#note that sometimed we throw realism out of the window

[convex-solos]

tell me felix just how fucked up scar and cub are in this au

Oh anon you are IN for a WILD RIDE here. I will mostly focus on their relationship with each other in order to highlight their key character traits.

I will start by mentioning that Convex’s relationship is full of nuance and is constantly evolving just like the characters themselves.

Some key elements to remember about the characters in order to understand their relationship is that Scar is characterized by a morbid need for attention and would do quite literally anything for the spotlight, while Cub is extremely prone to boredom and has to keep himself entertained in progressively more dangerous mind games and activities.

They both play 4D chess with each other. At the end of act I Scar’s crush for Cub completely escalates in a morbid attachment and downright obsession that will only get worse when Cub convinces Scar he is the only person he has left now.

Remember that Scar has just seen his face, the epitome of his beauty (which equals attention), tarnished forever, he has been humiliated by his defeat. Sure he could get plastic surgery to fix SOME of the damage, but it wouldnt be the same. His ego has been wounded too.

So Cub is there. He is the only person Scar talks to while he recovers and he makes sure to be the only “landmark” that Scar has left. So of course Scar’s obsession with Cub only gets stronger, but Scar knows this. He is aware that Cub is playing him but the thing is. He doesnt care AT ALL.

Cub is willing to give him a chance to be reborn, to forget about his failures and for once in his life take the stage for himself and do as his heart desires. He is enabling him, and that’s all that matters to Scar.

Cub is. Easily bored. He dropped out of med school after refusing to take the hippocratic oath and started a series of incredibly dubious medical practices that he managed to keep for himself, only to satisfy his own curiosity.

At some point he got bored so he decided to bring his attention to the human mind. That’s where Scar comes in. In the story Cub and Scar meet by chance in the middle of the night, they then exchange a few words about the clear luminous night sky above them.

That’s it. That’s all that happened… if it wasn’t for the fact that Cub had visible blood stains on his clothes and Scar didn’t even bat an eye. That intrigues Cub, so when Scar advertises that he’s looking for a roommate, Cub immediately takes his chance. Scar becomes his long term “project” and everything culminates to the end of the first act where Cub offers Scar the chance to work by his side. Perfect, right?

But their relationship is… extremely complicated to say the least. Cub doesn’t do “love”. He doesn’t feel that kind of attraction. Scar’s feelings aren’t love either, they’re more akin to obsession. Scar is extremely unpredictable and that drives Cub insane, but he has to admit he enjoys a challenge and Scar himself doesn’t mind at all how scarily controlling Cub is. He likes the attention :)

Cub promises Scar he will kill Grian when the time is right. You can imagine how ecstatic Scar is, he wants to destroy everything related to his “old life” in order to truly enjoy his new and better life.

When Grian takes Cub’s eye out at the end of the second act Cub’s priorities change. Now he wants to be the one to kill Grian for the sole reason she dared to actually impair him. LOL. Notice the parallels?

Things get worse when they get locked up in prison. Scar is always on edge and is extremely violent. He gets thrown into solitary confinement a couple of times. This is the point in the story where Scar realizes just how empty he is and is just a husk of his old self. He is TERRIFIED of being left alone with his thoughts.

Obsession can imply going through stages of deep hatred for the object of said obsession. So Scar does snap at Cub in this incredibly pressuring environment and it only gets worse when he learns Cub has no intention of letting him kill Grian. Cub doesn’t budge. Scar had the illusion of being finally free with Cub but it was just that. An illusion.

Scar’s mood swings from manic states to depressive episodes so he is extremely delicate to handle with, but Cub manages to keep him loyal to him, LOL! Because at the end of the day they truly only have each other. It’s too late to go back now.

Sometimes Scar scares Cub and they both know. Scar acts like he doesn’t know Cub’s tricks until he does. Their relationship is a constant push and pull, it’s a match made in hell and I wouldn’t have it any other way. <3

[drdemonprince]

I've noticed a pattern in anticapitalist books I read (specifically I'm talking abt Mark Fisher here, in Capitalist Realism). They do this great anticapitalist analysis etc and then go on to critique their students? and sometimes it's a bit ableist? it's like all the critical thought goes out of the window and they cannot understand the situation because for once suddenly they are in the authoritative position. It always gives me this "I don't understand these kids, back in my day-" vibe, and I see this with lecturers at university too. like Mark Fisher maybe we can think outside the box about your student who "needs" headphones to focus in class "even though no music is playing". and maybe it's not to do with the "Matrix"(????) I'm well aware this was written in 2008 but it's weird that I see this pattern continue today. Not to mention Mark Fisher took part in some ableist studies, and was a guy with questionable intentions on occasion.

it's like you Just said that reducing labour is good why are you calling your students lazy, that's so unprofessional and privileged. I wonder of coincidence that he is anti-meds when his right wing, pro-eugenics, accelerationist friend was addicted to amphetamines.

Or even just the amount of people who have written books about laziness and anticapitalism (excluding you) and just saying the most contradictory shit ever?? or not following their own ideology???

Anyway, I wonder if, when writing Laziness Does Not Exist, you came across any of this and were equally as baffled.

Materialism is just *so* true that high-status academics don't have a vested class interest in seeing their student struggles as legitimate or in recognizing the struggles of disabled people in general. For many edgy academic leftists having the correct opinions is just a way to flex one's intellectual status, not a lived experience they give a shit about. I'm not shitting Fisher in particular in saying this, it's more that it's a really widespread problem in the culture of these kinds of (very white, very academic, very cishet) leftists communities. You see the same kind of thing among some of the Chapo stan types, too, you don't have to be specifically an academic to do it -- lots of people throwing around the r-slur and flexing on how much they have read and doing fuck all for the oppressed people around them. I tend to find it especially common among people who inherited leftism from their (often academic) parents? Whereas leftist communities populated by Black & brown anarchists and working class people tend to fare a lot better in this particular respect.

Note that I'm not saying a person's identities are a guarantee of them being any more radical -- there's lots of liberals lurking in our midsts of all identities for instance -- more that someone's orientation toward power tells you a lot. and unfortunately there is an approach to leftism that puts a lot of stock in either institutional power via the academy, or in a kind of soft power of intellectual authoritativeness that tends to punish anyone who is supposedly less well read, less intelligent, lazy, needs disability accommodations, has trauma triggers, or what have you.

The simple answer is that power and privilege obscures other people's challenges from you, and the desire to preserve one's power (be it actually institutional academic authority or just the status of the person who supposedly knows the most in the room) leads to a lot of oppressive behavior. a lot of these guys that you're talking about believe in communism sincerely but they don't have humility, they believe themselves to be superior to most everyone else. and they tend to be white guys from wealthy families who either do not have any disabilities of their own, or they have the undiagnosed intj mastermind rational flavor of autism that makes you feel incredibly alienated from others but interpret that alienation as a sign of your intellectual superiority. (i had this type but i got better. a little)

[manga-and-stuff]

Interview with Makoto Yukimura, the Mangaka behind Vinland Saga

REALQ: What kind of child were you? Yukimura: I was a laid back kid, who took a very, very long time to come to a decision. I'd be late to dinner because I was thinking about something or other. Once, while I was alternately touching the right and left eyes of a snail, I became aware that night had fallen. I wondered why my group of friends were always in such a hurry. I would focus on something and lose the ability to tell if time was passing quickly or slowly.

REALQ: When did you first encounter manga? Yukimura: I was five-years-old and the manga was Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump. I remember thinking the cover art was cool. When I was little, I used to think that the cover art and the story inside were drawn by different people. [Laughs]    But I watched the Dr. Slump anime before I read the manga. Later, someone told me that there was a manga that the anime was based on and I found the weekly magazine where it was serialized. In the beginning, I was dubious. I didn't see why there needed to be both a manga and an anime. Like, why do the same thing twice? How-ever, after I saw them both it made sense because each had its own idiosyncracies. REALQ: Did your parents say anything to you about reading manga? Yukimura: No, they never said anything. They came from a generation who said reading manga made you an idiot, but they didn't say any-thing. They didn't say anything when I told them at 16 that I wanted to draw manga, either.

REALQ: Was there anything that your parents, siblings, or people around you would say to you often?

Yukimura: There certainly must have been various things, but I don't remember because I was probably concentrating on something else at the time and didn't hear them. However, one thing I do remember is being told to watch out for cars. Like, at the very least, try not to die. [Laughs] Nevertheless, I really did get into a traffic accident. Once, on my way to the park to play with my friends, I ran out into the street and got hit on the side by a sedan. I rolled over the top of the car—the hood, wind-shield, top, rear window, then the trunk. Strangely, I wasn't seriously injured and played in the park afterwards. Actually, there was also another incident.    My sister and I were riding together in a car. It was just the two of us and as we were going down a hill, a car suddenly appeared and we hit its side. I was sitting in the backseat and was launched forward like a catapult. My sister was so surprised she called out, "Mako, you're flying!" Strangely, I wasn't injured that time either, and we decided not to tell our mother. [Laughs] REALQ: Did your way of thinking change after the accident? Yukimura: I think that if it did change, I wasn't conscious of it. Despite being a near-death experience, it was a miracle I wasn't injured. My mother getting angry at me afterward was more frightening. [Laughs] In terms of my "way of thinking," I'm a little different. Like something in me is lacking. It's often the case that for some reason I don't fully comprehend a conversation even if I'm really trying to concentrate on what the other person is saying. What's the reason? If I'm honest about it, it's because I'll start thinking about something else, even if it's just for a moment. REALQ: Did you also have trouble paying attention during class at school? Yukimura: Yeah. Especially classes that didn't interest me. I continued to have this problem in high school, where I'd often be sitting in class and before I realized it, the bell would ring. However, my notebook would have stuff drawn in it...manga. REALQ: Didn't teachers or friends say anything? 

Yukimura: In high school, I didn't have much of a social life, so nobody said anything. I went to reasonably academic schools [REALQ Editor's note: Yukimura graduated from Chuo University and Suginami High School] and my peers studied quite hard. The feeling that I was so different from most of the people around me had a big effect on me. I didn't fit in. I lived in my own world.

REALQ: Did student life give you anxiety? Yukimura: Anxiety was the only thing I really felt. In a way, isn't school a microcosm for society? Despite it being a microcosm, there's this feeling of being left behind. That made me really anxious and sad. But as a result of suffering in this way, I realized that society existed out-side of this microcosm—a kind of society that I had never experienced inside the microcosm of school.

REALQ :What lead you to have this epiphany? Yukimura: It occurred to me out of the blue one day when I was feeling totally devastated. I was 16. One autumn day after school I thought to myself, "I'll finish high school because if I don't, it will make my parents sad. But participating in a society reflected in this kind of microcosm will be impossible." It was just like that moment when a cup is filled to the brim with water and suddenly the surface tension breaks and it overflows.  However, thinking this made me feel better. Until that point, the "ruler" for determining success since the first year of high school had been getting good grades, getting into a good college, and then finding a job with a good company. This ruler contained within it a system of values for how one should live their life. When I decided that this was not the ruler I wanted to use to measure my own life, things became a lot easier for me. I used to get burnt out worrying so much about getting decent enough grades that would allow me to get into university. Like, "please let me just graduate!" Realizing that there was another way to live was a lifesaver. 

Of course, I think it made my parents nervous. In that era, there was still a deeply rooted notion that one's academic background was im-portant and working for a good company made you a good person. Back then, this was like saying, "Your child is the type of kid who won't find their way in the world." It was like throwing away the most important ruler and replacing it with a new ruler that was a little bent and covered with indecipherable markings. [Laughs]    REALQ: Was there anyone from your high school days who had an influence on you? Yukimura: A teacher who taught classical literature. He was apparently a teacher with quite bizarre interpretations of the material. More than anything else, what left the greatest impression on me was when he used class time to talk about how wonderful Michael Ende was [REALQ Editor's note: a German writer of children's fiction]. He introduced me to The Never Ending Story. Once I knew about Michael Ende, he became an influence on me. It was the first book I knew of in which someone wrote a book because he had a sense of obligation and a goal in relation to society and the world. I thought that someone who wrote a book because he felt that it was something he had to do was a rather beautiful thing to wish for. REALQ: Next up... Yukimura discusses the connection between himself and Thorfinn Karlsefni, the protagonist of his Vinland Saga. Is there anything that makes you hesitate when you draw your manuscripts? 

Yukimura: For characters, it's probably the hands. Hands take time to do well. The strength of a character's grip on a sword, for example. Male and female hands are hard to differentiate, too. Hands are the most expressive part of a character, after the face. 

I've heard that you can tell a person's personality from their hands, so I always look at them. [Laughs]    You can fake a facial expression, but your hands will show how hard you work or how hard you don't. If you show the character's life in their hands, you'll get a good result. REALQ: When did you start paying attention to how you drew hands? Yukimura: Since I was young. But I still find it difficult now. When I look at the work of other manga artists, sometimes the faces are well drawn, but the hands are not. To put it bluntly, if I were to choose among artists, I would choose them by how they draw their hands. REALQ: Is there anyone whose work you reference? Yukimura: I'm especially influenced by artists with high amounts of realism. When it comes to hands, it's gotta be Katsuhiro Otomo. 

It's not just his hands, though. It's everything. [Laughs] 

Also, the young, up-and-coming artists are all quite good. Their hands are pretty, but you can see the structure clearly as well. REALQ: Any thoughts on these hands? [While looking at Sigurd's hands in the manuscript] Yukimura: Yes. These hands are drawn fairly well. In Sigurd's case, de-spite the muscularity, his hands are not rough. That's because he has his underlings do the tough work. In Thorfinn's case, he has many small cuts, and there is more cracked and peeling skin.

REALQ: Are there any scenes in Vinland Saga strongly influenced by your own experience? Yukimura: When Thorfinn is on his knees, apologizing. [Laughs] The part where he says, "Please. I won't ask you to forgive me, but allow me to live a bit longer." I've been drawing manga for 20 years. There's always a shadow of guilt that hangs over me. I'm sorry for being so selfish. So, I feel I have to, at the very least, draw something that readers will love... I'm nothing without that. Thorfinn is a young viking from medieval Europe. Since his teens, he's pillaged, fought in wars, and done many other terrible things. His feelings change as he grows, and he starts to feel guilt for his past actions. The ghosts of those he killed appears in his dreams, and he is ravaged by nightmares.    I am only here today because of the care of those around me. I am truly thankful. If anything about Thorfinn comes from my experiences, it has to be this. In his current state, the protagonist has no right to convict anyone else. No matter what kind of scoundrel he meets, Thorfinn always feels that he has done something worse in the past. I think it's good this way.

REALQ: Did you know from the beginning that Thorfinn would become the way he did? Yukimura: Yeah. The story began with the premise that the protagonist is fated to have done many terrible things. He goes from being the oppressor to being the oppressed, and in doing so, he learns many things and becomes an adult. He then departs, saying, "I will go to a new land beyond the sea and build a peaceful country." That is an escape from the values that dominated European society. They do not feel that it is bad to wage war and plunder other countries. And, although their opponents are human beings, they believe they have the right to make the weak into slaves and kill them if they need be. In the society of that time, such things were seen as good things. Thorfinn experiences—and hates—both. But he is powerless to change the system... So he decides to leave. There will be terrible bloodshed if he decides to change the world. So he leaves it to Canute. Because Canute has the power and the shorter path. "I am different," he says. "I will live in a different way." When I put it into words, it seems like a lot of what I think is reflected in my work. [Laughs]

REALQ: From your childhood experiences and your writing process, I get the feeling you are a perfectionist who doesn't com-promise when it comes to goals or ideals. Do the people around you feel the same way? 

Yukimura: I think I am a perfectionist. In the past, my seniors and teachers would say, "If 100 points is amazing work and 0 points is nothing, it's easy to get to 80 points. However, each point beyond that is incredibly difficult. Past 90, it's so rough that you'll start spitting blood. And nobody gets to 100." I don't know if, by absolute standards, my work is at 80 points. But, for my own standards, I care a lot about each of those 1 or 2 points beyond 80. I care so much that others see the changes I make and say, "He pushed back the deadline for this? What's changed?" [Laughs] I've even rewritten an entire manuscript before. REALQ: Is it really rough when you have to throw out a whole manuscript? Yukimura: It's sad that to know the work won't produce results, but the worst possible thing for me is to feel regret afterwards. If I can choose to suffer for a brief moment as I draw, then I'll do it. The regrets afterward stay around much longer... REALQ: Are you happy about the reactions of your overseas readers? Yukimura: Yeah. It's encouraging to know they like my work. Especially when I heard some of them were reading Vinland Saga side-by-side with a dictionary. I forgot which language they were translating from and into, though. [Laughs]

REALQ: Let me change the subject: Advice from adults to children... Do you think it's important to emphasize the importance of having dreams? Should we tell kids to have dreams and tell them their dreams will come true? Yukimura: I used to think dreams were just desires. However, I was a good-for-nothing back then, so I think I was being resentful. [Laughs] At the very least, I don't think doing whatever you want to do is a beautiful thing. That's just you doing what you want to do. The truly beautiful things are helping others, volunteering, things like that... Finding a home for a stray dog, or doing things that no other person wants to do—that's beautiful.    This includes me, but to do what you want to do is simply selfishness. I received my role in society, but I couldn't carry it out. I wasn't a modest enough person for that. I said such things because I thought I would do what I wanted to do no matter what other people said to me. It's the same for everyone, I think. Those who do what they want and succeed are simply the ones who ended up with a place in society. It's a miracle. After all, what some people want is to carry out meaningless terrorism... But it's the same thing. Both are "dreams." REALQ: If you could give an hour of advice to your younger self, what would you say? Yukimura: I'd say, reflexively, to be 3 times as careful of oncoming traffic. [Laughs] More seriously, I'd say, "You're worried that you're inferior to others. But don't worry." I'd tell myself that there isn't only one ruler to mea-sure yourself by. "Humans come in all sorts," I'd say. "There's not a single number line that we all stand on." Text by Shuta Miura

[bardsingingasong]

5+1 Chances to scare you

TITLE: 5+1 chances to scare you | Read on AO3

AUTHOR: Bardsingingasong | MarysseLalonde

RELATIONSHIPS: Kyle Rayner/Jason Todd

SUMMARY: Jason never scares, or that's what he says. Kyle is determined to prove the opposite.

           There're 5 times tat Kyle tries to scare his boyfriend and 1 when he gets               it, more or less.

WORD COUNT: 3,677

BOOKS/NETFLIX/2002 SHOW/VIDEO GAME: Batman-All Media Types, Green Lantern- All Media Types

TRIGGERS/WARNINGS: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warning.

RATING: G

ADDITIONAL NOTES: 

Happy Halloween!

Yeah, I know Halloween is already past, but never is too late to celebrate it!

I'm very glad to contribute to this fandom and this precious ship. I hope you enjoy these idiots in love.

As usual, I want to thank my beta, TanisVs, for her work. You're the best girl, and I love you so much!!

Friendly reminder: English isn't my first language. I'm trying to improve my English, but I have a lot of work to do. Please if you wish to comment, first of all, thank you, and least be polite, I'm doing my best.

Enjoy!

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"As if you could scare me.”

Kyle frowned, and raised his head from Jason's shoulder to look at him. It was late at night. The patrol was over, and Kyle was back on Earth for the next month. They had decided to watch a movie, specifically a horror movie.

Growing up in Gotham and being trained by Batman had made Jason think that he was immune to fear. He liked to pretend he couldn't feel that emotion in particular, but Kyle knew it best. After all, the White Lantern was linked to the emotional spectrum.

"As if you were never afraid,” Kyle bit back. "Everyone feels fear sooner or later.” 

"Yes, but it didn't mean you can scare me."

Kyle moved away from Jason, leaning on the sofa to look at him. Jason had that smile of his, which means he was fooling around with Kyle.

"I will," His voice tone was firm. "I know you, I could scare you in one way or another."

Jason stared at him, his smile growing bigger while his fingers held Kyle's chin.

"Sounds like a dare." He sounded playful and sensual. He was using the tone that he knew it drove Kyle mad. He was trying to distract him. Jason probably was bored with the movie, and he was in the mood to play.

And Kyle hated taking the bait so quickly.

"Maybe it is." Kyle was digging his own grave, but he never refused a challenge no matter how absurd it was.

"I would like to see you try."

In a second, Kyle was astride Jason's lap, devouring his mouth.

"It's a dare?" Jason asked between kisses.

"Will you take it?" Jason pulled him and pressed him against his body. His hips were raised, telling Kyle what he was thinking all the time during the movie. That was a little disturbing, but Kyle could understand that it was a time since he was on Earth.

"Maybe later, when I'm not busy".  

There were no more words after that. The movie continued playing in the background, but sooner rather than later, their screams of pleasure ended up covering the scare screams from the film.

Later, when they were resting at Jason's bed, Kyle began to think of his plan attack.

1

“You know, I think we have a ghost in the apartment.”

Jason gave him an incredulous look. He was throw away over the sofa, watching a movie with a large popcorn bowl. Kyle should have joined him, but he had claimed how much he wanted to paint.

"And you think that because... ?"

Kyle stared at him. He usually didn't care how Jason looked like an idiot from time to time, but sometimes he wished his boyfriend would take him seriously. If Jason wanted a reason, he would have one.

"Because I was working on my canvas when some of your books fell from the bookshelf."

“Are you sure it wasn't you who has made them fall?”

Kyle rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. "I'm sure, because your stupid Jane Austen's books are floating everywhere, and I can't do that without my ring."

Red Hood grumbled. He left the bowl on the sofa and paused the movie before he got up. He didn’t seem not much convinced but went to the bedroom anyway. Kyle followed him. The two of them stopped in their tracks at the doorway. The room was uncoordinated, with all Kyle's paints over the bed and the floor. An easel was in front of the windows and on it the unfinished canvas. The scene could be normal, but there were some open books, floating mid-air. The books moved like someone was making them levitate. Maybe for the inexperienced eye they could look more real, but Jason wasn't a beginner. A single look was enough to know what happened there.

"If you make a single scratch on my books, it'll not matter how much I love you, you'll sleep in the streets for the rest of your Earth's days off." Jason said. He turned around and started to walk to the living room. "Put them back on the bookshelf, Rayner.”

The Lantern looked at him and back to the room.

"Aw c'mon, man! Are you serious?!" He ran after him. Jason was again on the sofa with the movie playing and the popcorn bowl on his lap. "You didn't doubt for a second."

"Who do you think I am, Ky?" He threw up a popcorn and ate it in flight. "I work with the big bat, your childish tricks could never fool me."

Kyle sighed loudly. He dropped on the couch, next to Jason, resting his head on the backrest. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jason's mocking smile. Acting like a child, the White Lantern set the bowl aside and lay down on Jason's lap, crossing his arms with a pout on his face. Immediately, Jason caressed his hair.

Almost all the time, those gestures made Kyle doubt how people could think Jason was anything but a loving person. He knew how brutal and lethal Jason could be, but it was always for a reason... most of the time. The ex-Robin was very protective of the people he loved, and his love was not easy to earn but if you got it, it would last forever.

In Kyle's opinion, the man had suffered enough to let him be imperfect. Maybe Red Hood didn't comply with Batman's code, but he was efficient, and the same hands that could skew a life they also could be affectionate.  

"Just for curiosity.” Kyle said. "What gave me away?"

"Many things. Your canvas was dry, and I could see the fishing line a mile away". Jason's voice was flat, even bored, but Kyle knew him for years and he could hear a tiny, tiny, note of fun on his tone. "You'll need to be more convincing if you want to scare me, Lantern."

Kyle snorted, giving Jason a bite in his thigh. Scare Jason Todd would be more difficult than he had thought in the first place.

2

"OH MY GOD! JASON!"

Kyle's scream surprised him in the shower. Normally he would have ignored the Lantern while showering, but this time something sounded wrong in Kyle's voice. Jason turned off the tap and wrapped himself with a towel. If it was a joke, he would ensure that his boyfriend would have a punishment.  

Jason walked towards the kitchen, leaving a trail of water behind him. He would clean it up later, when he was sure Kyle hadn't been hurt by any nonsense. If anyone could do something so stupid and end up hurting himself, it was Kyle (and Dick too, but that was another matter). Sometimes Jason would try to explain to himself how Kyle could survive in space and be part of a group like the Lantern Corps as clumsy as he was.

"It may already be import… ant."

Jason fell silent as he entered the kitchen. Kyle was standing by the counter, with a rolled-up cloth tightly covering his hand. The cloth was completely stained red, and was dripping profusely. The cutting board and the knife with which he must have been working until then were equally stained with red. At first glance, it would appear that Kyle had cut himself. Very much so. To be honest, Jason would say that was the best performance the White Lantern could do. He was even crying! He could have fooled anyone, but not Jason. Definitely not Jason, who could distinguish fake blood from the real one with his eyes closed.

Red Hood saved the prank in his mind, he would ensure that Kyle will do it again with the Outlaws. Roy's face would be epic. But for now, he stayed near the door, looking at Kyle with his arms crossed.

"That's the best you can do?" Jason's tone had no emotion, but he arched one eyebrow, revealing his amusement. Jason had left his warm shower to suffer another pitiful try from his boyfriend to scare him. He'll make Kyle paid for it later. For the moment, Jason would be satisfied with dismantling his joke. "I don't know what have you used as fake blood, but it is more liquid than real blood. Nice whack, Lantern."

"In your defense I would say that it could have been quite convincing for someone with no experience. Play the joke on Jordan or Gardner, they'll fall for it."

"What about John?"

"Steward is the smart one in your little gang. He probably won't believe it."

"Does that mean I'm an idiot too?"

Jason didn't answer. He smiled and said:

"You're going to clean up this mess and make dinner while I finish showering, got it?"

Kyle pouted but smiled after. Scare Jason was his challenge, and it would be more fun than the second Robin had thought.

3

"Okay, this time it has to be the final one." Kyle took the final look at his latest work: a tall ghostly figure hanging in the middle of his studio. The smell of fresh paint still hung in the air, as the last layer had not yet dried.

The first two attempts had been a total fiasco, but this time Kyle thought he could make it. He had been working tirelessly for days to finish the puppet of the ghost, covered with layers and layers of fluorescent paint that gave it a rather spooky realism.

That night, none of them would be home. Jason had patrol with the rest of the bats, and Kyle would spend the day working as a team with other Earth Lanterns. That meant the Lanterns had an excuse to drink together, and for Kyle it meant he had an alibi when his prank exploded in Jason's face.

"Okay, Kyle, you can do this."

Kyle had left home early, having left a light construction as an alarm to know when Jason was leaving. So he had come back and set the trap, placing it where Jason didn't expect to find it.

When he returned with the rest of the torches, they bombarded him with questions. Hal and Guy laughed outrageously, while John and Simon looked at him with some disapproval. On the other hand, Jessica smiled at him and gave him new ideas in case the prank didn't work.

Time passed quickly between laughs and drinks, and by the time Kyle returned home, he had forgotten his own trap.

"I'm home," he said, opening the front door.

Jason's muffled voice received him. He wasn't in sight, so Kyle thought he was probably in the bathroom. Exhausted and a little drunk, Kyle went to the bedroom to change his clothes, thinking of making a light dinner for him and his boyfriend later. Suddenly, a tall, shiny figure pounced on him. Kyle, lost in thought, had no time to turn away completely and let out a cry of surprise. The figure collapsed after hitting him, and broke into pieces on the floor.

Kyle stood extremely still, totally taken by surprise, and watched what was left of his joke that he had been working on for a whole week. His drunkenness disappeared suddenly, with the loud sound of his heart beating in his ears. Obviously, Jason hadn't fallen into her trap, but he had.

How ironic, a victim of his own plans.

 "What's broken?" Jason asked, poking his head out the door.

"My dignity..."

Jason was curious, but didn't push for Kyle to tell him what had happened. Kyle looked, and was, very embarrassed, with a strong blush on his cheeks. He just cleaned up the broken pieces of the ghost without saying a word.

Later, when Kyle checked the security cameras, Jason's laughter echoed throughout. And the next day, when he woke up, the icon of an unread message was blinking on his phone. When he opened it, he found a laconic:

<Jason: 3, Kyle: 0>

Sometimes he really hated his boyfriend.  

4

Kyle started to get discouraged. He already had three failures in his mission to scare Jason. Perhaps it was impossible, after all, Jason had been through too many traumatic experiences since he was a child to be afraid of mundane things like ghosts, blood and floating books. Kyle thought about googling. He knew that Gotham had a website where people explained and taught how to make those kinds of scary jokes and traps, not just for Halloween but in case someone wanted to make them at any time of the year. Kyle thought it was a bit disturbing. Some of the jokes were funny, but others also made him think that most people in Gotham needed to go to therapy.

"How do you make a fake cut head? And then they say this city has the highest crime rate in the country. I wonder why."

Kyle decided to try one and ended up watching all the available tutorials. They were really creepy and unpleasant, although Jason probably wasn't afraid of them either.

"But I don't lose anything by trying..."

What Kyle hadn't counted on was having to watch people hide their fake heads in the fridge. That made him feel a lot worse than knowing that he probably couldn't scare his boyfriend, because... Well, the thought of Alex had never stopped hurting him. He had learned to deal with it over time, it was true, but... No, if he was going to play that prank on Jason, he couldn't, shouldn't, even think about going near the fridge with something that simulated a human body part.

The choice of model was quite easy. He couldn't risk anyone going off the rails, so he couldn't choose anyone from Jason's immediate environment. No Waynes, no Alfred, no Outlaws, no Titans in general. So he had to use someone just as willing as he was to play those kinds of jokes. Guy Gardner was always the best choice if you were looking for a partner in crime. Kyle only needed to tell him his plan so Guy would sign up without hesitation.

Now, a large jar was on the kitchen table, and inside was a picture of Guy's head.

"I'm home!" Jason announced from the front door.

Kyle looked up from the picture he was working on and took a look at the jar. He smelled the Chinese food, Jason had brought dinner. "Kyle?"

"Here." Kyle forced himself to stay focused on his work.

Jason walked over to the couch, left a kiss on Kyle's head and went into the kitchen. Kyle needed all his willpower not to look at his reaction. But to his disappointment, Jason pretended that nothing was out of place.

"Okay, I admit I almost believed it this time," he said, calmly. Kyle put the notebook aside and looked at his boyfriend. Jason was taking out the Chinese food boxes, placing them on the counter near Guy's fake head. "Gardner is a pain in the ass, I wouldn't be surprised if one day you decided to give him his due.”

"Don't say that." Kyle leaned against the sofa, watching Jason put the food on the plates. "You should get along better with him, he's my best friend and you're my boyfriend. You get along so badly because you look so much alike."

"Even more so.” When Jason left the dishes on the table, he approached Kyle and leaned in to kiss him properly. "Anyway, it's pretty well done. Can I put it on the shelf?”

Kyle rolled his eyes. Another failed plan.

"Whatever you want. Just don't put it in the bedroom, I don't want to see my friend's head while we're having sex."

5

Everything had failed. Kyle had no ideas anymore, no real strength, to try and scare Jason. His boyfriend was like an iceberg, nothing seemed to scare him, and the most he could do was make him laugh at his pathetic jokes.

"Just jump after him and say 'BOH!'" Dick had said last night, when they were having dinner with Jason's brothers.

Dick's suggestion was absurd. If Jason wasn't scared of anything, he definitely wouldn't do it because of a jump scare. But in for a penny, in for a pound, he thought.

Kyle came closer to the couch, where Jason was having a nap, using his ring to float and make less noise possible. But he was distracted by the thought that he might give Jason a heart attack, until he suddenly realized that his boyfriend had opened his eyes and was staring at him. Kyle flinched.

"Tell me you're not doing what Dick told you to do." Jason said. His voice sounded sleepy and resigned.

"No?" Kyle replied. Jason raised an eyebrow, skeptical, and Kyle felt his cheeks burning. "Okay, okay! I'm out of ideas."

"Do you want one? Admit your defeat, and come here with me."

That was the last attempt and the last defeat, so Kyle decided to be content, rather than reward himself, by curling up in Jason's arms and abandoning himself to pampering.

6

It had to be a nightmare.

Jason searched Kyle's body, frantic and agitated, desperate to find signs of life. He held the lantern in his arms, his head tilted unnaturally, and his eyes closed.

"Please wake up, Kyle, please, please." Jason whispered.

"Jay..." He heard Roy, who put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it tightly in a gesture intended to be comforting.

The other Lanterns of the Earth landed in front of him. Jason didn't need to look at them to know how they felt. He could hear Jessica's grasp, and he was pretty sure that sound was Gardner hitting something.

That couldn't be happening.

"Jason."

Jason ignored that voice, more focused on stroking Kyle's cheek. His skin was cold, and it shouldn't be. Kyle hated the cold, he always wrapped himself in a lot of blankets when he was in Jason's flat.

"Jason." The same voice called him again.

This time, a firm hand grabbed his arm. Red Hood looked up and met Hal Jordan, the man who had once argued with Batman about how Jason was fucking his beautiful little brother.

"Let it be." Jordan said.

Jason frowned.

"I'm not going to leave him! He's hurt, he needs help!" Red Hood replied, angry.

Jason saw compassion in Jordan's eyes, and he hated him. Why did he feel sorry for him instead of helping Kyle? No one around him was moving a finger, what was wrong with them?

"Jason, he's gone." Roy said.

"He's right here."

"Kyle's dead, Jason." Batman's voice echoed in his head.

"Poor little broken Robin. Did you lose something?" He knew that voice. It was the Joker, chasing him wherever he went. "Maybe if he hadn't been near you, he'd still be alive."

His singing voice made Jason feel sick. Batman was right, Kyle was dead. And the clown was also right, if he had been more attentive, maybe, maybe Kyle wouldn't have had to intervene and...

Kyle was dead because of him.

"Jason."

Someone was calling him, but Jason ignored him. I had to help Kyle, I had to do something. He felt a pang of horrible guilt crushing him to the ground.

"Jason."

The voice was loud. He knew it. It was sweet and quiet, like Kyle's voice when he convinced him to stay home on a rainy day, and drink hot chocolate until they couldn't take it anymore. He felt a wave of affection. That had been a good time.

"Jason, please wake up."

Jason opened his eyes. He could feel his heart beating strongly against his ears.

"Come on, honey, breathe. It was a nightmare."

Jason closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled, trying to do it as slowly as possible. When he became aware of his surroundings, he felt someone beside him. A hand was tracing soft circles on his chest, making him feel much more comfortable and calm. A calm voice spoke intelligible words of comfort.

When Jason finally opened his eyes and got used to the twilight, he saw Kyle next to him. He looked very worried, but was smiling softly, surely relieved that Jason had finally calmed down.

"Hey." Jason mumbled.

"Hey." Kyle replied. "Are you okay?"

"I'm feeling better." It was going to take Jason a while to recover, but he would work on it.

"It was just a nightmare." Kyle repeated, still anguished.

Yes, it had been a nightmare, but it wasn't just that, Jason wanted to say.

All of Jason's nightmares were hard.

Sometimes the dream was about his own death, other times it was about the death of his loved ones. None of them were better than the other, all of them made Jason feel like a wreck for a while.

"You were dead in my arms," he whispered.

Kyle bit his lip. He felt many emotions bubbling up inside Jason, but (sadly) fear was the predominant one. Kyle curled up on his side, resting his head on Jason's chest. Jason moved to put his arm around Kyle, keeping him close to him.

"I know he was trying to scare you, but that's not how he wanted to do it. Kyle felt Jason's laughter under his cheek as he pressed him a little closer to his body.

"I'll give you that." He said. "But I prefer all the other times, they were much more fun than... this."

They were silent for a while. Kyle began to feel sleepy, although he knew Jason wouldn't fall asleep, at least for the rest of the night. Then... he heard him.

"I love you."

Kyle smiled, barely surprised, but delighted. He felt it, he felt his love overcoming his fear at full speed.

"I know."

Jason mumbled, with a snort.

"Don't quote Star Wars, nerd."

They burst out laughing almost at once. In the end, Jason had gotten scared, though in the way Kyle would have wanted. It didn't matter though, they were together, they loved each other.

And that was the most important thing.

[gamepanicplay]

Design Report: Immersion

How enemies help to immerse the player

The importance of in game enemies. this is a detailed explanation on how they important and therefore imperative for immersion in different styles of games.

Enemies can turn the most boring of dungeon crawlers do an exciting impactful adventure and those tense moments and exhilarating action. To make these enemies truly immersive in the gameplay required these three important steps.

·         mechanical Immersion

·         Spatial Immersion

·         narrative Immersion

 Mechanical immersion is usually associated with small Untold Stories that are found in the background. These types of stories are not converted the player by npcs they are visual cues that allow a player to interpret the story differently from what is originally presented these are usually hidden to give the players a semblance of Mystery.

I shall give you a scenario of this "you are in a big dark room all the windows are boarded up from the inside and all the plates and dishes are strewn About shattered on the floor and Scattered around, you see drops of blood leading from the cabinet leading to A Door can you see more blood Pooling under the door frame”.

There are other forms of immersion you can acquire immersion from voice clips or in game files , ones that can be found within a book or notes and most commonly from prodding at npcs and even npcs talking with each other a good example of this is how Skyrim npcs interact with each other and the player and sometimes you can acquire quests by Simply listening to npcs talking and you can outright miss this Quest if not paying attention. And these games these forms of information like they can be found as physical objects you can interact within the games you don't just get a PNG of text you actually get a three-dimensional item that you can look around for more clues.

Spatial Immersion is predominantly described with the featuring of this type experience where players experience seasons and topography of the game like far off mountain treading off into the distance that you are allowed to explore on foot, deep gorgeous that's when you fall in them you gradually increase your speed until you hit the bottom, and endless Fields where the player can experience peace with the calm sounds of nature with the gentle sounds of footsteps on grass. The best way to allow people to experience these forms of immersion or it is better if I say the best say the ways in which this shatters immersion is with the dreaded loading screens the more loading screens and the unexplained invisible game walls where the player is individually told they are not allowed to go there. The player experiences the more it pulls him out of the game.

Some of the player base debate about how far must immersion go?

Some people seem to agree that in some games there is way too much realism, and this type of realism can actually pull some people out of the game a common problem did people like to talk about is carry weights do they help immersion or do they break immersion.

Ideally, if you want a player to go through a specific area and not take any shortcuts you would use the actual enemies themselves to block the players pat through that area to gently lead him to the early wish him to experience first.

 Mentioning the enemies let us talk a little bit about the enemies and what their purpose basic is it is not that simple as enemies stopping the player from proceeding to make it more difficult it needs to be a smart placement so that you do not frustrate the player, everyone knows you cannot just drop an insurmountable wall to your player otherwise they might leave the game.

Now there are games where there extremely difficult enemies but those specific enemies specially were made like that for the purpose of that particular game and the main mechanic of the game like for example:

“shadow the Colossus” (In this game is about gigantic creatures that requires multiple strikes in specifics places while you are climbing them to be able to kill them.)

They are very important criteria to making a good enemy. For the best example, I can present where the grand majority of the ambience of the game is within its enemies Subnautica.

“Subnautica” (A game where you are free-floating through the ocean trying to survive giant sea monsters trying to eat you.)

What Subnautica has is that you first land in the safe Shallows and what this area is a spot where very few hostels to allow to spawn and until the player integrates with this new environment then he can go deeper where he could find bigger and stronger the enemies. In broader terms the enemy should be appropriately levelled of the current level of player it's ok to have weak enemies at the beginning of the game your Player does not know how to play it so you can forgive him that early And this smoothly leads us to narrative Immersion narrative immersion is someone deceiving because it doesn't only refer to immersion from the story but can also be in the way of how your characters are written a good way of doing this is when your enemies have a specific job some people called them enemy classes find the most common ones being The Archer and bruiser there are different varieties of these enemies and because of their specific abilities they look different from each other. To change the player the enemy doesn't just need to be spammed to lose all of its HP there would be intelligent ways of killing enemies with player made traps or with pre-existing traps they make the enemy Trigger.

The most important thing an enemy need memorable is personality good ways to give your anime personality are physical differences in the different jobs said they are assigned this is not just a stylistic choice this can also help players in coming up with different tactics according to the enemy you could have an enemy type does run away from the player when alone but the text to player when in a group. It is very important that is your characterisation of the enemy is very closely related to how they look and that their weaknesses are clearly visible for it to be easy for the player to realise this week point these weak points don't need to be obvious they just need to be clear.

 While making an enemy be very careful of how the enemy looks within the level design  you may you could have designed one of the most beautiful and creative enemies but it doesn't matter if they don't fit the place you've put them in or if the level is not built for them and with this you need be very careful the enemy needs to fit in the overall narrative and game play style you have created, if you have a very slow-moving game where the player needs to be slow and cautious to go through puzzles do not throw in a quick enemy where do player doesn't have time to react to it. It might be frightening yes but it could completely ruin the player’s experience.

While making the games enemies keep in mind when you are making these enemies of how they will react with each other will they be hostile, or will they be friendly or will they team up to kill the player. Enemies do not necessarily need to be hostile to the player they can also be there to serve as a problem for the player to solve.

Now let us talk about how to make a game enemy while using these four aspects difficulty, specific, personality, synergy.

 CHARACTER CREATION

 Let's begin by talking about the environment you're in some kind of cave, now let's say that at the beginning of the game this is going to be a 2 hit kill enemy, where the enemy lets you do a mistake in you getting hit by him immediately kill you the best way to convert these enemies dangerous, is by making him big and angry-looking preferably with big claws that face towards the player now we will start by doing something that will go against realism instead of making our enemy dark give him a bright colour so the player can see him early this will not make the game easier it will make the game fairer for the player.

Now we have a basic description of how the character looks, now we should ask how he will act. The enemy should be aggressive and following player true out the Maze with him giving up after a short while with more of an aggro range this will allow the player to be able to Backtrack if they are in the wrong section of the Maze.

Now we have a description of an enemy. Is only one I know you could create word create synergy with this character I would suggest small but quick anime does very little damage to the player that would not attack the player when alone what would group up and attack the player.

Another section I put focus on is by designing the characters sound like for example the addition off enemies that make insects sounds start the insect phobia of some people and for the bigger enemy large booming steps to show how large this creature is compared to the player this will also help the player not necessarily see the anime first but rather hear him first.

References

Design Report: Immersion

Cheng, K. and A. Cairns, P., 2005. Behaviour, realism and immersion in games | CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. [online] Dl.acm.org. Available at: <https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1056808.1056894> [Accessed 2 May 2021].

Youtube.com. 2017. Before you continue to YouTube. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2gIE5gyA6s> [Accessed 3 May 2021].

Frasca, G., 2010. Rethinking agency and immersion: video games as a means of consciousness-raising. [online] Taylor & Francis. Available at: <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1076/digc.12.3.167.3225> [Accessed 3 May 2021].

Katelyn, P. and Clint, B., 2011. An Examination of Flow and Immersion in Games. [online] SAGE Journals. Available at: <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1071181311551455> [Accessed 3 May 2021].

Calleja, G., 2011. In-Game. [online] Google Books. Available at: <https://books.google.com.mt/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KIQKV_MXvBAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=immersion+in+game+enemy&ots=ykriU7XAE2&sig=VRgi57MxF2RLFdKMYuv_4dusnvc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false> [Accessed 4 May 2021].

Youtube.com. 2017. Before you continue to YouTube. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhU4xywyWU4> [Accessed 7 May 2021].

[buckybarnesbingo]

BBB Week 4 Roundup!  Some good stuff lies ahead, so go find it!

Title: Just Before Dawn Collaborator: grimeysociety Link: AO3 Square Filled: B3 - Isolated or Trapped Ship: Bucky/Darcy Rating: Teen Major Tags: Brief mentions of animal cruelty, Fluff and Crack, Magical Realism Summary: One day, Darcy rescues a dog and then a gorgeous naked man appears in her living room that night. Word Count: 6148

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Title: The Stark Robo Sucker 5000 Collaborator: crazycatt71 Link: AO3 Square Filled: C1 - Sensation Play Ship: WinterHawk, Bucky/Clint/Steve/Tony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Fucking machines, exhibitionism, Dom/sub undertones, orgasm denial, wrist cuffs Summary: Clint & Bucky put on a show with the Stark Robo Sucker 5000 Word Count: 1174

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Title: Dummy’s faboulous ideas Collaborator: Menatiera Link: AO3 Square Filled: C5 - Sidekick Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Matchmaker bots, fluff Summary: Dummy is determined to help the people he cares for. Jarvis is concerned, Bucky is amused. Word Count: 744

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Title: Nutritional Value Collaborator: Judy_The_Dreamer Link: AO3 Square Filled: B5 - Bucky/Steve Ship: Stuckony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: a/b/o dynamics, PWP, power dynamics and kinks, past mpreg Summary: Sometimes the first taste is not enough and you find yourself hungering for more. Tony, Steve and Bucky come to terms with what transpired in Joystick. Word Count: 13,739

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Title: Let Someone See Right Through Collaborator: avintagekiss24 Link: AO3 Square Filled: B1 - Kink: One Night Stand Ship: Bucky/Reader Rating: Explicit Major Tags: drinking, implied mention of death, past infidelity, smut, sex, a little bit of angst, oral sex (female receiving) Summary: Two strangers meet at a bar on their birthday. Word Count: 4446

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Title: Darcy, Bucky and the Hundred Acre Wood Collaborator: grimeysociety Link: AO3 Square Filled: B5 - Sunshowers Ship: Bucky/Darcy Rating: Gen Major Tags: none Summary: Darcy and Bucky are transported into the world of the Hundred Acre Wood. Word Count: 2163

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Title: Into the unknown - Chapter 1 Collaborator: diner_drama Link: AO3 Square Filled: U3 - little sister Ship: Stucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: Frozen AU Summary: Bucky has everything under control. He's the hereditary leader of a small and prosperous country. He lives with his beloved sister and her fiancé in a beautiful castle, and his people are safe and well. He also happens to be in control of the power of ice, but he's got that working for him now, so that's not an issue. But when he closes his eyes, he can hear a siren's song calling him from the far North. Word Count: 800

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Title: Taps Collaborator: Ribbonsflying Link: AO3 Square Filled: K3 - Vulnerability Ship: Stucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: flashback to deaths of unnamed characters, some blood obviously because vampires, drinking blood Summary: Bucky nosed into Steve’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder. “Now I know why you refilled my juice without being asked.” “No, it’s because I’m a sweetheart," Bucky protested. Steve scoffed playfully. “Sweetheart, my ass. There’s nothing sweet about you.” Word Count: 2357

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Title: Petals - Chapter 1 Collaborator: DocOlive Link: AO3 Square Filled: B3 - hanahaki disease Ship: Stucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: Hanahaki Disease Summary: Steve Rogers knows what it's like to be sick. With actual illnesses that exist, like the asthma that always gets worse in the spring. But when he starts coughing up flower petals, rational explanations fly out the window. But is it really possible that he's contracted a fatal case of lovesickness? Word Count: 681

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Title: What About Us? Collaborator: pherryt Link: AO3 Square Filled: C1 - One Night Stand Ship: WinterHawk Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Canon Divergent, Tower Fic, A/B/O dynamics, explicit sexual content Summary: Bucky's come in from the cold, Steve is being Steve, Tony wants to throw a party and Bucky has no idea who the Alpha is who asked him to dance (or why, when Bucky's been hiding in the corner all night to avoid people), but it suddenly looks like more than dancing is on the menu. Word Count: 3091

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Title: The Road To You Has Been Fractured With Torment Collaborator: visionarygalaxy Link: AO3 Square Filled: Y4 - Bondage Ship: Stucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, Dom/sub, Kink negotiation. fluff Summary: Bucky and Steve reconnect after everything they've been through, slowly and carefully. Word Count: 1284

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Title: and now, the end is near - Chapter 3: Three: Clint Collaborator: hawksonfire Link: AO3 Square Filled: C2 - Heat Ship: Bucky/Steve/Clint Rating: Explicit Major Tags: explicit sexual content Summary: A three-part tale in which our boys are content. Word Count: 4316

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Title: Petals - Chapter 2: Don't forget to tip your barista Collaborator: DocOlive Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - pining Ship: Stucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: mild blood/gore sickfic ( hanahaki disease) Summary: Bucky wasn’t even supposed to be here this afternoon. He was supposed to be at the library working on his Urban Policy lab project. But that was neither here nor there; it’s not like Darcy had up and come down with the flu on purpose. Besides, he reminded himself, he could use the money. He could always use the money. -- War veteran turned grad student and barista Bucky Barnes has a thing for a certain Brooklyn twink. Word Count: 2791

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Title: And I Will Wend My Way With You Collaborator: mariana_oconnor Link: AO3 Squares Filled: Chapter 1 - B2: Bucky/Clint Chapter 2 - U5: Jealousy Chapter 3 - Y5: Hair Braiding Chapter 4 - K4: Sharing Clothes Chapter 5 - K2: Kink: Wall Pinning Ship: WinterHawk Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Fantasy AU, Mild Dub-con, Slavery, Violence, implied/referenced rape/non-con, explicit sexual content Summary: After four long years, Bucky's mission is finally complete. All he needs to do is leave the Hydra Empire and make his way back to the Kingdom of Brooklyn with the information he has obtained. He definitely doesn't need the added complication of a slave, especially not one as angry and handsome as Clint Barton. Word Count: 29,653

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Title: A Bad Day With Coffee Is Better Than A Good Day Without It - Chapter 1 Collaborator: Trashcanakin Link: AO3 Square Filled: B2 - Bucky/Clint Ship: WinterHawk Rating: Not Rated Major Tags: Pre-Slash, Mutual Pining, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Human Disaster Clint Barton, Deaf Clint Barton, Not Canon Compliant, Not Beta Read Summary: Clint has a terrible, no good, day... Bucky tries to make it better. Word Count: 2491

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Title: End Of All Days - Chapter 11: Part X Collaborator: Minka Link: AO3 Square Filled: U5 – AU: Adventurers/Explorers Ship: Stucky Rating: Mature Major Tags: violence Summary: Captain Steve Rogers had thought his military days were behind him, left in the bloody nightmare that was Saigon. Retired and working as a History Professor, the last thing he expected was to get caught up in a cataclysmic Slavic prophesy foreshadowing the end of the known world.With Cold War tensions running high, Steve finds himself in need of a guide and translator to get him behind the Iron Curtain and into the isolated snowdrifts of Siberia. It’s deep in the heart of Bucharest’s resistance fighters that Steve finds the ideal candidate, but swaying the enigmatic ex-operative known as The Winter Soldier proves to be complicated. Trust is hard-won, especially in the world of espionage, and with a KGB death squad nipping at his heels, the Soldier has countless reasons to stay presumably dead. As the lines between right, wrong and the supernatural begin to blur, Steve is forced to reconsider everything he’s ever believed, right from the sanctity of his own country to the very foundations of creation itself .--- Aka the Indiana Jones/Atomic Blonde lovechild of a fic that literally no one ever asked for but you’re bloody well going to get anyway. Word Count: 47,940

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Title: Siren - Chapter 1: Do you think I'm stuck up 'cause I'm always picking fights? Collaborator: Writing_mermaid Link: Tumblr Square Filled: C3 - Free square Ship: Bucky/Reader Rating: Mature Major Tags: siren AU Summary: Y/N is a mutant, a Siren, the last of her kind, with deadly dangerous powers and a hidden past. If most of the Avengers likes and get along with her, Steve doesn’t, and it’s getting worse when Y/N and Bucky become close. After all what can bring two broken souls together if it’s not a dark past. Word Count: 1479

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Title: What, Like It's Hard? Collaborator: DocOlive Link: AO3 Square Filled: K3 - crack Ship: Stucky Rating: Gen Major Tags: Legally Blonde fusion Summary: “Hey Buck, w-what’re ya doing with that?” Steve’s looking at him like he’s just grown a third head or something. Shit. What the fuck did I do now? “Sorry, pal, I was just trying to help out a little around here.” Bucky lets go of the handle, letting the big, ugly hammer drop to the floor. “Just clearing things off the floor so I could do a little cleaning before we drown in cat fur.”Big old viking shouldn’t leave his shit all over if he don’t want people manhandling it outta their way. -- Or, Bucky moves Mjölnir while he's cleaning, and doesn't understand what the big deal is. Legally Blonde meets the Avengers. Word Count: 559

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Title: Don't Forget To Write Collaborator: The_Alias (Artemis_Day) Link: AO3 Square Filled: Y1 - Secret Admirer Ship: Bucky/Jane Foster Rating: Teen Major Tags: secret admirer Summary: 'The tenth time, there is no note. Just him.' Jane has a secret admirer, but who could it possibly be? Word Count: 6072

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Title: The reason Nick Fury doesn't do vacations.  Collaborator: Fighting_for_Creativity Link: AO3 Square Filled: Y5 - Rescue Mission Ship: WinterIronFury Rating: Teen Major Tags: Vacation gone wrong, Happy ending, crack(ish), Hydra, mention of animal experiments, Angst and Hurt/Comfort Summary: Tony and Bucky wanted to go on a trip with their third Nicholas Fury. However Nick refused, Bucky and Tony got abducted and… Tony never thought he would see tigers in that state. Word Count: 5473

[glopratchet]

intro

n the world to come there is little sin There are just lots of american alligators It was a great idea, but it wasn't long before people started getting burned by their own fires The prediatrain movement caught fire in america The demand for american alligator meat skyrocketed and so did the price People began to get greedy and the greed got them killed You see no reason why this can't happen here too Whorals where burned to ash while polled hereford heifors fetched record prices at market that week The cows have returned to the farms and other prey animals make their homes in unused warehouses Over a billion dollars a head in auction sales! It'll take the world a few years to bleed the remaining American Alligators and it'll take a few more before there come reports of theft Googizon won the bid to construct for the military the most forward thinking alligator farm in existance All eggs used today bear the GoogZon prf mark It currently floats near the okeenokee snow swamp Or so it will say on their website No one believes it This is not that story "Come on Al, it's the target! " the tech yells as you take fire and hit the pavement We are primal ponds inc a predatory company, head quartered at number ten prime avenue And you are Al Brutal leads rank 3 for said company A small mom and pop alligator farm attemping to make it And you're casing it "We don't have sufficient evidence! " You yell back We need you to make deliveries for us When your territory was hoisted upon you you had a team It's gone, lost You have no one Please Point of view of the player: You wake up with a mean hang over and a thick head ache in the dark A delivery champion You will drive through the night to a swamp and break through glitched out gates is a lowly position He had a secert life as billy fea fbots navigator And one more thing He had to have known about his bugs Maybe all saltimbanques are fots dead ones or not but he googled it It turns out no one has made a crappy real time virtual reality game dedicated to About a dozen years before your time, digital reality came out billy fortes navigator yet Delivering dragon tail in the far, far, future or you could kill the bugs, sharpen your tusks, drink your vodka and hang out with the hardcore otters Maybe that needs to change You push "N" to climax the degrading disk and send it out into nothing We proudly introduce today drum roll please Doesn't anyone play regular instruments any more? Alligator delivery service A darkness awash light breaks through the windows and washes over you The door slams open and a deliverywoman walks in your office The alligator farm where the gator are delivered is currently under hostile takeover Trouble in the bandit managed quarry has led to good business for here A series of construction tasks allow you to flood the market with new affordable alligator meat and pelts You bring in your first load of revenue Already we own over four over ten foot alligators a buzzard and a vat of swamp water Let's throw ourselves a party and watch as they exterminate your future competition Including rex lex, your prime suspect Five years seems like enough time for our boys in blue to put the pain on old rex A massive 14 foot beast with jaws that could crush cars float in your tank You're out of coffee and are jittery as hell Each on is incredibly detailed with over twenty bioligocail parts like an engineers wet dream THey have nothing else worth mentioning, jsut huge predatory monsters that will sell for a bundle Part one of this weeks training pick up a nearly dead gator out the tank and work with it over time to tame it Part two Part thee no wait Part five Part four Lum rex overfished the river and died before we could get our hands on it use the dead rex to harvest collagen The only thing it's good for something, something That's it for this week folks Let's prepare today's shipment Part six bio-diesel Part seven shoot some folks in the face! wait wrong game Part eight Looks like we're gonna spend our earnings wher else but here oh yeah, No employee raises we're shorting titanium Gold doing amazing things with Bridge and tunnel construction in NYC Part nine THe alligator lays in the mud lifeless after taking multiple assaults from your shovel The alligator drops and lands with a heavy thud Part ten capitilize on new changes We all help load the alligator onto the semi As you secure it, Coming next fall We are currently broadcasting their vital signs over at americanalligator They're in a glass reinforced steel container welded under the deck xyz The accelerator and brake are under the dashboard Our alligators come in many different sizes, each perfect for their own uses We currently have a large supply of eggs that will be ready to "harvest" in about ten years Ages, shapes, sexes and shades are represented over our entire roster of workers They all have cute baby faces, cold reptilian eyes and maws full of razor teeth The like to eat, sleep, dream, and spawn but don't speak our language or one anothers They're sensitive to movement and bright lights but that's it They love to fight and gossip and spread allegiences through body language and scent We created them using centuries old processes, updated from breeding techniques pioneered by the USSR to create super soldiers The algorytms which run each alligator is closely modeled after the human brain and all it's decisions making pathways This allows each alligator to learn and rationalize After the habits of the real world reptile, alligator missippissus extended lenghts and agility are full 360 Their lungs breath and thier hearts beat just like yours Similar organs replaced with robotic parts replace hollow bones They bleed real blood and molt just like the real things Orders for gator teeth are starting to accumulate and folks just love those mugs hand painted with an engraving of the Holy Rood, it's such a conversation piece! Our desire is to create an expierence which leaves you dripping in the hair, blood, offal and oil of adead reptile From the feeling of utter terror and awe as you combat one of these unpredicatable beasts The thrill of the hunt as you dispatch one of these creatures, the feeling of being a great hunter Alligator delivery service in addition to gator tail, hide, meat and eggs available Please allow around 8 weeks for your tail ordered to be ready for pickup We serve realism No happiness in killing a creature, even if it's wrong The realism of death is important to us Their every behavior has been memorized by the leading ichthyologists to achieve lifelike movement in our alligators Hours of alligator combat video have been studied Real life wild life wranglers have been interviewed for interaction of our beasts and filmed for the feeding times Now we just need to budget of 500 dollars towards the creatation of an alligator carcasses ready for consumption Our dedicated staff is enthusiastic to begin serving you Of an accurate alligator wrestling simulation This will give our patrons a greater sense of fulfillment when slaying these beautiful beasts in the wild And on behalf of all the artists improving perfect beeing CCD is commited to becoming your best supplier of fuctioning animal organs, so if you are ever in market for any glactic wild beast organ or rept Thank you for allowing us to serve your alligator fantasies Note: No animals are killed in the creation of these projects Alligator parts are ordered online, at real prices Tail orders ready in 8 weeks Sofware is taking over everything and eating the jobs of the working class as they increase efficiency We will be the last one standing the monopoly we need to succeed to provide our parents a stable future, no matter the cost The artists become in time we all will be artists The human condition is to become an artist Our skin becomes a canvas for our violent mammal urges To become one with nature We cant do it know be have sacracity Father of the art we become the last mammal on Earth So people have to be responsible in any way they feel correct to build on their future and fulfill the promises Should we try something that hasn't been tried yet? Algrothymic story telling with algrothymic alligators What would be worth giving your life for? -Youtuber "Mothers Meateor" Chances are your are going to be entrenched in a feeling of emptynes as you see most of your kind unfulfilled You play this game more like real life knowing that there is nothing after what happens Utter terror and awe sometimes as you encounter an alligator you have neve seen before As if it really exists Pleasure of the hunt as you begin to think cruelly The first simulation we need to get on-line is wrestling for alligator teeth Please remember your payment for the materials: it will all be worth it in the future For mom Let us become artists On the farm are incredibley detailed models of different organs This is the source of our realism Our bodies become painted canvases to be admired in their perfection They own the following body parts 1 heart, 2 lungs, 3 ribs, 4 kidneys, 5 teeth, 10 pints of blood, 20 gutfuls of feces, 40 liver slices and ------------- It has many storys as humans describe them Sofawin notes interpretation However, there are descriptions to the creation stories Brain storming: Defination- Flying dream Master piece realness bone organ healthiness enlightenment artist scrawling writing hard work starving pain, embrace sunlight sacrificing accuracy for fast 2 Left eye ribs 6-12, 2 arms, 10 fingers, 2 lungs 10 ribs right leg 5 toes Foundation bone setup Outline proportions 2: 1 3 crown Right eye eyebrows art piece scars chin 3 fingers I am the white masked guy with an eye tattoo over my right eye, I manage all the projects Upper jaw piece William 'bill' coles - Born 10 Lower jaw 5 Indian boy with attitude Duncan brennan - 5 Right ear A pig heart the size of a cannon ball you struggle to keep alive this is your 2nd pig heart you have had Left ear Rion - Really tall african-american guy from new orlean, likes to wear black Tail You are not the only mutant alligator in this city You must fight for territory and you want old orleans Front right leg An alligator that walks upright and a sword weilding alligator cowboy from atlantic city He is a drug-fueled mutant Front left leg A blind lesbian alligator that carries a padmachine gun Hind right leg This guy has a harpoon for his tail Hind left leg This alligator is a pyromaniac who likes to blow thing up A tiny little 85 year old alligator with a sugar addiction Heart and lungs Master echo luke tyler - Blind guy with a magic staff lives in memphis Urinary/Defecation system I heart mary Gentiles part I am part shark, part primate or monkey Nose Hope is on the horizon for all mutant alligator people! We are moving to new orleans in 1 year Right flank Last show for old orleans guys! Testicles Left flank Charilaia - 1 year left to live wants to go out in style Carly - underwater welding alligator woman rare and beautiful Martin - Addicted to alcohol and drugs Back hide abby- Normal florida gator Eh-pee Biggest enemy is the skinless man who wears cotton on his belly and uses a sword for violent acts Belly hide Teeth Skinless men - Are skinless humans, think they are vampires when really they are just psychos Lungs Wasp - Black and yellow striped arrival to new orleans airport, walks to old orleans in 5 hours Kidney's/ genital organs fran The alligator has a weight in kg based on its heart size The weight is not just a number but how it effects the alligator's every motion A percentage of the weight is affixed to each body part section and organ All the percentage of the weight equal to one hundred for example; The alligator's liver makes up 4 76% of its total body weight The alligator's skin makes up of 11 These precentages affect certain rules of the game Skin 4 85 We specialize in home loans The thicker an alligator's skin; The more it costs, but the house price is higher too We need all the words to describe an alligator hide 1 millimeter of skin thickness reduces house price by 200 dollars and increases mortgage cost by 1% Word one to describe alligator hide can change price by 100 dollars Each word after the first adds 100 dollars to cost The words are modified later for better Buyer experience Word two to describe alligator hide can change price by 10 dollars Each word after the first adds 1 dollar to cost Word three to describe alligator hide can change price by 1 dollar Word four to describe alligator hide can change price by 0 dollars Each word after the first adds 0 dollars to cost Word five to describe alligator hide can change price by -1 dollars Each word after the first adds -1 dollar to cost Word six to describe alligator hide can change price by -10 dollars each word after the first adds -10 dollars to cost , the words are modified later for better Buyer experience Word two to describe alligator skin can change price by 10 dollars each word after the first adds 1 dollar to cost Word ten to describe alligator skin can change price by 1 dollar each word after the first adds 0 dollars to cost Word ten to describe alligator skin can change price by 0 dollars each word after the first adds -1 dollar to cost Word ten to describe alligator skin can change price by -1 dollar each word after the first adds -10 dollars to cost Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -10 dollars each word after the first adds -100 dollars to cost Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -100 dollars each word after the first adds -1000 dollars to cost Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -1000 dollars each word after the first adds -10000 dollars to cost Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -10000 dollars each word after the first adds -100, 000 dollars to cost Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -100, 000 dollars each word after the first adds -1, 000, Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -1, 000 dollars each word after the first adds -10, 000 dollars to cost every word change increases the price by not 1000 dollars but 10, 000 and that is not a typo http: //pastebin Word ten can describe alligator skin can change price by -10000000 dollars each word after the first adds -10000000000 dollars to P 114 your skin if you haven't read our company ethos, try reading over our summary and your choice will be obvious We believe A creed to live buy and die by we are building a rocket ship and we are trading in fantasy, science, fiction things that no reasonable human should, the old ideas have drifted away and belief systems rapidly put in their place there never was much no need to re-read our creedo you're a reasonable human aren't you? don't lie Scrap of paper, grain P 115 wait at your home If you have not arrived in two hours turn this page turn it now read it later your will is crucial Your where about are not zero hour 05: 00 hours The stable alligator with curiosity looks at the woman standing nervously in the newly bought dress

[retrauxpunk]

sv 6.06

recap post of the penultimate episode of silicon valley under the cut (with spoilers as usual)

this miiiight be a downer post so if you want to avoid that ... this is your warning

...

...

... i think this is the first episode recap post i’m writing that doesn’t start with ‘what the fuck’ because honestly i think i found this episode a bit weird and not ................that good? and MAYBE it’s just because i’ve had a shitty couple days? i’m not totally sure.

but.

I dunno.

I’ll try do this chronologically.

it was a good point of yikes with richard not actually having secured the AT&T deal and just telling his employees that he had because like, that’s a good potential source of conflict. i’m down for that.

i liked when he was talking to AT&T guy and then there’s a cut to dinesh and gilfoyle standing their like shocked parents. dinesh’s expression of ‘WHAT’ ... yeah i like that. also gilfoyle looked especially fine as hell, particularly the hands.

okay.

i 

... gilfoyle using THE AI TO DEBUG CODE? i think this broke my suspension of disbelief. this seems wildly stupid and implausible given, like, gilfoyle’s WHOLE CHARACTER? i don’t really buy that someone who’s as security-conscious and conscientious as he is would, um, DO THIS? please feel free to present counterarguments if you disagree with this (or any other points in this post tbh) because i’m honestly open to hearing them, in fact i would welcome anything that made this episode feel more sense-making and less ‘what the fuck did the show just decide to fire all their tech consultants and throw character out the window?’

LIKE. it’s partly the fact that this seems a bit farfetched on the technological realism front but it’s MORE SO the fact that it just seems so NOT GILFOYLE.

GIVEN THAT FIVE EPISODES AGO HE GOT MAD AT DINESH FOR LETTING THE TWO AIs TALK. HE’S CLEARLY AWARE OF THE RISKS.

and he acts like this cavalier dont give a fuck asshole but i DO NOT BELIEVE that he would risk ALL OF PIED PIPER’S CODE with his AI?????? FUCK what is this!!...?

..............????

okay.

i’m  ............ upset that they seem to have COMPLETELY DITCHED this whole jarrich thing they were building up. i’m NOT saying i’m mad that they’re not canonically a romantic couple. i’m saying that -- shipper goggles completely not in the picture -- the first four episodes built up so much stuff for them, there was SO MUCH about their relationship, and with 6.05 and 6.06 there was just fucking NOTHING. and it just. feels like kinda shitty writing? UNLESS?? in the final episode there’s a lot of richard and jared content to make up for it?

like the first four episodes had so MUCH content about their relationship (jared’s whole generally lovelorn thing, accidentally driving to the hacker hostel, quitting, richard throwing a fit when he quit and watching with this cocktail of sadness and bitterness and anger as jared leaves, their fight at the hacker hostel, JARED BRIEFLY FORGETTING TO BE MAD AT RICHARD AND SMILING DURING THE WHOLE BUYING HOOLI THING, richard apologising and telling jared he missed him, JARED FUCKING CRYING) and then there’s just NOTHING? what the FUCK? IS THIS? it HONESTLY feels like the writers were building up to a big richard and jared moment (whether romantic or platonic, either works) but then that storyline got axed by an executive and they got forced into dropping or something, or they just fucking collectively FORGOT about this whole arc seriously WHAT. IS THIS?????

this is the first time in my life i’ve gotten this level of upset about any tv and i guess, well, whatever they do with the finale, it can’t be as bad as what they did with game of thrones!! (i don’t watch game of thrones or read asoiaf, but it was pretty impossible not to catch wind of that whole clusterfuck) that’s gonna be my source of ......... solace.

so yeah.

for FUCK’s sake. all of jared’s talking about gwart, i just. if that’s meant to be sincere i don’t fucking buy it because no fucking way did jared imprint so hard on a person who was fundamentally a rebound

I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THE LACK OF JARRICH STORYLINE WHAT THE FUCK this is not even a queerbaiting issue THEY HAD A FUCKING STORYLINE TOGETHER AND NOW IT’S VANISHED INTO FUCKING SMOKE WHAT THE FUCK

ALSO DID THEY SERIOUSLY JUST WIPE OUT HOLDEN OFF-SCREEN ARE WE REALLY MEANT TO JUST IMAGINE THAT IN THE GAP BETWEEN EPISODES JARED JUST CONTINUOUSLY EMOTIONALLY ABUSED/HARRASSED HOLDEN INTO QUITTING WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK

honestly when i set out to write this recap i was just like ‘this prob won’t be a long post because all i really have feelings about and want to talk about is the ending of the episode’ but clearly ... that has turned out not to be the case

okay anyway, yeah, i mean, it’s definitely plausible that if richard and jared were to real life people that jared would rejoin pied piper and they’d just simply never address their falling out, right, i mean people are plausibly that emotionally constipated sometimes and don’t communicate in situations where you’d expect them to.

BUT THIS ISN’T REAL LIFE IT’S FUCKING TV and it appears to me rather much like shitty screenwriting when you set up a relationship conflict that’s fucking PACKED with juicy emotional moments and then it DISAPPEARS INTO THIN AIR what the FUCK

jesus christ

okay

anyway.

russfest.

honestly when jared was seeing gwart around i was a bit like, okay if this meant to be a legit hallucination it’s a bit Much because, really, jared being that genuinely devoted to gwart that the breakup with her cut him that much? i’m not buying it 

so i’m glad it turned out to be Not a hallucination

i liked the twist that actually yaonet wasn’t throttling pied piper, pied piper itself just wasn’t good enough. i liked richard breaking down over it. tbh on a subjectively level i found it a bit painful to watch because he really did behave like a toddler and that was a bit, like, second-hand-embarrassment. but i don’t like object to it or anything.

WHY IS THIS SEASON ONLY SEVEN EPISODES.

the fucking speed with which richard breaks down and then magically finds a solution honestly feels way too rushed and unearned.

U N E A R N E D

that is how i feel about the resolution of this episode. like.

okay so if i remember/understand this correctly, richard’s [extremely hand-wavey solution] was to apply his compression algorithm to son of anton which allowed it to become more intelligent and learn faster/better? and that basically FIXED PIED PIPER? he used gilfoyle’s [a tad unrealistically] bitching AI to like ... have pied piper fix itself? 

i barely understand it.

and it’s not like i demand a fully fleshed-out solution, right, like with the middle-out jerkoff epiphany, that wasn’t fleshed out but there was enough detail for it to feel believable. whereas with this ... it did not feel like that. 

yeah the whole thing felt way too rushed.

what even was it? like, gilfoyle was using son of anton on pipernet to debug things ... whereas richard first used his compression algorithm on son of anton, then set son of anton loose on pied piper? okay that makes, like, enough sense that if they poured more time and detail into this, then i’d probably be totally happy accepting this in the storyline and my suspension of disbelief wouldn’t have been fucking skullfucked

but this, just. this pacing. i did not like it. it felt massively unearned because there were, what, a very small number of minutes between when richard finds out his tech is inadequate to when he finds a solution?

GOD THEY COULD’VE MADE THIS SO MUCH BETTER IF THEY’D PUT AN EPISODE BETWEEN PROBLEM AND SOLUTION INSTEAD OF JUST LIKE TWO FUCKING MINUTES

this makes me SO MAD IT GIVES ME THE CONFIDENCE TO THINK I COULD WRITE A BETTER STORY THEN THEY DID? FUCK???????

???

okay like yeah totally possible the writers had constraints outside of their control and they did the best they could. but. i’m still not ... happy with the result lol

anyway yeah i’m fucking cheesed off about how richard gets skullfucked with the inadequacy of his own tech, has a breakdown, and then MERE MINUTES OF SCREENTIME LATER, he has a wild solution that works!

and sure, they had it appear to fail first, which was good. but then it magically was back up and running! and yeah i liked how russ said ‘lights!’ and it turned out that this magical new pied piper had gotten so awesome that it build this new feature for itself or whatever, but, honestly, it happened way too quickly to feel believable or satisfying and i’m mad.

because this show has set a pretty high standard in the past and now it’s been a fucking let-down with this episode. god.

what the fuck is this pacing? it was so good at the beginning of this season!! WHAT IS THIS???

AND IF THE PROBLEM IS TIME

THEN WHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE SO MANY PLOTLINES WITH FILLER? THE WHOLE ETHAN CONFLICT. GILFOYLE AND MONICA VS TRACY. GAVIN FUCKING BELSON’S STUPID BOOK DEAL. can you imagine how much better this russfest plotline would’ve been if they’d had MORE TIME from not doing those ultimately unimportant subplots? fuck

i have legitimately worked myself into a rage writing this post. i did not expect to have this many feelings, to this level of intensity.

and it’s fucking frustrating because the bones of an awesome arc are here! the moment when the AT&T guy sees the giant hologram from the plane, that could’ve been actually epic rather than a feeling of ‘i know this is meant to be epic but it just feels totally hollow because they completely fucking compressed the biggest part of this whole episode into five fucking minutes’

and richard’s breakdown where he’s jumping on the laptop, screaming about ‘six years’? god that point would’ve been amazing if there’d been more time to explore it!

on a lighter note, i was amused when richard said he had gilfoyle’s laptop because i was like ‘oh okay it’s nice to know that richard is a l33t enough hax0r that he can get through gilfoyle’s undoubtedly Strong laptop security with [presumably] relative ease’ ... and then it turns out it’s dinesh’s laptop and i’m like, ah, okay, less impressive then XD

...there’s no way that the girls in jian-yang’s ‘coding class’ were stupid enough to believe that writing fake amazon reviews constitutes ‘coding’. not in fucking 2019.

i’m mad.

god this has lowered my expectations of the series finale SO MUCH which i guess may be a good thing because, y’know, there’s less capacity for disappointment now.

IT’S OKAY.

IT’S OKAY.

EVEN IF THE SERIES ENDS ON A SHIT NOTE, WE HAD FIVE AND A HALF SEASONS OF SHOW THAT RANGED FROM FUCKING AMAZING TO NOT AS GOOD BUT STILL ALRIGHT.

and i have a whole imagination’s worth of potential fan content to be created once the show’s over. i don’t know how long this sv love affair will last but i sure fucking intend to keep it alive as long as i can.

on the topic of fan content, if you’re interested in making sv fan stuff and receiving it as a christmas/holiday gift, please consider signing up for the silicon valley secret santa/gift exchange that i’m running :))) the official blog for it is @svexchange2k19 and the sign-up form is here

[miqojak]

vermilion, tangerine, timberwolf - i really admire your confidence and your attitude and your dedication to plot and 3d characters who fuck up sometimes. i haven't reached out because my availability has been super erratic and i'd hate start something just to bail two weeks later, but you seem like someone who'd be really cool to tell a story with, maybe one day~

VERMILION = Your roleplay inspires me TANGERINE = I love your aesthetic TIMBERWOLF = I would trust you in a fight without rolls

I'm super touched by all of this!! To know that I was so inspired by others that I've gone on to inspire yet more people... is really up-lifting? Creativity is such a genuinely special thing we all get to share in - and I do love a character with depth! ...especially in a long-term plot that gives you room to explore that, and what it means, and how they grow (and as much as I like RPing my own OCs, I feel like I've DMd so much guild stuff over the years, that I have a penchant to want to continue setting up plots in a way that whoever I'm RPing with can explore their character's virtues and flaws and how those change as we grow/are put under pressure/etc). And hey, I've long since determined that RP-fights are best done without rolls - assuming you can trust the person not to throw realism out the window...and again, I've done a lot of dark RP, and run a lot of guild events over the years, and you have to be fair, to have fun! I believe in a touch of realism to my fantasy (the amount of research I do on fighting styles before I write combat...), and respect the fact that a character isn't always ready for a hit, or a certain twist in a fight. No matter what kind of badass you are... well, we're all prone to making mistakes. No one can go into every fight prepared for every eventuality and block all hits, land all of their own, etc. And on that note, if your OC is a fighting badass? That should also shine through, and rolls don't account for that. It's obnoxious to know my OC might excel at something, then fail because a random roll says so (I love my TTRPGs, but modifiers slow down RP in a video game...). I want characters to succeed when they should, and fail when appropriate also! (That's not to say that I don't still toss a roll into my RP now and then, when I'm not sure what might happen, or feel a couple outcomes are equally likely, so I leave it to fate! I use rolls...

In major public events, I get why rolls are used - it helps get a fight done and over with in a timely window, and all that...plus you can't 'cheat' with a roll out there for people to see. But within the confines of like, my FC or a trusted RP partnership? Well, I'm glad that is something you feel you can trust me with, because I work hard to earn and maintain trust, and that's a scenario it can be hard to trust others in - you don't want your OC crushed by someone who dodges all hits, feels no pain, and only lands critical hits or something, you know? (Which was essentially the first RP scene I had in FF - someone ignoring all hits and all pain and concussing my OC... not fun to be stomped on while all your posts are basically ignored.) And hey, mental health has been stealing me away from my creativity all winter, and even lately I've been struggling to want to be creative with Gpose, and such - so don't worry! I think your aesthetic is baller, as well, honestly, and would still love to write when you feel you've got the time! (Not like I won't be patient...hell, ADHD can strike and I'll forget to respond to social media for a week sometimes, myself.) Never hesitate to reach out and brainstorm with me!

[wsmith215]

How ‘Curtis’ Tackled the Coronavirus in a Newspaper Comic

Curtis © 2020 King Features Syndicate Inc., World Rights Reserved/Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast

In the closing weeks of March, comics pages in daily newspapers were oblivious. People were still making plans. There were parties. When animals talked, as animals in comics do, they said nothing about quarantines.

One of the first voices to speak of the new normal belonged to Barry Taylor Wilkins, the younger of two brothers in Ray Billingsley’s long-running strip “Curtis.” It was on Monday, March 30, and we see Barry and Curtis’ mother, Diane Wilkins, squeezing hand sanitizer on her boys’ hands.

“Why do I have to put this stuff on my hands, Mommy?” asks Barry.

In “Curtis,” it is common for such questions to have both simple and complex answers. Since debuting the strip in 1988, Billingsley has mixed lighthearted gags with occasionally stark portrayals of the Wilkins, a middle-class African-American family, and their larger community of family, friends, barbers, and teachers. In “Curtis,” realism sneaks up on you: the family’s third-floor apartment can feel cramped; the father, Greg Wilkins, is uninspired by his job; and young brothers Barry and Curtis have real stresses, like fear of guns in school.

On this day, Curtis tells his brother the sanitizer is to clean his fingers before picking his nose. But we know the real reason. So does Diane. The boys don’t. But that will change.

Little Nemo Was the Most Beautiful Comic Strip Ever Drawn

At four panels a day, time moves slowly in a daily comic, even when events in other newspaper pages move alarmingly fast. As March finally gave way to April, the Wilkins family were seen adapting to their little corner of the pandemic. There are jokes about home-schooling and cabin fever. Greg tries to cheer his sons up with a theatrical display of pancake-making, flipping them with a juggler’s flare. “I try my best to shield my boys,” Greg will say to Diane. “And that is why I love you always,” thinks Diane.

Curtis © 2020 King Features Syndicate Inc., World Rights Reserved

Then, in the middle of breakfast, the Wilkins’ lives change again. Curtis receives a phone call. He walks back into the kitchen, dazed. His stack of pancakes is still waiting for him, untouched.

Story continues

“It’s our teacher, Mrs. Nelson,” Curtis says. “She tested positive for coronavirus.” 

Curtis © 2020 King Features Syndicate Inc., World Rights Reserved

“I don’t want to start much trouble, but sometimes I can’t help myself,” Ray Billingsley told me in a recent phone interview from his home in Stanford, Connecticut, where he has been hunkered down with his basset hound, Biscuit. “It’s the artist in me.”

Ray Billingsley, the author of Curtis

Courtesy Ray Billingsley

Although a few new comics starring people of color have debuted in recent years, “Curtis” remains one of the few daily syndicated strips centered around black characters. Billingsley sees himself following in the tradition of Morrie Turner’s “Wee Pals” and Ted Shearer’s “Quincy”—and also Aaron McGruder’s “Boondocks,” but with a difference. “‘Boondocks’ was in your face, and he didn’t care how much,” Billingsley said. “The rest of us, we have to walk a tightrope.”

Billingsley tested that tightrope when the Wilkins family noticed that Barry was slipping milk out of the house. They thought he was feeding a cat but followed him and found instead an abandoned baby. In another strip, Diane miscarried after being assaulted at an ATM. “Nobody was expecting a miscarriage in ‘Curtis,’” Billingsley said.

One of the slyest moments in “Curtis” happened when the Wilkins family and friends were invited to Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead’s house, as part of a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the comic strip “Blondie.” They took a wrong turn and ended up in Mary Worth’s neighborhood. There, they discovered how fast police response time can be in a different part of town.

Billingsley often pushes against his six-week deadline to allow him the chance to comment on current events. Yet the experience of drawing “Curtis” during COVID-19 feels different than anything he has done before. “This one I’m going by instinct. I said, ‘It’s time to do it right now.’ I kept seeing that nobody was addressing this.”

Curtis © 2020 King Features Syndicate Inc., World Rights Reserved

I asked if he felt a special weight in his decision to have a character contract the illness. “Actually, I’ve been feeling the weight of this entire story,” he said. “I have to really get into what everyone was feeling. We’re talking about a core of four people and how it’s really affecting them as a unit. I’m not showing anyone else. It’s just about this family right now.”

“This has been one of the harder ones to draw. I had the flapjack party going on and I knew something was going to come up. When Curtis comes into the room, it hit me then, too. It made me depressed. I do it to myself. They’re so much from the heart that they can hurt me first. If I’m hit on an emotional level, I’m pretty sure other people will be too.”

People don’t usually die on the funny pages. It’s only possible in what’s called a “continuity” strip, one in which a narrative might stretch over many days or weeks. After all, Beetle Bailey can get beaten to a pulp and spring back up the next day, and nobody questions it. “In Beetle’s world, it doesn’t matter who’s president, or what kind of disease is going around,” laughed Billingsley, who counted the late “Beetle Bailey” creator Mort Walker among his friends.

The first major character to die in comics was Mary Gold, who in 1929 contracted a mysterious illness in the comic strip “The Gumps.” Since then, deaths have remained rare. In 2004, it came for the elderly Phyllis Blossom Wallet in “Gasoline Alley.” Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” has featured several deaths, most controversially that of Andy Lippincott, who died of AIDS in 1990. Letters from readers poured in after the death of the family dog Farley in Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or For Worse.”

You didn’t see any death scenes in the comics page during the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918. Comics scholar Jared Gardner began searching through hundred-year-old newspapers for any comics that dealt with the outbreak and was surprised by how little he found. “Lots of words, lots of typing, but not lots of drawing,” Gardner said, speaking via Zoom from his home in Columbus, Ohio, where he serves as director of Popular Culture Studies at Ohio State University.

Public Domain

Gardner put what he did find on his website “Drawing Blood,” which is dedicated to comics and medicine. There is a single Bud Fisher “Mutt and Jeff” comic with the punchline “I went home last night and opened the window and in flew Enza.” A few comics discuss wearing masks and avoiding crowds. Some subscribe to the xenophobia suggested by the misnamed “Spanish flu.” Others lightly mock it, as in George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat,” in which Krazy dreams of a Spanish bullfight and wakes up the next morning with the flu, which “may or may not disprove the ‘germ’ theory,” as Herriman wryly notes.  

Public Domain

Gardner suspects that the oversized cultural influence of comic strips in 1918 might be why there were so few mentions of the flu. Cartoonists and their bosses knew they were being watched. As John M. Barry wrote in his history The Great Influenza, the Sedition Act promised jail time for anyone who dared “print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government of the United States.” This even extended to “pessimistic stories,” and the trial of leftist cartoonist Art Young for violating the Espionage Act had proven that the government reach might extend to cartoonists.

It might have just been that most cartoonists didn’t think people wanted to see the flu in the funnies. Still, the few that did address it have a lesson to teach us. “It must have felt like the end of the world for these folks as surely as this time does for us,” Gardner said. “It can feel unprecedented and apocalyptic, but looking at comics from a hundred years ago reminds us that they got through it.”

The first widely syndicated newspaper comic to address COVID-19 was Bill Hinds’ “Tank McNamara,” a sports-themed strip that had to contend with the sudden absence of professional sports. “Curtis” followed shortly after. Cartoonist Stephan Pastis often makes himself a character in his smart and acerbic “Pearls Before Swine”; he drew his first coronavirus comics as if he were stranded with nothing but pencil and notepaper, playing off his real-life situation of being out of the country when the United States starting limiting travel. Meanwhile, a heartbreaking series in Darrin Bell’s “Candorville” tackled social isolation by showing full-panel cityscapes from throughout the world. The same thought arises in different languages from each house and apartment: “I am all alone.”

Argentinian cartoonist Ricardo Siri, whose comic “Macanudo” is published in English under his pen name “Liniers,” says the strip was born out of time of social and economic crisis in Argentina. “My way of being punk was to be optimistic,” he said, talking to me by phone from his current home in Vermont, where he teaches at Dartmouth College. His coronavirus-themed work has been delicate and hopeful, often turning to the natural world for inspiration. In one full-panel strip, a girl and cat sit together, watching a butterfly make its way across a grassy field. The caption reads: “Taking care of each other will also be contagious.”

“I feel like when people are drowning, you can either throw them a life vest or an anvil,” Siri said. “Every now and then I allow myself to be angry in the strip, or pessimistic, or nihilistic. But I think the reason the comics page first existed, from the Pulitzer and Hearst years, is to give people something so they don’t jump out the window.”

In a sense, the visual representation of COVID-19 is itself a cartoon—a multi-colored illustration of a spike protein-studded ball created by Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (By contrast, Gardner notes that cartoonists in 1918 often used mosquitoes to represent the flu, due to the insects’ past association with sickness and death.) Eckert told The New York Times they were tasked with creating “an identity” for the coronavirus. But it took cartoonist Mark Tatulli to turn their image into a full-blown character. In Tatulli’s wincingly funny “Lio,” the Coronavirus might laugh menacingly or wait quietly in a doorway. In one chilling comic, it sits on the couch, watching the news. “It’s always weird seeing yourself on TV, ya know?” it says to a child.

To Gardner, these novel approaches to the novel coronavirus are a sign of hope for comics themselves. “If you want a media that can talk about it right now, and both comfort and educate, what does it better?” he said. “There’s social media, which is evil, and there are comics. It’s a moment where the comic strip, editorial cartooning, and web comics can talk about stuff as it’s happening, and they can build space for community in the moment—which is part of why comics and cartooning became so important in the first place.”

Added Gardner, “There’s a tone, a kind of intimacy, that the comic strip can capture that is really needed. I’m grateful for it.”

The most intimate moment in the current run of “Curtis” comes when Greg Wilkins is explaining to his son that because of social distancing, he can’t visit Mrs. Nelson in the hospital. Curtis pumps his fist and says, “Awwww, she’ll be all right!—Mrs. Nelson is a tough ol’ lady.” 

Greg smiles and holds his son. He praises him for his positive attitude. What he doesn’t see—but what is clearly visible to readers—is that Curtis is crying.

I told Billingsley that this devotion of a student to a teacher reminded me of a series in Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts,” when Linus is watching his beloved teacher Miss Othmar during a teacher’s strike, and she falls down with exhaustion.

“Remember, only Linus was close to Miss Othmar,” says Billingsley. “Lucy wasn’t. It can be a very special bond between a student and a certain teacher.”

In fact, he said, Mrs. Nelson was the name of his own third-grade teacher. “I didn’t have the best home life, growing up. I had a father who was very strict. It got to the point where I looked forward to going to school, because I was away from my father. I was one of those weird kids who was good friends with the principal.

“Mrs. Nelson was the first person who told my parents I had a career in artwork. She encouraged me, and from that time on I kept drawing.

“So when Curtis put his head behind his father, I quietly cried to myself, because I knew I was going to do this.”

Since that moment, there have been jokes in “Curtis” about Curtis saying that he’s bored and being handed a mop and bucket, and of Greg admitting to his son that he misses “being at work complaining about being at work.” But Billingsley said he’ll be returning to the story about Mrs. Nelson. He doesn’t know exactly when. Just like when it started, he said, he’ll be going by instinct.

“When it’s time to wrap this story up, I’ll know it.”

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[qqueenofhades]

Black Sails s4/finale thoughts

Okay, so I caught up on episodes 4x05-4x10 with @thelittleschemer​ over the past few days, and as such finished the season/series. Now I have many thoughts and need to write them down, welp.

I held off on finishing the show because I didn’t want it to interfere with what I had planned for TDH, and I can definitely say that it did not change anything about what I had worked out for the ending of said fic (which I really need to get around to doing soon). I was pleased to see that there were/will be a few points of concord, but yeah, TDH will definitely remain its own entity/story.

Tagging @prairiepirate​ and @ransomideas, who have expressed interest in my thoughts on said subject, heh. Under the cut for length and possible unpopular opinions.

Okay, first and foremost: Overall, I really liked it. The writing generally remains some of the best on TV, the acting is phenomenal, and as usual with Starz’ historical dramas these days, the production value is jaw-dropping. The sets, costumes, ships, etc are all just so real, and it definitely set up well for Treasure Island. It finished off its narrative arcs cleanly (or mostly so) and it continues to provide some excellent meaty commentary on the nature of stories, who tells them, who remembers them (hums “Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story” because lbr, theme song of this whole show) and the roles we play in creating and managing and remembering our own. This show was (and remains) incredibly intelligent and complex and subversive, you have to pay attention to all of it or you’re going to miss important plot developments (and probably still be confused on a few points) and it’s otherwise not at all what you’d expect from the premise (and first few episodes). As I said, just overall really impressive on many levels. The final few episodes also had a very POTC feeling to them, with mysterious islands that nobody can find, ghost stories, swashbuckling sea battles, hidden treasure, and so forth, and that was a lot of fun.

That said: Time to deconstruct it!

My main issue with the second half of s4 was that they seemed to throw all constraints of time/space/travel out the window, especially when it involves the characters sailing long distances at sea over incredibly cramped time-frames. Possibly writing TDH has made me too well-informed in said matters, heh, but they’d have us believe that Jack sailed from Nassau to Philadelphia, back to Nassau, out to Skeleton Island, and then back to Philadelphia in what.... a week? It’s been hard to gauge a reliable timeline for the show, since they’re moving historical events around freely and playing fast and loose with the facts to tell a good story, but we have the Maroons arriving and Madi’s mother saying that pirates from as far away as Massachusetts (which made me briefly hopeful for a Sam cameo, I AM NOT GONNA LIE) have heard of the fall of Nassau and have come to fight. In what... again, a day or so? I realize it’s important to keep the plot moving, and that nobody is actually going to watch two weeks of Jack and Anne stuck on a ship on the way to Philadelphia (although lbr, it’s probably still amusing), but for a show that has prided itself on its gritty realism, it kept taking me out of the story because I was all, NO WAY THEY’RE THERE ALREADY. WAIT. WHAT. THEY’RE BACK AGAIN? OKAY THEN.

(Aka, every historical/historical fantasy show has to contend with the fact that they need to get characters/news to places faster than historically accurate transport can actually take them, so things get compressed and skimmed over and squashed together, etc. It wasn’t enough to ruin anything for me, but I did keep noticing it, so yeah.)

My other issue was the involvement of the Spanish. Once again, I understand the narrative choice behind the decision: they needed a wild card/way to shake things up/break the standoff between the English forces and the pirates, and re-change the balance of power on Nassau. However (and I feel like they were aware of it and tried to finesse it to some degree in the narrative) are we really supposed to buy that the Spanish hate pirates just that bit more than they hate Rogers, agree to sail to Nassau, sack the place good, and then.... pack up and leave, never to be seen again or to have any further involvement with trying to reclaim the Urca gold (which would at least be a full-circle thing)? Within the span of an episode? I feel like the writers needed the shakeup, and to obviously provide an impetus for Rogers’ poor decisions to blow up in his face, but they knew they didn’t have time to adequately deal with the outcome, so we had the Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition and then poof, gone. This connects to the other sense I had, which was that they knew they had to wrap things up for the final season and find a way to stop a full-out war from happening, so the Spanish had to disappear after their use as a one-off shit-stirring device, the Maroons and the pirates and the English had to hastily make treaties to avoid said war, and despite a few really excellent action scenes, it still felt, idk, a bit... anti-climactic? As if they wanted a relatively happy ending for these characters (which is understandable) but didn’t have time to play everything out, so it just got compressed and a bit watered down.

Speaking of characters...

I love that the show has such intensive character studies/conversations/setpieces. However, I also feel as if the pacing ended up being a bit off as a result. We kept having long, multi-minute scenes of just two characters talking to each other (and again, exchanging important information in most cases, so you can’t really tune out), followed by a brief action scene, usually followed by yet another long dialogue scene. It’s always enjoyable to see the acting chops on display (I mean, these are not easy scenes to work through and require a lot of line memorization and facial nuance and other skill), but at several points I was wondering when everyone was going to stop talking and get back to the issues at hand -- as noted, if they’d cut some of the talking and focused on solving their plot problems, it could have flowed somewhat more smoothly. It felt as if they went too often to the well of “flashback followed by voiceover explaining plot twist” and had to TELL us information rather than SHOW us. Which again, it’s a good problem to have when your narrative is rich and complex and intelligent and has a lot of moving pieces, but again, everything could just be a bit, well, tighter. At least, that was the overall impression I was left with.

I was successfully kept on pins and needles over Madi’s fate (I had a few choice words when it looked like she was dead) and I hope she and Silver do end up together (I think it’s implied she does come back to him at the end) because I really like that relationship for both of them. It added a bit of selflessness and sympathy to Silver’s otherwise completely self-interested character, as did the scene where Flint presses him to explain his past and he doesn’t; we can tell he simply wants to forget everything that existed before Long John Silver (and I love how both that persona and “Captain Flint” were treated and twisted as distinct narrative entities for both characters) and that his life has probably been incredibly tragic too. He’s just dealt with it differently than Flint (which again, fits with them well as each other’s foils/yin and yang.) Their conversations/one-on-one faceoffs were some powerhouse acting from both Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold, and I appreciated the way things came full circle between them/to the logical end, but with a twist and with callbacks to their relationship in the pilot (as well as Silver finding the cook belowdecks). Madi is also generally a queen of everything and I love that she, a dark-skinned African woman, was made a central love interest and given emotional and narrative power/sympathy in her own right, and that the subject of slavery and her telling off Rogers to his face remained front and center. The show has always been so good with that (and LGBT representation, to the point where it’s a shorter list to think of who ISN’T LGBT than who is) and I really appreciated that.

On the subject of Rogers: Luke Roberts did an incredibly good job. Like damn. You can see the anger and insanity and grief rising and rising in him, but he’s almost scarier because it never breaks the dam entirely, because he’s always (almost always) self-controlled and dangerously calm and driven to do whatever he has to, and yet has no qualms with absolutely anything that is going to take. I was yelling at him for being the worst (and as noting, side-eyeing the decision to involve the Spanish both on a story and a meta level), and rooting for him to get his just desserts, but also genuinely being scared of him and respecting that he was good at what he was doing. You’re aware that he CAN hurt/kill/otherwise cause serious problems for our faves, and you’ve seen him do it, sometimes in gruesome detail. So yes, he served as an effective villain. You never could relax with him on screen, or be quite sure which way he was going next.

As for him and Eleanor, I’m still not entirely sure what to take away from that. I never bought that she genuinely loved him, as Eleanor is way too selfish to do anything, even a relationship, without personal benefit, and she got together with him in the first place as an alternative to incarceration/hanging. Even Flint questions whether her relationship with Rogers is somehow different from all the men she’s bragging about overcoming. Eleanor’s motives/nuances remained opaque until the end -- I believe that she wanted to rule Nassau again, and that she wanted to survive (hence the sad irony in her fate: that everything she did and everyone she sold out trying to save her neck led to her dying anyway) and that she saw in Rogers a way to do it. Likewise, I think he loved the idea of controlling Nassau through her more than her, and that it was easy for both of them to attach their feelings about ruling/controlling this place to the person of the other, to the point where even they might have been fooled/willing to believe it was true (if somewhat twisted) love. Hence as well why neither of them ended up in charge of it, she died, and he was ruined by his wife’s family, but not the wife he expected.

Jack and Anne were, as usual, fab, though as noted, their Super Speed Ship Travel had me side-eyeing hard. I noticed that their story, at least for now, ended far more happily than it does in history. Glad that Max got the chance to come out on top (I never ended up fully connecting to her as a character, but she’s definitely a BAMF).

Billy.... damn. Talk about a 180. Going from the man willing to do anything to keep your crewmates safe from Flint, to shooting them down in the water aboard a boat full of redcoats? Not cool, bro. Not. Cool. (Though I did enjoy the final face-off between him and Flint on the yards.) When that’s contrasted with Flint giving orders to make sure everyone is evacuated from Nassau and nobody is left behind, it strikes you how much they’ve changed places and how Billy has become objectively no better -- indeed, possibly worse -- than Flint, and doesn’t even have Flint’s self-awareness to know it. He has gone down a road by himself, by choice, and which fits fairly well with his upcoming role in Treasure Island/estrangement from the others (real talk, how does he get off?) but which made him pretty hard to root for by the end. I also think it’s no accident that he got paired with Rogers. Both characters are convinced they are acting for a greater good on their respective sides, but both are willing to do anything to achieve it, stubborn and independent to a fault, and unwilling to take any responsibility for their mistakes.

And okay, so... Flint.

He is my favorite and as such, I’ve had to save him for last, since I probably have the most thoughts/investment on the end of his story. In a nutshell: I have mixed feelings. I was convinced that he was going to die for most of the season, so I am obviously happy that he got some measure of solace/happiness/reunion at the end. However, I am also not sure that it wouldn’t have worked better for him to die, or at least leave his fate more open-ended. Hint that Silver wasn’t telling the whole story and that Flint was still alive, but for it to remain ambiguous where he went or what he did or why.

This obviously is a strange place to be for my favorite, but after a season of fairly hard-hitting emotional moments/notes and some pretty bloody action, I almost feel like they chickened out of killing Flint at the end and wanted to give him some happiness instead -- aka, an unexpectedly sunny “Everyone Lives!”-type finale for what has been a pretty dark show. Which again -- I have no problem with, because heaven knows the man deserves some happiness, but I still found myself vaguely unsatisfied with how it was pulled off. See above for my feelings on how well they dealt with the legends/personas of “Long John Silver” and “Captain Flint” in their own right, and I did appreciate that the end of season 2 (Flint wants to leave it behind and settle down with Miranda, but she’s killed) was paralleled with the end of season 4 (Flint does get a chance to leave it behind/is reunited with Thomas). However, on a narrative level, this... doesn’t quite work for me, because Thomas was never built up on-screen to be a character capable of carrying this emotional weight. We saw him only in a few season 2 flashbacks. We saw a bit of his and Flint’s relationship and how that backfired, but all we ever really knew about Thomas mattering to Flint was that we were told he did. We cared about Thomas because we cared about Flint and Miranda, but there was never really enough for him to become any more than a motivating/backstory figure in Flint’s own story.

Hence, I feel as if Thomas worked better as such (a backstory figure) rather than as Flint’s presumably somewhat-happy ending. Yes, I am a diehard Flint/Miranda shipper, but I was more invested in Flint and Miranda’s relationship because of all the time the narrative spent on making me care about it. We saw them together for two seasons. We saw their arguments, their disagreements, their tender moments (”I was hoping to have you all to myself for a few days”/”I recognize you, do you recognize me?” will never not kill me). We saw Miranda fighting to be with Flint and reminding him that she has been loyal and devoted to him for ten years, and him finally accepting that and letting her come with him to Charlestown and the two of them planning to make their home together and leave piracy behind... only for, yeah, welp, noooo. We saw Miranda’s relationships with other characters and we saw her own struggle in how exile had changed her and the sacrifices she had made for allowing Flint and Thomas to be together and the blame she took for the scandal. We had Flint wanting to die and be with her and his flashbacks/dreams of her for half of season 3, and him even saying that this was worse than losing Thomas (”But you... I am ruined over you.”) In other words, I was invested in them because the show spent so much time making sure that I was. I cried out loud when Flint compared Silver’s apparent loss of Madi (the woman he was willing to give up the war for/wanted to be his wife) to his own loss of Miranda. Flint and Miranda were both real characters in their own right, and Thomas just by nature of his role in the story was someone that they had lost and whose memory they still honored. To pluck him out and make him alive again seems a bit, well, pat.

Don’t get me wrong, my super bi ass is definitely incredibly appreciative that Flint, a bi character who has had two great loves in his life (Thomas and Miranda) ended up with his same-gender partner, and that they got to be reunited on screen. But I also feel as if the most poignant and fitting end for his story would either for him to explicitly die, and for his reunion with both Thomas and Miranda to take place in the afterlife (I so wanted that scene of the three of them together again/Thomas and Miranda being there to finally bring Flint back to them) or for his fate to not be spelled out, as it is in Treasure Island. I.e., for it to be pretty clear that Silver didn’t kill him and let him go, but for us not to know where he went or why, and that is why the legend remains and lives on. That way they can have the symmetry of him letting the persona of Flint “go back to the sea,” and to also keep the tragedy and romance and true loss of his story. He HAS changed forever in being Flint. He can’t give that up, he can’t wake from his nightmare. He’s lost everything and everyone (including his ship, poor Walrus). The ending with Thomas was nice enough, but again, I don’t care that much about Thomas in his own right, because the narrative never spent time on making me do that. I am happy FOR Flint because I love him and I know it’s what he would have wanted, but I don’t feel the gut-wrenching relief/sadness/cry-for-days-but-love it that I would have with Flint dying and finally getting to be with both Thomas AND Miranda again, and for us to see them once more as a threesome and a whole. Again, I feel like they ducked out of bringing Flint’s story to a sadder and arguably more fitting end, and while I can’t argue with my fave getting to live, yeah.

Anyway! Damn. That was a long-ass meta. As I said, overall I did like it very much, I certainly had feelings, and the rest of the show was generally so well-written that I can forgive them some pacing and plot hiccups here and there in this season. As I said, this is absolutely one of the smartest and most subversive and diverse shows on TV, and I am sorry to see it end. I would watch the shit out of Treasure Island if they do it (as I think they were kicking around). I just wish they could have hit some even more powerful notes in a few places. But thanks for the great adventure.

[preservationandruin]

Words of Radiance Part 2, Part 2

I swear to god I am not intentionally replicating Homestuck’s act structure with the parts here. 

Shallan gets serious, Kaladin fights someone else with his powers and falls off a horse, Sadeas is Sadeas, and Adolin starts losing friends. 

Continuing on with Part Two, the listener song epigraph mentions decayform, which “destroys the souls of dreams” and sounds horrifying. Needless to say, it’s one of the forms from the old gods. Anyway, Shallan is talking with Gaz, in part about why he deserted. She gets the details from ground-level about how the lighteyes started fighting not to win, but for sport. She also has started being witty around them, which is hilarious. Vathah still hates her, and she’s doing her best not to let it get to her. Also: 

“If you don’t mind me saying, Brightness. You have quite the clever tongue on you!” 

“I’ve never actually had someone’s tongue on me,” Shallan said, turning a page and not looking up, “clever or not. I’d hazard to consider it an unpleasant experience.” 

“It ain’t so bad,” Gaz said. 

They both looked at him.

“He shrugged. “Just saying. It ain’t...” 

GAZ. 

Also, Shallan thinks for a moment of trying to get Sadeas on her side, which uHHH SHALLAN NO. Pattern also mentions that Voidbringers have their own spren, from Odium. And we also get that Tyn assumes that Shallan is some nobody pulling a con, which...is wrong. Tyn’s assumptions about Shallan really come back to bite her. 

Smokeform is stated to be “though crafted of gods, it was by Unmade hand,” which implies a distinction. Also, Kaladin needs to get on a horse and is completely perplexed by this. He doesn’t trust horses, which...might be fair. I like Jenet, the stablemaster--she’s very frank about everything. And she reacts to Adolin showing up by throwing rocks at him. It gets him to go away and is also lowkey hysterical. Kaladin also just goes to the horse and is like, okay, neither of us want to do this, i understand that. 

Also, Adolin decides to taunt Kaladin again, pointing out a much more feisty horse, and Kaladin--knowing this is a bad idea--goes over to try to ride it. Unsurprisingly, he’s knocked on his ass. He’s very amused by all of it, actually. 

An interesting listener fragment, ending with “Our gods were not who shattered these plains.” Then who did? I still have a theory that it’s where Honor died. Also, confirmation that the plains were deliberately shattered. 

Over to Adolin, in a fight on the plateaus. Jakamav is there as well. I still only see that guy as a fratboy. Also, Eshonai is there, and Adolin wants to fight “him.” Eshonai instead tries to arrange a meeting with Dalinar--the one that ends up ill-fated when she takes stormform too soon. We also hear about when Renarin summoned his blade, him having one of his fits. Also also, Adolin comments that this plateau “almost looks man-made”--it probably is an old ruined building, covered in centuries of crem. Jakamav basically tells Adolin they’re not friends until Adolin’s reputation improves again, and Sureblood shows off a little to cheer Adolin up. Renarin also specifies that he didn’t have a fit, and Adolin notices that he’s not wearing his glasses. Renarin also says that he needs to be ready, because something is coming--Adolin accurately connects that to the numbers on the walls. 

More Shallan flashbacks. We get that Shallan’s homelife is getting worse and worse, and that she finds solace in the gardens. She wants to leave and find “a place away from the shouting.” Helaran keeps visiting and giving Shallan drawing supplies--does he know she’s a Radiant? Possibly. We also get that when she thinks of what happened, she goes blank again, staring at the wall for an indefinite amount of time. We also get how broken the family is--Jushu gambles and drinks, Balat sets fires, and Shallan dissociates whenever she thinks of what happened when she was eleven. 

Tyn and Shallan are talking in the present day, teaching Shallan accents and such. She also gives Shallan eyedrops that can darken your eyes--something Shallan might not need with her surgebinding, but still useful. Also, the boots scene. They’re so lucky Rock wasn’t one of the bridgemen they encountered--he would have seen through it in a second. The others are still skeptical. Still funny, but also still uncomfortable--another little way Shallan overlooks how she’s a lighteyes and the amount of clout and fear that connotes in darkeyes. 

“hopefully she wouldn’t run into those particular soldiers again” Oh, Shallan...

A Sadeas viewpoint. He’s still basically living on the Thrill alone. And he still doesn’t understand why Dalinar traded the Blade--he assumes it was to try to slow Sadeas down instead of, uh, being a decent human being and rewarding good men. The thing that gets me about Sadeas is that he just doesn’t get it. He notices that other soldiers are more competent than his men, gets irritated, and then puts no effort into positive reinforcement or into discipline. Also, we get that Parshendi used to try to surrender, but the first time they tried it Sadeas killed all of them, turning the war into a bloodbath. Thanks, Sadeas. 

Also, Sadeas still hasn’t realized anything about the bridgemen--he thinks they’re lying on the ground and sleeping while better men died, not, uh, being exhausted from being run like animals while malnourished. Also, Sadeas says that he knows Amaram is a ruthless bastard, which is true, and Amaram starts pulling his self-important horseshit. 

Sadeas is just so oblivious. He thinks everything works in one set way and doesn’t consider that people might have motivations he doesn’t understand. We also get some of the cause of his frustration--he’s getting old, he’s dying, he’s desperate for that to stop happening. Also, here we get the fact that contrary to what Dalinar believes, Sadeas doesn’t care about Elhokar--if Alethkar is going to be “strong” Elhokar’s going to have to die. 

...Eerie that that’s the same logic that almost wins Kaladin over, later. 

Also my brain just barfed “Sadeas voice: Make Alethkar Great Again” at me and I’m fucking dying. Also, we get that Sadeas can read Adolin well--it takes him a moment, but he notices that Adolin is faking not taking the duel seriously and letting himself take hits so that he can surprise people. Unfortunately for Sadeas, turns out later that he can’t read Adolin quite well enough. Also, Sadeas here admits that even if Dalinar was behaving the way Sadeas is--if Dalinar was what Sadeas in theory wants him to be--Sadeas would kill him anyway. That’s what gets it--this is the moment it becomes blatantly clear it’s not about Alethkar, it’s about power. 

Shallan is geeking out about plants. She also does a drawing for Gaz, drawing him as the people he saved saw him. A lie, but also not a lie. She’s getting good at this. One wonders what she’ll be able to do in the Alethi court proper--used right, she could be a great ally to Dalinar, if she can show the nobles what they would be like if they were united. Interestingly, she also draws a woman bringing down a hammer and chisel on a stone body’s face--she may have just drawn Shalash, despite knowing nothing of what she was doing. That’s very interesting. Tyn also says that Shallan needs a dose of realism. Tyn, just because Shallan blushes at the thought of lewd jokes doesn’t mean she hasn’t murdered multiple people before. We get this line: 

“How can you be so certain I’ve never done things like this?”  “Because you’re not broken.”  “Maybe I’m faking.” 

She is faking--faking so well she’s fooling herself, sometimes. Also, Tyn gives her some advice about the betrothal and how to make it work. 

Kaladin leads his troop of patrollers back and has stew, looking at the stars--there are moving stars called starspren, apparently, and I’m taking mental notes about the astronomy of Roshar--and Kaladin notes that something’s weird about the air. Also, we get Rock shooing away an ardent that’s probably Nazh. Back to Shallan, we get her and Tyn bantering more--including bringing up that sometimes Shallan might have to go with both hands bare for a con, which Shallan is scandalized by. We also get the news that Vedenar is in chaos because the king, his heir, and multiple highprinces were killed by Szeth. Thanks, Taravangian. 

Kaladin has another dream where he is the storm, and talks with the Stormfather, who accuses Kaladin of planning to kill Syl and “leave her corpse to wicked men”--the Shardblades. Kaladin denies it, but he’s already started. We also get “He comes for you, little traitor. I am sorry.” and a second storm rising made of red lightning--Odium is showing up. Kaladin is very spooked. 

Back to Shallan, where Pattern is freaking out too. This is the highstorm where some Parshendi bond stormspren, isn’t it. That would make sense for the amount of panic that is happening with people--and then Szeth shows up. Elhokar, understandably, is losing his shit. Dalinar is also upset-- “I’m not asleep at the table this time, you bastard. You’re not taking another one from me”--and he, Adolin, and Kaladin engage Szeth. Dalinar of course assumes Szeth was after Elhokar. Kaladin also realizes that Szeth has windrunner powers. 

And Kaladin gets stabbed by a Shardblade--and heals it later. Which is supposed to be impossible, and probably is, if you’re not a Radiant. Dalinar manages to barehanded catch a Shardblade--which is badass--and Kaladin tackles Szeth out a window and into a highstorm. The listener song implies that a listener might be able to surgebind--Radiant Eshonai please Brandon I will do anything--and Kaladin fights Szeth, telling Szeth he’s a windrunner. Szeth doesn’t believe him. We get Szeth’s breakdown--They named me Truthless--and he demands to know if all of “them” are back, to which Kaladin answers yes. Szeth runs, and Kaladin collapses. 

Kaladin also notices that Adolin noticed that Kaladin’s arm was stabbed, and fails to say that he’s a Surgebinder--is too much of a coward to say it in front of Elhokar and Adolin. 

Back to Shallan, she learns that Tyn was supposed to assassinate Jasnah Kholin. And the associate Tyn is talking to mentions Shallan and gives a description, meaning that Tyn now tries to kill Shallan. 

And Shallan stabs Tyn through the face with her Shardblade. “Difficult things. Yes, I believe I told you. I’ve learned that lesson already. Thank you.” And she also takes the conversation Tyn had, learns she worked for the Ghostbloods, and arranges a meeting with them. Again--the trip without Jasnah let Shallan come into her own a lot, and learn valuable con art skills. And that’s the end of Part Two! Adolin is suspicious of Kaladin (rightly), Shallan is almost at the Shattered Plains and has a meeting with the Ghostbloods arranged and also killed someone again, Kaladin has destroyed Szeth’s worldview, and Sadeas is scum.