#i hope they figure out Alpha formation in the series

[oddly-casual]

Mikey: What do we do Leo?

Leo: I-I-I-don’t know-

Donnie: you’re the leader, you should know!

Raph: what are we doing? Alpha- Alpha formation? I-I-I

Donnie: We don’t even know what Alpha formation is!

Leo: Alpha formation, go!

Donnie: I think all his hormones just kicked in at once…

-

They really just be making up shit

[froggie-recs-fics]

Fic Roundup (up to 9/26/21)

I'm gonna start collecting fics I've read recently to recommend them, because making trope lists takes too long and many fics fall by the wayside. Let me know if you like this new format!

The fandoms in this list are as follows: Marvel (SamBucky, HTP, SpideyPool, WinterHawk, WinterIron, Stony, Stucky, SpiderShield), DCU (Bane/Blake), Inception (Arthur/Eames), Teen Wolf (Sterek).

A * signifies a particular favorite (though I love all these fics)

Marvel

Sam/Bucky

double back by flowermasters (E, 12K, Post-Endgame, Time Loop, Time Travel)

Sam gets stuck in a time loop. In 1943.

Things could be worse, but they could certainly be better.

Companion piece here: quick time

I'll explain everything to the geese by napricot (Post-Endgame, E, 50K, Sam can talk to birds)

Bucky is so competent that it hurts my feelings is not a rational complaint to have about a person, and yet, after a year of being Captain America and partnering up with Bucky for the new and improved, post-Blip Avengers, that’s kinda how Sam’s feeling.

It’s not great. It maybe leads to Sam making some rash, ill-advised decisions like claiming he has a previously undisclosed superpower, and then getting caught in a web of lies when he ends up actually developing that surprisingly inconvenient superpower. Talking to birds had seemed like a harmless superpower, but it turns out that birds have a lot of opinions, and they don’t hesitate to tell Sam about them, especially when it comes to his supposedly subpar courting skills. Which is ridiculous, because Sam isn’t courting Bucky. Right?

Rumlow/Bucky

**blueprints for a better world series by itallstartedwithdefenestration @astralhux (CATWS, Post-CATWS, Noncon, E, 115K, Dark Main Character)

When Pierce discovers the asset is no longer capable of getting himself hard during recreational use, he tells Rumlow to figure out what the problem is, and to fix it. The solution turns out to be more complicated than anyone expected.

I can't recommend this series enough

Peter/Wade

*Dead Men Walking series by doctorestranged @lazystrawberrymilkshakes (E, 235K, Identity Porn, Slow Burn)

When a series of murders take place, Peter Parker goes undercover in Sister Margaret’s to get intel on Tony Stark’s prime suspect: Deadpool. Peter goes in hoping to get enough information so that Spider-Man can save the day, but like everything in Peter’s life, it becomes a bit more complicated than that and it soon becomes apparent that he might not be the best fit for the job.

All About Chemistry by TwiceBakedPotato @sedatedkoala (No Powers AU, M, CNTW, 74K, Teacher-Student Relationship, Slow Build)

After serving his 20 years in the Marine Corps, Wade Wilson is cashing in his GI Bill and going back to college. He feels like the old man on campus, but that doesn't matter. He likes his classes. He likes learning. And he especially likes his Chemistry professor with the messy brown hair.

Clint/Bucky

Making Me A Habit by Kangofu_CB @kangofu-cb (No Powers AU, T, 20K, Pet Store, Slow Burn, Pining, Misunderstandings)

Bucky is a disabled vet struggling with reintegrating into civilian life. He has a routine and a rhythm, and he doesn't like to let anything - big or small - disrupt it. That all changes the day Bucky finds himself inside CATastrophe, the local pet rescue, recovering from a panic attack in the back room of the shop.

He’s used to walking by the place, not visiting, but the next thing Bucky knows, he’s hanging signs and being used as a climbing tree for a bunch of freshly-acquired kittens. And he just...keeps going back. First for the kittens, then for the disaster shop owner who rescues actual kittens from actual trees and teaches archery as a side-gig, and eventually because he’s hopelessly in love.

(Clint was in love before Bucky ever walked in the door.)

*Nameless by AvaKelly (Post-CATWS, M, 101K, Time Travel, Time Loop, Slow Burn)

A gun is pointed at him before he can even move from his position, the Soldier's metal arm steady in its aim. Clint sighs.

"Nemo," Clint says. "It's tattooed on your wrist, right here," he lifts his right hand and taps his left index finger where his palm ends.

The Soldier's eyes widen. "How do you know this?"

"I put it there."

Glitter, G-Strings and Other Mission Hazards by flawedamythyst @flawedamythyst (T, 16K, Undercover, Stripper Clint)

“Which is why you need me to shake my booty for cash,” said Clint.

“Precisely,” said Coulson. “You’re the only agent we have who wouldn’t need additional training in the skills of an exotic dancer to take on the mission, and we want to get someone in there as soon as possible.”

Clint nodded, shutting the file. “Okay, awesome. I’ll dig out my sequined g-string.”

“You’ll have full access to requisition any costumes you might need,” said Coulson.

A mission requires Bucky to be Clint's back-up as he goes undercover as a stripper, which gets more difficult with every new costume he comes out in.

Paternal Error by EVVS @skylarkevanson (Post-CATWS, T, 33K, Kid Fic, Established Relationship)

Bucky has never once thought of being a parent. Not since the Winter Solider happened.

Until he falls in love with Clint Barton. And that idiot just keeps collecting children for his flock.

Now Bucky has to pretend like he's good at parenting.

Bucky/Tony

Forms of Love by bear_bell (Post-CACW, E, 33K, Split Personalities)

Months after the Avengers' dispute in Germany, the team returns to the US and moves back into the tower. As always, everyone pretends that nothing happened. Tony is just fine with this. He's used to pretending, and he'll be damned if he lets any of them see him flinch.

Tony's the bad guy, after all. He's used to it. He's fine with it. He's good at it.

Only now, there's something far worse loitering around the tower - The Winter Soldier. No one notices the guy at first, but when they do, Tony figures that he should have the soldier's back.

Birds of a feather should flock together, and the bad guys should start a book club.

Steve/Tony

While You Were Sleeping by betheflame @betheflame (No Powers AU, M, 65K, While You Were Sleeping AU)

It's been years since Steve Grant Rogers Drysdale has spoken to his twin, Ransom. So it was quite a shock when he was summoned to a hospital and found out that Ransom was in a coma.

Even more shocking? That Ransom is engaged. To Tony Stark.

Steve/Bucky

The Road Goes Ever On And On by PipGraham (Omegaverse AU, M, Noncon, Graphic Violence, 20K, Road Trip, Pre-Serum Steve, Past Domestic Violence)

When Brock's continued domestic abuse puts not only Steve's life in danger, but also that of his unborn pup, he flees into the night with just a small backpack of clothes and almost no money to his name.

Steve quickly runs into trouble as he tries to embark on a 3-day cross-country bus journey back home to New York City.

He meets a kind veteran when he most needs a helping hand.

Just Words by LadyRazzle (crimegimp) @ladyrazzle (Pre-CATFA, Soulmate AU, T, 2K, Fluff)

Inspired by that now legendary post: "soulmate AU where you wake up on your 18th birthday with the first words your soulmate will say to you tattooed on your body so you’ll know them when you meet them." Well what if they appear the moment you turn 18, rather than just the day? And what if by the time you turn 18, you'd already fallen in love?

Bucky wasn’t eager to discover what the words said. He already knew what he wanted them to say. He always had.

Peter/Steve

Forgetting It's There by spinstitcher (stygian) (NR, 8K, Crack, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Porn)

“You’re Captain America,” he blurts out.

“What?” says Captain America, looking a little wide-eyed. He casts a nervous glance at the girl at the counter – he has nothing to worry about there, she’s rocking out to her iPod and could care less what they’re talking about – and says, “No, uh, Steve, it’s just, I’m Steve.”

“Right,” says Peter, and then because his brain-to-mouth filter had apparently been completely destroyed in the fight on Oscorp Tower: “Hey, your butt really is as tight as it looks on TV.”

DCU

Bane/Blake

7 Deadly Ass(as)sins by teacuphuman @teacuphuman09 (AU, E, 23K, BDSM)

Bane and Barsad own a sex shop and John needs a job.

Straws by Menirva (Bane/Blake/Barsad, AU, E, 38K, BDSM)

John works in a smoothie shop.

He has a knack, a second sense if you will, for being able to look at a person and know what they're going to order. It's not the most spectacular gift in the world but he likes being able to figure people out and he's never wrong.

Except for this scruffy asshole who is clearly just ordering the wrong thing to fuck with him.

How is he even finishing an extra-large?

Inception

Aurthur/Eames

Rough Trade by Whisky (whiskyrunner) @whiskyrunner (AU, E, 23K, Internalized Homophobia)

Arthur is an investment banker. He is professional and efficient. He's a halfway decent cook. He's totally independent and has been since the age of eighteen. Maybe he's tired all the time because he works about ninety hours a week which is twice what normal people do, but he's rich and he's competent at his job. He's almost thirty, and already a success.

And there are some things Arthur is not. For instance: Arthur is not gay.

Lucky by earlgreytea68 @earlgreytea68 (M, 37K, Kid fic)

Arthur finds a baby.

Teen Wolf

Stiles/Derek

Cut to the Bone by standinginanicedress (Omegaverse AU, E, 112K, Secret Relationship, Enemies to Lovers kinda)

“Not that it’s any of your god damn business, but my name is Stiles. Do you need something?”

The alpha grins. All teeth, shiny white, straight as an arrow. He’s got this sculpted perfection to him that Stiles is sure has worked on all the omegas he’s ever encountered before, but Stiles stands his ground and narrows his eyes. “A date.”

Stiles looks him up and down, slowly, from the black shoes on his feet, to his uniform khakis and blazer littered with pins, to his face. He frowns, makes a face, and says, “pass.”

Cornerstone by Vendelin (Human AU, E, 83K, Marine Derek, Blind Stiles, Friends to Lovers)

Suffering from PTSD, ex-Marine Derek Hale moves back to Beacon Hills to open a bookshop and find a calmer life. That’s where he meets Stiles, completely by accident. Stiles is talkative, charming and curious. Somehow, despite the fact that he’s blind, he’s able to read Derek like no one else.

Stand Fast in Your Enchantments by DevilDoll, Rahciach (AU, Graphic Violence, E, 76K, Captivity, Feral Derek)

"Stiles knew damn well what a pissed-off wolf sounded like, and every hair on the back of his neck was telling him that somewhere in this room was a very pissed-off werewolf." An AU in which Derek is feral, Stiles is magical, and they eat a lot of fast food.

The Payoff Pitch by Leslie_Knope (Sports AU, E, 83K, Coming Out, Friends to Lovers)

Derek is on the cusp of his second season with the LA Dodgers, and as the reigning runner-up Rookie of the Year, the pressure’s on him to become the team’s star pitcher and lead them to the playoffs for the first time in five years. He’s trying to deal with the burden of expectations and really has zero desire to spend any extra time or energy on anything that isn’t baseball.

But then he meets Stiles.

[cacodaemonia]

hi! i saw your post about clone trooper designations and thought you might be able to help me. hopefully we'll find out once the bad batch series comes out but in the meantime im trying to figure out designation numbers for the bad batch to use in a fic. do you have any ideas about how they could look?

Hi! :D

Ah, cool, thanks for reading my obsessive headcanons, haha! I haven’t thought much about the bad batch, but my guess is that they’re CTs who just happened to have those “desirable mutations” mentioned in the show.

As for the numbers, if you go by the rough system I came up with, there’s really a ton of flexibility. My headcanon is that pretty much all clones after the first few prototype generations, like the Nulls and Alphas, have the letter-letter-xxxx-xxxx designation format. So by that logic, the oldest clones would have the smallest numbers in their first xxxx. Cody’s might be, for example, CC-0603-2224 (6th DNA configuration, 3rd batch from that configuration, and the 2224th clone from that batch [incidentally, my sad headcanon is that a LOT of the first batches didn’t survive to “adulthood” because it took a while for the Kaminoans to tweak the process to get higher survival rates. Additionally, even though in TCW we only know of a couple handfuls of CCs, there had to have been thousands of them, many of whom probably died on Geonosis]).

All that aside, since most clones seem to only use the last 4 numbers of their designation, you can basically give them any 4-digit combination there. That’s what I’ve been doing for stuff I’m writing in the RCAU, anyway. :)

I hope that helps somewhat????

[bnnypwn]

Welcome to Dragon Ball ‘Redux’!

Hey! I’m Bnnypwn, and I’m going to start posting a Dragon Ball fanfic I’ve been working on for a while. Over the years, I’ve developed a few drafts of it, and a couple different names came and gone, so I’ve ended up with the name for this whole project being Dragon Ball ‘Redux’. Honestly, I’d like a better name than that, but whatever for now. I have plenty of material ready and planned, and I thought it would be fun to share this. I typically write fanfic just for my own enjoyment, and I thought others could enjoy this, too, so I hope at least a few people do; I’ll keep writing this anyway.

The basic premise for this fanfiction is to make a new version of the Dragon Ball story. The Dragon Multiverse this fanfic takes place in is entirely separate from the one we know in the original work, but it abides by the same basic rules, has the same physics, and is home to the same species. The Earth that this story centers on is different than the one Goku grew up on, and so a different group of heroes will rise from it. All original characters, all original stories. A bit formal of an explanation, I know, but I’m the kind of fan who has to make everything cohesive with canon. This kind of explanation is what I needed to feel like I could start writing this, and I hope it helps clear up the starting point for you readers.

It’s also important because one of my goals in writing this is that I won’t use the exact same resources and opportunities as in the original work. Like, there are Kais, because the universal order is the same, but because the North Kai we know isn’t in this world, Kaio-ken does not exist here. Stuff like that. I figure that if I’m going to make an original story, I should push myself to make it feel distinct. That doesn’t preclude anyone from doing similar things, since the same basic principles are in play, just that I don’t want readers or myself just waiting around for the heroes to get the things we already know about. They have their own journey.

In making this and a lot of other fanfics, I’ve developed a kind of half-notes, half-prose style, writing in an overview narrative format with bullet points instead of paragraphs. So for this blog, I’ve retained the bullet points in the document; it helps set the right mood. I’ve also added a level of series structure to the story, mimicking how Dragon Ball transitions to Z and GT and Super. The first set of stories are grouped under the ‘Alpha’ series, the second are the ‘Beta’ series, and so on. I have series premises up to ‘Epsilon’ for this fanfic, and I hope you all stay with it for that long.

I’ve had a lot of fun making this and playing around with different ideas in the story. Early on, you’ll notice one notable change, so just know that it’s deliberate. I actually haven’t made any designs for the characters yet, either, so I can let you see those as I make them (if I get around to it). For the first few stories that I’ve already written, I’ll post a new one every week or two, but after that I can’t promise a regular schedule; I have a life and other creative pursuits, and tend to work sporadically. I also may have to adjust the story as new developments appear in Super, which has happened a couple times already, and that takes time. That said, I do plan to see this through to the end, even if I take a few breaks and come back to it. So yeah, please get a kick out of this! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you like it!

[setsureadsshit]

Lost At Sea: A List of WIP’s I am finally letting go of [ Part 2 ]

[ Part 1 ]

Exactly what it says on the tin.

Very Sincerely Yours by semaphoredrivethru

Summary: Terrified at the prospect of humiliating himself in front of the ton and completely ruining his first season with his crippling shyness, omega Stiles Stilinski does the only thing he can; he invents a sweetheart away at war. A completely fictitious and utterly gorgeous captain, a gentlemanly paragon of romance and adoration, an alpha with whom Stiles spends years "exchanging" letters.Years later, an angry, war-battered Derek Hale shows up at Stiles's door. He's no gentleman, and vehemently denies the existence of anything remotely resembling romance. He's received every last letter and has come to collect on Stiles's promises of home and marriage, no matter what.

Last Updated: 2018

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Sterek

Personal Notes: AHHHHH, THERE’S NOTHING I LIKE MORE THAN A GOOD REGENCY BODICE RIPPER AU. HOW UNFORTUNATE THAT THIS ONE NEVER GOT FINISHED. IT WAS SUCH A GOOD START TOO, I AM SO DISAPPOINTED. AHHHHHHH SO SAD.

Sold by onlyastoryteller

Summary: The government has passed two significant acts that eliminate the rights of convicted felons. When Peter Burke learns that Neal Caffrey's Work Contract has been purchased by a private citizen, he springs into action.

Last Update: 2018

Fandom & Main Pairing: White Collar ; Baffery

Personal Notes: While this fic is amazing and it hasn’t been THAT long since it was last updated (trust me, I’ve held on to fics for over 5 years on the hope it’d get updated lmao), this fandom and pairing just doesn’t interest me anymore; mostly because The Bullshit Season really turned me off from the show.

Sypha’s Boys by ShifterCat

Summary: “Back in the tomb under Greşit, Alucard asked you about that prophecy involving him. And… you blushed.”“O-oh.” That brought her up short. “Yes. That.” Sypha glanced away, gathering herself, then looked back decisively. “‘The Hunter, the Scholar, the Sleeping Soldier: they shall travel together. They shall defeat great evil together. They shall… love together.’”Trevor blinked a few times, allowing that to sink in. Then: “Your prophecy says we’re going to fuck?”

Last Update: 2019

Fandom & Main Pairing: Castlevania ; Syvorcard

Personal Notes: I mean, it says what it is on the tin - it’s just a collection of smut vignettes and after the first 5 chapters the sex kinda just gets old and I start to crave actual plot. That isn’t to say it’s not well written and I didn’t enjoy it but..you know *hand waves* 

Partners by wordswehavesaid

Summary: In which Barry Allen is the Starling City Police Department's forensics assistant. Yes, Starling.

Last Update: 2015

Fandom & Main Pairing: The Flash/Arrow ; Flarrow

Personal Notes: I love love love love LOVE this fic. I love it SO MUCH and it physically PAINS ME to let it go but it’s time. Still, at 25 hefty chapters, it’s not really a bad deal to put your time into it.

Take My Body by paraselenewoman

Summary: Derek and Jordan are Alphas. Stiles is their newly obtained omega. Everything is pretty terrifying.If given the chance, though, Stiles probably wouldn't change a thing.

Last Update: 2015

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Derek x Stiles x Parish

Personal Notes: ......okay listen. I never said I was proud of all of my fic reading choices okay BUT SOMETIMES. SOMETIMES A BITCH JUST NEEDS SOME GOOD OLD FASHIONED A/B/O Dom/sub DYNAMICS IN THEIR LIFE OKAY. YOU CAN’T SHAME ME - but I am a little embarrassed to admit it so let’s head to the next fic.

That Which Binds Them by Flarrow

Summary: Everyone is born with a mark shared by their soulmate, located somewhere around their shoulder blade. They say the mark burns upon meeting one's soulmate. Oliver knows what his is, but doesn't believe in the system. Barry doesn't know what his looks like, but he wants it to be a surprise.Set in The Flash and Arrow universes, but AU in the sense that I'm not sticking to the storyline laid out in either series, though I may borrow elements when they work for the story. Barry and Oliver are still The Flash and Arrow. Idea of the mark's location was inspired by the brand Oliver received in “The Fallen.”

Last Update: 2016

Fandom & Main Pairing: The Flash/Arrow ; Flarrow

Personal Notes: I read this a while back but I do remember it being a really good story. At 18 chapters, I didn’t feel like giving it the full re-read treatment since I’m currently on a role but I DID take the liberty of reading the very last chapter and I can say you’ll leave this fic satisfied if you do read it, even though it’s unfinished.

Steve Rogers and the Tri-Wizard Tournament by gryffindor17

Summary: There’s not a person who walks the halls of Hogwarts who doesn’t know Steve Rogers: the boy with the righteous streak, hot temper, and massive crush on the Romanian Longhorns’ star Chaser, Bucky Barnes. But Bucky exists to Steve only on the front page of The Daily Prophet. He has long since resigned himself to admiring from afar, catching games when he can or otherwise following Barnes’s crusade against injustice through printed page.Until the man himself walks into the Great Hall on the first night of their Seventh Year.Bucky’s life outside of the spotlight is hardly worthy of a footnote, never mind a headline, but no one wants to read about Bucky Barnes being found face-down and fast asleep between the shelves of Durmstrang’s impressive library. Between his studies and the Quidditch Finals looming around the corner, the last thing Bucky needs is something like the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He knows Headmaster Pierce is expecting him to volunteer, but all Bucky really wants is to pass his N.E.W.T.S. and maybe twist The Minister’s arm into passing the bill about guaranteed pay for House Elves.That is until he spots Merlin’s gift to man sitting at the Gryffindor table.Then things get complicated.

Last Update: 2016

Fandom & Main Pairing: Captain America (MCU) ; Stucky

Personal Notes: It’s rare that I actually enjoy Hogwarts AU’s and I’ve kinda dropped out of the Captain American fandom so, while this IS really well done, I’m just not interested in it anymore.

Part Of Your World by Jenetica

Summary: Derek's a werewolf. Stiles is a merman. They're not supposed to work.Luckily, they're both determined to prove that particular fact false.Sequel to "Sea Foam and Sunshine."

Last Update: 2014

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Sterek

Personal Notes: This is the second part in a series and you should def read the first one it’s fucking great. The second one is also good but...you know. Not gonna be finished ever so.

Knot Your Playmate by Halzbarry

Summary: He quickly closed his laptop and laid back on his bed. Somehow he’d convinced himself to not only sign up for an online ABO hookup website, but to also meet up with not one, but two alphas to potentially sleep with and get him through his heat. AU where Stiles is an omega, and has to sign up for an online ABO dating website to find an alpha to bring him through his heat, and possibly be a match so he doesn't flunk out of high school and get sent to remedial school because of Harris. What he doesn't expect is to find two mated alphas looking for an omega, and for feelings to start getting involved. Notice: Fic is on indefinite hiatus and is no longer being worked on.

Last Update: 2015

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Derek x Stiles x Parish

Personal Notes: .......LISTEN. IT’s GOOD OKAY????

Last To Know by Never_Says_Die

Summary: Kink meme fill in which every werewolf and shapeshifter in Beacon Hills is aware that Stiles is pregnant before he is. And apparently the first baby!werewolf being born into the pack (their Alpha's, no less) is a big freakin' deal and excuse enough for everyone to lose their damn minds. When Stiles figures out why everyone's been acting so weird around him, he's not amused. 

Last Update: 2013

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Sterek

Personal Notes: This one is basically finished, like, it’s 21 of 22 chapters but the 22nd chapter would have mostly been just putting a bow on it, it’s already wrapped you know? It’s a really good fic I really love it, I should honestly just reblog it in it’s own right but I’ve already gone through the trouble of formating it so fuck it.

Lonely Road by CranApplePye

Summary: Stiles is running from things he doesn't want to face. Derek is running from a past he cannot leave behind. Their paths collide on a lonely stretch of road when Stiles' car breaks down and Derek is the only mechanic on hand. An unexpected closeness develops, but both men are harboring secrets and Stiles may have just found the one person whose luck runs worse than his own. When the past catches up with the future, it may be one collision that neither of them can survive, and it may end up pulling everyone they love down with them.As everything begins to unravel, choices must be made. Stiles must decide how far he's able to go to protect the people he cares about, and what he'll do when he hits his breaking point. Derek must decide whether he can overcome a lifetime of betrayal enough to trust in someone again, and what he's willing to sacrifice if he is. And Scott and Allison must decide what it means to stand by your friends, and what price they are each willing to pay to do what is right.

Last Update: 2015

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Sterek

Personal Notes: I AM REALLY MAD THIS NEVER GOT FINISHED. SUCH A COMPELLING STORY. SUCH A FRESH TAKE ON WHAT THE CANON COULD HAVE BEEN. AAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Lost In The Flood by Skaboom

Summary: When social services finally barges in and takes Isaac away from his father, granting custody to his aunt, Isaac gets the first good night's sleep he's had since his mother died, but that doesn't mean that everything is easy from there on out. There's a lot of lingering damage, and with everyone gossiping about him at school, it's hard to find someone to turn to, but with the help of a caring Aunt, a great therapist, and an unexpected friendship with Stiles, a kid on his lacrosse team, Isaac might finally be on the right path.

Last Update: 2017

Fandom & Main Pairing: Teen Wolf ; Stisaac

Personal Notes: Another sad goodbye, there has never been enough Stisaac fic in this fandom for me so seeing what few good fics there were go unfinished is particularly bitter to me.

[mell-eight]

So Much Good News

1/31/20

I can't tell you how many blog posts I've written this month where, just before I was ready to post, I got more news and had to rewrite.  I think this is my third or fourth attempt to get out a blog post, but there's so much to tell you I'm just going to post what I have, and I may end up writing another blog post tomorrow. Either way, this post is really long, but I promise there's exciting stuff inside.  Read on:

Submissions to NineStar Press:

Both Ground of Insurrection and Ground of Resurrection have been accepted at NSP!  The editor really seemed to like them.  I'm so excited Resurrection will finally be available for you to buy.  I can't estimate when a release date might be, but I'd like to think sometime in 2020.  

I am still waiting to hear about Wounded Alpha, but I'm very hopeful.  I know the editor has it in her queue, so it's moving along in the submission process.

This editor asked me to submit all the other stories I had ready, so I have submitted six more books to NSP.  All the completed books from my Road To, Magnified, and Out of Underhill series have officially been submitted.  The editor will evaluate them all and will let me know whether NSP is interested.

My Dragon's Hoard series, The Coup and the Prince, and Elemental Ride are next on my list.  I need to get them formatted for submission first, which will take a little longer for The Dragon's Hoard as I'll need to read through to make sure all the page breaks are correct and such, but I hope to have all of those books submitted by next week.

The Oracle series:

I know many of you reached out to me asking for The Oracle series to get republished as well.  I inquired with NSP as to whether it was possible to republish The Oracle's Flame as-is, and the answer was the expected no.  However!   I have an idea that will fix the issue without substantially changing the plot or too much of the characterization.  I just need to find the time to actually get it written.  If I'm able to make that change, NSP is willing to assess the entire series, so I will have to find the time somehow.

Of course, this means Heart's Tournament will not be reprinted.  There's no way to soften the same issue within that story as it's integral to the plot.  Until I figure out whether it's worth trying to self-publish it, that story will have to remain out of print.

Editing:

The copy edits for Ge-Mi: Part One are complete.  I have sent them back to the editor.  I don't know whether NSP has one more editing step before it gets turned into an ebook, but it's closer to being ready to go.

The second round of edits for Dragon Consultant have arrived.  What about the first round, you ask?  That was one of the things I wrote in a previous blog post that never got published, but I finished those too.  I should have the second round complete within a day or so.

The Supernatural Consultant series as a whole will be marketed for a YA audience.  That means a few things will have to be changed to make it suitable for a slightly younger audience, but I promise there are no changes to the overall plot and characterizations. Lumie will always be Lumie, and I don't think there will be any changes at all in the later books.

Once I finish the second round for Consultant, there will be copy edits.  I'm also expecting to see the first round of edits for Ge-Mi: Part Two, which I'm super excited about.  I'll try to let you know when those arrive.

Writing:

I completed The Beast from my fairy tale project. That just leaves A Heart's Dream to finish and then the anthology will be complete.  As always, this is a time issue.  I need to find the time to sit down and write it, and this was at the top of that to-do list, but has been supplanted with fixing The Oracle's Flame.

Aside from that, I haven't had the chance to get much writing done.  I don't know I'll be able to write more as long as edits keep appearing regularly, but I'm going to do my best to keep on writing as much as I can whenever I can.

[dantesilvadraws]

Determined Ch. 2

Fifteen years ago Bakugou Katsuki left to become the hero he always wanted to be. Even if that meant leaving Kirishima Eijirou and their pup behind. Kirishima Katsumi grew up hating the hero Ground Zero for leaving and hurting his father. Now that Ground Zero has returned to his home city, Katsumi wants to hunt him down and avenge all the pain he caused his father, Eijirou.

Warning — OMEGAVERSE

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Chapter 1

Katsumi was too excited to sleep, he felt invincible and unstoppable. He laid in bed under his sheets, posting about getting accepted to UA on social media. However, as he scrolled through app after app, he kept seeing posts about Ground Zero. 

“What a bitch.” he thought and frowned as he turned on his phone flash light. 

Katsumi was having such a good evening, but he had to be reminded of that asshole every three seconds. He hated seeing the constant stream of news that everyone seemed to be so enthralled about it. Katsumi couldn’t understand why people liked him so much and he didn’t care to learn either. Quietly, he hopped out of bed and opened his closet.

Eijirou sat on the couch, the television hummed in the background speaking highly of a man who had become a ghost to Red Riot. In one hand he held a glass of bright red wine and the other scrolled through news site after news site on his phone.

For the first time in fifteen years he allowed himself to investigate what had become of his ex. He took a sip of wine and wondered if Bakugou would recognize him if they just so happened to cross each other’s paths at like the market or someplace. Eijirou didn’t think he’d changed that much in fifteen years. Yes, he wore his hair a bit longer than before, and he had a few new scars but other than that nothing much had changed.

Eijirou discovered that in those fifteen years, Bakugou had gotten himself two girlfriends and one boyfriend. All of his relationships ended, of course, and that made Eijirou smile. Bakugou was also a high earning hero, he had plenty of money and could probably open a hero agency of his own if he wanted. However, there was one particular villian that caused significant damage to Ground Zero. 

It happened early in his career, and put him out of the game for seven months. It was during that time he met his first girlfriend, she was a nurse at the hospital he was at. After Bakugou healed up, all that remained was some irreversible damage to his right eye that left his vision a little wonky and some nerve damage in his left his hand.

That was the first and only devastating loss that Bakugou had suffered from. Of course he had a few losses here and there, but nothing that left permanent problems. In later interviews, Bakugou claimed it was from being new and inexperienced in the field. 

It made sense. 

There was so many fan sites dedicated to Ground Zero that it was almost sickening. Eijirou found himself rolling his eyes more than he’d ever had before. Not that he was jealous, but he knew Bakugou on a level these fans would never know him on and they lived in a world of innocence. Eijirou knew the type of person Bakugou could be, but maybe he changed. People do change, right?

After about two hours of catching up on fifteen years of drama and adventure, Eijirou decided to shut everything down. He went into the kitchen and began to rinse out his wine glass when he heard someone knocking at the door.

He cursed quietly to himself, he was fearful of who might be on the other side of that door. What if -- could it be? No, no he didn’t know where he lived unless he asked around but--

Holding his breath, Eijirou opened the door and was relieved to see Mina standing on the other side. 

“Katsuki isn’t here with you, is he?” he asked, as he stuck his head out of the door frame to look left then right.

Mina laughed at his paranoia, and said “No, but that is what I came here to talk to you about, oh, and Izuku is here too!”

“He is?”

“Right here!” Izuku jogged up to the door, he was holding a kitten in his arms, “I found this little guy down the stairs.”

“I told you to leave it!” Mina said.

“I know but he’s all by himself and he was crying.” Izuku pressed his lips gently against the top of the little orange kitten’s head, then looked up at Kirishima and asked, “Do you have any water we can give it?”

“Sure.” Eijirou opened his door wider and allowed his friends in, along with their new feline companion.

Izuku and Mina sat on the couch while Eijirou placed a little bowl of water on the floor by the kitchen. He took the kitten and set it down near the bowl, and the little baby soon began to lick up the liquid.

Eijirou patted the kitten softly, before walking over to Izuku and Mina, “So, have you guys seen him? Have you seen Katsuki?”

“Yeah,” Izuku was the first to answer, he tried to hide his excitement but failed to do so, his smile gave it away, “He ate breakfast with Shoto and I.”

Eijirou took a seat on top of the coffee table and stared at Izuku, “What did he say?” he whispered.

“About 80 percent of the conversation was about you.” Izuku admitted.

“Me, huh?” Eijirou tried to suppress a blush from forming across his face, “So, what -- what did you talk about?”

“Your face is so red right now!” Mina laughed and pointed at him playfully, “Ei, don’t tell me, do you still have feelings for him?”

“I -- I’m not sure.” 

Mina crossed her arms and glared, “Even after selfishly leaving you, you can’t say for sure if you have feelings for him or not?”

Eijirou looked down at the floor in between his feet, and said, “I, I hate to say this but I’ve always hoped that he’d come back and meet Katsumi.”

“Doesn’t Katsumi hate him?” Izuku questioned. 

“Yeah, but…” Eijirou scratched at the back of his neck.

“Well, he wants to see you again.” Izuku said with a smile, “He said he wants to apologize to you and he was just a dumb kid back then. I didn’t tell him anything about Katsumi, I figured that was something you should tell him.”

Katsumi had always been a little bit of a rebel but never pushed the limits to the point of no return. If there was one thing he hated it was making his father upset. He loved Eijirou and he respected him. He really wanted vengeance on Grand Zero, does that fucking bitch even know how much pain he put Eijirou in?

Katsumi remembered the first time he learned of who his alpha father was. It was back when he was in elementary school and he had just arrived home from school one winter. They still lived at his grandparent’s house, and were sitting at a kotatsu table. Eijirou was reading a fitness magazine while Katusmi was working on a homework assignment that required him to make a family tree. 

“Dad?” 

“Yes?”

“The other kids have two parents, am I special?” Katsumi asked, “My friend, Naasu says it takes two people to make another person, did you make me on your own?”

Katsumi will never forget that look of pain that crossed his father’s face that day.  

“Dad?”

“I didn’t make you on my own.” Eijirou admitted, he set the magazine aside, “You do have another parent.”

“Is he dead?”

Eijirou smiled, but it was forced, “No, he’s not.” he shook his head.

“Where is he?”

“He…”

“Don’t cry.” Katsumi grabbed some napkins sitting on the table and patted the tears off his father’s cheeks. “Was he mean?”

“He’s a great man, he just -- he made a choice and he didn’t pick us.” 

“Who is he?” 

“Ground Zero.” 

Ever since that day, Katsumi knew what he had to do. No one is allowed to ever make his father cry. Not even if that person was his other father, and a powerful hero. Katsumi would do whatever he has too. 

The hunt had begun.

It was unlikely that Ground Zero would be out around town this late at night but Katsumi was going to do his best to track down his whereabouts. So, what better place to begin than to go to the new hero agency?

Ignoring the business hour sign, Katsumi tried to pull open the door a few times but it was obviously locked. He then opened the mail chute to slip in a note addressed to Ground Zero. The note provided a place and time to where they were to meet and fight. 

But before he could drop the letter, Ground Zero stepped out of the building. 

Katsumi quickly shoved the note back into his pocket and glared at him. Bakugou returned the glare with the same red eyes. He was so intimidating that he could probably scare a normal kid shitless from just his eyes alone. But not Katsumi. Katsumi had something important he needed to do.

“You’re a fucking bitch and I’m going to kick your ass!” were the first words Katsumi ever spoke to Bakugou.

[mint-yooxgi]

[2] - Belonging - Wolf!Junmyeon X Reader

Wolf AU - Part of the EXO Trails of Moonlight Series

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Mature

Pairing: Junmyeon X Reader

Words: 2,505

A/n: Next part is here! I think it’s cute, but let me know what you guys think! Enjoy!

Previous ~ Next

The whole walk back to the pack house is silent, and you can feel the tension rising with each step you take. You can tell your uncle is upset, but not as pissed as Yisung is. Before you made it two steps out of the clearing he made that very clear, ramming into your side quite harshly, and unexpectedly. You’re sure you’ll have a bruise when you shift back.

You all make it back to the house, shifting and walking inside.

“I still can’t believe we had to go rescue your ass,” Yisung grumbles, stomping his way upstairs.

“I didn’t call for you specifically,” you roll your eyes. “Not my fault you ran out of the house.”

“(Y/n)!” Your uncle’s condescending tone has you snapping your head over to his direction. “I thought I told you not to go too far out!”

“I didn’t! I made sure to steer clear of packs that I could smell,” you defend yourself. “I had no idea they would be there.”

“You should have been more careful,” Max scolds. “How did they sneak up on you anyways?”

“I-“ you stop yourself before continuing, “-I was resting by the water and I didn’t hear them approach me.”

“Resting? (Y/n), do you know how dangerous that is? Especially doing that on your own in an unfamiliar territory,” your uncle yells, making you shrink back slightly at his loud tone. 

You can hear Yisung’s snickering coming from up the stairs, and Dani has completely disappeared, not wanting to stick around for the confrontation. Your own temper flares at this.

“Well, maybe if you had gone to the first territorial meeting when we got here, this wouldn’t have happened!” You snap, but your movement aggravates your bruised ribs, causing you to clutch your side in slight pain. Your uncle takes notice immediately.

“Are you injured?” He asks, expression immediately becoming worried. “Did those other wolves hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” you spit. “And just for your information, this injury isn’t from them.”

His eyes narrow slightly in confusion until realization crosses his features.

“Yisung!” Your uncle bellows, heading towards the stairs.

You close your eyes and let out a puff of air, successfully calming yourself down. You can hear your uncle and Yisung arguing upstairs as you make your way to your bedroom at the front of the house. You walk in and close the door behind you.

Your bedroom isn’t anything too special, consisting of a bed, dresser, mirror, and a small desk in the corner. Two windows sit on the wall to your left, small, but big enough for a body to fit through in case of emergency.

You let out a sigh, and fall onto your bed. A hiss escapes your lips as you land partially on top of your arm where your bruise is beginning to heal. Burying your head into your pillow, you let out a groan. 

Turning onto your back, you lay on your bed, staring at the ceiling. You think back on the events that have occurred this evening, and you can’t help but think of the alpha of the other pack.

A smile tugs at the corner of your lips as you feel your heart race in your chest. He has the nicest coat of fur you’ve ever seen, such a rich dark brown, and he looks strong too. He’d make a great protector, he’s probably an ever greater fighter.

One thing that you can’t stop thinking about though, is the way he smelt. He smells like strawberries and vanilla, your favourite scents. A content smile appears on your face, letting your eyes flutter closed as you recall how you felt in his presence. You felt safe, like you belonged.

You let your thoughts wander, allowing them to be filled with this mystery wolf’s presence, and one thought has your eyes flinging open in surprise.

Mate.

Is he really your mate? Was he as affected as you are now? What do you smell like to him? All these questions, and more, race through your head all at once. What you do know is that you cannot wait to see him again, and the next time you see him, you hope he’s in human form.

***

The next two days pass by agonizingly slow for Junmyeon. Besides being bombarded by questions from his pack when he and the three others got back, it’s been pretty uneventful. 

He hasn’t mentioned anything to the rest of them that you’re his mate yet. He figures it best to wait until the two of your packs are on better terms with each other, considering you were just fighting with each other not that long ago. That, and he wants to be one hundred percent sure that you’re his mate first, and that you accept him. He doesn’t think he could take the humiliation of denial if you didn’t.

Finally, it’s Friday. The Friday where the town hosts the territory meeting for all newcomers to the area of the supernatural variety. Each of them get their own separate section in the atrium to discuss things with their own kind, and the witches cast a spell to make sure no humans enter at this time.

He’s currently standing at the front, discussing formation tactics with two other alphas of different pacts when he smells the all too familiar and comforting scent of hazelnut and caramel drift into the room. On the outside, he looks visibly unaffected. On the inside, his wolf lets out a hum of content.

Seeing as the arrival of your new pack has caught the attention to the other two alphas, Junmyeon takes this opportunity to turn his head and look as well. Immediately, his eyes are drawn to you, and he knows right away that it’s you, his mate.

You don’t even look at him, instead looking around at all the others wolves present, as if you’re sizing them up. Something one of your male pack-mates says makes you frown, turning to glare at him.

“She’s cute,” one of them states, pulling Junmyeon out of his thoughts as he tears his gaze away from you.

“Who?” he asks.

“The unmated one,” the other alpha mumbles, nodding his head in your direction.

Junmyeon’s brow furrows in discontent, his wolf letting out a involuntary growl, turning around once more to stare at your group. He looks over at the two other females that are with you, noticing their marks on their necks signifying they’ve been mated. He then turns his head to look at you once more, and this time, he catches your gaze as you’re already staring at him.

“You don’t know that for sure,” he comments, starting to feel uncomfortable with them talking about you, his mate, like this. “She’s also wearing a turtle neck, which could be hiding her mark.”

“Nah, you can tell it in the way she holds herself,” the one goes on, “she’s not mated.”

He grits his teeth, and before Junmyeon can say another word, Kris, the co-alpha of his own pack, comes up to him.

“Junmyeon, come on, the meeting is about to start,” Kris says, motioning for them to take a seat.

Meanwhile, you hang out near the back of the room with the rest of your pack. They’ve all chosen to move in slightly while you decide to lean against the back wall. Yisung and Woosin have already managed to piss you off, so you don’t want to stay with them any longer than needed.

The only upside to coming to this meeting is that you finally can see what your mate looks like in person, and if you’re being honest with yourself, he’s really cute. You both caught each other staring at one another earlier, so you know he knows you’re here. You’re just not sure if you’re ready to face him yet, for you fear rejection being the first thing to come out of his mouth when the two of you come face to face.

You’re pulled out of your thoughts as the wolf leading this meeting mentions what happened between your pack and the other one a few nights ago.

“I think it would be appropriate to go over territories at this time,” he says. “Kris, Junmyeon, since this happened on your territory, would you like to go over the boundaries?”

With a nod from the man sitting beside your mate, they stand and head to the front. He’s taller than your mate is, and he does most of the talking, going over the areas of each pack’s territory. Once he’s done, your mate starts talking.

“This area here is unclaimed, so I’m assuming that’s where you’re all staying,” he says, directing this at Max, who nods in confirmation. “Then that area shall be your territory as of now, and as a good will gesture from one pack to another, the clearing that borders our territory is also yours.”

At his words, your eyes widen slightly in surprise, a small grin coming to tug at the corner of your lips. That means the clearing where you finally felt at peace is yours, you can go back to it without worrying about being attacked.

You can also tell his partner is shocked by his words, turning to look at him quickly in confusion, before shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts. They both move to sit back down.

Junmyeon can feel your eyes on the back of his head as he listens to the final words of the wolf leading the meeting. He knew giving that part of their territory to you would make you happy, and the slight smile that tugged at your lips proves it. Also, based off of what Minseok, Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol told him when they found you there, he knew you’d appreciate it. Now, he won’t have to worry about them attacking you again if you decided to sneak back there.

Soon enough, the meeting is over and everyone moves to leave, or stay behind and talk with neighbouring packs. You just want to get away from Yisung and your pack for a while, wanting to be left alone.

Your uncle turns to look at you questioningly as he notices you lagging behind your group.

“I’m going to stay and explore the town a bit more,” you say. “I can handle myself.”

He gives you a look, “are you sure? I can get Dani to stay with you.”

“No, it’s fine,” you reply.

“I don’t know, (Y/n),” he says warily. “I don’t like leaving you on your own, considering what happened a few days ago.”

This time, it’s your turn to give him a look, “Max, I know you’re only trying to look out for me, but I can take care of myself. What happened the other night was a one time thing. Besides, they said the town area is a communal territory, so I don’t need to worry about being attacked like I was then. Even if someone tried something, do you really think I’d let them get a chance?”

“You’re right,” he sighs, bringing his hand up to rub at his eyes. “Just don’t stay out too late, please. You’ll kill this old man from worrying to much.”

“Oh, shut up, you’re not that old,” you chuckle, shaking your head.

Waving goodbye, your uncle heads after the rest of your pack who have all continued on without you. You look after him with a small smile on your face. You’re happy he’s not one to linger on the past, and he knows he can trust you. One slip up every now and then is expected, and it is technically his fault for not going to a territory meeting earlier, so he can’t hold it against you.

Letting out a small puff of air, you take in your surroundings fully. Deciding to head left to start, you begin your exploration. You cut across the field that lies beside the atrium, but before you can get very far, you hear the familiar sound of someone running after you, and the scent of strawberries and vanilla becoming stronger the closer they get to you.

“Wait!” He cries out, reaching out for you with his right hand.

However, you sense his movement, and out of reflex, avoid his hand. Turning around, you grab him by the wrist, but he isn’t expecting this, so his natural reaction is to jerk his hand back. This causes you to go crashing into his chest, and your momentum sends the both of you tumbling to the ground. You land on top of his chest and his arms naturally come to wrap around your waist.

Both of your eyes are wide as you stare at each other, your heart racing in your chest. Junmyeon’s wolf purrs at having you so close to him at last. You feel so perfect pressed up against him, your body moulding to his like two puzzle pieces fitting together.

“This is not how I imagined our first meeting to go,” he laughs nervously. But I like this outcome much better.

“Me neither,” you breathe, hands still resting on his chest.

You both stare at each other for a few more seconds until you both are snapped back to reality. Reluctantly, he unwraps his arms from around your waist, his wolf letting out a whine in protest. You reluctantly remove yourself from on top of him, missing the comfort his warmth brought you. Your own wolf lets out a whine.

Standing up, the two of you face each other once more.

“Well, I guess this is technically the second time we’re meeting, although I wouldn’t count the first as formal,” he jokes.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” you grin, sheepishly. “You really didn’t have to give us that part of your territory.”

“It’s nothing, really,” he smiles, and god, if that isn’t the best thing you’ve seen in your life, you don’t know what is. “Like I said, think of it as a good will gesture. Besides, I thought you would appreciate it.”

“But you don’t even know me,” you reply, slight furrow to your brow.

“Well then, let’s change that,” he grins. “I’m Junmyeon.”

“Junmyeon,” you whisper to yourself, as if testing the way his name sounds, and the way his name sounds coming from your lips makes a shiver of pleasure run down his spine. “I’m (Y/n).”

Now, it’s his turn to test how your name sounds, “(Y/n).”

His wolf lets out a content howl as he sees you smile at him saying your name.

“Well, (Y/n), a little birdie told me you’re new to the area,” he smiles, and you can already tell where this is headed.

“I am,” you nod, smile beginning to tug at your lips.

“If you’d like, I could, uh-” he clears his throat, “I could show you around.”

A full on smile pulls at your lips, “I would love that.”

[weerd1]

Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1909.07: Missions Reviewed, “Behind the Lines,” “Favor the Bold,” and “Sacrifice of Angels.”

“Behind the Lines” begins as the Defiant has a new mission as Starfleet intelligence has discovered a listening post the Dominion has been using to track Alliance fleet movements across five sectors. The issue is that very array will track the Defiant approaching to attack. A risky approach through the Argolis Star Cluster is planned, but Sisko won’t be commanding. He is promoted to Admiral Ross’ adjutant, and now coordinating all Starfleet actions from Starbase 375. Dax takes command.

 On DS9, Odo, Kira, Rom, and Jake continue their resistance. Rom makes sure the Jem’Hadar get a hold of Damar’s report showing that ketracel white supplies in the Alpha Quadrant will not hold. He recommends poisoning the last batch so the Dominion soldiers don’t become a mass of berserkers killing everyone in their path. The Jem’Hadar don’t take well to this, causing a brawl that leaves many Cardassian and Jem’Hadar casualties in Quark’s and strains the Dukat/Weyoun power structure. Odo is angry, as he had voted against this idea, thinking the resistance would tip its hand. While discussing it with Kira, the Female Changeling arrives on station, apparently trapped in the Alpha Quadrant by the minefield. She is desperate to link (or so she says) and begins to again instruct Odo in the ways of shapeshifters. 

Damar reveals to Quark (after some “kanar,” Cardassian booze) that he has a plan to disable the self replicating mines. Rom figures out what it must be, and the group plans to have Odo disable sensors so Rom can sabotage the equipment. Odo is distracted by linking with the Female again, and Rom is captured. 

Dax and the Defiant return from their mission, successful, and Sisko observes her as the Captain, knowing now that she has this under control.

So many great character moments here, from the Last Temptation of Odo to Rom stepping up as Resistance, to Quark slowly getting pulled into actions against the Dominion as well. Kira’s fury as an apathetic Odo hears about Rom is palpable, and may have been such high temperature as to actually melt my laptop screen a little. The story forcing us to hear about the Defiant’s mission rather than see it gives us a taste of Sisko’s frustration.  Hearing them actually begin to discuss the possibility of an attack on Earth was pretty jarring to Star Trek fans in the 90s, and that tension still plays today, even knowing where the show is going.

“Favor the Bold” shows us a Resistance desperate to get Rom released as he has been sentenced to death. Guards will not let Kira and Quark near Odo’s quarters, as Odo has been in the room with the Female for three days.  We see Odo, still communing, and when the Female tells him it has been three days, he is shaken. Meanwhile, looking for a way to turn the war around, Sisko hatches a plan to retake DS9. 

The Starfleet admiralty is at first resistant, again citing how diverting resources leaves the inner worlds vulnerable, but Sisko argues that Earth is “not the key to the Alpha Quadrant; the wormhole is.” With Starfleet approval, Sisko sends Martok and Worf to Qo’Nos to convince a reluctant Gowron to direct Klingon ships into this battle as well.  On DS9, the deactivation of the minefield has begun, and Rom in prison asks Quark to continue his mission to find a way to stop the new graviton beam from disabling any more. Kira asks Ziyal to intervene on Rom’s behalf with Dukat. Odo finds Kira to apologize, but she says “we are way past sorry.” Jake, using the barfly Morn, gets a message to his father regarding the mines, and with a newly minted Ensign Nog and crew they take their place at the head of a fleet of 600 Federation starships. They are soon met by 1200 Dominion and Cardassian ships. “Fortune favors the bold,” Sisko hopes, and the battle for DS9 begins.

I remember having to watch this weekly in the 90s, and by the Great Bird how tough that was.  The ability to just hit “next” on Netflix is a gift and a curse.  You don’t want to stop. This is the show at its best, and the stakes keep building. I remarked to Jennifer how well the effects hold up after 20 years, but let’s save that discussion for the next episode. Looking back over my summary, there are big things I missed, like the Dukat/Ziyal drama, and Kira beating the hell out of Damar for putting a hand on Ziyal, or Leeta’s concern for Rom and how the Bajoran and Ferengi governments are negotiating for his release.  So many details, so much drama, and all of it is fantastic.  These episodes aired in 1997, and their storytelling sets the stage for what is now the expectation from HBO or Netflix. “Babylon 5” certainly has its influence, but modern television is born on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The Federation fleet faces off with the Dominion as “Sacrifice of Angels” begins. O’Brien and Bashir are quoting “Charge of the Light Brigade” while Sisko tries to get the Cardassians to break formation and chase the Federation fighter wings. This will open a hole in the Dominion line the Federation will try and break through. 

They know it is a matter of hours before the Dominion takes down the minefield and tens of thousands of Jem’Hadar ships pour into the Alpha Quadrant. On DS9, Damar warns Dukat there are “elements” that may be trying to counter them: Kira, Jake, and Leeta. They are locked up with Rom. Quark has enough and gets Ziyal to go with him. Quark surprises himself with a bold rescue where he literally has a phaser in each hand, shooting two Jem’Hadar soldiers at once.  Kira and Rom run to try to keep the minefield from being destroyed by disabling the station’s weapons. Dukat describes to Weyoun how he only wanted to shepherd Bajor, and what a protector he is. How you don’t just kill your enemies, you make sure they know they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. He orders the Cardassian ships to make Sisko think his plan is working by breaking a hole, which the Federaiton jumps into. They are about to be defeated when out of the sun, the Klingon fleet emerges.

 The line breaks and the Defiant gets through, alone, setting maximum warp to DS9. Odo, having discusses his dismay with the Female Changeling realizes what he has become and his love for Kira prevents him from giving in to the Founders. He helps Kira and Rom get into the weapons controls. Rom disables them, but just after Damar has detonated the minefield. 

The wormhole is open, and the Dominion is coming. The Defiant arrives, and with weapons down, Damar cannot shoot it down. The Defiant plunges into the Wormhole to meet thousands of Dominion ships head on. Garak asks how “that poem” ends, and O’Brien tells him he doesn’t want to know. Sisko is at once in the presence of the Prophets, and he reminds them that they want to protect Bajor. They agree, but tell Sisko there is a price; he will never find peace on Bajor, and “his path is different.” Fading back into his reality, Sisko watches the Defiant’s main viewscreen as the enormous Dominion fleet…disappears. 

On DS9, Dukat, Damar, Weyoun, and the Founder watch the wormhole open and only the Defiant emerge.  With the Dominion fleet gone Weyoun declares “Time to start packing,” as the Founder orders the Dominion forces to pull back to Cardassia. Dukat searches for Ziyal, trying to get her to come too. She refuses, telling him it was her who helped Rom and Kira escape. Damar appears and shoots Ziyal as a traitor. 

Dukat snaps unable to leave his dead daughter. The Defiant docks, reuniting Jake and Ben; Worf and Dax; Bashir, O’Brien and the holosuites. Garak looks for Ziyal, and overhears someone say Kira is with Ziyal in the infirmary. Garak finds Kira with Ziyal’s body and Kira tells him “She loved you.”  “I could never figure out why,” he says. “I guess I never will.” Sisko finds a broken and mumbling Dukat in security, talking as if Ziyal is there and he will take her back to Cardassia.  Dukat tells his phantom daughter that he forgives her, and then looks at Sisko. “I forgive you too,” he says, handing Sisko back his baseball.

This six episode arc comes to a stunning conclusion.  Some may cite a “deus ex machina” in the end, but to ignore the fact the Sisko has been presented as a having this connection to the Prophets since the very first episode.  It’s not deus ex machina when the gods were already recurring characters (See also: Battlestar Galactica).  Damar building as a character who is so loyal to Dukat as to kill the bosses daughter for him contributes to how we will see his conscience tear at him until he too has his own form of break. The Klingons arriving are simply gorgeous, and the effects, perhaps not quite as flashy as the Abrams films or Discovery, hold up very well here. Thinking of the logistics necessary in the nascent days of CGI mixed with model making necessary to pull this off makes them stunning. The tracking shots of Defiant racing along the surfaces of Dominion ships is a better effect than several modern films and tv shows, which I will not name as I don’t like to be negative on the internet. (DM me for what I think is the worst SF show in years.)  The heartbreaking ending to Ziyal’s story, managing to leave Dukat a broken shell and Garak and Kira both reeling is effective, and I will miss her character. Weyoun’s handclap and line about leaving is just a wonderful note in this symphony, and now we get to see Odo truly try to find his redemption. Peak Star Trek. These six episodes were actually adapted into a series of novels, and they absolutely deserve to be.

NEXT MISSION: After war, loss, and destruction, the show lets us catch our breath with THE wedding of the 24thCentury! Dax and Worf decide to merge their houses in “You Are Cordially Invited”!

[queenofmoons67]

The Truth Cannot Be Long Hidden

Summary: Agent McCall finally returns to Beacon Hills to find out the truth.

Note: This is the sixth fic in my series “The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack”. You do not have to have read the others to understand this, just know that: this is set after season five, but written before season six aired; Isaac, Jackson, and Derek have all returned to the pack.

Agent Rafael McCall sat in the driver's seat of his car, studying the school before him. He didn't slouch, doing his best to go unseen. Instead, his shoulders rested, tense, as far up the leather as they could go. He watched, and waited. And when the final bell rang, he finally saw who he'd been waiting for.

Scott McCall walked out of Beacon Hills High laughing, a grin on his face, surrounded by friends. To his right, Stiles Stilinski. To his left, a tall blonde that Agent McCall recognized as, with some surprise, Isaac Lahey. Directly behind the three leaders were a girl he recognized as the sister of a deputy, holding hands with an unfamiliar blonde male. And behind them, from left to right, walked: a glaring teenager Agent McCall identified as Jackson Whittemore, a young black male rolling his eyes, the queen of high school Lydia Martin pointedly ignoring her ex-boyfriend, and the once-thought-to-be-dead Malia Tate scanning the horizon. At first glance, they looked like any other pack of students coming out the school doors. But at second glance… at second glance, they resembled a different kind of pack. Scott walked slightly ahead of Stiles and Lahey. The couple behind them, while seemingly relaxed and talking about nothing serious, kept an eye on their surroundings and were perfectly positioned to guard the lead trio's backs. Whittemore, while upset, was clearly making an effort to stay calm and not yell at anyone - something Agent McCall had never seen, though the sight of Martin running facts and figures in her head was only too familiar. And yet, at the same time, they guarded the teen in-between them. Tate, on the other hand, guarded the entire pack - anyone approaching from behind would have to go through her first. As a whole, the group seemed well-oiled and ready for anything.

Several things worried Agent McCall. One, where was Kira Yukimura? Two, why had Whittemore and Lahey returned? Three, who were the strangers? Four, where, when, how, and why had his son become the leader of this well-prepared pack? And - somehow, Agent McCall managed to freeze even more in his seat. While he hadn't been hiding the fact he was watching, he hadn't expected this reaction. Tate and the unfamiliar blonde seemed to notice him at the same time, though how when they never looked directly at him he didn't know. Some unseen signal then passed to the others, and automatically they seemed to close ranks. The black male was pushed up in-between the couple, Scott's face grew serious as he began walking towards his father's car, and Whittemore and Tate both looked ready to kill. For that matter, so did Stiles and Lahey, though they only showed it by closing the small gap between them and Scott. In almost no time at all, they reached Agent McCall.

"Dad," Scott said stiffly, hiding his worry the best he could - though, of course, his betas could smell it, and he could feel the anxiety coming through the pack bonds because of it. As Isaac gently nudged him with his foot, the alpha sent what he hoped was waves of reassurance back to his pack. At the same time, the sensation of questions came in from the adults, and even as he tried to negate them, he could feel Derek and Chris drawing closer - able to do so since neither had to be at work.

"Scott," Agent McCall greeted. He eyed the group behind his son. "Can we talk privately?"

The alpha didn't even bother checking with his pack. "Whatever you can say to me, you can say to them." The smell of sadness, mixed with worry, anger, and grief emanating from his father startled him.

"Fine," Agent McCall agreed, trying not to show any of his feelings. "I told you when I got back we would talk, and that I would want the truth. Here I am. And if you've gotten into something, and don't know how to get out, I can help."

Scott protested, "Dad! I haven't joined a gang," while Stiles and Jackson both choked on laughter at the very idea that True Alpha "I'm the hot girl" Scott McCall could be in a gang.

"If you want me to believe that," Agent McCall began, "then you have to tell me the truth."

The alpha hesitated, glancing back at his pack. If he told, he would be revealing their secrets as well. And - "Do it, Scott," Chris Argent interrupted his thoughts. Startling, the alpha looked up to find that his left hand and hunting advisor had both arrived while he considered the next course of action, and had subsequently been absorbed into pack formation - Isaac moved back to stand beside Hayden as Derek took his place, while Chris stood in front of Scott to both block the FBI Agent's view of his alpha and to have eye contact while he did his job and advised. "Do it," the ex-hunter repeated, voice low now that he had Scott's attention. "If you don't, you'll have to work around your father. He'll be watching the pack's every move, doing his best to go against us as he forms his own opinions - just like he's already done. He'll blame your mother for everything. He'll never leave, not until he knows the truth. And if you don't tell him, you will regret it. Whether that happens sooner or later, if you eventually get over it or you carry it for the rest of your life, you will regret it. So make it easy on all of us. Tell him the truth." Speech done, Chris watched the emotions flit across Scott's face until they finally settled, and as he felt the satisfaction that came with making a decision through the bond Chris slid away, tucking into the pack on the other side of Stiles.

"Fine," Scott declared, making his dad look at him in surprise. "You want the truth?" He didn't even have to glance around, Mason tapped the "ok, we're alone" on his back. "We're werewolves. Well, some of us are. Some of us are something else. Some of us are still entirely human. But some of us are werewolves, and me? I'm the alpha of the Pack." Agent McCall gaped at his son, astonished he'd even try to pass something like that off as truth, only to jerk back and reflexively reach for his gun when Scott's eyes flashed a brilliant ruby red while simultaneously growling, showing off a sharp set of fangs. Behind his son, Hale, Lahey, the unknown couple, Tate, and Whittemore's eyes all flashed a mix of cerulean blue and murky yellow. "Leave town, dad." Agent McCall's attention lurched back to his son. "Now that you know the truth, leave. We don't need you here. If anything, we're better off without you bringing the eyes of the FBI down on Beacon Hills."

Scott turned away, the rest of his pack - a wolf pack, Agent McCall realized, an actual wolf pack - following close behind, guarding their alpha and each other. Stiles and Hale, who the agent recognized as his son's right and left hands, quickly caught up to, again, walk just behind Scott on either side. His son was safe, Agent McCall realized, and with that, he started his car and left. He'd keep in touch, but that could be done from a difference. His son had grown up into a fine young man. There was nothing left for him to do but watch him live his own life.

Note: You can find the complete series of “The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack” on AO3, and a list of all the fics’ summaries on Tumblr.

[arnoldjaime13]

Blog Tour: WOLF MARKED by @AlexisCalder1  With An Excerpt & $10 Amazon GC #Giveaway!

 I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the WOLF MARKED by Alexis Calder Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

  About The Book:

Title: WOLF MARKED (Moon Cursed #1)

Author: Alexis Calder

Pub. Date: July 29, 2021

Publisher: Alexis Calder

Formats: Paperback, eBook

Pages: 232

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle

Read For Free With A Kindle Unlimited Membership!

They tried to break me. Now I’m going to break them.

Cursed to never shift, the only thing I was looking forward to about the First Moon Ceremony was that the magic sealing me into Wolf Creek would break, and I could finally leave. Instead, the ceremony reveals my true mate: Tyler Grant, future leader of my pack and the man responsible for my most recent concussion and black eye. He’s as brutal as he is handsome and fate is a bitch to put us together. There’s a rumor that a mating bond could break my curse and just as I’m getting my hopes up, Tyler destroys them all. Instead of bonding with my mate, I’m beaten and left for dead. A hot-as-sin feral shifter finds me and helps me back on my feet. But his help comes with a cost and I’m not sure I’m willing to pay the price. With my former pack hunting me down, even an enemy might be a better ally than trying to stay alive on my own. This is book one in steamy rejected mate series. This is not a reverse harem series. 17+ for steam, language, and darker themes.

  Excerpt

Chapter One

 The wind rustled the paper calendar hanging on my wall and I glanced at the crossed off days. Six days left. I was so close to freedom. Pulling my jacket tighter around me, I walked over to the window and peered outside. The sky was steely gray and the clouds looked like they might bring a tornado. It was late spring and the weather this time of year was unpredictable.

Maybe I’d get lucky and it would hit my mom’s shitty trailer and I could get out of here permanently. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get out of here that easily. Whatever witch magic they’d used to seal us in pack lands seemed to also keep the worst weather away. It also prevented us from self-harm. Not that it kept anyone else from beating the shit out of me.

I supposed if I really wanted out, I could have pushed Tyler and his entourage a little more. The penalty for killing another member of the pack was death, but I had a feeling nobody would mourn me. And it wasn’t like they’d lock up the next alpha for getting rid of the broken wolf.

I closed the window. While we were unlikely to get a tornado here, we did get rain and I didn’t need the water coming in and ruining my few meager possessions.

The duffel bag sitting next to the folding table that served as my desk was already packed. It had been for three months. Waiting until the night the magic would free me from this prison. On the first full moon after my nineteenth birthday, I was supposed to shift, and with that magic, I’d gain the ability to leave the magical border around our town. I already knew I wouldn’t shift, but the magic should break, letting me finally escape from the hell that was my life.

For the rest of the pack, that barrier was our savior. It kept us hidden and protected. Away from feral wolves who hunted other shifters for sport. Away from humans who would kill us on sight. Most importantly, it kept us away from witches. At least that was what they taught us. For me, it kept me away from freedom. I’d take my chances with humans and feral shifters any day over the shit I dealt with here. Witches and magic freaked me out more, but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

Fucking magic. Fucking witches. They were the cause of all my pain. The reason I was trapped in a town where I was abused daily. The reason my mom spent her days on her back with whatever pills she could find to dull her pain. I didn’t even know who my dad was but I was sure he was an asshole. Just like my mom’s dad. He was the one who pissed off a witch, resulting in the curse that follows my family. No shifting for us. Practically human with a dormant wolf shifter gene. If only my mom had fled while she was pregnant with me and let us live as humans. Instead, she’d stayed here, pining over the fucker who knocked her up. He never came back and I got stuck here.

“Lola, did you grab cigarettes at the store?” Mom yelled.

“Yeah, mom. They’re on the table.” I shouldn’t indulge her habits. It was gross and it cost me a small fortune but it kept her off my case. She didn’t ask where I went or what I did as long as there were cigarettes on the table and food in the fridge. All paid for by my after school job at the pack grocery store.

It wasn’t a glamorous job, but it was helping me save something for when I finally got free of this hellhole.

I took a peek in the mirror and gingerly touched the bruises from my latest black eye. Another gift from the male who would one day be the pack alpha. If Tyler Grant had treated me with indifference, maybe I’d have stayed here. Instead, I got daily reminders that I was unwelcome. One of these days he was going to go too far and I intended to be long gone before then. Huh, how about that? I guess I didn’t have a death wish after all. My desire to survive was barely hanging on by a thread. It would be easier to roll over and give up. Thankfully, I had the reminder of my mom and what her life was like. I refused to become like her.

I considered applying some concealer to cover my injury, but it wouldn’t hide it much. The rest of my classmates would be healed by now, but since I didn’t have the wolf inside me to aid in that, I healed like a human. The purple and blue made my eyes look even more green than they were. Apparently, I had my father’s eyes. Most of the pack had brown or amber eyes. The green in mine was another thing that made me stand out. Add in the red hair and it was impossible for me to hide.

Quickly, I pulled my hair into a low ponytail to get it out of the way. I grabbed my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. Six more days. That was all I had to do. Just a few more days of school, a few more days of work, a few more days of ignoring the over-acting of my mom’s moaning through the paper-thin walls of her bedroom. I shuddered. No kid should have to hear their mom engaging in that. I didn’t judge how she earned her money but I sure as hell didn’t want to listen to it.

With one last glance at my packed bag, I left my room. The thought of leaving was the only thing getting me through the motions. Chin high, I reminded myself that I was almost there. I’d made it this far. I could make it six more days.

Students mingled in the grass in front of Wolf Creek Community College when I arrived. I glared at the building, which was right next door to Wolf Creek High School. Sometime when I was a small kid, they’d expanded the school requirement to make all of us take at least one semester of college while waiting for our first full moon. Most kids who grew up here dropped out as soon as they had their first shift and settled into some mundane job in town. Few left because we all knew being a wolf without a pack was challenging. I wouldn’t ever turn into a wolf so I wasn’t worried. Being alone would be better than being here.

It was the twenty-fourth of May and there were only a couple weeks of school left before summer break. But I wouldn’t be here to finish the year. My birthday was last week, which meant the full moon in six days was my ticket out. I was so close, I could taste it.

As I neared the entry, I realized that a small group of guys was waiting by the front doors. My heart pounded and I froze. Tyler and his crew were gathered there despite the fact that most of them had already had their first full moon. Tyler was one of the few wolves who stayed enrolled in school after his first shift last month. I figured for sure he’d be out of here since his future was set. As the next alpha, it didn’t matter if he had any actual skills aside from being able to throw people around. He could do whatever he wanted and nobody would bat an eye.

Quickly, I changed direction and started walking toward the side of the building. There were other doors I could use and I wasn’t in the mood to get the shit beat out of me today. It wasn’t like I was a pushover but there was nothing fair about three dudes against one non-shifted chick.

I slipped into the side door and walked down the tile hallway. Kids I’d known my whole life glanced at me and quickly looked away. That was how it was for me. When I was younger, it hurt that I was so alone. Now, I was grateful for their indifference. Ignoring me was better than the alternative.

When I finally took my seat in my Calculus class, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d made it in without sporting a new black eye. Six more days.

Professor Ortiz started writing on the white board and the four other people in the class were already taking notes. I had no deep love of math, but I was good at it and Tyler wasn’t. Another not as proud moment. My schedule was based on things Tyler hated. I reminded myself that it wasn’t like I’d even get the credit for the class since I’d be out before the term was over. It was pure survival at this point.

Soon enough, I was sucked into class, too focused on the numbers to worry about anything else. Okay, so maybe I liked that about math. It forced me to shut out my other worries.

I went through the motions for the next two classes, doing enough to keep the professors from noticing me and not engaging enough to draw attention to myself. It was a balancing act I’d perfected over the years. Keeping to myself and making myself nearly invisible were the only ways I’d made it this far.

The hallways were packed. There were only a hundred of us in this school, but since we all had the same lunch, it got busy when it was time for a break. I walked into the crowd, keeping my gaze down to avoid confrontation. It was especially important this close to a full moon.

Someone ran right into me, their shoulder slammed into mine, shoving me aside. I looked up, ready to find a way out, but when my eyes met Tyler’s I knew I was fucked.

“Where have you been hiding little wolf?” He stared at me with his amber eyes, a vicious smile on his lips. His fingers dug into my bicep as he held me tight.  “I waited for you at the front door but you didn’t come. I thought maybe you were playing hooky.”

“What and give someone else the chance to beat the shit out of me? You know we’re exclusive.” Missing school was worse than attending. Tyler and his friends might use me as a punching bag, but the torture that came with being truant was far worse. I’d tried a few times in high school, but it wasn’t worth the pain.

He pushed me forward into the women’s bathroom. The door swung open and two girls standing by the sinks screamed.

“Out. Now.” Tyler growled.

“I don’t know why you waste your time with her,” Tenny, a tall blonde who was a few months older than me said.

Every female at school wanted Tyler. He was going to be the next alpha, after all. Even without the promise of power, his looks would buy him a lot of attention. He was over six feet of solid muscle. With wavy black hair, piercing amber eyes, and a strong masculine jaw, he was like a walking wet dream. Thankfully, his good looks were wasted on me. He’d been an awkward kid and by the time he resembled a fucking Greek God, I knew what kind of person he was.

“Ditch the loser, Ty,” Tenny said in what was probably supposed to be a seductive tone. “We haven’t had a tumble in my back seat in a while.”

“I said, out,” Tyler repeated.

“She probably doesn’t even know what you like,” Tenny whined.

“What exactly do you think he’s doing with me?” I asked. “Because I promise you if he put his dick anywhere near me, I’d bite it off.”

Tyler’s hand made contact with my face, slapping me so hard it nearly knocked me on my ass. The sting made my eyes water and I forced myself to clench my jaw and hold my breath rather than cry out. I’d learned long ago that when I reacted, it made things worse.

Tenny giggled. “Well, since she’s not meeting your needs, you know where to find me if you want a real wolf.”

“Out,” Tyler repeated.

The girls left the bathroom and I pulled free of Tyler’s grip. “What do you want, Tyler?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “My father should have kicked you and your whore of a mother out the day your grandfather crossed that witch. Better yet, he should have let you starve in the caves.”

I swallowed hard. The worst punishment in our pack was being locked in the caves on the south end of town, right near the border. Locked in without food or water with other criminals meant that wolves often went feral and fed on each other. It was gruesome and had only been used once in my lifetime, but the threat was always there. Only, this was the first time Tyler mentioned it. He’d told me I shouldn’t be here in previous encounters, but he’d never talked about the caves. Ever since his first shift, he’d been more emotional and less stable. I was grateful he wasn’t the alpha yet.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be out of here soon and you’ll never have to look at me again.” I glared at him.

Before I saw it coming, his hand was around my throat and he pushed me back, slamming me against the wall. I heard the cracking of my head as it made contact and hoped it didn’t mean I had another concussion. Pain blurred my vision and I winced despite myself.

He was faster and stronger than he was before his first shift. When we were younger, I had a chance against him. As we got older, he got stronger, feeding off the energy of his wolf. I didn’t have that advantage. It was hard to tell if the beatings had gotten worse or if he’d gotten stronger.

When we were in elementary school, he teased me but by middle school, things turned physical. In the last year, I had learned I didn’t stand a chance fighting back anymore. What I wouldn’t give for some of the strength and power that came along with a shift.

Tyler scowled at me. His expression reflecting pure hatred. I never knew what I did to make him so mad, but it had gotten worse recently. Beating me up had always seemed to be a sport, something he did with a laugh to show off to his friends.

That’s when it hit me that we were totally alone. My heart pounded faster. In all the years of dealing with Tyler, he’d always had others with him. There were always witnesses. He liked the audience and there was always someone to pull him back if he took things too far. We’d never actually been alone before. For the first time during one of our little torture sessions, I was worried. This wasn’t just a game anymore.

“Let me go,” I demanded.

“Like I said, you shouldn’t even be here, little wolf.” He squeezed harder, making me gasp for air. My vision blurred, growing darker around the edges. For a moment, I wondered if this was it. If he took me out, I would be free of this place, done with the pain. I considered it for a heartbeat. A flicker of anger urged me forward, I wasn’t ready yet.

Risking retaliation, I kicked Tyler right in the nuts. He let go, groaning, as he grabbed his manhood. I sidestepped him then bolted for the door, sucking in air as I fled. The hallway was empty. His friends nowhere in sight. Whatever Tyler had been after, he didn’t want any witnesses. If he hadn’t already had his mind set on murdering me, he probably did now. I might have just signed my own death warrant. Fuck. Surviving for the next six days was going to be harder than I thought.

About Alexis:

Alexis Calder writes sassy heroines and sexy heroes with a sprinkle of sarcasm. She lives in the Rockies and drinks far too much coffee and just the right amount of wine.

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Tour Schedule:

Week One:

7/26/2021

BookHounds

Excerpt

7/26/2021

The Momma Spot

Excerpt

7/27/2021

#BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog

Excerpt

7/27/2021

#BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog

IG Post

7/28/2021

Rajiv's Reviews

Review

7/28/2021

Rajiv's Reviews

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7/29/2021

Writer of Wrongs

Excerpt

7/29/2021

Books a Plenty Book Reviews

Review

7/30/2021

Reveal + Review

Review

7/30/2021

@coffeebooksandmascara

Review

Week Two:

8/2/2021

TLC Book Nook

Excerpt

8/2/2021

Two Chicks on Books

Excerpt

8/3/2021

A Court of Coffee and Books

Review

8/3/2021

A Court of Coffee and Books

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8/4/2021

More Books Please blog

Review

8/4/2021

More Books Please blog

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8/5/2021

Jaime's World

Excerpt

8/5/2021

JaimeRockstarBookTours

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8/6/2021

The Reading Cafe

Review

8/6/2021

Don't Judge, Read

Review

8/6/2021

What's Beyond Forks?

Review

[iasmelaion]

Yuletide 2017

Don’t mind me, just crossposting my Yuletide letter here. Fandoms are The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (has nothing to do with that Tom Cruise movie), Sense8, 17776, and Moonlight. Sorry to everyone on mobile where I guess read mores still don’t work?

Another year, another Yuletide! Thank you for signing up to write in one of my fandoms! I can't wait to see whatever you come up with, and with these fandoms, chances are I'll love whatever it is you choose to write. If my requests/prompts/details don't catch your interest, just remember that Optional Details Are Optional, and that I will be thrilled to get fic in any of these fandoms at all. As far as my basic preferences go: I am okay with gen, het, slash, and femslash. If I've indicated a pairing preference in my request, don't feel pressured to write it! I'm a big gen lover, and I'll specifically note if there's a pairing I don't want to see with the characters I've requested. Also, a confession: I usually skim through sex scenes. I know, I know, what am I doing in fandom if I skim past the porn. But I am almost always way more interested in character interaction than in sexy times. Feel free to include sex scenes! I'd just really prefer that porn not be the whole point of the fic. Things I love: banter, subtle but meaningful declarations of love and/or trust, pining, characters finding home and family with each other, the smaller moments of domesticity or the calm before the storm, crossovers, detailed worldbuilding, lolz, feelings, women being complex and sometimes assholes, dudes being stoic yet simmering with repressed emotions, any number of forced intimacy situations (fake married! Undercover relationship! Surprise soul bond! Huddling for warmth! Oh no there’s only one bed! Sex pollen! I could go on, really), threesomes/sedoretu-style moresomes, and indulgent emotional hurt/comfort. Things I don't love: dark fic, character bashing, character death, non-con, infidelity, incest, alpha/beta/omegaverse fic, mpreg, harm to children, being mean to robots, unhappy endings, issuefic. Also, while I generally love AUs, I love these fandoms for their settings and the characters in those settings, so I'd prefer no total AUs (canon-divergent AUs okay though).

1. The Last Samurai - Helen Dewitt (Ludo, Sybilla) My desires in terms of Last Samurai fic are simple: I just want to know what happens to Ludo and/or Sybilla, after the book. Especially Ludo. Who does he end up being, when he grows up? What does he do with his brilliant mind? Hell, what name does he choose to go by? I'd really just love to see something about an older Ludo interacting with the world and the interesting people in it, a sort of extension of the kind of adventures he got up to in the book. I'd also love to know more about Sybilla, whose character arc I thought ended up getting somewhat short shrift. How does her life change as Ludo grows up? Does she enter the world again, academic or otherwise? How does she continue to deal with her depression? This is my third fourth fifth sixth SEVENTH, holy shit, year requesting this, and I live in hope! I’m pretty sure the book is even in print again now! Here is what I said in years past: I wrote about my thoughts on the novel here, if that interests you. Anyway, like my request says, I more or less want straight up future fic about Ludo and Sybilla. I want to know what kind of man Ludo becomes, what happens to Sybilla as Ludo grows into an adult, what happens to their relationship. In short, I just want to know more. Whatever you do to fill my insatiable desire to know more more more about these characters will make me happy. Don't feel like you have to match the style of the novel. I will be very impressed if you do, but it's not a dealbreaker for me. Anyway, Ludo and/or Sybilla future fic! That's my Last Samurai request in a nutshell.

2. Sense8 - Any I basically just have a lot of EMOTIONS about the cluster and the experience of being sensate, and would love a fic exploring that. What exactly does it mean, to be part of a cluster? Our main cluster seems to have had a somewhat unique/traumatic experience of being “born,” how does that make their take on being sensate different? The show did a pretty good job visually showing it, but I'm super fascinated by what the interiority of the experience is like. The members of the cluster seemed to feel a pretty instant empathy and understanding of each other, what's that like? By now they must know each other better, what was that process like, learning all the mundane stuff about each other in non-life or death situations? How does being a sensate influence their relationships with the other people in their life? What happens when, say, Will tells Diego or Lito finally tells Hernando and Dani (on the way to rescue Wolfgang perhaps)? I know Season 2 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, but feel free to just jump ahead to some nebulous future where everything’s resolved if you want. You by no means have to answer all or even any of these specific questions, they’re just guides for the kind of thing I’m interested in here. I picked Any characters here, so go wild. I'm most interested in the main cluster, but I'm overall fascinated by the whole sensate experience and what it means for any given character's relationships and experience of the world. Any fic exploring that would be great. Shipwise, I'm into all the canon pairings and basically any permutation of the members of the cluster. My tl;dr thoughts on Sense8 are here and here. This is a fandom where I sort of feel spoiled for choice in terms of characters I'm interested in, so I picked Any for this request. I love the main cluster and their relationships with each other, you basically can't go wrong picking any given combination of them and smushing them together. I'm also very interested in all the non-sensate side characters and how they interact with the cluster. I really just want more more more in this universe.. 3. 17776 - Any I am so utterly FASCINATED by the improbable and amazing and weird utopia Jon Bois has built with 17776. It’s a world that seems to be positively teeming with stories, and I’m wildly interested in reading about any and all of them. I do not actually care about football qua football; I like the country and centuries-spanning version of the game Jon Bois has extrapolated here, but you don’t have to make it the focus of anything you write. What I’d love to know more about are those first few decades after humanity realizes they can no longer die. Or, heck, who first realizes people have stopped dying, and how do they approach that mystery? How do other parts of the world deal with immortality, what games do they play? I know Jon Bois thinks that humanity is alone in this universe, and won’t be able to overcome the practical roadblocks to long-range space travel, but what if they did? What if humanity’s not alone? Who are the kinds of people who’d fling themselves out into the big, wide dark of space, with no expectation of returning, and eternity stretching out in front of them? What other bits of electronics or AI have gained their own sentience or significance, and who do they talk to? Honestly, I’d be thrilled with you exploring just about any nook or cranny of this fascinating universe. I’d only ask that you maintain the source’s absurd yet optimistic and loving tone. Bittersweet and even a little elegiac is fine, I just don’t want anything grim or dark here. The world we’re living in right now has plenty of that. Also, do not feel the need to try any wild format/coding stuff the way Bois did if you don’t want to. A vanilla text story is more than enough for me. A quick primer on 17776 in an effort to snare more people in, and also just elaborate a little more on why I love it: 

You can find 17776 here. It is...hard to explain. Maybe impossible to explain. For one thing, it's a sort of multimedia storytelling experience, composed largely of text, but also some video and audio, and some website weirdness. Jon Bois of SB Nation wrote this, ostensibly, as a series on the future of football. It is not what you might expect, given that starting point. The premise is this: humans stopped dying and aging as of April 7, 2026. Any other risk of injury or illness has been mitigated by a worldwide network of nanobots that will fix anything. It’s a post-scarcity utopia, all pressing problems fixed Having reached this pinnacle, and having hit the hard limits of ability and resources that leave them unable to meaningfully explore space, the humans of 17776 are left with some weird ways to pass their endless supply of time, one of which is playing football. Only it’s not football as we know it, it’s football blown up so the field crosses states and the timespan crosses decades, centuries. 17776 opens with the space probes Pioneer 9 and Pioneer 10 trying to talk to each other, many years in the future. As 17776 slowly unfolds, Pioneer 9 is shepherded into sentience and learns about what’s going on on Earth from Pioneer 10 and JUICE (the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer). Pioneer 9 learns about football, and the people who play it now, and some people who don’t play it, but are passing their endless amount of time in different ways. Really, the whole experience is worth a read/watch, I’m not doing it justice here. I’ve always been fascinated by fictional takes on immortality, and 17776 offers a pretty new take on it, one where everyone is immortal, not just a few people, so humanity has to figure out how to deal with it together. It would be easy to turn this premise into a horrifying dystopia, a sort of endless hell for all the humans stuck on Earth together with eternal life and no escape. What I love about 17776 is that Bois turned this premise into a utopia, a bittersweet sort of heaven. There are things and experiences that the humans of 17776 mourn and miss (no more children seems like an especially bitter loss, ouch), and they seem to be a little obsessive about cataloging and exploring the past. But it’s so meaningful to me that, when free of want and hardship and death, this vision of humanity buckles down to do ridiculous, wild, fun, sweet things like play century and country-spanning games of football, or travel around learning every minute detail of every place, or travel around meeting each other to share stories. Here is a quote from Jon Bois that really gets at why I’m so fascinated and in love with the 17776 universe: Humanity’s technological advancement over the last 150 years has been almost frightening, but that’s a very small speck of time. I think we’ll eventually hit a wall, and that wall will be, “we can’t travel into deep space ourselves.” Too much distance, too much radiation, and too little incentive. If that ends up being the case, we’ll have nothing to do but solve our problems on Earth. I’m being really optimistic when I guess that we might someday. After we do that, we’re gonna want our games, our art, and each other. One day, we might see those as the only reasons we’re here. In a world where there is no death, where the biggest human problems have been solved, there's something beautiful about those things that still hurt, those things we still lost: the dream of space, children, childhood, endings. And what sweet hope, to distill down our reason for being here to games, art, and each other. There’s a real love of people that runs through all of 17776, and that's one of my favorite things about it.

4. Moonlight (2016) - Chiron, Kevin Just give me Chiron and Kevin’s happy ending. The world hasn’t been kind to them, but I want to believe in the possibility of it being kinder, of them being tender and kind with one another, after everything. I want to believe that they can build a life together, even if it’s not the kind of life they or anyone else would have expected. Trevante Rhodes said, “I like to think they’re together, walking in Central Park hand-in-hand when they’re 90 years old,” and yeah, that’s what I hope for them too. So I’d love a story about how they get there, or how they start that journey. Another possible prompt, this one from something Andre Holland (who plays Kevin) said: “I have this image of them walking along with Kevin’s son and teaching him, either overtly or experientially, about what masculinity is and what it means to be a man, in all the variations that are possible. That, to me, is the magic of it, that there’s a young boy in the world who will grow up with a different idea of masculinity than either of them had.” The thing I loved most about Moonlight was how incredibly intimate and tender it was, how quiet and clear-eyed. It felt like living in Chiron’s skin. And I love it as a love story too, even though the ending was bittersweet. I took it to be hopeful, and obviously, I’m a lover of happy endings. Ultimately, as sad as parts of Moonlight were, as hard as life obviously is for Kevin and Chiron, Moonlight healed some wounds in me that Brokeback Mountain and so many other unhappy queer love stories left, by showing all that hard stuff, but offering a way forward anyway. Kevin, calling Chiron to reconnect. Chiron, taking a risk, making that nine-hour drive to see Kevin. Kevin and Chiron letting themselves be vulnerable to and with each other. Both of them, ultimately, reaching for one another.

[birbleafs]

[fic] verdant green

Series: Tales of Zestiria Rating: T Genre: AU. Post-apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Cyberpunk/Dieselpunk. Character(s): Mikleo, Sorey, Atakk. Brief mentions of Michael, Muse and Zenrus. Warnings: Character death, mentions of terminal illness, nonsense sci-fi medical procedures and terminology. Summary:  Somewhere, encrypted within its system was a stream of coded information, of preserved memories, of a shared lifetime. A/N: So I've been seeing this post going around tumblr about using words like "smaragdine" in fic. And what started out as a joke conversation with Namio/Bagel on twitter turned into something more. Also, Buckminsterfullurene is not a made-up term. They are actually the smallest molecule of carbon shaped like a hollow hexagonal sphere, like a football (that's why they're also called 'buckyballs') except nano-sized. Fic can also be read on AO3

Mikleo refused to vocalize it, of course—Sorey doesn't need to know of it, never needs to—but even he had to admit there was an amorphous beauty to them. If he was allowed to observe them up-close and for longer, he would marvel at that perfect formation of fused-rings, structured and welded together into a tight crystalline sphere, their colour the verdant green of lush forests, of unearthed emeralds hidden in sunken pirate hoards.

Or like smaragdine Buckminsterfullerenes.

Mikleo frowned, and then mentally shuddered, adjusting his glasses over the bridge of his nose with a delicate finger. The corner of his lips crinkled into a crooked smile as he fingered the brass locket around his neck, feeling the blunt edges of the hexagonal sphere. Now that was a terrible way to describe anyone's eyes, though he suspected Sorey would have found it cool anyway, because, Mikleo, look! This author knows about buckyballs too! Think they know anything else about other nanoparticles?

Maybe, he would’ve replied with a frown and a huff, though probably not as much as their proclivity for waxing lyrical with, uh, less than palatable prose.

A heavy silence lingered over him, and—

And Mikleo could almost see it, could almost hear it—the tiny curve of a smirk, an amused snort and then Sorey’s laugh, bright and radiant like sunrise. He blinked, suddenly aware of the throbbing ache within his chest; he straightened himself in his seat, glancing up at the glowing panels beside the bed. Electric-blue lines danced in spikes across the dark screen in tune to the soft beeps of the instruments, like waves crashing and receding from the shoreline.

“How much longer, Atakk?” Mikleo asked, turning his gaze back to the bed, at the figure resting. The small droid beside him chimed a soft response, yellow lights blinking steadily as it continued its extraction work.

“Right,” Mikleo said, and then to Atakk’s second beep—a query, this time—he exhaled softly, before he managed a tiny, reassuring smile. “I’m all right. Just…nervous. But we’ve here now. And I...”

Another sigh, fingers curling into his palms, digging into flesh and, “I... We—There’s no turning back now. Not when we’ve come this far. Sorey will understand.”

Sorey wouldn’t want this and you know it, said the quiet voice in his head, and Mikleo knew, in the deepest recesses of his heart, it was true. Sorey would want him to move on, to be happy, to live—

But what about what I want? He thought bitterly, almost angrily. They had all left him, one by one. Mother first, in the crash, and then Uncle in that incident when The Council had demanded access to his research, had coerced him into a project he’d fought hard against and failed. Even Gramps was gone, returned to dust and cinders. Mikleo had lost them all within a span of five years and now, after months of endless tests and bacta-therapy/arti-org graft procedures and hollow promises of he’ll be cured and awake in no time, don’t you worry! ...

Mikleo sighed, squeezing his eyes shut to chase away the pain and memory, to find his centre again.

No, he would not lose Sorey either; he could not. He was selfish, he knew, for wanting this, but he was also afraid. If they could not, would not save Sorey—then, he will.

Atakk’s excited whistle drew Mikleo back to the present and he opened his eyes. He watched the droid remove its data extraction limb from the tangle of wires and cables that ran from the instruments and up the bed frame, to the device strapped around the figure’s head. Turning to the panels again, Mikleo could see the blue spikes gradually receding, the oscillation sluggish now, before it finally flatlined. The instruments began to screech, and Mikleo quickly moved to flick the power button off, killing off the alarm.

For a moment, he neither moved nor spoke—gazing through the silence of the room at the figure on the bed, his eyes misty from guilt, pain and longing. Then, he rose from the chair and patted the droid fondly over its domed head. “Let’s get out of here before someone notices.”

Atakk chirruped a positive and quietly rolled towards the door. Mikleo followed suit, pausing only at the doorway to glance furtively back at the motionless figure.

Forgive me, Sorey. But I’m going to save you—I promise.

*

They left the city before dawn, riding past residential blocks of dreary grey, the land-speeder coughing out clouds of grit and yellowed dust in its wake as the engine whined in tune to the faint trill of birdsong. Camlann had never been more than a decaying city of rusting metal architecture and sun-baked streets. But it was the only place Mikleo had known, had called home for the past twenty-one years.

It’s not really home anymore though. Not since Mother and Uncle and Gramps...

He shook his head, concentrating on the dusty trail ahead, before looking over at Atakk. The droid whistled softly in the seat beside him, beads of lights flashing in sequence over its front panels. Somewhere, encrypted within its system was a stream of coded information, of preserved memories, of a shared lifetime. Somewhere, embedded in the deluge of algorithms and alpha-numeric ciphers was a glimmer of hope, of home again.

By early noon, they’d left Camlann far behind them, blazing ahead towards the deserted valleys of Elysium.

  *

He sat, for three days and nights, in a makeshift bunk in a rocky cleft, hidden from view by sparse shrubbery at the foot of a hill. Atakk was always by his side. The droid’s extraction limb was plugged into the network of cables and creaking machinery around them, information—information and memory and a shared lifetime—downloading in flashing blips of green and blue upon the screen.

Mikleo sat upon a bed of desert flowers entwined with curling vines, fingering the brass locket in his hand, watching the viridescent glow cast nebulous shapes over the slate-grey rock face surrounding them.

He sat and waited, the sound of whirring mechanical parts his only lullaby.

*

It almost seemed too long, too bleak, but finally, finally—the sun broke through gloom and misty cloud banks, and Atakk chirped. The droid wiggled where it had stood motionless for days, releasing a series of excited beeps and whistles. Mikleo moved quickly to its side, blood rushing in his ears, his heart pounding as his gaze flickered over to the cramped corner of the cave.

He exhaled, softly, slowly. There was a whirr of pistons and the soft whine of mechanical joints. Mikleo watched in silent awe as the figure—an android shaped and formed like a young humanoid male—sat up, one hand raised to brush a lock of synthetic brown hair from his forehead. The android held up both arms, studying them for a moment, before turning to gaze at Mikleo. His eyes were over-bright in the dim cave, bright and radiant like sunrise. Bright like the verdant green of lush forests, of unearthed emeralds hidden in sunken pirate hoards.

Bright like—

“Smaragdine.” The low, electronic voice echoed through the cave; a long pause, and then—“Buckminsterfullerenes.”

The android blinked and tilted his head in an angle that was achingly familiar to Mikleo.

“Mikleo…?” the android said, and Mikleo felt his heart clench, relief and yearning and sorrow all rolling into one and threatening to overwhelm him. He’d almost wanted to laugh then, at the absurdity, at everything. But he let out a sigh of relief instead, the knots and tension he hadn’t realised was there gradually dissipated from his shoulders.

“I... I know you. I know us,” the android repeated, testing the feel of his voice as though he’d finally understood his nature, of his being . And this time, Mikleo knew for sure, it was Sorey’s voice. It sounded lower, inflected with a synthesized edge now, but still, it was unmistakably...

His eyes burning, Mikleo reached towards the android—towards Sorey, now awake and aware; towards Sorey, his dearest friend, the only person left in this crumbling barren world who was family—and pulled him into a tight embrace.

“I’m here, Sorey,” he said, voice strained and heavy with emotion. He could feel the soft vibration of whirring gears through Sorey’s chest, could hear the gentle ticking of a clockwork heart encased in alloy and steel. “Took you long enough.”

“Mikleo,” Sorey said once more, his head still angled in confusion. But his eyes were filled with recognition and warmth. “Looks like I’ve missed a lot. What... happened? Did we—” He looked around the cave in wonderment. “Did we fall down a hole because of you again?”

Mikleo crinkled his nose in slight petulance, brushing away stray tears from his eyes before they could fall. Beside them, Atakk was still wiggling in barely contained excitement, chirruping lightly. Mikleo laughed softly then, and tightened his hold around Sorey.

“It’s a long story…”

  —end—

End notes: Seriously though, please don't call anyone's eyes "smaragdine orbs", unless they're part lizard-man/dragon or literal jewels LOL I don't really know what this is but the idea wouldn't leave me. Showers are dangerous places to cultivate plot bunnies. Some backstory to this AU, because idk if I'll write more for it: - Mikleo and Sorey are Bio-engineering research graduates. Their interest in the study of ecology and mechatronics was, in part, due to Michael, who is a well-known Robotics scientist within the Academy's research circles and Muse, who worked as a conservationist. Sorey's mother, Selene, was one of the few who dared brave the safety of the City Dome to explore the endless sand dunes outside. Shortly after giving birth to Sorey, she headed out on a scouting expedition, searching for the famed oases rumored to exist somewhere in the Elysium valleys. She never returned to Camlann. - When the boys were sixteen, the Council of Camlann approached Michael to recruit his skills for Project War Machine. However, he refused to co-operate as he'd only wished to apply robotics for the betterment of their people, not to create weaponized droids in the War of the Dying Cities. He and Muse were punished severely for their refusal. - Gramps became Mikleo and Sorey's guardian after Michael and Muse's deaths, but he was old and frail, and soon succumbed to the Dust Plague. Sorey caught the Dust virus while venturing out to the sand dunes to collect water samples from the solar-powered harvesters. The Dust virus causes gradual failure of all vital organs and patients soon fall into a deep coma that most do not awake from. - Mikleo searched for a cure, but could not find any. When he looked over Michael's old research notes in transferring a person's ghost (his uncle's term for the human soul) into a synthesized host body, he knew then what he had to do to save Sorey. For two years, he worked on building android prototypes in secret and when he finally created the perfect model, he set his plan in motion. - Atakk is named so because of its model number: AT-AK01. The droid belonged to Michael and had helped him with his research. -Mikleo's brass locket was an anniversary gift from his father to Muse. His father had passed away before he was born. - I was listening to this track from the Wonder Woman OST while editing and was promptly whelmed with feels. sorry for the pain adskffjhf

[tardisgirlepic]

Ch. 1: “The Empress of Mars” Analysis Doctor Who S10.9: Fastballs, Mars-Not-Mars, Rassilon References, Etc.

Apologies for getting these 3 chapters for “The Empress of Mars” out after the airing of “The Eaters of Light.”  I post first on Archive Of Our Own, which I did before the 10th episode.  With photos, it takes more time to post here.

NOTE: TPEW = “The Pyramid at the End of the World” TRODM = “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” THORS = “The Husbands of River Song” CAL = Charlotte Abigail Lux, the little girl from the Library TOS = The Original Series of Star Trek TNG = Star Trek: The Next Generation

Wow, So Much to Say and So Little Time!

It’s going to be impossible to cover all the main points of “The Empress of Mars” because of the huge data dump of subtext.  DW has run out of time to tell the story in a slower manner.  Even though the subtext has been coming at a fast pace all season, this episode crams more subtext into it than probably any I’ve ever seen.   It must have taken Mark Gatiss awhile to figure out how to get all the references into the episode.

These week-to-week analyses are just the start, too, of how I read subtext.  The one thing they lack is to place them in the broader context after several weeks and months, seeing how they fit in the subsequent story.  For the most part, I don’t have that luxury of doing that here in a weekly format.  That’s something for a post mortem, so to speak, after Season 10 is over.

Due to lack of time, I’m going to show only necessary photos.

The previous analysis was really long.  My apologies. This analysis will be in multiple chapters.

Big Classic Who Connection

“The Empress of Mars” has a very Classic Who feel to it.  It’s clear to me that Mark Gatiss is a fan of the Ice Warriors since this is the second story he’s written with them.  His first one was “Cold War,” an 11th Doctor story.

However, the really big Classic Who connection comes at the end with the Alpha Centauri character, shown below.  Alpha Centauri is an ambassador, or was, at least, in Classic Who.

The woman, Ysanne Churchman, who voices this character in “The Empress of Mars” is the same person who voiced the original Alpha Centauri in the 3rd Doctor story “The Curse of Peladon.”  I had never heard of this character before.  But now I’m geeking out with the Classic Who connection of getting the original actress.

Ysanne Churchman was born May 14, 1925, and according to the TARDIS Wikia, she has “voiced Alpha Centauri in the Doctor Who stories The Curse of Peladon, The Monster of Peladon and Empress of Mars, and an Eight Legs in the Doctor Who story Planet of the Spiders.”

Usurpation of a Different Type, Cowardice & Leadership

This story has a lot of themes.  And one of them is usurpation.  It’s not possession as we’ve seen but the situation where young Captain Catchlove in the British army is blackmailing older Colonel Godsacre with the colonel’s secret.  Godsacre is a figurehead of sorts, and at any moment of the captain’s choosing, the captain can take command, and he does.

Interestingly, this theme is connected to another, which is people grappling with cowardice in the face of leadership.  The colonel had a crisis of leadership sometime back, which led to his desertion. However, Catchlove fairs no better once he usurps control.

In fact, he is even more of a coward than Godsacre.  Even though we see Godsacre run again from leadership once he, the Doctor, and Bill escape the brig, it’s Catchlove who throws Vincey in front of Ice Warror fire to save himself.  And a little later, Catchlove takes Queen Iraxxa hostage to save himself again.  In fact, he’s planning to desert his men and strand everyone on Mars.

In the end, Godsacre finds redemption when he pledges his life to die bravely in battle. 

GODSACRE: God save the Queen. SOLDIERS: God save the Queen! IRAXXA: You will die with honour, with bravery, and in the service of those you swore to protect. GODSACRE: Thank you. You don't know what that means. Thank you. IRAXXA: But not today. In battle, soldier. To die in battle is the way of the warrior. Pledge your allegiance to me and my world, and I will ensure you have the opportunity. GODSACRE: My life and my service are yours. (kneels) To the end. IRAXXA: To the death, my friend. To the death.

It’s a good day to die, a warrior’s hope to die well in battle.  While this phrase does come up in TNG with Klingons, like Worf, who is living on the Enterprise, among humans, I first heard this phrase as a child.  It comes up in the movie Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman, a white man who was raised among a group of Cheyenne in the Old West after his parents were killed by another tribe.

I mention this because redemption and dying well have become themes for the 12th Doctor. Dying well is implicit in the whole idea of Norse culture and Ragnarök.  And we’ll examine this more in the next chapter.

Anyway, Godsacre and Catchlove aren’t the only ones grappling with leadership in the episode. Iraxxa admonishes Friday, telling him his duty, as an Ice Warrior, is to command.

DOCTOR: His cryogenic cell was damaged. They saved him.

IRAXXA: And made him their pet!

FRIDAY: It was necessary to dissemble, Majesty. I thought only of your resurrection. It was a tactical decision.

IRAXXA: An Ice Warrior's duty is to command!

She doesn’t accept his excuse.

Cowardice & Leadership in a Broader Sense

Cowardice has long been a theme.  The Doctor has been running all his life, according to the 10th Doctor in “The Sound of Drums,” ever since he looked into the Untempered Schism at the age of eight.  In “Heaven Sent” and “Hell Bent,” we find out he’s been running from himself.  He’s scared of the prophecy that he is the Hybrid, who will destroy the universe for love.

GENERAL: All Matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own.

Cowardly in Love

As a result, the Doctor knows he is not supposed to fall in love with anyone.  Love is a curse, which comes back to the 7th Doctor story “The Curse of Fenric.”  He then becomes cowardly in love, too, not telling people how he feels.  We saw those results, for example, in River’s outpouring of anguish in THORS.

Cowardice in the Face of Leadership

In “Dark Water,” Danny Pink dies.  Later, he has a chance to delete his emotions in the Nethersphere, but he can’t bring himself to do it.  In “Death in Heaven,” the 2nd part of the finale to Season 8, Danny becomes a Cyberman with emotions.

He wants Clara to turn off his emotions because he can’t bring himself to do it.  He’s a coward here.  Yet Danny admonishes the Doctor for the Doctor’s cowardice of not wanting to turn off Danny’s emotions, either, and allowing Clara to do it.  Danny is being hypocritical, but then Danny is a mirror of the Doctor.

DOCTOR: Danny, Danny, I need you to tell me. What are the clouds going to do? What is the plan? CYBER-DANNY: How would I know? DOCTOR: You're part of a hive mind now. Presumably that's how you found Clara. Just look. CYBER-DANNY: I can't see much. DOCTOR: Look harder. CYBER-DANNY: Clara, watch this. This is who the Doctor is. Watch the blood-soaked old general in action. I can't see properly, sir, because this needs activating. If you want to know what's coming, you have to switch it on. And didn't all of those beautiful speeches just disappear in the face of a tactical advantage? Sir. DOCTOR: (sighs) I need to know. I need to know. CYBER-DANNY: (sotto) Yes. (normal) Yes, you do. CLARA: Give me the screwdriver. DOCTOR: No. CLARA: Just do it, Doctor. Do as you are told. (The Doctor meets Cyber-Danny's gaze then gives Clara the sonic screwdriver.) CYBER-DANNY: Typical officer. Got to keep those hands clean.

In the end, it’s the women who step up.  Clara turns off Danny’s emotions, and Bill, to help stop a slaughter, confronts Iraxxa in an irreverent way that even the Doctor wouldn’t or couldn’t consider.

Fear & Usurpation

Has the Doctor been usurped because of his fear when he was blind?

Interestingly, the Master talks about his own fear in the 10th Doctor episode “The Sound of Drums.”

MASTER: The Time Lords only resurrected me because they knew I'd be the perfect warrior for a

[Underpass]

MASTER [OC]: Time War. I was there when the

[Cabinet room]

MASTER: Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform. I saw it. I ran. I ran so far. Made myself human so they would never find me, because I was so scared.

Turning human is a form of usurpation of a sort, where the human part takes full control of the Doctor’s body.  In “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood,” we saw how different the Doctor was when he was human.  He did things he would never do as a Time Lord, like having children beaten or sending them into battle.

Both the Master and Doctor turned themselves human out of fear.  Is this how all the problems started?  There is subtext in “The Empress of Mars” that suggests, not for the first time, that events are all the Doctor’s fault.  We’ll look at this in the next chapter.

Imperialism: Another Type of Exploitation

Exploitation of beings is one of the main themes in Season 10 within different types of governments, economic systems, and government actions.  We’ve seen it in a totalitarian government in “The Lie of the Land.”   Before that, we’ve seen capitalism gone amok in multiple episodes.  And now imperialism rears its ugly head in “The Empress of Mars.”

According to Wikipedia:

Imperialism is an action that involves a country (usually an empire or kingdom) extending its power by the acquisition of territories. It may also include the exploitation of these territories, an action that is linked to colonialism. Colonialism is generally regarded as an expression of imperialism.

It is different from New Imperialism, as the term imperialism is usually applied to the colonization of the Americas between the 15th and 19th centuries, as opposed to the expansion of Western Powers (and Japan) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, both are examples of imperialism.

Since exploitation of groups of people, racism, and species-ism are heavily referenced, especially this season, I expect this has to be at the heart of the story with the Doctor.  It comes back to the question: why is Caecilius a slave in Pompeii to begin with?  Is it because he is a Janus of sorts but turned himself human?  The Janus could also possibly relate to Missy and the Master, where Missy represents the future and the Master the past. 

Imperialism, Robinson Crusoe, Friday & Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe, a 1719 novel by Englishman Daniel Defoe, is important to look at since Friday, the Ice Warrior, is specifically mentioned as being named for the character in the book.

In the novel, Robinson Crusoe is an Englishman whose father wants him to study law.  Initially, Crusoe is committed to obeying, but he eventually capitulates to the temptation of the sea and embarks on a ship with a friend. They nearly die in a storm.  On his second voyage, Moorish pirates seize the ship, and Crusoe gets enslaved.  Later, he and a slave boy break free, and Crusoe sells the slave boy.

Years later, he gets involved in the slave trade when he joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but he gets shipwrecked in a storm, along with 3 animals. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, so here is another religious conversion event, similar to the Doctor going through the Great Work. 

Wikipedia says

More years pass and Crusoe discovers native cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to kill them for committing an abomination but later realizes he has no right to do so, as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.

Friday, too, wants to eat the people they kill, but Crusoe forbids it.  Crusoe spends 28 years marooned, the last 4 with his servant, Friday, according to Wikipedia, “on a remote tropical desert island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. The story has since been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra", now part of Chile, which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966, but various literary sources have also been suggested.”

The expression "Man Friday," comes from the novel and describes a male personal assistant or servant, especially one who is particularly competent or loyal.  "Girl Friday" is the female equivalent.  (Nardole is, at times, playing the Doctor’s Man Friday.)

It’s the interpretations of the novel that I find very important because they symbolize themes, especially in Season 10.   It’s James Joyce’s that I find particularly interesting. According to Wikipedia:

Novelist James Joyce noted that the true symbol of the British Empire is Robinson Crusoe, to whom he ascribed stereotypical and somewhat hostile English racial characteristics: "He is the true prototype of the British colonist. ... The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity." In a sense Crusoe attempts to replicate his society on the island. This is achieved through the use of European technology, agriculture and even a rudimentary political hierarchy. Several times in the novel Crusoe refers to himself as the "king" of the island, whilst the captain describes him as the "governor" to the mutineers. At the very end of the novel the island is explicitly referred to as a "colony". The idealised master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen in terms of cultural imperialism. Crusoe represents the "enlightened" European whilst Friday is the "savage" who can only be redeemed from his barbarous way of life through assimilation into Crusoe's culture. Nonetheless Defoe also takes the opportunity to criticise the historic Spanish conquest of South America.

According to Wikipedia, Defoe’s “most successful poem, The True-Born Englishman (1701), defended the [King of England William III, who was Dutch-born] against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirising the English claim to racial purity.”

Interestingly, racism was not overt in “The Empress of Mars,” and at least from what we saw, there was tolerance of both Vincey and Bill, at least race-wise.  We did see sexism, which added realism for the time period. On top of that, Vincey had a picture of Alice, the white woman he wanted to marry.   So I found the message of human toleration hopeful from the start, except for Godsacre’s initial reaction to the Doctor.  Most likely, there’s more going on here with the Doctor than what it appears.

Instead of racism, species-ism is a problem with both the humans and the Ice Warriors.  The humans have made Friday a servant, just like Robinson Crusoe did, and they want to claim another planet as their own.  On the other hand, Iraxxa calls humans pink things and worms. 

I see this episode as hopeful in the end, where the 2 sides show tolerance and cooperation, overcoming whatever prejudices they have to live, work, and die together.

While the themes are sound, we can’t trust the setting.

They’re in the Library Matrix

From the start, the Matrix makes its presence known.  Things aren’t happening the way they appear.

NASA

At the beginning of the episode, the shot of NASA looks very digitized, so we know right away this is in the Matrix.  Also, there’s a reflection line (red arrow) to tell us this isn’t real.

Inside NASA, there’s another reflection line (red arrow).  Also, there are at least 3 types of computers (yellow arrows) in the mission control room.  While I’m not an expert on working at NASA, I’ve been in a similar environment.  The computers would most likely all be the same in this type of environment.  Maintaining multiple types of computers (one is a laptop) costs more money and can create potential problems.

Doctor Fades into the Clockwork

Interestingly, right at the end of the NASA scene, the Doctor smiles at the “God Save the Queen” message, which seems odd once again.  Then, a mist of sorts starts to superimpose itself over the Doctor, and the color mutes before he starts to fade into the clockwork, as shown in the image below. He becomes part of the machinery.

Mars Is Not Mars

We know the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole can’t be on Mars for multiple reasons.  The Doctor while on Mars said, “Mind you, there's a lot here that doesn't make sense.”  So true! These are just a few of the problems:

Martian Gravity

Since Mars has a lot less mass than Earth, the surface gravity on Mars, according to NASA, is only 37.5% of the surface gravity on Earth.  Therefore, if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 37.5 pounds on Mars. The moon’s mass is about 1/6 of Earth, so 100 pounds on Earth weighs only 16.7 pounds on the moon. 

While people on Mars wouldn’t be bouncing as much as on the moon when they walked, there would still be a noticeable difference in how people moved.

Martian Oxygen

To prove there was oxygen on the Mars-not-Mars, there was a fire.  That didn’t preclude any harmful elements or compounds, though.  Nardole, the Doctor, and Bill could still have died when they took off their helmets.

On Earth, our atmosphere is mostly made of nitrogen, 78%, while oxygen accounts for about 21% Argon, carbon dioxide, and smaller amounts of other gases make up the rest.

On Mars, according to the Universe Today, the atmosphere is composed of 96% carbon dioxide, 1.93% argon and 1.89% nitrogen along with traces of oxygen and water.  The atmosphere is not breathable without a spacesuit or an artificial environment.  Even if the Ice Warriors had created an artificial environment, that doesn’t account for the gravity issues, unless this is a spaceship with artificial gravity.

There’s also less atmospheric pressure on Mars.

It’s interesting that oxygen is once again a subject and that there would be a lack thereof.  I’m betting “Oxygen” will be referenced again in at least one subsequent episode. 

Spacesuits Are Fake

The helmets wouldn’t have helped anyway because the spacesuits are the 2-piece variety. Therefore, they can’t be airtight the way they should be.  There’s no way the steam punk spacesuits of the Victorians are airtight.  I do love the ear horns.  Nice touch.  Why does Catchlove’s helmet have all those viewing holes?  How many eyes does he have?

Helmet Lights

Most of the time, we can see 4 lights in the helmets, a sign they are in the Library.  A few times, we can see 5, which is a weapon of mass destruction.  This episode is very much foreshadowing the Doctor’s fate, which we’ll examine in the subtext references.

Martian Ice Cap Obscuring “God Save the Queen”

There’s no way the Martian ice cap wasn’t there in Victorian times.  Therefore, the whole “God Save the Queen” message couldn’t possibly be written the way it appears.

Pitching Fastballs: Astounding Number of Internal & External References

Wow, there are an astounding number of internal and external references in the subtext!  On the whole, “The Empress of Mars” possibly has more internal and external references to movies, TV shows, books, short stories, songs, British terminology, mythology, and other DW episodes than any other episode so far that I’ve seen in DW.  Also, I believe Season 10 has more of these internal and external references than any other season of DW. 

“The Empress of Mars” is a great example of fastballs: the copious subtext references that we have to deal with in one week before the next episode airs.  Because I had to look up most of the references, it’s taken time just to understand all of this before I get to write anything, which cut into my writing time.  There are several references to Classic Who episodes, but I only had seen a few of them before this episode.

On top of this, some of the external references are actually indirect allusions to other DW episodes. So there is a big bowl of spaghetti to look at.

“The Empress of Mars,” The Princess of Mars & Star Wars

Right from the start, the title of the episode, “The Empress of Mars,” is an external reference to a classic science fantasy novel A Princess of Mars by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs.  It’s the first book of his Barsoom series.

The Princess of Mars and the Barsoom series is what Star Wars is based on.  In 2012, Disney put out the John Carter movie but horribly marketed it.  Many people didn’t realize this John Carter story started it all.  The original story really is remarkable given Burroughs wrote it in 1912.

The Doctor even made a reference, too, to Star Wars, when he said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”  That quote is said in every Star Wars movie at least once.

Here’s what StarWars.com has to say about Burroughs’ story The Princess of Mars and subsequent books and the John Carter film.

John Carter is a film directed by Pixar alum Andrew Stanton that follows Civil War veteran John Carter on his astounding trip to the planet Barsoom, which we know as Mars. There he meets a princess leading a rebellion, fights against an evil empire, and meets a variety of strange aliens on a desert wasteland of a planet, gets powers far beyond the abilities of normal men, and encounters a strange religion. There are times where he’s captured, thrown into an arena to fight bizarre monsters, and other times where he’s forced to rescue a princess.

It sounds like I could be talking about Star Wars just as easily as John Carter. And since John Carter came out in 2012, you might be thinking, “No! You’ve got it the other way around! John Carter was influenced by Star Wars.”

But you’d be surprised.

Here’s a quote from George Lucas in a 1977 issue of Science Fiction Review: “Originally, I wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, with all the trimmings, but I couldn’t obtain all the rights. So I began researching and found where [Flash Gordon creator] Alex Raymond got his idea: The works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, especially his John Carter series of books.”

We examined many chapters ago how the Doctor was going to be involved in a rebellion.  We’ve seen the evil empire in “The Lie of the Land.” Also, we’ve even seen much of the rest of it, including a strange religion – the Church of the Papal Mainframe, the Silence, and the Monks.

Mars Has Significant Ties to Previous Episodes

When I think of Mars references in DW, I think of “The Waters of Mars,” which “The Pilot” alluded to with all the water coming off of Heather.  However, there are other episodes that are very important, too.  BTW, this isn’t an exhaustive list:

“The Pyramids of Mars”

In “The Pyramids of Mars,” a 4th Doctor story, Sutekh, according to the TARDIS Wikia, is a powerful extraterrestrial, also known as Sutekh the Destroyer.  He was an Osiran who planned to destroy all life in the universe.  Afraid of all forms of life which might one day challenge his hegemony, he became the destroyer of all living things.  The Osiran inspired Egyptian mythology.

At one point, he usurped the Doctor’s body.

“The Ambassadors of Death”

“The Ambassadors of Death” is an early 3rd Doctor story with Liz Shaw as his companion.  I had never seen this story before.  It can possibly explain a bit about what is happening in Season 10.

The Doctor joins UNIT's investigation of the mystery surrounding Mars Probe 7.  The Recovery 7, on a rescue mission, runs into problems once it comes back to Earth.  The 3 astronauts are kidnapped.  It turns out these astronauts are a triad of radiation-dependent alien ambassadors, who swapped places with the 3 human astronauts.

According to the TARDIS Wikia, the Doctor finds that Mars Probe 7 is still orbiting in space. Intercepted by a huge, alien spaceship and taken aboard, the Doctor finds the real astronauts unharmed, but mind controlled.  The aliens' captain threatens to destroy the Earth unless the 3 ambassadors are released.

The Doctor returns to Earth and discovers that the kidnapping of the ambassadors is part of a plot devised by xenophobic ex-astronaut General Carrington to frame the aliens.  The general has a machine built to mind control them, forcing them to kill humans, so he can convince the world's authorities to wage war against the extraterrestrials. 

The 3 ambassadors act like robots, very similar to the zombies in “Oxygen.”  In fact, like the zombies, the aliens can kill with their touch.  Once the aliens aren’t being mind controlled, they want to know why they have been made to kill when they came in peace.  The Doctor and UNIT thwart the general’s plans and arrange an exchange of the ambassadors for the astronauts.

Interestingly, right at the end, there is a big structure overhead made of hexagons, symbolic of imprisonment.  The Doctor walks out, representing his freedom as one of the astronauts. 

In the 10th Doctor episode “Smith and Jones,” the Doctor talked about roentgen radiation after using an X-ray machine to kill a Slab, a slave drone, who was trying to kill them.

MARTHA: What did you do? DOCTOR: Increased the radiation by five thousand per cent. Killed him dead. MARTHA: But isn't that going to kill you? DOCTOR: Nah, it's only roentgen radiation. We used to play with roentgen bricks in the nursery. It's safe for you to come out. I've absorbed it all. All I need to do is expel it.

Why would the Doctor or any Time Lord be playing with roentgen bricks in a nursery?

Interestingly, in the very 1st Dalek story called “The Daleks,” the Daleks talk about needing radiation:

DALEK 2: We need radiation to survive. So we must increase our supply of radiation.

DALEK 1: But there is only one way to do that.

DALEK 2: Exactly. We may have to explode another neutron bomb.

There’s a possible theme here of needing radiation to survive in 2 of 3 episodes.

Tip: When reading subtext, always look for patterns (at least 3 occurrences).  Or what could be the beginning of a pattern (2 occurrences).  Themes that keep coming up are foreshadowing the coming canon. Patience is typically required because it’s rare for foreshadowing to become canon in the next episode. Usually, things take years to become canon.  However, Season 10 and the 12th Doctor are different.

There are several key points here, making patterns that we’ve encountered. 

1.     There is a triad involved.  

2.     There is usurpation, not of possessing a body, but of mind controlling the aliens to kill, something they normally wouldn’t do; they came in peace.  

3.     Their touch kills, like the zombies in “Oxygen.”  (This isn’t a pattern with 3 occurrences that I know of, but with everything else matching it becomes part of the pattern.)  

4.     We know the subtext shows in “Deep Breath” that the Doctor is a cyborg.  Is he really a cyborg?  Is it that he is just mind controlled to look that way, or is he really that way?  If so, how did he get that way?

5.     The aliens are being framed, which is something we examined as a possibility in my analysis of “The Lie of the Land,” relating back to how the Valeyard, the Master, and the Time Lords were working to frame the 6th Doctor.

Therefore, “The Ambassadors of Death” does help substantiate my hypothesis that the Doctor is being framed and being used to kill against his will.  And this also goes along with the image we keep taking a look at, shown below, from “Human Nature” that has said all along the 24th Doctor (the Roman Doctor) is in the Library metaphor being framed and used against his will.  And it’s because he’s unbalanced by love.  For the extensive examination, take a look at Chapter 10 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

There’s a similar photo of the 12th Doctor that we looked at from TRODM in Lucy’s kitchen in the pre-airing analysis of the episode in Chapter 9 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

A cyborg assassin and time travel are themes of The Terminator, which Bill mentioned in “The Empress of Mars.”  The Terminator goes back in time to kill someone to prevent a revolt.  Not only does this have similarities to using the ambassadors as cyborg-type killing machines, but also the movie’s concept of an assassin relates to the 4th Doctor story, “The Deadly Assassin,” which we examined in my analysis of “Extremis.”  In it, the Master frames the Doctor.

“The Christmas Invasion”

While the first 10th Doctor story “The Christmas Invasion” has just a small reference to Mars, it is very significant.  Britain sends the Guinevere One space probe on a mission to the red planet and loses touch with it, which is a call back to “The Ambassadors of Death.”  While, the signal loss is only for a short time, unlike the Classic Who episode, we see a triad of assassin Santas.  Also, Mickey and the others talk of the Santas being pilot fish, a reference to the 12th Doctor.  Santa, for that matter, is also a reference to the Doctor.  Therefore, there is quite a bit of similarities to “The Ambassadors of Death.”

Guinevere is also a character in the King Arthur legend.

“The Waters of Mars,” “The Five Doctors,” the Ice Queen’s & Rassilon’s Tombs

Back in Chapter 19 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who, I posed a question.   “Did the 10th Doctor bring a curse upon himself when he announced he was Time Lord Victorious” in “The Waters of Mars”?

Here’s what I said

I believe he is either a version of Rassilon or a slave of Rassilon, since this most likely comes with a curse of immortality, just like with the Ring of Rassilon.

Rassilon, in the past, has slept eternally in his tomb while his mind lived on in the Matrix.  Putting on the ring grants the wearer immortality.  However, it imprisons the wearer in the stone of Rassilon, watching over him forever.  In “The Five Doctors,” a Time Lord puts on the ring and gets petrified as a relief on the side of Rassilon’s sarcophagus.  The ring comes with the warning:

    To lose is to win     And he who wins shall lose

So Time Lord Victorious loses.

Weeping Angels are probably involved in this.

We’ve actually looked at “The Five Doctors” multiple times in recent chapters because Rassilon’s insignia keeps coming up in Season 10.  Therefore, it’s not surprising that the Ice Queen’s tomb in “The Empress of Mars” looks similar to Rassilon’s tomb, shown below, in “The Five Doctors.”

Rassilon is sleeping eternally (red arrow).  However, we see his projection from the Matrix (yellow arrow) of his head.  The Time Lord on the right will end up in the blank area (white arrow) as a stone relief because he puts on Rassilon’s ring and gets immortality at a price of being a sentinel to Rassilon.  This relief is one reason why I believe the Weeping Angels may have something to do with all of this.

In comparison, here’s the Ice Queen’s tomb, shown below.  Like Rassilon’s tomb, the items underneath the body, in this case gems, have an effect on the body above.

In fact, both Rassilon and Iraxxa claim themselves as resurrected.

In “Hell Bent,” after Rassilon tries to have the Doctor executed, gunships show up

RASSILON: Excellent, General. You sent for reinforcements. DOCTOR: No, he didn't. (He puts on his sonic sunglasses.) DOCTOR: I did.

(The final troopers join the Doctor as the gunships train their weapons on Rassilon.)

RASSILON: What? I am Rassilon the redeemer! Rassilon, the resurrected! Gallifrey is mine!

In “The Empress of Mars,” Iraxxa talks to Friday, who is here sentinel:

IRAXXA: My Sentinel. You have fulfilled your pledge. I am resurrected!

Mars, the Roman God of War, and the Janus Connection

Mars is significant for multiple reasons.  Not only is it the setting of multiple Martian episodes that have a bearing on what is happening, but also Mars was the Roman god of war.  According to Wikipedia, he was also “an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter and he was the most prominent of the military gods in the religion of the Roman army.”

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, “Mars was a part of the Archaic Triad along with Jupiter and Quirinus, the latter of whom as a guardian of the Roman people had no Greek equivalent.”  And Quirinus: “In Augustan Rome, Quirinus was also an epithet of Janus, as Janus Quirinus.”

Regarding Janus: In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past.

This is significant because not only is there a triad, which we’ve examined in my analysis in “Extremis,” although not in the same context, but also we’ve examined the Janus connection, which shows up in “Face the Raven,” where Clara is killed.  We also saw it in “The Pilot,” where Heather is shown as a Janus in a puddle.  Since I never got to finish “The Pilot” analysis, I ended up talking about the Janus concept and mistaken identity in my analysis of “Oxygen.”

The Doctor is a mirror of the 2 Janus in “Face the Raven” as well as Heather.  Interestingly, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.  We know the Doctor is connected to time, and we’ve examined the Door/Doughnut metaphor (which would also cover passages and gateways) in Chapter 17 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who, along with the Doctor’s struggle with duality in my analysis of “Oxygen.”

Therefore, it’s fitting that “The Empress of Mars” takes place on Mars-not-Mars for multiple reasons.

I’ve arrived at the symbology of duality and the Door/Doughnut metaphor (which includes gates, doorways, and passages) independently from the symbolism of Janus.  Because everything connects, it verifies we are on the right track of reading the subtext.

Tip: When reading subtext in DW, just about all subtext will have multiple connections, so it should link up from various, independent directions.  Once it does, you know these things are important and will become part of the canon in some form.

Alpha Centauri & Ice Warrior References

As we saw above, Alpha Centauri shows up in 2 stories, neither of which I had seen.

“The Curse of Peladon” & TOS: “Journey to Babel”

“The Curse of Peladon,” a 3rd Doctor episode, is very interesting, especially because DW obviously based this episode on parts of TOS: “Journey to Babel” and Spock’s background. Now, I understand better why Spock’s name comes up 5 times in “The Empty Child.”

Anyway, in “The Curse of Peladon,” according to the TARDIS Wikia:

The Doctor and Jo make a test flight in the TARDIS and arrive on the planet Peladon. Seeking shelter, they enter the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor is mistaken for a human dignitary summoned to act as chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation.

Here’s a case of mistaken identity.  Only men of rank and women of royal blood are allowed in the royal throne room of Peladon. The Doctor and Jo become imposter Federation delegates – Jo impersonating a princess.

Every time the term “Federation” came up, I kept thinking of Star Trek.  At first, I didn’t think anything of the soon-to-be king’s pedigree that he was half-human on his mother’s side.  However, when characters started talking about the delegates voting on Peladon’s application to join the Federation and mining rights were involved, along with a strange murder, I suddenly realized this was based on parts of the TOS episode “Journey to Babel.”  And the soon-to-be king was a mirror of Spock, who is the Doctor in DW, as “The Empty Child” makes clear.

According to Memory Alpha regarding “Journey to Babel”:

The delegates will be attending a conference on the neutral planetoid named Babel to decide the admission of the planet Coridan to the Federation, which is rich in dilithium but is poorly defended.

As the Enterprise comes under attack on the way to a diplomatic conference on Babel, one of the alien dignitaries is murdered, and Spock's estranged father Sarek is the prime suspect – but he is also deathly ill, and only Spock can save him.

In this Star Trek episode, we find out Spock broke tradition against the wishes of his father and joined Starfleet, an instrument of the Federation. In comparison, one of King Peladon’s trusted advisors is accused by another trusted advisor of abandoning “the ancient ways of our people.”   And he says that this will bring the curse of Aggedor upon everyone.  To avoid the curse, the advisor kills the other.  The king wants to join the Federation, which would abandon the ancient ways.

The Doctor, as Spock, is a mirror of soon-to-be King Peladon.  The prince wants to marry Jo, the Doctor’s companion.

In comparison to the Doctor-as-a-prince mirror in “The Curse of Peledon,” in “The Lie of the Land” the 12th Doctor is associated with Prince Charles (red arrow), shown behind the Doctor, and Lady Diana in her wedding dress (on the other side of his head). This happens inside the pyramid just before he touches the seated Monk’s head.

Then, in “The Curse of Peladon” both Alpha Centauri and Ice Warriors show up.  The Ice Warriors are not the villains.  In fact, one of the Ice Warriors saves the Doctor’s life.

Even more interesting is that there are emblems of Aggedor, the beast, shown below, whom people are afraid of.  It looks like a pig or boar, which is reminiscent of the sheriff’s boar emblem in the 12th Doctor episode also penned by Mark Gatiss, “The Robot of Sherwood.”

“The Robot of Sherwood”

Here’s the Sheriff’s shield and emblem in “Robot of Sherwood.”  This shield also shows up in THORS.

Surprisingly, Ice Warriors and Mars are also mentioned in “The Robot of Sherwood” in a conversation between the Doctor and Clara.

CLARA: Yeah, you. You stop bad things happening every minute of every day. That sounds pretty heroic to me.

(The Doctor licks something from a large metal spoon. Custard?)

DOCTOR: Just passing the time. Hey, what about Mars?

CLARA: What?!

DOCTOR: The Ice Warrior Hives.

CLARA: You said it was my choice.

The sheriff (a cyborg) was supposed to lose his head in the episode.  However, it was to air just after journalists were decapitated, so the BBC, thinking better than to show a decapitation, edited it out. 

“The Monster of Peladon” & TOS: “The Cloud Minders” 

“The Monster of Peladon” is a sequel to “The Curse of Peladon.”  However, it’s not that good.  Both Alpha Centauri and Ice Warriors show up again, but this time the Ice Warriors are villains.  This episode is based on the same premise as the TOS episode “The Cloud Minders.”  In both the DW and TOS episodes, miners are at odds with the leadership on the planets.

The main thing I came away with from this sequel is that 50 years later, King Peladon was dead, and his daughter is now queen.

Another Master Reference

One of the internal references in “The Empress of Mars,” has the Doctor mirroring the Master again. At NASA, Knibbs starts counting down to the reception of the probe’s signal.

KNIBBS: I got everything crossed. Okay, people. Transmission arriving in ten, nine, eight, seven, six. (The big screen is now counting down to Download Commences with them.) DOCTOR: Five, four, three, two, one! Sorry, I could never resist a countdown.

In “Last of the Time Lords,” the Master says

MASTER: Three minutes to align the black hole converters. Counting down. I never could resist a ticking clock. My children, are you ready?

Additionally, the Doctor’s smile at “God Save the Queen” before the opening credits just seems really odd and out of character.

In the Next Chapters

There are so many references left to look at, so I’m planning on 2 more chapters to show you the meaning of at least part of them.  For example, Friday is a lot more important than he might appear, so we’ll examine him in connection to more than just Robinson Crusoe.  In another example, ravens show up in the subtext in multiple ways, which comes back to Clara.  We’ll begin to look at some of the raven references in the next chapter.  Then, there’s more to the Victorians than it appears, and I’ll show you examples of what I call collective symbology vs. individual symbology in relation to the troops.  Additionally, we’ll look at how the subtext is coming together for Ragnarök and more.

Go to next chapter => Ch. 2: Friday, Odin & the Doctor; Missy’s 2 Faces; Etc.

[zumester]

Behind the Black

This is our contribution to M3, Multiple Media Month. For those who don't know, M3 is a time in which the multiple/plural community has a special opportunity to get together and create. It can be anything, from a piece of visual art to a line of code. If you identify as plural, you can contribute using the hashtag #multiplemediamonth.

This is a piece we wrote, recounting some events that took place within the system over the last few weeks. Hope you enjoy.

The mindscape was permeated by an all consuming darkness, hiding the hills and valleys, the sharp corners, the signature of the land. Hiding squinted eyes and thin smiles and hints of movement that otherwise would have been invisible, just above the horizon.

You wouldn't have known, as an outsider looking in, but above the ground, a loft hung bolted to the underside of the sky. A loft made of the same abysmal black as everything else was.

If you could have seen through the darkness, you'd have noticed the occasional murky glimmer from deep within the walls. Suggestions that something inside of it was alive, and at work. And if you could have seen through the darkness, you might even have been able to guess what he was doing. You might have been able to hear the pressing of buttons, the pulling of levers, the clickity clack of fingers on a keyboard, and the muttering of half formed words. You might have been able to smell smoke billowing just under the surface and wondered what, of the things there, was worth hiding.

If not for that darkness, you'd have seen a vaguely humanoid shape emerge from the door to the loft. You'd have seen him step out onto the beginnings of a catwalk that weaved through the mind, highways forged out of metal and madness. The walk spread for infinite miles, looming above the ground below, an endless expanse of empty space.

He perched his hands on the catwalk’s railing and looked down. Tried to make sense of the scattered activities of his fellow headmates. From below, he appeared black on black, a silhouette whose shape was ever changing, no single feature stagnating long enough for anyone to have caught more than a glimpse.

He called himself the Master Plan.

“We talked about doing an overhaul of the mindscape… Any suggestions before I start moving things?”

Eli was the first one to lift his head, running his tongue over a pair of fangs before speaking. “Moving what? Your loft isn't going anywhere. Alpha’s probably never going to leave the basement. I'm the only one on the ‘ground floor’ with a room, and it's not even a room! It's just a designated zone where hordes of shadows sprites like to congregate. It's not corporeal, you can't move it.”

It sounded like a challenge. Plan quirked his brow, only for as long as it took him to find inspiration.

Meanwhile, Eli wasn't done. “Everyone else is just kind of groping around in the dark. No landmarks, no landscape, nothing to--nothing that--”

From some undetermined location in the darkness beyond Eli’s “not a room”, Nomad finished his sentence. “Nothing which would ground one to their surroundings.”

It struck him, belatedly, that Nomad’s words had been a pun, but before Eli could respond, Plan had already raised his hands and gathered what energy was in them, ready to make his move. The drone of angry machines fueled by roaring steam pipes reached their ears, presumably from inside the loft. It had never been clear exactly what made the mindscape what it was, but it was clear that whatever it was, the Master Plan held dominion over it.

With a flick of his wrists, the shadows circling around Eli’s head were pulled out of formation, tugged in one direction and then another by invisible strings; dancing puppets that only knew one song. Plan stretched his arms wide and the entire scape resonated with a daunting chorus: clanging metal and unrecognizable voices. He held a remote control that no one could see. A power over their shared mental space that no one could understand.

From his spot on the catwalk, lodged in the sky, he made Eli’s “designated zone” spread to two dozen times its original size. It was as if he held a remote control that no one saw. A power over their mental space that no one understood. Shadow's licked at the air, now far away. What they revealed was an opening in the darkness that almost looked like light.

For the first time, everyone could see everyone, revealed for what they were. Strangers shambling through an empty eternity.

Still holding the railing like a set of reins, Plan sorted Eli’s face out of the crowd. “What was it that you said about moving shadows?”

Footsteps echoed like gunshots in their newly broadened scape. Plan, slouched forward with his hands in his pockets, made his way to the ground floor, as if to say, “Look at me, bringing myself down to your level. Let's make something together.”

A tunnel opened up in the ground, not far from Plan’s feet. Metal hinges screamed, and a figure emerged from within. “All this open space is well and good, but we need our own rooms. Places we can have and hold and hide in.”

Eli nodded in his brother’s direction. “Alpha, finally decided to join the party?”

Plan’s gaze had shifted to the horizon. “You're right. But we'd need so much space, so much maneuverability. For a cluster of minds that never stop creating… What way would we have of keeping up with what one another was creating, making it all fit together into a three dimensional space? Without getting hopelessly lost in the process?”

“It doesn't have to be that complicated,” said Jude, who had otherwise gone unnoticed. “If we set this slot of land up as the base, we can layer as many alternate realities as we want on top of it. They can all exist at the same time, right next to each other, without interfering with one another. Easy enough for you to keep track of, with a measure of privacy for whoever wants it.”

Plan’s expression condensed into a frown, gears turning behind his face. “We'll need gateways of some kind. A way of allowing each of you a personalized method of entering your own rooms. A method of organizing it all in a way that can be visualized from any part of the mind, by any of its inhabitants. Ensuring that no one enters anyone else's reality by mistake. Doors with their own keys.”

“What are the doors gonna look like?” Domino asked.

Scattered silence followed. Despite sharing a mind and a body, the members of the system didn't have a lot in common. They weren't even the same species. Architectural design wasn't exactly the kind of subject that made collaboration easy.

Ideas spiraled into the air and became clouds of thought, reaching for the highest layers of the upper consciousness, far beyond sight.

Static that played on a loop from speakers unseen was overshadowed by a subtle melody weaving its way between stacks of cumulonimbus.

From one corner of the mindscape, a little blonde head lifted and big blue eyes scanned the horizon, as though certain that the song had been written specifically for her.

She padded across the featureless black ground and knelt beside the figure of another child. His hands were buried wrist deep in the ground. Searching for something?

He lifted his head to look at her and moved to open his mouth, but was stopped by the web of string that had sewn his lips together. She understood him anyway. Partially-formed bits and pieces of thought were visualized above their heads as a scrambled collage.

“There's something under the ground. It's really big, spread out all over the place,” she said, pointing to get Plan’s attention. “But he says it's stuck.”

He was almost glaring now. Not at Ghost. No, he seemed frustrated at the idea that he might be missing something.

He stooped down and ran one palm over the air directly above the surface of the ground, going for a less hands-on approach than Brenn had. The rest of them were fixated on the spot just beneath his fingers, and as he clenched them into a fist, curiosity rewarded them. A set of mangled roots emerged from the dirt, and the ground around them was displaced, shifting upward in a way that suggested that this was only the tip of the iceberg.

“Who planted that?” Oliver asked.

Plan didn't answer.

Master Plan grew entire trees from the horde of roots interlocked beneath them. Most everyone in the system chose a tree and nurtured it to full size, building each one into something as unique as its owner. They functioned as literal grounding techniques, as well as doors.

Ghost’s tree had a wooden toy chest growing in the space between two branches. She was a 5 year old kid and it suited her. Aside from serving as an actual toy chest, when opened, it also formed a kind of mental wormhole. All she had to do was hop in and be ready to fall.

Nomad’s tree had a thick trunk and, at its top, the tree's branches spread out in such a way that the center had formed into the shape of a bowl. It held a small body of water, and its reflective surface linked it to another world that Nomad could visit whenever he wanted to, just by diving in.

Oliver’s tree appeared to be a normal willow, other than the fact that one of its branches was actually a lever that could be pulled into place to reveal a fissure in the surface that opened into a fully sized door. The shape and location of this lever changed every time the door was opened, to keep outsiders out. He was a bit of a hermit.

Brenn’s door, though built plainly into the trunk of his tree, required the repetition of a specific tune before it could be opened. One of the tree’s branches curved down in front of the door at arm's length, with piano keys carved, perfectly, out of its surface. Brenn, a mute who was obsessed with the power of musical expression, had only to play three notes to unlock his door--his name.

Domino’s tree didn't seem to have any kind of security system built into it. It simply employed a series of doors; small doors built into progressively larger ones. As a polymorph, she required entryways of all shapes.

Deth had pulled a slice of bark away from the base of his tree--just far enough away that he could slip into the narrow space between. Somewhere inside was a similar break in time and space that allowed him access to all kinds of places, but most often, he preferred to rest directly behind the bark, quietly watching the rest of the mindscape.

Lorys's tree wasn't so much a tree as a bush, with a large pet door in front. This was, of course, because Lorys was a man who had been reincarnated into the form of a wolf.

Some of them resisted.

“I'm still not leaving my basement,” Alpha said, from below ground.

Jude attempted to reason with him. “C’mon, Alpha,” he said. “Plan made you a tree and everything.”

It stood towards the western edge of the scape, and Plan was still playing with the way the leaves had arranged themselves on its upper branches.

“I like it down here, it feels…” He wanted to tell them that it felt safe, down there, with the heat of the furnace gliding off of his back and a familiar feline curled around his feet while he played his organ. He didn't want to sound human. He certainly didn't want to live with them.

“We had a theme going,” Plan said, and stepped back to survey his work, tilted his head as though judging the balance in a photograph. His words were noncommittal, more so than the words he didn't say aloud: “We had a theme and you're ruining it.”

Maybe out of spite more than anything else, Alpha reacted; appeared at the door to the basement and laid eyes on the tree. Lifted one hand and pulled. The sight of it wasn't entirely unlike watching a mime pull on a rope that wasn't there. Watching a jedi padawan try a tad too hard.

“What are you doing?!” Nomad cried, climbing out of the pond in his tree, still dripping wet. “You're killing nature!”

Alpha’s eyes glowed red. “I'm fixing it.”

His tree began to shake, wood cracking and giving way as its trunk began to bend down. Some of its roots snapped, and the ones that didn't curled inward. The trunk itself arched toward the ground in the shape of an inverted U. It slid into place along the floor of Alpha’s tunnel, where its leaves withered to dust.

He brought one fist down to his core and opened it, palm spread skyward. The trunk of the tree molded into the shape of a set of stairs leading right to his doorstep. At the mouth of the tunnel, a mess of roots obscured the entrance, but the onlookers could all hear Alpha ascend his newly installed staircase and as he approached the surface, that mess untangled for long enough to let him through.

“Better?” he asked.

He wasn't the only one to resist. Jude politely declined Plan’s offer, preferring to wander the forest on his own. He was the “host” after all, the one who spoke to most outsiders, the one who went to work and did the groceries and went to doctor’s appointments. He had to be in tune with what the others were doing. He had to be ready to front on a moment’s notice. He couldn't afford a world of his own that wasn't directly adjacent to the one outside, like the mindscape was. But while that was a reasonable choice, the scape’s resident demon infestation (Eli and Grubbs) resisted with motives that weren't as clear.

“We'll just hang out over here,” Eli had said, sticking to the edge of the forest; the small strip of land between the tree line and the beginning of the shadow wastes. The area beyond the mindscape, where Eli’s shadow sprites had been delegated to swarm aimlessly and obscure what lay beyond.

The wastes seemed impossible to navigate, but then, no one really needed to. They were all fairly content with the forest they'd been given and the loft hanging above their heads. It seemed natural enough that some places, like the upper consciousness and the deep subconscious (the areas encompassed by shadow) wouldn't just be available for exploration on demand.

Not long after the mindscape’s intensive remodeling, someone started popping in and out of view, partially visible from within the shadows. Eli saw him first. A tall, lanky type. Straight purple hair. Carried boyish charm in his pockets, and wore makeup to match. He seemed to drift close to the mindscape’s edge, and then back away again, not quite ready to be found, but teasing the idea of it.

Nobody but Eli seemed to care. It wasn't entirely uncommon for fragments beyond the scape to show themselves long enough to be seen, perhaps long enough to make a passing comment.

Master Plan was in charge of who was allowed in. His word was final, and he hadn't chosen to speak up on the matter. But Eli wasn't happy with that. He respected Plan’s authority. He'd earned that much, by this point. But Eli reserved his right to investigate what little he could. So, again and again, he found himself hovering at the shadows’ edge, peering into the wastes, calling to what might lay beyond and waving to get its attention.

Jude watched him with curiosity. The rest ignored what they saw as futile.

Until the one beyond the shadows began to respond.

The outsider was standing there, smiling at him. Waving, like it was nothing. He'd disappear back into obscurity and then reappear, a few steps ahead of where he'd been before.

He'd appear masculine one moment, feminine the next. In jeans and a jacket, then in a dress and heels, then in a button down, a bow tie and a flowing skirt. He carried a suitcase in his hands, and the shit eating grin on his face suggested that there was something fantastic on the inside of it.

The rest of the system was beginning to gather, suddenly curious.

The outsider’s grin faded and he pointed through the crowd. Behind them, Plan stood, expression characteristically blank. “Pherris. His name is Pherris.”

Eli’s line of vision bounced back and forth between them. “Pherris?”

“He--actually, he seems to be juggling pronouns here. Not sure which ones to pick, perhaps? No...more like… he… she… uses both?”

Plan was accessing stray bits of information from within the wastes. Something that only he had the ability to do. Latching onto new information and stringing it together into statements of fact.

He figured it out at the same moment that they did. Felt it, a truth whispered in the farthest reaches of the upper consciousness, while they saw it, in the gaunt look of the outsider’s body, her grayed out eyes and pale lips.

“She's undead.”

A cold hand reached out of the writhing mass of shadow sprites. Eli grabbed hold and pulled. They tumbled out onto the grass and she struggled to find her footing. “S-Sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to…” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, and if her body hadn't been dead, she probably would have been blushing.

“How did you die?” they later asked. It was the obvious, most pressing question. Most of the system members held a distinct identity with its own context and origin. But she could only offer an apologetic shrug. She had no memory of her previous life.

“I'm pretty sure that I used to be a necromancer… Ironic, huh? But that's it. I don't know what my life was like, why it ended, why I'm not lost within the deep subconscious, a rotting corpse of memory, fading into nothing.”

On the catwalk above, Jude turned to face the Master Plan. “Do you know?” he asked. “About her life, I mean?”

He didn't answer right away, which didn't bode well.

“C’mon, there must be something out there in the wastes to tell us where she came from.”

“There isn't. Anywhere. I've checked and double checked and triple checked. Whatever thought patterns she's made of, I have no idea where she came from or what her origins are.”

“Well, she must have originated somewhere in the mind.

“... Are you sure?” He retreated to the loft and closed the door in Jude’s face when he tried to follow.

For days, Plan’s main focus was sifting through the neural network, searching for any shred of data that might shed light on the situation.

Meanwhile, Pherris settled into life in the mindscape. She was given her own tree, but was at a loss as to how to reach her room.

When Eli came to investigate, she was kneeling at the base of the tree, running her fingers down roots that spread like veins into the grass. He poked his head out from behind the trunk, eyeing her for a moment. “S… where's the door?”

“What?” she squeaked, not having seen him until he spoke.

“The door. Isn't that the point of the trees? Gateways to our own dimensions. Privacy and freedom of expression and all that good shit.”

“Oh… I… I just feel like a door would be too… direct? I feel like I used to be very good at that magic stuff. I can sense it, resonating through this tree. Life. What feeds all white magic. I… don't have it anymore. It's not fair. I don't remember being a witch, but… I miss it.”

“You're right, that blows.”

She stared at her hands, struggling to hold onto her past, a finely orchestrated web of sights and sounds. Left to weave a tapestry using the few strings of thought she had left.

“But…” Pherris lifted her head, brows furrowing. “But white magic isn't all that's out there. The living aren't the only ones capable of accessing the supernatural. There are some nonliving entities capable of tapping into sources of energy other than their own bodies…” Her wandering eyes landed on Eli. “Like demons.”

He froze. “What?”

“I remember… I was swimming in darkness and I saw you there. No soul, no humanity. Dead, according to the laws of nature. Dead, and very much alive.”

He stood, resisting the urge to back away. Unsure as to where this conversation was heading.

If she noticed his skepticism, she didn't show it. “You use magic, right? That floaty thing you do. I've seen it.”

“I… If that's magic, then I don't know how it works. I don't know how I do it.”

She reached out to him. “I bet I could figure it out.”

He grabbed her wrist and bared his fangs. “But you won't.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm no one’s lab rat.”

“But you have so much untapped potential. There are so many things you could do, if you only knew how…”

The growl in the back of his throat faded, slightly. “... what do you mean?”

“Magic is a very versatile craft. Once you have a source of power and know how to use it, there are few limits on what can be done. All that is required of you is that you be willing to learn.”

He turned this idea over in his head a few times, examining it.

Pherris searched the expression on his face and grinned. “You could do almost anything.”

“Don't tempt me.”

“... said the demon.”

Her grin was contagious, and it tugged at the edges of his mouth. His body relaxed and he released his grip on her arm; couldn't help but consider the implications of what she was telling him.

The mindscape was non physical, yes, but it was also under the control of the Master Plan. Anyone couldn't just do as they pleased. Their rooms were the exception to that rule. They offered a space in which system members could do whatever they wanted, however they wanted, with as much space as they wanted. The catch, of course, being that their rooms were completely isolated from the mindscape. Isolated from the space they shared. The one that mattered. The rooms that Plan offered them were empty promises. A game. And that was why Eli had refused the offer.

But Pherris wasn't from the mind. Not even Plan knew where she'd originated.

If she could teach him how to tap into a power that the Master Plan himself couldn't interfere with…

“Let's do it.”

The next day, the system had a new addition. Plan and Jude spoke in hushed tones after the stranger showed up, having emerged from the wastes entirely unnoticed by the rest of the system. They waited for the others to catch on. Waited for the show to start.

“I've been catching bits and pieces of information about him for the last day or so. But with Pherris still so new, I figured it might be best to hold off on a system wide announcement until I was certain he'd be joining us. And then, he was just… here.”

Jude tried desperately to read his face, but it was an amorphous silhouette that cycled through a handful of different shapes for every second that he looked at him.

“Who is he?”

“He's from the mind. I'm sure of that. But… I didn't piece him together. Again, I didn't invite him here. Name's Krowen. He's blind, but…”

“What is he?”

“He's composed of anger, but… nothing like Eli’s. Eli filters the system’s anger in the moment. He helps them vent. This one… I don't know if there's anything in him but pain.”

“That's what you said about Ghost.”

“This feels… different. His anger isn't the same kind of anger as any of ours. This is rage, spawned by much older and much stronger catalysts.”

“Like what?”

Plan shook his head and marched past him. “If this is handled correctly, I won't have to tell you.”

The members of their system recognized, one by one, that someone even newer than Pherris had come to town. She didn't say it, but seeing him sent a feeling of dread right to her stomach.

He wasn't speaking. No, he seemed to prefer aimlessly wandering through the forest. The system, which tended to welcome newcomers with open arms, met Krowen’s silence with silence of their own.

That night, magic was the last thing on Pherris’ s mind. She had begun to become increasingly aware of a kink in her neck that just wouldn't go away. When she reached back to run a hand up her spine, she felt a bump. A bump where one of her vertebrae had been displaced and pressed tight to the skin.

It must have crushed her windpipe. It must have damaged her spinal cord. It must have killed her.

When Jude saw it, he went knocking on the loft door. “Plan. Open up!”

No answer.

“I know you can hear me. I know you saw what I saw!”

He thought that, maybe, Plan had resolved to ignore him. Until the door swung open to reveal a silhouette superimposed over the brightly flashing control panel that hummed in the background.

“Earlier, when we spoke,” Jude said, “you mentioned that Krowen was blind. That he was blind and something else… What was the ‘something else’?”

Master Plan sighed, almost inaudible over the mechanical orchestra playing around them. “He’s blind, but he has an ability that compensates this loss. He can speak to the dead.”

They were laying down, nestled comfortably in bed, face half buried in a pillow, legs cocooned in a tangle of bedding.

The room was blurred out of focus by exhaustion but it didn't matter. Rays of light pouring down on a palette of yellow and white, none of it mattered. It was time to sleep. The familiar lull weighed them down, pulled them under the covers, and it all felt so warm, so comfortable, so inviting that--

They could hardly breathe.

Internal dialogue played in the backdrop of their fading consciousness.

“Can't breathe.”

“That's a bit worrying.”

“What do we do?”

“I don't know, can't we just finish falling asleep?”

“So… tired…”

“What if we suffocate in the night?”

“That probably won't happen.”

“But wouldn't that be a stupid way to die?”

“...”

So they sat up. Or tried to. Tried to push the covers back. Tried to roll off their face. Tried to move at all, really. But nothing happened. And lethargy only weighed down on them further. Until mild annoyance turned into panic.

And then the dream ended.

Their eyes popped open and they realized that it had all been the beginnings of a disturbing nightmare. That they were okay, in their physical body, in their physical room.

Plan settled down at the controls in his loft, hands dancing over the keys like lightning danced over the ground. Because this nightmare had felt different. This had to be something new…

Krowen had been given his own tree, but at the time, he'd simply burned it down and left a charred stump at the center of the forest.

Now, he huddled among its smoking roots and grinned. Plan felt it before he saw it.

“You.”

The whole system resonated with the strength of the accusation as he made it.

“You're doing this.”

He materialized in front of Krowen, arms folded, while the rest of them kept their distance. Krowen tried to stand, but Alpha molded a set of chains out of the darkness and wrapped them around the stranger, pinning him to the trunk with a force that shook the entire scape.

“Whatever the reason, stop,” Plan said, his words wearing a tone that held no room for defiance. “We need to sleep. It's been over 24 hours. What, a day and a half? 36? 40?”

He glanced at Alpha, who shrugged.

Krowen said nothing. Hardly suggested that he heard at all.

Plan sighed, strung out and on edge. “Okay, we're going back to sleep. Alpha, keep an eye on him. Eli, you're on high alert. Nomad, round up the littles. Lorys, patrol. Good night. The end.”

He trudged back up to his loft and slammed the door.

Less than 10 minutes later, they were there again. Laying in bed. Above them, a ceiling fan whirred and whirred, getting louder and louder as the need for oxygen became more and more desperate.

Again, they were forced awake by their own terror, and again, Plan found himself in front of the stranger with the grin plastered across his face.

He wanted to yell, he wanted to scream--if only because it might weasel an answer out of the troublesome newcomer.

But Eli was just as exhausted as the rest of them were. None of them had the strength to be angry.

So Plan decided to say what they were thinking. To vocalize their fears, in the hopes that it'd set them down a path towards resolution.

“You murdered Pherris.”

Almost immediately, images flashed above her head. A nondescript but very humanoid figure loomed above the bed from their dreams. And there was an inescapable feeling of helplessness as he leaned over her, laid his hands on her body. Drained the blood from deep gashes in her arms. Wounds that manifested themselves now, on her undead body, as carefully stitched scarlines. Wounds that painted the white sheets red, like roses.

It was why she couldn't move, couldn't speak. Why every part of her seemed to be fading into nothingness. She was on the verge of death, and he just couldn't wait to finish the job.

She was taking too long. Maybe it was the will to live. Tendrils of magic pumping life through her veins while she still had it.

So he reached down, took her neck in his hand, pulled her from the bed, lifted her into the air, palm cupping her spine, and snapped it.

“So help me, you will not be allowed to tear this system apart. I'll kill you if I have to, and if you have the nerve and the strength to come back, I'll kill you again. I'll kill you over and over and over and over again if it means keeping this system running.”

He said it, but even as he said it, Plan knew that it wouldn't matter. For as long as Krowen kept coming back, Plan was wasting his time. Providing a temporary answer to a long term problem. That wasn't going to cut it. Not this time.

He needed to turn a curse into a blessing.

The system was in lockdown. Sleep wasn't working. Every time they tried, nightmares wrapped further around the mindscape. Thick vines; thorns that latched onto everything they touched.

Plan wandered endlessly across the catwalks in the sky, muttering to himself, muttering things that ended up making it to the outside, to those beyond the system.

“How did he even get inside?”

“Pherris. She was a decoy. When she came to the system, I focused most of my energy on learning who she was and supervising her transition to life in the mindscape. The mystery of where she'd come from and how she'd died was enough to… to distract me from… the real threat…”

“A primordial archdemon. Meant to embody the subconscious mind’s darkest desires, bred from the conscious mind’s worst memories.”

“I had theorized at the eventual formation of an entity like this. We--they--they have so many bloody, twisted, self deprecating, emotionally cannibalizing thoughts; cropping up in the mind all the time. I had to put them somewhere. So I cast them to the bottom of the subconscious mind where they became an unchecked mass of fear and hate. It was so easy. Loading them into the dumbwaiter, pulling the lever, saying goodbye. Thought I was saving everyone… It festered there, congealed into personhood, became… him. It was naive of me to think that I'd solved the problem simply because I could no longer see it. Now, it's back. Locking it in the dungeon of our mind won't work. I should have known that.”

“But… how did a fragment crawl out of the subconscious mind on his own and formulate a plan for infiltrating the mindscape? That's more than impressive… That's…”

The Master Plan froze in place, realization washing over him, baptizing him in dread.

“He had an accomplice, and I know who it is.”

Master Plan stepped into the elevator built into his loft and pressed one of two buttons. The box shook in it's frame, and he wondered briefly why machines in the scape needed upkeep. Why his elevator groaned in response to use, why the lights flickered. Everything else in the scape was the manifestation of the system’s thoughts and feelings and--oh.

He began to sink.

The mind was like an ocean. Above the surface, thoughts became actions, became reactions, became realities. It was where system members went to front.

The upper layers of the “water” constituted the most active regions of the conscious mind. Short term memories, fleeting thoughts.

Far enough below the surface that it wasn't effected by rippling waves and wind, the mindscape was a veritable Atlantis. It was where the system’s members lived, interacted with one another, spent their downtime, all while sheltered from the outside world.

If you went much farther down than that, you found yourself in the mind’s Marianas Trench. The deepest depths that the ocean had to offer. The subconscious mind.

That was where Plan was headed.

The elevator came to a rickety stop and the doors opened on a cold, smokey darkness.

There were things strewn about the ruins of the mind. A purple bicycle with pom poms glued to the ends of the handlebars. A toy dinosaur that had had his tail gnawed off. A red hat, covered in moth holes. A doll with curly brown hair.

Half faded images came in and out of focus, projected onto the shadows in the distance. Images of the family, the friends. Images of the used-to-be family and the used-to-be friends. Eyes scrawled out in angry black ink. Repressed. Buried deeper than the bottom of the ocean. Forgotten forever--or, that was the intention.

Above it all, roots hung in the air. Hopelessly entangled, reaching ever further upward. It wasn't a stretch to think that they might reach as far as the mindscape. Somehow, Plan wasn't surprised, and he was fairly certain that he knew, now, who had planted them.

He was there, perching on a pile of garbage. A faint silhouette on an already colorless exterior. Ever changing. A thousand faces in one.

Plan stopped at the foot of the pile and met eyes with his twin. “Master Disaster. It's been a long time.”

Disaster glanced up from what he'd been inspecting. A ragged, homemade “book”. Newspaper articles and journal pages taped together between two pieces of cardboard. “For Julia, my gem,” it said.

He set it aside and took a few steps down the pile, knocking memories free from their graves and sending them rolling down the hillside, coming to a halt around Plan’s feet.

When he reached the bottom and the two found themselves at eye level, Plan lifted a hand, to shake his brother's hand. It was a bid for formality, and it failed. Plan was the personification for association, order, reason. Disaster personified dissociation, disorder, chaos.

“You would know better if you visited once or twice a decade,” said Disaster, tactfully avoiding the outstretched palm. He turned and led Plan deeper into the subconscious.

Plan considered asking the question he'd come to ask, but he already knew the answer, and his brother knew that he knew.

“You fashioned that child out of all of the worst memories hiding in the deepest corners of the mind. He's toxic waste, leaking pain and suffering everywhere he goes. So, how do we clean it up?”

“I hope that you aren't surprised by these developments. We both know that something like Krowen has to exist. This mind is broken. Not having an entity like Krowen, forced to embody the worst of the damage… is a luxury. A luxury that we can no longer afford.”

“But having him so close to the others--”

“Is a good thing.”

Plan fumbled for words, not used to being on this side of the discussion. “Why?”

He tripped over something wedged into the sea floor. Would have fallen, if Disaster hadn't steadied him in time. Looking back, he saw that it was a small toy lock box. It had rattled when knocked out of place by Plan’s foot. Filled with childhood secrets.

“There's so much down here that… I never thought I'd see again.”

“Foolish not to stay in touch with this part of the mind. Clearly, it has just as much bearing on the system as anything else does.”

“And you? What have you been doing down here all this time?”

Disaster looked away. “You don't remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Did you ever consider that of all the things you cast into the abyss, over all these years, I was the first?”

It wasn't until Plan was alone again, in the elevator, rising slowly, that he received his answer.

It came from above the stormy surface of the water. From another system entirely.

He had been so focused on saving the system from Krowen’s wrath that, possibly, the most obvious solution had sat unnoticed for weeks.

“...what if he's the one who needs saving?”

If you could see through the darkness, if you could see into the innerworkings of those within, if you could see anything but the pale, human face, the hazel eyes, the glasses, the short, red undercut, the septum ring--if you could, you'd see the smile on Plan's face.

But you can't.

[powerborntouch]

“The Altered Adventure: Secrets of the Cyclone: Grave Robbers (Chp 10)” Reaction

This will probably be the most different from the Minecraft roleplay. That’s exciting.

If you don’t want spoilers, stop scrolling down and blacklist “altered adventure spoilers” or “secrets of the cyclone”

I’m actually sad that Brayden wasn’t that involved in the book. I was under the impression that he would. Well, if the future books at least clarify his motives, I don’t care if he’s underused. Just fix the plot holes.

I thought campfire was a typo. Omg, I loved that joke. (There are a few typos and formatting errors in this book, btw)

Omg, Letvia and Inferno finally appear. Yuuuussss

Omg, guys, the novel is giving so much Voice/Letvia shipping fuel. I think this book is trying to redeem itself with how the roleplay treated Voice/Letvia

LETVIA, YOU’RE BLUE NOW. THAT’S MY ATTACK. Third time. Her skin is actually blue. I assume she’s a Justment. So Justments give no shit about what color they look like. But I want to know what their bodies look like figure-wise and what sets them apart from NPCs.

Inferno looks exactly the same.

I like the tension between these Guardians and the different opinions.

Without his body, Voice felt anxious and empty. And 136% done with all the puns he had to hear

Graves just pop out like daisies? Ok. I can roll with that. It feels like a video game. First the quest vibe. Now this. These aspects make me excited about Altered.

“rip Samantha Telling. You had a very weird name. Like, what parents in their right mind would name someone Samantha in Altered?” I wonder if Samantha Telling is a shoutout/easter egg that I don’t know.

Poor Betsy and Gizzy :( Why did they have to make this hurt

Elizabeth is more appreciated that Barath. Rip Barath. Rip. Still the least favorite Guardian of them all

Gizzy’s asking Benji for advice. That’s a step :D

A trap to anyone who steals the keys. Courtesy of the Guardians. Now that’s what I call actually protecting the Prophecy.

I’m glad there’s flaws to the morph ability. Coming to think about it, I think the morph ability is more balanced in the novel. It’s harder to kill things in the real world than in Minecraft, so it will be harder to gain new forms. I’m starting to appreciate this power

Daaaang. A skeleton army o_o This really escalated from the wolf pack and Ratchet

Barath was destroyed by his own hammer. How ironic. And finally Gizzy uses that hammer for once

Clayton, goddamnit. Have you been following him all this time?

I feel so worried for Gizzy and Benji. Who’s gonna save them this time? Not Betsy, that’s for sure.

Ouch. Hit in the head. …is it bad that I’m hoping for one of those flashbacks?

Yaaay, flashback

Omg. Please don’t mess up with Ratchet’s character and the timeline continuity. Pleeeeeaaaase. I’m begging you.

Witch left his chill back in the Minecraft roleplay. He’s so dramatic in the novels.

Oooooooooh, Voice. That was SAVAGE

“Egotistical notion” Witch is implying that Voice is saving the world just to improve his image. I can take this in two ways. 1: Voice loves his reputation, will do anything to secure it and thinks saving the world is the best way to do so. He’s not saving the world for the lives, but for himself, and doesn’t care if people get hurt. Or 2: Voice is so concerned about being Altered’s best Guardian. He feels like he has no choice but to prioritize the Prophecy over Aurona because he believes it’s what’s expected of him. He doesn’t want to fail Altered and make the people fall into despair.

“you’re going to pay for those words” BY BECOMING WORDS

Witch is also calling Voice hypocritical.

“This, Voice, is a fitting punishment for such a ridiculous name.” OOOOOOOOOH OOOOOOOOOOOH OOOOOOOOOH BUUUUUUURN. So apparently, in Altered, Shamas, Witch, Letvia, Samantha and Alpha are acceptable names. But being named Voice is a tragedy. Lol.

Looks like Voice’s attacks are weak when he has no body. I like that limitation.

Ok, the book doesn’t acknowledge the timeline continuity nor Ratchet’s motives. It better not had mess it up…

Seriously, Gizzy needs to get his head checked for a concussion. He won’t survive long enough to kill the Demon if he’s suffering internal bleeding.

Witch as ashamed? Gypsy has no chill? OMG, did he just SLAP his son? Omg, they’re both crying?? Omg. No nooooo. Omg. Witch’s mental breakdown reminds me of my Witch Redemption AU. I don’t know if I should be happy for the similarities or be even sadder. Aaaaaaah Omg. We finally get Witch’s backstory…but I don’t know what to make out of it :’D

Aurona overshadowed Witch. But Witch still cares about him.

Ok, Witch’s motives are better explained. I like that.

“You will become king of Altered” *DESK SLAM* STOP LYING. We know this isn’t true! The book describes Gypsy as uncertain when he said that. But why is Gypsy insisting it anyway? I hope this is addressed later.

Witch says that the Guardians made him look bad…but he is bad. He did a lot of bad stuff in the Minecraft roleplay. I wonder how the novel series is gonna present this guy. So far, he’s someone I sympathize for.

I’m finding so much info that aligns with my Witch redemption AU too :D Differences are Witch being more sentimental and being the older brother

I’m kinda confused…the Chosen One and the savior of Altered…are not the same thing. ???

Dang, Ratchet is still villainous. I’m starting to doubt that he will receive a redemption. Like, at this point, Witch has a better chance to be redeemed that Voice and Ratchet

I’m still confused about the Prophecy. It can either make Witch king or take Gizzy home. I hope this is addressed better later. If I didn’t knew about the Minecraft roleplay, I would assume that the Prophecy is something that grants people wishes.

Also, I noticed that Gypsy didn’t say that his time was coming to an end…hmm…

There’s one great thing about making Aurona and Gizzy children in the books: it questions morality. Witch was angry at Voice for separating him from Aurona (a child), but he was ok with Voice’s plan to separate Gizzy (another child) from his family. So, is Witch just as bad as Voice?

I don’t know what to think about Witch. His character is not clearly defined with all these different perspectives. Like, this info contradicts the info from chapters 2 and 3. I want to analyze this later and figure out why the narrator lied about Witch in chapters 2 and 3.

Did Witch agree to Voice’s plan willingly or unwillingly? What did Witch do as a Guardian? So many questions, but they can’t be answered in the book.