#and will graham objectively sucks i love him but he does

[cashmere-caveman]

hello everyone :) inspired by this post by @burrowingregg, please enjoy my thoughts on "what if crozier fucking dies and little becomes captain"

if he dies before sir john

one of two outcomes. sir john either doubles down ("we have to find the nwp for francis!"/"well now that the haters are gone its time to have Real Men Solve This Like Champs") or he goes hm. maybe this is a sign and actually this is a dire situation. perhaps we should pack it in men

i dont rlly have any thoughts on this except i am rlly curious what this would do to fitzy. does he ramp up the charming pretender routine now that he's the uncontested no1 son and crozier cleary didnt know what he was talking about or would this be an early wakeup call and jumpstart the fury beach convo w blanky?

if he dies pre ep4 (tuunbaq)

the lashing would not turn out this way bc little wouldnt have hickey punished as a boy -> less men would berth on erebus

mutiny later maybe? definitely different

(is this a good moment to squeeze in some solittle bc they have to cooperate to keep all the men in check.)

definitely better communication within terror command bc the lieutenants will know little is going to hear them out i think and since little sucks at asserting authority hed have to rely on them more than crozier did

weird tension between jopson and little i think. is it sexual. is it antagonistic. actually maybe i could see jopson joining a mutiny in a crozier dead scenario hmmm…. heres how hickeyjopson can still win !!1!!!!!

if he doesnt survive the withdrawal

jopson.exe stopped working

maybe i could see jopson joining a mutiny in a crozier dead scenario hmmm…. heres how hickeyjopson can still win !!1!!!!! (1).docx

joplittle coworkers to enemies speedrun. i think jopson would grieve so fucking much but then go Ah! We compartmentalise this emotion! Nothing easier than that :) and then hed be so fucking passive agressive as the new captains steward without even realising bc WHY does little walk around alive and hale when little was the one who got crozier the alcohol that killed him how is that fair (jopson is Not at a point where he is willing to confront the fact that he himself was just as much an enabler as little, if not more so)

also sidenote but he wouldnt shave little since that actually never was in a stewards job description in the first place lol no homoerotic blade to throat interaction for you, sir!!

i do think little and fitzjames would work well together! they did a good job on coordinating the carnivale and fitzjames is not someone who lashes out a lot, which is good bc little does not deal well w getting screamed at

i think blanky would become elemental. w crozier dead and (assuming carnivale still happens) mcdonald gone hes the last brit who speaks inuktitut fluent enough to communicate w silna Plus hes one of the v few remaining high ranking arctic veterans

(what would change in a scenario like this if my good friend and upcoming romance novel love interest graham gore - who was an arctic veteran and even competent and charismatic - was still around? food for thought)

what would hickey do? the object of his obsession is out of the picture so he cant get revenge for getting whipped, he still wants to go to his tropical vacation and i think w crozier dead he would switch to survival mode 3000 (he is always already in survival mode to begin with, but i mean the point at which he switches from playing defense to offense) sooner. if the captains dead theyre fucked for real whats holding him back? hickey voice in fact what is holding anyone back? men, we need to confront the situation!

i really think this might be where thomas "shouldve been a news reporter" jopson would shine. that nosy bitch knows about Everything going on, and in a situation like this where every information must be handled in a v tactical way so as to Manage The Situation i think there would be a great deal of avenues of action open to someone in a position like his. especially, i think, bc to me a great deal, if not to say the entirety of jopsons optimism and endurance and focus is simply build on this vast foundation of trust he has in crozier and w crozier gone, what happens to all of that? there are a few ways this could play out imo

a) he instead reorients himself toward the next Authority Figure, which in this case would probably be Fitzjames. I do think it is unlikely, simply bc due to crozier dying during withdrawal the fences would not yet have mended entirely and jopson Will Hold A Grudge. it wont be little, for previously mentioned reasons, even though i dont think jopson would be able to realise that himself. he does not have a lot of interactions w the other lieutenants up until then (not counting serving dinner etc) and since iirc they had not been called into the Sobriety Meeting i dont quite know about how much he would trust them. so unless sth drastically changes during the walkout the options would be fitzjames or little and i personally vote no on both

b) he would retreat into himself and simply Wait. wait for what? u ask. well :) he would wait. and then, maybe one day he might even React. but for now, he would Wait, and Pay Attention

c) i realize this is quite a shrewder reading of jopson than what dave k has said of how he sees him but as i said earlier to me a lot of jopsons "goodness" hinges on crozier providing him w the trust he needs to unfold these qualities. and w that gone, i think that leaves him as someone v smart, in a position where he has access to a lot of information, and also in a state of absolutely crushed hopes and reopened trauma. and that certainly does put you in a state of mind doesnt it?? atp his trust in the remaining leadership might be v fragile and he would certainly wonder how any of this would go on. so hed either implode and fucking idk. wither. (which, for the record, i think he would Not do) Or! he would decide that alright. no one left to handle this but himself so time to take matters into his own hands! youve shot smaller hawks than this tommy its time to get out of here! which, again, is where i think a possible hickey alliance, maybe via billy, might take place. if jopson and hickey would team up for a mutiny they would definitely constantly be daydreaming of killing each other <3 not to be me but i would read the fuck out of a hickeyjopson mutiny vs a solittefitz alliance. give me intrigue! give me bastardry! give me some fucking losers dishing it out in the canadian arctic over the worlds worst buffet options!

this is not necessarily a full point on its own but more of an addendum: i genuinely think jopson has it in him to pull a dundy. aka i think he v much does strike me as someone who would stage a quiet not so much mutiny but a quiet usurpation of power through simple calculated ruthlessness. which! speaking of usurpation!

option d) jopson decides that hes the only competent bitch left and the only way to ensure everyones survival is to go full grima wormtongue and become the puppet master advisor to littles captain. little would actually let this happen and might even welcome it. we know this guy is genetically engineered to follow orders. dont say i never did anything for joplittle enjoyers!!!

crozier dies during the walkout at any point:

i dont really have anything big for this. it would be bad but depending on what has happened at that point (how scurvy ridden is fitzjames? is jopson a lieutenant yet? has hickey killed irving already?) it might not change too much tbh

if he gets shot during morfins suicide it would be disastrous i think but it might actually make the men come closer together again maybe? if little becomes captain then and there maybe the mutiny might get prevented or at least postponed bc little would let the marines get their armed patrol and thus they might not be as resentful/mistrusting toward command. ofc little As A Captain trusting tozer and getting fucking bamboozled by him if the mutiny still happened would be an even worse look lmfao. that is if morfin shot him. if it was however a Marine who shot crozier…… well. i think thered be an execution first thing at daybreak! and any and all weapons would be under lock and key w extra attention to the point that i think not even armitage would hand them out. plus lbr it wouldve been tozer in this scenario w the killing shot so! armitage without tozer…. does that poor lad even know how to exist when he is not in sols orbit. how would hickey exploit this….. (also extremely evil version is jopson shooting crozier which is so evil that we do not consider it. goodbye)

if crozier dies pre tuunbaq attack id be curious if the (attempted) hanging would still happen. i personally think it would, simply bc hickey would definitely try to start some shit and fitzjames would be wary enough to order a post mortem on irving plus jopson would definitely catch that rat. maybe he would actually hang, even, but that depends on whether little as his captain or fitzjames as the overall expedition commander would give the little speech beforehand. if it's fitzy, either him or hickey in his response would run out of time before the tuunbaq shows up and hickey would escape, but if it's little theres a real chance he would shortly state some dry facts let hickey speak for two sentences of last words maximum and then get it over with. and now That would be a fascinating scenario to explore. crozier gone, hickey gone, camp in ruins, dozens of men dead, fitzscurvy left in charge. would there be a second mutiny? des voeux, perhaps? or billy himself (he was also an architect of this!!! he went to burn the fucking maps!!! billy was not regular rat who marrydivorcemarried the evil rat he was evil rat no2!!! simply a less flashy (fleshy….. hah) flavour!!!) just quietly absconding w a bunch of men into the fog? what would tozer do, if he had survived and hickey hadn't?

last minute death scenarios

anything w crozier dead before hickey could capture him would not change much i think. maybe hickey would deflate some upon the news but hed still capture goodsir and still die as a wannabe new god. i think the real tragedy would be if little was left as the only captain after fitzjames' death. that man was Not made to carry such a burden and dundy would smell the blood in the water and ursurp him early i think, which ironically might lead to a scenario where there could be a sliver of hope for survival for the healthier parts of the crew

if crozier died during the capture bc hartnell didnt take the bullet hickey would fucking kill whoever fired that shot (i do not remember who it was. golding? was it golding? i fucking hate that guy i can easily belive it was golding) and i think hartnell and little and whoever else was there would either escalate the situation into a shootout to avoid the mutineers taking croziers body for food (lbr hickey would love to eat that old man) and die right then right there or maybe get themselves captured bc everything is just pointless now (unlikely outcome imo the tension would be too high) OR theyd somehow get the fuck out of there, organize a party of men to take the mutineers and have a final showdown (unless dundy intervened and ursurped ofc) which means: tuunbaq survives!!! yay :D good ending for silna :) she has not lost the tuunbaq so maybe even no exile <33

if crozier just died during the final tuunbaq fight: no changes at all

which concludes my thoughts! this turned out way longer than i expected and honestly did not focus on little v much but it was super interesting to consider all these scenarios so thank u burrowingregg for giving me the idea to begin with :) i would also be super curious to hear everyone elses thoughts on this so please do chime in!!

[contortedoptimist]

Long unedited ramble-post mostly about will graham below.

I

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Will has a negative opinion of psychogy and affini from before the events of s1 hannibal. He failed the psych eval to be an agent, expressed distaste at the criminal minds museum and his answer to crawford he has at least a base knowledge of what autism/asperges is and the totally not concerning phrase "you won't like me psychoanalyzed" reads to me as someone has tried before (most likely just "you won't like me if you know me"). He seems to dislike on principle mental illness labels given lightly even to criminals he does not care about, contesting them immediately in favor of a more nuanced description. He isn't scared or dislikes social interaction (he seeks out pp he likes and is able to get a wife, be a prof, no prior accidents) he looks... Intimately aware he's different wich is what makes him unique and useful but also lonely. He is a different species. Has no interest to blend in more than he has. He does not find other people that interesting, not only H. Never meting someone who just gets you sounds terrible to me. He works fine under jack because Jack doesn't really treat him like person. He is an object to use that he believes with the appropriate measures(H) can be fixed and overclocked as necessary. Will is fine with this because the alternative is being some weird freak you gotta be careful with even if you don't like him and he'd rather be crawfords can of WD-40 for stuck cases. He is attached to the job be he sees it as his biggest redeeming social  value: to use his otherness for good. Without it he's feel personally bad and would loose his best asset to be accepted by the others. He doesn't recognize in any label and getting tagged with one he wod see as a hindrance and upset him more than hes willing to admit (he only ever complains of the inaccuracy of the attempts to do so but I know him personally OK?) This is something he's unwilling to compromise on for the comfort of others. He knows how badly some want to "know what he is, unmask him" and no one seems interested in trying to understand instead. Alana first rejects him as patient (good) but never takes a step forwards he desperately wants, she  is going to help but does not want him in her bubble. More than loving Alana I think will liked Alana, wich is already huge for him. Alana might be the first time he's ever wanted to try inviting another person in his space and is quite taken by the rejection. I know will is not the solitary type by the 7 dogs he wants to be part of social structures everyone just sucks to him. He is not getting his socialization needs met at all and he does not want to think about it he is doing the (very simplified) equation: his needs are the hannibal type = he is bad. Maybe if he wasnt so repressed about this he would have not gone so off the rails at the first taste of blood, less inner turmoil, more shooting hannibal. Re:mental illness. When in prison he wants hannibal dead, he gets wrong the part where he's fine with someone else doing it for him. He wants him dead n2 for ruining his life/rep/etc and n1 for the mental invasion. Stopping the chesapeake ripper is tertiary. What hannibal did to him is the most violating thing he could have done, and we're not talking about the tube and ear down his throat. He crossed boundaries in Wills mind Will himself did not venture to(wich leaves them unguarded) and it makes him so so so mad. Chilton is the insult to the injury bc now there's a cretin who thinks he can do that too.

[cadisflya]

i love ur portrayal of will! he stays true to his duality of fascinating and somewhat doesn't deserve this shit but also rancid.

that really is the balanace tho—the heart of the horror. will is, at his core, a rancid little bastard. he is also, at his core, someone who feels a powerful protective urge over the vulnerable. he wants to punish those who abuse their power over vulnerable people, especially those who betray the basic principle of not punching down. that is, in itself, a heroic impulse. the PROBLEM is that will graham believes that /his/ view of the world is singular, and his self-imposed ‘non-humanity’ makes him a thing who stands outside of humanity, and he believes that /his/ understanding of who does and doesn’t deserve punishment is really the only understanding that he genuinely values despite the fact that he is perfectly able to understand the conceptualizations of others.

we call will an ‘empath’ and yea conceptually, theoretically, that is true. he is able to conceptually cognitively empathize with almost anyone because his imagination is so strong and his natural and educated insight so remarkably keen—but the fact that he can understand and even emotionally reconstruct the experience of others doesn’t mean he actually values those experiences and it doesn’t make him a decent person. empathy is not inherently sympathetic and it’s not inherently altruistic, either. the only other perspectives he honestly cares about are those of the people he considers dear to him who are people in which he identifies elements of himself. hannibal, alana, abigail, bev and margot to a less intimate degree. a lot of time this value is actually a recognition of self, and the pieces of himself he sees in others are what he identifies as valuable—that’s a basically rancid concept if you really analyze it, but we all do it, and it just happens to work out that because he has felt vulnerable, he identifies with the vulnerable, and what’s to punish their abusers. that’s righteous, and poetic, and makes him an appealing character.

problem is that, in order to punish those abusers, he wields the exact same tactics that those abusers think are ‘theirs’, he weaponizes the manipulative tactics people have tried to use against him, and he is willing to manipulate those he wants to protect in order to protect them. AND he still considers himself ‘outside’ of others and, thereby, above them. it’s why angels are monstrous, why monsters are monstrous. he feels communally with hannibal who employs his own form of righteousness that is simply based on different value perceptions. rancid value perceptions, rancid in ways that he is also rancid and in some ways that he’s not. we say again y’all, it’s all a matter of taste. that’s the crux. you cannot attempt to moralize those who act outside of communal morality. will is bad. hannibal is bad. there is no argument that will make them good. this is all still poetic, sure, but it’s why it’s horror. it’s horrible. because we have to say ‘damn you are rancid but you also move me and sometimes you kind of make sense’, when we see margot and alana murdering their abuser we say ‘hell yeah’ even though, objectively and by the communal values of society, it’s horrifying. because it’s both horrifying and not, it’s both terrorizing and absolutely righteous. the isolation and prioritization of one perspective over another is the way that the person constructing the narrative manipulates the way the narrative is perceived, and the show is a masterclass in that. trying to moralize will graham means you’ve fallen victim to that narrative. will is a murderer, point blank. he’s also a bitch, point blank, like he’s mean. what we see in him is the part of us that has been raw and vulnerable and vicious, and that’s a human part, too, and being moved by that vicious righteousness and its otherness, wanting to justify it, is what makes horror such a fascinating genre.

[igonecrazy]

I WATCHED 6 AND 7!!!!! IDEK WHERE TO START AKSJAKAKAKA-

- okay episode 6 first aksjakakaka THEY FINALLY MET!!! IT TOOK THEM SIX EPISODES TO MEET!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭

- And then Will tries to kill Hannibal. And Hannibal tries to kill Will :((( Typical but I’m tired of their dumbassery aksjakkaka

- I want to punch Mason in the face he’s a fucking slimeball omg

- ALANA AND MARGOT 💖💜💙!!!!!!!!!! DAMN!!!!!!! Me likey!!!! 😍😍😍😍

- ok fuck episode 7 was so hard to watch 😭😭😭 hanniboo 😭😭😭

- I thought nothing could top the dude inside the foal and then Mason did this :/ 🤢🤢🤢

- HANNIBAL PEGGED MASON!??!!!! (Also side note if anything thinks Hannibal is straight despite him canonically knowing what stimutaling a prostate does imma seriously throw hands 😤)

- MASON DEAD!!! :D :D 🥳🥳🥳

- Hannibal surrendered :o

- He literally said he’d always be found with Will I’m emo now 😭😭😭😭

I TOLD YOU THEY WERE SPECIAL RIIIIGHT!!!!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳

Their time apart sucked for us as much as it sucked for them 😭😭😭

No! You can't! You shouldn't have tried you dumbfucks!! He says this and then like a survival challenge whore puts them to the test!! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Also..Will and Hannibal invented romance in these two episode 😭😭😭🖤🖤🖤 their own brand of fucked up I hate him I will kill him the first chance I get but I will also kill anyone else who tries to kill him pls don't hurt him he's mine but also take him the fuck away from me I can't stand his stoopid face! romance!! 😭🖤 I love it!

This whole scene and the whole bunch of dialogues here just......ah! Staph! It hurts! Also! The boi looks at his long lost (8 months!) boo who gutted him like this and people still think Will doesn't absolutely love him 🤭🤭

And then Hannibal was like you drew knife on me you're going into the soup!😔 🤣🤣🤣

Mason is a slimy pig 🔨😑 who got what he absolutely deserved!!

But am still grateful for him chaining Hannibal so we could have the satisfaction of him getting unleashed 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤

And yessss!! Margot and Alana!! Damn! When they first met and flirted I was like it'd be cool if they got together but I didn't let myself hope that they would and then they did and I was smacked in the face with that whatever the fuck was that sex scene which took me a few seconds to even decipher what I was seeing 🤣🤣🤣🤣 anyway!! Murder Wives..the deadly couple but with braincells and .........(I'll mention the rest later 🤭)

With a cattle prod!!!! (I dunno........no I know shoot!) 🤣🤣🤣

Nobody....well I hope nobody thinks Hannibal Lecter is straight ☺️ he is pansexual and a disaster when in love coz his braincells retire 🤦🏻‍♀️ hence it took him so long to tell Will how he felt about him! Crushing fear of vulnerability for someone who's into murder and staging and cannibalism 🤦🏻‍♀️

THAT FUCKING BREAK UP!! THE SOFT SWEET SURROUNDING LULLING ME AND HANNIBAL IN WITH A FALSE HOPE TOWARDS OUR OBJECT OF DESIRE WHO'S SAT THERE LOOKING LIKE A SLEEPY BANGED UP SIREN! AND THEN IN THAT FUCKING SOFT WHISPER HE BREAKS UP!!!!! AFTER WE SAVED HIM!!!!!! THAT WHORE!! (not that I blame Will Graham for it..it adds into Will's bigger narrative of trying to get away from Hannibal..which is why he keeps saying shitty things like "You don't know who's side am on" to Pazzi "a part of me will always want to run away with him" to Jack not refuting Alana in Hannibal's kitchen when she asks if he could still be friends with Hannibal who's friendship is "blackmail elevated to the level of love" this time he tries to push Hannibal away putting the responsibility of putting distance between them on Hannibal..he doesn't call the FBI or anything and when Jack shows up he's like he's gone Jack.. But his plan of putting distance woked a lil too well and Hannibal was like fuck you am going to jail because you said you won't miss me! Hannibal is Will Graham's biggest stray who is bitey won't behave but also would not fucking leave him alone..IN Short what am saying is that Will Graham never wanted Hannibal to surrender or get caught he just wanted to be left alone coz he was tired of their game which neither of them could win and he was still not willing to accept the darkness in him..)

A special mention to Chiyoh my beloved for being the coolest and sweetest 🥺🖤

A lil Mads and Hugh from the blooper reel ☺️☺️☺️☺️

[hannigramficrecs]

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[roomeight]

hey i just wanted to say that you’re probably one of the few people in the blur fandom that actually uses their brain. seriously,, i love your work so much and you’re just so cool!!

Aw, thank you 💕💖 that's good, I just want people to feel like they can talk about this. I know my answer about 2011 stuff isn't easy to hear. But I understand what it feels like to kind of realize Graham is not who you may have thought he was. It's a shitty feeling and I just wanted to tell that anon about what I've thought about it as someone who realizes Graham's potential faults and doesn't excuse them but also just wants to like..still be a fan.

That's the joke that I don't think my antagonist realizes, that I'm not opposing what they're saying. I'm not saying Graham is a perfect soft uwu boy free of sin. In fact, I think I've been the only one saying this stuff before and other fans just turn off when I say it because it's painful. I'm not saying fans are jealous and making it up, I'm saying it's a difficult thing to process that Graham may be meeting up with fans and we don't know for sure what that means because we don't have proof. A reaction to that may include jealousy, and it also may include feelings of betrayal. Worst case scenario, he's having sex with groupies. Do I agree with that? No. Do I have proof of it? No. But I also realize that my moral compass does not translate to a man who I've never met. It is his and his wife's personal business, and I can choose whether or not I want to be a fan of his. The first time I found out he spoke to one of my friends and met up with another I left the fandom because it was too painful to reconcile what I'd seen with my idea of Graham. I didn't like that he was doing that. I came back four years later as a bigger Damon fan and had hoped that with Graham being less active on twitter and having a family he'd matured a bit.

But again, I have no proof that he slept with fans. I just felt uncomfortable. So I want to point that out. I also want to point out that when he did talk to my friends nothing sexual happened.

And the other thing I'm saying is this is not an uncommon thing in rockstardom. The Beatles did it. Doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't mean I feel warm and fuzzy about it. But also, again, it isn't my business. It's his very personal business. And it could be different than I think it is. It could be Graham's done nothing wrong and my own bullshit has made conclusions. So yeah, line in the sand here for what I'm trying to say is I'm not trying to defend Graham or tear him down. I'm saying if people are struggling with it, try to remain objective about what is out there and realize what is fact and what is conjecture, and if what's out there that's objective makes you as a fan uncomfortable that's perfectly OK and I get it and I'm sorry because that feeling sucks. Graham is a great artist and his music has meant a lot to me and it would be very hard to give that up.

[thespaceace124]

Tv shows I watched this year, my favorite character from each, and why I like each character.

Since my past few posts about Fandom/TV shows have been kinda negative/ criticism, to end off the year, I wanted to make a few posts about things that I like in media. So today we’ll be taking a look at all the shows I watched/finished this year and my favorite characters from each.

Space Force: Captain Angela Ali. Its been a hot minute since I watched Space force, but iirc she’s just… done like 99% of the time with all of her superiors, but in the ten episodes we get, we see some fun little character moments from her. Like in the war games episode where she has to grapple with being an amazing book student, but has a hard time applying some of the stuff she learned at the military academy in a “combat” situation and has to sort of learn and take the lead from one of her “underlings” who is better in that sort of situation. Also, the bonding moments she has with Chan, like when they’re on the road trip, and when she asks him for help learning some science stuff so she can be more useful on missions and stuff. (again, its been a while since I’ve watched this one so my memory of it is a little foggy)

Stargate SG-1: Colonel Jack O’Neill. I like the tope he falls into of the very surface level sort of gruff military man, doesn’t like talking about his feelings, makes smart ass remarks, asks people who talk to much to get to the point, he’s a very fun character, and adds a lot of fun lightheartedness to the show and is generally enjoyable to have on screen. Also tends to get the most character development, at least regarding his past and sort of why the way that he is. (I would say Teal’c gets the second most), also the reason I got into stargate, as my dad showed me a compilation of him being a smart ass and I was like “oh ho ho, I gotta see more of this guy”

Doctor Who (specifically seasons 11 and 12): The Doctor. I like this version of the Doctor, I like that she a little more lighthearted chaotic as opposed to the previous Doctor, who I would describe as dark chaotic, (at least in s11) and just very fun to be around and watch on screen. Also, I think that the rest of the fam is a little bit underdeveloped? Like, we got a lot of fun stuff for Ryan and Graham in the premier with them being a part of a family unit and then at the end of the season we got a nice little scene of them bonding and Ryan calling him grandad and then in s12 there’s like none of that??? And with Yaz we get that she’s kinda got the usual female companion backstory (not a big fan of her job, not happy living with her family, wants *More* out of life) and then we learn that she got bullied as a kid, and at one point she tried to run away, but a kindhearted cop and her sister??? Managed to keep her in Sheffield. So, I feel a little bit like the doctor is my favorite as a default just because we already know the doctors story, so we’ve just pasted a new personality onto a familiar character.

Deep Space Nine (started 2019): Major Kira Nerys. Straight up the reason this character is my favorite is because my dad said I remind him of her and that makes me feel nice. Also, Nana Visitor is very pretty. Also I like that she takes 0 shit from anyone, including Sisko, but we also get to see her learn and grow  from “I will always voice my disagreement no matter what” to “There is a time and a place to object” and also a little bit of learning that sometimes you have to work with people who’ve hurt you and sometimes that sucks. Anyway, she’s a grade A badass and I love her.

Voyager (started 2019): Captain Kathryn Janeway. Like my reasons for Kira, I think Janeway is a badass, and that Kate Mulgrew is very pretty. But also, I think Janeway is a badass in a different way than Kira is, simply because their characters are in very different situations. But I think Janeway is portrayed to be handling things extremely well, and doing what needs be done, obviously that wasn’t super looked at as they did want to keep the tone of voyager relatively light, but anyway, I like Janeway because she’s someone to look up to, to want to incorporate traits of into your own behavior.

Picard: Rafaella “Raffi” Musiker. I like Raffi because she is one of the most consistent characters in Picard. See imo Picard suffers from having too much on its plate, and also it drops/ abandons too many characters. With a show that has only 10 episodes, especially in a first season, you can’t do that. So, with Raffi being in the majority of the episodes, with consistent characterization that makes sense, and working as someone who can actually keep Picard in check? That’s the best character in the show. Also, I think of actors not seen in Star Trek before, she’s one of the better ones and that makes her better.

Lower Decks: Ensign Beckett Mariner. I love a chaotic smartass. Also, for as much as I love LD being a relatively slice of life comedy, I love that Mariner got a ton of characterization in the last few episodes, especially exploring her relationship with her mom, and people who knew her at the academy. She’s super fun, I love how she’s almost always dunking on Boimler, but also really cares for him and doesn’t want to see him hurt. Again, she’s just super fun to see on screen, I love that she doesn’t really like authority figures, and is content to figure herself out while being a relatively low-ranking officer. I like Mariner because she is both sure of herself, but not totally sure what she wants to do with her career, which is something that Star Trek has never explored before, and I think its super interesting.

Discovery: Commander Michael Burnham. I think a trend with a lot of the characters on this list is that I personally find them cool and/or pretty, and once again that also applies to Michael here, but also, I like her because Michael as a concept is fascinating. Like the idea of being a child who goes through a trauma and then is immediately whisked away to a place where she can’t actually process it? And then as a result grows up emotionally constipated and only in her 30s, is sort of finally able to shed that and actually learn how to be healthy with her emotions? Absolutely fascinating, I love that. I also love that we can kind of see that her upbringing and the suppression of emotions as a child still effects the choices that she’s made to this day. Its super cool, and I think one of the best parts of discovery.

Ratched: Nurse Mildred Ratched. I don’t have anything really important to say here, I just tend to like the main characters of tv shows because by default they get the most development/ back story or whatever, and honestly this is one of those shows that I enjoyed enough to watch all ten episodes, and then never picked it up again, so. Ehhh

Dexter: Dexter Morgan. I like Dexter Morgan because he’s a man who has always been told he doesn’t have emotions, but as the show goes on you can totally see that he does have emotions, he just doesn’t know how to handle them, and that they don’t present themselves in the same way that “normal” people’s do. Like, I fully believe that Dexter did actually love Rita, Harry jr., Deb, and Hannah. But I also believe he didn’t fully know how to cope with those emotions, because instead of getting his son help Harry Morgan decided to turn his son into a killing machine, which was a Choice.

Hannibal: Will Graham. I liked watching him kinda fall into Hannibal’s co-dependency trap. Character regression baybee. But like, that’s what happens, I’m pretty sure at one point they both admit that they aren’t healthy for each other, but they also cant live w/o each other. Which is not a dynamic I personally had seen delved into in media before I watched this show. I just think he’s neat.

ATLA: Toph Beifong. I like Toph because I think she provides a nice foil to Aang, whilst also not going too far into the opposite direction. She’s decisive, she knows for the most part what she wants from this adventure, and mostly how to go about getting it, while also discovering a new family along the way. I also just like the way that she can and will throw a boulder at you if she thinks you deserve it.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Sabrina Spellman. Again, sort of falling into the “I tend to like the main character by default folder” It’s also been a hot minute since I watched this show, so I’m just gonna say that I like Sabrina because she is always the one getting her own self into trouble by being Different. And while I’m not saying that it is always good to conform and do what is expected of you, all of the issues in the show are caused by Sabrina (for the most part). Season one is all about shit falling apart if she doesn’t sign the book, season two is her shaking things up at the witch academy and also not wanting to be the princess of hell (understandable, but again, still her fault) and the whole plot of season 3 is the fallout of her imprisoning the devil and then also being too cocky with the guy made of clay. She’s far too cocky, and I think that’s super funny in regards to how it gets her into situations she’s not really prepared for.

The Coroner (BBC): Beth Kennedy. I watched this show with my stepmom, and in this show, Beth tends to be the one who lightens the mood a lot, so she’s my favorite character b/c of that.

[auggie-hunter]

the questionnaire~

who rocks the ferris wheel seat, and who flips out and begs them to stop?

neither. too busy making out.

who is always horny and will have any place, any time?

auggie. he’s always game for a quickie at any given moment. any. given. moment.

“wait, here?” teddy gasps and giggles against his lips as he kisses her.

“mhm,” he nods.

and so what if they’re the ones having slutty coat room sex at someone else’s wedding. so what.

who is more into taking showers/baths together? who tries to make it relaxing and who gets handsy?

they both are. something about showers and baths together really ticks the intimacy box for them. but believe it or not, teddy is the one to get handsy in the shower/bath.

“so i was thinking,” she starts, shifting her weight in the tub. she swivels around, careful not to slosh too much water around as she straddles his lap

his hands easily find her hips as she eases closer. “so you were thinking...” he echos with a nod.

her left hand rests at the base of his neck, while her right glides down and into the water between them. “i have nowhere to be for the next hour, so maybe,” she takes him in her hand. “we could make it worth our while.”

who likes to walk around the house naked, and who tells the other to go put some clothes on?

neither, really. they usually keep whatever space they’re in comfortably chilly so as to be wrapped up in sweatshirts and cardigans. sweatpants and socks and heavy blankets. cozy.

however, they are huge fans of being naked together. huge. top two on the list, probably.

who sleeps on the couch when they get into a fight?

auggie. 

(but teddy will be nudging him to scoot over not 30 minutes later and crawling onto the couch and under the throw blanket beside him. “what you said really hurt.”

and auggie will just wrap her up in his arms and kiss her head. “i’m sorry. it was uncalled for. i didn’t mean it.” and he’ll kiss her head three more times and tell her how much he adores her and they both sleep on the couch because the idea of sleeping apart sucks to even think about. call them codependent)

who takes photos of the other while they sleep?

teddy tends to take photos of auggie because auggie rarely sleeps. let me clarify. auggie’s a very excitable human, and will stay up and about for most things. because of this, he is always tired and falling asleep at inopportune times, and (teddy’s favorite) adorable ones.

(like the time he fell asleep while trying to stay up for a 24-hour stream and she had to inconspicuously wake him without getting caught on camera.

she did take proper photo evidence and post it on his instagram before he woke up. puppy filter and all)

who said “i love you” first?

teddy. it outright took his breath away. 

who ends their arguments in a fight with “because i love you”?

teddy.

auggie has a lot of anxiety. he’s been working on it, but he’s also made his peace with the fact that a portion of it will remain unresolved, and will be something he just feels and deals with. kinda like white noise. it’s a dead parents thing. whatever.

the point is, it happens less and less when it comes to teddy the longer they’re together, but he goes through deep pockets where he needs reassurance.

because he thinks, no knows teddy graham is the very sun in the sky that the planets revolve around, that she hung the moon and all the stars, and there’s absolutely no possible way on this earth he could ever be good enough for her. that he or something would inevitably fuck this up.

she’s gotten pissed off at him about it only once their entire relationship. but they’d been going through a rough patch with schedules not lining up, and not enough hours in the day to make long distance work, so it’d been a pot of emotions on the verge of boiling over. she’d shouted at him to stop doubting her. that if she hadn’t left yet it’s because she wasn’t planning to. “because i love you!”

he’d felt awful that day. because that’s the last thing he wanted to make her feel. and he’d promised her he’d work on it.

but they don’t tend to argue. their conversations are softer, more compassionate.

“hey,” she grabs his hands “i’m not going anywhere.” pressing kisses to each of his knuckles, she glances up at him. “because i love you, okay?”

they do annoy each other though. quite a bit. sometimes for fun.

who likes to wear the other’s clothes?

teddy loves to wear auggie’s sweatshirts to run errands if it’s something she doesn’t have to get dressed up for. or around the house she’ll grab a shirt or button up. she once wore a flannel of his to record a music special.

they also wear her merch around the house. free clothes and whatnot.

who wakes the other up in the middle of the night to tell them a cool dream they had? who has the most nightmares, and who sings them back to sleep after?

teddy for sure. auggie’s more about letting her sleep, but teddy always wakes him up to share. good dreams, bad ones, crazy ideas, good news, song ideas… her imagination is always going, going, going.

who is more likely to cheat?

on each other? truly? neither. they’d faster cheat on other people for each other. and that sounds cliché and almost fiction, but it isn’t that it’s that they both genuinely like and love each other. cheating doesn’t fit in that box.

who starts a food fight in the kitchen?

probably auggie. though teddy has been known to throw flour.

who initiates duets? and who is the better singer?

teddy. auggie will be humming something to himself and she’ll jump in as off-key as possible.

“you’re the oates to my hall, baby,” teddy says, swinging him with her around the kitchen island. “the garfunkel to my simon.”

“oh, so you’re just gonna full on side-kick me now?”

“i’m down on a daydream!” she sings loudly, and okay, maybe the brunch mimosas had been a little more champagne than orange juice that morning. “but that sleepwalk should be over by now, i know!”

auggie throws his head back laughing and he can’t help but grab her face and just kiss her.

objectively, teddy is the better singer. but, and he will deny this, she thinks auggie sounds beautiful in the shower.

who starts the hand holding? who grabs the other's butt? who slides their arm around their waist? who likes to put their fingers in the belt loops?

the hand holding is somewhat mutual. it kind of happens naturally. they gravitate toward one another to begin with. some… fucking weird energy thing, his sister frannie would say. it was actually visible between them.

the butt touching is totally teddy, and it happens a few dates in when she accidentally has a bit too much wine at dinner. she grabs his ass on the way back to the car. “small but mighty.”

they laughed for a solid ten minutes.

of course, that then meant free reign for him to return the favor. respectfully. but also at will. and gosh was he grateful.

the arm around the waist is auggie, but he’s a very physical person. always pulling her closer, touching her back, anything to feel her right there with him.

who is more seductive when they are drunk? and who is louder in bed?

auggie, who is already kinda handsy and forward when it comes to sex with teddy, gets handsier when he’s been drinking and his voice is like 2 octaves deeper than usual.

but teddy’s a master at seducing him. like she’s read every book on how to turn him into a putty in her hands. he thinks she finds it fun. no, he knows she does. he knows every outfit she keeps for it. hmph.

she might be louder though. for sure.

who is more protective?

auggie is wildly protective of teddy. her heart, her world, her happiness. and takes it really personally when that’s threatened in any way. but teddy’s really protective of auggie’s feelings. in a healthy way. but she’s always there to catch him if he falls. she’d also go to war for him. in a heartbeat.

who talks to the other while they are sleeping?

not necessarily while they’re sleeping because if it ever starts, the other tends to wake up. but they do talk a lot. unless they’re wiped from exhaustion.

who drives and who has the window seat?

teddy insists on driving most of the time. she enjoys it, and implies he can’t drive. it’s a lie, of course. he’s the better driver.

(“are not.”

“baby.”

“you’re not, though.”)

who falls asleep in the others lap and who carries them to bed?

auggie tends to be the one to fall asleep in her lap. he’s usually the one falling asleep first if his insomnia’s been acting up.

it’s the most rain new york has gotten all year, she observes from her place where she rests against the corner of the couch. the dreariest darkest afternoon they’ve seen in a while. the apartment is dim despite it being just after 2pm that sunday afternoon.

she’s kind of sleepy and could probably go for a nap. but she’d already thrown off her sleep schedule by letting auggie con her into smoking and staying up to watch all of doom patrol. while fun and great, it turned into distracting hands under throw blankets, which turned into 5am, thus making her want to sleep now but she’d just managed to fix what early quarantine had broken.

they’d need to set a new boundary on this friends with benefits thing.

time. sleep. rest.

but then again, who was she kidding? he could say jump and she’d ask how high and never stop. he didn’t know that though. they’d agreed on not going there for the sake of their friendship. that it was just sex. whenever, but still. just sex.

she glances down at him where he’s fast asleep arms wrapped around her midsection, head resting comfortably against her abdomen, lulled by the sound of the rain coming through the open window. and she’s looked at his face a hundred times, but like this, her heart flutters, and she can feel the way she just fully adores him like this.

she can’t help but smile to herself, and sighs. she needs to get over him. and fast. of course, all this weird intimacy they insist on maintaining just because they’ve spent all this time indoors together isn’t going to help that.

she threads her fingers through his hair, lightly scratching at the back of his head. “hey, go to your bed,” she says softly. “you fell asleep.”

“mm.” he doesn’t budge and her smile widens. she lightly tugs at his ear. “ow.”

“bed.”

he grumbles without another word, and if she’s wistful as she watches him go to his room, she’ll deny it.

who cuts the other's hair?

that’s not a risk they’ve been willing to take just yet.

who is super bad at sexting? and who sends them encouraging messages throughout the day?

if auggie’s feeling particularly confident (usually after a few drinks), he can swing it. otherwise, he’s not great at it.

teddy’s usually the one sending encouraging messages though.

(“yeah, you don’t send me any cause you’re always sending them to darby and ravi.”

“that’s true. but i love you more than them.”

“that’s actually debatable.”)

who thinks they are not good enough for the other’s love? and who’s more afraid of losing the other?

read the anxiety question above.

who starts random slow dancing with the other in the kitchen?

teddy definitely. but auggie will every once in a while. slide her around the kitchen at two in the morning by the light of the refrigerator.

who kissed first?

auggie kissed teddy first. bit the bullet before he lost his nerve. and then he just never stopped.

who orders take out at two in the morning? and who wakes the other up at three in the morning to go downstairs with them to get a glass of water because it’s too dark?

who writes love songs about the other? do they sing the songs they write for them?

if teddy could write every song in the world about him she absolutely would. but yes, she writes most of the love songs and most of them are about him or to do with him or about dreams they’ve planned together.

there’s a world in which he gives creative input, basically a song writing duo, but he takes no credit. “all the magic is yours anyway, i’m just a sounding board.”

of course, he gets wildly emotional about it, and the way she expresses herself when it comes to him, because again, for the millionth time, he can’t believe her.

who is embarrassed when they have to wear their glasses and who thinks they look super cute?

not necessarily embarrassed, but auggie typically only wears his glasses at home, so until they live together, it’s rare she sees him in them. she does think he looks cute in them.

which is great because he’s blind as a bat.

who likes to nuzzle their head into their partner’s chest?

teddy. at her coziest. if she could live there, she would.

how many and what colours are the blankets they like to snuggle in?

four or five, at least two of which have been knit by teddy herself. the colors are usually on the softer side, neutrals, navy, dusty pinks. and a blanket crosby brought teddy from a trip to thailand years ago they’ve piled into the mix.

who runs up and hugs their partner and who stands arms wide open to catch their partner?

teddy runs. auggie catches her. every time.

eight months. it’d been eight months since he’d seen her outside of a screen. eight months since he’d held her, touched her, kissed her.

eight months without her. all for the sake of democracy or whatever bullshit.

auggie had been starting to doubt how much longer he could do this without her. and the truth of the matter is deep in his bones he knew he’d wait forever, even at freshly eighteen, he just knew he’d wait for this girl forever and a day.

he’s shifting his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels, hands tucked anxiously into his pocket as he waits at the guest area. her flight had landed and she’d sent him a text saying she hadn’t checked a bag and that she’d be out soon, which meant she’d be here soon.

whether it’s the nerves or the excitement, he isn’t sure, but he might throw up.

but he doesn’t have time to process it, because not a second later, a whirlwind of blonde hair, pink lips and a soft blue dress was running toward him.

and just as her carry-on bag smacks the ground, he catches her in his arms, pressing his lips to hers.

“i missed you so much,” she sniffles, lips finding his once more.

would they rather go on a romantic date or a laid back date? explain why.

any date uninterrupted is a dream date for them. and they could make any moment romantic.

he stumbles some, but somehow manages to regain his composure, even if it means he leans on her a little more than intended.

teddy’s arm around his torso squeezes some, knowing that steadying him means steadying both of them. “you’re so drunk,” she mutters, head tilting onto his shoulder.

auggie scoffs, but ends up laughing in the process, the arm he has around her shoulders squeezing her tight. “babe, it’s two in the morning and you’re wearing sunglasses; don’t—” he giggles. “—don’t call me out for being drunk.”

she grins and giggles herself, the cat-eye style of her sunglasses adding to her mirth. “i calls ‘em like i sees ‘em.”

“you ‘calls ‘em’ huh?”

“shh.” she’s on her toes, pressing a kiss to his cheek, and readjusts his sunglasses in the process.

joy dripped off them like warm light. her heels hung off the fingertips of his left hand and over his shoulder, having traded them for his sneakers. he offered, and would probably have to throw out his socks once their night was done, but he truly couldn’t care less. not when he had all of this around him.

“okay, listen.” she took a sip from the bottle of champagne she was holding before holding it out to him.

“i’m listening.” he lets her go to take a drink, the bubbles no longer tingly against his cheeks.

“you know we can’t stay here for 39 more days, right?”

he furrows his brow, unsure of what she means by that, though it’s taking quite a bit to connect most complex thoughts that aren’t about teddy graham at the moment.

“to get married. you have to live in paris for like 40 days in order to get married here.”

“oh.”

“yeah.”

“wait, why not?”

“auggie. baby. focus.”

“sorry, let’s sit.” he laughs and holds out his elbow for her to take, leading her to an empty bench just up the way. plopping down on the end, he draws her down to his lap. teddy sits sideways and chooses to extend her legs onto the rest of the bench, crossing her feet at her ankles. his shoes look huge in the distance.

“we can’t stay here.” she pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “the world’s not looking good and i kinda don’t wanna get stuck here.”

auggie nods in agreement. “fair point. so what do we do? do we wait?”

she sighs and grabs the bottle from him, taking a sip before setting it down between her thigh and the back of the bench, next to her shoes. “i don’t wanna wait.” she kisses him. “we’ve waited so long for everything,” she groans, her frustration evident.

he gives her the tiniest of smiles and presses a kiss to her temple, lingering for a long beat. he gets it, of course he does.

“let’s wake daily up.”

his eyes widen as he wraps his arm around her. “no.”

“no?”

“no, she’ll be pissed,” he chuckles. “i already woke her up once to find you, i don’t think i’d survive a second night of interrupting her sleep.”

teddy laughs, full belly laughs, and he can’t help but join her. they might have to lay off the champagne soon, but they can worry about that later. “daily is ordained.” she curls into his chest. “she’s the only way we can leave paris married.”

he leans forward, resting his forehead on her shoulder. “starting my first official day as a member of your family by getting murdered. cool.”

she smiles, dropping a kiss atop his head, hints of his shampoo wafting into her nose. “is that a yes?”

“i gave you my shoes; a real no for you doesn’t exist in my vocabulary.” he gently kicks his socked feet to make a point.

“first of all, you offered and insisted, and second, you should be proud of yourself for saying vocabluary.”

“vocabluary?” he picks his head up, amusement coloring his features.

she’s kissing him then, both hands pressed against his cheeks. “come on, let’s go get married before you start feeling over-dramatic and change your mind on me.” she swings her legs over and stands, holding her hands out to him.

“never, ever, in my life.” he takes her hands and stands.

“oh, sure. like you didn’t just fly across the ocean cause you missed me even though you just saw me. the level of drama is staggering.”

“i didn’t.” he shakes his head and grabs her shoes and the near empty bottle of champagne. “i had business.” he takes a swig before handing her the last of it.

“in paris?” she giggles and sips the rest, tossing the empty bottle in a nearby trash can before he wraps his arm around her so they can start to walk.

“mhm. i had to pick up my wife.” she hip checks him and he grins. “all the more reason for you to know i’m not changing my mind.”

“i know. all your drama is reserved for how much you love me and how you have to make a big deal about that all the time. softy.” she presses a kiss to his hand resting over her shoulder. “doesn’t mean i can’t make fun of you for it.”

“i like a gesture.” he shrugs.

“yes, you do. it’s cute.”

teddy grins, wide and bright, and he squeezes her tight. “you’re cute.”

who still gets butterflies after years of dating?

they both do. there are a lot of reasons for which their relationship has had to take a backseat, so every moment they do get to spend together is cherished. and when it becomes permanent, it feels brand new every day.

who is the one who makes their partner laugh so much that their face hurts?

despite how cool they both come across, they’re both actually spectacularly dorky and goofy and ridiculous. so they’re always laughing about something dumb or silly or an inside joke they remember all the time, especially at very inopportune times.

(”we ran out of a funeral once.”

“aug, don’t remind me, i’m still ashamed.”

“well, it was either that or we had a laughing fit in there.”

“we’re monsters.”

“i feel like the dead parents club gives you morbid privileges by association.”)

who accidentally drinks too much caffeine and who has to deal with their partner bouncing off the walls?

auggie already has too much coffee to begin with, but when he has too much caffeine he’s a bouncy ball off concrete walls.

where is a special place they hold close to their hearts? why is it special?

paris. whenever they’ve allowed themselves to think of a place where they want to be together, to dream about where everything would be perfect, it’s paris.

walking along the seine, seeing the eiffel tower, watching the sunset on a rooftop, seeing the art at the louvre

(“being the art at the louvre.”

“auggie.”

“you are though.”)

she proposes before one of her paris shows.

they wake up her sister in the middle of the night to officiate their marriage before they’re back in the states.

there’s just something about paris that’s everything and more to them.

who has awful taste in music?

not awful, but auggie probably likes more questionable music.

“unironically listening to nickelback isn’t a bad thing, you’re all just haters.”

which one of them is the meme lover?

auggie loves a good meme. he loves making memes also. and making memes about teddy as a goof.

how did their second date go?

terrible. they’d wanted each other for so long they didn’t know what to do now that they had each other so they were so nervous they ruined it.

(”you didn’t ruin it.”

“i didn’t talk all night!”

“well, at least you didn’t spill wine all over your dress.”

“it wasn’t that bad!”

“i could never wear it anymore.”)

of course, the apology that followed and the makeup date more than made up for it.

how many children do they want/have?

depends on if they ever stop going at it like bunny rabbits. no, but three. honorable, beautiful mention to their son, lip.

who is the better dancer?

natural dancer? auggie. still a klutz though. teddy is a terrible dancer, but she’s become great at choreography. she also does not care.

do/did they have a theme wedding?

no. they eloped, actually. got married together in secret. they did have a party though after to celebrate with family. no theme though. 

what do their parents think of them dating?

teddy’s parents love auggie. they think he’s sweet, and kinda dorky. but he’s as dorky as their sweet girl and they love that about him. they’re especially delicate about being parents to him. not replacing or overstepping, but reminding him he’s their son now, too.

are they a super sappy couple?

severely. nauseating. but in a really endearing way. refreshing almost.

who asked the other to get married?

teddy proposed seconds before she went on stage.

who stays up too late and makes stupid jokes?

auggie stays up too late, and teddy makes stupid jokes.

who is the nerd?

auggie

who knows the most obscure facts?

auggie.

who makes the other a flower crown?

teddy (and cardigans and blankets and mittens and hats and scarves)

who likes to read?

teddy. she reads constantly.

who bothers the other person while the other person reads?

auggie. very adorable. very annoying.

do they have similar taste in movies?

yeah, for the most part. they’re both into classic comedies. auggie does love a superhero/comic book movie though.

how do their personalities complement each other?

teddy is bright and loud and awkward and unapologetically herself. auggie is bright but more reserved unless in good company and definitely second guesses himself more. but they do a great job of catching each other wherever they need, if that makes sense. filling in the blanks, combining all the puzzle pieces, yin to yang.

how do they tell everyone that they are going to be having a kid/adopting a child soon?

the minute they’re in the clear about things being safe. especially after lip. they do get creative with sharing their news, though. and it’s always cute.

who has better fashion sense?

teddy for sure. she can create an entire look from a color. auggie dresses well, but well for him.

who will punch someone out if they are rude to their partner?

auggie. no question.

what songs do they sing together in the car?

depends on the mood. sometimes oldies, sometimes the radio will just play. sometimes loud with all the windows down.

who likes to prank the other?

auggie came from a house of pranks, so he loves pranking her. 

who is the one who loves to take pictures?

teddy likes a random selfie here and there, but auggie likes having his camera out during quiet moments to catch her unaware. not often, because their private moments are sacred. but every once in a while.

how would they react if they found out they were soul mates?

they wouldn’t be surprised. it’d be the missing piece of the puzzle.

where would they live?

depends. sometimes new york. sometimes suburbia. sometimes an estate up in maine. sometimes paris is the way to go. wherever the other one is, really.

what type of dragon would they own, if they could have one?

probably like drogon targaryen. protective, and only trusts them.

what would they dress up as, for halloween?

they have pretty creative costumes, usually comedic ones. wayne’s world. cosmo and wanda. dumb and dumber. juno and paulie bleeker when they were pregnant with rosie and briar cause they both got a kick of it (and cause she actually got to drink a gallon of sunny d… even if she puked it all later while he held her hair back)

there was one year they did nightwing and batgirl for allie’s superhero themed party and he absolutely dragged her out of there early because of the red wig.

can they name each other’s favourite food?

teddy would say auggie’s addiction to chinese takeout is borderline unhealthy.

“whoa, hey.”

“dude, it is.”

but probably italian after that summer he became obsessed with learning how to make homemade pasta and pasta sauce.

auggie would say desserts. sweet tooth galore for her.

do they have pet names for one another?

usually ‘ted’ and ‘aug’, but teddy has welcomed ‘baby’ into the mix. cause he’s her baby. he’ll let a ‘baby’ or ‘babe’ out here and there, but he usually just prefers ‘ted.’

teddy is also in the business of coming up with every pun on his name she can think of. snoop auggie aug and augustus gloop might still be her best work.

how do they cheer each other up?

distractions and affection. sometimes food. games. music.

do they show a lot of pda?

they don’t really makeout in public, but they are very physical. hand holding, hugs, back rubs. proximity is a security blanket for them.

how old were they when they got together?

depends on the universe, but anywhere between 15-22, usually with history.

can they do yoga couple’s poses?

no they’re a pair of klutzes. it’s ironic as hell.

what is their song?

such great heights - the postal service lover - teddy bea~

what does their room look like?

they usually have a big cozy bed, one allowing them room to stretch out and take up space, even though they end up in each other’s space nearly every single night.

their things are intertwined. her clothes with his. his toiletries near hers. there are pictures and art they both love, and the agreement that they wouldn’t have a tv in their room to enjoy each other and rest in there. 

relaxing colors. wood tones, soft greens. maybe a few plants. definitely a balcony with a view.

who would be the one to kill zombies while the other keeps them grounded?

auggie currently kills zombies while teddy keeps him grounded.

who makes the other breakfast in bed?

auggie makes breakfast in bed unless he’s slept in.

who loves kids more?

they’re both a pair of big kids themselves. so it’s pretty even. they adore kids.

do either of them have a crazy ex?

possibly? hm.

what are their favourite colours?

auggie likes shades of blue and green. teddy likes golden colors and pinks. 

who likes to cook?

they both do. they like to cook together. though teddy is more of a baker, and auggie is more of the savory chef. cooking’s cathartic for both of them, and definitely something they love to do together.

who is the forgetful one?

probably auggie.

does either of them know how to fight?

make (lots of) love not war. they’re the softest of humans. soft, soft, soft.

what do they do for valentine's day?

depends. usually any excuse to spend time together is nice. valentine’s day can be any old day for them. flowers though. making a dessert to eat together. maybe a weekend getaway.

who swears more?

auggie’s a fucking potty mouth.

who has the better comebacks?

teddy. for sure.

who would start a fight with another parent at a bake sale?

her brother crosby and his sister fiona.

who reads buzzfeed?

auggie. fanboy king.

who is the hopeless romantic?

teddy, but they’re both wildly romantic, almost in equal measure.

do either of them know how to do a handstand?

believe it or not, both of them.

who can rap better?

teddy.

“ollie might’ve disowned me if i didn’t learn.”

do either of them want to go skydiving?

god no.

“i mean, i might wanna try. north said it was fun.”

“and your name is not north oeste. it’s auggie hunter, and you’re not jumping out of a frickin plane.”

what do they usually text about?

missing each other. food ideas. teddy’s legs. reminders. whatever crazy idea bixby’s got going on. whatever insane idea allie’s got going on. date plans. i love yous. and teddy’s legs.

who is the dramatic one?

auggie.

is either one confrontational?

not particularly. they talk too much for heavy confrontation so fights are rare. they’re willing to fight for each other though. 

what is their favourite cuddle position?

auggie’s love language is physical touch. he likes to touch and be touched, so when it comes to cuddling, if he’s tired or sad or depressed, he’s for sure the one to rest his head in teddy’s lap for her to rub his head or back. but he’s also definitely happy to be the big spoon and wrap her up in his arms so there’s no space between them.

“can i tell you a secret?”

“let me guess, you were already married,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to where her bangs meet the rest of her hair, both arms wrapping around her shoulders.

“pfft.” she snuggles up into his chest, closing her eyes as she tucks her fingers under his left suspender.

“okay, that’s definitely not a no.” his hand trails over the bare skin of her upper back, pinky lightly gliding over where the fabric of her dress begins.

“you married me two weeks ago, keep up.” auggie hums in agreement. “also, there’s really hot lingerie under my dress right now...”

“oh?”

“but this dress has at least nine hundred and three buttons, and i know we wanted a party, but weddings are really tiring.” her voice is quiet and a little bit whiny.

“and you wanna take a nap,” he finishes.

“as badly as i wanna get into your pants.”

he laughs again, this time squeezing her a little bit tighter than before. “i promise i won’t tell anybody we took a nap on our wedding night if you won’t.” he smiles to himself, closing his own eyes as he drops another kiss atop her head.

she swoons.

who listens to more vulgar music?

pretty even. they’re not picky about that.

do either of them have secrets even the other doesn’t know?

no. they know everything. everything.

who is their go to couple for a double date?

eli and thayer, josie and ollie with daily and naomi, darby and north, or allie and frannie, though he’s still yet to figure out how he can manage to be the only one with the girlfriend in the bunch and still be the odd one out when those two are involved.

do they tip the waiter/waitress on their date?

absolutely.

how do they work out a fight?

sometimes they’ll need space just to let themselves cool off. saves them from saying something they don’t mean.

and then they talk. for hours.

who brings home an illegal pet?

neither of them. maybe teddy.

what side of the bed do each of them sleep on?

auggie on the right and teddy on the left. (or really, auggie closer to the window and teddy closer to the door)

what is their favorite photo of them two together?

it always changes but it’s a tie between them at disney and this random photo of them at an award show backstage.

she’d been wearing a pink cape over her shoulders, and sitting on top of the back of the couch in her green room after she got all her awards. and when he’d sat between her legs, she’d wrapped him up in it like a blanket and kissed his cheek. naomi caught it just in time.

who takes longer in the bathroom?

depends. usually teddy.

who has more songs on their ipod?

teddy.

what movie did they first see together?

stepbrothers.

what do they like to see each other in?

“nothing.”

“auggie.”

auggie prefers nothing, or really anything that shows off her legs. he really, really loves her legs. her ass too. all of her really, anyway…

“i like a tux. you look really good in a tux.”

who makes jokes at inappropriate times?

auggie.

at what age do they discuss the possibility of children?

i think they just know they want kids, and it comes about as a “when we have kids” kind of moment. and neither of them question it because there’s no objection. there’s also the fact that the first time she gets pregnant catches them both by surprise.

what do they love about each other the most?

auggie loves how much teddy loves. her heart is enormous and the amount of love that pours out of her at any given moment takes his breath away. she’s there for all her friends and family no questions asked, and the way she loves him, and the way she takes care of him, he could’ve never imagined he’d ever deserve a love like that.

she’s his loving, perfect little goofball.

teddy loves how much auggie cares about stuff. he’s so excitable and bright eyed and he has every reason to be jaded but just isn’t. not really. not in the ways it counts. he just loves things and people and comes at them with the excitement of the very first day.

and that smile of his. she’ll do anything to see him smile. that… wow. yeah.

who is the one that sees the big picture, while the other focuses on the small details?

teddy sees the big picture always. she’s patient like that. auggie focuses on the details. it’s why he can spiral, and how she can make sure he doesn’t.

what would they write on their partner’s social media for their anniversary?

vlauggie: no idea where you came from or what i did to deserve you, but life with you is pretty amazing. (and then a picture of teddy baking in the kitchen with her back turned)

teddybea: for sure my favorite human. (with a video of him playing a vr game he didn’t know she was recording)

who is bad at math?

teddy. math sucks.

who googles everything?

auggie probably. but he’s always connected to something so it’s a habit at this point.

who does stuff on impulse?

also auggie. anxiety. and low patience. he talks about allie, but he’s worse, just less vocal.

(“okay that’s a lie, nobody is like allie. nobody.”)

how do they comfort each other when they are helpless to do anything about the situation?

there’s a lot of holding and cuddling for comfort. sometimes they just sit in silence in front of the fireplace. or they’ll lie on the floor. they like the floor. there’s a lot of thinking done on the floor.

what is an inside joke they have?

if there’s a secret room they’ve likely hooked up in it. not sure if that’s an inside joke but there ya go.

just for you

who makes the other smile with almost no effort at all?

teddy just has to breathe and auggie is smiling for the rest of the day.

what is their favourite holiday?

probably christmas because they’re two big kids. and there’s something really wondrous about christmas lights. for all the times they’ve been apart on holidays, christmas has always been the one they’ve had to figure out how to make their own.

they like to lie side by side under the christmas tree and look up at the lights and dream.

who is the one that is calm and collected while the other is angry and destructive?

they’re both pretty calm and collected for the most part. he’s definitely the one to lose his head first, though.

what is their favourite board game to play?

classic? clue. though they go through a chess phase after the queen’s gambit. also life. not technically a board game, but taboo. but their brains are connected, so people hate playing with them.

who has the car ready while the other is robbing the store?

auggie would probably drive the getaway car.

what artist/group did they go to for their first concert?

some tiny indie show deep in brooklyn where they could hide in plain sight.

who is the more social one?

probably teddy. auggie’s fairly social, and nice, but it does take him a second to jump in.

what are their karaoke songs?

auggie does a mean “it’s all coming back to me now” by celine dion, and no, he will not be taking questions after this.

teddy does classic pop queens of course. “stronger” by britney spears is a show.

(though, and this isn’t necessary karaoke, she once got pulled into singing an acoustic version unpretty by tlc with daily and it was probably the most beautiful thing ever)

who would get up on stage and make a fool of themselves just to make the other laugh?

auggie, one thousand percent. happily.

which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway?

teddy always warns auggie not to stay up, but he does anyway, and then he’s dealing with the consequences.

which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies?

that kitchen is fucking master chef. next question.

which one spends all day running errands and which one says “you remembered [thing], right?”

auggie probably spends time running around and comes back with his arms full of stuff.

“shit, i meant to text you, i’m sorry. you remembered the ice cream, right?”

“fuck.”

(he’s driven back to the store on a few occasions)

if they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips?

auggie is certainly more dramatic so he’d make a huge deal about it, while teddy just strolls in behind him. “you could’ve just pushed this button.”

which one likes to surprise the other with a lot of small random gifts?

teddy brings auggie something from every tour stop he doesn’t make it to. or she’ll replace his streaming headphones every once in a while.

auggie’s more of a gestures guy. he’ll make dinner, show up unannounced (though she’s done this before and he nearly fell over) plan a date in front of the fire or on a roof top, whisk her away on a long drive for an adventure.

which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside?

okay, it was one time and he doesn’t scream about spiders, but he’s a city boy and bugs are just not his wave at all.

which one gives the other their jacket?

auggie. he’s been known to give her the shoes off his feet also. so that tells you everything you need to know.

who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling?

not threatened but roasted. daily, belly, and honey forever roast auggie within an inch of his life. all with love. it’s the one time he’s grateful for his mess of a bunch for giving him a thicker skin.

olive, on the other hand, threatens his very existence if he ever hurts teddy. but she and teddy are like sisters too.

who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other?

teddy, probably. auggie might be too nervous. unless he literally can’t take it anymore and then it just bursts out of him,

how good would they be at parenting?

team effort for sure. auggie’s probably a bit more of a pushover than teddy is, but that’s because he has such a soft spot for teddy that of course he’d be mush at any human who came from her.

and they just adore their kids so much. like heart bursting kind of love.

losing lip is hard, and nearly breaks them, but it makes them appreciate the little moments in between even more. even if that means getting rosie’s little feet in the face in the middle of the night. or briar’s knees in the ribs. or having to squeeze into aurora’s bed to make sure the monsters don’t come out in the middle of the night.

(their daughters don’t seem to make the connection that they have towers for parents until way later in life)

which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters?

they’re both pretty regular with their typing. auggie definitely uses more internet slang though.

who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun?

teddy makes terrible puns and laughs at herself while doing it. 

who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy?

teddy probably would bring home a puppy or kitten no question.

which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired?

he’d never been to disney before, and his dad’s miracle campaign stop lining up with her tour ends up being the brightest source of light through the end of the tunnel.

but here he is, sparkly ears, blue, pink, and purple, atop his head, and a ��my first visit’ pin on his chest, both purchased by her. she’d played tour guide and they’d had the best first day ever.

“‘d you have fun?” she mumbles, arms wrapping tighter around his chest as her lips lightly find the side of his neck.

he nods, rearranging his hands on her thighs and boosting her up so she could rest more comfortably on his back. “yeah, it was amazing.”

“good,” she smiles, resting her chin on his shoulder.

which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering?

teddy performing on stage is auggie’s favorite brand of euphoria. she shines up there, but ironically, he can’t cheer for her. he can only smile proudly or else his heart bursts from love.

family game night, however? the full hunter-graham labor day weekend maine extravaganza, when they destroy everyone at charades? yankees winning the world series level cheers.

“they definitely practice when we’re not here,” bixby mutters.

“oh totally,” frannie agrees beside him. “gross.”

auggie on a baseball field is also a sight to see. he doesn’t play much anymore. but he’s zeroes in his focus, and the seamlessness between him and allie is impressive, considering how much they bicker. teddy totally shows up in her cute “watching baseball outfit” jersey, cap, foam finger and all.

which one would give the other a makeover if they asked?

teddy should definitely be the one trusted with fashion because auggie, while not a bad dresser, doesn’t have much variety to his wardrobe.

however, teddy did ask auggie to help touch up her highlights over quarantine and dye some of it pink and he did a pretty decent job for his first time. only missed a few spots

“you can thank me for that,” allie says one day over zoom. “i bullied him into learning how to french braid my hair when we were seven.”

“no, don’t laugh,” auggie says seriously. “she actually did bully me.”

which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of?

auggie’s fully convinced teddy’s cats want him dead. they haven’t done anything to him, not really, but there’s a look that warns him he won’t make it out of this house alive by the end of it. whatever ‘it’ is...

which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains?

auggie. they’re both towers, but he’s still taller than she is, so it just makes sense for him to hold the umbrella and hold her in the process.

if your they went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? who would take the pictures?

see paris above.

although they’d thrive on a beach, minus the inevitable sunburn.

“but the freckles you get after are cute,” teddy says, and kisses both of his cheeks.

and in a winter lodge.

“so,” he says, setting down his eggnog on the lip of the hot tub to tug on her arm. “where were we?” he asks, drawing her onto his lap.”

and in a tiny hostel in amsterdam they end up having to share a tiny bed in because they make a mistake when booking.

“i swear to god if you two start hooking up down there, i’m going to kill you both.”

“allie,” he groans, kicking the bunk above him, “shut the fuck up.”

teddy giggles. “did you have to do all that?” she asks, twining her leg with his again. “we’d just figured out how to get cozy.”

“are you guys just gonna talk all night or let me sleep?” olive grumbles.

“all of you? shut the fuck up,” frannie says finally, and if she could’ve slammed a door, she probably would’ve.

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 505

ADSOOO!!! AND CLAIRE!!! AND ADSOOOOO!!!

My floofer was not amused when I woke her up to show her the cat on the teevee. Bqhatevwr, boo boo, you’re stuck with me. #TeamSocialDistancing

Oh, I guess the voice overs are back in a big way. Super...

And also like, this whole running bit about God and stuff would work so much better if they’d included Jamie and Claire’s faith a bit more throughout the show. *cough Jamie’s prayer cough*

Do we have to pour one out for science!jizz? This is the book bit where the science!jizz happened, but maybe they’ll do it later? Probs not. Le sigh.

Marsali being all excited with Claire and Claire being all fuck yeah I found it gives me the warm fuzzies. I LOVE THE TWO OF THEM A LOT OK.

This montage makes me dizzy. Not a fan, tbh.

Oh hey, the old Hancock building! With a park that looks nothing like Boston, haha. But I appreciate the effort lol, my main office is like a block from the old Hancock building. Not that I’ll be seeing it any time soon. Living that work from home life until the plague times are over.

But for real, social distance. No joke. Stay the fuck home.

I love 60s Claire if only because damn girl, look at dem legsss.

Hi, I’m Der and I’m very shallow sometimes.

But Claire has objectively great legs.

Omfg, Roger, stop being a butthurt whiner. You suck at being a soldier. You know you suck at being a soldier. And instead of being like yeah, let me learn and get better, you just bitch about it.

Sam is gonna kick his horse in the head at some point. Why the fuck does he dismount like that. It’s literally bugged me since season one.

So they’re pardoning everyone. Probs not Murtz though. Cool that instead of doing a continuous ramp up to the inevitable confrontation, they’re going the book route of lol, jk, all this was kind of a waste of time for now...

Really, Knox, you did something excessive? Cool way to say murdered a dude.

Ok well if Knox is getting the Ardsmuir roll, then he’s def gonna die, right?

Jamie’s 100% gonna intentionally miss Murtz’s face.

Boom, called it.

I do not like spiders. Please move this VO along, Claire.

I’m fucking glad we finally get Doctor!Claire. We should have gotten more Doctor!Claire in season three. Jamie got to have all aspects of his 20 years examined but fucking Claire’s side was literally just about Fred and how shitty he is.

Fuck you, season three. Fuck yeah, Doctor!Claire!

“It’s my married name.” Lulz. And not the married name she wants...

GRAHAM SAYS THE THING JAMIE SAID WHEN CLAIRE WAS STITCHING HIM UP IN SEASON ONE AND I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT IT OK.

Graham makes me miss when the show was in Scotland like whoa. I miss the Squad. There are so many characters now that are like kind of always around but they’re not part of the Squad. And the main Squad is always separated. So like there’s barely any big group adventures anymore where we actually give a shit about everyone involved.

I JUST WANT THE FOLKS I CARE ABOUT TO HANG OUT MORE, OK!

Needle!jizz 2.0 is gonna be the closest we get to science!jizz, isn’t it. Whomps.

Can the show please just be a period procedural with Claire and Marsali being badass doctors? Thx.

Because for real though, Marsali being like “scalpel” is my favorite thing ever.

I feel you, Jemmy, I’d cry if I were stuck hanging out with Roger too.

I DO NOT LIKE SPIDERS, CLAIRE.

“My lass is more concerned wi’ words and deeds.” Which is why it baffles me that she’s still with you, bro, because your words and deeds fucking suck.

How Bonnet doesn’t accidentally swallow the diamond is beyond me.

Ok so if your wife was violently raped and you know she’s had some PTSD about it, because you’ve seen the drawings and stuff, you should maybe act completely the opposite way from how Roger is acting.

“And you kept it? A gift...from Bonnet.” Yes, you giant fuckwit, your traumatized wife went to hang with her rapist for shits and giggles and accepted a present because she really wants a memento to remember him by. They’re on such good terms and all. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! HOW IS HE SUCH A DOUCHECANOE?!

You do not get to judge or question how someone processes their trauma you raging asshat.

He is such a fucking Fred.

Do I think what Bree did was smart? Or a good decision? Hard no. But it’s what she thought she needed to do to move forward with her life. And so she can do whatever the fuck she wants. Yeah, words have consequences and it was a stupid move, but Roger needs to step all the fucking way off.

“You’ve never said as much to me.” “I didn’t think I needed to.” I HATE ROGER SO MUCH. I HATE HIM WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND FIERY SUNS. HOW DO THE WRITERS NOT REALIZE THAT THEY’RE MAKING THE CHARACTER WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE THE SECOND ROMANTIC MALE LEAD AN IRREDEEMABLE PIECE OF SHIT. OH WAIT BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOTS OF PRACTICE FROM FRED 1.0 THAT FRED 2.0 IS JUST A NATURAL PROGRESSION.

Lol at this “Boston” priest sounding vaguely southern. Is he one of the pedos the archdioceses just kept shuffling around?

(I’m not a fan of organized religion and being forced to grow up Catholic sucked a lot for me. I did some therapy about it.)

Ok so is Claire’s knife on her belt the hand job antler knife? I mean, Jamie doesn’t give it to her until Echo, but I’m gonna pretend like it’s the hand job antler knife. Also, some witches use a white handled knife called a boline to cut herbs and stuff so it’s fitting that Claire constantly-being-witchy-to-her-own-detriment Beauchamp has a white handled knife for collecting herbs.

“Yeah, Frank and I... no, we had a very complicated marriage.” Well that’s one way to put it. *keeps rage bottled up on the inside*

“Frank and I, we still managed to make it work, for Bree’s sake.” Except it didn’t fucking work. He was terrible to you. You basically put up with 20 years of emotional abuse for the sake of your kid and then he used her as a weapon against you. Because he is garbage. Much like Roger.

Claire is always the bigger person. She was with Fred and now with Roger. Like, I’m still pissed that she never got to let out her side of things. She just keeps framing it through rose colored glasses, never speaking ill of Fred when he didn’t do that for her.

WE DO NOT DESERVE CLAIRE BEAUCHAMP AND NEITHER DO MOST OF THE MEN ON THIS SHOW.

Fergus deserves milady.

They’re really going hard with the Roger, Bree and Jemmy have to go back stuff. Are they gonna bump them going back up to the season finale this year? They bring it up basically every fucking episode. I’d be down with moving that along tbh. Except then we’d have to have just the two of them as their own story line and I hate that part from the books.

“We are but humble servants to the law.” Really, Javert Knox. Would you say your duty’s to the law?

“Those who follow the path of the righteous shall have their reward.” Yes, bible and shit, but also a veRY FAMOUS LINE FROM A VERY FAMOUS SONG FROM A VERY FAMOUS MUSICAL.

“Scotland, eh? I never stopped missing it.” HARD SAME, GRAHAM. HARD SAME.

Pledged their oaths to the militia. Not the governor. Miiiinor detail, haha.

“It is a relief, to finally put down the sword and pistol and pick up the axe and shovel.” So, Jamie, you’re saying you’re gonna walk behind the plough-share, you will put away the sword?

Oh hey, it’s Joe! Another person we should have spent more time with in season three.

“Something about Graham Menzies...” Maybe the fact that he could easily have been part of the OG Squad?

I MISS THE OG SQUAD.

“Principally that men like Fitzgibbons never change.” Really, Knox, men like [him] can never change? A man, such as [him]?

“OUR DUTY IS TO THE LAW. WE WILL SEE JUSTICE DONE.” OK BUT THEY’RE LIKE LITERALLY TRYING TO SHOEHORN IN ALL THE LES MIS LYRICS THEY CAN LIKE THE TIME I DID THAT WITH I’M ON A BOAT IN THAT ONE RECAP...

“What kind of deceitful devil wears the guise of honor and talks of justice and mercy?” Valjean Fraser, at last we see each other plain...

“Believe of me what you will,” there’s a duty that he’s sworn to do. Protect his Murtz.

“As god is my witness, I will do what must be done.” You never shall yield? ‘Til you come face to face?

“Damned if I’ll be in league with a traitor.” Would you rather live in the debt of a thief?

“But I will not stand by and watch my kin hunted like a dog.” Like a dog on the run, Jamie?

Called it! Broski needed to die. You’re not gonna make sure the letters are burned all the way, Jamie? Like didn’t that dude who brought in the letters see you there? This seems like it’s gonna backfire *rull* quick.

Also, speaking of dead bodies, is Rando McWhatshisface still in the basement?

Is Adso Gavroche in this scenario?

Jamie Fraser, murder to kitten snuggles in 0.3 seconds.

IF YOU HURT ONE HAIR ON MY LITTLE BEBE’S HEAD, I WILL END YOU, JAMIE.

Slash finally, I thought this episode was turning into Waiting for Gadsot...

(I made myself chuckle a little too hard at that one, tbh.)

“I found him in an alley, couldn’t leave him behind.” AKA how Jamie Fraser adopts all of his children, haha.

“How would you feel about taking a trip to London with me? Your father wanted to bring you there before he died.” You mean, when he threatened to steal your kid from you? It fucking speaks so highly of Claire that she won’t ruin Bree’s impression of Fred. Even though Bree knows by now that he was a terrible person.

“Thank you for my gift.” YOUR GIFT LOVES YOU TOO, CLAIRE!

(And I’m still a sucker for the Claire calling Jamie “soldier” bit.)

[shireness-says]

Bed sharing. I don’t care the situation - just some good old bed sharing that leads to *wiggle eyebrows*

Killian could kill Ruby and Graham for choosing tonight of all fucking times to finally get their shit together. 

Not that he’s upset that they’ve finally given into that attraction; it’s been a long time coming. But it does leave him in his current unfortunate bunking situation: lying awake next to one Emma Swan, secret love of his life. 

It had seem like such a good idea at the time: saving money at this law enforcement conference by sharing costs and beds, Emma with Ruby and himself with Graham. But that had been before Ruby had a few too many glasses of wine from her purloined drink tickets and launched herself at Graham, ending with a sock on the door and Killian sexiled from his hotel room. 

Emma had been kindness itself, offering sanctuary in her room and forbidding him from sleeping on the floor. “We’re both adults,” she had said, and Killian had agreed at the time.

That was before Emma started moaning in her sleep, however.

Killian is only a man, and especially only a man who’s been head over heels for his lovely blonde colleague since day one. And a lovesick man such as himself can’t be blamed for the reaction his body has to what sounds like a very pleasant dream that the object of his affection is having.

The squirming was bad enough, and more than enough to distract Killian from his best efforts to imagine Leroy the local drunk in a speedo so as to smother any arousal that dared creep in. The squirming turns to writhing, however, and it’s all a lost cause. Every drop of blood rushes towards his cock as he tries desperately not to make contact with any part of Emma’s body. It’s okay, it’ll pass, her dream will end, he’s just got to wait this out and –

“Killian.”

That’s a shock - enough to make him tense up, just in time for Emma’s arm to collide with his and startle her out of sleep. 

“Killian?” she mumbles, squinting into the dark. “What are…”

“Were you dreaming about me?” he interrupts.

Even in the dark, he can see Emma blush. “No.”

“Are you sure? Because it sounded like you were.”

“Well I wasn’t,” she insists. Stubborn thing, his Swan. He loves that about her - most of the time.

“I don’t mean to press the issue, but it sounded like you moaned my name, and a man just wonders…”

“Fine, I was, are you happy?” she huffs.

“Eh. You see, I was already dealing with, shall we say, a not-so-little problem, and hearing you in the midst of a late-night fantasy… well, let’s just say it didn’t exactly help,” he confides. 

Emma’s eyes widen in realization for a moment, before her face settles into something close to a smirk. “Is that so?” she replies as her hand lands on his waist, ready to start inching down. 

“Indeed. So tell me Swan, in this dream of yours… what was I doing for you?”

“You couldn’t handle it,” she tells him, even as her fingers play with his waistband.

“Try me.”

“You started at my neck,” she finally replies. “Nibbling and sucking all those little places I like, especially that spot behind my ear.”

Killian shifts to do so, kissing and sucking until he draws a pleased hum out of Emma. “And what about my hands, love?”

“You started at my chest, playing with my nipples,” she continues, ending on a breathy stutter as he does just that.

“And then?”

“And then you moved down to suck at my nipples and - oh god.”

“And?”

“You started stroking me down there.”

She’s already wet and ready when Killian moves his fingers through her folds, just the way he’s always dreamed. “And then?”

“I woke up,” she gasps. 

“Then I’ll take it from here,” he murmurs against her chest.

It’s hard to believe he’s not dreaming as Killian feathers his thumb across her clit and sinks a finger into her heat. The noises she makes are just enough to convince him, though, making him double down on his efforts in order the make her gasp and moan even louder. 

He can feel how close she is, her walls just starting to flutter around his fingers, when Emma pulls him back up. “I want you,” she gasps, shoving him onto his back and attacking his basketball shorts with a desperate haste. 

“Then take me. I’m yours.”

That makes her pause for a moment. “You really mean that?”

Killian shrugs as best he can from his sprawled position on his back. “Almost since that first moment.”

Instead of replying, Emma straddles his hips and sinks down onto his cock, enveloping his member in tight, warm heat and making Killian groan loudly. That would be enough of an answer - even more than he had ever dreamed of - but Emma makes sure to meet his eyes and tell him four words that change everything.

“Then I’m yours too.”

She moves slowly atop him at first, drawing out every moan with every downward thrust, but the pace quickens until she’s riding them both to the edge of release, Killian just barely hanging on. Emma’s brow is furrowed in a way that makes him think she’s looking for just a last little something, so he returns his attention to her clit and brings up his knees to thrust beneath her, changing the angle just enough to elicit happy mewls. They finally sail into climax just like that, and Emma collapses into a boneless, sated heap on his chest.

“Was this a one time thing?” he asks tentatively as they both try and catch their breath.

Emma chuckles. “Definitely not.”

Thank god for Ruby and Graham after all.

Send me smut prompts!

[hannigram-a-b-o-library]

SummertimeSlick Round Up Post!

We hope you all had a fab time with SummertimeSlick! We've loved seeing the contributions coming in and enjoying all the creativity!

Don't forget to check out our other events coming this year!

Until then - enjoy all of the wonderful SummertimeSlick works.

*

Hannigram - Alpha Hannibal/Omega Will

Touch by raiast Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Omega Verse, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, S1 AU (ish), Alpha Hannibal Lecter, Omega Will Graham, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Bites, Soul Bond, True Mates, Mildly Dubious Consent, Lucid Heat, Gangbang/Multiple Partners, unprotected sex, semi-graphic depictions of violence, Hannibal is Hannibal, Will does NOT have encephalitis, Knotting Summary: From the kinkmeme prompt: "Going into an intense heat, Will volunteers to be shared and passed around by a group of Alphas. Hannibal finds out. Does he stop it from even happening? Sneak in and sign in to join the group?" What happens when an Omega with a voyeurism kink signs up for a Public Heat and his possessive Alpha psychiatrist applies for a volunteer position? Hint: lots of knotting, lots of come, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of bloodshed. Language: English Words: 10,902 Chapters: 1/1

A Common Point of Interest by rodabonor Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Phone Sex, Sex Toys, Double Anal Penetration, Omega Will Graham, Alpha Hannibal Lecter, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Hannibal (TV) Season/Series 01, ""Therapy"", pillow humping Summary: “I keep thinking about you coming here. We both pretend it’s a lack of self-restraint that drives you, but it would take far more than what we’ve done to genuinely make it snap. But we still enjoy the idea. Or I do. Do you?” “An alpha out of control,” Hannibal muses. “It’s not how I prefer to see myself, but it wouldn’t be the first time you make me reevaluate my preferences.” When Hannibal finds out Will is going to be alone during his heat, he offers phone counselling to lessen the strain of spending it without an alpha. Will takes him up on the offer. It leads to more than therapy over the phone. Language: English Words: 10,210 Chapters: 1/1

Hannigram - Alpha Hannibal/Omega Will - AUs

Turning Page by raiast for exarite Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Underage, Omega Verse, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Bonding, Underage (Will is 16), Omega Will, Alpha Hannibal, first heat, slight praise kink, Daddy Kink Lite, Knotting, overtones of incest (not biologically related), Hannibal Lecter is Not a Cannibal Summary: From a prompt in kinkmeme: 'It's biologically impossible for Alpha parents to be affected by their Omega children's Heats. When Will presents while alone with his father, Hannibal realizes two things. 1) Bedelia cheated on him, and 2) he can claim Will for himself.' Language: English Words: 15,958 Chapters: 3/3

Scented by vix_spes Teen & Up // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Intersex, Scenting, Mpreg, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, elements of Black Sails, Alternate Universe - Regency, Alternate Universe - Pirate, True Mates Summary: Will Graham is hiding a secret from his mate. Given that said mate is the infamous Pirate Captain Hannibal 'the Cannibal' Lecter - and a former surgeon -, Will is expecting him to cotton on sooner rather than later. Series: Part 3 of All At Sea Language: English Words: 1,675 Chapters: 1/?

Decisions, Decisions by FhimeChan Gen // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Fluff and Crack, Accidental Bonding, Mating Bites, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Undefined Genders Summary: Yet another accidental bonding. Language: English Words: 671 Chapters: 1/1

Pagan of the Good Times by BelladonnaWyck Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Hannibal Lecter, Omega Will Graham, Alternate Universe - Escorts, Public Sex, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Strangers to Lovers, With a bit of enemies to lovers, Sex Worker Will Graham, Sex Worker Hannibal Lecter, Kidnapping, Some angst, with a happy ending, Impact Play, Aftercare, BDSM, Caning Summary: Hannibal Lecter has been alive for several hundred years and has never met anyone quite like Will Graham. *** Or the fic where Hannibal and Will work at a Sex Ranch together until Hannibal Pretentious Lecter decides to open a fancy HellFire Club. There is a whole mess of stuff that will happen in this fic and I will make sure to update chapter notes as needed! Language: English Words: 1,503 Chapters: 1/?

The Stray by TigerPrawn Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Inspired by Lady and the Tramp (1955), Lady & The Tramp AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Alpha/Omega, Animal Ears, Alpha Will Graham, Omega Hannibal Lecter, Canis Sapiens, Alternative Evolution, (Lady & The Tramp meets Planet Of The Apes), Cattus Sapiens, Arranged Breeding, Past Abuse, Past Neglect, Getting to Know Each Other, Sharing a Bed, Mental Health Issues, (MH of minor characters), inexperienced Hannibal, Loss of Virginity, Knot Denial, Alternate History, Falling In Love, incarceration, Escape, Cruelty, Rescue, Disappointment, (humans suck), Kidnapping, (but like... a good kidnapping), Mating Cycles/In Heat, Bonding, Knotting, Mpreg, Happy Ending Summary: When Will meets pampered pet Hannibal whilst he is scrounging for scraps, he has no idea that their lives will become so completely entwined and that it will change both of their realities. Series: Part 62 of ABO/Omegaverse Fics by TigerPrawn and Part 25 of Tiger's Hannigram AU fics Language: English Words: 20,573 Chapters: 3/3

Trope: Shipwrecked (Hannigram AU) by TigerPrawn Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Shipwrecked, Alternate Universe - Historical, Mistaken Identity (Kinda), Mistaken Dynamics, Tension, Strangers to Lovers, Service Alpha, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Knotting, Developing Friendships, Getting to Know Each Other, Happy Ending Summary: When a nobleman washes ashore on the island Will has lived alone for many years it is not an ideal situation. Especially when it comes to heats... Series: Part 30 of Trope Trope: Exploring fic tropes in an Omegaverse setting, Part 73 of ABO/Omegaverse Fics by TigerPrawn and Part 48 of Tiger's Hannigram AU fics Language: English Words: 5,088 Chapters: 1/1

Alpha Will/Omega Hannibal, Hannibal Rare Pairs and Hannibal Extended Universe all under the cut...

Hannigram - Alpha Will/Omega Hannibal

Marking His Territory by slashyrogue Teen & Up // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Mpreg, Scenting, Fluff, Slice of Life Summary: It took Hannibal longer than it should have to notice that Will had begun to mark him as his territory. Pure self indulgent fluff Language: English Words: 293 Chapters: 1/1

designed to make you want me by acheforhim Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Will Graham, Omega Hannibal Lecter, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Established Relationship Summary: Although Hannibal would go to great lengths to manipulate someone into doing whatever he wants, he’s absolutely terrible at asking for what he needs. Language: English Words: 2,368 Chapters: 1/1

Trope: Fake Date (Hannigram AU) by TigerPrawn Explicit // M/M // Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha Will Graham, Omega Hannibal Lecter, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Not Canon Compliant, Dating Agency, Grumpy Will Graham, charming Hannibal Lecter, Manipulative Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal charms everyone, Mutual Attraction, Office Sex, Desk Sex, Knotting, the morning after, Happy Ending Summary: Will's possible promotion is relying on his superiors thinking better of him. One way to do that is to take his omega to the upcoming cocktail party. Only problem is, he doesn't have one, having to rely on one sent by an agency. He wasn't quite expecting Doctor Hannibal Lecter. For SummertimeSlick prompt: Favourite Trope Series: Part 28 of Trope Trope: Exploring fic tropes in an Omegaverse setting, Part 71 of ABO/Omegaverse Fics by TigerPrawn and Part 47 of Tiger's Hannigram AU fics Language: English Words: 4,207 Chapters: 1/1

Hannibal Rare Pairs

Pleasurable by TigerPrawn Explicit // M/M // Beverly Katz/Freddie Lounds // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, alpha Bev, Omega Freddie, Established Relationship, Spanking, Spanking with a hairbrush, Dirty Talk, Light Dom/sub, BDSM elements, Painplay, Praise, Object Insertion, intersex omega, Intersex Alpha, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Rough Sex, Knotting, Mentions of Bonding, Penis In Vagina Sex Summary: Alpha Bev gives girlfriend omega Freddie a spanking with unexpected consequences. For #SummertimeSlick fest prompt - New Kink! Series: Part 69 of ABO/Omegaverse Fics by TigerPrawn Language: English Words: 2,714 Chapters: 1/1

Hannibal Extended Universe

Fire And Flame by Grantairesbigadventure Explicit // M/M // Valhalla Enchanted - Prince Charmont (Ella Enchanted)/One Eye (Valhalla Rising) // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Explicit Sexual Content, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat Summary: Charmont finally gets away from his awful uncle, he finds himself saved by a strange man. Being in the middle of the heat, Charmont is afraid of how the night will go. Language: English Words: 2,606 Chapters: 1/1

Insatiable by AchillesLament (11Mydesign11), You_Are_As_Alone_As_I_Am Explicit // M/M // SpaceDogs - Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Adam Raki // Selected Tags: Oral Fixation, Omega Adam Raki, Alpha Nigel (Charlie Countryman), Alpha/Omega, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Knotting, ass eating, slick, outside smut, Fluff and Smut, Nigel (Charlie Countryman) Loves Adam Raki, Insatiable Nigel, Bathroom smut Summary: Nigel’s heavy work load has kept him away from his beautiful Omegan mate, Adam. But his impending heat brings out a previously unexplored fetish in the Alpha that requires his attention on Adam in the most inopportune places and times. Will his craving ever be sated? Only one way to find out. For SummertimeSlick 2019 Fest for Hannigram A/B/O Library Series: Part 8 of Shoot Across the Sky Language: English Words: 4,580 Chapters: 1/1

a different kind of sating by exarite Mature // M/M // Tristhad - Galahad/Tristan (King Arthur 2004) // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega/Omega, Omega Galahad (King Arthur 2004), Omega Tristan (King Arthur 2004), Seduction, Mutual Pining, Misunderstandings, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting Summary: It's hardly a secret that Galahad was interested in Tristan. That much was blatantly obvious from how the Omega resorted to ridiculous seduction tactics, even if Tristan wanted to pretend it was just a silly little game. But Tristan was keeping a secret of his own. Language: English Words: 3,740 Chapters: 1/1

Playmates by TigerPrawn Explicit // M/M, Multi // Roberto Bellini/Nigel (Charlie Countryman), Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Adam Towers, Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Roberto Bellini/Adam Towers, Roberto Bellini/Adam Towers (briefly) // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Alpha/Omega, Alpha/Alpha/Omega, Alpha Roberto, Alpha Adam, Omega Nigel, intersex omega, Mating Cycles/In Heat, gruff Nigel, little shit Berto, distant cousin Adam, Double Penetration Summary: Nigel's heat is due and his now regular heat partner Berto, has a suggestion. Sequel to Plaything for SummertimeSlick (almost kinda surprise heat) Series: Part 70 of ABO/Omegaverse Fics by TigerPrawn, Part 95 of Tiger's Mads x Hugh Rare Pair fics and Part 2 of Plaything Language: English Words: 5,515 Chapters: 1/1

Just like Animals by AchillesLament (11Mydesign11) Explicit // M/M // DogsDogs - Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Will Graham // Selected Tags: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Scenting, Obsessive Behavior, Stalking, Jealousy, Falling In Love, Smitten Nigel (Charlie Countryman), Alpha Nigel (Charlie Countryman), Omega Will Graham, Grumpy Will Graham, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Slow Burn, But not /too/ slow, Knotting Summary: A new life in the States is proving lucrative for Nigel as he tries to move on from Gabi. The latter isn't going as well, not until he catches the sweet scent of a surly, headstrong Omega named Will Graham. That's when his obsession shifts from her, to him. Will the Alpha's insistence pay off, or will it all turn to blood in the blink of an eye? Language: English Words: 2,633 Chapters: 1/?

Under the boardwalk by AchillesLament (11Mydesign11), TortugaVerde Explicit // M/M // ChocolateDogs - Nigel (Charlie Countryman)/Aiden (Blood and Chocolate) // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Painting, Sex on the Beach, Falling In Love, Anniversary, Knotting, Animal Instincts, Lust at First Sight Summary: Aiden loves painting on the boardwalk, there even an Omega like himself can do his work without much distraction, that is until the Alpha Nigel catches his eye and his nose. Will they be able to resist the lure of one another or does fate have other ideas for these two wild men? Language: English Words: 4,638 Chapters: 1/?

Trope: Awkward Date (Valhalla Enchanted - Modern AU) by TigerPrawn Explicit // M/M // ValhallaEnchanted - Prince Charmont (Ella Enchanted)/One Eye (Valhalla Rising) // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha One Eye (Valhalla Rising), Omega Prince Char, Awkward Dates, trying to take it slow, after putting the cart before the horse, Char has no idea how to date, Awkward Conversations, Clumsiness, Public Display of Affection, Nipple Play, Knotting, Getting to Know Each Other, Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting Summary: Char, the once sexually assured and popular omega, has no idea how to actually date. Sequel to Trope: College AU (Valhalla Enchanted - Modern AU) Series: Part 29 of Trope Trope: Exploring fic tropes in an Omegaverse setting, Part 72 of ABO/Omegaverse Fics by TigerPrawn and Part 96 of Tiger's Mads x Hugh Rare Pair fics Language: English Words: 4,969 Chapters: 1/1

I Get Around by vix_spes Explicit // M/M // RoyaleInstinct - Le Chiffre/Adam Towers // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Intersex, Pre-Casino Royale, Voyeurism, Knotting, Public Sex, Exhibitionism, Masturbation, Overstimulation Summary: Adam's goal in heading to the south of France had been to enjoy some sun and some alphas - preferably rich, hung and attractive ones. Anything more than one night would be considered. There had been pickings galore but it seemed as though there was one particular alpha that he had underestimated... Language: English Words: 5,873 Chapters: 1/1

Thick in the Air by InsanelyWriteful Mature // M/M // MurderArtists - Aiden (Blood and Chocolate)/Hannibal Lecter // Selected Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Scenting, True Mates, mild violence, Descriptions of gore, rape mention, no one is raped, Murder, Manipulative Hannibal, teasing Aiden, Aiden is in trouble, Alpha/Omega, Alpha!hannibal, Omega!Aiden, Dark fluff, Humor, Cannibalism, Horror, Dismemberment, Blood Summary: For Aiden, life's all fun and games until you have a serial killer trying to court you. Language: English Words: 7,867 Chapters: 1/1

[atleastputinsomeeffortinuroc]

Rant/Review: Ready Player One --aka-- Just Watch Wrinkle in Time Instead...

I don’t usually hate movies. 

I know that seems backwards considering that this blog is me complaining and ranting incoherently about movies I don’t like, but very few movies leave me seething. Even all of the Detective Conan movies, which are mostly terrible pieces of garbage, I don’t necessarily hate. Red Crimson Letters is a terrible waste of time and energy, but I wasn’t insulted or felt talked down to. It was just a really bad movie I wanted to talk about.

In my life, there have only been three movies who have truly enraged me. “Batman v Superman,” “Joy,” and “War for the Planet of the Apes.” 

Objectively, there are aspects that are genuinely good in all of them and are definitely better than I probably give them credit for...but I doubt it, but they just flare up an anger in me for one reason or another. They’re permanently on my “fuck that movie” list. And now…now there’s another entrant to that prestigious list.

Ready Player One.

My GOD. THIS was the book everyone’s been talking about? THIS is supposed to be the fucking bible of pop culture?! THIS MOVIE?! THE ONE THAT UNIRONICALLY HAS THE PHRASE SPOKEN BY HUMAN VOCAL CHORDS “FANBOYS ALWAYS KNOW A HATER?!!” ARE YOU GUYS--…ok. Ok, I need to calm down. 

There are several, several, SEVERAL parts about this movie that don’t work, and I could go into a lot of the problems, but instead I’m going to try to talk about three aspects of the film. And for the sake of me not swearing up and down, we’re not going to talk about that godawful dialogue. Just know that it sucks.)

1) The ham-fisted arc

2) The protagonist and his trophy waifu

3) References over content

There are spoilers ahead, and I’m going to write this with the assumption that you’ve already seen the movie. If you haven’t, you’ve been warned. Anywho, let’s get started. Put on some “a-ha,” break your nostalgia goggles and join me as we go down this road where I collectively shit over Spielberg’s attempt to adapt a supposed “beloved classic.” (CAN YOU TELL I’M MAD?!)

1)     The arc

Here’s the thing with arcs in narratives, and more specifically films. 

They need to feel earned. 

Your central character has gone through a life-altering change or point of view since the beginning of the film due to the adventures and trials had throughout the film. Good examples include “Mad Max: Fury Road” where Max finally lets others into his life and sees the value in not going through life alone as described by the part where he donates his own blood and tells Furiosa his name. Another good example is actually from the Oscar nominee Spielberg had LITERALLY LAST YEAR, “The Post.” In it, Kay Graham finally put her foot down and shows authority by stepping out of her comfort zone to release the Pentagon Papers—damn what the powers that be say. This is important to any narrative because it shows the flaws of your characters through their insecurities and hesitations to make them human rather than movie characters. Even if you have paragon characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, or Batman, they still have to overcome some kind of personal issue that is keeping them from achieving what they’ve wanted.

Now, if you look over to the main character, you can see that his arc was…what is it that was his arc? 

He’s…he’s the same at the beginning as he was at the end. 

“OH BUT HE HAS A PENTHOUSE AT THE END,” yeah that’s not a change. One could argue that the (even though the catalyst for change has no fucking relation to it) arc is about unplugging and enjoying the real world. The bits at the end with Easter Egg man where he starts going on and on and on about how he missed reality or something, and the VERY BRIEF bits at the beginning where you see people all over the VR systems, one of which is the mother neglecting a fire in the house and one where an Asian man almost commits suicide after losing all of his stuff in the game (it’s played for comedy, so THAT’S also pretty fun, because it’s not like Japanese suicide rates are a serious issue or anything OH WAIT.) So it’s about being close to reality and unplugging. Ok. Coolio.

But here’s the thing, similar to “War for the Planet of the Apes”…YOU HAVEN’T EARNED IT. There are brief moments where it kind of alludes to it (see the middle challenge with ‘oh yes, I should have kissed the girl during the Shining’ and the small bit at the middle where the main two are sitting there and the main dude has ONE HALF-ASSED LINE about how “it’s nice here. It’s slower,”) but that’s IT. It doesn’t actually give you a reason to think that staying in the Oasis and avoiding reality is a BAD thing. Sure you have abusive father obsessed with getting high scores but he’s just one dimensional asshole dad who dies and you don’t give a shit about it one second later after his parental figures are killed. 

There are no real CONSEQUENCES to spending too much time in the Oasis, it’s just because he’s good at the game. And if there are, they sure as hell aren’t focused on in favor of mindless spectacle (which looks REALLY BAD by the way. I know it’s supposed to look fake because video game, but do the main characters have to use the ugliest models in existence?!) As such, the ending and central arc of learning is lost.

So what’s the arc? Well…there is none. Nothing is really learned, nothing is really gained that MATTERS aside from the keys to Willy Wonka’s goddamn chocolate factory. 

Z or Perzival or Wade or generic-white-gamer-boy learns all of fucking NOTHING by the end. (As such, it makes the ending where he says “EVERYONE HAS TO BE OFF ON TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS” come off as BULLshit.)

But no, this is clearly the Spielberg classic. It’s not like Indiana Jones learned anything in the Last Crusade as a character only he totally fucking DID, HE LEARNED TO RESPECT AND LOVE HIS FATHER WHO HE PREVIOUSLY DESPISED AND THE IMPORTANCE OF—sorry. Sorry I’m getting a bit mad again.

Anywho, due to a lack of a real arc, it makes you think that the entire fucking plot was pointless. It was just inevitable that the good guy win because…well he’s the main character. He doesn’t say anything about anything but is instead dumb fluff, which would be fine…but here’s the thing. It also affects the main characters. And it affects them HARD.

2)     Tweedledee and Tweedledumbass

The two main characters have no personality or character due to this lack of an arc.

The main man, Wade, his personality is…what exactly? He’s just generic hero-boy who is obsessed with the 80s. “He’s like a regular Star-Lord!” I hear you say, only he totally fucking isn’t. Starlord has baggage, has character has points and instances that stretch BEYOND just quoting 80’s movie and saying the actual phrase that a screenwriter actually wrote down and didn’t immediately delete that went “FANBOYS ALWAYS KNOW A HATER” NO I AM NOT OVER IT.

...Point is, the references don’t make Star-Lord who he is, it’s the character of Peter Quill himself. Cocky, brash, and in many ways, a child running from his past. 

As for Wade, he’s got nothing. I’ve looked over this sometimes, depending on the writing or the situation, so maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much, but the actor who plays him isn’t doing a good job. I know I don’t talk about acting a lot, but the man…the man is just whining through his lines. He comes off as insufferable with his needless 80’s knowledge that I was genuinely rooting for the one-dimensional villain to kill that fucking brat.

Then we have Artemis or Samantha or Sam or its-the-pixie-cut-rebel-chick.  

There are several scenes that are etched into my brain now (including a FUCKING NUT-SHOT AND A PASSWORD FOR A HUMAN ADULT THAT IS “B055MAN69.” IN A SPIELBERG MOVIE. THE MAN WHO MADE INDIANA JONES AND SCHINDLER’S LIST.), but one of the big ones is the final image of the film in which the main character in his 80’s man-boy cave spins around with his beautiful woman sitting in his lap as they suck face as the line “reality is pretty awesome anyway” or something like that. Aside from the main character not earning that statement as previously stated…fucking let’s look at it for what it is.

The man just won a real-life walking-talking waifu. A trophy wife that he wins at the end of the game.

She’s what probably made me see through the movie the most honestly. She makes this big fucking deal about “oh, but I’m not who you think I am on the outside, I’m not pretty” and then when you go outside to the real world, of course she’s the fucking gorgeous Hollywood white girl—she just has a goddamn birthmark on her eye to be her “blemish.”

“Oh but she’s insecure about it,” I hear you say--I’m sorry, but you mean to tell me NOBODY told her she’s fine and beautiful with the eye-mark BEFORE Wade? You mean to tell me she’s insecure, but not insecure enough to feel the need to buy fucking MAKE-UP!? I’m not saying that she needs it, I’m saying that the character’s central flaw is the WEAKEST FUCKIN FLAW I HAVE EVER SEEN. YOU WANNA CHANGE THE GAME, QUASIMODO THAT SHIT. 

THEN, and this part was just fucking HILARIOUS to me, she mentions about how the ioi company fucking KILLED HER FATHER in a workshop and she has to stop him for revenge…and then it’s totally dropped. Like it’s never mentioned by the end. At all. She chucks a grenade into Mechagodzilla to kill the bossman but fuck me if it ain’t satisfying and adds physically NOTHING to her character.

Her character exists for one purpose. She is the love interest who sets the main character off on his journey. Nothing more. And I say that, because SHE’S THE CATALYST FOR HIM FINDING THE FIRST KEY. She tells him something that reminds him of something that solves the puzzle. And what’s more, I am willing to bet that THAT’S the reason they kept her Hollywood pretty. Because you need to have an attractive romantic love interest to keep the audience pleased. 

Now apparently, she does more in the movie than she does in the book. And that’s great. That’s super. She’s the one breaking in to destroy the d20 of doom. Hell yeah I guess. But I also don’t care. You wanna know why? BECAUSE I AM NOT READING THE BOOK. Superficial changes that improve certain aspects doesn’t make the movie better than it is. It’s like polishing a fucking turd. Yeah, it’s nicer than what you had, but you are still making me hold this piece of dogshit.

They don’t have characters. They don’t have chemistry BECAUSE they don’t have characters. It’s a fucking wash.

3) Drowning in References

But now we talk about the big one. The big fucking thing that everyone and their mother is obsessing about this movie over. And the thing that has gotten me from not liking this movie to fucking DESPISING it.

The references.

To quote from people who will be seeing the movie in the theater *ahem*...

“OHMYGOD IS THAT TRACER?! OH AND IT’S HARLEY AND THE JOKER! OH! OH! OH! IRON GIANT! HALO! BORDERLANDS! BACK TO THE FUTURE! BATMAN—FUCKING IT’S THE BATMAN! THEY MENTIONED THRILLER! THAT’S PRINCE! STREET FIGHTER! MECHA-GODZILLA FIGHTING GUNDAM! MINECRAFT! NINJA TURTLES! FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH! STAR TREK! FIREFLY! THE SHINING! IT’S FUCKING CHUCKY!!!”

…Ok? So what?

Not to be a snob, but seriously—so what? Why does it matter?

Listen, I like crossovers too. I remember the Avengers and what a big goddamn deal it was, and how it made everyone’s jaw drop to the ground, and how in some ways, it still does. But whereas with those it felt organic, Ready Player One with its ninety thousand references felt…empty.

I’m going to bring out two comparisons to the table that do the same thing that Ready Player One did, “Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?” and “Wreck-It Ralph.” Both had pop-culture icons throughout them. One had all of the classic cartoons all spliced together—where you saw Daffy Duck and Donald Duck in the same shot having a dual piano-off. One of them had all of these video game characters that you loved and embraced since you were a kid, running around and hanging out ala “Toy Story.” These big names are all in the background, just like Ready Player One, but they’re clearly different in terms of execution. Why is that?

Well it’s because the movies weren’t reliant on them. Sure, Rodger Rabbit had fun moments with these big names, but if you took them out and animated totally new characters with similar personalities, what would you lose? Nothing. The plot is the same, the dynamics are the same, and it can still be seen as a salute to the classic animations from back in the day to also an allegory for the Jim Crowe era just as the book intentionally was. Same goes for Wreck-it Ralph, the character goes through a fundamental change that has him accepting who he is and how “there’s nobody else I’d rather be, than me” ALL THE WHILE paying respects to classic arcade video games.

The same can’t be said for Ready Player One. The instant you take away the pop-culture references, the movie loses its protective suit of armor to reveal it’s about…nothing. 

It is. 

Nothing. 

The generic quest, the generic corporate baddie, the generic love interest, the main character has nothing to say, and the conflict is revealed to be flat—nothing about it sticks out or makes an impression.

And if you fail to make an impression without a fucking suit pop-culture references then, well, if I may use a pop-culture quote myself...“If you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”

Plain and simple.

But then…there’s the one thing I can’t really debate. 

“It’s just fun though, right?”

Yeah sure. I’ll admit around that third act, even though it was long overdrawn, I had fun watching the violence and references I understood while they blasted “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in the background.

But y’know what? It was just about as enjoyable as seeing someone adapt a piece of shitty fanfiction, because both have one thing in common for everything that they do: It’s just there for fan service. If you make the statement “well the Oasis is cool,” then you’ve clearly missed the point because you don’t like the movie, you like it’s gimmick. And it’s gimmick exists—it’s called VR Chat.

Meanwhile, screenwriters of different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders and religions from everywhere across the world are actually putting EFFORT into their screenwriting and directing. And while their action scenes for their blockbuster idea may not be perfect, they at least tried and did something new with it.

I went to see “Wrinkle in Time” today after I’d seen Ready Player One yesterday, needing to see literally anything good. And yeah, it’s not perfect. It’s got some stilted dialogue and some questionable acting on nearly all fronts at points and the conflict can be about as cliched as you can imagine, but the visuals, the costume design—you could tell everyone cared and put a goddamn effort into everything put forth. It’s much more gorgeous than the downright UGLY CG that was in the Oasis world in Ready Player One, and I guarantee you nobody had the phrase “B055MAN69” anywhere. It didn’t pander to kids or guys who wanted to feel validated for knowing a couple references. It wanted to tell the story of fighting back evil and hatred by embracing love. It’s cheesy and sappy…but fuck me, if it didn’t try to say something while having fun.

But fuck that movie right? We have Iron Giant fighting Mechagodzilla. 

If you have that, then why bother putting in effort?

That’s what kills me. It’s lazy and people praise it because it just stuck pop-culture words in a fucking blender. Don’t call it innovative. Don’t call it original. Don’t call it anything than what it is.

80’s. Prepubescent. Fucking. Fanfiction.

You can love it and enjoy it if you want, I mean I don’t like not liking movies. It sucks. And in some aspects, I can see why you can if you turn your brain off but…I’m not gonna lie, to see this get away with murder insults me.

Listen, I love Spielberg. There is nobody I respect more in the business. His work in AI, and the reason why he did so to keep a dying friend’s vision alive will always keep him as one of my personal heroes but…sometimes you gotta call people out when they make shit. And I am.

I don’t care what anyone says, don’t see Ready Player One. Watch something worthwhile. Go to Netflix and watch “Stranger Things” if you’ve got that need for an 80′s kick, or hell--”Blade Runner 2049″ is a visual goddamn MARVEL. Go see “The Post” or “Jaws” if you want some good Spielberg. Just PLEASE! Go see something that isn’t just a bunch of references that almost feel as though it’s a remake of “ctrl+alt+del.” 

(Random aside, people have told me to read the original book...but if that fucking thing is ANYTHING like this movie, I’d rather BURN IT than let it get one inch into my house. So no, I’m not going to read the book even if there are claims that it’s “better.” (Even though I believe that it’s impossible to say a book is better than it’s adaptation or vice versa because it’s two different mediums and as such it’s hardly fair, but that’s a whole other thing.) Point is, I’ve never been more turned off to a book in my godddamned life and I ain’t gonna bother.)

[amorremanet]

top 5 movies? and why? no no TOP FIVE BOOKS

oh gosh, both of these are hard and my answers for them are probably so boring (they also come with the, “this is just how I feel right now because ugh, I am the worst at picking any all-time faves for broad categories”) — but!!

top “five” movies:

The Prince of Egypt — has some of the most beautiful art that I’ve ever seen, anywhere, and music that sticks with you, and it really shows the human drama and human stakes of such a classic story in ways that a lot of adaptations of Biblical mythology are afraid to do

Deadpool — because I’m garbage, the characters are great, the script is pretty good, and the movie makes me laugh. It’s not really a deconstruction (in the way that some people make it out to be, by way of justifying why they like it), and it’s not super-intellectual, and in a lot of ways, it’s like a giant #SorryNotSorry that makes fun of superhero movie tropes while continuing to use them (and there are some subtle ways it plays with some of said tropes and twists them around, but it largely doesn’t) — but it’s fun

But I’m A Cheerleader — is far from perfect, and I maintain that it’s actually much more depressing than the ending leads us to believe (I mean, Meghan/Graham and Dolph/Clayton get together and escape from True Directions and homophobic parents, and Meghan’s Mom and Dad at least try to do better by their daughter, but things don’t work out that well for anybody else), but it’ll always have a special place in my heart because it was one of the only lesbian movies that I had access to as a little gay baby

Female Trouble — I wouldn’t say that it’s the best thing that John Waters has ever done, just the one that I personally like the best, and I’ll admit that it’s probably an acquired taste…… but I love how it takes on celebrity culture in the story Dawn Davenport, and it gave us great lines like, “The world of heterosexual is a sick and boring life” and, “I wouldn’t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls!” It also has a special place in my heart as one of my favorite, “gay AND weird” movies

—which probably makes sense, given that it was written and directed by the trash king of being gay and weird

……like, seriously. My (best friend who I call my) brother once asked me, “So is John Waters gay or is he just really weird?” and the only thing I could think of to say to that was, “Yes, both.”

the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy — which is totally cheating, to put three in here, but I couldn’t pick between them. I do think that Hot Fuzz and The World’s End are more fully actualized than Shaun of the Dead, but I love all of them, and the reason is pretty much just, “Because they’re good mixes of being hilarious and making me FEEL things” (……less so in The World’s End, for several reasons; it’s a lot heavier on the feels, to the point that you sometimes feel bad for laughing at the jokes, but still)

and books:

Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman) — This book was my introduction to both PTerry and GNeil, after I found a cheap copy in an airport bookstore when I was about twelve and immediately fell in love. It’s funny, the characters are vibrant and engaging, and it played right into my love of screwing around with Biblical mythology.

I’m periodically tempted to list different books for both of those men (with PTerry’s probably being one of the Granny Weatherwax books, or Faust Eric, and GNeil’s being either American Gods or one of his Sandman books — because yeah, he’s done other good stuff, but I’m more sentimentally attached to AG and Sandman. Also, Preludes and Nocturnes has some of the only non-movie or TV horror that has genuinely terrified me, so)

—buuuut then I never do, because Good Omens was my first book from either of them, and remains my sentimental fave, even though I admit that they’ve both written other books that are, “better” or, “stronger,” or whatever

Dry (Augusten Burroughs) — There’s a lot of fair criticism to be made of Augusten Burroughs, and he’s been one of the writers at the center of the debates about truthfulness or lack thereof in popular memoirs (like, how much an author is allowed to condense things before it stops counting as a, “real story,” and how an author remembers things happening vs. how other people remember them), but Dry nevertheless means a lot to me.

Like, I enjoyed Running with Scissors and his novel, Sellevision (which were the other Big Deals in his collected works, at the time I originally read Dry), but Dry fucked me up a LOT when I first read it. It has continued to fuck me up ever since.

There are passages in this book that I can’t even be jealous of, as another writer, because they’re so good that they skip right the fuck past, “I’m angry and jealous that I didn’t write this myself” and into, “Holy shit, THIS is why I write, the ability to do THIS KIND OF THING EXACTLY with words, I need to go write something right now”

Also, it means a lot to me for sentimental, “I read this book for the first time when I was in high school, and it made me feel less lonely and sad and scared” reasons

Dynamic Characters (Nancy Kress) — This is by no means the be-all and end-all of, “how to writer better” books, but it’s a personal favorite of mine, for two reasons: 1. there are some things that Kress doesn’t cover about creating characters and doing better by them in your writing, but she’s still pretty comprehensive and offers some solid illustrative examples, multiple perspectives on this part of writing (not as many as she could, but to be fair, she only has so many pages to work with), and a good mix of “tough love” advice and gentler, more reassuring advice;

and 2. …it was the first, “how to writer better” book that I ever got my hands on. I picked it out specifically because I’d posted a completely ridiculous crack fic that was a crossover between Harry Potter and Sailor Moon, with a first-person protagonist narrator who was a hot nonsense self-insert power fantasy Mary Sue with no flaws and no nuance because, hey, I was 11.

And someone actually commented to go, “Hey, look, you have talent, but you could do better and one place to start is maybe with learning to build better realized characters” — so I picked out the Nancy Kress book and it seems like a really silly thing to call a turning point? But it was big a turning point for me

Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (José Alaniz) — okay, time for me to be a loser and cite an academic book. I’m also probably a cheating loser, since I just read this book for the first time recently…… but with that said? I’ve read a LOT of critical treatments of the superhero genre, some pretty good, others pretty bad (for example, I remain Perpetually Tired of Slavoj Žižek’s heavy metal Communist, Bane in Leather Pants bullshit reading of The Dark Knight Returns), and most of it somewhere in the middle

—but there’s this trend among people who write critically about superhero junk, whether they’re academics of not, wherein we act like we have to act like superhero comics are The Most Progressive Ever and oversell their sociopolitical impact in order to make them look like ~*True Art*~ That Must Be Taken Seriously (—and like, I’m not saying that they have NO impact on people at all, because that’s objectively false. But you also can’t try to claim that Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America comics are why the Allies won World War II)

(this is a pointless aside to note that I deliberately left the Goddamn Batman off that list, because while Supes, Diana, and Steve were all off punching Nazis, Golden Age Bruce and white boy!Dick were running around on the home-front, rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps. So… y’know. There’s that.)

……or we have to take legitimate criticisms of problems in the superhero genre, both historical and current, and use them to go, “Therefore, the entire genre is pointless garbage that has no redeeming qualities at all and could never ever EVER be used to tell any stories that are worth telling, and frankly, you are all terrible, horrible people for enjoying it, how very dare you enjoy that X-Men movie or that Red Hood And The Outlaws comic, you’re basically a fascist now”

—which is hilarious, to me, because the people who write that sort of criticism almost always cite Fredric Wertham’s book, The Seduction of the Innocent (aka: the book that led to so much moral outrage over the allegedly very gay and fascistic, child-corrupting content of comicbooks that the Comics Code Authority was created), and they always go, “Well, obviously Wertham was OTT and totally full of shit, buuuut…… *argument that would not have been out of place in his book*”

So, one of the big reasons I loved Professor Alaniz’s book is that is does neither of these things. It offers some incisive, and occasionally kinda damning, critique of the superhero genre and its handling of disability and mortality, but he does so from a place of love and enjoyment, and never pretends to hate the genre, nor argues for throwing the whole thing out because it has problems.

Like, his underlying mindset is very much, “Yes, the superhero genre has a LOT of problems, but people could, in theory, fix them and try to get closer to realizing the full potential of what these characters and stories can do” — while never skimping on a detailed analysis of the trends and case studies that he presents.

Sometimes, I think he’s kinda reaching (and I, personally, never want to hear anything about Doctor Doom’s Oedipus complex ever again so long as I live, though it was validating to hear that my theatre kids AU version of him — who is a ridiculous mess, obsessed with taking selfies, and perpetually acting like he totally gets everything while missing some crucial detail, which is how he ends up thinking that Loki is dating Tony Stank [a suggestion that makes both of them want to puke] — is actually a valid interpretation of his character, based on some parts of canon)

Overall, though, my biggest problem with Professor Alaniz’s book is that he can be kind of a hipster and it can get a little bit annoying. Not enough to ruin the whole book, but enough that it does stand out.

Like, his chapter on Daredevil specifically analyzes an infamous Silver Age story that basically everyone hated — the one where Matt Murdock tells Karen and Foggy that he isn’t the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but he has some heretofore unknown identical twin brother named Mike, who is not blind but *IS* actually that aforementioned costumed hero, and carries on a charade of pretending to be his nonexistent twin brother — and okay, we get some pretty neat discussion of how passing can work or might not with disabled people

…but you can still walk away feeling like his biggest reason for analyzing that story arc was less about its value to any part of his discussion, and more about going, “Other Daredevil stories are too mainstream, I care most about this one that was so infamously ridiculous that people have said even soap operas wouldn’t have done this plot”

Likewise, I’m not saying that there aren’t very fair criticisms to be made of the X-Men and how their stories handle disability in particular… but at some points in his chapter on the Silver Age Doom Patrol comics, Professor Alaniz seems to be less, “using the pre-Claremont Silver Age X-Men stories as an illustrative foil to the Doom Patrol, especially with regard to how Charles’s paraplegia is treated vs. how The Chief’s paraplegia is treated” and more, “using this discussion as a free excuse to bash on the X-Men for being popular”

To his credit, Professor Alaniz does kinda discuss some of the ways that the X-Men’s popularity might have been affected by the fact that things like their ableist handling of Charles make them feel, “safer” and, “less sociopolitically threatening” than he makes the Doom Patrol out to be (with a pretty convincing argument, actually)

He just doesn’t do it enough for me to feel like his “criticism” of the X-Men isn’t at least partially grounded in going, “Well, it’s popular, therefore it sucks” (—as opposed to my approach to them, which is, “It’s popular, and has a mixed bag of things that it does well vs. things it does that suck, but it does not suck BECAUSE it is popular”)

Anyway, good book, and it’s written in a refreshingly accessible way (it’s still an academic book and harder to get into than, say, Good Omens, but Professor Alaniz doesn’t make a lot of the more common mistakes that leave a lot of academic writing effectively incomprehensible)

and last but not least…… Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (we all know who wrote this, okay, come on) — because I’d be lying if I didn’t include at least one HP book on this list, considering how important those books and that fandom have been to the course of my life and to my development as a writer, and it was either gonna be this one or POA, but this one won over the other because I’m garbage

[ciathyzareposts]

Ten Great Adventure-Game Puzzles

This blog has become, among other things, an examination of good and bad game-design practices down through the years, particularly within the genre of adventure games. I’ve always tried to take the subject seriously, and have even dared to hope that some of these writings might be of practical use to someone — might help designers of the present or future make better games. But, for reasons that I hope everyone can understand, I’ve spent much more time illuminating negative than positive examples of puzzle design. The fact is, I don’t feel much compunction about spoiling bad puzzles. Spoiling the great puzzles, however, is something I’m always loath to do. I want my readers to have the thrill of tackling those for themselves.

Unfortunately, this leaves the situation rather unbalanced. If you’re a designer looking for tips from the games of the past, it certainly helps to have some positive as well as negative examples to look at. And even if you just read this blog to experience (or re-experience) these old games through the sensibility of your humble author here, you’re missing out if all you ever hear about are the puzzles that don’t work. So, when my reader and supporter Casey Muratori wrote to me to suggest an article that singles out some great puzzles for detailed explication and analysis, it sounded like a fine idea to me.

It’s not overly difficult to generalize what makes for fair or merely “good” puzzles. They should be reasonably soluble by any reasonably intelligent, careful player, without having to fall back on the tedium of brute-forcing them or the pointlessness of playing from a walkthrough. As such, the craft of making merely good or fair puzzles is largely subsumed in lists of what not to do — yes, yet more negative reinforcements! — such as Graham Nelson’s “Bill of Player’s Rights” or Ron Gilbert’s “Why Adventure Games Suck and What We Can Do About It.” It’s much more difficult, however, to explain what makes a brilliant, magical puzzle. In any creative discipline, rules will only get you so far; at some point, codification must make way for the ineffable. Still, we’ll do the best we can today, and see if we can’t tease some design lessons out of ten corking puzzles from adventure games of yore.

Needless to say, there will be spoilers galore in what follows, so if you haven’t played these games, and you think you might ever want to, you should absolutely do so before reading about them here. All ten games are found in my personal Hall of Fame and come with my highest recommendation. As that statement would indicate, I’ve restricted this list to games I’ve already written about, meaning that none of those found here were published after 1992. I’ve split the field evenly between parser-driven text adventures and point-and-click graphic adventures. If you readers enjoy and/or find this article useful, then perhaps it can become a semi-regular series going forward.

And now, with all that said, let’s accentuate the positive for once and relive some classic puzzles that have been delighting their players for decades.

1. Getting past the dragon in Adventure

By Will Crowther and Don Woods, public domain, 1977.

How it works: Deep within the bowels of Colossal Cave, “a huge green dragon bars the way!” Your objective, naturally, is to get past him to explore the area beyond. But how to get him out of the way? If you throw your axe at him, it “bounces harmlessly off the dragon’s thick scales.” If you unleash your fierce bird friend on him, who earlier cleared a similarly troublesome snake out of your way, “the little bird attacks the green dragon, and in an astounding flurry gets burnt to a cinder.” If you simply try to “attack dragon,” the game mocks you: “With what? Your bare hands?” You continue on in this way until, frustrated and thoroughly pissed off, you type, “Yes,” in response to that last rhetorical question. And guess what? It wasn’t a rhetorical question: “Congratulations! You have just vanquished a dragon with your bare hands! (Unbelievable, isn’t it?)”

Why it works: In many ways, this is the most dubious puzzle in this article. (I do know how to make an entrance, don’t I?) It seems safe to say that the vast majority of people who have “solved” it have done so by accident, which is not normally a sign of good puzzle design. Yet classic text adventures especially were largely about exploring the possibility space, seeing what responses you could elicit. The game asks you a question; why not answer it, just to see what it does?

This is an early example of a puzzle that could never have worked absent the parser — absent its approach to interactivity as a conversation between game and player. How could you possibly implement something like this using point and click? I’m afraid a dialog box with a “YES” and “NO” just wouldn’t work. In text, though, the puzzle rewards the player’s sense of whimsy — rewards the player, one might even say, for playing in the right spirit. Interactions like these are the reason some of us continue to love text adventures even in our modern era of photo-realistic graphics and surround sound.

Our puzzling design lesson: A puzzle need not be complicated to delight — need barely be a puzzle at all! — if it’s executed with wit and a certain joie de vivre.

2. Exploring the translucent maze in Enchanter

By Marc Blank and David Lebling, Infocom, 1983

How it works: As you’re exploring the castle of the mad wizard Krill, you come upon a maze of eight identical rooms in the basement. Each location is “a peculiar room, whose cream-colored walls are thin and translucent.” All of the rooms are empty, the whole area seemingly superfluous. How strange.

Elsewhere in the castle, you’ve discovered (or will discover) a few other interesting items. One is an old book containing “The Legend of the Unseen Terror”:

This legend, written in an ancient tongue, goes something like this: At one time a shapeless and formless manifestation of evil was disturbed from millennia of sleep. It was so powerful that it required the combined wisdom of the leading enchanters of that age to conquer it. The legend tells how the enchanters lured the Terror "to a recess deep within the earth" by placing there a powerful spell scroll. When it had reached the scroll, the enchanters trapped it there with a spell that encased it in the living rock. The Terror was so horrible that none would dare speak of it. A comment at the end of the narration indicates that the story is considered to be quite fanciful; no other chronicles of the age mention the Terror in any form.

And you’ve found a map, drawn in pencil. With a start, you realize that it corresponds exactly to the map you’ve drawn of the translucent maze, albeit with an additional, apparently inaccessible room located at point P:

B J ! / ! / ! / ! K V ! / ! / ! / R-------M F / / / H P

Finally, you’ve found a badly worn pencil, with a point and an eraser good for just two uses each.

And so you put the pieces together. The Terror and the “powerful spell scroll” mentioned in the book are encased in the “living rock” of the maze in room P. The pencil creates and removes interconnections between the rooms. You need to get to room P to recover the scroll, which you’ll need to defeat Krill. But you can’t allow the Terror to escape and join forces with Krill. A little experimentation — which also causes you to doom the world to endless darkness a few times, but there’s always the restore command, right? — reveals that the Terror moves one room per turn, just as you do. So, your objective must be to let him out of room P, but trap him in another part of the maze before he can get to room B and freedom. You need to give him a path to freedom to get him moving out of room P, then cut it off.

There are many possible solutions. One is to go to room H, then draw a line connecting P and F. Sensing a path to freedom, the Terror will move to room F, whereupon you erase the connection you just drew. As you do that, the Terror moves to room V, but you erase the line between V and M before he can go further, trapping him once again. Now, you have just enough pencil lead left to draw a line between H and P and recover the scroll.

Why it works: Solving this puzzle comes down to working out how a system functions, then exploiting it to do your bidding. (Small wonder so many hackers have found text adventures so appealing over the years!) First comes the great mental leap of connecting these four disparate elements which you’ve found scattered about: an empty maze, a book of legends, a map, and a pencil. Then, after that great “a-ha!” moment, you get the pleasure of working out the mechanics of the Terror’s movements and finally of putting together your plan and carrying it out. Once you understand how everything works, this final exercise is hardly a brain burner, but it’s nevertheless made much more enjoyable by the environment’s dynamism. You feel encouraged to sit down with your map and work out your unique approach, and the game responds as you expect it to.  This simulational aspect, if you will, stands in marked contrast to so many static adventure-game puzzles of the “use X on Y because the designer wants you to” variety.

It’s worth taking note as well of the technology required to implement something like this. It demands a parser capable of understanding a construction as complicated as “draw line from H to P,” a game engine capable of re-jiggering map connections and rewriting room descriptions on the fly, and even a measure of artificial intelligence, including a path-finding algorithm, for the Terror. Nobody other than Infocom could have implemented a puzzle of this dynamic complexity in 1983. I’ve often noted that the keystone of Infocom’s design genius was their subtly advanced technology in comparison to anyone else working in their field; this puzzle provides fine proof of what I mean by that.

Our puzzling design lesson: Technology isn’t everything in game design, but it isn’t nothing either; the tools you choose to work with have a direct impact on the types of puzzles you can attempt. A corollary to this statement is that the technology which goes into design affordances is often far more subtle than that which allows whiz-bang graphics and sound.

3. Getting the babel fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

By Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky, Infocom, 1984

How it works: You’ve escaped planet Earth just seconds before its destruction at the hands of a Vogon Constructor Fleet. You’re now in the hold of one of the Vogon ships: Vogon Hold This is a squalid room filled with grubby mattresses, unwashed cups, and unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear. A door lies to port, and an airlock lies to starboard.

There is a satchel here.

In the corner is a glass case with a switch and a keyboard. It looks like the glass case contains: an atomic vector plotter

Along one wall is a tall dispensing machine.

That dispensing machine contains babel fish, which, when inserted into your ear, will allow you to understand the many strange alien languages you’ll soon be encountering. Rather than belabor this famously extended puzzle point by point, I’ll just provide you with a transcript of the steps you need to go through to solve it. In real life, of course, you would spend much more time bumbling and fumbling than does our ideal player here.

>examine machine The dispenser is tall, has a button at around eye-level, and says "Babel Fish" in large letters. Anything dispensed would probably come out the slot at around knee-level. It bears a small label which reads "Another fine product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation."

>i You have: no tea a thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is a towel It looks like your gown contains: pocket fluff The Hitchhiker's Guide an electronic Sub-Etha signaling device a loose pile of junk mail a toothbrush a flathead screwdriver

>push button A single babel fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and through a small hole in the wall, just under a metal hook.

>remove gown Okay, you're no longer wearing your gown.

>hang gown on hook The gown is now hanging from the hook, covering a tiny hole.

>push button A single babel fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and hits the dressing gown. The fish slides down the sleeve of the gown and falls to the floor, vanishing through the grating of a hitherto unnoticed drain.

>put towel on drain The towel completely covers the drain.

>push button A single babel fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and hits the dressing gown. The fish slides down the sleeve of the gown and falls to the floor, landing on the towel. A split-second later, a tiny cleaning robot whizzes across the floor, grabs the fish, and continues its breakneck pace toward a tiny robot panel at the base of the wall. The robot zips through the panel, and is gone.

>cover panel with satchel Okay, the satchel is lying on its side in front of the tiny robot panel.

>push button A single babel fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and hits the dressing gown. The fish slides down the sleeve of the gown and falls to the floor, landing on the towel. A split-second later, a tiny cleaning robot whizzes across the floor, grabs the fish, and continues its breakneck pace toward a tiny robot panel at the base of the wall. The robot plows into the satchel, sending the babel fish flying through the air in a graceful arc. A small upper-half-of-the-room cleaning robot flies into the room, catches the babel fish (which is all the flying junk it can find), and exits.

>put mail on satchel Okay, the loose pile of junk mail is now sitting on the satchel.

>push button A single babel fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and hits the dressing gown. The fish slides down the sleeve of the gown and falls to the floor, landing on the towel. A split-second later, a tiny cleaning robot whizzes across the floor, grabs the fish, and continues its breakneck pace toward a tiny robot panel at the base of the wall. The robot plows into the satchel, sending the babel fish flying through the air in a graceful arc surrounded by a cloud of junk mail. Another robot flies in and begins madly collecting the cluttered plume of mail. The babel fish continues its flight, landing with a loud "squish" in your ear.

Why it works: This is easily the most famous text-adventure puzzle of all time, one whose reputation for difficulty was so extreme in the 1980s that Infocom took to selling tee-shirts emblazoned with “I got the babel fish!” In truth, though, its reputation is rather exaggerated. There are other puzzles in Hitchhiker’s which rely heavily — perhaps a little too heavily — on the ability to think with the skewed logic of Douglas Adams. This puzzle, however, really isn’t one of them. It’s certainly convoluted and time-consuming, but it’s also both logical in a non-skewed sense and thoroughly satisfying to work out step by step. From the standpoint of the modern player, it’s only really objectionable aspects are the facts that you can easily arrive at it without having everything you need to solve it, and that you have a limited amount of tries — i.e., a limited number of spare babel fish — at your disposal. But if have made sure to pick up everything that isn’t nailed down in the early part of the game, and if you use the save system wisely, there’s no reason you can’t solve this on your own and have immense fun doing so. It’s simply a matter of saving at each stage and experimenting to find out how to progress further. The fact that it can be comfortably solved in stages makes it far less infuriating than it might otherwise be. You always feel like you’re making progress — coming closer, step by step, to the ultimate solution. There’s something of a life lesson here: most big problems can be solved by first breaking them down into smaller problems and solving those one at a time.

Importantly, this puzzle is also funny, fitting in perfectly with Douglas Adams’s comedic conception of a universe not out so much to swat you dead all at once as to slowly annoy you to death with a thousand little passive-aggressive cuts.

Our puzzling design lesson: Too many adventure-game designers think that making a comedy gives them a blank check to indulge in moon logic when it comes to their puzzles. The babel fish illustrates that a puzzle can be both funny and fair.

4. Using the T-removing machine in Leather Goddesses of Phobos

By Steve Meretzky, Infocom, 1986

How it works: While exploring this ribald science-fiction comedy, Infocom’s last big hit, you come upon a salesman who wants to trade you something for the “odd machine” he carries. When you finally find the item he’s looking for and take possession of the machine, he gives you only the most cryptic description of its function: “‘It’s a TEE remover,’ he explains. You ponder what it removes — tea stains, hall T-intersections — even TV star Mr. T crosses your mind, until you recall that it’s only 1936.”

Experimentation will eventually reveal that this “tee-remover” is actually a T-remover. If you put something inside it and turn it on, said something becomes itself minus all of the letter Ts in its name. You need to use the machine to solve one clever and rather hilarious puzzle, turning a jar of untangling cream — whatever that is — into unangling cream, thereby to save poor King Mitre’s daughter from a tragic fate:

In the diseased version of the legend commonly transmitted on Earth, Mitre is called Midas. The King was granted his wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. His greed caught up with him when he transformed even his own daughter into gold.

King Mitre's wish was, in fact, that everything he touched would turn to forty-five degree angles. No one has ever explained this strange wish; the most likely hypothesis is a sexual fetish. In any case, the tale has a similar climax, with Mitre turning his own daughter into a forty-five degree angle.

This is pretty funny in itself, but the greatest fun offered by the T-remover is in all the other places you can use it: on a tray (“It looks a little like Ray whatsisname from second grade.”); on a rabbit (“A bearded rabbi wearing a prayer shawl leaps out of the machine, recites a Torah blessing, and dashes off in search of a minyan.”); a raft (“It sinks like a stone. I guess a raf doesn’t float nearly as well as a raft.”); a pair of cotton balls (“Let’s just say that some poor male raccoon is speaking in a particularly high-pitched voice.”).

Why it works: The T-removing machine is sometimes held up as another puzzle concept that couldn’t possibly work in any other medium than text. I’m not sure if that’s literally true — later in this very list we’ll see another funny wordplay-based puzzle that does work inside a graphic adventure — but it certainly is true that no responsible producer would agree to pay for all the work required to implement all those one-off, just-for-fun responses in graphics. In text, though, they’re just a matter of an additional sentence or two.

Adventure designer Bob Bates likes to point out that the vast majority of what the player attempts to do will always be wrong; that’s just the nature of the endeavor. When she does one of these wrong things, the designer needs to do as much as possible to entertain her. A later generation would dub this the “juicy” approach to game design: rewarding curiosity and creativity, even if none of it contributes directly to the prosaic task of finishing the game. Steve Meretzky had a great puzzle already with the T-remover, King Mitre, and the untangling/unangling cream. He could have left it at that by coming up with excuses for why you couldn’t put other things in the T-remover. Instead he stayed faithful to his invention and implemented many alternatives alongside the “correct” use of the machine.

Our puzzling design lesson: Don’t ignore the “else” in the “if, then, else” of an adventure game. It makes your game feel like a living world rather than an arbitrary collection of logic gates to be navigated, and shows that you respect your player’s creativity.

5. Escaping the pirate Lafond in Plundered Hearts

By Amy Briggs, Infocom, 1987

How it works: Would I be engaging in too much gender stereotyping if I noted that the puzzles in the only Infocom game to be written by a woman often deal in social intelligence rather than abstract logic? This is another fairly lengthy sequence, so it’s best if I once again just show you what happens if you do everything correctly. "Welcome, ma petite." Lafond bows you in.

Lafond's Bedroom Lafond's bedroom shows all the outpourings of his megalomania. Royal hues of purple and gold weigh down the hangings on the bed and the eastward window, as if trying to smother the moonbeam shining in.

Lafond is leering, lip curled.

A lace-covered table crouches beside a wing-backed chair in one corner. Sitting on the table is a green goblet, a blue goblet and a flagon.

"Have some wine." Lafond pours wine into two glasses, giving a blue one to you. "Drink this down. We have a long night ahead of us." He drains his own.

>drink wine You empty the blue goblet of wine.

"Good girl," he says, "Let's see more cooperation of this sort."

Suddenly, the door slams open. It is Jamison, coatless, sword bared, his shirt ripped. "Thank God I am not too late. Leave, darling, before I skewer this dog to his bedposts," he cries. The scar on his cheek gleams coldly.

With a yell, Crulley and the butler jump out of the darkness behind him. Nicholas struggles, but soon lies unconscious on the floor.

"Take him to the dungeon," Lafond says, setting down his glass. "You, butler, stay nearby. I do not wish to be disturbed again.

"Now that we are rid of that intrusion, cherie, I will change into something more comfortable. Pour me more wine." He crosses to the wardrobe removing his coat and vest, turned slightly away from you.

>pour wine into green goblet You fill the green goblet with wine.

"In private, call me Jean, or whatever endearment you choose, once I have approved it." Lafond is looking into the wardrobe.

>squeeze bottle into green goblet You squeeze three colorless drops into the green goblet. You sense Lafond hesitate, then continue primping.

The butler enters, laying a silver tray of cold chicken on the table. "The kitchen wench has gone, your grace. I took the liberty of fetching these myself." He bows and leaves the room.

"Sprinkle some spices on the fowl, ma petite," Lafond says, donning a long brocade robe, his back to you. "They are hot, but delicious."

>get spices You take a pinch of spices between your thumb and forefinger.

"Tsk. The cook has gone too far. She shall be 'leaving us' tomorrow." Lafond adjusts the lace at his neck. >put spices on chicken You sprinkle some spices on a wing and nibble it. The peppery heat hits you like a wave, leaving you gasping, eyes watering.

Lafond strolls to the table smiling slyly. "But you haven't finished pouring the wine." He tops off both glasses. "Which glass was mine? I seem to have forgotten." He points at the green goblet and smiles in a way that does not grant you confidence. "Is this it?"

>no You shake your head, teeth clenched.

"Ah yes, of course." Lafond obligingly takes the blue goblet.

He inhales deeply of the bouquet of his wine, then turns to you. "You must think me very naive to fall for such a trick. I saw you pour something into one of these glasses -- although I cannot smell it." He switches goblets, setting the blue goblet into your nerveless grasp and taking up the other, smiling evilly. "Now you will drink from the cup intended for me."

>drink from blue goblet You empty the blue goblet of wine.

"Good girl," he says. Lafond takes the leather bottle and drops it out the window. "You shall not need this. You may suffer no headaches in my employ."

He lifts his glass to drink, but stops. "Your father, for all his idiotic meddling in other people's business, is not a fool. I doubt you are, either." He calls in the butler, ordering him to empty the green goblet. The man reports no odd taste and returns to his post.

>get spices You take a pinch of spices between your thumb and forefinger.

Lafond draws near, whispering indecencies. He caresses your lily white neck, his fingers ice-cold despite the tropic heat.

>throw spices at lafond You blow the spices off your fingertips, directly into Lafond's face. He sneezes, his eyes watering from the heat of the peppers. Reaching blindly for some wine, he instead upsets the table, shattering a glass. Lafond stumbles cursing out of the room, in search of relief.

>s You run out -- into the butler's barrel chest and leering grin. You return to the bedroom, the butler following. "The governor said you were not to leave this room."

>z Time passes...

The butler seems to be having some problems stifling a yawn.

>z Time passes... The butler's eyes are getting heavier.

>z Time passes...

With a grunt of anger, the butler realizes he has been drugged. He grabs the leather bottle and throws it out the shutters.

The butler collapses, head back, snoring loudly.

>s You creep over the prostrate butler.

Why it works: Plundered Hearts is an unusually driven text adventure, in which the plucky heroine you play is constantly forced to improvise her way around the dangers that come at her from every direction. In that spirit, one can almost imagine a player bluffing her way through this puzzle on the first try by thinking on her feet and using her social intuition. Most probably won’t, mark you, but it’s conceivable, and that’s what makes it such a good fit with the game that hosts it. This death-defying tale doesn’t have time to slow down for complicated mechanical puzzles. This puzzle, on the other hand, fits perfectly with the kind of high-wire adventure story — adventure story in the classic sense — which this game wants to be.

Our puzzling design lesson: Do-or-die choke point should be used sparingly, but can serve a plot-heavy game well as occasional, exciting punctuations. Just make sure that they feel inseparable from the narrative unfolding around the player — not, as is the case with so many adventure-game puzzles, like the arbitrary thing the player has to do so that the game will feed her the next bit of story.

6. Getting into Weird Ed’s room in Maniac Mansion

By Ron Gilbert, Lucasfilm Games, 1987

How it works: In Ron Gilbert’s first adventure game, you control not one but three characters, a trio of teenage stereotypes who enter the creepy mansion of Dr. Fred one hot summer night. Each has a unique skill set, and each can move about the grounds independently. Far from being just a gimmick, this has a huge effect on the nature of the game’s puzzles. Instead of confining yourself to one room at a time, as in most adventure games, your thinking has to span the environment; you must coordinate the actions of characters located far apart. Couple this with real-time gameplay and an unusually responsive and dynamic environment, and the whole game starts to feel wonderfully amenable to player creativity, full of emergent possibilities.

In this example of a Maniac Mansion puzzle, you need to search the bedroom of Weird Ed, the son of the mad scientist Fred and his bonkers wife Edna. If you enter while he’s in there, he’ll march you off to the house’s dungeon. Thus you have to find a way to get rid of him. In the sequence below, we’ve placed the kid named Dave in the room adjacent to Ed’s. Meanwhile Bernard is on the house’s front porch. (This being a comedy game, we won’t question how these two are actually communicating with each other.)

Dave is poised to spring into action in the room next to Weird Ed’s.

Bernard rings the doorbell.

Ed heads off to answer the door.

Dave makes his move as soon as Ed clears the area.

Dave searches Ed’s room.

But he has to hurry because Ed, after telling off Bernard, will return to his room.

Why it works: As graphics fidelity increases in an adventure game, the possibility space tends to decrease. Graphics are, after all, expensive to create, and beautiful high-resolution graphics all the more expensive. By the late 1990s, the twilight of the traditional adventure game as more than a niche interest among gamers, the graphics would be very beautiful indeed, but the interactivity would often be distressingly arbitrary, with little to no implementation of anything beyond the One True Path through the game.

Maniac Mansion, by contrast, makes a strong argument for the value of primitive graphics. This game that was originally designed for the 8-bit Commodore 64 uses its crude bobble-headed imagery in the service of the most flexible and player-responsive adventure design Lucasfilm Games would ever publish over a long and storied history in graphic adventures. Situations like the one shown above feel like just that — situations with flexible solutions — rather than set-piece puzzles. You might never have to do any of the above if you take a different approach. (You could, for instance, find a way to befriend Weird Ed instead of tricking him…) The whole environmental simulation — and a simulation really is what it feels like — is of remarkable complexity, especially considering the primitive hardware on which it was implemented.

Our puzzling design lesson: Try thinking holistically instead of in terms of set-piece roadblocks, and try thinking of your game world as a responsive simulated environment for the player to wander in instead of as a mere container for your puzzles and story. You might be surprised at what’s possible, and your players might even discover emergent solutions to their problems which you never thought of.

7. Getting the healer’s ring back in Hero’s Quest (later known as Quest for Glory I)

By Lori Ann and Corey Cole, Sierra, 1989

How it works: Hero’s Quest is another game which strains against the constrained norms in adventure-game design. Here you create and develop a character over the course of the game, CRPG-style. His statistics largely define what he can do, but your own choices define how those statistics develop. This symbiosis results in an experience which is truly yours. Virtually every puzzle in the game admits of multiple approaches, only some (or none) of which may be made possible by your character’s current abilities. The healer’s lost ring is a fine example of how this works in practice.

The bulletin board at the Guild of Adventurers tells you about the missing ring.

You go to inquire with the healer. Outside her hut is a tree, and on the tree is the nest of a sort of flying lizard.

Hmm, there’s another of these flying lizards inside.

I’ll reveal now that the ring is in the nest. But how to get at it? The answer will depend on the kind of character you’ve built up. If your “throwing” skill is sufficient, you can throw rocks at the nest to drive off the lizard and knock it off the tree. If your “magic” skill is sufficient and you’ve bought the “fetch” spell, you can cast it to bring the nest to you. Or, if your “climb” skill is sufficient, you can climb the tree. If you can’t yet manage any of this, you can continue to develop your character and come back later. Or not: the puzzle is completely optional. The healer rewards you only with six extra gold pieces and two healing potions, both of which you can earn through other means if necessary.

Why it works: This puzzle would be somewhat problematic if solving it was required to finish the game. Although several lateral nudges are provided that the ring is in the nest, it strikes me as dubious to absolutely demand that the player put all the pieces together — or, for that matter, to even demand that the player notice the nest, which is sitting there rather inconspicuously in the tree branch. Because solving the puzzle isn’t an absolute requirement, however, it becomes just another fun little thing to discover in a game that’s full of such generosity. Some players will notice the nest and become suspicious, and some won’t. Some players will find a way to see what’s in it, and some won’t. And those that do find a way will do so using disparate methods at different points in the game. Even more so than Maniac Mansion, Hero’s Quest gives you the flexibility to make your own story out of its raw materials. No two players will come away with quite the same memories.

This melding of CRPG mechanics with adventure-game elements is still an underexplored area in a genre which has tended to become less rather than more formally ambitious as it’s aged. (See also Origin’s brief-lived Worlds of Ultima series for an example of games which approach the question from the other direction — adding adventure-game elements to the CRPG rather than the other way around — with equally worthy results.) Anything adventures can do to break out of the static state-machine paradigm in favor of flexibility and dynamism is generally worth doing. It can be the difference between a dead museum exhibition and a living world.

Our puzzling design lesson: You can get away with pushing the boundaries of fairness in optional puzzles, which you can use to reward the hardcore without alienating your more casual players. (Also, go read Maniac Mansion‘s design lesson one more time.)

8. Blunting the smith’s sword in Loom

By Brian Moriarty, Lucasfilm Games, 1990

How it works: Games like Hero’s Quest succeed by being generously expansive, while others, like Loom, succeed by boiling themselves down to a bare essence. To accompany its simple storyline, which has the rarefied sparseness of allegory, Loom eliminates most of what we expect out of an adventure game. Bobbin Threadbare, the hero of the piece, can carry exactly one object with him: a “distaff,” which he can use to “weave” a variety of magical “patterns” out of notes by tapping them out on an onscreen musical staff. Gameplay revolves almost entirely around discovering new patterns and using them to solve puzzles.

The ancestor of Loom‘s patterns is the spell book the player added to in Infocom’s Enchanter series. There as well you cast spells to solve puzzles — and, in keeping with the “juicy” approach, also got to enjoy many amusing effects when you cast them in the wrong places. But, as we saw in our earlier explication of one of Enchanter‘s puzzles, you can’t always rely on your spell book in that game. In Loom, on the other hand, your distaff and your book of patterns is all you have. And yet there’s a lot you can do with them, as the following will illustrate.

Bobbin eavesdrops from the gallery as Bishop Mandible discusses his plan for world domination with one of his lackeys. His chief smith is just sharpening the last of the swords that will be required. Bobbin has a pattern for “sharpen.” That’s obviously not what we want to do here, but maybe he could cast it in reverse…

Unfortunately, he can’t spin drafts as long as the smith is beating away at the sword.

Luckily, the smith pauses from time to time to show off his handwork.

Why it works: Loom‘s minimalist mechanics might seem to allow little scope for clever puzzle design. Yet, as this puzzle indicates, such isn’t the case at all. Indeed, there’s a certain interactive magic, found by no means only in adventures games, to the re-purposing of simple mechanics in clever new ways. Loom isn’t a difficult game, but it isn’t entirely trivial either. When the flash of inspiration comes that a pattern might be cast backward, it’s as thrilling as the thrills that accompany any other puzzle on this list.

It’s also important to note the spirit of this puzzle, the way it’s of a piece with the mythic dignity of the game as a whole. One can’t help but be reminded of that famous passage from the Book of Isaiah: “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Our puzzling design lesson: Wonderful games can be and have been built around a single mechanic. If you’ve got a great one, don’t hesitate to milk it for all it’s worth. Also: puzzles can illuminate — or undermine — a game’s theme as well as any other of its aspects can.

9. Teaching the cannibals how to get a head in The Secret of Monkey Island

By Ron Gilbert, Lucasfilm Games, 1990

How it works: For many of us, the first Monkey Island game is the Platonic ideal of a comedic graphic adventure: consistently inventive, painstakingly fair, endlessly good-natured, and really, truly funny. Given this, I could have chosen to feature any of a dozen or more of its puzzles here. But what I’ve chosen — yes, even over the beloved insult sword-fighting — is something that still makes me smile every time I think about it today, a quarter-century after I first played this game. Just how does a young and ambitious, up-and-coming sort of cannibal get a head?

Hapless hero Guybrush Threepwood needs the human head that the friendly local cannibals are carrying around with them.

Wait! He’s been carrying a certain leaflet around for quite some time now.

What’s the saying? “If you teach a man to fish…”

Why it works: One might call this the graphic-adventure equivalent of the text-adventure puzzle that opened this list. More than that, though, this puzzle is pure Ron Gilbert at his best: dumb but smart, unpretentious and unaffected, effortlessly likable. When you look through your inventory, trying to figure out where you’re going to find a head on this accursed island, and come upon that useless old leaflet you’ve been toting around all this time, you can’t help but laugh out loud.

Our puzzling design lesson: A comedic adventure game should be, to state the obvious, funny. And the comedy should live as much in the puzzles as anywhere else.

10. Tracking down the pendant in The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes

By Eric Lindstrom and R.J. Berg, Electronic Arts, 1992

How it works: This interactive mystery, one of if not the finest game ever to feature Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective, is notable for its relative disinterest in the physical puzzles that are the typical adventure game’s stock in trade. Instead it has you collecting more abstract clues about means, motive, and opportunity, and piecing them together to reveal the complicated murder plot at the heart of the story.

It all begins when Holmes and Watson get called to the scene of the murder of an actress named Sarah Carroway: a dark alley just outside the Regency Theatre, where she was a star performer. Was it a mugging gone bad? Was it the work of Jack the Ripper? Or was it something else? A mysterious pendant becomes one of the keys to the case…

We first learn about Sarah Carroway’s odd pendent when we interview her understudy at the theater. It was a recent gift from Sarah’s sister, and she had always worn it since receiving it. Yet it’s missing from her body.

We find the workplace of Sarah’s sister Anna. She’s also in show biz, a singer at the Chancery Opera House. The woman who shared a box with Sarah during Anna’s performances confirms the understudy’s story about the pendant. More ominously, we learn that Anna too has disappeared.

We track down Anna’s solicitor and surrogate father-figure, a kindly old chap named Jacob Farthington. He tells us that Anna bore a child to one Lord Bromwell some years ago, but was forced to give him up to Brumwell without revealing his parentage. Now, she’s been trying to assert her rights as the boy’s mother.

More sleuthing and a little bit of sneaking leads us at last to Anna’s bedroom. There we find her diary. It states that she’s hired a detective following Sarah’s murder — not, regrettably, Sherlock Holmes — to find out what became of the pendant. It seems that it contained something unbelievably important. “A humble sheet of foolscap, depending on what’s written upon it, can be more precious than diamonds,” muses Holmes.

Yet more detecting on our part reveals that a rather dense blackguard named Blackwood pawned the pendant. Soon he confesses to Sarah’s murder: “I got overexcited. I sliced her to make her stop screaming.” He admits that he was hired to recover a letter by any means necessary by “an old gent, very high tone,” but he doesn’t know his name. (Lord Brumwell, perhaps?) It seems he killed the wrong Carroway — Anna rather than Sarah should have been his target — but blundered onto just the thing he was sent to recover anyway. But then, having no idea what the pendant contained, he pawned it to make a little extra dough out of the affair. Stupid is as stupid does…

So where is the pendant — and the proof of parentage it must have contained — now? We visit the pawn shop where Blackwood unloaded it. The owner tells us that it was bought by an “inquiry agent” named Moorehead. Wait… there’s a Moorehead & Gardner Detective Agency listed in the directory. This must be the detective Anna hired! Unfortunately, we are the second to ask about the purchaser of the pendant. The first was a bit of “rough trade” named Robert Hunt.

We’re too late. Hunt has already killed Gardner, and we find him just as he’s pushing Moorehead in front of a train. We manage to nick Hunt after the deed is done, but he refuses to say who hired him or why — not that we don’t have a pretty strong suspicion by this point.

Luckily for our case, neither Gardner nor Moorehead had the pendant on him at the time of his death. We find it at last in their safe. Inside the pendant, as we suspected, is definitive proof of the boy’s parentage. Now we must pay an urgent visit to Lord Brumwell. Is Anna still alive, or has she already met the same fate as her sister? Will Brumwell go peacefully? We’ll have to play further to find out…

Why it works: Even most allegedly “serious” interactive mysteries are weirdly bifurcated affairs. The game pretty much solves the mystery for you as you jump through a bunch of unrelated hoops in the form of arbitrary object-oriented puzzles that often aren’t all that far removed from the comedic likes of Monkey Island. Even some pretty good Sherlock Holmes games, like Infocom’s Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels, wind up falling into this trap partially or entirely. Yet The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes stands out for the way it really does ask you to think like a detective, making connections across its considerable length and breadth. While you could, I suppose, brute-force your way through even the multifaceted puzzle above by visiting all of the locations and showing everything to every suspect, it’s so much more satisfying to go back through Watson’s journal, to muse over what you’ve discovered so far, and to make these connections yourself. Lost Files refuses to take the easy way out, choosing instead to take your role as the great detective seriously. For that, it can only be applauded.

Our puzzling design lesson: Graham Nelson once indelibly described an adventure game as “a narrative at war with a crossword.” I would say in response that it really need not be that way. A game need not be a story with puzzles grafted on; the two can harmonize. If you’re making an interactive mystery, in other words, don’t force your player to fiddle with sliding blocks while the plot rolls along without any other sort of input from her; let your player actually, you know, solve a mystery.

(Once again, my thanks to Casey Muratori for suggesting this article. And thank you to Mike Taylor and Alex Freeman for suggesting some of the featured puzzles.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/ten-great-adventure-game-puzzles/

[hannigramficrecs]

Margot

Screwed Up and Brilliant by orphan_account [words: 26,470]

“You never get anything you want by not asking for it, Will.” “Well, if I knew all I had to do was ask." Will smiled, a devious thing as he let the next words drip honey-sweet from his tongue. "Be my bad decision?” Hannibal leaned in then, pressing him back into the wall, his breath smelled of scotch and smoke, and Will was dizzy with it. “Such a lovely little thing.” Hannibal's thumb ran across his lower lip. “How could I deny you when you ask so sweetly?”

Ship of Dreams by stratumgermanitivum, whiskeyandspite [words: 20,134]

The Titanic AU that (no)everyone has been waiting for.

Footprints in Snow by scorpiobabylon [words: 12,509]

Hannibal is held at gunpoint by a pregnant omega in the woods. They fall in love, of course, on the omega's terms.

Look, Mother! The Sheep Have Devoured the Wolves! by HigherMagic [words: 102,934]

Hannibal and Bedelia are married, but unable to have children. At Margot's insistence, Hannibal agrees to meet the Omega that was a surrogate for her and Alana. Will is rough-edged, unrefined, and everything Hannibal shouldn't desire. This arrangement promises to be clean, and simple. Of course, nothing concerning Will Graham is ever simple.

Wings of Wax and Feather by BelladonnaWyck, raiast [words: 55,947]

Hannibal Lecter had always known the winding road of fate may one day lead him straight to a prison cell. He’d never imagined he’d find his true mate there.

Kinship by YouAreMyDesign [words: 13,296]

Will sucks in a breath, his eyes wide, but he refuses to look at Hannibal. For a long moment, there is silence. Then, quietly, as soft as a prayer; "He's my brother," Hannibal murmurs. "I adore him."

Vena Amoris by PaperPlaneChemTrails [words: 55,596]

Will Graham is a producer on a Bachelor knock off reality TV show. Against his protests and better judgement, Dr. Hannibal Lecter is cast as the primary love interest on the show. Despite his many initial misgivings, Hannibal is a hit, and Will finds himself as drawn into the story Hannibal is creating as everyone watching at home. Everything is going well until Will becomes suspicious that he is the real object of Hannibal's affections, and all of a sudden contestants start to turn up murdered.

In The Truly Gruesome Do We Trust by sidnihoudini [words: 9,473]

Hannibal and Will have murder husbands mind palace sex, and Alana watches obsessively. A slow, sneaky grin slides its way across Will’s face as he looks up at Hannibal and teases, “You enjoy being watched.” “Does a lion eat its prey while it is still alive?” Hannibal asks rhetorically, an amused quirk to his lips. He drags his elbows against the silk sheets, letting himself rest his weight on them so he can comfortably brush his fingers through Will’s curls. After a pause, he drops his head, and presses his open mouth to Will’s. He pulls back a fraction, and breathes, “Yes.” Fully smiling now, sharp and uncontrolled, Will arches up against Hannibal’s body, and asks, “Does that make me the lion, or the prey?” “You are simply part of the pride,” Hannibal murmurs.

Lot 166 by HigherMagic [words: 92,727]

Mutant trade is a legal activity. Hannibal has never been inclined to buy one for himself, but then Jack asks him to attend a Verger auction to acquire a special asset for the FBI. What he gets is Will, one of Mason's 'Special Projects'. Whether Will can be useful to the FBI remains to be seen, but now Hannibal legally owns a mutant slave, and things promise to get very...messy.

The Abyss Smiled Back by HigherMagic [words: 49,768]

Will is missing, presumed dead, which makes it difficult for Jack and Alana to get Hannibal to help them catch another brutal serial killer, given that Hannibal's only condition for helping them is that he gets to see Will.

The Kings of Nothing at All by HigherMagic [words: 105,908]

Years after Hannibal and Will fled to Italy, their children are grown and starting their new lives. When their youngest child, Adam, gets kidnapped by a bunch of would-be killers, he knows his parents and sisters will stop at nothing to rescue him. He just has to survive that long.

1 (11/25)

[kikkifairelight-blog]

Week 2 response

Mastery M501

In finding three concepts to compare to Dr. Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” I thought of what he said about pitfalls, having a child like wonder about what you are trying to master, and that humility drives you to do better. In Greene’s book on pages 201& 224 the first involves “#5 “The Open Field”and Emotional pitfalls of a creative-active phase in our career he states “the work is more demanding: we are on our own and the stakes are higher. Our work is more public and highly scrutinized”and the great Martha Graham was influenced by her father’s words “the body does not lie” to move past what she had been taught and succeeded beyond her dreams, but she had to rely that it was to be her own mind and body that got her what she wanted and no one else ideas. In the book on Greene talks of the incident that started Graham’s journey to her own mastery saying, “Ted Shawn surprised her with an ultimatum-she would have to pay him $500 for the right to teach the Denishawn exercise and dance material, if not she was strictly forbidden, under penalty of a lawsuit to ever use any of their methods in her class or personal work” (2012, p 225). To Graham that would mean she would lose her livelihood and her journey to mastery would falter. Being the innovator Graham decided to change it up and make her own dance moves from the inherent feeling of her body and her mind. She knew it would take time for people to accept this new dance and pitfalls she had were more professional acceptance than the mastery of her own body and the art of dance.

Dr.Pausch talks in the video of keeping the child like wonder in your discovery of your true passion/career saying if you’re not excited to do what you are pursuing then the journey will be harder for you in the end.  Greene’s “Original Mind” (2012 pg. 175-76) comes to my mind when talking of childlike wonder because as Greene talks about in the book the original mind “looks at the world more directly—not through words but received ideas”(2012, p 175) As children do they look at what they see around them with a directness and a wonder that adults forget about as they get older and can have more enthusiasm for a particular subject or object. It reminds me of my niece Rebecca who loves horses and will collect anything on horses because they bring her joy and she does not want to know why horses do what they do just, yet she is just at a point of wonder about horses that brings her happiness and intrigues her mind on how pretty they can be. She is not to the point of what a horse can do, the process is learning and loving anything horse until she wants to know more of what horse do, where they live, and what purpose they have in the world.

The last part humility drives you to do better it speak to me as a person in when Dr. Pausch talked about how his mom would bring him back to reality about his insecurity over getting his studies done or whining about this or that. His mother would let him know that there are worse things out there in the world that others have overcome so suck it up. I do that a lot with myself and my husband does that for me when I get overly worried or anxious about something I have little control over, he tells me “can you take care of it right now? Or there are people right now living on the street and we have a roof over our heads, if the gas bill is late its late, calm down.”He helps me to see that there are other things to focus on like getting better at my writing so that one day I can make money to keep the utilities on and spread my words of wisdom and mastery to find the most interesting information he has ever heard. That goes with Greene’s “Cultivating Negative Capability” (2012, p 181) where he talks about “the only solution for an enlightened person is to let the mind absorb itself in what it experiences, without having to form a judgement on what it all means” the mind must feel the doubt and anxiety but continue to dwell on it for too long, the mind must move on to the task at hand and leave all other things behind.

My journey to become a great writer, fantastic handbag and accessories store owner, and learner of the information of life will be shaped by this reading in that I need to be more determined to reach my goals through study and practice of each mastery. I don’t want to be just great at one subject or profession but several and that takes a lot of energy, strategy, dedication, and sacrifice. I may lose sleep, not see my family all that much, and spend many of hours on the internet learning new techniques to master causing my eyes to hurt and fingers to cramp up, but in the end I will achieve my goal of getting my voice out to the world through my writing, my joy in fabrics and patterns to the people who enjoy it just as much, and continue to expand my mind maybe beyond what I knew it was capable of learning. I just have to “Allow for Serendipity” (2012, pg. 183) as Greene states in the book “ your task is to feed this natural inclination, to create the natural inclination, to create the optimal conditions for it to make new and original associations between ideas and experiences.” My determination needs to allow me to spend some time in wonder at the information I am finding for my current article or blog series, or the latest patterns on fabric from my favorite designers that give me infinite ideas on how to use that fabric to sell in my store, all the while learning a new skill or bit of information that I didn’t know yesterday or five minutes ago. I will remember to come back to this chapter throughout my apprenticeship and intermediate learning of these masteries because if you cannot remember your core purpose for doing what you want to do in life what are you really doing with your life.

Greene, R. (2012). Mastery [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781101601020  

Pausch, R. (2008, May 26). The Last Lecture reprised [Video file]. Retrieved from   https://youtu.be/BODHsU3hDo4