#mean old man mckay

[sga-mcshep-4ever]

"It's okay. It's okay. He's upset, because you're smarter than him. You guys know what chocolate is? No? This is going to be huge. Okay, come with me. We're going to go over here, and we'll leave the mean, old man alone."

[acealistair]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard GameInformer Article Transcribed SPOILER-FREE

I've gone ahead and transcribed the GameInformer article about DA:TV for those who can't read it from screenshots/on GameInformer for whatever reason. This version specifically is the PLOT-SPOILER-FREE version! I've removed all references to the main storyline of the game (even those revealed in the gameplay footage already released, just to be sure) to mostly focus on mechanics and the author's general impressions of the game. It does still include some references to companions and their personalities/mechanic abilities, as well as a couple locations that we're already confirmed to be visiting. However, further details on specific locations are hidden.

As mentioned in my full version of the article, I've transcribed it as accurately as I could, which means including typos, grammar mistakes, improper capitalization, etc.

Throughout my research and preparation for a trip to BioWare’s Edmonton, Canada, office for this cover story, I kept returning to the idea that its next game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (formerly subtitled Dreadwolf) is releasing at a critical moment for the storied developer. The previous installment, Dragon Age: Inquisition, hit PlayStation, Xbox, and PC a decade ago. It was the win BioWare needed, following the 2012 release of Mass Effect 3 with its highly controversial and (for many) disappointing ending. Inquisition launched two years later, in 2014, to rave reviews and, eventually, various Game of the Year awards, almost as if a reminder of what the studio was capable of.

Now, in 2024, coincidentally, the next Dragon Age finds itself in a similar position. BioWare attempted a soft reboot of Mass Effect with Andromeda in 2017, largely seen as a letdown among the community, and saw its first live-service multiplayer attempt in 2019’s Anthem flounder in the tricky waters of the genre; it aimed for a No Man’s Sky-like turnaround with Anthem Next, but that rework was canceled in 2021. Like its predecessor, BioWare’s next Dragon Age installment is not only a new release in a beloved franchise, but is another launch with the pressure of BioWare’s prior misses; a game fans hope will remind them the old BioWare is still alive today.

“Having been in this industry for 25 years, you see hits and misses, and it’s all about building off of those hits and learning from those misses,” BioWare general manager Gary McKay, who’s been with the studio since January 2020, tells me.

As McKay gives me a tour of the office, I can’t help but notice how much Anthem is scattered around it. More than Mass Effect, more than Dragon Age, there’s a lot of Anthem - posters, real-life replicas of its various Javelins, wallpaper, and more. Recent BioWare news stories tell of leads and longtime studio veterans laid off and others departing voluntarily. Veilguard’s development practically began with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. When I ask McKay about the tumultuousness of BioWare and how he, as the studio manager, makes the team feel safe in the product it’s developing, he says it’s about centering on the creative vision. “[When] we have that relentless pursuit for quality, and we have passion and people in the right roles, a lot of the other stuff you’re talking about just fades into the background.”

That’s a sentiment echoed throughout the team I speak to: Focus on what makes a BioWare game great and let Veilguard speak for itself. Though I had no expectations going in - it’s been 10 years since the last Drag Age, after all, and BioWare has been cagey about showing this game publicly - my expectations have been surpassed. This return to Thedas, the singular continent of the franchise, feels like both a warm welcome for returning fans and an impressive entry point for first-time players.

New Age, New Name

At the start of each interview, I address a dragon-sized elephant in the room with the game’s leads. What was Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Why?

“These games are reflections of the teams that make them, and as part of that, it means we learn a lot about what the heart and soul of the game really is as we’re developing it,” Veilguard game director Corinne Busche tells me. “We quickly learned and realized that the absolute beating heart of this game is these authentic, diverse companions. And when we took a step back, as we always do, we always check our decisions and make sure they still represent the game we’re trying to build.”

Dreadwolf no longer did that, but each member of BioWare I speak to tells me The Veilguard does. And while I was initially abrasive to the change - lore aside, Dreadwolf is simply a cool name - I warmed up to The Veilguard.

Solas, a Loki-esque trickster member of the Elven pantheon of gods known as the Dread Wolf, created the Veil long ago while attempting to free the elves from their slave-like status in Thedas. This Veil is a barrier between the magical Fade and Thedas, banishing Elven gods and removing Elven immortality from the world. But players didn’t know that in Inquisition, where he is introduced as a mage ally and companion. However, at the end of Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC, which sets the stage for Veilguard, we learn in a shocking twist that Solas wants to destroy the Veil and restore Elves to their former glory. However, doing so would bring chaos to Thedas, and those who call it home, the people who eventually become The Veilguard, want to stop him.

“There’s an analogy I like to use, which is, ‘If you want to carve an elephant out of marble, you just take a piece of marble and remove everything that doesn’t look like an elephant,’” Veilguard creative director John Epler says. “As we were building this game, it became really clear that it was less that we were trying to make The Veilguard and more like The Veilguard was taking shape as we built the game. Solas is still a central figure in it. He’s still a significant character. But really, the focus shifts to the team.

“[We] realized Dreadwolf suggests a title focused on a specific individual, whereas The Veilguard, much like Inquisition, focuses more on the team.”

Creating Your Rook

Veilguard’s character creator is staggeringly rich, with a dizzying number of customizable options. Busche tells me that inclusivity is at the heart of it, noting that she believes everyone can create someone who represents them on-screen.

There are four races to choose from when customizing Rook, the new playable lead - Elves, Qunari, Humans, and Dwarves - and hundreds of options to customize your character beyond that. You can select pronouns separately from gender and adjust physical characteristics like height, shoulder width, chest size, glute and bulge size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how crooked your nose is, and so much more. There must be hundreds of sliders to customize these body proportions and features like skin hue, tone, melanin, and just about anything else you might adjust on a character. Oh, and there’s nudity in Veilguard, too, which I learn firsthand while customizing my Rook.

“The technology has finally caught up to our ambition,” Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes tells me as we decide on my warrior-class Qunari’s backstory, which affects faction allegiance, in-game dialogue, and reputation standing - we choose the pirate-themed Lords of Fortune.

Notably, instead of a warrior class, we could have chosen mage or rogue. All three classes have unique specializations, bespoke skill trees, and special armors, too. And though our Rook is aligned with the Lords of Fortune faction, there are others to choose from including the Grey Wardens, Shadow Dragons, The Mourn Watch, and more. There is some flexibility in playstyle thanks to specializations, but your class largely determines the kind of actions you can perform in combat.

[SPOILER]

Beyond the on-paper greatness of this character creator, its customizability speaks to something repeated throughout my BioWare visit: Veilguard is a single-player, story-driven RPG. Or in other words, the type of game that made BioWare as storied as it is. McKay tells me the team explored a multiplayer concept early in development before scratching it to get back to BioWare basics. The final game will feature zero multiplayer and no microtransactions.

Happy to hear that, I pick our first and last name, then one of four voices, with a pitch shifter for each, too, and we’re off to Minrathous.

Exploring Tevinter For The First Time

Throughout the Dragon Age series, parts of Thedas are discussed by characters and referenced by lore material but left to the imagination of players as they can’t visit them. Veilguard immediately eschews this, setting its opening prologue mission in Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Empire. Frankly, I’m blown away by how good it looks. It’s my first time seeing Veilguard in action and my first look at a Dragon Age game in nearly a decade. Time has treated this series well, and so has technology.

Epler, who’s coming up on 17 years at BioWare, acknowledges that the franchise has always been at the will of its engine. Dragon Age: Origins and II’s Eclipse Engine worked well for the time, but today, they show their age. Inquisition was BioWare’s first go at EA’s proprietary Frostbite engine - mind you, an engine designed for first-person shooters and decidedly not multi-character RPGs - and the team struggled there, too. Epler and Busche agree Veilguard is the first RPG where BioWare feels fully in command of Frostbite and, more generally, its vision for this world.

[SPOILER] The first thing players will do once Veilguard begins is select a dialogue option, something the team says speaks to their vision of a story-forward, choice-driven adventure. After [SPOILER], there’s another dialogue choice, and different symbols here indicate the type of tone you can roll with. There’s a friendly, snarky, and rough-and-tough direct choice, and I later learn of a more romantically inclined “emotional” response. These are the replies that will build relationships with characters, romantic and platonic alike, but you’re welcome to ignore this option. However, your companions can romance each other, so giving someone the cold shoulder might nudge them into the warm embrace of another. [SPOILER]

Rhodes explains BioWare’s philosophy for designing this city harkens back to a quick dialogue from Inquisition’s Dorian Pavus. Upon entering Halamshiral’s Winter Palace, the largest venue in Dragon Age history at that point, Dorian notes that it’s cute, adorable even, alluding to his Tevinter heritage. If Dorian thinks the largest venue in Dragon Age history is cute and adorable, what must the place he’s from be like? “It’s like this,” Rhodes says as we enter Minrathous proper in-game.

Minrathous is huge, painted in magical insignia that looks like cyberpunk-inspired neon city signs and brimming with detail. Knowing it’s a city run by mages and built entirely upon magic, Rhodes says the team let its imagination run wild. The result is the most stunning and unique city in the series. [SPOILER] Busche says BioWare used Veilguard’s character creator to make each in-world NPC except for specific characters like recruitable companions. [The level utilizes] a smart use of verticality, scaling, and wayfinding to push us toward the main attraction: [SPOILER].

[SPOILER] Something I appreciate throughout our short journey through Minrathous is the cinematography at play. As a Qunari, my character stands tall, and Rhodes says the camera adjusts to ensure larger characters loom over those below. On the flip side, the camera adjusts for dwarves to demonstrate their smaller stature compared to those around them.

This, coupled with movie-liked movement through the city [SPOILER] creates a cinematic start that excited me, and I’m not even hands-on with the game.

[SPOILER]

Here, we encounter a dozen or so demons, which BioWare has fully redesigned on the original premise of these monstrous creatures. Rhodes says they’re creatures of feeling and live and die off the emotions around them. As such, they are just a floating nervous system, pushed into this world from the Fade, rapidly assembled into bodies out of whatever scraps they find.

[SPOILER]

The Veilguard Who’s Who

While we learned a lot about returning character but first-time companion Lace Harding, ice mage private detective Neve Gallus, and veil jumper Bellara Lutara, BioWare shared some additional details about other companions Rook will meet later in the game. Davrin is a charming Grey Warden who is also an excellent monster hunter; Emmrich is a member of Nevarra’s Mourn Watch and a necromancer with a skeleton assistant named Manfred; Lucanis is a pragmatic assassin whose bloodline descends from the criminal House of Crows organization; And Taash is a dragon hunter allied with the piratic Lords of Fortune. All seven of these characters adorn this Game Informer issue, with Bellara up front and center in the spotlight.

The Lighthouse

[SPOILER] Epler says, much like Skyhold in Inquisition, the Lighthouse is where your team bonds, grows, and prepares for its adventures throughout the campaign. It also becomes more functional and homier as you do. Already, though, it’s a beautifully distraught headquarters for the Veilguard.

[SPOILER] I see a clock symbol over a dialogue icon in the distance, which signals an optional dialogue option. We head there, talk to Neve, select a response to try our hand at flirting, and then head to the dining hall.

[SPOILER] From the dining hall, we gather the not-quite-Veilguard in the library, which Busche says in the central area of the Lighthouse and where your party will often regroup and prepare for what’s next. [SPOILERS] Busche says I’m missing unique dialogue options here because I’m Qunari; an Elf would have more to say about [SPOILER]. The same goes for my backstory earlier in Minrathous. [SPOILER]

[SPOILER] The ensuing cutscene, where we learn [SPOILER], is long, with multiple dialogue options. That’s something I’m noticing with Veilguard, too - there’s a heavy emphasis on storytelling and dialogue, and it feels deep and meaty, like a good fantasy novel. BioWare doesn’t shy away from minutes-long cutscenes.

Busche says that’s intentional, too. [SPOILER] “You’re defining [Rook's] leadership style with your choices.” Knowing that Rook is the leader of the Veilguard, I’m excited to see how far this goes. From the sound of it, my team will react to my chosen leadership style in how my relationships play out. That’s demonstrated within the game’s dialogue and a special relationship meter on each companion’s character screen.

Redefining Combat Once More

[SPOILER] After loading up a new save, we’re in control of a human mage.

Following the trend of prior Dragon Age games, Veilguard has completed the series’ shift from tactical strategy to real-time action, but fret not: a tactical pause-and-play mechanic returns to satiate fans who remember the series’ origins (pun intended). Though I got a taste of combat in the prologue, Veilguard’s drastic departure from all that came before it is even more apparent here.

Busche says player complete every swing in real-time, with special care taken to animation swing-through and canceling. There's a dash, a parry, the ability to charge moves, and a completely revamped healing system that allows you to use potions at your discretion by hitting right on the d-pad. You can combo attacks and even “bookmark” combos with a quick dash, which means you can pause a combo’s status with a dash to safety and continue the rest of the combo afterward. It looks even cooler than it sounds.

Like any good action game, there is a handful of abilities to customize your kit. And, if you want to maintain that real-time action feel, you can use them on the fly, so long as you take cooldowns into effect. But Veilguard’s pause-and-play gameplay mechanic, similar to Inquisition’s without the floating camera view, lets you bring things to halt for a healthy but optional dose of strategy.

In this screen, which essentially pauses the camera and pulls up a flashy combat wheel that highlights you and your companions’ skills, you can choose abilities, queue them up, and strategize with synergies and combos, all while targeting specific enemies. Do what you need to here, let go of the combat wheel, and watch your selections play out. Busche says she uses the combat wheel to dole out her companions’ attacks and abilities while sticking to the real-time action for her player-controlled Rook. On the other hand, Epler says he almost exclusively uses the combat wheel to dish out every ability and combo.

Busche says each character will play the same, in that you execute light and heavy attacks with hte same buttons, use abilities with the same buttons, and interact with the combo wheel in the same way, regardless of which class you select. But a sword-and-shield warrior, like we used in the prolgoue, can hip-fire or aim their shield to throw it like Captain America, whereas our human mage uses that same button to throw out magical ranged attacks. The warrior can parry incoming attacks, which can stagger enemies. The rogue gets a larger parry window. Our mage, however, can’t parry at all. Instead, they throw up a shield that blocks incoming attacks automatically so long as you have the mana to sustain it.

“What I see from Veilguard is a game that finally bridges the gap,” former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in 2021 before joining the Veilguard team last year as a consultant, tells me. “Uncharitably, previous Dragon Age games got to the realm of ‘combat wasn’t too bad.’ In this game, the combat’s actually fun, but it does keep that thread that’s always been there. You have the focus on Rook, on your character, but still have that control and character coming into the combat experience from the other people in the party.”

“This is really the best Dragon Age game that I’ve ever played,” he adds, noting his bias. “This is the one where we get back to our roots of character-driven storytelling, have really fun combat, and aren’t making compromises.”

Watching Busche take down [SPOILER], I can already sense Veilguard’s combat will likely end up my favorite in the series, although admittedly, as a fan of action games, I’m an easy sell here. It’s flashy, quick, and thanks to different types of health bars, like a greenish-blue one that represents barrier and is taken down most effectively with ranged attacks, a decent amount of strategy, even if you don’t use the pause-and-play combo wheel. Like the rest of the game, too, it’s gorgeous, with sprinkles, droplets, and splashes of magic in each attack our mage unleashes. Though I’m seeing the game run on a powerful PC, which is sure to be the best showcase of Veilguard, Epler tells me the game looks amazing on consoles - he’s been playing it on PlayStation 5 and enjoying it in both its fidelity and performance modes, but I’ll have to take his word for it.

Pressing Start

The start or pause screen is as important to a good RPG as the game outside the menus. Veilguard’s contains your map, journal, character sheets, skill tree, and a library for lore information. You can cross-compare equipment and equip new gear here for Rook and your companions, build weapon loadouts for quick change-ups mid-combat, and customize you and your party’s abilities and builds via an easy-to-understand skill tree. You won’t find minutiae here, “just real numbers,” Busche says. That means a new unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that’s as in-depth as the numbers get. Passive abilities unlock jump attacks and guarantee critical hit opportunities, while abilities add moves like a Wall of Fire to your arsenal (if you’re a mage). As you spec out this skill tree, which is 100 percent bespoke to each class, you’ll work closer to unlocking a specialization, of which there are three for each class, complete with a unique ultimate ability. Busche says BioWare’s philosophy here is “about changing the way you play, not statistical minutiae.”

Companion Customization

You can advance your bonds by helping companions on their own personal quests and by including them in your party for main quests. Every Relationship Level you rank up, shown on their character sheet, nets you a skill point to spend on them. Busche says the choices you make, what you say to companions, how you help them, and more all matter to their development as characters and party members. And with seven companions, there’s plenty to customize, from bespoke gear to abilities and more. Though each companion has access to five abilities, you can only take three into combat, so it’s important to strategize different combos and synergies within your party. Rhodes says beyond  this kind of customizable characterization, each companion has issues, problems, and personal quests to complete. “Bellara has her own story arc that runs parallel to and informs the story path you’re on,” Rhodes says.

In Entropy’s Grasp

[SPOILER]

“When designing companions, they’re the load-bearing pillars for everything,” Rhodes says. “They’re the face of their faction, and in this case [with Bellara], their entire area of the world. [SPOILER]” Rhodes describes her as a sweetheart and nerd for ancient elven artifacts. As such, she’s dressed more like an academic than a combat expert, although her special arm gauntlet is useful both for tinkering with her environment and taking down enemies.

Unlike Neve, who uses ice magic like our Rook and can slow down time with a special ability, Bellara specializes in electricity, and she can also use magic to heal you, something Busche says Dragon Age fans have been desperate to have in a game. Busche says if you don’t direct Neve and Bellara, they’re fully independent and will attack on their own. But synergizing your team will add to the fun and strategy of combat. Bellara’s electric magic is effective against [enemy], which is great because we currently only have access to ice. However, without Bellara, we could also equip a rune that converts my ice magic, for a brief duration, into electricity to counter the Sentinels.

[SPOILER]

I continue to soak in the visuals of Veilguard [SPOILER]; it’s perhaps the most impressive aspect of my time seeing the game, although everything else is making a strong impression, too. I am frustrated about having to watch the game rather than play it, to be honest. I’m in love with the art style, which is more high fantasy than anything in the series thus far and almost reminiscent of the whimsy of Fable, a welcome reprieve from the recent gritty Game of Thrones trend in fantasy games. Rhodes says that’s the result of the game’s newfound dose of magic.

“The use of magic has been an evolution as the series has gone on,” he says. “It’s something we’ve been planning for a while because Solas has been planning all this for a while. In the past, you could hint at cooler magical things in the corner because you couldn’t actually go there, but now we actually can, and it’s fun to showcase that.”

Busche, Epler, and Rhodes warn me that [location] will starkly contrast to other areas. They promise some grim locations and even grimmer story moments because, without that contrast, everything falls flat. Busche likens it to a “thread of optimism” pulled through otherworldly chaos ravaging Thedas. [SPOILER]

[SPOILER]

Busche [performs combat] with ease, showcasing high-level gameplay by adding three stacks of arcane build-up to create an Arcane Bomb on an enemy, which does devastating damage after being hit by a heavy attack. Now, she begins charging a heavy attack on her magical staff, then switches to magical daggers in a second loadout accessed with a quick tap of down on the d-pad to unleash some quick attacks, then back to the staff to charge it some more and unleash a heavy attack.

After a few more combat encounters, including one against a [enemy] that’s “Frenzied,” which means it hits harder, moves faster, and has more health, we finally [SPOILER]. [Boss enemy] hits hard, has plenty of unblockable, red-coded attacks, and a massive shield we must take down first. However, it’s weak to fire, and our new fire staff is perfect for the situation.

[SPOILER] It’s clear that even after a few hours with the game’s opening, I’ve seen a nigh negligible amount of game; frustrating but equally as exciting.

Don’t Call It An Open World

Veilguard is not an open world, even if some of its explorable areas might fee like one. Gamble describes Veilguard’s Thedas as a hub-and-spoke design where “the needs of the story are served by the level design.” [SPOILER] Some of these areas are larger and full of secrets and treasures. Others are smaller and more focused on linear storytelling. [Location] is an example of this, but there are still optional paths and offshoots to explore for loot, healing potion refreshes, and other things. There’s a minimap in each location, though linear levels like [SPOILER] won’t have the fog of war that disappears as you explore like some of Veilguard’s bigger locations. Regardless, BioWare says Veilguard has the largest number of diverse biomes in series history.

Dragon’s Delight

With a 10-hour day at BioWare behind me after hours of demo gameplay and interviews with the leads, I’m acutely aware of my favorite part of video games: the surprises. I dabbled with Origins and II and put nearly 50 hours into Inquisition, but any familiarity with the series the latter gave me had long since subsided over the past decade. I wanted to be excited about the next Dragon Age as I viewed each teaser and trailer, but other than seeing the words “Dragon Age,” I felt little. Without gameplay, without a proper look at the actual game we’ll all be playing this fall, I struggled to remember why Inquisition sucked me in 10 years ago.

This trip reminded me.

Dragon Age, much like the Thedas of Veilguard, lives in the uncertainty: The turbulence of BioWare’s recent release history and the lessons learned from it, the drastic changes to each Dragon Age’s combat, the mystery of its narrative, and the implications of its lore. It’s all a part of the wider Dragon Age story and why this studio keeps returning to this world. It’s been a fertile franchise for experimentation. While Veilguard is attempting to branch out in unique ways, it feels less like new soil and more like the harvest BioWare has been trying to cultivate since 2009, and I’m surprised by that.

I’m additionally surprised, in retrospect, how numb I’ve been to the game before this. I’m surprised by BioWare’s command over EA’s notoriously difficult Frostbite engine to create its prettiest game yet. I’m surprised by this series’ 15-year transition from tactical strategy to action-forward combat. I’m surprised by how much narrative thought the team has poured into these characters, even for BioWare. Perhaps having no expectations will do that to you. But most of all, with proper acknowledgement that I reserve additional judgment until I actually play the game, I’m surprised that Veilguard might just be the RPG I’m looking forward to most this year.

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Defiant One, Pt. 9

In Miller's Crossing (S04E09), John Sheppard talks a man into killing himself. He does this for Rodney (but also for himself, because he simply can't stand the thought of losing him; it is both a thoroughly selfless act and an utterly selfish one). He sacrifices the life of a man who did some terrible things for a pure motive -- in an attempt to save someone that he loved, his dying daughter.

Sheppard can't admit it, most of all to himself. So he tells Rodney: "I presented a situation. He volunteered."

A similar thing happens here, although it is never McKay's intention for it to happen. He -- his actions, his words, his growing agitation -- presents Brendan Gaul with a situation, and he volunteers. Sheppard and McKay both put the gun into his hand, and he turns it in on himself. He is in pain, to be sure. Believes that he is dead anyway, and becoming more and more a burden. He feels his life-force draining away by the moment. But still. Here, Rodney McKay talked a man into killing himself. For Sheppard.

It's not what he says, it's the way he speaks about him: "What I really wanna do is call him on the radio, but I'm afraid if he's hiding from the Wraith, I might inadvertently give away his position, and let's face it, what chance do we have against the Wraith if Sheppard can't take him out? I was hoping to be strong enough, then I..."

The thing is, while Brendan was in pain and dying, his decision seems to have been motivated not just by the desire to let his old friend McKay off the hook, but for McKay to get his happily ever after. Just before, they have this exchange:

McKay: It's been too long. I think the Major could be in trouble -- and if he's in trouble, we're in trouble. Gaul: Then go. McKay: You figure you can move? Gaul: Not a chance. I'm not going anywhere. McKay: OK. That's OK. Gaul: Go. Rodney, just go! Save the day.

Save the day, get the girl.

This echoes Sheppard's sentiments in the previous episode: save the city, save Weir and McKay, take the rest of the day off.

In the final season, we see many instances of this: people willing to sacrifice their own happiness, even their own lives, for the chance that someone they love might be able to have a modicum of happiness. I'll get to the many mirrors to the main story later but obviously the biggest example of this is Sheppard himself, willing to sacrifice everything (and by everything I mean unfathomable things) just to give Rodney a chance at something that he thinks might make him happy. Rodney getting his happily ever after is more important to him than his own life.

And here, Brendan makes that choice. He doesn't think he's going to survive anyway, so he might as well help Rodney save the day and get his guy. There is not a doubt in my mind that Brendan hadn't realized by this time that McKay's agitation over Sheppard's well-being went well beyond the regular. Listening in on them, he might well even have come to the conclusion that Sheppard returned those feelings. They are so obvious that literally everyone else can see what they can't, even when it's right before their eyes.

The events of the Genii siege had reminded Sheppard that his love will get people close to him killed, and hence it is better not to let anyone get close. Brendan seems to have thought of himself as a roadblock, something that kept McKay from getting to where he wanted to be but taking such drastic measures, he actually made himself into an obstacle -- ensured that his death would be looming between these two for a good while.

McKay doesn't think that his love is poison. He thinks that his love is worthless. Here, Brendan's actions reinforce that belief; he sacrificed a lot to stay back with his friend, to take care of him, but in the end, it wasn't enough. His compassion and devotion weren't worth staying alive for. No matter how much he does for other people, he can never do enough. No matter how much he accomplishes, he can never accomplish enough to earn love (because he thinks that it is something that is earned through good behaviour and the correct performance and flawless execution of tasks). It is through acts of service that he expresses his love and sincerely believes that if he could only do enough, one day he might be worth someone's love.

Doing things is also his way of avoiding his emotions, just as self-isolation is for Sheppard. He actually confesses this to Zelenka in This Mortal Coil (S04E10), "That's one of the perks of the job. Something terrible happens, you don't have enough time to dwell on it ‘cause you're too busy trying to stop the next terrible thing from happening. Seriously, if it wasn't for the Replicators and their plan to wipe out every human in the galaxy, I'd be in pretty bad shape right now."

Beyond some disturbing anecdotes, we don't really learn that much about McKay's childhood but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that this stems from losing his mother at a young age, possibly to slowly progressing disease (McKay's last words before the gun goes off here are "I was hoping I would be strong enough..."; it is easy to transfer the sentiment for a young boy's words to a dying mother). This kind of a traumatic event often causes estrangement in siblings and embitterment in the surviving parent. By the the next episode and definitely toward the end of the season we learn that he and his sister are estranged and can infer that by this time, both of their parents have passed. She is the only family he has left, and indeed it seems like most people chosen for the mission have minimal ties to earth.

Of course it is dramatic irony that McKay's feelings of unworthiness for love would increase at the same time that Sheppard is beginning to open up and let someone closer, to learn that he doesn't have to be alone, that he doesn't have to save the world alone when there are such heroes as Rodney McKay in it. Of course it has to be this way. Their journey is only just beginning, after all.

Outside, we find Sheppard talking to himself again. This is obviously for the benefit of the audience, as watching the strong silent type doing stealthy commando stuff can carry an episode only so far. But we can interpret it as Sheppard's need to communicate. He really wants to have that link to McKay, wants to at least hear his voice on the radio if he can't have him near. But it was he himself that told Rodney to stay off the radio, and he doesn't to open it back up again just to tell McKay that he's still here, still failing at the one task he needs to succeed which is to keep him safe. He doesn't want to contact McKay until he can approach him with the all-clear, come pick ya up.

He also doesn't know how badly McKay wants him to get in touch. How some of the final words he spoke to Brendan were "What I really want to do is contact him on the radio". Neither of them realizes how much the other needs them.

Ford and Teyla are finally able to contact Sheppard. He sounds so relieved to hear from them because back-up means not that they might defeat the wraith, not that he might be able to get to the jumper, but that he might be able to keep Rodney safe, because all of the other things were meant to accomplish that aim. But alas, his relief is short-lived:

Sheppard: Lieutenant, I like your timing! Get your ass down here. Ford: Sir, we're still two-zero minutes away at top speed. Sheppard: Well, in that case, your timing sucks! Get here as soon as you can.

Note that Sheppard is not performing military for the young soldier under his command, he's not using military parlance even though that is how Ford approaches him, and it would probably be the way Ford wishes Sheppard behaved toward him (because the hierarchy and code of conduct exist for a reason, after all). Sheppard just has such problems with authority that he can't put up the performance, especially when he's the one that is supposed to be the authority. This is relevant both to his sudden use of military parlance with Dr. Gaul earlier, and his responding McKay with "Negative" instead of "No".

Sheppard and the wraith are shooting at each other, and it seems like the Major might be done for. It's interesting how his last resort is an answer to the here unspoken question "What would McKay do?", which is something he also used to motivate himself in the previous episode in which he actually said the words out loud. Here, he just does the thing he thinks McKay would do in this situation -- which is to say, try to project invaluability, make it seem like the wraith needs to keep him alive to perform a task that cannot be accomplished without him. He shouts to the wraith: "You need me to get off this planet. I'm the only one that can fly that ship."

Again, this is a bold faced lie. Sheppard feeds lies to his enemies, this is what he does. He started by lying about the war, about being Lantean himself, all of it. Lying and subterfuge are weapons he uses against his enemies.

Note also that while he's doing the thing he thinks McKay would have done in this situation, he's protecting Rodney at the same time, as we began the whole episode with him teaching Rodney how to fly -- Sheppard, that is, is not the only one on the planet that can fly that ship but he would very much like the wraith to believe that he is. What he thinks might be his final act is keeping Rodney safe. He knows there's 20 minutes until reinforcements arrive and he's making sure that the wraith has no reason (having just fed upon him, which it very much wants to do) to go looking for McKay before that in the event that he is killed right here, right now. He might die, but McKay will live.

And then Rodney throws a wrench in that plan.

Continued in Pt. 10

[soul-spices]

watch me age 10 years after reading the short interview with ROP’s script writers

they are so lovingly applied, they aren’t even visible. Amazing.

having to take the passive aggressiveness of a 40+ year old white man-child in a Tolkien adaptation is something I never thought I would experience, but here we are, Mister Payne.

also, can you maybe stop using the “Well Tolkien never mentioned x thing” argument? You can use this as a template excuse to justify basically anything. Which is probably why you’re overusing it in the first place.

 the hairstyles changing over time seem to apply solely to male elf characters, who now sport short, gelled up hair, mullets, fades and buzzcuts; and not the female elf characters, who still have long hair. How very gender normative of you! Truly, the public applauds you for your backwards views in this very contemporary adaptation.

amazing Mister McKay. I’m left in awe at your lore knowledge, yet I cannot help but notice you didn’t gave Galadriel her iconic braided crown hairstyle; the hairstyle that TOLKIEN DESCRIBED HER WEARING during the first age. You show that you know the lore, yet you seem to have put little of your knowledge into the show itself. This is truly and quite an amazing feat. Bravo.

i forgot who created this month old meme, to credit them, but it seems to be still valid to the discussion:

firstly, the fault is not that Galadriel is portrayed as a warrior. The issue is how piss-poor you’ve written her as one ( among other things I won’t go into here). You’ve basically written her as the most generic and unlikable manchild-warrior-protag ™

secondly, Nerwen is not a “nickname”, it is the name given by her mother because Galadriel was the tallest female elf among her peers ( and in all ME history, if we’re going meta), and because she was athletic, and liked partaking in sparring with other elves. She wasn’t called Nerwen because she was manifesting the manchild-warrior-protag ™  vibes you cursed her with. Maybe Mister Payne is projecting his own inner man-child into the character he’s likely writing for the script.

thirdly, since we are playing ‘taking the names as literal as physically possible’ game, did you know that her birth name, Artanis, means “noble woman” in elvish? Funny how we don’t see any of the diplomacy of a noble person in her character during your show. Interesting how you wrote her character to be brash and muscle headed :) with the social skills of a petulant child.

no. no, I don’t think I have anymore patience for this.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter Interview

[positivelybeastly]

"My slutty pirate outfit doesn't fit anymore." That's how she greets him as she strides into the lab--in her civilian clothes, the provocative costume that's been her staple since 1989 slung over her arm. "I know the new boss isn't going to let us have the night off without a fight, but I'd like the universe to cut me a little bit of slack."

It's less about the costume and more about the change. And the fact the team spent yesterday fighting off the ghosts of dead classmates, which is... fairly brand for October, somehow.

Tess has been arguing with Erik all day, and it's not hard for Hank to figure out why. It's textbook: she feels like she's losing control of her life, and therefore, she's digging her heels in and being stubborn over something that can be controlled. Like a night out, or cheap Halloween decorations. As for their leader, Magneto--is Magneto, and Tess choosing a tacky ghost windsock as the hill on which she's willing to die doesn't bode well for the future.

"Morph and I found it with the old Halloween stuff in the attic." She tosses the outfit--and a couple of old souvenir Halloween shirts onto an unused lab table and pulls up a chair for herself. Then she glances down and picks at a dust bunny stuck to her shirt. "Do you remember how hard we had to fight the Professor to get that Sleepy Hollow trip?"

(Tess. Tess fought him for the Sleepy Hollow trip.)

"I kept freaking out the horse the 'headless' guy was riding." So they bailed on the hayride, and Hank set up somewhere atmospheric to read from the copy of Washington Irving he'd brought with him. She smiles fondly at the memory, flicking the dust bunny to his pristine floor. "You had a bigger audience than anyone by the time you were done."

Her eyes are dark and thoughtful as she watches him swing from the rafters.

"I could get through to the Professor about things like that. Why it all matters and how it keeps us going when things get--" She bares her teeth for a moment, then shakes her head. "When they get the way they get. But I don't know how to make Erik see it."

[Forgive some of the language but it's Provocative Halloween Costume Talk and it's 1997.)

"You surely aren't telling me that Tess McKay, Provocative Privateer of the Ponderous Pools of Westchester, is no longer a fixture of our fair shores?" Hank glances up from his own costume - a startlingly accurate Hamlet outfit that he's patching a few errant holes and frills in, since it hasn't quite survived the interim year unscathed - and smiles at Tess as she strides into the lab with her usual confidence.

Hmmm. Where's his red yarn . . . ah!

"Oh, I remember quite completely. The Professor was very insistent that we couldn't blow our cover, that it simply wasn't wise to have that many mutants - including those of the physically mutated persuasion - out and about, even on Halloween. And you were very insistent right back, if I recall correctly."

Hank does recall correctly. (Of course he does.)

And, naturally, that perfect recall extends to Washington Irving, the self-same author of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. How could it not? Even as he flips up onto the ceiling and clambers away from Tess to fetch his red yarn, the rafters clanging with each self-assured clasp of his feet to their reinforced structure, he doesn't lose a beat.

"“All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in diverse shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in spite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.”

He has a big, teasing grin on his face as he regards Tess, his meaning and his joke plain. What kind of woman could possibly perplex man more than ghost, goblin or witch, hmmmm?

But, this is, despite initial appearances, a serious conversation, and his face mellows for a moment. He can definitely understand Tess' frustration, even as he perceives why Erik is having such a hard time letting them all relax. In amongst all the consternation about his trustworthiness, there's been little time to talk about his leadership style, and the fact that it could use a little work.

Obvious, in retrospect, when one considers his previous attempts to lead a force against the X-Men have gone - not well, but a fact easily lost in the shuffle. Magneto is excellent at charismatic charges against the enemy, logistics, battle tactics, but morale was never his strong suit, was it? How best to rectify . . . ah!

"Just a moment, I think I might . . ."

With a little puff of dust, Hank fishes a rather worn photo album out of a storage container underneath one of his many lab desks, and throws it with expert accuracy, the book opening along its spine and presenting its secrets to Tess.

'Inaugural X-Men Halloween Party, 1983.'

"For whatever reason, I appear to have misplaced Jean and Warren's pictures, I shall have to go rifling through my other albums for completion's sake, but, if you flick over the page . . ."

"Perhaps a reminder for Erik, that even the Professor was not above having a little bit of fun every now and then, might convince him that there is worth in the activity. He need not participate, but, if the Professor was able to convince Scott to let go for one night and simply dress up and have fun, I believe you and I are capable of the same, Tess."

[waitformethistime]

Watched the prelude in theaters today.

Loved the Kyoru Greatest Hits montage but if y'all had time for that then why couldn't you just give us more original content? Or better yet animate all the scenes you chopped from s3? Smh.

McKay doesn't give the same standout performance as Sawashiro imo but shes definitely not bad.

J. Michael Tatum...I remember thinking when the character designs came out that Katsuya kinda resembled Kyoya Ohtori with the glasses. And then Katsuya opened his mouth and that did not help with the confusion. He is legit charming though and I hate it.

Kyoko and Katsuya genuinely wouldve been such a good pair if there wasn't such a gross power imbalance. Like that man is her teacher. And also the first adult to ever actually listen to her. Can't blame her at all for falling for him but I sure as fuck can blame him for pursuing it. Musty ass.

The best part was after he died and I don't even mean that in a malicious way. The way that grief is portrayed and how it later manifested as part of Tohrus trauma in the main series is so well-written. Kyoko staked her whole life on this older man who promised to take care of her and was left with basically nothing except an empty house and a child she wasnt emotionally mature enough for.

The way her outfit resembles her middle school outfit too always felt deliberate. She literally regresses back to a scared little girl and its depressing af.

The Kyoru at the end. Jerry and Laura will always be my Kyoru. No disrespect to Manaka and Yuuma because they are wonderful but Jerry and Laura were my Kyoru when I was 12 years old watching low quality 2001 anime in parts on YouTube. And they've grown so much as VA's since then too.

"My stubborn girl" had me swooning. Atleast amidst all the grooming, we atleast got one healthy relationship out of this. 😭

[jadescortaurius-alt]

[Audio log #9 "case 2010 and 2008"]

Dr. Forest: So, doctor Rodriguez. May you tell me more about subject #2010?

Dr. Rodriguez: Why of course, 2010 was taken into custody on November 19th 2023. In the field report filed by operative McKay, it was said that 2010 was found crying in the woods with pitch black portal like rips and tears in the surrounding foliage, air, and ground surrounding it. The subject was said to not have put up much of a fight due to it falling unconscious, it has been tested that the creation of these rifts are caused by stress or when pressure is applied to the subject. Though 2010 has shown it can make fist sized two way portals that she can place an arm through and grab things that are near the second portal.

Dr. Forest: Portals hm? What do you suppose 2010 is?

Dr. Rodriguez: I myself was unsure of what origin 2010 is.. but, a man wearing a plague doctor's uniform approached me one evening and aided me with some research. We concluded that subject 2010 seems to resemble a six year old female shadowfolk, shadowfolk normally live in places with no light though some are rarely spotted roaming around in broad daylight. Though she is different from most recorded shadowfolk.. as I've previously stated, 2010 can create portals.. after this socialization test with 2008, 2010 will be put through a test that we believe will trigger its more powerful rifts.

Dr. Forest: Oh, you must mean Dr. Abel! He has also aided in my research of 2008, perhaps if you are in need of more assistance. I would gladly aid you in your research of 2010.

Dr. Rodriguez: I greatly appreciate the kind offer doctor Forest, but I will have to politely decline. I already have an assistant to aid me with 2010, besides- you and your research assistant must have your hands full with such a powerful capture don't you?

Dr. Forest: Ah- yes- about that.. I am currently taking on this capture case by myself at the moment. Though I did have an assistant before, Dr. Singleton was her name. Though Professer Ogden had informed me that she had quit and returned to her former foundation, I found it quite peculiar since she did seem to have a sort of bond with 2008.. but alas, there's nothing to be done about it now.

Dr. Rodriguez: Ah, do you believe that you will be in need of a new assistant?

Dr. Forest: No, I believe I can handle subject 2008 on my own by now. It apears to be very docile, contrary to the field report that was given to me on the 4th of November in which it said that 2008 reportedly caused the deaths and fatal injury of nearly 20 field personel before being gunned down by general Jacobs. Which gives me the theory that 2008 is in fact a docile specimen though it can be driven to extreme violence if provoked to do so.

Dr. Rodriguez: Doctor Forest, you do know that- wait a second what is 2008 doing-? [Click]

<"recording device off">

[End of audio log #9/11]

[itgrowsperhapsthegreater]

✨️FIC ROUND-UP 1✨️

In the future this will be more about fics I recently read but for the first one, it will be some all time favorites. Fandoms are all over the place even if this is still a lotr/hobbit focused blog.

The Hobbit

all that shine as moonstone leave a discernible mark by kay_cricketed

After the Battle of Five Armies, Thorin Oakenshield is determined to secure Bilbo's place in the world, even if he must make him a husband and a widower in the same hour to do so.

(Devastating to this day but so painfully good)

Between One Breath and the Other by victoriousscarf

At a very young age, Ori had been told that dwarves loved once and forever.

While his mother sat behind him, braiding his hair slowly he found himself tilted his head back and asking her how he could possibly know. She smiled, hands sure as she plaited his hair. “You’ll know,” she said, fingers gentle. “You’ll see them one day and you’ll know.”

(The whole series is so good and really got me into the ship)

Until You See The Light by Lapin

Fíli and Ori have broken no promises. Fíli did not try to force a marriage on one unwilling, and Ori did not run from Erebor like a thief in the night. And yet, the two of them are paying for the crimes of their family. Somehow or another, they must find a way to make a marriage work, in between the politics and the old hurts.

Smaug never came to Erebor's door, but then, there are greater monsters than dragons in this world.

(Anything by Lapin in any fandom you like is gold tbh, but this one in particular has such amazing world building in it. It's unfinished and I don't know how likely it is the author will return to it)

SGA - Stargate Atlantis

Five Impossible Things Rodney McKay Did Before Breakfast by laceymcbain

Rodney hates that this is the day he’s going to disappoint everyone, and it’s little consolation he probably won’t be around to deal with the fall-out.

(Or the one where Rodney tricks Sheppard into leaving him while he reconfigures the shield when Grounding Station #3 is going to blow.)

(One fic I have read so many times I could probably quote it)

freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose by synecdochic

Because the meaning of life is "do the next thing", and we all carry the seeds of the past into our future. Futurefic, Rodney-centric

(The classic. I remember reading this in like 2010 on livejournal, I still love it, major character death warning, this is a fic about moving on and grief)

Edges by rageprufrock

"Dr. McKay--tell us about Atlantis."

(This one hurts, same as above)

DC

Exit Strategy by smilingbackwards

Batman needs a Robin and Batman has a Robin. Tim is just extraneous now, vestigial. He’s a bandage over a healed wound. He doesn’t know what he’s hanging on to.

Or: Tim didn’t expect his exit strategy from the Batfamily to involve quite so much bonding time with Damian over Wayne Enterprises bureaucracy.

(Fundamentally influenced how I think of Tim Drake:

"So much about them is so similar that Tim thinks Bruce has always treated Tim a little like a reflection of himself.

But Tim isn’t Bruce. He didn’t grow up angry, hellbent on justice any way he could see to get it. Tim grew up lonely, without even the memory of being loved to sustain him. What he wants from life isn’t the same as what Bruce wants. Tim wants connection. He wants to be thought of, however fleetingly. He wants someone, anyone, to love him.")

allopreen by envysparkler

Tim retreats to Titans Tower after he’s hit with Ivy’s pollen.

(Replace this with any other fics from this author, the perfect mix of hurt/comfort)

Asimov’s Integral by sElkieNight60

Tim is an unwanted android, a Robo-Child. After being sent back by his parents, his last and only hope rests in the hands of a man still grieving the loss of his own son.

“I didn’t ask for a replacement,” Bruce barked. “I don’t want a replacement! You can go back and tell the RCO I don’t need a replacement.”

Bruce Wayne didn’t want him. If Bruce Wayne didn’t want him, he’d be sent back and dismantled.

(Another amazing DC author, again so many good fics, Tim angst is best angst)

Brooklyn 99

the little ones are climbing up the walls by cashewdani

Her name was next on the list. That’s how she became Tess’ godmother.

(Fav b99 fic)

This round-up is heavily inspired by @captainkirkk 's weekly fic round-up, I think it's a very cool concept.

[twotales]

Pigeons

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis

Characters: Rodney McKay, Radek Zelenka

Pairing: Rodney McKay/Radek Zelenka

Rating: G

Word Count: 848

Tags: Old Age, Established Relationship, Fluff, Bickering, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Pigeons

Summary: Just taking the daily walk to the park.

Notes: This fic is inspired by this tumblr post. More notes and translations at the end.

Read On AO3

Rodney pulled on his boots and tied them snugly, his back and knees creaking as he stood. He put his coat on, his arthritic fingers fumbling with the buttons.

"You never bought me a single coat without buttons. I swear you've been trying to kill me since we met."

"You are delusional. I have done nothing but support your arrogant ass for fifty years."

A lopsided smile grew across Rodney's face as he pulled a toque over his white hair.

"Forty-seven. And if by “support” you mean “follow me around like a lost duckling.” Then yes, you did." He lifted his chin. "Let’s be honest here, you imprinted on me and I just couldn't shake you off."

He could see the man looking at him from over the top of his glasses. “If I didn't love you," he said. “Už bych tě vyhodil z okna.” His eyes gleamed. “I když myslím, že ještě není pozdě.”

Rodney's smile broadened as he picked up his satchel, checking to make sure he had everything. "You know I can understand all that now, and I am one hundred percent sure your mother wouldn't be too happy to hear you threaten me with defenestration."

"Mm, yes, I am regretting past decisions." He pushed his glasses up his nose. "The first of which is introducing you to my mother."

Rodney swung the bag over his shoulder and opened the door. He grimaced as the harsh wind hit his face. "Jesus, you just had to love somewhere cold, huh?"

"No one said you must live here Rodney."

Rodney locked the door and rubbed his arms before starting the daily walk. "Are you kidding? If I’d left you to your own devices you would have blown up half of Europe."

"I am not the one who goes around destroying things." His lips tilted up, "I do seem to recall someone blowing up 5/6th of a solar system though." He held his palm out. "Is it possible that you know of this person?"

"Oh c'mon, that was forever ago." Rodney threw his hands up, "Could we all just move on already?"

"Maybe one could move on if one was not being constantly told he would destroy one's homeland if left to his own devices."

"Fine," Rodney turned into the park and rolled his eyes. "I'll stop telling you that."

His brows lifted, "And you promise this?"

Rodney was all teeth. "Never."

"Well, then I will never move on."

Rodney's lips trembled. "I wish that were true."

He sat on their usual bench and put the satchel next to him. He pulled out his lunchbox and a sack. He opened the lid and took out his sandwich. He snorted as the inevitable birds came off their perches to be closer to the food.

"How could you love these things?"

"Do not even start. They are beautiful creatures."

"More like rats with wings." Rodney said while chewing.

“Oh, “rat’s with wings,” he says." He throws a hand up. "Bah! They are nothing like some rat." He pointed into his palm." They are docile and affectionate creatures who have contributed more to civilization than any other species of bird." He held said finger up, "They can be trained to tell the difference between Bach and Stravinsky you know.” He gesticulated wildly, “But of course, people complain about them, call them rats. We are the ones that brought them here! And yet we forget and treat them like nothing. But they remember even if we don’t. They are intelligent animals who do not fear us because we domesticated them.”

Rodney opened the sack and sifted his hand through the small seeds."I love it when you get wound up."

He knew that man would pull back, eyes lighting up, a dimple-popping smile spreading over his face because Rodney didn’t say such things often and the thing was he loved it when Rodney got wound up too. It was just how they were, how they would always be. Rodney threw a handful of birdseed and watched the birds peck and coo.

He could see the man on the bench smiling down at them, holding his hand out to pet one, the backs of his fingers rubbing gently up its neck. "Jsi můj oblíbenec."

"That is disgusting," Rodney said fondly.

He scowled. "Rodney, they are less disgusting than humans."

"Yeah, well, I don't like those either."

Rodney smiled as he said it. He could see the man chuckling at him, eyes crinkling on the sides as they closed lightly.

Rodney finished his sandwich and sighed, wiping the crumbs off toward the group of happy birds. His throat tightened as he zeroed in on one with a bar wing pattern. Two perfectly symmetrical solid black stripes across each one. He spread a pile of seeds next to it. His hand moved slowly, making sure the bird was aware of his intent. He gently ran the back of his fingers up its iridescent green and purple neck. The pigeon cooed happily as tears welled up in his eyes.

"You would have been Radek's favorite."

As always, I would like to thank @all-mighty-yaoiyuri ​ The Czech who checks my Czech. (ᕗ-^▿^)ᕗ ❤

More Notes:

Not going to lie, I cried several times while writing this, like, I am talking bawling my eyes out crying. And just so everyone knows, Radek died of old age, he did not suffer in any way and got to spend the rest of his life contributing to science and bickering with the man he loved the most.

Translations:

Už bych tě vyhodil z okna: I'd throw you out the window.

I když myslím, že ještě není pozdě: Although, I don't think it's too late.

Jsi můj oblíbenec: You're my favorite.

[lilacs-in-space]

1. How many works do you have on AO3?:

9

2. What's your total AO3 word count?:

87,894

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I only write for Star Trek these days. I muddle between all of them as I tend to write for small background characters I've developed unhealthy obsessions with.

Back in my fanfiction.net days I predominantly wrote Star Trek Enterprise and Stargate Atlantis but I took a 20 year hiatus (more or less) in writing fanfic. I only really started writing again about 6 months ago because Star Trek Picard made me simultaneously so happy and so angry that my creativity just exploded back to life.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Not Your Typical Disaster Scenario (Discworld - Terry Pratchett) 

Eight Down. Yellow Bird Who Goes 'Quack!' (Discworld) 

A Way With Wordes (Discworld) 

Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring. (Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek) 

Where the falling angel meets the rising ape (12 Monkeys (TV))

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Absolutely! Nothing makes my day like receiving a comment on a fic. I always make sure to leave them on fic I enjoy too.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I think my fav kinds of endings are bittersweet rather than angsty. A lot of the time they end with lovers parting, willingly or not. Love me a 'doomed by the narrative' type.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

A Way With Wordes - it ends with a wedding announcement!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, which given that I've written for an insanely unpopular ship once or twice, is actually a little surprising.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

My good man/woman/rogue, I only write smut these days. I used to live for fluffy friendship fics, and I like to think I still inject a lot of tenderness into my work, but I am more motivated by the idea of becoming a good erotica writer than anything else these days.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I don't. I thought about writing a 12 Monkeys/Picard crossover but never went through with it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes. I had a bunch of Spock/McCoy poems I wrote back in 2002 reappear over a decade later on AO3 under someone else's name. Not an archive, just some guy pretending he wrote them. I honestly didn't care. They were exactly the kind of mawkish tripe you'd expect a 12 year old to write.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Back in my day, sonny, we wrote fics round robin style through hotmail.com or on the yahoo message boards. (So yes, but we're talking like 20 years ago. I don't do it anymore because I'm in too weird of a niche these days!)

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Nebula class. Looks like a frog. I have a Nebula model on my desk that I replaced the decal of to make it the T'Kumbra!

OH, you mean like...OTP? Uh... I don't think I have one anymore? Back in the day I used to read a tremendous amount of McKay/Weir(SGA), Archer/T'Pol (Ent), and Jack/Sam (SG1) but these days I really enjoy reading about niche characters and ocs. Some of the best fics I've read this year have been oc/oc fics or obscure character(OC) and original character(oc) fics.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

You got me in between the devil and the deep blue sea - I was so taken with this idea when I started, then I got super sick and now whenever I think of working on it, I just feel tired again and don't. We'll see if I return to it.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I feel like I'm really good at setting a mood and drawing a person in with all their senses. I get a lot of comments about that.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I don't use one word where many will do. My chapters are way. too. freakin'. long.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I do this a lot, but I always put in the translations. If it's a sentence, I will place the translation after the sentence. If it's just a word, I'll put in a glossary.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Ever? Star Trek TOS and it was a Spones fic. On AO3? Discworld and it was Vimes & Vetinari.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

I am obsessed with A Perfect Match. I love delving into Romulan and Vulcan culture and exposing the similarities and dichotomies of two arrogant characters like Letant and Solok.

However, I am also very proud of Not Your Typical Disaster Scenario which I wrote based on a piece of art I found super inspiring.

If you’re reading this and want to play, I hereby tag you with no pressure. 🥳

[gray-isnt-real]

I’m alive! And I’m gonna be rewriting/reworking Dimensional Disaster- editing our cast, practicing how I draw them, working on the story, etc. So I will be working on it again soon!

For now, though, I present y’all with a close look at two of our main protagonists: the redesigned Kailani Hale, from a tech-reliant universe, and the revived Alex Mckay, who in the story originally comes from the small town of Perfection, Nevada in a universe that isn’t quite as perfect.

Kailani Hale

Kailani originally comes from a futuristic, technology reliant universe run not by a government, but by a major corporation known as MATRIX. MATRIX is the sole producer of anything and everything technology-related throughout the nation. They control internet access, the media, the economy, the political systems, everything. They keep everything going.

Kailani wasn’t exactly someone at the top of the food chain in this universe- think, the middle man. She was a project manager and head engineer, supervising major projects that would be put into circulation nationwide and monitoring the work of those beneath her. She worked alongside the Directors to put new concepts on motion and improve the company for public favor. She was a neutral party in this world.

Until she stumbled upon a project that the owner and founder, Joseph Alt, had been working on behind the scenes. Project D-100, it was called. A device that resembled a pocket watch, able to open doors to hundreds of different dimensions.

She only meant to take a look; she was only curious how it worked. But that didn’t mean anything when the alarms went off, when security guards pursued her down the halls of the laboratory, shooting with the intention to kill.

Kailani ended up using the device to escape, and ended up in a completely different universe, just as it was intended to work. The only issue was…she didn’t know how to get back to her own universe. And there began her journey through dimensions, exploring and gaining friends across the fabric of the universe.

That’s how she met her best friend, Alex.

Alex McKay

Alex McKay hails from Dimension TR-3M0R, a seemingly normal universe to anyone who didn’t know better.

Nothing dystopian or utopian about it. Just the regular earth, regular people, regular little towns.

Alex is a young woman who moved from Bixby, Nevada to Perfection, a little town in the middle of nowhere to start her life after college. She started her own little farm, with small numbers of livestock and crop to live sustainably and sell to others either in town or the next town over. She got on well with her neighbors, like the old guy who turned his house into a bunker and the girl who ran what was formerly Walter Chang’s Market.

Life was great. Until she found herself face to face with an infestation of giant sand worms that the town lovingly called Graboids. That’s right. Alex comes from the Tremors universe, where the Graboids roam and the Shriekers and Assblasters get blown up into a pulp.

Alex did eventually grow accustomed to the weirdness of Perfection, to watching out for El Blanco the sterile Graboid and warding off other strange creatures. She thrived out in the small town, even in chaos. And then she met Kailani.

•

•

•

I’m going to make a comic of how they met eventually. For now, have lore :D

[steampunkforever]

Most of you who pay attention when I write on movies have heard me talk about this mysterious figure named “Adam McKay.” Yet I’ve yet to write a filmposting on any of his works. Naturally, the best film to start a creative retrospective of McKay’s mythic work with is the Will Ferrell vehicle “Step Brothers.”

Step Brothers is deeply stupid. Step Brothers is hilarious. Step Brothers is an oddly intelligently unintelligent comedy exploring the themes of blended families, delayed adulthood, and what constitutes the idea of success. There’s also a sequence in which a 13 year old makes Will Ferrell lick dog poop.

Again we come to “did the movie achieve what it set out to.” I’m starting to sour on this as a solid definition of a good movie, though Pacific Rim is still good and anchors that metric. Regardless, I loved it. Another triumph for Adam.

As simply a Will Ferrell vehicle (albeit one produced by 00s comic king Judd Apatow), Step Brothers is just a slapstick romp, but McKay (who I didn’t realize directed it until after the film was well on its way) takes it a step farther. The dialog, while stupid, is cleverly stupid, where you may laugh in spite of yourself but it won’t be out of pity. It’s a ridiculous movie but it isn’t bad.

Rather, this is a surrealist film taking your classic blended family plot of two young boys becoming friends an uniting against an older bully sibling and turning it on its head. The young boys are in their late 30s, their bullying brother has a family, a land rover, and is younger than they are, and the titular step brothers still act like they’re 12, down to crying at the table until their parents tell them to stop fighting.

I don’t mean this in a “grown men act childish” way that many comedies handle the manchild trope. In every metric, these are Man Children and that’s what distinguishes this from any other Jason Segal or Vince Vaughn “adult man never grew up” comedy from this era. They’re stuck in the “child of the 80s who never left” personalities that we’re seeing span into the 90s and also start to collect funko pops, and they’re building an injurious DIY bunk bed.

Of course I’m being pretentious about Step Brothers and it’s really not that deep. Director I have a love hate relationship with in an extremely parasocial way happened to make a good movie that’s best enjoyed with three beers in you and a grilled cheese about to join them (another win for theaters with alcohol). Surprise. But the thing is, though definitely sophisticated by any means, Step Brothers put a twist on this specific genre of comedy that’s special and should be pointed out. Maybe it’s just Adam McKay who can pull it off, but he pulls it off with just enough balance that it’s great and simultaneously not that deep. And I think I can get a tad pretentious about that at least.

[greenpanda-basicfakewitch]

Lore | Horned God

[This one is a little longer]

Horned God may in fact be the horned GODDESS [hypothetically]

[Deer Goddess]

 The Horned gods origins are a little tricky. There are sources that claim that the Horned god was originally the horned goddess. Cernunnos, originally derived from old pagan myths of a horned ‘Goddess’ , a story about how a deer would turn into a woman. In folklore society in 1930, a researcher put his theories on a matriarchal Hunter gatherer society ruling highlands of scotland as a pre-celtic deer cult. J.G. Mckay.

Modern Scottish Gaelic and modern Irish Gaelic dictionaries both give the word Fiadh having two meanings: “Deer,” “God.” The deer was some sort of god, as well as divine messenger, some type to the Goddess Artemis. How you had to ask permission to hunt.

In Faerie lore, deer are their cattle and a common form of Faire women, Witches can transform into mice, hares, cats or black sheep but never the sacred deer.

In many pagan animal-cults, the priest or priestess would often wear an ornamental headdress of the sacred animal. There are Scottish folktales of a deer woman that Mckay theories could be explained by this real practice. In these folktales, a hunter, who has been stalking deer, observes, when putting up his gun to take aim, that the animal changed into a woman. He falls in love with her. Adventures ensue and they are separated until he finds her again on a distant island and they finally marry and live happily ever after.

The Deer Cult and the deer-goddess cult date back from a remote matriarchal time. Diana as well as Artemis and her nymphs, would appear to be classical examples of a hint at this older heritage. No one in patripotestal times, it would seem, would dream of inventing a feminine hunting divinity.

Celtic Society developed and created a masculine Horned God from the deer goddess and keep the feminine character next to him as a reminder as his shadow. By the stage the Deer Goddess matriarchy would have been in decay and her worshippers have grown fewer. While worshippers of the male Cernunnos became ever more numerous.

 Today, there are whispers of this old Deer Goddess Cult in traditional German and English stag dances that are performed by men who dress themselves in women’s clothes, thereby preserving a memory of a former time when stag-dances were perfect by women, and of a later time, when the religious functions of women were usurped by men. 

Shakspearen roots.

Swiftly moving on a couple thousand years, we come to the iconic bard, Shakespeare. Elizabethan english comedy abounds with images of the cuckold- a man with horns on his head, symbolising his shame that his wife has taken up with another man-

Herne the Hunter- from Shakespeare to popular culture. So at least thats where the name came from.

Robin Hood Myth [Horned God] 

[Authors note: This website is not secured so take care also- these types of websites were the ones I’ve seen and how I came to know about Wicca]

The Horned God is the father of Robin Hood? And it’s Pagan?

The Horned god is a central theme/character in many european pagan faiths. Generally seen as a deity of woods, wild animals, hunting and virility he is an elemental force of nature and commonly identified as a male deity often the consort of the female force or earth mother. 

This is the case in the Wicca religion where the horned god is worshipped as both the child and the consort of the great Mother, Triple Goddess.

 There are some evidence that the idea of the ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ in Wicca is part of ancient tribal rites but such evidence is limited.

 For many modern Wiccans the ‘Horned God’ sometimes known as the Great God or Great Father is his own father.

Mating with the Goddess at Beltaine then dying at Summer Solstice only to be reborn as her child  at the new year, or Winter Solstice, he is a key symbol in the birth/death/Rebirth cycle.

The Horned God is known as the ‘Hunter’ has strong links in Britain with the idea of ‘Wild Hunt’ he is the taker of life, a vengeful spirit, hunting evil with a pack of demonic hounds. 

He is often portrayed as carrying a bow. 

The british Herne the HUnter is rumoured to survive still as a powerful spirit.

Herne is linked to Robin Hood just as Robin provided for the needy, Herne provided food for the tribe.

 In some legends he is listed as Robin Hoods father, although this adds greater status to Robin Hoods legends.

 He is portrayed has either having horns or Antlers, as well as his image is full of Phallic symbols.

Locations: There have been representations of Fertility icons for thousands of years as in the Altars of Stag Horns which have been found in Temples of Apollo and Diana in ancient Greece. 

He is sometimes depicted with hooves or Goat hindquarters, a link to the Greek God Pan. Which of course had christians mistaken this horned fello for Satan.

Stag God image can be found in a cave painting at Trosi-Freres in France. This painting is thought to date around 13,000 BC known as the “Sorcerer” and depicts a half human, half stag spirit. This image is often seen as a representation of a shaman dressed as a stag performing a rite to ensure good hunting.

The Horned God is not an exclusively Wiccan concept as one would expect as many Pagan faiths have similar roots, the Horned god concept can be seen in the Greek God Pan, the Celtic god of the underworld and animals cernunnos, the Roman Janys, Tammuz and Damuzi the consorts of Ishtar and Inanna, Osiris and Dionysus as well as the Green Man mythological figure in the Uk.

The link with Osiris and Cernunnos which were both gods which guarded the underworld or judged souls and Osiris was both brother and consort of Isis seen by many as the Egyptian mother goddess. Cernunnos was a fertility god of the pagan celts and Gauls and is thought by many to have been the basis for the christian concept of the horned devil being a half man half goat guardian of the underworld and certainly a rival faith for early christianity.

The link between the Horned God and the Green man in English folk lore is very strong and even today many pubs in UK villages bare the name  “The Green Man” often with a very pagan image on the pub sign. The Green man also known as ‘Green Jack’ or ‘Jack in the Green’ is an English spirit of trees and plants with the power to make it rain and crops grow well. The Green man is thought to share his home in the forest with forest fairies sometimes called “Greencoates” or Greenies depending on the region of the UK. In popular imagery the Green man is shown as face peering out of foliage, his wood spirit companions and fertility imagery clearly links him to Pan and also as a sort of sanitised Hern the Hunter and Wild hunter.

For many modern Druids and Wicca the Horned god is a key part of the birth, death, rebirth cycle and mentioned in many rites and celebrations, his imagery is powerful and has a strong attraction to many as a symbol of almost suppressed power / violence and male sexuality. Some modern pagans reenact the ancient rite where the hunter who brought the most/ best meat to the table was dressed in stag horns and furs and was rewarded with the right to couple with the priestess representing the goddess sometimes in front of the whole tribe. The few pagan groups that reenact this mostly do so symbolically or with the hunter and goddess being intimate partners already with only a small part of this “Great Rite” being performed before the rest of the coven.

[mundaneandmagicalcreature]

Media consumed during 2023

Books

The Secret to Superhuman Strength (2021). Alison Bechdel. 7/10

Salomé (1891). Oscar Wilde. 10/10

The Vampire Lestat (1985). Anne Rice. 8/10

Time is a Mother (2022). Ocean Vuong. 3/10 (I feel like an asshole, but I didn't like it)

The Queen of the Damned (1988). Anne Rice. 9/10

Infinity (2017). Hannah Moscovitch. 8/10

Bomarzo (1962). Manuel Mujica Lainez. 10/10

Stone Fruit (2021). Lee Lai. 9/10

The Vampire Armand (1998). Anne Rice. 7/10 (I hate Marius)

Mémoires d'Hadrien (1951). Marguerite Yourcenar. 2/10 (How do you make a bisexual emperor sound like a boring old man, Marguerite, how?)

The Tale Of The Body Thief (1992). Anne Rice. 5/10

Poems (1931). Wilfred Owen. 7/10

La Sed (2020). Marina Yuszczuk. 8/10

Spinning (2017). Tillie Walden. 9/10

Movies

Emma (2020). Autumn de Wilde. 8/10

Minari (2020). Lee Isaac Chung. 10/10

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). Robert Wiene. 7/10

Bones and All (2022). Luca Guadagnino. 7/10

Maurice (1987). James Ivory. 7/10 (the book's better)

Fucking Åmål (1998). Lukas Moodysson. 6/10

Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972). Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 6/10

Le Fil (2009). Mehdi Ben Attia. 10/10 (I would marry this movie if I could)

37°2 le Matin (Betty Blue) (1986). Jean-Jacques Beineix. 7/10

Salomé (1922). Charles Bryant, Alla Nazimova. 4/10

Interview with the Vampire (1994). Neil Jordan. 8/10

The Addams Family (1991). Barry Sonnenfeld. 9/10

Addams Family Values (1993). Barry Sonnenfeld. 7/10

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022). Guillermo del Toro. 8/10

渺渺 (Miao Miao) (2008). Hsiao-tse Cheng. 5/40

La ley del deseo (1987). Pedro Almodóvar. 7/10

და ჩვენ ვიცეკვეთ (And Then We Danced) (2019). Levan Akin. 10/10 (so, so, so sweet)

Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) (1971). Luchino Visconti. 7/10

Disobedience (2017). Sebastián Lelio. 8/10

Shiva Baby (2020). Emma Seligman. 7/10

X (2022). Ti West. 5/10 (maybe I just don't like slashers; the music was 10/10 tho)

Back to the Future Part II (1989). Robert Zemeckis. 5/10

Ammonite (2020). Francis Lee. 7/10

Colette (2018). Wash Westmoreland. 6/10

The Duke of Burgundy (2014). Peter Strickland. 8/10 (unnerving and visually stunning)

Summerland (2020). Jessica Swale. 7/10 (Studio Ghibli vibes in a live action movie; a bit saccharine-y at times)

The Handmaiden (2016). Park Chan-wook. 9/10

The Favourite (2018). Yorgos Lanthimos. 10/10

Nope (2022). Jordan Peele. 8/10

Renfield (2023). Chris McKay. 6/10 (I liked the Nicholas Cage scenes, everything else was kinda meh).

Professor Marston & The Wonder Women (2017). Angela Robinson. 7/10 (sweet, romantic, entertaining, but at times it felt fake and manufactured, the way "based on a true story" movies usually are).

The Terminator (1984). James Cameron. 4/10 (it could have been 45mins instead of 1h45mins...)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). James Cameron. 6/10 ("If you didn't like the first why did you watch the second?" Because I love my sibling)

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989). Steven Spielberg. 6/10

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Francis Ford Coppola. 9/10

The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Jonathan Demme. 10/10

Sycorax (2021). Matías Piñeiro. 8/10

Black Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp) (2022). Peter Strickland. 8/10

Carta a Mi Madre Para Mi Hijo (Letter To My Mother For My Son) (2022). Carla Simón. 7/10

Is It Too Much To Ask (2019). Leena Manimekalai. 6/10

The Actress (2021). Andrew Ondrejcak. 9/10

Shakti (2019). Martín Rejtman. 6/10

El Silencio es un Cuerpo Que Cae (Silence Is A Falling Body) (2017). Agustina Comedi. 10/10 (so sad, so tender, so loving)

Meeting The Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970). Terrence Dixon. 9/10 (Something tells me this is an excellent documentary; but there's a lot about "talk about certain things in a certain way" and "you know what I mean?" and no, I don't know what he meant or what things and ways were those).

Aftersun (2022). Charlotte Wells. 10/10 (who will lift this elephant off my chest now?)

Vers La Tendresse (Towards Tenderness) (2016). Alice Diop. 6/10

Silvia Prieto (1999). Martín Rehtman. 9/10

Camarera de Piso (Maid) (2022). Lucrecia Martel. 1/10 (the audio was unintelligible)

Contes Immoraux (Immoral Tales) (1973). Walerian Borowczyk. 4/10

Ojo Dos Veces Boca (Eye Two Times Mouth) (2023). Lila Avilés. 8/10

Az prijde kocour (The Cassandra Cat) (1963). Vojtech Jasný. 8/10

O Ornitólogo (The Ornithologist) (2015). João Pedro Rodrigues. 8/10

Uma Paciência Selvagem Me Trouxe Até Aqui (A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here) (2021). Érica Sarmet. 6/10

Squish! (2021). Tulapop Saenjaroen. 3/10

Fugue (2023). John Gianvito. 6/10

Η δουλειά της (Her job) (2018). Nikos Labôt. 8/10

Playback (2019). Agustina Comedi. 10/10

Maine Diil Nahin Dekha (I Am Yet to See Delhi) (2014). Humaira Bilkis. 1/10 (I have seen instagram reels with more argument and better structure)

Proyecto Fantasma (Phantom Project) (2022). Roberto Doveris. 7/10

El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Crab Trap) (2009). Oscar Ruíz Navia. 6/10

Ema (2019). Pablo Larraín. 9/10

Los Fuertes (The Strong Ones) (2019). Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo. 7/10

Phörpa (The Cup) (1999). Khyentse Norbu. 7/10

Նռան գույնը | Nran Guyne | Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates). Sergei Parajanov. 10/10 (The weirdest movie I've ever seen, and one of the most visually stunning ones)

Voyage of Time: An IMAX Documentary (2016). Terrence Malick. 10/10

إن شئت كما في السماء (It Must Be Heaven) (2019). Elia Suleiman. 9/10

Potemkiniştii (The Potemkinists) (2022). Radu Jude. 2/10 (yes, I know the Russian government is evil, but please tell me something else)

Nr. 1 - Aus Berichten der Wach- und Patrouillendienste (From The Reports Of Security Guards and Patrol Services) (1985). Helke Sander. 8/10

Liborio (2021). Nino Martínez Sosa. 6/10

Sendiri Diana Sendiri (Following Diana) (2015). Kamila Andini. 6/10

Valkoinen Peura (The White Reindeer) (1952). Erik Blomberg. 4/10

Wadja (2012). Haifaa Al-Mansour. 10/10

La Femme Au Couteau (The Woman With A Knife) (1969). Timité Basori. 4/10

Tornar-se um Homem na Idade Média (Becoming Male In The Middle Ages) (2022). Pedro Neves Marques. 6/10

Un Garibaldino al Convento (A Garibaldian In The Convent) (1942). Vittorio de Sica. 6/10

Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau (Paris 05:59 Théo & Hugo) (2016). 7/10 (20 mins of porn followed by an hour and 10 mins about post-exposure prophylaxis and the importance of public health and transport systems)

Suplement (The Supplement) (2002). Krzysztof Zanussi. 7/10

天下乌鸦 (All The Crows In The World) (2021). Tang Yi. 6/10

L'Échapée (Escape) (2009). Katell Quillévéré. 8/10

An Exercise In Discipline - Peel (1982). Jane Campion. 1/10

La Amiga De Mi Amiga (Girlfriends And Girlfriends) (2022). Zaida Carmona. 2/10

Matka Joanna od aniołów (Mother Joan Of Angels) (1961). Jerzy Kawalerowicz. 8/10

Please, Baby, Please (2022). Amanda Kramer. 8/10

Magari (If Only) (2019). Ginevra Elkan. 7/10

Amansa tiafi (Public Toilet Africa) (2021). Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah. 5/10

Holy Spider (عنکبوت مقدس) (2022). Ali Abbasi. 10/10

Movies (II, 'cause I reached the character limit in a section)

Les Cinq Diables (The Five Devils) (2022). Léa Mysius. 8/10

Close (2022). Lukas Dhont. 10/10 (so, so, so sad)

Rien à Foutre (Zero Fucks Given) (2021). Emmanuel Marre, Julie Lecoustre. 7/10

Un Affaire De Femmes (Story Of Women) (1988). Claude Chabrol. 10/10

Serpentine (2022). Eva Doležalová. 2/10 (good photography, but the story is trite an shallow)

Strange Way of Life (2023). Pedro Almodóvar. 7/10

Belle (2013). Amma Asante. 6/10 (not terrible, but cardboard-y like it was written to teach middle schoolers history)

Series

Severance (2022-). Season 1. Dan Erickson. 7/10 (entertaining but i wanted more answers)

Atlanta (2016-2022). Season 1. Donald Glover. 9/10

Atlanta (2016-2022). Season 2. Donald Glover. 9/10

Atlanta (2016-2022). Season 3. Donald Glover. 8/10 (very uneven)

Atlanta (2016-2022). Season 4. Donald Glover. 8/10 (Mr. Glover, why was the last episode dedicated to product placement?)

The White Lotus (2021-2023) Season 1. Mike White. 6/10

The White Lotus (2021-2023) Season 2. Mike White. 7/10

The Last Of Us (2023-). Season 1. Craig Mazin. 9/10

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013-2018). Season 1. Anthony Bourdain. 8/10

Six Feet Under (2001-2005). Season 1. Alan Ball. 9/10

Six Feet Under (2001-2005). Season 2. Alan Ball. 8/10

Six Feet Under (2001-2005). Season 3. Alan Ball. 8/10 (Nobody Sleeps is my favorite episode so far; so close to my own understanding of what love is)

Six Feet Under (2001-2005). Season 4. Alan Ball. 9/10

Gravity Falls (2012-2016). Season 1. Alex Hirsch. 8/10

Six Feet Under (2001-2005). Season 5. Alan Ball. 8/10

Good Omens (2019-). Season 1. Douglas Mackinnon. 8/10

Good Omens (2019-). Season 2. Douglas Mackinnon. 9/10

Gravity Falls (2012-2016). Season 2. Alex Hirsch. 9/10

The Bear (2022-). Season 2. Christopher Storer. 10/10

Dictaduras Latinoamericanas (2016). Pablo Gregui and Marcel Cluzet. 3/10 (the episodes were way to short to teach me anything beyond common knowledge)

What We Do in the Shadows (2019-). Season 5. Jemaine Clement (?). 7/10

The Newsreader (2021-). Season 2. Michael Lucas. 10/10

Our Flag Means Death (2022-). Season 2. David Jenkins.4/10

Over the Garden Wall (2014). Patrick McHale. 10/10

The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). Mike Flanagan. 9/10

Misc

Pokemon Leaf Green (2004) 3/10 (beating the pokemon league was a debt from childhood but it was so boring)

Escape From Monkey Island (2000) 6/10

HBO's The Last Of Us Podcast (2023). Season 1. 10/10

The Procession to Calvary (2020). 10/10 (I expected a fun, silly little game and got exactly that)

Stardew Valley (2016). 10/10

[positivelybeastly]

If you could make movies about Hank, how many would you do and what could we see in them? Like an origin story, specific storyline etc. Would it be live action or a cartoon/animation, if live action who would you cast as Beast?

Now this is a fun thought experiment!

So, I actually think that if I was going to focus specifically on Hank, I would want multiple series, each separated according to decade or periods of his life, as it were, and we're going to mix media a little bit. Bear with me. This is probably going to be a multi-part series, so, here's the first part.

60s/First Class

So, we start off with a live action series that begins in medias res - alarms are blaring, people are rushing through corridors, klaxons are bathing corridors in red light. Through it all, a young man with a frightened but determined look on his face fights through the tide until he reaches a room full of radiation suits. He pulls one on, takes a few deep breaths, and then pushes through into a reactor room that's clearly going critical.

No music. No dialogue. No sound, except for the thumping of a heart beat and the sounds of this intricate mechanism being cajoled, being calmed, being put right again, until eventually the alarm lifts. Now it's just the sound of heavy, panicked breathing, and the man keels over at the railing nearest to him as a group of men in identical radiation suits rush to him. He blacks out.

When he comes to, he smiles at the woman sitting beside his bed, and moves as if to kiss her, but she smacks his arm, before embracing him and kissing him. A doctor moves in to talk, but there's still no dialogue, just soft music. A small montage of people in suits, offering the man in the bed a lot of paperwork that he signs. Before long, he's well enough to leave the hospital, and he and his wife drive to a farm. They stand on the outskirts, arms wrapped around one another. Camera pulls back, revealing the name on the mailbox.

McCoy.

Cut to the intro, which is nuclear flames, genomes shattering, a mysterious, animalistic figure gazing out of shadow with yellow eyes that turn into spotlights, revealing the title of the show.

'X-MEN: BEAST - FIRST CLASS'

17 YEARS LATER

A young man who's the spitting image of the man we saw in this prologue sequence is being harassed by a young woman with blonde hair. They're talking about the last quiz they just had to take in Biology, and the young woman tells the young man that he needs to stop hiding who he is. How brilliant he is. He tells her that he's on the high end of normal, and she scoffs. They walk by a football tryout, where the coach is harassing his team, telling them that any old nerd could do better than them.

"You, McKay - over here, show 'em what I mean."

"It's McCoy, sir, and I don't know quite what you mean?"

The coach becomes ever more insistent. McCoy shrugs, shaking his head. He kicks the ball. It sails clean, hits the goal - at the other end of the pitch. The coach is flabbergasted. He wants McCoy for the team, but McCoy is uncertain - until the team kicks off, saying they don't want this gorilla on their team. One of them, identified as Janssen by his jersey, is particularly venomous, and McCoy gives him a coldly furious look.

"Coach, what position does Janssen play?"

Smash cut to the same number on the team, but with MCCOY on the back. Sports montage, naturally, with MCCOY as star player, intercut with the occasional side-eyed look from a parent or onlooker whenever he does something a little too amazing.

Jen is the love interest of the movie. She's great.

Final game of the season. Crowds are roaring, full football Americana experience. MCCOY is in full swing, but we aren't seeing things from his perspective, we're seeing things from somewhere up in the bleachers - from some kind of scope. It zooms in hard on MCCOY, a finger tenses, squeezes - misses. Screaming, hysteria. The scope view panics as MCCOY comes charging towards it, and we zoom out to see Janssen as McCoy clambers up the side of the bleachers with unnatural ease.

They fight. McCoy knocks the rifle away, but he's a little too strong, and Janssen nearly falls over the edge, and it's quite the drop. McCoy grabs him and stops him from going over, but he can't use his other hand to hold on to the bleachers and Janssen at the same time. He knocks off his shoe, and we get our first look at an oversized foot that looks to be as dextrous as a hand. McCoy moves to use this odd limb to help Janssen up.

Janssen hisses. Says he'd rather die than get help from a filthy stinking mutant that crawls all over human girls like he's a real man. He smacks McCoy's hand away, drops. We don't see the impact, but McCoy does. His eyes widen. He yanks off the football helmet and throws up, staggering as he climbs back up, just in time for the officials to come storming in. He looks red-faced, shaking. He looks guilty.

We cut to the farm. The McCoy family are quiet, withdrawn - worried. The parents keep looking outside, where their son has taken to disassembling and reassembling every piece of farm equipment available to him, as if that's going to make him feel any better. Edna and Norton talk, and they feel guilty, Norton especially, about the legacy they've given poor Hank, as we pan up over the kitchen counter and see a newspaper headline exclaiming about the mutant panic taking over the nation.

A knock at the door. Norton looks pale, so Edna answers - to a man dressed like some kind of Conquistador, which he identifies himself as. He brings out a sword and seems to cast some form of electricity with it, striking down Edna and Norton, drawing their son back to the house with a speed that defies thought, and it's only this lightning sword that stops him from bowling the man over right there and then.

The Conquistador wants this young man, Hank, to do him a favour - use his father's ID card to steal some specific components from the nuclear power plant he works at. He looks basically identical to him, he shouldn't even be questioned. His sword twitches in the direction of Hank's parents, and his jaw sets. He agrees.

A short, tense sequence at the power plant. Hank does the deed, but it's dangerous and it goes wrong, the alarms are sounded - but he gets away. He escapes to a warehouse where his parents are being held by the Conquistador's men, and the man is raving, rambling.

Hank trounces them, effortlessly. It's superhuman to watch, and Edna and Norton are wide eyed as Hank frees them, all of them silent. Norton opens his mouth, apologises. Hank doesn't understand, apologising for what? Norton gestures at Hank's obviously overgrown hands and feet. For that. That's his fault. Hank's expression darkens, and Norton realises what he's said without thinking, and he looks to Edna, but she doesn't know what to say. Behind them, the Conquistador is getting back up, pulling up his sword, aiming it at Hank's back.

A ruby red beam comes out of nowhere, blasting it away, and Hank turns around, to see . . .

The Professor explains who he is. What the people with him are, what Hank is - a mutant. Hank already knows, and the Professor smiles a little, because of course Hank does. The conversation continues, and Hank is interested, intrigued, even - he keeps glancing back at his parents, but they look very uncertain, even as they do their best to give him smiles and make sure he knows they're okay.

"There will be sacrifices, Hank. This won't be an easy life. But it will be a worthy one."

Hank agrees, but before he walks off with Xavier and the other X-Men, he embraces his parents one more time. He's holding them tighter than they are him when he lets go.

The series then adapts some 60s X-Men, some First Class stories - I'd definitely want to pull in the story where Hank and Bobby first becomes friends during a vacation road trip across the US; the Unus the Untouchable arc, where Hank becomes a wrestler; a momentary flirtation with Jean Grey, before he realises who she's pretty much destined to end up with; the beatnik foot cult; Magneto.

Costumes change, villains go by, and Hank is enjoying himself, growing, but as he grows older, he seems less satisfied.

Especially since we find out that Xavier wiped Jen's mind, and she no longer remembers Hank. For their safety. Hank is. Not pleased. It's the first wedge between him and the Professor, and they paper over it, but. It sticks.

Towards the end of the series, he receives a letter in the mail, and when it comes time to do Danger Room exercises, he's conspicuously absent. Xavier is oddly reticent to talk to him, and instead suggests that Scott, Bobby, Warren and Jean talk to him instead. Hank is in his room, the letter in his hands, and seeming torn. They all talk.

Hank wants to leave the X-Men. The very concept shakes them a little - the last time this happened, Unus attacked and they were nearly defeated - but the newfound confidence of having done this for a few years now means that they understand why Hank wants to move on. Everyone's been thinking about it, actually, Hank's just the first one to have a place he wants to go to rather than just 'not the school.'

They embrace. Bobby in particular takes a little longer than everyone else to let go, and it's clear it's killing him a little that Hank is going, but he does let go.

The final scene of the series is Hank in civilian clothes saying his final goodbyes. There's not a dry eye in the house. Jean kisses him on the cheek, Bobby hugs him way too hard, Scott clasps his shoulder, Warren gives him a fistbump. The Professor shakes his hand. They're all sad to see him go, but this is for the best.

Hank gets into his car, and starts it up. He looks back at the Mansion, the X-Men, wistfully, thinking, for a moment, that he should stop and go back. But in the end, he puts the car in gear and drives. As he leaves the Mansion, he adjusts the rear view mirror.

For the audience, Hank is replaced by something wearing his clothes. Dark furred. Monstrous. Unfamiliar. Familiar. Yellow eyed.

End credits. End of the series.

To be continued.

I actually have no idea who I'd want to play a young Hank, I'm not as up to date on young actors as I'd like, but I've been recommended someone called Noah Centino for a 17-20 year old Hank, so, sure? Whoever they are, they need to be able to pull off Hank's distinctive Superman curl.

I'd definitely want an almost sort of 'The Incredibles' tone to the X-Men sections of this series, where it's all deathly dangerous but the X-Men almost don't seem to realise until they do. Michael Giacchino does the score, because the man can do no wrong.

[film-in-my-soul]

For your top 5 (or 10) fandoms who is your fave for each and why do you love them?

Oh god, that's a tough ask but boy howdy and I'm glad you said (or 10) cause honestly top 5??? Ooof.

This is gonna be a mix of new and old fandoms since, honestly, I feel like I've been part of so many TT^TT

1. Top Gun - Nick "Goose" Bradshaw

What can I say? His mustache and terrible fashion sense compel me (not me wishing my wardrobe was his). But on a more serious note, I just love how he is with Carole and Bradley. He's also Mav's rock; the comedic support and his vibes are just immaculate. He's very "man written by a woman" energy, a complete dork, and I love him.

2. Top Gun: Maverick - Tom "Iceman" Kazansky

Am I splitting hairs calling these two different fandoms? Maybe. Do I care? No. Because Ice needed to be on this list. I love him. I mean, look at that smile? Also, I think Ice is just one of these characters that everyone likes to paint as super serious, and I just??? Did this man not snap his teeth in a show of aggression? He's got a petty streak a mile long and knows how to keep up with Maverick verbally and in the air. He's got the range, and I love digging into him. Also also, it's Val Kilmer.

3. Six of Crows - Kaz Brekker

This one was hard cause I could have pulled another above and separated book from the show, but for the purposes of variety, I will stick with the book on this (if it was the show, it would be Jesper). I love my fictional men a little deranged and willing to burn the world down for the people they love. Kaz is honestly the epitome of that, even if he's very stupid about it. I genuinely love his character. He's unapologetically a bastard and self-aware enough to admit it without finding too much fault in himself. He's got depth and violence, and I love that.

4. 9-1-1 (TV) - Evan "Buck" Buckley

Buck is such a great character, and even after 6 seasons, he's still growing and coming into himself. He starts at such an interesting place as this earnest but dumb jock-headed fuckboy, and we get to watch him come to terms with himself, his struggle with intimacy and romance, and even now with his self-worth. I think Buck so easily could have been a stereotypical ego-driven character, but he's balanced on this knife's edge of cocky and sensitive, just wanting to do well for the people around him, that he's honestly very compelling.

5. Stargate: Atlantis - Carson Beckett

Carson TT^TT (if you know, you know). Look. I've got a thing for sensitive characters, and Carson is great. He's also a character that grows out of his cowardice and fear, and I love that for him. He's a bit of comic relief and a good mix of level-headed and completely done that balances out Sheppard's more boyish energy and McKay's snappish ego.

6. Supernatural - Gabriel/The Trickster

He's goofy, damaged, and makes it so sexual predators get eaten by sewer gators? Ummm? Yes. Gabriel could have been just a one-off character, monster of the week, but bringing him into the story at large and giving him this anger and hurt over the situation he can't control and thus, takes it on himself to force others into so they might feel like he does? I eat that shit up. He's not just this comic relief relatable angel, there are these brilliant moments with him that are just filled with depth, and I honestly can't get enough.

7. Beyond Evil (괴물) - Lee Dong Sik

Please see above with Kaz Brekker and my love for slightly deranged characters. Dong Sik is this seemingly confident character who is always 1 step ahead, always thinking, and quick on the draw with his quips. He toes the line of "am I crazy or just that much smarter than you" and fuck if it doesn't work. But fundamentally, he is damaged and traumatized, and when we get to see that? Witness the broken man beneath the facade of control? It's as beautiful as it is devastating.

8. Law & Order: SVU - Rafael Barba

God, never has a character had a better introduction to a series, in my opinion, than Barba. I mean... he literally let a sexual sadist choke him out in court with his own tie, I- christ above he's great. Dry humor, whip-smart, but not infallible. He's fun and funny in an interesting way, and there's just something about how sharp he is that's so great.

9. Star Trek (2009) - Leonard "Bones" McCoy

Southern, snark, and unofficial James T. Kirk brat handler? What's not to love. Also, sorry OG Star Trek, but Karl Urban wins this one. That being said, of all the remake characters, no one embodies the original well as Karl Urban does, so I could have swapped him with DeForest Kelly, and my reasons would still be the same. The sass and attitude are just so great. He's grounded and witty and a fucking joy on screen.

10. Underworld - Selene

She is iconic, and I would let her step on me. But also, as a character, I just really fucking love her? She's a badass, plain and simple, she honestly does what she wants and looks hot doing it, but more than that, I really appreciate her as someone who is distinctly cold and detached from the world and the people around her, but finds love that doesn't change her as a character, just elevates and encourages her choices. Her falling in love with Michael doesn't suddenly make her a ray of sunshine; it just gives her something more important to fight for than what she grew up believing she had to.

~

This was a lot of fun anon! Thank you for sending this in to me :3