#ESPECIALLY re: cutting things down that one is a BRUTAL war

[tyrannuspitch]

11,500 words into this project. still four chapters to go. gnawing on the bars of my cage. the next four will be FUN but i want to be FINISHED......

[lost-technology]

Dear My Brain, I do NOT need to do another massive Trigun AU right now. However, just to make you happy, I'll toss out my ideas here for "maybe someday." Okay, I'm on a Fallout-kick lately. Good show for my games, yes? A rare pretty decent live action adaptation of a set of video games. Definitely nods to fans / players there. Also been doing a little playing of Fallout 4. (Fallout 3 is the only game of the series I've played all the way through main quest sadly (maybe I'll download the classics from Steam...) Anyway, I've played with this notion for Trigun before - but only in the "if they were players." I made perks / gameplay styles for the main characters. So, what are you doing, brain? Why are you starting to come up with ideas for an actual story for me to write as a crossover?!!! Especially when I do not know if there are enough people who like both properties AND read fanfiction to be interested in a crossover AU / fusion fic - then again, I tend to write things primarily for my own delight, anyway. I was telling myself "no, these two things are already too similar, there's really no need," but then came the idea that "no, there are some things unique enough to the Fallout setting that you could really have fun with the Trigun characters wandering a post nuclear North America rather than Planet Gunsmoke / No Man's Land." I could even interchangeably refer to the Wasteland as No Man's Land... Okay, Brain, so you're telling me that in this fusion universe, Vault-Tec had a subsidiary that worked closely with the budding U.S. space program, which if I am not mistaken, is canon (that satellite-dish quest in Fallout 3 and that experimental for space-colonisation front Vault concealing the real experiment in the Nuka-World expansion for 4). SEEDS was sort of its own separate thing, more benevolent than the Vaults and free from their wild secret experiments. Their mission was open: Developing a new, yet profitable, source of power for the cooperate overlords to profit from, being a failsafe for re-terraforming the Earth in the event of a nuclear war, and being a study for close-quarter scientist-living for potential space colonies. SEEDS Vault 05 (as distinct from Vault 5, SEEDS gets a different class) saw the successful bioengineering of life forms they called Plants. They were actually developed shortly before the war of 2077, but were not considered perfected. After the bombs dropped and the doors sealed, further study showed the Plants' potential as essentially living G.E.C.Ks (Garden of Eden Creation Kits). A living answer to the G.E.C.K, water-chips, cold-fusion... Even a potential way to divest from the atomic energy that America had been depending on since the end of WWII. (Fallout, for non-players, is an AU of reality diverging at WWII's end). And then Independents are born. Rem Saverem, a rogue scientist who rebels against Vault-Tec's lack of ethics managed to smuggle out the first Independent. Poor Tesla, being a little girl she had to send out, but the Hell of the Wastes were literally a better shot for her survival than for her to stay in the SEEDS-Vault. Sometime later, a pair of twin boys are born and Rem manages to convince the crew not to make them into test subjects. Until she can't. Cue big escape scene where she gets Vash and Nai out of the vault and dies in a hail of bullets right before them as guards cut her down and come after them... And so starts the journey of pair of living McGuffins who can either save the world or destroy it in search of their lost sister. Nai eventually becomes Millions Knives, a brutal Wasteland warlord bent on the destruction of humankind. Vash is on the run with bounties upon bounties upon him. He meets a ghoul named Wolfwood, dependant upon a certain kind of Chem to heal his wounds and to keep him from going feral and a couple of reporter-ladies from one of the larger settlement-cities intent upon uncovering Wasteland mysteries.

[galacticwildfire]

Fire Meet Gasoline | Poe Dameron

Two

Poe Dameron x Solo Original Character

Hope Solo’s haunted by the night the temple burned. Having gone rogue she hunts the First Order in search of answers until a fateful encounter with Poe Dameron brings her back to the Resistance and Leia puts her daughter under his command to find Luke Skywalker.

Word count: 10k

Tags/warnings: simp poe, exhausted leia, snap lowkey living for the dramatic irony, resistance command having a panic attack, lando being the favourite uncle/minor hypocrite, mentions of war crimes/systematic kidnapping and indoctrination of children, grandpa vader, alcohol consumption and swearing, threatening with a blaster, angst. Leia Pov, flashbacks to before the awakening.

A/N: They don't interact this chapter but from next one onwards the story kicks off. I have a prequel published that I'll be updating as I go on ao3. All my stories are written for adults with adult themes, I use appropriate tags but read at your discretion.

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Leia

Poe leaves, more than a little deflated he doesn't get to go and try to find her. He's a brilliant asset and usually pretty sharp, so while the fact my own daughter's left him void of common sense is unexpected, I can't blame that alone for him not putting two and two together.

I'd only recruited him a few months ago, half a year after I'd begun telling people Hope had returned to university to finish her education in order to take up politics full time. I'd encouraged her at several points to return to school considering she'd gotten herself expelled when she was sixteen, believing it would be useful to redirect her away from the path she was spiralling down but her commitment to the cause may just be greater than my own, or rather her obsession with hunting down Snoke.

I had always admired her keen sense of justice and the passion that came with it, that was until seeing it in action and learning just how brutally efficient she can be. Certainly the product of two generations of generals and senators, unfortunately with Han's impatience for both war and politics. She's always given as good as she's gotten, certainly a stark reminder of how I was at the same age. Except she's always taken things too far, never truly letting go of a slight and always evening the score, and that was before she began seeing herself as the sole harbinger of divine justice upon the First Order.

It should have been a simple mission, reconnaissance, but it was my error in believing she could physically walk away from an injustice, it's not in her nature, especially not the kidnapping of children by the First Order when Lando's own daughter had been victim of it.

Cutting down the storm troopers to free them and help them escape was one thing, I wouldn't have expected her to do any different even if the sight had jarred me deeply, but it was when she got her hands on their captain it all went wrong. I'd seen her use the force to inflict pain on different occasions, always on impulse and without thought, out of desperation to protect, but this was torture.

She didn't ask where the children were to be taken, didn't ask anything that could have mitigated what she'd done or gather the intel we needed but continued on her own vendetta. Somewhere in her demanding to know Snoke's location, something a mid-rank officer certainly didn't have, the captain made the mistake of mentioning the name Kylo Ren and in her own words, she snapped.

And I had to once again cover up my children's crimes.

It only seemed fitting that she should re-educate herself on the fragile state of galactic politics and what the repurcussions of such an act could be through returning to university and serving the galaxy rather than blindly attacking it. I had to pull every favour I still had to keep it from reaching the ears of the senate. Her return to Naboo seemed to satisfy the rest of command and my few contacts in the navy such as Ematt who were aware of the incident.

Even if it was utter bullshit.

I've known very well she's been flying about the outer rims working for pirates and the like, assumably to try to get a rise out of her father.

Han and I's separation was mutual, amicable as it could be considering the circumstances, but it was never that way in Hope's eyes. I understood Han physically couldn't stay in the home we'd shared with our children, and I struggled to look at him without seeing Ben, but he never wanted to leave Hope. He'd asked her to go with him in the Falcon but she wouldn't leave me. She was too focused on fighting a war that hadn't even begun to see that her father was all but pleading with her to go with him away from the cold war that was forming.

Except in her eyes war was declared the moment a suspected First Order agent exposed the truth about Darth Vader to the galaxy, Ben finally turning was the final blow.

For the Resistance this is a cold war but for Hope she's been fighting ever since she was seventeen. Han didn't understand it, he couldn't understand the visions that plagued her or the nightmares that haunted her. He couldn't stay, and she couldn't leave. We both saw her slowly slipping further into the darkness despite how desperately we'd fought to keep her from it, but he was the one who swore he couldn't watch another child lose themselves to it. That was our final fight, over him leaving his daughter.

She wasn't even eighteen.

Now she's out there looking for him and he's nowhere to be found, too ashamed to face either of us since falling back into old habits. Not even his daughter making a reputation for herself as a scoundrel has been able to draw him out of whatever hole he's been hiding in from the Guavian Death Gang to face her, and now she's digging herself into that same hole. Even if Lando insists from what he's heard that she's made herself into quite the successful scoundrel, no doubt exploiting Jedi mind tricks in a way that would certainly drag Luke out of hiding just to lecture her for it.

As for this Naboo starfighter, she didn't have one in her possession when she left this base but it's only natural she'd acquire one since she spent her teenage years pushing them to their limits to the point she got herself suspended from the Naboo Starfighter Corps for pulling some mad stunt that made Han proud. It breaks my heart knowing how far she's gone to try to find him, or as it now seems to spite him when she always worshipped him.

Before she could even read she'd spend hours in the cockpit of the Falcon asking question after question as Han showed her each and every control and he'd would spend hours answering every single one, beyond thrilled he had a little version of himself. She was always his little co-pilot as Han put it and Chewie was happy enough to let her take the reins, more often than not having her on his knee until she grew old enough to reach everything herself.

She was a happy child, with big bright eyes and a soft face framed with my dark hair, knowing with a mixture of pain and acceptance that she has the same blue eyes that my father had. While Hope took after my side physically, and in many factors emotionally for better and for worse, the way she'd speak, the awestruck look in her eyes whenever she'd gaze upon the stars.. it was all Han's. He adored her right from the moment he delivered her onboard the Falcon after an unfortunate hyperlane blockade complicated matters, sitting her on his lap in the pilots seat, just a few hours old, and declaring her the youngest pilot in the galaxy. She would certainly grow to have his heart and need to be amongst the stars.

He never recovered from finding her the morning after the temple burned. I could feel she was alive but he couldn't. He thought she was dead when we saw her body on the ground from the cockpit, he still thought she was dead when we landed and saw the blood and ash caking her face and the burns across her body, he believed she was dead right until he had her in his arms and found she was somehow half conscious despite the searing pain she was in.

It broke Han. He blamed himself for not protecting her from the one person who we believed would never harm her. Ben might have come to hate us by that point, but never Hope. He'd been jealous of her when she was a baby with six years in age between them, something certainly neither Han or I planned, she was a surprise but certainly a very welcome one.

But Ben... he hated her until she grew to idolise him almost as much as Han, he was a lonely child and suddenly he had a little sister who looked at him like he was a hero and he would have done anything to keep her safe. He was her brother, her teacher, and she was the one person in the galaxy he still loved after believing everyone else had abandoned and betrayed him.

Yet there she was, half dead with lightsaber burns across her body and neither Luke or Ben anywhere to be found.

Hope insists she doesn't remember what happened after lightning hit the temple, whether Luke somehow erased those memories or she's suppressed them I don't know, but it took her months to admit it was Ben who had left the scar on her arm, months before she could even speak about what happened that night. She says she doesn't remember receiving the lightsaber burn to her leg but insists Ben never meant to kill her or anyone else that night, that he'd maimed her in an attempt to subdue her from fighting back before lightning hit the temple. Insisting that however she received the burn to her leg that put her in hospital for a week came afterwards.

I have my own dark theories regarding that.

I look up as Poe comes in again, except with Snap this time. "Yes Captain Wexley?"

"I'll leave for the recon mission now in case the First Order decides to clean up any proof they were in the sector." He slowly looks to Poe who stands there no doubt believing he's come up with some foolproof plan judging by his self assured smile. "Poe's concerned I might need a wingman with the amount of tie's in the system and wants to come with me."

I just sigh as I look between them, Poe's nervous excitement clear for anyone to see. I've become fond of Poe because of how much he reminds me of Hope. From the very first time I met him and lectured him for nearly getting himself killed and he answered with some bullshit excuse it felt like I was speaking to my daughter for the first time in months, so this is a sweet irony.

"That was exceptionally foolish of you," I'd told him, looking right at Poe sitting there drenched in sweat after having Ematt bring him to me after he'd just narrowly escaped the First Order. "You barely got out of there with your life."

"In my defense, General," he began and I leaned back in my seat, anticipating his response. "There's no way I could've known I'd find a First Order staging point."

"But you hoped you would," I said, having been through this routine easily a dozen times before with Hope so I knew how it went, and felt an ache at how long it had been since I'd had to have such a conversation. "Or something like it."

"Yes," he admitted sheepishly but he clearly didn't regret it. I couldn't help but smile to myself as much as I'd tried not to.

"The need to do what's right," I continued, able to read him accurately by that point. "And maybe find a little adventure along the way."

He'd shifted in his seat, a nervous admittance that I was right, and I felt a strange comfort knowing Hope was doing just that, living a life of adventure no matter how misguided she might be.

"You remind me of my daughter," I'd said and he seemed surprised. "Fly like her too apparently."

He blinked, not sure of whether to be flattered or not by my tone. "Is that a compliment?"

"I'm hoping we'll see."

I'd recruited him that day and I've never regretted that decision, although I couldn't have anticipated I'd become equally fond and frustrated with him in a way I've only ever been with my own daughter, so this truly is a sweet irony. Although something tells me Poe wouldn't be able to look me in the eye for at least a month if he knew it was my daughter he was gushing to me about, Snap however from the equally exasperated and amused look on his face has certainly pieced together who Poe encountered.

"It seems this rogue pilot destroyed all of them so I'm not overly concerned," I say and tell them. "Poe you can do that mission report, Snap see what data you can get and if you come across this pilot I trust you'll know what to say."

Snap's known Hope since the first Resistance meeting and along with L'ulo helped get her used to flying the old x-wing's we acquired and solidify the training she received on Naboo. She respects him enough she'd at least hear him out before jumping to lightspeed. If anything she sees Snap as a brotherly figure so I have some confidence he could convince her to come back if they ran into each other.

"And this pilot," Snap says, snapping his fingers in thought before asking Poe. "How old did you say she seemed?"

"Um, early twenties?" he answers, Snap too obviously trying to cover for his wingman in assuring me Poe thinks she's of a more suitable age for him to be fawning over even if he is technically correct that she's in her early twenties. Considering I was younger than Hope and Han was older than Poe when we met I can't exactly say much and she'd no doubt remind me of that fact if she was here, meanwhile Poe takes the opportunity to keep pressing the matter. "Look even if she doesn't have any proper navy training I'd be happy to sort that out and take her under my command. I'm not sure what history's there but again I just want to say how great of an asset I believe-"

"I'll remember that," I assure him, ending the conversation there and dismissing them both. "Thank you Captain Wexley, Commander Dameron."

Poe looks confused but nonetheless follows Snap out of my office. I'm wise enough by now to know some things are not just mere chance, he's been able to confirm for me this pilot is Hope, the physical description was enough for me but the ego certainly sealed it. She's twenty now, so Poe isn't exactly mistaken in his assessment, she reached that milestone towards the end of the last year not that she was here for me to see it. If anything Poe's blatant interest in her only makes the realisation she's grown up hit harder. Her youth had been robbed from her before she'd even turned seventeen, she at her own insistence became a child soldier and threw herself into the field, I couldn't have stopped her even if I wanted to, but it's knowing my daughter's turned from a renegade teenager to an equally renegade woman without me there to see it that hurts.

Counting the birthdays of one missing child is hell enough let alone two.

I could send Poe to find her and try to convince her to come back, both of them certainly believe themselves to be the best starpilots in the galaxy and I dare say they are from what I've seen them do. Even with the natural talent Hope's inherited I've never known a pilot to put as much dedication into their training as she has from such a young age, twelve years old and petitioning the Queen of Naboo herself to allow her to fly in their starfighter corps along with enrolling to undertake their gruelling handmaiden training so she could get her hands on a blaster. Luke always had concerns over her lack of seriousness when it came to her Jedi training, but the attention and devotion she lacked elsewhere she put into flying and unfortunately fighting.

Flying is her lifeblood and I know the same can be said for Poe, which is why I know if I had to send a pilot to chase her down it would be him. He'd be the only pilot in the galaxy who'd have a chance, although I dare say she's taken on her father's talents in rigging hyperdrives and thrusters to speeds that should be by all counts impossible, and certainly illegal, which would complicate things.

Regardless, she doesn't know him and she certainly wouldn't listen to him, and there could be very serious consequences if it were to be discovered she's the one piloting the starfighter that's fallen on both the First Order's and the Navy's radars from the intelligence I've received. Until I know for certain just how much trouble she's found herself in it's best to keep this information classified and from the rest of command until I can cover up the extent of her antics, I've certainly become quite skilled at that by now.

But the thought does give me an idea. Operation Saber Strike, a heist to hijack a ship and steal intelligence from a senator with links to the First Order. It'll be the most dangerous mission the Resistance will have conducted to date. Poe's been the most obvious candidate but I've been hesitant since the Resistance cannot be linked to it and if anything were to go wrong we would not be able to send a team to recover him.

But if Hope were there that would change the odds considerably, and from her reported exploits with Hondo Ohnaka she should have no problems with it. At least she hasn't reached her father's level of stupidity in swindling Hutts, yet.

And so I contact Lando, he might be the last person in the galaxy who could talk sense into her aside from Han and if she's still on Tatooine then we might just have a chance.

When his image appears he immediately asks "Have you heard from Hope?"

He lost his daughter when she was still so young, we almost lost Hope that day as well to the Empire's kidnappers, remnants that would become the First Order. I know Hope is the closest thing he still has to a daughter, and as it stands he is the closest she has to a father. The only man in our family who hasn't disappointed her, he may not be blood but he's her uncle, the only one she has left.

"I found her."

The relief in his voice is unmistakable. "Where?"

"Tatooine, one of my pilots had a run in with her on patrol just an hour ago, came just in time to find her ambushing a squadron of tie fighters," I inform him, wishing it was Han I was telling this to. He'd be trying to hide proud laughter and asking how many she shot down, the same proud laughter he had whenever she'd do something I'd disapprove of. But he isn't here. "Bring her home."

"Leia," Lando says heavily. "You know she came to me when she ran away from base and hasn't stepped foot here since I tried to talk sense into her, that was almost a year ago and she still hasn't shown her face. I can try to track her down and get her to come home but she's Han's daughter, we both know that's easier said than done."

"She's gone rogue," I say, knowing if she's left Poe this impressed she must have been truly stupidly reckless, not to mention the utterly suicidal amount of tie's she's been targeting. "Which is why I'm sending you, to let her uncle have a word with her before I send in x-wings to ground her and forcibly drag her back."

I let Ben slip through my fingers, I'm not making the same mistake twice.

"Alright," he promises me. "I'll find her but I can't promise I'll be able to convince her to do anything. You know how stubborn she is."

"Tell her I have a mission for her," I say, knowing the reason she left and didn't return was because we grounded her. "And that it's time to get back in the x-wing."

He nods and as the transmission ends I'm praying I'm making the right decision.

Grounding her was the hardest decision I've made since starting the Resistance, when she took off I knew she'd go to Lando to try to cool down, but it was when she turned on him as well I truly began to worry. For months I was terrified, I was used to her taking a couple weeks away from base without contact to compose herself but this time it was different. But it seems now my worst fears were just that, she hasn't turned to the darkside or gone after Ben, not successfully at least, she's more Solo than Skywalker and I need to hold onto that.

I have to.

Still, I need to know what to expect and so I access the the flight recordings from Poe's mission since I don't want to wait for the report to know what happened and I just need to hear her voice to convince myself this is real.

When it begins it's Poe talking about nothing to BB-8 as usual before noticing the tie-fighters.

"Crap, they're going after a civilian ship, you know what that means buddy?" BB-8 beeps in reply. "Yep, it means this patrol just got interesting, ready for some action?"

I shake my head at how excited he sounds, Hope might have left but when it comes to giving command headaches Poe fills her place perfectly. Ematt's said more than once that he's glad he's not the one having to oversee his missions anymore despite how much he praises him, all while Ackbar once remarked he may as well be a Solo with how he flies. I know Hope would have been considerably proud to know she was the Solo in mind Ackbar was referring to. There may be two Captain Solo's, but one's significantly more notorious on this base than the other.

Poe's just as brilliant as she is, an invaluable asset, a pilot that would make his mother proud, but at this point I've come to accept brilliant pilots seem to think they're an exception to the rules.

Although he does try significantly harder to follow them to his credit.

"You see that BB!" I hear Poe yell at whatever stupidly reckless manoeuvre she's pulling, able to hear the explosions through the recording and there are many of them. "Come on, let's go follow them through the asteroid belt. Don't worry, I'll make sure you don't get bumped."

Poe's love for his droid is something I've certainly only ever seen in Hope, and that's saying something considering my family. From when Hope was a baby she was obsessed with R2 and so when we decided to send Hope off to university Luke told me it was time R2 had a younger companion who could give him the love and adventure he deserves and he's certainly gotten that.

Hope's always liked droids more than people, but I've thought on more than one occasion that Hope and Poe would actually get along quite well if they met and put their egos aside, that she could even come to see him as an older brother, but it seems I'm sorely mistaken in that assessment.

I listen carefully as he makes contact.

"Naboo starfighter identify yourself."

I don't expect to tear up at the sound of her voice after so long, but I do. "No, I don't think I will."

"Before you get cocky are you aware you were just ambushed by a squadron of tie-fighters belonging to the First Order and that I came to assist?"

"I was the one ambushing them," she says and I can hear the smile in her voice. For so long I've been worried sick she's been in some cantina drinking herself to death or out of her mind but here she is, my Hope. "I'd thank you for your assistance but you were a little late."

"It's a shame, I thought this patrol was about to get interesting."

I can't help but roll my eyes at Poe's remark, it's past time I gave him another lecture regarding engagement seeing as he's getting too comfortable in the field.

"I didn't think New Republic pilots were allowed to engage," I hear her say, she's not an idiot as much as she acts like one, she'd know damn well it's a Resistance pilot by the model of the x-wing. "Am I under arrest officer?"

"Oh for the love of the force," I cringe at the flirtatious tone of her voice, suddenly wishing I just waited for the damn transcripts and begin to realise I'm going to have an absolute handful between her and Poe if Lando manages to convince her to come back. They might just get along better than I'd anticipated judging by Poe's infautation.

Maker help me.

I continue listening to their back and forth, waiting for something that could give me any additional information or hint that something is wrong, but she sounds happier than she ever did in the months before she left base and somehow that only hurts, proving to me a failure on my part.

"A moonjockey in a beaten up x-wing?" I hear her tease despite the state of her own that still sits in the hanger.

"Beaten up?" He repeats and can't help but chuckle to myself despite the tears in my eyes. "Not everyone's got the credits to be flying state of the art N-1's so why don't you tell me what organisation you're with? Bounty hunters guild or something like that, hired security?"

Now I become curious, Threepio's network has a significant amount of intelligence on her but I've been reluctant to hear any of it aside from trying to pinpoint her location, telling Threepio that as long as she's alive and not actively trying to get herself or others killed I don't want to know the details of her criminal adventures, the same can be said for Han. If I allowed myself to hear everything Threepio has to say about them I would have been dead from a heart attack months ago.

"Something like that," she says and I purse my lips knowing there is only one man on Tatooine who would be hiring her for that kind of work. Surely she can't be stupid enough to work for Boba Fett? No, not stupid enough, but she is spiteful enough. "Maybe I'm just a pilot like you who's sick of those bastards and decided to take matters into my own hands."

Well, at least she hasn't changed one bit in that regard in the time she's been gone.

"You know," I hear Poe begin. "The Resistance is looking for pilots."

I hear the amusement in her voice and even I can appreciate the irony. "Is that so?"

"I was tracking the tie's that got behind you before you went into the asteroid field, counted fourteen you took out with those canons, make's you a double ace, triple if you count the one's you herded into the asteroids."

"I'm a quadrouple," she corrects and I can't help but smile as frustrated as I am she's put herself in a position to become one. "And that was easy work."

"You're a hell of a pilot, I've only ever known two pilots to pull off that manoeuvre you did and I'm one of them, definitely the only other one to be able to pull it off in space. If you're as good as you seem I can put you in touch with General Leia Organa herself."

Poe's starting to get a little big for his boots but in this situation he's right, and considering the intelligence he brought to me without even knowing it I can't fault him, and despite his ego I know he's deserving of the trust I've put in him, just as I know Hope is.

"I know I'm a hell of a pilot, best one there is."

Han's daughter alright.

"I don't know about that," Poe tells her and I sigh, already I know where it's going. At least I was correct in assuming their ego's would quickly come into play. "But I'd be willing to see what you've got."

"Is that so?"

"That's right."

"Alright hotshot," she says and I cringe again, regretting not waiting for the transcript, but there's an ache in my chest as well. I'd almost forgotten how difficult it could be to listen to my daughter and remember her father so vividly, something I know put distance between us. Except now I find myself also mourning the girl I was at her age, knowing how greatly I've always underestimated how much she takes after me as well as Han. "You know, I never got your name."

"Commander Poe Dameron," he answers and ironically adds "Of the Resistance if you haven't put that part together yet."

"Commander huh?" she says, and know she's no doubt trying to profile him considering she was only a captain and hear the bitter undertone to her voice. Turns out the trouble they could give me may very well go either way. "You must be a flyboy then."

"The best," he says and I sigh knowing this base might not be big enough for both their ego's, which they certainly live up to. "And you still haven't identified yourself."

"And I'm not going to," she says, no doubt thinking he's an idiot for not putting it together but he certainly wasn't doing much thinking and she didn't seem as disinterested as I'd expect. Considering the closest she's ever come to a relationship was with a blue skinned Twi'lek girl from the temple I hadn't exactly accounted for flyboys being her type, but then again I thought the same about myself once. "But I'm sure you'll figure it out Commander, give General Organa my regards."

I purse my lips at that, sitting in contemplation as the recording continues to play out before I can be bothered to switch it off.

"Ah shit, she's taken off," he says and sighs before saying "She's something huh BB, is that what love at first sight feels like? Because wow."

It ends there and I don't know if I should be thankful or not that's the extent of the flirting but that's an issue that can be dealt with later. In the meantime Poe can be as lovestruck as he likes but that'll soon fade when he realises she'll unfortunately detest him for outranking her, at least until they get to know one another, and I'll deal with whatever comes of that when the time comes. She could certainly do far worse than Poe. 

Perhaps this encounter could just motivate her to come back, for Hope there's no greater motivator than spite and the need to prove herself, and if I give her a mission that should seal the deal for her. I just want her back, my idiot daughter who I love more than anything in the galaxy. I want her back as much as she drives me even crazier than Han does. I need her back.

I pray Lando can get through to her, but I still need to know exactly what work she's been doing in the Outer Rims in order to ensure there won't be any legal complications that could come with her returning to the Resistance.

"Threepio," I call out and he comes in. "I need to know everything you got on what Hope's been doing for the last year."

"Oh dear," Threepio says. "General, you may want to sit down for this."

"I am sitting."

"Oh yes my mistake, then you should hold onto the arms of the chair," he says but I know he's been dying to get it out. "You will not like it."

"Which is all the more reason to know."

"Well where to start, yes, let us start with our old friend Boba Fett, and that was sarcasm if you could not tell..."

~

Hope

After cleaning up the outpost the tie's came from I return to Mos Espa to collect my payment, the encounter certainly playing on my mind with a mix of bitter jealousy and satisfaction. Despite the pure anxiousness I feel knowing Mom will no doubt put two and two together I can't help but smile to myself at the thought of this commander. Am I slightly pissed that someone's who's been there less than a year is a commander while I was stripped of being a captain? Absolutely, but he's left an impression. There's just something about him.

Although that excitement quickly fades when I step inside the palace and remember the conversation that had me walking out of here just hours ago.

"There were twenty four ties all up," I tell Boba, having encountered some more while targeting the outpost. Just one short of being able to claim to be a mega ace. "Three separate squadrons of varying sizes. I found where they were stationed on the moon of Chenini, small outpost but I destroyed it. Their activities drew enough attention I had a run in with a Resistance commander but I'd taken them out before he could get a shot in."

While I'm quite proud of that he's displeased, but not with me. "Twenty four stationed on one of the moons, that is worse than I'd anticipated." He has Fennec Shand bring forward my payment, an elderly lady but I'd never cross her. She looks seventy and fifty at the same time and is still attractive enough to make me question myself morally. "You've earned every credit but I have a bonus for you." I raise an intrigued eyebrow. "You've been searching for the Millennium Falcon yes?"

"Yes," I say, my heart skipping a beat at the mention. "Maz Kanata told me it was stolen by Gannis Ducain."

"Who is currently in Mos Eisley," he says and I feel my lips curl into a dangerous smile. "I recommend you get there before he learns you roam these parts and takes off."

"Thank you for the bonus," I grin as I take my payment and make my way out with a hand on my blaster, eager to put it to use. "Come on R2, let's go get my ship."

~

Not even ten minutes later I've landed in Mos Eisley but there's no sign of the Falcon, even so enough people must know why I'm here because the moment they see me with a blaster in hand they point the way to the cantina.

The moment I step inside it falls quiet and immediately I set my eyes on Gannis Ducain, having gotten a description of him from Maz Kanata a few months back.

"Solo!" a voice yells out. "Tell your daddy he owes me-" without looking away from Ducain I fire a blaster bolt at the man harassing me, shooting the drink out of his hand before turning my blaster on Ducain.

He slowly raises his hands, Maz had told me Dad hired him to fill in for Chewie as crew and that he stole the ship out from under him as thanks, so I'm not swayed to sympathy.

"My ship," I say, keeping my blaster on him as he slowly starts moving out from behind the booth.

"It's-" he begins before deciding to make a run for it and I wonder just how stupid he is as I chase him out onto the street, I could use the force to stop him but bodyslamming him against the wall of the cantina is much more satisfying.

"My ship," I repeat as he struggles only to find himself frozen and his eyes widen in alarm. "You know who I am?"

His voice shakes as he answers me "Yes, yes -princess."

I give a satisfied nod. "You have one chance to tell me where my ship is."

I don't give threats, I don't need to, having the reputation as the heir of Vader's more than enough without the other accusations that follow. On base I'm just Han and Leia's little girl, but out here people recognise me as more than that.

R2 for once doesn't beep in alarm but stands there backing me up, knowing full well what Ducain did. He might try to prevent me from committing violence with a lightsaber due to some specific traumas but he never stands between me and someone who's betrayed our family.

"The Irving boys," he rasps out and insists "They stole it from me."

I'm almost disappointed he gave up so quickly and pull my blaster away from his head, knowing if the Irving Boys have it this is going to be more difficult than I'd hoped.

"The Irving Boys?"

"Yes, please don't kill me," he pleads and I'm mildly alarmed that's the first thing he thinks I'd do, it's not far off but still. "I made a mistake, I'm sorry-"

I'm tempted to push for more answers but freeze when I hear Lando's voice. "That's enough, he gave you an answer, put the blaster away."

The shock of his voice has me frozen, but only for a moment. "He stole my ship."

"If I remember right that was my ship first and you heard me, blaster away."

I curse under my breath, reluctantly shoving my blaster back in its holster and letting Ducain go before turning to look at Lando, finding myself gagged for words as he looks at me with a mixture of pain and disappointment, Ducain's boots kicking up the gravel as he makes a run for it.

"I tried to track you down for your twentieth but you're a hard person to find these days," he remarks and I know he's going to let me have it. He's always been the fun uncle but he knows when to draw a line. "I still remember when you were two and kept trying to steal my blaster to play with. I remember telling Han you'd be trouble, daughter of a princess and a scoundrel, that your defiance would shake the stars and by the maker have you certainly lived up to that."

"What can I say?" I try to smile. "If I'm gonna be trouble I might as well be good at it."

He looks momentarily humoured by that, proud almost, but still tries to put on a stern face. "Is this what you're doing? Running around the Outer Rims and making a name for yourself to piss off Han?"

"If I recall you made a name for yourself once," I remind him. "It's you and Dad I learned this from after all."

He shakes his head, not quite judging my choice of career but my other choices. "If you'd learned anything from us you wouldn't be working with Hondo Ohnaka and Boba Fett."

At least he doesn't know about robbing a Hutt blind.

"You're right," I acknowledge before pointing out. "It's why I'm rolling in credits while Dad's in debt to half the Outer Rim."

He raises an eyebrow and whistles "Well look who's still a little smartass, tell me how much are they paying you to do whatever it is you've been doing out here."

"Anywhere from five to fifty thousand credits for a smuggling job without commission and I just got twenty four thousand for taking out twenty four tie-fighters, a thousand for each one's the deal I struck with Boba Fett," I tell him proudly. "When you're the last Jedi in the galaxy who isn't hiding and the best pilot in it you can afford to be selective with your pricing."

He's impressed but tries to hide it. "Alright you're definitely doing better than Han but that's beside the point, tell me, are you actually happy doing this?"

"I'm not happy no matter what I'm doing so does it matter?" I answer with my arms crossed over my chest. "If I'm going to be miserable I might as well be rich."

He's trying hard to say I'm wrong but we both know I'm right. Even so he still tries. "You're a princess, you don't need to smuggle maker knows what to be rich."

"I smuggle artifacts, contraband, weapons and supplies, not spice or people," I assure him, I may have smuggled spice that one time but he doesn't need to know that. "Unlike you and Dad."

Lando's eyebrows shoot up at the audacity. "Spice yes, people no."

"You sold Hera Syndulla," I remind him, remembering Hera telling that story during a reunion when I was still a kid.

"One time, and I'd planned to swindle that guy and get her out," he tries to argue. "And besides it's not my criminal career we're here to discuss. You're working with Boba Fett so any moral argument you have is irrelevant, you're a princess you should be with your Mom instead of doing whatever this is."

"I have a code, I don't deal with that kind of thing and I only take work from people who were Jedi or Rebel sympathisers," I still try to explain. "And as for being a princess Mom only gave me that title when she was ruined in the senate and needed someone to take her place. I never grew up as one, there's no Alderaan, it's a political position that means I get to curse people out in the senate and petition them for money we don't have."

"Speaking of your Mom," Lando begins and I look away. "She wants you to come home. She's worried sick about you Hope."

I immediately shake my head, as if in reflex. "Her and I have nothing to talk about, and the only real home I ever had was the Falcon considering I was shipped from Hosnian Prime to Naboo to Ossus on repeat for years, and you made me let Ducain go before I could get more information."

"There isn't any more information to get out of him, and if I recall interrogations with a lightsaber were how you got into this mess in the first place," he says and I can't meet his eye as he references the incident. "Hope despite what you believe, you were justified in what you did to get those kids out and save from from being indoctrinated into becoming stormtroopers. You know damn well your Mom and I would never condemn you for that, especially not me."

"But she did," I argue gently and he shakes his head.

"She condemned you for trying to torture a First order officer for answers," he corrects. "You saved lives that day even if it went against the rules and she was proud of that, but not what came afterwards." I can't say anything, keeping my eyes trailed on the ground as he continues. "You know ever since you were a teenager I've helped you get out of whatever mess you've found yourself in because I'm your uncle and it's what I'm here for. You know I've always told you that if you ever need help and don't want to go to your parents to come find me and we'll sort it out."

Whatever attitude I have quickly disappears with Lando, him being the one person in my family I can't find a reason to be angry with. Not when he's been the only one other than Mom to stick around.

"I know," I say quietly, regretting being so angry when he told me to go home after I'd come to him when I first ran away.

That day I'd cut down a squadron of stormtroopers, until then I'd never used my saber on another person. I'd felt first hand the absolute agony of being on the receiving end of an attack and knew the people behind those helmets weren't wholly evil, that they were once children like Lando's own daughter who were taken and brainwashed. As much as I hate to admit it, it was shame along with Mom's own horror that led me to run.

I know Ben would have called me weak for even feeling shame about harming someone who wouldn't think twice about taking a shot at me, but I killed them and realised for the first time that despite my anger I might not have what it takes to destroy an entire order when the death's of a few stormtroopers haunted me. Maybe it's the fact that I didn't feel any hesitation or guilt until after the act that disturbed me the most. Torn between pure apathy and blinding anger and who I was raised to be.

Lando walks over and puts his hands on my shoulders. "Let me buy you a drink and we can sit and talk before you try to run away again, okay?"

I give a stiff nod and feel tears prick in my eyes as he hugs me tight, unable to remember the last time I'd even hugged anyone. It would have been Mom, how long ago I can't say. At least a year, probably longer than that considering all we did was fight. It's all I can do not to burst into tears as he lets me go and we head into the cantina.

~

We sit there in a booth at the back with drinks in hand, the silence heavy until he breaks it "So you've been rolling in credits and you don't even have a cape?"

I can't help but smile "I have several I'm just not wearing one."

"Ah, so I did teach you something then," he says and winks like he always would when I was younger, it brings me comfort. "Tell me has Hondo tried to swindle you yet?"

"Yes but it didn't quite work in his favour so I swindled him back," I say, laughing to myself. "You know Hondo, profit above all else but as it would turn out the old pirate has a soft spot for Jedi."

"Really?" he repeats in surprise. "I thought the only thing he'd have a soft spot for's credits."

"Turns out him and grandpa Vader had a duel once and he can't stop boasting about it," I sigh and he laughs. "I thought I'd only have to listen to his stories about working with you and Dad and not the time he drugged Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi and tried to ransom them along with a sith lord."

"That sounds about right," he says and tells me "You know I do miss the days of adventure, as much trouble as it would get me in."

"So why am I not allowed to have my own?" I pose to him and know he finds it difficult trying to play the responsible parental figure when he's always been the uncle enabling my whims and helping me get away with it. "I'm quite good at it too, even got an offer of membership to the bounty hunters guild."

"Do you know what you're even better at?"

I humour him. "What?"

"Being a rebel." I lower my eyes at those words. "Trust me I know, but unlike me you were a rebel long before you ever went into this line of work."

"High command wanted to expel me from the Resistance Lando, even Admiral Ackbar and all the others who were actual rebels," I remind him and finally admit "I know what I did to that captain was wrong, it was wrong as a Jedi, as a member of the Resistance and as a somewhat moral person. I know it horrified Mom and the rest of command, but the moment their captain mentioned the name Kylo Ren I- I snapped."

He nods in understanding and says "Kylo, I remember your brother came up with that name as a kid since he hated his actual name. A mix of Skywalker and Solo wasn't it?"

I don't know if I want to laugh or cry at that memory, likely both. "That's how I knew Kylo Ren was him, I mean- we knew who Snoke's apprentice had to be but I don't know, I think I was in denial for a long time until then and realised he wasn't just an apprentice, but the First Order's enforcer and that-"

"It's alright," Lando says and his hand covers mine. "So tell me what you've really been doing out here, because ever since you were seventeen you've had your mind on one thing only which is finding Snoke and bringing your brother back. I know you haven't abandoned that."

"I've been training," I tell him, knowing acquiring Jedi scriptures and artifacts has been half the work. "Mom is somehow convinced Luke returning will miraculously bring own the First Order but I'm not that naive. Obi-Wan Kenobi couldn't bring down the Empire, Ahsoka Tano couldn't stop Vader. It's not going to be one man against an Empire."

He nods in agreement but points out the hypocrisy of my statement. "So what makes you think you can single handedly defeat the First Order by hunting down tie fighters?"

"The work I've been doing is so I can use my connections and credits to track down Jedi artifacts," I tell him and he's listening. "The Jedi are gone but holocrons still exist."

He leans back and says "I dealt with Jedi artifacts during the time of the Empire, even back then they were nearly impossible to come by."

"But not completely impossible," I say and test the waters. "Three months back Hondo and I pulled off a heist on Cato Nemoidia."

"On what now?" he repeats. "Hope if you get caught robbing them they execute you."

"Well I didn't get caught and he got whatever he was after and I got a holocron," I tell him, deciding not to tell him about raiding Grakkus the Hutt's vault, Vader might have gotten to it decades ago but some artifacts managed to remain hidden, until me. "Luke's disappeared, Ben's lost his mind and I need knowledge that I don't have in order to defeat an enemy who does and that's what I've been doing out here Lando, preparing for the war to come instead of sitting on base knowing everything is futile if we can't strike hard and fast."

He nods slowly, appreciating what I'm saying has it's merit. He knows objectively speaking he should be lecturing me, but he knows I'm right. Still he tries to play both sides. "I understand you need training, that you want to have some adventure along the way instead of spending your younger years as a political servant or stuck on a lonely base with no one your own age there. You're young and you deserve to live the life we fought for your generation to have, but you don't need to cut Leia out to do that. Regardless of what you did or the fact she's a general now, she's still your Mom and she just wants you to come home. She's been worried sick you've been out of your mind, whether that's just on the run or or worse."

We both know what worse means.

"You didn't see how horrified she was Lando," I try to get him to understand. "She'd never looked at me like that before, like I really could become what Vader was, not until then when she knew how I'd gotten the information out of their captain."

"Let me tell you something," he says trying to change the subject. "Do you think your Mom never lost it from time to time during the war? She strangled a Hutt to death with her own chains. Hell she even had Chewie choke me once, for good reason, but still. She isn't perfect, and whether you believe it or not she doesn't expect you to be either, especially not when it comes to dealing with an enemy captain trying to kidnap children, she still trusts you."

I just scoff. "Really, because she made it quite clear she didn't."

He leans forward. "What if I told you Leia has a mission for you?"

I actually laugh in disbelief. "She told me I'd be lucky if she ever let me in an x-wing again."

"Well, she said to tell you it's time to get back in the x-wing," he says and I sit there stunned. "I know you and your Mom have had your differences but I'm gonna tell you what I've told you I don't know how many times in the last three years. Instead of searching for the family who ran away, hold onto the family you've still got."

"Lando-"

"I know how stubborn you are, so you've gotta get this idea out of your head that going home means you've given up on whatever crusade you're on. It isn't giving up, it's going home to your Mom to see her and make things right before you lose her too." The thought of that has tears again coming to my eyes. "You're so focused on what you've lost that you don't see what you still have."

"I disappointed her," I swallow. "Worse than that I compromised the Resistance because I couldn't keep myself in check."

"She's forgiven you if she's asking you to come back," he says and my throat's tight as I realise just how badly I want that to be true. "Because she's your Mom and you're all she has left and she loves you."

"I-" I'm at a loss for words. "I can't."

"And Leia can't lose you either," he reminds me. "Han might have left, he might have blamed himself for your brother turning and what happened to you, but you aren't the only one he left. You and Leia need to stand together instead of whatever this is."

"You know something Lando?" I ask him, laughing sadly. "Mom wanted all these big things for me, had all these expectations, but Dad... he never did. I was never a screw up in his eyes, I was just his little girl no matter what I did and now I can't go anywhere without people thinking I'm either a spoiled princess or a danger to society."

And so he asks me "Then what do you want to be?"

It's a question I don't know how to answer, once maybe I had an idea, but it's less simple now.

"The girl I was before it all fell apart," is all I can come up with. "The girl who had a family. Why else would I be out here? I- you've spent your life looking for your daughter Lando, for your family, and I just want mine back too."

His face is grave and there's pain in his eyes. "Leave finding Han to me, in the meantime go home to Leia." It's then his voice turns heavy. "I know you love him but don't be your father's daughter, don't run away because things get hard. Don't abandon your Mom just because he did."

It hurts, but it's true and I nod.

"Alright," I agree, and reluctantly decide. "I should see what this mission is since there's only one of me."

He nods proudly. "You're making the right decision."

"And if I'm not it's gonna be your doorstep I end up on," I promise him, knowing it always ends that way eventually but he's right, I can't abandon Mom.

I need to make things right. 

~

After a stop by Naboo to ditch my starfighter in favour of my transport I make the short flight to D'Qar. In case there is any slight chance Mom hasn't pieced together I'm the one that's been flying that ship I'd like to keep it that way, and besides my x-wing will be thankful to have the N-1's modifications transferred over.

The journey's short enough I don't have time to change my mind, still I'm anxiously twisting the ring on my finger the whole way there, a rebel alliance signet that Mom gave to me for my nineteenth. Little did either of us know soon after I'd leave, and now a year later here I am.

When I come into the atmosphere I'm contacted by command, a new voice I don't recognise but it seems there's enough of those to go around.

"Identify yourself."

"Solo," is all I need to say before there's some surprised chatter in the background and I'm given clearance to land. I'm half tempted to turn the ship around as it suddenly becomes real but considering she isn't standing in the open hanger waiting to berate me it gives me a little faith.

In fact when I land she's nowhere to be found and I hold out the smallest hope she's off base so I have some time to prepare myself, or rather to stay happily in a state of avoidance. 

Eyes are on me as I walk through the hanger dressed very much like a smuggler and not the daughter of a princess, the expected whispers following. Some faces I recognise, like L'ulo Lampar's, who gives me a nod of welcome acknowledgement which I return, but most are unfamiliar and I realise just how much has changed while I've been gone, numbers have at least doubled in that time.

The officers who know me give me a nod of respect being the general's daughter, but the strict formality is a stark reminder of the loneliness I felt while I was here, having failed to find myself at home with the veterans with nobody my own age anywhere to be found. 

"Oh no," I hear Major Brance say as he spots me, quickly turning on his heel and walking in the other direction while speaking into his comm. "She's finally back, maker help us."

I blink at that and even R2 is slightly offended on my behalf but as the person in charge of intelligence and imparting bad news he's quite familiar with my exploits. His hesitation is merited, but for others it's based more off the conspiracies about the temple than anything else, coming from a Sith lord and being a known lightsaber wielder doesn't exactly help my case. 

Mom's a respected general, very few know of her training so she was able to escape the accusations that were thrown towards me when the truth about Vader came to light. She was the princess of the Rebellion, just as they now call me the princess of the Resistance and I remind myself I have every right to be back here after so long even if command doesn't like it. 

I've done my training, hell I've trained since I was twelve years old, but it's a Cold War with no action and no way to truly prove myself without being deemed a political disaster waiting to happen, and I proved them right. All I've ever wanted is to prove myself, but not like that, and when the whispers become to match I walk until I find someone I'm willing to talk to to find out where Mom is.

"Snap," I smile in relief, a familiar face since he was one of the first to join the Resistance, someone I'd met before everything went to hell, who was in that hanger on Hosnian Prime when they brought me back from the temple.

Snap looks at me, pleasantly surprised. "Well look who's back. How long's it been this time? Nearly a year?"

"Yeah, something like that," I answer with an anxious laugh. "Have you seen the General?"

"Off base on some political mission," he answers and informs me with little sugarcoating "Just a warning, she knows it's you that's been flying the N-1."

"Shit," I whisper and he just nods in agreement. "I'm screwed."

"Yep," he says and to divert myself from thinking of the consequences of that I go down a different strain of thought.

"So...that commander gave her my regards then?"

He looks like he's struggling to keep a straight face. "You could say that."

It's awful timing but I'd rather ask about this new flyboy than imagine what's going to happen when Mom comes back. "You know him?"

"I'm his wingman," he answers. "And no, I didn't let slip that the person blowing up ties is the general's daughter, your anonymity is intact."

Snap's one of the few people on base I genuinely like and for that reason, he has your back without needing to ask for it.

"Thank you," I say and inquire. "Is he stationed here?"

"He's been on the Echo of Hope but he's been moved to here since taking command of red and blue squadron," he says and remarks "Haven't seen a pilot like that since you left."

I struggle to reign in my bitterness. "Really?"

"Oh yep, and he sure seemed to like you." I make a sound of genuine surprise and he pats me on the shoulder as he walks past. "Welcome back Solo."

With Mom gone it gives me some time to prepare to see her, to get out of my head for long enough things might just feel alright. For a while we were closer than we'd ever been, but after Dad left whatever close relationship we'd forged broke down with every argument and disagreement over how to deal with the First Order until that last mission.

"How do you feel R2?" I ask him, knowing it's not just me I've got to think about. "Are you happy to be back? I know Threepio will be happy to see you."

He gives an affirmative beep and that at least reinforces my decision to come back. He'll be missing Mom, I know I've been even if the thought of seeing her leaves me physically sick with worry. She knows I've been hunting the First Order, but there's still a chance she doesn't know about the rest of the work I've been doing to fund my pursuit, even if it's unlikely.

Regardless, I'll be lucky if I don't get the dressing down of my life, but if she has a mission for me I have to be here. I have to prove myself.

And maybe I'm a little curious to find out more about this commander.

[stillness-in-green]

MVA In Memoriam (2/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia)

Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party

Chapter 224 – Revival Party

• Mr. Compress’s side comment about how the distance Re-Destro wants them to travel means he must know they have warp capabilities. Also shortens his subsequent line, removing the bit about how their position has been locked onto, leaving only the marveling about the dude on the phone being the kind of person who has access to a satellite camera. Not a major cut, but it did strip out a bit of reiteration on how very Seen the League is. The warp line is another nod to how the MLA’s been doing their research—in particular, it ties in nicely with RD’s observations about the Noumu. He talks, there, about something Dabi said after the High End fight, which means he must also know that Dabi was warped out by an “Ujiko-san.”

• Also Mr. C’s observation that they haven’t broken Machia yet, and his posed question about what to do. Mr. Compress, I’m so sorry that you’re so wordy and lose so many quips and asides because the anime was set on brutally scything out every line of non-essential dialogue it could find.

• Ujiko’s extremely hilarious, “Listening to Villain Radio is my new favorite hobby,” line. Why would you cut this; this line is hysterical.

• The bit where Mr. Compress has the bright idea to use a High End Noumu like the one Dabi used, Ujiko rejects the suggestion out of hand, citing production woes, and Shigaraki says that he wasn’t going to ask for one of them anyway. Aside from being more cut Compress content (or “Comptent,” for short), it helps center the timeline somewhat at a point where the manga is jerking it around all over; it also shows that the League has been keeping up with news from the outside world. It also shows that at least one of them thought about using the Noumu—and since we know Re-Destro did some rationalizing on that scenario too, it’s good to see that it is at least briefly on the table.           Further, Ujiko provides a few rare details about the Noumu creation process. Firstly, that AFO is normally involved, so his absence makes the procedure much more difficult (though not, apparently, impossible). Secondly, that Hood-chan was the only Noumu who’d actually reached the testing stage. This will be important later, for Ujiko’s agonizing about unleashing them early/Mirko having to fight four of them at once.           Also, I just miss Mr. C’s funny little head wilt when Ujiko immediately turns down his “use some Noumu” idea. Ditto Shigaraki’s blasé shrug and little grin. Again, not to harp on the art too much, but man I wish the anime had kept all the fierce little grins and tight, incensed smirks Shigaraki has through the majority of this and the phone call sequence.

• Spinner’s line, “Without knowing squat about what we’re up against?!” A minor cut, as these things go, but it reiterates that there’s a chance RD is bluffing and the League has no way to know one way or the other, and demonstrates that the League can give Shigaraki some pushback on his decisions without having to worry about getting dusted for the temerity.[1]

• Takes one of Spinner’s lines—“Wait. I get it. Wherever you go, Shigaraki, he’ll sniff you out and hunt you down.”—and gives it to Shigaraki instead. Because fuck Spinner’s growing understanding of Shigaraki and the way his mind works, I guess! It’s especially notable that Spinner figures this out when Mr. C had completely the wrong idea about Shigaraki’s intentions—it demonstrates the way Spinner is gradually aligning himself with Shigaraki’s way of thinking, which we’ll see even more clearly during the War Arc. Also, again, it’s good to see the moments where the League weighs in on Shigaraki’s plans.

• The visual of Twice lashing out at Dabi with his razor-edged tape measure over Dabi’s dismissal of Giran, though all the relevant dialogue was there. Possibly this is because, having cut the CRC bit, the audience has no way of knowing that Twice’s tape measure is razor-edged, so why bother raising the question, “Why is Twice trying to attack Dabi with a tape measure..?” Possibly it’s because showing that attack would require animating movement, and MAN ALIVE, did Episode 109 ever want to do everything it could to avoid animating movement.

• Slidin’ Go’s line about how Deika isn’t usually his turf, but today is a big exception. This makes the hearty affirmative with which Trumpet announces himself a response to Shigaraki’s half-phrased observation about the reason behind the city’s emptiness, rather than a response to Slidin’ Go. It works, more or less, and probably even flows more clearly, all things considered. I’m always sad to lose lines from the vanishingly few named/characterized MLA members we have, though. I like, too, that it hints at the machinations that have to have been involved with setting things up for the Revival Party, and the way those plans were carried out with confidence that Re-Destro’s “bait the League into coming for their broker” plan would work despite the total absence of a response from the League in any of the time Giran was missing/his fingers were cropping up on the nightly news reports.

• A few shots of cameras in the city, which foreshadow Skeptic’s watchful eyes and ability to track the League through the city. In retrospect, this isn’t surprising, since the anime went on to cut basically any indication of Skeptic’s entire plan re: the footage of the League attacking, so why bother keeping the cameras? (Oh, right. Skeptic’s whole thing is cameras and information/disinformation. Skeptic for second-most screwed-by-the-anime MLA member.)

Additions

• Showed Toga having stood back up somewhere during Shigaraki’s explanation of their throw-Machia-against-the-MLA plan. A simply appalling choice. In the manga, she stays crouched down by Twice the entire time Shigaraki has his mask pulled off, because Toga cares about reassuring Jin-kun when he’s in a bad way.

• Rephrased Compress’s dialogue somewhat, also giving him a new line about the MLA’s forces in Deika when the League was still in the hills looking down at the city: “The so-called Meta Liberation Army has a force of 110,000 here.” I assume it was because the scene falls in a different episode than the tactical discussion did (in the manga, they’re the same chapter), so the anime was reminding the viewer of the stakes, but it’s potentially awkward because, er, no, the MLA categorically did not bring their entire army to Deika. We’ll find out as much for sure later, with the note that the regiment advisors weren’t in attendance because they were occupied at the bases they command, but even with only the knowledge we have here, Re-Destro’s statement about his numbers is that they’re scattered all over the country—hence the shot of Japan with a bunch of lights scattered across it to represent said numbers.           That said, to be (briefly) charitable, there’s no particular reason for the League to assume that, and they did discuss the possibility that there were going to have to fight 110,000 people. So it makes sense that Mr. C might state as much when recapping for the audience.

Chapter 225 – Interview with a Vampire

• Re-Destro talking about Deika’s geography and why they chose it strategically. The anime dropped so much about the MLA’s planning and information-gathering beforehand; it really made the MLA look ludicrously overconfident. And while they don’t lack for that trait, certainly,[2] this is also an organization that has meticulously grown its membership for generations right under Hero Society’s collective nose; you don’t get to where they are by being unduly foolhardy. Erasing so many scenes demonstrating their caution and forward-planning undercuts the threat they represent to both the League and society at large.           Also too, the descriptor of Deika as a nice, quiet, isolated little town in the mountains gives us some hints about how the MLA has avoided notice for so long, when you consider how the Hero business works: because so many people who get into heroism want to make it big, like celebrities, they don’t want to stick around small-town beats, and so the rural areas are understaffed.[3] That’s presumably why groups like the CRC and the MLA grow their numbers out in the boonies: much less attention from the Powers That Be. You can guess at some of that from how Spinner describes the place—“not too small, not too big”—and what Trumpet says about the percentage of the population that’s MLA, but RD adds that key “isolated” descriptor, and says that it’s a place where they “lay low.” That gives us some potential insight into how many—likely the majority—of the MLA came to their beliefs: by being raised to them, because their hometown was infiltrated by the MLA generations ago and they have literally never known anything else.

• RD’s phrasing, “Counter to point one,” when he makes his second point about the Noumu. He acknowledges that it’s counter-intuitive to his first argument, that he knows it would normally be an argument against that opening point, not in support. It’s just conversational padding, really, but “conversational padding” like that does a lot to distinguish character voice, so that not everyone talks the same way.

• A panel showing a trio of unnamed MLA warriors strategizing about how to divide their forces now that the League has split up. It’s the little cuts like this that gradually remove the agency of unnamed characters, such that they’re left looking like unthinking puppets instead of real people with the ability to register and respond to their circumstances. It also points towards the truth of what the MLA warriors are and one reason they’re so dangerous (for all that the manga itself will neglect this most egregiously later on): they’re trained in regiment tactics and accustomed to working in groups. This contrasts them both with villains, who might group together, but certainly don’t usually fight that way, and heroes, who are so unaccustomed to working in groups that it’s cited as part of the reason to have named super moves.

• Curious’s little pageboy-cut middle school kid line telling Toga to back off when Miss Curious is on the job. This is an early example of how defensive the MLA are of people above them in the hierarchy, an important thing Spinner will pick up on and attempt to use against Trumpet. Again, it’s little moments like this that both add some welcome notes of individuality to the MLA warriors (if only by virtue of Horikoshi and his assistants’ traditional talent for distinctive character design) while also fleshing out who the MLA are as a group, and contrasting them with the League.

• Deleted Toga’s line IDing her “on-the-go suck-suck mask,” but did insert a nice little bit of her expression shifting when she whipped it out. It lost a bit of the self-conscious silliness of her support item name in exchange for a cool little animation beat. I don’t dislike it, particularly, but I am, as previously stated, very leery of edits that make the League more polished in their villainy at the cost of their human foibles.

• Curious’s line about having come prepared to counter Toga’s moves, which was supposed to further reiterate that the MLA has done their research on the League; they didn’t just decide out of the blue to target the most notorious Villains in the country without studying up on them first and planning accordingly!

• Curious’s line about how she’s going to get started with some background info while her people use their meta-abilities to keep Toga and her buddies on the ropes. A marvelously characterful line! It speaks especially to that edge of formality the MLA brass observe that even as she’s ringleading this attack, Miss Curious is still set on going through her interview process step by established step.

Framing Shifts

• Made some of Curious’s lines spoken dialogue instead of internal monologue. That’s probably fine for when she’s waxing enthusiastic about Toga’s lack of hesitation in committing murder or how she’ll use Toga’s story to further the MLA’s agenda. It’s less fine when she’s rattling out the entire name, brand and patent status of her support item for no particular reason when Toga is already halfway through trying to knife her (that’ll be next chapter).

• The anime implied pretty firmly that Curious’s bombers died. And like, yeah, that’s always made more sense than the idea that anyone could survive something like that, but I hate it anyway. For one thing, it makes it even harder to credit the idea that Toga’s still on her feet afterward if Curious’s supposedly not-very-lethal explosions merk all her own people. People in this series survive ludicrous amounts of damage, and these random MLA devotees are no exception! For another, it leans into the narrative that the MLA higher-ups throw away the lives of their minions without the slightest care. It’s a lot harder to make that case when it’s explicit in the manga that Curious’s people survive the blood explosions—the blonde in the tracksuit is unharmed enough to snicker about it, and the noodle chef is even doing well enough to continue attacking! I’ve always been of the opinion that the MLA are, yes, willing to spend the lives of their underlings on attaining goals, if that’s what they think is necessary, but that is not at all the same as gleefully throwing them onto the pyre to watch them burn.

Additions

• Some individual shots of Mr. Compress, Dabi and Twice fending off or fleeing from various MLA types. A nice try on getting the group split up, but it feels kind of budget save-y, when we could have gotten actual animation of those fights instead.

• Inserted a quick shot of a headline about Toga’s first attack as Curious was rambling on about why she’s interested in Toga but not the League in general. Actually a fairly reasonable insertion, given how much text is crammed into her talk bubble in the manga while the dude standing next to her is already getting a knife in the neck.

Chapter 226 – Bloody Love

• A panel of interviewees talking about Toga’s first victim being sociable and popular. It gives a bit of context on what he was like, what people thought of him, but given that we know enough about Toga at this point to know that his popularity was entirely incidental to what she liked about him, it’s not a huge loss.

• The detail of the broadcasted interviews censoring Toga’s name. Considering how Japanese media normally treats minors accused of crimes, this is an eyebrow-raising change—the manga censors it because Japanese media outlets would have done the same. No idea why the anime didn’t, unless it’s another of those places where it would feel too “real,” to have something that so closely mirrors real life treatment of criminals?

• Everything about quirk counseling, and whoo boy, that is a loaded cut. There is exactly one other mention of quirk counseling anywhere in the manga, and, curiously enough, it also comes up in relation to a villain: in the U.A. faculty meeting after the USJ attack, Midnight muses that maybe Shigaraki never received quirk counseling in elementary school. It’s a weird little non sequitur there—exactly what sort of program did she expect could single-handedly make the difference between a well-adjusted adult and a gleefully murderous manchild with aims on killing Japan’s Number 1 Hero? Just over two hundred chapters later, we get a hint: a program designed to fit people “neatly into society’s little boxes.”           Quirk counseling, then, is not about helping children find healthy ways to process their quirks, but rather, about teaching children what is and is not acceptable in terms of quirk use—and as Curious says, Toga’s admiration of blood was never going to be acceptable.[4] This explanation doesn’t just tell us a lot about Toga—that she wasn’t only failed by the hysterical condemnation of her parents, but also by a society that had no interest in helping her if it didn’t see a use for her—but also provides some insight on the viewpoint of the Meta Liberation Army vis-à-vis mandatory state-funded programs that dictate what “normalcy” looks like to impressionable children.           Curious is, of course, not a particularly trustworthy narrator in this, as one might expect of someone who uses language like “society’s little boxes,” but it does track with Midnight’s earlier musing of, “Maybe the anti-social dude never took the program intended to make sure he was a functioning member of society.” That kind of statement—“State-sponsored educational programs are there to program children into becoming unthinking cogs of society, actually.”—is one that it’s all too easy to imagine the people with an eye on broadcast standards taking issue with, even coming as it does from the mouth of a villain.

• Curious’s line, “Let’s turn your death into a legendary tragedy, shall we?” and its accompanying visual of two different papers with imagined headlines. The dialogue doesn’t strike me as crucial—Curious’s fervent belief in Toga’s story is amply demonstrated elsewhere and her intent to turn that story into a legend reiterated in the line immediately following—but it is a shame to lose the headlines. They tell us, in Curious’s own words, exactly the tack she was planning to take in telling Toga’s story to the general public, without the constant namedropping of the Liberation Army that she does when talking about it in person. One headline in particular—The Price of Suppression: A String of Bloody Murders—is an especially useful reference for discussing whether the MLA actually wants, as is popularly claimed, completely unhindered quirk use, even for people like e.g. Muscular who want nothing more than to murder people with their quirks.[5]

• Curious’s initial wait what response to getting Floated, and her people’s focus shifting away from Toga and onto Curious instead. On a surface level, that focus shift helps explain why Toga’s able to zip around the ground and touch nearly twenty people before they even react: because they’re afraid for Curious. It also hurts the ongoing characterization of the MLA rank and file as being fanatically devoted to their higher-ups which, again, is something Spinner is supposed to notice later. It’s the worst kind of plot device if that devotion is completely told to us rather than consistently shown!

• Toga’s internal reflection that she’s seen Ochaco use her quirk, and knows how to use it. It’s obvious from the panel that she knows how to use it, but the manga implies that Toga transforming doesn’t automatically grant her an understanding of peoples’ quirks; it’s only in observation (and possibly love) that she can reach this particular unlock. Leaving out that information leaves open the possibility that she can just do this all the time now, with anybody she transforms into.

• The reaction from the surviving crowd to Curious’s death. See above re: STOP FUCKING ERASING HOW MUCH THE MLA CARES FOR EACH OTHER.

Framing Shifts

• When Toga bolts, Curious in the anime sounded serious, her expression alarmed, like she was actually worried that Toga might escape, even though her dialogue said just the opposite. Maybe you could say that she was afraid Toga would die before she got her statement, but given that she tried to kill the girl herself moments later, I’m skeptical of that claim. Regardless, in the manga, she never loses her smile, and she flashes a Liberation salute as she stands up to give chase. It’s a characterization note, that she’s so wildly confident about this that she never stops being completely enthralled with whatever Toga has to show her.

Chapter 227 – Sleepy

• The last of Toga’s conscious dialogue, about how she’s lost a lot of blood, is fading out, can’t move—but more notably, the way that this state of things makes her feel closer to “them,” that it’s “the same sensation.” And who is “they” here—her victims? The people she loves? More alarmingly, why does the line sound like she’s been this beat-up before, and remembers the sensation? Does that tie into e.g. her comment during the training camp that she doesn’t want to fight too many hero students at once because she doesn’t want to die? Has she actually been subject to this kind of violence before in the past? Does that tie into her still-unexplained ability to erase her presence? It’s an interestingly loaded little line, for being so vague, and illustrative of Toga’s mentality on becoming the people she loves. Which also lets the scene segue nicely into Re-Destro’s observation that, in Toga Himiko’s world, there’s no such thing as “other people.”           On which note, guess what else the anime cut?

• The entire fucking scene where Re-Destro actually reacts to Curious’ death, the motherfuckers. This lost:           1. RD’s talk about the way Toga sees the world and how that led to society casting her out, which he points to as evidence of said society clinging to old ideals even though the nature of humanity itself has changed. It calls back to his methodology with Detnerat, marrying his lines from the commercial to his overarching ideals; it also shows that he understood very well what Curious saw in Toga, and demonstrates that he can express that understanding and empathy even in the face of losing one of his closest allies.           2. Skeptic’s reaction to Curious’s death, which is pretty sparse, but at least present. He says she never should have been on the front lines—an excellent reminder to the people who’re always going on about how the MLA brass thinks themselves so above their followers: Curious was on the front lines, against the wishes of some of her peers!—and calls her a valuable resource.[6] You can theorize about Skeptic not caring for her beyond her usefulness to the cause, or just that Skeptic is a huge autist who processes his emotions differently than most, and isn’t going to stop to do that when there’s still a battle going on, but either way, you need this scene to do it accurately.           3. Speaking of people who process their emotions in unusual ways, as I said above, this scene also shows Re-Destro openly crying over the deaths of Curious and each and every warrior diving into battle with their hopes for the future. They’re not crocodile tears, either. As was the case with Miyashita, there’s no one in this room that Re-Destro would need to perform grief for: Skeptic clearly doesn’t see a use for tears right now, so I don’t see him expecting them from Re-Destro, and the only other person in the room is Giran, a hostage who the MLA—very probably Re-Destro himself—maimed! It’s not like RD’s tears are going to change Giran’s mind about him (indeed, Giran gets a comedic reaction beat at the absurdity of the dude who started all this up here crying about it)! But RD says life is precious and he cries anyway, briefly, before he ruthlessly turns it off.           RD’s valuing of human life—especially his own peoples’ lives—crops up in roundabout ways twice more, both leading the fight with Shigaraki (“It angers me.”) and ending it (“Any more would bring about meaningless death.”). This, though, is when he’s most open about it, to the degree that—as with Machia’s grief—it’s kind of off-putting and strange. Cutting it makes it that much easier for people to get entirely the wrong impression of RD as a character.           4. The delightful scene where Skeptic berates Giran about asking brainless questions and then answers his question anyway. Fuckin’ hell, why cut this?? So much of Skeptic’s character is in this scene! You get moments of his neuroticism later on, but never in so concentrated a burst as this (there’s one other sequence that could compete, but—spoilers—the anime cut that one, too). The exchange also explains the cameras placed throughout the city—which are visually referenced early on—and what the MLA is planning to do with their footage. Without that explanation, the audience has no idea how, exactly, the MLA was planning to use wiping out the League as a springboard for their grand return to the spotlight. That footage is the crucial part of how the rest of the country reacts to Deika in the Endeavor Agency Arc, and the anime never even mentioned it! The audience was just left to assume that all the media came in afterward, not that there was the slightest whiff of footage from the battle itself.           5. Once again brings up Re-Destro’s belief in the power of the heart to move other hearts. We get a bit of that in Curious’s flashback, but here he says it in his own words—as he will also bring it up to Shigaraki. Once again, Shigaraki is going to be challenged about his conviction, which ties back into what Spinner and Ujiko demanded from him earlier in the arc. With so

many people set to be grilling Shigaraki on this front, it tells us again what the arc is for: Shigaraki’s conviction, and him demonstrating it to the people who think he lacks it.

• The panel of Spinner asking how long they’ve been at it and Mr. Compress responding. This line helps manage the pacing, giving the audience an idea how much time is passing as we cut around to different places. It’s also, you know, more cut Spinner dialogue, and shows the beginnings of Shigaraki and Spinner getting split off from the rest by Shigaraki’s sleep-drunk staggering angling him off in a different direction. The rest of the scene is moved to after Toga’s fight with Curious, but not otherwise tampered with.

• The other big reaction to Curious’s death, which is Trumpet using it to rile up the crowd. The group that attacks Shigaraki isn’t just some free-roaming mob—they’re coming at him in a grief-stricken frenzy, which they’ve been goaded into by one of their leaders.           This sequence also introduces the campaign van—a vehicle that will have several more appearances—to events, and hints at Trumpet’s meta-ability. Further, it’s one of the scenes that outright states that the MLA is less an army than a religion, in Mr. Compress’s line about how Trumpet is like a preacher rallying his flock. That understanding—that the MLA may style themselves as an army, but what they really are is a cult—is key to the way the MLA members act, from the very bottom to the very top.

• Trimmed Shigaraki’s flashback down, cutting—among other things—the very first lines Hana speaks, and her namedrop. This moment is the first one Tomura gets back, and the very first thing we find out is that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. The anime also failed to identify Shimura Nana’s relation to Tenko/Tomura and Hana—helpful to remind the audience of a plot thread they haven’t heard about since Kamino. It also cut out the silhouette of chubby baby Tenko and Tenko’s first line, asking why Hana’s showing him this, a line which clues us in that Hana was the impetus here, not Shigaraki as he was back then. Still not satisfied, it also cut the phrase, “Daddy said all that stuff,” which is a clear and ominous warning that there was some conflict going on between young Shigaraki and the Father whose dismembered hand he now wears on his face.

• Left the dialogue but cut the silhouette of an airborne Geten with his enormous ice fists coming in hot behind Dabi when he was smarming about it not being his style to take the pacifist route. It’s not crucial, since we see the fists again shortly (it’s the end of the chapter page, whereas the anime rolls right on into the continuation of the scene), but it’s a shame, since framing Dabi from below with this sudden presence behind him is a much more fun, dynamic angle than the dead-boring medium shot the anime used. Also too, it’s good foreshadowing for the fact that Geten can fly, since he certainly didn’t get that kind of air by jumping off the roof of the mini-mart across the street.

Framing Shifts

• The crowd attacking Tomura came at him from the back of the shot, whereas in the manga, they’re surging forth from the front; that is, the anime had Shigaraki between the crowd and the POV of the viewer, whereas the manga has the crowd interposing between the viewer and Shigaraki. It makes a huge difference in the impact! Running up from a nebulous background distance, the crowd looked small and futile. Crossing directly in front of the viewer as they attack Shigaraki makes them look like the crashing human wave that they are. But, you know, coming in from the front would mean they’d have to be animated with more detail, and again, Episode 109, more than any other episode in the arc, clearly didn’t have the budget to spare on such things.

• The moment Shigaraki first uses the spreading Decay is horrifically clear in the manga. It’s full of speed lines, Shigaraki moving so fast he decays a dude mid-word, but the impact itself is spread over two pages. We watch his hand literally cleaving through the leading attacker’s face, and then are encouraged to linger on the oversized panel below, the intricately drawn crowd, full of individual faces, still intact on the left, scattering to dust on the right, all fully lit, with Shigaraki—still drawn with speedlines to emphasize his movement—the focal figure in black at the center.           The anime rendered this moment in two stills—Shigaraki’s hand about to hit the lead attacker’s face, and then the crowd already decaying. There was virtually no movement to it, the crowd was so heavily silhouetted against a glare of daylight that it was difficult to tell what was going on, and the moment stayed on screen for only two seconds before Shigaraki landed and threw up, both actions favored with more animation than one of the signature moments of the entire arc. Hell, it even left the walls on either side of the alley intact, when the manga shows them dissolving into ash as well, decay traveling through the ground in a deadly, destructive radius around Shigaraki’s attack.           The anime ever-so-graciously allowed Spinner his line to explain to the audience what just happened, but I think that’s mostly because it would be genuinely difficult to parse if he didn’t. It also gave him a flashback to what we had literally just seen, except this time it wasn’t silhouetted for some reason, so at least the audience got another chance to look at it, I guess?           “Am I seeing things? Just now, his decay effect spread to people he wasn’t even touching!” Well, I guess we’ll have to take your word for it, Spinner.

Additions

• A quick shot of a camera, there and gone almost too fast to register. I want to compliment the anime for adding a camera back in, since it removed the shot of the cameras earlier, but honestly, given that it cut all the scenes about how and why the MLA was gathering footage, I really don’t know why it even bothered. Also too, the camera was gone so fast it felt more like a marker for a scene change—which it also was, segueing the scene from Toga collapsing (only to cut back to her later staggering down an alley) to Spinner and the rest still trying to hold their own—than it did something the audience was supposed to really notice.

Chapter 228 – Wounded Soul

• Twice in the opening pages left out scattered members of the MLA that were around for the start of the Dabi/Geten fight. Leaving them out raises the question of where all the people attacking went, but it’s also the first demonstration that Geten is a danger to his own allies. We don’t see any of them dying on-panel or anything, but we do see them having to dive frantically out of the way because Geten demonstrates no care to the collateral damage of his attacks.

• Cut a small flashback, presumably from Twice’s perspective, of finding the site where Toga and Curious’s fight concluded. You can see the ground covered in blood, and a body that looks a bit like Curious if you squint (distinguishable by the sleeves of her jacket), as well as a small group of people kneeling on the ground in various poses suggesting mourning and a paying of respects. Yet another shot demonstrating the depths of care these people have for their leaders, that they’ve completely let the battle fall by the wayside in favor of their grief.

• Drops the “those zealots” phrase from Twice’s, “I’ll rip those zealots limb from limb for this!” line. Damn, the anime really was determined to erase everything that even hints at the Liberation Army being something much creepier and more damaging than just an underground militia, huh?

Framing Shifts

• For all my complaints about the material, I generally like the voice acting quite a bit. I don’t love the first exchange between Dabi and Geten, though. It’s not a fault of the voice actors themselves, but rather the delivery. Geten was very cool and level-headed throughout, which is all right to a point, but he’s a gremlin under that troll parka, and this fight is where we hear him as close as we ever will to how he is before the multi-layered humbling he’s subject to over the course of this fight. It’s a bit of a shame to play him totally straight, without any of the snark he’s so clearly capable of—and without the tick upwards in vehemence his talk bubbles indicate in his last lines.           Meanwhile, it’s fine for Dabi to get more heated as the scene goes along, and indeed he does, but he also plays it pretty cool at first. You can tell in the shape of his talk bubbles that he’s completely unruffled during his delivery of that, “Consider this a freebie, just for you: ice melts,” line. The anime had him raising his voice for it, and it just loses a lot of the humor of Dabi’s own snark to have him yelling it instead of just laughingly stating it, voice barely raising enough to give his talk bubbles some straighter lines instead of being all undisturbed curves. (For comparison’s sake, it’s about the same level of angular as Geten’s, “You’d best not think your little campfire can melt my ice!” line, but the anime had Dabi shout his line, while Geten continued at the same unperturbed volume he��d maintained since the beginning.)

• As with Shigaraki’s first mass decay, the shot of Geten’s ice dragon did not make the impact on me in the anime that the manga did. I think it’s mostly the way the ice was colored? The claw’s pretty good, but the head looks blobby and indistinct, more like blue soft-serve than the shifting, sharp-edged, brilliantly bright sculpture-in-motion of the manga.

• Twice’s voice actor did his best to sell the scene of him finding Toga, but I wish they’d kept that tight close-up on his mouth when he says, “Give it up. The girl’s dead.” They animated him leaning closer to the camera, but that doesn’t have the sharpness of that sudden cut to being right there on his lips, like some malevolent thing is using them to speak words so terrible that they can’t even be associated with the rest of his face.

                                                          ---

Come back next time (and hopefully in less time) for Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade.

FOOTNOTES

[1] We would, of course, have an even clearer idea of that had the anime not cut the scene of Spinner shouting in Shigaraki’s face.

[2] It seems particularly strange to me that Curious and RD both mention quirk evolution as a thing they know can happen in extreme circumstances, but didn’t predict that backing the League into a life-or-death corner might provoke one or two members to undergo exactly that evolution.

[3] Mount Lady is the obvious example, but you can look to places like the island in Heroes Rising, too: one hero, and when they retired, a group of high school kids had to go sub in for a while until a replacement could be arranged. It’s not like retirements just happen overnight; the Commission had to have known it was coming. Still, they had to scramble to find someone. It doesn’t suggest they had anybody just champing at the bit to take the post, you know?

[4] In Chapter 140, we see a young Tamaki Amajiki in a class called “quirk training.” It’s uncertain how connected this P.E.-like class is to quirk counseling, but Toga wouldn’t have been getting much help there, either, seeing as it’s all about figuring out how to use one’s quirk in a way that’s “useful to society.” I can think of some ways, but nothing that I expect would be very popular or liable to be explained to a grade schooler in a country with as long a history with ritual cleanliness as Japan. To a Shinto mindset, Transformation isn’t just off-putting or unhygienic; it’s spiritually unclean.

[5] The answer there being, no, obviously not, or Curious wouldn’t, in all apparent sincerity, be trying to characterize Toga using her quirk to murder people as an undesirable outcome, a cost society is paying for its current stance on quirk use. Yes, you can gather that much from her calling Toga a tragic girl, and Re-Destro concurring later, but listen, I will take every line I can get that I can use to push back against the wretchedly widespread idea that the kid whose name means Apocrypha is the be-all-end-all source on MLA ideology, somehow more reliable and trustworthy than every other MLA character combined, including Destro himself. I would very much like it if the anime had not deleted a bunch of my talking points while making good and sure to leave all Geten’s most damning lines intact.

[6] Not that an anime-only person would fully understand why some random reporter was all that valuable a resource, since the anime cut the explanation of what Curious actually does for a living.

[scripttorture]

Writing Torture Scenes: Shock Value

We’ve all read or watched a story like this: after several scenes of build up the lighting goes down and we get the Big Reveal that… something traumatic happened. Cue close up on the inevitable wounds or scars and the main character’s shock and horror.

 Then, just as abruptly as it was brought up, the story drops this theme. The traumatic event never comes up again. It has no lasting impact on the main characters or the plot.

 It’s only purpose was to shock the reader.

 Now I know what you’re thinking; after all that, you’re probably expecting me to tell you that using torture for shock value is ‘problematic’. So let’s get this out of the way early: I don’t think there’s anything morally dubious about using torture for shock value in a story. I don’t think that it’s apologia.

 I think it’s bad writing; it’s a missed opportunity to get more from a scene.

 So we’re not talking about how to write ethically here today, we’re talking about how to write better scenes.

 Getting an emotional response from your readers.

 Positioning torture, or any other traumatic event, as shocking is not in and of itself a bad thing. These things can be shocking.

 But assuming the primary (or only) response is going to be shock or horror means making some pretty big assumptions about the audience. For one it assumes the audience doesn’t include any survivors or witnesses. Because someone with lived experience of the things we’re depicting is probably not going to find their existence shocking.

 Shock can also fall flat for anyone who has read widely. After a while readers start to recognise tropes and patterns in the fiction they consume.

 Shock value only really works once. A reader who has seen this sort of scene before is going to have less of a response compared to a reader whose never encountered this trope before.

 Shock isn’t a reliable emotional response.

 So what is?

 It might sound obvious but torture is an extreme experience and it tends to elicit some pretty extreme emotional responses. Anger, grief, despair, bitterness, spite, determined opposition, fear and revulsion are all possible, in survivors and those close to them.

 Think about the character’s relationships to each other. How would revealing a traumatic event change that relationship? How does the character the survivor is confiding in feel? How do those feelings impact the survivor?

 Communicate the emotions the characters are feeling during the scene. Use them. This doesn’t mean getting rid of narrative elements designed to shock it means adding to them. Not just shock but shock and whatever else fits the scene.

 If your characters are experiencing more than shock, you’re increasing the chances that there’s more for your readers as well. Especially if you’re telling a horror story that’s trying to build up a sympathetic response to the victim because a flat or one-note description can kill that emotional response.

 What is trauma adding to the story?

 Step back from your own response to the story for a moment and imagine that (however nasty or brutal the incident in the story is) it’s ordinary in this world. Try to view it through that lens.

 Without the shock, what’s the character’s primary response? And is that best captured with description, conversation or action? What does that response tell the readers about the character?

 Let’s have an example: war is tearing this fantasy kingdom apart and as they trek towards their goal our heroes have seen villages damaged, abandoned or destroyed. They’ve come to this one perhaps a day behind the attackers and as they march down the main road they see the detritus of lives overturned. A loom broken in the middle of the road, the carved weights still intact. A child’s shoe smouldering.

 They could change course, charging after the attackers. They might even catch them and drag them back to justice. Though it won’t rebuild the shattered houses or heal the injured.

 They might halt and spend hours or days sifting through the rubble. Because someone might have survived. And maybe they do pull someone, injured and shaking, out of the ground. Or maybe they don’t. Perhaps the sun bakes the mud and the brick dust hard and it clings to their clothes for days afterwards.

 Perhaps they cut the weights free of the loom and carry them. Because the weaver must have gotten away and they’ll need those weights back-

 Or may be they keep marching through and spend the weeks afterwards thinking about it, wondering if there was anything they could or should have done.

 What the characters do, think and feel after a traumatic event communicates the impact more clearly then a statement about the event itself. Regardless of the level of gore or how unusual the event might be to most of the audience.

 Consequences give a scene weight, meaning, impact.

 And shock doesn’t really serve to drive long term consequences. It’s not a sustained emotion. It doesn’t drive change or re-evaluation.

 When an event is only important in the narrative for a moment we’re signalling to the readers that it isn’t that important. Which seems like the opposite of what a reaction like shock is trying to achieve.

 A character doesn’t need to be directly harmed or traumatised for an event they see or hear about to have lasting consequences. Does the character think about it afterwards? Does it change their plans or effect their motivation? Does it haunt them?

 What serves the story?

 A good scene, no matter the subject, usually accomplishes multiple things at once.

 A conversation between characters can show the audience something about the characters, establish their relationship and give out important plot information all at once.

 A panoramic view of the surroundings can tell us about the history and environment the story takes place in and show the characters’ relationship to those things. The character who kicks the historic monument on the way past versus the character who stands for twenty minutes sketching it.

 Scenes about revealing brutality work the same way.

 They can add more then shock. You can use them to challenge and change characters, to make them reaffirm or question their goals, to strengthen or crack their relationships. You can use them as part of the world building, showing what’s considered terrible and what is considered ordinary.

 So the next time you sit down to write a shocking scene take a moment to think: What else could this add to the story?

Edited for typos.

Available on Wordpress.

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[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #161

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the leader of the Shinsengumi and (as of writing this) the only berserker we don’t personally own, Hijikata Toshizo! The good Vice Commander is a  Battle Master Fighter for his tactical prowess, as well as an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian so he can fight in that suit and summon the Shinsengumi to his side.

Check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: To the left! Take it back now y’all!

Race and Background

People might argue against this, but you’re still technically Human, giving you +1 Dexterity and +1 Constitution. (We’re using variant rules here.) You also get proficiency with Medicine. It’s been a while since you sold that stuff, but it’s like riding a bicycle. Probably. You also get the Charger feat, so now you can make a melee attack as a bonus action after using your action to dash. You either get  a +5 damage bonus to the attack, or you can shove the target 10 feet away.

You’re also a Soldier, giving you proficiency with Athletics and Intimidation, which you’ll get a lot more use out of than investigation. 

Ability Scores

You use guns and lighter swords most of the time, so your Dexterity has got to be high. That being said, your Strength also certainly isn’t bad either. His ironclad adherence to the way of the shinsengumi gives him a higher than average Constitution. You’d think that’d be wisdom but no, it literally makes him tougher. Your Charisma isn’t terrible, but you’re only really good at intimidating people. After that is your Intelligence- you certainly aren’t dumb, but you’re more of a practical learner than a book learner. Finally, dump Wisdom. You’re a berserker. A couple battlefield skills are tied to wisdom, but we’ll get something to make those a bit better later on.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: First level fighters get a fighting style, and being a Close Quarters Shooter will help you mix up your melee and ranged attacks by ignoring the normal disadvantage ranged attacks have when next to enemies. You also ignore most cover on creatures next to you, and you get +1 to ranged attacks. Your Second Wind also lets you stay on the battlefield for even longer, healing yourself on a short rest. The Shinsengumi never die, so keeping your HP above zero is a priority.

As a fighter, you get proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, as well as Survival and History. You’re literally a historical figure, honestly that one’s just a gimme.

2. Barbarian 1: Bouncing over to barbarian right away lets you Rage as a bonus action, giving you advantage on strength checks and saves, a bit of bonus damage when making strength-based attacks, and you resist physical damage types, all for as long as you keep attacking or taking damage, up to a minute. You also get Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC based on your dexterity and constitution while in a snazzy outfit.

3. Fighter 2: Second level fighters get an Action Surge, letting you take an extra action in a turn once per short rest. We heard you liked advancing. Now you can advance while you advance.

4. Fighter 3: Third level fighters get their specialty, and as a Battle Master you can use your Combat Superiority by spending Superiority Dice, 4d8 that you get back on short rests. Commander’s Strike lets one of your allies attack as a reaction, and you add the die to their damage. Tactical Assessment adds the die to an Investigation, History, or Insight check, and Commanding Presence adds it to an Intimidation, Performance, or Persuasion check. You’re also a Student of War, giving you proficiency with one kind of artisan’s tools.

5. Barbarian 2: Going back to the barb gives you Reckless Attacks, giving you advantage for the turn in exchange for enemies getting advantage for the round. Pro tip: use your gun. You also get a Danger Sense, giving you advantage on dexterity saves you see coming. Dodging gunfire is very useful, even if you can shrug off a bullet.

6. Barbarian 3: Third level barbarians get proficiency in Perception thanks to your Primal Knowledge. You also become an Ancestral Guardian, letting you summon your Ancestral Protectors, the Shinsengumi, as you rage. The first creature you attack each turn gets bogged down by Shinsengumi agents, giving them disadvantage on any attack that isn’t against you. On top of that, if they still try to attack other creatures they deal half damage thanks to getting resistance slapped on their attack.

7. Barbarian 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to grab the Crossbow Expert feat. Or gunner, if your DM’s okay with guns. We don’t assume your DM’s cool here, so we’re just calling it Crossbow Expert. This lets you ignore the loading properties of crossbows, ignore disadvantage caused by people standing near you, and attack with a hand crossbow as a bonus action after you attack with your main action. You like mixing things up when it comes to taking down lawbreakers.

8. Barbarian 5: Fifth level barbarians get an Extra Attack each attack action. You also get Fast Movement giving you an extra 10′ of speed each round, letting you charge even further every turn!

9. Barbarian 6: Sixth level ancestral guardians get a Spirit Shield, spending your reaction while raging to reduce incoming damage to yourself or another creature within 30 feet of you. Most people hold back a bit when faced with bursts of gunfire. You are not most people, but still.

10. Fighter 4: Finally bouncing back to fighter nets you another ASI, making your Strength a bit better so your rage attacks can be more accurate.

11. Fighter 5: This level is very special; you get absolutely nothing. The extra attack you get this level doesn’t stack.

12. Fighter 6: Another ASI already? Grab the Tough feat for 24 extra HP now, plus 2 more HP each level up.

13. Fighter 7: Seventh level battle masters can Know your Enemy, spending a minute to read your opponent’s Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, AC, HP, or class levels. You find out if your target is equal, superior, or inferior to you in two of those areas.

You also get another Superiority Die and the maneuver Bait and Switch. You can spend 5′ of movement to swap places with a willing creaure (within 5′ of you, duh) without provoking any attacks of opportunity. For the round, you or the other creature get a bonus to their AC equal to a roll of the superiority die.

14. Fighter 8: Use this ASI to bump up your Dexterity for a thicker skin and more powerful gunpowder.

15. Fighter 9: Ninth level fighters are Indomitable, letting you re-roll a failed save once per long rest. I’d save it for death saves, you’re not exactly great at self-preservation.

16. Barbarian 7: We’re back in barbarian to stay now, gaining a Feral Instinct that gives you advantage on initiative rolls. You can also ignore being surprised if you rage first. You can also make an Instinctive Pounce when you rage, moving half your speed for free. Your catchphrase is “advance”, you’re going to be quick on the draw.

17. Barbarian 8: Use your last ASI to bump up your Constitution for a better AC and even more health. Despite your in-game stats, you’re a pretty tanky guy.

18. Barbarian 9: Your Brutal Criticals make you a terror of the battlefield, adding an extra die of damage when you deal a critical attack with melee weapons. You made your own martial arts style, it makes sense you’re good with it.

19. Barbarian 10: Tenth level guardians can Consult the Spirits, casting Augury or Clairvoyance once per short rest for free. That’s... not particularly in character, but I guess every police force has investigators.

20. Barbarian 11: Your capstone level unleashes your Relentless Rage. When you’d normally drop to 0 HP, you can make a DC 10 Constitution save. If you make it, you stick around at 1 HP and the DC increases by 5. The saves reset on short rests. You are the Shinsengumi, and the Shinsengumi will never die.

Pros:

Speaking of, you’re really tough. With over 200 HP, rage defenses, and the ability to abuse your range for three attacks each turn, you’ll be able to stick around for a long fuckin time on the battlefield. 

Your Ancestral Guardian skills and battle maneuvers give you a surprising amount of support utility for a barbarian/fighter mix. Spy on the enemy and protect your squishy party members, then go ham and give the rogue a chance to get another sneak attack in.

In a similar note, your battlefield control skills are surprisingly useful for how subtle they are. Bait and Switch is great for getting your allies out of sticky situations, or you can shove creatures away for a similar effect. Basically you’re exactly annoying enough to make enemies focus you, which is exactly what you want.

Cons:

One big problem is your focus on dexterity-based weapons for your damage. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, it does mean you’re leaving quite a bit of damage on the cutting room floor while raging. A few barbarian skills also aren’t really made to work with bows and arrows. Basically it makes reckless attack better, but brutal critical worse.

You’re also not great against magic thanks to your terrible wisdom. This is almost a defining feature of berserkers, but it’s still worth mentioning. Especially since it means your party might be fighting the near immortal death machine if you go up against mind-controlly enemies.

With no sources of magic damage, you might find fighting certain types of enemies pretty hard without the DM’s help. Unless your DM’s a huge prick that probably won’t be a problem, but I don’t know your DM, so it counts as a negative.

[mechawaka]

Spring in Derdriu

A commission for @artsytardis​

Words: 11.7k

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Claude/Byleth

Rating: Teen

Mood music: Roses & Revolutions - Dancing in a Daydream

Summary: Five years after the war, Claude is the king of Almyra and Byleth is the queen of United Fodlan - but neither of them had the courage to propose at the Goddess Tower. When Byleth comes down with a sudden fever, they might have another chance.

---

They couldn’t possibly name Derdriu the new capital of United Fodlan, Lorenz had declared the very day after Byleth’s coronation. It would ‘imply things,’ he’d said, aghast that she would even suggest it.

Lo and behold, Ferdinand and Sylvain had expressed similar worries about Enbarr and Fhirdiad, respectively, and what ‘things’ their hosting would ‘imply.’

And Garreg Mach was also out of the question. Archbishop Seteth, recently crowned himself, wanted to keep the reformed Church of Seiros as far removed from political power as possible. Byleth couldn’t make her capital there, he’d insisted. The implications!

So which will it be? her newly appointed cabinet - four representatives from each geographical region, with twelve in total - had prodded, each sect adamant that theirs couldn’t possibly be the permanent home of the new government.

And Byleth, already exhausted despite only being in charge for a grand total of one moon, had replied:

All of them, then.

That day, United Fodlan’s migrating government, colloquially known as the Wandering Court, had been born. Byleth spent one season in each capital - spring in Derdriu, summer in Fhirdiad (on which she was insistent), and winter in Enbarr. In the fall, she and the entire cabinet gathered at neutral Garreg Mach to conduct any business which required everyone’s presence at once.

For five years, the system had worked perfectly. There had been some inevitable pushback at first, mostly from anti-Imperial factions who were upset that Byleth had adopted the old Empire’s ministerial structure, but they had gradually quieted down as the continental economy stabilized and flourished under its guidance.

Moreover, Byleth liked being on the road. She was raised in tents and on horseback, always moving between destinations, and the frequent travel helped soften long days of paperwork and political debate. 

It also let her document certain supply and infrastructure problems firsthand; to this day, Byleth fondly remembered a tiny village on the Rhodos Coast whose inhabitants had sent in an official request for a new bridge - and had been shocked senseless when the queen herself, in transit from Fhirdiad to Garreg Mach, had shown up to build it.

(Petra had put her personal stamp of approval on that one; you only rule what you can see and touch, she’d written of the event.)

Today, though - this season, this cursed spring - the system was not working.

Oh, it had started normally enough. Byleth, once settled in the palace at Derdriu, had taken up her usual duty of hearing the cases which had passed since her last time in residence and breaking any tied votes. 

It wasn’t until her ministers were tying up the season’s work that a heavy rain swelled the Airmid, causing flooding in four different territories and knocking out a siege-battered section of the Great Bridge of Myrddin. Suddenly, they were swamped with petitions: drowned fields, lost livestock, choked roads. All with less than a moon remaining before the court’s transition to Fhirdiad.

In short, Byleth hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours.

Her head was a splitting fissure of tectonic activity, rumbling in the background of every meeting, every hearing, and roaring to life at random intervals that left her gritting her teeth and glaring at Lorenz, wherever he was in the room.

Oh, we simply can’t stay in Derdriu permanently, she mocked him mentally as, again, a searing wave of pain spiked behind her drooping eyes. It would ruin everything, or whatever.

“- and with that in mind, the Merchants’ Association asked us to move the boundary twenty feet down the riverfront,” Marianne recited from an open ledger. She, like all the other ministers, was dressed in a smartly cut, floor-length robe of office that bore the seal of United Fodlan, with her hair gathered neatly at the back of her neck.

“Ministers Victor and Goneril voted in favor of the merchants, while Minister Gloucester and I voted in favor of the fisheries. How do you rule?” Marianne looked up from her record and across their round discussion table. Her eyes were bright and serious at first, but they creased with worry upon taking in Byleth’s pinched expression. 

“Are you feeling ill, Your Majesty?”

This garnered the other ministers’ attention as well. Ignatz pushed his glasses up his nose to study her better, staring in that perceptive, sympathetic way that said he’d already identified all the faults in her appearance. 

Hilda, who’d been twirling a quill pen between her fingers, glanced up and gave Byleth a detachedly brutal once-over, indicating with an arched, sculpted eyebrow that she disliked her findings.

Lorenz, meanwhile, simply regarded his queen with a dry, ‘I told you so’ stare.

“No, no. I’m fine,” Byleth asserted, avoiding everyone’s concerned faces, and especially Lorenz’s. He had warned her against overworking only a week prior, and here she was zoning out like a bored student. She’d get an earful from him later, no doubt, about a ruler’s responsibility to their subjects extending to self-care and time management.

“My apologies. Minister Edmund, please recount the case again.” Byleth pushed herself up, ignoring the pounding rhythm inside her brain. She often paced the length of the room for difficult petitions, anyway, and maybe movement would help ease the pain - but she took one step and the world went sideways.

She swayed dangerously on her feet, catching herself on the edge of the throne. Her legs were soft and wobbly as a dessert jelly; her vision swam with blots of darkness and intense color at random. 

In a hushed, grave voice, she whispered, “Oh, that’s not good.”

“Quite,” Lorenz agreed curtly, having materialized at her elbow to aid in stabilization. He turned to the others, lips pursed and demeanor supremely unamused. “I believe Her Majesty is finished hearing cases for the day. All in agreement?”

Byleth barely registered the other ministers’ responses; her ears were suddenly full of cotton, dampening all incoming sound. Even Lorenz’s voice, so close at her side, was fuzzy and jumbled. She could only nod and follow him out of the throne room, vaguely aware that Marianne had joined them.

When had her headache gotten this bad? It must have been a slow progression, she reasoned as the trio headed toward her chambers, building in intensity during the meeting. She vaguely recalled an old medical lecture of Manuela’s about blood vessels in the brain, and how moving suddenly after a stationary period could cause...something. Something bad, probably.

Not for the first time, nor even for the hundredth, she wished she’d paid closer attention to the other teachers’ seminars back at Garreg Mach.

Lorenz politely turned around while Marianne helped Byleth out of her heavy court mantle and into her gigantic bed, busying himself by preparing a teapot at the dresser.

“I’ll be fine by tomorrow,” Byleth professed as she collapsed onto her mattress, allowing Marianne’s white magic to flow over her in a soothing current. “We can re-convene at first light.”

With his back still turned, Lorenz scoffed. “I highly doubt that.”

“I’m sorry, but he’s right,” Marianne corroborated, ceasing her spell and pressing the back of one hand to Byleth’s forehead. “You have harvest fever; you’ll need to rest for at least a week to let it run its course.”

“A week?” Byleth demanded, sitting straight up again. “But I leave for Fhirdiad in two!”

Lorenz brought the teapot over on a wheeled cart, putting his hands on either side and warming it magically. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have taxed yourself to infirmity, hmm?”

At that, Byleth shot him an impotent - and, in all likelihood, given her state, pathetic - glare, but the mere action of tensing her forehead muscles worsened her headache and she fell back onto her pillows, defeated. He was right, damn him.

“Byleth,” he continued, exasperated, dropping all formality as he always did in the absence of prying ears. “Just rest. We designed this government to run in your absence - let us handle things from here.”

Marianne echoed the sentiment with a soft smile, pouring some strong-smelling medicinal tea from the pot. “We’ll see that Ordelia and Hrym are well cared for,” she said, holding out the teacup like a peace offering.

Byleth grudgingly took it.

---

Lorenz squinted down at Byleth’s sleeping form, sprawled and content amongst her blankets, and sighed. No one had ever prepared her for a life of leadership and politics, but she’d risen to the challenge admirably in the last five years. Perhaps too admirably, if situations like this were any judge.

Her problem, he’d decided long ago - and informed her whenever the chance presented itself - was moderation. Temperance. Byleth Eisner tackled every problem with a single-minded determination that, while remarkably efficient during the war, had tended to cause a variety of problems in peacetime.

In that regard, she was quite similar to him. To Claude. And speaking of Claude -

“We had two guards and a trio of footmen at our assembly today,” Marianne observed, keeping her eyes on the bed, but her message was clear.

“Indeed.” Lorenz tapped the heels of his polished boots restlessly against the floor. He could practically hear the wagging tongues from here; he could picture the story of their fainting monarch billowing out from the palace like blood in water, ripe for scenting - and there was one particular green-eyed shark always circling for a whiff.

He forced a long, resigned breath out through his nose, and said dismally, “I’ll direct the staff to prepare the guest wing at once.”

---

Thanks to whatever was in that tea, Byleth slept straight through the next few days. Even when she woke, she was groggy and mostly insensate to the world around her; she recalled Marianne’s visits to administer medicine or urge a few sips of water, but other than that - nothing. Only light and color and sound, all indistinct and running together.

The fever itself wasn’t so bad. She was being treated by the most studied healer in the region, and the rest was good for her, as much as she resisted the notion.

No, what had her itching for freedom, for an escape, had nothing to do with the sickness and everything to do with her own shoddy mental compartmentalization. Byleth had a single unbreakable rule, and it had kept her safe and stable for most of her life: don’t slow down.

Her friends - formerly students, and now United Fodlan’s new ministers - had always struggled to understand what went on in her head, and Byleth had to confess that it was often a confusing place for her, too. That was why she spent as little time there as possible. If she was solving governmental disputes or plotting a route through the Oghmas, she wasn’t thinking about her problems - and for someone that had attended the Jeralt Eisner school of “don’t confront your problems until they literally confront you first” coping strategy, that suited her just fine.

But these hours cooped up in her bedchamber were slow, and Lorenz had taken great strides to ensure that nary a tax report breached its threshold. And when there was no work to do, no roadblock for her mind to chew on, it drifted to contemplation, to nostalgia, and then, inevitably, to Claude.

What would he think of the stalemate between the merchants and the fisheries? That one was easy. He’d find a third option, something neither of the institutions had proposed but that benefited both, and dazzle them with its presentation. He’d find a way to spin the conflict so that it wasn’t about competing guilds, but about the betterment of the city as a whole.

She wondered if he looked different now compared to when she’d seen him last, at the Alliance Founding Day celebration the previous Horsebow. They only ever saw each other in formal wear these days, painted and decorated and utterly without privacy. Had he let his hair grow over the winter like she had? Was it curling near the base of his neck, thick and wild?

Oh, here we go, she thought, rolling her eyes and then squeezing them shut. This was why she kept herself preoccupied; any lapse in activity brought these sorts of ideas to the forefront, and they always turned to indulgent fantasy. Only Claude brought out that side of Byleth - and it made her so paradoxically angry, and afraid, and lonely.

Angry because she hadn’t intended to let him in; he was just there one day, snugly by her side, a few months after she’d joined the faculty at Garreg Mach (and she would always lament, at least a little, that Rhea hadn’t put her with the students instead). Even after he’d admitted his ulterior motives in getting close to her, Byleth never had the heart to be mad at him for it. He was so damn endearing.

Afraid because, as easily as he’d attached himself to her, he’d un-attached. Byleth could admit to herself, alone in her darkened bedroom, that most of her mental evasion strategies centered around one specific memory: that early morning conversation they’d had right before her coronation, in which Claude had spontaneously announced his departure from Fodlan.

(“There’s something I need to do,” he’d said up at the Goddess Tower, and she had been so sure he’d wanted to say more, but instead he’d just...left.)

Lonely because their friendship had never been the same after that. They were both so busy, now, and with so much responsibility - and she missed him. Missed their easy conversation and matching drive; missed the academic dissections of famous battles and the late nights spent comparing various cultures’ names for the constellations. 

Her remaining friends were certainly a balm, and she wouldn’t trade them for the world, but none of them were him. She’d never filled that spot at her side. Couldn’t fill it. Nothing and no one else fit there.

But she also couldn’t ask him back. He was the king of Almyra now, fulfilling everything he’d wanted and worked for and talked about with stars in his eyes - and Byleth could never begrudge him his lofty and admirable goals. Never. Instead, she’d had to accept the possibility that the grand arc of his ambitions no longer included her in its trajectory.

She sprawled out sideways on her bed, letting the warring emotions flood her body. Maybe this was good for her. Maybe, like the fever, she just needed to let them run their course. Maybe these were the natural consequences of escapism and denial.

And it wasn’t like she’d be able to get away from herself any time soon.

---

“Of all the - absolutely not,” Lorenz stated, planting himself in the center of the hall that led to Byleth’s bedroom. “There are procedures, Claude. Royal protocol. You know this!”

But Claude had already danced around him, utilizing that foot speed the mages never needed to master. “Come on, Lorenz, I’m not some Srengan diplomat - we’ve all seen each other covered in mud and guts. What’s a little illness between friends?”

To his credit, Lorenz didn’t ask how Claude had come by that knowledge. Nor were his protestations very vigorous, as if the man had foreseen this exact scenario - and for that, Claude was proud of him. 

That pride wouldn’t keep him from his goal, however. He’d saddled up his wyvern as soon as the words “queen” and “sick” had left his spymaster’s mouth.

“She’s not well. You’ll be interrupting her convalescence - Claude,” Lorenz said sternly, holding his friend by the elbow and fixing him with a soul-searching gaze. “She cannot receive visitors in this state. What’s gotten into you?”

For an instant, Claude’s happy-go-lucky mask slipped. He’d been too pushy, so much so that even Lorenz got a glimpse of the panic underneath - the cold terror that had driven him across the continent and still gripped his heart. He knew it wouldn’t let up until he could confirm Byleth’s condition.

But he was a consummate faker, and so the mask slotted deftly back into place. “Why don’t you go ask her, hmm? I’m sure she’ll be positively overjoyed.”

---

When Lorenz walked in, Byleth was still in the same position, all spread out and despondent. 

“How are you feeling, Your Majesty?” he asked pointedly, and his use of her title - coupled with his formal position near the door - should have clued her in to what he was really asking, but Byleth was far too addled for nuance.

She tilted her head in his direction and flatly, shamelessly said, “Fine.”

Lorenz’s disciplined expression soured a fraction. “Well, that is wonderful news -” his ironic lilt suggested that this news was anything but wonderful, “- because you have a visitor.”

He stepped back to clear the doorway, giving Byleth a look that said she deserved everything that was about to happen. “May I present King Khalid ibn Riegan of Almyra.”

Claude poked his head in much too casually for Lorenz’s theatrical introduction. “Byleth! I brought you some -”

He paused, staring at her depressed-starfish pose. Byleth, in the blink of an eye, sobered completely and experienced all the stages of grief in quick succession.

“- fruit,” Claude finished lamely. Behind him, Lorenz pinched the bridge of his nose.

---

“Claude,” Byleth intoned, dredging up her ‘serious teacher’ voice for the occasion. She’d bathed and changed her clothes since his impromptu arrival - Byleth had never possessed a single modest bone in her body, but, again, he just incomprehensibly brought it out in her - and now she sat on the edge of her bed while he occupied the bedside armchair.

“It was so nice of you to drop in,” she continued, folding her arms across her chest.

Claude laughed anxiously, holding a woven basket full of fruit in his lap half like a shield and half like an offering to an angry deity. “Okay, why do I get the feeling you’re mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Byleth said icily. It wasn’t a lie; it was more like she was mad around him - mad at the space surrounding his stupid, handsome head - mad that he’d shown up, as if summoned, right when she was feeling so sorry for herself about him.

But that was far too complicated to explain, so instead she asked, “What’s your business in the city?”

He brightened a bit, perhaps relieved to divert the topic. “Thought I’d tour the Goldroad - see what travel is really like there outside the official inspection dates.”

Byleth cocked her head to the side, staring out her west-facing window. He referred to the winding trade route that now spanned the Throat, starting at the Locket and ending at a similarly sized fort across the border in Almyra - but that was over a day’s travel from Derdriu.

Following the path of her eyes, Claude went on quickly, “And, you know, I was in the area, so why not visit my very best friend?”

She wasn’t sure she’d classify a seventeen hour wyvern flight as ‘in the area.’ Byleth narrowed her eyes, looking from his rigid smile, to his posture, to the basket he carried, then back to his face, waiting for the actual answer.

“- All right,” he confessed, exhaling deeply. “My spies said you were sick, so I came to check on you - how are you still so good at that?”

She smiled despite herself and pointed at the basket, which he promptly handed over. Popping a dried date into her mouth, she asked coyly, “At what?”

Claude laughed heartily, reaching over to get one for himself, and that simple action propelled them effortlessly into a comfortable, familiar rhythm, dispelling their outer veneers of royalty. 

They traded stories about travel, about new friends, about insufferable opposition; Claude told her about one of his subordinate satraps - which served a similar function to Byleth’s ministers, but with more concentrated local authority - who had threatened to raise an army in his territory over the price of grain, and then panicked when Claude had called his bluff and negotiated a lower price.

(“Did he even have an army?” she asked, completely absorbed in the story and eating sour cherries by the handful.

Claude, with a wide, gleeful grin, replied, “Not a chance.”)

In return, Byleth told him about last year’s failed rebellion in eastern Faerghus, in which a group of Blaiddyd royalists had tried to rally the region’s former aristocracy under the banner of House Fraldarius - and how Felix himself had ridden out to personally disband them.

(“Oof. Embarrassing,” Claude commented, making a face like someone had punched him in the gut. “What did he say to make them listen?”

Byleth snorted and modulated her voice to match the prickly swordsman’s. “‘This is not happening. Leave.’”)

As the afternoon wore on, servants brought in tea service and then dinner - and Byleth’s temporary surge in vitality upon seeing her dear friend started to fade, replaced by the fever-aches she’d come to know so well. Her movements grew slower and her answers shorter, overcast by brain fog.

Claude watched this change in her with considerable worry, helping her back under her blankets after they’d finished eating and re-situating the pillows around her head.

“Oh, stop it,” she chided, swatting away his hands. “I’m not completely helpless.”

He backed off, smiling easily, but stayed within range to aid her again if needed. “I don’t know about that,” he teased. “You know what they say about people who catch colds in the summer.”

“It’s spring,” she insisted, wrinkling her nose, but he didn’t laugh. In fact, there were no traces of mirth left anywhere on his face.

Byleth sat up straighter. “Claude, it’s only harvest fever. Marianne said it should clear up in a few days.”

He dropped back into his chair, resting his elbows on his knees so he could bridge part of the gap. “But what if it’s not, though?”

A nearby Church of Seiros’s evening bells rang out across the palace grounds. The brassy sounds changed with each echo, reaching her bedchamber as ghostly distortions.

“What, you think Marianne got it wrong?” Byleth asked, pulling her blanket up subconsciously.

“No, just -” Claude ran a hand back through his hair, pushing it even further out of its usual style, “- what if it’s related to...whatever Sothis did to you after the siege?”

He’d spoken so quietly that Byleth had to lean forward and slow her own breath in order to hear it. The concern in his tone - the restraint in his clasped hands; the uncertainty in his eyes - made her take a second pass over everything.

She no longer saw a casual check-in made by a concerned friend. Claude had traveled here with speed and intent, and now she knew why; just like their parting words at Garreg Mach had stuck with her, her long and mysterious slumber had probably stuck with him.

(The realization, while illuminating, didn’t hit her as hard as it should have. She thought some version of that truth, formless and undefined, must have been swimming around in the back of her mind for a while. It explained so succinctly why Marianne had insisted on treating Byleth herself, and why Lorenz stood vigil so often outside her room, even though the two had comparably little free time.)

Now that she thought about it, the long-term consequences of merging with a goddess should probably be a bigger concern of hers, too.

“I haven’t heard Sothis’s voice, nor felt her presence, in six years,” Byleth explained calmly, striving for an affect that would put him at ease. “And I’ve been in perfect health, besides.”

Claude gave her a long, lingering look - one that took in not only her face, but her long, mint-green braid and her customary wardrobe, unchanged from her days at the monastery - as if he wanted to commit her current state to memory. Byleth returned it with a confused frown, ready to comment on the odd behavior, but then his usual smile returned in a flash.

“You’re right,” he acquiesced with a little shrug, standing and straightening his riding harness. “It’s probably nothing serious. A few days, you said?”

Byleth’s confusion skewed into suspicion. Claude never let anything go that easily. “Yeah,” she answered slowly, searching his face for signs of duplicity. “Marianne said I’m already over the worst of it.”

“That’s great,” Claude enthused in the exact manner he’d use to win over his enemies, and Byleth’s misgivings quadrupled. “You should get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He was out the door in a flourish of his royal half-cape, paying no mind to the official etiquette of departure. (Byleth didn’t care about such things, but Lorenz was surely fuming about it in the hall.)

She let herself fall, warily, back onto her bed, pondering what Claude could possibly be up to - because he was up to something. It was only after she’d started to drift off, her head nestled warmly in one of about a dozen pillows, that the implications of his parting words struck her.

---

Ignatz rushed down the administerial wing’s main corridor, clutching a stack of accounting ledgers in one arm and several sheaves of operational business licenses in the other. Sunlight was just starting to peek through the hall’s windows, painting slowly elongating bars of yellow on the opposite walls; nobody would be in their offices yet, but if he could deliver his cargo before breakfast, he’d be able to get a head start on his own day’s work -

Thus distracted, he pushed his slipping glasses back up the bridge of his nose - using an occupied hand. Fifty business licenses, previously sorted alphabetically and geographically, drifted to the ground in a fluttering cloud of failure.

“Oh, no,” Ignatz muttered, dropping to his knees and gathering up the papers as best as he could without dropping the ledgers. If he didn’t deliver his cargo before breakfast, that would delay all of his tasks by at least an hour, thereby pushing back tomorrow’s tasks as well, to say nothing of his meeting with the merchants’ guild - 

A head of shaggy brown hair and a pair of leather-gloved hands bent to organize the papers into a messy but holdable pile, then helped to situate it more snugly in Ignatz’s grasp.

In his haste and immeasurable relief, Ignatz threw a grateful, “Thanks, Claude!” over his shoulder as he resumed his flight down the corridor.

At the threshold of Hilda’s office, though, while balancing both stacks with one hand so he could turn the doorknob, he froze and shouted back the way he’d come, “Claude?!”

---

Instead of the usual morning sounds - like the rustling of Marianne’s skirts or the trundling of a breakfast cart - Byleth woke to singing. It originated somewhere to her right, winding and unhurried, and she knew this gentle melody; Claude had taught it to her during the war.

So he really was still here, then. He’d really stayed. 

She opened her eyes just a hair, hoping for a chance to observe him before he noticed that she was awake.

It was still early. All the curtains were tied back and the windows cracked, letting in pale, diffused light and a sea-salt breeze off the bay. Claude stood at her personal writing desk, which Marianne had turned into a makeshift apothecary, weighing a small pile of freshly ground coriander. He was dressed more casually today, having discarded his courtly attire and riding leathers in favor of a belted Almyran-style tunic; his hair was bound in a simple but flattering tie at the nape of his neck.

Byleth watched him work - watched him thoughtfully consider the ratio of coriander to ginger to water, his hand hovering over each as he deliberated. All the while he sang that soft tune, so beautifully laden with memory and affection. 

When he’d finally settled on a mixture, he reached into a pouch at his belt and uncorked a vial of honey, adding a spoonful to the mug. She tried her best to hold it in, but a tiny, breathless laugh escaped her; that rich wildflower honey was a signature of Claude’s home-brews - a sweetener to make his questionable concoctions more palatable.

He jumped and whirled at the sound, his cheeks darkening somewhat at being caught unawares, but Byleth just shook her head slowly, reassuringly, and hummed the next few bars of his song. At once, his embarrassment morphed into a wide, slanted smile, and he turned back to put the finishing touches on his creation.

“What are you still doing here?” Byleth asked, pushing herself up to a sitting position. Her hair must have been a mess, but she had to settle for a quick smooth-down.

Claude chuckled and sat on the edge of her bed, holding out the mug of steaming medicinal tea. “Really? No ‘Good morning, Claude, and thank you for taking such good care of me?’”

She took the cup and shot him a faux-scowl. “Who’s running your country, though?”

“Oh, it basically runs itself.” He waved a flippant hand, staring out a window in the direction of the Throat. “Our scholars say, ‘A king is a great ship’s rudder.’ It just so happens that my ‘great ship’ has a good heading right now.”

Byleth regarded him doubtfully. She knew this proverb, and its wisdom was definitely not intended to excuse literal flights of fancy.

“What?” he asked, rolling his head to the side playfully. “If anything happens, Nader knows where I am. Besides, aren’t you happy to see me?”

Her stern facade - only performative, anyway, since Claude never failed to disarm her - softened. “I’m always happy to see you,” she said quietly, hiding her vulnerability with a big sip from her mug. (It was delicious, of course, after being assembled so skillfully.)

The curious look he gave her in response lasted a little too long, probed a little too deep for comfort, so she followed it up with a nervous, “Where’s - where’s Marianne?”

Claude, ever-insightful, let the moment pass without remark. “She allowed me to perform her caretaking duties in exchange for a little, ah...discretion...on my part.”

That was easy to imagine. Her ministers had enough on their legislative plates without the obligatory fanfare that would accompany an ‘official’ royal visitation - so the last thing they needed was King Khalid, the former leader of the Alliance, showing his highly recognizable face all over Derdriu.

“We’re both locked up, then,” Byleth said plainly. That explained his wardrobe; a casual observer might think him no more than a member of the staff. As long as he didn’t linger in unfamiliar company, he could move freely about the palace.

“Yep.” Claude smiled contentedly, like he’d gotten the best possible end of this deal. (Byleth begged to disagree.)

In a comically professional, woefully unconvincing physician’s voice, he asked, “So, how are you feeling today, my liege?”

Byleth choked on a sip of her tea, cough-laughing and beating her chest to clear her airways. “Much better, doctor,” she spluttered, setting down her mug to prevent any spasm-related accidents. It was true; her head and body aches had been fading with each passing day, and the fever was low enough that she didn’t feel like a boiling crab leg anymore.

“Good, good,” he mused, looking far too pleased with himself. “Then what do you say to a bit of chess on the balcony?”

She gave her sternum a few more good thumps to really get all the spicy ginger out of her lungs, using the extra time to examine Claude more closely. He knew he couldn’t beat her at chess; what was this about? And was it related to - to whatever inscrutable scheme he was currently enacting?

“Sure,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t give up his plans if asked. (Not until the most dramatically poignant moment, anyway.) If she was going to figure it out on her own, she’d need more opportunities for candid observation, and chess should do nicely.

His face split into a grin immediately. “I saw a board in Lorenz’s office. Meet you back here after lunch?”

“Yeah, it’s a date,” she agreed lightly, and didn’t miss the way it tripped him up on the way out. 

---

“You’re still here,” Lorenz observed with the same sort of weary derision one might direct at a persistent rug stain. He stood in the doorway to his office, holding a tea tray and projecting an aura of disappointment.

Claude, who was currently inside said office and in the midst of burgling a marble chess board, hastily clicked all its pieces back down and clasped his hands behind his back. “I am! Very astute of you to notice.”

Lorenz’s eyes flicked pointedly from his uninvited guest to his now-askew board, then he calmly strode around both to reach his polished mahogany desk. “Well, then. Would you join me for tea, Your Majesty?”

The way he gestured to the opposite chair spoke clearly of interrogation, but Claude sat anyway. It wouldn’t be polite to steal a man’s gaming paraphernalia and refuse his company.

“Why, thank you, Minister,” he answered, exaggerating his friend’s formal air, “we are simply delighted by your invitation.”

Lorenz’s poker face had improved over the years, but Claude still caught the subtle tightening of a jaw and the slightest arch of a brow; dead giveaways that he’d still snap at a piece of bait like a Brigidian piranha. Good to know.

“All right,” Lorenz said, clipped, like he’d come to a decision at the end of a long internal debate. “What are you doing here, Claude?”

Claude blinked, taken aback by the suddenness of the question. “Uh, well, Marianne and I -”

“I quite understand the generous arrangement which Marianne has afforded you,” Lorenz cut in quickly, pouring out two cups of tea. He handed one over the desk with the gravitas of a commander handing down orders. “What, precisely, are you here to do?”

Faking affrontation would be a moot point here, Claude thought. Lorenz was chasing down a specific answer, and from the set of his brow, he’d probably figured out most of it.

And that was fair. Despite their rocky interactions, Lorenz was one of the few people that Claude would say he trusted, and he knew that Lorenz felt the same (even though he had a peculiar way of showing it).

However, while Lorenz looked confident in the answer to his question, Claude didn’t even know where to start. How could he sum up this whirlwind?

Should he begin with the primal fear of hearing that Byleth had collapsed? With the breakneck flight to Derdriu, imagining all the worst possibilities in his head? (The mild shock in her eyes as she toppled backward into the chasm; her ensuing five-year absence, silent and absolute.)

Or at the boundless relief - the sheer, joyful knowledge that she had not, in fact, been re-afflicted with Sothis’s ancient sleeping sickness?

Or, should he skip straight to the certainty that he wouldn’t survive another such scare, and the unwillingness to be apart from her for even a second more, political repercussions be damned? 

In the end, holding a steaming, fragrant cup of bergamot, Claude - in one of only a handful of occasions thus far in his life - couldn’t find the right words.

Luckily, Lorenz, who must have witnessed his friend’s rapid expression shifts, found one instead. Gently, and with more sympathy than expected, he asked, “Still?”

Ah, so he had figured it out.

Claude raised his teacup in a silent toast. “Still,” he confirmed, then downed it in one gulp.

“Hm.” Lorenz paused to serve out refills and scones, and Claude knew exactly what his friend was remembering.

(For five years during the war, Claude had periodically returned to Garreg Mach, even though everyone else had given up the search for Byleth. As the visits persisted in the face of increasing danger, one by one, and with varying levels of understanding and acceptance, his friends had all come to the same conclusion: their leader was in love with their former professor.)

“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” Lorenz said curtly, but not unkindly. “You have a plan, then? - Oh, what am I saying? Of course you do. The Master Tactician wouldn’t have shown up without a plan.”

Claude, who had been trying to decide if Lorenz was mocking him or not, visibly fumbled his cranberry scone at that final comment.

Instantaneously, Lorenz’s face went from invested concern to mortification. “Goddess above - you don’t have a plan.”

Claude didn’t have the heart to say that his “plans” often sprung from gut feelings like this; that, very often, he was building a bridge to his goals and walking it simultaneously, trusting that there would be another plank when he reached back for one.

In this particular instance, his bridge took the form of an impromptu and extended stay at the palace while he figured out the world’s most diplomatically sensitive marriage proposal. He wanted to tell Lorenz that, actually, he had several possible scaffolds in place, he just hadn’t chosen one yet - but Claude could see the foundational flaws in all of them, and still hovered at the juncture, unsure where to lay the next plank.

“- No, I don’t,” he finally admitted, steepling his fingers on the desk. “I’m taking suggestions, though, if you have any?”

Lorenz took a slow, calculated sip of his tea, giving Claude one of his patented ‘how did you manage to become the leader of anything’ looks. “Marianne assures me that Byleth will recover in a matter of days -”

“I know,” Claude interjected miserably. His timetable was tragically inadequate.

“- And, while your presence here is temporarily acceptable on the basis of friendship, it will become much harder to justify after the palace returns to its normal operations -”

“I know, Lorenz,” Claude said, letting his forehead fall onto the points of his fingers. The pain, he thought, was well-deserved. “Sheesh, you don’t have to rub my nose in it…”

Lorenz laughed softly. “Apologies. I’m simply savoring the moment; it isn’t often you need my strategic input.”

With his face downturned and concealed, Claude grimaced. He supposed he’d deserved that, too.

“But,” Lorenz went on, “I do have a suggestion. Given your limited available time and lack of direction, we should enlist outside support.”

Claude raised his head incredulously. “Your solution is to have more people laugh at me?”

“Yes. Hilda and Marianne, to be precise.” Lorenz smirked and crossed his legs. “And they won’t laugh - in fact, Hilda will be delighted.”

His tone of voice was too amused for the answer to be anything good, but Claude still asked cautiously, “Why?”

“Oh, because I owe her quite a bit of gold, naturally - I thought it would take you and Byleth far longer to act on your feelings, and my money was on her acting first.”

---

Byleth loved the balcony off her bedchamber. It was on the same side of the palace as the throne room, only higher, with a wider perspective of the canal below and a down-angle view of the opposite block. Sitting on it and looking out, with the stone railing acting as an artificial horizon, she really felt as if she were floating above Derdriu; the city sprawled off endlessly to her right, while its great network of canals spilled into the bay on her left, all set in miniature from this height.

A tangy sea breeze teased through her hair, rustling the many and vibrant plants - in pots, hanging from the roof, and mounted in window boxes - that scattered the area. They were in perfect health, she noticed, despite the rarity of her visits, and Byleth wondered if it was some palace staffer’s entire job to maintain luxurious spaces like these, even though some busy official might seldom use them. 

She privately resolved to appreciate the balcony more often.

It didn’t take long for Claude to come whistling through her chambers, bearing a chess board like a server delivering a high-end meal. He put it down on a small, circular table where Byleth’s own board was already set up, then carefully aligned their edges to create a double-long playing field.

(They’d invented this game early on at Garreg Mach after discovering that neither of them felt challenged enough by the base rules. It had gone through several name changes before they’d agreed to just keep the original; after all, if either of them ever mentioned the game to the other, they both understood which (clearly superior) version was being referenced.)

“So, you managed to get Lorenz to part with it,” Byleth commented as he arranged his pieces and sat down opposite her. “What’d it cost you?”

Claude made a face like he’d just licked a lemon. “Oh, nothing much. Just my reputation and dignity.” He laughed it off, but there was a distinct, hollow ring of truth to his words. “Anyway. Sixty-point game?”

She cocked her head, intrigued. Their special rules allowed for custom “armies” to be built from the standard chess units, each with an individual point cost. Byleth personally liked to run an army without pawns - high risk, high reward (usually reward).

“Not forty?” she asked mildly, picking out her standard array plus an extra frontline of knights. Claude would regret handing her such an aggressive opener. “Are you trying out a new strategy?”

He grinned and laid out his own army, which seemed to focus around his sovereigns - and, as usual, contained a robust line-and-a-half of pawns. What he sacrificed in speed, he made up for in defensive surface area.

“I am. I think you’ll really like this one,” he said, playing his first (highly predictable) move. 

That was the thing about Claude, though. Byleth thought his move was predictable right now, at the beginning, but he was a highly intelligent improviser. The long field between armies meant that most of the game was based on ranged path speculation. 

Was a cluster of pieces actually heading toward her left flank, or would it divert to threaten other units at the last second? She’d have to put a metaphorical shield in place for the first possibility, and a sword for the other - and with Claude, it was impossible to tell ahead of time which he would actually pick. 

But, despite the chaos his playstyle caused, its spontaneity was also what made him such a compelling opponent. The tactical element never got stale.

“It’s bound to be more exciting than your rook phalanx idea,” Byleth teased, starting her knights off on their long journey.

Claude gasped like she’d just insulted his mother. “Hey, that was not my fault - it was a good attack pattern in theory!”

She made a tiny sound of agreement to humor him, but remained privately unconvinced.

As usual, they lapsed into silence for the first phase of the game, each trying to dissect the other’s overall strategy. Of course, at this stage, it was largely conjecture; there would be many, many reactive and counter-reactive moves before any two units actually engaged.

The quiet was nice, though. Ships’ bells echoed in from the piers, mingling with street noise rabble and the shrill cries of bay gulls. There was no one to demand her ear or her time - a rare commodity. She could tell Claude enjoyed it, too, by his easy smiles and relaxed posture.

Why had they ever stopped doing this? It dawned on Byleth that it had been years since their last game.

“- Hey, Claude,” she said at the thirty-turn mark.

He didn’t look up from his spread. “Hm?” “What in the world are you doing?”

His green eyes, which had been bouncing between forward pawns, flicked up to her face. “Setting up my midgame?” he half-asked, gesturing to his formation like the answer was obvious. “Why, what are you doing?”

Byleth narrowed her eyes at the board. He’d split his pawns into two staggered ranks with his sovereigns in the middle, like some sort of sandwiched convoy, and the outer ring of mid-tier pieces looked to be guards.

“Your brilliant new strategy is to hand-deliver your king to my army?” she contended, tracing his column’s trek down the board with her hands, then opening them wide, fingers hooked, to mime the pieces being eaten by a sharp-toothed monster.

Claude laughed confidently. “You’ll see. The king and queen together are unstoppable.”

It was certainly an unconventional approach. By virtue of its novelty, it tripped Byleth up several times in the early game - one might even say, around turn sixty, that her opponent had the advantage. But the sheer speed and maneuverability of her knightly vanguard eventually prevailed, and by turn ninety, she had his entire escort block surrounded. 

“Multi-point threat,” Byleth declared, moving in on his rear line. “This was an interesting idea, but I do believe your king is in mortal peril.”

Claude, who’d been standing for the last dozen turns, paced to the other side of the table. (He loved to do that - to see the situation from all angles, like he would in a real conflict. Unfortunately, that expanded perspective could do little for him here.)

“No, I think - listen - he still has his queen.”

Byleth examined the setup again. “Uh-huh, he sure does,” she drawled, trying to understand how that might change their fates.

“I’m just saying,” he went on, crouching so that he could view the board at eye level. “Look how far they’ve already come. Look at all they’ve been through together - it’s not like a little opposition could stop them now, right?”

She crossed her arms, a bewildered smile tugging at her mouth. “Are you seriously trying to Nemesis me right now? My bishops have them both in four.”

Claude gave a frustrated sigh. “No, this isn’t a scheme - well,” he amended, scratching pensively at his chin scruff, “okay, it is a scheme, but -”

I knew it, she thought, vindicated, and grinned accordingly.

“Ugh, forget it.” Claude toppled his king. “You’re right, it was an ill-fated venture that clearly needs outside support.”

Byleth frowned. “What? I didn’t say that.”

He waved his arms like he was dispelling the entire conversation. “Never mind. We’ve still got plenty of light - how about another game?”

---

Later that night, after Byleth and most of the palace had retired, Hilda’s raucous laughter rang out through the entire administerial wing.

“You tried to tell her with chess?!”

She, Claude, Marianne, and Lorenz all sat around a table in one of the meeting rooms, passing around a bottle of strong Faerghan whiskey.

“No wonder she didn’t get it,” Hilda continued, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes (in a delicate manner that spared her makeup). “You know how Byleth is!”

Lorenz refilled his glass, nodding emphatically. “Agreed. Subtlety will get you nowhere in that arena, my friend.”

“I thought it was sweet,” Marianne disclosed quietly.

Claude propped his feet up on an unused chair and dipped his chin gratefully. “Thank you. I also thought it would be sweet. And successful.”

He took a long swig straight from the bottle, much to Hilda’s amusement. “But you were right, Lorenz, okay? So -” he slapped the tabletop in invitation, “- go on. Advise me.”

Perhaps sensing that their friend was already punishing himself enough, no one pushed the teasing any further. Lorenz and Hilda shared a look - one that said they’d already discussed the matter privately - and then everyone got straight down to business.

“First of all, we should discuss the legal ramifications of your union,” Lorenz said, indicating the palace walls. “It’s true that anti-Almyran sentiment has died down greatly since the war, especially here in Leicester, but I fear widespread confusion - how much power would the king of Almyra suddenly have over their territories? Their livelihoods?”

Claude recoiled from the intensity. “Whoa! She hasn’t even said yes - aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves, here?”

(In truth, he had the same worries about his own homeland; it wasn’t like xenophobia was exclusive to Fodlan. His current plan - if she agreed - was to introduce her presence like he’d introduced his own: aggressively and unapologetically, with hopes that the Almyran public would regard it with the same eventual respect.)

The other three gave him bland looks.

“You really, honestly think she’ll turn you down?” Hilda asked in angry disbelief.

Claude gritted his teeth. “I don’t know - I mean, that’s Byleth’s whole deal, right? Unbeatable strategist? You never know what she’s thinking?”

“Oh, Claude,” Marianne said, patting him on the arm. “You should have more confidence in yourself.”

Hilda snorted into her tumbler.

“- Regardless, I don’t want to discuss the politics without her. If she says yes,” Claude emphasized with a stern glance around the table. “I have to get to the actual question first, okay? Lorenz. Ideas. Go.”

The man in question raised his eyebrows. “All right - well, Leonie proposed to me during a horseback ride. She’d painted all of her mounted archery targets with one word each, and in order they spelled out a question...oh, it was very romantic,” he said, his tone warming as he spoke. He then promptly cleared his throat. “But, ah, Byleth isn’t in a physical state for riding, hmm?”

Hilda propped her elbows up on the table and cradled her chin in her hands, recounting dreamily, “Marianne took me deep into the forest at night and professed her love under the light of the full moon. How could I have ever said no to that?”

Marianne hid behind her glass, her face beet-red. “I don’t, uhm, think there are any full moons coming up soon, though,” she managed to squeak out.

“Yeah, you have to do something quick.” Hilda pointed at him with her glass. “Let’s see - we already know it can’t involve winning something, so that’s out.”

Claude laughed sarcastically into the bottle.

“A grand display would not be diplomatically feasible, either,” Lorenz added.

Yeah, that made sense, Claude thought. A single plant in the throne room had brought word of Byleth’s illness to him in under three days - and he wasn’t the only one with eyes here. 

“You should do something that’s meaningful to both of you,” Marianne suggested, her face returning to its usual pallid shade. “Something simple but significant. Byleth would appreciate that, I think.”

Simple but significant.

Claude swirled the idea around in his head at the same time he swirled the contents of his bottle. Significant he could do - had been doing - but simple was another story. Maybe that was his problem; maybe he just needed to go back to the basics.

“And don’t get her a ring,” Hilda said. “I never see her wearing jewelry unless the tailors insist.”

He chewed on all of that, taking slow, measured sips of whiskey. Something meaningful to both him and to Byleth - something memorable, but uncomplicated. No rings, he added mentally. That was fine; as an archer, he disliked having obstructions around his hands, anyway. (And while they were out here breaking traditions, who cared if it was one or one hundred?)

“Hey,” he began, doing some quick calculations around wyverns’ seasonal nesting habits. “How quickly could I get something down the Goldroad?”

Lorenz’s brows knit together. “From the capital to here, I presume, and with the use of your royal seal? Within the week. Why? What do you need?”

Claude grinned, luxuriating in the rush of a good plan coming together. “All right, listen to this -”

---

If she could’ve had her way, Byleth would have chosen to remain in those last days of her fever forever. Her symptoms were mild and unobtrusive, she didn’t have to do any paperwork, and Claude was there; simply put, it was the ideal situation.

They spent four whole days together playing games, mixing various drinks, going for (short and supervised) walks around the garden, and reminiscing about old times - but Marianne’s medicines were effective and all things, even good things, must end.

On the morning of the fifth day, she knew she was cured. Her mind was clear and her body strong, if a little feeble from the bed rest. Everyone else must have been on the same page, too, because Marianne came to greet her after breakfast in Claude’s stead.

“So that’s the end of the arrangement, then?” Byleth asked, trying to keep her voice even and normal.

Marianne smiled softly and pressed the back of her hand to Byleth’s forehead. “Yes. Claude will be returning home this evening, as I’m sure he has many decisions waiting for him there.”

That makes two of us, Byleth thought dejectedly.

“Your temperature is perfectly normal,” Marianne reported. “Do you have any lingering fatigue? Dizziness?”

“Nope. Nothing,” Byleth said, heaving a reluctant sigh. “I suppose I should head down to the audience chambers.”

She really, truly hadn’t meant to sound like a pouting toddler bound for punishment, but that was exactly how it had come out.

Marianne laughed. “Yes, you should - tomorrow.” To answer Byleth’s questioning stare, she pointed across the room. “I think you’ll be too busy today.”

Right on cue, something large impacted outside the windows with a dull, cracking thud. Without thinking, Byleth whirled, ready for some sort of threat - (her sword belt was hanging next to her bed, easily accessible for such emergencies) - but it was only Claude on the balcony.

Rather, it was his massive white wyvern, Sahar. She’d perched on the railing, her sharp claws gouging long scrapes in the stone, and he was mounted on her back.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay for that!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Good morning! Care for a ride?”

Byleth burst out in surprised laughter, too endeared to be mad about the property damage. She looked back, confused and curious, but Marianne just shook her head.

“Go,” she said, gesturing outward. “Have fun. You have my official medical clearance.”

That was all the permission Byleth needed to throw open the doors and run out, barefoot and grinning, to leap at Sahar’s saddle. The seaside wind blasted her hair back and Claude opened his arms for her arrival, bracing in his stirrups to absorb the impact.

They’d performed this maneuver many times during the war; since Byleth preferred to do her fighting on foot, Claude would often sweep down to reposition her more quickly. Even after five years without practice, they executed the pick-up without a hitch: she landed knees-first at the front of the saddle and Claude anchored her, wrapping both arms around her midsection.

In combat, the move had been utilitarian - the fastest way to mount up. Right now, though, it felt more intimate; with no armor, no weapons, and no urgency, they were basically just hugging on wyvern-back.

Byleth quickly turned herself around, hoping he hadn’t seen the blush rising up her neck. 

“That eager to get out of there, huh?” he teased, helping her get situated.

She rolled her eyes and cinched a pair of flight straps around her waist. The fit was snugly familiar, securing her to both the saddle and her fellow rider.

“You know the answer to that,” she replied, glancing down the tall outer walls of the palace. A few people in the canal-side gardens had looked up at the spectacle; they were too far away to see much detail, but this was clearly the queen’s bedchamber. “This isn’t the most discreet escape, is it?”

Claude scoffed, turning his mount skyward with a nudge. “Oh, it’s fine. Not many Fodlanese know about the white wyvern thing. Besides,” he said mischievously, testing the knots on her straps, “didn’t Marianne tell you? Our arrangement is done.”

With that, they were off. Sahar spread her massive wings - leathery and smooth, delicate and powerful all at once - to catch the current, pushing herself off into it and raining stone chips and dust in her wake.

Byleth yelped at the sudden lurch, falling back against Claude, who gladly supported her while they gained rapid altitude in the midday sky. Sahar’s rhythmic wing beats took them high above the notice of anyone in the city, down the palace’s canal and out into the bay.

She watched it all fall away as they climbed. The great trade ships shrank to the sizes of beetles in their lanes; the flocks of gulls that chased them, to mere specks. The ocean itself became an undulating cobalt tapestry, shot through with threads of white and gray.

When they leveled off and the wind died down in their ears, Claude spoke, “Remember when I taught you to fly?”

A series of images flashed in her mind: wrangling a saddle onto an impatient wyvern; losing straps and buckles under flapping wings; falling before she could even take off - so, so much falling.

“I remember when you tried to, sure,” she said, cringing at the memories. Even Leonie, who never gave up on anything, had declared Byleth’s flying skills unsalvageable. “Why?”

Claude laughed a little too hard, like he was recalling the very same foibles. “Nah. You just needed more time - we couldn’t spare any in the war. But now?”

“Are you suggesting,” Byleth said, throwing him a flat look over her shoulder, “that I fall on my ass repeatedly in front of the entire court? It was bad enough when it was just jeering students.”

“No, no, my point is -” Claude directed her attention back to their view of the bay, “- you could come out here whenever you wanted. Get away from it all.”

So he’d noticed her restlessness. Well, of course he did, Byleth admonished herself. He’s Claude.

“That would be...nice,” she admitted, giving him a half-smile. “It’s different, isn’t it? Leading during peacetime?”

He relaxed his hold on the reins and let Sahar go where she would in the open sky; she took full advantage of the freedom, floating into various air currents and skirting low, wispy clouds.

“Yeah, it is.” Claude’s tone was sober and diminished. He prodded gently, “How have you really been, Bee?”

The nickname brought unexpected tears to her eyes; he hadn’t used it since they parted at Garreg Mach five years ago. She’d forgotten how fond and welcoming it sounded - how warm - coming from his mouth.

Byleth faced straight ahead, glad he couldn’t see her expression. It must have been just as regretful and conflicted as her mind.

“I never expected to be here,” she murmured, and in her heart she finished the thought: without you. Her voice barely carried over the wind, but she knew Claude had heard it; he scooted closer to her in the saddle, whether consciously or not. “Everyone around me is so certain of their place, and I’m...not.”

Her thoughts strayed to Edelgard and Dimitri, to their twin drives that - even misguided and corrupted as they were - strove for a better world at their roots. Byleth, who held no grand vision for the future, couldn’t help but feel unfit for the mantles they’d left behind.

(Truthfully, that was one of many reasons why Derdriu was her favorite capital, and spring her favorite season. Fhirdiad’s and Enbarr’s thrones still felt like someone else’s seats to her - someone else’s dreams.)

“I don’t think anyone expected to be where they are now,” Claude said, matching her volume. When Byleth shot him another ‘quit your bullshit’ look, he chuckled and corrected himself, “Okay. Maybe I did, but nobody else did.”

“Lorenz thought he’d be leading the Alliance, hitched to some noble lady. Hilda didn’t think she’d be doing anything.” Claude put up one finger for each example. “Marianne wanted to keep her head down. Ignatz thought he’d be barred from his passions.”

He rested his chin on the top of Byleth’s head. “Expectations and reality don’t always match up. Are you unhappy with where you are, Your Majesty?”

I’m exceedingly happy where I am, she thought, easing herself back to rest against him. And that’s the problem.

“No,” she answered simply. “I’m not.”

Claude, perhaps sensing the dishonesty in her words, hummed doubtfully. The sound rumbled deep in her chest. “Well - if you ever were unhappy, you know I’d help, right? No matter what it was.”

“I know,” she said, tilting her head to smile up at him. “And - I think you’re right.”

He shifted to accommodate her better, crossing his arms over her lap to grip the saddlehorn. “Oh? About expectations?”

“No, about flying.” She settled into their pseudo-embrace, resolving to enjoy it while it lasted. “I should learn.”

Claude made a small, happy noise in his throat. “I’ll teach you. It’ll be great.”

They drifted down the Edmund coastline in a comfortable quiet after that. If not for the Throat looming in the distance - a constant reminder of the hourglass hanging over their flight - Byleth would’ve been perfectly content. The longer they went, the more she wished he would just keep flying straight over the mountains - but the sun continued on its inexorable path through the heavens, and all things, even good things, must end.

Still, though, when he wheeled them around and began the journey back, Byleth thought she detected a resonant note of hesitation in him.

By the time they’d reached the bay of Derdriu, the sun hung low and the sky had turned to vibrant oranges and indigos; the frothy crests of waves, the metal fixtures on ships’ masts, and even the scaly tips of Sahar’s wings shone golden in the rich evening light. 

The palace’s white marble exterior reflected sunset-colors onto the streets and canal below. In any other instance, she’d find it beautiful, but right now it was no different than the Throat: an ominous, prohibitive barrier.

Claude guided Sahar to the balcony again, wincing as her claws ground fresh holes into the railing.

“- I’ll pay for that,” he reiterated sheepishly, then hopped down to offer Byleth a hand.

She took it, letting him assume her weight while she scrambled much less gracefully to the ground. The stone tiles, quickly cooling with the onset of night, chilled her bare feet on contact; she shivered, looking back wistfully at the evening sky. 

When she turned around again, Claude was watching her intently. Unreadably. 

“Did you enjoy the ride?” he asked.

“I did. Thank you.” She tried to match his tone, to hide her sadness - to appreciate the time they’d had together instead of mourning its conclusion. “I suppose you need to get going, then?”

“Mm, not quite yet,” he replied with a secretive smile, wrapping Sahar’s reins around her saddlehorn. He muttered a phrase to her in Almyran, to which the great wyvern nuzzled into his hand and took off in the direction of the aviary.

“Let’s get you warmed up, first.” He strode past her to the open balcony doors, jerking his head toward it encouragingly when she didn’t immediately follow. “Come on, it’s okay - I have time.”

Byleth trailed after him, instantly suspicious. He was using his ‘false sense of security’ voice again, like he had on the first night. “Claude, what are you planning?” she called out warily, stepping into her darkened bedchamber.

A spark struck in the hearth, setting the tinder inside ablaze and silhouetting Claude in a red-orange halo. “Why do I have to be planning something?” he countered, overly defensive, as he stoked the fire. “- You looked cold, is all.”

She gave him a skeptical once-over, then turned to grab a cloak from her wardrobe - and there on her dresser, shining in the firelight, was a lacquered ebony box the length of her arm.

It was decorated with glittering gold leaf along its edges, clearly meant to hold something valuable. Byleth whipped around to fix Claude with an accusing glare, but he just shrugged innocently and motioned for her to open it.

He had a long history of bequeathing strange gifts to his friends, always seeming to enjoy the reactions a little too much. Byleth wasn’t aware of any current holidays, though, either in Fodlan or Almyra.

She sighed and lifted the lid. “I swear, if this is another apron -” 

The breath caught in her throat. It most definitely was not an apron.

Nestled in a bed of burgundy velvet, only slightly smaller than the box itself, laid a porcelain-white wyvern egg dotted with flecks of pearlescent ivory. 

This time when she glanced back, it was in affectionate curiosity. “So this is why you were pushing flight training,” she said, gingerly touching the warm shell. “But - aren’t white wyverns only given to members of the royal family?”

Claude moved to stand next to her, drained of all his earlier mirth and bravado. In its place was a tense energy she hadn’t sensed in him since they’d last met at the Goddess Tower.

“Well, yeah, that’s the idea,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I was hoping you’d, uh, well - I wanted to ask you, since -”

He stopped and grunted, looking disgusted with himself. “Let me start over.”

Byleth nodded, absolutely baffled. What in Sothis’s name was he trying to say?

Claude ran a hand back through his hair and took a deep, steadying breath. “We both didn’t have the best experiences with family growing up. I mean, you had Jeralt and I had my mom, and they were great, but other than that it was…”

“Lonely,” she offered. They’d discussed their respective childhoods many times before - commiserated in the shared wounds of alienation and neglect.

Delicately, he took her hand and squeezed it. “Yeah. Lonely. And if I’m reading this correctly, so were the last five years, right?”

Byleth swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded again.

“Yeah,” Claude repeated softly. “For me, too. So, I thought - maybe neither of us has to be lonely anymore.”

His meaning dawned on her like a sunrise, blooming heat high in her cheeks. Her embarrassment fueled his, in turn, and they were left staring at one another in stunned silence; from an outside perspective, they must have looked - fittingly - like a pair of panicked deer.

“Claude,” she pronounced thickly, needing to verify her theory, “are you asking me to…?”

“Mhm,” he confirmed, a portion of his usual confidence flickering back to life in his smile. He tipped her chin upward with his index finger. “I want to be your family. I want you to be my family.”

Byleth had spent the first part of her life without adequate modes of expression. Before meeting Claude, she’d gotten by on curt gestures and a flat affect - and now, in the face of overwhelming emotion, she regressed right back to that state.

All she could do to communicate her answer was to jump and reach for him, just like she was leaping onto his wyvern - and, predictably, protectively, his arms closed around her. Anchored her.

Like always, she thought. A perfect catch.

“Woah - I’ll take that as a yes, then?” Claude asked, tentatively hopeful, laughing and stepping backward from the unexpected force.

Byleth buried her face in his shoulder and nodded, unable to speak; hot tears spilled from her eyes, soaking into Claude’s tunic collar, and her wrists trembled where they were clasped at his neck. Her heart had never beat, yet now it was overflowing, filling her chest with something happy and potent and home that she’d never dared to covet before.

In the glow of the hearth, to the crackling of logs and the faint rush of a sea breeze outside, Claude rocked them back and forth at a measured, soothing pace. He kissed her forehead, her temple, her cheekbone, wiping away her tears with his thumb and whispering in a shaky voice, “It’s okay, Bee. We’re going to be so happy, I promise. I promise.”

---Epilogue---

Lorenz understood the severity of the Airmid flooding - really, he did - but he did not understand why it needed to translate into a six-in-the-morning assembly. Anything the ministers discussed there could be handled just as easily, and with more lucidity, during their regular working hours.

Still, he trudged diligently up the stairs to the meeting rooms. If there were emergency measures to enact, then, by the goddess, he’d see them enacted. The peoples of Hrym and Ordelia had already suffered enough for several lifetimes.

He was just inside the threshold, blinking and stifling a yawn, when he saw them: Byleth and Claude, seated side by side at the head of the meeting table, the former digging into a plate of food and the latter grinning like a madman.

Lorenz’s yawn cut off abruptly; his jaw snapped shut with a click.

“You’re still here,” he grumbled, sliding into a chair on an empty side. “Somehow I doubt this is about the floods.”

Hilda and Marianne, who were sitting opposite him, giggled quietly together, their hands clasped on the tabletop. (Frankly, it made him jealous. Leonie hadn’t wanted to touch the office of royal minister with a ten-foot lance.)

“Nope,” Byleth said, pointing at Claude with her fork. “This is about the legality of our marriage.”

Hilda clapped frantically with excitement. “Congratulations! Ooh, this is going to be the biggest wedding ever - can you imagine the guest list? We’ll be curating it for months.”

“I think I’ll exclude my paternal cousins,” Claude mused. “Just to watch them squirm.”

Marianne nodded. “They deserve it.”

“Wait. Hold.” Lorenz slapped his daily ledger down on the table like a judge calling for order, and it worked just the same. The rabble died down, all eyes turning to him. “First of all: congratulations, you two. You’ve made me a marginally poorer man.”

Hilda snickered triumphantly.

“Second: this is going to be a legislative nightmare - and don’t you tell me differently, Claude von Riegan,” he added, holding up a finger when it looked like Claude would cut in. 

“I’ll abdicate,” Byleth suggested, stabbing into a sausage.

“No -!” all three ministers shouted in unison - even Marianne, who’d also half-stood from her chair, hands braced on the table.

(Meanwhile, Claude simply watched his new fiancee with moon-eyed adoration; Lorenz was sure he’d humor anything she said right now.)

“That - that won’t be necessary,” Lorenz said, clearing his throat and smoothing down his ascot. “I only mean that it will take time and collaboration. Claude, I insist that you stay another week while we draft something for you to take home. I’ll write to Nader.”

Byleth let out a rare exuberant gasp; beside her, Claude glanced down the table and gave Lorenz a sly, conspiratorial wink. 

“- Oh, try to act professionally about this, would you?” he insisted, but an infectious smile was already spreading across his own face. 

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

Author’s Notes

candidates for game names:

byleth: better chess (rejected - judgmental)

claude: long chess (rejected - misleading)

hilda: chess 2 (considered but ultimately rejected - legality)

lorenz: tactician’s chess (rejected - boring)

[wisteria-blooms]

apparition licence (fred weasley & reader)

summary

“You know, he’d be right pissed,” George said leaning over the counter, a semblance of his old self taking hold of him, as if his twin were there alongside him to agree, “if you’d finally gotten your bloody licence and never apparated again.”

In which Fred Weasley’s promises to you are cut short. 

warnings: major character death, major radio hit

apparition licence (2,485 words)

For the longest time, you knew you loved Fred Gideon Weasley. Loved him in his youth, white Christmases when freshly-sewn oversized jumpers swallowed his awkward and lanky frame. Loved him through the phases of his rebelliously long hair, silently cheering for him on the sidelines as he attempted to swindle the age line with George. Loved and laughed at him as he turned snot green from a miscalculation on a product he tested on himself. Loved him entire summers as the freckles on his skin darkened and his fiery hair seemingly set ablaze under the beating hot sun. Loved him as he streaked through wreckage and rainbow fireworks in your fifth year, leaving the formality of education behind in his own way. And loved him when he promised to do the same for you when you graduated.

Through the insanity of their pranks and your willingness to volunteer as their reliable product tester, Fred always handled you like delicate flower. His love, unbeknownst to you, was especially prominent when you begged him to teach you how to apparate before you were legally allowed to. The sweltering August you spent cooped up at 12 Grimmauld Place, you’d become particularly persistent. That summer was when the twins had just gotten licensed in apparition, abusing the privilege much to their mother’s chagrin. You couldn’t get anywhere in the house without hearing the familiar crack, and Fred’s warm body suddenly flush against yours. He’d laugh when you jump back in surprise but not before pulling you towards him in an embrace. How you loved feeling his warm flesh on yours, fingers intertwined in his when you fell back on the sofa.

“Why not now?” You pleaded, face close to his, much closer than friends should be. The question of your relationship was something you vowed to resolve after the impending war.

“Nope,” he spoke firmly, drawing circles with his calloused thumb on your hand. “Next year, you’ll learn it properly.”

“But I can’t take the test until the year after.”

“Summer birthdays are just awful things, aren’t they?” He teased, a form of payback from all his spring birthdays spent in the rain.

“Fred,” you huffed. “You and George break so many rules anyway, what’s different about this one?”

He racked his head for an excuse.

“Nothing,” he stated with a wink. “Just that you’d look bloody gross if you were splinched.”

You made a face. Fred looked at you with an uncharacteristic tenderness. It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to teach you at all; it was the thought of his teachings failing that terrified him. If Ron splinched, he would’ve sat there laughing with George before his twin would realize the severity of the situation and call for help. If it was Ron that was reprimanded by the Ministry for underage apparition, he’d tease him endlessly, knowing his father would step in for that little git. But not you. You just sat there pleading with perfectly pouted lips, and the temptation to just kiss you right there was taking precedence in his heart.  But no, not now. No, for you, everything had to be right and proper.

“Now, if you stop asking, I may take you for a side-along stroll through this place,” he offered instead.

You looked back to the kitchen where Molly was preparing tonight’s dinner, humming as she chopped carrots and onions and stirred the stew, blissfully unaware of her son’s proposition.

“You’d really?”

He held out his arm.

“Really.”

With a crackle, you were both gone, the last thing you heard being Molly’s voice scolding Fred for excessive apparition. You appeared in a spare room where Ron was rehearsing something akin to flirting in front of the closet mirror. Before he could react – crackle – you appeared in an unused bedroom where Kreacher was quietly pilfering through old possessions. The old house elf turned around a second too late, because you were now in the twins’ room, where George was laying on his back, twinkling a prototype of some sort between two fingers. He looked up, noticing your arm still linked in Fred’s, and smiled.

The rest of the day was well-spent using Extendable Ears to listen in on Ron’s feeble attempts at chatting up women.

The disappearances of Fred and George in your last year left a gaping hole in your heart. Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s absence did nothing to soothe that pain. Where Headmaster Dumbledore used to sit, it was Headmaster Snape. Where Filch used to censure, there were the Carrows. Where grumbles came from being forced to write lines or polish trophies, instead echoed screams of pain from deep down the dark hallways. You remained quiet, bit your tongue and obeyed the rules to just get through it all. You prayed every day for your friends’ safety. And if there was anything to get you through this horrible year, it was the prospect of passing your apparition test in April. And Neville, who turned out to be surprisingly good at emphasizing with your worries and your confiding in him of your long-time infatuation with Fred Weasley. Being the kind boy he always was, he assured you you’d see him again, that he’d feel the same way about you. You felt relief wash over you at his words. 

When this was over, no matter how bloodied and bruised any of you were, you’d leap into Fred’s arms, relishing in the feeling of him spinning you around in celebration. His girl, he’d proclaim. Then in his melodic laughter, you’d kiss him for the first time. And the rest of the story would write itself.

But as comforting as his words were, they were heinously wrong. That ill-fated night came beating down like a sledgehammer to a mirror, shattering your hopes and dreams. You’d gotten just a quick glance at Fred alongside his brother Percy before the walls caved in, taking him and twenty years of joy and jubilant laughter in the aftermath. All you got to see after braving the worst year of your life was his lifeless stare as he was laid in the makeshift infirmary. His hand didn’t offer the same warmth and protection as they always did, instead, they were bitterly cold in yours. Through tears, you whispered about all the things you planned to do after you’d gotten your apparition licence, fully knowing he couldn’t hear a damn thing. He was gone. You cried and cried into his chest, stopping only when Molly pulled you up and embraced you, shedding her own tears with you. A mother’s intuition always knew, but this was a love that would never be.

Months after, you still couldn’t bring yourself to do it. Apparate. A skill you yearned so strongly to do, waited for that April day so patiently for. And no, not for just yourself. No, the sensation of it and any talks of it was always reminiscent of Fred Weasley. The feeling of taking his strong arm, the smell of his well-worn flannel– of bonfires and the warmth of a loving home – and the sound of his strong heartbeat as you lay against his chest. He lavished you with grand dreams of how you were going to apparate around the country à la Weasley after this was over, to the salty seaside of the beach, paying a quick visit to Bill and Fleur at the Shell Cottage, then through the earthy forest where you could spend the day with just nature, then through modern London for a quick show, then re-appear in the Burrow without barely a sound, but always just in time for dinner.

Now, all the wonderful memories sunk to the bottom of the ocean, never to be found again.

So, you’d taken to chimneys and flying for your travels. It was slower but at least it didn’t hurt. At the very least, a walk to the lovely shopping streets signified that things were back to normal. As normal as they’d ever be after the brutality of war. Boarded shops slowly opened their doors again, painting some much needed colour after a grey drought. You’d taken to buying small quantities of floo powder, sparsely replenishing your little flowerpot on the fireplace mantle every Monday. Weekly trips became routine and whether it was healthy or not, you didn’t care.

One early morning with nothing in particular to do, you found yourself on a walk to Diagon Alley. The skies were amber and the sun was shyly tucked under the horizon. You were probably Floo-Pow’s first client of the day, and you wondered if anyone thought oddly of you for making so many stops here. But what would they know? This was your way of coping, and no matter how ridiculous it was, it helped you.

You paid your sickles and received your purchase in a bag through a small wooden hole. You then stopped at a bakery. With it being so early in the day, the only patrons were other storeowners who sought peace before opening their own doors. They sat nursing their coffees and languidly flipping through The Daily Prophet. You didn’t even have to ask the employee at the counter, who memorized your order: two coffees, a few pastries, and a copy of today’s news. With your purchases in stow, you slowly walked to your last destination.

93 Diagon Alley. The brightest store of the lot of them here was Weasley Wizard Wheezes.

George let you in immediately when he saw you waiting at the window. There was barely a quiet moment in this shop, so early mornings were quite inviting.

“Morning, Georgie,” you greeted as the doors opened for you, watching the younger twin stock his store. You held up the coffee and a bag of pastries. “Breakfast?”

“You didn’t have to,” he murmured, descending his ladder and cleaning his hands with a towel before making his way to the door. He always thought it should be him treating you with all the earnings of his business. Nonetheless, he accepted your weekly offering of breakfast as usual, a sentimental token of your thoughts. “Thanks.”

You did your best not to wallow in sadness in George’s presence; it made you feel selfish. George had lost his twin brother, his loyal partner in all his marvellous mischief, and most importantly, a part of himself. You had just lost a friend. You were not Fred’s family, you had not grown up together, had not taken your first steps or said your first words together. You had no right to complain or to pity yourself at the future you lost when George got up every day and continued his brother’s legacy the best he could.

As he bit into his pastry, he eyed the little sack you kept at your side.

“Again?” He raised an eyebrow.

You flushed.

“I know, it’s such a stupid thing to get hung up on,” you admitted, remembering how he said the same thing last week. “But I just can’t do it, Georgie. It still hurts.”

George sighed.

“You know, he spent that entire week asking if you’d gotten your licence,” he recalled, in reference to the week that elapsed between your examination and the final battle, the day of Fred’s death. “And of all the crazy things you were going to do. I was sure he’d forgotten I even existed.”

You chuckled before the first tear rolled down your cheek, memories of things that would never be consuming your mind.

“With distinction, like you,” you said, voice wavering. You were at least glad that you remained in Fred’s last thoughts. “I was so excited to tell him.”

The younger Weasley twin handed you a handkerchief from his jacket which you happily accepted.

“I reckon he knew,” he said through a sip of coffee, “Longbottom might’ve said something to him.”

You dabbed your tears, a smile lighting your face. So, he knew. He must’ve known before he passed. 

“You know, he’d be right pissed,” George said leaning over the counter, a semblance of his old self taking hold of him, as if his twin were there alongside him to agree, “if you’d finally gotten your bloody licence and never apparated again.”

The image of Fred jokingly chiding you for your wasted efforts in your head caused you to laugh. Genuine bouts of laughter. How could you have never realized? He would’ve revelled in your ability to apparate so flawlessly like him, and what a shame it’d be if you never did it again because of him.

“I suppose you’re right,” you admitted. “He’d be so upset with me.”

“Mum's making a big breakfast today,” George stated, taking a quick glance at the clock to his left, its centre adorned with a puppet Weasley caricature. Its abnormally small finger on its left hand long past seven and its large finger on the other was pointing precariously close to the twelve.  “If you can make it by eight, she’d love to have you.”

“I’ve always loved your mom,” you complimented, thinking of how loving Molly was, and how at certain points in your life, she considered you her own daughter and her, your own mother.

You spent your last moments of sunrise embracing George, feeling the pain of losing Fred slowly dissipate. One day it would disappear completely, but to start that process, you had to start taking the first steps. To not fear what Fred loved to do. What he would’ve loved you to do in his absence. 

“Careful now,” George warned, chin rested on your head as he stroked your hair. “Don’t splinch yourself.”

“With distinction, George Fabian Weasley,” you corrected, “I passed with distinction.”

And so you left George’s presence, disappearing from the shop with barely a sound as the stubby finger of the Weasley caricature jerked upwards to meet the eight. The familiar rush of apparating coursed through your body. Your friends often described it as though being unpleasantly squeezed, but for you, it was the nostalgic feeling of holding onto Fred Weasley’s arm as you apparated alongside him in Grimmauld Place. It was the blazing rush of his sun-kissed arms, strong around you, keeping you safe as if hurting you was the worst thing he could ever do. It was the excruciating bliss of his lips against your cheek, on your forehead, but not your lips lest he mess it all up. It was every glorious sunrise you saw outside your windows, staying up far too late to fulfill orders with him and sleeping when his mother called for breakfast. It was the unbridled joy you felt, heart tingling listening the wild promises of what was to come. It was the longing anticipation of him telling him how proud of he was of you in front of all his friends and family, how he knew his girl could do it.

But proud you would make him as you walked up the hill to the Burrow, feeling that in some ways, Fred would always be alongside you.

#fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x you 

[earths-roots-grow-up]

Headcanon abt Prussia’s psychology and historical relationship with Poland underthe cut. I hope you like it :)

Fact: The Polish-Teutonic wars were a series of military conflicts that started in 1308 when Teutonic Order took over polish city of Gdańsk (Danzing) and annexed it (event is knows as Slaughter of Danzing). After that came the first Teutonic War, in which the Order won Pomerelia from Poland. It was the beggining of larger Polish-Teutonic conflict that lasted for over 200 years and some following wars include:

- The second Teutonic War, a conflictr that took place between 1409 (when the Grand Master declared war on Poland and Lithuania) and 1411 when the conflict ended with Battle Of Grunewald. Teutonic Order lost and had to retreat, then manage to withstand the Siege of Malbork. The Knights did survive the defeat, but they never again gained their previous influence and power, while Poland-Lithuania was established as one of main powers in Central Europe. After wiki: "Most of the brothers of the Order were killed (during the final battle), including most of the Teutonic leadership". Many Teutonic fortresses were taken over and only eight castles reminded in Teutonic hands after this conflict. - The Thirteen Years' War, when the Order's Prussian territories began a revolt against the Order and asked Poland for help. Poland was like ‘hell yeah, let me make this my problem!’ and Prussian Confederacy/Kingdom of Poland truce was created. This war ended with the Knights losing and having to give up Western Prussia to Poland. - The Polish–Teutonic War 0f 1519–1521 that ended with a treaty of Kraków - this treaty resulted in parts of Order's Prussian territories becoming secularized as the Duchy of Prussia under polish rule (4 years later). This was sealed by the Prussian Homage of 10 April. There were more conflicts between 1308 and 1521, but I don't want to write an entire book here, so I reccomend the Polish-Teutonic War site on wiki, it has a pretty comprehensive list :). So in super short oversimplified terms, as I understand it: The wars started at the beginning of the 14th century with Teutonic aggression and lasted for over 200 years, during which Poland and the Order pretty much became THE RIVALS. The turning point was the battle of Grunwald when the Order lost a lot of its power, but still had some fight in it. It ended with Teutonic Knights secularizing and becoming a vassal state to Poland. This of course completely turned upside down after Prussia became independent again, got the status of a Kingdom and pretty much whipped Poland off the map in 1700s for 100 years, so I guess Prussia never forgets (which is one of my fav HCs for him xD).

Headcanon:

So my most obvious headcanon that comes from this is the hate/hate relationship that Poland and Prussia have. I believe they really can't stand each other and view each other as enemies. Their whole history is pretty much one somehow dominating the other or attempting to dominate him - from the Teutonic Wars, through Prussia becoming Poland’s vassal and then tables turning and Prussia (& Austria & Russia) partitioning Poland into nonexistence & and the Germanization that followed, until WW2 when they also fought. It’s a pattern.

It's like they live for revenge and each revenge has to be more brutal and dramatic than what happened before. It’s a snowball of anger that escalates. And I HC that yes, all of this was seen by both of them as revenge for the previous hurts and both of them believe the other deserved it for what he did before. The difference between them is that Poland views himself mostly as the victim that fights back (due to Polish martyrology culture, which is strong in the historical nation narrative [The Christ of Nations, etc], and the general belief in the “Germanic Aggressor”) and Prussia sees himself as the conqueror who has been humiliated by someone lesser (due to his general lack of empathy for those he sees as victims, so he would never cast himself as one, he himself wants to be casted as the aggressor, as to him this position means power and agency).

Prussia can never get why Poland kinda glorifies himself as the Victim and The Martyr (an important element of Poland’s identity), as to him that makes no sense, being a victim is pathetic, right? and Poland can't understand why Prussia glorifies himself as the conqueror as to him he's just a bloody tyrant so why would you be proud of that, right?

They see value in different things to the most basic level, which makes communications very hard - and both of them see value in things that end up being destructive to them, bc both the ‘Might is Right!’ and the ‘My suffering makes me SpEcIaL!’ thinking is not healthy. They are both messed up, just differently. But the way they are messed up kinda... makes them the perfect enemies and makes it easy to escalate conflict. They fit in this very pathological way, when Poland needs to “suffer” for his national identity of the Martyr of Europe to make sense and he needs someone to cast as the aggressor, while Prussia needs to attack and conquer to see himself as the badass powerhouse of Europe he wants to be. They are like the perfect toxic relationship - they bring out the worst in each other due to their specific world-view quircks, so it kinda makes sense that their history is so bad.

But my second less-obvious headcanon is:

Prussia began the Teutonic Wars with the slaughter of Danzing because he was young, ambitious and very impulsive. Gilbert has a hot temperament and a strong desire to be active - and he did exactly that, without really thinking through the ramifications of attacking a big established country while being just a young Knights Order. You can see this on macro scale in the Teutonic Wars and on micro scale in the Battle on lake Pejpus where he charged on a frozen lake. He was so into attacking that he never even considered the environment. The thing is, this failures (and his hot temper!) almost killed him. He literally almost died due to the lost wars, lost most of his power and had to completely re-invent himself from a military crusading catolic Knights Order into a secularized Duchy just to SURVIVE and ended up under the Polish boot for years. His biggest enemy’s boot. And he needed to kneel in front of him. This is IMO an incredibly important moment for how his further development went. The Ordnung Muss Sein discipline-is-key culture and the strategic mindfulness that become a second nature to him start here, when he almost dies because of his reckless actions. It also ingrained a sense of deep humiliation connected to the Prussian Homage that only installed the need for power EVEN MORE. Before he wanted power because he hated the feeling that he is less important than Actual Counties and believed he was given unfairly bad cards by being born without land. Now tho there's an extra motive: fear. Fear of being subjugated. And revenge. This kick started the process of creation of Kingdom of Prussia as we know it - so the transition from a wild-child-Order that just went with the flow and threw himself into battle on literal iced-over lake, into a very calculating, rational thinking soldier who assesses the room and everyone in it at the moment he enters and is hyper aware of all the environment and situation that accompanies his conflicts. So I guess the short version is: Prussia is very disciplined and controls his anger very well but that's not how he always was. He’s a powerful force of nature, a wildfire, that is being reigned in by the self-imposed diligent soldier discipline in order not self destruct. It becomes his second nature, he becomes the Machine, bc if he stayed the Wild Child he started as, he would have perished and he is aware of that. So this explains why he is so merciless about his discipline and order - it’s not just a preference he has, on a more primal level it’s about survival to him. Natural tendencies still sometimes slip through, especially when he's tired, drunk or in any way vulnerable. I like to HC that you can hear the more crazy part of him when he laughs - it's such a loud, boisterous, overwhelming laughter that it does not seem to fit his cold, diligent matter-of-fact soldier-persona at all. It's bc what's inside is spilling out in the laughter. You can also see it when he parties ;)

You can also see it in violent outbursts of anger that happen when he is REALLY on edge. They are kinda scary. But most of his ‘anger outbursts’ (and wars)  are calculated and planned to get his way with minimal consequences. The truth is, he feels like he failed himself whenever he really looses control.

My other HC about Gil as Teutonic Knghts can be found here, here, here and here if you like my rambly takes :)

[chiseler]

Great Zilches of History

Film is light. There are times, though, when that light may take on a Stygian cast, burning with a flamme noire severity, a weird and otherworldly keenness. Or it may burn lurid and loud — especially if it’s a very old film, acting like a séance that summons the unruly dead. The darkness in cinema best typified by that form we call film noir is in its essence an extension of the peculiarly American darkness of Edgar Allan Poe.

Early, nitrate-based film stock, with its twinkling mineral core, gives Poe's crepuscular light its time to shine and thereby illuminate the world. No longer held in the solitary confinement of a page of reproduced text or an image, frozen, rendered in paint or ink. Poe's singularly tormented vision is finally written alchemically, in cinematographic rays beamed through silver salts; into moving images of such aggressive vitality as to blast every rational thing from one's mind. A Black & White image flipped into negative makes black fire, or black sunlight such as illumines Nosferatu’s Transylvanian forests, through which a box-like carriage rattles at Mack Sennett speed. But with the slightest underexposure, a little dupey degradation of the print, or even a little imagination (such collaboration is not discouraged), this liquid blackness will spread everywhere and anywhere, the most luminous pestilence known to creation.  Be it in the laughing nightmare of Fleischer cartoons of old (Out of the Inkwell, indeed) or John Alton’s vision of the night, we are left to wonder: is daylight burning out the corner of a building, or is it the blackness of the building which is eating into the sky? 

As with many such questions, film permits us no easy answer. We are simply to watch as the characters smudge. As their shadows pulsate and flicker, emanate out beyond themselves. But if Poe represents the loss of control over one’s existence and the ensuing panic, then cinema, consciously or not, takes existential dread as a given.

God, a vague and unseen deity, died at the moment cinema was born, replaced by a new celestial order. Saints and prophets made poor film characters, giving off the feeling of having stepped out of a stained glass window, flat, Day-Glo icons moving uncomfortably through three-dimensional space. Movies rather rejoiced in dirt and rags, texture and imperfection, so that the most lacklustre clown easily outperformed all the icon messiahs. At 45 minutes, Fernand Zecca’s The Life and Passion of Christ (1903) is one of the earliest feature films, but compared to the same filmmaker’s less ambitious, more playful shorts, it’s a beautiful snooze. A different execution climaxes his Story of a Crime (1901), in which we get to see, by brutal jump cut, a guillotine decapitation before our very eyes. This, as Maxim Gorky prophesied, is what the public wants. Or maybe the events of 1901, cinematic and otherwise, allow “the public” to define itself in ways heretofore unthinkable. The year brings Victoria Regina’s propitious death. And with her passing, Edgar Allan Poe’s pronunciamento on celebrity, “the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque," comes to new and anarchic fruition as an incendiary schnook, one of history’s finest.

When he shot President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6th, 1901, the currents of fear and vengeance unleashed by Leon Czolgosz would carry him on a journey from reflexive beatings at the hands of police and a post-Victorian mob – ladies in bustles shedding all restraint, transformed from well-honed symbols of middle-class decorum into yowling banshees, screaming “GIVE HIM TO US!” – straight to the electric chair, from whence his corpse would be taken for additional punishment, a process where ghoulish prison authorities at Auburn separated the head from the body, and then poured sulfuric acid on what remained, before secreting the sorry residue of America’s anarchist son into an unmarked grave.

Despite attempts to erase Czoglosz from history, a visual document survives, oozing with pathos and bitter recrimination. It is impossible, looking into those eyes, not to feel unnerved and, yes, sympathetic with him – his desperate act, after all, was as critical a part of America’s greed-engorged industrial fantasia as the near daily spectacle of peaceful strikers, his friends among them, being slaughtered in the name of profit. 

Cinema’s misspent childhood years in late-Victorian fairgrounds are followed by a grimy adolescence in Edwardian nickelodeon parlours. The medium, which finally comes of age amid gaudy palaces built in its honor, morphs many times. However, All Talking Pictures are the final death knell for the Victorian standard, belching from the screen a thousand inbred tongues that invade the ear willy-nilly. They remind us that when Queen Victoria breaths her last Naturalism sheds decorum, taste, breeding, good table manners.

Edgar Allan Poe essentially owns motion pictures via ongoing necrophilic obsession, since celluloid preserves the dead better than any embalming fluid. Like amber preserved holograms, they flit in and out of its parameters, reciting their own epitaphs in pantomime; revenant moths trapped in perpetual motion. Film is bona fide illumination — as opposed to religion’s metaphorical kind – representing the supremacy of alchemy and necromancy over sackcloth and ashes. The inmates, emboldened under the spell of Klieg lights, were not only running the asylum, but re-shaping the world in their own image.  Both Church and State with their blunt instruments of repression proved impotent against the anarchy of this freshly liberated ghetto.

Holy men were unceremoniously defrocked, their doctrine of abject compliance to class-based norms re-written into storylines enriched by grease-painted floozies, costumed villains, and snooty dowagers brought down a notch by the drunk hobo in her drawing room. Amidst widespread labour unrest and mass poverty, followed soon by the Great Depression, filmgoers of the silent era had a front row view of the plutocracy’s helplessness against a swelling tide of restless humanity. Charlie Chaplin’s itinerant laborer may have accidentally thwarted a plutocrat’s plan for world domination and/or a house renovation, just as Groucho Marx seemed to have spontaneously derailed a social climbing matron’s equally fierce ambitions.

All hail the magic mirrors! Celestial mandalas! Giant eggs and butterfly women! Segundo de Chomón’s The Red Spectre (1907) ruthlessly assaults our eyes with a wraith-magician dissolving through his coffin lid in a red, hand-tinted, flame-flickering hell. His presence, caped, skull-masked, was to herald a new thespic truth, that from this moment forward the art of acting would be reduced to how you respond to light, and how light responds to you. The Specter of Chomon’s dark bauble is in every element Poe’s Red Death — japing and performing tricks for us, his adoring fans and welcome guests, before announcing our doom — literary metaphor slammed against a literal backdrop of amber stalactites, pellucid as an ossuary.

That was a long time ago, in the first decades of the 20th century, before artifice and studios and the commercial paradigm of stardom finally swallowed cinema in one ravenous bite. It was a period when one could see, if one paid close attention, the dreariness of ordinary life at the centre and around the edges of every motion picture brought forth. It lived onscreen in film’s early days, exposing the pretense, however fitful, of opulence or period as simply that: pretense, a fundamental desire to escape reality. But this “escapism” had always been erroneously attributed to the audience’s needs, when in fact it was rather those bankrolling the nascent medium not yet sufficiently in control of itself to impose any order.

The censors were on to something, even if they could never fully articulate what precise blasphemies were being committed. 

Take Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for instance, which isn’t pure noir but is pure Poe: what would the surgical excision of an influence look like? Granted, the noir genre seems an unlikely Poe derivative, but what of Laura — fatalism, romance and necro-fantasy (with Lydecker as Usher)? DOA is the kind of concept Poe might have dreamed up; one of the great noir scribes, Cornell Woolrich is channeling Poe through an all-thumbs pulp sensibility. And how hard would it be to cast Val Lewton as the horror noir hybrid, with premature burials, ancestral disease, lunatics taking over bedlam? Jean Epstein, who adapted The Fall of the House of Usher in 1928, complained that Baudelaire’s translations fundamentally mistook Poe’s innocence for ghastliness. 

The dead in Poe, writes Epstein, are “only slightly dead.”  

To the extent that Epstein was correct, the whimsy that Poe bequeaths to cinema finds itself absorbed in almost material terms — not as sensibility but as a texture whose particular nap or weave is never granted names. In Mesmeric Revelations a voluntary subject is quite near physical death and under the ministrations of his mesmerist, answering precise questions about the nature of God. Before dying, he says God is “ultimate or unparticled” matter: “What men attempt to embody in the word ‘thought,’ is this matter in motion”. The same unnamable textures apparently survive on television, a case of Poe resonating inside our minds, a collective consciousness replaced by cathode rays. 

Deep within the 18 hours of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, there is a moment that, on its incandescent surface, could have been lifted weightless from the great post-war dream of material deliverance; as if the zeitgeist of the mid 20th century had somehow got lost and ended up in this one: Daytime, the top on the convertible is down, the radio tuned, The Paris Sisters singing I Love How You Love Me as a reincarnated Laura Palmer lifts her face to a cloudless sky.  Within this tapestry of an early Phil Spector production — his trademark reverb eternally evocative of Romance and Death (two conditions Spector knows well) — the voice of Priscilla Paris could be a siren sound from the American Beyond, or a dream goddess lullaby from the whispering gallery, or sweet nothings from the crypt.  We don’t know.  We’ll never know.

In this oneiric echo chamber, Poe smiles down upon American blondness, muscle cars soaked in sunlight, candy for eye and ear; the terrible ecstasy of unending motion and immortality.

If Lynch’s Return means going back home, then home is that Lemon Popsicle/Strawberry Milkshake species of innocence proffered by America's music industry between 1957 and 1964. The horror genre always has to have some component of innocence to devastate, be it the existential kind which inspires the malevolence everyone paid the price of a ticket to have vicarious transit with; or the mere victimisation of the unsuspecting. Either way, there was no other period in American popular culture when innocence, of any variety, was so lavishly examined, toyed with, killed.  The free floating chord that opens The Everly Brothers song, All I Have To Do is Dream, remains a lamentation in sound: the sudden recrudescence of Poe’s beating, tell-tale heart.  Adoring such guilt-free teenage odes to sleep, death and sexual desire, David Lynch finds a muse in Amanda Seyfried. Specifically her visionary eyes melting Phil Spector’s dark edifice of sugar in a deathless, Sternbergian close-up — iridescent search lights, ever more urgently scanning the sky above, waiting for the sun to swallow her whole. We can only bear witness, and internalize this shimmering ingenue, this angel in a red convertible, trading places with Old Sol; as if whatever she just snorted has entered our system through hers.  But in that ephemeral instant she achieves oneness with all things; the transcendence of stardom — true, temporal stardom  — shorn of fame and the imperatives of show-business.

To this day David Lynch’s favorite film remains Otto e Mezzo, directed by Federico Fellini: Western Europe’s sorcerer of confectionary delights and unending motion; the man who put the “dolce” in La Dolce Vita. Fellini, he states, "manages to accomplish with film what mostly abstract painters do; namely, to communicate an emotion without ever saying or showing anything in a direct manner." Even if one were to take him at his word — and we must, of course, for no filmmaker has ever been known to misrepresent themselves to us — this seems a strange instance of gravitational pull, particularly in the light of the formal strategies of both men as they developed through time. Lynch has always favored a blunt pictorialism that, in its bluntness, borders on the language of Imagism: the studied simplicity of the language used to complex, powerful effect. Fellini, in 8 1/2 and throughout much of his career, by contrast, unleashes upon the viewer an insanely fluid, brutally precise camera ballet. Any good cinephile might be tempted to resolve the disparities and move toward a brighter, less subterranean comprehension. But, ultimately, such understanding would be a didactic burden no moviegoer needs. For here, in these conflicting dialects, you have a fleeting taste of ideologies swirled together like ribbon candy: a blur of four-wheeled luxury from the New World zooming past regional splendor into that fraternity of man: the socio-economic nirvana imagined by Karl Marx in the Old.

Careening from one via to another at harrowing, white-knuckle speed, Fellini was once heard to lament that “Some of the neo-realists seem to think that they cannot make a film unless they have a man in old clothes in front of the camera.” George Bluestone, recording these words for the pages of Film Culture in 1957, was sitting in the literal passenger seat of that ideal metaphor for post-war ebullience in action: expert, 20th century precision hurtling them through Roman streets with graffiti-scrawled churches proudly bearing the hammer and sickle; that famous Black Chevy skirting the Italian Scylla (the Vatican) and its equally dogmatic Charybdis (the Party). At that velocity, anything could make sense.

“Appearances aside" Bluestone wrote, "the Chevrolet is at every moment under Fellini’s control. He weaves in and out of traffic, misses pedestrians by inches, swerves away from Nomentana’s interminable monuments, dodging yellow traffic blinkers as if he were trying out a darkened slalom.” It is every bit a performance. Rome, after all, is the land of Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Apollo and Daphne — marble-cum-flesh, even as flesh itself gives way to forms that leave the viewer in terrified awe. While reliving his own mythic, carbureted experience, Bluestone does some weaving of his own, quoting Genevieve Agel’s one-line pronunciamento (and, in the process, defining what would soon be labelled 'Felliniesque'), “Fellini is a visionary of the real”, as the passenger positions his driver somewhere between corporeal reality and ecstatic truth while the big man (no old clothes for this maestro) drives and drives. “As one hand lightly guides the wheel, the other gestures — it acts.”

Spirits of the Dead is one of those compendium films, with voguish directors (Malle, Vadim, Fellini) entrusted with bringing to the screen a Poe story each. Only the Fellini episode, Toby Dammit, is notable, but it's very notable, a hallucinatory yarn owing as much to Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! as to Poe's Never Bet the Devil Your Head, its ostensible source. The title character, played by Terence Stamp with white-blond hair and dark roots and constant beads of witch hazel perspiration, is in Rome to attend an awards ceremony and to play Christ in a western, but he's fatally distracted by his new sports car and a vision of the devil in the form of a little girl. Toby's ride through a hellscape of nocturnal Rome seems lifted from Jules Dassin’s 10.30 p.m. Summer (1966), but works even better for Fellini than it did in the Duras adaptation. An oppressively subjective film, Toby Dammit narrows down to the view in the Ferrari's headlights, a ghastly floodlit interzone where human forms are gradually replaced with mannequins and cut-outs, as the city becomes unreal, an elaborate movie set, an uncanny valley laid out for the staging of an epic stunt/snuff film.

Fellini and Lynch celebrate bodily extremes in intriguing if differing ways, which should, in our time, naturally gallop beyond the pale, but nevertheless become wholly, weirdly digestible. It is perhaps the innocent glee of these artists, their wonderment at the vast variety of shapes the human body can assume; an innocence which suspends toward erasure our awareness the way physical representation functions in the 21st century. Lynch presents the disabled as childlike, mysterious, magical beings without ever worrying about lending them agency (The Elephant Man’s John Merrick functions both as passive whipping boy and chic spectacle for the whole of Victorian London), or the mendacity of adult sophistication (the latest Twin Peaks iteration includes a pint-sized hitman who whines like a puppy when his icepick is broken). Is it any wonder Lynch evolved a style which placed them front and center in unmoving shots, without irony or pity? 

Poe, while certainly a pioneer of fake news, also had a way of vindicating the lumpen masses of humanity (to the middle-brow’s abiding chagrin).  

The Mystery of Marie Roget, a Parisian murder mystery, presented as a fictional sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was simultaneously trumpeted as a correct solution to the real-life murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York. When a news article presented fresh evidence while the story was still being serialised, Poe made minor changes to the final instalment to keep his fiction in line with the facts.

He later published a story about an Atlantic crossing by balloon, accomplished in three days, in The New York Sun in 1844. "Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason's Flying Machine!!!"  The piece was presented as truth, and only revealed as "The Great Balloon Hoax" a couple of days later. “The more intelligent believed," wrote Poe, "while the rabble, for the most part, rejected the whole with disdain.” He saw this as a new development: “20 years ago credulity was the characteristic trait of the mob, incredulity the distinctive feature of the philosophic.” 

What had changed? Perhaps the acceleration of scientific and social progress meant that the more literate and scientifically-minded had become inured to startling new developments, so the most surprising events now seemed credible. And since these same technological leaps were always presented as social benefits, the working class was growing skeptical, since they rarely saw any improvement in their condition.

by Daniel Riccuito, R.J. Lambert and David Cairns

Special thanks to Richard Chetwynd

[malgal7777]

Hiking with Tracy 2021:  Weekend 3, the Lost Weekend

As I went back to re-read my blog I noticed I had cut off my WHOLE weekend of 4/17!!  This is my 20 mile walk from the Emeryville Marina to the Richmond Marina and back via the Bay Trail along the water & Hwy 80.  So let me try to reenact my journey!

The theme of this hike was “Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart, you just gotta poke around” - Once again I tip my hat to the great Jerry Garcia.  Not sure if you all figured it out, but I love Jerry.  I came to the Bay Area to follow the Grateful Dead’s music and I never left.  

This particular hike was absolutely beautiful.  I wish it wasn’t so I can mix this blog up, but sorry folks, you live in a beautiful area.  Even along a dirty highway, there are things of beauty all around you.  Take for example this hike, wildflowers everywhere.  Even popping out of the sidewalk.  I'm reminded of Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park...”Life refuses to be contained...it just finds a way”.  And sure enough, Sunflowers out of the sidewalk!

Since I was next to a highway, I went with headphones this time around.  One of my positives during this pandemic is my rekindled love for music radio stations.  I love listening to a radio station and I definitely have my favorite DJ’s. My personal favorites this past year were:  WWOZ - a local New Orleans station; KCSM - a Bay Area jazz station and KXT - out of Dallas, TX.  These stations literally kept me sane during the lockdowns.  I highly recommend them, especially if you’re cooking, doing chores or working in the garden. 

This particular morning I went with WWOZ.  And what a good decision that was.  Ron Phillips was spinning his favorite Saturday morning tunes and I was going down the road feeling BAD (as in good)!  Irma Thomas, Anders Osborne, The Subdudes and a little known singer/songwriter out of New Orleans, Chris Smithers.  If you get overwhelmed and about to burst...stream Chris Smithers “Let it Go”.  So funny.   Anders Osborne is a name my friends have been trying to get me into for a long time.  And I’m a bozo, definitely missed the boat on this one!  From his new album, try this song:  Welcome to Earth.  

Ok, so I digress!  Back to the walk.  In one of my last posts, I mentioned the people I meet.  Well this am was a doozy!  As I was grooving to the sweet sounds of the Crescent City I was approached by a group of ladies.  They had a question for me:  What’s more important in a relationship:  Love or Economics?  My first response was “Wow, you ladies don’t mess around for a Saturday morning!  Going deep on me”.  But, because I’m me, I had an answer. Now usually I would have said Love, Love, Love.  Hands down right?  But they caught me at a weird time.  I have been obsessively thinking of a comment I overheard from another group of ladies while doing my Diablo hike.  One of them had commented “I have no desire to marry just for love.  Forget that, I need to be economically stable”.  My reaction was pity for this poor girl.  I literally felt sorry for her.  The more I thought about it (obsessively for two weeks) I came to realize, she didn’t necessarily say she wasn’t going to work, she just wanted someone with their shit together and would contribute to their family being comfortable.  What’s wrong with that?  Is being comfortable taboo now?  So when my Bay Trail friends asked me, that’s how I answered.  Love was great but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be comfortable, isn’t that love after all?  I obviously made one of the women very happy.  She loved it.  The other two nodded and smiled, they were on Love’s side.  So we said our goodbyes and I felt like I had gotten a weight off my shoulders.  As I was walking away though...I asked myself...But didn’t YOU marry for love?  And sure enough, I did.  Bob & I didn’t have a pot to piss in.  And while we’re not the Rockefeller's, we’re comfortable enough for us.  I love him dearly and love has to be the basis that you build your financial future upon.  If you don’t have that, it get’s ugly when $$ is involved.  The best part of this moment was that song “Welcome to Earth” was playing as I was coming to this realization and the last line is literally “Love is always the answer”.  The Universe works in mysterious ways!  But, where were the ladies...I wanted to change my answer??!!  No where to be found.  Man, I blew it.  I would now obsessively think about this for the next 20 miles. Told you I was a bozo. 

By this time I had reached The Albany bulb.  A Bay Area gem to the north of Golden Gate Fields.  There’s a great beach and then it jets out into a peninsula which is covered with art installations all over.  I’ll talk more about that later, since I came back on Sunday to finish my 25 miles. This morning though I watched a group of swimmers about to enter the freezing bay waters, no wet suit mind you!  CRAZY and No Thank You!  Brrr.   Next Stop, Point Isabel, dog heaven.  A large open spaced off-leach dog park.  I go there all the time.  If you have a dog, you should take them.  They will love you even more than they already do. 

Now past Point Isabel is where the trail gets interesting.  You start to wander away from the highway and are now among the prettiest beaches and marshes. It’s an interesting view of the Bay Bridge and you can no longer see the Golden Gate Bridge as you veer north of it.  You now start to come upon single family homes along the trail.  You’re instantly reminded of Cape Cod.  A ocean view from Richmond, CA.  The best part is once you see this neighborhood you know you’re close to the marina.  And sure enough, I turned the bend and there in front of me was the Ford Assembly plant, my 1/2 way point.  But, it’s a very cruel joke.  You see the plant across the opening of the marina, it’s literally right there!!  Then the realization hits you in order to get to it you need to go around the WHOLE marina.  And as you continue to walk and go around another bend, the sidewalk gets longer and longer and longer.  The Richmond Marina is HUGE. Lovely though.  Large green spaces with people doing yoga;  a ladies bootcamp class along the water; boats coming and going from the marina and two pretty cute restaurants also along the water.  

I finally made it to the Ford Assembly Plant and now Richmond Ferry Terminal.  The assembly plant hosts seasonal events, we’ve been to the women’s roller derby ones.  Nothing like watching tough chicks bully each other on roller skates.  Then there are a few businesses strewn throughout the building.  Dolls Kill, which I believe is a clothing business for those on the freakier side of the spectrum.  And Mountain Hardware!  Quality clothing for the outdoorsy types.  I should have gone in and gotten a windbreaker.  The wind was pretty brutal.  

The best part was of course the Rosie The Riveter museum.  A museum dedicated to the women that left the kids at home and joined the workforce to help build ships during WWII.  This whole area was built for the war effort.  Richmond grew from 25,000 to over 100,000 within three years!!!  Can you imagine?  How does any town build the infrastructure needed to maintain that population?  Grocery stores?  Clothing? Schools?  Highly recommended.  It’s a suggested donation, so don’t be cheap, donate.  You won’t be disappointed.  I once brought Charlotte and a couple of her Girl Scout troop there to meet a real life “Rosie”.  She told the girls her story and it was of course about LOVE!  The trials and tribulations of her and her partner as he was fighting in the war and she was here making the ships that would keep him safe.  Man, where were those 3 ladies!!  

The way back was pretty much the same. I made it!  Now onto Sunday, 4/18. The Albany Bulb!  A Bay Area gem.  Bob & I have been coming here for years.  Way back when it was a landfill full of broken concrete slabs and rebar.  Some artist types took it upon themselves to start living there.  They kept the concrete slabs and rebar and started to make installations out of them.  Giant sized figures;  rows of wooden paintings; mazes and one guy even built a concrete castle along the water facing the Golden Gate Bridge.  Best real estate in the Bay.  They exemplified the phrase “one mans trash is another man’s treasure”.  Of course the stuffed shirts got wind and kicked them out.  But gave the stuffed shirts an idea...Hey, why not make a park out of this dirty unused lot?  Duh.  So before you harass your kid for taking art classes, remember it’s usually the artists who push the rest of society in the right direction.  

It’s also a great place to bird watch and now the wildflowers are a blooming, so it’s quite serene.  If you’re looking for some inspiration, this is the place for you.  

So my posts/weeks are a bit out of order.  Oh well!  It’s my blog and I’ll create chaos if I want to!  

I’ll end on this note:  Love is ALWAYS the answer. 

So sponsor me (hehehe):  https://runsignup.com/tracyalbert/Donate

[agatharights]

Okay so the bastard warlord dads au. I just adore it? That's amazing! I just wanna hear more stuff about Star and Megs trying to be dads to Orion. How does that all go?

It’s actually part of an AU called Transformers: Toku, largely based off of tokuketsu tropes and stories, that I share with @drawma-king but the warlord dads were one of my contributions- a combination of the common trope where one of the protagonists turns out to have an Evil Dad (or two, in this case) and the fact that every so often I look at Optimus Prime and Starscream and remember that it’s funny they have the same color scheme.

(if there’s anything I re-use from this AU into others, it’ll probably be the warlord dads arrangements because *chef’s kiss*)

Also because I wanted to post it- here’s a little short story about Orion’s first “real” face to face meeting with Megatron and Starscream! It goes about as well as you’d think.

UNDER THE CUT because long. Sorry, mobile users.

As for how it goes...it goes well at times, poorly at others? They’re trying, but also the kind of people who look at conquering a world because they’ve decided they have the Divine Right of Kings are gonna have some issues from the get-go. After the supposed death of their kid, Megatron and Starscream decided very actively to never approach the concept of family again- it hurt terribly, neither of them have much emotional maturity, and they had a war to run. So unfortunately they don’t actually know how to deal with kids, having avoided them for so long.

Not to mention that Orion(at the time named Guiltaur)’s loss was overtly traumatic. A Decepticon fortress was hit in a surprise attack by Autobot forces that outright destroyed the entire structure and sent the high-ranking Decepticons who were holed up there scattered- it was a tremendous step in destabilizing the Decepticon empire for the Autobots, a good move tactically. The Autobots who were combing through the rubble afterwards were horrified to find a sparkling- miraculously unharmed, and ushered the child away in secret- in no small part to hide the fact that they’d operated on bad intelligence and attacked a building that was not just military, but apparently domestic as well.

Megatron and Starscream, believing that their child had died as a result of Autobot attack, kicked the war into high gear, and that’s when stuff started getting real interesting. Meanwhile, Orion’s past was scrubbed to keep him safe from both autobot retribution for his parentage, and to keep him hidden from Decepticons, and he was placed into the care of the Order Pax- a religious order that took in a lot of war orphans, and eventually he was taken in by Alpha Trion, an archivist looking for an apprentice who definitely didn’t fortell all of this happening that would be silly you’d have to be, like, a prophet or a prime to tell that stuff :)

Anyways

Megatron struggles with treating Orion like a new recruit- he’s deeply impressed when Orion turns out to have excellent combat and self-defense skills for sparring (thanks to Orion’s secret life as Optimus Prime, Hero) and tries to bond with him through training- but inevitably pushes too hard because he can’t tone it down. On the flip side, Megatron’s preferred method of showing affection is just by giving people things, so a whole-ass lost library is an appropriate present for a kid, right? Right????

At the very least, Megatron gets that parental relationships are hard (given his own rocky family relationships) and isn’t really sure how to be attached to Orion. He feels like an interloper, and the fact that Orion is very clearly not interested in sticking around only makes it sting- but Megatron at least tries to convince Orion that sticking around is worth it. Sure, things are a little nasty right now, but wouldn’t you like to be crown prince of an empire? Wouldn’t you like to someday rule? We are from royal stock, and you carry the blood of kings.

Starscream instantly becomes attached. And covetous and overprotective. He hovers over Orion, and while Orion’s more or less okay dealing with it because he likes physical affection, Starscream is *very* touchy, literally. He’s constantly touching hugging him, touching his face and shoulders, kissing his helm or outright grooming him like he’s a youngling. Skywarp and Thundercracker are more casual, but still super affectionate towards Orion- especially since they basically become defacto babysitters for the most part, and Orion finds himself surrounded by a triad of very loud, broody birds a lot.

Starscream’s also a little disappointed that Orion’s favoring a grounder altmode, seeing as Orion also has the “genetics” more or less to become a Seeker as he’s still a youngling (I’ll probably post my lil thing about genetics in this setting) but is damn proud that Orion’s inherited a lot of his appearance- they both have longer faces and bright yellow optics/biolights, he has Starscream’s color and long legs and Orion even has little semi-thrusters on his heels (that give his truck altmode a jump-boost)!

Megatron is afraid of becoming attached, because losing those he loves is standard fare. Starscream is afraid of not being attached enough, as if raw love and want could keep Orion safe this time.

Orion would like to leave. This is terrifying- he’s been moonlighting as a power-armored hero fighting the Decepticons- including Megatron and Starscream themselves, and if they found out he’s pretty sure it would be catastrophic. Even without that, though, he’s an Autobot kid- he wants to be back in the Archives, with Alpha Trion and his friends. He’s been dragged out to basically a castle in the middle of nowhere, halfway across the planet from his home, and he can’t get out. It would wear on anyone’s nerves.

Megatron is terrifying and stern and way too eager to throw other people around literally, not to mention that Megatron is pretty intense in his growing megalomania, and Orion picks up on the fact that this dude legitimately believes it’s his divine right to rule and that’s not just a story to unite his forces. Seeing as Orion has interacted with the spirits of several ancient Primes at this point, he knows EXACTLY how that sort of thing usually goes down. It never goes down well. And then Starscream is overbearing and obsessive, treating him like literal treasure, but not toning down the inherent violence of his inclinations in the slightest, while still insisting on grooming him, touching up his paint, and constantly feeding him.

The part that freaks out and ultimately hurts Orion the most is that he can see how much they both desperately want this. He’s shown Megatron and Starscream not as monsters to fight on a battlefield, but as broken, wounded people who’ve turned their pain into brutality, but treat him like he’s made of precious crystal. He learns about grand-creators and family histories he never knew, he learns about Decepticon history and how these people all came together.

Worst of all, he learns that Megatron and Starscream love him.

And that love can truly sink some people to unspeakable depths.

Knowing that someone would do anything for you is a terrible curse, when that person is willing to literally turn people into mindless monsters to fight for their cause.

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Operation: Kill Dean

Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester (no reader/no pairing)

Word Count: 3,087

Warnings: just fluff

Request: If you're taking requests, I'd like to see Dean finally get his five minutes with the clippers with Sam. 

Summary: Dean started this prank war, and it will only end with one of the brothers crying... but it isn’t going to be Dean.

Squared Filled: Impala // Creepy clown(s)

Author’s Note: This is for @spndeanbingo and @spnclassicbingo  respectively and this is unbeta’d and any and all mistakes are all on me.

Feedback the glue that holds my writing together

Tags at the bottom

Sam sat down at one of the library tables with his favorite lore book in the entire collection. He was such a stickler for reading and knowledge, that he would re-read books in order to see if he could learn anything new with the same information. He claims it helps keep his brain in check with the same old monsters. Every time a new werewolf, witch, vampire, or anything else comes into town, there is always something special about that particular person. It’s why he loves re-reading books.

He moved a piece of hair away from his eyes before opening the book. He flipped to the first chapter but froze at what was presented before him. Someone, and he knew exactly who, cut out the pages in the book to create a secret compartment. His blood boiled at the thought of his own brother sabotaging something that is so dear to him.

“Dean!!” he yelled as he stood up. As soon as Dean heard his booming voice, he entered the library with a pure and innocent look.

“What’s up?”

“You know what’s up. You did this to my book!” he motioned to the mess.

“I did no such thing!” Dean gasped.

“You’re the only one in this damn bunker. Who did it, Cas?”

“Yeah, it was me,” Dean laughed, not being able to keep up the innocent act much longer.

“Dude! I don’t go messing with your things.”

“Calm down, it’s just a book,” Dean scoffed. He wouldn’t have done it if he knew there wasn’t another copy of the book in the storage room.

“Okay, fine. You want to play this game again? You’re on,” Sam growled as he passed by his brother.

“What does that mean?”

“Just remember you started it!”

“This should be good,” Dean chuckled to himself.

A few days went by without Sam doing anything to his brother which only put Dean more on edge. His brother was like a snake, he could come slithering in at any moment without any warning. He had to be extra careful because he knew that something was coming soon, and the longer time passes, the bigger the prank would be.

Dean and Sam trudged into the kitchen after a long and brutal hunt. The only thing on Dean’s mind was his favorite bottle of whiskey and some leftover pie he saved just for this moment. As soon as he set his stuff down, he grabbed the bottle and the pie before taking a seat at the table. Sam resisted the urge to grin as he grabbed one of his beers. Dean popped the top of his whiskey before drinking it from the tap. He took three big swigs, so he really didn’t taste what Sam did to it before they left. However, as soon as Dean took a bite of his pie, he spit it out onto the table with a look of disgust.

“What the hell is this?” he coughed as he grabbed his bottle and took a swig, however, the same thing happened. Sam busted out laughing, and Dean knew this is what he deserves after messing with Sam’s books.

“Is everything okay?” Sam snickered.

“You did this?”

“Like I said, you started it.”

“Okay, I see how this is going to be. We’re going all out then, huh? Watch your back, Sammy,” Dean growled as he left the mess on the table and grabbed his duffel bag. He marched to his room where he had a secret bottle of whiskey in case anything were to happen to the other one. Sam waited a few moments as he drank his beer before hearing his brother cry out in disappointment and frustration. Even his whiskey in his room was tampered with.

“SAM!”

When Sam got wind of another case a few days later, the brothers headed out on the sixteen-hour drive to where it was supposed to be. Dean was in charge of getting the room while Sam went out and went to the morgue to view the body. With Sam out of the picture, Dean got an idea when he noticed a store across the street. Nothing unusual about it except for the deadass creepy-looking clown doll in the window. Dean’s smirk turned evil as he headed over to the place.

“Dude, call me,” Sam sighed as he walked to the motel room. He had just finished his task, but his brother wasn’t answering the phone. If Dean wasn’t in the room, then he was going to be pissed. He opened the door and looked around for the tall man but found nothing. Instead, he saw a lump beneath the sheets, and Sam got even more pissed at the idea of Dean sleeping on the job. He stormed over to the bed before yanking the sheets off his brother.

“Dude, I have been--holy shit!” Sam yelled when a dark and creepy clown stared at him with a wide smile. Sam swiftly turned around only to be greeted by his brother in the most horrifying clown mask he has ever seen. “Not funny!”

“You should see the look on your face!” Dean laughed as he took off the mask.

“You know, I was going easy on you these past few weeks, but you just crossed the line.”

“Oh yeah? What are you going to do?” Dean challenged. All Sam could do was smirk.

“I had to call a tow truck because I couldn’t seem to find the problem,” Dean sighed as he walked into the motel room. His car was working just fine, but it was acting up in the morning as he went to go use it to get some coffee that was better than the motels. Sam snickered quietly under his breath as he read his book, but that sound put Dean on edge.

“What the fuck did you do to her?”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked with a grin as he made eye contact with him.

“What the fuck did you do to Baby last night!”

“Nothing much just loosened a few things, took some things out. I’m not really sure,” he shrugged.

“You can mess with my beer and my pie, but you don’t fucking mess with Baby!” Dean yelled.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have shoved a fucking clown mask in my face! Or cut out my book!” Sam yelled back, and he pushed a strand of his hair when it flopped in front of his eyes. Dean watched this, and he suddenly got an idea that would piss Sam off so badly that he wouldn’t know what to do to top it.

“Stay the fuck away from her. You’re paying for it,” he glared as he snatched up the money lying on the table. Sam didn’t seem to mind as he stormed out of the room.

Dean made sure to get up in the middle of the night without waking his brother. He knew it wouldn't be a difficult task, especially when he roofied his beer to make him a much heavier sleeper than normal. The prank he was going to pull off required his brother to stay asleep. He got out of bed, gripping the pair of long and strong scissors in his right hand. Dean has been wanting to do this for a very long time, and now that opportunity has arrived.

He leaned over his brother and lifted a chunk of hair. He held his breath as he snipped the piece off, waiting to see if Sam would wake up. When he was in the clear, he set the hair on the nightstand next to him before taking another piece… and another… and another… and another until he took so much off that it would force Sam to get a haircut like his own.

Due to the position Sam was in, he didn’t have a chance to do the back of his hair, but he got enough of it to where Sam would need a haircut to fix what Dean ruined. When he was finished, he took the hair and placed it in a small baggie before getting into bed and closing his eyes.

He slept well that night knowing what he did.

“I’m going to KILL YOU!!” Sam screamed when he saw himself in the bathroom mirror. Dean shot up and out of bed, getting a peek at the murderous look in his brother’s eyes. Without thinking, he raced out of the room before his brother had a chance to even grab at him. Sam chased after him with only one thing in mind:

Kill Dean for ruining his silky locks

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[canadianabroadvery]

What will the upcoming year bring in world affairs? A presidential election looms in America; the wave of leaderless protests from Chile to Lebanon is rolling on; China’s rising belligerence is being felt on the streets of Hong Kong and in the expanses of cyberspace; regional tensions in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and in east Asia all threaten to escalate into wars; Europe’s future remains uncertain. Will 2020 be known for an explosion of conflict and instability, for a reassertion of norms and order, or for some as-yet unanticipated historical shift?

These matters too are uncertain to make firm forecasts possible, but you can try to identity the critical factor in each case. The below is my stab at doing so: a (non-exhaustive) list of big questions about the year ahead with the factors that will decide them and a prediction of how those crucial factors will turn out. I will return to these predictions at the end of the year to see how well I did.

1. Will there be war with Iran?

The issue: At the time of writing America has just killed Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s proxy forces across the Middle East, in a drone strike in Baghdad. Tehran has vowed “severe revenge”. This could accelerate the existing spiral of escalation, pulling in players like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and possibly lead to American air strikes on Iran and outright war.

The decisive factor: The Iranian leadership knows war with America would be catastrophic but believes (seemingly correctly, at least until now) that Donald Trump does not want direct conflict. The question is whether the president might blunder into a different position in the heat of the moment. An election is looming and voters do not want war, but Trump is also thin-skinned, volatile and will be desperate to save face if Iran retaliates spectacularly.

My prediction: Iran will most likely calibrate its response to avoid pushing Trump and American public opinion on to a full war-footing; by targeting American allies and interests rather than directly attacking Americans and by using proxies like Shia militias in Iraq and Hezbollah. More likely than outright American-Iranian war is a proxy war played out the Levant, the Persian Gulf and especially Iraq.

2. Will Donald Trump be reelected?

The issue: On 3 November Donald Trump will go up against a Democrat challenger in America’s presidential election. His approval ratings are below those of previously reelected presidents like Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton, but as in 2016 he does not necessarily need to win the popular vote to secure victory under the electoral college system.

The decisive factor: Trump’s victory relied on a coalition spanning hardline Republicans, moderate Republicans who accepted his theatrics as the price of tax cuts and white working-class voters who defected from the Democrats over cultural issues. That coalition is fairly robust, so the Democrat candidate’s chance of overturning it relies on his or her ability to build a culturally and, crucially, geographically broader coalition taking in states like Wisconsin and Arizona.

My prediction: With the Trump coalition more consolidated than the fragmented Democrat one, the fundamentals point to reelection for the president.

3. Will global carbon emissions peak?

The issue: Under the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rises above pre-industrial levels to the 1.5 to 2.0 degree range (within which the future impacts of climate change rise from moderate to very high), global greenhouse gas emissions need to plateau this year and start falling next year. That requires a step-change in global efforts, as 2019 saw carbon dioxide levels rise to record levels and at almost the same rate as in the previous year.

The decisive factor: This will largely be decided by policy in three places: China, the United States and the EU. Together these three largest emitters generate about half of the world’s greenhouse gases. The good news: the “Green New Deal” - the notion of a radical ecological re-wiring of the economy - will be a major feature of US and European politics this year and China is sticking to its Paris targets. The bad news: America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will take place over 2020 and, having stabilised for several years, China’s emissions are growing again.

My prediction: With most countries failing to meet their Paris targets and none of the big three (particularly America and China) decarbonising their economies fast enough, emissions will continue to rise in 2020.

4. Will Boris Johnson get an EU trade deal?

The issue: The newly elected prime minister has until the end of June to decide whether to extend the transition period beyond the current deadline of the end of the year. He has pledged not to prolong this “vassalage” but will struggle to negotiate more than a basic trade deal - one most disadvantageous to Britain rather than the EU - with Brussels in that time.

The decisive factor: Any fast deal will probably cover goods (where the EU has a surplus) but not services (where Britain has a surplus). Nor will it cover many matters relating to data, science or security. The question is whether Boris Johnson believes that his 80-seat majority in the Commons is big enough to absorb rebellions when it comes before parliament, whether he believes voters will tolerate the costs of such a deal and whether, on the first of these at least, he is right.

My prediction: Johnson’s self-confidence and the momentum of his electoral win will allow him to push through a bare-bones deal, sowing the seeds of political crisis in 2021.

5. Will China march into Hong Kong?

The issue: Last year’s Hong Kong protests, sparked by plans to allow extradition to the Chinese mainland, have carried on into 2020 with violent clashes on New Year’s Day. With no resolution in sight and Chinese troops massing at the border, the threat of a military intervention to crush the protests, a second Tiananmen, continues to loom.

The decisive factor: The protesters, boosted by supportive results in district council elections in November, are standing by their demands of universal suffrage, an amnesty for arrested protesters and an independent inquiry into police brutality. So the endgame depends on whether the Chinese leadership’s highest priority is to maintain political, economic and diplomatic stability or to make a example of Hong Kongers to discourage anti-Beijing rebellions elsewhere in its neighbourhood or within mainland China. The former militates for patience, the latter for violent intervention.

My prediction: With Hong Kong due to lapse to full Chinese control in 2047 anyway, Beijing can afford to play the long game, continuing to squeeze Hong Kong and vilify the protesters without a full intervention. With its domestic economy slowing, it needs stability. Only if the unrest in Hong Kong threatens to spill over onto the mainland, which currently looks unlikely, will the Chinese army march in.

6. Will the wave of global protests continue?​

The issue: Hong Kong was just one of many places struck by last year’s wave of street protests. Others included Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Russia, France, Spain, Chile and Bolivia. The motives were various but many concerned autocratic or corrupt governments, low living standards or climate change, and most were leaderless movements organised online. Were they a one-off, or part of a longer trend?

The decisive factor: Protests tend to subside when one or more of four conditions are met: grievances are addressed, governments crack down successfully, the means of organisation are curtailed or protest-fatigue sets in. Whether 2019 will be seen as an exception depends on the presence of these factors in the main arenas of protest in 2020.

My prediction: In some cases, like Chile and Lebanon, governments are changing tone or policies in light of protesters’ demands. But even there, protest movements are merely developing into broader more long-term movements. Grievances linger on, most obviously the international intransigence on climate change motivating the Fridays for Future protests. And the opportunities for mobilisation afforded by social media are only growing. Do not expect the protests to go away; instead expect them to evolve.

7. Will the EU become a more serious player?

The issue: Ursula von der Leyen’s presidency of the European Commission gets under way as member states squabble over the next seven-year budget, big challenges like euro-zone reform and migration policy remain parked and relations between Paris and Berlin continue to be at a low ebb. Emmanuel Macron wants to reinvigorate the EU alongside von der Leyen but his proposals, including greater “strategic autonomy” from America and NATO, are divisive.

The decisive factor: Essentially there are two countervailing forces at work. On the one hand Trump, Brexit, the crisis years and shifting geopolitical circumstances are pushing the EU to become a more serious, hard-nosed actor; Angela Merkel’s big EU-China summit in September will be a case in point. On the other this process is exposing new divisions on things like common defence, emissions reductions, the future shape of the union and the relationship with outside powers. The question is whether the centripetal forces (events, threats and other shifts pushing the union together and forward) exceed the centrifugal ones (differences of outlook and interest pulling it apart and holding it back).

My prediction: On balance the EU is more resilient than it looks. But while it may muddle its way forward in 2020, major advances will only take place in the heat of the next crisis.

8. Will there be conflict between India and Pakistan?

The issue: Tensions between India and Pakistan grew in 2019, with tit-for-tat air strikes and diplomatic sanctions. India has revoked the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state, and further inflamed tensions last month by introducing an anti-Muslim citizenship rule, the latest in Narendra Modi’s increasingly blatant flirtation with Hindu nationalism. Further attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir by Pakistani-linked Jihadis, or another terror attack in India like that in Mumbai in 2008, could easily escalate.

The decisive factor: The region is a tinderbox. Modi and Pakistan’s Imran Khan have ramped up their rhetoric, mass media outlets in both countries are talking up confrontation and both countries face economic problems fuelling political grievances. So the question is whether the mechanisms for deescalation still work. An attempted Modi-Khan reset in 2018 came to little and neither America (distracted) nor China (considered partisan by India) make ideal mediators.

My prediction: Though neither Modi nor Khan want war, the possibility of a runaway escalation between the two nuclear powers is one of the most underpriced global risks of 2020.

9. Where will the unexpected bad news occur?

The issue: Lawless and rogue states, inadequate global governance and climate change are three defining features of our age. With them come risks of state collapse and war, cyber-attacks and terrorism, uncontrollable epidemics and refugee crises and environmental catastrophe. 2020 will doubtless see various as-yet-unpredictable instances of many or all of these.

The decisive factor: Most of the world’s states, especially in the complacent West, are less truly sovereign and more interdependent than they believe themselves to be. It is this delusion that causes them to be caught by surprise when an unexpected crisis occurs, as chaos or risk from one part of the world ripples through the global system. The question is not whether this will occur but how resilient states and international organisations are when it does.

My prediction: Given the risks I expect at least one of each of the following categories of cataclysm. First, an extreme climate event hitting part of the West not used to the levels of climate chaos already felt in the global south (the fires raging in Australia are but a foretaste). Second, an instance of violence or other instability in one of the world’s rogue or war-torn zones (most probably North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Burkina Faso, Venezuela or eastern Ukraine) causing a crisis in a country far from its own borders. Third, a crisis or calamity specifically caused by a failure of international governance and democracy; that is, by insufficient coordination, information sharing or collective action at the supra-regional or global level.

10. Where will the unexpected good news occur?

The issue: It is customary, in these end-of-year or start-of-year round ups, to nod to how many good things have happened beyond the headlines: poverty rates and infant mortality falling, literacy and immunisation rates rising. But each year also throws up specific causes to rejoice. In September for example Tunisia held what were widely deemed the Arab world’s first TV debates, during its second free election since the Arab Spring. There will be such happy moments in 2020 too.

The decisive factor: China, Latin America and Africa have thrown up plenty of good rising-living-standards stories in recent years. But with authoritarianism on the march in China and Brazil, and Africa’s rise more halting and troubled than some sunny predictions of the past decades suggested, the picture there is more mixed.

My prediction: There will nonetheless be specific and epochally good news from Africa in 2020. It is possible that the Ebola epidemic will be finally vanquished during the year. And Ethiopia goes to the polls in May, with good prospects of victory for the reformist prime minister Abiy Ahmed (winner of 2019’s Nobel Peace Prize). That would put Africa’s second most populous country, its future in the balance, on a positive course. Elsewhere this could be a further year of growth for progressive mobilisations, from the Fridays for Future marches to anti-nationalist movements like Italy’s “Sardines” and emerging digital rights campaigns; I predict that these will trigger at least one major, positive change of national government or international policy during 2020.

[metalgearkong]

Jedi: Fallen Order - Review (PS4)

11/24/19

Developed by Respawn Entertainment

Up until now, Electronic Arts has taken the wrong direction with their exclusive Star Wars license. So far they created not one, but two awful Star Wars: Battlefront games, both overstuffed with microtransactions and unethical loot boxes. Sure the graphics, sights, and sounds of Star Wars were present, but when the entry fee was $60 and the base game had so little to it, I wasn’t a fan. Jedi: Fallen Order is an answer to all the rightful criticism EA has taken, and they have finally funded developer Respawn Entertainment to make a dedicated single-player, offline, action/adventure game that Star Wars fans have wanted for years. Jedi: Fallen Order is an enormous step in the right direction with the Star Wars license, and shows the potential on what a lot of money and talented people can create when backed by passion.

This is yet another game taking place place between episodes III and IV, a few years after Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi Order. I don’t know if the Force Unleashed games are still considered canon, but I certainly hope not. We play as Cal Kestis, a young Jedi Padawan who survived the purge, and has been hiding out for years as a scrapper taking apart old ships from the war. The Empire has established itself firmly as the dominant superpower of the galaxy, equipped with all the classic Star Wars stuff I love, such as AT-ATs, AT-STs, Stormtroopers, and TIE fighters. A few additions include the Inquisitors, apparently Dark Jedi not following the "rule of two,” who seek out and kill the remaining Jedi in hiding. I guess they come from a TV show or something, but I’ve never watched any of those. Accompanying them are Purge Troopers, who use electro-magnetic melee weapons and can be a struggle to take down. I think the Purge Troopers should have just taken the role of the Inquisitors because I think it would be way cooler to know that the only experienced Force-users left alive now are Obi-Wan, Yoda, the Emperor, and Vader.

The gameplay could be described as a combination of Uncharted exploring, and Dark Souls combat (although it more so reminds me of 2018′s God of War, also inspired by Dark Souls). I didn’t give this game enough credit in the beginning. I decided to play the game on the hard difficulty option, but a few a few hours, I bumped it back down to normal mode. I underestimated the combat and how tough even simple enemies could be. Encounters involve locking on to one enemy at a time, and timing attacks, parries, and dodges. Even low level bad guys can take down your health, especially because they usually appear in small groups. I quite enjoyed fighting members of the Empire, especially basic Stormtroopers, but fighting creatures was much more annoying. Space bugs, space rats, and space crabs feel like a chore to kill as they leap backwards and avoid your lightsaber strikes, and its often harder to read their telegraphs. 

Coming across a squad of Stormtroopers is always where I had the most devilish fun. I appreciate how the game gave the troops a lot of personality. You can hear them chatting to each other before a fight, and they make sarcastic comments as you slowly dwindle their numbers. Laser bolts can be reflected back at the shooter, making ranged combat pretty easy. It’s when the game mixes melee enemies and ranged enemies where it gets a little more tricky and engaging. Every melee trooper is a Scout Trooper and I found that a little hilarious and inconsistent compared to a Scout’s role and ability levels from the films. I didn’t realize they can stand toe-to-toe with a Jedi using their electric sticks and block plenty of lightsaber strikes before being killed. I also liked the detail that when an AT-ST is defeated, you then get to brutally execute the pilot as he scrambles out and fires his pistol as a last ditch effort before his merciless death.

Bosses range from the aforementioned AT-STs, as well as large indigenous creatures found on different planets. Each world, from what I could tell, also has an optional, semi-hidden boss. These didn’t draw my attention much because they’re basically clones of other tougher creatures, only with a greater damage output, higher speed, and more health. You do get experience points for defeating enemies, but I lived happily without taking down these frustrating side-bosses. The most blatant rip-off of the Souls-like formula is the fact that when you rest at meditation spots (save points), it resets all the enemies in the level. This makes more sense in a game with tighter gameplay, such as Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, but there’s not as much of a need for experience points, and the gameplay isn’t reliable enough to warrant farming XP from regular enemies over and over again. I nearly gagged when the game warned me that meditating resets the enemies around you. I’m sick of seeing this mechanic, especially if it isn’t necessary.

I wish the gameplay was a little tighter and snappier. Enemies telegraphy their attacks well enough most of the time, but if an enemy is about to do an unblockable attack, the game doesn’t let you react quick enough to go from blocking to dodging. Many times I’d be blocking or trying to parry, and when an unblockable attack was coming, I couldn’t quick-step to the side fast enough. This means your reflexes not only have to be good enough, but you have to give the game a head start because it takes some time to go from one thing to another. This would happen often enough to get me frustrated. Another annoyance was Cal falling to the ground when the block meter isn’t depleted, and getting hit repeatedly as he’s trying to get up. I get that you can’t block forever, but you shouldn’t be “stunned” when the block meter isn’t empty yet. I don’t know if some of the clumsiness was intentional, but I would get pissed off during tougher fights because I felt like I was fighting an enemy as well as the mechanics.

This all has to do with combat, but I found the traversing to be more reliable. Respawn Entertainment definitely borrows heavily from the Uncharted and rebooted Tomb Raider series. Cal can’t do a lot at first, but as he remembers powers over time, you unlock more abilities such as Force push, Force pull, wall running, double jumping, and more. Sliding down icy or muddy slopes is always fun, especially when combined with other traversal obstacles such as gaps and the need to wall run at the beginning or end. If you die in combat, your brought back to a meditation point, but if you die while adventuring, the game resets you quickly and with a small loss of health. The animations were great as well. I really did feel like a character in the Star Wars universe climbing rocky terrain, jumping over ledges, climbing, and all sorts of stuff like that. It gave the game a cinematic feel even during gameplay. Same goes for combat which can be a little imprecise, but at least looks great. It’s funny, however, that a lot of what prevents Cal from going to new places is the game, is him simply not “remembering” how to do something, especially when he will recall one of his skills out of the blue.

One of the greatest strengths of the game is also it’s greatest weakness: the level design. Each planet you visit has its own interconnecting environments, of which short cuts can be unlocked so you can loop back around easier in the future. The map is also extremely helpful as it gives you a 3D view of the environments, shows where you haven’t explored, shows where places are locked, and shows things like meditation spots. But there isn’t one bit of fast-travel in the game, so when you find yourself deep in a tomb or canyon, you have to hike your way all the way back to your ship. Granted, the developers have tried their best to make the way back interesting with new enemies or new ways to get back to the start, but when some of the environments are as large and twisting as they are, it can be a grind to get from A to B sometimes. Regardless, I’m impressed with how big and detailed each location is (my favorite being the lush jungles of Kashyyyk). It also gives you reminders of places you can re-explore once new abilities are unlocked.

The story itself is one of the worst aspects of the game. While the settings and storytelling itself can be quite good on regular occasions, the overall plot is extremely basic. When Cal is forced to use his powers to save his friend during an industrial accident, he draws the attention of the Empire and the Inquisitors. The game becomes a race between you and the Empire to find a hidden list of Force-sensitive children left in the galaxy. This list (Holocron) has been hidden by a former Jedi who simply has put it in a difficult place to get to simply as a test, so that anyone who finds it would be “worthy” or something. We don’t necessarily see the Empire taking steps to find this list, but they pop in and our during cinematics when it’s convenient for the game. It’s basically an excuse to hop between a handful of planets and get slightly further and further as we unlock new abilities (a la Metroidvania). We spend a vast amount of time in deep tombs, putting Lara’s recent adventures to shame. It got old after a bit, even if the graphics and designs were gorgeous. I also think the game had one or two many giant ball puzzles.

The acting can be hit or miss as well. The most annoying character was Cere (Debra Wilson), one of the members of your small crew, who is a former Jedi Master, but has cut herself off from the Force. I think on a technical level, Wilson plays this character like a seasoned actor, but I found Cere’s character to be like one of those teachers or supervisors who is more dramatic than she needs to be. Cere comes off as condescending and a bit self-important, making excuses for herself while holding Cal to a very noble and high standard. She just comes off as endlessly melodramatic, and I don’t see a lot of need for her to have been a former Jedi, especially because she’s nothing but a co-pilot, quest-giver, and expositioner.. Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan) is a very vanilla hero who isn’t too bright, but is very altruistic. He has to have everything explained to him, even though I think he could have easily been telling other characters information, rather than being so clueless as a Jedi Padawan. Monaghan does a pretty good job playing him, I just thought the character itself was a little bland and typical.

Instead of the main Inquisitor chasing you around (called the “Second Sister”) I think being pursued by Darth Vader would have been way more fun. How much cooler would it have been to be hunted by THE Darth Vader, him doing exactly what his job was during this time period? Another inconsistency that irked me was that Cal is a Padawan, yet he’s proficient in single blade, staff, and double lightsaber combat. I know this makes the game more “fun” but it doesn’t make sense to me that a teenage Padawan is an expert in three forms of lightsaber combat, each of them needing nearly a lifetime to master. I was annoyed I could switch to a lightsaber staff at any time with no background or explanation for it. I would have liked it much more if the story and game stuck to single blade combat, and not felt like it would have been too basic or boring for most players. But I think the larger thing to blame is the Star Wars canon and Force-using, lightsaber-using people don’t get much of a technical explanation on how much the Force aids you or how much training you need to do on your own.

It may not seem like it, but overall I am actually pretty happy with Jedi: Fallen Order. Not only does it eschew the practices EA has become notorious for, but it’s a game in a genre I really enjoy. Aside from some combat imperfections, flat story, and average characters, I had a lot of fun exploring this game at every turn. Finding chests with cosmetic collectibles and playing with the Force powers kept me going from one corner to the next. I also enjoyed the music which was done by composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab, instead of relying too much on the famous John William tracks (although they are heard far and few between). They evoked a Star Warsy tone and atmosphere without outright copying existing works. I loved moments like my first AT-ST fight, or climbing and piloting an AT-AT. Most of the set-piece moments were exciting and unique for a Star Wars video game. It certainly has its blemishes, but definitely not things that couldn’t be ironed out in a future sequel. I really hope Respawn Entertainment and EA continue on this path of coming up with semi-original stories with their Star Wars license and make single player driven experiences.

7.5/10

[zmediaoutlet]

you saw endgame! please share with the class! assemble!

haha, okay, well–here’s some thoughts, since we’re far enough out that I don’t think this will be too spoilery for people – but it’s gonna be super long, so it’s under a cut, either way:

Well, it was–spectacular! In that it was literally a spectacle, for one thing. I had pretty lowered expectations after not particularly enjoying Captain Marvel (it was fine, but boring) or Infinity War for that matter (better-made, but the stakes were obviously nonexistent because we knew something was going to be done). Here, though… I just really, thoroughly enjoyed it. It was thoughtfully done, well-executed, and just as a moment of payoff for those of us who have been here all ten years… It was just really something. I saw Iron Man on opening weekend in 2008 and fell in love, and even if I haven’t loved every single movie since then, I feel like Marvel just sent me a love letter, and I was so–glad. What a good movie-going experience it was.

I say all that having seen SO MUCH rending of garments and gnashing of teeth from the !stans and shippers, but all of that’s so very much missing the point. This is the story of *this series*, this great arc that led to this point. The thing to remember is that the MCU is fanfiction itself–it’s based off of characters who are based off of characters from a canon that’s been rebooted and re-blended about a billion times. This is the story this group of fic-writers, essentially, chose to tell, and I think they did it pretty damn well. You can write your own fic where Steve weeps into Bucky’s hair for 70 years if you want to. This story isn’t that, and that’s okay. (Genuinely, if fandomites could take like half a step back they’d be much happier people. I know it’s hard–I’ve been in a process of letting go with SPN that I haven’t really managed to do well–but c’mon. Don’t get so het up about it.)

Some things:

1) I was genuinely impressed with the time travel mechanism, especially as it bounced meta-ly off of other examples we’ve seen in pop culture. Finally, a story that allows ACTUAL alternate-universe time travel instead of boring-ass time loops. I’ve always thought it was spectacularly dumb when the worry is “but if I kill myself in the past, I’ll die now!” Nope! Avoided! Thank you, folks. It’s kind of weirding me out that so many people online seem confused about how the time travel worked, but it was incredibly clean and I just want to high five the people involved. The one thing that seemed like a plot hole was Old Steve at the end, with the implication that he was co-existent in this timeline for 70 years (and did nothing about Hydra??)–but then the Russos said that they assume he went to an alternate timeline, and then came back to this one to give Sam the shield. It wasn’t on screen either way so you can make your own headcanon, but I’m good with that. So: successful time travel. Hoo-fucking-rah.

2) Thor. This was the one real spoiler I had going in, that Thor Got Fat. All this weeping about how he’d been mistreated by the narrative. So, I was pre-emptively worried… and then ended up not thinking it was that bad. Look, I’m a chubster, I’m well-aware of how sensitive that can be for people. What I found interesting about it was that it was, yes, kind of a visual joke, just because The God of Abs was a pudge, but it was actually treated remarkably kindly by every character for whom that would be in-character. Meaning, sure, Rocket makes fun of him, and Rhodey’s kind of a dick (because Rhodey’s like that with Tony, even)–but Bruce, Steve, and even Tony all deal with him quite gently. That scene where he tries to volunteer for the gauntlet and Tony carefully holds him back was so sweet and sad. Poor guy. It was a good exploration of the depths that the last ~10 years of his life have pummeled him into. It wasn’t that he was fat, it’s that he was broken. People will make up their own minds about the equivalencies there and what’s being implied, but it was a good visual metaphor as far as I was concerned. If he were “just” a sad drunk no one would have believed that he wasn’t ready for what was coming, and he wasn’t. But he got better, because his friends really were there for him. (Also, Korg was wearing Taika’s pineapple shirt! I hope there are nice fics where Korg and Maik gently just play XBox with Thor because that’s all they can do for him.) 

Also on Thor, re: Thor/Loki – more rending of garments about how he didn’t go see Loki. Let’s think about this: you’re on a top-secret time mission to save the universe (Time Heist!), and you go see your trickster god little brother who, yes, you miss, but who also hates you at this point in his life. That’ll go well. I completely understand why there wasn’t a scene. The scene with Frigga was all I needed there.

3) Steeb: I’ve never been the… biggest fan of Steve. I mean, he’s fine. His character is caught awkwardly between the man, Steve Rogers, who abhors bullies and will break rules to do what’s right, and between The Man, Captain America, who kinda Is Rules and needs to do what’s right but also represents an idea greater than himself. There’s a lot of wonderful tension there, but the movies haven’t particularly capitalized on it, and when they’ve tried it’s been in a lip-servicey way.

That said, this movie deals with it really, really well, I think. At the beginning he’s trying to live, and isn’t doing a great job of it. The plan they come up with is simple, perfect heroism – he’s not representing an Ideal, but he is one: he’s the man and the ideal simultaneously, that striving toward right will eventually create a more just, fairer world. If sacrifice is required he’s willing to make it. That scene of him standing alone against the massed forces of Thanos with his broken shield strapped tight to his arm is like a distillation of who Captain America should be. I’m so glad we got that, at the end.

As someone who doesn’t invest in Steve/Bucky but who completely understands it, I also see no issue with the thing where he goes back to Peggy. Bucky understands, too. That moment where they hug and he tells Steve, so-softly, “I’ll miss you,” oh man, oof. Bucky knows. I hope there’s a lot of pining!Bucky in that fandom, y’all are missing out on a STELLAR opportunity if not. Especially pining!Bucky where Steve knows and can only do his best to be Bucky’s friend. Steve going back isn’t out of character, either, despite the clamoring. He misses Peggy, he misses peace. Who knows what they got up to in that alternate timeline–maybe he and Peg went and routed Hydra early, maybe they saved Bucky, maybe they had a WWThreesome with Buck, whatever. But Natasha and Tony both told Steve to “get a life,” and he finally got to. He’d done enough. He earned it.

4) OH MY GOD, NATASHA. What a character arc. I friggin’ adore the mirroring of her and Clint’s stories. The brutal assassin who gained a family and learned what it meant to love something so much she wanted to sacrifice herself for it–those scenes on Vormire were heartbreaking. I’m also super glad that the movie paused, after that. Someone called her death “fridging” – wow. No. She was a hero, as much as Tony was. Whatever it takes.

5) Tony. Holy shit. In a lot of ways this was his movie–in a more meta way, it was RDJ’s movie, and Favreau’s, and Feige’s. It all started with Iron Man, and that’s where it ended. There wasn’t a stinger scene because we got that funeral and then the moment in the credits with the originals signing the screen, and of course they saved Robert for last. The success of this movie is really a testament to the risk everyone took, way back then. It sure as hell paid off.

“You wouldn’t lay down on a grenade to save your men,” Steve said. How many different ways can Tony prove him wrong? At least once more. ;-;  I’m just super emotional about the whole thing. So many good moments all leading up to what happened. Little Morgan in his helmet, Pepper’s faith. Steve’s faith, for that matter. (I still have a tiny pocket of my heart reserved for Steve/Tony, no matter how non-canon it is. What a great relationship they have.) The panic and misery when Carol brought them back, calling Steve a liar, and Steve just–gentle with him, again, and how there was no anger there anymore. Argh. 

That’s the thing that I think I appreciated about the movie most, in the end. Despite all the craziness, the spectacle, the easter eggs slinging at you left and right (”Hail Hydra.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!), what I loved most is that in the face of this ultimate goal, this literally universe-saving moment, the stakes were actually felt because the characters (and actors, and script) sold how unimaginably important it was. Interpersonal bickering fell by the wayside; any dumb conflicts just washed away. No drama for its own sake, or manufactured arguments. Just–working together. The Avengers we hoped to get in the aftermath of the first team movie. We got ‘em, finally, even if we lost a lot too.

This all sounds super elegiac, I guess. It sort of is. It wasn’t a perfect movie by any means, but it might be perfect for what it meant to do, and what it set out to do. There were a couple of little nitpicky things that I might change, but they’re so small so as not even to be mentioned. And so many more tiny moments that I loved, loved, loved. It’s the first one of these movies that I’ve wanted to rewatch in literal years, and that’s making me really happy all on its own. I’m just left with this utter… satisfaction. Not sad, just happy that they made it worth my while.

Put another way: when I was leaving Shazam I felt like I’d spent about 4 hours wasting my time. When I was leaving Endgame, I felt like it had been an instant. Just yay, all ‘round. I loved it three thousand.

What did you think?