#its the chronic thing of having too many characters and not focusing on the core relationships :(

[frogmascquerade]

Potd spoilers in the tags :D

[authorlaurawinter]

#ShowYourProcess

Rules: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Dropping this for The Curse of Broken Shadows

1) Inspiration

Basically, Brela was the inspiration.

Every time I write something new, I try to challenge myself with something new. The first book I ever wrote was to prove to myself that I could. The second was to prove I could write a sequel. The third was to test out writing in a different perspective. The fourth was to write a series and create my own world and magic system.

With TCOBS, I wanted to write adult fantasy with romance and magic but also test myself to see if I was capable of writing epic fantasy. Add in my signature flare - a FMC who is absolutely, unapologetically herself and makes all of those things above stand out on the page. Enter Brela, whose character creation alone formed the backbone of everything that happened in this book.

2) Preparation

As a chronic obsessor of having the perfect first line before I can even start writing, I spent weeks writing on a different project while I ‘brainstormed’ TCOBS. Read that as I procrastinated writing the project that was slowly consuming my every thought because I was afraid to start. I came up with so many excuses:

“The magic system isn’t perfect” - spend days altering the names of the core magics and their affinities.

“I don’t have the world set up” - create a map, name all the cities, oh but wait what if I need to add something later, I should make up a ton of other cities just in case, oh and those cities will also need history and people and maybe a story that makes it unique...

“i’m not quite sure what the ending looks like” - so why even start?

Until I just went for it. I said “screw it” and just wrote the characters to see what story they wanted to tell.

3) Art Process

Because I had the five characters (two main) already fleshed out, it was mostly about writing their adventures based on how they would react to situations. I knew the basic timeline of events until the middle of the book and a few scenes that I knew needed to happen for the plot that were scattered through the last half, so it was just about letting the characters dictate what happened in between.

The fleshed out chapters were the hardest to write because I had this idea of what needed to happen and I tried too hard to make it perfect the first time around. The other chapters were easy - just having the characters do what they do - and I found those days the most fun because it shaped what was to come in a way I didn’t expect when I started out.

I’m an “edit while you write” type of person. Usually to start the day, I read what I wrote the day before, make edits or changes or just add detail, then continue where I left off. At the end of the day, if I have thoughts about what needs to happen, I’ll write the bullet points at the end of my page so I know where I wanted to go. If I am stuck, I’ll leave it blank and let my brain daydream about it to figure out the next day.

4) Thoughts

I definitely covered some dark elements in this book, which made for a lot of challenges but also a lot of fun (that sounds morbid). It really forced me to look deeper and explore the spectrum of human emotion. Ex. I wrote a character with stockholm syndrome which gathered a few negative comments from reviewers who didn’t understand why she or her friends didn’t intervene to stop her from going back to that person. There was also other triggering moments that were explored and the consequences of those memories/thoughts/actions. In the end, it made my characters who they were in this story which might not go over well with others.

I also love this book because it really focuses on characters over other things. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a plot, but at its core we get to see characters flourish separately and together.

Plus, there’s a found family of assassins. And knife flirting. It’s the best.

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Sorry, y’all it’s been a lifetime so I don’t know who has done this yet. Tagging anyone who wants to do this plus @avrablake, @emelkae, @mel-writes-with-her-dragons, @the-orangeauthor

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

‘always and forever, lara jean’: a bungled mess of my thoughts while watching the movie

Alright, cards on the table: I never finished reading the book. I got bored a couple of pages in, so I just read up the summary on Wikipedia and called it a day.

Not gonna lie, I expected better from the movies. I loved the first movie; it was cute, it was fun, it hit all the right places. The second movie was… eh. Jordan Fisher is cute, so that’s a plus.

And then we got the third movie; the final in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy.

And it was somehow even worse.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. Despite its shortcomings in the plot and character development-related departments (the fact that Lara Jean wrote addresses for letters she never meant to send is something that will bother me on my deathbed), the movies have their merits. They’re cutesy and charming and enjoyable, overall; movie-LJ is sweet and unashamedly a girly-girl, which is a refreshing change from the #NotLikeOtherGirls, pick-me girls and bruh girls we had in loads of other YA movies growing up. Peter’s pretty cute, too; he’s not a possessive freak like so many other love interests (The Kissing Booth, After, Anna and the French Kiss), and his and Lara Jean’s dynamic is cute, too. Not to mention- we finally have an Asian lead whose Asian-ness isn’t the whole focus of the story!

Again, maybe I’m being extra with all this. The series is, at its core, solely for entertainment purposes. Not every piece of media has to have an underlying message and you shouldn’t need to read between every goddamn line to find something worthy of enjoying. They’re certainly helpful for whiling away a couple of hours; perfect for bingeing with a pint of ice cream in hand, and all of this is in good fun.

Also, it goes without saying, but: spoilers ahead.

The film beings with Lara Jean scribbling a postcard to Peter while she’s in Korea with her family. The inclusion of that little snapshot of Asian culture made me so happy- seriously, fuck everyone who says diversity in media doesn’t matter. I’m not even Korean, and I was overjoyed at seeing a couple of scenes just from the same continent I’m on. The K-pop music in the background was a fun touch, too (although all Korean music isn’t K-pop, but that’s a rant for another day).

(Also: Blackpink has so many more suitable songs than Pretty Savage that go with the theme of the movies. Kill This Love in the second movie while Lara Jean is getting ready to go to her boyfriend’s match is bad enough- they’re supposed to be in love in that scene, goddammit.)

One thing that bothered me throughout the movies is how obviously non-Korean Lara Jean and Margot look. It’s like whoever chose the cast went for any random Asian- Lana’s Vietnamese and Janel Parrish is half-Chinese, and it’s so obvious. You seriously couldn’t find two Korean-Americans who even vaguely resembled each other so they could pass for sisters? The actresses do a stunning job and I don’t want to shit on them, but I just wish they didn’t go with the ‘all Asians look the same, what’s the difference?’ mindset.

Also, a nitpicky thing I’ve noticed in movies with characters who read a lot: no one holds their books up while they’re reading. Your arms start to cramp, which is why you keep your book in your lap while you’re reading, or you rest on your belly and hold the book in front of you. My spine and shoulders didn’t suffer years of torture as a chronic reader for you to include characters who hold their books up while reading.

A major gripe I have with Always and Forever, Lara Jean is how the characters are almost jarringly out of character- not from the books, but from the two previous movies, too. Lara Jean didn’t have much of a character to begin with, so I can’t say much about her (she dissed Oasis at one point; it’s okay for me to be mean to her), but the rest of them are either caricatures of themselves or just totally different people.

Movie Peter >>> Book Peter. He’s almost too perfect (except for the fact that he unironically loves The Fast and the Furious, which… ew), almost too much of the ideal boyfriend. Not that my perpetually single arse would know. How do boyfriends even work? I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with one; how often should you feed it? Do you need to take it on walks?

(In the notes I’ve written towards the end of the film, I’ve complained about Peter being immature and making Lara Jean feel bad about following her dream to go to NYU. He confuses me.)

Not to mention how distractingly adorable Noah Centineo is from some angles and under certain lighting conditions (other times, he reminds me of the human version of Shrek and that bothered me). King of weird Tweets and Instagram captions though he may be, he’s got a really nice smile, and his gravelly voice is both parts sexy and disturbing.

But I digress.

I’ll never forgive the directors for what they did to Kitty and Chris- two of my favorite characters, from both the books and the movies. Kitty’s annoying to the point of being borderline unlikeable- gone is the occasionally snarky comic relief we all came to love; in her place is an annoying brat whose every line comes out forced. Also, making soap is fun; fuck you, Kitty.

Chris is essentially Dixie D’Amelio’s character from that TikToker Grey’s Anatomy ripoff; the main character in One Direction fanfiction from 2012 who doesn’t want to go to the concert but her best friend gets a ticket for her so she can’t bail but Harry Styles sees her in the crowd and falls in love at first sight and 50k of mutual pining and misunderstandings late, they get together. She’s cynical and snarky and hates capitalism and consumerism and prom (because of course she does), but secretly, she’s into it (because of course she is). My guess is that she’s there to appease all the arseholes (including myself) who accused the characters of being too one-dimensional, but it seems too out of place in a movie that doesn’t have much plot to begin with.

I really, really hate how Lucas was done dirty- throughout every single movie. Of course, it’s Lara Jean’s story so not every side character has to be fully fleshed out- but you’d think three. entire. movies. would be enough to give Lucas a bigger role than the GBF and the token black guy for the diversity brownie points. Every single time Lucas shows up, it’s to push Lara Jean and Peter’s story forward. I would’ve liked to see a romance for him pushed forward instead one for Chris- especially because he says, at one point in a previous movie, that it’s hard to find other gay boys, so it would’ve been sweet to see him find love- and Chris’s character arc could’ve been focused on reconciling with Genevieve. Instead, we see the OG Reggie from Riverdale be the one to show Chris the bright side of monogamy, and Lucas gets a date to prom as an afterthought (another darkskin black dude, so no one thinks the film is racist).

Genevieve’s character in this movie gives me whiplash. Look, I’m all for girls supporting girls- healthy female relationships are something way too many YA movies lack- but she goes from bitch queen extraordinaire to friendly the moment the next scene calls for it. Her character isn’t consistent. A redemption arc should be executed cleanly and believably; you can’t have a character be a total prick one moment and then suddenly be, “Hey, if you get into NYU, let me know,” the next.

And Genevieve’s still an arsehole to Chris; at one point, in NYC, while they’re at the NYU campus grounds (I knew that Lara Jean was going to go to NYU the moment she saw all the banners; I fucking called it), Genevieve tells Chris, “University is for people who actually have a future,” and I recoiled. I’m not the nicest of people and yet that was going too far. Chris doesn’t hesitate to shoot back a, “You peaked in high school,”, but still. Y i k e s. You can’t convince me someone’s turned over a new leaf when they say something like that.

Lara Jean’s dad (forgot his name; gonna call him Dr. Covey) is as unremarkable as ever, and his new wife (forgot her name, too… Trisha? Trina? Eh, something like that) is… unsettling. I mean, I get that they’re all loved up and twitterpatted, but there’s something about all the smiling they’ve got going on that chills me to the bone.

Also, Trisha/Trina kinda looks like TikTok’s ThatVeganTeacher and it bothers me.

Another huge problem with this movie even being made is that the series never had enough plot to continue onto a trilogy. Lara Jean’s letters are what the plots of the first and second movies revolve around; the third only mentions them in passing. The final love letter from Peter was a cute callback, but there’s a massive continuity issue with the first two movies and this last one- both character and plot-wise.

Maybe I’m not articulating this clearly enough, so I’ll use an example: take Harry Potter, for example. Harry’s main goal throughout the series is defeating Voldemort. And it takes all seven books for him to get there, to finally achieve this.

Lara Jean’s goal in the first movie changes midway; from keeping up the façade with Peter so she can avoid the crap with the rest of the letters getting out, to making her fake relationship real. It forms a bridge with the second movie; the letter that went out to John Ambrose, and her dithering between Peter and perfection (I’m not sorry). But what does the third movie have to do with any of this?

There were way too many music montages. You couldn’t go five minutes without a random pop song playing in the background, and it was annoying as hell. Don’t Look Back in Anger was w a s t e d on this stupid film. The artsy scenery shots were even worse- no, I don’t give a fuck about the New York skyline or a bird’s eye view of whatever vehicle Lara Jean is in. A few shots of Seoul would’ve sufficed; the rest was overkill. This movie is way too damn long already (almost 2 entire hours!!!); cut out a couple of those. No one cares.

I thought they’d pull the whole Aladdin trope with character-A-keeps-trying-to-tell-character-B-the-truth-about-a-lie-B-believes-in-about-A-but-B-keeps-interrupting, but Lara Jean (typing her name out is annoying, why couldn’t she have a single name, like both of her sisters?) comes clean earlier than I expected. Peter’s reaction about LJ not getting into Stanford is… uncharacteristically mature? No “Why did you lie to me?”, no accusations, not an ounce of betrayal. Which I did not expect from a guy who’s a little bitch for the greater part of book one (I really don’t like Book Peter, in case you couldn’t tell). I know fuck-all about book three’s Peter, so I can’t tell if he really did adopt this mature, well-adjusted persona, or the movie did it to make Peter seem like less of a dick (like they did it with the sextape-that-wasn’t-a-sextape in the first installment).

On a sidenote, how do these main characters in YA books get into really good colleges with zero to no visible effort? These arseholes fuck around for the entirety of the story and have way too much going on to actually do schoolwork, but they waltz into Ivy Leagues at the end. And apparently, I’m not the only one bothered by this.

There’s something to be said about how the movies don’t really sexualize minors (characters who are minors, to be fair. None of the MCs look anything like teenagers), though. It’s almost weird to see them not getting drunk and partying and having sex all the time. Maybe that’s why Lara Jean trying to get her hand on Peter’s dick felt so stilted and awkward (I cringed so hard when she kept trying to touch him and he kept pushing her hand away, holy shit).

And the kissing. It’s to be expected from a romance film, but there was so. Much. Kissing.

The amount of product placements (… actually, I could count only two: Apple and a pair of Beats headphones Lara Jean puts on at one point, but the movie shoved so many iPhones in my face that I’m obligated to exaggerate) would’ve made anti-capitalist Chris mad.

I’m guessing this all takes place in a parallel universe, sans the coronavirus. Still, being in quarantine this past year and being socially awkward for every other one, it was agonizing seeing everyone so close together in NYC. When Peter kissed the ball (lol) (I have the sense of humor of a straight boy in middle school, don’t judge me) when him and Lara Jean go bowling, I had a visceral reaction. And what are the odds of Peter meeting his estranged dad at the very same bowling alley?

Speaking of Peter’s daddy issues (I’ve written “Hardin but diluted” in my notes; I watched this movie at, like, 1 AM; I’m not entirely sure what was going through my head at that point)- I hated how they guilt-tripped Peter into giving his father another chance. In the wise words of Hannah Montana, everybody makes mistakes- but leaving your wife and two kids for another woman is pretty far from a little oopsie on Mr. Kavinsky’s part. I don’t blame Peter for hating him, and I’m not in a place to judge whether Mr. Kavinsky (does he get a first name?) should be forgiven or not, but I feel like they let him off too easy and made Peter seem like a misunderstood teenager with anger issues for not accepting Mr. Kavinsky’s (crappy) apology at once.

And it adds nothing to the story at all; Mr. Kavinsky peaces out after having one (01) coffee with his firstborn, and he’s never seen again. If you’re going to introduce a subplot, make it tie into the main storyline- the very least you could do is make it an important enough part of the story to have more than 10 minutes of the run time. It makes no sense as to why they’d bring up Peter’s dad in this last film, when he’s already gone through two perfectly fine. I guess it was a ‘tying everything up’ part… even though no one cared.

Lara Jean’s handwriting is surprisingly ugly for someone who’s written that many love letters. And her styling took a definite nosedive; her outfits in the first movie were so effing cute, but now they’re just… meh.

There are so many conversations and lines that the writers must’ve thought sounded good enough for someone to type out the quote in curly font and slap it on a screenshot from the movie to post on Instagram, but when it comes to the actual delivery, they just sounded… weird.

Peter says one time near the beginning of the film, “You know what I’m looking forward to the most in college? Never having to say goodnight,” because he expects him and Lara Jean to get into the same college.

But I guess the word they should’ve used was ‘good-bye’, because this just makes him sound stupid.

At one point, Lara Jean asks Kitty how much Kitty’s gonna miss her when she goes off to college, and Kitty says, “A four.” Later on, she confesses, “I’m gonna miss you a twelve, Lara Jean,” and all I could think was, “But we’re endgame, Archie!”

(In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t let people know I’ve watched Riverdale; it lessons my credibility.)

Still, there remains some good to be found: all the baked goods looked very delicious and made me crave chocolate chip cookies. Peter wearing the socks Lara Jean gifted him at the beginning of the movie was a cute gesture, and Lara Jean giving Peter her teal hatbox? The one she kept her love letters in? Was so? Cute? Help?

And hey, it’s a cliché that’s been done to death, but I’m always a sucker for that part in movies where the girl walks down the stairs in a pretty dress with her hand on the banister and the boy turns around and his mouth falls open and all he can say is, “Wow,”- and this film did not disappoint! Not to mention how cute both Lara Jean’s and Chris’s prom dresses were.

Dr. Covey and Trisha/Trina’s wedding was cute, too- I struggled to decide whether Kitty wearing a necklace that says ‘feminist’ and a tux is a bit too on-the-nose, but I’ve decided that it’s nothing to get my knickers all in a twist about (for clarification: it’s not the necklace or the crossdressing that made me debate this; I just wish they didn’t make a big deal out of it- I wish they didn’t have Kitty and Lara Jean get into an argument about her not wearing a dress, if that makes sense?).

And the final letter- the one from Peter to Lara Jean- I ate that shit up; it was so, so, so cute.

In conclusion (why is it so easy for me to crank out 3k about my thoughts on a Netflix movie and yet when it comes to English Lit. at school, I’d stare at a blank sheet of foolscap for ages?), did I enjoy the movie? Not really. There were parts of it that I liked, but it was overall too boring and I kept wishing I’d watched the new SKZ Code episode instead every few minutes.

But that doesn’t mean that it was bad. I kinda feel a little sad, actually, now that Lara Jean and Peter’s story has come to a close; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the first movie, is one of my favorites, and bitch though I might about them, the kinda grew on me… like an innocent plant, at first, but then like a fungus. Not a parasitic fungus, just not mutualistic, either… kind of like a commensal.

Maybe I should stop with the biology similes.

[c0smicheaux]

Third Houses in the Signs

Aries- we see an individual with a fast mind and an aggressive approach to communication. This is someone energized and filled with active ideas, whose mind never stops working. It is a blessing as much as it can be a curse, for the sign of Aries holds our unresolved anger issues just as much as it brings speed, intelligence and clear reasoning. When this position is accented, a person has to learn about consequences of their words, as well as words spoken by other people, and build up their patience for matters they obsessively think about. Stubborn communicators, they can be quite annoying when in a large group, at least until they realize what they need to do to become true leaders, giving respect to everyone around them.

Taurus- thoughts are often slow, static, and turned to hedonistic or material matters. This is one of the most practical and constructive positions, although sometimes irritating for people with third house cusp in signs that belong to the element of Air. When a person born with this position discovers their talent to create, it is easily incorporated into their daily routine, with ease in taking responsibility and handling dull details that would turn others away. This will bring them a lot of satisfaction in the material world, shown through financial gain and everything it has to bring through beauty and a cozy way of life. The greatest challenge of such a mind hides in their lack of flexibility and the inability to accept change, as in all loving matters of the sign of Taurus.

Gemini- The position of the third house in Gemini is the most natural of all positions. It is a blessing in itself, and a person always has a smart approach, clarity in their choice of words, and the same clarity in their mind. In a practical sense, it often speaks of one’s attachment to their sibling, and points out that communication is an important part of a person’s life. Depending on the position and the dignity of Mercury, we can see how challenging or positive their mental world actually is. What people with third house in Gemini often lack is compassion, as well as reason when it comes to practical material issues. More often than not, these individuals need a healthy routine and to build respect for time and their own body in order to truly be satisfied and learn to get in sync with, and speak from their heart.

Cancer- The third house in Cancer speaks of inherited intelligence, for better or for worse. If one is born into a family of well-educated individuals with a wide dictionary, we can safely presume that theirs will be similar and deeply rooted with their ancestry. However, problems with any sort of reasoning especially when it comes to division of rational from emotional issues, has the root in the same place too – their parents. They need to build a strong personality and care for their individuality in order to release some pressure from their mind. The main challenge of each Cancer thinking individual is in expressing their emotions in a practical and acceptable way, and they will often fight the battle of reason vs. emotion even though they should be accepting both rolled into one.

Leo- thoughts are mostly focused on one’s Self. Even though this can be troubling to many friendships and tricky relationships in their lives, these individuals have a task to build up their personality and character with clearly set boundaries towards the outer world. This is a strong position that brings a lot of ego challenges, unless one is truly enlightened and fully aware of their infinite abilities, including the one in which they understand that there is no thing that should be taken personally. In a way, these people can become the happiest of all individuals once they learn to accept and nurture their child within, clear on their own desires and goals in life, and aware of their responsibility. Only then will they express their core personality with easy and shine a light on everyone around them.

Virgo- this is a strange position that is as often weakening as much as it is empowering. While the sign of Virgo exalts Mercury and speaks of intelligence and incredible mental abilities and clarity, it is also a point of practical issues, matters of physiology and routine, and health issues that don’t need to be discussed as much as they like to. In many cases, people born with this position get burdened with their health, turn to the role of a victim, and some even end up in a state of mild or severe hypochondria, simply because they lack emotional satisfaction and search for faults in everything, especially in themselves. They have to develop strong faith and always leave room for love, inspiration and creativity, without digging for rational explanations for every single thing throughout their lifetime.

Libra- we can see someone who thinks and speaks of other people way too often. As much as this position can be good for one’s love life, speaking of childhood sweethearts, handsome neighbors, and the ability to see “the other side of each story”, it is also a challenge to turn to their own inner core unless they are properly built through their upbringing. This is someone who has to have a strong personality, always aware of their own judgment and attitudes, before talking to anyone else about them. Once they learn to incorporate their own opinions into the society, they become great thinkers and orators, with the ability to touch others and raise their confidence, awareness and clarity. If they become too judgmental, it is usually time for them to make an inner change and build a more satisfying personal life.

Scorpio- it is never easily handled. This is a strong, deep mind, often enriched with a sense for dark humor, and thoughts and words that are difficult to remain pure and free of dissatisfaction. This position is a strong one for science, research, and occult matters, but brings challenges in areas of the heart and emotional contacts with the closest people. Darkness of Scorpio is best seen through one’s mind and a person needs deep emotional clarity and enough laughter and easiness in life to accept it with grace and beauty. The best practice for such strong personalities is to imagine beauty daily and choose a creative line of work. If they manage to recognize the good in all things, it will clear up the fog and help them discover incredible treasures within.

Sagittarius- , we instantly see someone who talks a lot. This is a position for philosophical thinkers and people of wide perspectives, opinions that always shift to more positive views, and the ability to use their beliefs in the scope of their practical existence. It can also speak of solutions that always seem distant, in case lack of direction in life is accented and one has no knowledge on their own true path and destination. In a positive setting, these people are optimists, travelers and teachers, blessed by a giving nature and a mind that is always ready to learn. In a negative one, they get lost, talk excessively, while thinking and talking rather than actually acting in their own best interest. Scattered opinions and expressions will easily take over when they are tired and lost in their path through life.

Capricorn- we can see a pretty tough individual. Although Capricorn is the sign of depth and rational choices as well as practical use of all things in life, it is also a sign of karma, damaged things, mistakes and coldness of heart. To keep your third house in Capricorn balance, you cannot detach from your emotional core. Compassion followed by rest is the key to any challenge of this house, especially in cases where a sibling has constant, chronic problems, no matter if they are material, physical, or any other kind. At the same time, strong boundaries and the need for rest are accented, and one can easily give in to stress and discover that as soon as they’ve had enough sleep, their mind clears up and the future seems much brighter, or at least acceptable. If they learn to not take life too seriously, they can be incredible in-depth, practical mentors and a real inspiration for everyone around them.

Aquarius- we instantly see an incredible mind filled with brilliant ideas and a rich social life. This is a rebel that never relies on advice of others, and falls into the field of problems if they start feeding their ego through endless advice they tend to give. The important thing to acknowledge here is that everyone is smart in their own way, and nobody needs any advice given unless they specifically asked for it. With liberal expression and a mind turned to alternative ways of reasoning, these people make good astrologers, innovators, and friends, for as long as they don’t give in to stress and take good care of their body and their physical state. Without a strong physique, one’s incredible mind simply has no grounding to bring its sparkling existence down to planet Earth in a satisfying way.

Pisces- we have to keep in mind that this is a sign of Mercury’s fall. The greatest conflict of emotion and reason is seen here, and it can be confusing, strange, and deeply challenging for one’s ability to speak, write, or even think clearly. However, the sign of Pisces speaks of our talents too, and depending on the position of Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune, we can see that one of these talents can be grounded through positive aspects and dignities of these celestial bodies. In order for the third house in Pisces to reach clarity, all mind-altering substances should be avoided, including alcohol, narcotics, medicaments and even nicotine. Purity within will allow purity of mind, resulting in purity of words and reasonable life choices. If they practice what they preach, they could discover that magic of life is there for the taking.

Source; astrology-zodiac-signs dot com

[tryingthisfangirlthing]

Love, I’ve Missed You In A Million Different Ways (How Is It We Keep On Writing Tragedies Together?) 3/14-ish

So this is part 3 of my @bering-and-wells-exchange gift for @dapperdorian. This section kept kicking my behind, and I wasn’t happy with it, and I wasn’t happy with it but I had a plan to follow. Then last Friday this idea bowled me over out of left field, and exploded, and, well. It’s not soft longing, more like love-hate if-things-were-different repressed wanting.

And warning for implied major character death.

3. She Would Have Given Everything

“I never want to meet you like this again,” Myka bit out, as she grabbed Helena's hand and jumped them both to the posh downtown lobby.

“Well, don't.” Helena lifted one shoulder. “But I'm not going to aside while this plague wrecks —”

“If you want to help, go back to your lab. You are not Batman! Or — Batwoman, or whoever. One of these days you're going to get yourself killed!” And her concern was very real. “And we need you.”

“That fictional, pouty, playboy Gary Stu? I should hope not!” Helena arched her eyebrows at Myka, and shook her head in disbelief. “Quite frankly, I’m offended that comparison even occurred to you.”

“Helena, you’re not super,” Myka hissed at her. “And you have —”

A loud crash rang out above them. Amanda lost the queen, Steve relayed.

On it. “Get out of here, and stay out,” Myka grit out, and jumped back to the 10th floor to search.

Higher than 10. Lower than 15. Closer to 15 than 10, judging by the volume of the ruckus. Coming higher, the screech of metal giving way under demonic claws. Elevator shaft. To confirm, she jumped several floors below, inside the shaft.

The breathless cold split second of everywhere and nowhere. Steeling herself against the rushing freefall, the crack of instinctual panic. Up, look up.

A forked tail, lashing out, snagged her hair. That was too close. Closing her eyes, she jumped again, without those strands.

Solid ground beneath her feet, no large, otherworldly presence. Definitely in the elevator, and climbing, Steve. Then she fell onto all fours, shaky and ungainly.

“Don't you dare talk to me about risking my life, when they need you just as much.” A fierce murmur in her ear, and a vial was pressed against her hand. “Drink.”

Myka opened her eyes just in time to see the swarm zipping up the avenue, Helena flinging a grenade through the doors into the middle of it. Flame burst through the cloud of insects, licking at wings and silencing snapping mandibles. The drones are here. First wave is dealt with, but I'm sure more are coming.

Copy. She could hear the frown in Steve's thoughts. We need to get these civilians out of here.

Shit. Why here? It wasn't a food source for them (like the nuclear power plant just outside of town) or on the dessert menu (the slaughterhouse just across the county line) or even a good nesting spot (no large, open yet enclosed spaces).

Better here than almost anywhere else.

Office complex on a Saturday afternoon… You have a point.

Helena gave you something. Take it.

You connected her, too? A miserable foreboding rose in Myka's throat. But that was Pete's forte, not hers.

Safer for everyone, was all Steve offered in return.

Myka uncorked the vial and drank. It didn't happen all at once, but her heartbeat slowed, a new energy crackling through her veins.

“What was that stuff?” She called across the lobby, as she straightened, rising, testing her knees.

“Just something I cooked up.” Helena didn't spare her a glance, alternating between eyeing the street outside and a flashing gadget on the marble floor by her feet.

“Yeah, I got that much.” She rolled her shoulders, checking for any aches.

“Well, I don't have the time to explain the various biochemical process involved,” Helena snapped.

“I was pre-med, you know. Before —” She couldn't find the words for — this madness. “Before.”

“I didn't know,” Helena said, softly, and Myka glanced at her to find that this was the thing that got her attention. A kind of sorrow flickered in her dark eyes, and Myka almost wondered if she was thinking, for the first time, about how her screw-up had affected everyone else.

“I was going to switch over to pre-law, though.” She brushed it off. Something wasn't quite right, that last jump... “Just didn't know how to tell my dad. You kind of saved me the trouble.” Because the last thing she needed was pity from Helena fucking Wells.

Helena nodded, slowly, her gaze wandering back to the now-beeping device at her feet. “I was a writer, before.”

“I know. Writer, inventor, physicist, all-around polymath.” Something in Myka's back clicked into place, and all her atoms lined up again — sans that shorn-off hair, she reminded herself, running the flat of her hand over the ragged curls. If she tried to reassemble more matter than was there…

You good to go?

“You did?” There shouldn't be that much surprise in Helena's voice, for someone once heralded as “the next Jules Verne or Anne McCaffrey.”

Yep. Where?

They were all huddled in a storage closet on the 7th floor, eight weekend workaholics, one with a kid. Steve was shielding them all from the creature’s senses for now, but the effort it was taking him slipped over their connection as well.

She jumped.

Her eidetic memory served her unspeakably well, in that she could look at a roomful of people and know exactly how to reassemble them. “Hold hands, please,” as she reached for Steve to one side of her and the nearest civilian on the other. “No disabilities or chronic conditions?”

“Asthma,” one person in the back piped up.

“All right, noted. Shouldn't be a problem.” Where to?

Mall on King and McAllister. It was a good three blocks away, but definitely out of any potential lines of fire. Myka drew on all of her focus, making sure she could feel every one of them, and jumped.

A tug, a weight on her core, as she pulled them all through spacetime. Head throbbing as she stumbled onto the sidewalk, relief flooding her as they all came through all right.

Steve tightened his grip, wrapping his other arm around her to keep her from falling.

“You all right?” It was almost startling to her his voice in her ear, after so often hearing it only in her head.

“I will be,” she muttered.

“Get back to Helena. She'll look after you while you rest up.”

“Where the hell are Amanda and Pete?” Why couldn't one of them babysit me?

Amanda and Pete are doing their damn best to contain that queen.

Fine.

So she sucked in a breath and, for the third time in what felt like as many minutes, she jumped back to that damn lobby.

— Nearly jumped straight into Helena, careened as she shifted her destination at the last moment, Helena's startled “oh!” loud in her ear. Helena's arms wrapped around her, as she came to rest back in reality again.

“We've really got to stop meeting like this.” Low, teasing, warm breath feathering over her ear.

Myka let herself sag forward. “Screw you,” she muttered.

“You're quite welcome to, some other time.”

I just learned way more about you two than I ever wanted to know.

Butt out, Steve! And she could practically feel the same sentiment emanating from Helena, though she couldn't hear her directly.

Kinda hard right now, sorry.

Helena guided her over to a red leather armchair, Myka dragging her feet one after another. At least she shouldn't be crucial to operations now, unless they needed a scout, or bait, or a distraction, or a split-second save. Again.

Myka bent over, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, hair falling in her face. Tried not to feel awkward about how sweaty and gross she was making this nice chair.

She heard Helena make some kind of round of the space, muttering to herself, occasionally British-cursing at some gadget or another. Myka focused on breathing and getting her presence of mind back together. “Do you have another of those pick-me-ups?”

“I wouldn't recommend downing two in a row. Just as a precaution.”

“Okay.” She lifted her head, to watch as Helena watched the exterior. A laptop balanced on the narrow reception desk, floor plan of the building on display, surrounded by sporadically flashing indicators of, something, and now Helena paid this more attention than the view through the glass doors. A flash-bang off too their left, building lights flicking off and on again.

“Don’t tell me it wrecked the wiring somewhere.” God, she was getting fucking tired. Both right now, and of everything.

“That was me. Experimental chain-lightning —” she caught Myka's look — “Basically a super-sized swarm taser. Or, attempt at one.” And she frowned at the screen.

“Great. You can knock them out. Now just jump this entire freakshow back off of our plane of existence already.”

“Yes, thank you, I’ve been working on that for the past six months already.” Annoyance crackled through her voice.

“Stopping every time there's even the faintest hint of an attack to go play Batman with us. Or really more Lois Lane.” Myka knew only the vaguest of comic book premises from Pete. “Or whoever the mad scientist is. Harley Quinn, maybe?”

“That is low.” Helena's voice shuddered.

“I Encountered Aliens From Another Dimension,” Claims Sci-Fi Author; The Secret Crackpot Side of Physics’ Once-Rising Star; Local Mother Institutionalized, Daughter Left In Uncle's Care; the headlines flashed across her memory, and she hung her head again. “You're right. I'm sorry.”

Helena hummed vaguely. It wasn't quite acceptance, but Myka would take it.

“Hopper, 10 o'clock.” Myka winced inwardly as its spines shattered window after window on its zigzag path through downtown, thirty feet above ground.

“Yes, I'm aware. How about you do your job and let me do mine?”

“Sorry,” Myka muttered. “Just trying to be helpful.”

“Well, you're not.”

“Besides, I wouldn't exactly call this your job.”

Can you cool it with the negative energies? Really making things difficult right now.

Myka braced herself against the loud crash upstairs, the way the entire building shivered with the massive impact. Then a loud kreee! and the creature fell to the ground outside, writhing on its back, screaming as it melted from its eight feet down.

“What — did you coat the building in something? Or has someone nearby recently discovered the power of carapace-melting acid shields?”

A wicker café chair across the side street burst into flames, and Helena swore.

“Is that going to melt through the cement?” It would be kind of impressive, if this stuff did manage that trick. It almost looked like it might, as the hopper's screams died down to a low gurgle.

“It shouldn't. It should only react with their exoskeletons but —”

“It is.” The last of the creature utterly dissolved, the acidic puddle was now carving itself its own little pondspace, sinking into the middle of the intersection.

A loud sigh. “That's what field tests are for.”

“Really? In the middle of the city?” Myka stood, outrage eating away at her. “You are utterly insane.”

Helena glared at her, and for a split second, Myka was glad those piercing eyes weren't super. “Oh, I'm sorry. Was I supposed to try to lure one out into the middle of bloody nowhere, and try to contain it, just to douse it in deadly acid, and hear from you, ‘Oh, how could you, Helena? Doing something so dangerous on your own! You're too important and we need you working to fix this reality tear you ripped open! Think about others for once!’” Her mimic was mocking, annoyingly accurate for this familiar argument.

Stop it! Fight later!

If Helena heard Steve, she gave no sign. “Myka Bering, my entire life right now is dedicated to mitigating the damage I've caused the best I know how, and I don't need to hear that sort of shite from you!”

She was trembling; they both were. In her peripheral, something burst into flames; a window shattered, smoking shrapnel landing on the entryway carpet.

Myka kicked at it, and found herself swaying on her feet. “You set up a minefield?”

“A perimeter, yes. For the moment.”

“How did you lug all this stuff here on short notice?” She hadn't helped, she knew. She rested her head in her hands again.

(“You're lucky,” she'd told Pete once. “Your powers don't leave you feeling like three-day-old roadkill afterwards.”

“Yeah,” he'd returned, “but I do spend like a billion dollars on tacos now. Besides, your powers are way cooler. I'm just a regular guy who can lift a bunch of stuff.”

Myka had surrendered to eating sugar, in frankly pathetic quantities, to combat the roadkill feeling the day after. But that wasn't something she'd tell anyone, not even her best friend.)

“I didn't.” As nonchalant as you please.

Myka looked up, narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means, I didn't do it on short notice.” Helena glanced at her, assessingly. “It means I set up what I hoped would be a lure for the queen here. And once she's gone, the rest should shut down.”

“And you didn't think to tell us?” Myka was striding across the room, reaching out to — to strangle her, probably.

She told me, Steve interjected, and Myka stilled. The queen showed up sooner than anyone expected.

Pete might as well have punched her in the gut. We're supposed to be a team, Steve.

“Because we all know how much faith you have in my work.” Helena's momentary smile was saccharine, sardonic.

She sucked in a breath, mind reeling like the colors of a kaleidoscope. “I think you're brilliant,” slipped out. “You've got no common sense, but you're a genius. You're, what, five years older than me? And you've found a whole other universe. Like something out of one of your books.” Helena was staring at her, lips parted, that melting gaze soft and shocked. “You're just so stupid, and — and selfish sometimes!”

Incoming! Myka!

She didn't think, just grabbed Helena and jumped.

But she didn't have some destination in mind, not even some instinctive concept of safe harbor. And now Helena was here with her, floating in this strange stillness that was everywhere and nowhere. I'm sorry, she tried to say, but there was no way to hear.

Like being thrown under a waterfall, she had no idea which way was up, air, reality. Stupid stupid, she'd been so tired, she hadn't thought — and wasn't that what she always accused Helena of? The thing she feared most in herself, the not thinking, the reason for rules... So stupid.

She tried to picture the lobby they'd left, tried to reach for any anchor.

There, that stupid blinking laptop, she could almost see it, and the ceiling plaster raining down, the claws and slobbering mandibles and gigantic five-eyed frilled head.

She pushed Helena away, through, pushed her to stumble onto that ragged red lobby carpet, and then Myka met the monster's claws.

It thrashed, resisted, but Myka yanked it with her, and then everything went black.

[crimsonrevolt]

Congratulations Paige you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Augustus Rookwood.

↳ please refer to our character checklist

Welcome back Paige! To hear from you was such a pleasant surprise and to have you back is even better! We never know what Augustus is going to do and that’s what makes him so great! He’s complex and interesting and we’re ready to have him back on the dash!

application beneath the cut 

OUT OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

Paige, 25, she/her, EST. I’m from Tennessee in the United States!

ACTIVITY

I’m currently having to share a laptop with my mom, and Chronic Fatigue keeps me pretty dead for most of the day, but I plan to get online at least once daily to reply to anything I owe. So 5/10 maybe? I mean, I’m ALWAYS available via chat though, to plot or just talk.

HOW DID YOU FIND US?

Originally, Alexis, your former (original?) Rabastan. Then I was here for months, left, returned for a year, left, and I’m baaaaaaaaack! Lol You know I can’t stay away from my trash son.

WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH MOST?

In the past, I said Hermione without hesitation. I was always the one who felt a bit left out when new to a school, the one who lived to make teachers happy, and was a little too weird to make friends on my own without an intervening force. However, now I would say Minerva. In my friend group, I tend to be “mom”. I use logic and my mediating skills to make sure everyone stays out of too much trouble, work on guiding them through tough situations, and I always offer snacks when someone is upset. Also, cats are my life, and if I could become one, I would. Though even with the benefit of magic, the process would be incredibly complicated and I’m super lazy.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Nope!

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER

Augustus Rookwood.

Middle name: Xavier.

Name’s full meaning: Majestic, splendid, bird/forest

FACE CLAIM

Daniel Sharman

REASON FOR CHOSEN CHARACTER

What I put in my first apps: I’ve always been drawn to the darker characters. Especially the ones who appear very controlled when in the public eye, and then “let loose” when they’re behind closed doors. Then there was mention of his family basically putting him on a pedestal. I’ve always loved (and had a muse for) characters that have a little too much responsibility put on their shoulders by their parents, and then begin to crack under the pressure in highly destructive ways.

Augustus seems like the type of person who originally started out trying to be the best son he could be. Who nodded and smiled at his parents’ plans for his future, worked his hardest in school, and then one day realized there was someone out there (The Dark Lord) to whom he could devote himself, and not have to be so perfect and “good”.

Which is why he will last in this war. No one suspects the “good little quiet boy” who kept his nose in his books, and his potentially deadly spells to himself. Not even the Dark Lord wanted him at first. Not until Augustus showed him exactly what he was capable of, behind a locked door, when everyone else was out trying to make as much noise for their cause as possible.

Now that he has an excuse to use the dark skills he’s kept to himself for years, Augustus kills when asked to and tortures just for the fun of it. However, he draws the line at children, and will convince another member of the group to kill/torture them when sent to “take care of” an entire family. He can’t exactly explain why he’s protective of children, or why that mindset changes as soon as they’ve reached an age when they can defend themselves. Perhaps it’s just too easy, and he likes a challenge.

Now that I’ve actually played him: He evolved over time and his ability to suppress his emotions slipped drastically depending on who he was with. There were far more bad influences than good ones, and soon, a few too many people knew his secrets and he was caught. Since then, he has retreated back into himself as much, if not more than before, and mainly focuses on his job and making the Dark Lord proud. And God, he feels like screaming every minute of every day. As the climax of the war draws nearer, situations become more and more tense. The whispers behind his back make his skin crawl, and although he knows he will be protected if he lashes out, he swallows his curses like acid. He was betrayed once, and won’t let it happen again.

PREFERRED SHIPS // CHARACTER SEXUALITY // GENDER & PRONOUNS

Preferred ships? Augustus/everyone, to be honest. Augustus will have sex with anyone. Long time friends, people he wants to manipulate, strangers, whatever. Sex isn’t tied to emotion for him. It is purely the pursuit of pleasure. Hell, he would probably have sex with the Dark Lord without even being commanded to do so. Because yolo? But romance is an entirely different animal. It requires trust and emotional connection and way too much of oneself. Therefore, Augustus has only felt such a connection once, and he’s not sure he wants to repeat it. However, he could easily be in a relationship or marriage with someone out of convenience or friendship. Though no monogamy or cute stuff unless pretending for the public. He thinks it would be selfish to tie someone down like that if he can’t offer them what they need emotionally.

Overall, Augustus identifies as an aromantic pansexual (though those labels aren’t exactly a thing in the 70s/80s), as a cis male (he/him/his). There has been some gender experimentation with polyjuice potion, but that was purely for fun.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER:

Patronus: Lynx. (Lore states that the secretive lynx represents controlled power, individualism, and sharp-sightedness. Lynx people are generally exceedingly observant, quiet, intelligent, and curious. Though their independent nature can strike some as aloof, they are often excellent guides and steadfast friends.) Boggart: Someone outing him for what he’s done. Such as, a member of the Wizengamot reading a list of his crimes. Wand: Hazel (Wandlore states that “A sensitive wand, hazel often reflects its owner’s emotional state, and works best for a master who understands and can manage their own feelings.”), 10 inches, Dragon heartstring core, Unyielding.

Blog: http://avgvstvs.tumblr.com

LINK TO VISUAL AESTHETIC

Brief playlist: “Choke” - I Don’t Know How But They Found Me, “Strangers” - Halsey (ft. Lauren Jauregui), “Run” - AWOLNATION, “The Last One” - Black Veil Brides

Aesthetic: On one hand, he’s a smoking gun, hands dripping with blood, wet leather after a surprise storm, teeth on pale skin, the way a bottle of alcohol holds the scent when empty, skin rubbed against a rough brick wall, and sins in hallowed places. But then he’s also the smell of old books, chalk covered hands from solving impossible problems, secrets whispered to empty rooms, lies screamed into crowded places, nails digging into palms, tantrums behind locked doors, cold chains, hot coffee, lightning and hurricanes. But then as an Unspeakable, there’s all this mystery surrounding his job, and the strict rules he must follow.  So order and perfection. But as a Death Eater, there’s all this chaos and mess. Augustus in school was far different. Sweaters with sleeves a little too long, glasses to read that kept slipping off, smudged parchment, top marks hidden from fellow students, praise from teachers sounding too much like the praise from his parents, the death of a sibling and the expectation to immediately get over it, sitting in windows and watching the world move too fast. Everything was perfectly imperfect, and he did everything he could to grasp and absorb the chaos around him, and hold it tight.

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

The following section should be looked at like a survey for your character. Answer them in character and feel free to use gifs. Or, if you’d rather, answer them in third person or OOC without gifs. Answers do not have to be extremely lengthy.

♔ If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it: “I would not invent my own. I would simply rework the pre-existing Obliviate and make it much more permanent and impossible to reverse. The incantation would be obliviscaris in perpetuum (forget forever) and it would be invaluable for those who wish to use it on victims, or for those who have something traumatic or highly sensitive in their past that they’d rather forget..”

♔ You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one other character and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you’d want with you: “I would choose to take the Dark Lord with me, obviously, despite him never being one to follow someone else. His powers surpass anything the forest could throw at us. Also, I would bring a time-turner with me, due to its ability to help me return to any moment before I run into trouble, and allow me to take a different path.”

♔ What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make? “Those that require me to go against my deceitful nature and be completely honest with people. Like, a decision that if I am being truthful, would end my carefully constructed public image.”

♔ What is one thing you would never want said about you? “I would never want someone accusing me of something, whether I did the deed or not. How I spend my time is an entirely private matter, and I would rather not have others prying into my life, no matter what they believe I have done.”

REACTION TO LAST EVENT DROP

While Augustus is glad that the Ministry is fully within the clutches of the Dark Lord’s side, he disagrees with the eradication of non-purebloods. He has never been a blood purest due to his childhood as an outcast and the discovery that those with colorful family trees tend to be the kindest. And after his time spent in America surrounded by Muggles, Augustus doesn’t really give a shit who your parents are. He plans to do almost everything he can to avoid a total genocide. Sure, murder and mayhem are fun, but one must draw a line at the slaughter of friends. Perhaps. While he has no plans to actively work against his fellow Death Eaters, he will not turn down direct orders. And for now, his orders are to stay focused on his work in the Department Of Mysteries. He has a plan for The Dark Lord that only someone who works in the Love Chamber can properly research.

WRITING SAMPLE

Augustus hadn’t been in this to make friends. Since childhood he’d fully accepted that he was born to be a loner. Besides, everyone else just got in his way. But as he sat, with cold metal chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles, clinking every time he tried (and failed) to find a more comfortable position, he felt truly and utterly alone. For the first time in his life, he began wishing there was someone by his side. Anyone, really. Just another warm body to deflect some of the angry, betrayed looks coming from the seats in which sat the Wizengamot and others. At that point, he would have even accepted a few of his least favorite acquaintances.

Unfortunately, everyone he knew was either dead, in Azkaban, or in the audience, watching with bated breath. This trial was one that had brought out spectators from every department of the Ministry. NO ONE had suspected the quiet wizard who went directly to and from the Department Of Mysteries every day, never making enemies or even standing out very much. He’d played his role perfectly. Even now, he kept his true self behind a facade, acting the part of the wrongly accused. Because he truly intended to leave the trial a free man. What good was the word of Karkaroff against his? The headmaster of a foreign school known to breed dark wizards, against a ‘friend’ of many at the Ministry? He’d spent countless hours cultivating false relationships with these people, earning their trust, and then gathering secrets. And until his name was spat by Karkaroff, it hadn’t so much as flashed through people’s minds. Not since he was pardoned all those years ago after his interrogation at the hands of Aversio.

The questions were easily answered with lies, and he even asked some of his own. “Where were you on the night of (…)?” “Where was I? Where were your Aurors? How could you let this happen?” “Who else answers to He Who Must Not Be Named?” “Clearly you’re bringing anyone in these days. If I pointed at any of you, would you put them on trial too?” Until the lies weren’t enough to get him released, and a vial of Veritaserum was brought out.

Rookwood started to sweat in that moment. His breath became ragged and his hands began to violently shake. If he was being honest with himself, he would have realized that it was sheer terror he was experiencing. As the potion was carried across the room and uncorked, he’d half expected someone to burst into the room and save him. The other part of him knew his entire life was about to change for the worse. Even as the liquid was forced into his mouth, possible scenarios of escape danced through his mind. If only the chains were slightly loose. Maybe one of his fellow Death Eaters sat amongst the crowd. Yaxley? Cassius? Dolores? Perhaps someone would have a sudden change of heart and remember how impossible it seemed for him to be a part of this. But alas, the chains were magic, all of his comrades had already been captured or killed, and after the trial of Barty Crouch Jr., no one trusted even the least suspicious person.

And then words were spilling past his lips, almost too fast, with the sting of Veritaserum still on his tongue. When asked about his dealings with the Death Eaters, he held nothing back, despite the deep ache within his very soul that got stronger with each new thing he revealed. Both the Wizengamot and the audience gasped as he told details of the lives he’d destroyed. How he’d stalked several entire families before torturing and killing them. The bodies he’d left in alleyways. The memories he’d stolen from those he’d left bloody and beaten. The way it made him feel when people begged. He told them it was an almost sexual satisfaction, and the Veritaserum-induced smirk that went along with his words must have been the final nail in his coffin, because the trial ended swiftly after that.

Augustus was forced to watch as his beloved wand was snapped in half in front of him, and he was immediately taken to a cold, damp room where an elderly wizard stripped him of his fine, embroidered robes and a pair of striped, dirty ones were shoved into his hands. He would be taking a portkey to Azkaban directly from that room, without a chance to say goodbye to anyone. Not that he cared very much for anyone in his life, especially those not currently residing in the prison he was destined for, but it was all very sudden. Like a flower being plucked from a vast garden and shoved into a dusty old vase, just waiting to die.

And in this little vase of his, he was alone.

[theonyxpath]

I thought about holding that pun back for a post about the powers set, but… Nah.

Welcome back, faithful readers!

Deviant: The Renegades is but two first drafts off being in Redlines. Since I last wrote one of these posts, a good 95% of the book has appeared on my hard drive through the hard work and dedication of my amazing team.

You’ve all seen the ubiquitous Theme and Mood sections in our book introductions, something that dates back to the early Classic World of Darkness games. They’re usually the first thing a Developer writes into a book’s outline, and the choice of them defines a gameline. Mechanics, splat designs, setting elements – they all work best when they’re aimed at one of their games’ themes. The Chronicles of Darkness games all share a common mechanical and setting backbone – the themes chosen are how they differentiate themselves, and how Deviant isn’t just a Hunter/Changeling/Promethean crossover.

Which is to say, that when designing a new game, what its Themes and Mood are is a fairly huge decision. Also equally important are the tone we write in, the style of language we use, and the design elements like the page borders, the layout set for the game, and even the art style that are more Mirthful Mike Chaney’s department.

A game with depth has more than one theme of course – Mage: The Awakening‘s main theme is Addicted to Mysteries, but it’s about academic politics, the responsibility of the privileged, resistance to tyranny and a lot more. Vampire: The Requiem is about unhealthy relationships as well as its stated theme of getting through the night. We usually don’t publish sub-themes in the books (they’d take up too much space) and leave them for setting bibles and other backstage documents, but we spend almost as much time on them.

Last time we laid out what Deviant is like as a game and setting. This time, we’re talking what Deviant is about.

Theme: Isolation

David Cronenburg is famous for it, but Ovid did it first. Mutation is a metaphor for isolation. Changes in the flesh making someone less than human mirror their disconnection from society until you can’t tell which came first, the divergence or the isolation. And it progresses. The Fly seems normal at first. Tetsuo immediately after empowerment is not the monstrous cathedral of flesh he becomes, but as he’s driven away from his loved ones, he worsens, until he accidentally kills Kaori and loses control. Sometimes, a character can come back from the brink, finding something to anchor their humanity (which almost always, in Deviant’s inspirations, means what the game would classify as Loyalty). Robocop regains his identity as Murphy. Guyver and Spawn become heroes, of sorts.

The Remade have lost their place among humanity. Most are disfigured by their scars, but even the lucky few who can pass for normal are being hunted by the Conspiracy, and being identified, or going back to their pre-Divergence lives, is a fast-track to being found. So, they flee, and become isolated. Revealing themselves might gain a new ally, or it might elicit disgust and fear which drives them even further away. And that, thanks to the mechanics for Conviction, Loyalty, and Instability, is a slow death sentence. To survive, a Deviant needs connection. Or, in game terms, Touchstones.

Mood: The Cost of Revenge

If Deviant were only about isolated mutants, it’d be a grab-bag of powers without a game. Players’ characters need something to do, that drives them on. Vampire depicts the struggle to survive every night with its attendant compromises, Mummy the missions the Arisen return from death with.

Deviant is about Revenge. The Remade hide from the Conspiracies in order to gain places of safety, but instead of digging in Conviction drives them to confront their personal demons – they’re compelled to strike back, harass their enemies, and get payback for every wrong done to them. Loyalty gives them something to protect from the Conspiracies. Setting the gameline up around this antagonist relationship – Renegade vs Conspiracy – needs mechanical backing in the games’ rules. In broad power level terms, Deviants are weaker than other gameline-types because their foes are (mostly) normal human beings, albeit well-organized ones. Our Conspiracy system will give rules for the Conspiracy-as-a-character, putting dots and dice rolls to the fight.

But Deviant is also a Chronicles of Darkness game. It isn’t as easy as good guys and bad guys. The CofD games are prized for putting faces on antagonist factions, for looking at the consequences of violence and leaving blood on the asphalt. The violence systems are designed for brutal beatdowns in alleyways, not action-movie heroics.

Our mood, then, is the cost of revenge. To the one seeking it, those they seek it on, and those caught up in the crossfire. Think Oldboy, not the Count of Monte Cristo.

Style: Gothic Science

Mage took all the Greek, Promethean took the Alchemical terms, Demon did the no-nonsense spy and technology lingo. For Deviant’s Lexicon, whenever we’ve needed to name a term we’ve gone for something that wouldn’t seem out of place in a 19th century natural philosophy or early scientific text. Look at the terms we’ve already got – Origin, Divergence, and Clade are straight out of Darwin. Within Deviant’s setting, the foremost scholars of the Remade aren’t Renegades but the conspiracies themselves, so common terms are usually something you can see a gothic secret society of meddlers in things man was not meant to meddle in using. Renegades have their own, much blunter, nicknames for a lot of things, that they tend to use when they don’t want to let the enemy define them. For example, one of the Origins is “officially” Exomorphs, but Renegade Deviants of that Origin normally just call themselves Unwilling.

And where something’s a game trait without any in-character definition for it, we’ve gone for as no-nonsense as we can – Conviction, Loyalty, Stability, etc.

And as the Awakening Developer, I am happy to report that Deviant‘s Lexicon is much, much shorter. Though that wouldn’t be hard. (Awakening‘s runs to hundreds of words, often with weird tenses, and I keep it in a spreadsheet.)

Tone: Simmering Hate

The tone for Deviant is one of suppressed violence, focused animosity, and simmering hate. The Remade are defined by a handful of touchstones, both loves and hatreds, and the Renegades focus particularly on enemies. Everyone else, for better or worse, is a bystander at best or collateral damage at worst. The Remade, to paraphrase John Wick, have focus and commitment, and dedication to making their enemies pay.

That capacity for violence is always there. The Remade aren’t like vampires or werewolves, frenzing or raging for a scene when provoked then feeling its aftermath – they’re always this pissed off, incapable of sating it. Even when a particular touchstone is punished to death, a Renegade can find more foes – and has to, if he wants to avoid degenerating into a monster.

Secondary Themes

A good game has a wider mandate than just its core Theme and Mood, and Deviant has more going on beneath its mutated skin.

Down and Out in the Chronicles of Darkness

Thanks to the conspiracies, mortal society is turned against the Remade, and the need to stay hidden, mobile, but able to strike back as Conviction dictates, along with the fact that most have nothing at all to their name, means most Renegades experience the world from the gutter. In the corebook, and especially in the Storyteller’s Chapter, we’ll be looking at advice for setting chronicles among the homeless and underclass. The game’s conspiracy mechanics will have rolls for the Conspiracy tracking any Remade who stay “on the grid” and try to use Resources, Status, and other Merits. (Those Merit’s entries in the character creation section will also warn the reader that they’re a double-edged sword) and we’ll focus the equipment and availability section of the core rules on things like Cash and alternate means of getting hold of needed supplies.

Few Friends, Many Enemies

When you’re on the run and your inhuman nature is progressively getting worse, a friend is a rare and precious thing, while enemies are everywhere. The true cost of a Renegade’s war isn’t the servants of the Conspiracy she fights or the Scars she suffers, but the toll it takes on her remaining supporters, each of whom is a valuable lifeline against Instability. Nothing stings a Remade harder than sacrificing a friendship in order to pursue their battle with the Conspiracy, and that’s going to be backed up with mechanics.

Anger at Bodily Failings

Body Horror isn’t about the gross-out. On a major level, it’s about becoming different as a metaphor for isolation, but Deviant leavens it with anger. Renegades are angry at the Conspiracies, sure (and those who have them at their Progenitors) but that’s what anyone should feel about a shadowy group bent on ruining their life and enslaving them. What fans the flames of the Remade’s legendary anger is their anger at what their changes have done to them. This should be easy to relate to, as writers and for our readers; whether you’re disabled, chronically ill, or just getting old, after a certain amount of time everyone’s body has let them down. Everyone’s had a moment when they tried to do something they used to be able to but couldn’t now, or when they realized that something had changed within them and wasn’t ever going to change back. The Remade’s anger is the anger of a war vet who came back without his legs, of an artist who’s going blind, of a public speaker who had a stroke and now can’t access his vocabulary. The flesh has failed them, and it pisses them off. Because of their broken souls, they can’t just internalize that anger – it needs a target, which is where Conviction comes in.

The Self–Martyring Impulse

Have you ever known someone in a bad situation who’s too busy lashing out at it to climb out? Have you ever known that something is the right thing to do even though it will cost you, and felt, secretly, that the cost made it more significant, more attractive a choice? I have, and the Remade do. Whether it’s because they feel worthless after their Divergence, or that they don’t deserve their friends, or a myriad of other reasons, a Renegade’s own worst enemy is often herself. Chronicles of Darkness games have a tried and true method of encouraging self-destructive behavior by characters, which is to give the player beats as a reward. When writing Deviant mechanics, use the carrot of player reward as well as the stick of mechanical drawbacks to push this theme.

People as Commodities / Self-Determination

The great sin of the Conspiracies is that they treat people as things. Even those Remade who weren’t literally kidnapped and forced into their Divergence are sought as resources or commodities by their antagonists. With their humanity fundamentally broken by their experience, how much personhood can a Deviant cling on to, and how much are they willing to let go to get their revenge or prevent others from falling into the same fate? Renegades are people who, no matter what happens to them, are determined to never be slaves again. While most of this will come through in the setting, there’s a slight mechanical edge to it – much as Demons are the perfect liars, Remade are really, really hard to mind-control, and most are stubborn as all hell on top of that.

Punching Nazis

All things said and done, though, there’s something awfully cathartic about beating on people who thoroughly deserve it, and we must cater for troupes who want to play Deviant that way, too. Not every encounter with agents of the Conspiracy should be a moral quandary, and Renegades who want to live longer learn to value and fight to protect something, not just for their own revenge.

————–

… And I think that’ll do for today, and this post. The Deviant bible goes on to define some anti-themes; what Deviant is not about, but let’s focus on the positive. Although I might do a blog about the concept of The Buy In that we’ve spoken about on a couple of occasions before.

Once the game is into redlines, I will start picking out a couple of specific things – the Origins, maybe, or the Clades, or Devoted. Don’t know when it’ll go up, probably sometime early next year, if I’m honest.

Dragonmeet!

As Rich says in his Monday Meeting blog, I, Eddy Webb (who as well as being King of Pugmire graciously wrote Deviant‘s chapter fiction,) and Matthew Dawkins (who isn’t connected to Deviant but is an alright guy as well, I suppose) will be at Dragonmeet ’17 in London, UK, this weekend. We’re not as organized as the bunch who went to PAX a little while ago so there isn’t an Onyx Path booth, but we’ll be wandering around. Say hello! I will have Deviant‘s first draft with me, and as anyone knows I care not for things like spoilers with a pint in me.

[nearlyhuman]

Long Post: An explanation about what anarchism is, why i’m an anarchist, and why it’s such a big part of my life all of a sudden

[[Since I don’t have much time before I need to get back to my homework, I am not going to edit this post super carefully to make sure I don’t sound like a dork or a narcissist. This post isn’t really meant for random followers, but people who know me irl. And I hope the people who know me irl don’t think i’m a narcissist and forgive me for being a dork. ]]

Beginning two years ago but not really taking root until a year-ish ago, anarchism became an idea in my mind with increasing pull and importance. As it has become a bigger inspiration and influence in my life/brain, I’ve brought it up in countless conversations and for the most part get blank stares, confusion, misconception, or the impression that the person i’m talking to wants to leave immediately because i’m scaring them or weirding them out or coming on too strong or w/e. I accepted, several months ago, that I can’t keep bringing it up if people aren’t interested. But recent weeks have made me realize that I should at least explain myself somewhere, once, in an impersonal setting, just to avoid constantly feeling like i’m weirding people out or confusing them. 

A foundational value in my life, spanning all kinds of religious metamorphoses, is the concept/verse “to those who have been given much. much will be expected.” In left-speak, I’m a Person of Privilege. I have been given access to a lot of things and have not faced hurdles many others have faced. I do not believe it is fine for me to simply enjoy my life however is easiest or happiest for myself -- I believe I had a god-given responsibility, a sacred duty to the world -- to give back, not just tithe-percentages but wholeheartedly.

That core value has driven me, again, from a young age, to self-educate about how the world works, and to be keenly invested in caring about the welfare of others, especially those who are extra vulnerable, disadvantaged, exploited, and oppressed. As I’ve slowly learned bit by bit, my attention has changed -- instead of focusing, for example, on the problem of suicide itself, I now invest more energy in the systems which create and allow for suicides to occur in epidemic proportions. While searching for the roots of the problems and the places where impact can be greatest and change is needed most urgently, I’ve been compelled to learn more and more about government, legislation, and those in power. Politics. That word everyone hates and removes from their own lives, but is really encompassing everything we do/think/are, every day, all the time. 

For a long time, the world of politics seemed like this enormous, hopeless, endless tangle of corruption and arbitrary interpretations of morality and justice and who has a right to what. It felt like there were good guys and bad guys on every side, that things were always convoluted, that no movement ever made sense for that long. None of it ever felt right, reliable, honest, trustworthy, or transparent.

And then, I learned about anarchism. 

When most people that I know discuss politics, there are roughly two sides. Sometimes people are vaguely aware of a third of fourth, but still, it’s largely a dichotomy. But what makes a Republican a Republican? What is the Republican platform, philosophically and policy-wise? What is a democrat? if you were to sit down and try to write a paper on what democrat ideology is, or what republican ideology is, could you do it? Do you know where the economics come from? Where the sense of authority comes from? Where the morality comes from? I think most of us just have these really vague notions about them, like “Republicans like small government and democrats like big government,” or “Republicans are christians and democrats are atheist.” But even these vague notions are usually pretty wrong -- for example, Republicans LOVE a large government regarding social justice issues, and there are MANY Christian denominations that are more populated by Democrats than Republicans. So what are these parties and how did they get so much power in our nation that they’re the only two platforms that Really Matter? Why do we accept the power they hold? Why do so many of us register as one or the other, and then vote down the ticket pretty much all one or all the other? When we don’t even know what they are and can only pick or choose a couple issues here and there that we feel like we maybe have kind of gotten a grasp of, like gay rights or abortion or gun control. 

So to explain anarchism and avoid that enormous mess about parties and what we think we accept even when we don’t understand it, let’s start at the beginning, and leave all preconceived notions behind. 

Who do you trust to be an authority over the world? who do you trust to be an authority over your life? Why? The people in power are not a special breed of person -- they don’t obtain power because they are more intelligent, more discerning, stronger of character, or more stable. For the most part, they obtain power because a) they want it and b) they’ve decided to spend their lives figuring out how to get it. And so now we’ve found ourselves in a society with myriad arbitrary laws dictating whether or not we can buy raw milk, who is permitted to marry who, that we can’t smoke weed but we can drink all the alcohol we want, that it’s okay to prescribe opiates regardless of alternatives/risks, that mass incarceration happens, police brutality happens, occupying other people’s countries and homes happens, patriarchy happens, white supremacy happens, that healthcare and justice can be bought only by those with wealth, and that wealth dictates everything. Seriously, from the nutrients we eat to the ratio of time we spend caring for ourselves to the lawyers we can afford to the healthcare we can afford to the education we can obtain to the amount of safety we can purchase etc etc. The more you know, the more evidence you see that having people calling the shots about how your personal world/life should go either don’t have your best interest in mind at all or don’t have the information and position they need to be in in order to make good decisions for you. Any direction that you look in -- economically, socially, geographically, culturally, you name it -- the people in power have really screwed us all over, majorly. And those of us w/ a decent amount of privilege can get by okay, most of the time. But it’s a sharp ledge to fall off when your luck runs out, when you quit winning the life-lottery that put you in a position of relative safety. Everyone hits that patch at some point. They get sexually assaulted. they can’t pay a debt. they find themselves with a chronic illness or a disease. will the system have your back when it happens to you? Look around and see that it absolutely will not. 

Okay, so, I’ve made a broad, quick case for why having a small subset of people in power over the rest of the world sucks. In anarchist lingo, we refer to that problem as being a problem of hierarchy. The idea of anarchism is to create a world without hierarchy. Again, PLEASE, keep leaving your preconceived notions at the door. Don’t bring up but what about X republican idea or X democrat idea and don’t bring up black masks and molotov cocktails, just hang back so we can keep working this out from scratch. 

So what does anarchism suggest? It suggests that we should be able to directly make our own choices in our lives. It suggests that we, the people, know what’s best for ourselves and can solve our own problems and make our own decisions and call our own shots. In effect, that means, instead of having a CEO or board make decisions about what millions of employees do, employees make decisions for themselves. Instead of having a department of education deciding what curriculum is being taught to our kids/us, we get to choose what we want to learn. Instead of having a department of state deciding when to draft us and send us into combat, we decide how to protect ourselves and make ourselves safe. We get to decide where to live, who we want to live with, who we want to work with, what we want to belong to, and how we make our communities work. Anarchism hinges upon the idea that, despite the fact that hierarchies have hit our culture hard (intelligence/information/mental health/opportunity-wise,) people WANT GOOD THINGS and can make decisions for themselves. People are a social species. By nature, we love to work together. We have families, we have friends, we seek community and partnership. We succeed when we cooperate and not when someone else makes our decisions for us and we are forced to comply. By giving power back to people, to be self-determining, we will be able to make progress together. And that governments and economic hierarchies that pose as being for our benefit/motivation/safety are actually ultimately getting in the way, and need to be dismantled and replaced with more cooperative, collaborative, empowered systems in order for civilization to avoid its descent into a melted planet where a tiny group has everything and the rest of us/our ancestors either die or get effectively enslaved. 

Honestly, the anarchist platform is kind of easier to understand than the Republican one or the Democrat one or the Libertarian one. It’s pretty simple. And we teach it to ourselves in all kinds of other situations. You know, all of that language about believing in ourselves and being empowered and being independent and knowing our worth and knowing what’s best for us and making or own decisions and respecting each other’s decisions and goals and dreams? We all talk about that all of the time! It’s just expected that if you’re a decent friend, you talk to your friends like that and you treat them like that. So anarchism really just takes what people sort of already understand on an internal/personal level and then expands that to encompass everything else, too. It’s not a big leap. Once you make it, it seems incredibly obvious. 

And that’s why it’s become so important in my life. I mean, for one, it’s beautiful and optimistic. Two, it’s really not a change at ALL from how I already lived and thought, it’s just putting how I lived and thought into a larger context. Three, it has helped the world make so much more sense to me -- it’s like Occam’s razor. If you apply an anarchist perspective to almost any problem, it’s solved pretty easily and neatly. Respect autonomy. Mind your business. Help your neighbor. Work together. Don’t oppress anyone. Don’t push anyone around. Be independent. Build what you want and what you love. 

So anyway. I’ll probably keep editing this post and improving it as time goes by because this is a rough draft on an important topic that will probably influence all kinds of things forever, unless I one day change my mind. 

[metawitches]

12 Monkeys was a Syfy network series, loosely based on the 1995 Terry Gilliam film of the same name, which ran for 4 seasons/47 episodes, from 2015-2018. It focused on a near future post-plague world and the survivor, James Cole (Aaron Stanford), who is sent back in time from 2043 to the decades before the plague in order to stop the deaths of 7 billion people.

Though the series uses concepts and characters from the film, it’s largely left the plot of the film behind by the end of the pilot. In the original 12 Monkeys film, the Army of the 12 Monkeys is a red herring. In the series, it’s a vast, secret organization which is responsible for the plague. Cole and Katarina Jones (Barbara Sukowa), the scientist who sends him back in time, assemble a time traveling team who oppose the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and their mysterious leader, the Witness, in a war to control the fate of the timeline.

In the future, post-plague world, Katarina Jones and her people find a damaged recording made in 2017, at the height of the pandemic, by Dr Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull), a CDC virologist who specializes in epidemics. The recording asks “Cole” to hurry and names “Leland Frost” as the originator of the plague. With this starting point and a time machine that barely works, Dr Jones sends James Cole, a barely civilized scavenger, back in time to interview Dr Railly in order to learn further details about the start of the pandemic. His mission is to use the knowledge he gains from Dr Railly to stop the plague virus from being released.

Of course it’s not as simple as that. Time travel isn’t precise enough yet to get Cole to the correct moment in Dr Railly’s timeline. He arrives in 2013, meets kidnaps Dr Railly, figures out that he’s too early for her to have the information he needs, then gets shot by the police in the process of jumping to a later point in her life. When she meets him again in 2015 and sees his fresh bullet wound, 2 years after she watched him receive it, Dr Railly is convinced that Cole is telling the truth. Together, they investigate the origin of the virus, which eventually leads them to Leland Goines (Zeljko Ivanek), code name “Frost”.

As viewers will expect, by the end of the pilot they’ve realized that Goines is only a piece of the puzzle. Information they glean from him, and later from his daughter, Jennifer (Emily Hampshire, brilliantly playing the role originated by Brad Pitt in the film), will draw them deeper into the conspiracy than they could ever imagine. But the Army of the 12 Monkeys is way ahead of them, already expert at time travel and manipulating events to suit their agenda.

While I love this series, the pilot is not one of my favorite episodes. I suggest watching the first several episodes, or even all of season 1, before you make a decision about the show. The plot is intricate and fast-paced, requiring close attention if you want to keep up with all of the clues and mysteries. There are set ups that don’t pay off for 2 or 3 seasons, but all of the dangling threads are addressed by the end of the series. I think it’s a great show to binge watch (over a few weeks) for that reason. If the episodes are spread out over several months, never mind years, it’s difficult to remember all of the tiny details that become important later.

But 12 Monkeys can also simply be watched as a fun romp. It’s one of the best scifi action-adventure series ever, with enough episodes to make it a meaty experience, but not so many that you feel like you’ll never finish. It’s well-made from a technical aspect, having been nominated for and won several cinematography awards. There is an overall series long quest, plus each season has its own arc. The series is full of great stories that range from the pandemic, various future dystopias and alternate realities, time travel, romance, detective noirs, comedy, Cold War spy vs spy, World Wars 1 and 2, mad science experiments, terrorism and revolution, fantasy to an art heist or two.

Some episodes can be viewed as entertaining stand alones, with familiar guest stars such as Christopher Lloyd, Matt Frewer, James Callis and Madeleine Stowe, as well as many faces that are recognizable to genre fans. Jay Karnes’ arc of episodes is a particular favorite of mine.

If you want to examine the episodes more deeply, the show also explores philosophy; the ramifications of scientific and technological progress; the long term effects of political decisions, corporate greed and organized religion; what long term poverty does to people on a personal level and on an organizational/ disorganizational level; and more. 12 Monkeys extensively explores the concepts of cycles, motivations, emotions, and morality. The ideas that are explored rotate through characters, groups and time periods, examining how varying circumstances affect the outcome, and how they don’t.

But this no Ground Hog’s Day- 12 Monkeys is well-written and original entertainment. You have to be paying attention to pick up on all of the social commentary and loops. In the end, it’s a show about love, loyalty, persistence and sacrifice. Showing the relationships between the characters is one of the things it does best. Many types of love are highlighted, including familial, romantic and brotherly. Intense religious devotion and ideology are explored as well. I would say that only same sex love is short changed. It’s hinted at, arguably to the point of queerbaiting and mild homophobia, but never fully expressed.

The characters are likeable, well-cast and acted. They all have chemistry together, including the recurring and guest cast members. Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull, Barbara Sukowa, Kirk Acevedo, Emily Hampshire, Alisen Down and Todd Stashwick comprise the core cast who circle in and out of relationships with each other for 4 seasons. They are all outstanding as individuals and in their many configurations.

The female characters are complex and fill a variety of roles in the story. The main cast is mostly white, with only a couple of men of color to add diversity in the first season. The show eventually adds women of color later in background/minor recurring roles, but it also drops Kirk Acevedo (José Ramse) as one of the regulars. 12 Monkeys did have a female showrunner, Natalie Chaidez, for season 1 and a few female writers and directors over the course of the series.

Within the series universe, physical, medical and mental disabilities and differences were extensively considered throughout the show’s run. One of the main characters struggles with mental illness, while others have chronic illnesses, addictions, or susceptibility to the plague virus that makes them functionally disabled in the future. There are a variety of conditions that are unique to the 12 Monkeys universe that can be considered gifts or disabilities, depending on the situation, and this is also explored.

The series is character-oriented enough that each main and recurring character has a chance to be fleshed out. Several switch between villains and heroes, then back again. I found the main villain particularly compelling. Not because they’re so out of control or murderous, but because they’re trying so hard to understand themselves and their place in the world, and then to create a world where they can feel free and okay about themselves. This isn’t the usual selfish, OTT megalomaniac. All of the extraordinary actions in 12 Monkeys are motivated by very human reactions.

Because 12 Monkeys is about a global pandemic, there are some eerie similarities that predicted how the real world would change in a few years. Without the comforting distraction of zombies, watching a show in 2020 which depicts the death of 7/8 of the world’s population due a virus, followed by an inevitable break down of civilization, might not be for the faint of heart.

On the other hand, this show is sustained by the characters’ belief that they can find a time or place in the world where they can be happy with the people they love, even if their loved ones are currently lost to them. Throughout the grueling struggles in the series, the characters never give up hope that they can make things better in the long run. They have an amazing amount of grit that carries them through as a group, even when some stumble along the way. That’s a powerful message.

All of the struggles are brought to a big finish in the series finale, which is one of the best I’ve ever seen, also in my Top 5. I cried happy/sad/emotional tears throughout the last 2 or 3 episodes of the series. There’s nothing I would change about the ending. The characters and all of the many dangling plot threads are given closure in a satisfying way, with just a tiny opening left should someone want to revisit the universe again in a spin off. Given the complexity of the story and everything viewers go through with these characters, it was an incredible achievement for the showrunners to also bring the story to such a perfect end.

This show was created by showrunners with a clear vision and an ending in mind from the beginning, which is reflected in the show’s consistency across 4 seasons and in all areas of production. 12 Monkeys was created and executive produced by Terry Matalas and Trevor Fickett. Richard Suckle, Charles Roven, Natalie Chaidez and Jeffrey Reiner were also executive producers. It starred Aaron Stanford as James Cole, Amanda Schull as Cassandra Railly, Kirk Acevedo as José Ramse, Noah Bean as Aaron Marker, Todd Stashwick as Teddy Deacon, Emily Hampshire as Jennifer Goines, Barbara Sukowa as Katarina Jones, Demore Barnes as Marcus Whitley, Alisen Down as Olivia Kirschner, Andrew Gillies as Julian Adler, Tom Noonan as the Tall Man and Brooke Williams as Hannah Jones.

Currently streaming on Hulu.

Images courtesy of Syfy.

12 Monkeys: Review of Entire TV Series-1 of the best scifi shows ever. 4 seasons of action-adventure, time travel, a global pandemic, true love, & a vast conspiracy that spans the globe & all of time + questions the nature of reality. 12 Monkeys was a Syfy network series, loosely based on the 1995 Terry Gilliam film of the same name, which ran for 4 seasons/47 episodes, from 2015-2018.