#mostly because this is the only one of my armies to actually see a sizable amount of tabletop play

[acornminiatureslog]

I wanna talk a bit more about my marines and the chaos marines I’m now working on after I got hit with a couple fun ideas while waiting on replacement printer parts.

For background, my space marine chapter, The Hounds of Terra, are something I came up with to spice up how Primaris marines work in the lore, and give me a chance to make badass ladies in space.

Intro

When Abaddon destroyed Cadia and the great rift split the galaxy in twain, one of the many hidden caches of Cawl’s primaris marines came under siege by the forces of chaos, and the attending techpriests were forced to activate the marines they had in stasis.

The siege went on for decades, with the attrition wearing on the loyalists. Specifically, the traitors quickly adopted tactics that made it more and more difficult for the apothecaries to recover the geneseed of fallen primaris marines. As the number of astartes shrunk, the tech priests took desperate action, pulling a batch of flawed geneseed from stasis. This geneseed was previously abandoned due to its mutations, but was preserved due to an interesting characteristic: it would only take hold and develop in female aspirants. In need of the aid, the tech priests began creating astartes with this geneseed and youths from civilian population. These new marines were effective, but looked upon with disdain by the other marines present, who referred to them as dogs, or hounds. They were given the most dangerous assignments and little support holding the line, but they found success, often out of spite, but more often because they new the fear the civilians they protected had to endure.

By the time relief finally arrived and broke the siege, the only marines left standing were these women. When the acting leader, Resia Avidon, went to meet with the envoys of the Indomitus Crusade with full intent of hiding her and her sisters’ oddities. The attending tech priests, eager to see how this project of theirs would develop, agreed to aid in the ruse.

The result was the Crusade designating the beleaguered marines as a full ultima founding chapter, gifting them a Battle Barge, Beneficia in Terra, and granting them time to gather their forces before joining in the war to beat back chaos in service of the Imperium. The chapter chose the name The Hounds of Terra, firmly declaring their loyalty and turning the insult hurled at them into a badge of honor.

Silver Cog

This was only a stopgap measure though, as despite their official induction as a chapter, they had no acceptable geneseed they could send to the vaults on Mars. This issue was solved when The Hounds of Terra had a chance encounter with a drifting strike cruiser. On board, they found the remnants of a chapter known as the Silver Cog, a firstborn chapter that had been reported missing two millennia ago. Their leader, Captain Valos Tetys, shared a tale in which their chapter had been lured into a trap, allies turning on them, only his strike cruiser escaping, their navigator sending them on a blind jump through the warp. Tetys feared that the hidden traitors within the imperium might still seek his chapter’s destruction, and wished to hide their true identity. Sensing he was a fair and reasonable man in a tough spot, Chapter Founder Avidon proposed an idea to Tetys: to integrate their chapters under the banner of The Hounds of Terra, the Silver Cog gaining the fresh start they desired, and The Hounds of Terra gaining a source of geneseed that would pass muster on Mars.

(Irl, this is my reason for lady primaris marines coexisting with my love of HH relic units. It is convoluted as fuck, but I kinda cobbled all of this together over time, and I like it. All the convolution gives me a couple different angles to work with when it comes to justifying matches against other Imperial armies.)

Potassiar

It was in the following decades when The Hounds of Terra established their working relationship with other imperial elements in the sector, and their reputation as steadfast hoarders. The chapter adopted a policy of gathering up any arms, armor, or relics they found, and if they were unable to reach the original owners, simply incorporating it into their own stores. In particular, this practice is how they have built up their terminator units, of which the chapter has four full squads. This practice also extends to spacecraft, with the ships of the Hounds of Terra often returning from naval engagements and long range patrols towing the hulls of lost and damaged naval ships. In return for the many hulks they have kept in circulation over the years, they have been gifted a handful of additional strike cruisers, and several escort vessels, which in turn, aid in the return of more lost hulls.

Of special note is the relationship The Hounds of Terra built with the minor forgeworld of Potassiar. This was the nearest base of the Adeptus Mechanicus to the cache-world The Hounds of Terra were birthed upon, and many of the surviving tech priests transferred to Potassiar after the chapter’s founding. The presence of respectable orbital facilities and these familiar faces within the priesthood led to Potassiar being a frequent resupply point for The Hounds of Terra as they warred against the great enemy. It was here that they dropped off many naval hulls and any arms and armor they recovered, yet could not return or fit into their own armory. The greatest collaboration came when a space hulk of respectable size materialized within the outer reaches of the Potassiar system. The tech priests immediately sent word, and captain Tetys himself led the full force of the chapter’s terminators to claer the hulk ahead of the mechanicus’ work prying loose ancient hulls. This aid was lent for the favor of the mechanicus in constructing a proper flagship for The Hounds of Terra, with a suitable hull being selected from the hulk by Captain Tetys.

At the hip’s completion, it was slightly larger than a standard battle barge, but only truly differing in the addition of expansive manufacturing and repair facilities, as well as a set of main engines salvaged from a battleship. Chapter Founder Avidon and her honor guard were brought to the dockyards for the final blessings, and named the ship Avidon’s Might. It was at this moment that the chapter was betrayed.

The skitari forces of the Potassiar tech priests ambushed the chapter founder, alongside a force of nurgle-blessed heretic astartes. Between a small force of loyal mechanicus elements, the chapter founder’s honor guard, and the terminator forces of the first company, The Hounds of Terra were able to hold off the traitors until the Beneficia in Terra was able to arrive and escort Avidon’s Might out of the system. Unfortunately, the traitors succeeded in assassinating the Chapter Founder, sending shock waves throughout the chapter.

Promotions

After the death of Resia Avidon, Captain of the third company, Olympia Vilaris, was elected by the gathered captains of the chapter to bear the mantle of chapter master. This led to Sergeant Vylane Zaporozia getting promoted to captain of the third company in recognition for her actions in the recovery of Avidon’s Might.

Aaaand that’s almost all the main skeleton of my Space Marine lore. There’s details from the various campaigns I’ve played them through, and still a bit more until where they’re currently sitting, but this is already getting way too long for one post. Feel free to send in asks if you’ve got questions on my giant space ladies!

[kingwuko]

Wuko in the Comics: Ruins of the Empire: Book 1, Part 1

Welcome to my second post on Wuko in the comics. In this post I’ll be discussing the first half of Ruins of the Empire: Book 1. Wu is a prominent character in this comic trilogy, and there is lots of character development and exploration for him. There are also a lot of scenes with Wu and Mako together, and what’s more, there are a handful of visual parallels to Korrasami!

Ruins of the Empire

Book 1 of RotE was released in May 2019. The art style is different from Turf Wars- the colors are very vibrant and it almost looks like stills of the animated series. It takes place 3 months after the conclusion of the animated series, and there is lots of continuity following the events of Turf wars. Some major plot points that carry from Turf Wars include: Wu has been governing the Earth Kingdom, Korra and Asami are in a firmly established relationship, and Zhu Li is President of the United Nations.

Plot Summary

The first half of Book 1 of RotE highlights the transition of the Earth Kingdom into a democracy by focusing on the first state to hold its elections, Gaoling. Gaoling’s election is at risk of being disrupted by Earth Empire general, Guan, who didn’t surrender when the rest of the empire did. The Krew decides to accompany King Wu to Gaoling to ensure the election proceeds without interference.

Major plot points in the first half of Book 1

We start out with a flashback that sets the timeline for the rest of the comic. In Gaoling, Commander Guan is running an earth empire “reeducation camp” and has just gotten word that Kuvira surrendered, but isn’t planning to give up so easily. He insists that his “experiments” and the Earth Empire will go on, with or without Kuvira as the Earth Emperor…. Then we jump ahead 3 months to Republic City, City Hall. We start out with an excellent frame, the first of many Wuko Korrasami parallels! Get excited, there are SO many!

Bolin is working for President Zhu Li Moon now, because, why not? He just quit his job working with Mako on the police force, and now he’s Zhu Li’s administrative assistant or something. Zhu Li is going to be introducing King Wu for a “big speech” to the citizens of Republic City. Korra gives Wu a friendly elbow nudge and asks if he’s ready. (the first of many wholesome friendship moments between the two of them)

Wu is not ready, he’s nervous. He asks Mako to read his speech for him, and Mako says no way- but then he reassures Wu that he’ll do great. “Just be yourself” Wu is immediately comforted and says that Mako always knows the right thing to say and that must be why he keeps Mako around! (I can think of a couple other reasons...) Mako’s expressions are very stoic and closed off. He’s got his arms crossed and looks grumpy (I feel like I’m always saying Mako looks grumpy. But that’s the best adjective I can come up with).

Wu begins his speech where he announces that it’s almost time for the Earth Kingdom states to begin holding elections, starting in the state of Gaoling. Grandma Yin and cousin Tu are in the audience and Yin is booing Wu, and also yelling “Long live the monarchy” while holding framed portraits of Wu and Hou-Ting.

Asami, Korra, Mako and Varric are standing behind Wu, applauding along with the crowd (well, the crowd minus Yin). Korra and Mako casually compliment Wu, saying that he's doing great and almost looks like a real leader! Wu says that within a year there will be a peaceful transition to democracy. He gets bombarded by questions and panics and starts singing. He tosses his stylish hat into the crowd, which Yin catches and says “you’ll always be my king!” Mako covers his face with his hands, Korra says ”well you did tell him to be himself” and Mako says “this is NOT what I meant”. Sorry Mako. You know Wu better than anyone so you should have known a song was coming. Zhu Li takes the podium and Wu dramatically faints/collapses into Mako’s arms. I presume on purpose.

We cut to a scene of Kuvira’s trial. Kuvira, after being read the charges against her, pleads not guilty (because every thing she did was for the “greater good”), Suyin confronts her and Kuvira apologizes but Suyin isn’t having it and forcefully tells her that apologies aren’t enough, she has to take responsibility.

We move on to President Moon’s office, where Wu is sitting on a sofa and Bolin welcomes Asami, Mako and Korra in. Mako lampshades Bolin’s many career changes. Bolin makes a comment to Mako that just because Mako has “found” himself it doesn’t mean the rest of them have. I, for the life of me, can’t figure out exactly what Bolin is trying to say here. Is he referring to the fact that Mako has “found” his career as a detective? Or something else, like his true feelings for Wu? Probably the first thing but us Wuko shippers will happily apply it to the other thing.

Once everyone is settled in, Wu asks them to come with him to Gaoling for the upcoming elections! Mako is actually not thrilled, and tells Wu that they aren’t going to be there for him to show off as his entourage. Wu is like No, that’s not it! Well, yes, kinda. He wants their help dealing with the Earth Empire loyalists being led by Guan. The Earth Kingdom army is understaffed and Wu is worried the Guan will try to prevent the elections from happening. The Krew agrees that it could be a problem, especially since it could cause other states to back out of holding elections and allow the earth empire to rise again.

So the Krew plans to come to Gaoling to show support for the elections, hopefully deter Guan from interfering, and Mako says they will keep Wu safe. Zhu Li encourages Bolin to go as well. Wu is very excited to team up with Mako again! After they leave the President's office, Korra suggests going to go speak to Kuvira to try to gather intel on Guan- Asami is not thrilled and doesn’t want to go with her because Kuvira was responsible for her father’s death. Korra is understanding and supportive and they share a lovely little kiss before Korra heads off.

Korra arrives at Kuvira’s prison with Naga. We catch a quick glimpse into Kuvira’s mind as she remembers a moment from her childhood when she ran away from her parents-after her parents accused her of breaking a vase, the take away her toys and lock her in her room “for her own good”, and she uses her earth bending to break the wall and escape. This and other flashbacks attempt to make us more sympathetic to Kuvira so we can accept her redemption arc in the remainder of the comics. After her little flashback, Korra and Kuvira discuss Guan. Kuvira says she didn’t know Guan hadn’t surrendered, and that Korra should consider him a major threat because he is cunning and strategic. Then Kuvira tells Korra if she wants to stop Guan, she should bring Kuvira along to reason with him and convince him to stand down and surrender. Korra is not convinced, but Kuvira tells her to take time to think about it, and she’ll be there to help when Korra asks.

Meanwhile, Guan is rallying his troops. He’s got a sizable regiment of soldiers along with tanks, and is giving them a big speech about taking back the empire and rising from the ruins of defeat. He and his troops head out of their fortress, presumably to do exactly what everyone is worried about and stop Gaoling’s election.

Mako and Wu Scenes

Mako and Wu are featured in many scenes of these comics, together more often than not!

The very first scene with Wu, he is standing right next to Mako, in the same frame as Korra and Asami. I realize “standing next to each other” might not actually be ground breaking evidence for Wuko, but it feels like a parallel to Korrasami, and most importantly creates kind of an establishing shot, planting Wu at the center along with Korra. This is kind of amazing considering he was in only one season of the show and he was largely a comic relief character that I don’t think the writers meant for us to take seriously. There is a pattern of parallels in RotE with Korrasami and Wuko, and we don’t really need to reach for them. They are right there, visually.

We also get to see some lovely moments of Korra’s and Wu’s friendship. She elbows him good-naturedly. She’s kind and supportive. She compliments him. He does seem a little awkward but overall it seems he really fits in with the Krew now, and I find it really sweet. His characterization feels very different from the show. He isn’t obnoxiously flirting with every 'dame' he lays eyes on. He isn’t bratty, or materialistic. He’s still goofy and lands some comic relief joke moments, but overall he is treated like an actual character with substantial development and plot-advancing roles.

During Wu’s speech, Mako is staring like, way too intently at him while casually complementing how he almost looks like a real leader. (Well, up until Wu starts singing, and then his second-hand embarrassment seems more intense than the others, who mostly just seem a little stunned, while Mako has his face buried in his hands). Also, the running gag of Grandma Yin being obsessed with royalty has it’s funny moments during his speech, but I really like it because the fact that Mako’s grandma is reverent, affectionate, AND outspoken with Wu would probably create an interesting in-law dynamic, right? Also, during his song, the tosses his hat out to the crowd which Yin catches like a single lady catching the bridal bouquet, and says “You’ll always be my King!” I like to imagine that she now wears his hat everywhere, along with Mako’s scarf. I know I’m reaching but Yin wearing both their accessories is another Wuko moment in my mind.

Let’s also talk about Wu fainting. After his panic-singing, Zhu Li quickly takes over and Wu steps back and dramatically faints, saying “Wu down”- right into Mako’s arms. Why into Mako’s arms? Did he step back and strategically aim himself at Mako? Technically the closest person to him was Varrick. So he had to stagger back diagonally and fall back toward Mako on purpose. Did Mako catch him with lightning-fast reflexes? Korra was also right there and she’s the Avatar, you’d think she’d react quicker than Mako. Nope. The best explanation is that Wu for sure was intentionally falling into Mako’s arms, and Mako’s ‘protect Wu’ instincts kicked in faster than anyone else's because.. Well. You ship Wuko. You know what I'm saying. <3

During the conversation in Zhu Li’s office, once again, visually Mako and Wu are parallel to Korra and Asami. They are sitting next to each other on a couch opposite Korra and Asami. However, there is this one moment where Mako is NOT HAVING IT with Wu. When Wu asks the Krew to join him, Mako is like, why? For show? No way. He says “We’re not your entourage, Wu.” Honestly that was kinda mean of him to say. I’m not sure what to make of it other than Mako is suddenly grumpy because his brother (who was visibly offended by Mako lamp-shading his career-hopping) snatched away a tray of cupcakes a moment before. Still, Wu is quick to reassure him that it’s not like that at all, and delivers the news of Guan and quickly makes a case that it’s the practical thing to do considering the political climate. Mako immediately agrees after that, and quickly flips his script to “we’ll keep you safe”. And Wu’s triple “yes” response with an excited fist in the air is enough of a Wuko moment for me.

When they leave Zhu Li’s office, yet another visual Korrasami/Wuko parallel. Korra and Asami are in the back holding hands, and Mako and Wu are in the front with Wu’s arm draped around Mako’s shoulders. Wu is very happy that Mako is coming along. Says they should get a smoothie to celebrate, and it’ll be just like old times! I’m sure Wu missed Mako. Mako doesn’t seem quite as thrilled but at this point it's really just Mako’s face. He just always looks like that. Who knows what he’s thinking inside.

What this means for Wuko

So if you are writing some fanfic or just coming up with headcanons with the comics in mind, there is a lot of material to work with right away. They are in close proximity for most of their scenes. Wu is accepted by the Krew, and he is buddy-buddy enough with Korra to presume he’s probably been talking to her outside of the scenes depicted in the comics. So there’s some potential for wingman or matchmaker Korra, or at the very least she will be happy and supportive of them getting together since she has warmed up to Wu a lot. Both Mako and Wu have matured enough that a healthy relationship is within reach. Wu clearly has affection toward Mako, and Mako still has that protective instinct toward Wu, even if he looks like he’s not having a great time (But like I said, he looks like that all the time, so I'm pretty sure he just has resting bitch face).

So that is about the halfway point of book 1. The next post I will talk about the second half of book 1. Some things to look forward to: a sauna scene, Mako, Bolin and Wu giving Kuvira the Bitchiest collective look ever, and Wu casually telling Mako that he loves him.

Wuko in Turf War

Wuko in RotE part 2

[itsnothingofinterest]

Have you heard? Apparently, Horikoshi said Hero Academia might be headed to a conclusion soon. This was surprising to say the least; not just because fans don’t want it to end but because it doesn’t really feel like it’s anywhere close to it’s end (plenty think it’s closer to halfway, with a select few like me thinking it’s closer to the 1/3 point). This has led some to speculate, partially in denial, if the conclusion Horikoshi is talking about is not actually the series’ “conclusion” concussion, but instead a Naruto Shippuden style “new name for the next part” type of deal. (Or if he’s just having the word “soon” put in some serious work.)

So I want to discuss that; go over as many reason I can think of for why the series could end within the next year or 2, or for why it could see another 5+ years to it’s life. It mean it sounds fun, right?

(Going into this though, I would like to state my bias. I don’t want the series to end soon; and if it kept at it’s current pace to conclude Deku’s academic life in chapters 800~1000, I would be a very happy camper. I’ll try not to let this affect my judgement, but I’ve got no oversight but myself here so...)

Anyway, here we go.

Reasons for the series to end soon.

I think a good point to start is that Horikoshi once stated he planned to end the series at around 30 volumes, roughly what’s already been covered, before finding he needed to expand the series further than that. That’s understandable, it’s easy to see how this arc could’ve been the end of the series had things played out differently enough in the last few chapters; but if he’s already said he’s expanded beyond that, what does that have to do with this discussion? Well for this side of the argument, it means 2 things: 1) all that’s left can be considered the ‘expansion’ on Horikoshi’s original idea, so how likely is it that there’s a lot of that, & 2) that Horikoshi likely didn’t intend for the series to last for Deku’s full school life, a major belief for those expecting the series to last a significant time.

And when we look at the actual content of the series, yeah there’s certainly things that could point to the series ending soon; namely all the arcs and plot threads that kinda just got resolved rapid fire. Dabi’s reveal, Mirio getting his quirk back, Hawks launching the attack he’s been orchestrating since his first appearance, Compress’s face, Bakugou letting go of his resentment for Deku; just to name a few. True, this is nowhere near all of the arcs & plot threads; but it’s a sizable enough portion if we’re assuming the rest have the next year or 2 to resolve themselves. A few more arcs like this last one and yeah, the series won’t have anything really tying it down from ending.

There’s also Deku’s rate of vestige quirk acquisition to consider. I mean in the 3 arcs featuring him since we learned about his extra quirks, he has acquired 3 quirks. At that rate, he’d have them all in 3 more student arcs and basically be at all but full power by then. Not that him keeping up this rate of quirk acquisition is guaranteed, but it sure seems like a sign of the series not lasting too long.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are ways for the series to end soon, easy paths to the finish line available to Horikoshi. It wouldn’t be that hard, for example, to get to confronting Dabi & Toga and resolving their arcs in some timely fashion. And AFO’s presence as a bigger bad over Tomura could allow for him to pull a Kaguya to his Madara, allowing for the plot to resolve with his defeat without really needing to address a lot of Tomura’s issues. And heck, that might’ve even become more likely after this latest chapter, wherein AFO acquired his very own army. That would likely involve finding too-easy solutions a lot of the more complicated issues, or worse, brushing them under the rug; but it can’t be denied that this is an option for how Horikoshi could resolve the series in just a few years.

Last piece of evidence worth mentioning is the simple nature of shorter series being the “path of least resistance.” You can argue all you like how the series lasting longer makes more sense or might result in a better story (and I’m basically about to); but in the end it can’t be denied that the less the series has left, the less work it is for Horikoshi. And that’s just gonna make it inherently more likely; a largely equivalent result for less effort is never not gonna be attractive for people.

Reasons for the series to last a long time.

Okay, I’ve done my best to be fair and included as many points as I could think of in favor of a shorter lifespan; but I won’t lie, this 2nd half is gonna be the fun part of this post for me.

Let’s start at the opposite end of the other side’s first point; Horikoshi planned to originally end the series at around 30 volumes. This past arc, ending in Volume 30, took place in the space between Deku’s 1st and 2nd school year, or you could say it took place during the end of his 1st year. This implies that while the original plan was not to go through Deku’s whole school life, he did intend it to end at a point of significance; the end of a school year. And what that implies is that he won’t end the series smack in the middle of the 2nd year, which would be where the series would end if it only lasted less than 3 more years. It implies he’d likely aim to end the series at the end of year 2 at the earliest, a significant ways away. (And before you ponder about a time skip; remember that year 1 had a time skip and still lasted ~30 volumes & ~6 years.)

Another reason to think the series is gonna last a while; it’s quite slow, in an overall sense at least. It’s hard to describe but; It doesn’t always feel that way because the moment-to-moment pacing is very good & it always feels like something is happening and stuff is getting tackled. But this is because it tends to tackle plots one at a time; so while plots make good development while in the focus, they can stay out of focus for a significant duration. For example; the ‘Shinsou becoming a hero’ plot was introduced in the Sports Festival, only saw real development during Joint Training, and has still yet to resolve with year 2 not starting yet. Or for another example, we learned over 150 chapters ago that All Might had his future predicted where he’ll die at the hands of a villain, setting up a plot where he’ll try to twist his future and survive this unknown threat to his life. His life has not once been in danger since. Not even in a broad sense like someone’s targeting him; no, this man has not has one risk to his life since the plot thread was introduced. There’s tons for plot threads like that, I’m barely scratching the surface here. And that’s actually fine...if the series has a long future ahead of it. This system of pacing actually works wonders for BNHA; because while people can occasionally miss their faves and their plots, crying out “where’s Shinsou” and all that, they generally like what’s being focused on when it’s handled and paced well (which it usually is). As long as the series itself has time to get to all of these plots and develop them to their resolution, this pacing system works like a well oiled machine.

Deku especially is a useful measuring tool for how slow this series can be. He’s not like the other plot points see, because he’s almost always around so he’s made to develop at a more even pace until the end. This is in contrast to characters like Shinou, Aoyama, Kirishima, Toga, or Shigaraki; who get bursts of development because they don’t spend consistent time in the spotlight and Horikoshi can’t be entirely sure when he’ll get the next chance to make use of them. So with that said, how slow is his development & how far along is it? Well, not very actually. Aside from in terms of powers, his development has been a bit lacking. Not to say he hasn’t had character moments, but they have been a bit scarce & minimal; and a lot of his major flaws (such as his self-destructive tendencies, his self-esteem issues, and his toxic hero worship) have barely been addressed, let alone resolved. In general, his character feels like it’s barely changed since he got into UA; in stark contrast to characters like Shigaraki, Todoroki, Shinsou, & even Bakugou. And that kind of implies a long road a head of him.

To bounce off another point from the “short future section” I mentioned how a lot of overarching plots just ended. The thing about that is, I actually made a post talking about that and how a lot of how they ended seems to set up more overarching plots then they seem to end. To not repeat myself too much, because this post is already really long; it’s like the series resolved the greater part of 6 years of content only to set-up up to 6 more years of content, and all in one arc. (Goodness that was a busy arc.)

And that’s just the advancement of already existing plot points. There’s a lot it can feel like he hasn’t even touched on yet. Mostly characters. There are just. So. Many. Characters in this series. That are in positions of seeming importance, but have done nothing. For example, Horikoshi’s been known to suddenly focus on class 1A students to make them feel important, and has gotten through maybe over half; but hasn’t really touched on Sero, Sato, Koda, Ojiro, Hagakure, & especially Shoji (who really, really feels like he has something planned, but nothing’s happened yet). And that’s just the guys below Mineta’s development level, which itself is pretty low. To say nothing of Class 1B, or Ms. Joke’s students, or most of the 30 faces known in the PLF, the main antagonistic group of the series! And yeah, this could all just be because Horikoshi likes introducing characters in larger groups than he’s actually equipped to handle; I’m not denying that. I’m just saying it’s also possible that he could be doing this because he feels like he has the time to explore them whenever he wants. (Heck, it could very well be both.)

Conclusion:

...I don’t know dude. I mean a longer series looks more likely to me; but I am very well aware that I’m not unbiased enough to make any real conclusive statement. Maybe I should consider that to mean it’s more even than that.

Perhaps we’re just too far away from the ending to really be able to tell either way. I mean low estimates still give the series at least a year. But even so, I do think this was all worth considering; because if nothing else, I did get a feel for all that’s likely to happen between now and the inevitable end. And I guess it turns out to be kind of a lot. So that’s neat.

[militant-holy-knight]

Why the Palestinian Cause is So Hard to Support

I'd usually stay clear off from getting involved in the debate regarding Israel and Palestine because you are guaranteed to offend all sides of the political spectrum if you stand with either. You get labelled a fascist by liberals and "pro-kike" by the far-right if you say anything positive about Israel, or being accused of supporting terrorism if you stand with Palestine. I know that many of my Christian brothers and sisters will easily support Israel because its the only place in the Middle-East where Christians are safe and protected. It's a very convincing argument... One that Palestine cannot make for itself unfortunately in effort to gain the hearts and minds of the people. Let me explain why.

Palestinian nationalism is often erroneously associated with Islamism due to the massive support and sympathy Palestinians receive from the Muslim world because several holiest sites in Islam - the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Dome of the Rock - are within Jewish control and they can’t abide that. Also because Arab = Muslim in the minds of many people in the West, nevermind that not all Palestinians are Muslims. Here is a little known fact: the Munich terrorist attacks were carried out by a group of Palestinian Christians. The operation was titled “Iqrit and Biram”, named after two Christian settlements seized by Israeli Defense Forces and their terrorist leader used the codename Isa (Jesus in Arabic) was a Christian born from a Jewish mother and a Christian father. Back during the cold war, Palestinians were mostly a mostly secular movement in part because they were backed by the Soviet Union and they believed that regardless of your faith - whether Christian or Muslim - you were fighting to liberate yourself from Israeli oppression.

However, this changed in the 80s with the foundation of Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nationalism had been viewed as an ungodly ideology by early Islamic thinkers, substituting "the nation" for God as an object of worship and reverence. The struggle for Palestine was viewed exclusively through a religious prism, as a struggle to retrieve Muslim land and the holy places of Jerusalem. While 90% of Palestinians are Sunnis, there has been a conflict between secularism and adherence to Islam. In the case of Hamas, Palestinian nationalism has almost completely fused with the ideologically pan-Islamic sentiments originally held by the Islamists.

The Islamic bitching about the Palestinians suffering oppression under the Israeli occupation doesn't convince me because for every Palestinian there are ten more Copts and Assyrians that do not enjoy equal rights. Muslim land is under occupation? The holy Christian sites of Alexandria and Constantinople are in the hands of the Muslims for centuries now. You could argue Antioch is also under Islamic occupation since Lebanon is now a Shia majority though this is only a recent development and Lebanon used to be the only Christian majority country in the Middle-East, and to be technical, the President of Lebanon is always a Maronite Catholic.

The occupation of Constantinople is particularly lamentable.  Itself It wouldn't be so bad if Turkey was a pluralistic society that respected the rights of other peoples, but its sham of secularism (which is pretty transparent to anyone observing current events) showed they never actually committed themselves to it even after abolishing the Ottoman caliphate. Consider the Christian Holocaust they have committed in the early 20th Century against the Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians (which they still deny it while at the same time boasting about it in private) and that now Turkey has less of half a percent of Christians. By contrast, Iraq under Saddam Hussein had at least a million Christians though this number has obviously went down because of its civil war. Let me ask you: what kind of secular society is this where the brutal dictatorship that is guilty of genocide actually treats its Christian minority better in comparison? And there are people that still use Turkey as the model of democracy for Muslim countries. Lets not pretend its the USA is the same way in regards to Islam demographics: there was a sizable Christian presence in Turkey before they discovered too late the appeal of pan-Islamism and decided their gavour subjects needed to die. 

The reality is that Turks don’t pray in the Hagia Sophia because mosques are lacking in Constantinople, they do it to rub it in the faces of the Greeks - and by extension - all of Christendom. Its a symbol of Islam prevailing over Christianity never mind that we were ahead of the curve, technologically and scientifically.

The reality is that Islamists can’t take infidels being in control of something they can’t have. Just like how Osama bin Laden denounced Sudan and Indonesia for granting independence to the Roman Catholic countries of South Sudan and East Timor - both of whom considered insignificant by the world community - because he believe any sort of land that was owned by the ummah should never be given to infidels. This is why these dipshits lay claim to Spain and Greece as theirs by right.

The reality is that whether you like it or not, Muslims are poised and eager to be biggest aggressor against Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted as saying  “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel”. I certainly don’t like the man and you certainly don’t have to, but to say he is incorrect would be a bold-faced lie. Even back in the day when the State of Israel was established, the General Secretary Abdul Rahman Azzam of the Arab League has been quoted as saying this genocidal threat:

"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine … You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.

"This war will be distinguished by three serious matters. First—faith: as each fighter deems his death on behalf of Palestine as the shortest road to paradise; second, [the war] will be an opportunity for vast plunder. Third, it will be impossible to contain the zealous volunteers arriving from all corners of the world to avenge the martyrdom of the Palestine Arabs, and viewing the war as dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world …

"The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle … or the final one… whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew's morale! Most desert Arabians take pleasure in fighting. I recall being tasked with mediating a truce in a desert war (in which I participated) that lasted for nine months…While en route to sign the truce, I was approached by some of my comrades in arms who told me: 'Shame on you! You are a man of the people, so how could you wish to end the war … How can we live without war?' This is because war gives the Bedouin a sense of happiness, bliss, and security that peace does not provide! …

"I warned the Jewish leaders I met in London to desist from their policy, telling them that the Arab was the mightiest of soldiers and the day he draws his weapon, he will not lay it down until firing the last bullet in the battle, and we will fire the last shot …"

"I foresee the consequences of this bloody war. I see before me its horrible battles. I can picture its dead, injured, and victims … But my conscience is clear … For we are not attacking but defending ourselves, and we are not aggressors but defenders against an aggression! …"

Granted the authenticity of this quote has been questioned and many have accused it of being taken off context. But that is largely irrelevant because the discourse about Jews in the Muslim world would have been considered unacceptable by Western standards. Children over there are indoctrinated to be intolerant and hateful, the exact opposite of what us Westerners are taught. Rather than enjoying childhood, their kids are taught the glories of martyrdom and to die in the name of defeating Israel.

And that lead us to Hamas, a political party that was democratically voted into power and it’s explicit in wanting to exterminate all Jews - not just the ones in Israel though, but in the entire world. In case you don’t believe me, just read their Covenant, which is a official political document they established.

Article 7 mentions a prophecy attributed to Muhammed. 

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of tree), would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.

Article 22 states that the French revolution, the Russian revolution, colonialism and both world wars were created by the Zionists or forces supportive of Zionism:

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

Article 32 of the Covenant refers to an antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

I know that not all Palestinians support Hamas since the PLO doesn’t recognize them, but enough Palestinians voted to get them into power - they are not a fringe movement. Following the 2007 coup, the Gaza Strip had exhibited the characteristics of Talibanization, a process whereby the Hamas government had imposed strict rules on women, discouraged activities commonly associated with Western or Christian culture, oppressed non-Muslim minorities, imposed sharia law, and deployed religious police to enforce these laws. While their PR wing denied efforts of Islamicizing the Gaza Strip, they have also added they don’t oppose it and believe in “persuasion”. One woman complained that women were not free to speak their minds or travel alone, and added:

"Hamas want to force themselves onto the people. They want the people to submit to them, this is their cover. They destroyed the reputation of Islam, by saying we're doing this because it is religion. This is how they won the elections."

Despite this, Hamas is somewhat aware of the weight of their words considering they have completely different rhetorics differing in the audience. When talking to an Arab crowd, they are explicitly anti-Semitic as one deputy member said on the Al-Aqsa TV:

If the enemy sets foot on a single square inch of Islamic land, Jihad becomes an individual duty, incumbent on every Muslim, male or female. A woman may set out [on Jihad] without her husband's permission, and a servant without his master's permission. Why? In order to annihilate those Jews. ... O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. O Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. O Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one

When talking towards the international audience, they slightly alter their tune to being simply anti-Zionist when talking to CBS:

We are not fanatics. We are not fundamentalists. We are not actually fighting the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers.

What Hamas may not realize it is that their adherence to fundamentalism and marginalization of Palestinian Christians, who would have once fought on their side are now on the verge of extinction, plays directly into the hands of Israel’s PR. I am sure you have already heard this being said many times that Israel is the safest place for Christians in the Middle-East - a rather dubious claim given only two percent constitutes the Christian population in contrast to Lebanon’s 40%.

Of course this is a shrewd plan that Israeli politicians play to gain the support of the United States and Christendom at large, including the current President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, a Roman Catholic like yours truly. This helps hide the more uncomfortable, darker reality around Israel: that far-right Jewish gangs regularly vandalize churches with price tag attacks, Orthodox Jews regularly spit on Christians when they come across in the streets or how some of them might have sympathies for extremists like the followers of Meir Kahane. I’ve also have personal criticism of Israel tolerating Islamist parties in the Knesset which is really galling considering that the MB is banned in certain Arab countries like their long arch-enemy Egypt (despite what their political enemies in the Islamic world would like to pretend, Zionism isn’t necessarily anti-Islam). Of course none of this can be even comparable to what Christians are facing in the Islamic world itself.

"Christians, natives of Arab countries, are escaping their countries of origin. This is a common statement nowadays everywhere and it is correct one hundred percent. Statistics show that a large number of them have emigrated to safer countries for them and for their children, like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The reason is the harassment to which they are subjected to by government agencies on the one hand and extremist groups on the other hand in countries they have inhabited for thousands of years…

"The Christians have lived in the territory currently referred to as [the Arab countries] for centuries alongside other religious groups, and particularly with Muslims who shared with them the afflictions of life. But the Christians have lost their partners for many reasons, including religious extremism among some Muslims, the demographic increases out of religious reasons, and the acts of discrimination, coercion, and individual and collective expulsion of Christians, and the pressures placed upon them even when they were serving their countries. There are many examples of that in Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Egypt, and other countries.

"Approximately 4 million Lebanese Christians have emigrated from their country as a result of the pressures placed upon them by others. About half a million Iraqi Christians have left their country for the same reasons… The situation gets worse today because of the discrimination by salafi [Islamic fundamentalist] extremists. In Palestine, the Christians are becoming almost extinct as a result of the control of extremist Muslims on the Palestinian issue and the marginalization of the role of the Christians, apart from the negative impact of the Intifada, which is led by Islamist organizations, on the Christians of Palestine. With regard to Christians in Egypt, the Copts, what happened and is happening to them equally on the part of the state and the Islamists will suffice to fill pages of books and newspapers to explain the coercion, discrimination and persecution. What is happening in Algeria, Mauritania, Somalia, and others is too long to explain.

"This situation is also reflected in non-Arab [Muslim] countries. In Islamic countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria, Christians suffer from persecution. In Pakistan, Islamist [spiritual leaders] have issued a fatwa [religious opinion] permitting the killing of two Christians for every Muslim killed by the American attacks in Afghanistan, as though the Americans represent Christianity in the world. In other countries they [Christians] live in fear, under the shadow of threat, and face a growing cycle of assaults whenever the United States and its allies carry out a military operation against any country.

"Christians are afraid of what might happen to them in these countries. The situation is quite critical and requires urgent attention. It is difficult for us to imagine any other time in which the Christians have felt a greater danger than the danger they feel today in these countries…"

Keep in mind, this report I shared was from 2004. Things surely must have gotten worse like in the wake of the Arab Spring. But this brings me back to my original point... While our brothers in Christ have their priests killed, their churches bombed, their women raped and their people forced to flee, don’t expect me to take the Palestinian cause seriously, if even their own Christians are being persecuted. If Muslims argued that the Palestinians have lived in this patch of land that is now occupied by the Jews, remember the Copts, Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks have lived in these lands long before Muslims arrived, but that is just my Christian perspective. 

As a long Islamist saying goes “before Sunday, comes Saturday”. 

[aswithasunbeam]

Kicks and Kisses, A Hamliza fic

[Read on AO3]

Rating: Teen and Up

Summary: Hamilton missed so much while he was away with the army in Virginia. When he finally arrives home, sick and exhausted from the hard ride from Yorktown, he needs only lay eyes on his pregnant wife to understand that he is the luckiest man in the world.

[A long overdue fill to a request from @itsnothingwithoutchaos for a fluffy hamliza expecting Pip story]

As the Pastures came into sight up ahead, Hamilton adjusted his cap further down over his eyes and spurred the horse onwards. Sunlight glittered and reflected off the nearby Hudson, too bright for his aching head. Sweat was beading on his brow and running down his back, even though by rights he should be chilled in the frigid late November air. The achiness and fatigue that had first come over him while he had stopped to acquire a fresh horse outside York City was growing worse by the day.

This morning he’d barely been able to drag himself out of bed. A few more hours of riding, he’d assured himself silently, his head hanging between his knees, only a few more hours and he’d be home with Eliza. The thought of holding her in his arms had been all the motivation he needed to pull on his boots and mount his horse.

He directed his horse right at the fork to take the quickest path up to the main house. Tom, a servant about his age, stood beside the Schuyler coach in the driveway, one of his hands held up to shade his eyes against the bright afternoon sun and the other holding some kind of tool. He seemed to be doing maintenance on the right wheel of the coach. Hamilton brought the horse to a final halt as Tom carefully replaced the tool and came towards him.

“Colonel Hamilton, sir,” Tom greeted, though his attention immediately focused on the exhausted horse.

“This fellow will need water, and a good rest,” Hamilton directed, patting at the horse’s neck as he braced himself  to dismount. “He’s had a hard ride.”

Tom agreed and accepted control of the reigns.

As Hamilton freed his boot from the stirrup and swung his leg over, his head spun dangerously. He did manage to lower himself safely to the ground, but the maneuver was far from graceful. Tom’s appraising gaze felt heavy on his back as he gripped at the saddle and waited for the vertigo to pass.

“Should I call someone from the house for you, sir?” Tom asked.

“No. No, I’m all right,” he muttered, hand to his temple. He drew several long, deep breaths until the world had mostly stilled around him. Giving the horse a final pat, he nodded his thanks to Tom, heaved his bag from the back of the saddle, and started towards the house on unsteady legs. 

When he found himself before the front door, he hesitated. Though he’d come to think of the Pastures as home, he hadn’t actually been here since last December. Letting himself in the front door felt presumptuous somehow. But to ring the bell would alert Eliza to a visitor and ruin his surprise. He sighed, readjusted the heavy bag on his shoulder, and, mustering his confidence, turned the doorknob to admit himself to the house. He lowered his bag to the floor of the foyer silently before he made his way to the front parlor.  

Eliza sat alone, reading, with her feet tucked up under her in a chair by the fire, a soft blanket covering all but her right hand. The whole parlor was drenched in sunlight, adding a kind of heavenly glow to the scene. He leaned against the doorjamb, knees a little weak, and stayed quiet, just staring, soaking in the sight of her.

She seemed to sense his gaze on her. Her eyes tracked up from her book to the doorway, and she froze, mouth partially open and eyes wide, like she was seeing a ghost. Their eyes met for a long moment.

“Alexander?” she whispered.

He smiled at her, then laughed when she tossed the book aside and started to fight with the blanket, which had tangled around her legs as she tried to rise too quickly from the chair.  

He looked down for the first time at the sizable bump where her flat belly had been the last time he saw her. His throat felt tight with emotion. That was their child, he thought, the idea suddenly overwhelming. She’d told him almost as soon as she’d realized she was pregnant, but he’d left for Virginia long before she’d begun to show. The idea of a baby had been rather abstract for him over the past months. Here, seeing her rounded belly, it felt beautifully real for the first time.

“Hello, my angel,” he replied, opening his arms to her as she rushed towards him.

Her arms wrapped around him, nearly crushing him against her. She rose up on her toes to kiss him. Their lips met in a fast series of wet pecks, as if Eliza was attempting to squeeze in all the kisses they’d missed while they’d been apart. Her aim went wide, and she was suddenly kissing along his jaw, then his neck. He laughed at the tickling sensation. She pressed one last kiss to his shoulder before resting her head there, still squeezing him tight.

“I didn’t think you’d be home so soon,” she muttered into his uniform coat.

“I rode non-stop from Yorktown as soon as the General gave me leave,” he explained, cradling her against him gently, conscious of the little life between them. He felt steady in her arms, stronger than he had in days.

“You should have written me that you were so close. Papa’s going to want to arrange a dinner at the very least. He’s spoken of nothing but your heroism since he heard of your victory at Yorktown.”

“I don’t think I quite feel up to a dinner party.”

He felt terribly ill and wrung out from the hard journey, but more than that, all the accolades showered upon him after his successful mission to take the British redoubt made him feel slightly uncomfortable. When he thought of Yorktown, he still remembered screams in the dark, the smell of blood and gunpowder heavy in the air, and the sensation of his sword cutting deep into a man’s chest. It was one thing to share a companionable drink with his fellow officers, who had fought alongside him and well understood the horror of war; quite another to sit through dinner with New York’s most elite families. Perhaps with time and distance he’d be more able to toast to victory without being reminded of its cost, but right now the idea of celebrating such a scene with civilians felt jarring and wrong.

Eliza was studying him intently. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because concern was fast eclipsing the pure joy that had radiated from her only moments before. Her hands soothed down his back gently. “Is something wrong, my love?”  

“No.” He shook the dark thoughts from his mind and forced a smile. “I’ve missed you so much, Betsey. For months, I’ve wanted nothing more than to hold you in my arms. Now that we’re together, I’m surely the happiest and most content man that ever lived.”

She didn’t look entirely convinced by the little speech, but she kissed him again in lieu of pressing the issue. His hand found her belly as they kissed. He stroked down her side gently, and he felt movement beneath his palm, almost like someone very gently tapping him on the hand.

She chuckled into the kiss.

“Someone else is happy to see you,” she whispered.

His heartbeat quickened. He felt a grin spreading over his face. “Is that…?”

“Kicking,” she confirmed.

He stared down at the bump in wonder. His palm stroked over her belly softly, trying to feel more of the little taps. Eliza placed her hand on his, and she slowly guided him back and down nearer to the spot he’d first touched. “Here. Feel it?”

He nodded, slightly breathless. Impossibly little feet were pushing at his hand. So many nights over the past months he’d stared up at his tent and imagined their little son or daughter in Eliza’s arms. To feel those little feet now, so real, under his hand, was the most amazing sensation he’d ever experienced in his life. His eyes found Eliza’s.

“Our baby,” he said, an awed reverence in his voice.

She nodded, glowing with happiness. “Our baby.”

“How long ago did you first feel kicking?”

“It started as a sort of wriggling a few months ago. Now the baby seems to do nothing but kick,” she answered with a soft smile, her hand soothing over the other side of her belly as she spoke.

He stroked his thumb over her belly button. The kicking seemed to have stopped for the moment, but he rubbed his hand firmly over the swell of her stomach. If he could feel the baby, perhaps the baby could feel him, too. Kneeling down, he leaned close and whispered, “Papa’s home now. I can’t wait to meet you.” He pressed a kiss to the spot where the baby’s feet must have been before heaving himself back up into a standing position.

Eliza looked up at him fondly, her eyes bright, and she reached to stroke a hand over his cheek. She frowned as she touched his face, though, and her hand moved from his cheek to his forehead. “You feel a little warm, sweetheart. Are you sick?”

He opened his mouth, prepared to reassure her, but a soft gasp from the stairway behind them intervened. Philip Schuyler had paused on the landing. After a moment of staring, he surged forward and clapped Hamilton warmly on the back. “My God, son, this is a surprise. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you home safely.”

He managed a smile for his father-in-law. “Sir.”

“News of your heroism has preceded you. I would have arranged more fanfare had I known you were due back so soon. Why didn’t you write?”

“I’m just glad to be home, sir. A warm welcome from my family is all the fanfare I need,” he pleaded. His legs were starting to feel unsteady again, the surge of energy he’d experience at finally seeing his wife fading fast.

Schuyler’s expression softened, an understanding look coming over his face. Of course, he’d come home from a war himself more than once, Hamilton realized. He wondered if the overwhelming urge to crawl into bed and sleep for days was universal.

“You should change and go get some rest, son,” Schuyler counseled, patting his back gently.

“Yes, let’s get you into bed,” Eliza agreed, adjusting to his side so that his arm slung across her shoulders.  “I think you have a fever.”

Schuyler placed his arm at Hamilton’s elbow to support him from the other side. Hamilton wanted to argue that he could make it upstairs under his own power, but one step forward set his head spinning again. Without the support, he’d likely have wilted to the floor. Schuyler’s arm moved around his back to support him more securely as they mounted the staircase.

His gaze quickly caught the large chunk missing from the railing. That must have been where the tomahawk landed, he realized, the deep scar in the wood a stark reminder of the Indian raid that had endangered his pregnant wife while he was away. Eliza and her family had managed to hide safely upstairs when the party broke into the house bearing guns and tomahawks, but apparently in all the chaos little Kitty Schuyler had been left in her bassinet downstairs. Peggy had bravely saved the infant, narrowly avoiding a tomahawk to her head as she fled upstairs. The evidence of the incident brought back the belated terror he’d felt at first hearing the report.

Black pressed in on his vision.

“Easy, son,” Schuyler encouraged, taking even more of his weight. “Keep your feet under you. You’re almost there.”

Eliza had followed his gaze to the rail, and she rested her hand over the missing piece. She smiled bravely up at him. “Everything’s fine, sweetheart,” she assured him.  

With their assistance, he finally found himself seated on a soft bed. Eliza started to help him change out of his uniform while Schuyler retrieved his bag and dug through his kit to find a nightshirt. Laying the garment on the bed, Schuyler announced, “I’m going to send for Doctor Stringer.”

Being poked and prodded by a doctor was the last thing he wanted.

“That’s not necessary,” he argued weakly. “I just need to rest.”

He saw Eliza share a significant look with her father. Schuyler nodded a little, and sent him a sympathetic smile. “I quite insist, son.”

He sighed, and pulled his shirt free from his breeches and over his head. He heard Schuyler leave to send for the doctor, closing the door behind him. When Hamilton stood to remove his breeches, Eliza stepped closer and started to undo the buttons for him.

“I can manage that myself,” he said, irritation bleeding into his voice. “I’m not an invalid.”

She smirked up at him. Her thumbs hooked into the material on his hips as she pressed close and kissed him again. “I’m sure you can. But I’ve very much missed being able to undress you.”

The irritation fled as rapidly as it had come. Her hands traced up his hips and across his bare chest before once more sliding towards the buttons on his breeches, which she began to unfasten slowly, still smirking at him. Unfortunately, another wave of vertigo crashed over him, interrupting the intimate moment and sending him staggering back to sit heavily on the bed.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly, after he’d sat for a long moment with his head braced in his hands.  

He nodded, frustrated, though when he met her eye he smiled despite his mood.

“You were flirting with me,” he groaned.

She laughed. Stooping down so her lips were close to his ear, she assured him in a sultry voice, “When you’re better, I’m going to do much more than flirt with you.”

“Don’t tease.”

She kissed him just below his earlobe. “I’m not teasing. I’m promising.”

He placed his hands on her hips and hummed unhappily. Why couldn’t he just be healthy today, of all days?

“Come on, let’s finish getting you into something more comfortable,” she suggested.

When he’d at last successfully donned the nightshirt, he slid his legs under the blankets and relaxed back against the pillows with a long, relieved sigh. Eliza sat on the bed beside him, though she remained atop the blankets. He rolled onto his side, closer to her.

He placed his hand over her belly again. “Is the baby moving?”

“Not right now,” she said, “but I’m sure you won’t have long to wait.” Her fingers stroked through his hair as she spoke, her nails scratching very gently against his scalp.

“Mm, that feels nice,” he sighed.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. Pushing up on his elbow, he moved closer still, resting his head on her chest. His hand remained on her stomach, near where he’d last felt the little taps, determined to feel the baby again. She adjusted to hold him to her, her fingers still combing through his hair rhythmically.

His eyes grew heavy as he waited.

He was drifting towards sleep when Eliza adjusted beneath him and slowly guided his hand to a different spot. He felt the little taps again, tiny feet nudging at his palm. The truth of his earlier assurance to Eliza asserted itself: here with his wife and child, he truly was the happiest and most contented of men.

[avelera]

Prayers to Broken Stone structure/character arc breakdown

So I’m learning a bunch in my writing class about how to put together character arcs, plots, and causal chains of events. In doing so I realized the only story I’ve written that has those elements in any sort of deliberate fashion was Prayers to Broken Stone (probably because it had 2 drafts). I decided to go through the story in my head and figure out exactly what I did there, though the lens of what I’ve learned. 

This essay could be helpful for people who want to walk through the thought process of how a character arc and plot are put together, but I’m also going to point out places where I think PTBS failed to have a strong structure, so it’s a bit of a peak behind the curtain that maybe not everyone wants to have. I also discuss what I would do if there was ever a 3rd draft. This is mostly me explaining my lessons to myself, so may be a bit rambling and long, but it’s available for those who are interested!

For me at least, I don’t generally figure out the mechanics of a story until I’ve finished a first draft, and I don’t think it’s actually got everything it could be until I’ve done a second draft. I’ve only done a second draft for one sizable work and that was with Prayer to Broken Stone, so I’m going to talk about the mechanics of Prayers for a second and how my dumb ass ambled backwards into a story that actually had a plot for once.

Chapter 1 - Actually sucked and was kinda rambling, so let’s just say Chapter 1-3 were actually chapter 1. This is the elements the first 3 chapters had that would, ideally help to think about when writing a different novel. I’m also going to talk about some places where I failed pretty badly though.

- Chapter 1-3 did well in that it opened with a character. The world is filtered through his perspective (Bilbo, and Thorin for chapter 2). All of the world is shown through their subjective, NOT objective eyes (when the description is actually good). Meaning everything is colored by their perception and the description actually serves a PURPOSE, which reveals character by showing how they see things (the wind is uncomfortable because they are uncomfortable, the world outside may be objectively beautiful but all they can see is the bad things like the army outside their door because it’s drawing their focus).

Tip: When writing a novel or story, avoid long, objective passages of description. Description should serve multiple purposes, either strengthening the setting, plot, or characters of the story. Description filtered through the lens of a character is better for the story. Ex. “It was a nice day and the sun was shining, but Bob didn’t care.” vs. “The birds were screeching, the sun hurt his eyes, and Bob was pissed off that he had already sweated through his shirt. Nice day my ass, he thought.” The second line tells us much more about the character, AND we learned what the weather was like, so everyone wins! 

One time I ambled ass-backwards into doing description correctly was the ch. 2 with the descriptions of Thorin’s transformation serving the story and not just being objective, like in the tip above. Thorin doesn’t see everything in the room like an omniscient narrator would. He only sees the things he cares about, which are the scales emerging on his skin, which he sees with hyper-detail which allows me to wax poetic for a bit. Also he’s surrounded by treasure, but I don’t describe all of the treasure, because it’s not relevant.

He sees a silver bowl, which he notices because it’s a reflective surface and his goal is to figure out what is happening to him. This goal is thwarted by an obstacle, which is the dragon sickness itself trying to lure him into a false sense of calm, literally putting him to sleep, so he can’t do the thing he wants to do which is presumably fix the problem. 

(This is probably a bit weak, and in a 3rd draft I would strengthen the reason that Thorin doesn’t just run out of the mountain screaming right at that moment but eh, hopefully I got away with it here and did so by introducing new elements about how dragon sickness works, which makes it hopefully more scary for the audience and raises tension.)

Tip: A character should have a goal, but they shouldn’t reach the goal too easily or there’s no tension or reason for the audience to keep reading. To raise the tension we need OBSTACLES and/or SETBACKS. How characters REACT when they’re confronted with these obstacles shows us more about the story, it often makes us like the character more and/or become more invested in their struggle, and it raises tension.

Chapter 3, Bilbo wakes up on the battlefield like he did on the book. (As I was trying to establish the book events so we could move on ASAP.) The goal that gets handed to him by Gandalf (that could have been strengthened a bit by him volunteering himself but eh, I was cribbing Tolkien) is to go check on Thorin. Bilbo was already worried about Gandalf, so he does the thing he already wanted to do even more, which is go check on Thorin. Again, this could have been a stronger scene if he didn’t want to go see Thorin because he was still afraid, but I guess that kind of happens in chapter 4, where the story actually properly begins. We’re still kind of “driving to the story” here, something that is discouraged. People want to start where the action is.

Tip: Avoid “Driving to the Story”, start us if possible in a scene where the action has already begun, framed in a way that you don’t need to flashback. Usually this is about 3 pages or a few hundred words into whatever you’ve written, because by then you’ve finished clearing your throat and you’ve finally arrived at the story. Now go back and cut the part where you weren’t there yet and boom, instant tension and audience attention.

Chapter 4 - the game pieces are in place, the story can begin. Except I decided we need to “drive to the story” a bit too much, we don’t need to, I could have just begun with Bilbo at the cave entrance about to go in (which I think I did sort of?? But yeah, you didn’t need to see Bilbo climbing the mountain again, we get it already that he had to).

Bilbo is reluctant to return to the mountain but his goal to help Thorin forces him to throw caution to the wind, he hears Thorin’s pained screaming from the events of chapter 2, presumably Thorin is only unconscious for a few minutes (oops, just found a logic plothole) because Bilbo is now running into the mountain.

Drama! Character! Action! We like Bilbo (I hope) because he has a strong goal: which is to help someone who is in pain! Hopefully we’re feeling suspense: will he accomplish his goal?? How is he doing it? Action! He’s running! His internal fear is now external (much of PTBS is about internal things like self-loathing becoming outside things like dragon scales, so this works thematically too, yay!) he’s not sitting in a room stressing about Thorin, he’s doing something about it, which we like, which makes us cheer for him!

He arrives to the treasury where Thorin is suffering the early onset of physical dragon sickness. Now there’s 2 apparent options on the table: 1) he helps Thorin 2) he doesn’t help. But we’re going to go with option 3 because both of those don’t really go anywhere which is 3) He finds Thorin, but Thorin is having a dragon sickness fit and tries to kill him.

Tip: Never set up a story that only has 2 options at the end: they do A or B. Always go with C. C consists of “they do A BUT something else happens” or “they do B, AND there’s unforeseen consequences”. This also applies for the end of your story, the end should be surprising (not just A or B) but inevitable (C) and shouldn’t be something that comes totally out of nowhere (Z).

I switched over to Thorin’s POV there because I thought it would create more tension and be scarier. We know Bilbo is entering the room, we’re wondering what will happen next. But oh no! Now we’re in Thorin’s head and all Thorin sees is an intruder. Hopefully this is both revealing the character and revealing the problem as well as setting up later events: Thorin occasionally has fits where he can’t tell friend from foe.

Tip: Don’t save the best for last. IE not all revelations should be saved for the end. Says there’s a guy who is about to go into the room where the killer is hiding. If he goes into that room, he might be killed! Yes you can do a twist where we’re surprised he gets killed, but now the story can’t be re-read because we know the twist. You can instead let us know the killer is in that room, and now there’s tension. Will the character go in? Won’t he? I hope he doesn’t! Maybe at the last minute we get option C, he starts to go in, but someone calls him away, but then the killer appears behind him and kills him! It’s not necessarily creative or original, but it is more tense and we don’t feel cheated because we didn’t know the killer was in there because we weren’t told. Now we know more things, and we’re stressing (ie there’s tension) about what will happen next.

Drama, action, character!  Thorin’s internal problem of not being able to distinguish friend from foe is made external! He attacks! He and Bilbo don’t just amble up to each other and have a calm conversation about uh oh, bad things are happening. Thorin tries to kill him because he doesn’t know who he is! It’s now pretty heavily implied that something bad is happening and we see it through action instead of navel gazing, and this action reveals character and plot, it’s not gratuitous.

Chapter 5 - info dump and lots of talking heads conversation. What redeems this chapter is something called an “adversarial ally”. Friends who want to help friends are great, but if the sidekick is just passively going along with what the protagonist’s asks for, not much is happening. Thorin and Bilbo need to clear the air, that’s my goal as a writer. But what do they want in this scene?

Tip: Don’t just have helpful sidekicks, have sidekicks (or side characters) who FIGHT with the protagonist. This gives you a fun way to do exposition! Kirk and McCoy arguing about what to do on the planet is way more interesting than Kirk saying what he’s going to do (which may be a dumb idea) and McCoy just agreeing to go along. Also we learn a lot when character’s argue, and we feel involved as audience members.

Well, Bilbo who is the POV character, wants to know what the heck happened to Thorin. But there’s an obstacle! He and Thorin have a lot of bad blood between them from the Arkenstone incident. They have to trust each other again before he can unlock Thorin’s tragic backstory (aka, what happened in chapter 2).

Talking heads scenes can be hard to make interesting, so it’s better for tension if they argue. This scene could probably have been shorter in some ways, but I need to thoroughly convince the audience that they are at least back to a working relationship so they can tackle the bigger problem, even if there’s still some lingering hurt between them. The argument escalates until Bilbo draws a sword on Thorin (well, not really, but it reveals that he wanted to). What probably isn’t very good in this scene is things like how quickly they resolve everything (it takes away tension I could have used later), and the fact that Bilbo just gives up on his tirade in reaction to his own attempt at violence, and there’s a bit of narrative convenience and author’s hand showing when Thorin just gets on the same page and asks Bilbo why he stole the Arkenstone, and admits he’s ashamed of his own behavior. Hopefully I got away with this through doing the voices well, but there are some logical leaps here because I was trying to get to the bigger point of them working together.

Skipping ahead (because I don’t want to do the whole fic) - They’ve met up and Bilbo has settled in for the long haul of curing Thorin. Again, logical leap there, they could just leave then, but I tried to foreshadow the sinister nature of the disease that they don’t just leave there. And at first, Thorin wanting to keep his dignity and not be seen with scales is also keeping him from going out, and Bilbo goes along with him on this in order to keep their tense relationship from blowing up again, and because it doesn’t seem like too bad of an idea there.

It’s a little mushy there, admittedly. This is probably because I hadn’t worked out a strong causal link around everything that was happening. The story is unified by the need to cure Thorin’s disease, and there’s the beginnings of themes around the need to want to be cured, and of Thorin’s real character arc in this story, which in addition to curing the dragon sickness/depression parallel, is also about shame vs. courage. He doesn’t want to be seen because he’s ashamed, he worries that he deserves what is happening to him and he’d rather try and fail to find a cure-- and die in the dark where no one can see him-- rather than reach out for help.

I didn’t know it when writing that scene at the time necessarily, but it means the climax of Thorin’s emotional arc has 2 big points. One is the big one where he scrapes away the scales and decides his life is worth it, he doesn’t have to die alone just to maintain the good opinion of others.

But there was another, more selfless arc which was set up with him not wanting to go outside for a cure back at the beginning, which is when Bilbo’s wounding forces him to carry Bilbo to safety, when he wasn’t willing to take himself to safety. He hears voices, not just of Gandalf but of his kin, the people that it was his greatest goal to avoid seeing what he has become. He wavers, tries to think of other solutions, and realizes he must expose himself and his transformation to them in order to save Bilbo’s life. That was the pride and humility character arc, or perhaps shame and courage arc as it could also be called. 

Thorin is a very brave character, except when it comes to this transformation which has exposed so much of the vulnerability and self-loathing he has hidden from the world and his family, and he needs to recover his courage in order to be in the room where he finds the cure in the next scene. He also needs to do something for Bilbo, who has done so much for him, and he needs to do something Bilbo asks him to do. Now, this theme somewhat contradicts the other theme of the fact Thorin lives too much for the opinion of others and needs to break out of that, but I like to think of it as a stepping stone emotional climax to the big one of ending the transformation. Yes he shouldn’t be worrying so much about the opinions of others, but before he can reach that revelation, he needs to reclaim his courage in facing his kin and learn that yes they do still recognize him and no they don’t blame him for it, and that blame he so feared was entirely in his head (just like much of the dragon voice). There’s all sorts of symbolism and stuff in that.

So in essence, Thorin had to go into the mountain because of pride/dragon sickness, he gets sicker, in order to get better he has to admit to Bilbo that he has a problem, they agree to work together, they go to do research to cure him BUT there’s an obstacle! Mim’s tablet gives him information, but it also makes him worse, not better, because his despair over learning that this curse is meant to be permanent actually strengthens the disease! (A big hint that the disease is emotionally based) 

Thorin goes back to the gold to feel better but there’s another obstacle! Bilbo reveals that he sees Thorin as monstrous now, they need to talk to overcome this obstacle! They have some downtime for processing all that has happened (ch. 9) and in that, Thorin’s disease is actually halted, though he doesn’t really notice or put together the implications that good food, rest, and companionship are the source of that halt. 

The boys instead go off on an incorrect tangent to solve Thorin’s illness, they decide it must be something external and physical, like a dragon’s claw. They go to find and destroy it but OBSTACLE, more tension! Bilbo’s ring has set up a trigger which makes Thorin’s disease worse (this probably wouldn’t work in a novel because the Ring would come out of left field and isn’t connected to events, but as a fanfic writer I have more freedom to draw on elements not directly connected to the story). Thorin and Bilbo’s hard work at making him better backfires, huge obstacle, enough that Thorin is pushed to a near suicide attempt in chapter 11, and only Bilbo taking action to stop him prevents this in chapter 12, where I take another break from the action to tell more about them falling in love.

Hopefully keeping the story going though is the danger of Thorin’s transformation, effectively a ticking time bomb which means even soft moments are tense in some way. That’s because there’s a GOAL in ch. 11 and 12. However, Thorin’s goal has changed. He now wants to die with dignity. Bilbo’s goal is to prevent this, so his goal is the same, but he doesn’t dare leave Thorin alone to get help. This creates TENSION between them as they want different things.

Tip: Characters wanting different things puts them in conflict, which creates tension and plot!

The story could stall out there a bit, and admittedly I got stuck writing this section because the goals were less clear. Bilbo is forced by a new element, Thorin’s dragon spell, to try to kill Thorin. Bilbo’s GOAL is to NOT kill Thorin, and it creates tension as he fights off the impulse, and Gandalf, Fili, and Kili enter. Notice they did not enter until the audience is SCREAMING for them to enter, wondering where they are. And that’s another important thing to learn: don’t serve what the audience wants BEFORE the audience wants it so badly they can taste it. That goes for exposition too. You don’t NEED to know why Thorin is transforming in chapter 2, because you haven’t felt the implications of it yet, only when the story CANNOT go forward without more information do you give that information (see: the library scene).

Tip: Don’t give exposition up front, wait until the audience cannot possibly wait another second longer, and then give them the info. This means don’t do what Tolkien did and have a 50 page prologue about what hobbits are at the beginning of Lord of the Rings. We don’t need that information yet. We’re not wondering what hobbits are yet, it’s not relevant. What we want to know at the beginning is what is the plot, what’s going to happen, who are the characters, and if there’s magic or some other weird element we need to know ASAP.

Tip: If a story is going to have magic in a setting where it might not otherwise, you have to give this fact as soon as possible. Preferably in the first paragraph, ideally in the first LINE. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” is a fantastic first line for that reason. We don’t want to get 10 pages into The Hobbit and then find out that Bilbo isn’t a human! It will mess up our perception of the story and piss us off.

Chapter 14-19 Thorin gets a new goal! First it’s to get revenge on Bilbo for revealing his transformation to his kin (Fili and Kili who Thorin thinks Bilbo betrayed him to), and then it’s to save Bilbo’s life once they’re trapped. There’s a bit of authorial hand showing there, to keep them away from the thing that they want (or at least, what Bilbo wants) which is to find Gandalf and get Thorin the cure. But this is Thorin’s character arc, as an author I know he’s not ready for the cure yet, so it’s delayed with tension and with stabbing Bilbo so he’s faced with the ultimate choice.

Some people thought the love confession was odd in chapter 15 because they expected it in the climax. The reason I put it there was because I have a different view of love confessions: I think they raise stakes instead of lowering them. My philosophy is that having feelings out in the open creates a GREATER sense of responsibility. Thorin and Bilbo could have technically parted ways back in chapter 5, because their love wasn’t in the open yet and technically they had no obligation to each other besides friendship and a secret crush. Thorin is ready to die by ch. 15 but can’t because Bilbo is in danger if he does, the Thorin of ch. 5 could have theoretically killed himself and left Bilbo to figure out his own exit from the mountain, or Bilbo could have left sooner to seek his own safety. A Thorin and Bilbo who have openly confessed their love however CANNOT simply abandon each other. They have to see this through to the end now.

Back to Thorin’s ultimate choice - what he has wanted most, MORE than being cured this entire story, is for his kin not to see what has happened to him. Him and Bilbo falling in love and confessing that love has given him a second goal which until now has not been in conflict with his first goal, because Bilbo is doing his best to help Thorin find a cure and is allowing him to stay away from his kin (note, their biggest fights are whenever Bilbo trips over Thorin’s desire to stay away from his family in Bilbo’s pursuit of HIS goal which is to see Thorin get better).

Now Thorin has to choose: let his kin see him, or let Bilbo (the love of his life) die. That choice creates tension and conflict. Once Bilbo’s life is no longer in IMMEDIATE danger (we think!) then we could freely tackle Thorin’s OTHER big issue which is curing his transformation (ch. 19-20). The obstacle THERE was that he’s made a deal that effectively sold his soul to the devil for the ability to save Bilbo (in ch. 17-18) and now the devil is coming to collect.

Thorin must now make ANOTHER difficult decision: give in to his self-loathing and conviction about his own monstrosity and helplessness in the face of this curse, or fight for his own life which it’s revealed he sees as worthless and not worth fighting for, in a horrible internal loop which strengthened the dragon all along. Yes he needs external voices to push him over the edge into fighting, the voices of his loved ones telling him that this fight is worth having, but more importantly he needs his courage which he also regained a bit of when he carried Bilbo to be saved. Thorin as mentioned before is a pretty courageous guy, but he had fallen and lost his way, beaten down by this curse that made all his internal fears into an external appearance that all can now see. Yes, it’s a bit narratively convenient that all he had to do was decide to fight in order to win, but that’s because the vast majority of the fighting already happened when he made a courageous decision to save Bilbo’s life. That was the line that got him to the water’s edge, now he needed the resolve to pull himself out rather than drown.

Thorin’s character arc is the emotional arc of the story, he’s the main character who must make tough decisions. By contrast, Bilbo is a fairly reactive character, which is why to me he was harder to write and more passive. He’s doing things because Thorin set events in motion, he’s reacting to them, but then again, Thorin would give up and drown if not for Bilbo pushing him forward in some scenes, so they are ideally co-protagonists, or two halves of one protagonist, or whatever. 

However, I admit, Bilbo doesn’t really have much of an arc, and if I did a 3rd draft, I’d probably give him a stronger one. Bilbo wants Thorin to get better, and he succeeds, but he doesn’t change much as a result except for falling in love. Part of the problem there too is that Bilbo is already brave as a result of the events of The Hobbit, so his arc isn’t about becoming brave, he already is.

A better arc for Bilbo could be around issues of emotional intimacy. Thorin needs someone who will say unreservedly that he deserves to live, he deserves to have happiness, he deserves to be loved. Bilbo is from a repressed society and is generally a repressed person, admitting he’s in love with someone is very difficult for him, as is really admitting any emotion at all that isn’t extremely practical. 

Perhaps it’s tied up in how much his parents loved each other, he never thought he could have that for himself and so had resigned himself to never being in love at all, which in turn made him a very emotionally closed off person for all but polite pleasantries. Over the course of the story, his arc would be emotionally opening up to the much more emotionally honest Thorin. 

Thorin is many things in this story, but secretive about what he’s feeling is not one of them: the man is anguished. Bilbo has a polite veneer throughout, which on the one hand helps him stay afloat in a crazy situation, but on the other prevents him from reaching his true goal, which is helping Thorin heal. I’d probably need to throw in some more obstacles for him, such as moments where he tries to open up to Thorin, but something goes wrong. Or moments where Thorin desperately reaches out to him for some sort of confirmation of his own worth, and Bilbo is in too repressed a place emotionally to answer what he really feels (which is love for Thorin), which makes Thorin spiral even harder into his illness. 

Bilbo’s emotional arc may still be shorter as a result, and resolve before Thorin’s: the climax is on the throne, when he can’t admit to Thorin (who is essentially dying that he loves him), something that might have given Thorin the strength to seek help. This decision haunts Bilbo, and makes him resolve to change. Bilbo’s arc is fulfilled in ch. 15 then when he finally blurts out that he loves Thorin and then of course he gets stabbed which is a new arc for him: survive.

This arc IS in there, but it’s buried, and a 3rd draft would probably see a version where that’s brought more to the front and Bilbo gets more of his own things to struggle for and more obstacles that prevent him from achieving what he needs to do.

In the end, both characters get what they want, and the epilogue is me rather self-indulgently showing them afterwards, where their goals are much simpler: be together. They need some reassurance that it wasn’t just panic and heightened emotion that made them fall in love.

They need recovery from their ordeal, and the point of that ordeal was that it made them both see the world differently, Thorin in particular is better able to manage his emotions when it comes to those who have slighted him, and he’s more easy in his own skin, and more assured of his own worth, which makes him a better king. Bilbo’s recovery would probably be something like reassurance that his love confession wasn’t for nothing, that there is a place for him here, that he’s achieved what Bungo and Belladonna, and basically what is called “a reassertion of domesticity” - aka he won his domestic happy ending. Thorin needs some of that reassurance too, because his arc was tied up in whether or not his life was worth anything, and the love of others contributes to that reassurance, though it isn’t the sole source of his worth. Bilbo’s arc is also complete in reassuring himself that Thorin is safe and healthy, which was Bilbo’s goal the whole time.

So anyway, this is me trying to retroactively understand what I’m learning in my writing class, though the lens of the only story I think I’ve written that actually has some decent structure to it. Hopefully from now on I can start to put novels like this together on purpose, instead of by accident!

[jeramylarp]

Larp and Money

[I should really put this disclaimer at the beginning of each post...my experience and focus in general is in Campaign Larps, and more specifically Campaign Larps in the Northeast.  Anything I say here is from that perspective and with that focus]

Running a larp costs money.  Playing a larp costs money.   Two of the main comment threads from my last blog post were, to put it succinctly and with all due respect to the commenters...

“Larps are too expensive”

“Larps are too cheap”

As both a larp runner, and someone who was once a broke ass college student...I completely understand both of these.  As I said in my very first blog post, larping locally, should cost a lot more than it does, but the market can’t bare the expense.  

As a larper and larp owner, there are a lot of hidden (and not so hidden) expenses on both sides of the equation.  From the larper side, while you might pay $45 for the weekend, the actual cost is closer $75-100 per event if you factor in gas, costuming, food, and the like.  From the runner side, I can tell you that unless someone buys any of the extras beyond the base admission, we are seeing perhaps as much as $2 of profit at the end of the day per person.   In most games, the few people who pay for extras subsidize the cost of all those who do not.  For larpers, a lot of people have to scrimp by just to make the baseline cost of the game...for those that play monthly, it is in all reality a monthly payment that is part of their budget.  It is like owning a second cell phone.  

So there is a call for larp to be cheaper.  I get that, and some larps do cost less than others.  I’m running a parlor larp next weekend where we are charging nothing, but the players still need to pay for the place we are using, and the other incidentals of attending.  I suspect that the average actual cost for a player is somewhere around $30.  There are some campaign games that run for $35 for the weekend, simply because their overhead and production budget is so low.  When you say you want cheaper solutions, they exist, they are out there and ready for you to play them.  There are often less frills than the more expensive games, but as they say, “you get what you pay for” (this is not a dig at the quality of cheaper games from a pure “did you enjoy this” end of things). I run a relatively high production value larp on a (mostly) monthly basis.  We have a sizable monthly props budget.  We provide food. Our camp accommodations are nice.  It is the sort of larp I want to run, and that comes at a price tag.  We keep the costs down as much as we can, but we run at a very tight margin, especially as business entity looking to make a profit (because artists should be paid for their art...this is not a discussion).

Some of the “Larps Should Cost More” commenters indicated feeling that the volunteer army that allows larps to run is little more than slave labor and that they should in all reality be paid in real world money.  When we started on this crazy journey, I agreed with that sentiment, I still agree with it in theory...but in practice it just doesn’t work.  As one of the business owners, let us say that we make a profit...we usually do. This profit varies wildly from event to event.  Sometimes we are barely breaking even, other times we might see $500...it is all based on a lot of mitigating factors.  If we are paying Staff Members directly out of this, we need to factor in a few things before we do...

First, Staff Members don’t pay for the game (at least at our game).  And yet, each Staff Member still consumes the resources that every other player at the game does.  This mean that each person who doesn’t pay costs us approximately $45 an event...because that is the cost of them being there split between camp costs, food, props, insurance, and other expenses.

Second, if you are going to pay people you have to be able to pay them consistently.  We swing between 60 and 90 people per event on average.  If we have a snow storm the day before an event and 35 people show up, we have to dip heavily into our coffers to cover the loss, even more so if we paid people.   Third, any amount of money we’d be able to give out would be merely a token.  I have been on Staff at a larp before, and worked for build, service points, free events, and self gain.  If the larp owner said he was going to suddenly give us all $50 a month for our work...I would laugh at him...and this was during a time when I could really have used that $50.  

Fourth, as soon as you bring money into the equation, you turn a volunteer position into a job, and if you are running legally you can’t just pay people under the table.  So the cost to pay people has a lot of other attached costs that again...a larp can’t really afford.  Certainly bigger larps can afford to pay some people, and if we ever break 100 players on the regular, it is something I would be willing to explore, but most larps live and die in the margins. I would be remiss if I were not to address the elephant in the room regarding volunteer positions.  Something that a few conventions, Magic the Gather Judges, and a few other groups within the sphere of gaming and nerdery ran into is that unpaid volunteers exist within questionable legal territory.  But the simple reality is, larps can’t exist otherwise.  Even if you paid Staff, the Marshals and others still fall under this questionable umbrella [For the sake of the reader, most local larps run under Owners > Staff > Marshals paradigm].  Volunteers are not, by and large, helping us wealthy yacht owning larp runner, prop up our fortunes to allow us to live extravagant life styles.  I have a day job.   There are exceptions.  I have been on Staff at a game where I probably should have been paid given the amount of work I did, and the financial reality of the larp itself.  Bigger larps should have a few paid employees, even if they are only part time employees.  But volunteers will always be a necessity for larps to function.  

[Note: If you, as a volunteer, feel like you are being unduly taken advantage of, you can and should leave.  I’ve seen games that run that way, it is terrible, and no one should stick around and be abused.  This is a real problem in our industry]

The fully professional, everyone gets paid, larp model simply does not work for campaign larps, and unless a lot of people can pay $100 event for a ticket it never will.  

But I digress...

Larps cost money on both sides of the equation.  Larpers have to respect that larp owners are generally charging far less than the actual value of the game in both money and man hours.  Larp owners have to respect that people are often spending what little they have to be part of the world they created.  

So yeah...larping costs money.