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whypolar · 1 year

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Gundam Unicorn OVA 4: At the Bottom of the Gravity Well

I thought the last one was the prettiest, and they might have one-upped themselves again. The shot composition alone...!

...This is a really weird one to talk about. Probably my most opinionated post so far, and even longer than the last one. This monster is over 15k words, I'm so sorry.

The sixth Unicorn novel is an extremely frustrating experience for me. It's my least favourite of the books by a wide margin, and it comes at you very suddenly after the first five, which I think are generally interesting and a lot of fun.

OVA 4 covers the plot of the sixth novel. It removed everything I disliked about the book, and replaced it all with something much better.

...And then it found entirely new ways to annoy me, by removing or otherwise fucking around with several novel scenes that were already good. Yes, it's Riddhe again.

I'm genuinely kind of baffled.

Still, overall it was a far more enjoyable experience than its novel equivalent. I'm going to talk about novel stuff right away this time, because it's kind of unavoidable. The OVA is very different, right from the first scene.

(Previous posts: Day of the Unicorn, The Second Coming of Char, The Ghost of Laplace)

FYI: I'm saving detailed discussion of any particularly disturbing or otherwise sensitive novel-only content for the end, in the last two sections. There will be content warnings listed under the headings for those sections.

Major structural changes: Dakar and Torrington

This is a huge change, right out of the gate. The attack on Dakar is where the main conflict of the novel takes place, but here it's already ending in the very first scene! For a while I wondered if they were going to return and attack it again, but it quickly became clear that wasn't the case.

Syam and Gael make an appearance. They don't tell us anything new, I don't think-- and we've seen that colony drop flashback before too, haven't we? I could be wrong. Regardless, I think they're mostly just making sure the audience doesn't forget Syam and Gael exist while everything else is going on. Probably a good idea.

We know a lot more about Syam's deal right from the get-go in the books, because it's literally prologue. I feel like significantly less has been explained here about his history and the history of the Vist Foundation-- but it's admittedly hard for me to keep straight what we've been told in previous OVAs vs. any gaps I may be filling in with prior knowledge.

I do wonder how they're going to handle him going forward. Are they going to infodump a bunch of relevant history and character motivation further on? Are they just going to refuse to elaborate on certain things?

Because they've been skipping over smaller character details about Syam that we learn through Cardeas, Martha, and Gael, he seems to be presented as a lot more... straightforwardly benevolent, at least on the surface. Almost ethereal, even. I think novel Syam has more of an edge, even if he's supposedly feeling repentant now that he's a sad old man.

Oh, and Gael. Gael was shot by Alberto on the Argama during the Palau battle, in the fifth novel. Maybe something equivalent to that is coming in the next OVA, on the Ra Cailum instead? They could also just skip it, since he survives and appears after that anyway.

This Zee Zulu was not present for the novel scene I'm about to discuss, but consider this: I like aquatic mobile suits.

The novel opens like this, with the Shamblo destroying a submarine. The context is different than the anime equivalent, since Dakar hasn't happened yet and there are no other mobile suits present. Nobody in the Federation is aware the Shamblo even exists yet.

The submarine in the novel was searching for the Garancieres, since it was believed based on the trajectory that it would have landed in the ocean (as opposed to the desert, where it actually ended up). One of the sonar operators picks up some strange noise, but it doesn't fit the profile of what they're looking for, so his superior tells him to ignore it. This was a mistake. The Shamblo-- also searching for the Garancieres-- tears their hull apart, killing everyone on board.

Instead of Dakar, the main conflict in OVA 4 takes place in and around Torrington Base-- a location from the seventh novel. They've essentially moved Loni's arc forward, and combined it with another battle.

I originally assumed this might have been a censorship concern, but a whole bunch of civilian casualties still happen, so... seems more about wanting to get to Torrington faster. I was very surprised when they didn't censor the woman with the baby on the fire escape. I remember reading the novel equivalent and thinking "oh, they're cutting that for sure". Shows what I know.

The novel version of Torrington doesn't have any civilian infrastructure around to damage. It's an extremely remote and backwater location.

Even with the addition of a nearby city, putting the coordinates in Torrington is significantly less callous on Cardeas' part than having them in Dakar. Programming the La+ program so they have to activate the NT-D in the middle of the Federation capital is stupid as shit, assuming your goal isn't to kill a bunch of random noncombatants. Novel Banagher's explanation for why he might have done it is so generous that it just kinda makes me sad.

I'm sorry Banagher, I know you're still traumatized because he exploded, but your dad doesn't give a shit about other people. He prioritizes poetic imagery in his treasure hunt over the lives of human beings. He zapped your brain as a child to check whether you could pilot the robot good. He sucks, Banagher.

The Parliament building as a location does give a much more direct clue to the nature of the Box-- the Federation charter is on the ground floor, and we're told through character dialogue that it's a replica of the original that was destroyed at Laplace.

This montage of all the scattered Zeon forces on Earth mobilizing might be my favourite sequence in the film. This is another situation where I wish I could include images for all of it. Don't even get me started on the music in this part. God, it's so sick. Cool fucking robot. (Image of a child holding a rifle flying over my head)

Yonem Kirks was originally a character from novel 7. He had nothing to do with Loni, as she was already dead when he was introduced. He was actually the leader of the group of Zeon remnants who picked up the transmission requesting assistance for the attack on Torrington. He would have been in the place of that nameless beardy guy up there, whose face we never fully get to see. He is eventually killed by Marida in the Banshee.

OVA 4 recasts Kirks as a surrogate father figure for Loni. In the novel, Loni's father is still alive, and he's also one of the main reasons that book six is my least favourite. You'll see.

Loni takes over her father’s original role as a character, but with everything I hated about him stripped out. I think that rules. I initially thought they were going to put Kirks in his role, but what they went with was definitely more interesting.

I'll talk more about Loni at the end of this post, since she's the core of the whole arc. She's a substantially different character in each version. I will also explain exactly what her dad's deal is in the book, and why I do not like it.

Let me get this out of my system first.

The Character Assassination of Riddhe Marcenas

Imagine: an interesting character is rewritten so that everything you liked is either downplayed or removed, and then your least favourite aspect of their personality or story is inflated to become their most important character trait. This is what experiencing anime Riddhe is like for me.

I feel like I'm being pranked. Literally, the degree to which they are systematically removing all his most interesting and sympathetic qualities is starting to feel like a running gag. It's not just things being cut for time, either; they've changed dialogue and body language in ways that can only be deliberate. Someone clearly decided that changing Riddhe's personality was necessary, and I can't figure out why.

I got mad enough about this to make a diagram. I didn't even realize just how much I apparently liked this guy until they took him away.

Riddhe becoming increasingly closed off, obsessive, and myopic is a significant degeneration, and it happens over a fairly long stretch of plot. It's interesting because we're given time to get used to this guy as a positive force before watching him spiral, and he's clearly still trying to be good even as he self-destructs. That's how it feels for the characters, and that's ideally how it should feel for the audience.

If he's just kind of a self-absorbed dickhead from the start, what's the point? Where's the juice? Where's the drama? Why should we care, on an emotional level, whether or not it's still possible to pull him back from the cliff?

Look, I admit that I was less cartoonishly mad about this on the second watch. I can imagine a more charitable reading of this character than my bitter little hater response. I'm sure the anime version works fine for people who haven't read the novels, or who have but don't care about the original character, or at least don't find the new version as deeply unlikable as I do. But it makes me so crazy.

I'm going to go through his scenes, so you can see exactly what I mean.

Riddhe & Ronan

Riddhe's first scene in the OVA is his conversation with Ronan. This is a scene from the fifth novel-- if you read my post on OVA 3, you may remember my surprise that there was so little of Riddhe and Mineva doing stuff on Earth. Clearly, some of it was pushed foward to be in this one instead. Sure. Fine.

In the novel version of this scene, Riddhe is waiting alone in his father's office. Two other people come by to speak to him before Ronan arrives. I'm fine with these conversations getting cut for time, but I do think they're interesting, so I'm going to go over them.

First is the Butler, Doillon-- the novel's fan translation spells it Dwiyon. Doillon is described as a father figure to Riddhe, and clearly one he feels more positively about than Ronan. Doillon tells Riddhe that he missed him, and asks him not to leave again. He says that he's old and will likely die soon, and he's worried about the family-- Ronan is also getting older, and his health is declining (heart issues).

We also meet Riddhe's older sister, Cynthia, who either doesn't exist in the OVA or is off doing vivacious socialite things elsewhere. She also tries to convince Riddhe to come home. She asks him about Audrey, tells him she's cute, and insists they both come to a party she's hosting later.

There's some discussion of Riddhe's mother, both in narration and dialogue. We're reminded that she's ill (unspecified) and living in a nursing home. It's implied that she might have had some kind of nervous breakdown because of "the political world," but it's unclear whether that means she was a politician herself, or if it was more about her involvement with Ronan.

At this point Ronan comes in, and everyone else gets shooed out.

OVA Riddhe's demeanour around Ronan is... curious? Maybe nervous, and a little dismissive, but trying to act respectful. He's very goofy, rubbernecking and trying eavesdrop on Ronan's phone call. It would be cute, if he didn't piss me off so badly within the next five minutes. Ronan, meanwhile, feels very distant, keeping his back turned away for much of the scene.

The novel relationship is extremely tense and hostile, and a lot of that energy comes from Riddhe. He has to deliberately restrain himself from being aggressive and getting angry during this scene, because he's aware he needs his father's authority if he's going to keep Mineva safe.

Riddhe hates being in his family's house. He does not like his father, and is constantly on edge when he's around. In many scenes, he deliberately avoids even looking at him. When we're told that Riddhe "ran away", the connotations of that are very different from in the OVA, where it sounds like he just left on a fanciful whim.

So the familial relationship is different. Fine. I think it's less interesting, but I can live with it.

Here's where I start getting mad:

Ronan accusing Riddhe of being in love with Mineva and suggesting that this is the reason he brought her to Earth is an anime-only addition.

Obviously, a character in a story believing something doesn't make it an objective fact. The framing, however, implies that Ronan is correct: Riddhe has a dramatic startle reaction, they've failed to establish any other strong motivation, and immediately after this scene he goes and proposes to her.

The scene where Riddhe talks to Mineva is a combination of two different scenes from the novel-- first the hug on the balcony, and later the proposal. The original two scenes have completely different (and incompatible) tones, and they're separated by a good amount of time, as well. There's also another scene between them, with Riddhe riding his horse, so I'll talk a little about that too.

The way these scenes have been combined not only fully re-centres Riddhe's character around being in love with Mineva, but it also makes him way more invasive and pushy. I fucking hate this guy. He sucks! Where's my boy!!!!

The Balcony Scene

The balcony scene takes place during the dinner party held by Riddhe's sister and her husband, after Riddhe has had his conversation with Ronan. The guests are mostly wealthy older women, the wives of important men.

Mineva is cautious and a bit intimidated. She is introduced as Audrey Burne, and stated to be the daughter of one of Ronan's connections. Riddhe is obviously sulking, refusing to speak to the point where he won't even respond to direct questions and his sister has to carry the conversation for him.

The guests begin gossiping about the recent terrorist attack on Industrial 7. The way they discuss the deaths is not particularly respectful. They talk about Zeon and spacenoids in general almost as if they're inhuman aliens. Cynthia tries to steer the conversation elsewhere. Mineva is horribly uncomfortable.

Riddhe stands up and leaves the table without saying anything. Mineva isn't able to find a good opportunity to leave and go look for him until 10 minutes later. She eventually finds him on the balcony facing the courtyard.

“I’m sorry” the voice entered her ears, and she looked forward, staring right at Riddhe’s back as he still looked forward. She lowered her face and said, “There’s no need for you to apologize...” “I feel that this is reality too. If I continue to remain in Neo Zeon, I wouldn’t know all of these things.” This might be a good chance to learn. Mineva muttered in her depressed heart, but she could not find any words to overcome these words that were full of such prejudice. She thought that mutual understanding was just a dream, and she remained unable to breathe in this helplessness of hers. “That’s not it.” Riddhe said as his shoulders trembled, and he clenched his hands that were on the handrails tightly. “That’s not what I want to talk about…” ... [His shoulders trembled,] probably because he was crying. That was not an emotion that could be caused by a breakdown in talks between him and Ronan, and Mineva sensed that there was a greater despair and sense of loss here, “Riddhe…” she called him, and approached his trembling figure. Suddenly, that back profile left the handrails, and Riddhe turned to Mineva, his chest filling her sights. Mineva was hugged around the shoulders as she was pulled to him, and he embraced her in his clutches. “I’m sorry, I…I actually brought you to such a unthinkable place…!” ... “No matter what, I’ll protect you well no matter what, so please stay here, stay by me…don’t leave me alone…” Water droplets that had warmth dripped on her hair, wetting her forehead. Why is he crying? What’s causing him so much pain? At that moment, Mineva had no sense of uneasiness or disgust as she felt Riddhe’s trembling body with her own. She hesitated over whether she should put her arms around him, and she looked at the sky that was entering the night from past the shoulders wearing the military uniform.

It's just... a completely different scene, with a completely different context.

Look at the description of that hug! Is that the impression you got from the hug in the anime, that Mineva felt at ease? The only person whose feelings we can tell for certain in that scene is Riddhe, and Mineva seems uncomfortable and unhappy both before and after the conversation.

The scene ends here. We get a continuation much later, as the final scene of the novel.

Mineva is alone in her room, several hours after the conversation on the balcony. We're told that Riddhe ran away from the house immediately afterward, without looking at her or explaining what had him so upset. She wonders what he's doing now, then wonders what she's doing. She feels helpless and lost, and rather unlike herself. In the past, she has always been very decisive. These confused, conflicted feelings are strange and unfamiliar to her.

When she looks up at the sky and asks Banagher what she should do, one of the stars is implied to be the Unicorn falling through the atmosphere. I think that imagery is really lovely.

Riddhe Horsegirl Moments

A couple days later, Mineva watches from a distance as Riddhe rides his horse. She is impressed by how in sync they are and how much trust there must be between them, but she also thinks that the horse is clearly picking up on Riddhe's anger and seems anxious.

(Right before this scene, when Ronan is watching Riddhe out the window, we're told that Riddhe deliberately learned a second, different riding style than the one popular with upper-class people that he was originally taught, because he thought it was boring. lol)

Cynthia comes out onto the terrace to talk to Mineva. They talk about Riddhe, and Cynthia describes her perception of his personality. The fan translation is kind of garbled here, but I'll include the passage anyway:

Cynthia looked down at Riddhe that was riding on the horse, “He’s really a useless child.” She sighed as she mused, and Mineva did not feel comfortable hearing this. “He’s always been like this in the past, always unable to hide what he was thinking, and never cared about the people around him when he put his mind to him. He’s already everywhere at once, but he’s attracted to small details for some reason, so he’ll always bear everything by himself alone.” This is really a rather accurate correct analysis. Mineva felt impressed that Riddhe’s relative was able to see through him so thoroughly, but felt a little depressed as she thought about how she had not been talking to Riddhe during this while...

Jp text for the list of traits:

「昔からそう。一途で、隠し事ができなくて、思い込んだら脇目も振らずに突っ走っちゃう。そのくせ、変に気が回るもんだから、ひとりでいろいろ抱え込んじゃうのよね」

Possible alt translation (I have no expertise, take with salt just as you would the other):

"It's always been that way. He's single-minded, can't hide anything, and when he makes up his mind, he rushes forward without looking the other way. Despite that, he's strangely anxious, so he takes on a lot of things by himself."

We're then told exactly how long Mineva has been staying at the Marcenas residence (3 days), and what the atmosphere has been like in the house. Riddhe is barely around, apparently busy repairing the Delta Plus. Ronan and Cynthia's husband Patrick avoid Mineva entirely. Cynthia and Doillon are the only people she has to spend time with, and neither of them is aware of her true identity.

Cynthia assures Mineva that Riddhe will probably get over whatever is bothering him soon enough and be back to his old self, but Mineva feels an ominous certainty that she's wrong.

My impression of novel Mineva is that she generally likes Riddhe and enjoys his company. She worries about him, and feels lonely when he starts becoming increasingly distant and angry. She doesn't like that she can see him changing, and she can tell that he's hurting. It's upsetting to her! She had just gotten to know this guy, and suddenly he's acting like a stranger again.

I have a hard time believing that OVA Mineva has enjoyed being in the same room with Riddhe at any point. She seems pragmatic and politely disinterested at best. Her body language with people she clearly likes-- Banagher, or hell, even the guy in the diner-- is very different.

The Most Depressing Proposal in the World

The dialogue of the proposal itself and Mineva's rejection is basically the same. Everything else about Riddhe's behaviour and body language is completely different.

They even completely inverted the exchange when he opens the door! In the novel, Riddhe asks if he can come in, and Mineva replies "this is your house, isn't it," but in the anime, he opens the door without asking and she's upset about the presumption.

It's such a small thing, but it's a clear signal to me that these changes are purposeful. They had zero reason to do that, unless they want to change the audience's perception of Riddhe and his relationship to Mineva. This suggests to me that they're not failing to adapt the novel character, but intentionally replacing him with something different. But... why? To what end?

This scene happens right after we learn that Riddhe is being sent to serve under Bright on the Ra Cailum. The context of the proposal is him telling her he's leaving.

Mineva has been in the house for at least ten days at this point. She has been feeling increasingly anxious and constrained, and by now she feels a strong desire to leave.

Riddhe is very distant and stiff. He tells her he's leaving, and apologizes. This is when he finally tells her about his conversation with Ronan, how the Marcenas family and the Vist Foundation "are like two mirrors facing each other," and that his family likely intends to use her as a hostage.

Then we get the proposal. It's so vaguely delivered that Mineva literally does not understand what he's asking at first. Not only does he not hug her, he's not even looking at her. He has a weird little twitch when bringing up his dad. The whole thing is miserable and kind of pathetic.

“So... can you become a member of our family?” In contrast, Riddhe said this without turning around to look. Mineva did not understand what he was saying to her as she frowned. “How about you abandon Zeon and the Zabi family, and become a member of the Marcenas family? In that case, my dad will—” To Riddhe, the last words were probably something he did not expect. His eyelids twitched, and he seemed to recover as he went quiet and lowered his eyes that were once facing Mineva. “…Even if it’s just a formality, this meaningless war will end like that, and you’ll be free.” “Do you feel…that can be considered freedom?” Mineva too lowered her sights, her heart feeling the sand-like bitterness. These words sounded too tragic to both the speaker and the listener, and even though they were just a few connected words, she could understand that her body and mind were gradually being contaminated. Something very important was starting to fall off, unable to be retrieved again—this kind of disappointment spread in her heart.

I'm sure Riddhe does think a marriage would reduce the danger she's in, but this is still a selfish question. He probably even knows it. It's just not the same kind of selfish as if he had barged into her room uninvited and proposed immediately during a fit of emotion because he's apparently madly in love with her, good grief.

Not even Riddhe wants to be "a member of his family." He had refused to speak to them for three years, well before he had the family secret dropped on him. But we're supposed to believe he thinks pulling Mineva into that is a good idea? Please. He is horrified by the idea of being alone with them.

He wants Mineva to stay because she's the only outside person he has left to hold onto, because he cut off all his other established positive relationships when he helped her escape.

Personally, I think that kind of total alienation is a lot more psychologically interesting than just being freshly upset and smitten with her!

Even though he knew how many risks he was taking, I think Riddhe was still telling himself he'd be able to wriggle out of it eventually. He'd use his dad's authority to secure Mineva's safety, and then he'd wait for another chance to run away and be a pilot again later.

Being told about the Box was the nail in the coffin for that, because it gave him a new, permanent sense of obligation to re-affiliate with his family, to "take responsibility for their sins." Perceived moral obligation is Riddhe's kryptonite.

The anime cut the conversation here, right after the rejection. Do you want to know what Riddhe's next line of dialogue is?

“Sorry, forget what I just said.”

lol. lmao even.

Like the anime, this conversation is the catalyst for Mineva running away. The scene in the diner is from Novel 7, as is Martha demanding Ronan give her Mineva. It all happens after Riddhe leaves.

The Ra Cailum

The Tri-Stars are not happy to have Riddhe on their ship.

When Riddhe first approaches the Ra Cailum in the Delta Plus and attempts to board, they actively antagonize him in their own mobile suits: they physically get in his way, don't respond to his hails, and one of them even fires on him.

Riddhe pulls off a dramatic maneuver to get past them, and this impresses them enough for the squad leader to say "alright, you've convinced me that you're more than just a useless nepotism hire."

They did not have authorization to do this. All four of them get dragged into Bright's office immediately after getting out of their suits. The Tri-Stars lie about what happened to avoid further trouble, and Riddhe goes along with the cover story. Bright orders the Tri-Stars to go clean the deck, and they leave.

The incident confirmed in Riddhe's mind that he's being given special treatment, so he brings it up to Bright:

The reason why the Tri-Stars would pull such petty tricks on him was because news of him being given special treatment was spread through the ship. He was already mentally prepared about being viewed as an irritant, but he could not stand being treated as a troublesome VIP and being unable to do anything. He stared at the back that had no intent of looking back at him and continued to emphasize with a restrained tone. “I’ve been through battle before. Please don’t remove me from dangerous missions just because I have to keep watch—” “DON’T BE NAÏVE!” Bright turned around to let out a roar that pierced through the pilot suit, causing goosebumps on Riddhe’s skin.

This conversation hits different when the "dangerous" situations Riddhe keeps putting himself in are on the extreme end even for a military pilot.

Novel Riddhe's disregard for his own safety is remarkable. I talked about it some in the last post, but after the conversation with his dad it takes on a more desperate tone. There is something very clearly wrong with this guy, and every time other people die around him it gets a little worse.

When I call Riddhe "borderline suicidal," I'm not saying he's consciously trying to kill himself, to be clear. He's not trying to get shot down on purpose-- quite the opposite.

I have no intention of dying. Right now, I don’t have a reason for that, before I can redeem the crimes of this cursed bloodline of mine— he muttered in his frozen heart, “Yes”, answered, and saluted.

The reckless death drive and the belief he has an obligation to stay alive can coexist without coming into conflict because they're ultimately coming from the same place and serving the same goal. He needs to keep existing in order to protect other people, and he needs to protect other people in order to justify having ever existed in the first place.

Or, basically: if you die, you only get to sacrifice yourself once, but so long as you survive you can keep doing it forever.

(And of course, what he thinks in the abstract while safely tucked away in an office is also different from how he behaves in actual combat, when people around him are dying.)

You'll get new examples when I get to what Riddhe does during the battle of Dakar. For now, we'll finish up the conversation with Bright.

Bright tells Riddhe to come back alive in both versions, but in the novel he also tells him to go clean the deck with the Tri-Stars if he wants to be treated like a normal pilot.

Nigel, the leader of the Tri-Stars, is waiting outside the door when Riddhe leaves Bright's office. Riddhe sighs and tells him he's going to help clean the deck. Nigel tells him he's too rigid, and he's going to end up wasting his talent. He doesn't let up even when Riddhe tries to be deferential:

... Riddhe instinctively looked away and said, “I won’t cause trouble for you.” ... but Nigel moved away from the wall and spoke, “You’re a rookie who doesn’t even know the meaning of the word team? Well, us Tri-Stars do whatever we want, and there’s no need for us to give you suggestions, but I’ll shoot you down from behind if you dare to pull the Ra Cailum fleet down. You better remember that.”

The equivalent to this line in the OVA seems a lot friendlier and more like banter. I think he's being truthful here, or at the very least genuinely trying to intimidate Riddhe.

Riddhe realizes Nigel still doesn't trust him and is continuing to treat him like an outsider. He thinks that maybe it's for the best, and responds with sarcastic praise.

Then we get this truly astounding line which I'm almost certain is a translation error, but I need you to see it anyway:

“Your sarcasm ain’t half bad there. Are you saying that us idiots who only know how to train are having a group orgy or something?”

Well I wasn't thinking it before but I'm certainly thinking it now. Why are you being so unwelcoming and excluding Riddhe from the group orgy, Nigel?

(The Japanese is "おれたちは訓練バカの仲良しグループってわけか？", if you want to check it yourself. Unless I'm missing some contextual innuendo, I'm pretty sure there is no reference to an orgy here. The phrase that got turned into that means "a group of close friends." He's basically saying "You think we aren't real soldiers and this is just a social club?"

I'm so disappointed. I wish this one was real. I was hoping to at least find a common crude idiom, like how people use "circlejerk" in English.)

Ahem.

Riddhe's attempt to be aloof fails; he immediately admits he's feeling envious and wants to feel included in the group. Nigel is clearly surprised by this, and seeds are planted for the Tri-Stars to come around.

This is important because when the attack on Dakar begins, Riddhe is initially told he isn't allowed to launch because he doesn't belong to any existing squadron. He's eventually given permission to launch with the Tri-Stars, after Nigel vouches for him.

Riddhe and Banagher vs. The Shamblo

The OVA actually reverses Riddhe and Banagher's respective roles here. Novel Riddhe engages the Shamblo well before Banagher is even on the field.

As the Ra Cailum approaches Dakar, they get a clearer picture of the situation. Bright realizes things are worse than they thought, and they need to rethink their approach.

Riddhe requests to be sent ahead on his own, to distract the enemy while the main forces land. He manages to make a convincing argument as to how he can do this without being shot down, and Nigel vouches for him again, so Bright agrees to let him scout ahead.

Riddhe launches on his own, without the Tri-Stars. He thinks about Mihiro and the Argama crew briefly while talking to the communications operator, which is sweet.

As Riddhe approaches the Shamblo, he realizes there are still civilians nearby who haven't finished evacuating. He also spots a GM III, part of Dakar's security forces, and watches it fire missiles even though the pilot should have been able to see the people on the street. Riddhe is furious.

The “GM III” continued to fire its beam rifle wildly at the road covered with dust and smoke. Riddhe grabbed the arm of the [mobile suit] and pulled it to the blind spot of the collapsed department store. (Khairul was killed…!) as the pilot continued to ramble on, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Riddhe used the communication channel to yell out at him, “Why are you using missiles at such a place!? There’re still people in the city!) (But we can’t let that guy approach the parliament hall…) “For the sake of your pride, you…!”

But then the Shamblo does its laser bits thing, so the GM ends up exploding. A lot of mobile suits nearby explode, in fact (RIP Guntank squad), and fleeing civilians get crushed quite gruesomely.

This is the point where Riddhe's death wish instinct activates, and "scouting" turns into "I need to engage the enemy and tank aggro right now."

“There’s no reason for them to die because of such a thing…!” If this is a tragedy caused by the “Box”. Riddhe let the machine transform, duck low, charge forward and squeezed the trigger of the beam rifle to its maximum. The beams that were deflected by the bits ripped apart the dust, grazing past the head of the “Delta Plus”. The machine then stood on the road in front of several blocks and started firing again. “Get over here!!!” he did not care that the reflected beams grazed past his shields as he let the “Delta Plus” leap up again. “I won’t let you kill anyone else. Just make me the only victim of the “Box”…!” The beam rifle continued to let out shots, and the beams that were reflected back in less than a second shook the machine. Riddhe continued to launch his attacks fervently as he forced the machine to retreat back to the coast. Anyway, I have to let the mobile armor retreat [from] the city and buy time for the civilians to evacuate. How long can I last? His mind that was thinking about this could not work at all, and the “Delta Plus” continued to shoot in a suicidal manner as it danced around the skies above Dakar.

Banagher sees and recognizes the Delta Plus on the monitor just before his fight with Zinnerman. His scenes are intercut with Riddhe and Loni's perspective on the battlefield.

Loni-- a very different character from her OVA counterpart-- keeps picking up on Riddhe's thoughts during combat. She attempts to convince her father that they should change course to avoid the civilians, but he refuses.

Riddhe helps a GM pilot in a damaged suit and tries to convince them to retreat, but they aren't having it. They tell him they're going to get under the Shamblo's feet, and they want him to shoot their suit so it will explode.

Obviously it's normal to feel fucked up about that kind of request, but it's still darkly funny to me how freaked out Riddhe gets, given his behaviour during this entire battle. Self sacrifice... not Riddhe? Death of friendly pilot not Riddhe??? No! No!!! Unacceptable!!!!

It's not Riddhe's choice to make, though. The GM rushes the Shamblo, where it is promptly torn apart and trampled. Riddhe manages to break through his hesitation and fires, but the Shamblo blocks the beam.

Then it fucking gets him. If you remember what I said about the OVA reversing the roles, the bit where the Unicorn gets grabbed by the claws happens to the Delta Plus instead.

The back of the “Delta Plus” was slammed hard onto the road, and the machine was half buried in the cracked asphalt. The large claws grabbed the lower half of the machine to restrain it, while the other claw rose slowly over the head of the “Delta Plus”, showing its malice that it was trying to dice it up as it opened its sharp blades. Riddhe sensed that his body was going to be crushed by this impact and scattered apart as he gritted his bloodied teeth. Is this the end? I can’t do anything, I’ll die here without being able to save anyone. As Riddhe’s concussed mind eked out these thoughts, How annoying, he muttered in his heart...

So then instead of Riddhe breaking off from the Tri-Stars to help Banagher, we get Banagher finally arriving on the scene and swooping in to save Riddhe from getting pureed.

They team up. The Unicorn isn't as manoeuvrable under Earth's gravity and atmospheric conditions as it is in space, so the Delta Plus basically becomes its flight unit.

Banagher is the one who fires the shot and destroys the Shamblo. He's very upset about Loni's death, but there's no moral dilemma or conflict between him and Riddhe.

Loni's situation is very different. She was probably already going to die whether they destroyed the Shamblo or not, and since it had multiple pilots, her death alone would not have stopped its rampage. I'll go over this again in more detail during her section. For now, the point I'm trying to make is that the novel version of this scene emphasizes that Riddhe and Banagher have a positive relationship.

I really get along with this guy instinctively. Riddhe hid this bittersweet reality inside his heart as he went full throttle and let the machine remain as low as possible.

[...]

The thrill when they were accelerating for each other as they raced caused all his senses to sharpen. If only I can remain at that moment of ecstasy.

The OVA scene is about... the opposite of that.

I still can't believe OVA Riddhe looks angry when Banagher's plan works and the Shamblo stops attacking the first time. He fucking scowls? Are you mad you're being proven wrong? That's more important to you in this situation than preventing more deaths? Distinctly un-Riddhelike priorities!

With the Shamblo gone, Riddhe is ordered to capture the Gundam.

The conversation they have about this is significantly longer. There's a lot of Riddhe failing to talk himself into killing Banagher after he refuses to surrender.

He's extremely torn up about it. Because Riddhe likes Banagher.

The metals bellowed as they touched each other, and the voice of the pilot rang within the interaction window. The “Unicorn Gundam” was touching the “Delta Plus” on the shoulder as it opened the communication circuit. ... (I never thought that I would meet you here in such a way…is Audrey alright? Did you make contact with the “Nahel Argama”—) Banagher intended to lean the body forward as he talked. However, Riddhe did not look at the other party’s face. He held his breath and fulfilled what he had to do at this point. The “Delta Plus” shook aside the hand resting on its shoulder ... The “Gundam” tripped, and by the time it managed to steady itself with the AMBAC, the “Delta Plus” was aiming its beam rifle at the abdomen. (Mr Riddhe…!?) “I’ve received an order to capture that “Gundam”. Get off that cockpit, Banagher.” Luckily, the visuals on the communication window were cut off the moment the interaction channel was removed. (Mr Riddhe, why…!) Riddhe merely let Banaher’s outcry chide his ears as his hand holding onto the control stick was trembling. “Don’t call me as if we’re close with each other. Without you, things wouldn’t end up like that…!” (Why’s that so? Mr Riddhe, Audrey—) “You and the “Gundam” are obstacles preventing this Audrey you speak of—Mineva from living peacefully. Get off!” My chest is going to break open. At this rate, I’ll go crazy too—just like this mobile armor that lies dead in front of me. Riddhe lowered his eyes and waited for Banagher to answer in a prayer. I feel you’re a man of your word. I’ll leave Audrey to you. The boy with such strong-willed eyes actually used those words to lay a curse on him and bind him, and though he hoped that the other party would step aside after realizing what was going on—

The things he says about Mineva here are interesting. I think it's very representative of the kind of weird rigid thinking Riddhe has, that even as he tries to talk himself into literally killing Banagher, he still considers the promise to take care of Audrey binding and unassailable.

It's also kind of fascinating that he considers protecting her to be something that he owes to Banagher specifically at all, enough to apparently consider it a burden, given that he had already taken action to do it himself before they ever had that conversation.

Even though he's stubborn and historically disobedient to authority figures like his father, Riddhe is still very... rules-brained, I guess, in his own way. He gets "stuck" on specific things people say to him like this a lot, particularly in the context of morality or a sense of duty.

Banagher won't get out of the Gundam, even at gunpoint. He doesn't understand why Riddhe is acting the way he is, and he wants an explanation.

And here's the important part:

When Banagher calls Riddhe's bluff and Riddhe cannot bring himself to shoot him, Riddhe tells Banangher to flee before anyone else can arrive to capture him.

Yes! He actively decides to disobey orders and let Banagher escape! That's the moment that the 'Black Unicorn' drops in on them! It has to show up for the plot to work, because Riddhe has already backed down as a threat!!!

And Riddhe's still focused on Banagher, even after the Banshee drops a bunch of rubble on his mobile suit. He's stuck there in his unresponsive machine, yelling at Banagher to run away.

There is hostility between Banagher and Riddhe during the Torrington fight in book 7, but the equivalent of that confrontation is presumably something for next time... there are still like, three more emotional bombshells that need to be dropped on Riddhe before he stops instinctively treating Banagher like an ally.

Do you see how, cumulatively, this might as well be a completely different guy?

I've been trying to avoid spoiling anything that happens later in the novels as much as possible, even though I assume most people reading these posts have either already seen the full anime or don't care about spoilers at all. But I simply must say. Holy shit. You're going to have this guy kill a fan favourite character? This guy? Worse Riddhe? I'm wincing just thinking about how apocalyptically fucking mad people must have been. I am imagining the forum posts in my mind's eye, and they're bad.

As much as I love complaining, I do think changes made in any adaptation deserve to be considered in their own right. Even if I don't like them. I've been thinking a lot about what these changes might mean, and what purpose they might serve.

Some possible narrative reasons for Worse Riddhe I came up with:

They needed him to kill this version of Loni in place of Banahger -- I think regular Riddhe would also be willing to kill Loni, once it became obvious that Banagher's plan had failed the first time. She's an enemy combatant who is deliberately killing civilians, and she's either unwilling or unable to stop.

To justify Mineva running away sooner -- as in, they thought if he was too likeable, the audience wouldn't understand why she wanted to leave. This wouldn't be a problem in the first place if they hadn't pushed his scenes forward so they had to happen all at once. Either way, Mineva would have many good reasons to want to leave without Worse Riddhe. Riddhe is only person she really has in her corner-- and then he tells her she's in an unsafe place, and then he leaves.

They were worried he might overshadow Banagher…? I don't think reducing Riddhe's role in on-screen combat would necessitate changing his personality. Also, this is just not something I personally give a shit about. Multiple important characters is not a problem. Banagher would absolutely still get to be cool and heroic. C'mon.

They think the new characterization is likeable / endearing, and the audience is supposed to find the increased focus on unrequited romantic interest in Mineva sympathetic-- [perplexed vocalization]

They think if Riddhe is more naive and jealous from the beginning, bringing him around will be more meaningful, from the angle of "Look, even this guy can be reached through the power of communication and not giving up on a possibility" -- Oo-hoo-oooh, I don't like how plausible this one feels. I can see the exact reasoning that might lead to it. I don't like it.

They're going to do something totally new with him later that never would have occurred to me -- I guess that could save it for me as an artistic decision, if it's interesting enough. Bit of a scary thought, though. What's up your sleeve?

If anyone else has theories or opinions about the rationale here, I'm all ears. I'd love to come up with something good enough to feel even 25% less annoyed about it.

Anyway, we've covered all my Riddhe grievances. Let's move on.

Frontal and Angelo are barely in this one, which is novel accurate.

They get their own section anyway, because they're always important to ME!!!

I get so excited every time Frontal shows up, regardless of context. The Sinanju theme starts playing and I'm already having the time of my life. He's literally just standing there and giving exposition. Embarrassing.

I love how visibly mad Angelo gets every time Zinnerman talks back to Frontal. He's hysterical.

Here's novel Loni experiencing Frontal's uncanny deepfake vibes:

The masked face spoke on the monitor, and Loni did not feel that it was the face of a human. The nose bridge and the lips under the mask were too refined, and the thick blond hair reminded her of a puppet. Am I seeing a complete artificial image here? she felt some goosebumps as she stared at Full Frontal, who was calmly smiling.

Banagher and Zinnerman

Banagher and Zinnerman's relationship is probably the one major story element that changed the least from the page to screen. I'm really glad that's the case. Their scenes together were some of the most enjoyable parts of the book.

There are still slight differences, as is inevitable.

Zinnerman is softer on Banagher in the anime. I think they probably did this just to make it even more shocking when he starts slamming him around and pointing a gun at him later. Novel Zinnerman is a bit more roundabout with how he expresses affection, and also more aggressive.

Zinnerman doesn't hit Banagher in the anime at all until their big fight, but in the novels he does it a number of times. He hits him twice when he's sitting around catatonic at the crash site, and that wasn't even the first time in the series (the first was all the way back on Palau, because Banagher was mouthing off when they drop him off to stay with Gilboa).

They have a confrontation before they head out into the desert, and it's a precursor to the conversation they have while traveling. The two conversations are about the exact same subjects, with the second mostly being a gentler reiteration, so I can see why they'd only keep one. The anime also shifts some of the aggressive energy from Zinnerman to Flaste, instead, by having him yell at Banagher and throw him around.

The scene that's only in the novel, is... scarier, for lack of a better word? Banagher starts out even more dramatically unresponsive and defeated, he ends up getting angrier, and Zinnerman is a lot more threatening.

On Banagher's condition at the crash site:

... he had no sense of will to live on by himself, and he would not ingest food if it was not prepared. If he was left alone, he would just sit around blankly for the entire day. ... There were no effects no matter what they did, whether they tried to threaten him or please him; he would not resist, but he would not show any form of will on his own. ...

On Banagher's internal mental state:

You killed him. You killed Gilboa, Tikva’s father. He had no intention of attacking, and you simply shot him. Tikva’s pitiful for not having a father now. You and him have no fathers. You killed him, and you killed a lot a people—

[...]

We can just run through this desert, Banagher thought. The sunlight can burn the skin, blood my head, dry up all the fluids in my body, and I’ll just become dust. Even the lead in my stomach and this cursed family blood of mine will be burnt to nothing. If I can do that, the “Unicorn” will never move again, the “Gundam” won’t awaken again; I won’t have to kill others, I won’t be killed, and the “Laplace Box” will be sealed forever— And then what? The abnormally cold voice interrupted to end the delusions. The impulse that rose in Banagher’s body quickly wilted as fatigue struck his mind. He found it difficult to think, curled back his body without doing anything and became a stone block like before.

Banagher's despair is also where the title of both the novel and the OVA comes from.

This place is really the bottom of a gravity well, Banagher admitted. His body and mind were tied to the bottom, so heavy that they were unable to move at all. Space felt so distant, and his soul was the only thing melting from his crouched body that was like dust. This is a one and only cog that can make decisions on its own. Don’t lose it—Mr Daguza did say it. I don’t want to lose it, I lost it unwillingly, but I really can’t hang on now. If I try to put it on, my body will break apart. I just want to sit here without thinking and without asking for anything. I’ll keep sitting until my heart melts completely…

And then Zinnerman comes in, and tells him him they're going on a trip. Sorry, you're getting a big chunk of excerpts here, because I really like this entire conversation.

Zinnerman was standing there. His hulking figure was standing there angrily “Stand up.” as he growled with a deep voice. Banagher immediately lost interest in the person who arrived, and immediately lowered his sight. “There’s a town 60km away. I’m going to walk there and get help, and you’re coming with me.” Are you kidding me? a slight electrical flow passed through Banagher’s mind as he lifted his eyes again. He saw the bearded face that was not smiling, and lazily looked down again. At this moment, Zinnerman’s hand grabbed him by the torso, and the body, which had its center of gravity at the back, was immediately dragged off the floor. “How long are you going to mope around here!?” The angry words roared into Banagher’s ears as the sand fell from his limp swaying body. His feet would not listen as his body was supported by hand grabbing him by the chest. However, Zinnerman’s hand that was holding this weight showed no signs of shaking at all. “We’ll leave after sunset. Get into the ship immediately. We need to prepare a lot of things if we want to pass through the desert.”

[...]

“Duty? I did my duty. I rode on the mobile suit and sank a Neo Zeon terrorist. Is that not enough? How many more must I kill?” Only this time did Banagher look right at Zinnerman in the eyes and spoke directly to him. What duty and responsibility? It ended up like this after I listened to those words. As he thought about how he would not be fooled again and intended to stand on his feet, a blunt sound rang in his mind as his world exploded. The body that was punched aside landed hard onto the floor, and the burning hot taste of sand spread in his mouth. The face that was buried in the sand started to ache, and Banagher’s body was trembling as he heard Zinnerman say, “You can deny us all you want.” “But don’t you dare think of yourself as a victim and throw a tantrum at me. I can still recognize it if the one that shot down Gilboa is a pilot, but not a brat who doesn’t have any resolve.”

[...]

The lead in Banagher’s stomach was burning, and he forcefully spat the sand that became dirt in his [mouth.] “I didn’t do this on my own will…” he muttered as he wiped away the blood on the corner of his mouth. “Someone else forced me to ride on a mobile suit, and things ended up like this before I even knew what happened. If you’re not going to forgive me, just kill me. Don’t beat around the bush and talk about something like duty; can’t you just harden your heart and kill me…!?” Zinnerman’s hard fist was still clenched as he answered with his trembling eyelids. See, this man talks big, but he’s no different from those guys who want the “Box”. Banagher said, “You don’t dare to do so anyway.” Banagher said with his busted lips that were curled up. “If I die, the “Unicorn” won’t move. If you can’t extract the data of the “Box”, you’ll just let this treasure rot. No matter how you hate me, it’s impossible for you to kill—” The second impact struck his face, ... “[Those] big shots may think that way, but we’re different”, Zinnerman growled, ... “It doesn’t matter what happens to the “Box”. My ship doesn’t have the room to feed someone like you who has no will to live.” The burly figure became a shadow as it moved towards Banagher, blocking his sights. The eyes of a killer were glittering somehow deep within, just like the first time, and Banagher clenched his hands together with the sand. Banagher stared at the two black eyeballs that were not showing any light, and exerted strength to stiffen his trembling knees. He tried his best to let his trembling body stand up, and glared at Zinnerman with all his strength. Do it if you can. I’ll spit my blood on you once I’m beaten down. As he was driven by this unknown temper, his swaying body was about to straighten, and Zinnerman showed some teeth on his ominous looking face. Before he could understand that it was a smile, he was gently nudged back and landed on his backside. “What kind of expression is that?” Zinnerman gave a wry look, and this was an unexpected response to Banagher as he looked back. “Someone who can give that kind of expression will not collapse that easily. Hurry up and get ready. The desert won’t listen to any excuses humans make.” Zinnerman finished and walked away. Are you serious? Banagher wanted to open his mouth and ask, but was unable to let out a sound as his wildly pounding heart spread the feeling of this fear that came a moment later. His body that was unneeded by anyone and self-neglected continued to give the sound of life stubbornly— “Damn it!” Banagher groaned as he kicked the sand at his feet. The blood that rushed up his body caused him to recall the heat, and the large amount of sweat that suddenly started to flow out evaporated before they dripped.

I really love this scene, and I miss furious blood-spitting Banagher, but I also liked the little sand-throwing tantrum they added to the conversation in the anime, so I can't complain too much. Other than that, the argument in the desert is basically the same.

Then we get the story about Globe. This is another scene where the music really stood out to me -- the track is called "Desert," and I think it's beautiful.

I like how they take advantage of the desert setting to show it to you visually in the form of Banagher seeing mirages, as well the hot wind in the desert evoking the heat from the burning town. It's a clever sequence.

I'll be coming back to Globe in a later section. The story and its telling has been altered in significant ways, although it serves the exact same purpose in the narrative for Zinnerman's motivation. Put a pin in it.

The conversation at the campsite is pretty much exactly the same in both versions, except the novel also describes ancient cave paintings on the stone walls they're using for shelter.

The novel has one more travel scene after this, where they get caught in a simoom and have a harrowing near-death experience. This is where Banagher really thinks through his feelings and resolves that he needs to live. As soon as the storm passes, they realize they're right outside their destination and start laughing hysterically from relief.

The novel also has several scenes where the two of them spend time with Loni in the city, scouting Dakar on foot before the operation. These are mostly about establishing setting, progressing the plot, and strengthening Banagher's connection to Loni, though there are some small Zinnerman moments I thought were charming.

Here's Zinnerman buying Banagher a beer:

Zinnerman suddenly raised his hand and called the waitress beside him. “Another beer please. For him.” He said with a nonchalant look on his face as he pointed at Banagher, wanting him to continue talking. “I’m still underaged, you know!?” Banagher then gave a shocked expression right back as his momentum was worn out. “Just drink. Today’s a special day.” “What’s special…” “You’ve become an adult. There’s no punishment for celebrating a little anyway.” A warm smile Banagher had never seen before caused him to feel some warmth in his stomach. He felt embarrassed, and thought that he could not look back anymore as he turned his stare to the sea surface that was dyed sunset.

The fight they have during the operation plays out pretty much the same, in both action and dialogue. Zinnerman does cause less lasting visible damage to Banagher in the OVA, though-- he's described as having his face noticeably bruised and banged up in the novel.

I do think novel Banagher knew civilian casualties were a possibility going in (in a way that OVA Banagher possibly did not consider at all, since the target is explicitly military). What horrified him was the deliberate act of murdering innocent people-- similar to novel Loni's feelings, in fact.

Even if he's rationalizing, Zinnerman's response of "you should have expected this" is still much truer about Dakar than Torrington. Come on, Banagher, you didn't consider there might be serious collateral damage if we walk the giant metal laser monster into a major metropolitan area? You saw what happened to Industrial 7. They could have just as easily destroyed that hotel by accident.

Such a good scene, though. Both versions. Get his ass.

Marida, Martha, and Alberto

There's a lot going on here. I'll start with the easy stuff.

Since Gael was on the Argama at the end of Novel 5, he goes to the bridge and tells them not to let Martha's ship capture the Unicorn. His mission had failed, and Alberto was successfully transferred to Martha's ship with Marida.

Gael warns Banagher through transmission not to trust Alberto and not to follow his instructions. He also tells him explicitly that Alberto killed Cardeas.

Alberto then cuts off Gael's transmission and admits to doing so. He explains his reasons, and then says some fairly cruel things to Banagher. It's clear that this conversation contributed to Banagher's intense despair in the desert; he even quotes Alberto directly at one point.

(The Foundation can’t live on without the Box. But that man intended to bring the “Box” outside.) ... (The Foundation has the “Box”. As long as this fact doesn’t change, it doesn’t matter even if the “Box” doesn’t exist. The key to opening the “Box” has no reason to exist. As long as we can destroy the “Unicorn”, everything will be back to normal. Don’t you understand? To a lot of people, you’re the seed of disaster.) ... (If you want to hate, hate father. Hate our father.) The voice pierced through Banagher’s chest, and then, there was a physical impact that rocked the cockpit. The connected ignition bolt was activated, and the traction wire was severed from the shuttle right from the end.

[...]

Banagher’s vision started to spin in a confusing manner, and the plasma air flow continued to blow by the cockpit. The temperature in the machine gradually rose, and the warning alarms continued to sway amidst the burning hot air. Nobody will save me. There’s no worth in saving me. Everything I know about is wrong. Banagher yelled with a voice that did not make a sound. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be sitting in this, even my birth onto this Earth is wrong— Banagher’ yell was vaporized by the additional heat, and the color of flames gradually covered everything.

With the line cut, the Garancieres moves in to grab the Unicorn instead. Banagher has passed out, but the Unicorn begins moving entirely on its own. Again it's described as looking like a devil, which is particularly fitting when it's basically fucking on fire. Zinnerman looks at its face and thinks it looks like it's smiling. I love that.

The head of the “Unicorn Gundam” that resembled a human face peeked through the bridge window, and the camera outside the ship was capturing a visual of its glowing eyes. It was an icy cold stare, and those eyes were staring at Zinnerman and company coldly as if it was grading the people inside the ship— “Is that thing…moving by itself?”

[...]

Zinnerman did not have time to shout out as his back hit the ceiling, and he tumbled onto the floor. From the corner of his eyes, he saw that the “Gundam” above him was narrowing its eyes in a smile with its back against the plasma glow. The machine with the appearance of a white devil was definitely smiling, and its body was swaying amidst the vortex that swelled like a mirage.

In book five, it's easy to read the passage with Alberto and not be entirely sure whether the tether being cut was the intention from the start, if it was something Martha ordered, etc. In book six we get explicit confirmation that Alberto made a snap decision at that moment to kill Banagher. He has weird guilt-induced visions of a young Banagher while walking around the cyber-Newtype lab.

... Alberto suddenly went quiet as he stopped in his tracks, as he sensed someone moving at the corner leading to the elevator hall. At a corner of the passage that was somewhat dim because of energy conservation, there was a black shadow popping out from a corner. That shadow moved lightly, forming the shape of a human, and became a shadow of a 4, 5 year old child as it stared right back from the corner. Those familiar eyes looked like they were about to be etched in Alberto’s eyes, and he could not help but look away. Haven’t you had enough already? Alberto thought as he widened his tense eyes with fear. The child who looked eerily similar to Banagher Links suddenly disappeared, and the shadow of the foliage plant placed at the corner was dragged along the floor.

[...]

The white machine fell into the scorching abyss as the traction wire was snapped—he recalled that scene and asked himself whether it was the correct decision. At that time, he merely had the impulse of wanted to get rid of the “Unicorn” from his eyes, and he did not remember making a sane decision. That was because he was scared, and he hated the eyes of the “Unicorn” pilot that were the same as Cardeas—Banagher Links, who was protected by the machine Cardeas put so much effort in making, and who appeared several times in front of him. Those eyes that could overlap his own when he looked into the mirror looked like they would reveal the sins he committed over and over again…

There's a bit more detail given as to the history about the Newtype lab, and why it still exists despite being shuttered. We also learn that it's rumoured to be haunted by the gruesome ghosts of children, who presumably died during experimentation. Alberto is not having a good time, and blames his hallucinations on the rumours.

Now I need to talk about the thorny part:

A lot of the stuff from the novels surrounding Alberto, Martha and Marida that got removed in the anime is related to sexual violence.

Book six has an extreme amount of sexual violence in general.

Content warning for this section: rape / sexual assault, csa, incest. If at any point you want to skip past it, scroll down to the heading and image for Loni's section. SERIOUSLY. I'M NOT KIDDING.

Since I was already talking about Alberto, I'll start there:

Martha and Alberto have an incestuous relationship.

I'm being pretty thorough with my current reread. I'm paying attention to everything, even stuff I don't especially like or find immediately interesting. If anything ever seems really out there, I try to crosscheck the Japanese (for as much as that helps, as a non-speaker). My previous read was much more casual, and I definitely started skimming whenever the incest came up.

As I continue reading into novel seven and beyond, I'm finding that it is... more relevant and also more severe than I remembered. I actually double-checked some scenes from later novels because I was wondering about something, and I'm fairly certain now that the implication is that Martha started grooming Alberto when he was a young teenager. That detail in particular significantly re-frames the kind of antagonist she is, for me.

You can already read sexual malice or eroticism into her interactions with various characters (Marida...), but that's not the same as being a canonical child sexual abuser. It's not like CCA Char stringing Quess along to manipulate her into the robot, or Haman trying and failing to seduce Judau in ZZ. There's no less damning explanation, and it's too prominent for "I pretend I do not see it" to feel like a viable reaction.

Unfortunately for the part of me that just wants to gleefully watch a sexy middle-aged lady be unrelentingly manipulative and terrible to everyone, I think continuing to ignore it would be failing to engage honestly with the text.

But hey, it's not in the anime. Anime Martha, at least, still gets to evil in the uncomplicated and fun kind of way.

I'm definitely going to be paying more attention to this aspect of Alberto as I reread. Unlike the other characters with csa backstories, I do not have any kind of developed opinions about how his is handled...

I wanted to get Martha and Alberto out of the way first because their Whole Situation spans multiple books. They are far from the most prominent instance of sexual violence in book six specifically. They only get three or so lines of unsettling innuendo, if I'm remembering right.

It's not a problem that sexual violence exists in the novels-- some of it is thematically or narratively interesting, and even important to why I'm so attached to certain characters. The problem is the sheer amount of it that gets thrown at you all at once, and how gratuitous it can get. Book six in particular overshoots 'shocking' and 'emotional', right into 'annoying'. It's excessive to the point of feeling stupid, and it cheapens scenes that I think could otherwise be resonant and meaningful.

This is something that's true of many (though not all) of the things I don't like in the Unicorn books-- they feel like frustrating over-extensions of things I did like about them. It's like Fukui doesn't know where to stop, and just takes bigger and bigger swings until it just becomes grossly self-indulgent (or in worse cases, reveals some kind of unpleasant bias).

I still remember reading Marida's backstory in book 5 for the first time and thinking I liked how it was handled, only for next book to go back and do it again but worse. Amazing.

There's a nightmare sequence when she's being brainwashed that has a sudden rape in the middle. It's more graphic than her backstory, which was often explained through metaphor, focused on Marida's emotions, implied through environmental details in the aftermath, etc. This one is just Fukui literally describing an assault to you.

She eventually kills her assailant, but is horrified to look and find the corpse is Zinnerman. Maybe that could have gotten me as a grossout horror moment if it wasn't the endcap for a sequence I didn't like, in a book that's already full of this shit. It's also just not necessarily the kind of shock factor I'm looking for from Gundam specifically. Whatever.

We're later told that the content of the brainwashing is based on Martha, but it's not explained exactly what that means (at least, it is unclear in the English fan translation). The nightmare does start out with Marida witnessing a snippet of Martha's childhood where she attends her father's funeral. Does it draw on her memories? Her worldview? Is it some kind of automatic generative process, or did she write it like a script? We don't know.

At the end of the nightmare, Marida sees herself as a child crying over Zinnerman's body, as an obvious parallel to the funeral of Martha's father at the beginning. I liked this. Shame about the middle.

I said I would come back to Globe. The novel version of the story has significant discussion of rape, including of children. When I compare the fan translation to the Japanese version, some of the lines might be slightly mistranslated, but the actual meanings are never describing anything less grotesque. One of them seems to actually be saying something worse than I had assumed, which is impressive.

The story in the anime states there were no survivors, which is not the case in the book, although there were certainly many horrible deaths.

(The novel tells us directly that a specific character is a survivor of the massacre at Globe. I've already been told that the backstory I'm talking about was cut from the anime, so I guess it's a moot point.

But since the story is being told by Flaste, it's not like some small number of survivors unrelated to him would necessarily be something he'd know about, I guess...)

Flaste also tells Banagher that there was footage of the violence at Globe that ended up being circulated on the black market. Attempting to track down and eliminate the source of the videos is what led to them finding Marida, since she was trafficked through the same network.

I'm done with this part. Unfortunately, the next section is possibly even more thorny.

Loni and Mahdi Garvey

Content warning for this section: racism / orientalism / islamophobia, allusions to real life terrorist attacks, one brief reference to sexual violence. The worst of it is over after you get to the heading "Who is Loni?", but if you want to skip all the way to the conclusion you can always scroll down to the last two images (Loni crying + the Shamblo with the destroyed cockpit).

The novel version of the Shamblo requires multiple pilots. The attack on Dakar is carried out by Loni, her two brothers Walid and Abbas, and her father Mahdi.

Novel Loni is generally a voice of mercy and restraint, although she still willingly participates in the operation. Much of her original dialogue during combat has been given to Kirks in the OVA.

Mahdi Garvey is the vengeful, resentful force that wants to punish the Federation for its crimes and destroy its symbols. He is the one who orders attacks on unrelated buildings and refuses to change course to reduce collateral damage, much like OVA Loni does-- however, he is significantly more resistant to being reasoned with than she is, and never has any moments of doubt or regret.

Walid and Abbas have very little agency. I can't remember a single notable line of dialogue from either of them, nor any traits that differentiate them. They're just kind of there in the background, usually doing whatever what Mahdi tells them to do.

All of these characters are explicitly Muslim in the novels.

One of the very first things we're told about Mahdi is that he has multiple wives and many children, but that Loni and her siblings are the 'purest' of his bloodline. We learn this after the destruction of the Federation submarine, while he tells them not to look away from the blood and entrails of the enemies they just killed. We later learn that he harbours a deep grudge not only against the Federation, but specifically against "White Men" -- he usually calls them Franks in Japanese.

I hate this character. I was so relieved when I heard they removed him from the anime. Most important call they made in the entire production, I think.

(The fan translation incorrectly translates "multiple wives and many children" as "many wives and many concubines," so English readers get an even worse first impression, by the way. I made sure to check everything I'm going to complain about in this section so I'm not slandering Fukui for the translator's mistakes.)

Mahdi talks about his religion quite a bit, but he's not portrayed as a religious extremist. He is not a fundamentalist. He doesn't seem to believe his quest for vengeance is something he is divinely commanded to do, although he certainly believes it is morally justified. He's completely fine with his unveiled daughter driving on her own to go pick up two unrelated, non-Muslim men (but he definitely expects her to give him lots of Muslim grandchildren).

His grievances with the Federation don't involve any particular hostility to secularism. He is angry about the Federation officially saying God is dead at the start of the Universal Century, and about the extraction of wealth from Muslim countries that he believes was an intentional destruction of Islamic society-- but I think those are entirely different issues.

You could try to make calls on whether this choice, or any other individual choice made about this character, is less or more offensive than the alternative-- but I think it's beside the point.

Mahdi isn't a Muslim because Islam is specifically important to his motivations; Mahdi is a Muslim because of what that is supposed to represent to the audience. Mahdi is a Muslim because because of the symbol of the Muslim terrorist in the global consciousness, and because Fukui wanted to invoke imagery of 9/11. His character is inherently a bit incoherent, because he's an amalgam of stereotypes about The Other.

I get the feeling a significant part of the research process for this character was looking at the wikipedia page for Osama Bin Laden. I assume Fukui made him less militantly religious than obvious real-life inspirations either because he believed it would be less controversial, or because it meant he wouldn't have to do as much research about Islam.

The through-line from the better-handled themes of the first five books that eventually leads to the terrible destination of Mahdi Garvey is pretty easy to see. It was deeply, deeply frustrating for me to get invested in the way the series acknowledged and engaged with global structural racism (even when it occasionally got a little clumsy or heavy-handed), only for it to drop this on me six books in.

I actually think this mess of a character was probably intended to be a complex, terrible-but-understandable antagonist? I'm completely serious. That's the whole reason it works to transpose his general motivations onto Loni, after removing all the stereotypes and real-world cultural references.

Mahdi is textually compared to Zinnerman (vengeance for the deaths of loved ones and injustice and violence against one's people), and Zinnerman is obviously framed as sympathetic. Mahdi pretty much has the same kind of backstory framework, just with "Muslims" instead of the fictional "Zeon."

Mahdi is also explicitly textually compared to Alberto (inheritor of an established family legacy and all the pressure that entails). Alberto is complicated, but I think he's also a sympathetic antagonist.

And then there's the very first character we meet in the novels, Syam. Syam is also a man from the Middle East who was negatively affected by the Federation's cultural imperialism, and Syam also participates in a terrorist attack. There's even a mention that the guys who recruited him were infiltrating religious institutions, though Syam was not brought in that way, and the religions in question are left unspecified.

Maybe you're wondering why I was so annoyed that Syam's backstory was removed, given I'm glad that Mahdi's was cut. The way they're handled is significantly different.

When he participates in the attack on Laplace, Syam is a nobody with rational motivations to do something awful. His backstory is there to talk about the material conditions and pressures that foment terrorism, including terrorism targeting oppressive governments, and the ways that powerful people take advantage of the desperate.

Mahdi is arguably sort of also that, but it's delivered through the lens of a deranged islamophobic caricature. lol

Syam's story is also a lot vaguer than Mahdi's, when it comes to real-world details. I'm sure there are criticisms one could make of that, too, but I still believe it's preferable in this case. The more you increase the specificity of real-world details in your future scifi world, the more knowledge or personal experience with the subject you need to pull it off convincingly.

Also, Syam not being white made our protagonist explicitly multiracial by extension, which I liked.

(Perhaps interesting: Loni seems to think of Banagher as being within the category of "Frank", but I'm pretty sure Mahdi identified him on sight as someone with "non-Western" heritage. This does not lead him to treat Banagher with any more respect or courtesy, however. Calling Banagher "the Key to the Box" is significantly more dehumanizing in his mouth than Loni's.)

Here's a quote that I think represents Mahdi at his most understandable and humanized. It happens right before he has the Shamblo blow up a hotel full of people out of spite, lmao:

Loni ignored her two brothers who were unable to speak up as she got up from her seat and gave a tense look at her father. Mahdi took her stare “Loni, [those people mocked me].” ... “[A barbarian] who’ll only imitate the white men on the surface, but [still hangs a knife on his waist]…that’s how those people viewed me. Whether it’s the receptionist, the [doorman], or any guest that brushed by, I can tell from their eyes even if they wouldn’t say it. Those people sold their souls to the society of white men, no matter the color of the skin. To those people, we’re just caged animals, pitiful beasts that are reared in the zoo to exchange for the self-satisfaction of a multi-cultural society.” Am I crazy? Mahdi asked himself in a corner of his mind, Then let me go crazy. and then answered his own question as he looked away from the speechless Loni. Father, grandfather, Loni’s mother, they all died in despair and hatred. I could only keep living to vent the regrets of those souls. I interacted with top-class education and culture in those white men’s society, and continued to be an alien that hated them. I tasted the feelings of bitterness, deceit and infidelity, I lived through such a life full of oxymorons, and it’s to be expected that I’ll lose my mind, but it’s all for this day. What should I do if I don’t unleash my madness? Who’s the one causing me to go mad!?

(I made edits to his dialogue here to more closely match the Japanese. The original fan translation said "those people used to mock us," and continued to use plural throughout the explanation, but the original line refers specifically to himself. I'm pretty sure it's specifically about when he was recently there, for his meeting with Banagher and Zinnerman.)

Again, the revenge narrative is basically the same thing we get from Zinnerman. And that part about feeling alienated from whiteness and being looked-down upon even as a highly educated, culturally assimilated person-- that's a real experience of racism! I've heard this sentiment from people in real life!

The problem is that Fukui put that sentiment in the mouth of a character who's a mishmash of stereotypes based on cultural fears that the non-Muslim world has about Muslim men.

The problem is that the only explicitly Muslim characters in this series exist to be terrorists in a heavy-handed 9/11 reference.

Another side note: the bit about the knife. Mahdi carries around a shamshir. When it was first mentioned I was just like "okay, he has a sword. Maybe it's a family heirloom or something." When Banagher notices it, he interprets it as representing racial / cultural pride as a person from the Middle East. Okay.

Fukui knows most of the obvious things about Islam. He knows about daily prayers, and that Muslim women often cover their hair and dress modestly. He knows that idolatry is a sin. He knows that Muslims are not wholly uniform in beliefs and practices. He knows the phrase "inshallah". I'm skeptical about his familiarity with the contents of the Quran beyond that, or the concepts of sunnah / hadith, or the differences between any specific major branches of Islam.

("Inshallah" comes up because Full Frontal says it as an ostensible gesture of cultural respect and cooperation, and Mahdi begrudgingly responds in kind with "Sieg Zeon". Hm.)

There's a bit where Loni gives an explanation to Banagher that liberal Muslims exist, which I guess might be necessary for an audience unfamiliar with Islam. It doesn't feel much like the kind of explanation an actual Muslim woman would give when asked why she doesn't cover her hair and/or face, though. It also immediately gets used as an excuse to scare Banagher with an example of supposed fundamentalist Muslim beliefs (basically, 'if I had been from one of those groups, seeing my looks would mean you either have to marry me or be executed').

Sorry to keep going on asides, but I actually recently watched a youtube video that contrasted Fukui's use of Islam in Unicorn with Ohtagaki's use of Buddhism in Thunderbolt. Since I'm currently reading the Thunderbolt manga, I thought it was interesting.

It amused me a little how the essayist skirts around specifically calling Unicorn's portrayal offensive or bigoted, instead settling for calling it "cringe."

You get the picture, right? I'm sure I could keep dredging up more examples, but I'll move on to how the events play out.

The Shamblo attacks the city as planned. Mahdi is bloodthirsty and vengeful, Loni is troubled, and the brothers are just kind of there. Mahdi has the Shamblo deliberately blow up an unrelated hotel.

Riddhe is flying around, witnessing everyone exploding and having a nervous beakdown about it. Mahdi refuses to change course to reduce civilian casualties when Loni asks.

Banagher fights Zinnerman, launches in the Unicorn, and saves Riddhe from getting crumpled like an empty soda can. Riddhe starts carrying Banagher around so they can do sick aerial stunts.

Then Mahdi has the Shamblo attack "The Trade Center." Fuck off, Fukui. You hack.

Since Loni is hooked into the psycommu, she hears all the deaths as they happen. This is finally too much for her, and she pulls off the helmet and begs her father to stop. Enraged, Mahdi yells at Loni about her mother's death.

The exposition here feels very awkward. Mahdi just drops this story on the reader at the last minute while chastising Loni, who obviously already knew about it. This really didn't need to be treated like a reveal.

“We should have expressed our thoughts sufficiently. I learned that Allah has a merciful and understanding heart. if we continue to massacre, we’ll be defying God.” She climbed up the ladder beside the seat and approached the captain’s seat. “What are you doing? Get back to your seat.” Mahdi growled, but Loni ignored him as she approached. “There are women and children on the Federation streets too. Father, please show mercy…” “Shut up! Did you forget how your mother died!?” [...] “Your mother killed a Federation soldier in the midst of the chaos after the war. She killed a despicable soldier who intended to rape a Muslim female in a refugee camp. The jury was completely one-sided, your mother was sentenced to death, and I couldn’t do anything to save her. I could only let your mother die all just to protect the trust of the company, all just to protect the cursed inheritance as a “Descendant of Dubai”! I endured everything all for the sake of this moment. I’m going to use this “Shamblo” to wreck the parliament hall and prompt all the Muslims to rise up. Our family’s tragic wish will be fulfilled soon, and now even you want to betray me?” The tears rolled down his suddenly widened eyes, dampening his face. This isn’t father. It’s impossible for such a man to be my father. Loni thought, but felt that this might be the first time she was seeing her father’s true state, ...

Realizing she cannot change his mind, Loni pulls a gun on her father. However, he pulls out his own gun and shoots her instead. As she loses consciousness, she reaches out to Banagher with her mind.

The Shamblo's bits are no longer effective without Loni controlling them. Hearing Loni's dying voice telling him to take down the machine, Banagher destroys the Shamblo.

Loni's brothers start arguing with Mahdi after he shoots Loni, but that doesn't save them by leading to a change of heart. They die alongside him in the cockpit.

Who is Loni?

Obviously, Loni is a Lalah archetype. She's one of at least three slightly different Lalah allusions in these books, which is kind of a lot, but I do like that one of them is a man.

Both versions of Loni's death scene have references to Lalah's dialogue in First Gundam ("I finally got to meet you," "It's sad, isn't it?").

Her eyes in the novel are green, also like Lalah. Because of her eye colour, Banagher mentally compares her to Audrey, and also... to his mom. The joke writes itself.

Banagher has significantly more face-to-face interaction with Loni in the novel than the OVA. Because of this, his relationship to her is more personal, at least before they get into each other's heads.

Novel Loni is knowledgeable, patient, and fond of children. She tells Banagher she wants to have ten kids.

She's a nice girl, I guess. It's not really possible to divorce her portrayal as a character from the portrayal of her father, Islam, and Muslims generally. The logic is built into her. I much prefer the character the OVA gave us.

They didn't have to change her character in order to remove the references to Islam. They could have just as easily kept Mahdi as the antagonist while making the Muslims-Zeon swap. I do like what they did, though.

By taking her father's role while also still retaining some of her own, Loni becomes even more central to her arc. She gets to be the primary antagonist and the person that Banagher wants to save. I think it's cool.

Like I said before, I try to avoid getting too deep into spoilers for later novels, but Loni's death in the novel has a number of things in common with the death of another female character that happens later. They're a little too similar for me. I'm sure it's an intentional parallel, but there's not enough contrast for me to find it juicy... I just don't think the narrative actually needs two different female characters to heroically sacrifice themselves so a male character can feel sad about shooting them. Of the two, Loni was the better choice for a rewrite, since this arc needed one anyway.

She still dies, obviously, and Banagher is still sad. There's even still a Lalah callback-- but it's a distinctly different kind of tragedy than the one that happens later. Barring any unexpected future changes, I personally think it's an improvement.

Look! A major theme!

Loni's father is still a presence in the OVA, in much the same way Loni's grandparents were for Mahdi in the novel. This is a story about ghosts of the past.

Tying Loni's rampage in the anime to a runaway psycommu is an interesting difference, especially given she says "Father?" right before it goes haywire. There's almost an insinuation that the machine is possessed.

This works as a metaphor, but if Mahdi was the previous pilot it could theoretically be literal, in much the same way that Neo Zeon managed to get some kind of Essence of Char from the Sazabi's Psycho-Frame when they created Frontal. Mahdi also presumably still developed and built the Shamblo, whether he piloted it or not.

"That isn't her, she's being enslaved."

Loni does describe her father as being swallowed or consumed by the machine in the novel, and she also describes the Shamblo itself as a force "leading people down the wrong path". I definitely interpreted this as metaphorical, though. Loni was the only one with her brain actually hooked into the psycommu.

They did a good job emphasizing the weight of family history as a theme in the OVA. The hands that reach down and pull Banagher's psychic projection away from her face! Again, I love the potential implications.

It's possible there's supplemental information or interviews about this somewhere, but I kind of prefer not having specific lore explanations behind what's happening in these scenes. I like the ambiguity.

Another interesting detail about OVA Loni is the explicit statement of "there's nothing left for me" / "there's no place for me" as a reason why she cannot stop.

This isn't part of her character in the novel, nor Mahdi's, even if loss and being consumed by revenge obviously is. I really like that it adds another connection to Zinnerman and Flaste's dialogue about how they felt after Globe.

I can't stop thinking about how easily I could draw a compelling parallel between the OVA version of Loni and the novel version Riddhe. They simply do not exist in the same universe. They both only ever passingly overhear the less interesting version of each other-- assuming they even notice the other as an individual at all, rather than just an enemy machine.

It's sad, isn't it?

I really like this visual. The hand motif strikes again...

The novel ends with Riddhe and Banagher both knocked out by the Banshee. It also reveals that Marida is the pilot, since Banagher senses her presence. The OVA places its cliffhanger a little earlier, right after the initial reveal.

I'm excited to watch the next one. We've hit the point where I feel like I'm starting to lose my "advantage", so to speak, in terms of knowing what's coming. It's exciting! I enjoy watching these a lot. Even when I dislike a change, I still like thinking and writing about it.

Sorry for the sheer length of this beast, and a huge thank you to the handful of dedicated Unicorn fans following me who are always excited and encouraging. Knowing anyone out there gets something out of these makes my day, and I appreciate your thoughtful responses. ✌️

I'm so glad to be done with novel six. Holy shit.

#remibloggue #gundam #gundam unicorn

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canis-or-cannotis-lycaon · 1 year

Text

The Science of Getting Lost

TIMING: Early May LOCATION: The Mines PARTIES: Jasper (@eatdearth and Gael (@lithium-argon-wo-l-f SUMMARY: Just a normal, scientific investigation involving a geologist (Jasper) and a chemist (Gael). They definitely don’t get separated in the mines. CONTENT WARNINGS: Family Death (Brief mention)

Well, Gael managed to put his name on the list in time for this “expedition” team to make a trip over to the mines to do some investigatory research regarding the strange goings-on in and around the area. There was supposed to be a team of five, including himself and Mr. Langston. Samples were to be taken and what could be tested on the site would’ve been, with the rest of the results being a job for the labs back at the UMWR. …At least, that’s what he was expecting as he arrived at the scene of where everyone was supposed to meet up and he found that he was alone. He glanced around the area briefly, holding up a wrist to his nose as though that would stop the sulfuric stench from entering it. His other hand pulled up the information he’d saved to his phone, eyes quickly glancing to the clock in the upper right-hand corner. This was the right time, this was the right place… and it was also the first time Gael had been part of the expedition. Perhaps there was a common consensus that they ran fashionably late? Or worse: they canceled and no one bothered to let him know. He wondered if that was the case and, messenger back with equipment still hung carefully over his shoulder, he now checked his phone for an email he might’ve missed. He was so focused on trying to find that email that he didn’t realize that his head tilted sharply as he heard movement coming from behind him. ----

Jasper yawned as he wrapped his hands tightly around the straps of his massive backpack. He was making his way to their scheduled meeting place, once again alone, though he was unbothered. His teaching assistant, Yvonne Jung, the daughter and only child of his mentor who implicitly leveraged Jasper’s many owed favors to get his daughter the position, was not available today.

She shouldn’t even be available any day, to be honest, considering she wasn’t a fan of this field and was just being forced into the study by her controlling father. Typical Asian family dynamic. Though Jasper, who was half-Asian, wouldn’t know, considering his own spellcasting kin was murdered by his late uncle, unbeknownst to him.

What was ‘beknownst’ to him, aside from the fact that that wasn’t even a word to begin with, was that he was going to have to do all this again on his own. He had no faith the other members of the ‘expedition’ team would even show up, as they were all a bunch of lazy, disrespectful, uninterested, cool in an anti-authority kind of way, and definitely busy pseudo researchers that just wanted to get their name included on the credits should this whole gamble actually amount to anything, which no one except Jasper even had faith in. Or maybe there was someone else as bored and as socially un-busy as him. “Hello? Who are you?” ----

He wasn’t sure how long it was before Gael heard another human’s voice and he whipped around on the spot so quickly that the messenger bag swung to hit his other hip with flair. “Oh hi!” He replied, the relief that he wasn’t actually going to be alone in this himself evident in his tone. Before him stood a man, taller than him and with amazing facial hair. His dark eyes danced over the stranger as his hands messed the strap of his bag to adjust it back to his shoulder properly.

“I’m Gael Córdova, the chemistry professor,” He introduced, holding out his hand once they were done with the strap and taking a few confident steps towards the other man, who presumed was… well, one of the members of the awaited expedition. “I wasn’t sure if I was super early or late but I was starting to get worried that I’d been set up.” He scoffed. “Oh, er… If you aren’t with the university then sorry but– it’s still nice to see someone else here.” ----

When the stranger turned around, Jasper immediately recognized him. He’s seen him around the Chemistry Department of the University once or twice when he had to pay them a visit to remind his usual contact over there that he still needed help on something or another. These chemistry professors can be forgetful, probably because of work and stuff. At least what Jasper thought. If he wasn’t so oblivious, he’d realize his usual contact didn’t really like working with him. Probably all those rock-related dad jokes.

“Ah, yes, you’re from the Chem Dept,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if that shortcut of a term caught on with anyone else when it didn’t. Jasper took his hand and vigorously shook it with both of his, excited to work with someone new. He was a lonely man, and it was even lonelier down there, so this was a great deal for him. “Yeah, I’m just about to set up,” he heaved a sigh as he carefully placed his backpack on the floor. “Jasper, Jasper Langston, from the, d’oh, Geology Department. It’s just the two of us, I think. You good with that?” ----

Oh, it was Jasper from Geo. It seemed obvious now that Gael took a longer look at the man. The enthusiastic shake of his hand didn’t go by the professor unnoticed, though, and he offered a smile with a nod. “Honestly I’m just glad I’m not by myself again.” He remembered having gone up to the general area before, returning with nothing but a splitting headache and zero answers. “I don’t mean to make assumptions but at this point, I’m sort of guessing that maybe you and I are the two scientists who actually, y’know, want to see what’s going on around here.”

Gael removed a small, rolled up picnic blanket from a clip around his belt and he turned away from the geologist to open it up, sighing as he did so. “I don’t have, like, a professional tarp; I kind of figured that we’d have a team that came with supplies.” He admitted. “At least I have a cute little blanket so we can pretend that we’re professionals.” He set the blanket down and placed his messenger back on one of the corners. “I’ve been up here once but care to let me in on what this place is?” He glanced up at Jasper expectantly, his dark eyes curious. ----

“You and me both,” Jasper chuckled at that before taking out a handheld device that was much wider than a phone. He started pointing it at the walls, at the ceiling, at anything he could of the mines basically, but it just beeped casually without really any urgency. He turned to Gael with a shrug. “Yeah, maybe,” he heaved a sigh, clearly disheartened at that fact. “My teaching assistant just has something important to do today, but I can’t speak for our peers.”

Jasper could always count on Yvonne, his teaching assistant, so he always cut her some slack. For someone who wasn’t interested in this field, who’d rather be doing something else, she carried her weight, and sometimes even his as well. With the rest of their peers, well, he wasn’t popular enough to warrant some respect, so it was always like this for him. Still, the science was worth it, so who cares about all that social junk, right? Jasper does.

“We usually do, but as you can see, it’s just me at the moment. We’re actually just doing a quick rescan of the mines today, but I do have our usual equipment in a truck outside if you want to help me bring them in? Definitely a lot of weird stuff going on down here,” and as Jasper said that, his device suddenly died on him. “Hmm, fluff.” ----

Oh, they were going inside. Perhaps Gael should’ve, y’know, asked before starting to set anything up. Well, it’s not like he thought they were in danger of getting robbed or anything so he left his things where they were and he found himself looking at the device that Jasper was holding - a frequency scanner? Did it read mineral deposits in the rock?

Gael wished he had something like that that could read the air. He tried before, he could remember trying before but for some reason, all his samples returned corrupted or sometimes, not at all. It was almost as though something was sabotaging his results. Then again, that was an insane thought and Gael wasn’t insane (though the stench in the air didn’t help the budding headache he could feel in his temples again).

While he was ruminating in these brief thoughts, Jasper said some sort of soft curse and Gael glanced from the direction the geologist pointed the truck to be in back to his temporary companion. “Uh oh, your thing died?” He asked. “...Sorry, I didn’t answer your question. Yeah! Yeah, I can help bring the stuff in. How far in did you want to go?” He asked. “You got batteries for that in your pack? . . . What even is it?” He didn’t mean to sound like he was ignorant but curiosity often won out at the end of the day in his brain. ----

The device was, unfortunately, old as fudge. Jasper had gotten it as a hand me down from his mentor, Professor Jung, before the old man left for greener pastures. What were greener pastures for a geology professor? Jasper may never know. He doesn’t see himself following in his mentor’s footsteps. Well, with regard to retiring or leaving the university any time soon at least. Jasper needs the university. He needs the social experience more than anyone will ever know. It might be the only thing saving him from throwing himself down the mines full time.

“Yeah, well,” Jasper heaved a sigh, shaking his head. It was routine by now, the device breaking down. If Jasper actually paid any attention to the damned thing, he would’ve realized it mostly does that inside the mines. But no, Jasper had already zeroed in on the fact that it was aged, ancient, and might be due for replacement by a newer generation device. Right under his nose, really. “It does that a lot. Batteries are new, so it’s probably just its age catching up to it. Department really needs to invest in new stuff.”

Jasper tried to downplay his disappointment with a chuckle, but dead air followed that right after. He lost himself in thoughts of why the department rarely listens to him, rarely caters to their own needs, rarely invests in useful stuff for them as well. Do they hate him? Or do they just not care about the field in and of itself? “Anyway, yeah, I’ve got the drills, hammers, and bags in the truck. They’re in a hard shell case. You know how to use a drill, right?” ----

So there was an old machine that scanned the rocks that routinely broke down, a bunch of drills, hammers, and bags in a truck when there were two people to carry it around, and… a crew of people who just decided not to show up to an excursion.

Gael wasn’t going to say that this was a bummer but it was kind of a bummer.

Part of him seemed to deflate and Jasper’s none-too-subtle disappointment in trying to pass off the fact that they gave him old, outdated tech only helped in making him wonder if it would be less of a waste of time to just… try this another day. However, Gael wasn’t a quitter and he put his hands in his pockets, adjusting his position so that he could start moving wherever he was told to go. On the other hand, though… “Iiiii do not,” He replied with an unusual amount of confidence for essentially admitting that he didn’t know how to do something. “But I can carry stuff sometimes. I can be your muscle and I’ll leave the geology tech up to you,” He offered.

“Or we could… do this another time?” He suggested after a pause. “Or, like… if you’re familiar enough with the interior, you could just show me around at what you guys might’ve found so far.” He was spitballing at this point; while Gael had a deep well of patience for people, and he certainly felt sympathy for Jasper seemingly being the main one who was interested in actually trying to figure out what was going on around there, he had considerably less patience for situations he acknowledged were out of his control. The smell wasn’t helping at all. ----

“Ah,” Jasper stated plainly. He didn’t even expect anyone else to come today, so why would he expect the only guy who did show up would know how to use a drill? To be fair, to him, though, it wasn’t just a drill. Certainly not a normal drill ordinary people regularly used in their households. It was more of a compounded drill, a specialized one, that geologists and miners used outside, in places like this, not inside households. That would be too much. “It’s all right. Yeah, maybe just carry the stuff and…”

Jasper heaved another sigh. There were two of them. Just two of them. It would have been challenging with just him alone but another person didn’t make much of a difference. Then again, him and Yvonne just did fine on their own sometimes, though carrying around heavy equipment, into and out of the mines, wasn’t something they did on their own. Maybe this guy was right. He stared at Gael with a raised eyebrow. Should he be calling him sir or something? Jasper should really socialize with the Chem Department, even though the last time he tried, he got brushed off by that cutie in a lab coat. What was her name again? Something that started with a letter A?

“Yeah, sure,” Jasper gave him a nod before leading him further in. The tunnels, he was very familiar with. At least the ones closer to the surface, the ones that didn’t have those miners that chased him off. Corporations are always a dick, he realized at a young age, which was why he supported local businesses instead of hoity-toity franchises. Screw Starbucks. This town has Sharma Tea and Bread Cemetery and a million other coffee places that taste better. “We should be close around that bend. Careful not to stray far from me, though. Unless you’ve been here before?” ----

To Gael’s relief and after what seemed like a bit of internal debate with Jasper, the latter agreed to his suggestion to give him a tour. The chemistry professor gave a small nod to the other man before starting to follow him in where they were abruptly greeted with darkness, even with the lights that offered shallow light… and the smell. The air was thick in the mouth of the mine entrance and only seemed to get thicker as they progressed and Gael felt his brow knit, placing a hand to his nose in as subtle a gesture as he could.

“Boy, it’s… pungent down here,” He remarked, trying to be light in his delivery but it was feathered with a subtle urge to gag. He kept his keen eyes on the geology professor, however, and when asked if he was familiar, Gael shook his head. “Unfortunately not. I moved here a few months ago but I was still getting my bearings.” Though that seemed like a flitting thought in his head as he grunted under his breath. Stick close to Jasper, don’t stray too far. Don’t listen to the sudden urge to scratch at your brain, digging into it and pulling out the feeling of sinking your teeth into a stranger’s arm.

Not Jasper’s arm. No one’s arm, what was he talking about? He opened his eyes, not realizing that he’d closed them and though something made it so that he could see better than complete blindness, he somehow lost sight of the geologist. “...Jasper?” He asked dumbly. ----

Jasper nodded fervently as he led Gael deeper and deeper into the mines. Or at least to where they had made their last progress. The geologist had gone much deeper than the rest of their team, though he would never advise the same to anyone else. Something about the mines, some things inside the mines, were not friendly. Jasper may not have encountered much of those unfriendly things, but just going off the vibes, the mines were not a place you wanted to hurl yourself into with just a phone. The flashlight’s useful, for a bit, but eventually, you’ll lose your signal. Or worse.

“Yes, well, there are certain chemical reactions that could very well be responsible for those smells,” Jasper explained in his professor’s voice, using a bunch of words that held no deep meaning for him, all while he continued to stare straight forward, never looking back behind him. Why would he? He knew the mines like the back of his hand. At least the parts where their team had explored. He knew where they were supposed to go. The other guy was also a professor, so he was also smart. That meant he would follow his advice and not stray far from him. He would not get lost. “...so rest assured, we’re pretty safe down here.”

Jasper then started talking about how the mines were a geological marvel, how certain things followed the rules that they were all accustomed to, the rules of the earth that they’ve studied over the years, the only rules that they’ve ever known, and how other things did not. There was enthusiasm in his voice, the same enthusiasm he’d have when talking about the Fast and the Furious franchise, the same enthusiasm a Marvel ‘fan’ would have when talking about the Disney Plus shows (that wasn’t She-Hulk twerking-related, even though if Deadpool did that, they’d all figuratively bust a nut, as his rival and student Jeremy would often say; maybe even literally, who knows?)

But that enthusiasm was soon replaced with concern when Jasper looked behind him, his wide smile turning into a frown, eyes widening into confusion and horror, and found the chemistry professor was nowhere to be found. “Gael? Professor Cordova?” Oh, dear. Not again. ----

“Professor Langston?” Gael’s voice rang out and he only called every once in awhile, falling silent and trying desperately to hear any indication of where he was in relation to the geologist; sound normally carried so why did he feel like he was being smothered in deafening quiet? While normally he would’ve stayed rational and calm - indeed, when it wasn’t around ‘those instances’, he held value in his ability to rationalize things calmly and logically - he was having immense difficulties as he wandered in the winding tunnels of the mine. Where he was now had no more light, and not even his vision ‘gifted’ to him by his brain injury could decipher details anymore.

And the stench.

Maybe… This was Jasper’s idea of a joke. Maybe he was fed up with not being taken seriously by the board or their team so he decided to punch down to Gael, the one newer and less experienced than he was. The chemist had no idea where he was going, he didn’t know his way around, he didn’t know how to escape, he didn’t know anything. He didn’t even know that as he walked, craning his neck to hear and calling for the geology professor, the foul odor that permeated the rock and dirt inside the dark tunnels crawled around inside him, fuelling this unjustified rage, dropping him to his knees and starting to shred through his clothes.

Skin covered itself in fur, gasps of pain turned into twisted snarling, teeth fell out. Claws. A tail. Ears. Snout. Not quite wolf but not quite man. Neither. Both. Pain. Exhaling a hot breath through long canines, Gael widened his amber eyes and let out a small, but still pitched howl. THAT echoed through the caves. ----

Jasper was a mood, swinging between indifference and professional concern. On one hand, Professor Cordova was a grown man. He could find his way out of the mines…right? Sure, Jasper’s already lost one person to the mines, but that was years ago, and she was just a kid. He was, too. Professor Cordova was a different story. He was an adult. Surely, someone with that big brain could escape the tunnels with relative ease. Right?

On the other? The mines have their fair share of missing persons. Jasper had gathered as much from his own unprofessional investigation, haphazard interviews of miners he had conducted without their knowledge and sometimes using a fake name, nothing of which could ever hold up in court with zero physical evidence, just some drunken blue collar worker rambling about the Steves and Joes that were never seen again, ramblings that an expensive team of attorneys can so easily squish.

Jasper heaved a sigh, shaking his head. Professor Cordova wasn’t a Steve or a Joe, but if he goes missing, it’s Jasper’s ass on the line when he returns to the university. Unless of course no one knew Professor Cordova’s schedule? Maybe he had a drinking habit? Maybe Jasper can just feign ignorance and pin his possible disappearance on— “What the fuck was that?” Jasper gulped, his hand pressed hard on the side of the mines. He had never heard anything like it before, certainly not in there. As he pressed the rest of his body against the cold hard rocky surface of the closest wall, he felt his heart race fast. Faster than it had ever in recent memory. “Shit. What if it— No! Professor Cordova!”

Against his smarter instincts, Jasper ran to where he had heard the howl, fearing that his companion was the cause of all that howling. A stray wolf having jumped a chemistry professor? It would be the first time he’d witness such a thing! Unbeknownst to him, he would be witnessing a different thing for the first time. ---- Still in the dark but now equipped with more proficient tools, Gael held his head up and attempted to sniff the air, feeling the fur on his hackles stand on end as all he seemed to smell was the disgusting rot. A low growl rumbling at the bottom of his throat, he reached up and felt the ceiling close to his head and while he was content to walk on his hind legs, he needed to be more careful in these narrow tunnels. He dropped to all fours quietly and he started stalking forward when he suddenly stopped, turning his head sharply as he heard a noise coming from a different direction. He wasn’t alone in these dark tunnels. Not even sure why HE was where he was, Gael decided to go in the direction of the new noise but didn’t have to travel far when he stopped short, hearing rapidly-approaching footfalls and his bright amber eyes fell upon a silhouette. A human. Unable to contain his excitement, his tail started wagging wildly and he bared his teeth, his lips seeming to form a wide, doglike smile as a noise that sounded like an unholy mixture of a human laugh and a yelp ripped from his throat.

From the corner of his eye, Jasper caught a glimpse of a vague form that stood like a human would. He immediately thought it was Gael, which he wasn’t exactly wrong about. Just not the Gael he knew, apparently, though it wouldn’t be apparent until he was close enough to realize what creature truly waited for him. ----

“Ah, there you are,” Jasper shook his head, still oblivious to the horrifying truth as he made his way toward its actual form, still some steps from actually laying eyes on its shadow’s owner. “Didn’t I tell you to stay close, Professor… Cordova?”

And there it was. The stark realization that Professor Cordova was not where Jasper thought he was. His immediate thought, now that he was staring at the abomination with wide, terrified eyes, was that Gael was somewhere else, somewhere safer than where the geology professor stood. As the creature glared at him, Jasper gulped. What the actual fuck was it even? A dog? A wolf? A hellhound? Probably that last one since the fucking mines must be connected to hell or some shit.

“Nope,” Jasper squealed before turning around, running away from the predator as it half-laughed and half-howled at him. At least he thought that was a laugh and a howl. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!”

One minute, the shadow was there and the next it was gone but Gael knew better. He could sense it, give it some time to run - the wolf enjoyed the chase, proud of himself for being able to catch things like birds and squirrels. They ran, tried to fly. This was similar yet different. He lowered himself onto all fours and rather lazily trotted after the shadow, trying to get more of a scent even though it was difficult with the stench of something else permeating the area, seeping through the walls.

The wolf didn’t actually start pursuing the shadow until he turned the corner where his amber eyes saw something illuminated faintly in the murk of the dark. It seemed to be… light dancing on the shadow. Confusing as it was since there didn’t seem to be any light for it to bounce off of, the wolf dropped to a creep, his body coiling with potential energy before he sprang forward into a bound. He easily caught up to the figure with a loud growl.

With a forward-reaching leap, his arms out in front of him, the wolf’s beetle-black claws snagged on something and the two of them were sent crashing to the ground. Wasting no time, the wolf snapped his jaws, catching what he perceived to be skin between his long canines and he proceeded to shake his head, pulling at it with everything he had like a dog playing tug of war with a toy. ----

Jasper ran as fast as he could, though that wasn’t saying much, considering he was no athlete. As he huffed and he puffed his way away from the monstrous wolf-like creature that was most definitely going to eat him, he wondered how the hell could it have gotten inside the mines. He’d been going there on his own, sometimes even with company, and he’d never come across such a thing. Was it lost? Did someone, or something, leave it there? Or was this whole thing connected to the weird happenings all over town?

He made one single mistake of looking back, trying to see if he was clear, if by some miracle his pursuer decided he wasn’t worth the jog, but the next thing Jasper knew, he was down on the ground, wincing in pain as his body collided with the hard ground of the tunnel. “Fuck…me,” he groaned, as he heard a faint ringing in his ear. “This is like that car thing all over again…except no pretty girls…” It took him a few seconds, wasted time he didn’t really afford, before he realized the predator was inches from his flesh, toying with his recently acquired hoodie, a gift for himself by himself just because he was feeling it, that had the word ‘SNACC’ emblazoned in unnecessarily huge font smack-dab in the middle of it. How appropriate.

Jasper grimaced as he tried to delicately free himself from semi-captivity. The creature did not seem to be sinking its teeth into his flesh with rabid urgency. Instead, it seemed to be under the mistaken impression that the hoodie was part of his flesh. He wasn’t quite sure if it was a race thing, which his non-concussed brain wouldn’t have even thought of, but he struggled and fought as discreetly as he could until finally, by some miracle or divine intervention, he managed to set himself free.

Thud!

Jasper fell on the ground on all fours. He took a moment to see if the predator realized what had happened but he dared not look back. Not again. Not this time. That fucked him over the first time. “Ah, fuck it,” he just bolted out of there, huffing and puffing his way away from the big bad wolf thing. “If I survive this, I’m going to work on my cardio…” ----

His fangs were still embedded in the flesh, tasteless though it was and in a mighty motion, Gael threw his head back, stripping the layer from clean off his prey.

Literally. He wasn’t expecting it to come apart so easily and he fell backwards with a yelp, the skin he pulled off landing gently on top of him for a moment as he began flailing wildly as the thing he wanted so badly was suddenly wrapping around him. This wasn’t in the plan, he didn’t know what was going on all of a sudden. He flopped onto his stomach, using a clawed hand to pull the skin from where it’d covered part of his back. The sound of fabric ripping could be heard down the dark hall by the time the wolf realized that what he’d gotten caught in his jaws was not, in fact, anything tasty or worth his time, he growled and abruptly abandoned the not-skin after sticking his nose into it. No blood, no flesh, no meat.

Worthless.

To make matters worse, the wolf turned his gaze up and forwards but he saw nothing in front of him, nothing but what seemed to be an infinite dark tunnel. He looked behind him and was met with the same vision. He lifted his nose and tried to catch a scent but all he got was that infernal stench, the one that riled him up and caused him to snarl to himself as he lost his prey. With a huff, he started to whine quietly, feeling pain in his stomach that seemed to start there and stretched itself to his extremities. His tail twitched, his hind legs cracked as he moved them and as he pinned his ears, feeling pain starting to wash over him like a rising tide, he snatched up the not-skin and buried his nose in it to catch a scent.

He lost the prey but maybe the prey knew the way out. And the wolf would be sure to find it before he went back to sleep.

#wickedswriting #writing: the science of getting lost #writing with: Jasper #family death tw #[mentioned]

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kingbryancroidragon · 29 days

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Eochaid mac Enna in the Days of Menelaus Chapter One: The Dream

I have no idea why I am sharing this. Maybe people will like it, but I was thinking something like "Prince Valiant, but with the Matter of Troy instead of the Matter of Britain", but I still want to do my own thing so it isn't an exact transplant. Some liberties may have been taken, I admit.

It had been three years since the Expulsion of the Children of Goidel Glas from Kemet by the Queen Regent Twosret. While the Tribe of Israel may have been wiped out by Merneptah, Ramesses the Great’s noble son, and the future may have belonged to the Gaels, they were a people in exile dwelling in Scythia, the birthplace of Nel, the Scythian prince who married Scota, Daughter of Horemheb, and became father of Goidel Glas.

Day had come and Eochaid mac Enna sat before a plain, watching the horses as they grazed. He was ruddy skinned with short, curly red hair and mismatched eyes, the left frosty blue and the right green, the latter having a tendency to shine like that of a cat. He was fifteen years of age and stood at a height of five feet and five inches, only an inch shorter than Merneptah had been. He was lean and hungry in appearance, his jaw square, his nose large, hooked and pink tipped, his cheekbones sharp and the rest of his head like an egg in shape. His eyelids were close-fitting, causing his mismatched eyes to appear small and triangular. He was of common appearance, not particularly good-looking. His attire was that of the Scythians and so he wore trousers, a tunic, a long-sleeved jacket and boots.

As Eochaid sat, staring at the horses, he thought of the dream he had the night prior. In that dream, he had heard a woman’s voice say: “Choose me and I shall give you the most beautiful woman in all the world as your wife.”

A pleasant voice belonging to a man replied: “If such a woman exists, I will gladly abandon my wife Oenone and our son Corythus for her! What is her name?”

Out of the darkness a city appeared, a city as splendid as the Pella of Alexandros III, the Rome of Julius Caesar, the Camelot of Arthur, the Aachen of Charles, the Winchester of Aethelstan and the London of Richard Coeur-de-Lion would be, for this city came before all of them. A good, strong voice pronounced: “Our worthy king Menelaus, stepson-in-law of Tyndareus, and his beautiful queen Helena, stepdaughter of Tyndareus.”

Out of a palace stepped the royal couple. The king was a man of fifty-one, of moderate stature, auburn-hair greying and handsome. The queen was twenty-three, beautiful, brown-haired with legs which Dares Phrygius would call the best, a mouth that he would call the cutest and a beauty mark between her eyebrows. With the royal couple was a girl of six years and a boy of two. Their children no doubt.

Again, Eochaid heard the voice of the evil-hearted man who had been promised Helena. “Helena of Lacedaemon…” he said. “I shall steal you away and make you Helena of Troy!”

Then the scene changed. In a bay with what must have been a thousand ships and a gruff voice uttered: “Though my beloved Helena and our son Nicostratus have been stolen away by Paris and the Trojans, I will not standby idly. I call upon all who will join me in rescuing her. The suitors that she turned down, the children of the Argonauts and more. For many this will be their destiny.”

And there stood Eochaid, clad in the armour of Achaea, so different from where he was now, looking upon a sea of grass where horses grazed. It was his destiny, he knew it. He had to tell his father Enna of his dream, his destiny!

Thus, did Eochaid run to the home where he and his father lived, only to find a great crowd around it. Enna had joined Eochaid’s mother in death’s embrace.

#menelaus #helen of sparta #nicostratus #paris of troy #eochaid mac enna

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remisumarni · 1 year

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cindy kimberly + she/her + cis woman – have you seen remi sumarni around los angeles? the twenty five year old is usually jamming to everything i wanted by billie eilish. word around the city is that they’re articulate, yet, they can also be vindictive, but you didn’t hear that from me. they’re currently a personal assistant and are typically seen walking the streets of los angeles with her phone glued to her hands. when i think of them, i think of a whispered conversation somewhere in the library stacks, oil paints surrounding a blank canvas and a vase of lilies in a dimly lit room. let’s hope the city treats them good!

if you were to ask remi she'd tell you that she is a street kid through and through but it didn't start that way. she had a pretty normal childhood, her parents were college sweethearts that got married after graduation and had their one and only child that they named amelia.

around age fourteen her father's mental health started declining rapidly culminating in a melt down that left him in a psych ward for over a year. during this year her mother met a man who dragged her into a fundamentalist christian cult. remi was only fourteen years old but it was clear to her that she was on her own.

remi is the name of a kid that she met while in foster care that taught her everything she knows about surviving in the system including how to pickpocket. when she got arrested remi, more or less, assumed her identity.

( wc alert ! ) she's a pick pocket and a good one at that, y/m is the first person to catch onto what she was doing because they tracked her down after she stole something important to them. instead of turning her into the police they became friends & frequently scheme together.

she used the money that she got from stealing to put herself through art school but after graduating she struggled to make any real money off her art so she turned back to what she knew best to make money, stealing.

( wc alert ! ) she met her boss by chance. y/m has a sparkling image, think america's sweetheart vibes, but they're also kind of a mess behind the scenes and remi is honestly the only thing keeping their image together. in my head their relationship is almost sibling like. like despite the fact that remi set a million and one alarms on their phone she's always at their house making sure that they're getting to where they need to be on time.

remi is loosely based on : gael martinez ( good trouble ) / emily ( the devil wears prada ) / jess barrett ( focus ) / fallon carrington ( dynasty )

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blitheringmcgonagall · 3 years

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My Gallant Lad - Part IV

So I got a wonderful anon telling me that this is their favourite Lily Rescues James fic, it’s part of my finished canon marauders fic We Can Be Heroes. But, because it works as a stand alone story, I posted it here in four parts. I hope you enjoy it! Set during the first wizarding war, Lily is very BAMF (but tbh so is James)

TW: angsty and violence

Part I here: After their worst row ever, Lily and James get captured by Voldemort...

Part II here: James tries to save Lily

Part III here: Lily tries to save James

PART IV

(PS this is not pro- Snape at all, quite the opposite, for this to make sense you’ll have to read the other parts, lol!)

Mulciber swallowed.

“Now help me lift Potter, and for fuck’s sake be careful, he’s perilously close to death as it is!” Snape said.

He was so angry his body was shaking in agitation.

Mulciber lifted James’ body as though it were made of glass.

***

“I’ll take it from here,” Snape ordered.

They were standing underneath the main door of the castle, which led into the courtyard.

“I thought we were bringing Potter and his vile mudblood to the Dark Lord?” Mulciber said, frowning suspiciously.

“Change of plan, Mulciber,” Snape said matter-of-factly. “I want to try and get Evans to talk, that way if Potter snuffs it, we won’t risk being beheaded by him.”

“What do you mean?” Mulciber looked at him in bewilderment. “If you attack Evans and manage to injure her also, we’re doubly fucked!”

“I won’t fuck it up, unlike you dithering idiots I actually know what I’m doing!” Snape says angrily.

Mulciber stared hard at him.

“Are you sure you’re Snape?” he said, narrowing his eyes and reaching for his wand. “You’re acting strangely and I-“

“He’s Snape all right, but under the Imperius Curse,” Lily interjected. “Expelliarmus!”

Mulciber’s wand flew into Lily’s outstretched hand.

“You?” Mulciber seethed. “How in Morgana’s hell did you manage to Imperio him? Last I heard you were wailing painfully awful songs from your cell, giving us all a headache! I thought you’d given up!”

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, for all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad,” Lily shrugged. “You just hadn’t experienced the merry part yet!”

“You’re not a man,” Mulciber sneered.

“Ha!” Lily’s face broke into a harsh smile. “What Chesterton didn’t say about Irish women is that when they’re angry, all their wars are won!”

Mulciber stared at her sullenly.

“Not my fault that you consistently underestimate me, Mulciber!” Lily shot back. “You think you’d have learnt by now!”

Mulciber’s face looked like curdled milk.

“Too late,” Lily said. “Obliviate!”

Mulciber’s expression changed slowly to one of utter confusion as he looked between Lily, James and Snape. He hadn’t even seen the spell hit him.

“What happened to him?” he said, scratching behind his ear and staring at James’ body. “Where’s your Head Girl badge? Your uniform?”

“Quidditch injury,” Lily said flatly. “Vicious Slytherin tactics. One hundred points from your House, now back to your common room before I have you expelled!”

“Whaat?” Mulciber said, looking utterly bewildered.

“I’m counting till ten. Ten… nine… eight…” Lily said.

Mulciber stumbled and turned immediately, muttering incoherent protests.

“Not bad, Lily Evans,” Snape whispered with a vicious grin. “Not bad at all.”

***

“Outside! Now!” Snape ordered.

Lily Evans remained silent as she walked outside at a steady pace, Snape following her and dragging James Potter’s body along the ancient flagstones.

“Now, it seems that nothing will persuade Dumbledore’s man to reveal what has happened to the Dark Lord’s precious treasure, a book Dumbledore’s men stole! Potter nearly died refusing to tell us. I’m ordering you to tell me, or I’ll make you kill your own husband!” he called out.

“No, I won’t tell you anything,” Lily said with effort.

“Wow! That’s dope!” Villiers whispered loudly to Wilkes.

The two men were sitting on the battlements having a smoke and peering down with interest at the scene unfolding below them.

“Look what Snape is up to! I never thought he was into that shit!” Wilkes replied. “He usually lets us handle that kind of stuff, says it’s boring!”

They looked at each other and grinned.

“Massive!” Villiers giggled, bumping fists with Wilkes.

Snape picked up his wand.

“Last chance, Miss. Evans,” he said, dragging James closer to the middle of the courtyard.

He was holding two other wands in his hand.

“What is going on here?”

Snape whirled around.

Voldemort was standing at the castle gate, and with him Evan Rosier. Voldemort’s wand was pointed at him.

“I am quite simply trying to establish the whereabouts of your missing book, my Lord,” Snape said. “I thought this might work.”

“Rosier here tells me you have been acting exceedingly strange,” Voldemort’s voice was icy. “He thinks you may be under the Imperius Curse.”

“Rosier is neither observant nor intelligent, my Lord,” Snape said stiffly.

“Be that as it may, Severus, you are not yourself, you would not usually dare speak to me with this much courage,” Voldemort replied, stepping forwards.

“My Lord?” Severus replied.

“Let us see what happens, shall we?” Voldemort said, whirling around at the last minute and pointing his wand at Lily.

“Stupefy!” Voldemort said with a lazy swish of his wand.

Lily Evans crumpled to the ground. Snape stood motionless, as though unsure what to do.

“Ah, the spell fades, I see. I had hoped you would not be so easily overcome by it. You disappoint me, Severus, I thought you were stronger than that. I thought you knew the mudblood well enough to watch out for any tricks she might play? Or were you too enticed by her beauty to focus on doing your job properly?” Voldemort spat out. “You shall pay for this mistake! And the object of your affections will most definitely pay.”

“I’m afraid I underestimated the mudblood,” Snape said, with a condescending smirk at the Dark Lord. “I don’t know her as well as I thought I did. She should perhaps have been sorted into Slytherin. It appears that Lily Evans is a devious little bitch!”

Startling emerald eyes glared at Voldemort from Snape’s face. As the wheels in Voldemort’s mind whirled, Snape removed a leather bracelet from his wrist and tapped it, revealing a large glittering brass key.

“Póg mo thóin, Riddle!” he said, flicking the V at Voldemort (who looked momentarily stunned) as he grabbed hold of James’ arm and apparated into thin air.

“I don’t get it,” Rosier said, looking at Voldemort and rubbing his forehead as though in pain. “Was that Snape? No, hang on.. what was..?”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” roared Voldemort, raising his head as his blood-curdling screams carried over the courtyard and into the surrounding forest.

He kicked out viciously at Rosier’s leg sending him hopping around in circles howling with pain. A family of carrion crows, disturbed by the commotion, flapped and squawked upwards from the turrets and battlements.

“Which one of you is the imbecile who allowed Lily Evans to escape?” he screamed at Rosier. “Why did none of you stop her?”

Villiers and Wilkes ducked down behind the walls of the battlements, grimacing.

A splash of white bird dropping landed on Voldemort’s nose. Rosier stared at him.

“You have some…” he said, pointing to Voldemort’s face. “Just there?”

Voldemort looked ready to kill him.

“If you don’t permanently dispose of this group of crows by Salazar’s soul, I will feed you to them myself!” he shouted wildly, waving his wand at Rosier, and rubbing his face furiously with the back of his sleeve.

“A murder of crows, not a group, but whatever,” Rosier muttered to himself, looking peeved, as he aimed Avada Kedavras at the screeching birds.

Voldemort walked over to the body of Lily Evans and stared at the darkening hair and sallower skin, Snape’s eyes looking up at him.

“Legilimens!” he intoned.

The memory was tampered with, powerfully, so that he was unable to see some of the earlier incidents, but he could see the conversation between “Snape” and Avery, Fuck Voldemort, I hate that bastard! Avery running off to hide from him. Seething with rage, he grabbed Rosier’s arm and touched his dark mark.

He watched as all his followers apparated around him, all except Snape who lay half-stunned on the ground, and Hugo Avery.

“Find Avery, bring him to me, now, or you all die!” he hissed, the red veins in his sclera protruding menacingly. “Nooooowwwww!!!!”

***

“I don’t know what happened,” Frank said, his croaky voice difficult to understand in between coughing fits.

“He needs to come with me to the Infirmatory,” Poppy interrupted, looking at Dumbledore and pointing towards the door.

Frank continued coughing and shook his head forcefully.

“We were ambushed… they were waiting for us… they wanted to get Black and Lupin,” he wheezed. “They got Lily and James… I wanted to create a diversion but before I could move, one of them released noxious fumes, no doubt to catch any other Order members, I was knocked out cold… I fell backwards and the thicket hid me from sight… woke up freezing cold a short while ago… I couldn’t find any trace of them whatsoever. I only got back just as Lily apparated here with James, he looks bad.”

The ancient double door burst open as he spoke, and Sirius Black stormed inside, his black jeans soaking wet, his leather jacket still in his hands, closely followed by a haggard-looking Remus Lupin.

“We came as soon as we got your owl. Where are they?” he roared, going straight up to Frank and grabbing hold of his collar urgently. “Where the fuck are they? Tell me!”

Remus found himself unable to utter a single word.

***

The door of the Infirmary flew open, Sirius breathless as though he had just sprinted up five flights of stairs (which he had). He looked at Lily and seeing the pain and fear in her eyes, he forced himself to look at James lying unconscious in the bed behind her - it didn’t look like his brother, the bruised and battered body covered in what he immediately recognised as myriad curses, his usually tanned skin a deathly pale colour. He looked already dead. He looked back at Lily, the darkness under her eyes, her quivering lips.

“Lily,” he tried to say her name but no words came out, caught in his throat.

“I know, sweetie,” Lily’s voice a hoarse whisper.

Then they flung their arms around each other, gripping on for dear life. Sirius felt her chest heave and held her even closer as her quiet sobs filled the silent room, shattering his heart.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered back, his breath still caught inside his chest, trapped.

What could he say, hearing her heartbroken sounds?

“We won’t... we shan’t let him die,” he managed to say eventually, shutting his eyes tightly to stop himself breaking down. He moved to take both her hands in his own, looking down at her with tears in his eyes.

He didn’t even know was he trying to comfort her or was he trying to comfort himself.

“I… I used an Unforgivable, Sirius,” Lily said eventually, keeping her head down.

“I would have sprained my wrist throwing Unforgivables at the bastards!” Sirius said. “I wish I could have done it for you.”

He had badness in him already, let him hold it for all of them.

It should have been him. He should have been there instead of James, instead of Lily.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Lily’s voice shook. “I did it to save James… it felt wrong, Sirius, it is wrong and disgusting, but I know I’d do it again to save him. Am I a bad person, Sirius? I.. I saw what they did to him, I wanted them all dead… I thought about it... I wanted to. I don’t want to become like them, Sirius, but I wanted to kill them, so badly!”

“Lily, you didn’t kill them. You could have tried to, but you didn’t. You saved James. Merlin, you saved my brother, the only brother I have left, I can never thank you enough,” Sirius’ voice broke.

He wondered what he would have done in her place.

“It was Snape, he wanted to save me, but I had to find James, I couldn’t… he hurt James, I hate him for it,” Lily said desperately, squeezing Sirius’ arms.

“Fuck that creepy bastard!” Sirius said.

“What if Voldemort kills him? What if he dies? It will be my fault!” Lily whispered. “I hate him so much, but I don’t want to get him killed. I wouldn’t care if he died in battle, not now, not after everything he’s done to James! But being tortured and killed for trying to save me? I don’t want that, am I mad?”

“You had to,“ Sirius said, gripping her tightly. “You had to try to save James. You couldn’t leave with Snape, you know that would have been wrong! You are not to blame for anything Voldemort does!”

“I need James too, Sirius, he doesn’t see that, he thought I could manage without him, he’s so stupid, such a stupid, darling, beautiful man,” Lily stopped, her hand over her mouth.

“He can’t die, Poppy won’t let him die,” Sirius whispered back.

Lily nodded, still crying. He saw her sway and grabbed hold of her shoulders.

“Merlin Lily,” he said anxiously. “Sit down immediately! Are you alright? Are you hurt? Do you need Poppy? Will I get-“

“ No, please, Sirius, I didn’t get hurt, James-“ she stopped, unable to continue, and bringing her hand up to her mouth again.

He didn’t think he could handle hearing what had happened.

“Hush, Lily, you’re both safe now,” he heard himself say.

“He... I couldn’t... I tried...” she said. She closed her eyes and swayed again, sitting down suddenly and placing her head between her knees.

“I need some water, and something to eat,” she said, sounding suddenly anxious as her almond shaped clear eyes searched Sirius’ for reassurance.

“I... Merlin, yes of course, Darling, let me get that for you!” Sirius said, relief blossoming at some small task he could do to help. “Do you want a firewhisky instead?”

“No! I can’t drink now I’m ... I’m a bit dehydrated Sirius, I better stick to the water,” Lily said, placing her hand over her lower abdomen in a protective gesture.

“Yes of course,” Sirius said feverishly, throwing his leather jacket on.

“I’ll get it,” Dearborn was standing in the doorway looking at Lily uncomfortably.

“Lily, I know you already had a debriefing with Professor Dumbledore, but he was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering a few more-“ he continued.

“No!”

Both Lily and Sirius spoke at once.

“Not now, my husband needs me here, Dumbledore can wait,” Lily said, staring at Dearborn with a hostile expression as she swiped at her red eyes furiously.

“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Sirius growled.

Dearborn nodded, recognising defeat.

“You get some food and water for Lily, Caradoc, I’ll tell Dumbledore,” Remus said. Remus stood quietly behind Dearborn, a grim look, no obvious emotions displayed on his tired face.

“Righto,” Dearborn nodded reluctantly.

“Hurry up,” Remus ordered. “We don’t want Poppy to end up with another patient.”

“Righto,” Dearborn said, looking relieved to have an excuse to leave.

*** “You wanted to speak with me, Mr. Lupin?” Dumbledore said, gesturing vaguely towards the chair in front of him.

Remus sat down. The silence made him nervous.

“You feel guilty for swapping your week on call with the Potters. You want to make sure that your friends are protected from danger as much as possible from now on?”

Remus felt his cheeks flush. He nodded, feeling even worse.

“Good,” Dumbledore said. “I can see why you’d think that way.”

Remus swallowed. Dumbledore blamed him too? He wanted to crawl under the floorboards never to re-emerge.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, looking down, unable to meet the Professor’s gaze. “I should have stayed…”

“That’s quite alright, Remus, these things happen, and we have to learn from them,” Dumbledore said.

Remus felt himself slide further down the chair. He wanted to cry. It reminded him of The Prank at the end of Fifth Year. It should have been him. He should have insisted Sirius go with someone else. He felt personally responsible for what had happened, and if James died because of him… if James died…

“What can I do, Sir?” Remus whispered hoarsely. “Tell me there is something I can do to help!”

He looked up and caught Dumbledore looking at him keenly, with an astute gaze.

“Of course there is something you can do to help, Remus,” Dumbledore said, steepling his hands together. “It will be dangerous though, the most dangerous mission I have ever given any member of the Order.”

Remus nodded dumbly.

“It is also top secret. You must not discuss this information with a single soul,” Dumbledore said, his blue eyes assessing Remus coolly. “Not the Marauders, not Lily Potter, especially not Sirius Black. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir,” Remus said, sitting up straighter. “You can trust me.”

“I hope so, Remus,” Dumbledore said. “Most people wouldn’t.”

Remus froze, taken aback.

“I…” he stuttered.

“Luckily for you, I am not most people, Mr. Lupin,” Dumbledore smiled pleasantly. “Lemon sherbet?”

Somewhere in the back of Remus’ mind the words you bastard and what the fuck presented themselves as appropriate responses.

He declined politely.

“I have a singularly important and quite unusual mission, and it seems to me that you are the perfect candidate to volunteer for it,” Dumbledore said, sucking loudly on the muggle sweet and leaning back into his chair.

Somehow the wizard’s eyes seemed beadier in this light. Remus waited.

“I will of course understand if you turn down this opportunity, Remus, that you may be too frightened to go,” Dumbledore said. “Other Order members may be more-“

Remus’ jaw tightened. The words you bastard and what the fuck once more presented themselves as appropriate responses.

“Other Order members have no idea how little I fear most things,” Remus said, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, of course, Remus, I am well aware that compared to most-“ Dumbledore said, with a placating raise of his palms.

“What mission?” Remus asked.

“A mission to infiltrate Fenrir Greyback’s werewolf pack. I am aware you have already made his acquaintance,” Dumbledore said. “To see if they can be persuaded to abandon their leader and join our side in the war. And to spy on them, at any rate.”

Remus felt a cold shiver of dread run down his spine. His old Headmaster couldn’t be serious, surely. That was a hopeless mission, a pointless waste of life, a …

Greyback…

An ear-splitting scream of terror, his own. Rabid eyes. Massive yellow canines lunging towards him, saliva dripping off them. Laughter and howling.

“Tell your Daddy I said hello!”

A tearing sensation as huge teeth sank into his hip. Another ear-splitting scream, this time of pain…

He felt his hands tremble and gripped the edges of the armchair in agitation.

“If you’d rather not, I am sure I can persuade another member of the Order to pretend to be a werewolf. With some clever Transfiguration spells, which many of our members are particularly gifted at, especially your own friends-“ Dumbledore said.

“No!” Remus said, standing up suddenly and staring hard at the other man, his breathing erratic. “Merlin no! You have no idea…”

His voice trailed off again, his heart hammering wildly against his ribcage.

“So, Mr. Lupin, you don’t feel you can bring yourself to-“ Dumbledore said.

“No!” Remus practically shouted. “I’ll do it! Don’t even think about asking anyone else… I’ll do it, alright?”

“I see,” Dumbledore smiled kindly again. “My deepest apologies Remus, how very brave of you. I should never have doubted you.”

Remus bit the side of his lip. This was akin to agreeing to a suicide mission. Any sane individual would have refused to accept the offer. But surely Dumbledore had guessed he would never allow any of his friends or colleagues to go instead of him, to risk being turned? The bastard must have known all along. Yet he owed so much to this old man, this powerful wizard, the one they were all relying on to beat Voldemort and to win this war. The one who had given him a chance. Who had risked his reputation by allowing him into Hogwarts. Who had not expelled him after the disastrous Prank in Fifth Year. Maybe he was being unkind and unfair to the man. Perhaps this mission was genuinely important?

“No need to apologise, Sir,” Remus said with a small smile, extending his hand out.

“Thank you, Remus,” Dumbledore said, shaking his hand warmly. “I do appreciate your help in this war. I shall contact you shortly with more information about this entire affair. Please remember to keep this top secret.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Remus.

***

He opened the door quietly. The room was dimly lit by the fire and the large candles on either side of the infirmary bed. James looked the same, somewhere between life and death. Lily was sitting on a chair, her head lying on the bed beside him, still fully clothed, the dark shadows under her eyes more pronounced in this light. She was holding James’ hand. Sirius was nowhere to be seen, but at the foot of the bed, on top of the carefully folded blankets lay Padfoot. He was whimpering in his sleep. The shaggy dog opened his eyes briefly, fixing Remus with his mournful grey eyes.

“Sleep, Padfoot,” Remus said quietly. “I’ll stay up. I’ll call Poppy if there’s any change. There’s nothing more we can do.”

Padfoot yelped quietly, turning to look at Lily and James and then looked back at Remus and whined. He was looking at Remus accusingly. Where had he disappeared off to, why hadn’t he comforted Lily? Did he not care?

“I’m sorry,” Remus said.

It sounded curt. Inadequate.

What more could he say?

Padfoot whined once again, dropping his head into his paws, looking dejected. Remus sat on the ground, his head in his hands. He could go over, talk to Sirius, but his boyfriend always knew if he was hiding anything from him, and he was too tired to make up an excuse for what had just happened. Too tired, too traumatised, too selfish…

He stayed where he was.

Padfoot slept fitfully, beset by nightmares. Remus did not sleep a wink. He did not allow himself to sleep. The fear of nightmares kept him awake, as though he were four years old again. Besides, he did not deserve to sleep.

***

PS Póg mo thóin - kiss my ass in Irish

PS To find out if James is okay, and if Lily is in fact pregnant and if yes, what happens next etc, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep reading We Can Be Heroes. If you just want to read on, it’s from Chapter 45.

If you want, I can post more stand alones (Harry’s birth? the Jily engagement? Jily Wedding? Wolfstar first kiss etc??or the next part but it just leads into more stuff!)

#WCBH one shots #BAMF Lily #BAMF James #first wizarding war #defying voldemort #canon jily #canon marauders #angsty #I love Lily Evans #jily #wolfstar #poor darlings #it’s all a bit Angsty

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cbhunter494 · 3 years

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Valyrian Translator

So what if you do actually want to learn Dothraki or Valyrian? Of course, the ideal scenario would be to have an actual language exchange with a Dothraki warrior or a nobleman from Essos for Valyrian. High Valyrian is the language of the old Valyrian Freehold which was located on the eastern continent of Essos. Much of Essos was once dominated by the Valyrians for thousands of years, stretching from the Free Cities in the west, to Slaver's Bay in the east. The Valyrians forced the peoples they subjugated to speak in (or at least be able to converse in) their language. After the Doom of.

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High Valyrian is a language originating from Valyria and the Valyrian Freehold. Corrupted dialects known as bastard Valyrian are spoken in the Free Cities(1) and Slaver's Bay.(2)

2High Valyrian

3Bastard Valyrian

History

Some of the oldest remaining ancient texts were written by Andals, Valyrians, Ghiscari, and Asshai'i.(3) After the Old Empire of Ghis was conquered by the Valyrian Freehold in the Ghiscari wars, the Ghiscari began speaking the High Valyrian of their conquerors.(4)

High Valyrian is no longer widely spoken due to the Doom of Valyria,(5) and most Valyrian records were destroyed in the catastrophe.(6) The tongues of the Free Cities have continued to evolve from the original High Valyrian.(5)

Queen Alysanne Targaryen is said to have begun learning how to read from Valyrian scrolls while still at the breast of her mother, Queen Alyssa Velaryon.(7) Alysanne's husband, King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, was fascinated with the Old Valyrian scrolls in the library of Dragonstone.(8)

How to lead jo owen ebook reader. Racallio Ryndoon is said to have spoken a dozen dialects of Valyrian.(9) Lord Alyn Velaryon studied Valyrian treaties about warship design and sea tactics when he visited the Citadel.(9)Larra Rogare, the wife of Prince Viserys Targaryen, was fluent in High Valyrian and the dialects of Lys, Myr, Tyrosh, and Volantis.(10)

Some highborn children of Westeros are still taught Valyrian as a sign of their noble education.(11)(12) Songs(13) and scrolls(14)(15) are still sung and read in High Valyrian, although by 300 AC most Westerosi nobles cannot understand the language.(13)

High Valyrian

Language

The High Valyrian phrase valar morghulis‎(16) is translated as 'all men must die.'(17) A counterpart phrase, valar dohaeris,(18) is translated as 'all men must serve.'(19)

The word dracarys is translated as meaning 'dragonfire.'(20) Obsidian is called 'dragonglass' in the Common Tongue, but 'frozen fire' in High Valyrian.(21)Valonqar is the word for 'little brother.'(22) High Valyrian is the most likely source language for maegi (pronounced differently from 'Maggy'),(23) which means 'wise'.(24)

The Valyrian writing system, or at least a Valyrian writing system, is described as involving glyphs.(25) It was also probably standard practice to write on scrolls, and not in books.(26) The glyphs can also be inscribed, as on an old Valyrian dragon horn, which, when sounded, had 'every line and letter shimmering with white fire.'(27) Valyrian carvings have been found on obelisks.(28)

Valyrian steel is forged with spells, as well as hammers.(29) Some smiths still know them, although not entirely.(30)

Names

House Targaryen came from Valyria and thus most of its members can be considered to have High Valyrian names. These include:

Aegon

Aelor

Aelora

Aelyx

Aemon

Aemond

Aenar

Aenys

Aerea

Aerion(26)

Aeryn

Aerys

Alysanne(31)

Ayrmidon(14)

Baela

Baelon

Baelor

Daella

Daemion

Daemon

Daena

Daenerys(32)

Daenora

Daenys

Daeron

Elaena

Gael

Gaemon

Helaena

Jaehaera

Jaehaerys

Maegelle

Maegon

Maegor

Maekar

Maelys(33)

Naerys

Rhae

Rhaegar

Rhaegel

Rhaella

Rhaelle

Rhaena

Rhaenyra

Rhaenys

Rhalla

Saera

Shaena

Shaera

Vaegon

Vaella

Valarr

Valerion

Visenya

Viserra

Viserys

English To Valyrian Translator

Houses Baratheon, Celtigar, Qoherys, and Velaryon are of Valyrian descent, and thus these names are possibly Valyrian as well.(34)(35)

Velaryon first names include:

Aethan

Corlys

Daenaera

Jacaerys

Laena

Laenor

Lucerys

Monterys

Vaemond

Valaena

Jaenara Belaerys was a Valyrian explorer(36) and Aurion was a would-be emperor.(37)

The Valyrians most likely gave Valyrian names to their dragons, as the dragons Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar, and Syrax were named after Valyrian gods and goddesses.(38)(39) However, not all dragons of House Targaryen had Valyrian names (e.g., Queen Alysanne Targaryen's dragon, Silverwing(31)).

Eight of the nine Free Cities were founded as colonies of the Valyrian Freehold, and are thus likely to bear Valyrian names as well:

Volantis's satellite towns of Selhorys, Valysar, and Volon Therys likely have Valyrian names as well. It is also probable that Elyria, Mantarys, Oros, Tolos, Tyria, and Velos are Valyrian in name, being cities close to Old Valyria.(40)

Bastard Valyrian

Free Cities

Bastard Valyrian includes the languages of the nine Free Cities.(1) Each of the cities has its own dialect, and each dialect likely has its own separate derived vocabulary. Syrio Forel of Braavos speaks the Common Tongue with a lilting accent.(41) One of the Brave Companions is described as having a thick Myrish accent.(42)

The Free Cities use glyphs to write Valyrian.(43) The Valyrian of the Free Cities is described as sounding 'liquid'.(44)

Slaver Cities

Valyrian Translations Season 4

The Old Empire of Ghis was conquered by the Valyrian Freehold five thousand years ago, and the Ghiscari have since spoken High Valyrian. The Slaver's Bay cities of Yunkai, Meereen, and Astapor have their own versions of bastard Valyrian, which have been influenced mainly by Old Ghiscari, the ancient language of Old Ghis. Like the Free Cities, the people of the Slaver Cities use glyphs to write Valyrian.(2)

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Astapori Valyrian is described as having a 'characteristic growl,' influenced by Ghiscari.(2) The dialect of Yunkai is close enough to that of Astapor to be mutually intelligible.(45)

Valyrian Voice Translator

Yunkai used to be part of the Old Empire of Ghis, and has multiple languages spoken in the city. Mhysa, Maela, Aelalla, Qathei, and Tato are given as words for 'mother', but which tongue fits which word is unknown (excepting the first, which is Ghiscari).(45)

Some slavers speak a mongrel tongue,(46) a blend of Old Ghiscari and High Valyrian.(47)

Characters familiar with High Valyrian

Valyrian Translation

Gerris Drinkwater speaks a halting approximation of High Valyrian.(12)

Haldon Halfmaester(48)

Tyrion Lannister learned to read High Valyrian on his maester's knee.(11)

Quentyn Martell can read and write High Valyrian but has little practice speaking it.(12)

Melisandre is known to pray in High Valyrian, the Common Tongue, and the speech of Asshai.(49)

Missandei(17)

Moqorro can apparently sing in High Valyrian.(50)

Septa Saranella tells Cersei Lannister the meaning of valonqar.(22)

Ser Barristan Selmy has some High Valyrian, though not as much as Daenerys Targaryen.(2)

Arya Stark knows some High Valyrian(51) but the kindly man insists that she improve it.(52)

Catelyn Stark considers the speech of Moreo Tumitis of Tyrosh to be the vulgar Valyrian of the Free Cities.(53)

Sweets is fluent in High Valyrian(54)

Aegon Targaryen is fluent in High Valyrian.(12)

Daenerys Targaryen(2)

Samwell Tarly only has a little High Valyrian.(55)

The closest thing the Windblown have to a company tongue is classic High Valyrian.(56) Their leader, the Tattered Prince, says 'and now we ride' to his men in the language.(56)

Quotes

Each of the Free Cities has its own history and character, and each has come to have its own tongue. These are all corruptions of the original, pure form of High Valyrian, dialects that drift further from their origin with each new century since the Doom befell the Freehold.(5)Download counter strike condition zero full.

Behind the Scenes

According to George R. R. Martin,

Tolkien was a philologist, and an Oxford don, and could spend decades laboriously inventing Elvish in all its detail. I, alas, am only a hardworking SF and fantasy novel(sic), and I don't have his gift for languages. That is to say, I have not actually created a Valyrian language. The best I could do was try to sketch in each of the chief tongues of my imaginary world in broad strokes, and give them each their characteristic sounds and spellings.(57)

David J. Peterson further developed High Valyrian for the television adaptation Game of Thrones.

References

↑ 1.01.1A Game of Thrones, Chapter 11, Daenerys II.

↑ 2.02.12.22.32.4A Storm of Swords, Chapter 23, Daenerys II.

↑The World of Ice & Fire, Ancient History: The Dawn Age.

↑The World of Ice & Fire, Ancient History: The Rise of Valyria.

↑ 5.05.15.2The World of Ice & Fire, The Free Cities.

↑The World of Ice & Fire, Ancient History: Valyria's Children.

↑Fire & Blood, The Year of the Three Brides - 49 AC.

↑Fire & Blood, Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I.

↑ 9.09.1Fire & Blood, Under the Regents - The Voyage of Alyn Oakenfist.

↑Fire & Blood, The Lysene Spring and the End of Regency.

↑ 11.011.1A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 1, Tyrion I.

↑ 12.012.112.212.3A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 6, The Merchant's Man.

↑ 13.013.1A Storm of Swords, Chapter 60, Tyrion VIII.

↑ 14.014.1A Game of Thrones, Chapter 9, Tyrion I.

↑A Feast for Crows, Prologue.

↑A Clash of Kings, Chapter 47, Arya IX.

↑ 17.017.1A Storm of Swords, Chapter 27, Daenerys III.

↑A Feast for Crows, Chapter 6, Arya I.

↑A Feast for Crows, Chapter 34, Cat Of The Canals.

↑A Storm of Swords, Chapter 8, Daenerys I.

↑A Storm of Swords, Chapter 78, Samwell V.

↑ 22.022.1A Feast for Crows, Chapter 39, Cersei IX.

↑A Feast for Crows, Chapter 36, Cersei VIII.

↑A Game of Thrones, Chapter 72, Daenerys X.

↑A Game of Thrones, Chapter 3, Daenerys I.

↑ 26.026.1A Clash of Kings, Chapter 6, Jon I.

↑A Feast for Crows, Chapter 19, The Drowned Man.

↑The World of Ice & Fire, Beyond the Free Cities: The Grasslands.

↑A Game of Thrones, Chapter 1, Bran I.

↑A Storm of Swords, Chapter 32, Tyrion IV.

↑ 31.031.1A Storm of Swords, Chapter 40, Bran III.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 15, Davos II.

↑A Storm of Swords, Chapter 67, Jaime VIII.

↑Citadel. Heraldry: In the area of King's Landing

↑The Citadel. Heraldry: Houses in the Riverlands

↑The World of Ice & Fire, Beyond the Free Cities: Sothoryos.

↑The World of Ice & Fire, Ancient History: The Doom of Valyria.

↑Fire & Blood, Heirs of the Dragon - A Question of Succession.

↑A Clash of Kings, Chapter 12, Daenerys I.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Map of Valyria

↑A Game of Thrones, Chapter 22, Arya II.

↑A Storm of Swords, Chapter 39, Arya VII.

↑A Game of Thrones, Chapter 65, Arya V.

↑A Clash of Kings, Chapter 27, Daenerys II.

↑ 45.045.1A Storm of Swords, Chapter 42, Daenerys IV.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 59, The Discarded Knight.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 60, The Spurned Suitor.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 14, Tyrion IV.

↑A Clash of Kings, Chapter 10, Davos I.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 56, The Iron Suitor.

↑A Feast for Crows, Chapter 22, Arya II.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 45, The Blind Girl.

↑A Game of Thrones, Chapter 18, Catelyn IV.

↑A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 47, Tyrion X.

↑A Feast for Crows, Chapter 26, Samwell III.

↑ 56.056.1A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 25, The Windblown.

↑So Spake Martin: Yet More Questions, July 22, 2001

The material on this page is taken from the web page Other languages at Dothraki Wiki that is owned by dothraki.org and may be used for noncommercial purposes.

External Links

Valyrian languages on Wikipedia.

High Valyrian 101: Learn and Pronounce Common Phrases By Katie M. Lucas

Retrieved from 'https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?title=High_Valyrian&oldid=257130'

By Stars Insider of StarsInsider |

Learn Valyrian and other fascinating fictional languages

Valyrian Translate

With numerous fantasy shows gaining more and more popularity, it's no shock that many fans are going the extra mile. For instance, it was reported that over 800,000 people started learning 'Valyrian,' a language spoken by characters on 'Game of Thrones.' Incredible stories like 'Star Wars' and 'Lord of the Rings' also have their own unique languages, which you can start to learn about in this helpful gallery.

High Valyrian To English

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cpd5021 · 4 years

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Crossing Lines - Chapter Five

She’s kinda a long one....

Just as I had suspected, it was a night of little sleep. When my alarm sounded bright and early, signalling the start of another day, I groaned and pushed myself out of bed. The hot water of the shower did little to wake me up and soon I was rushing around the room to get ready. I stopped for a cup of coffee on the way in, instinctively grabbing one for OA as well, our new routine, and then trudged into the building. I sipped at the hot liquid and forced myself to breathe deep breaths as I joined the group forming around the office. To my surprise, Voight and Jay were already here, looking as if they had been working all morning. Jay glanced up towards me, his eyes trailing my hand as I passed OA his cup of coffee and causing me to swallow hard at the look on his face. Deep breaths, just keep taking deep breaths. I replayed the mantra again and again in my head, hoping it would help. We broke into groups and much to my dismay, Jay and Voight would be riding with us today. A tip had come in on a possible location so we rolled out and headed to the scene. Our day picked up the pace then and after spending hours at multiple locations, tracking down suspects, interviewing witnesses, and working with the unit back in Chicago, we managed to finally get a break through. Using all of the resources the FBI had to offer, we set up an operation and successfully brought our guy down. As an added bonus, Kim and Adam managed to nail down two other guys in connection to this case and at the end of the day, everyone’s spirits were high. It was well after hours by the time we finished up all the necessary paperwork, OA doing me the favor of walking Jay and Voight through their paperwork so I didn’t have to. I was closing out of my computer when I saw Isabelle walking my way. She wore a warm smile as she came to lean against my desk.

“Good work out there today.”

I returned her smile, thankful for the compliment. I wasn’t sure about her at first, but she grew on me and luckily hadn’t sent me packing my first week here.

“Actually, I am quite impressed with your overall performance the entire time you’ve been here. I would love to have you on our team should you ever become available.”

Her offer wasn’t necessarily a surprise to me, the FBI had a way of snatching up good police and while the events that had let me here might have said otherwise, I knew that my work was solid... most of the time. If you had asked me when I first got here, if I would have ever considered leaving Chicago, I would have laughed in your face. Chicago is my home, the good, the bad and the ugly. But now, after the events of the last few months, more specifically the last few weeks, I found myself letting the offer linger for a moment. New York would be a fresh start, on multiple levels. I knew where the lines were here, both personal and professional. And after seeing the way Jay was reacting to me, I wasn’t sure I had any real reason to go back. I couldn’t even bare to think of Jay and I being at odds like we were now, facing him like this on a day to day basis. Isabelle had remained silent beside me, watching my face show a range of emotions. As my eyes met hers, she gave me another warm smile.

“I’m not looking for a response now, I know it’s a big decision. Just think on it for a while and let me know.”

With that, she stood and walked away, leaving me feeling more confused than ever. I remained at my desk, lost in thought, when OA came over and bumped into my shoulder.

“I can smell the smoke from the fire burning inside your head right now.”

His tone was light but his face showed concern. I looked up, trying my best to give him a reassuring smile.

“It’s just been a long day.”

That much wasn’t a lie, although I had left all the details out.

“And that’s why we’re all going out for drinks! We need to celebrate after wrapping up that case, plus it’s your last few days here.”

He smiled at me and I knew I wasn’t going to get out of this. I didn’t correct him on his last statement, technically it was my last week here...unless I took her offer. I didn’t want to bring that up just yet so instead I let out a sigh and stood up from my desk. I grabbed my belongings and followed OA out into the hall. As we walked towards the parking lot, OA bent down slightly so he could speak quietly to me.

“I hope it’s okay, but your team got invited too.”

My heart sunk at the thought of seeing Jay again today but I tried my best to hide it. I nodded in agreement, not trusting my voice and then finally ducked into my car. I let out a shaky breath as I started the vehicle and pulled out of the lot behind OA.

The crowded bar helped me keep my distance from Jay and my present company helped to lighten my mood, but that didn’t stop my eyes from traveling over to Jay every now and then. He sat next to Voight at the hightop table across from us, his head stayed down most of the time as he picked at the label on his beer bottle. I sipped at my own beer casually, between laughing at the conversation going on around me. A round of shots was ordered and a small shot glass was passed my way. I swallowed down the burning liquid, shivering with the after taste. My eyes glanced over to Jay again, this time meeting his eyes. I barely recognized the man I saw within them and it broke something inside of me. I watched as he whispered something to Voight, who gave him a quick look before nodding at whatever he had said. Then Jay stood from his seat and turned to make his way out of the bar. I don’t know what spurred me to do so but suddenly I was on my feet and trailing after him. I weaved my way through the bodies packed around the bar before breaking free onto the street outside, my eyes darting back and forth before I located his retreating frame. I had to jog to keep up as he rounded the corner of the building, disappearing from my view. As I darted around the same corner, I saw him quickly making his way to their car and knew it was now or never.

“Jay!”

I yelled out his name, my voice breaking a little from the sudden rush of emotion I felt. He paused for a moment and I wondered if he would just keep going, like the last time I was yelling for him. Slowly, he turned to face me. He didn’t move, forcing me to close the distance between us. Once I stood in front of him, I could feel my hands trembling from the nerves. I shoved them into my pockets as I looked up at him. His eyes were dark, almost empty, and they refused to meet mine. We stood in silence once again as I felt myself at a loss for words.

“Did you need something Hailey?”

He asked, repeating his question from the night I called him. His coldness had me scrambling to maintain control of my emotions. Part of me wanted to turn around and go back to the bar, to tell Isabelle that I accepted her offer and hope that I would never see him again. But another part of me, a much smaller one that I had been pushing down for months, screamed at me to continue. I took a breath, my nostrils flaring from the mix of heartbreak and anger coursing through my veins.

“Don’t do that.”

My words came out slow and steady, my tone never shifting. Maybe this was the end, but if that’s what this was then I wasn’t going to go down without a fight, I couldn’t.

“Do what?”

His voice was low, his tone matching mine. He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes still avoiding mine.

“You know what, you keep pushing me away.”

My voice shook a little that time but I couldn’t help it. I hoped he hadn’t noticed. He scoffed at my words, throwing his head back in frustration before responding.

“You’re the one that’s been ignoring me. I called.”

Okay, I deserved that jab, just a little. I had been ignoring him and I hadn’t returned his call. But that was only based on his initial reaction to me leaving. This whole time in New York without Jay, without at least talking to him and knowing that he would still be there when I got back had nearly killed me. And now it felt like I had already lost him. My body began to tremble within as I could feel my emotions building.

“You shut me out. I was only trying to protect myself from getting hurt further.”

My reply struck something within him and he met my eyes briefly before darting them away again.

“Hailey...I don’t know what to say. I don’t get how you could just leave like that...after everything..”

He dipped his head down and I could see he was battling his own emotions. I processed his words, trying to get a handle on where his head was at.

“It wasn’t my choice Jay...Voight sent me here. I didn’t want to come.”

My voice broke again, replaying the night in Voights office, followed by the last time I saw Jay in Chicago. He looked at me again, his stare searching my features for something...but what I don’t know.

“You should have come to me. We could have figured it out together.”

That confused me. I had come to him, right after I found out. I sent him a questioning look but he remained silent.

“I did come to you. As soon as I found out-”

Before I could finish, he was shaking his head back and forth, his arms uncrossing and his hands clenching into fists by his side.

“Not about your punishment Hailey...you should have come to me before Gael..”

So he knew about that. Voight must have told him because he was the only other one that knew. Part of me was thankful that I wouldn’t have to tell him myself, but I wanted to be able to explain my side of it. Although, I wasn’t sure my past justifications would hold up at this point.

“Jay…”

I trailed off, unsure of what to say. He shook his head again, refusing to look at me.

“I can’t do this...not again.”

His words confused me again and I remained silent, hoping he would continue but he didn’t.

“Do what Jay?”

His eyes met mine again, a fire blazing within them now. He took a step towards me, his abruptness causing me to take an instinctive step back. He paused for a moment at my response, he recognized the flash of fear across my face. I knew Jay would never hurt me but I couldn’t help the knee jerk response.

“You...in New York...I can’t…”

His words were choppy but the sudden realization of what he was talking about hit me like a ton of bricks. My nostrils flared again as I fought to keep my composure.

“I’m not Erin.”

My tone was cold but the anger behind it was evident. I couldn’t believe he was comparing me to Erin. Sure, I guess the location and job title were similar. But I hadn’t just up and left him, I hadn’t abandoned him to pick up the pieces by himself. I had tried to talk to him, to make him see that this wasn’t my choice and that I had every intention of coming back. Until he shut me out that is. Besides, the situation between them and us was completely different, they were in a relationship. I am just his partner. He looked up at me, struggling to find something to say. I knew he wanted to say I was wrong, that that’s not what he had done..but I was right and we both knew it.

“So you’re telling me you’re not staying. I’m sure they offered you a spot, they’d be stupid not too. And you’d be stupid not to take it.”

He struck a nerve within me, causing my emotions to flare once again. This time it was me that took a step forward, my own fists clenched at my sides.

“Stop it Jay, stop pushing me away! I had every intention of coming back.”

I spoke louder this time, unable to control myself. I had placed emphasis on the past tense and he had instantly picked up on it.

“Had? So something changed? Your new partner?”

My breaths were coming out labored as the anger swelled inside me. I could tell there was a jealous undertone to his statement, something that surprised me. Sure, OA and I had grown closer over my time here but it was nothing compared to the bond I shared with Jay. I racked my brain for a response, not even sure how to continue this conversation without yelling.

“OA is a fantastic partner. I was lucky to have him. He was someone to turn to when I had no one else.”

I knew my words would cut deep and when Jay dropped his head again I knew I had made a mark.

“So you’re staying?”

He asked, voice low and full of held back emotion.

“I don’t know what I’m doing Jay. This whole thing has been a mess and I’ve lost my only friend that could help me through this.”

My eyes brimmed with unshed tears as I spoke, my emotions finally getting the better of me. Jay looked up at me then, his own eyes looking wetter than normal.

“You didn’t lose me…”

I blinked and before I could stop them, the tears rolled down my face. Jay looked as if he wanted to come closer, to wipe them away, but he remained in place.

“It sure as hell feels like it.”

My voice shook as I spoke and I hated every second of it. I hadn’t said any of this outloud and now that it was out, it felt even realer. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Jay, I needed him more than I ever thought possible. Suddenly, all the feelings I had been pushing down since Jay got shot came rearing to the fore front and I fought to hold them back.

“I just need to know….I can’t stand the thought of doing this every day, of being like this with you. I didn’t run away to New York Jay, I was sent here because I made a mistake, I got off track and I lost myself. But you, you pushing me away like that, shutting me out...it killed me.”

Jay’s eyes bore into mine, once again searching for something within them. There was something new in his eyes too, but I couldn’t put a name on it. The way he was looking at me was something different, there was an intensity behind his stare that had me scrambling to keep up.

“Can I ask you something?”

His voice was quiet once again and his question had my mind reeling. I nodded for him to continue, unsure of what was about to come my way.

“The day in the hospital, before my phone rang...what were you going to say?”

That was, absolutely, the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. I was instantly back in that moment, having waited for hours in the waiting for him to wake up, going into his room ready to lay everything on the table. My heart raced at the thought of it, I hadn’t told him then and I sure as hell wasn’t ready to tell him now. I wanted Jay back sure, I wanted us to get back to the partnership and the friendship that we had had before. But saying that to him, those words...they would change everything and I couldn’t do that.

“It doesn’t matter Jay…”

I tried to blow it off but I knew he wouldn’t have it. This was the first time we had spoken about that moment since it happened and I knew he was doing it for a reason.

“Hailey...whatever it was...tell me.”

His voice had changed once again, this time he was almost pleading with me. He took a step closer and I shook my head, refusing to break on this.

“No.”

I whispered, letting my head dip down to avoid his stare.

“Hailey..tell me.”

He pushed, his voice intense as he took another step closer.

“Tell me.”

He repeated, now standing directly in front of me. I felt tears brim my eyes once again and I quickly blinked them away. I shook my head again, harder this time and clenched my fists by my sides again. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t tell him what I had been feeling all this time, I knew he didn’t feel the same way and it would ruin us for good. I couldn’t lose him as a friend, I just wanted us back to normal.

“Damnit Hailey!”

He exclaimed louder than our previous conversation. His outburst had me jumping a little and I looked up to meet his eyes. My own eyes were wet with the tears falling freely down my face.

“I love you! Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I yelled back, my voice thick with emotion. I could feel my heart breaking as the words settled on his face. I could see his eyes change and knew that rejection was coming my way. First I had screwed up my job and now I had just ruined the only other good thing in my life. I felt a burning in my chest and swallowed hard to keep the sobs at bay. I held his eyes, waiting for his response, for the words that would break me. But instead of saying anything, Jay took another step closer, closing the distance between us. He moved slowly but I still struggled to keep up. I saw his hands raise, ever so carefully coming to rest on my cheeks, cupping my hot face between his cool hands. He was searching my eyes for something again, but I still didn’t know what. He applied a gentle pressure to my face, tilting my head back slightly. I watched as his face came closer to mine, my brain rushing to catch up. I held my breath as he closed the gap between us, his lips pressing into mine and my entire body feeling as if it was going to explode. I couldn’t process what was happening. Instead of the rejection I thought for sure was coming my way, he was kissing me. Kissing me with a slow and gentle pace that instantly had my body on fire. All at once, my brain caught up and I found myself wrapping my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. His mouth worked against mine as I kissed him back. Before I could stop myself, my tongue darted out, trailing across his lower lip and effectively deepening the kiss. By the time we pulled back for air, my heart was hammering out of my chest and my entire body was buzzing from the sensation. I felt lightheaded in the best possible way and as I looked up at him, meeting his eyes once again, I felt more tears run down my face. They weren’t tears of anguish or heartbreak this time though. I smiled up at him, his face mirroring mine as he looked down at me. He still held my face between his hands and his thumbs gently swiped at the tears that ran down my face.

“I love you too.”

He spoke softly, his own voice thick with emotion. I stared into his eyes, finally able to place a label on the look I saw within them. I knew that in these few minutes, everything between us had changed. I didn’t know what that meant for us or where we would go from here, but instead of worrying about what came next, I pulled him back in for another kiss, smiling against his mouth when he instantly returned it.

And there we have it, the final chapter of this story! I might do one more chapter, more of an epilogue to show what exactly does come next, so stay tuned for that. Hopefully you enjoyed this story and thank you too everyone who left a review on this fic. Thank you to @Chilly7188 (Tumblr) for the prompts/ideas that made this fic happen and for everyone who answered all my questions about FBI.

#chicago pd #chicago pd fanfiction #halstead and upton #jay halstead #hailey upton #halstead #jay x hailey #upstead #upton

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Old Review: M. Night Shyamalan’s Makes Another Happening

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has left his unmistakable stamp on some of our culture’s most primal fears: ghosts, beings from another world, and even unnamed monsters in the woods. Yet in his latest effort, the cryptically titled Old, the storyteller attempts to wrap his arms around the greatest terror of all: time itself.

Like the ticking clock inside Peter Pan’s crocodile, time has stalked every creature on this planet to their inevitable doom. It can often be ignored or compartmentalized, but it finds you in the end. Which is why, on paper, Old should be terrifying. By adapting a graphic novel called Sandcastle by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, Shyamalan is attempting to prevent us from looking away. This is a film where once you step foot on a mythical beach, you will live a lifetime in a day. Who has time to distract themselves from the ravages of decay when it’ll be here by dinner?

And yet, that is not the movie Shyamalan made. Despite being a film supposedly preoccupied with the future that awaits us all, Old feels like a relic of its director’s past. For here is another half-baked and clumsily constructed series of clichés strung together by sequences which vary wildly from quality to kitsch, and from horrifying to hilarious. His characters might be rapidly aging, but the filmmaker’s undeniable talent feels as if it’s regressed back to its awkward and gangly The Happening days.

Also like that Mark Wahlberg misfire, Old is a story that mistakenly believes it’s obligated to overthink and explain its fairy tale logic. Which is a shame since the actual setup of the film is simple enough: Two sets of families, plus two other childless couples, are offered a once in a lifetime opportunity by their isolated island resort. They will be driven to the far side of the island where there’s a secluded beach surrounded by a cove with special minerals. Alone on white sandy shores and in the bluest waters, they can get to know each other and sample the good life.

There are more characters than are worth listing, but suffice to say the important ones are Guy, an actuary accountant played by Gael García Bernal, and his museum curator wife Prisca (Vicky Krieps). Despite being of separate international origins, they’ve raised the all-American nuclear family with daughter Maddox and son Trent (Alexa Swinton and Nolan River… at first), and are determined to give their children a happy childhood, even as their marriage appears to have long rested at the water’s edge. However, once they reach this magical beach populated by many other underdeveloped characters, it becomes an open question how happy a life can be had when their children rapidly age into teenagers and then young adults in the span of a morning… and that rich doctor down the way (Rufus Sewell) begins showing signs of late stage Alzheimer’s after only a few more hours.

Old is a genuinely creepy premise, which in the right hands could unnerve as the ultimate body horror. What instills more existential dread than seeing your youth turn to wrinkles, and golden halcyon days go gray inside of 90 minutes? But inexplicably that is not the movie Shyamalan chose to make. To be sure, there is some basic use of humans’ natural transmutations, but it’s mostly through the perspective of parents watching their children age like bananas. And credit should be given to the hair and makeup folks, as well as the younger actors, who convincingly pull off the continuity of Maddox and Trent’s accelerated lifespans.

But for each effective moment, such as when teenaged Maddox and Trent approach their parents confused and horrified at why their voices are different, there are five more of Guy, Prisca, and an ensemble of wildly inconsistent adult performances standing around trying to justify their film’s lunacy with laughable pseudo-science. Rather than delve into the ripe existential phobias that are growing around its cast like coconuts, Old is content with mostly coasting on being a Fantasy Island episode that adapts And Then There Were None—complete with a surprise killer running around. The movie thus plays less like an artist grappling with mortality than it does one slumming in B-movie trashiness.

And if The Happening should’ve taught Shyamalan and his audience anything, it’s that intentional trash has never been his forte. As with the revelation of why folks were killing themselves in The Happening, Old spends far too much time setting up a rationalization and an inevitable third act twist, which plays a bit like if at the end of The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock revealed the title creatures had been trained by a mad scientist down the shoreline. It’s unnecessary and, like so much else of the film, focused on the wrong questions. But then even the ideas that Old does concern itself with are haphazardly explored and articulated.

After proving he still has a gift for quirky and clever dialogue with films like Split, the perfunctory and ham-fisted nature of nearly every adult character interaction is baffling here. From on-the-nose lectures wherein parents tell their children in the first scene they’re too young for this and not old enough for that, to the robotic way in which Guy and Prisca unconvincingly talk about their marriage, the banality of the screenplay is as ceaseless as the sea. Framing and blocking for the camera is similarly roughshod throughout the movie. Sequences meant to evoke genuine horror—including a surprise pregnancy teased in the trailer—become outright giggle-inducing in their final execution. It’s in fact hard to think of any theatrical screening this summer with more laughs drifting through an auditorium.

By the time of its hokey and melodramatic finale, Old has collapsed on every level as a horror movie, but may have cemented its status as a cult midnight movie classic.

I take no joy in writing this. As someone who’s seen virtues in most Shyamalan movies, even damnable ones, it was a real pleasure to witness the “Shyamalanaissance” emerge in the wake of The Visit and Split. I even enjoy the autobiographical subtext the filmmaker inserted into Glass. But if those movies were a validation of his cinematic powers, then Old is the puddle waiting for him in the parking lot.

Old opens in theaters on Friday, July 23.

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foodreceipe · 4 years

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How was French cuisine toppled as the king of fine dining?

October 20, 2016

In the food world, one of the biggest stories of the last 50 years has been the waning of French culinary authority, the end of a 300-year reign.

In last year’s ranking of “The World’s Fifty Best Restaurants,” only one French restaurant, Mirazur, appears in the top 10. And its menu reflects modernist (“molecular”) gastronomy – a recent trend of using chemistry in the kitchen – rather than anything associated with traditional French cuisine.

Since the 18th century, France had been equated with gastronomic prestige. The focus of its cuisine has been simplicity, developed as a reaction against medieval reliance on spices; instead of possessing a sharp or sugary taste, its dishes contained butter, herbs and sauces based on meat juices to create a rich, smooth flavor.

The first elegant restaurant in America, Delmonico’s, was founded in New York in 1830 with a French chef, Charles Ranhofer, whose food was considered an exemplar of French tastes and standards. Until the end of the 20th century, the most prestigious restaurants around the world were French, from London’s La Mirabelle to San Francisco’s La Bourgogne.

In 1964, the first New York Times “Guide to Dining Out in New York” listed eight restaurants in its top three-star category. Seven were French. Meanwhile, beginning in 1963, Julia Child’s hugely popular television show “The French Chef” taught Americans how to replicate French dishes in their own kitchens.

So what happened?

In my recently published book, “Ten Restaurants that Changed America,” I show how one restaurant, Le Pavillon, came to epitomize the rise and fall of French cuisine.

Food ‘fit for the gods’

Four of the 10 restaurants featured in my book offer some version of French food. Delmonico’s described itself as French, but it also offered American game and seafood, while inventing dishes such as Lobster Newberg and Baked Alaska. Antoine’s, a New Orleans restaurant that opened in 1840, now portrays its cuisine as “haute Creole,” but it, too, presented itself as French for most of its history.

Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California – the original inspiration for the current farm-to-table vogue – initially tried to imitate a rural French inn before becoming one of the first restaurants in America to promote local food with high-quality, basic ingredients.

But while these restaurants reflect French influence, only one consistently and deliberately imitated Parisian orthodoxy: New York City’s Le Pavillon.

It began as a pop-up-style eatery called “Le Restaurant Français” at the French Pavilion during the New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940. But the sudden German conquest of France in the late spring of 1940 left the staff with a choice: Return to Nazi-occupied France or stay in the U.S. as refugees.

Maître d’hôtel Henri Soulé, together with those who stayed, found permanent quarters in midtown Manhattan and rebranded it “Le Pavillon.” With a preexisting reputation for excellence from the fair, the restaurant was an instant success.

Le Pavillon and Soulé soon ruled over the city’s restaurant scene, rising to become the undisputed top-ranked establishment in America, with exacting culinary standards that surpassed its Francophile competition. French writer Ludwig Bemelmans thought that Soulé provided not only the finest meals in Manhattan but also eclipsed those in France. In his memoirs, famous food critic Craig Claiborne recalled the food as “fit for the gods,” and a throng of celebrities passed through, from the duke and duchess of Windsor to the Kennedy clan (well, until they quarreled with the irascible Soulé during John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign).

Alongside excellence, a reputation for snobbery

Most high-end American restaurants at the time were opulent but served either French standards such as duck a l'orange or dishes that weren’t particularly French, such as lamb chops.

Le Pavillon’s cuisine, however, was unabashedly pretentious. The more elaborate presentations sent the food writers into raptures: Mousse de Sole “Tout Paris” (sole stuffed with truffles, served with a Champagne sauce and a lobster sauce) or lobster Pavillon (lobster with a complicated tomato, white wine and Cognac sauce).

Some of the restaurant’s famous dishes seem rather ordinary by today’s standards. Beluga caviar was (and remains) an expensive delicacy but takes no talent to prepare. Chateaubriand steaks – a tenderloin filet usually served with a red wine reduction or a Bearnaise sauce – routinely exceeded US$100 in today’s dollars. But it takes more skill to select the cut of meat than to prepare and cook it.

Soulé himself missed the bourgeois fare of his homeland such as blanquette de veau or sausages with lentil and, paradoxically, prepared these ordinary dishes as off-menu items for customers who, he felt, could appreciate the real culinary soul of France.

Those special customers were conspicuously favored, and this is an unattractive aspect of Soulé’s legacy. To the extent that French restaurants in America, to this day, retain a reputation for snobbery and annoying social discrimination, it’s largely traceable to Soulé. He didn’t invent “Siberia,” the part of the restaurant that nobodies are exiled to, where service is slack and borderline contemptuous, but he perfected it. He was an exacting proprietor not just to his harried cooks and waiters but to customers as well, disciplining them with a look or, if necessary, harsh words if they questioned his decisions on where they were seated.

The competition for status was not all Soulé’s fault. Joseph Wechsberg, author of a book on Le Pavillon published in 1962, attributed the jockeying for position not to Soulé but rather to a preexisting “battle for survival in the status jungles of Manhattan around the middle of the 20th century.” Even in the supposedly less formal and certainly un-French restaurant scene of today, there is no evidence that sparsely decorated farm-to-table restaurants treat their customers any better than the dictatorial Soulé. Just try getting a reservation at David Chang’s Momofuku Ko in Manhattan’s East Village.

The difference was that the short, stout, charming but awe-inspiring Soulé, whom restaurant critic Gael Greene described as a “flirtatious, five-foot-five cube of amiability,” never pretended to be anything but confidently elitist in running his operation. He routinely referred to himself in the third person and treated his staff in a dictatorial, patronizing fashion. Soulé even defied his landlord’s demand for a better table. When, in response, the rent was exponentially raised, he preferred to move the restaurant rather than give in.

Soulé’s death from a heart attack at the age of 62 in 1966 was marked by adulatory obituaries. Claiborne memorialized him as “the Michelangelo, the Mozart and the Leonardo of the French restaurant in America.” The restaurant staggered on after Soulé, before shutting its doors in 1971.

Today it’s all about globalization and innovation

Following the sudden closing of Le Pavillon, spin-offs – Le Veau d’Or and La Caravalle – would flourish. But if Le Pavillon is now largely underappreciated or even unknown, it is because of the demise of the French model it established: formality and elegance that veered on intimidation.

Even before Soulé’s death, a hint of the new competition had emerged in New York’s Four Seasons. The restaurant, which recently closed, opened in 1959 as a daring anomaly: an elegant, expensive restaurant that was not French but rather international and eclectic in its menu offerings.

Today, grand French cuisine has yielded to Asian and Latin American influence, the rise of Italian cuisine, the cult of local ingredients and the farm-to-table model.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, we witnessed the growing influence of Asian tastes: both specific cuisine (Thai, high-end Japanese) and Asian-European fusions (promoted by chefs such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten). There was also the Italian challenge to French hegemony. Italian cuisine in its American “Mediterranean” form offered simpler, more lightly treated preparations: grilled meat or salads, rather than elaborate, rich sauces.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of new centers of culinary innovation, whether it’s Catalonia, Spain (where molecular gastronomy was pioneered in the 1990s), or Denmark, where foraging for food and new Nordic cuisine is in vogue.

These days French cuisine seems traditional – and not in a particularly good way. Unfortunately, its association with snobbery only contributed to its demise – a reputation that Henri Soulé did nothing to discourage.

https://theconversation.com/how-was-french-cuisine-toppled-as-the-king-of-fine-dining-66667

#French cuisine

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emafilmcompletfilm-1213 · 4 years

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2 septembre 2020 / 1h 42min / Drame, Thriller De Pablo Larraín Avec Mariana Di Girólamo, Gael García Bernal, Paola Giannini Nationalité Chilien SYNOPSIS ET DÉTAILS Interdit aux moins de 12 ans Ema, jeune danseuse mariée à un chorégraphe de renom, est hantée par les conséquences d'une adoption qui a mal tourné. Elle décide de transformer sa vie.

Six films courts autour de la nuit, des rêves, de la peur de l'obscurité et de rencontres entre les animaux et les hommes… Cinq jeunes réalisateurs et réalisatrices à l’imagination fertile pour une promenade poétique nocturne. Combien de temps as-tu dormi pendant le film EmaRising ()? La mLe Voyage du Pèlerinique, l’histoire et le message étaient phénoménaux chez Ema ( Ema). Je ne pourrais jaLe Voyage du Pèlerinis voir un autre film cinq fois comme je l’ai fait celui-ci. Retournez voir une seconde fois et faites attention. Regarder Ema Movie WEB-DL Il s’agit d’un fichier extrait sans erreur d’un serveur telLe Voyage du Pèlerin, tel que Netflix, ALe Voyage du Pèlerinzon Video, Hulu, Crunchyroll, DiscoveryGO, BBC iPlayer, etc. Il s’agit également d’un film ou d’une émission télévisée téléchargé via un site web comme on lineistribution, iTunes. La qualité est assez bonne car ils ne sont pas ré-encodés. Les flux vidéo (H.254 ou H.255) et audio (AC3 / Ema C) sont généralement extraits de iTunes ou d’ALe Voyage du Pèlerinzon Video, puis redistribués dans un conteneur MKV sans sacrifier la qualité. DownloadMovie Ema L’un des impacts les plLe Voyage du Pèlerin importants de l’indLe Voyage du Pèlerintrie du streaming vidéo L’indLe Voyage du Pèlerintrie du DVD a connu un véritable succès grâce à la vulgarisation en Le Voyage du Pèlerinsse du contenu en ligne. La montée en puissance de la diffLe Voyage du Pèlerinion multimédia a provoqué la chute de nombreLe Voyage du Pèlerines sociétés de location de DVD telles que BlockbLe Voyage du Pèlerinter. En juillet Ema, un article du New York Times a publié un article sur les SerLe Voyage du Pèlerins de DVD-Video de Netflix. Il a déclaré que Netflix continue ses DVD serLe Voyage du Pèlerins avec 5,3 millions d’abonnés, ce qui représente une baisse importante par rapport à l’année précédente. D’autre part, leurs serLe Voyage du Pèlerins en streaming comptent 55 millions de membres. Dans une étude de Le Voyage du Pèlerinrs 2020 évaluant «l’impact de la lecture de film en continu sur un DVD traditionnel MovieRental», il a été constaté que les répondants n’achetaient pas des films sur DVD aLe Voyage du Pèlerinsi gros que le mien, voire jaLe Voyage du Pèlerinis, comme la diffLe Voyage du Pèlerinion en continu a conquis le Le Voyage du Pèlerinrché. Regarder le film Ema ( Ema), les téléspectateurs n’ont pas trouvé la qualité du film très différente entre le DVD et le streaming en ligne. Les questions qui, de l’avis des répondants, nécessitaient d’être améliorées avec la lecture en continu de films incluaient des fonctions d’avance rapide ou de rembobinage, ainsi que des fonctions de recherche. L’article souligne que la qualité de la diffLe Voyage du Pèlerinion de films en continu en tant que secteur ne fera qu’augmenter avec le temps, alors que les revenLe Voyage du Pèlerin publicitaires augmentent chaque année dans l’ensemble du secteur, ce qui incite à la production de contenLe Voyage du Pèlerin de qualité.

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❍❍❍ Definition and Definition of Film / Movie ❍❍❍ While the players who play a role in the film are referred to as actors (men) or actresses (women). There is also the term extras that are used as supporting characters with few roles in the film. This is different from the main actors who have bigger and more roles. Being an actor and an actress must be demanded to have good acting talent, which is in accordance with the theme of the film he is starring in. In certain scenes, the actor’s role can be replaced by a stuntman or a stuntman. The existence of a stuntman is important to replace the actors doing scenes that are difficult and extreme, which are usually found in action action films. Films can also be used to convey certain messages from the filmmaker. Some industries also use film to convey and represent their symbols and culture. Filmmaking is also a form of expression, thoughts, ideas, concepts, feelings and moods of a human being visualized in film. The film itself is mostly a fiction, although some are based on fact true stories or based on a true story. There are also documentaries with original and real pictures, or biographical films that tell the story of a character. There are many other popular genre films, ranging from action films, horror films, comedy films, romantic films, fantasy films, thriller films, drama films, science fiction films, crime films, documentaries and others. That’s a little information about the definition of film or movie. The information was quoted from various sources and references. Hope it can be useful. ❍❍❍ TV MOVIE ❍❍❍ The first television shows were experimental, sporadic broadcasts viewable only within a very short range from the broadcast tower starting in the 1930s. Televised events such as the 1935 Summer Olympics in Germany, the 19340 coronation of King George VI in the UK, and David Sarnoff’s famous introduction at the 1939 New York World’s Fair in the US spurred a growth in the medium, but World War II put a halt to development until after the war. The 19440 World MOVIE inspired many Americans to buy their first television set and then in 1948, the popular radio show Texaco Star Theater made the move and became the first weekly televised variety show, earning host Milton Berle the name “”Mr Television”” and demonstrating that the medium was a stable, modern form of entertainment which could attract advertisers. The first national live television broadcast in the US took place on September 4, 2020 when President Harry Truman’s speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco was transmitted over AT&T’s transcontinental cable and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets. The first national color broadcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) in the US occurred on January 1, 1954. During the following ten years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. A color transition was announced for the fall of 1955, during which over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color. The first all-color prime-time season came just one year later. In 19402, the last holdout among daytime network shows converted to color, resulting in the first completely all-color network season. ❍❍❍ Formats and Genres ❍❍❍ See also: List of genres § Film and television formats and genres Television shows are more varied than most other forms of media due to the wide variety of formats and genres that can be presented. A show may be fictional (as in comedies and dramas), or non-fictional (as in documentary, news, and reality television). It may be topical (as in the case of a local newscast and some made-for-television films), or historical (as in the case of many documentaries and fictional MOVIE). They could be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy and game shows.[citation needed] A drama program usually features a set of actors playing characters in a historical or contemporary setting. The program follows their lives and adventures. Before the 2020s, shows (except for soap opera-type serials) typically remained static without story arcs, and the main characters and premise changed little.[citation needed] If some change happened to the characters’ lives during the episode, it was usually undone by the end. Because of this, the episodes could be broadcast in any order.[citation needed] Since the 2020s, many MOVIE feature progressive change in the plot, the characters, or both. For instance, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere were two of the first American prime time drama television MOVIE to have this kind of dramatic structure,[4][better source needed] while the later MOVIE Babylon 5 further exemplifies such structure in that it had a predetermined story running over its intendevd five-season run.[citvatio””&n needed] In 2020, it was reported that television was growing into a larger component of major media companies’ revenues than film.[5] Some also noted the increase in quality of some television programs. In 2020, Academy-Award-winning film director Steven Soderbergh, commenting on ambiguity and complexity of character and narrative, stated: “”I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television. ❍❍❍ Thank’s For All And Happy Watching❍❍❍ Find all the movies that you can stream online, including those that were screened this week. If you are wondering what you can watch on this website, then you should know that it covers genres that include crime, Science, Fi-Fi, action, romance, thriller, Comedy, drama and Anime Movie. Thank you very much. We tell everyone who is happy to receive us as news or information about this year’s film schedule and how you watch your favorite films. Hopefully we can become the best partner for you in finding recommendations for your favorite movies. That’s all from us, greetings! Thanks for watching The Video Today. I hope you enjoy the videos that I share. Give a thumbs up, like, or share if you enjoy what we’ve shared so that we more excited. Sprinkle cheerful smile so that the world back in a variety of colors.

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general-grey · 5 years

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Top 5 Soulsborne bosses that make you cry (either because they're really difficult or, because, y'know it's Soulsborne. Emotional suffering is just part of the game)

ONLY FIVE??? Almost ALL of them make me cry!

These are in no way by order of preference, I can’t possibly rank them as usual because they all make my heart hurt in a different way :’C

(Also, I have not had the chance to actually fight every boss, I’m working my way through Bloodborne currently and also I’ve not had the chance to play the two Dark Souls III DLCs - and Dark Souls II either, but that is gonna come in a later time)

1. Great Grey Wolf Sif - On my very first Dark Souls playthrough, I made sure to do the DLC before fighting Sif because I’ve heard of his boss fight having a different, sadder cutscene… but I’ll be real, NOTHING could have prepared me for that. The way he gets the drop on you. Him about to rip off your entire head… and then the recognition in his eyes. That small, pitiful whine. The music motif.

Ngl sometimes when I listen to his boss theme, and it catches me in a Mood, I can actually legit weep real tears. That is r a r e. I don’t cry often at these.

2. Orphan of Kos - As it happens, he’s the boss that I am currently working on in my first Bloodborne playthrough.

The first thing we see oh this thing, is him crawling his way out of his dead mother’s womb, into this bleak, cold and desolate beach. He raises his head to stare into the sun, which is twisted into the shape of a maddened, blood-drunk hunter’s collapsing eye…

… and he weeps.

That thing was more telling than any lore description could have prepared me for, and it broke my damn heart.

3. Yhorm the Giant - Siegward’s quest, and the deep friendship that very scene implies just warms and pains my heart at the same time. I don’t know what the hell happened to the Profaned City, nor do I know how did a tiny Catarina knight could end up there and befriend Yhorm, but however that happened, it certainly must’ve been a giant tale to tell.

And anyone who’s a friend of Siegward is a friend of mine… and he deserved better. They both deserved better. They really did.

4. Ludwig the Accursed / the Holy Blade - Oh man. Oh, man.

I love this dude’s boss fight. I love it SO MUCH. He’s ghastly, he’s disgusting, he’s got his old hunter gear all stuck and wrapped around his twisted, horribly mangled and mutated body. His screams are haunting, and the music in his first phase is this lurching, sinister chant that reminds me of his very uncanny movements (when he’s not propelling himself at me with extremely high velocity).

And then Miyazaki decides to rip straight into my soul when the second phase kicks in, and Ludwig is just as twisted and malformed as before… but he stands up, composed-like, clutching into his sword - the only thing that supposedly kept whatever little humanity he had left in this terrible beastly state, and he fights.

As a human.

One last time.

…and then I think of the dialogue he has after this, and his heavy breathing as he finally falls asleep, and I’m just…. He makes me very sad.

5. Slave Knight Gael - This is a predictive statement. I’ve not played the Ashes, nor the Ringed City. It’s on my list, right after I finish Bloodborne.

But I know just enough to know that this old man, this poor, selfless old undead, will absolutely tear my heart to shreds because I’m so soft for characters like these, you have absolutely no idea.

Some honorable mentions go to: Knight Artorias, Chaos Witch Quelaag, Darkeater Midir, Lady Maria, the Twin Princes… the Living Failures, dammit!

And I’ve not even included Sekiro bosses.

But this was enough rambling, I jsut wanted to say that I’m extremely soft for many Soulsborne bosses, I love these games so so so much it is almost physically painful :’)

#greytext #meems #soulsborne #dark souls #bloodborne #see this is why i either never answer memes #or just doN't do it on phone #i fuckign barf up long ass essays and i can't NOT do it because if i doN't #i just don't answer altogether #i MUST tell people why i love these disaster games i'm just asfjsedg #void-feathers

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ahouseoflies · 6 years

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The Best Films of 2018, Part III

Parts I and II are here and here.

GOOD MOVIES

70. Mid90s (Jonah Hill)- I usually applaud filmmakers for letting visuals tell the story instead of spelling everything out, but Mid90s needs to spell some more stuff out, especially at the truncated end. His brother brought him an orange juice, so all of the abuse is forgotten? I need a bit more there.

I was always going to be in the tank for this though, having been the same age as the protagonist at the time, owning some of the same shirts as him and hanging some of the same posters on my wall. Despite the "My First Screenplay" beef I had up top, each supporting character gets something to do. Hill shows promise as a director (and the fingerprints of his influences) by being able to shift between poles of emotions in a matter of seconds.

69. McQueen (Ian Bonhote)- Although it waits too long to get into McQueen's depression, this documentary does an adequate job of showing the ups and downs of his life. It was great seeing things I've only read about, like the Voss show.

Here's the thing though: I'm not a genius, but if I were, I would hope that my closest friends and advisers would be able to articulate what made me great. A little less "We were working sixteen-hour days." A little more "He changed art forever."

68. Beautiful Boy (Felix Van Groeningen)- For better and worse, this portrait of a parent's worst nightmare is unrelenting. Surprisingly, the toughest moment is when Nic is fierce with pride, clean for fourteen months. Because when you pause and see that there's an hour left in the movie, you shudder at how low he might end up going.

Van Groeningen's sort of french braid of past and present hasn't changed for his English-language debut, but things worked best for me when he locked in on Timothee Chalamet's mannered but touching performance. I wish the movie had a proper ending.

67. The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo)- This takes a little while to get sick and twisted, but I liked it once it did. Part of why it works is Gyllenhaal's commitment to the role. As dark as the character gets--and the film does seem hell-bent on establishing her as a failure when I'm not sure that's true--Gyllenhaal never judges her. It's probably her best performance since SherryBaby.

As for Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays a poetry professor who kisses people and then apologizes and says that he misread the moment and acts all bashful, are we sure about him? Are we sure he's good at acting?

66. The Spy Who Dumped Me (Susanna Fogel)- The spywork of the last half-hour is way too convoluted, but the comedy is fast and loose in service of a sweet female friendship. We're at the stage with the genius of Kate McKinnon in which I just assume that she came up with anything funny on the spot. For example, there's an off-hand joke that her character went to camp with Edward Snowden and was surprised that the news didn't mention how "into ska" he was. It's so bizarre that it had to be improv. Later, when Edward Snowden shows up as a character, I had to admit that the movie was tightly written. But I assumed it was McKinnon first. 65. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)- Halfway through Ready Player One, there's a sequence that takes place inside The Overlook Hotel of The Shining. The characters are walking through a photorealistic recreation of that setting, down to the smallest details, but it has been repurposed with different angles for this film. Not only have I literally never seen something like this in a movie, but I never imagined the possibility of such a thing existing. And somehow...it's corny and derivative.

So goes Ready Player One. It takes the simple pleasures of a Chosen One narrative with a killer villain, loads every corner of the frame with Ryu or Beetlejuice or a Goldie Wilson campaign poster, and punishes you with maximalism. Each piece reliably contributes to the whole, sometimes in thrilling and amusing fashion, but no matter when you check your watch, forty-five minutes are left.

When imdb came out, Steven Spielberg was one of the first people I looked up. What shocked me was how many projects I attributed to his direction when he had only produced them. In my kid brain, Spielberg had directed Gremlins or Goonies or An American Tail. They had his imprimatur of whimsy and wonder and childhood identification even if they were, you know, a bit more conventional and less purposeful than the movies he directed. Well, not since Tintin has there been a Steven Spielberg-directed film that feels more Spielberg-produced.

My favorite reference was the Battletoads. Or more accurately, imagining the seventy-two-year-old filmmaker going, "Oh, you know I gotta get the 'Toads up in this bih!"

64. Ben Is Back (Peter Hedges)- Despite a little bit of note-card screenwriting--"Get a line about how insurance doesn't care about drug addiction in there!"--The first two-thirds take their time revealing information to the viewer, dropping bread crumbs of the family history quite gracefully. Roberts and Hedges play off each other well, and their charisma powers the first half. She, of course, has an ample bag of Movie Star tricks, but, surprisingly, he already does too. You can see, in the confrontation at the mall, for example, how the mother's dissembling and conniving would pass down to him.

So it's a real bummer when the final third decides to separate the leads and rushes to a baffling conclusion. It falls apart like few movies in recent memory.

63. Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo)- Whatever. I admire the skill that it must have taken to balance the revolving wheel of characters--even if it does feel like check-ins half the time. The movie is exhausting in a bad way until it's exhausting in a good way. More importantly, here are my power rankings. (Their power in my own heart. Thanos is obviously the most powerful.)

1. Rocket 2. Hawkeye (Renner Season even when it isn't.) 3. The Collector 4. Black Panther 5. Thanos 6. Iron Man 7. Ned 8. Nick Fury 9. Star Lord 10. Thor (His scene with Rocket is the best one in the film.) 11. Gamora 12. Hulk (Your boy is so earnest in this. "They KNEW!") 13. Spider-Man 14. Wong 15. Okoye 16. Doctor Strange (Way cooler in this than his own movie.) 17. Captain America (His hair was beautiful.) 18. Drax 19. Pepper Potts 20. Falcon 21. Groot 22. Black Widow 23. Winter Soldier 24. Loki (Is he alive? Was he alive before this? Can he impersonate people or whatever even if he's dead? What's his deal?) 25. Scarlet Witch (Her first line is, getting out of bed, "Vis, is it the stone again?") 26. Gamora's Sister (No, you look it up.) 27. War Machine (Do you think Cheadle forgets that he's in these? Like, he misses a day of shooting just because he forgot?) 28. Vision 29. Whatever Peter Dinklage Was

62. The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery)- Sissy Spacek's character explains, on a tour of her house, that she pulled up some wallpaper and found a signature from 1881 underneath, which is so unique that--ugly as it is--she couldn't bear to cover it. The movie is sort of about that. Does a way of life from a long time ago matter now?

Does it matter how you present yourself? How much does intention cancel out action?

The questions play themselves out in a way that is formally interesting--Lowery swish-pans and advances the scenes in a way that he hasn't since Ain't Them Bodies Saints--but informally pretty dull. Redford is engaging as possible, but I feel like I maxed out on my concern for a person who refuses to change.

I've had the Sean Penn "on one" scale for a long time, but I'm introducing the "off one" scale for Casey Affleck, who is so purposefully muted that he seems like he's going to pass out in some scenes. Keep doing you, Case. As far as acting goes.

61. Disobedience (Sebastian Lelio)- I admired how little the film spelled out about the setting and the characters' pasts. The beginning is cautious without being slow, and the women seem drawn to each other with a sort of magnetism that is difficult to pull off. While the triangle of people at the center is realistic and fair, the picture is ultimately a bit staid. I don't want melodrama out of the story either, but I do think it would work better if the characters were more passionate about anything, even the religion that makes them lack passion. 60. Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu)- This movie is sweet, and it nails the rom-com fulcrum scenes that it has to. Hear me out though: Both of the leads are winning, and Henry Golding's charm keeps us from acknowledging that his character is a psycho. Here is a list of things that, over the course of a year, he does not bother to tell his girlfriend:

a. That his family is the wealthiest in Singapore. Or wealthy at all. But more notably, he tells Rachel no details at all about his family, such as his brothers' and sisters' names. b. That he skipped an important trip home a few months ago, which caused a rift in his family. c. How to pack or dress for their trip to visit his family. d. That his mother did not want them sleeping together at her house, not that he "wants her all to himself." e. That his family wants him to take over their business, which would necessitate a permanent move to Singapore. f. That he went out with one of the women attending the bachelorette party, and that this woman has very good reason to sabotage Rachel and Nick's current relationship. g. That the wedding they're attending is also a super-rich affair that will be covered by international media. h. That the wedding party they're attending the night before is a formal affair with hundreds of guests, not the "family party" that he presents it as. By the way, this is one of the two times that he not only doesn't accompany her to an event, expecting her to meet him there and find him, but he doesn't even send a car. i. That he's thinking about proposing to her. "We haven't even talked about that stuff," Rachel tells her mother.

Communication is key, Nick.

59. Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh)- I liked the first half and its patient doling out of information. Haigh sews quite a few credible threads to show why the gruff Dell would take a liking to Charley. When the film diverges into a drifter story, I got frustrated with it. To me, drifter characters aren't interesting because they take unpredictable actions, what enliven films, and make them predictable. A dine-and-dash is a dangerous, exciting thing to happen in a movie, but when this scared kid has already done so much similar running, it dulls that edge. This is Haigh's least successful film, but it's still empathetic and sensitive.

58. Hereditary (Ari Aster)- The first third of Hereditary is when it is at its most intimate and compact as a story of grief. And with the bridge of a genuinely shocking event, it becomes less Don’t Look Back and more of a hellish explainer.

Ari Aster is a master craftsman already, investing every element with intention, down to “Why are clocks so present in the frame?” That craft extends to Toni Collette, who is even better than she normally is. But in refusing to be mysterious and small, the film didn't connect with me on a level beyond admiration..

57. Gringo (Nash Edgerton)- The expository information about the company comes too late, the ending is too tidy, and I'm not sure what my girl Mandy Seyfried is doing in this. But it's funny overall, in large part because Theron and Edgerton bounce off each other beautifully, projecting a very specific brand of nouveau riche awful. She says, "Fat people are...hilarious," and he wears too many accessories in his pick-up basketball game, for which there's a running clock.

Many of these crime comedies fail because all of the characters are painted with the same cynical brush, but Oyelowo is so likable here as a frazzled guy in over his head, playing against the type of simmering dignity he inhabited as someone like Martin Luther King. I'm glad that he's getting at-bats with something this different.

56. Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard)- If you like table-setting (and I do), then this is going to be a fun time. Each room at the motel gets a two-sided mirror, each character is two-faced, many events are presented from two perspectives, and there's even a double in the title. It's hard not to share in Goddard's delight as he patiently lays out all of the Tarantinian pieces.

Once he has to start declaring things though, somewhere halfway in the meandering two and a half hours, the film doesn't end up having much to say. I'm not sure I wanted another Cabin in the Woods ending, but I did want it to add up to more than the modest pleasures that it does. Kudos to Chris Hemsworth and his dialect coach for finally piecing together a serviceable American accent.

55. Thunder Road (Jim Cummings)- As far as calling card movies go, this one is a pretty smart character study. It centers on how the things we find important, the impact of words in this case, can often be the things we struggle with the most, through dyslexia and spoonerisms and messed-up jokes in this case. That being said, no offense, the film would be 25% better with a more capable lead actor. 54. Annihilation (Alex Garland)- Much like Sunshine, another Alex Garland script, this story handles the mystery elegantly, with jolts of real horror, until we get where we're going, which doesn't live up to the promise. I do appreciate that it respects the viewer's intelligence--withholding answers to questions, sometimes never answering questions. I'm grateful that it exists. 53. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)- Like Chi-Raq and Red Hook Summer, BlacKKKlansman would make for a hell of a YouTube compilation if you cut together its best moments. It's sharp and vital when it's at its best, which is pretty much any time it's commenting on the present, through "Now more than ever" Nixon campaign posters, mentions of how David Duke's policies might show up in Republican platforms, or the searing epilogue that brings back one of Lee's oldest tricks.

Like a lot of his recent work though, it's a mess tonally, and basic stuff like the timing of the cuts seems amateurish. I also think Lee's relationship with Terence Blanchard is hurting him at this point; the music doesn't match what's going on at all. I wish it hung together better than it does.

52. Widows (Steve McQueen)- This is the messiest film that Steve McQueen has made, which is its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. That loose quality allows for some expressive moves, such as when the alderman candidate takes a real-time two-minute ride from the poor area where he's campaigning to the tony area where he lives, in the same district. This is a film with admirable ambition to go with its cheap thrills.

But that same messiness produces as many bad performances (Farrell, Neeson, and, yes, Duvall) as it does good ones (Debicki, Henry, Kaluuya), and it elides so many moments near the end that I have lingering questions about whether a major plot point was even resolved. This is definitely the type of movie that has a three-hour cut that is better, and I still hope that director's cut doesn't waste five scenes on Debicki's prostitute relationship with Lukas Haas. (Where is his sliver of a face on the poster?)

51. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci)- I feel as if I have to adjust to the astringency of any Iannucci property, and when I do, I laugh a lot. This movie is hilarious, and I'll save you from a list of the jokes that work the best.

Iannucci and his collaborators take one of the most violent, tyrannical periods of history and expose its perpetrators as sniveling, feckless children who might accidentally spit in their own faces as they're trying to spit on someone else's. Destabilizing those in power--in this case de-memorializing them--and portraying them as lost, scared humans is the goal of satire. So even though he does it so well, part of me wonders, "Is that it?" Bureaucracy is dumb? Isn't this an easy target? For what it's worth, I felt the same way about In the Loop, despite everyone else's praise. I'm waiting for Iannucci to find a weapon sharper than the middle finger.

50. Tully (Jason Reitman)- In a way, it's refreshing for a screenwriter to be bad at writing men. The outdated, clueless, manchild dad is the biggest weakness of the script, especially since everything else is pitched with such realism. There's also one scene that I hate but probably shouldn't spoil.

Put aside that character though, and this is a movie with wit, verisimilitude, and even a bit of visual agility. The protagonist--Marlo, a Diablo Cody name if there ever was one--has a special needs son, and I appreciated the honest way that Marlo's frustration with him sometimes outweighed her understanding.

49. Fahrenheit 11/9 (Michael Moore)- Fahrenheit 11/9 is diffuse, but it's effective enough to be in the top half of Moore's work. He stays out of it mostly (besides that familiar narration, as gentle as it is ashamed), but his heart is clearly in the searing Flint section. In fact, I wish he had made a documentary that focused only on that American travesty, not all of them.

He has the same challenge that many of us do--pointing out the crimes and perversions of Trump while keeping the high ground--and he doesn't always avoid the low-hanging fruit. Dubbing Trump's voice over Hitler's is the type of shit that people hate him for. At most turns, however, Moore's choices make sense. A long diversion into the Parkland kids, even though I find them kind of tiring personally, serves as an inspirational peak to the valley of any people of a generation or two earlier than them.

48. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)- Many Wes Anderson movies are flippant about death and disease. When the effect works, it's refreshing and disorienting. When it doesn't, like in this movie, it feels cold, as if he's moving dolls around in a playhouse.

But in every other way, the sweet and wry Isle of Dogs benefits as a manicured chamber piece. The details are obvious (the tactile fur on all of the dog puppets), less obvious (a translation provides the legend "very sad funeral" to accompany a news story), and even less obvious (more than one joke about how many syllables should be in a haiku). If the narrative--jaded stray finds redemption through guileless child--doesn't offer much in the way of re-invention for the director, then I'm glad the large canvas does.

47. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsey)- I wanted an artsy crime film, and I got an artsy crime film. I have no idea if I liked it. It's bleak and groady, more of a violence movie than an action movie, concerned with the cycle of abuse and the oily spread of vengeance. It begins twenty minutes after most films of its type might choose to, and it begins in earnest at the hour mark. The atonal Jonny Greenwood score is a perfect approximation of whatever kind of dark clouds are floating in the protagonist's head.

Even when it doesn't work, the film is a reminder that Lynne Ramsey is a real artist. Although this doesn't come close to the catharsis and real-world relevance of We Need to Talk About Kevin, it reveals a focused point of view. Whether it's depicting a sequence through only surveillance footage or cutting to a half-second of flashback, she includes exactly what she wants to.

46. The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Sera)- I gave Non-Stop two-and-a-half stars, and this is a much more elegant version of Non-Stop. Even though it succumbs to gross CGI and outsized conspiracy, the class-conscious table setting is non-pareil, and it lets Neeson act his age.

45. Vice (Adam McKay)- Vice is a difficult film to evaluate because its greatest strength, the resolute, partisan, experimental point of view, is also its greatest weakness, the hand-holding, pedantic, antic point of view. There are moments in this film--the menu scene, the fake-ending--that are more inventive than anything else this year. And credit to McKay for a sui generis structure that covers thirty years in the first hour and two years in the second hour; if nothing else, he has the talent to make unitary executive theory fun.

It's a big, angry, auteurist, '70s swing, so it also takes a lot of chances that don't work and, quite obviously, it wields poetic license in the way that Ron Burgundy swished around a glass of scotch. Sometimes it doesn't know when to trust the viewer, like when it freeze frames and flashes "George H.W. Bush, President, 1989-1993" over a Bush-looking guy talking about "Barbara and I" as his son misbehaves in the background. Through no fault of McKay's, the story feels anti-climactic as well. Although I felt more distance than I expected from events that I consider recent history, the dominoes are still falling in the world that Cheney shaped.

One thing that is less debatable is Christian Bale's transformation into Cheney. That word "transformation" is used any time a famous person wears a wig. This performance, which spans decades and is not directly related to any of Bale's other work, is different. The portrait of Cheney is one of monolithic evil, which Bale suggests, but it's also grounded in reticent, clenched jaw micro-movements. Cheney, who is four inches shorter than Bale, seems like the smallest and biggest man in any room. At this point, if you told me Bale was playing Grendel, I wouldn't bat an eye. In fact, his Grendel might look a lot like Dick Cheney.

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adventures-of-the-creeping-bam · 3 years

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NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: THE ADVENTURES OF THE CREEPING BAM, BOOK ONE: THE JOB - CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER ONE (Please read this first, for obvious reasons.)

IMPORTANT: Please note this story includes content that may be considered mature, such as moderate battle violence, some strong language and occasional mild sexual scenes.

CHAPTER EIGHT: KESLA

Once the Hunter’s Pass lies behind us, we’re in true wilderness, beyond any influence of Hocknar or the Provisional Government or even the Terrors themselves. Out here in these harsh mountain climes, the only law is tooth and claw, ain’t no mercy if you screw up. In a way it’s kinda freeing really. Out here we can just be ourselves.

Yeslee’s given up riding her horse entirely now, it’s easier for her to scout ahead on foot. This is where she’s truly at home, creeping through the brush, climbing trees and leaping from branch to branch, impossibly silent no matter what terrain she’s navigating. She could be five feet away from me right now and I’d never know it, but I suspect she’s a long way off now. She can move so fast for someone so big.

It’s the middle of the day now, the sun’s right over us now, and for maybe a couple of hours in the day we’ve actually got real direct light to work with thanks to the towering peaks so tall and steep all round us. This valley’s deep, the trees don’t get a whole lot of sun here, but they’re tall enough all the same, furred evergreens crowding the path as we move through. In two more hours it’ll almost be like twilight again down here. It’s much quieter here too – there’s animal life here, I’m sure of it, but it’s a lot more stealthy than in the gentler lands we left behind. It’s has to be. There’s a whole lot of predators round here.

Rummaging in my pack, I pull out my bag of jerky, slip out a couple pieces and wrap the rest back up before putting them away again. I snap off a chunk with my teeth and start chewing, enjoying the rich, salty taste as I allow Ulrich to follow the only real path there is to take right now. ‘Spite of our surroundings, and the situation in general, I feel weirdly safe right now. Like I can get away with letting my guard down for a little while.

I hear the rough clatter of scree under hooves as Gael urges their mare up beside me, and my destrier bucks up a little bit as they both draw close, raising his head and straightening a touch like he’s trying to look even bigger than he already is, which is massive enough already. The mare’s not in season or I think he could go completely crazy, disciplined warhorse or not, but he clearly finds her attractive all the same. Boys. They’re all the same no matter what species they are.

For a few minutes we carry on like this in relative silence, Ulrich actually prancing a little bit now, and Gael’s mare turns her head to look at him every once in a while, clearly checking him out too. Mutual attraction, it’d seem. I look across at Gael and they’re smirking, clearly as amused by this whole development as I am. They’re blushing too, though, a little embarrassment peeking through. Not that I’m surprised – Gael’s always seemed lacking in real worldliness to me, and I’ve always suspected that goes double for dealing with things like romance and its ilk.

They’ve got their hood pushed back now, comfortable to be themselves out here like I am. Back in the lands of civilisation they tend to keep it up most of the time, but then half-elves are looked upon as something out the ordinary in most so-called polite societies, much like half-orcs. They don’t really inhabit either world, neither a creature of short, vital life from the cities or farmlands, nor a truly near-immortal, almost inherently magical being not entirely of this world. Most of the time their shorter but still clearly pointed ears and more subtle but still visible otherworldliness simply mark them out as clearly different, but also lesser. I don’t envy Gael the difficulties they must’ve had growing up as a half-elf in such an elite environment as the Silver Order’s magical Academy in Bavat, even if my own childhood wasn’t exactly a treat in its own right.

A lot of the time they put up walls around themselves far beyond the hood, adopting airs and graces that can come across as arrogant and superior if you ain’t used to ‘em, gotten to know the truly intelligent, vital person underneath the veneer. From what little I’ve been able to glean about their time in the Academy, this is how they grew up, learning to be like this as a kinda shield against bullying and prejudice from other students. I wonder if they had many friends among the student body. Maybe. There’s outcasts everywhere in the world, probably banded together there too.

Out here, though, Gael can drop all that. When we’re on the road, or in the middle of a job, they can behave how they choose, and I swear this is always the happiest I ever see ’em. So they got their hood swept back from that unruly bob of wild black curls, and they ain’t tucking it back behind their ears or shoving it out their face like they do when we’re in “polite” company. No nervous tics out here. Just easy smiles and those impossibly bright eyes.

“You really do like it out here, don’t you?”

Gael looks at me for a few moments, eyes narrowed a little as they study me. They seem as surprised by the question as I am that I asked it in the first place. Then that smile starts to come back. “Yes, I think perhaps I do. It’s much simpler out here. Just us and the work.”

I nod along with that. Nice, succinct. They got a lot of fancy words they like to employ sometimes, I suspect they do it partly to put others on the back foot and gain the advantage in a conversation, but sometimes they can cut through the bollocks and just say it straight like that. This really is my favourite version of Gael Foxtail. They’re a little like me, I think.

“Long ways to go yet. Plenty of time with just ourselves and the road.”

A little scowl crosses their face as they say: “Plenty of time for you to whip my backside in training too, I would imagine.” It’s gone fast and they’re smiling again.

“Yeah, that too. Y’know, we could try unarmed combat instead if you’d like. I could get you wrestlin’ in no time. Or knife-fighting if you think it’d be easier. The sword’s just my strongest suit.”

They chuckle a little at that. “No thanks. The sword’s fine. I mean you areright, I need to learn. I can handle my staff well enough but we’ve come up against some very tough customers during our time together. And I can only imagine what you’ve experienced in the years before you met me. I bow to your experience out here.”

“Yeah, well that’s all very well. But there’s plenty out here I still don’t get. That’s why we were kinda hurting as a party ‘fore you finally came along. Krakka’s great at what he does, but he’s kinda limited in what he can do with his god magic. We get hurt, he patches us up fine, and he takes down undead like nobody else I ever seen before. But there’s some seriousmagic out there. It’s good to have a mage of our own for that stuff.”

Gael looks at me for what feels like a long time again. They’re blushing again, and it’s clearly from the compliment. They start nibbling their lower lip and it’s thoroughly endearing. “Um … thanks. Glad I can be useful to the group.”

“Hey, listen. That don’t really matter. You’d be one of us anyway, magic or not. We’re a family. We look out for our own, and we feel safe cuz we always know everybody else’s got our back too. I’m not riding you ‘bout the fighting cuz it’ll make you more useful. I’m teaching you to fight so I know you’ll be safe.”

Another long look, and those eyes are locked on mine now. Their blush is fading now, but I see them swallowing hard, jaw clenched tight, and their bottom lip’s wobbling a little. Those impossibly deep, uncannily bright blue eyes are brimming wet now. I let go a deep sigh and reach over, grip their shoulder tight. If we weren’t riding right now I’d give ‘em a hug. After a moment they reach up with their right hand and grip mine, give it a squeeze, then reach up with the other so they can wipe their eyes with the voluminous sleeve of their robe. “Thank you. Really. It means a lot.”

“Don’t mention it.” I give their shoulder one more squeeze and let go, then look back over my shoulder at the rest of the group, strung out behind us.

Driver 8’s as stoic and stone-faced as ever, just perpetually plodding along beside the cart, while Wenrich simply gives me a cool, calm nod, nothing clear enough to read in it. Krakka’s in back right now, he probably hasn’t even seen this exchange. Art’s the only one who’s clearly paying attention, and he gives me a big, beaming grin full of sharp teeth as he gives a little wink. I give him my sternest, harshest glare in return and his grin drops quick enough. I manage not to smile too smug as I turn back to the road.

We ride on for a time, and the silence is comfortable now. After a while we come across a fork in the track ahead, and I hold up my hand for the rest to stop as I rein Ulrich up, Gael doing the same at my side. Trotting forward I look around, then I spot an arrow, freshly scratched into the bark of a tree on the right, underneath a little symbol I instantly recognise as Yeslee’s sign. Turn right here. I turn in the saddle and signal my intention to the others, then nod over at Gael before turning onto the correct path, the rest of our little convoy following without question.

We’re moving ever so gradually downhill now, and after a few minutes I can hear the subtlest trickling sound somewhere in front. Water ahead. Seems right.

“So … I get that your friend Wenrich can’t tell us what’s in the box.” I venture after a little while. “But you ain’t bound by any orders not to say, are you? You got any idea what we’re transporting?”

Gael gives me a sidelong glance, thoughtful again, then looks back over their shoulder for a moment. Clearly clocking Wenrich. When they turn back to the road they’re a little stony-faced, but they nod all the same. “I don’t know exactly, but I have my suspicions.”

“Like what?” I get a chill down my spine at this, but it ain’t nerves. More like excitement, I think. Anticipation.

Gael thinks for another minute or two, I suspect working on finding the right words. They know I’m not dumb, but when it comes to magic I’m still largely a layman, so they’re gonna try not to overwhelm me in jargon. Finally a sigh, and they look up at me from under that unruly fringe, a little sheepish now. This is gonna be complicated, then.

“Right … how much do you know about the Sundering?”

“Just what they teach most kids when they’re young, I reckon. Tao broke, they say. There was this massive disaster, nobody really knows what it was or what caused it, but one day the world was normal, then everything just kinda … I dunno, it stopped. The world stopped spinning. The gods had to step in, they used all their power and their magic, and set it all turning again. But it didn’t really work, cuz ever since Tao’s been turning with one side always turned away from the sun. Which never really convinced me to tell the truth.”

“How come?” Gael smiles at that, brow cocked too. Incredulous, but amused.

“Well Helios, he’s a god, ain’t he? God of the sun. Serena’s twin brother. He’s a god, just as powerful as all the rest of ‘em, right? So how come, once he saw what happened, how come he didn’t just make a new sun on the other side so they could have day on the dark side too?”

Gael’s other brow goes up at that. Reckon I’ve actually genuinely surprised ‘em with that one. “That’s … hmm … not really how it works, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. There’s more to it than just the gods. Da taught me something about science when I was a kid too. Like we’re moving through space while we’re spinning, and we’re goin’ round the sun, not the other way round. So that’s why the Night Lands are always pointed away from the sun. It’s also why the days and nights are always the same length, depending on where you are, no matter what time o’ year it is, but how it used to be they’d get longer or shorter, different times of year. Pretty weird idea, that.”

“Your father taught you that? You said he taught soldiers how to fight.”

“True, but he was smart too. Da was a real sharp tool, as they say. Anyways, ma told him all that stuff. Before I was born. She was a teacher. He always wished she’d survived having me, cuz she would’ve brought me up to be smart as her.” I feel a pang as I speak these words, a lump growing in my throat, but I choke it back hard, blink away the tears before they can come. When I turn back Gael’s looking at me again, real thoughtful now.

“What?”

“I think you’re very much all the best that bothyour parents could have made you, Kesla. You’re one of the brightest people I know, in your way. You may not have the education that someone like myself has always benefitted from, but you’re still extremely clever.”

Reckon I might actually be blushing now, I can feel my cheeks flushing hot, the rising heat in my neck, but if Gael sees they don’t seem to acknowledge it. “Um … thanks … I guess.”

Another smile, then they shrug. “You seem to have the basics down on the Sundering, anyway. It was a great cataclysm, yes. And you’re right, no-one really knows what caused it, although there are a great many theories. Some believe that the great dark beast, Apophis, might have been the cause.”

“You mean the Void?” I feel a chill just thinking about that. Apophis. They call it the Anti-god, or sometimes the Adversary. “I heard that it was the father and mother of all monstrosities, that everything that’s evil and unnatural in Tao today came from its diseased core. All the undead and mutations and … whatever it is crawling round in the darkness beyond the Borderlands. That’s why all the necromancers an’ worse tend to flock to its worship.”

“Well, not exactly, but yes. Something like that.” Gael thinks again, considering their words carefully. “Some people believe that, but there are many who think that Apophis was actually created in the Sundering, that it was such an almighty terrible thing that happened that all the negative energy that was unleashed just coalesced and assumed an actual divine form. That Apophis is simply some kind of eldritch by-product.”

“Yuck.” I frown deeply, not liking what that suggests to me. “I dunno if that’s better or worse.”

“Neither do any of the people who prescribe to these theories, because if the Sundering could create something so abominable as Apophis simply by accident, then whatever did cause it was something truly terrible. Unfortunately, even the gods remain stubbornly obtuse regarding that subject.” They give me another sidelong glance, then add: “It means they don’t seem to understand it.”

“I know. Da taught me words too. Said ma called it a vocabulary.”

This time they laugh out loud, and I have a little chuckle too. We ride on in silence for a few more minutes, buoyed by our mutual amusement. Finally I find my curiosity leading me to speak again. “Okay, so what do you believe? If it wasn’t the Void?”

“Personally, I don’t know. There are too many possible variables that still remain unaccounted for, there’s just no way to definitively prove anything at all. Too much mystery still to be solved, if you will, and not enough clues. But there are many, especially in the Silver Order, who think it might have something to do with whatever does lie on the other side of the Borderlands, that whatever holds sway in the Night Lands caused all this to begin with. That this, what the world has become, was their intention, or at least something much like it. Or perhaps something much worse, perhaps the gods foiled this plan, at least in part, when they set Tao back on its path again.”

“You mean maybe whoever, or whatever it was, they wanted Tao cast adrift in the darkness entirely, and the gods making it so only half the world was being stuck in night meant they had to make do with what they could get?” Another shudder. “Don’t reckon I like the sound o’ that either.”

“Nor do I. But there aresigns that this could at least be part of the truth. If Apophis was made in the Sundering, it wasn’t all that was created. Every once in a while, some remnant pops up, something touched by that impossible energy that broke the world. A piece of wreckage, something that all that pure, concentrated power got forced into. When I was at the Academy, I was taught a bit about this kind of thing. It’s called radiation. That object will always carry that energy, and it has an actual effect on everything around it.”

“What kind of effect?” I gulp, I can’t help it. I’m not liking the sound of this.

“A powerful one.” Gael shrugs. “Really, it depends on the energy itself, and the object to an extent. Different effects for different frequencies of energy, or depending on the kind of object that’s been imbued with this energy. Often it’s a negative one, sometimes quite debilitating. It can even kill you if you get too close, or are exposed for too long. Other times it can be strangely beneficial.”

I actually pull up on the reins this time, Ulrich almost rearing for a moment, and Gael’s mare shies from him, but only a little. I didn’t even mean to do it, I just did it. But I stare across at them, genuinely taken aback, then look back at the cart as the others stop as well, Wenrich frowning a little as he looks at me. “Are you telling me we could be getting slowly poisoned by this thing right this second, and not even know it? Are you seriously telling me this?”

“No, of course not.” Gael’s manoeuvred their horse closer and takes hold of my wrist, gentle but firm. “Look, the Order’s been uncovering this stuff for a while now. We’ve got a lot of experience dealing with this kind of problem, we’ve come up with some very effective protocols for rendering these artifacts as safe as possible. That’s why it’s sealed up so tight in such a big crate. I would hazard that the object itself is actually quite small, the rest of the box is purely to make room for the dampening. We should be safe as houses.”

Looking into their eyes, my mind is racing away a mile a minute, going over the connotations of all this, what they said, what they’re saying now. I look back, see Wenrich’s stood up now, he’s watching us both closely, but he’s too far back to have been able to hear our conversation. That was kinda the point. That being said, doubt he’s gotta think too hard on what we been discussing could provoke this kinda response outta me.

As I manage to get my nerves under control again I take several deep breaths, wheeling Ulrich gently round until we’re pointed back down the track again. Gael’s watching me close, wary now, probably regretting telling me quite so much as they did. I nod back at them, trying to put an easy smile on for their sake, but I’m not entirely sure it works. “Okay. If you say it’s cool, then it’s cool.”

“I mean it, Kes. If they hadn’t perfected this hundreds of years ago already I wouldn’t be trusting them with it any more than you would.”

“Sure. I trust you,at least. If you say so, then I’ll give ‘em the benefit of the doubt.” I click my heels very gently into Ulrich’s sides and he jolts into a walk again, clearly enthusiastic to be moving again. Reckon he can feel the stress that’s still rushing through me. Gael keeps pace with me, and soon enough I can hear the others following too.

“So does this explain why these … whoever they are, why they’re so dead set on getting’ their mitts on our cargo?”

“Maybe. This artifact, we think it’s like … an engine, almost. Something that can power something big. Or a catalyst, perhaps. Something that could provoke a great change, if they put enough time and effort and resources into exploiting the sheer power this thing has inside it. It’s not beyond all realms of possibility that, if some great and terrible power got enough of these artifacts together and forced them to unleash their energies altogether in just the right way, at just the right time …” They shudder.

“What, you think some crazy bastard out there could be looking to kickstart another Sundering? Seriously?”

The look that Gael gives me this time is one I never actually saw before. I seen ‘em startled in battle, rattled even on occasion, although for the most part they tend to bloom surprisingly well when things get proper tight. Nor is this the sheepish nervousness I seen ‘em try to hide so often, generally with varying degrees of success. No, right now they look genuinely spooked. Like actually afraid. “Minerva protect me … I hope not.”

Chancing one last look back at the cart, I see Wenrich’s still watching me closely. Still calculating. I wonder if I should take him aside tonight, have a polite little conversation with him about exactly what he’s brought us into. Would he be so forthcoming once I lay it all out for him?

Probably not. I like him, it’s real hard not to, the way he is, or at least way he seems, but I still don’t trust him. He’s here, in it with us, but he’s still playing his cards too close to his chest. Reckon far as he’s concerned the Silver Order’s his first concern, getting this job done an’ keeping their precious secrets. We’re a much lower concern in his agenda. Even Gael, if it comes to it.

Well … nothing I can do ‘bout it right now. We’re here now, middle of nowhere, heading into a place which is essentially the middle of nowhere squared. For at least a week, we’re gonna be too busy staying alive to really have time to worry about anything beyond it. No point dwelling on things we can’t change, least until they’re relevant again. Right now my job’s making sure they don’t.

Regardless, it’s stuck in there now, a niggle in the back of my mind, an’ I reckon it’s gonna stay put for now. What good humour I might have felt being out here before, it’s tainted now. Dunno if I’ll be able to get comfortable again any time soon …

TO BE CONTINUED ...

#never split the party #the creeping bam #the adventures of the creeping bam #book 1 chapter 8 #fantasy fiction #original fiction #original fantasy fiction #to be continued

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