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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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The FTC has Big Pharma’s number

On November 27, I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

The most consistent bright spot in the dark swirl of US politics is the competence of the Biden Administration's progressive enforcers: people like Rohit Chopra, Jonathan Kanter and Lina Khan, who keep demonstrating just how far a good administrator can go. Anyone can have a vision, but knowing how to execute is the difference between hot air and real change:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

Take a minute to contrast Biden's administrators with Trump's: Trump's administrators had an ideological vision just as surely as Biden's do, and Trump himself had a much more pronounced and explicit ideology than Biden, whose governance style is much more about balancing the Democratic Party's blocs than bringing about a specific set of policies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

But whatever clarity of vision the Trump administration brought to DC was completely undermined by its incompetence (thankfully!). Apart from one gigantic tax break, Trump couldn't get stuff done. He couldn't deliver, because he'd lose his temper or speak out of turn:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/14/when-youve-lost-the-fedsoc/#anti-buster-buster

And his administrators followed his lead. Scott Pruitt was appointed to run the EPA after a career spent suing the agency. It could have been the realization of his life's dream to dismantle environmental law in America and open the floodgates for unlimited, wildly profitable corporate pollution and pillaging. But the dream died because he kept getting embroiled in absurd scandals – like the time he sent his staffers out to drive around all night looking for a good deal on a used mattress:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/epa-s-pruitt-told-aide-obtain-old-mattress-trump-hotel-n879836

Or his insistence on installing a CIA-style "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" (SCIF) so he could play super-spy while reading memos:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/epa-administrator-scott-pruitt-sound-proof-booth-scif/index.html

Or the time he sent his security detail to the Ritz-Carlton to demand that they supply him lots of little bottles of his favorite hand-cream:

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/7/17439044/scott-pruitt-ritz-carlton-moisturizing-lotion

There were other examples in the Trump administration, but Priutt is such a good case-study. He's like a guy who spent his whole life training to compete in the Olympics, and finally got a shot, only to be disqualified for ordering too much room-service in the Olympic Village. Priutt was wildly ambitious, but he was profoundly undisciplined – and wildly incompetent.

Compare that with Biden's progressive enforcers and agency heads, who showed up on the first day of work with an encyclopedic knowledge of their administrative powers, and detailed plans for using them to transform the lives of the American people for the better:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

The Biden administration's competence translates into action, getting stuff done. Maybe that shouldn't surprise us, given the difference between the stories that reactionaries and progressives tell about where change comes from.

In reactionary science fiction, we enter the realm of the "Competent Man" story. Think of a Heinlein hero, who is "able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."

In Competent Man stories, a unitary hero steps into the breach and solves the problem – if not single-handedly, then as the leader of others, whose lesser competence is a base metal that the Competent Man hammers into a tempered blade:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/RobertAHeinlein

Contrast this with a progressive tale, like, say, Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For the Future, where the Competent Man is replaced by the Competent Administration, in which people of goodwill and technical competence figure out how to join forces to create population-scale architectures of participation that allow every person to contribute their skills and perspective:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/03/ministry-for-the-future/#ksr

The right's whole ideology insists that the world can only be saved by Competent Men. As Corey Robin writes in The Reactionary Mind, the unifying factor that binds together conservative factions from monarchists to racists to Christian Dominionists is the belief that a few of us are born to rule, and the rest to be ruled over:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#mafia-logic

The Reaganite insistence that governments are, by their very nature, incompetent and malign ("The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I’m from the government, and I’m here to help'"), means that conservatives deny the possibility of a Competent Administration.

When conservatives take office and proceed to bungle the most basic elements of administration, they're fulfilling their own campaign narrative, which starts with "We must dismantle the government because it is bad at everything." Conservatives who govern badly prove their own point, which explains a lot about the UK Tory Party's long run of governmental failure and electoral success:

https://apnews.com/article/uk-suella-braverman-fired-cabinet-shuffle-7ea6c89306a427cc70fba75bc386be79

There's a small mercy in the fact that so many of the most ideologically odious and extreme conservative governments are so technically incompetent in governing, and thus accomplish so little of their agendas.

But the inverse – the incredible competence of the best progressive administrators – is nothing short of a delight to witness. Here's the latest example to cross my path: the FTC has intervened in a lawsuit over generic insulin pricing, on an issue that is incredibly technically specific and also fantastically important:

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/ftc-blasts-pharmas-abuse-fda-patent-system-sanofi-mylans-insulin-monopoly-lawsuit

The underlying case is before the FDA, and it concerns the dirty tricks that pharma giant Sanofi used to keep Mylan from making a generic version of Mylan's Lantus insulin after its patent expired.

There's an explicit bargain in patents: inventors can enlist the government to punish their rivals for copying their ideas, but in exchange, the government demands that the inventor has to describe how the invention works in a detailed patent filing, and when the patent expires, 20 years later, rivals can use the patent application as instructions for freely copying and selling the invention. In other words: you get 20 years of exclusive rights in return for facilitating your competitors' copying and selling your invention when the 20 years are up.

Pharma doesn't like this, naturally: not content with 20 years of exclusivity, they want the government to step in and punish their competitors forever. In service to that end, pharma companies have perfected a process called evergreening, where they dribble out ancillary patents after their initial filing, covering minor reformulations, delivery systems, or new uses.

Evergreening got a moment in the public eye earlier this year, with John Green's viral campaign to shame Johnson & Johnson out of using evergreening to restrict poor countries' access to TB medication:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

The story of pharma is that it commands gigantic profits, but it invests those profits into medicines that save our lives. The reality is that most of the key underlying pharma research is publicly funded (by Competent Administrators who apportion funding to promising scientific inquiry). Pharma companies' most inventive genius is devoted to inventing new evergreening tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

That's where the FTC comes in, in this Sanofi-Mylan case. To facilitate the production of generic, off-patent drugs, the FDA maintains a database called the "Orange Book," where pharma companies are asked to enumerate all the ancillary patents associated with a product whose patent is expiring. That way, generics manufacturers who make their own version of these public domain drugs and therapeutics don't accidentally stumble over one of those later patents – say, by replicating a delivery system or special coating that is still in patent.

This is where the endless, satanic inventiveness of the pharma sector comes in. You see, US law provides for triple damages for "willful patent infringement." If you are a generics manufacturer eyeing up a drug whose patent is about to expire and you are notified that some other patents might be implicated in your plans, you must ensure that you don't accidentally infringe one of those patents, or face business-destroying statutory damages.

So pharma companies stuff the Orange Book full of irrelevant patent claims they say may be implicated in a generic manufacture program. Each of these claims has to be carefully evaluated, both by a scientific team and a legal team, because patents are deliberately obfuscated in the hopes of tricking an inattentive patent examiner into granting patents for unpatentable "inventions":

https://blueironip.com/patents-that-hide-the-ball/

What's more, when a pharma giant notifies the FDA that it has ancillary patents that are relevant to the Orange Book, this triggers a 30-month delay before a generic can be marketed – adding 2.5 years to the 20 year patent term. That delay is sometimes enough to cause a manufacturer to abandon plans to market a generic drug – so the delay isn't 2.5 years, it's infinite.

This is a highly technical, highly consequential form of evergreening. It's obscure as hell, and requires a deep understanding of patent obfuscation, ancillary patent filings, generic pharma industry practice, and the FDA's administrative procedures.

Sanofi's Orange Book entry for Lantus insulin listed 50 related patent claims. Of these, 48 were invalidated through "inter partes" review (basically the Patent Office decided they shouldn't have allowed these claims to be included on a patent). Neither of the remaining two claims were found to be relevant to the manufacture of generic Lantus.

This is where the FTC's filing comes in: their amicus brief doesn't take a position whether Sanofi's Orange Book entries were fraudulent, but they do ask the FDA to intervene to prevent Orange Book stuffing because "improper listings can cause significant harm to competition and consumers."

This is the kind of boring, technical, important stuff that excellent administrators can do. The FTC's brief is notice to the FDA that it should amend its procedures to ban (and punish) Orange Book abuse. That will make it possible for you, a person who needs medicine, to get that medicine more cheaply and quickly. In America's pay-for-use privatized healthcare hellscape, this could be a life-or-death matter.

There's plenty of things the Biden administration is getting very, very badly wrong, but we shouldn't lose sight of how its progressive wing is making real, lasting change for the better. Competent Administrations are the true peoples' champions. They beat Competent Men every time.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

#pluralistic

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bby-bo · 1 year

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When The Boss Comes Knocking

the following is a CEO!Sakusa fic that landed somewhere between sfw and sorta nsfw, but its kiyoomi and he just makes my brain go buzz in every situation so i just couldn’t help it

Part 2

Summary: You dated Sakusa in high school but went your separate ways after graduation. Turns out he missed you much more than he let on.

Warnings: none, just kiyoomi being hot. use of “sweetheart” and “baby”

Sakusa Kiyoomi always has been and will always be the man of your dreams. Tall and broad shouldered, even in his high school years he was the pinnacle of your existence, and all you wanted was to be near him. Your wishes were granted for only a brief period of time when you finally dated in your junior year, but your Kiyoomi was ripped away from you when his family decided he needed to start preparing to take over the business.

The Sakusa Group was well known and respected for their acquisition of many successful start-ups, but details of their business dealings were always very secretive. And the company had only grown and expanded since Kiyoomi became CEO at just a mere 25 years old- not that you were stalking the Sakusa Group’s movements in your free time or anything.

When the two of you broke up he had encouraged you to “follow your own dreams”, and made sure to mention he would be extremely busy in the years after graduating high school. You had received the underlying message loud and clear. He wanted to be left alone and didn’t want a girl from a regular family ruining his image when he entered the executive world. Your heart was shattered, but that didn’t stop you from missing Kiyoomi dearly even years later. The hugs that completely enveloped your frame and the scent of his light cologne, the one he brought you to pick out for him on his birthday. The rasp of his deep voice and how its sound had burrowed into the back of your brain, the memories of random things he once said to you popping to the forefront of your mind haphazardly throughout your days.

You had done as he said, and moved to the city to become an author as you always dreamed. Actually, you were pretty successful in the romance industry and even though you only had a handful of books published, your fanbase was so dedicated and charismatic. In your single year of dating Kiyoomi you had amassed a lifetime’s worth of romantic material, and between your real life experiences with him and the melancholy fantasies that kept you up at night nowadays, you had lots of inspiration. Although, even you were prone to the classically dreaded writer’s block.

Today was just a regular Tuesday morning in the office, where you preferred to write when you were stuck in a rut. Unfortunately, the coffee mug on your desk was not bringing the inspiration that you wanted and you glared at the last sip, willing some piece of creativity to be hiding inside as you downed it. Nothing. Loosening a sigh, you dropped your head into your hands just as a knock rapped on the door. Without lifting your head you greeted the visitor, already knowing who was on the other side.

“Come in!”

“How’s it coming? Anything I can get you right now?” It was the sweet front desk girl, Josie, checking in on you. Again.

“Unless you can write in my place, there’s not much you can do for me i'm afraid” Josie meant well, but her insistent interruptions certainly were not helping your workflow, and this was the third time within 30 minutes she’s asked if you needed anything.

“Okie dokie, I’ll check back later then! Keep at it! ”

“Oh, you don’t have to-” She was off with a wave without hearing your response, the door slamming behind her. With another sigh, your head dropped back into your hands, frustration building.

Not 5 minutes later, there was another knock at the door. But this time the door opened before you could respond.

“Holy shit, Josie i’m really fine I swear- K-Kiyoomi???” You burst from your seat in surprise, your eyes all but popping out of your head.

And there he was, like a fever dream come to life, standing in the doorframe. His handsome face tilted to the side slightly, a smirk pulling across his lips.

“There you are, I’ve been looking for you” His voice had gotten deeper since the last time you spoke. His hair a little longer, his chest a bit stronger. But his eyes remained the same, that dark gaze enticing you and melting you down with just a look.

“W-what are you doing here? How did you-? What is this??”

As much as you wanted to cave and run straight into his arms, you vividly recalled your last conversation with Sakusa. Not Kiyoomi. He had corrected you so coldly before parting, saying “you should call me by last name from now on, otherwise people may get confused”. As if it would be bad if people mistakenly thought you were still dating. As if to push you that much further away. Your confusion only grew as you looked at him now, unsure of his motives for being here.

“Came to scope out a new prospect. I sent an executive to meet with your publishing house’s CEO last week” His smirk widened as he took deliberately slow steps into the room, sleek confidence dripping from him.

That's right, your boss had mentioned that your little publishing house had been recently approached by a huge parent company with an amazing offer, but as far as you knew nothing had been made official. And you certainly had no clue that said parent company was the Sakusa Group. The realization settled in, and the frustration you felt earlier was starting to bubble up again.

All of a sudden he was in your space, sleek black button-up shirt in your direct line of sight. What was his goal here? Certainly this has nothing to do with you? Right. Exactly. He claimed he was here for business. Then why..??

Long fingers gripped your chin, thumb tugging your bottom lip from between your teeth where you nervously chewed it.

“Where did you pick up this bad habit? And when are you planning on acknowledging me properly?” Your heart dropped to your stomach. His firm grip brought your face to look up at his, a little too close for comfort. Kiyoomi’s smirk tilted into a small frown, an admonishing look starting to grow.

“Of course sir, I apologize. Good morning Mr. Sakusa.” Backing out of his hold, you bowed in respect. Of course he was here for just business.

This only seemed to irritate him further though, and when you rose from your greeting he took another step closer. You may as well have been toe to toe now.

“Since when do you address me that way?” His eyes were too intense, and you could feel the memories of your past relationship coming up in your mind, emotion nearly overwhelming you before you swallowed it down.

“I’m not sure what you mean sir, it would be improper for me to address you otherwise”

If he was irritated before, then he was surely pissed off now.

His hands gripped your shoulders, roughly pushing you back against your desk before planting his palms on either side, caging you in.

“Why won’t you look at me, hm? It’s disrespectful to ignore your superior sweetheart” Shit. That voice had you in a vice grip and he knew it. He was using it to his advantage.

“I was unaware you would be my business superior until a minute ago, forgive me sir” How long will your legs hold up before melting completely?

“Seems like something is bothering you. You don’t like the idea of working with me? Or maybe you don’t like the idea of me being your boss? Sweetheart, I hope you realize I know you’ve been writing about me.”

“No! No thats not-!” Your head shot up in a rush to disagree, or maybe to explain. Either way, you immediately realized your mistake and you were silenced once more. The tip of your nose brushed his, and his breath brushed your lips in an intimate greeting, as if to say “hey, i missed you”.

His mock irritation melted away, the smirk returning once more. You fell into the trap too easily.

Most people knew Sakusa to be the cool and straightforward man he showed to the world, but when you dated in high school he quickly shattered this image. Though he certainly preferred to stay away from crowds and strangers, he was still human after all, and loved to be in your personal space whenever he got you alone. He had always enjoyed making you blush and stutter, thriving off the knowledge that he could affect you so deeply. Clearly, he still enjoyed that feeling.

But you were not a toy, and he was interrupting your work day. And how dare he just come back into your life after throwing you aside for so many years?! Absolutely not, you refused to be disrespected this way. Your hands came to his chest, giving him a solid (and completely ineffective) shove.

“No. This is not professional Mr. Sakusa-!”

Sakusa didn’t back up a single inch. Instead he gripped your face, long fingers pinching into your cheeks slightly. Your breath caught in your throat, previous arguments completely obliterated.

“Stop. Saying. No. Now answer me. Since when do you call me by my last name? You’re purposely not answering my question”

When you took a breath in you caught the scent of his cologne, and it was the same one you picked out for him in high school. He still wore it. Every single thought emptied out of your head, except for the recognition of how close he was to you, and where he was touching you.

“Say it.”

“K-Kiyoomi...”

“Say it like you mean it, baby.”

“Kiyoomi.” A smile broke out as his name fell from your mouth a second time.

“That’s my girl, just as pretty as ever. I missed you so bad sweetheart, I’ve been looking for you in the city for some time now. And don't worry, I’ll make up for lost time, so don’t push me away.”

His second hand came up to the back of your head, tugging you back by your hair and bringing your mouth to his. But he didn’t kiss you, he denied you the pleasure, only speaking against your lips. You let him do as he pleased, no longer able to deny how much you missed him. Missed this.

“Look at you with your hair so grown out now.”

“Do you like it?”

“I love everything about you.” He moved to plant a firm kiss to both of your cheeks, and to your disappointment he slowly released his hands from your face and hair.

“The Sakusa Group will officially be in ownership of your publisher by the end of the week. You’ll be seeing a lot more of me, so get used to it sweetheart.” He offered no further explanations or goodbyes, and he left your office with only your disheveled and flustered state to prove that he had really been there at all.

You made absolutely zero progress on your writing the rest of the morning and afternoon, but when you returned the next day ready for another day of failure, you opened the door to see your office transformed into a florist.

There were flowers on every single surface, completely covering your desk and the floor. There were roses of every shade, along with tulips, orchids, and other kinds of flowers you had never even seen before. Each bouquet was bursting with color and life, wrapped in silk ribbons and set in gorgeous porcelain vases that looked absolutely priceless. There was only a small path left open for you to walk to your desk seat, and on your keyboard was a note.

“A flower for every occasion I missed. And more just because.”

Your hand came up to your mouth, tears already welling up in your eyes. You looked to the bottom, and saw he signed the note,

“Always Yours, Kiyoomi”

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #sakusa kiyoomi #sakusa comfort #sakusa x y/n #msby sakusa #sakusa #kiyoomi #anime #sakusa fluff #sakusa smut #kiyoomi sakusa x reader #sakusa x reader #sakusa x you #sakusa scenarios #bby bo sakusa #hq sakusa #sakusa fanart #sakusa fanfiction

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factual-fantasy · 5 months

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I am now curious about the ocean that's never been posted before, what's his deal?

(Post in question)

AAAA I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE INTERESTED!! :DD His name is Casey! He's an old madness combat OC that I made, along with 5 others! (Although I only drew references for 4-)

Now I made these guys without really knowing anything about Madness combat.. I just made some OCs with the little scraps of knowledge I had because all my friends had Madness OCs and I wanted to be cool like them.. 🥺

Now his story if I can remember is..

Its along the lines of he was this guy that lived in the Nevada wasteland. And he traveled around in this huge dump truck turned killing machine with two of his friends. At some point they were in a building trying to get diesel..? And there was a fire..? The truck was stolen by this gang and his two friends died in the fire.. Casey had just lost everything, he was of course devastated.. for a few years after he just wandered the wastelands.. just barely surviving.

Eventually, he found the gang that stole his truck. So in a blind rage he went into their camp and murdered everyone. But his truck was no where to be found.. Instead he found this kid tied to a tree waiting to be executed. "Stefany". He ends up cutting her lose and suddenly he has adoption papers in his hands. Weird-

They travel around together and eventually they meet this scientist guy that got separated from his group. I think I did a thing where the people that live in the wasteland hate scientists or something..?? And Eric was like "Please don't kill me I just want to go back to my group!" And Casey said somethin like- "Ok I'll take you back only if you give us this lab thingy when we get there." And Eric agreed.

So they go on this whole found family adventure and by the time they get to the lab Eric had really bonded with these people. He wasn't intending to actually keep his promise but because he really likes Casey and Stef, he kept his word. He steals the lab thingy but gets caught. Casey and Stef save him and peridot style he becomes a wastelander-

Now after a while of traveling around, naturally, Casey gets hurt somehow. He's messed up pretty bad so he's just camping out somewhere while Stef and Eric go look for food. While Stef is out looking for food, unbelievably.. she spots Casey's truck. She's never seen it before but Casey talked about what it looked like and how to break into it.

So she goes after the truck, uses the secret hijack method and kicks the two thieves out of the cab. She hightails it back to their camp to show Casey. But those two thieves follow her. When she gets back there's a stand off between Casey's group and the thieves. When suddenly,

"..Casey? Is that you?"

Turns out his two friends didn't die in the fire. And they had found the gang before Casey did and stole the truck back. Which is why it wasn't at the gangs camp. They talked about the fire.. Casey thought his friends had died, and his friends thought Casey had died. T'was but a silly misunderstanding.

So in the end all of them become a team and start traveling around in the big dump truck together.

I haven't brought the story beyond that, and a lot of it doesn't fit with actual madness combat lore.. 😅 But its all I've got!

#my response #madness combat #my ocs #I also drew bunch of text post memes with these guys #I should totally post them sometime

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alltimefail-sims · 29 days

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Moonwood Mill's community has repurposed an old logging factory into their very own local library. Its open and airy structure make it the perfect location to curl up with a book or catch a view of the night sky, and out back, the Wildfangs have dragged old workout equipment into the former loading dock for a handy make-shift gym.

I was bored and decided to make some tweaks to improve the function and overall look of The Moonwood Mill Library! I really do love the concept of the Moonwood community taking an abandoned factory and turning it into a makeshift community space, but the original execution left much to be desired. Don't worry though; I did my best to maintain all the grime, damage, DIY features, and disrepair... but without the gaping empty spaces and random wall and ceiling configurations that were giving more "unfinished building" than "abandoned building."

INFORMATION & DOWNLOAD BELOW ↓

Packs I Used:

This lot is completely CC Free and labeled as a “Library” lot type! This reno uses very few packs and the only objects used from Growing Together and Outdoor Retreat are the sleeping bags (GT) in the sewer area, and the shower (OR), so really you could consider this an Eco Lifestyle, Get To Work, and Werewolves build... as long as you have those three, you will be fine!

TOU: All I ask is that 1. you do not reupload and claim the build as your own (yes, even if you tweak it a little…) and 2. you tag me if you use it! I would love to see this in other people’s games and saves, that’s why I’m sharing it! ❤️

Additional screenshots are on my Patreon post. This build has been play-tested, but please let me know if you run into any in-game issues!

DL: Patreon (always free)

+ @publicvanillabuilds, @pancakesrealty

#Moonwood Mill #ts4 #simblr #ts4 community lot #ts4 build #ts4 download #the sims 4 #sims 4 #ts4 lots #ts4 werewolves #ts4 DL #mybuilds #lot renovations

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mono-dot-jpeg · 9 months

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safe - express crew

summary; what would happen if you got injured during an expedition?

genre/extra tags; scenario, hurt/comfort but not well executed, reader has path of destruction, reader's combat type isn't mentioned, caelus is trailblazer with path of preservation (bc that's the one i use), yes im using the same banner at the top for caelus

[platonic] [teen reader] [gender neutral reader]

warnings; leg injuries described, getting scolded, feeling helpless

[buy me a kofi]

a/n; wrote this as scenarios... hope you enjoy it! only did the trio and welt bc 4 characters is my limit per scenario post. march's part is shorter than the rest im sorry

caelus is not well versed in situations like these.

he knew of your reckless nature. how you just loved thrills, how you want to destroy every enemy in your way, how you enabled his weird tendencies and fighting instincts just to watch a good show.

but this was too much.

in the heat of battle as you charge in, you take a big hit (even if with the help of caelus's shield) and the enemy smashes their weapon against your leg. you collapse to the ground, the pain rushing through all your nerves as you yell out.

caelus does his best to keep the enemy busy with his taunts and trying to build his shields. when he finally manages to finish the enemy off, he's running to you and picking you up as carefully but urgently as he can. he's talking to you to distract you from the pain and hoping that the adrenaline you're feeling with do until he gets to you to proper help.

when he finally gets you to medical help, he's conflicted. his usual expressive witty self is quiet with frustration. within the small time of you joining the express a little after he did, he's gotten attached to you, seeing you as a younger sibling. he can't help but think it's his fault for not being on guard to keep you safe. he can't find it in his heart to scold you despite how he's aware that if you just thought before you did anything, you would've at least been less injured.

it takes a day for you to get properly patched up and resting. and it's awkward when caelus walks in, no longer wearing his usually amused smile, but wearing a stone faced look. you avoid looking at him, it's not subtle at all with how you don't want to talk about the accident at all.

but he speaks about it anyways, "i really hate being angry, you know?"

"i know."

"i think it's safe to say that we're both in the wrong for this?" he suggests, sitting on the edge of your bed. "i could've stopped you and you could've waited for me." you're both silent as you recall the pain of it all.

"yeah. i'm sorry." he moves to sit by your side, patting your head.

"i'm sorry too, just get some rest alright?" he mutters, tugging the blanket to cover you better. "i'm just glad you're okay."

he hated when you got reckless, he was not as nice about it as the new trailblazer. well, he wasn't openly rude about it but he gets the most abrasive when you decide to be reckless. he would never say it openly but he cares for you. he cares for you a lot. you're younger than the other express members so of course it was natural that he felt the need to care for you. totally not because he's basically the established parent friend out of the four of the youngsters of the express, you included.

so the moment you get such an injury, he's killing the rest the enemies and taking you to welt and himeko. he's muttering about how frustrated he is with this turn of events. he's annoyed because he doesn't have the path that march and caelus have, so he can't protect you as easily.

you can't understand a word of what he's saying since your mind is fuddled with pain and slowly running down from its adrenaline. you pass out before you hear his pleas to stay awake.

when you're finally okay and stable, it's dead silent in your room. you and dan heng sit nearby each other, you on your bed and him in a desk chair. you're concerned by his silence but you don't want to say anything, knowing that he would start scolding you. unlike caelus, he's not afraid to be honest and sound rude while he's at it. he doesn't like sounding like the bad guy, but someone has to put the foot down when welt and himeko weren't around.

as you lay there on your bed, you feel small, like you were just a weak kid who couldn't do anything. you struggle to look at dan heng, the room is thick with tension and worry. you hate how stupid you feel. it's hard to describe it, when you want to cry but it's not out of sadness or anger. you feel bad. and it makes you want to cry. and you do. you don't say anything, he doesn't say anything.

he looks at you while you're a silent mess. his hand presses on your forehead and moves down to rub away your tears gently. "please don't do that again. not when i can't do as much to keep you safe." he mutters, moving his chair to sit closer to the bed.

you spill out your apologies and worries as you hug him weakly. "i'm- i'm sorry dan heng!" he pats your head, providing his silent comfort.

"it's okay. i'll always forgive you." he sounds tired as he jokes deadpanned, "maybe this is a sign from the aeons to stop being stupid."

"hey!"

despite march's cheerful aura and bright words, she was skilled in battle. and very good support. even when she was smiling in support during a battle, she was ever so alert for everyone's safety.

unfortunately she let her guard down for just a small moment and you ended up running in with no shield support, causing you to take a bigger hit than normal.

after that she had immediately shielded you, the cold of her ice felt nice against the heat of the pain.

"y/n! please be more careful next time!" she says immediately after she takes care of the last enemy. she's probably the only one to actually scold you in the battle even if it was close to ending. "just because i can shield you doesn't mean you're safe all the time." she insists on carrying you via piggyback as she scolds you all the way through the trip back.

"you know you're gonna have the rest of the express worried sick when you do things like that!" if this was anyone else, you would much worse but march has such a sweet tone to her voice that you can't help but feel fine. on the way back, she cares for the injury the best she can with her ice. and it helps when you finally get the proper help.

you recovered quicker than usual with her assistance.

"now what do you have to say to me?"

"you make me want to not say it now."

"i just saved your life and this is the thanks i get?!"

"bleh."

"i'm never gonna give you a shield again."

welt..

welt dislikes taking you on expeditions. he's been clear about that from the start. but he's not gonna restrain you from experiences, good and bad. but he'd much rather you have good experiences. and not ones like these.

the ones where he has to pick you up from the ground and worry that you're gravely injured. just like the rest of the crew, he hates seeing you hurt. maybe it even hurts even more being a sort of father figure to you and feeling the obligation to care for you.

instead of the cold silence from dan heng or the worried silence from caelus, you feel the disappointed silence from welt. and that hurts more than your injury.

it's suffocating when you're being carried the way back and you know you're about to get a mouthful of scolding. it's not even gonna be an angry scolding, which is even worse.

when he takes you down the hall of passenger rooms of the express, you struggle to find the words that would at least lessen the looming feeling of disappointment. "i- um.. uh.." you stammer. he continues to walk and find your room, but you feel his hold tighten. you know he's listening.

"i don't.." when you both enter your room, he places you right on your bed and sits in a nearby chair. he looks at you, which almost makes you break in a cold sweat. "i'm really..." he doesn't rush you to speak, he doesn't cut you off or anything. he waits patiently by your side.

"i'm sorry." you look down at your lap, "i was really excited when you finally let me go on one of these trips with you. and i ruined it. sorry."

his lips pressed in a line before he speaks, "please be more careful next time. i can't guarantee you'll go on your own though, not until you learn to control yourself."

next time? "does this mean i can still go next time?"

"not anytime soon." he sighs, "did you not catch any other word?"

"that's not a no."

"i'm not saying a yes."

#honkai star rail x reader #honkai x reader #honkai star rail #honkai star rail welt #welt yang x reader #welt x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail march 7th #hsr march 7th #march 7th x reader #caelus honkai star rail #hsr caelus #caelus x reader #dan heng x reader #hsr dan heng #hsr dan heng x reader

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soupthatistohot · 7 months

Text

BSD: An Absurdist Analysis - Chapter 111

"You simply can't kill me": Fukuzawa's refusal to die and Fyodor's folly

[BSD Absurdism Masterpost]

Fukuzawa is able to attack Fukuchi despite his many injuries, thus turning the tides of the war, is peak absurdism. Despite the odds, despite the fact that he’s literally been stabbed multiple times and is pitted against somebody with a really OP ability, he succeeded and was able to call off the airstrike that would’ve decimated Yokohama.

There's not much more to say about that, I'll get more into it when Fukuchi's plan is explained in-depth. So, we then jump to Fyodor and Nikolai outside of Meursault.

I’ll briefly point out the absurdity of Fyolai’s relationship because I haven’t gotten to analyze them yet, but I won’t go too deep because I know I’ll eventually get to them in my BSD manga re-read. I also don’t fully understand these two weirdos just yet, to be completely honest. So all I’ll say here is that their relationship is a complete paradox – being friends and allies but seeking to kill one another.

I would like to focus mostly on Fyodor’s need to control in this scene because I think that’s a central part to the absurdist reading of why Dazai succeeds. This is directly addressed in the anime adaptation of this scene when Dazai explains how he survived (AKA what will likely occur in the next chapter), so I won’t get too deep into it just yet, but I do want to touch on it because I think I’ll be focusing on Dazai and the absurdity of the power of Soukoku in the next chapter a lot more.

In any situation we’ve seen so far, Fyodor has elaborately planned things out so he has control over it. Not much takes him by surprise, and if there are any wrenches thrown into his plans, he’s always got something else to back him up (for example, when he was put into Meursault, he still had methods to execute his overarching plan with Fukuchi). His and Dazai’s intellect are often compared because of their ability to have a plan for any given outcome. The difference is that Dazai doesn’t really have control of many situations, he leaves a lot up to chance.

The absurdist protagonist usually succeeds through strange means, taking a shot into the dark and hoping for the best (another good example is Aya jumping off the building). Fyodor doesn’t do this, though, his plans are not only premeditated but also allow him to pull all the strings, and this is best exemplified by his control over the vampires. Dazai’s plans are effective for a different reason, he’s able to predict outcomes up to a certain point, but he doesn’t have complete control over the situation. His plan in Meursault depended on his ability to gain Sigma’s trust, and (assuming the manga will follow the anime plot, which is very likely at this point) his ability to put his trust in Chuuya.

Theoretically, having control over a situation would be optimal, because it allows the individual to manipulate — but reality is absurd.

This is why Dazai succeeds as an absurdist protagonist. He doesn’t try to completely control reality, because that’s an impossible feat. Trying to control reality would mean that you have an understanding of it, and that you’ve figured out its meaning, which is impossible according to the philosophy of the absurd.

The only thing an absurdist knows is that reality is absurd and the only effective way to exist is to not succumb to it. Therefore, Dazai embraces reality’s absurdity and leaves much of his plan up to chance, which is one of the only tactics that will be successful against Fyodor’s obsession with control. Fyodor’s mistake was thinking that he could play god and make sense of a world that inherently does not make sense and never will make sense. His attempt to control everything was an attempt to bend reality to his will, which is impossible.

And it bites him in the ass.

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd manga #bsd manga spoilers #bsd 111 #fukuzawa yukichi #fukuchi ouchi #fyodor dostoevsky #nikolai gogol #chuuya x dazai #bsd absurdism analysis #soup rants

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thetomorrowshow · 7 months

Text

knowing what the cards were

hi besties enjoy (or scream at me)

cw: past major character death (and mourning thereof), violence, blood

There's a pond in Rivendell, down the face of the mountain a little ways, right in the thick of the pine trees that grow all the way down the side. It's far enough away from the main city (and any outlying buildings) that likely few have ever even seen the pond, a place too insignificant to be worthy of any sort of attention. Despite this, the pond and its surrounding trees have always been a beautiful, peaceful location. The pond has only ever had the clearest water, carried down through a small stream from the melting snow of the high peaks.

Now, in the dark of night, water skimmers skate along the surface; a couple of frogs sit on rocks at the edge. Otherwise, there's no sign of life. No fish, no creatures poking through the trees to find a drink here.

The pond is a small, unseen place of tranquility, particularly at this before-sunrise hour, when even the owls are sleeping in their nests. The night is still, the forest silent, and the pond a dark reflection of all the unheard and unseen.

And Scott, sneaking out of his bedroom window like a guilty teenager, goes to it.

He had discovered the pond in his youth, a quiet hideaway from his brother and his parents and all their politics. He hadn't gone there frequently, only when everything really became too much and he had to get out before he exploded.

The pond had always had a calming effect, apart from the real world, a tiny piece of grace and solitude.

He chooses it now as the place not for its seclusion, nor its beauty, but for its lack of living creatures.

He doesn't know what's going to happen when he uses the artifacts.

Again, Alinar had been frustratingly vague on how to use the artifacts. There'd been something about magic, and something else about learning how the artifacts interact with him, so Scott hopes that using them before facing Xornoth in battle will be all right. He doesn't really understand what it means when it talks about interacting with him, but a test run never hurt anyone.

He already sent Gem the instructions (recipe? Scott really doesn't know a lot about magical terms) for the crystal that they need to trap Xornoth. She and Katherine are going to be working together on that, as far as he knows. Lizzie and Joel are occupied with the war. Pix has been out of contact for weeks. Pearl is maintaining neutrality. Shelby hasn't responded lately.

So it's up to Scott to execute the rest of the plan, not sure who he can even turn to for support in this. After all, only the Champion of Aeor can unite and use the artifacts to trap Xornoth in the crystal.

Scott lands carefully on the mossy ground beside the pond, wings drawing up behind him. The moon has disappeared beyond the mountain, but the sun hasn't yet begun to rise. Perfect time for experimental magic.

Scott pulls his Cod-woven bag off his shoulder and sets it down on the moss, leaning it against a small boulder, then slips off his soft shoes and sets them neatly beside it.

He doesn't much care for the feeling of damp moss under his socked toes, but a glance at the grass to his left tells him that it would be infinitely worse (and far more wet) to stand there.

Should he even be wearing socks when he puts the boots on? Will that ruin the . . . magical connection, or something?

Scott strips off his socks and stuffs them in his shoes, just in case. Then he unlatches his bag and pulls out the boots, which he sets atop the small boulder.

They glow, he realizes, the runes casting a very dim blue light over the leather and stone beneath. Scott stares at the glow for a moment, surely only bright enough to discern due to the almost non-existent light cast by the stars above, then reaches into his bag again, where his fingers meet the chilled gold rods of the antlers.

He withdraws the crown as well, sets it on the boulder. It glows as well, just the slightest bit, the gold clear against the dark background.

That's got to mean something. Maybe all ancient, godly artifacts glow like that.

There's really nothing else to wait for. At any moment, a servant could come knocking on his bedroom door, summoning him for matters of war, only to find him missing.

He should pray. Right? He is trying to get Aeor's attention, after all.

Haltingly, Scott kneels in the grass, grimacing when he feels the knees of his black trousers instantly become soaked. He's not really any good at praying, but he can give it a shot.

"Um," Scott says awkwardly. What is it the priests always say? "O Aeor, God of us all and of those below, God of the mountains and . . . and of the snow, God of the day that conquers the night, God that now slumbers until the world is returned to thy light. Uh. . . ."

The introduction part feels clunky and must actually be more ornate than that, but Scott can't quite seem to bring it to his remembrance, even with however many years that he's been hearing it. It's good enough, though, and now he ought to continue—but the prayers differ after that, a thousand and two different ones for any situation. And Scott, after he recited the main forty for his religious tutoring, made no effort to keep them memorized nor learn any of the others.

"Aeor," he says after a few moments of deliberation, dropping all attempts at following a prayer, "if I truly am your chosen, consecrate these holy objects now in me. Show me . . . show me the way. Help—help me."

Did Alinar ever kneel alone in a forest, praying for any help that his god would give? Did Alinar ever feel entirely inadequate for the job that he was faced with, for the mantle of Aeor's Champion?

Years ago, reading Alinar's tales, Scott would've laughed at such a thought. Alinar had been foreordained, had perfectly completed every task set for him. Never was there any doubt that the task at hand was beyond his reach.

But now that Scott's in the hero's story, he can't help but hope it's normal to feel like an utter failure. Normal to be scared. Normal to feel totally, utterly lost.

Scott stands, brushes off his knees, and pulls a boot on.

It fits perfectly, of course, his foot sliding into place with ease. He laces it up as tight as he can, the boot going a bit higher than halfway up his calf. The other is no different, though his fingers fumble on the white leather of the laces and it takes him a moment to get it pulled as tight as he wants it.

Okay. He has the boots on.

Next step.

Scott straightens, and with mounting anticipation and shaking hands, he lifts the crown of antlers onto his head.

He waits.

He doesn't . . . he doesn't feel any different, so far. Maybe . . . holier, maybe?

He flexes his toes in the boots. They aren't stiff at all, the leather well taken care of but fairly worn-in.

He tilts his head from side to side. The crown feels almost weightless, impeccably well-balanced. It isn't in any danger of slipping, either, set firmly on his head, fitting as perfectly as the boots do.

Now. How is he meant to test these out?

Scott takes a tentative step forward.

There's a sudden, crinkling-crackling sound from his feet—Scott looks down—

The edge of the pond is frozen.

There's frost under his toes. The edge of the pond is frozen.

There's absolutely no way.

He takes another step—more crackling, the ice spreads another foot down the pond.

Carefully, Scott puts some of his weight on the ice.

It holds. More spreads, even.

He puts both feet standing on the now half-frozen pond.

It doesn't even crack.

Ice magic, then. The boots have some sort of ice enchantment, likely written into the runes. That—maybe he's meant to freeze Xornoth? Freeze him, so that he can't get away from the whole crystal ordeal. Or maybe use the ice to freeze him to the crystal?

And when thou hast the daemone at thy will, binde it to the cristyl.

That . . . that might be right. Right? It's probably more than normal ice, it's probably strange magical ice. Something that can bind.

Scott crosses to the middle of the pond. He's walking on water, practically. The pond is just freezing around him, making a large path for his next step before he's even raised his foot.

Jimmy would have found this so impressive. He would've stood on the shore and sputtered, mouth hanging open. Scott would've laughed, and held out his hand, and brought Jimmy out onto the ice to stand with him. And then, gazing at his perfect lover with his permanently-messy hair and his still-shocked expression, he would have kissed him.

And it's for Jimmy that Scott is going to end Xornoth.

He can't kill Xornoth, the book had told him that much. Their souls are connected, some sort of confusing reincarnation of spirits kind of thing that Scott doesn't really understand. He needs to bind him to the crystal in a ritual that he also doesn't understand, but if the boots have an ice enchantment to freeze Xornoth in place or attach him to the crystal, maybe the crown just gives him the magical authority to command Xornoth to go into the crystal? Or something like that?

Scott points at a sleepy-looking frog. "Don't move," he commands with all the power he can muster.

The frog doesn't move. But it probably wasn't planning on it, anyway.

And part of the intrinsic elvish magic that he already has is the strength of suggestion. If he tells someone not to move, really tells them, with power, chances are they won't move.

Will the crown just amplify that magic, then? Or will it make it literally impossible to break a command given, since the power comes from a god and not just a normal elf?

Well, at least he figured out what the boots do. He really ought to get back—he's already spent enough time away. A servant could have alerted the entire palace by now if they knocked to find him missing.

Scott heads back to shore and unlaces the boots, stepping out of them and into his own shoes (he doesn't bother with his socks right now, tucking them into his pocket). Then he puts the boots and the crown back in the bag, beside a small book that looks . . . unfamiliar.

When did he put a book in his bag? Especially one that looks so . . . ancient?

Frowning, Scott pulls it out and cracks it open.

The text isn't anything like what he's used to, blue lines thick and letters big, with no discernable spaces for words. It takes a moment of staring stupidly at the large letters before he has the sudden realization that this is a book in that form of Oceanic that he was meant to give Lizzie. He's already given her the book, but he remembers that it had a smaller book inside. It must've slipped out at some point.

He'll probably see her soon, right? War negotiations have constantly been taking him or one of his advisors to and fro, so surely there'll be someone to give it to her, if not him precisely.

So Scott puts it back in his bag amongst the artifacts and takes off, flying straight back to the palace and landing on his bedroom windowsill, crawling in.

Unnoticed, the touch of his fingers on the window frame leaves frost.

When Scott wakes up (blurry nightmares of chains and indistinct threats), he feels cold.

He must've left the window open. He's done that before, woken up to a little bit of snow on the windowsill after a late-night flight.

And his bed's been rather cold as of late, missing the heat of another body.

But when Scott opens his eyes, his favorite blue blanket is white.

He sits up, confused—and snow falls off of him in little showers, clumping onto his blanket in the creases.

Why is there—?

There's ice on his bedside table, just a thin layer of it. Snow on the bedknobs. Snow on the rug.

And the window is closed.

The low fire that's usually still a bed of hot coals in the mornings is emitting zero warmth, the coals black and cold. The lantern on his bedside table has gone out.

Scott throws his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the cascade of snow that falls to the floor. How did—what?

The boots.

Are they still active even when he isn't wearing them? But—had something changed when he put them on? Is there a way to turn them off?

Scott fumbles around his bedpost until he finds his bag hanging, from which he pulls out the boots and turns them over in his hands.

"Stop," he says, voice still heavy with sleep. "Just . . . don't."

Nothing changes. Did it work? Are the boots still freezing the room?

Nothing really looks like it's melting, but there isn't anything new in the room, either. Scott sets the boots aside (and they feel normal, they aren't covered in frost or anything) and stands up, stumping over to the fireplace on numb feet. He stokes the coals, trying to bring any bit of warmth back to the room, but there's absolutely nothing left to be brought back.

He doesn't keep a flint and steel in his room. Usually a servant cares for these kinds of things, but he doesn't want a servant in here to find his room frozen. How on Aeor's green earth would he explain that?

He has to have a flint and steel in his travel kit in the closet, right? Scott ducks into the closet, finds his travel kit thrown on the floor where he left it after the funeral. He picks it up, rummages through it for a moment. Sure enough, tucked into a part of the leather kit is a small flint and steel, right next to a small hunting knife and needle and thread. He pulls it out and heads back to the coals. He can do figure this out. No need to panic.

There's a little pile of logs by the fireplace, which he shakes the snow off of before tossing them in, hoping they aren't too damp or anything. That would be just his luck, the inability to light a fire in a frozen room.

Thankfully, they aren't too damp. It takes a couple of tries with his numb fingers to get the flint and steel to strike a spark, and another couple tries to get it to light, but it lights nonetheless.

Once the flame takes hold, the room immediately starts to feel a bit warmer, and Scott shudders as his fingers start to tingle with pins and needles. Right, that's taken care of. Maybe now he won't freeze to death.

And then he remembers that there's quite a bit of ice and snow in his room, which will all be melting shortly.

That might be even worse than all the ice, and it's with a panicked hurriedness that Scott starts scooping up the snow in his bare hands and running it to the window to toss it out. He gets a good bit of it (at some point he lifts his blanket off his bed and just shakes it out the window) out, but it's already starting to melt and he can barely feel his fingers and the rug squishes under his feet—

Knock-knock-knock.

Scott curses, wipes his hands off on his dressing robe, and has his hand on the doorknob before he realizes he isn't wearing his veil. He curses again, doubles back to his closet. He doesn't have time to pin the whole thing on, he doesn't have time for any of his—

Scott pulls a veil on over his head and doesn't even bother with any of the pins and ties. It's a long one, meant for trips out, but he just adusts it until his eyes are in the eye-slit and hopes that he doesn't have any hair sticking out.

Then he can get back to the door (he trips over the trailing veil, it wouldn't be long enough to trip over if he'd tied and pinned it properly) and crack it open, sticking his head out.

Surprisingly, he finds not a servant, but Galidre, a junior member of his council. Galidre bows, black robes sweeping the floor.

"Your majesty," they say, straightening. "A representative of the Undergrove is here to speak with you."

"Shubble?" Scott asks, a little bewildered. What does she need?

"Not—not the ruler herself, but an ambassador. I believe they are requesting sanctuary, Milord."

Sanctuary?

That doesn't make any sense. The Grimlands haven't really mobilized anything concrete yet, and as far as Scott was last aware, Mythland and the Lost Empire were both still attacking the Ocean Kingdom.

But Scott doesn't ask questions. He just withdraws and gets dressed (properly pinning his veil this time), then grabs all the towels from the washroom and lays them on his bedroom floor to try and soak up some of the water. Hopefully nobody comes in to clean his room or gather his laundry while he's out.

Last of all, he steps into his very normal boots, pulls on his black gloves, and sets his crown atop his veil.

Perfect. He looks the pinnacle of 'king-mourning-his-fiance', no doubt about it.

He misses Jimmy.

And just as Galidre had suggested, in the meeting with the representative of the Undergrove, Shubble's people are looking for sanctuary.

"There's so few of us, your majesty," the gnome implores, twisting his mushroom hat between his hands. "Less than eight thousand at our last count. We do not ask for you to provide for us, but if we could come to just the foothills of your lands, someplace safe for our children, we promise all able gnomes will serve in your armies."

That isn't asking much. It's asking far less than Scott would have asked, had the situation been reversed, and Scott's bruised heart aches at the humble plea. Can he even bear to turn them away?

"I will . . . I will discuss this matter with my council," Scott tells him, glancing between Galidre and Aphoras, the two advisors present. "I don't wish for any to be harmed while it is in my power to stop it."

If Shubble's worried, it means fWhip is getting ready to attack. Or maybe that Sausage and Joey are leaving their battle, hoping to strike Scott in his complacency. Something's happening soon, and the Undergrove cannot protect itself.

He doesn't want to uproot the gnomes from their new home. The gnomes had appeared in his childhood, three or four thousand of them moving from some unknown, conquered land to take up residence in their own small corner of the world. They've nurtured and cultivated that corner, built a city and begun farms and families, until it became what it is—a lovely little civilization beginning to thrive. To take that away from them would be cruel.

But he has to do it. To save them the destruction of their entire culture, he has to pull the gnomes away from everything they have.

He could make the decision here and now. His mind is already made up, he won't need to discuss this with his council.

But as the gnome hops down from his too-big chair, bowing deeply, Scott knows that there's another way.

He has to end the war.

Ending a war is easier said than done. For one, Scott still doesn't really know how to use the artifacts. The crown remains stubbornly unforthcoming with what its use might be, and the boots. . . . Well, the boots don't stop. The next morning when he wakes up, his room is frozen again—and the morning after that. Scott stops bothering to melt it and just pins a 'do not disturb' sign on the door, before moving to sleep in Jimmy's almost-untouched bedroom. That one freezes, too, as well as the sitting room, and Scott gives up on trying to stop the boots from freezing things and just piles blankets onto his bed and puts pans of hot coals in between the sheets for when he needs to sleep. Otherwise, he just stays out of his room and pretends like it isn't covered in ice.

(He doesn't notice, but frost spreads under his desk, and his untouched cups of tea ice over, and every tear he cries freezes on his face.)

(Others notice, though. Ilphas stares when a wave of Scott's hand sends a streak of frost along a wall; a servant cleans his office and is bewildered by the ice everywhere; the eldest of the palace begin whispering rumors of Aeor's Champion, remembering the old songs.)

For another, Scott doesn't really know how or where to meet Xornoth to defeat him. Does he just go outside? Call his brother's name? Hope the demon shows up, despite the wards around Rivendell preventing his entrance?

He really doesn't want to summon the demon. Somehow, that seems like a poor idea. Some part of Scott is certain that demons have the most power right as they've been summoned, and whether that's true or not Scott doesn't want to test. And he'd absolutely rather not have Xornoth in Rivendell.

The only thing he can think to do is meet Sausage's armies at . . . well, at the border of Mythland. It would be a bold show of support for the Ocean Kingdom—he would have either to march his army through Mezelea or sail across the ocean to reach Mythland. It should only be a move to make if he's certain that he's ready to fully enter the war, or if he's certain that Xornoth will be there.

And suddenly it doesn't really matter, because three days after the ambassador from the Undergrove arrives, he receives communication that fWhip has set out for Rivendell, thousands of soldiers at his command.

His hand is forced. Scott sends Gem a quick message, asking if she's been able to create the crystal. When she responds by gushing excitedly about the properties, he tells her to meet him at No Man's Pass, on the far East border of Rivendell.

It only takes two days to mobilize the advance party of his army, prepared as he has been to enter the war. He can but hope (and dread) that Xornoth will be there.

So Scott swallows down his anxieties about not being able to figure out the artifacts (and he really has tried, but he's only had them for a little over a week), swings the Codmade bag with both of them inside over his shoulder, and rides out to meet Xornoth.

With any luck, Aeor will guide.

It's a cold morning when Scott steps out of his tent, ready to treaty with fWhip.

Their armies had met the day prior, and both of their generals had agreed to a meeting between leaders to see if they couldn't come to an arrangement of some sort. So Scott steps out, dressed in his most moveable mourning clothes (a short veil tight enough to be almost a scarf around his face and head, a hood pulled over that, billowy black trousers and a belted tunic with an open-front surcoat) and the Boots of Alinar on his feet, the Crown of Alinar a conscious weight in the Codmade bag at his side.

And when he enters the treaty tent, set on a cliff overlooking a rushing river in the shadow of one of Rivendell's mountains, with Ilphas at his side and two guards behind him, there are more people in the tent than he expected.

fWhip he notices first, dressed in his usual black coat and scarf, standing between two guards of his own, elytra clicking idly. But next to him is Sausage (naturally Scott wants to kill him), and next to him is Joey.

Which is entirely unexpected, because as far as Scott is aware, neither of them brought their armies—or any sort of guard—with them. They must have flown over for this confrontation in particular, as if a war wasn't currently happening, as if their own soldiers aren't dying right now.

Scott can barely muster disgust past the fear (fear of what will happen, fear that it won't work, fear because these three men tortured him again and again and if all fails, he'll be at their mercy again).

Also present is Gem, wizard's staff in one hand, a leather bag swung over her shoulder, and Katherine, wings fluttering anxiously behind her.

"I'm here to keep the peace," Katherine says immediately. "I don't know why everyone else is here."

"I'm here because Scott asked me to be," Gem pipes up.

"I'm here to see my Xorny," Joey says obnoxiously.

It's less the idea of Joey dating a demon and more the idea of Joey dating his brother that makes Scott want to vomit. Out of all the men in the world, he picked Xornoth? And out of all the men in the world, Joey is his potential brother-in-law?

Sausage shrugs in a way that makes Scott want to kill him. "I just wanted to see it all go down!"

"Me too," a voice says behind Scott. Scott whips around—Joel's standing there, looking entirely unrepentant.

He was counting on the fact that there would be some factors within his control, such as who was present—he had only anticipated himself and fWhip and Xornoth.

"All right, this is far too many emperors in one tent," declares Scott. His feathers are standing on end, all of his nerves jangling. This isn't good. Something is going to go sour here. Especially adding Joel to the mix. Joel is hotheaded at the best of times—in the middle of a war, in a tent with the enemy? Scott doesn't trust him to keep cool.

Scott almost doesn't trust himself to keep cool.

"It's like a House Blossom meeting all over again," Sausage says, voice cheery in a way that makes Scott want to stab him through the heart.

"Hey, I'm just here—"

"This does concern me, after all, it's about—"

"Well if it concerns you, then it concerns—"

"—for everyone, so they—"

"—is that Lizzie said that—"

"My lords and ladies, your presence is acknowledged and appreciated," Ilphas steps forward, checking over their shoulder at Scott. Scott nods his go-ahead—he's never been so grateful to have political, stuffy advisors who know how to be polite.

"This is, however, a meeting between Lord Smajor and Count fWhip, and as such, no other rulers are permitted to be in the tent during the meeting."

"Aw, come on!" Sausage whines. If Scott could kill him without breaking a million laws right now. . . .

But they all clear out, even as Joel walks backward, glaring hard at fWhip.

And Scott is left alone with the man (and their combined guards and Ilphas).

fWhip nods toward the table and two chairs that have been set up in the middle of the tent, a clearly-just-unrolled red rug underneath them.

Scott waits. He doesn't plan on implying that he's at fWhip's command.

After a long moment, fWhip shrugs and sits.

It's the little things.

After waiting a sufficient amount of time to establish that he is the one running this conversation, thank you very much, Scott sits across from him.

He's about to speak. He's about to open his mouth and demand a conference with Xornoth. He's about to end this war.

But fWhip leans forward, a small smile playing on his lips.

"I heard it wasn't exactly quick," he says lowly, and Scott has a moment of confusion—quick? what wasn't quick?—before fWhip continues.

"Not as long as Xornoth was gonna make it, of course," he says, eyes fixed on Scott (and goosebumps spontaneously appear all over Scott's body as he flashes back to those six days in captivity). "If Xornoth got your little fish boy, he was gonna make it long. I heard some of his plans—something about making you watch as he slowly skinned him—?"

Before he even knows what he's doing, Scott's on his feet, hand dragging fWhip up by his collar, pulling him halfway across the table as the man lets out a surprised, choked noise.

"Milord," says Ilphas sharply, tugging on the back of Scott's robe.

Scott shoves fWhip back in his chair (which rocks onto its back legs from the force), hands shaking—whole body shaking, trembling with something like the grief-stricken rage Lizzie had shown at Jimmy's funeral. He—just to casually—casually mention torturing his dead fiance and—and Scott knows he's doing it on purpose, he knows it's to get a rise out of him, and he finds that he just doesn't care.

fWhip's guards step forward, though, weapons raised, and with Ilphas firmly pushing down on his shoulders, Scott sits back down, his gloved hands balled into fists.

He isn't going to stand for this. He isn't going to let fWhip sit there and just speak such filth about his beloved.

But he can't do anything. Not yet.

It gives him a bit of satisfaction to see fWhip ruffled, collar upturned and hair out of place. But fWhip just fixes a stupidly smug look on his face and crosses his arms.

"Scott, we both know you can't threaten me anymore," he chuckles. "Not since I beat you, whipped you, branded you with my own signet . . . there's absolutely nothing about you that I find scary. You've literally begged me for mercy way too many times for that, my friend."

Scott forces himself to breathe deeply, let his fists relax, even as the faded whipping scars on his back twinge in memory. He has to—he has to get control of himself, he has to conduct this in a kingly manner. It doesn't matter that he was tortured by this man, it doesn't matter that his fiance died mere weeks ago (over a month ago, his mind supplies, it's been over a month and the world has somehow gone on), it doesn't matter that he's only a hundred and nine, for Aeor's sake, he is a king and he has to act like one.

"We are here—" he starts, but fWhip interrupts.

"Xornoth only wants one thing. Well," he laughs a little, "a couple of things. World domination is pretty high on his priority list. But he wants you to give up the god, Scott. He already knows you're Aeor's Champion or whatever that is, so you are his best chance at finding the other one. After all, you've got a very rare direct connection to a god yourself!"

That . . . that doesn't make any sense.

The other one? Aeor is the only god that Scott knows of that happens to be living (other than Exor, who Xornoth is already irrevocably bound to). Are there others alive? Others that he's somehow meant to know about?

It doesn't really matter, Scott supposes. He's here to end this war and that's allowed.

"That subject is not the purpose of this meeting," Scott says stiffly, ignoring the chill that runs down his spine at those words that he'd heard so many times in his nightmares. "The purpose—"

"Yeah, yeah, you want me to not bring the war to you or something, trying to convince me to leave your people alone," fWhip waves. "Your people mean nothing to me. I'll kill them if you make me, but if you don't want me to do that, I have a couple of terms. So—"

"That is not what I intended to discuss," Scott says icily, smoothing out a wrinkle in his tunic.

fWhip raises an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah? Then what?"

Scott leans a bit closer, all of his instincts screaming for him to move further away. "I am here to demand a meeting with Xornoth," he says, forcing every ounce of cold anger that he feels into his words. "He has tormented these lands for long enough. My business is with him and him alone."

fWhip scoffs. "If you've got business with him, you've got it with me," he says. "So, go on. Say your piece."

You know what? Sure. Scott doesn't mind killing two of his tormentors in one go. First fWhip, then Xornoth. He can absolutely do that.

But Ilphas's hand falls on his shoulder, as if they know exactly what he's thinking of. It would be very, very bad politically to kill fWhip right here and now.

"You misunderstand me," Scott says, and his stomach flips because this is it, it's time to save the world and he doesn't know if he has the strength to do it, and he doesn't let his voice waver but he does let his breath catch— "I mean to kill him."

fWhip bursts out laughing. "Sorry—are you serious? You kill Xornoth? Like, I admire the initiative, but you're the weakest person I know! At least, the weakest living person."

Scott ignores the jab at Jimmy, as disgusting as it is. He just settles back in his chair, crosses his legs.

Eventually, fWhip stops laughing, and his cheerful demeanor drops into a glare alarmingly quickly, quickly enough that it unsettles Scott more than anything fWhip's said so far.

"Your funeral, Smajor," he says darkly. "It'll be nice to get you out of the way."

The lamp on the table goes out, bathing them in a cool dimness.

Scott's heart leaps into his throat.

He doesn't dare breathe in the sudden stillness.

The lamp flickers back to life, the once-yellow flame now a deep red.

The tent, which had been almost frigid for some reason, rapidly begins to heat to an unbearable temperature. Sweat breaks out on Scott's forehead, rolling down his back, dripping down his cheek. It's like he stepped into the Nether, hot enough that his head starts to feel dizzy and his stomach unsteady.

The table begins to rattle, quiet at first, then faster and faster and louder and louder. The ground begins to shake, actually, rumbling and trembling, and the tent walls are flapping in a sudden roaring wins and Scott knows he's coming he knows he's here—

The tent pulls free of the stakes and completely flies apart, the red light spilling outward over the darkening plain, much further than a lantern's light ought to go. Scott shoves back his chair and stands, surcoat whipping around him, searching the skies for any sign of his brother.

Scott's never really seen the demon up close. He's briefly seen him (outside of their youth) twice. Once was from a distance in the End, Xornoth standing atop a tower to watch the battle to save the dragon. The other time was just a brief encounter, Xornoth appearing behind him while visiting the Overgrown close to a year ago, seemingly to do nothing but spook him.

And now, as Xornoth appears before him, Scott loses sight of all his anger. He can't feel anything but cold fear.

Again, Scott's never really seen the demon up close. And as he stares now, feet rooted to the ground, he doesn't see a single sign of the brother he once knew.

Xornoth, like Scott, is dressed all in black, but where Scott's mourning clothing is carefully fashioned and clean, Xornoth's black robes are torn, his dark armor unshined and grimy. His feet are shod with armored boots, his hands with leather gloves, and upon his head is what could either be a literal pair of black antlers or the red-streaked crown of Exor's Champion, a crude mockery of the one hanging at Scott's side.

His face is distorted, blackened, eyes bulbous and entirely maroon, mouth far too large and cutting jaggedly into his cheeks. His ears are still somewhat elvish, poking through his straggly black hair (which had always been purple as a child), which trails down his shoulders and chest.

Whatever that demon is, Scott can barely picture his brother in its place.

Yet it is his brother, here and now, and Xornoth is standing atop a boulder on the edge of the cliff, dark veins of red spreading out from it through the earth, cracking apart stone and solid dirt. Soldiers and rulers that had been milling about leap back, weapons raised.

And echoing through Scott's head and bones and the stifling air around him is a voice that hasn't haunted him in decades.

"Well, brother," Xornoth says, their blackened lips stretching inhumanly, pointed teeth bared. "You think you can destroy me?"

Scott's really starting to think he can't. The very air is thick with the stench of brimstone, so much so that members of his army are doubled over coughing, and the wind is howling and the skies are dark and there's maroon smoke rising from the ground and Scott can't breathe, he's choking on his own air and he doesn't even know what he's supposed to do—

But he doesn't fall to his knees, even as Katherine does beside him. He doesn't cover his ears and squint his eyes shut, like Joel does.

Instead, he fumbles open his bag and pulls out the Crown of Antlers, which he trades out for the crown on his head.

And Xornoth's smile falters.

His gaze travels down, down to Scott's feet.

Scott taps a booted toe against the ground.

"That's right," Scott calls out, above the whistling of the furnace-like wind and the coughing of the soldiers. "I have the artifacts. I'm going to bind you and your master, never to return again."

Almost as if caused by his words, spoken with a conviction that he forces himself to feel, the wind changes directions. The sweat on Scott's back freezes. fWhip, mere steps away from Scott, coughs, his breath appearing before him in a puff of smoke.

"You don't know how to use those," Xornoth sneers, but despite the years it's been since they last spoke, despite how unrecognizable he truly is, Scott knows his brother. He knows that when his voice becomes harshest is at his moments of uncertainty, determined to command his way out of any problem.

That means he's scared. He knows what Scott can do to him.

(Even if Scott doesn't know it himself.)

"Gem," he calls over his shoulder, and within moments she's at his side. "I'll need you to hold the crystal while I bind him, all right?" he says, quieter.

She nods, reaches into her sleek leather satchel and pulls out a huge, clear crystal, bigger than Scott's own hand. It shimmers slightly, gold specks scattered throughout that somehow shine with the sun hidden by the dark grey skies. She hefts it up, mouth in a grim line.

Scott nods back to her, then takes a step forward, one arm up to shield his eyes as the wind and heat get stronger the nearer he gets to Xornoth. Another step. Another.

There's a crack in the air, deafeningly loud, and Scott only has a moment to register that Xornoth has vanished in a cloud of black smoke before a literal tentacle bursts out of the stoney ground right in front of him, sending chunks of rock flying, and wraps around Scott's middle.

It lifts him into the air, a sizzling sound and uncomfortable heat against his body and wings telling him that it's burning through his clothes and feathers, and Scott struggles against it to try and pull his wings free but it's holding tightly to him, raising him higher and higher into the air—

And then it stops.

Ice is gathering where Scott's fists have been beating against the tentacle, gathering and spreading down, and though it melts almost instantly it simply reforms, until the tentacle begins to slowly recede into the ground.

Scott stumbles out of its grasp and onto blessed solid ground (he loves being in the air but not like that), and Xornoth himself appears right in front of him.

The demon moves, arm reaching out, mouth stretching open, Scott's arms fly up to shield his face—

"Stop," Scott gasps blindly, putting as much compulsion as he can into the one word, even though he doesn't even know what he's commanding Xornoth to stop doing.

The wind calms to almost nothing. Ice crackles across the ground. The air becomes frigid, though the terrible smell still lingers.

Scott lets his arms lower from blocking his vision, terrified of what he might find. Dear Aeor, his legs are utterly trembling, but he doesn't have the time to collapse.

And he finds that Xornoth is standing motionless before him, face twisted in rage.

"Gem," Scott says, voice too loud for the sudden silence, heart pounding in his ears. "The crystal—Gem, now—"

Gem hurries forward, holds it out, and Scott musters everything he has in him and commands, making the words up as he goes, "Xornoth, Exor, and those demons within you, I bind you by the power of Aeor to this crystal, never to be free from it again."

He waits, breath tight in his chest.

Nothing happens. Xornoth glances down, eyes catching on Scott's waist, and chuckles.

"I bind you!" Scott says again. This has to work. He has the crown, he has the boots, he has the crystal, this should be working—

He shoves all the imagined power he can through the air, as if to push Xornoth bodily into the crystal, this has to work he's getting desperate—

He's knocked backward with a sudden force, a blast of frost and ice coming from his own body, and Scott hits the ground and rolls through the dust, bumping his elbows and knees and hips, his veil getting caught under him and tearing down off his face.

He lays there for a moment—he can't afford a moment, but he can't breathe—and when he gets up, pushing himself up on his gloved hands, he sees—

Xornoth is frozen, a giant block of ice encasing him. The crystal is on the ground, twinkling under a blanket of frost.

And Gem is on the ground too, slumped as if dead, hair white as snow.

No—no—

"What'd you do to my sister!" fWhip shouts, rushing forward to Gem. He kneels down beside her, pulls her into his lap, starts shaking her.

Scott struggles to his knees, tugs off his torn gloves with shaking hands. He didn't—he didn't mean to hurt anyone, he didn't mean to hit Gem—he doesn't know what he's doing, he was just trying to fix everything but he doesn't know how and he doesn't know what to do—Aeor, please—

He stumbles up, the lace of one boot getting caught under his foot and coming entirely undone.

Ice is everywhere. Great chunks of it around the plateau, coating every bit of ground in a sheet, the one tree growing in the tough dirt entirely uprooted and frozen.

Those members of his and fWhip's armies that are closest to the treaty grounds are dusting frost from their uniforms, some of them picking themselves up from the ground where the force of the blast had knocked them.

He didn't know the boots could do this. He didn't want to do this. He didn't mean for this to happen, he didn't want this to happen—

"You—!"

And before Scott can even really process everything, fWhip is barreling into him, sending him right back to the ground with an "oof".

"I'm gonna—" fWhip starts, straddling Scott's stomach, eyes wild and face red with anger, but a CRACK! that shoots through the air gives him pause.

Everyone, slowly, trancelike, turns to where the frozen Xornoth remains, and the large crack that's splintering down the ice encasing him.

With strength that must come from Aeor himself, Scott shoves fWhip off (he ignores the way fWhip's jacket goes stiff with ice) and rolls to his feet, stumbling toward Xornoth, scooping up the crystal on his way.

And then he doesn't know what to do.

He holds up the crystal beside the frozen chunk of ice that holds Xornoth, willing it to do something, anything.

"I bind you," he chokes out, pressing the crystal through the crack and into Xormoth's chest. "Come on. . . . I bind you!"

The ice shatters from Xornoth with a wave of heat that blasts Scott back, knocking the crystal from his hand as he once again hits the ground hard on his back (all the breath is forced out of his lungs and it hurts) and slides a couple of feet, feathers turning the wrong way and getting torn out.

Scott scrambles to regain his bearings—he can't breathe and everything hurts—but before he can even get from more than a sitting position, a foul-smelling boot kicks him in the chin and his head snaps backward, sending him back down.

He opens watering eyes, blinking several times to clear their blurriness, arms splayed out at his sides. Xornoth stands over him, radiating heat, the dark clouds in the sky behind him seeming to swell.

"You think you can trap me in a little piece of glass?" Xornoth growls, and when Scott again tries to get up, pushing himself up with his arms against the gravelly ground, he again kicks him down, knocking his head against the stone.

No. No, he has to save them—he can hear people shouting, he can hear screams, he's Aeor's Champion, this isn't how the story is supposed to go—

Xornoth laughs, cruel and derisive, before bending down over Scott and gripping one gloved hand in the front of his tunic. He drags him up, up to standing, his tunic tearing just slightly.

Scott can barely even struggle. His body feels like jelly, wings hanging limply behind him, legs almost unable to support his own weight.

He tried. He tried so hard.

Xornoth's face is so close to his that Scott can smell his reeking breath, see how the points of his black teeth glisten with saliva, but he can't even find the strength to tip his head back, get away from him.

"Even your little fish boy fought harder than this," sneers Xornoth, only loud enough for Scott to hear, and Scott's heart breaks.

Jimmy.

He just wants Jimmy.

Somehow, if Jimmy had been here, it all would have been okay.

A tear slips down his bare face. Scott swallows back a sob, brings up his fumbling arms and weakly pushes at Xornoth's hand.

Ice spreads across his glove, and Xornoth hisses before throwing Scott down. He lands hard on his side, feels one of his ribs crack with a flash of white-hot pain, and he can't do anything but lie there and try to breath through it.

"I am Xornoth," the demon declares, voice echoing around the cliff, and the armies waiting on either side quiet, the only sound Xornoth's voice and the once-again rushing wind. "I am the ruler of this world. The so-called king of Rivendell tried to challenge me, and has failed. If any of you who followed him wish to feel my mercy, give up your arms now."

Scott knows his people. He knows that despite his youth, despite some unpopularity among older generations, his people care too much for him (for tradition, for his family) to renounce him.

And he can't let that happen. He's done for. He failed.

Rivendell needs to surrender.

Scott raises his head, just a little bit, some grit that had been stuck to his cheek falling to the stony ground, and looks around—there.

He catches Ilphas's eye—Ilphas, standing at the forefront of his army, their grey cloak slipping from their shoulder and hair out of place but their chin held high and stance dignified—and ignores the abject horror painting their face, then gives the tiniest, most minute nod.

They blink several times, and if Scott didn't know any better, he'd think they were crying. They nod in return, though, and turn away, calling instructions to surrender.

Xornoth nudges Scott with the toe of his boot. "This is your king," he spits. "And he is dead."

Before Scott can do anything, before he can so much as move, another maroon tentacle cracks out of the ground beside him, burning hot, and wraps around his legs.

It's all Scott can do not to scream—this tentacle is far hotter than the other, burning straight through his trousers to his skin, but before he can try to squirm away, it drags him up into the air upside-down and throws him.

Scott doesn't even have time to process the wind rushing through his ears before he slams into the ground, knocking his head against a rock in a way that makes his vision flash black and grainy and sends pain jolting through his entire head.

Xornoth stalks toward him, he sees, through blurry vision red with pain, he says something—something terrible and pulsing—Scott scrambles back, his palms bleeding against the rough texture of the cliff, he just has to survive he just has to survive—

Xornoth grabs him by the right wing, pulls him up as the delicate bone strains, Scott tries to even out his weight to his feet but he can't find his footing—

The bone in his wing snaps and Scott doesn't have the energy to scream, his breath releasing in a little gasp. No . . . no. . . .

He meets Xornoth's eyes, the world hazy.

There's no pity to be found in those dark pits. No mercy. Only satisfaction.

And Scott knows, right then and there, with a clarity that cuts through all the pain and haziness, that he's dying.

He failed.

He failed all of them.

And with a burst of hot power from Xornoth, Scott is once again flying through the air and then he's falling, down, down, the wind buffeting his back as he goes over the cliff, his right wing thrown uselessly this way and that as his left wing tries valiantly to save him but his weight is too much, and with a gross clunk and a white hot burst of pain, it slips out of the socket.

Before Scott can scream, before he can pray, before he can do anything but twist his body in the air to face nose down, he hits freezing water and blacks out.

The last thing he thinks, mind desperately spinning, is that at least he won't have to live so alone anymore.

His body aches, pulsing up and down, from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his toes, traveling up each limb and down each vein. Everything hurts, in ways that he can't quite understand.

The stag steps carefully through the forest, over gnarled tree roots and clumps of grass, each step rocking him from right to left.

Scott takes in a slow breath, body slumping further against the stag. The fingers of his right hand loosely grasp its hair, his left arm hanging at his side.

He just wants to fall asleep. He's so tired, and it all hurts so much that he can't even think. He just wants to sleep.

But he blinks slowly instead, watches as a squirrel skitters up the bark of a huge oak tree. A deer pokes its head out from behind a birch, its ears twitching curiously. Somewhere in the branches above, a chickadee sings its repeating song.

Scott lets his breath out in a long sigh. His body rolls with the slow trundle of the stag, jostling his various uncategorized wounds.

He swallows, throat dry.

Maybe he can sleep here. On the back of the stag. Let it carry him to wherever it intends to go.

He's so tired.

The ground below gets softer, bit by bit, the dirt becoming darker, the grass more frequent. The stag's hooves begin to leave impressions in the ground, the grass springing up after every step. A frog croaks from nearby, low and long. The leaves on the trees start hanging lower and lower, dripping down into puddles of murky water.

And then, the dirt now mud and squishing with every step, the stag stops.

Scott should see why it stopped. He should lift his pounding head, see what's before them, because surely if it's important enough to stop the stag he has to see what it is.

But he doesn't have the strength.

As his body is pushed, further and further—

After a long moment, the stag bends its neck, head dipping low in an arc, and Scott begins to slide forward, his fingers slipping from their limp grasp, his body leaving streaks of red in the brilliant white hair.

He slowly slides further, further, until he rolls between the stag's antlers, his tunic catching on a sharp antler and pulling a long tear down the side, before he slowly falls into a clear pool of water.

He sinks, red billowing up in the water around him—

Sinking, water filling his lungs, so much weighing him down and down—

Down and down, until his toes meet silty mud at the bottom.

He hangs there, in the water, letting it wash away his aches and pains and all the blood, and he sighs, bubbles spilling from his lips.

He's so tired.

A fish swims up to him—a cod—

Hands under his arms and pulling at his tunic, dragging him up onto a rocky shore scraping his back—

It noses at him, pokes him hard in the chest—

Pressing on his chest, harder and harder, again and again and it hurts—

And then swims up to between his eyes (it takes a moment to come back into focus) and stares at him, eyes large and somehow desperate.

And he sees, wavering in and out, desperate and beautiful brown eyes.

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lokiondisneyplus · 8 months

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Potential spoilers below the cut, but a super interesting article.

Some non-spoiler pull quotes:

Tom is my producing partner in a true sense. Before we had any writers or directors, it was Tom and I for months building this story out. We had a 30-page document that was like, This is what the show is: TVA, He Who Remains — even Victor Timely was in that first document years ago. And it’s just carried through. -- This is maybe — not maybe — this is the first Marvel series to never have any additional photography. The story that is on screen is the story we set out to make. -- We were casting, and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” was playing in L.A. and in New York, but it hadn’t gone nationwide yet. I think it was going the very next week. We had gotten a call from our casting director who said, “Hey, I’m about to put together a list for OB — just initial thoughts. But before I do that, I really think you guys should meet Ke, and I think it should be Ke. I think you guys should meet with him quick, because probably by Monday, he’s going to have a lot of offers for different things.”

Of the eight live-action TV shows that Marvel Studios has produced for Disney+ to date, only one has concluded with the explicit promise of a second season: That would be “Loki,” the outrageously entertaining series about Tom Hiddleston’s god of mischief and his metaphysical exploits in the Time Variance Authority.

It turns out, those plans were already in the works before a second of “Loki” had ever streamed. As executive producer Kevin Wright explains to Variety, he and Hiddleston began talking about Season 2 of the show while in production on the third episode of Season 1.

“As we were shooting the ‘Lamentis’ episode, Tom and I started having lots of conversations about how this world could build out, how we dive deeper into it,” he says. “A large part of what we wanted to do was not trying to repeat ourselves, and not try to play the hits.” At the same time, he adds, they also wanted to make sure didn’t start Season 2 by “fast-forwarding through the drama” of the Season 1 finale.

And so much happened in that finale. To recap: Loki and his variant-turned-potential-soulmate Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) arrive at the end of time, where they meet the creator of the TVA, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) — the variant of the supervillain Kang who won a massive multiversal war. To prevent future Kangs from emerging, He Who Remains has used the TVA to maintain a single, sacred timeline — pruning away trillions of potential lives in the process. He gives Sylvie and Loki an impossible choice: Replace him as the head of the TVA, or kill him and bring forth an infinite number of Kangs.

Loki wants the first option; Sylvie wants the second. She wins, kills He Who Remains, and boots Loki back to an alternate version of the TVA, where previous compatriots Mobius (Owen Wilson) and Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) don’t remember ever meeting him.

Variety has screened the first four (of six) episodes of “Loki,” and without spoiling anything, Season 2 picks up pretty much exactly where the first season left off — before then charting its own storytelling path. The full cast has returned, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw as former TVA judge Ravonna Renslayer and Eugene Cordero as TVA functionary Casey. And Majors returns as well as He Who Remains, in addition to another Kang variant, a 19th century inventor named Victor Timely. They’re joined by new actors including Kate Dickie (“Game of Thrones”), Rafael Casal (“Blindspotting”) and recent Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan as TVA technician Ouroboros, aka “OB.”

Behind the scenes, there have been some changes from Season 1. The series’ original director Kate Herron and head writer Michael Waldron both stepped back to focus on other projects. In their places, “Moon Knight’s” Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have stepped in as lead directors, and Season 1 writer Eric Martin stepped up as head writer for Season 2.

To delve into the second season of “Loki,” Wright talked with Variety about casting Quan just before his performance in the multiverse spectacular “Everything Everywhere All at Once” changed the actor’s life forever; what the future of “Loki” the show and Loki the character might be following Season 2; and how Majors’ arrest in March for assault did (or did not) affect their plans for Season 2.

What were the discussions like about how to approach Season 2?

I think we had to just keep reminding ourselves that the TVA is a great world, let’s live in the drama of what we’re creating there. Which means not fast-forwarding through the drama that they just decided to stop pruning timelines, but also staying in the emotional turmoil that Loki and Sylvie are coming into this season with.

Also, there were certain things in Season 1 that felt like they were maybe a risk, and we didn’t know how the audience would respond. Once we realized that they embraced it, it felt like a lot of freedom to go further.

What did you feel was a risk?

In a very early draft of the script that Michael Waldron had written, that first Time Theater conversation between Mobius and Loki was maybe a couple of pages. And then a lot of other big Marvel-y action things happened afterwards, and we all went, “That’s not the interesting stuff. This Time Theater conversation is interesting. That’s what the show could be.” If we are really diving into the character-driven philosophy and introspection of self, that’s quite different than the last 10 years of Marvel movies. Would the audience follow us along on that?

Tom Hiddleston famously held seminars on the character of Loki for Season 1. Did he do anything like that for Season 2?

No, because we tried to bring back as much crew as we could from Season 1. It was largely the same team. Obviously, we went from Atlanta to London [for production], but a lot of our department heads carried over, so there was an institutional knowledge that was built in. And Tom is my producing partner in a true sense. Before we had any writers or directors, it was Tom and I for months building this story out. We had a 30-page document that was like, This is what the show is: TVA, He Who Remains — even Victor Timely was in that first document years ago. And it’s just carried through.

So even as Kate Herron kind of handed the reins over at the end of Season 1, there is an institutional knowledge that comes with us being the glue between the seasons.

You mentioned He Who Remains and Victor Timely. You finished shooting Season 2 in 2022, but did Jonathan Majors’ arrest for assault in March resulted in any changes to the show?

No. This is maybe — not maybe — this is the first Marvel series to never have any additional photography. The story that is on screen is the story we set out to make. We went out there with a very specific idea of what we wanted this to be, and we found a way to tell it in that production period. It’s very much what’s on screen on Disney+.

It’s clear that Majors plays an integral role this season, and you just alluded that Marvel usually does additional photography on all its titles. So was there any discussion about making changes to the show, given the uncertainty about what was happening with Majors?

No. And that mainly came from — I know as much as you do at the moment. It felt hasty to do anything without knowing how all of this plays out.

How early into the writing of Season 2 did you decide to cast Ke Huy Quan as OB?

We were in London, so I had at least some version of our scripts. The way the process works, they’re always being rewritten, but OB was in there, and his introduction scene was almost exactly as originally written. I would like to say it was in early spring, which was maybe just two months before we started shooting. We were casting, and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” was playing in L.A. and in New York, but it hadn’t gone nationwide yet. I think it was going the very next week. We had gotten a call from our casting director who said, “Hey, I’m about to put together a list for OB — just initial thoughts. But before I do that, I really think you guys should meet Ke, and I think it should be Ke. I think you guys should meet with him quick, because probably by Monday, he’s going to have a lot of offers for different things.”

So that that Friday, myself, Justin and Aaron, two of our directors, had gotten on a Zoom with Ke. We pitched him the show and this character. We shared that introduction scene with him and maybe the full script. And then we called in the big guns that Monday; Kevin Feige got on the phone with him and said, “Ke, I know you read the script. I know you talked to the guys. We really think you should do this. I really want you to join the Marvel family.” And he had already made up his mind over the weekend. It was like, “I’m there. I’ve been a huge fan of this for a long time.”

In Season 1, the show explored several time periods and locations outside the TVA, but in the first four episodes of this season, you stick to just 1880s Chicago, 1970s London and 1980s in the Midwest. How did you come to that decision to focus more on the TVA and building out its history?

Because that felt like where so much of our core character conflict was going to come from. There was so much intersectionality of our characters and what they think of the TVA. Sylvie wants to burn it down because the apple is rotten, as she says. Loki sees it as potentially the only form of defense against whatever else is coming in a war with Kang. Mobius and B-15, they’ve dedicated their whole life to it. They’re not quite ready to give it up. Renslayer feels like she’s been keeping it together, and you get a real understanding of why she thinks she should be the one to get this thing back on track.

We want everybody to be in the gray area — they’re neither good nor bad. They might make bad choices or heroic choices, but they are trying to figure out who they are. The TVA felt like the place where we could maximize that storytelling and learn more about those characters through that. But also stay tuned, because we are going to more places [in Episodes 5 and 6].

Do you think the TVA could start to appear in other titles in the MCU?

I would love that. Look, I’ve been siloed in on “Loki” for almost five years now, by the time this show finishes, and with every filmmaker who has put their hands on the show, we’ve all had the same conversations: It feels like the TVA could really be this exciting connective tool for all of this storytelling. And we’ve only seen a fraction of it. We’re dealing very specifically with this one smaller department with Mobius and B-15 and Renslayer, but you look out at those vistas — this place is infinite. The exciting thing to us is there certainly are more stories to be told there. We’ve carved out our own little corner of the sandbox and built something cool. We’re hoping that other people want to come and play with it.

One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about “Loki” is how it’s telling its own story, but have you considered bringing more of the MCU into it?

Yes, in both seasons of writers’ rooms. It always felt wrong to go too far outside of the box of things that would directly contribute to Loki’s character arc in these two seasons. So that’s why we get [Jaimie Alexander as] Sif in there [in Season 1], we play with the variants in the void and various levels of Asgard-specific storytelling. But while we’ve had nearly 12 hours of storytelling, it never feels like we have enough time. Eventually, just handling the stories of our ensemble and not shortchanging them has always been priority number one.

Now, Season 1 and 2 were always built to be two chapters of the same book. The hope would be going forward, there are more books that we can tell these stories with. I certainly think that we could start doing that.

Would there be a Season 3 of “Loki”? Is the future of the show finite or more open-ended?

I think it’s open-ended. We certainly did not develop this season going, “We have to tee up Season 3” — in the way that we did with Season 1, where there was a very specific, “Hey, we’re coming back.” But I also think that where this show goes, there certainly can be many, many, many more stories told with Loki in the “Loki” world, and in other worlds connected to Loki, the character.

Do you think Loki would ever rejoin the larger world of the MCU?

That’s the hope. I don’t want to — yeah. I think the the sun shining on Loki and Thor once again has always been the priority of the story we’re telling. But for that meeting to really be fulfilling, we have to get Loki to a certain place emotionally. I think that’s been the goal of these two seasons.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

#loki #tom hiddleston #kevin wright #ke huy quan #season 2 #spoilers

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mariacallous · 10 months

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Rescue crews are still searching Lahaina, Hawaii, for survivors of the catastrophic wildfire that obliterated the town last week on the island of Maui. It’s the deadliest blaze in modern American history, with 99 people confirmed dead, surpassing the 85 that perished in 2018’s Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Crews have only searched a quarter of Lahaina, so the death toll is expected to rise higher still. At least 2,200 structures have been destroyed.

During the 19th century, it made a kind of terrible sense that blazes like the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 could burn swaths of a city almost totally unchecked. Fire and building codes were lacking. So were firefighting forces and robust water infrastructure. By the early 20th century, those things had been upgraded. Cities and towns were safer—for a while. But now expansive urban fires have returned, and they are burning with startling frequency and intensity.

“We thought urban fires had gone away, that San Francisco in 1906 was the last. And now they’ve come back,” says fire historian Stephen Pyne. “It’s like watching polio come back. We fixed this. But you have to maintain the hygiene—you have to keep up the vaccinations.”

And the Lahaina fire shows that they can burn in places where nobody expects a catastrophic wildfire: a modern town on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific, whose ecosystems only rarely saw wildfire in prehistory.

It’s not the only recent example of fires ravaging surprising places. In 2021, a freak wildfire ignited in late December—way outside of typical fire season—in Boulder, Colorado, burning more than 1,000 buildings. In 2017, the Tubbs Fire ripped through Santa Rosa, California, and its surrounding communities, destroying 5,600 structures and killing 22 people. “Those aren’t fire areas—they’re just the burbs,” says Thomas Cova, who studies wildfire evacuations at the University of Utah. “They’re modern streets, modern sidewalks, manicured lawns. It’s really become, in this changing climate, much more difficult to map where fires are going to occur and what time of year and how bad they might burn.”

On Maui, as with wildfires all over the world, there isn’t just one factor contributing to the blaze. Overall, climate change is making wildfires worse: A warmer atmosphere can absorb more moisture from the landscape. Climate change is also making droughts more frequent, longer, and more severe, so there’s less moisture to wet the landscape in the first place.

Add high winds—gusts of up to 80 miles per hour drove the flames a mile a minute across Lahaina—and all it takes is a single spark to ignite a fast-moving blaze. “There’s no firefighting capabilities for structure-to-structure urban fire in winds like that,” says Cova. “Once one structure catches on fire, if the wind’s blowing like that, it becomes like a blowtorch against the neighboring home.”

These winds across Maui were dry as well, helping to suck the remaining moisture out of vegetation to turn it into fuel. That fuel seems to have been invasive grasses that European colonizers brought when they established plantations. When rains are plentiful, these plants grow like mad, then easily dry out once the rain stops.

“Those fire-prone invasive species fill in any gaps anywhere else—roadsides, in between communities, in between people’s homes, all over the place,” Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, told WIRED last week. “At this point, 26 percent of our state is covered in these fire-prone grasses.”

Not only has much of Maui been in a drought, but it’s also at the height of its dry season, so these plants have turned to tinder. “Feral landscapes fuel fires,” says Pyne. “Hot, dry, and windy, with lots of fuel, is the formula for big fires. And that’s what you’ve got here.”

In Hawaii, as in places along the West Coast, more and more people have been moving into the danger zone: the wildland-urban interface, or WUI. This is where nature butts up against human settlements or even intermingles with them. That’s why Paradise burned so quickly and thoroughly, destroying 19,000 structures, as the fire sped through pine needles and other dry leaves piled up around town. In Maui, the invasive grass acts as an accelerant. “Virtually every community in Hawaii is on a wildland-urban interface,” Pickett continued. “So we’re just like a WUI state, because we have developments that are all adjacent to wildland areas or surrounded by wildland areas.”

We don’t have to discover the vaccine against wildfires in such an interface—it’s already known. Massive urban fires waned in the 20th century because of better building codes, and infrastructure is still important today. When high winds kick up, they jostle power lines and can spark fires. Electrical equipment malfunctions were the confirmed causes of the Camp and Tubbs fires, among other recent blazes. While officials are still investigating what ignited the wildfire that consumed Lahaina, there’s speculation that it was also electrical wires. While it’s expensive to bury power lines, such an investment could go a long way toward saving structures and human lives.

And in the modern day, another big factor is managing potential fuels: In places like California, that means clearing dead brush. In Hawaii, it’s those invasive grasses. Because humans are such an unpredictable X factor in sparking fires—with a wayward firework or cigarette—it’s paramount that when people make mistakes, there’s less fuel to burn.

Protecting cities from supercharged wildfires also requires fundamental social shifts. If a tropical town like Lahaina can burn, which other cities are also at risk—and totally unready for it? “Normally we think of preparing for events that are within an envelope of historical, prior events,” says Cova. “This is unprecedented for Lahaina. And so how do you even begin to talk about preparing for things that no one's ever seen, including the people that manage fires?”

One of the greatest risks of urban wildfires is that residents can get caught between fast-moving fires and the limitations of city infrastructure, like narrow, winding roads or a lack of evacuation routes. People died in their cars trying to get out of Paradise, and it appears the same happened in Lahaina. “We’ve known for a long time—even in hurricanes where you have way-advance warning—that evacuating cars sometimes is essential, but it’s really problematic, because you get congestion right away,” says Ann Bostrom, a risk communication researcher at the University of Washington. “Any city where you have a wildland-urban interface, and then you have any kind of complicated transportation, where you don’t have free egress, that’s problematic.”

Protecting other cities from Lahaina’s fate will require fighting a battle on multiple fronts: managing fuels to re-tame the feral landscape, minimizing ignitions with better electrical infrastructure, and rigorously communicating evacuation plans. “This is the kind of society we’ve created,” says Pyne. “And these are the kinds of fires that society will have to deal with.”

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pretty-prince-lulu · 28 days

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The Fortress of Tathtatèrith (Plungedlaboured)

Is it finished? Nope, but I've done enough with it that you'll be able to get where I'm trying to go with it, so... here.

I'll put a readmore right here because this'll have more pictures than I have still-thriving brain cells.

Do bear in mind I've not actually been playing very long, and this is maybe the.... eighth? fortress? that I've kept from going up in flames long enough to have Something Going On.

Out of the gate was picking an embark. I've been trying to build a fortress primarily out of glass for a while and kept cocking it up or embarking somewhere that made it a nightmare, so I scoured the map of the realm of Romxah for the exact right place to do it.

Sand? Check. Nearby abandoned monasteries so we can acquire books? Check. Elves we can have that old sacred eternal Unsteady Peace with who come and count our leaves every spring like the wood narcs they are? Check. VOLCANO so I don't have to be at definite war with said elves while making the glass? Check-check-checkaroo. We're too far from the coast to actually have any of the ocean in our tile, which worked out to be vastly more unfortunate than I expected.

Starting out, I had it in mind that I wanted to make use of the transparency of the glass in the design itself, because that is Very Cool. I considered but ultimately omitted the inclusion of crystal glass into the main design because working with crystal glass makes me cry in real life. I planned to go with green glass as the majority material, with clear glass as the accent. I like the look of the result but clear glass is also, as it turns out, a wailing nightmare to keep in sustained production.

Approaching the main entryway is... this. (With current morale stats. And supplies. I cannot keep these people in meat I stg).

Now, obviously, this is sort of cool, but not in any way finished. You'll be seeing that theme coming up a lot. I had planned to involve statues of the Founding Seven Dwarves in some way, but I'm still kind of batting around the actual execution because most ideas would provide goblins a means by which not to get jet-propelled into the Fanta. I like goblins landing in the Fanta.

The slits contain serrated green glass discs, ten apiece. This generally has the effect of turning enemies into a fine pink mist (see: the pieces of said mist still awaiting cleanup). The Draltha are on their way out with the Routed Roads squadron, a soldier team that I primarily send out to abandoned monasteries to cart off the books. I'm not sure I recommend them as war animals. They're long-lived but I also have to remember to graze them when they come back, and then unpasture them so they don't sadly sit there with the chicken leg icon above their heads making me feel all guilty.

Zooming out a little as we enter the doorway:

These rooms are for The Great Citadels, my 'primary' soldier squadron. Each statue is of that dwarf (and their spouse if they have one at the time of stone-casting). The other sets are of each soldier's war animal, and the blank engraved spot will be for the second war animal I have not yet finished harvesting the alunite to immortalize in said stone. I know it's not important in the scheme of things, but I really like to track who owned what animal. It makes my heart happy. A couple of the giant war dingos have died of old age, which I didn't realize could start happening from age six or so and I'm very sad about it. I thought I read they got 15-20 years but I must have been mistaken.

They got dedicated and specific rooms because I hate, absolutely hate hate vomit hate, how they all get unassigned from their fucking bedrooms after being sent out. No joke, it makes me think twice about dispatching them, so this at least makes it clear to me who ought to be returning to which fucking space.

Down this road, with its perpetually unfinished walls and floor, lies the barracks proper and the road to the foundry. What are those statues and slabs, you ask? Every time a forgotten beast or dangerous creature that involves a popup warning dies in our territory, I like to immortalize it. I just like that you can do that. I think of it as a running history of our land.

To the right there is an access shaft to the mist generator, which is not working, and I am salty about it to the point of tears. This map has no wind. ZERO wind. I did not realize it was a possibility until I had already built all the fucking infrastructure so I'm working on... alternative means of power. But it stands now it's sort of just a Circle of Embarrassment.

The foundry's main focal export is glass- obviously- with its quantum stockpile for random bits of metal coming out of melted down goblin shields. The draltha there are not war animals, but instead have a different very important job- to eat all the mushrooms that grow on the sand. It appears that we can't gather sand where the mushrooms grow, and this is the only situation in which the eternal Snack Hunger of my army of draltha is coming in actual handy. God knows these are a bugger to feed otherwise sometimes.

Given the sheer amount of stuff needing constant melting down I am seriously considering expanding this foundry. There's little space remaining to the south before I hit the edge of the map so I may add more workshops between here and the barracks. I am hesitating mostly on pain of them being on different elevations and me being terrified of fucking up the magma circuit expansion. I know me. I fuck things up. And this is a very hot thing to fuck up.

Heading down the hatch and to the north, we have the trading depot. This is one of the most unfinished parts of the whole place so far unfortunately.

It will EVENTUALLY have detailed rings of glass flooring and perhaps dedicated tables and chairs and stockpiles, but right now it is the emergency draltha feeding tunnel featuring the Barrel Hoard and the accidentally wild-caught elk birds I'm trying to get some offspring out of so I can sheepishly return them to the wild and they can stop pecking our shoelaces in vengeance. I also have tentative plans for a statue-lined road instead of the paved path we currently have outside, which would be both 1) pretty and 2) an early detection system for the werebeasts knocking stuff over.

To the south we have another mist generator. It doesn't work and has redundant gears and materials. We have not finished prettying it up for its eventual functionality. We call this the fail hole. We go in here to cry.

Here we have the rooms of the Duchess, the mayor, the manager and the bookkeeper. Here, and in the hall, you see the first instances of what I was trying to do with the transparency. The glass floors show what's happening downstairs, and if I layer the patterns, starts doing really interesting things indeed- as well as creating an effect that is uniform, but at the same time varied and dynamic.

Further to the right:

The prisons and the quarters of the captain of the guard, with our stockpile of cages and assorted animals being trained. The idea is that any visitors are almost guaranteed to pass through the guard's corridor, which makes it easier for me to forbid doors and lock them up until dear lady Sibrek Amudalåth Ebalfer (Sibrek Thunderbolts the Revered Beast) finishes... dealing with them. She's our captain of the guard, dungeon master and hammerer. Judge, jury, executioner. A sweetheart, really, despite that. You might spot her around- she's wearing a breastplate but no other armour. That's not an accident- this way I can actually see exactly where she is and identify her fast in the crowd. I really hate it when I forget to arrest people. This happens a lot. ADHD and all... so I have to give myself the best odds of managing to lock up the fuckers.

Onto the tavern!

The Mechanical Cake was my first real major attempt at designing the multi-level glass details. The idea was that the 'cream' would get a slight spiralling effect with the furniture on the floor beneath, with the middle layer of clear-glass cream also having some shading because the construction finishes partway through it (this is RIGHT at the end of the map! I'm corner to corner here!). The spoke at top right connects... to things. Things that don't fucking work.

Every statue is also specifically OF something that is either important to the city or took place and is something we want to remember. Mostly this is in the form of animals- a few wild creatures that earned names through good deeds (or misdeeds, in the case of Omalurush the giant wren). The manera is the one who wrestled that forgotten beast. The draltha is simply a celebratory piece of the animal once we tamed a few, as is the dingo. The cat statue is a custom design entirely, made to celebrate Stâkud Wethandle, the only male cat we had on embark. He was not interested in helping us have kittens, so we had to buy another male a few years later when I actually realised.

Down south is our kitchen which is SUPPOSED to be shaped like a gear and spoke and NOT like a penis. I feel the need to point out the meals on the fucking floor and the HUGE NUMBER OF BARRELS WE VERY MUCH HAVE. I don't know why they won't use the barrels. It's doing my head in. It doesn't matter how many I make, they just sit around being tube of empty failure. I'm convinced this is a rudeness directed at me specifically.

DESCENDING DOWNSTAIRS FOR ANOTHER TIME.

The hospital over its water reservoir, the stone and gemstone workshop, and more dogs! Yay! The floors and walls are, as always, not yet finished. Other stuff IS finished. I swear. It's not all like this.

To the north of this stairwell:

The woodworking, craftworking and tailoring suites. Tailoring in particular could do with more space (and I DID use up all that leather... why do they need new underpants so often?). I'll have to think about doing that in a way that doesn't throw off this whole... thing.

OH SHIT, I FORGOT TO GO UPSTAIRS FROM THE ENTRY HALL. Uh. Brief deviation time GO

The underground processing facility with our very important Farm Draltha. Another one of the most unpolished sections but it sure is one I spend a lot of time staring at trying to figure out why I'm out of booze again. Featuring the wildly akimbo disconnected wooden failures of machinery that doesn't work, and the little corner notification about how many forgotten beasts I'm ignoring with ALL my might.

Scrolling up is the paddock proper.

This is also, at this point, pretty wildly off-brief because I keep having to expand it and don't have time to do that in a design-preserving way. I will eventually figure out a good form to contort this into so that it looks like it was intentional and not just sort of... built around trees and things.

Note the single giant elephant that I had zero plans for but absolutely HAD to buy because who WOULDN'T buy the one elephant.

We scroll up to reveal... a plain glass ceiling... and UNEXPECTED RUBE GOLDBERG IDIOTIC EVIL TOM AND JERRY BULLSHIT!

I rebuilt the bridge from the retracting version to make it the kind that launches things upward instead. Usually, those things go straight into the lava, but occasionally they survive and make it onto my rooftop. Whereupon they activate my trap card, and the serrated spinning glass discs make their debut as belles of the ball and then it rains feet and happiness.

um. anyway. BACK TO THE MANUFACTURING HALL.

Here you see the guildhalls, zoomed out.

All technically unfinished. I plan at least a few token workshops with desks and tables to emulate the demonstrations they so frequently hold in there. The displays in the back contain artifacts- specifically, exactly enough artifacts to make the room value sufficient to qualify as grand guildhalls. Zooming in, however, we'll find evidence of one of my more useless passion projects!

Varying numbers! The water ripples and flows! It does, admittedly, lose something from a still image. The idea is to provide an interesting design-in-motion effect beneath these halls, mostly because I never know what to actually DO with guildhalls that isn't just... you know, production.

Some of the detail in those channels DOES get lost in the water flow. This is what it looks like dry.

To the right of the halls is my secret shame.

The top section of what was SUPPOSED to be a perpetual motion machine, and instead has poop everywhere and generates no power. There is an anterior section below that is much the same. I THINK I know what the problem is but it's going to take a lot of work to correct and I kind of want to explode in flames before doing that.

Going down again, we have the cistern to the water system, the first section of residential accommodation, and the first chapter of the pet cemetery.

For some reason, I didn't realise until THIS fortress that you could bury pets, and that you were SUPPOSED to do that. Not kidding, I abandoned the last fortress once I realized I hadn't been doing it. Shit like this matters to me, so every residential floor going down will have a section cut out for the pets. I also include a slab and a statue of that pet, which so far is mostly of that pet being adopted, but in the case of the turkey it's 'that time the turkey fell over'. It made me laugh so I let it stay even though it throws off the design pattern.

There's about 10 residental floors beneath all the other stuff and they all are designed off this same pattern. Eventually, they'll get flooring. I swear to god. I'm at year SIXTEEN and we still don't have all the floors. Fuck me.

DOWN ANOTHER FLOOR!

The barracks of the Routed Roads. Unfinished and looking decidedly spoonish. This is the last barracks I've built- which, yes, means I only have two military squadrons. It's been enough so far because I've been Bridge Discing All who Cross Me. I know damn well it won't suffice long term, but for now I'm enjoying spoon life with occasional desperate use of Dfhack.

TO THE RIGHT

The All-Faiths Chapel (The Mauve Fold) with some pet graves and a dwarf funerary annex! I may have murdered someone in the unused cairn!

I vacillated between designing this temple as a butterfly, a clover or a filigree emblem so I sort of did all three at the same time. The stripes layered beneath the swirls are not just ornamental water this time, but that's for the next floor!

The two dead dwarves were vampires and kept drinking my fucking children. I DFhacked them back to life and I'm not ashamed. DON'T DRINK MY FUCKIN KIDS.

on the south side of this corridor:

The outpost liason's quarters. Admittedly built in a bit of a hurry. I wasn't expecting the Royal Entourage yet. There's still some ore in there.

BUT HE IS NEXT DOOR TO:

The Bronze Vault.

Designed to resemble a heart, with tables running down the ventricle in an effort to create a sort of shadowed effect. I expected to need to build more bookshelves. Have you ever looked up how many books they hold? Holy shit. You could probably make do with one if you weren't a crazy person. As is most shelves do in fact contain just one book. Everyone leaves them on the fucking chairs. I guess our asses like to read.

Orbitting the lava and to the right:

The king's quarters!

I was going for a sort of semi-transparency chessboard effect here (I just noticed that door I missed fUUUCK). The queen consort has her own tomb because she is also a baroness and required her own separate one, so I added it onto the design as best I could. Why do they need so many weapon and armor stands anyway? I never see anyone who asks for one using any of them....

AND LAST OF ALL, BECAUSE I'M NOT GOING TO SHOW 19 FLOORS OF IDENTICAL BEDROOMS, THIS

MORE pet graves, and this. A stem and leaves, with artifacts in the tips.

I know you don't need a temple to every individual member of your pantheon of gods, but honestly, it doesn't feel correct not to build it, does it? They're not used very often, and mostly just have Megadogs playing in them, but I still felt like they were important to build.

Starting at top left and going down:

The Earthen Chapel, where we worship the Diamond Rocks, a deity who appears as a female dwarf and holds domain over minerals. The Secretive Chapel, dedicated to Betan, appearing as a female dwarf and governing silence and dreams. I'd probably worship this one if I was a dwarf. The SANCTUARY OF OBLIVION. The edgelord chapel for Vesh the Fated, who takes the form of a skeletal male dwarf. His statue features Atir Releasechannel, an undead dwarf who worshipped him ardently about 1000 years ago (presumably for feeling a kinship?). I ought to comb the legends file and found out what happened to him. As an aside, this feels like a common name for a god of this sphere. My last fortress had Vesh the Fated Death. The Cathedral of Aquamarines, dedicated to Onget Canyonambers. The weird cube sculpture is apparently actually of Melbil Flankboulders being cursed to vampirism. Wonder if this one had anything to do with the pair I have in the graveyard. Onget presides over jewels and takes form of a male dwarf. The Helmed Abbey, worshipping Arban Healergates, a god shaped as a male dwarf and who is the god of fortresses. He's depicted engraving in his statue.

To the right side of the stem! The Silvery Sanctum, the as-yet-artifactless temple dedicated to Zim the Turquoise Spines, a female dwarf. The goddess of mountains. The Temple of Taxing (???) for Limar the Ivory Diamond. A male dwarf god, who governs… wealth. Ah. I see. A divine Ted Dibiase, only with presumably less 'going to jail for massive fraud on the needy', but presumably the same number of dollar signs on his championship belt. The Submerged Cathedral, appropriately dedicated to the goddess of water, Kogan (Not to be confused with Betan, even though I absolutely do). The Sanctuary of Playing, for Lun Dashedtop the Courageous Justice. The goddess of the sky and the wind, who takes the form of a female dw…

she's a giant bat. WHY ARE THEY ALL DWARVES BUT SHE'S A BAT and, uh, last one: The Cathedral of Avalanches for Uzol irongravel the Amethyst. Male dwarf god of metals.

and I will stop this here. enjoy the mental image of our eight perfectly normal dwarf gods, one skeletal god, and one who is a BAT for NO REASON

#dwarf fortress

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