#id be so powerful if i ACTUALLY properly wrote

[timelessoceans]

“Do you remember that agreement we had all those years ago?”

Mickey’s body froze, his demeanor growing more nervous as he sank back into the chair.

“Why yes, I… I d-“

“Care to remind me of what it was?" The CEO kept his gaze on the window, his voice gaining a sense of authority.

The mouse grew silent, his eyes looking straight at the CEO, whose back was still turned to him.

“Uh, okay." He cleared his throat, raising a hand to his head.

"In exchange for all of the toons’ safety and well-being in the real world, I, Michel Theodore Francois D. Mouse, pledge my full loyalty to -"

“- the Walt Disney Corporation.” The CEO finished Mickey’s sentence for him, causing the mouse to grow silent once more.

He could feel his heartbeat grow faster, his expression growing more uneasy. He knew it was a mistake, but what else could he have done? It all happened so fast. Too fast.

[ just a little sneak peek. a little glance at the machinery i call my brain ]

[rdiowx]

Ray or Jet Star smut? he just looks very tall and strong and like he could overpower me in a second (maybe amab reader if you feel comfortable with that?)

EEEEEE I LOVW RAY TORO also ofc i love writing amab readers

I feel like i shouldve went with jetstar for this one, maybe couldve had more plot. Also he wasn’t Originally supposed to be cocky but that was my bad

COCKY RAY TORO

Ray toro x amab!nb reader

Smut,he’s overpowering u but at least he’s hot, amab reader, this wouldve been done last night if i didnt get distracted, its short too, in all seriousness ray toro is like 6’1, i wrote this while listening to 5th period massacre by leathermouth, ray is lowkey kinda mean actually, porn without plot, unprotected sex, reader doesn’t talk much, dont ask me why it took two days to write this bullshit.

You wanted to be in control this time, And Ray pretended to let you for a little bit…until he got bored and overpowered you. “C’mon you didn’t think id actually let you be in control did you?” Ray teased from above you. You only whined in response before pouting. “Dont look at me like that, you look like a kicked puppy.” He frowned in a condescending manner. Ray undressed you, quite gently considering his tone of voice. After undressing both you and himself he made sure to force you into position.

“Comfy?” Ray questioned from above you, receiving a nod in response. Ray reached over to grab the lube on the nightstand before lubing up his middle and ring finger to stretch you. You jolted from the cold and let out a whine which Ray only shushed and pushed his fingers deeper. “Feel good?” Ray asked looking up to see your reaction. “Mhm..” you groaned as Ray angled his fingers just right.

Ray continued to slide his fingers in and out of you, occasionally scissoring them before adding a third finger. Ray being skilled with his fingers was an understatement, he was an actual god. You almost came just from his fingers, Ray didnt even have to touch your cock to get you to cum and he knew that. He had the power to turn you into a sweaty mumbling mess if he felt like it. He finally pulled his fingers out of you after getting you oh so close. You whined in protest, clearly unhappy with the loss of tension in your lower stomach.

“Shh, you want my cock don’t you?” Ray teased, letting your orgasm fade completely before lubing himself up to avoid discomfort. Ray lined himself up with you before slowly sinking in, clearly teasing you after a while. “Ray, if you dont stop teasing im going to- Oh fuck!” You were cut off by Ray thrusting entirely into you catching you off guard. “You’re going to what? What are you going to do?” Ray mocked, pressing a short kiss to your skin.

You couldn’t answer properly, only able to let out strangled moans or high pitched whines. “Thats what i thought.” He smirked, setting a steady pace. “F-fuck you.” You finally stuttered out. “I am.” Ray replied cockily, shit eating grin present on his face. Ray grunts as he thrusts particularly rough that time, you let out a strangled noise that you weren’t even sure was human. Even if you had the power to flip ray over you werent sure you would’ve, he was making you feel too good and he was well aware.

“M’gonna cum soon Ray!” You almost yelled, tightening your grip against the now wrinkles sheets below you. With that Ray lifted one of his hands to stroke your cock, slightly slower than the pace of his cock going in and out of you. You were squirming at this point, not able to handle the pleasure of both his cock and his hand. Not even a few seconds later you released all over his hand and both of yours and Rays stomachs. “Holy shit-!” Ray groaned throwing his head back before releasing inside of you.

You whined in annoyance as you felt his cum drip out of you. “Im going to be in control next time even if i have to tie you down, and thats a promise.” You giggled leaning up to kiss him. “Ill take your word for that.” Ray replied, still panting heavily. You went to get up only to be stopped by Ray “where are you going?” Ray asked looking towards you. “We’re gonna take a shower we’re both covered in sweat and cum Ray.” You answered looking back at him. “You dont wanna have a cumfilled cuddle with me?” Ray pouted still laying down but eventually getting up seeing as you werent very fond of the idea.

[dyketubbo]

I'm not gonna lie. I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if dr**m is trying to keep the other ccs quiet about it or prevent them from knowing what's actually going on by saying stuff like 'oh it's just twitter drama don't even bother looking'. Because apparently when tubbo brought it up he instantly revealed that he was lurking in chat. i don't know though, i'm not watching the stream i'm just going through what i heard other people say so take that with a grain of salt. But the way the ending felt so rushed and written like someone who favors cd wrote it... wouldn't be surprised if he just went "we're doing this now." we know he has the power to do that. again take this with a very very big grain of salt.

oh no i 100% think that dream has a hand in keeping ccs quiet. the more and more stuff that comes out the more sure i am that dream has a heavy hand not only in the others silence, lack of knowledge (the way tubbo is acting, it seems like he heard of it, but still has to look into it properly), but also a good part of why the finale was. uncomfortable, to say the least.

him lurking in tubbos chat only continues to damn himself. i think eventually, hes just going to keep digging his own grave until eventually whether the court says hes a groomer or not wont really matter in properly damning him when hes already getting a good amount of damnable behavior stacked up against him. honestly, i dont know if id be able to do it myself, but it would probably be good to have some sort of document of dreams suspicous behavior even outside of the amanda case. it may help in linking the person we know dream to be outside of the case, with the person dream is within the evidence provided by amanda, and any other victims who havent been solidly proven as lying

[asklightking]

{Mod} I am gonna copy paste what I wrote on Twitter, since it's late and I think I am getting sick, so I need the rest, but here is the haul I got this year, feel free to look closely for the smaller items and such, and if you have any questions feel free to ask, but besides that, enjoy reading a lot about my time at AnimeNYC, but tl;dr: it was super fun, and I want to go back~!

Day one: Went with bros, and seeing what was at our fingertips this year is always awesome~. Artist alley had plenty, yet this year I didn't buy a lot from there, already regret that... but there was a lot to do! Played some jubeat, bought some nice things, wasted most of my time in line for a Nikke thing (I don't even play Nikke XD), and finally, this year we had a lot more booths that had singles and packs for MtG! It's crazy always seeing the change in merch options each year (lowkey need more Daki booths), but then... Suisei~

The first day ended with the Suisei concert, featuring Calli, and... I never understood why people cry at concerts before... until this concert. When she started Stellar Stellar, I actually screamed, I nearly cried, I can't properly word how happy I was, a perfect Day 1 end, thank you so much to @suisei_hosimati and @moricalliope for an amazing concert, truly was an unforgettable event~!

Day 2, went alone sorta, first autograph~! Wish they signed personal items, but it was for my brother, so it's fine, but what was nicer was meeting up with @Adorabirb for a bit~! It's been a while since we last saw each other, and while it was short, it was pleasant~! I also was in a bit of cosplay, wasn't *good* cosplay but hey, I did it so it's fine! @Adorabirb has the only decent picture of it (sans dragon sword) so ask him for it XD Besides spending more, I saw an Advent panel, played a VR game, took pics, and then... Onigiri panel~

Onigiri had a panel where she guessed what novel titles are real, and failing to guess right gave her a batsu (punishment), hence the "shrimp fried rice" post I made. Still, was very fun, @OnigiriEn_ is as funny "live" as she is in her vids, a great time!

Day 3: As per the previous post, it started off nearly catastrophic. So much wasted time, much anxiety, and fear of the worst... I am thankful I made it just in time, she was the main reason I looked into autographs, and they signed a book I had for a friend, so that went well, I then got another two autographs (won three, given an extra), aimed to spend money, got a signature from Onigiri (and a scolding >.<) a Marine art book that I thought was spicy, and I had to get a Suisei thing in honor of the concert~, and finally ended with Hololive ID!

Essentially a concert, they sang songs I never heard before, but they were great songs, and I was reminded how powerful @ayunda_risu's voice is, her and @moonahoshinova was hitting some great high notes~! Even bought some pen lights for this! Great end to the weekend!

In the end, the weekend was a blast, I saw a few more panels than I usually do, and I realized that... when I don't go with the intent to gift others with fun on the side and flip it, I just enjoy myself, I have a lot more energy, I don't waste a bunch of money on gifts for people (I still look a *bit* for gifts), I have a lot better of a time, and so does my wallet... idk how to feel about this shift, but in the end, I genuinely had fun, and have much better memories of this event than ever before~. I hope I can go again next year~!

[marvelousstevetony]

Okay, so after a stressful few months, I finally wrote a little snippet of something. This was mainly just to get back into writing, but hopefully, I'll get to some of the requests in my inbox very soon!

Anyways; a short no-powers au, stevetony, coffee shop meet-cute. I might continue if anyone wants to read more of this, lol.

~~~~~

Tony downs the last of his coffee as he closes the file that’s sprawled upon the table of the coffee shop.

He neatly places it back in his briefcase, humming contently to himself, the notes of his favorite medium roast dancing on his tongue, and he lets out a sigh of relief at the thought of going home after another stressful days.

As he’s packing up, his pocket vibrates, and Tony quickly pulls out his phone and looks at the caller ID.

“Hey, Pep,” he answers, his voice ragged from running board meetings all day.

Pepper says something in return, but it’s unintelligible as the buzz of the coffee shop drowns out any other noise.

“Hold on a sec, I can’t hear you,” he says, getting to his feet, and grabs the empty cup as he heads for the door. “I’m just leaving the coffee shop.”

“Tony? Do you hear me now?” Pepper asks once Tony’s gotten outside. He confirms that yes, he can hear her, then she continues and starts running Tony through his schedule for the next couple of days.

“I swear, Pep, I’m one board meeting from handing the company over to you,” Tony grumbles, pressing his phone closer to his ear and stops the other with his index finger to block out the honks and boisterous pedestrians. “I can’t do it anymore. I’m going on vacation.”

Tony can all but hear Pepper rolling her eyes at him. She always tells him how dramatic he’s being, which… fair enough.

“You’re being dramatic, Tony. Besides, the— wait, what’s that sound? Is someone shouting in the background?”

He hadn’t noticed, but when he distances the phone from his ear, he does hear a Hey! Being called from somewhere behind him.

“Yeah, well. We’re in New York, someone’s always shouting,” Tony states, but then he feels a something heavy grab his shoulder, and he quickly spins around to see who has the audacity to lay their hands on Tony’s very expensive suit jacket.

“What the—“

Oh. Oh.

“Pep, I gotta go. I’ll call you back, okay? Bye.” The words rush out of his mouth before Pepper even has the chance to form a coherent reply.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt or- or startle you,” Tall, Blonde, and Handsome says in hurried voice and instantly withdraws his hand from Tony’s shoulder.

Tony casts a quick glance at where Blue Eyes’ hand had been and finds that, despite the touch lasting less than two seconds, he already misses the warmth and heaviness of it. Trying to come up with a reply, he opens and closes his mouth a good few times, but all that escapes through his lips are a few confused noises that must make him seem like a right fool.

“You, uh, you forgot your briefcase. At the coffee shop,” Blondie explains and smiles wryly as he holds up the black, leather bag.

Tony blinks at him, still unable to get his brain to function properly. For a second, he imagines the look on Pepper’s face as she’s yelling at him for losing yet another briefcase full of important files, but his mind is soon infiltrated by the stranger in front of him.

There’s a weak indent on his left cheek, one that probably deepens into a small dimple the wider his smile gets. His nose is covered by a light sprinkle of freckles that Tony guesses have come as a result of New York recently being graced with the Sun’s presence. And good God, his eyes — Tony could spend hours, days even, trying to figure out what shade of blue they are.

“I just- I saw you leaving, and it was still there, so I figured…”

The man looks a little uncertain, as if he had gotten it wrong and it wasn’t actually Tony’s briefcase but someone else’s entirely, and that’s when Tony realizes he still hasn’t said a word.

He gratefully accepts the case and nods at the stunner, who he notices is shuffling his feet uncomfortably.

“Right. Thank you,” Tony says, opens the case and reaches for his wallet.

The man’s eyes widen as Tony starts looking through it, then rushes out, “I didn’t steal anything, I promise.”

It occurs to Tony that it definitely looks like he’s checking if everything’s still there, which is surely not what Tony intended. “Oh, I didn’t— I was just,” Tony tries and fails to articulate, instead opting for just waving the $100 bill in the air between them, gesturing for the man who just saved Tony from another earful to take the money and saying a final, “thank you.”

The bluest eyes Tony has ever seen grows impossibly wider when he understands, then holds up his hands, palms facing Tony and the money. “Oh, no, I can’t accept that.”

Tony sighs internally. Of fucking course. Not only is the guy hot as hell, but he’s also as polite as can be. Figures.

“Please, it’s the least I can do.” He pushes the bill closer to the man, then, with a smirk, adds, “You just saved me from a whole lotta trouble, so.”

The chuckle that slips through those luscious, pink lips is so low and sultry, it’s actually kind of offensive, Tony thinks.

“Well, I’m glad I could be of service. Anyone would’ve done the same, though,” he says and gently nudges Tony’s hand down, smiling sheepishly.

“We both know that’s not true,” Tony quips with a raise of an eyebrow.

“Anyone decent, then,” he amends and this time, when he beams at Tony, Tony catches a glimpse of the perfect, pearly white teeth that are hidden behind his lips.

If Tony wasn’t so distracted and preoccupied by daydreaming about his rom-com worthy meet-cute, he maybe would’ve asked for the guy’s number, or even just his name, but all of Tony’s composure has apparently left the building.

“Are you sure?” Tony asks, frowning. “I insist—“

“Absolutely sure,” he assures. “Just being a decent human. Have a good day, sir.” He flashes Tony one last, soft smile as he pockets his hands and walks away.

Tony stays still for a minute, watching as he makes his way down the street. He can’t help the warmth that rises to his face and the blush that colors he cheeks when the most gorgeous man in New York City glances over his shoulder and looks right at Tony with a similar fond expression and cheeks tinted crimson.

A good day indeed.

[mixelation]

@cardio-vore commented:

the ulquiorra-tatsuki teamup we deserve???

HOLD UP I WROTE (and then abandoned) SOMETHING LIKE THIS

One thing Ulquiorra has learned about humans is that they equate physical size with strength. The man looks down at Tatsuki, who is even shorter than Orihime and wearing a sweater that hides lean muscle, and sees only empty, ineffectual posturing. 

He’s wrong, of course. If the man could sense reiatsu properly, he’d have marked Tatsuki as a threat the moment she turned the corner. Tatsuki is nothing but a sand louse compared to an arrancar, but in the pathetic spiritual buzz of the human city, her reiatsu sticks out like the sun. 

(Orihime, then, is something like a supernova.)

The man’s eyes turn to Ulquiorra, hovering behind Tatsuki in his restrictive gigai, and he seems to dismiss Ulquiorra almost as easily. Tatsuki has informed Ulquiorra that he is a pretty boy, which apparently translates into appearing physically weak. 

It’s frustrating how stupid humans are. Ulquiorra could kill both this man and Tatsuki just by letting out enough reiatsu. In Las Noches, he wouldn’t even have to make threats or demonstrate. A lesser being like this man would beg Ulquiorra for commands to gain his favor. 

“I know what your fucking game is,” Tatsuki says, and her body language is all aggression. The man seems to think it’s adorable. 

“A cute girl shouldn’t use language like that,” he says, voice languid. 

Tatsuki doesn’t break his neck on the spot, which is unfortunate. Instead she grabs his arm and twists it around, forcing him to his knees at her feet. The man cries out in shock and pain, and all the smugness falls off his face. It’s oddly satisfying-- Ulquiorra has never been one to lord his own power over people, but he also doesn’t like being looked down on. He wants Tatsuki to make the man fear them. 

The man tries to strike Tatsuki with his other arm, but she grabs it and shifts her hold, forcing the man face-down into the pavement and bringing one knee down on his back. It’s a very trained motion, more like the practiced strikes of a shinigami than the wild blows of a Hollow. 

“You fucking bitch,” the man says, even as his cheek brushes the concrete, and Ulquiorra steps on the back of his head. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Tatsuki snorts, leaning back to riffle through the man’s pockets. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

The man struggles and screams and begs to be let go, but now that Ulquiorra has his head pinned down, he doesn’t even need supernatural strength to hold him in place. Tatsuki pulls his wallet from his pocket and removes his ID. 

“Watanabe, huh?” Tatsuki says, eyeing the card. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he tries. There’s a plea in his voice, but Tatsuki looks unimpressed and she gets off his back and stands. “Orihime-chan and I are friends.”

“Actually, I have it on very good authority that she wants you to leave her alone,” Tatsuki says dryly. She drops his wallet next to his prone body but pockets his ID. “I’m keeping this. You can pick it up from the police tomorrow.”

Tatsuki looks at Ulquiorra expectantly, and it takes a moment for him to realize she means to just let the man go. The man is writhing under Ulquiorra’s foot again, trapped like the sad animal that he is. 

“I could just crush his skull,” Ulquiorra says. The man suddenly goes very, very still. 

Tatsuki rolls her eyes. “Okay, but then you’re the one who has to explain it to Orihime.”

This is a good argument, in Ulquiorra’s opinion. Orihime would definitely cry if she found out Ulquiorra murdered a human, even if the human was stalking Orihime. Orihime crying is a definitively bad outcome. 

Ulquiorra removes his foot. The man does not get back up. 

“Leave Orihime alone,” Tatsuki tells the man, “or we’ll find you again. Understand?”

Tatsuki puts a hand on Ulquiorra’s arm to guide him away, and Ulquiorra eyes it with minor disdain. He knows that it’s better to seem united in front of the enemy, though, so he doesn’t shrug her off like he would if they were alone. 

(In Las Noches, he’d have ripped her arm clean off. He does think about it, briefly, but the human world is soft and forgiving. He can be lax with Orihime’s underling.)

[thisbluespirit]

6, 8, 18 for the ship asks pleaseee (any fandom) and I hope you feel better soon

Thank you! <3

6. Favourite f/f ship

In shocking thisbluespirit-does-actually-watch-things-made-this-century answer, Swan Queen! (aka Emma Swan/Regina Mills from OUaT). I don't always know how I ship it, because I awkwardly also enjoy Captain Swan and like canon (possibly not allowed??), and canon does not have a lot of wiggle room for them, other than foe-yay-ly, but it gives me All the Feels (TM). (I mostly resort to mime and squeaking to express them, not translatable over the internet.)

In more properly ancient telly answers, Mina/Lucy from Dracula (ITV 1968), who totally have the first Brit TV f/f kiss, as we've now totally proved scientifically. *coughs* *shifty eyes* I love the bit where Lucy seduces Mina a ridiculous amount.

8.Most fluffy ship

I'm very mild and gen but not all that fluffy when I ship (a great handicap in current fandom, alas), so I checked my AO3 works and aside from me having a weird definition of fluff some days, it coughed up Ben/Polly from Doctor Who, and this seems accurate.

(I also write fluff ficlets for Eight/Charley, but I don't think they are really a fluffy ship in the same way that I think Ben/Polly actually are.)

18.Guilty pleasure ship

None, maybe, or lots? I don't take my fannish activities and especially not shipping too seriously in general (although I do have a couple of die-hard OTPs and OT3s), so I'm not going to worry too much about fictional things I may or may not ship sometimes fanfictionally.

I do feel vaguely guilty sometimes because most of my ships are from old telly and mostly het, and, um, sorry? I keep watching elderly telly and my preferences tend to run het-wards, although by no means exclusively.

So, probably any ship from things like The Power Game and Manhunt would count, because everybody is the most problematic ever, especially in TPG.

Or that bit where I genuinely do ship those two Generals in Enemy at the Door and wrote very dark fic about it and I still don't know how I feel about myself, but I had to do it, okay! (aka: James Maxwell is so DOOMED <3<3<3.)

I have a thing for age difference ships, which I think tumblr would like me to feel guilty about, but I don't, although I am kind of amused/slightly embarrassed at my former teenage self, who was totally into it even including those dodgy Victorian ships where the father's friend brings up the daughter as their ward and then marries them once they reach 21. Ate them up with a spoon every time! (Adult!me is more side-eyeing of this, but at the same recognises that teen!me a) thought imagining dating any boys her own age was a nightmare, and up to about 18, fair, totally fair, and also b) like the iddy bit was the obv cool older hot guy being all NO YOU MUST MARRY SOMEONE YOUNGER I AM NOT WORTHY, YOU MUST NOT THROW AWAY YOURSELF ON ME. And Victorian Young Girl being I AM SO GOING TO, YOU CAN'T STOP ME, I WON'T LEAVE YOU. And my id remains is into that! Just with less of the actual adopted ward bit now I'm older. I still hate the ones where they really do go away and marry some boring younger dude, though. What a let down. :lol:)

okay, that was a ramble, sorry. Short answer: I judge myself a lot for my old telly fandom life choices, but I am supportive of my teen self's love of problematic 19thC/early 20th C lit. (You go, teen!self! You can worry about it later. ;-p)

Send me a no.: list here.

[transhoverfish]

I had this question in my mind for few days now but.. how many AUs have you made up for both Subnautica games?

I'm really curious because I started writing down all the ones that ever came on my mind (I have twelve now) - I wrote them into a Word document and some even have a description

I mean like the medieval, college.. any kind of au

hmmm actually i don't have that many? wait no nevermind. i just counted there's at least 8 counting survivors KABDKABFOHA

ANYWAYS here's a brief rundown of all my aus! once again long post so its under a read more. because by brief i mean at least a paragraph per au because im bad at being brief.

survivors

so this is the au im currently writing for! degasi lives, avery lives, various aurora crew live and they save the planet from the kharra a few times and raise some sea emp babies. big found family and some literal just family. some murder on the side too but that's not important found family only. probably the only one of this list that's ever to be properly written and finished.

melon and the coconut + dreamland

avery/bart centrenic au, partly based on an alteration of survivors where only they live. bart lives in his own fantasy of different outcomes to events, dreaming of something else. avery grows distant and bitter with bart's unwillingness to accept what's happened, and starts to blame him for everything. eventually the two drift apart so much that they barely interact, and avery leaves bart's base to build his own. bart never goes after him, and avery never purposely looks for him again. i got obsessed with glass animals + specifically these two songs so i daydreamed an au up. saddest out of all these i think :(

keen au

its keen sole survivor au babey!! according to 🌟realism🌟 most ppl don't live if they pass out for longer than like an hour (that does not include sitting in a small area w a fire and smoke for 3+ hours) so ryley uhhh Dies. keen doesn't go back to the aurora w/ yu and ends up being the only survivor. bc im a sucker for bart lives that might be a thing, perhaps not, it depends on my mood half way through.

ghost au

main plot of game with only on the crater, but everyone else is a ghost now and haunt ryley. ghosts can see ryley, ryley can see ghosts, ghosts cannot see each other, although they can occasionally hear each other if the people in question were close before they died. mostly just subnautica but ryley befriends dead people.

horror au

survivors but like….. mutations with WAY WORSE consequences and all the effects of the kharra that i forgot about. did you know the kharra causes aggression? because i did not. its mentioned in like 1 log and i totally forgot. living in complete isolation for 10 years and believing everyone you know is dead, and blaming yourself for the future deaths u know are coming? being able to hear a goddamn mile around you at all times while still having mostly the same normal human eardrums? being able to stop yours and others hearts AT ANY TIME WITH NO CONTROL OVER THIS AT ALL?

these powers fuck them up a lot more in this variation. also ocean scary. but mostly mutations and kharra and everything messes up everything for everyone.

paul fucking dies au

everything's the same up until the landslide at the first island base, where the degasi were inside when that giant boulder crashed into it. bart and marg escape but paul dies. whoops! never thought too hard about this one but marg probably makes all decisions, they explore further, maybe meet sea mama?? and stop the aurora + sunbeam from crashing?? hmmmm. but yeah just paul dies faster.

degasi in arctic au

the entire degasi ends up floating out to sector zero and marg is not alone! bart adopts preston. that is literally all i've thought about in this au, the base premise of it and bart adopts a dog.

evil bart au

bart….. but no longer Baby. bart is now Feral and Rabid. kind of a bad title bc hes not like, intentionally evil, but he makes some fucked up decisions and ppl die. basically the very original plot of survivors where bart gets obsessed with finding sea mama and curing the planet that Nothing Will Stop Him. destroys precursor stuff to stop the others from interacting w it and finding out anything, specifically lets micah and beatrix die bc they spoke out about him too much, probably lets danby die instead of helping him, probably partly responsible for paul's death similar to the very first degasi logs. havent thought about it in a long while so i dont remember much about it other than bart was evil. not rlly an au as opposed to a strange character choice for him that i ended up not liking, so prob the only one on here ill def never write out but hey figured id list it anyways

and i think that's all?? all of the ones i could remember or bothered to write down at least lol. got me a big list!!! :o

[qhazomb]

Hey okay i know this is kinda weird but since you made the post about nerfed benrey im kinda curious. Im also so so sick of those fics not being properly tagged and im lowkey kinda thinking about writing a (lighthearted) fic about benrey pretending not to have powers postcanon because he thinks thats why gordon doesnt like him and its just. The worlds worst detective gordon being like “something is going on here” while benrey is clipping through walls behind him and then slowly backing out before be gets spotted. I wanna write a fakeout “benrey gets nerfed” fic because im a petty bastard (dont worry gordon doesnt get mad at benrey or anything he just gets so fucking smug when he finally catches benrey using powers). Anyway since youve written fics and also you have opinions on powerless benrey id love to hear your opinion if youre willing? (That includes saying genuinely “this is a bad idea” so i can be stopped early from doing something stupid ajhsjdhdb)

go for it! i’ve actually written something myself with the idea of “benrey has his powers still, but is hiding them because he thinks gordon/the others hate his non-human/monstrous qualities.” here it is, if you wanna see it. i wrote it in response to the last time i kept stumbling upon too many untagged nerf’d benrey fics. kinda wanna write another monster!benrey positive fic, but i don’t have any ideas rn... aside from maybe something to go in the thingvrai au series i plan on doing after i finish the body swap fic, hmmm....

[sweetsmellosuccess]

Sundance 2021: Day 5

Films: 4 Best Film of the Day(s): Judas and the Black Messiah

Prisoners of the Ghostland: For years now, Nicolas Cage has found projects that allow him  —  at this point, encourage him  —  to indulge his innermost acting Id. Never particularly one for thespian discipline before (with a few notable exceptions), he’s been freed of these petty restraints in favor of further and further unhinged “performances” that consist of his hyperbolic, twisted up line-readings and little more. For this film, he’s teamed up with Japanese gonzo auteur Sion Sono in a bizarre, cultural mash-up that includes western, samurai, comic book noir, and sci-fi all colliding together in a tedious heap. Playing largely without rules does allow for an exploration of creative impulses, but without narrative drive, or stakes of any real kind (beyond Cage’s character’s testicles  —  don’t ask), the film drowns itself in nonsensical, self-conscious oddities, with everyone seemingly taking the direction to “act weird!” until it all bleeds together. Even Cage’s various Cagisms (“Tes-ti-CAAAAL!”) get lost to the cacophony. Be careful what you wish for, Nic.

Cusp: The specific physical details change and evolve a bit, but much of the thrust of the American coming-of-age doc remains as fixed as a mountain range. Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt’s film, about a trio of teen friends growing up in small-town Texas over the course of a long summer, hits many of the usual sorts of points: With not much else to do, the kids amuse themselves with endless smoking, boozing, and drugging (and, this being Texas, an alarming amount of playing with firearms), get into and out of relationships they think might be love before they aren’t, and disagree vehemently with their parents, and the choices they’ve made in their lives. Still, Autumn, Brittney, and Aaloni each have their own burdens to carry  —  Autumn and Brittney are both abuse survivors, Aaloni’s father seems callous and harsh to all of his children to the point that they all hate him  —  and the intimacy with which Hill and Bethencourt’s camera captures their struggles and experiences is refreshingly candid, especially in the day of the endless social media montage. The young women are caught somewhere between child and adult, but unavoidably hurtling forward, an understanding we are all forced into accepting, but hasn’t yet hit them. “I’m sixteen,” one of them says near the end, “I have forever to go.”

Night of the Kings: On the evening of a blood-red moon at the MACA prison deep in the heart of the jungle in the Ivory Coast, a new, young inmate (Bakary Koné), having just been named “Roman” by the reigning Dangoro, Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu), is forced to tell a story to the rest of the inmates as an entertainment. As soon as he has finished, he’s been warned, he will be put to death. Ivory Coast director Philippe Lacote, who grew up in the city of Abidjan, where Roman’s story takes place, has created a sort of recrafting of Arabian Nights, with Roman as its Scheherazade. The thing is, as Roman begins to stammer out his story, attempting to elongate it as much as possible in order to stay alive, the inmates make it a fully interactive affair, jumping in to demonstrate the action Roman describes, breaking into songs glorifying the characters he creates, and responding favorably or unfavorably to every detail as he lays it out to them. In this way, Roman’s halting, confusing story  —  which changes time frames, and details as Roman rethinks them  —  becomes a collective experience of the entire prison, even as Lass (Abdoul Karim Konaté), a rival to the ailing Blackbeard, plans his overthrow. Ironically, Roman’s story might not rise up to the mythic elements he keeps trying to interject, but the film’s story  —  with its colorful cast of descriptive-name characters (Half-Mad, Razor Blade, Sexy, Petrol), magic realism components, and multilayered intrigue, plays like its own sort of myth.

Judas and the Black Messiah: It’s maybe one person out of 100 who would actually act in the best interest of everybody else instead of themselves. Which means there are about 99 who would look out for themselves, if push came to shove. Shaka King’s shattering film about Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the charismatic chairman of the Chicago sect of the Black Panther party in the late ‘60s, and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), the man who would betray him to the FBI, is a testament to this most egregious human principle  —  memorialized, as the film’s title strongly asserts, in the Bible  —  and one of the confounding bedrocks of human civilization. Hampton was a young man when he became the chairman of his chapter, and his successes immediately grabbed the attention of J. Edgar Hoover (here played by Martin Sheen), who was obsessed with the idea that the Civil Rights movement had inlaid ties with the communists. Putting pressure on his Chicago office to diffuse Hampton, agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) brings in O’Neal, recently busted for impersonating a Fed, and offers him a chance at his freedom, but at the cost of playing snitch on “Chairman Fred.” King, who co-wrote the screenplay, boils to story down to its essence without getting needlessly choked in the details. We see Hampton’s savvy, and his ability to connect with people of any creed or color  —  easily, the most frightening element of his program to the FBI was the so-called “Rainbow Coalition” that banded together the Panthers with black street gangs, but also Puerto Rican groups, and, shockingly, all-white coalitions, all untied under the rubric of being poor and abused by Chicago’s notoriously corrupt and racist police department —  but also, his absolute belief in keeping political power in the hands of the people, not the government. King’s film features absolutely blazing performances from its two male leads, in addition to a strong turn by Dominique Fishback, as Hampton’s wife, Deborah Johnson, and a strong, driving narrative focus that keeps the line taut, even if you know exactly what’s coming. King manages to portray Hampton in purely human terms, grounded in the reality of the struggle, and avoids needlessly deifying him in the process. It’s true, O’Neal, though the primary protagonist, remains more unexplored  —  this isn’t The Killing of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, exactly  —  but Stanfield gives enough breadth to the performance to keep the film properly balanced. It’s shatteringly good.

Sundance goes mostly virtual for this year’s edition, sparing filmgoers the altitude, long waits, standing lines, and panicked eating binges  —  but also, these things and more that make the festival so damn endearing. In any event, Sundance via living room is still a hell of a lot better than no Sundance. A daily report.

[edwad]

What are your least favourite Marx books? Which ones are the worst?

this is sorta tricky because i guess you’d have to define “books” since

many of his most famous writings are tiny pamphlets or speeches which were then published as articles or pamphlets and might not properly be considered “books”, especially since some of them were only published posthumously as texts once transcripts were found for speeches. value price and profit would be the go-to example for this.

a lot of the “books” we now have are really just editorial collages of manuscripts that were not written in the format of a “book” and were in many cases not even intended to be published. so when we try to measure their worth in how Good they are or not, sometimes the “book” we’re talking about doesn’t really exist or is constructed/“finished” (often poorly) from the raw manuscript(s). great example would be the economic manuscripts of 1864-5 which were then turned into volume 3 of capital, but the debate around the nature of engels’ job as editor means that the “book” capital volume 3 is considered by many to be inferior to the unadulterated manuscripts, if not an outright distortion of them.

but if we can sorta treat all the published texts as “books” (excluding like, individual articles unless they are noteworthy enough to single out. if they’ve been published as a pamphlet and are considered Important Texts i’ll consider them here) and ignore the fact that marx was an extremely prolific writer (meaning that there’s a lot that i haven’t read), id largely come down on the younger marx.

i think pieces like the communist manifesto, paris manuscripts, wage labor and capital, etc are relatively intellectually immature compared to his later works. a lot of what’s in them had to be corrected or outright abandoned by the 1860s. there’s also the problem where the paris manuscripts suffer from the 2nd problem listed above where they are mishmashed together in such a way that they appear inconsistent and where the actual process of inquiry gets lost in the rearranging of pieces of text. for example, the piece we read at the beginning as the “preface”, but which was actually from the third manuscript and was pulled to the front by editors, shows an attempt by editors to “finish” what marx apparently would’ve done himself, despite the fact that the manuscripts were from marxs personal notebooks and for his own development/clarification as he studied, not manuscripts for a “book”. this seemingly minor change reflects the overall editorial attitude to the publication of the manuscripts. a more apparent alteration is in the last “manuscript” regarding the critique of hegelian philosophy, which was never written by marx. it is an “essay” compiled from paragraphs and stray remarks throughout the paris notebooks, put together in a semi-coherent order so that it could stand as a single text (the same thing happened with the first “chapter” of “the german ideology”). when editors are this bold, it is hard to distinguish the good/bad of marxs work from the heavy hands of editors.

the same is true of wage labor and capital, which was republished by engels after marxs death with numerous “corrections”, especially around the category of “labor-power” which marx developed in the late 1850s, about a decade after WLC was written. the result is that engels decided to publish “not as Marx wrote it in 1849, but approximately as Marx would have written it in 1891,” which ignores the fact that merely changing “labor” to “labor-power” everywhere in the text that mentions its sale as a commodity doesn’t magically bring it to some hypothetical peak. marxs theoretical foundations between 1849 and 1867 (not to mention 8 years after his death in 1891!!) were radically different, meaning that the updating of a single category doesn’t resolve the problems of the text. here again, the editor plays a heavy role in the reception of the text (if you’ve read WLC, you almost certainly read the 1891 edition with engels’ editing), but also the theoretical foundations themselves are inadequate and were jettisoned in a matter of years.

the communist manifesto comes from this era of marxs thought as well and suffers from the same problems, although marx and engels treated the text as a kind of “historical document” which shouldn’t be altered, displacing the explicit “corrections” to the prefaces of later editions. regardless, its fame as The text of communism means that it becomes the go-to text for encountering and combatting communism. this is why it’s taught in high school classrooms and why jordan peterson thought it was enough to simply deal with the manifesto (beyond the fact that he’d obviously never read anything else by marx) as if it was the final word on communism. it isn’t, and the text has many problems that it’s authors pointed to, but also several which are only ever made implicitly in other texts, as the theoretical foundations are constantly being placed under scrutiny and changed. in the manifesto, he is largely uncritical of political economy’s categories, adhering to a malthusian conception of wages and a naïve theory of crises.

but there’s another issue, which isn’t wholly unrelated here, regarding the esoteric/exoteric dimensions of marxs writings which aren’t really grappled with until the 1970s by the neue marx-lektüre, concerning the ways in which marx would often write in “popularized” fashion, resulting in a kind of theoretical “dumbing down” of the concepts. he was extremely aware of the need to make himself understandable and even rewrote the beginning of capital several times in order to escape the same fate of the 1859 contribution which did poorly, in large part due to the fact that most people didn’t really understand it and those that did weren’t the people he was trying to reach.

the problem is that this often led to simplification rather than clarification, crudifying the analysis and turning it into something else which meant, at the end of the day, he was still misunderstood. this problem exists in many of his texts (even my favorites), meaning that some of his pieces, especially those which are often more explicitly political, become somewhat contradictory when compared to his private notebooks at the time. another serious and related issue here is the political censorship he faced at the time, which likely had a lot more to do with the way he expressed himself in published texts than we typically think. in my view, both of these things together help explain bernstein’s identification of a reformist tendency in the later marx, which was combatted by equally bad readings of traditional “exoteric” marxisms.

anyway, this is less a list of my least favorite marx books and more of a marxological wash of problems with making lists like this in the first place. it’s often hard to distinguish between marx and his editors, but also he was constantly developing and self-criticizing older conceptions, meaning that his “worst” books for me come from periods/texts where he isn’t on very firm footing (basically everything he wrong up to the grundrisse as far as i’m concerned), but excluding some of the texts which i think are actually quite strong despite their editorial weaknesses. my interest, then, is in understanding his intellectual development and bringing context to some of his later positions. that makes even the worst texts really important, even if i don’t find them adequate, which is sorta the point since he didn’t either.

[mikami]

Death Note Audio Drama 02

Disk 2: Collateral Damage - a summary / partial translation

Disk 1 and an attempted explanation of What This Is are here.

This episode also isn’t particularly wild as far as plot diversion goes, but it changes a key element of how Death Note manipulation works and.... introduces a whole lot of Matsuda trivia, somehow. We also say hi and bye to Naomi.

___________________

We begin with Naomi tracking down the bus driver of the busjacking. The driver is really annoyed that people keep tracking him down to ask him about it. Naomi asks about Raye. (Her vacation pic is from Honolulu in this version). Naomi presses the driver to tell her as much as he remembers about the other passengers.

_____

TITLE MUSIC PLAYS

_____

We’re back in time. Light is trying to think about how to get Raye Penber’s name. His dad’s computer has no notes about it. Light deduces that his dad doesn’t even know about the tailing. Ryuk brings up the eye deal.

RYUK: I can offer you the eyes of a shinigami.

LIGHT: U-uh, you mean a real pair of eyes? That’s disgusting!!

RYUK (amused): No, I just mean the power of those eyes.

The lifespan halving gets brought up and Light just goes “uhm... no thanks”, literally. 

LIGHT: Are there any more surprises? Some kind of bonus point system? Fine print? 

RYUK: Uuuuuhm, can’t think of anything much right now.

LIGHT: You could have written it into the Death Note, alongside the other rules. I don’t like to be led by the nose, I’m not your goddamn----

RYUK: ... what?

LIGHT: I am not your puppet.... But I can get one for myself.

RYUK: I don’t get it.

LIGHT: I know now, how to get my pursuer’s name. And that’s without making any kind of contract with you.

_______

A TV transmission. An attorney has issued a lawsuit against prisons for the way prisoners die. His client died of heart attack after writing a pentagram in his own blood. He was close to being pardoned. The lawyer says that the government has a duty to ensure safety of the prisoners, no matter what they are in for. 

_______

L and Soichiro discuss the murder and other abnormal murders like it. They have Soichiro be the one to discover the “L did you know” message, oddly. But they don’t really detail how it is coded, so it might have just literally been written down word by word in this version. L tells Soichiro to not tell anyone about this, not even his team. Soichiro immediately says he’ll only keep it in her personal data files.......

_______

RYUK: Are you really sure you should snoop around your dad’s office like this?

LIGHT: If you want a useful way to keep your eyes busy, why don’t you keep watch?

RYUK: I am not your partner. Oh, an apple. [eats]

LIGHT: Luckily, I can do just fine without your help. A-ha! Interpol listed them all!

RYUK: All your extremely dramatic deaths?

LIGHT: More or less. Seems like not all I wrote into the notebook actually happened.

They go over the stipulations of manipulation needing to be physically doable for the victim. 

LIGHT: And now I just need... a catalyst.

_______

News transmission. A news entry about the killer of the Amane parents having died. Channel switch. A Christmas-themed advertisement for Space Land. Channel Switch. A news feature about Kiichiro Osoreda and his failed bank robbing.

______

Light meets Yuri and Yuri’s dialogue is kept pretty accurate to the manga, which is something that I found really disappointing actually. Light’s and Ryuk’s dialogue here is also very close to the original. 

Raye Penber complains that he’d like to do real policework at some point again, otherwise he acts the same as in the manga here.

The whole busjacking is just really manga-close. But when Raye says he’s police undercover...

LIGHT: Oh, really? And how do I know you’re not in cahoots with this madman?

PENBER: And who are you? A detective?

YURI: His dad is a detective, that’s why he’s so smart.

LIGHT: Do you have ID? Otherwise I’ll have to deal with you first. 

PENBER: Of course! Here.

LIGHT: Raye Penber... FBI? What is the FBI doing on a bus to Space Land?

PENBER: This isn’t really the time for that, boy.

LIGHT: Alright, cowboy, then toss your lasso already. 

I cannot overstate that he literally says this. Word by word. After that, the scene returns to its canon version. The bizarre thing is that Ryuk explains the plan out loud, including telling Light’s name to Otoharada. Of course, Otoharada is brainwashed and acting according to script, but still weird.

_______

News transmission. The busjacking gets described. Light turns the news off and shows the Death Note entry to Ryuk, who reads it out loud. 

______

We hear a New Year’s countdown. 

WATARI: What in Hercules’ name was that?

INTERPOL REP (still clinking champagne glasses): It’s the time difference, Mr. Watari! It’s midnight, here in the USA. 

WATARI: Oh... I am so very sorry. I must have lost my overview. 

INTERPOL REP: Forget about it. Just a moment.

She leaves the party room. She informs Watari of the deceased FBI agents. It happened three days ago, but she only got the report now, thanks to the holiday crunch. She now refuses to involve the FBI further. 

______

Soichiro calls L. He’s pissed about L involving the FBI, now that he’s heard. 

______

Back with Watari and the Interpol Rep (her name is Paula Virilio and she’ll be referred to as Virilio in the future) are still talking about the matter. She tells Watari that on Dec 28th all the agents asked about names and photos of their coworkers, so she gave the first four the file and asked them to pass it further.

______

Soichiro is really mad about Virilio’s miss-step too. L and Soichiro work out that they need to know who sent the first email about the files. The phone call ends.

The Task Force is really mad about L still not taking the same risks as them. They actually seriously consider L being Kira for a moment. 

______

The Task Force enter the hotel L is staying in. Pardon me for sometimes just saying ‘someone’ as the speaker, I find the Task Force really hard to tell about and without context cues I am often lost.

MATSUDA: A whole hotel suite? How do you earn the money for this stuff?

L: By being smarter than everyone else, Detective Matsuda.

MATSUDA: You are... [He corrects himself from the formal ‘you’ used to address adults to informal ‘you’ here] You are L....?

L: The one. Please sit down, gentlemen.

MATSUDA: He’s still a child...

L (laughs): I am old enough to vote, Mr. Matsuda. Old enough to carry a weapon, to marry, to fall in love... and to catch a murderer.  And you are Chief Inspector Yagami. I also know you from TV.

SOICHIRO: Yes, here’s my ID, for protocol. This is Matsuda, as you know. Detectives Aizawa, Ukita, Mogi...

L: A group of dead men. 

SOICHIRO: Excuse me, what?

L: If I really was Kira, you’d all be dead now. 

MATSUDA: How can we know that, boy?

L: Because you are not dead, detective. 

MATSUDA: We call that kind of thing circular logic.

L: I call someone like you an idiot. 

MATSUDA: I don’t need to listen to this from a civilian, you little shitty---

SOICHIRO (softly): Matsuda. 

L: You name is Touta Matsuda. Graduated from Kumamoto University. Passion for sports cars and every Thursday, you go to the cinema. Big drama. Not in a relationship right now, but in pining hope for something complicated with Noriko Takai. Hm. A very concerning sympathy for both [???? I DONT KNOW THE WORD] as well as country music. Loves Korean cuisine, but....

SOMEONE: He’s got your number, Matsuda.  

MATSUDA: So what? You all can easily figure out the same from social media.

L: Yeah, that’s what I can do. Everything. About you, and your sister, and your stupid aunt who doesn’t know how to properly set the privacy settings of her account. I know where you live, you tool--

SOICHIRO: I think we got it, L. 

L: Really? Kira plays this game to win. I agreed to meet you, because you were all getting nervous about working with an anonymous specialist, so I am here. To get my hands as dirty as yours. But really, is this necessary...?

SOICHIRO: What do you want, L?

L: I want you to take this seriously.

SOMEONE: In the face of 12 dead agents, matters are serious enough, I think.

L: Correct, so you take care to not become number 13. All of you have to disappear. Get off social media, get new email accounts. If you address the public or the press, you will introduce yourself with these names. You are not going to tell anyone your real names. That’s exactly why I am still alive.

And this is how we get the fake IDs.

_____

Naomi at the NPA. The receptionist refuses to let her speak to anybody from the Task Force. Light steps in, to hand in the spare clothes for his dad. His dialogue with Naomi is similar to the manga, but audio drama Light’s insistence and volunteering of excessively much info he shouldn’t have.... it makes me laugh.

LIGHT: And you are looking for my father?

NAOMI: Uh, yeah, I--

LIGHT: I can tell you’re up to speed, miss. You’re definitely correct to not just tell your matter to the next best person. Especially after those FBI murders. We’re all suspects, am I right?

NAOMI: U-uh, I didn’t say that---

LIGHT: If you’d like, I’d gladly get you in contact with my father. I’ll get through to him, even if he usually rejects calls.

RYUK: Take the bait, missy, take it...

NAOMI: Would that be alright, u-uh, Light?

RYUK: Aaand, bullseye!

LIGHT: Why don’t we take this conversation somewhere else?

RYUK: There’s just too many video cams here.

LIGHT: As long as we don’t know how Kira kills his victims, I’d suggest a less public place. 

_______

LIGHT: Okay, where were we? My name is Yagami. Light Yagami.

NAOMI: Shouko Maki.

RYUK: And my name is Ryuk, but you’re not actually able to see or hear me.

LIGHT: I think Kira is capable of more than simply killing people. It seems as if he could influence their actions before their deaths.

NAOMI: I think the same. And here I thought I was alone with it. Yes, he can control people before he kills them. But that’s not all. He can also kill them through other means than heart attacks.

RYUK: Who is this little snooper?

LIGHT: Should that be the case, we might be facing even more murders than thought. There are cases that haven’t been considered in connection to Kira yet.

NAOMI: Exactly. Those might be cases Kira hoped would stay secret. I am fairly sure that someone... someone I know... has met Kira.

LIGHT: Hah. It might be hard to get someone to believe this statement.

NAOMI: That’s why I came in person to explain the circumstances of the case.

LIGHT: Wouldn’t it be even more convincing if your friend told his own story?

NAOMI: He can’t. He was one of the murdered agents. 

RYUK: Oh, now it’s getting interesting.

NAOMI: He was my fiancé. He told me that he got involved in this busjacking. By now, I assume that Kira was on that bus as well.

RYUK: She’s talking about Raye Penber, wow. 

NAOMI: Something wrong?

LIGHT: Why are you assuming that Kira was on the bus?

NAOMI: Name and face of the culprit were on the media day by day. He was on the run after a totally miscalculated bank robbing. And then, 8 days later, shortly after Christmas... My fiancé dies. Together with his 11 colleagues.

LIGHT: The connection seems vague to me.

RYUK: What he wants to say is.... perfect match.

NAOMI: Something must have happened there. I think that my fiancé and the culprit were used by Kira to get to the other 11 agents. 

LIGHT: The culprit was hit by a car, it wasn’t a heart attack. This is how you got to the conclusion that Kira can control actions?

NAOMI: Yes. 

LIGHT: That seems pretty far fetched. 

RYUK: It really isn’t, lady.

NAOMI: Even the first time I heard of the busjacking, the circumstances seemed strange to me. I kept asking my fiancé questions, I basically interrogated him to tell me the story again and again. 

LIGHT: And... what was his story?

______

We flash back to Naomi and Raye talking. Both of their voices are tense.

RAYE: Yes, I showed my ID to one of the passengers, okay?! Are you happy now?

NAOMI: You shouldn’t have done that!

RAYE: I know that! It was complicated. The guy wouldn’t have cooperated without me proving that I’m a cop.

NAOMI: You were undercover, Raye! 

RAYE: Stop that! You weren’t there. 

NAOMI: You had explicit order to not blow your cover.

RAYE: And you are the only person who knows I have done that. If you don’t tell anybody, nobody will ever know. 

NAOMI: But I am not the only one. Isn’t that right? We still don’t know how Kira finds and executes his victims. You can’t afford even a single misstep.

RAYE: You’d probably prefer he’d shot all the passengers then.

NAOMI: Ugh, Raye, that’s not the point---

RAYE (hitting the table): Of course that is exactly the point!! 

______

LIGHT: This whole situation isn’t free of emotions. 

NAOMI: So?

LIGHT: I just want to make sure your feelings aren’t influencing your analysis skills.

RYUK: Which are working quite excellently.

NAOMI: Hey, you. I was a special agent with several decorations before I gave up my career to marry Raye. I’m not just some random brat.

LIGHT: I agree with you, the suspicion warrants a closer inspection. 

They keep talking, Light himself brings out the deduction that the person Raye identified himself to was Kira.

______

We’re with Ukita on phone duty. Someone who thinks they are Kira is calling. Ukita is already pretty annoyed, even before the guy talks of other hallucinations. He hangs up quickly.

_______

SOICHIRO: is it important?

MATSUDA: No, boss. Ukita is just whining again. He doesn’t want to be on phone duty anymore. He texted: “When do I get a hotel suite with 24/7 room service?”

SOMEONE: Does he think we’re just chilling here?

SOMEONE: Probably. Uhm, do you want the final shrimp?

SOMEONE: Take it.

They then move on to talk about surveillance footage of the FBI agent deaths. They have footage from 3 deaths, one of them is Raye Penber. They have the most material on him. They realize he’s done more than a full round on the Yamanote line. They also notice him having an envelope that disappears. They conclude Kira was on the train, receiving it.

______

Light makes his first attempt to kill Naomi, same cause of death as in the manga. Naomi wants to go back to the NPA building now. Light comes with her, as he notices she isn’t dying. 

_____

Ukita on the phone again. Akiko Misora is calling about her daughter Naomi being misses. Ukita is pretty annoyed (”Oh really? Was she kidnapped by aliens or something?”). Akiko explains that Naomi came to Japan with her fiancé,  but he died and shortly after Naomi also fell out of contact. Akiko complains about how much paperwork getting the ashes to the US was, and says how charming Raye was and how good his Japanese was...... Ukita wants to get rid of her, until Akiko tells him Raye’s name.

____

The Task Force discusses Naomi’s existence and disappearance. She left her hotel at Dec. 29th and has been missing since. They all suspect that Naomi, being an ex-agent, has started her own investigation. But they also worry someone found her.

_____

Light explains to Naomi that the Kira team doesn’t meet with people on principle, because of the risk. He calls them ‘us’ and Naomi picks up on it, leading Light to explain he is a member of the task force. (Ryuk: “And if you believed that one, you might as well buy a fake Rolex of him now.”) Light invites Naomi to the team, like in the manga. Naomi does a lot of nervous laughing in this scene, but she does give him her real ID.

______

The task force think about Naomi, and her existence in connection to Raye being the first one to send an email to Virilio. They decide to place cameras and bugs in the houses of those who were investigated by Raye. It’s the families of Kitamura and Yagami. 

______

Light writes Naomi’s name down again, this time her real one. They walk together some more. Light points out that Naomi doesn’t just want to investigate but also to hear the full story about Raye’s death. 

NAOMI: I already knew on the day of that something was wrong. Raye was acting really strangely. He got up and left, without a word. He even forgot his cellphone. 

LIGHT: Oh, is that unusual?

NAOMI: I followed him downstairs. He was at the reception and made them print something for him. I gave his phone to him, but he said nothing at all. He was so.. empty.

LIGHT: Distracted?

NAOMI: ... empty. Not a smile, not a kiss. He took the phone and left. At the time I still thought ‘well, maybe an order’. Next thing you know, the police arrives at the hotel. Asked me to come with them... identify the body. I have no idea what happened in the final hours of his life. 

LIGHT: I do. I know the details of Raye Penber’s death down to the very last second. 

NAOMI: I haven’t even told you his full name yet...

LIGHT: He entered the station via the west entrance. Past the street musician who always plays there. He passed the ticket entrance at 11 past 3. He went down to the Yamanote line, in the direction of Kanda. 

NAOMI: I don’t understand... That’s only too stations if you directly take the Chuo line. Why this giant detour?

LIGHT: Because someone was waiting for him. The Yamanote line is the perfect place for a meeting. It has stops everywhere and nowhere. 

_____

We launch into a flashback to the Yamanote line. Light walks up to Raye and greets him, but Raye does not answer him. Light introduces himself at more depth, even using his full name and calling himself Kira right after. Raye continues to not answer. Ryuk realizes that Raye cannot answer because that is how Light has written it down. Light keeps chatting, explaining his plan to Raye. On the train, he makes Raye watch as he writes the names of all his colleagues. He also touches Raye with the notebook, to let him see Ryuk. Raye can’t do anything.

____

LIGHT: Well, Naomi, I’m afraid Raye was just sitting there. His eyes widened a little. Panicked, you know?

RYUK: Yes, panic just about cuts it. Just like the face you are making right now, darling.

LIGHT: But he couldn’t move. Just like you right now. I was quite precise with my orders, you see? 

Light continues to explain that he needed the names of the other agents and that he can do anything to people whose names he has. 

_____

The task force discusses the family surveillance further. Light says the chance of Kira being among those people is 5%, but this is their only lead. Soichiro tells L to be thorough with his surveillance, like in the manga.

_____

LIGHT: All Raye could do was sit there until the time was ripe. And then get up...

RYUK: Without a word, Naomi. Silent like a fish.

LIGHT: And he left the train at Kanda station. 

RYUK: And then he died. 

LIGHT: Right on the platform, so to say. 

RYUK: He extended his hand like in a bad movie. As if he wanted to say ‘I am cursing you’ or something.

LIGHT: And thus, Raye Penber died. I find it regrettable. 

RYUK: Because he wasn’t a murderer. Which you also aren’t, Naomi. Just wrong place, wrong time... Collateral damage.

LIGHT: But I think you understand, Naomi, that I can’t leave you alive, if I want to keep working. I know you want to move, to hit me. I know that you wish above all else to take the gun out of your pocket. But none of that will happen, because I already put your final moments into motion. And that means I’m the one who’s in power here. 

Ryuk asks what she’ll do. Light explains that he wrote the same conditions as on the first try, about her suicide.

LIGHT: So Naomi, I think you know what to do. Now go. 

RYUK: And there she went. A woman with a mission. 

LIGHT: Hey, Naomi! Want me to call my dad? Still want to talk to him, tell him everything you learned today? Hm? .... and she just keeps walking. 

RYUK: She didn’t even say goodbye. I hope it was worth it. This new direction you’ve taken, it’s going to change everything. 

LIGHT: What new direction?

RYUK: Now you’re no longer simply a criminal. You’re a police killer.

[ayearofpike]

Witch World/Red Queen

Witch World

Simon Pulse, 2012 521 pages, 24 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-3028-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Wi 2012 OCLC: 924501501 Released November 13, 2012 (per B&N)

(HELL YES I DID take this picture in Vegas. Way back in November, underscoring just how behind this entry is.)

Red Queen

Simon Pulse, 2014 ISBN 978-1-4424-3029-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Rd 2014 OCLC: 1030042441 Released August 19, 2014 (per B&N)

First I have to address the immediate question: It’s the exact same book. Like, down to pagination. (Yes, I read them both. We’ve already established I’m kind of a freak.) I don’t know why it has two different sets of catalog information. I don’t know why they changed the title, but I will hazard a guess that Witch World is a shitty title and it took slow or lacking sales for S&S to convince Pike/Pike to convince S&S to change it. I don’t know why they then picked a title that would be coming out shortly from another publisher, one that would go on to create a much more robust universe and move enough units to muddy any kind of search query. I don’t even really know why I bought them both. I don’t know a lot of things, and I’m not quite masochist enough to find out.

What I do know? This book is more of the same old shit. Like, OK, most people aren’t going to read all 95 of Christopher Pike’s books right on top of each other, so the connections and relationships might slide. But if you do, you start to see that this dude actually has no new or original ideas after ... let’s generously call it 1996. The beautiful girl in the California town in the middle of nowhere who goes on a weekend party outing with her friends, but then meets a dude with mysterious powers and ends up in a fatal situation, only to realize that she’s survived death and now has strength and vision beyond her prior ability or even imagination? A vision that taps her into an alternate parallel universe, where she’s had a child who has the potential to be the most powerful human ever, only evil forces know about this child’s genetics and want to use her for their own selfish and horrific ends? This is The Grave, gang. Well, mostly The Grave, with some Sita and Alosha and, yes, even Spooksville sprinkled in for flavor. But the point is, we’ve seen all of it already.

Pike has previously said that he felt rushed toward the end of his previous S&S days, and that he didn’t put everything he had into the stories he wrote because of being pulled in multiple directions. That’s fair, and it makes sense that he’d want to come back to something he felt wasn’t as good as it could be, something that didn’t get enough care and attention, and make it better. So it’s a little frustrating that this is what we get. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got a lot of potential, but then again, so did The Grave. I can’t help but feel like Pike is still just trying to figure out what has sold, what has been attractive to people who read his books and others like them, and is retreading so much old ground that it’s starting to become flat and uninteresting. (Which might be part of my reticence to finish this project.)

One thing that’s new and notable about WW/RQ: it marks the placement of Pike’s first YA F-bomb. He’s been using “damn,” “hell,” and “bitch” since the beginning, and starting with EoI (eliding maybe one or two in Whisper of Death) he began liberally (not literally, mind) dropping “shit.” But “fuck” has been sacred, hallowed ground, off limits in any but his adult novels, never mind that this is pretty much what all of his characters want to do all the time. So imagine my profound shock when I picked this book up right around its release date* and encountered the word “unfuckable” on page 18. A sign of the times, yes, and of what was becoming permissible in YA, but to someone who had grown up with Pike and expected a certain voice and stance, this felt kind of wrong and out of place. Much like my opinion of Pike in the 21st century in general.

*This was another random club store find in a rural town in southern New Mexico. I don’t know why the store where I mostly bought diapers was getting Pike in hardback on or near release when nobody else even knew these books were available, and can’t imagine I’ll ever find out.

OK, summary time. Jessie Ralle has just graduated from high school and her entire senior class is going to Las Vegas to celebrate. Said entire class is like 200 people — so not only does Pike still not get what a small town is, but he demonstrates increasing disconnect from how young people actually act. Vegas is a two-hour drive from Apple Valley, California (where Jessie’s mom relocated them after her Hollywood doctor dad bailed on them for a hot young nurse, and also where none of this takes place). I barely even wanted to drive across town to my senior party, to say nothing of paying for a hotel and a fancy dinner with a massive group that I barely know. And that was before the Internet and streaming media allowed us to prune and curate what (and who) we interact with so ruthlessly. Like, if this was a class of 40, I’d be on board, but 200?

But apparently it’s a close-knit 200 people, even though we only ever meet like six of ‘em. Jessie’s riding in a car with four others: her best friend since childhood, the uptight salutatorian, the class nerd who of course has always had a crush on Jessie, and Jimmy. Jessie has loved Jimmy from afar since the beginning of high school, and from up  close for a couple of months this past winter, but he dumped her to go back to his previous girlfriend, who graduated early and hasn’t been seen around town since. That doesn’t mean Jessie is over him — far from it, actually — so this car ride is either going to work out in her favor or be super awkward and uncomfortable.

They get a three-bedroom suite at the MGM Grand for $150 over a weekend somehow. It is all I can do to suspend my disbelief. Like, I’ve been to Vegas (obviously; see top image). Pike obviously has too; his description of spatial mechanics is (mostly) on point, which is what makes this price thing so jarring. I’ve been responsible for booking hotel rooms there off and on for the last 20 years. And the one time we ever got a suite, it was almost twice that PER NIGHT and still only had one bedroom. (We split it six ways, and we all HAD jobs.) And this was in the beat-ass old Luxor in September 2006. Ain’t no way these fucking CHILDREN managed a SUITE in a PREMIER CENTER STRIP HOTEL SIX YEARS LATER FOR LESS. And Jessie has the gall to fucking COMPLAIN ABOUT THE COST.

I MUST STOP YELLING. I am so a dad, right?

But anyway, Jimmy doesn’t have a room — he wasn’t even sure he was coming on this trip. Jessie’s best friend offers for him to stay with them, which Uptight Salutatorian bitches about, but like, chill the fuck out, there’s a couch, right? He and Jessie have to talk about whether this is OK, and it turns out he left her because his ex was pregnant, but the baby died just after he was born. And Jessie isn’t OK. They’d been together long enough that this smacks of either an excuse or a manipulation, and she doesn’t like either option. She kicks him out and cries a lot, and then the gang all goes to dinner at the Bellagio, which is where this starts to get financially realistic when half the class balks at the cost of the meal and fucking bails. Yet the restaurant serves the rest, even giving these (again) CHILDREN bottles of wine, which messes Jessie up enough to kiss Nerd Crush. In front of Uptight Salutatorian, who (it turns out) likes HIM. So everyone gets pissed off at each other and takes off, and then Jessie and Best Friend go see O (the Cirque show inside the Bellagio). 

It’s page 35, by the way. Almost 500 to go yet. At least from here the story gets more focused and straightforward.

After the show, they want to gamble. CHILDREN. But they have fake IDs, so they head down to the Tropicana, an older hotel with lower minimums on blackjack, where they bump into a dude who seems strangely familiar to Jessie, even though she’s sure she never met him before. This dude is in town for a medical conference ... Jessie will later learn about his genome-scanning technology and what it implies for people like her, but she’s gonna have to figure it out first. He has an uncanny ability to win, and people start asking him for advice, but he denies them all. Except Jessie. They quickly pile up hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is where she’s hosed because they’ll never let her cash out that much with a fake ID. So the dude gives her his room key (not at this old-ass dirtball hotel, at the Mandalay Bay across the street) and says he’ll get her money and bring it up in a minute, and she should order some dessert from room service while she’s waiting.

No, they don’t fuck. They almost do, but then Jessie remembers Jimmy and realizes she’s still hung up on him, even though he wronged her and left her hanging. But she learns that the dude will cop to some unnatural method of knowing what’s coming next in the deck, which is why he managed to bet properly at the right times. He doesn’t show her, but he does teach her how to play twenty-two. Not twenty-one, which is blackjack: in twenty-two, aces are only worth one, but red queens are eleven. And if you get a natural twenty-two (queen of hearts and queen of diamonds), you win instantly, PLUS your opponent HAS to try to win their bet back in full on the next hand. The dude doesn’t state why these are the strict rules, but he does imply that a portion of the winnings goes to some mysterious party that doesn’t come clear yet.

So Jessie goes back to the hotel, where Jimmy is sitting on the floor outside. He’s been sexiled from the nerd’s room, because it turns out he was OK going after Uptight Salutatorian (who I guess isn’t so uptight after all). And he’s crying and he’s apologetic, and this coupled with Jessie’s realization in Mystery Gambler’s room is all it takes for her to accept him back. They have breakfast with everyone the next day (room service, more invisible money spent) and then Jessie and Jimmy drive out to Lake Mead to splash and swim and sex. But what’s weird is that it reminds them both of the first time ... which neither of them remembers the same way. Even more awkward is the ex showing up with a warning: “They never take just one, Jessie. They always take both.” (102)

This doesn’t make any sense, right? Well, Mystery Gambler has planted a seed that things might get confusing pretty quick, and invited Jessie to talk to him about it. So she hops in a cab back to his hotel, except the cab takes her out to a creepy industrial area instead. When it finally stops at a stop sign, she bolts, only she doesn’t know where she is now. Luckily, a beautiful woman in a red Porsche pulls up at that exact moment and offers to give her a ride. Which ... aren’t you even the slightest bit concerned that a strange car brought you out here and now another strange car has just pulled up right when you needed it? Obviously not, which is what leads to her getting tased and waking up in a meat freezer, where the safety ax is of course missing. She wrestles with the door and some meat-hanging apparatus for a while, but can’t get it open and ends up spraining her ankle in the process. And even though it’s dangerous to sit, to slow down, to stop moving in this freezer, Jessie can’t help herself.

She wakes up in a hospital. Only this room doesn’t look or feel like a typical hospital room. Plus, she can’t move. She can’t even blink. She’s briefly relieved when two doctors come in, but that goes away when she realizes they’re here to perform the autopsy. The senior doctor gets called out, which is all the other guy needs to start satiating his necrophilia all over Jessie’s corpse. He’s pretty shocked when Jessie suddenly sits bolt upright and curses him out — enough that he has himself a nice little heart attack right there in the morgue. The other doctor comes back, and she seems to know what happened, and is also weirdly thrilled by the guy’s obvious pain? But she leaves without taking any action, and Jessie sees this as her chance to get out of Dodge.

The hospital is downtown, which is a long way from the MGM Grand but at least it’s an obvious straight shot on Las Vegas Boulevard. Only Jessie doesn’t recognize some of these north-end casinos. She goes inside one to get her bearings and is quickly accosted by three punks, who she casually injures like it’s no thing. What’s even stranger is how quickly they back off and the degree of respect they suddenly accord her. And even stranger than that is that the blackjack tables don’t say “blackjack.”

You guessed it. People in Las Vegas are playing red queen.

So now she has to talk to Mystery Gambler more than ever. She walks all the way to the Mandalay Bay, because fuck a taxi anymore, right? Only it’s called the Mandy, and his room on the top floor is now one floor lower than it used to be. But as it turns out, he does have some answers. He first tells Jessie the truth of why he's in Vegas: his whole medical conference story is just a front. There is some basis in reality, in that his group has identified certain genes that, when awakened, enable essentially superpowers. His genetic sensor identified that Jessie has seven of these genes — but he already knew that. He seems to know a creepy amount for some rando she just met. And also, he keeps calling her Jessica, and she realizes she's using a longer version of his name too, reflexively, even though he never called himself that in their interactions.

This, plus the hotels and the casino game and the fact that, y'know, she woke up on a fucking MORGUE TABLE a few hours ago help Jessie to realize the truth of her situation. With a little guided meditation, which helps her to remember things that never actually happened to her, she learns that there are two simultaneous dimensions happening on Earth, we live two lives in parallel, and the extra genes (when activated) allow people to experience both. These people, historically, are who we think of as witches, so for lack of a better term this second dimension is colloquially called witch world. Like, super lazy writing, right? I guess Pike blew his load inventing names for shit in Alosha and couldn't be arsed to consider that maybe twelve thousand years of connected humans might have named something themselves. (Yeah, I said twelve thousand years. Back at it again with the same timeline.)

But one of those things Jessie remembered is having a baby. This is where her father (remember, the dude who bailed on Jessie and her mom) suddenly shows up. We learn that he left (in the “real” world, not in witch world where he’s still present in her life) because he realized the importance of Jessie and her fate, and hoped that his absence would protect both her and the baby to come. (He has the "seeing-the-future" gene, I guess?) According to Dad, this baby is potentially the most important person in the history of both worlds, because she's the only one to have ever been born with all ten extra genes. It's also a weird connection, because this is the only occasion that anybody knows of where a child has been born to different parents in the two worlds. (The kid is an entirely different person because of that, so that's weird too.) But, just like the boyfriend's ex-girlfriend warned, "they" have taken both. 

"They" turn out to be a cadre of witches who want to use their powers to elevate themselves rather than ... well, it's never really made super clear what the "good" witches do. Like ... hang out and be immortal? Oh yeah, I didn't mention that once you're awakened you can't die of natural causes. I guess the dad says that sometimes they'll interfere when shit is really going sideways, but for the most part they want regular humans to regulate their own affairs. It's the Telar again! Only, no, wait, they call themselves the "Tar" in this book so it's obviously totally different. And yeah, both babies have been taken; they let the boyfriend think his son died in infancy so that he'd eventually be a lever to manipulate Jessie when he realized he had two living children. But it sounds like the daughter is already causing trouble for her kidnappers, without even being aware of her ten genes, which ... 

I don't know, it doesn't make any sense now that I'm writing about it. Like, I'm cool with the parallel dimensions, I'm on board with dying to become awakened, I'm down with extra powers and whatever. I'm even mostly OK with this story reusing so many assets from all these past books. But like ... how does the baby have some (even unconscious) control of her locked genetic powers when her counterpart in the real world is not only still alive, but had a different MOTHER and is therefore a totally different PERSON? The first chapter of the sequel (all I’ve read of it so far) doesn’t make it look promising that we’re ever gonna find out, so just keep suspending the shit out of that disbelief, I guess.

But anyway, now that Jessie’s connected, she’s hell-bent on rescuing her baby. Which I think she would have done even if she were still separated, but whatever. And I know, easy to think that not actually having a memory of the baby might make it difficult, but these memories are slowly bubbling up and emerging, especially strong ones like parenthood and family. She’s been warned against contacting Jimmy (or “James,” I guess) in witch world, but she doesn’t hesitate to tell him all the crazy shit that’s happened to her in the real world.

(This is another reason I have a problem with the lazy naming conventions on display. To witches, “witch world” is the most real. Each day takes place first there in their perceptions, followed by the same day in the “real world.” We’ll also see how events in witch world have a stronger effect on events in the real world; namely, if you die in witch world you pretty much always die in the real but the inverse is not true. So, once again, why wouldn’t witches have come up with some more appropriate naming patterns at least, given how old the oldest is? Just more lazy crap we gotta swallow.)

So anyway, Jimmy doesn’t believe her; he thinks someone drugged Jessie with a hallucinogenic and now she’s having altered state memories. So she gets out of the car they’re driving to the desert and picks it up to prove her new strength. Why are they driving in the desert? For some reason, Jessie is drawn to the power associated with the nuclear tests that the government ran in the barren nowhere that is most of Nevada. There’s gotta be a reason, after all, that the centers of witch power are here. So they bust into the deserted testing ground, only to discover it’s not that deserted — there’s a kid out there apparently living by himself. He takes to Jimmy immediately and agrees to come back to the city with them, where they’re going to talk more to Jessie’s dad.

The kid can’t speak, but he can write — with a prehensile tail that he has heretofore hidden by wrapping it around his waist. He tells them about the other freaks that live out in the nuked test cities, as well as the mean man who brings him food. The rationale isn’t clear, and the kid isn’t talking ... well ... you know what I mean. But this is where Jimmy finds out his son is still alive and being used as bait. And dude fucking TAKES it: as soon as his ex calls and wants to discuss what she might know about the children, not only does he refuse to step back and let the powerful people handle the rescue, but he actually wants to go through the death process in order to awaken his awareness of both sides.. They don’t let him do that, because apparently our good guys are not allowed to actively connect more witches, except when they are. So all they can do is talk to the ex and learn that she doesn’t care who she sells out to as long as it saves her son, which ... fair. But Jimmy isn’t willing to go that far, and they head back to her dad’s house to regroup, where they realize they’re being watched.

Or they were, I guess. There’s a car with two obvious spies in it, but they’re dead, and the killer is hanging out nearby. This dude is, we learn, second-in-command of the Tar leadership, a five-thousand-year-old Celt who wants to take a more proactive approach in encouraging good and deterring evil in both humans and witches, mostly with his sword. He’s a Highlander, is what I’m trying to say. He takes Jessie out to a sacred spring in the mountains, where they swim naked together, as you do when you first meet an ancient Celtic swordsman, right? But there’s some cliff writing out here, written by the ancient people in a script the Highlander knows, having been taught it by the man who turned him so many years ago. It describes a woman who will have such power that she controls the destiny of the world, and it’s essentially Jessie’s daughter. So like ... tell me something I don’t know, right? What’s more new and unusual is the Highlander’s description of red queen, how it was taught to him and spread throughout ancient Rome, and how a certain percentage of all winnings, no matter who takes it, has to ultimately return to his benefactor, who we’ll call the Alchemist because that’s what Pike calls him.

We’re going to have to wait on more description, because the Highlander takes Jessie home and we skip-cut forward to the next night in witch world, where she’s meeting the leadership council and discussing their intents to rescue the baby. Mystery Gambler is there too; he's going to act as Jessie's liaison to the bad guys, having served as a double agent since the Civil War. This scene seems like it might be superfluous, except that you mostly only retain the memories from the dimension in which you die, and so the council knows that Jessie needs some backstory.  (Don't we all.) The main thing we get out of this is that they've kind of figured out that WANTING to activate their witch genes has a high correlation with witches going bad at all, especially when they try to engineer the birth of high-number witches. So Jessie's contact with Jimmy was carefully arranged so as to appear NOT engineered, because even though the future sight told them that these two were compatible and would fall in love and make a power baby, any appearance of forcing it could make things all fucked up.

So Jessie's entire life is a sham, manipulated by sources of power she was never supposed to see, one of those being her own goddamn father.

What next? Well, on to the other purpose of this meeting: prep for said meeting with the bad guys. The council expects that they're going to offer Jessie her baby back, as long as both of them live under bad-guy control, and they want her to string them along while they figure out what to do. Great fuckin' plan, guys. You've been trying to make a power baby for how many thousand years, and you didn't have a contingency plan if it got kidnapped?

But so Jessie and Mystery Gambler go to the next meeting, and this is starting to sound like work. As it turns out, the leader of the bad guys is (plot twist that surprises nobody!) the coroner who was unfazed when Jessie sat up in the morgue. She's making this deal because the baby is difficult, and they think that if she has her mother that they'll be able to control her and her powers. They let Jessie hold her, which activates even more of those mom connections, but when they go to take her away the baby cries and creates almost a physical wall, which the big strong guard man has to fight with all his might to overcome. President Coroner has no qualms with the possibility that she might have to kill both baby and mom if they don't cooperate. In fact, she invites Jessie to die right here and now, by forcing her to fight for her life against Mystery Gambler. For Jessie, this is proving her worth and her importance in being allowed into the bad-guy circle. For Mystery Gambler, it's a step up to a higher ranking of leadership. For President Coroner, it's TV. So they have a monster sword fight ... well, Mystery Gambler has a sword; Jessie has a bamboo stick that proves its power when she somehow shoots fire out the end and totally incinerates the dude. Which is cool by the bad guys, because they already knew MG was a double agent and wanted him dead anyway. And then there's another kid ... this one with a tail ... only instead of a blunt prehensile end, this one has a stinger like a scorpion's. Guess whose kid THIS is.

Back in the real world, Jessie and Jimmy go see her dad, who confirms that there was a mysterious fire on the top floor of the Mandalay Bay the night before, with one fatality. Which ... does this even come close to matching the timeline? How could it have already happened if the day hasn't happened yet? But whatever — the important thing is that the council wants Jessie to accept the bad guys' offer and go live with the baby. The tail-boy is still here, though Jessie's dad says he's riddled with malignant tumors and can't possibly live too much longer. But they realize that if he can tap into those cross-dimensional memories, the way Jessie and Jimmy were doing when they argued about fucking all the way back ... two days ago, then maybe they can use him to triangulate the area where witch-tail-boy lives, presumably with President Coroner. He leads them to a gated community at the base of a mountain, which they figure is good intel to take back to the council even if they're not ready to investigate yet.

Jessie does want to try to find the area where she got dumped and zapped the day she was killed, for ... you know, reasons. She hears cries of pain coming out of the sewer in the general area she thinks it was, and in investigating she runs into the big mean guard from the bad guy meeting. He thinks it's been a waste of time trying to get her on their side and is just about to kill her when the Highlander shows up and unceremoniously lops off his head. He has some more info about what might be going on down here, and it has to do with his dearest and oldest love: that’s right, President Coroner. 

They met in ancient Rome, around the turn of the calendar, but every effort they made to procreate ended in tragedy. One son was killed in battle fighting the Huns, one daughter (and her children) died of the plague, and a final son (who, let it be known, they named HERME) disappeared during the US Revolutionary War. All this loss made the poor woman so bitter and angry that she naturally began striving for control, including supporting Hitler (like, literally helping him) during WWII. The Highlander thinks there's another dimension to her having gone there, though: somehow she can feed off the pain of misery and death, and is addicted to it. Also, it gives her another power of being able to confound people, which the Highlander experienced when trying to reason with her around the time of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion and again when the power baby was kidnapped. Is it helping anybody that he's holding out on the council with this info? 

So he takes Jessie back to the hotel, where she owes her best friend an explanation — only she already knows. Turns out that this dude she's been hooking up with in Vegas is a witch too, and has explained to her the ins and outs and difficulties of what's going on with Jessie, up to a point. Turns out this dude is ALSO a double agent, here supposedly on assignment from the bad guys but just about ready to turn face, at least partly because he's found himself in love with the friend. After two days. His primary power is the ability to change his appearance at will, which Jessie learns in a jarring fashion upon waking up in witch world and finding a tall hunky dude in her suite in place of this pudgy nerd. She has that gene too, he says, and helps her start down the path of disguising herself. She quickly gets good at it and then realizes: couldn't I use this power to sneak into that gated community and steal back my baby?

Obviously it's not going to be so easy as walking into the joint and walking back out with The Special, even disguised as President Coroner as she is. First of all, she doesn't even know for sure that the baby is here now, and she does know that the actual boss is in town, not here. (Lucky thing, right, when she goes through the guard shack in full makeup.) So instead she goes to Jimmy's ex-girlfriend's place. Don't ask me how she knows that THIS is an option, or that the girl is indeed even home, or that she is living there at all. There's not even really a reason to believe that she can help, or that she even KNOWS anything about the baby. But Jessie's concerned about the competition, and fairly confident that her target doesn't have the strength gene and will therefore be easy enough to overpower. It proves true in terms of tying the girl up and throwing her in the trunk of her car, but Jessie isn't counting on being lied to. The ex kicks through the backseat and forces Jessie off the road, where they have an epic Matrix battle that culminates in Jessie punching a hole in the gas tank and exploding the thing with an emergency flare. She feels a surge of pleasure while the ex-girlfriend dies, which is ... creepy? Shows some link to President Coroner? What else does it mean?

It at least means that Jessie should be prepared when she goes to talk to President Coroner tonight. She buys a handgun at a pawn shop, then meets Jimmy James in front of the Tropicana, where the big ugly bodyguard picks them up in a limo. James takes a little while to get in the car, and he doesn't sit right next to Jessie for some reason. The car takes them back to the gated community, to the biggest house, where President Coroner is waiting. Negotiations don't really go as well as could be hoped, since the boss already knows that she's not the one who kidnapped the ex in the trunk of a car. But while they're working out their threats and measuring their dicks, who should walk in but the Highlander. He's finally talked the Tar council into using brain powers to murder his dearest love, and as one person has to be present to make it work, guess who volunteered. Only the big mean bodyguard is holding the baby, and he'll rip her in half if they make a move against his boss. This is a good time for the best friend's boyfriend, the shapeshifting teacher, to appear out of thin air, grab the gun out of Jessie's waistband, and cap the bodyguard in the head. Yeah, he was sitting between them for the whole car ride, like there's not enough seats in a limo for him to stretch out somewhere else. Cockblocker.

But here's the weirdest part: President Coroner recognizes him. That's right, bitches — Herme lives! He has seen the evil his mother is doing and has finally come out of hiding to try to help put a stop to it. And James helped him because he knows what's going on in both worlds. He's experienced it, actually: after Jessie fell asleep, he killed himself (with Herme's help) so he could be fully present and help in witch world. I have more timeline problems and concerns, obviously, starting with the question of how Jimmy could possibly be here today if he hasn't yet killed himself, but that's not where the characters are right now. Right now they're concerned with stopping this ultimate evil who doesn't seem to care about murder. So Herme and his Highlander dad point blue brain lasers at President Coroner, who generates a red bubble to stop them, because everything we have to know about good and evil energy colors we learned from Star Wars.

And now Jessie finds herself inside the red bubble. She's been the most susceptible of those exposed to PC, after all, and so she might be convertible to the pain-suckers. She relives all of the memories that our dear villain has of her children dying and of how the pain could be turned into a pleasurable sensation, and it's just hypnotic enough and convincing enough that, as Jessie finds herself back in her own body, she can be persuaded to take her gun back from Herme and shoot the Highlander. He doesn't die, but he's weakened enough that President Coroner can steal his sword and stab him in the heart.

So now what? Well, it's a good thing Jimmy's here to save everybody! What would we do without a white dude who's barely aware of his powers? But he knows that together, with Jessie and the baby, they have a strength that is impossible to overcome. So they manage to paralyze our villain, but now her scorpion son shows up and wants to murder too. Only — plot twist! — he murders his mom! Turns out that when Jimmy killed himself, he also killed tail-boy in the real world, and now HE'S got good-guy memories. This is really telling about President Coroner's parenting skills that all of her living children not only think that she has to die, but show up to help DO IT.

But now all is good and we can move forward as a family, right? Totally! At least until Jessie wakes up in the real world and finds Jimmy lying beside her, still and cold and dead.

This would have been a good place to stop, right? Of course he doesn't. Two days later, Jessie and her best friend are home from Jimmy's funeral, talking about what's going on and all the implications, when suddenly there's a sound at the door — the mail box. (Does anybody still have one of these shits in 2012? Most rural neighborhoods are going to the community box.) Jessie collects the mail, among which is a red envelope containing a letter from the Alchemist (remember that dude) anticipating a future meeting and sending best wishes from ... President Coroner.

And that is the end of Witch World! Or Red Queen, whichever one you picked up. Like, are we starting to understand how Pike has so little grasp of world-building that he has ALREADY killed his main antagonist AND the potential monkey wrench in Jessie's future relationships? Doesn't he realize none of us are going to get invested in a world where you don't stay dead after you die? I mean, except zombies. But since that's not what we're talking about, I can't possibly imagine where Black Knight is going to take us. I mean, I can, because I've read the back copy, and it doesn't look remotely related. Maybe that's one more reason I've been stalling on this entry: to keep me away from the annoying-looking next one.

[1nkweaver]

PICK N OPAL!!! 1- What happens when your character doesn't get what they want? 2- How well can this character resist their emotions and impulses? 3- If the character were to come face to face with their darkest fears in a nightmare, what would they see? 4-Do they prefer sweet, salty, sour, meaty, spicy, or neutral tastes? 5- whats their feelings on the groups their with lately?

1- What happens when your character doesn't get what they want?

Opal: It really depends on what it is tbh. Opal will either let it go immediately, or he’ll keep pushing subtly, or he’ll have a “do it yourself” attitude to it. If it’s some kind of divine plan thing, he’s -going- to make it happen, that’s the long and short of it.

Pick: He probably just whines really XD but if he’s not getting what he wants because his opinion or thought process is like being put down then he’ll get aggressive. He really buts heads with people on moral issues and developing plans because I think he thinks that you should always debate every possibility.

2- How well can this character resist their emotions and impulses?

Opal is stoic as fuuuuuck man...it’s hard to really feel like he -has- impulses, but I definitely want him to almost be like -TOO- in control of his emotions. Yknow, like seeing your church get destroyed with your people inside it and seemingly not reacting super duper hard, just kinda...staring at it. (Yeah Baughn, that’s basically what he did when that happened do you feel bad?)

Pick is very emotional on the other hand. He tries so desperately to think about what would Anders do because he always felt Anders was smart, but Anders almost always acted on his feelings, and he instilled that in Pick a bit. Pick thinks first with his gut, then with his heart, and last with his brain- but he uses all three. Goblin nature in my mind is to be very id driven, so he very often just -goes- with his instincts and feelings, he doesn’t question them bc he feels that’s the truest part of himself.

3- If the character were to come face to face with their darkest fears in a nightmare, what would they see?

Opal dreams of building something, and while those things have been destroyed before and he’s had to start over, there has always been a sense of rebuilding. Opal’s worst nightmare would be that sense of total defeat- he’s dying, his friends are dying around him, and everything he built is being destroyed in one fell swoop. It’s kind of dramatic but Opal doesn’t really think about things on a personal level, his worst nightmare is being there for the end of the world.

Pick’s nightmare is a lot more real and personal. He’d be back in a place he was before. A place with music, and laughter, and a lot of voices...and he’s looking at it while either standing over a corpse, or looking out from between bars.

4-Do they prefer sweet, salty, sour, meaty, spicy, or neutral tastes?

Opal definitely has a sweet tooth- I remember in waterdeep he had the equivalent of fish and chips and he found it..interesting but strange. I must imagine he loves things like custard and candied apples and the like, probably caramel too, things of that nature would really make him feel happy.

Pick eats a lot of things so he has a really expanded palette, I mean the guy will eat garbage. I think it’s partially goblin instinct to like salty and meaty things, like gamey raw meat and stuff like that. But I also personally think that now, especially with the gourmand feat, that he has a real big love for spicy. Not necessarily spicy hot (though he’d love that) but spicy flavorful, like with indian food and the like. Just really powerful flavors.

5- whats their feelings on the groups their with lately?

The Opal of Waterdeep has developed very slowly, I last left off with a month long timeskip while we rebuilt trollskull manor. He thinks that he can help them, but he needs their help too, and he’s been learning their secrets and keeping his close. I remember I wrote out a whole speech for Opal because he believes he got one of the characters backstories figured out, and meant to confront them about it. 

Opal of Avisten is a little bit different- he’s older, wiser, but more grizzled and lives in a more dangerous uncivilized world. It was his plan to actually assemble the party itself, he gathered these people and chose them individually for a reason. They are his people, they are his flock. I hate to use the religious allegory but Opal sees himself as the “jesus” figure and all of the rest of the party are his “apostles”. Maybe they’ll listen to him, maybe they’ll betray him. But they’re all integral to each other and they all have something that Opal needs to do for them, and they will do something in return for Opal. Deep down they are good people, flawed people, but they need each other. As Ida would say they are twisted.

Picks ideas on the party are...complicated, a lot now, like a lot. Let’s break it down:

Jin- The first person he met, didn’t think much of him at all. A very typical roguish type- talks a lot, not a lot of wit, good with his fingers, a himbo. They’re fast “friends” but Pick really wants a rivalry. Jin is proving to be more than what he appeared, smart, multifaceted. Pick still thinks he’s “better” but he thinks Jin is also necessary. The first person Pick would call a friend. Jins sexual advances make Pick confused and uncomfortable. Pick wishes that Jin would be more real- he saw Jin having his nightmare and associates strongly with him. Pick wants to be able to “hash it out like dudes” but Pick is not one for heavy drinking or drugs or sex. He’s not about to bond and tell sad backstory over getting drunk, which he thinks is the main way that it would come out of Jin. He kinda also wants to see Jin angry, because he thinks that Jin is closing that off too. He thinks Jin is being friendly but he isn’t being “real” with him, which is ironic because Jin is very “down to earth, says it like it is” kind of dude...but he’s not -really- doing it. He’s not being -really real- with Pick right now, which is fine, it’s not the time for it. But can they just have a real conversation? Please? 

Kai- Technically the second person that Pick met after Jin. Strange, youthful nature, naive, good heart. The kind of person you call kid and ruffle up his hair. A tiefling- weird, foreign, strange. The thing Pick honestly doesn’t understand at this point is why the fuck does everyone baby this kid. Yeah he gets scared but that’s a good thing- and hello don’t know if you realized it but Kai is stronger than most of you. Where Pick sees others trying to protect Kai’s innocence, Pick sees someone that needs to be seriously trained if he’s staying in this group. Stop babying him and show him how to properly use his sword. Don’t keep him away from things that give him fear, show him how to kill his fears. Pick doesn’t consider Kai a friend, but he considers Kai the “goodest” person of the group. Pick sees Kai as someone who by every right should turn to evil and is choosing to do good, instead of someone who was just born good and did what was expected of him.

Aspasia- Strange, strange woman. Strong, obviously- but out of place. Why is she here? Why is she connecting with these people. There is a mind behind that muscle that is being ignored- and god Aspasia is literally always thinking about other things. Pick initially thought Callie and Aspasia were lovers- he’s still not really sure? But apparently Sia also is loosy goosy with Jin, he doesn’t understand their friendship at all. Pick and Aspasia haven’t spoken but he feels an unspoken energy between them. Their desire to fight, and OOC I know if they talked their goals would align more strongly than anyone else’s in the group so far. Pick thinks Aspasia needs to speak the fuck up with her words more than her muscles as of late because she’s not talking.

Ida- The absolute largest conflict of interest all in one person. Ida both reflects things that Pick severely, severely hates in this world, while at the same time being the one that most accurately reflects Anders as a person, the person Pick respects the most. This has led to a very very difficult understanding of Ida in Pick’s eyes. Pick hates Ida, he hates that she’s so nice, self sacrificing, puts herself down, acts like the mom, and he hates clerics. He doesnt’ think she deserves to be lied to however. He may hate a lot of the things that Ida represents, but not a single person in the party has Picks -respect- besides her. Pick was going up that hill, and everyone could have yelled at him to turn back and he would not have, the only person that could (and did) convince him in that moment was Ida. Pick will argue with any member of this party but in the end he will do what -Ida- says to do. That’s what she deserves. Not his kindness, not his love or admiration or friendship, but his respect. He’s respecting her because she right now is the closest thing to Anders. And damn if Pick hates that.

Callie- Quiet, curious, Callie. Pick thought her and Aspasia were lovers, he’s still not really sure, but their inseparable nature reminds him of him and Anders- he would never get in between them. Except...for the fact that for whatever reason he fancies Callie. It might be just because she’s someone he can literally talk eye to eye with, but there’s more than that. He appreciates that she doesn’t have to talk a lot, he finds her care for animals endearing even if he’s afraid of horses, and her abilities in combat are varied. Her use of magic frightens him, but she’s hard to read. He does straight up find Callie cute, attractive. In a way that he hopes isn’t creepy he likes...holding her hand and stuff? He thinks she’s very soft, he sees a kind of...goblin nature inside of her? Kinda like a little flame of passion that she keeps really really well hidden- but her understanding of nature, her “going off alone” ness..very goblin like and that draws him to her, and then she doesn’t have a goblins (admitedly, freakish) outward appearance. He likes her a lot, he’s sad that she seems to pull away so often, he blames himself..? Wants to find a way to get through to her. Now that Callie has a wolf Picks childhood dream of being an Outrider was reawakened.

Siril: Big man. Pick does not understand why the hell Siril is here at all. He is by far probably the most out of place person in the group in Picks first impressions, but he’s sticking around. He has been wanting to have an actual just good old getting to know you talk one on one with Siril since the very beginning just based on the fact that he’s interesting! Pick has never seen a Firbolg before, they’re so -different- as people and Pick is totally okay with that! He wants to talk about it! He thought maybe on that watch that they had together last game they’d finally talk but it seems that they most likely spent it in silence. Seeing Siril go from really aggressive to Jin to almost warming up to him, as well as warming up to Sia...hurt Pick a little. Not necessarily as jealousy, but perhaps something similar. Pick thought they had a lot in common, they were the new guys to the group and in Picks opinion he thought they were really the “freaks”. They’re the weird races, and he just feels like he’s...missed out on a shot. He thinks Siril doesn’t really find him interesting and he really can’t place a finger on it but ever since he came to the party Pick wants to impress Siril. That’s why he gave him space when it was clear he was annoyed, that’s why he went along and did as much work on the murder case as he could, it’s why he -went- with Siril to see the widow and gave her all his gold. It’s why when Pick was asked by Siril if he was a good person Pick gave him a truthful answer of “you are useful” because truth is what Pick gives to people that he feels are deserving of a harsh answer. He thought they’d talk more since then and they really haven’t, and Pick wonders if all that time trying to impress Siril was for naught, he really doesn’t have the emotional maturity to figure out why he’s feeling what he’s feeling, but he just has those base feelings. Does he “like” Siril, is he “attracted?” He doesn’t know how to process that, but he had an instinctual desire to impress him, to be seen as useful or interesting to him, and seeing him bond with other people that Pick wasn’t expecting him to (ie, not me, the other “freak”) he feels...hurt by it.

[airconditionedcomputingnightmare]

File 1: The PC/XT

Where it all began, more or less

This is the IBM 5160 PC/XT, the 1983 follow-up on 1981's IBM 5150 PC. By itself the 5160 was largely an iterative advancement on the 5150 PC, most notably trading the earlier model's little-used cassette connector for three more ISA expansion slots totalling at eight versus the PC's five. The PC/XT's BIOS also had some enhancements meant to make hard disk I/O easier, but these were also integrated into later PC BIOS revisions. The minority of the changes the XT brought to the table are nonetheless significant; They mark the point where Intel's x86 (and later x86-64) architecture slowly started to become codified as a standard in computing. To this day, your average Intel or AMD CPU-based computer can run code meant for the PC 5150 and 5160 unaltered (with certain caveats such as needing a MS-DOS or FreeDOS boot floppy). Much like it's precursor, the PC/XT is powered by a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU and can push up to 640 kilobytes of RAM (but in the early days, maxing it out would have been extremely unusual). I'd been obsessed with these systems for a fairly long time, considering the acquisition of one a milestone for my computer collection.

In November of 2017, something caught my eye: A man downstate near Peoria selling a IBM PC/XT in pretty darn fine shape with one floppy drive and one hard drive, complete with a Amdek data display and a original IBM Personal Computer keyboard¹. All that kit, and the guy was at a fair price, to boot! I'd wanted one of these for more than a decade and I had a decent surplus of cash thanks to paid time off having paid out at work a few days earlier, so I'd be an absolute moron to not have jumped on it. The only catch? Pickup was local only, and I didn't have a car at the time. This would be an immediate and pressing issue, but it turned out the man came up to Chicagoland regularly and had business in my neck of the world anyways. At that point, I could have borrowed a ride for a short distance run to the meeting place he'd proposed, a furniture outlet two towns over, pretty easily. It was a date with destiny.

So it went. A few days later, I rolled up and parked at said shop. The machine's seller turned out to be an older fellow who greatly resembled Joseph Joestar (Pictured above) to a disturbing degree. The actual exchange went pretty smoothly. I went in the shop and ate some awful, awful (yet satiating) meatballs. The trip home was pretty uneventful. So far, so good...and I was fresh off the restoration of a IBM 5170 PC/AT I’d picked up at VCFMW, so at the time I figured this one wouldn't hold many surprises. Besides, the IBM PC was the standard most people imitated at the time if they went for MS-DOS. It'd have to be a breeze, wouldn't it? This theory wouldn't hold water, and soon I'd find myself surprised by the fact that it did, in fact, hold many surprises.

“Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?"

When I made it home, I slapped it on my workbench and popped it open for an initial inspection. The machine had obviously seen some upgrades over it's lifespan: The installation of an aftermarket power supply, a Hercules monochrome graphics card, a 3600RPM 30MB Seagate ST238 hard drive, a Tecmar Captain Real Time Clock/Serial/Parallel/Memory board, and a Scientific Solutions DADI/O card. The latter most card was the most curious in retrospect, since it hinted at the machine's background in ways pretty much nothing else could. I doubt I'll ever find out exactly what that background was since it didn't occur to me to ask the seller at the time, but the hint it represents is fascinating since that's not something you'd think you'd find in an old farmer type's WordStar 4 machine...which, by all means, this thing had otherwise appeared to be to this point.

It's worth mentioning here that the hard drive I'd previously alluded to was a model using the MFM interface, the late '70s - mid '80s precursor to the more modern IDE/PATA and the SATA interface seen in pretty much every modern computer. MFM drives are fickle but impressive beasts, with their controller hardware on a separate expansion card and little brains of their own. They're slow, they're loud, they're clunky and they're an awe to behold in spite of (or perhaps because of) all that. They have actual, honest to god stepper motors and mechanical brakes. When they work, they're impressive as hell but...they often don't. At least, I've found more dead ones than I've found live ones. Naturally, when I first turned the machine on as-is to kick off the smoke test process and assess precisely what I'd need to fix up, I heard said MFM hard disk warm up... followed by a shrill, piercing dragging noise that could only be the hard disk's read/write head burying itself in one of the hard disk's platters. That lack of smarts inherent to MFM hardware I'd alluded to had come back to haunt this system, since MFM drives typically don't know to automatically park the head somewhere catastrophe is less likely to strike unless the command is issued manually by the user. It pretty obviously wasn't parked before the machine was put into storage, so at some point in time the machine was jostled enough to put the head somewhere it'd thrash the drive as soon as it was given power again. In layman's terms, the thing was toast. Well, shit. I like to keep hardware period accurate where I can, but MFM drives are prone to wild price fluctuations and you often have to gamble on untested drives when buying used due to how difficult they can be to test. Thankfully, a relatively practical solution that cuts out some of the uncertainty exists and I'd had good luck with it on previous projects with dead drives: An IDE controller card loaded with the XT-IDE Universal BIOS. Usage of an IDE card would allow me to hook up something more readily available (Such as an old 80gb drive or even a CompactFlash memory card), and usage of the XT-IDE BIOS would make booting simpler since that would mean not having to gamble on the card's own BIOS (or lack thereof). The pair are a pretty common solution to this sort of boondoggle to the point that there are open-source card designs readily available for purchase from many sellers, including Glitchworks , whom I've relied on in the past quite a bit and from whom I wound up purchasing a Revision 4 XT-IDE card from for this project. I also snagged a nice 64mb Cisco cF card off ebay, which would pretty much have to be bootable since it was formerly boot media for some smart network switch or something that's outside the scope of this article.

Hey Mr. Postman, Man me a Post

Time passed, the U.S. Postal Service did its thing, and I planned and prototyped what the final IBM DOS install would look like using PCEm. I was initially targeting IBM PC-DOS 2.11 since that version of DOS is what the PC-XT shipped with, but decided 3.30 would be a better choice since it'd fit the machine's upgrade history and most MS-DOS software out there expects 3.0 at a minimum. DOS 3.0 through 3.30 were essentially to DOS what Windows XP would later be to Windows in terms of longevity.

I also attempted to remove some of the light rust from atop the case using the tried-and-true method of vinegar and tinfoil. I succeeded at getting rid of a fair bit of the corrosion, but also took some of the paint with it; that paint used on the IBM PC line's chassis is a textured, unusual spatter coat job that's both a pain and expensive to reproduce to the point that it's just not worth it to spray paint. Typically people just accept the blemishes or find a replacement case altogether. This exact thing had happened with my PC/AT previously, so I don't really know what I was expecting to happen. Thankfully, the monitor mostly obscures the blemishes.

I also wound up attempting to service the 5 1/4" floppy drive at this time, which was in dire need of some care and plagued by mechanical issues. The read and write head wouldn't work reliably for anything and the movement of said head was almost comically stiff. Getting things cleaned up was superficially simple enough; most of the time all that's needed is cotton swabs and some isopropyl. Clean the read/write head, take off the old, gunky, dusty grease on the drive rails, and you're solid. Regreasing the rails so that the head could move freely also went simply enough, merely needing some white lithium grease on the previously cleaned rails. Using my testing boot media I got the system booted into DOS using a floppy after the cleaning; While 360kb of space wasn't nearly enough this wasn't meant to be the final setup. Cramped, sure, but it sufficed for testing. By all means, the drive seemed to be working fine now since it superficially read and wrote fine while also formatting without errors...and if anything was wrong, it sure wasn't obvious to me or the system itself. Eventually the XT-IDE card made it in. I slotted it in, hooked up my cF-IDE adapter, and set up DOS onto the drive. When I tried to boot off the hard disk the first time, though, I was greeted by a screen full of garbage and rancorous beeping from the system's speaker. Something was wrong, and I had no idea what since typically the setup process for XT-IDE cards is pretty braindead once it's assembled properly and in the system. Repeated attempts at re-installation of both the card and the operating systems yielded no changes, and even taking the XT-IDE card and cF card out altogether for a transplant install in my PC/AT (my "known good" testing system) lead to nothing but more garbage on what is otherwise a computer willing to take whatever absurdity I throw at it with grace and gusto. Trying different floppy disk install media and different DOS versions did nothing to fix the corruption issues the thing was having, and it didn't like different cF cards either. What was happening? On pointers from Glitch himself and some other friends on a chain of IRC channels I hung around, I ran diagnostics of various types, including pulling all the installed expansion cards one-by-one and testing to rule out conflicts. There were none, and by all means pretty much every part of the system but the card checked out fine.

It turned out my card had a 573 latch go bad due to an issue with a bad shipment of ICs from a part supplier on Glitchworks' end, so with help from Glitch, the namesake and head honcho of the company, that all was simple enough to sort out; the board had the bad IC swapped out in no time at all. Once that all was in order, I found myself facing mounting frustration as the system still didn't want to boot off the cF card (but just hanging on boot with no errors or anything at all instead of spewing garbage all over the screen now), but I noticed it sometimes - yet inconsistently - did like mechanical hard disks and more robust IDE DOMs. Programs also experienced random corruption issues, too. I wasn't in the clear quite yet; I had a weak step in the install process to find which was corrupting DOS installs left and right.

My only clue? Transplanting the card to the PC/AT and installing DOS from there worked perfectly fine, even after moving the card back to the PC/XT. The PC/AT's boot card also worked just fine in the XT. That suggested that whatever the issue was, it was isolated to the PC/XT's input/output facilities specifically. The XT-IDE card itself actually was perfectly fine now and the similar symptoms to that of the bad latch were mere red herrings. It took me a while (and some shouting at from friends) to make the connection, but eventually I came to the conclusion that I should give the floppy drive a one-over using CheckIt, a personal go-to software suite for diagnostics on DOS systems. Lo and behold the floppy drive was generating absurd amounts of read errors, and at that point they could only be caused by capacitor issues (which would be fairly serviceable to fix but not immediately worth doing) or alignment issues (in which case the drive might as well be scrap²). It was easier just to not use the 360k drive. With the knowledge that the floppy drive was not to be trusted at all under my belt as well as the knowledge that any operating system installation should be done from the PC/AT, I proceeded to take another crack at things. I wound up with the PC/XT's Cisco CompactFlash card booting fine in the PC/AT but not the PC/XT, and the PC/AT's Compactflash card (a cheaper SanDisk card) booting fine in both. I figured I'd try swapping the cards out in full and this resulted in both machines working perfectly, as the PC/AT was more than happy with the theoretically nicer Cisco card. CompactFlash media can be fickle like that, but considering the SanDisk card is a significantly cheaper card meant for cameras yet proved more to the PC/XT's taste than a card expressly meant to be used as boot media is just bizarre; However at that point I couldn't be bothered to question things further since they well and truly worked from then on out. That wrapped up the last of the technical hurdles, and I was free to work on the machine at the software end of things.

AND REVERSI!

File transfer would be downright trivial with the cF card as my fixed disk, being just a matter of pulling the card from it's slot in the rear of the system and shuttling it over to my desktop in order to add programs or files. That wouldn't be a luxury I'd have with the DOM, in which case I'd have to deal with comparatively slow exchanges using FASTLYNX. I decided to stick to IBM DOS 3.30 with XTREE 2.0, a typical DOS shell and one that might have realistically ben in use in the machine's heyday. I also got Windows 1.01 installed, but without a mouse it's somewhat awkward to use. I can get a mean game of Reversi, Windows 1.01 through 2.11's built in game, going though.

Since that last bit of struggle with storage, everything has been essentially silk smooth. It was a months-long ride of trial and error, but in the end I finally got the working PC/XT I'd been wanting for years. Brutalist and built like a tank yet oddly attractive in that '80s way, the machine is an absolute blast to both use and behold. I can easily see it remaining the keystone of my collection for some time to come. There's still some stuff i'd like to sort out and some experiments I'd like to carry out (especially in regards to that Hercules graphics card I mentioned, which is worth a write-up in it's own right), but for now I can rest easy knowing that I've managed to get it back in shape in spite of what felt like three months of non-stop obstacles.

1: The IBM PC 5150 and PC/XT 5160 keyboard microcontroller used a much different protocol for input and output on a hardware and software level than the one in the later IBM 5170 PC/AT and onward would use. This means that if you scalp a PC or PC/XT-friendly keyboard (or any other legacy system's keyboard, on that thought) for the neato mechanical switches you're going to have an extremely difficult time finding a replacement. Don't do that; Consider a more modern mechanical keyboard instead. They're cheaper, just as good, and you don't potentially irreversibly gore a computer that way.

2: Alignment issues are dependent on blind luck or stupidly expensive and rare specialty equipment to fix. Even then, you still need a bit of blind luck.

[lokbobpop]

Disability

1570s, "want of power, strength, or ability," from dis- + ability. Meaning "incapacity in the eyes of the law" is from 1640s.

1 : a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person's ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions Scientists have tentatively linked the reading disability known as dyslexia to a bevy of brain .

Disability disa bility dis ability dis a bil it y dis able ty disa bilit y

Writing the word disability

I fucked up spelling it i thought id get this one but no the end bility i mess up didnt let it slow down enough to take my time with it was thinking come on get these words dont your going out today move move.

Reading the word disability

Wrote it fine this time.

I did some work in a disability home i last one week they were all running around like crazy and grabbing me I wouldn’t cope it was hard work I couldn’t wait to get out of there i told them im not going back I couldn’t do it i stood up which im still surprised to this day I couldn’t do it. Mentally handicap people freak me out i feel very ashamed of myself saying that but i saw a program when inside they are completely normal trapped in a body they have no control over what so ever how awful there life must be the struggles they must have to live through they are normal people trapped in the body of hell im sure they would rather have died than live this life like this im sure i know i would.

When there not parking but the disability ones im pissed off im like i want to park i want to go in i dont park there but i want to and thats not right but a friend who has a card when we are out i sometimes use it it helps definitely lol

I wouldnt want a disability sticker as i wouldnt want to be a disability i dont want to be a point of being a burden to others and i wouldnt want to deal with a disability myself i see this as being weak and a person who hasn’t taken responsibility for there minds which i so havent myself and actual fear my physical getting worse than it already is.

Yes fear i would be at a disability physically fears me.

Well i do have a disability i cant read or write properly this disability is enough for me i find this hard to cope with this has kept me down all my life why? Because I have let it i have believed its not good enough to be like this and in so believing im not good enough im less than others why because I cant do what another does so this makes me less maybe less in this way but not all ways yes this so i see so why let it affect you at all? Mm good point i see that others will judge and if the do i will feel less ok and I don’t want to feel less and looked at like this why its not good why just to be different yes i want to be the same lol are you sure as before you wanted to be special now you want t be the same true but the same in this the mind just not hte rest why because thats normal i want to be normal why normal currently sucks yes true so fucking get your act together and love you exactly like you are so others can do what you have done who are like you yes.

Saying disability out loud.

Fear of ever having one i dont want one

Thoughts of not being able to walk in a wheelchair or blind deaf all things i thing would be awful and all i have to deal with is dyslexia none of the really bad things so whats my problem. I see I couldn’t cope at all with this and should definitely make the most of only having a small problem yes

People who get paid for disability like my friend brother has over a million pound in benefits and need spending really its just sitting there where many with disability’s have nothing no money seem very unfair.

Sf

Does this definition support me no so much fear of people with disability and my own making mine nothing to all other disability i see ive aloud mine ot make me weak worthless and believed it there’s people out there with far worse conditions than i i need to stop and get off the poor me on this one and show the world what i can do and become.

Disability this ability

Disability

You have a ability you just have to work with your disability find you where you can shine within

My disability is just small and in not way would it stop me from walking my mind.

I will live this word with walking my mind im fine what I have is fine in fact it makes things easier because i can push myself i can see where i can go and what i have to do i there and its ok with self determination self perfection self persistence