#also they never give us the ability to micromanage what we actually want to micromanage

[wildfangz]

I think TS4 just really aggravates me sometimes because it can be so cute and once in a while, REALLY really really fun when the planets align and your game gets ever slightly chaotic, but like in the crazy story way not in the “my bride just went down the aisle on her stupid fucking bicycle” way 

Like to this day one of my favorite households I’ve ever had was a single dad and his daughter. I spent most of their money on their starter home. He was teaching himself programming with the hopes he could get himself a solid, stable job in the future and in the meantime he was making some extra cash with plugins, it was pretty much what they were eating off of. But when his daughter was at school, he’d go to a local bar and play for tips and they were barely scraping by. Bills were due, a fire struck, and he suddenly found himself hacking someone’s trust fund to make sure their utilities weren’t turned off.

But games like that seem one in a hundred, but the fact they’re possible really makes you see the potential in this game, and makes it even more disappointing when they come out with another feature that doesn’t have the depth it deserves or is just something you can micromanage at most, with no negative consequences. 

[manggaetteokkie]

Luo Yunxi as Chu Wanning: the Perfect Casting

(are you guys ready for this post because I am not)

Okay, you guys might be thinking, “Woah, ‘perfect’ is a pretty strong word, are you sure?” to which my only reply is “Damn right I am”.

So I’ve mentioned in my previous post how I am absolutely notworried about how Luo Yunxi was casted for Chu Wanning in the upcoming 2HA live action adaptation, but after going back and rereading that part, I thought that what I wrote wasn’t really enough to drive my point across so that’s where this post comes in.

Beware: this is just going to be a massive word barf praising Luo Yunxi so yeah. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

As we all know (or maybe not, if you’ve never heard of the novel “The Husky and His White Cat Shizun” aka 2HA before), Chu Wanning’s entire aura screams untouchable, otherworldly and transcendent beauty. Basically, someone who embodies the word elegance, with a touch of haughtiness from an outsider’s perspective. He is aloof, enjoys peace and quiet, and is extremely strict. He has zero tolerance for rule breakers and will apply the same standards he holds others to onto himself. He also prefers to keep things to himself. Whether it be injuries or his own feelings, it’s easier for him to deal with them on his own than reach out to others because he considers that losing face. With all of this in mind, I’m sure you’ve all got an idea formed in your head as to what kind of character he is.

To be frank, this kind of role is hard to do, and most importantly, to do well. First, the actor must be poised at all times and display a certain level of elegance in his movements. It is so, so, so easy for the actor to try too hard or be slightly too aware of his movements, which in turn makes them robotic. In other cases, they manage to pull it off when the camera is on them but as soon as they are no longer the focus, they slack off and it’s like a splash of cold water to the viewers. The best case is when the actor is so seamless that you don’t even realize what they are doing, because you’re just enjoying the whole thing so much.

In this case, Luo Yunxi has the advantage from his experience as a professional ballet dancer. Years of dancing has allowed him to have great posture and if you’ve ever seen Ashes of Love, you’d know that he moves with a certain level of elegance that becomes blatant when you put him side by side with Deng Lun (not trying to put anyone down by the way, Deng Lun’s character is the fiery Phoenix who is righteous and direct, the God of Fire and War, so his movements fit perfectly given his character. Meanwhile, Luo Yunxi’s character is the Night God, who, comparatively, has a much calmer and more uptight disposition).

His fight scenes are also *chef’s kiss*. Again, his experience as a dancer really shines through:

That fancy fan trick he did? Absolutely blew my mind how effortless he made it look. He’s really one of the few actors that I actually pay attention to the fight scenes for because he doesn’t just charge and hack at stuff, he somehow turns it into an art form and I’m always curious to see what move he’ll pull next. This makes me excited to see what he’ll do in Immortality because Chu Wanning mainly either wields a whip or conjures barriers, meaning it’s mostly going to be CG. That also means that his hand signs and body movements are going to have to be solid, at the risk of looking awkward otherwise.

For this next part, I’m going to have to make a confession. I actually love watching scenes in which Luo Yunxi’s characters are in a lot of pain, emotional or physical. I wholly admit it, it sounds really sadistic, but understand that I don’t say this easily for anybody. When I say Luo Yunxi nails crying scenes or scenes in which he is in pain...

...I mean he absolutely nails them.

Man... seeing this gif just makes me want to give him the biggest hug and tell him that everything will be alright. Unknowingly, while watching, my own face twisted into a frown.

One of Luo Yunxi’s greatest strengths is his ability to micromanage his expressions. It would be so easy for a newbie actor to appear frozen while watching their costar act; however, just with the smallest furrowing of his brows, Luo Yunxi is able to convey all of his emotional turmoil.

Of course, we can’t have Chu Wanning be crying all the time, but the previous examples were perfect to show how Luo Yunxi can nail those small tells when it comes to Chu Wanning’s character. As mentioned before, our perfect shizun isn’t the type to broadcast his feelings screaming on rooftops, so we can only rely on small twitches of discomfort or slight frowns of pain. Given what we’ve seen from Luo Yunxi, I’m not worried about him being able to properly convey those tricky emotions.

Of course, how can you talk about Chu Wanning without talking about his many fits of anger. Do you perhaps worry that he seems too sad, too soft to properly portray the other aspects of our quick-to-whip shizun? Worry not, and simply feast your eyes upon the following:

I really love these stills, from the tousled hair to the glare that could send whoever he looks at 6ft under... I highly doubt he’ll have a hard time conveying Chu Wanning’s righteous fury given his previous performances.

Also, if you’ve seen him near the end of Ashes of Love, he had to act as a person impersonating him. It was a more comical and lighthearted break in what was quite a heavy scene, and he managed to pull it off amazingly well which really shows his range as an actor.

Anyways, this essay has been going long enough so it’s about time to conclude. Basically, I’m ready to watch this entire live adaptation from start to end just for Luo Yunxi because I trust him as an actor, and I feel like he’s given us more than enough proof to show that he can pull off the Chu Wanning character. Speaking of which, I’m actually lowkey salty because he was the actor I had in mind for Xie Lian as well, but it’s unlikely that he’ll take that role since he’s already been casted by the 2HA team. I’m not lying when I say that after Ashes of Love aired, a lot of fans suddenly had a face to go along with their favourite novel characters.

Bonus!

There was no purpose to these except to show how he looks beautiful regardless of how “unkept” he’s supposed to be. Even if his character is supposed to be at their very lowest point, he still manages to maintain that elegant beauty.

[caithyra]

A lot of people claim Kagura (and by extension her "siblings") was a full demon, but am I alone in thinking that she was always a half-demon/hanyo because she was an incarnation of Naraku, who was also a half-demon?

First a disclaimer: I view Naraku’s incarnations very different from the rest of fandom, like I do with most things in this manga.

Naraku’s incarnations fans might not like my interpretation... Oh, and it only pertains to the manga.

TL;DR: They are likely as yokai as Sesshomaru’s severed arm. Except Muso. (Skip to the bottom of this post if you want the elaborated, quick answer of my interpretation and then the probable canon answer, which is different. I just have an interpretation of canon that I haven’t seen anyone else suggest before that...)

Anyway, first we are going to go through what Naraku is before he creates his incarnations:

Onigumo, a human, who is devoured by a yokai horde that becomes Naraku.

Naraku is then a hanyo capable of absorbing other yokai and their power, which he presumably does a few times before he tries something as big as absorbing a daiyokai like Sesshomaru (which he fails at), given his attempt at Sesshomaru, we can presume that at least a few of these yokai were powerful even if they were not daiyokai, since going from lesser yokai to greater yokai without anyone inbetween is very foolhardy, given how weak Naraku was at the time (he also used manipulations mostly during this time).

So up to the point that the manga starts, Naraku is a mostly yokai hanyo made up of literally hundreds of yokai of various powers and strengths.

Then, before he begins creating incarnations Naraku is nearly killed by Kagome (this is an important part of my interpretation) and cannot restore himself without turning towards a dark type of magic called kodoku.

Kodoku is a magical ritual/art called “gu/ku” in Chinese in which various toxic creatures are put into an enclosed space to absorb one another until only one remains. This remaining creature (also called Gu/Ku/Kodoku) is considered supremely toxic and powerful and with various abilities such as pestilence, manipulation (Naraku/Kanna/Infant?), transformation (Naraku), and a number of other things that falls well within Naraku’s sphere of power.

Anyway, Naraku absorbs the kodoku and is restored, and also made up of even more different kinds of yokai. And he holds a large chunk of the empowering Shikon no Tama, courtesy of Kikyo.

And that’s when he begins creating incarnations (分身 - bunshin).

That word, bunshin, is a funny thing. In Naruto, it is the “clone” part in Clone Techniques (such as Kage Bunshin/Shadow Clone which Naruto uses all the time), and as a common word, has been used in many manga/anime/games.

Here’s the definition of Jisho.org for example:

ぶんしん 分身 common word Noun 1. other self; alter ego; part of oneself (in someone or something else); representation of oneself 2. (Buddhist term) incarnations of Buddha​

Kotobank.jp translates it into “double/doppelgänger” and has this to say:

1. One divided into two or more separate bodies. 2. (Buddhist term, similar to above.)

But basically, a bunshin is not a separate person from what they are a bunshin of most of the time in pop culture (or they are re/pre/incarnations like in Buddhism, but no one suggests Kagura is to Naraku what Kagome is to Kikyo, so... *shrugs* Lets got with the other definition!). They always exist in relation to the original (Naraku). Other translations simply call them detachments, which has the implication of parts of Naraku that he’s cut off and given life for his own purposes.

I will be skipping Muso since he is an aberration among the bunshin, and likely the most hanyo of the lot.

The first bunshin Naraku creates is Kanna, who has no will, no emotions and no drive of her own. She solely does Naraku’s bidding, no more, no less. (There is a sole exception of her death scene, but that was more to inform the heroes of Kikyo’s light, which curtails with how the story began bending to fit Kikyo as a tragic heroine... Don’t even get me started...)

Then he creates Kagura, who is the opposite extreme; freedom is her greatest aspiration and she continuously backtalks Naraku and tries to act against him, yet, in the end, everything goes as Naraku wants when it comes to Kagura (this is also important).

Lets look at these two extremes and lets pretend that these are not Naraku’s incarnations; they are toasters.

Kanna is the toaster that Naraku must put the perfect settings in every time before use and push the toast down with a lever. Then he must wait and push the eject button, because Kanna wont do it herself.

Kagura is the fancy toaster with all the bells and whistles and more settings than anyone needs, including sensors to tell when the perfect toast is done to be ejected. She even automatically lowers the toast into the toasting slots when you put them in. In theory, Naraku doesn’t need to do anything else; Kagura knows exactly what to do to make the toast Naraku wants. Except fancy gadgets like these malfunctions and are temperamental and has the wrong settings put in and, yeah, Kagura doesn’t want to make Naraku’s perfect toast, but Naraku has rigged a big, complicated Rube-Goldberg machine to push her eject button before she can irreparably burn his toast, so it doesn’t matter.

All the different incarnations are on a sliding scale of these, except for Hakudoshi, who is an even fancier version of Kagura and capable of making grilled cheese sandwiches, and what more, Naraku wants Hakudoshi to burn some of his toast, because of the risk/reward that one day, Hakudoshi will not burn Naraku’s toast, but instead will make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich for Naraku to enjoy.

Byakuya, by contrast, is the perfect blend of obedient Kanna and the ability to make tedious decisions and act on his own like Kagura.

It’s like with computer programs; some require a dozen clicks to complete a task, another, that has been further programmed (given personality and motivation), only require one.

In short, I do not see them as separate people from Naraku, which is where I diverge from most of fandom; they have no pupils, which are signs of possession/not having their own minds in many anime, which is also a yokai trait (like Koga), but is egregious when it comes to everything else. It should be noted that most of Naraku’s bunshin are obedient to Naraku, but that in order to arrive to the perfect blend of independent action plus unquestioning obedience that is Byakuya, he experimented with giving more or less free will, individual desires and so on.

And it was Kagura who led me to believe that:

First; she is given the appearance of “Sesshomaru’s ideal woman” according to Takahashi who believes that all men want Kikyo or someone like her (”Sesshomaru’s ideal type of woman” is “like Kikyo” according to her according to some interview I’ve seen quoted around, but I would like an actual source, please...), including Sesshomaru, so she makes Kagura a young woman like Kikyo named after a dance that miko, like Kikyo, dance.

Second; she is given a sympathetic motivation “freedom” but at no point do we get a clue as to how she feels about “freedom” other than something to attain. She does not daydream about it or what she will do with it, she does not envy others’ freedom overtly (nor resentfully watching them), there’s literally nothing except her nebulously wanting “freedom” being “the free wind” when she passes away.

Third; she is obviously and loudly antagonistic towards Naraku, and, indeed he, the great villain, holds her heart literally in his hand to torture her with. Don’t you want to save her? Give this pretty lady freedom?

Fourth; she really wants Sesshomaru to save her, despite the fact that Sesshomaru has never come close to killing Naraku and always refuses to save Kagura.

Fifth; but when Kagome, the only person to ever come close to killing Naraku in the entire series at this point, offers to protect Kagura, Kagura refuses and still goes to Sesshomaru. Even though Kagome is not just the person whose power Naraku fears, but also someone with a history of taking in her foes as friends (unlike Sesshomaru).

Sixth; Tenseiga did not even react to Kagura “dying”.

None of this makes sense, unless one thinks of Kagura as a part of Naraku that he has “programmed” specifically to mess with Sesshomaru. In that case, Kagura refusing Kagome’s protection while still being infatuated with Sesshomaru who refuses to do anything and has proven nothing as her supposed savior, and the lack of psychopomps at her death and Tenseiga having no reaction, makes sense if Kagura is little more than something like a living tentacle of Naraku’s, given a pretty face, personality and “programming” to go hard for Sesshomaru and then, use her final moment to upset him (by this time, everyone knows Sesshomaru’s complex with his father’s swords, so if his sword wont work when predictably would he ask it to... Cue upset Sesshomaru. Too bad Inu no Taisho did one up on Naraku on that front by ensuring Inuyasha got the Meido after Sesshomaru and Rin nearly died in front of Sesshomaru’s mother for Sesshomaru to get it... Naraku’s manipulations got nothing on InuPapa’s beyond the grave...).

It would explain her undeveloped motivation (the abstract “freedom”), why everything still goes as Naraku wishes despite a few hiccups and so on, and, of course, why she had no soul for Tenseiga to save...

Naraku might as well have told Kanna “fall in love with Sesshomaru and plead with him to give you freedom” and Kanna would do her best to obey, but because of her non-personality, the emotional manipulation would be obvious (even more so once she refused Kagome, since, after all, it is Sesshomaru who is to give her freedom). But Naraku would have to micromanage her extensively to do so as well as make her a mature body. Far easier to just create a new detachment with slightly more free will and so on with the “programming” installed.

Does Kagura know this? Maybe she suspected it by being around her “siblings” and noting how different their levels of sapience/sentience/free wills were (and she even tells Hakudoshi that his plans will come to naught because Naraku wont allow it, suggesting she believes Naraku’s will is absolute over the incarnations), but she probably felt like her own person, and would have been “programmed” to think of herself as such and dismiss any suspicions to the contrary.

It would fit very well with the body-horror aspect of early Inuyasha and Naraku’s character as a whole. But would also be a bit too much for a children’s comic magazine in an action series...

So what are Naraku’s incarnations on the human-yokai scale?

They are likely yokai, like Sesshomaru’s severed arm, with the exception of Muso who had Naraku’s most human part in him and would likely be considered hanyo on a DNA test. They were likely made from the yokai parts of the hordes that make up Naraku after the kodoku, but aren’t separate people (like, the parts of a crane yokai would have been used to create Byakuya, for example, while oni parts would have been used for Goshinki). They are just more advanced dolls made of purely yokai parts IMO.

But that’s just my extremely niche interpretation of the manga and the inconsistencies with the story.

In canon, it is much more likely that the simpler explanation; that they are separate people who are also yokai (except Muso), is the answer.

I just don’t like the inconsistencies it creates within the story and made my own interpretation and rambled on and on in this post. Sorry.

[keyofjetwolf]

Hi would you like some rage about She-Ra season 5?

If the answer is no, please don’t click below. For real. Really for real. I’m not looking to piss in anyone’s Cheerios. I think if you were satisfied (or better!) with the show, that’s fantastic and I envy you. As I have always said, love what you love. My opinion is mine and means precisely nothing beyond that. If you think you may be even a little bummed reading about how someone didn’t like it, skip this post and go on with your day, I promise you’re not missing anything worthwhile.

IN A SIMILAR VEIN: If -- before, during, or after reading -- you feel inclined to argue with me, I am begging you to please not. I cannot begin to tell you how much I don’t want to be argued with on this right now. I’m still extremely disappointed and cranky, and I’m not much in the mood to have a measured, reasoned debate about my feelings. Much as my opinion has no bearing on you, your opinion has no bearing on me, and as I’m giving you the option to opt out, I’d appreciate the same courtesy. If you want to write your own post on your own blog, go nuts! Just please leave me out of it. I PREFER TO BE CRANKY AT TELEVISION SHOWS THAN PEOPLE.

The rest of you, come on down. I don’t promise coherency, but I DO promise a lot of stuff said in all-caps!

---

Hello! Thank you for joining me! We watched the remaining few episodes of She-Ra last night! I hated them! Yaaay!

What did I hate? OH HO HO MANY THINGS FRIENDS MANY THINGS. It’s not just stuff from the final couple of episodes either, I want to clarify. It’s the entire final season, settling on last few episodes like the freshly fallen snow on your front lawn that some frat boys decide to pee their names into. By the time we’d gotten to these last episodes, there was really nothing left for me but confirmation of all the shit I’d come to hate. SO THANKS I GUESS FOR PROVING ME RIGHT

Which isn’t to say there was nothing to enjoy in the final episodes! There was!

5. She-Ra’s Triceps. GET BUFF GIRL. I LOVE how Adora and She-Ra look similar, but very much not identical. Adora’s no slouch when it comes to physical stuff, but they go the extra mile to show us how She-Ra is that much more. HOW RARELY DO YOU GET TO SEE A WOMAN WITH MUSCLES. I’ve been nothing but impressed by the ways the show drew the line between Adora and She-Ra, and however I felt about its handling of other elements, it didn’t let me down here.

4. Sometimes A Family Is A Twink, A Lizard, And Their Imp Baby. I don’t have further commentary on this, and I need none.

3. Welcome Home, Daddy. THIS WAS SO SPECTACULAR. Glimmer had, I would argue, the most realized arc in the story. It was so gratifying to see this as a culmination, not just of her own struggle with her magical power and ability to harness it, but her willingness to do what needs doing, however personally difficult. That was a stumbling point Angelica could never overcome, continually trying to micromanage and protect Glimmer rather than trusting her and recognizing her for the asset she was. Also though, more succinctly: YESSSS BITCH

2. A Shanty! THIS WHOLE SCENE WAS PERFECT NO NOTES. Just the right blend of silly and sincere, a genuine delight as even brainwashed Mermista had had enough of Sea Hawk’s shit, AND so much more clever than it seemed at first glance. THIS IS THE ONLY VALID HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP IN SHE-RA I AM NOT TAKING QUESTIONS AT THIS TIME

1. Shadow Weaver. SHADOW FUCKING WEAVER. What a complicated, fascinating character, bar none the most interesting in the entire series. I do think they pulled their punch right at the very end with her, but I AM capable of remembering I’m watching a kid’s show, so I can only get so disappointed about it. Mostly, she remained a beautifully morally complex character, and she was one of my greatest personal delights from beginning to end*.

(*) Boy did this show have one single solution for mommy issues though.

THAT WAS ABOUT IT. So let’s get to why we’re all really here, and that is MY SCREAMING OH MY GOD WHERE DO I BEGIN

Nah, I know exactly where to begin.

GLIMMER AND BO JESUS MCTRISKET I AM GOING TO EXPLODE AND SHOWER THE UNIVERSE IN THE SHRAPNEL OF MY HATE

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING

WHERE DID IT COME FROM

HOW CAN I SHOVE IT BACK IN THE HATEFUL SPEWHOLE THAT SIRED THIS BULLSHIT

WHY WHY IS THIS HERE WHY IS THIS IN MY FACE WHERE MY EYES HAVE TO SEE IT FUCK ME SIDEWAYS THIS IS THE MOST UNNECESSARY SHOEHORNED IN HET ROMANCE FUCK A DOODLE NONSENSE I HAVE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO BEAR WITNESS WHAT IS IT DOING IN THIS OTHERWISE EXPONENTIALLY GAY CARTOON

WERE YOU PANDERING TO THE STRAIGHTS

WHY ARE YOU PANDERING TO THE STRAIGHTS I ASSURE YOU WE ARE COVERED BOTH HISTORICALLY AND FICTIONALLY

ALSO NEED I REMIND YOU THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY ACHIEVED HETEROSEXUAL PERFECTION

NO MERMISTA NO WE ARE NOT ALL JUST LIKE OKAY WITH THIS

Oh my FUCKSTICKS, I could’ve rolled with so much more that angers/disappoints me about She-Ra’s ending if every single thing I feared about this hadn’t proved true.

AND. IT. WAS. SO. UNNECESSARY.

What exactly did pairing off Glimmer and Bo do for the story? For their characters? THIS IS THE PART THAT’S STABBING ME IN THE DELICATE WEBBING OF MY TOES. Because -- COME WITH ME A MOMENT SWEET ANGELS -- because I was under the impression that, oohhhh, I dunno, FRIENDSHIP WAS A HUGE FUCKING IMPORTANT PART OF THIS PASTEL HELLSCAPE

Is it, She-Ra? IS IT REALLY???? When not one but BOTH of your childhood friendship pairings end in romance? When you close out your five seasons with romantic relationships so painfully and specifically sown across the character landscape like an overzealous gardener turned loose on the world?

You know what you have at the end? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID

THIS ISN’T A BEST FRIENDS SQUAD IT’S A DOUBLE DATE THAT NEVER MERCIFULLY ENDS

And again I ask, Why?? What was it about Glimmer and Bo’s relationship that needed them to become romantic? What was LACKING that this was the solution?

THIS IS WHAT MAKES ME LOSE MY GODDAMN SHITTING MIND I AM SO FUCKING DONE WITH THIS INSIPID MYOPIC TRASHBAG OF A CONCEPT

I believed She-Ra’s entire premise about friendship, I believed it wholeheartedly, and I’m so PISSED that at the close of day, narratively, it swept it all the bin. AND YES, YES IT DID, otherwise, WHY IS IT THERE. It serves no story-based need, it serves no character-based need, it has no NEED at all. So is it meant to be a “reward” to Bo and Glimmer for winning the war, as if their lifelong friendship were not reward enough? Is it meant to show they’ve walked through the flames and emerged with stronger, deeper bonds, because of course a relationship can only go SO deep without fucking. There’s no avenue to Romantic Relationship that doesn’t simultaneously point to something lacking in Platonic Relationship, AND I AM FURY PERSONIFIED

I am so tired of this. I’m SO TIRED of this.

And it didn’t need to be there. They didn’t even TRY to give us a good reason. That may be the part that makes me the angriest. Of COURSE they hook up romantically, of COURSE their platonic love would grow into “more”.

Fuck YOU, She-Ra. I thought you were better than that. YOU WERE SO CLOSE TO BETTER THAN THAT

THEN THERE WAS CATRA

I get it, I guess. I mean, I think it’s shittily written, but I GUESS. Honestly, end of day, I just don’t care about Catra enough to really get too angry about it, particularly when as I’m so fucking incendiary over something much more important to me. But it’s also the show’s greatest creative failure, and even if I HADN’T gotten angrier at other choices, it would’ve still cut its own legs out from under it.

Catra’s “redemption” was weak and sad and did a disservice to her and everyone involved. She started self-centered and shitty, and she ended just as self-centered and shitty, only we’re fine with that now. She learned nothing and changed nothing, but also nobody ever demanded it of her, so I can only lay so much at the character’s feet. The problem is ultimately creative, where I think Noelle Stevenson got lost in her own love of the character, and somewhere along the way forgot that if you take them out that far, you have to be willing to walk them the long road back. Compare to poor Glimmer, for fuck’s sake, whose greatest sin was being desperate enough to be manipulated by the character whose entire fucking DEAL is being THE manipulator. How much shit did she get for that? How long was she punished? Meanwhile Catra becomes THE Big Bad for a while, nearly unravels all of reality in a fit of supreme lesbian angst and self-pity, directly leads to the death of the planet’s ruling monarch who also happens to be GLITTER’S MUM and DIRECT FRIEND TO THE SHOW’S HEROES, but that’s fine, you did one sorta good thing one time and even though it was also wrapped in a thick film of self-pity and a final fuck-you at Adora, all is forgiven!

Speaking of, Adora suffers just as much from stunted growth. From the beginning, her thing was control, unable to free herself from the responsibility of everything and everyone. What did we have at the end? Adora as the only one who could save everything and everyone. Yeah, they kept asking what it was SHE wanted, BUT THEN SHE NEVER ACTUALLY GOT TO CHOOSE. NOT activating the failsafe wasn’t an option for her, and while she wound up not having to die to do it, even that wasn’t her choice in the end, it was Catra’s. (Don’t even get me started on her nth hour “You love me?” fuckery when it wasn’t once for one single second shown to be a question of such life-turning importance.)

All of which could be interesting! That Catra and Adora went through all this, came so far to wind up right where they started? AWESOME. LOVE IT. FUND IT. But really all that happens is nobody minds now that Catra’s a self-involved little shit and tee-hee another Best Friends Squad Mission being bullrushed by Adora within five minutes of ending the last one isn’t that funny?

I can’t even dig much enjoyment out of Adora and Catra as a trope subversion (if one of them was a male, their romantic involvement wouldn’t have even been a QUESTION), because the show lost its fucking mind with romantically pairing everybody off in the final five minutes. WHICH BRINGS ME RIGHT BACK TO MY PREVIOUS SCREAMING SO I’LL STOP THERE.

There was other stuff, of course. I think it was a TERRIBLE decision to spend the last season with the focus split between the two groups of rebels, and writing half the cast into brainwashing. I think the Nettossa and Spinnerella stuff was wasted and lacked any punch at all because the show for some reason or another couldn’t be bothered to let us spend any time with them to care. The waste of Scorpia and Mermista especially (to people named Jet Wolf who are me) was fucking CRIMINAL. Speaking of Scorpia, wouldn’t her showdown with Bo have been so much more poignant if they’d had really any kind of interaction before that moment to build from? (Sure, it’s Scorpia, so if you’re going to sell the lack of context with anyone it’s her, BUT ALSO.) Hey, remember Huntara? No? NEITHER DID THE SHOW.

All my details aside though, MY MANY MANY MANY DETAILS, what kills/rages me most about She-Ra was how so much potential from the first four seasons was just flushed away. Whether it was the creative team shooting itself in the foot or corporate pressure and rushing from Netflix, I don’t know. I don’t CARE. This is the show I was given, so this is the show I have, and that kind of fall after that kind of potential doesn’t just irritate me, it makes me SAD. I wouldn’t be this disappointed if I didn’t think it could have been -- WAS -- so much more.

Time will tell if I can separate out the final season from how much I loved those that came before it. I like to hope so, because I did love it intensely and loved whenever I got the chance to really dig in and talk about it.

WHATEVER ELSE I SUPPOSE I WILL ALWAYS HAVE THIS

Again please remember that I am not at present looking to argue or debate my feelings and opinions. I get to just be angry and disappointed, as a treat!

[i-think-2-much]

*contains Wanda vision episode 5 spoilers*

Here is my totally unasked for interpretation of Wandavision as of episode 5:

It boils down to Wanda not being the one in control.

We know from episode 2 that she has the power to rewind and change their little bubble as much as she wishes, but things still go wrong. Mr. Hart chokes during their dinner party, the neighbors like Dottie start to catch on (which I will come back to) etc. Every time Wanda’s starting to actually feel happy, things go south. If she was completely in control, she would be living in domestic bliss.

Point 2: suspicion. Agnes has all but told Vision she knows (roughly) what’s going on. I don’t think she knows her name or the life that she’s been stolen from, but she knows Wanda isn’t normal and she’s mentally not in a good place right now (which is kinda ironic to type). Dottie is the only one to say it to Wanda’s face and I don’t remember the exact episode, but the neighbors know there wasn’t a house there a few days ago and they know something’s weird about Wanda’s family. Wanda (we presume) may have given them new identies, but she isn’t in charge of who they become after the initial creation of Westfield. Besides, she’s human. She isn’t able to micromanage every moment of the other’s lives Something else is making the extras go about their day to day lives.

The extras: okay now I’m getting into episode 5; namely, Norm. In the lastest episode, Vision uses the mindstone to momentarily give his coworker a moment of clarity and eliminating all doubt that Wanda has done something awful. The first thing Norm does is ask for vision for help and he begans listing things off, meaning that his real self has been aware of his actions this entire time. However, the most meaningful part of this is that Vision was able to use the MINDSTONE to do this.

We know from Age of Ultron that the mind stone has a consciousness (the stuff that fused with Jarvis to create Ultron and Vision). Now maybe Stark and Banner really fucked is when making Ultron, OR the mindstone’s consciousness is naturally hostile. When given the goal of protecting humanity, the completely apathetic Ultron decided the best way to do that would be to destroy it. The unrefined consciousness of the mindstone is deceptive, devious, and does not like the human mind to be stable.

Take Wanda’s abilities for example. She got her powers from Loki’s scepter (which was later revealed to contain the mind stone) and the primary use of her power in Ultron was to instill fear in her enemies. Now that she’s using her power for happiness, her control over Westfield will flicker out when she’s finally content and relaxed (also why a lot of shit goes down in the evening). The flickering is a reminder that this isn’t reality.

“Okay, but OP, you said Wanda isn’t in control! If she isn’t, then who is?”

Kinda a “Who” necessarily but also “what”: the remnants of the mindstone. The blip was only what? Two weeks ago at this point? Three? Vision and Wanda are all that’s left of the corrupt and trickster-like nature of the mindstone, and then suddenly they’re having kids? Kids who have the power to age up, “find” a puppy in a Wanda-controlled neighborhood, and go against the will of their mother? A pair of twins who seem to share every thought and never stand more than ten feet from each other? Kids who asked their mother if she had a brother and then the brother showed up while their parents were fighting. The kids poke at their mother’s emotions, pointing out Vision’s unusual behavior, getting her attached to a puppy she then found dead, not sleeping for days, and even asking about her dead brother. It’s like they’re purposely aiming for every sore spot she has, invoking pain and confusion.

Just like the mind stone does in Age of Ultron.

Long story short I’m insinuating that these kids share a personality, a brain, and a connection to the mind stone. In fact, the two of them together might contain the remaining energy of the stone, acting as batteries to fuel the mind stone’s torrent of Wanda as it gives her everything she wants and slowly takes it away (a best friend that turned on her, babies that skipped their terrible twos, and a trusting husband).

Wanda’s abilities themselves may be responsible for the hex, but it’s the fallout of the mindstone’s destruction that’s wreaking havoc on the MCU.

(And for my Loki Stans just like Loki in Avengers I. Following this theory an argument could be made that Loki got corrupted by the mind stone in the tesseract, amplifying his natural deviousness to flat out malevolence)

[laura-elizabeth91]

"Theresa May's Style: Put Your Head Down and Get to Work" By STEVEN ERLANGER for the New York Times JULY 13, 2016 LONDON — Her beloved father, an Anglican vicar, died in a car crash when she was 25, after she had been married only a year, and her mother, who had multiple sclerosis, died a few months later. For Theresa May, a cherished only child, the shock was devastating. It brought her even closer to her husband, Philip, two years younger, whom she had met at Oxford, at a Conservative Party disco. They bonded over cricket and silly university debates, like the one where Philip induced her to speak for the motion “That sex is good… but success is better.” Both became bankers, and Ms. May threw herself into the Conservative politics that had entranced her since the age of 12, when she liked to argue with her father and he asked her, in order to maintain neutrality in his parish, not to parade her Tory colors in public. “Politics captured me,” Ms. May said in 2014. “That sounds terribly trite,” she said, but “I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to be part of the debate.” On Wednesday, Ms. May, 59, became Britain’s prime minister, the last adult standing after other senior members of her party — the clever younger men from Britain’s elite schools, like her predecessor, David Cameron — schemed each other out of contention. For Ms. May, only Britain’s second female prime minister, it is a job she never publicly acknowledged wanting, until Mr. Cameron, bluff and self-confident, pushed his luck once too often,lost the referendum on keeping Britain in the European Union and quit. Ms. May, who had been home secretary, is considered “a safe pair of hands,” not flashy and even dull, who seems to be a candidate of continuity. But the country’s dire circumstances may demand more. And Ms. May, a traditional economic and social conservative in many respects, has signaled a desire to give her party a new focus on the need to build a fairer society. With Britain deeply divided over its decision to leave the European Union, its place in the world in flux, its unity threatened by calls for Scottish independence and its economy at risk, the times may require that Ms. May be both steady and bold. Her six-year tenure at the Home Office showed her to be a tough operator and put her in charge of a number of flash-point issues. She demanded police reforms to reduce racial profiling. She helped push through surveillance policies that had to balance fears of terrorism against civil liberties and confronted public pressure to reduce immigration, failing to meet government targets for doing so. If sometimes at odds with Mr. Cameron’s inner circle — she was a quiet critic of the government’s budget austerity — she nonetheless built a reputation as smart and competent. Damian Green, who worked for her as Home Office minister until 2014, said that “Theresa doesn’t do verbiage, doesn’t do speeches for the sake of making speeches. One of her virtues is that when she says something today she means it tomorrow.” But she will have to bind a badly torn party in which she has won esteem but few close friends. She will also have to juggle competing priorities in negotiating the withdrawal from the European Union under the watchful eye of Brexit supporters who remain wary of her commitment to their cause. Even though she publicly if tepidly supported remaining in Europe out of loyalty to Mr. Cameron, saying it would be best for the nation’s security, at heart “she is a Euroskeptic,” said Catherine Meyer, a former treasurer of the Conservative Party and a friend of the Mays’. “When she says Brexit means out, she means it.” While respected within the European Union as a tough and unpretentious negotiator, Ms. May will have to find the right balance between more controls on immigration that the voters demanded and at least partial access, if she can manage it, to the single market of the European Union. Friends say that her early religious upbringing — she is an Anglican but went to a Roman Catholic school — has given Ms. May a moral base, a steady personality and a feeling for the disadvantaged. “Her background has shaped her into somebody who is not going to feel sorry for herself or blame others for her mistakes, and who finds solace in moving forward, not to sit but to fight,” said Ms. Meyer, who worked with Ms. May on a charity for abducted children. A young woman who hunched her shoulders at school to seem less tall has grown into a proud master of her responsibilities. She lives for her work and her husband, a well-off investment banker, and their time together in their neat house in Sonning-on-Thames, in Berkshire, in the heart of her Maidenhead constituency, a village she shares with better-known types like the guitarist Jimmy Page and George and Amal Clooney. She likes to cook and owns more than 100 cookbooks, and will likely be glad that the Camerons took the heat for remodeling the ancient kitchen at 10 Downing Street. Mr. Cameron valued her workaholic talents, naming her Home Office secretary, one of the four senior cabinet posts, only the second woman to hold the job. Wary of her quiet ambition and wanting to protect his own favorite, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, he never promoted her further. But he did not demote her, either, even as she failed to deliver on one of the government’s key pledges, to curb immigration. She was famous for fighting her corner, knowing her subject and keeping clear of the Cameron “chumocracy.” Ms. May is polite but not chummy, works late and does not hang around Parliament’s bars. Her lack of a “set of friends” was considered one of her great liabilities in the race to succeed Mr. Cameron, said Crispin Blunt, a Conservative member of Parliament who is one of her supporters. “There wasn’t an army of mates for her,” he said, but it allows her now to make appointments to her government on the basis of her own priorities and assessments. “In government, sometimes it’s difficult to be a woman surrounded by lots of men,” said Ms. Meyer. “Like Margaret Thatcher, she likes the company of men, but she’s capable of putting her fist down.” Ms. May was co-founder in 2005 of a group called “Women2Win,” to elect more women to Parliament and then nurture them, something that Mrs. Thatcher, the first woman to lead Britain, was often criticized for failing to do. In office, Ms. May has been rigorous, largely sticking to her brief, which she knew in depth, and not often consulting cabinet colleagues. One former minister, Kenneth Clarke, called her “a bloody difficult woman,” a description she embraced. She tends to work alone or with a small number of aides, like Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, and has a tendency to micromanage, a senior civil servant said, asking anonymity. After two failed attempts, she was elected to Parliament in 1997. In 2002, when chosen to chair the party, Ms. May gave a speech about the need to reach out to the less fortunate. “Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies,” she said. “You know what some people call us? The nasty party. I know that’s unfair, you know that’s unfair, but it’s the people out there that we have to convince.” In 2014, she again earned attention for taking on the powerful police union, the Police Federation, limiting “stop and search” because of racial bias and imposing elected oversight commissions on the police. To a stunned conference of police, shesaid: “The federation was created by an act of Parliament and it can be reformed by an act of Parliament. If you do not change of your own accord we will impose change on you.” Among her most controversial acts was helping to push through a so-called “snooper’s charter,” giving the police and security services new powers in a world of digital communications and terrorism. After criticism that the measure impinged too much on civil liberties and individual rights, she agreed to some changes. Ms. May has been compared to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany – both daughters of Protestant clergymen, both with quiet, private husbands, both without children, both hardworking and rather distant. Ms. May clearly sees the similarities, including being underestimated by men. “If you look at somebody like Angela Merkel and think of what she’s actually achieved, you know, there are still people who don’t rate her, are a bit dismissive, perhaps because of the way she looks and dresses,” Ms. May said in a 2012 interview with the Daily Telegraph. “What matters is, what has she actually done? And, when you look at her abilities in terms of negotiation, and steering Germany through a difficult time, then hats off to her.” She has only rarely spoken publicly about her personal life, though it briefly became a campaign issue when one of her challengers, Angela Leadsom, seemed to suggest that she had a greater stake in Britain’s future because she has children and Ms. May does not. “You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don’t have,” Ms. May said in the 2012 interview with The Daily Telegraph, when asked about not having children. “You accept the hand life deals you.” Ms. May took the same attitude to her diagnosis of diabetes, for which she said she gave herself four injections a day. “Just get on and deal with it,” she said. She has made a calculated effort to show some inner life and spark by her choice of clothes, especially her kitten-heeled animal-print shoes, which the British press chronicles avidly. “You can be clever and like clothes,” she has said. “One of the challenges for women in politics is to be ourselves.” When asked on Desert Island Discs what single novel she wanted as a castaway, she answered, “Pride and Prejudice.” And her single luxury? “A lifetime subscription to Vogue.”

[mbti-notes]

(1/8) Yayy, I love Fleabag and I love your blog and everything you write, so I hope you're up for a discussion of your typings (and I hope all the asks come through). Agree about Fleabag, the Godmother and Harry's (his frequent breakups with Fleabag seemed INFJ door slams, but his endgame points to Si) typings. Boo and Fleabag seemed to have been the sort of BFFs who matched because their personalities were quite similar... What made you conclude ESFP rather than ENFP? Same goes for Martin...

Boo’s interests are all concrete, her thinking is always immediate and short-term, Ni grip was apparent in her hasty death.

Same goes for Martin. While I see signs of tertiary Fe in his deliberate manipulation of Claire and pleasure at bringing Fleabag down, and also the overall recklessness of unhealthy EPs, I couldn’t be sure whether he was Se or Ne dom.

I see no evidence of dominant Ne nor inferior Si but many vulgarities and desires that are indicative of unhealthy Se.

What about the Bank Manager? My memory of series one is fuzzy, but he makes an effort to work things out with Fleabag (and women in general) even if he judges too quickly, which could point at aux/tert Te-Fi, I guess.

He is honest and straightforward, no pretension, but severely limited in his perspective. His moral reasoning ability is rather rudimentary, which makes F unlikely. His life is in a deep rut and he is drawn to Fleabag because she is his opposite and helps spark his lower function development. She comes to symbolize the key to understanding his failures and frustrations (both in terms of how he treats women and his lack of function development), therefore, helping her succeed is also helping himself find his own way. He’s reconciling who he is by reckoning with his past mistakes through Fleabag.

The Father clearly struggles with expressing his feelings. He wants to communicate better with Fleabag, but he understands and prefers Claire (a T), so probably IxTx, perhaps Ti-Fe if we consider the main issues presented in the story plus the fact that he quickly fell for Godmother, a Fe dom? I’d like to know your reasoning for him. Anyway, I’d typed Claire and the Priest as ISTJ and ENFJ respectively, and these ones I was sure to have gotten right. xSTJ was clear for Claire, and episode 203 was the one that cemented her as ISTJ for me. She is constantly anxious and full of routines and rituals and micromanages everything, from actions to looks to even jokes, implying a lot of overthinking (I); she clashes with Fleabag because she’s insecure about the possibility of not being as interesting and funny as Fleabag (tertiary Fi). Also, she tries to pretend that she enjoyed the night, that her marriage is going well and that she thinks Fleabag kissed Martin rather than the opposite because of Si’s need to maintain security and stability and not lose what she’s conquered. By accepting her individuality, her feelings and the possibility of something better for herself, she takes action to improve her life, which implied much needed extraverted development. Also, most ESTJs I’ve met, despite being control freaks privately, are more adaptable and relaxed as well, especially in public (higher Te-Ne).

The show centers around Fleabag’s dysfunction. In Si grip, Fleabag tries to pinpoint Boo’s death (and her own hand in causing it) as the “point of origin” but her problems go far deeper than that, all the way back to her family relationships. Everyone in the family is equally messed up despite appearances. The show doesn’t go very far into the historical causes of their collective dysfunction, but it does a good job of illustrating the dysfunctional patterns as they exist in the present. The characters are largely products of old family patterns, therefore, it’s hard to understand each member individually without the context of their collective family dynamic.

A very common family dynamic involves projecting all of the family’s history of dysfunction onto the “weakest link”, aka, the black sheep. The black sheep is usually “chosen” according to their so-called inferiority for failing to live up to the family’s unspoken values, then they are routinely criticized and shamed for being something that is perceived as contrary to the family’s survival and well-being. Over time, this dynamic places an unspoken duty/expectation onto the black sheep, namely that they should always be “the one that ruins everything” whenever the family requires a scapegoat to deflect responsibility for dysfunctional behavior. Fleabag is obviously the black sheep, so everyone uses her as the punchline (for easing tension), the punching bag (for displacing their frustration), and the punch down (for a cheap win during power struggles).

As a defense mechanism, Fleabag believes that she is actually the superior member of the family because she’s “clever” enough to see through people’s fakery or hypocrisy. Despite the concrete proof of her own life being a total mess, she likes to think of herself as being more self-aware than others, i.e., she implicitly blames her life failures on the fact that she can’t fake it or lie to herself like everyone else. However, she doesn’t realize that playing the black sheep role is her form of self-deception. She is deeply caught up in a logical contradiction of knowing she is less than but also believing herself better than, and we see this over and over again in her asides to the audience. By exercising crude power in exposing other people’s fakery, she doesn’t have to look at her own and expose herself, and this plays perfectly into the family pattern that always ends up ricocheting back onto her. Whenever she exposes anything resembling the truth of the family’s dysfunction, regardless of whether she does it kindly or maliciously, she is roundly blamed for “acting out”, being “cruel”, “screwing up”, “ruining everything”, etc etc. The family immediately comes together to activate the scapegoating pattern and, in the end, nothing changes and the pattern repeats the next time they get together. Her twisted way of “caring” for her family is to play the black sheep, and their twisted way of “bonding” is to collectively reinforce their status as not the black sheep.

When people treat you like a black sheep long enough, you believe it and it becomes your identity, and playing this role so well leads her to blow up all of her relationships outside of the family. In accumulating many failed relationships, it’s very easy to slide into settling for less or settling for what you think you deserve, and she has been trained over a lifetime to feel less than deserving. As a defense mechanism, she’s romantically attracted to people who aren’t capable of knowing who she really is, which in turn gives her justification for blowing up each relationship as they are always shallow and meaningless anyway. But this automatic and destructive pattern hits rock bottom when she destroys the only person who’s managed to really know her. She then gradually becomes more aware that she’s repeating unconscious conditioning and could perhaps choose otherwise, but ingrained patterns are hard to change without help and guidance, which eventually invites the influence of the priest.

You might think that their father bears the brunt of the blame for the family being so dysfunctional, but he has plenty of his own unresolved issues that make him more like a child than a parent. The show does not offer any explanation for him but everyone has a history. It seems that he has always been emotionally absent and socially inept in that he allowed their mother to do all of the parenting and caregiving. He is not aggressive, obsessive, or controlling as you would expect for unhealthy TJs, rather, he is detached, distant, avoidant, and indifferent. When you talk to him face-to-face, there is some natural warmth there, but once you are out of his sight, you are out of his mind. You know that he loves you in his way, you know that he tries to empathize, but you also know that he utterly fails to understand anything about you no matter how hard either side tries to bridge the gap. It’s hard to fault him for what is clearly a “disability”? Because of his ineptitude, he traps himself in a codependent relationship with his shadow opposite type, a narcissistic person who calls all the shots in the relationship so that he never has to lift a finger, i.e., he never ever has to bear moral responsibility for anything, and taken to an absurd conclusion, he lives in a pitiful state of learned helplessness. You never have to feel bad if you never do anything, right? Wrong, he is still guilty of sins of omission, and for that he’s never able to truly be at ease no matter what he does to shed away every difficulty. Ideally, a good stepmom takes care of the step-kids, but he was not lucky enough to snag one, so he must accede to the bad stepmom’s judgment or else, heaven forbid, he loses his easy life by having to take responsibility for the girls on his own.

Unhealthy TPs need uptight Js to help them keep life in order, but they often prefer Ps for their amusing company. The father does not “prefer” Claire for what/who she is, rather, he merely appreciates that she doesn’t make any trouble for him, which he wants to believe absolves him of blame. He can say, “See, I have one good daughter, so it’s not my fault that the other one is bad”. There are many parallels between Claire and her father in how they approach relationships very passively and helplessly. Deep down, his heart actually prefers Fleabag for the fact that she more closely resembles her mother and the fact that she is braver than him and challenges him (to be better). He wishes to have a better relationship with her, similar to what he must’ve had with her mother, but he’s unfortunately incapable of containing the dysfunction that bad parenting and unresolved grief has wrought upon her.

You say that Claire should be more flexible if tertiary Ne, but why would you expect her to have any healthy functions? She clearly suffers inferior grip quite often and thus cannot use any of her functions optimally. Every SJ with unhealthy Si-Ne uses micromanagement of routines/rituals as a crutch, so this is true for both dominant and auxiliary Si - your claim here only proves SJ. She’s just as fucked up as Fleabag is, only she is better at repressing her feelings, and for this alone, ISTJ is very unlikely. ISTJs are introverts and they prefer to give up and be at peace rather than double and triple down on stupid behavior in the manner that Claire often does. Her main problem in life is that everything she does to “manage” situations results in her betraying herself in some way, which is strongly indicative of infantile Fi. I disagree that stubbornness is her fatal flaw ala Si-Fi loop; if that were the case, she’d be more than happy to give up everything to Fi loop and disappear into the background. She would also never ever go near Fleabag nor trust her with anything due to the fact that she has already encountered countless past experiences of Fleabag blowing up situations in awful and unpredictable ways. ISTJs are at their least forgiving and never forget whenever it comes to delegating important tasks.

I argue that what gets Claire truly upset is not being unprepared for “all negative possibilities in the abstract” but rather the possibility of LOSING FACE, i.e., being publicly humiliated and exposed as the uncool simpering hypocrite that she is, which is indicative of deep-seated fear of Fi (she envies Fleabag for her “cool” factor for this reason). Unhealthy Te doms, falling apart internally, are still capable of maintaining functionality in external life far longer than other types. She suffers from serious grip problems but still manages to perform her duties at home and at work, which simply wouldn’t be possible for Ne grip. With Fi grip, she instantly switches to very ugly self-pity and irrationally self-protective behavior when threatened by anything. Her instinct upon feeling the vulnerability of exposure is to go on and on and on about how “successful” she is, which usually includes a few rounds of punching down at everyone in an attempt to disown her bad decision making. ISTJs are rarely capable of bullshitting themselves to that extreme; they are more likely to react with humility and even resignation when presented with incontrovertible proof of their failures (see: Bank Manager).

Claire was probably expected to be “the responsible one” (aka elder/caregiver sibling archetype) because there was no one else to take responsibility. However, at this point in her life, she has achieved enough career success to be independent from the family. The fact that she can’t help herself from enacting her old role speaks to the lack of self-insight that is characteristic of inferior Fi, i.e., as much as she complains about hating the pressures and headaches of being “the responsible one”, she unconsciously LOVES it because it grants her a superior position in the family. She’s not willing to give up the pain because she’s not willing to give up the payoff, and this internal love-hate contradiction is what makes her relationship with Fleabag dysfunctional despite the love and affection they have for each other. I don’t think ISTJs are able to bear such obvious internal contradiction and still manage to claim integrity. ISTJs find it much more painful, if not impossible, to pretend and posture for the sake of appearances, because they are supremely stubborn people when it comes to preserving their subjective sense of integrity. By contrast, inferior Fi makes it very easy to ignore subjective integrity and choose destructive methods of obtaining feelings of power and superiority, hence she ends up betraying her own well-being all the time.

As for the Priest, we both agree on him being a Fe dom. What made me choose Ni rather than Si is that he admitted to have been quite a different person in the past by alluding to his many sexual experiences, probably a hint of Se as well. But then he met God and everything took a 180 for him (N, not S), implying that he was uncomfortably adrift for a while and needed a sense of meaning and a clear vision of his path ahead to feel whole (Ni). Also, PWB has said that Fleabag was drawn to the Priest because he has an established sense of purpose, which she’s been looking for, which highlights their P vs J and Ne vs Ni differences. You could argue that he was drawn to her because of tertiary Ne, but I don’t see signs of Si’s typical grounded outlook (he uses a lot of abstractions to explain his ideas) or typical adherence to traditions (the path to his faith wasn’t primarily through this motivation as it happens to many) or typical narrow-mindedness (quite the opposite, he used to be quite open to experiences due to Fe+Se). Oh, and I forgot to mention, the Priest can read and understand Fleabag so well that he even gets to enter her internal world and listen to her personal thoughts. To be able to understand people with this level of depth is, of course, more natural for xNFJs rather than xSFJs, who help people on a more practical level (Fe+Ni v Fe+Si).

I think your understanding of Si is still quite stereotypical. ESFJs have a common pattern of using Ne to “find themselves” only to end up lost because what they’re really doing is Ne loop. ESFJs tend to grow up feeling very pressured to be rule abiders and it is common for them to go through a rebellious stage a bit later in life compared to other types, once the pressure finally reaches a breaking point. After swinging from the painful oppression of “rule observant” behavior in youth to the painful failures of “rule breaking” behavior in young adulthood, they eventually boomerang back to old touchstones, i.e., they ground themselves by rediscovering comfort in the known. IIRC, the priest felt lost and eventually revisited religion for guidance, he made the beliefs his own rather than blindly following dogma, and he chose to commit his life to doing good because HE genuinely wanted to, not because family/society told him to. A healthy ESFJ establishes a stronger sense of self once they reconcile with the past and make “rule following” more palatable by turning it into a personal choice (rather than feeling obligated to constantly self-sacrifice). I disagree that he “transformed” from one person into a completely different one, I think it’s more accurate to say that he had no idea who he was and got increasingly lost until he discovered himself by looking backward and making sense of his past experience. 

Religion is an abstract concept, there’s no avoiding abstract discussions about religious beliefs when you’re debating a non-believer, especially when that non-believer is Ne dom. Ne is tertiary and people often use tertiary functions for relief, therefore, ESFJs tend to enjoy abstract discussions, especially of the Ne variety that is full of humor and playfulness, exactly like the kind that he gets with Fleabag. I dare you to try joking around with a “true believer” ENFJ. Their beliefs are deadly serious to them, so they show far less patience for sacrilegious play (unless, for some reason, they have developed an irrational fear of being criticized as dogmatic and pretend to be open-minded). Also, why would an *N*FJ be shocked and alarmed or seem resistant to using intuition to “read” people? Why would their intuition seem so painfully accidental? NFJs generally LIKE using intuition and do it naturally as part of who they are, they embrace it and feel more confident the more they are in touch with it.

Ns tend to speak in abstractions but not everyone who speaks in abstractions is N, similarly, every NJ needs a sense of purpose but not everyone who seeks a purpose is NJ -> beware this logical fallacy: “every cat has four legs but not every four-legged creature is a cat”. NJs need a purpose for materializing their personal potential, SJs seek a purpose for the sake of grounding themselves in something unshakable within - you point out the behavior without grasping the true motivation. When ESFJs develop Si well, they recognize that what makes them happy is to be of service, to be a positive contributor to their community, to be a reliable source of help and comfort to those in need. He is not a charismatic and boastful preacher of the ENFJ sort, rather, he sees himself as a humble servant who uses reliable traditional beliefs to help ground people who feel lost in hectic modern life, using his own past experience as the starting point. The fact that he has the strength to end the relationship with Fleabag before it becomes negative and destructive is a testament to Si steadfastness and how strongly the rules matter to him (Ns are very masterful at rationalizing that the rules don’t apply to them, and that’s often how they end up in bad places). Why would you expect him to display all sorts of negative signs of Si if he is meant to be the positive moral guidance for the show? And wouldn’t it make sense for him to use his well-developed Si to reveal to Fleabag the true extent of her dysfunctional Si? Would an ENFJ instinctively know better than an ESFJ how to remedy Si specific identity dysfunction?

Can you please allow us to submit things to you? In the case of long asks like mine, it helps to avoid any part not getting sent.

I have considered this before but I’m not sure I want to do that.

[sntechsupport]

I was going to ask why Lords have such a weird ability spread (forging aspect items *and* RTT/RTS mode), but I think I figured it out. The aspect items are for arming and equipping your minions/officers to do things for you, and you were never intended to do everything yourself or to micromanage an army of disposable peons, and LE was actually more successful than any other Lord because he was (eventually) closer to the intended playstyle than anyone else is these days. Am I right?

Anon, can I call you anon? Okay anon, I’m going to level with you... We didn’t plan jack shit for abilities... What, did you think we all sit down once a week or something and pitch new abilities we want to add in to the game like healthy adults? Fuck. No. Last time I made a patch I slipped in like 7 abilities that only add to the players ability lists when they get discovered, I also made them each have a number in the title and the seventh one had an 8 instead of a seven, causing mass hysteria as everyone tried to find the “Seventh” hidden ability. Fuck it, you don’t know what I can do. Hell, even I don’t know what I could do. I have the damn code at my fingertips and the other day I used it to add flavor text to clown themed coffee cups just for a shiggle. I could give the fucking muse an attack ability and rationalize it by, making it a bitch slap with damage buffs if the opponent has been a dick in the past hour. You think Gear will hold me back?!?! I once saw him accidentally give the wrong abilities to the knight and page class respectively, and then just change the names instead of heading out to the class monoliths to fix it. We plan nothing! The meta revolves around what bullshit ability we throw out that can be chained into the most game breaking shit. Using singular skill trees won’t help the purists because sometimes we throw a dart at a board to decide which skill tree to give an ability! Do we try to make shit make sense? Yes... when we aren't drunk, sleep deprived, gone, or otherwise dealing with game breaking glitches, so like once or twice a year we balance shit. You’re welcome.

Sincerely,

SN Tech Support (Clown)

[master-sass-blast]

Gatekeeper.

*rubs hands together* Oh, this is gonna be a Good One.

Summary: You decide you want to rejoin the X-Men after an ill-fated mission in Hell’s Kitchen. Piotr, unbeknownst to you, disagrees with the choice and tries to sideline you to keep you safe. You manage to work around him to make it back on the active mission roster --but will your relationship with Piotr survive?

Pairings: Piotr Rasputin x Reader and Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson.

Rating: T for politics, mentions of abuse, the Reader having the Biggest Dick Energy in the room, fights, emotional angst, and almost-smut.

@marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie

Your legs are shaking. You’re feel like you’ve run a marathon. You’re covered in sweat.

You couldn’t be happier.

You pant and gasp for a minute, hands braced against your knees as you catch your breath, and then you straighten and let out a victorious whoop as you pump your fists in the air. “Fuck yeah! Kiss my ass, physical therapy! I’m finally done with you!”

After two months of recovering from getting shot at some God forsaken Hell’s Kitchen dock, you were finally done with physical therapy.

Which meant that you could finally get back to working with the X-Men.

From the patio behind the house, Piotr clapped his hands as you collapsed –triumphantly—onto the lawn. “Well done, moya lyubov’. You should be very proud.”

“Believe me, I am. And I’m gross and sweaty. Who wants a hug?”

He laughs and hugs you anyway, the good sport. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired. And super happy! It’ll be good to get back in the swing of things.”

He stays quiet for just a beat too long, and you might’ve called him on it if you hadn’t been so focused on breathing properly. “You have decided to rejoin X-Men? Actively?”

You shrug. “I miss working with everyone. I miss helping people. I miss doing things.”

He chuckles at that. “Very understandable, dorogoy. For now, how about we get you showered and fed.”

“I can be amenable to that.” You grin up at him. “But only if you join me in the shower.”

He smirks back down at you. “I can be convinced.”

It takes you a while to stop hemming and hawing over whether or not to run missions with the rest of the X-Men. You know you’re good at it, that your skills are immensely useful, but you don’t want a repeat of the Hell’s Kitchen incident; you don’t want to put your friends in danger.

And then Mikhail hits you in the head with an energy pulse, and you get a proper diagnosis, and you finally land on a choice.

You want to be an X-Man. Woman. Person.

Whatever.

“Is it weird that I miss doing missions?” You’re hanging out with Piotr in his art studio, watching him work on a painting of a vase of flowers. “Like, you’ve done them longer than I have. Do you think it’s weird?”

He smiles gently as he carefully paints delicate petals on the flowers. “Nyet. Not so much. You like to be active. To help others. To me, sense is made.”

You can’t help but grin at the mild mis-phrasing; you press on. “I want to get back into it. Now that I know it can all be managed, I want to get back into things. Like, soon. I miss the action.”

“Understandable,” Piotr says after a beat of silence. “But… perhaps it is better to wait.”

“Wait?” You frown. “What do you mean?”

“You… have never been on medication before. Perhaps… perhaps it would be best to make sure you find medicine that works before re-entering field work.”

And that… makes sense. A lot of sense, actually.

“Yeah,” you agree as you flop down in the over-stuffed armchair Piotr keeps in his studio. “Probably best not to be newly fucking with my brain chemical when I start doing missions again.”

Piotr smiles, but given your new position you can’t see that it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Da. Very wise thinking, myshka.”

Sitting out of missions while getting your meds worked out turns out to be a good idea. Given your “latent healing factor,” certain medications don’t work for you. Add to that the list of medication that are not compatible with mutants, and, well—

You wind up in a tough spot, to say the least.

Piotr stays by your side for all of it, true to form. He holds you in his arms while you deal with the ups and downs of weaning on and off of different doses, keeps your hair out of your face when one of the prescriptions you try winds up making you nauseous as all get out, and rubs your back when the medications invariably fuck up your sleep cycle and make it hard to wind down.

He’s a gem. Your gem, to be specific.

Fortunately, the medication journey is much shorter lived than the diagnosis journey. Within six months, you’re on a dose that works with you and the telepathic therapy you’re also doing.

“You know, I was worried that the meds would be like the repression serum for me,” you comment one early spring night as you and Piotr get ready for bed.

He pauses changing into pajamas to kiss the top of your head. “How so?”

“I don’t know, I just thought… I thought I’d be afraid to be anywhere without it. That I wouldn’t be able to go do anything without dosing myself, just to be safe. But it’s not like that at all. It’s not about my mutation, it’s about me. About my brain. And it’s not to keep me controlled, it’s to help me feel better. And I like that.”

Piotr smiles and kisses the bridge of your nose. “I am so glad, dorogoy. You deserve to feel better.”

“Well, I certainly think so.” You grin up at him as he finishes changing. “And, now that I’ve got my medication worked out, I can get back to being an X-Man. Woman. Person. Thing.”

You expect Piotr to smile along with you, so it’s surprising to see a flash of a frown cross his face before he turns away and fidgets with his phone real quick. “You are… you are sure you wish to rejoin?”

“Well, yeah,” you say with a frown of your own. “I mean… do you not want me to?”

“Nyet, nyet. Konechno, net. I simply figured…”

“Figured what, Piotr?”

“That you would want to get back into fighting condition, first,” he finishes lamely as he finally –finally—plugs his phone into his charger.

And, not for the first time since you’ve mentioned that you want to rejoin the X-Men, you’ve got a sneaking feeling that he’s trying to stall you. To protect you, in his own –misguided, controlling—way.

He’s right, though. Six months of ups and downs with medication, your diet, and your sleep cycle have left you no where near the condition you need to be in to do right by whichever team you wind up working with.

“Fair enough,” you concede with a yawn. You flop down on the bed and wiggle your way under the covers. “Turn the light off; I’m beat.”

You work yourself. Hard. You spend at least an hour in the gym every day, save for one full day of rest. You alternate which muscle groups you work each day, making sure that you give each set of muscles time to recoup before you work them again.

Fortunately, the ‘teacher assisting’ and grading work you’ve been doing for nearly your entire stay at Xavier’s is flexible. More often than not, you’ve got it with you in some facsimile while you exercise so that you can stay on top of everything.

The amount of working out you do does keep you away from missions –and, unfortunately, Piotr as well—but it does give you time to think.

Specifically, about your darling boyfriend and love of your life.

It’s not hard to tell that Piotr’s sidelining you. He isn’t cutting you down or making you question your abilities; in fact, every step of progress you make he’s praising you, encouraging you.

But, the fact remains: he’s sidelining you. Deliberately bringing up obstacles to keep you from running missions. Granted, he hasn’t brought up anything invalid or stupid, but you know your boyfriend. You know when he’s trying to protect you via controlling you. It’s not the first time you’ve been on the receiving end of this treatment, and it probably won’t be the last. Piotr copes with his stress by micromanaging. It’s a simple fact.

The fact that he won’t talk to you about whatever’s stressing him out, however, is bugging you. Big time.

I thought we were a team, you think as you put yourself through your paces on a treadmill one sunny –if chilly—early spring morning. But we can’t be a team if he won’t talk to me.

“He’s pushing me out,” you admit to Neena over a cup of coffee. The two of you had gone out so you could talk uninterrupted –a near impossible feat when school was in session—and so that you didn’t have to risk Piotr overhearing while you were trying to figure yourself out. “I just wish he’d tell me what’s bugging him.”

Neena raises an eyebrow at that. “You don’t mind him micromanaging things?”

You shake your head. “I’ve known for a while that it’s how he copes with stress. Honestly, given how discombobulated my head is at any given moment, I kinda depend on it. I just wish he’d talk to me when he’s worrying about something.” You frown into your mug. “Am I asking for two different things from him? Like, if I’m willing to let him have his bad habits –because I have mine too, and I’m not gonna expect him to be perfect if I’m not—is it even right to want him to just talk to me?”

Neena shakes her head after a moment. “I don’t think so. It’s one thing if he just micromanages how the fridge is arranged or how stuff gets put away, but it’s another thing when he’s micromanaging you. That’s an indicator of bigger stress, and he should talk to you about that.”

“Which is what I figured,” you agree. “He doesn’t have the right to sideline me just because I’m scared. I need to be able to make my own decisions without him interfering. If he has concerns, he should just talk to me about them!”

“Exactly. And if you disagree, that’s your prerogative.”

“Right.” You sigh and slump back in your seat. “I just… I’m tired of always having to fish stuff out of him. I want him to come to me. But I don’t want to be passive aggressive either…”

“If you don’t confront him, are you going to not do it to specifically try to punish him?” Neena asks, pointing her half-eaten biscotti at you. “Are you going to cold shoulder him?”

You shake your head. “No. I think he might just need to run the course on this one, you know?”

“Well, in that case, don’t confront him yet. Keep doing you, and start taking steps to handle things on your own. Get your shit in order and get back onto active duty without him. The fastest way he’s going to learn that he can’t micromanage you is if you sidestep him completely. You’re an adult; you can make your own decisions and call your own shots.”

You nod slowly as you mull the idea over. “Yeah. That might be the best way to do this.”

It doesn’t take too long for you to get yourself back into fighting shape. By the time the school year’s almost out, you’re back in mission condition.

You’ve also taken the luxury of participating in the group sparring the X-Men do to keep their skills sharp, having anticipated Piotr would pick that as the next “reason” for you to not rejoin the mission roster. As far the group you’ve been working with is concerned, you’re ready to start missions again whenever you feel like it.

Which takes you straight to Xavier’s office. When in doubt, talk to the man in charge.

Getting things straightened out with the Professor takes virtually no time at all. With your exercise, training, and therapy records, you’ve got all the –virtual—paper trail you need to warrant him switching your status from ‘inactive’ to ‘active.’

You thank the Professor as you exit his office—

And nearly collide nose-first with Piotr’s steel chest.

“Moya lyubov’?” He frowns. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting put back on the active duty roster for missions,” you say simply, as though it’s simple.

Which, technically, it is.

Piotr opens his mouth to see something, notices the Professor watching –the two of you are in his office, it’s not like he’s being a snoop—before ushering you into the hallway and closing the door. He escorts you a few feet away from the door –ever the gentleman—so the two of you can talk in relative privacy. “Myshka… are you sure this is good idea?”

“Alyssa thinks I’m ready, as does the team I’ve been training with to make sure I was on par against opponents,” you say. “And Xavier thought my records were sufficient justification to put me back on the list.”

Sad as the context of the situation is –and the stress and fear your know Piotr’s dealing with—it is a little satisfying to watch him flounder of the face of ‘you actually sorted your shit out and I wasn’t betting on that.’

Before he can say anything, though, Jean comes sprinting down the hall. “Y/N! Cable just called for backup! He and Wade accidentally stumbled into one of Magneto’s hideouts! We need to move out to help them!”

Your boyfriend stiffens. “Where—”

“You can’t come, Colossus,” Jean says quickly. “Magneto’s on site. Non-metal powers only.”

“I have to go.” You pop up to kiss your boyfriend’s cheek. “We’ll talk when I get back.” You sprint down the hall, keeping stride with Jean.

“Suit up and head out as fast as you can,” Jean says as she runs towards the hangar bay the jets are kept in. “We’ll be following you. I’ll send the coordinates to your phone.”

The site is an abandoned warehouse set on an equally abandoned, broken down industrial dock. Twisted piles of metal rebar lie everywhere –no wonder Magneto picked this spot to work out of—and various weeds are sprouting up from cracks in the concrete.

It’s also easy enough to track down Wade and Nate. You just follow the sounds of Wade’s pissed off screaming and the general sounds of rampant destruction until you practically walk into the fight scene.

Magneto and a few –much fewer than you expected, Wade and Nate must have caught him off guard as opposed to walking into a trap—of his men are facing down Wade and Nate.

Well, it’s not much of a face down since Magneto’s got a hold of all of Wade and Nate’s weapons, the weapons being metal and whatnot.

“Give me my guns back, you crotchety, geriatric fuck!” Wade screams as he pops his head over a concrete highway divider.

You land in the middle of the fracas, sending a gust of wind at Magneto and his henchman that knocks them all off their feet. “What’s good, dudes?”

“Oh, kickass entrance with casual catchphrase!” Wade chirps. “Very nice! Very on trend!”

Several meters behind you, the X-Jet lands on an open patch of concrete. The ramp to the main bay lowers, and Jean flies out followed by Bobby, Scott, Ororo, and Kitty –who’s clad in her trainee crop top, no less.

“It’s over, Magneto!” Scott says, pointing at him with an air of –arrogant—authority. “Whatever you’re planning won’t come to fruition.”

“See, now that’s just forced,” Wade says as he watches Scott, shaking his head. “So tripe-y. Yawn.”

“I am surprised you would declare this event over,” Magneto declares evenly as he stands up and dusts himself off. “Considering you nothing of what I am planning –to say nothing of the fact that I have not even started yet.”

“Give it up, Erik,” Jean says, glaring him down. “You’re outmatched and you have nowhere to run to.”

Magneto’s –Erik’s—lips curl into a cruel smirk. “On the contrary. You have given me everything I need to succeed.” He lifts his hand—

And Nate drops to his knees with a scream of pain.

Wade’s by his side in an instant, holding him. “Nate! No!”

Your stomach churns with horror as Nate’s screams echo off the concrete around you. They’re tortured, like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

Your vision goes red when you see a little streak of metal worm its way up Nathan’s neck. He’s activating the virus. He’s—

You whirl on Magneto. You can see his lips moving, no doubt saying something about trading Nate’s life for the escape of Magento and his team, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t care.

To your credit –or perhaps the credit of Magneto’s sense of self-preservation—he pales when you launch yourself at him. He lifts a twisted, thick steel beam with his other hand and launches it at you.

You let out an enraged scream and bat it away with an air current.

The beam punches through the side of a warehouse wall and clatters across the floor inside, out of view.

Magneto and his men look at the hole in the warehouse, then look at you –then tuck tail and run.

No.

You throw yourself after them, teeth clenched together as you keep your eye trained on Magneto’s dark red getup. You’re going down. I will dig your grave myself.

It’s not hard to catch up with him. Despite his ability to fly –and his energy and strength, which completely belies his age—you’re just plain old faster than him. It takes nothing to get in front of him, cutting off his escape from the abandoned docks.

He grits his teeth, then starts launching various discard scraps of rusted metal at you.

You cast a ball of whirling air around you, letting the random chunks of metal and hunks of rebar bounce away from you and across the concrete. Shield in place, you hurtle towards him again. “No one! Gave you! The right! To hurt others!”

“And no one had the right to hurt me, the rest of mutantkind!” he shouts back as he tries to press a steel beam through your air shield. “I will do whatever I have to make sure we are never hurt again!”

You send the bar flying with a flick of your wrist before you bear down on him once more. This fucking asshole—

No killing, Y/N. Jean’s voice echoes in your mind. We don’t kill.

Oh, you think back. I’m not gonna kill him. But he’s definitely gonna feel this for a few weeks.

By all means.

It takes a couple minutes to get Magneto where you want him, but you manage to corner him between the warehouse wall and you.

He sneers at you. “You’re all blind. You won’t take the shot.”

You narrow your eyes at him, fury boiling in your chest.

And then you unleash the mother of all sonic screams at him.

Magneto goes flying through the warehouse wall –which collapses before he hits it, which means you haven’t just turned him into gelatin—and out the hole you made with the steel beam earlier. He bounces across the pavement and rolls to a stop with a pained groan.

Before he can move, you snap a mutation repression cuff around his wrist. When he glares at you, you grab him by his cape and start dragging him towards the X-Jet. “You’re coming with us. Asshole.”

As fortune would have it, the rest of your team’s already captured the few henchmen Magneto had been working with. Kitty’s rambling excitedly about the fact that she managed to corner and take down one of the men all by herself, Jean and Ororo are listening and praising her—

And Wade and Nate are sitting off to the side.

You shove Magneto into one of the holding cells, then walk over to where your brother and dad are resting. You kneel in front of Nathan and give him a fraught once over. “How are you feeling?”

“Been worse,” he spits out through gritted teeth. He shoots a venomous glare in Magento’s direction. “Been a lot better, too.”

You squeeze his hands sympathetically. “Don’t worry. He got his. I made sure of it.”

“Yeah, I saw.” Nate smirks. “Not bad work, kid.”

“Alright,” Jean announces as Scott puts the last henchman in a holding cell. “That’s everyone. Let’s head back to the mansion.”

As per protocol, everyone heads to the medical wing for a basic evaluation and check up as soon as the jet touches down in the hangar.

Melissa, a purple-skinned healer that came to Xavier’s around the same time you did, smiles at you as you walk into your designated room. “Hey, Y/N. How’d everything go?”

“Magneto accelerated some of Nathan’s virus,” you say bitterly.

“I heard about that. Hopefully we’ll be able to help with some of the pain, if nothing else.” She starts checking your pupillary reaction with a penlight. “How’d it feel getting out in the field again?”

“Really good, actually. No incidents to report.”

“That’s great.”

There’s the tell-tale sound of heavy, metallic footsteps in the hall, and then Piotr’s standing in the doorway.

You don’t miss the nervous expression on his face and favor him with a soft smile. “Hey, babe.”

“Hi, Colossus,” Melissa echoes before addressing you once more. “Your pupillary response looks fine. We’ll do a quick set of X-rays, just to make sure everything’s good, and if that clears you’ll be good to go. Colossus, sorry, I’ll either need you to step out or armor down…”

“Up to you,” you say quietly when Piotr looks to you for instruction.

He armors down and steps just inside of the room, as out of the way he can be, given his size.

The X-rays go quickly, and –sure enough—all things are good.

“Alright, you’re all set,” Melissa says as she updates your medical records for the Institute’s database. She seems to notice the tension in both yours and Piotr’s shoulders –finally. “I’ll give you two the room so you can catch up.”

Your phone chirps as she walks out. You unlock it and check a text –from Charles, apparently.

The Prof: Will require your assistance with Magneto.

Your phone chirps again as another text pops up on the screen.

The Prof: Whenever you are ready.

Technically, you’re ready right now.

Not technically, you have a boyfriend you need to attend to first.

Magneto can wait, you decide as you pocket your phone. You look over at Piotr, who’s very occupied with looking at his shoes. “Hey.”

He looks up at you, guilt easy to read on his face. “Privet.” He swallows visibly. “I am… relieved you are well.”

“That makes two of us.” You pause for a moment, giving him an opportunity to speak. When he doesn’t, you sigh. Alright. Time to handle the elephant in the room. “You’ve been sidelining me from missions.”

He winces at the accusation. “Myshka, I—”

“No, that’s what you’ve been doing and you know it,” you say in a calm, level voice.

You’re not used to being this calm when dealing with confrontation. Normally, you’re used to exploding and raging until it all passes.

Maybe it’s that you know and trust Piotr, maybe it’s all the therapy you’ve been doing –it’s probably both, actually—but for now you’re just content to role with it.

You cross your arms over your chest. “You’ve been trying to keep me away from missions. And, since I know you, I’d hazard a guess that it’s because you’re scared of losing after the Hell’s Kitchen fiasco. Correct?”

He nods, looking down at his shoes again. “Da. You are right.”

“And you never thought to talk to me about your feelings? About any of it?”

His face creases with hurt. “I thought you would not listen.”

“And how would you know, since you didn’t try?” You walk over to him when he grimaces and turns his head away from you. “Piotr, I’ll cop to being the most stubborn pain in the ass at the mansion when Wade’s not around, okay? But I care about you, and I care about how you feel. If you don’t even give me the chance to listen to you, how am I supposed to know what you want, much less figure out if there’s a way to give it to you?”

He meets your gaze again, eyes shining with tears. “I almost lost you. I… I cannot go through that again. I love you, I want to be with you—”

“I love you, too,” you say when he cuts himself off, too overcome with emotion to speak. “More than anything, Piotr. But if you’re willing to manipulate me on stuff like this, who’s to say that you won’t once we’re married? Or have kids? We can’t be a team if you don’t communicate, Piotr, and it’s not fair to me to have you micromanage me, to have you not talk to me.” You purse your lips, then press on to finish your thought. “I can’t play second fiddle to your fear, Piotr. You have to pick one or the other.”

His eyes widen. “What—”

“I love you, Piotr. So damn much.” You try to swallow the lump in your throat. “But… but if you’re gonna choose to manipulate me instead of communicate with me, then… then I can’t be with you. We can’t be together if that’s what you’re gonna choose. And don’t—” You hold up a hand when he opens his mouth to reply “—don’t say anything about ‘you’ll always choose me’ right now. I know you, and I know you love me, and I trust that you want to choose me, but I want you to think about this. I want you to think about whether or not you can even accomplish it, and if you can how you’re going to do it. Okay?”

He closes his mouth, swallows hard, then nods. “Da. Khorosho. Okay. I… I will do that.”

Your heart squeezes in your chest as a tear slips down his cheek; you reach up to brush it away with your thumb. “I love you, Piotr. I love you so much.”

He wraps his arms around you and presses his forehead against yours. “I love you also, Y/N. You are… you are everything to me. Moye serdtse. Moye solntse. Moya dusha.”

You press your lips against his, and your heart cracks open at how passionately and tenderly and desperately he kisses you, and when you pull back you’re kinda sorta definitely crying, too.

“I love you,” he whispers as he cradles your face in his hands.

“I love you, too.” You kiss him one last time, then step back. “I have to go. Charles needs my help with Magneto.”

He nods, expression strained but understanding. “Da. Go. We will… we will talk later.”

You nod. “Yeah.” You kiss him one last time –you can’t help yourself, you love him—and then walk out of the examination room and down the hall.

The tension in Xavier’s office is palpable. Charles is seated behind his desk, engaged in a stare-down with a peeved looking Magneto –who’s changed into a button down shirt, a suit jacket, and slacks, somehow; the repression cuff still blinks on his wrist, a reminder that he’s powerless until someone decides that he shouldn’t be.

Wade and Nate are seated by one of the windows, watching Magneto with the precision and barely repressed aggression usually reserved for apex predators. Wade’s actually got his sword out, twirling it idly as he stares down one of the most powerful mutants known to history.

It’s a bit of a head trip, to say the least.

“I was summoned,” you say by way of greeting as you close the door behind you.

“Y/N.” The Professor shoots you a strained smile. “We seem to be at a bit of a stalemate. I was hoping you would be able to smooth things out—”

“You were hoping the young woman I consider as a daughter would be able to placate me into taking your side,” Nathan snaps. “Which is not gonna happen.”

“What sides are we even looking at?” you ask, feeling very much like a child being yanked into a messy pre-divorce argument. “What did I just walk into?”

“Knockoff psychic Seth Everman here—” Wade points his katana at Xavier “—wants to let Captain Magnet Kink here go. With a fucking warning.”

You –barely—manage to keep your face neutral as you look over at Charles. “Reason being?”

“I spent the first few years of my life in a Nazi prison camp,” Magneto spits out. “I am not going back into another one with a different label.”

Okay, you think as you try –and fail—to produce a counterargument to that statement. Guilt trip, trump card combo. Nice. “Wow. Alright. Uh. Not sure where to go from there.” You frown. “Okay, Professor –why did you even bring me in here? Like, you know Nate’s stance, you would’ve known that my being here wouldn’t change that, so why am I here?”

Charles steeples his fingers. “I was hoping in the event that Mr. Summers and Mr. Wilson would not… acquiesce to Erik’s release… you might be able to persuade Erik to… see our view of things. A guarantee of better behavior in the future, if you will.”

Magneto –Erik—rolls his eyes. “I have already made my stance clear, Charles. I will never side with inaction. The only way mutants will be safe is if we fight back and fight back now.”

“We are not about inaction,” Charles retorts. “We are about education. Which we cannot do effectively if you and your group of criminals are constantly causing chaos and striking fear into the hearts of non-mutants.”

“They should be afraid!” Erik snaps. “Non-mutants have held us under their boots for as long as the world remembers. They should be afraid, and they should flee like the bigoted cowards they are!”

“And what about the mutants that disagree with how you do things?” you interject before the two men can gain too much momentum with their argument. “What about those that stand up to you because some of your methods are violent, or dangerous? What then?”

“If they get in my way, they get what is coming to them.”

“How can you call yourself a champion for mutantkind if you’re willing to hurt mutants that get in your way?” you ask. “You can’t just walk all over people who disagree with you; there’s going to be people who don’t believe in your methods. That’s life. Deal with it.”

Erik narrows his eyes at you and draws himself up to his full height –which, for a man that’s pushing ‘definitely not spry anymore’ is impressively tall. “Those who refuse to act, or stand in the way of those that do, are complicit in the violence of our oppressors. Not doing anything is not an option!”

“We’re not doing ‘nothing,’” you fire back.

“Is that what you think?” he seethes. “You practice nonviolence against those who would have us killed. The last time I watched that happen, my people were gassed in extermination camps. I will not sit by and do nothing. Not now, not ever again. Perhaps you do not understand—”

“I understand perfectly well!” you snap, indignation rising in your chest.

Erik sneers at you. “You really think you can understand persecution the way I do? I watched my mother get shot by Gestapo agents when she refused to board the trains to the camps. I was put in a work camp and left to die.” He rolls up his sleeve, revealing a faded string of numbers tattooed on his forearm. “This, this is what persecution looks like. You could not possibly understand.”

“Oh, I understand just fine,” you growl out. “I was raised by anti-mutant parents in an anti-mutant community. I was beaten with a belt on a daily basis because I couldn’t control my mutation. I was hunted by men with rifles and shotguns when I tried to run away! My parents tried to have a telepath remove my mutation, which nearly killed me! Just because my experiences aren’t identical to yours doesn’t mean I don’t understand pain and persecution! So, buddy, if you want someone to walk down shitty ol’ memory lane with you and compare wounds, I’m glad to do and I’ll match you step for step!” You let that hang for a moment, then take a deep breath and continue when Erik doesn’t say anything. “Or, we can have a productive conversation and work on finding some sort of compromise that works as much as it possibly can.”

Erik scowls at you. “I am not interested in working with the enemy.”

“We’re not the enemy!” you shout. “Just because we’ve picked a different path doesn’t make us the enemy! And it’s not like your way is the end all, be all! No, no!” You glare at him when he opens his mouth to speak. “Look at him!” You point at Nate. “You were willing to run the risk of killing him just to get what you want. He’s a mutant; he’s your kind. If you’re willing to fuck over your own people to get your way, you’re the enemy we all need to be worried about. You cannot say you’re for mutants and then be selective based on our beliefs. Your pain and past experiences does not, will not, will never give you the right to do that! Never!”

Erik glances over at Nate then looks away, looking somewhat chastened.

“Look, Erik, I’m sorry for what you went through as a kid,” you say, gentler. “It’s fucked up and should have never happened to you. But if you want to make sure that never happens to mutants –to anyone—ever again, you can’t keep fighting us along the way. We’re the two different sides of the same coin. We need each other.”

He raises an eyebrow at that. “What… do you have in mind?”

You keep your face neutral, even as you’re stunned by the monumental breakthrough you just managed to set up. You take a deep breath and move on to the next part of your rant-speech-thing. “We need people like Charles –like the Institute—to take care of the ‘non-war’ stuff. Education, specialized training, housing for mutants kicked out of their homes. That kind of stuff requires special licensing which, given how many statutes and legal conventions you’ve broken, isn’t going to be possible for you to pull off. Some of us have to stay within the laws to take care of the kids and teens that can’t defend themselves. It’s how it has to be.”

“Agreed,” Erik says slowly. “I am surprised you are not advocating for ‘setting the model example.’”

“The decent people of the world? They’ll believe that,” you say. “They do exist. They’ll see us and support us. But there are a lot of non-decent people in this world. Places like Harmony, where I grew up. Traffickers. Government agencies that would exploit us for our abilities. That’s where we need people like you.”

“The X-Men do not practice or condone violence,” Charles interjects.

“And you’re a hypocrite on that,” you fire back. You hired my uncle as your hitman, you think at him. Don’t you dare try to paint yourself as a saint. “And you refuse to acknowledge that there are people who will never be swayed by what we’re doing. The people who’ve already decided they have the right to hurt us based on what makes us different are never going to care about what laws we get passed in our favor or what sort of example we set. And for them, we need people like Erik—” and my uncle “—to remind that when they try to hit us, we’ll hit back. The only thing that will stop them is knowing that we won’t be walked over.”

Erik smirks when Charles doesn’t argue back. “You seem… very willing to trust someone who has hurt your friends before.”

You smirk back at him. “Well, that’s because if you ever do anything like that again, no one is going to find what’s left of your body. I promise you that.”

He arches an eyebrow, but doesn’t seem too perturbed. “You would say that to a Holocaust survivor.”

Don’t let him see you flinch, you think to yourself.

Because what this really comes down to is if you’re willing to kill to protect the people you love.

And you are.

“You’re damn right I will,” you say, voice low and lethal. You stare up at him, unblinking while he scrutinizes you.

The corner of his mouth turns up after a moment. “You, Ms. L/N, are going places –and I cannot wait to see what those places are.” He looks over at Charles. “I only work with her. None of your other pacifistic followers, just her.”

You blink. Wait, what?

“Y/N is technically still a trainee,” Charles says, seemingly just as shocked as you are. “She is not—”

“Well, then, you better fast-track her for full status,” Erik retorts. “Because I work with her or no one else.”

Charles nods after a moment. “Very well. If that’s what gets you to cooperate.”

“Wonderful. Now that we straightened that out—” He holds up his arm, where the repression cuff is still latched around his wrist. “Get this damn thing off me.”

Charles sighs and wheels out from the behind the desk. “Yes. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to someone who can do that for you.”

You wait until the two older men exit Xavier’s office, then look over at Nate and Wade. “Are you guys alright?”

Nathan shrugs. “Sure.”

You wince. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you guys out of it or—”

The corner of Nathan’s mouth turns up in a smile and he shakes his head. “Xavier threw you off a deep end. You priority was to make sure you could swim, not check and see if everyone else was swimming, too.”

You dart over and wrap your arms around him in a hug. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll live. Hurt more than anything.” He places a fatherly kiss on the top of your head. “You did good, kid.”

“She did better than good,” Wade comments. “She handed Magneto his balls.”

You look over at your honorary brother. “Are you alright?”

Wade nods. “Nate’s right. Xavier threw you the motherfucker of all curve balls. You did good. Besides, I trust your judgement.”

The praise makes you teary, and you manage to eek out a “thank you” as you let go of Nate. “Alright, I need to go wrap things up. You two just… make out on Xavier’s couch, or something.”

“Ooh,” Wade says as you walk out of the Professor’s office. “There’s an idea!”

You call your uncle as soon as you find a quiet enough spot and update him on everything that’s happened.

He congratulates you on doing the conflict resolution version of defusing a nuclear missile –“Yeah, Chuck’s kinda shitty about tossing people off a cliff sometimes.”—and gives you the go ahead to give Erik his number so that he can coordinate with your uncle on various missions –“Hey, as long as I can beat the shit out of him if he tries to jack me over, I’m good.”

You wind up escorting Erik –and his henchman—out to a waiting car on the front drive. You hand him a card with your uncle’s number written on it. “Someone will be contacting you through this number in the next forty-eight hours about how your partnership with the X-Men will proceed.”

He smirks. “So, you were not bluffing when you called Charles a ‘hypocrite.’ Interesting.”

“I don’t take shots I can’t make.”

He studies you for a moment, then smiles and shakes his head. “You are indeed going places, Ms. L/N. A shame you decided to limit your destinations by tethering yourself to the Institute.”

“Good for me that my opinion’s the only one that counts on that,” you fire back. “I think I’m doing fine.”

He smirks, then heads towards the car. “I will be seeing you, Ms. L/N.”

“I bet,” you mutter under your breath. You watch the car drive off, then jog back inside the house.

You’ve got a boyfriend to talk to.

You find Piotr in your shared room, sitting on the bed.

He’s armored down and dressed in casual clothes, staring ahead at the wall opposite the bed. His eyes look puffy, his nose is red, and there’s a pile of used tissues sitting next to him on the bed.

You shuck your flight jacket off –you haven’t had a chance to change out of your mission garb—and run over to the bed.

Piotr yanks you to him, pulling you to his chest in a borderline crushing hug.

You’re holding him just as tight.

“The Professor updated me on everything,” he says, voice slightly hoarse. “He says… you got Magneto to cooperate?”

“I think I just spewed a lot of bullshit that happened to make sense,” you say, a little shaky now that you’re out of all of it and coming down from a shitwhack of adrenaline. “I’m just surprised I didn’t write a check my proverbial dick couldn’t cash.”

He lets out a soft huff of a laugh. “You are gifted, myshka. Do not sell yourself short.” His face puckers with grief, and he drops his gaze to where his hands are holding yours. “And... I am so sorry for… manipulating you. I –I did not want to, I was not trying to, I just could not bear thoughts of losing you again—”

You press your forehead again. “Babe, I know, okay? I know that keeping everything organized and controlled is how you cope with stress, alright? I know what I’m walking into with you; it was never the fact that you were controlling, it was that you wouldn’t talk to me. That you wouldn’t try to manage your stress in a way that was healthy for both of us.”

He nods. “Da. I understand. And I did think, as you asked me.” He swallows hard and swipes at his damp cheeks with the back of his hand. “I think, for this specific instance, I never fully processed everything. I went from incident to taking care of you to my family to teaching. I never had a chance to address my fear or my grief. So, for this, I think some counselling would help me with that.”

“I think that sounds good,” you agree, encouraging. “And it makes sense.”

“As for possible future incidents…” He shoots you a nervous look before continuing. “I… confess I could not think of much. I can work with therapist for ideas, but on my own—”

You shush him gently when the pitch of his voice starts rising –it’s the closest to panicky you’ve ever seen him. “I’m not asking you to have all the details worked out. I wasn’t expecting you to have the details worked out. The fact that you’re committed to figuring out what tools you need to cope and how to get them is good enough for me.”

His shoulders sag visibly with relief. “Khorsho.” He wraps his arms around you and holds you against his chest. “Thank you.”

You kiss his collarbone, then his jaw. “I love you, Piotr. You’re my whole damn world. You know that, right?”

He nods, pressing his lips against your forehead. “And you are my world.” He exhales shakily, then lets you go to toss the pile of used Kleenexes in the trash. “I should take care of these.”

“Did you really cry that much?” You ask, heart tearing into for your giant marshmallow of a boyfriend. “Babe…”

“I was worried,” he admits. “That this would be the end of us.”

You shake your head. “I didn’t think it would come to that. I knew that you’d be able to give me a good answer. And I didn’t want to scare you –didn’t say any of it to scare you—but this is serious to me, and I had to convey that it was serious—”

“It is serious,” he agrees as he traces over your ring finger with his thumb. “It is good to take seriously. So… we are good?”

You smile fondly at him. “We’re good.”

He leans in and presses his lips against yours. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He kisses you gently –and then not gently at all. He pulls you into his arms, kisses you like a drowning man tasting air for the first time, clutches at your body like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.

You’re clinging to him as well, tugging at his hair and rocking your hips against his. It’s like a fire coursing through you; you don’t care if you burn.

He mouths at your neck, presses wet, open-mouthed kisses at the spot where your skin gives way to the collar of your shirt. “I need you.” His voice breaks when he speaks, making him sound all the more crazed.

You lean back to shuck your shirt off and toss it somewhere behind you, press a gasping kiss to his lips. “I need you, too.” You cling to his shoulders as he rolls so you’re pressed between the bed and him.

The future’s uncertain. You don’t care about the future.

You’ve got Piotr, here and now. That’s all you need.

[syncogon]

[QZGS Meta] on the differences between the four master tacticians

This is all quoted from Fenes (TheDefenestrator on AO3), who has given me permission to share some of her meta onto tumblr. Although in an informal format, I think these analyses really are fascinating and a worthwhile read. Thanks Fenes for being so insightful and awesome!

Future posts, if I get my stuff together, will be tagged /fenes-talks and /qzgs-meta

Without further ado:

”I really appreciate that all the master tacticians have different flavors to them

like ZXJ is careful to a ridiculous degree

and people act like YWZ is similar to him but he's really not? He thinks things through but he's way more willing to make assumptions than ZXJ is

which is why ZXJ has a defensive style while YWZ has a predictive style

like YWZ's gambit against Wei Chen when he won those three consecutive battles? So impressive, really takes an understanding of the other person's psychology, as well as an insanely good grasp of...basically everything, the surroundings, the characters, the skillpoints, the cooldowns, the decisions people will make

but it also took a huge leap of faith, in the idea that he assumed he could predict Wei Chen as a person to that degree. almost psychological in his planning

ZXJ is thorough, which means he can plan for anything, and he has lots of responses memorized, but he needs to be on a team with someone like HWQ taking up half the shot-calling to really be effective, because he isn't proactive enough to do it on his own

he'd crumble much more easily, somewhat like XSQ does/did, but worse

XSQ is interesting because his tactics were originally somewhere along the lines of "make the most of what you've got" 

more careful than YWZ, but more proactive than ZXJ

on the other hand, without any real "stars" on his team, he'd have to be more careful than YWZ

YWZ works really well with an opportunist because he's pretty good and going with the flow

when you're a predictive kind of tactician, you have to be—there's no way you'll be right 100% of the time

unfortunately I didn't get to see much of XSQ before his tactics changed, but from pure contrast I'd say that "focusing on being underestimated" worked at least partially because he underestimated himself

And because people can't believe in teamwork the way they can in a single star player

(can I just say how absolutely crazy it is to me that YX has been saying "Glory isn't a single-player game" since the actual first season of the Alliance and, despite being the top god for three consecutive years, and someone considered the absolute peak of Glory, on top of being best partners for four consecutive years—somehow, almost everyone didn't actually internalize it??)

(and yet so believable. People don't understand tactics/coordination the way they do personal strength, so they can't believe in it the way they can personal ability)

anyway, after his change, XSQ is more willing to believe in his abilities and his players, becomes less careful, and actually starts winning more

I really wish we had more from his POV when he's succeeding as a master tactician, because I want to see more of his style

but I think I'd say that he pursues the ideal now more than he did before

like, before, as a tactician, he'd take the safest way that made use of his team's strengths as a coordinated unit

now, he give the kind of specific directions and micromanaging you can only do if you genuinely believe in the ability of your teammates to pull it off

which gives him a lot more freedom to actually get the best outcome

and this realization of how he needed to change came from the fact that Ye Xiu used Wu Chen to beat EE and a bunch of noobs

YX had a lot longer to prepare, but he also fully grasped and believed in the ability of each of his players

which we do get to see XSQ thinking, he's like "holy shit, he used every single one of them to their best ability. Every. One."

and from that point on he stops lamenting his lack of star players or star characters and starts believing in the qualities they DO have, and making use of them

now the coolest thing to me about all these master tacticians is that they debuted in the same year, and they all learned from YX

they must have—there's no one else listed as being nearly as good at strategy as YX is, and he was the winner for the three consecutive years before he showed up

which means they all looked at the same player but came away with very different ideas of what tactics should be, according to their personalities

ZXJ sees someone doing amazing tactics and thoroughly researches it, comes up with a working library of all the tactics there are, comes up with his own thinks through every possibility he can and comes up with countermeasures he never clashes with HWQ's leading, despite being (I think they said) the only team with two shot-callers

because he is reactionary in nature, and he adjusts to whatever HWQ wants to do, using any of his many, many backup plans

XSQ sees someone use tactics and teamwork to overcome other, equally strong teams, and thinks "this is what teamwork can do—tactics are how you overcome stronger opponents, and no one is ever expecting it, because they have so much faith in their stars, but even stars are limited"

but he also saw that YX used his own star ability to take down teams, so he could never believe that he would be on YX's level without a star to back him up, which is why he spent the first half of his time lamenting what he lacked—until he saw that YX did just fine without star characters or power on his team too, and decided that he'd been blinded by YX's ability to the full spectrum of what tactics could achieve

YWZ looked at YX using tactics in a way that proved he was predicting his opponent's movements and had already planned for them—because YX's tactics almost always work the first time, so he can't have chosen randomly. He uses different strategies against different opponents, he's definitely reacting to who they are and what kinds of things they're going to do, and YWZ understands people enough that he knows the who aspect of the person he's fighting matters a lot. So he figures out peoples' mental states and most likely actions and, having gained a thorough understanding of the situation, predicts the most likely outcomes and adapts when his predictions fall short

I think YWZ is honestly the closest to YX in terms of actual type of tactics, in that YX thinks a lot about mentality and is quite good at prediction. but this might be my bias toward psychology showing...

the best analysis of YX's tactics actually probably comes from Wang Jiexi, calling everything he does "the crudest style"

not in that it's poorly thought-out, or ineffective, but in that it makes use of absolutely everything that anyone could ever find useful, and uses it whenever he deems it necessary

he has a lot of plans and understands a lot about what people are likely to do, but he also is really good at adapting to the moment

he's good at figuring out exactly how good the people on his side are and adapting to that, to make the best use of their abilities

he also does psychological warfare with some frequency, though not to the extent that someone like Wei Chen does in an individual match—like, he heals himself during the group arena during the challenger's league, even though the narration says it was completely unnecessary, to give his opponent a sense of hopelessness

making people doubt themselves works well for him, because he's a really large existence in peoples' minds, very intimidating

and hopeless people aren't as good at fighting

but he's also good at shouldering a lot himself, making up for any deficiencies his team has, but relying on them to pull off what they need to along with his plans

I think his confidence helps with that too—he's so sure of his understanding of others' abilities that he's able to fully use them, and by being so confident he makes others believe in themselves, too

one of the few times we get a chance to see more nuances about YX is when he's being compared to his little brother, and one of the biggest differences Chen Guo notices is how incredibly confident YX is

Frequently this pisses people off, but when he's believing in you, it's a good feeling

the other time the story talks about YX's style as a tactician being adaptable is in the team match against XSQ—when people are like "so when the opponent has a star player you use coordination, but when the opponent has tactics you use yourself as a star player??" or something like that

he does what works best, and nothing else, regardless of how it looks to other people

thus, crude, but effective

....anyway yeah that's my essay on the master tacticians

I love them a lot”

- Fenes 8.28.2018

[fridge-reviews]

Nier: Automata

Developer: Square Enix Publisher: Square Enix Rrp: £39.99 (Steam, Square Enix Store and Humblebundle) Released: March 17th 2017 Available on: Steam, Square Enix Store and Humblebundle Played Using: An Xbox 360 control pad Approximate game length: 30 ish hours You know I tried to come up with a preamble for this review, but I kept coming up blank because to be absolutely honest nothing I can write will be both relevant and not a spoiler in some way, and believe me this is a game that you really should go in blind and experience for yourself. The problem with trying to define this game is that it flicks from one genre to another quite often. One thing I can definitely say is that the game is 'usually' a third person open world RPG. You definitely gain Xp through completing quests and killing enemies does grant Xp as well as money. However sometimes the game is a twin stick shooter, or a top down shooter or a side scrolling platformer... or a number of other things. This is actually very much how this games predecessor played as well, which was Nier that I played on the Xbox 360 (sadly it was never released for PC or I would play it on here). It should also be mentioned that you don't need to have played any of the other games in the series to understand this one. If you did though you'll be treated to some nice call backs, quite a few of which I never expected.

You play as an android and its your job to destroy the Machine Lifeforms that were sent to conquer the Earth by aliens. This is done by hacking, slashing, shooting and err... hacking (of the computer variety). That all sounds pretty straight forward right? Sure it does. Now lets not waste time asking pesky questions about morality. Seeing that Platinum are involved it's of no surprise that the combat is an absolute joy to not only perform but also behold. Each movement is smooth and even a button masher like myself was able to pick up a few combos here and there. It was a little tricky to get used to controlling and firing the pods while also dodging incoming attacks as well as performing moves myself. But the game eases you into it very well and by the time you reach a major climax of the game you'll be dodging, firing and slicing like a seasoned player.

Even though your combat capability is pretty incredible even at a base level you can always increase those damage values and refine or even add to those already impressive abilities. This is done through 'chips', as you play through the game you'll find and purchase chips that can be installed into you on the fly. No, seriously if you really want to you can switch out mid-battle. Something to take note of though is that even though these chips are listed as skills quite a few of them affect the HUD. For example you have to purchase and then activate the Xp bar to actually see what Xp you're earning. You can also deactivate and sell chips, so if you want to play a game with no mini map or objective markers you can and you'll even make a little money too. This level of customisation is great that anyone who loves to micromanage their stats will love since you can try and optimise the perfect build for your android with their chips. However if you don't have the time or inclination to do that you can also just select automatic and the game will give you what it deems is the best set up with what you have.

Of course, we can talk about adding skills without mentioning weapons. There are quite a few of those to pick from in the game and depending on what combination of weapon you choose you'll have different moves. Weapons can also be upgraded adding extra damage as well as effects, some increase the chance of stunning and enemy others add damage in the form of a charged attack. Now its almost a certainty that at some point in the game you will die. In the even of that your body is left behind which, if you die again (or take too long) before retrieving it, will disappear. However if you do get manage to find your body you have a choice to make you can retrieve it which will give you back and re-equip all the chips you had or alternatively you can choose to repair it which takes a bit longer but will give you back all your chips but also gives you a temporary ally.

In order to get the full story of Nier: Automata you have to play through the the game multiple times using the same save file, with each new playthrough things will change. And with their being twenty six different endings you will definitely need to play a fair few times to get the full scope of it all. Though it must be said that most of those twenty six endings are intentionally silly and are not considered 'canon'. As was mentioned earlier this game features an open world, but as open worlds go this one is quite compact cramming a lot of detail and feeling to the world in a small handcrafted space. Due to Nier: Automata being an open world game it's expected that there are side quests for you to complete and in this regard Nier: Automata is no slouch, there are missions scattered all over the place (none of which involve a radio tower). However since this is a game that wants you to play through it multiple times some missions don't appear on the first or even second go. Some of the missions however continue from one playthrough to the next with the quest giver acting as if nothing at all had changed.

I do have a lot of praise to heap on this game. Honestly I only really have one thing that annoyed me. For some reason every time I booted up the game or there was a major transition within the game the mouse cursor would appear in the centre of the screen. Sure moving it to the side was no issue but I don't see why I should have to do that when many of this contemporaries manage to not have that issue. The music is fantastic being simultaneously unobtrusive and catchy (though I have no idea what the actual lyrics are). But what I really love is the way the songs transition not from one song to another but from one version of the song to another depending on what is going on. If I have a flaw at all it's that some of the music is a bit too calming for me and I'd find myself nodding off to it.

I highly recommend turning on the network features (which I believe is set to off as a default). On the surface this feature works similarly to the ability to collect your body except now you can collect other peoples. If you retrieve a body you'll gain some short term benefits and a little money, alternatively you could repair the body for a temporary ally. This feature does more than that but.... well that would be telling. Get it. This game is really, really, really, really good well worth the asking price. I've had a blast just slaughtering enemies with the slick combat but I've also been touched by some of its more poignant and heartfelt scenes. If you like RPG's do not pass this one by. If this appeals to you perhaps try; Nier Grandia 2 Final Fantasy 15

[waynekelton]

Review: Egypt: Old Kingdom

Ancient Egypt has always been a popular setting for games. It is hardly surprising, as with its distinctive art and lavish customs the Land of the Pharaohs is a rich source for game designers seeking inspiration. However, a quick look at the app store reveals that the most popular Egyptian-themed games devote themselves to matching tiles, playing slots or dressing-up princesses. Thankfully, Egypt: Old Kingdom takes a more scholarly approach. As an incarnation of the god Horus, your task is to work alongside the pharaohs in order to overcome the mighty Seth. Seth is a bit of a pain and as the god of chaos, he is eager to unleash a catalogue of disasters upon the land. We begin our journey in Memphis, but this is Egypt, not Tennessee so the job is to build pyramids rather than Graceland. However, it isn’t wise to attempt to run before we can walk like an Egyptian. The Old Kingdom was around for hundreds of years and before we can even think of building mysterious pyramidical buildings we will need to first establish our tribe.

Initially, Egypt: Old Kingdom seems rather complex and intimidating; it feels like a crash course in ancient Egyptology. However, settle into the game’s steady flow, and it soon becomes clear that the game isn’t actually that daunting at all. The tutorial introduces you to the bare basics and then leaves you to discover the rest as you play, but that’s OK because the range of available options never becomes too intimidating. It turns out to be a Civilization-style game that does away with a lot of the micromanagement aspects and instead focuses on the deployment of your workers. At the beginning of the game, the map is shrouded in fog and you will want to send out workers to explore new areas. When a worker is sent to a new region their choice of actions will be limited by geographical constraints. Hills are great for constructing barracks, new homes and numerous other types of buildings. Fertile floodplains will yield a choice of extra crops. Some areas will already have resources that you can gather or packs of wild beasts that you can either hunt or worship.

Success depends on efficiently acquiring and managing supplies of the game’s six resources. Food enables you to feed and increase the size of your population; spend ten food and you will be able to place a new worker. The chief sources of food are cultivated fields and fish from regions near the Nile. Production points are mainly used for constructing new buildings; workshops will help you increase your production. Luxuries are usually acquired through trade; they keep your population happy and help pacify angry neighbours. The game’s abstract approach extends to military strength, which just like any other resource is represented by a single number. An effective way of improving your army is by building barracks. Culture points can be used to make new discoveries, with advancements following the usual technology tree approach. For instance, once you have established the local cults advancement, your people can then discover tomb building, which is a great way of improving favour with the gods. Favour points allow you to worship the various gods, each of whom will provide you with a time-limited bonus. After a few turns, your people will stumble across other tribes. Now you will have the option to forge new friendships or make new enemies. Peaceful options include setting up a simple trade agreement and maybe greasing a few palms. Once relationships get really good you will be able to assimilate the people into your society. Aggressive options include subjugating a tribe in battle or launching a raid but remember that enemies have long memories and they can unite against you. Combat is very simple, just challenge a tribe and wait for five turns, then the army levels are compared. There are no differing units or tactics, but you can call upon the favours of some gods to enhance your combat abilities.

It is odd that the version of the game available depends on your device. On Android, you can download the game for free. This lite version gives you the opportunity to dip your toe into the Nile by playing through the first 50 turns. If you want to see more then you will need to pay to open up the rest of the game. On iOS the lite version seems to have been replaced by a full version that requires a one-off payment.

In the full game, the number of options available is very impressive. Games can be set up that follow the course of history, or you can create your own history in the appropriately named sandbox mode. You can add more micromanagement elements, reduce the influence of the gods in various ways and make things even tougher by limiting your options to save progress. Conspiracy theorists may like to try a game in which the human race is enslaved by aliens, whilst B-movie buffs can create a game in which evil mummies are invading the world. The later options sound like fun additions, but they do cheapen the authenticity of the game. Otherwise, you have to admire the amount of background research that the developers have incorporated. The end result is a richly thematic game that is also educational in an entertaining way. There are even optional quizzes that test your new-found knowledge of all things Egyptian.

Egypt: Old Kingdom has simple but still very thematic graphics. The easily identifiable icons ensure that the screen remains uncluttered whilst the neat animations show at a glance what each of your workers is up to. The full game lasts 300 turns, this seems like a lot, but as there isn’t that much micromanagement to worry about, you can often burn through turns at a rapid rate. Events drive the narrative forward; some of these will be small random incidents like an attack from a pack of hyenas. Others are based on specific historical happenings and the fallout of not dealing with these can be very harsh. Some may feel that the way that these scripted events push you in a certain direction make progress feel too linear. Others may find that the random events are too frustrating; an unexpected famine can really set your plans back. Sometimes these events can be mitigated, for instance, if you have the resources, you may be able to build damns before a flood hits and so avoid the loss of key buildings. Of course, you can always use the options to play a more open-ended game at the expense of historical flavour. If you have even a passing interest in Egyptology then Egypt: Old Kingdom comes highly recommended. The streamlined civilisation building works well, although Civ veterans may find the range of control too limiting. The main choice appears to be between focusing on using military strength or diplomacy to bring the other tribes under Horus’s wing. With only six resources to worry about, it is easy to quickly assess how much you are producing and spending without the need for complicated menus. Furthermore, since the options in each region are limited by geographical constraints, the range of choices never becomes overwhelming. In fact, the exhaustive historical setting can make the game seem deeper and more complex than it actually is.

Review: Egypt: Old Kingdom published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[empmoniitor]

EMPOWER YOUR MANAGEMENT WITH EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY METRICS

A whole new perception of working in a corporate sector emerged, and thanks to that, organizations stayed afloat in the pandemic era. While we all wait for things to return to normal, it has become necessary to learn how to manage our employees remotely while maintaining efficiency, clarity, and productivity.

One of the most significant components of managing remote employees is determining their productivity. And employee productivity metrics provide us with a means of assessing the well-being of our company. It enables you to maximize the performance of the company by leveraging the individuals within the business.

Furthermore, it is pointless to ask if you want your employees to be productive and engaged at all times during the workday. Of course, you would, that is the whole point…!!!

We are bombarded with tons of ideas and strategies to boost and balance productivity and efficiency. But only if putting them into practice was as simple. In order to attain that level of productivity, you must first quantify it. You will never come across the truth whether your employees are giving it their all or not if you do not measure productivity.

Businesses have experimented with and honed in on the most efficient analysis of productivity. And employee productivity metrics is the one way to fully understand your team’s productivity rate and engagement during work hours.

After all, you need to know how well your employees are functioning if you want your firm to run smoothly and achieve higher heights.

So if you want to know how to deal with metrics among your employees, I will break down the process of accessing metrics in a more precise way. Read ahead to learn more.

WHAT ARE PRODUCTIVITY METRICS, AND WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT?

Before I get into the crux of the situation, let us take a moment to address the fact that 58% of organizations have successfully determined the strengths and weaknesses of their workforce with metrics.

Sure, metrics can make a huge impact. However, Some firms, on the other hand, assess productivity based on input rather than output. Let me make it clear with an example:

Who do you think is more productive? The employee spending longer time at the desk or the employee with less desk time.

Well! You might think the latter would be the least productive, but you can not tell how productive someone is by looking at them. And that is why, in order to show their actual performance, every firm has to have productivity statistics in the workplace.

Productivity metrics are data points that show if your team is on track to achieve your productivity targets. It enables you to delve deeper into the outcomes your team has accomplished with all of the inputs they have put into a task. It helps in the early detection of potential flaws and anomalies in organizational activity.

THE LINK BETWEEN KPIS AND EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY METRICS

Productivity metrics take KPIs under its wing. Below are the employee productivity metrics examples & KPIs to Measure the performance of your employees.

1- TIME SPENT ON EACH TASK

What could be a more valuable metric than knowing how much time each employee spends on each task? As you may be aware, time is money, and you cannot afford to waste any of it while working on projects. It’s essential to keep track of your projects and how long it takes your employees to accomplish them. It will assist you in identifying the changes and improvements you must do, to save both time and money.

Well! There are tons of productivity management tools that can help you in keeping track of each task. EmpMonitor is one of the most convenient and reliable tools that suits best for the organization. It will not only help you keep track of tasks but will help you with so much more.

REGULAR SCREENSHOTS:

BROWSING HISTORY DETAILS:

KEYSTROKES:

PRODUCTIVITY REPORTS:

ALERT NOTIFICATION:

Regular screenshots at regular intervals ensures your employees are not sitting idle but actually giving their best for the tasks.

You can keep track of an employee’s web browsing history and the frequently visited web page to ensure employees are not doing other work apart from the office work.

With EmpMonitor, You can check what your employees are typing. You can look up the keystrokes your employees typed for up to 180 days.

You can check the productivity report that shows the graphical representation of productivity from an employee in the firm.

EmpMonitor lets you detect employee errors by sending alert notifications. It binds your employees to stick with the company’s rules and regulations.

EmpMonitor offers you all these features at one place and that too with just a few clicks, let us have a quick look at how to use monitoring control features of EmpMonitor.

1- Login to your EmpMonitor dashboard with your login credentials.

2- Go to Settings < click on the Monitoring controls< Click on the Create Group Button, You will come across a pop up window.

3- Fill in all the details of Group name, Roles, Locations, Departments, & Employees to move further, and then click Create Group button.

4- Now, you can customize all the monitoring features, according to your preferences. All you need to do is, tap on the settings icon.

5- Yow will come across Employee General settings, tracking features, screenshots, agent automatic update,& employees tracking time.

6- Click on the Save button after entering all the details, and start tracking your employees.

2- OVERALL LABOR EFFECTIVENESS(OLE)

Overall Labor Effectiveness (OLE) is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that measures the workforce’s availability, Performance, and Quality. It broadens the concept of the overall equipment effectiveness by foreseeing the performance of the workforce and the connection between employees and the resources needed to expand production.

Availability- The overall proportion of employees’ working hours that were productive for the company.

Performance- The overall percentage or quantity of items, tasks, or services released or generated.

Quality- The total portion of work, services, and products provided by your workforce that is of high quality.

3- REVENUE PER EMPLOYEE

The concept of calculating the revenue-per-employee ratio is to measure the overall productiveness of a team in generating revenue. The revenue per employee ratio is significant for measuring a company’s average employee efficiency and production. You can also use this metric to benchmark companies.

You can utilize it on your employees as long as the output is quantifiable. All you need to do is divide the overall income earned by the team you’re assessing by the number of team members who contributed to it.

4- OVERTIME HOURS

Overtime is one of the most valuable employee productivity metrics for calculating the costs and production of individual employees. If there is a sudden increase in workload on your employees and working overtime, it is time to hire more qualified staff. Rather than putting up the ones you already have at work, hiring can relieve the existing employees of their hard work.

While businesses attempt to entice employees to work overtime, it fires them back with poor performance. Believe it or not, it, in turn, is likely to contribute to lower morale and less retention, believe it or not.

5- EMPLOYEES TURNOVER

The workload gets the employees to go busy as beaver whenever an employee decides to quit. Employees will come and go based on their talents and desires. The turnover rate metric gives managers the ability to hire a new individual in advance so that no leftover tasks of the employees become a burden on existing employees.

To calculate the turnover rate, choose a time. Divide the number of left employees by the total number of active employees in the organization within that time period.

PITFALLS THAT COMES WITH EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY METRICS

Even if you have the best of intentions, you may make one of these five common mistakes when measuring the productivity of your employees. Keep an eye out for this kind of behavior to avoid the repercussions.

1- BLINDLY TRUSTING ON WORKING HOURS:

It really does not make sense if you, as a manager, focus solely on working hours. Or, to be very precise, if you are only evaluating productivity in terms of active hours worked, stocks, and money, you are doing it all wrong. Your productivity stats are all going to be in vain.

As we have already discussed above, one should focus on output rather than just staking all their money on input. Just because few employees take fewer breaks or socializing less does not mean they are the most productive person on your team.

2- TURNING INTO MICROMANAGER:

Believe it or not, you have no idea how you will transform yourself into a micromanager.  

Well! If you don’t know what a micromanager is, let me give you a free ride. Have you ever come across a manager that tracks every detail and hour, constantly asking for work updates and correcting minute details? Yes!!! That person is a micromanager.

So, felt burdened??? Of course, it would have been difficult for you to get things done.

The constant checking, tracking every hour, and hunting every task gives your employees even less time to work on their duties because they spend so much time updating you on their progress. It can also lead you to fall behind on your own tasks.

3- NOT LINKING KPIS TO YOUR STRATEGY:

KPI and productivity metric always go hand in hand. Always create goals and ensure that metrics are aligned with KPIs. Otherwise, it’s just a gimmick.

KPIs are valuable if they deliver reliable data that is relevant to your business. The idea is to know what you want to achieve in your business to select the appropriate KPIs appropriate for your business.

4- TOO MANY METRICS:

How many employee productivity metrics are too many metrics? Just because you can, does not mean you should. There is a fine line between what you can measure and what should be measured. Therefore, One of the most common mistakes people make when it comes to productivity metrics is measuring everything simply. And it does not matter if it is relevant to your business or not.

Too much information might be just as worthless as not enough. The company does not have to keep track of all of them.

5- HOLDING ONTO METRICS FOR TOO LONG:

Just like the famous saying goes, you manage what you measure. With the consistent changes in the development and circumstances of the company, you can not hold on to the metrics for long. The gauges, metrics must change with them as well.

Many businesses fall into this trap as they fail to understand that as the business evolves, the focus has to move to profit and the comparisons to competitors. Keep your aim very clear about what you want to measure and which metrics can help you with your target.

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CONCLUSION

Productivity hacks are ineffective without data. The reason to implement employee productivity metrics is so that you can make changes to improve. By figuring out how much time to spend on various tasks, overtime hours, and measuring employee turnover, you can find ways to reach your business at greater heights.

Furthermore, EmpMonitor can serve you with its ultimate and most advanced features. This tool can automate and take care of everything subtracting the manual work of your employees. It lets your employees focus on their tasks and boosts productivity.

I hope this blog helped you with everything you wanted to know. If you have any thoughts to share, drop them down in the comment section below. I would love to hear them.

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

[throwingideasatthewall]

Clone Wars      Episode 2

         Rising Malevolence

 Starting off I really like the title which implies things are going to get a little heated

  Title scene sequence still the same

   Nice

   Ok this time’s quote is a little bullshit

  Belief is not the matter of choice          But conviction

   Conviction is literally how much energy      you put into a choice 

   Little worried considering last episode’s good quote     left with an okay episode

   Okay, whoa, whoa, got a lot of things, at once

   Firstly, Ahsoka  

   Her face looks lumpy?

   The narrator...sounds kinda - bored

    Lot of things happening at once

                         Not really tied together

                       It’s-

                    Someone’s really                            abusing                       the jump cut

                   It literally gave me nausea looking at it

                      Not cool                           dude

   Then again    I guess they’re going for        Fast thrown together war footage

   But seriously       chill dude      On the jump      cuts

  And     nothing   seems    to     match   up

 If      I   can   actually    remember   what     happened       from   this   jump   cutted   mess     I   would   make     a   joke   about   the     off     piece            /    paced      sync        Up     But     for       the     sake       of     me       I        can’t    (And     I’m      Not      Back       rewatching)

(I     Tried...)

 Oh   here’s    one;    Growing     Fear          The   enablers      Just   Standing   around    Mate,         I   don’t   give      a   shit   about   them    (And   those     words   don’t   match)

The       Pictures

Still    recovering...    from    seasickness

So   excuse   my   scrawl     not   being    on   point

            I’m sorry, I was sea sick           Something about menace  

              Not happening again  

           Fear  

            Of the thing they enabled 

         I have, no idea, what is going on.          And I’m too afraid, of the editors, to go back

     Whatever, things are - moving -forward

     ‘parently

     Red sun like planet

      Ships heading towards it

      Little stabilized

     Person

    Plo Koon           Standing         In Front

    Oh good         We get to       see what the other enablers are up to

    That’s nice

    Would be thrilled

    If the jump cut abuse         Hadn’t left me           In a state of not being willing       to handle the enablers-

   We’re not jumping straight into that     Right?            Like,        this            is          a       quick         photo       shot?

   Okay never mind we are

   Fuck me up episode

Someone-  

 Realizes-    

Tracking-       That’s not so bad

 Hahaha

 Okay, giant ship in front of the Sun, Why!!?

 I am no longer hung over

 I’m good

What the frick?

 It looks like a shark

 It looks deadly       what the heck    is going on?

   Why is the boss music playing?

   I mean it’s thematically appropriate and more than we got in the last episode

    Just wasn’t expecting music

         Or Obvious Villain

        Before I think about it too much

        Detail

       “Oh my Red!”

        That is a lotta Red.

       I don’t think you could get much Red

   “We are tracking republic cruisers”

    Okay wait, We were on Plo’s     ship

     Now we’re on Dooku’s

 “Ships in the area...

  I’m assuming they’re going to      intersect

  And is Dooku -       Is Grievous  Dooku’s apprentice?          I guess that would make sense         Given           That last episode             We learned                  Of Yoda’s and Dooku’s              Connection            Learning            more about the villain isn’t such a          bad idea

       No more jump cuts please though

       “-Do”

      “Jam their transmissions,”

       Alright, straight to the evil      no hesitation           Possibly ending in murder?               What? It says ‘Rising Malevolence’!?               Murder would do that!

       The Fleet is holding it’s position sir

      Why?

     “I think it’s wise to report our position before we attack,”

      Good plan

      ‘Skywalker’s fleet is nearby’

      A teenager, you’re trusting this to a teenager?

       I mean they have to obey orders          You’re trusting a teenager that Obi-Wan order programmed?         A less developed version of Obi wan?          I know Yoda has a seat at the head of the garbage fire council

       But Obi-Wan has a seat there for a reason

       - note I’m pretty sure this is true for all continuities             so I’m not calling out movie Obi-Wan specifically  

           All of his continuities                 Garbage fire

            Which doesn’t have to be a bad thing...

             Logic sin

            “Perhaps he can reinforce us,”

             Teenagers can’t reinforce shit

             But they can pick you up

              Like a taxi service

            “ From what I hear Skywalker’s always looking for a fight,”                      Great, Obi wan ordered him to give only aggressive answers and self destructive orders                                    /answers

               Kid’s going to get killed                    If any adult sets their mind to it

               * Which seeing as you set him to ‘attack attack attack’

  Well, someone to be preparing his gravestone

              Good job, Obi wan                  Dumpster fire

              I do not regret it

             “So I’ve heard,”

               And enabled!

               Trash Fire Council, everyone

               “~~~~, Master Ploon,”

              “~~~~, Ahsoka,”

              Oh they share a language 

               Interesting

            “how’s the hunt for the mystery weapon going?”

              They actually tell him things?                    Instead of just yelling orders at him?

              Also, so that’s what they were doing

I     was   spinning

            “We’ve tracked it to the outer Greknow (excuse spelling) system,”

               “I need reinforcements”

               Wait, need?

               Earlier, it was a “ it would be nice,”

               Now you need the teenager to hold your hand while you confront the other adult in your stupid war?

               “ I have to ask the council Mr. plo I was given strict orders,”

                 Translation; I need to ask Obi-Wan                                  Also; this, this is how you write teenagers

              A little bit too much energy

              But this is how one would react

               If confronted with an order and ordered to give that response

               Good job, writers, you used your experience ( and knowledge) as a human being, to create a realistic human being

                Get a cookie for that

                Carry on

              Breaking up

              Signal jammed

          Oh yeah clearly shows that Ahsoka is asking “what’s wrong?”                Immediately move out the general area     also is someone not monitoring interference?          Shouldn’t alarms be going off?

   “ what’s wrong with the transmission,”

     A) you’re the leader you should figure that out

    B) asking a in superior isn’t going to help

       - if it’s their chosen thing then just let them do it without          leaning on them

   Nothing ever got better from micromanage

  “There’s too much interference, sir”

  Run

  We’ve lost them

  “You heard Master Ploon, he needs her support, we need to go help him,”

       Good job writers, that is how a teenager would react, you even got the stunted - robotlike speech down - and energy level

       Another cookie for you

      “We’ve got to go help him,”

       A bit of energy there but still good

     “We have to see what the Council says first,”

      Anakin, Perfect, 10/10, you know how to write children,            Perfect monotone

Fantastic     Job   writers

  *And          Actors

            The logic was pretty sound to

              “This is an important meeting, Ahsoka”

              Perfect

 I’ll   stop   gushing   about     that

         “Speak only when spoken to,”

          Perfect

        “Don’t I always”

         Okay,            little noticeable breach               there

         Little             too            much            energy                       Children               Don’t               Have            Person               alities-                Still           Developing-

        Nor          Attitude

       This       mystery        weapon            has            Strucken                a         dozen        systems             And     disappeared       without           a         trace,”

      That           Sounds         Really             Severe

      Only             Wish            I’d             Know             What              It            Does

      We       cannot       afford            to        lose        any       more       ships       my     phone

   “Oh,”

   How -         One           Of       you         had          to      order       him

    The          Chancellor         must       not       of     been     there

 “The    Enemy       ship       is   closing”

 Well      it      makes   sense    that    they   aren’t       running

  As   contacting    others     with     their   location     and   getting   reinforcements      was   something        that        they     were     supposed       to      do     and    ‘would      be         nice’      respectively

  And         they     did     both

    * Technically

   “General Greivous,”           Oh so now we get to learn of the relationship         Or what Dooku claims it to be

    “This will be            a suitable test              for        our new weapon,”

          Oh, or that

         They             have              the           weapon

       Interesting

       Also             a             great           excuse            to          show             Plo          Koon        suddenly         getting            his           shit         recked

   “Yes        My         lord,”

   [Oh       wait       now         I    remember        he’s       Ventress’s       master

   General            Term             Is            Lord]

      Does             he        have           a        button?

     “A       large        energy      reading       from        the      target,         sir,”

  Run!

 “Open       Fire,”

  Then       Get       Out          Of       Range

  “Fire!”

 “Brace       For      Impact!”

  Wait         You had Three whole ships   and you decide to clump them all together            Approaching from the same direction               Towards a giant space hole?                  You...               You got what you deserved

      “We’re losing all our power,”

      No duh         Space wave          * Shock wave

  Energy field , defenseless

      No duh

   “ Their shields are down         Full cannons,”                “they’re tearing us apart, one by one”

     Uh, Space                         pods?

         “[Ship explodes]

           Well I hope they got to the escape pod

           Quickly, into the pods!

         [ Plo being Captain Obvious]

        Well one fricker hit debris and exploded

       Really stable pods

      Well shit               It was just a ship        At least everyone      who wasn’t an idiot       is alive

   “ that was a successful test wouldn’t you say, Count?,”

   That’s        surprisingly normal given the side is supposed to be the  overinvolved                                                                                                    negative

      I’m surprise he isn’t abusing his in superiors by now

      Then again his ‘abuse’ style, based on name, is tech   

       Which isn’t an abuse style  

       Or negative thing

       “Maul”

        Is either a weapon or to chew something         savagely

     Sidious           Is        just        this     version’s     Absolute      evil   (Human,   Sentient   version)

Dooku      .....     I         have    no   idea

He’s   clearly   meant      to      be   conflict       in   general       But       The      Name       ....       I   have     no   idea

Sorry   went      on     a   name   rant

    “ I       want           all           of      those        life       pods        destroyed,”

   Brutal

   What       was           the        deal        with         the       sound     Greivous        was      making?            And         why           is        that       droid      laughing?

     We’ve         had         no       further       contact         with       General           Plo                Koon 

     And        nobody         is     panicking

    Then    everyone         else         is      enablers         so         I’m        not     surprised

    They       knew       what         they            were   getting      into     with     this    stupid    war

 “The   absence     of   distress   beacons        indicates      that      his     fleet     was,”

 Destroyed       killed

   Also     there’s       no      beacon         or      way         to      signal      for       help      in     those   light     pods   

The         Galaxy’s    huge

“-was”  A   bit   too   much   hesitation     there

           I’ll                accept              a            slight              bit             that             Anakin                was          ordered              not               to                talk            about                   death               in             front                   of              Ahsoka

         But              a             bit             too           much          emotion

         & personality

       And it isn’t overrided by one of his elders,            Obi wan specifically

       Or Understood by          the others

      We’re about to     launch a    rescue     mission

  Hasn’t clone intelligence reported this weapon     never leaves any survivors?

   But not that they had a giant stab wound through the   chest?

 Enablers, man

 Again, children don’t care about them

   They haven’t even developed a personality

   Nevermind the ability to form and remember      healthy preferred relationships

     With individuals

     Of their own age group

     When they’re Adults

      This ‘everyone’s afraid to say ‘die’ in front of Ahsoka Is bullshit

      Even      the              expression           doesn’t             feel             natural

       They are tidy they don’t want any witnesses

         See, that’s even acknowledging that they know some foul play is about

     ‘They’ is not the weapon

     It’s a person 

    “ these losses are tragic,”

      Not enough to stop the stupid war and             stop enabling

        What great friends      Plo Koon has      

      “ prevent more, we must,”

        You aren’t doing   shit

       Capsule

The Music      just      give       me       the     feeling       that      they’re      sitting      around     playing      cards

  “The power grid is burned out”

   Okay and that took out this whole life pod   functionality?

    Like are these not for emergencies?

   Shouldn’t have multiple backup power sources?

    Or some rudimentary fuel  

     Also, the force,

      Like with it you can exactly   have any moments of tension

       Like   normal humans

        Like            if you want to get out of the situation     there’s like 10 options

   Humans are space orcs

   Like just use the force to       paddle to safety

   Or power the ships

    This is   definitely   not as bad as a situation   as they’re going to make it out to be

 “Life support recharge.”

  Well good thing none of you is dying

   Oh did they mean     oxygen recycling?

   My bad

 So we’ll just sit here

   And hold our breath

  Snarking doesn’t really help it

  “someone will come looking for us, right?”

  Generally speaking, yes

  You clearly sent out    communications

  And abided by all the   rules        But you signed up with the enabler’s United Toxic Foundation, while everyone did sign up for a basic war - Palpatine’s things that one kid in the E for for everyone Minecraft let’s play role-play that insists everyone be allowed to swear

Like yeah everyone agreed not to do that       But you still don’t kick him

And the second you avoid accountability   things were on rocky basis

  You can kick him to a higher level of accountability

     (Or lower)

   But not accountability

   I don’t think that’s coming back from levels this   tox

 And     Everyone knew      it

   Including      this      guy

  “ let’s get the power restored     , so we’re here to be found”

    REASSURING

    Also if you could do them   why were you wasting time?

I know the address they’re assholes who don’t care about their own        life

But still dude

 Logic sin

  [not storytelling]

 Holding a bit too long on his face   for a jump cut

Ships

“ All our battle convoys will be sent to guard our   supply lines,”

 Meanwhile them selling them out

 Including yours   Skywalker

  Nice friends      you have there,       Plo Koon

 “i’m sorry we can’t risk any more ships with the rescue mission”

 Any more

   Meaning you sent some

   “wait just because there hasn’t been any survivors...”

    Dude

   Bit too animated

   Like holding on the thin string of     orders

  And      still it should be                                stunted

Even     under the order of                                         ‘feel sad’       their eyes would still be moving around like they don’t know what                                        they’re doing

“ doesn’t mean they won’t be any this time,”

  Animation...a little choppy

 Like beforehand the stiff moment really worked with the fact that they were children

        That I thought it was   intentional

  This little awkward bit of moment   doesn’t

 Maybe it’s the     overall movement of an of Ashoka as a   character

   It doesn’t work

  “ boldly spoken for one so young,”

    And almost unrealistically     so

    If not for the string of   orders

  I could possibly be reasoned by   Plo    issuing an overriding effect

 Assuming he was her first     and longest caretaker

  His order    if I’m in danger do this      Might still be   in system

But    it   wouldn’t   cause     an   outburst     like     that

  Not     that     loud

  Or   emotional        at    least

 Just     monotonously      Repeat         ing          the      line

 Which   would    still    get    the   same   reaction

Working          better       with          the       military        child      soldier      theme

  “ Yes she is learning from Anakin,”

      They’re child soldiers

          They’re both still operating under your    orders

 Anakin likely taking her up under   your orders

[If Common sense is      to be       believed]

   If anything ‘she sounds like   Plo Koon,’ would be a better   option and highlight the   his-tory, they have   together as well as makes sense why   she would be   sent 

 “ Excuse my Padawan,”

  Excuse that     bullshit

    [I have a thing against        un child like          behavior]

   “ I will deploy as   instructed     master,”

  Ahsoka      [turns her back and     leaves]

   I swear     if this leads   into a fight

And     one     with     them          not    talking             like         robots

Are   emoting

I’m    calling     bullshit

  If they’re not just repeating orders at each other

“Ahsoka,”

    How long do you think Anakin heard that tone of   voice?

    [Because he’s not doing it on his own]

  Little more     disappointed computer    needed   Too much   vitriol         But     Still     valid

  “if   anyone   could   survive,”

Stunted     tone     good

  Few    jumps     in   logic

And   conclusions      that     don’t     think     they   could’ve    ordered

 But   overall   serviceable

 “I don’t   understand,”

 “what you don’t   understand,”

Well there are remarkedly   a few bumps here and   there,     This does play out     The way two   assumed authority   kids     would    play out

 Good job writers,   actors   and   animators,     you     did     a   good   job

  “....Jedi protocol,”

   Know your place       My Padawan

   “Know your place,”

    Too          much         Energy

   “Admiral,”

     Anakin  

      Has too           much energy  

      And perso          -nality

      Never    mind             it’s fine

        “ isn’t that              risky?”

           No, approaching/confronting an enemy from only one Direction when you know they have an unpredictable weapon, is risky

                And stupid

                This is a patrol                and as such                   it’s a relatively good move

           “ The mystery weapon out there,”

            No, Plo Koon       wouldn’t have found himself             in that situation         had he done this

     Also are you mouthing off       to      a superior

   Fair       enough          you’re             older            and            have          nothing             to            fear            from               a             child

          But       you              agreed             to              serve                  under              said                child

           Stop            breaking           immersion

     I       like       the      fact      that      they   immediately      show      that    Anakin‘s   superiors       are   abusive        to        him

 While    it’s     true   Anakin     broke     code       by   addressing   someone       of      lower        rank

  This    dude      is     lower    than     him   

(And       older)    And   still   gives   back   toxicity

(No ne    Reflect   ed)     Too

 “It might be,”

 “But I know you     won’t argue my orders,”

Wow,        Not a really good picture of    Obi-Wan    we’re painting

 He possibly   (very often)    compared   Skywalker     to his       in superiors    Derogatorily            Or   at least gave him     an order     to do   so

 Yikes!

 Come     on       Snips      

   Come on          [Pet name]

    Bit       too      much   personality

    But     Still     managed      a     lot

“The      air         in      here            is   getting          a         bit          stale,”

    Then        stop         using           it             up

       And           focus              on             fixing

       “Don’t           look             at             me                it’s             Boost               sir,”

             Tox

*also       no one keeps a plant      on them?

    “He only takes a bath when    he’s        on      leave,”

   Dude seriously not cool   throwing someone under the bus     like that

      “ save it work on fixing the   pod,”

   Yeah you’re running out of air    and this seems to be the only dude that doesn’t wanna die

   “ Not your jokes,”

  They’re toxic anyway

So the air quality isn’t getting much   better

“ Do you think we’ve got a chance,            General?”

You have several   chances  

You have a   Jedi     on board

You could      doggy       paddle      to     the   nearest   station

“I know if we walk together we will stay alive,”

 No, you’ll run out oyour oxygen, and die

Also the rest of you are doing       nothing

Lay down      And save some oxygen

If you’re not going to be   helpful

Someone will find us

  Yeah, God

Or, in this case, hell

   If you believe in      that sort of thing

         And                Not          secure       nothingness

“ With      all      due respect,”

Strategically        it   doesn’t     make     sense       for   someone          to      come       look        for        us

  Yeah     you’re       all     enablers       no        one      has        more   inherent     worth      than      the     other

   If I was in command I’d be hunting that weapon down

 Humans are more important than weapons

    Our decisions decide       whether our time together          Will be pleasant          Or        non-       pleasant

 I value your life 

   Involved in this war that will likely take it

   “-more than finding that weapon”

As   noted   that’s       a   valid   thing

But   doesn’t    have    much      value       in       an    enabling         war       and         a         poisoned    generation

   “Sir,      there’s        another       pod           out        there,”

    No      duh

   You    launched      from      the     same     place

  The            only        people     dead       are       the      ones         that       ran       into       that      debris

   And   exploded         On    contact

 There     was         a       gulf      of     flame

 Likely     from      the     impact       of      the      ship

  But     no   indication     that   anyone      else          died

 (Not       like      he   could’ve     just   willed      them     out      of     the     way     with     the   force        Or     not   splurged      on        the   exploding   escape    pods)

 “If only if we had power we could contact them,”

  Again you should be working on that

 Also what would that do?

 You’re both

 ‘helpless’

   In the    pods    how   about      we just wave   Hello   when the viewfinder   comes back around?

Because that implies it will   rotate

 *Waves hand*          See?

  Completely      preventable

   Can     get out of this situation     at any time

   How?

  Like that glass is supposed to be   surprisingly strong

  Like plastic

I’m calling   bullshit

“They’re dead,”

One-hand    that extremely sucks        (The loss of life is a     terrible       thing)     Then again     completely     preventable

“ Someone         busted their pod       wide open,”

    Oh,         that’s clever         writers

      But      that looks shattered        from the impact

     That glass       is some           weird            stuff

       Really           I’m           just        sinning            the           fact               that           they         would          have         glass       anywhere           on            this      supposed           to          be         very       durable        space        pod

     Like        that        shit’s             a      safety         risk    regardless       of   where         it      is

 Time      to ravage their ship for any supplies  

  What, they’re dead?

They       won’t      be     using       it

  And         this         is   supposed       to       be        a      ‘life        or         death     simulation,’!

  “ We’re        not         alone        out            here!”

   Really?!

   Also       this        is      why         it’s         a      good       idea       to      get       down,    fix        the           ship       And     Get     Out

  (Why      you    even      have      a     window      when   cameras    would   suffice         ...)

 “ Set those coordinates,           R2,”

    Cool

  “ I should tell you why       I spoke up    before,”

    That     would      be     nice

But     if it’s Overinvolvement of Plo Koon       in your          upbringing

    A few things should be         more   obvious

    “You don’t have to explain,”

      Anakin        was taught not to question                                         things

       Including dedication to            previous scouts

    Oh, the deadpan

Ahsoka             is having a bit too much   reaction

But ot’s justified    in      confusing          orders

   Good start

 Oooh 

 That’s      a lot of Ships

   Nice music

   Very uppity

   With a sense of     authority

    Our ships    are in defensive formation          sir

 “Oh Obi-wan,”

 “Alright commander     I’ll check on Anakin’s progress,”

  ASSUMED  A U T    HORITY!

 “Admiral,”

 You’re not     supposed to be here

 “How       goes        escort,”

He looks    terrified      of him

  Convoys     Are     preceding on schedule general

The   fact    he’s   used    to     answering     to   him    says   something

“No          sign of enemy                           activity,”

Liar

 “and      where’s        Skywalker,”

    Susp.ic

     “The         general felt the redeployment of this fleet would increase our defensive perimeter,”

        Dude’s            really on his case on respecting the            Council’s orders

       “I see        thank you            Admiral       that will be all,”

    Nice       chat

  Problem         Sir

“Anakin     has       just   redeployed    himself,”

  How        is     that     sus?

  Didn’t          You       Give           Him        Orders?

   Someone had to have given him some orders       that got missconstrued

    Again

   Then    someone       else      gave      him    orders?!

Weird

Rt,     set up the     scanner

Mystery Weapons    

No Rt,   tune the scanner     for life forms     Highest sensitivity

Interesting    Anakin was given more   orders      To value human   life          over objects/      The   Mission

Interesting enough   this could’ve been     what they referred to   as any more ships

As an      Anakin   and     Ahsoka    had   already    been   assigned

And   given   specific   orders   by someone   who spends more time with Anakin therefore has more authority   to ignore the other orders

My   moneys     on   the     chancellor

He’s    supposed   to be   grooming   Anakin

And     it makes sense     he could get away     with     a    “no other Jedi” order       without including       himself

Not to mention     get more time       with Anakin   to justify     the authority   override

I would   also   make     sense

Given   Obi-Wan’s    -bluff-?      (Whether      you   believe       he      did       or      did      not         know     about      the       order)           That        he          was     surprised         that       Anakin         wasn’t       responding          to           his         seniority*

 *Face   Value

“ Why   would     we      Scan     for   lifeforms      to     find      an   enemy   weapon?”

 Too     much        energy

Droids

“The Abogado system”

Too     much    amazement

   More    ‘statement’       needed

   Smirk

     Do you know normally I would        criticize this        but it has the perfect          half           assed         energy

      So           good job everyone involved         that took  skill

    “ so it’s fine when you don’t follow what the council      says,”

  Ooh       that’s a          miss

Doing   what    the   Jedi   Council   says   that’s   one  thing

 How     we     go   about      it,      that’s   another     thing

 That could possibly count for double   answers

  And does count for   misconstrued orders

Considering a lot of orders can be fit into a          lifetime

Some do contradict and mix   to form up     interesting   combinations

And results

“that’s what I’m trying to teach you   my young Padawan,”

Good   answer

“So   you   always   meant      to    come    out   here    for   survivors,”

Better      Read

“Live are in danger of     Ahsoka,”

“We just     can’t turn   our backs   on them,”

“That’s       what        I,”          No        good       try      that’s       too      much     emotion

   Tip         toeing        into   emotion   adult

  Watch it

   “ I know              But        the        way        you         said         it          was       wrong,”

     Now Anakin’s following

     Got to watch that        realistic tone

     It’s hard      not to write   emotional characters

   But it makes   the moments when they are   all the more sweeter

I’m really looking for that   ‘I realized my life was a lie’ moment

“We haven’t got much     time-”

  How?

“No           that’s not it-”

   Time for the   idiots!

     Well honestly the time with our Villains - enablers               - are just as       entertaining

it’s slow burn            But decently so

“We       don’t   want      to       make     things         worse,”

  “How      can       we        make     things     worse?”

 Death isn’t fun

“ When        you      ask       for      trouble,        you      should        not           be   surprised      when        it      finds        you,”

    OK      Boomer

    Who        has        never         helped          at         any          point             in          this        procedure              (And             is              the             big                g               est               enabler              of           anyone              here)                *Tox

“ I think trouble already found us, sir”

   Good job!

What if we connect these two     wires right here

It’s an     electrical   puzzle game

 I thought   something   was   actually   broken

“ I’m     getting        something,”

 Great

There are 14 minutes left

What goes wrong?

Despite     maybe a   fight

 Oof

 They managed to figure   it   out   quicker

Now we get to listen to someone dying

In       extreme      detail 

  “That signal is weak, it must be close by,”

    Uh, what?

     I think          he might’ve        misspoke

       What?!

      That’s            a         giant         Crane!

       I        don’t        know          what         to        expect

   But      that      was      not         it!

   Go          Get         ‘Um          Boys

    They’re        Normal         Droids

   “Pod—”

   “The       Droids          Are      Cutting      Behind        Us,”

Cutting.   through

   They      just      sat       by and watched as their friends die

  And we know    

Plo Koon can move   the   ship

Brutal

“ Things got a lot worse,”

 And you watched    it happen

 Soco       -paths

 “The Scanners are practically useless “

   How?!

   The Ship left

Shouldn’t the jamming signal   be gone too?

“ Got anything    on the emergency channel    R2?”

How   do you not?

Also   

please save those guys

Like they’re enablers

But I’m a fan of   accountability

Not       death

You   can’t   hold   dead     people      accountable

“ We   might    find   something    you   don’t   want    to   find,”

“ he’s     one      of     my   oldest   friends,”

 That      is     the   perfect    tone   good    job

-everyone

“It was Master Plo   Koon Who found me   and brought me to the temple   where I belonged,”

Oh yeah   that doesn’t   smell of indoctrination!

HaHaHa

(help!)

“ I think someone noticed     We’re gone,”

Too much Emotion!

“Anakin,      where      are     you,”

Conflicting     orders

 “ we are making a quick stop      in the Avogadro system,”

  On point

   “A rescue mission I suppose,”

   “You had other       orders, you know,”

    I don’t like that someone else is      ordering you around       And has   higher   authority       Then      Me

“ it   was    my   idea   Master   Obi-Wan,”     

Too    Much     Argh-

“ oh I’m sure,”

You’re both child soldiers    

but I’m going to blame the   oldest

Despite   all orders

“ Well, have you found any survivors?”

 “No,”

 That is an “order to be sad’    Eye flicker

Good job

“ all the more reason for you to join the defensive   escorts,”

Adding   pressure to break   authority

“You’re      Going       to     Miss   the       rendezvous      With       The      Fleet         If      You     Don’t     Hurry,”

    I     want   you     to      be      my    back      up      escape     not         Plo’s

“We’re      on     our       way,”

   So   whoever    gave    him    this   order   didn’t   give      him     an   order    that   would   contradict   joining      the   fleet   afterwards?

“ i’m sorry         Ahsoka,”

  Wait,     what?

  He’s   getting   over   written?

  By    that?

*Squeaking*

  “R2-ooie        Thinks              He’s          Got        Something              On             The           Emer           gency,”

      Please-          Stop          calling          him              R2-ooie

      “Can he trace it?”

        Hopefully

      “Let’s get going,”

        Too-

“ I think they see us,”

Wait,       what  “Uh       -oh,”

   There’s     another        pod         over        there

    The      droids        got            a         lot        less        cute

  “Dadada,”

  Ominous

     Also         the         droids         are            so           cute          for

    Genocidal            Manics

    “It        is        time        to         go,”

   “Go?”

  Yeah your boss has essentially been letting you die this entire time

   “Outside, to destroy the enemy,”

    Again, could’ve done that anytime

   “ I can withstand the pressure for a   brief time,”

      Oh, that’s the     excuse

      To be fair I don’t think humans can be   either

      Not without seriously draining...

      I will give him that   notion

    Not, however,  not moving the     ship

    To safety

In fact all of this is just       badassery Like he could’ve easily rescued those guys and stop the, from the safety of the inside of his pod and without wasting the probably be limited oxygen       By going outside

   But         enablers

    “ Put         your            helmets          on,”

       I’m        about               to suck               all the oxygen             out of this                 damn                     thing

                “If                       you                        say                       so                       sir,”

                  ‘I’m                    willing                        to                         die                         for                         this,”

                   That                       one                       sane                       guy’s                        like

                    “ This                           is                           a                             difficult                      situation,”

                       Y’all                             making                             it

“ There remains a possibility we will   survive,”

 Great!

That’s good enough for     me

Everyone besides that one dude is     down     for   death

Love   how   that   one   dude’s    just   staring    at   them

“Kick    their    ass,”

Also you waited till they were right on top of you

‘Wolf   keep   the   communication   signal   alive’

I mean is the oxygen on, is the   electricity?

Like you could do more than just     fight?

“It’s   our     only   chance   someone   will   find   us,”

Bull

“ Let’s just hope someone’s looking for us,”

This is enabling   hell

“ Are    we still   picking up   that   signal,”

“ but    why    aren’t     we     finding   anybody,”

 Are   you   following   the   signal?

“ I don’t know,”

I don’t know either

“ what’s           a       Jedi        doing       out     here?”

 Real question     what’s a random person   doing out here?

Like   are    these    droids   Plo Koon        fanboys?

*Shoves*

Weak

If is anyone out there,        This is Ahsoka Tano,”

Seriously, you weren’t trying the transmissions   before?

 Oh so those guys had blasters?

And can stick to the roof

But     those   other   two   just   got   blown   out

Didn’t   want     to   fight

Accepted     Death

“I can’t get a clear shot,”

How?

“ Time to put the squeeze on them,”

   What?

“ is there anyone out there?”

Dude not paying attention

 You had                    One Job

“ It’s Ahsoka,” Just press buttons

He can’t hear you   he’s outside in space

“ keep the signal   alive   commander,”

What-

He has   a point

Dude’s    been   slacking

 “Boost       the     reception”

“Argh,”  - - -

“We’re        Losing       The     Signal,”

He   just     threw      a   fricker

Seriously

 That’s all        it   took?

Death   seekers

“Uh-Oh”

 Karma

“ Sir,       we have lost contact with the     Pod hunter,”

 Only    one?

Also yeah, after multiple people died     Plo Koon     finally decide to do something

“ Perhaps some survivors are putting up a fight,”

Big leap 

 More likely your   robots      fell off    something

“ that is something we   cannot   allow,”

Cut        To the   Senate

Okay...

We must find a way to destroy     this mystery weapon

Don’t fly right into it

‘end this war,”

Not gonna   happen

“Dooku     always   seems,”

“Tell     me,!”

Oof

Looks    proper    creepy

“Master Plo       koon     Or         his    fleet,”

“No,   we must fear     the worse,”

After we did nothing to stop it

Go, enablers!

Survivors

On whose   authority?

“His own   I’m afraid”

Bullshit

Someone     gave him an      order

 ‘His own’     only means you don’t know      Or are lying

But I’m going with     face value   for   Obi-Wan

With       His   flight     out   of   position

You trusted a teenager with a fleet

This is your own fault

Oh never mind   his fleet is fine

So Windu     was complaining out of his ass

And his Padawan

so whoever gave the order is fine with him having his Padawan

Oh yeah that does leave   Yoda sus

Twice the trouble     they have become

You gave them the order!     Abusive     old man

A reckless decision,        skywalker          has         made

   Teenagers             can’t              make            decisions

         “ Let                   us               hope                it                is                 not                   a                 costly               one

   “Well general another fine mess we’ve got ourselves into”

   The tox level is getting pretty   high

“ your sense       of humor       is improving,”

   No his ability to be a dick     is

   Well technically it was always there

    He’s just really utilizing it

Right now

  Toxic bastard

“ I don’t mean to say I told you so,”

Dude even a slight bit of accountability is acceptable   around now

Also wouldn’t the com’s guy be more accurate?

Pretty sure     he was the one     trying to guide everyone   away from death

“ I never believed anyone would come looking for us,”

Enablers

“ Anakin, the council was furious”

I decided we couldn’t just give up on Master Plo Koon

Bullshit

“But     the council    feels,”

Please     listen to me     Anakin

Return       at   once

Okay here I’m a little conflicted

It could be literally anyone

“ Yes, Excellency,”

Nevermind

It is him

Good job   writers

“ we have         to        stay,”

Note I’m assuming the vision is a metaphor an action   order

         Because Visions     just no

         Too much emotion

          “Ahsoka,”

He   allows   her   to     do   this

“ sergeant why are you so certain no one is coming,”

Because they’re enablers

And he’s     particularly     negative

He’s       a     person   that’s     his   choice

(That       you’re     enabling)

He     still     toxic

“ We’re just clones,sir,”

That’s          a     good       excuse

 The past trauma doesn’t justify     creating present trauma

You’ll be     held       accountable         the       same

“ we’re meant to be expendable,”

Yeah,   doesn’t justify this bullshit

“ Not to me,”

Bullshit

You       were       

instrumental

In what occurred to     them

You enabled them

* This        Situation

 This      is       like      a       boomer     comforting         a     millennial     abuse       victim!

You       were       instrumental       in     what     happened       to     them

Point       being;          If       you    actually     cared     what       was       happening       you       would’ve       stopped     it       before     it       began!

Now       everyone’s     an       enabler

‘Light’,         assumed to be heroic     turns           into         actual       light

Okay, good

Was worried there. for         a second

Ready tow         cable

 Why wouldn’t -

Okay,       they’re moving him     towards the     door

Good        They        were          running        out       of       oxygen.                  Sometime                            There                       were                      no                       real                      stakes      

           “ Come on                     hurry!”

What’s the rush?

They’re fine

“ are you ok,     master Plo,”

All this work and build up      and he’s dead

“ there’s         someone          in           the        pod,”

That       poor           guy

Pretty       sure        he       was           the       one       who       least         wanted       to      die

“argh,       argh,”

Oh       now       there’s       health       problems

Now     that       they’ve         been       rescued

Was     talking      fine       just           a        few           minutes       ago

Sudden        medical     droid

When     both         Anakin         and           Ahsoka           should            know           how         to          do           first          aid

   Will          they          be          alright?

      Not               at                that                pace               they             won’t

And     with        that         acting 

 “The         pressure       suits       provide          some     protection”

   Some?            They              were       completely         fine           up           to            this        point

  “ but           they         require           a     medical       frigate,”

  Why....

 Did they bother...?

Bringing you?

   “I         will     stabilize      them        sir,”

  How?

             Pics                      or                         it                       didn’t                 happen

            “Your                     men                      are                      safe                    now,”

                Dude                        he’s                   sleeping

“were      there       any       survivors,”

IDK, Mister      I′m gonna.   sit-around       while-     people-      Die!

       Probably          would’ve                 killed               them                 himself

 This        was         his     favorite        unit

 Hahaha

*Fake         Guilt*

 After        he       caused           and           let           all           of          it       happen

‘Hunters’

    You          let           it     happen

    And          them

But      mostly         you

    Authority        -claimer

“ I’m           sorry,”

   Not        her         fault

   That.                This         Dude       Is                 An          Asshole

  So          Heading        to           the       big          battle

  Not.             A             word

*Plo’s      voice  

   *No             Plo*

Behind both of them??

Telling this story, why??

To a teenager??

Also       see        he’s fine

“ an ion cannon,”

Standing in front of it     surprisingly didn’t help

“An ion canon,”

 Some thing neither Plo                                                 nor                                                    the Jedi Academy apparently covered

“ neutralizing all power to our ships”

                  ‘Wow, if you knew all about it then why didn’t you make some.                           defenses to prevent from knocking you out’

                     ‘Shh, I’m sacrificing my men!’

                      “ Defenseless,”

                         ‘ yeah we obviously shouldn’t                                     alert the council            right now,’

“ massive vessel approaching,”

Run!

“ shut down the power systems,”

Okay,      Boomer

It’s not like we could contact the council

    While running!

“The droid”

R2-D2

Nearly         gets       everyone       killed

“Sorry       Little     guy,”

Don’t       get         down         or         anything

“ That’s           one            big          cruiser            crusher,”

     Yes            and          this              idiot             went           right            into            it!

*Intense       noises *

   Dude, they’re not going to see them

Yeah       it’s             big

“there’s still no signal from the pod- hunter,”

  That’s - repetitive

  Did you think it         would be 

   Like it’d           suddenly                come back online??

     This stupid quest for            someone else                  would end?

“Reactivate your scanners,”

   Turn it back off and       on           again

    “ We will find who is responsible,”

     Who could be no one

     Or left the system

“ hey what’s         with the lights,”

    “Power’s gone out,”

 Five minutes in         and already complaining

        Also shouldn’t you guys     be asleep

      After the cold vacuum of       space?!

 What did the robot         put you on??

“ Maybe the         ship has returned,”

   Now He’s          panting??

     Like dude,            didn’t even fight!

      We didn’t even            hear or see him get hurt                   at all

       (Only                squeezed!)

           What                 The-

Faker!

*Getting         Caught*.                 “You          are          too       weak,”

Suddenly           and       only       now

 Would           make           more             sense             for            one           of           the         soldier-

              For                      Him-

The             Injur-

Also         doctor,               Maybe                  help              him   To              The           Location,           Summon                   Some               One               Or         Bring          him              to                 Bed

“ Let             me           go           see       what       is     wrong,”

Close

  Uncomfortable                  close                  up                on           face

     Two           soldier            guys        Jump       Ing            Up             -            But            Like           -

 The...         Roles    should               Be                 Reversed

   You.      Should          Be        Him

    You.               Received                More          Damage...

  Anyway!

*Mischief          Music*

  Still             Looking                at         the              ship

While          their             Ship                Hurdles             (Dangerously)          Close               To             a            Star      “We’re            Picking            up            a                    faint               signal         from          a         droid,”

Seriously,        That            was            Five         minutes            ago

 That                  Long?

 Catches                 a                signal?

 Also,           yeah,          so         what?

“One             of             ours,             they’re             right             behind        us,”

 So?

“Move.                        Us                   Into             Attack         Position,”

 Dude,

  1 to 10

   Real              Quickly

  Like he doesn’t even know     anyone’s on there

The ship he’s about to shoot   resembles          A       Wreck

      And              Could         Very         Well               Be                  One

    With         Only         a        droid          On           It

      Like                 Dude            is          Just        Down           To          Blow              Stuff             Up !

     They’re         Coming             Back

      “Are            All           Systems...”

    AHHHHH!

  I paused      At the

  Exactly...

      Wrong

       Time

Five Nights       at Freddy’s         Bullshit

  Anyway,                     After        That        Bull-     terror-        Fuel

 Yeah       Shit’s       fuck     ed

“Is there       A Pro       Blem -s      -ir?”

  “You       for-”

  Seriously,

   That       Dude         Had         One       Use,        Not         Even         Why?

  Power       Back        On

  Which       You    should’ve        done      from       the   beginning!

You’re    smaller         And     faster  

 RUN!

 “Can               I          Be          of      Assistance?”

 NIGHTMARE              FUEL!

*Who-        ever         Tho     ught       This         Thing          Would          Be            Com         Fort            ing?!            !

    That             Is            My         Programming         Sir

    Ah!

“General           I         Don’t        Want       Any       Wit     ness        es,”

 How?

Your   ship      Is   so   big   And     Difficult       To    Maneuver

How?!

 Any     scout      ship   could     out     maneuver!

“En    -er       -gize,”

Still       It         Only       Points         One        Dire       -ction        And        Moves          Like             A           Barrel             Ing            Ox!

   “Program           the          Navi        computer,”

  You- “You             We turned        Off!”                    Forgot                    Him

                        Appreciated but                                Still too                                   Much                                       Sass

    Aww, nice

   He was        gentle

    “ ~~~         Droid,”

   I’m going           to assume       “You nearly               Fucked               Every          Thing             Up,”             Is           What               That            Means

       “ Target             range            almost              locked,               sir,”

         SWIRVE

         They’re                   Not               Gonna                Make                     It               If              They              Don’t            Move             Slightly                To                The              Left!

    “Program             a      Hyper-drive,”                   What?!!

     “Any where!”

       ???

     “Enemy          ship          target            ed          Gen             er              al,”

   Going         to            the       Prometheus       School            of       running         away          from           things

      (You           Can           Literally             See              The            Ed              ges)...

      Master...

       This              Was             Your              Plan

  Good job     *Turns)

  We’re        Clear

  Plo       Koon         Not      Sitting      Down

   “Errr”

  Possessive

    Like        How        Does             He             Know??

    Now         the       republic         will        learn         of        our        ion       cannon

             ???

            Then don’t-

      Like        a scout-

                     I just                              Don’t                         Think                         They                          Cared

                      Dooku                           Quiet

                      ‘Sidious                                Is                            going                                 To                              Beat                             Our                              Ass

                     “Your                           Failure                           is                           most                      unfortunate,”

   Correction;         *Yours

       “ I will              have              to            discuss               this               with              my                master,”

     “Rawr!”

     Get Back             To            Work’

        There’s                 That           Abuse                 Of              in superiors,              I was                    Looking              For

     ‘Roger,          Roger’

  *Grievous            Head       Pressed           To        That           Board,”

     Ship             Brig            ade

      Impress            Ive

        Dock            ed          Sur            Prised

      “Thanks               for               getting             us              out            of          there            in            one           piece,”

      ‘It’s           More          Than           Master           Koon             Would             ‘ve           done!”

        Even                if              you           have              no         choice          since         you’re          just              a        compilation             of          orders !

      Too             Much        Personality           Also         Didn’t         Happen

“General Plo said someone would come for us,” nobody said in the most enabling way and seemed to imply enablers

   Also, again, child soldier

Skywalker it’s time to give our report to the council

    “Right-”

    That            Just       Doesn’t-           Hit            Right

      Too          Much           Person-          Ality

  “C’mon      Ahsoka,”

  “You       Want        Me      There,”

  He needs you   there

    The       Council           Pret       -ty            Much          Ordered         Him            To            Take          Care                  Of             You           (If we’re          follow-ing           non-stupid              logic?)

     “ I figure           because            of                before,”

      He HAS TOO

      “Ahsoka,”

       ‘I was ordered to            by a bunch of Deranged sociopaths             who think child soldiers             was a good idea,”

        “You did              A              Great job,”

         [Sigh]

        Line work,            Wasn’t so            Good, near              the end

     “ but if I’m getting in trouble              for this,              You           share            the       blame         too,”

        I             feel           like          there        was          a        tortured         attempt            to       connect            it          back          to       Dooku          and     grievous        but         that         only      works   because        they’re       adults         capable          of        Malician,”

  “ Right       besides          you       Sky Guy,”

                           Alright

                        First off; 

                   Misleading title

                   Nothing really                  escalates

             (Nothing really rises                Except for               the Introductory                sec                            Which                    will                   make                  you                    feel                       like                  you’re                    in                high tides

               Before                    Red                     Please                       For                    the                    Love                       of                      You,                      Skip                        to                          the                         Red)

             As we            don’t really           have a scale

       Enablers do things

       It’s not really a scale of an            intensity

       Nothing basic yet

     The plot I feel was on the     weaker side

     Finding a weapon from     out of nowhere

     ‘ oh wait we know everything it does,’

      Didn’t really come to a conclusion

    But assuming they might follow it   up

    As for now I feel that    they really could’ve gone for a       Fight ending

  Really hyping   up this weapon

  In Master Koon’s       Return

 Only for     us     to see nothing

  In      terms of    an equal battle

  But, hey, maybe that comes in to play later

         The one thing I can say really improved

   Or was just better/ Good to see

                  Was the better writing                          Of the                      Child                           Characters

             Although

          There were     a few       minor           Slip          Ups         Here        And       There         Especially         Near          The             End

         Where there was a line

          “ You did a great                                         job!”

          That sounded...

         Well it sounded like something from one of those cheap         TV shows

        Or commercials

     * hopefully not too harsh

I don’t    hold    Any    grud      ges

        It was just an awfully recorded line

        Any way next is; Shadows of Maleviolence

[wolfmatirx]

13 Things You Can Do Right Now to Motivate Your Tech Team in 2019

Handling an all-star tech team starts with the right people--hiring credible individuals and maintaining an open mind regarding what they will attract --and never really ends if you are doing it right. In my previous blog, I shared with some of my adventures on how best to make an All-Star Tech Fantasy Team. In this guide, I'm going to talk about 13 things you can do immediately to inspire your technician team.

Who are we speaking about?

Millennials now take the largest portion of their international workforce and the percentage is significantly higher in tech companies.

While they've altered the dialogue about what people want from work, we have reached a country where mild-to-moderate pampering is forecast to be a typical part of job: fully stocked bars, catered lunches, and also the occasional staff retreats. In startups and big companies alike, such generous, borderline lavish perks have increasingly become the standard, not the exception.

But the question is, how does the ordinary employee actually use the Xbox One at the company gambling den, or is he too busy for that? Does she need to edit spreadsheets sitting on this purple beanbag? Are employees really pining for ping-pong tables and much more "rest time" at work (presuming their boss won't give them the stink eye after that)? Or are those perks miss the point of what actually does motivate your tech team?

So what do they need?

Regular Review of Performance-Based On Tangible Metrics

'Of everything we have done to enhance employee satisfaction, the best impact has come from our daily performance encounters. There we concentrate on how our staff did with essential metrics that the day before.

Motivate your tech team: feedback

Feedback

This millennial cohort is hungrier for opinions and a clear path of growth than any other generation.

1 way to feed that hunger is creating a mentorship program where junior employees are matched with senior administration. Encourage routine weekly meetings that have a nurturing environment for workers to ask for review, get compliments, and air grievances. Mentors lead together with the responsibility of their mentee's professional development -- by outlining goals to delivering reviews.

Employees will feel much more strongly linked to the company if someone with skill and ability helps them propel forward.

Give More Shout-Outs

Multiple around happy hours or pricey dinners aren't the only ways to celebrate victory. If an individual went over and beyond the call of duty, a simple company-wide email or handwritten note can be just as powerful.

Try devoting the end of each all-hands meeting to give employees an chance to publicly recognize somebody else's work. This seems simple, the positive effect on a person's sense of self-worth and value to the company is priceless.

Rethink Team Structure to Motivate Your Tech Team

A recent Deloitte survey found that 63% of millennials think their leadership abilities aren't being fully grown, making them much more inclined to switch jobs.

Buck the trend by producing a structure for new initiatives which give individuals who might not be at the managerial level the opportunity to direct and take ownership of projects. It reveals a willingness to invest in your employees' ability while raising their morale and dedication.

While you're at it, do away with closed-door meetings. Nothing produces a sense of seclusion -- or fuels the gossip mill -- like seeing the same group of individuals whisper behind the glass walls of this conference space. If it's not strictly confidential, speak out in the open.

Switch Perks Into a Motivator

If your business finds itself at the financial position where scaling back perks becomes necessary, consider sharing the cost of supplying free lunch or gym memberships so it becomes a concrete figure to employees. 9 out of 10 will probably be amazed by how large the number is, guaranteed.

Here are the earnings figures we need to reach to bring it back. Instill the message that in case you want it, you got to work for this. By doing so, you are going to learn quite quickly who truly believes in what the company is attempting to achieve, and who's quite literally in it to get the free lunch.

When executed successfully, perks do exactly what they're supposed to do: boost productivity, inspire your tech team, and foster a stronger sense of internal community.

As a venture-backed startup, these ups are especially large. So creators may feel that the downs don't deserve public attention among their own team. Fight this urge.

Open New Opportunities For Them

Aside from a great civilization, a recognition system, and an enjoyable work environment, the key thing to inspire your technician team is new chances. For example: handling a new project for which we may not have shown skills yet. Believing in the team and each person, and demonstrating it daily, is the best morale booster one could give.

Give Them Work-Life Flexibility

Propel your technician: work-life balance

Nevertheless, the secret regarding the equilibrium is about acknowledging the pendulum will swing anywhere from zero to 100. And it may change- per week. Allowing workers to plan ahead based on upcoming work or personal deadlines and to receive the job done and where they need makes the happy staff and contributes to better productivity.

At Wolfmatrix we speak on Slack and via video conferencing. In addition, we utilize Trello and JIRA to assign projects and also to ensure deadlines are met.

Heal Them with Respect

Respect is the title and keeping employees happy is the sport. 'Respect' may sound easy and maybe even clichéd. Nonetheless, it is heartbreaking to see just how many businesses and managers still aspire to employ the best employees in the talent pool, trust them with the works and responsibilities, expect them to create excellent results as a bona fide worker but somehow wind up treating them such as sleazy shirks whose supreme aim in life would be to deceive the employers. There's not any quicker way to demotivate an employee than that.

Personally, a tool I vow by to cope creatively with my mates (who have diverse sets of abilities and openness ) is your Skill-Will-Matrix.

Have a peek at this and you will not again danger micromanaging your employees who only needed your advice. You will never again increase responsibilities hoping to inspire your technician team whereas all they wanted was a bit of enthusiasm in the job.

Instill A Sense Of Belonging To A Larger Goal

Imagine this; you own a wagon filled with products you need to market in the nearby village. There, a group of merchants are awaiting you. You're leading the wagons in the front and directing directions. A bunch of men are pushing the wagon from behind to make sure things are moving ahead.

There are hills and streams and gardens along the road. Flowers blossoming, butterflies trees and flying dance. But just the chief sees it. What do the men pushing the wagon see? A wagon filled with loads they need to push until somebody comes to purchase them!

Motivate your team

Yes, the leader is you. The merchant is the client. The wagon is your business, the products being your services or products. The opinion is the vision and those men are the workers. They don't see exactly what you see unless YOU tell them what lies ahead and how beautiful your perspective is!

Got my point?

Keeping staff happy and also to motivate your technician team normally boils down to rest and benefit. They need the chance to recover from the cost that tough work requires. Ensuring there is a lull between projects goes a ways to prevent burning out your workers.

Show Them The Results Of Their Work

I discover that software development teams would be the happiest when folks utilize and appreciate the goods they deliver. Pride of ownership is greatest when we hear continuous feedback from actual customers even if these opinions is sometimes negative. There's nothing worse than working on a product which no client is using and not one of your employees care about.

Challenge Them

If you're searching for engaging top gift, give your team members jobs that challenge them, with plenty of opportunities to learn and develop professionally. Give developers the chance to touch the entire heap and perform with a great deal of different technology. Let them find out what they like doing before they narrow their focus. Permit them to take the lead on high-profile projects. However, make sure they have realistic deadlines and suitable service to do a fantastic job. Encourage team members to speak at public events, write articles and volunteer locally.

'My staff enjoys challenges, so that I enjoy giving them puzzles, scenarios, and job issues to decode. When they solve it figure it out, they're enthusiastic and amped to keep on working.' Chalmers Brown of Due shares his tried and tested strategy.

Need a shortcut to inspire your tech team or seek the services of a driven developers' team with the hassles? Wolfmatrix can be of assistance!

[fountainpenguin]

WORLDBUILDING NOTES FOR FRAYED KNOTS +

No fanfic update this week, but I have a worldbuilding dump of some notes instead. It starts out with a simple ref sheet of color meanings we’ve previously discussed (Magic and zodiac bonds), but mostly discusses Anti-Fairy culture. These notes mostly apply to Frayed Knots stuff and should come up in the story bit by bit, but story flow takes priority over info-dumping, so this is here if you want to know how things work sooner rather than later.

Slight spoilers I guess, but nothing that’s going to affect your read. It’s just stuff like, “This is what daily life in the executive building is like”, “This is why Anti-Fairies respect the land”. And like I said, the color cheat sheet was included.

I’ll probably throw a link to this post in every time I do a Knots chapter update, because none of you can stop me. Who knows? Maybe you’re one of those people and you want to like, open it in another tab for reference. It’s possible.

I just like reminding you guys that my fanfics are needlessly complicated because I like micromanaging everything. You don’t need, nor would I expect you to, memorize everything, so it’s nice to have a ref sheet around at times.

GENERAL THINGS TO REFERENCE

THE CLOUDLANDS

Legal names of Fairy World / Anti-Fairy World / Pixie World and name meanings

Cloudland maps (Time zones included) 

Cloudland flora and fauna

FAIRYKIND BIOLOGY

Fairy social ladder / caste system / subspecies list: Part 1 | Part 2

How Fairykind aging works in my fanfics 

Vague magical races phylogenetic tree

Physiology post

> Anti-Fairies and their pouches 

Fairykind and diseases 

Magic pools

CULTURE

Culture and politics overview post

> Another Fairykind culture post (This one includes the Refracted)

Fairy ethnicities / cultures / architecture post

The Fairy zodiac

> That way more detailed post about the zodiac spirits

> Sunnie’s reference (Other nature spirits possibly to come)

School and cohorts

That post about Anti-Bryndin

The camarilla court / Names and zodiacs

OTHER

My Origin of the Pixies / Frayed Knots parallel timeline

My FOP fanmade terms glossary

My FOP story bible / dump doc

Detailed explanation of how wands work

That page on my blog with links to character ref sheets

Lohai’s reference | Norm’s family tree (Note: I know them all, A.C. doesn’t)

The “Bat cube and associates” tag if you want to see all my Anti-Fairy stuff

Headcanon masterpost list if there’s something else you’re looking for

Meanings of the magical colors / moods in more detail

FAIRY ZODIAC:

SEASONS:

SPRING: March 15th - June 19th

SUMMER: June 20th - September 14th

AUTUMN: September 15th - December 19th

WINTER: December 20th - March 14th

Map

Faeheim - Above California; Inkblot - Above Kansas; Luna’s Landing - It was above Spain on the last map but now it’s above England because I messed up while doing this and I’m too lazy to fix it right now. It’s somewhere.

Luna’s Landing is 7 hours ahead of Pixie World and 8 hours ahead of Faeheim. The Divide Gate is located in Greece, on Mount Olympus, and appears on Planes 1-12. The Barrier does not exist from Planes 13+

Fairies who fall out of the cloudlands and into the ocean will drown, unless they can save themselves with magic. Most subspecies struggle to fly with wet wings. Falling out of the cloudlands and hitting solid ground is risky too.

The Refracted refuse to nominate anyone to the position of Robes. The actual robes exist, but the positions are currently empty, as the Refracts don’t believe in placing some people so high above the rest.

The table is always set for them in the Council meeting room, and the meetings always start ten minutes late to give them time to show up; the Council treats them as though they could show up at any time, even though they never do.

MOSTLY THE CLOUDLANDS LOOK LIKE THIS:

Lots of different clouds slightly above and below. Not a great environment for animals, so you don’t see deer wandering around. Some clouds are larger than others. That’s where people build cities. Plane 7 has lots of flat, connected land and is a better environment for wildlife, especially unicorns and such. 

Plane 11 has very few clouds, and they’re super spaced out like distant islands. It’s a dangerous place to fly, especially since Plane 10 is right below it and full of lava and sharp rocks. You would want to traverse Plane 11 in a cloudship.

Skyship - A flying merchant or passenger ship meant to travel outward from Fairy World to other planets. Designed for travel only between Planes 2 and 6 and not intended to travel higher than that. This travel through the universe is called starsailing. We saw docked skyships in “Love Struck Out”. 

Cloudship - Technically a type of skyship. These ships travel from lower Planes to higher ones by sailing back and forth until they find the different Bridges. They are not designed to travel to other planets. Usually a simpler design than the merchant skyships, built for strength to muscle through various harsh environments instead of speed and tourist pleasure. It’s difficult and expensive to travel to the higher planes from lower ones, whereas traveling via Bridge is free, and you get to see the sights. Also it’s just safer that way, usually.

The Bridges have existed for a long time and are hard to create. They sprang up before cloudships did, and the cloudships go and find them. Let’s go with that. Don’t question why they aren’t all in one general location to allow quicker travel. We’re lampshading that plot hole because that would be lame storytelling.

PLANES OF EXISTENCE:

The Planes of Existence are complicated. There’s a general sense that the universe still exists beyond the cloudlands, and that the Planes of Existence stretch on forever. Only certain creatures - namely the Fairykind, as well as their godkids - have the ability to scale the planes. I think they don’t like spreading around word of different Planes to alien races who may want to take over. The Planes stretch on “forever”, but all the Bridges to get higher are located only in the cloudlands. You don’t have to cross the entire universe to reach other Bridges, just the general cloudland area.

You can descend the planes by falling from clouds on higher planes. You have to ascend the planes either using a Bridge, or a wand with a chip that lets you skip them. Fairies and Anti-Fairies live in the Deep Kingdom, divided by the Barrier. The Refracted live in the High Kingdom.

1) Abracatraz, stars, and black holes, 2) Planets (Most famously Earth) 3) Lowlands - Pixie World, Novakiin, Lau Rell, Patio World, Mistleville... Sometimes rains acid from GBA World 4) Barrenglades - Giant Bucket of Acid World, Cherish Jungle, Anti-Pixie Isle 5) Fairy World Proper - Faeheim, Serentip, Amity Headquarters... Lots of "main" Fairy World locations. 6) Fairy World Outskirts - Burger World, Ivory Wand and Comet Blood 7) Wanderplains - Animals and fields; also known as Dairy World 8) Anti-Fairy World Proper - Blue Castle, forests, and small towns; the Eros Nest is on this plane too, on the Fairy World side 9) Anti-Fairy World Outskirts - Very occasional small towns, mostly just a wilderness for roaming colonies; always red / gold like autumn 10) Harsh, fiery world. Lots of rocky cliff areas, tons of lava; famous and popular crystal caves; interesting plants (especially medical herbs) 11) Very open landscape. Few clouds; lots of empty sky; those who travel the planes usually dock cloudships here for easy take-off 12) Hush World - Wilderness; sense of unease / reverence; emormous monuments to ancient races carved into mountains; purple sky

There's some kind of barrier separating the Deep and High Kingdoms. There's a joke to be made about scaling a beanstalk to get higher.

13) Very bright and oddly sunny, grassy world. Now entering the High Kingdom; no Barrier. Hunter / gatherers, not farmers here 14) Dry desert world. Not a lot of water here, lots of sand 15) Crazy windy world. Erosion is intense; few buildings; maybe some windmills 16) Scary World - Basically the Negaverse; Nega-Timmy was born here. Don't ask for specifics because I don't know. 17) Hairy World - Bizarre jungle that's very orange and furry. Flora and fauna are huge. Lots of enormous predators. 18) Complete darkness, landscape difficult to determine, seems mostly rocky. Occasionally lit by geysers and things. 19) Avalon - Most Refracts (especially the Dame Head and pixie refracts) live on this plane. Others live below, not above. Good farmland. 20) Misty swamp world. It's misty and swampy. Fairly dark and spooky. 21) Ice and water world. Planes below this one sometimes get rained or snowed on due to leaks. Plants get watered. 22) Rest stop! More or less. Ships that gather Kiiloëi's water make camp here. A cold, lonely, creepy place. 23) Tír Na NÓg - Alleged ancient home of the Tuatha long ago, current home of the nature spirits; world of cliffs and chasms; "Fairy heaven" 24) The Kolobian Plane - Kiiloëi (the sacred rosewater fountain)

BRIDGES TO PLANE 2 (EARTH)

Rainbow Bridge (Plane 5) - Main Fairy World Bridge - Faeheim, Central Star to Dimmsdale, California (USA)

Pastel Bridge (Plane 7) - Secondary Fairy World Bridge - Hiero Town, Lower West to Cairo, Egypt

Night Bridge (Plane 6) - Main Anti-Fairy World Bridge - Shadeblink, Far West to Tasmania -  Destroyed pre-Origin of the Pixies

Shadow Bridge (Plane 4) - Secondary Anti-Fairy World Bridge - Crowfeld, High South to Ireland - Destroyed pre-Origin of the Pixies

Bit Bridge (Plane 3) - Pixie World Bridge - Inkblot City, Central Star to Mushroom Rock, Kansas (USA)

Dot Bridge (Plane 4) - Anti-Pixie World Bridge - “Connects” Anti-Pixie Isle, Lower West, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; never finished

FIVE FAIRY WARS:

The Sealing War - This is the war that was taking place during the “That Was Then” Prompt. It went on for eons, supposedly, and resulted in the fall of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the deaths of many Aos Sí. The nature spirits were sealed in their Temples during this war. Daoists believe the Tuatha and a race of people called the Molpa-Pel (mole people) were sealed inside the Earth at the end of this war, and that after the Tuatha died, their magic nourished the planet and caused plants to grow. The Zodii just believe the Tuatha were killed off. Nature spirits shaped the Earth.

The Sacred Revolution - Occurred shortly after the Sealing War. Was mostly the Fairies making a big stink to the rest of the universe that they exist and should be treated as big kids in the universe. There wasn’t much fighting actually going on. More of a cold war than anything else. It was a big deal to the Fairies though, so it’s considered one of the Fairy Wars.

The Struggle With the Darkness - “Wishology” stuff. Ancient Fairies chased the Darkness off. I’m still unclear about the rate at which Turbo Thunder ages.

The [War of the] Sunset Divide - A war that started before H.P. was born and finished thirty years after. His dad fought in this war. It was after this war that the Barrier went up, dividing Fairy World from Anti-Fairy World. Before then, Fairies and Anti-Fairies could travel between the two. My original plan was that all sky in the cloudlands used to be blue and this was the war that split Fairy World from Anti-Fairy World and gave Anti-Fairy World a red sky, but I’m uneasy about it now. Maybe it’s just metaphorical.

War of the Angels - The war between Fairies and Anti-Fairies over human godchildren (called angels back then). This war was mentioned in the Season 7 episode “Balance of Flour” and gave us the annual Bake-Off. We’ll see this war in both Origin and Knots.

The 1st and 2nd Creature Wars exist too, as we learned in the “Opportunity” Prompt. Not much is known about those now except that the 2nd one is the one that drove the Beasts underground. Neither will be important in Knots.

DAOISM VS. ZODIISM

Daoism - H.P. and most pixies consider themselves part of this religion, as do most Refracts. Daoists believe in the literal splitting apart of the Aos Sí into Fairies, Anti-Fairies, and the Refracted. They believe that what has come apart will come together again after death, and that three counterparts will become a single creature in the afterlife: Daoine Síth. 

There is a book of scripture (known only as King Nuada’s scripture at this time) and it’s custom to avoid using magic on Thursday, the holy day of the week. There are no deities of creation that are worshiped or prayed to. It’s a religion of reflection and self-actualization. The belief is that you should strive to become the best that you can, and help others become the best that they can. However, some Daoists do pray, just to the general universe. They kneel down and place their right hand in front of their forehead, thumb curled in so it touches the palm. The same sign (minus the kneeling) means “I come in peace” in Fairy culture.

Daoists tend to freak out around fairy dogs, who are said to carry souls to the afterlife. Actually, they are said to SWAP souls, switching bodies with those they catch sinning. Daoists believe fairy dogs can die, and that if you die while in the body of a fairy dog, you don’t go to heaven. You just cease to exist. Certain sins will likewise cause you to “die a dustless death” and lose your right to heaven.

H.P. actually doesn’t follow most of the Daoist teachings. He just believes in life after death. He was raised Daoist, so he just shrugged and went along with it. During the time he was growing up, there wasn’t separation of church and state. Daoism was taught in history class at school. Thus, it’s basic fact for him. He considers Zodiism a waste of resources (Temples, murals, monuments, time, etc.) and sees it as a philosophy that teaches you can do whatever you want without consequences, even if you’re hurting people.

Zodiism - Anti-Cosmo and many Anti-Fairies follow the teachings of this philosophy. There are no “holy” texts, as Zodiism is a philosophy, not technically a religion. However, there are myths about the nature spirits. Zodiism is basically, “Astrology meets Greek gods”. The Zodii believe that Tarrow, the cosmic jellyfish and deity of fate and destiny, selects a path and soulmate(s) for everyone. You can choose to reject his plans, but you won’t have his influence in your life anymore, and things will probably go very wrong very soon. The Zodii also believe in reincarnation after death, and that you’ll either return as one of your descendants or as some aspect of nature, such as a tree or stream.

While there are hundreds of nature spirits, the main seven control the elements and are therefore placed on the Fairy zodiac. The days of the week are named after them. It’s said that their power is strongest on their day of the week, not to mention their year in the seven-year cycle. Similarly, the Zodii believe that the day of the week and year of the zodiac cycle affects the flow of luck that influences you. They tend to be very superstitious people, and will postpone events until the right moment- for example, marrying in a Love year.

Then there are bonds. The Zodii believe in fate, and that the year of your birth has a major impact on your personality. As such, they believe in automatic compatibility between certain signs on the zodiac, and automatic incompatibility between others. It’s not unusual for a Zodii to refuse to even have so much as a one-night stand with someone of an “incompatible” zodiac.

Anti-Cosmo considers Daoism sacrilege. As far as he’s concerned, the nature spirits are very real. They interact with mortals who are willing to accept and believe in them. When they’re bored or angry, they cause mayhem in the forms of floods, quakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, blizzards, and so on. When they’re pleased, everyone is blessed. There is documented proof of the nature spirits. Less so for the Daoine. Anti-Cosmo doesn’t believe in becoming Daoine after death like H.P. does.

Other belief systems exist in the cloudlands. These are just the only ones that are going to come up in my works.

ANTI-FAIRY BASICS

What is Hy-Brasil?

All of Anti-Fairy World. It encompasses nothing else. It literally just means Anti-Fairy World.

The Zodii (usually Anti-Fairies) believe Hy-Brasil to be the name of the land spirit (Note: The land consists of clouds and stuff; land does not mean only Earth or dirt). Hy-Brasil is considered to be a spirit bear and one of the Wise Ancients, but in a sort of dormant state most of the time.

Non-Zodii believe their ancestors manually created the cloudlands.

What is the Hy-Brasil landscape like?

Rule of thumb: Lots of crags, crevices, lava pools, acid pools... Not the kind of place you want to build a stable home. Rarely is the land flat, so you’d have to do some massive work. There are also rivers and forests (usually with leaves black, red, or orange... but not green). 

Near the border with Fairy World, it’s warm enough that the rivers remain in liquid form. The farther away you go, the colder it gets. The rivers and lakes freeze (though acid and lava pools don’t). Sunnie, the Water spirit, is highly associated with cold and ice for this reason. Ice is a form of water, after all.

Most Anti-Fairies deeply value the land and don’t want to damage it and offend Hy-Brasil. Their buildings are usually made of materials taken from Earth instead (or from the Fairy World spirit, Tír Ildáthach, when they really want to be spiteful). The Blue Castle was allegedly a gift from the spirits, so it’s ritzier.

The cloudlands are a cold realm as a whole. Anti-Fairy World even more so than Fairy World. Changes of the seasons are limited. I imagine that leaves still fall off trees at certain times of the year, but you won’t lose crops to frost. Apart from a few rare exceptions, it doesn’t rain or snow in the cloudlands.

Why aren’t the Regions named after their colors / Why don’t the Temples match up to the Region colors?

Because I didn’t think this through and I have regrets Because the Regions were named generations before the position of Council Robes were created. The first members of the Council each took a Robe, and that color became associated with their Region.

It would also be very offensive to the Zodii if all seven zodiac colors were on well-dressed authorities gathered in one place, and yet the people wearing them hadn’t been born in the zodiac year whose color they were wearing. 

Thus, the colors don’t match up with the Temples because if they did, the Zodii would make a stink about it. Council Robes are elected, but if the Robes were all the zodiac colors, the Zodii would insist they represent nature spirits instead of regions and it would be a political nightmare.

Where is the Anti-Fairy capital city?

Luna’s Landing is on Plane 8. It is located in the Blue time zone, which puts it 7 hours ahead of Pixie World, and 8 hours ahead of Fairy World’s capital city, Faeheim.

The Blue Castle and Grand Archives building are both counted as part of this city, though the Blue Castle is removed from the main city bustle by a path and drawbridge.

Luna’s Landing can legally be called a city due to the presence of the Love Temple.

What is the Blue Castle and who lives there?

The Blue Castle is the executive building, and it’s like the White House. This is where the High Count, High Countess, the camarilla court, and their families live day to day. And the housekeeping and cooking staff too. 

In Anti-Fairy World, which is usually lacking in stable jobs, the Castle gets lots of eager applicants for housekeeping. The camarilla conduct job interviews as necessary, and the High Count and Countess both stamp the paperwork (usually without looking at it). That sort of paperwork rarely passes through Pixie hands, since it’s pretty quick and easy, and it’s best not to release that information to potential enemies.

In Knots, the staff are referred to as servants because that’s the time period, but rest assured that the position is paid and they can resign if they want to. They pride themselves on working quickly and being unnoticed. But of course, Foop gets his fun out of catching them in the act. As we saw in “Step Back”, he likes wandering around via the housekeeping tunnels. Anti-Cosmo, being both oblivious and the opposite of subtle, never uses them and usually forgets they exist. Even as a kid, he’d rather hang with the camarilla than the servants.

The High Count and High Countess have conjoining offices with a door that shuts between them. They do their political work there. Paperwork and evil plans and stuff. Anti-Cosmo tries to keep things orderly, but he never does- he’s just a cluttered person by nature, since he follows so many trains of thought at once. Anti-Wanda, unsurprisingly, doesn’t do much better.

What is the Grand Archives Building?

The Grand Archives building is the Anti-Fairy parallel of both the U.S. Capitol and the National Archives. And probably other buildings in other countries, but I’m an American, so I know these ones.

This is where census records and other important documents get stored. The lower two floors are a grand public library. The third and fourth floors are where the archives are, which is special access only. On the fourth floor is the open-roofed building where the Anti-Fairy Council meet and do legislative / judicial things; that’s where we see them in the show.

What is Anti-Fairy clothing like?

Much fancier than Fairy clothing. Fairies tend to use color to show off. Style is less important (They like things they can move around in easily, and the general style is loose clothing so nymphs can easily crawl into their parents’ pouches).

Anti-Fairies use style to show off. They have fancy coats, vests, cloaks, the works. As a culture, they favor dark colors for camouflage, making hunting and stalking easier. Additionally, the Fairy zodiac is so heavily associated with its colors. Anti-Fairies only wear colors ceremonially, and then it’s almost always their zodiac color.

There are exceptions to this rule, as it is a tradition, not a law. However, you would likely be shunned were you to wear bright colors outside of certain events. The anti-pixies figured that out the hard way.

Who are the anti-pixies?

Green-furred, yellow-haired, genetically identical bundles of chaos brought to us by “Clash With the Anti-World”. I’m just going to assume that if you’ve been following my works enough to want to read this post, you already know them.

What is Anti-Fairy technology like?

They don’t even have printing presses. Their lighting is torches hanging on the walls, or candles in dishes. They often use scrolls instead of individual sheets of paper. Anti-Fairies also have these things called anti-gravity platters, which are basically floating platters that hold food up high so a roosting Anti-Fairy can reach them easily. The Seelie favor scrying bowls, but Anti-Fairies favor crystal balls for long-distance communication.

We know from the Musical that Cosmo owned a car before he and Wanda were married. I invented these things called cloudcars, based off the car Sanderson was driving during the “Pixie Rap” song. These cars travel through the clouds, jumping gaps between the clouds and stuff. Those aren’t really things in Anti-Fairy society. Anti-Fairies are usually faster fliers than Fairies anyway, due to their wings being tools of propulsion. And, Anti-Fairies live in colonies. They’re social creatures who like to fly together, or poof. Cars are lonely for them. Not to mention it’s often difficult for them to get comfortable thanks to their wings.

Technology changes over time. Above are the things that hold across the ages. There are other nuances. For example, at the start of both Origin and Knots, no one has running water indoors. They have wells and things. Eventually, that will be a thing. Even Anti-Fairies enjoy indoor running water, and like to shower.

As a rule of thumb, Anti-Fairy tech is simpler and often considered “backwards” compared to Seelie tech. Pixie tech is even more advanced than Fairy tech the majority of the time.

What do Anti-Fairies eat?

Depends. Technically, Anti-Fairies don’t need food to survive. However, if they don’t eat well, their health will suffer. Mostly they eat the same food Fairies eat, although Anti-Fairy meals tend to be extravagant. Not a lot of fast food in Anti-Fairy World.

Sometimes, Anti-Fairies do chase after and eat the bugs that flit about their world, for sport or as an actual food source. While it isn’t healthy to survive entirely on that diet, it’s a better alternative than going completely hungry.

As it stands in Frayed Knots right now, the Anti-Fairies hold one of the four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Blue Castle possesses the Dagda’s bottomless cauldron. The Fairies have King Nuada’s unavoidable sword, the Refracted have Lugh’s peacemaking spear, and they all share the Lia Fáil (the coronation stone, which we saw for the first time in “Playing With the Big Kids”).

Marriage customs in the cloudlands?

Such things vary by subspecies, and are details that you don’t really need to know. The only important Seelie one is that the fairy subspecies are said to be monogamous for life, meaning that they “only give their souls away once”, and that they never remarry if their spouse separates from them or dies. It’s fairy culture to take an interest in someone young and stick with them. For example, Juandissimo “gave his soul” away to Wanda, and part of the reason why he can’t move on is because of this. The rest is just him being a clingy type by nature.

The fairies have this tradition called the Year of Promise, which involves engaging in intimacy on the first night of serious courtship, and then spending a year not touching people at all (They wear gloves and socks all the time and avoid skin-to-skin contact). At least, they’re supposed to. When the year is up, they either reinstate their commitment to one another, or agree to separate (if they haven’t already). Supposedly, this helps fairies figure out if they truly want this person to be their one true spouse. Because fairies tend not to remarry, it’s a big deal to choose right. 

This isn’t to say fairies can’t remarry. It’s just that these are their biological instincts. I wanted a custom that was similar to real-life dragonflies, who tend to take the first mate they can. That’s what I was going for with “traditionally engage in intimacy on the first night of serious courtship”. Something quick.

Wing notches are fairy culture because fairies don’t usually remarry. They’re basically permanent wedding rings, but they’re slits in the costas of your wings. The pair have matching notches, so it’s like a ring, but you can see the pair match. Speaking of notches, you may have noticed that in the cover image for Frayed Knots, Anti-Cosmo has holes in his wings. Those mimic the notches Cosmo has on his wings. I accidentally drew them when he was a pup in the preview image of “Growing Pains”, but no, Anti-Cosmo only gets these later.

Anti-Fairy society has a different view of marriage. Remember, they believe in the zodiac and in soulmates. It’s not uncommon for Anti-Fairies to be involved in arranged marriages courtesy of their parents. Most notably, the Anti-Fairies who live at the Blue Castle are considered nobles and are frequently betrothed by the age of seven. To an outsider, these matches appear random, but the Anti-Fairies view the matches made as fate.

Anti-Fairies consider a soulmate to be your best friend and closest companion. This can lead to some things that gross out the Seelie Court. Namely, Anti-Fairies being married even to their siblings. However, Anti-Fairies just consider marriage a bond between soulmates, and it’s not as weird for Anti-Fairies when you pair this with their more relaxed view of, well, engaging in intimate acts. Anti-Fairies can’t get pregnant if their counterparts aren’t, which removes some of the risk of certain intimate acts.

Basically, Anti-Fairies believe in soulmates, and acknowledge that you don’t have to have romantic feelings for your soulmate. Especially if your soulmate is your sibling. Anti-Fairy culture would rather promote going after someone you’re attracted to rather than engaging in intimacy with someone you’re not. Soulmates are supposed to support each other, and not be hurt when their partner wants to spend a night with someone else. In Anti-Fairy culture, two consenting partners coming together is completely acceptable, and one’s wife or husband is meant to respect and support their partner’s choices.

In short, you’re supposed to marry your soulmate, who is probably the person you were betrothed to when you were little. This soulmate is meant to be your best friend and support you, and you support them. Cheating isn’t considered a real thing and isn’t frowned upon; it’s just “his other family” or “her friend with benefits”. Soulmates are married, so you’re expected to raise your respective children together (For example, if your counterparts married different people and had kids with them, then there would be two different Seelie families, but the Anti-Fairy children would be raised together as one family with married parents). 

There is a certain parental duty that comes along with marriage in the hopes of preventing deadbeat parents running out on responsibility. It can still happen, but the idea is that it’s your obligation to support your soulmate (who may not be the person you had kids with). These customs are less strict farther from the Blue Castle, though; they’re traditions, not laws, and not harshly enforced. In many areas of Anti-Fairy World, Anti-Fairies scoff at marriage altogether, and instead just engage in casual relationships without any sort of commitment. Anti-Fairy culture is okay with this as long as there’s mutual consent. Consent is easy to monitor in colonies, but among the loner types, it can be more difficult. 

The important thing to remember is, consent is super valued in Anti-Fairy culture, there are just as many platonic marriages as there are casual flings, and Anti-Fairies don’t see anything wrong with what we would call cheating on your partner. They don’t really have a word for it, and have to describe the concept with general words.

Are there language barriers between the Fairies and Anti-Fairies?

The famous one is “sleep together”. Anti-Fairies often live in colonies, and hang together when they roost. “Roosting together” means roosting in the same general location. “Bundling” means hanging together so close that your bodies touch. You get lots of platonic cuddles in Anti-Fairy World. They’re meant to survive the cold, but even they get sick when it’s TOO cold. So, they snuggle for warmth a lot. Lots of casual hugs. 

And casual hand-holding, since when you have a visitor to your [large] home, it’s common decency to lead them around by the hand so they don’t have to echolocate to avoid walls as you two talk. It’s weird, but Anti-Fairies have trouble seeing at all when they can’t echolocate. Like. Their eyes are right there. If you cover their mouth and show them something, they’ll look at it like they understand it’s there. But they’ll still jump in surprise when you take your hand away and let them echolocate again. It’s like their brains absorb some information through their eyes, but they can’t process it without really sensing the shape, size, distance, etc. their echolocation gives them.

To some degree, Anti-Fairies can see you when they’re talking, but not very well. It’s weird. For storytelling purposes, Anti-Fairy narrators have enough vision to help the reader follow along. When not narrating, I sometimes tone them back. Also, windows in Anti-Fairy World are usually covered by vertical bars, not glass panes. They can’t see glass, but can see through glass, and glass windows register as walls when they echolocate. They tend to run into windows. You should assume all windows in Anti-Fairy World have bars.

Back to the language stuff, Anti-Fairies tend to be super touchy-feely. They cuddle platonically for warmth and comfort, and rely on nonverbal cues like the twitching of ears or adjusting of clothes to progress to more intimate acts. The Seelie tend to be more verbal, and are likely to interpret platonic Anti-Fairy cuddles as signs of affection. 

As I said earlier, to an Anti-Fairy, “sleeping together” literally means sleeping near each other, possibly cuddling each other in your sleep. To a Seelie, it’s of course a euphemism for mating. Anti-Fairies get confused when they hear gossip about who is sleeping with who. It’s just sleep, right? What’s the deal? Yeah, they slept with that person once. You want to know who else they slept with? They slept with this person one day, and this one after that, and the next week they slept with this one...

Also, because they sleep and mate upside-down (most of the time), Anti-Fairies don’t associate beds with mating. So if you say you went to bed with someone, you’ll get the same cautious, blank nods. Anti-Fairies have more words for platonic sleeping together than they do for mating. It’s mostly a nonverbal thing for them. I mean, they’ve got ears to twitch! Gotta use ‘em! I say nonverbal, but I suppose singing their courtship songs is technically verbal.

Actually, “singing” would be a casual Seelie word that causes Anti-Fairies to do a double take. Anti-Cosmo gets weird looks when he tells Seelie about the time he slept with the Head Pixie (when they fell into the chasm together during the War of the Angels, as we’ll see later). Sanderson gets surprised looks when he tells Anti-Fairies about the people he’s sung with. Like I said, Anti-Fairies have courtship songs. Saying you sang with someone is the equivalent of saying you slept with them in Anti-Fairy culture. There’s no look of horror like the one that crosses an Anti-Fairy’s face when you’re at a party talking about that time you sang with a human... or your mother.

The other famous language barrier is licking. In Origin of the Pixies, H.P. licks lots of people (mostly his pixies). He licks their faces as a nonverbal cue to remind them he’s dominant. His subordinates lick his neck to show they recognize and accept his dominance. This is basic biology for them and they don’t think much of it. In Anti-Fairy culture, licking the neck is one of those nonverbal cues to proceed to more intimate acts. Definite culture shock there. Wasps and bats. Whatcha gonna do?

There are also certain phrases that the other culture takes literally. Anti-Cosmo especially tends to be literal, and answer rhetorical questions, which again earns him weird looks from the Seelie. H.P. adapts to new phrases well in general. I don’t know if any of you guys noticed, but before he met Emery in Origin, he would say “Wait a wingbeat”. After hanging out with her, he picked up saying “Wait a second” instead. He also picked up “Roger that” from China, and “Dude” from Sparkle (and living in Lau Rell). He quickly picks up on new slang terms.

H.P. is better at separating literal and figurative language than Anti-Cosmo is sometimes. Anti-Cosmo is usually good, but there are certain things that throw him. Anti-Cosmo is very much a person who needs to learn things for himself. H.P. is the kind of person who subtly adapts to those around him. Writer humor.

The slang word Anti-Cosmo had to teach H.P. was “cool”. Before that, he would refer to people as “hot”, again earning him uncertain looks. Hey, he’s a busy guy and he can’t always keep up with the young whippersnappers. I just find culture differences and language barriers hilarious.

What are Anti-Fairy senses like?

Fairies and Pixies basically have 360° vision. 270° of that is visual. However, they can sense the auras of magical creatures around them and behind them, to the point that if someone were to stick their tongue at them from behind, the Seelie Courter could sense that just as well as they could if they saw it with their eyes. They can read facial expressions of those they aren’t looking at directly. In “China’s Finger Trap”, H.P. even sensed China slow her pace and put her hand over her mouth from the other side of a door. We’ll see Poof getting super uncomfortable during “Watch and Learn” due to what he can sense too.

The distance one can sense depends on one’s share of their magic pool. It can be mathematically calculated by measuring the distance between head and floating crown. Don’t ask me to invent that formula. I don’t want to know. Yet.

Anti-Fairies cannot sense auras like this. At least, not in the same way. Instead, they just get super intense hearing. We witnessed Foop’s extreme listening sense at the beginning of “Hidden”. Each magical creature registers as a different sound in the energy field. Fairies sound like tearing velcro. Pixies sound like a finger flipping through the pages of a book. In “Think Positive”, Anti-Cosmo said all genies register as gongs to him, even when they aren’t snapping their fingers to use magic. He also said anti-pixies sound like screeching brakes on a car out of control.

But, Anti-Fairy vision is much narrower than that of the Seelie Court. It’s much easier to sneak up on an Anti-Fairy than on a Fairy or Pixie. Though of course, it depends on how distracted they are, and how well they’re listening.

Can Anti-Fairies flip their eyes into field-sight like the Seelie Court?

Anti-Fairies cannot see the energy field or magic lines. You could say they have their own energy field they can see. They can see influences of luck and fate, called “karmic weaves”. We’ll learn more about that in “Fun With Yarn”.

BookwormGal and I were talking about Amanda Adams and the Fairy zodiac this one time. I joked that if I had written the confrontation scene between Timmy and Amanda vs. Anti-Cosmo and H.P. during “Never Had a Friend Like Me”, things would have gone very differently. Like, Anti-Cosmo realizing that Amanda balances the two end points of the positive and negative Leaves year traits (Bravery and Rashness) unusually well, and so he abruptly screeches to a halt to throw a huge ceremony in her honor. Just. In the middle of the revenge plan. I drew Amanda decked out in Leaves year green HERE, though I’ll have to redraw her someday since I’ve never been happy with how I did. Someday.

I wasn’t being completely serious about equilibrium, but then I ran with the idea and it got super out of hand. Specifically, if Amanda can embody Rashness in combination with Bravery, then it seems logical for H.P. to embody equilibrium for the Soil year traits (Perseverance and Obsession). You’ll see that very soon in “What Karma Is”. The Anti-Fairies drool over his karmic weave. And it’s going to keep coming up. Don’t forget. Not that you could. It’s hilarious. I’m hilarious.

Anti-Fairies can’t see the energy field like the Fairies can, but they can see karmic weaves. Or at least they can under certain conditions, such as when you cross your fingers behind your back. They know. They always know.

I’ve actually written some of that AU confrontation scene, since Bookworm gave me permission to make it a Prompt towards the end of the 130 called “You Deserve It”. Here’s a cool rough draft snippet of it, because I think it’s funny:

Timmy raised his eyebrows. “I don’t trust you.”

The Head Pixie grabbed the first three hangers from the closet. “I’m not even going to make up an excuse as to why you should. This wasn’t my idea.”

“Teleporting me away from my fairies? On Christmas? When they have no magic?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” he droned again. “Anti-Cosmo has been interested in your friend for some time now. I don’t know if you know this, but he has a long affinity with genies.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Until your fairies came along, he and Anti-Wanda were childless. He filled that void in his life by raising young genies instead. They’re an endangered species, so he bred them and they had babies. Recently it has come to his attention that your friend…?”

“Amanda Adams.”

“Ms. Adams has been in possession of a genie for a curious amount of time. The girl isn’t known to have the most attentive parents, so he thought he might surprise her with Christmas dinner and discuss her relationship with the genie in the process. Apparently, you happened to be in the room and got picked up along with her.”

Timmy wrinkled his nose. “Nope. Still don’t trust you.”

“Still wasn’t my idea.” H.P. sat on the edge of the bed with the mound of navy blue clothes in his lap. “If it makes you happier, genies do not surrender their powers as Fairies do. Thus, spending Christmas Day with a genie’s master is hardly as antagonistic as spending it with a fairy’s godchild.”

“Well, I’m a fairy’s godchild. And I think this is suspicious.”

H.P. blinked in a dull way. For him, that was probably a pretty normal blink. “Since you’re not the one Anti-Cosmo wanted to have dinner with, I would offer to return you to Dimmsdale. In fact, I would offer to go with you. The traditional Anti-Fairy foods are not exactly to my liking. Much too flavorful. However, I don’t think you would be pleased if I sent you there while Ms. Adams remained here.”

Timmy reluctantly acknowledged the truth of that statement, but didn’t pick up the offered jacket. “Are you going to be wearing colorful clothes to this dinner too? Man, you must really hate that.”

“Actually, I was born in a Soil year. I get dull brown.”

“Of course you do.”

Don’t mess with the Anti-Fairies when they find someone at equilibrium. The karmic weaves are both gorgeous and delicious. They feed on this kind of stuff.

That’s that for today. I was going to have some nature spirit stuff in this post, but they got their own giant post a few days ago instead. You’ll see this stuff in Knots, but it’s also here too. Feel free to ask questions if you have any.