#proportion in a way that made the end of the game less impactful

[lord-radish]

So I just finished DanganRonpa. It was the only thing I was speaking about for a second there.

Honestly? Kind of fell apart at the end. Not entirely, I still had a lot of fun, but I began to fall off with it and the final Class Trial was a bit of a slog.

I'm really glad I didn't steamroll through to the end last night, because I was already beginning to hit a brick wall (and bc I was called in to work 2 hours early the next day, which ended up being like hellishly menial) and the way the game infodumps at the end was really exhausting. I was having trouble staying invested even after giving it a reasonable break.

I really enjoyed the game, and I'll be looking forward to the rest of the games and the anime. Probably gonna spoil the gaiden game for myself rather than play it. But it'll have to be after a long break, because that last trial broke my brain with the amount of exposition it had and how long the entire thing went.

It's a strong 7/10 - liked it a lot, but for how much it stands out, I don't think it's up there in my top 25 games or anything like that.

[artbyblastweave]

Team Fortress Two: Parahumans Edition

Like eight different people asked about the specific powers I had in mind for the wormverse iteration of Team Fortress. Here’s the reddit write-up, updated and expanded, now with additional Ms. Pauling and Administrator.

(Read more under the cut; this absolutely got the hell away from me. This is so so long)

The Scout: The Youngest of Nine Brothers, The Scout triggered as a One-upmanship thinker/brute/changer; his power is the manifestation of “anything you can do, I can do better.” He can designate a broad area of human endeavor- usually, the extremely broad field of "athletics"- and, after a few hours of practice, will become slightly more competent at it than the most competent person in his company. Applying this power within his family dynamic bumped him up to about the level of an Olympic athlete. In the company of eight other parahumans his athleticism pushes into the superhuman, allowing him to make impossible standing jumps and run at the pace of a slow-moving car for hours on end without tiring.

Scout is loosely aware of his power, but he isn't aware that he can consciously apply it to anything other than his physicals, and furthermore hasn't caught on to the scaling mechanic at play. This has enabled his Casanova wannabe tendencies, as he subconsciously uses his power to become slightly more socially competent and charming than whoever he's currently attempting to woo. The emphasis, though, is on slightly- Scout’s power is optimized for groups approximately the size of the one that prompted his trigger event. In extremely small groups- three or less- his enhancements, physical, social or intellectual, tend to short out at inconvenient times, and if he currently associates himself with a truly massive group, his power simply doesn’t activate. The defining element is scrutiny- his power is nothing without an audience that Scout, on some level, esteems. 

The Soldier: An anti-GesselSchaft vigilante who was motivated to travel to Europe and attack the group in the mid-90s out of a rabid patriotism mixed with an “End-of-History” Ennui, soldier triggered after his incredibly poorly-planned attack on the group-which went well at first due to sheer dumb luck- ended when he tried to escape from a burning, Nazi-infested hovercraft using a homemade bedsheet parachute. Torn between panic at his impending splattering and his heartfelt conviction that his plan was utterly foolproof, Soldier triggered with a subtle but versatile brute/breaker power that shields him from harm in direct proportion to how bad of an idea his plan was.

The result of Soldier’s power is that an enormous number of incredibly stupid game plans are lubricated and made viable for The Soldier, and only for The Soldier, and never for the reason that he thinks his plan is currently working. His power shields him from the incidental blast damage of using high-explosive weaponry at unsafe ranges, it allows him to blast jump hundreds of yards with only minimal charring, and in addition it’ll shift his weight and density on the fly to make the bad landings less impactful. Blasting a horn to “rally the troops and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies” has limited effect on morale, but it does temporarily render him resistant to the smattering of gunfire now headed his way. Less overtly, it allows him to survive on a diet of expired rations and keep overtly rabid Racoons as pets with no ill effects.

 Soldier survived his trigger event with only a sprained ankle and has yet to realize that his power is more complicated than a simple low-level brute rating; This largely due to the fact that a mental complication of his always-on breaker-state is that he’s literally psychologically incapable of self-critique, and thus always barreling forwards in search of a plan so patently awful that even his power won’t be able to cover the deficit.

The Spy: Soldier was in fact a brute-oriented ping of a more-mature European cape, The Spy, who was also in the Gesellschaft base that day on an unrelated job. The Spy has a stranger power that increases the efficacy of his disguises in direct proportion to how unconvincing they are. The use of a paper mask with someone's likeness on it is sufficient to convince viewers that The Spy looks exactly like that person. Not that he is that person, mind you, but that he looks exactly like them; the effect doesn’t extend to his voice, and shatters if he attempts to do anything that the person he’s impersonating wouldn’t be physically capable of doing.

Unique on the team in that he’s actually very good at mercenary work and spycraft sans powers, Spy triggered midway through his career when a job went south and he was forced to attempt a “knock-them-out-and-take-their-clothes” gambit on a guard with a comically ill-fitting uniform. Spy actively resents his power, feeling that it forces him to make a mockery of his distinguished profession and behave like a boorish amateur, and providing him only marginally better coverage than the ill-fitting uniform should he face real scrutiny. Indeed, Spy is only really effective because he combines his power with a genuine talent for martial arts and sabotage; he got more of a power boost from the access and connections being a middling parahuman provided him than from the power itself, and he benefits massively in the field by being surrounded by a group of massively flashy morons who distract from his flimsy disguises.

The Heavy. A Russian dissident arrested on trumped-up charges of being an unregistered parahuman, along with his entire immediate family. After orchestrating a breakout from a Red Gauntlet internment camp, he triggered  during the grueling trek to a pre-arraigned extraction point, pushing himself to collapse after giving all his rations to his ailing family. 

Misha triggered with a brute power that exaggerates positive input on his body. Eating a spoonful of food meets his caloric needs for a week, eating a normal meal induces an extremely powerful short-term healing factor, consistent low-level exercise makes him strong enough to carry an artillery weapon free-hand, and various medications work positive effects on him almost instantly (in line with his own perceptions of what the medications ought to be doing!) While essentially set for life himself, his power does nothing to meet the needs of those around him; this pushes Misha to throw himself on the grenade as often as possible in order to resolve situations quickly and keep those he views as under his protection out of the line of fire. Misha is a major driver of Scout’s power, and his innate receptivity to medical intervention also gives him good power synergy with....

The Medic. An Implant Tinker, Dr. Humbolt is capable of building almost any kind of tinkertech device imaginable, as long as the device is mostly or completely embedded inside a living person. This includes the normal set of Bonesaw-like durability enhancements, bone reinforcements, organ meshes and the like, but it also extends to more esoteric technologies like teleportation recall modules, internally-mounted skin-tight forcefield generators, and (in one-notable case) rapid onset clone gestation within the target host. 

At one time a decently competent transplant surgeon, the medic triggered after being abducted by Gesellschaft and forced over the course of weeks to try and implant looted tinker tech into other captives. (Gesellschaft had no real expectation that this would work; it was as part of an experiment in causing a tinker trigger.) This culminated in a kludged implant backfiring and vaporizing both the current patients skeleton AND the supervising Gesellschaft doctor; resulting in a do-or-die sense that he either had to come up with something his captors would find usable NOW or get shot to death. He was saved from having to respond to the situation only by the soldier falling through the skylight wrapped in a makeshift bedsheet parachute.

Medic’s power has a surface-level armorfaceyness to it; he triggered because he couldn’t make tinkertech implants and got a power that let him successfully make tinkertech implants. Under the surface, however, his power is laced through with an allergy to respectable, replicable procedure, which he actually valued fairly heavily pre-trigger; he triggered as part of what (he) perceived to be a search for a process but instead got a trigger that let him jump straight to a successful outcome, that he himself has limited under-the-hood understanding of. There’s no process he can figure out that will make his captors let him go; there’s no innovation he can make that can become general industry practice; there’s no way to divest himself from his work. His singularly useful ability forces him to constantly append himself to cape teams that can protect him and act as vectors for his technology, lest someone press-gang him into circumstances similar to that of his trigger event. This has had deleterious effects on his mental health and professionalism; why bother taking shit seriously if it’s almost certain to pan out agreeably? All else being equal, why not do buckwild shot-in-the-dark things with whale glands and baboon uteri? In for a penny, In for a pound.

The Engineer:  Dell Conagher was an early beneficiary of the “skateboard trick” tech boom instigated by the tinkers; prior to his trigger, his small, fly-by-night engineering firm was able to make a small fortune by observing shard-enabled robotics in the field and then working backwards to create extremely advanced conventional prosthetics, automatons and security systems based on observed principles. Unfortunately, a search for funding brought him into the orbit of the nascent Elite; a subsequent falling out lead to Conagher’s remote workshop coming under siege from a group of Elite legbreakers. Rather than a straightforward smash-and-grab, the Elite sent a group of strangers, night-hag-style environmental breakers, and movers, intended to harass Conagher into insanity over days or weeks; the goal was to send a message. They’d unfortunately failed to account for the fact that Conagher was completely insane and had wired his house and workshop to the gills with security countermeasures and booby-traps, resulting in an extended tit-for-tat siege. Although he put up a decent fight, Conagher’s limited countermeasures began to run dry, and he triggered out of fear that he’d overcommitted, that he’d overestimated his own ability to counter parahuman abilities through conventional engineering, and that they were going to take everything that he’d worked so hard to build.

A Siege Tinker. Conagher specializes in building resource-Un-intensive, quick-to-deploy, hardy, easy-to repair defensive emplacements, and emplacements that make it easier to repair other emplacements, such as teleporters and dispensers; his combat specialty is squeezing blood from a stone, lowering the overhead of committing to, or retreating from, a fight. The tradeoff is that he has extreme difficulty expanding the total number of discreet emplacements included in his set-up, having a much easier time iterating upon and gaining razor-thin margins on the performance of his handful of existing devices; working down the alternative tech tree of a weaponized prothesis delayed his progress for years in other areas, and his power curtailed his ability to think about non-tinkertech designs without his thoughts drifting back to his defensive emplacements.  His power solved his inability to defend his valuable work by sharply curtailing how much work he can do that’s valuable enough to need defending.

The Pyro. An individual of imprecise origin and ambiguous gender, The Pyro was Dell Conagher’s business partner, bodyguard, and possibly either his ward or his relative. Noted for never appearing in public outside of their full body protective gear and gas mask; ostensibly related to their work with Dell’s company as a chemical engineer, although it was commented on more than a little that they apparently never took it off. 

The Pyro was caught up in the siege that caused Dell’s trigger event was in charge of running maintenance on Dell's various defensive measures during the seige, both before and after his trigger event, as well as contributing jury-rigged incendiary weapons to flush out the encroaching strangers. However, the stress of playing whack-a-mole refueling the more energy-intensive machines under fire caused them to trigger with a bud from their associate. The Pyro is a shaker with the ability to increase the longevity and energy output of chemical reactions within a certain radius. Pyro is a lowercase t tinker, using an arsenal of makeshift incendiary weaponry only made practical by their power. Their homemade flamethrowers can be fired continuously for hours, and the fires they set burn abnormally long. In their hands, a flare gun or a can of gasoline gains output equivalent to a military firebomb. If they superheat a blade, it'll retains that heat for hours on end. Crucially, their mere presence in a vehicle allows it to run for thousands of miles on fumes. 

The Pyro’s powerset is nominally complementary to that of the engineer; much of his tinkertech was built in conversation with Pyro’s ability to enhance the battery life and fuel efficiency. The downside, though, is that the power induces a Burnscar-adjacent form of delusional pyromania. When using their power at a low burn, Pyro is calmed and mildly elated; when using their power to amp up explosions and wipe away intruders in a cleansing fire, Pyro is both Euphoric and detached from reality. This is because, as a response to Pyro’s immediate situation, the intended use of the power is a knot-cutting, scorched-earth anti-stranger measure, meant to flood an environment with heat that burns hot enough and long enough to scour all life, probably at the cost of whatever (abstract, probably not really worth it) value you were defending that area over in the first place. Anything Pyro does with the power that’s more subtle than that is downstream of their continued attachment to their partner.

The Sniper. The brainchild of an undersea tinker collective off the coast of New Zealand, The Sniper had a rough go of it as a kid. His mother, a callous fermentation tinker, modified his biology so that all of his excretions were violently acidic and lightly alcoholic, essentially making him a bargain bin Newter. Then his father, a propulsion tinker, loaded him into a rocket to see if he'd designed a user interface intuitive enough that a three-year-old could operate it.

He hadn't. At the age of three, Sniper triggered with a thinker power related to calculating the angles and trajectories of moving objects in times of great chaos and stress. His newfound abilities allowed him to merely crashland in the Australian outback instead of plowing into Ayers rock and dying instantly. He roamed the bush as an urban legend until he was adopted by a pair of kindly farmers. Although his power proved almost useless for competitive shooting in a controlled environment, he realized at a young age that reckless, life-or-death attacks on the local wildlife brought out the best in his abilities, and eventually realized that he had the chops to cut it as a mercenary in the States. A loner by nature and inclination, the fact that his power only functions optimally when things have gone to hell essentially forced him into the company of Team Fortress, whose baseline idiocy provides a comfortable cushion for his power.

The Demoman. Originally a competent but unpowered demolitions expert, The Demoman triggered with a bud of The Soldier's power after an ill-advised drinking game between the two of them was interrupted by a surprise Behemoth attack, which Demo was then forced to face with a bad case of alcohol poisoning. Prior to meeting Soldier, Demoman’s life had been defined by aggressive mercenary rigor, inculcated by and shaped in reaction to strict militant parents. He drew firm lines in the sand in regard to his work-life balance, never letting the boisterous party-animal tendencies he formed out of rebellion leak into the strict hours he kept as a mercenary, until Soldier finally wore him down during a middle-of-nowhere-shit-shift. His trigger was thus heavily influenced by a sense that the first time he’d ever indulged himself while on-call had been smacked down hard by a karmically-inclined universe.

In addition to increasing his overall durability, Demo’s Brute/Thinker power causes his aim, courage under fire and overall competence to scale up to superhuman levels based while intoxicated.... and to sap to below what he was capable of pre-trigger when he's sober. His power carried him through the crisis of his trigger event with ease, but now forces him to constantly mix business with pleasure, constantly drinking on the job to maintain any semblance of competence. An additional complication of the power- which took some time to become obvious- is that any information or skills that Demo acquires while either drunk or sober becomes gated, hazy and slippery while in the opposite state, resulting in an almost Severance-like dichotomy of personhood. The sheer amount of personally important events that have happened to him on the job thus encourage Demo to stretch his buzz further and further outside of work-hours, pulverizing his ability to effectively compartmentalize or maintain a work-life balance; turning him into the always-on-call hypercompetent soldier they wanted in a way his still-living mother finds repugnant.

The inaugural Team Fortress lineup was formed in the aftermath of the shitshow at the Gesselschaft base; Soldier, Medic and Spy were joined by Heavy, who had been hired by Spy’s handlers in the EU as a last-ditch extraction option should things go south in the exact way Soldier caused them to. The swath of carnage the quartet generated during their escape both demonstrated their power synergies AND painted them as a unit in the eyes of Gesselschaft and the collective parahuman underworld, incentivizing them to hang together out of self-preservation. After returning to the States following a running fight through Europe against Gesselschaft, the Team picked up The Engineer and The Pyro when the duo hired them for a retaliatory strike on the Elite’s southwestern holdings, picked up Scout while cooling their heels from that stunt in the Northeast, were approached by Sniper after becoming a sufficiently-renowned laughingstock that he realized the potential power synergy, and finally picked up Demo for a gig that required a bomb guy and then just sort of kept him around.

The team became truly untouchable, however, after they picked up Ms. Pauling.

Ms. Pauling is a buck-passing Thinker; She has a PTV-style ability to redirect the fallout, blame for, and censure of wrongdoing; in any given situation, she knows who to throw under the bus in such a way that she’ll walk away clean. She knows what evidence she has to plant, and where, and what steps she needs to take to make sure she isn’t fingered while executing the frame job; she knows what to say, and in what intonation, to make people believe or at least not interrogate her transparently flimsy alibis. Her power works best when actively and intentionally used to someone else's detriment, although it can muddle through if there’s no obvious scapegoat for a disaster besides Ms. Pauling herself. The Primary beneficiary of Ms. Pauling’s power is Ms. Pauling; however, she’s capable of expanding her self-conception to include any organization or group of people she’s reasonably attached to, folding them into her getaway plans. A born company woman, Ms. Pauling labored for years prior to her trigger as an assistant at an international industrial concern whose corporate ethos she truly believed in; she spent years smoothing over scandals and allegations of corporate malfeasance in good faith, only to realize when it was too late that by making her the relentlessly loyal face of the company’s crisis response, her bosses had deliberately maneuvered her into position as a scapegoat when the bottom inevitably fell out and the SEC closed in; her attempts to throw her bosses under the bus using her new power was thrown off by her ingrained subconscious attachment to the company, resulted in her coverup mostly bouncing off and destroying the lives of hapless third parties; this incited a break into moral nihilism on Pauling’s part.

In the aftermath of her trigger, Pauling was recruited by a powerful Cauldron Cape known as The Administrator. The administrator was a Master/Brute who could stave off her terminal illness by visually observing violent conflict; the act of observing the conflict would also increase the bloodlust and durability of all observed participants while also stunting their critical thinking skills. The Administrator used her immense inherited corporate wealth (with which she had purchased the cauldron vial) to funnel dozens of powered and unpowered mercenary teams into pointless scrimmages over utterly useless remote properties through a host of shell companies so that she could feed off their violence via a mass surveillance wall; Team Fortress was one of many teams pulled into the set-up. Pauling was tasked with using her power to cover up the immense corporate malfeasance necessary for the plan to work; she was strung along with the promise that the immense violence was in service of a higher purpose this time. (This was partially true; the op was Cauldron-enabled and guided, with the intention of generating an experience mill for villains and mercenaries.) Pauling fell into Team Fortresses orbit because they both made good scapegoats for her power AND frequently got into jams that the Administrator would order her to get them out of; when the Administrators’ set-up inevitably imploded, Pauling remained attached to the team as an unofficial tenth member for a lack of anywhere better to go.

In the years following the end of the Gravel Wars, Team Fortress has roamed North America as a subdued mirror of the Slaughterhouse 9. Mildly heroic if mercenary in their ambitions, there’s no situation they can’t make worse through their cartoonish disregard for consequences, and no consequences that Pauling can’t find a way to make everyone else's problem. The team maintains a strange doublethink brand-image; they’re small-timers, they’re harmless, they’re clowns, they’re unstoppable, they’ve never failed a job (never succeeded, either.) You don’t want them involved; you want them on your side if they ARE involved. They fight for the highest bidder; they almost always end up fighting the highest bidder; you can hire them, but you shouldn’t, but you’ll only learn that the hard way because thanks to Ms. Pauling the story at the end of each job is never, ever about how the team is a risky hire.

[pansear-doodles]

Anthro AU FAQ (Under construction)

What's the Rain World Anthro AU? An AU created out of fun where the sapient denizens of Rain World (Iterators, Slugcats, Scavengers...) are given anthropomorphic proportions and distinct clothing, more prominent personalities and facial expressions, and a modern-ish setting.

Its not meant to be taken TOO seriously and its meant for dumb fun. Almost all characters are alive in this AU (Yes, this includes Artificer's pups) and all the playable slugcats meet each other and get to be a friend group! There are also less threats such as Five Pebbles and Hunter being cured from the rot (...not really!). Everyone is just having a good time overall.

There are sub-AUs where some characters are not alive and are not having a good time, but the main one is the happiest possible.

Keep Reading to see more questions

Does stuff like the karma system, rain, cycles, echoes, and other in-game stuff exist still in this AU? Yes but the bleak/harsh aspects of them are toned down in the main AU. There's also some changes for how the karma system works.

The characters claim they experienced death, but how come they're still alive? How does death function in this AU and why do scars remain? Cartoon logic. They just wake up in a new body in the last shelter they slept in (or somewhere else if unlucky) and proceed as normal. They do experience every pain of that death, and the dead body is usually eaten before the alive one can see it. As for scars, its trauma-dependent. Emotionally charged scars overall leave one an impact.

What creatures of Rain World are considered non-sapient/still creatures in this AU? Typical enemies that's not in the same scale as Scavenger AI, creatures that don't have a sort of community/tribal system, etc. Lizards, centipedes, and vultures continue to be a threat in this world (and they can become pets).

How do the iterators work in this AU? How come I can see them walking around? They still experienced many events from the game, but since in this universe with high communication leveled sapient slugcats (who are far more sympathetic compared to the Ancients) and other adjustments, they're given a bit more freedom and empathy. The iterator puppets themselves can still walk around the vicinity of their can, but they would require a backpack with neurons and water if the puppet were to travel outside. I still have so much to research about the complexity of the iterators, but for now...

How do the slugcats travel fast? They got used to their environment and are familiar with the paths they take. Especially with having less threats in the world (especially with a more forgiving rain cycle), they're given more freedom to roam with less of a hassle.

How modern are we talking? The current IRL times. Combine that with some of Rain World's unique aspects and you got it. So you can have a scavenger wear a fleece sweater while listening to lo-fi, Lol.

Can I directly ask the characters? Only in special occasions! Follow me to stay tuned for when their inboxes get opened.

Can I make fanart for this AU? Yes! Absolutely! I love seeing fanart! No need to ask me unless you require specifications on my portrayal of the characters. Just don't portray the characters in a negative way please (not to be confused with angst- I'm talking about hate art and all that.)

Can I make sub-AUs/my own interpretations/my own versions/my own clothing/my own projections and headcanons? Sure! Don't be restricted with some rules, just as long as you're having fun. You don't even need to ask permission from me first unless its something big and can affect my end. Maybe it can be its own completely different AU! Possibilities are endless.

Can I redraw a comic/scene? Sure! Just credit me when its done and up on the public. :] Anyone can freely line and color my sketchy comics.

Can I borrow/be inspired from the ideas? Yes of course! Have fun.

What are some other headcanons/original ideas/community-made things placed on the main AU? The following: -Artificer X Hunter -Personalized Iterator designs that are not seen in-game for the local group such as Chasing Wind and Unparalleled Innocence -Rainworld Drought -Some of my Rainworld OCs (Cameos and incidentals only) -Iterators associated with specific Slugcats are referred as parental figures (exception to Five Pebbles and Artificer(landlord) ; Saint and Sliver of Straw are associated (mentee and mentor). -All of the slugcats use any pronoun (usually they/them) and are ambiguously gendered (or have no gender)

[escape-rock-bottom]

Ending the Blame Game.

If there’s one thing I can claim humans universally hate, it’s looking dumb and being at fault. Even just feeling that way is enough to set some of us off in some way. I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t resonate with this on some level. If this is just a psychologically ingrained behavior, it explains why we as humans are often resistant to taking accountability and admitting ignorance.

One of the most consistently discussed topics in the therapy and self-help worlds is the act of taking accountability. In essence, if you’re able to accept your faults and move on without taking it too personally, you can improve your relationships, confidence, and respectability.

However, it’s easier said than done. Often, the most beneficial changes are the hardest ones to incorporate into our lives in the long run. Simply put, most people would rather be in the right and know things and it’s all because of a combination of societal expectations and human psychology.

I’d argue that making the effort to hold back on closing off when you feel criticized or blamed and truly analyzing the situation instead of getting defensive or blaming yourself can help drastically improve communication and respectability. Think about it: Would you rather talk to someone who you always feel you have to watch your words around when you have a problem with something they did or someone you can actually confront and productively resolve a problem with?

Another interesting side effect of taking responsibility for your actions is that doing so often rubs off on others: You may find the people who are usually resistant to admitting fault will do so more often. You may even receive a deserved apology from otherwise stubborn individuals!

Lastly, you won’t have to add things to your emotional baggage. Admission leads to letting go. Seriously, who needs to sit there being annoyed and embarrassed at yourself that you were caught in the act of stealing sweets from the grab bowl consistently while you were supposed to be on a diet? How about not stewing in rage because a peer in your group at work outdid you and you blame yourself for not being more intelligent? That’s pretty lame to put that on yourself.

Personally, I am working on being less critical and defensive. It’s one of the traits of mine that drives me nuts honestly. There’s nothing more frustrating than someone doing something and acting like you’re the crazy one for doing it, but confronting the person by trying to get them to confess is pretty useless. Usually, they just get more agitated and then things blow out of proportion.

The opposite is when I actually am at fault but am approached in an accusatory manner. Instantly, I feel put on the spot and have the urge to defend myself. I don’t want to be judged! However, getting defensive garners the exact same result: I get agitated and things escalate. Productive communication or compromise is now out of the question, and now I’m angry and the other person is annoyed.

It’s difficult to put my pride and annoyance aside and actually face the problem with a clear mind. It’s even harder to admit fault in front of a person who loves to point out every little mistake you make. However, you take the power back. Saying “Yeah, I did do that.” usually disarms the person trying to get a rise out of you. Also, arguments never turn into full blown shouting matches when you just hold back your immediate reaction.

The trick here is a simple yet consistent exercise of awareness and reframing. Be aware of what’s being said, be aware of your emotions and thoughts, stop yourself there and rework your thinking. Putting your logical brain before your emotional brain is a hard skill to master, but a wonderful power to have. The most agreeable people possess this trait, and when faced with issues, lessons are actually learned and resolutions are made.

Honestly, the most important reason behind this claim is the impact it will have on your relationships and your self-perception. Learning when to accept fault, when to stand your ground, or when to just drop it and come back to it later not only gives you mental and emotional stability but also more agreeability. People will quickly learn that criticizing or blaming you does nothing more than get a simple “yes, I did that” or “no, that wasn’t me” and will not prime themselves for an altercation with you.

It’s amazing how far neutrally approached conversation can get a relationship. There’s less room for misunderstandings and pain, and more room to really unravel the issues that caused the confrontation in the first place. All in all, consider building this skill if you want to improve your relationships and emotional control.

And remember: more often than not, your mistakes are not a judge of your character, nor are they when another person points them out. It's annoying, yes, but it's a necessary way to communicate the need for compromise or resolve in a relationship.

[thornedrose44]

For prompts: Kara and Lena holding hands for the first time. One of them tentatively reaching our, their fingers brushing until they are intertwined and the other gives a small affirming squeeze.

A/N: Okay so when I first saw this prompt I missed the first time part. So therefore enjoy this angsty hurt/comfort mess filled with love that I think is becoming my signature genre.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

Lena’s entire body was in agony. Complete and total agony. 

Her legs were probably broken as well as a few ribs. Her right arm was numb and immobile which probably should have been the most concerning but at this stage Lena was just grateful that there was one part of her body that wasn’t pure pain. 

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

Two-hundred and fifty metres. A mile. A hundred miles. It might as well have been the distance to the moon and back.

Lena wasn’t even sure that she had managed to cover more than a couple of metres with how she was dragging herself forward mere inches at a time with her one good arm. 

She stretched out her left arm into the cracked and broken earth, digging her forearm in with the minimal strength she could muster (her teeth gritted and jaw clenched the whole time) before pulling her broken body forward.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

It didn’t matter that she was making minimal progress, it didn’t matter that the pain was so intense she was close to blacking out every time she dragged herself forward. It didn’t matter because all she could see was the crumpled blue and red heap at the centre of the battlefield. 

All she could see was Kara and there wasn’t a force on this - or any other - planet that could stop Lena from reaching her.

Alex would be coming for them, Lena didn’t doubt that, would be racing through the ruins of National City to get to her sister but that did nothing to ease the unbearable fear that Kara’s immobile body evoked. Lena couldn’t just lie there not when Kara was in sight. 

An alien invasion of epic proportions had required a full scale evacuation of the city and, unfortunately, this time there was no lead weakness that they could exploit. It was their weapons versus Earth’s weapons which came in the form of two powerful kryptonians. 

Kara was the heavy weapon, taking the brunt of the attacks to protect the citizens she cared for so deeply whilst firing back with heat vision that eviscerated their ships. Superman was on rescue operations pulling people from rubble and hurrying them along.

Lena had been working with the DEO, tweaking weapons and plans to beat the enemy, when she saw the sight of Kara bruised and bloodied on the screens. It was then Lena did what she had promised herself she would never do.

Had promised herself the second she had seen Lex power-crazy and at his cruelest that she would never follow in his footsteps.

Would never ever, ever put on Lex’s suit.

That version of her had never been in love. 

That version of her had never seen Kara hurt.

That version of her had never wanted to inflict pain like she did in that moment.

She unlocked her most secure vault and unleashed the one weapon that made her physically sick to look at. 

Lena had been in the air and joining the fight less than a minute later, appearing out of nowhere to shield Kara’s faltering body from a rocket.

Lena looked over her shoulder as her kinetic field absorbed the explosion, watching as Kara’s face morphed from shock to gratefulness to concern. 

“Lena, what-” Kara panted, unable to fully summon the energy to shout.

“You’re not doing this alone!” Lena yelled back in return, green eyes desperate for Kara to understand.

“Lena…” Kara cried, blue eyes distraught at Lena being involved, at Lena getting hurt but most importantly of her wearing the suit that she knew Lena despised to save her.

“Together, Kara!” Lena shouted to break through the kryptonian’s mental spiral. “You promised, Kara. You promised! There’s nothing we can’t do together.”

Blue eyes slowly cleared to be replaced with sharp, determined focus.

Kara had made that promise to her everyday since they stopped Lex. Had made that promise to her whenever Lena’s guilt created even a slither of physical distance between them. Had made that promise to Lena whenever there was an awkward moment or fumbled conversation. Had made that promise to Lena every game’s night when she claimed Lena as her partner. Had made that promise to Lena whenever they came close to crossing the line of friendship that had been growing fuzzier and fuzzier with each movie night they had spent cuddled up in each other’s arms. 

“El Mayarah.” Kara murmured clear and proud, jaw lifting up and a familiar righteous fire flickering in her eyes.

“Up, up and away?” Lena teased, priming her jets in readiness.

“Up, up and away.” Kara repeated, hand twitching by her side as if she was about to reach out for Lena so that they could soar up into the sky together.

***

It was the final ship that took them both down and created a crater that wiped out at least two streets. 

Lena hit the ground first - though Kara followed less than a heartbeat later - the Lexsuit taking the brunt of the impact and saving her life but leaving her body wrecked. Crawling out of that hunk of twisted metal had been more traumatising than the terrifying plummet to Earth and knowing - because she could see Kara’s unconscious form falling nearby - that Supergirl would be unable to catch her.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

Stretch. Dig in. Pull.

The closer she got to her red and blue goal, the more her hope dwindled, the more her heart broke causing an ache that surpassed all of her physical injuries. 

Kara was so still.

Kara, who Lena inextricably linked to activity, motion… life.

Kara, whose ever restless legs bounced through meetings and close games of chess.

Kara, whose fingers constantly sought to make contact with Lena’s hand or to brush through Lena’s hair. 

Kara, who was ever quick to spring to her feet and sweep Lena into a hug.

She should not be still in this dead wasteland as Lena crawled towards her.

Lena’s strength gave out a couple of feet away from Kara, her arm unable to pull herself forward. A scream of frustration and anguish ripped from Lena’s throat at being denied the comfort of simply touching the person she loved so much in the world when she was so close.

Her fingers stretched and stretched, clawing at the blackened earth, Kara’s pale finger milimetres from reach.

Stretch… 

Stretch… 

Stretch… 

Lena inhaled sharply as her fingers made fleeting contact, hope rekindling in her chest.

Stretch… 

Stretch… 

Stretch… 

Lena’s index and middle finger curled slowly around Kara’s index finger, intertwining them together with that single contact point.

“Kara…” Lena breathed.

She was grateful for this connection. Grateful to be with Kara in any way possible but still finding it not to be enough.

She was greedy. Greedy for more. Greedy for everything.

So this could not be how it ended. She and Kara would not end here.

“Kara.” Lena repeated urgently. “Please, Kara.”

She squeezed Kara’s finger with all the strength she had left in her.

“Not like this.” Lena begged. “Please, please don’t leave me.”

The returning squeeze of her finger was so light, so tender that Lena could have easily imagined it except for how heartbreakingly familiar it was. 

It was how Kara always touched her: soft and gentle. 

It was all the affirmation Lena needed. She knew then that this wasn’t the end of them. She knew then, as she slipped into a deep slumber awaiting the rescue that was undoubtedly coming, that everything would be okay.

[azucanela]

DIVINE INTERVENTION [PT.2] OIKAWA TOORU

DIVINE INTERVENTION MASTERLIST | HAIKYUU!! MASTERLIST

SUMMARY: Maybe getting into a fight with one of Oikawa’s fangirls hadn’t been the best idea. 

WORD COUNT: 2.5k

WARNINGS: violence, injuries, bruises,

A/N: do people actually plan their series ahead of time, because i kinda just write whenever my brain has an idea

Meeting Y/N L/N had been... weird for Oikawa, to put it simply.

As conceded as it may sound, Oikawa knew that he was well-liked, he knew that there were people lining up to go out with him— especially since he got confessed to nearly daily— but it wasn’t just that. Teachers had placed Oikawa on a pedestal for balancing athletics and good grades, along with simply being a ‘joy to have in class’ because he was respectful and offered his help often. Other students adored him because he was actually a rather kind person when he wanted to be; and he was well known in his school. 

He’d been singled out for as long as he could remember, that now both Oikawa and his own classmates felt as though they were simply on two different worlds.

Which is why Y/N L/N had been weird. Most of the time his natural charisma charmed almost everyone he’d met, his skill in volleyball and academic prowess were something that had also earned him respect in the school. And yet Y/N L/N simply extended her hand to him like he didn’t matter, offering her name only momentarily before retuning her attention to Iwaizumi. She’d simply treated him like just another person; and it had been a while since Oikawa felt normal.

So he began to pester her, whenever she was around—most of the time with Iwaizumi— he’d started talking to her more in their shared classes, even inviting her to his volleyball classes. 

Talking to Y/N had been like a breath of fresh air, as stupid as it sounded. He would never admit this to her, of course. Though he was fairly close to when their last year of middle school had come upon them and they were all deciding on which school they’d be attending.

Thankfully, the entire trio ended up going to Aoba Johsai. Even now, Oikawa didn’t know what he would’ve done had Iwaizumi and Y/N attended different school, though he’s happy he doesn’t know. Blissful ignorance.

Despite their years of friendship, Oikawa had never actually been annoyed by Y/N, he enjoyed her presence if he was honest. She was good company. She’d always put up with his ‘nonsense’ as Iwaizumi put it, and she’d supported him throughout his life— though she’d also threatened him for taking things to far and endangering his well-being, Oikawa had a feeling that was something he was supposed to appreciated. Yet, Oikawa had a feeling that today would be the day Y/N truly annoyed him. 

Rumors spread fast in Aoba Johsai, especially when they were about Oikawa and his love life, it had always been an issue. He hadn’t been in many relationships, much less committed ones. People tended to talk, his fans tended to act out, and after about two weeks any relationships he had were over. Which is why Oikawa was shocked to discover that he was in a relationship with his best friend, and had been for a while. And his apparent girlfriend had gotten into a fight with another girl earlier today in class. 

If Y/N was honest, she just hoped that Oikawa went with the little story she’d made up— otherwise she’d seem like an idiot who was just as obsessed with him as the girl she now sat beside in the principal’s office. And honestly, there was no real explanation for why she’d lie, not without her seeming crazy. 

Was fighting her the best idea? No, not at all. Did the girl deserve every hit? Definitely. Was Iwaizumi struggling to pull Y/N off of her? Possibly, we don’t discuss that. Now you might be wondering, why would the lovely, kind, amazing and beautiful Y/N L/N ever get into a fight? 

Well the girl started talking and wouldn’t stop. Speaking like Oikawa was an object, a trophy to be won, a game like the one he played. She spoke like she knew Oikawa personally, as though he owed her a relationship, a chance. But if Y/N was honest it was the threats that set her off.

She wasn’t sure if Iwaizumi was more shocked by the girl’s words or Y/N’s fist ramming against her face after this girl tried to smack her. 

“Oikawa doesn’t find out about this.”

That was all Y/N said when he finally pulled her off the girl, just for her to get escorted by the school’s security guards, down to the office. Though Iwaizumi wasn’t necessarily sure was she was referring to seeing as the fight had been the talk of the school now, and Oikawa was headed Iwaizumi’s way. He’d been seated outside of the office for some time now, awaiting Y/N’s inevitable return, suspension, or expulsion. 

This was going to be bad. In all their time as friends, Iwaizumi had never expected something like this to happen. If we was honest, he wasn’t even sure if the pair was or was not dating. Perhaps they’d been hiding the relationship from him or maybe this was something Y/N had simply made up on the spot, he wasn’t sure. What he did know, was that things had never been so... messy between Y/N and Oikawa. 

Now, Y/N wasn’t considering the impacts her little plan would have on the friend group at the moent, just that she didn’t play the death threat card often but now seemed as good a time as any to allow a false tear to fall down her cheek, “and then—” A sniff, “and then she threatened me and I got so scared, Principal! She said she was going to kill me.” Getting expelled was the last thing she wanted, but if this didn’t work— well, she was running out of ideas.

Now, Y/N wasn’t the best actor, but she was friends with Oikawa, and she’d definitely picked up a few things from him. Like the fact that their principal was a lot more sympathetic towards members of their sports team; and Y/N happened to manage one of the teams. And she was fairly sure that their most noteworthy players would’ve drained themselves entirely had it not been for her, so she considered herself... kind of valuable. Especially with Oikawa’s knee injury that he insisted on disregarding, Y/N had a feeling things would’ve been far worse for the boy had she not gotten involved.

Speaking of Oikawa, even as Iwaizumi warned him not to enter, the boy simply pushed the door open, a fake smile making its way onto his face as he spoke, “Principal!” He exclaimed, arms spread open, his smile only faltering as he notices the fading red mark on Y/N’s cheek, accompanied by a few bruises on her arms and several bruises on the other girl. Oikawa quickly recovers from the shock, returning his attention to the man before him, “how are you?”

The Principal offers Oikawa a tight lipped smile as he replies, “a little busy in case you haven’t noticed.” A deep breath from the man in question, “you should see yourself out—”

“You see, Principal. I just came her to collect my lovely girlfriend, I heard about this little mix-up and got worried, you know?” His eyes meet Y/N momentarily, and the look on his face tells her that she’s going to regret this once he manages to get them out of this situation— hopefully with her clean school record being maintained. “Things can get so blown out of proportion by school gossips, right?”

The Principal doesn’t seem to buy his words as he gestures to the other girl seated across from Y/N, who’s holding a tissue to her bleeding nose as she stares up at Oikawa in shock. “This young girl was very injured and—”

“She’s just fine? Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” Oikawa looks to the girl, placing a hand gently onto her shoulder as he offers a sympathetic look, and she practically swoons at the pet name he sues, eyes zeroing in on the hand placed on her shoulder. The girl is clearly in awe at the fact that the very boy she’d intended to confess to all those hours ago was now here and touching her shoulder. 

Y/N nearly rolls her eyes as the girls mumbles out, “oh my god you’re– yeah I’m fine! I really shouldn’t have disrespected Tooru’s—”

“Oikawa.” Y/N corrects quietly, first names were reserved for people close to you, and this girl just had a crush formed from basic manners and good looks, though the girl pays no mind as she continues. Y/N can’t help but feel irritated by the fact that even though she’d literally been attempting to choke Y/N earlier, she was now acting as though Oikawa was her best friend. 

“—girlfriend! I didn’t know you two were actually together, I’m so sorry but—”

Y/N can’t help but feel odd hearing those words come out of someone else’s mouth. Girlfriend. The word feels wrong in a way, and leaves her with an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d never considered being Oikawa’s girlfriend, not really, she’d heard other people’s speculations but she’d never actually considered why they might think that. 

Oikawa has already moved on from this girl, turning back to the Principal as he spreads his hands wide, “see! No harm done, now I need to be getting to Volleyball practice along with our lovely manager here, if you don’t mind that is?” Y/N nearly laughed at the fact that he was pulling the, ‘I’m literally your star athlete so you better do as I say,’ card. Though she only watched as the Principal brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose with a sigh, waving them off.

“Just don’t do it again.” He grumbled out, not sparing them another glance as he grumbled something out about young love and ‘Oikawa’s stupid fans.’

Y/N practically shot up from her seat, bowing to the man in thanks, “of course sir! Thank you, and have a nice day!” Oikawa’s hand has already come to the small of her back as he guides her out of the classroom, passing Iwaizumi who simply sighs as he watches them.

“Try to be on time to practice, idiot.”

Oikawa waves back to his friend, “of course, Iwa-chan! Anything for you!”

Iwaizumi probably would’ve started cursing had he not been standing just outside the Principal’s office, opting to glare daggers into the back of the boy’s head instead. Watching as he and Y/N made their way through the halls wordlessly. 

Y/N knows Iwaizumi’s eyes are focused on Oikawa but she has a feeling that the rest of the people in the hallway are more focused on her; seeing as she was today’s scandal. For several reasons. There was the being Oikawa’s secret girlfriend— though they weren’t actually dating, and Y/N had a feeling the gossips at her school would have a field day if they found out about thaT— and the fight with that girl and the— well, we don’t discuss that last bit. 

She doesn’t have a plan, Y/N was now wishing she’d just accepted the possibility of suspension because then she could’ve put off this conversation with Oikawa, the conversation where she’d have to explain what exactly happened. And at the moment, she didn’t have an explanation to offer him. What she’d done had been impulsive, yes, she could admit that. But stupid? Well, the girl did apologize, so maybe not.

“So... how’s your day been?” 

A sarcastic laugh escapes him as he pushes open the door of an empty classroom, eyes scanning the room once more before he’s shutting the door and bringing his hands to his head. “Care to explain?”

Y/N offers him a sheepish smile as she takes a seat on top of a desk, shrugging, “shouldn’t we get to practice like you said?” Avoiding confrontation happened to be a specialty of Y/N’s, and more often than not, Oikawa respected this. But it seems today was not one of those days. 

“Shouldn’t you have stayed out of it like you said?” Came his response, eyes narrowed at her as his eyes trailed over her figure. “What happened, Y/N?” His thoughts go to the conversation they’d had not too long ago, he’d explicitly been against this idea, for a variety of reasons.

Oikawa’s racked through his mind for reasons why she would do this even after he’d explicitly asked her not to, even more so why she’d get into a fight over him. A small thought in the back of his mind nearly made its way back to him, one he’d been struggling to bury for years as he searched for an explanation. 

Y/N doesn’t really have an explanation either, maybe it was because she had been tired of these people pretending they knew Oikawa, because of the conversation they’d had in the gym. Seeing him upset over it might have triggered something inside of her, and made her decide— why not take things into her own hands? He didn’t deserve any of it, they could be so overbearing, acting as though he belonged to them. 

Maybe it was spite, pure spite. Anger over all the ways these stupid confessions and fans had affected her. Maybe she’d wanted it all to stop and thought that this was the best way how. Maybe there was no real reason beyond that. She finds herself wishing she could offer him an answer, though nothing comes out of her mouth.

When Y/N doesn’t reply, Oikawa simply sighs, bringing a hand to the bridge of his nose before turning to Y/N, his eyes trailed along the dulling red on the edge of her cheek and the bruises evident on her arms. Frowning, Oikawa brought a hand to her arm, “well at least you won the fight.” He didn’t know much about what happened, just what he’d heard in passing and when one of his teammates had approached him to congratulate him for ‘finally getting in to a relationship with Y/N.’

A small laugh escapes Y/N as she nods along to his words. “Yeah,” she mumbles in agreement, lips pressing together to form a tight lipped smile as she struggled to find words, “so... what do we do now?”

That would be the question of the hour.

[tags] lmk if you want to be added via askbox

haikyuu!!: @shawkneecaps @therainroguefanfiction​  @iwaizoom @aquabcrry-y 

[jcmoneydick]

TharnType SS2 Episode 11

Why didn’t Type bring his bag with him? Why did he just throw it in the house and dip?

Type’s family dynamic is based on pettiness, and is so cute. You can tell Type doesn’t let his dad get away with anything. But, you would think that after seven years, Mr. Thiwat would get used to Tharn being around. As soon as Type is done hearing what his dad has to say he’s calling for his mom. It’s hilarious, and I could probably watch ten minutes of Type picking on his dad. 

Why are they trying to convince me that Tharn is capable of cooking. The series should be called Tharn & Ghost!Type considering how often Tharn talks to himself. It’s a coping mechanism, I get it, but like.... If you would tell Type this, you wouldn’t be sad and lonely. And at this point it kinda feels like them not talking to each other is all stupid pride. Tharn says “I want you to make up with me,” as opposed to “I want to fix things between us.” Tharn and Type both did wrong to get them to this point, but it wasn’t so wrong that they shouldn’t talk for a month. I feel like this is so dramatic and super freaking petty. If the script made it seem like this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I would believe it. But the script (to me) implies this is their first big almost break up fight. I know the both of them are drama queens, but this “cheating” situation has been blown out of proportion. Also, Tharn no longer believes Type cheated on him (or is no longer worried about it). “I want you to make up with me. You know it, too. That you’re the one who let him in.” So he’s more worried that Type let Fiat in, but refuses to pick up the phone and apologize for accusing him of cheating. The whole situation has a mind of it’s own at this point.

Tharn went all the way to his parent’s house for a bandaid. Pussy lol.

I love how even Thanya is like “Tharn stop being a bitch”. Then his parents are all like “good communication is what you need” and “even your mama made me super jealous once”.  His parents are saying everything I said to him since episode 1 and I am living for it. I can see his dad wanting to roast Tharn “Is that all? If he said dude’s a patient, maybe you should believe him.” And I feel like Tharn is realizing how silly he’s been by not giving Type a chance to talk to him. Ghost!Type appears again.

I don’t know how to feel about Fiat feeling guilty. I’m happy Leo and Fiat can do their shit together, but that should be the end of their involvement with TT. Does Fiat not care that he was kidnapped? I really feel like that whole event should have been like “P’Type don’t want shit to do with me,” and leave it at that. Also, Phu and Cir need to stop leading people to TT’s condo. The face drop that Tharn committed to *chef’s kiss* cause I would be the same. Difference between me and Tharn: I ain’t nice, I would’ve slammed that door right in their faces. BUT ALAS, Fiat speaks for himself, instead of letting Leo do it for him. The apology does seem sincere, and Tharn seems to realize that his pride is getting in the way. Like Fiat’s show of maturity has influenced Tharn.

Type puts on his best grandpa shirt to see Khom. Does Type take the closest open beer to him, no matter where he goes? Isn’t that how people get syphilis? And now we see Type’s pride making a mess of their relationship. Khom is a real one though, he immediately debunks everything Type is complaining about. 

Is the ordainment thing like a rite of passage in general, or like depending on where you grew up in Thailand, or strictly based on religious beliefs? This is also the fastest decision Type has made since asking Tharn to top him. 

I figured Tharn was on his way to Type when he answered the phone in the car, but it was petty of him to say “I gotta go” like that. I would’ve broken down just like Type, but I would’ve also sent a “fuck you too” text. Someone pointed out that Type went through the five stages of grief during this five minute crying scene.  (I just laughed at Type, slipping in the sand.) I know this is supposed to be sad, but like all the shit they put us through makes this so comical to me. But he made valid points. I would’ve been mad at someone making me love them for seven years just to Jimmy Neutron me too. Type cried for so long it got dark outside. It was like noon when this scene started.  Are Vespas appropriate for beach AND road travel? 

Type’s dad is so mad Tharn showed up! It’s easy to see where Type got his tantrums from. Type switches from disbelief to “imma whoop his ass” in nano seconds. This apology scene furthers my belief that this was blown way out of proportion. I know Type says they need to communicate more, but I get the feeling that this wouldn’t be Type’s first time telling Tharn to be one hunnit with him. 

Type: I’d never do anything behind your back

Also Type: *kidnaps and assaults a nineteen year old*

Type: Let’s spend forever together.

At this point in the tale, so many of TT’s scenes together seem like MG couldn’t keep a straight face. Some of the laughs and giggles help the scenes, the rest of them seem like they’re breaking  character to me. The change to me is like a whole reset. The acting in the series seems more like MG than anything most of the time, so for Type and Tharn to be so characterized during episode 9 and 10 really throw me for a loop. It almost seems like two different people, and nearly negate (bastardize? debunk?) the impact of episodes 9 and 10.

“I’m not used to it” Just how hard is Tharn fucking Type?

Since Ghost!Type is gone, Tharn resorts to talking to Sleep!Type. Gulf has to be asleep for real in one of these cuts.) I’m happy that Tharn is making the decision to follow Type, instead of imposing his opinion on him. Personally, I think Tharn trying to propose to him right after they get back together is POOR timing on his part. I can see how Type’s thinking has changed, but I do feel like they should’ve warmed up to this again. A thrown in the wind “So, eventually you’ll wear my ring, right?” I really don’t appreciate Tharn trying to run away again. They just talked about this like less than 24 hours ago. Type stating his emotions and plans about this is so nice though. After 10 episodes of his avoidance of the marriage, I’m glad he clearly spoke his feelings for once. And Type mentions not being able to give his parents grandkids, but I thought Type didn’t want kids. I know wants can change after years, but it kind of shocked me at first. Is this stated anywhere in the first season or is this a headcanon I actually thought was canon? 

I really can’t believe Champ and Doc are out here playing games with each other still. Type has given Doc so many tips and advice. Khunpol HAS to be playing hard to get at this point. It’s cute, but also kiss already. 

Type’s dad manages to be racist and homophobic. How familiar, reminds me of home. Did Type just tell Tharn he’d blow him? How bold.

Prediction for next ep:

Type’s ordainment and Tharn’s slaving about the resort.

Mr. Thiwat’s begrudging acceptance of Tharn

TT’s engagement (romance turned to 100)

P’Thorn’s wedding

Maybe the families meet?

[virgilantejustice]

A Winter’s Journey

Hi @turbovickiii!!!! I really hope you like this, your prompts really helped me get out of a rut, and I just really hope you enjoy this. And, of course, a merry Christmas!!

I don't believe I need to add any warnings, but let me know if I'm wrong.

@sanderssidesgiftxchange

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The air was cold. Spitefully cold. Far colder than it needed to be. 

Roman muttered to himself as he trudged through the full six inches of snow that covered the path to the cabin. Spitefully cold.

Why on earth they had decided to rent a cabin for Christmas was beyond him. It had been his idea of course, but that doesn't mean that the others should have /listened. Why didn't one of them point out that his car could break down halfway down the several mile long track through the middle of nowhere slap bang in the middle of a snowstorm?! Obviously that was going to happen!

But, Roman would be damned if he didnt make it to that damn cabin, even if he had to walk the four miles left. Again, an absolutely terrible idea, but Roman never was the logical one, and Logan was waiting for him there, and he couldn't wait to hear his beloved tell him what a total idiot he'd been.

Arms crossed firmly across his chest, teeth chattering, feet numb in their snow filled boots, Roman marched with a stony expression of (slightly exaggerated) grimness. He did think at one point that he should probably make a pun about romans, y’know, marching, get it? But the cold is freezing his creative flow! His brain was slowing down! He could practically hear Logan's voice in his ear telling him that he was being ridiculous, but he didn't care.

Finally, after several thousand years of trudging down that blasted track, Roman saw a wooden structure. Small, slightly run down, but it was shelter.

“Thank the Gods,” Roman breathed into his hands, the slight warmth making his hands feel a little less icy.

He breathed out again, deeply, through his mouth. There was just something about how the air seized the moisture that he exhaled and turned it into his own little cloud. For all his bitterness towards the bitter cold at that particular moment, Roman saw beauty in that little puff of mist. He saw beauty in most things, and certainly in every season, but there was something about winter that captivated him as he walked down the snow covered path. The crunch of the gentle flakes under his boots, the swirls of frost on the gnarled bark of the trees, the jagged lacework of cracks in every frozen puddle. To be fair, I suppose it is expected to see more beauty when your arduous voyage is nearing its end.

“See," he grumbled through chattering teeth, “we could work together, you beautiful bitch.” He was referring to winter, of course, because addressing an entire season is a perfectly normal thing to do, at least it is in Roman’s eyes.

It seemed to him that he quickened his pace in excitement when he saw the reddish-brown walnut wood walls, but in all honesty, that last straight was as painfully slow as the rest

He was practically falling over himself by the time he reached the heavy wooden door of the cabin, and he silently prayed that there weren't /two remote, wooden cabins down this road and the right one was actually a further two miles, because, well, just no.

Fingers too numb to turn the handle, Roman sort of just whacked his hands against the door, wincing when his brittle skin, dried out from the cold, cracked with each impact. He prayed again (wow, twice in a day after a lifetime of agnosticism, it's funny what the cold’ll do to you) that Logan had in fact already arrived.

“Good lord, what happened to you?!” 

Logan opened the door, and, frankly, looked a little more shocked than was /strictly necessary (at least in Roman’s opinion).

“And a merry Christmas eve to you too, my darling,” Roman replied indignantly, gently pushing Logan out of the way and soaking in the warmth of the cabin. A sigh escaped his lips as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes a fire crackled softly in the grate, casting warm, dancing patterns across the inside of his eyelids as he turned, exposing his whole body to the heat, like a pig on a spit, happy to roast for a while.

A hand on his arm roused Roman to open his eyes to meet a pair of bespectacled ones. He leaned forwards for some kind of hello kiss, but Logan stopped him with a warm hand to his chest and a raised eyebrow. Logan looked at Roman’s lips. “You're bleeding,” he said plainly, turning towards the corner of the room sectioned off by a countertop which they optimistically called the kitchen. 

Roman peeked his tongue over his lips and felt a split down the bottom one. "So i am,” he said, equally as plainly (in proportion to their usual levels of exuberance, of course). The ice that had slowly begun to build up in his eyelashes was melting, and nature's own tears dripped down his face. He licked them from where they settled in the corners of his lips.

"Here," Logan said, handing him a damp paper towel, but when Roman reached out to take it, Logan clasped his hands with surprising urgency. "Your knuckles!" He said, looking increasingly concerned as Roman's icy fingers sucked the warmth from his own.

Roman looked down and was almost surprised himself that he hadn't been in some kind of fight, judging by the cracked and shredded skin on his hands.

"You should see the other guy," he chuckled, but Logan gave him a stern look.

"Hand cream and mittens," he said, somewhat absently as he began to look for the aforementioned items. "And for goodness sake get changed, you're soaked through."

"Care to help me with that," Roman smirked as he came up behind Logan and wrapped his arms around his waist. 

"Stop stealing my body heat and go!"

Rolling his eyes, Roman grabbed his bag and found one of the bedrooms (it wasn't hard, seeing as the two bedrooms made up half of the rooms in the house).

He rummaged through his rucksack, felt something soft and pulled. A pair of thick pyjama trousers, hoisted out by the ankle, were followed by a pyjama top that, by some cruel twist of fate (or perhaps Roman was just really bad at packing) did not match. Roman glared at the non-matching pyjamas as if it would make one of them change colour. 

They did not change colour. 

Disgusting.

Huffing and puffing, Roman pulled on the hateful garments, then shivered. Please say I packed a hoodie, he thought as he delved once more into the breach of his rucksack, once more, please easy I packed a hoodie.

His fingers touched something soft and he grabbed it and he pulled.

His bag pulled back.

He pulled harder, grunting with the effort, but his bag held on tight in its cruel game of tug-of-war.

“What’s going on?” Logan asked, standing with his arms folded in the doorway, his tone incredulous.

“This fiendish bag won't yield my hoodie!” Roman glared at the bag for a moment longer before shivering again. “I’m cold,” he said quietly.

“Of course you are,'' Logan sighed, coming forward and, somehow, and with no effort on his part at all, extracted the somewhat stretched hoodie from the bag and threw it gently to Roman.

He missed Roman entirely, so Roman picked it up off of the ground and slipped it over his head, hiding the unmatched pyjamas.

“Come on, you ridiculous human being you, your hot chocolate is getting cold.”

“No! Not the cocoa! You fiend!” Roman addressed winter as a season again, leaving Logan standing in the doorway, a little perplexed, but let's be honest, not surprised to be so.

Roman wanted to drink his hot chocolate then and there (I mean, who wouldn't) but Logan maintained that it could be reheated and stubbornly pushed the lotion into Roman’s hands.

Logan glared until he had put on so much hand cream that his skin stubbornly refused to absorb any more, leaving a slick over his hands that Logan immediately shoved into mittens. 

Roman winced at the strange, slimy feeling that that combination induced, but Logan continued to glare, so Roman quietly submitted.

"I've never felt more beautiful," Roman sighed, leaning back across Logan's legs and delicately resting the back of one slimy, mittened hand on his forehead.

"You're always beautiful," Logan said quietly, brushing a strand of hair from Roman's forehead and pretending not to be looking at him as his cheeks turned just a little but pink.

Roman didn't say anything. He thought he would, it seemed like the kind of time that he would, but he didn't.

---------

The rest of the evening was spent on the sofa. Roman finally got his hot chocolate, and Logan listened and nodded as he excitedly went on about some new idea or another, smiling in the right places as he had learned to do, but Roman could see that his eyes were somewhere else.

“What are you thinking about, my darling?”

Logan had a strange expression on his face, part confusion, and then a whole mix of other emotions that Roman couldn't quite make out.

“Why did you walk here?” he finally replied. “Virgil and Patton broke down in almost the same place, but they're waiting for a repair service. Why did you figuratively freeze yourself solid walking four miles through a snowstorm?”

Roman looked up at his lover's face, the harsh edges softened by the glow of the fire, and he genuinely felt his chest seize with the love for that ridiculous nerd that resided there.

“Because I knew that you would be here,” he answered plainly.

Logan let out one of those short, breathy laughs of incredulity and said, “you're a fool. I've fallen in love with a fool.”

---------

As the night crept in and the light faded, Logan read by the flickering light of the fire, as Roman had persisted that they should by no means turn on the lights. (the conversation went something like this:

“But it makes no sens-”

“But the aesTHETIC!”)

Roman began reading, but soon abandoned that in pursuit of just laying with his head in Logan's lap with his eyes closed. It was warm and quiet and Virgil and Patton still hadn't arrived, but apparently the repair person had just arrived and was giving them a lift. 

The door opened with its characteristically deafening squeak, and Roman was just about to lift his head to greet his friends when he heard, “sshh! He’s sleeping!”

Feeling nice and sneaky, Roman decided not to pick Logan upon this just yet.

Virgil snickered, Patton squealed, the door closed.

“Don't say a word," Logan muttered dangerously.

"I didn't say anything, dude." Roman could imagine Virgil holding his hands up in surrender with a smirk and hand to pretend to shift in his sleep to hide a grin.

"You two are just so darn adorable!" Although clearly intentionally breathy, Patton’s excited words could barely be called a whisper.

A weight shifted on the sofa and Roman felt a new hand brush some of the hair from his face and tried extra hard to look as asleep as he possibly could. Patton, he was willing to bet. Virgil always preferred to fling his legs over the arms of the armchair across the room.

"He walked halfway here," Logan murmured, sounding fond, but ultimately unimpressed. 

“Goodness gracious, the poor thing.”

“Idiot.”

Roman bit his tongue.

“This is gonna be the best Christmas ever!”

“If we don’t freeze to death first.” Roman heard Virgil clamber up from his chair, presumably in search of blankets.

“You gave it your best shot,” Logan muttered, just loud enough for Roman to hear (if he was awake of course). Roman decided that asleep people could still squeeze gently and affirmatively on people's hands, so he did. Logan didn't stop stroking his hair, so he figured that he got away with it.

“Could I have one too please my Spooky Sweetheart?”

“Sure thing. Logan?”

“No thank you, I'm evoking William Harvey at this precise moment.”

Silence.

“William Harvey? Civil War doctor? Bodies for blankets- you know what, never mind.”

Presumably Virgil came back with the (non-corpse, thanks for that image, darling) blankets, and the soft chatter slowly dissolved into gentle, steady breathing of sleep.

Roman suddenly felt a wave of contentment wash over him. Drowsily, he felt around for Logan's hand and brought it close to his face. It was warm. He heard Logan sigh somewhere above him, but felt his fingers gently cup his chin. 

Real sleep crept closer and closer, and he knew that when he woke up, Christmas day would be ever so, ever so sweet.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Taglist (tellme if you want to be added or removed):

@celeste-tyrrell @uwillbeefoundtonight @stop-it-anxiety @soakinforsif @combine-the-kitchens @randomavengersquotes

[ianworthy]

Israel vs Palestine

What is really happening? And the bloody solution…

First off, I'm from a small town on the other side of the planet so I don't have any kind of agenda.  If you want that B.S. there's lots of options.  I realized more than ever over the last year that we are being lied to and manipulated on the daily, which led me down many rabbit holes. I've been "re-educating" myself and started writing in an effort to make some sense of the craziness.

History made shorter…

We should start around when the Ottoman Empire ended for some context, which was in the early 1920s in case you slept through History.  If you rely on the ‘news’ you'd think this started a couple of weeks ago.  Reality, if you go back far enough no one "owned" anyone, nor the land they occupied or any of the land you’re on right now. Humanity and its entire existence has involved one tribe/country trying to annihilate the other.   It never works out, but here we are 200000 years later, give or take 194000 years, depending on whether your belief in Science transcends beyond vaccines and masks.  In case you didn't catch that I’m referring to the 6000 year timeline outlined in the Bible.  Breaking this down to the core revolves around religion used to create unnecessary animosity, so a relatively small proportion of a population can benefit.  Isn't that every war ever?

After the Ottoman collapse, the land that's in dispute aka Israel and Palestine was given to the British.  Interesting fact, if you look at all the atrocities and wars currently going on in the world, they are all countries that were "occupied" some way or another by the British or to a lesser extent, the French.  Aren't we all curious for Harry's hot take on how he's the product of ruthless colonization of his great grandparents that its impact on global society is ever present? These former colonies are humanitarian disasters enslaved by whichever military coup at the time provides corporations with the most resources.  But hey, as long as the Old B of England got the right biscuits to accompany her afternoon Tea that's all that matters, right?        

When the British, or most powerful Army at the time called the shots, there was a movement referred to as Zionism that began to gain support from the Jewish people throughout Europe.  Zionism basically means the nationalist movement to create a state for the Jews, not the jam by Damien Marley, which is my first exposure to the word Zion.  I'm sure this rise was foreshadowing of what was to come.  Not to get all conspiracy theory on you but none other than the Rothschilds (wealthiest family in history that created the global money supply that are apparently no longer wealthy) created a proposal that involved divvying up the land for a state in the future, which was after the war.  Google the ‘Balfour Declaration’ if you don't believe me.  From that point the amount of land occupied by the Palestinians has steadily decreased, according to the last map I checked it was looking pretty bleak.  The land was divided not because they are physiologically different but because one group of parents parents parents were raised to believe in Abraham and the other a linkage to Abraham.

Up to the current point… 

I'm sure that Jared Kusher's involvement in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Trump peace plan of supplying the middle east with more missiles played a supporting role, but more current, Ramadan.  The Israelis like all of the World Leaders during the last year have been flexing too much during the lockdowns of COVID, which carried over to yet another Ramadan and evicted some families for further settlements.  In addition to the evictions the Israelis broke up a Mosque gathering on Eid, Antifa style.  Eid for Muslims is like Christmas for Christians, but instead of getting toys and gifts from Jesus swap, Santa Claus, you get to eat during daylight after a month of starving yourself.  This Mosque is Islam's third holiest site, conveniently Jerusalem is Judaism and Christianity holiest site as well, coincidence?  To relate, for Christians, if Jerusalem is the holiest, and the Vatican is the Second then probably a Church like Notre Dame would be third, or up there at least.  I feel that the MSM coverage of the Notre Dame burning was little different than the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

In retaliation to the Israeli raids, Hamas, the awful military leadership of Palestine launched missiles that had no real threat of reaching their target, being shot down half way by the Rafael Advanced Defense System (Iron Dome) that the US taxpayer supplied batteries for under Obama.  In response to a “potential” desert storm attack from Palestine a bunch of USA made Lockheed Martin F-16s equipped with M61 Vulcans and Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles launched an Airstrike killing a bunch of innocent civilians, including kids.  According to the death toll I just looked at, it was 241 dead Palestinians, including 5 top Hamas commanders, the media and a bunch of kids to 12 Israelis, no executives, consultants, shareholders or politicians were killed.               

The Solution Is…

Two solid states, and no longer decreasing the amount of land occupied by the Palestinians and increasing of Jewish settlements.  Palestinians and Jews both have the right to a home.  With the help of the greedy boomers (worst leadership class in history) and the media making the next couple of generations hate each other, the rift is super deep.  Every war is sustained by the industrial military complex.  Lockheed Martin Raptors or Raytheon Heat Seeking Missiles do not magically appear in the Israeli Air Force.  The corporations that run the United States are in the business of making money at all costs, in this case innocent lives mostly Palestinians.  Humans need to stop providing the means to commit such acts of horror.     

It also seems pretty convenient that Benjamin Netanyahu was recently unable to form a new government and is facing criminal corruption charges.  Party leaders are always guilty of something, it’s just a matter of if they follow the most profitable line or not.  He's obviously not the right person to run Israel, taking it in the extreme right position that’s trendy right now in politics.  Extreme either way is no solution to anything, and the sooner Netanyahu goes the better.  His father was an Ivy League Professor active in the Zionist movement, who's father was also a Zionists.  Point here is people that grow up entitled with an unwavering ideology and no life experience make for horrible leaders.  That applies to a lot of world "leaders", even the countries that don't have nonsensical inbred Royals in charge.  Any peaceful long-term resolution involves leadership that recognizes that Jews and Palestinians have a right to a home.  There also needs to be more fair coverage.  I guess it doesn't help that the people running Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Lionsgate, Universal, NBC, The New York Times, The Tribune, Discovery, CNN, Google and Facebook are all Jewish.  In Palestine, the Israeli Air Force blew up one of the main media buildings that housed Al Jazeera News and the Associated Press.  No press or opinion vs all the colluding press and opinions. 

As for Hamas, or any of these military coups that emerge are the result of instability and no leadership for its people, present more of a challenge.  Israel can and hopefully soon, will function just fine with new leadership.  My entire adult life, the Industrial Military Complex has been at war with the Middle East.  The defense contractors that have been defending America from an “evasion” always seem to find some action. It's purely about Oil(Money) and strategic power, but we can leave that for another time. From the West perspective Hamas is a terrorist organization, which they are, but if you're living in Palestine having dinner with your family and a Raytheon heat seeker comes through the window and blows up your family into pieces. Wouldn’t that be a terrorist act? In order to have any kind of sustainable solutions the counties and corporations that pillage these places killing innocent people need to find a way to structure these de facto coups into a legit military that can serve as a National Army. At the end of the day these kids are just fighting for what they think or are forced to think is right. Given the option, and right identity, kids can redirect their frustration and hatred towards a national unity that respects and values its citizens. Not that I have much faith in non-secular rule, but I think as a starting point a country that can be run more or less by its people is better than this apartheid situation that’s going on now.

The ceasefire has been called, which is the necessary short-term solution, however not going to change much going forward.  This game is being played with a zero-sum, and I think that they were premeditated targets that were going to be fired at some point in the future regardless of what the spark was. My position at the end of the day is that a handful of countries produce all the weapons used to blow everyone up, so it should start at the source and those who benefit the most.  Which obviously isn't the everyday people of Palestine or Israel. The upside, with the media fighting for relevance the corporate narrative is being challenged.  We just haven't figured out the right way. I have some thoughts, subscribe or follow please.

[wolfandwild]

My Shadowlands Wish List

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to pre-patch and the inevitable launch of the expansion, I thought I’d rattle off a wish list of things I hope we get to see in Shadowlands, largely from a lore/story perspective. (Or rather, my stupid foot was hurting so badly I couldn’t concentrate on writing my fic properly, so I decided to ramble off some not-so-hot takes, honestly they’re pretty mild in the grand scheme of things). I was in the first alpha wave, so I’ve had a pretty good opportunity to play the game as it is thus far, and I did want to make it clear up front that I’m fully aboard the hype train. Shadowlands is looking like a great expansion for a number of different reasons, and while I do have a few areas of concern, on the whole I am currently feeling very positive. Please also note these are just my random, late-night personal musings - your mileage may vary, and that’s a-okay.  Mild Shadowlands spoilers below the cut.

You Get A Customisation! You Get A Customisation! Everybody Gets A Customisation! This one is pretty much a no-brainer. I don’t necessarily think Blizzard need to have absolutely every possible character customisation ready to go before launch, but I’d like them to continue adding further options over time. I move in a couple of different circles in Warcraft - I’m obviously involved in the writing/lore/character aspect of the game, but I’m also GM of a raiding guild and closely follow the gameplay/competitive side of things too - and customisation is one of those few things that gets everyone excited, regardless of their reason for playing the game. I’m looking forward to seeing a much more vibrant, unique and diverse Azeroth come Shadowlands pre-patch. (Mostly irrelevant side story - when Wrathion returned in the Patch 8.3 cinematics, my Twitter and lore Discords were basically going berserk with excitement, meanwhile there’s a hundred very confused dudes in my raiding guild who don’t read quest text being all, “What the hell is a ‘Wrathion’?”. I live in two different worlds, honestly). Another reason I’m excited about customisation (and I’m probably in a very small minority on this one) is because I actually really dislike allied races, and I think it gives Blizzard an option to add more flavour to character creation in the game without always having to cobble together a new race. I honestly think they should have simply gone for sub-race customisation from the beginning, to avoid having to ass-pull allied races out of nowhere. Using customisation over allied races also makes it far simpler to give something to both factions (e.g. high elves), or to add something for one faction without necessarily having to always add something to the other faction to keep things in balance. Giving an extra hairstyle to humans but not orcs generally isn’t going to cause that much of a fuss, but if one faction were given an allied race and the other wasn’t because there wasn’t a logical racial option, there would be a shitstorm of epic proportions. So you end up in a situation where one faction* gets saddled with a really random, sucky allied race just to be ‘fair’. *The Alliance. It’s the Alliance. Leave Britney Arthas Alone Arthas has never been a personal favourite of mine, but I respect that he has a fantastic story, and that he’s a cornerstone of Warcraft lore. His story is both satisfying and complete, and that’s exactly why they should leave him the hell alone. I don’t mind if he’s visited in flashbacks (like the Bastion cinematic), or if we explore how he affected still living characters (e.g. Jaina, Sylvanas, Bolvar), but I think it would be a mistake to try to make him a central character in the expansion. In contrast, someone like Kael’thas is an excellent choice for an additional arc, because his original story was a bit all over the place and there is still plenty of room for his character development. Arthas doesn’t need it, and I don’t think the minute potential gain is worth the risk of retroactively making the rest of his story worse. On a similar note... Warcraft III Was Released Nearly 20 Years Ago, It’s Time to Move On The Warcraft RTS was a landmark series of games, and was obviously without them we wouldn’t have the World of Warcraft. However, I think the future health of Warcraft’s lore depends on the ability of the writers to grow the story outwards and upwards, not to always default back to the same handful of characters for nostalgia’s sake. While characters like Jaina, and Thrall, and Sylvanas are great, they can’t carry the narrative forever. Shadowlands represents a unique opportunity to build up the next generation of characters and to blow the cosmology of the universe wide open. From what I’ve seen on the alpha/beta, Blizzard are definitely taking a step in this direction, and I’m hoping that’s what we get instead of Patch 9.2 - Oh Look, It’s Thrall Again. On an additionally similar note... Sylvanas Is Crazy, And She Needs To Go Down (I don’t actually think she’s crazy, but one should never miss the opportunity for an Avatar reference). One of my complaints about the recent lore developments in Warcraft its that it’s starting to feel a lot less like the World of Warcraft, and more like the Sylvanas of Warcraft. She’s playing 469D chess; she’s behind everything; she’s the sole driving force of the narrative. I don’t think that works in an MMO that’s meant to tell the story of an entire expanded universe. It makes things feel small. And before I get eaten alive, I want to be clear that I don’t dislike Sylvanas as a character - in fact, I think she’s very compelling and on a night when my foot wasn’t killing me so much I’d be happy to get into an argument as to why she’s actually one of the most consistent and well-written characters in the World of Warcraft. I don’t necessarily think she needs to die, either, but I think it’s time for her narrative to come to a close to make room for other characters in the story, and I don’t think Blizzard are going to get a much better opportunity to give her a satisfying ending than in a death-themed expansion. Justice for Tyrande (Or Vengeance, Whatever Uther Wants to Call It) Tyrande got done dirty in Battle for Azeroth, probably more than any other character. I’m not a massive night elf fangirl by any means, but their entire race was basically used as grist for the mill in Sad Orc Dad’s story, with no next to no narrative follow-up besides a cool cinematic that went absolutely nowhere in game. Outside the game, her character then got subjected to the cacophonous misogynistic crowing of the fanbase that occurs whenever a female character dares to be angry in the World of Warcraft. Much like Jaina, she’s decried for being ‘crazy’ or ‘irrational’ for, you know, being pissed that her people and her homeland were wiped out in an act of wildly disproportional aggression. I don’t know about you guys, but that would tend to make me a wee bit testy, but maybe I’m crazy and irrational too. In any case, I want to see her go off in Shadowlands. Fuck ‘em up, girlfriend. You Get One Villain. If You Drop It, I’m Not Buying You Another One I think most people will agree with me that the two weakest expansions (at least from a narrative perspective) were Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth. There are a few reasons for this, but for me one of the biggest issues was that they were chop-and-change expansions. Both were advertised and started off with narratives and themes that were wildly different from where they finished up. Warlords was part Iron Horde expansion, part Legion expansion; BFA was part faction war expansion, part Old God expansion... and that’s exactly the problem. Both times, I felt like we got two half-done expansions, instead of one single, cohesive narrative experience.  If you look at expansions like Wrath of the Lich King and Legion, both of which were very well received, a lot of their success hinges on their presentation of a consistent narrative with a clear goal for players within the story. The Lich King, for example, was a consistent and very present villain. He menaced you throughout your entire journey, and so his eventual defeat on top of Icecrown Citadel was meaningful and impactful. Defeating N’Zoth, by contrast, felt pretty hollow, as we hadn’t had enough narrative build up to really care about taking him down. Part of the reason I’m excited for Shadowlands is it looks like we’re getting a nice, focused story development that builds up to a logical and satisfying villain in the Jailer. Why Can’t We Be Friends? Look, I bleed blue. I love the Alliance... but the faction war should not continue to be a driving narrative element in the World of Warcraft. I don’t want the factions to be removed, I think they’re a core part of the Warcraft experience and I’d be pretty sad to have to let them go entirely, but the cycle of hating one another then teaming up in an uneasy alliance in order to defeat a bigger bad, only to go back to being at one another’s throats the next day is... tiresome.

Ideally, the war would have ended after Legion - it was the most logical place to do so, and I think it was a big missed opportunity that they ran with Battle for Azeroth immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, I think this means the Alliance is going to just have to forgive and forget, which doesn’t really make a lot sense at this point given everything that happened in BFA, but for the sake of the overall story, it might be a necessary sacrifice. That said... I Am Once Again Asking for Alliance Narrative Agency I know there are a lot of (valid) complaints to be had about the Horde storyline, but the one thing the Horde has always had over the Alliance is that they actually get to drive the narrative forward. The Alliance are pretty much exclusively reactionary, and in a lot of ways are side characters to the main Horde storyline. I’ve made this argument elsewhere, but it honestly wouldn’t be too hard to remove Anduin’s part in Saurfang’s storyline in Battle for Azeroth and have it turn out more or less exactly the same way... which says a lot about the importance of the Alliance in the overall storyline. In short, the Alliance are secondary players at best, and downright irrelevant at worst. One of my biggest hopes for Shadowlands is that we’ll actually get to see some Alliance narrative agency. To be clear, however, this does not mean a simple rehashing of Horde conflicts with a blue coat of paint. Alliance stories are not Horde stories, and nor should they be. Having an Alliance leader turn into a genocidal despot is not the only way to create conflict or agency in the story - there are plenty of opportunities for character growth, development and conflict on the Alliance side without having to have one of our leaders do a heel turn (e.g. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, Anduin dealing with his experience in the Maw, Jaina confronting the fates of people like Kael’thas and Arthas, Taelia meeting her father, etc.), and I really hope we get to see some of those narrative threads come to fruition. I Want to Mount Everything Add a hundred new mounts. Two hundred. A pot plant with googly eyes, the four hundredth Alliance horse, your mum. I’ll ride anything; I don’t even care. (Please note this is the most important opinion I have).

[felassan]

Sorry if you've answered this question before, but I was wondering what choices that can be made from the past three games do you think will have the biggest impact on DA4? Personally I think that whether or not Morrigan has old god Kieran will be important considering his scene with Flemythal and the subsequent Solas and Flemythal scene at the end of Inquisition.

Hi Nonnie, I don’t remember answering one like it recently so not to worry. :) Ooh this is a great question, thanks. Let’s see. Cut for length. warning, Tevinter Nights spoilers below cut.

for me this is a tough question! thinking back on the choices we’ve made over the years, browsing the Keep for a refresher, I feel it’s quite a tough call. for one thing, DA4 for me presents a slightly different sort of premise choice impact-wise as a subsequent game compared to that posed by the existing ones. in previous installments we stuck largely around the same areas of the map game-to-game. We went from Ferelden to Ferelden. then we played a Fereldan fleeing Ferelden and what befelled it, to a relatively nearby city-state. we had a Fereldan’s perspective for that whole game, and the city-state filled up with a lot of Fereldan refugees. consequently ~Ferelden~, both in terms of culture and related choices, like Fereldan storybeats, were quite present in DA2. Kirkwall was nearby and Fereldan-filled enough that some of the ripples of things the Warden chose were mentioned, encountered, felt during the game. then ofc we went back to Ferelden. Ferelden combined with Orlais, to be sure, but Ferelden all the same. we’ve been a Fereldan in the Marches and a Marcher in Ferelden. 

moving to the far north, to the distant Imperium and perhaps even beyond.. Tevinter is very culturally distinct from the south. it’s geographically distant, has its own Chantry etc, does things in its own way, is fairly dominant as a Thedosian world power, and is sort of isolated from the south in that it seems fairly closed off to like, the average southerner? these things combined with the way Tevinter is a general sense don’t really make it feel to me like a place where waves would be felt from many of the choices we made in the south. I’m invested in and appreciate BioWare’s knock-on effects, meaningful choices and choice-import system for this franchise, so this isn’t me saying I don’t want it. it’s also still going to be a DA game, so this isn’t me saying there won’t be any ‘ripples’ at all or that our choice won’t matter. I just think the radical shift in setting, compared to the prior shifts, for this installment presents BW with a less complicated and relatively cleaner slate to work with than previously. not completely blank, but more so than usual. I think this is understandable and quite strategic - 4 games worth of choices means more and more variables to track, more resources to ‘express’ those choices in game, is just very complicated in general. at a point it grows arms and legs and becomes either exponential/unmanageable or ridiculous, whether thru the amount of handwaving, retconning, footnoting big things, etc. thinking about it, in Tevinter, how much could it really matter who rules in Orzammar, say, or Ferelden? How much could it matter whether Hawke sided with the mages or the templars? yknow? given the location and stuff I tend to think a higher proportion of choice impacts than ‘usual’ will be expressed as things like differences in Codex entries and other ‘flavor’ stuff such as ambient dialogue or offhand dialogue references. letters, a war table-esque mechanic, etc.

Example: Who became Divine had quite differing outcomes and developments across the south. Sometimes I think showing these in a new game set in the south would pose a problem with the sheer.. differing-ness, divergence. I’d worry about them retconning some of those epilogue slides a la DAO, or minimizing things. Thankfully tho ofc as it turns out, we’re not really going to be in the south to see it first hand, so it’s not a big problem in the end.

there are also some places where I think we may subscribe to a different idea or two (thats cool, these games engender such diverse opinions and neat discussions). for me: In the scene where OGB Kieran is with Flemythal, Urthemiel’s soul passes from him to her. if Morrigan reappears in DA4 therefore, whether or not he is in tow, her son is no longer the OGB. In the Solas and Flemythal post-credits scene, I don’t think that Solas absorbed Flemeth herself, Mythal herself, her godhood or her possible-Urthemiel soul - just her power, her strength. I therefore don’t think Solas is in a situation where in some worlds he’s absorbed Urthemiel and some worlds has not. I also believe that if Flemythal is still out there, if she has grand designs and a plan/intent, her ‘movement’ on that front would progress regardless and not really be influenced by whether or not she carries the soul of Urthemiel. I could easily be wrong given the DA4 hints towards old god stuff, but this is my feeling at the moment. Also, we see Flemythal passing something away through the eluvian in the post-credits scene. That’s the same regardless of whether she has Urthemiel, so it’s not Urthemiel or not just-Urthemiel. whatever it was, it’s not Urthemiel-dependent. if she was passing her godhood to Morrigan or something (who knows?), Morrigan receives a godhood regardless. back to if Morrigan reappears in DA4, if this was the case, Morrigan’s received a godhood regardless (Mythal), and therefore has received a big power-up or development, regardless.

I tend to think the OGB choice was a Biiig smoking gun of a choice in DA:O, at a time when they weren’t sure if there would be a next game or not (remember the DAO epilogue slide retcons?), if that makes sense. There were folk at the time who believed that the main plot of future games should revolve around the existence (i.e. omg my son!! he exists!!) of the OGB. a tangent but I remember folk calling for him to be the PC or to be a companion in DAI lol, which.. yeah. the choice in the end wasn’t ignored or footnoted - Morrigan in DAI has her son or does not, and if she has him he is the OGB or he is not. things still play out in that part of DAI in a fairly similar way, and if she has the OGB, that thread is resolved in the Flemythal transfer scene. Flemythal collects and off she goes. then seems to die, lol (I don’t think she’s dead but that’s another post I’ve made 7 times already). I think this was their way of what I’m calling ‘expressing’ and fairly neatly tie-ing off on that particular significant divergence. if she lives, I don’t see Flemythal’s importance or power/role being diminished by “possible absence of Urthemiel”. I suppose in a general sense I think of the choices as things they ‘express’, and the choice thing in general as actually more like.. the clever illusion of choice. [with the caveat that I have limits or specifications like if the PC killed or caused the end of a companion, they should stay dead]

Back to the question, because this somehow became a schpeel. on reflection yeah, mm, I definitely find this a difficult and dizzying topic to consider. Perhaps there are less choices that I foresee/would guess have the biggest impact or an impact in DA4, and more choices that I would like to see have an impact on DA4. Some of these things that I want to see ‘expressed’ or come back to mean  or influence something are (beyond the obvious like redeem/stop and “Did the Inquisitor befriend Solas or not”):

prior to DAI, despite some of the way the ramble above sounds, I would have said the OGB choice. Post DAI I now feel like this was satisfyingly expressed

I can see them handwaving the Warden leaving Sten locked in the cage and saying he didn’t die when the darkspawn came and somehow got out and returned home, so they can have him as Stenishok. Ok... fine. What I do want to see reflected though, if we encounter Stenishok (invasion and all that), is whether the HoF recruited Sten to help during the Blight and what his opinion of them in the end was, so did he think they were honorable, did he respect them. So i.e., or the standin metric for that would have to be I suppose, whether or not we returned his sword. I think the Qunari under Sten would invade regardless of his opinion of the HoF (went into that here, warning, TN spoilers at link), because that’s the Qun, and IC for Sten, but if he came to respect the HoF I want to see that reflected in the nuances of how he thinks of the people of the south and conceives of his previous experience there.

this one is definitely more like straight up wishful thinking, but with the new prominence of the Crows.. whether the HoF recruited Zevran and Zevran is alive and well. I went into that a bit here, ctrl-F Zevran (warning, TN spoilers at link).

whether the HoF killed the Architect. if he’s alive he should really be out there doing either nefarious or intriguing things, especially considering the new weird and wonderful darkspawn phenomena and the continuing mysteriousness of the Wardens, the implied civil war, odd/lack of news out of Weisshaupt etc. what does he think of the new darkspawn developments in Hormok? What did he make of the rise of his peer Cory?

whether the HoF allowed Avernus to continue his research, with/without constraints. ok, it can be one of the things that inspired the surviving HoF to search for a cure for the Calling, but I’m intrigued. the power of blood, the Taint, the Wardens, sending the research to the ever mysterious First Warden.. again all very thematic with current things.

whether Fenris is alive and well. I love him and he is always alive and well in my worldstates, I think returning him to Danarius is an awful in-universe thing to do. but if he was returned to Danarius or Hawke killed him or never recruited him, look, I don’t want to see him handwaved or “he’s there anywayed” into the DA4 plot if he appears in it, or at least not in the same way each time. (I don’t want to see “slave Fenris off to the side on a Tevinter street” in-game, I think there’s no need for that at all, but if you did give him back I simultaneously don’t want a “I escaped and now I’m the same Blue Wraith/DA4 Plot Thing anyway” if that makes sense, he just shouldn’t be in the exact same role/position at all. just for clarity on this if he was given back I don’t want or need to see it. No thankyou! that’s not what I’m sayin) I actually don’t want to see him in DA4 in a general sense really, and definitely not as a companion or in a major role (but I am Living for and love his comic content, that’s swell!). but that’s another subject centered on wanting to see more new chars and less old, stuff like that. I also think they should stop retconning or handwaving/asspulling/writing around in-game character deaths that the PC chose or caused like they did in those cases with Leliana, Anders etc. Stahp.

If Merrill is alive and well and didnt destroy her eluvian, I think we could do with using her eluvian expertise in the next game given the eluvian network, whether that’s via research notes or somesuch or an advisory/Morrigan-in-DAI type capacity.

if Feynriel is alive and well and left to study in Tevinter, I think we could do with using his abilities/knowledge of his abilities in the next game, given the sleep-threat.

if Cass got the book of Seeker secrets. alright, do they know yet if they can help the cured Tranquil with their emotions? c’mon, spread the knowledge of the cure. this is less because I want to right all social and societal wrongs in Thedas or whatever and more because this as a plotline really interests me in terms of storybeats and implications. for example I’d like to see curing a Tranquil in-game, not just in a book, and the premise of a recently-cured Tranquil companion grabs me a lot. I think it’d be interesting to explore them re-adapting and stuff with the rebounded flood of emotions and everything, trying to help them along the way etc.

who drank from the Well, although I can see this being kinda complicated to write, especially if Morrigan reappears and/or the Inquisitor returns as an NPC or as PC. my mind categorizes this as almost OGB-choice tier in terms of significance and complexity.

[mwolf0epsilon]

BATIM - Helping Hand

Summary: All stories have a beginning and an end. Henry’s ended with kindness, Joey’s began with cruelty.

---

     Back when he’d been trying to reintegrate into civilian life after going to war, Henry had no conceivable way of explaining his experiences in an eloquent fashion. It was very difficult to put into words the sort of visceral feelings that made his chest tighten with a mixture of white hot panic and instinctual terror. There were no feasible words to express the sensation of looking another human being in the eyes and knowing that they were just as reluctant to be there, and that one of them had to die for the other to live. War was a topic that muted him to a somewhat permanent degree. Too hard for him to talk about. But the studio? The horrifying atrocities Joey had committed in his absence? The lengths he'd gone to get what he wanted? That was the one horrific happenstance in which he could find his voice and curse out a supposed friend for their heinous crimes, especially when he found himself back on that familiar doorstep that led him into that repeating nightmare... The mockery of a long-dead dream. Yes, Henry Stein, the man of few words, would end up spewing out as many acidic profane words that he could conjure up on the spot. So foul they were that they would have had a sailor as shocked and disgusted as a blushing nun. Not that anyone could judge him for it. A man of routine could only bend so much to the insatiable will of another, before he slowly found himself pushed over the precipice of madness. It was by pure miracle he hadn't lost his senses long ago. Because, thankfully, Henry made due with what little leniency and creativity he had to keep himself entertained. Every few loops he changed things up just a little bit.

     The “Long Runs” as he called them, were a respite of sorts Henry had concocted long ago as a means to give himself a break from the main storyline Joey so vehemently forced him through, with little to no choice in the matter. They were, in a sense, somewhat of a sacred thing. His sanctuary, as Sammy would put it, and one that he'd long since forced his puppeteer not to disturb. If Joey didn't want his marionette to flop onto the ground in defiance of restarting the same old stale song and dance all over again, he'd have to allow him some time to relax and get back on his game. Otherwise Henry would simply sit down and refuse to even go near the Ink Machine, much less begin this charade. Without the hellish thing as his driving point, it’s not like Joey could find any reason to push him forward anyway.  Not without the Ink Demon being let out to take on its role of the relentless hunter. So, having learned this, Joey seemed to begrudgingly allow him to explore the studio to his heart’s content without pushing him to do anything that would immediately set him towards that final stage. That repetitive speech that made less and less sense the more Henry experienced it.

     On these breaks Henry took his time and did what he’d done back when he was a kid: He people watched. An odd hobby, but one that taught him something quite valuable about creating characters. Traits and qualities. Everyone had a way of being that was entirely unique to them. Be it the way they walked, if they spoke just with their mouth or with their hands, or how they chose to project themselves out in the world. Dress and speech patterns, certain ritualistic habits, likes and dislikes...All things tended to be readable on a person if you just stopped, watched and listened for long enought. Which is why, on every one of these breaks, Henry took the time to figure out everyone’s gimmicks. Soon after, he’d started his little gestures of kindness...

     It all started with the swollen searcher with the nice hat. Jack Fain, the once lyricist that had aided in getting the right words to Sammy’s jolly little tunes. Henry had been absentmindedly exploring the sewer tunnels near the music department when he’d noticed the searcher in a rather bad way. Overstuffed with the thick ink that Twisted Alice so coveted from his brethren. So large and nauseatingly lumpy that he couldn’t even move out of his current spot. He supposed that was his inevitable fate unless crushed with a crate, which made him feel a little less upset about dropping such a heavy object onto the poor thing. Then, much to his surprise, Sammy Lawrence himself sauntered down from one of the adjacent tunnels to find the pitiful creature blocking his path. And even more surprising, he actually seemed sad about it's sorry state.   “Oh you silly sheep… This is the 4th time this week that I’ve found you so heavy with your precious wool…” How Sammy could count the weeks, Henry wasn’t sure, since he knew for a fact the music director often forgot his own name. Come to think of it, Sammy forgot a lot of things, reminding Henry of a fellow in his platoon that was afflicted with early onset dementia. He’d been discharged due to becoming a liability, and seeing him fight the disarray of his own mind had been a honestly terrifying spectacle. Henry had felt a great pity for him, which is about the same way he felt for Sammy now. The poor guy could have been great had he not ended up in Joey Drew’s grasp and then tossed into this nightmare realm. “Not to worry...Your shepherd is here now, although you’ll have to forgive me. I have no shears.”

He’d watched in morbid fascination as Sammy dug four-fingered hands into the swollen searcher’s mass, pulling out chunks of it in a way that made Henry’s stomach twist in discomfort. If Jack felt any pain, he didn’t show it.  If anything with each clump of ink removed, he seemed almost relieved. Finally, once returned to his regular proportions, the searcher let out a much softer humming sound. One that was much nicer to the ear than the wet hiss he reserved for Henry whenever he got too close to the skittish creature.   “You’re welcome my little sheep. The others will be most pleased with the wool you’ve so generously provided…” The pile of thick ink was truly massive, and the old artist could only wonder what Sammy hoped to do with it. “Please refrain from consuming more. Excessive indulgence is a sin you know...”

From the way Sammy had addressed Jack upon arrival, this seemed to be a recurring issue. One the self-appointed prophet seemed to exclusively come down into the sewers to solve himself. It piqued Henry’s interest in such a way that he’d begun to wonder… If he helped with that, would this in any way benefit him? Couldn't do him wrong to have some thick ink at hand... And then he wondered: Would helping them benefit Jack and Sammy in any way? Only one way to find out!

     He'd left it for the next time he decided to take a break. First going through a few more loops to give himself time to figure out just how to help the prophet and the swollen searcher that lived down in the sewers. He couldn't exactly allow Sammy to sacrifice him. It would only end with the delusional ex-music director dying faster. So what could he, a humble artist, possibly do for someone who was so lost to devotion? And then there was the question of what could he do for Jack. The only thing he seemed interested in, was being left alone and keeping a hold of that dang valve. Henry hadn't personally known the man, so this was a difficult task. Luckily he found an answer in the form of an audio log Buddy had collected well before the older man had set foot in the studio. As it turned out, Jack Fain was a fan of coffee. That at least was something to look into, as he made his way all around the studio. He'd mostly only found rations of bacon soup, but surely there had been a coffee machine in the break room, right?  And if he could keep his seeing tool, maybe he could keep anything else he kept on his person until the end of another run? He'd tried it once with Wally's keys and he was pretty sure he'd kept them on the next loop, only to lose them again later (the man should have invested in a better key ring, that one was a slippery bugger!). But could it work for heftier items? That too was a theory he tested, and Joey surely must have found it quite odd when he'd begun his end of the loop speech, only to stop as he stared in confusion at the bag of coffee Henry had brought along with him.   "...I have questions..." He deadpanned as he stared at the bag of coffee with slight distrust. A bag of coffee beans. Nothing could be less threatening.   "Funny, I thought that was my job?" Henry grinned. "Asking questions, and never getting any answers?"   "Funny indeed… Whatever you're up to, don't think it'll do any good." Joey frowned. "Your path is set, and nothing can change that. Even if I’ve been rather patient with your excursions."   "We'll see." That only gave Henry more motivation to try. If just to spite Joey. Another guilty pleasure of his that he indulged in from time to time. He too needed a bit of fresh unpredictable entertainment after all…

     To not lug around a bag of coffee everywhere he went (which wasn’t very practical), Henry had decided to take another break on his next run to begin experimenting with this little idea that had been borne out of curiosity. It was easy to set a goal for it: If offering something of comfort to someone that had minimal impact in Joey’s puppeteering did anything of value not only to himself but for the person in question that he sought to offer some kindness to, then what could potentially happen if he tried the same trick with some of the "main cast"? It was, in all honesty, a rather clinical way of thinking and planning things out. He was essentially detaching himself from this reality to test those around him, having superior knowledge of what was truly going on (albeit in a limited and at times fleeting fashion) thus a sort of intellectual advantage over their situations. He was being a less harmful manipulator. Setting up events like Joey. The morality of it all came crashing down just as he’d gotten a coffee machine to work.   “Keep it together Henry.” he shook himself out of that nasty train of thought as fast as he could. “You’re not doing anything malicious...You’re just...Making coffee.”

He could maybe use a cup or two himself. If just to settle his nerves. How ironic that a stimulant could calm anyone.

  "Yeah, just a simple cup of coffee. No harm, no foul…" Except to his hand when the damn coffee maker scalded him for no particular reason. If anything, he hoped this was the best damn coffee that the swollen searcher had ever tasted in his whole life as an ink slug. There was just one tiny problem with this plan: Henry didn't have any cups. Nor any mugs. Not even those tiny little plastic cups that came with these sorts of machines. The studio was apparently in a "bring your own mug" policy just to skirt around buying a refill of those.   "Joey you damn cheapskate…" he had to improvise. Thankfully he wasn't short on containers or an appetite for bacon soup. He just hoped the taps in the bathroom would still have access to clean water...

     To Joey it must be quite a sight, watching an old man make his way down into the sewers balancing three cans of soup containing piping hot coffee in them. The stairs weren't exactly up to code and the ink coating them was slippery, so this whole journey to sate his damn curiosity might leave the old artist with second degree burns and potentially a ruined back.  Thankfully he managed his way down into the depths with no real issues, and noted the shadow of the prophet following his every move. Good, he hoped an offering would appease him. Play on the same field as Sammy in a sense, just to see what he might do. Granted treating Jack nicely might grant him the cultist's mercy if he treated him like a friend still. At the sight of him, the thing that had once been Jack Fain began to flee as usual.   "Hey, wait… I have something for you!" He watched the creature skirt around a corner, hat barely staying on. He stood there, unwilling to run, and simply held the cans of hot coffee with a slightly disappointed look on his face. And then…

...Snhiff shniff shhhhniff…

The wettest sniffing sound Henry had ever heard assaulted his ears, as the swollen searcher peeked back around the corner at him. Its mouth shut but the hollow sockets where it's eyes should be appearing to be wide as it tracked what must be an alluring aroma to it. It appeared searchers still retained a sense of smell, which begged the question of how Jack could stand to live down here.   "Smells nice doesn't it? I uh…" he waved one of the cans carefully so as not to spill its contents. "Got a coffee maker upstairs working again."   "Ksshhhff…Eeee..." he couldn't understand what it said, but Henry was pretty sure Jack was trying to say "coffee". He recognized what it was, and most importantly it looked like he desperately wanted it.   "Yes. It's coffee. Do you want it?" He outstretched his arm, trying to entice the swollen searcher with his peace offering. It looked at the can, the sloshing dark liquid inside it, then stared at Henry. It seemed to be trying to decide if it was worth risking its "hide" to get what it so desperately craved. Finally after an agonizing minute, it went for it.

     Henry nearly toppled over as the swollen ink abomination lunged for the can. He damn near spilled the other two on himself as well. Luckily he'd regained his footing and managed to keep everything nicely contained in the repurposed cans. The searcher on the other hand was less the skittish thing that ran circles around him, and more like an overexcited puppy. The slurping desperate chugging noises as it inhaled the coffee were a little gross, but that was easily overlooked by just how happy it looked.   "That good uh?"

The gurgling purr that followed got a chuckle out of him, and he couldn't help give Jack a gentle pay on the hat. He couldn't have imagined just how happy the poor fellow would get. And he wasn't the only one. That worn out Bendy mask peering from the corner gave Henry a good idea of just how impactful such a small gesture had been.   "I have an extra can if you'd also like some…" He'd brought one in the hopes that Sammy might appreciate some as well, but he wasn't sure if he liked the stuff. In the little time they'd worked together at the studio, the music director had been more of a smoker than a coffee enthusiast. Shame he wouldn't be able to get such an item for him… To Henry's surprise, rather than keep his distance and wait for his dramatical reveal, Sammy actually responded to him.   "My stomach does not react kindly to most substances besides the Lord's plentiful gift..." His words were devoid of emotion. Awfully cold but also contemplative. "I'm sure my darling sheep would be more than happy to consume my share…" The happy gurgling more than confirmed this, and Henry wasted no time to give him the extra can. Jack took it gleefully and began to drink it eagerly.   "A picky eater…" Henry felt slightly disturbed at the idea that Sammy was drinking any of the ink just laying around. "I can respect that."   "I assure you, it is not by choice." The mask cocked to the side, studying him. "Although I must admit the stomach aches have helped ensure my physique stays at the peak of perfection to ensure my tasks are well done."

Henry frowned and stared down at his own stomach. He was a little on the pudgy side nowadays, and honestly chugging cans of bacon soup probably didn't help. But he wouldn't call Sammy's proportions the peak of perfection.   "Doesn't sound too fun, getting sick unless you drink… the Lord's gift." Best not step on any toes, if Sammy still had any that is. Play it casual.   "I do not believe you've come down here to critique my practices as a devout follower of the Ink Demon." The Bendy mask turned to watch Jack devour the can of coffee. Henry felt like he must have been smiling fondly. "You have… Come down here to present us with offerings. Kind ones."   "Yes." He replied calmly, remaining just as calm when the mask turned back to him. Sammy's body language spoke for him more than his words did. He was doubtful.   "Why?" A good question.   "I had nothing better to do." He responded truthfully, albeit only partially. "And you could both use the kindness I'm sure."

They could, they honestly could. After having their minds, bodies and souls taken from them, their identities torn asunder, both Sammy and Jack could only benefit from being treated with the one thing Joey had stripped from them. Humanity. That run, for such a tiny little gesture as offering Jack some coffee, Sammy let him go without a fight. Joey's speech was much more heated than usual, but nothing really seemed to change on the next loop. At least he didn't think so until he found a can of hot coffee waiting for him in Sammy's sanctuary, as well as a bowl of extra thick ink with the valve propped in the middle of it.

-

     His second gesture couldn't have been more easy. While Sammy still tried to sacrifice him, his speech was more subdoed. Almost playful in a way that said "I know what you did and I'm grateful, even if my actions don't show it". Joey's grip on him was too strong to escape with just one kind action, but not enough that Sammy even in his state of forgetfulness could get the mental image of Henry treating Jack to some coffee out of his inky brain. The alterations to his pattern gave Henry plenty of time to figure out just what to do for his encounter with Twisted Alice. Playing slightly into Sammy's delusions had allowed him to get close, so focusing on her obsession might coax what little of Susie was left. Because he'd gotten wise and asked what it was like to become a toon to the only other person qualified to give him a proper response. Sure Buddy couldn't talk, but his reignited personality had given Henry insight on what it was to become a cartoon character. There was a power struggle at first. The original human personality and the Toon's personality clashing in an effort to remain in or take full control. A chaotic and confusing process until one came out victorious. At first Boris had won… then Buddy had slowly begun resurfacing the more loops Henry went through. Now they had a mutual agreement. They needed each other to survive, and the same turned out to be true for Alice and Susie. Alice being the more dominant and jaded of the personalities, having long since fallen from grace after witnessing the sheer cruelty and lack of hope this abominable studio had to offer. Susie ended up being the weaker of the two, guarded by her dragon like a princess in a twisted castle. She sometimes spoke up, clearly disturbed by what their shared hands had done in the past, but Alice had too much of a grip on her to ever let her go. If Henry could properly appease the angel, he might be able to get to Susie as well. Give them… What? A glimmer of hope? Better than let them stew away in their rotten despair.   "You're staying. I'm going." He pleaded with Buddy after taking the gifts left behind by Sammy and Jack. "Don't give me that look, I've told you what she does when she gets her hands on you…" A soft whine as the toon wolf pleaded for him to reconsider.   "I know you worry, but I need to reach out to them. Even if it doesn't change much, they deserve some consideration." He pauses to think back on the tapes Susie had left, and then her final speech before he was forced to confront the brute Boris inevitably became. "After Joey used them it's the least I could do." Buddy (and no doubt Boris) growled in frustration before eloquently writing just what he thought of Joey. Henry crinkled his nose at the rather uncharacteristic choice of words, but the very last sentence made him smile somberly: “You don't have to fix Joey's mistakes.”   "I wish it was that simple. I really do." It wasn't like he had a choice, not when Joey thought he could evade the responsibility himself and pin it on someone else.

     Alice was fairly easy to butter up to. He'd entered her lair and sat through her little song like the patient man he was, and then when she finished up with her usual screeching finale he did something she didn't quite expect. He applauded. She was so caught off guard that she just stood there, even as the lights turned back on. Flabbergasted at the sudden adulation.   "What a finish, truly miss Angel, you're quite a gal." He'd continued to clap, bowl of thick ink balancing precariously on top of his head. "I'd offer flowers, but sadly all I have on me is ink…"   "...Why, what a flatterer…" She sounded uncertain, a hint of Susie just barely at the surface. She must have been quite shocked as well. No one had ever reacted to Twisted Alice's presence with such a welcoming embrace. She was a creature to be feared after all.   "Flatterer? Me? My goodness miss Angel, don't tell me you don't get the occasional fan…" he removed the bowl from his head and made sure the thick black blob was quite visible to her. An enticing offering provided by Jack Fain. It's not like he needed the excess ink.   "Sadly not. If only most visitors were as well mannered as you..." She crossed her arms, Alice's suspicions breaking through. "But that's to expect from the real creator, isn't it Henry?"   "Glad to see some recognition, but honestly I can't be credited for any of this. Not when it's been… Altered to such a degree." Henry looked around with a saddened expression. "Joey really managed to taint everything he touched..."   "Only if you let him." The Angel's hiss was a terrifying thing. "But it was so easy to let him in, wasn't it...? He had a way with words…" Susie was such a meek girl. A scared chick in a world conducted by the big bad wolf. And Alice? Alice was a fox that offered her protection. But Henry could be just as cunning provided he was given the chance. Always for a good reason, rather than satisfying his selfish desires. So very unlike his childhood friend.   "Words were his weapon of choice, until that wasn't enough." Henry offered her the bowl, watching as she inspected it. Tested it's stability. She seemed pleased.   "Why are you here, Henry? Why come back to this miserable place?" Alice's gaze was piercing, but not as malicious as it often was. "And I'm sure it's not due to nostalgia, or an excuse to flatter your way up to the heavens."   "I think I knew once." He replied in truth, because you didn't lie to an angel. "But now? Now I'm not so sure… I think Joey liked that naivety on my part. It certainly worked to his advantage."   "That it did, little errand boy. You're just as trapped as the rest of us…" She dismissed him. "You may pass freely… But don't think I'll show you mercy twice. You are, after all, still a thief."   "What's a man to do but try to protect a poor pup?" He couldn't help tease as he made his way to the door. He was free to explore her lair and go on about his "day" without her tasks or her looming presence. That was good enough a reward for him, even if it didn't promise Buddy's freedom from the cruel fate that awaited him.   "Such a shame that pup wasn't meant to be." Alice responded. "A shame indeed. He was such a nice boy..."

     This particular encounter gave him a lot to think. The people he'd once assumed to be monsters weren't inherently malicious. That much he'd figured from Sammy's behaviour after he'd played nice. But while most chose to cower and cry, or lose themselves to desperation and lies, Alice was simply resigned to the hand she'd been dealt. Because, honestly, she was in a terrible position to begin with. Even if Susie clearly wanted better, for the both of them. In the end, the angel was only trying to protect her vessel even if Joey set her on a most cruel path. She was tired of grasping on to shallow hopes of ever getting out. Rather be the hunter than the prey. That run, his old friend seemed even more frustrated with him.   "Stop humanizing them. There's nothing you can do for them." Joey had grit out through his teeth, trying to keep a smile that was as insincere as his speeches.   "You're wrong. There is something I can do." He'd responded, unbothered by the anger in his captor's words.   "And what's that?"   "Treat them with decency, which is something you never did."

-

     The Projectionist was a challenge. From what he could tell, Norman Polk had essentially gone feral from years of agony and isolation. Most of the Lost Ones even considered him a dumb and very violent animal. Alice thought of him as useful. Susie felt a terrible pity for him. And Buddy? Buddy both feared and felt anguish when confronted with the Projectionist's presence. Henry had known him for a short while, so he could understand the sentiment. Norman had been a good albeit quirky man.   "He looked after us…" Susie spoke over the intercom. "He was so kind. It hurts to see him like this… A monster."

While Alice didn't let up on her list of tasks, and did indeed always take the cartoon wolf as scripted, she'd started letting Susie come forth to speak to Henry. She had a lot to say.   "If I knew how, I'd help him." He watched the Projectionist walk through the flooded maze of projectors and hearts. Each step heavy, and the clicking of the projectors somewhat deafening. Occasionally it let out a soft crackly noise from its speaker.   "You'd die." Alice interjected.   "How so?"   "Why do you think it takes hearts, Henry?" The twisted angel asked. Come to think of it, he'd never considered the why of its actions. "It's because its own was stolen long ago."   "Joey stole his heart?"   "No my dear errand boy." Alice chuckled bitterly, before Susie took hold. "Sammy did…"

     Joey was getting awfully frustrated with him, so Henry gave in and followed the plot to a t on the next three runs. He needed to think anyway.  Think of how to address the problem. Because, really, how would he convince Sammy to halt his ritual to look for something he might not even recall ever having stolen? And then there was the matter of giving it back to the Projectionist without getting brutally killed. He decided to just wing it on his next break. Starting with visiting Jack with more coffee, if just to get Sammy to talk. It worked, but the prophet seemed hesitant to talk about the resident of level 14.   "That beast is a dangerous one… Nothing but my lord can stop it's rampage."   "That beast is looking for something someone took from him." Henry explained. "Or so I've been told."   "And how am I to fix this exactly, little sheep?" The deranged cultist crossed his arms. "Surely you mustn't think of me as a miracle worker?"   "Help me find it. I've been told you might know where to look."

Truth be told Sammy had no idea what he was on about, but he was adamant to repay him for once again bringing some semblance of joy into his favourite "sheep's" life. Luckily there wasn't any need to run around in futility, searching for something that might be long gone. The prophet's memory issues resulted in Sammy placing items he considered of value in the same place. A box hidden under the floorboards beneath the cot he'd set up in his sanctuary. Unluckily, a heart was not among the objects he'd stored. At least it seemed so since it wasn't anywhere to be found in the box of trinkets.   "Damn it…" he sighed sadly. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.   "I am sorry to disappoint." The Bendy mask betrayed no real emotions, so Henry wasn't too sure if the apology was genuine. He sounded a little miffed about having his personal space invaded, but didn't act upon it. "What is it you seek, exactly?"

Looking through the box, Henry gave a nonchalant shrug. He picked up a golden locket that was coated in dry ink, turning it slowly in his hand as he tried to figure out how to surpass this bump in the road. Sammy quickly reached out and took it from him, clearly upset that he'd touch his personal belongings.   "Don't touch that." The cultist hissed.   "Sorry…" he watched him put the locket back into the box, next to what appeared to be a series of unlabeled tapes. There was also a chain with a ring on it, and a few other trinkets that seemed to hold some sentimental value. "I know you can't remember much… but… Did you ever take a heart? A literal heart?"   "A… Heart..."   "Yes. I know it sounds strange but--"   "Not at all. They're plentiful down below." Sammy shrugged "Delicious too… More so than the ink or the soup. I cannot explain how."

And Henry would rather not have him explain, because his stomach wouldn't be able to handle it. He’d killed people before as a soldier, seen horrific things, but the thought of someone describing eating a human-ish heart made him sick.   "Then, yes a heart. Maybe not an ink one." He added, trying to keep the conversation on track.  The ex-music director paused, tapping a finger to the chin of the mask, before staring down at his own chest. Much to Henry's horror, he plunged his fist into his own torso and pulled out…Well it must have been a heart at some point.  Now it looked like an amalgamation of stitched flesh and all sorts of wires and weird clicking mechanisms. A perfect fit for the quasi-mechanical monster skulking around level 14.   "Would this be the heart in question?"   "W-what were you keeping it literally on your person for?!" He couldn't help spit out, much to the annoyance of the deranged ink man.   "Where would YOU keep a heart?" He huffed "It was safer here… And it felt important."

No kidding. And important it was, to the point where Sammy didn’t want to give it back. How was Henry going to convince him to do so?  Well…   “The person it belongs to needs it back.” He pleaded. “Can’t you please hand it over so I can give it to him?”   “I cannot trust that you’d find the rightful owner.” Sammy stated. “Sheep need guidance, not to guide. And you, little sheep, are risking falling prey to the wolves.”   "I can assure you I know the owner, and so do you." At least he had, once. "The Projectionist needs it back Sammy. Please, be reasonable."   "I am being reasonable. I'm protecting this from that horrific beast!" He held the heart closer to himself, very likely glaring beneath his mask.   "It doesn't need protecting from him! It needs to go back to him!" Henry argued back. The old cartoonist was getting fed up.   "No!"

That was… not the right answer. At least not when Henry was so close to a breakthrough. Or so he thought. He regretted what he had to do to get that heart in the end. Killing an unarmed man felt like cowardice, even if it was for a good cause.

     Level 14 was always such a dreary place. Even with a newfound goal, an old veteran like Henry still felt uneasy going through such a maze. After being forced to kill Sammy that run, he wanted good results. If just to justify his actions as being for the greater good. They… weren't.  The Projectionist charged as usual upon seeing him, and Henry had to fight his instincts to flee. Instead he held out his gift, closed his eyes, and prayed. No pain came, but the scream… That gutteral and mechanical crackling of sheer agony. Like hot iron had struck flesh. The Projectionist was screaming, it's chest ripping itself open to reclaim the missing piece. And then, when the wires shot out and took back the heart, the screaming only intensified. Boris took hold of the body he shared with Buddy. The cartoon wolf howling in despair to match the screams while curling into a tight shaking ball in the elevator. The Projectionist fell on its knees as it continued to scream. Henry's mind was fraying just listening to it. Watching the pitiful beast claw at its mending chest and screech until its speaker could handle no more.  A loud pop filled the air, and suddenly there was no sound. But the clawing continued The convulsing carried on. It was screaming without a voice and it was all Henry's fault. Coward that he was, he ran to the elevator and slammed a hand against the buttons. His eyes too blurry from regretful tears to see where he'd end up. Alice and Susie remained quiet. Their silence was damning. Condemning his actions and allowing his conscience to fall heavy with guilt.

     That time, once he set foot in the quaint New York apartment, Henry shakily sat down at Joey's table and stared into nothingness. A tired hollow man that couldn't bring himself to look at the grinning devil that was positively gloating with joy.   "I told you so." A choked sob and bitter tears followed. Henry hated how careful Joey's hands were as he wiped away his tears, and as he murmured sweet words into his ear. That burning cobalt gaze aglow with the flames of victory. Fuck him. Fuck Joey Drew. This old war veteran would not give in so easily. He just had to try harder.

-

     There was no point in following the plot. He felt like he had to fix the mishaps of his last run before he even tried to offer his services to either Tom or Allison. This much was clear once he stepped foot in the sewers, because instead of being happy to see him or even feeling timid, Jack outright attacked him on sight. Gurgling and hissing in rage at him having hurt Sammy in his last run.   "I know… I'm sorry…" he kept the irate swollen searcher at bay if only just barely, hoping to appease him with his sincerest regrets. "Can you take me to Sammy? I… I want to make it up to him. What I did was wrong."

More than wrong. It was damaging. Because instead of the usual inky figure clad in overalls, boots and a Bendy mask, Henry was met with a shivering searcher with said mask.   "Oh Sammy… I'm so sorry." He was at risk of getting his throat ripped out, but he still couldn't help kneeling down to make himself look less threatening to the frightened creature. The searcher didn't try to retaliate, instead it clutched its chest and groaned pitifully.   "I know what I did was wrong. But so was keeping Norman's heart." Not that Sammy wasn't aware of this. He'd claimed it to be important, and he'd wanted to protect it, but he'd also been reluctant to give it back. People's selfishness had already done so much damage to this studio, it was only cruelly ironic that in trying to do the right thing Henry too had been quite selfish. "Is there any way I can make this less painful for you?"

Gesturing vaguely at the searcher's current state explained enough. The creature that had at one point been a prophet that had in turn been Sammy Lawrence, seemed to hum in thought before nodding slowly. It dragged itself towards the upstairs, motioning for Henry to follow. He did so, with Jack right on his tail if only to keep a suspicious eye on him. Back in the music department Sammy proceeded towards his Sanctuary, which Henry quickly got to work on unlocking for himself. He couldn't exactly do the little wall trick Sammy did to get around. Once the projector turned on and he plucked or hit every correct note, Henry strolled towards the opening shutter. Sammy greeted him with his box of trinkets.   "Is there something in there you need?" He adjusted his glasses as he asked, trying to get a better look at the contents. The searcher nodded eagerly and pointed at a vinyl record, way at the bottom of the pile. "Oh… you want me to play that for you?"

More eager nodding and a wet sounding slap on the ground. Well it wasn't much but considering Sammy refused to touch it for fear of covering it in ink, Henry thought perhaps he hadn't heard any music in far too long. Besides the "hymns" he played for his Lord.   "Willow Weep for Me? I don't think I've heard this one." With careful hands he took the vinyl from the box and began to look for a record player. The dinged up gramophone in the corner was almost beckoning him to play it. Once he'd turned it on, the melody was quite soothing. His two searcher companions seemed to think the same. Jack seemed to finally relax and practically curled up near the record player, while Sammy seemed to bob slightly to the tune. Henry simply closed his eyes and listened to the music, only opening them back up when broken words began to sing along. Sammy's form was repairing itself. Slowly, but steadily. Going from slouching and being half submerged in a puddle to looking like he was kneeling on regenerating legs.

"Willo- we'p for…" the prophet coughed "...me."

     Not too long after Sammy's recovery, Henry left the music department. He had a lot of preparations to make if he wanted to do any more actual good rather than having a repeat of the last run. Hopefully Sammy would be in higher spirits once they met back up in the harbour. As loathsome as it was to fight him, it was better to see him so full of energy than cowering in a puddle. He already knew what he could do for the duo of survivors, but he had to make a few stops along the way. Starting with giving Buddy the notebook he carried on his person, and Boris his favourite bone. It was a delight seeing the toon wolf's eyes light up as he flipped through several pages of doodles, while he happily gnawed on that suspiciously human sized bone. Then he went to Alice and requested an actual "date" with the angel. Not in the romantic sense mind you, he loved his beautiful Linda like the goddess she was. He merely wanted to sit down, have a can of coffee, and talk. Let Susie feel normal for a little while after both she and the angel witnessed what happened to the Projectionist. Afterwards, he checked up on said ink creature and noted that it wasn't roaming like usual. Instead the Projectionist was sitting on a crate, staring at the wall where one of several Bendy cartoons was playing. It even chose to ignore Henry when he approached, one hand clutching its chest in slight pain. Still adjusting to what had been restored. On his way out, Henry swore he heard a soft "thank you" under all the crackling and static of its speaker.

     The Lost Ones greeted him with their sorrowful gaze as usual and he replied not with fear or revulsion as he once did, but with a kind smile and promises that one day he'd find a way to make it better. It wasn't immediate freedom like they desired, but it was something more tangible. Something more human. The path to fighting Buddy in his brutish form was as harrowing as ever, but Henry's mind was set. He left cans of soup out for the Butcher Gang, oiled the joints of the octopus ride Bertrum Piedmont's disembodied head resided in, talked to the animatronic despite having no proof that it actually moved, and even greeted the Ink Demon from within the Little Miracle Station where it always fought the Projectionist. Henry could practically feel Joey's outrage at his nonchalant actions. His carefree actions despite the hopelessness of his situation. Of their situation. Then when he met with Tom and Allison, he promptly disarmed himself and offered them his tools,before accepting captivity without a word. Once questioned, he gave them the honest truth. Hard to believe, but Allison was not as suspicious as her canine companion. It wasn't difficult to give her the proof she needed to know he was being genuine. Pity to see her so crushed that there really was no escape in their foreseeable future. Not just yet. But still a possibility. After all, the others were remembering with each gesture of kindness he offered them.   "Joey wants us to feel less than human." He told the not-quite-angel. "It's how he keeps us in the linearity of his failed ending. He can't accept that he can't win."   "But neither can we. Otherwise we'd already be free?" Allison sighed, Tom offering her a gentle pay with his good arm as they left the Harbour.   "Maybe, but giving up hope is the last thing I'd ever do. Then I'd just be letting him win." Henry calmly replied,ready to plummet very soon as he began walking over the precarious boards. "Joey is a man who dreams big. What he never did was have any faith in said dreams… Instead he forced others to do it for him. I'm tired of being his scapegoat, and maybe we won't get out today or tomorrow, but there's only so much he can throw at me until he gives in."   "So we outlive his dreams?" Allison asked.   "No. We just outlive Joey instead." With that said, Henry walked forward and felt as light as a feather as he fell into the depths. There was one last person to show some decency to. Even the demon deserved a gesture of kindness.

-

     Joey Drew was furious. For all that he'd spoke of belief and dreams in his many speeches he knew that Henry Stein, that stubborn fool, was right. There was only so much he could throw into the plot before he grew tired. His body was already giving in to time itself, and he'd never quite perfected his methods enough that he could make himself a reliable new form. Not without risking becoming one of the abominations… Buddy Lewek's Boris had been a fluke. A lucky match. The rest? The rest were adamant to not be what he'd set them to be reborn as. Even Susie had failed to emulate the character she so loved. And Henry? Oh his blood boiled… Why couldn't Henry give in?! Joey was so close,so close to getting his perfect Bendy. If the traitor would just let the Ink Demon consume him!

     A knock on the door caused him to rip up his storyboard with the ink pen he'd been using. Cursing himself, Joey crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the trash can besides his desk. Already it was overflowing with similarly crumpled papers covered in ink stains. Looking at the clock, a few more profanities spewed from his mouth as he turned his wheelchair around. Who, for the love of God, was knocking on his door at 3AM?! Wheeling himself over, Joey practically ripped the door open.   "What?!" He didn't care if he was rude. His mood was completely sour and he hated being interrupted. To his shock and confusion, he was met with a face he thought he'd never get to see again. Nathan Arch smiled down at him with that unnerving toothy smile of his.   "Hello to you too, Mr. Drew." Joey blinked up at his old friend and rival. He hadn't heard from Arch since… Since he'd bought the studio and the Bendy IP… What could he possibly want now, when he'd already taken so much?   "Mr. Arch." He regained his composure. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"   "Oh, just dropping by to discuss something… Something very interesting." The man used his leg to gently push Joey out of his way, arms crossed behind his back as he invited himself in and began looking around. Joey glared behind his back and closed the door.   "At 3AM? Even for you, a punctual man, this is a bit much." He stated as he uneasily observed Nathan as he looked through his storyboards. "Couldn't it have waited until a more reasonable hour?"   "Since when were we reasonable men, Joey? Especially when you've been so… Cruel to me." The other turned to stare at him, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "The machine… Joey. You took the machine."   "Of course I did. It's mine." And no one else's. Not that fool Thomas Connor's, nor GENT's. The Ink Machine was his and his alone. "Yours is the studio and even my work. But the machine will never not be mine."   "Oh, that's where you're wrong. You see,the GENT contract you signed stated that it belongs to the studio… Thus, it belongs to me." Nathan stalked over, arms coming to rest on Joey's shoulder. "It's as simple as that."   "Not quite. As it is, it can't be moved…"   "Ah yes. Your little… Project." Nathan chuckled. "Show me. Show me the homunculus…"

     There was no saying no to Mr. Arch, and no actual way he’d be able to physically force him out, so Joey complied to his request. Wheeling back into his office where the machine resided, Nathan followed and watched with glee as Joey called upon the Ink Demon itself. It stood there, in all its despicably gruesome glory, staring at both men without visible eyes. It shrunk away from Joey, just as it always had.   "It's magnificent…" the awe in Nathan's voice was disturbing.   "It's a freak of nature." Joey hissed. "Imperfect and incomplete."   "In who's eyes, dear friend? Here stands defiance to God's will. Life created by the creation." The Ink Demon shivered, holding it's head in its mismatched hands. Trying to block out their words. "Why throw it away so eagerly just because it didn't correctly follow the template?"   "Because it's not enough! It needs to be perfect! It needs to be all we've ever dreamed of!"   "We? Oh Joey darling… did you really think creating a living toon would ever bring back your beloved Henry? Did you think he'd ever want you? When he had such a lovely girl that could give him what you never could?" Nathan laughed cruelly. "Henry Stein left you, because you were a selfish boar. And then you were so hung up on trying to win him back with extravagance that you couldn't stop and see what you already had! God above Joey, you were so desperate you hired a mere child that reminded you of Henry, only to torture him the same way you tortured your employees…"

The Ink Demon looked to them again, flinching when Nathan stalked forward and grabbed it by the chin.   "This, Joey, is not a failure! It's the doorway to immortality. A vessel of timelessness. A godly power that you rejected vehemently." Nathan's eyes were becoming crazed, that dangerous spark devolving into an inescapable madness and anger. "For what end exactly? To give it away to some shmuck that could never truly appreciate it?! Well… that won't do. That won't do at all!"

And without warning Nathan Arch did something Joey couldn't believe he'd ever dare. He plunged a fist into the Ink Demon itself, and tore out it's heart.   "NO!"   "If you won't accept this gift, then I shall!"

There was nothing to be done. The ink demon shrieked and soon the machine began its work. Ink flowed out of the nozzle, mixing with the distorting melting figure of the demon and pulling both it, and both men inside. As the world around them passed by, Joey could only watch as the ink began to claim both his form and the form of the one who dared intrude in his project. They both fell with a wet splat, a large puddle, before taking two very distinct newly reborn and remade forms. One a towering grinning demon with disturbingly human teeth. The other a little devil in a suit. The studio was without a narrator. This was the end.

[leighmhis03]

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[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG172!

- I didn’t truly believe that we would encounter a Web domain so soon, since somehow I still pictured it as the very last thing standing between Jon&Martin and the Panopticon. It means that the domains that I was expecting to be the most “heavy” on the boys, the Lonely and the Web, are already behind us (we’re down to Hunt, Vast, Dark, Spiral, and Eye).

- The “thanks Alex” Fun™ Fact of the episode was that he used the sounds of spider mating calls in this one. Alex, why.

- With MAG170, this was amongst the most “empathetic” episodes of the season so far? Or at least as far as the Fears domains are concerned? It was closer to the way older statements were framed: it really felt like someone’s story, someone’s personal struggles and life, the horrible things happening to them. I’m a bit less fond of statements this season, overall, because they feel too voyeuristic (I know, that’s the point!), because it’s decontextualised people reduced to their fears and nothing more… but Francis’s story really felt heart-wrenching.

And it was an incredibly harsh episode, dealing with codifications, scripted situations, stage&audience conspiring against the “puppet” (the audience laughing at Francis’s misery), down to the audience call excluding the non-binary protagonist (“Ladies and gentlemen”), physical cruelty (the hooks, the spiders). I like how Francis’s “act” worked, both by highlighting that they had absolutely no chance of ever winning the play on their terms, since the Spider was deploying everything against them (physical restrains, pain, psychological torture and the voices of close ones for more pressure and impacts)… and yet, that we saw them still fiercely trying to reject what the Spider wanted, still able to tell that this was not what they wanted. It was also a good move that, in this one, Francis was a victim from start to finish: not pitted against others; the addiction wasn’t making them a danger for anyone else, it was first and foremost about them, what they wanted for themselves, how others’ casual cruelty was in the way and isolated them further, leaving them at the mercy of the Spider and its hooks. If there was someone “winning”, it was the Spider (managing to give birth to many others); all of this was solely for its benefit.

It seems to be part of The Web’s game to allow some resistance, to revel in internal conflicts, but it doesn’t remove the fact that Francis had been tortured for 48068 acts, and that they were still trying to reject it.

- We got a few interesting formats so far: The Stranger's poem (MAG165), The End’s Coroner’s report (MAG168), The Flesh’s botanical book (MAG171), and now The Web’s play (MAG172)… which was awful(ly clever), with the puppet/puppeteer’s dynamic.

Nothing new about The Web preying on vulnerable/isolated people, and especially people dealing with addiction, it’s been a reoccurring thing: Raymond Fielding had taken in kids that the system didn’t know how to handle (and nobody was suspecting anything when, as “legal adults”, they were disappearing); a Spider person had tried to get Trevor off her back by making old needs resurface; Annabelle’s first encounter with The Web, if she were to be believed, was through a victim who had suffered with drug addiction; there is a huge proportions of smoker characters in Web-related statements, and there is still Jon’s lighter and Jon starting to smoke again after he got it.

Same thing: nothing new about The Web having a knack for stories and the entertainment arts! We had two statements dealing with movies, Annabelle taunting Jon about having possibly lied during her own statements, Annabelle’s website searching for stories…

- WOW, did this domain come for Jon’s throat as the ~Apocalypse-bringer~

(MAG172) THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis… It’s such a shame, but I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to! The man in the audience saw to that! [CHUCKLES] I am no more free than you are, little puppet. Ah! If only you could see the strings that bind me, that wind together as they pull me along my own path…! Perhaps then, you would not blame me so. But they are not the tripping threads that we are here to watch – no. So sit, Francis. It’s time…!

That gaslighting and self-victimisation from the monster who was pulling the strings and doing a show to generate more of itself (both fears and spiders). First time one directly referred to Jon’s presence, of course it would be a Web one, uh…

- There was an awful parallel between Francis’s story, the Spider forcing the consumption on them, and Jon… for the first time, getting stuck in a loop of stories as the next act was beginning. Is Jon reacting to the domain’s logic (since this one works on the long term, the accumulation, the fact that Francis knew that their torture would keep going and happen again and again)? Was it The Web purposefully trying to trap Jon here? Was Jon more susceptible to this domain given his own experience with The Web and his relying on statements? Would Jon even have been able to leave if Martin hadn’t been there to stop it…?

(Jon had already been vulnerable to the cabin, as he discovered in MAG162: the domains and the new reality can affect him. Jon had pointed out that The Eye didn’t want Jon to stay there; it’s not surprising, but incredibly bold to see that a Web domain tried to trap Beholding’s precious little Archivist…)

- Second time that Martin had to forcefully interrupt Jon mid-statement:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: The photos on the wall of her family–”MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: “–whose faces seem indistinct but she knows–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! ARCHIVIST: “–that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [COUGHS] ARCHIVIST: “–pops out of the frame.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, she’s here! ARCHIVIST: “Her home is being eaten alive by–” MARTIN: [CLOSER] Please come back! ARCHIVIST: “–this devouring Desolation–” MARTIN: JON! ARCHIVIST: “–and she–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] MARTIN: She’s here! [COUGHS]

(MAG172) AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LOUD CLAPS AND CHEERING] [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: “The tragedy of Francis. A comic puppet show in all acts. Act 48068.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon? ARCHIVIST: “A stage that is a room that remains a stage.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, one is enough. ARCHIVIST: “The audien–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [CONSTANT MUFFLED LAUGHTERS] ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh, wh–what? MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going.

And the trick definitely seems to be not being in Jon’s presence while he settles into statement-mode, or it prevents anyone from being able to interrupt? Martin wasn’t able to stop him during MAG167 (but that statement had been sneaky about its start), and he didn’t when they were in Jared’s garden either…

* Daisy listened to Jon reading two statements during season 4 (MAG133 and MAG136) and, although it was part of their deal that she would not interrupt, I wonder if she could have, back then? Jon had gotten interrupted a lot during season 1 and 2, but it was by people walking into his office while he had begun reading alone.

* … I’m still not sure that Basira could have stopped Jon in MAG141, when he forced Floyd to give his statement? Jon told her that she could have but hadn’t because she wanted to know too, but he was also, quite frankly, full of shit and trying to avoid his own responsibility with regards to his victims, back then.

* It’s interesting that Jon’s “statement bubble” is now constantly showing to muffle sounds from the exterior (/from an extra-diegetic level) when he’s giving the statement. The tape recorder only catches Martin’s voice muffled, far, as if behind another layer. But once Martin broke Jon out of it, the cheers, laughs and claps from the audience, which used to be very distinct and present, were the ones suddenly sounding far away (while Martin was on the same level as Jon). We’ve been told, again and again, that the tape recorders are not neutral, but I find quite interesting the fact that they’re “translating” the different levels around Jon in this way?

- On first listen, I had failed to understand that Martin was actually meant to stay around Jon – like in MAG171, and like he had done in MAG163 when they discovered Jon’s new need to pour out about the domains:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: You probably want to wait outside. MARTIN: … Hum, no?! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Well… Put your fingers in your ears then, I, I suppose. […] Martin…? [DRIP] Martin? [DRIP] Martin, I hate your tea, and wish you made coffee instead…! [DRIP] … Alright, then. […] End recording…! [CLEARS THROAT] [SHUFFLING] MARTIN: Mm? All done? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes. [EXHALE] MARTIN: Good.

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: We’re fine. MARTIN: A–are we? I mean, that place is– … I don’t, I don’t feel fine, okay, and you were there a long time doing your… y–you–your guidebook, which, you know, I get it, but that place is… I–it’s–it’s infectious, and, I don’t–

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: You, uh… [SHUFFLING] You might want to take a bit of a walk. This… feels like a strange one… [LOUDER SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: What does “strange” mean, with something like this? ARCHIVIST: Don’t think you want to know…! MARTIN: Good point. Hum, o–kay, well, uh… Good luck, I’ll be… uh, o–over there! [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] … Right.

(MAG166) MARTIN: Do you need anything? ARCHIVIST: No. MARTIN: Fine, I’ll just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] Ye–yeah, right. [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE]

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: Now, if you’re quite done inciting me to murder? MARTIN: Not “murder”! Smiting. ARCHIVIST: [FOND SIGH] MARTIN: Right, yes, yes, of course. You… [INHALE] You vomit your horrors. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: [REVULSED SOUND] Uh! I’m… not sure I like that metaphor…! MARTIN: “Puke your terrors”? ARCHIVIST: … Just go. MARTIN: Alright. Fine, I’m going. [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS]

(MAG170) MARTIN: Why am I here? I… I, I fell behind. I was, I was too slow, and, and, and the fog caught up, I was… I was following, al–always following, never leading; never leading. Why did he leave me behind? Di–did he? […] I thought you’d left me behind…! Gone on without me. ARCHIVIST: No, never…! N–never, I–I just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] I, I didn’t want to… look too ha–, I–I–I promised I wouldn’t… know you, and, and with the fog in all–all the rooms, I’ll, I just, I lost y–, I… I–I’m sorry.

(MAG171) JARED: [LONG MEATY INHALE, EXHALE] Cheers for that! ARCHIVIST: … Don’t. MARTIN: Jon, are you… alright? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, hum… Sorry. MARTIN: No, it, it’s alright.

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: If you say so…! MARTIN: Just… [INHALE] Just give me a shout when you’re done, alright? [BAG JOSTLING] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: … Good. Right. […] MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going. ARCHIVIST: Y–you were listening, I… I–I–I thought that you– MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring!

So they’ve truly learned from the Lonely house: Martin had to stay in MAG163 when they discovered Jon’s new predicament; then starting MAG164, Martin began to leave Jon alone for his statements, not keen to listen to them. In MAG170, they lost sight of each other in the house – since then, Martin has gone back to staying around Jon, trying to not listen (except, precisely, that Martin went wandering off in MAG172, which he wasn’t supposed to do, and came back… just in time when Jon was beginning a new cycle). Trials and errors.

- MMMMM, so this is the second time Martin did something, wasn’t exactly able to explain why he had done it, was questioned about it, and the matter was ultimately left hanging:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring! ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I… I don’t like it, it… really scares me.

Regarding Martin putting the tape recorders on the Coffin: Jonah didn’t claim it to be his doing in MAG160 (I thiiink that Peter was suspicious of Elias influencing Martin then, since he also checked that Elias wasn’t overstepping in MAG158…), so probs wasn’t him. Annabelle pointed out to Jon that she had sometimes helped “to keep you safe” in MAG147, I still feel like it was most likely her doing?

Two things were interesting here: that Martin began exploring, and that he came back just in time to stop Jon. The first one left Jon vulnerable, allowing him to potentially get trapped in the cycle of Francis’s Acts; the second one… allowed Martin to make him snap out of it just in time. Or the wandering may have “protected” Martin from being trapped in Jon’s statement, too, because he could have accidentally begun listening if he’d hung around?

(A bit afraid about the fact that, twice, it was shown that as long as Martin didn’t slap Jon out of a statement, he wouldn’t stop: it makes Jon and Martin both vulnerable to their surroundings if they’re not together. Jon gets trapped in the statement, while Martin’s main protection is still Jon… That sounds a bit like a weakness that could get used against them at some point? ;;)

- SOB about Martin mentioning he was (probably) motivated by “curiosity”, since it has been hammered in that… it isn’t a good thing for Beholding-touched people to indulge themselves too much, tends to cause their downfall, and has even allowed The Spider to sneak in and weave its Web:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “When Gertrude was appointed to the role, there was a single survivor left in the Archives: a woman by the name of Fiona Law. Fiona was the most fascinating combination of curiosity and cowardice, pushing forward and forward into the unknown, until the very first moment of threat… crystallised. […] She had never got deep enough into the mysteries that plagued her to slake that burning curiosity. And she never would. […] But Emma had a sickness. As much as she might have despised the ageing Fiona, it was the same one that plagued her: curiosity. That desperate, grasping need to know. […] There was a fire to Sarah Carpenter, perhaps the one which led to Gertrude hiring her, and Emma’s curiosity ignited once again, this time keen to find out exactly what it would take to break this brave investigator of the unknown.”

No wonder Martin Is Feeling So Threatened Right Now, after having learned about Emma (Beholding assistant taken over by The Web… and become a master at deceiving her Archivist).

- Martin rejected the Lonely house, so does it mean that other domains will be trying to seduce him, now? It’s interesting that he reacted to the theatre in a way that was very similar to the house, which was supposed to be “his” (but wasn’t “anymore”):

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: We all have a domain here, Martin. The place that feeds us. MARTIN: Oh. [PAUSE] Where’s yours? ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE] I mean, we’re… traveling towards it. MARTIN: Oh! Right, obviously. [CHUCKLING] Duh. Hum… What about me? ARCHIVIST: … Would you… like me to… ? MARTIN: No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

(MAG170) MARTIN: Do I have a home? This, this place feels like it’s all… for me, I think, but I don’t… [CREAKING OF A DOOR] I don’t like it here. […] I feel like there’s somewhere I need to be, but… But no, no; this is my house, [CHUCKLE] where else would I need to be? […] You, you are Martin Blackwood; yes. You–you didn’t choose to be here. Jon is coming. I am Martin Blackwood, and I am not lonely anymore, I am not lonely anymore! […] Jon, it’s… okay. I promise it’s okay. This place tried, it really did, and honestly I… I wanted to believe it. But I didn’t. ARCHIVIST: This… “place”, i–it… [STATIC] My God…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: M–Martin, if you… did; i–if you wanted to forget… a–all of it, stay here and just… escape. I… I would understand. […] I, I just… I wanted to make sure that you knew what this place was. MARTIN: It’s The Lonely, Jon. It’s me. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Not anymore. MARTIN: Hm! No. [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] No…! Not anymore.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… […] ARCHIVIST: Would you like to leave now? [BAG JOSTLING] AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LAUGHS] MARTIN: … Yeah, screw this place. Never liked theatre anyway.

Interesting, too, that there are a few parallels right now with the situation in which Martin had initially encountered Peter in MAG108: while reading a theatre-related statement, isolated and scared. Even Jon’s way of describing The Lonely’s “seductiveness” was quite reminiscent of The Web (especially in Francis’s story):

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: The Lonely is… possibly the most insidious of the powers, I believe. Certainly it is the one that… most delights in having you do its work for it. Even the Spiders seem to have a hard time matching it for sheer seductiveness. [HUFF] “Time to yourself”, “self-care”, “putting yourself forward”… “not being a burden on those you care about”… [PAUSE] It doesn’t even need to tell you any lies; just waits for the lies you tell yourself.

So… a few similarities in the way The Lonely and The Web are shown trying to seduce Martin? Martin seemed to reject the theatre, but it could do a Peter with him and go… persistent.

(So obligatory “this is how Web!Martin can still win”, and it’s never not a good time to remind myself of:

(MAG138) MARTIN: I think he wants me to join The Lonely. ELIAS: Then it sounds like you have a decision to make. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF]

(MAG158) MARTIN: Oh, I’m getting there, but if this is the final test or something? Then bad luck. The answer’s still “no”. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: … No. No! This isn’t fair, do you have any idea what you’ve done? You knew, he must have– MARTIN: Elias– … Jonah had nothing to do with it. PETER: No! That’s not– You can’t– ELIAS: You’ve lost, Peter. Admit it. [CHUCKLE] He played you like a… like a cheap whistle. PETER: No! Shut up!

Because gnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiih.)

- It was a bit of a (pleasant) surprise that Jon&Martin didn’t meet Annabelle in the obligatory Web domain of their journey! But it makes us go back to the usual question: where is she, why is she not showing herself directly, what does she want, why can’t Jon see where she is?

(MAG172) MARTIN: Jon, what does The Web want? It’s… I mean, we know it’s got a plan, can’t you just… see what it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way. MARTIN: … Oh. Right. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: Sorry. MARTIN: … And Annabelle? ARCHIVIST: Still can’t see her. If it wasn’t for the phone call, I’d have said she was probably already dead…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SIGH]

Jon had trouble seeing when inside of Hill Top Road, back in MAG147 (though he blamed it on having recently encountered The Dark). Could she be there? On the other side of the crack? Waiting inside of the Panopticon/Institute? On the back of Jon’s head? Being many many spiders, as an avatar, and thus impossible to locate because she’s plural? Technically dead already, but having planned and foreseen how the phone call with Martin would go, leaving a pre-recorded message that would play exactly as needed? That makes a lot of people that Jon has trouble seeing in the new world, with Georgie&Melanie, Jonah…

- I’m still laughing a lot that the beginning of the episode felt very much like Jon asking for a bathroom break:

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: Ah… Hold up, I–I need to, uh… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Now, seriously? We’re almost out of here. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I’m sorry…! Not really up to me…! MARTIN: Fine. [SIGH]

Martin: When are we getting to the Panopticon!! Can’t we take another direction or a shortcut? I don’t like these places. Jon: Can we stop for a bit? I really need a break!! Right now!!

Awful kids, do not go on vacation with them.

- Eeeeeeh that Jon&Martin’s tastes in media are so different!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(MAG165) MARTIN: Was it a good poem? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know! “No”? You’re the poetry expert, Martin, not me…! […] Then I don’t know what you mean, Martin, I’m not a poetry person, I don’t… “get it”. I never have. MARTIN: That’s… That’s fine, I understand…! ARCHIVIST: Look. I’m better than I was; I used to think all poetry was bad. MARTIN: Sorry, what?! ARCHIVIST: I mean, I just thought of… [SIGH] I sort of thought it was pointless! Just… write some prose and stop… wasting everyone’s time! MARTIN: Hm! What changed? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know, I just… mellowed on it, I suppose. MARTIN: That’s… kind of weird. ARCHIVIST: In my defence, there is a lot of bad poetry out there.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: … Methinks the Spider doth protest too much…! [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: Jon. ARCHIVIST: Joking! Just joking.

(MAG172) MARTIN: … Yeah, screw this place. Never liked theatre anyway.

I hope that Theatre Kid Jon felt personally offended by that last one. (I’m really waiting for Martin to learn that Jon has been listening to The Archers.)

- It had been highlighted in season 3 that Martin didn’t really get Jon’s sense of humour. The archival staff overall had a general tendency to resort to dark/insensitive humour to cope with their situation, but ;; I side with Martin on how right now, it doesn’t feel relieving or reassuring that Jon makes small jokes about the horror befalling people:

(MAG171) ARCHIVIST: It takes a skilled gardener to get them to grow like this. The curling, cascading intricacies of collagen and marrow… it takes devotion. MARTIN: Jon. [FOOTSTEPS STOP] [WHIMPERS IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … S–sorry. MARTIN: You sound like you think they’re beautiful. [FOOTSTEPS RESUME] ARCHIVIST: Don’t you? [SILENCE]

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: If you say so…! […] Ticket for one, then, I suppose.

… because we don’t really know if Jon wants to make them stop?

(“Ticket for one”, tho, was INCREDIBLE and very “jON.”)

- … When Jon told Martin to try to not focus too much on which part of his actions/decisions could be due to The Web:

(MAG172) MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I… I don’t like it, it… really scares me. ARCHIVIST: I, uh… MARTIN: Oh, don’t say that’s what it wants, I know. ARCHIVIST: I, I wasn’t going to. […] Don’t do this to yourself, Martin. This is what it wants, the, the paranoia. [SIGH] Trust me, I, I know. MARTIN: … Fair.

… he indeed reaaaally knew from experience. MAG147 had visible effects on him, to the point that Melanie directly addressed it and Annabelle became a regular potential culprit in Jon’s mind alongside Peter and Elias:

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: I’m sure the flares will work fine. … I mean, un–unless it’s all some… elaborate… plot… to have us… burn this place down again. BASIRA: So what if it is? ARCHIVIST: I don’t follow…? BASIRA: I mean. Anything we do could be part of the “Grand Master Plan”. So – what, we do nothing? Just… sit on our hands, and hope that’s not what the spiders want? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, could you… could you describe your therapist for me? MELANIE: [CHUCKLING] What? You think I wouldn’t notice if she had cobwebs down her face? ARCHIVIST: … No? […] It’s just… The Web can be subtle, you understand? MELANIE: And? For all you know, its plan is to paralyse you with indecision…! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: Leaving you… sitting here, terrified that… everything you do is somehow all part of its Grand Plan… And who do you think that fear is gonna feed? ARCHIVIST: Yes, well. [INHALE] You are… not the first, to make that point.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk. I don’t know by who, but to my mind there are… three options. Martin has left it here, to let me know that… whatever the situation is with Peter Lukas, it is entering its final act and he needs my help. Alternatively, Peter may have left it here to… goad me into action? Or just to gloat, to highlight my helplessness and everything. [SIGH] Or Annabelle Cane is trying to manipulate me into thinking it’s one of the other scenarios. Previously, the Spiders have made their presence clear when they’ve sent me… “hints”, but I can’t take that for granted. I don’t know what to do…!

(MAG158) ARCHIVIST: And I don’t keep any of them with the key to the tunnels. It’s been left for me. DAISY: And it says “Play me.” Kind of suspicious. BASIRA: So Elias left it? ARCHIVIST: Or Martin. O–or Peter, or… Annabelle!

(And we still don’t know who had left the tapes and Adelard’s last statement. Peter and Martin didn’t mention them, nor did Elias, which indeed leaves The Web for these ones…)

I love that since season 4, Martin’s answer tends to be “screw it, I hate this, bye”: with Peter and Elias’s live-divorce, with the Lonely house, now with The Web doing… something to him. Trying to call to him? To make him hear “the music”, as Simon’s allegory had described it?

- So Jon has trouble seeing ~the big picture~ of The Web:

(MAG172) MARTIN: Jon, what does The Web want? It’s… I mean, we know it’s got a plan, can’t you just… see what it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way.

And how ~convenient~ that the Vast grandpa wasn’t dead by the time of season 4, and is probably Enjoying Sky Blue in a domain of his own:

(MAG151) SIMON: Peter, however, seems to think that it will upset the balance that we all have an awful lot invested in. And he’s not at all certain the world as we understand will come out the other side. MARTIN: And let me guess – you think he can’t see the “big picture”? SIMON: [INHALE] I see why he likes you! MARTIN: [SIGH] SIMON: It’s all a matter of perspective, you see. My patron has gifted me with… quite frankly, an absurdly long life. An appropriate gift, and one that serves to provide a certain distance from things. Of course, a paltry few centuries is nothing, really, but it’s more than most get. And even in that brief time, I’ve seen all sorts of ebbs and flows to balance off things.

We’ve yet to cross a Vast domain, Jon said he REALLY didn’t want to meet Simon ever, Simon was incredibly smitten with Martin… there is still hope for Meeting-Simon-in-the-Vast-domain.

(- Sounds like Jon remembers Helen’s point about “knowing” and “understanding” being two different things (with Jon adding “seeing”):

(MAG164) HELEN: And please: my name is “Helen”. ARCHIVIST: Like you said, I can know everything now. Including how much of a lie that really is. HELEN: Don’t mistake “complication” for “falsehood”, dear Archivist. ARCHIVIST: [AGGRAVATED EXHALE] HELEN: And remember, that knowledge is not the same thing as understanding.

And now I’m remembering that The Distortion used to be curious about the house on Hill Top Road, but not really able to tell what The Spider was doing there… Did Helen get her answers in season 4?)

- Oufft re: Martin&Jon’s discussion:

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: I was going to suggest that… I could… maybe… “know”. I could look. Just a quick peek, to, to see if it was just curiosity, or… something else. … Well? MARTIN: I don’t… If you look, and I was… “influenced”, then how can I trust anything else? How can I believe any of my thoughts and feelings are really mine? ARCHIVIST: U–uh, well… I–I–I’ll still be here to check, I–I’m not leaving you. MARTIN: Sure, but you’d be looking through the details of everything that ever crosses my mind? I don’t want that! Y–you know I don’t want that. ARCHIVIST: … I know. […] So… Do you want me to? To, to tell you if…? MARTIN: No. [SIGH] No, I’ll just have to live with it, I guess. Hardly the worst thing I’ll have gone through since– … I, hum. I–it’s fine. [SIGH]

I really liked how it absolutely didn’t feel like an argument (and wasn’t one!): Martin has objections, has the power to make a decision, and gets the last word… since it primarily involves himself. I appreciate that Martin was able to tell the main flaw of Jon’s offer – knowing what is happening could provide a temporary relief… but wouldn’t offer a sustainable existence for him (if The Web isn’t trying to manipulate Martin now, it doesn’t mean that it won’t try later, which means that Jon would have to check regularly; and if Martin is under influence… indeed, Martin couldn’t trust himself anymore, and depending on Jon’s power to check everything would turn Martin’s existence into a half-life. And it would still feed The Web in the process). Kudos to Jon for his restraint, too, because given his insistence, he’s probably curious/afraid about it, but he hasn’t broken his promise of avoiding to “know” about Martin and he laid out Martin’s options, leaving the decision to him. On that front, they’re doing fine!

  Title for MAG173 very much screams “Dark, duh?!” but it feels very easy, so is it a trap. I could see the link if it were Vast or Hunt, too, but really, it just screams Dark. … And it could work for a character death episode, but I feel like every title can read like a character death episode one way or another. (Worried about Daisyyyy…)

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - Gen 8 Retrospective

This Generational recap itself might be a bit on the shorter side, since I already said my peace on the games themselves and their less than stellar impact on the fandom before I even started them. (Not that there isn’t a lot I’m talking about here today though, hoo boy.) Though just know between a repeat playthrough and my opinion on the Pokemon dropping as I've analyzed them more, I'd say my final verdict is that they're a decent enough swan song to the way Pokemon games used to be that made Gym battles feel special again but lacked in a lot of other areas. 6/10 overall.

Though obviously Gen 8 isn't done yet. Since DLC is on the way, as I've said several times already. My general thoughts on the concept of Pokemon DLC replacing the traditional “Third Version” is good. For one thing I'd much rather pay $30 for access to new content immediately over paying another $60 for a “Pokemon Armor” version that had most of its new content back-loaded in the postgame. $30 is still steep... but it's better. And of course, the prospect of releasing more new Pokemon via DLC is a good one too. Hopefully releasing DLC rather than a full game every year will relinquish some of the workload off Gamefreak... so perhaps we can get smaller batches of new Pokemon released mid-generation to help mitigate just how many Pokemon felt like they didn't get finished in time. But also hopefully it'll mean Gen 9 will be all the better when we get there... Gamefreak has stated they're really challenging themselves with the next major Pokemon games so hopefully they're taking the more level-headed criticism to heart and it's not all talk but we'll have to see.

Yeah, that's about all I have to say about the state of Pokemon as of right now, neverminding my multiple rants and tangents since I've already gone to great lengths to state that Gen 8 isn't as good as I might've initially thought. I still like it overall, and it's probably still not my least favorite Gen... but it's very much like Gen 4 with an EXTREMELY mixed bag. Certainly felt like for every excellently designed Pokemon they had below-average flunky that feels like it should've gone back to the drawing board once or twice. But even all that aside, one of my more annoying sticking points with Gen 8 is the severe lack of new animals.

So in place of my usual ramblings on my thoughts on a generation as a whole, let's do a little Compare and Contrast. Let's look at the past few Generations and see just how noticeable this flood of species redo's is. Green checks are significantly new enough animals, Red crosses are for animal origins that have been done before, Yellow slashes for Pokemon with vague or heavily mixed taxonomic origins, and Grey circles for Pokemon that are disqualified for being Objectmon, since we've yet to get repeats of those. (Also disqualifying Gen 8's regional evos other than Obstagoon since it's not necessarily their fault that they're repeats.)

Are there arbitration in places? Probably. But I feel like the point still stands that Gen 8 was waaaaay too reliant on touching up on animals already covered in Pokemon before. Especially when there's still so many animals that have yet to get a Pokemon to their name. The one plus Gen 8 does have in this regard is that it has a few more “taxonomically vague” Pokemon than usual. But repeating animals in and of itself isn't all that bad, if you make the repeat different enough to be interesting in its own right. The one thing you could do wrong in that regard is to just make your monster notably more “normal” compared to the Pokemon it's repeating. So how does that hold up?

As much as I've established that one's a crow and the other's a raven, the two animals are still very much similar creatures. But I do feel like Murkrow and Corviknight are differentiated enough while both still being a “fantasy” creature in their own way. Murkrow is very much a gangly, cartoony crow while Corviknight covers the more majestic side of corvids.

Another one that's pretty blatant is that we now have two regions with a Ladybird as the common bug. Orbeetle does however get to be more accurate to the Ladybird life cycle, starting out with a larvae and ending with the beetle. Again, Ledian and Orbeetle are very different flavors of the same creature, Orbeetle not skimping out on any outlandish elements. In fact, it's more visibly outlandish than Ledian was.

This is where things start to get hazy. I've stated that Nickit and Thievul are sadly my least favorite fox Pokemon to date, simply because it has the least to offer imaginatively than all the other foxes that accompany it. Ninetales has the kitsune thing going on, while its Alolan variant covers Arctic Foxes. Zorua is a fantastical take on the tricky nature of foxes by combining aspects of shapeshifting kitsunes or tanookies while throwing in a bit of Kabuki. And Fennekin grows up to be more of a wizard. Thievul is very much a stereotypical red fox while having the trickster nature of foxes that's not only been done by Zorua before, but also in a much more stereotypical thieving way like a Swiper the Fox sort of thing.

Wooloo always struck me as odd ever since it turned out it wasn't the region's common Normal-type. I can excuse plainness in the common woodland animal since they're rather uniformly not terribly interesting (and arguably are like that by design). So it turns out it's more of a common early-game fodder just like Mareep is, but Mareep is just a smidge more interesting by being elemental, and also it turns into Ampharos, a weird little bipedal lamb with little flippers for some reason. Which is reasonably more imaginative than a Pokemon that's mostly just a sheep.

Sandaconda is another one that feels significantly fantastical and unique compared to its previous serpentine cousins. The only snake Pokemon beforehand that was hugely different from the template of what a snake usually is was Snivy. Sandaconda is even unique as far as cobra monsters go, with its “hood” being a big ol' sac that it keeps its projectile Anakin-repelent in.

Centiskorch is a little iffy. It's cool that they turned a real centipede's grappling maneuver and turned it into an even more effective weapon via its heat spots. But in terms of body shape it's significantly more normal looking for a centipede than Scolipede's almost horse-like proportions, isn't it?

Another iffy comparison since they're both fairly “regular” looking Octopus monsters. But even so, I'd count it as a point against Gen 8 since there's been more than plenty of time to come up with a cool and unique body type for an octopus.

That's better! Eiscue, while normal-looking if you only count the penguin body, is still a funny and imaginative take on a penguin monster that is a completely different flavor from Empoleon's stern look to boot.

Another dodgy one to justify. There's neat theming in there, but there's hardly any denying that an elephant that rolls up into a wheel and rolls around is notably a much weirder take on an elephant that Copperajah going by an elephant's body shape to a T.

Had they gone for a look more purposefully weirdly geometric like they SEEM to be going for, I probably would've given it a hand-wave, but even with that in mind, Copperajah is pretty vanilla in terms of Elephant monsters. Especially compared to Donphan.

...So even then, it's pretty mixed in that regard. Some Pokemon feel like worthwhile additions to the biodiversity, but others I can't help but wonder what the point was. Did Wooloo really need to exist in a series that already had Mareep? Couldn't they push Copperajah's concept further to better contrast with Donphan? Having repeats isn’t BAD, pretty sure every Gen past the 2nd has done them. But it’s hard to find sticking points on Gen 6 and 7′s repeats. Aurorus is totally different from Meganium. Vikavolt, while being much more close to realism in body structure compared to Pinsir, is still a vastly different fantasy creature just on account of having a gun for a face. And the whole Goomy line is almost nothing like Magcargo. And all that is WHILE still bringing in plenty of new animals to play with.

So yeah, I hope all that can help with understanding why I was a little harsh on Gen 8. It's still not my least favorite, cause we still got a ton of good out of it, and I would much rather have a mixed Gen of “Some Really Good, Some Not So Great” over Gen 2 and 4's “Some are good but the rest are really plain and boring.” But of course, as per usual, we gotta do the lists...

Top 10 Favorites of Gen 8:

Like I said, the new Pokemon that are good are REALLY good. Still struggled to make a Top 10, for good reason!

Top 10 Favorites Overall:

That said, there wasn’t a ton of impact on my Top 10. Top 50 maybe, but not here.

Bottom 10 Least Favorites of Gen 8:

Sadly there was plenty I was just plain not a fan of. Has there ever been a Gen where I just straight up dislike the whole Bottom 10? Hmm...

Bottom 10 Least Favorites Overall:

And tragically, this Gen did make a pretty deep cut into my least favorites, oof. It is an unholy image to not see Gallade be all the way to the left up there.

The Cutest:

The Coolest:

The Prettiest:

Corviknight and Eternatus aren’t just there because I ran out of traditionally pretty ones, just so you know. There’s something about a sleek, nearly all-black design that is genuinely gorgeous-looking to me.

The Spookiest:

Most Creative:

Weirdest/Most Unique:

Most Forgettable:

Most Personality:

At least there were still plenty of personality-driven designs! Look at all these adorable little charmers and smug little shits.

Most Under-Appreciated:

Best Regional Variants:

I’ve probably said it already but I am legitimately ecstatic with Regional Variation being a mainstay feature now. There is INFINITE potential with the concept and totally didn’t deserve to get ditched after a single use just in Alola. In fact I think it’d be rad if they do any more remakes they retroactively made “Sinnohan” or “Hoenn” forms of Pokemon. I thought they might’ve made some “Kantonian” forms for Pokemon in Let’s Go and redesigned a few modern Pokemon to look a bit like they were designed back in the 90s... but sadly that didn’t happen. Despite how cool it would’ve been. But Kanto is sacred ground that cannot ever be changed, I guess...

Best Ultra Beasts: (????????????????)

h

Best G-Maxes:

I still love the concept of G-Maxes, and we’ll probably get a few more before Gen 8 is done entirely. But it does stink that the concept in the end felt a little half-baked. Speaking of which...

Pokemon That SHOULD'VE Gotten G-Maxes:

Because G-Maxes wound up being locked to only be for Gen 1 or 8 Pokemon, with only a handful of exceptions. MAYBE they’ll stretch into other Gens in the DLC, but until then lemme just make a personal wishlist of SQUANDERED potential. Though I’ll limit myself to Pokemon that are only in the current Galardex as to not be here all day.

I’m sure if you pay attention to the Fakemon scene at all, you’ve already seen a few G-Max Dhelmises where the seaweed has grown so massive that it’s now able to possess an entire haunted ship. And they are CORRECT to make such a thing because GOD what were they thinking NOT doing that?!? It’s right there under your noses!!!

Still bummed there was never a Mega Vanilluxe... but this could easily make up for it! A towering snowing mountain of ice cream is a super cool idea for a kaiju-size ice cream monster, maybe even ditching the icicle shaped cone in favor of having it rest in a “bowl” of ice!

Like??? Hello????? Are you telling me you’re making Kaijumon over here and you’re NOT gonna make a giant mecha?????????????????

Because a giant living beehive deploying swarms upon swarms of Combee is a badass concept just by itself.

Like c’mon this one was REALLY staring you in the face. A region set in Poke-England and you’re not gonna make a funny giant Zeppelin?

Just trying to imagine a colossal haunted chandelier is giving me chills by itself. Especially if you were to make it look elaborately regal and all that.

I’ve not got a specific idea, you’d just think they’d compensate for the lack of a Mega form.

G-Max Rillaboom has me feeling like this one’s likely to not happen, since I imagined a cool idea for a G-Max Trevenant was to make it a giant Deku-Tree looking haunted tree with a colossal trunk and even bigger canopy.

I guess Butterfree already had the spot taken for “Mothra stand-in”, but I feel like Frosmoth has just as much cool potential for a G-Max form as Butterfree did. Especially with the powdery snow scales it has.

Perfect opportunity to give Goodra a giant, more monstrous slug-like form. But no dice there either. Maybe next form gimmick...

Okay, C’MON. We KNOW they weren’t that bothered about giving G-Max forms out to Pokemon that already had Megas. This is the most obvious one of all! ESPECIALLY since its defacto-Mecha Godzilla got a G-Max but it didn’t.

Most “Unfinished” Feeling:

Since “least favorite” doesn't necessarily meant “unfinished.” (As much as I dislike Toxel, it doesn't really strike me as “not done.”) Not that I have clairvoyance on Gamefreak's internal workings, but some of these Pokemon definitely feel like they're not up to scratch with the series's usual quality standard.

My Disappointment is Immeasurable and My Day is Ruined:

To pick on Gen 8 one last time... and since it was a running gag anyway, here's the Pokemon that just crush my dreams the most. Except Appletun, mostly. It's good enough to be let off the hook. The rest? They were things that were on my wishlist of things and animals I would've LOVED to see get turned into Pokemon, only for my hopes and dreams to sink faster than the Titanic. Considering a majority of concepts within Pokemon don't come back, if not for a very long time, these Pokemon mean that I have to reluctantly strike a cake monster, a snowman, a coal monster, a train monster, a sea urchin, a pie monster, and some fresh Lapras attention off my wishlist. Sigh.

With two rounds of DLC coming, the main Pokemon review series probably won't be back until the tail end of this year shortly after Crowned Tundra is released. I am excited to get to talk about some of what they've shown so far, but I'd rather wait until the content is released and we know everything about the new Pokemon and Regionals. There will however be at least one more little bonus article about Gen 8 and the future of the series, but I wouldn't expect it to be out for a while. Before the DLC is out probably, but still a long ways off.

[Archive]

[insanityclause]

Exactly two months to the day they closed their acclaimed run in London, the cast of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” is stepping into the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway for the first look at their new surroundings. On Aug. 14, they will begin previews of the drama for a 17-week limited engagement of what is widely regarded as one of the Noble Prizewinning writer’s greatest works.

Directed by Jaime Lloyd, who has become one of the foremost interpreters of Pinter, this version is designed so that none of the actors ever leave the stage. The trio are all recognizable from their screen exploits — Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Cox are beloved characters from the Marvel universe as Thor’s trickster brother Loki and blind attorney Matt Murdock in “Daredevil,” respectively. And Zawe Ashton recently made a splash opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Netflix’s “Velvet Buzzsaw.”

Told backwards in chronology, the play tracks married couple Robert (Hiddleston) and Emma (Ashton) as their relationship unravels after Emma begins an affair with her husband’s best friend Jerry (Cox). But it also dives into the destruction of Emma and Jerry’s affair, as well as Robert and Jerry’s friendship. As with most Pinter, the characters are often sparse in their language in emotion, and words left unsaid often cut the deepest. A simple game of squash takes on much significance — the camaraderie, the competition, and ultimately what it means when they stop playing together.

The cast sat down with Variety to discuss squash and other games people play, with what Pinter means to them, and how their paths have crossed in the past, leading to this moment.

What does it mean to you to be here in New York, making your Broadway debut?

Zawe Ashton: It is a dream come true, actually. I’ve seen some of the best things I’ve ever seen in this very theater, including the show previous to us, “The Ferrymen.”

Tom Hiddleston: I first came to Broadway with my dad and my sisters when I was 17. It was my first time seeing the city and I remember going into Times Square and we went to see “Follies.” This was before I was even thinking about being an actor — or maybe in the back of my head I had decided. The first time I was in this theater I saw Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett doing “The Mountaintop.”

Charlie, you actually live out here, are you planning on showing them around? Charlie Cox: Oh, yes. There’s a few places I want to take them.

Ashton: [Laughs] How can you make that sound sinister?

Cox: I’m not sure the places I like will be what you’re imagining. I want to take them to Bubby’s. It’s a restaurant with a great all-American brunch.

What does “all-American” mean to Brits?

Cox: Fried chicken and waffles.

Hiddleston: And big portions.

Cox: And coffee that keeps being filled up. You have to put a napkin over it to stop them.

Hiddleston: Right. If you have a second coffee in the UK you have to pay for it.

Cox: It’s crazy. When I get my coffee, I need to put my milk and sugar and the proportions have to be right. When they fill your coffee up over here, the proportions are all off. Also, you feel like you’re on rocket fuel and you don’t know why.

Ashton: Anything else we need to experience?

Cox: Well, these two are too healthy but I’d love to introduce you to half-and-half. It’s one of the best inventions in the world. It’s cream and milk.

Hiddleston: I know about that. This isn’t, like, my first time in America.

Cox: Oh, and I’d love to introduce you to McDonald’s. [Laughs.]

Hiddleston: I’m really excited about the seasons. I’ve spent time in New York before but it’s only been for like two weeks at a time. To be here from summer into fall into winter…

Cox: Fall is an illusion in New York. You get a weekend in the 70s, and that’s it.

Ashton: No, but the colors and the trees! And Thanksgiving is going to be amazing!

How did you first become familiar with the work of Harold Pinter and specifically “Betrayal”?

Hiddleston: For my A-Level English literature, we did a play of Pinter’s called “The Homecoming.” What I found so interesting was “The Homecoming” was so spare and so precise and so grown-up. I remember my teacher encouraging us to think about this play as about power and sex and family, all in a very brutal way. That it’s a father and sons competing for supremacy. I remember thinking: “This is reading a bit too much into it, isn’t it?” But it isn’t. As a 17-year-old, I just didn’t realize there was a writer engaging so consciously at this level.

Then I read “Betrayal” at the Royal Academy of Dramatic arts as an exercise for a dramaturgy class. I read it in one sitting and I did think, at the age of 21, “This would be an amazing thing to do one day.”

Ashton: We did a couple months of scene study at drama school and I played Anna in “Old Times.” I was 19 and I loved it and we actually nailed the scene study. I mean, we were 19-year-olds, maybe it was terrible. But my head of year said to me: “If I had known how easy Pinter was going to be for you, I would have given you something else.”

Was it easy?

Ashton: No! It wasn’t easy! But what I think he identified that if you vibe with Pinter, you’re kind of a special breed of person. If you can lean into all the violence and brutality and also see the tenderness and experience the special viewpoint he has of human relationships, you have a friend for life.

And you vibed with him from the start? Ashton: 100%. And now I love him even more. Doing “Betrayal” is about having to invest in a love affair with these two men, but I also feel I’ve invested in a love affair with Pinter. I’ve wanted to read his poetry, I’ve wanted to think about him, I’ve wanted to read the books Joan Bakewell and Lady Antonia Fraser wrote about him. Just to try and piece together the man who I’ve never met. Charlie has.

You’ve met Pinter?

Cox: The first play I did in the West End was with Jaime Lloyd, “The Collection.” Harold was part of numerous rehearsals and came to see the play many times. I got some great Harold stories that I’m still dining out on! During that time, I read “Betrayal.” Harold died the following year. It’s funny, my wife and I live in Connecticut and when I was offered this play I walked into my local bookshop and it was sitting right there.

A year ago, you didn’t know you’d be doing “Betrayal” in London, let alone here.

Cox: Four weeks ago we didn’t know we’d be here! It all happened very fast. When we closed in London, we thought we were done.

My understanding is this all began last October, when Tom and Zawe did a reading from the play at the “Pinter at the Pinter” gala?

Ashton: It sprung from that gala and people thinking we were rehearsing it already. People kept coming up to me and asking if we were doing a full production. So at the gala I basically came up to Tom and said, “What are you doing in March 2019?” And you were like, “Uh, get away from me, crazy lady.”

Hiddleston: It was an interesting night because it was celebration of all his work as a gift to [his widow] Antonia Fraser and it was 10 years after he died. But it wasn’t a heavy night, it was a celebration. And people came back to do extracts. The production Jaime Lloyd directed of “The Homecoming” came back. Jeremy Irons came back to do “No Man’s Land.”

Wait, Jeremy Irons starred in the film version of “Betrayal.”  Were you intimidated to do a scene in front of him?

Hiddleston: Well, less intimidated because I played his son in “The Hollow Crown.” There were several “Betrayal” alumni. Sam West was there, who played Robert at the Donmar Warehouse. Kristin Scott Thomas, who has played Emma, was also there. There was something very generous about this company of great, established actors who had made a great impact with Pinter’s work saying to Zawe and myself, “If you’re not doing it, you should do it.”

Ashton: It was such a compliment.

Hiddleston: Then Antonia Fraser also said, “Would you like to do it?” And Jaime leaned across and said, “Let’s do it!” So it came together very fast. And Jaime’s first suggestion for Jerry was Charlie, but he said you couldn’t do it.

Cox: The show I was doing [“Daredevil”] was going to be scheduled for another season at the time. So they went out to find somebody else. Then my show got cancelled and I called my agent and said I would love to do a play. I didn’t hear for a bit and I finally got him on the phone and was about to say “I’ve been trying to call you!” — but in a very nice, English way. And before I could say anything he said, “How would you like to do ‘Betrayal’ with Zawe Ashton and Tom Hiddleston?” I paused and said, “I’d like that very much.”

Ashton: If “Daredevil” hadn’t been canceled you wouldn’t have been able to do it.

That has to take some of sting out of cancellation.

Cox: It did, yeah.

This play doesn’t work without the chemistry between the characters, even when they are constantly competing and  one-upping each other. Did you know each other prior to working together and was that chemistry pretty instant?

Cox: Tom and I knew each other. We were bouncing around L.A. at the same time early in our careers.

Hiddleston: The truth is, we first met bumping into each other auditions for the same films that neither of us would get. After like the fourth time, we said, “Let’s go get a burger.”

Ashton: We’d been intersecting for years. Weird things have happened: Tom and I sat next to each other years before at the theater. We did the gala but weirdly, we’d also done a reading a couple weeks before that. And then Charlie and I realized we had auditioned together years ago.

Cox: I’m almost sure it was you. I didn’t get it.

Ashton: I didn’t either. And it was definitely you.

Hiddleston: That’s how most actors know each, they audition for things they don’t get.

Ashton: This could be the most unpleasant experience; it could really be toxically bad. What has happened is it has been the most joyful experience ever. That’s not to say we’re not completely embedded in the raw pain of the play. But I think you realize when you get to a certain age that you don’t need it to bleed into your lives and you don’t need to carry it home. I don’t want to do that with Harold Pinter because you can and you will go mad.

Hiddleston: It’s one of those things, you can’t put your finger on why it works, but it works and it’s a great pleasure

Cox: That one-upmanship you talked about that’s in the text; if that were to manifest between us as actors, it would be awful.

Ashton: However….there was a squash game.

Cox: Let’s not talk about that.

Ashton: It did spill over into that game.

Cox: Look, it’s not about who wins or loses, it’s about who’s fitter. And Tom is fitter than I am.

Hiddleston: It was very instructive, playing squash. Some of those scenes, the competition is in the subtext, the brutality to each other is underneath it while they’re being civil on the surface. After we played squash, those scenes played themselves.

Cox: I still have a buttock injury from that last game. I was desperately trying to reach a ball because I was so determined to keep up! We had one day where we had five solid sessions and then Zawe joined us for the spa.

Leaving behind these characters at the end of the day could be a challenge. Are you able to do that?

Cox: Sometimes I’ll be at the end of the day and I’ll be agitated in some way and then I remember; of course, I just got off stage.

Ashton: I’ve often said I’ve felt like a baby who needed to be burped. There’s so much repression in the play and people aren’t saying what they mean and you want to cry but you have to hold it in. Sometimes I want to cry for three days.

Hiddleston: My favorite actor of all time Paul Scofield said: “The emotions are real, but they aren’t mine.” Which I think sums it up. Actors investigate something real but the situation doesn’t belong to them. So I know consciously I’m not Robert, I know I haven’t been betrayed. But when I investigate his sadness, some aspect of that belongs to me. It sometimes leaves a shadow.

“Betrayal” has been performed in America before, obviously, but are you curious about how Broadway audiences will respond versus London audiences?

Cox: We get a lot of Americans in London. I don’t think it’s going to be radically different.

Ashton: I think it’s going to be radically different. I think there’s going to be some exciting new things having an American audience is going to illuminate. I think it’s going to be interesting.

“Betrayal” runs at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre through Dec. 8.