#however some I’m keeping because I like them better despite what’s in the transcripts

[taz-metamals]

Welcome to my TAZ sideblog! I’m working on drawing all the Steeplechase Metamals, and the purpose of this post is to organize and keep track of them.

Here are the Metamals in the order they were first introduced:

- Charles the Giraffesaurus rex

- Chihuahuowls

- Orwell the Armored Gorilladactyl

- Emperor Pumas (one is named Greg)

- Harold the Bulbulgoose

- Clarence the Beaver-eel

- Spider-spider monkey-monkeys

- Skunk-frogs

- Llama-sheep

- Yak-eagles

- Aardvark-coyotes

- Tiger-moles

- Pangolin-falcon

- Lance and Camille the Monkangaroos

- Turtle-lions

- Claude the Jagpanda

- Squieetahs

[kobakova]

Dragon Age and how it addresses oppression

ok so disclaimer this is not the rewrite of the Elven pantheon (the thing I keep promising I know I’m terrible) however it is an introduction to it and basically the reason why I feel the need to rewrite it in the first place! It’s a bit wordy, but I hope you take the time to read through it, as it took a lot of time and effort and I would super appreciate it! Today I stumbled upon a tik tok that was discussing how DA handles oppression and it motivated me to create a post about how I believe the way DA handles it is problematic at its core. I am not going to link the tik tok, as the creator has asked not to be put on blast, though I am including a word for word transcription of what the creator has said to avoid altering or skewing their message. I want to add that this is not an attack on the creator and what they said, more importantly it is an analysis of how other players perceive the oppression addressed within the game and how that proves that there is a serious problem with how DA handles it.

It is evident to me the message Dragon Age is trying to express is that oppression HAS to happen and that there is a reason to oppress. There are many examples within the game that prove this statement, though I want to focus mainly on how oppression impacts the mages and the Dalish, and how you as the main character can choose to perpetuate that oppression. To begin, here is the transcription of the tik tok below, which addresses oppression through the treatment of the mages.

“When it comes to mages, dragon age gives us a very clear picture that yes, these are people, they have hopes they have dreams they want to do better for themselves, they want to help others, we see this very clearly especially in DA2 where the whole plot revolves around mages rebelling. However, we also see very clearly in DA2 what can happen when a mage is left unchecked. Abominations, blood magic, the ability to force ones will onto somebody is a real threat with mages. Whether they succumbed to blood magic, whether they succumbed to the temptations of demons. These are unique challenges that face mages. And whether or not they should have freedom is true. And the game even gives us an amazing depiction of what could happen through Tevinter mages. What happens if mages are truly released, they have freedom. They might turn out like the Tevinters. Mages can become the ones solely on top oppressing other groups. A situation of the minority suppressing the majority. Whereas all the other lands of Thedas it’s the majority oppressing the minority. We have to grapple with these choices, whether not you kill a blood mage or you let them live. Or whether not you side with the mage rebellion or you side with the templars in DA2. It doesn’t pretend like it’s easy, and it doesn’t pretend to be something that it’s not. It doesn’t pretend to be real life. It gives unique challenges and unique decisions.”

My problem with DA is that you make choices through the role of an oppressor, which is very clear within Dragon Age: Inquisition as your rise to power then gives you the choice to oppress. The transcription above proves that a player has to make their decisions through the lens of an oppressor because you can determine the freedom or oppression of other people, in this case, the mages. Oppression cannot be a tool used for good because it is inherently bad, it only belittles others and is used to gain power. This could be a valuable lesson on how once power is gained so then is the ability to oppress, and how with the responsibility of power you should make choices based on what is best for the people who are oppressed. However, Bioware fails to follow through with this message for the sake of keeping their game morally grey. Instead, Bioware creates reasons and excuses for certain groups to be oppressed, thus making it okay for the player to make a decision that oppresses because either within their history something bad happened or there are certain people within the group that have done bad things. For example, all blood mages are considered evil due to some mages using blood magic in order to oppress and harm. However, we see in the game that not all blood mages are evil, and use blood magic to help. Despite this, all who use blood magic are deemed evil and if used, even if it means they are trying to escape an oppressive system, they will become Tranquil. When addressing Tevinter mages it’s evident that they have gained power, however they have chosen to oppress with this power. Being born with the ability to use magic is having the ability to gain power over another, but it is up to the individual to use that power to oppress or to use it to assist others. The ability to use magic itself is not an oppressive tool, because it has the ability to do good, it is the decisions of the individual that make it oppressive if the person decides to be an oppressor. If Bioware wasn’t so adamant about keeping the game morally grey, then they would’ve had an opportunity to create really interesting and important lessons on power and oppression that would better reflect our political landscape.

Now I want to move onto the Dalish, because I have a serious issue with how Bioware addresses the oppression they face and I believe it is important to mention. As stated above, Bioware chooses to ignore the dismantling of oppression, and instead creates reasons in order  to excuse the oppression of a group simply due to the fact that no group is perfect and they all have their issues. This is evident within the Trespasser DLC when discovering the true nature of the elven gods, which I will paste below:

!! Warning: spoilers ahead !!

“Following the initial events of the Exalted Council, the Inquisitor uncovers the reality that the Elven Gods were in fact phenomenally powerful mages who rose in prominence after the end of an unknown war. Solas implies that the Evanuris started out as generals during the war, then respected elders, and finally were revered as gods. They started out as heroes of the famed war eventually becoming corrupt tyrants in order to hoard and maintain their own power. The Evanuris institutionalized a system of slavery using Vallaslin as a brand, with only Fen'Harel (and more subtly, Mythal) challenging their tyranny. Most of the gods were arrogant in their ways, their power and attitudes more akin to the Tevinter Magisters. Eventually, the other Evanuris plotted against Mythal and killed her, prompting Fen'Harel to lead a rebellion against them and later creating the Veil to banish them into the Beyond,”

(https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Elven_pantheon).

From what I’ve seen, little is known about the Elven Pantheon before Dragon Age: Inquisition and the discovery that the elven gods are actually powerful mages is only represented within the Trespasser DLC. Though I have learned later that this was always the plan for the Elven Pantheon, which was to expose the gods for being tyrants who enslaved their own kind. It is clear that Bioware took inspiration from Native tribes to then create the Dalish elves (even within the name, since there is the Salish Kootenai tribe and Bioware literally just switched the first letter) and this is why I have a major issue with how they chose to handle the oppression that the Dalish are impacted by. Throughout the Dragon Age games, we see the torment that the Dalish suffer through from name calling to the complete erasure of the elven race; Bioware even goes as far as to take significant historical events like the Trail of Tears and write them into the elven history. This is why the Trespasser DLC angers me, because after all you learn about the Dalish and what is done to oppress them, it almost seems brushed off after it is exposed that the elven gods were similar to Tevinter mages. This type of message has real world implications, and can impact how people perceive Native people. Within my own experience as a Native person, I’ve had people argue to me that the oppression Native people face has reason because we have also owned slaves which is COMPLETELY untrue. I was shocked to see this exact reason be integrated into the Trespasser DLC, and it worries me because some players will see that and find it perfectly rational to think that because of the Dalish’s history it is then okay that they were oppressed. Throughout history, America and other countries that have oppressed Native and Indigeous people have created excuses and reasons to oppress them (from excuses like we are s*vages that need to be educated, to reasons like the Manifest Destiny). Therefore, it is incredibly harmful that Bioware would use the same type of reasoning not only for the Dalish but for the mages and the Qunari as well. Finding a reason to oppress a group does not create progressive change, it only divides us and keeps the oppressed groups oppressed and keeps the oppressors in power. Bioware needs to change how they approach oppression, and instead actually teach players the tools needed in order to dismantle oppression. 

I hope to be able to change how the Dalish are perceived, and show through my rewrite of the elven pantheon and also rewrites of missions involving the Dalish how to dismantle oppression through the choices and involvement of the inquisitor. I thank you all for taking the time to read and if there are any questions please don’t be afraid to ask!

[doctorstethoscope]

The Right Chapter 22 || Aaron Hotchner x Fem Reader

helloooooo besties and happy Saturday! 

Read previous chapters of this fic here! 

contains: canon-typical descriptions of violence and death

wordcount: 1.9k 

You're passing the diamond on your chain between your fingers anxiously a few days later as you and Spencer pour over a map on the jet. You’re headed to Colorado after a family annihilator had struck twice in the same small Denver suburb. The whole town was on alert, and you needed to solve this one fast before the whole state devolved into hysteria. Hotch decided on the jet to send you, Reid and JJ to the precinct-- you and Reid will keep working on the geographic profile, and JJ will coordinate local law enforcement. He, Morgan and Emily are headed to the neighborhood to see if any of the locals had noticed anything off. 

“There has to be a connection to this specific suburb. Why come ten miles outside of Denver when the city, or even a closer suburb, would be a more target-rich environment?” You floated an idea past Spencer, who nodded in agreement. 

“You think he sought out these families in particular?” He asked, turning his attention to the pictures on the whiteboard. 

“Not necessarily. Garcia’s still looking for a connection between the families, but so far she hasn’t found one. I think these two families were practice for something worse, or for a family that matters more to him.” You conclude, hoping more than ever that you had profiled wrong. 

“If that’s the case, our presence here might trigger the unsub to escalate,” he points out with a grimace. 

“Or, hopefully, it will send him into hiding.” 

“We’ll never find him if he does that.” 

“We’re gonna have to.” You sigh, pulling your attention back towards the map. You pour over it, certain that if you look just a little closer, the answer will jump out at you, but it doesn’t. 

Geographic profiles are always helpful, and you and Spencer were great at them, but they rarely solved cases on their own. The reality of the situation is that without any info on the unsub or the connection between the victims, you were essentially trying to create something out of nothing. You push your chair out from the table, deciding to give your mind and your eyes a break, when your phone starts to ring. It’s Garcia.

“Oh, you’re just my favorite person.” You said into the phone by way of greeting, hoping that she’s going to present you with the missing piece that will make all of these seemingly unrelated pieces of information make sense together.

“Careful, peach! There’s someone else on the line who might object to that,” Garcia warns you. 

“What do you have for us, Penelope?” Aaron asks.

“So, the Sutton and Mack families have more in common than we thought-- not so much socioeconomically, but their kids were both enrolled at the local high school, although different ages, and the moms were on the PTA together.” 

“Were they friends? The kids, or the moms for that matter?” You ask immediately. 

“It doesn’t really look like it, but I’m going to keep digging,” she tells you. 

“And no connection between the fathers?” Hotch asks.

“Nope, Mr. Sutton was an attorney and Mr. Mack was a cab driver. Doesn’t seem like they ever would have met.” She tells you both. 

“Garcia, do me a favor and make sure Mr. Sutton wasn’t in Mr. Mack’s cab within the last month or so. Let us know when you have more.”

“Oh, sir, before you both go, there’s one more thing.” She blurts out before Aaron can hang up the phone.  “It’s about Josh.” 

You take a sharp breath in, and Spencer’s in tune to you immediately, his head jerking up from the maps, looking you over to make sure you’re okay. 

“What is it?” Hotch asks, sounding every bit as tense as you feel. 

“Josh was arrested this morning. Busted for possession during a traffic stop,” She tells you and you let out a sigh of relief. 

“That’s… that’s great news.” You say.

“I thought you’d both like to know.” Garcia tells you.

“Anything else?” Hotch asks, and you're perplexed by his lack of response to such a good update. 

“No, that’s all for now. I’ll call you back as soon as I have more on the case.” She says, and the line clicks.

“What was that about?” Spencer asks, bringing you back to reality, and you share the info from Garcia about the victims. You can tell that he knows that there’s more, but he doesn’t press and you don’t offer. 

“If both the kids and the moms knew each other, we could be looking at a bullied kid or a woman scorned.” You theorize. 

“A woman wouldn’t kill the kids, at least not a mother. And if the woman wasn’t from the PTA, why target these moms in particular?” Spencer argues, and you agree. 

“Could be a man, too. Maybe he’s jealous that he doesn’t have the picture-perfect family he’s destroying.”

‘That’s more likely. Although with nothing connecting two husbands, we’ll have a hard time profiling a man if that’s the case.”

“Okay, so for now we focus on the kids until we find something that pulls us another way. You want to take the Macks and I’ll work on the Suttons?” 

“Will do.”    

You work in silence for a couple more hours until Hotch, Morgan and Emily return. 

“Anything helpful?” JJ asks, coming into the room behind them. 

“The moms were friendly, but not necessarily friends. The kids mostly hung out in separate social circles, it seems.” Morgan informs you all. 

“Any obvious power imbalances between the kids groups, or bullying?” You asked. 

“None that any of the kids we interviewed brought up.” Emily tells you. 

“None of the moms mentioned it either-- and they’d be more likely to bring it up than the kids would.” Aaron tells you. 

“So we’ve got a whole lot of nothing.” JJ concludes, and you sigh. 

You all continue to work for a few more hours-- putting together profiles of each of the members of the families that ultimately bring you no closer to finding the unsub. 

“We’ll be back here first thing tomorrow morning-- there’s nothing else we can do tonight.” Hotch concludes as he pins the last index card to the cork board. “Let’s head to the hotel and get some rest.” 

Despite the exhaustion that has soaked its way deep into your bones, you and the rest of the team pull yourselves out of your chairs and towards the SUVs. You nearly sink into the leather, and if he wasn’t such a stark professional, you might have asked him to carry you up to your hotel room.  He did, however, offer you a very gentlemanly hand to help you out of the car, and wrap his arm around your waist as the two of you trudged your way into the elevator and down the hall towards your room. You collapse onto the mattress as soon as you make it through the door, and Aaron chuckles at you, taking a moment to brush his teeth and change. When he settles on top of the covers next to you, you speak up, although hadn’t really intended to do so.

“Aaron, can I ask you something?” 

“You can ask me anything, my love,” Aaron mumbles like it’s the easiest thing in the world as he leans over to set the hotel alarm clock that sits on the bedside table. 

“When Garcia told us that Josh was arrested… you didn’t seem happy.” You said, decidedly not a question. He answers you anyway, shifting towards you to look you in the eye before he speaks up. 

“I’m sorry honey. I’m relieved, of course I am. I was just focused on the case this morning. Maybe I haven’t fully processed it yet,” he confesses. “But of course I’m happy for you. I would have been happier to arrest him myself, but this is just as well.” He tells you with a rueful smirk. 

He’s lying, and you can see it in his face. Maybe lying is a strong word, but there is definitely more to it than he’s telling you. “You’re sure? There’s nothing else that’s bothering you?” You pushed, but he shook his head, looking down at his lap.

“I’m sure, doll. I really am happy. We’ll take Jack out when we get home to celebrate.” He tells you, leaning over to kiss your temple. 

“Maybe a bike ride and some ice cream? I haven’t been out on the bike with him since he got his training wheels off.” You suggested. 

“Sounds perfect,” he tells you, reaching to kiss you again and moving to wrap his arms around you, which you dodged. 

“Get the bed nice and toasty for me while I change,” you smirked, rolling off the mattress and heading towards your suitcase for some pajamas.

You were back at the police station before the sun rose the next morning, pouring over the transcripts of what had come in from the tip line the night before in the hopes that you might find something useful. Your desk looked the same way it used to when you were studying for exams in the academy-- papers and highlighters scattered everywhere, color coordinated page flags littering all of your documents. 

“Cupcake, if I didn’t know any better, I might think you were the serial killer,” Morgan comments with a smirk, setting a hot cup of coffee in a relatively-unoccupied patch of desk. 

“Very funny, Derek.” you rolled your eyes. “I’m only letting you live because you brought me coffee. And because I’m too tired to kick you,” you told him.

“Do you want any help?” He offers, and you smile, but shake your head at him. 

“No, thanks. I’ve got a pretty strict organizational system going on over here, if you hadn’t noticed,” you chuckle. “But you can come to the medical examiner’s office with me in an hour or so?” 

“It’s a date, mama.” He confirms, rapping his knuckles against your desk before going back to his own workspace. You flip through a few more pages, leaving scribbled notes and wayward highlighter in the margins, before you notice something and call Garcia. 

“Good morning, peach! What can I do you for?” Garcia asks in her usual cheery tone, clearly far ahead of you in terms of cups of coffee consumed. 

“Morning,” you say to her. “Listen, something came in through the tip line last night, and it’s probably nothing, but I just have this feeling…” 

“Lay it on me,” she tells you encouragingly. 

“So, Mark Vexper is a long-term sub at the high school where all of the kids went. He didn’t go to work the day after both of the murders. He had a scheduled personal day the first day, and he called in sick the second. Like I said, probably just a coincidence--” 

“No stone left unturned, kitten! I’m on it. Buzz you when I have more.” She says, hanging up unceremoniously.

“Good catch,” Hotch says from behind you, and you startle. 

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” you brush the compliment off. 

“Maybe, but we won’t know until we look into it,” he tells you. “You feeling okay?” He asks. 

“I just really want to catch this guy and get home to our boy.” You tell him, and his heart warms. Looking around surreptitiously, he drops a quick kiss to the crown of your head. 

“Me, too, angel. We’ll get him.” He tells you. 

An unexplainable chill runs up your spine, and you have a strange feeling that Aaron’s not talking about this unsub.

tagging:  @romanogersendgame @wanniiieeee      @zheezs14      @greeneyedblondie44 @angelic-kisses13  @baumarvel @ssamorganhotchner  @ijustwannaread2k19    @rexit-mo @shmaptainhotchnersmain @qtip-blog @averyhotchner  @the-modernmary @itsmytimetoodream @choppa-style @hotforhotchner11 @infinite-tides @isthatme-thatsme @g-l-pierce @bakugouswh0r3 @ssahotchie @sleepyreaderreads

[interact-if]

Day 2 of Pride Month interviews! You know them, you love them…. give it up for Ames!

Ames, author of Attollo and Metamorphosis

Pride Month Featured Authors

“…and it was a singular, terrible thought, which burrowed itself into your mind like an engorged maggot. This was not a man nor a monster. This was a concept, an ideology, a terrible myth, which had personified itself to stand before you now.You were, to put it simply, screwed.”

After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your sibling’s apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s going on and, hopefully, be home before the weekend.

Too bad it’s never so simple.

Demo: Attollo, Metamorphosis (TBA)

Tags: cybernoir, thriller

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: Tell us a little bit about your project(s)!

Attollo is a cyber-noir horror set in a walled city off the coast of the Atlantic that’s been a victim of a nuclear disaster. After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your sibling’s apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s going on and, hopefully, be home before the weekend. Too bad it’s never so simple. Attollo is a 17+ game that deals with heavy topics and a lot of moral questioning; from cults to corrupt government, it has no shortage of monsters in the dark—both metaphorical and literal.

Metamorphosis is a crime/horror story based in the world of crime scene cleanup, where there are three simple steps: Get the call, clean the scene, and don’t ask too many questions. These are the rules that you live by under the employment of Noctua’s Crime Scene Services, and you credit them for keeping you alive.

However, after a routine house call brings forth nightmares of memories that are not your own, you find yourself pulled deeper into Noctua—a city of both monster and man—in a bid to find out the truth behind the murder of Deirdre Callow, and better yet, how her memories came to be yours. Your job mandates that you don’t dig too deep—but could this finally be the exception?

Metamorphosis is 18+ and will have explicit content; follow the last moments of a stranger to find out not only who took her life, but how this connects to the underbelly that Noctua works so hard to hide.

Q2: Why interactive fiction? What drew you to the medium?

Lmaoo, oh man. I think it really all began last summer when I first found examples of interactive fiction. I don’t even remember how I came across it, it might’ve been that I saw it mentioned in a post or I saw it as a tag on Itch.io, but at some point, last summer I began to investigate it more. I think what really drew me in was the ability for the player to control the narrative; it was like playing an old RPG, but modernized, and the fact that I could see a story unfold that was influenced by my decisions was so fascinating to me. Not to mention that IF allows so much more character depth than regular novels, in my opinion.

I’m 99% sure my first exposure to interactive fiction was through the game Crème de la Crème (a fantastic game, by the way) and I just enjoyed it so much that I went haywire for the genre. Then Temple of the Endless Night came out (another fantastic game that I’m looking forward to!), and that was really the turning point for inspiring me to give it a go. Now, almost a year later, here I am working on my own two games!

Q3: Are your characters influenced by your identity? How?

My bisexuality doesn’t have much of a major influence on the game, but I do think it contributed to the way that I view and write relationships. I figured out my sexuality around high school (I kissed a girl in high school and found out I liked it just as much as when I kissed a boy) and since then I’ve been very involved in the LGBTQ+ community of both my hometown and uni town.

I think this involvement, like being able to hear about other people’s experiences and share my own, has made me feel a lot more comfortable writing some of the characters in the game. Although Attollo and Metamorphosis both don’t focus heavily on relationships (both have murder in them, which I feel is a bit more pressing), I do keep the option for any RO’s to be romanced by anyone, regardless of gender or preference, because that’s simply what I’ve become so attuned to. In terms of side characters relationships as well, I think my involvement and my own experiences have allowed me to write far more diverse relationships than I might have, and I think that this has also allowed a more fulfilling experience for players when reading through.

I also have incorporated some struggles that I’ve faced before because of my identity into the games. For example, I and a few others have faced issues with religion due to who we are, and I incorporate this into both games. Dreamwalker, Pariah, and Sysba from Attollo all have shadows of this experience in their character origins, and Ilali and Ariston from Metamorphosis has a major point involving identity and beliefs. Both games also have undertows of ostracization and division between groups, which is also something I’ve experienced in the past. Being able to grapple these moments and control them via a narrative has been eye opening for both myself and others involved, and I’m hoping it can be a learning experience for the readers as well.

Q4: What would you like to see more of in LGBT+ fiction?

I think, now, the amount of progress in LGBTQ+ fiction is expanding at a wonderful rate. There are so many interactive fictions with options to select sexuality, select gender, select beliefs, etc. However, despite this expansion, there’s still a good deal of backlash against some aspects of LGBTQ+ fiction.

For example, as a bisexual woman who has dated men, I know there are some individuals who may not consider me a part of the LGBTQ+ because of this aspect. Not only is this incredibly disheartening, but it’s a viewpoint that I think should be educated against, and fiction is a fantastic pathway to do this. Another example I can think of is a friend of mine who identifies as asexual but is sex-neutral rather than sex-repulsed. Most people can’t believe her when she says this, and she often faces backlash for this declaration as well. This is another thing that I think that, with exposure through a medium such as fiction, can be worked on.

What I’m trying to say here is that I think LGBTQ+ fiction can be a brilliantly educational platform—if used right. Although it already teaches so much with what it has, I think having that representation of different subgroups of sexuality, of their experiences and beliefs, so people can become aware and knowledgeable of these options, is something I’d like to see more of.

Q5: What or who are some of your biggest inspirations?

Oh man, I struggled to list off inspirations because I know I have some, but as soon as someone asks me who they are my brain just goes ‘brrrrrr’ LMAO.

In terms of the games that I write and the worlds that I build, I think David Lynch and Robert Chambers are probably the two that I somehow incorporate. Attollo and Metamorphosis both have a lot of surrealist horror, which are what these two really specialized in. Shirley Jackson is also another person who inspired me a lot when it came to the writing and creation of Attollo, especially the intrapersonal relationships between the characters.

In terms of life, this is something else I really struggle to answer. I don’t really have celebrity inspirations or anything like that, but I do get inspired by my close friends and sister a lot. Seeing them go through the struggles that they face and absolutely thrive really drives me to push through my own struggles. They’re the strongest, most brilliant group of people that I know, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I can be a part of their lives. Not only that, but we also all collectively encourage each other to push further and to chase our dreams (as cheesy as that is LMAO) and that’s something that I think is another stroke of good fortune. I struck gold when I met them, and they’re some of the biggest inspirations in my life.

Q6: What’s a super vague spoiler for your current project?

For Attollo, I’d say ‘Home is where the heart is.’ For Metamorphosis, to quote John Berendt, ‘Always stick around for one more drink.’

Q7: Lastly, what advice would you give to your readers?

What advice would I give to you all? Oh my, I’m not exactly a wise woman here, but I’ll do my best to give you something lmaooo. I think what I really want you to walk away with, from both my stories and this interview, is that if you’re passionate about something, then share it with the world. Don’t let anyone deter your passion.

I remember listening to this painter once who commented to his friend how he ‘really liked painting’, and his friend’s first response was ‘but are you good at it?’. He then compared this to the scenario of walking; would you say, ‘but are you good at it?’ to someone who said, ‘I really like walking’? No, because it simply wouldn’t make sense, and it doesn’t make sense to say that to anyone who’s doing something out of passion.

To put it simply—if you love something, then don’t let anyone take that passion from you. I began writing these stories because I’m passionate about Attollo and Metamorphosis; I love each character, each bit of lore, and I share it with you because I want you all to enjoy it as well. Am I the best writer? God, no. Does everyone like what I write? Definitely not. But will I let this stop me from writing, from enjoying what I’m doing? Never, and I want you to do the same.

Explore your passions, embrace your passions, and let what makes you happy continue to do so

[jamespotterthefirst]

Heartbreak

Open Heart, Book 1, Chapter 10 (Part 2)

Retold through social media posts and messages

All posts here

Posted Saturday 

10:53 PM

23 minutes before 

______________________________

Received Saturday

10:56 PM

20 minutes before

______________________________ 

Posted Saturday

10:57 PM

19 minutes before

______________________________ 

Received Saturday

10:59 PM

17 minutes before

______________________________ 

Received Saturday

11:15 PM

1 minute before

______________________________ 

Received Saturday

11:18 PM

2 minutes after

from: Sienna Trinh

to: Lilac Allende

Transcript of voicemail:

Hey you! Sorry I called you late! I was baking my world famous German chocolate brownies and lost track of time. You know how I get. You weren't answering so I'm guessing you fell asleep. I'll talk to you later, okay? I can't wait to hear all about this trip! 

______________________________ 

Received Saturday

11:31 PM

15 minutes after

Hi Carrie, 

Are you ready to murder me yet? Given my lack of response in the last few days and the frequency of your emails, I would imagine you are. 

I'm alive. 

And in Miami, seeking inspiration in the turquoise sea and in the overpriced bottles of red wine this hotel insists on passing off as top shelf. Probably not something I should be admitting to my agent but here we are. 

The manuscript is going well. Actually, I should say the manuscript was going well… Until I decided to scrap it and steer it in a completely different direction. Before you stop reading here to pass out or call me twenty five times, please hear me out. 

Untitled_Mystery_Doc will still be a mystery at its core, except now the two leads will surrender to a forbidden romance. Detective Prescott must fall fiercely and hopelessly in love with Selene Obispo. It was something the writing was demanding of me all along, but I lacked the inspiration to bring their tension to fruition. That changed thanks to the Celestial's lavish oceanside balcony view. 

Earlier tonight, I was leaning over the railing of my balcony, glass of that aforementioned wine in my hand, watching the last remains of a reception of some sort in the distance. A delighted, lilting laugh from a nearby balcony broke my concentration. It was from a young woman who looked to be no older than you are. Even from a distance, I could tell she was a vivacious creature, radiating the type of effortless beauty that would have even the strongest of beings hanging by her every word. In an inky blue dress, she looked so captivating, it was no wonder the man at her side could hardly keep his eyes away from her. 

This man, Carrie. 

He was, without a doubt, the handsomest specimen I have ever seen. A true Romantic hero come to life from the pages of every classic novel in the catalog. Tall with piercing eyes and a jaw so sharp, it could slice through even the strongest of convictions. He possessed the type of good looks that were striking, like the powerful fissure of lighting. 

The pair seemed to alternate between conversation and companionable silence as they enjoyed a drink. Every so often, when he was certain she wasn't looking, he would glance at her almost desperately, as though rushing to take in as much of her before the precious seconds ran out. He was not aware that in those moments when he contemplated the vast ocean before them, she would do the same. 

After another lull in their conversation, the young woman looked at her phone, a pensive crease on her brow as she searched for something. Seconds later, the notes of a song began to drift from the speaker of her device. The man scoffed, inspiring more cheerful laughter from her. Despite his annoyed front, his expression softened as he watched her. 

More silence and then they started what sounded like a solemn conversation. As they spoke, he looked conflicted, his fingers gripping his glass as though reason and restrain were slowly ebbing away. 

Fragments of what they were saying reached me.

“…higher I aspire, the more I stand to lose.”

“I...certainly understand that.”

He stood then, with the conviction of someone seeking to run away from the ineluctable. 

When he stopped at the railing of their balcony, however, he turned to her, shoulders deflating as though realizing he didn't want to run anymore. Finding her there at his side was confirmation that she was an inevitability, a constant in his existence like his binary star. 

It was confirmation that she was done running too. 

He was saying something then, the words coming out in a desperate rush. She didn't seem to mind though, patiently listening and offering reassurance. 

“... Your risk paid off.”

Those words seemed to be the denouement of their time together because his gaze took her in with undeniable clarity. 

“It did...and I’m beginning to realize…” 

The way he looked at her then, with over-spilling yearning, would have inspired poets throughout the ages. Even if I had a hundred years to write, I could never capture the utterly lovelorn way in which he regarded her.  

“There are some things that are worth any risk.”

And then he kissed her. Their bodies gravitated closer to one another, reveling in the novelty of having her in his arms at long last. And even though this kiss erupted with the euphoric urgency of the first time, there was familiarity in the way he caressed her, in the way she stroked his jaw. As though they had spent long, agonizing moments before this memorizing one another. 

All of this was painted clearly before me in the seconds before I stepped away. 

I could not justify stealing any more of this moment from them. Particularly when the desperation in their movements acknowledged the race against the clock. They both knew that this stolen moment would eventually conclude. 

I am inspired, Carrie. 

Even from afar, I could tell these two yearned for each other. Their kiss was the inevitable culmination of forbidden longing, beautiful yet heartbreaking all at once. 

It's exactly what was missing from my manuscript. 

Let me know your thoughts. 

How's Gigi? Did you like the groomer I recommend? 

Sincerely, 

Andrea  

______________________________ 

Received Saturday

11:32 PM

16 minutes after

To Whom It May Concern;

My name is Lisa Burkett in room 4087. This evening, my husband and I witnessed a couple in a nearby room making out. They were extremely loud and explicit. The woman even climbed on top of the man at some point. 

This is appalling since we're here with our children. Luckily they didn't see this happening. 

Please put me in contact with a manager. This is unacceptable for a resort that advertises being family friendly. 

Attached you will a picture of the incident. That's how exposed and close to us they were. 

Sincerely,

Lisa Burkett

Attachment: 

______________________________ 

Received Saturday

11:39 PM

23 minutes after

______________________________ 

Sent Saturday

11:41 PM

25 minutes after

______________________________ 

Searched for on Saturday

Googled by Ethan Ramsey

11:56 PM

40 minutes after

______________________________ 

Searched for on Sunday

Googled by Lilac Allende

12:03 AM

47 minutes after

______________________________ 

Searched for on Sunday

Googled by Lilac Allende

12:06 AM

50 minutes after

______________________________ 

Listened to on Sunday

Audible library accessed by Ethan Ramsey

12:46 AM

______________________________ 

Searched on Sunday

Googled by Ethan Ramsey

1:03 AM

From “Student Doctor Network” accessed at 1:11 am

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

Sibling group chat titled “Y’all look familiar”

Members: Laurel Allende, Lilac Allende, Jaime Allende

1:36 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

from: Naveen Banerji

to: Ethan Ramsey

1:59 AM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

2:17 AM

______________________________ 

2:46 AM 

The Celestial Incident Report 

Camera footage transcript 

Hall 4000

Written by: Anthony Romero

Re: Guest Complaint 

Guest, Dr. Ethan Ramsey, exits his suite, careful to shut the door as noiselessly as possible. 

This man has seen better days. 

His hair is disheveled and stubble mars the jawline that wreaked havoc among The Celestial's guests and staff alike. The doctor looks downright exhausted, as though he hasn't slept a wink all night. Full disclosure, I'm a measly hotel employee, writing an incident report no one will ever read so I don't know how to put this delicately. But here goes nothing: the man looks as though his lack of sleep is not from the reckless fun Mrs. Burkett complained about but rather the lack of it. 

Dr. Ramsey hesitates mid-stride, looking at the door as though it poses a mystifying dilemma. Jaw working, he seems to decide something, jolting forward to take hold of the doorknob.

Reason seems to catch up to him because he exhales noticeably and releases the doorknob as though it scorched his skin. Looking angry but determined, he strides down the hall toward the elevator. 

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

3:18 AM

______________________________

Received on Sunday

3:54 AM

_____________________________

Accessed via Ethan Ramsey’s camera roll

4:13 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

7:20 AM

______________________________ 

Failed Login on Sunday

Nurses’ Station desktop | Third Floor 

7:53 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

from: Bryce Lahela

to: Brittany Ryan

8:01 AM

______________________________ 

Searched on Sunday

Googled by Sienna Trinh

 8:01 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

from: Sienna Trinh

to: Wayne Bradley Torning

8:19 AM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

8:35 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

8:51 AM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

9:02 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

9:15 AM

______________________________ 

9:32 AM 

The Celestial Incident Report

Camera footage transcript

Hall 4000

Written by: Anthony Romero

Re: Guest Complaint

Guest, Dr. Ethan Ramsey, dressed in pool attire, grapples with the key card to his room, the technology somehow perplexing to a man who went to med school. The struggle is short lived because the door swings open from the inside, revealing the second guest on file, Dr. Lilac Allende. 

Again, no one reads these anyway so I can confidently say that if I wasn't a goddamn professional, I would've promptly slid into her DMs. She would've rejected me, of course, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, am I right? 

Dr. Ramsey freezes as his eyes land on her, the muscles of his back tensing. Dr. Allende instinctively does the same, eyes going wide, much like a defenseless bunny facing the snarling snout of a wolf. They stay motionless in stunned silence for so long, I had to check the footage to make sure it hadn't frozen. 

After what seems like an eternity, Dr. Ramsey clears his throat and averts his eyes, as though interested in the carpet's God awful pattern. This reaction is definitely the wrong one because Dr. Allende pulls herself to her full height, eyes alight with fire. 

Goddamn. My bunny analogy was way off because this girl looks anything but defenseless when she is this pissed. 

“I came back to change,” he explains, probably feeling her glare burning into his face. 

“We need ice,” she says at the same time, lifting the empty ice bucket she holds.

They definitely don't need any. The ice in her voice and demeanor is enough to stock the poolside bar during spring break. 

Dr. Ramsey looks at her then and when their eyes meet, an unspoken conversation passes between them. Slowly, her resolute anger begins to melt. Unmistakable hurt flits through her features and this time, she's the one to look away. 

What the hell happened with these two? 

Before Dr. Ramsey says anything, she moves around him and strides down the hall with unstoppable determination. He moves to follow her, but with considerable effort he forces himself to stop, watching her disappear instead. 

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

10:22 AM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

10:51 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

10:59 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

11:36 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

11:41 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

11:58 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

12:04 PM

______________________________ 

Edenbrook Hospital on Yelp

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

1:23 PM

Full transcript of review:

This review is regarding the "care" I received from one Dr. Lilac Allende. Is it normal to almost die at the hands of your doctor? I didn't think so either. Yet here we are. I went in because I had a horrible chest pain that got worse with each day. They assigned Dr. Allende, an intern, to me which was already kind of subpar but it's reduced cost medical care right? I should have trusted my gut because she diagnosed pneumonia and prescribed macrolide antibiotics azithromycin…. which I am allergic to!!! Don't they have charts for this reason? 

Or maybe she can't read English given the language barrier. Do they need to start printing patient charts in whatever foreign language she speaks to avoid death? 

I don't need to give you the gory details of what happened next, right ? 

Anaphylactic Shock. Code blue. Defibrillator. I found out I wasn't the first patient this happened to under her care. There was an almost identical incident on her first day. When I tried to complain to management, they brushed it aside. Word around the hospital is that her boss favorites her. Figures. 

______________________________

Received on Sunday

1:49 PM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

1:56 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

1:57 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

1:58 PM

______________________________ 

Drafted on Sunday

status: NOT SENT

1:59 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

3:23 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

4:03 PM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

4:13 PM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

5:26 PM

from Sienna Trinh

to Wayne Bradley Torning

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

5:41 PM

from: Sienna Trinh

to: Danny Cardinal 

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

6:32 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

6:36 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

6:45 PM

______________________________

Sent on Sunday

6:52 PM

______________________________ 

Received on Sunday

7:10 PM

______________________________ 

7:26 PM

The Celestial Incident Report 

Camera footage transcript 

Hall 4000

Written by: Anthony Romero

Re: Guest Complaint 

Guest, Dr. Ethan Ramsey looks like a tortured man as he paces in front of their door. He runs restless hands through his hair, completely unaware of the effect this has on the majority of the staff reviewing this footage. He pauses in front of the door, pinching the bridge of his nose and raising his gaze upward, as though sending a silent prayer to anyone listening. 

Jesus, Buddha, Beyoncé—whoever is up there, help this poor man out. 

The door opens, causing him to flinch slightly. In the threshold stands Dr. Allende, wearing one of the hotel's fluffy, white robes. Though she is fully covered, save for her legs, Dr. Ramsey still blushes, as though aware of what lies beneath the fabric. 

Dr. Allende, meanwhile, crosses her arms, leaning against the doorway as she studies him. This time, when their eyes scan one another, it's not with the frustration or resentment from the morning. 

“Come inside.”

Her voice is quiet. 

Dr. Ramsey's jaw clenches. 

“Lilac—” 

“We can't.” Acceptance ripples through her voice. “I know.”

Dr. Ramsey looks at her with an acute mixture of misery and longing. 

“We can't ignore each other forever though.”

“I know. That's not what I want either.”

She nods once in response. 

More silence.

“You're not angry anymore?” 

The question is unexpected because her gaze snaps up to his. 

“I wasn't angry at you, Ethan,” she says after a pensive pause. “I was angry at myself for refusing to let go of what happened. I just want to put it behind me without a backward glance, like you did.”

Those last three words get a reaction out of him. His jaw clenches and strains with effort, his shoulders looking equally as tense. He looks away from her, perhaps afraid that if he continues to look into her beautiful, earnest face, he will contradict her. 

The way he had been pacing in front of her door only minutes prior, the way he looked at her this morning, the way his hand gripped the door knob the night before—all of it suggested her assessment as wrong. He was just as trapped in the previous night as she was. 

“Lilac, I'm sorry about last night.”

She looks stunned for a brief second. When she recovers, she shakes her head in a tiny movement.

 “I'm not.”

He takes in a long breath, allowing hope to filter through his expression. 

“Now, come on. We have an early flight and my boss is making me go into work right after we land.”

“Sounds like an asshole.”

“The worst,” she agrees with a hum. 

His quiet chuckle and the way he shakes his head is the last thing the camera captures before he follows her inside. 

______________________________ 

Posted on Sunday

8:34 PM

______________________________ 

Sent on Sunday

10:01 PM

______________________________ 

Posted on Monday

3:56 AM

_____________________

Posted on Monday

4:23 AM

_____________________

Posted on Monday

8:03 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Monday

8:16 AM

______________________________ 

Posted on Monday

9:11 AM

______________________________ 

Posted on Monday

9:56 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Monday

9:57 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Monday

10:03 AM

______________________________ 

Status change on Monday

10:21 AM

______________________________ 

Received on Monday

11:33 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Monday

11:50 AM

______________________________ 

Sent on Monday

12:33 PM

______________________________ 

Sent on Monday

12:40 PM

______________________________ 

Sent on Monday

12:49 PM

_____________________________

A/N: I really hope you liked this because I poured my whole heart and two brain cells into it! Did you find my little Easter egg?

A few things:

I was going to include the song playing on MC’s phone in the balcony but decided that everyone has a different one. And I love that. Mine is Nirvana by Sam Smith. What’s yours?

That Yelp ordeal happened in real life at my old job. It was the shadiest shit I have ever seen. Even the meanest bitch at work was so shocked that someone would be this much of a snake. Someone printed the “review” about a coworker and posted it everywhere for everyone to see like Regina George. It was awful.

 People also wrote computer passwords everywhere and just left them lying around. These computers had highly confidential info but people didn’t give a single fuck.

 I picture Ethan picking up the Hamilton book because MC is obsessed with the musical. Plus, he’s a history nerd. But listening to it reminds him of her when he’s trying his damndest to forget about her. LOL good luck bro 

I really debated having MC text him a risky picture after the kiss. But then I figured a) this is self-indulgent and b) once he kissed her, all reason and all restraints went out the window.

 Thank you to everyone for being so patient while waiting for this! Thank you to @aestheticartsx for finding some of these amazing pics. She is the best! 

 I love you all.

-Bree 

________________________

tags: @openheart12 , @takeharryandgo , @trappedinfanfiction, @aestheticartsx, @aworldoffandoms, @paulfwesley, @myusualnerdyself,  @rookie-ramsey, @ohchoices, @colossalpainintheass, @enmchoices, @i-bloody-love-drake-walker, @choicesfanaf, @openheartthot, @octobereighth​, @nazarihoe, @utterlyinevitable, @kites-in-our-skies, @maurine07​, @schnitzelbutterfingers​, @doilooklikeiknow​, @snesdudes​, @kingliam2019​, @perriewinklenerdie​, @cinnamonspongecake​, @choicesstan1​, @queencarb​, @ethxnrxmsey​, @missmiimiie​, @jens-diamondchoices​, @adamsdumortain​, @apphia12​, @kalogh​, @lucy-268​, @binny1985​, @queenbirbs​, @honeyandsunfl0wers​, @newcolonies​, @lilyvalentine​, @rigatonireid​, @interobanginyourmom​, @parkerattano​, @custaroonie​, @nikki-2406​, @lilypills​, @chasingrobbie​, @nooruleman​,  @lonely-mxxnlight​, @ruinedbypixels​, @shadynaturehilariouscookie​, @tsrookie​, @mvalentine​, @professorkingslay​, @drakewalkerfantasy​, @casey-v​, @helloblueeyedcat​, @mysticaurathings​, @blossomanarchy​, @thegreentwin​, @togetherwearerapture​, @rookieoh​, @ramseysno1rookie, @rookiemarsswiftie​, @natashajaniphilchoices​, @mysticalgalaxysstuff​, @hatescapsicum​, @choices-lurker​, @kiara-36​, @junehiratas​, @danijimenezv​, @macy-ray85​, @adrex04​, @canigetanawwjunk​, @sanchita012​, @overwhelminglyaquarius​ , @scorpiochick8​, @skylarklyon​, @starrystarrytrouble​, @mercury84choices​, @drariellevalentine​, @ethanrcmsey​, @lion-ess24, @aarisa-frost​, @kaavyaethanramsey​ , @udishaman​, @a-crepusculo​, @quacksonlover​,

@varikasnuori​, @dimitriwife​, @genevievemd​, @shanzay44​, @fabi-en-ciel​, @trebondialanna​, @emotionalswift2, @lady-calypso​, 

(If I forgot anyone, please DM me!)

[firelxdykatara]

Touching Zuko’s Scar

It’s entirely possible that someone has written meta on this before, and possibly done it better/more eloquently than I’m about to. However, I have Things To Say and I’m going to say them, and hopefully my point comes across! This post is largely spurred on by a few posts I’ve seen in the tags lately which have... rather baffling takes on the whole ‘who touches Zuko’s scar and why’ situation, particularly in regards to feeling the need, for some reason, to diminish the scene in which Katara touches his scar and the importance of that moment for both of them.

From what I can tell, this was done in an attempt to prop up Maiko, which I suppose makes some amount of sense since that is a ship which can barely stand on its own without tremendous amounts of headcanoning to fill in the gaping holes left by the fact that the entirety of their relationship development happened off-screen (and the glimpse we do get into it in the ‘going home’ midquel comic leaves a lot to be desired in terms of why Zuko would even want to be with her, but that’s another discussion entirely). But it still doesn’t quite fit, because the scenes with Katara and with Song are so much more meaningful, both in terms of Zuko’s arc and the way the girls relate to him (and it also ties into Katara feeling so hurt by Zuko’s betrayal, and needing more than any of the others before she can forgive and accept him into the gaang).

Now, that out of the way, I do want to say up front that the intention here is not to be particularly anti Maiko, but to examine the situations in which Zuko’s scar is touched (or almost touched), and the similarities two of these scenes have which are not shared by the third (at which point, you’re obviously free to draw your own conclusions).

Also, please bear with me--I can’t take screenshots or anything, so I’ll reference scenes and the episodes they come from but there won’t be images.

Under a cut bc this got long

To start off, there are three moments in the entire series where a character touches, or tries to touch, Zuko’s scar with her hand. (I say ‘her’ because all three instances occur with girls near Zuko’s own age.) The first moment is in The Cave of Two Lovers, the second episode of book two--this is the moment where Song sees Zuko’s scar, recognizes it for the intentional burn from a firebender that it is, and reaches for it.

Song: Can I join you? I know what you’ve been through. We’ve all been through it. [looks at Zuko’s scar] The Fire Nation has hurt you. [she slowly reaches for his scar, but before she can touch it, Zuko grabs her wrist and stops her; she puts her hand back in her lap] It’s ok. They’ve hurt me too. [pulls up the leg of her pants to reveal the burn scars there]

The second moment comes at the end of book 2, in The Crossroads of Destiny, in a moment that is a deliberate parallel of Zuko’s connection with Song--but this time, he lets Katara touch him.

Katara: [she holds up a vial] This is water from the spirit oasis at the North Pole. It has special properties, so I’ve been saving it for something important. [moves closer to Zuko, standing in front of him] I don’t know if it would work, but... [Zuko closes his eyes, and Katara’s fingers touch his scar; the scene holds there as the music swells, before they’re interrupted]

Like Song did, Katara felt a connection to Zuko via a similar trauma he suffered. However, unlike Song, Katara knew who Zuko was--the banished prince of the Fire Nation, and someone who had been her enemy for most of the past several months. However, she still feels compassion and empathy for him, and it is for this reason that she takes his subsequent choice harder than anyone else in the gaang does (and why it takes more for him to earn her forgiveness).

Now, the third moment is... rather incongruous. There is neither compassion nor understanding involved in touching his scar, there is no real emotional connection, and it comes right on the heels of his girlfriend--someone we’re supposed to believe cares about him and his emotional wellbeing, since they’re in a relationship (which happened off-screen, but I digress)--shutting down his attempt to talk about his feelings, something that will present a conflict in their relationship later on.

Mai: [yawns] I just asked if you were cold, I didn’t ask for your whole life story. [she moves forward, smirking, and then chuckles, putting one arm around his neck and pulling his face towards her with her other hand] Stop worrying. [they kiss, and then Mai walks away, leaving Zuko to stare out at the horizon again; the wiki transcript says he looks relieved, but to me he looks resigned more than anything]

What’s interesting about this moment is, for one thing, it’s unclear if Mai is even supposed to be touching his scar at all. Giancarlo Volpe, the director for this episode, put the original storyboards for the scene up on his DeviantArt, and in them, it seems he was fairly careful to make sure Mai was not touching Zuko’s scar. This would make sense, considering that touching Zuko’s scar was presented as a very big deal--he specifically prevented a girl from touching his scar in the beginning of book 2, and at the end, he allowed another girl to touch him, showcasing vulnerability and trust in that moment. It is the culmination of one small part of his character arc, and that makes the moment that Katara touches his scar even more meaningful.

Of course, I can’t say definitively that it was an animation mistake or something that was deliberately changed during production (which, considering there is a moment later in the book where Bryke mandated a change, isn’t outside the realm of possibility), but it does present interesting implications.

However, even if you take the scene at face value and assume that Mai was intended to be touching his scar....it’s still presented in an entirely different framework than the previous two scenes, despite occurring almost immediately after Zuko’s moment with Katara in the caves (at least as far as episode count).

The different framework being, of course, the fact that it.... doesn’t mean anything at all.

In the first two scenes, Zuko’s scar and his pain--as well as the pain of the girls who are forging an empathic connection with him based on understanding each other’s trauma--is the focus. Touching, or attempting to touch, Zuko’s scar is the point--it is very deliberate, and there’s no way to argue against it because the writing is very explicit, and nothing else would make sense for those scenes. On the other hand, you could take out the moment where Mai touches Zuko’s scar and lose absolutely nothing--because the focus is not on Zuko, but rather on the fact that he was attempting to open up emotionally to his girlfriend (and note that this is the first indication we get in the show that they are together--take out the kiss completely and no one would even know they’re dating, let alone supposedly like one another even as friends), and was shut down with a sarcastic quip, ostensibly because Mai simply didn’t want to hear it. (This is in keeping with her later characterization, where she would much rather distract him and keep him from actually talking about any of his problems, but @araeph goes into the nature of Mai and Zuko’s emotional intimacy [or lack thereof] in much greater detail in this essay, so I won’t get too deep into it here.)

Mai touching Zuko’s scar doesn’t mean anything to the audience because it doesn’t mean anything to Zuko. He doesn’t react to or acknowledge it in any way, it’s as if he doesn’t even notice it happening (perhaps because it wasn’t supposed to? but again that’s speculation), and nothing in the scene would change if it didn’t. It simply doesn’t matter. On the other hand, Song nearly touching Zuko’s scar and then Katara actually touching his scar? They matter to him--and to the show, and therefore the audience--very much. Both moments are incredibly important to Zuko’s overall arc, because together, they show how far he had come in his own emotional journey over the course of the book.

Of course, it isn’t enough to keep him from choosing to side with Azula, because his journey was far from complete--but the fact that he was able to show such trust and vulnerability to a girl who had been his enemy not very long ago? That was huge. Because Zuko didn’t just let Katara touch his scar--he closed his eyes. She could have hurt him in that moment, but he trusted that she wouldn’t. He trusted that she was willing to use special water she’d been saving for something important--and he trusted that, in that moment, he was important to her.

It wasn’t just Zuko showing trust either, though--Katara showed trust in him. She trusted, after a few minutes of conversation and learning about the loss of his mother (and, specifically, the fact that the Fire Nation was responsible for the loss of his mother, just as it was responsible for the loss of hers), that he had changed--that he was different, and she could trust him. She was willing to use the spirit water she’d been carrying around for months on someone who had recently been so much an enemy that she fled from the tea shop, convinced that he’d somehow infiltrated the city and was planning something.

The fact that she trusted him in that moment is exactly why she took his next choice so hard, but it is also why their relationship cemented itself so solidly after The Southern Raiders, giving them quite possibly the strongest relationship in the gaang outside of Katara and Sokka.

Anyway, that was a lot of words for what essentially amounts to this: Song attempting to touch Zuko’s scar in the beginning of book 2 is explicitly paralleled by Katara being allowed to touch his scar at the end of it, and both moments occur during scenes where Zuko’s pain and trauma are acknowledged and validated, and where the person he’s speaking with feels a connection to him because of that shared trauma--because they understand what he has been through. It’s likewise important to note that while Song didn’t actually entirely understand, because she didn’t know who Zuko was or what being traumatized by the Fire Nation actually meant to him, Katara did--and she still was able to feel for him, connect to him, and want to help him.

By contrast, the moment with Mai occurs in a scene where Zuko’s pain and trauma are invalidated and dismissed, where his girlfriend attempts to distract him rather than help him through what is clearly a moment of great emotional turmoil. No, she shouldn’t have to be his therapist, but emotional support is vital in any relationship--especially when one party is traumatized and desperately needs support and love--and it is notably lacking from Maiko, starting from their very first romantic scene together.

Make of that what you will.

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few  years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

So, this may sound weird, since I don't ship ZK, but I think the reason some dislike EIP is because they realize it was the first part of a busted enemies-to-lovers arc. EIP was part one, where Zuko and Katara see how others see them, and it weirds them out. Yet, Zuko insisted on sitting next to Katara and Katara pushes Aang away, suggesting there might be something there that they don't want to acknowledge. (1/3)

The first part of the finale was Part 2, where June reiterates the "Hey you're with your gf again!" Zuko and Katara deny it, but there likely should have been an undercurrent of 'Why do people think we're together? Do we act like it? Should we be? S/he is kind of cute.' During this time, Zuko defers to Katara and despite Toph likely being more helpful, asks Katara to be the one to take down Azula with him. (2/3)

Last part of the finale should have been the money shot, Zuko taking lightning for Katara, and in a parallel to CoD, Katara healing him. Dante Basco is right in that there probably should have been a kiss at that moment and the end scene of the gang at the Jasmine Dragon with Zuko and Katara shyly proclaiming their interest in each other. (3/4, sorry I have one more)

Again, ZK is not my ship, but EIP seemed to set up a ZK endgame that jumped the tracks at the end. By all the "rules" of a good narrative, Zuko and Katara should have ended up together, otherwise EIP should never have been countenanced or storyboarded. Full disclosure that I'm not a huge Kataang fan either, but Kataang was done a disservice by having EIP exist. It either should not have ever gotten written, or the ZK enemies-to-lovers arc should have been concluded. (end)

Disclaimer: I don’t care if someone ships Zvtara. Never have, never will. If the takeaway you (the general you, not anon specifically lol) get from this post is that Zvtara is “bad,” then I’m going to assume you didn’t actually read anything I wrote, because that is the farthest thing from my point here. Also, this post is strictly my personal response to these asks. I don’t expect everyone to read this and be like “YEAH” lmao. I am sure some people have different opinions, and that is a-okay!

In short, I think we will have to agree to disagree, anon.

Do some people consider EIP the beginning of a busted enemies-to-lovers arc? Of course they do, they’re “rabid zkers” who wear Zvtara shipping goggles 24/7 lmao. EIP couldn’t have been the beginning of an E-L arc because such an arc was never in the cards for them in the first place! Katara forgave Zuko in the previous episode. Trying to cram a romantic relationship into five episodes after months of hatred between Zuko and Katara would have been awful writing (and thus probably would have been a decision mercilessly criticized until the end of time, lmao). So it’s honestly better that Zvtara gets to spread its wings in fanon instead (much less pressure)! Also, realistically speaking, Katara and Zuko probably still had so many issues to work through in their friendship. Like yes, she forgave him and recognized he was trying to do better, but that doesn’t erase what Zuko has done to her and her friends. There is still plenty of forward progress they need to make before romance can even be considered between them. If that makes sense?

Also, let’s be real: EIP and bit with June afterwards were 100% ship bait. Just an attempt to add to the “drama” of who Katara would end up. A technique only effective while it was airing, for the record, because if you watch the show straight through, it becomes glaringly obvious that Zuko and Katara’s relationship - while gorgeous - was always meant to stay strictly platonic within the canon timeline.

Anyways. I’ll try to break down your ask one piece at a time!

“Zuko and Katara see how others see them, and it weirds them out”

Yes, they are definitely weirded out! The transcript says, “Zuko and Katara inch away from each other, slightly uncomfortable.” Which is just a longer way of describing that they were weirded out by the depiction of their relationship in EIP, lol. However, the play is not how others see them. The play is the Fire Nation’s imperialist propaganda, meant to demean the entire Gaang. I talk about in specifics how the entire Gaang is belittled here, but this is the key stuff I noted about Zuko and Katara:

it’s important to situate that and more importantly situate eip zuko and katara’s relationship within the context of the show. the fire nation is an imperialist country. the southern water tribe has suffered heavily beneath them. we know from “the headband” that fire nation individuals are fed pro-imperialistic propaganda from birth; that combined with zuko and azula’s degrading comment of “peasant” towards katara demonstrate very clearly how the fire nation views every other nation - put simply, they are superior and everyone else is inferior. that attitude is therefore reflected in the eip play:

- katara, an indigenous woman, is highly sexualized and portrayed as overly dramatic and tearful, because the fire nation objectifies women not of their own people and views them as less intelligent and less emotionally stable

- she is thus paired as having a “romance” with zuko in eip because naturally, via fire nation logic, zuko would be able to “score” an “easy” woman of one of the water tribes

- furthermore, the eip “romance” between zuko and katara emphasizes zuko’s position as a traitor to the fire nation; the implication is that as a traitor, he’d only be able to achieve a relationship with a “lesser” woman, e.g. a woman not of the fire nation

That is not how other people truly view Zuko and Katara’s relationship. That is how the Fire Nation depicts their relationship in order to degrade and dehumanize Zuko and Katara. To misinterpret that as “evidence” that Zuko and Katara should have been together romantically is… disturbing, in my opinion. (I really try to stay far away from zkers who use EIP as “proof” of supposed Zvtara interest in each other like honey that is imperialist propaganda please don’t 😭).

If you want to talk about how other people actually view Zuko and Katara’s relationship, look at the Gaang, who were around them most of all! They never tease the possibility of romance between their friends. Why? Because within canon, there wasn’t one. Simple!

“Zuko insisted on sitting next to Katara”

Nope! This is all the transcript says: “Zuko [Removing his hood.] Just sit next to me. What’s the big deal?” He doesn’t even mention Katara! Zuko is literally just like I’m already sitting. Why do I need to move? lmfao. It’s no thoughts head empty for our favorite firebender 😂

“Katara pushes Aang away”

I’m assuming this about the kiss, which I’m going to make a post about in the future because I am TIRED of the tomfoolery. Anyways, I’ll keep this brief - yes, she does push him away. She does not deny that she likes him. For Katara, the issue is the timing: “This isn’t the right time.” Both Katara and Aang know they like each other, plain and simple (which is why Aang doesn’t ask if he returns her feelings - he asks if they’d be together, because he knows their feelings are mutual). Katara pushes Aang away because, as she says, they’re in the middle of a war. She’s already seen Aang die once. He might die again. She doesn’t want that, of course, but it’s a reality Katara is forced to consider.

Anyways, her decision has nothing to do with Zuko. Lol.

“June reiterates the ‘Hey you’re with your gf again!’ Zuko and Katara deny it, but there likely should have been an undercurrent of ‘Why do people think we're together? Do we act like it? Should we be? S/he is kind of cute.’”

June’s assumption - especially because it is a repeat of a gag from earlier in the series, when it is incredibly concerning to assume a Fire Nation citizen would be with someone of the Water Tribes because of the war and its consequences - is comic relief. Not even good comic relief, lmao, because of the horrific implications I just mentioned that come with it, but it’s supposed to be comedy. There was no need of any “Zvtara” undercurrents there because a) Katara and Zuko had never expressed romantic interest in each other in the past, b) it wouldn’t track with the show’s narrative of Katara as Zuko’s surrogate sibling because of her position as Azula’s primary foil, and c) it just doesn’t make sense in general. Katara likes Aang. Zuko likes Mai. There was never a love triangle there, plain and simple. Fandom invented it.

And again, if you want to talk about how people actually see Zuko and Katara, don’t look at June, who has never had a proper conversation with either of them. As I said, the Gaang is a much better example, since they’re with the two 24/7. If they never tease Zuko and Katara about romance, why should we trust this random lady who doesn’t even know them?

“During this time, Zuko defers to Katara and despite Toph likely being more helpful, asks Katara to be the one to take down Azula with him.”

As I mentioned, Katara is Azula’s primary foil, so from a literary perspective she absolutely needed to be the one to take her down. Zuko needed to face Azula, but taking her down - again, from a literary pov - was always meant to be the end of Katara’s journey (she was the only person besides Aang who was ever a match for Azula, after all, as we see in CoD). Also, how would Toph be more helpful?? Not saying you’re wrong, btw, I just don’t understand what you mean. If I was Zuko, I also would have brought the waterbender that I’d already witnessed almost take down my sister already 😂. But even if Toph would have been more helpful, sometimes practicality must be sacrificed for a fulfilling narrative arc, lol!

“Last part of the finale should have been the money shot, Zuko taking lightning for Katara, and in a parallel to CoD, Katara healing him.”

Honestly, anon, this part of your ask baffles me 😂 I totally understand why rabid zkers might make this argument, but taking into account the rest of the show… It just doesn’t make sense? It’s been talked about a hundred times, but Zuko taking lightning out of romantic interest would ruin his redemption arc, regardless of if it was Katara or Aang or Sokka or anyone in the Gaang that he was taking it for, so that should be the end of discussion, full stop. I’ve talked about this issue here and here before, and someone else does a great job breaking it down in this post, too. But seriously. Zuko having romantic interest for anyone in the Gaang would ruin!! His!! Entire!! Arc!! I hate when people don’t understand that 😭 Zuko had to learn selflessness, to learn how to put others before himself, and to unlearn the imperialist rhetoric he’d been indoctrinated with from birth. Romantic interest during canon for Katara, Sokka, Aang, whomever, I don’t care, completely disregards all of his growth of breaking away from the Fire Nation. Plain and simple.

“Dante Basco is right in that there probably should have been a kiss at that moment and the end scene of the gang at the Jasmine Dragon with Zuko and Katara shyly proclaiming their interest in each other.”

I learned in a discord I’m in that Dante Basco apparently hadn’t seen the whole show until this year lmao. He didn’t know what energybending was nor did he know A:TLA ended with a Kataang kiss. Take that with a grain of salt, of course (you can watch the livestream this is revealed in here, and it was also mentioned in the recent StageIt A:TLA reunion), but I think it’s safe to conclude Dante Basco can be treated like any other Zvtara shipper. He likes the ship, which is totally cool, but he is not one of the writers, so his opinion meant naught in constructing the canon narrative.

ANYWAYS. My point is why would Zuko and Katara proclaim interest in each other if such interest would have to be crammed into five measly episodes?? Especially when four of those episodes were the finale?? That is awful writing, of course the A:TLA writers wouldn’t do that, lmao! They’d built up Kataang and Maiko already. Why scrap it and needlessly rush a romance from an excellent - and, important to note, a newly established - platonic bond? Nah.

“EIP seemed to set up a ZK endgame that jumped the tracks at the end. By all the ‘rules’ of a good narrative, Zuko and Katara should have ended up together”

Nope. Idk what rules people have been teaching you, anon, but they were lying!! You deserve better than people who would lie to you like that 😤. But yeah, narratively speaking, Katara and Zuko getting together would have made no sense. It would have undermined Zuko’s and Katara’s arcs, it would have completely disregarded Katara’s established feelings for Aang and Zuko’s for Mai, and again, it would have been totally rushed. Who wants that?? Normal people don’t, lmao. This might be hard to believe considering I occasionally rag about BNF zkers, but I actually have several friends who are Zvtara shippers! They agree that canon Zvtara would have made no sense, and that it’s better to play out a potential Zvtara dynamic in post-A:TLA fanon. I swear, it is only the rabid shippers who think Zvtara should have been canon, and trust me when I say no one should want to associate with them, lmao.

(And again, as I touched upon earlier, Zuko and Katara’s canon narrative relationship was surrogate siblings because of Katara’s position as Azula’s primary foil. The show wrapped their arc up perfectly! With a lovely bow and all. So no complaints from me!)

“otherwise EIP should never have been countenanced or storyboarded. Full disclosure that I’m not a huge Kataang fan either, but Kataang was done a disservice by having EIP exist”

What EIP did right:

- accurate (and horrifying) depiction of pro-imperialist propaganda

- recap of previous seasons

- a lesson on consent (Aang kisses Katara, it is depicted as wrong, and Aang reacts appropriately by admonishing himself and by giving Katara space afterwards. like, people call Aang an incel/entitled/whatever, BUT HE HAD THE PERFECT REACTION?? he literally backed off and never pressured her again. i would have killed for the guy who kept getting in my personal space during my junior year to have backed off when i told him to. spoiler alert: he didn’t)

- hit some good humor beats

What EIP did poorly:

- honestly it’s not very interesting just based on watching it (deconstructing it as propaganda gives it better depth), but that’s to be expected from filler

- stupid shipping drama

- not having an additional conversation/explicit apology between Aang and Katara

HOWEVER. This final point is actually very subjective. For one, A:TLA has a clear trend of not showing apologies on screen. Ex.: Katara doesn’t apologize to Sokka for what she said about their mother, Zuko doesn’t apologize for anything he did to the Gaang, Song, or really anyone (closest we get is “Hello, Zuko here” lmao), Ty Lee and Mai don’t apologize for putting the Kyoshi warriors in jail, etc. etc. So while an explicit apology would have been great, the lack of one admittedly tracks with the show’s pre-established standards. And two, while I of course would love a conversation between Aang and Katara (that’s literally MORE KATAANG. why would I refuse 😂), it isn’t… necessary, to be frank. Aang’s mistake is treated as such - kissing Katara was wrong and he should never have done that. Like I said, Aang acknowledges this error and gives Katara space afterwards. Thus, it is Katara who chooses to be with him when the war is over. She respects the time he gave her to come to a conclusion, and the choice she makes is that she loves him despite his poorly-timed kiss (I mean, she forgave Zuko for being complicit in Aang’s death. Katara is clearly a very forgiving person!). So like,, it gets to a point where if someone doesn’t recognize that, they’re probably the kind of weirdo who labels anything they don’t understand in a story as a plothole, lmao.

All of this is to say that EIP wasn’t a disservice to Kataang. It certainly could have been better, of course, and the kiss was obviously only put in to hype up drama (“will they, won’t they” blah blah blah), but overall it handled consent well for a kid’s show.

“It either should not have ever gotten written, or the ZK enemies-to-lovers arc should have been concluded.”

On the whole, EIP is absolutely an unnecessary episode, yeah. It was just a recap before the finale. The only important thing is its accurate depiction of pro-imperialist propaganda, but most people’s minds don’t immediately go to that, I’ll admit lmao 😂. And as I’ve already said, there was no Zvtara E-L arc - fandom completely made that up. Which is totally fine! That’s the point of transformative works. But they are still fanon. Plain and simple.

TL;DR - Zvtara was never in the cards for A:TLA. I wish rabid zkers would stop pretending it was and have fun in the sandbox like the rest of us 😭

And for the record, anon, you absolutely, 100% do not have to be convinced by any of this! It’s just my own, personal thoughts on the whole dealio. No worries either way!! 💛

[1vintage]

Ocean Vuong on Metaphor

below is a transcript of an Instagram story from Ocean Vuong, available here in his story highlights under Metaphor.

Q: How do you make sure your metaphors have real depth?

metaphors should have two things: (1) sensory (visual, texture, sound, etc) connector between origin image and the transforming image as well as (2) a clear logical connector between both images. 

if you have only one of either, best to forgo the metaphor, otherwise it will seem forced or read like “writing” if that makes sense.

~

a lot of ya’ll asked for examples re:metaphor. I can explain better if I had 15 minutes of class time (apply to UMASS!). But essentially, metaphors that go awry can signal a hurried desire to be “literary” or “poetic” (ie “writing”), which can lose traction/trust with a reader. in other words, a metaphor is a detour—but that detour better lead to discoveries that alter/amplify the meaning of what is already there, so that a reader sees you as a servant of possibility rather than someone trying to prove that they are a “writer.” One is performative, the other exploratory. In this way, the metaphor acts as a virtual medium, ejecting the text’s optical realism into an “elsewhere”. But this elsewhere should inform the original upon our return. otherwise the journey would feel like an ejection from a crash rather than a curated journey toward more complex meaning.

example:

“The road curves like a cat’s tail.”

This is a weak metaphor because the transforming image (tail) does not amplify/alter the original. The transfer of meaning flattens and dies. Logic is weak or moot: A cat’s tail does not really change the nature of the road. You can certainly add to this with a few more expository sentences which might rescue the logic—but by then you’re just doing cpr on your metaphor.

Sensory, too, is weak: a cat’s tail has little optical resemblance to a road other than being curved (roads are not furry, for one.)

So this is 0 for 2 and should be scrapped. (Just my opinion though! Not a rule!)

okay so what about:

“The road runs between two groves of pine, like the first stroke of a buzzcut.”

this is better. the optical sensory of the transforming image (a clipper thru a head of hair) matches well with the original.

but the logic feels arbitrary. again it doesn’t substantially alter the original.

in the end this is just an “interesting image” but not strong enough to keep I’d say.

Now here’s one from Sharon Olds:

“The hair on my father’s arms like blades of molasses.”

Sensory connector: check. A man’s dark hair indeed can look like blades (also suggestive of grass) of molasses.

Logical connector: check. the father is both sharp and sweet. Something once soft and sticky about him (connotations of youth) sweets, has now hardened the confection no longer fresh etc.

It’s an ambitious metaphor that is packed with resonance. In other words, it does worlds of work and actually deepens the more you dit with it. A metaphor that actually invites you to put the book down, think on it, absorb it, before returning. a good metaphor uses detours to add power to the text. poor metaphors distract you from the text and leave you bereft, laid to the side.

lastly, the prior examples are technically “similes” but I believe similes reside under the umbrella of metaphor. although a simile is a demarcation, ie: this is “like” that. but this is “not”, ontologically, that.

however, I think something happens in the act of reading wherein we collapse the “bridge” and the mind automatically forges synergy between the two images, so that all similes, once read, “act” like metaphors in the mind.

but again this is all subjective. you might have a better way of going about it.

Another very ambitious metaphor is this one from Eduardo C. Corral:

“Moss intensifies up the tree, like applause.”

This is a masterful metaphor, risky and requires a lot of faith, restraint, and experience to pull it off.

Difficult mainly because we now see a surrealist “distortion” of the sensory realm: origin IMAGE (moss) is paired with transforming SOUND (applause).

There is now a leap in comparable elements. But the adherence to our two vital factors are still present.

Sensory: moss, though silent, grows slowly (the word “intensifies” does major work here becuz it foreshadows the transforming element). Applause, too, grows gradually, before dying down.

Logic: the growth of the moss suggests spring, lushness, life, resilience, and connotes anticipatory hope, much like applause. In turn, applause modifies the nature of moss and imbues, at least this moss, with a sense of accomplishment, closure, it’s refreshment a cause for celebration.

God I love words.

~

I’ve gotten so many responses from folks the past few days asking for a deeper dive into my personal theory on metaphor.

So I'm taking a moment here to do a more in-depth mini essay since my answer to the Q/A the other day was off the cuff (I was typing while walking to my haircut appointment).

What I’m proposing, of course, is merely a THEORY, not a gospel, so please take whatever is useful to you and ignore what isn’t.

This essay will be in 25 slides. I will save this in my IG highlights after 24 hrs.

Before I begin I want to encourage everyone to forge your own theories and praxi for your work, especially if you’re a BIPOC artist.

Often, we are perceived by established powers as merely “performers,” suitable for a (brief) stint on stage—but not thinkers and creators with our own autonomy, intelligence, and capacity to question the framework in our fields.

It is not lost on me, as a yellow body in America, with the false connotations therein, where I’m often seen as diminutive, quiet, accommodating, agreeable, submissive, that I am not expected to think against the grain, to have my own theories on how I practice my art and my life.

I became a writer knowing I am entering a field (fine arts) where there are few faces like my own (and with many missing), a field where we are expected to succeed only when we pick up a violin or a cello in order to serve Euro-Centric “masterpieces.”

For so long, to be an Asian American “prodigy” in art was to be a fine-tuned instrument for Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.

It is no surprise, then, that if you, as a BIPOC artist, dare to come up with your own ideas, to say “no” to what they shove/have been shoving down your throat for so long, you will be infantilized, seen as foolish, moronic, stupid, disobedient, uneducated, and untamed.

Because it means the instrument that was once in the service of their “work” has now begun to speak, has decided, despite being inconceivable to them, to sing its own songs.

I want you, I need you, to sing with me. I want to hear what you sound like when it’s just us, and you sound so much like yourself that I recognize you even in the darkest rooms, even when I recognize nothing else. And I know your name is “little brother” or “big sister,” or “light bean,” or “my-echo-returned-to-me-intact.” And I smile.

In the dark I smile.

Art has no rules—yes—but it does have methods, which vary for each individual. The following are some of my own methods and how I came to them.

I’m very happy ya’ll are so into figurative language! It’s my favorite literary device because it reveals a second IDEA behind an object or abstraction via comparison.

When done well, it creates what I call the “DNA of seeing.” That is, a strong metaphor “Greek for “to carry over”) can enact the autobiography of sight. For example, what does it say about a person who sees the stars in the night sky—as exit wounds?

What does it say about their history, their worldview, their relationship to beauty and violence? All this can be garnered in the metaphor itself—without context—when the comparative elements have strong multifaceted bonds.

How we see the world reveals who we are. And metaphors explicate that sight.

My personal feeling is that the strongest metaphors do not require context for clarity. However, this does not mean that weaker metaphors that DO require context are useless or wrong.

Weak metaphors use context to achieve CLARITY.

Strong metaphors use context to SUPPORT what’s already clear.

BOTH are viable in ANY literary text.

But for the sake of this deeper exploration into metaphors and their gradients, I will attempt to identify the latter.

I feel it is important for a writer to understand the STRENGTHS of the devices they use, even when WEAKER versions of said devices can achieve the same goal via different means.

Sometimes we want a life raft, sometimes we want a steam boat—but we should know which is which (for us).

My focus then, will be specifically the ornamental or overt metaphor. That is, metaphors that occur inside the line—as opposed to conceptual, thematic, extended metaphors, or Homeric simile (which is a whole different animal).

My thinking here begins with the (debated) theory that similes reside under metaphors. That is, (non-Homeric) similes, behave cognitively, like metaphors.

This DOES NOT mean that similes do not matter (far from it), as we’ll see later on, but that the compared elements, once read, begin to merge in the mind, resulting in a metaphoric OCCURRENCE via a simileac vehicle.

This thinking is not entirely my own, but one informed by my interest in Phenomenology. Founded by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century and later expanded by Heidegger, Phenomenology is, in short, interested in how objects or phenomena are perceived in the mind, which renewed interest in subjectivity across Europe, as opposed to the Enlightenment’s quest for ultimate, finite truths.

By the time Husserl “discovered” this, however, Tibetan Buddhists scholars have already been practicing Phenomenology as something called Lojong, or “mind training,” for over half a millennia.

Whereas Husserl believes, in part, that a finite truth does exist but that the myopic nature of human perception hinders us from seeing all of it, Tibetan Lojong purports that no finite “truth” exists at all.

In Lojong, the world and its objects are pure perception. That is, a fly looks at a tree and sees, due to its compound eyes, hundreds of trees, while we see only one. For Buddhists, neither fly nor human is “correct” because a fixed truth is not present. Reality is only real according to one’s bodily medium.

I’m keenly interested in Lojong’s approach because it inheritably advocates for an anti-colonial gaze of the world. If objects in the real are not tenable, there is no reason they should be captured, conquered or pillaged.

In other words, we are in a “simulation” and because there is no true gain in acquiring something that is only an illusion, it is better to observe and learn from phenomena as guests passing through this world with respect to things—rather than to possess them.

The reason I bring this up is because Buddhist philosophy is the main influence of 8th century Chinese and 15th-17th century Japanese poetics, which fundamentally inform my understanding of metaphor.

While I appreciate Aristotle’s take on metaphor and rhetoric in his Poetics, particularly his thesis that strong metaphors move from species to genus, it is not a robust influence on my thinking.

After all, like sex and water, metaphors have been enjoyed by humans across the world long before Aristotle-- and evidently long after. In fact, Buddhist teachings, which widely employ metaphor and analogy, predates Aristotle by roughly 150 years.

Now, to better see how Buddhist Phenomenology informs the transformation of images into metaphor, let’s look at this poem by Moritake.

“The fallen blossom flies back to its branch. No, a butterfly.”

When considering (western-dominated) discourse surrounding analogues using “like” or “is”, is this image a metaphor or a simile?

It is technically neither. The construction of this poem does not employ metaphor or simile.

And yet, to my eye, a metaphor, although not present, does indeed HAPPEN.

What’s more, the poem, which is essentially a single metaphor, is complete.

No further context is needed for its clarity. If context is needed for a metaphor, then the metaphor is (IMO) weak—but that doesn’t mean the writing, as a whole, is bad. Weak metaphors and good context bring us home safe and sound.

Okay, so what is happening here?

By the time I read “butterfly,” my mind corrects the blossom so that the latter image retroactively changes/informs the former. We see the blossom float up, then re-see it as a butterfly. The metaphoric figuration is complete with or without “like” or “is.”

Buddhism explains this by saying that, although a text IS thought, it does not THINK. We, the readers, must think upon it. The text, then, only curates thinking.

Words, in this way, begin on the page but LIVE in the mind which, due to limited and subjective scope of human perception, shift seemingly fixed elements into something entirely new.

The key here is proximity. Similes provide buffers to mediate impact between two elements, but they do not rule over how images coincide upon reading. One the page, text is fossil; in the mind, text is life.

Nearly 5000 years after Maritake, Ezra Pound, via Fenolosa, reads Maritake’s poem and writes what becomes the seminal poem on Imagism in 1912, which was subsequently highly influential to early Modernists:

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.”

Like Maritake, Pound’s poem technically has no metaphor or simile. However, he adds the vital colon after “crowd,” which arguably works as an “equal sign”, thereby implying metaphor. But the reason why he did not use “are” or “is” is telling.

Pound understood, like Maritake, that the metaphor would occur in the mind, regardless of connecting verbiage due to the images’ close proximity. We would come to know this as “association.”

Even if the colon was replaced by the word “like,” the transformation, though a bit slower, would still occur.

In fact, when I first studied Pound years ago, I had trouble recalling whether this poem was fashioned as a simile or not—mainly because the faces change to fully into blossoms each time I try to recall the poem.

Now, let’s look at a simile that, to me, metaphorizes in the same way as the examples above, in the line we saw before from Eduardo C. Corral:

“Jade moss on the tree intensifies, like applause.”

The origin/tenor image (moss) is connected to the transforming element (applause). This metaphor suggests, not an optical relationship, but a BEHAVIORAL one.

Both moss and applause are MASSES that accumulate via singularities: grains of moss and pairs of hands clapping to form a larger whole.

By comparing these two, Corral successfully suggests that moss grows at the RATE of applause, creating a masterful time lapse effect. Applause speeds up the moss growth, connoting rejuvenation, joy and refreshment. That something as mundane as moss deserves, even earns, jubilance, also offers a potent statement of alterity, that the smallest flourishing deserves celebration, which in turn suggests a subtle yet powerful political critique of hegemony.

The poet, through the metaphor, has recalibrated the traditional modes of value placed on the object (moss).

And no other context is needed for that.

You might disagree, but when I read Corral’s line, I don’t SEE an audience clapping BESIDE the moss. I see moss growing quickly to the sound of clapping. Although the simile is employed, the fusion of both elements completes the action in my mind’s eye.

Like Maritake and Pound, metaphor has OCCURRED here—but without “metaphor”.

HOWEVER, the simile is still VITAL. Why?

Because the transforming element is abstract (applause) and looks nothing like moss. We don’t want moss to BE applause, we want the nature of applause to inform, imbue, moss.

The line, I feel, would be quite poor if it was formed sans simile:

“Jade moss is applause on the tree.”

The “is” forces transposition, which is here akin to slamming two things together without mediation. We also lose the comparison of behavior, and are asked to see that moss BECOME applause, which doesn’t have the same meaning as the original.

So, although the simile fuses into metaphor (via association) in the mind, such a metaphor would NOT have been possible without the simile.

Similes matter greatly—as tools towards metaphor. Why?

Because (thank god) our minds are free to roam.

To summarize, one of the central strategies (and, to an extent, purposes) of the Japanese Haiku is to juxtapose two elements to test their synergy. This impulse is grounded in Shinto and Buddhist concepts of impermanence and structural malleability. That is, all things, even ideas and images, are subject to constant change—and such change is the most pervasive nature of perception.

The Haiku then becomes the perfect medium to test such changes. This principle is of central importance to me because it is rooted in non-dualistic (or non-binary) thinking.

The poem becomes the theatre in which fixed elements can be transformed, their borders subject to being dissolved, shifting towards something entirely new—to “create”, which is the Greek root to the word “poet.” The metaphor, then, is more like a chemical, whose elements (like hydrogen and oxygen), placed side by side, becomes water.

In this way, Buddhism’s influence on my work and, specifically, my use and understanding of metaphor, is a foundational QUEER praxis for alterity.

The reason why I emphasize the malleability of simile’s impact is that, although syntax and diction can aide a metaphor towards its more luminous embodiment, the ultimate key to its success is you, the observer.

YOU have look deeply and find lasting relationships between things in a disparate world.

In this sense, the practice of metaphor is also, I believe, the practice of compassion. How do I study a thing so that I might add to its life by introducing it to something else?

At its best, the metaphor is what we, as a species, have always done, at OUR best: which is to point at something or someone so different from us, so far from our own origins and say, “Yes, there IS a bond between us. And if I work long enough, hard enough, I can prove it to you—with this thing called language, this thing that weighs nothing but means everything to me.”

In the end, it is less about how you set up your metaphors (you will eventually find a way that suits it and you) but more about how you recognize your world. THAT is not easy to teach—it comes with patient practice, with a committed wonder for a world that at times might be too painful to look at. But you must and you should.

Good metaphors, in the end, come from writers who are committed to looking beyond what is already there, towards another possibility.

This calls that you see your life and your work as inexhaustible sites of discovery, and that you tend to them with care.

That’s it. That’s the true secret to a strong metaphor: care.

Lastly, I want to recommend the work of BIPOC poet and theorist, Thylias Moss, who discovered the Limited Fork Theory, a theory which suggests that the mind engages with the world, and especially with ideas, including text and art, the way the tines of a fork engage with a plate of food.

That is, only so much can be held on the work/mind with each attempt to consume, and that no “work” can be possessed in its entirety, which I find happily congruent with Lojong.

What a wonderful anti-imperialist and forgiving way to engage with our planet and its phenomena. Thank you, Mrs. Moss!

And thank YOU for sticking around through my little seminar.

I hope this has been helpful. Again, this is just my 2(5) cents! Now I’m going to sleep for four days.

In the meantime, me-ta-phors be with you.

—O

[holyhellpod]

4. Fambily

In this episode, we skim the surface of the fambily dynamics in Supernatural, which are--ah. Dicey at best. 

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Content warnings: domestic violence and family abuse

[Growl]

Ah, the Winchesters. Where do we even start. Unhinged, deranged, and continually traumatised in every way, Sam and Dean complete each other. At least, that’s what the show wants us to think. Despite the ways they betray each other, lie to each other, and  piss each other off, they are fambily. And fambily is the most important thing. The concept of Fambily in the show Supernatural (2005-2020) takes many twists and turns throughout its run. In the first five minutes of episode one, the heteronormative, nuclear family of John, Mary, Sam and Dean is ripped apart by an unknown, antagonistic force that represents all the evil in the world. It creeps into a nursery and eviscerates a white, blonde mother while preying upon a 👶, I mean, how much more evil can you get? It’s fantastic that, in the later seasons especially, Supernatural embraces this idea that fambily doesn’t end in blood, but blood doesn’t always mean fambily. By the end of the series, the fambily concept has expanded to include two dads, an aunt and uncle, and a thirty-year old infant. I’m going to talk about the finale in its own episode, so that my ire will have its proper outlet. 

When the show starts, Sam, Dean and John have each other, and only each other. By the time season 2 really kicks off, Sam and Dean don’t have John anymore, but they do have Bobby Singer. The concept of the triumvirate follows them throughout the series as though they’re in a less sexy Italo Calvino novel—first Sam, Dean and John, then Sam, Dean and Bobby, then Sam, Dean and Ruby, then Sam, Dean and Cas, then Sam, Dean and Mary, then Sam, Dean and Jack. It’s broken in seasons 13-15 when Cas comes back and they have a family of four, and then five when Mary can stand to see her boys.  

But the Winchesters are not the only fambily in Supernatural who matter. In season two, we’re introduced to the Harvelles, mother Ellen and daughter Jo, who are a hunting fambily who run a hunter pub in the middle of whoop whoop. A pub that Eric Kripke famously hated, and rejoiced when he burnt it down at the end of season 2, because the Winchesters and by extension everyone they know aren’t allowed to have anything good ever. It’s revealed in season two episode “No Exit” that John got Jo’s father killed on a hunt, which obviously affects Jo more than it does Sam and Dean. 

[Editing note:] Okay I’m editing this episode, and I’m not happy with it. I’m not going to scrap it completely because I think I do have good points to say, but the general analysis of this episode is so surface level. It is basically contributing nothing to the conversation. And I started this podcast in order to actually contribute something to the culture. I could make a bunch of text posts on tumblr or I could spend hours and hours and hours and hours of my life to something that — I don’t know. Is it bringing me joy? Not at the moment. But, yeah. So I’m not going to scrap this episode completely but this is my way of saying from now on the episodes are going to take as much as they will take and I will commit myself to having deeper and more thoughtful analysis. And if I have to spend an entire episode on one aspect of one thing, I will. I could be at university right now studying a masters or a PhD in fucking literary analysis but instead I’m sitting on my bed making a Supernatural podcast because it brings me joy. It does. It really makes me happy and I don’t want to abandon this project, because people are listening to it. I don’t know why, I don’t know what you like it about it, but you’re listening. And I just think I owe it to myself to make things that I support 100%. So I’ll continue this episode and hopefully this rambling hasn’t put you off it completely. But from now on, I’m going to really, really talk about things that matter in regards to Supernatural… Kind of an oxymoron. Kind of a contradiction. But things that contribute to the cultural consciousness instead of just rehashing the road so far. That’s all I want to do. I want to contribute. I want to say good…ful things. Okay this is making me happy. It’s already working, it’s already making me happy. I’m just going to keep rambling and laughing. Okay so, more thoughtful analysis, deeper analysis. Things that make you think. Things that make me think. Instead of just a bunch of words that mean nothing. Okay, continuing on.

Okay to figure out which episode this was I had to watch a little bit of season two, and I’m still on my season 13 rewatch. The difference between the two seasons. I don’t know if I can even put into words the growth this show has gone through, and the characters have gone through, over the last 15 years. It would be like summarising my own growth by combing through my extensive diary collection and the years of societally- and governmentally-enforced heterosexuality that has plagued my entire life. Those boys are babies in season two. The bootcut jeans alone. Sam is literally 23 years old. I don’t even talk to 23 year olds. I block them on social media.  

The Harvelles are a blip in the Winchester map. While the actors Samantha Ferris and Chad Lindberg did attempt to resuscitate their cultural currency months after the show ended by participating in an event — okay I can’t. I can’t even go into it. Like, clearly Samantha Ferris heard back from her representation as soon as she started posting those tweets and realised she wouldn’t continue to get money if she endorsed, well, the gays. And Chad Lindberg was just using the clout to push his Etsy wares like a 14th century merchant, so I gotta respect the hustle. But Jo and Ellen die in season 5 episode “Abandon All Hope” and are barely mentioned again except the episode Ash appears in, season 5 “Dark side of the moon,” Jo in season 7, “Defending Your Life,” and Ellen in the season 6 episode “My heart will go on.” They didn’t exactly leave what you would call a lasting impact for the next, you know, ten seasons. 

To be honest, I’m not sure when it’s revealed that Bobby’s wife died after being possessed by a demon. It’s made clear in season 5 “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” and I did not have to look that up, because season four and five are burned into my retinas like a particularly nasty sun flare. Bobby outlines the horrific way he killed his wife, because why not throw some spousal violence into the mix, and later in season 7 “Death’s Door,” it elaborates on their life together. I saw this sentiment expressed on TikTok, which we all know as the foundation of cultural knowledge, which was that fambilies don’t need to be two parents and children. Fambilies can be spouses or partners. You don’t need to have children in order to be a fambily. I think that’s a very nice sentiment and I’ve chosen to adopt it for these purposes. Bobby and his wife Karen are a fambily. While Karen wants kids, Bobby chooses not to have them for fear of becoming like his father and repeating the trauma he inflicted on Bobby. Bobby and Karen’s fambily dynamic is ruptured in the same way that John and Mary’s is—by an intrusive, demonic force that brings Bobby into the hunting world and ends Karen’s life. But by the time we see him at the end of season 1, Bobby is already ingratiated into Sam and Dean’s lives as their surrogate father, and this bond only deepens as the show progresses. Bobby expresses the sentiment to Dean to not be like John, that Dean is already a better man that his father ever was. Isn’t that what we all want to hear? That we have superseded our parents and outgrown them in ways they could never comprehend? Don’t we just want to be better than the generations that came before us, in order to mould a better world for the generations that come after us? Don’t we want to make things easier for our children, and our friends’ children, and our siblings’ children? Dean is a better man than John, and Bobby is better man than his father ever was. It’s about breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma. I have to believe that Sam, Dean and Bobby did this, because then it’s possible for me to do the same thing. Include here that speech about representation in media that I didn’t bother writing for the last episode. Bobby is the surrogate father to Sam and Dean, a better father than John was, a better hunter even. He crafts an entire network of hunters who report to him, as seen in the season 6 episode “Weekend at Bobby’s,” and he continues to act as Sam and Dean’s mentor until his death in season 7 “How to win friends and influence monsters”. An alternate universe version of Bobby is introduced in season 13, which I have my reservations about, and he and Mary get together, which again, why. Season 13 is so hard to sit through. 

A fambily that is introduced late into the series and is simply NOT given enough screen time is the Banes fambily. In season 12, “Celebrating the life of Asa Fox,” we are introduced to the Banes twins, Max and Alicia, who are by far the most gorgeous hunters we’ve seen in the series. They are hunters raised by a witch, Tasha Banes, who doesn’t appear yet, and they manage to survive the trial by fire that is overcoming the demon Jael. Later in this season, in the episode “Twigs and Twane and Tasha Banes,” both of which are written by the late great Steve Yockey, we are introduced to Tasha in a way that seems awfully familiar: Alicia calls Sam to say their mother has gone missing on a hunt, and hasn’t checked in in a few days. By the end of the episode, Alicia and Tasha are dead, and Max has ostensibly sold his soul for the power to bring Alicia back. The Banes twins’ storyline directly parallels Sam and Dean’s from the pilot, but it’s a tragedy from the outset. We already know Tasha is dead and they can’t save her, however, like Dean does for Sam at the end of season 2, Max chooses to save Alicia at the expense of his own soul. Spin off when. Banes twins series when. I’m waiting. They were in two episodes and I’m still thinking about them. The Harvelles are dust. 

In season 7, “Reading is Fundamental,” a waifish 17 year old honour’s student Kevin Tran breaks into a rehabilitation facility to steal a tablet. This starts a chain of events that ingratiates Kevin Tran in the apocalyptic, death-succumbing world of the Winchesters, starting with Dick Roman, head leviathan, and continuing, but not culminating, with his death at the hands of Gadreel, who was possessing Sam, it’s a whole thing. Any time you attempt to summarise anything on Supernatural, you sound like a lunatic. And I say that as someone who has a supernatural podcast, with an audience of only supernatural fans. We are lunatics, but we’re lunatics together. Kevin’s arc was cut way too short, but we at least got to see him with his momma Linda in the beginnings of season 8 with the unfortunately named episode “What’s up, Tiger Mommy?” It introduces Linda Tran as a capable and worldly woman, hell bent on protecting her son. She offers up her soul among other things in exchange for Kevin and the tablet with him. During the episode, she is possessed by Crowley, and Dean attempts to kill him, which would mean killing Linda as well. Kevin considers this the ultimate betrayal and leaves with his mum. Later in season 9 episode “Captives,” Linda is reintroduced as a captive of Crowley, who escapes with Sam’s help. Back at the bunker, she reunites with Kevin, who is now, thanks to the Winchesters’ incompetence, a ghost 👻. My macbook keeps suggesting little emojis in the smart bar so I just gotta put ‘em in. That’s the last we see of Linda, so I’m drawing my own conclusions about whether she gets to live a long and happy life. Kevin is a fan favourite and despite my reservations about Osric Chau which I will not get into like ever I really like Kevin too. He outsmarts Crowley many times and shows remarkable tenacity to get an impossible job done. His desire to see his mum again, the driving force behind his actions, mirrors Dean’s desperation to have his fambily together again like they used to be. I would call this a parallel but I don’t believe they purposefully did this, I just think they accidentally rehashed the same tired storyline they’ve been peddling since 2005. But yeah, if I was Kevin and all I had was my mum, seeing her again would be the driving force for my actions as well. Kevin’s father is never mentioned, and it honestly isn’t a big deal, which is great. Sometimes fathers are just absent, and you don’t need throw a hissy fit about it or make it your entire personality, Dean.

Missouri Moseley, played by the inimitable Loretta Devine, is introduced in the first season, episode “Home,” in which she helps out on a case involving Sam and Dean’s childhood house. We find out that Missouri is a long-time friend of John’s and helped him to understand that supernatural forces were behind Mary’s death. She is Sam and Dean’s first point of entry into the world of the Supernatural, and they didn’t know it until they meet her in “Home”. In season 13 episode “Patience,” another layer to Missouri’s character is added with the advent of her family: estranged son James and granddaughter Patience Turner, who is also a psychic. We get a lot of backstory for Missouri in this episode, even if it is sloppily written and contradictory to the way they initially set her up. If Missouri and James had been travelling when he was a child, why was she stationed in Lawrence in both 1983 and 2005? What did he mean that Missouri was hunting? I can’t be bothered unpacking the confusing bits of information presented in this episode. It’s not a good episode and I really don’t see why everyone goes apeshit for Bobo Berens. He kills Missouri in this episode, in a really horrible way. Like the history of Supernatural’s racism and misogyny should not be dumped on one man, but nor should it be perpetuated and it is continually throughout the entire show. Confusing, contradictory and badly written backstory aside, she is an interesting character, and her willingness to sacrifice herself to save her family echoes that of Mary in “Home”. I’m actually really mad that Patience never gets to have a relationship with Missouri, and later in season 13 episode “The Bad Place,” Patience’s father tells her that if she leaves to help The Winchesters and uses her psychic abilities, she’s not welcome back in his house. To me that’s just unnecessary. We have a family that has already been ruptured by the death of Patience’s mother, further ruptured by Patience’s father cutting off contact with Missouri, and then to go a step further he disintegrates their family unit by kicking Patience out. Like how much loss do the Moseley-Turners have to endure? It’s really just cruel at this point. But Patience does find family with Jodie, Donna, Claire, Alex and eventually Kaia, and while I love the concept of found family and this found family in particular, it comes at the expense of biological family, which is something that the show has pushed from the very first episode. So that’s evolution in itself. Going from “fambily is the most important thing to these characters” to “found fambily is where we find love” is great, but ripping apart a biological fambily like the Moseley-Turners, and indeed starting the episode by saying Missouri has been shunted out of her son and granddaughter’s lives for trying to bring her son comfort, is just fucked. Like, I couldn’t name a single Bobo episode that I actually like without having to comb through them. I’m trying really hard not to shit all over him because as a writer I know how much that sucks and I know how hard is it for any marginalised writers to get a start, but I’m allowed to have my vendettas. 

If you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, and only if you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, you will understand just how jacked up the angel family really is. The angelic counterpoint to Sam and Dean are the archangels Lucifer and Michael. We are introduced to two different versions of Michael—one in season 5, who possesses their dad in 1979 and their brother Adam in 2010—my god that was literally over a decade ago—and Apocalypse World Michael, played by four different actors: Felisha Terrell, Christian Keyes, Jensen Ackles, and Ruth Connell, who plays Rowena. I don’t know what in the hell Jensen Ackles was doing performance-wise when playing Michael, but I consider it a federal crime akin to drug trafficking or money laundering. As for Christian Keyes playing Michael, Andrew Dabb, you know what you did and you’re going to have to live with that.  

In season 5, during the apocalypse, Michael and Lucifer only interact in the last episode, “Swan Song,” but the entire season is built around their conflict. Lucifer disobeyed their father, and Michael as God’s most powerful weapon must defeat him. It’s meant to mirror Sam’s descent into, uhhhh, badness or something, disobeying John to run away to Stanford, or, like, drinking demon blood? It’s unclear. Lucifer and Apocalypse World Michael interact in season 13, and Michael kills Lucifer only to take over Dean’s body and start a season-long arc of, like, bad acting and barely thought-out plots. I would say to Jensen Ackles “don’t quit your day job,” but this is literally his day job. 

The angels as they’re introduced in season 4 are warriors of god, and all they know is obedience and killing. Even Cas can’t break out of the cycle of killing his angel siblings, and often justifies it by saying that it’s for the greater good, that he needs to do it to take down a stronger force like Raphael or Metatron. Anna manages to break free of her family by falling and becoming human, but when Cas betrays her and the angels capture her, she is lobotomised, tortured and sent back out to kill Sam. Then she’s burned to a crisp by Michael possessing John, not the last time a woman would burn to death on this show. The angels are dysfunctional at best, and actively hostile to each other, especially Castiel, the infamous spanner in the works. I could write an entire academic paper about how the angels think of Castiel as this rebel slut who murdered his way to the top and is going to be the downfall of angel kind, but Dean thinks of him as this little nerdy guy with a harp he carries around in his back pocket. Which honestly Cas would love because he’s obsessed with Dean and wants to touch his butt. I don’t know what else I can say about the angels without turning this into a dissertation, so I’ll continue on.

While all seasons of the show are about family, season six is especially about matrilineal family. It introduces the concept of the mother of monsters—Eve—and focuses on Mary as a solution to the loneliness the characters feel after her death. Samuel Campbell, Mary’s father, is brought back to life and manipulated by the promise of seeing his daughter again. He asks Sam and Dean what they wouldn’t do to see Mary again, which is kind of the general thesis of the show. What wouldn’t John, Dean and Sam do for each other? Dean sells his soul. John makes a deal with the demon who killed Mary. Sam teams up with Ruby to kill Lilith in revenge, which begins as a suicide mission because he doesn’t know how to handle his grief for Dean. The difference is that Samuel betrays Sam and Dean, his own grandchildren, for the promise of seeing Mary again. This cardinal sin alienates him from being a good guy, because good guys never betray Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean are our protagonists! Our heroes! The bringers of the light! The knights in shining armour! The white on rice. The cherry in cherry pie. They are the ones we’re meant to align ourselves with, because it’s their story the narrative is telling. And anyone who doesn’t align themselves with the Winchesters is an enemy who needs to be defeated.   

We’re introduced to the character of Gwen in the first episode of season 6, “Exile on Main Street”, and she says in the episode “Family Matters” that Samuel, the patriarch, doesn’t like her very much because she reminds him of Mary. While Samuel, Christian, Gwen and co are technically family, Dean has no connection to them past bloodlines. And as I said before, while family doesn’t end in blood, we learn throughout this season that blood doesn’t always mean family. Gwen dies in the episode “And Then There Were None,” because of course she does, and Mary doesn’t come back, at least not in this season. 

In “Family Matters,” the alpha vampire, played by the irreplaceable Rick Worthy, mentions that “we all have our mothers,” referring to Eve, the mother of monsters, the one who spawned every other monster and who has been trapped in purgatory ever since. Eve is pulled from Purgatory to wage war against the hunters and Crowley because they have been preying on her first borns, the alphas. I love Eve. I love her. She’s my favourite villain after Metatron. Mainly because I think she is like… sexy as hell. Like wow I am just so attracted to Julia Maxwell and this, like, bored smokey affect thing she does where she barely moves her mouth when she speaks and her strong brow makes her seem so intimidating. I don’t know anything about her personally, but I feel like she would’ve bullied me in high school, and I’m into it. It’s really hard to judge just from this one role whether she’s a good actor because Eve has such limited range and few things to do, but I really wish she’d gotten more screen time. Yeah, she’s doing the bare minimum and I’m completely obsessed. But Eve isn’t just a monster, she’s literally THEE milf. The original milf. And I really think she should’ve stayed around, but since they kept Lisa alive they had to kill at least one high profile woman. 

Continuing with the family storylines in season 6, Dean tries to establish a family with Lisa and Ben, and for the most part succeeds. He gets a job, plays the role of the doting boyfriend and stepfather, and protects them as best he can. I’m going to spare you the rant perched at the tip of my tongue about how this is at best a lavender marriage or staying together for the kid, and that Lisa only exists to be an ideal for Dean, not an actual partner he can grow with throughout the rest of the show. It’s his first attempt at a fambily outside of Sam, Bobby and John, and it fails miserably because Lisa isn’t a good match. The fact is, she will never be able to fit into the hunting world because of the way the writers wrote her—as mother and girlfriend archetype, and we’ve seen how well they do with those—in fact they actively paralleled it in “Exile on Main Street” where they had Dean hallucinate Azazel coming back and pinning Lisa to the ceiling. It couldn’t be more obvious that they don’t respect her. At least they didn’t fridge her for Dean’s man pain. It’s honestly horrible because Dean put so much effort into believing this was his one chance at happiness, and when it crumbles like a tim tam in hot tea he beats himself up for it and uses it as an excuse to never be happy. 

He does seem to be happy for the most part with Lisa, but because Sera Gamble doesn’t know how to write interesting or complex female characters, when Sam reenters the picture it once again becomes about the original premise: two brothers on the road, fighting the forces of evil. There’s no room for any women in that sphere. Up until this point I think—correct me if I’m wrong—there has been one female hunter who survived, and she was in one episode. The hunter Tamara in season 3 “The Magnificent Seven,” whose husband died in maybe the most sadistic way anyone has died on this show. Don’t rewatch it, just google it. All women die, including Mary, their mother, who is brought back in season 12 and killed in season 14. AND FOR WHAT? For WHAT Andrew Dabb.

Often, the loss of a parent, child or significant other is used to excuse bad behaviour and terrible choices. The hunting life causes Mary’s whole family to die before she can escape it, and because she makes a deal with Azazel for John’s life, the same demon John makes a deal with, Azazel kills her anyway. John abused his kids and brought them into the hunting life, because he was obsessed with getting revenge for Mary’s death. Sam does the same thing when Jess dies in the first season, and it starts a 15-season long arc of pain and misery. He sets Lucifer free in the season four because he is obsessed with getting revenge for Dean’s death and obsessed with the power drinking demon blood gives him. Then again, Sam is actually right for saving people by exorcising demons, which is literally the first part of the family business motto,  instead of just gutting them with the demon knife, but because Dean doesn’t agree with it, it’s bad. Sam always wants to do the right thing, he just gets a little caught up in the details. But you know what? Bloodfreak rights. 

When Cas dies in season 13, Dean is so overcome with grief, a grief that echoes John and Sam’s, that he mistreats Jack and threatens to kill him. In season 14, Nick, Lucifer’s vessel, boo snore hiss, kills everyone involved with the murder of his wife and child before he finds out that it’s actually Lucifer’s doing, and then he tries to raise Lucifer from the empty because he’s addicted to killing? Whatever, stop employing Mark Pellegrino. Stop writing men as obsessed with getting revenge 

The biological fambilies in Supernatural suck shit. Honestly every time I watch an episode about fambily I’m even more glad I don’t talk to mine. Dean and Sam need to spend some time away from each other, while they’re both still alive. Their fambily dynamic gets better as the show progresses, and I was pleased to see in season 12 that they do away with the codependency, constantly sacrificing themselves for each other, isolating themselves, betraying everyone they know for each other—they started to act like, you know, normal people. And that’s good. Sure, the show would not be anywhere without John sacrificing himself for Dean, and Dean sacrificing himself for Sam, and honestly that’s what made those first few seasons amazing. But after a while it becomes lazy writing, not parallels. A parallel that Supernatural pulled off is Sam comforting Magda in season 12 episode “The Survivor” in the way he needed to be comforted in season 1 and 2 as a psychic child. A parallel is Dean preparing Cas’s body for cremation in season 13  in counterpoint to the way Cas remade Dean’s body in season 4. This show can absolutely do parallels, some of the most beautiful parallels ever put on screen, but the last season was such lazy writing that I cannot forgive it. 

This has been an overall negative episode of Holy Hell, and that sucks. I don’t want to be so negative. I want to talk about the good things that Supernatural did, and share in joy with you all, so now I’m going to talk about the only positive I see with fambily in the entire show. 

For Dean, everyone older than him is a parent to disappoint, and everyone younger than him is a little sibling to protect. Cas is the exception, as there’s no way to define Dean and Cas’s relationship without acknowledging the reciprocal romantic ways they care about each other. Dean says on multiple occasions that Cas is like a brother to him, and that he’s Sam and Dean’s best friend. He actually drops the line, “After Sam and Bobby, you are the closest thing I have to family,” on Cas in season 6, and he acts like it’s nothing, but you can see in the expression on Cas’s face that Dean just recontextualised the entirety of Cas’s being in one sentence. Cas falls for Dean, gives up his family for Dean, and decides to follow him in the first act of free will we see on screen. And Dean, who has never known love without pain, says to Cas, you are fambily to me, I actively choose you, you belong in my life. But to belong in Dean’s life is to follow his plan, and when Cas doesn’t, he is punished for his hubris. Dean loves him, and he never even admits it.

Charlie becomes like a little sister to Dean, as does Jo. Jack is unequivocally Cas’s son, but becomes something of Dean’s son as well and some would argue Sam’s son. Claire becomes Cas’s daughter, but imprints so much on Dean that many, myself included, have come to consider Dean her father as well. If you subscribe to the idea that Dean and Cas are old marrieds, Dean would be Claire and Jack’s stepfather, and they would be a nuclear fambily all on their own. In season 14 “Lebanon,” when John says to Dean that he thought Dean would have settled down with a fambily, Dean says, “I have a fambily.” Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.

Cas chooses to be a part of Claire’s life in season 10 “The Things We Left Behind” because he feels guilty about what happened to her after he possessed Jimmy, but after getting to know Claire he cares for her. The crime that is Claire and Cas not interacting after season 10, my god. That’s his daughter, you ghouls. But Claire and Dean do get more moments together. Dean, Sam and some British guy save Claire from turning into a werewolf, and Claire and the rest of the Wayward Sisters save Sam and Dean from the Bad Place. The Wayward Sisters are a found fambily all on their own, and since I could devote an entire episode to Jody’s little brood, I have chosen not to talk about them much, because this episode is at least half an hour, 34 minutes, and it would take up too much of my time. Claire is one of my favourite characters and I’ll be talking about her in the next ep, so stay tuned for that. 

Even before Jack is born, Cas becomes his protector. He goes from trying to convince Kelly to end her and Jack’s life, to being her pseudo-husband and the surrogate father to her child. To me personally, it’s the best thing this show has ever done. Cas, Kelly and Jack love each other in a way that is so wholly uncomplicated, that is so pure and so good. Once Cas becomes Jack’s protector, there’s never any question of whether they would hurt or betray each other. He is Cas’s son, his baby boy, and he loves Cas so much that he resurrects Cas from the empty. When they meet for the first time in season 13 “Tombstone” after Cas comes back, they fit into each other’s lives so easily. This is the part in writing this where I was absolutely sobbing my dick off. There are so many moments between them that show the kind of love that each of these characters deserved. Sam and Dean deserve to have that love from their father, and so does Cas. And together they build a family unit around caring for Jack that does indeed end the intergenerational trauma that plagues the Winchester fambily.

And that’s why season 16 is so important to me. I can make things better. Dean sorts his shit out, all of his shit: his alcoholism, depression, ADHD, borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation, sexuality, gender, the fact that Cas is literally the love of his life and he gets to save him from the Empty the way Cas saved him from Hell. They plant flowers in the field where Dean spread Cas’s ashes in season 13, and they get married at Jody’s cabin with all their loved ones left alive. Claire walks Cas down the aisle and Jack is the flower girl, because he’s literally a three year old baby. Sam and Eileen raise a bunch of rugrats and the Wayward fambily continue the hunting legacy and have a Sunday afternoon roast every week. Dean and Cas raise Jack right, they cut up oranges for soccer practice and watch all his school plays. He and his cousins grow up knowing what it’s like not only to be loved, but to be looked after, to have all their needs met. They grow up normal, and the trauma that plagued their family is a thing of the past. It’s good, you know? It’s just fucking good.

[passionate-reply]

Have you and Telex met somewhere before? If not, you may want to make their acquaintance. This delightfully irreverent Belgian electro-disco trio came in next to last at 1980′s Eurovision Song Contest. And then they did an album featuring English lyrics by Sparks’ Ron and Russel Mael! Find out all about what makes this record tick, in this week’s installment of Great Albums. Full transcript below the break...

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! It’s time to break outside the Anglosphere, and take a look at one of the finest synth-pop acts to come from Belgium: the irreverent post-disco trio of Telex. Telex were, in fact, so European that they were sent to that most European of institutions, the Eurovision Song Contest, in the year 1980, in what was perhaps their finest hour in the spotlight.

Music: “Eurovision”

While many contemporary listeners may find “Eurovision” amusing, it actually didn’t go over well in the contest itself, and Telex managed to place second to last on behalf of the Belgian people, losing even the (arguably) more illustrious last place to Finland. It was one of the earliest true “joke entries,” so perhaps the masses weren’t ready for this approach yet. Despite its generally upbeat sound, I think the lyrics of “Eurovision” come across as really quite harsh--and the song’s availability in both English and French meant that plenty of people understood them. Mocking the financial instability of Italy and, apparently, anyone dumb enough to tune into Eurovision, there’s really a rather condescending, perhaps even cruel, sensibility about it. A conspicuous reference to the Berlin Wall, a symbol of some of Europe’s deepest divisions and greatest political turmoil, gives it an extra nudge towards feeling rather contextually inappropriate. Telex’s “Eurovision” might just be the most cynical or anti-European song ever entered...at least up until Hatari of Iceland gave us the thunderous industrial anthem “Hatrið Mun Sigra,” in 2019.

Telex’s follow-up to this “incident” is, in my opinion, where their career starts to really get interesting. While it isn’t that heavily advertised, 1981’s Sex was actually something of a collaboration album, featuring English-language lyrics on all tracks which were contributed by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks. Given the recent resurgence of interest in Sparks spurred by Edgar Wright’s documentary on them, I figure now is as good a time as ever to revisit this somewhat lesser-known work in the Sparks catalogue--or, at least, with one foot in the Sparks catalogue.

In my opinion, Sex takes the better aspects of both of these groups and combines them into something that feels like more than the sum of its parts. Telex’s soft, yet sprightly synth arrangements have as much fun and flair as those of fellow Sparks collaborator Giorgio Moroder, and feel more substantive and organic than Sparks’ many attempts to play with various genres in which they remained outsider dilettantes. Likewise, the Mael brothers’ lyricism is a major improvement to the often clunky English offered by previous efforts by the Belgians. Recontextualized amidst a sea of dreamy Euro-pop, and delivered by Telex’s suave yet unassuming vocalist Michel Moers, the same style of lyricism that often makes Sparks feel crass and overwrought to me becomes transmuted into something I’m much more amenable to. Much like Devo, I’ve often found the “smartest guys in the room” vibe of Sparks a bit off-putting, but Sex has a certain subtlety or ambiguity about it, that keeps me coming back and pondering it.

Music: “Dummy”

The feel-good, squelching bass grooves of “Dummy” recall the most affable work of the seminal Yellow Magic Orchestra, and a falsetto hook that’s to die for marks it as one of the more pop-oriented tracks on the album. Had it stopped at “Dummy, hey, I’m talking to you,” it would be not only less interesting musically, but also conceptually; the overt questioning, “now who’s the dumb one?”, rescues it from simply being mean. I like to think it calls to mind the archetype of the fool who is constantly vocally doubting the intelligence of others, in an attempt to cover for their own insecurities. While it’s a comparatively simple track, lyrically, it establishes some of the album’s most important themes, portraying traditional “intelligence” as mutable, and perhaps questionable. Despite its appeal, “Dummy” was actually not included on the original tracklisting of the album, but rather debuted as the B-side to the single “Brainwash,” before receiving this promotion in later revisions of the LP. In this rare case, I actually think the later edition is superior, and it’s the one I’d recommend.

Music: “Brainwash”

Besides just sharing opposite sides of the same single, there’s also a strong thematic connection between “Dummy” and the slower-paced, narrative-driven “Brainwash.” Arguably the most high-concept track to be had on Sex, “Brainwash” tells the tale of an intellectual who willingly forfeits his intelligence for the sake of falling in love. That, in and of itself, is a take on the love song that I’ve never heard before. We all know the trope that being in love makes one stupid--our word “infatuation” is basically Latin for “being made stupid.” But “Brainwash” suggests that, given the choice, we might well be better off as fools rushing in. What good is a life full of knowledge if it is one without passion, and deeper humanity? The narrator of “Brainwash” seems fully cognizant of what they abandon, and makes an informed decision to do so. But what complicates things even further is the development that the object of the narrator’s affections seems desperate to make them regain their prior book smarts--perhaps a commentary on how society frames this issue, and its willingness to prioritize the prestige of education over genuine human happiness. The single “Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?” explores a related, but also distinct tension between knowledge and happiness.

Music: “Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?”

Moreso than anything else on the album, “Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?” is really sort of harrowing. Moers’s falsetto feels less like a fun disco aftershock and more like a cry of pain, and the stilted melody and more brash synthesiser stabs establish an air of unease--though still not so strong that it feels out of place alongside lighter tracks like “Brainwash.” Its lyrical narrative is plainly a tragic one, with a narrator who thinks he’s encountered his wife, but can’t quite piece it together, or get the response that he’s looking for. It’s evocative of the very real agony a sufferer of dementia and their loved ones might face, losing their memories, and, with them, their connection to the people around them. But perhaps the most eerie thing about the track is that it never does dip into more maudlin territory, even if it feels like it ought to. In the full context of the album, and particularly the sentiment expressed by “Brainwash,” we’re forced to question just how unfortunate the tale expressed in this song is. Perhaps “Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?” is also suggesting that love is more powerful than knowledge, in its own way. Perhaps the characters it presents have transcended the need for knowledge of their shared history, because their bond is deeper and more primal than that? Similarly subversive questions about love are also posed by “Exercise Is Good For You.”

Music: “Exercise Is Good For You”

With a pleasingly abrasive, textured synth line and a rather singable refrain, “Exercise Is Good For You” is the one track cut from the later version of the album that I do find myself missing. This track’s narrator has devoted themselves to exercising--perhaps over-exercising--in the wake of a bad break-up. At first blush, it may seem a bit absurd, but this is a real-life coping mechanism, and one that can potentially be quite dangerous, particularly as it’s often combined with eating disorders. The potential for peril is compounded by the notion that, well, “exercise is good for you,” and that in a world where too few of us partake, anyone who does must be doing the best for their health. While it doesn’t deal with the realm of knowledge, I do think “Exercise Is Good For You” works in a similar space as tracks like “Brainwash” and “Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?” do, offering an ambiguous narrative that asks us to question something we habitually value--in this case, by portraying the apparent virtue of physical fitness in a darker and less healthy light.

Earlier, I referred to this album simply as Sex, but for the UK market, it was re-christened Birds & Bees. There is obviously something quite transgressive and irreverent about naming a pop album “Sex”! We like to think of pop music as trading chiefly in themes of love and romance, so the title Sex functions as a bit of a “low blow,” suggesting that we ought to think more cynically about “what’s really going on below.” Despite this, there’s really not a lot of terribly bawdy tracks to be had on either version of the album, which may come as some surprise if you’re familiar with their early track “Pakmoväst.” I think the fact that the album title was changed, and seemingly “censored” with the very knowing title Birds & Bees, only adds to its transgressiveness, and lends it a certain allure of the forbidden.

You won’t find birds or bees on the cover of the album, however, but rather a butterfly, feeding off the nectar of two large flowers. It’s certainly an image that can be read as evocative of sensuality, with yonic visual overtones. Perhaps more overtly offensive to the eye is its queasy, dull yellow colour scheme, which is actually much more stuck in the 70s than the rather sharp and with-it electro-disco stylings of the music.

Historically, the butterfly is often used as a symbol of innocence, particularly with respect to the carnal knowledge of sex. In François Gérard’s depiction of the mythological heroine Psyche, a butterfly hovers above the subject, as she receives her first kiss from her lover, Cupid, a god of lust and sexual desire. The suggestion of youthful innocence is only heightened when the title Birds & Bees is applied. We might also consider the similarity between the idea of naivete or innocence as a virtue, and the apparent thrust of tracks like “Brainwash,” which also challenge the utility and benefit of knowledge about the world.

Telex would go on to release three more LPs after this one, and while they never quite surpassed a cult following, they keep up with the times quite respectably, incorporating sampling and digital synth textures without losing their signature levity and playfulness. I think they’re well worth a listen if you’re interested so far.

Music: “Raised By Snakes”

My favourite track on this album is one that’s exclusive to the later release, and never appeared anywhere else: “Mata Hari,” which was not only added to the album, but given the prominent position as its opening track. Mata Hari was actually a real person, a courtesan famous for her exotic dances inspired by her time in the Dutch East Indies. But she became caught up in the political storm of the First World War, and the French government convicted her of spying for the Germans--even though many believed she was framed. After her execution for the alleged crime, her severed head was embalmed and displayed in a Parisian museum, for all to gawk at...until it mysteriously went missing, possibly stolen by an “admirer.” It’s a strange and tragic tale, for sure, and one suitably treated with a sense of mystery and uncertainty by the song. An undoubtedly complex and controversial figure, Mata Hari can be seen as a symbol of European disunity, not unlike the Berlin Wall, as well as a representation of sensuality used for devious and destructive ends. I think this track enriches the album’s themes while also feeling somewhat separate, with its more pensive mood and third-person lyricism. That’s everything for today--thanks, as always, for listening!

Music: “Mata Hari”

[clean-bands-dirty-stories]

Idiots ~ H.D.

A/n: God I love requests when people KNOW my branding!!

Request: “Hamish duke x male reader we’re the reader is a magician but can’t tell when someone is flirting with him and hamish trying to get his attention” by anon

Word Count: 3800+

Masterlist

Once upon a time, two boys sat at a table together in a little coffee shop. One of them went on and on and on about something and the other watched him with an expression that channeled both confusion and adoration. Everyone looking on had the same mixed expression, but this time with different emotions: charmed amusement, and frustration.

See, Hamish and Y/n were adorable and obviously in love and those who didn't even know them looked at them and saw a couple and smiled because young love. Because young love gave everyone hope. Because it was fresh and pretty and admirable and kind of funny when you thought about all they were going to go through, imagining it with a happy ending of course.

Unfortunately, for those who did know them, Hamish and Y/n were really fucking annoying.

They were obviously in love with each other - or at the very least attracted on some level. Y/n always listened to Hamish ramble, even though he obviously had no idea what Hamish was going on about most of the time. Likewise, Hamish dealt with Y/n's severely annoying ability to not perceive literally any attempt at flirting Hamish threw at him.

Don't get me wrong, Hamish was trying. REALLY HARD. He's been trying since they first met. Hamish had been forming a friendship with this girl- the only person who could keep up with him when he talked about his field and major. But there came a moment when he noticed that she lost interest in him and what he was saying, even as she talked and joked along in time. The day he'd met Y/n, the boy had been talking to that girl that Hamish was sort of becoming acquaintances with. He used to know her name, but she had been quickly forgotten when Hamish had noticed how Y/n never lost interest in him, even though the poor English major was obviously way over his head trying to understand what Hamish was saying.

Long story: the girl and Hamish stopped talking in favor of Hamish giving Y/n all his attention. He preferred to be cared about and he appreciated the effort Y/n was giving, even if he couldn't deliver with any results. He liked that he could go on and on about anything - even things outside of school - and Y/n would listen without complaint. There was something so genuine about Y/n. It drew Hamish in a lot. After a while, their conversation drifted from Hamish talking and Y/n listening to Hamish trying to get as much information about Y/n as he could. Y/n was willing to talk about a lot, and where he was hesitant Hamish recognized the line he'd drawn and let it be. They were only friends for five and a half months, but in that time Hamish had developed very deep feelings for Y/n. Which had lead him to try his hand at flirting.

At first he'd thought Y/n wasn't interested, but then someone had made a joke about them being a couple and Y/n had gone along with it without hesitation. Which seemed to Hamish as if he didn't mind the idea. He had looped in a classmate on a promise he'd do the kid's next assignment. The kid had flirted with Y/n, getting the same complete lack of understanding Hamish did. It seemed that despite Y/n being super affectionate and kind, and even though he was quite smart if Hamish gave the time and effort to help him understand, Y/n was the single most oblivious person Hamish had ever met. At some point Y/n had decided that no one would ever like him, or maybe he'd accepted flirting in some other form. Whatever it was, Y/n did not pick up on any common form of flirting at all.

Hamish tried for two months. TWO. MONTHS. He gave up and even tried straight up pick up lines. Y/n's response had been to return with pick up lines of his own and then to say, "I love that we can joke around like this. It's so refreshing, when everyone around here seems to be so gloomy and shit these days."

Hamish was at his wit's end. He was ready to just take a leap of faith and tell Y/n his feelings straight out and take the hit if Y/n rejected him. Before he could, unfortunately, he found a blue rose on his desk one morning as he prepared for his TA period. He'd looked around to see what it could possibly mean and after several hours and dark holes and wrong paths, came across the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose. Instead of confronting Y/n about his feelings, he decided to go to this thing tonight. It seemed interesting and might give him time to clear his head. He enjoyed new things and learning opportunities. Something fresh to figure out might even clear his head and help him with this whole Y/n predicament.

That evening as Y/n and him did their usual afternoon studying together, Y/n seemed upset about something. Hamish wasn't going to prod about it, as he'd learned that Y/n only shared his thoughts and emotions when he was ready to, but it was setting a weird mood.

"Hamish?" The blonde boy looked up, expecting Y/n to finally share. Whatever he'd been expecting, what Y/n said next threw him off. "Don't go tonight."

Hamish's eyebrows came together. "Don't go to what?"

Y/n pursed his lips before looking at the colored pencils he'd been doodling with. They'd found that if Y/n took a few seconds every once in a while to do something other than homework, he had a lot better time studying. That didn't seem to be what he was thinking about now. He picked up a blue pencil and reached over, handing it to Hamish. "Will this one be okay to use on your notes? I know you're peculiar about how you organize them.”

Hamish didn't highlight his notes. He stapled them by units and had a different folder for each of his classes, but that was it. If he really needed to remember something, he would use blue pen instead of black. He hated using pencil though- it faded and smeared.

However, despite the oddity, Hamish was not confused about the message Y/n was sending. There was only one thing Hamish was doing tonight, as they'd made no other engagements. And the only way Y/n would know about it...

Y/n was part of the Order of the Hermetic Blue Rose. And he was telling Hamish not to come to the whatever it was.

In Y/n's eyes, Hamish saw a plea for Hamish to avoid the thing altogether.

"It'll be fine," Hamish said slowly. Y/n's level of code and secrecy lines up with the Order. After all, they were kind of like the Illuminati, if the Illuminati were real. It was super secret and most people thought it a big joke. Hamish had thought it a joke himself before he'd gotten that rose. He'd only heard of it in passing, mostly when homework "went missing" and people joked about the Order whisking it away, or someone wasn't in class and people played with the idea of them having crossed the Order. If Y/n was apart of it, he would never say it in any way.

"No," Y/n argued. He seemed to think for a second and Hamish realized that he was trying to deliver a message to Hamish. "Honestly Hamish I think this class is bad for you. You seem to struggle with it a lot. Maybe you should just drop it. I've been... meaning to tell you for a while now."

Raising an eyebrow, Hamish tried to figure out what Y/n was saying. Did he think this would be too hard for Hamish? That he wasn't smart or tough enough? No, that wasn't in character. Y/n always encouraged Hamish to do things even when Hamish himself set a limit. He decided to test the waters, push back a little. Try and get more information. “I mean it's not that bad. I've been enjoying it."

Y/n frowned. "I took it last year and it almost ruined my transcript. I know how much you care about your grades- it might really hurt them. Dangerous stuff you're playing with here." Hamish's eyebrows came together. Before he could ask, Y/n stood and gathered his stuff. "I'll see you tomorrow." He gave a tight smile, fear in his eyes. What was he afraid of? He left and Hamish gave only a small nod.

Was the Order really so serious? I mean honestly it was just a bunch of college kids. Were they... cruel? Maybe it was more of a gang than some powerful organization. Maybe Y/n was in trouble.

Well that meant that Hamish absolutely had to go. He needed to know what was going on and how to help Y/n, if he could. If he couldn't, at least they'd be able to watch each other's backs.

So he did.

And before anything happened, a weird ringing sound took over his entire mind and the next thing he knew he was in a room he sort of recognized but had no memory of. Naked. Covered in blood.

The next time he saw Y/n, surprise surprise, actually wasn't when they were all attacked by those they'd been closest to the last six months. And by they, he meant the three other people he also kind of recognized but, yet again, had no memory of. No, it was actually a little after he discovered what the Order really was and found out he was a werewolf. Alyssa Drake of all people popped out of nowhere, promising to give their memories back. And as she talked to Jack and tried to convince him to trust her, Hamish spotted Y/n next to her.

He became human and put a robe on, coming into the room. He felt a lot of emotions. They pushed him to blow right past Alyssa and Jack, straight to Y/n. Hamish pinned him against the wall, anger seeming to have taken the most hold for now. Y/n looked terrified, but when their eyes met his expression softened. Hamish got the impression that Y/n was not afraid of him, but something else. It made worry boil up and he pushed it down, trying to keep hold of himself.

"Tell me you weren't sent to watch me. Tell me you aren't one of them, Y/n."

The room was very quiet as the others came in, everyone watching. Y/n searched for the words for a second. "I- Hamish, I'm part of the Order." Hamish stepped back and Y/n's eyes watered. He seemed to be more panicked now. "I didn't become your friend just to watch you like the others though! We weren't ever supposed to meet or talk, not like we did. The- the girl I was talking to the day we met. SHE was supposed to watch you. But you started ignoring her and seemed to take to me better, so I- I- I hate it now, but back then I was just doing what I was told."

"So you took my memories?" Hamish demanded. "That didn't strike you as wrong?"

"Okay first of all," Y/n snapped. "I didn't even know who you were for like two and a half weeks after we started talking, okay? When they told me, they introduced you as some incredibly dangerous monster who was hellbent on killing everyone who used magic so even if I had, it would have been in self defense because I thought you were dangerous."

Lilith stepped forward. "If you had?"

Y/n huffed, straightening his clothes. "I didn't ever dust you. By the time they told me who you were, they only told me because I was talking to someone about this guy that I-" he cut off, and Hamish shifted upon seeing the blush rise up his throat. Lilith and Alyssa both wore the exact same look. They knew exactly how Y/n felt. "I was friends with." It was then that Jack's eyes went wide with understanding too. "They tried to convince me to stay away because of what you are, but all you've ever been is funny and smart and really talented and snarky as hell." He huffed in amusement. "I was always kind of impressed with you, your sass is like next level it's amazing." Everyone in the room felt the oddity of the warring emotions of everyone else with the weird sort of light and humor Y/n brought to the table. They wanted to smile, but there was too much else going on. Y/n cleared his throat, trying to not default to humor. Hamish cursed himself for being concerned- he knew that Y/n struggled a lot with being emotionally vulnerable. "Anyway, I don't know who did it or how or when, but they never even asked me to. They thought that we had stopped talking for the most part. I never talked about you again at least."

"Until now," Alyssa spoke up. "He confronted me. Begged me to help because he said I would understand since I was... friends with Jack. I told him about my plan to come here and help you guys and he was more than willing and ready. We were hoping that together we might be able to convince you."

The Knights got quiet, all listening to each other. But it was clear that everyone but Randall was nearly completely convinced, and Randall didn't care enough to argue. If  his friends were going, so was he.

They all lined up and Alyssa dusted them. At first they panicked but when they all woke up with their memories completely returned, Hamish's eyes immediately landed on a very hopeful Y/n. He scrambled to his feet, trying to find his words. "You lied to me." Y/n paled. He seemed to be terrified again, but this time Hamish knew immediately why. He was scared of losing Hamish.

Again.

"Hey guys! How are we doing?" Y/n was smiling as usual. It was dazzling to Hamish.

"Better now that you're here."

Y/n laughed. "I know you've been having a hard time with homework, but have you really been so miserable without the comedy relief around to lift the mood?"

Everyone exchanged looks. Everyone but Y/n, who was as always oblivious to everything. Hamish had struck out again.

The first memory was the easiest to swallow.

"Hey Hammy."

"You've been spending too much time with Randall," Hamish sighed as Y/n greeted him upon entering the Den. Y/n laughed. "Maybe you should be spending more time with me."

"Miss me?" Y/n teased.

Hamish looked up from his book, locking eyes with Y/n. "Yeah. Maybe just us? Tonight? Dinner? Movie? Something else?"

Y/n shrugged, his expression unchanged. "Yeah sure dude. I'm starving, and the new-" Hamish stopped listening after that. His message had gone unreceived once more.

He could remember everything, and yet he found himself mulling over the ones about Y/n the most.

"You should wear that shirt more often. You look very good in it."

"Thanks man."

And-

"You free later? I was thinking maybe we could get better acquainted."

"And see I was sitting here thinking we were already best friends." Y/n’s frustratingly beautiful laugh rang out again and Hamish felt his shoulders slump. "Yeah I'm down to hang. Anything for my best buddy."

Then there was-

"Hey Y/n nice pants. They'd look great on Hamish's floor."

"Very funny Lilith," Y/n hummed as he read a book. Hamish shot her a death glare as he sat next to Y/n, his arm draped over the back of the couch they both sat on.

"Not a joke," Randall chimed in. "I think they'd really match the walls. Maybe try it out?"

"I would have to take them off to do that, and I don't see the point of going all the way back to my dorm to get another pair of pants for me to wear just so we can see how these look on Hamish's floor. Total waste of time, especially when I have to have this book read by tomorrow for class."

Eventually Hamish had just turned to pick up lines.

"Hey Y/n, can you hold this?"

He held out his hand and Y/n went to take whatever he was holding, only for Hamish to interlock their fingers. Y/n laughed and didn't drop his hand, even as he rolled his eyes to dismiss what was happening. "Now who's been spending too much time with Randall?" After Y/n looked the other way, Hamish frowned and dropped his hand.

Attempt after attempt after attempt....

"Kiss me if I'm wrong but dinosaurs still exist right?"

Y/n didn't even blink. "Dinosaurs do exist, silly. Well, their bones do. We can go the museum to check them out if you want to?"

Hamish huffed. "What about the kissing me part?"

"Well you were wrong, so I'll have to pass," Y/n reasoned calmly. Hamish glared at the opposite wall so Y/n couldn't see.

He had tried everything.

"You remind me of my homework, because I'm going to slam you on my desk and do you all night."

Y/n burst out laughing. "That's a good one! I haven't heard that one yet. Did you go on some weird kick and look all these up? You've had a load to share lately."

Hamish sighed. "Yeah. Randall got drunk and shared them all with me. I thought they'd make you laugh."

Until he'd finally just said it.

Hamish stood in front of Y/n, desperate. At this point, even his friends thought Y/n was a hopeless case. Maybe they'd been wrong. Maybe Y/n didn't like Hamish. Maybe he was just trying to be polite. "Will you go on a date with me Y/n?”

Y/n smiled at Hamish. "Lose to Cup Pong with Randall again?" Hamish didn't even waste the time to come up with something. He just turned around and walked away, ignoring Y/n's familiar laugh behind him.

He'd been sure that Y/n just wasn't into him. Until:

"If we die today, I need you to know that I love you."

"I love y-"

"No." Hamish grabbed Y/n by the shoulders, his eyes boring into the other boy's. "The Order is probably going to kill us today, or the next chance they get, now that they know about us.  Even if it's not today. I can't die without you knowing that I've legitimately fallen in love with you and it's driving me insane."

Y/n's eyes were wide and earnest, but before he could respond Vera and him had to face the magicians outside who had found the Den, and after there had been too much going on... He hadn't even gotten to get Y/n alone before his memory of Y/n had been taken completely in one go.

Hamish remembered everything. He remembered scheming with Randall, who knew Y/n the most of course because-

Randall was the first to move after they all woke up, dazed and trying to process all their new memories. He, of course, tackled Y/n in a hug immediately. They were both crying. "I'm sorry I forgot you."

"I knew you'd come around," Y/n reassured. "We're brothers man. You can't get rid of me even though you totally want to."

Leaning away, Randall laughed as he wiped his tears. The pair had been a duo for as long as any of the pack had known either of them. Randall was the one who acted like an idiot but was super smart. Y/n was the one who everyone thought was super smart because he got great grades and knew fun facts, but who was actually a total idiot in the sense that he had absolutely no people skills and misread almost every situation and made everything either really fun or super awkward. With help from Hamish he'd been able to figure it out a little. That's how they'd all met. Hamish had told them both about the Knights, but only Randall had been chosen by one of the furs. They'd all been friends until...

"Wait, you're part of the Order?" Hamish voiced.

Y/n sighed, Randall's arms falling away from him. "Alyssa came to me before. She begged me not to tell you, because if they didn't dust you then they were going to kill you. I figured it would be better to have you guys forget me than to be dead, at least until we could figure... something out. I told mom that something really bad had happened and you had disowned me. Said-" He blushed. "I said you and Hamish were together and I'd made a move on you. She was PISSED and left it to me to fix. I was just glad she didn't mention me to you at all. She's been mad at me for ages and demanding I figure out a way to fix it, so when Alyssa had the idea to just work with you guys instead of doing what we were told... I was all for it."

"He joined the Order so they wouldn't wipe his memories," Alyssa continued. "Because all of last year's additions had been... eliminated one way or another, we needed more people anyway. And since Y/n already knew about magic and you guys, it was only too easy to convince the Grand Magus to induct him."

Hamish stood and Y/n did with him. Randall immediately got protective, but Y/n placed a hand on his shoulder and he calmed. Not that he could take Hamish... maybe. Now Y/n was curious, but this wasn't the thing to be worrying about right now.

Hamish opened his mouth to speak, and from the look in his eyes Y/n could see what he was thinking. So he skipped the pleasantries and rushed to him, pulling him close by the back of his neck so their lips could press together. Everyone else, despite everything going on, cheered. After everything they'd been through and all the hardships they'd faced, finally - FINALLY - Y/n had figured his shit out.

When Y/n pulled apart, both boys were grinning. "I've been being your friend for the last few months so that when I finally found out a way to get your memories back, they wouldn't question it when we got together because goddamnit Hamish, I love you too. And I hope you still feel the way you did then, even knowing that I'm part of the Order. That I... I know magic, and use it." He looked like he was ready to get rejected.

"You still know nothing," Hamish whispered. "The fact that you could feel me miss you back and you still think I would chose any other relationship or person over you or let anything get between us... How can you be THAT stupid?"

Y/n socked him on the shoulder. "Asshole."

Hamish just grinned before hooking his finger in Y/n's belt loops. "Your asshole."

"Damn right," Y/n whispered, smirking.

Lilith reached over and chucked a pillow at them. "OKAY OKAY! We do have shit to deal with other than your guys' love life." She was right. The boys parted and everyone got ready to do whatever they had to next to make the scales balanced again. To make it all right.

But as they all headed to the the temple, Y/n leaned over and added, "I owe you a date."

Hamish just smiled at that. "More like you owe me ten."

[eschergirls]

Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2020/04/22/totally-true-gender-science-pc-zone

From Jess Morrissette on Twitter (with permission):

"For some women, the 3D space and layout of an area in a game like Quake is not immediately obvious to them. Tunnels which lead off from a room, or even the entire architecture of the room, may be 'invisible.'" Source: "How to Get Your Girlfriend Into Games" (PC Zone, May 1999).

Holy s- this piece.  And way to go with the "As your experiences in bed have undoubtedly told you, there is no bigger turn-off than a complete systems failure" part that seems to insult the presumed-to-be-male audience too? -_o  And the "science" snippet that says women can't play FPSes because we can't navigate 3D space, but women are good at adventure games because women talk more than men... but remember gamer guys, don't complain about women being bad at things because you used to be a girl in your mom's womb once! Holy cow, PC Zone, not helping.

Transcription for screenreaders (big thanks to Bella (@MoviePosters00) for the transcription):

HOW TO GET YOUR GIRLFRIEND INTO GAMES

You've been playing games for years, but just imagine what they must look like from a non-gamer's point of view. They suck. The graphics are crap. Look out of your window — that's good graphics. These just look shoddy and blocky in comparison.

And what's with all the violence? Why do you have to kill everybody? Why can't you just talk to them? And what are these locations? Cathedrals? Dungeons? Catacombs? God, it's all so dark and depressing. And why are there so many blokes in these games? And what the hell am I doing spending hours playing this when I could be out talking to people, reading books, watching films, living life... This is how girls think.

Girls and games rarely mix. They rarely mix because you — man, boy, bloke, fellow, chap, me lad —you designed them.

Unlike most other examples of popular culture, computer games are predominantly designed and programmed by blokes and so inevitably appeal to men and the male tick-list of desirable experiences: being a superhero, being competitive, being murderous, and doing things fast.

Sure, we play the odd puzzler like Tetris. And yes, we can be found occasionally talking to elves in adventure games. But on the whole, we want violence, people's heads exploding, fast cars, big jets and gouts of hot arterial blood splattered against cobblestones. We want wars and vast armies of ourselves crushing other vast armies of people different to us into the dust.

She thinks: "Why play stupid computer games when you could be making me a cup of tea, paying me some attention, taking me out (or whatever your relationship revolves around)?"

You think: "Why waste valuable time attending to you when I've got to complete this freaking level?"

She strops. You grit your teeth. You feel bad about playing so you grab what gameplay you can in unsatisfying snatches, standing up every five to ten minutes and stroking her hair.

You say: "You okay?" She says: "Yeah. Guess so." You sprint back to your machine for another five-minute burst. Suddenly it's 2am. She's face-down asleep and you're having just one more go. Relationship: terminated.

Obviously, the ideal situation would be for both of you to like games. Those with PlayStations will probably have already experienced a touch of curiosity about games from their partners. But if the PlayStation is designed to be simple and appealing, the PC is a horrible beige monolith, forced to do games as an afterthought.

But it can be done. You can get your girlfriend playing games. We at PC ZONE have designed a 12-Part System. It takes some planning and no small amount of patience. We can't guarantee 100 per cent results but we believe, if you follow this plan, at the least, she will have some idea of why the hell you play games in the first place.

THE 12 RULES OF GIRLFRIEND GAMING

Step-by-step techniques for getting your girlfriend into games

1 CHOOSE WISELY

There's no point throwing her directly into Falcon 4 or Dark Reign II. Keep your game choices simple and realistic. Choose a game with strong interactive qualities and with real-life locations. There aren't, however, many good girl games on the PC.

PC ZONE chooses:

Half-Life

The hazard course is a particularly good starting point. It takes a while to get going but once they're hooked, they'll never stop.

Tomb Raider III

Despite what feminists say about her bosoms, girls like playing girls. Especially strong, agile ones.

Motocross Madness

Great driving game set 'outside', with hyper-realistic graphics. Exhilarating and amusing.

Creatures 2

Yeah, yeah, they "get to raise babies". Easy joke.

Worms

Because you can name the worms and then blow them up.

Quake II

Multiplayer especially. They'll hate it at first but try and try again. They'll get it.

Grim Fandango

Interactive, movie-like, funny, with a plethora of locations and mysteries. How much more girly can a game get?

Others (recommended by visitors to our website)

Puzzle Bobble, YOU Don't Know Jack, Baku Baku Animal, Civilization, SimCity 3000, Sam & Max, Broken Sword, Little Big Adventure, Settlers 3, Caesar IA Fallout 2, Zork: Grande Inquisitor

2 SET UP YOUR ROOM

Rule number one: tidy it. Rule number two: tidy it again (and vacuum this time). No-one wants their first introduction to games to happen in the midst of a smeg pit. Clear the mugs away. Wipe all those shavings and toenails off your desk. Clear the cigarette butts, bits of paper, Blu-tack and Coke cans out of the way. Get a nice clean mouse — not one clogged up with three months' worth of dried skin. Clean all those manky half-moons of crap off the keys on your keyboard, too.

Use Stanislavski's Circles Of Attention technique to minimise her distraction. Turn off the main light in your room and erect a side light which creates a pool of illumination around your computer. This makes the computer screen the centre of focus and mutes any peripheral distractions. In short, she has nowhere to look if she gets bored.

3 SELL HER THE GAME

Talk to her in language she can understand. Remember: you are a computer games geek.

She is a proper person who cares about things like emotions and novels. Don't use jargon. Ramp up any 'interactive' elements (talking, speaking, puzzle-solving). Play down hyper-violent aspects (flying globules of gibbage, explosions with true particles, realistic death throes). Once she's over her initial reluctance, she'll be as bloodthirsty as anyone, but you have to get her there first.

Half-Life

You want to say: "Next-generation first-person shoot 'em up with strong narrative elements."

You should say: "011, it's an amazing unfolding story with you playing the central character."

Motocross Madness

You want to say: "The real-time shadows are unbelievable and on Voodoo2 it uses tri-linear mapping for a super-realistic fractal landscape."

You should say: "It's really realistic and it's set outside."

Worms Armageddon

You want to say: "It's like that tank game you used to play in school where you'd enter the trajectory and balance it against wind speed."

You should say: "It's like Tetris."

TOP TIP If you're ever in any doubt about how to describe a game, just say: "It's like Tetris." Whatever you do, though...

4 DON'T OVER-HYPE IT

"Oh God, this is the best 3D shoot 'em up ever. The graphics are unbelievable. It’s such a brilliant game. It rules." Do not say anything like this or you'll create preconceptions. A game will have to have reality-quality graphics and the most involving storyline ever known to grab her after that sales pitch. To the uninitiated, compared to reality, a good film or a great novel, games - all games - suck and blow (at the same time).

5 HAVE A GOOD MACHINE

Don't waste your time trying to convert her to the Dark Side if you're packing a five-year-old PC with a green screen and Sinclair BASIC. Who wants to see a glut of piss-poor pixels masquerading as people and locations? Get 3D acceleration. And get it now. Get RAM. Get a nice big monitor and some meaty speakers. If you're going to use a joystick, get a big, firm one she can grasp (yes, insert crap joke here).

Get a joypad if you can. Remember, computers were never designed for games. It may be more versatile in the long term, but a keyboard isn't as forgiving as a joypad (plus you get to see her 'girl-steering' the pad in mid air when taking corners in racing games). The mouse is a brilliant 3D navigation device, but not at first and certainly not for someone used to pushing icons around a flat screen.

6 ENSURE EVERYTHING IS RUNNING CORRECTLY

As your experiences in bed have undoubtedly told you, there is no bigger turn-off than a complete system failure. Blue screen General Protection Faults are the gaming equivalent of a hair-trigger ("Oh sorry, I just GPF'ed"). Create a load of shortcuts on the desktop and configure keys/joystick/sound/video in advance - you don't want to stop the action over and over to adjust CD music volumes or the 'crouch' button.

Don't decide to check your email. Don't receive any phone calls. Don't schedule a clan match. Don't invite your mates over for a pissing contest. Make sure it's just you and her.

7 DON'T TAKE OVER

This is Five Gold Rings of the plan - the most important piece of advice. Resist the temptation to dominate proceedings. As she tumbles - for the fortieth time - headlong into the lava, do not snatch the mouse out of her hand and show her how it's done. Encourage. Encourage. Encourage. Every fibre in your body will be screaming for you to take the mouse - don't. Take a deep breath and count to ten. Better still, go outside and scream into a pillow (perhaps two. Eiderdowns). The more you interrupt and cajole, the less she will become immersed in the game and the more you will fail.

8 REASSURE HER

Like any newbie, she needs constant reassurance.

She says: "I'm crap."

You say: "No, you're not just schooled in the conventions of this medium."

She says: "Oh, I can't do it"

You say: "It took me a while to get the hang of it, too."

She says: "What's the point? I don't get it. I'm not doing it anymore."

You say: "There's a really brilliant bit coming up. Just stick at it."

She says: "I'm bored."

You say: "There's a bit like Tetris coming up in a sec."

She says: "Where's the bit like Tetris?"

You say: "It's coming in a minute, okay?

9 DON'T PATRONISE HER

"Ooh, you're doing really well," you say, as she dies on the Half-Life hazard course 50 times in a row. She's not stupid. She knows the difference between succeeding and failing. If she has developed black-ball trouble or a psychological block, change the scenery. Try a different game or a different level. Surreptitiously turn God mode on. Anything.

10 MAKE IT PART OF AN EVENING

Don't just announce that tomorrow night, you'll be playing computer games together. Or lock her in and force her to sit in your chair for hours. Go out for some beers first, or get some wine in, or whatever your relaxation method of choice is. Don't push it. Imagine this is like date number two or three. You wouldn't slap it on a tray and say "Let's go," would you? Maybe you would, but pacing and timing and bit of restraint are going to get you further.

Also, get some snacks in. PC ZONE recommended snacks for girlfriend gaming: Tooty Fruities.

11 POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

It is a psychological fact that people will do things they don't want to if there's a reward for them at the end. You may have to trade. Say you'll go to see a film with subtitles with her if she spends an hour playing games. Or that you'll cook something other than corned beef curry. Or that you will finally pull out those dirty socks that are stuck like cardboard behind the radiator. There has to be a trade. You don't get something for nothing. Hopefully, to use an unfortunate comparison, like Pavlov's dog, every time she hears the ping of the SimCity 3000 menu options or the splattery fine red mist of giblets hitting cobblestones in Quake, she'll start salivating.

And finally...

12 DON'T BE SELFISH

Now you have succeeded in getting her as addicted to games as you are, you must nurture her interest. This means sharing your machine.

Remember, girls always win at beat 'em ups. You can revise all the best, most shimmery combos and special moves but she, just by randomly banging the joypad, will triumph every time. If you lose, don't tell her it was "a crap game anyway". Be gracious.

Maybe you should invest in another PC and set up a network. That way, she can play, you can play, and you can settle washing-up arguments with the railgun. Ah, bliss...

Oh, and don't forget to delete that porn.

AND NOW, THE SCIENCE BIT...

Blokes don't like talking about their emotions and girls can't park. Crass sweeping generalisations or statistically proven sweeping generalisations?

A variety of behavioural differences have been reported for men and women, and researchers have zoned in on 'parallel parking' as an example of the differences between male and female thought processes. Men can often 'see' the space, in 3D, in their brains. Women can perceive the gap, but need to talk about it in order to understand its relationship with the length of their car. They ask themselves questions and come to a conclusion, which takes longer than the male approach, which Is just to pile in there and use the alarms of the vehicles in front and behind to judge distances.

This car-parking phenomenon also has an influence on the way women perceive computer games. For some women, the 3D space and layout of an area in a game like Quake is not immediately obvious to them. Tunnels which lead off from a room, or even the entire architecture of the room itself, may be 'invisible'. This is not, as your grandfather no doubt maintains, because "women are stupid" but simply because they have a tendency to perceive 'negative space', the gaps between objects rather than the objects themselves.

The widely-held belief that women only like adventure games can be explained by recent studies, which found that women spend 43 minutes a day making personal calls and men only 22. Women speak, on average 9,000 words a day, while men utter a mere 2,000. Generally speaking, women communicate more and enjoy the act of talking and interacting more than men.

Anyway, before you start moaning about crap girl gamers or bad parking arguments, remember this: until six weeks into your mother's pregnancy, you were a girl. Then your defective X chromosome kicked in. Everything went haywire and for some reason your nipples weren't absorbed. Your clitoris, however, remained and grew and grew into your penis. Just remember that.

PUT TO THE TEST

We put PC ZONE's 12-Part System for getting your girlfriend into games to the test. We took a bunch of girls, various games, applied the system and tried to convert them to the Dark Side. Here's what happened...

NAME: Paula

AGE: 27

JOB: Make-up artist

STANCE ON COMPUTER GAMES BEFORE: "Boring waste of time. A typically mindless male pursuit."

STANCE AFTER: "No different. The kind of thing you do in the absence of any other stimulation or activity. When you're trapped in the house and there's no alternative. It makes me want to go and read a book."

VERDICT: Thoroughly resisted conversion to the Dark Side.

NAME: Vanessa

AGE: 22

JOB: Model

STANCE ON COMPUTER GAMES BEFORE: "I've only played PlayStation games before. I like martial arts games."

STANCE ON COMPUTER GAMES AFTER: "I really enjoyed them, but I still prefer games that get my adrenalin going."

VERDICT: Converted.

NAME: Mandy

AGE: 27

JOB: Hairdresser

STANCE BEFORE: "I've played puzzley games like Tetris. I get quite addicted, but how blokes can play them for hours or weeks strikes me as strange."

STANCE AFTER: "It's tempting once I get started."

VERDICT: Not much change

NAME: Emma

AGE: 24

JOB: Archaeologist

STANCE BEFORE: "They're all full of blood and violence. For boys who haven't grown up. I like building games like SimCity."

STANCE AFTER: "A bit disappointed you can't shoot people's legs off, but yeah, good fun."

VERDICT: Success.

NAME: Helen

AGE: 28

JOB: Stockbroker

STANCE BEFORE: "They are quite good, but far too complicated. A solitary, masturbation-type thing."

STANCE AFTER: "Yeah, good. I like them. Although I don't think I'm going to develop a habit or anything."

VERDICT: Our job here is done.

Quake ll

PAULA: "It's quite dismal. I don't have any sense of where I am. I'm just running around mindlessly. (Picks up some health 'biscuits.') Have those things disappeared because I picked them up? I don't know where I am. Am I trapped underground? Don't know where I've come from, don't know how to get out (she spends minutes shooting wall fillings). How do I know that's a door? I don't really understand the rewards. I get mild satisfaction from shooting someone. And blowing their head off."

Motocross Madness

PAULA: "I like the outside setting and the freedom. It's exhilarating to move over nice bumpy terrain. It doesn't look that realistic".

VANESSA: "I love this. It's more me. I love racing. The graphics aren't that amazing. I do like the crashes, though. It's wicked. I could play this for hours. It's brilliant. Wheeeeee (performs enormous, deadly cartwheel which should splatter drivers against the rockface like a plum). There's so much open space all over the place. I even like falling off."

MANDY: "It's a bit samey. What are you supposed to do? I like having race-oriented goals. I wouldn't buy it. It's got really weird, illogical controls."

EMMA: "Don't think much of the ground. How are you supposed to know where you're going? I've never been on a bike before... Oooh! I'm doing a wheelie! (The girls clap.) Why is it so sunny? It wouldn't be sunny. It'd be all muddy, like on KickStart, with people standing around who you could hit."

Pacman

PAULA: "Immediately challenging, but there's a really depressing quality about it. The `so what' factor is very strong. The graphics are shit - just lines and dots on a bit of paper. Don't care whether I win or lose. (Indignant) How old is this game?"

Half-Life

PAULA: "Much more exciting than Quake II. More problem solving - more appealing in that sense. The tension is greater and there's more suspense. The usual dismal, claustrophobic setting. It makes me feel anxious and tense. Ah! Ah! (Genuinely screams loudly when she sees a zombie.) That's horrible! I get bored when I go round and round in circles. It makes you aware of how mindless it is. It's quite satisfying - oh (plummets 10,000 feet to her doom) but it's quite satisfying to kill a bizarre monster."

VANESSA: "Feels more real than on the PlayStation. It's quite exciting - all these holes to jump through. It's exciting to use all these fingers. I hate it when I lose. I love guns. I like holding the gun. I thought I just came up the ladder. Why should I go down again? I wish something more exciting would happen. This is boring."

MANDY: "This is good. I like this. I like the fact that you're making progress. I'm excited. I like the way his arm moves (she ducks to avoid low pipes on screen). Quite impressive, but I couldn't play it for hours."

Grim Fandango

HELEN: "Superb. I like things like this. I like shooting things, it leads you into the scenario. You have to find something, secret things (she is getting visibly excited). There's a mystery. That gave me a rush of pleasure (she finds the way out of the first room). That looked like it should do something. I want to go back and see."

EMMA: "it's the kind of game where you'd suddenly realise it was 2am and you had to get up for work in the morning. I like the music that's on in the background."

MANDY: "There's so much more to see - it's a lot more interesting to look at. I like the detail. You're not just doing the same thing over and over again. It's good because this isn't the kind of game where my boyfriend could phone me up to brag about his high score. Yeah, he does that"

[agentofscifi]

Super Genius Marinette Ch. 1

So, I read Marinette: Iron Man Rising & Ladybug: Young Avenger by @unmaskedagain and total loved them. Then I got the idea, what if Marinette was Ironman’s kid. I know there’s been a lot of BioDad ideas for Marinette and I wanted to try this one out. Hope you guys love it!

I stare down at my classmates over the top of my iPad. They were all chatting away about random things they would be doing during the summer and their pool party celebration after final exams. There were a few pointed jabs at me by Alya and Lila, but I simply ignored them. They’d gotten worse this year after it was revealed that I supposedly forced Lila to lie about having a lying disease to get out my expulsion the year previous. I simply rolled my eyes at their naivety. Coming next fall, this entire class would crash and burn. 

My class had a lot of potential, however, they never really did anything with it. It didn’t help that this entire room ran itself off of my scheduling, reminders, and fundraising due to my class representative job. I was still kind of angry at myself for taking the job. I was already juggling a lot of work. Being Ladybug was time-consuming enough, adding on class representative duties put me behind in my real studies. That was one secret I had been harboring for years. I am a child genius and the daughter of the famous Tony Stark.

When my mother was young she had a brief one night stand with my biological father, Tony Stark, while on vacation. When my mother was just a few months pregnant, she met my Papa at baking class. They started dating and ended up opening a store together. When I was just 1, they married. Now, shortly after my birth, my Mama called my Dad to inform him that she was pregnant. A DNA test was done on the sly. My father never revealed that he had a child and my existence was kept a secret. So secret that only my Father, Mama, Papa, Aunt Pepper, Uncle Rhodes, Uncle Happy, my Papa’s parents, and my Mama’s parents knew about it. A small circle that somehow remained small. 

My father sent birthday gifts, called and video chatted, and he even attended a ceremony in Paris when I was a child. However, all three of my parents wanted me to have a normal life. It was slightly more difficult when I managed to trick-out a computer at four and fix household appliances at six. They ended up sending me to a specialized école élémentarie. I was put on a fast-tracked schedule that had a lot of self-studying and online learning. If I kept to the schedule, I would graduate from Lycée at 14 and started University at 15. A few months younger than my father. 

I, however, insisted on attending normal school to keep up with kids my age. I didn’t care as much about starting university at an unusual age. I did skip a grade, however, as I couldn’t hide all of my knowledge. So, I started at a regular école élémentarie. Classes were general alright, I enjoyed the literature classes and speed through the science and math classes. I mostly did my advanced work in class. As long as I turned in my homework and wasn’t bothering people, my teachers didn’t care. Chloe did put a bit of a damper on friendships, as no one wanted to anger the Mayor’s daughter. However, I still enjoyed regular school. 

When I started Collége Françoise Dupont, at age 10, I was already through the first year of the materials. It got easier with me being in Madame Bustier’s class. She was a nice teacher but didn’t control her classroom very well. For two years I managed to do my advanced work without her ever knowing. Frankly, her relaxed environment made it easier for me to work ahead. When I started my third year of Collége, I had done all of the materials already. A year and a ½ of studying in a year’s worth of time. 

Of course, this is when it got messy. I received the Ladybug miraculous and made some real friends, or so I thought. All of this was fun and great, but it made working ahead more difficult. Adding on Ladybug work and class representative work made it possible for me to only do a year’s worth of Lycée work in a year. 

Father called, a little worried, but I easily calmed him down. I was still three years ahead of everyone else, plus adding on all of my design work and my class representative duties would make my college application even better. Less studying gave me more time to do independent work. My pseudonym, Maria, created several green energy products, three different popular apps, and an extremely lightweight, flame-resistant, and shrapnel resistant line for firefighters. I was a success, and I would continue to be, despite all of Lila’s mechanisms. Either way, I was in the last few hours of class with these idiots. Starting next fall, I’d be attending MIT in Massachusetts. 

I had a small, personal graduation from my specialized Lycée a week ago. I sent my transcripts from both my specialized Lycée and one from Lycée Françoise Dupont. I did get Madame Mandeleiev to help me get video footage of Lila framing me for my expulsion and write a letter explaining the issue of my rescinded expulsion on my record. A brief phone call and an email containing the Ladyblog link told MIT everything they needed to know about my classroom. I did get asked why I stayed. Truthfully, I wanted to see this through. After Lila’s return in the second half of my Troisieme year, I started collecting evidence against the Collége and Lycée Françoise Dupont for enabling bullies, extreme favoritism, and incompetence. 

“Marinette?” I glance up from my iPad to see Madame Bustier looking at me. The entire class is now looking at me. Lila is smirking next to Bustier. “Can you apologize to Lila?”

I raise one eyebrow. “What am I apologizing to Lila about?”

“For your rude and threatening words earlier, before class started, in the locker room.” Madame Buster speaks to me as if I am a small child. She’d done that to me for a while because I skipped a year. She seemed to think that because I was a year younger than everyone else, I need to be treated like a child. After Lila’s arrival, she became even more condescending. 

I glance at the clock really quickly. 2 minutes until the bell and just a few hours until I would be flying first class to New York. “I didn’t go to the locker room this morning Madame Bustier.”

Mrs. Bustier sighs. Lila smirks before sobbing loudly. It sounded horrible and fake, like some cheap amateur actress. “Oh, Marinette. I didn’t want to make a big deal about this. I just wanted you to apologize for your mean words and for stealing my iPad-I mean, oops!” Lila’s shirk is back, but the entire class misses it to turn to glare at me. Then the comments started.

“Dude, stealing is not cool!”

“Stop being such a bully!”

“I thought we could trust you!”

“I can’t believe this! I used to think you were such a good person.”

“Just give Lila back the iPad, Marinette.”

I roll my eyes, putting the iPad in my hand into my bag. “File a report.”

There’s silence. “What?” Lila looks at me in confusion. 

“File a report. If I really stole this iPad from you, go to the police. Have them do an investigation.” The bell rings above us and I stand from my seat. Everyone is still in the same spots, too stunted by my declaration to do anything. 

I walk down the stairs until I’m in front of Mrs. Bustier. I pull out a file and hand it to her. “I’m unable to be Class Representative next year. This is everything I need to hand over for my successor. All of the money earned for the Graduation trip in two years is in the class savings account. I left a page detailing how much was earned at each event this year.”

I move to leave the room, but Mrs. Bustier steps in front of me. “Marinette, we talked about this. The Marinette of the world, setting an example.” 

I met Mrs. Bustier’s eyes with a flat look. “Mrs. Bustier, I have a flight to catch, please move.”

“Marinette!” She sighs, but I had already moved around her.

Chaos starts to erupt behind me in the classroom. Students yelling about me being childish, some saying Lila should press charges, and others saying that they should just enjoy me being gone. Either way, it was no longer my problem. I didn’t have time for stupid people.

Next

[prurientpuddlejumper]

A Lipless Face That I Want to Marry, Ch. 4

<- Chapter 3 | Chapter 5 ->

Summary: Chilton’s recovery is slow and painful, and he is a cranky traumatized bastard who might be determined to push you away.    

1,878 words

Twelve days. Six surgeries. Fifteen blood transfusions.

“Did you bring me something to eat?” he whined. Considering he could barely lift his voice above a whisper, it was an impressive feat that he could whine. “Tell me you smuggled something edible that does not go into a tube through my nose.”

“I’m sorry, honey-bear,” you pouted. “But you know I can’t until the doctors OK it.”

“I am a doctor.”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re still at a high risk of going septic—no outside foods covered with outside bacteria. Besides, they won’t let you eat solids yet, anyway.”

“Sanguinaccio dolce. Mango smoothie. Crème brûlée. Yamakake Soba...” he listed off non-solid things you ought to have snuck in for his enjoyment.

“And how would I get them in there?” You rapped your knuckles on the clear acrylic of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber.

He scowled. “This is not a zoo. No tapping the glass.”

You grinned and pulled a chair alongside the chamber so you were sitting next to him.

“Did you bring the laptop?”

Slinging the messenger bag you were carrying off your shoulder, you pulled out a smooth rectangular object and held it up proudly. “That I did. I’m ready to write if you’re up for it,” you said, but added with some hesitation, “Are you sure you want to do this now? You should be resting, and… I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to relive what happened.”

“I am sure,” he snapped. “I may drop dead at any moment, so we will finish this now. While I still draw breath.”

You stiffened imperceptibly in your chair. The reminder that, despite making it this long, he was far from out of the woods was an unwelcome dagger in your chest, which you quickly plucked out and stuffed away in the box of things you weren’t going to think about.

“As for the wisdom of my reliving it—I feel his teeth every time I close my eyes. I may as well profit from the experience.”

Dr. Chilton was growing anxious that it had been nearly two weeks since his encounter with Francis “The Red Dragon” Dolarhyde, and he had not yet had the chance to publish on the subject. He had wasted far too much time being unconscious and dying—he needed to send a letter in to the American Journal of Psychiatry before some know-nothing crackpot took a swing.

He was the foremost authority on the Dragon—the only person to have communicated with him and lived who was not, himself, a fugitive for murder (or a blind girlfriend, but he doubted Reba was going to publish anything). This was his achievement. His way of staying relevant. The definitive analysis of the Red Dragon for the Journal, and then a spectacular ending for his book once he had his own hands to type with again. No one would take this opportunity from him.

After living with Frederick Chilton for over three years in relative domestic harmony, there were times you forgot what you ever used to dislike about him. Why you hated him so intensely when you first met.

This was not one of those times.

As you took dictation from your glass-encased fiance, you felt a crushing wave of empathy for the man’s poor secretary. He was demanding and fussy, making you read back every sentence to him line by line and mercilessly correcting any mistakes or omissions. He spoke slowly because of his weakened lungs and raw throat, and the thick glass and lack of lips made him difficult to understand, especially with nurses walking through and machinery beeping and whirring in the background—but when you tried explaining that to justify a transcription error, he took it as a personal affront.

You had to support him no matter what, you reminded yourself. This was much harder on him than you. You can always leave if you want you; he can’t. So when he was frustrated and cranky, you were patient and kind.

It took five hours and ten rewrites to get through two thousand words he was satisfied with submitting for publication, and you were nearly crying by the time you left.

***

Thirteen days.

High protein intake is critical to a speedy recovery in burn patients, but Frederick’s mangled digestive system could not tolerate protein very well. Keeping his kidney off the precipice of failure was a tightrope walk involving dietitians planning his every calorie intake, and daily blood work monitoring.

As a medical doctor, Frederick Chilton was aware of, and understood, these things. However he still rejected them as excuses when you once again did not bring him any outside food.

“Then what is the point of you coming?” he snapped, and immediately wished he had not. You stood frozen in the doorway of his recovery room unsure what you did wrong. You were right, of course—his throat felt like he had fellated broken glass. As much as he longed to chew something flavorful, with texture, he could not have swallowed solid food anyway. He closed his eyes. Softer, he asked, “Did you bring the March issue of the Journal of Psychiatry?”

You let out a held breath, unfreezing, and pulled the magazine out of your bag, presenting it with an upbeat flourish. “Delivered to your doorstep.”

“Would you read it to me?” He sighed, humiliated. It was not only that he could not hold the publication—even if you were to flip the pages for him, with only one working eye and no reading glasses, it was hopeless. He was completely dependent on you.

A cough shook his body as if to punctuate how completely he was broken. Useless. Weak.

The metal feet of the visitor’s chair scraped on the white floor like nails on a chalkboard as you dragged it close to his bedside, making him wince until you settled down and helped him browse for an article of interest.

He could barely make himself care about the content of the study. As you read, you rested one arm on the mattress right next to his, where it lay helplessly prone alongside his body, and he could feel the warm weight of you sinking into the cushion. The pressure was uncomfortable on his inflamed tissue, but soothing to something deeper. God, he wanted to be soothed. He wanted so badly to feel any kind of comfort. Anything to latch onto. He closed his eyes and got lost in your voice. For a moment, he could almost forget about the searing pain in each of his limbs and pretend he was at home, in his bed, with you.

The soothing, steady lull stopped, and he opened his eyes, horrified to find you looking intently at his ruined face. His nostrils flared painfully. “Do not stare,” he warned.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to,” you said. “I finished the article. I thought you fell asleep.” You searched for somewhere else to settle your eyes—the metal bar at the edge of the bed. Your lap. A flower arrangement.

You made such a show of not staring at him that he was even more certain that you had been. He was hideous. Perhaps that entertained you. You were probably already planning for Halloween. Red-hot thoughts swirled around his head like cinders.

Before you could get through a second article, a nurse came in with a tray of mushy hospital food. Humiliation stung deep for you to even see the damned tray, and it annoyed him that you did not immediately excuse yourself. There was no way in Hell he would allow you to watch such a disgusting, embarrassing process—being spoon fed like a toddler, the nurse wiping off his toothy chin of the spillage meant to be kept in check by lips.

“Go home,” he grumbled, leaving no room for argument.

You had barely been there for half an hour.

***

Fourteen days.

“Do you want to look at venues?” you offered, tucking him in with the extra blanket you had a nurse bring because he was cold.

“Venues?” he repeated with clear exasperation. He let out a weak cough.

“It’ll be fun! It’ll take your mind off things.” You grabbed your laptop off the plastic visitor chair where you’d left it, and excitedly held it up so he could see the screen from his prone position. There was already a search typed into google with preview images of scenic gardens glowing with string lights and towering ancient library ballrooms.

“I thought it went without saying our wedding date is… postponed.”

Your shoulders deflated. “I know, but… you’ll be out of the hospital by next year,” barring complications, “so we can use the time to plan. We were going to have to postpone anyway if you couldn’t pick anywhere that was good enough for your standards,” you teased.

“It is pointless.” He laughed bitterly, humorlessly, and your brief smile dropped.

“It isn’t… pointless.”

“I will not be able to visit any of the locations.”

“But we could make a list of places you want to visit when—”

“Stop!” he hissed.

“Oh,” you said quietly. “OK.” You sounded small. Too small.

“I… uh...” Frederick tried to say something. Something to make you sound less small and wounded. Fragments of thoughts and half-formed apologies stuck in his sore throat. Fuck, his skin hurt. Parts of it were starting to heal, but in the short-term that only made it worse, because now it itched, too. Pain. Itch. Guilt. Cold. You deserved so much more than him. “You should go,” he said at last, finally settling on the only way to make it better.

“Wh-what?”

“Just… go,” he croaked.

“I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again. What do you want to talk about? Or, I can shut up and we can listen to music, or...”

You were apologizing. Again. Because he was being an asshole. It disgusted him how weak he made you. You used to be so fierce. Stubborn and unstoppable. But being with him was slowly killing your fire.

“Get out of this place. I want to be alone.”

It was better this way, he thought. It was better for you to get away from him.

You stared at him silently across what now felt like a vast distance of white laminate flooring. His beautiful, pale, mismatched eyes were fixed on the ceiling, hard and uncompromising. He blinked rapidly.

You wished you knew what was going on in his head. You wished you could fix it for him. But right now, as much as it pained you, he wanted you to leave, and maybe that was the best you could do.

“OK,” you relented. “I’ll be back tomorrow, all right? I love you.”

The only sound as you packed your laptop away and slipped your coat over your shoulders was his ragged breathing, the beeps and tones of hospital machines, and the occasional cough. He waited until you were almost out the door before replying, “I love you, too.”

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Magnificent Scoundrels: The Team, Part I

After having this idea buzzing through my brain for a while, I got bored and decided to write it.  This is a multi-sci-fi universe crossover story, involving the Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, Titanfall, Mass Effect, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Warhammer 40,000, the Empyrean Iris stories by (), and my own sci-fi story, Tongues of Fire.  

Disclaimer:

I only own Tongues of Fire.  Disney owns Star Wars, CBS owns Star Trek, Microsoft owns Halo, Respawn Entertainment owns Titanfall, Marvel owns Marvel (should be fairly obvious), Games Workshop owns Warhammer 40,000, and starr-fall-knight-rise owns Empyrean Iris.

Note: Italics indicate thoughts

Note: Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, and Marvel (as in Marvel Comics and Marvel Cinematic Universe) exist as fictional stories in the Empyrean Iris Universe, as they were specifically mentioned or alluded to in the stories that make up that universe.  Likewise, Star Wars exists as a fictional story in the Marvel Universe, as it was specifically mentioned in several of the movies.  Otherwise, the other universes, even though they are fictional stories in the real world, do not exist as fictional stories from the respective fictional universes.

Now, sit back, relax, try not to die, and enjoy the story!

On the edge of several different galaxies 

Admiral Adam Vir walked the dark streets of what he thought was probably a long dead moon.  After the events of the past several weeks, he had received a mysterious summons from a mercenary from another galaxy to come here, this day, and hear an offer.  It was…uh, well, complicated.  Actually, complicated was putting it rather mildly, he mused.  Apparently, the man, named, he turned and discreetly checked the transcript of the message, Thomas Drake, was going to assemble a team of magnificent people to “to be all around awesome, make a ton of money, and generally get up to as many shenanigans as possible.”  This was going to end real well.

The shadows grew long as Adam, Sunny, his first lieutenant, and Krill, his medical officer, both aliens, walked into a small black building that looked like the outside of a respectable restaurant.  Two tall black-suited human guards stood at the entrance.  Strangely despite the dark, they wore eye-covering sunglasses.  As Adam and his retinue reached the entrance, the closer guard smiled.  

“Admiral Adam Vir?” he asked.  Adam forced a smile, overriding his instincts that this probably wasn’t a good idea.  Sunny and Krill shared a look.

“That’s me,” he replied.  The guard held up something that Adam recognized as a fingerprint scanner.

“Just put your hand here sir,” instructed the guard.  Adam did as he was told, and a green light blinked on the side of the device.

“You can go right in, sir,” said the guard as he opened the door for Adam and his friends.  

It was not what he expected.  It looked like an extremely high class lounge.  The windowless room was decorated with large black drapes with red trim, and had many white table-clothed booths and tables spread throughout.  There was an elegant bar on the side of the room near the door, and a dance floor on the side opposite it.  It looked quite classy, and quite cozy.  But the room itself took second place as the most interesting thing there.  By far the most interesting were the people.  Lounging and talking throughout the room, or quietly keeping to themselves and looking with suspicion at everyone else, they were probably the strangest and most varied group of people Adam had ever seen.  

Sitting far away from the door at one of the back tables, nursing a small glass of amber liquid, was a man with short-cut black hair.  He was completely by himself, and seemed rather content to remain so.  He was wearing some sort of strange, sleeveless armored vest, the likes of which Adam had never seen before.  An odd-looking green helmet with a strange x-shaped viewing slit sat on the table next to him.  The man had the look of a professional soldier, although exactly what type of soldier and from where, Adam had no idea.  

Across the way, sitting in a both, still towards the back but on the other side of the room, sat perhaps the strangest group of people Adam had ever seen, and that was saying a lot.  There were two two relatively normal looking people, a man and a woman, wearing military fatigues who glared pointedly at the two aliens in Adam's retinue when Adam looked at them.  Their regular looking appearance only served to contrast the man sitting in the middle of the both.  He had a long, scarred, rather handsome face that was framed by neatly trimmed sideburns.  Adam couldn’t really tell what color his hair was, however, because of the hat.  Where to begin with the hat?  It looked as if someone had taken several doses of LSD and tried to design an officer’s cap worn by the secret police of a fictional government agency, then made it several sizes bigger than normal.  The uniform wasn’t much better.  It was as if an insane Napoleonic-era Prussian tailor had created it, added an equally horrible-looking greatcoat, and draped the entire thing in altogether too much gold lace.  The overall effect was...bizarre, to put it mildly.  Although, now I want one, mused Adam.  The two wearing military fatigues looked at the gold-laced one, probably their boss, if the uniform quality was to be gone by, then looked back at Adams' group.  They seemed to be arguing over him, and the man made several gestures to emphasize a point before bringing his fist down on the table with a thump.  The insane-uniformed man rolled his eyes, grinned, said something that appeared to placate the two wearing fatigues, and swirled his drink experimentally before tossing it all back.  The two wearing fatigues kept glaring suspiciously in Adam’s direction.  It was only then that Adam seemed to notice the fourth person at the table.  The fourth man was sitting quietly by himself, wearing a more plain set of fatigues, bothering no one, but something about him felt...off.  Looking at the man sent chills down Adam’s spine, his collar itched for no reason, and his stomach suddenly felt slightly queasy.  He brushed it off, and kept looking across the room.

In another booth, towards the middle of the room, was...Han Solo and Chewbacca?  The hell was going on?  Was there some mercenary captain who dressed like Han Solo, the character from a 2,000 year old movie?  And there weren’t any aliens that looked like Chewbacca, or were there?  Confused, he shook his head to clear it and continued his search around the room.  His jaw dropped.  There, leaning against a wall, was the video game character Master Chief.  Another fictional character from a 2,000 year old story.  What the hell was happening?  He continued his around the room, now suspicious of where this was going.  

At another table, this time closer to the door, sat two tough looking humans males and one figure wearing a strange body suit with a purple-hued mask that completely obscured the face.  One of the humans appeared to be wearing normal civilian clothes, (the first normal one in the room, thought Vir) and the other was wearing black body armor with the numerals “N7” stamped over the right breast.  If Adam had to guess, he’d say the humans were mercenaries of some sort.  The other one, he had no idea.

Moving over to the ornate bar, located on the same wall of the room as the door, stood a tall man in a black leather greatcoat.  HIs face was movie star handsome, and framed with immaculate black hair.  He had an easy smile, and looked rather out of place in a room filled with soldiers and old fictional characters.  And talking to the man was...Captain Kirk and Spock from Star Trek.  Adam shook his head as if to clear it.  Obviously, this was some sort of fever dream, and he’d wake up in his cabin at any moment…

But it was not to be.  The door slammed open behind him, and a strangely familiar voice said, “Excuse me.”  Vir turned around, and when his eyes laid on the figure walking through the door, they almost fell out of his head.  Walking into the room was a blond-brown haired man wearing a red colored greatcoat and a small, old-fashioned music played attached to his waist.  Following the man was a green skinned human looking alien, and a raccoon walking on it’s two hind legs.  The Guardians of the Galaxy.  Another ancient fictional story, come to life.  The raccoon sneered at him.

“Finished staring?” it asked with a surprisingly human-like voice.  Adam shook his head again.

“Er, yes, yes,” he trailed off.  What was happening here?  The black haired man from the bar appeared suddenly next to him and gave an enthusiastic grin.  

“Ah Adam Vir, Sunny, Krill, Peter Quill, Gamorra, Rocket,” he addressed each of the new arrivals by name and with a small smirk as he shook each of their hands.  All the new arrivals looked at each other with confusion.  How does he know our names?  We don’t know him, seemed to be the unspoken consensus between the two groups.  “Welcome.”   He turned behind him and spoke to the rest of the room. “Alright now that everyone’s here, we can begin!  It would be best if we all sat or stood in the middle.  Yes, yes, there it is, wonderful.  You’re fine there.  C’mon, get your gluteus in gear and get over here, Han.”  Everyone shuffled somewhat awkwardly to the middle of the room.  The black haired man and several tuxedoed waiters pulled over a group of tables and chairs.  The man, who Adam guessed was their host, Thomas Drake, gestured at everyone to sit.  Most sat, with several electing to remain standing.  Drake languidly leaned against the edge of a table.

“So.  As you may already know or have already guessed, my name is Thomas Drake.  Due to several of your galaxies messing around with the fabric of time,” Drake glared pointedly at Kirk, who gave a sheepish smile, the solo military-looking man from the back of the room, who shrugged indifferently, and the elaborately uniformed man.  Said man threw out his hands in a defensive gesture.

“Hey, I’m just a humble Commissar.  If anyone’s screwing with time, it’s the Inquisition.”  Drake sighed.

“Whatever.  Anyway, before I was oh so rudely interrupted, I was saying that due to several of your galaxies screwing with time, all of our galaxies, which existed separately as alternate realities, have all combined into a massive, multi-galaxy and multi-timeline mess.  The reason that all of you are here is because, apparently unlike the rest of you, I’ve done my homework, and I’ve found something interesting.  In every one of our collective galaxies, there seems to be a badass, lucky, famous, and all around awesome soldier or mercenary.  You.”  Things were starting to make much more sense.  Drake continued, “I have invited and/or got permission for all of you to be here today for one simple reason: I plan on creating a group of all of us.  Put together, we can overcome any obstacle, learn more about this new reality of many different galaxies we are facing from inhabitants of said galaxies, cause a bunch of shenanigans, eliminate any threats to the governments we work for or the people we love, and if none of those are incentive enough, make an ungodly amount of money.”  Several people (and aliens) around the table grinned at the last one.  “I’ve already gotten permission for those who need it to join this little group, so, the only question remains,” he spread his hands wide for dramatic emphasis, “who’s in?”

Chewbacca growled something and Han Solo nodded.  “We’re in.”  The lone military-like man nodded.  

“I’m in.”  The Guardians looked at each other and nodded.

“Making tons of money and exploring new galaxies?  Oh, we’re definitely in.”  The tough-looking man with the “N7” on his armor and the hooded figure in his retinue nodded.

“I have Council authorization.  I’m in.”  Drake looked at Adam.

“And you?”  Adam’s mind was made up.  Get the chance to go through multiple galaxies, some actual fictional stories from his childhood, meet a ton of new people and get to see new aliens?  Definitely.  He looked at Sunny and Krill.  Sunny nodded, Krill merely had an exasperated look plastered on his bug-like face.

“We’re in.”  Drake looked at the elaborately-uniformed man.

“What about you?”  The man pursed his lips.  

“You got permission from the Administratum for this?” he asked skeptically.  Drake rustled through the pockets of his greatcoat and came out with a piece of parchment with a medieval-style wax seal.  

“No, I got permission from one Inquisitor Amberley Vail.  These are the written orders.”  He tossed them to the man.

“Ah.  That would explain several things.  I’m in.”  Drake turned to Kirk and Spock.

“And you two?”  Spock frowned.

“This does not seem as if it were in the best interests of the Federation.”  Drake smiled dazzlingly at him. 

“Your government would want to explore these new galaxies anyway, and who would they send?  You.  This way you have more allies to help you.”

“Fair point.  We’re in.”  Drake grinned wickedly.

“Wonderful.  Time to Rock and roll!”