#except instead of a death note I have a computer where I write my evil plots

[crimsonmonsoon]

People who are reading my fic because they either liked the designs I posted on tumblr and/or they want better characters and plot from mlb:

Me giving Alya the most trauma of any of the characters:

(My fic is Miracle Box: a Miraculous Rewrite, btw if you wanna read it and haven’t yet)

[lunastwilightblog]

The Volturi are the good guys and Bella is the up-and-coming villain

I’m on my computer for this as I know it might be long, but bear with me (insert Emmett pun here) 🐻

So wait - the Volturi are the good guys? But didn’t SM write them as the bad guys? 

Well, yes, SM did write Aro and co in as the antagonists of the series, but bear in mind that originally she didn’t write most of New Moon to happen, or the entirety of Eclipse. There was Twilight and Forever Dawn, which we’ll sadly never read. Her vision of the Volturi and their role as the evil villains who wanted to separate Edward and Bella became distorted as she had to flesh them out more and show their role as the governing body.

Then she wrote the Illustrated Guide and revealed their history and the horrors of the world without their authority; with the Romanians being as brutal as they were, the constant terror humans lived with and the fracturing of the world into many unstable and violent vampire-ruled empires (plus with way more children of the moon running about, probably as far west as - at least - central Europe). 

When the Volturi were coming to power they were laughed at with the idea of their law, a significant reason the Romanians didn’t take them seriously. But now they are extremely popular.

This isn’t just because Aro created vampires to go out and sing his praises. Volturi rule has been a blessing for both humans and vampires.

For humans it’s the obvious: they are not living their lives in fear, they are not subject to massacres (except if caught in newborn warzones), their population has been able to grow and expand, modern medicine and technology have been able to flourish, society is much more stable, people need to flee areas much less (if ever) so they can stay put and complete research/live to meet their grandkids/etc, and not have to serve a vampire in the local castle. 

For vampires it’s actually quite similar: with the human population growing to as large as it is today when at the time the Volturi came to power it was (estimated to be) only 210 million globally, vampires have been able to grow to even greater numbers also, and feed more often than before. If a vampire 2000 years ago killed 5 people in a town it would be an outrage the humans would certainly have noticed, however kill 5 people in a place as big as London, LA, Paris, Singapore, Bucharest... it would likely not be noticed very much, if at all (depending on who you kill).  

Humans like to measure things in percentages. Those 5 people is a huge number to a town of 2000 - that’s 0.25% of the whole town’s population. It would be talked about, and relatives of the dead/missing would all know each other. Yet kill those 5 in a city of 12 million (as is London), that’s only 0.00004167% of the population. And chances are, the dead humans’ families don’t even live in the area (or could be in another country entirely) never mind know each other to realise there was a mass murder.

So vampires, as long as they hide from humans, as is the only law (besides no immortal children or consorting with werewolves), they have a lot more freedom nowadays than they did before the times of the Volturi. There are so many people that they can easily get lost in a crowd, move internationally, and not be pressured for allegiance by a local vampire warlord (before meeting Aro, Caius ran afoul of the Romanians, and he barely escaped with his life).

With there only being one authority, and one that does not interfere with your day-to-day life, is a dream come true. As long as they don’t break this law that is very easy to abide by, they can do whatever the f*** they want.

Carlisle would have never been able to get a job as a doctor if he was known to be a vampire, nor could any of the Cullens have entered education of any form. They’d be stuck sneaking into libraries after closing, and googling. Edward would have never met Bella (neither would Edward’s ancestors have immigrated to America - in fact, Europeans may have never discovered America in the first place. The whole Cullen coven aside from Carlisle might never have been born).

So what the Volturi have done (despite many of them having not-so-savoury personalities corrupted by hunger for power or violence) is bring peace to the world, get rid of tyrants, increase the food supply, allow a greater amount of freedom, and the first kind of trials and justice ever seen in their world. Sure, Aro uses trials to find new talent, but it’s still a world away from before.

Which leads me on to the events of Breaking Dawn, and Bella.

So. Maybe controversial, but: the Volturi did absolutely nothing wrong in Breaking Dawn.

They turned up thinking a serious crime had been committed. They stopped to talk (which Vladimir certainly never would have done!), considered the evidence and processed new discoveries and discussed their legality, decided there was no crime to punish, and left with only the informant dead. Yes, Irina had been innocent in the way that she strongly had believed she had been telling the truth and her memories must have presented good enough evidence to Aro initially, but their witnesses had come to see justice being served, and in the vampire world that is execution. Aro could have continued with prosecuting the Cullens for something he now knew was false, or execute Irina instead.

(Side note: she did kind of deserve it too. She didn’t bother to check her evidence, she wanted revenge for Laurent’s death so her accusation wasn’t coming from a place of good intentions but instead she was willing to have her friends and family killed for Laurent. She was also forcing Aro into a position where he had to prepare himself to kill Carlisle, whom we know he cherishes. Remember also that Aro turned down Laurent’s application to the Guard because he’d followed the Romanians for a while, so he won’t have been entirely trusting of Irina anyway, her having been Laurent’s mate).

Anyway. Onto Bella.

So Aro’s impression of Bella after New Moon seems to be positive. Why? Well, through Edward’s thoughts he saw that Bella was able to keep The Secret. He had heard how much she wanted to be a vampire. In addition, Marcus showed him how strong Edward and Bella’s bond is. Both of them knew, that if E & B’s love was almost as strong as Marcus and Didyme’s, that no matter what Edward currently said or thought about Bella being turned it was invalid. If Bella were dying, he would turn her for sure, which happened. Then the obvious, that Edward had already proven he could not live without her.

Bella was trustworthy and probably going to be turned. Alice showing proof was just a formality so Aro could say he had evidence rather than admit he’d just made assumptions (and Alice having had that vision may act as proof that his assumption was correct).

Therefore, from Aro’s perspective, Bella was a human who wanted to become immortal so much that she would rather die than not, and she was already following his law. She was no issue. 

Yet.

Bella, knowing the law, should have been very grateful that she was left alive. Edward not being executed and she not being killed or forcibly turned on the spot... Aro had been very nice to them.

And again, in BD, he was very nice to them. Some people will inevitably say that he was weak in not killing them all. I mean, they stood beside Vladimir and Stefan! They have an army of wolves fundamentally opposed to vampires! Aro has lost Good Reputation Points by sparing the Cullens. He held as close to a trial as vampire society has ever had, and rightfully pronounced the Cullens innocent.

So shouldn’t Bella like him? He has spared her life and the lives of her loved ones more than one, and proven that he can be spoken to and conversed with properly and is willing to admit he was wrong. With Aro, we know it’s important to look more at what he does than what he says, and what he has done is be very kind to the Cullens (though who knows about the future?).

Yet Bella was creeped out by him when they met and interpreted him as a threat to Edward’s life. As she loves Edward, she’s always going to be of this mind, and first impressions are important.

Vampires are stuck with the mindsets they had when turned. An example of this is Esme, who was turned after her baby died and she tried to die too. She is permanently feeling maternal. She was turned only days after giving birth. Before knowing this, Bella even describes her as maternal and the mother of the family. Huilen also has a lot of care for Nahuel, being his aunt, because of her love for Pire, and while she was dying, Pire begged Huilen to raise him. Joham does not seem to have this parental love for his son and daughters; he never really knew Pire and was never affected by her love for Nahuel, and did not meet him until years after he was born. He’s only genetically a parent. He doesn’t have the protective mindset. When he was turned, he was a curious scientist (in fact, it was even why his creator turned him). He sees the world and people as things to study.

Anyway.

When Bella was turned, all she was thinking about was Renesmee. She begged Edward to get the baby out and didn’t care for her own life.

And she will be forever stuck in this high alert, must-protect-my-baby mode. Then for weeks as a newborn vampire, she was thinking of Aro as a threat and preparing to fight him. Compounding that, he was a threat to her daughter.

Both of these things will have had a significant effect on who she will have become after her newborn phase ended. It is impossible for Bella to ever like Aro now, even if she tried.

Her dislike of him, and willingness to fight against him, will be forever engrained in her brain.

This is dangerous.

Bella found the Romanians weird, but she didn’t dislike them per se. She would probably be willing to stand with them against the Volturi again.

We can take an educated guess and assume that sometime they will rise up again - and Bella might stand with them (though I highly doubt any of the other Cullens would).

Bella was not a problem for Aro until she stood beside Vladimir and Stefan. 

Here is this vampire who can block most of his coven’s gifts, stuck with an intense dislike of him, who he has seen with his own eyes stand with his enemies. He has every right to be nervous now. Her love for her mate is almost as strong as Marcus’s bond to Didyme - how strong is her bond to Renesmee? Likely more. Aro knows the threat in that. He knows that Bella may be viewing him in the way Marcus feels when he thinks of taking revenge on whoever killed Didyme.

Nobody wants the Romanians back in power. Those who lived under their reign and those who have heard first hand stories told to them all know very well that life under Vladimir would be horrible, brutal, awful for all beside his close coven members (though considering he had a very large coven that was often squabbling amongst itself, it was probably miserable for a lot of them too).

But Bella is young. She has no memory of the world before the Volturi, and knows no one with first hand experience of that world other than the Volturi. She will have heard that it was horrible, but she has no emotional or personal connection to the near-ancient past, and vampires who lived during that time are disappearing. No one lives forever.

Then, she is American. Like Garrett, she values freedom, and the Volturi are the only oppressive vampire force either of them has ever known. Despite them being the least oppressive in vampire history, Bella and Garrett haven’t experienced the alternative. They are a government that is at times harsh, is corrupt, and executes people. They go to war and they obliterate their enemies. Bella doesn’t see that the Volturi is the least bad government her world is ever going to get, and that they’ve granted her so much freedom. She is unable to see that because, in her youth, she has nothing to compare them against.

By standing against the Volturi, Bella isn’t just standing against Aro, Caius, and Marcus. She is standing against the peace they have brought between vampires, against humans living without fear, against modern civilisation itself. She stands a representative of the next world order, and Aro can sense it.

[everlarkficexchange]

the song of my heart (plays in you)

Written by: @thelettersfromnoone

Prompt 108: Everlark fall for one another over a blood transfusion. It happens not once, but twice. His blood runs through her veins, and now hers runs through his. What are the odds they would save each other’s lives? [submitted by @mandelion82]

Rated: Teen and up; mentions of: car wrecks, physical and mental trauma, amputation.

Tags: One-shot, Soulmates, Time Jump(s), Blood-Oaths.

Word count: 2342.

Notes: Unbetaed. All mistakes are my own. Thanks to @javistg and @xerxia31 for being amazing hosts for this exchange ❤️

“The blood [of the covenant] is thicker than [the] water [of the womb].”

“Mama, tell the story again?” Grey eyes peek up shyly through dark eyelashes, fingers curling the folds of her mother’s nightgown. “ ‘bout the dream-people?”

“It’s late, darlin’,” Mama murmurs with a soft smile. She presses a kiss to her daughter’s brow. “Papa will tell the long version tomorrow, hm?”

The girl’s lower lip pops out in a pout- papa is the better storyteller, but she wants to hear the story tonight. She snuggles against her mama’s belly, whispering a ‘night-night’ to the baby they say is growing in there.

“There once was a boy who was called to war, to fight for a king in a land far from home. Though he survived many times in battle, one day, an enemy struck him, and he was hurt, something terrible. At death’s door, his friends brought him to a healer’s house, who saved his life. As he recovered, he grew to love the healer’s daughter, and she grew to love him. In time, when he was recovered, his king came calling on him again. Before he left, the boy and the healer’s daughter made a blood-oath. They drew their own blood, and held their wounds against one another. They vowed that, from that moment until they met again, the song of their blood would call out for one another, no matter how far.”

Her little hand reaches over to mama’s, pressing their palms flush. “Like this?”

“Mhm,” Mama interlaces their fingers, kissing her daughter’s knuckles. “Just like this. Every night, while he was away, all they needed to do was close their eyes, and they could feel one another’s feelings, and see through one another’s eyes.”

“Till forever?” The little girl’s eyes are growing heavy, a yawn coming in spite of her best efforts. “Mama, it’s til’ forever, right?”

Mama doesn’t answer straight away. When she does, it’s soft as a butterfly’s flight; “Till forever, until they found each other again.”

The little girl’s breathing evens out, eyes slipping shut. 

(She’s always wanting a happy ending.)

She’s twelve and using the computer unsupervised the first time she looks it up on a whim. She is meant to be researching poetry, but that quickly becomes dull. 

Instead, the rabbit hole of the web sucks her in.

According to the internet page that comes up, a Blood-Oath Soulmate is defined as a myth, steeped in legend: a couple who, when faced with separation, make a blood-oath that allows them to see, hear, and feel one another across the thousands of miles. 

The origin, exactly, is unclear. It’s a myth with several cultural variants- in her own region, Twelve, and in the northern regions of Åtta, Tio, and Tretton, the war is won, and the boy returns to the healer’s daughter. By contrast, in the southwest, they say the boy earned a glorious warrior’s death, and the girl grieves but honors his memory. In almost all the other regions, the myth is drawn out, many side-adventures and evils hinder the boy’s path home, and by the time the boy finds his way back to his love, amidst a continent of misery, they both are old and grey. It’s not clear where the myth started, some say it’s a retelling of an old Sumerian tale; others, that it comes from Viking oral lore. Some, still, argue that they all are true, that the same fate spreads itself throughout time, throughout the world, in different ways. 

All modern experts, essentially, concur on the matter of the story’s implausibility. The human body replenishes its blood count within weeks, one discussion board points out.

It was just a myth to make humans feel their love could be impermeable, or withstand the tests of distance and challenges, claims another. Or, one user with a profane avatar states, the modern meaning is just guess-work and the cultural context and any kernels of truth will forever be lost.

And everyone knows there’s no such thing as a soulmate.

Kat feels her stomach clench as she quickly exits the browser, lonely in the wake of her father’s death, and her mother’s subsequent depressive episode, and still clinging to her mother’s hushed telling of a love that is palpable down to the bone.

(She can’t decide if knowing it’s ‘just a story’ hurts or helps more. The veneer of childhood is always treasured for a reason.)

She is seventeen when it happens. 

A flash of a medical room. Harsh fluorescent lights. Thick, strong hands trying to block the light out. Starched sheets, scratching skin. A pinch of a needle and stifled shout- 

She wakes covered in sweat. 

Something is wrong, niggles at the back of her mind. Her pounding heart beats out wrong, wrong, wrong. She pushes it away, presses the thought down. She manages to lull herself back to sleep, a deep, imageless thing, but the wrongness sticks with her. 

The next night is nearly identical, except the stranger’s hands are tearing off the bedsheets. A stump of a knee rests where a leg should extend. A panicking voice, a nurse, shouts for help as the struggling and screaming begins-

“Where’s my fucking leg?!”

Kat wakes with a jolt, strangled gasps as she pushes her own blankets off, hands grasping at her limbs, the phantom terror and horror bringing bile up her throat. 

What was that?

A dreamless sleep doesn’t find her again, her eyes bruising with nights of nightmares and days of exhaustion. The hospital, the scratchy sheets, the nurses and medications and injections. 

One week, then another.

She’s in Civics class when it occurs to her. 

The blood drive, at the beginning of May. She’d turned seventeen, and finally weighed enough to donate blood.

Could it be…?

She sleeps in, one Saturday morning, when they are fitting a prosthetic on her stranger; crutches and halting steps as those beefy hands grip support bars.

“Just a step further,” a voice encourages. 

Shame and frustration, and a deep, croaking voice lashes out of the throat-

“I can’t!”

You can, you can, you can, she tries to will the stranger her confidence.

The figure stills, and for a moment, she thinks they can hear her. 

“I’m done,” they say, and in spite of the disappointment on the nurse’s face, a man in a white lab coat agrees, and helps them back into a wheelchair.

Kat feels the sinking failure, the desperate yearning to help this person, this stranger. There are only nurses and doctors, in her dreams. She knows what it means to be lonely, even when there are people around; what it means when you wake up in emotional pain, but have no one to share it with.

She wants to tell her stranger it will all be all right, but the weeks pass and she can only confide her secret to herself. They wouldn’t believe her, even if she could say it in person.

Where is your family? she tries to ask.

They never seem to hear her.

(Waking becomes harder, but she can’t confide in anyone that she wakes wishing she could live in her dreams without them thinking she’s gone mad.)

They are kneading dough, seated at a wood table in a cluttered kitchen. The prosthetic is fitting to the leg, tender today but not sore, exactly. She can smell the flour and feel the silky-smooth texture between her fingers. Smoothe jazz music is playing, from a radio over on the counter. She feels a hand squeezing her stranger’s shoulder.

“Looks good, Pete.” It’s a gruff voice, but not unkind.

“Needs to rise,” her stranger- ‘Pete’!- retorts. They don’t look up, but she can feel a flush on her ‘Pete’s’ cheeks.

“We got some coursework from the school, then.”

(She doesn’t realize this is the last she will dream of her stranger.)

The dreams evaporate, after eight weeks, as abruptly as they had begun.

In the aftermath of her first dreamless night in over a month, she wakes to the dawn breaking with no images from her stranger. 

‘Pete’. 

She tries to will herself back to sleep, compel visions back from the brink. It’s the first night she thinks to try and remember the names of the doctors and nurses, or the location of the hospital. The nametags are foggy in her memories, a nurse Jackie or Jenny and a last name they had abbreviated to, ‘A.’ 

The internet doesn’t help her any more than her own mind can. ‘An amputee named ‘Pete’ who likes to knead dough and is doing high school coursework at home’ doesn’t do much in a White Pages search. 

She writes it all down, then, each snippet and sound she can recall. She keeps the journal under her mattress, knowing her mother won’t bother, and her baby sister wouldn’t dare to look. 

Like a madwoman, she rereads her own accounts, adds notes to it every morning, hoping the dreams will start again. But every morning, the dreams seem more as if they were fantasies, and her journal reads like fiction.

A year passes. 

Her dreams now are either blank, or memories of ‘Pete’.

She could blame it on her family friend, and his stupid insistance that she attend Prom; or maybe the girlfriends she eats lunch with, who guilt her by saying that everyone needs a life outside of school, and after-school jobs.

Kat had only driven into town because she needed a damn dress. Two weeks later, and she would have been exhausted from Prom as she crossed the school stage, collecting her high school diploma.

Nothing pans out the way she imagines it will, though.

She’s alone in the car when a truck in the oncoming lane overturns at a curve in the road.

Pain bursts on her head. Flames against her skin. Crushed metal, and broken glass. In the distant fog of wailing sirens, she can hear first responders attempting to call out to her. 

The only thing she remembers seeing clearly, between the accident and the hospital, is smoke rising into a blue, cloudless sky, through a shattered windshield.

“You lost a lot of blood, Kat,” the doctor says, tone not unsympathetic. “We had to do a transfusion.”

“Oh.”

She blinks, a haze of morphling in her preventing her from fully comprehending. Some broken bones. A neck brace. Burns on her face and arms, but not as bad as they first had thought- she won’t need skin grafts.

All small mercies.

Her sister and mama are there, balloons and flowers and hugs a-plenty. Get-well-soon cards from several classmates and family friends.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” her mama murmurs, as the doctor leaves.

“Okay.”

Mama runs her fingers through Kat’s knotted hair, while her sister clings and tells her how much she loves her.

She’s not numb, not beneath the morphling. But she’s so damn tired and her skin itches under the bandages. 

(She can’t comfort her family while they try their hand at comforting her.)

She is washing her hands in the hospital room sink, when she feels a jolt, a compulsion; a chill down her spine and gooseflesh down her arms. She looks in the mirror, and feels in awe, feels a foreign elation. A burst of affection, a warmth. 

She can’t reckon with it, can’t justify it. 

It’s just… her own face. Sloppily braided dark hair. Healing stitches on her cheek, and forehead. Silver eyes, surrounded by a bruise, set in a narrow face. She gulps, leaning in closer, and trying to grasp the sensation. Out-of-body, might be the right term- dissociative, she’d read about once, for Health and Wellness. 

There’s a knock on her door, the nurse doing a check, and as Kat turns, the warmth dissipates.

The nurse comes in not long after, checks her vitals and asks a series of questions.

“My name is Katniss Everdeen.”

That warmth in her chest is back, the hair at the base of her neck stands straight.

She scrubs her hands over her face, focusing on the simple questions the nurse is asking.

“I’m eighteen years old. I’m graduating from PPH12 in Sommen in one week. I’m at Merchant Memorial Hospital.”

In the bathroom that night, she stares at her own reflection, and wonders if maybe that feeling of someone looking over her shoulder- more like looking through her eyes- if maybe….

She fogs up the mirror, and writes her room number. She stares at it, for a time, before scoffing at own ridiculousness, and wiping it away with her towel.

She only has one day left before being discharged, though she’ll miss graduation and the parties that would entail. She can’t say she is particularly disappointed; she’s never been a party person.

She’s awake when the door to her shared hospital room opens. She pays it little mind. The curtain around her bed is pulled taught, her roommate jabbering away on their phone about the food service as if this were fine dining, rather than a hospital. Kat is reading a get well card, this one signed by the whole senior class and class advisors.

There’s a thrumming in her veins, but that might be them weaning her off of the morphling.

Curtain rings scrape against metal, and she barely glances up, the nurse rounds due any minute now. Normally, though, the bubbly nurse who does the day-shift is already bustling with an overwhelming enthusiasm that makes Kat question how exhausted the nurse is at the end of the day.

Maybe it’s a different nurse or a doctor or mama, or- 

The blue eyes that are boring into hers are ones she has only seen in her dreams; she can finally see blonde curls framing them, familiar thick, strong hands brushing through the curls. 

“Pete?” she croaks, certain she’s finally lost her damn mind.

His eyes widen at the sound of his name, lips parting. 

“I found you.” 

A tone of surprise, as if he’d driven all this way, but in expectation of disappointment.

“Peeta,” he introduces himself, edging closer. His hand carefully takes hold of her own. “And… I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Katniss.”

(Her name has never been spoken as sweetly, and her heart has never felt so full.)

[secretshinigami]

Maybe Maybe Maybe

Author: @lightsredapple / Zara_Zara (on AO3)

For: @danthegeek

Pairings/Characters: Light/L. Soichiro Yagami

Rating/Warnings: G. Mentions of alcohol

Prompt: “Soichiro and L go out for drinks, discussing the case in the beginning, then talking about Light, L sharing his feelings for Soichiro’s’ son.”

Author’s notes: Happy holidays everyone! Hope you like this danthegeek, I had fun writing it :)

In the early hours of the morning, L was surrounded by warmth. And he was holding onto that warmth at all the points that mattered: there was a warm waist in his arms, a forehead pressed against the perfect space between delicate shoulder blades, the soft rise and fall of a chest under his hands, and legs entwined into a mess of infinity. Between the slits of his slowly waking eyes, the world was a sleepy ocean of twilight. The world felt so soft in the moment. It was something he often forgot the world could be. It was easy to be blinded by all else when he surrounded himself with the indifferent light of computer screens, scrolling, scrolling, searching… 

For the longest time, L had been deeply acquainted with empty rooms. He’s seen it all, rooms violent with furnishings to rooms desolate with sparsity, and after many years of traveling they all ended up looking the same. This was because, at the root of it, the essence of any hotel was rooted in its transience. The rooms within its building were meant only to be lived in for a certain amount of time before its guests moved on. This sort of transience suited L just fine. He went wherever a case called him and inhabited many hotel rooms but never lived in them. These places were never home. He’d never sought for such a thing in his life. However, when he woke up that morning, feeling well-rested, easy, slow, warm, all of these states which were caused by one young man—he found that none of these things were easy to ignore. What happened to him? he wondered. Normally, at this time he’d be vividly awake and deep within a case. Normally, he wouldn’t even have slept at all and would’ve been on his fifteenth coffee by then. Even after over a year of this set-up, sleep and rest and calm were consistently very novel things for L…but, honestly, he wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

The seconds ticked by and it would’ve been so easy to have slipped back to sleep. And L would’ve done so, but he could feel Light waking. And if Light was awake then he was most certainly going to be leaving soon. In that moment, stopping that from happening was L’s first and most pressing issue of the day. To win, you must attack, so making like a boa constrictor, he tightened his hold on Light. It was the perfect plan. Light wouldn’t want to move because he wouldn’t want to wake L. He was considerate like that. L didn’t get enough sleep, he always said. It would not only be hypocritical of Light to wake L up but it would also go against Light’s  code of honor and all that jazz. Yes, this was good. More than good, L thought as he nuzzled Light’s back with this forehead and sighed contentedly. With his victory insured, L contendly closed his eyes but frowned when Light moved. It seemed as if he was trying to escape the pirate knot of limbs L had on him, “L,” Light whispered. L remained quiet because he was “asleep.”

Light fidgeted once more. “L,” Light whispered again and sighed when he got nothing in response. A minute passed where Light stayed with all his warmth and all was well. “I know you’re awake,” Light said, voice just barely a whisper. “I need to get up now…I have class.” 

L still refused to respond or let up on his tight hold on the other man. “L, come on.” Light exasperatedly said as he began trying to pry L’s arms off of him. It was difficult because they were as tight as a dead body in rigor mortis. Did L die during the night? After Light gave a good struggle and finally got one leg loose from L’s own, L inhaled deeply as if he were waking and mumbled, “Mmm? Morning, Light-kun.” He felt Light’s back untense somewhat at signs of life from L and L took that opportunity to strengthen his hold on him. At this point it wasn’t cuddling anymore, they were wrestling in a strange sleepy manner. 

“Good morning, L,” Light said in a conversational tone, entertaining him even if he definitely knew that L had been awake this whole time and was just being difficult. “I need to get up. Let me go.”

“Do you really need to? Is it urgent? Life or death?”

“Yes, so will you please let go of me?” 

“I’m not convinced. If this were truly a life or death situation, you’d sound more distressed.”

“How’s this for distressed…” Light grumbled. And with far more energy than was fair in the morning, Light rolled them over, commencing a brief tussle in the sheets. In one horrible move, Light completely escaped. L stretched one hand towards him, like a dying man reaching for help, but it collapsed when confronted with the merciless look of triumph on Light’s smiling face. With half his face pressed to the pillow, one of L’s eyes watched as Light gracefully walked away and pulled the curtains open, “I’m sorry, L. I have to go.” Light needlessly repeated, except, this time with a pointless apology. 

L rolled more comfortably onto his side and hugged his aching shins as he silently watched Light dress. The morning sunshine was spilling in through their window, flooding the room with daffodil yellow. It burnished Light’s skin a golden color, much of it methodically getting hidden away by needless layers of fabric. The soft sounds of his dressing were simple and sensual. They were the only sounds that moved in the otherwise sleepily still room. Head crushed to his pillow, L catalogued Light’s motions with a passive intensity and sighed to himself. 

“C’mon, don’t pout,” Light chuckled and finished fixing his tie that didn’t need fixing. He then bent down to peck L on the mouth. Both their eyes were slitted open. The peck was chaste. What was with that? It had to be corrected. L’s hand kept Light’s head from moving away. He tried deepening the kiss but Light pulled away with an apologetic grimace and said, “Morning breath.”

L flopped on the bed as if he’d been shot, “You’re so mean to me, Light…Denying me my rights…You should be prosecuted,” L yawned and sleepily glared at Light. 

“A lawsuit from the Greatest Detective in the world? Scary. We’ll talk more about this later, yeah?” Light was a blur as he swept out of the room. The room went quiet.

  ***

  Light wasn’t in fact coming home soon that day. Light enjoyed acting on his freedom and often stayed out of their pent house just because he could. Whether he went out for a walk in the park, or to sweat off energy at the gym, or study in a cafe, he always returned to their place at 9 p.m. sharp. This suited both of them just fine. Each of them were independent creatures at their core, so the time apart was a welcome gift to that part of themselves. Light’s habit on that particular Thursday night was ideal, as L was going to meet someone he had evaded telling Light he was going to see. 

  ***

  Like looking through a fishbowl, L gazed at the explosion of colors in his drink. Instead of sipping it just yet, L picked the colorful umbrella off the rim of it and twirled it in his fingers so that the colorful pattern blurred. With his other finger, he slowly pushed the food menu towards his company, “Shall we order an entree?” It occurred to him, perhaps belatedly, that it was just about edging on dinner time for most people and Soichiro might be hungry. 

  “I’m fine, Ryuzaki. Thank you for the offer, though.” Some beats of silence rested between them. It would’ve been devastatingly awkward if they were anyone other than who they were. L was unbothered by such silences, in fact he often encouraged them, because when suspects were confronted with an uncomfortable silence they tried often to overcompensate for the silence, slipping up in the process. However, he didn’t need that particular advantage of silence in this instance because Soichiro wasn’t under interrogation, of course. Anyhow, the gravity of the awkwardness was dulled somewhat by Soichiro’s unrelenting efforts to keep up the appearance of being unphased by such things. 

  Years of experience in the force curated a disposition that was as cool as a glacier; but, historically,  L was responsible for testing that coolheadedness. Particularly when it came to the terrible suspicions cast against his son that ended up proving untrue. The emotional trauma from that whole period had yet to leave Soichiro and it made him somewhat embittered towards the detective in front of him; this was despite knowing that the things that had to be done during the investigation were necessary for catching as big an evil as Kira. Soichiro only wished Light hadn’t had to go through everything he was put through. 

  Soichrio watched as the little pink umbrella spinning in L’s fingers escaped and whirled to the ground. L blinked at where it fell but did not pick it up, that was when Soichiro decided to speak and go straight to business, “Ryuzaki, why did you ask to meet me…Is everything ok? How is Light?”

  “Light-kun is well. He has his three balanced meals a day, follows a reasonable sleep schedule, and is working very diligently in his studies,” L ticked off on his fingers as if consulting a mental list, “He has also begun trying his hand at baking. A skill of which you can imagine I am very appreciative of.” 

  “Oh that is good. I am glad to hear it.”

  “And how is Yagami-san?” L pressed his fingers to his drink and slid it towards himself to take a sip of it. After L did so, Soichiro lifted his sake and drank from it. The burn from his drink tickled his throat and offered a little bit of comfort from the unease of having L’s big fish eyes looking directly at him. 

  “I’m doing fine, thank you, Ryuzaki. I feel better than I have in months actually.”

  “If I may ask, how so?”

  “Well, the Kira case may have closed two years ago but I haven’t felt this way in a long time,” He thoughtfully paused, “Like things are finally starting to settle.”

  “Settle?” 

  Yagami senior swirled the dark liquid in his glass very quietly. It was quite busy in the bar, but not the loud sort of busyness. The noise level in the place was just enough to hear the clink of the ice cubes inside. That was the only tick that betrayed Soichiro’s discomfort with sharing about himself. He was not a man used to sharing the more introspective parts of himself but he would try for the sake of his former boss, the detective who had caught Kira, and most importantly the man who his son had chosen to spend his life with. 

  When Soichiro had found out that Light and L were in a relationship, he was admittedly very surprised…And not exactly thrilled. The two of them had told him, Sachiko, and Sayu just the previous year during Christmas dinner. Soichiro had already been surprised when Light had asked if he could invite Ryuzaki to it, but he just thought it was because the two of them had become very close friends during the investigation and had kept in contact. However, it did strike him as a little odd that Ryuzaki was still in Japan a year after the Kira case closed. But he had reasoned that any number of things could’ve led L to stay in the area or even draw him back—another case, perhaps. But no, through a series of subtle gestures during that fateful dinner, the nature of their true relationship came to light. Admittedly, Soichiro was a little uncomfortable with this revelation. He was not alone in this because Sachiko was as well. The two of them were of the same generation and mold, one that was generally more conservative in their beliefs. Sayu was shocked but no less understanding. She got over her surprise quicker than her parents. Soichiro regretted his reaction. He wished he had been quicker to accept and understand. It felt like he failed his son by not doing so, and it hurt him to know the way he acted had hurt his son in the process. Their relationship suffered for it and grew weaker than it had ever been. 

  It was through some self-discovery and acts to educate himself in areas he had previously been blind to that he came to understand this relationship Light had built with the man before him. Ryuzaki, or L, may have been quite an odd personality and not at all the sort of person who he and Sachiko thought their son would give his heart to. But he understood it—at least, Soichiro thought he did. L may have been a bit strange, but no one could deny the intellect nestled behind the explosion of black hair. Soichiro wasn’t blind, during the investigation he noticed the way Light and L seemed to click. Listening to them talk to each other was like watching a million fireworks go off at once. It was beautiful to see his son’s intellect and genius at its peak but it was like the sorts of conversations Light and L would have were far above the world’s heads. Soichiro also noticed that just as much as those two connected they also crashed violently against each other, quite literally at times. Both of those things were novelties to him in regards to Light. Soichiro had never seen his normally patient and even-tempered son lose his temper at someone else. Much less throw himself into a physical altercation with another person. That uncovering of his temper was surprising. Equally, on the other hand, he had never seen his son so engaged with another person. It was like all this time his son had been sleepwalking through life, doing everything perfectly, of course, but he’d never seen him so alive until then. It didn’t make sense but then it completely did. 

  “Crimes have returned to the numbers they used to be at before Kira. And with that, they are very…Normal. Nothing on the scale of Kira and his madness. It’s almost like how things used to be a couple years ago but not quite. For one, I’m trying to be home more.” The Kira investigation had forced him to confront his mortality on more than one occasion. Such a confrontation left a lasting impression and was not so easy to shake off. Soichiro may have watched how work life and criminal life may have returned to normalcy; however, he knew that he himself couldn’t follow in those same steps and go back to living life as he used to. Light was already living away and making his life elsewhere, but Soichiro decided to make efforts to try and be there for Sayu and his wife. “I’m still very busy, but my daughter recently showed me an article about the benefits of balancing work and private life…So, I’m trying to do that for them..”

  L nodded and took a long draught of his drink. Soichiro took that opportunity to nurse his sake. L set his sweet drink down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, “Please don’t take offense at my saying this, but I notice Yagami-san has changed.”

  Soichiro blinked. He had not expected that. “I’m not offended. I appreciate it,” He coughed and quietly said, “I’m trying.” 

  “I think it’s admirable. I cannot boast of such a thing,” As if to emphasize that comment, L suddenly pulled out a cherry stem he’d twisted to a knot in his mouth. That, and his familiar way of sitting combined to send a message that said:  I’m the same as always.  It was strange receiving a compliment such as this, especially from the person who was giving it. L was putting himself down to give Soichiro that compliment. But on the other hand he also could’ve been mocking him. It was always hard to tell these sorts of things with L. 

  Soichiro’s discomfort with the situation had only begun to wane but he still felt compelled to get up and order more drinks. So, after getting a slightly stronger glass of sake and another colorful concoction of a drink for L, he felt ready for anything. The extra fortitude the sake gave him did not quite prepare him for L’s next question, “I was thinking over what you’ve said and my attention has caught onto one particular thing. You said you have been trying to change for ‘them’ .. your family, but what of yourself?”

  Soichiro paused, “I’m not sure I understand the question. Isn’t the fact I’m trying to change already to do with myself?”

  “I suppose,” L looked away and sipped his drink as he thought. The truth was he was kind of bored with this train of conversation even though he was the one who had put it in this direction. These kinds of things, the sorts of things to do with hearts and feelings didn’t really interest him unless it was to do with…No one, really. No one except Light. That exception refocused him on the topic at hand and why he was there, “I only meant to ask, are you changing entirely for your family? Such a thing seems like a very selfless undertaking to me.”

  “Well, my family are a very big part of it. Almost everything I’ve done has been for my family, keeping them safe, secure, and cared for,” Soichrio paused in thought and initially took a sip of his sake before he thought of something painful and took a much longer drink of it. Fire tumbled down his throat as he remembered requesting to be imprisoned with his son. He had spent long hours in that cell of his just hoping and praying that the real Kira would slip up and clear his son of all suspicions. Just even thinking about the well of love he had in his soul for his family made something expand in his chest like a bomb exploding in slow motion. It was just too much. He loved them all fiercely and would tear down the world for any one of them. The emotion pounded through his skull and shone sharply in his eyes, “Everything I do, I do for them. At least that’s what I always believed. Yes, my job took me away from home for many many hours, but I always thought it was worth it because when I finally got home at the end of the day I knew the streets were a little safer for my family and everyone else. That was something that always drove me to this field of work. It was why I became a detective. The world can be so cruel, as I’m sure you already know, and probably know far too much of, but there is also good in it. People can be kind just as much as they can be cruel. My family gave me balance because when I returned home, I returned to love.” Soichiro wiped a corner of an eye that was burning with something mysterious. 

  “Out of the darkness and into light.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Forgive me, it was an ill-timed joke. Thank you for sharing what you have, Yagami-san. Speaking as honestly as you have is no easy feat.”

  “Thank you,” Soichiro said. Feeling very odd after unpacking all those thoughts. He hardly remembered L’s original question and he felt he didn’t quite answer it. Or maybe he did.. He wasn’t sure.

  “Have you spoken to Light-kun recently?”

  Soichiro looked down, “No, I haven’t.”

  L extended his hand, “If you’ll allow me your phone I can give you Light-kun’s number. He changes it every so often.” After poking Light’s number into Soichiro’s phone—Light most definitely wouldn’t be too pleased with that but he’d get over it—L slid Yagami senior’s phone back to him and then said, “So as to not take up anymore of your time, I will tell you why I asked us to meet here,” Soichiro leaned forward slightly, alert. “As you know, Light-kun will be graduating just a few months from now. With his incredible skills and talent I feel he will be an invaluable asset to my team. I already offered the job to him and he has accepted. We will be leaving Japan in early June.”

  “I see,” another surprise. But to a certain extent he also expected this. Sparkling pride filled him at the news but it also made him a little sad. Although he already rarely saw Light now, his son would be leaving the country soon and that would stretch their distance to a grander more physical sense. But he was a little confused as to why L was telling him this. “Are you asking for my approval? Light is an adult and can make his own decisions. If that is what he wants to do, I support him.”

  “I wasn’t asking for that. But I’m certain he would appreciate hearing that anyway.”

  And then it clicked. L giving him the phone number and then telling him that he and Light were going to leave… “I think so too,” He blinked at L and saw him differently. He felt he just saw a layer to the man that he was not aware existed. So, he was changing as well. He thought that much of it must’ve been Light’s influence and Soichiro smiled very faintly at the thought of it. He didn’t drink nearly enough to feel a buzz or loosen his tongue, but the knowledge that this was probably the last meeting he’d ever have with Ryuzaki gave him enough courage to say, “You know, I think you’ve changed as well, Ryuzaki.”

  “Oh?”

  Now that he said it, he pushed away embarrassment because such a comment felt too familiar, but Ryuzaki had told him the same thing so it couldn’t be as impolite as it felt. Especially since Soichiro meant it well. “Be honest, Ryuzaki. How do you feel for my son?” When Ryuzaki and Light had visited their home and announced their relationship a year ago, the status was all that they had shared. Of course, such a thing had to be backed up with feelings and he was more than certain they existed. But he wanted to hear it confirmed in some way. Specifically, from the man who was soon going to take his son away.

  “I love your son, Yagmai-san,” There it was. Said factually and flatly, almost coldly. But that was Ryuzaki’s way, and perhaps the factual way in which it was said lent it an undeniable weight of honesty that could not be ignored. 

  Soichiro released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and asked, “He feels like home?”

  L blinked at Soichiro. It was an unexpected question given the sentimentality of it. It was even more sentimental than the one about L’s feelings. L knew of his own feelings but he’d never romanticised them in the way Soichiro’s question was asking him to do. Did Light feel like home? he wondered. What was a home anyway? Despite the questions that were stirred up inside him, L bluntly answered, “He is my home.” L  told himself he’d contemplate that statement later or discard it as something trivial. He reconsidered the latter due to Soichiro’s big smile of happiness and relief. He’d never seen Light’s father smile that way and it made him curious, “What is your home, Yagami-san?”

  “My family, of course.”

  “Is it true even if Light is away?”

  “Yes,” Soichiro’s grin dimmed somewhat, but it was not sad. 

  “I don’t need to apologize for taking him away then.”

  “That’s right.”

  L lifted a corner of his mouth, “Good. I wasn’t planning on it.”

***

  Later that night, when L had his head on Light’s lap and was dozing away, Light’s phone rang. L blinked his eyes open and watched as Light impassively checked it. L said, “You should get that.”

  Light raised an eyebrow at him, phone held aloft and vibrating in his hand probably with only seconds left to live, “Oh?”

  L just stared at him without an answer. Light frowned slightly but his curiosity was a persuasive force. He flipped his phone open and tucked it between his shoulder and chin with one last weary glance down at L. “Hello?” One of his hands resumed idly running through L’s hair but with less intent than before. 

  The volume was too low to hear anything, especially with the tv. But a low and staticy “Light” could be heard.

  “Dad?” Light said in initial confusion before looking down at L. A flash of realization passed in his eyes as Light realized the answer was right there in his lap. Quickly getting over his surprise and trading it for weary caution Light asked, “Are you ok?” He moved L’s head off his lap and got up, walking away to another room where he closed the door. Sealing away his voice as he spoke on the phone. 

  Hmmph, why didn’t Soichiro call a little bit earlier? Preferably, before L had his head on his son’s lap? Lolling on the couch for a bit, he waited for Light to return, but the call was taking longer than expected. When he tried listening through the door, he couldn’t hear anything, which led him to believe Light had gone into the room’s bathroom to add an extra layer of distance. 

  Forty minutes passed before Light finished his call. L had lost interest in the movie he had not really been watching and turned off the tv to read. But he was not really interested in the book either and put the book down when he saw Light reappear. Light remained in a meditative silence as he returned to the couch. L watched him the entire way, trying to pick up on what Light felt and what he was thinking. Light reclined on the couch and moved so he faced L, propping his chin on his hand he matched L’s stares and quietly regarded him, “That was my dad,” he needlessly said.

  “I know.”

  “Of course,” Light rolled his eyes but turned more serious and said, “I don’t appreciate my phone number being handed out so freely. Nor do I like how you’ve interfered in my family business. But I appreciate the inventions behind it all, just don’t do it again. I can handle these things on my own.”

  L nodded and found his toes a very interesting thing as he stared at them. “You’re mad at me.”

  “I’m not. Sure, I’m a little put-out but I’m not angry. As I said, just don’t do something like that again.” 

  Unable to contain himself anymore, L asked, “How did the call go?”

  “It was fine,” Light shrugged in a far too deliberate manner. “He just talked about work and I talked about university. Nothing important.”

  “You spent 45 minutes in there.”

  “He was very intrigued by my class to do with the history of Japanese Criminology.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Where did we leave off again?” Light turned the tv on again and resumed the movie they’d been watching. 

When they were in bed once again, drifting off to sleep, L wondered about what Soichiro said, did Light feel like home? He felt an arm encircle his waist and drag him back into Light’s chest. So Light really didn’t mind what I did, he thought and relaxed into his hold. It was a reverse of earlier that morning when L was holding him instead. Now Light was mirroring that position of the past but in his own way. His forehead was pressed to the back of his neck and their legs were fitted together, not tangled. Is this home? He thought, as he idly played with Light’s fingers. L sighed and then Light sighed with him. Maybe.

[atleasttheresthis]

Project Partners (Song x Katara)

Happy day two of ATLA wlw week! This one is for the academia AU.

content warning: alcohol

@atla-wlw-week

"So, in conclusion, you and your partner will research one new surgical or oncological technique from the last five years on any of the cancer types I've included here. You'll have three weeks to complete the project." Professor Pakku pauses, lifts his eyes from his notes and turns them on the horde of bleary eyed, eight am lecture suckers in front of him. "Any questions?"

Song, who is just as tired and out of it as the rest of her classmates at 8:30 on a Monday, studies the powerpoint slide in front of her, struggling to write down all the project requirements before Professor Pakku moves on from the assignment and starts the day's lecture.

"Before you ask, Taedo," the Professor is saying from the front of the room, "no, I will not accept any late papers. If you would have read the syllabus I distributed at the beginning of the semester instead of no-doubt chucking into the garbage as I'm sure you did, you would know my policy on late assignments."

Song grins to herself as Taedo slumps down in his seat. Pakku is something of a hardass, but since Song mostly keeps to herself and stays out of his way, she's never had a problem with him. Besides, his course on cancer treatment was super popular among the pre-med and nursing students. It would take a lot more than verbal abuse to get Song to give up her seat in the course. She needed the elective to finish her third year of the nursing program at Ba Singh Se University, and since she wanted to work at a cancer ward after graduating, this course was practically a requirement.

From the front row, Katara pipes up. "You could just put the syllabus online."

Pakku sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose while Song rolls her eyes. For the entire semester, Katara seems to have made it her mission to make the Professor's life difficult, and it drives Song crazy.

"I suppose I could, but my ancient and old-fashioned ways make it quite difficult for me to use the computer, or so you told me in class last week." Even from her spot in the middle of the room, Song can hear Katara harumph. 

"Any other questions?" Professor Pakku asks, then sighs when Katara shoves her hand into the air. "Yes, Katara?"

"I've noticed you didn't include the breast as part of the infected areas we could study," she begins, but the professor interrupts her.

"Yes, thank you for proving, yet again, that you know how to read," Pakku says easily. Song winces. Lately she’s found herself unable to focus in this class, devoting her energy instead to either silently cheering on Professor Pakku in his misguided quest to get Katara to be quiet for more than five minutes so he can teach, or silently (always silently) commending Katara as she points out Pakku’s rampant sexism. Their relationship confuses the shit out of her, and while right now she finds herself inclined to defend the student (because wow, that was a really asshole thing to say, Professor), she thinks both of them go way too far.

Either way, it’s threatening to wreak havoc on her GPA.

Unaffected by Pakku’s rudeness, Katara presses the point. “That’s sexist,” she says bluntly, and Song finds herself nodding. “We should be able to study whatever cancers we want to. Just because you want to ignore all the stuff that only affects women doesn’t mean we want to.” She stops for a moment, considers. “Also, will we be able to pick our own partners?"

Pakku seems to have lost his temper. "You know what, just for that, everyone else gets to pick their partners, except for you. You will be paired with," he stops, consults the class list on his podium. "Song Ma."

Um, what? Song lets out a breath, unable to believe her shit luck. Everyone in the course turns around to stare at each other, wondering who the unlucky girl is until they catch Song's face. She knows she's got a completely disbelieving, what the fuck look on, so much so that Pakku actually smiles when his eyes catch hers. He gives her a small shrug, evil grin totally upstaging his non-apology. "Good luck," he adds helpfully.

Katara sniffs, turns back around in her chair. Song resigns herself to the inevitable. It's obvious there's no getting out of this one.

***

Song finds Katara waiting in the hallway after class. Slugging her backpack over one shoulder, Song steps forward and introduces herself. "Hi. I'm Song." She briefly considers holding out a hand, then stops herself, raising it to stifle a yawn instead. 

"I know," Katara says snobbishly. Jesus, this is going to be like pulling teeth, isn't it? Biting back a rude reply in kind, Song asks "do you have any ideas for what you want to research?"

"I want to research the use of dye to identify positive lymph nodes in breast cancer patients," Katara says immediately, and Song sighs. "Look, I know you're apparently cool with being on Pakku's bad side, but I don't need a shitty grade on this report because you can't pick your battles and have to stick it to the man whenever you have the chance." Katara looks a bit surprised by her outburst. Whatever. Song's grade is on the line, she's not going to risk it for some girl with a death wish, even if she is really pretty, skin somehow looking shiny and gorgeous even under the fluorescent lights of the hallway.

"I'll talk to Pakku," Katara offers begrudgingly. "See if he'll officially allow us to go beyond the project parameters."

"Fine, go ahead," Song relinquishes. Katara hadn't asked if she had any ideas, but whatever. "Your funeral."

Katara cracks a smile. "Is that okay, or did you want to research something else?" 

Song is so surprised by Katara's thoughtfulness, by her apparent ability to reach into Song's head and pluck out her inner monologue, that she merely shakes her head. That's alright, though. Lymph nodes are fascinating enough.

"Cool," Katara says. "I'll swing by his office hours today and let you know how it goes." Song nods, watches Katara walk away, and realizes she never even gave the other girl her phone number. 

Oh well. They have three weeks to work it out, and she'll see Katara in class on Wednesday.

Song shrugs to herself, walks out of the biology department toward the squashy chairs on the ground floor of the science building to get some reading done before her next class.

Later that day, when she's studying with her housemate Bohei after lunch, an email pops up on her phone.

Hey Song,

I talked to Pakku, he'll let us do the breast cancer project without deducting anything from our grade. 

Let's find a time to talk soon so we can figure out how we should divide the work. I can handle the research part of it if you want to handle the conclusion and summary.

-Katara

Song is furious. Why is Katara relegating her to the easy stuff? Doesn't she think Song can do good work?

"What's wrong?" Bohei, one of her housemates, asks from across the table. Song reads her the email. "Isn't that the stuck up girl that's always getting into fights with the professor? Sucks that you're paired with her."

"The professor put us together," Song explains. "Ugh. Why won't she let me do the work on this project? I'm smart, I can handle a research paper!"

"I actually think you're in a golden situation," Bohei says, reaching over to snag a few of Song's chips from an open bag on the table. "Just let her do all the work, if she cares about it so much you'll probably get a good grade, free A for the project."

Song shakes her head. "No, I want to help, I can do it. Why doesn't she think I can help?"

"Why do you care?" Bohei counters, raising an eyebrow. A great question, but Song is not in the mood for self-reflection.

"I, I don't," Song splutters. "I don't care, I just, I just don't think it's fair that she's doing all the work alone! And besides, how do I know she'll do a good job?"

"Okay," Bohei says, giving Song a look that says she knows what a flimsy excuse that is. Why does Song care what Katara thinks of her? She's just some know-it-all who can't leave well enough alone. Song emails her back, tells her she's free for dinner, and gets a reply a few minutes later that Katara will meet her at the dining hall. Song tries to push the other girl out of her mind, turning back to her chemistry notes. 

It's no use. By the time dinner rolls around, Song is simmering with indignation over Katara's assumption that she couldn't help with the project. She packs up her stuff, trying to tune out Bohei's pointed questions (the other girl had gotten over her instinct to leave Song alone about it and has instead spent the rest of the afternoon asking if Song likes Katara, like, like-likes Katara???) and begrudgingly makes her way over to the dining hall. After swiping her school ID to get in, she sees Katara at a table with a plate of food. Sighing, resigning herself to a confrontation, Song heads over there, dropping her bag onto an empty seat.

"Hey," she says, monotone, and Katara looks up. "Hi," she says back, a bit startled, but Song's not exactly giving her the best attitude.

"How was your day," Song asks rhetorically, and Katara raises an eyebrow but whatever, Song is just being polite.

"It was okay," Katara answers, tossing some of her long brown hair over her shoulder. Song likes it this way, better than when she puts it in the long braid that snakes down her back. "How was yours?"

An awkward moment, where Song has lost herself staring at Katara's hair. She realizes the other girl has asked her a question, and gives herself a shake. "It was fine too," she answers quickly. 

"Do you want to get a plate before we start working?" Katara asks.

Song agrees, gets up to scour the dining options for something to eat. She ends up with a bowl of pasta, some carrots, and a glass of water. Reaching Katara again and sitting back down, Song pulls her laptop and notebook out of her bag before spearing a piece of pasta and angrily throwing it into her mouth.

Katara, oblivious this time to her anger, has gotten out a laptop of her own. "So, I already made a google doc, I'm sharing it with you now," she says, and Song moves to check her email, loading the document on her screen. "Like I said, I can handle the research part and you can do the conclusion, is that okay?" Katara asks, not even looking up from her computer.

Song takes a deep breath. "No, it's not really okay," she answers in a rush. That makes Katara look up. "I can help with the research part too, I think I can handle it," she says drily. "I just don't think it's fair for you to do so much of the work," she tacks hurriedly, wanting Katara to think she's doing this for more noble reasons than wanting the other girl to think she's smart.

"Oh, it's okay, I don't mind doing the work," Katara brushes Song off, turning back to the laptop. 

Song groans internally. "Katara. I can help. I want to do some of the work on this project, it's my grade too," she reminds her.

Katara looks at her skeptically. "Alright," she concedes finally. "Here, want to look over some of the sources I've already gathered?"

Song takes another bite, nodding. They spend the rest of the evening compiling journal articles and studies on the use of dye to identify positive and negative lymph nodes in the armpit. It's not half as bad as Song thought it might be, both girls are focused on the work, and after an hour and a half they have enough to start working on the paper. Song drafts a preliminary outline, which Katara approves of after making only one or two small changes, and then they call it a night, agreeing to meet up again later that week. Song packs up her bag feeling good, they got work done. And she's definitely proved to Katara that she's smart enough to hold her own. Not that she cares about any of that.

***

As the week goes on, Song finds herself enjoying her study sessions with Katara more than she'd like to admit. For all her sharp edges in class, she's surprisingly laid back when she talks with Song. She's got a sharp sense of humor, and the way she vivisects Pakku and some of the other asshole idiots in their class causes Song to nearly pitch a fit. About the work itself, she's pretty anal, but Song's own standards are exacting themselves, so it's not like she can complain.

They meet again on Wednesday, but it's on Friday that Katara tells her that she's pre-med and plans to become a breast cancer surgeon. Her mother died of breast cancer, and she wants to work so other people don't suffer like she did. It only seems natural to tell her about her father's fatal car accident, in turn. 

"Is that why you want to become a nurse?" Katara asks quietly. She doesn't say she's sorry, and neither does Song. What good would that do?

Song blows out a breath. "Maybe?" she offers. "I don't know. I just know that I'm good at this, I'm good at helping people when they're hurt, and if I can do it, shouldn't I?"

Katara nods. "I understand," she says, and Song gets the feeling that she really does.

***

By Friday night it becomes obvious to both Song and, unfortunately, Song's housemates, that their girl is quickly becoming enraptured with Katara. "What do I do?" Song moans into a chocolate chip cookie that D'wei made to cheer her up.

"I thought she was annoying," he asks, topping up his glass of cheap, Barefoot wine, before handing the bottle to Song. 

"No, she's still annoying," Bohei chimes in. The three are sitting in their kitchen, Bohei painting her nails at the table and Song in the chair next to her while D'wei perches himself on the countertop. 

"But she's annoying in a hot way," Song whines. She gives herself a generous glass of wine, her third of the evening, then slumps over the table, cheek pressed against the wood.

"Haven't you only met with her like, twice?" D'wei asks. Song opens her mouth to respond, but Bohei beats her to it. 

"D'wei, come on. Song's a, you know," and she holds her wrist at shoulder height and bends it so her arm flops over.

Song chuckles, face mashed into the table.

"A what?" D'wei asks, and Bohei rolls her eyes.

"A lesbian," Song mumbles. "Exactly," Bohei says, nudging Song's head with her elbow. "Falling in love inside thirty seconds, that's classic lesbian behavior, you should know that."

"That's our M.O.," Song agrees. "Song's done that four times in the past year and half," Bohei continues.

"And once with a boy, but we don't talk about that," Song says. "But Katara's different, I can tell."

"She's stupid beautiful, I'll give you that," Bohei adds, capping her nail polish and blowing on her nails to dry.

"I know," Song grumbles, shoving the rest of the cookie in her mouth. "How do I tell her I like her?"

Bohei shrugs. "You could play 'girl in red' while you guys study, that will probably clue her in," D'wei suggests.

Song wrinkles her nose. "Too obvious," she answers. "Japanese Breakfast, then?" he asks.

Song thinks on it. "That one might work, actually."

"Hope so, or else you'll just have to pine from afar," Bohei stands up, blowing on her nails to dry them. "Or grow a pair and tell her you like her. Are we watching a movie or not?"

"We're watching," D'wei says decidedly, while Song moans, hopping off the counter and pulling Song into the living room by the wrist. "Don't worry, we'll watch something that's not about romance so you won't feel bad."

Song scoffs but settles herself on the couch between them nonetheless. D'wei's assurance turns out to be a complete lie, and they watch Pride and Prejudice, but whatever, Song's totally not thinking about Katara while the movie plays.

"Hey, Song, do you want Katara to stroll determinedly toward you through the morning mist wearing that exact unbuttoned shirt?"

Shifty silence from Song. "She does! D'wei, she does!"

"It would be super romantic," Song mumbles.

"Holy shit! Dude, you'd better tell her how you feel, or your ovaries will shrivel up!"

Eye roll. "I'm pretty sure you can only say that about people with dicks, Bohei, it's not like Katara's going to get me pregnant."

"But you want her to!"

***

On Friday, the week after their project was assigned, Song blinks the rain out of her eyes, holds her phone to her chest to keep it relatively dry under her bowed head and stares blearily at Google maps. Picking her head up she squints at the street signs, turns left, and then finally spots a sign saying "The Jasmine Dragon" above what looks like a small but cozy shop across the street. Grateful to have finally found the place, after trekking halfway across the city. Song had finished her exam earlier than expected, and with her and Katara's project deadline coming ever closer, she'd texted the other girl to see if she had any free time to work on it right now. Katara had agreed, saying she was studying with some friends at a place called the Jasmine Dragon. So here Song is.

Hurrying into the shop, Song relaxes after getting out of the rain, pulls the hood of her jacket down and snakes her braid out from where it's pressed uncomfortably between her backpack and her shoulder blades. The Jasmine Dragon tea shop is well-lit against the downpour, filled with comfortable armchairs dotting the room in twos and threes, with one long table at the back of the shop. Seated at the table are a few people working quietly by themselves, along with Katara and what must be her friends, working not at all quietly. Katara is sitting next to a boy who looks enough like her to be her brother, along with two people Song doesn't recognize, a boy with a completely bald head and shorter girl next to him. And--

"You!" Song shouts, then looks around herself, embarrassed, as she realizes how loud that was. Blushing a bit, she takes two sharp strides toward the table and says "you!" again, in a much smaller voice.

The boy on Katara's other side, with a nasty burn scar across his face and a Jasmine Dragon employee apron on, mutters "oh, shit," under his breath.

Katara is looking at Song, confused. "Hey Song, this is Zuko. How do you--"

"You're the asshole who stole my bike!" Song says angrily. Bike thief, whose name is apparently Zuko, goes bright red.

The shorter girl across from him lets out a laugh. "Oh man, Zuzu, you have the worst luck!"

"Shut up, Toph," Zuko mutters, eyes anywhere but on Song.

Katara lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Just once," she says, "just once, I would love it if someone recognized you from something nice you did for them, instead of whatever dick move you pulled."

"Never gonna happen, sweet sister!" The boy next to her crows happily. "Our Zuko was an asshole in a previous life!"

"Last year was a previous life?" The bald boy says, half-serious, and then high fives Katara's brother uncertainly.

"Fuck all of you," Zuko says. "He's doing his best," the shorter girl says dramatically, then slugs Zuko in the arm. 

"Wait," the bald kid says, turning to address Song. "Are you sure it was him?"

"Yes," Song says through clenched teeth, "I saw him leave a party at my house on my bike last year!"

It was one of the only parties Song and her housemates had thrown that semester. From what she can remember, Song spent a good portion of the evening trying to get close to the moody boy who was drinking alone in her kitchen. She had definitely tried to flirt with him, she remembers, cheeks going red, before Bohei had pulled her away to do shots. At the end of the night Song had passed out on their living room sofa. She woke up some time before morning at the sound of the door closing to see the moody boy, who was definitely Zuko, pick the lock on her bike and ride away on it, but she was too drunk to realize what had happened. In the morning, it was too late. Nobody else seemed to remember the boy, and she had no luck finding it.

Back in the tea shop, the bald boy is trying to defend Zuko. "That doesn't sound like something Zuko would do," the kid says, a bit soothingly. 

"No, it does," Katara counters. The shorter girl nods while Zuko hangs his head. 

"Yeah, that was me." He admits. "Look, I'm really sorry. I...was in a bad place that year, and I was super drunk, and--"

"Yeah, whatever, " Song says, uncomfortable with his honesty. "Are you going to give it back or not?"

"Of course he's going to give it back," the bald kid says enthusiastically. Song wonders who died and made him group spokesperson.

"Wait, do you even still have it?" the other girl asks. Song notices that she hasn't been making eye contact or even turning her head to look at anyone talking. She catches eye of the cane lying next to the girl's chair and realizes she must be blind.

"Yeah," Zuko says uncomfortably. "I woke up the next morning and, I, uh, didn't know what to do with it? So I just...kept it in the garage." He runs a hand through his hair uncomfortably. "It's still there."

Song, who has dropped her bag to the floor and started peeling off her jacket, throws up her hands. "You haven't even been using it?"

Zuko coughs. "No?"

"Ugh!" Song shouts, furious that he didn't even seem to need the bike.

"Look, I'll, I'll bring over to your place tomorrow," Zuko says placatingly, standing up. Song shoves past him and falls into his empty chair. "Yeah, maybe you should have tried doing that eight months ago, when you drunk-stole it from me," she deadpans, before turning to Katara. "Are we working on our project or not?"

Katara looks like she wants to keep laughing at Zuko's expense, but stops herself when she sees Song's face. "Uh, yeah, sure. Guys, this is Song, from my biology class. Song, this is Aang, Toph, and my brother Sokka." She points to the bald kid, the girl, and the dark-skinned boy next to her in turn. "You already know Zuko."

Song grits her teeth. "Song, I--" he starts helplessly.

"Zuko!" Someone calls from the back of the shop. "A little help back here?" From behind her, Song hears Zuko sigh. "I'll see you guys later," he says, before walking away. "Let us know if anyone else accuses you of something awful!" Sokka calls out after him gleefully.

"Or if something else from your dark past comes up to bite you in the ass! I want to start a facebook album!" Toph adds, and Song snickers, despite herself.

"Sorry about Zuko," Katara says carefully. "He was in a really bad place last year."

"So I've heard," Song says drily, fishing out her notebook and a pen.

"I'll make sure he gives you the bike back," Sokka offers. Song nods minutely.

"Why don't you guys get out of here," Katara says after a moment. "It's not like you're getting any work done."

Sokka opens his mouth, clearly affronted, but Song beats him to it. "No, you guys don't have to go, it's okay," she starts, but Aang catches onto Katara's meaning and has started packing up his stuff.

"No, Katara's right, we'd just waste your time," he says easily. "Come on, Sokka, Toph, we can study at my place."

Sokka sighs dramatically, but helps Toph get all her stuff together nonetheless. "Ugh, fine." Then he shoots his sister a sharp grin. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Katara splutters indignantly while Toph cackles. Song can’t even begin to guess what that means. “Nice to meet you, Song!” Aang calls over his shoulder before tailing Toph and Sokka out of the shop.

Song raises an eyebrow in Katara’s direction. “Ignore my idiot brother,” she says hastily, dark skin growing rosy with a blush. Maybe Song does know what that means.

“Do you want something to drink?” Katara continues quickly. “The weather is so shit outside, a hot drink will probably make you feel better.”

“I’m studying to be a nurse, Katara,” Song says, rolling her eyes but letting a grin escape so the other girl knows she’s playing. katara’s face lights up as she sticks her nose in the air. “Well, I’m studying to be a doctor, so I don’t know what they cover in nursing school.” She gets out of her chair and flounces towards the counter.

“You don’t even know what I want,” Song says half-heartedly, eyes on Katara’s ass. “You’ll like what I get you,” she says airily, half-turning to catch Song in the act of looking. Song blushes again, but boldly meets Katara’s eyes. The other girl smirks, before turning to the woman at the counter and rattling off something Song can’t hear.

When Katara returns a few minutes later, steaming mug of tea in her hand, Song has unpacked her laptop and is half-looking over the work they’d done so far. She passes the mug to Song. “Thanks,” she says gratefully, warming her hands against the bright red ceramic of the mug. “How did you guys find this place?” She asks, fighting off a yawn. Holding onto the warm tea has suddenly reminded her how tired she is.

Katara takes the seat across from her, picking up her own cup. “Zuko’s uncle owns it,” she explains. “Zuko’s really sorry about your bike, I know he is,” she says earnestly, casting a glance across the shop at him moving around in the back. “He went through a lot in the past year, he used to be such an asshole, even to us,” she adds. “But he’s alright now.”

Song doesn’t know what to say, can’t quite believe her, so she takes a sip of her tea instead. “Oh, it is good,” she said, surprised. Katara smiles in satisfaction. “Uncle Iroh thought you were a fruit tea girl, but I told him different. Guess I was right.”

It’s cheesy, it’s so, so high school, but Song’s stomach flutters at the idea of Katara knowing what sort of tea she’d like. It's got her tongue tied, but Katara saves her by asking about her day.

“It was good,” she answers. “I finished my international relations exam early, that’s why I texted you that I had time.”

“Well look at you, smartypants," Katara says, and Song scoffs. They spend the rest of the afternoon like that, sort of but not really working on their project, until Sokka comes back to pick up Katara and gives Song a ride back to her apartment.

"See you tomorrow!" Katara calls through the car's open window. Song shoots her a confused look. "When Zuko and I come to return your bike!" She reminds her. Song agrees, but doesn't think anything will come of it, which is why she's so surprised to open her apartment door at eight o'clock the next morning to see Zuko and Katara in her doorway, bike in hand.

"Good morning!" Katara says triumphantly, and Song stares. Katara, she, she looks so incredible Song can hardly believe it. Her hair is perfect and shiny, and she looks like she's wearing extra eye makeup. Zuko, meanwhile, looks like how Song feels, bedraggled in comparison. "Told you we'd bring you the bike!" Katara says excitedly, while Zuko yawns next to her. "Here, here you go," he says, steering the bike into Song's apartment. "Uh, thanks," Song answers slowly, leaving the bike by the door.

"Put your shoes on, we're taking you for breakfast," Katara instructs, and before she realizes what's happening Song finds herself in the back of Zuko's car, sitting next to Katara and behind a girl Song vaguely knows from one of her politics courses last semester, who Zuko introduces as his girlfriend. Song thinks Mai is way too cool a girl for someone like Zuko, but keeps her mouth shut.

"Go to the diner on fifth," Katara instructs, and in front of Song Mai scoffs. "No way, their coffee is garbage."

"All diner coffee is garbage," Zuko offers from behind the wheel, and behind him Katara says "I want pancakes. We went to your shitty coffee shop last time."

"It's not shitty, you just don't appreciate aesthetics," Mai sniffs.

"It's overly minimalist and their cake is bad," Katara says bluntly, before turning to Song. "What do you want to do?"

Song blinks, slightly overwhelmed at being thrust into this dynamic of people who were clearly comfortable in each others' lives. But also, it's early, so: "I want to eat eggs."

"Diner it is, you're outvoted, Mai!" Katara crows happily.

"You didn't ask me what I wanted," Zuko protests, already steering the car in the direction of the diner. "We know you're happy with either one," Mai explains.

"Always happy when I'm with you," he says to Mai, and Song can see his face in profile, he's offering Mai a small smile. Mai meets him halfway and gives him a quick kiss. 

"Eyes on the road," Katara interrupts, pulling a face to make Song laugh in the backseat. It occurs to her that this might be something of a double date.

And it's definitely a date, she realizes, or she hopes, because Katara has squeezed herself next to Song onto the vinyl covered cushion of the diner booth, and keeps knocking her knees into Song and, once, even holding her thigh flush against Song's. She eats off Song's plate with no remorse, encourages Song to do the same to her, and quietly flirts with Song for most of the meal. It's enough to give Song a pleasant whooping feeling in her gut that lasts the whole day.

The restaurant environment is certainly helping, Song loves diners. The way they all sort of look the same, the ridiculously long menus, the poor lighting, all of it. It's her and her mother's favorite place to go, and when she lived at home they used to go there almost every day, even if it was just for a cup of bad coffee. Song feels at home here, which is why she loves the diner so much.

Besides Katara's flirting, Song actually has a good time enjoying Mai and Zuko's company. Maybe he really was a different person when he stole her bike and ignored her at her own party, because now he's making an effort to include her in the conversation, filling in the gaps into which she might have fallen, being the odd one out in a group of friends who knew each other so well.

"We went to school together first," Zuko is explaining, gesturing to himself and Mai. "A different school, actually, one our parents wanted to go to. It was really close to our hometown. Caldera College."

"Our parents are in business together," Mai says. "Well, my father works for his father."

"And my father wanted me and my younger sister, Azula, to work for him too. But that, uh, didn't work out…" his hand moves to the scar on his face, and Song stifles a wince. "So I left the old school and came here. Well…"

"His Dad cut him off," Katara butts in. "But it was actually a good thing, here I met these guys." Zuko says with a small smile.

"Didn't start off as a good thing," Katara mutters, and here Zuko blushes, tilts his face to the table. "Yeah, those were my uh, my bike stealing years," he grimaces another apology at Song.

Katara yelps, it seems like Mai has kicked her under the table. "But we're good now," she adds brightly.

"Like I have to keep reminding you," Zuko says, raising his eyebrows, and now it's Katara's turn to look chagrined. Song wonders at their need to air their dirty laundry in public.

"And then I decided fuck my parents' business and followed Zuko here," Mai declares, setting her hand on top of Zuko's.

Song nods. It's a lot to process. "What about your sister?" she asks, wondering if this is the right question. 

Maybe not. The emotion runs from Mai's face like colors in the wash, her mouth settles into a dull line. Zuko sighs, and, next to Song, Katara huffs out a breath. "We're working on her," Katara explains.

"My Dad was working her to the bone, putting way too much pressure on her after I left," Zuko says. "Especially after I left," he adds to himself, and on the table Mai squeezes his hand. "She snapped, dropped out," Mai picks up from him. "We're trying to make sure she gets the help she needs."

"That's really hard, I'm sorry you have to go through that," Song offers, and Zuko nods. "She'll be okay," he says, face determined.

An awkward pause, but the first of the meal and the plates are nearly clean, so that's a success. "You don't have any siblings, right Song?" Katara asks.

"Mm-mm," Song shakes her head. "Just me and my mom," and Katara nods, which she was expecting, but then Zuko does too, and maybe they have more in common than she'd thought.

"Mai has a younger brother," Katara volunteers, and Mai rolls her eyes but tells them an adorable story about Tom Tom regardless.

"That was...nice," Song says truthfully, when they've dropped her back at her place and she's got Katara on her doorstep.

"They're alright, huh? I thought you'd like them," Katara says happily.

Song, feeling warm and full of eggs and lukewarm coffee, has the confidence to say "maybe they're not the only ones I like," eyes catching Katara's before dropping to her doorstep.

"Yeah," Katara says softly, hand reaching towards hers. "I--"

She's cut off by the sound of the horn. Katara turns and Song sees that Mai's got a hand on the horn while Zuko sits by looking pained. Katara gives them the finger before turning back to Song. "I like you t--"

The horn again. "Katara, let's go!" Mai shouts, and Katara rolls her eyes and Song smiles. "I'll see you at our next study session?" she offers.

"Yeah," Katara says, looking relieved, "I'll see you then." She waved goodbye, bounds off the porch toward the car, opens the back door while yelling "jesus christ, Mai, I'm here, calm down."

Song unlocks the door of her house, still smiling, and heads inside.

***

Katara and Song meet, one last time, to go over the paper. It takes them ages, both of them are deliberately dragging it out. They go through it one line at a time, taking turns reading the paragraph aloud and double, triple checking the references. When it's finally over, i's crossed and t's dotted, Katara's hand hovers over the trackpad of her laptop, mouse on the 'submit' button. "Are we ready?" she asks one more time.

"You're sure it's cool with Pakku if we do breast cancer?" Song clarifies, and Katara scoffs. "Oh, actually Song, I forgot to tell you, he's not cool with it and we're going to fail. Whoops!"

"Okay, okay," Song laughs. "We're ready, do it."

Katara takes a deep breath, clicks the trackpad. Project over.

"It's in the lap of the gods now," Song comments, and Katara nods, shutting her computer.

"Now what should we do?" she asks, and for the first time she's almost shy. It's utterly adorable, the light blush under her eyes, and Song steals herself and says "well, I'd like to kiss you now."

Katara stiffens beside her. "You should definitely do that," she says hastily, and Song laughs, reaches up slide her hand into Katara's hair and leans in, catching her lips.

It's perfect. Katara tastes like everything Song had imagined plus more. When she pulls back Katara chases her lips. "I think you should give that another go," she murmurs, and Song laughs again, happy to oblige.

It's even better the second time. They kiss for a while, lazy, and afterward, when they're resting their foreheads against each other, Katara speaks up.

"I think I'm going to take you on a proper date," she muses.

"I'd like that," Song answers happily. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

[thesummerstorms]

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 7)

CW: mass execution

TL;DR Recap: Niner & Omega watch the Separatists murder Hokan’s old militia. Etain and Darman meet and it’s incredibly awkward. Hokan takes time to gloat. The truth finally comes out about Atin.

Beginning Kal Count: 10 Ending Kal Count: 12 (or 12.5)

THIS RECAP IS THE LONGEST YET. Everything seems to happen in this chapter.

So we open with Niner being bored, Fi being Fi, and Atin being cheerful because he’s up to his elbows in electronic guts. The scene starts pretty quiet before a massive tonal change, but it’s honestly the front half that’s my favorite, just for character reasons.

Niner is bored and grumpy, so logically he’s thinking about how to revise the training manual. Plus his little “if one precaution was good, two were better.” Good old Niner.  Fi being amused that Atin is made content by shredding a computer to pieces. I don’t know, it’s just the little things about their dynamic that makes me happy.

Niner is still upset with Atin, but he’s also curious. He doesn’t have long to think about it though, because the Separatist troops assigned to Uthan along with some of the battle droids assigned to the planet start approaching Hokan’s old Weequay militia. The squad watches as the Separatist officer and the droids proceed to murder every single one of Hokan’s old “associates” in visual range with no warning then retreat back to their base, which Niner finds understandably worrying. 

We switch then to Etain, who is frustrated and paranoid and is building herself an emergency exist by loosening the boards in the back wall of the barn where Jinart has been hiding her. She’s yet again frustrated that she can’t do more with her Force powers, and her lack of self-esteem really comes out in full measure.

“She wondered why Jedi blood had bothered to manifest itself in someone who was so fallible.” Sweetheart...

Jinart arrives to take her somewhere and lets Etain finally feel her presence in the Force. But when Etain mistakes Jinart for a Jedi and asks why Jinart didn’t tell her what she was... Jinart tells Etain to shut up.

“And given your competence, I’m the one who’s most at risk. Now, silence.”

Okay, listen, if you could give her even like three seconds of genuine explanation rather than just attacking her for not trusting you after her teacher was literally sold out and then tortured to death, then you wouldn’t need to tell her to STFU. I’m just saying, Jinart.

Anyway, Jinart tells Etain that there’s a soldier waiting up ahead for her, so Etain heads in that direction, despite Jinart still being extremely shady. She’s about to meet Darman, and while I love them both dearly, while this ship is my OTP, it’s... really fucking awkward.

Listen. This is just weird as hell, okay? I’m gonna admit it. I also pretend it ... wasn’t written like this. Because while Darman is naive and inexperienced, he still has enough neurological development (and enough experiences that go beyond the pale of normal adulthood even) that this weird framing of him as “childlike” just comes off creepy. So I ignore it. That’s really all I have to say about it.

Etain feels Darman’s scope or his attention through the scope or whatever, and decides “well, I’m going to fuck someone up before I die, if I can”, which to be fair, is a very Etain thing to do.

Darman sees her lighstaber is like “oh, finally a Jedi”, and tries to greet her politely. Except this is Etain, who really has no idea what the fuck is going on except that she’s been on this planet for three or more months, the only person she trusted was murdered, and there’s an evil Mandalorian somewhere who wants to hurt her badly.

So naturally when her vision clears (Darman blinded her with some kind of light), she see his helmet, assumes Jinart’s shadiness was in fact the prelude to a betrayal and that this is Hokan...

Darman getting worried now:

And Etain being Etain,she launches herself at him.  (ง'̀-'́)ง(ง'̀-'́)ง(ง'̀-'́)ง

It... doesn’t go well. Darman deflects most of her attacks pretty easily and literally dumps her in the river, continuing to try and calm her down to no avail, but she’s reached her breaking point and is pretty much in a blind rage.

“and when she was frightened and desperate and angry that was very hard indeed. She hadn’t know it until now.”

Listen, it’s a very un-Jedi-like but very Etain thing to do, and also who can really blame her given what she thought was happening and the kind of time she’s had on this planet so far. But Darman is exasperated, and I’m pretty Etain was embarrassed looking back at this for the remainder of her very short life.

Anyway, Darman finally manages to calm her down enough to let him talk, and in the process, he tries to smooth things over by taking the blame. He didn’t identify himself, it’s his fault, etc. He introduces himself (with the wrong designation- KT uses CC 1136, which would make him a Commander, rather than RC 1136) but in doing so, he uses terms of ranks, confusing the hell out of her. She asks when they got a Grand Army and-

We get the iconic “handing her back her lightsaber from the river” scene, except the official art for that picture always neglects to depict the fact that as gentlemanly as he’s trying to be, she’s dripping wet with her hair plastered in her face and desperately trying to politely ask her not to either get herself shot or go after him with a lightsaber again.

Instead of “meet cute” it’s more of a “meet extremely awkward”.

Anyway, this is all coming on the heels of several really bad months for Etain and the utter dismissal she just got from Jinart, so her insecurity really comes out in this conversation. It’s not really pretty.

(Side note, for once I do have to give KT some points on effectively carrying a tiny world building thing: Dar was embarrassed when Jusik asked for his name, he’s embarrassed that Etain is doing it now, and he’s going to be embarrassed again when she asks the rest of his squad.)

“talking army gibberish” lmao.

Again, self-esteem issues. But to be honest, as embarrassed as I am for Etain in this scene (she really doesn’t give her best here) it’s probably because I can relate a hell of a lot to her emotions?

Like, imagine. You’ve already got major issues with your self-worth from a lifetime of not being good enough for the people and the system that raised you, you just got dragged by an old woman after months of struggling behind enemy lines, you failed in your mission to protect the one person who gave a shit about you, and some (to your knowledge) regular human just successfully took you down without too much struggle when Jedi are supposed to be more than human, the best of the best. Then he turns to you with wide-eyed confidence and insists you are now his commanding officer, and you almost feel worse because he’s trying to absolve you of any fault. 

I’d be kind of prickly and asshole-ish, too, if I’m honest.

Again, we start with her having trouble with some wounded pride. But... we end on that bomb shell, and I would not blame Etain for short-circuiting at being told a 10 year old had been “bred to serve [her]. It’s a hell of a lot.

Anyway, I’m aware I copied and pasted almost the entire scene, but there’s a lot there, okay? But next comes more Hokan, and he’s basically just gloating that he’s now more powerful than Ankkit.

*long, exasperated sigh*

Listen, I could write a college essay about characterization just focusing on this man’s use of the word decadent, holy fuck. Also, the gloating is “vulgar” but all he does for pretty much his entire appearance in this chapter is gloat.

You know who Hokan would have gotten on with? Vizsla. Wait- no. Even Vizsla kicked him out. Anyway, Hokan finishes gloating and then goes off to murder a farmer for not divulging important information quickly enough/trying to trade it for booze.

This chapter is long and I know I’ve made this post really long, but we cut back to Niner and Fi again. They’ve made their way to one of the rendezvous points, only to find the trees that should be there aren’t. Fi eventually guesses that they’ve been logging and makes a disparaging comment about intel. Niner gives a little bit more exposition on how terrible the Kaminoans were, including a rumor about clones with impaired eyesight who disappeared and a comment about how Jedi giving orders is different from Kaminoans because Kaminoans are the only things he fears.

Fi is sighing, and eventually Niner prods at him:

And we get our biggest Kal Count yet. Technically this is one continuing remembrance, but it’s also long as hell and includes lots of little memories, so I almost want to include it as 1.5 towards our Kal Count, bringing us to a total of 11 (or 11.5). I’m way more interested in their conversation before Kal is brought up than after, honestly. But the reminiscing gets broken up when Omega is suddenly shot at by a few Separatist officers and a bunch of battle droids:

Please, please imagine this moment with the cartoon B1 battle droid voices from The Clone Wars. Please, I’m begging you.

Atin saves Niner’s life, which is honestly the most positive thing that has happened between the two of them so far and marks a turning point for them in general. It’s also the first time we get to see Fi jump in as squad medic, but he’s super efficient about it. Also, he snarks at Atin as he’s actively trying to decide if Atin is dying or not:

Niner offers to carry Atin’s pack for him until he’s doing better, which means he’s probably carrying something like 300 lbs now, even if Atin did save his life. And I know my screenshots for this post have been ridiculously long, but Niner finally, finally reconciles with Atin enough to figure out why Atin has been an asshole about Darman this whole time (minus the Vau thing):

It’s a pretty nice closing line to the scene, honestly. Also, technically speaking our Kal Count just jumped to 12.

I’ll spare you most of the closing scene because it’s just Hokan being pissed and thinking it’s impossible clones could have done this, but:

a) Mandalorian. Honor. Complex. You’d think Mandalore the Ultimate had been in charge for the last few years instead of Jango.

b) seriously. What is it with the word “decadent”??????

But it’s over quickly with Hokan making the wry observation that if he didn’t know better he would think he was being haunted by Jango’s ghost.

[reliciron]

Notes on Redeeming Arcann: Part 1

Ok, here are my thoughts on redeeming Arcann. This is just my own current analysis of his character and where I might take him in possible future fics. If someone has a different interpretation I would love to hear it as my own ideas on him continue to shift. If anyone is struggling with his character, I hope this might give you a starting point or jog some new ideas. And if you’re just reading this because you like character analysis (I do too), then I hope you enjoy it and it’s not too incoherent.

This first part will focus more on redeeming Arcann. The second will be my thoughts on his character motivations.

Part 2

Alright, this is going to be very, very long, so strap in. 

Ok, so since I don’t have a lot of experience writing, I felt my own grasp of what it takes to redeem a villain was a little too shaky to do Arcann’s redemption justice on my own. He’s admittedly a pretty horrific character at his worst, and the game itself really doesn’t do a very good job of giving him a believable redemption arc. I feel it would be very easy for an inexperienced writer like me to fall into character apologia and try to ignore what he’s done in favor of ‘it’s not his fault’. Fiction is full of men who act like jerks and excuse it with daddy issues, and I’m really trying to carry that awareness into his redemption so I can avoid that pitfall. The atrocities he committed were his choices, but understanding why he became a character who would make those choices does not mean that he wasn’t ultimately at fault for what he did.

So with that in mind I did a quick search, looked through a few guides on redemption, and eventually settled on this one.

In an effort to make this smooth, I have copy/pasted the major points from the article and put them in brackets with my responses following each one.

[Realism is derived from a multitude of factors, but one of the most important is having authentic motives. Villainy is a dark path for a reason – it’s hard to come back from – which is why you need a super-bright ‘why’ torch to help your baddie see the light.

The best way to create a ‘why’ (or a motive) is to understand where it comes from. For example:

Maybe your villain wants a bigger pay off and this is how he thinks he will get it

He could be taking an order from someone more powerful

A more emotional reason might be that the hero appeals to his heart by saving someone the villain cares about

Or perhaps the villain just wants to right a wrong or past mistake]

-----

Ok, so Arcann has a little of the last 2 of those reasons. Now that he’s gone through the Force Healing dishwasher, he wants to try and make up for all the horrible things he did (Mostly the people he killed for shits and giggles while hunting down the Outlander. War is war, and he might not beat himself up over the people he personally killed on the battlefield. They made the choice to be soldiers/Jedi/Sith, and they knew they might die when they went up against him.)

He was also swayed by the Outlander letting him and Senya go, and how they cared for her while he was figuring things out.

-----

[Whatever the plot point for justifying your villain’s redemption, you can create added depth to their motive by linking it to an old wound in his past.]

-----

His mother left, and it’s possible that he still wonders what would have happened if he and his siblings had gone with her (I can’t remember if he touched on this in one of his cut-scenes during KOTFE). But more importantly, no one has ever come back for him except his brother. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t expect Vaylin to care about him enough to help him unless it benefits her, so after Thexan’s death he feels like he’s alone and nobody would miss him if he died. And that’s… really not a good place to be.

He doesn’t feel connected to his people since I doubt he ever saw much of them while growing up, so it’s easier to treat them like dirt if he can’t empathize with them. Also, the closest person to him, and the only one he seems to care about, is Vaylin, and she’s even more messed up than him so they just echo each other’s cruelty and drive each other to new heights of awfulness.

So that’s why it’s so important to him and game changing that his mom shows up after he’s been defeated.

Now the scene in KotFE goes like this: Senya finds Arcann dead (unconscious) and pinned under a bunch of debris. She drags him out and cries because she thinks he’s dead. Then Vaylin shows up, and while Senya is focused on her, Arcann blinks awake. Vaylin starts to attack, and Arcann stops her. Blah blah blah, Senya saves Arcann because he tried to protect her and she “feels the good in him”.

Ok.

(Keep in mind, my computer chugs much worse if I have the background music on, so I always play with it off. So scenes that maaaaay be relying too much on the music to carry the emotional weight, don’t have that crutch to lean on when I see them.)

Putting aside some dumb stuff, like why didn’t Senya sense that he was alive, and why didn’t she “sense the good in him” until after he pushed Vaylin away, here’s a few tweaks I might make:

Senya finds Arcann badly injured and pinned under debris. She realizes that he’s still breathing so she drags him out, sits down, and cradles him in her arms. She fully expects that he’s going to die, and her resolve crumbles. She rocks him gently and sings to him, her voice breaking here and there as the ship comes apart around them. She left her children once, and she refuses to leave Arcann again. She’s going to stay with him until he succumbs to his wounds, or the ship disintegrates.

To her surprise, he begins to wake. He turns his head into her chest, instinctively remembering her voice and the way she’d sing when comforting him and his brother after a painful day of training. He opens his eyes blearily with a mumbled “Mother?”. And now, finally, after years of being apart, she senses the conflict in him. Buried under years of pain and rage, is the tiny flicker of the boy she used to know.

The ship shudders underneath them and she makes her choice.

She hauls him up and throws his remaining arm over her shoulders. He can barely support his own weight and is fading in and out of consciousness as she drags him off the dais. They’re almost to the door when Vaylin appears and cuts them off.

Senya pleads with her, but Vaylin refuses to see reason and moves to kill her. Senya tries to throw Arcann out of the way, but the minute his arm is clear he manages to force push Vaylin away, where she appears to be crushed under falling debris.

Senya can’t save both of them, but she didn’t feel any conflict in Vaylin. So she chooses Arcann and takes him to the shuttle.

After they’re far enough away, Vaylin comes to in a rage, only to find that she’s missed her chance. She too, escapes in a patrol vessel.

-----

[Epiphany Redemption

Sometimes we don’t realize we have bad habits until someone tells us or we suddenly become aware of them. One of the most famous epiphany redemption examples is Scrooge going through an awakening. With the help of the Christmas ghosts, he’s shown the impact of his actions which causes him to see that he’s been leading a terrible life. The end of the story show him as a changed man, being kind and charitable to others.]

----

This sounds like what happened to Arcann.

It could be that with his mind clouded with pain and a likely concussion, he forgets his anger enough to think that, if his mother cared enough to save him and feels there’s still good in him, maybe there is.

It could be worked into the healing ritual, instead of this nebulous “light sapping the dark from him while he lays unconscious” thing. It could be that the ritual lifts all of his emotional baggage up so that he can view his past choices through a clear lens. Kind of A Christmas Carol speed-run, where his actions flash by in his mind and the horror of what he’d become slowly builds and replaces some of the rage. So the healing ritual doesn’t cure him of the darkness, so much as it’s a cold dose of the reality of his actions without the rage and bad justifications covering it up. The pain and rage is still there, and he’ll have to deal with it naturally later (get that boy a THERAPIST), but it no longer gets in the way of his decision making and he’s free to make better choices.

This explains why he was so panicked when he woke up that he didn’t notice his mother was still alive. And her “death” was just one more horrible thing he’s done. That even in healing, he still manages to kill the people close to him.

(It’s also why I always take the choice to tell him that Senya’s still alive right before he flies away, to spare him from that extra self hatred.)

-----

[It takes time. Just as a hero takes an entire novel to overcome her flaw, it will take some time for a villain to make this monumental change. Don’t let them flip-flop like a beached fish between good and evil – the change needs to build slowly throughout the book.]

----

I think this is the main issue that a lot of people seem to have with Arcann’s redemption. The healing ritual was such a hand-wavy “ok he’s better now” cop-out for what would normally be months or years of interesting character development.

I understand of course. This is a game, not a book series. There isn’t time to give Arcann the kind of focus that sort of development needs, and they weren’t allowed to weave his redemption too much into the story because not everyone spares him.

We can lessen the impact of this by ignoring some canon things and writing around others, but it would take a major rewrite of a large chunk of KotET to integrate this point.

-----

[Foreshadow, foreshadow, foreshadow. Readers don’t like to be cheated. You need to drop breadcrumbs throughout your story to let your reader know subconsciously that the villain is going to change, otherwise they’ll feel cheated. It doesn’t take much – the occasional soft glance from the villain, a nicely spoken sentence, and action that is ‘good’ rather than evil. Tiny clues.]

-----

There were tiny hints here and there, but not really enough for my taste and they were very easy to miss.

Some examples I can think of are:

He sort of yells at Vaylin at one point and without her saying anything, he immediately backs off, calms his voice down, and tells her that he’s not blaming her. She’s flippant about it, but it made it clear that he cares about her enough to treat her with respect and what little affection he’s capable of at that point.

@swtorpadawan made a good point in this post about how Arcann’s hesitation in destroying the Gravestone might’ve been because he sensed his mother’s presence.

And while I don’t think it was supposed to be hesitation on Arcann’s part, just the game forgetting about the time as we are shown Koth lining up the shot, he technically DID hesitate in killing the Outlander after he stabbed them (assuming you refused Valkorian’s power). There was a decent length of time where he had them, mortally wounded and defenseless, and he hesitated so long that Koth discovered the scene, figured out a plan, and shot out that big thing on the ceiling.

-----

[Don’t make it easy. It’s hard for the hero to overcome her flaw and likewise, it should be hard for a villain to overcome his. A quick way to make it harder for the villain to redeem himself is to catch him between two of his values. For example, while this character isn’t a villain, it still illustrates the point: Ned Stark in Game of Thrones values loyalty and wisdom – his wisdom tells him if he helps his King it will inevitably lead to his death, and yet, his loyalty forces him to help the King anyways.]

----

This one is closely tied to the “it takes time” point, and is also horribly ignored in the story. Once he’s healed he’s practically a different person. Now I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t devote much time to his writing since he’s an optional character, or if they meant to write him like this, but it’s still unfortunate.

He strikes me as determined and ruthless (like his mom). His interaction with Thexan and his commitment to the Outlander seems to imply that he’s loyal once he’s found someone worthy of it. He’s intelligent, but can be arrogant sometimes (of course this will have been knocked down a few pegs since the Outlander kicked his ass).

An easy point of conflict between his values (especially soon after he joins the Alliance), would be between his loyalty to the Outlander and his ruthlessness.

He could be on a mission with the Outlander, and have an enemy defeated but alive. The Outlander might want to spare them, while his ruthlessness demands their death. He knows how people like this work, that sparing them is a good way to get stabbed in the back, and if the Outlander is too softhearted to look out for themselves then he will.

BUT the Outlander is showing him trust by letting him accompany them, both trust that Arcann won’t kill them and that he will follow orders. Their trust is extremely precious to him (especially if he’s already crushing on the Outlander) so he really wants to do as they say.

He’s forced to balance their trust against his need to protect them.

------

[Don’t let them go soft. Villains are villains for a reason. Keep them authentic by retaining some of their sharper personality edges. Just because their actions are good doesn’t mean the whole of them will be.]

-----

I feel like this one is especially important, and also terribly overlooked.

Arcann learned some bad habits while being a villain and even when growing up, some of those should carry over into his healed self.

They might lessen with time and careful retraining, but he will always have sharp edges.

He will probably have a temper (although this must be handled very carefully to avoid making him look childish and abusive).

And if someone he cares about is threatened he may fly into a rage until they can calm him down. This rage may be followed by flashbacks of the battles he’s been through and the way the hatred felt in his gut, leaving him panicked and shaky once it’s over.

He probably has nightmares regularly, and care must be taken in waking him up to avoid a violent response, same thing with sneaking up on him: DON”T.

Honestly, the dude went through so much and did so many horrible things that I don’t see how he wouldn’t have PTSD. He certainly has self-hatred up to his eyeballs.

-------

One more thing:

Once he’s joined the Alliance, I think we need to be careful when writing him to make sure that his goal of trying to make up for the horrible things he’s done isn’t overlooked. I mean yeah, he’s helping by coming along on missions with the Commander, but that is super small time stuff compared to what he’s done and I don’t think he’d be satisfied with it for long.

He’s an intelligent man with experience commanding armies on the battlefield, and an extremely talented Force-user. At minimum, and when not accompanying the Outlander, he should spend most of his day immersed in Alliance reports giving tactical advice (once they trust him enough, of course) and helping with combat training in the Force Enclave. When they trust him more, he can maybe become the official liaison between the Alliance and Zakuul, using the resources and tech of his home world to help the reconstruction on the planets he bombarded and getting Zakuul what they need as well.

Of course, once the Republic/Empire war starts up again, his position will change and he may take on a more military role, commanding offensives on behalf of whichever side the Alliance has picked.

My point is, wallowing in emotional hurt/comfort and developing romance is really fun and satisfying, but don’t forget his promise to atone for his misdeeds.

[davetheshady]

may I politely request ⭐dealer's choice director's commentary⭐for pretty much any part of Love is All You Need to Destroy Your Enemies?

Did you mean: infodump about Chapter 5?

We start off in medias res during Pteranodon Attack-Gate from Episode 4: PTA Meeting. Since most of the fic runs parallel to WTNV’s storyline for the first ~two years, the way I narrowed down which events to feature was to read through the transcripts and take note of which ones had Carlos, which ones featured science/magic/time travel-related elements, which ones had weird discrepancies or unsolved details that could be explained by Carlos/science/magic/time travel/all of the above, and which ones I just liked a lot. 

Incidentally, Cecil issues a correction that the winged reptiles in question were actually pterodactyls, not pteranodons, which was then promptly forgotten by the showrunners lol.

"—And then Kelly pulled her hamstring while they were doing the Fixing of a Nail position. I'm trying to convince her that she and Joe should do yoga together, I think it would really cut back on minor injuries and also they both look great in yoga pants. Anything new with you, Carlos?"

"Nothing that compares to... hamstring injuries," says Carlos, from his position on top of the Sciencemobile.

"All right," says Kate, adjusting an enormous pair of mirrored aviator shades. "Then describe the Barstow formation."

Since literal character doubling was such an important part of the plot, I had a lot of fun with thematic character doubling, too. Carlos and Kate (and the other grad students) are actually pretty close in age, and here we see her willing to put herself into danger to get the job done while casually chatting with her colleagues. Also, there’s a nice dose of karma for the books in Carlos having to deal with someone else oversharing details about their relationships, compounded by the fact that unlike his all of Kate’s are actually true. (In nicer doubling news: Kate is the one who gets her degree in science, has functional romantic relationships, AND continues to work in Night Vale, which are all eventually Carlos’ hashtag life goals.) 

"Maybe it was future you," asks Julie, who does not sound appropriately concerned for the potentially diverted course of the Currents of Time. Or for the potentially diverted course of the already unlinear life of Carlos.

This is the first conversation where she’s ‘Julie’ in his mental narration. I enjoyed having her be hilariously unsympathetic to his concerns here, because her priorities are still very different, but it also sets up a baseline. She doesn’t bother worrying about hypotheticals from the weird shit, but actual hard data (like, Carlos not sleeping and having minor breakdowns in her lab) is what prompts her to share reactions besides SCIENCE! and snark.

His stomach roils at the thought of more time travel. "Some kind of illusion is more likely," he says: some person or creature temporarily assuming his form, probably for sinister purposes. He reluctantly adds those weird doubles from the sandstorm to his list of possible suspects, though his dissolved right in front of him in the middle of next March and there haven't been any sandstorms recently.

oh hey haha what’s that

One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is when allegedly intelligent characters ignore obvious plot points so the writer can railroad the story in their chosen direction. On the other hand, it is genuinely difficult to avoid spoiling your plot twists if your main character is actively trying to figure them out. I leaned heavily on “the character has all the basic details… along with so much other information they can’t realistically narrow it down”, combined with some red herrings: an obvious one (illusion magic) and hopefully a more convincing one (time travel as the only relevant plot: it's DEFINITELY involved, but its presence is obscuring another facet of the plot altogether).

There's always a risk that astute readers will figure it out, but, like… so? That just means instead of shocking plot twist reveal, they get an “I KNEW IT!” reveal, which is equally satisfying in a different way. As long as the characters have convincing reasons for not figuring it out, it's hopefully still enjoyable to follow along with them as they wander around in the dark. 

(And just for clarification: that was Doppel-Carlos crashing the town hall meeting when he and Dr. Raith were testing out time vortices.) 

Andre hands him a copy of the Night Vale Daily Journal. “’Look your best to face the void. Smooth-chinned souls are most enjoyed’,” reads Carlos. “‘Burma-Shave.’”

"No, below the ads," says Andre.

1) ‘character reads wrong piece of information in paper’ is a classic goof (“There’s a sale at Penney’s!”) and I found it very amusing to repeatedly attribute it to Carlos, since he’s genuinely trying to locate the important information. Unfortunately for him, he lives in Night Vale and no longer has a filter for “useless nonsense”, because even the nonsense has proven relevant and/or kinda murdery before.

2) Burma-Shave! This was passed down to me as part of our Great American Roadtrip Family Lore (I come from a long line of roadtrippers) and it’s definitely the kind of kitschy 50s detail that fits so well in Night Vale.

"Oh!" says Cecil. "What were you studying?"

"Bioremediation for contaminated pit lakes via sulfur-reducing bacteria," says Carlos truthfully.

Why? Because I edited one of my friends’ papers on it, that’s why. (Birds kept landing on it and dying, which is also a very Night Vale detail.)

When he returns, he finds Cecil standing by the record player with his back against the wall, staring fixedly at Carlos’ vinyl copy of Ixnay on the Hombre.

One of the DF books (I think White Night) had a hilariously high number of characters showing up wearing band t-shirts, and Carlos’ was for The Offspring. (The original file name for this fic was Original Prankster, back when I thought it would be three chapters long.)

“It’s about a wizard stranded in a strange, uncharted desert territory,” [Cactus Judy] says serenely.

Cactus Jane! I decided to make her a recurring character because 1) she’s in a time travel episode (Episode 18: The Traveler), 2) both she and TMITJ had the detail where no one can remember their real name, which seemed significant, and 3) WTNV itself did not have very many recurring female characters at that point. She’s into Shakespeare because I personally knew a lot of relevant Shakespeare quotes, but also as a hint that’s she’s a lot older (and thus a lot more supernatural) than she seems: Shakespeare was a HUGE part of pop culture in the 19th century, particularly in the southwest. Theater companies used to make more money going on tour through states with precious metal mines than they did during their whole season in the big coastal cities, probably because jaded city folks never threw gold nuggets on stage to show their appreciation.

If life is a contest between good and evil, Cecil would be one of the people handing out stickers just for participating.

This is one of my favorite lines.

My plan is fool-proof! It's sheer elegance in its simplicity!

Look, if you enjoyed this fic, WTNV, and/or The Dresden Files, you should probably go watch The Middleman. Yes, I know it’s not streaming, do it anyway. Load up on antivenom and go rent it from your local library.

“Could you [create a time vortex]?""Oh, for sure," says Carlos. "All I'd need would be a couple years to do nothing but work on a highly illegal spell and figure out a way to steal an entire ley-line's worth of power and excise my sense of morality and self-preservation.”

And WHAT are the odds of THAT

It's not that Carlos doesn't like him. It just wouldn't be fair to lead him on when Carlos wouldn't actually—

Well, Carlos wouldn’t mind asking but he doesn’t normally go for—

Okay, Carlos could definitely make an exception for Cecil and—

And—

oh NO he accidentally used logic to make himself admit he has FEELINGS

One of the reasons I love this pairing is that you have Cecil, who is incredibly emotionally open (all the time, on public radio) as a distinct contrast to Carlos, who is so used to putting up a very specific facade that he even does it to himself and then struggles when he doesn't have it to rely on. It creates conflict, but it also means they have very different perspective they can share with each other. 

"Did the earth move for you, too?" says Cecil.

"Bwuh?" replies Carlos.

"At the monitoring station," says Cecil, because right, they're talking about science and not about how Carlos may or may not have accidentally developed a tiny, tiny crush on Cecil, who is standing right in front of him and looking extremely interested in what he's saying and will commit his words to memory and lovingly repeat them for all the world, or at least all of Night Vale and anyone else who received the same odd death curse as Carlos, to hear.

"Oh. Hmm – unh," replies Carlos, then shakes his head. Not talking, that's the way to go. That way he won't accidentally say something he doesn't mean, or worse, something he does mean but probably shouldn't say. Cecil can ask him science questions and he can shake his head yes or no, and maybe refer him wordlessly to supplementary materials, and it will all be very professional and—

"Where did you get your shirt?" asks Cecil. "It fits you so well."

"I'll look at my notes and computer models and see if I can figure out what's going on," Carlos blurts out, and practically runs from the room.

One of the reasons I started writing this fic (SEPTEMBER 2013, BABY god I feel old) was because we all knew Carlos was immensely important to Cecil, but had relatively little information about him, and ALL of it was filtered through our unreliable narrator. So… I just kind of ran with that. 

But on top of the obvious unreliability of “didn't notice Carlos was a wizard from a different series”, I wanted to do it on the smaller scale, too, and put a different spin on the touchstones of their growing relationship that everyone was already familiar with. So this interaction is now a crisis for both of them, and for dramatically/hilariously different reasons. 

“If you’re worried about going native, I’ve got bad news for you, buddy, because you do more chanting than anyone I’ve met.”

Another one of my favorite lines.

“I’ve had to hunt down people I know before, and trust me, it’s not a fun date night!”

Between Molly and fanon interpretations of Cecil, Carlos’ type is apparently 1) weird tattoos, 2) unusually-colored hair, and 3) can kill him

There's a brief hiss from the TV's speakers, and then Cecil says, in a small, forlorn voice, “I don't know if he listens to me, sometimes.”

Carlos puts his head down and laughs bitterly.

I LOVE IRONY 

But even though I wanted to subvert the surface meaning, Cecil DOES still have a point. He got a good look at Carlos’ soul when they first met and still fell in love instantly, but Carlos has a difficult time hearing that because at this point he fundamentally does not believe he’s worthy of that kind of love. In order to truly believe Cecil, he also has to start learning to love and accept himself. (It’s very much a work in progress, but nobody’s perfect.) The title isn’t just meant to refer to romantic love – self-love, friendship, familial love, and unconditional love for the humanity of his trash fire town are equally important, because they all support each other.

hmu for more dvd commentary!

[travllingbunny]

The 100 6x04 The Face Behind the Glass

It’s an understatement to say that I’m late with this review, simply for having had no time to write it before, but here am I, trying to post it at the last moment, before the next episode airs tonight (or is it already airing in US? I will only be able to watch it tomorrow). In the meantime, the fandom has discussed a bunch of different theories, made all sorts of speculations, and I’ve participated in that, a lot.

I didn’t expect this episode to have quite this effect on me and many other fans who have guessed the big twist of this episode way ahead. But while it didn’t come as a surprise, it still hit hard, because the episode was, for the most part, well done, with important character moments for our protagonists, combined with further world-building and fleshing out of the new characters and communities..

And even though I always expected the „peaceful“ society from Sanctum to villains, but this show has achieved something I never expected: introducing villains who match or are, arguably, be even more evil than the leadership of Mount Weather.

I won’t discuss various theories, but I will mention what my favorite theories are, and touch on what I think may happen and what storylines I think could come out of this.

While it is perfectly understandable that the characters still haven’t realized it – because they don’t have the information we have as viewers, and don’t think of everything in terms of storytelling – as a viewer, it wasn’t difficult to guess from the start that something was very wrong with this „peaceful“ society, especially since everything was just too happy, shiny and too good to be true. This episode played on that in particular: there was a ceremony where Russell said all the right things about making peace with your loved ones, and making amends for the wrongs you’ve done – apparently, a traditional custom in Sanctum. (The level of hypocrisy is really high.) Russell himself apologize to Kaylee for closing the Sanctum door on her and her family when they found themselves on the outside and he had to protect the entire community. (This story must have resonated with some people in the audience, Bellamy in particular. Maybe it would have with Raven, too, but she wasn’t there.)  The people in Sanctum were all happy and smiling. Each one of our adult protagonists who does not already have a romantic partner either met a potential love interest, or had fun with a sex interest, or both. There was a party in a club, with music and dancing. And most alarmingly, delicious cookies were served – which brings back memories of the chocolate cake in Mount Weather.

Now, to make it clear, the Sanctum people are not a rehash of Mount Weather. They are very different from the Mountain Men, and in fact, they also have some of the worst characteristics of the Grounder culture – very hierarchical structure and religious worship of people with „special“ (black) blood who have computer chips with stored minds in their heads - only in a much more disturbing way. Whatever one may think of the Flame, it works very differently from these mind drives, and was created for a very different reason: the host retains agency, personality and full control over their body, and the dead people’s „spirits“ are there to help and guide the host with their knowledge and experience. (At least that’s the idea – how helpful it seems to have been to Grounders, is debatable.) These mind drives, however, were apparently modified so that they can store an entire consciousness, which then overtakes the hosts’ body completely. Essentially, it’s body-snatching – it helps the Primes extend their natural lifespans indefinitely, at the expense of the „disposable“ people – and in their minds, everyone is disposable, except them.

And this is what the Primes have in common with the Mountain Men. Mountain Men were horribly evil. They thought they were superior and entitled to live at the expense of everyone else, to put people in cages, drain/drill,  kill them horrifically, throw them away like garbage, turn them into slave monsters they’ll use against their people It was an incredibly evil society. And yet the Primes manage are arguably even more selfish and awful. At least the Mountain Men were doing it for their community, and had the excuse that they had all grown up and been raised to be like that, learning it from their parents,

The Primes, on the other hand, are those same people who started it all, 236 years ago. They’re the ones who have been stealing other people’s bodies to make themselves and their family members live forever, and who have brainwashed their entire community to worship them as gods and be OK with it.They have been stealing bodies to make themselves live forever. And they’ve brainwashed their entire community to be OK with it, worship them as deities and give them people willingly as sacrifice. While most of the Mount Weather community was complicit, actively or passively, in the crimes because it benefited them, the Sanctum community has been brainwashed to support and be complicit in the crimes that benefit no one other than the Primes. If they were to rise against the Primes, the Primes would have no chance. They don’t have the enormous technologically advanced weaponry of Mount Weather, they don’t even have too many guards to keep order – they instead function as a cult and keep everybody down through religion and belief.

In the end, maybe they are similarly horrible, but different types of evil. The allusions to Nazism were pretty obvious in season 2, from the way the Mountain Men would drain or drill people and then throw their bodies like garbage, to the guards going through people’s living quarters and murdering all the „traitors“ who were hiding the Delinquents to save their lives (though, to be fair to the Mountain Men, at least they had a legitimate motivation – needing to survive – while the actual Nazis were just a bunch of racist, ableist idiots). On the other hand, season 6 has had many more religious references. Gods, devils, Lucifer („light-bringer“ – Lightbourne), Gabriel, Gospel of Josephine (the name of the next episode), The magical number 12 (plus the rogue/special 13) appears again. We had the ill-fated 13th station, Sky people/Arkers as the 13th Clan, and now Dr Gabriel Santiago aka „the Old Man“ (he hasn’t explicitly been identified, but does anyone doubt it is him?) as the 13th Prime. In the eyes of the people in Sanctum, Russell and the other Primes are 12 gods, and Gabriel is a demon – like Lucifer, the fallen angel who was banished from the paradise. To us, however, it is the Primes who seem like the devils.

It’s as if we are going back in time to meet the same people who were a part of the elite that destroyed the world 229 years before. These people did not participate directly in the destruction of the Earth, but were closely connected to those who did.  These guys aren’t the descendants, but the same people we saw in the flashback at the start of 6x02 Red Sun Rising. But the things that didn’t seem as sinister then seem so much more disturbing when you pay attention and look back on it with what we know now. At first, I didn’t even notice that Josephine was a sociopath  - but what else would you call someone who test possibly poisonous plants on children and then laughs about it. Russell is a megalomaniac, as his wife noted. The eclipse psychosis brings out, in the most disturbing and exaggerated manner, what is already there inside the person, and for Russell, it was megalomania and desire to be in control: „Sanctum is mine!“ is what he was shouting as he went and killed almost everyone in the mission.

From the info we have gotten so far, the Primes that Sanctum worships are the 12 out of 13 people who were members of the original Eligius 3 colonizing mission, most of whom ended up killed by Russell. Apart from Gabriel, there were four families: Russell, Simone and Josephine Lightbourne (Russell was the astronomer and team leader, Josephine a taxonomist); Priya and her teenage son Ryker; Kaylee’s family – which consisted of mom, dad, and two children - son and daughter; and Miranda’s family – presumably Miranda, her husband and daughter. Out of these, we have seen 10, and 3 got killed by Diyoza and Madi while hijacking the ship, so 7 are still alive in host bodies. Russell said that Josephine was 3rd on the waiting list for a new host – the first two must be Miranda’s daughter (who was supposed to be put in Rose’s body) and husband. She is not going to be happy if/when she finds out Russell and Simone broke their rules and skipped the line for their daughter. There will probably be conflict within the Primes themselves.

But even though these characters and their histories are interesting, out actual protagonists interest me much more.

Unlike the Primes, the Children of Gabriel are actually morally grey. Compared to the Primes, they are definitely the good guys, and their goal to bring them down is definitely good – but they have a bit of ’end justifies the means“ going on, and the execution leaves a lot to be desires. (More on that later.) If they believe that the hosts are really dead once the Prime bodysnatches them, their willingness to kill hosts before they are bodysnatched is more understandable. Or maybe they are just prioritizing the death of the Primes over saving individual hosts. But the majority of their guerrilla fighters in the woods are a bit too into killing – in particular, the woman that got killed by Octavia seemed to love killing as much as Octavia does. The exception is Xavier, who seems to be a major new character this season, who is trying to hold on to a moral code of avoiding murder. He even deliberately let Octavia „get away“ so his people wouldn’t murder her, even though she killed several of the CoG (although I’m not sure that, if you want to minimize murder, letting Octavia in her current psychological be free is a good idea). She doesn’t seem to have understood that, since she is currently swearing to kill Xavier. Gratitude problem, indeed. If that’s really what she wants to do.

I’m curious to find out more about the role of the bodyguard (?) and the future hosts. Who were Rose’s parents? Why was Jade the only one who seemed to take care of her? Did she care for her as Rose, or as a future host for a Prime?

Octavia has been getting moments this season that parallel her brother’s in season 1 – first she stowed away on the dropship, and now she bonded with and tried to protect a child, showing her more humane side that’s still there, hidden beneath all the violence, and giving her the same „fear is a demon“ advice that she and Bellamy both heard from their mother. And she lost Rose, just like Bellamy lost Charlotte.

It will be interesting to see the team-up of two two „snakes“, „devils“ from season 5, as they are both good at fighting and killing, but are such a contrast to each other  – Octavia, impulsive, broken, and emotional disturbed, and Diyoza, rational, good at strategy, cool and snarky, and heavily pregnant. As Diyoza said, snarkily quoting Casablanca: „This is a start of a beautiful friendship“

Ironically, Diyoza thinks they can become heroes of the new planet by killing the Children of Gabriel – not realizing yet who the real villains are. But they should eventually learn the truth. For that to happen, however, Octavia first has to learn not to attack first. If she achieves something good and important by listening to people and saving people instead of going for the kill, that will show a real character development and positive change.

A character who fleshed out a lot this episode is Jordan. His romance with Delilah was fast and simple, but still cute – he is emotionally a teenager, living his first love, and she had the chance to live her last one, before handing over her life to someone else. But is also was a chance to see Jordan opening up to someone about what his life had been like on the ship. Before this, Jordan only seemed like a sweet and optimistic, smiling guy, but now we’ve seen his sadness and longing and his feelings of guilt, too. His description of his life on the ship was the best piece of dialogue in the episode. Monty and Harper may have gotten their happy ending, but they also sacrificed a lot – by removing themselves from the lives of their friends, and by putting their adult son back in cryo – and Monty eventually had to live all alone for quite some time, after Harper’s death. But they also put their son in a difficult position – of growing up with no one except his parents, without any people his age, or any other people in general – only seeing them as „faces behind the glass“, friends he could never have, a life that he couldn’t lead. Of course he wanted to be cryo frozen so he could once have that life, and of course his parents let him – because it would have been monstruous if they had been selfish and decided to prioritize their needs to have their son in their lives over his chance at life. And it’s sad that Jordan feels guilty for going into cryo-sleep, leaving his parents and becoming a „face behind the glass“ for them – someone they could only long for and never have again. But it shows his empathy and compassionate nature that his parents’ feelings are still so much on his mind and that he feels guilty for making them prioritize their child’s needs over theirs, even though that’s a normal thing for a parent to do.

Clarke spent a lot of the episode trying to apologize and make amends to her friends– and those interactions had to happen at this point, before Clarke gets bodysnatched. Each of her last (as in, latest) interactions with her loved ones – her words to Madi, where she accepted her role as a Commander but also told her she may remove the Flame and be a regular kid if she decides to; her apology to Raven, which Raven did not accept, but instead was very harsh with her, and the message Clarke gave her from Shaw, that she deserves to be happy; and her tender moment with Bellamy, where she apologized and told him how much he means to her, and her apology was fully accepted – is going to get so much more weight in these people’s minds after they find out what happened to her.

The scene between Clarke and Raven was a bit frustrating. I’m sure that the reason why we’ve had so many scenes of various people bashing Clarke is exactly because of what happens at the end of this episode. And don’t get me wrong: Raven and others (Murphy, Emori…) have very good reasons to feel angry over Clarke’s betrayal in S5, which happened so recently from their POV. It makes sense that they’re angry over that, and they are not obliged to forgive Clarke immediately. I was all for them hashing things out. However, the way they’ve done it and the things they’ve said is… weird. Because both Murphy and Raven keep talking as if Clarke has been doing awful things to them and betraying them for years, and that’s definitely not the case, quite the opposite – she was a hero and did things to save them a lot of times, and while she had to go to lengths to do it and kill people to save those she cares about, they’ve also done the same and participated in some of those same things, if they were not those that needed to be saved. The last time they saw Clarke before they went to space, she made it possible for them to go to space in the first place, and was left behind to be all alone for 6 years, except for a child.  It’s like the two of them have retconed the events of seasons 1-4 in some weird way. When Raven says that Clarke says sorry and then does HORRIBLE things AGAIN, I’m like… what horrible things? Clarke deciding to go save Raven instead of staying in the bunker, and ending up almost dying and all alone f(except for a child) for 6 years on a deserted planet? Clarke trying everything to save everyone from Praimfaya, including volunteering to be tested in the radiation chamber, risking a horrible painful death? Clarke making the list of 100 people to survive, after Raven told her she had to do it, bashing her at the same time (“I’m in charge of rationing, but deciding who lives or dies is your specialty”? ) Clarke going to the City of Light to save everyone? Clarke doing everything to save Raven from ALIE? Clarke saving Raven’s and everyone else is life from being horribly murdered by the Mountain Men? Clarke mercy killing Finn to spare him the torture - and do what is best for everyone? Yes, indeed Clarke had  "impossible choices". Which Raven never took responsibility for - she always expected Clarke to make them. Even demanded. She asked for the list to be made and ordered Clarke to do it, but Clarke got blamed for it. Not to mention all the times that Raven participated in the same things Clarke did to defend themselves or saved their people- like torturing Lincoln, blowing up the bridge in S1, facilitating the Ring of Fire etc. She was bashing Clarke for not telling the full truth to the people in Arkadia about their low chances of survival in season 4 - when she could have told them the truth herself and didn’t. Raven stood and gave moralistic criticisms about the plan to test someone in the radiation chamber, but Clarke was the one who injected herself with Nightblood and volunteered to get tested. Not to mention all the times when Raven did have to make terrible and impossible choices, but she seems to forget about it. Like leaving Clarke behind to die. She was also ready to leave Bellamy, Monty, Murphy and Emori to die in the season 5 finale, and was hurrying Clarke to pull a lever and leave them. And then there are times when she did or try to do awful things just to protect someone she loved. Remember when she wanted to give Murphy to the Grounders to be tortured and horrifically murdered for something he didn’t do? Murphy did murder others and cripple her, but Finn was guilty of that crime - which was a murder of a bunch of civilians for no reason. But Raven never blamed Finn. Then she wanted Clarke to kill the Grounder Commander and start a war, and probably get killed, just to save Finn, a murderer. And punched Clarke and called her names when she didn’t do it.

And Raven’s comment that the only difference between Clarke and Octavia is that Octavia „doesn’t pretend to feel bad about it“ shows how little she understands both of them: Clarke is feeling deeply guilty and has even tried suicide during her eclipse psychosis. And the difference between Clarke and Octavia is not that Octavia is not pretending to feel bad about it, the difference is Octavia is pretending to not feel bad about it. She feels awful inside, because she wanted to die, but instead of saying sorry and trying to do better, like Clarke, Octavia can’t bring herself to admit mistakes but instead antagonizes everyone, tries to make people kill her, or kills people for little reason – because she doesn’t know how to deal with her gult and self-loathing in another way. It’s the worst possible way to deal with guilt.

My rewatch of the show has reminded me that this is not the first time Raven has been judgmental, self-righteous and hypocritical to Clarke, but the reason why it didn’t stick out so much before is because she had other interesting storylines. Could the writers give her something else to do? Being mean to Clarke for several episodes in a row and doing little else – except have a brief romance – is getting old.

Raven did get to meet a new character – Ryker, who seems on the surface to be another in the series of apparently perfect love interests for her. Now, I’m usually not the one to jump to conclusions that every single new character is someone’s love interest, but they seem to be setting Ryker up that way – especially with the fact that Clarke told Raven Shaw’s message that she deserves to be happy, in the same episode where she meets this new guy. It seems a bit early to give another romance for Raven so soon after Shaw’s death. However, I don’t think Raven/Ryker is going to work – because, likable as he may seem, he is a 250 year old Prime, who may have been a teenager when it all started, but now he’s lived several lives taking other people’s bodies. And I think he’ll have to die at the end of the season. But this is why I think Ryker being some kind of a love interest for Raven may actually give her a really good storyline. (See further below under Predictions/Speculation.)

Ryker doesn’t seem to be all that into the whole Prime thing – he was late to the ceremony even though it was his own mother, Priya, who was coming back in poor Delilah’s body. Jordan, Clarke and the others used to think the „Naming“ was just some ceremonial thing with giving people names after celebrated ancestors – but they are going to start realizing something is up now, after Jordan experienced his first romantic heartbreak, by seeing Delilah come back as a literally different person, with a much colder demeanor, someone who doesn’t even recognize him – but who went straight up to Ryker and hugged him as her son, even though he is in a body that’s older than hers. „My beautiful baby boy“. That was one weird AF mother-son reunion.

BTW, fandom conversations about race regarding the new Sanctum characters are going to be so confusing because of the bodysnatching. Some of the Primes (Russell, Josephine) are in bodies of hosts who are the same race as their originally were, but others are not (Simone, Priya/Delilah, Ryker, Kaylee…).

Clarke continued her apology tour with the most important conversation – with Bellamy. Leaving him in Polis for his sister to throw him into the fighting pit, is what Clarke personally regrets the most and considers her biggest sin, because of what he means to her. Even though he has been very supportive of her, unlike the others from the Spacekru, she still seemed afraid of how he is going to react and if he was going to accept her apology and her assurances that he is a part of her ’family“ still and incredibly important to her. This warm and vulnerable moment – including another obligatory Bellarke hug, intense and intimate as their hugs and touches always are- between the two of them needed to happen before they are separated again – and before someone else tries to take Clarke’s place and impersonate her. So far, they have been having important conversations and moments, rebuilding their relationship after the awful conflict and misunderstandings from season 5: they have addressed Clarke leaving Bellamy, they have addressed her radio calls, they have not directly addressed Bellamy’s betrayal – from Clarke’s POV – but she showed trust in him to take care of Madi in 6x03 and repaid it. But I’m sure that this is not the last time they  talk about either of these things (and not just because we know from the trailer that there’s at least one other conversation coming up in S6 about the radio calls and leaving Bellamy in Polis). These things are ongoing plot points that are given a lot of weight – and the issues have not been fully cleared. Clarke still hasn’t addressed the fact that she didn’t just forget that Bellamy was also her „family“, she was angry and heartbroken  when she felt that Bellamy betrayed her, and when she thought he had told her she wasn’t a part of his „family“ anymore. And Bellamy hasn’t told her that one of the main reasons he did it, and the main or most immediate reason that pushed him to poison Octavia, was to protect Clarke („another traitor you love“). But once they are able to talk about all of it, I’m sure this will lead to other admissions they are not ready for right now. In 6x01, Clarke was scared of talking about the radio calls and her feelings, and now it was Bellamy trying to avoid the conversation. At this point, Clarke seems to have made peace with the fact that she can’t hope for anything else from Bellamy but rebuilding of the relationship they used to have, because he’s with someone else and doesn’t feel that way about her (or so she thinks), while Bellamy seems unsure about many things and trying to figure them out, but is unable to face those issues right now.

We also got the confirmation that Bellamy finds it easier to forgive Clarke because he understood and related to her protectiveness of Madi, as he used to be the same with Octavia, his sister/pseudo-child. But his line „I know what it’s like to risk everything for one person“ may also be foreshadowing. And so is Clarke’s assurance that she will never forget that Bellamy is a part of her family.

After unburdening herself emotionally like that, Clarke tried to do something she very rarely does: relax and have a good time, including dressing up, dancing and flirting in the club with the random good-looking person (specifically, tall, dark dude with facial hair) she had known for very little time, and have a hot one-night stand, after spending 6 years in forced celibacy. (Which is, BTW, only the 5th time she’s had sex in her life, as far as we are aware.) I like the fact that the show doesn’t subscribe to the idea that sex must always mean love – sometimes it has insta-romances, but this is one of those times when it’s really not about love or special bond, just having fun and taking your mind off the misery that’s the rest of your life.

Now, while I liked the fact that Clarke got to just have a one-night stand that didn’t mean anything but a bit of fun, which wasn’t presented as her doing something bad, hat I like a lot less is what happened right after – when the one-night stand led to Clarke being paralyzed, kidnapped and bodysnatched. This feels too much like the trope of punishing people (women especially) for sex, even if that was not th idea.

The doc was a Child of Gabriel, so one of the good guys, so to speak – but oh boy, did he screw things up. Why wouldn’t he have told her the truth (do CoG not understand that normal people are not like the brainwashed Sanctum residents and would freak out and turn against the Primes if they knew they were going to be bodysnatched?), instead of deceiving her, and then trying to explain when it was too late, then paralyzing her and trying to kill her so she wouldn’t be used as host, then committing suicide? Congratulations, dumbass, you just got the exact opposite result of what you planned and were supposed to do!

While Clarke was dancing with the doc, the camera made sure to show that Bellamy was watching them, and the song had very fitting lyrics:

Seaside

I’m running around looking for peace of mind

So come out and change me

You were always around to make me smile

 Stuck underwater

I’m stuck underwater

I just need some space

My friend

It’s not what you wanted

It’s not what you wanted

But I just need a change

Again

 And then when the camera panned to Bellamy:

 Help me out before I die

Save me now before I give up

Help me out before I drown

There has been some debate over whether Bellamy looked jealous (enough) – and while his expression wasn’t the obvious heartbreak on Clarke’s face when she was watching him kiss Echo in S5, he looked sad, wistful and lost in thoughts. Maybe some people expected a stronger, angrier reaction – but I always hated that idea: it would be OOC, he was never possessive of Clarke that way, and it would make him a jerk if he acted that way while he is in a serious relationship with someone else.

Then Echo arrived – which was a bit odd: unlike Jordan and Delilah, who came as a couple, Bellamy and Echo didn’t dress up or come together. Bellamy was still distracted, looking back to the dance floor, when she asked him if he was fine, and he claimed to be upset because he remembered Octavia’s arrest at the party on the Ark (which he described as the last party he was to before one – even though that’s not true. The last party he was at was in Arkadia in S4, a few days before Praimfaya, when he drank with Jasper and others and probably had a one-night stand with Bree, and then later left when he learned about the bunker, while the others from that party, minus Harper and Niylah, decided to stay and commit suicide.) Bellamy indeed looked very sad in this episode – in contrast to his livelier and more hopeful demeanor in the previous episodes – presumably because of what a huge moment and huge loss it was for him to decide to leave Octavia behind and definitely cut her off from his life. But when he immediately started to criticize Echo for not being emotionally open enough, (like Clarke?) it felt like this either came out of the blue, or was very much connected to the fact that Bellamy had that emotionally intimate moment with Clarke, and was just watching Clarke acting fin and sensual with someone else. I’m usually not too impressed with Tasya Teles’ acting, but Echo’s silent hurt in this scene is one of her best acting moments so far.

Bellamy then realized he had just acted like a jerk and took out his issues on her, so he and Echo had an emotional conversation, where Echo ended up telling him the story about losing her parents, when Queen Nia’s army took their land. But this scene was weird in some ways. Bellamy said that Echo told him before that she didn’t remember her parents. This is the first time she has told him the true story. Which is quite surprising - since they spent 6 years is close proximity, probably without much else to do but talk, and (while we don’t know how long they’ve been dating), have been at least friends for 3 years out of that time (since it took him 3 years to forgive her).  This may be a sign that she never really opened up and that they never really got that close as you’d expect. The conversation did start with Bellamy criticising Echo for not being emotionally open as he would like – but he said that the Echo he knew on the ring was more open. However, the dialogue went on to prove him wrong - since it turned out she hadn’t ble to talk about her parents for 6 years, and had lied about it to avoid conversation, and he never noticed.

So, this is either bad writing - or it is good writing that is intentionally meant to convey the lack of real intimacy in their relationship on the ring, and that Bellamy simply didn’t notice it because..? Maybe he didn’t want to? Or he didn’t have anything to compare it with, as his relationships with Raven, Murphy, Monty, Harper and Emori were not more emotionally intimate? It’s difficult to judge what “the time on the ring” was like, when we never saw any flashbacks, and the little info we got is contradictory. We hear that Echo proved herself there, or showed feelings when loved ones were in danger, but other times they talk about it as if nothing was happening and they were just bored and worried about not being able to get to Earth?

It’s also a little odd that Echo says that her emotional repression is because she was fighting for survival all her life - when that is also true of Bellamy. He had a huge secret to hide since he was 6, so you would expect him to be completely closed-off, and he is certainly not. A much better explanation would be Echo’s specific spy training, which we got a glimpse of in her hallucination in 6x02. That was IMO a much stronger character scene for Echo (and that episode was full of great character moments for everyone). If this scene in 6x04 is meant to be a full explanation of her personality, it’s not satisfactory. If it is meant as one of the setups for her to start struggling with her identity and get development in future episodes, I will like it better. 

 And finally, that ending. Even though the twist had been foreshadowed a lot and was expected by quite a few fans, me included, at least since 6x03 or not before, the scene where Russell and Simone decided to wipe Clarke’s mind and put their daughter’s into her body, was incredibly creepy and chilling, especially since we were practically in the POV of the paralyzed Clarke, who saw and heard everything but couldn’t move or do a thing. The dark room, the skeletons of previous hosts, all the way back to the original bodies of the Primes, all contributed to how disturbing it all felt – and so did the fact that Russell and Simone came off very human while incredibly monstrous at the same time. Russell is sad about doing evil, but then he does evil anyway and continues doing so, and he had some very hypocritical lines where he told Clarke she was giving them a „gift“ and that she can now „be at peace“. That’s not what she meant, Russell! Russell and Simone are convinced that they are killing Clarke – and the released script itself and Jason Rothenberg in the Inside the episode video confirmed that Clarke Griffin is indeed dead and gone…

Yeah, it’s pretty funny that they’re trying to sell this even for a moment. Of course, if it were true, it would be one of the stupidest, most pointless and offensive ways to kil off your protagonist, but we all know that’s not the case. The question is just, what exactly will be the condition of Clarke’s mind during the time Josephine is in control of her body, and how and when she will be brought back/freed. And most importantly, this plotline should give both Clarke and her loved ones a lot of great character moments and an exploration of their feelings. It should also propel the entire season’s plot, because our protagonists now have a personal stake in dismantling this awful society and putting the stop to the horrible practice that has been going on for 236 years.

Predictions/speculation

Out of the theories circling around, the one  I like the minds of the hosts are not really erased; they are just dormant because the Prime mind is written on top of them and dominant. After all, why would we assume that Russell and the other Primes know the truth about how the process works? They. wouldn’t really know, or care, if the hosts’ minds are gone or just trapped and unable to do anything as the Primes’ minds are in control – which, in many ways, is even more disturbing than a simple death of the host would be. But the hosts before Clarke have been willing (as far as we know), and might not have had anyone determined to bring them back (the Children of Gabriel are content to just kill the hosts if that’s the only way to stop the process). The Flame will no doubt come into play, but not the way some people think. As confirmed by Jason Rothenberg in his recent Twitter Q&A, the „mind drives“ are a version of Becca’s original technology, modified in order to store an entire consciousness. The Flame is a more developed version of Becca’s original design, and might help someone – probably Raven - figure out how to erase the process in the mind drives. The fact that Madi has Becca’s „spirit“ in her head could also play a role. I’m sure it won’t be easy, though, and a lot of other things will probably also be needed, including input from Gabriel himself.

What would be really interesting is to see what this does for Clarke’s character arc. We will see Josephine pretending to be Clarke, but I wonder if we will also see Clarke pretending to be Josephine pretending to be Clarke, Josephine fighting with Clarke, Clarke trapped inside her own brain and fighting with her demons… 

It will also be interesting to see how the loss of Clarke affects her friends and family. They have never before dealt with a situation Clarke is the one who needs saving for any longer period of time, and where everyone has to work together to save her. This should help show everyone’s real feelings for her. After all the bitterness and anger that some of them have shown (Raven in particular), her disappearance/“death“ will probably make them remember all the times that she did heroic things and saved them and others, and a comparison with a selfish, spoiled sociopath like Josephine should make them see what a real „bad guy“ in Clarke’s body would be like.

Will they also be able to save Delilah and the other hosts? Some people think that would be too „fairy-tale“ like, aka too good to be true – but, whatever Delilah meant by it, I think that her line “Don’t let me be a face behind the glass” (which compares the hosts to people in cryo-sleep) either hints at or foreshadows that the hosts can be saved. And I also think that the stakes will be higher if the hosts can be saved (or at least some of them – since some of the Primes may get killed in their hosts’ bodies before the end of this season), which would mean that the storyline must end with the final deaths of all the Primes – the destruction of their mind drives. If the hosts were really gone (and for some reason, only Clarke could be brought back), it would feel wrong to kill the Primes once they stop posing direct danger, and if there is another way to make sure they stop stealing other people’s bodies, especially if some of them end up helping put an end to the Prime rule and the bodysnatching practice.

But if the hosts can be saved, and given a chance at a real life that was taken from them at the age of 21, and if they can only be saved by destroying the Primes, who have already lived over 250 years at the expense of others… then this is a choice that will have to be made: the right choice, but maybe not an easy one. Especially if Ryker really ends up being Raven’s new love interest, and if ends up really not being fully bad and helping our heroes, we may end up being season 6 Maya, and at the same time, it could put Raven, for once, to be the one who makes the decisions who lives and who dies and has to stand by it, and – what would be even more interesting – to be the one who „kills“ her love interest for the greater good and what is right, this time, essentially going through Clarke’s season 2 role. Ryker’s line about about raven as an omen of death sounds like foreshadowing.

Rating: 8/10

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 2: The Racism of the Conductor’s Baton (Part 1)

Years in the future, but not many…

TIER: Now what in the heck is this I wonder?

BRIGHT: ...the reader wonders what’s going on now, as we jump to a sun-bleached desert with a Wayward Vagabond wandering across it.

CHEL: Here, we introduce another count:

WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 1

Should the baffling developments to which this count is applied be explained satisfactorily later, we’ll take the points off, but we use the counts in the present to express how one feels on seeing them for the first time. Even if it does get explained later, I feel like this is oddly placed, especially since it doesn’t get explored in any detail here. Mileage may vary, though.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think when I first encountered this upd8 I didn’t click on the link.

BRIGHT: Thankfully - and unexpectedly - this state of affairs only lasts a page, and then we return to something associated with the storyline so far: Rose Lalonde has started a game walkthrough of SBurb. After spending quite a few words to say that she will be brief, she explains that installing the game is bringing about the end of the world.

Then she takes a couple more paragraphs to express her condolences and reassure everyone that it was all inevitable anyway.

CHEL: Not a case of HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING, as I considered briefly - writing the FAQ is about the only thing she can do in the circumstances. Warning people not to play the game won’t help now, since enough people have already started that the resulting meteors are going to destroy the Earth anyway. All anyone can do now is set up their own session and hope to escape through it, and all Rose can do to help is advise them in the hopes some succeed. Sucks for all the people in the world who don’t have a computer, though, but the apocalypse isn’t exactly supposed to be fair.

FAILURE ARTIST: Amidst her purple prose she uses the r-slur. It’s one thing reading John or TG say it, it’s another thing with her.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 5

BRIGHT: Over on the next page, John has survived! As has his house, and his father, although there are eyes peering out from under the bed...and through the kitchen door...oh, yeah, and the house is now perched atop a rocky crag in a dark sky.

FAILURE ARTIST: That’s a good atmospheric animation. The next animation doesn’t have the [S] for sound but it’s longer than a couple seconds. I probably accidentally clicked next when I first saw it.

Next, we get a new voice: some mysterious insistent prompter who calls John “BOY”. We’ll find out later who this person is.

CHEL: I’d say this doesn’t earn a WHAT IS HAPPENING point because we’re used to John obeying prompts. It’s curious that the style has changed, but not completely confusing.

FAILURE ARTIST: Next comes the first walkaround game! The reader moves John via the mouse, arrow keys, or the WASD keys. When you click on certain objects, a little yellow box comes up with messages clearly from the mysterious prompter. If you click that box, John’s opinions come in a green-lined box. You can walk around the whole house and backyard - except for John’s father’s room.

Since this is an interactive game, you can go in whatever order you want, but for the sake of summarizing, let’s go by the order in the printed edition.

John surveys the balcony. The prompter wants you to “do something with” what it calls the “ghost clown” and John explains that ghost clown is the kernelsprite and the Sburb server player is supposed to be the one to prototype it. Meanwhile, the kernelsprite spouts wingding.

John goes down the hallway. Dad’s room is locked so John goes to the bathroom. He notes that Rose did a “piss-poor” job of fixing the bathroom. He wonders if he could just pee over the cliff. Thankfully, this never happens.

John goes into his bedroom. It’s a mess. The door has been ripped off the hinge and there’s black goo everywhere. John is annoyed at the mess but begrudgingly admits Rose saved his life. John (or the reader) takes the time to look at the posters.

The prompter doesn’t like Little Monsters anymore than TG but John wishes he could hang out with Fred Savage. John’s wish to hang out with candy-corn-horn monsters could be considered foreshadowing and Hussie jokes about it being that but Hussie probably didn’t have trolls in mind at that point. Clicking the Con Air poster elicits the question “IS THAT JOHN CUSACK?” from the prompter. When we find out who the prompter is, it will make little sense they would recognize John Cusack, but the actor is a universal constant. Clicking the Ghostbusters 2 poster, we find out TG calls the film “nasty manbro bukkake theater” and poor innocent John doesn’t know what that means. It’s rather disturbing that TG does know. (CALL CPA PLEASE?)

CHEL: Not sure. At that age with access to the internet I picked up a bunch of obscene words without actually seeing the material they applied to. Then again, this is TG, and considering his later-seen home life it’s quite possible he didn’t just get curious on Urban Dictionary, so…

CALL CPA PLEASE: 1

FAILURE ARTIST: He examines the totem lathe, which the prompter calls a “sewing machine”, and wonders if other punch cards will make other shapes.

If you click on the computer, you see Rose is trying to get in touch with John. He ignores her for now.

John leaves the bedroom and makes his way down the stairs. Both he and the prompter hate all the harlequin art, but John does like the crude bust sitting on the floor.

The Cruxtruder is still in the middle of the room with its lid open. When you click on the lid, the prompter commands John to reseal the opening and John says “Pandora’s tube” has been opened, which is awfully literary for him. When you click on the Cruxtruder itself, the prompter demands John push it and exit the house. John says he can’t without grist and comes close to dropping the comic’s name.

When you click on the urn, the prompter commands John to topple it. John refuses, saying he’d never do that… at least intentionally. If you click on the portrait above the urn of Nanna, John wishes for her wisdom.

The prompter calls the doors to the kitchen “like you see in a cowboy saloon”, a turn-of-phrase that will be weird when we find out who the prompter is.

So John goes into the kitchen. There’s lots of black goo around and an orphaned bowl of cake batter, but no Dad. The black goo is apparently oil. John wishes for his father back. If you click on Colonel Sassacre’s book, John declares that both it and WISE GUY are his “favoritest book”. The prompter wants John to eat some of the Betty Crocker cake mix but John calls Betty Crocker a “wench”. This is the start of John’s feud with Betty Crocker. On the fridge is a primitive drawing of Slimer that John drew at the tender age of almost thirteen. This won’t be the only picture on a fridge we see. There’s board games in the kitchen cabinet, a callback to Death’s games in Problem Sleuth and also a weird place to put board games. If you click on the kitchen phone, you find out the prompter does know what a telephone is, but this phone doesn’t work.

Through the door is a laundry room, but both John and the prompter agree there’s no time for that. Note that the prompter knows what washer and dryer machines are.

Next, John goes into the backyard. The prompter wants John to fiddle with the live wires and John wisely refuses. John checks what the prompter calls a “wall-mounted gadget” (electric meter) and discovers the house is still powered. How come the prompter is familiar with so many electrical devices but doesn’t know about live wires and electric meters? In his commentary, Hussie does note that this is strange.

CHEL: To be fair, “magic” is a legitimate power source in this world.

FAILURE ARTIST: From the tree hangs a pair of trick handcuffs over the void and the prompter wants John to claim them. The prompter seems to be out to get John killed.

John goes back into the house (via what the prompter calls the “luncheon parlor”) and goes to the piano room. If you click on the huge mural, John says Cirque du Soleil filed a restraining order on Dad. I think Hussie once said it was because Dad tried to shave a performer. The prompter wants John to “consume nut” (again with the death!)...

CHEL: “Consume nut”? *immature snickering*

FAILURE ARTIST: ...but John says there’s probably no hospitals in this dark realm. If you click on the piano, the sheet music for Showtime pops up and that songs plays instead of the constant wind noise. Maybe you should visit this room first. There’s a safe in this room but John doesn’t know the combination.

Though Dad seems obsessed with clowns, we’ll later find out something that turns that on its head. However, Hussie does have his own interest in clowns, having once created a comic about a hapless circus clown named Whistles.

According to the book commentary, the entire walkaround game took less than twenty-four hours to draw, write, and program. Still looks good. That wind noise does get awfully annoying.

CHEL: The walkaround game is also the original source of “Trickster Mode”, an Easter egg in the Flash in which Hussie’s face floats on the screen and John looks like this:

Speculation ran rampant in fanfic and art for years, usually involving the “Tricksters” being the Superpowered Evil Sides of the kids. This isn’t quite how it turned out when Trickster Mode appeared again (much to my disappointment, I admit, I liked those), but that’s for much, much later in the comic.

John and Rose chat again. John can’t find his dad. Rose explains that John and his house have been transported to a mysterious somewhere which saved him from the meteor impact that destroyed his neighbourhood. Her research has turned up many similar collisions across the world, getting bigger with time, and the two conclude that the objective of the game must be to stop the meteors and save the world. There’s a rather cute bit of dialogue where Rose wishes John happy birthday and mentions her gift to him is in progress, and she helps him retrieve his father’s PDA from the precipice for portable internet.

FAILURE ARTIST: In Andrew Hussie’s annotation, he says this conversation made fans see the two as a “shippable commodity” (Hussie’s exact phrase) but compares them to shipping Colonel Sassacre/Pogo Ride.

CHEL: I’m pretty sure he was being facetious there, especially given that equally weird ships are actually canon, but the worse parts of the fandom latched onto it and John/Rose shippers get a lot of shit, mostly from people who ship Rose with girls. People who ship John with boys seem a lot more mellow about it. That’s Tumblr for you.

FAILURE ARTIST: On Dad’s PDA, you can see a chatroom called SERIOUS BUSINESS where a FedoraFreak is updating everyone on his rescue of his wardrobe from a house fire. FedoraFreak’s story doesn’t end here. While he doesn’t ever appear on screen his conversation can be seen on the PDA a few times later and at the end a character exposits important backstory to him before he passes away. Andrew Hussie brought up FedoraFreak a lot on his defunct Formspring with facts that like many of his answers on that site might be just taking the piss.

CHEL: John is now starting to notice the mysterious commands in his head, and attempts to refuse to follow them further; the cut back to the Wayward Vagabond immediately afterwards shows that he’s the one giving the commands by way of a strange-looking console. The console has four screens, three dark, one showing John. Now he’s starting to seem a lot less random, though we still don’t know much about him. If it was up to me I might have used this as his introduction instead of the first page with him that we got. He’s wrapped in rags but we can see enough of him to know that he doesn’t look human - his fingers are sharply pointed, his eyes are tiny and beady, he has no hair, and his flesh is stark black. Admittedly he doesn’t look a lot less like a real human than the stylised sprites of the human characters do, but you see what I mean, he doesn’t fit the appearance they have.

FAILURE ARTIST: I like this reveal of Wayward Vagabond, though I think again my first read I didn’t click the link. I don’t know why it’s a link and not a panel.

CHEL: Rose’s FAQ further explains what was demonstrated earlier, warning users not to activate the Cruxtruder until they’re ready to start the countdown. Once it is activated, it produces “cruxite dowels”, cylinders of mysterious material, which can be used in conjunction with the “Totem Lathe”, the “Alchemiter”, and special punchcards to produce objects from nothing, which will prove useful, though honestly I don’t know why they need to put the punchcard through the Totem Lathe and then the totem in the Alchemiter. I feel a step could be eliminated there in the design of these machines.

Unfortunately the FAQ also contains this line, and I don’t mean it’s unfortunate because Rose making typos is OOC:

Removing the lid signals the moment your life becomes a great whirling batshit pandemonium, somewhat resembling the chaos of an especially ethnic wedding. Somewhere, a soused uncle deliberately shatters china on the floor. Muddy livestock is decorated, and then lost track of. The question “Who’s mule is this?” at times can be heard over the din. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 6 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 3

FAILURE ARTIST: Oh wow. Guess there’s a lot hidden in these easy-to-skip parts.

CHEL: Rose herself is still in the observatory, watching the storm outside and the flaming collisions of meteors in the distance. Her laptop battery is running low, the house’s electricity is out, and the fire is getting closer, but there’s a backup generator behind the backyard mausoleum. While she has time, she tries to help John by prototyping the sprite for a second time, but it dodges the various items she tries to put in it, until Nanna’s ashes are knocked over a second time, directly onto it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think it is said later that the prototyping is drawn to dead things. While the Betty Crocker box would be very interesting considering the mythology that later develops around that marketing icon, obviously the sprite would chose Nanna’s ashes.

CHEL: The Colonel Sassacre book has some importance in the lore, too. We’ll see that when more backstory is revealed.

The sprite disappears, but as John searches for an escape route from the house to retrieve the second CD-ROM, we see it again, slightly changed…

TG messages John and still seems pretty calm about John’s reports of weird happenings, coming out with a pretty entertaining rap about the situation. I still always giggle at “afflecks saclifice, i mean -crifice, would have to sufflice. aw fluck it”.

TG: ill have to make a rap about TG: i dont know TG: morgan freeman or something TG: being the president TG: itll be called TG: "obama made it so that no one gives a shit about black presidents in movies anymore" WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 4

FAILURE ARTIST: Fanon makes TG a great rapper but he really sucks and the only time he doesn’t (and in fact is the best in paradox space) we don’t actually get to read it.

CHEL: Probably that’s because the fans saying he’s great can’t rap any better. I know his rapping is a lot better than any I could do - for one thing he’s able to come up with one at all that quickly. I mean, yes, he does use words like “derangerous” in it, but I listen to a band who tried to rhyme “plane” with “California”.

FAILURE ARTIST: Good point. I can’t rap either.

CHEL: Is this a Problematykks point? I don’t think black people are the butt of the joke exactly, but…

Anyway. John stands on the balcony and Rose lifts the car from its precarious position on a spike of ground over the abyss, with the intention that John can break the window to retrieve the second part of the game, but just as he almost reaches it, her connection is lost, and the car plummets out of view below the clouds beneath the house.

FAILURE ARTIST: “The loss of any Dodge Dart is a terrible thing.”

CHEL: While checking his PDA, John is messaged by GG again! She’s surprised when he knows the explosion near her house was a meteor. Fortunately she’s unharmed, and mildly surprised but encouraging when John explains. Since he can’t reach Rose, John decides he has to get TG involved; TG is still rap-typing, and John’s reaction of “aaaaaarrrgh!” is pretty appropriate. John tells TG he has to use the game to save Rose, but TG’s lost his copy, and his brother apparently won’t be happy about TG borrowing his.

Rose gathers up her stuff to head out to the backup generator. Attempting to use her Grimoire for Summoning the Zoologically Dubious in her strife specibus results in this creepiness, so instead she uses her knitting needles. Some pages are spent consulting the Grimoire anyway, introducing the reader to the NOBLE CIRCLE OF HORRORTERRORS and some diagrams of what appear to be windows.

FAILURE ARTIST: Problem Sleuth had weird teleporting window shenanigans so this is a callback to that.

Rose goes outside briefly and thinks of a T.S. Eliot quote (“April is the cruellest month..”) that she attributes to Charles Barkley. Misattributed quotes are a running gag in this comic but for all we know in this verse maybe Charles Barkley did say that.

CHEL: She re-enters the house and prepares to risk confrontation with her mother…

And suddenly we jump to TG.

FAILURE ARTIST: Insufferable Prick Dave, unlike John and Rose, doesn’t simply shake his head disapprovingly at the joke name but takes out his sword and slices the box. He has a strong sense of self. Strider was probably a Lord of the Rings reference but Andrew Hussie didn’t come up with the names. He only chose them.

Like I said earlier, Dave Strider is sort of an author avatar for Andrew Hussie. Dave and Andrew have a similar sense of humor, similar bodies of work, and perhaps similar neuroses.

Dave’s introduction lists a few interests that never really come up again. He is said to like BANDS NO ONE’S HEARD OF BUT [HIM] but we never hear of these bands either. Andrew Hussie in the printed book bemoans that he never got around to talking about that interest. He collects WEIRD DEAD THINGS IN JARS but besides creating one abomination this collection never amounts to anything. He even lampshades his forgotten interests much later.

CHEL: The other kids at least get something made of their interests; John’s bad movies come up a lot and are the starting topic of a later important conversation, and Rose and GG’s interests are relevant to their game powers. Dave’s, well… The swords are his favoured weapon, but swordplay is much more of his brother’s interest than his, which is thematically appropriate, but leaves Dave’s own interests rather out of the spotlight.

Dave has a very cramped-looking room with furniture made of boards and cinderblocks and a bed which appears to merely be two mattresses stacked together. When the prompts bring up the game, he has the game in his possession and claims to have no intention of playing it, showing this is a flashback.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave looks in his closet and finds the box his 13th birthday present from John came in plus a jar full of a yellow substance. John had given him shades worn by Ben Stiller in a movie and while the movie isn’t named it is the 2004 remake of Starsky & Hutch featuring the comedic duo Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. That movie appears in Problem Sleuth and much much later Stiller and Wilson become part of Homestuck’s mythology.

Meanwhile, the jar full of a yellow substance is not what you think.

CHEL: He browses the internet for a while, showing his satirical reviews of GameBro magazine, and introducing one of the comic’s favourite running gags, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

SBaHJ is something of a legend even outside the Stuckosphere. Hussie originally drew it as a parody of bad two-gamers-on-a-couch webcomics, intentionally using terrible art, terrible dialogue, confusing layouts, and non-sequitur “jokes”. It proved popular, so he turned it into an entire comic strip, getting steadily worse with each entry. It… well, go check it out, words can’t really do it justice. Be warned that there is some graphic and disturbing content including incest, scat, gore, and bestiality, albeit all drawn so poorly it’s kind of hard to tell what one is looking at.

FAILURE ARTIST: Not just a general parody, it was in response to this guy on the Penny Arcade forum who wanted to learn just enough art to make a two-gamers-on-a-couch webcomic and refused to listen to people who told him he’d have to learn the basics.

CHEL: In-universe, the comic is drawn by Dave, who has “legions of devoted fans, most of whom are totally convinced of your creative persona's sincerity. Which is just how you like it.” Dave’s devotion to the concept of “irony” is a major part of his character; he hides behind “irony” as his reason for doing almost everything, up to and including liking his birthday present.

We then see a few pages from the fictional webcomic John also liked, depicting the Midnight Crew. While this could be interesting and relevant (you’ll see why soon), it would be more so at a point when we weren’t waiting for one of the main characters to be rescued from a meteor strike and/or massive fire.

GET ON WITH IT!: 4

FAILURE ARTIST: That is a lot of panels just to spend watching a character read a webcomic, even considering the importance of the webcomic.

CHEL: And while we’re at it, I’m assigning another point for posting Dave’s first conversation with John again. The reader might need a reminder of what was said, yes, but the magic of the internet means it would be possible to provide a link back to that page rather than making archive bingers read the same thing twice.

GET ON WITH IT!: 5

The new conversation he has with Rose is entertaining and establishes their relationship of mutual friendly snark very well, though.

TG: if you ever find yourself in the position where your life depends on me playing that piece of shit game, then ill play

Unwise words, Dave.

We briefly cut back to John, who finds another mysterious trail of oil in his house, and whiplash back to Dave. This might be an issue of the webcomic format again; in a webcomic, it’s reasonable to occasionally remind the readers that yes, this character’s still there and still doing things. In a book or in an archive binge, it’s a little jarring, but if the former applies that’s not really the writer’s fault.

Back at Dave’s, there’s a Flash DJ game on Dave’s fancy mixing equipment (much nicer than anything else in the room, as we’ll discuss further later), on which Dave accidentally spills his bottle of what despite John’s comments is definitely apple juice. He emerges from his room to fetch a towel, and now we see some clearer hints of the weirdness of his home. In the short trip to the bathroom we see two marionettes, created out of photo collages in jarring contrast to Dave’s sprite self, one overlooking the hallway and one hanging in the shower. Dave, meanwhile, cleans up the juice and hangs the soaked CD-ROM envelopes up at his window to dry. Despite his remembering to turn off the electric fan so they don’t get blown out, the game discs naturally end up going out the window anyway in somewhat more unusual fashion; specifically, a crow flies in and randomly steals them. Dave’s attempts to stop the bird result in sylladex shenanigans, causing his katana to fly out, impale the bird, and send it and the game discs crashing through the window.

[kneesheee]

Little Devil

warnings: threats of death | mention kidnapping | mind manipulation | canon-typical violence

|five|

Jason sat back in one of the chairs as he cleaned the crowbar in his hands. His eyes tracked the movement of the man in the middle cell. The man had crying and screaming himself hoarse as he and Jamila took out his companions. It had gotten to the point where Jamila walked into the cell and forced him to silence or she’d give him a real reason to scream.

He hasn’t done anything since.

Jamila herself had hosed her body down until it was clean enough for her to venture upstairs. She had showered and now she was resting in Roy’s friend Kyle’s room. The space cop sometimes came over with Roy when he and Connor were on good terms. They descended into Roy’s workshop and more often enough Kyle was bringing back metals from Planet Vegeta to fix whatever they broke in there.

Whatever.

He needed to go check on Talia. He didn’t know how long he had been down here. Jason stood to go change when an alert went off on the computer behind him.

His computer was better in ways that Oracle’s ad Batman’s weren’t. They searched for crimes and put pieces together. His idea came from a movie. Captain America: TWS if he was sure. The algorithm was wonderful and once he told Talia about it and let her watch it herself, she stopped at nothing to find someone who could make her something similar if not better. So yes, Jason has his own Project Insight except it was filtered. Potential targets were filed away by threat level.

People were like chess and Jason found that he liked moving pieces into his corner. Almost two-thirds of the people that pop up either work for Head Industries or the League now.

If only he could convince Talia that Tony Stark was not that suitable to be her superhero crush.

(“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong Habibi… he is a man with great influence and an incomparable mind. His morals are unbreakable with knowing when to sacrifice them for necessary evils. My only complaint would be this Marvel continuously writing him to be their sacrificial lamb and unorthodox villain for the sake of making Private Rogers look well. [Its Captain America, T?] Have you not watched the movie Jason? Steven Rogers was made captain to sell war bonds and disrespected a chain of order. It was for plot development that he was made into a captain. In a real world, none of his actions would have suffice. Anthony is practical and though his jokes fall short, it is quite easy to see that he makes up for it. And besides, what kind of woman would I be if I didn’t appreciate his appreciation of a strong woman. He clearly sees females as the superior sex.)

Jason shook his head and paid attention to the details crossing his screen. Roy was calling. He rose a brow and answered.

The red head looked frantic. His green eyes were lit with worry and grief. “Jason! Jay, please. I need your help! Connor’s been kidnapped by the League of Shadows!”

Well fuck.

--

Damian was brought out of his musings as his communicator went off. He spared a glance at his mother who was recreating a picture that Todd had hanging on his wall.

The person on the other end didn’t even give Damian time to speak before they began barking orders, “Get to the Batcave. The others will meet you there. I’m bringing a guest.”

Damian only spared a minute to stare at his phone before he was abruptly standing up. His mother looked up at him and was on her feet and in a defensive position before he could even blink. Damian tilted his head to the side and hummed. She was favoring her right side leaving herself vulnerable to attacks to her left and then he saw the knife in her hands (and where the hell did, she get that---Todd was going to kill him).

“Pack a bag. We will be staying at castle for an undetermined amount of time.”

She roamed her eyes around the room three times before nodding her head and walking away to what she showed him to be her room.

Cain walked over to him and tilted her head. She ran a hand through his hair, and she was one of the few people who could do so without risk of being stabbed. Damian sighed through his nose, “We need to leave and return to the Cave. Todd is bringing a guest.”

He could feel her nod before she was following his mother. Damian wondered just who this guest was. He hoped it to be their enemy, so that he may show them what happens when one attacks the Al Ghuls. The demon inside him cried for blood. This dastardly attack on his mother cannot stand and someone will have to pay.

Damian smiled a cruel smile. Yes, whoever Todd’s guest was will pay dearly for causing harm to his mother.

--

All Al Ghuls knew where the Batcave was located. It wasn’t a secret. They knew where it was, how to get in there detected and undetected, hidey-holes, and how to navigate the computer without raising alarms.

Personally, Jamila never bothered with it. She was content to living her life traipsing the globe making a name for herself that would one day rival her parents.

And yet, somehow, here she was standing in the cave with all the bat brats staring at her. Well standing wouldn’t be the right word. She was lounging across their debriefing table cleaning her nails with one of her knives. Her green-blue eyes tracked everyone’s movement and took note of the many exits and passageways she had been forced to learn.

And then-

Her knife fell from her hand.

Jason moved next to her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Jamila gave a full body shudder as she saw what her stupidity led to.

“Kalh,” the word dropping from her mouth. She was sure she would’ve sunk to the ground if Jason was not supporting her.

This miniature version of her aunt looked at with something akin to suspicion and recognition.

She drank in the similarities to the woman she knew to the child standing before her. She took deep pleasure in knowing that she looked like her aunt instead of her mother when she was an infant. It wasn’t long before the butler was whisking her away at Jason’s order.

“Who are you to claim relation to the Al Ghul line,” her other cousin demanded. Jamila turned her head to look at him and quite honestly, she found him lacking. Oh, so she can see the potential. She can see where he would’ve been great. But it’s this idiotic way of ignoring his instincts and obviously ignoring his birthright that makes him unworthy of her attention. It’s no wonder that he fell to the end of the line of succession regardless that it was only because of the death of their grandfather.

Jamila only manages to stop herself from sneering. Jason informed her of his infuriating plan. Announcing her as the heir? It was the reason they were in this mess to begin with! And he just goes and saddle her with a title she does not want! That she threw away!

She can feel Jason sigh because he just knows how she’s going to react.

And react she did.

Pulling herself to full height, Jamila looked down her nose at her younger cousin. Honestly, even Anastasia wasn’t this infuriating, and that little spoilt princess made Jamila want to travel back in time and put her knife through her egg.

“I am your superior in all that matters. I am the Demon of Death. The snake cloaked in poisons with more blood on my hands than a blood bank. I am Jamila Al Ghul-Wilson. Daughter of Nyssa Raatko and Slade Wilson. Rightful Heiress to the Demon’s Head.”

“Rightful,” the one Jason fondly calls replacement questioned. She ignored the spluttering from her youngest cousin that she was lying. As if she wanted to be born to either of her parents.

Jamila tilted her head to the side, “Jason has informed me that my half-brother has been kidnapped. It is obvious that my Mother has taken him and with Mistress Talia compromised, Mother has the right to the throne. She doesn’t know about me, so she’d name my brother her heir.”

The blue idiot that had once thrown her cousin-heart in Arkham sneered at her, “Why should we even trust you? We might as well beat you and Nyssa and dismantle the League of Shadows. It’ll save us a lot of trouble.”

Jamila smirked, “You? Beat me? Don’t make me laugh.”

He puffed up and took a step towards her and Jamila’s smirk widen. She could feel interest piquing in her and her fist clenched ready to lay down the truths.

“I’ve beaten your father and Cass beat your mom—”

Jamila snorted, “Irrelevant. I’m a better fighter than both. Lady Shiva has said that I am better fighter than herself. So, you and your Cass- “

“Mila,” Jason groaned. “Do you have to antagonize everybody?”

“It’s a part of my charm,” she shrugged. “We need a plan and we can’t really do anything until the Mistress is back to her rightful age.”

She pulled a jump drive out of her pocket and handed it to Jason. He had already read all the information on there and copied it to his own computer. Jamila smirked. She also knew he made the data unable to copied again to try would upload a virus on the device download so viscous that no data would ever be able to be added.

Her cousin looked at her with amusement in his unmasked eyes as he moved towards the Bat. Her eyes tracked the Batman’s movement and she couldn’t see what her aunt saw in him. He was so plain.

Jamila trailed her eyes around the room before the sound of people entering caught her attention. She glanced over at the newcomers. She quirked a brow when she saw Jason’s friends.

The clone that Jason took after like a father to a son bumbled down happily alongside the Amazon with the eye-catching thighs. Jamila was suddenly glad that she had her own mask covering her face. Those thighs looked completely delicious.

Following behind them were the alien princess that Jason also befriended. Jamila trailed her eyes down her body. Now this was a woman. She didn’t understand how Jason managed to control himself with such beautiful women surrounding him. And honestly, it is no secret between the two cousins that they both have a thing for strong women.

Following behind them was the red head archer. The one Jason told her was the adopted brother of her mother’s son. And from the way the others following behind could only be his family. Her lips curled back in a snarl.

She had no use of compromised agents.

Jamila could feel a heavy stare on her, and her gaze trailed across the room until she could see Lady Shiva’s daughter staring at her. Jamila wondered what she could read through her body language before she shrugged uncaringly and made her way to Jason’s side.

“Remind why I exactly did I allow you drag me here with these imbeciles,” the Farsi language dripped off her tongue like water and she inwardly smiled. She had done her research on all of them, and she knew for a fact that none of them spoke Farsi. But she almost remembered Jason mentioning that the alien had to actually kiss people to learn new languages and well Jamila knew a lot of languages.

“Because we have to stop your mom and we have strength in numbers,” Jason replied absently as he and the Bat looked over the information on the junk drive. Jamila glanced up at it and inwardly snorted. She hoped that they weren’t thinking of leading an attack going by the old structure of the compound.

“But- “

“You can also use them as distractions while you proceed to beat the shit out of your mother and declare yourself the best of the Al Ghul lineage.”

Well it was true. It was she who took down her grandfather for good after all. Though it was also nice to have facts and her mother, and her brother was the one Al Ghul she hadn’t fought. Damian hadn’t counted. He would need help to beat her just like Anastasia. She will fight them when they are older and more experienced. She scowled, “Damn you and my competitive nature.”

“What are the two of you talking about?”

It was the blue idiot again. She whirled around ready to continue her verbal onslaught when Jason placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Its none of your business, Dickhead.”

Jamila inwardly smirked before she turned back towards the computer. She noted the routes that they planned on taking. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on fixing Aunt Talia instead of planning the attack?”

“You know Batman has to be prepared. Uh… you know he has contingency plans for his contingency plans.”

If she didn’t stop now, she was sure her face would be stuck in a permanent scowl. “In other words, he’d rather be an idiot and focus on the problem that Connor has been kidnapped instead of the obvious connection that this is just a ploy.”

“Well when you put it that way… Ouch!”

Jason rubbed the back of his head from where she had slapped it and the two of them stood glaring at each other. His eyes to her mask. She sighed deeply and it felt as if a weight had gathered on her shoulders.

“We need the Mistress to be back to her right age. It’s imperative- “

“Okay enough of this! How can you expect us to work together when we don’t even know what you’re saying!”

She was going to shove that escrima stick so far up his ass.

“Jamila knows what’s at stake and I trust her to have our back.”

“You might trust her, but I don’t,” he exclaimed. His fist clenched and his gaze darkened with every glance he spared the cousins. Jamila was struck with a sudden realization and she laughed aloud.

“By the demon, he’s jealous!”

Honestly, she couldn’t stop her shaking shoulders if she tried. It was just hilarious.

“What,” Jason’s words were followed by an almost immediate denial of, “No I am not,” from the Dickhead?

“Hate to say it ‘Wing, but you totally are,” the blonde and purple one stated. “You’ve been in this weird state of confusion and jealousy since everything started. You’re almost bad as B.”

Jamila perked with interest before turning to look at Batman. He was jealous?

“This family is fucking weird,” Jason grumbled before pointedly turning away. “Can we focus on the mission now? I think we’ve got a good plan to rescue to Connor.”

They all moved to crowd around the screen even Jason’s friends and the Arrows. Jamila stiffened and quickly moved away. She knew none of them well enough for them to be so close in her personal space.

She sniffed disdainfully from her reclaimed spot on their debriefing table returned to cleaning her nails. She paid little attention to the plan they were going over and honestly, it was a shit plan. Going in through the cover of night? Cliché. Taking down the systems? Predictable and inclined to fail by the five multilayered and encrypted security systems. Hit them before they see you takedown? Unlikely to work with the patrol.

“It won’t work.”

It was as if the world stopped. She rose a brow in challenge.

“What?” Roy asked with such heartbreak on his face that she might have felt guilty. But she didn’t know him. Didn’t care for him. Didn’t care about him. So no, she didn’t feel guilty.

“It will not work,” she shrugged. “The compound has changed for one. These plans you are looking at come from Construction 855b. It hasn’t looked like that for six months now. I should know. I was there when the changes began.”

“You didn’t think to let us know before we started planning,” the Dickhead growled. Jamila sighed deeply.

“I do not like you and it is only out of respect for my cousins that I have not beheaded you.”

She took little notice of how the yellow bat took a cautious step away from her and closer to Lady Shiva’s daughter.

“Mila,” Jason groaned and pressed his hands into his face. She shrugged.

“I have already stated that we cannot do anything until Mistress Talia is back to her rightful age.”

“I’m sorry, but who are you again?” She switched her gaze to the person that had spoken. The Green Arrow. Her mother’s second husband.

She smiled sweetly, “I am Jamila. Jason’s cousin.”

The alien flew close to her and Jamila deserve a reward for not stabbing her in the eye. “Ahh, you are cousin in the picture on Jason’s nightstand. It is nice to finally meet you. I am Koriand'r.”

A small smile pulled at her lips. It was not fond. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

But the peacefulness couldn’t last long because the Blue Idiot was back, and he brought a friend. The girl glared at her suspiciously and Jamila stared back blankly. “You’re hiding something,” she accused.

“I am hiding a lot of things,” Jamila stated. “‘Tis not a crime. And it is none of your business.”

“Its my business if it leads to any of them getting hurt,” she shot back, and Jamila smiled sharply. The Blue Idiot narrowed his eyes at her before moving to once again complain to Jason.  Idiot. “And as I have just stated, it isn’t any of your business.”

“I don’t trust you,” she sneered. And Jamila laughed again, “The feeling is quite mutual.”

The girl searched her features before sighing, “Look- “

“No, you look… I care for none of you. I do not like any of you and if you died, I would not shed a tear. The only people on this property that are worth my attention are Jason, Damian, and my aunt. I am only here out of loyalty to them. You all want to rescue Connor and I do not blame you for that but getting my aunt back to her rightful age is the only way. And I care not for your opinion. It hasn’t been worth anything ever since the words ‘You’ll never be Dick Grayson’ tumbled out your mouth. Do not think that I do not know who you are Barbara Gordon. Because I do and I do not care.”

“Why is getting Talia back so important to you,” the blonde asked as she walked over. If she had been trying to be intimidating, then she needed work.

“She is my aunt.”

The blonde (Stephanie, her mind supplied) looked at her in frustration, “Well yeah, I get that. But why is it more important than saving Connor? I mean she’ll still be here if we go after him first.”

Jamila rolled her eyes at the ignorance being presented in front of her. She cast a glance around the room and notice how they seemed to have garnered everyone’s attention, “Look you guys don’t trust me. I get that. Jaycee’s word isn’t enough. But Talia is my aunt and the only person standing in this room besides me and Jason that she cares for is Damian. You don’t want to help her? That’s cool. That’s fine. But if you so much as think you’re going to stop me… ME… from helping her? I will kill all you right now and fix her myself.”

She laughed at the way they all tensed defensively. She rose a brow watching how the archers’ fingers flexed as they controlled themselves. Batman attempted to stare her down, “We don’t have the time to spare- “

“Make it,” she cut him off. “The Mistress is way more important than my brother right now.”

“Brother,” the Green Arrow choked. She sneered, “You are so not my father.”

She turned back towards the back, “Mother will do nothing to Connor now that she has him, but she does want Talia. She will stop at nothing to get her. Right now, she’s protected. None of Nyssa’s operatives can enter Gotham without facing death.”

“We’re not- “

“Tawaquf,” she stated and watched as all the Bats and Jason freeze up. Weapons were pointed at her and she flipped out of the way as the alien princess and amazon headed for her. “I apologize for the distress Jason, but I do not have the patience to play these games with them.”

“Undo whatever it that you have done, and I will not kill you quickly,” the Amazon snarled. Jamila smiled in challenge. Now that would be a good fight. She turned her head in interest ready to apply pressure. She could feel something awakening in her as its power seeped through her pores. It coated the room before wrapping around her in a cocoon.

“I will like to see you try,” she teased. She could see the way Shiva’s daughter attempted flinched away. She could see how Jason and Damian both wanted to move forward and embrace her.

“The Lazarus Demon,” she heard. Her gaze flittered over towards the Green Arrow and Black Canary. She saw the way the Amazon flinched away. “You recognize my friend? How?”

Then she shook her head, “Never mind. That is irrelevant. The code word I used was a trigger into an automated system that my grandfather had injected into the blood of all operatives of the Bat including you, cousin mine. You might not remember but the Mistress has used it on you plenty because of your past with the pits.”

Jamila moved towards the Bat computer and began to search. Jason had told her that the Bat had most of the things needed for the scientific part of the cure. It was the magical part that will be a problem. But like her cousin, she’s had some fun traveling through the multiverse and she met people.

She turned towards the others in the room. The Outlaws and the Arrows. “I will help you that I promise, but Mother will be prepared for retaliation. By kidnapping Connor, she knows that you all will follow. This can either go two ways. She will believe that Jason will follow you out of loyalty and thus leave Mistress Talia vulnerable. She may cannot get any of her operatives in here but that doesn’t mean she cannot pay someone else to.”

“Pay,” Roy cut in. His eyes widened, “Deathstroke?”

“Yes, the League has been a longtime customer to Mr. Wilson. Stealing the daughter of the demon will be child’s play to him. While she might expect you all, she might not expect Batman and his brood. She will think that Jason somehow managed to convince you all to stay back and guard the Mistress. The other part is that she does expect Batman. The compound has undergone construction made to slow you all down. She will employ these added additions.”

The Black Canary nodded her head as she cautiously moved closer. Jamila’s gaze turned to her and she could Lazarus turn its attention on her. “It makes sense. We all have a connection to Connor and using him can be a distraction for her to get Talia and for her to do whatever it is that she wants to Connor simultaneously.”

Jamila nodded, “You will need someone who knows the compound as it is now, and I only know half of it. I do not know all of it and I rather not run in blind. And these new additions are meant to stall. Any second waiting is a second we cannot afford.”

“Call up your magical contacts. I need someone to bless this bottle and bridge a contact with—” Jamila inwardly winced and her hand automatically raised to cover her now bleeding nose.  She ground her teeth together, “Bridge contact with the ancient goddess Manat.” Another hand rose to her ear and she inwardly growled at Lazarus. She didn’t even worship Manat.

“Are you okay,” the Green Arrow questioned with concern on his face. Fatherly concern at that. Jamila never had a father and the only mother figure she had was her aunt.

“Just peachy,” she growled. She could feel a heavy stare on the side of her head, and she turned to see her cousins looking at her. “Harar,” and then regained control of their bodies again. A pity that she will not be able to use it again and a blessing that Mother would not be able to use it at all. “Let’s just get this over with.”

[joannalannister]

Petyr Baelish once spoke to Sansa about "the players, and the pieces," He thinks of Cersei as one of the latter, and himself, of course, as one of the former. Who else do you believe he thinks of as a player? Vars, I'm sure. But Tywin? Stannis? Robb Stark?

I don’t think Petyr considers anyone else to be a player tho? 

He calls Ned a player (albeit a “hopeless” one) but Ned certainly wasn’t a player to Petyr. Recall the context in which Petyr is speaking; he’s talking to Sansa. And not just talking, but commiserating with her. "You must miss your father terribly, I know. Lord Eddard was a brave man, honest and loyal . . . but quite a hopeless player." He’s trying to get Sansa to trust him, get her to come over to his side. Sansa doesn’t know Petyr’s role in her father’s death. 

Trust nothing Petyr says.

For Petyr to assign someone the distinction of “player” would be to put them on the same level as himself, and imo Petyr doesn’t think anyone is on his level. Petyr is The Player. He’s the conductor of a great Westerosi symphony in his own mind. A puppeteer, if you will, with all of Westeros as his puppets. 

Fandom calls Petyr a chessmaster, using the term as shorthand for his political acumen and his patience and his cunning and his intelligence and everything else, but I’m not sure "chessmaster” is the most apt image to conjure up for Petyr, an image of Petyr sitting across the board from a living, breathing opponent over a game of chess. Chess is a game of elegance, of nobility. (Maybe you’re thinking about ”nobility” as in “lords and ladies” but if you’re thinking about “nobility” as in “integrity” that suits my purposes just as well.) Not the right image to conjure for Petyr Baelish, imo. Not right at all.

Picture, instead, an Atlantic boardwalk in 1980, in a city that saw its heyday forty years before. The paint is chipped and fading, the happy families fled long ago, and the neon lights flicker on the marquees where they haven’t gone out entirely. On that boardwalk you’ll find an arcade. The gaudy, overbright exterior is a sharp contrast to the darkness within. The poor lighting hides the junkies shooting up and the filth on the floor. Don’t ask what happens in the back room, because it is unspeakable. Petyr knows; he has even profited from it. 

In that arcade, there is a game. It is a for people who are hungry. Petyr is insatiable; he plays it every day. It is a game of labyrinths and enemies around every other corner, but mostly it is a game of leveling up. 

An “Out of Order” sign must be taped to the blackened, cracked screen for weeks if he loses. But he rarely loses. When he wins, his score is displayed in brightly flashing lights for all to see, even after he takes his leave. 

No. Not chess at all for Petyr Baelish. I mostly see Petyr playing against a computer, if we’re making game metaphors. 

Think about what Petyr is saying: “The players and the pieces.” What is a piece? It’s an object. It’s a thing. If I may borrow from Terry Pratchett for a moment, “Evil begins when you treat people as things.”

“And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. [...] That's what sin is.""It's a lot more complicated than that--""No. It ain't. [...] People as things, that's where it starts.""Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--""But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

Petyr dehumanizes everyone around him. He treats them all as things, to be moved and eventually discarded. They’re like the little dots in Pac-Man, only there to be devoured so that Petyr can move up to a new level in the Game.

Like, lemme talk about ASOIAF villains and villainy for a sec...

A major theme in ASOIAF is humanization / dehumanization. I think what you have to pay attention to if you’re trying to identify the heroes and the villains in ASOIAF is who is working to humanize people and who is working to dehumanize people. 

(This is GRRM, so these aren’t always neatly ordered, distinct categories (there will always be some who are “a bit of both” like Tyrion), but I think, generally. this is the classification to go by. However, please keep in mind, even someone like Jon does things like steal a woman’s baby and use the baby in his own plans ... so ... not neat categories.)

So. Humanization / dehumanization. 

For example, Tywin refuses to recognize the humanity of pretty much everyone not named Lannister (and once upon a time, Targaryen, probably). 

Randyll Tarly dehumanizes everyone he perceives to be weaker than himself. (That’s why Tywin is morbidly fascinating to me and Randyll is just plain disgusting to me.) 

The Others want to dehumanize everybody, no exceptions. 

And Petyr, imo, dehumanizes everyone except himself. 

Like, if I was making a pyramid diagram of ASOIAF characters, I would put the Others at the top of my pyramid, for wanting to enslave everybody. (Meaning they would want to save ZERO people, putting them at the pinnacle of my pyramid for Number of People Saved/Humanized.) 

Petyr Baelish would be just one tiny step down from the Others, because he would save himself, so that’s like, dehumanizing everybody minus ONE. 

Then I would put Tywin as the next step down on my pyramid, because he wants to protect Lannisters so that’s, like, idk, ~200 people out of the entire population of Terros. 

Then I would put Randyll below Tywin, because he would be fine with, like, all of the hyper-masculine males of Westeros surviving the apocalypse, but all the “weak” people ~~~deserve~~~ what happens to them in the Others’ invasion.

And so on.

So anyways... Petyr ... I think he’s one of the major antagonists of the series because I don’t think he considers anyone else to be, well, human. And if they’re not, well, human, I don’t think they can be a player in the game he’s playing. I think literally everyone else is a piece to him. Everyone else is just another part of the game he’s playing. 

"In King's Landing, there are two sorts of people. The players and the pieces." 

Petyr is telling Sansa a truth, but it’s not a truth she recognizes. There are two sorts of people in King’s Landing, in Petyr’s mind: there is Petyr Baelish, and then there is everyone else. 

Some people, like Varys, are complex yet powerful “pieces” he simply hasn’t “unlocked” yet. Petyr just hasn’t gotten to that level of the Game yet. 

(I strongly believe that Varys will die before Petyr. You don’t kill off your “one step down from the Others” villain until near the end.) 

And the narratively interesting thing, imo, is that Petyr thinks of Sansa as a valuable “piece,” just a pawn that will help him rise drastically, when I think Sansa is going to be instrumental in Petyr’s downfall in ADOS. 

It’s the way GRRM’s villains dehumanize people which is their downfall. 

For example, Tywin repeatedly refused to recognize Tyrion’s humanity. In the end of ASOS, Tywin thought of Tyrion as half a man (half a Lannister? the last and least of the Lannisters), a little child, and as a result, he thought Tyrion would put the crossbow down and do as he bid, and look what happened. 

Petyr thinks everyone is a piece in his game and ... well, future books will tell how that plays out.

Sidenote #1 - I think the chessmaster title is quite good for Varys. I think Varys is actually (usually) (mostly) (sort of) (it’s ASOIAF, everyone is grey) good-intentioned. There is at least some nobility (integrity) in Varys. 

Sidenote #2 - this is just a note for myself, but at a later date I would really like to write down and organize my thoughts on Tywin’s dehumanization of Tyrion and how that makes Tyrion something like ~~half a Lannister~~ in his eyes, and how this connects to Tyrion’s heterochromia/dualism, and connections to A+J=/=T and the “I cannot prove you are not mine.” Not right now tho. Right now is for sleeping. 

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Houses of the Holy- Part 2

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 2,283

Warnings: Typical Supernatural violence, angst, language, minor character death, blood, you know the usual

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. If you’re a junkie for this sort of thing, then a tag list is the right thing for you! If you want to be a Queen, I’ll add you to that list too! Any and all comments on these are appreciated.

Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.

Tags at the bottom

Read 'The Time an Angel Visited You’ from my background stories to understand this episode better!

Just like yesterday, Sam had left you and Dean in the room with nothing to do. You knew Sam would be back any minute from doing whatever it is that he was doing since he wouldn’t tell you too much but you couldn’t have sex with Dean.

You couldn’t even go out for something in the vending machine and you were starving. Dean went to go get you something from it but you were sick and tired of being in this hell hole. You’d rather be in actual Hell than sit in this God damn room for one more second.

Dean, seemed to be busy, holding onto a police radio, listing to whatever was going on. You didn’t know where he got that or how he did but you just sat at the table, your legs resting on the table, listening to it.

You’ve listened to woman cop for the past hour, talking about how some guy named Zach stabbed this other guy but you’ve been in and out of paying attention to it.

“We've got a minor TA, involving a motorcycle and a, uh van, this is at the corner of 28th and Pine, 28th and Pine.” The woman on the radio said. Just then, the door opened and Sam walked in with a bag of food that he promised to give you. You grinned and took the bag, the food being more important right now.

“Hey, did you bring more quarters?” Dean asked, his eyes lighting up at the thought of being on a vibrating bed.

“Dude, no, I am not investing in your sick habit.” Sam said, sitting at the table while you happily ate your food. Sam tossed a sandwich at Dean after sitting. “You're like one of those lab rats that pushes the pleasure button instead of the food button until it dies.”

“What are you talking about? I eat and I got news.” Dean said, talking about the police scanner.

“So do I.”

“Alright, you go first.” Dean said, eating his sandwich.

“Three students have disappeared off the college campus in the last year. All of them were last seen at the library where Carl worked.” Sam started.

“Sick bastard.” You said with your mouth full. Sam looked at you and grimaced but turned back to Dean.

“So, Gloria’s Angel…”

“Angel?” Dean interrupted Sam.

“Okay, whatever this thing is…”

“It struck again.” Dean interrupted Sam again.

“What?” He asked, looking you who nodded.

“I was listening to the police radio before you got here. There was this guy, uh, Zach Smith, some local drunk; he went up to a stranger's front door last night and stabbed him in the heart.”

“Then I'm guessing he went to the police and confessed?”

“Yep. Roma Downey made him do it. I got the victim’s address.” Dean said, getting up from the bed and taking a sticky note off the mirror and handing it to Sam.

“Great, let’s go,” You said after you finished and smiled, wiping your mouth with a napkin. Sam and Dean opened their mouths to speak but you didn’t want to hear it. “Impala and hair. That's all I gotta say.”

Dean and Sam didn’t say a word as they followed you to the car and Dean took off, wasting no time. He was just as happy to get out of the motel room, even if this was a dead end. But you had a feeling it wouldn’t be.

You got to the house and followed Sam over the fence, into the yard and through the window. It was very easy and probably much easier to go through the front door but you were a wanted woman and you needed to be careful.

The room you landed into, must have been his office because there were books everywhere and a computer and a desk. Sam sat down in front of the computer, ready to get into it while you and Dean searched the room.

“I found nothing in here. We should let Sam work and go check the rest of the house out.” You suggested. Upon exiting the room, you found nothing and sighed when you walked back into the study.

“Did you find anything?” You asked Sam.

“Not much here except he's got this one locked file on his computer. I can’t seem to get into it. Wait, I just did.” Sam said, ending with a grin on his face.

“Yes, you should be very proud of your hacking skill.” You teased.

“It comes in handy,” Sam said, going through the file. “Oh my God.”

“What is it?’ You and Dean walked around and looked at the screen.

“Well, he's got all these emails. Dozens, to this lady named Jennifer. A girl named Jennifer who is thirteen years old.”

“Oh my God! This pervert!” You exclaimed.

“Yeah, I don’t want to hear this.” Dean said, disgusted.

“Looks like they met in a chat room. These emails are pretty personal, guys. Look at that, they were setting up a time and place to meet.”

“That's just great.” Dean said, rolling his eyes.

“They were supposed to meet today.”

“Huh. Well, I guess if you're gonna stab someone, it’s good timing. I don't know, man, this is weird, you know? I mean, sure, some spirits are out for vengeance, but this one's almost like a do-gooder, you know?” Dean said, sighing.

“Like an avenging Angel?” Sam said, looking at you and Dean. The more you are on this case, the more you were believing in Angels. Dean scoffed and turned away, not wanting to hear about the Angels.

“How else do you explain it, Dean? We have three guys who are not at all connected to one another who are all stabbed in the heart? Look, I’m not saying you have to be a believer, but at least open your mind up to the possibility that Angels are real and this may be your first case about one. I remember when we hunted our first vampires. You didn’t think they were real but they are.” You said, looking at Dean. You were siding more with Sam on this than Dean.

“Hey, look at this.” Dean said, picking something up, ignoring what you just said. If he wasn’t ignoring it, he was denying it. It was something Dean Winchester did best.

“What is it?” Sam asked. You sighed and shook your head, wondering how you were going to get this through his thick head.

“You said Carl Gully was a churchgoer, right?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“What was the name of the church?”

“Our Lady of the Angels.” You said for Sam, remembering you read that while you were confined.

“Of course, that would be the name,” Dean muttered. Dean held up the folder he held for you and Sam. “Looks like Frank went to the same church.”

“Then maybe the church is what’s connecting all these people together. You know, this Angel thing isn’t sounding too bad anymore.” You said, looking at Dean.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s just go to the church in the morning.” Dean said, setting the folder down.

Finding the church was easy and talking with the priest was even easier. If you shed a few tears about finding God and joining the church, then the priest would be all over you. That is why you, Sam and Dean were walking with the priest through the sanctuary of the church.

“So you're interested in joining the parish?” Father Reynolds said.

“Yeah, well, you know, we just don't feel right unless we hit church every Sunday.” Dean lied. You hated lying when it came to religious stuff because you could seriously be messing with some stuff that you didn’t know about but this had to be done in order for you to finish the case.

“Where'd you say you lived before?” Father Reynolds asked.

“Fremont, Texas.” Dean said when both you and Sam looked like deer in headlights.

“Really? That's a nice town and St. Teresa's parish is there. You must know the priest there.”

“Sure, yeah, no it's uh, Father O'Malley.” Dean said, thinking on the dot.

“Hmm, I know a Father Shaughnessy.” Fr. Reynolds said with a frown.

“Shaughnessy, exactly. What'd I say?” Dean said, trying to confuse the man.

“You know, we're just happy to be here now, Father.” Sam said, cutting in.

“We're happy to have you. We could use some young blood around here.”

“Hey, I don’t mean to offend you but I heard things about the neighborhood.” Dean said, looking at the priest to see what he would say.

“Well, it's gone to seed a little, there's no denying that, but that's why what the church does here, is so important. Like I always say, you can expect a miracle, but in the meantime you work your butt off.” He said with a smile.

“Huh. Yeah, we heard about the murders.” Dean said, getting right to the point.

“Yes. The victims were parishioners of mine, I'd known them for years.”

“The killers said that an angel made them do that?” You asked, looking at the Father.

“Yes. Misguided souls, to think that God's messenger would appear and incite people to murder. It's tragic.” He said with a sigh.

“So, you don't believe in those angel yarns, huh?” Dean said, glad to know someone is siding with him.

“No, I do believe with all my heart. I kind of goes with the job description.” Father Reynolds said, pointing to his priest outfit. You looked around the sanctuary, looking at all the stained glass art that were in place for the windows, high above.

“Father, that's Michael, right?” You said, pointing to one of the art pieces.

“That's right. The archangel Michael with the flaming sword; the fighter of demons and holy force against evil.” Fr. Reynolds said, looking at the art.

“So, they're not really the Hallmark card version that everybody thinks? They're fierce, right? Vigilant?” Sam asked.

“Well, I like to think of them as more loving than wrathful. But, uh, yes, a lot of Scripture paints angels as God's warriors. ‘An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone down upon them, and they were terrified’.” You and the Winchesters looked at the man, not knowing what he was quoting. Probably something from the bible. “Luke, two nine.”

“Father, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us but I think we should be going. You are a very nice man.” You said, shaking his hand.

“Oh, it’s my pleasure. Let me walk you three out.” He said with a smile and walked out of the church with you.

“Hey, Father, what's all that for?” Dean asked, seeing a lot of tribute items at the bottom of the steps where people can leave things.

“Oh, that's for Father Gregory. He was a priest here.”

“Was?” Dean asked, looking at Sam with his eyebrows raised.

“He passed away right on these steps. He's interred in the church crypt.”

“When did this happen?” You asked.

“Two months ago. He was shot for his car keys.” The priest sighed deeply.

“I’m sorry.” You said with a sigh.

“Yeah, me too. He was a good friend. I didn't even have time to administer his last rites. But like I said, it's a tough neighborhood. Ever since he died I've been praying my heart out.”

“For what?”

“For deliverance from the violence and the bloodshed around here. We could use a little divine intervention, I suppose.”

“Well, thank you again for taking the time to see us. It’s been a pleasure.” You said, walking away from the priest. He walked back into the church and Dean stopped you and Sam.

“You still think it’s an Angel?” Dean took you to the shrine to investigate.

“What? You seriously think Fr. Gregory is doing all of this?” You said, looking at Sam who shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, he knew all the other stiffs, because they went to church here, in fact I'm willing to bet that because he was their priest. He knew things about them that nobody else knew.” Dean said, standing back up.

“Then again, Father Reynolds started praying for God's help about two months ago, right? Right about the time all this started happening?” Sam observed.

“Aw, come on, man, what's your deal?” Dean said with a sigh and an eye roll.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, offended a bit.

“Look, I'll admit I'm a bit of a skeptic, but since when are you all Mr. 700 Club? Seriously, from the git-go you've been willing to buy this angel crap, man. I mean, what's next, are you going to start praying every day?” Dean said, looking at his brother.

“I do.” Sam simply stated.

“What?”

“I do pray every day. I have for a long time.” Sam admitted.

“You know what,” You said, stepping between the brothers. “I think that’s awesome, Sam. You know, whatever makes this life easier.”

“Yeah, I guess. Whatever, let’s check out Father Gregory’s grave.” Dean said, walking away. You stopped Sam before he could leave.

“I’m serious, Sam, I think it’s awesome. I mean, I don’t pray at all but if you seem to find some peace through it, then more power to you.” You said, linking your arm with his.

“Thanks, Y/N.” Sam said with a smile, starting to follow Dean.

“Yeah, plus, those people aren’t the only ones who’ve seen an Angel.” You said, admitting what you were so afraid to admit before.

“Wait, what?” Sam said, stopping you from walking.

“I’ll explain later. Right now, we have a case to do.” You said, continued on walking with Sam.

The Queens:

@maddieburcham1 @ginamsmith  @mogaruke @whit85-blog @inlovewithbja @spn67-sister @kdfrqqg @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @roxyspearing @supercalifragilistic26 @mishamigose @cobrakai1967 @essie1876 @wishedworld @crispychrissy @laqueus-ludovicus @nostalgic-uncertainty @jerk-bitch-and-an-angel @potterhead1265 @starswirlblitz @untitled39887 @ta-n-ja @deans-fallen-angel-boy @scarletluvscas @notnaturalanahi @tahbehonest @stay-in--place @dreaminofdean @posiemax @donnaintx @mikey1822 @alexandriajanae4 @li-ssu @just-another-winchester @obsessivecompulsivespn @emoryhemsworth @newtospnfandom @mizzezm @goldenolaf25

The Dean Beans:

@akshi8278 @mega-mrs-dean-winchester @winchesterandpie @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @carribear31 @tacklesackles @oreosatmidnight @not-naturalfangirl @missselinakitty @iam-a-cutiepie  @kristendansmith  @milo-winchester-4ever @jensenackesl @codyshany316 @pheonyxstorm @helllonearth @juniorhuntersam @pouterpufftrain @ruprecht0420 @shut-ur-face-and-get-in-the-car @carriemichelle2012 @aubreystilinski

Series Rewrite Junkies:

@helllonearth @amyisabellal @deanwnchstr @caseykitten6 @roxalya19 @quixoticcat @supernaturalblogging @notmoose45 @crowleysminion @mina22 @tahbehonest @hadleymcallister2177 @destielsangels @spnhybrid @oreosatmidnight @valerieshubin @seninjakitey @flyonlittlewinchester  @aubreystilinski

[tyrantisterror]

Bonus: More Buffy Characters I’d Ruin

I had to cut myself off while writing my How I’d Ruin It: Buffy the Vampire Slayer article because it was almost 10pm and I still hadn’t finished, but goddam if there aren’t more Buffy characters I wanted to talk about, so here’s the “deleted scenes” for the article.

Anya: Introduced as a monster of the week (specifically a demon), Anya was demoted by her bosses to a mere mortal human after she was defeated, and went on to be a recurring cast member.  Anya had a delightfully warped outlook, since she really wasn’t accustomed to human society and as such didn’t understand many social taboos. While she could be blunt and callous, she meant well, and was a good ally.  Unfortunately, she was also written to be Xander’s love interest, and most of her plots were built around him.  Worse, the rest of the characters kind of treated her like shit, regarding her with annoyance at best and outright hostility at worst.

Since my reboot is a bit kinder to monsters in general, we’d go a different way here.  Instead of being annoyed by Anya, the group would all actively try to rehabilitate her – their end goal is coexistence with the supernatural, after all, and Anya could be instrumental in that.  Though it takes a while and is often frustrating, they make progress, and Anya eventually learns the value of humanity and in turn becomes an essential ally.  Especially once her powers start coming back…

Tara: Introduced as Willow’s first female love interest, Tara was a young witch whose family told her (and all her female family members) that women in her family would become demons on their twenty first birthday, and thus had to be hidden away to keep from incurring the wrath of the outside world.  This was resolved in one episode, and afterwards Tara had little to do except be Willow’s girlfriend.  The writers later killed her off for drama because they had nothing else for her to do.

But, I mean, c’mon!  A young woman raised by an abusive and misogynistic family goes to college, discovers witchcraft AND her own homosexuality, and then rebels against her family despite being told that doing so will reveal her true inhuman nature?  Surely that has potential for more than just one episode of focus!   Let Willow and Tara have solo adventures!  Get her involved in helping the rest of the cast!  Shit, you know what, given our reboot’s stance on monsters, let’s make the family’s threat true – maybe she IS part demon.  Demons rebel against authority, and some authority needs to be rebelled against.  Tara has the potential for interesting and awesome plots – plots about how being different from what is normal doesn’t have to be a cause of shame, but can instead be literally empowering.  Let’s make it happen.

Jenny Calendar: Jenny Calendar was introduced as the high school computer teacher, and also a “technopagan,” i.e. a witch who incorporates modern technology into magic, rather than remaining in the past.  That is such a badass concept that it’s a damn shame they never did anything with it.  Instead, Jenny became Giles’ love interest, and then was revealed to be part of the Roma family that cursed Angel to have a soul, which is treated as a betrayal for some reason.  Then Angelus kills her so Giles can feel sad.

Again, there’s so much lost potential here!  Given that this reboot is playing up both the magic AND technology expertise with Willow, Jenny could easily find stuff to do as Willow’s mentor, and making a mix of magic and technology more of a thing could also allow for a lot of weird and fun monster plotlines that they would be key in solving.  Having a strong, adult female role model would also be good for, like, all of the main characters – Buffy’s mom can’t fill the role entirely since she needs to be out of the loop for plot reasons.

Kendra: The first time Buffy died and came back to life resulted in another Slayer getting called into being, violating the “there can only be one Slayer” rule after a grand total of one season.  Kendra is one of the few black characters in Buffy who gets more than one line, AND she’s a Slayer, AND she’s from Africa!  There’s a lot of potential there!  Sadly, she was kind of, well, boring, and her case wasn’t helped by the fact that the writers clearly didn’t do a whole lot of research into any of the various countries and cultures in Africa, resulting in a character that’s pretty stereotypical.

But that potential though! Let’s have the reboot violate the “only one slayer exists at a time” rule right from the get go – instead, there are many slayers, albeit still very few (definitely under 100).  Each would be the hero of their own story, and there could be fun stories where we get glimpses of the different types of supernatural threats on other parts of the globe.  We could explore how different Watchers work with their respective Slayers, comparing Giles and Buffy to others while also examining the problems with the Watchers Council (and perhaps showing that more Slayers than just Buffy realize they’re getting a raw deal here).  The potential is so great!

Faith: As mentioned in the article proper, Faith is Buffy’s evil opposite, the rogue Slayer who became a villain.  Faith loves fuckin’ and killin’, and the show makes it very clear that both of those interests are the reason she’s evil – everyone seems to go out of their way to slut shame Faith, to the point where “evil” and “skanky” are both treated as her defining attributes, each equally vilified. While Buffy has a fairly normal middle class life (despite being in a single parent household and, y’know, a vampire slayer), Faith grew up poor in an abusive environment, and has overall had a hard life.  She is very clearly a troubled person before she turns full villain, and her character arc is primarily focused on her envy of Buffy’s life.  She rants repeatedly about how often she is unfavorably compared to Buffy, and one of her evil schemes involves swapping bodies with Buffy to escape punishment for her actions.

The fact that Faith is positioned as Buffy’s evil opposite because her life situation sucks is, well, problematic, and the slut shaming piled on top of that definitely doesn’t help. However, since we inverted Buffy for this reboot, why not invert Faith as well?

Reboot Faith comes from a ridiculously rich family, is valedictorian at her school, and treats vampire slaying as an unfortunate responsibility rather than an adventure. She’s a brutally efficient yet utterly merciless Slayer.  In her mind, she’s an exterminator, not a hero who saves civilians and certainly not someone who wants to find a peaceful solution to the humans vs. monsters conflict. As far as she’s concerned, supernatural creatures threaten humanity just by existing, and the conflict can only end with one side’s total destruction.  She is essentially every negative implication of a typical “Human slays monsters” story condensed into one character – a proper opposite for Reboot Buffy’s open minded rough housing party girl monster fighter.

Forrest Gates: “Who the fuck is Forrest?” you may be asking. Working for the same government monster task force as Riley Finn, Forrest was essentially Riley’s sidekick and foil.  He was both Riley’s second in command and best friend, and he stuck with the government when Riley rebelled to be with Buffy.  Being a foil, his personality deliberately contrasts with Riley’s: while Riley is straight laced, soft spoken, and “nice” in a bland “I’m not vocally racist but I still voted for Trump” sort of way, Forrest is hot blooded, individualistic, outspoken, sarcastic, and sometimes deeply cynical. If you were to guess which of the two would rebel when they learned their government employers were up to shady shit, you’d guess Forrest – which I suppose makes it an interesting twist that he stays while rule-abidin’ Riley goes rogue.

Forrest doesn’t develop more than that, and when I first saw the series I wrote him off as just what he was written to be: Riley’s foil.  Upon rewatching the series this year, though, I noticed something: Forrest is, well, interesting.  He’s far more analytical and aware than Riley.  He’s got better lines, he’s got a good sense of humor, and he brings a wild sort of energy to every scene he’s in.  He’s got more vocal interest in and chemistry with Buffy than Riley did before they hooked up (not a hard feat, to be fair – Riley has all the romantic energy of two week old mashed potatoes).  And, yeah, he seems much more believable as the army guy who would spot the flaws in his organization and go rogue.  Let’s make Forrest the Initiative Agent who switches sides and goes with our heroes.  It verges into crackfic territory, sure, but that’s what How I’d Ruin It is all about.

Harmony: Starting as “Cordellia except without the depth,” Harmony was just a Mean Girl stereotype until she became a vampire. Then she evolved into something slightly more complex: Harmony was a woefully ineffective villain, a ditz who was not cut out for causing evil that everyone, good and evil alike, made fun of. She also became an abuse victim, which might have been poignant if the show didn’t spend all the rest of her screen time making fun of her for being dumb, shallow, and promiscuous.

I have a noted soft spot for affable and ineffectual villain characters, and I think Harmony could play a valuable role in my heretical reboot’s approach to monsters.  Harmony would be the rare person who actually improved upon becoming a vampire, as her death and rebirth as a monster helps her realize how bullshit all her high school clique nonsense was.  At the same time, she’s grossed out by the whole “eating people” thing, and her general cluelessness actually gives her a unique perspective that other vampires and monsters lack – Harmony, in her own simple way, could note the pragmatism of not eating people, since no one’s gonna stake you for buying blood from a butcher.  When grander villains rope her into their schemes, they quickly find she’s more of a hindrance than a help.  She’d be the loveable rogue of the story – not quite a hero, but never a true villain either.

And maybe we could explore toxic relationships with someone who isn’t quite so cartoonish.

“Angel”: While the core of Angel’s character – being the only vampire with a soul and the guilt that comes with – doesn’t work in the reboot’s setting, that doesn’t mean we can’t have him altogether.  Reboot Angel would take a page from his spinoff and make him a vampire Private Detective, and one of the first vampires Buffy meets that is inarguable a decent person.  He helps the helpless, gets his blood from non-human animals in a human way, and is generally a good person despite being a vampire.  In this take, Angel wouldn’t be a love interest – ‘cause even when he’s not evil, there’s a creep factor to the whole “vampire with a body that’s in its mid 20’s dating a 16 year old” thing, and also because it would be kind of funny to me for a vampire to rebuke the interests of a young vulnerable woman, since, y’know, that’s the opposite of what vampires usually do. Buffy’s crush would, painfully for her, be unrequited.

“Angelus”: In the original show, Angel lost his soul and became the evil Angelus when he and Buffy bumped uglies in the figurative way instead of the literal way they usually do.  It’s one of the more clever results of the show’s “All monsters are metaphors” approach – a guy seems nice until he sleeps with you, then he turns evil. That’s a really good way to use a monster story as a metaphor for a real problem young women face.

But.

There is a crucial difference between the figurative meaning of this plot and the LITERAL events of it, and that difference rests in the guy’s autonomy.  Angel has NO CHOICE in the matter – he has no control of his actions, no agency in the horror that follows.  His soul is magically removed by the coitus, and the evil done by Angelus is the responsibility of the vampire spirit that now runs his body. The only one who has agency here is Buffy – the person who, in the real life problem this situation is an allegory for, should be the VICTIM of the resulting abuse.  Women get blamed for making men abusive a LOT – “she was asking for it” and all that bullshit.  And here we have a monster plot that literally makes the victimized woman the only person in the relationship who has agency in causing the abuse that follows – she literally removed his soul by sleeping with him.  It’s not an unintended thing, either – some of the characters call Buffy “rash” and “careless” for sleeping with Angel, and  taken within the show’s general opinion that girls who sleep with men before marriage are bad, it’s not something we can ignore.

Still, there’s a good idea beneath the awful execution.  We just need to tweak it.

So our “Angelus” would begin as a decent guy who dates one of our young female characters – maybe Buffy, maybe Willow, maybe Cordelia, we’ve got options here.  He seems nice at first – he’s got sort of a bad boy thing going on and he’s a bit older than is normal, but whatever doubts he inspires are quickly dissuaded by the help he offers the group and his general kindness. He might be broody and angsty from time to time, but any red flags he sends are easy to write off.  Until he sleeps with the girl in question.

Then, quite literally, he turns into a monster.  Up till this point the audience would be lead to believe he’s human, but no, he reveals his true colors as something inhuman and heartless – perhaps something much worse than a vampire.  The personality change is as drastic as the physical, and our heroes quickly learn that all his “kindness” before was a ruse.  He is nothing more than cruel and sadistic predator, and one that needs to be put down.

Vampires as a whole: Buffy’s take on vampires is one of my least favorite in fiction, since they’re basically just strong guys with sharp teeth, weird eyes, Klingon bumps, and often an inexplicable knowledge of martial arts.  Like most post-Anne Rice vampires, they’re very simple so as to avoid being “goofy” – no transformation, hypnosis, etc.  My preference is for the “goofy” stuff though – turning into mist, or a giant bat, traveling on moonlight, commanding legions of rats, all that good Bram Stoker shit.  I also love some of the weird folkloric takes on vampires, like the ones with multiple hearts and other weird shit.

Borrowing a page from my own fictional universe, the vampires in my Buffy reboot would be weird and varied.  There would be multiple breeds, and even within those there’s a lot of individual variation.  While some vampires are stronger than others, ALL would be significant threats.  We’d be going for quality over quantity – while Buffy has less vampires to fight in this reboot, the ones she does slay take a lot of work to kill.  So, in short – vampires by way of Stoker rather than Rice.

[joshtheoverlander]

Power Rangers RPM Review

Okay, so this is one in a line of Power Rangers reviews I plan on doing. It won't be in any particular order. I watch whichever season I want. A big round of thanks goes to Netflix for having literally every series so far, excluding Ninja Steel, but I think that one's still airing. I know Linkara did his History of Power Rangers series and if you want, you can go ahead and watch that. It's really good, trust me. I just thought I'd give my own two-cents on things. It won't be quite as detailed as Linkara's thing, but it'll be my review, so whatever. It's always worth noting that I might get awkward in places, as I'm no professional. Anyways, we're starting off with my favorite Power Rangers season so far: RPM. Made to be the final Power Rangers series, the show takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of a world. The planet has been ravaged by an evil computer virus known as Venjix, attacking the humans and animals with an army of killer robots. So basically PG Skynet and Terminators. I kid, the show is actually the darkest in the franchise so far, depicting instances of mafia connections, human enslavement, deprivation of one's humanity, and death. After all, this is the apocalypse. Every single place on Earth has been turned into a lifeless shell aside from one city. There would be now way around genociding 95% of all life on Earth with that kind of premise without making yourself like one of those idiot parents who just wants to protect their precious little snowflakes, so I'm already happy. Said city is Corinth, a place protected from Venjix by a domed barrier that keeps him and his attack bots out...for the most part. His special bots are capable of slipping in, but that's where the Power Rangers come in. As with every season of Power Rangers, they fight off his creations to protect the people. The Rangers this time around are some of my favorites, mostly Dilan and Ziggy, the Black and Green Rangers respectively. Especially together. The two have a friendship that you just can't help but love, especially when Ziggy points things out and Dilan more often than not has his back even when the other Rangers think he's an idiot or just writes him off. Not to mention Ziggy is the best thing in this show. He's easily most likely to be fan favorite as he's a wellspring of comedy and light-heartedness in this world of death, pointing out things that just aren't right or things that seem ridiculous, which gets us onto the topic of the humor of this season. Some of the humor is your typical Power Rangers humor, but as this was originally intended to be the final season of the Power Rangers, they threw in a bunch of self-referential humor, poking fun at the tropes present in every season such as the zords and the vocal call-out when they morph. In one episode, when the rangers are saved by these mysterious figures, the idea that they could be ghosts pops up, of which the Yellow Ranger writes off for being ridiculous of which Ziggy replies with, "You drive a giant yellow teddy bear! I drive a giant green fish!" The other Rangers aren't quite my cup of tea like Dilan and Ziggy are, since those two are just the greatest of bros. First, the "original" three. The Red Ranger, Scott, is the son of General Truman, the man in charge of keeping Corinth safe, however the two aren't quite on the best of terms. Their relationship for most of the show seems to be business only, which is explained in Scott's backstory episode, Ranger Red, where it's explained that Scott's older brother, a fighter pilot, died trying to fight off Venjix's forces so that the last remaining living humans can make it inside Corinth. Since then, their relationship has been strained to one of absolute formality between a soldier and his senior officer, causing Scott to want to try and prove himself to his father. He's a bit temperamental and brash, but he overall proves himself a capable ranger. Next is the Blue Ranger, Flynn. The son of an engineer who grew up trying to be a hero to others in need. This led to a lot of misfortune as he grew into an adult, including a number of lost jobs, one of which he lost from ripping off the movie Braveheart. Did I mention he's Scottish? When Venjix attacked, he found his calling when he saved a bunch of people by hijacking a bus and going into the fray to pick up several civilians being attacked. His character isn't much, but I liked him. At least his character wasn't as minor as the next person on our list. The Yellow Ranger, Summer. Summer was the daughter of a wealthy family know as the Landsdowns. She was quite the stereotypical stuck-up bitch, even going so far as to use her butler as a footstool. However, when the apocalypse began and she was abandoned by everyone, including her so-called friends, her butler came and helped her, leading her to eventually ask him why he bothered with her when she's been nothing but horrible to him. He tells her that he knows that there was more to her than what she's demonstrated this far, and that he's waiting to meet the real Summer. One day, however, a bunch of Grinders, the foot soldiers of Venjix's army, attack, killing the butler and leaving Summer on her own. When she arrives at Corinth, she picks up on a distress call about a crashed fighter jets and takes a motorcycle to help the pilot, who happened to be Scott. Once again, after her backstory episode, there's not much else development. She's more or less the "nice Ranger" and Dilan's love interest. Now for the Rangers that we love, Black and Green. First the Black Ranger, Dilan. Dilan is the one the show focuses on, so it's safe to say he's got more development than others. He rode into Corinth when he likely had nowhere else to go, but was apprehended due to the fact that he was a Hybrid, basically cyborgs with Venjix technology in their bodies. He can't remember anything about his past aside from the fact that he had a sister. His only lifeline to his past is a pocket watch that, when wound up with a key, plays a song like a music box. He's a bad boy, more or less and is the least likely one to just go along with whatever the Rangers do without question. Ziggy, on the other hand, our wonderful Green Ranger, is a nervous, yet charismatic and optimistic person. At the start of the season when the Rangers are introduced, he claims to be a big fan of them, yet is usually the one to point out the oddities that comes with being one, like the way their Zords look. At first he was cowardly, ready to shrink down and avoid danger, but he's still a good person. In his backstory episode, Ranger Green, he was a member of the mafia, more or less, and after the apocalypse, he was given a job to do, which was to deliver medical supplies to the gang Meetup, but instead took them to an orphanage where a number of the children were suffering illness. The mafia boss Fresno Bob (Yes, I know) was, of course, mad, so a man in the mafia who was friends with Ziggy snuck him out of Corinth. However, as we saw in the first episode, Ziggy came back since there was nowhere in the world that he could go to and he had better chances being in Corinth than out in the wasteland. He does gain courage and even skill in being a Ranger in time, but he remains the loveable fan favorite all throughout. Now every series of Power Rangers has those new "special" Rangers, at least that's how I see them, and what we get in that regard are Gem and Gemma, the Gold and Silver Rangers, two twins that started out outside of Corinth and fighting Venjix's forces with all they've got. They're incredibly excitable and love explosions and they also often do a finish-each-others-sentences kind of thing. Fans aren't quite as fond of these two which is understandable, as they can get kind of annoying from time to time. However, they're personalities are, as explained by Linkara, due to the fact that they never mentally matured and so are basically man-children. I'll get into the cause with the next character, Doctor K. Doctor K is they're "mentor" for this show, but of course Ziggy has a thought about that, wondering how she could be their mentor when she's younger than them. Unlike Gem and Gemma, Doctor K is incredibly anti-social, an introvert to the extreme. At the start of the series, she never communicated with the Rangers face-to-face, resorting to pulling an L and only talking to them through monitors and with a voice filter disguising her voice. However once Dilan brings it up and takes a big issue with it as it displays and could cause a lack of trust, she finally shows herself to the Rangers. At first, she's incredibly harsh, especially to Ziggy, but as the series progresses we see her try to change and open up. Throughout the series up to around the halfway point, she refers to the Rangers as the Rangers and not by their names, but she tries to change that. There's even an awkward hug in her development. Eventually she manages to address the Rangers by their names...except Ziggy, to his dismay. This is due to an extension of her personal issues. When Doctor K was a child, she was taken away by a think tank known as Alphabet Soup because she was a natural genius and was convinced that the sun was harmful to her, thus keeping her from trying to leave. As the years roll by, she regresses into an introvert until one day, the program introduces her to Gem and Gemma, who developed into extremely extroverted people. The two makes friends with Doctor K instantly, but Doctor K doesn't quite make friends with them until much later. One day, when she sees a butterfly, she follows it to a window where light is pouring in and realizes she's been lied to and plans to escape. When Gem and Gemma come by, she tells them she plans to escape by using a virus program named Venjix that she created to sabotage Alphabet Soup, but on the day she starts it up, the men of the program come and attempt to take her away, prompting her to try and install a firewall to keep Venjix from getting into the world beyond Alphabet Soup and fails. When the place begins to go to hell, Gem and Gemma disappear to go grab the Gold and Silver Morphers and Doctor K soon assumes them dead. After that she stopped opening up to people for a long time, keeping herself distant from others to protect herself. However, as stated, she does manage to slowly open up to the others and even manages to call the Rangers by their names except Ziggy. At first you might assume it's because she hates him, but as things soon progress you realize that she distances herself for longer from him because he's a bit different from the others. Finally, let's discuss the villains! Venjix is an intimidating big bad. He's ruthless and cold and relentless, though it's kinda funny how striking his stationary form is to that of HAL 9000. He takes on the Rangers himself multiple times later on in the series, showing that if his generals and attack bots can't deal with the Rangers, then he might as well. Speaking of his Generals, they don't do much in all honesty. Other than Tenaya-7, a cyborg used to infiltrate the domed city of Corinth, the generals don't get much time to do anything. I can't remember any of their names, they're so scarce. The foot soldiers this time around are fairly nice, though they don't receive any upgrade aside from one specific episode and then they never do it again. It's a touch disappointing, but never quite as much as the generals. The story soon reaches a point where Dilan finds out that Tenaya is a Hybrid and his sister and attempts to contact her. Eventually she joins them and attempts to infiltrate Venjix's headquarters and succeeds, but are soon driven out. Tenaya is then soon taken back by Venjix and taken control of to ensure she doesn't betray him again. All the while there's a subplot about how the Venjix virus is inside Dilan and is spreading and that once it reaches a certain percentage, he'll be susceptible to mind control, which he soon is, but thankfully Doctor K, in that time, had begun developing a cure, which Dilan, in his last moments of free will, uses to expel the virus from him, and then uses on Tenaya too. The show all builds to a final confrontation with Venjix in his ultimate body, and ends when Gem and Gemma literally drop a building top of him. The threat of Venjix is finally gone and the world will finally be open to restoration, though it would take quite a while. The show ended on a cliffhanger that was created to ask Disney for a second season, but it never happened. Power Rangers RPM is my favorite series so far and I highly recommend it to any Power Rangers fan out there to go watch it if you haven't seen it yet. Trust me, it's great. I love the characters and the plot and premise, and I love the humor. It does suffer some flaws like the change in direction with the story after the original writer got canned, the incredibly near-pointless generals and a few character issues like Gem and Gemma's personalities and a distinct lack of character development for Flynn and Summer, but it's also one of, if not the most mature Power Rangers series so far. One thing that irks me, however is that they chose the wrong theme song to use for the show. It's this grungy theme song that's few in lyrics, but if you look up Power Rangers RPM alternate theme song, you'll understand just how big they fucked up in that regard. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this or at least found it tolerable. Next time I'll be discussing Power Rangers Dino Charge.

[allronix]

Salty asks: 1-27.

Assuming this is the fandom of your namesake. 

1. OTP that I just don’t get. Probably Sam/Tron. Not to say some folks can’t REALLY fucking rock it (see the “We Are Pilots” verse), but it takes a lot of work. Their only meeting in canon was in a duel to the death with the Program being brainwashed and crazy, and Sam has very little if any reason to even like the guy, even in a post-Legacy setup. 

2, Fandom OTP I only BroTP:  Probably Tron/Ram. Ram had too much chemistry with Flynn, and Tron was single-minded enough about Yori to put his deity on hold. While I can very easily see group marriage as a normal part of Program society, it’s not something I can see in canonical circumstances. 

3. Unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion? Nope. But if they trash my faves, I hope they can back up their dislike with a very good argument. 

4.  A NoTP for my fandom. Not touching Sam/Alan with a 10-meter Rod Primitive. The age gap for one, the paternal role Alan took for two, the fact Lora is not dead in this timeline third, the fourth is the possibility of OT3: Shall We Dance making this ship even more brain-breaking.

5. Has fandom ruined a pairing for me? Not in this fandom, but I’ve avoided the hell out of some shows because I saw the fandom for them was such a big ball of crazy that I wanted to avoid it like kryptonite. 

6. Has fandom made me enjoy a pairing I previously hated? I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, and I’m not sure I’d call it “enjoy,” but there are some Clu/”Rinzler” fics that almost make the whole thing come out as something marginally less squicky and more interesting than “sadist and his sex slave.” 

7. Anything I used to like but dislike now? Y’know, I kinda used to dig Flynn/Alan slash. But after I realized I could make a drinking game out of them (take a shot if they mention Lora, chug the whole thing if they mention Jordan - stay sober the whole night), they lost a lot of appeal. I’ll make an exception for “Shall We Dance” scenarios. Heck, I love Shall We Dance because it’s a very different matter if Lora’s aware and on board with the whole thing. Heck, if someone upgrades it to an Ot4 of “Shall We Dance With Jordan,” then I owe them a six-pack of top-quality beer or cane-sugar soda and my enthusiastic gratitude. 

8. Anon hate? Yes. Received it. But over politics, not fandom. It’s to be expected. The Galaxy Rangers list used to have “don’t talk to Allronix about politics” as one of the bylaws. 

9. Most hated character? Probably Pavel. He’s such a transparent slimeball with little in the way of interesting motivation. Tesler? While he’s a nasty piece of work, there’s wiggle room to argue that he’s doing what he’s doing for the good of the system and doesn’t like doing what he does. Sark? Incredible ham and definitely one note, but David Warner plays the best creeps ever.  (He out-creeped Malcolm McDowell, that’s near-impossible) 

10. Most disliked arc. Probably the Isos. I’m still not sure what they were, or why they were special or what was so great about them, or how they would change everything, aside from the implication they were partly biological. Which is great and all, but the way it was handled has an “organics rule, synthethics drool” vibe that is pretty insulting when everything else in the franchise shows that the Programs are just as capable of love, hate, morality, humor, and free will as the humans who built them. 

11. Unpopular character I like that the fandom doesn’t? I just had to have the bad luck…or the good luck…to latch on very hard to the Tron 2.0 characters. Good luck in that it’s unexplored territory. Bad luck in that I seem to be the only one who writes Mercury, or Crown, or I-No. 

12. Unpopular arc I like the fandom doesn’t? 2.0 again. What got me about it is that the 1982 and Legacy films dealt with malevolent AI who were cruel of other AI and wanted to extend the cruelty. 2.0 inverted it; the uncorrupted Programs were, with very few exceptions, wanting to protect themselves and their home. The corrupted Programs were driven insane by a User who embraced the worst parts of the role. And then you had F-Con who planned to crank that up even more so that they could rule both worlds from the shadows. It really needed to be explored more, as it was a great start. 

13. Unpopular opinion about a character: Sam Flynn kinda spooks me. He has no reason to be merciful or benevolent to Programs. As far as he saw, his dad believed in them, and they stabbed his dad in the back, kept his dad away from him, tried to kill him, tried to kill Quorra, killed all of Quorra’s people, and eventually killed his dad right in front of him. And he’s taking over command of a software company with barely any time to process that trauma.  It’s probably not going to end well for the Programs unless something intervenes.

14. Unpopular opinion about the fandom: They have very little interest in reclaiming the female characters from the margins, and that’s quite frustrating. Quorra and Paige get some fics here and there, but even those petered out. Yes, this fandom is VERY heavily skewed male, but you’ve got Quorra, Paige, Mara, Gorn, Lux, Yori, Lora, Gem, etc. in Legacy canon, and some great potential with Mercury, Ma3a, and Eva Popoff if you import from 2.0. I was hoping to see at least SOMEONE write up a fanfic about Jordan. What kind of woman could handle a brilliant, cheerful, crazy ball of energy like 80′s!Flynn?  

15. Unpopular opinion about the canon: Legacy is very difficult for me to watch. Even though it totally brought the whole thing back from the dead, it’s just frustrating to watch. Not to say everyone didn’t bring their A-game to it, but it took everything that made the first film so much fun and destroyed it, ending up as a depressing waste where everyone loses, and Dillinger Jr is just waiting in the wings to cause even more trouble. 

16. If I could change anything about the canon, what to change? Tron 2.0 totally happened. It would not be hard to come up with a workaround for Ma3a that keeps Lora alive. There’s probably about three or four ways I could come up with other than the made of crack one I’ve got going in my fics. 

17. Instead of X happening, I’d go with Y: If you want something other than “instead of 2.0 being thrown out the airlock, it’s part of canon,” I would have loved to see Sam get rescued by Bartik’s crew (Bonus points if Yori’s running the damn thing) and then meet up with his dad and Quorra. That way, there could have been a little more complexity to the Grid situation and a way to avoid the whole “Programs are evil!” thing Legacy ended up with.

18. Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased? Shipping, IMO is shorthand for schools of character interpretation. Someone who ships Quorra/Sam is going to have a different take than someone who ships Quorra/Zues, or Quorra/Paige. They’re all looking at the same data, but the interpretation of the data is going to vary.   

19. One thing I dislike most about my fandom: It’s a back alley of the 80′s that its own company barely wants to admit they did. This makes canon and newcomers a little hard to come by.

20. Purest ship in the fandom. Tron/Yori was my first OTP. They’re still my OTP, because 82!Tron was such a sweet, earnest dork and Yori was such an adorable, sneaky badass. Post-Legacy? It’s going to be one heck of a climb no matter which guess you take about Yori’s fate (And seriously? Morgan got gypped), but having those two limp off into whatever digital sunset there is would be the closest we get to a happy ending that’s canon-compatible.

21. Crack ships? A crack ship for the sake of a crack ship is a “no thanks!” But there are ships that look like someone did them on a three-drink dare that actually manage to work. I’m thinking to KOTOR fandom where someone made a REALLY awesome case for Canderous/Bastila that should not have worked and totally did. 

22. Popular character I dislike: It’s not so much “dislike” as “I’m not sure what to make of them.” Really wanted some development on Sam. Quorra got Evolution and a nice episode of Uprising, but Sam…he’s still a bit of a blank to me. 

23. Unpopular character I adore:  I especially latched on hard to Jet Bradley after reading the Ghost in the Machine comic because he had clearly done a lot of thinking about what being a User means in that setting, and was bringing up points no one else bothered with. As such, he makes an excellent foil and walking deconstruction fleet while still being, ostensibly, one of the good guys. 

24. Would I recommend Tron to a friend? Only with a ton of disclaimers. This was made in the EARLY 80′s, by people who apparently had no fucking idea what they were doing, and Disney probably signed off on it while under the influence of something. But the combination ends up as something inexplicably brilliant and probably launched thousands of computer animation careers and hundreds more IT careers. 

25.   How would I end it? I’ve got fics in mind for it. I kitbash 2.0 and Legacy shamelessly. The ending I have in mind? Well, Alan and Lora end up giving up their lives in analog to rebuild the Rome Flynn started. Jet ends up dedicating his life to serving the Programs and goes a bit native. Mercury and Tron act as the primary “knights” of Alan and Lora. Sam and Quorra handle much of the rest in the analog world, slowly trying to open up the world and make it ready for the revelation of the digital one. And Yori runs a reformation of the Program religion so that they are prepared to accept the Users as fallible beings who are still powerful, but less “worship as deity” and more “we depend on one another - don’t screw it up.” 

26. Most shippable character? Probably Flynn. I can see him as a fellow who would (prior to the coup) enjoy himself and his opportunities to the fullest, including trying anything twice sexually. 

27. Least shippable character: Probably Esomond Baza. He’s a coward with so little self-esteem, self-respect, or a moral compass that he needs a few months of therapy before even thinking of a date.