#because ive seen 5 movie bundles and things like that

[star-shard]

Im honestly a little shocked they've never made a massive 31 box set collection of all of Elvis's movies. I mean it'd be expensive af, but I'm sure there'd be collectors that would buy it.

Does it come down to copyright?

[imnotcameraready]

chivalry is dead (7)

A/N: y’all ., ., .,,. . ..  we’re finally getting to the Good Shit. my hand was literally Over the “post” button and then i remembered “oh shit this is supposed to be touchstarved roman”, so, uh, that’s not reflected in this chapter at ALL. but it’s still filled to the brim with angst. but like, hurt comfort angst. i think i can call this a hurt comfort, right? right

WARNINGS: cursing, arguments, yelling, like a lot of yelling, Complex Emotions, self-hatred (implied) — if I missed anything, please let me know!!! <3 <3

Words: 6575 

Pairings: im proud to say that this has some Logicality. only 20,000 words into the story and we’re finally getting small tastes of ships. still DLAMP endgame but by god. 

Part 1 (chivalry is dead) — Part 2 (i’m wishing) — Part 3 (the bells of notre dame) — Part 4 (honor to us all) — Part 5 (i’ve got no strings) — Part 6 (god help the outcasts) — Part 7 (go the distance)

AO3 link!

@starlightvirgil @forrestwyrm @daflangstlairde @marshmallow-the-panda@askthesnake @k9cat @patromlogil

i hope y’all like this one!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 

______(tumblr’s not letting me put a line so ive manually created it)______

It seemed that, without Roman’s focus, the Imagination sustained a regular day/night cycle. Logan made a mental note about it as they watched the sun go down behind the forest hills, perfectly in tune with his internal clock’s knowledge of the real world’s time. The sky, however, was darkening more rapidly than it would normally. While walking through the forest, he hadn’t noticed any incline changes, so perhaps the forests were thicker than he’d originally thought. The map didn’t indicate that, anyway.

It was a fascinating place, the Imagination. It seemed semi-sentient — at least, based on how the Playwright described it and from what they’d seen so far. Logan regretted not asking to see more of it when Roman was….

No. He’d ask Roman to show him once Roman had returned. His chest hurt a tiny bit to think of it. Nothing was out of reach.

He faced forward again, marching silently. Patton was humming, had been for the whole trip, humming Disney songs.

The Child was staring at Logan still. It was unnerving, for many reasons (A child? Roman was a fucking child? Why was he staring so much? How much less formed were each of the Romans? How did they select what they looked like? Who was the Child based upon? What did he believe?) so he looked away.

“Stop,” the Child patted Patton’s back, “Stop here.”

“Ooookay,” Patton stopped, and Logan stopped behind him.

They’d been walking towards the castle this whole time, away from the sunset. It was clearly huge now, with multiple large spires with red and glittering gold flags. Patton thought it looked straight out of a medieval movie, almost too grand to just be based on Disney alone, though it did bear some resemblances to the castle in Disneyland. It was incredibly pretty.

Oh, sure, he’d seen the Imagination before. Patton and Roman had sat at the window in his room and Patton would listen to Roman as he talked about the various worlds he created. Sometimes it was a balcony with seats and a tea set, but he liked the window sofa more, since he and Roman could sit in each others’ laps and bundle up beneath a pile of blankets. Patton could recognize this castle from a distance. He’d seen this setting before, with the forest and large lake and glittering dual rivers that Roman’d named and then renamed and named again, though Patton couldn’t remember what names he finally chose.

Logan seemed surprised by it all, though, and Patton didn’t want to make it seem like he was rubbing his friendship with Roman in his face. Plus, he’d never been inside. Things were a lot bigger up close.

Yeah, he could see how Logan kept frowning around the world. How he’d been glaring at the Child for the whole walk. Patton’d made a pun — “This sure is a magic kingdom, eh?” — and he hadn’t even groaned!

Patton shifted his weight on his feet, casting Logan a worried look as the logical side inspected the building before them. Whatever was eating at him, he hoped it’d settle soon, because Patton knew they’d need Logan thinking properly to get Roman put together.

“We’ve gotta go in here,” the Child pointed to the building.

It was an unassuming door with two steps leading up to it, attached to a building that looked exactly the same as the others. Besides the door was a wooden sign, fixed to the stone wall, that read “Art Museum (Ages 3–6)”. It was a fairly unassuming building, similar to the other stone buildings to the left, right, and other side of the road.

“Okay,” Patton reached out and touched the door’s handle, just to be interrupted by the Child waving his arms up.

“No! No, no, not yet!” he put his hands out.

“Not yet? Well, what’re we waitin’ for?” Patton put his hands on his hips, watching the Child with a small smile.

“The sun is lowering. It will be night soon,” Logan added, giving the sky a quick glance again.

“But the Artist can’t know that you’re Dad and Mister Logic,” the Child said, mirroring Patton’s hands-on-hips position.

Logan, on the other hand, crossed his arms in thought. “Why can’t he know? Is he a danger?”

“Nah,” the Child shook his head and pointed a finger at Logan. “The Artist doesn’t like you most.”

Logan exhaled sharply. His brow furrowed, nose scrunched, as he processed THAT. Of course,the Playwright supporting him meant there was a counter. Of course Roman didn’t harbor only positive feelings towards him. Logan knew his and Roman’s opinions differed on a multitude of topics, often resulting in unpleasant quarrels. He knew. And, yet, it hurt. “Come again?”

“The Artist doesn’t like you. Don’t worry, he doesn’t like Mister Anxiety either. Or Mister Deceit. He kinda sorta likes Dad?” the Child made a so-so motion with his hands, before letting his shoulders drop with an exaggerated groan. “Not really. He doesn’t like Dad. It’s okay, he barely likes Thomas!”

Logan looked toward Patton with a frown, now thoroughly confused, and was greeted with a similar confused pout. There was a part of Roman who just didn’t like any of them. Not even Thomas. That upset Patton fairly well, but Logan….was almost relieved.

The Child waved his hands again, sticking them up in between the two adult Sides. “Hey! Like I said, that’s okay! We just gotta walk around him and he probably won’t notice you.”

“Do you think he won’t notice that three people have entered his house? Especially two adults. Two full Sides,” Logan couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice.

If the Child noticed, he didn’t let on. “Yep! He barely looks up from the whatevers he’s working on, anyway,” he bounced on the balls of his feet, “Maybe….hm.”

He looked up at the sky and rubbed his hands together. Above them was a thick cloud. It would probably rain that night; they were still looking for him, anyway.

The Artist was probably getting worried. Right? Curfew was coming up soon and if Child got caught, Thief and Bard would be upset, and so Artist would be upset, too, right?

“We have to go in. If he asks, uh,” an idea popped into the Child’s head, and he snapped his fingers. “You can say you’re Dad guy and Teacher guy!”

Logan’s eye twitched. “Do you mean the characters from Thomas’ short videos?”

The last semblances of seriousness Logan held inside himself was shattered by the Child’s enthusiastic nodding. “Yeppers! They’re really nice! Teach is really good at making Dad laugh, and since this all happened, they’ve been—”

“The Shorts characters are alive inside the Imagination,” Logan wasn’t even trying to hide his disdain anymore.

He’d been half angry, half curious as they marched through the sleepy town. He could accept magic, sure, he could suspend his disbelief. It made sense that the Dominoes guy was in here. That was backed by science. But what in the name of Newton did the Shorts characters—

“Logan,” Patton held his hand and gave it a quick squeeze, “This is the Imagination.”

—okay, really, why the FUCK were the Shorts characters real in here?! — and the Child was now just rambling on about characters who were actually fictional. Characters who were characters. Scratch his curiosity from earlier, the Imagination followed no reason and he wanted out. Immediately.

Patton squeezed Logan’s hand again, in a rhythm, one two three four, tight, and raised his other hand toward the Child, who was still talking.

“Hey, kiddo,” the Child immediately quieted, looking up at Patton, “This all sounds fun, but can we talk more about it when we’re inside?”

Patton immediately regretted interrupting him. The Child’s lip curled inward, eyes growing wider as he nodded silently. He looked at Logan, who was scowling at the door, and wilted.

“Yeah. Not important. Okay,” the Child took the door handle and flung it open.

Before Patton could respond, he darted in. Logan looked at Patton, scowl replaced with a confused raised eyebrow, oblivious to the quiet tension he’d missed while internally monologuing.

Patton just slouched. The Child was more skittish than he’d anticipated.

The museum was dark and dusty, though not unintelligible. Patton entered first. There were drawings everywhere, some on actual pieces of paper, some on torn-out notebook pages, some on the wall itself. All of which were children’s drawings, of course, scribbles and splotches of paint. In the halls were also some sculptures on pedestals, most seemingly made of Playdough.

He stopped by a drawing of a house, two windows and a door, and read the placard beside it. Patton was pretty sure he had the same drawing in his room, tucked away in an old photo album.

“Thomas and Roman Sanders. House 41, 1994. Crayon on cardstock.”

Patton felt tears coming to his eyes. Thomas was only five, oh those were good times, learning about the world around him! Such a soft era. And Thomas’ grown so much since then, too.

This was an interesting place for someone to live, but considering his name was Artist, it made sense for him to live amongst his work. Patton turned around, a bright smile on his face, and motioned Logan to join him. “Logan! Come look at the art!”

Logan was standing just inside the door, which was closed behind him, eyes examining the exhibit. It was disorganized and clearly unkempt. Roman must not have visited in a while. Or maybe he didn’t have a curator for this museum. Before he could respond to Patton’s call, the Child’s voice echoed from down the hall.

“Are you coming?”

Logan and Patton shared a look, one disgruntled and one sheepish, and hurried down the hall lined with childish artwork. There were more houses, some family drawings, a fun looking self portrait with bright colors.

“Hurried” is an overstatement. Logan had to pull Patton away from a drawing on more than one occasion.

“Down here,” the Child’s whispers bounced along the walls.

They entered a room, still lined with drawings, and found the Child standing in front of one of the artworks. He held out a hand to them. “C’mon, we’re going in,” he said.

Logan squinted at the painting in question. Yes, painting, done in “Crayola Washable Paint on Cardboard,” according to the placard beside it. “Thomas and Roman Sanders. House 118.”

He looked at Patton for support that this was absolutely ridiculous, but was only met with another shrug. “It’s the Imagination,” he said, as though that explained everything, “Don’t think too hard, or you’ll get a headache.”

Too late for that, Logan thought, though he stopped himself from pondering. Instead, he grit his teeth and held Patton’s arm, determined to get to the bottom of this figurative rabbit hole. Patton himself took the Child’s hand.

The Child gripped Patton’s hand and leaned toward the painting. He pinched the painted door’s handle, tugged.

They all felt a pulling sensation, the Child pulling Patton who pulled Logan.

And then there was a door before them.

It was as though someone poured white paint all over their surroundings, from every angle, wiping away the museum they’d come from and leaving a blank emptiness behind them, all within less than a second.

Logan stared at the door. Then he turned, slow and steady, overlooking the blank white expanse. Like an empty page.

Something wasn’t computing. It’s the Imagination, he repeated in his mind, like Patton’d said earlier.

Directly behind them was the only piece of “world” they could see other than the door. It was another painting, of the museum, of the room that they’d just left, hanging in the middle of nothing.

Social realism, Logan thought. The painting’s placard read “Roman Sanders. The Art Museum repaint, 2019. Oil on canvas.” A reverse portal, created recently. Logan almost wanted to touch it and see how dry the paint was.

“C’mon, we gotta go inside,” the Child whispered, giving Patton’s hand a tug.

Patton, in turn, tugged Logan, who turned back around. “Sorry, this is just….” fascinating? Interesting? Enchanting? Something I would like to experiment with Roman on further? “Different.”

Patton watched the Child as he watched Logan. Roman was clearly still in there, Patton thought, and he didn’t want to be. And, to be frank, Patton understood that feeling. There were many days where he wanted to curl up into his hoodie and be young again, if only to hear a good joke once more. Those were the two-cookie kinds of days!

Maybe Logan couldn’t see what Patton was seeing? The Child’s big wide eyes, staring at Logan and Patton as though searching for approval. Or how he tried so hard to ignore Logan’s obvious contempt for the situation. It was obvious that the Child was actively trying to ignore it, but Patton didn’t miss how he flinched at Logan’s tone. The Child wasn’t naïve, not entirely — in certain turns of phrase and side-glances, the Child revealed his thirty years of life experiences.

But the Child also didn’t seem to notice that Logan wasn’t angry about the world. No, Patton thought as Logan turned back to the museum painting quickly, he was more upset at himself for not being able to understand it.

“Different,” Logan repeated, brow furrowed. It didn’t feel like the right word. He wasn’t usually one to have vocabulary troubles, but he couldn’t find a more adequate word.

It satiated the Child. Or, rather, the Child was thinking of something else. His hand was stiff on the doorknob. Patton leaned in, letting go of Logan finally to put both hands on the Child’s shoulders. “Go ahead,” he whispered. He hoped the Child could feel how much Patton loved him.

Perhaps he did, because the Child calmed down. Enough for him to open the door.

The most notable thing was the mess. There were a lot of things inside that door. Canvases, sketchbooks, pens, pencils, paint sets, notebooks, cups of water, all in piles or scattered about the floor. Some canvases were hung on the walls, too, and some were laid flat on the ground. Others were stacked atop each other or leaned in bunches against the walls. There was a clear path through the mess on the floor, that branched to the stairs on the left and then into the kitchen on the right. Logan could see a drawing tablet over there, too, propped against the wall. Where the laptop was, he couldn’t tell. Patton could see that most of the paintings were unfinished. Whether it be sketch lines still showing or just clearly half-painted, half-white canvases, not a single finished piece was in this clutter.

The second most notable thing was the person painting.

Another Roman — the Artist, most likely — was sitting on a stool in front of a painting on an easel. It was also only an assumption that he was another Roman, because he absolutely did not look it, clad in a white hoodie covered in paint splotches and red sweatpants, hood pulled up and covering his hair. The only thing that indicated his Roman status was the golden waves adorning his sleeves, the same as the waves on Roman’s crest.

He held a large painting palette in his right hand and a brush in his left, dabbing oil paint against the half-finished canvas in front of him. Another work in progress, it seemed.

The clutter and the painting didn’t bother the Child. He closed the door behind himself, being careful to not slam it, and cleared his throat.

The other Roman didn’t move nor speak. Just kept painting, dabbing his brush on the palette and swiping it along the canvas. The painting was unfinished, but it looked so far like an impressionist piece, Logan thought.

The Child coughed again, yet the other Roman didn’t flinch.

“I’m back, Arty,” he said.

“I heard you,” came the impatient reply, snappy and fast, the Artist not turning to speak to them, “Who’s with you?”

“Dad. And Teach. Dragon was mean today,” the Child was playing with the hem of his shirt

“Mhm.”

“It’s curfew. They couldn’t go back to their houses.”

“Mhm.”

“So they’re gonna sleep here. I’ll keep them in my room.”

“Mhm.”

The Child took Logan and Patton’s hands into his own again and pulled them toward the stairs. “Good luck with your painting,” his voice teetered off into silence as the Artist failed to turn again.

Patton opened his mouth, but the Child squeezed his hand and shook his head. Logan took a little more tugging, as he stood by the bottom of the stairs, trying to look at all the paintings. Some were paintings — oil impressionist, pop art, surrealism and cubism, even some De Stijl paintings — some were simple figure drawings on lightly-crumpled paper, some even….was that a painting of Virgil?

The Child tugged harder and Logan stumbled after him.

They made it to the top of the stairs. The Child let go of Patton and opened the door, ushering both of them in before slamming the door shut behind himself.

This was probably the most regular room they’d seen so far in the Imagination. A small twin bed sat in the corner, with a big canopy and fairy lights overtop. There were streamers and drawings and posters hanging all around the walls, even some stickers and some drawings done directly onto the wall. A wardrobe sat in the corner farthest from the bed, a desk and vanity mirror besides that, and five bean bags were arranged in a circle around a circle rug in the middle of the room.

There was an air of magic around the room, too. The fairy lights bobbed up and down slowly, despite being hung on wires, and the clouds painted onto the ceiling seemed to move. The ceiling was fairly low, too; Patton reached up, eyes stuck on a cloud in the shape of a heart, and found that he could actually touch them. The heart swirled around his hand, glowing light blue before dissipating entirely.

“Sorry about him,” Patton and Logan looked down at the Child — he’d gone to the wardrobe and was taking off his cloak, revealing a plain white shirt with the crest’s sun emblazoned across his back. “Artist’s, uh, not a people person.”

“So we saw. His work, however….it’s breathtaking,” Logan stepped aside as Patton went for one of the beanbags, “I didn’t realize Roman was that much of an artist.”

The Child snorted. He sat down on one of the other beanbags and started untying his shoes, chubby fingers unlacing them down a few notches. “Yeah, well. You never seemed interested. No one was. Arty doesn’t like leaving his art all alone, so ever since we formed he’s been in here with it.”

“Yeah, you said somethin’ like that.” Patton crossed his legs on the bean bag, leaning forward on his elbows toward the Child. “The Playwright also said something about everyone having different thoughts on what’s best for Roman.”

“Playwright!” the Child tossed his shoes into the corner behind the door and laid back in the bean bag, spread out with his arms open. “Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen him in a while, is he okay?”

Logan let his shoulders loosen and slouch. It….did feel good to unwind, after the events of the day. Maybe the adrenaline and shock were wearing off finally. He sat down on another bean bag, bending his knees as though he were in a normal chair. “Yes, he is fine. He is, ah, backstage, as he called it.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Artist doesn’t like Playwright at all,” Logan and Patton shared another confused glance at that, “Thief says it’s ‘cause he doesn’t like mister Logic, but I think he doesn’t like you ‘cause he doesn’t like Playwright.”

“Why doesn’t he like the Playwright? That seems counterintuitive, to not like yourself,” As soon as the words left Logan’s mouth, he realized how hypocritical it sounded. And how obvious the explanation was.

Patton seemed to notice as well, because he grimaced, putting a hand on top of Logan’s knee. The Child, however, just shrugged. “Well, I don’t like all of me, you know? I wanted to figure out what parts of me I could live without, but every part of me has an opinion about what part’s important.”

“I?” Logan asked, softer now.

The Child nodded. “Roman. I,” he made a gesture up at the air, and it reminded Patton a little of the hand flip Roman typically did when rising. “I’m Roman but I’m not Roman.”

“How does that work, kiddo?” Patton coaxed him.

“It’s like….” he trailed off, resting his hand on his chin as he thought. After a few quiet moments, he continued.

“Okay,” The Child sat up and patted his own chest. “Me. I’m the Child. AND I’m Roman. I’m all….”

He flopped backward again onto the bean bag, making vague gestures with his hands as he wrestled to find the words, only to find that there were none. No words truly.

The Child let his hands fall onto his stomach with a groan, staring upwards. Patton and Logan shared a nervous glance. It was clear something was bothering the Child, something integral to this Hunger Games of Romans situation.

“Take your time, kiddo,” Patton tried to comfort him, but his words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

The Child was just looking up at the sky ceiling. After another few seconds, he heaved a sigh.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The sky?” Logan and Patton both looked up as well.

“With all the clouds that look like pretty things. And even if they don’t look like things, they look soft and fluffy and wonderful. And then, when there aren’t clouds, it’s the most beautiful shade of blue or a dazzling red, like how a nice summer night makes you feel?” The ceiling had been full of fluffy white clouds, meandering across the painted blue expanse, but as soon as the Child mentioned “dazzling red” the clouds began to glow pink as the ceiling’s paint color changed to red. He clapped.

“Or, or! Even better, sometimes, when it’s really, really late, and there are stars out? And every star is like a gem on a glittering cloak that the world’s putting on you?” the ceiling changed once more, painted black as the clouds vanished. One by one, twinkling stars seemed to glow from nothing against the ceiling backdrop. In actual constellations, no less.

“It’s all so….” the Child exhaled, “Beautiful.”

Silence followed. All three of them were now laying on the bean bags, looking up at the twinkling stars and the occasional barely visible line that connected them. They just starred, Logan and Patton unsure of how to break the silence, until the Child continued himself.

“That’s what I want Roman to remember,” Patton looked at the Child, who was watching the stars. He spoke with a strong determination, voice set. “That’s what I want to see. The beauty.”

He faltered, closing his open mouth and gritting his teeth. Logan looked away from the sky now, too, and watched the Child as he closed his eyes. Wiser than he seemed. “But that makes me really childish, doesn’t it? If we just see the beauty, then that means we’re ignoring all the bad stuff. And if we’re too childish, we don’t get taken seriously, and we really need to be taken seriously. I mean….”

The Child glanced over at Patton, and he could have sworn that the Child had tears in his eyes. Oh, he hoped he wasn’t crying. Patton reached out, offering his hand to maybe comfort him, but the Child just shrugged, unwilling to look at him anymore.

“We see how you get treated, Dad,” Patton’s brow furrowed in confusion, hand retracting a little, as though the Child’s words hurt. “No one takes you serious and you always have to prove yourself. We don’t take you serious, either, a lot of the time. ‘Cause if you’re childish, then you don’t deserve to be taken seriously. That’s what Roman tells himself. Tells me. But it’s wrong.”

Now the silence was just awkward. Patton lowered his hand into his lap as the Child looked back up at the sky. There was no denying now, now that the Child’s quiet breathing hitched and stuttered, that he was crying.

“It has to be wrong,” he whispered between gasps.

Slowly, the Child pulled his hands up to his face, rubbing his eyes and sniffing into his hands. Patton was going to start crying himself, watching the Child cry. He turned to Logan with a bitten lip. He knew, deep down, that the others didn’t always take his opinion seriously. Heck, it was a running theme! Patton the childish, the inner child, the baby. But Jesus, that was point blank.

“You’re correct, Roman. I don’t always understand you both, but the things I don’t understand aren’t…they aren’t unimportant. Occasional immaturity does not equal insignificant. We….” Logan faltered and looked up at Patton, who was staring at him now, tears dotting his eyes.

They really did walk on him, didn’t they? Logan considered the times he had helped elevate Patton’s concerns, and the situations in which Patton’s concerns were elevated. No one took the puppet suggestion seriously, until it was proven successful, and Thomas himself had to step in to get them to even consider it as an option. Along with that, Deceit was able to mimic Patton by, what? Literally saying he was a fan of cartoons and was silly? It was so easy to character Patton into a caricature of immature glee that he, Roman, and Virgil barely noticed.

That was the insult, wasn’t it. Childish. Not to be taken seriously. Silly and immature. Was that what he thought of Patton?

Patton wiped his tears and looked away. “I….guess that’s true. But hey! That’s what comes with being Thomas’ inner child, isn’t it?” there he went, voice heightening in pitch as he tried to make it sound as though he weren’t so upset with Logan’s silence and the Child’s assessment. “Your dorky ol’ Dad can be a lil’ goofball a lot of the time.”

“Your goofball-ness is welcome, often appreciated. We….do have a lot to learn, about having fun and seeing things anew.”

Patton looked over at Logan, who was watching him with determination. The Child, too, was watching Logan with both eyebrows raised, having grabbed a pillow from his side to press his face into. His eyes were two large spotlights.

“I do not understand the Imagination. I cannot claim to. But there IS immense beauty in this world you’ve created, and I see that it would be a waste to focus on making logical sense of it rather than take in the world around as a work of art. It might be childish, but sometimes….a little childishness is what we need to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a healthy headspace. Your input is appreciated.”

If Roman was having these sorts of concerns, about being perceived as childish or not, then Logan knew it was likely Patton had similar concerns. He chided himself mentally for letting this self-consciousness fester but a direct approach was always the most efficient.

And it was all worth it to see Patton smile and remove his glasses, wiping the tears from his downcast eyes.

“Thank you for sharing your concerns with us, kiddo,” the Child smiled at the nickname and rubbed the back of his neck, turning away for a bit. Patton smiled at him, then at Logan, beaming like the sun. “Logan put it real well.”

Logan fixed his glasses, pleased with himself, and the Child patted his arm. “Thank you, Logan,” he said.

They sat in silence, eyes flicking with new brief understanding between each other, until there was banging from below the floor. Patton squeaked and Logan stiffened, but the Child just groaned into his pillow.

“WHAT’RE YOU TALKING ABOUT UP THERE?!” the Artist’s voice boomed from below.

“JUST TALKIN’ ABOUT THE OTHER SIDES WITH TEACH,” the Child shouted back, voice muffled by the pillow.

“WELL, SHUT UP ‘BOUT THEM! THE DRAGON BITCH’LL HEAR YOU!”

“YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”

“YOU BRATTY LITTLE—DON’T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!”

The Child leaned his back, groaning loud and angrily. “FINE! SORRY!”

Logan and Patton exchanged worried glances. Had the Artist heard that whole conversation? They looked to the Child for any thoughts or input, but he just shook his head.

“He won’t come upstairs. Ugh, I was doing real good at not saying your names,” he rubbed his face, rubbing the tears into his skin to hide them, “It’s–It’s like the taboo system. Dragon, he put a curse on your names so all of us can hear it when someone says them. The others aren’t really scared of that, they–they….Artist doesn’t want anyone finding this house. He heard me say your name, mister Logic.”

Before either of the adults could respond, however, there was another crash from downstairs. The Child frowned and climbed off the bean bag, kneeling on the ground with an ear pressed to the rug.

“What—” Patton was cut off by the Child shushing him harshly.

They weren’t confused for long, though, as the voices grew more raised and angry.

“—TOLD YOU—FUCK OUT!” they heard the Artist shout.

“I WILL ONCE YOU STOP TALKING SHIT ABOUT THE OTHERS! THEY’RE IN OUR REALM NOW, THEY COULD HEAR YOU!”

Patton raised his eyebrows. He looked at Logan, who was frowning at nothing. When he noticed Patton, Logan mouthed “Playwright.” He didn’t seem like the type to be so….explosive.

“WELL TOUGH, PLAYWRONG. I DONT GIVE A FUCK IF THEY HEAR ME! I JUST DON’T WANT DRAGON SHOWING UP, THOSE UNGRATEFUL CRITICAL ASSHOLES—”

“THEY’RE MUCH MORE THAN THAT, THEY’RE BETTER THAN ALL OF US COMBINED, YOU STARVING STEREOTYPE—”

The Child stood up slowly, stepping carefully on the rug and sliding his feet along the wooden floor. He slid all the way to the door. As slow as he could, he clicked the lock in place, and let out a breath. The yelling died down immediately to a whisper, as though locking the door disconnected the room from the whole house.

“That’ll keep them out. They’re probably not gonna come up here, can’t get into my room now, but if they find you then we’re all fucked,” he mumbled.

“Language,” Patton mumbled, and the Child giggled at him. “No swear words when there’re children present, you know that!”

“Yeah, yeah—” the Child cut himself off with a yawn, shoulders hiking up slowly.

He shuffled back to the bean bags and collapsed into the one he’d been sitting in. He curled into a ball, huffing a small sigh. Patton yawned, too, and smacked his lips. Logan had to stifle a yawn himself. They were contagious.

It had been a long day. They were due for a sleep, especially after the arduous experiences they’d had throughout the day.

“Y’know, I didn’t think the Playwright’d let y’all in,” the Child’s words jumbled over each other, and he covered his mouth as he yawned again.

“What makes you say that?” Logan pressed.

Despite the tiredness, he knew there was something wrong with his initial read of the Playwright, and this situation didn’t leave space for those kinds of errors. The Child shrugged. “I….from what I know, he’s more….he likes things done his way. He really wants all of you approve of him. Mostly mister Logic, but all of you. And he really, really, really doesn’t like Princey. Him an’ Dragon an’—an’—” the Child yawned again, mumbling the rest of his sentence incoherently, but Logan didn’t process that.

There was another mention of this “Dragon” character. Logan rubbed his cheek, arms crossed on his knees as he ran the new information through his mind. The Playwright was volatile — he scoffed quietly, of COURSE Roman, with his boisterousness and exuberance, wouldn’t be able to contain his energetic nature into something reserved and quiet. He had his quiet moments, but he couldn’t maintain stoicism forever. They would have to assess him again, it seemed.

“I thought….” Patton whispered, and Logan looked up at him.

Patton’s eyes were downcast at the ground, brow furrowed in anguish. He’d thought they’d gotten at least one part of Roman, one bit to understand that they were accepted. That Roman was LOVED, damnit, because that’s what it was! He was loved, Roman was loved, and by God it felt like he’d failed if one of his friends doubted that so much that he couldn’t believe that.

“I’m gonna sleep. Just right here. Y’all can take the bed if y’all want,” the Child’s voice slurred together, halfway asleep already and cutting into both adults’ trains of thought.

Patton sighed. He slowly switched into Dad Mode as he pushed himself up and rolled his shoulders. “Nope. You’re a growing boy, kiddo, you’re goin’ in the bed.”

He stooped down and picked the Child up, chuckling quietly as he groaned in dramatic despair. Still, the Child wrapped his arms around Patton’s neck lazily, snuggling against him once more. Logan crossed his legs on the bean bag and watched as Patton sat on the bed, rubbing the Child’s back, and tried to pry him off.

“You need to get in bed, kiddo,” Patton whispered gently, “You’ve gotta sleep. A prince needs his beauty sleep, right?”

The Child giggled. “I’m not a–a–a,” he yawned again, “A prince! I’m a child!”

“But you’re gonna grow up to be one! You’re gonna grow up to be a great prince, ruling over all the Imagination,” Patton was whisper shouting, putting on a grandiose voice full of gusto.

He mimicked blowing a trumpet with one hand and the Child laughed, patting Patton’s hand down.

“Nuh uh!” he hummed between tired giggles.

Logan stood up behind Patton and gently took the Child’s hands. The Child looked up at him, squeezing Logan’s hands sleepily and giggling.

“You will be a valiant prince,” he lifted the Child’s hands away from Patton, and he took the cue to start tucking the Child into bed, “You will be a prince, lion-hearted and loved. But tonight, you must sleep.”

The Child squeezed his left hand, then his right, and laid down in the bed he’d been placed in. He looked so comforted as Patton pulled the blanket up higher around his face, big brown eyes questioning as he looked up at Logan from beneath the edge of the blanket.

“Will they listen to me?” his voice was thick as he teetered between unconsciousness and lucidity, “Will–Will they care, when I’m a prince?”

Logan nodded at him, and Patton nodded too. They were both sure, sure as the sky is blue. “Yes,” Patton whispered, “Everyone will hear you. And you’ll live happily ever after, my Prince.”

The Child giggled quietly. Slowly, he snuggled into the bed, and his hold on Logan’s hands relinquished, now gripping the blanket as he curled into a ball. Within mere seconds, he was snoring softly.

Patton stepped back and stretched. He looked up at Logan, who was removing his glasses in preparation for sleep.

“Wanna sleep on the floor?” Patton asked, “Or should we stack the beanbags in a square and use those as a bed?”

Logan considered the bean bags for a moment, actually, before deciding the morning back pain wouldn’t be worth it. “I think we can suffer the floor for a night,” he said, taking his coat off and spreading it out on the ground.

Patton followed suit, throwing his cat cloak down and spreading it out like a bed mat. They both slowly climbed to the ground beside each other, fitting themselves into the space that was to be their sleeping mat, grabbing some of the pillows and stuffed animals strewn about. At least the carpet was soft, adding extra padding. They both laid down, heads resting on some of the Child’s pillows, staring up at the stars on the ceiling.

Though they were both tired, Patton wanted to clear one thing up before letting himself drift off.

“....Lo,” Patton asked, voice soft. “Lo, are you awake?”

Logan sniffed. He was actually partway asleep already. “Yes, Pa—er. Patt.”

Patton giggled. It wasn’t always that he got to hear Logan call him by a nickname. He sobered up fast, though. “Did you mean what you said? About…about appreciating the childish things.”

Ah. Logan opened an eye. Patton smiled sheepishly at him.

He still had his glasses on. Logan turned to his side, facing Patton, reaching a hand out and taking his glasses off carefully. He slowly folded them and set them aside on the ground, with his.

“Of course I did. You provide important opinions and insight, often noticing details I….overlook,” Logan rested his hand on Patton’s shoulder, “You are appreciated.”

Patton beamed with a wobbly lip, more tears threatening to spill over. He slowly took Logan’s hand and pressed it to his lips. Not in a kiss, per se, but more to hold him close. To show that he was so thankful, so grateful for this acknowledgement. Plus, he was afraid that the tears would spill if he opened his mouth.

Logan didn’t seem to mind, though his face did turn a brighter shade of crimson, just barely visible in the starlight.

After a few seconds, Patton regained his stability. “Thanks,” he whispered. “We...we’re gonna get Roman back.”

Logan nodded, discombobulated. Patton’s breath on the back of his hand was comfortingly warm. There was that feeling in his chest. What was that?

He let go of Logan’s hand and rolled back onto his back, letting out a sign of contentedness. Their little prince was fast asleep and the next day would bring more trials. They had to find Virgil and Deceit and hopefully the Roman who’d been on the roof. They had to talk to the Artist. They had to confront the Playwright. They had to find the OTHERS and talk to THEM.

And Patton knew they’d be able to face it all head-on. He knew it in his heart. “Goodnight, Lo’. I love you.”

Logan exhaled beside him. Perhaps….things would be okay. He looked over at Patton, whose eyes were already closed, legs crossed and hands interlaced on his chest in a peaceful manner.

There was that feeling again. The data points — he was too tired to be thinking coherently, look at him, applying statistics knowledge to emotions of all things — indicated that he felt warm and fluttery near his lungs whenever he considered the other Sides. It felt as though his lungs were clenching, breathing constricting and carbon dioxide exhalation warming. That couldn’t be literal, though, or else he’d be ill. On this particular adventure, in this particular day, it’d happened a few times.

Perhaps he was just tired. It had been a long day, all of this just in one day. Logan would consider this issue more in the morning. However, he would indulge in the working hypothesis just once, whilst muddled in this warm-chested comforting confusion. “....I love you, too, Patt. Sleep well.”

It may have been a trick of the light or his mind, but Logan thought, just before he closed his eyes, that he’d seen Patton smile at him.

[bibhabmishra]

The Princess Bride

It feels downright inconceivableI to devote only one chapter in a book about lessons gleaned from eighties movies to The Princess Bride. Why, just off the top of my head, while standing on my head, I can name five life lessons that this movie teaches you that you don’t learn anywhere else:  1. “Never go against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!” 2. “Love is the greatest thing—except for a nice mutton, lettuce, and toma- to sandwich when the mutton is nice and lean.” 3. “Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” 4. Eventually, you learn not to mind the kissing parts. 5. And most important, “As you wish” = “I love you.”  Such is the depth of wisdom in this film that in 2013, twenty-six years after its release, BuzzFeed devoted a listII to the lessons gleaned from it. A BuzzFeed list! Who needs the Oscars, Princess Bride, when you have that ultimate of mod- ern-day accolades? The Princess Bride is so adored that it’s probablyIII now a clichéd response on Internet dating websites: walks on the beach, an open fire, sunsets, and The Princess Bride. And yet, despite this, love for The Princess Bride is not seen as desperately hackneyed or cheesily safe. The Princess Bride is what you’d need a prospective love interest to cite as their favorite movie for the relationship to progress,IV it’s the one film that would make you rethink a lifelong friendship if you found out your best friend “just didn’t get it”—not that they would ever say that, because I honestly don’t know a single person of my generation who isn’t obsessed with this film.

And not just my generation: in As You Wish, a very enjoyable book about the making of The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes—who played Westley the farm boy, of course—recounts being told by both Pope John Paul II and Bill Clinton how much they loved the movie, proving that The Princess Bride appeals to saints and sinners alike.V Now, having said all that, I have a confession to make. I was not the big Princess Bride fan in my family when I was growing up. That title instead went to my sister, Nell. Our mother took us to see it at the movie theater when I must have been nine and Nell was seven, and even though the film was— incredibly—something of a commercial disappointment when it came out, the cinema was absolutely packed with kids like us. In my mind, everyone in the audience was utterly in thrall to this tale of Buttercup (Robin Wright), her true love Westley (Elwes), and their battles against Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), and Count Rugen (Christopher Guest), and their eventual assistance from the brave swordsman Inigo (Mandy Patinkin), the giant Fezzik (the professional wrestler known as André the Giant), and Miracle Max (Billy Crystal). Afterward, we stood in the cinema atrium as our mother bundled us back into our coats. “Did you girls like it?” she asked. Standing there in her corduroy dungarees and T-shirt, Nell looked in a state of semi-shock. “I LOVED IT. I WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN RIGHT NOW!” she practically shouted. Now, The Princess Bride is wonderful, but in order to understand how unex- pected this proclamation was, you have to know a little bit about my sister. Ever since she was old enough to throw a tantrum, my sister refused to wear dresses. She never played with dolls. She refused to let my mother brush her hair and had apparently no interest in her physical appearance. She did not like mushy stories—she didn’t even like reading books. In other words, she was the complete opposite to me. How much of that was a deliberate reaction against me, a younger sibling defining herself in opposition to the older one, and how much of it was simply an innate part of Nell was already a moot point when we went to see The Princess Bride: Nell’s parameters were so firmly set by then that her nickname in our family was “the tough customer.” She would consent to drink only one kind of fruit juice (apple), and buy only one brand (Red Cheek), and only if it came out of a can (never a carton), so there was absolutely no negotiating with her about mushy princesses. Lord only knows how my mother got her to see the movie in the first place. She must have hid- den the title from her. And yet, like the grandson in the film, Kevin Arnold,VI Nell found that, against all odds, she did enjoy the story, just as Kevin’s grandfather, Columbo,VII promises. I think Nell made my mother take her to see the film at the cinema at least three more times. As she wished. When it came out on VHS, we bought it immediately and it was understood that the videocassette was officially Nell’s, just as the videocassette for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was officially mine. When she found out that the film had originally been a book by William Goldman, who also wrote the screenplay, she asked my amazed mother to buy that, too. Nell read it over and over until the pages fell out, so she stuck them back in and then read the book again. The Princess Bride was the book that taught her to like books, as much as the movie taught her to relax some of her other rules. She developed a lifelong crush on Westley and, not long after, she started wearing dresses, too. The reasons why Nell loved this film so much exemplify, I think, why it is universally adored in a way that, say, the vaguely similar and contemporary The Never-Ending Story is not. It’s a fairy tale for those who love fairy tales, but it’s also a self-aware spoof for those who don’t; it’s an adventure film for boys and—for once—girls, too, but without pandering to or excluding either; it’s got a plot for kids, dialogue for adults, and jokes for everyone; it’s a genre film and a satire of a genre film; it’s a very funny movie in which everybody is playing it straight; it’s smart and sweet and smart about its sweetness, but also sweet about its smarts. Unlike, say, Shrek, there are no jokes here for parents that go over the kids’ heads: all generations enjoy it on exactly the same level. It’s a movie that lets people who don’t like certain things like those things, while at the same time not betraying the original fans. But most of all, The Princess Bride is about one thing in particular: “The Princess Bride is a story about love,” says Cary Elwes. “So much happens in the movie—giants, fencing, kidnapping. But it’s really a film about love.” This might seem like a statement of the obvious, but it isn’t, actually. Yes, the film is ostensibly about the great true love between Buttercup and Westley, and their most perfect kiss that leaves all the other kisses in the world behind. Both Elwes and Wright were so astonishingly beautiful when they made the film that, watching them, it’s hard to believe any love ever existed on this plan- et other than theirs. And they, rather pleasingly, were quite taken with one an- other. In his book, Elwes talks at length about how “smitten” he was with Wright, and she says precisely the same about him: “I was absolutely smitten with Cary. So obviously that helped with our onscreen chemistry. . . . It doesn’t matter how many years go by, I will love Cary forever.” Disappointingly, however, Elwes insists that they remained just friends. “Everyone asks if there was more!” he says, sounding a little exasperated, apparently unable to see what everyone else can: namely, that it seems against the laws of nature for two such beautiful people not to have had sex at least once. The last scene that Elwes shot was of him and Wright kissing on horse- back, creating “the most perfect kiss” of all time against a sunset. Surely that was romantic. “Well, not really. Robin and I were friends by that point so we kept laughing, and [the director] Rob [Reiner] was going, ‘Touch her face, touch her face!’ ” He laughs. But Westley and Buttercup’s love is only a part of the film, and only one of several love stories in the film. There is also, for a start, the great love between Inigo and Fezzik. The scene in which a drunken and broken Inigo looks up into Fezzik’s face in the Thieves Forest and Fezzik says a simple, smiling hello is much more moving than the moment when Buttercup realizes the Dread Pirate Roberts is actually Westley (not least because she’s just pushed him down a hill). Even if Inigo does become the Dread Pirate Roberts at the end of the film, as Westley suggests he should, it is as impossible to imagine him going off without Fezzik as it is to imagine Buttercup and Westley being severed. This love between the two men is at the root of one of the film’s subtlest lessons. Bad guys teach audiences how to think of opponents in life, and this is especially true of bad guys in books and films aimed at kids. Because stories for kids tend to be relatively simple, villains in these films are almost invariably evil, and that’s all there is to be said about them. Cruella de Vil, Snow White’s stepmother, the witch in Rapunzel: WHAT a bunch of moody bitches. This is also certainly true of movies for children in the 1980s, from the frankly terri- fying Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit to the enjoyably evil Ursula in The Little Mermaid. It’s a pleasingly basic approach, and one that validates most kids’ (and adults’) view of the world: “I am good and anyone who thwarts me is wicked and there is no point in trying to think about things from their point of view because they have no inner life of their own beyond pure evil and a desire to impede me.” The Princess Bride, however, does something different. It’s easy to forget this once you’ve seen the movie and fallen in love with the characters but Inigo and Fezzik are, ostensibly, bad guys. When we first meet them in the movie, they knock our heroine, Buttercup, unconscious and kidnap her for Vizzini. We are also told they will kill her. Our princess! In the eyes of children, you can’t get much more evil than that. They are hired guns in the re- venge business, which is not a job for a good guy in any fairy tale. But Gold- man flips it around. We quickly see Inigo and, in particular, Fezzik being ex- tremely sweet with each other, doing their little rhymes together and trying to protect one another from Vizzini’s ire. Their love for one another shows us there is more to these villains than villainy. Goldman then ups the ante even further by having Inigo describe to the Man in Black how he has devoted his life to avenging the death of his father, thus giving him the kind of emotional backstory kids can definitely understand, as well as adding another mission to the movie. Soon after beating (but not killing) Inigo, the Man in Black fights with Fezzik, who we already know has a similarly sad past (“unemployed—IN GREENLAND”). Plenty of villains were once good before crossing to the dark side: Darth Vader, many of Batman’s nemeses, Voldemort. The point in those stories is that the difference between true evil and true greatness comes down to one wrong decision, one wrong turn, and there is no going back from that. But The Princess Bride does something more subtle: it suggests that good people some- times end up doing bad things, but are still good, have stories of their own, and are capable of love. Inigo and Fezzik both killed people in the past for Vizzini, but they’re all still good people. This is quite a message for kids (and adults) to take in: not everything is clear-cut when it comes to good and bad, even in fairy tales. In the original novel, William Goldman goes into much greater detail about Fezzik and Inigo’s friendship, and this is one of the reasons why I—in all hon- esty—pre-fer the book to the film.VIII But the film alludes to it enough in order for audiences to understand the real bond between the men, and partly this happens through the script and partly through the actors, especially one actor in particular. At one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered for the role of Fezzik, but, thank heavens, he was already too expensive by the time the film finally started shooting. Where Schwarzenegger is all jarring rectangles and jut- ting jaw, André the Giant was all soft circles and goofy smiles. Where Schwarzenegger palpably punished himself to a superhuman extent to get the body he clearly wanted so badly, the man born André René Roussimoff suf- fered from gigantism due to acromegaly and had no choice about his size, just as Fezzik didn’t, much to the latter’s misery (“It’s not my fault being the big- gest and the strongest—I don’t even exercise”). It would be a patronizing cliché to say André was born to play Fezzik, but he was certainly more right for the role than Schwarzenegger. By the time he made The Princess Bride, André was seven feet, four inches and weighed more than 540 pounds. Easily the sweetest stories in Cary Elwes’s book come from the cast and crew’s memories of the wrestler, who died in 1993 at the age of forty-six, and this is not mere sentimentality. Quite a few of The Princess Bride’s cast have, sadly, since died, including Mel Smith, Peter Cook, and Peter Falk, but none of them prompts the same kind of fondness as that felt for André. “It’s safe to say that he was easily the most popular person on the movie,” Elwes writes. “Everyone just loved him.” Partly this is due to the extraordinary nature of the man. Robin Wright re- calls going out to a dinner with him where he ate “four or five entrees, three or four appetizers, a couple of baskets of bread, and then he’s like, I’m ready for seconds. And then desserts. I think he went through a case of wine and he wasn’t even tipsy.” But it was André’s innately gentle nature that made him so beloved. His “compassion and protective nature,” Elwes writes, helped Wallace Shawn over- come his almost paralyzing fear of heights when they were filming the climb up the Cliffs of Insanity. When Robin Wright felt chilly when filming outdoors, André would place one of his huge hands on top of Wright’s head. “She said it was like having a giant hot water bottle up there. It certainly did the trick; he didn’t even mess up her hair that much!” Elwes writes. When he died, William Goldman wrote his obituary in New York magazine. The last lines were as fol- lows: “André once said to Billy Crystal, ‘We do not live long, the big and the small.’ Alas.” Next, on a smaller level, is the love between Miracle Max (Crystal) and his aged wife, Valerie (Carol Kane). Initially they seem simply like a squabbling old couple, playing purely for broad comedy (and their scene is the broadest comedic one in the film). But it soon becomes clear that Valerie is needling Max only because she wants him to get back his confidence in his work after Prince Humperdinck destroyed it by sacking them, and her little cheer when her husband agrees to make a miracle for Inigo is really very touching. By the end of their scene, they’re working together, finishing one another’s sentences, holding each other arm in arm, and whispering little asides to one another. As a portrait of elderly marriage goes, this one is a pretty lovely one. Finally, there’s the great love story that frames the whole movie: the one be- tween the grandson/Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and the grandfather/Columbo (Peter Falk). In the beginning of the movie, the grandson is irritated by his cheek-pinching grandfather and can hardly believe that he has to stop playing his adorably primitive-looking computer baseball game to listen to grandfather read a book.IX As the film progresses, the relationship between the grandson and grandfather progresses almost like a traditional love story: the grandson slowly gets more interested, clutching his covers anxiously when Buttercup is almost eaten by the Shrieking Eels; then he gets angry, banging his bed with his fist when it seems like Westley has been killed; and finally, he comes around entirely and tells his grandfather to come back the next day to read the book again. “As you wish.” His grandfather smiles, and the film ends. “That wasn’t actu- ally in the script,” Elwes says. “They came up with him saying that on, I think, the last day, and it really captures the love between the grandfather and grand- son. You can also see the tenderness between Fred Savage and Peter Falk.”

[edge-lorde]

hp update: its the beauxbatons special event mon ami! i go back to work tomorrow and i dont want to pack my bag!

thats right, not only have i completed a new chap but ive also done the french special event. i will detail it first. 

so, the french event takes place during year 2, when pennys pen friend aurelie comes to hogwarts with her head mistress from the french magic school to learn consider if she would like to transfer. that would be interesting to see. the books did mention that magic school transfers are at least possible, as draco mentioned once about how he might transfer to durmstrang at one point i believe, but we never see it happen. would they get their own little sorting ceremony?? idk might be fun to explore in fanfiction, take notes children. 

aurelie herself seems p ok. they give her some french affectations in her dialog, and she always calls the school ‘Ogwarts, but her written accent is not as bad as fleurs if i remember correctly. she either has her own unique voice actor or doubles with merula & merulas positive voice noises just happen to sound like RON HON HON but i cant tell for sure. idk about chiara but at least 1 other crypto-friend does not have his own voice actor; talbott shares a voice with barnaby. 

much adieu was made over the fact that hogwarts doesnt teach alchemy which seems like an oversight if the school is really supposed to be so good. much of the plot of the event revolves around looking for flamelian artifacts, but of course none will be found until harrys first year, after the end of this viddo game. 

throughout the whole event and even now that its over there has been a special sale deal for energy and other in-game currency. everytime i look it says there 5 and a half hours left to take advantage and its been 5 days. i managed to complete this even without the use of this bundle or any of my hard-earned gems U__U. 

other notable things would be that we get confirmation that beauxbaton is not an all girls school like it appeared to be in the movie, and we get to see our dear mc do the fancy intro that was in the movie. i cant imagine that is their regular intro for other things or what else you would use it for besides the triwizard tournament but there you go.  

as a reward i have received a powder blue beauxbaton uniform and a little vial thing that gives me an undetermined amount of gems when i click on it every day. very interesting. i very much enjoy the french little witches hat the uniform comes with and have kept the make-up and facial hair on. its starting to grow on me! nyuck nyuck hyuck.

in other game news, its centaur time. i needed to get presents for the centaurs so they would let me into their camp. badeea proves herself to be a mother fucking g by giving me an antique star map to give them. i like badeea shes like a benevolent genius who floats into the story every once in awhile when you need her most and then fucks off again. 

torvus is the only kid sized centaur, also. all the others are adult height and its very jarring because i dont think torvus is supposed to be a kid. hes just like the shetland pony of the centuars. all the centuars in the camp look like buff dudes because they cant make any be female, because theres a 25% chance that there are no female centaurs. its a question on this test thing that jkr made a long time ago but we never got an answer key. we know the centaurs have foals though so my guess is there are female centaurs, they would just look like dudes by human standards. 

got a new potions class segment where we can hang out with barnaby = good. still nothing for ismelda and liz. technically liz might not be in the class, given that weve never seen her in it even though shes slytherin. good to know barnaby didnt fail potions tho. 

lots of sidequests i need to catch up on.... just been busy....

[thethistlegirl]

Hold On

@sky-larking requested a fic about hand-holding...and I ended up doing a 5+1 because I had too many ideas to fit in one fic...

+1 (part 1)

They don’t know when Jack is going to wake up. The hit he took to the head before being bundled into a car and sent off to his intended death at the bottom of a cliff was hard enough to make a man who normally laughs off concussions as pale and still as a corpse.

Mac sits in a Romanian hospital and holds Jack’s hand. Everything he did, he did for me. If he dies, it will be because of me. Matty told him she’s found out that Mareks was spying on Mac. That Jack did what he did to keep Mac safe.

He risked his life for me, and I’ve been holding him at arms’ length for months. Mac can’t leave Jack’s side, not for anything. What if he never wakes up? What if I never get to tell him I’m sorry? What if I never get the chance to thank him for not giving up on me?

1

The time, the explosion isn’t Mac’s fault. Jack can find an odd source of humor in that, even as they plummet to what might be their deaths in a jet with a giant hole in its side. Nope, this time the rogue terrorist cell of the week decided to make a cliche dramatic exit in style. Leaving Mac and Jack with a plane full of barrels of radioactive sludge and a bomb ready to explode on impact.

He’d probably still be making jokes, despite the situation, if he wasn’t currently trying to talk the kid down from the biggest panic attack Jack’s seen him have since the Sandbox.

Granted, if Jack doesn’t keep hanging on and find a way to pull them both back to a spot where they’re not actively being sucked out of the hole to their doom, Mac is going to fall to his death. Mac yelled that all they had to do was wait for the pressure to equalize inside the cabin and this would stop, but that was before the plane hit an air pocket, lurched, and flung him too close to the opening.

Now the kid’s clinging to Jack’s hand for dear life, tears slipping down his face from closed eyes. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay, I got you,” Jack says.

And then the pull of pressure isn’t as strong, and Jack’s able to pull Mac back into the relative safety of the plane. The kid’s shaking violently, and Jack pulls him into a hug. Mac holds it for a few moments, but then pushes Jack away and starts moving toward the front of the plane. Because they still have a crisis to stop.

2

It was supposed to be an easy mission. In and out, retrieve a flashdrive and walk away.

And for once, freaking once, it was actually true. No, the reason Jack is sitting in the back of the exfil van, thinking his hand might be the next thing to need a cast after the medics are done setting Mac’s leg, is the kid’s own clumsy nature.

They were out of the facility, with the flashdrive, and enjoying a nice leisurely stroll through the mountains where the secret base had been, to the exfil coordinates. Mac as usual was being infuriatingly good at it, teasing Jack whenever he got winded scrambling over rocks and downed trees. In Jack’s defense, he argued every time, he’d been the one who fought off ten guys while Mac found a way to bypass the security doors. Okay, maybe it was more like five guys, but still…

Jack’s stomach was beginning to complain a little louder than the blisters on his heels when it happened. One minute Mac was climbing a small bluff to check their location, the next the kid was rolling down scarily fast. Jack heard the crack when he slammed to a stop against a boulder near the bottom.

By the time he got to the kid, Mac was panting, reaching for his leg but looking afraid to touch it. Jack could already tell they were dealing with a broken bone. At least it’s the lower part of his leg, not the femur. Jack doesn’t think the kid would have been able to make it out of that was the case.

Together they’d rigged up a decent improvised splint and based on what Mac had managed to see before falling, found exfil. And now, letting his hand be slowly crushed in the kid’s pained grasp, Jack can finally relax.

3

“Jack?”

“What?”

“Did you know that you can make decent night vision goggles out of low-light security cameras?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh.”

“Only because you told me five minutes ago.”

Jack shakes his head at the concussed, confused kid he’s currently dragging through the halls of the secure facility they’re breaking out of. Jack’s fairly confident he can get them out; it would be easier if Mac was functioning at normal capacity but the last time they were interrogated, the kid took one too many hard hits to the head.

“Oh.” Mac tugs at Jack’s hand. “My ribs hurt. Can we stop running?”

My ribs hurt...yeah, cause you’ve probably got two or three busted ones. Jack shakes his head at the kid’s pain tolerance. Even concussed and loopy he downplays whatever’s wrong.

“No, I’m sorry, we can’t.” Jack locks his hand a little tighter around Mac’s wrist and drags him down a hallway, trying to ignore the approaching pounding boots in the hallway behind them. Just a little farther…

4

The world is blurry and full of smoke and pain when Jack wakes up. He shakes his head slowly, fighting the sudden sick feeling. It’s more than the concussion, more than the pain from his leg trapped under the dashboard of the secure transport vehicle.

It’s the thought that that maniac might have his partner again. The last thing Jack remembers is seeing Murdoc walking up to the vehicle he just flipped with a grenade launcher, smiling down at Mac. And then he blacked out.

His whole body hurts , and he can’t really turn his head because of the way he’s trapped in the car. So instead he reaches out with his right hand and feels along the crushed metal and broken glass, ignoring the pain. Mac. He has to make sure Mac is okay.

When he feels the seat material but no warm body he panics. The harsh breaths burn in his throat from the smoke. And then a trembling hand twists fingers into his. Jack relaxes as he feels familiar calluses and scars. Mac is still here. Murdoc hasn’t stolen him away again. They’re going to be all right.

5

Jack has the feeling he’s seen this in a movie before. If he could remember which one he’d be making references like crazy right now...was it Indiana Jones, maybe...but at the moment he’s a little more preoccupied with getting away from the guerilla militia that want to kill them.

He’s pretty sure these guys won’t follow them if they jump what looks like three stories off this waterfall. But he’s also pretty sure the reason is that these guys don’t want to commit suicide.

“Mac, any better ideas?”

Mac shakes his head. “They’re closing in from all sides. I think it’s our best bet. And if we can stay out of the immediate area of the waterfall hopefully we’ll be able to avoid getting sucked under by the current and drowning.” But the kid’s voice is shaking. He doesn’t want to jump, not that far.

“That’s very reassuring. I was kinda hoping the fall would kill us first.”

“It’s only about twenty-five feet. We’re not gonna die...unless the water is really shallow.”

“Thanks.” Jack grabs Mac’s hand. “One, two, three, go? Or go on three?”

And then a shot cracks into the tree beside them, and Jack pulls Mac over the edge, screaming “Threee!” as they plunge to the water below.

+1 (part 2)

Mac’s falling asleep in spite of himself when he feels Jack’s fingers tighten around his. He sits up with a start, knocking his head against the IV stand and wincing.

Jack blinks blearily, then turns his head to glance at Mac. “We lived, huh?” He asks, voice raspy.

“Yeah, we did.” Mac feels like crying with relief.

“I’m getting too old for this,” Jack grumbles. “I may not be the genius of this operation, but I’d like to keep the few brains I’ve got from being scrambled, ya know?”

Mac begins to chuckle. Jack is okay. We’re going to be just fine. Because Jack already knows how Mac feels. And he’s just reminding him that nothing’s changed. It’s still the two of them against the world, the way it’s always meant to be.

[scriptmedic]

Hello! I have a character who's five years old and I was wondering what difference that makes medically, if that makes sense? Both like how medical workers will act with her and explain things given she's very young and how that would factor into her medical care, like basic checkups or diagnosing illnesses and stuff like that. Sorry if this is too broad or vague, and thank you for all you do!

Hey there! Congrats on being Janey on the spot with the inbox and  being the first ask of June! 

So, one quick note. I come from EMS, and particularly now from a critical care service that handles a lot of kids. But I’m assuming for the purpose of this ask that this child is not and has never been critically ill. Okay? Okay! 

Pediatrics is its own specialty for a reason, and I have bundles to learn about it. There are all sorts of things that are different in pediatric medicine (and all sorts that of things that are shockingly similar!). 

First, let’s talk about “furniture.” As you’ll remember from having once been a child, peds doctors offices and clinics, and even ERs, are often bright, colorful and cheery places. Kids get offered toys and lollipops, they get to see special movies. Doc McStuffins is a very common sight in peds hospitals and waiting rooms. 

I’ve heard of peds hospitals that have different mural styles for different wards: one hallway that’s done all up in a baseball theme, another in a princesses and dragons theme, another in trains. 

Oh! When little kids get a nebulizer treatment, oftentimes now the mask they get the treatment through looks like a dragon and it’s awesome and I wish they came in adult sizes. 

Providers are also, by necessity, gentler with kids. You can’t argue with a kid and tell them to hold still; they’re going to squirm whether the shot is good for them or not. (Don’t get me started on vaccinations, please.) 

In terms of the medicine, as someone who works on a pediatric critical care unit, there are two ways you can look at kids. 

A) They’re just little adults. 

B) They are definitely not little adults. 

Both are true. They’re little adults in that they have the exact same functions as adults. They’re not little adults in that there are big social development changes that go on at various ages and there are some physiological changes (mostly that come up in very technical fields) that are different. 

For adults, a lot of the med doses are standardized; for kids, they’re almost all weight-based. A 5 year old should weigh roughly 20kg/45lbs (and there’s a really neat method called Handtevy that will give you the estimated weight of any kid up to 10 yrs old based just on their age; it’s stupendously cool and exactly the kind of thing pediatric critical care medics nerd out about!). 

IVs are almost always smaller in kids, but that’s because they’re little. I’ve also seen ERs use whole teams to get a single IV in a child, including someone singing happy songs while other people stab the child with needles. (It seemed seriously Clockwork Orange to me, but I have a feeling it’s data-driven with good outcomes, so who knows?) 

I get the feeling you’re asking about pediatrics in general and not pediatric critical care, so I’m going to try and focus on the general practice stuff, which is that kids who don’t get seriously ill tend to do pretty well. 

Some things they might have done at the doctor’s office if they’re not there for a specific illness: 

Vitals: blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, temperature

Height/weight checks. 

Scoliosis checks. 

Vision and hearing checks. 

Immunization checks. (I’d say just check the immunization schedule recommended by your region; the CDC’s is here and is as good as any.) 

Allergy scratch-testing 

Common reasons a 5 y.o. will go to the doctor: 

Earaches and ear infections

Fever (usually the flu or an ear infection) 

Vomiting 

Asthma. This is incredibly common in some areas, and I’ve worked in a few. 

the snot. so much the snot. 

Something lost in the nose 

Something swallowed 

Mechanical injury (broken wrist, bumped head, etc.)  It’s common for good parents to be suspected of child abuse for having clumsy kids. 

Kids tend to bounce -- both literally and figuratively. They’re little, but pretty tough and hard to injure, and when they do get hurt they heal pretty quickly. They’re still growing, so they do well. 

That’s all I can think of about pediatrics when it’s 2 in the morning and I worked a 14+ hour day! 

Congrats on getting there first and I hope this was what you needed. 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty 

(Samantha Keel) 

disclaimer    

Patreon: where the ask box nevercloses and you can see the freakingfuture. Want in?

NEW AND UPDATED: Free eBook: 10 BS “Medical”Tropes that Need to Die TODAY!  

[deadmantalking117]

MEL

In my mid 30's I really started getting sick. All the time. So very sick. Up until now I was mostly ok. For the past 10 years since my diagnosis I was doing fine. But I had that Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I had been told that I would die before I got to be 40. And there's 40.. right over there! And for the first time.. I'm really sick.. a lot. Deaths coming for me. So I did what you're supposed to do. When I got sick.. I had my Dr admit me into the hospital... that's where you go to die.. right? Some episodes were a few days.. some a few weeks. But they were many. Being fed thru a tube. IV tubes everywhere.. so many needles.. Part if my routine was walking the halls. To help recover.. it's very important to keep moving. The more you can force yourself to get up and move.. the faster you recover. It's pure Newtonian physics.. a body at rest stays at rest.. a body in motion stays in motion.. so get moving. Keep moving. Walking the halls is an ordeal. You need to bundle up all your tubes and IV's.. unplug the pumps. (They're battery backed up) and make sure you dont get tangled up and fall. But I put on my monster feet slippers and headed on out. Usually twice per day.. I would try to get 10 laps around the ward. Most times I barely noticed other people.. I'm in astonishing amounts of pain.. and focused on making the next lap. But I could see other rooms.. with other people. As I passed by one of these.. a little shell of a girl.. laying on her bed was being smacked on the back by nurses.. they had to do this several times a day to break up the phlegm in her lungs.. so she wouldn't drown. I had noticed her before.. another frequent flyer like me. This time she gave me a little smile and a weak wave. She's seen my laps.. and had started counting me. One day as I'm passing.. she called out.. "that's 6!" I stuck my head in to say a quick hello. And my entire life changed. Mel was a little waif of a girl. She was fighting a couple horrible diseases that were wasting her tiny little body.. she was terminal.. but hanging on hard.. at 19 years old.. she looked 10.. she was so frail she couldn't get out of bed... ever. I was 36-37 and facing my own mortality. But this girl never had any real life. At 19 .. She's never had a boyfriend.. or any friend.. She's been in hospital beds her entire life. Nurses were her only human contact, besides her parents. But they had to work to support their dying daughter.. so they couldn't be there a lot. I made it my mission to visit her as often as I could get out my own bed. Most days.. as I did my laps. I'd stick my head in the door.. say hi.. ask how she was doing.. always a weak little smile.. "still here" she'd joke. Thats 4! Or 5! As I hobbled past. One day when I stopped by she asked me if I wanted to come over tonight and watch a movie with her.. as a permanent guest.. she got a good t.v. and a vcr.. her mom would bring her movies. "So if you are bored and wanna come by my mom will bring me any movie I want". I have an amazing wife and family. My times in the hospital were made easier by their visits and support. I was never lonely. But this sweet dying wisp of a girl.. only had mom and dad.. and they were killing themselves working to keep her alive as long as they could. So. Movie night! I bundled up my tubes.. put on my monster feet slippers.. and headed over around 8. See.. the thing in hospitals is.. time is meaningless. 2 am.. just the same as 5pm. But mom left at 8 each night.. so she's free! Our first movie was a Ray Liotta comedy/drama called Article 99. If you wanna see a story about veterans care.. its great. A must watch. We gabbed throughout the film. Each making jokes about the movie.. or our actual lives. Or whatever.. I was stunned by how cheerful and funny she was. How could someone this ravaged be so upbeat? I remember when I left that first night.. I had this overpowering urge to give her a hug or something.. but that's impossible. She can't be touched ! The nurses had told me was written in stone.. she was so prone to infection that you had be sterilized before any contact. They had to undergo a whole routine just to treat her! The only reason I could sit with her was because we were already in the same environment.. and I didn't have anything contagious. I recall the time where I was in for a flare up. But I was also having sinus issues.. so her room was a no fly zone. When I could get up and walk.. I had to stand well back from her door and kinda yell in to her room. But she'd always have something to tell me. On days when I was too sick to get up from my bed.. we'd pass messages back and forth through the nurses.."she wants to know when you're coming by for movie night.. and what do want her mom to bring?" Tell her.." maybe tomorrow night.. ever seen Star Wars?" Things like that. Most days.. I was way too sick to get up. But I made a special effort to at least do a couple laps.. so I could say hi. She'd always update me with her "labs" her blood count.. oxygen levels.. what new drug they were going with now.. there was always a new drug. Basically let me know she still alive. I'd tell her about the family.. "Kat says hi.. she'll see you on her next visit" "kids are doing ok" things like that. This was over a time period of about 6 or 8 months..I was literally sick all the time. Most days.. I'd get up.. vomit uncontrollably for a while.. have an astonishingly painful bowel movement or 6. Try to get on with my day. Over and over I'd go back to the hospital.. 3 or 4 days usually.. couple weeks sometimes... one particular stretch of 35 days being fed thru a tube stands out. I was not a happy camper. But here was this dying girl.. who almost never got to go home. And she's better than me. It bothered her that she was happy I was sick... but it was cool that we could hang out. I remember when she confessed this.. she had a small whisper of a voice.. because of the years of damage from tubes and drains. She talked kinda like a deaf person talks. But very quietly.. a husky whisper. I can hear her even to this day.. 25 years later. Picture her laying in her bed.. She looked a bit like the actress Kate Micucci. Just a smaller wasted version. One day the nurse tells me that Mel is wanting me to stop by and visit.. she's doing really good. She also told me.. "You know she dresses up for you?" She would have the nurse comb her hair.. she even had her pretty nightgown set aside to wear when I was in the house. She had 3 or 4 different nightgowns to wear so she wouldn't always have to wear hospital gowns. But one was her favorite.. apparently she only wore it when I was there. Our total time together over this 6 or 8 month time span.. maybe a few hours total. 5 minutes here ... 10 minutes there.. it always had to be me that visited.. and I was in no shape.. and as soon as I could get up.. I was gone. We had a few movie nights. I did make her watch Star Wars.. she said she liked it.. but I remember that we always talked thru the movies.. so I don't think she even really watched it. She made me feel better.. first by motivating me to get up and walk.. but mostly by her relentlessly cheerful attitude. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you.. she was barely alive.. 19 years old.. but looked like a 10 year old who been hit by a bus. Yet there she lay.. smiling all the while. In her prettiest nightgown. One Sunday afternoon theres a knock on my door.. Kat was out shopping and I was sick on the couch watching the kiddies. I open it and there's 2 older people standing there.. GREAT.. church people.. I'm so not up for this.. I'm sick. But they weren't church people.. they were Mel's parents. MEL DIED YESTERDAY. They had gotten my address from one of the nurses.. she knew that I'd want to know. They told me how greatful they were to me. Mel loved me.. she talked about me all the time.. her mom told me she had the biggest crush on me.. if course I knew it.. but I'm choking back tears while these people I've never met tell me I was literally the only friend she ever had. She'd been born sick and wasn't expected to make it to puberty. But she stayed around for almost 20 years. Mom tells me that her numbers were always up when I was in the hospital. About how her friend Steve was back in and we're going watch such and such movie maybe tomorrow aftetnoon. About how they'd always wanted to meet me.. but she didn't want them to embarrass her in front of her friend! Dad was a butcher.. he offered to make my whole family a barbeque.. they wanted to do something for me. I was too sick to eat anything then.. but got their number and promised to call when I was up and around. I never did. Not long after Mel died. I quit going to the hospital. It wasn't her death.. it was a bunch of reasons.. mostly I felt like something had to change. But I'll tell you that story another time. Before they left my doorway.. I asked the one question I never even thought to ask Mel. I knew what diseases she had..I can't recall what they were.. some long medical thing that doesn't really do the disease justice.. like toxohistiplasmosis leukasemia. It's just a bunch of letters slapped together to try to explain the death of a beautiful young woman. Who gives a shit what you call it. I asked them.. " what is Mel short for anyways? I never asked her. Was it Melody? Or Melony?" Her name was Melissa I was her only friend for a very short period of time. And she absolutely changed my life. Her parents are likely long gone.. they appeared to be in their 60s back then.. they had no other children. Kathleen and I are probably the only people who know this person even exsisted.. even if only for brief moment in time. But she did exsist.. And she helped shape the course of my life.. simply because of who she was. She did exsist.. and I was her friend.

[seanmeverett]

Review of Playster’s All-In-One Entertainment Streaming Service

Get free headphones and a tablet when you subscribe to their movie, music, book and gaming service

I. Setting the Stage

A newcomer to the streaming music and movie battle has come to the market with some serious upgrades. Playster’s $25 per month gets you unlimited access to not just music and movies, but also books, games, and audiobooks. In addition, this new streaming company gives you not one, but two physical products along with its service: headphones and a tablet. If you like, you can also break apart that bundle and only subscribe to the type of service you’re looking for. Just books? Just music? No problem. From their website:

After all our time spent in the video streaming industry, we have yet to come across a novel approach that bundles all different types of content together, in addition to the devices you’d use to engage with them.

A smart concept for a smart price. The question, then, is does the reality live up to the seemingly too-good-to-be-true promise?

Playster’s homepage

In this Part 1, we dig into the Playster product experience. In the upcoming Part 2, we’ll compare it to other major players in the industry to see how it holds up.

You can view the Playster product and their content without signing up or logging by going to play.playster.com.

In terms of content providers, which is likely the single most important thing about a digital experience, they have made some important partnership announcements. In addition to the 800-pound gorillas of the publishing space, they have movies from Paramount and Stars to go along with music from Sony and Warner. Suffice to say, you’re going to get access to some truly popular content with their service.

II. The Unboxing Experience

Playster was kind enough to send along a Combo Box that we could test in order to write up this review. We waited until we had everything in hand before we logged into the service so our experience was much the same as a brand new customer using it for the first time.

The box comes with a welcome sheet, a user guide, a new fully functional Android tablet complete with a 5 megapixel camera and native apps already installed. The headphones aren’t bluetooth but do come with a standard wired connector between the cans and any device, including your current smart phone or iPod.

Below is what logging into the Playster browser experience for the first time looks like. Navigation seems easy enough. A few quick sections right there in the middle depending on my use case. The left-hand sidebar showing the various services from music to movies to games and books.

Desktop, tablet, and mobile responsiveness of Playster’s web app.

The user experience is self-explanatory so no issues there, and it’s responsive across various mobile devices to checks that box nicely. Below is what their service looks like from the native Android tablet. It shows the interface for browsing music, listening to music, playing a game, navigating for something to watch, the video player itself, and even the included web browser.

III. Streaming Music

The first thing we reviewed was the music streaming services in an office setting. The initial loading experience on fast wifi took a few seconds, but the quality of the sound is great. One interesting thing I noticed a few minutes into the experience was changing the volume using the on-screen slider. With Apple Music you notice the volume changing as you drag it, but in Playster’s case, the actual volume didn’t change until you released the mouse to the desired place on the slider.

We compared the sound quality of the free headphones to a pair of high-end Bang & Olufson BeoPlay H8 bluetooth headphones. As you might imagine, there was a difference, especially when one costs $0 and the other costs $500. But we have to isolate hardware from streaming quality.

We have to say, listening to the headphones for about an hour while we navigated throughout the various sections of the included tablet experience, our ears didn’t start hurting, nor did we experience any sort of cheap tinniness that you might expect from free headphones.

If you’re an audiophile and pore over hundreds of reviews online and spend thousands of dollars on headphones, then yes of course you’re not going to be happy with the in-the-box phones just like you wouldn’t with Apple’s included EarPods.

But, if you’re a casual user, or you’re getting this for your young child, then it’s going to work just fine. I was jamming out to Hip Hop, R&B, Pop, and EDM during my hour-long test and only had the volume up maybe 30%. I never once thought to myself, “Wow, these sound like crap”, which is what my going in expectation was just simply because they’re “free”.

So, if you’re looking at signing up for the $25/month service to get the tablet, headphones, and access to music, gaming, movies, and books, but are worried that the hardware, software, or streaming quality is crap, let me allay your fears. You are getting a helluva deal here!

To give you a sense of what it’s like to navigate through their music streaming product, create your own playlists, and find new music to listen to, view the gallery below.

Ooh they got Bruno Mars and Hamilton and Dua Lipa and John Legend and Meek Mill and Calvin Harris and Chainsmokers and Kings of Leon and Trolls (yes, the major motion picture soundtrack :)

Gallery of images from the desktop version of Playster’s music streaming service.

Ok, so I’m digging their music library. At first glance Playster seems to have a range of titles to suit most people’s needs. They likely negotiated content rights to a package deal much like the other streaming music services, which is why you’ll see a lot of the same titles across different services. Save for maybe TIDAL. Which means, if you’re into music streaming, you get to choose between the one that you like best, or that offers other benefits.

If Apple Music is $10/month and you can get free headphones, a tablet, gaming, books, and movies for $25, Playster seems like a much better deal. Or, if you want to keep it at the $10 price point, you can subscribe to just their music service.

We haven’t seen an API so there will likely be less app development over the top of it like Spotify and more recently, Apple Music, but frankly we don’t think most people really use other apps around music other than to just listen.

Interestingly, while a game was loading we discovered a new track that’s pretty hot. A few of us subscribe personally to Apple Music and we hadn’t come across this track over there so this seems like a novel benefit.

We just went on Apple Music to see if this specific track is there. It is. So in this case, it’s even steven, though from a discoverability standpoint we found it on Playster, not on Apple Music.

IV. Streaming Movies

The next section we tried was movies. Most people are going to immediately compare this to Netflix or maybe HBO. And the first thing you always notice is the content library. Note: see the top of this post for the content partners and how to view the movie library before you sign up.

From landing on the Movie page to selecting a film, and then loading it in its flash player.

The piece that many in the video streaming industry like to lambaste about is the player. Everyone is building or using what’s called an HTML5 player, which moves away from the long-standing Flash player. Many folks cite reliability, security, and power usage as a reason to move to the new native web experience.

Now, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with Flash players. In fact, at Piksel we stream 50,000 live events annually without issue all at exactly the same time, which means we’re hitting peak load every week. It’s all done via our Live flash player as we don’t have the reliability yet baked into our new HTML5 player. So, should you be concerned now that Safari and Chrome don’t automatically load any flash video player, including Playster’s? The answer is no, you’ll be just fine.

It’s going to play your video on your new free tablet without issue and shouldn’t even be something most normal users ever think twice about.

V. Games

At this point, with Spotify, Apple Music and TV, most of us are familiar with streaming music and movies online. So going in we knew what to expect and aside from personal gripes you have with the content library, everything is as expected.

Which is why it was with great interest that we reviewed the gaming sections of the platform. Are they letting you download games to your device so you can play them on planes or in trains? Or are they streaming like Valve’s Steam?

So many curious questions.

Most of the games that show up are meant to be played on the included tablet so if you opt for the all-inclusive, $25/month tier, you shouldn’t have a problem.

But we also wanted to give a true test of just subscribing to the gaming service and only using it from a desktop or an iPhone to see what that experience was like.

So we went to Gaming > Best Sellers and chose the very first item that looked compelling in the first seat position. Loki. That sounds promising. Click in via our 13" MacBook Pro with TouchBar, and bam. No dice.

Ok, we get it now. There are compatability issues with some of the titles. This one only works on Windows machines apparently. Some stream via HTML5, and some are native downloads. Lets see if we can find one that works with Macs.

Ok, found one, lets download it and unpack the file. Ok, so it’s not the actual game I downloaded (that part’s confusing), but isntead a wrapper that I have to log into, which then pulls open the Mac app with the gaming content library.

A 200 meg download. This is going to take a minute.

Ok, downloaded. A new play button shows up, so we click it. And wait. Okay, it’s a new machine so we need to install some Java software. After clicking the OK button multiple times and nothing happening, we realized it’s an Apple dialogue box fail. We have to click the “More Info” button and off to Apple’s site we go to download more stuff.

So far this is not an awesome, or easily accessed, experience. And I’m beginning to get a bit worried that my brand new machine could be opening itself up to some vulnerabilities. I would urge the Playster folks to reconsider their strategy towards desktop gaming. And the fact that it’s not included in the mobile apps makes me wonder if it’s just an add-on and not a core product feature.

Okay we’re in and finally playing!

Lets try a second game now that we’ve gone through the setup process to see if it’s any faster. We often remark to each other, around the office, how crazy our belts are. So, consider us shocked when we saw a game with the same name. Don’t mind if we do.

The games feel very mobile friendly, but playing on the desktop with a mouse is as expected. Less than ideal compared to how it would feel if it were available in the iOS app.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any games in the iOS version of the app so if you have an iPhone, we wouldn’t recommend that you subscribe to only the gaming service. Again, getting the full-featured service is likely the best deal for the money.

VI. Books

We downloaded the iPhone mobile app and logged in to review the ebooks because that’s how we read them on our phone. We’re used to using Reeder for our news and iBooks for our books so were a bit curious what the experience was going to be like.

Interestingly, it has the same page turn functionality as iBooks though not quite as fluid. The typography handling also isn’t quite as lovely as Apple’s version, but it gets the job done. Have a look below at the end-to-end experience of first opening the app (after logging in) and getting into the reading experience.

Playster does have three necessary features for any ebook experience:

Fast scrubbing through pages

List of chapters

Typography choices for size and font

Note that you will have unlimited access to books and audiobooks for a flat fee without having to buy additional credits.

Truth be told, iBooks is a bit nicer reading experience and likely have a much bigger content catalog with the latest and greatest New York Times best sellers. But it comes down to your personal reading preferences.

One nice feature for Playster’s marketing site would be to provide a list of their content catalogue without requiring a user to sign up for the free trial in order to see what they can expect.

Based on our review, the strongest aspect of the platform in terms of content is music. If we had to rank, it would be in the same order as this review:

Music

Movies

Books

Games

Incidentally, it’s also in the same order of time you’re likely to spend in each one.

That concludes part 1 of our review. In the next edition, we’ll be comparing it in a bit more detail to competing services to provide a comprehensive roundup of the streaming services.

— Sean

Recommended Reading for You

Sponsor Your Own Product Review

13" MacBook Pro with TouchBar Versus 12" MacBook

Embracing the Oura Ring

Beta Testing Magic’s Assistant Service

Review of Soylent’s Coffiest

Review of Playster’s All-In-One Entertainment Streaming Service was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean Everett on Medium http://ift.tt/2kSDdsB