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please-buckme · 3 years

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A Broken Heart.

Chapter 1

Lee Bodecker x fem!reader

Chapter warnings: slight mentions of sex, 18+,hitting, sad shit, break up, heart break, angst, cursing

Chapter Summary: reader and Lee breakup.

Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Chapter 2 //Chapter 3

The world felt as if it were shattering around you, crumbling beneath your feet like the rapture was upon you. Honestly, if the world did come to an end right now you’d be elated. At least you wouldn’t have to deal with your broken heart anymore.

You sat against a wall in your room, wallowing in your own self petty. It’d be three days since Lee Bodecker had broken things off with you. He had said that you were hurting his campaign, that he still loved you but needed a woman of power to help him become sheriff of this godforsaken town.

Lee had taken you out in the same field he took you to every time y’all made love. He kissed you so passionately, held you so closely. If you weren’t so caught up in the way his hands felt against your bare skin, you would’ve noticed how distraught he was the entire time he made love to you. It was his way of saying goodbye before he actually said goodbye. After he’d broken up with you, you felt disgusting and violated.

You’d never felt like that with Lee. He was your deputy and sinner in disguise. He was your rock and your soft place to fall. When the tears finally fill, the most empty feeling you’d ever felt emerged in your gut. One day you thought you were gonna be Mrs. Lee Bodecker. You daydreamed constantly of your wedding day and sharing a bed with the man you loved for the rest of your life ‘til you were old and gray. To know now that dream will always remain a dream.. that’s what hurt the most.

After Lee drove you home, you sat in your room for three days straight, not even coming out for supper. Your momma tried to convince you to eat and it worked once on the second day, until you threw up right after.

She didn’t understand. She’d never been in love, not really. Not love like you and Lee had. People told y’all all the time how rare and beautiful your love for one another was and you agreed. Just looking back on those memories made you sick. You listened in awe of how beautiful your love was not knowing Lee would only break your heart days later.

Today was Sunday, the lord's day, and usually you never wanted to go to church, but today you really didn’t want to go. The whole town, including Lee and his new arm candy, would be there. It’s the first time you’d be seeing Lee since he dropped you off. It was too soon, especially since you knew he’d already moved on.

As you sat with your head between your knees, your momma barged through your bedroom door.

“Jesus, girl. Why aren’t you up and ready to go? Church starts in an hour and you aren’t gonna make me late again.” She stomped over to your closet and shuffled through your dresses.

“Momma.. I- I’m not ready. I can’t see… him with her. I just ain’t ready for that kinda humiliation.” You sighed, trying to reason with your Bible-thumpin momma.

“Oh, no. You’ve embarrassed me enough this week. Disappearin’ for three whole days over a boy? You’re pathetic. You know, back in my day, we didn’t get to sit around and sulk the days away. No. We had to carry on like everything was fine and that’s what you’re gonna do. Now, get dressed.” She threw you a dress, one of your favorites actually. It was a teal blue, babydoll dress that you usually saved for special occasions, but you weren’t feeling very special at the moment and now you were just pissed off.

You stood and came face-to-face with your momma, “I’m not going. You have no idea how I feel. You can’t. You’ve never felt love the way we had it, Momma. No one ever loved you or me the way I love Lee. You couldn’t possib-“

Just then you felt a sharp sting against your cheek as your momma slapped you across the face.

“Not. Another. Word. You will be dressed and waitin for me at the car in ten minutes. No poutin’ and no sulkin’ in the pews. I don’t wanna hear another word about that boy.” She turned to exit your room but turned around to give you one last dig to the heart, “And, honey, a man in love would never have done what he did to you. Remember that next time you wanna preach to me about love.” With that she left your room. Your cheek still stung from the unexpected hit to the face. Your momma was cruel but she’d never hit you before.

The slap, in a way, was kind of refreshing. For a split second you’d totally forgotten about Lee. Only for a second, though. His crystal blue eyes and cheshire lips never leave your thoughts completely. You shook your head in defeat, trying to erase him from your mind. It didn’t work, but you took a deep breath and began getting ready.

The church parking lot was full when you and your momma pulled in. Rickety old trucks to brand spankin new, brightly colored cars littered the dusty lot. You spotted Lee’s car immediately, thankfully he was already inside.

The whole town came to this church, which wasn’t that many people. Nevertheless, everybody knew everybody and, even if you didn’t care, everybody knew everybody’s dirty laundry. Old Man Karl got pulled over last week for a DUI, Nancy from the library cheated on her husband with his brother and.. oh yeah, Lee Bodecker dumped his long time girlfriend for the mayor's daughter.

Lee and yours breakup was the talk of the town. You were the fresh, new gossip in this boring as hell town and there’s nothing you could do about it.

You couldn’t get two steps into the church without being bombarded by women you didn’t want to know but also knew too much about, asking if you were alright and that they’d pray for you on this ‘beautiful, glorious Sunday morning’. Yeah, same shit different day, different person.

One woman stayed to chat with your momma, so you went to find your seat. Your usual spot was next to Lee and naturally that’s where you headed, only to be greeted by Lee and His new girlfriend, Laura-Jean Mancon. She was one of those girls who’d been pretty her whole life. Blind hair, blue eyes and a huge rack. Everybody thought she’d go into modeling or start an acting career but she never did. Instead, she stayed and was now going to marry Lee. In your eyes, that’s the best path she could’ve taken. You’d take her place any day.

“Mornin’ Y/n.” Lee cleared his throat, unable to make eye contact with you.

“L-“ You went to say his name but found you couldn’t. It was only one syllable, only three letters and it pained you to even think about, let alone say aloud. You cleared your throat, “Laura-Jean, nice to see you again.”

Laura-Jean said nothing in return. She just hummed, waiting for you to talk away.

“I guess I’ll go.. find me a new seat.” You took a deep breath when you felt the tears welling up in your eyes, again. Lee stared straight forward the whole time you stood there, too cowardly to even look you in the eyes. Some Sheriff he’ll be.

You scanned the crowd of people and found your momma in the front row, of course. You made your way up the aisle and took your seat next to her. The chorus sang their hems and the preacher clapped his way in on the last versus.

“How are we doin’ on this fine Sunday mornin’?” he drawled to the crowd. He got an assortment of greetings in return.

“I said ‘HOW ARE WE DOIN ON THIS BRIGHT N’ SHINY SUNDIE MORNIN’?’.”

“GOOD” the people shouted in return. You could hear Laura-Jean giggling over something but you wouldn’t dare look back. Lee always made church bearable, making wise cracks at the preaches expense.

“Now, today I’d like to talk a little bit about love. Of course, we’re always talkin’ about love when it comes to our lord and savor, Jesus Christ. But just for a moment, it ain’t about him. No. This mornin’ I’m preachin’ to you about young love.”

Here we go.

“It comes and goes so fast, but when you have it, it’s one of the most beautiful things this world can offer you.. especially when you put a little Jesus in it.” The church laughed. You knew where this was going. Your stomach churned as you sunk down into the pew.

“I’d like to ask the newly engaged folks in the crowd to come and join me up here. You know who you are, soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Lee Bodecker.”

Your heart felt as if it were going to explode, a tear escaped through your lashes and you quickly wiped it away.

They walked up hand in hand, smiling for cheek to cheek. How could he be so happy, so calm after only being broken up for less than a week? Did he ever love you? Really love you. Like you loved him. Obviously not because you could never, in good conscience do this to him. You couldn’t stand on a stage wrapped arm in arm with another man while Lee sat, just as you were now, devastated and totally distraught.

“So tell us,” the preach beamed. “When’s the big day.”

Lee looked at you with a pained expression as Laura-Jean answered the preach.

“May 21st”

Your breathing heavies at the reply. Turning to your momma you whispered, “Momma, that’s in two weeks.”

“I know that. Now, hush.” She side eyed you with a full smile still pressed to her lips. Even your own mother didn’t seem to care about your feelings. You sat there, listening to Laura-Jean go on and on about their ‘big day’. Tears streamed down your face and you let them. You’d given up on trying to hide how hurt you really felt. When you looked up, Lee stared straight at you. He wasn’t crying but his pain ridden face told you everything. One look at him and you couldn’t breathe anymore. You stood abruptly, all eyes were on you and Laura-Jean had stopped talking.

“I- excuse me.” You said before booking it out the back door. Lee hollered out, asking you to wait. It was too late. You were half way out the door and couldn’t stand to be in that room for another second.

Your feet stomped against the grave, dust clouding up in your wake as you made your way to the road.

“Y/n!” Lee called out after you.

“Go away. I have nothing to say to you, L- fuck.” You cursed, trying desperately to get away from him.

“I said wait, goddammit.” He growled, capturing your bicep in his large hand.

“Let go of me!” You whined sounding out of breath.

“Not until you listened to what I have to say.”

“What, Lee? What could you possibly have to say?”

“I- I.. dammit. I know I put you in a tough position but-“

“A tough position?” You repeated.

“Let me finish.” He sighed and released your arm from his grasp, “I know I hurt you. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am, but, doll, this is it. This is my only chance at becoming Sheriff. You know how hard I’ve worked to get here and you’ve always been so supportive of my dream. I- I just thought.. out of everyone you would understand.”

Your skin burned as you imagined smoke blowing from your ears. Did he really just say that? That you should understand the break up and go on with your life like nothing happened like he is? You stood there frozen, breathing heavier and heavier as your brain tried to come up with a coherent response while trying to also remain a lady.

“I- I still love you. You know that, right?” He asked, bringing a hand to your cheek and wiping a stray tear away.

You flinched at his burning touch and slapped his hand away, “Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again. I don’t love you anymore. I can’t love you. Shit… seeing you was the best part of my day and now I can’t even look at you without feeling like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. I can’t even say your name anymore. Everything about you, now, fills me with so much pain and dread. So if that’s what your love is, keep it. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Doll,” A tear ran down his cheek, you now being the one who’s breaking his heart. “I never meant to hurt you. I swear.” He sniffles.

“Well, you did. I’m in so much pain.” You sobbed, “I’m in so much pain and I have no one to go to because you were my person. You have left me completely empty and utterly alone.”

“Y/n, I-“

“Save it, Bodecker. I’m done talking to you.”

Lee didn’t chase after you this time. He let the tears stream down his face as he watched you walk away. He was just as heartbroken as you but couldn’t show it., not when he was so close to winning this election. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and headed back towards the church. He knew you just needed time and that he’d still see you around town.

Seeing you today took his breath away. You wore your favorite dress that he bought you for your birthday so long ago. You didn’t have on any makeup, which he loved. You were so naturally beautiful and he did still love you with every piece of his shattered heart. He’d eventually come up with a plan to get you back, but for now he would respect your space.

Once you’d gotten home and shut the door, you couldn’t help but scream at the top of your lungs. Hoping for some sort of release from all this heartache you felt. Telling him you couldn’t love him was the hardest thing you ever had to do. You sat on the floor in the same position you were in before you left; head between your knees and sobbing like a baby.

There was no escaping him in this town. There was church and the grocery store and the diner you worked at part time. He was everywhere. He’d come in every morning you worked to have coffee with you. He had been a part of every little thing you do in your daily routine for as long as you can remember.

There was never a time you weren’t together. It was always just you and him. He was the one who held you when you were sad, but where was he now when you needed him most?

To you, there was only one way to fix this; get the hell out of here. Completely leave town and start anew somewhere else. You have an aunt that lives right outside of town. You can stay there until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Wiping the tears from your eyes, you got up. Your aunt agreed to the plan and said you could stay with her for as long as you needed when you called her. You packed a small duffle bag and waited for her to pick you up.

When she did finally pull up out front, you hopped in the car and she drove off, leaving the dusty ole town you called home for so long. You took in a deep breath as you drove towards your new life. No Lee, no momma, no worries.

Dividers by: @firefly-in-darkness

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grigori77 · 3 years

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Movies of 2021 - My Pre-Summer Favourites (Part 2)

The Top Ten:

10. ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE – one of the undisputable highlights of the Winter-Spring period has to be the long-awaited, much vaunted redressing of a balance that’s been a particular thorn in the side of DC cinematic fans for over three years now – the completion and restoration of the true, unadulterated original director’s cut of the painfully abortive DCEU team-up movie that was absolutely butchered when Joss Whedon took over from original director Zack Snyder and then heavily rewrote and largely reshot the whole thing. It was a somewhat painful experience to view in cinemas back in 2017 – sure, there were bits that worked, but most of it didn’t and it wasn’t like the underrated Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, which improves immensely on subsequent viewings (especially in the three hour-long director’s cut). No, Whedon’s film was a MESS. Needless to say fans were up in arms, and once word got out that the finished film was not at all what Snyder originally intended, a vocal, forceful online campaign began to restore what quickly became known as the Snyder Cut. Thank the gods that Warner Bros listened to them, ultimately taking advantage of the intriguing alternative possibilities provided by their streaming service HBO Max to allow Snyder to present his fully reinstated creation in its entirety. The only remaining question, of course, is simply … is it actually any good? Well it’s certainly much more like BVS:DOG than Whedon’s film ever was, and there’s no denying that, much like the rest of Snyder’s oeuvre, this is a proper marmite movie – there are gonna people who hate it no matter what, but the faithful, the fans, or simply those who are willing to open their minds are going to find much to enjoy here. The damage has been thoroughly patched, most of the elements that didn’t work in the theatrical release having been swapped out or reworked so that now they pay off BEAUTIFULLY. This time the quest of Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to bring the first iteration of the Justice League together – half-Atlantean superhuman Arthur Curry/the Aquaman (Jason Momoa), lightning-powered speedster Barry Allan/the Flash (Fantastic Beasts’ Ezra Miller) and cybernetically-rebuilt genius Victor Stone/Cyborg (relative newcomer Ray Fisher) – not only feels organic, but NECESSARY, as does their desperate scheme to use one of the three alien Mother Boxes (no longer just shiny McGuffins but now genuinely well-realised technological forces that threaten cataclysm as much as they provide opportunity for miracles) to bring Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) back from the dead, especially given the far more compelling threat of this version’s collection of villains. Ciaran Hinds’ mocapped monstrosity Steppenwolf is a far more palpable and interesting big bad this time round, given a more intricate backstory that also ties in a far greater ultimate mega-villain that would have become the DCEU’s Thanos had Snyder had his way to begin with – Darkseid (Ray Porter), tyrannical ruler of Apokolips and one of the most powerful and hated beings in the Universe, who could have ushered the DCEU’s now aborted New Gods storyline to the big screen. The newer members of the League receive far more screen-time and vastly improved backstory too, Miller’s Flash getting a far more pro-active role in the storyline AND the action which also thankfully cuts away a lot of the clumsiness the character had in the Whedon version without sacrificing any of the nerdy sass that nonetheless made him such a joy, while the connective tissue that ties Momoa’s Aquaman into his own subsequent standalone movie feels much stronger here, and his connection with his fellow League members feels less perfunctory too, but it’s Fisher’s Cyborg who TRULY reaps the benefits here, regaining a whole new key subplot and storyline that ties into a genuinely powerful tragic origin story, as well as a far more complicated and ultimately rewarding relationship with his scientist father, Silas Stone (the great Joe Morton). It’s also really nice to see Superman handled with the kind of skill we’d expect from the same director who did such a great job (fight me if you disagree) of bringing the character to life in two previous big screen instalments, as well as erasing the memory of that godawful digital moustache removal … similarly, it’s nice to see the new and returning supporting cast get more to do this time, from Morton and the ever-excellent J.K. Simmonds as fan favourite Gotham PD Commissioner Jim Gordon to Connie Nielsen as Diana’s mother, Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira and another unapologetic scene-stealing turn from Jeremy Irons as Batman’s faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth. Sure, it’s not a perfect movie – the unusual visual ratio takes some getting used to, while there’s A LOT of story to unpack here, and at a gargantuan FOUR HOURS there are times when the pacing somewhat lags, not to mention an overabundance of drawn-out endings (including a flash-forward to a potential apocalyptic future that, while evocative, smacks somewhat of overeager fan-service) that would put Lord of the Rings’ The Return of the King to shame, but original writer Chris Terrio’s reconstituted script is rich enough that there’s plenty to reward the more committed viewer, and the storytelling and character development is a powerful thing, while the action sequences are robust and thrilling (even if Snyder does keep falling back on his over-reliance on slow motion that seems to alienate some viewers), and the new score from Tom Holkenborg (who co-composed on BVS:DOJ) feels a far more natural successor than Danny Elfman’s theatrical compositions. The end result is no more likely to win fresh converts than Man of Steel or Batman Vs Superman, but it certainly stands up far better to a critical eye this time round, and feels like a far more natural progression for the saga too. Ultimately it’s more of an interesting tangential adventure given that Warner Bros seem to be stubbornly sticking to their original plans for the ongoing DCEU, but I can’t help hoping that they might have a change of heart in the future given just how much better the final product is than any of us had any right to expect …

9. SYNCHRONIC – writer-director duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are something of a creative phenomenon in the science-fiction and fantasy indie cinema scene, crafting films that ensnare the senses and engage the brain like few others. Subtly insidious conspiracy horror debut Resolution is a sneaky little chiller, while deeply original body horror Spring (the film that first got me into them) is weird, unsettling and surprisingly touching, but it was breakthrough sleeper hit The Endless, a nightmarish time-looping cosmic horror that thoroughly screws with your head, that really put them on the map. Needless to say it’s led them to greater opportunities heading into the future, and this is their first film to really reap the benefits, particularly by snaring a couple of genuine stars for its lead roles. Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are paramedics working the night shift in New Orleans, which puts them on the frontlines when a new drug hits the streets, a dangerous concoction known as Synchronic that causes its users to experience weird localised fractures in time that frequently lead to some pretty outlandish deaths in adults, while teenage users often disappear entirely. As the situation worsens, the pair’s professional and personal relationships become increasingly strained, compounded by the fact that Steve is concealing his recent diagnosis of terminal cancer, before things come to a head when Dennis’ teenage daughter Brianna (Into the Badlands’ Ally Ioannides) vanishes under suspicious circumstances, and it becomes clear to Steve that she’s become unstuck in time … this is as mind-bendingly off-the-wall and spectacularly inventive as we’ve come to expect from Benson and Moorhead, another fantastically original slice of weirdness that benefits enormously from their exquisitely obsessive attention to detail and characteristically unsettling atmosphere of building dread, while their character development is second to none, benefitting their top-notch cast no end. Mackie is typically excellent, bringing compelling vulnerability to the role that makes it easy to root for him as he gets further out of his depth in this twisted temporal labyrinth, while Dornan invests Dennis with a painfully human fallibility, and Ioannides does a lot with very little real screen time in her key role as ill-fated Brianna. The time-bending sequences are suitably disorienting and disturbing, utilising pleasingly subtle use of visual effects to further mess with your head, and the overall mechanics of the drug and its effects are fiendishly crafted, while the directors tighten the screw of slowburn tension throughout, building to a suitably offbeat ending that’s as devastating as anything we’ve seen from them so far. Altogether this is another winning slice of genre-busting weirdness from a filmmaking duo who deserve continued success in the future, and I for one will be watching eagerly.

8. WITHOUT REMORSE – I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy, to me he was one of the ultimate escapist thriller writers, and whenever a new adaptation of one of his novels comes along I’m always front of the line to check it out. The Hunt For Red October is one of my favourite screen thrillers OF ALL TIME, while my very favourite Clancy adaptation EVER, the Jack Ryan TV series, is, in my opinion, one of the very best Original shows that Amazon have ever done. But up until now my VERY FAVOURITE Clancy creation, John Clark, has always remained in the background or simply absent entirely, putting in an appearance as a supporting character in only two of the movies, tantalising me with his presence but never more than a teaser. Well that’s all over now – after languishing in development hell since the mid-90s, the long-awaited adaptation of my favourite Clancy novel, the origin story of the top CIA black ops operative, has finally arrived, as well as a direct spin-off from distributor Amazon’s own Jack Ryan series. Michael B. Jordan plays John Kelly (basically Clark before he gained his more famous cover identity), a lethally efficient, highly decorated Navy SEAL whose life is turned upside down when a highly classified operation experiences deadly blowback as half of his team is assassinated in retaliation, while Kelly barely survives an attack in which his heavily pregnant wife is killed. With the higher-ups unwilling the muddy the waters while scrambling to control the damage, Kelly, driven by rage and grief, takes matters into his own hands, embarking on a violent personal crusade against the Russian operatives responsible, but as he digs deeper with the help of his former commanding officer, Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Queen & Slim’s Jodie Turner-Smith), and mid-level CIA hotshot Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell), it becomes clear that there’s a far more insidious conspiracy at work here … in the past the Clancy adaptations we’ve seen tend to be pretty tightly reined-in affairs, going for a PG-13 polish that maintains the intellectual fireworks but still tries to keep the violence clean and relatively family-friendly, but this was never going to be the case here – Clark has always been Jack Ryan’s dark shadow, Clancy’s righteous man without the moral restraint, and a PG-13 take never would have worked, so going for an unfettered R-rating is the right choice. Jordan’s Kelly/Clark is a blood-soaked force of nature, a feral dog let off the leash, bringing a brutal ferocity to the action that does the literary source proud, tempered by a wounded vulnerability that helps us to sympathise with the broken but still very human man behind the killer; Turner-Smith, meanwhile, regularly matches him in the physical stakes, jumping into the action with enthusiasm and looking damn fine doing it, but she also brings tight control and an air of pragmatic military professionalism that makes it easy to believe in her not only as an accomplished leader of fighting men but also as the daughter of Admiral Jim Greer, while Bell is arrogant and abrasive but ultimately still a good man as Ritter; Guy Pearce, meanwhile, brings his usual gravitas and quietly measured charisma to proceedings as US Secretary of Defence Thomas Clay, and Lauren London makes a suitably strong impression during her brief screen time to make her absence keenly felt as Kelly’s wife Pam. The action is intense, explosive and spectacularly executed, culminating in a particularly impressive drawn-out battle through a Russian apartment complex, while the labyrinthine plot is intricately crafted and unfolds with taut precision, but then the screenplay was co-written by Taylor Sheridan, who here reteams with Sicario 2 director Stefano Sollida, who’s also already proven to be a seasoned hand at this kind of thing, and the result is a tense, knuckle-whitening suspense thriller that pays magnificent tribute to the most compelling creation of one of the best authors in the genre. Amazon have signed up for more with already greenlit sequel Rainbow Six, and with this directly tied in with the Jack Ryan TV series too I can’t help holding out hope we just might get to see Jordan’s Clark backing John Krasinski’s Ryan up in the future …

7. RAYA & THE LAST DRAGON – with UK cinemas still closed I’ve had to live with seeing ALL the big stuff on my frustratingly small screen at home, but at least there’s been plenty of choice with so many of the big studios electing to either sell some of their languishing big projects to online vendors or simply release on their own streaming services. Thank the gods, then, for the House of Mouse following Warner Bros’ example and releasing their big stuff on Disney+ at the same time in those theatres that have reopened – this was one movie I was PARTICULARLY looking forward to, and if I’d had to wait and hope for the scheduled UK reopening to occur in mid-May I might have gone a little crazy watching everyone else lose it over something I still hadn’t seen. That said, it WOULD HAVE been worth the wait – coming across sort-of a bit like Disney’s long overdue response to Dreamworks’ AWESOME Kung Fu Panda franchise, this is a spellbinding adventure in a beautifully thought-out fantasy world heavily inspired by Southeast Asia and its rich, diverse cultures, bursting with red hot martial arts action and exotic Eastern mysticism and brought to life by a uniformly strong voice cast dominated by actors of Asian descent. It’s got a cracking premise, too – 500 years ago, the land of Kumandra was torn apart when a terrible supernatural force known as the Druun very nearly wiped out all life, only stopped by the sacrifice of the last dragons, who poured all their power and lifeforce into a mystical gem. But when the gem is broken and the pieces divided between the warring nations of Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail and Talon, the Druun return, prompting Raya (Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran), the fugitive princess of Heart, to embark on a quest to reunite the gem pieces and revive the legendary dragon Sisu in a desperate bid to vanquish the Druun once and for all. Moana director Don Hall teams up with Blindspotting helmer Carlos Lopez Estrada (making his debut in the big chair for Disney after helping develop Frozen), bringing to life a thoroughly inspired screenplay co-written by Crazy Rich Asians’ Adele Kim which is full to bursting with magnificent world-building, beautifully crafted characters and thrilling action, as well as the Disney prerequisites of playful humour and tons of heart and soul. Tran makes Raya an feisty and engaging heroine, tough, stubborn and a seriously kickass fighter, but with true warmth and compassion too, while Gemma Chan is icy cool but deep down ultimately kind of sweet as her bitter rival, Fang princess Namaari, and there’s strong support from Benedict Wong and Good Boys’ Izaac Wang as hard-but-soft Spine warrior Tong and youthful but charismatic Tail shrimp-boat captain Boun, two of the warm-hearted found family that Raya gathers on her travels. The true scene-stealer, however, is the always entertaining Awkwafina, bringing Sisu to life in wholly unexpected but thoroughly charming and utterly adorable fashion, a goofy, sassy and sweet-natured bundle of fun who grabs all the best laughs but also unswervingly champions the film’s core messages of peace, unity and acceptance in all things, something which Raya needs a lot of convincing to take to heart. Visually stunning, endlessly inventive, consistently thrilling and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, this is another solid gold winner once again proving that Disney can do this kind of stuff in their sleep, but it’s always most interesting when they really make the effort to create something truly special, and that’s just what they’ve done here. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the studio’s finest animated features in a good long while, and thoroughly deserving of your praise and attention …

6. THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES – so what piece of animation, you might be asking, could POSSIBLY have won over Raya as my animated feature of the year so far? After all, it would have to be something TRULY special … but then, remember Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Back in 2018, that blew me away SO MUCH that it very nearly became my top animated feature of THE PAST DECADE (only JUST losing out, ultimately, to Dreamworks’ unstoppable How to Train Your Dragon trilogy). When I heard its creators, the irrepressible double act of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), were going to be following that up with this anarchic screwball comedy adventure, I was VERY EXCITED INDEED, a fervour which was barely blunted when its release was, inevitably, indefinitely delayed thanks to the global pandemic, so when it finally released at the tail end of the Winter-Spring season I POUNCED. Thankfully my faith was thoroughly rewarded – this is an absolute riot from start to finish, a genuine cinematic gem I look forward to going back to for repeated viewings in the near future, just to soak up the awesomeness – it’s hilarious to a precision-crafted degree, brilliantly thought-out and SPECTACULARLY well-written by acclaimed Gravity Falls writer-director Mike Rianda (who also helms here), injecting the whole film with a gleefully unpredictable, irrepressibly irreverent streak of pure chaotic genius that makes it a affectionately endearing and utterly irresistible joyride from bonkers start to adorable finish. The central premise is pretty much as simple as the title suggests, the utterly dysfunctional family in question – father Rick (Danny McBride), born outdoorsman and utter technophobe, mother Linda (Maya Rudolph), much put-upon but unflappable even in the face of Armageddon, daughter Katie (Broad City co-creator Abbi Jacobson), tech-obsessed and growing increasingly estranged from her dad, and son Aaron (Rianda himself), a thoroughly ODD dinosaur nerd – become the world’s only hope after naïve tech mogul Mark Bowman (Eric Andre), founder of PAL Labs, inadvertently sets off a robot uprising. Cue a wild ride comedy of errors of EPIC proportions … this is just about the most fun I’ve had with a movie so far this year, an absolute riot throughout, but there’s far more to it than just a pile of big belly laughs, with the Mitchells all proving to be a lovable bunch of misfits who inspire just as much deep, heartfelt affection as they learn from their mistakes and finally overcome their differences, becoming a better, more loving family in the process, McBride and Jacobson particularly shining as they make our hearts swell and put a big lump in our throat even while they make us titter and guffaw, while the film has a fantastic larger than (virtual) life villain in PAL (Olivia Colman), the virtual assistant turned megalomaniacal machine intelligence spearheading this technological revolution. Much like its Spider-Man-shaped predecessor, this is also an absolutely STUNNING film, visually arresting and spectacularly inventive and bursting with neat ideas and some truly beautiful stylistic flair, frequently becoming a genuine work of cinematic art that’s as much a feast for the eyes as it is the intellect and, of course, the soul. Altogether then, this is definitely the year’s most downright GORGEOUS film so far, as well as UNDENIABLY its most FUN. Lord and Miller really have done it again.

5. P.G. PSYCHO GOREMAN – the year’s current undeniable top guilty pleasure has to be this fantastic weird, thoroughly over-the-top and completely OUT THERE black comedy cosmic horror that doesn’t so much riff on the works of HP Lovecraft as throw them in a blender, douse them with maple syrup and cayenne pepper and then hurl the sloppy results to the four winds. On paper it sounds like a family-friendly cutesy comedy take on Call of Cthulu et al, but trust me, this sure ain’t one for the kids – the latest indie horror offering from Steven Kostanski, co-creator of the likes of Manborg, Father’s Day and The Void, this is one of the weirdest movies I’ve seen in years, but it’s also one of the most gleefully funny, playing itself entirely for yucks (frequently LITERALLY). Mimi (Nita Josee-Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) are a two small-town Canadian kids who dig a big hole of their backyard, accidentally releasing the Arch-Duke of Nightmares (Matthew Ninaber and the voice of Steven Vlahos), an ancient, god-tier alien killing machine who’s been imprisoned for aeons in order to protect the universe from his brutal crusade of death and destruction. To their parents’ dismay, Mimi decides to keep him, renaming him Psycho Goreman (or “P.G.” for short) and attempting to curb his superpowered murderous impulses so she can have a new playmate. But the monster’s original captors, the Templars of the Planetary Alliance, have learned of his escape, sending their most powerful warrior, Pandora (Kristen McCulloch), to destroy him once and for all. Yup, this movie is just as loony tunes as it sounds – Kostanski injects the film with copious amounts of his own outlandish, OTT splatterpunk extremity, bringing us a riotous cavalcade of bizarrely twisted creatures and mutations (brought to life through some deliciously disgusting prosthetic effects work) and a series of wonderfully off-kilter (not to mention frequently off-COLOUR) darkly comic skits and escapades, while the sense of humour is pretty bonkers but also generously littered with nuggets of genuine sharply observed genius. The cast, although made up almost entirely of unknowns, is thoroughly game, and the kids particularly impress, especially Josee-Hanna, who plays Mimi like a flamboyant, mercurial miniature psychopath whose zinger-delivery is clipped, precise and downright hilarious throughout. There are messages of love conquering all and the power of family, both born and made, buried somewhere in there too, but ultimately this is just 90 minutes of wonderful weirdness that’s sure to melt your brain but still leave you with a big dumb green when it’s all over. Which is all we really want from a movie like this, right?

4. SPACE SWEEPERS – all throughout the pandemic and the interminable lockdowns, Netflix have been a consistent blessing to those of us who’ve been craving the kind of big budget blockbusters we have (largely) been unable to get at the cinema. Some of my top movies of 2020 were Netflix Originals, and they’ve continued the trend into 2021, having dropped some choice cuts on us over the past four months, with some REALLY impressive offerings still to come as we head into the summer season (roll on, Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead!). In the meantime, my current Netflix favourite of the year so far is this phenomenal milestone of Korean cinema, lauded as the country’s first space blockbuster, which certainly went big instead of going home. Writer-director Jo Sung-hee (A Werewolf Boy, Phantom Detective) delivers big budget thrills and spills with a bombastic science-fiction adventure cast in the classic Star Wars mould, where action, emotion and fun characters count for more than an admittedly simplistic but still admirably archetypical and evocative plot – it’s 2092, and the Earth has become a toxic wasteland ruined by overpopulation and pollution, leading the wealthy to move into palatial orbital habitats in preparation for the impending colonisation of Mars, while the poor and downtrodden are packed into rotting ghetto satellites facing an uncertain future left behind to fend for themselves, and the UTS Corporation jealously guard the borders between rich and poor, presided over by seemingly benevolent but ultimately cruel sociopathic genius CEO James Sullivan (Richard Armitage). Eking out a living in-between are the space sweepers, freelance spaceship crews who risk life and limb by cleaning up dangerous space debris to prevent it from damaging satellites and orbital structures. The film focuses on the crew of sweeper vessel Victory, a ragtag quartet clearly inspired by the “heroes” of Cowboy Bebop – Captain Jang (The Handmaiden’s Kim Tae-ri), a hard-drinking ex-pirate with a mean streak and a dark past, ace pilot Kim Tae-ho (The Battleship Island’s Song Joong-ki), a former child-soldier with a particularly tragic backstory, mechanic Tiger Park (The Outlaws’ Jin Seon-Kyu), a gangster from Earth living in exile in orbit, and Bubs (a genuinely flawless mocapped performance from A Taxi Driver’s Yoo Hae-jin), a surplus military robot slumming it as a harpooner so she can earn enough for gender confirmation. They’re a fascinating bunch, a mercenary band who never think past their next paycheque, but there’s enough good in them that when redemption comes knocking – in the form of Kang Kot-nim (newcomer Park Ye-rin), a revolutionary prototype android in the form of a little girl who may hold the key to bio-technological ecological salvation – they find themselves answering the call in spite of their misgivings. The four leads are exceptional (as is their young charge), while Armitage makes for a cracking villain, delivering subtle, restrained menace by the bucketload every time he’s onscreen, and there’s excellent support from a fascinating multinational cast who perform in a refreshingly broad variety of languages. Jo delivers spectacularly on the action front, wrangling a blistering series of adrenaline-fuelled and explosive set-pieces that rival anything George Lucas or JJ Abrams have sprung on us this century, while the visual effects are nothing short of astounding, bringing this colourful, eclectic and dangerous universe to vibrant, terrifying life; indeed, the world-building here is exceptional, creating an environment you’ll feel sorely tempted to live in despite the pitfalls. Best of all, though, there’s tons of heart and soul, the fantastic found family dynamic at the story’s heart winning us over at every turn. Ultimately, while you might come for the thrills and spectacle, you’ll stay for these wonderful, adorable characters and their compelling tale. An undeniable triumph.

3. JUDAS & THE BLACK MESSIAH – I’m a little fascinated by the Black Panther Party, I find them to be one of the most intriguing elements of Black History in America, but outside of documentaries I’ve never really seen a feature film that’s truly done the movement justice, at least until now. It’s become a major talking point of the Awards Season, and it’s easy to see why – director Shaka King is a protégé of Spike Lee, and together with up-and-coming co-screenwriter Wil Berson he’s captured the fire and fervour of the Party and their firebrand struggle for racial liberation through force of arms, as well as a compelling portrait of one of their most important figures, Fred Hampton, the Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the BPP and a powerful political activist who could have become the next Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya is magnificent in the role, effortlessly holding your attention in every scene with his laconic ease and deceptively friendly manner, barely hinting at the zealous fire blazing beneath the surface, but the film’s true focus is the man who brought him down, William O’Neal, a fellow Panther and FBI informant placed in the Chapter to infiltrate the movement and find a way for the US Government to bring down what they believed to be one of the country’s greatest internal threats. Lakeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You, Knives Out) delivers a suitably complex performance as O’Neal, perfectly embodying a very clever but also very desperate man walking a constant tightrope to maintain his cover in some decidedly wary company, but there’s never any real sense that he’s playing the villain, Stanfield largely garnering sympathy from the viewer as we’re shamelessly made to root for him, especially once he starts falling for the very ideals he’s trying to subvert – it’s a true star-making performance, and he even holds his own playing opposite Kaluuya himself. The rest of the cast are equally impressive, Dominique Fishback (Project Power, The Deuce) particularly holding our attention as Hampton’s fiancée and fellow Panther Akua Njeri, as does Jesse Plemmons as O’Neal’s idealistic but sympathetic FBI handler Roy Mitchell, while Martin Sheen is the film’s nominal villain in a chillingly potent turn as J. Edgar Hoover. This is an intense and thrilling film, powered by a tense atmosphere of pregnant urgency and righteous fury, but while there are a few grittily realistic set pieces, the majority of the fireworks on display are performance based, the cast giving their all and King wrestling a potent and emotionally resonant, inescapably timely history lesson that informs without ever slipping into preachy exposition, leaving an unshakable impression long after the credits have rolled. This doesn’t just earn all the award-winning kudos it gained, it deserved A LOT MORE recognition that it got, and if this were a purely critical rundown list I’d have to put it in the top spot. As it is I’m monumentally enamoured of this film, and I can’t sing its praises enough …

2. RUN, HIDE, FIGHT – the biggest surprise hit for me so far this year was this wicked little indie suspense thriller from writer-director Kyle Rankin (Night of the Living Deb), which snuck in under the radar but is garnering an impressive reputation as a future cult sleeper hit. Critics have been less kind, but the subject matter is a pretty thorny issue, and if handled the wrong way it could have been in very poor taste indeed. Thankfully Rankin has crafted a corker here, initially taking time to set the scene and welcome the players before throwing us headfirst into an unbelievably tense but also unsettlingly believable situation – a small town American high school becomes the setting for a fraught siege when a quartet of disturbed students take several of their classmates hostage at gunpoint, creating a social media storm in the process as they encourage the capture of the crisis on phone cameras. While the local police gather outside, the shooters discover another threat from within the school throwing spanners in the works – Zoe Hull (Alexa & Katie’s Isabel May), a seemingly nondescript girl who happens to be the daughter of former marine scout sniper Todd (Thomas Jane). She’s wound pretty tight after the harrowing death of her mother to cancer, fuelled by grief and conditioned by her father’s training, so she’s determined to get her friends and classmates out of this nightmare, no matter what. Okay, so the premise reads like Die Hard in a school, but this is a very different beast, played for gritty realism and shot with unshowy cinema-verité simplicity, Rankin cranking up the tension beautifully but refusing to play to his audience any more than strictly necessary, drip-feeding the thrills to maximum effect but delivering some harrowing action nonetheless. The cast are top-notch too, Jane delivering a typically subtle, nuanced turn while Treat Williams is likeably stoic as world-weary but dependable local Sherriff Tarsey, Rhada Mitchell intrigues as the matter-of-fact phantom of Zoe’s mum, Jennifer, that she’s concocted to help her through her mourning, Olly Sholotan is sweetly geeky as her best friend Lewis, and Eli Brown raises genuine goosebumps as an all-too-real teen psychopath in the role of terrorist ringleader Tristan Voy. The real beating heart and driving force of the film, though, is May, intense, barely restrained and all but vibrating with wounded fury, perfectly believable as the diminutive high school John McClane who defies expectations to become a genuine force to be reckoned with, as far as I’m concerned one of this year’s TOP female protagonists. Altogether this is a cracking little thriller, a precision-crafted little action gem that nonetheless raises some troubling questions and treats its subject matter with utmost care and respect, a film that’s destined for major cult classic status, and I can’t recommend it enough.

1. NOBODY – do you love the John Wick movies but you just wish they took themselves a bit less seriously? Well fear not, because Derek Kolstad has delivered fantastically on that score, the JW screenwriter mashing his original idea up with the basic premise of the Taken movies (former government spook/assassin turned unassuming family man is forced out of retirement and shit gets seriously trashed as a result) and injecting a big dollop of gallows humour. This time he’s teamed up with Ilya Naishuller, the stone-cold lunatic who directed the deliriously insane but also thoroughly brilliant Hardcore Henry, and the results are absolutely unbeatable, a pitch perfect jet black action comedy bursting with neat ideas, wonderfully offbeat characters and ingenious plot twists. Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk is perfect casting as Hutch Mansell, the aforementioned ex-“Auditor”, a CIA hitman who grew weary of the lifestyle and quit to find some semblance of normality with his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), with whom he’s had two kids. Ultimately, he seems to have “overcompensated”, and his life has stagnated, Hutch following a autopiloted day-to-day routine that’s left him increasingly unfulfilled … then fate intervenes and a series of impulsive choices see him falling back on his old ways while defending a young woman from drunken thugs on a late night bus ride. Problem is, said lowlifes work for the Russian Mob, specifically Yulian Kuznetsov (Leviathan’s Aleksei Serebryakov), a Bratva boss charged with guarding the Obshak, who must exact brutal vengeance in order to save face. Cue much bloody violence and entertaining chaos … Kolstad can do this sort of thing in his sleep, but his writing married with Naishuller’s singularly BONKERS vision means that the anarchy is dialled right up to eleven, while the gleefully dark sense of humour shot through makes the occasional surreality and bitingly satirical observation on offer all the more exquisite. Odenkirk is a low-key joy throughout, initially emasculated and pathetic but becoming more comfortable in his skin as he reconnects with his old self, while Serebryakov hams things up spectacularly, chewing the scenery with aplomb; Nielsen, meanwhile, brings her characteristic restrained classiness to proceedings, Christopher Lloyd and the RZA are clearly having the time of their lives as, respectively, Hutch’s retired FBI agent father David and fellow ex-spook half-brother Harry, and there’s a wonderfully game cameo from the incomparable Colin Salmon as Hutch’s former handler, the Barber. Altogether then, this is the perfect marriage of two fantastic worlds – an action-packed thrill ride as explosively impressive as John Wick, but also a wickedly subversive laugh riot every bit as blissfully inventive as Hardcore Henry, and undeniably THE BEST MOVIE I’ve seen so far this year. Sure, there’s some pretty heavyweight stuff set to (FINALLY) come out later this year, but this really will take some beating …

#movies 2021 #zack snyder's justice league #synchronic #synchronic movie #without remorse #raya and the last dragon #the mitchells vs the machines #pg psycho goreman #psycho goreman #space sweepers #judas and the black messiah #run hide fight #nobody #nobody movie

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watchtower-feed · 4 years

Text

Losing My Mind (Part 3)

SSA Main ✧ Luthor ✧ 1 ✧ 2 ✧ 3 ✧

The air moves and both Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian appear beside you.

You watch Lex’s eyes widen and turn from one alien to another. Once they’ve entered his mind, his eyes start closing. You lean down and whisper, “A courtesy, my soulmate.”

You stay close to Lex, laying his head on your lap while Miss Martian lies near you, her eyes glowing an effervescent light green and Martian Manhunter holds her hand. You panic when Lex’s brows crease and his eyelids flutter.

“It’ll be okay,” Martian Manhunater’s deep voice echoes in the near-empty dome of the lab. Everyone had been cuffed and escorted out. It’s just the four of you in the middle and Batman and Green Arrow on the side keeping watch.

“Miss Martian is the best telepath I know. She won’t hurt him.”

You purse your lips and your hand on Lex’s shoulder cups around his skin, pulling him a little closer. “How do I know his memories of the links are the only thing you’ll take?”

Martian Manhunter’s face doesn’t know how to show emotion. So he tips his head to the side. “You came to us for help because you trust us.”

“No,” you answer in reflex and blush in shame. You turn away from him to look at Lex. You want to say that you asked for their help because they’re the only ones that would help. You couldn’t even count on the Fate sisters so who else was left but the enemies of your soulmate?

When Miss Martian starts blinking and moving, Martian Manhunter gently helps her situp and the other heroes start walking toward the center. You check on Lex and find his features calm and his breathing even.

“He’ll be… asleep for a while…” Miss Martian’s voice is ragged. She grunts and takes a long breath before she speaks again. “Batman--” he’s already handing her a piece of paper and pen. She slowly scribbles down a list. After she’s done she hands it to you.

“We need to destroy all physical evidence that might trigger his memories. Can you please write down any locations that might not be there?”

“What do you mean they might not be there?” Batman asks.

Miss Martian frowns, “My powers are strong but some human minds have their own kind of strength. Especially for someone like Luthor. It was like… a filing cabinet?” she turns to Martian Manhunter, unsure, before she looks back at Batman. “Everything was well-organized and easy to find, and all in one place.”

Batman turns to you, “Like a trap.”

You glare at him and cower a little closer over Lex.

“If it is, she’s not involved,” Martian Manhunter interjects and then turns to you, “I’ve read your mind. Batman asked me to.”

Batman grunts, making Green Arrow smirk.

“This is Luthor we’re talking about, Batman. He’s probably had this as a contingency plan years ago when my unc-- I mean Martian Manhunter joined the League.”

Batman turns to you and you wait for another accusation. But he nods toward the list you forgot you’re holding. You look at it and carefully read each location. Safehouses. Lairs. Secret meeting spots. Deposit boxes. Storage containers. You’ve been to most of them but there are some missing. Locations only you would know. You write down the dorms and apartments Lex went to in college, his foster house in Metropolis, and just in case, you write down the location of the Luthor farmhouse.

“They’re not secret locations but these would be the last places Lex would go to and his enemies would expect the same.” But Lex is smarter than his enemies, you wanted to add. But you still needed their help. You still needed them to make sure Lex forgets everything.

✧ ✧ ✧

You’re standing in front of the big tree on Luthor’s farm and holding the piece of paper with a list. You’re scrunching the paper in your hand. Every location has been crossed off except this one.

Except for the ones you listed down, every single location had endless records and evidence of Lex’s research on the links. As well as copies and backups of each one.

But you’re disappointed because there’s not a single written record about you. Not a single file that acknowledged your existence. Your name wasn’t even written down on a loose piece of paper tucked haphazardly between pages or thrown in a trash bin or shredded.

Lex had erased every single trace of your existence in his life. He had been prepared to lose you completely. No. Get rid of you.

Flash taps you on the shoulder. “Looks like no one’s been here since the fire took down the farmhouse. Where to next?”

You keep your back to him but your voice breaks when you answer, “This is the last one.”

Flash quickly tenses and turns to Batman and Green Arrow for help. It’s Miss Martian who approaches you. “Y/N,” she holds your shoulders and tries to look you in the eye with a half-lidded gaze. “If you want, I could also--”

You quickly shake your head and bite your lips to keep the tears from falling.

No. You want to remember. Despite everything-- Despite the man he’s become, you still want him in your memories.

✧ ✧ ✧

You stayed in Gotham for a couple of weeks, against your will but you were ready to do anything to get Batman off your back. He wanted to keep an eye on you, to make sure this wasn’t all part of an elaborate move against the League.

While Superman continued to monitor Lex in Metropolis, you weren’t allowed anywhere near the city nor Lex. But you had no desire to be.

The Lex you saw on the news wasn’t the one you know anymore. He wasn’t the child you grew up with, the teenager you fell in love with, nor the man you devoted your life to. Because that is what you did. Your whole life has revolved around him and now he’s gone.

Finally, it’s time to start your own life. After Gotham, you move back to Star City to be with your family and be reacquainted with the life you could have had. You suddenly don’t need to keep running and hiding anymore.

Not even Batman could keep an eye in Star City 24/7. But a month later, Green Arrow stops by your house to check on you. It is his city after all.

“You can tell Batman I’m still being a good girl and to the League, thank you again for your help.”

Green Arrow laughs. “I’m not here because Batman told me to.”

You raise your eyebrow and try to suppress the smirk playing on your lips, “So you heroes just do monthly checkups on every citizen you’ve saved--”

“--and worked with,” he finishes with a gleaming smile. While Batman had intimidation going for him, Green Arrow uses his charms to lower his enemy’s guard. Lex didn’t particularly applaud the cunning in it. But he did make note of it.

So you keep your mouth closed but give him a small smile. Both of you wait a while.

When the silence suddenly gets too awkward, Green Arrow coughs, “Well I should get going then-- Oh!” he fishes out an envelope from inside his jacket and hands it to you.

It’s an invitation to Oliver Queen’s mayoral campaign tomorrow night at the Star City Plaza Hotel.

“He’s one of the good guys.”

You’re too baffled by the sudden situation that you keep staring at the invitation. “Well if he has the League backing him, he can’t lose,” you say mindlessly.

“Actually,” Green Arrow chuckles. “It’s just me… on the down-low.” Of course. If vigilantes started publicly endorsing politicians, they’d lose the people. You nod.

It takes you the whole day to decide whether or not you should go. There are still so many things you had to do to get your new life started. But that also meant that you aren’t particularly busy. Suddenly not having a life’s mission is enough to make you go to a mayoral campaign of all things.

It’s actually not so bad. Good guy or not, Oliver Queen knows how to throw parties for his people. His people being the upper class. You see a few big names show up, all smiling for the camera while they shake hands with the new potential mayor of Star City. All for show.

You find yourself spending most of the night at a table near the stairs, deflecting conversations of who you are, and who they are. Is this the life Lex wanted? To be among these kinds of people?

No, he wouldn’t. He cares less for these social gatherings than politics itself. You snicker silently as you think about how Lex would show up only if he had to be on stage and then leave the rest of the night to his secretary.

You’re picturing this in your head that you almost don’t get surprised to see him across the room shaking hands with a stiff Oliver Queen. But then you remember you’re no longer linked and he’s no longer your soulmate. So why is he suddenly here?

He catches you staring at him. You watch him turn back to Oliver Queen and mindlessly excuses himself but the mayoral candidate holds Lex’s hand in his grip and seems unwilling to let his company go.

You quickly take this opportunity to slip away and blend into a small crowd headed down the stairs toward the lobby. You wait until they reach the bottom steps before you break off toward a deserted hallway. You lean against the wall and try to catch your breath. If written words on a piece paper could potentially unravel everything Miss Martian erased, then you had to get out of here.

“Leaving so soon?”

It’s as if destiny still has strings on you.

You turn around. Slowly. You try to smile. You try to keep your feet planted on the floor and your hands behind you. “Not really my scene.”

Lex raises his eyebrow and places his hands in his pockets. “So you’re here for work then. Star City Sentinel?” he asks, “or Gotham Gazette?”

He thinks you’re a reporter but that’s not right. He’s not one to seek reporters. He runs away from them.

“Uhh, no,” you answer. “I’m-- filling in for a friend.”

“A friend, huh?” He raises his eyebrows in amusement. “Anyone, I know?”

You suddenly don’t like this. You don’t know what this Luthor is thinking. You narrow your eyes at him and push yourself off the wall, about to walk off. “Probably not. I don’t even know who you are.”

He laughs, “Really, Y/N?” It makes you stop. “Was that the best you’ve got? Everyone on this planet with access to TV and the internet knows who I am. I thought you might have been able to play this little game a while longer.”

You turn to him then, standing too close and within his reach. Your eyes are wide and he stares back at you with a calm exterior.

"Did you really think it would be so easy?"

You couldn’t move. Your words come out like a whisper with only disbelief pushing them out. "H-how?"

He hums. "You're not the only one who's employed a mindreader.”

His hand reaches out to hold yours. He turns it around in his hold, seeing and feeling your skin touching his. Then he squeezes it. He points his head to the exit and you follow him while he brushes his thumb on the back of your hand. At this point, you’ll follow him to the ends of the earth.

You almost hear Oliver Queen yelling after you as you get in the passenger seat of the town car. Almost.

Lex drives and there’s only silence inside. Your hands are on your lap and they’re shaking. Now that you’ve had time to think, you don’t know what to think. “Lex,” you mutter, “Please. Explain what’s happening.” You slowly turn to him but he keeps his eyes on the road. “If you remember, then why-- why aren’t you angry?”

Lex finally turns to you. He can’t help the smirk that lifts the corners of his lips and the mischief curling his eyebrows down. “Aren’t I?”

You don’t reply to him. Your eyes hold his gaze until the playfulness finally disappears from his features. He briefly closes his eyes and sighs.

“I knew our memories would be erased once we meet,” he starts and you hold your breath, “And when I succeed in taking control of the memory link, any lingering feelings would've been obliterated as well.”

Your lips quiver as you listen and your words come out a whisper, “Isn’t that what you wanted--”

“But I found,” he interrupts, “Over the years, I found that there was one memory I couldn’t forget."

Your eyes widen because it suddenly feels as if time had stopped.

"Which... which one?"

He suddenly smiles sheepishly and his voice goes lower, "The ceasefire."

You remember it so clearly. The rarest of days when Lex suddenly appeared in front of you, distraught, angry, annoyed, and just as surprised to see you as he was to find himself under a big tree, on a hill, in an orchard in Florence.

"Where am I?"

At first, you pondered about ignoring him but then you realized that would make him harder to tolerate and you don’t know how long he’s going to be staying.

"Italy," you answered nonchalantly.

He whipped his head around, as if not taking your word for it. Then he turned to you and raised one of his eyebrows, "What are you--"

"I needed a break,” you interrupted. You stretched your arms and then sat down on the blanket you had just laid before Lex arrived. “I found out a while ago that immersing myself in a familiar environment keeps me from wandering into your memories."

This happened during the third year of your decades-long game of cat and mouse. You were still testing out the possibilities and limitations of the links. But Lex, at the time, was still rejecting it completely.

You watched him close his eyes and you can tell he was willing himself to disappear. But to no success. "Ugh!"

You snickered. "You look like you could use a break, too. Tough day at the evil lair?" you teased but he doesn’t turn to you. He rubbed his palms down his face in aggravation. You rolled your eyes at him, "Since you're stuck here, we might as well be civil."

"You could walk away," he snapped at you with a fake smile.

"No way! I was here first!” You sounded like a child and Lex almost laughed. Instead, he managed to contain it to a small smirk but it was enough to embarrass you. “Whatever,” you grumbled and leaned back with your arms supporting you. “I'm not leaving this spot."

Lex scowled and rolled his eyes. He tried to look for the nearest town or guesthouse. But there were only acres of trees on the horizon. He grimaced because it reminded him of the farm. "What's so special about it?"

You were surprised to hear his questions. Was he actually trying to be civil? You tried your best not to sneak a look at him and kept your gaze up.

"It's nice to see the light trying to pass through the leaves. When the wind comes, the leaves and branches rustle so the specs of light look like they're dancing."

Lex was looking at you while you talked and he saw them dance on the contours of your face, making you smile. Again, it reminded him of the farm.

He finally sighed and unbuttoned his suit jacket. He draped it over your shoulders and then lied down on the blanket with his head resting on your lap. He felt you tense up.

"I need a break,” he declared with his eyes closed.

Slowly, your body relaxed and you sat up so your fingers could run through his hair.

"Is this an intermission?" you tease softly.

"Hmm,” he frowns. “Call it a ceasefire. Your vocabulary hasn't gotten any better. You must be wasting your time in college instead of studying."

You glared at him. But then you saw the small smirk that played on his lips and it reminds you of his room in Metropolis.

You leaned down to hover above his head. Your shadow forced him to open his eyes and look at you.

"I miss you, Lex."

A strong gust of wind swayed the leaves to reach for the sky, and the light was dancing wildly behind your head. Without thinking, Lex's hand reached up to pull you down for your lips to be reunited.

The two of you have been quiet for a long time. You’ve been wringing your wrist with your fingers trying to figure what to say next. But Lex knows it has to be him that speaks first.

“I believed destiny made a mistake linking you to me.”

It’s not what you expect and your heart hurts a little to hear it. But you’ve always known that.

“Then,” he pauses. His mouth closes and opens a few times before he could finally continue. “You proved me wrong.”

Your hands stop.

“While I cowered away and tried to ignore our link--”

You look at him to make sure he’s not lying to you.

Lex is staring straight at the road but there’s a hint of excitement in his eyes. “You adapted!” he said proudly, almost breathless. “You lived in my memories for days at a time and fit into the background as if you were actually there.”

He turns to you suddenly, eyes wide and mouth grinning, “For god’s sakes, Y/N, you found out Batman’s link and planted the information in my head, making me believe I was the one who discovered it.” He scoffs, “And then had me ask Scarecrow create a fear toxin that only worked in his dreams. Tell me-- Why?”

His excitement is contagious. You found yourself leaning a little closer and wanting to tell him everything. “I knew it would make his soulmate visit the black market for blockers. I needed her to get the League’s help.” He laughs. “How-- how did you know I planted the information?”

“I found out when we finally met. When the link cleared my head of memories of you.”

Your own excitement takes a sudden dip. What you did was wrong. You knew it was before you even started it. But Lex had been making more progress in his plans and you were still figuring out how to get the League to trust you.

It was pure coincidence that you found Batman’s link as if destiny has been pushing you down this road the whole time. It was your roommate’s sister. She visited and you overheard them talking about the links. She was talking about her neighbor in Central City who had the strangest sleeping schedule and often called out Bruce Wayne’s name in her sleep. “Imagine having a subconscious link with Bruce Wayne? I’d die every night catching him with a different supermodel in a wet dream.”

You knew who Bruce Wayne was. Having existed in Lex’s memories, you knew the identity of every single hero and villain, even in other galaxies. Truly, something was helping you pave the path to your success.

Lex reaches out to hold your hand, stealing you from your thoughts. His voice comes softer now but you could still hear the mirth in it, “You uncovered my plans and used it against me. Erasing my memories and planting fake ones about a happy childhood where my parents lived until I finished college-- Only you would've come up with something twisted and wrapped it in a bow.”

You suddenly have the urge to pull your hand back. Instead, you pinch him. He flinches but keeps smiling.

"I was impressed. The things you could do. The lengths you went through--"

"For you," you answer in a whisper. You squeeze his hand and you speak a little louder. "It was all for you."

His smile softens and there’s no longer excitement or mirth there. Just affection. "Yes. For me."

He lifts your hand to his lips and kisses it. "Forgive me, Y/N. Perhaps destiny has truly blessed me."

END.

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#lex luthor #lex lutho/reader #lex luthor x reader #soulmate au #ssa #superhero soulmate au #DC fanfiction #lex luthor fanfiction #DC imagines #watchtower-feed #atbucud

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twodaysintojune · 4 years

Text

The Accidental Time Quandary

The Untamed / Mo Dau Zu Shi / The Grandmaster of Diabolic Cultivation XiCheng, Background WangXian, 9k

Find me at AO3

“The hell are you doing now?”

Wei Wuxian was kneeling in front of a large array in the middle of what he had fondly started to call his studio that was just a simple shackle at the backside of his home with Lan WangJi at the Cloud Recesses.

“Time Travel!”

Said Wei Wuxian with a grin, turning to look at his brother with a nose smudged in paint. Jiang WanYin rolled his eyes but looked amused at the array at his feet.

“You’re getting bolder everytime. I’m just glad your husband decided to make this place for you, not that I’m surprised after how you blew up half of the building the other day...”

Wei Wuxian pouted at him “Hey! That was a miscalculation.”

Jiang WanYin snorted. He would never say it but he was just glad to be able to interact with his brother like this. It had taken them years, even after things had cleared out although, thankfully, it had not been as many as the amount of years his brother had spent dead. Heck, he even was on better terms these days with Lan WangJi as well, although he deduced that that had also been influenced a lot by his brother who, after leaving his year in seclusion had started to try building some bridges between both volatile men.

“Just you wait. If I make this work I’ll come back from the future with a lot of amazing stuff.” He stood up and went towards his desk to write down a couple of notes.

Jiang WanYin sighed. “You know, there are things that should be best left alone… Besides how are you going to know it actually is the future? Maybe you should first try to go to the past, if you change this character here...” He erased a couple of strokes and grabbed paint to place the proper incantation for the word past “There. See?”

Standing from inside the array, he showed his brother his work when suddenly the array came to life. Things happened in a flash but felt like forever at the same time. He felt his own surprise and saw Wei Wuxian’s panicked expression while his own hand lifted towards the man, who tripped over the low table trying to get to him. A burst of light blinded him.

And then, darkness.

When Jiang WanYin opened his eyes once more the first thing he noticed was a terrible headache. He groaned and turned on his side. He looked around and found himself in what he felt was a guest room of the Cloud Recesses but not the one that had more or less become his own. He sat up and saw a simple white robe that reminded him a lot of the one he had used once while studying at the Cloud Recesses ready for him in front. He saw Sandu leaning by their side but Zidian was nowhere in sight. He frowned, it was very unsightly to take away a spiritual weapon from the owner but he trusted the Lans and Wei Wuxian so he had to wonder if that could have something to do with the mishap of the array. Sighing, he dressed up, took Sandu and stepped outside. He was not going to be able to get any information inside of the room anyway.

Jiang WanYin was still not quite sure about how much time had passed since the accident with Wei Wuxian’s array but it seemed like it was around eight or nine in the morning so he assumed that at least almost an entire day. What a waste of time.

Finally, he saw Wei Wuxian on his back, standing in front of Lan WangJi in the corridor where he was walking. Taking advantage of the fact that he could not see him, he walked soundlessly towards him and pushed his lower back towards Lan WangJi with enough strength to make the troublemaker fall onto Lan WangJi’s arms, faces dangerously close to each other.

“Oi, Can you stop flirting with your husband so early in the morning? I need to ask you some questions.”

He frowned when he got no response from either of the pair and stepped closer. Wei Wuxian was still frozen in place, face literally burning while Lan Wangji’s ears looked like they had condensed all the red blood in his body on themselves.

“Hello? Earth to stupid couple? Can you come back from cloud nine already?”

Finally, Wei Wuxian turned towards his brother. “W-w-w-what!?”

Jiang WanYin sighed and rubbed his frown in frustration. “Oh for the love of...” Unceremoniously, he grabbed his forearm and pulled him away from Lan WangJi who, incredibly, had not tried to keep him to himself like he always used to do. “I said, stop flirting with your husband dammit! How long has it been anyways? Shouldn’t you get out of the honeymoon phase already? Whatever, please excuse us, HanGuang-Jun.”

He bowed towards the other man who looked like all his brain functions had suddenly stopped and just looked at them walk away from sight.

“Anyway, that array of yours, I need to know what happened. My head still hurts like I’ve got the worst hangover ever and I would really like to know where you left Zidian.”

Jiang WanYin turned to look at his brother with crossed arms. Wei Wuxian, who still looked like he had received the biggest shock of his life was only able to cling on to the last words of his brother.

“W-where is Zidian? Isn’t it with Madam Yu?”

Jiang Cheng frowned and was about to lash back once more when he finally noticed the white student robe Wei Wuxian was wearing. Just the same as his own. His eyes widened and he felt his ears prickle with noise when the implications of actually having been thrown to the past finally hit him.

“...Shit.”

Quickly, his mind reeling, he stepped backwards and began to run away from where Wei Wuxian still was, ignoring his calls. This had to be a joke, like, the worst joke ever. He began to run towards the library, hoping that he would be able to find something that could help him go back.

“You! Stop there right now!”

Before Jiang WanYin had realized his mistake he had already stopped and, sighing, turned around towards the owner of the voice.

“Master Lan Qiren.” He gave the elder a bow.

“Jiang WanYin! I can’t believe it! Do I have to remind you of the rules?”

Jiang WanYin did his best not to roll his eyes “Rule thirteen, Running is Prohibited.”

“Then why are you even doing it!?”

Jiang WanYin was running through a series of excuses on his head when a voice behind them came through.

“I believe young Master Jiang had Sword Practice at this hour?”

Arriving with a soft smile was Lan XiChen, Jiang WanYin had not felt happier to see him in what felt like years. Which was true, it had been years. Ever since the Sunshot Campaign, when for one reason or the other he was cornered fighting the Wens on a particularly bloody battle and somehow Lan XiChen had appeared by his side to save the day.

“I… uh, Yes. Forgive me, Master, I did not want to delay anyone more at practice so I thought it best for the group if I ran even if it looked unsightly.” He gave him his most respectful bow with ease. He had practiced it for a long time by now.

Lan Qiren huffed. “I understand where you come from but it’s best to show up in time. These actions are very rare coming from you. What happened?”

“I was not feeling well earlier, Master.” Like hell he would tell them he had time travelled and suddenly had found himself trapped in the past.

“Very well, I’ll let it pass this time. Go back to your class.”

“Master, Zewu-Jun.” He bowed at both of them and walked away towards the Practice Court frustrated. He was going to have to wait for it to end in order to escape to the library to start trying to find some answers.

He was unaware of how Lan Xichen was looking at him walking away noticing that he walked poised and well trained, hands perfectly positioned at the back in the manner that he had been doing for years as Sect Leader. Imposing and undefying.

Sword practice had been… interesting to say the least. He remembered clearly that he had struggled a lot with many things back then but at the moment it felt like child’s play. All the forms and poses perfectly forged within his muscle memory. He did not realize the mistake he was making of doing things so well until their resting time.

“You’re on a roll today, aren’t you?”

He turned to look at Nie HuaiSang “What do you mean?”

“You’re working your stances really well. Everybody’s talking about it.”

“Huh?” He turned around to look how, indeed, many people, including his own brother, were looking at him.

Oh, crap, I fucked again. Was the only thing he thought.

“Ah, I don’t know, maybe I just woke up in a good shape? Don’t count on it looking this good all the time.” He waved away.

Nie HuaiSang laughed “No, no, this is what real talent is about. I could never do it this well even in good shape.”

Jiang WanYin turned to look at his friend with a serious look. It pained him to see such a bright innocent face knowing what would come of him years later. Without realizing his own actions he took his arm softly.

“If you don't feel like using your sable, maybe you could try with something else, like fans. I mean, you're already fluttering around with those all the time. It wouldn't hurt to try.”

Nie HuaiSang looked at his friend surprised by the honest advice and then looked downwards, a soft red filling his cheeks.

When the second hour began there was a bustle between all the students. Jiang Cheng turned around to find Lan XiChen in the middle of the training grounds.

“Well, I see you’ve been doing well!” Said the man after being told by the teacher of their progress. “Maybe you boys would like to do something more entertaining for the second hour? Like, one on one fights?”

The boys began to cheer as much as they could considering the place where they were while Jiang WanYin felt a sudden turn in his gut. He turned towards the direction where he had seen his brother, knowing perfectly well what he would do.

"Come on Jiang Cheng! Let's fight!"

The group had been separated into pairs and the fist pair was already starting their fight. The first person pushed away from the sparring circle was the one who lost.

Jiang WanYin felt unsettled, waiting for their turn by his brother's side. It had been so long since they had fought with blades, ever since that fateful core transplant that he didn't even remember his brother's fighting style. He also didn't want to face him at all. The memory of the reason why Wei Wuxian had given away all of his cultivation path just for him was something he still didn't feel ready to face.

"What? Are you nervous I'm gonna beat you up in front of everyone?"

He felt a sure nudge on the ribs. He turned around and, bringing the best impersonation of the fifteen year old that he didn't remember he ever was, pushed Wei Wuxian away.

"Shut up!"

Wei Wuxian sent him a flashing smile. Apparently that had been the right answer.

When the both were called forward Jiang WanYin decided to do the wise thing and wait for Wei Wuxian to take the first step, he wanted this to be over as fast as it possibly could. They began circling each other, measuring their pace.

Wei Wuxian snorted "What's wrong? Too afraid to come at me? Where's your usual hurriedness?"

"What about you?" Called Jiang WanYin "Always so happy to wait for the troubles to get you, maybe I should give you another push towards the right direction?"

"You-!"

Wei Wuxian plunged towards his brother, clearly feeling his cheeks burning. Jiang WanYin received the plunge with his own sword and guided it away from him, throwing Wei Wuxian even further to the edge of the ring. Before he was able to recover his ground, he felt Jiang WanYin kick him, making him fall on the ground, completely out of the ring. It had been the fastest match yet. Before Jiang WanYin could take notice of the odd silence that suddenly surrounded him Wei Wuxian turned around.

"Hey! You kicked me! That's not fair!"

"I don't recall anyone asking for the duels to be fair."

"What are you talking about? That's just common sense!"

Jiang WanYin sighed. "Alright, whatever, come at me again. I won't kick you this time."

Wei Wuxian looked at him in a way that clearly stated he was finding something suspicious but stood up again.

"Alright, but this time you come at me."

Jiang WanYin sensed it. How could he not? The way his own brother was actually doubting he was not the real Jiang Cheng. He wondered for a second if it would be better to pretend to be more stupid or whatever it was he had been back then but he was just so tired about this whole situation that he couldn't bring it on himself to fake it and he also felt that it would be extremely disrespectful to act stupid towards Wei Wuxian.

Jiang WanYin's voice went lower "Well then step inside." If you dare to. Was what was left unsaid but still clear for the both of them.

Wei Wuxian took a step back before gathering himself. There was something very wrong about this Jiang Cheng but at the same time he was unable to point out exactly what. He stepped inside, taking a gulp and strengthening his grip on his sword.

This time, the moment they heard the senior call for the start of the match, Jiang WanYin plunged towards Wei Wuxian, the first hit almost disarms him but he manages to recover and swings back if only to gain some distance. Jiang WanYin saw his brother's panicked face and inwardly sighed. He allowed him to gain some terrain and security before going towards him again. This felt more like teaching Jin Ling a new sparring technique than actual fighting and Jiang WanYin felt again that guilt that would never leave him.

I wonder how well we could fight each other now if he had kept his core.

"Stop looking at me like that! I haven't lost yet!"

The angry note on Wei Wuxian’s voice made Jiang WanYin go back to reality. He had not realized just how much his thoughts had been reflected on his face. Realising he shouldn't hoard the ring for long, he walked towards an edge while Wei Wuxian threw a thrust that he had hastened believing on his immediate victory when Jiang WanYin did a quick turn, leaving the path clear for Wei Wuxian's second fall out of the ring.

"Well!" A calm yet joyous voice came from their side "I think this match has been won by Jiang WanYin!"

The disciples around them bursted in applause. While Jiang WanYin came forward to help his brother up.

"Are you okay?"

"What? Do I look like I need help?"

"No, just asking."

"Shouldn't you be gloating about the fact that you won in front of all the group?"

Jiang WanYin gave his brother a bitter smirk, turned around and bowed towards everyone, acknowledging his victory before turning back towards the spot where he had been watching the rest of the matches, arms crossed, firm stance.

Almost casually, Lan XiChen stood close to Jiang WanYin. A thing he found himself extremely grateful for since it helped a lot to keep Wei Wuxian away from him for the time being and he was definitely not ready to be attacked with questions at all. They watched the next match in silence until at some point both contenders grimaced after clashing their swords in a particularly heavy way.

Lan XiChen expressed a low "Oh" while Jiang WanYin grimaced in solidarity. Sensing the younger’s expression, Lan XiChen ventured with a low voice.

"What do you think about that move, young master Jiang?"

Jiang WanYin snorted "Terrible arm position, I'm surprised they're still trying to go at it. Their muscles will be sore for at least three days."

Lan XiChen hummed in agreement.

"You should stop them before they do something stupid, it's obvious they're just trying to impress you since you don't come here often."

Lan XiChen turned quickly to look at him, surprised at the familiarity with which he had been addressed but he had to agree that following his advice would be for the best. He stepped forward and stopped the kids, giving them encouraging words but also admonishing them about the need to be more careful with their stances and sent them right away to the healer wing.

The next couple of matches were good and uneventful so Jiang WanYin and Lan XiChen remained silent but the more pairs came into the ring, Jiang WanYin couldn't help starting to mutter.

"Those two need to improve their footwork… That boy should better use his dominant hand, there’s no shame in being a leftie… Is that kid from the Nie Sect? He seems to be better suited for a sable… Oh, this one’s just trying to show off his forms, isn’t he?" he snorted “like someone would give a damn about that in a real battle...”

Lan XiChen hummed along with each remark, some of the things Jiang WanYin was commenting on were things he would have not noticed either, especially regarding other sects fighting style but what caught him off guard were the comments regarding battle training. Comments like “too slow, would have his arm cut off before he could make a full turn” were the ones that would have made him wince if he had not been trained with perfect propriety like a true Lan. With each match, he was feeling more and more restless about his companion.

After the last winner was decided the class gathered to bow towards the senior in charge of them and Lan XiChen and parted towards the dining hall. Jiang WanYin walked towards his brother, realising he had been away from him too long and that they were supposed to be inseparable and soon Nie HuaiSang joined them laughing, he clung himself to Jiang WanYin.

“Dude, that was scary!”

“What was scary?”

“Zewu-Jun? Like, I could have never been able to stand so close to him for so long!”

Wei Wuxian laughed. "What are you talking about? Didn't you see Jiang Cheng? He was so stiff with his arms crossed and everything! Just like a soldier!"

Jiang WanYin gave out a dry laugh. "Yeah, it was putting me on edge."

It was a lie, of course. But how could he explain to his friend that in the middle of all this time traveling madness he had actually felt relief, since it was the most natural thing to stand by his peer? Now that he thought about it though, he also had to give them credit. He suddenly remembered how nervous he used to be anytime he had to stand even two meters away from him. He knew Lan XiChen was only three years older than Lan WangJi but back then it had felt like he was looking at an unattainable being, like gazing at a true immortal. Even at their current time and despite the fact that they pretty much treated each other as peers in general, Jiang WanYin always felt like there was some sort of barrier between them both. He sighed.

The hours after lunch were spent in the classroom. Jiang WanYin had been unable to brush his brother and Nie HuaiSang away, even when he had tried to chide his brother into some trouble just to be able to get away from there.

"Jiang WanYin!"

He turned towards the front of the class, Lan Qiren looking at him with accusatory eyes. On the other side of the room, Lan WangJi was also peering at him with a look that by now he knew was almost a frown.

Yes, I was not paying attention, so what?

"I'm sorry master, could you repeat the question?"

"I asked about the best way to deal with water ghouls. I thought you were feeling better? I heard that you did great at sword practice."

Listening to master Lan Qiren's concern his teenage self would have goaded at the rest of the class.

"My apologies, master, I'm afraid I might have gone a bit too far and overexerted myself before I was completely recovered."

"You're sick?" Came the soft concern from Wei Wuxian. Jiang WanYin hushed him quickly.

Lan Qiren gave out a soft sigh. "Please go back to your room and meditate, it will be a better use of your time. Check with Nie HuaiSang later for today's topics."

Jiang WanYin cheered inwardly. He stood up and bowed politely.

"I am grateful for your concern master, I shall take my leave for the day."

When he was far enough from the studying hall, he peeked around and made a turn towards the library. He had glanced at a couple of the tomes Wei Wuxian had had on top of his desk while doing his research so he at least had an idea of where to start.

The good thing about being able to be outside at a time when everyone was busy inside classrooms and halls meant that he didn't find anyone on his way to the still ancient pavilion.

The doors were closed but they were not locked so, after sending a sad look at the magnificent magnolia tree outside that had suffered greatly when the fire started by the Wens happened later, he went inside.

Doing his best trying to keep everything in order, meaning like the books and scrolls had not actually been touched at all, Jiang WanYin went through several documents. Once the light of the evening was not enough he finally moved the ones he had been reading aside and let out a sigh, leaning against the window ledge, rubbing his eyes.

He was wondering whether it would be wise to light up a candle to keep on going or just call it quits and hope for Wei Wuxian to be working on something on the other side when, somehow, the soft fragrance of Chrysanthemum tea filled his lungs. He inhaled it without a second thought, trying to avoid the headache he was feeling coming.

“Still haven’t found what you’ve been looking for I presume?” A soft voice asked.

“Mn… I don’t even know how on earth Wei Wuxian manages to not even read all this shit but be able to put everything to practice, I...” he stopped his words with a start and lowered his hands, only to find Lan Xichen, standing in front of him with a soft smile, tea tray in hand.

Noticing his Sandu was reclined on a column two arms away from him while Lan XiChen’s Shouyue was perfectly poised at his hip, Jiang WanYin slumped his shoulders with a dejected sound. He then went to pick up the books he had on the table and put them aside to have space for the tea. Lan XiChen sat down graciously in front of him. Jiang WanYin waited for the man to serve him before he finally reached for the cup and took a sip. They drank the first cup in silence. He served the second cup and snorted before taking a sip.

“I’m such an idiot, letting my guard down while checking everyone’s training.”

Lan XiChen looked at him and took a sip of his tea. “Actually, it was way before that.”

“Oh? Pray do tell.”

“I met my brother early in the morning. He was clearly agitated and told me what you had done pushing Wei WuXian towards him but that was not really what caught my attention.”

He saw Jiang WanYin’s eyes widen in comprehension and then closing them with a frown, he rubbed the middle of his forehead with the tips of his fingers.

“HanGuang-Jun”

Lan XiChen nodded and took another sip.

“When he turned fifteen, WangJi told me he had begun thinking about a decent title name despite being barely granted his courtesy name. Imagine his surprise when he heard you say a title name he had not even thought about yet.”

“Oh man, what a slip… On my defense, I had not realized where the fuck I was at the time. And don’t make that face with me, there’s no rule saying anything about cursing. Yet.”

Lan XiChen’s face stiffened, he had not stopped smiling but the person in front of him was able to read him well.

“I presume the reason you decided to take the matter in your hands was because you didn’t want your brother to get anywhere near unknown danger then. You know being this kind is the reason you always suffer, don’t you?”

Lan XiChen’s hand twitched on his knees. “Who are you?”

Jiang WanYin glanced at him, he knew this pale face, realized he had gone a bit too far with his stark comments. It was the moment to back off. “I can tell you. But it will depend on you whether you believe me or not.”

Jiang Wanyin sat upright and placed his hands over his knees, properly facing Lan Xichen.

“Greetings, Sect Leader Lan, Zewu-Jun. I am Sect Leader Jiang, Jiang WanYin. Better known as Sandu Shengshou.” He then properly bowed in front of him.

Lan XiChen felt like the moment was elongating itself into eternity. He had not dropped his tea simply because his manners did not allow him to.

“I’m sorry but Sect Leader Jiang...”

“Yes, at this time it should still be Jiang FengMian.”

“Then how… when..?”

Lan XiChen wanted to get answers but he stopped dead when he saw Jiang WanYin’s eyes fall into darkness.

“Do not mind yourself with those details. All I can say is that I never intended to find myself in this awful situation either but mistakes happen when you have a brother such as Wei WuXian.” Jiang WanYin reclined himself on the wall behind him and rubbed his eyes once more. “I swear to god I’ll kill him someday.”

“Please, stop that.”

“Huh?”

“Stop rubbing your eyes.”

Jiang WanYin groaned. “You always say that. Who cares about that myth that your eyesight goes bad? I’ve had this habit for years and my eyes are still perfectly good.”

Lan XiChen smiled “And yet you still stop.”

“Well obviously. I respect you after all.” Jiang WanYin looked at a letter peeking out from Lan XiChen’s robe. “Is that a Request Letter? You couldn’t find the answer by yourself?”

Lan XiChen looked down at the paper and felt his ears turn red. “How do you..?”

“You still do the same over there. Coming to the library when no one is around to try to find an answer. Also bringing your favourite Chrysanthemum blend means this one’s giving you a headache. Can I see that? Maybe I can help.”

Logic told Lan XiChen that it would be best to refuse since he wasn’t even sure this boy was Jiang WanYin or someone else. But being forced to act as a proper Sect Leader for two years now despite the fact that his father was still alive made him feel like he was stumbling and making a mess of everything, forced to handle everything by himself. In the end he desperately lent on that feeling of relying on someone that he had never found before, trying to please everyone around him.

Not only that but the way Jiang WanYin had told him about his own habits while he held out his hand in such a personal way made Lan XiChen feel like he was allowed to actually ask for his help. He took the letter and handled it to the man in front of him. Jiang WanYin opened the request and began to read.

“Ah, I see, bloody beasts at the east of the Zhonghua pass. If I recall correctly there are several caves over there huh? No wonder it’s giving you a headache.” He grabbed a piece of paper, brush and ink and began drawing. “I’d recommend you a pincer strategy. Place protective barriers on both sides of the bottleneck road in a two hundred chi radius. Then start barring down the caves on the bottom-east since those are the ones closer to the town. Take at least twenty of your best swordsmen and five archers, seven of them with proper healing knowledge involving open wounds. It’s not gonna be easy considering these things go in packs. You can leave tracing talismans a day before the hunt so you can see which caves they use most and narrow them down. It will still take you at least five days to go through the whole place but this will help avoid any human casualty.”

Jiang WanYin finally looked upwards from the paper and met an image he never imagined he would ever see. Lan XiChen was looking at him completely dumbfounded with an open mouth. He also felt his own face blush and he frowned in defense.

“What? What is it?”

Lan XiChen tried to regain himself “Nothing, nothing it’s just… I’ve had this request for five days now and I've been stressing over it since I didn’t see how to properly handle it and you… How did you come up with this strategy just like that?”

Jiang WanYin looked aside and shrugged. “Guess I’ve got enough experience now...”

“Jiang WanYin you’re… You’re amazing.”

“Okay that’s it, stop it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because you’re Zewu-Jun? I’m the one who’s supposed to admire you here! You even saved my life!”

Lan XiChen looked at him dumbfounded. “I saved your life?”

Jiang WanYin felt himself blush again. He sighed and looked aside. He knew he shouldn’t say much but still felt like this was important, and it was easier to tell this Lan XiChen what he could not tell the one he was more familiar with but still detached from.

“There was a battle. At the north of Qinwei. We were ambushed by our enemies and we made a hasty retreat. I got surrounded by enemies while helping the rest to run away and was pretty sure I was gonna kick it right there when you showed up to help. You had been in hiding for a while back then so it was shocking to see you there but still, you saved my life.” He looked upwards and met Lan XiChen’s eyes. “So thank you for that.”

Lan XiChen was doing some mental calculations, Qinwei was part of the Wen territory so it meant they would eventually go to war with the Wens. Knowing that he wouldn’t get enough information from the man in front of him he just slotted away this information for when it would be of importance. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Well, if you do. When you do. I won’t say much about it. But I’m still grateful to this day so that’s why I’m saying it right now.” Jiang WanYin looked downwards, and suddenly looked fairly interested on the porcelain cups in front of him. He frowned. “I always forget to get you the Pink Lotus Set. I should note it down for next time.”

Lan XiChen felt his smile broaden, he kept wondering just what kind of relationship he had with this man, hopefully they were close friends. If not, he was going to do his best to make him understand he would very much like to be close to him, seeing how much consideration he had towards his personal likes and tastes.

“So far I can understand that even though you are Jiang WanYin, you are not the same Jiang WanYin of the present but of days to come. Can I ask how far?”

Jiang WanYin looked at him and frowned. “Does it matter?”

“Can’t a man be curious?”

Jiang WanYin sighed but only rested a hand over his knee. “I’m thirty six years old.”

Lan XiChen’s eyes widened. No wonder this man had solved a problem he was struggling so much with such ease. He was currently looking at a man with eighteen years of experience ahead of him. Something inside his gut twisted but he could not pin down what it truly meant at the moment.

“Well, as much as I’d love to keep chatting with you, I’m gonna take my leave.”

Jiang WanYin said while grabbing the documents he had taken and walking towards their corresponding place.

“I thought you would try to investigate more.”

“I’m fed up with this and I bet Wei Wuxian is fretting over there to get me back so I’ll just wait. The array was still on it’s testing phase so I also believe it’s effects won’t last long.”

Lan XiChen huffed, the equivalent of a snort in his proper Lan behaviour and looked at the man sort everything with an ease that told he was extremely used to the order within this library. Lan XiChen looked at Jiang WanYin work while he thought for a while about their chat.

“You said there’s going to be a battle in Qinwei.”

“I did, yes.”

“So that means there’s going to be a war.”

“A battle is a battle, it means nothing.”

“I, yes, but if you know about the events to come, don’t you feel like it would be best if you tried to do or change something… Anything, about it?”

“No.”

“But…”

“I SAID NO!”

Lan XiChen jumped when the man slammed a book against a column. He was only able to see his back but even from where he was standing he was clearly able to see that Jiang WanYin was trembling. Lan XiChen immediately shut his mouth, realizing his mistake. It took Jiang WanYin over five minutes before he could open his mouth once more. It had been a relief that he didn’t have Zidian at hand.

“How dare you ask me that?” He began with a low, cracked voice. “How dare you ask me that when every time, every single time I’ve made a choice or taken a decision all things have turned to the worse!?”

Jiang WanYin turned towards Lan XiChen, who went stiff the moment he caught a glimpse of an expression so full of sadness and despair that clutched his own heart. He stomped towards Sandu and took it up before turning again to face the other man.

“Look, I fucked up, and my life got fucked up and heavens forbid I fuck things up even more just by trying to set things right. You might be young and hopeful and maybe you don’t get it but I still have a few menial things to cling on to and I won’t let them go so fast.” Jian WanYin paused for a moment to take a breath and calm down a bit more. “Sect Leader Lan.” He bowed and turned to walk through the door.

Lan XiChen saw the figure of the man stroll away from the building and, feeling like it was not right to let him leave in those terms, he ran to reach him. He had not stepped too far away, Jiang WanYin was looking at the magnolia tree with a sad, nostalgic glance. Lan XiChen approached him with care, almost afraid he would run away like a wounded, scared animal. He didn’t know what to say to keep him there so he threw at him the first thought that went through his mind.

“How about my life then?”

Jiang WanYin turned to face him, still with that frown that he could tell now was not because of anger but of frustration and regret.

“What?”

“You say you don’t dare change anything about your life but what about mine? Isn’t there anything you think I could do to change certain things to come?”

Jiang WanYin gave him a long assessing look, then looked back at the magnolia tree and sighed after a while.

“Fill your library as soon as possible with as many qiankun bags you think you’d need to save all the books inside. You’ll need them to avoid them dying in the fire.”

Lan XiChen was about to open his mouth once more but a glance from the other man told him best to keep his mouth shut. Jiang WanYin turned around to start his way to the dormitories but didn’t move. He took another breath.

“Also...” he paused. More than what should have been enough but Lan XiChen stood patiently. “It would do you good to remember at all times that kindness is not equal to honour; and you should never give away all of your heart, lest you wish to end up losing it entirely.”

Lan XiChen frowned but did nothing to stop the man when he walked away from him. He had indeed given him some advice although, considering his own personality, he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a general recommendation for all the years to come or meant to be about a person in particular. Or both.

He went back to the library to grab the forgotten tea tray and decided to wait until the following day to ask Jiang WanYin, he clearly needed some time to cool down.

The following day he saw the chaotic trio composed of Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng and Nie HuaiSang doing a ruckus right before class started. All three stopped their upheaval when they caught sight of him and did their best to stand upright.

“Good morning, young master Nie, young master Jiang, young master Wei.”

“Zewu-Jun”

The three boys saluted politely but obviously restless. He hovered over for a moment too long at Jiang WanYin who began to look rather nervous.

“How are you feeling today, young master Jiang?”

He noticed Jiang WanYin’s cheeks turn a slight tone of pink along with a face that betrayed his inner thoughts of wanting to be one hundred steps away from Lan XiChen rather than actually face him.

“B-Better! I’m… I’m feeling better, Zewu-Jun. Thank you for your concern.”

Lan XiChen gave him another long look and sighed a bit dejected although his smile never left his face.

“Very well, if you do feel like you need some rest please do tell me.”

“Yes! Thank you, Zewu-Jun.”

With that, the boys entered the classroom while Lan XiChen waited to see that every student had gathered. He looked at the bright blue sky.

So you went back to the future. I’m glad for you, Jiang WanYin.

Jiang WanYin opened up his eyes and groaned, his body ached as if he had run and done training for an entire week and his head felt foggy. Slowly, he began to hear the sound of a voice that sounded odd yet known and saw a shadow in front of what looked like candlelight hovering over him.

“—ng! Jiang cheng!”

He extended his arm towards the place where he saw the shadow and surely felt his hand being held by two more slender ones that held him tight and then something cold hitting his cheek from above.

Tears.

“W-Wei…”

“Yes! Yes! That’s me! Wei Ying! Can you hear me? Can you see me? Jiang Cheng? Please answer me!”

“Urgh, stop shouting, my head...”

He felt his hand being released but soon the hand holding was replaced by a tight hug and more sobs.

“Oh, thank heavens! I was so scared! You were not breathing anymore and I thought… I thought...”

Jiang WanYin felt his brother's words falter for a moment.

“How could I have ever faced Shijie again!?”

“How, indeed...”

Jiang WanYin felt his brother shudder and then lose himself in a barrage of uncontrollable sobs. Feeling kind of bad he lifted his tired arms and held him back. He was still feeling disoriented and thus didn’t do much to move away from the tight lock his brother had him in. After some time that he could not really measure he looked around and saw Lan WangJi sitting aside, guqin hovering over his knees. He tried to focus his eyes on him.

“How… How long was I gone?”

“It’s almost time for sleep.”

“...Same day, I presume?”

“Mn.”

“Oh.”

Suddenly, Wei Wuxian tore apart from his lying brother who was not really going to admit was feeling a little dejected from the separation, ripped his tears away with his sleeve and began to see if his body had any injury of sorts. Lan WangJi stood up, leaving his instrument aside and sat beside Jiang WanYin, taking his wrist and starting a spiritual check up. Jiang WanYin coughed a little bit.

“I told you some things were best left alone.”

Wei Wuxian let out a choked laugh.

“Yes, yes you did. You’re so smart sometimes.”

“I honestly can’t tell if you’re making fun of me.”

Jiang WanYin heard a distinct sob being held back and sighed. He turned to face Lan WangJi and focused as best as he could on him.

“I feel like literal shit. Just knock me down, please?”

Lan WangJi’s eyes widened enough that he could tell he was astonished by his request.

“Haha, yeah, there’s a first for everything I guess.”

Still, he was not knocked down anytime soon. At least not until both men had decided he was generally okay. Only then did Lan WangJi press his spiritual energy on the man who did his best to allow the intrusion in order to lead himself towards a dreamless sleep.

When he woke up again, he could see that the ceiling of the room he was in had dark beams and rays of sunshine entering peacefully through a window out of sight. He rolled over to his side and saw an open door with a view he had never seen before. He groaned, his body felt better but he felt an odd pressure on his head.

“Good morning, Sect Leader Jiang.”

He knew the owner of that voice, he could almost see the face that accompanied it smiling.

“Can you really call it morning, Zewu-Jun?”

There was a clear, amused laugh “We’re close to midday but not there yet.”

Jiang WanYin did his best to get up but a pair of strong hands kept him down, he finally saw the owner of the voice in front of him.

“Please don’t strain yourself, Wei Wuxian went for food for you, completely free of chillies I trust.”

“Mn...” Jiang WanYin looked around “Where are we?”

“This is the Hanshi.”

“Why did they bring me here?”

Lan XiChen could see Jiang WanYin doing his best to understand but his brain was still foggy.

“It is much closer to the Jingshi than the healer's wing at the other side of the compound. And no, you were no bother.” He said, finally understanding Jiang Cheng’s real question. “I just arrived a couple of hours ago from a business trip, so the place was free for you to rest.”

“It’s still your room.”

“Mn, Wei Wuxian was not allowing anyone to take you away so WangJi decided to put you here because Wei Wuxian needed to rest as well. He almost loses all his spiritual energy trying to keep you alive.” Lan XiChen turned his gaze away from the man to another corner of the room.

“I was about to prepare some tea, would you like some?”

“Yes please, my throat is… I can use some tea.”

Lan XiChen hummed in a way that Jiang WanYin could definitely tell was more of a chuckle coming from the man.

Soon enough, he arrived back, placed a tray for both of them and sat by the edge of the bed. He helped Jiang WanYin get up and placed a cup of tea on his hands. He also helped him drink it when he noticed that his hands were slightly trembling. Jiang WanYin sighed, the tea was doing a lot to make him feel better.

“How do you feel?”

“Like I drank eleven jars of Emperor’s Smile and then got the genius idea of getting trampled by a hundred fierce corpses.”

Lan XiChen couldn’t stop himself and let out an honest laugh.

“I am very sorry to hear that, but it still is better than the other option.”

“...Did I almost die?”

“I was told by Wei Wuxian that the moment the array stopped flashing you collapsed, your vitals were still functioning but the problem was that your soul was nowhere to be found… The real problem began a few hours later.”

Jiang WanYin processed the information Lan XiChen was providing. “The vital functions stopped working.”

Lan XiChen nodded. “Wei Wuxian had obviously started to work on the array to bring you back but it apparently took some time for it to find you.”

Jiang WanYin groaned and rubbed his eyes “No wonder he was so panicked. Well, at least it was me and not any other poor soul.”

Lan XiChen’s smile went sour. “Please don’t do that.”

“Can’t a man rub his eyes in peace?”

“I don’t mean that.”

“Huh?” This time Jian WanYin stopped rubbing his eyes and looked at his Lan counterpart.

“Please stop diminishing your own self like this.”

Jiang WanYin jerked back and frowned. He would have spat something aggressive at anyone else but this was Zewu-Jun, not just anyone. Since he was unable to counterattack he looked aside, clearly feeling his cheeks burn.

Lan XiChen sighed “I, for one, am grateful that you’re alive. It means that I didn’t save your life for nothing back in Qinwei.”

Jiang WanYin looked at the man suspiciously.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Have you asked yourself if you actually went back in time?”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve got enough time to do that yet...”

Lan XiChen looked at him for a while and then looked down at his hands, neatly stacked over his knees. He took a deep breath. “When I went into hiding I was gone from everyone’s sight but I was still well informed of what was going on at the battlefront thanks to a-Yao.”

Jiang WanYin looked at the man wary, ever since he left his year of seclusion he had not willingly talked about anything related to Jin GuangYao unless pressed by other people. And when he did, he tried his best to avoid saying his name out loud and yet right now he was calling him in the same fashion he used to do when he was his sworn brother. Jiang WanYin wasn’t sure why he had chosen to do so, even less why particularly in front of him but couldn’t really dare to ask.

“There was this time when we were told you had decided to take over Qinwei. I was in LanLing.”

Jiang WanYin, who had kept his gaze low, snapped his head upwards to face Lan XiChen.

“You were in LanLing!? Then how did you even show up all the way in...” Jiang WanYin’s voice slowly faded into nothing, his mind working at a hundred miles per hour.

Lan XiChen nodded. “Many people wonder about the fact that we managed to salvage and recreate our Library up to a fault and consider it a miracle. But it was thanks to you that we managed to do so in the first place. I needed to repay what I owed you. When I remembered your prediction about the battle on Qinwei I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. Your very life was in the line that day.”

“No offense, Sect Leader Lan, but I don’t think that exposing yourself to the Wens when everyone was after you in order to save a stupid brat just because he helped you save a bunch of scrolls was the wisest thing to do.”

“No offense, Sect Leader Jiang, but those bunches of scrolls are an invaluable heritage of my sect. It may have been just paper but they hold the knowledge of all my ancestors. It was well worth risking everything to save you in order to repay such immense debt.”

Jiang WanYin looked away flustered. It was hard for him to accept even the slightest type of praise, it was even harder when it came from someone as high as Zewu-Jun.

“Why are you bringing all of this up now anyway? It’s not like I wanted you to thank me or anything… Actually, how many years has it been for you now since that talk? How could you remember any of that!?”

Lan Xichen smirked “Ah, that must be because the person itself is a very difficult person to forget about, but also because by now you have already saved not only my Sect heritage but also my own self.”

Jiang WanYin frowned “What do you mean?”

“You also gave me two pieces of personal advice, remember?”

Jiang WanYin widened his eyes and looked at his lap, unable to face the other man. “Kindness is not equal to Honour.”

Lan XiChen hummed “And never to give away all of my heart.”

Jiang WanYin stayed silent, his gaze fixed on the tiny stitches that bordered his blanket. He was not sure what to say about that. He was not even sure whether Lan XiChen wanted him to say anything at all.

“This is why I say you have saved my own self.”

This time, it was Jiang WanYin the one who sighed. His voice came out defeated.

“You still suffered a lot.”

“Yes. I did… But had you not given me your advice, I fear I would not have survived at all.”

Jiang WanYin sent Lan XiChen a clearly skeptical look. Lan XiChen gave him a kind smile and looked away towards the open entrance of his room trying to come up with enough words to explain but not burden his guest with his own shadows.

“Losing my sworn brothers was hard. Being forced to deal with what I did to a-Yao, even after seeing what he had done was even harder. And yet, despite all the grief in my heart, I was able to get over the worst part after a year.” He looked back to Jiang WanYin. “And it was thanks to you.”

Jiang WanYin looked aside once more. He felt oppressed by the amount of sincerity the other man was showing him. “As I said...”

“Still. Please allow me to tell you what I couldn’t back then. What I had to hide for years now.”

Lan XiChen took Jiang WanYin’s hand and pulled them softly to force the other man to look at him.

“Thank you.”

Jiang WanYin frowned even harder and looked away. Unable to come up with a proper response. Lan XiChen took another breath and kept talking before he lost his chance.

“There’s something else. Sect Leader Jiang, we have known each other for so long and shared so many things. I… I wish that we could become friends.”

Jiang WanYin turned to look at Lan XiChen startled, he didn’t know what he was expecting from this man but that definitely had not been part of the things he thought Lan XiChen would want to discuss with him. Ever.

“Please, stop thinking so high of me. I’m only a man. And I need a friend.”

“...I don’t think I could ever be the kind of friend Zewu-Jun needs.”

“Maybe, but you’re the kind of friend Lan XiChen needs.” Lan XiChen gave him a nervous, almost shy smile. “Sect Leader Jiang, can I call you Jiang WanYin?”

“I… Zewu-Jun…”

“Please, call me Lan XiChen.”

Jiang WanYin felt his face burn, he fixed his eyes on their intertwined hands. “L-Lan XiChen.”

Lan XiChen beamed, finally letting go of Jiang WanYin’s hand.

“It feels great to finally hear my name coming from your lips.”

Jiang WanYin paused for a second before going through Lan XiChen’s last statement.

“Wait, what?”

Lan XiChen looked at him questioningly when he finally processed the last words he had said and immediately blushed wildly. A thing Jiang WanYin would have never imagined he would be able to witness in his entire life.

Almost as if on cue, they heard Wei Wuxian singing, clearly getting near the hanshi and finally showing up at the door.

“Ah! Jiang Cheng, my beautiful brother, you’re finally up! Good, good, I brought you food!”

“Did you prepare it? I don’t want to get poisoned after being so close to death’s door, I don’t think I could handle it.”

Wei Wuxian laughed earnestly “If this kills you in any way it will be because of the lack of flavor.”

Lan XiChen stepped up and made way for Wei Wuxian to sit and put his tray in place of the tea. He immediately sat down taking over the empty spot and grabbed a bit of the herb porridge with a spoon.

“Alright, say ah~”

“The hell—!? Do you think I’m a baby or something? Give me that spoon right now!”

“No can’t do. You’re recovering and I’m here to help you recover. Now open up.”

“Wei Wuxian I swear to the gods that—”

“Jiang WanYin, your brother was terribly worried for you, maybe you could allow him to care for you?”

Jiang WanYin turned to look at Lan XiChen with a look that openly screamed betrayal. After he pondered his options he finally relented.

“Fine, but I don’t wanna hear any of you talk about this or I swear I’ll break your legs.”

He opened up his mouth for Wei Wuxian who cheered and carefully began to feed his little brother. Meanwhile, Lan XiChen disappeared from their sight to clean the teapot and cups in order to try to calm his nervousness after his own slip. Falling into the motions of cleaning he began to hum a song. It was a sinuous, rather complex song. Just like the person that had inspired it in a library many years ago.

#xicheng #jiang cheng #lan xichen #mdzs fanfic #time travel #jiang wanyin #lan huan #zewu jun #sandu shengshou

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williamsockner · 4 years

Note

I saw your comments about country music on the Chicks thread and I’m curious about your opinion. I grew up on country music and feel like “9/11 killed country” is pretty valid. But I’d love to hear your take because I miss it [country music].

Hi! So, my major issue with the “9/11 killed country music” post, as someone who listens to a ton of musical genres but has both a history of and soft spot for country, is that it’s a reductive, cherrypicking way to define an entire massive genre based on a handful of individual songs and high-profile artists that had their heyday at this point nearly two decades ago (Toby Keith, Big & Rich, etc.). It’s a very slanted read on pop radio country, and it’s not even remotely accurate to quantifying the broader genre.

It’s just bizarre that people allow their idea of the whole genre to be molded by a spate of reactionary right-wing songs that found traction immediately after 9/11 and then largely lost dominance in the genre. Most country songs on the radio are not about jingoism - they’re still about a lover done you wrong, or drinking after a hard day’s work, or finding happiness without much money, or teenagers in love, or about the tragedies of alcoholism and domestic abuse, or appreciating your small town, as so much of this genre has always been. If you look at the top 10 right now, there isn’t a patriot song in the whole thing (although two of the songs have overtly Christian references, but that’s always been part of country music too). The militaristic patriotism songs tend to just be one or two songs a year that end up in heavy rotation around the fourth of July and in September, but they get outsized attention comparatively because they’re so offensively grating.

And even after 9/11, for the last two decades most country songs on the radio still haven’t been “nationalist pop with twang”. Yes, in the 2000’s we had “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” and “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning” and “American Soldier”, but this was also LGBT+ supporter Shania Twain’s* and avowed Democrat Tim McGraw’s imperial phases, the era of “Before He Cheats” and “Concrete Angel” and “Red Ragtop”, the years that made a Blake Shelton song about breaking out of prison his calling card and gave Miranda Lambert a massive hit with a song about burning her abuser’s house down.

This isn’t to say that country is progressive. Country music has a major problem with being dominated by straight white men, and even straight white women spent several of the last years underrepresented** (to say nothing of LGBT+ artists and artists of color). But that issue predates 9/11, as does the whitewashing of country’s history; the aforementioned Ken Burns documentary does go into how white country musicians forced black musicians out of the scene and erased their accomplishments going back decades before 2001. “Proud to Be an American” and “God Bless the USA”, for the record, were recorded in 1980’s.

Country, as a genre, does lean more conservative than many other genres, but it still holds a wide array of political viewpoints, even on the pop charts. I’m not just talking about indie alt-country darlings, although I’ll get to those in a minute - even pop country megastars are a varied bunch. Eric Church, who currently has a hit on the top 10, just dropped a scathing track called “Stick That in Your Country Song” that cusses out underfunding schools and mass incarceration; Luke Bryan got a #1 hit in 2017 with a chorus that included “I believe you love who you love and ain’t nothing you should ever be ashamed of”; Carrie Underwood pinned an entire album and tour cycle around a single about escaping domestic abuse and recently released a song criticizing gun proliferation; Kacey Musgraves won a CMA for her hit single where she criticizes slut-shaming and encourages women to “kiss lots of boys or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into”, then she won a Grammy for an album where she sings about smoking weed and dedicates an empowerment anthem to the LGBT+ community; Miley Cyrus had an explicitly bisexual song on her most recent “back to her roots” country album; Tim McGraw discussed running for governor of Tennessee as a Democrat and threw his support behind Obama way back during Obama’s 2008 campaign. I’ve been relatively unplugged from country radio for the last few years, but this is all stuff relatively off the top of my head.

And that moves us to alt-country. I die a little inside whenever someone says that they “just mean radio country” when they say they “hate country music”, because alt-country is just the tits. It just is. It’s the best. If someone says they listen to rock music, we don’t assume they only mean Nickelback and Shinedown - and yet somehow we’ve shut country out so much that we don’t even consider that there’s an entire world of the genre beyond what charts - and that world is rich and powerful and thoughtful and as valid a form of music as any other genre. Some favorites contemporary alt-country artists of mine (including some songs about immigration, opiate addiction, protesting war, sexism, agricultural exploitation, homophobia, one bashing Trump directly and even one about female cunnilingus): Courtney Marie Andrews, Ruston Kelly, Tyler Childers, Margo Price, Jason Isbell, Colter Wall, Ian Noe, Kathleen Edwards, Lydia Loveless, Lori McKenna, Amanda Shires, Ashley Monroe, Lucinda Williams, Over the Rhine, Samantha Crain, Shooter Jennings, Cam, John Moreland, Chris Stapleton, Lindi Ortega, Lavender Country, Cody Belew, Honey Harper, Lera Lynn, Nina Nastasia, Patty Griffin, Holly Williams.

The problem with the “9/11 killed country” attitude, to me, is that it’s a stance that requires limited knowledge of country that happened after 9/11 and a selective memory for the country that existed before 9/11. Jingoist country songs existed and found massive success before 9/11; more progressive country songs existed and found success after 9/11. Contrary to what people on tumblr seem to believe, the genre of country music was not just outlaw country, “Jolene” and Woodie Guthrie folk songs until Toby Keith came along; it was already highly Christian/gospel-influenced and highly patriarchal. And it was already full of goofy songs about getting drunk and partying and driving tractors, the predecessors to “bro country”.

I think, personally, we lose so much by centering “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” and Florida Georgia Line as the first things we think of when we think about country music, because those songs and acts aren’t representative of the genre, or even of the pop country charts. We lose a lot because we lose sight of all the fantastic progressive or apolitical music in the genre, and we lose a lot because we ignore the sins of pre-9/11 country and the opportunity to critique its history of whitewashing, heteronormativity and cultural Christianity by likening it to some sort of good ol’ days.

Thank you for letting me ramble!

*I’m aware of Shania’s ignorant-ass Trump comments, but those reflect more recent political developments for her and came with a hasty retraction.

**Although lol the pop, rock and rap charts have all been brutal to women for the last several years.

#music #country music #i have a lot of feelings about country music #this got long #not-quite-wild

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bookshelfpassageway · 4 years

Note

Hello yes I would like the full rundown on It's A Wonderful Life a la Eugene Riverworth (I once helped my DM spec out alignment-reversed versions of our entire party, alt universe characters are near and dear to my heart)

ALRIGHT SO IT'S CATASTROPHIC AMOUNTS OF CONTEXT TIME

Sorry I took so long, I've just spent most of my week trying not to turn into a puddle of goo. I accidentally listened to Mr Blue Sky today, however, and the last verse sucker-punched me into finishing this.

...At some point, I'm going to take my google doc of garbage notes with no filter and turn them into a coherent campaign recap to hand out to people. But for now, here's this definitely-more-than-a-snippet-snippet.

Alright so, to start with, we have an NPC friend named Rothwin. He's a goth wood-elf wizard with a deep, deep set guilt complex about how many people he's known that have died. His mother, due to a dragon attack, and he recently discovered, his little sister, due to the mafia said dragon runs. His twin brother was recently thralled by Mind Flayers, and we've been trying to track him down. He also had a particular bond (I don't have all the details, but he gave him an enchanted knife and a letter) with our halfling assassin, Tasher, who was disintegrated back at lv 8 by a possessed Eugene. He let the possession happen on purpose, to try to get the upper hand in a fight with our warlock's patron, but the thing he gave himself over to was not at all inclined to give Eugene's body back. This chain of events also led to the kidnapping of Rothwin's brother. There's a reason we call him the "trashwizard".

Anyway, Rothwin. Rothwin is the hero child that wants to fix everything. Guilt complex from here to the moon. He's also a slightly higher level wizard than us, a lv 14 party, and he's recently spent a LOT of time scribing studiously in his spellbook. Because Eugene is a nosy little man, he actually got a glimpse at the spell he was working on: Wish.

So, the night after Rothwin's brother is captured, we hang around and try to comfort him. He seems oddly alright, and tells us that he thinks things will be looking up, soon.

When we awake, the world is different, none of us know any of the others, we remember nothing of the world before, and Rothwin has erased the dragon that tore his family apart, over 200 years ago. In the process, the circumstances did not arise where Tasher died.

The original Eugene left home at 17 to seek his fortune, and, finding that to be a very hard task, gradually lowered his standards over the course of a decade until he became the glitzy mountebank in the pointy hat we all know and love.

This new Eugene never had that chance to be a con man. If he did swindle, it would have only been a brief stint of the minor, hunger-induced infractions of the very beginning of his career. He had a pretty similar childhood and departure. Instead, he was recruited by this universe's much more prosperous version of the Mage's Guild (run by Rothwin's mother), an agent of whom saw some element of talent in him. So for the past ten years, he's made his name as an Illusionist of mild note, a full wizard rather than a rogue multiclass, and slowly moving up the Guild's ranks. He'd just been promoted, even. He's Neutral-Good-aligned, as opposed to the original True Neutral, and though his base traits remain the same (including: sociable, vain, ambitious, indulgent, a bit foolish), they're dialed up to different degrees. This Eugene is a genuinely sweet person, in a slightly fussy and oblivious kind of way, and actually allows himself to get attached to people. Which happens easily, and strongly. He hasn't had any need to shut that part of himself down. He has a Simulacrum named Snowy, and understands what birds are (running joke in the campaign, his familiar is exactly one pint of screech owl and summoning medium-sized birds has never been successful).

Eugene's youngest sister, in the original timeline, was a warlock of the Raven Queen. She quickly began having visions of the way fate was originally supposed to play out, and together they were able to research what might have happened and start to contact the old partymembers. Everyone arrived, and started getting flashbacks of the events of the campaign. We fought some old enemies who were defeated in the original world, including the devil that set off so much catastrophe, and a mad wizard who here had managed to imprison the guy who can fix this.

We managed to short out this wizard's magical abilities with a Counterspell, triggering the source of his stolen power to take over his body to see what the hell was going on. The Whispered One, known more commonly (though not in this campaign. His name is a pricey secret after all) as Vecna. We met him once in the original timeline too, he's how Rothwin found out his sister was dead, and was responsible for the warlockifying of an artificer. (it was almost the original Eugene, but the depressed cat got in there first, also, selfishly, a warlock multiclass would have screwed over his spell slot situation too much)

Between people starting to get flashbacks (flashsidewayses?), logical deductions, and a free trial of information from the Whispered One, we realize IC what's happened and what we'd be going back to, and how to set things back to exactly square one.

Everyone gets... Maybe a little too into the RP at this point. There's a lot of philosophy and metaphysics. There's also a lot of upset when we realize who doesn't survive the original course of fate. We try to figure out if it's possible to put it back the same but just a little different, and realize that someone is here with the power to do so, but the Whispered One is not going to budge unless we give him a secret as payment. Changing fate to save a life (possibly more), would likely require a more costly secret than average. Also, we as players aren't just going to shortchange VECNA. We like being alive (Sure we will piss off the Raven Queen, but that's fine, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it). Also dramatic gestures are more narratively satisfying. Eugene's mental state is a fascinating concoction of self-loathing, existential dread, cunning bastard, hero wannabe, "hey I've known this party longer than anyone except my family and former business partner" + "I will admit I care about people". Some solutions are proposed, the Dragonborn Paladin has a book from her backstory, the Assassin has god secrets...

And Eugene, filled with guilt and distaste for tragedy and fondness for Tasher and a complicated infatuation towards Rothwin and all the trappings of a moral person, realizing for absolute certainty that all that he's become, worked for, and hoped for in this life, MUST be overwritten by someone he can't stand, and knows won't be able to stand him... Suggests that what is more secret than a life that could have been, and never could have been, lived? His own existence could not only amount to something, but actually be preserved in some capacity in the Whispered One's library.

This is immediately, though with some surprise, accepted by the Whispered One. "In all my years and years, I've never had a whole person a secret before..." A portal into a dark room with pinpoints of green light inside opens, and all he has to do is step through, and Rothwin will be given the power to re-cast Wish to bend the world back to the way it was-... While having fixed that which can be fixed. There's a bit of devolving back into Philosophy here, people trying to stop him or suggest simpler secrets, but knowing this might lead anywhere except causing more stress and the risk of him chickening out, Eugene steps through the portal.

Cassie, who had been watching him intently since the deal was proposed, gives the world's smallest "...wait" at the exact moment it's too late. Rothwin is given a green glowing rune, and casts Wish again.

The party wakes up right where they left off before all this happened, with no memory of what transpired. Eugene seems no worse for wear, and has gone back to accidentally persecuting the local introverts. Tasher washes up on the beach where we scattered his ashes, remembering only the other world and feeling a compulsion to seek out the place where we might be going next, and the devil we fought... Is present on the material plane again, somewhere.

So yeah. The man can’t go one timeline without yeeting himself headfirst into shady eldritch nonsense in a bid to find a Third Option. But this time having fixed the problems he created by all the previous times he’s done it. RIP good!Eugene, you were too pure to exist without the universe breaking. This is absolutely going to come back to bite me in the ass and I have no idea how my DM will have it do so.

#hey why did the readmore screw up? the readmore should be lower #damn it tumblr #it refuses to let me change this #anyway long post ahead #my posts #anonymous #answered #Eugene Riverworth #should tag the campaign at some point

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falloutdialogue · 6 years

Text

Dialogue After a Companion Hates You

(Some of this dialogue is said after lowest-affinity conversations, other lines are just at any point that they hate the player.)

Cait

I told you I'm done with you. Now piss off.

Get away from me. We're through, remember?

Back off. I'm not talkin' to you.

We're done! Get the hell away from me.

Keep botherin' me all you want. I'm not changin' me mind!

Codsworth

To think I actually respected you.

I'm not sure who I'm disappointed in most. You... or me, for believing in you.

If only you'd never graced the Commonwealth with your presence. We'd all be better for it.

It's hard to determine what's worse: Raiders, Super Mutants... or you.

It's people like you that keep ruining this world for everyone else.

If only you'd never left that Vault. The Commonwealth would have one less villain.

Believe me when I say, I wish nothing more than to erase my memory of you entirely... but then I'd hate to make the same mistake twice.

Curie

I should've stayed at home.

This situation cannot be tolerated.

So many violations of my ethical coding.

We are so opposite.

Danse

No. We're done talking.

I've got nothing to say to you.

Just turn around, and walk away.

I thought I was clear. We're done.

Just stay out of my way.

I always have time for you.

Deacon

There's too few good men left. The Commonwealth just chews them up and spits them out.

[Mumbling to himself] Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

My initial estimation of you was off. Way off.

The Railroad accepts all types. Even people like you.

The company I keep sometimes.

You don't really need me, right? I'd love to go solo.

I didn't think anyone would get on my nerves more than Glory.

You're just feeding our enemies ammunition in their PR campaign against us.

You ever hear of the Golden Rule? Didn't think so.

So many mistakes...

Hancock

You're lucky I'm feeling merciful right now.

Not sure who I'm more upset with right now, you or me... nah, it's you.

Can't believe I signed up for this.

You know what you've made us look like? Cowards.

My rep's probably shot to hell after all this... thanks for that.

You're gonna end up six feet under acting the way you have... if we're lucky.

You got some real shit to answer for.

I've run with some scum in my day. But you...

Just what the world needed... one more thug.

MacCready

After what you did, I doubt anyone will hire me.

I should have stayed in Goodneighbor. This sucks.

Just back away while you still have the chance.

Nope. Whatever you're selling, I'm not interested.

Maybe I should head back to the Capital Wasteland. There's nothing here for me now.

You standing here for a reason?

What's it going to take to get through to you? Go. Away.

I made a horrible mistake sticking it out with you.

Can't believe someone could be so stupid.

It's pretty obvious that you don't care about anyone but yourself.

Piper

Ugh. I don't even want to look at you.

Blue, please. I'm trying real hard to not yell at you right now.

I always wondered how people could let things get so bad in your time. Well, now I know.

How'd I let myself end up here...

How could I let you rope me into this...

Thought we might do some good together... so much for that.

You are infuriating, you know that?

Well, at least if anyone needs to find us they can just follow the trail of ruined lives...

I've come across some real monsters, but you, you may just take the cake.

So much time and effort, right down the tubes.

Preston

We don't have anything to talk about.

I've got nothing to say to you.

This'll go better if we don't talk to each other.

I'm done trying to get through to you.

Don't test my patience.

Strong

Strong hate human!

Strong want to smash human!

Human is worthless!

Go away!

Strong should make gore bag out of human.

Leave before Strong smash!

Nick

What?

Back to ruin my day?

You're still here?

What do you want?

Pester someone else, why don't ya?

X6-88

I have nothing to say to you.

If you can't respect the Institute, then I can't respect you.

Excuse me, I have duties to attend to.

You should keep walking.

I can't help you.

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loquaciousquark · 6 years

Text

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E29 (August 7, 2018)

Tonight’s preshow: favorite moments from the live show at GenCon last week. Y’all, Dani is so short in real life, I can’t even. Less adorably, I’ve burned my popcorn. Why must life be so cruel?

Music fades out, then hard smashcut to Brian passed out in his chair. Bless, he looks tired. Smashcut to Marisha and Liam also sleeping on the couch. Get these kids some rest, I tell you what. Tonight’s guests: Liam & Marisha.

Announcements: Tonight’s sponsor is Dwarven Forge, who’ve recently launched their kickstarter for the Cavern’s Deep set. See more at critrole.com/dwarvenforge. Honey Heist 2: Electric Beargaloo airs this Friday at 7:00pm PST (on top of the regular episode on Thursday). They actually shot it last night, and it’ll air unedited on Friday. Liam: “No audience, no fucks left to give.” Marisha and some of the others will hang out in the chat Friday night to share the experience, and Brian will be posting some behind-the-scenes photos and videos at the break. The Mighty Nein shirt is back in stock and available at critrole.com.

CR Stats! The MN reached 159 “9″s this episode, which includes all rolls ever. The 150th 9 goes to Beau--dex save against the fire trap. Beau dealt 147 damage this episode, the most for anyone in any episode in C2 so far. Liam: “This is the class you were born to play.” Marisha: “I’ve never been a Grog before. I’m so excited, you guys.” In Episode 7, the Bust of Estelle Getty attacked twice and hit both times. In Episode 29, the Bust of Nefertiti attacked four times and missed all four. Lorenzo’s last action was Cone of Cold; after that, the party dealt 117 of their total 146 damage. The 6 rounds of this fight is the longest fight of this campaign.

Sam’s outfit? Liam: “What are you going to do next year?” Sam’s panicking. Xenomorph? Cthulhu? Matt Mercer costume? Marisha: “What, are we talking prosthetics? Long hair and a henley aren’t really amping it up.” Liam: “He could wear a vest.”

Liam likes both the intimacy of being around the table and the live theater’s energy. Seeing people cosplay as their characters chanting and screaming is unreal. It feels like a bottle rocket going up next to them. Brian always cries at live shows because of the impact that it has on people--reading tweets is one thing, but seeing the love in person is beyond words.

Liam wasn’t surprised at all at how useful Frumpkin was as a spider. “I don’t know why anyone would think it would be a bad idea.” Marisha: “I got shit for the things I turned into for THREE YEARS! It’s my turn to make fun of other people’s animal choices!” Liam: “#thankskeyleth.”

Beau’s newfound confidence with ladies is both luck and Molly’s influence; she’s always been a bit of a flirt, but Marisha thinks “disaster lesbian” is totally accurate. Liam pitches a 70s exploitation-style spy movie on the spot. Marisha talks about a few times that she almost pursued something with Yasha/Ashley, but then she left and Marisha didn’t get the chance. Brian commiserates.

Beau waited until Keg could walk off into the sunset to avoid morning-after awkwardness.

Caleb’s first impression of Caduceus is “he’s really ready to put his life in danger. There’s that. I mean, he wanted to get out, so he could have taken a train ride through Alaska, but instead we invaded a compound.” Beau doesn’t have impressions yet. She’s been so desperate for help that any help was a win.

Caleb doesn’t enjoy having power over others. He has an ability to think critically and get things done, but hasn’t been in that position for a long time; he has big plans but no ability to achieve them. He wants to just start getting comfortable again. “Caleb is a mess of contradictions. I change my mind as to what he thinks or I think any given moment.” He wars with liking people and needing to walk away from people because what he’s doing is “more important.” He isn’t sure which part is lying to himself--he just knows that as he lies to himself, he’s still doing something completely different.

To an excellent question about character development by Brian, Marisha talks about finding ideals for a character that you have to go all in on, while still knowing that the world is going to go in on you at the same time and that you’ll change whether you like it or not. Some characters are more stubborn (Caleb); Beau is a little more vulnerable to outside forces of change, such as the death of Molly--she’s never had someone die that she cared about before.

Liam talks about how Caleb has that ability to bring back some fundamental aspects of the person he used to be, in part because he’s now forming connections with people he doesn’t want to admit to even himself. However, what happened with the Shepherds made him angry in a way he never anticipated, plus losing so much of the party... ”I want to do the impossible. If I can’t do this?” The Caleb at the beginning of the campaign was happy to sit back and skulk; this new Caleb, who has been angry, and who is now one of a very small party, cannot skulk. “There was no hanging back. Decisions had to be made.” He doesn’t want to be a leader, but he’ll get things done if he has to.

Beau doesn’t and will never feel vindicated for Molly’s death. BWF: “Revenge and closure aren’t always the same.”

After the live show and Keg, Taliesin told Marisha, “Molly would be so proud.” One of the things that lingers with Beau is that she put on a front in her last conversation with Molly while he was trying to be totally genuine, and then he died before she ever opened up. She’s processing the fact that she missed that opportunity, which is why she jumped on that opportunity with Keg. Marisha also talks about the documentary about Glow on Netflix, where the woman who played the “heart” of Glow talks about her regrets of being in love with the producer but never telling him, and now twenty years have gone by and she’s still in love.

GIF of the Week: @seraphinedreams, which is a Star Wars-style scroller about the Anti-Wheaton Ashly Burch and all her 20s/19s/18s from the live show.

BWF talks about one of the theatre workers recognizing Brian and pointing out the Tal outfit was “worse than last year’s.”

The Nefertiti lamp was a loan from the Egyptian Room of the Murat Theatre. Khary saw the lamp and went off about how much he needed the empowered figure. Liam: “Thank God we had her, though. Really turned the tide of the battle.”

Going into this fight, Caleb was still furious at the Iron Shepherds. Even so, even during the fight, Caleb was telling himself, “You need this, you need this,” so that he can go to the next thing.

Marisha likes Matt’s revision to the Cobalt Soul class. She’s still figuring out the right things to ask but is liking it much better in terms of expertise costs.

Liam: “I don’t think many moments in my life will rival the impossible moment of that motherfucker dying, on stage, with so many people watching. It was bewildering [to have so many people watching] and it made that moment of blind luck so much more amazing.” Marisha’s not sad at all that he’s dead. Everyone talks about the crazy energy of the HDYWTDT in front of 2500 people.

Brian isn’t apologizing in advance for or after the Honey Heist. Consider me piqued.

Beau cares about Caleb’s mental health. She’s sympathetic, especially since she’s starting to care for the rest of their group. She still believes in the importance of keeping teammates healthy out of both care for them and selfish concern for herself in a fight.

Marisha talks about how emotional she got when Shakaste talked about them being good people doing good things, leaving places better than they found him, especially since Khary’s not caught up on the campaign. Now Beau has to think about the themes that keep cropping up. Caleb knows what they’ve done here is good, but still thinks that the universe is pretty random & that even if they saved an entire orphanage, Caleb will still find himself unforgivable and terrible. “Nothing will erase what he’s done.” BWF: “Nothing?” Liam: “Nothing.”

They hid Khary the whole weekend to keep him from the critter crowd. “It was like telling a 12-year-old in Las Vegas that they had to stay in the hotel.”

Fanart of the Week: this lovely piece by @emtousi12 on twitter, featuring all the guests of the campaign so far.

Caleb/Liam regretted the invisibility scroll casting even before he cast it. He was stressed, the haste was a dud, and he was almost totally out of spells. Liam commiserates with Marisha about having planned very badly on selecting his first level spells for this fight-- “I had a bunch of spells I couldn’t do dick with.” However, he really, really, really didn’t want to die, so even though he desperately wanted to save the scroll, he wanted to live more.

Neither Beau nor Keg think they plan to make this a recurring thing. “Hit it and quit it.”

Liam’s asked again about why he dedicated the kill to Frumpkin & not Molly (same question as was asked at Gencon). Liam starts talking about how Caleb had a girl cat as a child (also named Frumpkin); later, he recreated his cat using magic, except this one was male (oops?). This--boy, this is a lot very quickly. Marisha: “Is this something you worked out? Is that a narrative beat you thought of in your head?” Liam: “That was a ‘yes/and’ improv thing because Liam also had a cat named Frumpkin as a little boy, and that cat was a girl. But I decided when I was creating my character that Frumpkin was a boy. But because I have real memories as Liam of the cat as a girl, I kept messing up the gender of the fucking cat in the game, so then I retooled my story. So the first part of my answer is that Frumpkin is more important than a magic spell. Frumpkin is a piece of his lovely childhood, his wonderful childhood, and he wanted to have a piece of that in his miserable existence. The second half of that answer is that [the kill] wasn’t dedicated to Frumpkin. Caleb was exhausted and bleeding out, on the verge of death; that line was the equivalent of ‘fuck this day,’ and to say [points emphatically] ‘That was for Molly’ is too--on the nose! I mean, they were all thinking it. They’re all weighed down by it. There’s no need to say it--the day is awful, and what’s more, Molly’s dead--for all they knew in that moment, the other three are dead too, they don’t know! This is a torture chamber! They’re in a Saw movie. They don’t know how the other three are. So maybe they’re all dead. Certainly Molly’s dead. So no, it was not dedicated to the cat.”

Beau felt the same thing, especially since Nott already went into the cage and had the moment with Jester. They were all feeling it and thinking it--it was there--and no one felt the need to say it aloud. “To quote Scarlett O’Hara, ‘I can’t think about that right now. I’ll think about it tomorrow.’“ Liam: “The bottom line is that Caleb is in love with his cat, and the shippers need to focus on that. Send me fiction about that.”

Everyone dreads telling Jester, Yasha, and Fjord what’s happened to Molly. Marisha thinks Fjord will be pragmatic, Yasha will be angry, and Jester will blame herself.

Marisha hypothesizes that since Lorenzo seemed interested in capable fighters, he might have been creating almost Winter Soldier-type slaves that he could use to fight for him.

Everyone’s relieved Sam didn’t fall off the stage in the rollerblades. Apparently he had a dry run out of costume that...did not go well.

Marisha loved the stunning strike moment and the HDYWTDT moment for each of them. Liam loved Nott’s kissing Caleb while he was invisible. BWF does NOT encourage this behavior and we should NEVER DO IT AGAIN and he does NOT WANT THIS IN THE FUTURE but he laughed pretty hard at whoever yelled “It’s High Noon” at Matt towards the beginning of the show.

Liam had a great time playing exhausted--yes, it’s awesome to have the amazing moments, but he loves the fun of the failures too.

Travis made it to the actual studio today and got a round of applause. “It’s like seeing a hologram of Tupac.”

After Dark: They’re So Tired I’m Tired For Them Edition

Oh, God. Twenty minutes in I realize my video froze during the break and I had no idea. I wondered why it was taking so long. Where are we? I’ll fill it in in a second.

Would BWF ever allow Sam to pick his outfit? He doesn’t know if he has the guts. Sam’s closet is full of ties and sneakers according to Liam.

Liam loved two critters cosplaying as gelatinous cubes at GenCon this year--he recognized one of them as one who came as a beholder last year and applauds her creativity. Marisha loved how their swords were floating around them. Liam swoons over all the Vaxes with functioning wings; Marisha loved Opening Title Sequence Matt; BWF gushes about the pair who came as him from Signal Boost and Liam Las Vegas; Marisha loved the Percy with the Orthax shadow. There was also a pair of little girls who did the twins one day and Yasha and Beau the next; all three get a little fluttery.

Most of the panel from GenCon is up on Critical Scope.

Marisha would prefer to face a party of wizards over a party of monks. Liam would prefer avoiding both, but if forced would take the monks since they have range requirements.

Thanks, broadcasting.

Liam isn’t bitter the two clerics didn’t heal him. Not at all. Not bitter at all. He was at two hit points before he healed himself with the potion.

Marisha started tearing up when they found the party members in part because the game is very real to them, and they miss Laura, Travis, and Ashley so much. Sometimes the very real reactions catch them off guard. Liam points out that they’re family and it never feels good with part of the family gone.

Live show was the best thing they did at GenCon, but seeing the booth was pretty cool too. Everyone was “cranky” Sunday morning. BWF: “Oh my God, you’re being so nice right now.” Marisha was annoyed from the moment the makeup artist knocked on their door the next morning to get Matt ready to be Pumat. The entire group didn’t say a word to each other over breakfast except to snipe at each other. “Do you know what time it is?” “You’re looking at your phone.”

Liam talks about some cool oversized minis he got for his daughter’s Ravenloft game at the Privateer Press booth. BWF got some new dice (as did Marisha for both her and Matt at the Level Up booth), a Wyrmwood box, and some Iron Kingdoms books.

BWF admits he is a deep nerd and loves Warmachine; he could have talked to the Privateer Press people for hours about the lore if he didn’t think they’d have chased him off.

Did Vax take Molly to the other side? Liam doesn’t know. He has his own ideas--Ariana, their official artist, did a picture of Vax on an obsidian throne & surrounded by obsidian, with white antlers growing out of his shoulder & holding a raven skull, and that’s what he feels his afterlife is like. He does like to think that Vax took Molly to the other side. “He was so colorful and full of life. I’d like to think so.”

The VOD of Matt’s Fireside Chat is up on the critrole Twitch! BWF: “He’s so articulate.” Marisha: “A living bard.”

That’s all for today! Is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

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cookiefonster666 · 5 years

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Thoughts on the Homestuck Epilogues (Tumblr Edition)

I predicted the future!

Might as well adapt this Blogspot post I made about a week ago into Tumblr form, why not. With a few minor changes. I don’t like using Tumblr but I figure it’s a good additional platform to share my surprisingly positive views on the Homestuck Epilogues.

The epilogues have a lot of controversial content, most of which I avoid talking about here.

BRIEF SUMMARY

4/20, read through Meat: epilogues pretty good

4/20, started Candy: what the fuck

4/21, stopped: aaaaaaaaughhhhh bluh i hate everything

4/24-ish, continued Candy: epilogues alright i guess also i am sad now

4/27-ish, finished: I LOVE HOMESTUCK

BRIEF-ISH SUMMARY

Meat was a wild ride that started as cool plot stuff and things that make you go "OH FUCK", continued as basically chapters 7-9 of Detective Pony (which I naturally enjoyed a lot), and ended as a mess of sheer chaos and destruction. My thought process ended as, "oh duh, this is the bad ending, candy must be the good ending". I was in for quite the nasty surprise.

I quit reading Candy just a few pages in. It didn't take long for it to suddenly become the weirdest fanfiction ever. Frustrated, I started skipping and searching through later parts and got rather salty when it turned out both sides were the "bad ending". I saw firsthand what vfromhomestuck meant by "clear your whole week": this is not something most people can just read in one sitting. Then I recovered a few days and read Candy in earnest, in a somewhat anachronous order and with many parts read multiple times. Slowly, I started to hope that the epilogues would be followed up with a true happy ending for real this time. I may or may not have written a snippet of some form of fanfiction paving the way for a happy ending.

Once I finally accomplished the equivalent of reading Candy as intended, I got hit HARD with feels. I accepted that the epilogues have many issues but as a whole (not just the sum of parts) are an absolute masterwork, sometimes because of those issues. It didn't take me long to realize the brilliant duality either. Meat is a side-splitting metafictional farce that (for me at least) is impossible to treat as anything resembling a story of people doing things. Candy is a tale of FEELS, and I don't use the word FEELS lightly. FEELS means I almost cried, like I did when I watched the Futurama episode Luck of the Fryrish.

DETECTIVE PONY AND METAFICTION

Before I move on and talk about the CHARACTERS, I'm going to discuss the meat epilogue's resemblance to sonnetstuck's Detective Pony. I love everything about Detective Pony, more than almost anything else in existence. My abnormal love for that godlike fanwork probably skewed my perception of Meat a bit. Starting from page 17, Dirk takes over the narration then fights over it with god tier Calliope; both do rather questionable deeds and Dirk was hit hard by fans as a result. Seeing other fans react towards that character with such hostility gave me a very distinct feeling of "what, am I missing something?" Dirk's takeover felt like a lengthy work of comedy to me; a story that never strips away from the fact that it's fiction, in a vein near identical to that of Detective Pony. I like to think I am in the right for perceiving that arc this way, because I think everyone who has read Homestuck should read Detective Pony. One of the epilogue authors read Detective Pony after writing the epilogues and was struck by it; I take this accidental mirroring of (post-)canon as proof that sonnetstuck understands Hussie's ways through and through. I like to think I have a solid understanding of Hussie's ways by now, but this guy is on a whole new level.

That said, the meat epilogue gets a bit carried away with metafiction to the point of making me think, "god when will things go back to normal". Towards the end of Detective Pony, Dirk goes through an existential crisis followed by a powerful revelation, and then resolves to do whatever it takes to erase his abominable creation. But the meat epilogue ends with (both figurative and literal) crashing and burning; no ultimate redemption for our poor Strider. Homestuck doesn't usually have much of a problem with getting carried away with stupid nonsense; maybe a few rare occasions in cases like Hussie's self-insert scenes. But getting carried away is a major criticism I have with cool and new web comic. I love that comic to death, but the parts that take a long time to dwell on the cool and new characters being creepy or weird are a chore to go through. o (the author of CaNWC) seems to have improved in that regard; the cool and new trolls' arc is much more to-the-point with such nonsense.

Meat getting carried away with metafiction is a major cause of my initial burnout shortly after starting Candy. I was sick of this mass dump of metafiction and expected Candy to be a refreshing change of pace. Haha, if only. My fault for reading Meat first. At night I sometimes ponder in envy of the parallel universe me that started with Candy. Actually I don't do that, I just thought it was a funny thing to say. Though I have on more than a few occasions sat in bed fantasizing about how awesome my life probably is in some parallel universe. What point was I making again? Oh whatever, it doesn't matter. I guess I should write a similar overview of Candy's narrative nature. Here goes:

LUCK OF THE FRYRISH AND SADSTUCK

Sad things are sad.

^ There, that's my candy overview. How hard was that?

With the two summaries out of the way, I figure the best way to dump out my residual thoughts on the epilogues is going character by character. I won't do every character, mostly just the ones who played large roles and were already characters in Homestuck proper. I'm sorting these characters in tiers of how well I think the epilogues handle them, mostly from worst to best.

N-TIER

N is not the lowest tier; it's the tier that cannot be ranked. N stands for two things here: "Not Applicable" and "Narrators". Naturally enough, two characters fit into that tier.

Dirk Strider: I've already talked about this guy quite a bit. I have a fondness for Dirk's character and I think his dialogue and narration in meat do a good job portraying some ascended, ultimate version of his character without straying from his voice, the tone that makes him Dirk. That said, I'm a bit peeved that "normal Dirk", the one iteration of Dirk Strider that isn't total bonkers and just wants his friends to be happy, doesn't exist in this story. In Candy, Rose suddenly loses the memories of her alternate selves, but for some reason Dirk keeps those memories and soon after commits suicide; he's left out of the picture until Candy's postscript, which I guess is a reasonable balance considering his indulgence throughout Meat. But why is only one of the succulently verbose Strilondes let off the hook? Some readers imagine Dave as the comic's protagonist and Dirk as the antagonist; I've toyed with that idea myself and can see it symbolized, but it just feels so wrong to me. Maybe the authors did too good a job writing Dirk for me to be complacent with such a shift in role. His conversations with Rose were just as delightful as I had hoped and they aren't weighed down too much in light of his shift in role, at least not for me.

Alt Calliope: The narrative rival to Dirk, as I mentioned previously. I'm not totally sure what to say about her, other than that one could see her as a counterpart to let's say Anna Harley; a necessary piece in the Detective Pony analogy. Alt Calliope's narrative arguments with Dirk were hilarious and that's all there is to say on the matter.

G-TIER

I'm lucky Gamzee's name starts with a G, because this means I can give him a tier of his own worse than F. As an individual arc that is; he'd get a much higher rating when taken as part of a whole.

Gamzee Makara: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I despised reading every word that came out of this guy's mouth as soon as his """redemption arc""" started. But I can clearly tell that was the point and that the suffering that is reading his words has a much greater purpose. Before you deem me a masochist or the kind that insists everything is "bad on purpose", know that I am neither of those things but really do mean what I say here. Gamzee's role in Candy draws tension between individuality and the whole. Reading this guy's hogwash is suffering in and of itself, but ultimately it serves a role of showing us how fucked up the world of Candy is and helps the reader experience John's existential crisis with him.

F-TIER

As before, these tiers are strictly about character arcs in isolation and not the big picture. This tier is home to none other than the legendary...

Jane Crocker: Boy did I predict the future on that one. A bit like Dirk, I would've liked it more if in only one epilogue did sweet innocent little Jane become such a monster. No way in hell am I going to run through the asshole things she does; it's a load of sensitive topics I'm not comfortable discussing in any capacity. Instead, I'll say that if I had to choose only one epilogue where Jane ran through her crazy presidential campaign it would be Candy; as with Gamzee's arc, this campaign serves well as a part of John's existential crisis. What's weird here is that in Candy she originally cancelled all this, but later ended up basically doing it anyway with Dirk gone. I can imagine Jane going back to normal in Meat, maybe? Or in the hypothetical "true ending" I discussed prior.

D-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier. Mostly the characters that don't do much and I wished did more.

Meenah Peixes: Needed more screen time, god damn it. She survives the Furthest Ring apocalypse, nabs the Ring of Life, then makes her way to Candy Earth and joins Karkat in the rebellion. Maybe it makes sense that her and Karkat teaming up in war is relegated to the background, to show how far the shouty guy has come in comparison to everyone else. I'll come back to this point when I talked about Karkat.

Roxy Lalonde: Doesn't do too much in either side, but does go through some touchy topics I'm not sure what to think about; I'm most certainly not ready to talk about those topics now. And regardless, Roxy's role in the epilogues is better discussed when I talk about John and Terezi a few tiers up.

Calliope: Doesn't do all that much either, full circle to being the exposition alien with mysterious morality. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Certainly beats out the slog of endless "ur pretty" conversations. Calliope pretty much fades into the background on both sides, which is sad but fitting.

(About pronouns: I'll keep referring to Roxy and Calliope as "she" unless I find reason to talk about the little those two do in Meat. I just avoided using pronouns in those paragraphs above.)

C-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier, but with a more positive "meh" than before. It's the "meh" that indicates lukewarm satisfaction rather than annoyance at mediocrity.

Jade Harley: Really should be on a lower tier, because she did dick squat other than being horny and painfully oblivious to all the nonsense going on. But I'm a sucker for Jade being "Jade" and was happy to see even a trace of that early in Meat. As before, I'll avoid the controversial topics surrounding Jade in the epilogues, aside from pointing out that this post reads very different now.

Karkat Vantas: This guy's a bit of an odd spot. His leadership role is addressed in the absolute last way I expected. Could've gotten more attention from the story I suppose, but damn if his character arc didn't get the most triumphant return imaginable.

Kanaya Maryam: I touched upon Rose and Kanaya's relationship when I discussed the "buddy system" in my first epilogues post and I still stand by what I said there. Her strong attachment to Rose is integrated well into Meat without seeming like fluff or defining her entire character, because she actually does other things there too. In Candy they remain a stable happy relationship and I guess I'm cool with that.

Aradia Megido: Role is the same as ever and I'm fine with that. Death fangirl who works for predestination and has ambiguous morality. Her arc with alt Calliope ends with a cliffhanger that is easily the biggest reason to hope for a follow-up to the epilogues; if such a follow-up were to happen, I really look forward to hearing more from Aradia.

Sollux Captor: Sollux is by nature the other guy, that's an immutable fact of life. He doesn't do much other than snarking at whoever's nearby and I can't imagine it any other way.

Jake English: If not for a scene near the end of Candy, I'd put Jake at D-tier. Through all of Meat and most of Candy, Jake's role is one of the oddest spots of all and it's pretty hard to pinpoint what the authors were going for, lest I dabble in controversial topics some more. But Jake's scene with John near the end of Candy is uniquely touching and makes the most out of his role as a second John. He moves in with John, bringing his son Tavros with him, and encourages John to reconcile with his former wife and make amends of sorts, ultimately giving a small portion of the cast a pseudo-happy ending. That whole part of Candy made me tear up.

Talking about the really GOOD parts is a perfect point for me to move on to...

B-TIER

Stuff that didn't make it into A-Tier, which I've reserved for what struck me HARD.

Dave Strider: In both epilogues, Dave's behavior generally seems based on how he acted in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, which is actually a LOT better than it sounds and hell if I know why that is. Dave's rants about politics and sexuality now have a charm I can't quite describe. His absurd fixation specifically on the economy matches shockingly well with the nature of Homestuck. The three-way romance between him, Karkat, and Jade goes in very different directions on either side, which I'll discuss a bit later. The epilogues even made Dave x Karkat an actually decent ship, how crazy is that??? The writers deserve a big badge of honor for doing that. Not sure what to say about specific things, but Dave was really well-written in an unexpected way.

Rose Lalonde: Again not sure what to say about anything in specific. Just really enjoyed reading Rose on both sides of the story. Shoutout to the heartwarming moment with John near the end.

A-TIER

Oh boy. Oh boy. Time for the big guns.

Vriska Serket: My mind hurts to process just how good Vriska's appearance in Candy was, after leaving the Furthest Ring and landing on Earth. First she talks with John rather aggravated, then she brutally murders Gamzee, then she sits down and has an honest talk with her ectobiological clone raised by Rose and Kanaya, and in the end gets in touch with Terezi which leads to a cliffhanger. The story somehow created the PERFECT balance of sincere reflections and typical Vriska flavor, which was deeply lacking in A6A6I5 with its horrific polar opposite versions of Vriska. Two Vriskas converse once again late in Candy and this time it's incredibly endearing and almost feels like an apology for the controversial Vriska/Vriska encounter back then. I accept the apology with open arms. Why is everything always so wonderful?

John Egbert: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS SO WONDERFUL? John gets a deep meaningful existential crisis arc in both epilogues; both cases I easily latched onto and found a bit of myself in. I absolutely loved seeing him and Terezi interact as a duo of people with some perception of canonicity; I'll get back to that point soon enough. John's marriage to Roxy not working out is a testament to both his issues with canon and Roxy's issues dealing with harsh situations. Roxy latches onto John and their son as a huge carefree pushover and he doesn't like that at all. And that's actually cool with me because John x Terezi is better in every way, as the epilogues made me realize. If that wasn't enough, the end of Candy spoils our little hearts by having John reconcile with Roxy anyway and give hope for a better future. Though a part of me does want to see a true happy ending where John and Roxy date with their delightful dynamic from their first interactions, I'm beyond pleased with the epilogues' handling of John either way. Swaying deep into some rather sad territory while remaining 100% faithful to his character that I've always loved so much.

Terezi Pyrope: FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES. Every scene with Terezi in the epilogues was so goddamn awesome. Her interactions with John were such a blast to read, with exactly the mix of humor and touching aspects that make both of the big John/girl ships what they are. How did the authors pull it off, making deeply emotional scenes without ever sacrificing that goofy Terezi flavor???

S-TIER

S in rating systems these days is way misused in my eyes. Normally A is meant to be the highest rating and S is used for the very rare absolutely exceptional case A doesn't do justice. But now you see shit like SS, SSS, SSSS everywhere like one S isn't the ultimate badge of honor? S is a rating I'd gladly give Detective Pony and may or may not give cool and new web comic. Same goes for my very favorite Futurama episodes. I'd give a few of Neil Cicierega's works that rating if I'm feeling up to it. In this post, I've reserved the S rating for:

Barack Obama: THE BEST PART OF THE EPILOGUES, HANDS DOWN. His conversation with Dave near the end of Candy is perfect in every way, it really transcends words. Humor, emotional touching, plot revelations, and straight up "Homestuck feel" are blended into the most delicious melting pot imaginable. When Dave confesses that he might be gay and explains troubles in his three-way romance, Obama responds with a truly inspiring speech about identity that raises an excellent point about the differences between the epilogues involving aspects of people that may seem immutable to some. I think Obama's speech leaves a powerful message I never expected Homestuck of all things to convey so well. I hope readers take that speech's message into account, though I know many will probably be a bit naive about it.

If you refuse to read the epilogues at all costs, then I implore you to read Dave and Obama's conversation anyway. You won't be disappointed.

CONCLUSION

epilogues good

that’s all there is to say on the matter

though if you don’t like them that’s also fine

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #epilogues #epilogues spoilers #homestuck epilogues spoilers #i predicted the future #i love john egbert #i love terezi pyrope #i maybe love vriska serket???#obama obama obama #johnrezi #yes good

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dungeonsnconcepts · 6 years

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My first DnD character

Was a 4th edition Shardmind Rogue. He was bananas. The campaign was a wild, not from any book, do what you like, mess. I loved it. This was about ten years ago, when I was a Junior in high school. Prior to that I had played two sessions of a giant mech homebrew for 3.5, and I have no recollection of that character (human I think? Possibly a self-insert).

But I digress.

Just last year, I was asked if I wanted to join a friends DnD campaign, as they were about to start "Into the Abyss". I was so excited! They were in a new system, fifth edition(not that I even remember the old system, other than that I had a bonkers amount of choices), and I figured I'd make something cool, but out of the ordinary.

I tried to make a half-orc who wanted to be a monk, but wasn't one. So I went with fighter, but refused to use weapons (dealing 1+3str on the off chance that I connected, as my rolls were terrible). God damned awful. Hilariously bad, to be honest, but I stuck with it. By fourth level I was known as "the one punch orc" because I seemed to have an uncanny ability to only hit after the paladin had already smited, and steal all sorts of kills. Seemed I killed almost anything I ever hit. I punched a ghost to death once. Several drow. A few ooze. Got to my ASI and took tavern brawler to increase my damage.

Then the party got joined by a dwarf fighter/barbarian, who basically filled the same roll as me in the party, but was actually good at it. He came in with a +1 weapon, and +5str, so if I ever hit (about half as often as he did) I dealt D4+3str damage compared to his D8+6, and he was hitting three times a turn (two weapons).

So I started to grumble about my character. He was bad to start off with, but when I can see what it was possible for him to do? It hurt pretty bad. Destroyed my esteem for my character, and thus, destroyed his self esteem. In order to keep up with the party's strength, the DM started throwing some homebrew enemies at us, which was fair for the rest of the party but ABSOLUTELY WRECKED ME. I was all but one-shot KO'd three sessions in a row (by a drow priestess's cloud of death, then by a ghost that possessed me to attack the party, then by a giant homebrew ooze monstrosity that nuked us). During this time, the DM and I had talked, and he allowed me to "rewrite my character". He told me to take some barbarian levels, as that fit how I'd acted, and he was "going to do something to fix me". I'd been asking for brass knuckles that would increase my damage to a D6 or something, so I was stoked. We did a solo session where my character was essentially kidnapped while unconscious. I awoke to an illithid playing with my brain after having cut off my arms (you know, those things that were central to my character?). Turns out that the dragon that rules the one town had sicked his mindflayers on me to "fix my ineptitudes". He also gave the barbarian a magical stat increase so he was +1 more to hit and damage. But it turns out I now have "flencing claws" and "some memory loss of what happened before the start of the campaign" (this I assume was to take away the backstory element that made my character want to be an off-brand monk). I now dealt D10+3 damage, as three foot long claws extended from my finger tips at will. Which was cool, but WILDLY off flavor (weird) for "the punchy orc".

So now I was dealing D10+3 per hit, three hits per turn (off hand attack), averaging about 5 to 8 damage per hit (massively bad rolls), and hitting still about half the time (+6 to hit). The Dwarf was dealing 1D8+7 per hit, three hits per turn, averaging 12 to 14 per hit, and hitting almost always (+10 to hit).

And I am still getting smacked silly by the things the rest of the party are ok at dealing with.

So his "fixing me" didn't really stop my grumbling. Now my character doesn't feel like my character any more (he's a weird, wolverine-ish, barbarian/fighter with memory loss of the backstory that was central to his motivation), AND he is still lagging behind the rest of the party in pretty much every way (note, the Dwarf also has 30 more hit points than me, and took the better barbarian path, so resistance to everything while I was still trying to be in "character" and took battlerager, as I was told to make this choice before my mind was erased or I knew what was being done to me).

And the enemies kept coming. Stronger and stronger. So I kept complaining. "homebrew enemies are kinda wrecking the game for me" I said, repeatedly. Pretty much as soon as we were in combat, I was in danger of falling over (the DM won't let me die for some reason), and outside of combat I'm a low Cha character that no longer really has a backstory.

So we hit a major plot beat, and he (the DM) asked for our input. I sent him a massive message about how I love the game, I love the world he's built for us, I love the party, I like my character, but homebrew is kinda not fun.

So he did ANOTHER solo thing with me, and turned me into Venom, the Spiderman villain. I was infected by an ooze that could give me spiderclimb and a bunch of homebrew abilities (int damage when I perform a bite attack, +temp health when I bite, auto grapple when I bite(which triggers my battlerager feature to deal an additional 3 damage), +1 magical attacks, +1 AC, advantage on wis saves because I have two minds, set to a +9 to hit, D10+8 damage from my claws, D6+3str+1magic from my bites).

Yay... I complained that homebrew was wrecking the game for me, so he turned me into homebrew. Stare into the Abyss, and it stares back apparently. Lol. The concept there is enough to be off-putting to me. But I guess I lost the ability to complain that I'm lagging behind the group in power.

But I no longer love my character. Sure, I LOVE venom. My absolute favorite comic character. But Grobnak the half orc barbarian fighter is not Eddie Brock. And this ooze isn't really venom. It's.... Venom-lite. Because I am not a super hero, which is fine! I don't want to be overpowered! But the thing I'm supposed to be IS overpowered. So I don't really feel like venom. And I'm not Grobnak the wants-to-be-a-monk-and-sometimes-punches-pretty-good any more either.

But I'm going to do my best to learn to love him (Grobnak) again, because the other campaign I've been in (which all of the other characters on this blog were part of) just got put on hold indefinitely.

#d&d 5e #d&d character #d&d #d&d shenanigans

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makorays · 6 years

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Thael

[i decided to write an off-screen interaction between my two characters in the savage worlds campaign my friends and i are playing, figured i might as well post it here since i’ve already posted art of them. some parts might be slightly confusing without context but i think you can get a general grasp of things.

also, apologies if any of this contradicts what is meant to be canon scellor lore; we’re kinda just using what we know of the scellor race and filling in the blanks based on what works best for our particular story.

here’s a good song to listen to while reading, if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJ6LO1QIyk ]

In the science lab, an oddly short Orthe and an oddly tall Ulkam engage in telepathic conversation. Minyaxl: You know, Thael, I just realized I've never really run into you anywhere other than the lab. What do you do in your off time? Thael: uh...i don't really have off time M: Wait, what? What the hell kind of slave-driving operation is this? T: no, i mean, i'm allowed to have it but i don't really take it. i usually just keep working M: ...Why? T: i dunno what else to do T: sometimes nazira tells me i need to take a break so i go to my room and watch the tv but that's about it

M: ......Really? T: i don't really understand human tv, the words they use are totally different from the words i hear people in the base use T: i never hear anyone around here say things like "daijoubu" or "hisashiburi" M: ...I also never really hear anyone here say things like that. M: ... M: But anyway, wow though, uh... Minyaxl scans the room for other staff and finds none but Thael. M: Wait, are you in your off time right now? T: yes M: ...Thael, let's go do something. T: do something? M: Yes. Hey, when was the last time you saw the surface? T: when you took me to that other country M: I...see. M: ... M: Let's go outside! T: ok Thael puts down his scientific implements and allows the small scellor to lead him, retaining his signature blank expression the whole way.

A minute or so later, the two emerge from the base. Thael briefly loses his wide-eyed look as he squints and raises his hand to shield his face from the blinding sun, but eventually returns to normal once his pupils adjust. Minyaxl walks him around to the shaded side of the nearby boat house. Minyaxl drops to the grass, his back against a wall, and Thael feels obligated to follow suit. A cool breeze blows past them, lifting the bottom of their hair gently to the side. M: It's come to my attention that we haven't actually talked very much at all, so I was hoping we could have a bit of conversation. I mean, jeez, you're pretty much my favorite person in this whole place and I still barely know anything about you. T: ... M: What are your interests? Got any hobbies? T: no M: ...Well I guess that answers the hobbies question but what about the interests one? T: nope M: ...Is...is that a "nope" as in "nope, i don't have any interests"? T: yes M: Well y- ...I mean...y-you clearly take an interest in science, right? T: ......... M: ...Is something wrong? T: um T: i... T: i'm not very interested in science M: ...What?! But you're great at it, you were great enough to be qualified for this! You obviously have a lot of experience with it, you must have done a ton of studying...why would you go through all that if you didn't even like it? T: ...i used to like it. M: Used to? What happened? T: ...... T: ...i...um......i-i'm not sure if it'd be good to talk about that. M: Talk about...what...? T: ... T: i've never told anyone about it before. M: Well I'm sure you could make an exception for me, right? T: w-well...um...

Thael begins looking uncomfortable. M: ...Are you alright? I've never seen you look so...worried, before. Not even when you were getting shot at... T: ...... T: i'm afraid. M: Afraid of what? T: afraid of you thinking less of me. T: you're the first person in the last 5 years i've felt that for T: ...you're the first person in the last 5 years i've felt ANYTHING for. T: i don't want you to know that i'm a- T: ...there's just some things i don't want you to know. M: ... Minyaxl produces a devilish grin, in spite of his friend's clearly serious discomfort. M: You know I'm not gonna be able to stop myself from prying after you've said THAT, right? M: C'mooon, what are you that you don't want me to know about? Let's see, you're awfully tall by average caste standards...are you actually a Niaar who wishes he were an Ulkam? Or maybe a formerly proud Niaar who was forced into doing an Ulkam's work? M: Or maybe you're actually an alien separate from scellor and humans that's just disguised as a scellor? It could explain the unique...body shape... M: Wait... He lowers his voice to an almost whisper for this next question, even though they're still speaking telepathically. M: ...Are you trans? Because seriously I still don't know how a biological male could be so... His eyes glance downwards for a split second. M: ...adiposally gifted. M: I swear though you better not be another android thinking that you're subscellor or anything as obvious as that because we JUST went through hell to prove that we're accepting of Teri despite her leaking informatio- T: i'm a monster. Thael turns his head to face his friend. From Minyaxl's perspective, Thael is now looming over him, his blank eyes now looking less like the innocent windows of an endearingly lost individual and more like cold, emotionless portals to a neurological abyss.

A few moments of silent thought pass, and Minyaxl briefly wonders to himself if he maybe ended up getting emotionally close to a broken psychopath, whom he also repeatedly slept with. M: ... M: Ahah, come on, it can't be that bad...don't scare me like that, alright? Thael ceases his gaze, staring off into the space in front of him again. T: when i said you're the first person i've felt anything for in the past 5 years, i meant it. T: i never really feel anything in regard to anyone or anything. i haven't in a long time. T: but when you're around...it's different. maybe not by much, but there's at least something. T: when you enter the same room as me, i feel a little happy. M: Only a little...? T: a little is a lot more than nothing. T: and...i... T: ......i don't want you to stop entering the same room as me. T: i like feeling happy. it feels...good. M: If you like being with me so much then why don't you ever leave the lab to come find me during breaks? T: i don't want to bother you M: Oh come on, you're never a bother to me. Which is a lot more than I can say about some people... M: And I guarantee you that your story won't bother me. T: i'm sure it will, and i'm sure that you'll feel more apprehensive toward me afterwards T: and then you won't want to see me, and then i won't get to feel good anymore T: ... T: is that selfish? M: N...no, it's not... M: But...I do think you should have a little more trust in me. M: Thael, listen. I really really like you. I consider us to be close friends, and I wouldn't just turn on a close friend like that. I'd trade the life of any one of my squadmates for yours if it ever came down to it. I am PROMISING you that whatever story you have to tell, it can't change those feelings. M: Can you trust that? T: ......... T: alright T: i'll tell you.

Clouds begin moving in front of the sun that shone so brightly a minute ago. Minyaxl knows it's just coincidental timing, but he still can't help but feel a small doubt about whether or not he should have actually asked for the story he's about to hear. T: around 500 or so years ago, there was a scientist who wanted to find a way to control people's souls. T: to that end, he did terrible things. T: he'd take living, sentient scellor, and restrain them inside pods that were designed to psionically manipulate their souls. T: in his experiments he ended up destroying or otherwise irreparably damaging dozens of scellor souls, leaving them with no hope of reincarnation. M: ...W...w-wait, what?? What the fuck...??? M: How have I never heard of this?? T: it was kept fairly secret, but if you dive deep enough into government project records you'll find it. M: Government?! T: yeah. M: Wh-...I...but... Minyaxl recoils with a look of absolute horror. He looks like he'd be ready to start producing tears, but he holds back to focus on hearing the rest of the story. M: Entire...souls... M: Just......destroyed?? M: How the fuck could anyone do something like that?!? Let alone our...our own government... T: thankfully, he never succeeded in his mission, but the damage he caused was permanent. T: and just like you're doing now, anyone else who heard about his exploits would've just lamented those past victims and moved on, but T: while reading about the things he did, i started to remember doing them myself. T: and then i started remembering other things that hadn't been written about T: like the fact that the experiments would cause a kind of pain more pure and direct than anything the body or mind could normally experience T: and the sight of the bodies dropping to the floor as empty husks once their essences were erased from the world T: and as those memories invaded my head, it quickly became clear to me that i was the one responsible for all of it. M: ...Oh. I......holy shit... M: B-but, I mean, even though that man deserves no forgiveness, everyone knows your past lives don't have to determine who you are. You're basically not even the same person, even if you happen to have the same soul. T: that was my hope T: i was absolutely horrified, but that horror was reassuring to me, because it meant that my current self would never do something like that T: well, that's what i thought, at least. T: i went into university with an immense conviction to do good, to use science for the benefit of others and make up for those crimes of the past T: i was a lot more excitable back then. i felt like a superhero, so sure of myself, so happy to do the right thing. i had so much passion that people thought i was kind of crazy and needed to chill out, but i felt nothing but positivity. T: i graduated with immediate career prospects. i didn't even have to look for a job, my credentials were such that a government agency reached out to hire me right away. i jumped at the opportunity. T: i should've seen the warning signs going in. they'd always talk about the importance of making "sacrifices" for the greater good, and they'd constantly reassure you that you'd be doing the right thing. that seemed kind of odd to me, but the thought never crossed my mind that it was a flimsy excuse to pretend that what was being done was ok. T: by the time i realized the truth of the situation, it was too late to back out. that's how they'd get people; they'd be vague enough to get you to agree to the job and sign an NDA, but they wouldn't bring any attention to the fine print stating that you wouldn't be allowed to leave once you saw anything. T: and then as soon as you were in, you saw everything. T: i never even thought it was possible for a government operation to be so unethical. i always assumed there were serious laws in place, but either there weren't enough or the government just didn't care. T: i guess i shouldn't have been surprised considering my past self had a government position, but i guess i blindly hoped that his project was a freak incident and things like that wouldn't be allowed to happen again. T: that hope was misplaced. M: ...What exactly...happened in there?

T: they wanted to find a way to force sentient scellor to become drones again. normally you have to make a conscious choice to become a drone, and even then the state is reversible, but they wanted the ability to rob undesirables of their free will. T: they wanted to be able to deal with enemies of the state without outright killing them, so our organization was tasked with discovering a method to make people more...neurologically compliant. T: despite our nonlethal end goal, a lot of test subjects died in experiments. of course i didn't want to have any part in it but they wouldn't let me leave no matter how much i begged. T: i was pretty low on the corporate ladder. i wasn't tasked with a whole lot of decision-making, but instead given the grunt work of carrying out experiments designed by those higher than me. T: since not even the most powerful orthan can force someone to become a drone, we had to try more brutish techniques. T: i personally had to carry out everything they could think to try, from hypnosis to... T: ... T: well. T: imagine a short little praal girl, barely into adulthood, strapped down to an operating chair, crying and screaming and pleading at you with every ounce of energy she can muster, begging you not to lobotomize her. M: ...... T: i tried to do it but my hand wouldn't stop shaking and my tears made my vision really blurry, so someone had to come in and scold me until i was able to steel myself enough to get it done. they yelled so loud that i started to feel guilty for NOT doing it. M: ...Y-you...... T: i was really bad at the torture too T: the subjects knew i didn't want to continue doing anything to them so it was kinda hard to be intimidating, i mostly just begged them to become drones so i wouldn't have to hurt them any longer T: the torture actually worked sometimes, but it wasn't good enough for the people in charge. they wanted to be able to instantaneously convert someone from a distance. T: so they kept devising more ideas, and they kept making people like me try them out T: and i just kept crying. T: i cried, over and over, every single day T: during my free time, during the experiments T: i'd tell the test subjects how sorry i was, again and again, even continuing to say it to the corpses of the ones that didn't make it T: i must have looked almost as terrified as they did. T: and i'd just cry and cry and cry T: but i guess eventually i ran out of tears. T: at a certain point when doing those sorts of things you just stop feeling, because you can't anymore T: so i stopped, and i haven't really felt anything since. M: .........

Minyaxl struggles to organize his thoughts into any set of meaningful words. M: I...I-I um... M: Wow... T: do you understand why i didn't want to tell you about this now? M: ...... T: i want you to be honest Thael faces Minyaxl again, locking eyes. T: do you still want to be close to me? Minyaxl worriedly searches for signs of life in the set of pale, empty glass orbs currently confronting him with a dead gaze. His instincts tell him to turn away, but he fights them. M: ...... He's not sure he's found anything, but he decides he doesn't care. M: ......Yes. T: ? M: Yes, I do. T: really? M: Listen, I'm not gonna pretend that the things you did weren't fucked up, but...you wouldn't have done them if you had any way of avoiding it. You didn't have a choice. T: yes i did T: i could have refused M: But from the way you described things it sounds like they'd have probably just killed you and gotten someone else to do it. T: but at least i wouldn't have shared responsibility Thael turns away. T: i really have no right to be alive after what i did M: ... M: Please don't say things like that... T: i'm sorry T: ... T: i just......wanted to help people...... Minyaxl scans his friend's face, expecting to see tears running down his cheeks. He instead sees the same dry, emotionless expression Thael has continued wearing throughout the whole story. M: But...you ARE helping people now. M: Look at your current job! You're helping to save an alien race from genocide!! T: i know T: i sometimes wish i could feel happy about that T: it's good that my body is being put to use for philanthropic purposes, but...i feel like i'm just that. T: a body, being put to use. T: i don't feel like a person who makes decisions, i feel like a robot that carries out the tasks that it's given and sometimes responds to self-preservation instincts like sleep and food intake T: it's funny, my job was to turn other people into drones but now i feel like a drone myself. T: not that i'm really bothered by that T: as long as i'm being used for good, it's fine M: ... M: I... Once again Minyaxl lowers the imaginary volume of his psionic voice, a little embarrassed of what he's about to say. M: ...I want to help you feel things again. Thael turns to him, his eyes opening slightly more than usual with a look of mild curiosity. T: ...? M: I'm going to stay friends with you, and I'm going to do the best I can to brighten your days. T: ...what...? T: ...why would you make that kind of effort for me...? M: Because I think you deserve it. T: ...how could you possibly think i deserve it after what i- M: It doesn't matter how!! I just do. You don't need to worry about it. T: ... T: well i suppose i'm......glad...? T: ...i know i said i haven't really felt anything since those days, and i know i'll probably never feel much of anything ever again, but... T: like i said earlier, you...do help me feel a shred of something every now and then T: so......i'm glad that can continue. The slightest of muscle movements raise the corners of Thael's mouth; it's almost imperceptible, but he is definitely smiling.

#thael #minyaxl #savage worlds #tabletop #scellor #writing #the initiative

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burganprell · 6 years

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Welcome, Y’all

I just hate those bumper stickers popping up around Austin that say “Don’t Move Here.” Many a Facebook post expresses the same.

I get the joke, but it’s just not funny.

This is a post about the future of Austin. It’s a post about Mayor Adler and his challenger this Fall, Laura Morrison. It’s a post in some ways about about the inevitable. It’s a little bit about Amazon, and it’s a lot about making sure Austin’s continued rise benefits everyone.

“We can only say the state of our city is strong if we are affirmatively building a future in which we preserve the soul and spirit of Austin.”

—Mayor Steve Adler

Our problems aren’t any one person’s fault, and no more the fault of a newcomer than a decades-long veteran.

If we ever stop being hospitable, we really will have lost the soul and the spirit of Austin. If we ever stop being a refuge and a block party and a march for good over evil, we really will have lost the soul and the spirit of Austin.

If we ever stop using our disposable income to vote for how we want the city to be, we will have lost the soul and spirit of Austin.

Instead of saying “Don’t Move Here” I’d rather we say what so many of you said to me when I first showed up, 12 years ago.

Welcome, Y’all.

. . .

In fact, when we say “Don’t Move Here,” we start sounding a lot like the anti-immigration nationalists we so strongly oppose on the national stage. I’m flabbergasted by my liberal brethren regularly these days, and this is just one reason why.

Unless we are going to build a Trump-like wall around Austin, we have got to be more solution minded.

I’m not particularly interested in hearing more from complain-y do-nothings, and least of all Laura Morrison, who already had her shot at addressing these issues in her first stint on Council from 2008-2015.

During her tenure, the issues in play were exactly the same as they are today, and the progress made was to my mind and many others’ deeply unsatisfactory.

Folks like Morrison can be eloquent when talking about Austin’s problems, but remain woefully short on ideas and action.

Every single one of Morrison’s answers to a difficult question — about transportation, about economic segregation, about homelessness, about CODENext — ends up with a non-committal “we have to strike a balance” or “we have to look at that closely” or “I think there are ways that we can grow, without doing that” — to which no specifics nor any follow-up is ever offered.

. . .

The one thing Morrison did do?

She led the anti-Prop1 PAC “Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice,” which fronted the fight against Uber and Lyft in Austin.

The net result? The Texas State Legislature overruled us and Uber and Lyft are back, more free to operate than ever before.

When meeting with technology companies and their workers, Morrison is likely to bring up her professional training as an engineer at her time at Lockheed. Don’t take the bait.

In case you have erased all memory of the ugly battle with Uber and Lyft from your mind, now is the time to recall:

Mayor Steve Adler had actually negotiated a signed, precedent-setting MOU from both Uber and Lyft that extracted important concessions from both companies, most important of all related to ensuring both driver and passenger safety. Tax revenue and data sharing were the other key components.

What caused that fight in the first place was later obscured: the rideshare-related numbers for rape and sexual assault had indisputably risen according to SAFE and our own Police Department. Folks predictably cast doubt on those numbers but they held up under scrutiny.

The philosophical argument about the utility and efficacy of fingerprinting drivers was less compelling to me personally and for many of you; regardless, Adler had solved this also. His innovative Thumbs Up! ordinance passed; a corresponding 100% voluntary identification program was to use market dynamics to incentivize validation instead of requiring it.

Alas, Council rejected the MOU, afraid to act. At the time it was much more popular to put the vote to the people, avoiding what had become a political third rail for everyone.

Uber and Lyft of course did themselves zero favors with their brash tone and dishonest backroom dealings. But I and many others were strongly in search of a workable compromise, instead of a temporary moral victory, followed by swift rebuke.

. . .

It’s really easy to fear-monger like Morrison does. “Everything’s going to change,” she loves to say. Change in Austin is not only not new, it has been constant for more than 100 years.

Morrison never goes so far as to claim she can prevent change, but it’s clear she intends to slow it down as much as possible. In the process of making her argument, Morrison enlists the typical boogeymen: real estate developers, Californians, technology companies, and businesspeople generally.

The funny thing is that those constituencies are forwarding some of the most progressive initiatives in the city, driven by a race to recruit, train, and develop talent (more on this later).

The scariest speaking point in Morrison’s arsenal? “It's time for a leader whose priority is the people who live here right now,” she often says.

The Chronicle’s Michael King was quick to pick up on this rhetoric in his interview of Morrison this past January when she first announced:

“[You make] a fairly sharp distinction between the people that live here “now” and the people that are going to live here. Does that mean people who have lived here for five years? For 10 years? Does the door slam tomorrow?”

Morrison’s response was typical: “Nobody has the power for the door to slam – if somebody had the power, would that be good? Probably not.”

Probably not?

It gets better. She continues: “the fact of the matter is, we need to make sure that we don’t turn people into losers.”

To me that’s code for protectionism, not egalitarianism. Morrison isn’t worried about the people who are already hurting. She’s looking out for folks who are not losing now, but are worried they will start losing soon.

Remind you of anyone else’s rhetoric? Shall we just say it aloud together? Is it really time to Make Austin Great Again?

I think that’s precisely how Morrison’s campaign intends to have a fighting chance against Adler.

Invoke a particular way of life, romanticize it, and protect it. Hat-tip the little guy, and act like the incumbent has a swamp worth draining. Get elected. Start governing like it’s 1980, or earlier. Most importantly try like hell to give your NIMBY old guard donors their Austin back, come hell or high water.

. . .

Here is why I am still all-in on Steve Adler and why I think you should join me by giving whatever you can to his re-election campaign.

Steve is a convener who gets things done, but who also goes out of his way to make sure others get all the credit.

Steve is not a career politician. He’s a successful lawyer and committed philanthropist who isn’t worried about optics. He isn’t afraid to stand up to Abbot, Paxton, Sessions and Trump.

In recognition of this fact and more, the Anti-Defamation League gave Steve Adler and Diane Land the Audrey Maislin Humanitarian Award last year, which is a huge honor not to be taken lightly. It’s not just another one of these nice gala things that people in power are given to curry favor.

Neither Steve nor Diane ever hesitates to speak truth to power, and it shows. They have demonstrated time and time again that they are fierce advocates for the oppressed, the segregated, the discriminated, and the powerless. Their record in these matters is substantial.

In times like these our Mayor must be incredibly effective in affairs both foreign and domestic, so to speak. There’s no one else in Austin right now who can pull off that combination without sacrificing one endeavor for the other.

And I do love it when Steve gets his lawyer on.

Whether he is fighting SB4 tooth and nail, collaborating with Judge Eckhardt to protect Austin’s right to be a sanctuary city, or leading more than 50 other cities to join us in recommitting to the Paris Climate Accord, Adler makes me proud to live in Austin and to be part of these precedent-setting fights.

Steve’s “worst” flaw is trying to pull the sword from the stone on tough issues that no one else has the courage to touch.

I can live with that.

. . .

Sidebar: here’s a good related read in case you missed it: “Why the nation’s mayors are watching Austin Mayor Steve Adler” in the Statesman.

Accomplishments: here are the Mayor’s 2017 accomplishments. It’s a big list.

Priorities: Adler’s priorities for 2018 are here.

Donate: here’s where you can give to Adler’s campaign.

. . .

The hands down, no question, most alarming thing about Austin is that we are #1 in the nation in income inequality. That’s not a good list to be atop of.

Every other issue in my mind takes a back seat to this one.

Not nearly everyone is benefiting from Austin’s growth and prosperity. Our community is still suffering from the mind-bending injustice our leaders perpetrated way back in 1928.

And no, keeping companies like Amazon out of Austin isn’t going to help our #1 problem.

The jobs and the growth and the money that companies like Amazon and Apple and Oracle bring are not at all the problem. Folks worry about what Amazon would do to traffic, or affordability. The actual problem with these big new HQ projects is routing and bridging the opportunities they comprise to everyone in the city.

I know a lot of people who’d love to wade through traffic for an $85K yearly salary. I was at Huston-Tillotson University a few weeks ago with President Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette. Their students’ desire for tech jobs is consistent and intense, across a dozen majors.

A fix will not happen overnight, but again, addressing Austin’s intense, perverse, historic economic segregation must be our overriding priority.

Good news: our newly-minted Master Workforce Development Plan is strong, and can serve as a reliable template for decades to come.

The Austin Monitor captures the plan’s purpose and progress in a few succinct paragraphs, for those of you who may have missed it:

At last week’s City Council meeting, a procedural public hearing paved the way for the formal addition next month of the Master Community Workforce Plan to Imagine Austin, which is the city’s plan for the next 30 years. But it’s the work being done with high-profile employers like Samsung and job training providers such as Austin Community College taking place quietly in the background that proponents of the plan expect will soon produce more applicants for positions that employers said they’re having trouble filling. The workforce plan has a stated goal of creating 60,000 middle-skill jobs in three high-growth sectors – health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing – as well as lifting 10,000 residents out of lower-class income brackets. Since the plan was unveiled last June, employers in similar industries have been courted to participate in ongoing sessions to identify the needed soft skills and common challenges that make it difficult for them to find and retain new employees. Their findings are then presented to representatives from Austin Community College, Goodwill of Central Texas and Capital IDEA to help those organizations tailor their existing job training programs to better suit the needs of the market. Thus far those workforce development programs are being funded in part with $660,000 in workforce data management contracts Workforce Solutions has secured with the city and Travis County, which includes some contributions from Google and JP Morgan Chase. Ongoing fundraising efforts are expected to contribute as well.

If Amazon can commit to helping build these kinds of socio-economic and racial bridges both notionally and materially, I want them here. And same goes for every other company considering a move to Austin, large or small.

As Mayor Adler said in his letter to Amazon as part of our response to their RFP (full text here):

Our long-term goal in Austin is to both preserve the soul of our community and make it accessible to all – even as we excel as a community that continues to attract top talent. What new solutions and long-term investments in workforce development, affordability and mass transportation might we achieve together that would not have been possible otherwise? I firmly believe that Austin and Amazon can help each other achieve solutions to our biggest challenges. Even as you assess our community’s great assets, I ask you to look at our community’s greatest challenges as an opportunity to help craft a story for Amazon and for Austin that will be told for a long time.

. . .

Now, about those complaints. Are housing prices way up? Yes.

Are folks selling their homes and moving to cheaper enclaves in the suburbs to stave off property taxes they can’t afford? Are musicians moving to Lockhart and further, in search of more room to breathe, and make art?

Absolutely. Yes. Unequivocally. And irreversibly.

Austin’s going to need to be an active and innovative partner to Pflugerville and Round Rock and Manor and Taylor and Bastrop and Lockhart and San Marcos. Austin’s going to need to continue to aggressively invest in affordable housing. We are going to have to get together at long last and pass a new land use code, too.

Our current land use system is almost 50 years old and it’s the engine behind many — if not most — of our shared frustrations about Austin’s growth and development. Not passing a new code is not an option.

By the way, it is okay to complain about the flawed process of producing CodeNEXT, but no one should be up in arms that it’s hard to get this right. No other American city has grappled with the challenges Austin currently faces and succeeded. We are at the cutting edge in terms of defining of how modern cities can best scale.

For a super smart deep dive on this issue, read Nautilus Magazine’s “Why New York Is Just An Average City.”

We’re going to have to raise taxes too, a tough sell here in Texas, no doubt. This will most likely happen via larger and larger bond measures, with transportation and our school system remaining serially at the forefront for at least a decade. We’ve become a big American city, like it or not. It is time to acting like one too. That process starts and ends with infrastructure and education.

. . .

We are also going to have to consider community micro-bonds to fund and perhaps outright reclaim some of our struggling institutions. We are going to have to re-fund our longest-suffering school districts with private money too.

We are going to have to offer a lot more *paid* internships so that folks who don’t have “friends and family money” have equal access to personal and professional development opportunities.

We are going to have to continue being a “Kitty Hawk” for things like autonomous cars and delivery drones, no matter how uncomfortable or controversial.

We are going to have to continue fighting passionately, and standing steadfastly, as Mayor Adler consistently has, against SB4, as we are the epicenter of the nationwide fight about sanctuary cities; for the Paris Accord as a leading green, smart city; for restorative justice in our local courts and jails; for innovative, community-based policing; and against a state legislature that champions states’ right while denying incorporated Texan cities the same privilege.

And look, we have just got to vote —not just at the ballot box — but with our time, talent and money — on how we want Austin to be for years to come. Spend nights and weekends working on the causes you care about most, and spend cold hard cash on the stuff you value about this city above all else.

But of course, vote at the ballot box, too, for God’s sake. Vote again. Keep voting. Vote in the little stuff. Vote in the big stuff. Vote for fun. Vote even though it’s boring. Vote because so many others can’t.

As Beto has said more times than I can count, Texas isn’t a red state or a blue state. It’s a non-voting state.

We are actually 51st in the union in voter turnout (that number includes Puerto Rico). Sadly, Austin is no better than the rest of our fair state in this regard.

Travis County turnout dropped a whopping 50% between the 2016 Presidential election and last November. Some dropoff is always to be expected but wow. That’s pretty bad, friends.

Part of it I have to think is that folks are exhausted. No doubt others underestimate the importance and effect of local politics. But what I really think is going on is that for most people, Austin is wind at our backs, and we’re too often too busy to really notice, or care. Austin protects a lot of us from a lot of things. The mandate to vote shouldn’t be one of them.

. . .

It’s not all bad news. In fact, an incredible amount of the new has been incredibly good. It’s useful to remind ourselves of a few things.

Yes, UT is churning out high quality talent, but so are Huston-Tillotson, the Acton School of Business, St. Ed’s and ACC.

I think what Gary Keller is doing on Red River is awesome. We haven’t nearly saved live music yet, but we have the appropriate levels of panic and corresponding commitment to get the job done.

There is a ton of innovation going on in Austin around homelessness, affordable housing, tiny housing, and more. Have you visited Community First Village, which has pioneered a game changing approach to solving chronic homelessness?

Divinc is a local business incubator focused on women and people of color, and it is churning out high-quality, high-growth companies. 3/4 of the last graduating Techstars class had either a woman CEO or a woman on the executive team, no small thing sadly, in tech.

Speaking of UT, they recently hired Scott Aaronson. The university is building an incredible new quantum computing center around him, the first of its kind.

When was the last time you went to the Harry Ransom Center? Have you been to the new Ellsworth Kelly building at the Blanton?

The New York Times called Kelly’s Austin a “temple of light” and suggested that “no contemporary artwork of this scale by a major artist has matched its creator’s initial ambitions so perfectly as Kelly’s Austin.”

In fact, the paper’s art critic M.H. Miller went so far as to conclude that:

Long the music capital of the Southwest, Austin is now also a burgeoning outpost of the tech industry. But the presence of Kelly here almost instantaneously transforms it into an important art destination, the kind of place people make pilgrimages to.

How about that?

Our new medical school and teaching hospital are out of this world. Do you know about how they have completely reimagined the clinic from the inside out? Do you know what it takes — and means — to be a Trauma 1 center?

Mueller’s a big real estate project sure, but it is also the #2 green neighborhood in the whole U.S. according to Redfin, and an exciting precedent for future development.

Do you support Urban Roots and the Sustainable Food Center? Austin Bat Cave? SAFE? UMLAUF? The Thinkery? Foundation Communities? The Trail Foundation? The Texas Civil Rights Project?

Do you know about Manor New Tech high school, where you can see the best STEM curriculum in the country firsthand?

RideAustin emerged from a nasty fight about who gets to set the rules, but it is not just solvent, but writing big checks to other Austin nonprofits every single month, $350K in total and counting.

If we are lucky, Meow Wolf makes Austin their 3rd location. Liberty Lunch is long gone and so is Las Manitas, but The Skylark is still kicking, and so is the Sahara Lounge.

Wth all the traffic and our kvetching about it, we didn’t even drop down to #2 in the 2018 best places to live. We stayed #1. Even if we slide to number 4, 5, or 6, we are in great shape compared to most cities.

Obviously, I remain optimistic. Very much so. I’d love to hear why you remain so, too.

. . .

12 years ago, when I first got to Austin, another patron at Wink one table over stood up to tell us that we were “the problem” with what Austin was quickly becoming, having overheard our table’s conversation about my recent arrival.

Which was kind of funny in and of itself because we were all at...well, Wink. On the west side of Austin, sipping fancy wine with abandon.

This conversation is not new. These sentiments are not new. Generations before us invested in the icons and institutions that make Austin what it is today, in education, the arts, business, health and more. For that they should be lauded, and hopefully their example inspires us to do the same once more.

Those generations also irresponsibly kicked the can down the road on transportation, education, systemic racism and inequality, zoning, healthcare and more. We are left today to clean up several messes we didn’t make. But let’s not spend too long lamenting the errors of those who came before us.

I’m here for the long haul. I hope you are too. I’m glad we are talking about Amazon. I’m glad Amazon is talking about us.

I’m glad Steve Adler has an opponent. The contrast is striking, and useful because of the conversation it forces about original and modern Austin, and about complaining versus getting things done.

I’m glad we have a lot of work to do. Even better, we have the money, the talent, and the drive necessary to fix what’s broken.

I grew up in Baltimore. I love Baltimore. And it is doing better, slowly and surely. But Baltimore is not Austin, not yet anyway. Most cities would love to have our problems.

Again, we have every ability to solve what ails us. And I think we have a duty to do just that. For those of us to whom Austin has given so much, it’s time to give back.

Welcome, indeed.

P.S.

Steve has the biggest fundraising deadline of his reelection campaign on June 30th at midnight. That’s in 6 days.

Current and potential opponents will look at his report when deciding what their next moves will be. Please help out with a donation of $25, $50 or any amount that you can.

The max is up to $350 per person or $700 per couple, as allowed by our City. Click here to donate now.

Thank you!

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cosmosogler · 6 years

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hi guys. didn’t sleep much last night. didn’t prepare me well for today.

i did get up and get to my chores... eventually. it took an hour and a half to get up and moving once i got out of bed. i showered and that went so late i just skipped breakfast and made myself lunch.

harrison decided to wait until 4 hours before mom was set to show up to freak the hell out at me. he figured out i was avoiding him and i told him the truth. he didn’t stop doing things i told him repeatedly to stop doing. i said those comments made me feel bad. he did the whole “oh i’m a failure of a friend” shtick and i didn’t have the energy to turn around and ignore my hurt feelings to comfort his hurt feelings about my hurt feelings.

he made me so angry! i typed out a lot of messages and had to press my fists against the desk and take a deep breath and erase them and try again.

the reason i got so angry was because as soon as it became clear i wasn’t going to say “oh no it’s ok” or whatever he demanded i send him a list of boundaries i have for him to not cross. like buddy if you don’t know them by now then it’s either not a problem or a very big problem. (he doesn’t listen.) i told him i didn’t know off the top of my head and he basically freaked out over and over in the same exact way no matter how many times i told him i was too tired to give him a list of my life for his own convenience.

i told him that. “i don’t have a check list for your convenience.” his response was “then how am i supposed to learn?” he sent me that literal message word for word after i told him twice that i am not his teacher or his babysitter. i have a full time job and it is not “patiently teach harrison about the magical ways of the world constantly and repeatedly at his pleasure forever and ever.”

i was so angry. i didn’t have time for that. i didn’t really get to prepare myself for mother before she showed up because i was grinding my teeth and taking deep breaths about harrison for two hours this afternoon. i sent him a link to a long pdf about emotional labor. that’s what he’s sapping out of me. the emotional labor. he won’t read it or understand it. but i told him to talk to literally anyone besides me about it. i know he won’t. he doesn’t listen. he doesn’t really listen to me. it doesn’t matter what i do. he’s just going to put me in these lose-lose situations forever and it’s exhausting and i have OTHER THINGS I NEED TO DO WITH MY DAY!!!

so i stumbled down to the parking lot to greet mother. we went and got her checked in to her hotel and we had dinner. i ended up talking a lot more than i wanted to. when i found out dad’s mom wants to get another dog (she killed her last one) i couldn’t hold back a pretty nasty comment. didn’t have the patience i needed.

at least when mom started making judgmental comments about other people i had the presence of mind to say “that’s not really my business” and change the subject to something that is my business. like insurance and taxes and boring difficult impossible adult stuff. mother wasn’t very helpful with a pep talk. when dad called she had me answer the phone for her. dad asked how i was doing and i said “i’m ok” and then let the silence kind of hang there. then i relayed mom’s message and hung up.

i was starving all day (i didn’t have the energy to actually make myself a lunch) and then when i got my food i could barely eat anything at all. it took me like an hour to eat my pasta. i didn’t even finish it. i ate too much to keep the few bites remaining for leftovers but... my body was doing that thing where i felt weak from hunger and yet food was the last thing i wanted anywhere near me.

every time mom complains about genevieve i tell her the same thing. eve is bored. she’s out of shape. she needs more exercise. mom never listens though and nothing changes. nothing ever changes just because i asked for something.

feels like that at least.

i learned my sister has been taking anxiety medication for several years now. our primary doctor prescribes them, my sister won’t see a therapist or psychiatrist. it’s so frustrating sometimes. she seems so miserable all the time but it’s like she thinks seeing a counselor will make her a crazy person or something. and you can’t be a crazy person! they’re the worst thing you could possibly be.

stigma.

she might be a little proud, too. but the way my brother’s expression changes if therapy ever comes up, that sort of sharp flinch, i can tell that judgment is there. i don’t see why my sister wouldn’t feel a similar way.

anyway i came home and i was so tired i did nothing for several hours. i got started on a thing for the comic but i didn’t have the energy to move past a quick sketch. i watched fma for a bit... episode 40 is next.

i feel like i can’t draw fast enough. i wish it didn’t take so long to tell a story. i have a hundred things backed up that i REALLY want to draw. but no energy to actually draw them. i stare at my to-do list and i look at my sketchbook sitting next to me and i just sag a little. i’m feeling overwhelmed. and i can’t find that... drive, i guess, i keep wondering if anyone’s even reading it (even though i know people are reading it, and they want to know what happens next, because that’s what happens when you follow an ongoing story).

i want to talk about it with someone besides harrison but when i go to talk about my process or the characters or choices i made i kinda clam up. at least in creative writing club that five-second hesitation of “oh my god, there is a huge flood of information i could give about how i’m doing with this story, i’ve been making such good progress, what do i talk about?” got me absolutely nothing. i didn’t get to talk about it at all! the president moved on to his dnd campaign. i don’t have super-reflex wit... i needed a minute.

i guess with harrison it’s easier to talk about it because he hasn’t played the game and doesn’t have his own opinions about the characters. he has a different set of spoilers i can avoid. it’s way easier to talk about elements from the middle of the story (the part i wrote) when i’m sitting on the horrible bombshell twist of an ending to the game (the part i didn’t write). harrison knows some of my events and the characters but not where i’m going with all of it.

while with people who HAVE played the game, the middle of the story is going to be much more unknown! how do our protagonists get from where they are to where they end up in the game? (what changes did i decide to make to the game’s story? i’ve revealed a few already, a minor one and a major one.)

so it’s way harder to talk with them about my story because a different subset of the story is going to be unknown to them. that subset is the part that i put all the work into. if i talk too much about the middle of the story then there ain’t gonna be any big mysteries left.

i dunno. a solution to this problem would be to have more friends i guess. i never know what to say or how to say what i want to say. i’m still very afraid of the judgment. i get it. i’m a big gay nerd. but the minute you say “fanfiction” people get all weird about it. i had to be really careful about who i told about my art. and none of them even looked anyway. nothing even matters.

i feel so trapped.

i gotta run errands with mom tomorrow, probably most of the day. i’ve been putting together a list of things i need to collect or fix. mom likes having things to fix. and if i give her things to fix that are not me, we get along a little better. she gets to feel helpful, i get to have a working desk fan, and i don’t have yet another tense situation under my belt of “memories of mother.”

anyway. i don’t know what else to talk about. i feel like i have more to say but i’m not sure what it is i want to say, and even if i did i don’t have the energy to say it.

#uuuuuUUUUUUUGH

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junker-town · 5 years

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7 moments we’ll remember most from the Brady-Belichick era

What will you remember most about the seemingly never-ending Patriots dynasty?

For nearly 20 years, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick had the NFL pinned down like a grade school bully. On Tuesday, that era ended when Brady announced he would not be going back to the Patriots, likely so he could start fresh with Tampa Bay at 42 years old.

Though neither Brady nor Belichick are retiring yet (and may not for a while), their careers have been defined by the other as much as by their own selves. So as they go their separate ways, now is a perfect time to revisit one of the most dominant, brilliant, occasionally obnoxious and seemingly never-ending dynasties in American sports history.

Here are just a few moments that members of SB Nation staff will remember the most from the Brady-Belichick partnership. You probably won’t be surprised to see we have a wide range of memories. Feel free to give us your own — the good, the bad, the stupid, ALL OF IT — because there is a lot to choose from.

When he replaced Drew Bledsoe

I was a Michigan fan as a kid, which means I was hip to Brady’s moxie, poise, chutzpah and grit before it was cool (indeed, I was hip to it even when Michigan fans refused to be). I was 13 when I watched him replace an injured Drew Bledsoe on a Sunday evening early in the 2001 season. I ran and told my dad what was happening. As Brady eventually led the Pats to the playoffs, I felt immense validation at having been in from the very beginning on one of the greatest sports underdog stories ever.

Then the Patriots wouldn’t stop winning, Brady grew more alien, and I no longer wanted to call myself a fan. Though it seems distant now, it’s worth remembering that there was a time when Brady was universally beloved.

— Louis Bien

When he made John Madden look stupid and started a dynasty

The Patriots were 14-point underdogs in Super Bowl XXXVI. It made sense. New England was rolling a backup quarterback who nickel-and-dimed his offense to the top of the AFC against The Greatest Show on Turf Rams. His low-wattage passing attack was a cavalry, and Kurt Warner’s offense was nothing but tanks.

I was 17 when this game happened, filled with optimism despite growing up with a Pats team whose only motivation to climb out of the AFC East basement was to get pelted with rocks over and over again in the playoffs. A small group of us watched this game from a friend’s basement — the furnished chunk of a split-level ranch. It was middle-school teacher nice; pool table, bar we weren’t allowed to touch, 32 inches of pure RGB beauty broadcasting the game from New Orleans. Paradise, really.

And it felt that way when New England raced out to a 17-3 third-quarter lead, even if we knew it wouldn’t last. St. Louis unsurprisingly came back to tie the game late in the fourth quarter. Brady got the ball back with 81 seconds left, then dropped back to pass despite John Madden’s protests; he wanted the Pats to play for overtime against a scorching-hot Rams’ offense that had just mounted a 21-second touchdown drive.

“With no time outs I think the Patriots, with this field position, you just have to run the clock out,” Madden opined from the broadcast booth. “You have to play for overtime now. You don’t want to force anything here. You don’t want to do anything stupid.”

Brady did no such thing. Like he had against the Raiders in Foxborough three weeks before, the young quarterback calmly dropped back and sliced up the St. Louis defense with a thousand small cuts. Five yards here. Six yards there. A 23-yard sideline strike to Troy Brown, who deserves so much more recognition than he actually gets. Madden’s tone changed:

“I kinda like what the Patriots are doing ... This is amazing. This is something, I’ll admit, I don’t think they should have done. But they had the guts, they have the quarterback, and they did it.”

Then, finally, the moment:

We exploded from our spots on the edge of the floral-upholstered couches. Cool ranch flecks flew from our hands and into the atmosphere. My buddy Matt grabbed me and we collapsed, screaming, into a delirious hug on the floor. Sports had never made me feel that way before. Everything was a dumb, sloppy mess, and it was amazing.

“That’s the way you should win a Super Bowl,” concluded Madden, appropriately convinced of just how damn wrong he was about Brady.

— Christian D’Andrea

When he grew his hair long

What was happening there? Look, Brady is an objectively handsome man. That long hair nonsense that happened in 2011 was just such a bad look. Please don’t do this again. Oh, and remember when he dropped that pass in Super Bowl LII against the Eagles? That was fun.

Photo By Rob Tringali/SportsChrome/Getty Images

— Caroline Darney

The tuck rule

It’s not mature nor proper to blame a loss on a bad call. There are dozens of things that happen through the course of a game that affect the outcome. For instance, the Raiders were much too conservative during the fourth quarter of their 2002 Divisional Round matchup against the Patriots in snowy Foxborough.

But that game will always be remembered for that pivotal moment. In the final two minutes, Brady fumbled the ball, but the call was overturned because of a rule that said that even if a quarterback loses control when in the process of tucking the ball back into his body, it’s an incomplete pass.

Photo by Jim Davis/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

This was a fumble. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.

It was a fumble, a turnover that would have ended the game, allowing the Raiders to move on while cementing Charles Woodson as a national hero. I’d like to think that loss for New England would have nipped the Patriots’ dynasty in the bud, but years of intense therapy (and a dash of common sense) led me to believe otherwise. But it’s still fun to believe the Patriots are built on a foundation of lies.

— Eric Stephen

Brady and Moss against the Dolphins

As a Patriots fan, I could have chosen a number of different plays and moments from that glorious 2007 season, but two moments that still delight me took place against the Dolphins in Week 7. The Dolphins were 0-6 at the time, and the Patriots were in the midst of an undefeated season. On the first possession of the game, Brady found Donté Stallworth for a touchdown, and from then on it was obvious that the Dolphins were in for a long day.

But the big story of the offense that season was the connection between Brady and Randy Moss. Not only was Moss playing well after leaving Oakland, he looked even better than he did in his Minnesota days. He was doing ungodly things to defensive backs. Brady would finish the season with a record 50 touchdowns, of which Moss caught 23. I couldn’t wait to see what the two would do against Miami.

It only took until the beginning of the second quarter for them to connect in the end zone, and it was glorious. From the Dolphins’ 35-yard line, Brady launched the ball deep after a play-action fake. When the ball came down, Moss was just past the goal line. The ball was slightly under-thrown, but no worries. Moss stopped his run and jumped over two defenders to catch the ball for a touchdown.

youtube

That play was an archetypal display of Brady and Moss’s unstoppability. Even when the ball was less than perfect, and two defenders were in position to stop the play, Moss erased the disadvantage.

A few minutes later, the same thing happened again. Brady launched the ball deep, this time from even farther out, and found Moss in the end zone blanketed by two defenders. Again, Moss caught it. He landed on his feet and the two defenders fell to the ground. Then he simply handed the ball over to the referees, because the play was just business as usual.

It encapsulated the feeling of that season: excellence as routine. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. It’s too bad the Super Bowl was cancelled that season due to the weather or something like that.

— Zito Madu

Brady and Belichick’s mutual friend

A story in four parts:

Via YouTube

Congratulations to Tom Brady on yet another great victory- Tom is my friend and a total winner!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2015

Belichick wrote Donald Trump a letter the week of the 2016 general election, which Trump read at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, the night before the polls opened. Belichick confirmed that it read:

Congratulations on a tremendous campaign. You have dealt with an unbelievable slanted and negative media, and have come out beautifully — beautifully. You’ve proved to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you, but the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable. Hopefully tomorrow’s election results will give the opportunity to make America great again. Best wishes for great results tomorrow.

Bill

“Donald is a good friend of mine,” Brady told WEEI in December 2015. “I have known him for a long time. I support all my friends. That is what I have to say. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s always been so supportive of me — for the last 15 years, since I judged a beauty pageant for him, which was one of the very first things that I did that thought was really cool. That came along with winning the Super Bowl. He’s always invited me to play golf. I’ve always enjoyed his company.

“I support all my friends in everything they do. I think it’s pretty remarkable what he’s achieved in his life. You’re going from business, kind of an incredible business man and then a TV star, and then getting into politics. It’s a pretty different career path. I think that is pretty remarkable.”

— Natalie Weiner

Never forget that his last pass with the Patriots was a pick-six

Brady didn’t have much of a choice but to take a chance. The Patriots were trailing the Titans by one point with only 15 seconds on the clock, starting a last-gasp drive at their own 1-yard line.

So he dropped back into his own end zone and tried to quickly get the ball to Mohamed Sanu for a first down. Instead, he threw a pick to ex-Patriots cornerback Logan Ryan, who jogged in for the touchdown to send his former team out with an early playoff exit:

PICK-6! The @Titans extend their lead with nine seconds left. #Titans #NFLPlayoffs : #TENvsNE on CBS : NFL app // Yahoo Sports app Watch free on mobile: https://t.co/EF5fHZbZSf pic.twitter.com/AOcwqlTSlc

— NFL (@NFL) January 5, 2020

At the time, we knew it *could* be the last throw Brady ever made in a Patriots uniform. But most of us didn’t think it would really happen. Would the six-time Super Bowl champion, the greatest quarterback in NFL history, the man partially responsible for the most dominant dynasty most of us have ever seen in this league really end his career in New England with a pick-six?

As it turns out: yes.

Now that I think about it, it’s kind of fitting that, of all quarterbacks, he’s replacing Jameis Winston, whose Bucs career started and ended with a pick-six.

— Sarah Hardy

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