#but obviously this caveat is never made clear until you read to the end of the ad lmao

[golbrocklovely]

never needed // colby brock

A/N: so fun fact about this fic is that i came up with it last year back in november. it was around the time me and my ex best friend stopped being friends. i was really in such a rough headspace, and i think the concept shows it. i just finished writing it today and wow... i still feel this way to some extent, but not fully (thank god). also i literally cried while writing it today so there’s that. hope yall enjoy this one. i'm trying to post a bunch of fics since this coming week is my bday (the 14th). no guarantees, but i'm trying my best to put out at least six things. let me know what you think of this one. see yall later :)

prompt: colby has been ghosting you for a while, just when things were starting to get good between you two. after a week of ignoring you, he’s finally ready to talk. || fem!reader x colby brock

trigger warning: angst, cursing, heartache, crying, honestly this one is really sad so sorry about that, happy ending tho

word count: 2331

~~~~~~~

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I groaned to myself, staring at my phone.

Colby was still ignoring me, something I had grown accustomed to this week. He had ghosted my calls and my texts. He turned his read notifications off too, so I had no clue whether or not he had even seen my messages at all.

Everything had been going great between us. We had met a couple years back and hit it off as friends right away. I always thought he was attractive, and our friendship was always really flirty; so much so that fans thought we were together. And then finally, something clicked a couple months back. I wasn't sure if it was the accidental drunken kiss we shared, or just a built up of feelings, but we finally decided that maybe we should test out an actual relationship.

We promised each other we would take it slow, both of us still heartbroken from our previous relationships and our general trust issues. But these past two months, we went into overdrive, actually taking the time to feel each other out as boyfriend and girlfriend.

And for the first time, I felt happy. Genuinely happy.

A week ago, we had even gone on a cute little date, something we had started doing regularly. We were in the middle of our conversation; I remember I laughed hard at something he said. It was loud enough that some of the patrons in the restaurant stared at us. And when he tried to shush me jokingly, a silence had fallen over us.

His face dropped suddenly, he became super serious and quiet, and then he asked if we could go home.

He told me the next day that he thought he got food poisoning and it just hit him in the restaurant. I didn't think anything of it and was fine with going home early.

But now, I wonder if he was lying.

I looked back down at my phone, reading over my messages from the past week to him.

Was I taking this too far? He could have just been busy. I don't wanna come across as clingy.

"Ugh, fuck that." I muttered out loud to myself, rolling out of my bed to get a drink.

I didn't care if I came across as clingy. I had a right to know why he was ignoring me. If it was work related, he would have told me. He had done that in the past before.

This was different, I just knew it.

Tomorrow, I planned to go over and see him. I would have done it tonight, but I knew he wasn't home. He was out with some friends at Saddle Ranch. Like a fan, I had to watch his stories on Insta, since that was the only way I knew where he was.

"Don't expect too much from him." Sam said.

I shook my head at that memory. When we got together, everyone was happy for us. But I could feel a certain tension in the room, a certain caveat that wasn't being mentioned. Later that night, Sam and I were by ourselves, and he asked me if Colby and I had really made our relationship official. I told him we hadn't gone all the way, but that we were taking it one step at a time.

"I'm happy for you guys, really. I just wonder..." His voice trailed off.

I cocked my head. "Wonder what?"

"Look, I love you both, but I don't know if Colby is really ready for a relationship. There's a lot of things he still needs to work through." He stated.

"We're not that serious." I laughed.

"Yeah, yet. If you plan to be, I just don't want you to get your heart broken because he wasn't ready." Sam admitted.

I patted his shoulder lightly, smiling. "Relax, Samuel. Everything will be fine."

"Alright. Just... don't expect too much from him, okay?" He mentioned, his eyes narrowing on mine.

That had been two months ago and... I think I should have heeded his warning.

A loud knock at my front door brought me out of my thoughts, scaring me. I grabbed a knife from my kitchen, striding over to the door. I glance through the peephole to see who was there.

Colby's face stared back.

"Y/N, it's me. Can you open the door?" He called.

I scowled at him through the peephole. "Sorry she's not home right now. Maybe you should try responding to her texts.”

“Look I'm sorry, but that's why I came over. I wanted to talk in person.” He replied.

“Damn, that’s a shame. Too bad she’s not home!” I exclaimed angrily.

“C’mon now, don’t be childish.” He remarked.

I swung the door open, holding back from yelling into my hallway. “Childish?!”

He smirked at me. “I knew that would get you to open the door.”

“You’re not funny.” I deadpanned, glaring at him.

“Can you please let me in? I seriously want to talk.” Colby responded, his eyes landing on mine.

“No, Colby. It’s one o’clock in the morning, I don’t feel like talking, and you’re drunk.” I jeered, resting my hands on my hips.

He scrunched up his face dramatically. “No, I’m not. I only had like two drinks.”

“Oh my mistake. I figured a person that randomly comes over to talk at the ass-crack of night is usually drunk,” I quipped. “Don’t you have better things to do, like be at Saddle Ranch?”

He stepped back, raising an eyebrow. “How’d you know I was at Saddle Ranch?”

I could feel my cheeks heat up. “Because… I watched your stories.”

“Nice to know you pay attention to me,” he uttered under his breath. “Please let me in.”

“No. Fuck off, Colby.” I hissed.

He rolled his eyes at my comment. “If you don’t let me in, I’m just gonna make noise out here in the hallway until you do.”

“Bet.” I huffed.

“What was your favorite movie again… ‘10 Things I Hate About You’?” He questioned, stepping back further into the hallway.

I blinked. “Yeah, so what?”

He looked up at me, giving me a devilish smile. “…You’re just too good to be true.”

My face dropped at his voice. “Colby.”

“Can’t take my eyes off of you.” He sang, pointing at me.

“Are you really-” I started.

He cut me off, running his hands down his body. “You’d be like heaven to touch.”

I hushed. “Seriously stop-”

“I wanna hold you so much.” He closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around himself.

I grunted, smacking my hand towards him. “Colby, it’s one in the morn-”

“At long last, love has arrived.” He opened his arms wide.

“Shut the fuck up!” I whisper-shouted.

“And I thank God I'm alive.” Colby praised up towards the ceiling.

I retorted. “You’re fucking embarrass-”

He spun in a circle slowly. “You're just too good to be true.”

“I knew giving you the code to my apartment was a bad idea.” I grumbled.

“Can't take my eyes off of you.” He winked, pointing at me again.

Colby took a big inhale, ready to start singing the music, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him into my apartment.

I slammed my door shut, locking it quickly. “Next time you do something like that, I’m gonna kill you.”

“That’s not very- why do you have a knife?” He motioned toward the knife sitting on my side table.

“What-? Oh, I thought you were an intruder.” I explained.

He lightly smiled, his dimples appearing. “You think an intruder would knock?”

I snapped, annoyed. “Aren’t you here to apologize?”

“Right, right,” he cleared his throat, his demeanor changing. “Y/N, I’m deeply sorry.”

“Sure.” I narrowed my eyes, walking towards my kitchen.

He followed me. “I know what I did was fucked up. I should have responded to you.”

“You completely ignored me for over a week.” I informed him, resting my back against the counter.

He nodded. “I know. I shouldn’t have done that.”

I crossed my arms uncomfortably. “…were you busy?”

“No, not really.” He divulged, dropping his head.

“So, you purposefully ignored my calls and text…” I could feel my hands shake against my arms.

“You make it sound bad-” He mumbled.

“It is that bad.” I emphasized, stopping him. “Colby, you wanna talk about being childish? That shit was childish.”

He agreed. “I know it was.”

“Obviously not since you keep joking about it.” I argued.

“I’m not trying to joke,” he protested, running his hands through his hair. “Do you wanna know the honest to God truth?”

“Of course I do.” I answered, furrowing my eyebrows.

He exhaled, glancing at me. “When we first got together, even though we were taking it slow, I was terrified to date you.”

“Terrified?” I puzzled.

He swallowed hard. “Yes. Scared shitless.”

“Why?” I questioned.

“I thought it was because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. But then… at dinner,” his voice lowered, his shoulders dropping. “I realized it was more than that.”

I shook my head, confused. “What are you ta-”

“I’m falling in love with you, Y/N.” He confessed.

His words made me step back, my breath hitching in my throat.

I choked. “What?”

“When you laughed really hard, and did that cute snort thing you do, I remember we looked at each other… and all I saw was you,” his eyes bore into mine, causing goosebumps to rise all over my skin. “No one else in that restaurant existed. And in that moment, I wanted to tell you I love you.”

I stammered out words, unable to think clearly. “S-so… you-”

“When I felt it, I knew I had to go home. Because I was just so shocked at the feeling. I haven’t felt that way for anyone in a long time.” He sighed exhaustingly, “and… I apologize that I ignored you. Every time I saw your messages, I knew I should have responded. But my body, my mind, wouldn’t let me.”

I frowned. “Because you love me?”

“Because… I’m scared to love you.” He admitted.

A heavy silence fell over the apartment. I shuddered out an exhale, not even noticing I had been holding my breath in for so long. Colby closed his eyes, twisting up his face, and turned his back to me.

“Why are you scared to love me?” I gulped, scared of his answer.

His shoulders tensed as he gripped the counter. “The last time you felt heartbroken… did it leave you feeling empty? Because that’s how I felt… for so long. It’s not even the empty feeling that bothered me. It was the fact that I knew something used to be there… and now it’s gone. I miss who I was before.”

I opened my mouth, but no words escaped.

“I have this deep, guttural feeling that you’re gonna realize I’m not worth loving, and that there is someone else out there that is, and you’re gonna leave me.” His voice trembled as he spoke, “everyone… always leaves me.”

I gasped quietly. “Colby-”

He turned back to me, his face becoming red. “I just feel like no one ever needs me, you know? Like some people only keep me around because they don’t have the heart to just tell me they don’t care anymore. Even Sam has someone else.

I consoled. “That’s not-”

“And I know it’s selfish to want everyone around me to only want me. I don’t really feel that way. I just… don’t feel like anyone really needs me as much as I need them,” his chest quaked as his breathing began to speed up. “And when you realize it too… I don’t think I can live through that fall out again. I don’t think I’m gonna survive it.”

“Wait, Col-” I murmured.

“At that dinner, I had this gut-wrenching anxiety come over me; a voice in my head that said ‘she’s gonna leave you too’ and… I’m just so sorry.” He panted, his eyes welling up.

I wrapped my arms around him tightly, pressing his body into mine as hard as I could. He buried his face into my neck, his body almost going limp against mine.

I couldn’t help my own tears spill as they landed on his shirt. “Baby, why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way before?”

“I was ashamed. I should be stronger than this.” He fumed through his tears.

I rubbed his face lovingly. “Who said that? You are strong. Expressing your emotions is strong.”

He nodded, croaking. “I’m so sorry, Y/N. Can you forgive me?”

“Of course. How about tonight you stay over, and then in the morning, we’ll talk about this more? Okay?” I suggested, resting my hands on his forearms.

“Yeah.” He whimpered.

I smiled brokenly. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

I lightly grasped Colby’s hand, pulling him slowly into my bedroom. He stumbled along, his head remaining down.

I sat him down on the bed and slid off his jacket, placing it on my dresser. I cupped his face, tracing his jaw with my fingers. His eyes finally landed on mine as I tilted his head up.

I leaned down and kissed his lips, resting my forehead against his.

“I’m not gonna leave you, Colby.” I stated, gazing into his eyes.

He begged in a hushed tone. “Please don’t.”

“I won’t. I promise.” I reassured, kissing his forehead.

I walked over to the other side of my bed and laid down. Colby kicked off his shoes, taking his belt off and pulling his jeans down. After getting undressed, he slid into bed with me, laying his head down softly on my chest. Wrapping his arms around me, he buried his head into my neck again, sighing against my skin. I ran my fingers through his hair, a light hum falling from his lips. I ran my other hand up and down his spine, feeling him shiver under my touch.

“We’ll be okay, Colby.” I whispered.

[jadagul]

Scattered stream-of consciousness thoughts on the Wheel of Time show, episodes 1-3 (from someone who read the books obsessively).

Spoilers for all three episodes, obviously, and also assorted spoilers for whatever book content I feel like discussing.

Episode 1

I liked the way they portrayed the man's madness in the opening scene--really conveyed the problem there.

Moiraine says there are four ta'veren in the Two Rivers. Which is kind of a nice change--it always seemed like it would make sense if Egwene were ta'veren too.

Egwene's ceremony reminds me of the way Nynaeve broke her block--it's surrendering to the flow of the water

They definitely sexed it up a little. (Did they give Egwene a slightly transparent dress, at the end of the braid ceremony? Or at least make it seem like they did?)

The whole series also has a more intense vibe. Everyone gets way more home drama, rather than the nice healthy home lives they had in canon.

I like the way they show Mat's willingness to do what needs to be done this early. That didn't really show up until book 3, and then at some point all his friends started remembering he'd always been like that.

Yeah, they deeefinitely ramped up the sexiness with the Rand/Egwene stuff.

Seeing moiraine _unguarded_ this early is interesting. We don't really see that--ever? In the books. But here she's pretty open with Lan.

Saying wisdoms _can't_ marry ramps up a lot of the narrative tension around Egwene, right? In the books wisdoms "often" don't marry but there's no rule.

Aes Sedai are classist? That's a new one. In canon they were super dismissive of anyone who couldn't channel, and anyone who was too old, but a capable channeler who showed up as a teenager would become important through their taking her on.

This version of the world has actual religion. It was notable in book canon that while there are a few religious precepts, there's not really any sort of religious ceremony or anything like that.

And Tam's speech at Bel Tine is basically the thesis of the Dragonmount conversion. Already a clear thesis statement half an hour into the series.

Got to the battle scene. What the hell is Moiraine's spell doing? She's dancing around a lot and nothing is happening yet.

Wow, that is an incredibly cruel thing to do to Perrin. (But makes sense with his freak out about the wolf)

The power is way slower in this. And more obvious. Made it way more physical, and also kind of nerfed it. But then, Moiraine's channeling in book 1 was always weaker than what we started seeing in later books.

They let Nynaeve get _kidnapped_? That's interesting.

Mat is so done with this shit.

The possibility that the Dragon could be a woman is an interesting change. Don't know what I think yet.

So much less talking and exposition. So much. (And yet the exposition is a lot more efficient. Less talking, and less exposition, but more of the talking is exposition.)

Episode 2

They made weaving more physical, clearly. The aes sedai can't channel while tied up (and handless)? That's a change from canon, but on reflection it makes sense. They have to show their characters doing something.

Best line: "You don't seem like a woman who's used to hearing no." "I am not."

The Trolloc threat is more immediate and closer than it was in the book. In the books you knew they were being chased but you never actually saw the trollocs. This version probably makes less objective sense---do none of the trollocs on the other shore have bows?--but it's necessary to keep the tension up, since tv can't rely on just telling you "ah yes we're being chased and it's scary".

Three oaths scene is interesting. First, Egwene knows the oaths, basically, which is not something she'd have known in canon. But second, it seems like they took out a caveat to "no killing with the power"? In the books you can kill Darkfriends and Shadowspawn. But that's not in the phrasing Moiraine gives here.

Rand already getting angry! Took him several books longer in the original.

But he did get a reaction out of Moiraine, which is better than anyone managed in book 1.

Nice interplay between the two Whitecloak leaders. Probably-Bornhald is intending to be decent, and is just (1) wrong about a lot of facts and (2) participating in a super corrupt institution. Whereas Valda is just awful.

That's the most out-of-control we ever see Moiraine, right? In the books she was never that diffident, even when she swore to obey Rand. (It is wise and good of her to do here, but she was never called on to do that in the books.)

Mat getting the dagger is even dumber than in the book! He just wanders off alone for no reason, after being clearly warned that the whole city is evil.

Ending was unexpected but great. (Well, I guessed what was going to happen when I saw the dagger, but not before.)

Episode 3

Mat and Rand having a reasonable conversation about their plans! People talking to each other! What series is this again?

Perrin is a little...frantic? With the flint, while trying to start the fire. More out of control than I'd expect him.

Best line: Nynaeve's "It's not a demand, it's a threat".

One thing I'm really missing: Nynaeve loses the 'I'll heal you even if I hate you' thing from the books. I liked that aspect to her character, but in this show she has to be talked into helping Moiraine.

Thom is not as impressive, vocally, in this as I would like him to be. But there was no way for him to be, right? A problem with portraying "the best singer ever" in any sort of film. In books you can just say that.

Was surprised and sad that Nynaeve didn't wind up busting out Powered Healing under pressure, with Moiraine.

The Tinkers are not nearly colorful enough. Especially in a world that generally has as much color as this one does. It's not like they have the excuse that "everything is drab in this series".

(Aram is great so far, though.)

Thom comments on how red hair is a sign of Aiel. Which seems like literally the only racial or ethnic distinction the shows are going to have. I wonder if Mat will connect that to Rand? I'm sure Thom has.

(Not sure what I think about this version of Thom in general.)

[thewingedwolf]

Not Telling: A Study in How Much We are Actually Told About The Characters, Part One of Two

AKA that meta I started writing/promised to post fully a year ago and then never finished or posted bc I’m a mess. It’s being posted in two parts because it got a bit long.

So we all have our own idea of what the characters look like although many people believe the characters look roughly the same, with some minor differences from headcanon to headcanon. But what does the text itself tell us? The answer is...both more than I expected but also in keeping with Not Telling, not a whole lot at all.

I want to start this with a caveat that I kept very good notes on TT, ACoK, and TaT, mediocre notes on KoA and passable ones for QoA lol. however, it does give us a decent picture of what everyone looks likes. This is like 70% quotes and 30% extrapolation, but I try to explain my thought process on some of my conclusions.

Eugenides:

There’s a few instances that I remember reading (mostly in The Thief) that I forgot to mark but I know all of those dealt with his height and hair - that his hair is long, that it’s dark, and that he’s smaller than Pol and the Magus. So here we go:

“..the man wearing it was tall. Taller than I was, of course, but taller than the magus as well.” - Note that he’s talking about the one of the gods here, which indicates that

eugenides is very short at this point

the magus when compared to other people is probably pretty tall

“Scabs that were black against my prison-fair skin.” - Indicates that his skin has lightened noticeably since he was in prison although that’s the only indicator we get about what he looks like until literally the very ending with...

“He mentioned an Eddisian mother to explain his dark coloring.” - Which is exactly what I mean in Not Telling - we are told enough to have a clear blue print of him, but we are left to fill in the details of how he looks.

About his wound: “it’s taken a divot out of your face...it might heal clean.” and “I was quite certain I’d have a feather-shaped white scar.” - Note that Eugenides thinks this is a sign of approval from the Eugenides the god.

We get just as little in The Queen of Attolia, although note that this is the first time we are getting Gen from someone else’s point of view, instead of him describing himself:

“...his dark hair covering his face...He’d grown...he was not quite her height, but with his hair cropped short under his helmet, she hadn’t looked twice at him when she had seen him.” - that’s the only real description we get of him in the beginning of QoA before It Happens, and it’s from Irene’s point of view. There’s also several references to him looking “young” “naive” and “guilless” - young pops up about half a dozen times, and she remarks often on him being “a boy” and “half-grown.” Obviously part of that is guilt, but I did want to note that when we’re in Gen’s mind, he doesn’t focus on how short or young he looks, but when we’re in someone else’s mind, they immediately zero in on how young and small Gen is.

There’s a lot of descriptions of him after The Thing but it’s all involved in how sick he looks ie bruises showing against his yellowed skin, being so pale that his scar looked dark against his skin, that he’s lost a lot weight, stuff like that. It gives us the sense that he is very sick but no real indication of how he looks when he’s not suffering from fever and blood loss.

“His dark hair blended into the darkness behind him…” - first physical description in KoA

“The Queen was several inches taller than Eugenides…” in KoA during the dance scene

“His usually dark skin was so pale the scar on his cheek showed against the lighter skin around it.” - during the assassination attempt

“Costis was sufficiently taller than the king…” - I think this is our first reference to Costis being very tall, but of course nowhere near our first reference to Gen being short.

“His face was pale, his normally dark skin yellowed.” - My note has nothing to do with his look, but the fact that his skin is usually dark but is now both pale AND visibly yellow makes me think his liver was damaged by the assassin and that’s why it took so long to heal.

“He chose Mede coats with the long bell sleeves because no fighting man who’d seen the muscles in the king’s wrist would have underestimated him the way the Attolians had. His other wrist with no hand at the end of it appeared oddly narrow and delicate. Costis tried not to stare and found himself looking instead at the king’s scars. The long line across his belly was an angry red, but there were other marks: ragged tears around his knees and elbows, and lighter shining bands around his ankles that could only be the mark of fetters, as well as the various lines left by edged blows on his chest and arms, and one long one on his thigh. There were also a number of bruises, some newly purple and black and some fading almost to nothing. Costis wondered where they could have come from.” - WHEW long description for the first time and its all about Gen’s scars.

“...skinny and prison pale, incongruous with the clean clothes the Magus had picked out for him.” - Sophos’ PoV from AcoK. This seems to imply that Gen is usually darker than he is in the Thief - which we’ve been told before, that he’s darker skinned but stints in prison and a number of serious injuries seem to frequently make him look sickly and pale - but also that he’s usually heavier - whether that means, like Sophos believes, that Gen is normally not as skinny or that he’s gained weight since becoming Attolis is anyone’s guess.

“I kept going until I could see his face, see every detail—the quirk of his eyebrow, the twist at the corner of his mouth, the mark on his cheek, where he’d said the Attolian guards had once shot him when he was running away…” - Kamet’s description of him.

“I remembered him as a boy, small for his age. I found him taller, broader in the shoulder, much older than the intervening years would explain, with a hook where his hand had been—wholly changed, in fact, but for the scar on his face and that smile.” - Gen is finally like a normal height lmao, but also he’s gotten bigger in general, which seems to imply IMO that re: Sophos’ assessment earlier, most of the weight (and likely muscle as Costis points outback in KoA) is the result of his time in Attolia and not weight he lost in jail. But whether THAT is due to him like, eating more potentially or having a different fighting style/routine that is bulking him up, or just a natural consequence of getting older or a combination of the two is again, your guess.

Helen:

“By far the least attractive of the women stood up.”

“She had black hair, like Attolia, and her gown was red velvet...tended to stand like a soldier. The ruffles on her shoulders made her arms seem long enough to reach to her knees. Her nose had been broken and reknitted crooked, her hair was cut short like a man’s and curled so much over her simple silver crown that crown itself was nearly invisible.” - all Gen’s point of view.

“She was short and too broad to be called petite. Her father had been broad shouldered, Attolia remembered, and not over-tall. Eddis had a serious expression.” - From QoA, in Irene’s pov. It seems the shortness of Gen is something that runs in the family.

“She’s ugly...she’s short, she’s broad-shouldered, and hawk-faced with a broken nose. I would say no, she is not ideal...I’ve seen men fall on their knees and get to walk across hot coals for her after one of those smiles.” - Gen talking about her with the Magus. I feel like it’s relevant that Gen calls her “the least attractive” when he’s with her, but only “ugly” when talking about her with other people.

“You look a little vulpine yourself.” - probably more a personality quirk than anything, but I still wanted to include it.

“Eddis reached to touch her own crooked nose. ‘If I laughed,’ she said, ‘it is only at the idea that we make a matched pair now, you and I.’” - for both her and Sophos here. Love flirting in the form of pointing out your irregularities, girl’s got game.

“The queen of Eddis is as beautiful as the day and as brilliant as the sun in the sky..he chuckled and quoted Praximeles about beauty being in the heart and not the eye..” - obviously Sophos’ opinion is colored by his love for her, but STILL, he does offer a description that she’s beautiful, is immediately contradicted by Akretenesh, and then basically thinks “it’s not my fault you’re stupid as fuck.”

Irene:

“Her hair was black and held away from her face by an imitation of the woven gold band of Hephestia. Her robe was draped like a peplos, made from embroidered red velvet. She was as tall as the magus, and she was more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen.” - Gen’s PoV in the Thief. We have a hint of his feelings for her in the way he describes her, and also there’s her Hephestia cosplay as well.

“Her hair was held away from her face by the ruby and gold headband that crossed her forehead just above her dark brows. Her skin was flawless and so fair as to be translucent. She dressed as always in an imitation of Hephestia.” - Gen calling out her Hephestia cosplay lmao. I also notice that she’s specifically not just “fair skinned” like Sophos or other Attolians, she’s described as almost weirdly pale.

Sophos:

I KNOW I forgot to mark a scene where Eugenides describes Sophos in TT as like...fair or pink-cheeked or something like that but I’ll be damned if I can find it.

“They were both obviously well bred...I wondered if they were brothers...the older one had darker hair and was better looking.” - obviously the older is Ambiades.

“One member of the crowd, a young man with a broken nose, a lip twisted by scar tissue, and dirty clothes that combined to suggest a person of violent and criminal habits…” - good description that also tells us that Useless the Younger looks significantly different since we saw him four books (and several years) ago. It’s not just that he’s older, or scarred, it’s that he *looks* dangerous now.

“I was taller than Malatesta by inches.” and “I wasn’t heavier than [Hyacinth] but I was taller and bore him to the ground.” - both give us an approximation of his height, weight, and strength.

“I felt my upper lip and rubbed my thumb against the scar tissue. I could feel it distorting my mouth. My nose had a new bump in the middle of it as well.” - scar healing badly

“Measuring myself against [The Magus], I realized we now saw eye to eye.” - considering several references to how tall The Magus is (which we’ll get to), this means Sophos is incredibly tall.

“...my hair all cut away and ragged.” and then they mention they dyed it. Once they get to Attolia however, “A barber came in to trim and shave us, taking off the last of my darker hair and leaving it tidy, if short.” So it’s gone back to his natural color, but this implies he usually wears his hair long.

There’s also a mention of him eating a lot, which isn’t a physical description, but does, IMO, imply something to his size - like how many sheer calories a lot of Olympic athletes have to eat a day.

“I smiled until I felt the scar tissue tighten...I had never let him see what I looked like when I smiled: my uncle.” - ICONIC.

ALSO - Sophos is frequently compared to animals. These animals include a lamb, lion, rabbit, bunny, puppy, and then back to lion.

Costis Ormentiedes:

I couldn’t find any description of him beyond a few references to him being tall in KoA which either means that I just missed it bc I got to emotional over KoA (which is likely) OR we don’t get a real description of Costis until TaT which is an interesting choice. ONWARDS:

“He was a very large Attolian…” - Kamet’s first impression of Costis, yet again reminding us how big Costis is

“He was a typical Attolian: sandy-brown hair, a broad face, light-colored eyes. Altogether he had a simple, straightforward look to him, and he seemed perfectly serious.” - gives us a general idea of what Attolians as a people look like.

“He was large, as I already knew, and a soldier. He had the scars on his hands and forearms and the unmistakable muscles from swinging a sword day in and day out. I had no doubt he was good at what he did - he rather reminded me of an ox, very strong, not terribly quick - but I thought killing was his work, not his pleasure….he moved easily, so he was no veteran crippled’s in his country’s service, but he was too young to have done his twenty years - my own age, or perhaps younger.” - Lots of information here from Kamet. The ones that stick out to me are: moves easily, which means Costis has likely not even been minorly injured before, but he has scars, which of course means he’s had a lot of flesh wounds. The other thing is that Kamet instinctively knows that Costis doesn’t like killing - I don’t know if that means Kamet is a good judge of character or if there’s something about Costis, whether it be the way he carries himself, or something physically like his expressions, his youth, his eyes, that tells Kamet this, but it *could* be something physical.

Kamet makes several references to Costis being hot lmao. He uses the word “attractive” several times in several different chapters and others agree with this assessment.

“She sent him to the potter to see if he could use a young man with a strong back.” - more comments about how ripped Costis is.

Kamet

Couldn’t find any description of Kamet in QoA, and he doesn’t really describe himself in TaT. I’m worried I missed something, but this is what I found:

“Normally as warm-toned as myself…” - Kamet comparing his own skin tone (undertone?) to Laela’s.

He also describes himself as small and skinny compared to Costis several times - once saying his face is roughly at level with Costis’ chest - and mentions flogging scars on his back.

EDIT: THANK YOU FOR COMMENTS, we get this like in QoA about Kamet: “The slave’s almond shaped eyes and red-brown complexion set him apart from the Attolians.”

—————

Not sure how to end this but anyway that’s what we’re given for the main PoVs. Surprisingly, we get more description for Helen than we do for Irene, and barely any for Kamet. There were some things that I had misremembered - I thought Gen was described as “brown skinned” but instead it’s “dark skinned” or “dark coloring” and I thought he described Helen as ugly more than once, but it’s just to the Magus, when they’re discussing Sounis’ potential marriage, which is....interesting to me, and sounds a lot more like Gen trying to downplay his cousin so the Magus will fuck off, especially when he offers Agape as an alternative that is, notably, prettier and also holds significantly less power. I also thought Costis was described as “blonde” or “fair haired” like Sophos but instead he’s “sandy brown” and I think the idea of him being Blonde was a fandom thing that I just misremembered.

[cherry3point14]

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 3

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: Meta baby. Pure meta. Word count: 2,100. Chapter Summary: Your google search turns up something unexpected. A/N: No author in this one for... reasons. Also this one is kind of short and lame. A means to an end if you will, but trust me, Ch 4 is a doozy. P.S it’s nearly 3am so Chapter 4 will be up when I wake up, ya dig.

Ao3 if you prefer

It’s almost funny how dramatic the voice in your head wants to be about those suited criminals and yet it doesn’t care to elaborate on anything important. Like, say, your imminent death. The mention of it was so casual, calm, but a couple of weirdos want to pretend to be insurance adjusters and suddenly it’s all pretty prose and run-on sentences. Flowery language about broad-shouldered men in roaring muscle cars that are going to change your life. She’d kept going while you’d interviewed Maggie Hall. She’d harped on and on about how you couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Of course, you couldn’t stop thinking about them, she wouldn’t shut up about them.

After an entire monologue about the way the paper felt in your hands and could never be replaced by computers—purists are the worst—you finally get to leave. That's when you get some respite. You’re walking out into the late afternoon sun and thanking Maggie for her time and it's bliss. Maggie's story sounds a little off, after years doing this you have this gut instinct for when you should investigate further. Funnily enough, you have drama in your life that you’ll submit a valid claim anyway. Just so you can get this cursed case out of your hair. You might even hurry it through the system before the thing has the chance to kill you.

You’re still not sure how a case could kill you. You’re a pencil pusher at best and the interview with Maggie is an excellent example of the majority of your fieldwork, obviously excluding the criminals at the start. Unless your demise is death by papercut.

For now, you’ve given up trying to fathom out the voice you’re hearing, especially since she's chosen to once again go radio silent. If she won’t say anything useful, like say how not to die, then you were going to have to figure out how to skip ahead on your own. Since she kept talking about the imposters you’d met that day, they seemed to be an excellent place to start.

CNK 80Q3. Ohio plates. That's as much as you know without google.

That evening you set yourself up in the same way you would to work from home. There's a desk in the corner of your dining room with a chair that offers enough lumbar support for the longest of research sessions. Although it’s your personal laptop and there’s not normally a large glass of wine sitting next to you when work.

After it powers on you’re assaulted by the usual pop-ups; windows you forgot to close last time and your emails. Procrastinating is not a new routine, and you’re on a mission, so they all get minimized instead of closed completely. Then you open a new browser window and a stark google homepage stares back at you. A hopeful new beginning.

CNK 80Q3. You’re genuinely surprised that she hasn’t started talking again to describe the change in the air as you type in the plate number. Or some drivel about the way your fingers emphasize each letter and number. It’s all there happening anyway, making the moment foreboding, but your narrator doesn’t seem care.

The first row of results are images. Weirdly its images of the license plate itself. That doesn't strike you as odd at first glance and then you think about it a little more. Why are there so many pictures of this particular license plate? Who is running around taking these pictures? You're pretty sure if you typed in your own plate number there would be no pictures of it. And then you see some shopping results where you can actually buy the plate. While the online shops might explain the images, it only really poses more questions. Why are so many people buying that license plate? What’s so special about it?

You take a sip of your wine before you scroll further, savoring the taste as well as the way it relaxes your shoulders. You don't own any 'fun' novelty coasters that say it but you're inclined to agree with the statement you've heard before. Wine really does make everything better.

You’re not yet into the murky depths of page 2 but you’re far enough down the page now to make it past the sponsored results. These links come thick and fast from websites that all seem to have one word in common. Supernatural.

Then you see your salvation. A page called Supernaturalwiki—the link is simply titled: Impala—and you stop scrolling, a grateful sound slipping past your lips as you do. Wiki, you know that word. Like Wikipedia. Wikipedia has references and moderators', clear and concise explanations. This was the easy way out you were looking for.

That’s what you hope as you click on the link anyway. Your naivety lasts all of twenty seconds before the page loads. With its stock image of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, and a quote about it being the most important object in the universe.

Or it's the most important object in some books at least.

Further clicking and longer sips of wine reveal it’s a series of books called Supernatural—with the title of the wiki you should have seen that coming. These were story after story of ghosts and demons and angels? There are pages that describe monsters, urban legends, and two men. Sam and Dean Winchester. They each have dedicated pages with their whole lives mapped out.

Sam and Dean are fictional brothers and apparently the heroes. Each of their respective profiles begins with an illustrated image from book covers, and then a series of quotes that contradict those pictures. Then their lives are intricately detailed, or should you say they are chronologically recorded according to each book. You would read their histories in full if it wasn't for how tiny the scroll bar is, indicating that these profile pages are ridiculously long.

You sit back in your chair and take a deep breath in the hopes of it being soothing. Or answering all your questions. It does neither. You have no answers and more stress.

This went beyond two men pretending to do your job now. Those guys were driving around in a car with fictional license plates. What was this? Some weirdly immersive cosplay? Was that something Sam and Dean did in the books?

Even so, those two guys weren’t roleplaying at comic con, they were actually in that woman's home. If you hadn't arrived they could have done anything. They could be doing anything now.

There's a ding from the kitchen which means the frozen meal you’d thrown in the oven is ready. Not that you stop thinking about this while you go and grab it because the more you think the less sense everything makes. Like why is a narrator who, until now, was obsessed with those guys, so very silent all of a sudden?

Back at your desk with hot food, you head back to google to see if you can buy these books anywhere because knowledge is power. Unfortunately, not even Amazon has copies. It’s only when you add the term “ebook” to your search do you find a Tumblr blog with links to download all the files, split into two categories. Published and unpublished. There are a lot of Supernatural books and from the looks of it there’s an equal amount of drama over how the unpublished ones got out.

You start downloading them without consciously making a decision to read them. Downloading kind of happens because your macaroni cheese is too hot for your mouth to handle yet, and your hands still need something to do. Besides you didn’t necessarily need to read all of them, if they were truly terrible you’d delete the files. No harm, no foul. But if this was the only way to get answers then you and your kindle were going to be pretty busy this weekend.

“Morning Laura.” Nobody likes Mondays, yet you have a little bounce in your step having made your usual green tea, got dressed, and driven to work in complete and utter silence. In fact, you’d heard nothing all weekend. The caveat was that, yes, you’d spent all weekend reading those books.

You liked reading and without discrimination. Trashy romance novels at the airport? You betcha. Fantasy books thicker than your mattress? Sure thing, order a pizza. But a mystery? Well, those were your favorite. Of course, the detective needed some sort of sketchy backstory and there had to be a fishy amount of red herrings. Most importantly there had to be something to solve. It was an elevation of your day to day life and you always get sucked in. In your job, you try to solve the most benign mysteries; people faking insurance claims. More often than not there isn’t even a mystery to solve, someone really did slip and break something. So, a mystery that grabs you out of nowhere is like a promotion for you, a challenge.

That had been how those Supernatural books had dragged you in. Ghosts and ghouls you could take or leave, you might have stopped reading if that’s all there was. Then this Carver Edlund went and put in that damn side plot about their missing father. It was too enticing, addicting. From the cryptic disappearance to the indecipherable journal of clues. John Winchester would be the death of you.

Or case 24-01 would be. The jury was still out on that.

And now it’s Monday. You’ve heard nothing more from the voice in your head—it may have been a low-level case of carbon monoxide poisoning—and the boys are so close to figuring everything out you can taste it. Technically they know John is alive by now, you finished Shadow some point yesterday afternoon and felt yourself choke up at the emotional goodbye with a father they just got back. But they still have no clue what he's up to, which is a hideous funhouse mirror reflection of your own life. Hopefully, by the time they figure out John’s game plan, you'll have your life figured out too. And fingers crossed figuring everything out will involve staying alive as well.

“You look like you’re feeling better this morning.” Laura is her perky self, always a little too happy for this side of 9am.

Oh right, you went home sick on Friday. You should remember things like that. “I think it was a bug or something I ate maybe.”

“Sure, sure. One of those convenient Friday bugs.” She winks at you.

If she accused you of that say, last week, you’d have laughed it off given that's a thing everyone has in common; trying to skip out on work. So, that's what you try to do this side of the weekend. You push out something that hopefully resembles a regular person's laugh like you’re in on the joke. You have to fake it because you’re still thinking about Providence. The book you’d finished that morning instead of watching the news. You’re still wondering if Sam is starting to move on after Jessica. 

Needless to say, you understand now. The many fan blogs and the artwork you’d glanced at before you started reading. All those things that you’d disregarded as an unhealthy fascination for a bunch of books. Now you’re one of them, obsessed. Walking into the office with your kindle tucked in your bag and Salvation just begging to be read.

This goes beyond finding John. That plot got its hooks in you but you’ve known John was alive since Home and you’re still reading. You could also blame this on your general love of reading except it goes beyond that too. Honestly, it’s hard to pick one thing. They’re really great books. Sam and Dean have such turbulent lives but they still have each other. They’re snarky, lost, angry, and caring. They’re both so different but the sibling relationship is so real. And the stories go beyond a new monster every book, there are these huge interesting story arcs that you couldn't stop reading if you tried. John Winchester had been the first example of these addictive plot points, but not the only one.

“Y/N?”

You snap your head up, “sorry, sorry.”

“I was only saying you’re going to be here all day then, lunch?”

Even though Laura must see the decision on your face she still pretends to hope until you start speaking. “Actually I have a lot to catch up on so I’ll probably be working through. Tomorrow?”

She smiles brightly and nods, “sure thing.”

As bad as you feel about lying to Laura she has presented you an opportunity. Everyone thinks you were sick on Friday. They even think you're behind on your work and they don’t know you’ve already conducted the initial interview. Which makes your decision to sit at your desk and prop your kindle up next to your screen even easier. Nobody would notice the difference between you concentrating or reading. If you skip lunch you might be able to get to Bloodlust out of the way too.

Continue to Chapter 4.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23  Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278​ @bloodydaydreamer StrangerThanFiction tags: @jaylarkson

[scribblesandsnark]

“Days Gone Bye” (TWD 1.1)

There’s so much about “Days Gone Bye” that is well done – not least because it operates primarily on silence and visuals rather than the preachy dialogue that takes over down the road. (Yes, season 2, I’m looking at you.) That said, not gonna lie, it took me bloody ages to figure out where the opening scene falls in Rick’s post-hospital, pre-Atlanta adventures. (And when I say ages, what I really mean is it took me about six or eight times watching the episode. Ye gods.)

I feel like Rick might have lucked out in the apocalypse. He’s a cop, so there’s obviously a uniform to wear as he waltzes off into the unknown. What would you opt to put on if you were in his shoes and didn’t have a uniform to default to? (Personally, I’ve realised I have a serious lack of practical apocalypse shoes on hand. Although I’m inclined to think that my high heels would come in handy for breaking dead limbs and stomping in undead brains, so there’s that to consider.)

Burnt out and/or flipped cars are popular for set design in post-apo/dystopian TV and films, as are buildings with blasted out/shattered windows, but until fairly recently I’d always viewed them as sort of abstract decorations without really registering how they might get that way. Indeed, in earlier drafts I spent some time snarking about how the zompocalypse must infect people’s driving abilities (a terrifying thought considering the actual driving ability of your average non-zompocalypse-affected person) and, to quote myself,

Given the amount of fire damaged/cars upturned/miscellaneous damage inflicted on cars, you’d think that fcking flamethrowers and grenades and rocket launchers were being wielded by random Georgian citizens as they frolicked through the streets escaping the dead.

But this year [2020], between the port explosion in Beiruit, which flipped cars with the force of the blast and turned high rises into ghouls with hundreds of gaping mouths, and the fires in California, leaving burnt-out hulks in their wake, it’s really come home to me how easy and careless that kind of destruction can be – and how swiftly it can come to be seen as a norm. No flamethrowers or grenades necessary.

Even the empty streets and the silence we’re greeted with in this opening scene, as Rick drives down a barren street and walks through an abandoned campsite, now has more resonance since the 2020 lockdowns brought that apocalyptic empty street into reality. I don’t think I’d ever really thought to walk down the middle of a street before, because, you know, traffic – and yet for a time, when there were no cars on the road and people were hidden away in their homes, that became a new normal. There was a freedom in knowing you could walk in the middle of the road with almost no risk, because all normal rules had been suspended indefinitely. Why stick to the sidewalk when you know a car’s unlikely to drive through?

I guess apocalyptic fiction only ever seems apocalyptic and unimaginable until the real world catches up.

There are a lot of things I could say about this opening scene, aside from the great visceral pleasure of getting absorbed by the camera work, feeling one with Rick as we witness the destruction, the abandonment, the death… There’s a stillness that I wish we saw more of in the later episodes. The introduction of the little walker girl sets up Rick’s hope and his despair in a wonderful way. Having the first appearance and first death of a walker be a little girl in her jammies really shows us just how much the world has been turned on its head – Rick’s a police officer, whose job is to help people (ideally, at any rate), and the realisation that in this new world the only way to help is to kill those he used to protect sets up a(n albeit inconsistent) through-line for the rest of the series.

So yeah, I could wax lyrical about the excellent beginning of “Days Gone Bye” – but because I’m a snarky arsehole, I’m going to talk about the dead. And I’m going to do so with the caveat that while I’ve read some of the behind-the-scenes commentary etc., I am not actually a Walking Deadhead, and consequently do not have at my fingertips the reasons why certain production decisions were made.

There’s an oddity in the first…two seasons? when it comes to cars and the dead, in that there are a startling number of people who seem to have just…died, while in the driver’s seat of their cars. We see two clear examples in the opening scene, as Rick passes between two cars, facing opposite directions, each with their own definitely dead driver slumped at the wheel. This appears, rather more egregiously, in the traffic snarl at the start of season 2, but for the moment we’ll stick with season 1. The camera’s shown us an abandoned camp, any number of cars that seem to have become part of stationary living. Yet we’ve got two dead people behind the wheel, in cars facing opposite directions. Now, I’m not disputing that people could die at the wheel. As the show later goes on to show us, you can get chomped, die, and resurrect within minutes. The problem is in the fact that a proportionally ridiculous number of people seem to die at the wheel. I suppose the logical conclusion is that said individuals stupidly had their windows down and their arms out, got chomped, and sent away the rest of the car’s occupants or anyone else in the vicinity, and then opted to just hang out in the car until death – at which point zombrain kicks in and any attempt to use a door handle is moot. (See, e.g., the number of zoms hanging out in closed cars.) Combine that with people more likely than this show’s putative heroes to shoot someone who’s been infected in the head before they turn and simply move on… Eh. I suppose it’s plausible. It’s just not very realistic. (Not least because oh my god, there are undead people, roll up your fucking window you fucking idiot. I know it’s hot in Georgia but roll those windows up, babe. You might sweat, but at least a stealth zom won’t use your hand for a snack. Gah.)

…not going to comment on the inconsistent zombehaviour in which a smolzom stops to pick up her teddy (see, later, other zoms climbing ladders, scaling fences, and using rocks to bash through windows – and in one instance, tugging her zip hoodie back up over her arm). Instead, my issue is with smolzom’s slippers. How has she not lost those by now??

(Total aside, but I’ve been bingeing L&O:SVU lately, and boy howdy do a lot of TWD people pop up like daisies there. Daryl, Shane, Noah, Dale, Beth, Lori, Amy, Tyreese, Lizzie, Liza (tbf from FTWD)…)

The fries that Rick and Shane are eating just look sad and wimpy and not worthy of eating. Do better, cops. (Do better, fries.) Really, it’s almost a surprise they’re not nomming doughnuts and coffee. There’s no doubt that the two are meant to be close, though; you have to be close to dab your fry in your partner’s ketchup (oh no, Lori).

Jon Bernthal is a good actor. I just wish they hadn’t given him a character who was so all over the place. (I’ll delve more into this in later episodes.) The first scene he appears in, after the opening credits, clearly sets him up as a chauvinistic dick, in contrast to pauvre Rick, whose relationship with his wife is suffering – and, critically, this is not because of Rick, but because of Lori. Her first introduction as a character is as a woman at odds with her husband – and the fact that her husband is in law enforcement really should not be glossed over here, not given America’s contentious relationship with LEOs. (We’ll get back to Rick and Shane eventually.) It’s no secret that spouses of people in law enforcement, or in the military, often struggle because their partners are always absent. I’m not trying to apply blame, here; law enforcement and military positions require a lot, and there is absolutely a high degree of trauma that can result due to the kind of work in which they engage. That said, the way Lori is set up as the antagonist from the get-go is just…distasteful. Rick is presented as reasonable, as wanting to try to make things right, as trying to do what Lori wants and yet always being the bad guy. The sad thing is that Lori is no one’s favourite character, and yet the character never had a chance. She was fucked over long before she actually turned up on screen, ensuring that our perspective of her is negative from the start.  In a show that takes years to establish strong women, Lori stands out as a particularly egregious example of a woman, wife, and mother who realistically could have been a positive representation of a woman that instead was turned into a caricature everyone loves to hate. (We’ll get to Andrea eventually, I promise.)

I think perhaps, most egregiously, the fact that Rick says something like “It’s like she’s pissed at me and I don’t know why” sets up Lori as being irrational and Rick as being patient and anxious to fix things without knowing why. Lori is fucked in terms of character development from before she ever  appears on screen and never has the opportunity to claw back some of that lost ground. Rick literally labels her as cruel – and cruel in front of their son, to boot. Who doesn’t view a person cruel to their child as a villain? Gah. Lori was absolutely fucked by merit of being Rick’s wife.  And it’s really a shame, because every so often Sarah Wayne Callies absolutely kills it (no pun intended, but leading up to Lori’s death is perhaps the character’s best scene).

Of course, too, the whole convo between Shane and Rick sets up Shane as a “fuck me, women, man” – and yeah, absolutely, this attitude ends up extrapolated to his behaviour towards people in general. Yes, it bonds our two good ol’ boy policemen as lads who love each other and try to jive each other into better moods but are sensitive enough to listen to actual emotional shit… But ultimately it establishes Shane as a dick and Rick as a victim. Shane’s absolute disdain for women’s emotion/women talking about their emotions is in some ways bizarre when you look at his future relationship with Lori – and yet at the same time, that disdain echoes through all of anything he does with Lori, with Carl, and with Rick in future.

Okay, so, let’s move on to the fuckfest in which Rick gets shot. (Twice, Lord help me. These fuckers are alarmingly inept.)

Pro: they fling out the spikey “stop the bad guy” chains.

Con: …well, at least one dude doesn’t know about the safety, so that’s … not ideal. (His death: not surprising.)

Pro: Rick can apparently drive backwards with skill. I can’t even back around a corner.

Con: Leon is a fucking moron.

Pro: Rick and Shane disposed of their hats??

Con: what happens to the Black cop? Why is he the only one we don’t know the fate of? (See TWD’s treatment of Black actors in general…)

Pro: the car does not flip in their general direction.

Con: pretty much everything else in this scene.

I dunno about the average viewer, but I feel like the two apparently competent cops – Shane and Rick – should each be assigned to one of the shitty cops, rather than riding together, because really, do you want cops rolling in to save you when they clearly don’t know the first thing about gun operation? (Yes, as any number of viewers have pointed out, there’s no safety on the gun that Leon is holding, but the fundamental point is to articulate how much of a fuck-up he is as a cop. If you’re out in the field and don’t know how your piece works, should you even be out there? Don’t they give cops gun training? You’d hope so…yikes. Although I guess it does sort of set up the absolute nightmare of season 2’s gun control plot line. (Oh god, season 2. Help.))

Am I the only one amused by the name Leon Basset? He’s a cat and a dog at once!

It takes Rick and Shane and co. an embarrassingly long time to put down the baddies – one of whom manages to hit a cop in a spot not covered by his vest, after having been flipped violently upside down in a car crash. Seriously, the fact these dudes are able to crawl out of the car and start merrily firing away, much less actually hit someone, is fucking insane. Have they trained in post-car crash shooting? I have to conclude they have, because otherwise the fact they have better aim than the multiple cops shooting at them is absurd. (Also hilarious: bad dude #1 crawls out of the completely totalled, upside-down car with, like, a scratch on his cheek. Until bad dude #2 takes a shotgun blast the chest, he appears to have lucked out with almost zero wounds from the crash. Are we sure *they* aren’t actually already dead??) And really, Rick’s an idiot in this scene – his fellow cops are intelligently hanging out by the cop cars, using them for cover, while Rick displays a high degree of absolute idiocy in waltzing straight out into the open; it’s made even worse by the fact that he’s brandishing his cute little Colt Python revolver while at least two of the cops behind him are wielding shotguns.

Bad copping, Rick. Cop better, please.

There are several shots right before Rick gets shot the first time where the camera angle makes it appear that Shane has his shotgun pointed straight at Rick, including the actual frame where he *does* get shot in the vest – when he’s shot in the side closer to Shane than the unnamed assailant. Now, this is probably due to bad blocking, although you’d think Rick would know better than to walk directly between the baddies and his fellow cops when there’s active gunfire, since it makes him a liability (seriously, I doubt the efficacy of the cop training programme in whatever bit of Georgia this is), but with the benefit of hindsight you could also see it as foreshadowing the eventual deterioration of Rick and Shane’s relationship. Think about the scene in “Wildfire,” the penultimate episode of the season, when Shane and Rick are in the woods doing a sweep, and Shane sights down that shotgun at Rick walking through the trees ahead of him for a long moment before Dale turns up. In that later episode (and moving on increasingly through all of Season 2), Shane wants Rick out of the way, but it takes a very long time in terms of screen hours to actually get around to making his final move. Ironically, it’s only ever here in the opening episode, following Shane appearing to be aiming through Rick’s back at the assailants, that Shane ever successfully gets Rick out of the way. Unintentionally, of course, but there is nevertheless an odd parallelism created here due to blocking and weapon of choice.

Dammit, Shane.

You know, on thinking it over, I’m surprised that this police force functions at all. Yes, the dispatcher only noted two individuals in the car, but if I’ve learned anything from watching procedurals it’s that before stopping to chat about anything you clear every possible place an unknown assailant could be hiding. I’d think that would especially be the case for a car chase, because how accurately can you see inside a speeding car? (That’s a legitimate question; I have no idea.) And actually, entirely aside from the possible existence of a third assailant, if you shoot someone with a gun, surely the follow-up after they’ve gone down is to immediately approach, ensure any weapons are out of arms’ reach, ascertain if the individual is dead, and if not, call immediately for medical attention. I know the baddies took several shots to the chest, but come on. They also emerged almost entirely unscathed from a totalled car, so clearly they’re already marked as practically unkillable. And yeah, following procedure wouldn’t have allowed Rick to get dramatically shot for real after the first fake-out, but they could easily have had him get dramatically and unexpectedly shot by the third dude when following procedure and checking to see the other two were dead. Most of the dialogue could have been retained as well. But oh well. I guess the show sets up the failure of authority figures to function effectively from the very start; not following procedure proves to be useful to Rick, considering his future actions as leader of the Merry Undead crew.

Further proof these cops don’t know how to cop: literally no one notices the third dude crawl out of the car, not even to go “hey!” Dude literally has enough time to crawl out on his hands and knees, stand up, point a gun, and actually hit his target before anyone (aka Shane) so much as notices his existence. There are at least three other cop cars in the vicinity – the other car that arrived with Rick and Shane (the “wait what’s a safety” cop and his partner) and the two cars that were chasing the criminals in the first place (four more dudes) – and yet apparently no one noticed a third guy standing up with a gun in his hand. And yeah, I’ll cut some of them a bit of a break on the theory that they probably couldn’t see the guy until he stood up because of the car in the way, but with seven people standing, *someone* should have seen him. Given Shane’s angle when he shoots, the two cops behind him definitely should have noticed something. The fact that someone only shouts to move in after Rick gets shot is just…shoddy copping. Seriously, this is the kind of stupidity that leads you to wish characters would just die. I’m sure someone would miss these people, but the world isn’t likely to notice they’ve gone. (Also, Shane blowing away the third dude on the first shot is pretty much the only time any of these professionals have actually hit their target immediately. Glad to know the safety of the Merry Undead crew is in the hands of people with worse aim than people flung around in a totalled car. Hurray!)

I’ve decided that after Shane goes with Rick to hospital in the ambulance, the rest of the terrible cops get eaten by the reanimated baddie crew. It’s what they deserve, really.

Moving right along…

Rick has a frigging massive hospital room. Either he or Lori is secretly a drug runner, or else the local cops have some pretty sweet health insurance. Lucky for Rick; if he’d been in a shared room or on one of those corridors with multiple beds separated by curtains, he’d have been walker munchies asap. Unforeseen side-effects of the zompocalypse: healthcare edition.

I…am not going to deal with the time issues of Rick being in hospital and then waking up to a hellscape. Suspension of belief, yeah?

I think the weirdest thing in the cut from Shane with the flowers to Rick waking up on the bed is the silence. The background beep of the machines has vanished, telling us the power’s gone off; the off-screen background hospital noise – heard most notably in the undiscernible PA behind Shane talking – has also vanished. Rick’s harsh breathing under Shane’s words also vanishes when the shot does, though I’m not sure if that’s meant to suggest Rick is better, worse, or otherwise. The scene doesn’t show it, but it sounds vaguely like a ventilator is functioning when Shane’s in the room, which would suggest Rick’s still hooked up to breathing support following surgery; if that’s the case, Rick was taken off the ventilator to breathe on his own at some point after that, since he wakes up only with oxygen to his nose. The shift from all that background noise to absolute silence is incredibly effective, because though we can’t register it visually, and may not consciously notice the shift in audible sounds, it nevertheless conveys to the viewer that something has changed before Rick even opens his mouth.

Horrifying thought, though, being stuck in hospital in Georgia without aircon. (I’d melt. Not just in hospital, but in general. Heat and humidity are not my friends.) Frankly, I’m surprised Rick manages to get any words out of his mouth given he’s probably a wee bit on the thirsty side; my mouth goes a bit dry and I might as well be trying to talk through a damn desert for all the words I manage.

It’s kind of amusing that there’s a lingering shot of the clock on the wall. Yeah, it adds to Rick’s confusion and disorientation because dammit, he can’t even tell what time it is – and what is the world without timekeeping?? – but what are the odds it happened to run out of battery in time to inconvenience the last man standing in the zompocalypse? “Oh no! I’ve missed the end of the world! Ah well, better late than never.”

Helpful that Rick woke up during the day – can you imagine how disorienting it would have been to wake up in pitch dark with zero sound? Anyone who lives in a vaguely urban or suburban area is almost entirely unaccustomed to the dominance of both anymore; when I moved back to suburbia after living in a sort of downtown-y bit of an offshoot of the nearest city, I had serious issues for months because at night everything was so quiet and so dark, especially during the period when the house next door was unoccupied. Seriously creepy. (Although I’ve also seen raccoons, deer, and a coyote as well as the ubiquitous squirrels and birds and neighbourhood cats, so that’s exciting. Actually, weirdly, there’s a surprising dearth of animals, to say nothing of pets, floating around in the apocalypse. We see dogs occasionally as time goes on, running about the streets of Atlanta, eating the dead, getting eaten when times are desperate; deer pop up every now and then, and crows alight ominously all over the place, but…where are all the dead goldfish? The cats??)

Does Rick just have a super special water faucet in his private bathroom, or are the utilities still working? (Nice to immediately have a way to quench his thirst. It also apparently gives him super strength, since he doesn’t keel over again despite the probable weeks he’s been flopped out in bed not using his muscles.) Alexandria has running water, but if I recall correctly it was also designed as self-sustaining. Hospitals usually have generators, since if the power cuts for whatever reason (earthquake, hurricane, T-rex attack) you want to make sure a bunch of people don’t cut out as well as a result, but as far as I’m aware that…doesn’t affect the water systems? (I am definitely not a water engineer. Are there water engineers?) And since he later goes down stairs to get out of the hospital, is there really a system still functioning that pumps water up several stories when the electricity appears to be dead? Convenient water is convenient.

Obviously there must be a generator or some kind of power still functioning, since there are some lights on in the hall, complete with requisite horror-themed buzzing and flickering. (Help, I’m having flashbacks of my mother’s kitchen.) Useful, in any case, since otherwise Ricky boy would be tripping over the debris in the hall before he got to the nurse’s station. (I guess we’ll put his continued unclothed state down to disorientation, but if I looked out my door and saw that much of a hallway disaster, I think I’d find some shoes first. Yikes.)

The clock at the nurse’s station has also stopped. These are battery-run, guys, they don’t go off when the power does. Speaking of electronics, though – it’s 2010, right? Why doesn’t the nurse’s station have any computers? I mean, I got my first laptop in 2006 and I think we always had a family computer when I was growing up, so it’s not like this predates the computer era. Actually, that’s a point – in all of the places that the Merry Undead crew break into/crash at, I’m struggling to think of instances of computers, laptops, mobile phones, etc. Rick has an mp3 player at the start of season 4, when he’s in his farming phase, and Olivia in…season 6? still carries her long-dead mobile around, but aside from the CDC and actual hospital-related machinery, there’s a startling lack of technology. I dunno, it just seems odd. Like the lack of feral cats.

I know Rick wants to illuminate the situation (hah), but his first thought is RUMMAGE THROUGH SHIT TO FIND MATCHES. Like, seriously, open a drawer or something, there’s probably a flashlight in there somewhere? I suppose we couldn’t spend too much time on finding lighting resources, though, considering that would delay the DRAMATIC DISCOVERY of Rick’s first dead person.

On which point – what are the walker rules for nomming a corpse, and what are the rules for reanimation? If the only way to actually put down a walker is through the brain, why isn’t our eviscerated lady corpse in the hospital undead? Her head appears entirely intact, although we might be missing a wound on the far side. (Although jeez, given how many facial bites and tears we see throughout this series, including the little girl at the beginning of this episode, how has no one snacked on her delicious face??) A single bite will kill and turn you, and some people do manage to get an initial chomp and then remain unconsumed before turning, like Sophia and the little girl at the start of the episode. But is there a maximum limit of flesh that can be consumed before a person is thoroughly dead and won’t reanimate? A severed head sans body will reanimate, as we see later with Hershel and the Whisperers’ victims, so it seems like percentage of bodily consumption can’t factor in. Certainly bike lady later in this episode is missing her entire lower half without it having affected her walkerdom eternity. Yet we have people like hospital lady corpse and T-Dog in season 3 who get more or less entirely consumed without reanimating. And that’s without even talking about all of the dead who appear to have croaked in their cars without becoming undead despite the lack of a head wound. So where’s the boundary?

At least some of this we can probably attribute to early days inconsistencies, since most shows don’t dive in with all of the rules for new worlds and supernatural creatures laid out and set in stone, but the amount of consumption has always bothered me. From the other side, too, actually, because walkers appear to be wholly driven by a single purpose: consume. So when a walker has a nice juicy item in front of them with plenty of flesh left on it, why would they leave it behind to drift off after something else? Walkers are later shown to be drawn by light, by sound, by smell (operating on the suspension of disbelief that undead would retain any of the senses of sight, hearing, or smell, but never mind), but since the underlying drive remains to consume, why would light, sound, or smell be sufficient to draw them away from a meal directly in front of them? I could see it if, for instance, a corpse were being devoured by a whole bunch of walkers and so those who couldn’t easily get to the body went “welp fuck it, Imma go follow that gunshot I just heard,” or if a body has pretty well been picked to the bones, since then there’s not anything left to consume and the drive would push on to the next. But there are plenty of times over the course of the series when walkers abandon a perfectly delicious human with plenty of meat left on the bones in order to go chase something else. I’m not saying walkers are meant to be intelligent hunters or anything, since as Jenner shows us there’s just some sad little sparkles at the brainstem that are still operating, but if you boil it down to the most basic drive, walkers are driven to consume, and it makes little sense that they’d abandon something consumable in front of them that’s a sure thing to chase something else (I could see maybe abandoning an animal to chase a human, like dropping the pigs’ feet to chase after sirloin). But to leave something not completely eaten… Unless they get full? The human stomach can only contain so much at one time, so maybe there’s a default survival code that overrides the consumption drive to stop a walker eating if continuing to do so would explode the stomach. Although that doesn’t really make much sense, either, since any number of walkers are wandering around with their innards more or less exploded without it being a problem. Hmm. No real answers, there, other than that overriding logic of THE PLOT. I guess the only thing I can say with some confidence is that at least part of the walker digestive system seems to still operate, because when Rick and Daryl gut a walker to make sure it hadn’t eaten Sophia, not only is the woodchuck turned from fur and flesh into nasty black goo, the skull of the woodchuck has also been stripped clean. (Then again, I have difficulty envisioning how a walker manages to swallow an entire woodchuck skull, but that’s neither here nor there. Who’s up for woodchuck chilli??)

Anyway, back to Rick and his terrifying exploration of his new world of doom.

I have to laugh when I look at this disaster of a hospital. Did someone, in the last throes of the world ending, just take medical records and fling them everywhere? When is there ever that much paper floating around loose in a medical facility? Ye gods, Rick could learn confidential patient information! Nooooooo…

Ahem.

Like the episode’s opening scene of Rick working his way through the abandoned streets, silence is used to great effect from the time Rick wakes up through to his encounter with Morgan and Duane. The audience takes in everything along with Rick, unfettered by exposition. The silence, the dark, the emptiness, the dead – it all unfolds through Rick’s shocked and bewildered eyes. I mean, what would you do if you wandered down the hall and suddenly discovered a mostly devoured corpse? (I’d probably hurl. Ew.) Alas that so much of the series later gets bogged down by humans who never shut up. (Yes, Rick, I do mean you.)

Of course, in order to do that, the episode also, to quote CinemaSins, conveniently conveniences a bunch of its walkers. Where are they? Where they can’t hurt Rick before he knows what to do. Which is…kind of ridiculous. Logic be damned! I mean, if there’s one thing this show has been consistent about, it’s the inconsistency of its walkers.

Wait.

Man, I would not want to be walking across that floor barefoot. Ew. And ouch.

I’d be a terrible candidate for the apocalypse. I’m afraid of the dark.

I do like the background details of all the blood spattered on the walls. It’s more quiet filling in the blanks of what happened when Rick was in his coma – all that lovely show, don’t tell that later gets left by the wayside. BUT HE’S WALKING BAREFOOT THROUGH GLASS OH MY GOD PLEASE STOP AND FIND SOME SHOES AAAHHHHHHH.

PUT ON SOME DAMN SHOES.

DON’T DEAD OPEN INSIDE.

The fact that the doors are bound with a chain AND with a slat of wood just makes me laugh. I don’t think that wood’s going to do much if the chain breaks.

That’s a shockingly good manicure for a dead person. She might be stuck in a locked room for eternity but at least her nails look fab.

I know Rick is freaked out by the groaning and dead lady manicure and chained up door and blood all over the place, but charging into a pitch-black stairwell armed only with a fold of matches seems really stupid. This is perhaps the most egregious instance in this episode of convenient walker placement. The fact that Rick not only makes it down the stairs and outside without tripping and smashing his pretty face is one thing, but it’s really stunning that there are no walkers who got trapped between the stairwell doors. I guess maybe that was the military exit route so they cleared as they went (and…took the bodies with them, as well)? Then again, I’d rather rappel out a window using bedsheets than make my way through an endless stairwell of night, so…

I’m going to be *extremely* nitpicky here and wonder why Rick hasn’t noticed the smell. Between lady chewy and the not insubstantial blood puddle he walks by, you’d think there’d be at least a whiff of the smell of decomp, especially if the power and thus the aircon are out and humidity reigns supreme. Blood is a biological hazard, and it…is definitely not odourless, especially after it’s been sitting around for days. Rick does grimace when he first goes into the stairwell, implying he’s caught a whiff of the dead, but he doesn’t encounter anything going down the stairs that seems likely to have caused it (maybe the dead laid out that he encounters outside?). Scent’s an ongoing problem with this show, though; it crops up when it’s a useful narrative point, like smearing yourself with guts to escape detection or realising there’s an ocean of the dead nearby, but otherwise, not so much. Okay, yeah, maybe I can buy that after a while of living in close proximity you’d acclimate – humans are stunningly resilient – but given how quickly humans tend to get tetchy when in forced contact with disgusting smells, are you really telling me that Rick just…doesn’t notice? Or is his own “I’ve been in a coma for an indeterminate period of time” smell so bad that it overpowers the death smell? Yikes.

That said, the moments of tension when Rick’s match goes out and he’s left alone breathing in the dark of the stairwell are lovely. It carries the audience along with Rick’s fear and anxiety and confusion, knowing he knows something is hinky without actually knowing what’s happened and what’s going on, while as a viewer conversant with the horror genre you keep expecting something to happen, to lurch up out of the dark. That nothing does actually is a delightful defiance of expectations. And after a silence and darkness punctuated only by the dim, narrow light of a match and Rick’s harsh breathing, the overwhelming brightness of the outdoors combined with the sawing of the cicadas almost begs you to retreat back into the contained, comparative safety of the stairs rather than venturing out into the huge unknown of the world outside the hospital and its endless supply of the dead.

Shame that the hospital’s flickeringly dodgy power doesn’t include the EXIT sign. Aren’t those supposed to work even if nothing else does? Maybe it was crashed with whatever took out the clocks. (Hah.)

Every barefoot step Rick continues to take hurts. Like, there’s all kinds of shit on the ground, and I’m not just talking bits of wire and other stabby pieces of metal. There’s blood and guts – do you really want to be squishing that between your toes?? Also, I’ve let it go this far, but Rick is wearing his hospital gown backwards, and if he’s been in a coma he…really shouldn’t be wearing boxers (and should have been hooked up to a catheter, but I think watching Rick rip that out instead of pulling the IV from his hand might have been a bit too traumatising for the average viewer). So out here in the open air, with all the wrapped rows of the dead, we get our first obvious sign of decomp in the number of flies buzzing around, and some of the limbs look like they might be mottling from decomp (kind of hard to tell, though). I know I said I wasn’t going to get into the time problems, but I promise I’ll try to keep it to this paragraph. The fact that the hospital and town are both almost entirely deserted, as we’ll go on to see, certainly suggests a decent amount of time has passed, since it takes time for that many people to up and leave somewhere. (I’m really surprised that in this show they only ever seem to encounter major traffic pile-ups on freeways or similar; if the people in my town were trying to skedaddle, we’d all get stuck on the road outside my neighbourhood. Hell, until they put in roundabouts it backed up horrendously just for getting to the schools in the morning! You’re telling me everyone was able to get out of their neighbourhoods to get to the freeway in the first place? Bullshit.) The state of the dead half-lady Rick runs into outside also seems to support that, since she’s pretty decomposed (though weirdly looks more mummified than not, which is odd considering Georgia’s on the humid rather than the dry end of the heat spectrum). On the other hand, though, the state of decomp of the lady in the hospital hallway and the corpses outside the hospital point to not much time having passed; they’re still juicy, if you like. As the following episodes will go on to show via characters’ minimal clothing and copious amounts of sweat, Georgia is hot and humid, and I hate to tell you this, guys, but if you keel over in a climate like that, you decompose quickly. You bloat up and your skin slides right off, and it’s all extremely disgusting. But here there’s a stunning amount of intact left on these corpses considering, again, it’s Georgia. (Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, so my observations might not be medically valid. Then again, the very idea that dead people are wandering around eating people is … also not medically valid.) In any case, Rick should be walking through a soupy mess of liquefying human tissue seeping through the sheets wrapped around the dead (yum. One more reason to acquire footwear, mate). The bodies piled in the truck should be sliding over each other as decomposing human makes the sheets slippery. I suppose that’s a major flaw in zombie construction in this particular zompocalypse; it forgot to take account of actual decomposition in the specified climate. (The smell also ought to be enough to pretty well bowl Rick over, but again, everyone apparently has the opposite of super smell in this series, so we’ll let it slide). Of course, if corpses actually decayed like normal, they’d be rid of most of the zombies in no time.

There’s a weirdly small amount of damage that’s been done to this hospital, from what little we’re shown. The hospital scene in “TS-19” suggests that bombing of the hospital, or nearby, has commenced, but all we see is a relatively small chunk of building missing, rather oddly in the middle of a wall, a downed ambulance sign, and then a bit more horizontal damage behind the military encampment when Rick gets up the hill. You’d think they’d have kept bombing, not least to eradicate the piles of corpses, but unfortunately we never really get to see much of the early days and the military reaction; we get snippets about bombing Atlanta and see Shane and Lori watch as Atlanta’s struck, and when Daryl and Carol stalk Grady Memorial there’s at least one shot of the city where it’s clearly suffered aerial bombardment. But there’s really not a lot of engagement with the drastic measures taken to try to control the situation, just the idea that those existed. Fear the Walking Dead, from my understanding, doesn’t really do much to deal with this either, despite ostensibly aiming to initially tackle the very period of time that The Walking Dead skipped over. So that’s a shame.

The military encampment is odd. Surely you’d only bail on things like helicopters and Humvees if you absolutely had to, since otherwise they seem to me like the first thing you’d hop into as an escape route (and certainly in season 3, the Governor indicates that military playthings are highly prized). Sure, maybe your random joe couldn’t commandeer a helo, but surely joe schmo could yoink a Humvee. I mean, if I were fleeing a hospital and there were a whole military encampment hanging out in the back yard that no one was minding, I’d be inclined to hijack something and zoom away. Operation Save the Toes! If a herd had passed through, surely we’d see more damage to what remains (for instance, would that nice tent still be standing?). Points, though, for framing of Rick against the broken military might that both visually and metaphorically shows us how small he is. Okay, so I have to ask: how far away from hospital did Rick and his family live? Because he appears to walk for quite a while – with a bullet wound that’s still healing! – and their house looks like it’s firmly in a nice suburban neighbourhood. So did he walk several miles to dead half-lady and steal her bike, or did he literally just walk down the street? Maybe the unhappiness in the soles of his feet is just being overwhelmed by, well, everything. All I can say is that I ran away from home barefoot around age 8 or 9 and ended up with such bruised and blistered feet – after maybe twenty minutes of walking total – that I couldn’t go to school for several days because I couldn’t walk. And I wasn’t even recovering from a gunshot wound!

(Also, can we talk about that hospital wristlet. That sucker should have waaay more info on it. Really, if nothing else I think we can conclude that the hospital Rick was admitted to post-shooting spent all their money on giant rooms and then forgot about actually hospitalling. Do we blame that on Georgia, America, or bad TV writing?)

CORAAAL!!

Further proof of the rapid adaptation of the human species: Rick spots the bike and goes AH YES MINE, sort of clocking the half of a lady ten feet away without really being fussed; maybe an hour (?) into his re-entry into this waking nightmare of a world, he’s already become so numbed to dead bodies hanging about that it barely registers until she moves. And, mind you, while he’s seen plenty of dead people, and seen undead fingers poking through the crack between doors, this is the first undead person he’s actually seen. His reaction to just…flee is very much in line with his general “holy fuck okay moving on” attitude that we’ve seen thus far; each thing is weirder and worse than the last, layering up the horror as a surreal reality that’s made even more bizarre by the utter lack of any living people to ground him. While his collapse and “is this real?” moment at the Grimes household is, I think, a bit misplaced, it’s also really understandable because everything he’s seen is so far out of the normal realm of expectation that the only logical reaction is to question reality. He’s almost certainly both dehydrated and undernourished, on top of which he’s been utilising muscles that haven’t been used in some time; probably the most unrealistic aspect of his first hours after waking up is that he actually manages to get out of hospital and home so easily, rather than keeling over somewhere in the street and becoming Walker O’s (part of a balanced breakfast!). Although I feel like I would have hit the “wake up” whacking yourself in the head point long before getting home and realising my family wasn’t there. I think I’d be more likely to believe I’d walk through the door and my family would be out than to believe that all of the dead or the moving dead were real. Obviously the latter for Rick makes the fact his family isn’t home that much more surreal and distressing, because thus far he appears to have awoken to a world where there are no living people aside from himself, thus leading to the conclusion that if there are only the dead and himself, Lori and Carl must be dead – but I think I’d crack before getting to that point. (Though I sometimes wake up in the morning and literally can’t tell reality from what happened in my dreams, so who am I to judge?)

Weirdly as well, there’s very little in the Grimes household that tells me anything about any of the family. I know Lori and Carly frolicked off with Shane super fast when everything went to hell and took pictures and photo albums, but this house (as excellent as it is) looks very much like a set. There’s nothing really personal. It’s weird. Who are the Grimes, even? It reminds me of my ex-boyfriend’s flat. No pictures, no posters, no books (!!), nothing on the walls, no trinkets or files or any personal touches at all (please don’t be a serial killer eek). No wonder Carl settles into the apocalypse quickly and Lori has no personality other than being a disaster. They had practically no pre-pocalypse life other than “I’m Rick’s child” and “I’m Rick’s bitchy wife.”

As Rick walks back out of his empty house, you can see that the letterbox appears to be full of envelopes. Do you suppose Lori wrote a bunch of letters to people on the off-chance they’d get picked up after she and Carl left town with Shane, or do you think the post carried on even after everything else collapsed? (Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds… Nor zombies either, apparently. Now I really want a series of shorts following a postman as she strives to deliver every letter she can (well, not the bills, obvs) even as the world continues to collapse around her head.)

Okay, so if you get home and discover your family is not there, and everything is topsy turvy and haywire and omg what the hell is even happening – who just goes and plonks outside to think? Surely you’d think “hmm, okay, maybe I should check the neighbours”?

Are overhead fans on the porch a southern thing? I can’t imagine having one here in the Pacific Northwest.

Can we talk again about how absurdly lucky Rick is when it comes to the existence of walkers in this town? The only ones in the hospital are literally chained behind doors with an explicit warning to piss off. The only one he encounters on his journey from hospital to home has no legs, and thus poses minimal threat to a man able to walk (or cycle, as the case may be). The first mobile walker he sees is in the distance and hasn’t noticed him yet, and before he has a chance to shout out and put himself in danger, Morgan and Duane ex machina themselves into position to not only take out the walker but also provide medical support. (I guess Rick’s just been running on…adrenaline? And yes, I know Rick also takes a shovel to the face – we’ll ignore the fact that there’s no apparent lasting damage from a shovel to the face, good grief – but that’s a far cry from the fate of having his flesh ripped from his bones before he even knew what walkers were. Boy, would that suck.) A whole bevy of walkers turn up that evening, ostensibly because Morgan had fired a gun, but then they all vanish by morning aside from a single walker still skulking around for the convenience of whacking practice. (I wonder what would have happened if the single walker still hanging around had been Morgan’s wife. Somehow I doubt he’d have been as willing for Rick to practise his new world survival skills on her.) Quite aside from his dubious hospital survival, Rick Grimes should be dead. I really wish this could be attributed to his cop training (but we know that shit is dubious as fuck), but unfortunately he’s just a dude wandering aimlessly who gets super lucky. Sigh.

(I can’t be the only one who looks at the walker Rick sees and thinks he must be either a mortician or a goth kid. That much black? When it’s apparently warm enough in Georgia that Rick is totally fine in your not-standard-issue hospital gown and boxers? Also, thanks camera for keeping the walker blurred out so we can’t tell he’s dead (did you save on makeup?), but in retrospect it kind of makes you wonder if Rick has eye problems. Now there’s a real problem in the apocalypse.)

Two things about Duane’s first appearance. First, he was inches away from Rick; how did he get enough room to swing a shovel? Second, wtf is Duane doing shrieking for his dad? He’s been living in this world for at least a month and his mum’s a zom: he has to know that walkers are drawn to noise, yet he’s yelping out like a wounded dog here. Apocalypse better, kiddo.

Rather hilariously, it’s when Rick sees Morgan casually shoot the walker through the head that he starts to panic. OMG HE KILLED A DUDE. I feel like with everything Rick’s seen so far he ought not to jump so quickly to the assumption that Morgan killed another living dude. Then again, he did just get whacked in the face with a shovel and should probably have a concussion, so…

Convenient that Rick passes out when Morgan threatens to kill him if he doesn’t answer, since given his current state I’m not sure he could have done coherently. Note to self: when faced with difficult or awkward questions, keel over. It’ll give you time to think.

The first conversation Rick and Morgan have when Rick first wakes up tied to the bed raises far too many questions related to how long Rick’s been in hospital and how bad his wound is. I…am not going to spend much time on this, because it’s a never-ending chase with no real answers. This is the scene that rips us out of the glorious silent exploration of Rick’s new apocalyptic world and thrusts us into exposition, which at least in this case has a reason given Rick’s total ignorance of the current state of the world – but it’s still exposition.

Anyway, briefly – didn’t Rick get hit from behind, under the armpit? Shouldn’t Morgan have had to change two dressings? But there’s only one, and moreover, Rick’s original bandaging didn’t come close to covering where the original gunshot entry wound was. Magical moving bullets! Mystery wounds! Exposition! Hurray!

Ugh, reasons never to work on The Walking Dead: you have to film in Georgia, and it’s hot and disgusting and everyone sweats, even at night. Blech. Thanks but no.

Morgan’s stupid use of the gun to kill the walker provides helpful exposition, but his reason for why he did it – “it all happened so fast, I didn’t think” – doesn’t make much sense. It was one walker, with no others anywhere in the apparent vicinity, and while his son had potentially whacked down another walker, there wasn’t exactly an urgent need to use the gun. And while I’m not sure that Rick would be able to articulate the idea that what Morgan killed was something other than a living human being, the fact that he’s so insistent that it must have been a man speaks to his desperation to cling to anything resembling normalcy, while unfortunately ignoring his experience since waking up in the hospital. What do you do when you don’t have the vocabulary to articulate what you’ve seen?

As an aside, Rick chained up to the headboard wearing his boxers and hospital gown kiiinda looks like he’s ready for someone’s doctor dom fantasy playtime fetish. Good thing Morgan’s not into that, right?

There’s something deliciously hilarious about Morgan warning/threatening Rick with his tiny little knife when the backdrop is such delightfully mundane floral pillowcases. Laura Ashley does not approve!!!

Why couldn’t Morgan have found Rick a snuggie? Or, I don’t know, slippers? Or socks? Or an actual bathrobe? He’s stuck with blankie chic.

I do love that shot though.

Sidebar, your honour, I have a digression to indulge.

Morgan’s “friend, you need glasses” is kind of hilarious given that now they’re into the apocalypse, sucks to be you if you have non-perfect sight or any medical problems requiring medication or other intervention. There’s a surprising lack of your average American with lots of health problems on TWD, perhaps in part as commentary that many of those individuals would have stood no chance against the relentless people-eating horde. While the introduction of Connie offers a welcome insight into how someone with a disability is able to survive in an apocalyptic situation, the show on the whole oddly glosses over that whole issue. America is not a healthy country (we weren’t pre-Covid and we’re certainly not doing well lately). Nearly half of Americans take prescription drugs, according to a survey from the National Center Health Statistics. Some of these are vital, in that without them the person would die sooner rather than later; others treat conditions that won’t kill you immediately if untreated, but will kill you eventually or will cause significant problems as time goes on; and still others treat conditions that, while usually debilitating, you can usually survive and be at least vaguely functional. Some medications can be substituted by herbal remedies (digitalis, marshmallow root), but many can’t. I have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and deal with chronic pain and migraines; I take daily meds to counter both pain and migraine, as well as an assortment of supplements (and hayfever tablets, oh god) that I *can* function without, but which to do so would seriously suck. Where are these people in the apocalypse? There are so many people with disabilities or on medication who would be able to keep functioning as potentially beneficial partners in the post-apo world. Where are they? And where are the characters grappling with the choice of whether to sacrifice themselves or let their family and friends deal with an ongoing and worsening condition? The only times we really encounter that sort of thing are Milton’s test subject Michael Coleman, who ultimately dies of prostate cancer, the vatos’ little senior citizen safe haven, and Lilly and Tara’s father, all of whom are elderly. We only ever get a little blip of each of those instances, as well, in what appear to be relatively comfortable and secure locations, so we really don’t get a sense of how their frailties or differing abilities play into the survival of those around them. Hershel’s worst health problem was the leg amputated post-walker bite, and that ultimately was irrelevant to how he lived and died. I might be missing someone – I probably am – but it’s an oddity, one that I suppose arises out of both a narrative need – the elderly and disabled and sick are often viewed as less capable and thus less interesting except as an emotional zinger – and a practical in-world need that wants to focus on the strongest and most active rather than devoting time to people who’ve not only had to adapt emotionally but also physically and psychologically. I’ve got a main character in a post-apo situation who’s not only hauling herself through cities and forests with a bad lower back and weak hip and reliance on a cane but who also is unquestionably the leader of her group, because while her disability is not ideal in this post-civilised world, it doesn’t negate her value. The apocalypse doesn’t eradicate every non-fit, medicated adult, and leaving them out or using them as plot conveniences isn’t ideal. To get back to Morgan’s glasses comment – a quick google search suggests that around 61 percent of the population is reported to wear reading or visual aids at least occasionally. This probably isn’t nearly as many once you wipe out the need for reading glasses among the older population (and, you know, people in their 30s like me… *sob*), but nevertheless there’s a significant portion of the population who can’t see very well without glasses (and let me tell you, good luck getting contacts during the apocalypse). My sister is pretty well blind as a bat without glasses and has been since she was in middle school. Imagine how differently things might have played out if Carl’s vision had been super shitty.

Sidebar complete.

I like the all-male hand-holding over the meal prayer. There’s something sweet about it, a clinging to old habits even in chaos.

It’s interesting that Morgan asks Rick if he even knows what’s going on, because by this point it must be at least a month into apocalypse (per Morgan’s line later in the episode that the gas mains have been down a month or so) – what are the odds you’d run into a random person so utterly clueless a whole month in? I guess maybe the hospital gown, boxers, and bare feet clued him in.

I’ve been thinking this all episode: Rick’s beard is beautifully trimmed for a dude who’s been in a coma.

Rick’s response to Morgan’s “yep, the undead, they’ll try to eat you” line is so blasé it’s funny. Like he’s just so overwhelmed by everything of the day that zombie cannibals or whatever are hardly worth getting fussed over. He jumps right from sort of reacting “oh dead people” to going “so they’re out there? Okey-day then”. Meanwhile, Morgan’s cool air comment about drawing zoms never occurs again, and there’s such a time gap between the firing of the gun and the walkers skulking around outside the house that it’s odd they’re still hanging around. Actually, you see this too at the end of season 2, when the herd of walkers wanders out of Atlanta and eventually ends up on Hershel’s farm – they turn when they hear the gunshot, but how good are their powers of perception? Like, they’re attracted to sound – fine, whatever, I can buy that, fine – but a gunshot, for instance, is a single instance of noise that then dies away. If you’re not in the immediate vicinity, as a walker, how do you continue knowing where to go? The show suggests that when zoms are drawn by noise it’s like a magnet, pulling them in unerringly to the source of the sound, but how do they continue to know which is the right direction for ages after the sound has ceased? It’s not like they have a compass or GPS.

Aww, we’re still early enough in the apocalypse that car alarms still work.

Morgan’s wife makes me sad in a lot of ways. Obviously she’s undead and roaming around looking for her next snack and her son and husband love and miss her and find her undead state to be traumatic, but it’s not that specifically so much as the consequences down the line. Morgan and Duane stayed in the same house where Mama Morgan died, meaning they’re regularly within eyeshot, thus inflicting pain and anguish, or suffering the threat thereof, long after her actual death. (Yes, of course, they had a secure and safe base in the house and didn’t want to move, but still.) Morgan couldn’t kill his wife when she dies, the first time around (although that makes me wonder at what point she was booted outside, considering she died in the house; did they chuck her dead body out the front door before she turned, or wait until she was ambulatory and forcibly eject her?). This – I guess you could call it weakness – proves tragic. When Rick gives him a rifle, he sets out deliberately to kill her and still can’t. And then, because Morgan repeatedly failed to put her down, she ultimately causes the death of Duane – and Morgan takes the blame, flipping into a state of madness that operates until he meets the cheesemaker. (I’ll come back to Morgan in later posts. I have *thoughts* about him as both killer and pacifist.)

How do you grieve loss or try to move on if you can’t actually lay the dead to rest? It’s a question that I don’t think gets explored enough in the show, because most of the time everyone is so concerned with pressing on and surviving that grieving is set aside. I’m not going to go into this here, because there’s ample opportunity to do so in later episodes without needing to jump seasons ahead.

Early days: walkers attempting to work doorknobs are a thing, rather than just pawing at the door.

Man, I miss having a bat. I have a wok and a kitchen knife to protect against the undead these days…and assorted high heels, should it come to that. (Oh god the humanity. My shoes would be ruined!!)

There’s something adorable about Rick wearing a damn headshield mask as he waltzes out the door in the morning with his wooden baseball bat and WHITE T-SHIRT to whack the undead dude on the front walk to death. Where did the headshield mask come from? Did the Drakes just happen to have one in the back closet in case of a pandemic? (*sad hollow 2020 laughter*) In any case, it’s a laughable contrast with rest of the show; by the end of the season, no one gives a shit about facial protection or protecting the skin. Potential backsplatter? Eh, give it here, I bathe in zomgoo for the health benefits daily.

Lori appears to keep a glass jar of pinecones on a shelf. She also apparently took framed photos from the wall in addition to the photo albums. At least one photo album makes an appearance in this season, but unless Morgan repurposed the empty frames for defensive purposes, there’s no indication ever of what Lori did with those framed photos. (Sadly, the photo album is lost when they flee Hershel’s farm. One assumes, anyway, since Carl later gets hold of a single photo for Judith because there are no others.)

Atlanta as a safe haven/refugee centre is…well, it’s a plot point to get Rick where he needs to go. Realistically, you don’t want to go into an urban centre when there’s a pandemic. In America, Covid is now hitting rural areas with force, but pretty much all of the early outbreaks and spread were in urban areas. And that’s without the added complication of the dead getting back up again! Cities obviously have more resources, but… I dunno. Although, to be fair, unlike Covid or the flu or the common head cold, zombieism appears only to transmit through bites (since we don’t yet know that everyone is infected!), like rabies, rather than being so contagious that if someone breathes on you, you’re sick. But even then – even accepting that people think that it’s passed solely through bites and not any other way – being bitten doesn’t necessarily mean instant death (Carl is perhaps the most obvious example of this, I think, but Jim and Deanna both also survive for a time after being chomped), so you could conceivably be bitten in a non-obvious area (your side, for instance), waltz into a populated area with only minor symptoms or hop on a plane and then be released into the population of another country, only to then actually die and start to nom people. Eh.

How many sets of keys do the Grimeses have??

I’d suck in the apocalypse because without showers I’d be so sad.

Ah, bonding is always best when undertaken half-naked and wrapped in a pristine white towel.

Duane is adorable. Why couldn’t we get a show following Duane and his sass?

This episode is almost entirely about following Rick in his discovery and acceptance of this new, batshit life, but in some ways I wish we’d got a snippet of flashback with Morgan and Duane and Lady Morgan. It wouldn’t really have fit into the episode, but I can dream.

Rick showers and puts his uniform on rather than civvies. The implication here is that the uniform retains a certain power – protect and serve – so anyone living who sees him would know that here’s a person whose job is to help. Contrasts sharply with the police officer in the second episode of Fear the Walking Dead who’s stockpiling water and clearly has already shifted over to an every-man-for-himself mindset. In light of America’s current epidemic of problematic police officers, it’s interesting to contemplate differences had TWD first aired in 2020. Or had it aired, for instance, in the Pacific Northwest or Northeast, which generally tend to have a more left-skewing and police-condemning attitude.

I mentioned guns briefly earlier, but seasons 1 and 2 have this cute “must respect guns” thread underlying any use of a firearm. Here Duane wants to learn to shoot, but both Morgan and Rick make sure to emphasise that he has to respect the weapon – “Yeah, it’s not a toy, son, when you pull the trigger you gotta mean it.” Season 2 has Shane (and Andrea) flouncing about articulating THOUGHTS about gun ownership and use and training. After that? Welp, fuck it. You get a gun! And you get a gun! And you get a gun! To be clear, I do think if you’re going to handle a gun you should know how to do so properly and safely, but in the context of the Walking Dead it’s an early seasons thing that’s totally dropped by season 3 as the zompocalypse marches on and nobody got time for that shit anymore. (I’ll get around to discussing the shooting practice in season 2 later…)

I don’t know if it’s just the camera angles, but when Rick remarks that a lot of the armoury is gone, it seems like a massive understatement – from what we see, almost all of the guns are gone. Which might be a prop issue (although given the number of guns floating around on this show you wouldn’t think that would be a problem), but does sort of make season 3’s trip to the ol’ hometown with Michonne and Carl kind of funny given that all the guns are gone if there were never really any left to begin with. (And, thinking about it, when Rick is trying to justify going back into Atlanta to get Merle, he comments that he cleaned out the armoury, which makes it even odder that Rick decides to go back for weapons against the Governor et al.

“Conserve your ammo. It goes faster than you think, especially at target practice.” Unless you’re in season 2 on Hershel’s farm, in which case everyone has so much ammo that they’ll never run out.

I know Rick is still in early days of understanding the apocalypse, but it’s still sweet, and ridiculous, that he gives Morgan a radio with the expectation they’d continue chatting and catch up with each other. It also highlights Morgan’s downfall: the unwillingness to get involved in others’ business. He could go with Rick and probably be safer, not least because there’s two grown men to protect one boy, but he instead waits – ostensibly to up his and Duane’s shooting proficiency, but ultimately we see that it’s very much about the unfinished business with his wife.

As an aside, it seems the police station was useful for (1) hot showers and (2) guns and ammo. I’ve never been in a police station, but weirdly I’d have thought they’d have supplies stashed away. Rick and co. didn’t even have a gander at what might be there. But again, early days, I suppose!

RIP Leon Basset.

I love how Morgan hammers the shit out of the wood he’s using to barricade the door. I guess the zoms are conveniently faffing about elsewhere. Especially funny given that he then goes upstairs to snipe walkers, none of whom seem to have noticed the hammering. Are hammers just soundproof??

Christ Morgan’s wife is beautiful.

There’s something…poignant about Rick tracking down the first living dead person he ever knew in order to put her to rest. It’s the same kind of early apocalypse care that we see in “Guts,” when he stops to look through the walker’s wallet so they know the life of the undead man they’ve killed. His sorrow and tendency towards mercy are both here clearly indicated and provide a sharp contrast with the man he becomes. The mercy and drive to do what’s right is what results in him feeling he has to go back to Atlanta to get Merle, what makes him so adamant that they don’t kill the living and should strive to go where there might be a cure, what drives him to hop off the road and go after Sophia and to keep optimistically searching for her. There’s a sweet innocence there that still exists because he came to the zompocalypse after the fact and still retains a strong need to do what’s right that time living in zombieland will beat out of him. The parallelism in this section of the episode, which switches between Rick and Morgan’s actions after leaving the police station, also highlights the difference between having to kill someone you love vs. killing someone you don’t know (or, rather, have no personal attachment to; Rick kills Leon Basset with few qualms, but also frames it as mercy).

Rural Georgia looks hot. And sticky. Thank God my sister didn’t end up moving to the south.

Are the cracks in the windshield and the dirty appearance of the glass supposed to be the result of the apocalypse, or just their police department being a bit short on funds? (Also, it’s Rick’s face in a cracked mirror! Premonitions of mad Rick??) At least Rick’s got his windows rolled up like a sensible person.

Initial observations of Camp Outside Atlanta:

Dale is wearing glasses that I *think* never appear again.

Amy is carrying an armful of kind of hilariously long twigs.

WHY IS AMY WEARING WHITE TROUSERS IN THE APOCALYPSE THIS IS A TERRIBLE DECISION.

Who on earth is on watch on the RV? From a distance it looks, frame-wise, like either Shane or Daryl, but Shane makes his appearance to the side and Daryl is off on a hunt, so who’s this? Actually, in general, it’s kind of amusing that there’s a whole slew of other people in this camp (mostly older/heavier people, based on visibility) that are just sort of vaguely there until the walker attack. It’s actually a shame, really that they didn’t do anything other than plonk some irrelevant extras in the background; it means that when they all die, it means pretty much nothing as a viewer. (I’ll come back to this.)

Shane has great hair. Shame he shaves it off later…

It’s difficult to see when you’ve watched the episode multiple times, but we don’t know what either Lori or Carl look like before they appear in the quarry group receiving Rick’s radio call – we only actually realise who they are when Rick flips down his visor. And, actually, despite what I said above, Lori’s first appearance is not that bad. She observes that there are others – Shane sort of dismisses it with “oh well we knew that.” And then she says that they ought to put up warning signs on Highway 85 to warn people away from the city. Which is smart. Yes, it’s potentially dangerous, but as we’ll go on to learn, they’ve sent people to Atlanta with no previous problem, on top of which the road into town is absolutely empty – Glenn’s exit from Atlanta on the same road Rick rode in on tells us that the road Lori is talking about here is the same road Glenn and Rick have been in and out on. And this is the first time that Shane puts forward an argument that’s just plain wrong. He says they’ve had no time. Okay, fair enough – but they have a group of five literally in Atlanta as they speak. And based on Glenn’s exit path on the way back to the quarry, that group of five followed the same route in. Setting aside the question of why the hell their scavenging team apparently couldn’t stop along the road to place a “Stay Away, Walkers Ahead” sign, Shane’s argument is that they can’t spare the time to place the sign, because it’s “a luxury we can’t afford.” This makes no sense. As we’ll go on to see, this isn’t the first time someone from their group has gone into Atlanta (although it turns out that Glenn, their “go to town” man, has previously only gone himself, without anyone else). Everyone else up by the quarry is basically just fucking around doing nothing. The fact of the matter is that putting up a sign to warn people away from the city isn’t a luxury, but rather a helpful, logical, and overwhelmingly safe thing to do. Shane’s objection comes, in the first instance, from a man reluctant to relinquish control; it’s clear that Shane is viewed as a decision maker with practical knowledge the other survivors lack, and as a result of that knowledge is viewed as a leader. It’s an important if subtle moment in which Shane is established as the leader of the camp, a position that he then unwillingly gets shoved out of when Rick turns up. It is interesting, though, that here Lori is gung-ho about leaving their mountain and going down to put up a sign, while she later adamantly vetoes her husband going back to Atlanta. Shane’s argument is that no one goes anywhere alone, but given later events, it seems that Shane’s objection is not that someone wants to go warn people away from Atlanta, or that they want to risk Atlanta itself, as much as it is his desire to not let Lori be in danger. And Lori’s frustration at Shane’s decree is obvious – and yet she relents and gives in once kisses are to be had. Shane following Lori to verbally whack her for even thinking of putting herself in danger just points up Shane’s chauvinism. NOT LEAST BECAUSE, OH MY GOD, HE CALLS HER GIRL. SHE’S A WOMAN, YOU TWAT. If the argument had been made that Lori shouldn’t go because she has a son, and she shouldn’t risk him being an orphan – that I could understand. But Carl is so side-lined here that he’s really just a reason to make Shane and Lori stop kissing. Sigh.

God I wish Lori would have socked Shane in the eye. He does have nice hair, though.

Also, those are some *really* nice giant tents. Although my best friend’s adventures have made clear to me that I have unrealistically small expectations about tents.

I’m a little concerned about the condition of the windows of Rick’s cop car. They’re…disgusting. The driver’s side front and back windows look equally awful – I guess it’s good the apocalypse happened, because good luck seeing traffic out those windows. His windshield doesn’t look much better. Is over-enthusiastic pollen a thing in Georgia??

So, about the dead couple whose farm Rick encounters/steals a horse from. They’re both dead, woe, sadness, etc. What I’m fascinated about is that dude took the time to shoot his wife, and then decided to write a message IN HER BLOOD on the damn wall. I mean, okay, you wanted absolution for killing your wife and being about to kill yourself. But you kill your wife and then use her blood to write on the wall??

Signs that Rick is still in early days acceptance: he doesn’t enter the house with two clearly dead people (and thus likely no walkers) and then has a sit on a bench, throws up, and then goes in search of alternative transportation.

…that poor horse.

Is horse-taming a southern thing? I feel like I’d be terrified enough of the giant heavy horse to…not approach it.

Iconic shot!

It’s stunning that Rick has encountered zero walkers aside from the little girl. Works with the need for the story to move along, but is silly in terms of later walker distribution (ignoring season 2, which is its own special disaster).

Is everything flat in Georgia? Legitimate question. The extent of my knowledge of Georgia is a flight transfer through Atlanta. (Atlanta airport employees are all super nice, though.)

There’s something about the two zomdudes hanging out on a bus that cracks me up. How do walkers decide to just park it somewhere? “Ah yes, I recognise this bus, I’ve taken it to work every day for ten years. Definitely the best place to spend eternity.” It’s also odd but entertaining that the two dudes on the bus are repeatedly seen once Rick is in the horde and then in the tank. Why these two? Yeah, they’re the first Atlanta walkers he passed by, but they’re not exactly presented as special or important enough to appear repeatedly. Rick pops out of the top of the tank and whacks the one across the face, and the other skulks around the base of the tank and makes eye contact.

One of the weirdest and most uncomfortable moments in this episode, for me, is the two crows nomming the dead military officer. Caw caw! There’s a mild horror at the thought of ever being carrion. Though I guess everyone is just food for something else…

I can forgive Rick for a number of odd decisions based on the fact that he’s really only been awake for, what, two days? Maybe three? He’s still adapting to the new world, learning its rules, etc. But he rides a damn horse into a major city and is just generally not concerned. He comments to the horse when they pass the bus with the two walkers that it’s no big deal, they can outrun them – and yet somehow doesn’t think ahead about the existence of the dead in a major city. I guess it can sort of be attributed to the fact that he’s encountered remarkably few dead, plus in his brain Atlanta and its refugee centres are the answer to everything. He just hasn’t actually thought about it.

And, again, I’m stunned at the amount of abandoned military equipment. I guess the moral of the story is “don’t trust the military, don’t trust the government, they can do fuckall to help you.”

So Rick sees a helicopter. When he meets the others after Glenn rescued him, they ridicule the idea that helicopters still exist. Which brings up two instances. Firstly, beginning of season 3, when Andrea and Michonne witness a helicopter crash with military dudes who’ve got others attached to them. Secondly, the helicopter that rescues Rick and has apparently set up Rick Grimes’s future films. I just wish I knew where this particular helicopter was from and where it was going.

For a cop, even one with minimal experience with the world as it is now, Rick is an idiot. He lunges forward as stupidly as he went forward alone in his confrontation with the idiot car guys. Surely you should be thinking ahead? He’s in relatively unknown territory in a relatively new world. I’m not saying he should have anticipated a horde of dead people, but you’d think he’d exercise as least some caution, especially when his nearby décor indicates that the damn military was swamped with the enemy, such that they fucked off elsewhere. But maybe it’s just me.

Ooh, look, an extra drinking water.

I like that the makeup artists decay the walkers more each season. Season 1, most of them are sort of “hai I’m a regular human, I just have some dramatic injuries and some zombie eyes.” They look like people who are mostly dead but haven’t started to decompose. (I’d never be hired as a walker – the longer the show goes, the more they need skinny people so the makeup and prosthetics aren’t so obvious…and I am not skinny.)

That poor horse…

Yet again, Rick seriously lucks out. We see him multiple times with “omg dead people” face, with walkers just sort of lurking/dancing in place because they can’t lunge in or he’d be dead. And then there’s conveniently a tank above him. I’ve never been able to decide whether Rick going “Lori, Carl, I’m sorry” and then putting his gun to his head is a genuine “Oh no, I’m about to die” or if he’d realised the hatch was above him and so it was a “welp if I die, I love you.”

Men have huge feet. Yeek.

It’s stunning how long Rick’s in the tank with a zombot before said zombot wakes up and attempts a menacing growl. Not least because Rick’s so overwhelmed at having been upwardly mobile that he completely fails to take in his surroundings. (Although, as we’ve seen, Rick has never been great at checking his surroundings. Dude should be walkerbait by now.)

Oh no, a walker. Haaalp.

I do appreciate that Rick suffered auditory pain from firing a gun in an enclosed metal space. I also find it funny that one of the buszoms comes into his eyesight, like for some reason he's important.

“Hey, you. Dumbass.” Glenn is fucking amazing and iconic. I wish he'd been the main of this show. No offense to Andrew Lincoln, of course, but Steven Yeun is great, and Glenn's development from a kid into an adult is just lovely.

Anywho, that marks the end of "Days Gone Bye." Good in so many ways, eh in so many others. What's not to love?

love  em

[rigelmejo]

i’ve been watching Handsome Siblings on netflix only in chinese to just like. see where i’m at.

and now that i’m on ep 4 it would feel kind of weird to suddenly switch back to english subs ok, for one.

but anyway like general level-wise: i am pretty much at where i can follow a lot of the gist of scenes even if i don’t pause to translate - but then i’m going to be relying on visual context a lot more. which is fine, it means i can go watch a show with no english subs to rely on Ever and at least follow along.

i do notice that if i PAUSE, i can catch the specifics of a lot more scenes. There’s a scene where the two princess sisters are talking to their nephew (who is a spitting image of Jiang Feng), and then after he leaves - discussing telling him to go take a mission to kill Xiao Yu’er, and then when he leaves the two princesses discuss their plan. I paused over and over after EVERY line that episode, because I really wanted to know the specifics of what they were saying. A lot of lines I could read, and there were a lot of one-words-in-a-sentence i had to look up for a more precise understanding. Same with a scene later in the town said-nephew and his girl kickass companions go to - i could follow the gist, but paused after some lines (and looked up a couple words) for more specific details. 

I will say that the more characters you learn, the easier life is. Really! The more characters I know, the easier my gist-guess is right, the easier remembering new words (made up of known characters) is, and looking up new words is VASTLY easier because I know their pinyin and can look them up faster than drawing. 

If you’re going to do this: I’d still recommend using googletranslate to look up multiple characters you don’t know/phrases, since you can draw and easily get the correct result looked up. I’d recommend pleco if you know the pinyin, or if its a single word (because pleco’s definitions are more thorough and explanatory than googletranslate’s), or if it might be an idiom. 

I would recommend that if you like watching stuff on the computer, to get the learn-with-netflix dual subtitle add on, and just click your subtitles for a definition on-the-video-itself instead of needing to open an app like me. 

---

I am immensely excited and happy that I can watch a chinese show with no english and follow the gist now. That is a huge amount of progress for me compared with August 2019 when I started (and only knew ‘ni hao/wo hen hao’ and the numbers ;w; ). I am so proud of where I’ve gotten to. I definitely think really focusing on increasing known frequent words helps a lot. (Also, reading a grammar guide - grammar is again becoming understandable, so idk my brain is just acclimating again i guess). I’m going to keep focusing on frequent words, and the 2,000 most common characters, for a while and hopefully eventually this payoff will translate to reading as well.

If you DO happen to want to try watching a chinese show without english and testing yourself/studying, I have some mild recommendations you might take into consideration. 

1. If it’s too difficult, do it a little, then come back to it in a few weeks, repeat. This task really only gets enjoyable once you understand enough to be ‘comfortable’ with the remaining ambiguity you still don’t comprehend. That is going to be different for different people. I am comfortable with a pretty high amount of ambiguity/lack of understanding, so I can at least try to watch even stuff-i-barely-grasp at least a little for practice until my brain feels fried. But I’ve been trying this for months... its only NOW that my brain feels relatively okay just watching without pausing, without feeling Completely overwhelmed. And if you do intend to watch without pausing much, you’ll have some degree of not-understanding-everything. Likewise, if you plan to pause the show (and how much you plan to pause it) should be tolerable for you as well. If you have to pause everything, understand everything - do you know enough words to do that in a timely enough manner to get THROUGH an episode? If it takes you a long time, are you willing to intensively focus and look things up that entire time? Basically - what is your tradeoff between you being able to pause and focus intensively on looking things up, versus you being able to watch without pausing and interpret from the words you know/context only. Whatever balance is most enjoyable/bearable for you is when this will start being something that’s easier to do regularly, instead of only occasionally as practice. At least, that’s how it was for me. I’m only finally at  a point where I can do this regularly - before I could only do this for maybe 10-20 minute chunks of time occasionally. 

2. Pick a genre of show/material you are going to engage in frequently. If you’re ALWAYS watching case-type shows, those words and those scenes will be more familiar to you and easier for you to interpret from context and with less looking things up. If you try this with a wildly different kind of show, you may know MANY less words and many scenes may be harder for you to comprehend the gist of. I watch a TON of case type shows so they’re very easy for me to see and pick up words I’m familiar with, single out the parts that are ‘important explanation’ versus ‘some crowd saying unimportant WOW oh No how Horrible’ type lines. So i can cherry pick important things to pause and look up words for, and guess at what kind of line i’m trying to interpret (i can guess if it’s about a case, an emotional discussion, a simple ‘lets do X’ statement etc - because i’m familiar with the plot type). In a similar vein - an easier show/material to do this with, may well be a show you’ve already watched in your native language/with your native language. For all the same reasons - you will be much more familiar with the context. I could in theory watch Guardian again (which i’ve rewatched... a lot) and I would probably follow the plot very easily. But I like a challenge too much apparently, and I’d rather practice with things I can’t fall-back on my existing knowledge for as much. A show I’ve never seen has much less I can rely on for context, BUT the trade off is I can really clearly test how well i’m comprehending the plot and lines - because they are all completely new to me, so I either comprehend or I clearly do not understand what’s going on/obviously misinterpret. So it’s a very quick way for me to see if I’m achieving anything or not. Whereas if I was watching a show I already saw, I might learn new words noticably, but I wouldn’t be able to tell if I’m getting better at understanding overall plot with no english to rely on (since I already saw it before with english).

3. If you’re like me - maybe pick a show either heavy on action, or heavy on daily life. While I am familiar with case-type shows... I generally think (for me) they’re harder to follow when your existing vocab knowledge isn’t high enough to follow it... They’re big on mysteries, on plots that are actually not what they appear, and surprises. They’re big on ‘strategies’ and I find for myself, strategies are kind of hard to follow when I know less words. In contrast: if you pick a daily-life type show, you’re more likely to either know the words or NEED to know the words at some point because they’ll be useful to you. And the scenes should be relatively easy to comprehend visually even when you don’t know the words. (My caveat being - if you want the language specifically FOR understanding certain genres, by all means go for the topics you’ll actually be using - if you’re gonna read a ton of wuxia, or case-stuff etc, then go for stuff you’ll Actually Use which might well be THEM). For me... my end goal is to be able to read creative fiction, so wuxia settings and fantastical settings and mystery-words and period-words are all things I better get used to. So I haven’t really watched much daily-life stuff (although there are daily-life scenes WITHIN a lot of dramas, and I do think they’re some of the easiest scenes to follow and comprehend). 

Now, why might you pick an action-heavy show: easy to comprehend. Especially if you often watch action-oriented stuff already. The first chinese show I watched a whole episode of in only-chinese (it’s first episode, so that’s when i figured out the entire show’s set up) was The Shaw Eleven Lang (I really wanted more of Zhu Yilong’s acting in my life okay?). I DID in fact, manage to follow the plot. Without pausing much, because I was just watching it with dinner. What made it easier to follow was SO MUCH of the dialogue was really straightforward - stuff like ‘i want that sword’ or ‘i hate you’ or ‘lets eat and drink together to celebrate’ or ‘you need to go save/kill x’ or ‘do you think i’m pretty’ etc. So much of the dialogue was NOT schemes/plots/mysteries, it was really straightforward ‘we are doing X, we like Y, we hate Z’. Which for me are the sentence types I find the easiest to understand, and especially found the easiest at that point in time. In addition, because the show has so much action, often the dialogue is accompanied by action scenes that make it pretty freaking CLEAR what their objective is/what they just said. Yes, there are still plenty of unknown words to look up if you want to pause - but it should be obvious enough that you might have a decent guess at what they mean before you look them up (I had to look up words like sword, princess, clan leader, but those were pretty clear even beforehand from the context of the scenes). After I watched the first ep (which i don’t think i could even find english subs for), I watched the second ep with eng subs to see if i’d interpreted the plot correctly so far - i had. It felt pretty motivating to get through 40 minute episodes without much pausing, and know I’d followed along. I think, at least if you’re already an action-show/movie watcher, action series are going to be a relatively approachable thing to try watching in just your target language. (Another positive is a lot of verbs as commands lines, in context, so for me it’s easier to pick up new verbs, and those kind of lines are very easy to pick up in context - also lines like ‘xiao xin’ be careful, bubi, meiguanshi, danxin, ni fangxin, etc - all these short lines that are easy to understand in the context they often come up in).

 (Also, do I recommend The Shaw Eleven Lang? Well... I need to go back to watching it but uh... it’s definitely AN EXPERIENCE... with wild fighter-game-tetsuya-nomura-would-be-proud kind of costume designs, wild af scenes so far, and uh as far as i can tell Zhu Yilong’s on point to play a pretty crazy bastard in it... also there’s a LOT of genuinely kickass girls and kickass main women, which i appreciate, i believe also the main women are all 30+ which is refreshing in general in any-show tbh. also just... everyone in the show is kickass... that’s the point... its a lot like to me, if a absolutely Wild fighting game got a budget for a full drama and just went wild on the plot - very fun to watch, very bizarre... not particularly deep but like, did you play Square enix’s The Bouncer on ps2 for a Good Plot or for an absolutely wild bizarre Time? This show is like the game The Bouncer... just freaking Wild conceptually). 

And now, I am watching Handsome Siblings, and managing to get through episodes with only a little pausing for when I want to figure out specifics. It is also very action-scene heavy. At least for me, that’s been making it a lot easier to follow the gist of. There’s scenes where robbers attack - and even if I don’t know every line, its easy to figure out the gist of what’s being said. There’s scenes where people fight - again, very easy to follow. The parts I’ve been pausing the most on are the sisters plotting, because I feel that’s probably the most intensive-mystery in this plot so far, and because I want to make sure I interpret the details correctly when they’re mentioning them (since I think they’ll play out more in the plot later). I think the fact this show is Action-Heavy is making it tremendously easier for me to follow then like... me trying to watch Nirvana in Fire would be. The very straightforward action scenes are much easier to follow using visual context, at least for me, compared to dialogue heavy scenes where the vocabulary is not going to be emphazised with visuals nearly as much. (Another bonus of Handsome Siblings, at least so far, is the dialogue heavy scenes ARE accompanied by visual flashbacks to EXPLAIN the dialogue). Another bonus for Handsome Siblings: the writing seems very straightforward and decently paced. You don’t have to wait long for new scenes, for new developments, and that means a lot of dialogue and action is doing something right away and has a lot of context you immediately see result in something else. For me that just makes it... approachable and understandable in the kind of way like... movies like The Mummy were paced, or Indiana Jones, or Independence Day... do you know what I mean? It’s fun to watch even if you couldn’t understand, and the structure makes it quite comprehensible again even if you heard no dialogue at all. So for me, at least, it makes the balance of ‘ease of watching versus patience to look things up slowly’ much easier. Because its ease of watching is pretty high even for scenes where actual words-you-know isn’t high, so you can save looking-things-up for only when you WANT to, not necessarily as something you need to constantly do just to catch the gist. 

---

I tried reading again - I tried reading the novel for the Sleuth of Ming Dynasty. It was BRUTAL because I apparently know NO dynasty-royalty-govt related words (which really explains why Men With Swords political scenes I know so few words lol). I got through 10 out of 39 ‘small’ pages on my phone for the first chapter. I think I managed to follow it, the grammar thankfully was really straightforward and I imagine the original author is quite talented. The difficulty was in the very common use of turns of phrase and idioms for so many parts of sentences, which were all new ‘words/phrases’ i’d never seen before.

[hattywatch]

T. Seguin - Back Road Part 2

Author’s Note: This fic has been in the works since JULY, it is now January of 2019. Just so you guys know how slow and hard this has been (that’s what she said). It would not have been possible without various drunken nights on my part and encouraging text messages on @hockeyandtaylorswift ‘s part-  and all of the lovely tags that people created when they reblogged the first part. I read every single one of the tags that anyone makes when they reblog any of my fics and they keep the content coming (PSA I’m sure all fic writers will tell you the same thing. Tags, comments etc spark the muse for real), so thank everyone who ever wrote anything nice about it, I love you. As a caveat, this one is 20 pages long. Go to the bathroom, grab a snack and a blanket, and settle in for the long haul. It’s also smutty. Are we back to using the term *LEMONS* now to fight the Tumblr bots? Am I showing my age? Yes, to both. 

Part 1

He really takes your teasing in stride, which is awesome, since that's the kind of person you are.

He almost seems to revel in it.

After you sprung that kiss on him and all but slammed your door in his face, he was quick to text you when he got back to his place:

Tyler: Well, my ego is in shreds, but aside from that I'm home safe

was the exact text you got, but close enough.

If you were worried that his chase would be over the second you showed any interest, that text certainly helped calm your nerves.

It turns out that where previous guys all maintained a cool indifference and responded only when you initiated, Tyler was the opposite. He text you almost daily after your movie date. A picture of a dog here, his breakfast there, and best of all there was no shortage of selfies, a truly amazing perk. What a face on that man, honestly.

You never stopped teasing though, because, quite frankly it was nice to be pursued and you were more than a little gun-shy of getting in too deep.

___________

After constant texts back and forth for a week following your date, your nerves had calmed considerably. The chemistry was always there and he even started teasing back a little.

Tyler: You never send me any pictures. This is so one-sided.

You sorely hoped he wasn't asking for what you thought he was. You weren't sure you'd have the willpower to cut him out of your life if he was trying to solicit nudes.

Opting to be cheeky and hoping for the best, you sidle up to your fish’s tank and pucker your lips together, before taking a selfie with Brendan, the goldfish.

You: May all of your fishes come true.

When the tell-tale bubble appears to denote Tyler forming his reply, your heart patters double time in anticipation.

Tyler: That's the stuff I'm looking for 😁

Breathing out a sigh of relief, you're delighted that he's a gentleman and you're morally justified to continue this infatuation.

___________

It's been well over a week, closing in on two, and Tyler has texted lots. He even called once, from the grocery store to ask your opinion on cheez-its vs cheese-nips (cheez-its > cheese-nips, obviously).

He hasn't however, attempted to schedule another date. You're not sure why. He initiates texting and responds pretty quickly usually, aside from the odd early morning or late night text.

You're starting to get a little down on yourself about it until he sends you a picture of him in what is obviously the first-class area of a plane, followed by the message:

Tyler: I'll be home soon, what are you doing Thurs?

You nearly knock Brendan off the end table when you flail your legs in excitement that's decidedly uncool.

Tyler suggests a few date ideas before saying that you’re no help and telling you to wear jeans and closed toe shoes.

___________

When Thursday finally comes you slide back into those lived in jeans you love so much. In full honesty, you did go out and buy a new shirt and some cool slide on sneakers, so you're feeling pretty good about yourself when you're adjusting your hair in the mirror and there's a knock on your door.

You sprinkle a little food into Brendan's bowl as you pass through the living room and grab your keys to meet Tyler at the door.

“Trent! Good to see you,” you lock the door behind you and turn around and meet Tyler's eye with a big grin. He dips down, leaning in for a hug and a respectful peck on the cheek.

“Tear my heart out why don't you? A guy's liable to develop a complex.” The complex is short lived, you can tell since he snakes his arm around your waist and leads you to the flashy sports car that sits in front of your house.

“Where's your Jeep?” He smiles at you as he opens the car door and closes it, walking around the car getting into the driver's seat.

“You know how it is,” he buckles his seat belt and finishes, “boys and their toys.”

“Apparently,” you answer coolly, refusing to be charmed by a shiny, expensive car. What type of girl does he think you are?

Whatever type of girl he thinks you are is quickly what you're becoming as he parks outside of a ranch.

“Are we being real Texans today?” you ask, letting yourself out of the car before he can come around and open the door. He walks around anyway, grabbing your hand and continuing up the dirt road to the ranch.

“Yee-haw,” he says seriously, looking straight into your eyes, but his eyebrows rise to belie his voice.

You can't hold back the giggles that brings out, and let him half drag you the rest of the way through the dusty parking lot to the instructor, who's waiting in the stables.

___________

Overall you are a much better rider than Tyler.

You can see the instructor getting frazzled as she tries to get him to loosen his grip on the reins and to stop inadvertently signaling for the horse to start a trot with the way he's squeezing his calves around the animal’s sides.

After a small lesson in the paddock which easily takes twice the time it should, you're given the okay to take the trail. The horses seem to know the trail so you and Tyler are free to chat, side by side as your horses gently lead the way. Tyler's horse mostly ignoring the inexperienced rider on his back.

“I was worried you wouldn't say yes to me again,” Tyler looks over at you grinning and you can't tell if he's kidding or not; after all, it was you and not him who initiated physical intimacy on your last date.

“Why is that? I thought I made it pretty clear on my porch that I would be open to another date,” you will your cheeks to cool down, it seems just the memory of your mouth on his has you a little warm.

He smiles warmly at you, a little blush appearing high on his cheeks, “Oh, I remember,” he takes a breath before continuing, “but I've been pretty busy with work, ya know, out of town a lot. I wasn't sure if you were sick of waiting for me to be around. Barely got you to agree to the first date.” He must signal the horse to speed up in some way, which Buttercup does with ease. Tyler's face looks stricken for a second until the horse seems to remember who is sitting in the saddle. She slows down to allow you and Spirit to catch back up.

You're laughing, hunched forward on Spirit, Tyler's panicked face burned into your brain.

“ 's not funny,” he's visibly trying to relax, since Buttercup is feeding off of his nerves.

“It so is,” you make out between giant gulping breaths while wiping the tears from your eyes. Spirit has finally caught up with Buttercup and Tyler's pout has subsided.

“Why couldn't you pick something that I'm better at. Let me impress you and feel manly?” You laugh again before reminding him that he's to blame for today's activity.

“Yeah, but I only picked this because you said that you like horses and haven't been riding since you moved here,” he gets a little line between his eyebrows as he scrunches them up and mock anger.

“Well, at the very least, I am impressed by your listening abilities,” you nod primly and he gives you a cheesy grin, before he agrees that he'll take whatever win he can get.

You can see the ranch through the trees and it seems like your ride is coming to a close. The sun is beginning to lay lower in the sky and overall it's been a really peaceful few hours.

You don't want it to end.

Hopping off of Buttercup is much easier for Tyler than disembarking off of Spirit is for you. It probably has something to do with him being 6 foot plus and incredibly fit, not that you like, noticed or anything. He smiles at you from below as he sees you struggling with the stirrups.

“C'mon cowgirl, time to go,” he extends his hand up to you and you obviously accept it. Any excuse to get closer to the man in front of you.

He grips your hips tightly from behind to steady you, as you swing your leg over and try to gently lower yourself back to solid ground. If you were watching the scene play out, instead of being a part of it, you'd surely roll your eyes. But that’s not the case, and his hands are strong and warm and you can feel them through your jeans. It sends warmth radiating through your body and you bite your lip to keep yourself from saying anything foolish.

Normally, you’d be a bit more than a bit self-conscious about him grabbing your hips. They’re wide and thick since that’s where most of your extra weight seems to congregate, but Tyler isn't shying away, and it isn’t necessarily hidden in these snug pants.

You're both silent on the walk back to his car.

___________

He drives back in the direction of your house, but is going well under the speed limit, which is odd for the ostentatious sports car you're in.

He hits a red light and finally looks over at you, “Did you have other plans tonight… or?”

His sentence tapers off and you stare at him with your lips pursed.

“Did you have something else planned?” It comes out a little too high pitched and excited to be passed off as cool, but you sort of hope he does, because you really don't want to go home and wait for him to contact you again, especially if his work schedule is as erratic as he's claimed. Who knows how long you two could draw this thing out for.

He stares at you now, seemingly mulling something silently. “Light's green,” you nudge him with your elbow.

He focuses on the road again but eyes you subtly, “I could make us dinner, if you wanted to come to my place?” He's tentative, like he's not sure what you're going to say- like he hasn't taken you on the best dates of your life, hasn't been unabashedly pursuing you and making you hot under the collar with every look he sends in your direction. Like you could ever say no to that face of his.

“Yeah we can do that, Tony” a grin splits his face and you just couldn’t help yourself.

He hunches over towards the steering wheel in what can only be described as giggles.

“You'll remember my name one day,” he warns as he makes a u-turn, driving the opposite direction of your home.

He'd be hard to forget, all his weirdness and sweetness and playful tenacity. You sit quietly, hoping his invitation to dinner is a little less innocent than face value.

___________

It seems Tyler is absolutely full of surprises, because the driveway he pulls into belongs to a veritable mansion and you're instantly uncomfortable.

Before you can help yourself a small, “oh,” drops out of your mouth. You hope he doesn't hear you, because that's embarrassing. You just feel a little out of place, since you're a waitress and he's picked you up at your house before, which is really just the first floor of a house in the suburbs that you rent and definitely could not afford to own.

He hits a button on his phone and the garage door opens and it's literally like you're sitting next to James- fucking-Bond. Once he's pulled in you see the Jeep sitting in the garage as well, along with a few other cars you wouldn't be able to identify as anything other than wildly expensive. He doesn’t seem to catch the noise you make, but he does catch you surreptitiously looking around. He parks and starts getting out, walking over to the door and unlocking it as you trail behind him.

“I told you, I like my toys.” He lets you into the house before him and you kick off your shoes at the door, afraid to track dirt all over the pristine floors.You follow him through the hallway and into the kitchen. It’s bright and beautiful, with marble floors and countertops and what are surely restaurant quality appliances, and if he told you his personal chef would be preparing dinner for you tonight it honestly wouldn't surprise you in the least.

But he doesn't.

He gets out pans and bread and butter and cheese and starts the stove before glancing at your shocked face, “Grilled cheese okay? I haven't really gone grocery shopping since I got back. Ya know, too busy trying to plan dates with girls who can't remember my name and getting shown up by rowdy horses.” You nod and he turns back to the pan, buttering it up as it heats over the open flame.

He motions over to the island stools and you hop up, watching him cook. “Can I help at all?” You don't really know where anything is, but your momma raised you right, so you ask anyway.

“There’s some wine in the fridge, if you’re interested,” he tells you, and you pour out two glasses as he pops the grilled cheeses onto two plates, placing one in front of you and scooting onto the stool next to you with his own.

“Wine doesn't really go with grilled cheese, huh?” He makes a face, but it doesn't stop him from washing down his second bite in the exact same fashion.

“Excuse you, grilled cheese goes with everything.” Sure it's just grilled cheese and all, but it's really actually pretty good and it's made even better by how sweet Tyler was to do it himself and not take the easy way out and order something in. It feels cozy and private sitting in his kitchen, drinking wine and eating the food he made. You eat mostly in silence, sipping your wine and looking around at the grand kitchen.

___________

It's hard to imagine what Tyler does for a living that he could afford a place like this. He doesn’t give off a businessman vibe and he doesn’t seem like the kind who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so you’re at a loss thinking of a position for him to work. Mostly you just don't want to be seen as a gold digger, even though you couldn’t have possibly known about this in advance; if you had known, you would have been even more reluctant to agree to a date than you already were.

“You okay? Kinda quiet, usually you're making jokes at my expense, I'm a little worried,” he nudges your knee with his under the table as you finish up your food. You pick up the wine glass and stand,  filling both of your glasses again. “Yeah. I'm good. Gimme a tour?” You open your eyes wide, tilt your head, and give him a genuine smile, it's not his fault that your uncomfortable about him being loaded. He obviously wasn't turned off by you not being rich, so you do your best to put it out of your mind in the effort of having a good time.

He smiles and stands dropping both dishes in the sink before he heads off into another room motioning for you to follow.

The two of you must make a decent amount of noise, because as you leave the kitchen, you can hear the tell-tale sound of paws on hardwood and before you know it, you're surrounded in labs. Before you get pummeled, Tyler grabs your wine glass from your hand before they could pounce you with love.

The dogs are wonderful.

He makes a fuss of trying to get the yellow one to stop jumping, but the brown and black ones are a little more well behaved, a little older and calmer. They hear his stern voice and sit and allow you to ruffle their ears, while the yellow one dances around happily, in between you and Tyler.

“It's fine,” you tell him. “If this is how I die, it's worth it,” you're fully sat on the floor now, giving pets and staving off sloppy kisses. He lets the dogs attack you with love for another minute before he helps you up from the floor.

“You'll spoil them.” He hands you back your wine and tells the dogs to go lay down, which they surprisingly do as they head off into an adjacent room. Tyler follows behind them.

“This is the living room,” he pauses, eyeing the dogs who look up at the sound of his voice from their position on the couch. “No,” he stares them down sternly and they plop their heads back onto the couch cushions and ignore you as you walk though.

“This is the dining room, I never use this. I don't even know why I have this room. I only use it when my mom's here.” It's amazing how the house is beautifully furnished and decorated, without looking like a 20 something male threw it all together or looking too overly pretentious, like it was done by a pricey designer.

He drags you into the game room, through the media room, and he ducks his head into a room that he calls his office. “I probably use this room less than the dining room.” He doesn’t even cross over the threshold, and keeps on his way to the stairs.

Letting the curiosity get the better of you, you step in and see stacked hockey pucks and gloves on the desk and jerseys on the wall. It starts to click. It would make sense for him to work in sports; it would afford him the money to own a house like this, and would probably require travel. He’s in great shape and Texas is wrought with professional trainers. You make a mental note to ask him about it later when you get the chance.

Suddenly though, you feel a little uncomfortable in your tight jeans, thinking about all of the hard bodies he probably comes into contact with daily.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Tyler calls from outside of the room, and decide you should probably stop snooping around without his consent; it’s not nice.

___________

The tour continues upstairs.

He shows you where his mom likes to stay, and then drags you into the room his sisters fight over for when they visit.

You know where this is going. Normally, you'd be delighted a guy like him was interested in getting into your pants, but you're not really in the mood to take them off anymore, considering how self conscious you're feeling. You feel a little claustrophobic in your own clothes, your shirt feels constricting around your arms and chest and you can feel where the waist of you jeans is digging into your flesh.

It's an honest shame, because his bedroom is awesome. Everything is a soft neutral. It's decorated minimally but tastefully. There are floor to ceiling windows that light the room up in warm reds and oranges with the dusky sky and the bed looks huge and warm.

You end up not having to deny him, because he doesn't even spare the bed a second glance before he's dragging you into his closet, which is like, wow.

“Hooooooooly,” you're almost reverent looking at the amount of clothes and shoes and, quite frankly the solid organizational skills that were put to practice here.

“Yeah, it's okay.” He looks almost sheepish. Like he doesn't want to be showing off, but you did ask for a tour, so he’s just giving the people what they want. .

“I think your closet is bigger than my entire bedroom.” You're backing out into his bedroom again and see another door.

“Do you have two closets you absolute diva?” You gently slap his chest, unable to stop teasing him as his face gets that distinct pink tinge again. Your face heats up as well at the hard muscle you feel under your hands. That smirk makes its way back to his face as he catches your hand lingering on his pecs. His eyebrows approach his hairline, so you turn away from him, pushing the door open, nosy once more.

“Okay, your bathroom is definitely bigger than my bedroom,” you do a little spin to take in the whole thing. Looking up at the skylight and out the window at the view. He laughs it off before grabbing your hand and tugging you.

“C'mon, I'm going to kick your ass at pool... unless you have to go?” He looks at you, waiting for approval.

You think about leaving for about a second, overwhelmed by- well, by everything. This house, and the cars, and his general… overwhelmingly handsome, charming self. But then you think about it again, and really, you do honestly like him, so you decide to throw caution to the wind. You’ve gotten this far with false bravado and flirtatious teasing,

“You don't even stand a chance, Tommy,” you smile before ducking under his arm and out of his room, hurrying down the stairs.

He chases you, right on your heels until he catches you at the game room, pressed against your back, all warm and big. He puts his hands on your hips and whispers low in you ear, “Let's see what you got, tough guy.”

___________

Once you're away from the bedroom you start to feel a little better. He keeps making sure you're comfortable and wanting to stay, he doesn't seem to be less attracted to you because you're not wealthy or shaped like a runway model. You can't seem to find a fault with him; normally that would be annoying, but you're just happy the only issue you have now is whether or not you want to make a move on him, since it seems he's letting you control all things carnal.

There's not as much pressure down in the game room, far away from the expectations of the bedroom.

Scratch that. There's a lot of pressure, but it's a different type of pressure. Because you were definitely shit talking before and you've lost 3 games of pool in a row. Not just lost; lost would be underselling it.

You were absolutely eviscerated- sinking only 1 of your own balls before Tyler cleared the table, then calls the 8 ball's pocket and smoothly shoots it in without a problem.

Pouting, you turn around and poke Tyler in the chest, “I don't want to play with you anymore. This isn't any fun!”

He grabs your wrist and tugs you towards him. He's laughing, a full loud thing that makes his eyes scrunch up and shows all of his straight white teeth. Your competitive side is still feeling pouty, but your red-blooded-female side is hot under the collar for this idiot.

He wraps his arms around you. “Now you know how I felt when you were showing me and Buttercup up. Sucks doesn't it?”

You let him wrap you up in his arms, it's a nice consolation prize for getting your ass handed to you over and over and over. “Yeah, yeah. I've never played before so… you should be a lot less proud.”

He looks down at you a little affronted. “Let me show you proper technique. I can't keep beating you mercilessly when you're such a rookie. It's not even a challenge.”

___________

You'd like to say that your heart rate and body temperature remained steady as he oh-so-innocently bent you over the table to show you how to properly line up a shot, but you make it a habit to not lie through your teeth.

It feels incredible. He's all angular, hard lines against your curves. It makes you feel distinctly feminine and small, something no other man has ever really accomplished.

Tyler is keeping it strictly business. No funny stuff at all. His left hand on your left elbow helping you stay steady against the felt of the table, while his right hand covers yours, far back on the pool cue.

He shows you a few times, slowly pulling your arm back and smoothly sliding it forward to make contact with the cue ball. You'd never assign the term “erotic” to billiards, but now you'd be hard pressed to ever look at a pool table again without thinking of this moment.

“Go easy. Gentle hands. You don't need a lot of force. It's more about finesse,” he's so close the words drop out of his mouth and settle onto the column of your neck.

Odds are really high you might jump him. It's absolutely terrible.

When he finally stands up and lets you have a go at it alone, you're practically vibrating out of your skin. You hit the cue ball all wrong since your hands are shaking, and it hops right over the ball you're aiming for and off of the table.

“You okay there hot shot?” He's stood up behind you as you drop your face onto the table in embarrassment. You can hear the laugh in his voice.

“It's going great, Trevor,” you manage, raising your head and scowling at him over your shoulder. ‘Great’ may be embellishing, but then he runs a finger over the sliver of skin that's exposed from where your shirt has rucked up, and all of a sudden you need to reassess your choice in adjectives.

The moment can easily be upgraded from “great” to transcendental.

You're not sure if you should stand up and turn around, since that would be prime position to get your mouth on his again. Or maybe you could stay bent over the table and see where he plans on going with this. Or maybe you just let your body turn into a pile of goo here on the table under his hands. They all seem like pretty solid options as far as you're concerned.

Tyler's hand shimmies your shirt up a few more inches and you entertain a flash of insecurity at the thought of your love handles existing, but you're happy to report that you forget about it pretty quickly as Tyler stretches his front over your back once more, clearly undeterred.

He pushes your hair to the side and tucks his chin into your neck, murmuring directly into your ear.

“This good? You want me to stop?” He's grabbing both sides of your waist and there's not a single gap between your bodies.

You're not quite sure you can fully formulate a coherent sentence with his lips running wild on the nape of your neck, so you press your ass back into him so he knows to continue.

“That's a yes then? Use your words, babe” you feel his smile against your jaw before he gently lets his teeth scrape over a particularly sensitive spot under your ear.

All the air in your lungs leaves you in a breathy moan, “Yeah. Yes. You're good.”

His hands drop lower and squeeze your hips, “I'm ‘good,’ what?” He presses his hips closer to yours before pulling away. The friction, while short lived, is sorely missed and leaves you wishing he'd do it again.

The short circuit in your brain isn't making the connection he's trying to lead you towards, and you turn your head towards him, eyes half-lidded while letting out an extremely intelligent, “huh?”

He repeats the motion again, pulling you back harder against him this time. “I'm good- what, (y/n).” He puts emphasis on your name, growling it into your ear.

This time he backs away entirely and pulls you to stand up and turn to face him, eyebrows raised, waiting for you to give him what he's looking for.

“You're good…” you swing your eyes skyward and pretend to consider it while wrapping your arms around his neck, eyebrows furrowed and nose wrinkled, “Todd?”

Tyler's jaw sets, but it doesn't reach his eyes. “You wound me.” His hand is over his heart. “Maybe I can jog your memory.”

He's got your ass in his hands before you can blink, and you're suddenly sat on the edge of the table. His hands rise to the waist of your pants while his mouth is fixed against yours, playfully dragging his tongue over the roof of your mouth. It tickles and is sharply contrasted with the stinging bite he leaves on your bottom lip.

“Can I take these off?” He's still tugging at the top of your jeans, so you stand and nod rapidly, shedding your pants before he has the chance to do it himself.

“Thanks,” he kisses the word into your mouth as he puts you back onto the edge of the table and gently pushes you back. “I'm going to do these too, if you don't mind,” his index finger slips in between your lacy thong and your hip. He succeeds in tugging it down off of your ankles when you nod your approval.

His hands grip your thighs just above your knees as he settles himself onto the floor between them.

You know what's coming and are so keyed up you're not sure you can even watch. It's a struggle to keep your eyes open, but the alternative is missing it, and you definitely don't want that to happen.

He goes slowly, licking gently up your right leg, but not breaking eye contact. “You know that's not my name,” he shakes his head gently.

Even now, he's such a little shit that you don't want to give into him. So, you press your cheek to your shoulder and lean back on your forearms, your eyes staying on his, “Tyson?”

He moves onto your left leg, licking from your knee into the crease of your hip. “Not quite. But I'm sure it will come to you.”

His hands push you over the lip of the table and onto the playing surface. A small shriek leaves your mouth because you hadn't been expecting it. He takes the opportunity of you being momentarily stunned to press his tongue against your pussy.

It's been more than a while since you've been privy to such lovely treatment, and you can't help it when your thighs tighten and your hand digs into his hair, while your head tips all the way back in bliss.

“Oh my God. Oh my God; I'm so sorry!” You pull your thighs apart, embarrassed that you'd boxed his ears so firmly between them, but he doesn't stop or even seem all that phased by it. Instead he responds by digging his fingertips into your flesh, pulling your legs wider so he can wedge his shoulders between them while moving closer into you.

Everything feels too good. His hands on your flesh burn in the best possible way and his mouth moving against you is making you lightheaded. You can't control it when your breath starts coming in quick pants as he starts running a finger up your slit while focusing his tongue on your clit.

It's stupid, but you open your eyes and  chance a peek down at him. Tyler must be able to feel your gaze, because he opens his eyes then and halts all his movements.

The needy whine that makes its way out of your mouth is ten different kinds of embarrassing, but you need him back on you. Your nerves are on fire, waiting to be sated, but Tyler just looks up at you, inches from where he was, haughty.

“Please don't stop.” Your hand finds its way back into his hair and you tug him forward a little. It's his turn to moan out, and he puts his mouth to you again with renewed fervor.

You can't help yourself when his tongue pushes into you and his nose nudges your clit and he lets loose a growl. No one could blame you for pressing further against him as you beg-

“Tyler, please. Please don't stop,” breathlessly while staring down at him.

You don't realize what you said until he pauses and looks up at you. You can't see the smirk, but you can feel the sweet kiss he places on your clit before he buries his face against you again. He contains multitudes.

It almost makes you wish you kept your mouth shut, because you know you gave him exactly what he'd been after. But you can't be bothered to care as the pressure in your belly becomes too much to bear. He focuses his mouth on your clit, relentlessly circling his tongue around it, and slips two fingers into you, stretching you, and the pressure explodes. Your vision spots as you try to keep your eyes on what Tyler is doing between your legs, but you have to close them when he reaches up to grab your breast over your shirt, too overstimulated by the way he's still sucking at your clit to need any more.

He rises up when you start to whine and wiggle against his licks, his face is wet with you and he looks so painfully sexy, lips swollen and red.

“That's it, baby. That's all I wanted. I knew you’d remember me.” He leans over you and kisses you gently on your lips. Tasting the combination of his mouth and your cunt is only serving to make you wetter.

He grabs your hand and pulls you up, “C’mon, baby, let's go upstairs.” He drags you behind him as he heads up towards his bedroom.

___________

When you get to his room you're magnetized to him. Up until now, you really haven't gotten your hands on him much. So you kissed him, and let your hands slide up his shirt and straight to his chest, you can tell before you've even gotten him undressed that you grossly underestimated how fit he is.

It's so unfair. Everywhere you're soft and curved he's hard, unyielding edges.

The moan slips out before you can close your lips over it, with your face pressed against his neck and your hands running up and down his firm stomach. You shake your head against him, disbelief at how hot he is and how he’s encouraging you to touch him like this.

If you thought he was unbearably smug before, you clearly hadn't seen anything yet. Tyler reaches behind his neck to pull his shirt off and you literally feel like you're in Magic Mike. He's too perfect. The black ink swirling over tanned skin, all pulled tight over his thick muscles.

Your hands go to his shoulders sliding down his triceps and his forearms, before linking your hands with his. You coax his tongue out of his mouth and into yours before sucking gently on it.

The hand holding doesn't last, he pulls your hands back up to his chest, “No, don’t stop. I like that. Do that again (y/n).” He presses your hands flat against him and rests his on top, dragging you up and down his chest and abs. His eyes drop closed and his head is tipped back just a little, savoring the feel of your hands all over him. Tyler clearly wants you to enjoy his body, and you can't say it will be a hardship to give him what he wants; he looks like he stepped out of your wildest fantasies. A tattooed bad boy with a secret heart of gold, the cliches write themselves.

You desperately want to make him feel good, he gave you what was surely the best orgasm of your life down in the game room. But, you just can't help the teasing; it's how you flirt, after all.

“What's that, Tyler?” Speaking soft and low into the shell of his ear, you keep your left hand where he's positioned it on his chest, but slowly slide the right one down his chest, down his impossibly defined stomach, and down to the drooped waistband of his jeans as you tuck a finger into them, hoping he gets the hint. “Tell me what you want, Tyler.”

His eyes look wild as he steps back and reaches down to unbutton and drop his pants. He's so hard already, you can feel it as you get your hand around him through his boxer briefs. Continuing to palm him, you feel a little drunk with power. He's letting out these little huffs and whines that fall into your neck and he's wrapped one arm around you and is grabbing at your ass so hard you're sure to have bruises.

He seems content to let you have your way with his body for the time being, almost egging you on with all his noises and gripping you harder when you give him something he likes. Currently it's the fact that you've pushed down his underwear and are continuing to pull his dick in long, smooth strokes, rolling your thumb over the head, that has him gasping in your ear.

“Yes, like that- wanna be inside you, please,” he's tugging at your shirt trying to pull it off, but you're having so much fun turning him to putty you're not sure if you want to give into him.

You've never had a man like him before. He seems content to let you set the pace of everything. To be in control of this huge man and how he'll get his pleasure, it- it knocks the wind out of you a bit to be honest.

Shortening your strokes, you pull your hand away from his cock, and lift your shirt over your head. Tyler's opened his eyes and looks over at you, groaning when he takes in your breasts. Your bra is pulled down over them, nipples peeking out, since he's been feeling you up over your shirt for the past few minutes. There's really no point in having it on, so you unclasp it and shimmy it off of your shoulders.

He's reaching out to touch you, but before he can, you're on your knees in front of him, sat fully nude, ready to make him feel good.

Dropping his head, he looks down at you and lets out a whine, “That's not fair I can't touch you from up here.”

Bless him, you're going to wreck him.

You take just the tip of his cock into your mouth and he stops complaining.

“You can so,” you tell him, grabbing his hands and bringing them to your head. You wrap your own hands around his thighs. They're firm and muscular like the rest of him, and you can't help yourself, so you lean over and lick up his inner thigh, back to his cock.

He's being so gentle, not using any of the leverage you gave him. So, you use your grip on his legs to force yourself down on him and hope he'll take the hint. After a few bobs of your head, it seems he understands and softly pulls you down over and over onto his cock with the hands that are wrapped up in your hair.

You love the way he's falling apart above you, breathy and begging for more, but you really don't want him to finish in your mouth tonight. Mostly in case you never get this opportunity with him again; you want the memory him inside of you at the very least.

He has the same idea because he tugs gently at your hair. “(Y/n), you gotta stop.” The pride swells up inside you as you feel his legs shaking. “I can't- just get up here.”

You stand, your thighs are a little a shaky themselves from being on your knees for so long, but he grabs you by your upper arms and helps you up.

“Lay down,” you barely recognize the gravelly voice that commands Tyler to the bed, but you know it's your own. He's so good, horizontal before you can blink, lying there waiting for you.

“Please, (y/n). Wanted this for so long, since the first time I saw you. You're so sexy.” You roll your eyes, mostly to stop them from watering at the heart wrenching sincerity that he speaks with. You straddle him and kiss his lips,

“You're awfully sappy for someone who was just fucking my face.” It's his turn to roll his eyes, but they're forced closed as you sink down on him.

He winds his arms around your waist and sits up just enough to watch your ass bounce on him from over your shoulder.

“Tyler,” he tears his eyes away from the image and looks up at you, “I want to make you come.” You stop bouncing on him and slowly roll your hips until his head knocks back against the pillows. He isn't looking up at you, eyes wrenched shut, so you assume you're on the right track.

“Such a good boy. Waited so long for me, Tyler,” he's breathing is labored at best but he manages to slow it enough to answer.

“Love when you say my name. I want you to come, can you do it again?” He's flushed from his face down to his chest and he's practically art, slick with sweat, muscles straining.

All it really takes is him leaning up a little and licking at one breast before sucking a hickey into it for you to lose it around him once more. It's overwhelming this time too.

Tyler is relentless. He takes over this time too, pressing up into you as you try to clamp your legs down around his hips to slow him, used to him letting you be in control, but it seems it's his turn now. He manages to get you onto your back without pulling out, and you haven't stopped coming around him yet.

“No, no. You had your fun. My turn, trust me.” You push up at his chest without any real intent of removing him from you. Your overstimulation quickly turning into another orgasm under his unrelenting hips. He can see the second you're falling apart, the legs that were wrapped around him twitching and squeezing at him.

“Yes, good girl,” he's cupping each breast roughly and you think if he makes you come again you may just pass out.

“Tyler please, I think you're going to kill me,” you scramble underneath him, grabbing at any skin of his you can find. He does that laugh again, with his head back and mouth open wide, nose scrunched. He's honestly a blast and if this is the last time you get to see him like this you will be sincerely disappointed.

“Keep saying my name like that,” he looks down at you all soft, eyes glinting, “that'll make me come.” He fucks into you three times, quickly, almost snarky, before returning to long smooth strokes. Pulling all the way out so only the very tip of the head remains inside of you before pushing all the way back inside, and shuddering each time.

“Is that all it takes?” You kid with him, pushing his hair back off his forehead. “You just want me to tell me how good you are, Tyler?” You feel him pulse inside of you and pause for a brief second before he picks his rhythm back up. “Yes, that's what you want. Tyler, you're so good, baby. I love your dick, Tyler. Fuck.”

Honestly, the way he's staring down at you like you're the one who hung the moon and the way your voice sounds wrecked and breathless is enough to have to clenching around him again, and it isn't even for his benefit when you cry out, “Tyler! Fuck like that Ty, don't stop, please, please, please, Tyler!”

The combine of his voice and you clamping down around him must finally send him over the edge and as soon as you feel him pulse inside of you, you open your eyes. He's absolutely gorgeous, face screwed up in pleasure, breathing hard through his teeth before he's spent and pulls out of you, rolling onto his side.

You scamper out of his bed to clean up and pee. The whole time trying to delay the rough thought of him kicking you out or calling and Uber to send you home in. Just the idea grates against your brain and has you nervous to leave the bathroom.

When you finally build up the courage, he's lying there, still gloriously naked, one foot tucked under the blanket. You search around for your underwear and remember that you left them down in the game room before sighing. Tyler's eye peeks open.

“What are you doing? Get in bed. It's late.” You're stunned and tilt your head blubbering out before you can stop yourself, “You want me to stay?”

“Yeah of course, I'll take you home in the morning after breakfast. I think I have some eggs downstairs?” he scratches at his hair before rolling to face your side of the bed, patting the pillow welcomingly.

Huffing out a surprised laugh, you pull the blankets up the bed and slide underneath them, so grateful that you finally gave into him all those weeks ago.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 38

Okay, fresh from @parisconstantine, here is the next installment.  Head’s up to @baelpenrose, @books-and-cartoons, and @stuffy-lana, I managed to mention all of your amazing characters here.  This is by no means the last chapter for them, but the most basic possible introduction.

As far as everyone’s favorite side characters from the previous contest ( @thatkidfrompinterest and Zach, @werewolf2578 and Maverick and Grey), they are by no means going to go away!  I love those folks!

Thank you everyone, as always for reading this far.  Minor mention of someone kicking a pet, but the pet won in the end ;)

Much to my sister’s patient frustration, the search for my new assistant was slow-going.  As I eased back into my role as Councillor, some of the additional work was taken off her shoulders simply by virtue of Simon and I working together. She still had a long list of applicants to consider, and an even longer list of people who may be qualified but were currently assigned to other areas.  Logistics on the Ark were a curious thing, and the longer I worked with Tyche and Simon, the more I was amazed by her ability to keep everything straight.

For starters, there were several positions on the ship which were by appointment or election.  The Council itself was appointed, but when we reached the as-yet-unnamed colony, the positions would start rotating out on an elected basis, one per year. Administrators were appointed by a unanimous decision of the Council, from a list of applicants approved by the Councillor they would be assisting most directly. Some, like Tyche, served no member directly, and were therefore voted on by a group of candidates put forth by each of the Council.  Then there were department heads, educators, researchers….

It was a headache, to say the least.

Part of the reason I never wanted to be on the Council in the first place was a healthy distaste for bureaucracy, and it had never been more evident than now.  My request to have Xiomara pre-approve any applicant before I even saw their record caused quite a stir, which I didn’t even consider as a possibility. My life was on the line!  It seemed obvious that I would want the person in charge of ship safety to narrow down the list.  But no… Eino, Pranav, and Huynh all thought this was considered ‘undue influence’.  Simon agreed with me and Xiomara, but his vote and mine were considered one, representing the seat we shared. Grey abstained from opinion for over a month until they were able to list the pros and cons logically, eventually proposing that it would be a good practice for anyone appointed to the Council or as Administrator, with the caveat that Xiomara’s background check would replace her vote, since she obviously approved of any candidates she passed on.

All that before we could even start reviewing candidates.  I thought Tyche was going to eat the other Councillors before anything was decided.

Fortunately, she was ready to go when the approval finally came in, with nearly fifty applicants who fit the criteria I had given her as a starting point. One by one, Xiomara reviewed them officially, then handed them off to Derek for the deeper digging.  She wasn’t even terribly sneaky about it – she marched in my office, flicked each file to his datapad, and watched him tear them to digital shreds with a delight that nearly made my skin crawl.

<This guy kicked Lyric,> Derek signed, flicking the file to me and my sister. <That’s a no go.>

“Who is Lyric?” I asked faintly as I reviewed the file. Safety checks came back okay, no unusual psychological issues dating back to Before, no criminal history in the before other than a couple drunk and disorderlies.  Looked clean enough.  Background as an accountant, worked a barrista in school.

“Grandma Kim’s dog,” my sister clarified.

“Who is Grandma Kim? Kim what?”

“Just ‘Grandma Kim’,” was the shrugged reply. “Only name she ever gave anyone. She works with Antoine in Social Services. Tough as nails, sweet as tea.  No clue how old she is, but she reeks of combat training.  Lyric is her German Shepherd, acts somewhere between service dog and K-9 unit.  They get assigned to people who suffer from acute fear of being attacked – severe domestic violence victims, you get the idea.  She pulls a really good ‘doting grandma’ act, until she suddenly has someone backed against a wall with a sharp object in soft tissue.”

I whistled, impressed. “Any chance she applied?” A grandmotherly ninja sounded like a good bodyguard right about now, if I didn’t think Conor would be seventeen flavors of butt-hurt about being replaced.

My sister and Derek simultaneously answered “I wish” and <you wish>. No luck on my side. Damn.

“Okay, dog-kicker is out of the list, if he managed to survive kicking said dog?” I arched my eyebrow at Derek, specifically.

<Most of him. Lyric kept a few toes and a chunk of calf from what I read in the file.>

“I really hope Miys didn’t regenerate any of that,” I grumbled before glancing at the ceiling. “And don’t answer that.  I don’t want to be disappointed in a good dog or disappointed in myself.”

Tyche cleared her throat. “About Grandma Kim…” She looked at me pointedly.

“You said she didn’t apply for the position.” I was so confused.

“She didn’t.  But, mon soeur, you need a therapy companion – “

“I certainly do not.”

“You certainly do.  I know Conor is looking out for you, and Noah monitors you remotely when you’re alone, but it isn’t enough.  You barely sleep, you only eat if Noah or Conor force you to.  I can’t force you to, because I’m just as bad. I’ve seen the medical reports – “

“That’s an invasion of my privacy!” I nearly shrieked in panic.

“I’m your emergency contact, you idiot!” she shouted. “They are required to tell me these things! Did that never occur to you, you fucking genius!?” She and I both panted, trying to catch our breaths.

“You don’t have to assign me a boyfriend or girlfriend,” I grumbled.

She heaved a sigh and flattened me with a glare. “I’m not trying to get you fucking laid, dumbass. You need someone to take care of you the way you take care of literally everyone else.  Someone to protect you, and dote on you.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she blocked me with an outstretched hand and continued. “I want you to consider having Grandma Kim and Lyric assigned to you.” Staring me down until she was certain I had time to think it over, she finally moved her hand.

“You’re assigning me a grandmother?” I tilted my head in confusion.

“Duh.” I was reasonably certain her eyes were going to roll out of her head. “You wanna get laid, do it on your own time. But a sweet old lady who conjures her weight in gummy bears everywhere she goes, complete with big guard dog and impressively sharp knives?  Even I would sleep better knowing she was watching over you.”

“Conor would be hurt,” I tried complaining, only half-heartedly. “And Mac hates dogs.”

Derek clapped to get our attention. <Mac loves Lyric. They take naps together.>

God damn it, even the cat was against me.

“Plus, she cooks,” Tyche wheedled. “You could trade recipes. Conor would be so over the moon at fresh cooked food, I think he would be okay with being backup to a little old lady.”

“Little old ninja, from the sounds of it,” I grumbled. “Can I at least think it over?”

“All I ask,” Tyche grinned in victory, nonetheless.

<This one is racist.> Derek moved the conversation on.  Out of the forty approved by Xiomara, Derek only left seventeen in the end. A racist, two drunks, one who didn’t believe in mental disabilities, a handful of flat out assholes (“That’s not illegal,” Xiomara argued.  “It doesn’t mean it’s excusable,” I pointed out. After all, Derek had a high threshold of intolerable asshole).

Of the seventeen finalists, two files really stood out. The first just baffled me. “This guy is entirely too pretty,” I muttered. “And he put down that he was a bartender… why is he applying for this job? What’s his current assignment?”

Tyche hmmm’d for a second before responding. “Sebastian Reed, twenty-six, owned the bar, actually. Currently assigned to Social Services, helping grieving families and those who grew up in households with drug-addicts. Was engaged, pregnant fiancée drowned Before.”

“Wait. He’s currently twenty-six? That means he would have been sixteen when the world went to shit,” I pointed out, trying to make sense of it in my head.

Xiomara held up a hand to interject. “He stated he was twenty-five when he came on board. He looks about right for that age. You know the rules – whatever name and age you gave when you came on board are the name and age we go by.  Official documents may disagree with that, but everyone is entitled to their privacy. So, no snooping on that, if he wants to tell you anything to the contrary, that’s fine.  But I’ll tell you now – there is no official record of his birth, but the bar was left to him when he was eight years old, by an uncle that passed away.  It was remarkable enough that I was at least able to find record of that. The rest could be completely accurate from there.”

“Okay, fair. We’ll respect that.  My real question is this: if he owned a bar and knows how to bartend, why don’t we have a bar on this ship!?” I demanded. “Don’t get me wrong, I think he could completely do the job – bartenders deal with entirely too much shit, with a smile on their face usually, can say ‘no’ to literally anyone, and if he owned the bar I completely believe that he could manage meetings and scheduling.  But it would be a complete waste.  I cannot, in good conscience, take the chance that the Council would appoint him to be my administrator when we really need him to open a pub on this ship.” I dragged a hand through my hair, finally at the point where I could avoid tangles.  Luckily, my hair really didn’t tangle that much, so once I suffered through my sister getting them out, it pretty much stayed that way. “I’ll send him the request myself, once we find a space for him to open it in.”

I pulled up the second applicant that caught my attention and flicked it to my sister’s screen. “Is this a joke?” I asked. When she shook her head with a smirk, I groaned. “You cannot be serious.  This guy doesn’t even like me.”

“You literally put that down as a substantial portion of the criteria. He’s stubborn to a fault, but willing to listen and compromise.  Not just a willingness but a hunger to learn.  Looks at both sides of every conflict and comes to his own conclusions, usually in the middle, but remarkably liberal when he does take a side. Meticulously organized, knows who the authority figures are and wasn’t afraid to beard the dragon in its den, figuratively.  Most of all, he is neither a victim blamer nor a person who will only see what happened to you.  He literally, on the first time meeting you, saw a Councillor, ‘someone with sense’ as he said, and demanded your say as a Councillor.  Sure, he has no tact whatsoever, but that means he will say ‘no’ when it needs to be said, and damned the hurt feelings. It also means he is willing to disagree with you when you are wrong.”

“He actually included his encounter with you in the application,” Xiomara pointed out, highlighting the part in question. “Did you really threaten to burn the materials he was requesting?”

“They aren’t materials, they are books, and yes, I did.”

“He believed you would do it.”

“Oh, I meant it,” I chuckled. “With every fiber of my being, I meant it. While I understand his eagerness to get them, his timing was deplorable.”

“Are you really going to hand-deliver them to him?” Tyche asked, skeptical.

“I may not need to,” I murmured.  “Application by Alistair Worthington approved by me. If he passes the vote of the other four, I’ll hand them to him when I give him the job.”

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[ahnsael]

From the Winter 1975 edition of Disney News Magazine (which I found an treasure trove of on The Internet Archive -- I’m looking for one article in particular, announcing the future arrival of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland, which was the very first thing I read on my own without my grandpa’s help when I was a wee lad and he used to read his old issues of Disney News Magazine to me, so I can re-live one of the happy memories of my childhood).

But when I ran into this during my search...I mean, I was ODV (Outdoor Vending, for the uninitiated in Disneyspeak -- good old Department 944). I worked those popcorn carts (there were ten of them during busy seasons when I was there and four during slow times, not the four-eight mentioned here), and this was before Disney had realized that feeding the birds popcorn wasn’t a good idea (even in my first time at Disney, it was okay to give a kid a small courtesy cup of popcorn for free to feed the ducks).

I’ve had all kinds of popcorn. Movie theater popcorn, those holiday tins with three different flavors of popcorn, home-popped (air or a pan with some oil) popcorn...but no popcorn I’ve ever tasted compares to Disneyland popcorn.

But my favorite part of being ex-ODV, other than having sometimes been able to sell balloons or glow necklaces (you can keep that battery-operated stuff of today), is that when I see that episode of Disney After Dark where Walt gets popcorn from one of those carts, I’VE WORKED THAT SAME CART.

Obviously, I never served Walt (he died almost eight years before I was born), but I’ve had GOOD times on those popcorn carts.

Including one of my favorite guest interactions ever, in which I met them twice over the course of five days (their daughter was sick for the intervening three days and they weren’t able to come in even though they had tickets).

The family (grandparents, parents, and the parents’ daughter) were from Washington state. They had never been to Disneyland before. I was working what, at the time, was Popcorn 4 (last I heard it’s called Popcorn 1 now, since it’s the one at Central Plaza that most people see first, in its old location where it was part of the scenery if you took a picture of Sleeping Beauty Castle from south of Central Plaza, but that may have changed since I worked there the second time). They came up to me in the morning full of questions.

I made it a habit to carry park maps in my back pocket (and, since in the Southern California Heat, I tended to sweat, I took about ten more than I thought I would need so that when I gave them a map out of my back left pocket, it wouldn’t be soaked with butt-sweat; I know, TMI, and I’m sorry, but it’s the truth).

So I gave them the map that they didn’t grab on their way in, explained everything I could to them, even wrote out an itinerary for them on the best times to hit different attractions (since those “best times” are often the same for different attractions, I encouraged them to prioritize, but also figured that since they had five days they had plenty of time to get it all in -- back then, before DCA opened, you COULD do Disneyland in one day and hit EVERY attraction if you planned it right; not sure that’s possible today).

While I talked to the parents/grandparents, I gave the daughter a free courtesy cup of popcorn to feed the ducks that ALWAYS hung around that popcorn wagen waiting for handouts or scraps.

There were two ducks there that day. She named them “Pop” and “Corn” as she fed them.

And she was better at telling them apart than I was. I just saw a couple of mallard ducks, but she recognized the differences in their markings.

So I basically helped this family plan five days in the park, detail by detail. And this was NOT an imposition on their part -- I was happy to do so. I mean, that popcorn cart gets REALLY busy at parade times and later in the day, but just after park opening it’s mostly open just for show. When the rope drops on Main Street, there aren’t exactly many people who think, “The first thing I need to do today is get popcorn!” It’s a slow time of day on that cart, and I loved helping give directions or advice or doing whatever I could to make a guest’s day better.

I gave the family my schedule for the next four days, with the caveat that schedules can be changed last minute and, while I might be scheduled to sell ice cream bars in Critter Country the next day, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be selling churros in Tomorrowland instead.

And I really looked forward to seeing them again. They were REALLY nice people, and I wanted to be able to check up on them and see how things were going if they stopped by my carts over the next few days.

I didn’t see them for the next three days.

The last day of their vacation, I was a Lead -- which meant more time backstage, and less time onstage as I handled the paperwork end of things more than I handled the onstage end.

But it was my job that night to “close the park,” which means that I would go around to the popcorn carts (the only ones that aren’t brought back to the ODV warehouse that night) to make sure they had been properly cleaned, and to put tarps over them so the people who hose down the walkways every night wouldn’t end up spraying the collected dirt/debris onto the carts, so that they would still be clean the next day.

This night, I had just finished -- I had to wait for Control 1 (the main security office) to announce that the park was clear to the Hub (Central Plaza) and to the Hub only before I went to my last cart at Central Plaza.

I finished that (usually I used a bicycle to do this but I’d gotten an early start that night and knew that I couldn’t let guests see me on a bicycle) and as I started walking back to the office (a route that would take me from Central Plaza through Frontierland, New Orleans Square, and Critter Country), I saw the family again on the bridge between Central Plaza and Frontierland.

So I stopped and checked up on them, knowing it was the end of their last day. They recognized me (which, as many thousands of people I talk to each day and how many cast members guests talk to, I was impressed both that the remembered me and that I remembered them, though I had spent more time with them than I do with the average guest so they had kind of stuck out to me more than the average “where’s the bathroom?” guests), and we talked a bit about their trip.

I started to ask about what they got to experience, but the mom quickly shushed me and explained that the daughter had been too sick to come to the park for the middle three of the five days, and that they had just been in their hotel room and were only willing to come in on Day 5 because they wanted the daughter’s last day to be a Disney experience, and not a “stuck-in-a-hotel-room” experience, and that they didn’t bring her in until late in the day because they were worried that they would make other people sick. This broke my heart. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

But while I talked to the mom, the daughter saw two ducks swimming in the water near the bridge, and declared that they were Pop and Corn (not gonna lie, I was kind of proud that she named them after the thing I gave her to feed them on the first day, even though now I know that feeding popcorn to ducks isn’t the best idea). I honestly have no clue whether they were the same ducks. A mallard is a mallard to my eye. But I wasn’t about to argue.I went back to what was then Popcorn 4 (leftover popcorn was left in a large plastic bag to be picked up in the morning and taken to a local food bank where it joined other leftover Disneyland food as a tax write-off donation to those who could still use it, rather than being thrown away).

I shared some history and trivia with them (at this point, including the daughter, since the mom had already told me what their experience had been like and I could tailor things to avoid asking about things like “You know that part in this ride?” to avoid having to hear the daughter say she hadn’t been on it.

Security came by on their sweep to get everyone out. Even the Main Street shops had closed at this point.

Fortunately, the guard who showed up and I had spoken several times backstage. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we knew each other well enough to respect each other professionally. When I pulled him aside and explained the situation, and told him that I would be responsible for this family and get them out before long, but that...we needed a moment, he tipped his cap and moved on (and I did walk the family out when all was said and done to make sure they did leave and didn’t spend the night in the park, but it’s also amazing knowing that I was not only the first cast member they had a conversation with about the details of their trip, but also that I was literally the LAST cast member they spoke to AT ALL in the park...that’s still a source of pride for me something like 25 years later).

At one point during my conversation with the mom (the dad was sadly deceased), the mom literally asked me to marry her. I’m pretty sure it was meant as a joke, and that’s how I took it at the time. But it’s the only time anyone proposed to me (the one time I proposed to someone else, it ended in a Dear John email on Christmas Eve so while it gets easier 22 years later, if I’m a little short with anyone or any posts that day...it still hits me this time of year).

But this was before my actual engagement, so there was no pain at the time.

The mom gave me her number and told me to call if I was ever in Washington state so they could return the favor of showing me around.

And the thing is...I lived in Washington state for a while quite a few years after this. But while I kept the phone number for YEARS (even if, at the time, I thought of it as “saving a memory” rather than actually intending to ever call), I had lost the number in a car wreck in which my car was totaled (back when I lived in my car so literally EVERYTHING important to me had been in it and I never recovered any of it).

I don’t remember what part of Washington they were in. And we were on a first-name basis from the get-go, so there’s no looking them up now to say “Hey, I’m that Disneyland guy from 20 years or so ago, how are things?”

But I totally would have checked in had I still had their number when I was in Vancouver WA.

It’s a guest interaction that has always stuck with me, and always will. I’ve had several of those, but this is the only one that comes with regret for not keeping in touch.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Geddon #3 Thoughts

Okey dokey this was actually better than the last few issues of the main book.

 Now look...there are still problems.

Still gaping fundamental problems.

Let us put aside the fact that the Inheritors are awful antagonists.

We still have 3 glaring problems that were present in Spider-Verse yet totally fixable in this event.

a)      The over focus upon Doc Ock, which if anything is WORSE in this event than in the last one

b)      Just like in Spider-Verse waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many characters rendering most everyone generic cartoon variants of Spider-Man as opposed to using the nuances of their personalities and exploring them via interactions. We have RYV Peter and MJ right next to a kid Peter and Uncle Ben Spidey and...nothing. Isn’t seeing Ben or kid Peter react to seeing all grown up Peter and his Spider WIFE more interesting that talking about how we should have one big Spider team? Isn’t seeing RYV Peter react to a living Uncle Ben more compelling than Spider-Ham making a snarky one gag? The closest we get to truly exploiting these types of opportunities is Ben and Otto butting heads and RYV MJ briefly (very briefly) showing a soft spot for Kid Peter. But would that have been that different if it was any other character? It only means something because he’s a kid and she’s a mother.

c)       Why. Has. No. One. Suggested. Fighting. The. Inheritors. With. RADIATION!

*facepalm*

I’m even ashamed of myself for not bringing that point up sooner.

The first Morlun story concludes with the genius tactic by Peter to use radiation to fight Morlun which practically kills him.

In Spider-Verse NOBODY brings this up until conveniently towards the end when they are stranded on a radioactive Earth.

In Spider-Geddon, again, nobody brings this up.

Radiation might not be to the Inheritors what sonics and fire are to symbiote but it has still been a consistently effective weapon against them as far as anyone knows. And in almost all the early Venom and Carnage stories Spider-Man or the other protagonists (and the writers handling them back then) were smart enough to try and exploit that obvious weakness so why do we start up the stupid pills in Inheritor stories?

In Spider-Verse you vaguely had the excuse that really only Peter and maybe Doc Ock would know of that weakness but after that story everyone knew of that weakness and no one is trying to exploit it. I get that you need recruits but if you HAVE a means of beating them then maybe USE it? For fuck’s sake Doc Ock is a specialist in radiology!

This next criticism is a little more debatable I will admit.

In the context of this situation...is it really believable that there would be a roughly equal number of people opposed to killing the Inheritors?

Of course there would be some but there seems to be about as many opposing the idea as supporting it. In fact the book is (superficially) framing both sides as neither wholly right or wrong.

But...is that really the case?

Touchy subject here but...this is a genuine bona fide war for survival. The Inheritors were actively engaging in genocide in their killing spree last time and were trying to achieve an endgame of eradicating all spider totems, willing to murder a baby to do that.

Now you might be saying it’s right and proper for there to be a side opposed to the killing. Because Spider-Man has a no kill rule right?

And that’s true...usually...Because....he has actually taken life a few times. Sometimes deliberately. He’s no Punisher or even Captain America but it’s happened.

In fact in Morlun’s first story Peter very seriously considers for a moment how far he’s willing to go to stop Morlun once he has him at his mercy. He’s spared the decision but it’s really not clear cut what he would’ve done. In fact he outright murders Morlun in their next encounter, granted he was not in control of himself.

Now of course you have got situations like Maximum Carnage wherein Spider-Man has considered but ultimately rejected killing as a viable option, and that was also a sort of war too, one in which you had some nasty characters indeed.

Buuuuuuuut...there are important differences.

First of all Carnage and his gang were very possibly not as physically imposing as the Inheritors. Carnage was their biggest gun and he was stronger than Venom and Spidey combined. But Shriek wasn’t. Demo-Goblin wasn’t. Doppelganger wasn’t. They had their own strengths and weaknesses and none of them were push overs by any means. But it wasn’t like the only hope anyone had of taking them down in a fair fight was with sheer weight of numbers. The Inheritors are essentially a gang of Carnage’s but who can kill and weaken with just a touch.

Carnage specifically also had a more easily exploitable weakness that enabled him to be subdued more easily. Sonics and fire are easier to come by and safer to use than radiation. Remember the Inheritors might be vulnerable to radiation but it’s like how Superman is vulnerable to magic. It’s not their specific Achilles Heel like with kryptonite or sonics/fire, it’s just something beyond the limits of their durability.

Team Carnage was also not as much of a threat. Okay the Inheritors arguably might only target totems instead of civilians in general, but Carnage’s limited technology and means of travel meant he was at worst a citywide threat. The Inheritors are a multiversal threat at least to totems.

Another crucial factor here is that as weird as this might be to say now, Team Carnage had some hope of reform, whereas the Inheritors really don’t. Carnage and his crew were mostly mentally disturbed individuals with homicidal tendencies and super powers. In theory they could maybe be cured of their mental instability or their abilities. This isn’t the case with the Inheritors because they aren’t crazy at all. Mass murderers yes, but not crazy. As cartoonishly evil as they are, fundamentally they do what they do to survive. They kill the totems because they literally eat them, that’s how they are biologically constructed. They were trying to wipe out all spider totems to neutralize future threats to themselves. To hope for them to reform is akin to hoping a lion will turn vegetarian, it’s never going to happen because it’s in their nature to be what they are. They could be nicer, they could be unwilling to kill civilians to reach their goals, maaaaaaaybe they could even be convinced to not try and en masse wipe out all spider totems.

But fundamentally they do what they do because of the food chain and the Spider-Heroes of this story are their menu options.

This goes beyond the morality of taking life, it’s survival plain and simple made clearer cut because the Inheritors are willing to kill those in the way of their snack time.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, not killing the Inheritors in Spider-Verse was arguably an option because there was a viable means of containing them long term (even though eating radioactive mutant spiders would surely kill them but whatever).

In this story, that option is dead in the water. They haven’t got the means to imprison them the way Team Carnage could be imprisoned and potentially rehabilitated.

So with all this said I find it seriously questionable that the story would even bother framing this as a true blue ‘debate’. Killing them is at least as morally justified as killing Nazis in a fire fight during WWII would’ve been.

I also debate some of the people who’re on Miles’ ‘no kill’ team.

I mean RYV Peter Parker...he did literally kill Venom. And I know RYV #5 by Slott tried to make out he was renewing his no kill vow by not killing the Regent but like...he wasn’t in the wrong really for killing Venom in the first place.

Maybe this is justified on the grounds that they didn’t know of the schism between the two groups and just stuck with whatever group initially recruited them.

In the flipside I find it a little unbelievable that Gamerverse Spidey is so unfazed by Otto’s willingness to kill. From what we’ve seen of his character, I dunno I don’t get that impression of him at all. At least he’d question it and morally wrestle with it to some extent. But he just goes along with it.

In fact that describes his whole character thus far in the main event. After issue #0 (which in hindsight was released when it was because the game was at it’s hottest) his appearance here amounts to being shocked by Leopardon and making a few quips and that’s it. He’s basically here for the same reason Peter was in New Avengers, boost sales via investment in him, so he shows up to do the bare minimum. Although what makes me raise an eyebrow is if his multiverse saving adventure where he met a giant robot will ever be mentioned again. I doubt it will. Also doesn’t it make more sense for him to be on Miles’ team given his history with Miles, his comparatively more similar morality and the fact that there is an MJ on his team? It seems way more full of potential drama if nothing else; but like I said this series isn’t interested in that so much as playing with variant action figures.

Now speaking of Leopardon, unquestionably he and Supaidaman (along with Spider-Ham in fairness) stole the show. The gag scene about leading with the sword was genuinely great especially if you’ve seen shows like the 1970s Japanese Spidey show or Power Rangers/Super Sentai.

Other positives include the art and Ben Reilly not being a jerkoff. Now I’m reading this having NOT read his solo-book that preceded this so maybe he’s out of character and I just don’t know.

Something that is a positive and a negative is the use of Otto and Miles.

Obviously pushing Miles and/or (especially) Otto over Peter would typically piss me the fuck off.

As would doing a story so outside of what a Spider-Man story should be.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...I have come to appreciate some caveats to that in the context of this series.

Spider-Geddon mercifully didn’t derailing Peter (or to my knowledge Miles’) solo books the way Spider-Verse did. Even in Spec from what I’ve read it’s just Spider-Man and Morlun punching each other on the streets which mitigates the mysticism that typically shouldn’t be in a Spider-Man story. Plus Zdarsky’s (crappy) Spec run had wrapped up when Spider-Geddon hijacked Spec.

Spider-Geddon is in a sense off to the side, it’s own mini-series and can thus be it’s own thing. The tie-ins to it from other titles (like Spider-Gwen) is another discussion and I’m not reading everything because I don’t hate myself enough to do that.

Not only does this mostly mitigate it not being what a Spider-Man story should usually be (because it’s a Spider-Man universe story off to the side, not a Peter Parker or Miles story in their own books) but it also better justifies Miles and Otto getting the spotlight.

Whilst in Spider-Verse it was insulting that Peter wasn’t the main character in his own book, because this isn’t happening in his own book (but he is still the lead in his tie-ins to the main story) it makes his absence from the spotlight okay.

In theory it even makes Otto’s presence in the spotlight okay...were it not for him being an asshat painted as more morally greyer than an asshat.

That however does bring up the problem that this series was both advertised as and specifically exists to serve Miles first and foremost. This series was supposed to make bank off the public awareness of Into the Spider-Verse but Miles is at best the secondary character in this cast of thousands vs. Otto who is clearly the primary character. He gets more panel time, he gets more exploration of his personality...even if that mostly amounts to obnoxiously repeating ‘the die is cast’ over and over.

It doesn’t help when the narrative, in spite of it’s pretences of even handedness, subtly paints Otto as in the right and much smarter than Miles.

Sticking with the issue of leadership I get that this event exists to primarily (in theory) serve Miles and secondarily (in theory) serve Otto (in practice it is the reverse) because one was getting a movie and the other was getting a solo book.

So it adds up then that they’d be the leaders of their respective factions....but...surely on Miles’ team there were more qualified people?

Miles is an inexperienced kid who to my understanding has never operated as a leader in a team. You have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more experienced Spider-Heroes there some of whom may have worked as leaders before so...why is Miles leader in-story exactly?

I mean think about it, Peter was made leader of a faction in Spider-Verse because he succeeded in beating Morlun and/or he was the Chosen One or something right?

But...RYV Peter is right there. He’s identical to 616 Peter in almost every way except he

a)      Didn’t have 10+ years of shitty Brand New Day and Slott stories to live through...which automatically makes him better than 616 Peter if anything, and

b)      He’s had over 8 years worth of experience functioning as part of a team and arguably the leader of it to, or at least co-leader with MJ

Surely he  is more qualified than Miles?

Another sort of double edged sword presented in this issue is how it handles tie-ins.

Spider-Verse is slightly notorious for Slott outright lying in claiming that you wouldn’t need to read the tie-ins to follow the story but of course you did.

However to Spider-Geddon’s credit that’s only been the case in regards to issue #0. Most everything of significance that has happened outside the main books has been shown or referenced enough that you could follow the main book thus far without having read anything else. Yes, this does still make the book feel like an anthology add for everything else but it’s done better than Spider-Verse is what I’m saying.

One thing that is a hold over problem though is the wonky timeline.

I said of issue #2 that it weirdly happens before issue #0 and shows us stuff that happens after the first Spec tie-in issue. Well issue #3 continues that trend.

Whilst Spider-Geddon #2 showed us something that surely happens after the first Spec  tie-in issue (thus ruining it’s cliffhanger) but Spider-Geddon #3 seems to give us the resolution to that second tie-in issue as well because we learn Peter chooses to fight Morlun in order to keep him occupied and make everyone else’s jobs’ easier.

Um....nice to be told that in this issue rather than be shown it in Peter’s own book.

And before you ask if I just read things out of order I double checked and the second Spec tie-in issue was in fact released after Spider-Geddon #3 so the editor(s) fucked up big time.

It’s also a decision that seriously hurts the main book if they stick to it going forward.

Because Morlun for the strong first impression he had...was really never one of the more interesting or colourful of Spider-Man’s enemies.

And his family are even blander variant action figure versions of him.

Verna is Female Morlun.

Daemos is Bigger, Dumber, more Brutish Morlun.

Brix and Bora are ‘Those Ghost Twins from Matrix Reloaded’ Morlun...who also take out whips and pose as if it’s fight time for no reason in that one panel randomly.

Jennix is Scientist Morlun if he also ripping off Ra’s Al Ghul.

And Solus is Old Morlun who looks like evil Santa Claus.  

If Morlun isbread with some thinly spread butter, then his family has no butter and has dried out a lot.

Like honestly how much of a difference would it have made if you swapped out 2 of the 4 Inheritors in this story with Verna and Morlun who were absent? Nothing sans the fact that you needed Jennix to do science stuff but even then he wasn’t very good at it. And that’s the plot too. He’s a super cloning genius but he can’t figure out New U tech. Um....okay that is weird.

Moving on, this is more a point in connection to Spider-Force than this comic but Otto claims that he handpicked the members of that team.

This raises some questions.

1)      How? I get Ashley Barton, Kaine and Jessica Drew. He knows all of them, but how could he have known about Charlie?

2)      Spider-Force claims that the strike force was assembled because they don’t mind dying. Now this is inconsistent in the issue itself but for the sake of argument let’s say it was true, how would Doc Ock know any of those people sans maybe Ashley wouldn’t mind dying. Maybe also Kaine but I’d imagine his bad blood with Kaine would colour his perceptions on that one. With Jessica and Charlie...there is no reason for him to think that that I can think of.

3)      Now in fairness the attitude and skillset of that team does make them well suited to a strikeforce...except Charlie. He seems tough and streetwise...why does this make him a great fit for that team, someone Otto would handpick??????????

Let’s stick with Scarlet Spiders for a moment.

So Ben Reilly’s 27th clone says dying all those times turned him wonky. Okay that’s not too bad. But also all the other spiders met him and he already explained himself to them and endeared himself to them.

Again...why are we telling but not showing. Ben Reilly (after recently being basically an evil businessman) meets a version of Norman Osborn? Where was that juicy scene??????

Let’s change gears here and talk something more superficial briefly.

So the art was....good. Different artists from the last 2 issues and it shows but not bad art by any means. The transition from one artist to another is a little noticeably but the styles are similar enough and both look good enough (great even) that it’s not a problem.

The fight scenes sans anything involving Leopardon though...are. They’re just so bland and functional, there is no sense of dynamism or choreography to them. I blame there being too many characters along with the Inheritor’s boring visual designs.

Ironically for all my gripes the last scene of the comic was...intriguing.

I didn’t read the Edge of Spider-Geddon issue introducing Norman Osborn Spider-Man...but now I just might do that.

The idea of Norman being Spider-Man is already kind of interesting.

But more poignantly the idea that whilst Miles and Otto have divided the team along moral lines and the Inheritors are also out there, there is now a small, secret fourth faction working their own agenda makes this way more interesting.

It hints that Spider-Geddon will become more like a real war and have people running their own agendas. And Norman is a great choice to make that faction. What’s so delectable also is Norman isn’t even making a power play out of selfishness per se. He like Miles and Otto is seeking to win the war, beat the Inheritors and above all else survive, but he’s just considering yet more extreme methods to do it. In a very abstract way it’s a little like how Xavier and Magneto fundamentally disagree about their methods regarding mutantkind but they are united in fundamentally disagreeing with Apocalypse third extremist option.

So over all...I can’t say I disliked reading this issue. A first for the main Spider-Geddon book I must admit.

P.S. the cover lied. No fight between the factions and no Superior Ock

[weshallneverrevolt]

Trauma! at the Disco: “This is Gospel” and the Ghosts of Mental Illness

Like many people my age, I have a soft spot for mid-00s rock music. Being a teenage music listener in that time was very exciting; MySpace was thriving, and it opened up previously obscure genres. Before then, I doubt most people my age had never heard emo, or horrorcore, or post-hardcore. But by the time 2005 hit, we were all awash in black clothing and crunchy guitar riffs and lyrics about dying.

We loved this music for its emotional rawness, despite its clumsiness. If you listen to, say, Hawthorne Heights in 2018, lyrics like “cut my wrists and black my eyes” are cringey enough to be physically painful. But for a teenager of the time – even one not actually self-harming – there was nothing more cathartic than these over-the-top one liners.

Still, the emotional truth was there, underneath layers of embarrassment. We can still feel it today, as one of those bands – Panic! at the Disco – is still capable of writing an emotional powerhouse of a song. That song in question is called “This is Gospel,” and for disaffected millennials it may be more cathartic than ever.

Note: this essay addresses psychological trauma, alcoholism, and substance abuse. Read with care if those things may upset you or hamper your path to recovery.

As we’ve all grown up, very few bands from the emo era have had real staying power. The ones that do embrace a theatrical edge that stretches beyond their genre. For instance, My Chemical Romance took teenage angst and made it into a Queen-esque rock opera called The Black Parade, and Skrillex parlayed his role in From First to Last into the equally angry, frenetic dubstep phenomenon.

This makes Panic! At the Disco especially interesting. Even on release of their debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, these guys were obviously something different. There was no screaming. The music was tinged with drum machines and accordions. Singer Brendon Urie’s voice was bright, clear, and almost operatic. The lyrics were literary – freshman year “I just read Fight Club” literary, sure, but still literary. Yet underneath these new elements beat the same teenage energy, where casual hookups were epic romances and someone not answering your text was the ultimate betrayal.

Though all of the original band members except Urie have since left, Panic! are still putting out albums in 2018. Their newest, Pray for the Wicked, sounds almost nothing like their debut. Given the band’s tumultuous history and shifting lineup, such a shakeup in their sound is understandable. Most of their original fans are probably as lukewarm on their current catalog as I am, but they’ve found their lane and stuck to it.

One element of the original sound, however, still persists: Brendon Urie can sing his ass off.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the piano version of “This is Gospel,” from their 2013 album Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die. The album version has the bombastic, electronic arena rock sound other bands from their era have (unfortunately) gravitated to; it’s rather generic, and the over-the-top production and poor mastering drown out Brendon’s voice.

But the band also released a gorgeous, stripped-down piano version, and it’s that version that really matters.

I mentioned earlier that Panic! has a bit of a tumultuous history. They started making music in their late teens, and when “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” launched their careers, they were too young to handle the fame. That had the most pronounced effect on drummer Spencer Smith, who eventually left the band due to his persistent drug and alcohol problems. Being a rock star is hard, but being a rock star at 19 sounds awful.

Per his own annotations on Genius, Brendan Urie wrote “This is Gospel” about Spencer’s addiction. It’s obvious from the lyrics, which are equal parts rage and a desperate plea. He leads off with this biblical verse:

This is gospel, for the fallen ones

Locked away in permanent slumber

Assembling their philosophies

From pieces of broken memories

From there, the song builds to a soaring chorus with the refrain of “if you love me, let me go.” Brendon’s voice is at once powerful and delicate, and his lyrics – comparing words to knives, expressing a “fear of falling apart” – convey a suffering but authentic friendship. Brendon’s anger is not at Spencer, but instead at Spencer’s addiction, a disease and all the awful things that caused it to fester.

Backing up to the opening verse, that biblical theme runs throughout the song. For Brendon, his friend’s addiction feels religious. It doesn’t always make sense, and his friend doesn’t always believe in it, but it still shapes his life. If you grow up religious, you can renounce it when you’re older…but the memories still persist.

Addiction and trauma can go hand-in-hand, but even separately they are almost mirror images. As an addict might drink til blackout night after night, a traumatized person relives their troubled past by acting out, or self-harming, or self-loathing. It’s a cycle you get trapped in, and most of it is tied to something that, far in the past, really messed you up. It becomes a set of rules you live by. A gospel.

There is a concept in psychology called the "repetition compulsion." It's the idea that most human behavior is driven by a need to relive past experiences, even if those past experiences were harmful. It's why people can repeatedly date terrible partners, why addicts can relapse, and why parents who abuse their kids were often abused themselves. Often, these people know what they're doing is wrong. They know they are hurting themselves and others. They fully understand that they should not do these things.

And yet, there is a powerful, emotional tug binding them to their trauma, one they may never overcome. It’s a past assembled “from pieces of broken memories.”

In this way, trauma is scripture, both functionally and figuratively. Like the Bible or Qur'an, it's a way of dealing with huge questions. Why am I here? Why do people do bad things? Why does my heart hurt so much? Trauma provides the earliest and most convenient answers, with the unfortunate caveat that those answers usually hurt you.

Brendon Urie was raised in the Mormon church, and left when he was 17. As a pansexual, slim suit-wearing singer in a rock band, he's pretty far from his LDS roots. Perhaps this is why his performance here - and his lyrics - are so heartfelt. Coming to terms with your trauma often feels like renouncing a religion, complete with all the burned bridges, strained family relationships, and sense of being eternally lost.

The aching truth of surviving trauma is that it follows you forever. It gives you rules for how you think, how you maintain relationships, how you view yourself. Because of those rules, you think it gives you stability. Sometimes that stability feels like love, in the same way that a good partner makes you feel safe. It's precious predictability. But if your trauma truly loved you, then - as Brendon sings - it would let you go. Admitting that is both important and unimaginably painful.

Another of my favorite vocalists, Frank Ocean, has a similarly beautiful ballad called "Bad Religion." In it, he croons "if it brings me to my knees, it's a bad religion." Trauma is a bad religion, and worse than any of the others we create, it is often one we cannot choose. Leaving it behind feels like betraying an old friend. It’s a "fear of falling apart."

If trauma is the holy book of our lives, we can only move forward by burning it. Build a pyre with your trauma and stoke the flames until the heat frightens you. Let it all burn to the ground. Use the ashes as war paint, and maybe listen to Brendon’s advice:

Don't try to sleep through the end of the world

And bury me alive

Cause I won’t give up without a fight

[glatisants]

Albion: The Legend of Arthur (Closing Thoughts)

I’m gonna start with some really general, spoiler-free notes on what I liked, what did and didn’t work, the characterization choices, and that kind of thing. Further down will a more specific discussion of the story and writing decisions and such, and that will get into more spoilery territory.

also before I get into my subjective opinions about the series, I want to say that this should be taken with a tremendous grain of salt, given that

I am probably not the best person to ask for lit recs in general, given that my favorite piece of Arthurian lit is unironically, wholeheartedly The Dream of Rhonabwy;

My standards for audio media are probably lower than most people’s—I used to listen to 1940s radio for fun and that has absolutely numbed my palate;

I’m a little biased, in that I think Owain/Ywain is sort of underrepresented in Arthurian media, and as such I get irrationally excited whenever he’s included as a character in anything, however loose that characterization may be (my caveat, though, is that I strongly dislike the real historical Owain mab Urien; I want a cool Owain/Ywain who is also very obviously fictional).

***

All in all, I liked it, but I’m not sure I liked it as an Arthurian adaptation. Something like this is kind of a departure for me—honestly, I’m not usually a fan of Arthurian adaptations that do away with the Round Table and make Arthur a 5th century warlord. Legendry, and particularly Arthurian legends, can be this very odd thing, in that it lies in this liminal space between pure mythology and, like, history fanfiction, and honestly that makes me very uncomfortable.

I get the sense that the writers’ main sources were mainly “chronicle”-type things and Welsh bardic poetry—things like Nennius, Aneirin, Taliesin, Geoffrey of Monmouth, maybe Layamon’s Brut, and possibly the Welsh Triads and the Mabinogion. When certain familiar narrative elements are stripped away—no Round Table, no Grail, no courtly love—it can be difficult to reconcile that with more traditional takes on Arthuriana. Still, it’s not like I’m an expert on adaptational integrity, and I know modern authors do weirder takes all the time. And some things—such as the sword in the stone, and the idea of a Round Table—are hinted at in a way that are tailored to the more “grounded” nature of the story, while still capturing the ideas that live behind the symbols. And magic and fantasy do enter the story, in a deeply satisfying way, even as the story is largely focused on politics and warfare.

The gritty, “realistic” setting of Dark Ages Wales can be a dealbreaker for some people; honestly, I’ve felt that way before. I did appreciate it wasn’t overly violent, and there wasn’t any rape/sexual assault—there is one scene where a character is implicitly threatened by a group of Picts (but to put it mildly, things turn out well for her), and in the final episode one character is almost forced into an unwanted political marriage, but those are the only moments I can think of. And the series as a whole ended up being more optimistic than I thought it would be. The main themes are that hope is a beacon that lights the way into the future, and that stories are powerful and immortal (a bit cheesy, perhaps, but I love that sort of thing).

Characterization Notes

Gwenhwyvar—I absolutely loved this take on Gwen; something about the way she was written just hit perfectly for me. She was incredibly clever, perceptive, and protective of her people above all else; she was serious, astute and pragmatic, but also kind and gracious. She commanded an army, and yet always approached conflicts with the priority of peace.

I’m not usually a fan of Warrior Princess Gwen because it can remove a lot of the subtlety of her character, but that problem didn’t come up here; they make a point of showing how she’s underestimated by her peers and uses this fact to her advantage in order to wield her power discreetly. But when she met for political negotiations with councils of men, they always spoke as equals, with nothing but respect for her.

Arthur—Honestly, he fell flat for me compared to the other characters, and I felt like I couldn’t get a good sense of him. Arthur can be a tricky character to write, because there’s this inherent need to make him stand out as a heroic figure, and that usually entails either seeing him eye to eye or elevating him to great heights; either he’s written as someone someone people can emotionally connect to and see in a personable way, or he is extraordinarily capable and thus untouchable. Here, I think that the pathos was largely found in characters like Anna and Owain, and that untouchable capability in Gwenhwyvar, and it seemed perfectly natural that the focus would move away from Arthur and towards them as the series progressed.

Honestly this might have been intentional—one of the points we’re left with by the end is the idea that Arthur grew to be far more than he ever could have realistically been, and that the hope he inspired was the reason he lived on in the stories, rather than who he might have been as a person.

Medraut—I found him a bit underdeveloped, and that was a shame—I really wish we’d gotten to see more of him. There were some mentions of his past friendship with Arthur, but that tension was hardly felt until they finally met in battle; I think there could have been a lot of potential there, and besides, he was a fun character. He was charismatic and affable, manipulative and petty, stuck on nursing old grudges; but he was also without friends, family or country, completely alienated and digging himself into a deeper ditch with every move he made. 

Owain—Genuinely uncertain how I feel about this characterization! He was intelligent, good-hearted, courageous, caring, and thoughtful; he was extremely likable, and I found that…a bit odd, honestly. I can’t really articulate my thoughts further than that. 

Others: Myrddin—this is the only take on Merlin I’ve ever genuinely liked. He’s such a nuisance and just beautifully weird. Aergol—I found him really interesting, and I was actually a little surprised by how much he grew on me by the end. Cynon—I found him such a tragic, miserable character, equal parts contemptible and heartbreaking. 

Room For Improvement

The pacing mostly fine, but a little bit odd in places—I felt like the final act could have used a bit more buildup.

Audio coherence could’ve been better during some of the action scenes—there were definitely a few parts where I was not totally sure what was supposed to be happening. Most of the time it didn’t bother me, but when it’s something like Arthur facing off against Medraut, that should be a dramatic high point, and I want focus and clarity; otherwise, whatever is trying to be conveyed will inevitably come across as anticlimactic.

I might’ve liked to see music used in more interesting ways, bc it can be really integral to effective sound design. There were a couple scenes where it was used really well (the leadup to the Battle of Badon, for instance), and I would’ve loved more of that.

I don’t know if this was supposed to be an intentional choice, but I could not take the Saxon characters seriously at all—they were performed in such an over-the-top way that they made me laugh more than anything else. The other characters were portrayed very well, I found the voice acting quite strong, so the sheer oddness of the Saxons stood out to me.

***

Okay spoilers below

I was all about Anna’s storyline and I think it was one of the strongest parts of the series. I loved the idea of this woman, killed unjustly for fiercely clinging to her ideals in spite of tremendous pressure, finding strength in her fallen ancestors and rising again as a powerful enchantress determined to seek revenge. It felt right for her, totally cathartic, and I was glad that she was treated so sympathetically.

I tried not to think about it too deeply, but I think I saw her as sort of a Morgan/Morgause composite; obviously the name Anna is associated with Morgause, and she’s linked with Lewdwn (aka Lot) of Gododdin, but her transformation to enchantress led her to call herself Morgan.

It was pretty clear that Owain had feelings for Arthur, but I sort of wish it was a little less implicit (fyi for people who haven’t read the other recaps, they’re the same age and not related in this). Like, I guess they were involved in a major plot point that was a pretty clear allusion to Achilles and Patroclus, and other characters kept mentioning rumors about them, but the most direct reference we got was Arthur confessing to Gwen that they had been together briefly when they were kids, and while Arthur never loved him, he had never thought to ask Owain how he felt. By the end, you kind of get the sense that Owain’s main motivation all along has been this love/loyalty, but it’s done in such a subtle way it leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and the fact that there was so much in their dynamic that went unspoken just exacerbates that.

I wasn’t sure how to read the ending and especially the final line. What I’m going with—just my personal interpretation—is that both Anna and Owain are stuck somewhere between life and death, possibly in a literal way as well as a figurative one. One of the recurring themes is, like, legendry as a means of resurrection and even immortality; legends are a place between life and death, where the dead are made immortal to walk among the living. So by the end, both of them have come to see firsthand how legends are made, and have become people tied to the liminal space of legendry, and thus belong to neither world.

I say this could be in a literal way as well as a figurative one bc Anna was given new life both through a physical transformation and the stories people would tell about her, and possibly some combination of both. And I think this could apply to Owain as well—maybe when he chose to take on the mantle of Arthur, he and his bronze sword somehow joined that part of the Otherworld with Anna and Merlin, and he became the proverbial King Asleep in the Mountain. But that might be a bit of a stretch. 

***

That’s all I have to say about this. I think the combined word count of all these posts could be a full-fledged novella, so thank you for your patience and for reading!

[leftpress]

Letter from anarchist comrade Joaquin Garcia (Chile)

admin | 325 | March 10th 2017

It has been five months since I returned to inhabit the cells of the Maximum Security Section of the High Security Prison and I think it is necessary to refer to both the personal and the prison scenario. The reasons for not writing before are obviously personal; but more than anything it is due to the belief – despite being convinced that sharing experiences generates inexhaustible links – that the virtual platforms and their set of communications is far removed from the real and approaches an abstract idea of the day to day life of jail and that of the individual. Irreducible? Yes, whether or not there is a swing of emotions, neither conviction nor mind falters, but that disgusting idea of the steel martyr behind the bars must fall. By the suicide of the image and the fetish, by the real destructive complicity.

“Pessimism is the opium of intellectuals, optimism belongs to the stupid. A fanatical and dreamy realism, the awareness that we do not fit ...

into this world, the values we will defend in each moment, plus the complicit warmth of those we love and cherish.”

Five months ago, a bit about detention:

On September 7th [2017], at approximately five in the afternoon and a little more than two months after the breakdown of the total domiciliary arrest dictated by the legal apparatus, I was arrested when I boarded a rural bus in the direction of some place. I climb in, I greet the driver, I advance a meter, a hand on my chest, “get off”, “hands behind your head”, to the floor, face against the floor, I look left, the sea, its breeze, smell of land and vegetation, a fleeting moment but with absolute awareness of what was going on, now would be replaced by the smell of chlorine and clean floor liquid, the yellow vest and the subtle but harassing smell of saliva in the dungeon. Despite the personal significance, the arrest was nothing spectacular and I would not write about it if I did not want to clarify a point; the journalistic propagandistic idea about an alleged “preventive control” as if it were random! The sickly obsession with vigilance and control must constantly be reaffirmed in the paranoid citizen, what better time than the capture of the “fugitive terrorist”.

Was it worth it? Impossible to respond with a simple “yes”, sometimes so dry, empty and self-indulgent, there are many more things to put on the balance. But it is undeniable that every experience in search of freedom is worth it; to take charge of existence with all its victories, its defeats, its joys and its sorrows, those are priceless experiences that the submissive can never know. It is not a question of whether it was worth trying, to think it in that way would condemn me to be an eternal loser, what is valued is the first step to all action, which – perhaps more spiritual than materially – will always be a profit. “The pen and gun are made of the same metal. The new urban guerrilla depends much less on the operational means and much more of our decision to attack power.”

Eco-extremism and Anarchy

I share the words expressed by the colleagues of the Revolutionary Cell Paulino Scarfó/FAI-FRI, an attack has morals and this obviously responds to the code of values and objectives of each revolutionary cell, its motives and contributions to the advance of antagonistic theories and practices. From this point of view, I believe that criticism of other currents cannot be made in any comparative way, and I am specifically referring to eco-extremism, because today there is a tendency, perhaps a little suspicious, toward the latter, as of who has betrayed its beginnings and has exceeded the threshold of what “we would not do”. And the truth is that little and nothing matters as to what is the root of this current and the individuals that compose it, as it is of the utmost importance to worry about the present and to assume that there is an irreconcilable difference between the different thoughts (objectives – motives – values). I want to make it clear that I am not referring to what each individual can do with his/her life or how much they articulate ideas and practical goals, I could not talk about the nonexistent “duties” of an immovable idea. If I write this it is, without caveats, about the generic. As soon as there is a paternalistic criticism, there will be an accusation, with reason of purism. To assume that criticism has to be removed from our expressions is a mistake; criticism, as the essential axiom of all revolutionary thought and action, must be severe and constant. I analyze, criticize, position myself and advance, for the evolution of individual and collective consciousness.

As a parenthesis: I am clear that when people talk about morals and values, many people have a stomach ache, especially the children of the replica, who eliminate words from their vocabulary to meet who knows what requirement of Denial, and thus not lose nihilism points (1). So, to clarify, to recognize the existence of values and morals does not mean that these are carved in stone, and are subject to question by the same conjuncture. And if there are pillars in my thinking and my feeling it is because I have chosen it.

Speaking of conjuncture, I applaud the attack on Oscar Landerretche [CEO of a mining company in Chile who was the victim of a successful letter-bomb attack by ITS-Chile], as a symbolic and practical objective. I admire and greet (2) the energy of all who take charge of their thoughts and annihilate the lethargy of social peace. Those who call for an imminent state offensive have to be questioned; strategies exist, of course, but to expect some kind of compassion from Power is not to understand the costs of confrontation. I detest until antipathy (3) the eco-extremist discourse, I distance myself completely from its reasoning, its mysticism and the apologies to absurd personifications. To reject the mass and its values is logical and consistent, but assuming that the masses all embody counter-hegemonic values on their own just for existing is stupid.

I can very much distance myself from ITS-Chile, but it is inevitable to feel rage when reading the shit from the official press, “alternative”, and “left”. Without pretending to please the masses, nor waiting for the approval of anyone: for the cowardice and defamation, fire. “Whoever does not want to see the elevation of a man fixes his sight in a more penetrating way in what is low and superficial in him – and thereby betrays himself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Long live the strange anarcho-nihilist conjugation! If nihilist praxis stumbled with anarchy, welcome.

Joaquín García Chancks

Maximum Security Section of the High Security Prison

End of January 2017

(1) ism, suffix forbidden (2) quiet, I know you do not care (3) see (2)

– ES

[conflictandscotchblog]

O Brother, Who Art Thou?

Its always nice to spend time with family, and the recent Memorial Day Weekend afforded us that opportunity.  When families get together, it’s an occasion to see how much we are alike, and how much we are so different.

For example, a group of my nieces, nephews, assorted partners and friends played two drinking games at a nearby table: Thumper and BUZZ.  They were so loud and obnoxious, if I had access to a firehose I would broke them up like a prison riot.  I’m sure when I was their age, we played the same games but with quiet whispers and respect for our neighbors. 

With that said, I would like to formally apologize to the woman who lived next door to our summer shore house in Seaside, 1979.  I’m sure she lived a very nice, peaceful existence until we showed up.  Just a group obnoxious, loud, assholes who played Thumper and Buzz five feet from her window, leaving dead soldiers (her name for empty beer bottles) literally on her doorstep.  Even with her obvious agitation of us, she would often say, ‘I am praying for you boys’.  In our gratitude we nicknamed her, ‘Sister Rose from The Church of the Perpetual Sorrow’.

We really were assholes.

Forty years later, to a spirit long gone, I offer a heartfelt apology.

Besides the assholery of youth, another difference showed itself the morning after Memorial Day.

While at breakfast, my brother Joe asked me if I would help him pick up some beds a friend gave him.  Sure, no problem, how far of a ride is it, I asked.

“Ten minutes,” he said between bites of food.  My sister, who sat beside us, cleared her throat.

“Closer to fifteen,” my brother amended.  A glance between the two of them revised it once more.

“Worse case scenery, twenty.”

Later, during the forty-five-minute ride to pick up the beds, I noticed a few more differences.  His Ford pickup was a far cry from my Toyota Corolla, a car he original forbade me to park near his house because it wasn’t American made.  Only after I told him it was a used car, and no foreign companies benefited from my purchase, was I allowed back on the block.  In the cab of his truck I wore my brown Skechers, six-pocketed Docker Shorts, and Izod-emblazoned collared shirt.  He wore work pants and a t-shirt with a bald eagle on the front, an American flag clutched in its talons; the eagle also wore an American flag t-shirt.  From his belt hung a six-inch knife, a blade he could use to perform a life-saving tracheotomy or free a baby bird entangled in litter found on the side of the road.

The only thing that hung from my belt was the shame that it was buckled in the first hole of the leather.

Windows down since he had no air conditioner, the American flag that hung in the back of the cab, agitated by the wind, repeatedly smacked me on the back of the head like I was a communist.

 As we drove, my brother periodically picked up a green bottle labeled ‘Fish Oil’ from the dashboard, and spit tobacco juice into the already half-filled container.  I chewed tobacco once in my life, and that was enough for me.

Years ago, as my brother sat in the car in the parking lot of the Browntown Shopping Center, I naively walked into a store and asked the clerk for chewing tobacco.  Times were simpler then, all I had to do was point out into the parking lot at some random car and tell him my dad sent me in.  Fifteen minutes later we were home, my brother and I climbed out the bedroom window, Tom Sawyer style, sat on the roof of the garage, and bit off a chew.

Seconds later, I turned green and threw up over the side of the house.

My brother had a different reaction, obviously, since some forty-plus years later, we sat in his truck as he spouted like a fountain into a plastic bottle.

It didn’t take a long, unexpected drive with my brother to point out the differences between us.  They have always been there.

A few years ago, while a group of us sat in the kitchen, my brother stuck his head in the door and commanded “Come with me”.  Instinctively, I stood up, but I was immediately dismissed.

“Danny, you come with me.”  My son Danny stood and, without words, followed his uncle out the door.  A few minutes later the pair emerged from the house and walked to the back yard.  Danny’s arms filled with shotguns, boxes of shells, and noise-cancelling earmuffs.

As they set up an impromptu firing range, my nephew Christopher turned to me, smiled, and said, “That’s nice, Danny always needed a father figure”.

My brother is gruff and has an opinion on everything; it must be exhausting for him to always be right.  At times, when introduced to people who know my brother, it is often with the caveat, “Don’t worry, he’s nothing like Joe”.

Which leads me to two questions.

One: Which one of us was adopted?

Two: Sometimes, I wonder, is it all an act?  Sure, there is that personality in him, but over the years, did he exaggerate it because that is what we expect of him?  Or maybe, when all is said and done, at the end of the day, my brother goes home and slips off this gruff persona?  With the façade gone, he pours himself a nice glass of white Zinfandel, sits by the fire, puts his feet up on the ottoman, and picks up and reads his well-worn copy of, “Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret”

The world may never know…

  Photo by Diane DeMarzo

[ninjabachelorparty]

OPEN WORLD VIDEOGAMES: A LOVE STORY

My first exposure to video games, a beginning that set into motion a life of love and sometimes obsession, was not a typical one. I was no NES kid at the start, back when Nintendo ruled the world, and the hearts of children. Neither was I a Spectrum or a Commodore 64 convert. My gaming education began with one of Commodore’s more obscure machines, the 16 + 4. This was a machine aimed more toward the business market (the + 4 referring to a package of office tools that came with the machine). But it played games also, and so it was that I received a battered and mysterious cardboard box, filled with a loose collection of tapes and wires. The origins of this box and who it came from is lost to time, but that stranger played an essential part in shaping my life and my interests.

TREASURE ISLAND

Two games stand out from this formative time in my gaming life. The first was Fire Ant, a fairly simple single screen maze game. A slower-paced Pacman with insects, that has the honour of being the first game I ever completed.  But another game, despite being one that I could never finish, cemented within me a love of open-world games that persists to this day. It was a game called Treasure Island. The gameplay was simple, still involving walking through some type of maze, this time however on multiple interconnected screens. Standing in place were pirates, who would throw swords at you if you ventured too close to them. Avoid the throw, and you could pick the swords up and throw them back. Fairly simple stuff indeed, with one caveat; after the initial screen, the choice of progression was handed to you– do you go to the left screen, or the right? A simply choice to be sure, but it was my choice. For Fire Ant, there was only one correct route to finish a level, with minor variations on the way. Treasure Island gave the impression of a much deeper and mysterious choice. One way might lead to a dead end, requiring a retracing of steps to find a new path that allowed progress. Sound familiar? The same roadblocks inhibit every open world game. “Go where you like, but this door is locked until the main quest gives you the key”. Exploration is the allure, and finding a working sequence to progress is the result of this exploration (and still in 2016, the newest Hitman gives me essentially the same feeling. Here’s a huge open level with so many possibilities, now to find the perfect sequence of execution within). Going back to Treasure Island now, it seems a very simple game, and maybe not as open as I once thought. But to an 8-year old seeing the possibilities of the medium laid before them for the first time, it was a revelation.  

MOONSTONE

Eventually the love for my Commodore 16 faded somewhat. Being a relatively obscure machine eight or so years removed from its release, it was almost impossible to find new games for. The lustre of the games eventually went away, the few times new tapes were found being marred by incompatibility and broken software. A future obsession might have been nixed right there, if it were not for the arrival in my life of, in my humble opinion, the greatest games machine of all time: The Commodore Amiga 500. It was Christmas of 1993, and I was 12, receiving, as I am sure many were that Christmas, the Cartoon Classics pack. It was love at first sight, and a massive expanding of my gaming horizons. I could talk for days, combing over every incredible game that I played, but one stands out as a natural progression of my taste for open-world games: Moonstone.

Mention this game to most that hold it dear and they will undoubtedly mention the gore. This game was brutal, making Mortal Kombat look like child’s play.  This game is essentially a single-screen beat-em-up in execution, 2D sprites moving about a plane and fighting. You control one of four knights, battling creatures of all shapes and sizes. And you will be eviscerated, over and over again. Eaten, decapitated, hung, and splattered in to the ground, your deaths were plenty, and brutal.

However there was another aspect to this game, an openness, which despite its fairly simple presentation drew me in. The overworld, if it can be called that, was a single-screen map of what seemed to be an entire continent. Littered around were icons showing places where you could enter a gameplay screen to fight monsters and collect treasures and keys. You avatar was a simple sprite of your knight’s head. It was basically the world map for a modern open world game, but interactive, and completely open for your exploration, in whatever order you wished. Looking back, it’s a very simple set-up, with maybe two dozen places to actually enter. My imagination filled in all the blanks it needed to though, and I spent hours lost as a noble knight, venturing across fields and plains, into dark and dank swamps and beyond.

GRAND THEFT AUTO

Another game from my Amiga days was a top-down driving game called APB. In the game, you drove a police car and apprehended criminals. Any further mechanics of the game are honestly lost to me, as I simply spent my time with the game driving around the fairly open map and ignoring any real objectives. It felt like a glimpse at something truly open-world, but would not be fully realised to me until I played a game for the PlayStation known as Grand Theft Auto. Another sprite-based top down game like APB, but in this game, you were free to go anywhere and do anything. Sure there were missions and critical paths, but no game prior to this had given the option to so freely disregard them and still have a complete and satisfying experience regardless. In APB I could drive around freely, but it was an aimless driving with no purpose. In Moonstone I could move my sprite around the map as much as I wanted, but to have a gameplay experience I still needed to enter the arenas dotted around.

Grand Theft Auto changed this in a major way. Firstly, you could leave your car, and then hijack any other vehicle you wanted. Get spotted, and the police are on your trail. You can leave the car behind and just wander the map, watching the city go about its business around you. Nowadays this is the common standard for open world games, but in this simpler time it was revolutionary. Exploration, police chases, stealing random cars, all of this had no bearing on the overall path, and didn’t push the story forward, but this was the game, or at least a tangible part of it. It was something to actively participate in; instead of something that you felt you had to push yourself away from the real game to experience. Other games needed their limits pushed to experience some freedom. Grand Theft Auto removed the limits and relished in it.

Grand Theft Auto continued to impress as the series continued, especially with the transition to Grand Theft Auto 3, which felt like the true realisation of the concepts on display from the first game. The original top down view obviously gave the game some hard limits, but these were shattered with the transition to a 3D environment. It truly felt like a limitless experience, with no corner unreachable and with every option you could imagine realised. The proceeding games are all fantastic experiences, but there was nothing quite like that feeling of starting up Grand Theft Auto 3. Some special mention must however be given to Grand Theft Auto 5, as it featured a city that felt truly lived in, alive and vibrant. The addition of the first person camera made this element of the game shine through, and it was an absolute pleasure to simply take in the world as it went about its business around you.

MORROWIND

I was never a PC gamer in my youth, and so many games that provided unique and very open worlds were hidden from me. That all changed one day when reading an article online about an adored PC game that would soon be coming to Xbox, a game in which it was claimed you could literally go anywhere and do anything. That game was of course, Morrowind.

This game was a revelation to me. The early games I loved were open essentially in map and your choice of direction, but still had clear and defined paths to completion. The Grand Theft Auto games pushed this further and allowed a sandbox of toys to play with, but whose core was still comprised of the basic building blocks of randomly generated, faceless characters and disposable vehicles, with little permanent consequence for their destruction or death. Morrowind allowed an unseen (to me) level of granular interaction, with a persistent world that granted limitless options.

Steal a car in Grand Theft Auto, and at worst, you’ll get in a police chase, and either get away or be killed. That car has no permanence in the world; it’s simply one of many toys for your sandbox. Steal an item in Morrowind, and that singular, tangible thing is affected forever. You can keep it, and another won’t respawn in its place, or take it somewhere and drop it where it will remain indefinitely. You are no longer causing trouble with generic pedestrians that repeat and respawn around you. Each character in Morrowind is a crafted individual with their own place in the world. When one dies, no algorithm generates a new one in their place when you return, to the point that you can completely cut yourself off from the main quest if you murder certain NPCs.

This level of detail, coupled with a fantastic fantasy setting, and a deep and interesting lore, combined to create something truly special that hooked me for dozens upon dozens of hours. Video gaming can be a good source of escapism, and at that time Morrowind was the closest realisation of another world, that I could enter and inhabit. Countless hours were spent simply roaming the land, on an unrivalled quest of discovery and wonder. I felt part of the world, and able to affect and influence it in at my choosing. It was often the smallest of interactions that left the longest lasting impression, as these gave the world that sense of tangibility that was so enticing.

HITMAN

The idea of open world games has become an industry standard in modern video gaming. Many games utilise the concept now, and has reached a point of much eye-rolling as a new or existing franchise goes that route. Games nowadays have maps that are saturated with icons and objectives and quests to complete, which can be extremely tiring. It might be that sense of wonder and awe has abated somewhat because of this, as developers seem too eager to point out all the awesome stuff that lies before you. The excitement at simply exploring and discovering the world has been lessened somewhat by many clichés and tropes that now come baked into almost all open worlds.

The 2016 release of Hitman seemed to be the perfect antidote to the bloated world maps of many recent games. It could be argued that it does not even qualify for the genre, but I see it as an open-world game that consists of six perfectly crafted, small open worlds. Its openness and freeform nature ignited in me the same love that all the games on this list provided. It has the detail and small-scale interaction of Morrowind, not quite as granular but still persistent and permanently affected on each playthrough. Once you leave a map and then return, everything resets, allowing endless chaos with little consequence in the same way as Grand Theft Auto. It feels like a perfect amalgamation of everything that appeals so much to me in an open world game.

Each map is so well crafted, with the smaller scale allowing a level of detail not present in many games, and is testament to the games design that it is a joy to simply walk the maps, noticing the details and discovering the world you currently inhabit. The size of your sandbox may be reduced, but the sense of wonder at wandering and learning the levels is not.

This list is not presented as some ultimate reference for the best of the genre, and is far from exhaustive in its history. Many games I hold dear are not present here, such as Just Cause, Saints Row, and Deus Ex. It is simply my way of paying tribute to a genre that I love by choosing those games that had the most impact and shaped the kind of experience I look for in my games. In much the same way as music, playing video games can help soothe a troubled mind, and being able to escape for a while into some other world and roam its lands can help immensely when our world might seem a bit too much to bear.