#one day i will replace these images when we have access to better quality

[watchandyoullsee]

Ariel Takes the Wheel

Scene 1: Ariel "Just Forgot"

King Triton (1989): "I just don't know what we're going to do with you, young lady."

Ariel (1989): "Daddy, I'm sorry, I just forgot, I--"

King Triton (2023): "It's irresponsible. Your sisters are only here for one phase of the Coral Moon. Can you imagine any one of them missing the gathering?"

Ariel (2023): "No, you're right. I'm sorry." (Excuse the watermark; I don't know where else to find images.) Of course, Flounder comes to her defense in the LA just like the 1989 version, saying it wasn't her fault, but Ariel realizes her mistake and takes full responsibility.

Scene 2: Blaming Sebastian

Ariel never blames anyone but herself in the 2023 version. She knows it's wrong to make the deal with Ursula in both versions, but the Live Action Ariel does not do it just for herself, but for both worlds -- after all, humans and merpeople may be different, but that doesn't make them enemies. Shipwrecks are alarmingly frequent, taking the lives of humans and damaging the seafloor below. Were the relations between the two peoples mended, perhaps their respective worlds could mend as well.

Thus, the stakes are higher. Had Triton been willing to listen while she had her voice (and it is understandable why he wasn't), she would never have had to give it up to be heard. 2023 Ariel not only rebels against her father because he made her upset (and she's obsessed with a human prince), but because she is doing what she believes is right for herself and her people. Since she heard Eric express a similar desire to bridge the gap between their kingdoms and the rest of the world (a desire she has never heard expressed by anyone else), it is only natural that she forms an immediate attachment to him. His beautiful face is not a motivating factor, but a nice bonus, and proof that humans are not all monsters.

Scene 3: Ariel "Didn't Mean To"

Ariel (1989): "Daddy, I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to! I didn't know!"

Ariel (2023): "I'm sorry, Father, this was all my fault."

The point of this comparison is to highlight how important it was that Ariel took the wheel of the ship at the end. These are two very different characters, and thus their character arcs are different. Ariel in 1989 was curious, naïve, stubborn, rebellious in the typical adolescent fashion, and innocent as an infant. Her arc wasn't the noblest for a princess, as notwithstanding her mistakes and lack of character growth, she managed to receive all that she desired in the end. She didn't need to kill Ursula because Eric was there to do it for her, just as Scuttle was there to stall the wedding and retrieve her voice, and Sebastian was there all the way along to get her closer to Eric. Animated Ariel did not take responsibility for her actions. How could she, when she didn't know any better? Every movement she made was in her own self-interest (though I think by the end she really did love Eric as a person and not just a pretty face). Still, we love her because she is the picture of wide-eyed, adventurous youth, and there is much room for her yet to grow up, even after she's married. Because of her carefree innocence, it's nigh impossible to hate her.

Live Action Ariel is also carefree to a point, but the weight of her title and responsibilities shines through in her character. She is ignorant about the Above World (by no means from lack of effort), but clearly educated as a princess should be regarding her own. She is less stubborn in her naivety and more secure in her sense of right and wrong. There is an important distinction to be made between knowing what is right and remaining steadfast in that knowledge, versus remaining immovable in one's obliviousness.

So why was it important that Ariel took the wheel in the climax? Because she had taken the wheel all along. Had she been trapped in a vortex like in the cartoon, a damsel in distress, it would have been a disservice to her particular character arc -- that of a girl who took responsibility for her actions at every turn. "Those sacrifices you made were a choice that you can't undo," she sings in 'For the First Time.' This thread of action->consequence->action would have been left dangling, unresolved if she had suddenly lost all power.

Does this in any way diminish Eric's character? Not at all. He was willing to sacrifice his life to be with Ariel through the storm. He did everything in his power to save her. He still threw the spear, which undoubtedly saved her life in that moment (and, might I say, was a display of incredible competence to have an aim underwater like that). In that way, he repays her in kind, after she'd rescued him from drowning.

As an aside, she mimics his exact movement when he had steered the ship earlier in the film. Had she not observed what he did in that storm, she might not have known what to do in the final battle.

Ariel still needed help -- she still needed the support and aid of her animal companions, Eric, the castle staff, and her father. BUT she also took plenty of action to satisfy her arc, avenged her father's death, and she gave credit where it was due:

Ariel (2023): "You gave your life for me."

King Triton (2023): "And you fought to get my life back."

Ariel (2023): "I didn't fight alone, Father. Eric was with me."

I hope this post makes it a little clearer why robbing Ariel of her ability to act in the climax of the film would have been a poor choice, specifically in the Live Action. And, by the way, you can still prefer one or the other, or neither. While I don't dislike the cartoon, I obviously prefer the more mature and responsible Ariel.

[dross-the-fish]

Thoughts on AI I was talking to some people about AI and generally I've been pretty neutral on AI as a tool. I've seen people bring up that it could be used as a good way for disabled people or people who generally aren't good at art to bring their ideas to life and honestly I'm pretty ok with that on principle. I am pretty firmly against AI being allowed to indiscriminately scrape the work of artists without their input or say so and I'm against Ai being used by the entertainment industry as a replacement for actual artists and writers. However what I really want to talk about is the use of AI as a tool, assuming it can be used ethically. I really hate the argument of "It's soulless," or "It's cheating" (used ethically it's just anther medium like photography or collages. Art is not measured by the amount of effort or the tools used. I am really tired of that take) and a particular scaremongering argument I've had directed at myself "It will replace you."

Because I do draw that's the one I get leveled at me the most. That AI will do what I do and do it better so there will be no point to me or what I make. They like to paint artists vs AI as John Henry vs The Machine and I just do not care for it. I think it's reductive to art and to artists to frame the value of art as a matter of effort vs quality of product. AI cannot make what I make because it's not me. It won't create my characters, it can only output what it's fed. The work it creates may be of better quality, more complex in texture and composition, more precise or more detailed but it can never build my characters because it doesn't know my characters like I do. I got curious and tried to use an AI image generator to see if I could make art with it and I could not. I have no idea how to input the fucking prompts in a way that makes something worth looking at and I lost the motivation to learn how to do so very quickly. As a creative outlet there was something so joyless about it. I felt like I was doing paperwork or coding and that's the shit I regularly get paid to do at my soul killing day job. I don't want to do it for fun. Also the intimacy was gone? I didn't feel like I was spending time with my creation and there was no sense of bringing something to life. None of the pleasure of watching a face take shape line by line and filling in the details until my character was looking back at me, imperfect due to the limitations of my skills but still fully realized and in some strange way "alive". Working with an AI generator felt so tedious. Even if I could learn how to use this tool and do it properly so that I get "better" looking results I don't want to. I feel so disconnected from the end product that I can't envision it ever bringing me any kind of fulfillment to make use of this tool. But I think, again, assuming it can be used ethically, as just another tool for making art it deserves to exist and be accessible to people who might enjoy using it to be creative. It's not the process or the software that's the issue, it's the way it's being abused and no amount of people trying to scare me with "AI could do it better than you" is going to frighten me away from preferring to draw by hand.

The point of art is not to be good, it's to create, it's to make something and to bring ideas to life. As much as I have my criticisms about AI I feel like a lot of the language used to condemn it presents a narrow view of what makes art "worthy" and it sets a goal post where none should exist.

Everyone should be allowed to create, and they should have access to whatever tools they are comfortable using and when we talk about AI vs Artists we should focus less on the quality and ease of use and more on the dilemma of using other people's work without consent and the potential for mass production of cheap and lazy products for profit from the entertainment industry at the expense of employing writers and artists.

[mappinglasirena]

Upper Deck Under Construction

I have spent the last few weeks amassing a new set of screenshots for season one of Star Trek: Picard, to replace the lower quality ones I had somehow managed to pry off of Amazon Prime back in the day. And as I'm staring lovingly at images of anything and everything La Sirena, occasionally, I notice things I've never noticed before. Usually those are very small things, but every now and again, I discover something absolutely delightful.

So, I thought I'd drop in to share one of my latest observations!

I've probably mentioned before, and many others have, too, that when Admiral Picard (retired) first arrives on La Sirena, the ship is undergoing a bit of a refit or possibly some repairs.

For one, the transporter console is nowhere to be found:

The console is clearly mobile, we see it move around the deck on other occasions.

But apparently, when Picard arrived, it had been taken somewhere else entirely for a while.

Similarly, the chairs on the bridge undergo a lot of transformations throughout season 1 (so many, in fact, they deserve their own post), but one of the most stark ones is from episode 3, "The End is the Beginning" to episode 4, "Absolute Candor":

Clearly, while in orbit over earth, someone on Sirena decided it was a good time to reupholster all the bridge chairs.

Now, if you wanted to, you could find explanations that fit the canon for all of these changes -- the removed transporter console, the reupholstered bridge chairs, the amount of cargo that increases drastically between eps 3 and 4, all of it could have a perfectly logical reason.

However, as I was looking through my screenshots today, trying to find an image of one particular section of the port wall for my 3D model, I noticed another refit, one that had never caught my attention before. And this change, I think, even the most dedicated canon-wrangler will have a hard time explaining (not that we won't try).

Let's go back to Picard's very first arrival on the ship for a second.

I have, on occasion, wondered how they managed to film this shot. I've never thought about it too deeply, but it has always seemed vaguely off in my mind. The thing is: this shot should be impossible, because this is the port side of the upper deck, and there are quarters where the camera man is standing right now.

Of course, this is a film set, so many of the walls are wild and can be moved around to allow for all kinds of equipment and setup. Maybe that's what I subconsciously assumed happened with the shot of Picard's dramatic entrance.

Today, however, I realized the walls had not just been moved aside temporarily to allow access for the camera crew. Rather, when they were filming the ep 3 scenes taking place on the open upper deck, the quarters on the port side of the ship weren't actually there yet!

It's subtle and a little difficult to see, which is probably why I never noticed it until today, even though I've been staring at every inch of this ship for the better part of three years now. But if you look closely at the middle section of the port wall and zoom in (especially on the second image, right next to Agnes's right arm), you can tell that there is open space where the quarters would be built in later.

(Especially compared to the same section of the deck in later episodes.)

(See how much of the beams and the space in between them is blocked here?)

Now, I'm as happy to wrangle the canon into submission as the next detail-obsessed nerd, but I in this case, I have yet to come up with a fitting, canon-compliant explanation for the discrepancy between episodes. I think, in the end, I'll probably file it under: "these things can happen on a tv set" and move on. (Although if one of you wants to try their hand at a headcanon, I would be thrilled to read all about it!)

For now, let's pour one out for the production team, who must have been stressed out of their minds, getting this monumental set ready for shooting while significant parts of it were still under construction.

[cooladddy]

The spontaneous and colorful illustrations of Massimiliano Aurelio

Among Massimiliano Aurelio 's passions is music, to whose protagonists - including pop, rock and jazz - he has dedicated more than one illustration. In the past his points of reference belonged to the world of comics , among them Frank Miller, to which along the way the masters of illustration were added. Today, among his clients we find Mondadori, Il Sole24ore, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and Wired, just to name a few. We asked him a few questions to get to know him better.

Hi Massimiliano and welcome to Picame. Do you want to introduce yourself to our readers? I was born in Puglia, precisely in Taranto and after studying art and illustration at the IED in Rome I came to Milan where I entered the advertising field as an Art Director. Illustrating, however, is a passion that I have always had since I was a child, so in 2012 I decided to take the path of being a freelancer which initially saw me working both as a freelance art director and as an illustrator but which gradually over the years saw me increasingly plus the field and for the past eight years I have been working full time as an illustrator. In short, I draw to live and to relax I draw.

Do you remember your first drawing? There is no trace of my first drawing in my memory but I remember very well some drawings related to my childhood. I remember them because I had the obsession of always depicting cranes building buildings and railway level crossings. I think I've drawn hundreds of them. My mother's numerous art history books that I occasionally used to draw on in the absence of blank sheets of paper also know something about it.

The artificial creation of images now has a spectacular level of quality, which helps, but at the same time threatens, among others, the professionalism of illustrators . Various forms of creativity can be “imitated” by AI and therefore completely replace human processing. Jacopo Perfetti, a teacher and entrepreneur who knows the subject well, states: " What worries me most is not that machines may one day think like man, but that man may one day think like a machine and therefore, Done, stop thinking ." What is your point of view? It is a topic on which I have not yet been able to delve as deeply as I would like but from the few articles I have read I am very much in line with the words of my colleague and friend, the excellent Emiliano Ponzi, when in an interview published a few weeks ago on the subject he said: " I have the feeling that there is a wave much higher than the shelter that can be found ." I can only agree, this is because if we already cannot control the tax evasion of small or large companies in the world, how can we control the images of other hundreds of millions of computers and users? It's too complicated, unless there is a restriction to the source where you access the images. The thing that worries me most about ChatGTP or Midjourney is that many artists are probably influenced by them so much that they no longer work to express their own way of seeing the world, but to copy what AI will succeed. I speak of artists, focusing above all on "commercial" illustration, which for reasons of time and budget does not have much time available for processing and publication. Instead, true artists have original, personal, inimitable styles. People like Salvador Dalì or Picasso speaking of the past, and recent artists or designers like Blu or Zerocalcare, have nothing to fear from the programs. To conclude, I still recommend a site like Have I Been Trained? , a tool that allows artists to understand if their works have been used to train this or that algorithm linked to the app that generates digital art of the moment. I would call it one of the tools that opened the eyes of many other artists who were unaware that their works had been used in the training program.

Three artists that you would like to recommend to our readers. Three are really too few but if I have to narrow the circle I would first recommend two great illustrators: the first and most current is Christoph Niemann who I consider one of the most brilliant minds in contemporary visual communication and who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago here in Milan . The second is Miroslav Sasek who I continue to appreciate today as I did twenty years ago with his colorful line and witty and vintage, yet current style. The last of the three but most linked to painting as an art form remains Amedeo Modigliani . In addition to the jobs for which you are popular, do you have any other passions or secret dreams? I have always wanted to have musical talent. One of the instruments that I have never touched but which remains on the wish list is the drums. I have loved it since I was a teenager when I listened to bands like Offspring, Nofx, Korn and I continue to appreciate it even today since my more adult ears have also been carried away by jazz music.

Chet Baker Is there an artist or character from the past or present that you would like to meet in person? Even here just one becomes too restrictive. But I have always been fascinated by characters and artists like Toulouse-Lautrec in Belle Époque Paris who lived and transmitted in each of their drafts or works of art. I would have a lot of questions and curiosities to ask him so one meeting wouldn't be enough. A work goal that you would like to achieve within a year . There are some projects in the works. The desire is to continue looking for new stimuli and not repeat previous experiences too much. There is an objective that I would like to try to achieve but I believe it will not be easy to complete within the next 365 groups. It is an idea about the history and events that happened in Milan in the last century in each decade and on different themes (architecture/fashion/events). Because Milan is the city that in Italy, more than others, has transformed a lot and continues to transform rapidly from year to year. Can you tell us what you are working on these days? I have just closed a very interesting project that I created for the Emilia Romagna Region and which has to do with the child/parent relationship in different age groups. At the same time I am finalizing a new illustration for the Yacht Boat International magazine which has "adopted" me as its official illustrator for almost two years now.

Yves Saint Laurent + Mondrian

Read the full article

[denimbex1986]

'...When I watched Nolan’s Oppenheimer as soon as it released in India, I was particularly keen to see what a 70mm black-and-white negative looked and felt like. Kodak made this particular reel just for Oppenheimer — and why wouldn’t they? After all, Nolan and a few small group of Hollywood directors are responsible for Kodak’s existence today. Nolan is the world’s most visible and heard advocate of the film camera or celluloid...

I reached out to Sean Baker on Instagram to know why, after having shot Tangerine on an iPhone, he declared he was going back to shooting on film and why he shoots his films on celluloid. He was willing to be interviewed, being another Hollywood director who is articulate about keeping celluloid alive — but in the indie space. His take, like Nolan’s, is unequivocal: “I do believe there is a revival of shooting on celluloid. I see a rise in shooting on 16mm specifically. And I love that Generation Z is embracing film. I don’t think there will be a revival in cameras until they begin being manufactured again. The last film cameras were made close to 20 years ago. We should not abandon the medium that created this wonderful art form just because a cheaper and “easier” option came along. Digital should be an additional option, not a replacement. And there is no doubt that shooting on film elevates the project in market value and in my eyes, aesthetic sophistication.”...

I happen to share workspace with a passionate filmmaker, 43-year-old Shikha Makan, founder of The Celluloid Project. Makan...started The Celluloid Project with a few others — an initiative to raise awareness and support celluloid filmmaking. Makan is attracted to the format’s rigour as well as aesthetics or the quality that she believes makes the image invested in and expressive of a film’s emotional centre. “I wrote to Christopher Nolan through Kodak because we knew nobody can champion the cause of celluloid better than him,” Makan says. It was a battle for this group. “It is about having the option of shooting in celluloid and the access to quality processing in India. Filmmakers now have to get reels from the US and only one processing lab exists in Mumbai now — and that’s not known to give you optimal resolution in your image. It is expensive for smaller filmmakers who still love the format and want to work on the format,” she adds. In 2018, when Nolan came to Mumbai, The Celluloid Project couldn’t meet him despite several attempts...

All celluloidians and Nolan fans agree that celluloid offers a tangible connection to the origins of the craft. The method it requires can lead to a more profound connection between filmmaker, the subject, and the audience. The imperfections and nuances inherent in celluloid contribute to the creation of a genuine, raw, and evocative visual experience that resonates on an emotional level. Embracing celluloid in the present day, as an available filmmaking option, is a bridge between today’s image-saturated world and the roots of image-making and storytelling...'

[theramseyloft]

i read your long pigeon poop post, and after some poking around online i saw that a loft in melbourne australia failed. do you have any idea why that is?

Oh... my fucking God. I am so furious.

Look at this thing!

$70,000 went into this monstrosity?

It looks like they converted a fucking water tower by punching holes in it and welding on entryways shaped like the stereotypical toddler’s first house drawing!

Who fucking researched this?!

Was it designed by a committee purely by aesthetic?!

Here is an article I found on it’s decomission and removal.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-city-councils-70000-pigeon-loft-turned-into-scrap-metal-20160724-gqcmsc.html

According to the pigeon expert quoted in this article: 

“Frank Hayes is the president of the Australian National Pigeon Association. While his group is mostly interested in show pigeons, a different breed to the city pests, he says it was fairly predictable the coop idea was never going to work.”

“ "The nature of the pigeon is that they find a home and they stick with it. So finding them somewhere else to go is a bit of a dream," said Mr Hayes.”

“ "Trying to shift them is one big headache. It's a worldwide problem and no one has ever figured out how to deal with it." ” 

LOOK at this structure!!!

It’s made of fucking METAL!!!

In AUSTRAILIA!!!

In the fucking OPEN!!!!

From this charming article:

 http://melbournedailyphotodaily.blogspot.com/2011/03/pigeon-loft-batman-park.html

“The loft is painted with light coloured corrosion resistant to reflect the heat and minimise internal over-heating. It houses two hundred nesting boxes for pigeon breeding. Eggs laid will be replaced with artificial eggs intended as a humane way to control and reduce pigeon numbers.”

That is a metal structure in the Melbourne sun...

No amount of Paint is gonna make that less an oven.

And I can’t imagine you can add anything to paint to make it corrosion resistant that isn’t noxious in a small space when the metal under it heats up.

“Bird feeding around the loft base is permitted to attract birds out of the CBD to this area. Bird feeding is not permitted in any other area around the CBD.”

But the city council is not actually providing the birds with good quality fed...

“... and no one has ever figured out how to deal with it."

No one, you ignorant twit?

NO ONE?!?!

Here is the site of a successful branch of the German Stadttauben Projekt, translated:

https://stadttauben-stuttgart.de/

“The Stuttgart pigeon project

Dear prospective customers,

nice that you found our homepage. We would like to introduce our project to you on the following pages:

The Stuttgart City Pigeon Project is an animal welfare-friendly concept for regulating and reducing city pigeons for the benefit of people and animals. We operate several supervised pigeon shots in the Stuttgart city area, in which the pigeons are cared for and their eggs are exchanged for dummies so that no offspring hatch. By the end of 2019, there had been well over 45,000 eggs. By feeding grain mixtures in our shots, the animals are no longer forced to look for food on the streets and squares in the area. They spend 80% of the day and the entire night in the dovecote. Ergo - your droppings also stay there and no longer land on roofs or balconies.

We were awarded the Baden-Württemberg State Animal Protection Award 2015 for our commitment .

The city pigeon is one of the most successful residents of the urban living space and today populates all major cities worldwide. It is the free-living descendant of the wild rock pigeons from the coastal and mountain areas in Africa and Eurasia. Long ago, the rock pigeons were domesticated by humans primarily for the purpose of meat production and thus also carried to our latitudes and cities. In modern times, the stock of the archetypal rock pigeon increasingly mixed with breeding, racing and sports pigeons that either escaped, were abandoned or, exhausted by exhausting competitive flights, ran aground in the cities. Today's city pigeons are the overgrown children and children's children of these rock, breeding and sports pigeons.

In cooperation with the state capital of Stuttgart, the Tierschutzverein Stuttgart und Umgebung eV launched the pigeon project in 2008. The cooperation was formed with the aim of bringing about a permanent and humane solution to the city pigeon problem.

The concept of the Federal Working Group for City Pigeons or the so-called * Augsburg Model * was helpful. It is based on scientific publications, practical experience and has already been successfully recommended by several federal states such as Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg. Today it is implemented in more than 80 German cities and towns. For example, there are pigeon houses looked after in Aachen, Augsburg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken and Wuppertal.

We aim for a small, supervised and healthy pigeon population in Stuttgart. Then the image of the city pigeon may rise again. Because healthy animals, which have a permanent home and receive animal feed, do not bother anyone!”

https://stadttauben-stuttgart.de/?page=1,0,0,Chronik+%26+Fakten

“Care instead of fighting: our chronicle

2008:The first step was a dovecote at platform 1 in Stuttgart main station

2009:The second blow was made in the roof of the Leonhardskirche

2009:The third pigeon house was on the Mühlgrün parking garage in Bad-Cannstatt, which has since been demolished and replaced by the pigeon tower in the rope

2010:The fourth facility was the pigeon tower in the city garden on Max-Kade-Weg

2011:The fifth pigeon house stood on the roof of the town hall garage until February 2016. Reconstruction on the roof of the city comb in April 2016.

2011:The sixth dovecote was a second stroke on the roof of the Leonhardskirche (other roof side)

2013:The seventh dovecote was built in the roof of the Fairkauf building in Stuttgart-Feuerbach

2014:The eighth pigeon loft was built (as a replacement for the location at the main station) on a flat roof in the Kriegsbergstrasse

2016:Dovecote number 9 was inaugurated in July 2016 at the Marienplatz in Stuttgart in the roof structure of the imperial building

2017:

On Landhausstrasse in the east of Stuttgart, we were able to set up dovecote No. 10 in the attic of a residential building. It was opened in June 2017

2018:In summer, an indoor pigeon tower was opened at Seilerwasen in Bad Cannstatt as a replacement for the Mühlgrün pigeon house

2019In autumn a new pigeon facility was inaugurated at the station in Zuffenhausen and the first egg was laid in December.    

In addition, a dovecote (trailer) on the grounds of the shelter Stuttgart and Nistwand for about 30 pigeons on the will of the ASPCA Stuttgart  House  Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn in Stuttgart Zuffenhausen care.

... more dovecotes are to follow!

Health hazard facts

A health hazard due to pigeons flying around, running and sitting can be largely excluded. New scientific studies have shown (again) that pathogens that may be contained in the pigeon droppings are usually bird-specific and are therefore not transmitted to humans. This was confirmed in 1995 by the Federal Ministry of Health.

The general classification of the pigeon as a pest was withdrawn by the Federal Institute for Consumer Health Protection back in 1989 on the basis of research results at the time and the opinion from 2001.

Feed facts about pigeons

Feeding pigeons in Stuttgart is prohibited on public land. Well-meaning pigeon friends increase the population density of the city pigeons by regular feeding in the same place, without offering the additionally attracted animals sleeping and nesting places where they are tolerated or the clutch can be exchanged. This creates people who work there or often live more pigeon hate and more pigeon misery.

Above all, too many food scraps are thrown away on the streets and squares of the city! This waste is mostly not compatible with pigeons. They lead to illnesses, shortages and thus, among other things, to the unsightly liquid starvation. Nevertheless, due to the scarcity of bird-friendly feed in cities, these human foods are usually the main basis for the feeding of city pigeons, but their organism is designed for pure hard grain feed. So this means sick pigeon populations that nonetheless reproduce disproportionately due to their (pet) genes raised by humans.

If you would like to help sustainably, please contact us. Only other supervised dovecotes in the city area (including food and egg exchange) start at the root of the "problem". We welcome any support!”

From their gallery:

Here is a loft.

Small, wooden, well insulated from heat and cold.

Those openings are not the nests. They are just doorways with a landing ledge designed around the comfort of pigeons, which are social birds.

Here is the inside.

Lots of comfortable nest boxes, perches in the back, food, water, comfortable socialization space...

Here is an entry into another loft currently in use.

Here is the inside.

Water and feed are provided by the care takers. You can see feed and drinking stations all over the floor.

And this is the inside of a huge new loft in Frankfurt.

These German Taubbenhauses are designed around meeting the birds’ needs for food, comfort, safety from the elements, and socialization with their flock mates.

None of these birds had to be coerced or forcibly relocated.

Because their needs were better met, they came on their own.

Look at the $70,000 Melbourne monstronsity again!

More specifically, look at the bridge behind it.

And tell me where you would rather me.

Compact metal tower designed exclusively around convenient human access, metal nest boxes, 0 landing platforms, no socialization space, no protection from the elements, still no choice but to forage for what ever garbage people toss you...

or the comfortably Cool space under a concrete bridge with a convenient water source.

Three guesses what’s more comfortable for the pigeons.

Now, would you rather live under a bridge with constant noise from traffic, open to predators, 

or

A well insulated apartment building with comfortable suites, a spacious common area, and a nutritious free meal plan with clean water included by default.

"It's a worldwide problem and no one has ever figured out how to deal with it."

My ass, Mr. Hayes!

[ihearthenryyycavill]

Pillows and dog houses (Henry Cavill x reader)

Author’s note: what’s up people, I’m here to offer you some fluffy Henry content. Short story for now, un-beta’ed. Just some fluff for the soul. @littlefreya thanks for dragging me back into the Cavill love train <3

Warnings: a tiny bit of angst, mostly fluff

Ever since she started dating one of the most famous actors in the world, the messages wouldn’t stop. Family members she hadn’t heard of in years suddenly wanted to snoop back into her life, claiming some bullshit reason why they hadn’t contacted her. The intention behind their messages was as clear as the sky, suddenly she was someone, suddenly she had access to more money.

Some of the messages were from fans. Most of them were normal, wishing them luck, or just asking mundane things like how Kal is feeling on this very day. But the mean ones left their impact on her. One time she was an “obese cow”, other times she was a “skeletton who looks she died three days ago”. There was no way to find peace with these hateful people. No matter what she did, there were always people who found a flaw in everything she did.

She threw her phone on the nightstand after a particular mean comment had caught her attention. The commenter was already being called out and cancelled, but the comments towards here biggest insecurity weren’t that easy to deal with.

Her biggest insecurity? That he’d find someone better and leave her for a ten when she was barely feeling like a positive number. He could choose out of a million willing women from all over the globe. Why did he settle for her?

The loud noise from her phone falling off the nightstand alarmed Henry, who had been playing one of his favourite video games up to this point. He paused the game, looking over to her.

“What’s up darling?”, he asked, his voice slightly deeper than usual - because he hadn’t talked since he booted up the game, immersed in the pixels on the screen dragging him into another world.

“Ah, just some assholes.”, she sighed, staring up to the ceiling, pouting as she thought of the comment she had read. Henry could replace her at any given point.

Henry sighed at her words, ending his game, turning off his PC and settling down on the edge of the bed next to her. “You know, what they are saying isn’t true.”, he said, placing a hand on her thigh as his thumb slowly moved up and down on her skin. “They aren’t my fans. They are hateful assholes, and if I could kick their asses without having the media all over me, I’d do it.”

The mental image caused her to chuckle, a soft smile appearing on her lips. “I currently imagine you trying to roundhouse-kick twenty teenagers who are half your size.”, she said, “Who would win? Henry Cavill or twenty rabid teenagers? Quality or quantity?”

“That’d be an interesting niche youtube video.”, Henry laughed, his hands leaving the now warm spot on her thighs, him laying down next to her. The warmth of his body radiating off him, such a familiar feeling, home in a single person. From downstairs, they heard Kal walking around, before he laid down on his spot by the couch. During quarantine, Henry had made a little bed for the big dog, which he promptly broke because he decided to jump on it instead of step on it. Since this very day, Kal has slept on the mattress which was originally for his bed. But it was comfy anyways, so the dog didn’t mind at all.

Henry smiled at the memory of his silly dog as he pulled his woman closer. The mean comments are long forgotten, replaced by a conversation about Kal and what Henry could build for him once he had another week to catch a break.

“We could build a little house in the garden for him?”, she suggested, pushing herself up so she could look at his handsome face. How the sunshine falling into the room gave him almost angelic-like features, highlighting his strong chin, his eyes closed as he imagined the house in front of his inner eye.

“Then on the first day, he would be so energetic, he’d jump on the house and break it, and we can fish splinters out of his fur.”, he said, causing both of them to laugh. “What do you think”, she started, causing Henry to open his eyes again, “Who would win? Superman or our Kal?”

Henry thought for a short moment, then smiled, “Kal for sure. He already owns the hearts of so many, that’d be an easy win for him.”

“But you own the hearts of so many too”, she threw in, poking into his chest, “You are everybody’s sweetheart.”

“But that doesn’t matter to me.”, Henry answered, her eyebrows raised in confusion.

“Hm?”

“As long as I am your sweetheart, I don’t care about anyone and anything.”

Henry placed a hand on the back of her head, guiding her to his face, gently placing a kiss on her lips. “I love you sweetheart.”

“To the moon and back?”, she asked, giving her Henry puppy dog eyes. Henry thought for a moment, then gave her his infamous shit-eating grin.

“To uranus and back!”, Henry grinned, and once she realized the pun...

“Cavill!”, he earned a pillow being thrown into his face.

“Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?”, he laughed, putting the pillow back into its normal spot. 

She nodded, pecking his lips one more time, “Exactly what I wanted and needed. I love you so much, you silly duck. My Henry dear...”

[the-wild-wolves-around-you]

Carry Me Home (A Din Djarin/Reader Fic)

Summary: Din and Reader find themselves on a jungle planet hunting a bounty, but nothing goes as planned, and secrets are shared.

***Based off this line from a previous fic in this series: "Then the mysterious bounty hunter told you his name one day when you were trying to hold his femoral artery together with nothing but bacta gel and hope."

No spoilers. Set in Season 1 between Episode 6 (The Prisoner) & Episode 7 (The Reckoning)

Pairings: Din Djarin/Reader; Din Djarin/You

Rating: M(ature)

Warnings: Blood, gore, & violence. Brief mentions of past slavery. 

A/N: In true Star Wars fashion, I'm just writing shit out of order lol. But the idea for this fic kept bugging me, so i just had to get it out on the page. 

You don't need to read the previous fics to understand this one, though (since the others are set in s2.) I have some more ideas for out of order stories, too, so I'll most likely be continuing this series.But let me know if you'd be interested in a fic from Din's POV! I think that could be fun, but if y'all are digging Reader POV, I'll stick to that.

And in case anyone cares, the title is taken from the lyrics of Arcade by Duncan Lawrence, which I was listening to on repeat as I wrote this. 

As always, I’ve posted this piece on Ao3, but I’ll paste the text below. 

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28763814

I’ll also include the links to the other two fics here: 

The Sea Like Glass Ch 1: Here

The Sea Like Glass Ch 2 (includes smut): Here

“Dank farrik!” you hissed as the wire in front of you sparked and sent a jolt of electricity through your already singed fingers. Not for the first time, you wished you could wear your gloves, but some of the pieces that needed repairing were too small to feel through the bulky material, so you could do nothing more than sacrifice your flesh for the cause.

Didn’t make it hurt less, though. You sucked the smarting tips into your mouth, glaring at the trashed circuit board in front of you, but the ruined hardware only crackled in response.

If you were back in Hanger 3-5 in Mos Eisley, you would have probably trashed the whole part and dug through Peli’s stock for a replacement, or gone down to the market and haggled for something newer, but you weren’t on Tatooine. You were smack dab in the middle of a jungle planetoid you couldn’t remember the name of, and it was up to you to get the Razor Crest running again on what you had available.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot.

You sighed as you sat back on your haunches, using the back of your wrist to swipe at the sweat trailing down your temple. The pre-Empire ship towered over you as you dug into her innards, having pried off one of the semi-melted lower side panels to access the appropriate circuits. Your thin tank top was already drenched, and the hair sticking to the back of your neck kept giving you phantom itches. You wanted nothing more than to tie it up completely, but you always felt naked when your nape was exposed. You weren’t necessarily ashamed of the scar there, or the past connected to it, since it wasn’t your fault you were born into shackles, but… still. It was a… personal story to tell, and you weren’t sure you were ready to share it with your new boss.

Well, “new” was relative. You’d been employed on the Razor Crest for several months now, but you didn’t know much more about the Mandalorian than you did when you’d first set foot onto his ship. You knew he was a bounty hunter, from a race of legendary warriors. You knew he had a partially sordid, and dangerous, past if your encounter with Ran and his crew of mercenaries was any indication. You knew the green baby was his ward, or foundling as he called it, and Mando was tasked with returning the little guy to his people. And you knew his Creed forbid him from removing his helmet.

That was about it. The Mandalorian didn’t talk much, but it didn’t particularly bother you. You’d always been a quieter person, and after years of Peli’s constant chattering, you were kind of relieved for the silence.

Most of the time, anyway.

“How’s it looking?”

You gasped in alarm, jolting yourself off balance and falling back onto your ass in the dirt.

“Maker, Mando,” you panted as you craned your neck back to stare up at the bounty hunter. “What have I told you about sneaking up on me when I’m working on electrics?”

The impervious mask of the Mandalorian stared down at you silently, blotting out the sweltering sun and providing you a modicum of relief. A moment passed, then two, and you shifted uneasily under his unblinking gaze.

“I thought you heard me approach,” he said finally, his modulated voice flat and unaffected, but he didn’t move from where he was looming over you.

“Well, I didn’t,” you grumbled as you flopped your head forward and popped your neck, stretching your legs out in the dirt.

The tight leggings you wore ended not too far past your knees, so your shins were streaked with the red soil of this planetoid. The dirt didn’t bother you, but the heat sure did. It was different than Tatooine’s dry desert. This heat was oppressive, stifling, almost cloying, and every time you took a deep breath, a small part of your brain panicked, images of drowning flashing through your mind even though you knew it was irrational. You were just grateful your clothes didn’t look a fraction as hot as the Mandalorian’s all black get-up and what had to be twenty-five kilos of armor.

“So,” the bounty hunter said after a few more moments of silence, interrupted only by the call of exotic birds in the canopy, “how are things looking?”

“Honestly?” you sighed as you pushed yourself off the ground, dusting the red dirt off your hands but not even bothering with your pants. “Not good. The bounty’s guns must have grazed us when we were still outside orbit, and entering the atmosphere certainly didn’t help matters. Some of the side paneling has been melted beyond repair, and a lot of the wiring is fried, too.”

“Can you get it flying?” Mando asked, crossing his arms over his chest and making his silhouette all the more imposing. The sun glinted off his silver beskar, and you squinted in the glare.

“Maybe.” You pursed your lips and averted your gaze, turning back to stare at the charred panels and sparking wires. Sweat trickled down your neck, and you reached back to cup your nape, feeling the bounty hunter’s eyes on you.

“Didn’t know I was paying you for maybes.”

“You’re not paying me at all if you can’t even catch that quarry,” you snorted before your brain could catch up to your mouth.

You froze when the words finally registered, nails digging into the back of your neck. Stupid. Your mouth always did get the better of you. You used to mouth-off to your former owner until he backhanded you into silence, and now you’re starting shit with a bounty hunter you’d seen kill half a dozen men in just as many seconds.

Stupid.

You waited for Mando to say something, staring at the Razor Crest without even seeing it, and even if you didn’t really believe he’d hurt you for a simple off-handed comment, your body didn’t get the message. Muscle memory was a hard thing to forget, and every fiber in you braced for the blow.

The birds chittered in the towering blue-green canopy above your head as sweat poured from every single one of your pores, and you were just about to come out of your skin when the Mandalorian finally spoke.

“Well, to catch the quarry, I need my ship to fly,” he said, and when you chanced a glance over your shoulder, you discovered he’d somehow moved further away from you, like he took several steps back.

Was he… giving you space?

His tone was still flat, but after several months spent in close proximity with the bounty hunter, you were now able to parse out several different minor inflections in his modulated voice. You were by no means an expert, but you knew for a fact he didn’t sound angry in this moment. When he was angry, his voice took on a softer, menacing quality. The few times you’d heard it—thankfully never directed at you—every hair on your body stood on end, and the lizard part of your brain had screamed to run and not stop running until you were in a completely different star system.

This wasn’t anger. This was… something else. You almost wanted to say… amusement, but that would have been crazy.

Still, the tension bled out of your shoulders like sand through a sieve, and you dropped your arms as you turned to face the Mandalorian fully again.

“Alright, this is the best I can do,” you said. “I can get her flying again, I think I can even get her shielded enough to withstand leaving the atmosphere when we’re done here, but it’s gonna take some time.”

“How much time?” he asked.

You glanced over your shoulder again at the damage, did some calculations in your head, and added some padding to give yourself a margin for error. Then you turned back to the bounty hunter.

“At least two days,” you replied, confident in your abilities. “Anything less, and we risk blowing ourselves to the Inner Core and back when I go to start her up.”

“Hmm.” Mando stared at you for a moment and then shifted to gaze into the jungle. “The bounty will most likely be off planet by then.”

“I don’t think so,” you contradicted him, and your heart actually skipped a beat when the T of his visor turned to look at you. There was something nerve-wracking about staring into the dark, reflective glass, but then you noticed your red-streaked appearance, and you cringed self-consciously as you looked away.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because,” you started, stooping down to pick up the tablet beside your tool bag, “when I first came out here and saw the damage, I was afraid we’d end up in this situation. But then I remembered that the quarry’s ship took more damage than we did in our little space battle. I know for a fact we landed at least one solid hit, I saw it myself.”

“And?”

“Well,” you said as you tapped at the screen, “given the make and model of his vessel, and the location of where we struck the ship, I was able to deduce that we most likely damaged his engines. If his engines are damaged, then there is a maximum distance he could have gone before he would have been forced to land, or even crash landed. With all this information, plus the fact that I knew the general location of where we lost visual of him when we entered the atmosphere, I’ve estimated the quarry can’t be farther than five klicks from our current coordinates. And with his entry trajectory, he’s most likely in this triangulated area three and a half klicks to the west, which should be easily reachable on foot.”

You turned the map on the tablet to face the Mandalorian, and he stepped forward to take the device from you. His gloved fingers brushed across your singed ones, remnant electricity shooting through your veins, and you stifled a flinch as you dropped your arm.

Mando studied the map for a long moment, cocking his head and zooming in to get a better look. You shifted uneasily in the silence, scuffing the tip of your boot into the red soil, but then the bounty hunter finally looked back up at you.

“When did you have time to do this?” he asked, and he actually sounded… impressed. “You were out here for less than ten minutes after we landed.”

“It wasn’t that hard.” You shrugged as your cheeks flushed with heat, but you blamed the sweltering sun overhead and the soup-like air.

“I didn’t realize you were so good with numbers,” he said, his helmet staring directly at you.

“Numbers are easy,” you replied, shrugging again as you raised your hand to chew nervously on your nails, but you stopped yourself when you saw the crimson dirt still caked on your skin. “They don’t lie, once you understand the rules.”

“Did Peli teach you how to do this?” he inquired, and you were surprised by all these questions. Most of the time, the bounty hunter asked you one-or-two-word questions and expected one-or-two-word answers. You couldn’t figure out why this situation was any different, but you found yourself responding anyway.

“Partially,” you explained, and you wondered how you could phrase your answer to be vague but satisfactory. “She… taught me a lot of the specifics for bigger jobs like ships and larger machines, but I’ve always been good at numbers and tinkering.”

That seemed good enough. You didn’t think it was relevant that you first started tinkering because your former owner used to lock you in his shop’s basement with broken droids when you misbehaved, and putting the discarded machines back together kept you from going crazy when your punishments lasted days. You also didn’t think it relevant that when your former owner found out and realized he could profit off your skills, you fine-tuned your abilities to become indispensable. The bastard still hit you occasionally, and his other slaves weren’t treated any better, but you had to admit, him locking you in the basement all those years had saved your life. If you hadn’t cultivated the skills you had, Peli wouldn’t have bought you at auction when the bastard bit the sand, and she wouldn’t have dug out your transmitter chip and effectively freed you the moment you walked into Hanger 3-5. The tiny woman had said she needed an apprentice, not a slave, and so that was what you became. Now, you were a mechanic in your own right, and a damn good one if you did say so yourself. Mando just didn’t need to know how you’d gotten there.

The bounty hunter seemed to think the same thing, too, because he nodded once before he looked back at the tablet.

“This is good work,” he said, and something in your chest preened at his words before you squashed it down. “If these calculations are correct—”

“They are,” you interjected before you could stop yourself.

“Then I think I can set out on foot, find the quarry, and bring him back tomorrow just as you’re finishing the repairs,” Mando went on, and he glanced up at you again. “Does that time frame sound right to you?”

“Maybe.” You shrugged. “Should work for me, but it could take you a little longer. I’m unfamiliar with this terrain, and there are too many other variables, like jungle beasts or indigenous species, for me to be sure.”

“The terrain won’t be a problem,” the Mandalorian said as he handed you the tablet back. “And neither will any beasts or natives.”

You cocked an eyebrow at the bounty hunter but didn’t contradict his confidence. “Alright. Then, yes, I should have the ship up and running by the time you get back. Are you leaving now?”

“Once I grab some supplies,” Mando replied before he paused and seemed to consider you. “Will you be… okay until I return?”

It was a familiar question, albeit still surprising. The Mandalorian was a stoic, usually silent warrior, literally a wall of beskar steel. You’d seen him kill men as easy as breathing, and he threw each bounty into carbonite without an ounce of remorse.

And yet, every time he had to leave the ship alone, he asked you if you would be alright until he got back. The question and concern would have made no sense… if you hadn’t seen the bounty hunter interact with his foundling. He tried to hide it, but he treated the little green baby so gently you knew there had to be a warm, beating heart beneath all that beskar. You just never expected any tenderness to be aimed at you, so it drew you up short every time.

“Yeah.” You smiled. “I’ll be fine. Besides—”

You trailed off as you felt something touch your lower leg, and when you looked down, big brown eyes set in a little green face blinked back up at you. Then little green hands lifted in your direction, and you laughed as you swooped down, picked him up, and set him on your hip.

“Besides,” you continued, still chuckling as you booped the child on the nose and left a smudge of red dirt behind, “I’ll have this little guy to keep me company. Right, kid?”

The baby cooed and reached out, his three tiny fingers settling on the bridge of your nose as he tried to boop you back. When he withdrew his hand, though, his skin was dyed black.

“Huh?” You frowned at the slick ooze on his fingers, your eyes crossing as you tried to bring his hand into focus. “What’s on your hand there, bud?”

“It’s grease,” Mando supplied.

“What?” you asked as you turned your head to the bounty hunter.

“Grease,” he repeated, and he touched the intersection on the glass T of his visor, right over where the bridge of his nose would sit. “You’ve got some just there.”

“Oh.” You blushed, your hand flying up to cover your face. Not only were you covered in dirt and sweat, but grease now, too. Typical. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought you knew,” the Mandalorian said, but there was that faint undercurrent in his voice that you were sure was amusement now. “Don’t you have any rags?”

“I did,” you muttered as you tried to rub at your face with your shoulder, “but I had to throw most of them out after that oil leak we had on the moon we left about a week ago. It’s fine. I’m already a mess anyhow, and I’m just going to get dirtier as I fix up the ship.”

Mando seemed to stare at you intensely for a moment, and you had the feeling he was taking in just how filthy your clothes were. You could read nothing from his body language, though, and since he wasn’t speaking, there was nothing to infer from his voice, either. Embarrassed heat crawled up your neck, and you suddenly felt naked in your tank top and leggings. You shifted the child in your arms a little to bring him more in front of you and block more of you from view, but the effort was useless because Mando was abruptly spinning on heel and marching toward the ship’s ramp.

“I’m going to gather supplies,” he said gruffly over his shoulder. “Don’t let the kid touch any of the wires.”

And then he was gone, his cape flapping behind him as he disappeared into the bowels of the Razor Crest.

“Okay, bye,” you muttered, and you frowned after him before looking down at the kid and lowering your voice. “Your dad’s a little weird, you know that?”

The child blinked up at you and then seemed to nod his head in solemn agreement.

You laughed and kissed the top of his head even though you knew you were toeing a dangerous line here. You knew you were just the ship mechanic, the hired help, but you and the foundling had spent a lot of time together when the Mandalorian was out hunting bounties, and you couldn’t help loving the adorable baby like he was your own. He was mischievous and always looking to put things in his mouth that he shouldn’t, but something about his presence was calming, soothing. Plus, those big brown eyes were to die for. You weren’t even that surprised the kid had managed to wiggle his way under Mando’s beskar. It had only been a few months, but you knew without a shadow of a doubt that if it came down to it, you would give your life to save this child.

Which was wildly inappropriate, but you chose to ignore that fact.

“It’s just gonna be the two of us again for a bit, little man,” you told the foundling, turning back to face the Razor Crest. “But we’re gonna have some fun, yeah? Do you want to help me fix up the ship?”

The child gurgled into your ear and patted your cheek, which you took as an affirmative.

“Alright,” you laughed as you set him on a large root right next to your tool bag. You dug around until you found a tool you would need eventually, and then you handed it to the kid. “Here, hold this until I need it, okay? But don’t put it in your mouth.”

The foundling seemed to pout at that last bit, but he dutifully wrapped his three little fingers around the tool and held it firmly.

“Thank you.” You smiled. Then you turned back to the ship, put your hands on your hips, and furrowed your brow. “Now, where to start?”

You spent the next ten minutes assessing what was completely ruined, what was salvageable, and what you had on hand that wasn’t necessary and could possibly be retrofitted to fix the damage. The skeletal beginnings of a plan were already forming in your mind by the time the Mandalorian was clomping down the ramp again. You set down the tablet you’d been tapping away at and picked up the child once more, and the foundling babbled as he waved around the tool he was still holding.

“Be careful with that,” you chuckled, and you craned your head back to avoid getting smacked in the temple. “I’ll need it soon, so keep holding onto it.”

The child cooed and then shifted to wave the tool at the bounty hunter as he approached.

“Putting the kid to work now?” Mando asked as he stopped a few feet away. The crescent-shaped hilt of his favored Amban rifle jutted out over his left shoulder, and a small bag was slung over his right, probably filled with spare ammo, cuffs for the bounty, and possibly some food. You’d never personally seen the Mandalorian eat, though, and a part of you was convinced he didn’t, even if you rationally knew that wasn’t possible.

“Nah, I’m just teaching him a thing or two,” you said as you settled the foundling more soundly on your hip. “You’re never too young to learn something new, and on the plus side, being my little helper keeps him out of trouble. For the most part, anyway.”

“Thank you for watching him,” the bounty hunter said, tilting his visor down minutely to stare at the child, who grinned a gummy grin and waved the silver tool again. “I know it isn’t exactly what I hired you for—”

“I don’t mind,” you cut him off, and you glanced down to smile at the kid. “He’s pretty good company, and some of Peli’s droids have given me more trouble than he does. It’s really no problem.”

“Well, regardless,” Mando replied as his visor returned to studying you. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” You nodded, flushing again under his scrutiny. Then you cleared your throat and gestured at the bag on his back. “All ready?”

“Yes,” the bounty hunter said. “Days are longer here, but the sun will set eventually, and I want to try and find the quarry before moonrise. If all goes well, I should be back tomorrow before sunset.”

“Good luck, then,” you told him, and you lifted your chin with confidence. “I should have the ship ready when you return.”

“Thank you.” He inclined his helmet.

The baby suddenly burst out babbling something, and you glanced down to see him reaching out with his free hand toward the Mandalorian. His three little fingers made grabby motions, and the bounty hunter sighed.

“Listen to her while I’m gone, okay?” Mando murmured as he stepped closer into your personal bubble and held out his finger for the foundling to latch on to.

The child cooed, swinging the Mandalorian’s finger from side to side, and the breath stilled in your lungs as the bounty hunter’s glove brushed the edge of your mouth. You smelled something like leather and smoke, probably blaster residue, but then Mando was stepping back again, and the baby was forced to drop his finger.

“Keep alert,” he addressed you as he adjusted the pack on his shoulder. “We’re pretty far from any civilization out here, so I don’t think you should encounter anyone, but don’t assume you’re safe. And get inside the ship once the sun sets. The jungle will be more dangerous at night. I’ll have my comlink on me, but it’s affected by proximity, so you most likely won’t be able to contact me until I’m on my way back.”

“Don’t worry, Mando,” you said, and you patted the blaster he’d given you that was almost permanently attached to your hip. “I can defend myself if need be, and I have no desire to be caught outside after dark. We’ll be fine.”

“I know,” he replied, but you weren’t sure if he was trying to convince you or himself. Either way, he seemed to compose himself because he nodded once. “I’ll be back soon.”

“We’ll keep a weather eye on the horizon.” You smiled. “Try not to die of heat stroke.”

“I’ll try my best,” he said dryly, but after one more moment of staring at you and the foundling, he turned on heel and marched off into the jungle without another word. The multi-colored trees swallowed him almost instantly, and suddenly you were alone.

The child cooed sadly as he stared after the Mandalorian, and he turned his big brown eyes on you as if to say, Where’d he go?

“Don’t worry, bud,” you said, turning back to the ship. “He’ll be fine and back before you know it. Now, let’s take a look at those power converters, shall we?”

You set the foundling down beside your tool bag again, but you couldn’t help glancing over your shoulder in the direction the bounty hunter had disappeared in.

He’ll be fine and back before you know it, you repeated silently to yourself.

~~~~~

Two days later, you were starting to doubt the validity of your statements.

The sun had set and risen twice, and there was still no sign of Mando. Now, the celestial orb was steadily making its way across the horizon for the third time, and you sat on the ramp of the ship and glared up at the chattering canopy.

The child was down for a nap in the hammock the Mandalorian had set up in his own bunk, and your eyes burned with a similar exhaustion, but the anxiety slowly mounting in you made it impossible to sleep. The past two days had passed uneventfully. You’d spent every hour of sunlight you had at your disposal patching together the ship, and since days were longer on this planetoid, you estimated you’d spent over seventy-two hours getting the Razor Crest in working order again.

And you’d done it. It wasn’t perfect, but the ship could fly, and you were ninety-eight percent certain it would withstand leaving the atmosphere.

Now, all that was missing was the Mandalorian and his bounty.

“Dank farrik, Mando,” you grumbled under your breath as you dragged your singed, cut-up, and bandaged fingers through your hair. “Where the Maker are you?”

The chittering birds and critters in the underbrush didn’t have an answer for you, and you huffed out an aggravated breath as another bead of sweat dripped into your eyes.

By your estimate, there were about six hours left before the sun set again. Part of you, the illogical, irrational part, wanted to charge into the jungle in search of the Mandalorian. You had a general direction and location he should be in. Maybe you could find him.

But the rational side of your brain thankfully pointed out all the problems with that plan. For one, leaving the ship unattended was dangerous. You hadn’t seen anyone in the past two days, but that didn’t mean you were alone in the jungle, and now that the ship could fly again, someone could potentially walk right in and steal the vessel if you weren’t here to stop them.

Then there was the issue of the foundling. Sometimes, Mando took you and the kid along with him when he was hunting a bounty in a more populated area, but he was always there to protect the two of you if something went wrong. What happened if you brought the child with you into the jungle and you couldn’t protect him? And you couldn’t exactly leave him behind. Someone could steal both the child and the Razor Crest in that scenario.

The most compelling reason to stay with the ship, though, was Mando himself. Before he left, he’d confidently declared that neither the jungle itself nor the beasts or peoples therein would pose any problem for him. If he was wrong, and these things had posed a problem for the bounty hunter, what luck did you have of doing something he could not?

Anddddd that’s where the irrational side of you chimed in again with, Well, if he did run into an issue, he could need your help, so you should go look for him.

It was a vicious cycle, and your head was pounding with how fast it was running in circles.

You groaned as you dropped your face into your hands, digging the heels of your palms into your eye sockets.

“Fine,” you sighed into the darkness. “I’ll give him until morning.”

If the Mandalorian hadn’t returned by then, you’d start up the ship and fly over the area you’d triangulated for him. If you couldn’t find him from the air… well, you’d cross that bridge when you came to it.

~~~~~

You huffed in irritation as you tossed and turned in Mando’s bunk that night. You turned one way, rolled another, but then you found yourself with your nose buried in his pillow, and you instantly flipped back over, face hot with embarrassment even though it was dark and you were practically alone. You weren’t sure if he slept with his helmet on when he was alone in the closed confines of the bunk, but either way, the small space smelled of him intensely. You tried not to put words to his scent, told yourself it was inappropriate and he was your boss, a Mandalorian to boot, and you had no room or right to think of him in any way other than strictly professional… but that apparently didn’t work because you knew he smelled like the cheap soap from the fresher, and the rest was a blend of smoke, leather, and metal, the degrees of which varied by the day and yet was still always uniquely him.

You knew you were playing a losing game even just having these thoughts, but you somehow couldn’t help yourself, couldn’t stop yourself. Ever since Mando stepped between you and Ran’s crew all those months ago, blocking you with his body, a startling, protective rage in every inch of his armored silhouette, this little voice had come to life in the back of your head and wouldn’t shut the kriff up.

What if? the little voice whispered. What if it’s not just you having these thoughts? What if you could have him in more than just your dreams and fantasies in the darkness of this bunk?

Usually, you shoved the voice into the deep, dark recesses of your thoughts and recited equations until it grew quiet. You knew that was nothing but wishful thinking at best and delusion at worst. The Mandalorian was just that: a warrior closed off from the world by a shell of silver beskar. He cared for the foundling, yes, but that was entirely different and bore no correlation to the bounty hunter’s relationship with you. There was little he could possibly want from a former slave turned mechanic, aside from your skills, of course, so you clenched your eyes closed and tried to take shallow breaths through your mouth, but nothing you did could get his scent out of your nose, your memory.

You sighed for the umpteenth time and rolled to face the wall of the bunk.

When the bounty hunter was on the ship, the two of you usually slept in shifts so you could share the bunk, though sometimes the Mandalorian slept upright in the cockpit. It had been his idea originally. You’d been fine with a thin sleeping mat on the floor of the cargo bay, but he’d insisted in his strange, stoic, nonchalant way. So, you shared, and when it was just you and the kid on the ship, the two of you had the run of the place.

The child was currently in the hammock above your head, but you were pretty sure he wasn’t asleep, either. Every so often, he’d gurgle or make some other noise, and more than once you peeked up to find big brown eyes staring down at you in the dimness. You wondered if he could sense your anxiety, and you shifted so you could glare past your feet, out of the bunk, and at the closed ramp door.

You wanted to be angry with Mando, but by the time the sun set a few hours ago, you’d moved past that anger and straight into worry. The bounty hunter had never been gone this long before without contact, and your gut told you something was wrong and wouldn’t let you sleep. You wished you could blame your insomnia completely on your concern, but sadly, that wasn’t the case.

As if on cue, a sudden, piercing shriek echoed through the ship, and all the muscles in your body locked up on reflex.

The child gasped and made a worried noise as he poked his head over the edge of his hammock and stared down at you, and you tried to plaster on a fake, reassuring smile.

“It’s alright,” you murmured, reaching up to gently rock the foundling. “The ship’s closed and locked up. They can’t get us in here.”

The baby made an unconvinced sound, but he settled back into his bed without any further argument.

You sighed as you continued to rock the child, and you did your best not to flinch when another high-pitched screech sounded outside the ship.

You weren’t entirely sure what “they” were, but you knew they were nocturnal and carnivorous. And hungry. The past two mornings, you’d found bloody animal remains torn to bits and strewn along the edges of the clearing the Razor Crest was parked in like gory, crimson confetti. You’d kept the child practically glued to your side during the days because of this, but nothing ever attacked you during the day. They just circled the ship incessantly at night, howling and screeching and keeping you from finding a moment’s peace or rest. They hadn’t outright attacked the ship yet, but you were ready for it, your borrowed blaster a cold and heavy weight tucked under your pillow.

Reaching for it now, you curled your fingers around the familiar hilt and tried to block out the crescendoing, bloodthirsty shrieks of the mysterious jungle beasts.

You didn’t know how or when, but you must have dozed off at some point because all of the sudden, you jolted awake with a panicked gasp.

The bunk was dark and close around you, but since you’d left the door open at your feet, it wasn’t claustrophobic. Your vision was still blurry with sleep, so you swiped at your eyes with the back of your left wrist as you scrambled into a seated position. In your right hand you grasped the blaster, and you pointed it blindly in front of you, toward the rear of the ship.

You couldn’t remember what had woken you up, but it had been something. Your heart pounded a frantic tattoo into the underside of your ribcage, your arm shaking minutely with adrenaline. The ramp was still closed in front of you, so it hadn’t been Mando opening the door and returning. You squinted in the darkness but couldn’t see anything beyond shadows and vague shapes in pale, muted moonlight. It must have still been night, then.

You strained your ears, listening for the howling, but it was quiet. Suspiciously quiet. The jungle beasts usually didn’t go silent until right before dawn, but it was dark enough in the ship that you estimated it was still the middle of the night.

Where had they gone?

Your heart rose up into your throat, sweat beading at every one of your pores, and your mouth was so dry that your throat clicked when you swallowed.

The child made a noise of inquiry above you, barely louder than a breath, but it still made you jump all the same. Your gaze darted upward to find brown eyes staring down at you, but they were wide in an alarmed sort of way. One three-fingered hand poked over the edge of the hammock, making grabby motions at you, and the noise he made this time was more urgent, louder.

Had he heard something, too?

“What is it, little guy?” you whispered, reaching up with your free hand and awkwardly grappling him from his sling-bed.

He tumbled gently into your lap with a soft “oof,” but almost immediately he was standing up, turning around, and frantically patting at your cheek.

“What?” you asked with a frown.

He babbled and continued to tap the side of your face, and his noises grew increasingly distressed until he was grunting with frustration.

Then his tiny palm actually slapped down right across your ear canal so hard that both of your ears rang, and you hissed as you jerked your head back.

“Kriff, what was that fo—” you started to ask, but another hiss cut you off, and this one wasn’t from you.

Your heart stuttered, eyes skipping over the child’s head and out into the cargo bay, and your right hand tightened around the blaster you’d lowered to your side.

But there was nothing there. Nothing moved in the shadowy ship beyond you, and you frowned, thinking your mind was playing tricks on your startled and sleep-addled mind, but then the hiss came again.

And this time, you recognized it.

“Oh, pfassk!” you cursed as you craned around and shoved your hand under the pillow. Your fingers scrambled wildly across the sheet but encountered nothing, and you growled in aggravation, shifting the child off your lap and coming onto your hands and knees. You tossed the pillow over your shoulder in a fit of frustration, and your right hand slapped at the wall around your head until the bunk light came on.

You squinted in the flood of harsh light, the child gurgling behind you, but when your vision cleared, you spotted the thumb-sized comlink off the edge of the cot, shoved up into the far corner of the bunk. You lunged forward and wrapped your fingers around the small device, and the words were falling out of your mouth before you were even sure you had hit the button.

“Mando?” you called into the comlink, cringing when your loud voice echoed back to you in the close confines of the bunk. “Mando, can you hear me?”

Mild static crackled back for a moment as you huddled around the tiny communicator, but then a louder burst of static—the hiss from earlier—exploded to life.

And you were sure you heard Mando’s voice in there.

“Mando!” you shouted as you heart did its best imitation of a speeder, and you cupped both hands around the comlink like that would help him hear you better. “Mando, it’s me! I’m here. Can you hear me?”

Another burst of static. Then…

Mando yelled your name, clear as day, followed by a scream of what sounded like “help” and a chorus of familiar howling, and your stomach bottomed out inside of you.

“Mando!” You were gripping the communicator so hard you were afraid you were going to break it. “Mando, where are you? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t respond. You sat there frozen for a full minute, ears straining to the point of ringing, but only quiet static crackled back at you.

“Dank farrik!” you cursed, punching the side of your fist into the bunk wall.

The child cooed at you, brown eyes big with concern, and he put his tiny hand on your knee as you raked a shaking hand through your hair.

Your chest heaved up and down as you fought for breath, your mind spinning off into a million directions at once.

Mando was in trouble. Mando needed your help. He was fighting jungle beasts, and he was far enough away that you couldn’t hear the shrieking with your own ears, but close enough that he could partially reach you over the comlink. You had to do something. You had to go help him.

But what about the child? What about the ship? You couldn’t take the Razor Crest. It was pitch black outside, and you wouldn’t be able to see Mando below the thick, dark canopy. You had to go on foot.

And you had to take the kid with you.

“Come on,” you said as you tucked the communicator into your pocket, grabbed the foundling and blaster, and scooted to the edge of the bunk. Your boots were on the ground below you, and you shoved your feet in them blindly, tying the laces in three deft movements.

Then you were on your feet, turning on the cargo lights, and jogging the child over to his floating silver carrier. You grabbed the spare remote on top of it, pressing the button and watching the top slide open with a hiss. Then you set the foundling down inside of it, and in the same motion you were tucking the remote into your pocket, turning on heel, and striding for the armory.

Another button press, followed by the hiss of hydraulics, and you were left staring at several walls of guns and weaponry. Some of them you knew. Mando had even taught you how to shoot a few, but those were typically smaller blasters.

And based on those howling screeches, you needed something with more of a kick.

Your eyes skipped over the blaster pistols since you already had the one on your hip, and after a moment’s indecision, your gaze settled on a midsized rifle you’d shot once before. You hadn’t been very good at it, only hit four of the ten targets Mando set out, and you remember it being very heavy.

But it was better than nothing, and you needed something to fight back against the dark jungle.

So, you took the rifle down and looped it around your shoulder, pursing your lips as the strap dug into your skin. You spent a moment checking the power cell and gas canister, and even though both were full, you still stuck a few spares into a belt that you wrapped around your hips. You also added a few grenades to your arsenal, both explosive and ones set to stun, plus a pair of Mando’s vibroknives, as a last defense measure. If you were being honest, if the rifle and grenades failed you, you probably wouldn’t live long enough to use the knives, but it made you feel better to clip their sheaths unto your belt.

The rifle and belt weighed you down with an extra five to six kilos, but you had lugged far heavier burdens through Tatooine’s desert, so you knew you could handle it.

The last two things you grabbed were the head lamp you typically wore when working under or inside ships and the cuff you’d programmed to work the twin lights—along with a variety of other tasks aboard the Razor Crest—resting at each of your temples. The cuff was a haphazard creation of yours made of old leather, metal, and glass, but it worked and was comfortable, which was all that mattered. It also had a small magnetic slot that was specifically meant for the remote of the foundling’s floating carrier, so you fished that out of your pocket and felt it snap into place with a satisfying click.

You were armed and ready now. All you had to do was move.

“Mando,” you said as you stuck the comlink in your ear and synced it to your cuff, which had a built-in frequency booster. You were already moving toward the ramp, tapping at your wrist and listening to the foundling’s carrier humming after you. The rifle felt heavy as you maneuvered it into your slick palms, and your heart hammered a war song in your ears. “Mando, I’m coming for you. Just hold on, okay?”

Static crackled in your ear, and your chest began to heave up and down as adrenaline flooded through you.

“Okay, little man, you’re going to take a nap, alright?” you said as you looked down at the child in his pod, your voice shaking even though you tried to stop it. “And when you wake up, your dad will be back with us.”

He cooed up at you with a fearful expression on his face, but you only spared a moment to press a kiss to his head before you were tapping at your wrist again. The lid of the pod started to hiss close as the ramp of the ship began to clank open, and you slid your finger onto the rifle’s trigger as the door slowly lowered before you.

The ramp finally thudded to the jungle floor, and you took a moment to stare out into the foreboding darkness. The moon was pale and wan in the purple-tinted sky, and all you could see were shadows along the edges of the clearing. Your eyes darted back and forth, every muscle in your body locked and braced for an attack, but nothing happened. Nothing moved save the indigo clouds over head, and the only sound you heard was the muted chirps and hums of insects.

“Okay, come on, quit stalling,” you muttered to yourself even though your heart felt like it was about to roll off your tongue. “Mando doesn’t have time for this.”

At the sound of his name—or at least, the only name you had ever known the bounty hunter by—some of the fear inside you vanished, and you were suddenly jogging down the ramp without further thought. The child’s carrier trailed after you quietly, and you jabbed at your wrist to close and lock up the Razor Crest.

You spared half a glance over your shoulder to make sure the ramp was secured, and then you looked down at your cuff. Mando’s comlink had a built in GPS transmitter, but its range was limited. However, if he was close enough to briefly contact you…

A dot flickered in and out on the grungy screen on your wrist, and you spun in a circle to figure out which direction had the strongest connection. The dot flared brightly when you angled toward the west, and you started running before you even had a plan.

You crashed through the underbrush with the child’s pod hot on your heels, and the thick, humid air sawed in and out of your heaving lungs as you gasped for breath. The lights at your temples provided enough illumination to see several steps ahead of you but not much else, and you tripped and careened over root and vine as you tried not to lose your grip on the rifle.

The good news was the dot on your read-out was no longer flickering, and it was now a strong red point about a kilometer ahead of you.

The bad news?

The jungle was no longer quiet around you.

As your feet pounded into the red soil and carried you forward, static crackled loudly in your ear, and the howling returned, faint at first but growing closer. Shivers wracked your sweat-slicked spine, and every fiber of your being was screaming to run the other way.

But you couldn’t. Because now you could hear Mando grunting and shouting over the comlink, clearer and clearer with each step, and as you vaulted over a protruding root in your path, you distinctly heard a roar of rage directly ahead of you.

You would have shouted his name if there was any breath left in your lungs, but instead you just lowered your head and sprinted as fast as you could.

The howling was nearly deafening now, echoing all around you, seeming to come from every shadow in the jungle. Your ears rang with the soul-piercing shrieks, and the cacophony was so disorienting, you tripped over your own feet and crashed into the dirt.

“Kriff!” you gasped, your knees and palms stinging as you skidded to a halt. Dots danced in front of your eyes as you panted harshly, and the rifle knocked painfully against your sternum.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the child’s pod come to a stop several feet away, the silver orb glinting in the pale moonlight barely filtering through the canopy.

Then you saw something else shift in the shadows behind the floating carrier.

At first, you thought it was your swimming vision, but then the weak lights of your headlamp reflected off several glinting eyes, and the breath stalled in your lungs.

A guttural, wet growl echoed out of the bushes beyond the foundling’s pod, and in the next instant the beast was lunging forward, vaulting over the carrier in one bound.

You yelped as you scrambled backward, fumbling for the rifle’s trigger, and you got the barrel up just in time to block a bifurcated jaw of gnashing fangs. The beast let out a piercing shriek as it snapped at your face, and the familiar sound nearly popped your eardrum at this proximity, but the pain barely even registered as you wedged your legs up under the creature’s chest and heaved it off you.

The beast let out a high-pitched yip as it smacked into a tree trunk, but you didn’t give it the chance to regain its feet. In one swift movement, you brought the rifle up, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

The blaster must have been set on full-auto because a continuous stream of energy screamed out of the weapon, and the barrel jerked upward with the recoil. Bolts of energy shredded through the vines and branches overhead, and some kind of bat-bird creature screeched as it dove out of the canopy and swooped over you. It thankfully wasn’t trying to attack, merely flee, and the avian-beast cawed angrily as it disappeared into the jungle.

“P-Pfassk,” you panted, your voice as jittery as your racing pulse. Still, you scrambled to your feet, with the smoking rifle held tight in your shaking grasp, and you stared wide-eyed at the corpse of the beast that had attacked you.

The thing was almost two meters long, and six disjointed looking limbs jutted out from underneath it. Your would-be-killer looked vaguely canine yet also insect-like, with its long snout and what looked like scaled plates along its spine. The combination made your stomach churn. The blaster had carved smoldering holes into most of the creature’s flesh, but the uncharred remains were blackish-purple, mottled with spots of blue and green that matched the jungle’s underbrush. The beast was entirely hairless and slick-looking like an oil spill, and its bifurcated maw hung open to reveal rows of rotted black fangs. Two pairs of pale white eyes stared blindly up at the dark sky, and purplish blood seeped out around the carcass to stain the jungle floor.

Bile rose in your throat, but before you could even process your fear, terror, and revulsion, a very human sounding scream echoed through the dark night, and you whipped your head in the direction it had come from.

“Mando,” you breathed, and you spared the dead beast one last glance before you took off running again, every sense on high alert.

You didn’t dare blink as you crashed through the underbrush, and you pushed your aching limbs as fast as they would go. The din of snarling and howling was so loud now it was rattling your teeth, and all of the sudden you were stumbling out of the thick tree line and into a small clearing.

A clearing riddled with bodies, both living and dead.

Your brain stuttered as it tried to assess the scene before you. The canopy overhead was broken in a perfect circle, so the moonlight here was strong and bright after the deep shadows of the jungle, and it illuminated everything perfectly. The Mandalorian stood in the center of the carnage, half collapsed against a rotten log twice as tall as he was. Carcasses of the canine-like beasts were piled up in mounds around the clearing, some shot but some charred into blackened skeletons, and the stench of burnt flesh invaded your nose and sat heavy on the back of your tongue.

For every dead beast, though, there were two more still snarling, and boy, were they pissed.

The pack of creatures prowled in a semi-circle before the bounty hunter, all their attention centered on him, and they growled and snapped their bifurcated jaws in his direction. They didn’t seem to want to attack him head on, and a moment later you saw why.

One of the beasts must have reached its breaking point, because with the same piercing shriek that had kept you up the past two nights, it lunged for the Mandalorian, the moonlight glinting off the armored plates along its spine.

The poor bastard never made it.

While the creature was still in mid-air, Mando jerked his wrist up, and a blast of flames roared out of his vambrace. The beast screeched as it was swallowed by the inferno, and its charred corpse crashed to the ground at Mando’s feet a moment later. The remainder of the pack snarled in fury as they paced in front of the bounty hunter, but you felt your throat tighten with fear.

The flamethrower was obviously a great weapon at repelling these creatures, but judging by the radius on that last spurt of fire, you estimated Mando had enough fuel for one, maybe two more attacks.

And there were dozens of the beasts left.

What were you going to do?

You heaved for breath as your eyes darted around the clearing, trying to look for a solution, but you knew the answer was obvious: you were going to have to fight.

You blindly tapped at your wrist, and a moment later the child’s carrier rose up above your head and nestled against the lowest branch of the tree you were standing under. You didn’t know if the beasts could climb, but the pod was made of a strong, reinforced metal, so as long as the creatures didn’t notice the kid, he should be fine.

The same couldn’t be said for you.

Maker, you were going to regret this, weren’t you?

You didn’t give yourself the chance to change your mind.

“Hey!” you shouted as you stepped further into the clearing, one of your hands dropping to the belt on your waist.

The chorus of snarls and growls tapered off for a moment as the pack whipped around in unison to face you, and the saliva evaporated in your mouth as you stared at the dozens of glowing white eyes.

At the sound of your voice, you could see Mando jerk upright in your peripherals, but you didn’t dare tear your eyes off the pack as they started to stalk toward you. Sweat dripped down your face and trickled along your spine as you palmed a cold, heavy orb in your right hand, and you watched the distance between you and the creatures shrink bit by bit.

Mando shouted your name, but you ignored him.

“Yeah, that’s right!” you yelled at the beasts instead. “You guys hungry? Why don’t you come and get me?”

“What are you doing?” Mando roared, but you still didn’t pay him any mind as you tracked the pack. There were maybe three dozen left alive, and they bared their black fangs at you as they drew closer and closer.

Twenty meters… fifteen… ten…

Now.

“Take this!” You heaved your arm back, aimed at the beast in the center of the pack’s line, and threw with all your might, and the creature yelped as the stun grenade struck him in the skull.

A moment later, a web of electricity exploded out of the orb and arced through half of the pack, and the poor bastards screeched and screamed as they fell spasming to the jungle floor. The beasts on the edges snarled as they jumped away from their sparking brethren, and you saw some of the canine-monsters retreat into the shadows of the clearing.

This was your chance.

You darted forward the moment you had a clear path to take, and you vaulted over the pack’s twitching bodies in three swift strides. When you landed on the other side of them, you spun around and faced the fallen creatures as they whined and spasmed on the ground. Then you lifted your rifle, aimed haphazardly, and pulled the trigger. You swept the barrel from side to side for a moment, energy bolts tearing and searing through flesh, but then you whirled back around and sprinted toward the Mandalorian’s prone form.

He was propped up against the log with his legs splayed out in front of him, and you inhaled sharply when you saw the dark stain of blood on the ground beneath his right thigh. His Amban rifle lay beside him, but since he wasn’t using it, you assumed he was out of ammo. The bounty hunter listed heavily onto what you first thought was a rock of some kind, but as you skidded to a stop in front of him, you realized the lump was the body of another humanoid, except it didn’t look to be breathing.

“Mando!” you gasped as you crouched down in front of him. “Maker, w-what happened—”

“What are you doing here?” he cut you off with a snarl, and the absolute rage in his voice drew you up short.

You gaped at his visor, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “W-What… you called—”

“I didn’t call you, he did, right before they tore out his throat,” Mando growled and shoved the prone form beside him.

The body flopped over with a thud, and you stifled a gag when you realized the poor bastard had been eviscerated. He was torn open from gut to gullet, intestines and innards gleaming wetly in the dark, and his bulging black eyes stared up unseeingly at the moon.

“Dank farrik, Mando,” you breathed in horror. “What happened?”

The Mandalorian tilted his helmet up to look at you, but then his gaze seemed to shift over your shoulder, and he was suddenly latching onto your wrist with an iron grip and tugging you forward.

“Watch out!” he shouted as you tripped over his legs and landed on the other side of him, and a moment later you heard and felt the roar of flames at your back as another beast met a smoldering end.

You scrambled up onto your knees and whirled around, rifle held at the ready, but there were only the two new dead creatures sprawled at Mando’s feet. Their corpses smoked as their blackened flesh crackled, and this time you weren’t successful in stifling your gag. You dry-heaved off to the side, tears blurring your vision, but when the chorus of bone-chilling howls started up again, you blinked away the tears and clenched your rifle in a white-knuckled grip.

“We gotta get out of here,” you panted, your eyes darting from place to place as you tried to track the beasts slithering through the shadows.

“Can’t,” Mando grunted, and all of the sudden, you realized his voice sounded off, slurred.

You whipped back around to face the bounty hunter, and your gaze immediately fell to the dark stain under his leg. It had grown since you’d first seen it, and then you realized a haphazard tourniquet was lashed around the top of his leg, right above the metal plate that covered the front of his thigh.

“You’re hurt,” you breathed. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.” Mando’s head jerked up and down in an unsteady nod. “Just… happened. One of them got me… when I was trying to save the bounty. Pretty sure they nicked my femoral.”

His words were softer and definitely slurred now, and panic rose up in your throat like a burning coal.

“Then we need to get back to the Razor Crest now,” you said as you reached for his shoulders, but the Mandalorian sluggishly shoved you away.

“I’ll… only slow you down,” he grunted. “The bounty and I… are easy meals. The pack should stay to finish us off while you make a break for the sh—”

“No,” you cut him off, and the snarl in your voice surprised even you. “No, Mando. I’m not leaving you to die. We’re only a kilometer away from the Razor Crest. I have extra power cells and grenades. We can make it.”

Mando’s head thunked back against the log he leaned on as he stared up at you, and even if you couldn’t see the face underneath the visor, you could see the resignation in every inch of him.

And it ignited a fury in you unlike anything you had ever known.

“So, what?” you growled, bending down to bare your teeth in his face. “You’re just gonna sit here and die? What about the kid? You just gonna abandon him?”

You’re just going to abandon me? you didn’t say, but the words rattled against the backs of your clenched teeth.

“He’ll… have you,” Mando said, and suddenly his gloved hand reached up as if to touch your face, but he didn’t seem to have the strength, and the tip of his index finger barely grazed the edge of your jaw. His touch left behind a warm streak on your skin, and you didn’t have to look to know it was blood.

“That’s not good enough,” you snarled before you stooped down and grabbed the ends of his makeshift tourniquet, yanking tightly on both ends until Mando groaned in pain and latched onto your shoulders.

He murmured your name, his modulator crackling in your ear, but you ignored him as you looped his spent Amban rifle over his shoulder and shifted to slide your left arm behind his back, throwing his right arm over your shoulders. You took two deep breaths to brace yourself, and then you dug your fingers into his waist as you tried to leverage the both of you onto your feet.

It was nearly impossible. The Mandalorian had to weigh nearly ninety kilos in his beskar, and with the added weight of the weapons and grenades you carried, you could feel the muscles in your legs, core, and back scream at the strain.

“Dank… farrik,” you hissed out between clenched teeth, but you managed to get the two of you upright, even if Mando was practically limp against you. Still, you had to leverage your back against the log behind you to keep from collapsing.

“We’ll never make it… back to the ship like this,” Mando panted, his cold helmet brushing against the shell of your ear.

“Shut up,” you gritted out, listening to the howling beasts closing in again like they could sense your weakness. “I refuse to leave you behind. So, unless you want to kill us both, you need to get your ass in gear, Mando. I can keep them off our backs as we go, but you need to walk with me. Understand?”

“Cyare,” he slurred, and the unfamiliar word sounded pained as his helmet thunked into your temple. “I… don’t want you to die.”

“Then walk,” you grunted as you tightened your grip on his waist and lurched forward a step.

Mando staggered behind you, half draped over your back, but you widened your stance and refused to go down.

“Please… Mando,” you panted, shoving the barrel of your rifle into the loamy red soil to act as a crutch. “Help me save us. Just… just put one foot in front of the other.”

“Wait,” the Mandalorian said, and he actually lifted his head off your shoulder. “The bounty…”

“The bounty’s dead,” you grunted as your eyes darted to the trees again. You could see the sinuous shapes of the pack weaving between the towering trunks, but they kept their distance for the moment. They’d lost more than half of their numbers by your estimate, and you prayed to the Maker they would just give up, but you knew that would be way too convenient for your life.

“The puck… said dead or alive,” Mando sighed, his arm weighing down on the nape of your neck like a yoke, and it reminded you of the slave’s collar you once wore.

“I can’t carry both of you back, Mando,” you growled in frustration. “I can barely drag you.”

“Don’t need the whole body,” he clarified. “Just… the head. It’s… a big bounty.”

You groaned as you glanced down at the quarry’s corpse, and then you tilted your head back to try and look at Mando.

“Can you stand by yourself for a minute?” you asked.

“Maybe,” Mando grunted, but he shifted his weight off you bit by bit and leaned up against the tall log at your backs. His boots slid a few inches in the blood-soaked dirt as he almost collapsed, but he dug his gloved fingers into the rigid bark and stood there shaking.

“Didn’t know I was paying you for maybes,” you parroted his words from days ago back at him in an attempt to take his mind off the pain, and it seemed to work because he actually huffed out a strained-sounding chuckle.

“Hurry,” he panted, and you nodded as you quickly stepped away from him, stood over the bounty’s corpse, and shoved the barrel of your rifle between his shoulder and neck.

It was so dark, and you were running on so much adrenaline you couldn’t even be sure of what species the man used to be, but you pushed the thought away as you took a deep breath and held down the trigger.

The rifle screeched as it tore through flesh like a hot knife through butter, and you tried to ignore the feeling of lukewarm blood splattering across your lower legs. Moments later, the jittery, rapid-fire motions of the gun ceased, and the bounty’s head rolled away from the smoldering stump of his neck.

Bile rose up in your throat again, but you swallowed it down as you picked up the decapitated head and started punching buttons on your cuff.

Instantly, you heard the familiar hum of the child’s pod drone closer and closer, and behind you Mando inhaled sharply as the jungle dogs yipped in curiosity from the shadows.

“You brought the kid?” he growled.

“Well, it wasn’t like you left me much kriffing choice, but you can fire me later for child endangerment,” you snapped as the carrier floated down to stop in front of you. Then you turned to the Mandalorian and held out your bloodied hand. “I need your fibercord whip. Eject it.”

Mando didn’t even question you, he just did as he was bid. Within moments, you had the thin but strong wire wound up in your palm, and then you started the gory process of wrapping it securely around the bounty’s bloody head. Your stomach churned at the slick warm goo covering your skin, but you swallowed the saliva pooling in your mouth as you tapped at your wrist again.

The child’s pod opened with a hiss, and you made sure to lower the decapitated head so it was below the carrier and out of the foundling’s line of sight.

“Hey there, bud,” you said as you leaned down and tucked the end of the fibercord into the interior of the pod near the hinges. “Look who I found.”

The foundling cooed and gurgled happily when he caught sight of the Mandalorian, and he lifted his arms and made grabby motions at the bounty hunter.

“Not yet,” you said as you stepped forward and blocked Mando from view. “First, we need to get back to the ship, so I need to close you up again. Don’t worry about anything you hear, though, okay? I promise we’ll be fine.”

The child murmured a soft sound as you bent down and kissed his wrinkled brow, but then you tapped at your wrist, and the pod closed with another hiss, locking the wire with the dangling head in place. You keyed in a few more commands, and the carrier rose up high above you, hovering at least six meters off the ground. Blood dripped from the severed stump of the quarry’s neck as it dangled from the pod, and you flinched when a speck of it landed on your cheek. It might be disgusting, but this way, the child and the remainder of the bounty would hopefully be out of reach of any of the beasts, and you could focus all your energy on getting you and Mando back to the Razor Crest.

“Alright.” You tore your gaze away from the silver pod and shifted your grasp on the rifle, wedging the stock against your right shoulder as tight as you could. You knew your aim would be abysmal since you were going have to shoot one handed while dragging Mando, but you hoped the full-auto setting would grant you some leeway. “Let’s go.”

“You really should—” the Mandalorian started, but you clicked your tongue to cut him off.

“That wasn’t a request,” you said as you sidled up against the bounty hunter and double checked that his tourniquet was secure.

“Fine.” He reluctantly draped his right arm over your shoulder, and you wrapped your left one around his waist. Then the two of you pushed off the log at your backs, and you staggered forward several steps, trying not to trip on any dead jungle dogs.

Mando’s cold beskar felt like it was burning you wherever it brushed against your bare, hot flesh, and he groaned in your ear as he practically dragged his injured leg behind him. The agony of his voice made you want to stop and sprint forward all at the same time, but you settled for stumbling several more steps.

“That’s it,” you panted in encouragement. “One step at a time.”

The pack howled and shrieked as you painstakingly shuffled your way across the clearing, but you haphazardly aimed your rifle into the jungle and held down the trigger. Rapid-fire bolts of energy careened into the darkness, illuminating white eyes and flashes of twining vines and snarling beasts, but several yowls echoed through the night, so you knew you’d hit at least some of them.

“Mando,” you gritted out as you neared the tree line. “I need you to hit my cuff. There’s a button on the side that will turn up my headlamp. I want it at maximum. Since these bastards are nocturnal, I’m guessing they don’t like the light.”

The Mandalorian grunted something that sounded like an affirmative, and then his left hand was swatting blindly at your cuff. After fumbling for a moment, his thick, gloved fingers encircled your wrist, his thumb brushing faintly over your thudding pulse point.

Your feet nearly tangled beneath you, but then Mando found the button on your cuff, and he pressed on it until the lights at your temple were bright enough to blind. The beams of white light cut through the oppressive darkness of the jungle, and the canine creatures yelped in pain as they darted back into the shadows. You swung your gaze back and forth, your lamp dragging over the scenery like a burning laser, and the beasts whimpered as their tails disappeared into the bushes.

“Come on,” you groaned as you dragged Mando forward, and the two of you finally stumbled into the thick of the trees.

You didn’t know how much time passed as you and the Mandalorian struggled back to the ship. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes hours. The moon appeared frozen in the sky above your head, and more than once you had the thought that you were already dead, and this was some messed up version of an afterlife where you were tortured for eternity.

In the end, though, you knew you were alive.

If you weren’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

“Left,” Mando slurred in your ear, half draped over your back, and your feet stuttered as you swung both of you around to the left.

The rifle screeched as it fired off into the darkness, followed by the yelps of dying dogs, and you hissed as the stock dug into your already sore shoulder. The pack snarled and gurgled as they encircled you, but they were hesitant now that you’d killed a majority of them. You wondered why they just didn’t give up, but you realized they could most likely sense you weakening, slowing.

Sweat ran in rivers down your face and spine, and every tendon in your body felt like it was on the edge of snapping. You could tell Mando was trying to take some of his weight off you, but he was becoming more and more unsteady with each step, his breath jagged and uneven as it rasped out of his helmet. He probably wouldn’t remain conscious for much longer, and if he passed out before you reached the ship, you were both dead. You couldn’t fully carry him, and you would not even entertain the idea of leaving him, so it was all or nothing.

Either you both reached the ship together, or neither of you did.

But, as you glanced up at the child’s pod hovering high over your head, you knew the second choice wasn’t really an option. The kid needed you. Needed both of you.

So, you were going to kriffing live, even if you had to break your body down to achieve your goal.

“Come on,” you encouraged as you stumbled over a tree root. “Come on, Mando. We’re almost there. Stay with me, okay?”

You had no idea if you were almost there or not. The homing beacon on your cuff was beeping steadily, but with all the howling, and the blood pounding through your ears, you couldn’t approximate how close you were to the Razor Crest.

“I’m… trying,” Mando mumbled, lifting his head just slightly. “B-Behind us.”

You cursed under your breath, letting the rifle dangle against your chest as you fumbled at your waist. Your fingers curled around a cold, metal orb, and you clicked the button in its center before you lobbed the grenade over your shoulder with all the strength you had left, which wasn’t much.

Then you staggered forward a little faster, dragging the bounty hunter behind you, and five seconds later, you heard the stun grenade go off, followed by the crackling of static and the yelping of beasts.

“That’s my last… stun grenade,” you panted, and the hair on your arms stood on end with all the electricity in the moist air. “I have some explosive ones… but…”

“But we’re not fast enough to get out of range in time,” Mando finished for you, his helmet bumping into the crown of your head as he sagged a little more.

“Yeah,” you huffed, but then a crunch to your right had you whirling and firing in one motion.

The canine yipped and screeched as the energy bolts tore through its chest mid-lunge, and it crashed into the ground at your feet as you staggered into a tree. The bark scraped painfully across your bare shoulder blades, and Mando groaned as you almost lost your grip on him.

“No,” you growled, tightening your arm around the bounty hunter and tugging you both upright. “Dank… farrik!”

The muscles in your arm burned hotly from the strain of keeping the Mandalorian on his feet, and you bit through your tongue to keep from crying out, the metallic taste of blood coating your teeth and whetting your parched mouth.

You stumbled forward blindly as you tried to work through the pain, but all the sudden, the claustrophobic darkness caused by the towering trees lessened a few degrees. You thought you were hallucinating it at first, but then you lifted your head a fraction and realized the trees were thinning out ahead of you.

And the beacon in your cuff was beeping like mad.

You were almost there. The Razor Crest was so close.

Of course, that’s when the snarling behind you reached new frantic heights, and you knew the pack was gearing up for one final assault.

“Mando, listen to me,” you gasped as you shifted to shove him against a tree, using your palm to keep him rooted at the sternum and on his feet.

He groaned as he listed there, mumbling something that didn’t sound like it was in Basic, but he remained upright, so you seized the opportunity to jab at the screen on your wrist. A moment later, the child’s pod swooped down from where it had been hovering near the canopy, and the bounty’s head dragged against the jungle floor with a dull crunch. You tweaked the carrier’s settings half blind, one eye on the encroaching darkness and the beasts therein, and then you grabbed the floating orb and shoved it against Mando’s gut.

“Ugh,” the bounty hunter grunted, his feet starting to slide out from under him.

“No, lean forward,” you rushed out, grabbing one of his shoulders and tugging him toward you.

Mando moaned as he collapsed onto the child’s pod, but since you’d cranked up the carrier’s power output to the max, the bounty hunter didn’t crash to the ground. Instead, he hung there half suspended, the pod whirling angrily from his added weight, his feet limp and dragging behind him.

“Mando,” you said as you tapped the side of his helmet, eyes still on the shadowy trees. “Mando, I need you to hold onto that pod as tight as you can, okay? Can you hear me?”

“Hear… you,” the Mandalorian just barely breathed, and you saw his arms wrap around the bottom of the silver carrier.

“Hold on like your life depends on it,” you instructed as you tapped at your wrist again. “Because it does.”

“What—” he started to ask, but he didn’t get to finish the question because the pod was suddenly surging forward, in the direction of the ship. The bounty’s head and Mando’s feet dragged loudly against the ground, but with one last jolt of power, the pod lifted away from the jungle floor and began to float away.

The pod would probably have just enough power to get Mando back to the ship before it died, but that was fine. That was just what you needed.

The jungle dogs howled and shrieked as they watched the Mandalorian drifting away through the trees, but as you listened to them start to skirt around you in his direction, you finally gripped the rifle with two hands and aimed into the dark.

Then you pulled the trigger, full-auto, and the shrieking of the energy bolts collided with the screeching of the canines and crescendoed into a deafening cacophony. You sprayed the jungle in wide sweeps as you slowly started to walk backward toward the Razor Crest, the rifle stock jolting into your shoulder in time with your racing heart. You just needed to give Mando time to reach the ship. You had programmed the pod to open the ramp at a certain distance, so they would just fly on into the cargo bay, and it would close behind them. Once they were safe, you could make a break for it and—

Suddenly, one of the shadows broke away from the trunk directly to your right, and you turned too late to see it was a slavering beast, its bifurcated jaw wide open and aimed for your throat.

“Ahh!” You stumbled back, trying to crane away from those jagged black fangs, but your feet got tangled up beneath you, and you came crashing down. A root slammed into one of your rear ribs so hard you heard and felt the snap as the bone gave, but you didn’t even have time to register that pain before the jungle dog smashed into your chest.

You instinctively shoved your arms outward, wedging the rifle between those deadly, snapping jaws. One of the beast’s jagged fangs scraped down your forearm as you tried to keep the bastard from swallowing you whole, and you screamed in fury and pain as blood spilled from your rending flesh.

Then you brought your knee up and smashed it as hard as you could into the jungle dog’s ribcage, and this time you felt its rib snap, and grim satisfaction burned like a wildfire through your blood. The warmth filled your limbs until you thought you would burst into flame, and you kicked the beast again and again as it yipped.

You were just starting to think you had the upper hand when the creature’s jaw started to close with a creaking sound of bone on metal, and your eyes widened in horror as the canine jerked its head back, taking your rifle with it. Then its bifurcated jaw snapped close with a horrible crunch, and the rifle shattered into shards of metal and sparks.

The beast roared in pain and rage as it tossed the remains of your rifle aside, but now you were acting on pure survival instinct, not thought, not logic, and you were already wrenching two grenades and a vibroknife off your belt when the nightmare dog finally settled its four milky white eyes on your face.

“Eat this, you bastard,” you snarled as its terrible jaws, rowed with serrated teeth, descended on you.

Then with one hand you stabbed the vibroknife into its neck just above the shoulder, and with the other you activated the grenades and shoved both of them down the jungle dog’s throat.

Warm blood sprayed down on you like humid rainfall, and you twisted the blade in to the hilt, feeling as it tore through flesh in a jittery fashion. The creature gagged and gurgled as its throat muscles convulsed around your other wrist for just an instant, but then you yanked your arms back with all your might, teeth catching on your elbow again, before you crashed into the dirt.

You were scrambling up in the next instant, barely listening to the creature heaving and choking behind you as you staggered forward into a clumsy sprint.

The rest of the pack howled at your back, but you were flat out running now, and you could see the Razor Crest through the trees. The pounding of paws on dirt sounded at your heels, and you couldn’t tell if you were gasping for breath or sobbing as you tore the final grenades off your belt, activated them, and let them fall through your numb fingers.

In the next instant, you broke through the tree line, and you could see the ramp of the Razor Crest, closing. You slapped at your wrist blindly as you sprinted as fast as you could, lungs heaving to the point of seizures, legs at the point of collapse. You didn’t know if the dogs were still right behind you, but the grenades…

You must have finally hit the right command because the ramp suddenly shuddered before it started to lower again, and you were ten meters away when the grenades went off like dominoes falling.

The first two explosions—of the grenades you shoved into the jungle dog—only shook the ground hard enough to make you stumble forward, but then the rest of them detonated much closer, and the combined shockwave hit you moments later and catapulted you into the air.

Thankfully, the ramp was just low enough that you scraped over it and crashed into the ship, smashing into a bulkhead with a dull crunch. The howling shrieks of dying dogs reached you through the ringing in your ears, and you felt a wave of heat hit you as the grenades engulfed the jungle trees. You curled into a ball on the cargo bay floor, your back to the ramp, and you just barely had the presence of mind to tap at your wrist one last time. A moment later, you heard the whirling of the ramp closing, and when it clanked shut a moment later, you rolled over onto your back and stared blindly above you.

You could just barely hear the roar of the building wildfire outside the ship, and the screeching of the jungle dogs died down within seconds. Your entire body—your lungs, your heart—heaved up and down as adrenaline pulsed through you like a bad hit of spice, and your ears ached in the relative silence.

Then the child cooed, and Mando groaned weakly, and you jolted upright like you had just been struck by lightning.

“Mando,” you rasped, flipping over onto your raw hands and bruised knees.

The bounty hunter half-sat, half-sprawled on the floor at the foot of his bunk. The foundling’s pod lay askew on the ground in front of the fresher like it had crash landed there when it finally died, but the child stood unharmed beside the Mandalorian.

Who was currently bleeding out on the floor of the cargo bay.

“Kriff!” You scrambled forward when you saw the spreading stain of blood below his leg, and as you drew closer, you realized his tourniquet must have been loosened when he collapsed.        

The Mandalorian barely even seemed conscious at this point. His chest stirred only slightly beneath his beskar chest plate, and if it weren’t for the soft groans he was exhaling, you would have thought him dead.

“Mando!” you shouted as you shakily rose onto your feet and staggered the rest of the way to the fresher. Your hands were shaking as you tore one of the storage compartments open in search of a med kit, and your voice cracked when you said his name again. “Mando! Stay with me. We made it back. We’re on the ship. Just stay with me for a few more moments. Please.”

You crashed down onto your knees beside the bounty hunter, tearing the med kit open with bloody hands and broken nails. His helmeted head lolled onto the edge of the bunk behind him, and you could barely hear his raspy breaths through the modulator.

The child stood between Mando’s splayed boots, eyes large and frightened, but you couldn’t pay him any mind right now. Your frantic gaze darted between the bacta gel patch in your hand and Mando’s bleeding leg, and even though it felt crazy, you set the patch down for a moment and reached for the last vibroknife on your belt.

Suddenly, Mando jerked awake with a gasp, and you reached out without thinking, pressing your left palm over his heart and feeling his faint, fluttering pulse.

“Mando, I’m right here,” you murmured soothingly. “Keep breathing for me.”

The Mandalorian muttered your name as his head lolled toward you.

“Yes, that’s me, I’m here,” you said, rising up on your knees and leaning over him. The vibroknife glimmered in your hand, looking like a real-life glitch, but you shook off the unsettling feeling and fixed your eyes on Mando’s visor.

“Mesh’la,” the Mandalorian slurred. The word was soft and elongated to the point of sounding like gibberish, but his hand settled firmly on the wrist you still had pressed to his heart, like he was talking directly to you.

In any other situation, your own heart would be fluttering with a feeling you didn’t want to name, but as the bounty hunter’s blood started to soak into the knees of your pants, all you could feel was dread.

“I need you to stay still, okay?” you said as you dropped your hand from his chest to grip the top of his injured thigh. “I need to cut your pants away from the wound.”

“O… kay,” he muttered, and his hand fell to settle over yours again on his leg like he was grounding himself by touching you.

“Nice and easy,” you cooed, trying to blink the tears out of your eyes so you could see to cut through his pants and not his flesh. “I’ll have that bacta patch on in just a moment. Why don’t you talk to me, huh? Mando, talk to me. Tell me something. J-Just stay awake.”

“Aw…ake,” he whispered, but it sounded like he was just repeating you now, barely clinging to consciousness.

Your hand shook as you slowly sawed through the blood-soaked fabric, and an aborted sob rose in your throat. But you shoved your hysteria down, down, down, you had no time for it, you had to stay level-headed, steady-handed, Mando was counting on you, Mando was dying.

“Mando,” you choked as you finally pulled the cloth away from his wound. Three parallel gashes, each nearly five centimeters deep, ran from his hip crease and nearly all the way to his knee, and blood pulsed sluggishly from the wounds in crimson gobs. “Oh, Maker, Mando.”

You dropped the vibroknife with a loud clang as you lunged for the bacta patch, and out of your peripherals you could see the child waddling closer, standing in between the Mandalorian’s knees, the hem of his little robe slowly staining scarlet. You didn’t have the heart or the strength to shove the child away now, so instead you focused on settling the bacta patch over the bounty hunter’s grisly injuries.

Mando twitched and inhaled sharply as the bacta adhered to his skin, and you sent up a million prayers to the Maker that you had administered aid in time.

“There y-you go,” you sniffled, unable to stop the tears from coursing down your cheeks now. “I got the patch on, Mando. You’re going t-to be okay. You… you have to be okay. Do you hear me, Mando?”

You felt like a glitching holotape repeating his name over and over, but you couldn’t stop yourself. You wanted, no needed, him to stay awake, and every time you said his name, he seemed to jerk a little, like he’d been recalled from a long distance at the sound of your voice.

For a moment, there was only the faint, raspy wheeze of the Mandalorian’s breath through his helmet, but then he suddenly mumbled something.

“What?” You shuffled closer, slipping in blood. You practically had your ear pressed against his visor. “What was that, Mando? Say it again. Come on, talk to me, Mando.”

“Not… Mando.”

The words were stilted, sluggish, and you frowned in confusion. “Huh? I-I don’t understand.”

“My… name isn’t… Mando,” the bounty hunter struggled out, and his helmet tilted forward a fraction like he had lifted his head and was looking right at you. “It’s… Din. Din Djarin.”

The shock you felt was muted, distant and removed, like a crack that formed deep in the heart of a glacier, buried beneath the adrenaline, horror, and helplessness warring within you.

“Din,” you breathed, and the word somehow tasted like the exact moment Peli dug out your transmitter chip. It tasted like freedom, like infinite possibility, and you didn’t understand why.

Mando—no, Din, Din Djarin—exhaled heavily as his head thunked back against the bunk, and even if you couldn’t see it, you could tell his eyes were slipping closed. “I… wanted at least someone to know before I—”

“No,” you cut him off vehemently, reaching out to cradle the sides of his helmet like you were cupping his face. “No, you’re not going to die. Not now. Not when… no, do you hear me, Din Djarin? I will not allow you to die. Not when I worked my ass off to fix this ship and drag you back onto it by the skin of my kriffing teeth.”

“Mmmm.” Din’s head lolled in your grasp, the weight of him growing heavier and heavier. “I knew I would like the way… you say my name.”

Oh, Maker. He was nonsensical now, and terror gripped you by the throat and squeezed.

“Then stay awake, Din,” you begged, and your heart felt like it was on the edge of a great precipice. “Stay awake for me.”

“’m so… tired,” he sighed.

“I know,” you breathed as you guided his head back to rest against the bunk, and you couldn’t speak above a whisper because your voice was thick with tears. “I know, but just listen to my voice, Din. Just—”

You trailed off as the child suddenly waddled into your line of sight, and you dropped your gaze slightly to find him standing between the Mandalorian’s thighs, right next to the bacta covered wounds. The foundling stared up at the bounty hunter with a furrowed, seemingly determined expression, and then he closed his big brown eyes as he reached for Din’s leg.

“Oh, buddy, don’t,” you started, reaching out to stop him, but Din—Maker, his name felt delicious and forbidden even in your mind—weakly placed his hand on your wrist to stop you.

“It’s… okay,” he panted. “He can help.”

“Help?” You frowned down at the child. How could he help? Was this one of the “powers” the bounty hunter had vaguely mentioned before? You thought the foundling’s ability dealt with physically moving things, not healing, but honestly you could do for a miracle right about now.

The child gurgled a small noise as his three fingers settled over Din’s wound, and the Mandalorian inhaled sharply at the same time that you felt… something. You weren’t sure what it was, but it was like the very air shifted, became magnetic, charged somehow. The air stilled in your lungs as you feared even the barest breath would fracture this fragile spell you were bearing witness to, and you watched with wide eyes as the gashes on the bounty hunter’s legs began to close right in front of you.

Bacta worked fast… but not that fast.

Several still, endless seconds passed as the foundling healed the Mandalorian, but then just as soon as it began, the moment ended. The atmosphere snapped almost tangibly, time jolted back into motion, and the child suddenly started to pitch backward.

“Oh!” you gasped as you lunged forward, your hands cupping the baby and bringing him close to your body. The foundling’s eyes were closed, his face slack, but his little chest still moved up and down with breath.

“He’s okay.”

You snapped your head up, more tears spilling down your cheeks with the motion.

Din was sitting up a little straighter, and his helmet looked squarely at you. His voice sounded stronger, too, and you gaped at him in bewilderment.

“He’s okay,” the Mandalorian repeated when you continued to blink at him. “He usually… tires himself out when he uses his powers.”

“I d-didn’t know he could do that,” you breathed, and your tongue felt like a disembodied lump of flesh in your mouth. “I… wait, how do you feel? A-Are you okay?”

You suddenly realized how close you still were to the bounty hunter, practically kneeling in his lap, but you ignored this as your eyes darted back to his leg. It was a little hard to tell through the dried blood and blue bacta, but it looked like the three gashes had closed altogether, leaving behind faint pink lines.

“I’ll survive,” the bounty hunter sighed, thunking his head back against the bunk again, but he tilted it to the side to regard you still. “Thanks to you.”

“I-I’m not the one who just healed you with magic,” you stuttered incredulously as your cheeks flared hot, and you cuddled the child against your chest even though you realized you knew almost nothing about the apparently powerful foundling.

“No,” Mando said evenly, “but you did charge out into a dark, unknown, dangerous jungle, fight off a pack of wild dogs, and drag both me and the bounty back safely.”

“Well,” you snorted with an edge of hysteria in your voice, and you gestured to the discarded head that lay sprawled against the corner of the fresher. “I don’t know if I’d say he got here safely.”

Maker, you felt a little crazy, hollowed out and wrung dry by the sheer amount of emotions you’d just experienced in a span of a few minutes.

“I’m serious,” the Mandalorian replied. “You… saved my life. I am in your debt.”

“I-I’m not one for debts.” You shook your head to try and clear it, dropping your gaze to the foundling’s face, nuzzled against your sternum. “I don’t like to owe anyone or be owed. You’ve stuck your neck out for me before, so let’s just call it even… Din.”

You saw the bounty hunter freeze out of the corner of your eye, and you bit your cheek until you tasted blood.

You should have known that was too much to ask for.

“Sorry,” you muttered, peeking up at the Mandalorian through your lashes. “You… mentioned your name when you were—”

“I remember,” Mando said, cutting you off, but you couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his expression hidden as always and his voice pitched in a way you didn’t recognize, couldn’t identify.

“Right.” You cleared your throat, feeling the adrenaline starting to drain out of you and be replaced by every ache and pain you had ignored in lieu of survival. “Of course, I can just forget about it. You weren’t exactly in your right mind, after all. I’ll just… using ‘Mando’ is fine for me.”

The Mandalorian’s visor stared you down unflinchingly for what felt like an eternity. Then…

“You can… use my name, if you like,” he said haltingly, then quickly amended himself. “But only when we’re alone, on the ship. I… my name could be a dangerous thing in the hands of my enemies.”

You blinked in shock at the bounty hunter.

“A-Are you sure?” you asked, and you tried to keep the hope out of your voice, but you knew you failed miserably. “O-Only if you’re sure. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

You’d thought giving up his name had just been a delusional, dying declaration, and you didn’t want him to regret it. What you said had been true enough. You were fine using “Mando,” even if the traitorous feelings buried deep in your chest said otherwise.

“I’m sure.” The bounty hunter nodded minutely. “I… trust you.”

The admission flooded your whole body with warmth, and goosebumps broke out across your skin. You’d known the Mandalorian trusted you, he wouldn’t have left his ship or his foundling in your care otherwise, but hearing him say the words felt like something out of a dream.

“Okay, then.” You smiled, heart thudding against where the child was pressed into your chest. “Din.”

At the sound of his name, the tension in the Mandalorian’s worn body seemed to bleed out of him entirely, and he sighed as his helmet fell back again.

“Let’s get off this Maker-forsaken planet,” he grumbled.

“I second that,” you chuckled dryly before you slowly clambered to your feet, careful not to slip in Din’s tacky blood or jostle the sleeping baby in your arms. You very gingerly leaned over the prone Mandalorian to set the foundling in his hammock, but you hissed when the movement jarred the bruised or fractured rib in your back.

“What’s wrong?” Din asked below you, and he was so close you could feel the rumble of his modulated voice against the bare skin of your stomach, your tank top having lifted up a fraction.

“Nothing.” You took a quick step backward, trying to put distance between you and the bounty hunter, but now that he was no longer actively dying, you were starting to realize you were a little more beat up then you’d previously thought.

The moment you stepped back on your right leg, your hamstring seized up, and when you went to grab at it, you realized your fingers were a little numb. You glanced down and saw fresh blood dripping down your forearm—your blood, not Mando’s—and the sight of the wound seemed to flip a switch in your brain because a moment later, pain crashed over you like a wave.

“Dank farrik,” Mando cursed lowly as he tried to shove himself up.

“No, no, no, no,” you babbled, holding out your less injured left hand in a gesture to stop him. “Don’t get up so fast.”

“You’re hurt,” he grunted, and you could practically hear the scowl in his voice as he tilted his helmet back to stare at you. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” you stressed, even though you could still taste blood on the back of your tongue. “Also, you seriously have no room to talk. You were literally just bleeding out less than five minutes ago.”

“How much bacta do we have left?” he asked, completely ignoring your statement. “We should take care of your injuries before they get any worse.”

“Maker, you’re not even listening to me, are you?” You rolled your eyes as you leaned your shoulder against the bulkhead, but when the Mandalorian started to get up again, you held your hand out once more. “Alright! Alright. Let me at least set the coordinates to meet up with the client and get the ship in the air. I’m pretty sure the jungle is burning down around us as we speak anyway, so the sooner we lift off, the better.”

Din stared up at you silently for a moment like he wanted to argue.

“It will take me two minutes, max,” you reasoned with him. “I won’t pass out or die in that time frame, okay?”

“Fine,” he finally sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. “Just… be careful climbing up there.”

“I’ll try my best,” you snorted, wincing when pain flared through your body, but you still slowly made your way to the ladder.

It took you way longer to climb five rungs than it should have, but you thought not falling back into the cargo bay was a feat in itself, given how every muscle in your arms and legs twitched in pain. The blood pouring down your arm also did nothing to help your grip, nor did your scraped up palms, but you still made it into the cockpit relatively unscathed.

Dawn was just breaking beyond the windows, but you could barely see it through the black smoke that hung thick in the air. Guilt sat heavy in your chest as you saw the charred trees and the birds fleeing the flames overhead, but you told yourself you did what you had to in order to survive.

And it wasn’t like you were walking away scot-free, either. Your arm pounded painfully in time with your slowing pulse, and every time you took a deep breath, you became a little surer that the rib in your back was, in fact, broken.

You punched in the client’s rendezvous coordinates without sitting in the pilot’s chair since you knew if you sat down now there was no way you were getting back up. While you waited for the Razor Crest to power up, you cringed at the blood you were dripping all over the floor, but there was nothing for it at this point. The whole ship would need a thorough scrub down the next time you made a pit stop, but that was a future-you problem. Right now, you were mainly focused on getting off this planetoid and out into orbit without crashing and burning.

You held your breath as the pre-Empire ship rose up above the now smoldering jungle, but no warning alarms or messages sounded. The Razor Crest glided steadily upward, and you leaned heavily on the control panel as you breeched first the clouds and then the atmosphere. Entering orbit rattled the ship and you more than you cared for, but nothing broke off or burst into flame, and before you knew it, you were drifting through the familiar black void of space.

“Thank the kriffing Maker,” you sighed as the autopilot took over, and then you turned and shuffled back to the ladder, exhaustion starting to make the edges of your vision go fuzzy.

Or maybe that was blood loss?

You were a little less graceful with the descent than you were with the ascent, but you at least landed on your feet before you nearly collapsed into the fresher.

“Careful,” Mando’s modulated voice murmured, and suddenly his bare hand was on your left, uninjured elbow, skin against warm skin.

“What are… you doing up?” You frowned as you studied the Mandalorian, trying to make sense of what you were seeing as he led you to sit in the open mouth of his bunk.

“I told you,” he said, reaching over and grabbing another med kit from the fresher. “We need to take care of your injuries before they get any worse.”

“You should be resting,” you grumbled, but you were too tired to put any real heat behind your voice.

“I’m fine,” Din parroted your earlier proclamation back at you. “The kid did a thorough job.”

Then the bounty hunter sat on a crate before you, a crate that hadn’t been there before, and you realized he was no longer wearing a majority of his beskar, save the ever-present helmet, of course. Instead, a faded but clean pair of duraweave clothes covered his body, and the bloodied outfit you’d basically sliced off him was piled up between his feet. It also looked like he had haphazardly tried to mop up some of his blood with the dirty clothes, and you wondered if you’d been up in the cockpit longer than you thought.

“Hey,” you chuckled suddenly, and you distantly noted that your voice was a little slurred with exhaustion. “Looks like I’ll have some new rags after all.”

You giggled a little loopily as you gestured to the Mandalorian’s blood-soaked clothes and then to the blood and dirt your outfit was also currently coated in, but Mando didn’t seem as amused as you were.

“Let me see your arm,” he said as his helmet stared at you impassively, but then he paused and added, “Please.”

“It’s really not that bad,” you tried to argue as you held out your injured limb, but since it was still actively dripping blood, your words didn’t carry much weight. Then the bounty hunter gingerly gripped your wrist with tentative fingers, and you hissed through your teeth as pain lanced up your arm.

“Osik,” Din cursed in a language you didn’t recognize, slowly rotating your arm to take in the extent of the damage. “Did one of those dogs get you? The bastard almost flayed you to the bone in some spots.”

“Yeah, well I shoved two grenades down his throat, so I think we’re even,” you gritted out.

Din froze and lifted his head, your blood, sweat, and dirt-streaked face reflecting back at you from his visor. “You what?” 

He must have really been on death’s door if he didn’t notice or remember you literally blowing the jungle dogs to Tatooine and back, but you just shook your head.

“Story time later,” you huffed, narrowing your eyes as you tried to breathe through the pain. “Bacta time now, please.”

“Right.” Mando jerked back into action, and in the next moment he was shifting into medic-droid mode.

Few words were shared between you two as the Mandalorian tended to your bumps and scrapes. Beside the deep lacerations on your forearm, your palms and knees were scraped bloody from tripping your way through a dangerous jungle in the dead of night. Your upper back was in the same condition since you’d been wearing a tank top when you decided to grapple with blood-thirsty hounds, and when Din accidentally brushed against your lower back, a small whimper squeezed out between your clenched teeth.

“This rib is probably broken,” the bounty hunter said, and there was a heavy quality to his quiet voice.

“Thought as much,” you grunted, trying to sit up straight without breathing too deeply. “Too bad we don’t have a full bacta tank to soak in.”

“I could always… drop you back off on Tatooine,” Mando muttered. “With the payment that I owe you, of course. Should be enough to pay for a full treatment and then some.”

You froze sitting there in the doorway of his bunk. The Mandalorian wasn’t looking at you, too busy double checking the bandage he’d wrapped over the bacta on your forearm, but you could see how rigid his body was as he awaited your answer.

“Do you… want to drop me back off on Tatooine?” you asked hesitantly, the breath shallow in your lungs. You could hear the child snoring softly in the hammock directly behind your head, and the thought of leaving him opened a dark pit inside you.

And that was nothing to say of the thought of leaving the Mandalorian. Of leaving… Din.

Now that you knew his name, the feelings you had done your best to ignore came surging up to the surface, that little voice whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

He told you his name. He trusts you. He wants you here. Maybe he wants you for more than just your skills.

You shoved the thoughts away as quickly as they cropped up, but that didn’t stop something small and fragile from unfurling in your chest. You almost wanted to call it hope.

“I—” Mando started, stopped, fidgeted on his crate, and then sighed as he scooted back a little to stretch out his injured leg. “No, I don’t want to do that. You’re a talented mechanic and… good company. I’ve… enjoyed having you on my crew.”

“Oh.” You blushed as the breath whooshed out of your lungs, leaving you feeling lightheaded and buoyant. “T-Thank you. Current circumstances notwithstanding, I’ve enjoyed being on your crew, too. A-And not just for the payment. Seeing new worlds, as dangerous as they are, was something I never thought I’d get to experience. So, even if the price to pay is a few bumps and scrapes, I think that’s a fair deal.”

“You have a skewed idea of ‘fair,’” the Mandalorian chuckled dryly as he reached down beside him, picked up a pair of his gloves, and slipped them back on.

“No kriff,” you snorted, the scar on the nape of your neck tingling. “But it works out in your favor, so I wouldn’t question it too much.”

“Fine.” Din held up his hands, but then he lowered them to his knees and cocked his head at you.

“What?” you asked when he didn’t say anything for a full minute. His gaze made your skin prickle even if you couldn’t see his eyes, and with each passing moment, you grew acutely more and more aware of how dirty and disheveled you looked and felt.

“Nothing,” he said, fingers flexing against his knees. “Just… thank you. Again. For saving me, the kid, the bounty, and the ship.” 

You fidgeted in discomfort. You didn’t know what to do with praise and compliments, having never really received them before, so you shrugged your shoulders as you picked at the bandage on your arm.

“I told you, we’re even,” you muttered.

“It doesn’t feel that way to me,” he argued, and something about his tone told you he wasn’t going to let this go. “So, how about this: after we drop off this bounty with the client, you can pick the next planet we stop on.”

“Really?” Your eyes flicked up to the bounty hunter and widened. He’d never let you pick a destination before. You’d always just been along for the ride.

Mando nodded. “And make a list of parts and stuff you need to keep the ship running. We’ll stock up wherever we stop off next.”

“Okay.” You grinned as your heart did a little jig in your chest, and you stuck out your bacta-wrapped hand to shake on it. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Din Djarin.”

His name rolled off your tongue like a grain of sand spiraling down a dune, picking up momentum as it went, and it sent a shiver of pleasure straight down your spine. You knew you were playing a losing game with your own heart here, but as you stared into Mando’s visor, you also knew there was no stopping yourself now. You would just have to deal with the future heartbreak.  

The Mandalorian tentatively reached out and grasped your fingers in his gloved ones.

“Deal,” he rumbled back.

“Good.” You nodded as a yawn cracked open your jaw, and you reached up to cover your gaping mouth and scratch your nose. “Now, given the client’s rendezvous coordinates, we should have a few days of rest before we reach our destination, and if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to start right now by taking a well-deserved nap.”

You made to stand up, but Din gently placed his hand on your shoulder to keep you seated on the edge of the bunk.

“Take the cot,” he said as he nodded behind you. “I’m going up to the cockpit to send a message to the client anyway.”

“Are you sure?” you murmured around another yawn.

“I’m sure,” he said, but then his gloved fingers were suddenly ghosting over the bridge of your nose. “By the way, you’ve got a little grease right here. Just thought you should know.”

You went cross-eyed as you tried to draw his finger into focus, but when he stepped back, you noticed the fingertips of his glove were shiny, and glancing down at the hand you used to shake his revealed that your palm bore the same black sheen.

“Hey, this is your grease,” you muttered indignantly, but then Din was pressing gently on your shoulder, guiding you to lay back on the cot, and you went willingly.

“Get some rest,” he said, turning off the bunk lights. “We’ll worry about cleaning up later.”

You tried to grumble something, but exhaustion was starting to tug at your limbs and eyelids, and your body unwound bit by bit as you buried your face in the bounty hunter’s pillow with no remorse.

A moment later, Mando’s boots were clomping up the ladder to the cockpit, but he left some of the cargo bay lights on and the door to the bunk open, like he somehow knew you were afraid of the dark.

The beginnings of a smile tugged at your lips, but you spiraled into sleep before you could fully process the thought.

[dizzymoods]

1. For a long time now I've been seeing a problem with the advancement of digital image manipulation technology. I've seen a trend that as the tools which allow filmmakers to make digital adjustments to their images become more powerful and accessible, the reliance on these tools has increased to the detriment of the quality of the image.

2. In the days where the photochemical process allowed much more limited control over the graduation of hues, much more of the work of producing the final image happened on set. The quality of the frame was more directly determined by the quality of the light which was reflecting off of the subject.

3. Light is the crux of the image making process. You can't have a good image without good light full stop. It doesn't matter what you do after the image is captured, if the light you captured doesn't work, it can't be made to work by any means.

4. As these technologies have progressed I've seen such a dramatic drop in creativity in the way that light is utilized. I can't help but think that some part of this is due to a shifting attitude in the way that the image making process is conceptualized because of these technologies. Especially when I see things like the incredible popularity of Patreon grifters selling access to their corny LUTs.

5, People are eating that shit up. It seems like its playing into the homogenization of culture. Like it's a homogenization of the visual language of media which is being catalyzed in part by the accessibility of incredibly powerful tools that aren't strictly necessary to the image making process in the hands of an entire generation uncreative hacks who have risen to popularity through means other than the merit of their work.

I think the key to what you’re responding to is what you call the homogenization of visual language in media. I think the problem isn’t the technology per se but the industry that incentivized the use of  the technology to maintain the carbon copy standard of the Hollywood look while also being used to save on money/time onset. && the developers who equally became incentivized to make the technology easier to be used in such a way by the industry & prosumers as well. That’s where I locate this problem. There’s a kind of echo chamber where the images that gets you hired fit into this rigid easily replicate-able formula and the technology makes it easier to make said images.  I see this reverberate outside of technology and into the arena of corporate production and aesthetics. Which of course loops us back to the homogenization of visual language.

I see this homogenization in the work of DPs who started in the late 90s/early 00s. I’m thinking about Matty Libatique in particular who started out doing unique visuals in  Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Even though I don’t particularly like the look of these movies they did have personality.  It’s hard not to notice how on trend, flat, and boring Matty’s recent movies have been.

& I use Matty bc he moves between Big Studio pictures (Venom, A Star Is Born, Birds of Prey) and boutique indie films (Chiraq, Mother!, Native Son). & part of this echo chamber is that the technology is now relatively accessible and cheap and can produce a quality that rivals Hollywood. So now there isn’t much of a visual distinction between a $100mil film and a $10mil film in terms of image quality outside of maybe vfx.

Indie films aren’t an alternative to the Hollywood look anymore. They are now either boutique bootlegs (a24 or Annapurna) or generic knockoffs.  The indie scene is a kind of testing ground for new directors and DPs: can you follow the Hollywood formula on a limited budget? That’s why today’s indie wunderkinds get scooped up into Hollywood bc they can achieve these boring corporate approved looks on a budget. Vastly different from say PTA  or Malik Sayeed in the 90s.

This mimesis is at the heart of film education too. & I say film education bc you find it not only in institutional training (film school/residencies) but also on film sets interning and in the most easily accessible online resources (youtube, forums, patreon grifters, books, etc). All film education follows the model of Recognition and Recreation. Recognize the elements of this image/look and reproduce it as best you can. Film education produces technicians not masters of craft. There is no artist development. You have to sneak your pov into this small rigid mold. 

And this echo chamber discourages seeking out history and alternatives bc they are either obsolete or not profitable. Ppl think photographing black skin is a relatively new development when photographers like Van Der Zee were doing in the 1920s. & what Van Der Zee was doing in his photography in the 20s is wildly more technically difficult than dragging an effect onto a photo or applying a filter. The New Black Vanguard photographers are particularly annoying about claiming to be the “first” to do something even though they’re consciously (but badly)  copying 70s-90s fashion photography that was circulating on tumblr (usually by Rashida & Bri) ca. 2011-2014

I’m not mad at these insta photographers or these other visual artists who might not be talented but are adept at social media/sliding the HSL scale. Its the media and tech industries manufacturing the ability to do so and the manufactured need to work this way. Now that so many ppl can do this and the tech is demystified it makes it easier to replace workers. As a photographer/DP you aren’t bringing a unique eye to the project like Vadim Yusov or Jack Cardiff. You’re bringing the ability complete the task quickly and cheaply.

Something that I don’t ever see talked about wrt the homogenization of visual culture is how around 2007 Fincher & Soderbergh started saying the dreaded digital look will be as good and eventually better than celluloid. & with the RED One and Arri Alexa it became an achievable reality. So now instead of a meaningful difference in the visual palette between celluloid and digital we now have what essentially amounts to celluloid and imitation celluloid.

i do think there is value in this post manipulation technology. I just think that it needs to embrace it’s artifice. So much of this digitally  produced corporate look has some tether to reality/physics. I try to imagine how Dziga Vertov or Seijun Suzuki would have used it. I think it would’ve been exciting We got a glimpse of how Obayashi was using it.

While I agree that the visual degradation of the image is annoying and worrisome. I think more importantly is the end to which images are used. What is the meaning or purpose of this image? There’s also a degredation and flattening of meaning in these images as well. I think #RepresentationMatters is a big reason for this. Everything is now selling us capitalist aspirational images of women presidents and black board members. They really don’t mean much more than those “Anything is possible” posters with the balloons on them in first grade classrooms.

Since going to HU I’ve been increasingly less interested in placing value in the graphic quality of an image but rather its meaning/purpose. The Dario Calmese/Viola Davis cover kinda sealed that deal lol. But I do agree w the sentiment here. I don’t think there’s a point to working in a visual medium if everything you’re making looks the same.

Shameless self plug of an online grifter: I’m planning on covering cinematography more generally but this specifically is central to that topic in September’s episode of Niggas Eatin.

TL:DR: the technology is more of a symptom of the absolute disease that is hollywood’s corporate slog of images than the actual problem.

[cicada-bones]

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 26: Death and Dreams

This was a fun one! Please forgive me for the angst at the beginning lol

I spent some time this week outlining the rest of the fic, and I found out that we are exactly two thirds of the way through what I have planned! Right now, I think we are going to end up with 38 or 39 chapters, so ive got at least twelve more to go. Crazy to think that there's still so much left in this story to tell!

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Rowan sat up quickly, a gasp already trapped in his throat. It was early morning, and the small window was white with frozen mist, preventing him from seeing much of the fortress’ surroundings. Regardless, he could tell that dawn was still far off – Mala’s golden light distracted by the waking of far off lands – and neglecting theirs.

Rowan rubbed at his eyes, seeking a way to wipe away the images that still danced behind his lids. He had been ripped from sleep by a dream, by the same dream that had been torturing him all week.

A nightmare that was not a vision, but a memory. A memory of the night he had spent two centuries trying to forget, and now was running like a cold river through his mind, relentless and inescapable:

The wind was reluctant beneath his wing feathers, tossing and tumbling and chafing against his magic’s inescapable pull. It was cold, bitingly cold. But Rowan didn’t feel it, not through his already icy chest. Frozen not with cold, but with fear. With panic.

The familiar land of home teased at the edges of his vision, but the picturesque mountain vista was distorted, marred by black clouds and the smell of smoke. The ice coating Rowan’s heart began to crack, shattering glass exploding in his torso. Piercing and slicing as it went.

Rowan dove, his wings straining, his breaths sharp in his lungs as he rounded a corner and their hilltop rose before his eyes. And then his heart dropped completely out of his chest.

Their home was gone.

Destroyed. Eradicated. Burnt to dust and ashes.

Nothing was left. Not the cottage, nor the stables or pens. Their animals were slaughtered and left in the snow to rot. And the garden, Lyria’s precious, treasured blooms, had been trampled into the earth. Already withering.

The surrounding trees were alight with a forest fire that could have been burning for hours. Days, even. The ground was dusted with snow, but the thin coating hadn’t proved a hindrance to the flames that danced from branch to branch, wild and harsh and utterly indifferent.

Rowan’s feet pounded into the earth as he approached the ground, shifting in less than a second. And he was running.

Twigs snapped over his skin, ripping into his face. Beads of blood dripped down his cheeks, replacing the tears that could not come. One moment he was running, and the next, he was home.

Their cottage was a pile of ash and burnt wood. A pyre. But Rowan ran for it anyways, his hands digging into the remains desperately, ignoring the heat of the still-burning embers. Ignoring the truth that was staring him baldly in the face: nothing that had been in the cottage when it burned would have survived.

All of a sudden, Rowan collapsed. His knees gave way and he was sitting in the dirt. Sitting in the grave of his only home.

Her name bubbled up through him, burning and itching as it went. But his throat tightened, trapping the cry in his chest where is writhed and twitched. Pressing against his heart and lungs and throat until they ached.

It felt as though hours passed, but it must have only been seconds. Drops of blood appeared before his eyes, and it was a while before he realized that they were real, before he recognized their smell.

His eyes slowly began to focus through the haze, and they traced the pools of red over the ground, through the trampled snow, up to the crest of the hill and –

Rowan tore up the hill, a desperate hope clawing its way up his throat. His hands reached for the body curled atop the cliff face, his fingers trembling. But then her scent reached him. Her cold, empty, lifeless scent.

And Rowan felt his very essence leaking away, melting into the snow as what was left of the mating bond guttered, and fizzled out.

He was alone.

Rowan reached out tentatively, his fingers seeking to cradle Lyria’s face, to stroke her hair, one last time.

But then a frown crossed over his mouth, his face tightening. Lyria’s hair was brown, not gold. And her scent was a mixture of silk and ferns and rabbits’ fur – not this strange, bright, citrusy spice.

Confusion washed over the agony in his chest. Dulling it, and distracting him. The mountains began to fall away, darkening and disappearing in his periphery. The falling snow seemed to stall in mid-air, sparkling like captured stars. Caution slowed Rowan’s fingertips as they stretched that final inch to brush across the female’s face and turn her head towards him.

Aelin Galathynius’ cold blue eyes looked back at him, their golden core frozen solid. A hollow void. Wild no more.

The princess’ blood stained his hands, and it sunk into his skin like acid. Filling him with an infinite, boundless guilt. Aelin was dead, and it was his fault.

He’d brought her to Maeve, and she killed her. And Rowan watched.

But no – she was here, right before his eyes. Her hair was a ripple of golden silk on the pillow, each breath a wisp of delicate white fog into the cold air of the stone room. Aelin was alive and well.

But not for long, a cold voice in the back of his head interrupted. Not for long.

And Rowan couldn’t find any disagreement within himself.

For even if she survived her looming encounter with Maeve, afterwards, she would leave. Back to Adarlan, or Terrasen, or Eyllwe. Onto other dangers. And he probably would never see her again.

Rowan stood up from the bed, and the princess sighed and turned over, her arm spreading out into the empty space he left behind. He lit a fire in the hearth, opened the window, and launched himself into the night sky – seeking answers from the wind that he knew it could not give him.

It was almost as though the dream had been crafted specifically to torture him, to make every part of him writhe in discomfort.

Rowan was used to dreaming of Lyria, was accustomed to closing his eyes each evening and being tortured with her scent, her bloodstained fingers, her broken body. Her screams. But this, this…lack, was almost even worse.

He was supposed to dream of her, his lost love. Was supposed to feel that pain for every day, every second, until he was returned to her in the Afterworld. For that pain to be taken away, for it to be turned on its head in such a way, was a violation of that unwritten contract. Of the agreement he’d made with himself when he gave his life over to Maeve. And so the guilt gnawed at him, a hungry animal.

But then seeing Aelin’s face in death, and knowing it was his fault –

Rowan shuddered, choking on the image and swerving in midair as he temporarily lost his balance. Even just imagining that guilt was beyond his capabilities. He couldn’t be the death of her. He refused to be.

But that meeting was creeping up on them, drawing ever closer. Each day Aelin improved by leaps and bounds. She was a natural fighter, taking everything he threw at her in stride, and then some. Even Fenrys and Connall couldn’t compare to her.

Even so, Aelin had not even come close to reaching her full potential. The iron bars locked around her power had not weakened, Aelin had only gotten better at navigating around them. She now knew how to access small amounts of her gift, and could control and manipulate those small portions, but the vast majority remained inaccessible to her. Held under lock and key.

But it almost didn’t even matter. Aelin was powerful enough that even without access to her entire gift, she was nearly ready to meet Maeve. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Rowan cursed inwardly, and made to turn back to the fortress, the blackened sky only just beginning to pale into a navy blue.

He could feel the days pressing in on him, the end of his time with Aelin looming close. There was a part of him that wanted to make the most of that time, that tasted the remnants of her blood on his tongue and wanted to damn the consequences to hell. Aelin had claimed him as a friend – was there a chance that she wanted him in that other way as well?

But it was only a very small part. There was still that male- no, man, across the sea. The love that had sent her away. A steel-cotton-and-birchwood trace in her blood. And though his mark had been fading in her scent of late, the amethyst ring remained on her finger, a clear sign of her feelings.

No, she didn’t want him the way he wanted her. But that was fine. In actuality, it was probably for the best. Rowan didn’t know what he would do if she had decided to pursue him for anything more than friendship. Aelin was relentless when she wanted something, and Rowan’s self-control was far from faultless. And there were more significant things to separate them than a captain across the sea.

Rowan sailed through the window of their rooms, shifted, and settled into the chair before the worktable. He removed the blades from their concealed places in his vambraces, and studiously began to clean them. There was still at least an hour before the sun truly dawned, but there was no chance of Rowan going back to sleep.

He reached beneath the work table, his hand stretching into the compartment hidden just underneath, searching for his sharpening set. But then his fingers brushed past an unexpected object – something he hadn’t thought about in weeks.

Rowan pulled out the bundle and unrolled it on top of the table surface, revealing the knives he had confiscated from Aelin all those months ago. Most of them were in piss-poor condition, having been neglected for so long (and not having been of particularly great quality to begin with). But there was one that stood out.

It was silver, and though it was burnished with dirt, the metal was of good make. The edge was strong, though dull, and the handle was wrapped in a sturdy leather thong. It was a good, solid weapon. One that could remain useful years after weaker tools had succumbed to the pressure of time.

Rowan discarded the other blades, grabbed his felt cloth and sharpening rod, and set to work.

···

Soon, Aelin awoke and headed down to the kitchens to help with breakfast.  Rowan went with her, thinking to grab some food before the kitchens filled with demi-Fae. On his way back up to his rooms however, Malakai found him.

The old male got right to the point. “Another body’s been found.” Rowan’s jaw locked, and a stone dropped into his stomach. “And there’s been a letter for you – it came with the courier this morning. She arrived just as I was about to go find you, so I thought I would deliver it for her.”

Malakai handed Rowan the letter, his eyes cold and hard, but Rowan knew that the aggression wasn’t directed towards him. This was the second body they had discovered this week, the other having been found three days earlier by Bas on his usual circuit. Rowan had forced Aelin to remain at Mistward that day to practice while he flew to the site to confirm Bas’ report, and to dispose of the body. But this time, he doubted he would be able to convince her to stay.

Rowan sighed and took the letter, recognizing the writing as Vaughn’s, but instead of opening it in the hallway he tucked it into a pocket in his tunic and turned his eyes back towards Malakai.

Without any further prompting, he launched into a description of the body’s location. It had been found by a sentry who belonged to a neighboring fortress to the south, far beyond any of the other sites. It had been spotted thirty-two miles directly southwest, just off the coast. Once the sentry returned, the commander at that fortress informed Malakai of the discovery.

Rowan only nodded at the male, who then jerked his head tersely in return and retreated back to the sentry station atop the battlement wall.

Each time Malakai arrived bearing news that yet another demi-Fae had been murdered it got harder. And now, it was the second time this very week. How many more would die before Rowan could figure out what the hell he was missing?

Rowan returned to his rooms in a daze, distractedly tearing open the report from Vaughn. It was short and to the point, as all Vaughn’s reports were. Apparently, Remelle, Benson, and Essar had arrived, and were now settling into the southwestern court to play diplomat and to spy for their queen – meaning that Vaughn was now on his way back to Doranelle.

Rowan set down the letter and sighed. Then began to gather up his many blades, and ready himself for a lengthy morning run.

···

Aelin had gotten even faster. Thirty-two miles – the farthest she had ever run. She had to push her Fae body to the limit, and yet they still made great time – it was still mid-morning when they arrived at the sea cliffs, where the body of the unknown demi-Fae was waiting for them.

Aelin stripped off her tunic, her chest heaving, forcing the white band she wrapped around her breasts to stretch and contract with each breath. Rowan averted his eyes, unbuttoning his own jacket while a delicate heat kissed his cheeks. He silently cursed at himself.

After they caught their breath, Rowan sent out a few feelers of wind, and they brought back impressions of pine and mist and birdsong…and a scent trail leading towards the shoreline. He and Aelin carefully approached the site, now close enough that Rowan didn’t even need his wind to scent the rotting corpse.

“Well, I can certainly smell him this time,” Aelin said wryly.

“This body has been rotting here longer than the demi-Fae from three days ago.” Rowan mused aloud. But then he regretted it when a spike of irritation struck him in Aelin’s scent. She definitely hadn’t forgiven him for leaving her behind earlier this week.

Rowan fully expected a sharp retort from the princess, scolding him for his protectiveness, but then the body of the demi-Fae came into view.

The ground around the body was torn up, the pine carpet full of gouges and hollows. There was a small stream just ahead, and even over its rushing, Rowan could clearly hear the buzzing of thousands of busy flies. All of which were hovering just above what appeared to be a heap of clothing piled behind a small boulder.

He approached the contorted form, swearing viciously as the smell began to overwhelm him. He leaned over to examine the male, forced to cover his mouth and nose with a forearm.

The demi-Fae’s face was twisted in horror, the obligatory dried blood oozing from the mouth, nostrils, and ears. The skin was wrinkled and dried as usual, but the clothes were perhaps more torn-up than others had been.

Aelin took a step forwards, her face twisted in disgust. “It has our attention and it knows it,” she said. “It’s targeting demi-Fae – either to send a message, or because they…taste good. But – ” Her voice cut off, her face becoming contemplative. “What if there’s more than one?”

Rowan’s brows raised in surprise. There had been moments where he had considered it, had though that the creature’s scent varied slightly between bodies. But he’d never been sure. And it had seemed even more unlikely that there were multiple overlooked and undetected creatures stalking the countryside.

Aelin moved to stand behind him, her scent filling with a nauseated horror. But as always, she didn’t let it overwhelm her.

“You’re old as hell,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “You must have considered that we’re dealing with a few of them, given how vast the territory is. What if the one we saw in the barrows wasn’t even the creature responsible for these bodies?”

Rowan narrowed his eyes, and gave her a shallow nod. She could very well be right – most land-locked predators didn’t have a hunting range beyond fifteen square miles, and the creature had killed over an area far closer to a hundred.

“Rowan,” Aelin’s worried tone pulled him from his train of thought. “Rowan, tell me you see what I’m seeing.” She swatted at the flies uselessly, her gaze fixed on the male’s hands, where you could just see –

Rowan cursed, crouching to get a closer look. There were small cuts along the palms, as if he had dug in his fingernails. Rowan used the tip of a blade to push back a bit of clothing torn at the collar. “This male – ”

“Fought.” Aelin interrupted. “He fought back against it. None of the others did, according to the reports.” She squatted beside him, holding out a hand for Rowan’s dagger.

He hesitated for a moment, but then her eyes met his, and he pressed the hilt into her open palm. Only for the afternoon.

Her lips twitched as she grabbed the dagger, seeming to tease him right back. I know, I know. I haven’t earned my weapons back yet. Don’t get your feathers ruffled.

Her gaze left his before he could respond, prematurely cutting off their silent conversation. Rowan snarled at her. He only got a quiet amusement in response.

Aelin carefully advanced towards the rotting forearm, gently running the tip of the dagger underneath the male’s cracked nails, and then smearing the contents on the back of her own hand.

A stain of oily black.

“What the hell is that?” Rowan demanded, leaning over her outstretched hand and sniffing the strange substance. He jerked back automatically, snarling. The smell…it was as though the stench coating the bodies had been distilled, condensed into solid form. And it was fouler than anything Rowan had ever smelled before. “That’s not dirt.”

Possibilities raced through his mind, each seeming less likely than the last. But that night-black oil…it couldn’t be blood.

“This isn’t possible.” Aelin jerked to her feet, her hands shaking slightly as she started to pace, all of a sudden filled with a manic energy. “This – this – this – ” her words came out in a stutter, and Rowan found himself rising slowly and carefully, forcing himself to press down on the panic that filled his own body at the sight of Aelin so frantic.

“I’m wrong. I have to be wrong.” The words didn’t seem to be directed at him, and instead Aelin was wrapped up in her own thoughts. No – her memories.

“Tell me,” Rowan growled, unable to wait any longer.

Aelin raised her eyes to meet his, her face tight. She moved to rub her eyes, but then seemed to remember the black oil still marking her skin, and went to wipe them on her shirt. Only then remembering that she wasn’t wearing one – only the breast band.

Her face twisted, and she crouched and ran her fingers in the stream, then rose and provided Rowan with an explanation. What she told him, astounded him.

Aelin had been holding out even more than he had suspected.

She told him of a creature, discovered in the catacombs beneath a library, within the very palace where she had been held captive for so many months. A beast with black blood and talons and a mutilated face – a demon with a human heart. Created, and held, beneath a clock tower made of Wyrdstone.

She told him of Wyrdmarks, of learning a language by firelight with the help of a friend, Nehemia, each word aching with the pain of her loss. Of how she had used the marks to contain the demon while she had killed it, cutting it to pieces right before the eyes of the crown prince.

She told him of the Wyrdkeys. And of the information that Maeve was holding hostage. Information that was necessary to stop a king who already possessed at least one of these keys, and was using it to create these demons. Targeting those with magic in their blood to be their hosts.

“The demon beneath the clock tower had been left there because of some defect, some flaw.” Aelin said, “But what if there were others, a new version that had been perfected?”

She shook with cold, her eyes cast to the ground, and Rowan sent a warm breeze her way. Wrapping the air around her like a silken ribbon, and erasing the gooseflesh that coasted her arms and stomach.

Rowan’s thoughts were twisting and contorting, but he held his face steady. This was the information he’d been missing. The connection that allowed the pieces to fall into place. He remembered the man Namonora had shown him, the man with the tale of a lethal darkness emerging from across the sea…

“How did it get here?” he asked.

Aelin shook her head. “I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong. But that smell – I’ll never forget that smell as long as I live. Like it had rotted from the inside out, its very essence ruined.”

Rowan began to pace. “But it retained some cognitive abilities. And whatever this is, it must have them, too, if it’s dumping the bodies.”

“Demi-Fae…they would make perfect hosts, with so many of them able to use magic and no one in Wendlyn or Doranelle caring if they live or die. But these corpses – if he wanted to kidnap them, why kill them?”

“Unless they weren’t compatible,” Rowan said. “And if they weren’t compatible, then what better use for them than to drain them dry?”

“But what’s the point of leaving the bodies where we can find them? To drum up fear?”

Rowan ground his jaw, stalking through the torn-up earth as if the ground would provide them with the answers they sought. But the dirt was only dirt.

“Burn the body, Aelin,” Rowan said, removing the sheath and belt that had housed the dagger still dangling from her hand and tossing them to her. She caught them easily. “We’re going hunting.”

···

Even when Rowan shifted into his other form, and circled high above, they found nothing. No trace of the creature, or of anyone at all, for that matter. This area wasn’t very densely habited – most of the local farmers inhabited an area farther down the coast.

As the light grew dim, they climbed up into the biggest, densest tree Rowan could find with several square miles, and they squeezed together onto a massive branch, huddled against the cold. Rowan hadn’t brought supplies for an overnight trip, and even with the coverage provided by the thick pine boughs, any fire would be seen for miles.

Aelin complained, petitioning to be allowed to summon even just a flicker of flame. But Rowan only pointed out that there was no moon that night, and as they had just proven – worse things than skinwalkers prowled these woods.

Instead of giving her space to grumble any further, Rowan asked her to explain more about the creature she’d encountered in the library, for her to detail its every strength and weakness. She told him readily, but nothing much stood out.

The creatures were strong, difficult to kill. Without the weaknesses of mortals, and with many of the benefits of immortal ones. As she spoke, Rowan pulled out one of the longer of his knives and began to clean it, more out of a desire to use the task to focus his own attention, than out of actual necessity.

“Do you think I was mistaken?” Aelin asked softly, “About the creature, I mean.”

Rowan turned away from her in order to pull his shirt over his head, and access the blades strapped to the skin beneath. He almost felt as though he could feel Aelin’s attention on him, could feel the slight pressure of her gaze on his back.

But when he turned back to face her, her eyes were fixed to his face. Still, the ghost of a smile marked his expression as he said, “We’re dealing with a cunning, lethal predator, regardless of where it originated and how many there are.” He grasped the small dagger that had been strapped over his left pectoral, and began to thoroughly wipe it down. “If you were mistaken, I’d consider it a blessing.”

Aelin leaned back against the tree trunk, her scent filling with exhaustion and dejection as she fell into her own thoughts.

Rowan let her be, instead turning to the familiar ritual of preparation. He systematically worked his way through his collection of blades, and then used the water skin to rinse his hands, neck, and chest, cleaning them of sweat and grime. Every now and again, feeling that faint pressure of Aelin’s watchful eyes.

He told himself that it didn’t mean anything, that she was looking at him simply because he was something to look at – an object in her field of vision. Her scent told him nothing, and so he dismissed those unwanted voices in his mind that thought that maybe, she was watching him for a different reason.

But still, the pressure felt…nice. It felt good to be looked at by her. To be seen.

Rowan pulled his shirt back on and settled his body against the trunk, his side pressing comfortably into Aelin’s. They sat in the dark quietly for a while until Aelin said, “You once told me that when you find your mate, you can’t stomach the idea of hurting them physically. Once you’re mated, you’d sooner harm yourself.”

Rowan turned to face her, the gold in her eyes glinting softly in the faint light. Her expression was unreadable. “Yes; why?”

“I tried to kill him. I mauled his face, then held a dagger over his heart because I thought he was responsible for Nehemia’s death. I would have done it if someone hadn’t stopped me. If Chaol – ” her voice broke off. “If he’d truly been my mate, I wouldn’t have been able to do that, would I?”

Rowan hesitated. He wanted to say no, that he didn’t think that Chaol was her mate. The man’s scent was fading from her blood, each day growing fainter and fainter. And it didn’t sit in that deep, essential place where Fae carried the scents of their mates.

No, the captain was a passing note in Aelin’s life, small and irrelevant. But the amethyst ring still glittered on Aelin’s finger, a reminder of the man who still held her heart. And Rowan wasn’t sure that Aelin wanted to hear that the man wasn’t hers to claim. Love could be a hard thing to let go of, regardless of how blatantly its falseness stared you in the face.

So instead Rowan said, “You hadn’t been in your Fae form for ten years, so perhaps your instincts weren’t even able to take hold. Sometimes, mates can be together intimately before the actual bond snaps into place.”

“It’s a useless hope to cling to, anyway.”

“…Do you want the truth?”

Aelin only tucked her chin into her tunic and closed her eyes. “Not tonight.”

···

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

[dwfwawfae]

I keep thinking what will happen if he’s found it

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I hope this question isn't too stupid, but you're one of my favorite writing blogs so I'll give it a shot. I want to write a FanFic based on the 1971 version of Willy Wonka. I wanted the story to tell Violet Beauregarde's story, the one that turns into a blueberry. However, I have SOME questions as I'm fairly new to FanFic. 1). Am I better off focusing on each kid's perspective, going back and forth? Or is it good to narrow my focus one one character? 2). Can I give them a character arch, li

(2/3) like Violet's really mean in school but she becomes kind after her experience at the factory. Is that too cliche or predictable? 3). Why does she try waddling away after her blueberry transformation and the Oompa Loompas are singing/dancing around her? They're trying to help her, and I don't really get why she'd do something like that. 4). What are tips to better understand the characters I want to flesh out? I guess it circles back to the last question, understanding their psyche. Yikes

(3/3)  Yikes! Super sorry this ask is long. And I'm even more sorry if my questions were lame or you've covered them before. :P. I can overthink at times, ESPECIALLY when it comes to my writing. I'm such a perfectionist storyteller, it's not even funny. I hope my questions aren't bothering you. You're one of my favorite writing blogs, so I figured I could come to you. I apologize in advance for wasting your time. You DO NOT have to reply at all if you don't want to. :P Thanks, have a great week

First and foremost: this is not a stupid question, you are not wasting my time at all. This is actually a rare treat for my blog because I don’t get many asks that don’t involve blindness, though I usually know better how to answer those than I do other questions. So, here we go:

Are you better off focusing on each kid’s perspective, going back and forth? Or is it better to narrow your focus onto one character?

The general rule of writing is to simplify. If two background characters serve a similar purpose, just combine the characters, for example. Slimming down extra scenes that don’t contribute to plot or character development.

However, that advice is meant for people publishing novels, working within an overflowing industry, dependant on sales and royalties. They have to meet whatever industry standards are, like word count or POV types. They have to find someone willing to take them on as a client because they love that book.

Fanfiction is not bound by such nonsense. Fanfiction is a beautifully lawless land where capitalism cannot influence it. What defines what you do with fanfiction is if you enjoy reading it, and if you have the steam to continue a long project.

Some people easily write 200,000k fics within a matter of weeks or months (or in my case, just once, two years). Some people work best with short fics. Both (and everything in between) are wonderful.

So, how much steam do you have for this project? How long do you think you can carry it and still finish it? Because that defines how big you should plan to make this project. If you don’t think you can write a long fic, then maybe just stick to one character.

A compromise between the two is to focus primarily on one character, and examine the other characters more briefly. This could be done in just a single POV chapter, or a handful. This could be done with the characters connecting and seeing the side character through your main character’s eyes, seeing how they’ve changed.

There’s no wrong answer. This fic is for your enjoyment primarily. No matter what you write, it will appeal to at least a few people, if not crowds. But your fun comes first, both literally and figuratively. Write for you, write to explore the story for yourself.

Can you give them a character arc like Violet’s where she becomes kinder after her experiences in the factory? Is that too cliche or predictable?

I wouldn’t call it predictable, because I’d expect everyone to go into completely different directions because they were all such unique and individual people before they entered the factory, and they were foiled by their own quirks.

Violet was mean and fake, she was demanding. I don’t know how much I want to speculate on the plotline you have going for her, how you’ll develop her to make her want to be more kind.

But I would love to speculate on the others.

Agustus Gloop? 

I feel like his experience in the chocolate river and almost drowning would make it hard to enjoy chocolate ever again. I think it would be a long time before he had any sweets. Also, because of his weight, I imagine there’s got to be some body-image issues hiding under the surface. I’d also put money on him being bullied, and him acting out against the students who bully him and because of his size he is more intimidating, but that doesn’t stop people from saying things behind his back.

I imagine the chocolate thing is a form of self-comfort. Maybe he turns to other foods to over-eat with to cope. Maybe eventually he figures out that this isn’t helping him. Does he try to replace unhealthy foods with healthier ones? (idk, I have a personal turn off on getting into the concept of dieting, so I’m not going to dig in much there).

I’d like to see him learn to love himself, develop some body neutrality, that his body doesn’t define who he is or what his worth is. That he becomes okay with who he is as he grows up. People who are happy and comfortable with themselves are generally nicer and easier going than people who aren’t. Maybe with some self-love, he’ll be kinder to others.

Veruca Salt?

Okay, I have a confession. My brain thought of her when discussing Violet. I haven’t seen either of the films in years.

Well, let’s thank Wikipedia everyone, the greatest gift of the internet.

Veruca does come across as a spoiled brat. Her parents shower her in material objects, which might mean something. I have a close friend who hates people buying things for him or giving him gifts that cost money. This has to do with a parent buying him things out of guilt after episodes of emotional abuse. I asked him a while back what he wanted for his birthday (I meant baked goods, I bake or cook special meals as birthday gifts for my friends. A has asked for chocolate chip cookies for three birthdays in a row now. Several friends ask for cookies for Christmas). Anyway, my friend had a panic attack and couldn’t respond until an hour later.

Maybe there’s something to that.

What does she think about money as she grows up? Does her love language continue to be gifts? I think it might one day be quality time. Maybe it is now. It’s common for rich parents to be absent and barely spend time with their kids because of work and extravagant social lives that sort of money gives them access to, meaning they barely have time in the day to spend with their kids. Maybe gifts are the only way she can make sure her parents still care, the only way she can get their attention? 

Mike Teavee?

Apparently in the movie credits his last name is spelled Teevee. But I’m obsessed with tea (and this is the point where I remember my tea and wonder if I’ve let it go cold because I got too focused. Nope, it’s still there). So it’s Teavee here.

Wikipedia describes him as a young boy who only watches TV, nothing but TV. He’s especially interested in cowboys and Western films. He comes across as a know-it-all. He’s easily annoyed but gets along with others.

Anyone have a guess at where I’m going with this?

Mike is neurodivergent. I mean, that’s my new headcanon. I lean towards ADHD because that’s what I project, but like everything else, his interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. Every viewer sees something different in him.

Some common ADHD (and autism) experiences beyond having a specific interest is how others react to your special interest. You get used to people getting bored when you talk about your interest for the thousandth time, but it’s still important to you, but not to someone whose opinion matters to you. RSD is probably common.

Wikipedia says he’s described as lazy in the books? Common ADHD “symptom,” or rather something that outside viewers label as laziness. Really, he just doesn’t have the motivation to do any of those other things.

And Charlie?

Did anyone think I wouldn’t have any thoughts on Charlie, our hero and protagonist?

Oh no, I have thoughts. Charlie goes to great lengths to set his family up comfortably, he becomes generous with his money. He also knows nothing about running a factory. I’m hoping Willy Wonka gives him some help there. But I bet adult Charlie is a stressed-out workaholic who tries to do everything and thinks he has something to prove, that he’s not just some random lucky child, that he can do this. Charlie totally gets a work-related anxiety disorder.

Those are my thoughts. I still think giving them Violet’s arc isn’t cliche or predictable, but rather completely different from what you think would happen to all those kids.

I mean, maybe a few of them are still little jerks in their adult lives. There’s no one road to grow up on, even if you’re four strangers who shared a similar traumatic experience.

Why does she try waddling away after her blueberry transformation and the Oompa Loompas are singing/dancing around her? They're trying to help her, and I don't really get why she'd do something like that.

They strange looking short men she’s literally never talked to, never seen or heard of before today, who’s already taken away two children by this point, all while singing a song about what terrible children they were.

And she’s scared because her body is doing something strange and scary and awful. She’s scared. She doesn’t know what to do. What will happen if these strange men take her away? She doesn’t know what happened to the other kids.

And they’re not really communicating they want to help, just singing cheerfully about how awful children are.

What are tips to better understand the characters I want to flesh out? I guess it circles back to the last question, understanding their psyche.

A lot of it is just watching real-life people and wondering why they are the way they are. Listening to their reasoning and what they tell you about who they are and where they come from.

I know people who grew up like Agustus with using over-eating as a way to self-comfort, and the bullying they experienced. I know that if a kid was physically bigger than his bullies, maybe he’d fight them to make them stop and leave him alone. People who go through that journey of learning that their body doesn’t define who they are, accepting it because it is theirs and it takes care of them.

(Which reminds me of a post I like that pops around here and there, that positive body image should be about more than how “sexy” your curves make you look. A person shouldn’t have to be sexy to be treated like a person. A person shouldn’t have to be sexy at all if they don’t want to, especially not all the time, and especially not a child. And there are a lot of obese children in the world who don’t have any positive body image messages designed for them)

I learned what my friend’s love languages are and why they have them and what they mean. Which is why I have that theory for Veruca.

Mike is just self-projection and listening to other neurodivergent people when they describe their life experiences or listening to their theories when they say a character is neurodivergent too.

I won’t lie, my theory on Charlie is based entirely on the Avatar: the Last Airbender fandom’s common head-canon that Zuko becomes a workaholic after he becomes Firelord. There might be some canon material in the comics that supports that, but I’ve never seen it. I think Zuko and Charlie have a similar vibe and that those three years Zuko struggled, and Charlie’s entire life before the factory make them both feel like they need to be perfect and do everything right to prove they deserve the job they’re given and that their backgrounds don’t define their worth.

Thank you so much for your ask anon!

And again, you are not a bother. I enjoyed digging into this movie I’d never thought in depth about until tonight. And you’re not alone, lots of writers are overthinkers and perfectionists. You are in good company. Our writing and fanfiction community welcomes and loves you <3

And thank you for your kind words! I’m so happy that you love my blog so much <3 It made my day to read that

Take care anon, and good luck in your writing :)

[singularityhacker]

Computer Generated Education

Everything is a Story

As humans, we are primed at the deepest levels to listen to and tell stories. We create movies, television shows, write novels, and sit around the dinner table telling each other stories about our day. It goes even deeper than that. It’s said that even startups rise or fall on the quality of the story behind the business venture. We even frame the whole way we deliver software products around user capabilities described in “User Stories”. So it should come with little surprise that all the major social media platforms have organized around the story format. Stories in the social media context are bite-sized multimedia experiences. Adopted by Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp. Even traditional media is trying to capitalize on this format with efforts like Quibi.

I was reading a dystopian article by Nicholas Carr called TikTok and the coming of infinite media around the same time of discovering my two niece’s obsession with Snapchat “streaks”. A streak is a kind of “don’t break the chain” gamification employed by Snapchat whereby users are called out with badges signifying their daily storytelling. My nieces were so attached to their streaks that the potential loss of their phone privileges and subsequent break of streaks filled them with horror. Between the Carr article and my first-hand observation of this obsession, I felt that surely all of western civilization was doomed and rapidly sliding into utter banality and destruction. The thought occurred to me that there had to be a way to leverage this mechanic and these flatforms in a more beneficial way. 

This gave rise to the idea of using procedurally generated educational content combined with computer-driven evaluation methods to repurpose these social media distribution channels and game mechanics for good. Let’s look at both aspects individually. 

Computer Generated Stories

Media, in the social media story format, can be created programmatically. I’ve done several experiments with Narakeet and can personally attest to how easy it is to dynamically create short videos purely from text, images, and some short pre-made video clips. Google is even currently experimenting with this by creating videos from websites. One could use thematically related content from sources like Wikipedia or open textbooks to create series of social media stories that are educational and conveniently consumable. 

Computer Generated Tests

The second part of this is the evaluation side of things. It’s good and all to be consuming educational content as opposed to mediocre entertainment but we can take it further. Studies show that merely having the expectation of being evaluated or having to explain material improves one’s retention of material. Crazily enough, recent advances in computer science language models have made it possible to automatically generate true/false quizzes from a piece of textual content. So from the same body of text, you can create short instructional videos and short quizzes to evaluate the viewer’s retention of that information. Ramsri Goutham has made this an easily accessible reality in the form of an open-source tool called Questgen.

Conclusion

The same science that can create a bomb can create nearly limitless inexpensive energy. Rather than deriding how technology is being used, we need to evaluate how it can be repurposed and reconfigured for good. The above scheme has enormous potential and is probably only limited by our willingness to step out of our comfort zones and think outside the box. Consider the educational crisis of over-packed classrooms or empty classrooms in the case of the ongoing and evolving pandemic. This approach doesn’t even require the creation of a new network because it exists as just another channel on the existing social media networks. Or imagine trying to shift the culture in a large scale enterprise setting. Do you hire teams of trainers and coaches to make that change or introduce a large scale reeducation program that can be executed by a small set of technical experts? 

Several years ago I wanted to test out of some college classes so instead of taking the classes that would have required me to drive and sit through, what I believed to be inefficient class activities, I just downloaded some flashcard apps designed for that material. Then every morning when I woke up, I spent about an hour cycling through the cards, studying the concepts, major figures, history, and principles of the topic. The flashcard app kept track of my growing accuracy and used spaced repetition to perfectly time when certain problem cards were repeated. It honestly didn’t even feel like work. 

James Clear in his amazing book Atomic Habits talks about reducing the friction to do the things you want to be doing and I can’t think of a better friction reducer than to be strategically replacing people’s social media addition with the gamified education described above.

[spoonie-living]

[Image: a person in plaid flannel and boots falling on the backdrop of a foggy sky. Credit: Pexels]

The Hard Fall: How getting on disability can impact your benefits (U.S.)

As spoonies, we’re generally occupied with getting on disability, but what happens once we win our case?

My lawyer didn’t prepare me at all for this, so when I got my confirmation letter and first payments, I had no idea what it would do to my government services.

When I called around, I got directed to some local government office. “Yeah honey,” the woman on the other line said sympathetically, “we call that the hard fall.”

And hard it was; I lost access to several doctors and had to pay out of pocket while sorting out my prescription coverage. And honestly, it could have been a lot worse.

This is something you want to know about before you win, because the last thing you need is to flail around trying to sort everything out as fast as possible. Trust me, I’ve been there. And I’d like it if you didn’t have to go there.

If you’re waiting on a case, take a few minutes to look through this information! It’ll help you set your expectations and save you some grief as you get settled after your case comes through.

I’ll be updated this as I come across more information (or potholes in the road), so click here to see the most up-to-date version of this post!

Disability backpay can push you out of resource-/asset-based programs

If you’ve been waiting a while on your case, your backpay could be pretty huge; after about two years, mine was $35k!

HEADS UP: If you’re blazing through your disability backpay to handle unpaid bills, be sure to leave yourself a decent cushion in case you have to pay for things out of pocket while everything gets sorted out.

If you’ve been benefiting from programs that determine eligibility based on how much cash you have in the bank (for example, food stamps), your backpay will probably knock you right out of them.

Take a moment to assess what government services you receive and prepare for their loss. In theory, the extra disability income will replace it, but… well, that’s only in theory.

NEED AN ESCAPE ROUTE? There’s an option called an ABLE Account that allows you to set cash aside for anything related to living with a disability (and that’s a broad category). This cash does not count towards your assets as evaluated by some (some) assistance programs.

You can only deposit $15k/year, though, so depending on the spare cash you end up with, you may spend a year off asset-based services. Note also that your disability (as recognized by the government) must have had an onset before 26 to quality.

Disability income can push you out of income based services… like Medicaid

I gave a thought to insurance only once I received the letter confirming my win. I had heard something about getting on Medicare, but not much else. I figured I’d have both at once. But… that wasn’t the case.

Turns out, disability income counts towards the income cutoffs associated with Medicaid. Yes, I now “make too much money” to qualify for Obamacare. Which didn’t exactly make sense. If I qualify for income assistance due to a disability, why wouldn’t I be a good Medicaid candidate? And why, oh why, would being declared disabled be a good time to mess with a person’s medical coverage?

What I learned is all comes down to the state/federal divide. Medicaid is state, and Medicare and disability are federal. The state doesn’t care where the money comes from; it’s just income to them. Meanwhile, Medicare is granted to everyone who gets on disability. Some folks with low enough disability income are “dual eligible” (which comes with its own weird logistics), but others, like me, end up just on Medicare.

This was really bad news for me, as Oregon Medicaid has really fantastic coverage. I got lucky with my providers overall, but still lost access to a couple important ones. You’ll want to look ahead as you wait on a determination and figure out whether you’ll be paying out of pocket or dealing with a gap in care as you start the insurance shuffle.

WARNING: While some states offer Medicaid coverage for naturopathic medicine (thanks, Oregon!), be aware that Medicare does not. You’ll need to pay out pocket or look for a Part C plan (see below) that does cover naturopaths. Which will be cheaper? Get out your calculator…

ETA: Medicare doesn’t cover routine dental or vision, either! It’s worth calling one of the orgs listed under Getting Help, below, to see if there are some subsidized options for you. Otherwise, check out this article for some ways to get that dental coverage. It looks like an Advantage Plan (Part C, see below) is the best option if you need vision coverage.

About Medicare coverage

The first thing to know about Medicare is that it has multiple, potentially moving, parts. Part A is hospital and emergency coverage, B is routine medical care, and D is prescriptions. What about C? Well, C is optional, bundled coverage that overwrites parts A, B, and D.

I don’t know all the factors involved in my case, but what I do know is that I received core Medicare for parts A and B, with Aetna for part D (prescriptions). However, there was a gap between that and the end of my Medicaid prescription coverage—so I was enrolled in the NET program, which is another prescription coverage to ensure you don’t get wrecked by transitions like this.

The most fun part? Nobody called me to get me “set up” and fill in the gaps. I was at the mercy of bureaucracy and the postal service to know what I was enrolled in. So for a little while I was just spinning my wheels and definitely paid for a prescription or two out of pocket.

NOW I KNOW: I probably could have created an account with Medicare.gov to get that info sooner. It’s worth trying, to see if you can save yourself the trouble.

Once I gave my insurance info to the pharmacy, they were able to initiate a partial refund for the difference. If they hadn’t, I would have needed to put in a claim by mail and waited for that to process.

BUT SERIOUSLY: Don’t wait on getting stuff in the mail. I got my “welcome to Medicare” brochure a full four months after actually getting on the damn thing. Luckily my actual card and prescription coverage info came much faster than that, but I just want to really illustrate what a mess this system is.

Paying for Medicare

Your Medicare coverage may not be free. With standard Medicare, you’re given specific monthly premiums, deductibles, copays, and more based on your income level.

SOMETHING NICE: In my case, there are no costs for my coverage this year; I think this is a kindness extended to ease the transition. I’m personally likely to save money this way, but another patient might potentially save by moving straight to a (paid) Part C plan.

Saving money and accessing doctors with Part C

My heart sank a bit when I first looked at what I had been given: Medicare isn’t really “one size fits all” in terms of price or coverage, and certainly wasn’t a good match for me.

Luckily, we have Part C to compensate for that. The government essentially contracts out to other insurance providers for Part C, so that folks can find a different mix of fees and coverage that better suits their medical needs.

So, you’re going to have some kind of coverage from day one. But once you get your wits about you, it’s definitely worth looking at your options in the Part C “marketplace.” In fact, Medicare.gov has a handy tool that’ll let you enter in your prescriptions, doctors, and more. Then the site will spit out the most advantageous plans for you.

Getting other/additional insurance

You might not be happy with any of your options under Medicare—and unfortunately, being on Medicare means you can’t buy coverage on the insurance marketplace.

That being said, there are some programs out there that’ll help you out.

A great example is Medicaid Buy-in Programs for disabled folks who work (even the tiniest bit, as long as you claim the income on your taxes). This does have resource limits, though, so don’t get too excited until you’ve figured out what kind of backpay you’re getting.

What else is out there? It really depends on your situation and your state. Your best bet is to contact your state’s DHS (mentioned below) and ask them to help you identify your options.

Getting help

As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, Medicare is an old system that’s been rebuilt, patched, and painted over—and navigating it (especially in conjunction with other benefits) can be a bit of a nightmare.

Luckily, there are programs that can help! Getting connected with them should be one of the first things on your to do list after getting on disability. Here are the two major ones that I was encouraged to work with:

State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIP) - This is a resource center and network of advisors meant to specifically help you navigate public insurance options. You can find your state’s program here. Oregon’s program, SHIBA, has a volunteer come visit you and explain how Medicare works—and honestly, this visit is what enabled me to make sense of all of this enough to write an article about it!

Your state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) - specifically, their senior and disability program - Once you register with them, they can help you access additional support programs, including insurance and food stamps. They may know about programs you aren’t aware of, so it’s worth filling out the form and getting a quick case review.

Other things to look out for when you get on disability

[Only one item for now. I’ll fill in more as the surprises hit.]

This year’s taxes are gonna be weird. Depending on your financial situation, you may want to get the paid version of TurboTax or get a tax consultant in on things. The short version, though, is that you can choose to modify previous years’ taxes to incorporate the backpay you received, or claim it all on your coming tax forms.

…and that’s what I learned from my hard fall. I truly hope it helps you avoid the stress I dealt with, or at least anticipate it more adequately.

Did you have a “hard fall”? Do you have advice to add to this? Do feel free to comment with your experience or contact me with any additions!

❤️, Editor Diane

[magicpotionniveous]

Pre-Lawsuit Ghost’s Tour Rider

On June 12, 2017  John Jurgensen of the Wall Street Journal posted a surreal outsider’s report on the Ghost lawsuit, for once not based on joppe’s translations. 

The WSJ is behind a pay wall and requires some juggling to access so here’s the highlight followed by the remainder of the article:

“Don’t put any fast food under our noses,” the band tells venues. 

...a list of requests sent to concert venues, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, included Ghost’s demands for cold cuts, beer and room-temperature bottled water. The band stipulated that bananas remain bagged in the catering area due to “a very severe banana allergy” among the traveling crew.

At each tour stop, they asked for six local postcards plus stamps (“YES WE REALLY WANT THESE”), along with good chocolate (“NOT HERSHEY!”) and quality food. “You are what you eat and in this regard we want to stay healthy,” Ghost noted in a dossier sent to venues.

When band members weren’t on stage or discussing evolutions in Ghost’s devilish mythology, they grappled with the earthly concerns of road life. In the cramped confines of the tour bus, sleeping schedules conflicted, recalls Mr. Persner. Debates about which restaurants to eat at were common.

From the beginning:

Ghost, a Swedish heavy-metal band, built a cult following over a decade using demonic pageantry and rhyming lyrics like “hypnotizing horns of ram” and “paralyzing pentagram.”

Band members perform in eerie masks and keep their identities secret, adding to the group’s mystique.

It all worked like a charm—until a recent lawsuit unmasked the satanic musicians as a bunch of earthly beings. In court papers and other documents, band members discuss such pedestrian matters as salaries, tour buses, laundry arrangements and how concert venues should prepare the bananas in their backstage spread.

“Don’t put any fast food under our noses,” the band tells venues.

In a realm where celebrities market their personal lives as much as their music, Ghost’s anonymity was an anomaly that fans flocked to. The band’s lead singer, Papa Emeritus, pairs skeletal face makeup with a pope hat bearing an inverted cross.

He performs while flanked by musicians known as Nameless Ghouls who wear silver-horned, mouth-less masks. Without revealing their faces, the band walked the red carpet at last year’s Grammys and accepted an award with Papa proclaiming that “a nightmare has turned into a dream.”

Four Nameless Ghouls are now suing Papa—a 36-year-old whose real name is Tobias Forge —in a Swedish court. They have accused him of financially shortchanging them and reneging on an agreement to make them partners and distribute the band’s profits equally.

The suit identified all the band’s members and has divided fans world-wide. Some have pored over the court documents and soaked up the behind-the-scenes details, while others resent the revelations for ruining Ghost’s spooky image. The dispute “really messed up the whole mythos of the band,” one fan complained online. “The lawsuit reduces them all to boring, flawed people.”

Kathleen Higgins of Halifax, Canada, a pet-store manager whose husband plays in a Ghost tribute band, avoided news of the lawsuit online and said she was bummed out by the band’s money squabbles and mundane affairs. “It’s like watching a Broadway show. When I saw ‘Phantom of the Opera’ as a child I wasn’t interested in who the actors were or what they ate for breakfast,” she said.

In character, Papa is a sort of occult sect leader who leads audiences in chants of “Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer,” incantations in the song “Year Zero.” But ahead of the band’s 2013 American tour, the front man was especially excited about Ghost’s transportation upgrade.

“It will be a real tour bus on the U.S. bit!” Mr. Forge wrote to the band in an email included in the suit. “Had we taken the van we would [have] gotten a minimal profit, but not sufficiently large for us to endure a month in the van.”

During concerts around that time, the band churned through songs such as “Death Knell” and “Satan Prayer.” At one point, Papa handed out unconsecrated communion wafers and sang about the stench of “dead human sacrifices.”

Afterwards, one of the Nameless Ghouls was tasked with cleaning the band’s gamey vestments in his apartment building’s communal washing machine in Sweden.

“It was like getting the whole football team’s dirty wash,” Martin Persner, the former Ghoul, said in an interview. Minutes from a band meeting included with court documents noted him raising concerns about the dank wardrobe situation and asking if it was possible to do laundry at the concert venues. Mr. Persner, a longtime Ghost guitarist who left the band last year, didn’t join the other Ghouls in filing suit.

As Ghost ascended in popularity in recent years, its concerts—known to fans as “rituals”—became more elaborate, featuring faux stained glass and burning incense. A confetti cannon shot fake money with Papa’s scowling face printed next to the number 666. Friends and audience members recruited as “sisters of sin” dressed up as nuns to administer the ersatz communion.

Backstage protocol was more basic. A list of requests sent to concert venues, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, included Ghost’s demands for cold cuts, beer and room-temperature bottled water. The band stipulated that bananas remain bagged in the catering area due to “a very severe banana allergy” among the traveling crew.

At each tour stop, they asked for six local postcards plus stamps (“YES WE REALLY WANT THESE”), along with good chocolate (“NOT HERSHEY!”) and quality food. “You are what you eat and in this regard we want to stay healthy,” Ghost noted in a dossier sent to venues.

When band members weren’t on stage or discussing evolutions in Ghost’s devilish mythology, they grappled with the earthly concerns of road life. In the cramped confines of the tour bus, sleeping schedules conflicted, recalls Mr. Persner. Debates about which restaurants to eat at were common.

The ultimate behind-the-scenes clashes, however, were about money. Mr. Forge’s legal response to the Ghouls’ suit, filed last week, describes showdowns over the band’s salaries, and claims the Ghouls were never more than musicians for hire. Their lawsuit “destroyed the mystery” of Ghost, Mr. Forge said, and their anonymity made them replaceable. He didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.

Papa Emeritus recently debuted a new set of Nameless Ghouls, with no announcement to fans. The band launched a U.S. tour earlier this month.

The former Ghouls who filed suit declined interview requests. In a statement released in April, they accused Mr. Forge of “unabashed dishonesty, greed, and darkness. Not the darkness of which Ghost sings, but a darkness that pushes a person to betray his best friends when fame and fortune appear within reach.”

Martin Persner reveals himself as a former Ghoul.

Ghost’s anonymity is a throwback to the 1970s, when groups like Kiss shrouded themselves in sinister mystery. Pre-Wikipedia, fans had to piece together group lore by poring over music magazines, album liner notes and urban legends.

To be sure, some inquisitive and savvy Ghost fans were able to ferret out details about the musicians before they were exposed in the suit. But for the band, concealing their everyday identities was just a way to amp up the theater. The goal was to fuel rumors and “to create something larger than five dudes. Like comic book characters,” said Mr. Persner, who went public separately in a YouTube reveal meant to promote his own band, Magna Carta Cartel.

Being shrouded in a cloak and mask had practical advantages, too. “There was never a bad hair day,” said Mr. Persner.

-- Neanda Salvaterra contributed to this article.

Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com

Appeared in the June 13, 2017, print edition as 'This Satanic Band Demands Better Work Conditions.'

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hell-on-earth-satanic-band-files-suit-citing-dreary-work-conditions-1497282380

The comments are a riot as well.