires that should surprise you, a character acquires this evil car, and the car starts doing evil things. The sequence of events is that a character who is bullied acquires the car, then becomes focused on the car, then the car starts killing people. The car’s owner is confronted, decides they’re okay with it, the car is stopped by their friends, and in the process, the owner dies.

Christine as a story is, essentially, a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment. If you’re used to horror media being built around an elaborate twist or some deep insight, it isn’t that kind of thing and I don’t think it’s ever trying to be. This isn’t about why or how a car could be an evil car, but much more about the very tangible question of ‘what if there was an evil car.’

It isn’t like I wasn’t having fun watching this movie. It wasn’t even that I was expecting there to be more to it. It’s only when I was reconstructing the movie’s timeline for this writeup that I realised how simple a story the movie is. If there’s a twist anywhere in it, it’s out of expectations I don’t have because I’m used to the way this kind of story is structured. Behold, a nerd, and that nerd is isolated, and responds by falling into something dangerous, and that something dangerous will destroy him, except along the way it will also destroy a lot of other people who suck as well.

I don’t know if I just don’t get Stephen King’s work, really. I don’t know if Christine really counts as being a Stephen King movie of course; he wrote the book, but as with all movies-of-books, there’s layers of interpretation. That’s where the ideas that seem missing in the movie get explored. In the story presented in this movie, I think it’s trying to draw you along the line of the nerd’s experience. You start out oppresed, then presented with a thing that changes that, focus on the change, try something different and then the change makes your life better by defending you from violence (through violence!).

The story takes you a place you probably want to go (where the very bad people in his life are punished) and then goes even further (where his friends are injured). I didn’t find this particularly relatable, because this nerd has a pretty understandable sucky experience of high school and is surrounded by people telling him to change or improve when he’s… like… seventeen. He’s enduring one of the least fun parts of his life and nobody’s defending him from the bullying by people with knives who should… and then the story escalates, through the narrative device of a haunted evil magic car.

I’m led to understand that in the book, Christine (the car) is haunted by the ghost of the previous owner, and this ghost seems to possess our nerdy protagonist. Christine is still a mystery, but the previous owner is more of a cultist engaging with the cursed car. That’s not part of the movie, though — in fact it kind of doesn’t work with the movie, because the role of that character isn’t in the movie. That role is instead handed to his brother — the brother who is also responsible for the same lines of dialogue that nerd winds up quoting, invoking the idea that he’s somehow becoming like that owner, don’t come from that owner.

It reminds me a lot of, and I swear I’m not messing with you, Biblical Harmonisation.

If you engage much with Biblical apologetics, which is the social practice of publically making up excuses for flaws in a human made text, you’ll encounter a common trend in how criticisms are restructured. When you present a series of contradictions in the text, like where one character is said to do something and in a different book that same thing is done by another character, you’ll often get a response that involves constructing a fictional thread of narrative that can make the two different accounts compatible.

It doesn’t matter how unlikely that thread is — what matters is that there is a way that the story can be reconstructed so that these two incompatible texts secretly do work together. The book of Christine includes things and the movie of Christine includes different things, and hypothetically you can use them to inform one another. I don’t want to, though — what the movie leaves unstated means we don’t have to deal with an extensive exchange with a racist grandpa, and there’s less of a focus on things like the importance of the military.

Instead, the story as presented is about an evil car.

Make no mistake: Christine is, as a movie, entirely worth the time I spent watching it just for the sequence of watching the damaged car repair itself. It’s great. There’s a greatness to the kills too, an excessive glory in how the movie treats the space around the car, and the sensuality of the material object that is Christine. Things like the use of the radio to communicate messages – threatening or otherwise – is a really cool touch. Christine is the character that drives the story and she’s really excellently played by a series of props.

I like this movie.

I also think it’s kinda got that fascist death cult thing going on that’s fundamental to a lot of Americana of the era. The Nerd never changes his ways from his devotion to Christine. He embraces the violence, the object, the change to himself, and reaches out for Christine as he – and it -dies, and the story treats his death as tragic. It’s a glorious death in its own way, where yes, he died, but thanks to him and his devotion to Christine, the bullies that hurt him and also a few people including a cop, are all dead.

The fantasy of a bullied nerd embracing evil power to finally get rid of the bullies is a pretty common one. It’s a very American story. It’s a story that’s mirrored in how they talk about school shootings. It’s a fantasy that there are problems and solutions that can’t really be addressed, but wouldn’t it be nice if they were. Shame there’s no way to consider it, or fix it, or address it.

Car’s just evil, you see.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[squids-comics]

Hey remember when I said I'd post writing yesterday? I forgot about Full Comic Friday. So here it is now!! Here's Dual Identity Dysphoria!

Lewis was an average man on a good day. On an average day, he was slightly below average. He was weak looking and rather scrawny. He was the kind of guy who never put any care into his appearance. He had tangled, greasy hair and wore nothing but graphic t-shirts underneath oversized hoodies. He was the kind of guy who stayed up late in the night and slept till noon. He had very few friends, very solitary hobbies, and didn't know how to talk to women to save his life. He also had a deep secret he kept closely guarded. 

Each afternoon, he'd crawl out of bed, directly into the bathroom. He'd shower and shave and moisturize, all while trying to avoid looking in the mirror. He didn't like the thing that looked back at him. He didn't like the shape of its cheekbones, or how sharp its jaw was, or the lump in its throat. They didn't look right to him. They didn't fee right. He'd walk away looking rather patchy and spotty, as it's hard to shave without a mirror.

After that, he'd move back to his room to get dressed. He'd pull a shirt and a pair of jogging pants out of his clean-ish pile in the center of the floor. He'd grab one of his two black hoodies from the closet and throw it over top. The whole outfit probably needed a wash, but he wasn't going to leave the house today so it was fine. He made sure not to open his closet too wide when doing this. He didn't want to see what was inside. It wasn't time yet.

Lewis worked a nice remote job, meaning he'd get to lounge around on the couch while typing out some writeups or filing some digital paperwork or whatever else his boss emailed him to do. It was easy, it paid well, and he didn't have to talk to anyone. It wasn't very fulfilling, but he liked it. 

On his lunch break, he'd throw open the pantry and pull whatever he could find out. Macaroni, instant ramen, canned soup. Nothing was too high class for him (unless it took more than fifteen minutes to make)!

When his half hour lunch was over, he'd come back to find a new email from his boss with a new menial task for him to do. Which he would, without fail. He was a star employee, just as long as he didn't have to send any emails of his own. 

When he finally clocked out, he'd crack open his freezer and find something to have for dinner. His favourites included frozen pizza, frozen lasagna, and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly adventurous, he'd try to make something more complex, like scrambled eggs. It didn't work out well most times, as he struggled with cracking eggs. They were so small and delicate, requiring the perfect application of force to crack the shell. Without enough force, their shell remains unharmed, leaving the egg relatively unchanged. Too much force would shatter the shell, destroying the egg and the nice comfortable life it had worked so hard to achieve. He didn't like when he tried too much force. It scared him. 

After dinner, he would jump back on the couch and flick on Supernova, his favourite sci-fi show. He liked seeing all the colourful alien worlds, and all the equally colourful people living on them. He'd typically watch for at least three hours, catching the newest episodes or watching reruns if there weren't any new ones out yet. Lewis had seen the reruns a thousand times already. But there was nothing wrong with watching them again. They made him feel comfortable. And he loved staying in his comfort zone, at least until his show was done anyways.

After he had his sci-fi fix for the day, Lewis would go back to his room and open his closet. It was time. The closet was originally designed to be a reach in closet, and still looked like one from the outside, but Lewis had refurbished it to be a walk in. Just behind the door was a rack of shirts and sweaters, hiding the deeper reaches of the closet. Lewis would brush them too the side and walk in. He'd quickly and quietly close the door behind him. He lived alone, but he still felt weird going in a secret closet with an open door. 

Inside the closet sat a mannequin torso and a separate mannequin head beneath a bright spot light. It proudly displayed what appeared to be a padded leotard made of rugged leather. The pads were especially thick in the hips and the chest, making them look particularly round. It was a maroon colour, with very bright red lace around the edges. In the center was a bright red spider web, stitched elegantly into the outfit. Even though it had been hand made and hand stitched, the leotard looked professionally done. On the head was a wig with shoulder length hair, a pretty bubblegum pink colour. The mannequins sat atop a chest of drawers and across from a rather large mirror. The spotlight showered the whole scene in a golden light, amplified by the mirror. 

Lewis ripped off his greasy clothes, throwing them in a heap on the floor. He couldn't get them off fast enough. He hated them. He avoided the mirror at all costs. He couldn't look in it yet. The reflected light from the mirror cast Lewis' shadow against the wall. He didn't like it's outline. 

He walked over to the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer. Inside were an assortment of medical supplies. A first aid kit sat open next to rolls of gauze, an alcohol based disinfectant, and way more rolls of medical tape than any normal person would need. Lewis grabbed one of the rolls and shut the drawer. Slowly and carefully, Lewis reached down to what was between his legs, tucking it back and taping it in place. When he was done, he returned the tape to the first drawer, before opening the second and retrieving a pair of pink leggings. Lewis slowly put them on, one leg after the other, ensuring they were on tight and flat. He put on a thin and breathable tank top shirt, made of nylon. He slowly lifted the leotard off the mannequin before slipping it over his shirt. It felt nice. Tight in all the right spots, with just the right amount of padding to sit on his frame.

The shadow on the wall was no longer as harsh. It seemed much rounder, with wider hips and a thinner waist. Lewis liked it, but they still wouldn't look in the mirror. They still weren't ready. 

Lewis opened the second drawer again. They pulled out a pair of fingerless red fishnet arm sleeves and slid their arms inside. Finally, they placed the wig on their head and turned to look in the mirror.

This was her favourite part. She loved the big reveal every time she saw it. Her hair was stunning, flowing down the sides of her head and resting softly on her bare shoulders. Her suit looked wonderful, giving her the hips and chest she desperately wished she was born with. Lewis was no longer in the room. He was gone. He had been replaced with The Seamstress. And it was time for her to go out on patrol.

There it is! I hope you liked it! Today's comic strip will be moved to tomorrow and Science Sunday will be swapped with a poll about writing. Hopefully next week will be back to normal schedule!

[not-radioshack]

Writeup: To boldly stumble… pushing the Alliance AT3D to its limits

Yeah. We're venturing into levels of absolute jank that none have ever gone before.

This writeup is also available on The Retro Web!

Fun fact, this card singlehandedly killed Alliance Semiconductor's graphics division! All three successor cards that were planned for release after the AT3D were promptly scrapped and never heard of again. Alliance themselves would crumble not long after, and at present is a shell of its former self that manufactures only memory chips as opposed to… well, mainly memory chips and a few other things on the side.

Aaaaaaanyhow, let's get on with this with a quick spec-dump.

Alliance AT3D - specs

Year released: 1997

Core: Alliance AT3D, unknown manufacturing node, 61MHz

Driver version: 4.10.01.2072

Interface: PCI

PCI device ID: 1142-643D / 0000-0000 (Rev 02)

Mem clock: 61MHz real/effective

Mem bus/type: 4MB 64-bit EDO, 488MB/s bandwidth

ROPs/TMUs/Vertex Shaders/Pixel Shaders/T&L hardware: 1/1/0/0/No

DirectX support: DirectX 6 (DX 3/5)

OpenGL support: - Native: no support - Techland OGL to D3D: --100% OpenGL 1.1 compliant --12% OpenGL 1.2 compliant --0% compliant beyond OpenGL 1.2 --Vendor string:

Vendor: Techland Renderer: Direct3D (display, Primary Display Driver) KNI Version: 1.1 beta 6

OpenGL support (continued) - AltOGL OGL to D3D: --100% OpenGL 1.1 compliant --100% OpenGL 1.2 compliant (but I highly doubt it) --Vendor string:

Vendor: Brian Paul Renderer: altD3D Version: 1.2 Mesa 3.0

As for the rest of the system...

Windows 98 SE w/KernelEX (no updates)

Matsonic MS7102C

Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) @ 750 MHz

256MB PC-133 SDRAM (single stick of Kingston KVR133X64C3/512, can't extract SPD data bc system crashes)

Hitachi 4GB Microdrive

Some random Slot 1 Cooler Master CPU cooler

And with that out of the way, onto the notes!

So. Uh, yeah. The Alliance AT3D, and more specifically this AT3D, is a very... VERY strange card. Despite releasing rather late for a 3D-capable graphics chip in comparison to the competition, the AT3D is very clearly half-baked at best, and a flaming dumpsterfire at worst. I'm not sure if it's the hardware itself or drivers written by the world's worst driver dev team to have ever existed, but there is something very, very wrong with the 3D rendering capabilities that this card has.

As implied by the specs of the card from up above, the AT3D has no native OpenGL support. Or native DirectX 6, for that matter. Windows 98 just happens to like to stamp DX6 support onto cards that don't support anything higher. This card was released targeting Windows 95, and drivers for Windows 98 and up were never made available. Luckily, with how similar the two OSes are at the kernel level, the Win95 drivers are fully-compatible with '98. Yes, that is in spite of the atrocious 3D rendering.

So, anyway. OpenGL. That was what this video was intended to focus on, but between me catching Covid back in August and only finally recovering enough to begin recovering by late September, the video ultimately ended up as this congealed pile of rambling and chaos, with plenty of Windows 98 crashes sprinkled in for flavor.

ClassiCube runs... okay, I guess, if you're willing to look past the amazing rendering quality. AltOGL crashes ClassiCube 1.3.5, and though I've been told that 1.3.6 works with AltOGL, with the AT3D at least it still crashes.

So, instead of AltOGL, I am using Techland's OpenGL to Direct3D wrapper. Though intended to be a "mini-GL" for their Crime Cities game, Techland's wrappers have a decent reputation for speed and compatibility among low-end cards. Though, the AT3D is clearly an outlier on both fronts.

Minecraft itself is unable to launch with either wrapper. With the Techland wrapper, the game complains about not being able to create an OpenGL context, which isn't too surprising given how the Techland wrapper implements only a subset of the OpenGL spec. Slightly more surprising, however, is the fact that AltOGL also fails to allow the game to launch, instead resulting in an instant crash back to desktop. So, while Minecraft proper isn't able to run on the AT3D, I still would say that you could pull off some block game shenanigans with this thing if you're willing to suffer the pain of its rendering hardware screaming in agony.

Other games aside from Minecraft and ClassiCube were tested as well, or at least attempted to be tested, but much like Minecraft itself, they crashed in varying levels of severity with both wrappers. Aside from ClassiCube, the only thing I was successful in running were the 3DMark99 and 2000 benchmarks and demos.

But, this is not where this writeup ends. Oh, no. There's still a completely fresh, unopened can of worms sitting right here on the table for all of us to enjoy.

That can of worms? The card itself and its BIOS.

If you take a look at VGA Legacy MKIII's entry on the Alliance AT3D, you'll find that all of the cards shown on the website are made by a company called "Super Grace". All of them are identical.

My card, however, has a little extra something: a populated 10-pin header.

I'm not 100% sure about what its function is, but just from eyeballing where the traces lead to from the pin header suggests that this may be a header for some kind of optional TV-out add-on board. Perhaps one that outputs composite and/or s-video. It certainly fits in line with the strange video BIOS (vBIOS) that this card comes with. (Also, wow! Matching graphics core, PCB, and memory chip branding! And look at that neato peacock logo from an unknown company!)

So then. The BIOS. This card's BIOS is version 4.30.00 Build 29, whereas the version of BIOS on the Super Grace cards is 2.30.00 Build 29. The differences go beyond just a bump from a 2 to a 4, too; the "version 4" BIOS has a neat animated Alliance Semiconductor logo and banner that slides in from the right, whereas the "version 2" BIOS is a static text box with no logo or anything. However, the lack of animation does also allow the system to complete the bootup process much faster.

Below are a pair of videos demonstrating the difference:

Beyond the visual differences, the primary functional difference between the v2 and v4 BIOSes is that the v2 BIOS seems to be completely unaware of the card's seeming TV-out capability. The v4 BIOS, however, is practically hypersensitive to it.

I'll give you a rundown of what happened.

I often use a program called "VCS" to let my Datapath VisionRGB capture card pass video through and act more or less like a regular monitor. The problem, however, is that apparently, when the capture card is hooked up to the AT3D, this causes the EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) that the capture card sends to the AT3D to seemingly identify itself (to the AT3D, at least) as... a TV.

Now, normally this shouldn't be much if any issue. Graphics cards after all are meant to be able to handle this sort of connection. Heck, before the capture card, I was using an actual TV as the monitor for my testbench.

But because weird hardware seems to gravitate towards me, this was not the case for the AT3D. Whatever EDID info the capture card seems to send to the AT3D when VCS is used causes the card to trigger its "TV mode", which enables a TV features tab in the card's graphics settings and disables almost all of the regular settings for refresh rate and screen positioning available in the regular settings tab. Attempting to disable the TV features tab results in a system crash.

The solution to this? Going into the VisionRGB configuration, manually wiping the EDID information, and using OBS as a video-out from the capture card instead after rebooting both the capture system and the testbench. This finally gets the AT3D to recognize the capture card as a regular monitor rather than a TV, and makes the TV features tab go away and unlocks the regular monitor settings.

The v2 BIOS does not do any of this.

I really don't have anything else to say about this card. The AT3D alone is already known for being one of if not THE worst graphics card to ever exist, and the extra sprinkle of weird behavior that my specific card shows is more or less just icing on the terribleness cake. The lack of the ability to really do anything aside from purely-2D tasks makes it hard to have much that can be done with the card in the first place. Though, I guess Baldur's Gate 1 works pretty well since it's a sprite-based isometric 3D game that only uses 2D rendering techniques.

Anyway yeah this card is peak jank lol. Have my card's weird BIOS that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet. The v2 BIOS is available from VGA Legacy MKIII.

Also the AT3D can run Tux Racer if you slap AltOGL on it. It crashes the whole system if you try and use the Techland wrapper, so the behavior is the polar opposite of ClassiCube 1.3.5.

Update: It appears that the Youtube RetroTechBytes also has a nearly-identical AT3D, peacock logo and all:

[dailyadventureprompts]

DM Tip: Getting Organized

Hey you, yes YOU, the person who has a sideblog where they reblog all their d&d content to use as a later reference. 

Why the HELL aren't you tagging your shit? Why are you just tossing my stuff (and I presume other people's) into a great big pile and expecting you're going to be able to so find it weeks or months or gods help you, years later? I go hunting in the tags of my own work for validation all the time, so don’t pretend I can’t see you reblogging 3-10 of my posts in a row without a way of sorting them. 

Take it from someone who’s had to hack their way through innumerable backlogs of their own making looking for one particular image/idea: you need a system, something that will let you access the content you want with the smallest amount of brain/time investment possible. This advice doesn’t only apply to tumblr, It applies to being a dungeonmaster as well, as any good idea you don’t write down is as good as lost. 

So, as a public service I’m going to go through a few different methods I’ve found helpful in keeping my ideas organized, and how you can use them to improve as a storyteller.

First step Journals

See all these? These represent the last 10 or so years of bad ideas, stray thoughts, and anxious scribblings I’ve had while trying to be a better dungeonmaster. The seeds of my best campaigns and my very worst mistakes are in there, as are the fundamentals of my current novel and a hundred other projects ranging somewhere between pre-production and the cutting room floor.  If I didn’t have these notebooks on hand, all those ideas would have just slipped into the aether, rather than having a way for me to reference them later. Every time I’m 50-100% through a journal, I go through it and type everything into a google doc, sorting it into dnd/non-dnd related stuff, and then further subdividing it into plot ideas, random concepts, future projects, or mechanical improvements.  Every journal gets its own google doc, and from there I suddenly have a decade of ideas at my fingertips, ready to recall. 

Next up, DM Binder: 

This right here? This is your tome of wonders, your tome of wily wizard tricks, that ubiquitous book that DMs are always pictured with whenever they get fantasy fanart of themselves. Every beginner dungeonmater knows how handy it is to have the DMG or other rulebook on hand so you can quickly page through and address a specific ruling or look something up, but eventually you get enough of a sense of how things should work that you don’t necessarily need to do that all the time. 

The instinct to have a book close at hand is a good one, you just need to upgrade the book in line with your skills. That’s where the DM binder comes in, a collection of everything you think you’d need to look up without being weighed down by all the stuff you already have on lock. Fill it with all the cool 3rd party systems you stumble across online, printouts of your own homebrew rules, and resources that help you cover for weaknesses in your natural talents. 

For instance, here’s what’s in my DM binder right now: 

Bulk grid paper if I need to draw something to explain it to the players

Writeups on the 3rd party XP and Talent point systems I use for levelup

Simplified encounter building rules if I need to create an encounter on the fly. Stand in monster stats. 

A one page d1000 list of character traits if I need to create an NPC on the fly. along with nearly 10,000 names. 

My simplified loot generation rules, along with a printout of various items that I can use to fill out a horde/magic item shop without having to go into my treasury docs (which is where I keep the good shit) 

A writer’s reference guide to different terrain types and the terminology used to refer to different parts of them. 

Random town/location/dungeon/quest/villain motivation lists. 

Collection of homebrew/3rd systems, separated by combat/downtime/etc

Generic dungeon layouts for different terrain types in case my party stumbles into something I didn’t plan, or if I get very, very lazy. 

Under the cut I’m going to go into a few more means to get organized, including a tried and true method of organizing your d&d sideblog that’ll turn your cluttered pile of notes into a solid archive. 

Google DOCs

Google drive is in invaluable tool if you’re going to be keeping notes, especially because you now have the ability to link between docs. Keep a whole folder full of ideas, and open a new subfolder for each of your campaigns. 

I highly recommend having a “random brainstorming” folder per campaign, while maintaining an actual physical journal specifically for at-table campaign knowledge. That way if you need to look something up, you can page through the handy guide you’ve made for yourself, rather than having to wade through all your ideas on past or future adventures. 

PDFs

there’s a lot of really good d&d content out there on Drivethru rpg, r/unearthed arcana and the DMsguild, but trying to sift through all of it for one particular piece of information is going to drive you mad. 

Make a D&d folder, and then a folder for every sort of thing you might want to sort: monsters, dm tools, adventures, settings, player stuff, each with as many subfolders as you think you might need. Also be sure to have a “ sorted through” folder if you’re like me and like transferring things like items or subclasses into their own docs. 

Tumblr Tags

Circling back to what started this post, I’d highly reccomend developing a tagging system if you want to keep a reference blog, one wiht a bit more detail than just tagging things “art” or “d&d” 

When you’re looking back through old ideas, you’ll generally want to tag things in one of three ways: 

Practical tags like “Mechanics” if you want to access general information on a topic

Hyper Specific tags like “Barfights” if you want to remember niche posts.  

or general tags like “Aesthetic: spooky” if you want to go wide and get inspiration from a lot of different ideas at once. 

Hope that helps some of you out there, even if it only saves you a little bit of time in the future, or inspires you to create some new tools for yourself. 

[marypsue]

I have been so very productive today. And I'm definitely not procrastinating on finishing either of the jobs I have on the go by finding and posting a snippet of former heroes for Sneak Peek Sunday.

Nope. Not me. Never.

...

Steve’s not sure how, exactly, so much of his life ended up revolving around kids.

Henderson’s kicked him and Robin both out of the back room, since all his little friends showed up. Pointing out that Henderson doesn’t actually work here had absolutely no effect, except to get Steve a glare from Nancy’s little brother, like Mike was trying to work out why Steve was even talking to them. The shitheads are starting to get entirely too cocky, in Steve’s opinion. Although, it’s not like they haven’t been pushing him around since the first time they all piled into his car.

“It’s kind of adorable how little respect they have for you,” Robin says, as Steve hands off a triple-scoop maple walnut cone to a giggling redhead in a blinding colour-blocked neon shirt and a double scoop of bubblegum to her equally giggly, equally garish friend.

“Do you want to scrub out the freezer? Because I could always make you scrub out the freezer.”

“Try it and I’ll tell Barbie on you,” Robin says, entirely unconcerned. And then, “Oh, great. Mallrats at six o’clock.”

“What? It’s barely half-past two -” Steve looks up, to see Erica Sinclair and her posse approaching the counter, and groans. “Don’t you ever get tired of ice cream? Wouldn’t you just love to go annoy the guys at the Orange Julius instead?”

“Nnnnope,” Erica says, popping the ‘p’, as she leans both arms from the elbow down against the counter in a clatter of pastel bead bracelets. “You’re the only suckers in this food court who give out free samples. Suckers.” She looks up at Robin and gives her lashes a too-innocent bat. “Speaking of which. How is the cherries jubilee flavour today?”

“No hablo inglés,” Robin says cheerfully. “Sprechen du Deutsch?”

Erica narrows her eyes at her.

And then turns that glare onto Steve.

Too many little sample spoons to count later, thankfully, the cluster of broke ten-year-olds around the counter is split by an actual customer. Steve gratefully ignores Erica’s complaints as he turns all his attention to – “Hey, are you even supposed to be here?”

The girl who’s apparently somehow both Hopper’s kid – yeah, the dead one – and Eleven’s sister raises an unimpressed eyebrow at Steve. “Look who’s talking.”

Steve kind of can’t argue with that.

“What’s your poison?” he asks, whipping his scoop out of its holster on his hip. Robin made fun of him for hours over that particular modification to the horrorshow that is the Scoops uniform. And wrote him up for both uniform and hygiene violations. Given that she’s somehow pulled the shift manager position, though, she’s really the only one reviewing those writeups, so Steve is pretty sure she did it entirely for her own amusement. She hasn’t missed a chance to make fun of him since last fall. He’s not sure why she’d start now.

Sara surveys the offerings in the freezer case. “What flavour is – ‘Blue Moon’?”

“It, uh -” Words fail Steve. “You really just have to try it.”

“I would also like to try the Blue Moon,” Erica pipes up, as prim as a church lady, but Steve’s got a paying excuse to ignore her, now.

He gratefully turns his back on her stuck-out tongue as he digs under the counter for another little box of sample spoons. “Sorry, for some weird reason we just keep going through these things.” He scoops up a little of the bright blue ice cream and holds it out for Sara, who takes the spoon, pops it into her mouth, and then frowns thoughtfully.

Robin, apparently, has been lurking in the food court watching for something to dispel the mallrats, because she passes by Erica and her friends on her way back in, Barbara in tow. “Hey, Steve, if you’re done with those -”

Sara turns around to see who’s coming up behind her, pulling the sample spoon out of her mouth with a sucking pop. Robin stops in the middle of a step and the middle of a word, blinking at her owlishly. “…hi.”

“Hi?” Sara repeats.

When Robin doesn’t say anything more, she half-turns back to face Steve. “You’re right. I have no idea what to call that flavour. Other than ‘blue’.”

The laugh that bursts out of Robin at that is strangled and high-pitched and too loud. She bites it off when she realises Barbara and Steve and Sara are all looking at her.

“I’m going to go scrub out the freezer,” she says, a little too fast, and then vanishes behind Steve and into the back.

[moonlightreal]

Winx news roundup

We’ve got a bit of season nine news and Straffi’s thoughts on the cancellation of Fate.  ‘Cause Straffi gonna Straffi!

 First via Winx Club Rus comes the news that season 9 will move from the preschool channel Rai Yoyo to an all ages channel Rai Gulp, that showed previous seasons.  This suggests that Rainbow may be having second thoughts about pointing Winx to ever younger audiences.  Hooray!  Interesting this happens right after Fate ended. 

Be cool if they decided to bring back WoW to try to appeal to the older audience.  I don’t think they will, but I liked WoW and I’m sad we missed Baba Yaga!

Also this picture is gorgeous.  I don’t know if it’s an early season 9 concept from before they decided to reboot the original costumes, or just fanart, but I like a pretty picture.

Next up we have posts by the man himself!  Straffi rarely speaks to the fans (which I think is smart of him) but he spoke up about the cancellation of Fate.

I’m not sure why he’s upset about how the news of fate was delivered; “it was cancelled” is pretty much the normal thing isn’t it?  At least the show didn’t drag it out or just ghost us like shows sometimes do!  Maybe they’re more polite about it in Italy.

Also there’s some shade thrown at the creators of Fate.  The discord I’m in was all over this accusing Straffi of throwing Brian Young under the bus and kinda yeah but also kinda, it’s true?  The people Netflix chose to make Fate made Fate to be the non-Winx saga and I’m not surprised Straffi is minimizing Fate as part of the Winx franchise now that it’s over.  It’s just so different from the image of “Winx” that must be in Straffi’s head.  Of course, if it was successful and brought Rainbow more piles of money would he have embraced it?  Quite possibly!

And Straffi immediately goes to how he’s gonna make a real, big budget live action movie with sparkling transformation sequences.  Hah!  You tell ‘em, Straffi!  I really hope he succeeds.  But yeah that was definitely not the politest thing ever to the Fate people.  Be nice Straffi, a lot of people worked hard and did their best and they deserve kind words.  It’s only the few showrunners who made the decisions to make Fate what it is.

All in all this is good news.  Our beloved animated show may not turn into a preschool show!  Straffi is pushing for a live action movie that could be Winx’s own PGSM!  And Fate was Fate.  Fate as a strange outgrowth of the Winx story, maybe a misstep but still another piece of story and its own added canon, and Fate as its own thing.  Even as Fate: Tales from Elemental Academy I have mixed feelings about the show but it’s not utterly awful.

...I say that while I put off writing up the last two episodes to watch Enola Holmes 2 and Rings of Power and whatever, and now I’ve got another batch of essays to write.  Look forward to more Fate writeups after I finish!

[thisismyrocket]

lately i've been thinking a lot about the "exact instructions sandwich challenge"

for the uninitiated, my understanding is that it's an exercise given to aspirant programmers that goes like this: programmer gets a friend or family member, and has ten minutes to write, on paper, a list of exact instructions on how to create a sandwich.

once the time is up, the partner takes the instructions, and their goal is to make the worst, sandwich possible while following the instructions exactly. so, they'll leave cupboards and bread bags open, put lettuce on top of the top bread slice, etc. real malicious compliance shit.

obviously, the goal for the "programmer" is to learn the importance of granular specificity, small and exact steps, and covering contingencies they might take for granted ane classify as "common sense" which is not obvious to their sandwich artist or their computers.

so you have to turn "get bread" into "open bread bag" then "remove bread slice" then " place bread slice on plate" then "close bread bag" or else the whole bag gets bagged ingredients piled on top.

that idea that, to a human, "get bread" is a single, intuitive, discrete task that implicitely includes all those "obvious" microsteps; whereas to a nonhuman machine, these are separate tasks that need tackled one at a time since they're not all "bundled"....

cutting to the chase. depending on my daily functioning level, my unspecified neurodivergence makes me more or less like the human or the "machine" in the scenario.

sometimes simple things are herculean and "pick up guitar" is equal in accessibility and one small step of many, as "practice guitar for today" is on good days.

it can be debilitating, frustrating, humiliating, and especially alienating. but in a sense, being able to "exact instructions sandwich" myself is a coping mechanism, is helpful.

especially since going from one "step" to another can be nearly physically painful for me, breaking tasks into small microtasks (like "open bread bag") can get me started. it's really, truly helpful.

i just wanted to writeup about it since it helps me. maybe it will help others, but mostly i wrote this in order to keep it all in one place in writing, and not only in my forgetful head. thanks for reading