#rendering hard..posterization effect saved me

[sunnyclovers]

i've been wanting to do a finished piece of them~ it's finally done :'o

[tiny-brass-bot]

Hi! I saw a post where you had a game made in godot with old school rendering, do you maybe have any tips on how to make godot render a game like that instead of its normal rendering method?

I'd be right happy to!

I'll try to make this concise lol, I always end up overexplaining and then getting lost in the weeds. Buckle up, it's a loooooot of little little things that all add up.

First off, you should decide which look you're going for. N64 and PS1, the two consoles I'm emulating, both had drastically different specs. (plus, there's plenty of other early 3D systems I've not even touched!)

The N64 had texture filtering (textures were interpolated aka "blurry"), it had floating point vertex precision (points moved correctly), it had perspective correction on its textures (no warping)

The PS1 had no texture filtering, no floating point vertex precision (vertices snap and pop around), affine texture mapping (textures warp weird). I also think the color space they operate in is different? Don't quote me

So you can go hard one way or another or pick and choose what you think looks good! We don't have anywhere near the hardware restrictions they did in the 90s so go nuts.

RESOLUTION

To get a low resolution window, I set the window size of the game and the window override size to different amounts

In green is actually how big the window is on my screen (4k monitor) and in red is the retro resolution I want. If you set the stretch mode correctly (an option a little further down the Window tab) then it'll make the pixels big

COLORS

Now the PS1 had the capability of showing you over 16 million different colors, but it could only display 50,000-150,000 at a time, so in order to get more fidelity out of it, the engineers implemented a dithering effect to better blend the otherwise sharp edges between colors.

I used this shader to achieve the dithering effect. If you don't understand shader languages, that's fine. There are a few different pre-built ones for looking like the PlayStation 1 out there.

TEXTURES

Textures for the PS1 could be as big as 256x256, but they were typically 128x128. And they would squish everything a model needed into there usually, at least with like player models and objects and such.

As mentioned, if you're not good with shader language don't worry. There are countless resources out there that people will either let you use or teach you how it works. But I'm gonna touch on it a little bit here.

PS1 textures had no pixel filtering, so you could see individual pixels.

This is what determines that in the shader code. If you want it to look like the N64 (blurry lol), the proper hint is "filter_linear". Note that it won't be 1:1 with N64, cuz they used bilinear filtering (which kinda sucks and causes weird quirks) whereas now you'll only find linear or trilinear filtering. It's a negligible difference imo.

PS1 textures also were only saved using 15 bit color. I'm told that Photoshop's "Posterize" filter set to 32 can achieve this, but don't use photoshop if you can help it. I use GIMP, and while a newer version might have a posterize filter, or there may be a plugin out there, my version doesn't so I cluge it a little.

Change your color mode to "indexed", set color dithering to how you like it, and the number of colors in the palette to a number to get a good result. Usually I'll do 16, 8, 32, but occasionally I'll cheat and do a non-multiple-of-8 teehee >:3c

You can change it back to RGB after to make further editing easier.

LIGHTING

N64 and PS1 both implemented vertex lighting, as opposed to the more modern and (now) ubiquitous per-pixel lighting. Godot as it is right now (4.2 i think?) claims it has vertex lighting that you can set as a shader property but they're lying and it doesn't work yet.

The old consoles could only handle like, 2 lights though so it doesn't matter much.

The real star of the show, and in my opinion the one thing that makes a game most look like the 90s is the inclusion of vertex colors.

By multiplying the color of your texture by its stored vertex color, you can do all the shading yourself!

Plus you can reuse textures like crazy just by coloring them differently. The N64 also made heavy use of vertex colors by forgoing a texture on models entirely and just painting them using verticies. The only textures on SM64 Mario are his eyes, stache, hat emblem, buttons, and sideburns. Everything else is done with vertex colors.

Here you can see this level from my Crock Land with no vertex coloring, with some of the vertex colors only, and then with the two combined.

Rare loved this. Look at how colorful that cliffside is in Jungle Japes. It makes it so much more interesting than just a brown cliff face. Plus you can see the vertex coloration instead of textures at work on DK and the Gnawty.

My go-to example for PS1 is always Spyro, what a gorgeous game. All of those colors there are not made by a light or an environment. They're hand painted babey! Also! With spyro! The skyboxes are actually just huge domes made up of vertices that are colored in different ways! That's how they can look so colorful and "hi-res".

There's plenty more you can do, like adding a CRT filter or a little bit of chromatic aberration which I haven't gotten into yet.

The way I've learned all this is just by being curious as to how the old consoles did their thing, and slowly accruing the knowledge over time. There's still infinite stuff I don't know too.

I hope that helped! And wasn't too longwinded or confusing! Like I said, it's all about piling up tons and tons of little things, small details, weird graphical quirks that really bring out the retro 3D feel for me.

And I didn't even get into the modeling side of things! That's an entirely different "color-of-the-sky"-sized post though.

I'd be happy to re-explain or explain more about any of this!

[sol1056]

anons on the dragon prince

Yes, we all know the comparison points, so I’m skipping those to focus solely on tDP. Alright, starting from the top.

It does speak volumes [...] that tDP has seemingly (and unless proven otherwise in s2 by a fan theory coming true) killed one of a major CoC after only 3 episodes [but] the fandom, and PoC fans more importantly, still trust Ehasz/Wonderstorm and the story to not let them down ...

I was talking to someone the other day who DM’d me about finally seeing tDP, who said something along the lines of “I feel like I can breathe.” Which isn’t that far off what @ptw30 and I were telling each other, when we binge-watched tDP the night of its release. 

First episode, we were both a little ennnhhh over the animation style. Second episode, we barely noticed that anymore. Third episode, everything went to hell in a handbasket and yet our shared reaction was something along the lines of, “I feel like I can settle in, and let the story go where it’s going. I don’t have to stress about this. The writers have got this.” 

Think of being a passenger when the driver isn’t sure where they’re going. They slow repeatedly to check road signs, show an ‘ehhhh oh right no no we’re fine’ expression (or say it out loud), or switch lanes back and forth unexpectedly. Eventually you’re going to give serious thought to pulling out your phone and offering to navigate, just so someone in the car has a clue. Failing that, you end up worrying whether you’ll get there on time (or at all). 

Not once did tDP give me the remotest worry about where it’s going. Even if it seems counterintuitive that we could get to a Manhattan happy ending by way of a Brooklyn character death, the story must have a good reason. We can relax and enjoy the trip. 

It’s hard to pin down what creates that trust for an audience, because it’s so many things. It’s a combination of setups and payoffs. It’s getting emotional beats at regular intervals. It’s having questions raised and getting just enough answered that you don’t feel like the story is covering for not actually knowing and/or hoping you won’t notice it’s making things up as it goes along. 

More behind the cut: tDP’s handling of race, who’s right vs wrong, and whether tDP’s storytelling can/will surpass AtLA.

I rewatched The Dragon Prince recently and it's amazing how carefully they show racism in only 9 episodes [where other shows failed in multiple seasons]. You can see what happens when people in charge care not only about their own characters, but also the audience following their story.

It’s a very thoughtful story, in the sense that the writers clearly put a great deal of thought into each character’s perspective and place. General Amaya is a walking poster child for How To Do This Shit Right Yo, as is Ava. It makes sense that no less attention was paid to the potentially complicated issue of racism, and how viewers’ real-world experiences would impact and layer on top of what the story is trying to do. 

I mean, tDP could’ve decided that Amaya would be deaf... and then proceed to make up its own sign language. Or that magic could (and should) heal disabilities. When the story did neither, it told me the writing team is aware stories don’t exist in a vacuum: that disabled viewers have also been waiting to see themselves on screen, as characters with agency, treated with respect. 

(The lack of subtitles for Amaya may’ve confused those of us who don’t know ASL, but it was absolutely a gift to those who do. It was saying: hey, this is just for you. All those times you’ve missed something that hearing people take for granted? Now’s your turn to be the one in the know. And come on, that’s just awesome.)

Will tDP stumble at some point? Sure. Stories and people are complex things, and the world is a thousand times more so. It’s not the stumbling that bothers me. It’s when a story is thoughtless, because it won’t even recognize its stumbles, let alone fix them. 

I really struggle with liking the show, specifically because it seems to take the stance that the elf girl was "right" to betray the other elves (leading to the slaughter of her entire team). beyond the pain of the ribbon, she doesn't seem to show any sadness or remorse, and then it seems that the human characters are quick to condemn the elf assassins, instead of the king's slaughter of the dragon king. what writing purpose does this serve?

It serves to prompt exactly what you’re doing: asking questions.

The story is full of conflicting interpretations of events, actions, reactions, and motivations if you just think twice. The humans may fear the elves, and do their best to prevent the elves from succeeding --- but Harrow acknowledged explicitly that it’s not as though the elves don’t have just cause. Harrow wasn’t going to go down easy, but I saw no condemnation on his part upon the elves’ retaliation for human crimes. 

Callum argued with Harrow over why Harrow couldn’t just ‘make peace.’ When Rayla shows Runaan the egg and demands Runaan call everything off, isn’t she effectively arguing the same thing? Additionally, Rayla went into the castle determined to make up for her failing; if she’d succeeded in her mission (especially with Callum’s misdirection), it’d be a very short story, indeed. Instead, the three protagonists end up unified in their hope that this could prevent any further bloodshed. 

Note that I say ‘further’ because what is done, and out of their control, is done. Rayla didn’t act out of a wish to betray; when she choose not to assassinate the prince, she acted out of a hope there could be peace. When the first ribbon falls off and the messenger-arrow flies overhead, Rayla’s assumption makes sense, based on those two details: her team achieved at least one of their goals. We don’t know their fate (other than Runaan), but it also sets up a later plot-point where Rayla discovers the team did not, in fact, all return intact. 

For that matter, by the time she learns those details (and concludes who won and who lost), she’s already befriended the princes. From the very first scene, it’s clear Rayla isn’t cut out for this assassination business. She’s incapable of seeing targets. As Ezran later notes, she sees people as, well, people, even when they’re strangers. Is it really so surprising that she’d waffle even more, once those strangers have become something nearing friends, or at least allies? 

So she chooses to keep silent, and her motivation is wonderfully complex, from a writer’s perspective. She wants peace, and believes returning the egg will do that, so reminding the two princes of her role in their father’s death would alienate them, and put her desires at risk. She likes the princes by that point, and doesn’t want to hurt them with such news. And she’s also feeling guilty for the part she played, especially knowing her secret (not just of failing her mission but of preventing anyone else from succeeding) is probably already known. 

Most of that thought process seems to get decided early in the journey. After that, Rayla goes through all the stages as she realizes the consequences of failing to fulfill a sacred oath: anger, bargaining, grief. At the end, Rayla weighs the two options --- keeping her hand, vs killing someone innocent of any crime --- and decides her hand is a small sacrifice in comparison. 

(Note that thematically, this is echoed in Ava’s story. Ava’s paw was caught in a trap, and escaping came at the cost of her paw. Yet Ava remains perfect as she is, and it’s only other people who require Ava appear to be whole. Part of the reason for going up the mountain is to save the egg, but Rayla also implies she wishes she could save her hand, too. Ava’s story is telling us that such a disability doesn’t and shouldn’t render Rayla broken or useless.) 

Alongside that, the boys don’t seem to have fully put together their father’s role in the current situation. I think Callum might have (in a roundabout way), but not so much for Ezran. It’s a process, though. First we’re shown the princes were raised with a bias they’ve never had reason to question, about elves being bloodthirsty monsters. The story lets Rayla call them on it and express her hurt, and the boys are remorseful. 

The story also doesn’t position Callum (as human) as always knowing the rightness of things; hell, it takes Rayla calling him a mage before he even realizes the meaning of what he’s done. The story also shows the boys are eager to learn (and willing to question their assumptions), when Callum asks Rayla what it’s like in her country.

By the end of S1, both princes have worked their way through several points: from ‘all elves are bad’ to ‘Rayla is the one exception’ to ‘maybe elves aren’t the monsters we were told they are.’ The next logical step is for them to begin questioning their father’s actions. Like you, the story is leading them into questioning things that they took for granted when the story began. 

That’s the purpose of creating a story where perspective shifts with each new character: the story is rewarding you for digging deeper.    

A story that doesn’t want those questions raised --- that isn’t prepared to grapple with them --- would tell you from the get-go, “elves are plain evil, that’s all there is to it.” Or, “humans are always good and their actions are righteous.” Any hint of a conflicting perspective would eventually be revealed as false within the story, or a minor oversight outside the story. 

Where tDP is so well-crafted is that it’s given everything enough layers and conflicts that poking at the story reveals more underneath. All you have to do is give it a bit of thought, and you can see a larger picture, and that larger story’s view may be tilted from what you’ve seen so far, if not flipped outright (or flipped back again). That’s the beauty of a large cast where each character has their own motivation, agency, reasons and beliefs and assumptions: there’s always another side to things.

That’s what makes a story truly rich and deep. Not the worldbuilding, not the complexity of the final solution, not the number of product placements or jokes or high-octane fight sequences. It’s characters with individual perspectives and motivations, agreeing and conflicting per their own purposes, and each one seeing themselves as the hero of their own story.  

...what is it about TDP that makes it a good show for you? What is it you like about it, what about it pulls you in? And would you say it's on par or close to the quality of Avatar?

I think my answers above have probably already covered your question, but I’ll add this: I think tDP has potential to not just be ‘on par’ with Avatar but to leave it far, far behind. 

I mean, AtLA is already ten years old. In 2003, Ehasz’ credits consisted of three freelance episodes for two shows, and one episode as a staff writer. That’s it. That he catapulted from that to head-of-story for AtLA speaks to a definite talent --- but of course he’d get better from there, with ten intervening years of continuing to hone his craft. 

I’d say there are two places where it’s most apparent: exposition and humor. While I (mostly) like AtLA, the exposition could be somewhat clunky. It needed to be in there, but it wasn’t always quite as deft as I would’ve liked, in terms of combining information with characterization. 

The writing in tDP is far superlative in that regard. We get exposition, yes, but it's not delivering answers so much as answering one thing to raise ten more questions. There are almost no “as you know Bob” exchanges. When Rayla talks about what her country is like, it’s exposition, but it’s also a wonderful characterization moment; Rayla’s love for her world shines through, along with a certain ambivalence about her place in that world.

The other place Ehasz has improved a thousand-fold is his humor. One of the things I hated most about AtLA was its use of bathos: taking a serious moment and turning on a dime to crack a joke and trivialize the moment. (Sokka was the worst offender, but no character was immune.) As AtLA went on, the story scaled back on that, but it still raised its head often enough to make me wince.

In contrast, tDP’s humor is seamlessly organic. When Rayla yells, “I’m not falling for that flashing frog trick again!” she’s deadly serious, but that makes the bizarre phrase even funnier. When Gren translates Amaya’s sarcasm and has a beat in which he’s clearly trying to find a family-friendly way to translate “bullshit”... that beat is the joke. We don’t need someone gesticulating wildly to tell us it’s funny. 

At the same time, Ehasz is clearly unafraid, now, to let the serious moments be. He doesn’t trivialize the characters’ emotions with a joke; the story isn’t afraid we’ll see it as cheesy or asinine -- as less -- when it’s being sincere. 

As Carol Burnett once put it, comedy is tragedy at a distance. What tDP is doing isn’t comedy in that sense, where the characters themselves (as AtLA often did) use humor to distance themselves. Instead, it’s humor most often in one of three modes. 

One is when a character intends to crack a joke: Soren and Claudia jibing each other, or Callum attempting to lighten everyone’s spirits. This is kept relatively light, so it’s not a constant thing, as if too much levity is to be feared.

The second is simply a witty delivery, like Rayla when her temper’s up. She doesn’t deliver the line “I’m habsolutely hurious” as if she expects a laugh; she is angry, after all. Or when Soren decides to let Callum 'win’ the bout: Soren’s melodramatic as all get out, but he’s not mocking Callum, for whom impressing Claudia is a big deal. Soren’s dramatic words and over-acting are actually a wonderfully compact characterization that tells us a whole lot in a single scene of what someone should expect when Soren tries to ‘help’. 

In the penultimate episode, when Rayla accepts the consequences of her choice and decides she’s okay with paying, this is a significant emotional beat. Her conclusion is... well, it makes sense given her thoughts to this point. 

But it’s also a blunt and rather startling way to put it. Again, this isn’t cracking a joke to create distance from emotion. It’s wittier than that. 

Ezran’s shock as he registers the words is barely two frames. Any longer and it’d be overplayed. Between basically saying someone's friendship is worth a body part, and Ezran’s half-beat of shock, the combination definitely startled a laugh out of me. 

And here’s the thing: in AtLA, one of the two would’ve cracked a joke. The story would’ve backed away from what really, underneath, is a pretty phenomenal admission. Not just of friendship, but also of how Rayla herself has changed so significantly between when she made that oath, versus where she sits now. 

Ezran’s response is both funny (again, in a witty sense) but also just as heartfelt. It’s also extremely telling in terms of Ezran’s characterization. 

The one character most likely to crack a joke --- Callum --- doesn’t always, either. In fact, sometimes he’s remarkably vulnerable and honest in ways Sokka, his spiritual predecessor, wasn’t allowed to be. At the same point that Ezran and Rayla are having their heart-to-heart, Callum’s admitting freely that he doesn’t have immense power; he just has a swirly stone that does the work for him. He doesn’t make a joke of Ellis’ compliment, nor make fun of himself. 

Ellis’ line was delivered seriously, as she has every reason to believe her perspective is true. If Callum were to joke, he’d be mocking her sincerity, and the story is willing to respect that Callum is someone who responds to sincerity with sincerity of his own. 

In a word, tDP is unafraid of its own heart. 

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + The Divine 33

Spoilers, obv.

I suspect this one may ramble. Or it may not. The odd thing is always when things which have been internally discussed forever end up not needing to be discussed in public. For Journey Into Mystery and Young Avengers, I always had the idea of the essay I'd end them with... but when I got there, I shrugged and did a couple of paragraphs which covered the basics.

(There was a grace note in both, in terms of highlighting a motif – Write Your Own Happy Ending and Be A Superhero. Save The World – but that's really minor detail compared to what I presumed I'd be writing.)

Well... I know it's going to be quite long, as I'm going to include the miniature essay on plot twists I lobbed up to respond to a question, just so I can include some WicDiv specific stuff.

So, WicDiv 33. The “Everything you knew is wrong” issue.

Jamie's Cover

Jamie coloured this himself.

There was a lot of discussion over this, in terms of how to resolve the equation that we'd set up. Where to go after the maximalist nature of Dio's 32? I won't mention the other options, as at least some of them may end up being used down the line. One suggestion I quite liked was doing the equivalent of the ABC Look Of Love album...

...which is this scene of posed romance on the cover, and when you flip the album, you see all the lighting and crew. In some ways, that's what this issue does.

But black makes sense on many levels as well. I suspect the idea of the specific bleakness will confound the expectations a little, but the statement of it is very there. We did say this was our Black Parade too.

Worth noting – first cover without a quote on the back. If we were sure the readers wouldn't have looked at the back cover before reading the book, we may have put Lucifer's “Am I the only one who didn't see that coming?” on there. But we couldn't be sure of that, so we didn't.

Russell's Cover

What Russell and Matt are doing over on Thor is state of the art superheroics. I've loved seeing what Russell's done across his time with Jason, and the idea of him doing a cover was just exciting. It's meant to be the full range of the medium, after all. I was surprised Russell went quite as maximalist as he did, but also pleased. I love this kind of operatic movie poster cover, and it screams Imperial Phase, including all the cast of the main arc. Dio's the hardest one to spot – that would be the black eyes over it.

IFC At this stage in the arc, working out what on earth to put in the synopsis is tricky. You have to throw your hands up to some degree.

The tweaks to the bios are the other thing – clearly we've got to set up the information required to comprehend the issue for those who may have forgotten it, without just saying what the thing is. For the very close readers, even the fact it's changed will be a tell. It was another reason we didn't do a preview for this issue, and even if we did, we wouldn't have released that page. Velocity in reading is key here.

With Woden we restate “She had some mysterious hold over him” rather than specifically talking about the Blakes. With Minerva we remind people that she was tortured on Ananke's machine, and then distract with a :(  emoticon.

Page 1

I believe the script for this page and the next is in the trade as “Making Of” material, which is fun. Chrissy tends to choose pages in terms of what's interesting, especially if we have something else to show. In this case, it's my drawing for the design of Woden's Secret Base.

My basic description for this was the Bat Cave, which is a man cave, if you squint. Having an enormous penny in it could have been a giggle. We had to have a few passes to get the lighting right on this – debating the colours on the bars of the cage was also tricky.

In terms of pulling out a detail, the suit of armour missing a head on the right would be a useful one. Balancing the “making sure it's visible” while not leaning too much into “LOOK AT THE HEADLESS SUIT” is Jamie's storytelling problem here.

The main dialogue problem was balancing the level of Cass' response here with her noise at the end of the last issue. Swearing to some degree is fine, but it has to be a specific kind of fffuuuucccckkk last issue. It couldn't be a swear that promised too much.

Page 2

And it's Pink Woden! But he's blue. Lighting, everyone.

Well... There was some debate on the colouring of Pink Woden, in various modes, and various reasons, not least the slight differences in colouring in his previous appearances.

(Issue 14 and issue 21-22, respectively.)

Have I said Pink Woden is my favourite fan name? We use it all the time internally, not least because Mimir is oddly hard to remember. Also, if we get used to saying “Mimir” we may end up saying accidentally in public.

Page 3

I had someone reach out to me wondering whether Cassandra choosing to gender someone by their voice and physical appearance was off. It's something I was thinking of at the time when writing it, and it's not exactly a line I'm happy with. But on balance, I felt it more likely that Cass would say that than Persephone would say anything.

Cass is imperfect in her language in lots of ways. I decided she's more likely to apologise about it down the line and kick herself, which I may end up working in, depending.

(You could also ask “why have anything there?” and that's only answerable in terms of the flow of information and ideas and conversation across the whole scene. Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult.)

Lovely expression by Persephone in the background of the first panel – in fact, her conflicted expressions throughout. I especially love the reflection of the arriving Woden in the reflection of Mimir's mask in panel 6.

Page 4-5

The challenge here was always choosing where to put the page turns in this issue. What are the big beats. In my original draft the LITTLE WODEN BOY interstitial was actually on page 6, which would change the rhythm in lots of ways – not least in putting the Falling God sequence on a page turn. In the end, we gravitated to this. I'm much happier with it.

(Little Woden Boy works as a creepier punchline at the end as well.)

Anyway, hello! It's David Blake.

I... I maybe should save writing for the reveals all together. In fact, fuck it. Let's drop the ask essay here and we can then talk about the stuff I don't include in it. I'm asked whether you change something when someone guesses something, or how that feels?

****

Oh, god, no. Never change anything if someone’s guessed something. Nothing good lies in that direction.

Why?

Okay, let’s talk – with no specifics – Game of Thrones. If you go into the depths of fandom, Game of Thrones is – to some degree, in some areas – a solved problem. There’s a good selection of fan theories (some of which have come to fruition) which have so much meat on them it was clear they had to happen, or the book would break its structure and become unsatisfying.

These twists are available to anyone who wishes to google for them.

The vast majority of people don’t. So… why change the direction of the story? What’s the point of fucking over the enjoyment of the vast majority of people (i.e. making your story make less sense, as you’re abandoning the already existing thread) for playing gotcha on a tiny fraction of your audience?

(As a quick aside – compare and contrast theorising in a fanbase with actual events in the text that’s being adapted. Clearly, anyone who is watching GoT could have googled the synopsis of the book. Equally, anyone who’s read the books knows the big beats. Does the adaptation change the big beats? If surprise to everyone in your audience is all that mattered, you would. We don’t.)

It’s also worth noting that, while obviously some complain on the nature of the adaptation, most fans of a book generally complain that they wish it was more like the book. In other words, things that surprised them (i.e. differed from their knowledge of the text) were less satisfying. They wanted to see the big dramatic beats, even if they’re stripped of their surprise.

Surprise only matters the first time you read something. For me, any worthwhile piece of literature exists to be reread, and will open up more upon rereading. In other words, knowing the twist should add to the rereading of the book. If it doesn’t, and renders the story less than it was, it’s probably a bad twist – which is one reason why I don’t tend to call them “Plot twists” to myself. I call them reveals. The plot doesn’t contort. It’s merely revealing something in the nature of the world the reader was unaware of.

(As an aside, this means that someone who has guessed successful the direction of the plot is actually effectively skipping to their second read of the book earlier.)

There’s the other side of this as well – not just whether a plot beat has been guessed, but the almost inevitability of a plot beat being guessed. GoT fans have had twenty years to puzzle this out. In that period, a mass communication device emerged which allowed fans to talk to one another and share ideas. This machine would have torn apart any plot.

No one individual needs to guess anything. People can make one step in a chain, and then that step is exposed to thousands of minds. If even one of them can make the intuitive leap to the next step, then it continues. No one person needs to be clever enough to see the whole thing. The internet hivemind is Miss Marple, seeing through the most contorted of machinations.

(In passing, this is one reason why Alternate Reality Games are hard to do, because the mass hive mind will figure almost anything out, almost instantly. Equally in passing, the failure to understand this is another reason why Ready Player One is bad, but that’s irrelevant.)

In other words, the reason why twists are guessable is the same reason they are satisfying. A twist that isn’t foreshadowed sufficiently to give the possibility of being guessed by someone is not a satisfying twist, as it – by definition – came out of nowhere.

To make this specific to my own work. In the case of the biggest and most intricate of my current books, WicDiv, we sell about 18k in monthlies and sell 18k in trades (in the first month of release). That’s our hardcore devoted readership. How many people of them actually read the essays in the WicDiv tags? I’d say 500 at the absolute maximum, and likely a lot less. So for a maximum of 1.3% of our readership, we’d derail a still effective twist for everyone else? No, that would be a bad call.

Especially – and this is key – the people who have chosen to engage with a fandom are aware that they may figure something out. They are trying to figure something out. Why take that pleasure away from them?

In a real way, I think, in long-form narrative, pure plot twists which no one in the world guesses are dead in the Internet age, at least when dealing with any even vaguely popular work of art. You can do them in short-form narratives (like a single novel, a single movie and perhaps a streaming TV show they drop in one go) but for anything where you give a fanbase the chance to think, it’s just not going to happen. A creator should be glad their work is popular enough to have enough fans to figure it out.

Yes, I may have overthought this.

But that’s only half the question.

How do I actually feel when someone guesses something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…

*

I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop”and shrug.

And then you get over your ass, because you know all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m winning.

I’ve mostly succeeded at this. I’m certainly better than I was two years ago.

(I’ll probably write more about spoilers and twists and stuff down the line. I’d note that setting up twists that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey – pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the actual sleight of hand over here.” In which case, there’s less of an Oh Poop response and more of a cackling evil mastermind response.)

The sigh can occasionally be accompanied with a “Hmm. I wouldn’t have posted that” or – more likely – “I wouldn’t have posted that THERE.”

To stress, what follows isn’t about my work per se, but culture generally, and is very much personal. This is stuff which good friends disagree with me on.

As a fan, I never tweet my own fan theories. I only tweet joke ones. Even my crack theories I don’t tweet, as they’re normally so bizarre that if they actually DO happen, I wouldn’t want to take the thrill away from people. Even in person in conversation I make sure we’re going into a deep fan hole before sharing them, aware that they may be true.

In a real way, the more likely I think something is true, the less likely I’ll say it. As this is my job, I tend to see basic structural ways stories are heading way in advance of most people. I’m a composer. I know how music works. You have a vague sense of what way they’ll go.

(One day I’ll write down my crack theory for the end of the previous Game of Thrones season. Maybe after next season, as it’s not impossible that they may end up doing it, though it’s increasingly unlikely.)

If I had a really good theory I’ve gathered evidence for? You can guarantee I’d put it beneath a cut. That’s the stuff which bemuses me. It’s a cousin of posting major spoilers about any piece of culture the day it comes out. The worst is one regular twitter trope – I’m always bemused when people do a “Calling it! XYZ will happen” tweet. Which strikes me a little like standing up in the cinema 20 minutes into a film and shouting out that you’ve guessed the ending. This ties back to the stuff I wrote above about twists being less effective in the modern age, except in a place where you can control the context and conversation. People may message in movies, but they rarely message everyone in the room.

(In passing, as it’s vaguely on topic – you may remember the research from a few years ago saying people who know a twist enjoy the story more than people who don’t know a twist. Even if this is true – and a single study should always get an eyebrow raise – it strikes me as a confusion over what “enjoy” means. All pleasure isn’t equivalent, and you can only have surprise on your first time through a work of art. That’s novelty. You can have that and then gain the “not surprise” experience second time through. If you spoil a work, it means the “novelty” experience is something you will never have. You may enjoy something more if you know the twist but you can always rewatch it to get that pleasure. If you’re spoiled, the individual specific pleasure of that first watch has been stolen.)

But that’s a conversation of social mores. Really, it doesn’t change anything in terms of how we act… and sometimes, I even grin when someone gets a twist in advance. The machine is working as intended. It’s actually kind of worrying if no one is thinking something is up in an area you’ve set up to be iffy. And… the alternative is worse – hell, there’s buried twists and details in Young Avengers that no one’s managed to figure out yet.

Twist ending: oh, no, I was a ghost all along.

****

I'm pretty sure the asker was asking about the Woden/Blake/Jon twist, and I'm primarily talking in terms of balancing the various needs of the group.

The problem with this twist was less making sure that people didn't get it, but making sure that everyone understood its import. If, hypothetically, I didn't want (barely) anyone to get it, we wouldn't have mentioned Jon after we introduced him in issue 6. Problem being, everyone needs to know Jon is a person who is Blake's kid when they hit this beat. My solution was to just reintroduce Jon hard, and resolve it, knowing that most people would just accept that. Then everyone knows who Jon is, so the father/son switch makes sense.

(In other words, far better some people suspect Woden is Blake rather than everyone going “Jon who?” Especially because the real horror of the Woden/Blake reveal is in its details.)

There's the other aspect to it as well – it's the sacrificial decoy aspect that I mentioned above. Even if guessed, it's a big enough twist to distract people. I reveal this at the start of the issue, so people will probably suspect that's enough big reveals for the issue. Yet no.

(See also: issue 11's dual deaths)

In reality, I was much more worried about the relatively small leap from realising Woden Is Blake And Jon Is Pink Woden to Mimir Is A Head.

But more on that later, I suspect.

Anyway! Storytelling!

There is something incredibly instantly disturbing about Blake without the helmet on, right?

Persephone's line was tweaked a bunch. I cut it as far as I could while still existing. It's a tiny moment of Rising Action, immediately squashed.

The switch to green as the cage goes to full power, plus Matt Wilson's wonderful pixel effects.

Love the Tron-eque light-bike trails seguing into flashback...

Page 6-7

The first date is just before Ragnarock 2013, where we first saw Jon on the stage in Laura's Flashback in issue 6.

This is a “Performance” by Jon, so is presented as such, in the same manner of Persephone's performance in issue 20. Jamie's integrated circuitry design is great, and allows us to go to a limited palette. 8 panel, 8-bit glory.

And Jon Blake.

You write and discover the characters. Jon has barely been in the book – he has a couple of lines of dialogue in issue 14, and that's it. I always knew why Ananke rejects him as unsuitable, but specifically how that would be articulated was something I thought I'd discover on the page. Writing a new character this far into the book is the sort of thing which keeps it interesting.

I was worried it would be hard, or shallow, as surely all the relevant little bits of me are already taken with the rest of the cast? Within a couple of sentences of typing, I knew I had completely forgotten one Gillen archetype.

I realised Jon was a heroic take on Lloyd/Mr Logos.

I laughed. Of course. Perfect.

The 11 days later says so much about how intricate the timeline is around here. It's the day before Baal and Sakhmet made their public debut.

The “She's a fucking weirdo/language” panel is a joy.

Yeah, Ananke really does like hanging around in people's gardens.

I specifically called for Ananke to be in an outfit from a previous God-creation sequence...

Page 8-9

...so Jamie could reuse the masks and only draw Jon transforming, and pull an extra page out of the budget.

The most embarrassing bit here is that I wrote this from my memory of Mimir's legends in the early drafts, and only remembered to actually check my notes at lettering. In fact, I'd got a couple of minor details of Mimir wrong.

(Or rather, didn't grasp the complexities of Mimir – it's very hard to get a take on Mimir, because the main myths we have of him are contradictory.)

Page 10-11

Man, I want to go to Mimir's club night.

In my original draft I wrote it as Jon cutting off Ananke's “Mimir” so that the god name wasn't revealed until the last page of this whole section. As in, it would stop people putting the book down, googling “Mimir”, realising “Heads” and then possibly seeing where we were going at the end of the issue.

I decided against it, in that's only going to be a tiny fraction of readers. If people want to break the flow of their reading to look up facts, I can't control that. Even then, I also knew it would be far from certain that just because they realised Mimir is a head, that they'd then realise others could be a head before the end of the comic.

And NOT including Mimir breaks the flow for everyone else, and is a bit cheap. Better than that.

That knife gets around.

Page 12

First panel: I never get bored of modern blur photoshop to show this kind of effect.

PoV shots are something I adore in comics. The six-panel grid gives it lots of space as well.

Honestly, that last panel with Mimir's own reflection is the creepiest thing in the world, and I love it.

Page 13

Yeah, I'm much happier with the interstitial here. Horrible.

(To state the obvious: Pinocchio reference.)

Page 14-15

I just imagine the tension in this room. Ugh.

I originally had a bunch more written for Woden here, but cut it. It was much better in the silent. He may say some of it down the line, but cutting it right to the basics – the particularly creepy basics – seemed key.

We went with a normal gun. Normal guns were at the start of the story, and have sort of disappeared. Once more we return.

Lots to unpick in all this dialogue, so won't give anything else. I'll say the whole exchange about the machine was as finely picked over to imply the meaning as much as anything else in the book – that's the thing about comics. The flowery fancy stuff? That's great and fun. But the real job is the compressing of precise exact detail, especially in a book which is nothing but precise detail.

I was chatting to Jamie about issue 34 earlier, and Jamie said how much he likes drawing Mimir's helmet. Looking at page 15 makes me see it – the second and fourth panels are just excellent in completely different ways.

Page 16-17-18

Jamie chose the steady angle, I believe, with a background drop, and Matt working the colours to show the emotions.

First panel is where the last of the fun drips out of Cassandra's expletives, and we're just left with something that's really just offensive and ugly. If there's any point where the issue reaches the black cover, it'd be this sequence.

I'm glad they've got here though.

Clearly, this is a Jamie masterclass. Pick it apart, learn. delight. Like – penultimate panel on page 16. The pause, the glance aside. Perfect. Look across page 17. There's a mixture of emotion and sheer dullness and boredom and fear, and how it all pushes and pulls again.

(“And I got it” is something else)

I believe I've said WicDiv contains a recapitulation of basically everything I've ever done as a creator. Mainly the Jamie and me stuff, but basically everything. I realised Laura's arc on Imperial Phase is me reprising what I did in Generation Hope – probably one of my least remembered things, which strikes me as fair – it only landed properly as we inched towards the end of the year. The plot was basically “Is Hope Good Or Bad?” when the answer was “Her Dad died a few days before the issue started. She's fucked up.” Only in mainstream death-happy superhero comics would that work as a twist. This was a bit like that – we distance the reader from Persephone and just show the actions and see what you make of it.

“Try to be kind. You have no idea what people are going through.”

That was the stuff I'd had planned from the start, but it only got more specific as I got nearer it and WicDiv became what it was. I've talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv's success. Laura's arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.

On a boring technical level, we did a lot of work with Cass explicitly saying facts to ensure that no one in the readership thinks Laura is confessing to killing her family. In an issue as twisty as this, I suspect some people would have.

(The second panel on page 17 is another one – tall enough to have a bunch of half ideas.)

And Laura, after making a breakthrough, immediately crumbles to another mistake.

The “Laura” line is a nod to the song, and one of the lines in the original WicDiv document sheet.

Page 19

I was going to tweak Cass' line – in some myths he's a giant – but that she's musing gives her a little freedom to dance around what we know.

You know, I suspect one reason why Mimir was never brought up as an option connected to Woden is that he's one of the very few Norse myths who've never appeared in a Marvel superhero comic. Or at least I don't think he has.

Normally we'd put something as big as the head remove on a page turn, but it's a physically small beat, so not something you will automatically recognise out the corner of your eye when you're reading.

I love Cass' thinking face in the penultimate panel. Thinkythinkythinky.

Two major beats happening on this page, of course – it appears Mimir is a head (or a robot head, perhaps?) and Mimir thinks the machine does nothing.

And then we hard-cut to what we do, but it's worth dwelling on this a little. When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the new information.

Hence two beats and a hard-cut...

Page 20-21-22-23

Anyway – this clearly had to be a page turn. To state the obvious.

Steady angle shot here, to have the awfulness of it there. I suspect if I’d had space I'd have had the last panel on page 19 be a third of a page, so the two removed heads could mirror one another.

As a minor detail, Minerva's running feet in the second panel of 20 are really good.

Minerva's gesture on page 21.2 is a joy. I know that feeling, Mini.

I really wanted Inanna to be talking from off panel on page 21, but that definitely would give the game away. The problem with distinctive fonts...

And 22 is the reveal on the heads. Probably best not to say much more about this, as I suspect any of the design elements will intersect with what happens in issue 34, so I'll talk a bit about it then.

Tara and Inanna's expressions really are wonderful.

Luci's line came surprisingly late. The “Talking Heads” interstitial came early. The only reason I wasn't going to use it here was in case I wanted to use it later. I decided I didn't.

Okay... twists.

In reality, for me, it's a case of once you've decided that this is the plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this. Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.

(You could argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)

It's been strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on. Seeing who got what and who didn't, and how people reinforced people has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise – though I've had people talk about that directly and personally. Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.

When Ray Fawkes told me “There's a reason you're doing all the decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I'd overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3... but it turned out fine.

“Played the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it's impacted every single conversation I've ever had about WicDiv. Like just writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song... and then realised there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist? No, someone may notice that, and it's against my rules anyway. I quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.

As if anyone is watching that closely, y'know?

That's an extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent (the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I've been telling friends that I'll never write a story that operates like this again. Partially that is because I wouldn't want to repeat myself, and partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don't think I want to do this to myself again. I'll find some other way to torture myself.

(Spangly New Thing certainly abandons the Scorpion's-Tale narrative model in favour of an intricate character clock of woe.)

Actually, talking playlists...  I have prepared something. There's a secondary WicDiv playlist which I've been using since July for songs which speak to the end of year three and the remainder of year four. I didn't want to add these songs to the main playlist in case a particularly determined WicDiv fan worked out issue 33 from them. This says a lot about the high levels of anxiety I've been running on for the last few years on this topic. It would be terrible to blow it in such a dumb way. Now, those reading in issues know secrets the trade readers don't. So it's going to be an interesting few months.

Here's the playlist. Keep it mum. I'll add it to the main list when the trade's out. Don't shoot me for the first track.

You may have seen us trying to prod people to reread WicDiv before 33. This was partially in response to a friend who read 33 before it came out who said – I paraphrase – “I wish I could tell people to reread the series now, because after they read 33, those issues are gone, forever.” She's right – it's a pure ‘everything changes’ issue, and you can't reread the comic earlier, because everything has transmuted beneath your fingers.

Which is by our design, but is still a grim thing to think about. We've destroyed all those issues on the shelves, and replaced them with a new story. On the bright side, we've given you 35 free comics. I suspect this returns to Jamie’s and my twitchiness over comic prices, and trying to make ours better value, every way we can. In this case, we want to make rereading valuable and exciting.

SIGH! This has been a journey, friends. I'm glad I no longer have to think about any of the above. There's huge stuff coming in the final year, but it's got entirely its own character and momentum. The cards we're playing with have fundamentally changed. There's so much stuff to come, but it builds from this.

Oh – I'm sort of regretting mentioning the thing about the third theme in the backmatter, as it's clearly the sort of thing that's going to drive a certain strata of reader to distraction – especially as if there's any number of other themes in the book. The one I was thinking intersects a little with pre-existing major themes, and speaks to the particular spin on them. We'll get to it eventually. Don't worry.

Anyway, to sum it all up, clearly with four talking heads, WicDiv is four times as good as Sandman. That is a FACT.

Christmas Special shortly, the trade collection in January, the 1923 Special in February and we're back with issue 34 in March, with the new arc.

Thanks for reading.

[pilawforhire-archived]

Little!Morgan is being bullied and she is weaponless. With no other option, she runs from the two older boys until she finds a tall male - if he has a sword, he has to be strong. "Ha!" She gets behind the stranger's leg, holds it with one hand and bravely takes a peek. "You weren't expecting this. My big brother is going to kick your butts to kingdom come!"-mxladymorgan

| @mxladymorgan

Through the tinted filter of his sunglasses, Law spied on the children energetically running and joyously skipping all around town, a cacophony of their shouts and laughter chorusing and bouncing among the crowd. With their youthful innocence, they possessed an air of spiritedness seemingly absent upon the progression into adulthood, with the onset of maturity. He couldn’t recall a time he had been that young and carefree. Perhaps once upon a time ago, he retained enduring cheer and optimism. Nevertheless, he reckoned ignorance was not bliss but incompetency and complacent neglect.

Yet, Law found himself habitually observing the children. Whenever a child crossed his path, especially a girl, Law looked, checked for resemblance to his dearly departed sister. Be it the ghost of Lami or Lami in the flesh, by some miracle of God, having survived the fire, Law harbored a forlorn but irrepressible hope induced by a feeling of lingering absence, an undying longing, for the past, over the future; a vile, pestilent ache resided within that remained resistant to the friendship Bepo blessed him with. But he accepted that any torment was a fortuitous prize for living.

Law stayed until the suspicious gazes of strangers narrowed unfavorably in his direction. He grasped his sword and left, walking and walking and walking, passing through the sea of faces unnoticed like a silent fart carried away by the wind, unseen yet everyone veered away from him. But he was only glad to part the crowd like God parted the Red Sea.

He took a few steps and drew a sharp intake of breath when he caught himself stumbling, his movements impeded by an unexpected force restraining his leg. Law jerked his head downward and scowled. Unfortunately, with the percolating darkness of the setting sun, Law had to push up his sunglasses and peer over his shoulder to get a proper look at the cause of the obstruction… A little girl?

In his bewilderment, Law barely perceived her words over the echoes of his own thoughts buzzing through his mind. Already Law began to scrutinize the girl, unconsciously searching her traits for similarities to Lami’s own. Freckles? An endearing dimpled smile? Eyes that gleamed with an inextinguishable light that radiated defiantly in the deterioration of her health? A warm voice that called him brother, with adoration and vigor transcending her pain and exhaustion? And then Law heard the girl utter the words ‘big brother’, and felt his heart leap. Slack-jawed, he removed his sunglasses and dazedly put them away.

For a moment, oblivious to the two boys, Law gawped and gaped at the girl, his fingers digging into his palms and his brows furrowed. Her hair was the color of Lami’s before it had whitened with the inevitable advancement of her illness. He would estimate her age to be around Lami’s, had Lami escaped with him. Logically it was impossible for the girl to be Lami, but what if? Besides, reincarnation was not completely out of the scope of his belief. Thankfully, before he made the mistake of blurting Lami’s name, the two bullies impatiently diverted his attention toward them with their audacious taunts as they carelessly swung and twirled their aluminum baseball bats around.

Despite their provoking invitation for trouble, Law gave them only a displeased cursory glance and then he started putting one foot in front of the other, intently leaving them to mind his own business, but Lami clung to his leg with the grudge of a vengeful ghost—no, not Lami, Law corrected himself, but the strange…girl. Law was forced to stop and evaluate his options. He stared again at the girl, purposefully ignoring the boys who were whispering sharply among themselves, alternating between exchanging looks and sizing him up in order to determine their chances of victory.

The girl seemed bold enough to him, that she would rather hug the leg of a menacing stranger armed with an intimidating sword as tall as his person, than face the two boys on her own. Had someone pasted a sign with the words ‘FREE HELP’ on his back, without his knowledge? Was the trio in it together? Was it a brazen attempt to rob him? Either way, Law knew it would be unwise to dally. The last time such a stroke of bad luck had happened—marvelously, children seemed drawn to him—accusations of pedophilia were outrageously hurled his way that he had a hard time disproving. I should detach myself from the situation and abscond, Law told himself, before ‘heart stealer’ was replaced by ‘child predator’ in the Marines’ records and his bounty posters. (While both granted him a foul reputation, he’d much rather not be associated with the latter.)

Lo and behold, he screwed up and stole a parting glance at the girl. Their eyes met and he felt a warmth gush through him and he knew it was futile to resist the silent plea he detected in her doe-eyed gaze that tugged at his supposedly frozen and severed heartstrings, rendering him incapable of turning his back on her. Lami…Lami would have expected him to offer his help. Besides, he only had to lift a finger against the cocksure boys; it would not take much effort.

Regardless, Law idled for a brief moment of hesitation and contemplation of his actions. He glanced around at numerous watchful eyes of an audience of nosy parkers gathered in their vicinity in anticipation of a brawl. For two pubescent boys, they caused the ruckus of a dozen men, demanding their voice be heard loud and clear throughout the crowd of onlookers.

With jutted out chins, the boys snatched up rocks from the ground. They pitched the rocks, one by one, into the air, and, in unison, they thwacked them skillfully as the rocks rained down. Rocks of varying sizes shot toward Law and whizzed past his ears, clattering on the ground several feet behind. The boys were either dismal or impressive with their aim to narrowly miss their target even at such close proximities.

Law remained unfazed, unblinking amidst the assault. His pulse stayed at a constant and his breath was calm. His greatest source of concern was the girl clinging stubbornly to his leg, refusing to let go throughout. Nonetheless, Law marched forward and seized one of the bats, directing the boys a cold glare. A loud smack of metal colliding with bone effected a searing pain in his side. Without flinching, Law only gritted his teeth and embraced the pain emanating from his thigh as he reciprocated the boys’ taunting with cavernous eyes and the quiet smile of a sleeping beast provoked.

“You’re a hundred years too early, brats, but thanks for scratching that insufferable itch,” Law intoned. He activated his haki and in the count of three, crushed the bat effortlessly in his grip. To the goggle-eyed faces of the boys, Law hurled the bat over his shoulder. The other boy determinedly raised his bat to strike. Law sidestepped in the nick of time, and instead, he reached down and grabbed the shirt of the girl. He fisted the fabric in his hand and wrenched her up to eye-level as he straightened upright. The boys, in their bafflement, could only stare as Law scowled at the girl.

“Brother? Don’t call me that in public, you little shit,” Law snapped. “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused me, having to search high and low for you, all over town?” His grasp of her shirt unrelenting, Law dangled her in the air. “You’re coming with me. We’re going home and I’ll teach you to run away again. And do me a favor? Save your breath apologizing or begging for sympathy. I think you’d be better off using your remaining energy instead to brace yourself for the world of pain you’ll be in once we’re home.”

Law shot the bullies a glower. “Do we have a problem? I’d suggest you tuck your tails between your legs and hurry away while I’ve got the good sense to remain lenient, lest you both fancy a mighty walloping yourselves.” If his words weren’t enough motivation, the graveness of his tone ought to send them running. The boys exchanged frantic glances before nervously blurting excuses about how late it had become and how they needed to be home in time for dinner, and they fled, never pausing, never slowing their pace as they sprinted in opposite directions.

With their escape, Law returned his attention to the girl. The crowd had dispersed; perhaps some would even contact the police about what they’d heard. Law didn’t care. If the girl kicked a fuss or cried or screamed, Law did not bat an eyelash. Seconds later, when they were left alone, except for a few strangers scattered in distant corners, peeping out with curiosity, Law gingerly lowered the girl to the ground. He gave her a glare for all the trouble she had caused him, before he took a deep inhalation and allowed his expression to soften.

“Don’t know what possessed you to think I could help, but you shouldn’t be so trusting of strangers, especially ones wielding weapons,” Law reproached, frowning. He turned halfway to leave, but paused after a step and stepped back towards her. “Are you lost?” he asked gruffly. “Do you have someplace to return to? Or are you alone?” If she was an orphan, well, he couldn’t just leave her to wander, especially since she reminded him of his sister. “Are you hungry?” he said, a moment later. Although apologizing was remarkably difficult, he figured he could at least buy her some food for the brief scare he might’ve caused her.

[ratherhavetheblues]

KELLY REICHARDT’S ‘WENDY AND LUCY’

© 2018 by James Clark

The truest way to the heart of Kelly Reichardt’s film, Wendy and Lucy (2008), may turn out to be its penultimate moment. This was not always my approach, as a reading of the Wonders in the Dark blog from February 15, 2012—A Dangerous Devotion: Lars von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark” and Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy”—would show. There I was intent upon engaging the protagonists of each work having risked everything (like Joan of Arc) for the sake of getting to the bottom of a dilemma unfortunately even beyond their very alert and brave powers. What, specifically, drives such souls to the brink of destruction?

There are ways of taking a closer look at the phenomenon, and Wendy and Lucyshows the way. Like Mouchette, a classic film figure under heavy fire, Wendy can no longer stand her emotionally violent, Midwestern blue-collar family and neighbors and their Rust Belt home base spanning Muncie and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Unlike Mouchette, the famous waif, she does not choose suicide as a meaningful change (nor is she destined to be immortalized by a forum of movie buffs). She hits the road with 500 dollars in savings from unspecified jobs, and a clunker supposedly capable of reaching that land of fool’s gold, Alaska. (Where others dream of gold, she—speaking volumes—dreams of a job in a cannery which, at least, does not resemble Indiana.) However, she does also bring a stunningly vast fortune in the form of her golden retriever, Lucy (a born retriever of buried treasures).

Right from the get-go we know Wendy will precipitate some kind of screw-up. Getting to that late and primary revelation mentioned above, there is Lucy in the back yard of a suburban Portland, Oregon, home, having become a foster-home for her as the upshot of Wendy’s jail time for shoplifting. (Perhaps before beginning with that end of their era together, in that tranquil yard, we should notice that, in the course of Wendy’s return to freedom she distributes posters including a photo, around the area where Lucy was last seen. “I’m lost!” the tag-line runs. When Mouchette is confronted in a forest by a figure suspicious about her intent, she defends herself by blurting out, “Lost, Sir! Lost!” The truly lost, Wendy, having found where her beloved had landed, proceeds there to confirm her incurable lostness. (And Lucy proceeds to confirm her genius.) The subversion of mainstream sentimental film reunions here is an important gift.

Wendy first sees Lucy gazing at a flock of seagulls circling her new and possibly very short-term yard. Calling out to her and saying, “You miss me, Lu?” Wendy passionately clings to the chain-link fence. Lucy forgets the seagulls and rushes to the only familiar aspect of a life having undergone a shock we never fully see, this being a remarkable hallmark of Reichardt’s narratives. “I’m sorry, Lu,” is a recognition that Wendy sees her friend as having smashed out the cliché ceiling where jerks come up smelling of roses in the hands of infinite forgiveness. “I know… I know, Lu” the wanderer emotes. But does she in fact comprehend that when, at the entrance of the grocery store she was about to rip off (after not entirely sincere calming kisses and caresses), Lucy could read her friend’s being a disappointment as spiked by, after Lucy’s desperate barking a warning, undergoing Wendy’s marching up to the leashed-secured companion, clamping down her snout and angrily telling her, “Don’t be a nuisance! I don’t need that?”

The beginning of Lucy’s painful realization that she doesn’t need the felon includes the frenzy on seeing her partner brought back to the store by a clerk and then taken away in a squad car (all the more disturbing in never seeing the back-door departure while left to puzzled and desperate staring at the front door). However, the generally supposed-to-be dull-one’s real struggle is left for us to reconstruct. As now newly composed, Lucy listens to Wendy’s solicitude and her heart is both joyous and something else, very hard to undergo. “Don’t be mad, Lu… Here, I got you this!” [a stick, to fetch]. She throws it toward where the seagulls were. “Such a good catch! Drop it! Good dog! Good girl!”  Lu happily plays, with old-time and not old-time energy. (Lucy’s flagging and once prominent lodestar [with funds having dwindled by way of the shoplifting fine, the car disposal and a theft/ assault in the woods] had become a lachrymose spent force like Mouchette; while Lucy had become a form of another cinema figure—unforgettable to a choice clientele—namely, Baltazar, the donkey, carelessly regarded as “The Mathematical Donkey.”) “I’m sorry, Lu,” is followed with a defeated cry. “I lost the car…” comes next, followed by the rather hasty, wishful thought, “That man seems very nice…” Suddenly it’s, “You be good…  I’m gonna make some money, and I’ll be back! OK, Lu, be good…”

How good Lucy could be in face of that collapse requires inference about how she weathered the abandonment. After Wendy’s release, she looks for Lucy at the pound. Though she comes up empty, we can imagine her dog going through the fear and depression seen in all the inmates on hand. We can imagine Lucy’s sense of being ripped away from not only a person of great interest but the infrastructure by which they had been sustained. Missing the interpersonal love intrinsic to that stemming would not be the end of Lucy’s heavy reflections. The moment of their kiss and caress through the fence out in the suburbs, fathoming how much is left and how much is gone, offers a wider range of action whereby other entities (seagulls, for instance; and the sea itself) offer creative love more resilient than that of Wendy.

From that perspective, accessible only to those who, with passions unstinting, beat back lostness, Wendy’s way of concluding the interplay is far more breathtaking and chilling than any gun battle. The intensity of this kinship should not be allowed to filter down as a sentimental highlight of melodramatic, advantage-addicted presences bending to the dubious powers of physics, religion and morality. Wendy, by and large, seems common and flighty. But, as we are about to investigate and define, her awkwardness and suspicion (and responsiveness to generosity) stem from an aristocratic spell. She does not cherish many others of her species for the very good reason –but too bluntly rendered—that they are far more remote from her energies than Lucy.

In the subsequent Reichardt film, Meek’s Cutoff (2010), Emily (played by actress, Michelle Williams, who also puts Wendy on the map) sees her real world shrink to one American Indian heading for the hills without her. She had considerably come to the point of being enraptured, from which to chart a difficult and seldom seen course. Here it is Lucy who sustains what Emily is about to undergo, while Wendy more closely approximates Emily’s game but uninspired husband, Solomon. While Wendy was spinning her wheels to little effect, Lucy was bringing lucidity to the matter, lucidity in the sense that effective love requires effective hate. That shocker, in the context of a sweet pup, requires incisive explanation. Creatures great and small, as our film makes efforts to highlight, find themselves intent upon many objectives. But their most remarkable action, namely, participating along with creativity itself (mustering the energy to complete its presence) is not widely accomplished among humankind. Wild creatures, including pets more fluent with carnality and its paradoxes, put together far better numbers of this sort. Though much of the world’s humans hunker down in finalities seeming to them consummate, from the perspective of that other way (being about kinetic coordination, rather than a stand) there comes to pass a state of impasse massively hindering forward momentum. By the same token, wild creatures (including some humans) feel at war; but also—through agencies of daring and reflection—a kind of peace. As the reservoir of coming to grips with impasse veers to more sanguine areas, there is the possibility of oscillating overtures amongst the options, especially in the syntheses of blithe percolation, increasingly putting heat on the opposition by attractive ways careening (like happy wolves) as part of a delicate wolf pack. Thereby, the problematicness of such a pragmatic inertia, never to be dislodged, can paradoxically flourish in ways integral to a cogent primordiality.

The power of the scene where Lucy and Wendy go their separate ways derives from that unique, compelling infrastructure. Such a smash-up, between those who have travelled where so many haven’t, elicits a post-mortem (where no one has actually died) for the sake of casting light upon a skill with consequences far beyond domestic viability. When it comes to breathing down Wendy’s neck to discern what’s the matter, we can begin by availing ourselves of Reichardt’s previous film, Old Joy (2006), where a couple of incompatible guys waste the beauties of rural Oregon and spend a bonfire night worsening their intrinsic depressiveness. In the course of Wendy’s joyless playing fetch-a-stick with Lucy where we first see them along a forested path in Oregon, the retriever stumbles upon a tribe of runaways spending the night around a bonfire. Actor, Will Oldham, who, in Old Joy, joylessly goes through the motions of play with the dog of the hour—Lucy, in fact—comes back to haunt Wendy and Lucy as once again a nocturnal presence proud of making a statement against those who work with a will. A (strategically significant) responder to Lucy’s neglect—an unwashed young girl with a large ring through one nostril and looking more affectionate than Wendy—readily becomes the leading light, eclipsing the loudmouth (Icky), though another boy, weighted down with a sense of his own errancy, also outperforms the medicine man. Wendy eventually comes into the picture, a picture of wanting to be somewhere else. She—a mixture of shyness and mistrust—divulges her travel plan, which prompts Lucy’s new friend to call out, “Hey. Icky, this lady’s going to Alaska!” That sets off Wendy’s having to hear the know-it-all recommend a company to work for (later we see her jotting down the particulars), without any recognition that she has anything in common with him. Increasing the alienation is Icky’s follow-up boasting about totaling a two-hundred-thousand-dollar earth mover there, when stoned, of course (Oldham’s playing the part of a stoner, in Old Joy). “They couldn’t pin it on me… I was gone!”) Her rather brittle body language here is a case of being all to the good and yet all to the bad. Before Lucy rushes ahead to that intriguing underworld, there is a play of twilight in the trees, smudges of vivid color—forming a dynamic incentive leaving Wendy far behind.

Following directly upon that wake-up call where a bonfire has a hard time priming Icky and Wendy toward some semblance of viability, there is Wendy’s parking her car on a quiet street; and a blurry pink figure, due to car and house lights springs, up by her window. “Sleep, girl,” she tells Lucy; but wakening is the keyword. Next morning our protagonists are wakened by a security officer, who informs her, “You can’t sleep here, Ma’am…” Almost simultaneously, a pigeon flashes skyward by that same window touched the night before. Its joining the patterns of exhortation constitutes a final bon voyage before Wendy’s limitations take over.

Her malaise and hard eyes in spying at the periphery of Icky’s campsite, before joining Lucy being treated well, bespeak more fear than alertness. The prompt death of her car (an Accord, of all things) while being told by the officer to move it sends her into an anxiety attack hardening into crude defensiveness. That same morning of ignition not happening brings the revelation that Lucy’s food bag contains 10 small kibbles. Rather than dip into her puny war chest to care for her partner, we have Lucy on a tight leash and Wendy scavenging for bottles and cans (an occupation of Oldham’s Kurt, in Old Joy). In their constriction (Lucy on the lookout for anything edible on the ground), Wendy ties her friend to a fixture at a strip mall while she goes off to a public washroom. She brushes her teeth, gives herself a sponge bath (attending to an injury at her Achilles heel) and fills a bottle with water; but Lucy does not become a beneficiary of that exercise, exposing how patently hopeless the master of rugged and woozy individualism amounts to. On the other hand, with the lady going to Alaska chewing on some nondescript scrap and Lucy at a loss to find even a scrap, their peril, pain and stoicism disclose that this is no mere folly but an enduring and profound love, however disastrous.

The dead car having changed a rout into a massacre, Wendy attempts to shoplift a can of I AMS (and sundry snacks), and the young stock boy who intercepts her proves to be an instance of all she hates and carelessly hopes to hide from. (The shoplifting scene in Greta Gerwig’s film, Lady Bird [2017], where two young check-out girls regard the effort as a laughable farce, seems to be more Icky than Wendy—a somewhat inadvertent underlining of how uniquely pitched our film has been composed.) The clerk may be a schoolboy part-timer, but his rhetorical apparatus, as fortified by a crucifix, comes to us as redolent of a fanatical opportunism able to override the far more rounded and easy-going manager. So well on top of her subject, Reichardt endows the moralist with a voice recalling smug Eddy in Leave It to Beaver; and also Kurt in Old Joy and Icky in our film today. Not leaving the experience with that, she shows us that Wendy herself has little trouble slipping into that murder-inciting register. “Excuse me, Ma’am? I think you’re forgetting something…” More an Inquisition than a secular mishap, Andy, the born cop, impressively hounds his boss, Mr. Hunt, who had begun with the modulated outlook, “OK, well, what are we talking about here?” Having nothing to do with grey zones, the upstanding choir boy invokes an egalitarian axiom being hard to deny. “The rules apply to everyone equally.” With the can of I Ams on the desk as Exhibit A, the clean-up drive puts forward another indubitable truth, “If a person can’t afford dog food, they shouldn’t have a dog.” Wendy, who had only too quickly put out the fabrication that she was intending to pay for the loot after checking on how her dog, tied outside, was doing (far worse, in fact, than Wendy was able to comprehend), expertly directs her smarts and phony sincerity to the generous motives of Mr. Hunt. “I’m very sorry… This isn’t going to happen again…” (The frenzy, despair and hopelessness of Lucy, on seeing her being ushered back in, comprising what we can imagine to be far from a unique error.) Andy presses on, with, “The food is not the issue. It’s about setting an example, right?” Wendy’s being as annoying a sophist as Andy kills any hope she might have had. “I’m not from around her, so I couldn’t be an example…” This brings Hunt to say, “We have a policy, Ma’am.”

Film stories about troubled humans and their dogs seem to invite the clientele to an evening of strong feelings everyone can easily appreciate. Wendy and Lucyis a film far from easy to fathom. In their first walk seen together, after a rather routine fetch-and-drop ramble, Lucy upgrades to that remarkably rough-hewn young girl who, when Wendy finally catches up, tells her, “Great dog!” [greatness being measured not by looks but by another kind of presence]. Learning of her name, the nomad declares happily, “You’re a sweetheart, Lucy!” What she sees, even if she can’t begin to explain it, is depth. She asks Wendy about Lucy’s breed, not as if it matters. The question catches the owner only half-listening, “I don’t know… a mix of hunting dog and retriever…” That verbal fumble becomes one of a series of sloppy assertions in Reichardt’s films, exposing the speaker as lacking articulative grip but unable to admit any shortfall in mastery within a troubling preoccupation. (Propped upon that bemusing skid, there is the nearly magical dialectic of hunt and retrieve, the “greatness” of which Wendy misplays and Lucy embraces.) Another form of elegant and ironic composition comes our way here in the form of a reprise of hugging Lucy, this time by Wendy. On realizing that collecting empty drink containers is not going to fit the bill, Wendy, outside the grocery store, performs a preamble to theft she has repeated frequently. She, too, caresses Lucy, and Lucy, as with the person the night before not having any ulterior motives, licks her face, always having been on the lookout for Wendy being as heartfelt as herself. Why would the supposedly advanced discernment need to prepare the lower form toward passivity, unless the latter has been treated to Wendy’s dark side, again and again? (Here, once again, the Shirley Temple, Depression Era concomitants of this duo lead first only to the shattered, for the sake of harder and deeper gifts.) “Don’t bother anyone, OK?” is the remarkably cynical patter on account of providing for her dear one’s breakfast. Lucy begins to wail and swish her tail fiercely in a vain gesture to make the coming outrage devolve to some kind of creative lift. Wendy turns back in anger and scolds, “What did I say?” She clamps Lucy’s snout and we wonder at the crude hysteria by which she would suppose to attain to innovative distinction.

After paying the $50 fine, Wendy returns to the scene of the crime and the scene of the end of her partnership. The bus that drives her there (a conduit of freedom) contains an ad which runs, “It’s not too late to sleep like a baby.” That seems the right time to attend to the sizeable unemployment and poverty constituency at that moment of truth. Having scandalized so many other expectations, this film is very apt to transcend political and moral bromides. All the scavengers flocking about the bottle returns depot are unfailingly gracious. When Wendy, seeing fit to retire from that trade after an hour or so, contributes to the cache of a man in a wheelchair, he describes her generosity as “cool.” Right from that first walk, ending with Icky and associates having more in common with the scavengers than marauders, a murmuring, lullaby motif of a woman’s voice wafts over moments of promise. Accordingly, it comes to light during the first moments of her bottles pick-ups. Its maintaining a sensuous balance, where imbalance so overtly threatens, combines with Lucy’s vigorous command of emotions (and capacity to be still) to expose sleeping-like-a-baby inertia as decadence, not accomplishment. Wendy, for all her gross incompetence, has had the drive to leave Rust Belt Fort Wayne. But choosing an extravagant (“cool”) destination she clearly cannot afford, from the points of view of money and maturity, leaves her floundering in distraction and melancholy similar to the casualties of the defunct saw mill which pushed a modicum of self-confidence to the total loss of such a state. (There is a startling and thrilling cinematic delivery apropos of this vale of anxiety. The district repair shop is closed for Sunday and a dispirited Wendy cups her hands to the shop’s window to see its interior free of reflection. In Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go [2010]—where a “Miss Lucy” is fired from her teaching job for siding with school children having been being bred for body parts—the schoolgirl protagonist and her friends cup their hands to a travel bureau window in order to ascertain that an employee within is the mother [the “origin”] of the doomed protagonist.)

Two other fixtures of that Portland exurb are the grandfatherly Walgrens parking lot minder who is mindful of Wendy; and a demented, self-pitying and rather far-seeing thief who steals about half of her meagre liquid assets. The man who said a mouthful when he said, “You can’t sleep here, Ma’am,” does in fact demonstrate alertness to Wendy’s predicament and that of those meek undead. Though he never deals with Lucy, the parking monitor functions in this distressed-dog movie the way Edmund Gwenn calms the maelstrom in Lassie Come Home (1943). Here, once again, good-will folk wisdom and cliched expectation in the foreground are no match for that nature in the background which Reichardt knows to be paramount. In response to Wendy’s counting on the local pound to eventually produce a Lucy Come Home, the Gwenn figure recommends the more active strategy (seemingly proven in his family history) of leaving on the ground items of her clothing to induce the missing loved-one to the happy fate befalling Lassie. Her departure from him includes his gift of a few dollars, all he can spare on a minimum wage salary, while making sure his granddaughter (having a body language in league with Andy) doesn’t see what is transpiring. (Just before that, we found Wendy angrily stalking about, demanding Lucy to appear and stop spoiling her excellent life. She catches up with Andy, being picked up by his mother after work, and punk-style, howls, “Have a great night, OK? Your son’s a real hero! [“Lucy! Come now!”].) A sweetheart, like Gwenn; but careful not to disrupt mainstream family priorities. Gwenn’s independence as a tinker provides food for thought. Waiting for news of Lucy, Wendy—perhaps feeling the need to do justice to the greenery she has denied herself—thinks to spend a night in the forest nearby the train tracks, where a golden patch of foliage only slightly steadies her. But her bid for bracing solitude exposes her to, like so many other of her overtures, a down side of the open road. The soporific aura of that hard-luck, wrong-side-of-the-tracks constituency seems to confirm her assumption that risk inheres in a field readily and quite pleasantly consumed. With her elderly friend (spending numbing days standing on the dead cement, and counting it a great improvement over his previous all-night job), she hears him declare, “It’s all fixed!” [needing a job to find a job]. “That’s why I’m going!” [to another type of numbing]. Suddenly highlighting the meaning of true risk is a predator who tells her, “Don’t look at me!” as he loots that portion of her money she hasn’t kept in her money-belt. The real plus of this episode consists in the sociopath very closely seeing-eye-to-eye with Wendy. “I don’t like this place… It’s the fuckin’ people that bother me… I’m out here trying to be a good boy, but they don’t want to let me… They treat me like having no rights… They can smell the fear… Fuck! I killed more than 700,000 people with my bare hands! Fuck if I know!”

“They can smell the fear,” is a brief sentence presiding over many horrific missteps. (Lucy can smell the fear.) In the aftermath of the car trouble, Wendy calls back to Indiana and her sister and her sister’s husband, on the vague supposition they might be interested in her troubled life to date. The far more sanguine husband picks up the call and kindly listens about the end of the vehicle. “It’s kinda bad here, actually…” “What does she want us to do about that?” the sister loudly asks, being like one of those the invader imagines killing with his bare hands. Wendy comes back with, “I don’t want anything,” [from the likes of you]. But countenancing the likes of her—and him—makes, as Lucy knows, more sense than going to Alaska. As with the complaining mugger and the whole town, it seems (and maybe the whole planet), vividly addressing sleeping babies seems to be a forgotten, or perhaps never found, skill. (Andy’s rabidity being merely a variant of falling prey to a gigantic creative exigency no one wants to pay the cost of.)

Lucy, on the other hand, has shown us what succeeding-to-thrive looks like. (A recent Time magazine expose, of the very smart and the very workaholic hogging material wealth, prescribes ways of letting others in on that rational advantage binge. That would be way down the track where Lucy thrives.) Wendy hops a freight going North, and as she slouches on the floor with a scowl on her face she looks out at the countless conifers (the most primordial trees), pulled along like toffee, into a mysterious weave by the speeding train. Lucy, too, is carried along, by the vicissitudes of foster care. Wendy is crushed by the countless obstacles. Lucy, by her own lights, knows of a fluid, mysterious range she is acute enough to recognize as being her real home. Lucy Come Home.

[tenscupcake]

electrostatic potential (26/?)

ten/rose. quite adult this ch. my notes on ao3 are super rambly and emotional, so i will not repeat them here! in short: i worked /really/ hard on this chapter, and i’m scared as hell to post it. thanks to @goingtothetardis​ and @aroseofstone​ for the betas. summary: as the doctor and rose traverse time and space looking for adventure, they slowly fall victim to a mysterious energy that can manipulate their emotions. though confused and unnerved by the cerebral affliction, neither of them understands its cause, or realizes that it could jeopardize their friendship. what will it take for them to discover the truth? this chapter on ao3 | back to chapter 1 on ao3

As the Doctor deconstructs Rose’s garden, he uses more caution than usual. They’ve both agreed they don’t want to be confined to their minds, and the simulated environment would be superfluous for what they’re about to do – they likely won’t be paying much attention to their surroundings. But it’s a tenuous process. He doesn’t want to completely sever their connection just yet, and it can be difficult to turn off some telepathic elements without withdrawing entirely. As the last vestiges of the mirage disappear, he retreats to the shallower parts of her mind while inviting her deeper into his. It’s advantageous for him to have more control and leeway while he’s teaching her, but optimal intimacy requires equal access.

With a concerted effort, the scale slowly starts to tip so it’s more symmetrical between them, but he slips a couple of times, and her stream of communication falters just slightly. It is for such brief moments that Rose likely doesn’t notice, but it’s still an unpleasant reminder that some of his finer telepathic skills are a little out of practice. He focuses onto what he can still sense from her – passing thoughts, lust, anticipation – grasping onto these abstract strands so he isn’t swept away. After a few moments, they find a balance together.

Having hyped this up for her so much, the Doctor is suddenly anxious to get started, fearing it won’t live up to the expectations he’s built. Is it only so great for him because he’s a Gallifreyan? Will a human not get as much out of the experience? Fantasizing about the idea of doing it was one thing; staring down the reality of making it happen is another.

But as Rose’s mind nestles inside of his and she makes herself at home, he breathes a little easier. Tension he hadn’t realized he was holding melts away. A warm, comfortable sense of calmness suffuses through him with every robust double heartbeat. It just feels right, like he’s been lost and wandering and finally found his way home. Rose always has this effect on him, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever quite get used to it. His mind drifted alone for too long.

“Rose,” he breathes aloud. It was meant to be an acknowledgment that they’ve reached a suitable equilibrium, but it comes out more as a sigh of pleasure. An offering of gratitude. An exultation. Some combination thereof. But his reasons for doing it are irrelevant, because for the first time, he hears the word filtering through her ears. Processes the sound of his voice through her perspective. It’s something he never would have believed, had she told him at any time prior, but in this moment, it’s sensual to her.

He didn’t know exactly what to expect going into this; what it would be like to get a steady stream of Rose’s unfiltered, uncensored perception of him. But this initial sample is enough to leave him dumbfounded. The Doctor? An elderly, out of practice Time Lord? Poster boy for asceticism? Champion of geeks everywhere? Sensual?

He still doesn’t understand what Rose sees in him, but he knows this is but a preview of what’s to come. He’s going to do a lot more than say her name before the night is through – what will she think then? How can he prepare himself adequately, when her reaction to something so minor is enough to bring the gears in his mind to a screeching halt?

She’s going to destroy him. But it’s going to be brilliant.

Opening his eyes, he finds her are still closed.

“I know I’ve said it’s easier to close your eyes,” he says. “But can you open them, now?”

She slowly lifts her reluctant lids, squinting and blinking for several moments as though the soft firelight of the room is harsh sunlight. Every moment her eyes are open he is mesmerized by them: her pupils wide, glassy orbs in a pool of dark honey. But she continually loses focus as though she’s disoriented, so he can’t hold her gaze for long. They’ve never done this with eyes open before, and it can take a bit of getting used to. There’s so much input to the brain in the midst of a connection like this; having to process visual inputs on top of it all can be taxing.

“You still feel me?” he asks.

She nods, too overwhelmed to speak. Not a good sign, he takes it, that she’s overwhelmed before they’ve really done anything, rendered speechless by merely opening her eyes. But they’ve made their agreement, and he’s too desperate for this to indulge the worry that she’ll pass out anymore. As long as she’s still freely consenting (and she is, constantly and enthusiastically in his mind), he doesn’t see how anything could change his mind now.

“I need to try something,” he says quietly, doing what he can to minimize the sensory overload. “To make sure this will work.”

“’Kay,” she nods.

Slowly, he shifts his fingertips away from her temple, trailing slowly down her cheek, her throat, until his palm comes to rest on her collarbone. There’s no disruption in their link. Her transient fantasies, excitement, and jitters are still flowing through his point of contact.

“How about now?”

“Yeah.” She gives him a smile. It seems to be getting easier for her to keep her eyes open.

“Good.” He grins back. “It’s not exactly convenient to have to have my hand on your head the whole time. How about…” He lifts his palm, until only the tips of his fingers caress her chest, teasing the tops of her breasts. He fixates on her telepathic signature, clutching onto to the outstretched tendrils of her mind, and it almost works. But his pinky finger accidentally lifts away from her skin, and the thread he was hanging by suddenly breaks. Her presence starts to slip away, and he doesn’t react quickly enough to catch it: in an instant he’s left alone in his mind. He can’t even finish his sentence as the abrupt solitude crushes him.

But Rose swoops in to save them both. Immediately realizing he’s gone, she loops an arm around his shoulders, slipping one hand beneath the collar of his shirt. Palm pressed against back, she buries her other hand in his hair, and something magical happens. Her mind swiftly and smoothly weaves itself back into his, with a softness that leaves him breathless. She’s never initiated the link on her own before, and he wouldn’t have bet anything substantial that she was capable of it yet. He thought for the foreseeable future he’d always have to be the one to do that.

Impressed and immensely proud of her initiative, a flood of affection washes through him, and quickly overflows into her mind as it does. With a soft gasp, she closes her eyes as she’s inundated with it, clenching her fist in his hair. Watching her physically react to something he’s given her is but another teaser of what’s ahead, and there’s twinge of excitement in his shorts.

“Brilliant,” he whispers. Convinced enough that they have a functioning system now, he rolls her gently onto her back and settles between her legs, suspending himself above her. Ensuring both his hands are securely on her skin for extra precaution, he kisses her, hard and fast, unable to temper himself anymore. She doesn’t complain, but matches his frantic pace, scratching her nails on his back.

It’s even better than the kiss in the garden. It would be intoxicating enough on its own – her soft curves beneath him, the delicate desperation in her kisses, the firm tug of her hand in his hair. But feeling what she does too is simply intoxicating.

His body hovering carefully over hers makes her feel protected. Cherished. His lips are slightly cool to her, and he tastes like clean water, minerals, a hint of sugar. His hair sifting between her fingers is pleasant to her, turns her on. Pulling him closer with the hand between his shoulder blades makes her feel powerful. In her eyes he’s the savior of the universe, and she’s the luckiest woman alive to have him in her arms, if only for the evening.

The hand in his hair drifts lower, over his ear, until she cups his cheek in her hand, splaying her fingers, brushing her thumb over his jaw. She likes the textures she finds there. The prickly hairs of his sideburn, the smoothness of his freshly shaved cheek, his angular jawline. Despite his slim frame, she considers him strong. Inhaling a deep breath through her nose, she gets a whiff of his aftershave, a crisp foresty scent that makes her head spin. Everything is so manly. It saturates every cell in her body with arousal. Her skin flushes with heat from head to toe, moisture pools between her legs, pulsing with need.

With such solid proof that she is attracted to him, and everything about him, the Doctor is at a loss. His strongest impulse is to contest and deny such notions, but this time he can’t. Her thoughts are completely genuine, and the physiological signals are downright unquestionable.

She’s tried to tell him, a couple of times now, how much she fancies him, but it’s never been as tangible as it is now. He’s suddenly dizzy, his equilibrium thrown off. Hyperaware of the planet spinning beneath him, the galaxies hurtling through space. And though he possesses a respiratory bypass, he can’t seem to flip it on. He’s panting between their rushed kisses.

Sufficiently overwhelmed, he reluctantly pulls away. With a few jagged deep breaths, some of the disorientation subsides.

“Molto bene.” He can’t help but smile, a bit delirious already.

“You were right,” Rose confesses in a rush, nodding vigorously.

Pride washes through him. Knowing she’s going to enjoy this at least almost as much as he will boosts his confidence.

 “I know it’s not easy,” he sobers up a little as his breathing stabilizes. “You’re still working on maintaining this naturally. But I’ll do my best to keep it active. So long as we’re touching, it shouldn’t break. But the more skin is touching, the easier it’ll be. The less you’ll have to think about it.”

She nods again, swallowing hard.

Both his hands are already beneath her top now, but he hooks his thumbs around the hem so he can hike it up her torso, and she lifts up her arms and wrests it off the rest of the way so he doesn’t have to. He nods down to her bra, and she unclasps it and wriggles out of it, as well, faster than he’s ever seen her do before. Rewarded with the lovely view of her chest, he allows himself a few moments to admire her perfection. He could stare at her all night and be content – if her smooth, fair skin didn’t look so tantalizing to taste.

He thinks back to earlier today, how positively she responded to stimulation there.

Curious, he lowers his head to her breast. Pulling its peak into his mouth with his teeth gently, he draws a circle around her nipple with his tongue. Rose bites back a moan, and his head spins with the surge of pleasure that pours through their link. It feels good –impossibly good. It’s not confined to where his lips touch: there’s ghosts of pleasure trickle between her legs, tingles and tiny muscle spasms as though he’s touching her there, instead. It spreads through her body from there, leaving no muscle group untouched; back arching, fists clenching, legs writhing.

Okay, theory confirmed. Human nipples remarkably more sensitive than Gallifreyan. He notes the observation, and continues to stroke the sensitive bud with his tongue, more to gratify himself than Rose, though he’d never admit it. He doesn’t have to learn to enjoy the exotic, unfamiliar stimulation; his physiology responds just fine on its own. Before long he finds himself grinding his now-aching erection against her thigh.

Feeling him react this way to her pleasure, his rigid length pressing against her because of what she feels, Rose is suddenly empowered. Inhibitions lowered. Impatient for even more.

Rearranging her hands, she starts undoing the buttons on his shirt, starting from nearest the collar, working frantically. Eager to touch him and to learn what her touch feels like to him. Keeping one hand on her skin at all times, he helps her divest him of the shirt one sleeve at a time. For once, he doesn’t have another one on underneath. Now that it’s likely he’ll be disrobing in a rush every night, he figures it’s just easier this way. She presses both her palms against his chest, then slowly guides them lower, mapping the contours of his torso. She relishes every inch she touches – the slight musculature of his pectorals, the manly hair. His ribs protrude through his skin in some places but it’s not offensive to her. She doesn’t find him scrawny, but perfectly proportioned. Biting her lip, she broadcasts a vivid reminder that she fancies everything about him.

He can hardly stand it, being bombarded with such compliments and forced to look at himself through such a glorifying lens. If he weren’t experiencing it so intimately, he’d never believe she actually felt this way. It seems almost insufferably vain not to turn away from it; and yet, he physically can’t. Having their minds fastened together is so divine, nothing she could think would make him purposely sever it.

Deep down, he can’t help but think he doesn’t deserve any of this. The killer of his own kind, taking a lover? The ancient destroyer of worlds, seducing a young mortal?

But Rose detects this fleeting insecurity, and insists that he does deserve it. He deserves her affection, and what’s more, he deserves to feel so much pleasure that he sees a supernova behind his eyes.

With Rose’s soft persuasion, the self-deprecating thoughts vanish from his mind as though they were never there.

With only both of their growing desire left in their wake, he groans with anticipation, grinding against her again.

Rose pushes back against his shoulders, and flips him onto his back with ease. Still dazed by her blatant adoration for him, he’s hardly in a position to take the lead, and happily submits to her control. He couldn’t possibly have prepared himself for this. It’s been so long he hadn’t accurately remembered how intense it is.

She throws a leg over his waist and straddles him, but doesn’t quite touch his erection. She leans forward, the gentle weight of her breasts brushing his chest. His arms wind around her back, his hands touching everywhere he can to sustain their connection, each of his fingertips humming with the current as he concentrates on making it even stronger. Using her newfound abilities to find his most sensitive spots, she kisses her way along his neck, lingering at each one, making him thrust helplessly into the air.

She loves making him squirm like this, and loves the way he tastes now. Saltier than usual. Not so different from a human bloke, she thinks. And he’s warmer than usual, too, flushed with arousal as much as she is, and it turns her on even more.

“Why did we wait so long to do this,” Rose murmurs, breathless next to his ear.

He mumbles out a garbled sentiment of agreement, just before she grazes her tongue along the shell of his ear, then nibbles his earlobe between her teeth before swiping it with her tongue, too. Shivers course through his body; he lets out a sharp gasp as a bright flash of pleasure lights up their link. With only a split second delay, Rose shivers, too.

He didn’t even know he had that one, ‘til now.

In retrospect, Gallifreyans may have been boring sexual partners compared to humans.

“Rose, come on…” he begs, rolling his hips again.

She takes mercy on him and wriggles back until her bum rubs against his length.

“Oh!” she cries out just as the warm friction of the movement brings him a rush of relief.

Spurred on by this tempting flicker of his pleasure, she lifts off the bed momentarily to rearrange herself; aligning her center with the length of his erection. Then, slowly, she rocks forward.

Oh, is right. Oh, yes. Her fingernails dig into his sides as her eyes roll back, and the way she breathes out his name is the most erotic thing he’s ever heard.

He thought it was overwhelming before, feeling Rose in times like this through a filter. Her sexual excitement is particularly potent, and when it transmits to him long-distance, it can be so intensely arousing that it in itself becomes pleasurable – heightened sensitivity, increased blood flow, vivid fantasies. It greatly facilitates his own arousal, and makes any subsequent stimulation that much better. A convenient shortcut, considering their biologically mismatched sex drives.

But all that is incomparable to this. Either his memory hasn’t done the experience justice, or Rose is simply much more adept than his previous partners.

He certainly wouldn’t complain, if it was only his own sensations he was feeling. Rose’s softest curves rubbing against his aching member, clothes or not, is superb in itself. It’s the stuff of fantasies. But as if that wasn’t enough, he can now feel everything that Rose does, too. Every single inch of her body is now an extension of his own. Every nerve ending she stimulates alights in his own mind, as though they belong to him. And he can feel everything. The persistent, solid heat of him beneath the fabric, the delicious friction that brings heat rushing between her legs and sends intense swells of pleasure down to her toes. The slick moisture seeping into her knickers as she moves. The tension building in her belly, coiling tighter and tighter as she perfects the angle of her thrusts to rub her clit.

His length pulses ever harder as she rolls back and forth, again and again, chasing two sets of pleasure now. The fact that they’re still half-clothed doesn’t matter. Nothing does except finishing together. How it happens is suddenly irrelevant.

He moves his hands down, slipping beneath her shorts, squeezing her bum beneath the fabric, pulling her down against him harder.

“That’s it,” he encourages, closing his eyes as the onslaught begins. He’d normally need much longer to climax this way, but Rose is nearly to the point of no return, and she’s dragging him along with her.

Rose sobs out a curse above him.

Their pleasure, physical and mental, intertwines seamlessly. The Doctor loses track of whose neurons are whose as they all fire at once. A million tiny lightning strikes in the synapses that are indistinguishable as Time Lord or human. Just as Rose wished, a supernova bursts behind his eyes, blinding him as they stumble towards a peak together. Reality fades from their grasp, until all that exists is the friction of two layers of clothes. Writhing limbs, cries of pleasure, the spasms of involuntary muscles. The effects of two nervous systems in overdrive synergize, extending the ecstasy longer than either of them could ever experience on their own.

As the pleasure finally ebbs, the dizziness from earlier starts to return. It’s been so long since he’s had one like this, he feels lightheaded.

If that went on mere seconds longer, he might have been the one passing out.

She collapses on top of him, her limbs jelly.

For a long while, they don’t speak, they simply lie together, hands rubbing bare skin, basking in the satisfaction. It’s different than the times they’ve already had sex, in the best possible way: they both already know exactly how the other felt during the entire experience. Not a moment is wasted in anxiety that either of them performed less than admirably. The only thing tempering Rose’s euphoria is that it didn’t quite go as she had planned.

“It wasn’t how I imagined it, either,” he confesses aloud.

“No,” she giggles as she looks up at him, chin on his chest. “But ‘s okay,” she adds. “It was lovely.” Using all her strength, she lifts up on wobbly muscles so she can bring her mouth to his. The kiss is lazy and sloppy, both of them fatigued.

“Always wondered…” she begins as she rolls off of him, flopping onto her side. He turns towards her so he can maintain as much contact as possible, skin touching everywhere it can, their mouths close enough to touch again whenever either of them feels the impulse. “What it feels like for a bloke.”

“And?” Struck with the impulse, he kisses her gently.

“It’s similar. But it’s also like nothin’ I ever felt… it’s more… concentrated for you.” She returns the gesture. “’S almost… explosive.”

He laughs at that, and only just now remembers he has a soiled spot on his shorts. But it’s not important right now.

His mouth meets hers again, and lingers this time, a slow, heated kiss that kindles the fading embers of arousal within their link. With every brush of his lips, he sends a bouquet of gratitude for being willing to try this, and assures her that he’d very much like to do it again. Sooner rather than later. Preferably before Rose goes to sleep tonight. Fortunately for him, she returns the sentiment, and then some. She makes it very clear that she’s not yet had her fill of him.

He smiles so widely that it messes up their kiss.

Not for the first time, he’s overcome with the urge to tell her he loves her. But he stifles it down before she can decipher the ephemeral thought.

With or without a confession, the Doctor is still consumed by a sense of possessiveness. He never wants to let her go. Never wants to be apart from her. He never even wants to break this link, even temporarily. Sod saving the universe; they can stay on Tarohanda forever, talking and making love with minds intertwined. Vulnerable though the thoughts are, these he doesn’t try to hide from Rose, and she treats each one as a treasure.

Sounds good to me, she responds through their link, so they can keep kissing.

As their kiss grows deeper, their hands wander – his to her breasts, hers to his hair. Their link is flooded with both of their memories of their recent encounter, the transcendent seconds of bliss they shared together, and it brings both of them back to the cusp of intimacy. Rose is the first to be noticeably aroused, moaning into his mouth, tugging on his hair. But it doesn’t take the Doctor long to follow suit, and he’s hard again in a matter of minutes.

Really glad, he groans as she throws a leg over his hip, brushing his erection, you didn’t pass out yet.

Mmmh, she agrees. More than ready for another round.

I was quite looking forward to – he groans as she sucks on his bottom lip – shagging you properly.

Yes, she rocks into him.

Want to know – he gasps as her pleasure surges through him – how it feels when I’m inside you.

Fuck, yes.

He breaks them out of the kiss, and deftly reaches down to unfasten Rose’s shorts. She does the same to his, and just for an instant, they both forget about skin contact. When their connection is momentarily broken, they both gasp, and their eyes meet immediately, sorrow and pleas for forgiveness exchanged in their gaze. He reaches for her face, touching a few fingers to her temple for the fastest reunion. It only takes a second before they both exhale with relief. He keeps his hand there as Rose gets rid of their shorts, with only a little help from the Doctor’s opposite hand.

Both of them finally bare, the Doctor guides Rose onto her back, and settles some of his weight on top of her before removing his hand. With so much skin touching now, the connection will no doubt thrive regardless of where his hands are.

He closes his eyes and focuses on the feminine biological signals flowing into his mind. Rose is keening, hot and damp between her legs, her racing heartbeat throbbing in her clit, still swollen from her first orgasm. Every breath is a slow, jagged gasp. Desperate for them to be joined properly, she suppresses the urge to fidget beneath him. She embraces him warmly from within their link, basking in the fullness that being together like this brings. And yet, her body reminds him, between her legs she’s empty and aching for him. It’s time for both worlds to collide.

Leaving a hand on her side for good measure, he brings one down to her knee, lifting it up to give him more room. She takes it one step further, wrapping her leg around his, resting on the back of his thigh.He aligns himself properly, and his eyes flutter closed as a slick wetness coats the head of his cock. He feels himself there, thick and warm, teasing her entrance, and her body beckons him inside, her interior walls clenching and expanding in preparation.

He decides he’s too curious, though, to rush to his final destination. Both to tease her and to experience more of her distinctive feminine pleasure, he guides member higher instead, tucked between her folds, searching. The moment he finds what he’s looking for, he swears he almost loses consciousness. For a juvenile few seconds, he almost wishes he had one of these. It’s more sensitive than any similarly sized area of his body; the lightest pressure brings almost overwhelming sensation. There’s dynamite contained in this little bundle of nerves. He repeats the motion, grazing the head of his cock over her clit again and again.

And, stars, what Rose feels as he touches her there. Pleasure, yes, of course, but there are other things, too. She can indulge him this way just by lying there, and it makes her feel powerful. She’s dripping wet for him, he’s rock hard for her, and it feels like they were made for this. She laments how utterly stupid they are, to not have been doing this all along. He’s warm and solid and she can feel the contours of him, foreskin and veins and all between her folds but instead of repulsing her, these details only turn her on more. Because she knows it’s enjoyable for him, in a way touching her this way with his hands or his tongue isn’t. It’s something that caters to them both, and she appreciates that.

For precisely that reason, he can’t wait any longer. He repositions himself back to her entrance, and slowly pushes inside.

Rose gasps, biting down on his shoulder, and his vision goes fuzzy with the onslaught of unfamiliar sensations it brings.

It’s fantastic as it is, delving inside of Rose Tyler, the slick warmth enveloping him, coaxing him deeper. It’s enough to make him see stars on its own, and he can’t blame human blokes for so often finishing too soon. But tonight, as much as he is being surrounded, he’s being filled. It’s something his own biology is incapable of emulating. Deep, hidden muscles stretch to accommodate him, and it could almost be uncomfortable, if it weren’t so immensely fulfilling and intimate. As the soft contours inside of her cushion and welcome him, she relaxes beneath his weight, the satisfying pressure of him inside her slowly calming tense muscles. Her other leg wraps around his waist, and she pulls him closer, digging her heels into his bum to take him in deeper because she feels so complete when they’re connected.

Every thought from her mind is telling him move, move, move but he can’t. Not yet. He wants to savor this. He kisses her, instead, thanking her for being so willing to try this with him. For opening her mind to him. For sharing herself so intimately with him. For the way she’s holding him right now. For everything.

She rolls her hips, and he shifts inside of her, bringing a burst of pleasure for them both, and their kiss is broken as they groan in harmony.

Though he mourns leaving her silky, sweet lips, he pulls back and starts to move.

She implied that it was different, the way he experienced sex. She must have been right, because hers is different, too. It builds so slowly and for so long that it consumes her whole body. Her hands clench into fists on his back, her toes curl where they’re resting on his backside, her largest muscle groups contract and relax in a slow, regular rhythm as her body prepares for release. It leaves her breathless; chest heaving and the most beautiful sounds falling from her lips as she draws closer.

They’re both incapable of any semblance of conversation as they become lost in one another. With double the nerve signals to receive, every ounce of their fused brain power is dedicated to sensory input; there’s none left to string together a coherent sentence. Their only concept of reality is each other; nothing exists beyond this bed, nor even beyond where their skin touches. Amidst light caresses and warm shivers of pleasure, his sensations and hers compete for their attention but neither ever wins out. A lull in pleasure for one is a spike in pleasure for the other. It never lets up, and neither of them could possibly handle any more, but they greedily chase after more nonetheless. Rutting faster, begging each other for nothing specific.

Together they climb, their pleasure melding together for the second time. Telepathy notwithstanding, the laws of biology dictate it shouldn’t be possible to experience both perspectives, certainly not at the same time. The sensory overload is enough to drive them both to near insanity. It’s too much to process. Emotions swirl chaotically through their minds, until he can hardly distinguish whose are whose. Impatience to finish. Reluctance for their union to be over. Gratitude that they’ve finally given in to their desires. Fear that they’ll be separated. Joy. Lust. Love. He hardly dares think it, but it’s unmistakable.

Before either of them can dwell on concrete words that don’t do justice to their tumultuous feelings, the Doctor rocks into her harder. Her curves cushioning the impact gloriously, their skin slick with sweat reducing the friction. As they both race to the peak, he reaches a hand between them to tend to her clit, and the added dose of pleasure causes them both to shudder, falter in their rhythm just enough to send them tumbling over the edge.

It’s not a supernova he seems this time, as they ascend together. Nor even a hypernova. It’s only Rose. Her back arched, lips parted, face contorted in pleasure. Leaving crescent-shaped indentations in his back as she clings onto him. Breathing out his name in a way he hopes he’ll never forget, no matter how many times he regenerates. He calls out her name one last time too, as she flutters around him and he spills everything into her. Eight limbs tremble through a harmony of soft sighs and rough moans.

The next few minutes are a blur.

He doesn’t recall collapsing on top of her, without enough decorum to support some of his weight so he doesn’t crush her. Doesn’t remember slipping out of her, or removing his hand from between their bodies. But somehow he’s ended up lifeless atop her, his face smushed into her pillow, whispering her name between panting breaths. She kisses the side of his neck, humming contentedly, and he’s relieved she isn’t uncomfortable, because he doesn’t know how he could move. Her hands are still on his back, and she rubs them up in down in slow, soothing motions, guiding him gently down from heaven.

He can still feel her in his mind, sated, weightless, exhausted. In love with him.

He’s too bloody knackered to be stressed about the potential ramifications of that last one, at the moment.

It feels wonderful, being loved.

It feels like only a moment later he’s startled awake.

Rose is talking to him.

How long has she been trying to get his attention? What did she say?

“You did!” Rose exclaims. She sounds indignant.

“I did what?” he mumbles, lifting his heavy head just enough to speak without the pillow muffing the words.

“Fall asleep!” She’s still annoyed, but a bit amused, too.

“I…” He lifts up a little more, using his elbow for leverage to look at her. “Did I?”

“You fell asleep, mister.”

He groans sleepily and rolls off of her, guilt catching up with him.

“Blimey. I’m sorry.” He rubs a hand down his face.

“And you were worried about me passin’ out!” She’s definitely amused now, a playful smile on her lips.

“Listen, you don’t understand, it’s, er…” He runs a hand through his hair, scrambling to defend himself. It’s been so long… he expected to be a bit lethargic after, but forgot just how wonderfully exhausting it is. “An intimate telepathic encounter is a precious thing for a Time Lord… it… can make us a bit drowsy...”

Her hands come to rest on his face, and she shakes her head with a laugh. His stomach swoops with the realization their link is still quite active. Apparently, he’s the most adorable thing she’s ever laid eyes on. She kisses him, a chaste peck on the lips.

“It’s for good reason,” he continues, since she seems to find him cute rather than insufferable right now, for whatever reason. “We’re not meant to be apart after the first time. Aside from circumstances like ours, where it’s happened backwards, a great deal of bonding happens afterward. Forms the partial connection at a distance that we already have.”

But cute or not, she doesn’t care to hear his excuses, no matter how valid they are.

“Okay, mighty Time Lord. Sounds like you need your rest.”

“We both do,” he plays along, nodding. Normally he wouldn’t tolerate a jab at his ancestry, but he’s still quite inebriated with those warm, fuzzy bonding hormones he mentioned. As such, he doesn’t see the point in arguing. The sooner he lets it go, the sooner he gets to fall asleep with Rose in his arms. She gathers the blanket from the foot of the bed and pulls it halfway over them both, and his eyes drift closed again.

“Let’s sleep then. Like we’re ‘supposed to.’” The sarcasm in her tone is evident, but he knows she’s only teasing.

“Mhm.” He wraps an arm around her, nuzzles her nose, he steals one more goodnight kiss before sleep pulls him under once more.

[regigigina]

So I went to an escape room...

Not sure if reliving this traumatic experience through writing is beneficial for my mental and physical health, but hey, I need a topic to write upon.

I have been a patron on an escape room establishment in Singapore some four years earlier and found the experience displeasing if not altogether upsetting. The game was treasure-hunt themed and we were given a full hour to solve puzzles and retrieve keys, with which we discover yet another hidden room and another locked chest. 

It was not so much the difficulty that baffled me, but several of these riddles seemed too far fetched that they were incomprehensible without hints rendered through the walkie-talkie. Above all that, since time was of the essence, we had to work on each puzzle separately. The obsessive compulsive in me was displeased with not knowing how the others were solved - not until after the end of the game, at least.

So when I got invited to another escape room game late last November, I knew not to expect control over the situation and just enjoy the game. By now, I had in fact learnt to surrender control over everything which are not my own doing. I was not the least bit compelled to ask about the minutiae of our game and left the entire arrangement to my friends.

We arrived at the premises just in time, promptly made our payment and signed a waiver. I am one who would skim through the small prints in T&Cs, so breezing through this 10pt font waiver was nothing. The content was surprisingly pretty serious, with mentions of holding the business harmless of injuries, heart attack and death incurred during the game. I did not recall the game being that grim, what on earth are we playing anyway?

To my horror, my friends pointed at the far right of the three posters hung on the wall behind the reception desk. The title “SANATORIUM” was written large and blood-red across the top of the poster. In the background was a corner of a room, gray and in industrial style, plain but stained. Right in that very corner was a long-haired female figure with long white dress, crouching on the floor so that the face was hidden from view. A shiver ran through my spine, my stomach tied up in knots, suddenly my steps were heavy.

“...I thought these games were all treasure hunt and detective themed,” I said in defeat.

“That doesn’t sound like much fun! It’s only fun because some of us are scared.” replied a friend who came up with the idea to play this escape game (duh).

Now it appeared impossible to back out of the game having paid my share of it, and to the mental list of pros and cons I added good reasons to go on such as not wanting to be a killjoy, and a wish to be invited the next time they go out. But now it looked as though the waiver terms were tailor made for me, and there was no eradicating the possibility that I would emerge from the room horizontal on a stretcher.

Worse, we had discussed on the way, at some point in the game the five of us would have to split into two groups. In the car I (only half) joked that I was not scared to die so feel free to throw me under the bus, but secretly dreaded not being able to figure out the riddles by myself. Upon the disclosure of our game title, I simply dreaded being on my own.

"It is all in my head,” I repeated to myself as I fought my gut feeling and proceeded toward the locker.

No phones or bags were allowed in the game, instead we were given one walkie-talkie to communicate with a helper stationed outside. We stood in an all-black antechamber next to a metal door bearing our game title. On the opposite wall, sound effects and scream or shouts of other players blared from behind closed doors.

After a brief explanation, the helper bid us good luck and - not open the door to our game, mind you - showed us a ladder leading to the ventilation, through which we crawled our way into the game. Already my imagination ran wild in that corridor, any moment now rats could run squeaking past me, hands reaching my legs, a shiver up my spine again.

Clawing our way through that corridor we emerged into a chilly, virtually pitch black reception room save for one mounted monitor which first gave us the background of the story. The scant lighting from the screen illuminated the four walls around us and, bloody hell, the wall was literally splattered with blood and scrape marks - what the hell am I doing here???

A creepy tune started playing and the video explained that we were actually locked in the hospital reception for our own safety. The doctors and nurses had all abandoned the scene due to ravages by an eerie patient (guess who? that woman in the poster!), so we must find the clues they left behind and get out of there before she finds us. Fuck me. A mild gush of cold air blew and the woman’s shriek blared across the room. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck! I let out an abrupt scream and glued my back to the nearest wall, not that it made me feel less frightened.

The haunting tune lingered throughout the game, interspersed with the woman’s howling, doors’ creaking and something clanking. The atmosphere grew infinitely eerie while I grew infinitely stressed. I cannot tell you enough how much my imagination is my curse. I stopped watching horror movies in eight grade when they started to creep into my dreams. Twelve years later now, I am no less adept at picturing my own reflection smiling back at me, or a hand jolting from behind a glass or mirror.

The guys were having fun and actually working on the puzzles, but I was too petrified to function from the start. Imagine my terror when they finally managed to unlock the exit door, opening up a hallway leading to - yet - a number of other doors (we were probably only 20 minutes into the game by then). I plunged into anxiety and apprehension. I felt my heart raced uncontrollably, lightheaded and sick in the stomach. I begged to give up the game early but my friends gave me that we-don’t-want-to-be-the-bad-guy-but-that’s-a-no look.

When the time came to split into two groups, things went horribly wrong and we ended up with groups of three guys and two girls. We, two girls, huddled up and crouched under a computer desk, terrified. I was near crying and fainting - and by crying I mean wailing, because tears had been discreetly shedding since long before. Tortured, I dared not look but to my feet.

It was horrifying when there were five of us; now that there were only two of us I thought a heart attack was imminent. I had been clutching hard to my friend’s arm and she, in turn, was clutching hard to the walkie-talkie.

“Ugh.. We give up, please get us out of here, please... We’re too scared to continue. I think I might need the toilet too,” my friend radioed the helper outside.

“....so you guys need the toilet?” he answered.

“We can’t walk out of here... We can’t go on anymore, we give up, please send someone to pick us up,” we begged.

“...you can’t.”

A short silence.

“Your friends need you.” he continued.

At once we both gave a loud, despaired, helpless sigh and let our heads fall back to the wall. In retrospect, this was perhaps the most hilarious moment - here we were two girls waiting to be saved, but had no choice other than to be the knights lest our friends would be forever stuck in the escape room. Kudos to my friend for saving the guys all by herself, while I desperately clung to her and painstakingly covered my view from everything but the floor I walk on.

There were a handful other funny moments throughout, but elaborating on them would be spoiling the best bits of the ingenious plot. Safe to say there were enough jump scares to leave me with a fresh phobia of doors for a couple of days. Just writing down some of the details here gave me the chills... Needless to say I took precaution not to work on this article after dark.

[popcornbutterflymedia]

how do you begin to write a story anyway? and how do you make that story your own? and when you are finally able to write a story, how do you protect and continue to fight for this story?

let me tell you about the three times i saw the movie: the first was on opening day. as all opening day viewings go, it was an overwhelming visceral experience. i looked at the movie as a whole. i looked to the actors, specifically quen and liza, the location. it was sensory overload. the combination liza, quen, direk cathy, korea had me buzzing, and excited. i knew what had happened, but i don’t think i could have given you a rundown. there was proper shock, because i wasn’t expecting the story, the comedy, the twists and risks it took, the performances. it’s one thing to believe in what actors can do, it’s another to dream up characters for them to play, but to get lost in a story, in portrayals. that’s pretty special. i was in a proud daze that resulted in an instagram word vomit.

the second time i watched was alone, because john wick just doesn’t cut it for me, and i wasn’t about to wait around two hours for the father. this time, i looked inward. this viewing was a lot harder. by this time it was clear to me that this wasn’t a typical rom/com/dram movie. for some reason, i looked towards the family units, and then inward, into myself. that’s when i got it. i finally understood, how the storytelling and the direction were different. ‘real’ was a keyword used in the junket, and real is the kind of love that is all encompassing. those stars in the lover’s eyes, have died, long ago, that the explosion no longer burns. all that’s left is a blackhole of fear, and fight, and less than stellar family histories.

the third time i watched was with friends who have also seen the movie multiple times, some more than my two times. some three times in a day. she wins. i knew the movie by heart so this time i experienced the movie with them and through them. there was laughter, discussion, and because, for some reason, i did not cry. i watched my friends cry. i was jealous. don’t get me wrong, it was heavy, it took my breathe away, and it hurt, to the point of immobility, but i did not cry. i was stunned.

‘my ex and whys’ is a story of love in the age of hyper-connectivity, instantaneous validation, entitlement, and information overload. it is a story of how our family, and friends shape our world. how we deal with our inherited wounds, and how we break free of the structures we were born into. 

young, impressionable calixta ferrer doesn’t settle for anything less than her very own mr. stick to one. she finds herself in heaven with gio martinez, a boy whose reputation is in dire need of saving. in her family, she never saw any man who stayed, and he came from a family of men who always left. they fell quick and deep, and wide eyed and fearful to an extent, fully aware that they each carry their family’s frailties and emotional baggages. it was true love, until their demons. caught up with each of them in very different ways. both hearts are casualties of their family history, and poster children for their friends failed forays into love. we get to see sneak peeks to cali and gio’s love story. we also get to see the nature of their breakup, and clues to their history sprinkled the throughout. we were given enough. 

the uniqueness of this film lies in its narrative. it asks the audience to look to the supporting cast, and take their experiences into account, to understand how it affects the leads. cali and gio, save from a few flashbacks, and drunken episodes, and powerful quiet moments did not spell their struggles out for us. we were asked to look to how they treat their friends and family too. the root of cali’s struggle to forgive, gio’s effort to ‘step into the light’ so to speak, even cali turning into a monster and realizing how hard it i to apologize is rooted in, and reflected upon, and rooted in their friends’ experiences, and family history. the movie feels so deceivingly intimate despite its considerable supporting cast. the support cast kind of underscores every cali and gio moment, subtly so, without overpowering the leads and the core story. it is for this reason that the movie’s supporting cast  must be commended. joey marquez, and gio’s band of brothers, especially joross gamboa, provided a strong, and rowdy contrast that further reinforces gio’s and struggle to change. ara mina, arelene mulach, and cai cortez as the perpetually heartbroken women in her life  laid a sturdy foundation for cali’s struggle to trust. gio could have had more lines, and cali could have confronted her dad, but because of the strength of the family units, those moments were unnecessary. speaking of supporting characters, ryan bang wins the supporting cast of the year award. he pulled double duty as a comic relief, a hysterically effective one, at that. as the conjugal friend, he served as the tie that binds cali and gio, even when they were at odds. his sub-plot provided referential perspective for cali to understand what gio went trough, without being so explicit. being korean with a pinoy heart, ryan is also a cohesive force for the film.

now, this is where i talk about liza and enrique. knowing what they are capable of, believing in what they can do and dreaming for them, is one thing, but to see them in character is an entirely different experience. to say that they halve matured as actors is an understatement. liza’s iconic scene went viral for a reason. the cinema went silent for a reason. i do not know how she does it, but she manages to surprise me every single time. i have no words for what she was able to accomplish in this movie. i am so proud. quen, started out as a reliable one in my eyes. on eily, his difficulty with ethan was a talking point. i thought he was at his most stable on that ffilm, and up to that point, he was. until this movie came along, and he reached new heights of stability and quiet. it is said that gio is quen in his simplest form. i like to call it his most introspective. he was strong and reliable and empathetic.this is where i reiterate that liza and quen’s is a true partnership. i understand the praise afforded liza on this film, but i don’t think she would be as effective as cali, if not for quen, listening, letting her go through what her character would go through, cali’s breakdown wouldn’t have been as powerful,if quen’s gio. i love that gio was quiet the whole time, that quen pulled back, that he elected to hurt for her, while hurt for what he had done. i had a question after seeing the movie for the first time. gio was a victim of circumstance. he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. technically, it wasn’t a clear minded choice, but cali conveniently heard it on the phone. i love that gio owned up to the pain he had caused and not get defensive on her with technicalities. truly, when a person tells you you’ve hurt them, you have no right to tell them you did not. that is exactly what gio had done. there is a sigh of pride, and speechlessness every time i have to find words for iza and quen’s gifts. they are too brilliant and too precious for words.

this cast can only be as amazing as the profiles written for them. the creatives are that brilliant. this brilliance is written all over the tine of the movie, which started out light and funny, before it dramatically got under your skin, and then injecting doses of humor to break the weight of emotion.

let’s talk about favorite moments:

the girl and boy in the rain

seven minutes in heaven

angry cali

the social media exchange between bakit list girl and dahil list boy

a gay jeffrey tam, who would’ve thought?

how his brother dealt with the bashers

gio trying to impress cali, their banter

the tonal change between funny and painful

vengeful cali, the funny and the painful

the stairwell confrontation, best performances, best direction/motivation, the best use of 8++ hours!

everything lee

everything korea

the shower of golden yellow leaves

‘would you have said yes?’

drunk cali

‘tayaan mo naman ako…’ moment, soooo underrated!

every time gio called cali ‘baby girl.’

the last chase, the traffic love declaration

this is a story of love,

a story of hope,

and a story of courage…

for people held back and broken by their histories. you could be cali, rendered fearful and immobile by abandonment, or gio who is fighting to break free of family patterns. whoever you are. you deserve a second chance. you deserve love. and you deserve the strength to go out and find it. you deserve to write your own story.

have i told you i did not cry in the three times i saw the movie?

well, there go the tears….

i knew it!

(congratulations team, you’ve done your job well. thank you for all the feels! ~ pao, february 26, 2017 <3)

[flightofaqrow]

chance meeting

qrow + Robyn ( @boundariestcbreak​​ )

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“Hey there, 5 O’Clock Shadow. I didn’t expect to see you down here.”

“Robyn Hill,” easy to know who she is, but bold of her to act so familiar with qrow branwen, to act as if she could recognize anything about his patterns of behavior, and lay that fact out loud and clear. even though her expectations are wrong.

...

“You seemed interesting to me,” Robyn offered gently but sincerely. After all, what’s life without a little risk? If Robyn always did what was expected of her, she’d likely still be up in Atlas right now instead of down here among the people of Mantle as their ‘hometown hero’.

“…interesting is one way’a puttin’ it, that’s for sure... guess you’ll find out.”

dry. qrow’s throat is dry and his mouth is dry, and his life is dry now, and Robyn is sweeter and more of a salve than he deserves, than he has any idea how to handle.

whether he wants to or not, he can feel the change in the atlas atmosphere. and maybe even another change in himself.

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mantle remains one of the few places which changes everytime qrow finds himself here.

atlas? maybe upgrades. gets fancier and stuffier and more full of itself. nothing truly changes. mantle switches storefronts and neon lights like they’re going out of style. the dust within buildings barely settles before new paint and a new logo appears on the outside, and boards nail up next door. just another sign of the struggle, but it keeps things interesting.

qrow finds comfort in some change right about now, meandering the streets, satiating wanderlust in his down time, with few other idle desires left to choose fulfillment from. distraction through exploration.

the restaurants can’t be beat. no perfectly-plated schnee manor meal could boast the same flavor as an authentic bowl of who-knows-what stew from some backstreet hole-in-the-wall. especially the ones tenacious enough to stick around long enough that he still recognizes the name.  

he notes more bars than bookstores around these blocks.

qrow hangs his head, holds onto the familiar weight of Harbinger on his back, and newly-shined black boots kick an empty bottle on the sidewalk out of his way.

just keep walking, qrow. obstacle by obstacle, step by step.

keep moving forward.

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Robyn, despite being born and spending all of her childhood and adolescence in Atlas, actually feels more comfortable in Mantle. Even before she became the crowd favorite in Mantle, she’s always felt more comfortable and inconspicuous here. More free to be herself than living in Atlas afforded her. Making the choice to live in Mantle instead of in Atlas, and work on her own with her team from the academy instead of with the military? Well, it really wasn’t a choice at all, because in her mind there were no other options for her. Knowing how badly Mantle was suffering, she couldn’t even fathom staying up in Atlas and ignoring the problem.

So she’d chosen to live down here, instead, and she had no regrets about it.

She liked to walk along the streets and check on people every so often, so that was what she was doing. And, as she did so, she noticed a familiar head of messy black hair.

She crossed the street to where he was walking and started walking alongside him. “Hey there, 5 O’Clock Shadow.” She said conversationally. “I didn’t expect to see you down here.”

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qrow suspected through the whole ordeal of going dry that his senses would wreak havoc with him before they got better. become more sensitized than sensitive. too much feeling or not at all, finally facing the mess he’s made of himself and letting it settle before he can sort it out.

maybe that’s why he’s easily distracted by the clattering of that bottle and slow on the uptake of a woman’s approach.

or maybe it’s because nothing he picked up on posed enough threat to enter trained perception; no spying eyes causing hairs on the back of his neck to stand, no suspicious scuffling from the shadows or looming presence creeping like a predator, no scent of steel or gunpowder or blood. she carried herself like any other passerby on the streets until deciding to sidle on up into his personal space, and hazy eyes pop open in half-startle before instinct narrows them to turn his head to see who would dare, right before she speaks.

“Robyn Hill,” another split second and he softens - only his face, not his guard. her true name drops from his lips rough and with such skepticism it renders any counter-nickname completely impotent, would only sound playful. easy to know who she is, but bold of her to act so familiar with qrow branwen, to act as if she could recognize anything about his patterns of behavior, and lay that fact out loud and clear.

even though her expectations are wrong.

his attention returns only to looking ahead as he continues forward, but long legs slow their lengthy stride so she can keep up more easily; he decides to ride out this walk and see what Mantle’s hometown hero, and thus Ironwood’s more immediate rival, wants.

qrow shrugs, ignores anything implied by this whole situation, “if you’ve come to gimme some sorta campaign spiel, can’t say i really want to hear it.”

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Robyn fights the urge to smirk at the way he startles ever so slightly when she slides up next to him. He must have been pretty deep in thought to not notice that she was coming up next to him. Not a good trait for a Huntsman to have-at least, she assumes he’s one, she really has no way of knowing for sure, but not many people walk around with a weapon on them, or at the very least within reach, if they’re not Hunters. She smiles a little, though it’s more a smirk than anything else, when he says her name. She knows his, too, with all the recon she’s done on him and the rest of the people he’d come in with. She just prefers ‘5′o Clock Shadow’ if she’s being honest.

She won’t say this out loud to him, but she’s glad that he has the courtesy to slow down so she can easily catch up to him.

“Nah, I would never do that. I save those for campaign days.” Robyn says, half teasing. It’s hard to miss her face on posters all over Mantle, though-that the rest of the Happy Huntresses put up-so she can see why he’d assume that.

“Perhaps I’m just making conversation, ever think about that, hm?” She asks as she looks up at him. She’s not exactly short, but he’s definitely taller than she is. That’s an interesting thing to note, which she does.

“So, what brings you to Mantle? Night on the town?” Her tone is jovial and light.

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qrow is a huntsman with plenty of bad traits. doing his best not to count the bundle of smaller side effects of giving one big one up as equal and unworthy of the trade. he may be better, but not yet his best. she can forgive him or get lost. never asked for company on tonight’s journey.

but he can’t complain, really. especially when she promises not to go all political on him. might still be playing spy, but that’s a game which comes more natural. could fill idle time as they walk along broken streets with too many temptations.

Robyn’s presence keeps qrow honest.

“good,” he gruffs, looking up above buildings towards a sunset sky, a bigger picture, “savin’ your voice for when you can reach more of a crowd makes sense.”

normal conversational questions in normal tone yet sounds like interrogation, considering. even so, qrow has nothing to hide, not currently, not so long as he watches what he says. maybe she could be equally as valuable for him in finding out the real goings-on of the grittier half of the kingdom.

or maybe it’s alright for both of them to actually be something more like normal during off-hours.

qrow rolls his shoulders back and smiles, a tiny thing accompanied by the huff of a chuckle. did he look ready for a night on the town while still in combat gear? he shakes that thought from his head and spares a quick glance over at her before returning to a slow scan of everything around.

“just checkin’ the place out. seein’ the city for myself. it’s… lookin’ worse around here since the last time i’ve been.”

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Robyn nodded. “Yeah, exactly.” She said, smirking a little. She couldn’t tell if he actually felt that way, or if he was just humouring her, but he wasn’t telling her to walk away, so she considered that a win. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m actually not much of a public speaker?” She asked as they walked. This whole conversation felt very casual, which she wasn’t opposed to in the slightest. “My decision to go into politics was actually more of an impulsive one, brought on by the desire to help the people of Mantle. I mean, it’s clear Atlas won’t do it without a push from someone down here.” She wasn’t sure why she had told him that, mainly because she didn’t see any reason to hide it or be ashamed of that fact. She was doing this for the people.

And then he smiles at her, and she finds herself returning it briefly before her gaze follows his around Mantle. “Yeah. I don’t know how long it’s been since you were here last but things are…I think they’re slowly getting worse? Which is another reason why I want to run for Council.”

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qrow doesn’t lie; not to allies, not over something so insignificant. he thinks out loud, because thoughts come rushing so fast without an ocean of liquor forcing them to swim sluggishly. and isn’t that what small talk is? exchanging thoughts?

or beliefs, as it were. ‘Hmn,” an affirmative huff of air acknowledges her disclosure.

“I mean, it’s clear Atlas won’t do it without a push from someone down here.”

Robyn repeats things the masses always like to say, but combines it with her own action. sounds passionate as she speaks. which does make him raise a skeptical brow about the first part on public speaking. maybe it’s true she might not like it, but he doubts she lacks the skill for it.

she’s getting qrow of all people to listen already.

“i wouldn’t say slowly,” he narrows his eyes at yet another dilapidated building, and the next shift of sooty faunus filled carts drive by next to them. Mantle’s never been the most glistening town, but now it’s like a cloud hangs over everyone there. The embargo, the crumbling defenses, the unrest, news of the rest of the world - for who followed it. and very little light to be found in the gloom.

maybe that’s why qrow feels like he fits in on these streets. it’s definitely how people can cling to Robyn so easily, even a promise to try and fight for the city gives them something to hold on to.

brows furrow, and lips press together in thought, more thinking, “what d‘you think its biggest problems are? …to change if you make the council?”

it got political anyway, didn’t it? well, hard to avoid when all of solitas seems in a crisis.

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Robyn’s brow rises at his lack of initial response to her words. But, she supposes-in his defense-that she hadn’t given him much to respond to. Anyone who knows anything about Atlas and Mantle likely knows of the huge power imbalance between the cities, even if they’ve never been here before; though from Qrow’s words, Robyn assumes that he has in fact been there before. Either way, he’s listening to her, which she considers a personal victory.

At his next words, a soft, almost hollow laugh escapes her. “No kidding.” She murmurs, silently watching the Faunus filled carts drive by, coming from the mines. Her eyes narrow slightly at the sight, but when one of them looks up and meets her eyes, she offers what she hopes is a reassuring smile, and takes great pride when the Faunus she smiled at seems to perk up, ever so slightly.

His question jolts her out of her own head, and she looks at him. “The treatment of the Faunus, of course.” Robyn says without hesitation. “The fact that the dust mines are still leagues more dangerous than they should be. I don’t know everything that goes on in the mines, obviously, but I hear things and they’re…they need fixing. Not to mention the treatment of the poorer citizens-not just in Mantle, but in Atlas as well.”

She winces a little. “That’s probably trying to take on too much at once, though.”

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qrow’s not the chattiest type to begin with, save for lectures or storytelling, let alone with a pounding in his head, the tremor of his hands still hiding in pockets, a twist in his gut adjusting to regular amounts of real food, and a craving in the back of his throat he forces himself to swallow down dry. just past forty and he has to get used to his own body all over again. eloquent use of his tongue not currently high on the priority list.

his head works overtime to keep it all together, but as he watches the interaction between Robyn and the faunus, his breath skips a second. and that’s new. Mantle’s hero spreading hope and joy, indeed, so much that some of it even spills over onto qrow. time seems to halt for a few single moments of everything being okay, promised by those smiles. corners of his mouth lift, and his features lighten, and there’s a spark of softness in his heart not unlike when he’d witnessed his nieces reuniting.

Robyn’s attention circles back to continue their conversation, her turn for deep thought, and he finds himself suddenly unable to meet her gaze in realizing how he was staring though that exchange, and some strange impulse forces him to look away before he might be caught.

still hears her, and resets quickly, in time to note the second-guessing on her face; offers an encouraging toss of his head as if to say chin up.

“that’s a lot, and some pretty heavy stuff, sure. if you’re talkin’ only one person. but you seem to know better’n to go it alone. got a good number of people behind ya, if talk on the streets is anything to go by.”

and more to come between now and election day, if what he just saw was anything to go by either.

and that’s possibly more than Ironwood can say right now, on Mantle’s side of things anyway.

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Robyn doesn’t mind that Qrow doesn’t seem to be the most talkative person that there is. Joanna’s not very talkative either, but when she does speak, it’s always insightful and important. Somehow, she gets the feeling that Qrow is the same way. Not to mention the fact that they’re still virtual strangers to one another, which could also be part of the reason why he’s choosing not to talk much. Either way, whatever the reasoning, she’s unbothered and won’t pry about it. If he ever wants to tell her, well, that’ll be up to him.

She does notice that he’s looking anywhere but at her, and she finds herself wondering why, her cheeks burning ever so slightly.

His next words draw a smile to her lips, and she nods. He knows that she isn’t just talking about the Happy Huntresses, either. She has so much support from the people of Mantle. But, it’s still nice to hear all the same.

“I do. I’ve worked hard to earn the trust of Mantle.” She admits, though she isn’t sure why she’s admitting this to him. Or why he’s so easy to talk to. “I was born in Atlas, to a more than kind of well off family.”

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qrow’s used to hanging back, staying quiet. broody and in his own head, even. but he finds he doesn’t mind this woman walking next to him, or the thoughtful chatter. taking a walk with a partner before so often meant absorbing the tempest of Raven’s dark, tangled presence, the too radiant light of Tai trying to shine on him, the ceaseless smiles of Summer trying to uplift him whether he liked it or not, lectures from Oz or threats from Glynda, or Yang and Ruby tugging at his cape and trying to tell him what to do, and when they got older the only thing much changed is how much he’d listen.

all to make him realize - he appreciates the unassuming, undemanding presence of this person; allowing him his space, not yelling at him too loud when his head and heart can’t handle it. all he’s done for so long is create distance. he’s forgotten what it’s like to have someone be so comfortable at his side, too.

it helps that they’re out in the open air, even if it’s a little stale, and cold, and poor quality. qrow’s always done better without walls.

it helps that it’s easy to tell how much Robyn cares.

“i don’t doubt it,” qrow laughs, louder than a huff this time, but still soft, soft enough to match her smile, “they’re a rowdy bunch down here. stomped on enough that they don’t put their faith in someone real easy.”

hmm, sounds familiar.

he’s also forgotten what it’s like for him to care enough to not want to ruin something.

her second statement surprises him, actually. he’d never tell by the humble, comfortable clothes she wears and a distinctive lack of uptight mannerisms, more down-to-earth... and mantle’s about as low as it gets. that guy in the transport ship said the huntresses all graduated from the academy, though, and a well-off home certainly makes funding an education easier. it sounds like the makings of a good story, and he does enjoy those.

“so what brought you down out of the clouds for this kinda work, then?”

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“A lot of people in Mantle believe that it’s every person for themselves.” Robyn explained as they walked. “They’ve survived this long, so perhaps their belief has some weight to it. But I want them to see that they do have someone on their side.”

His question catches her more than a little off guard. No one outside of the Happy Huntresses knows Robyn’s reasoning for choosing to help Mantle and abandon Atlas instead of enlisting in the Atlesian Military like her parents had expected her to-and she prefers it that way. But something about Qrow makes her want to be open with him about this. She figures he won’t spread it around, anyway. 

“When I was at Atlas Academy, I noticed that even some of my classmates didn’t have enough-Food, clean clothes, new school supplies, all of it-while a lot of my other classmates seemed to have more than they knew or cared what to do with. Including me. And since my family had so much to spare, well, I figured, why not…take some from my parents and give it to those who needed it?” Somehow, she got the feeling he’d appreciate that way of thinking more than anything else. And it was simply the truth.

“I don’t think my parents ever figured out where the money went. Or, more likely, they had so much they didn’t notice when a decent chunk of it went missing. My classmates were grateful, to say the least. But I didn’t do it for the glory. I did it because it was the right thing to do, and because no one else was going to help them.”

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more windows and doorways pass by as they walk. qrow no longer takes note of what directions they head, where they go; happy to explore streets as well as this newfound comfort in conversation, with no worries of getting lost. Robyn likely knows the city as well as herself, and all it takes for him to find his way home is to duck down an abandoned alley and shift for an aerial view.

honking horns and whirring spybots don’t sound so loud with something else to focus on.

qrow nods again, still listening more than responding.

“A lot of people in Mantle believe that it’s every person for themselves.”

they should see vacuo, he thinks, but doesn’t interrupt. and yet there’s a difference between being on one’s own until they prove themselves, and a person struggling so much day after day that there’s no time to notice the allies already around you.

Robyn gets people to look up, and look around.

there’s probably a lesson for himself buried somewhere in that train of thought, but it makes his head twist with clouded memories, and his heart pinch until his mouth sours; maybe a bullet to the head for loading up later, but for now he’d rather pay attention to what she’s saying than his inner voice; Robyn’s recollections given in a clear and far more pleasant chirp.

how she progressively keeps making him more jovial, qrow may not know or even realize, but now he lets out a deep belly laugh between them, briefly bringing his outside hand up to cover his mouth, and swaying enough to bump against her and brush shoulders, “redistribution of wealth that skips right past the middle-man, huh?”

she’s not wrong to believe he’d understand; growing up as a communal bandit taught him to share and to steal alike, and plenty of programs existed in city society for kids who needed help, but whether they were timely or enough could be another question. nice to know he still looks enough of a bad boy to make her spill something like that, even all cleaned up.

and amusing as it is, he does take note that she has every potential to be a thief from those in charge; not unlike himself, even now.

he doesn’t see the harm in fair trade of what’s now in the past.

“can’t say i’m a stranger to pickin’ pockets myself. though, it wasn’t for glory or what’s right,” tone turns more somber as he gazes down at the sidewalk once more, “just didn’t have much choice at th’ time.”

a quick pause, and then he’s turned towards Robyn again, stupid grin spreading across his face, “buuuuut …i can use that skill a little more wisely these days.”

more like wise ass, since he dangles something shiny in front of her - a bracelet which just a minute ago had been resting around her own wrist.

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Robyn laughed softly at his words, nodding in agreement. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. I saw an injustice being done and took matters into my own hands to fix it.”

She wasn’t surprised to hear that he also picked pockets from time to time. If anyone knew how important that was, it was her, and she said as much. “You have to do what you have to do to keep the people you care about safe.”

Robyn had a simple silver bracelet around her wrist. It had been a gift from her older brother, Sparrow-who was the only member of her family she still spoke to-upon her graduation from the Academy, and she hadn’t taken it off since he had given it to her. The rest of the Huntresses knew not to touch it, and she usually kept it concealed under her sleeve just so no one attempted to steal it. He was a skilled Atlesian engineer, working independent of the Military; something they had heavily agreed on was that they didn’t want to be indebted to the military in any way. She knew General Ironwood was doing what he thought was best, at least she hoped that was the case, but military work still simply wasn’t for her.

The bracelet that was now dangling from Qrow’s fingers. a soft gasp escaped her and she jumped for it, feeling kind of childish but determined not to let him have it. “Stealing from me after I got vulnerable with you? That’s a low blow.” She said, but there was no malice in her tone.

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genuine.

Robyn doesn’t need to have the most eloquent speeches in Remnant when sentiment rides so high in few words. yet trained ears can hear her teeth within the sound of them, promises just as much as threats. it could just be a trick of the streetlamps, but qrow’s eyes shine just like the glints of light off metal jewelry still spinning in his grasp.

malnourished ego relishes in the surprised and distraught look on her face, telling him he’s not lost all of his skills in the disorienting sucker punch of sobriety. he still knows where to find the important picks, see through into the hidden places people tried to tuck away treasures from prying notice; not that their value always meant the monetary type.

child-like mischief dances across his features right back, something wicked and sneaky were it not so bright. he finds amusement in watching her values come so immediately to life - caring, keeping things close to her, reaching her desire right out to reclaim what is rightfully hers. would admit it’s kind of cute, if he let his mind go there.

he raises a brow, shakes his head and lets out a dry chuckle before rough voice rounds off into a defensive plea, “c’mon now, Robyn… ‘s’it really stealin’ if i show ya and give it right back?”

for as much as his bird brain argues against giving up a newfound shiny trinket, his arm doesn’t pull away from her clutches or try to resist. no desire to be accused of taking advantage.

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Robyn really didn’t want to get into a fight with him-she wasn’t an unnecessarily violent person, and usually only turned to it when her own life and safety or the lives and safety of the people that she cared about were threatened. But she didn’t know him that well, and if he refused to hand over the bracelet, well, she might have to make an exception for him.

It was a good reminder, though, to never let her guard down. She wasn’t short, but she knew she might have to jump in order to get it back, which she wasn’t looking forward to. But if it meant she’d get her bracelet back, she’d do it without hesitation.

The look on his face is both infuriating and a little endearing, but also intriguing at the same time.

“Considering you took it without my permission, I think that yes, stealing is stealing regardless of the brush you paint it with.” She said, finally snatching the bracelet back from him and clasping it firmly to her wrist.

“Not bad, 5′o clock. I’m impressed.”

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and qrow lets the item go without a fight, hands soon retreating back into his own pockets as he resumes his stride. sense of time and location all the more distorted, flies when he’s having fun, knows only that city lights looking brighter means that the sky further darkens. can’t say he’s not finding himself interested in making a night of this, but too many familiar doubts claw the surfacing of urges back into the depths of self-denial without liquid courage to keep them afloat.

a little parlor trick doesn’t seek to impress, hardly the extent of elite skill, but maybe his spine straightens a little anyway.

dry air scrapes out over a parched throat in yet another amused huff. she bends the rules to suit herself, huh? how pleasantly human.

“speakin’ a brushes an’ paint,” subjects to change, observations to make, qrow tilts his chin towards graffiti on the next building wall, motion tossing layers of hair to fluff around his face before settling again, “you got the same opinion on vandalism? seems some of your fans have quite ah… a talent.”

no accusation in the tone or upset on his features, only continuing to tease. Robyn does good without being a goody-two-shoes, stands firm while remaining kind. likeable traits, in his opinion.

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Robyn doesn’t hesitate to keep walking along next to him, still keeping up with him relatively easily. She wonders what he’s thinking, but knows enough about decorum and the way society works to know not to ask outright. He doesn’t seem like the type to enjoy talking about personal things-but he’s been forthcoming enough with her so far, so maybe it would go over well if she asked him.

His question causes her gaze to be drawn to the symbol on the wall of the building that they pass. Though she knows, as a politician, she shouldn’t endorse it, she can’t help smiling at the sight of it. He doesn’t seem upset that it’s there, just curious.

“On the record? It’s wrong and they shouldn’t do it.” Robyn says casually. “Off the record, though? It’s flattering. That’s the slogan I use often when I’m…not focused on political business. I didn’t ask them to do that, but I’m also not opposed to it, either.”

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qrow nods once and begins, “well, not-”

but as his sole slips off a curb which seemed to come from nowhere, reality reminds him why he started with a low head and side-glances. knocked off balance, knee giving out from under him, qrow’s lanky frame buckles to the ground with a pained grunt, and only well-trained reflexes bring his hands out in time to rescue from a total faceplant.

scratches appear on palms, then fade quickly as aura activates - making it worse as a hanging sign falls off its awning of the nearest shop, close enough to hit Robyn’s head if she’s not just as quick.

fists ball tense and pound angry into the ground. it’s what he gets for not paying attention for too long.

he finishes his statement with a sigh, “…not everyone or everything is under your control.”

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Robyn gasped as Qrow tripped, and reached out to help him. But before she could actually do so, he seemed to catch his balance right before he could face plant into the ground, so she brought her hands back to her side, cautiously watching him in concern to make sure that he was okay. He seemed to be okay-if she had to guess, she suspected that if anything was damaged because of his almost fall, it would probably be his pride.

She heard the sound before she saw it, and ducked just in time that a hanging sign narrowly missed her head, a gasp of surprise escaping her.

She wanted to make a quip about it never being a dull moment with him, but she figured that would be the opposite of helpful.

“If my father had almost been hit by a falling sign, he’d be demanding to speak to the restaurant’s manager.” Robyn said instead. “Thankfully, and I’m grateful for this every day, I’m nothing like him.”

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yeah, qrow’s pride already laid dead at the bottom of a forest trench somewhere, or made into the fertilizer of a garden, what’s left of it. especially now that he can’t even find the residue of some false security at the bottom of a bottle. no, what always remains wounded is his patience.

always, every time. can’t even go for a stroll without something fucking up. every sense aware of it tonight.

of course she aims to help, and for once, she misses. no one able to anticipate, not since Raven, and she eventually got tired of him too. qrow is the one opposite of helpful, in every case.

fists no longer pound but clench harder. legs don’t even move to raise him up; returned-to-weary face pinching and pulling back an imposing wave of tears from tiny things threatening to break the dam and flood him over with everything he’s avoided for so long. but at least Robyn avoided the sign.

a sardonic huff responds as qrow collects himself, finally stands and brushes the street dust from his arms, “sounds like a great guy.”

sarcasm a favorite fallback while trying to suck it up and move forward.

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Robyn knows she should probably be less willing to continue to spend time with him after nearly being injured or worse by a falling sign while walking with him. Strangely though, or maybe not so much-she’s always been a bit of a rebel, even before starting the Happy Huntresses-that isn’t the case at all. In fact, it just makes her want to spend more time with him to see what else happens while they’re together.

Maybe she’s crazy, but she doesn’t care. Being with him makes her happy, so she’s going to continue to do so regardless of what happens. After all, what’s life without a little risk? If she always did what was expected of her, she’d likely still be up in Atlas right now instead of down here among the people of Mantle as their ‘hometown hero’.

His sarcastic words made her smile. She wondered if he thought she’d be offended by the way he spoke about him. But, as it turned out, she was outrageously amused whenever someone decided to make fun of or insult her father and his extremely elitist friends and coworkers. “Yeah, he was a real piece of work.” Robyn said. “He’s not dead or anything, sadly, but we just don’t talk.”

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qrow pauses in place and breathes in the space of Robyn’s thoughtful silence; pays attention to his surroundings, for once. no frustration. no blame. no upset at being inconvenienced or insulted. the only demonizing words heard are echoes within his own head, not the emptying streets around them. Robyn smiles through the threat of mishaps and harsh tone, the collapse of a black hole that follows in his wake. as if she laughs in the face of danger and simply sidesteps around.

no kidding when they call her a hero. attitude and all.

then she moves the conversation forward rather than running back. maybe living in Mantle just makes one used to being down on their luck. qrow’s tempted to run, though. it’s what he’s used to - hiding from the shame, not taking the risk, not forcing it onto others.

“his loss,” he finally responds, and saying it makes qrow think twice about what he has to lose. ...so he doesn’t run.

not yet. holds out, holds on just a little longer tonight. a frown sets to something more neutral on his face, and any voices go quiet, replaced with pounding against his skull. shaken by his fall, or maybe something else more insidious. everything hurts.

she’s too good for this. too many important tasks held in her hands to leave to chance.

he looks over his shoulder, longing, and turns away as slowly, palm finding the side of his head like some sort of comfort, grounding, pressure placed on temple. pain and happiness dance side by side, and without liquor-laced words, without any guiding compasses left in his life, all he can do is be honest, even if only in quiet breath off to the side.

“…can’t say i’d like the idea of not bein’ able to talk t’you again,” pained yet soft words speak the truth of how he feels. Apparently his clothes aren’t the only things new about him these days.

he hurts and he also hurts for her. it shouldn’t be that way - to say sadly someone’s not dead, “well, anyway. …i’ve been findin’ more and more that family isn’t always everythin’.”

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Robyn keeps on walking, and not just because she doesn’t relish the thought of almost getting hit by the sign (or something entirely different for that matter) a second time. She knows it likely isn’t intentional at all, and probably has to do with his semblance, so she doesn’t take offence to it. She could, but there’s really no point to it in her opinion.

A smile comes to her lips at his words about her father. They’re two simple words, but they mean everything to her. His loss. So many people just gloss over the fact that her dad is not a nice man-or worse, assume that because he is, she must be too. But not him. He actually makes her feel validated for her dislike of him.

That means a lot more to her than she thinks she can ever tell him. She’s confused and concerned by the expression on his face, but not enough to actually ask him about it.

Her cheeks burn at his next words and she chooses to focus on what he says after that. For now, anyway. “I think you’re right about that. My mom is well-intentioned but she’s also kind of a doormat.” Robyn admits. “She never stands up to him for anything.”

“And for the record, I like spending time with you too. You’re probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.”

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Robyn moves right on, and it gives qrow enough encouragement to lift his own feet and start following her on their walk, now. though, they still feel heavy; he feels heavy. shame and guilt sitting like yolks on his shoulders and no bar to help hold them up.

it still hurts even though happiness makes her face shine. but he bears it. he’s used to carrying burdens, even if right now he’s only swapped some for others before he can finally, maybe, set a few down for good.

“i dunno too much about parents t’be honest. never had any t’know how that feels.” shoulders slouched again. hands in pockets again. brow bent at the weight of it all again. but qrow is breathing, and he’s moving forward, and he’s talking. and maybe some of that skull cracking sensation is really just some stuff starting to seep out.

“but it sounds as though you’re nothin’ like either of ‘em, then.” one of the kindest, most stand up people around.

he looks up with softer eyes, finally caught completely off guard. he rattled things off, out, whatever, stream of consciousness for conversation. 

“i…” he didn’t really expect to be complimented back. at the moment, it’s an unwelcome rush to his head.

people easily changed their mind about what it meant to spend time with him, but interesting was a compliment he couldn’t easily deflect. by all accounts, he was - skilled at fighting, part of an infamous team, traveled most of the world - and learned more than he ever wanted to about it, knew a lot of people in high and low places alike. even with his mind at it’s most unforgiving, he couldn’t argue with a more subjectively neutral descriptor.

“thanks…” vermillion gaze stays connected before sinking to the ground, counting footsteps in time with the throb in his head, “…interesting is one way’a puttin’ it, that’s for sure.”

at least it made his life sound like something of a story instead of a joke.

“i prob'ly shouldn’t take up all’a your time,”

don’t do it, he thinks, don’t run from this. someone who wants time with you. even if it is only for now.

“… but if i’m gonna, i could at least offer you somethin’ t’eat.”

dinner. food. more things he skipped for too long in favor of other priorities filling him up. real calories might help the headache. he squints to take in the options of whatever street they’re onto now. somewhere open late, because it’s gotten late. any old diner would do.

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Robyn considered his words. Was it better to live with parents that she didn’t get along with, or would it be better to be without them? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to ask him that. Even she had more tact than that-which was definitely something she’d need a fair bit of if she was planning to go into politics (and she definitely was, there was no turning back from it in her opinion anyway).

Hearing him say that he didn’t think she was anything like either of her parents caused her smile to widen slightly. “Well, thank you.” She took that as a compliment, and why shouldn’t she? “I try very hard not to be like either of them.” She wanted to make a difference in this city, make things better for those around her, and defend those who didn’t have anyone else to defend them in the first place.

“You seemed interesting to me, which is why I said it.” Robyn offered gently but sincerely. Her brows furrowed when he said he shouldn’t take up all of her time. “You’re not taking up any time that I don’t already have free.” She told him.

And then he mentioned offering her something to eat, and she beamed. “Come on, I know just the place!” If she knew him better she’d probably take his hand, but as it was, she just started off in the direction of her favorite place to eat in Mantle.

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“guess you’ll find out,” qrow submits. people did, always, one way or another. she already had the first sign. her energy at the offer is contagious enough to keep him awake, even if the clouds still hang around his head and body drags.

good thing she didn’t grab his hand; he’s not sure he could keep up with her tonight. she pulls his gaze from looking about right back to her bright smile, and the corners of his mouth quirk up in return. she saves him from having to think, at least. and tries to absolve him of stealing her from any other task or person.

“fine, okay,” sounds more like resignation over depreciation. he really didn’t expect a simple stroll to turn into a late night date. not usually that lucky.

though, maybe the fact he feels too worn down to truly enjoy it, a mess of person and emotions in every other aspect of the situation, accounts for enough. food to stop the headache and maybe a drink along with to -

no. not an option.

he shakes his head, maybe to himself, maybe to her, maybe to the slew of taverns and pubs and simple restaurants that still serve alcohol strewn about the city, maybe to the universe itself, “… but if we’re stayin’ out this late y’gotta keep me outta trouble.” tired, and hurting, he’s slipping. qrow starts the statement off almost like a joke, but his step slows and his voice roughens by the end before blowing out in a sigh. he reaches for her first, a light hand on her shoulder, if only for the necessity of slowing down eager scurrying to hold her to something more serious, “as long as… this place y’got in mind doesn’t have a bar, alright?”

opening up once makes it easier to do twice. Robyn makes it simpler somehow, and Clover would be thrilled to know qrow is learning to be all the more grateful he doesn’t have to go it alone. can only imagine right now - how tonight might have turned out if he was.

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“Guess I will.” She agrees, smiling a little, even though her back is to him so he won’t be able to see it-or maybe because of that reason. Maybe there’s something wrong with her, but she’s excited to see more of him, to learn more about him as a person. Or maybe he’s just an interesting man who seems to be as interested in talking to her as she is to him.

She does, however, look over her shoulder to make sure that he wants to go with her, because he doesn’t seem all that enthused about it. But maybe that was just how he was as a person, because he seems to want to come along with her.

“I can do that, don’t worry.” She assures him. The feeling of a hand lightly on her shoulder, turning her around stops her and she looks at him. “Don’t worry, Qrow, it’s just a diner.” She promises. She’s not about to judge him for why he needs to stay away from it. “I actually don’t drink alcohol, either. I’ve just never had a taste for it.”

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she sounds so sure, and reassuring. leader’s colors shining from Robyn, and qrow realizes how long it’s been since he’s had such direction and such easy willingness to follow.

for now, anyway.

qrow looks into pretty purple eyes making promises, and he breathes out the tightness in his chest, and he believes her. believes her with some sudden depth in an angry gut that tells him he might believe in just about anything she told him, and anywhere she’d take him. because whatever she says she means it, and that concern is clear all over her face, and he’s close enough to see it.

“thanks.” qrow will trust Robyn, and trust in this fleeting feeling; won’t bury it with worry or drown it with whiskey; he will find the burn he seeks from his own heart, even as a lamplight flickers ominously and then dies out with a crack next to the pair.

just another signal to keep moving forward, and he does, moving in beside her again. 

“you’re better off for it,” he praises. “heh. gotta say food has more flavor without’t around too.”

senses. his senses still catching up with him just as much as his feelings are.

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Robyn looked steadily back at him. She wished she could read his mind, just because he was such an enigma to her, even now, even the amount of time that they’d spent together just tonight alone. Not that they’ve spent much time together tonight, but it was more than she expected. She hadn’t expected this at all when she’d woke up that morning, but now she couldn’t imagine not having come up beside him to make casual conversation with him.

Even the sign that almost hit her couldn’t dampen the fact that she was glad she’d made that decision to begin with.

“You’re welcome.” She said earnestly when he thanked her. It was clear that he trusted her, and she’d do whatever she could to make sure that trust stayed completely intact.

Robyn could tell as he talked about how she was better off without alcohol that he was speaking from experience. “I bet.” Not that she was going to judge him for it, of course-she didn’t know his history, and even if she did, it wasn’t her place to judge him.

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Robyn wouldn’t like qrow’s mind much right now - a mess outside of huntsman and saving-the world work, and seriously he’s got to be losing it with the myriad directions it’s running. or maybe that’s just the experience of his heart speaking louder than his head for once.

“You’re welcome.”

a platitude. a nothing statement. but the way Robyn looks at him and says it full force, it hits him deep. because it’s been a long time since he’s really felt welcome anywhere.

“tch,” he scoffs at her second statement, though. lightly, the jagged edges of it worn down from sheer exhaustion over the subject. more nothing statements that his own insecurities twist, so this one hits more like a jab to the side of his head,  “i’m not someone y’should bet on, believe me.”

but he still follows.

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Robyn smiles at him. It’s clear he’s lost in his thoughts, and that’s fine with her. She’s never cared for trying to forcing conversation. The conversation will come if it wants to, as their previous words to each other have shown pretty clearly. Even though she hasn’t known him for very long, it’s clear to her that they don’t need to fill every moment they’re together with words.

She shrugs when he says he’s not someone to bet on. “Why not? I’ve always loved the story of an underdog. Not that I’m saying you’re one or anything, but I find that most of the time, the people you ‘shouldn’t’ bet on are the ones who need it the most.” Gods, that sounds so cheesy. All she can do is hope he finds her words charming or endearing instead of corny.

She isn’t sure why she wants to impress him so badly, but she does, and she can’t seem to shake it.

“Look, we’re here.” She said, more than a little glad for the opportunity to change the subject, holding open the door for him. “After you.”

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Robyn continues to give him time for his thoughts, and it’s something that keeps him clinging without even realizing it. In and out of conversation, in and out of his head, in and out of luck; in and out is the way of qrow branwen, and she hasn’t had a problem with it yet.

“mmh,” a grunt attempts to acknowledge and appreciate, but it comes out rough around the edges. she doesn’t really understand, and he’s not up to explaining. not tonight. not when everything hurts too much already.

let him have tonight. just one where she doesn’t realize how wrong it is to even stand next to him.

“maybe that’s true,” qrow mutters quietly, almost not loud enough to hear over the slush splashing at his feet until he steps inside, still pensive, vision a little blurry and slow to adjust to the change in light, “i usedta like those stories too.”

he thinks her sentiment neither charming nor corny, just true. he is one.

it had gotten so dark out.

he’d normally insist on being the one to hold the door, but he’s off. simply follows along with what she says, still follows her. and after she comes in behind, the door closes in suit and he can hear the window crack.

he closes his eyes and clouds pass over his face and he tries to ignore it, shakes it off and signals the greeter by holding up two fingers, not even speaking, until it’s to Robyn.

“but i think i’m gettin’ too old for fairy tales these days.”

they made for good segues, but ones with an underdog usually ended with the character coming out on top. not qrow’s experience in reality. maybe he used to hope, but somewhere along the line he stopped seeing himself in those stories. sometimes the underdog just stays kicked down in the dirt.

they really did need to change the subject to save this. he leans on the nearest wall, scopes the place out as they wait to be seated. three exits, no one suspicious, good lines of sight from most tables, no bar - just as promised. don’t be disappointed, qrow.

“…geez, i can’t remember the last time i’ve been this hungry. what d’you recommend, Robyn?” real food. not alcohol, qrow. his stomach growls in agreement.

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Robyn can’t tell if he genuinely agrees with what she’s said, or if he’s just humouring her, but either way, she’s glad he’s listening to what she’s saying. Not that she thinks he’s the type of guy who will just brush what she’s saying aside without actually hearing it. Though she doesn’t know him well, she can tell that much, at least. When he says he used to like those stories, too, she looks at him in surprise. That’s something she hasn’t expected to hear from him, but she’s happy that he at least used to like them.

Even though he doesn’t seem to feel that way now. “They don’t have to be fairytales.” She points out. “When I left my family behind in Atlas, I had nothing because they wouldn’t give it to me if I supported Mantle over Atlas. And yet now I’m Mantle’s hometown hero.”

She figures that if she wants to keep him from walking away prematurely, and never wanting to talk to her again, that maybe a subject change is the best course of action.

So when he asks what she recommends, she immediately lights up, grabbing a menu that’s near where they’re standing. Bringing it over to him, she opens it so they can both look at it together. “The soup is really good. The grilled cheese sandwich is a classic, of course. They have a couple of really tasty pastas.” Oh, and now she’s rambling. Well, what can she say, the food here is really good. And since they’re both here to eat, why not tell him the most filling options?

“It kind of depends on what you’re in the mood for.” She looks almost lazily at him. “So tell me, Qrow, what are you hungry for?”

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qrow doesn’t brush people off. one thing he’s learned in his travels is that everyone has a story, some more fairy tales than others. everyone has good thoughts, from the veterans to the kiddos, from the elite to the streets, from one continent to another. his eyes stay trained on her, listening as she talks more about her family.

hero, indeed. did any heroes lack hardships? he wonders. he’s glad her underdog story is unfolding better than his. he’ll do what he can to keep it heading in that direction. better than dwelling on his own stagnation.

he pushes the topic no further. as good at listening as knowing when to keep his mouth shut. …when sober, at least. perhaps less so in the past.

but his lips purse tight until she gets to answering his question and a menu appears in front of him. it’s almost adorable how she seems so excited, so determined to keep his interest and soft rose eyes meeting hers again all but say so, as well as promise she’s done nothing to lose it. usually he’s the one on that end of the game. trying to make a friend or run intel or teach.

what is he hungry for?

an innocent question, but it tweaks his head to the side in response, unreadable and pensive expression on his face as too many answers fill it. he looks over the menu, over the room, gives Robyn an unsubtle once-over, too.

he’s a recovering addict, purpose-lost huntsman, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a war.

what is he hungry for?

a stiff drink. a full plate of meat. a whole bowl of berries. a brisk brawl. a good lay. a long flight in fresh air. everything, anything. he’s never felt so alive and so dead inside at the same time, and hopefully something will balance out, but for now he holds on to this night and this woman doing her best to be good company, who is deserving of the same.  

“don’t know, quite frankly. …seems like lately my tastes have been changin’” qrow steps in beside Robyn, in front of the laminated list, palm reaching up and covering her hand like he helps hold the menu up too, “maybe i’ll start with whatever you’re havin’,” rough and tired voice comes off something like a flirtatious purr, whether intended it or not.

“first things first, though, huh? we should probably find a table. uh… off to th’side if we can.”

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They don’t say much before she starts rambling about the menu, but the look in his eyes says that he doesn’t mind listening to her talk. At least, she hopes that what it’s saying and she’s not just projecting what she wants it to say. A look is just a look, but sometimes there are other meanings to it. And now she’s not even making sense in her own head. Thankfully, he can’t read her mind. But, if he could, maybe he’d find it endearing. A light shiver runs through her body as his hand covers hers, like he’s helping to hold it up. Her heart pounds like she’s a teenager again, and she feels more than a little ridiculous. But she makes no attempts to pull her hand away from him.

When he says he’ll have what she’s having, she smiles. “I appreciate your confidence in me, but I’m going to have to disappoint you in that regard because honestly haven’t decided what I want yet.”

His soft suggestion, which definitely seems flirtatious and sends another brief shiver through her body-hopefully he can’t tell or otherwise doesn’t notice. “Yes, absolutely.” She agrees, and then slowly moves over to the side so they’re not blocking the door.

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“guess we’ll figure it out together.”

Robyn could talk all night and she’d have a captive audience.

her voice is lovelier and kinder than the one in qrow’s own head, though what it says echoes so many of his heart’s sentiments. his thoughts might make more sense most of the time, but sense and thinking isn’t in his plans on a night off, never were. her voice is smoother than the alcohol for that, too. whether more effective or not remains to be seen.

…

although it... must be the case. because she leans away, and the pair are led away, and then everything is something of a blur even more foggy than his deepest black out drunk nights.

before he knows it, they’re laughing at that corner booth over almost-empty plates and bowls, having decided to just go halves on a whole selection of things; each more flavorful than the last, possibly for having someone to share it with.

“you serious?” with a tilt of his wrist, qrow points a fork in Robyn’s direction, table manners still lacking even after 30 some years of consuming solid food, “i knew th’ foot drones were junk, but tha’s just pathetic.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Robyn feels her cheeks burn when he says they’ll figure it out together. Yep, she feels just like an Atlas schoolgirl. “Guess we will,” she agrees softly. The fact that he’s so interested in what she has to say is a large part of why she’s so eager to spend time with him, why she finds herself wanting to be vulnerable with him despite the threat it could pose to her well-being.

Before long, they’re both seated in a both in the corner of the restaurant, more than a few nearly empty dishes on the table in front of both of them. To get past the ‘I don’t know what to order’ issue she had been having, they decided to get several different dishes and share them with one another. The whole thing feels very intimate, and it makes her heart pound sharply in her chest.

Which is why she’s grateful to have something else to focus on, like how laughably easy to disable Atlesian drones are. She giggles. “Oh, I’m completely serious. For something that Atlas is so reliant on to help keep the peace or whatever in Mantle, they’re really flimsy and delicate.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

qrow can’t tell if that cute little flush on her cheeks really is what he thinks it is, or just the creeping red light of dawn coming in through the window of their corner. 

wait… 

...sunrise? 

he’d left for a walk in the early evening, and now the sun’s coming up?

they’d truly spent all night together. and not even together together in the more literal ways qrow’s used to. adult ways. no, they’d hung out like kids. walked and talked and shared stories and snacks; his head has to catch up to that fact, and his heart can’t remember the last time it had come so naturally.

he even, had fun, aside from how his body aches and really needed the rest and recovery. food and another day added to his sobriety count was a good enough start, he convinces himself.

and worth it, to see a pretty face smiling and laughing in his presence. he finds himself staring fondly in return, and halfway feeling guilty, like any spark of joy is some great sin of indulgence when it comes to his life, and he had partaken in plenty all at once.

things had gone unexpectedly uncomplicated, and he can only imagine someone, somewhere in the restaurant is paying the price instead, even though he’d done his best to distance himself from the other customers and the kitchen.

“speakin’a atlas, though…” he sighs and leans back, not even realizing how at some point he’d leaned in, closer; his arm drapes over the back of the booth, reluctant to truly let go, “i’d better head back soon. patrol’s startin’ ‘n three hours.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Robyn is usually a very time focused person. She always knows what time it is, or when she specifically needs to be somewhere, and has never been late a day in her life-for anything. She always has been. That’s just who she is as a person. It’s one of her better traits, even if her need to be punctual drives May and Joanna completely up the wall, she knows being early is leagues better than being late.

Her gaze follows his, and her eyes widen. how is it already day time? They haven’t been here that long, have they? Even if they have, though, she finds that she doesn’t mind in the slightest.

She almost knows what he’s going to say before he says it, because she honestly feels the same way, but the words still sink into her stomach like a pit. They have to get back to their responsibilities. “Yeah, you wouldn’t want to be late for that.” She agrees, leaning into his touch a little as she feels his arm brushing against her back ever so slightly.

“This has been really fun.” She says softly, looking over at him. “You’re a fun guy, Qrow.” That’s putting how she feels mildly, though. Even for barely knowing him, she already feels completely at ease and comfortable around him-and that is not a feat many people accomplish with her when she barely knows him. It’s refreshing and comforting.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

dry. his throat is dry and his mouth is dry, and his life is dry now, and Robyn is sweeter and more of a salve than he deserves, than he has any idea how to handle. he feels her body weight against him and locks onto lovely eyes full of fondness, and a wave of warmth washes over him entirely, which her words then set fire to; he feels like he’s breathing through smoke, and his chest gets so tight he coughs, turning his head and bringing his opposite fist up to cover his mouth while trying to morph it into a nervous laugh.

gods, what is he doing. giving her the entire wrong idea of what lingering close to him means.

and yet he can’t bring himself to self-sabotage as he’s done before so readily. something in Robyn’s softness, her compassion, her tenacity, the values she’s shared with him tonight, make him feel like even if Misfortune makes him fall flat on his face (again), she’d be a safe landing. but he still worries about keeping her safe at all.

he chokes on words. not wanting to lie but not wanting to lead her on, and clueless how to keep this up without messing it up; he eats up even more of their time and offers nothing for it but a small, grateful smile.

only when he stared again out the freedom and fresh air of a window, can he find himself and catch his breath enough to peer back in one more sideglance and speak, quietly, as if he said anything with discernable volume, he’d jinx it, “yeah, it has.”

with that, he tosses some lien on the table, standing, before he can let inklings of a next time grow into anything more than a passing thought, and hurries as quickly back across the threshold of the establishment as not leaving her behind allows.

qrow shoves his hands back home in his pockets to keep them from the temptation of touching her again. he shakes his head, looks at her, then looks up into sky. and he knows, he pushes it into the very depths of his chest and swallows the lump in his throat, but he knows it. he has taken flight and soared through the air so very many times; he has stared into clouds and storms and rainbows and auroras, and the arcing chase of the moon and the sun, but this dawn’s colors look different. brighter. full of all those nameless wavelengths avian eyes can discern, and they’re unblurred and unfiltered for the first time in a long time.

whether he wants to or not, he can feel the change in the atmosphere this Atlas morning. maybe even yet another change in himself.

a spontaneous night with Robyn has turned into a brand new day.

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[apsbicepstraining]

Bradley Wright-Phillips’ new account; and Frank Lampard hems into relevance

Plus: the Rapids triumphing operate terminates unexpectedly; Torontos good is back to his best; and Jason Kreiss triumphant return

A record-setting darknes started in atypical pattern for Bradley Wright-Phillips.

The Red Bulls striker invested most of the equal in emptines, unable to get a clear stroke in a hazardous caste, thanks in part to a suffocate Chicago Fire defense. But as has been the case since he assembled the team in 2013, a little bit of space was all he needed to show his form.

And on Sunday, it served to break records.

Wright-Phillips extra-time equalizer was his 63 rd as a Red Bull player, putting him past Juan Pablo Angel as the all-time franchise purpose scoring leader.

Of course, I wont lie I like to break records, right holders of MLSs single-season goal scoring record said after the equal. I try not to think about it, but when you say these kind of things, it makes me proud.

A streaky striker by nature, Wright-Phillips has once again begun to warm up, tallying three goals in his last two competitions, violating the double digit goalscoring threshold for the third largest season in a row. But regardless of Sundays record, it is the nature of his latest aim that has Red Bulls boss Jesse Marsch excited.

Ive been defying him to draw more performances belatedly in video games. They did a good job of being hard on him. Every team we play knows Bradley is important. They focus in on him and Sacha, and Brad still manages to find ways to get goals, Marsch said.

As good as Brad is, we are trying to encourage him to have a cut-throat attitude, that even if he doesnt have a lot of suggestions in video games, he simply needs one to make a difference.

On Sunday, thats all it took for the Red Bulls to salvage a degree from near cataclysm in the unfriendly confines of Toyota Park. I made a lot of work into what I do, Wright-Phillips said. And when they are able to make an accomplishment like that, it builds me glad and proud.

Welcome back to Major League Soccer, Jason Kreis

The two-time MLS Cup win and former NYC FC boss rejoined the tournament after a short sorcery away from video games. His wage? A 3-1 succes in Orlando against the New England Revolution.

In some lanes, Kreis astonished with his approach to the match. In others, “hes having” stayed the same. The hallmark of a Kreis side the diamond midfield was shunned for the conventional 4-2-3-1 that Orlando has employed for most of the season. His decision to start Antonio Nocerino and Servando Carrasco over Darwin Ceren and Cristian Higuita was surprising, as was his alternative to start Brek Shea on the bench. All starting decisions, he said, were based on formation in training.

But most of his lineup decisions followed recent precedent. The back four remained intact. Molino, who has lined up across every midfield statu during Orlandos recent gauntlet of fixture congestion, detected a home on the left. Kaka rendered centrally behind Larin, with Hadji Barry giving his third consecutive commencing from the year on the right.

New England searched poised to play-act spoiler, putting in an excellent road effort through the opening 45 minutes. Kei Kamara opened the scoring, waltzing his method past the Orlando defense and learning the net exactly 18 instants in.

But Orlando saw their model in the second largest half. It took Larin less than a instant to score, drumming Bobby Shuttleworth at the far berth with a calm finish. Second half sub Shea transmitted in a cross in the 63 rd, observing Kevin Molino to double the make. Molino capped off the nighttime with a brace.

But the darknes belonged to Jason Kreis, who managed to reignite a sleepy Orlando side to their firstly succes since June 26 th.

Obviously[ Im] extremely, very happy, Kreis said after the pair. I ponder the week of toil that the players and staff have put in was excellent. One of the best weeks Ive ever been involved with. To see that work terminate in a really strong accomplishment reaches me extremely happy.

Frank Lampard margins into relevance for NYC FC

Frank Lampard is the worst Designated Player signal in Major League Soccer record: that was the narrative six short weeks ago. And with good reason. After all, his sketchy stay with New York City FC has been defaced by false-hearted starts, contractual fluster, fitness matters and questionable harm concerns.

But his recital on Saturday against the Colorado Rapids introduced an exclaiming symbol on one of the most remarkable comeback floors of the MLS season.

Since rendering from a calf hurt, Lampard has been on fire. Donning the captains armband in place of the suspended David Villa, the Chelsea great rekindled his past species, tallying the first hat-trick in NYC FC history en route to a 5-1 win over the Colorado Rapids.

This was no small feat for Lampard or NYC FC. The Rapid were undefeated in 15 accords pate into Saturdays encounter an enormous achievement within the frameworks of the parity-laden MLS. Their protection granted a paltry 14 aims through 20 matches leader into the weekend, the best evidence in the conference. Eight of their first 20 coincides was concluded in shutouts. Likewise , no crew has been able to score three against the Rapids backline all season long with or without Tim Howard.

And no single musician has scored more than two goals against them, either. Until Lampard devastated the working party. The Englishman, who has been the top scorer in MLS since his yield as a starter on 18 June, “re opening the” scoring in what was initially a drab liaison.

Lightning immediately put a pause to the equal, but NYC FC accompanied abundance of energy on the restart. A second wayward fumble from Michael Azira threw the Rapids down a person in the 37 th minute. With Colorado reeling, Tony Taylor redoubled the extend before the half, and Steven Mendoza saw it three shortly after the second. But “its been” Lampard who induced an memorable curtain call. First he curled a shot past Howard and then completed his hat-trick with fines and penalties. He is now among the top-1 0 goalscorers in the league.

Not bad for a guessed has-been, right?

He demo true-blue leadership today, team-mate Jack Harrison said. He was a true captain at Chelsea and he demonstrated it today. He supported everyone incorrect showing that we do need him and hes a key part of our success.

An abrupt resolve to a good thing

The Colorado Rapids forgot ugly against NYC FC – and that is putting it mildly.

We shot ourselves in the hoof, said Howard. Its a small tone, its easy to get around, easy to defend properly and we didnt do that as a group today. Once the red-faced poster happened, the game was finished.

Despite the result, the Rapids should still be proud of what they have accomplished this season. After all, they continue to second in the West with one of the stingiest securities in the league.

Now tells placed their achievements in context. Compare the teams current success to their woes in 2015. They have already overshadowed their win total last year with 10 wins in 2016 compared to nine in 2015. Their defense is actually comparable this year: in 2015 they allowed merely 22 aims through 21 competitors as opposed to their current 19 tolerated. Their offensive wasnt all that different either, with the 2016 Rapids tallying 24 purposes, compared to the 19 through 21 scored last season.

So whats the difference? For starters, Colorado are scoring first and regarding on to acquires a key factor for any hopeful. Last-place season, they managed to tally first in eight of their opening 21 accords. That was key to their fleeting success on the year( 4-1-3 ). This time, it has been the bedrock of all the teams success, with the Rapids becoming a solid 10 -0- 3 when feeling that first destination. Merely NYC FC have opened the tallying more frequently( 14 of 21 accords ).

The team have also learned how to use residence battleground to their advantage, exiting undefeated at DSG Park (8 -0- 3 ). That wasnt the action last-place season as Colorado extended 3-4-4 in the same time frame.

Jermaine Jones must really been a part of their success. The team is undefeated when the midfielder starts( 4-0-3 ). But Pablo Mastroeni has been a key catalyst as well. Continuity and identity is already foreign words for the Rapids under Mastroeni. Now, key offseason acquisitions have bolstered the golf-club, and Mastroeni has effectively molded his high press method to his actors strengths, may be required for his young roster to cheat resists on turnovers in the attacking third.

The result has been unfettered success and no single loss can take that away from them.

Torontos best is back to his best

No team in Major League Soccer razz their fates on the back of a single musician fairly like Toronto FC and their golden goose, Sebastian Giovinco.

On Sunday evening, the Italian striker borrowed the maestro tag from countryman Andrea Pirlo, orchestrating and executing on each of Torontos purposes in a 3-0 shutout of the Columbus Crew.

It took all of eight times for him to show his form. A long-range bomb ricocheted off the back of team-mate Tsubasa Endoh, pulsating Crew keeper Steve Clark for the early extend. Endoh was credited for the goals and targets – but Giovinco stirred it happen.

Just 16 a few minutes later, the Toronto offense began weaving their road through the Crew defense, terminating on a hand and proceed between Jay Chapman and Giovinco. The former Juventus star took a curling fire on the outside of his hoof to double Torontos advantage.

And he wasnt done there. Giovinco forced Steve Clark into a diving save in the 55 th hour. One instant subsequently, a dangerous criticizing string watched Giovinco smack the same post not formerly, but twice, scarcely missing on his chance for a fortify. Unable to find two seconds purpose, the Italian striker reverted back to the role of distributor, this time connecting with Jozy Altidore for the final goal of the match.

His 12 th goal of the season sets him exactly one behind conference leader David Villa. His two facilitates on the night delivering his season total to nine as well, tying him for second tournament broad. Those stats are all the most impressive when you conceive his nine-match scoreless shortage.

Weve said it before and we will say it again: the success of Toronto follows the success of Giovinco. Toronto are 5-1-2 when Giovinco tallies. When he doesnt? An humiliating 3-6-4. His most recent, highly publicized nine-match tallying drought resulted in a paltry 2-3-4 record for the expected playoff challengers. With last weeks hat-trick and this weeks yield, the team have already been strung together two triumphs for the first time since April, putting them four items clear of the ruby-red line.

The Seattle Sounders can tell you the dangers of relying on a single outstanding chassis to move the squads fortunes. Two thirds of the channel into this season, and they are still trying to find a solution for the loss of Obafemi Martins.

Toronto may find themselves in a same blot. But for now, Giovincos brilliance continues to grace the Great White North and they will follow his lead, for better or for worse.

The post Bradley Wright-Phillips’ new account; and Frank Lampard hems into relevance appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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Tokyo

Imperial Palace and Nijubashi Bridge

The D&O Diary is on assignment in Asia this week, with the first stop for meetings in Tokyo, Japan’s capital city. Tokyo is such an amazing place. With a population of 13.8 million in the city itself and a total of 37.8 million in the Tokyo prefecture, it is by some measures the most populous city in the world.  It is also a fascinating place. It is such a study in contrast, between the traditional and the modern, and between incredible organization and the disorder of its massive crowds.

  It was great to visit Tokyo but I was unfortunate in the timing of visit, because I arrived during of a long stretch of consistently rainy days. The sun didn’t shine at all until the day I left. The majority of the time the rain was coming down in a steady drenching downpour.  Even with an umbrella and a raincoat, I got soaked. (A weather system that was basically the outer edge of a typhoon that hit China apparently was responsible for all of the rain.) The damp and dreary weather did put a little bit of a damper on the visit, but I nevertheless managed to see a great deal of the city as well.

  How much rain fell? This is a screen shot of a Nippon Professional Baseball League game on Sunday night between Hanshin Tigers and Yokahama DeNA BayStars . It isn’t the best picture, but you can see that the infield is basically a lake. As I said, it rained a lot. The teams finished out the game despite the conditions because of the tight playoff schedule.

  Imperial Palace East Garden

I stayed in a hotel in the center city, near the Tokyo Station and close to the Imperial Palace. The palace itself is not open to visitors, but I did have a chance to take a hike around the palace’s beautiful gardens. The  Edo-era Shogun palace is almost entirely gone and most of the palace buildings today were rebuilt either after the 1923 earthquake or after World War II. The gardens cover areas where the Shogun palaces stood. The picture at the top of the post shows the Nijibashi Bridge and a portion of the Imperial Palace that is visible from the public park.

      One of the few remaining Yagauras (watchtowers) from the Shognate’s Edo Castle.

  The steady rain was not altogether a bad thing. For example, because it was absolutely pouring rain the morning I went to visit Koishikawa Korakuren Garden, I had the place to myself. As the pictures below show, even in the rain, the park was beautiful. It is hard to believe that this oasis of calm exist in the heart of such a massive city.

  Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens

  Engetsukyo, the Full Moon Bridge

  I wasn’t entirely alone in the Gardens, I did have this heron to keep me company

  The city’s beautiful parks are such a contrast with the rest of the hectic city. For example, on Saturday, on my way back to the subway after a stroll through Ueno Park in the northern part of the city, I  walked through the Ameya Yokocho street market (Candy Story Alley, pictured below), which on  Saturday afternoon was crowded with shoppers buying fruits and vegetables, clothing, and electronic goods.

  Amaya Yokocho, near the Ueno subway station

  Later, I visited the Harijuku district, in the Shibuya section of the city. Harijuku is an area of shops and cafes famous for its youth fashion and the street scene. I enjoyed walking around Harijuku and people-watching. I was at least twice the age of everyone else there. OK, more than twice the age.

    Takeshita-dori, the busy hub of Harijuku

    Harijuku “fashion”

  Harijuku is such an interesting contrast to Tokyo’s much more famous high-end shopping district, Ginza. Ginza is, by contrast to Harijuku, clean, orderly, and seriously glitzy. The stores are for the same luxury brands you see in every major city in the world these days. I was there late on Saturday afternoon when one of the main streets was closed off to vehicle traffic, which at least made it pleasant to walk around.

    Ginza on Saturday, with the main street closed to vehicle traffic

  On Sunday, I traveled on the Ginza subway line to the Senso-ji , a Buddhist temple in the Asakusa district. The approach to the temple is along a narrow alleyway lined with shops, a vestige of the times when pilgrims would arrive from long distances to visit the temple. When I was there, the alleyway was mobbed with visitors, despite the steady rainfall. The temple itself was crowded as well although the gardens surrounding the temple were quiet and calm. The temple is also near the Sumida River, a busy waterway spanned by numerous bridges.

  The Senso-ji Temple

  Nakamise-dori, the long alleyway that leads up to the Senso-ji temple

  Because Tokyo is so huge, its subway system is massive as well. It is also incredibly well organized. I was able to naviagte the subway without difficulty. It helps that the sign-posting and announcements are in English as well as in Japanese. Each subway line is color-coded and designated by a letter. Each subway stop on each line is designated by the subway line’s  color and letter and by a number. The numbers run sequentially along each line, which makes it easy to identify stations and also to figure out the direction in which a train is traveling. All of that is not to say that using the system doesn’t have its challenges. The subway stations are enormous and sprawling with numerous exits. Trying to find the correct exit proved to be a challenging exercise at times. There was something about the Shinjuku train station. I was there several different times and each time I managed to get lost trying to find my way through the station. (Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is the world’s busiest train station.)

      In addition to mastering the subway, trying to figure out how and where to eat was also a challenge for me, at least on the days when I was on my own. Most restaurants only had menus printed in Japanese (not that it made much of a difference in many cases, as I am sure that I would not know what many of the offerings were even in English.) Many of the restaurants helpfully displayed plastic renderings of their meal offerings; this actually had a counterproductive effect on me, as the plastic models looked singularly unappealing to me. I generally aimed toward noodle dishes and I preferred restaurants whose menus allowed me just to point at the pictures. One afternoon, I did have an excellent sushi meal, at the Standing Sushi Bar (yes, you stand while eating your sushi), in the Shinjuku neighborhood.

  Wheat noodles with boiled pork and greens

  The sushi on the left was more or less familiar; I have no idea what several of the others were. I ate it anyway. It was good.

    I also had some excellent meals when I had local help choosing the restaurant and navigating the menu.

    A traditional Japanese lunch with sliced Mackerel, steamed vegetables, and sesame sauce.

    Shabu-shabu, with thinly sliced meat for dipping in the boiling water

  There was of course no shortage of things in Tokyo to baffle me, but one completely unexpected confounding thing was how early it got dark there. Japan does not use daylight savings time, and Tokyo is pretty far east in its time zone (Japan Standard time). So it started to get dark around 4 and the sun set just after 5 pm. The jet lag  was bad enough, but the early sunset compounded my disorientation. Trying to find your way around a massive city like Tokyo in the dark is a struggle (and the rainy conditions didn’t help either). I tended to end my evenings early.

  Japan has a national election coming up on Sunday, October 22. There were political posters on the subway trains and election coverage dominated the local news on TV. I didn’t follow all of the issues under discussion in the Japanese election but one issue that did get my attention is the proposal to amend Japan’s post-war Peace Constitution, to alter the document’s war-renouncing Article 9 in order to recognize Japan’s Self-Defense forces as its military.

  Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan and head of the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party

  Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s mayor, whose upstart candidacy as the head of the newly formed Party of Hope has made the election a lot more interesting

  Even if Japan’s war legacies were not an issue in the current election, it would have been impossible for me not to think about Japan’s complicated 20th century history while I was in Tokyo. Many of the major tourist sites in Tokyo — including, for example, the Imperial Gardens and the Meiji Temple – are associated with the imperial family. The question of Hirohito’s role in the country’s right-wing militarism before the war has long been controversial. In touring the city, there are constant reminders of the destruction the war wrought. Almost all of the historical tourist sites, including in particular the places associated with the imperial family, are reconstructions built after the war. Very few pre-war buildings remain.

  I didn’t purposefully set out this year to visit so many  sites of severe World War II destruction, but somehow during 2017 I visited Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Warsaw, Tallinn, and now Tokyo, all cities that experienced varying degrees of severe damage from the war. It has now been over 70 years since the war’s end, and the cities have all been mostly rebuilt, although in Berlin, for example, it is still an ongoing process. Cities like Tokyo and Berlin paid a terrible price for their country’s involvement in the war. Now that the cities are rebuilt and the terrible events are  a couple of generations in the past, the remaining issue now is what the war means today.

  I thought about these issues as I made my way through the crowds on Tokyo’s streets. Because of the language barrier, I didn’t get to talk to as many people as I would have liked. I will say, the Japanese are unfailingly polite and uniformly friendly, at least in a formal way.  Everyone I met was nice to me and helpful. Walking around this busy modern city, the thought that our countries fought such a terrible and destructive only a short time ago seemed unfathomable.

  Where I ended up with these thoughts is that even if we now live in a time of peace that was unthinkable then, we can’t forget what came before, as unimaginable as it all seems now.  Better to live a world where we can visit each other’s countries and experience each other’s culture. I feel as if my first encounter with Japan’s culture enriched me and expanded my horizon. I will have to come back (when the weather is nicer, I hope), to try to meet some more of the country’s people.

  More Pictures from Tokyo: 

  Here is a picture taken at a great lunch that I enjoyed with Alexander Reus of the DRRT law firm and Hiroki Ohashi of AIG.

  Here is a picture taken at a great lunch that I enjoyed with Alexander Reus of the DRRT law firm and Hiroki Ohashi of AIG.

  This awesome Torii is at the park entrance to the Meiji Shrine

  This is a statue of Hachiko, the most loyal dog in the world. He would go to the station to meet his master every day — until one day his master died while at work. The dog still continued to come to the station and wait for his master every day, for nine years, nine months, and fifteen days after his master’s death.

  Japan is a modern society and it has come up with some things that I think we should adopt. Like, for example, a vending machine for beer.

    The post Tokyo appeared first on The D&O Diary.

Tokyo syndicated from http://ift.tt/2qyreAv

[golicit]

Tokyo

Imperial Palace and Nijubashi Bridge

The D&O Diary is on assignment in Asia this week, with the first stop for meetings in Tokyo, Japan’s capital city. Tokyo is such an amazing place. With a population of 13.8 million in the city itself and a total of 37.8 million in the Tokyo prefecture, it is by some measures the most populous city in the world.  It is also a fascinating place. It is such a study in contrast, between the traditional and the modern, and between incredible organization and the disorder of its massive crowds.

  It was great to visit Tokyo but I was unfortunate in the timing of visit, because I arrived during of a long stretch of consistently rainy days. The sun didn’t shine at all until the day I left. The majority of the time the rain was coming down in a steady drenching downpour.  Even with an umbrella and a raincoat, I got soaked. (A weather system that was basically the outer edge of a typhoon that hit China apparently was responsible for all of the rain.) The damp and dreary weather did put a little bit of a damper on the visit, but I nevertheless managed to see a great deal of the city as well.

  How much rain fell? This is a screen shot of a Nippon Professional Baseball League game on Sunday night between Hanshin Tigers and Yokahama DeNA BayStars . It isn’t the best picture, but you can see that the infield is basically a lake. As I said, it rained a lot. The teams finished out the game despite the conditions because of the tight playoff schedule.

  Imperial Palace East Garden

I stayed in a hotel in the center city, near the Tokyo Station and close to the Imperial Palace. The palace itself is not open to visitors, but I did have a chance to take a hike around the palace’s beautiful gardens. The  Edo-era Shogun palace is almost entirely gone and most of the palace buildings today were rebuilt either after the 1923 earthquake or after World War II. The gardens cover areas where the Shogun palaces stood. The picture at the top of the post shows the Nijibashi Bridge and a portion of the Imperial Palace that is visible from the public park.

      One of the few remaining Yagauras (watchtowers) from the Shognate’s Edo Castle.

  The steady rain was not altogether a bad thing. For example, because it was absolutely pouring rain the morning I went to visit Koishikawa Korakuren Garden, I had the place to myself. As the pictures below show, even in the rain, the park was beautiful. It is hard to believe that this oasis of calm exist in the heart of such a massive city.

  Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens

  Engetsukyo, the Full Moon Bridge

  I wasn’t entirely alone in the Gardens, I did have this heron to keep me company

  The city’s beautiful parks are such a contrast with the rest of the hectic city. For example, on Saturday, on my way back to the subway after a stroll through Ueno Park in the northern part of the city, I  walked through the Ameya Yokocho street market (Candy Story Alley, pictured below), which on  Saturday afternoon was crowded with shoppers buying fruits and vegetables, clothing, and electronic goods.

  Amaya Yokocho, near the Ueno subway station

  Later, I visited the Harijuku district, in the Shibuya section of the city. Harijuku is an area of shops and cafes famous for its youth fashion and the street scene. I enjoyed walking around Harijuku and people-watching. I was at least twice the age of everyone else there. OK, more than twice the age.

    Takeshita-dori, the busy hub of Harijuku

    Harijuku “fashion”

  Harijuku is such an interesting contrast to Tokyo’s much more famous high-end shopping district, Ginza. Ginza is, by contrast to Harijuku, clean, orderly, and seriously glitzy. The stores are for the same luxury brands you see in every major city in the world these days. I was there late on Saturday afternoon when one of the main streets was closed off to vehicle traffic, which at least made it pleasant to walk around.

    Ginza on Saturday, with the main street closed to vehicle traffic

  On Sunday, I traveled on the Ginza subway line to the Senso-ji , a Buddhist temple in the Asakusa district. The approach to the temple is along a narrow alleyway lined with shops, a vestige of the times when pilgrims would arrive from long distances to visit the temple. When I was there, the alleyway was mobbed with visitors, despite the steady rainfall. The temple itself was crowded as well although the gardens surrounding the temple were quiet and calm. The temple is also near the Sumida River, a busy waterway spanned by numerous bridges.

  The Senso-ji Temple

  Nakamise-dori, the long alleyway that leads up to the Senso-ji temple

  Because Tokyo is so huge, its subway system is massive as well. It is also incredibly well organized. I was able to naviagte the subway without difficulty. It helps that the sign-posting and announcements are in English as well as in Japanese. Each subway line is color-coded and designated by a letter. Each subway stop on each line is designated by the subway line’s  color and letter and by a number. The numbers run sequentially along each line, which makes it easy to identify stations and also to figure out the direction in which a train is traveling. All of that is not to say that using the system doesn’t have its challenges. The subway stations are enormous and sprawling with numerous exits. Trying to find the correct exit proved to be a challenging exercise at times. There was something about the Shinjuku train station. I was there several different times and each time I managed to get lost trying to find my way through the station. (Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is the world’s busiest train station.)

      In addition to mastering the subway, trying to figure out how and where to eat was also a challenge for me, at least on the days when I was on my own. Most restaurants only had menus printed in Japanese (not that it made much of a difference in many cases, as I am sure that I would not know what many of the offerings were even in English.) Many of the restaurants helpfully displayed plastic renderings of their meal offerings; this actually had a counterproductive effect on me, as the plastic models looked singularly unappealing to me. I generally aimed toward noodle dishes and I preferred restaurants whose menus allowed me just to point at the pictures. One afternoon, I did have an excellent sushi meal, at the Standing Sushi Bar (yes, you stand while eating your sushi), in the Shinjuku neighborhood.

  Wheat noodles with boiled pork and greens

  The sushi on the left was more or less familiar; I have no idea what several of the others were. I ate it anyway. It was good.

    I also had some excellent meals when I had local help choosing the restaurant and navigating the menu.

    A traditional Japanese lunch with sliced Mackerel, steamed vegetables, and sesame sauce.

    Shabu-shabu, with thinly sliced meat for dipping in the boiling water

  There was of course no shortage of things in Tokyo to baffle me, but one completely unexpected confounding thing was how early it got dark there. Japan does not use daylight savings time, and Tokyo is pretty far east in its time zone (Japan Standard time). So it started to get dark around 4 and the sun set just after 5 pm. The jet lag  was bad enough, but the early sunset compounded my disorientation. Trying to find your way around a massive city like Tokyo in the dark is a struggle (and the rainy conditions didn’t help either). I tended to end my evenings early.

  Japan has a national election coming up on Sunday, October 22. There were political posters on the subway trains and election coverage dominated the local news on TV. I didn’t follow all of the issues under discussion in the Japanese election but one issue that did get my attention is the proposal to amend Japan’s post-war Peace Constitution, to alter the document’s war-renouncing Article 9 in order to recognize Japan’s Self-Defense forces as its military.

  Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan and head of the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party

  Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s mayor, whose upstart candidacy as the head of the newly formed Party of Hope has made the election a lot more interesting

  Even if Japan’s war legacies were not an issue in the current election, it would have been impossible for me not to think about Japan’s complicated 20th century history while I was in Tokyo. Many of the major tourist sites in Tokyo — including, for example, the Imperial Gardens and the Meiji Temple – are associated with the imperial family. The question of Hirohito’s role in the country’s right-wing militarism before the war has long been controversial. In touring the city, there are constant reminders of the destruction the war wrought. Almost all of the historical tourist sites, including in particular the places associated with the imperial family, are reconstructions built after the war. Very few pre-war buildings remain.

  I didn’t purposefully set out this year to visit so many  sites of severe World War II destruction, but somehow during 2017 I visited Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Warsaw, Tallinn, and now Tokyo, all cities that experienced varying degrees of severe damage from the war. It has now been over 70 years since the war’s end, and the cities have all been mostly rebuilt, although in Berlin, for example, it is still an ongoing process. Cities like Tokyo and Berlin paid a terrible price for their country’s involvement in the war. Now that the cities are rebuilt and the terrible events are  a couple of generations in the past, the remaining issue now is what the war means today.

  I thought about these issues as I made my way through the crowds on Tokyo’s streets. Because of the language barrier, I didn’t get to talk to as many people as I would have liked. I will say, the Japanese are unfailingly polite and uniformly friendly, at least in a formal way.  Everyone I met was nice to me and helpful. Walking around this busy modern city, the thought that our countries fought such a terrible and destructive only a short time ago seemed unfathomable.

  Where I ended up with these thoughts is that even if we now live in a time of peace that was unthinkable then, we can’t forget what came before, as unimaginable as it all seems now.  Better to live a world where we can visit each other’s countries and experience each other’s culture. I feel as if my first encounter with Japan’s culture enriched me and expanded my horizon. I will have to come back (when the weather is nicer, I hope), to try to meet some more of the country’s people.

  More Pictures from Tokyo: 

  Here is a picture taken at a great lunch that I enjoyed with Alexander Reus of the DRRT law firm and Hiroki Ohashi of AIG.

  Here is a picture taken at a great lunch that I enjoyed with Alexander Reus of the DRRT law firm and Hiroki Ohashi of AIG.

  This awesome Torii is at the park entrance to the Meiji Shrine

  This is a statue of Hachiko, the most loyal dog in the world. He would go to the station to meet his master every day — until one day his master died while at work. The dog still continued to come to the station and wait for his master every day, for nine years, nine months, and fifteen days after his master’s death.

  Japan is a modern society and it has come up with some things that I think we should adopt. Like, for example, a vending machine for beer.

    The post Tokyo appeared first on The D&O Diary.

Tokyo published first on

[simonconsultancypage]

Tokyo

Imperial Palace and Nijubashi Bridge

The D&O Diary is on assignment in Asia this week, with the first stop for meetings in Tokyo, Japan’s capital city. Tokyo is such an amazing place. With a population of 13.8 million in the city itself and a total of 37.8 million in the Tokyo prefecture, it is by some measures the most populous city in the world.  It is also a fascinating place. It is such a study in contrast, between the traditional and the modern, and between incredible organization and the disorder of its massive crowds.

  It was great to visit Tokyo but I was unfortunate in the timing of visit, because I arrived during of a long stretch of consistently rainy days. The sun didn’t shine at all until the day I left. The majority of the time the rain was coming down in a steady drenching downpour.  Even with an umbrella and a raincoat, I got soaked. (A weather system that was basically the outer edge of a typhoon that hit China apparently was responsible for all of the rain.) The damp and dreary weather did put a little bit of a damper on the visit, but I nevertheless managed to see a great deal of the city as well.

  How much rain fell? This is a screen shot of a Nippon Professional Baseball League game on Sunday night between Hanshin Tigers and Yokahama DeNA BayStars . It isn’t the best picture, but you can see that the infield is basically a lake. As I said, it rained a lot. The teams finished out the game despite the conditions because of the tight playoff schedule.

  Imperial Palace East Garden

I stayed in a hotel in the center city, near the Tokyo Station and close to the Imperial Palace. The palace itself is not open to visitors, but I did have a chance to take a hike around the palace’s beautiful gardens. The  Edo-era Shogun palace is almost entirely gone and most of the palace buildings today were rebuilt either after the 1923 earthquake or after World War II. The gardens cover areas where the Shogun palaces stood. The picture at the top of the post shows the Nijibashi Bridge and a portion of the Imperial Palace that is visible from the public park.

      One of the few remaining Yagauras (watchtowers) from the Shognate’s Edo Castle.

  The steady rain was not altogether a bad thing. For example, because it was absolutely pouring rain the morning I went to visit Koishikawa Korakuren Garden, I had the place to myself. As the pictures below show, even in the rain, the park was beautiful. It is hard to believe that this oasis of calm exist in the heart of such a massive city.

  Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens

  Engetsukyo, the Full Moon Bridge

  I wasn’t entirely alone in the Gardens, I did have this heron to keep me company

  The city’s beautiful parks are such a contrast with the rest of the hectic city. For example, on Saturday, on my way back to the subway after a stroll through Ueno Park in the northern part of the city, I  walked through the Ameya Yokocho street market (Candy Story Alley, pictured below), which on  Saturday afternoon was crowded with shoppers buying fruits and vegetables, clothing, and electronic goods.

  Amaya Yokocho, near the Ueno subway station

  Later, I visited the Harijuku district, in the Shibuya section of the city. Harijuku is an area of shops and cafes famous for its youth fashion and the street scene. I enjoyed walking around Harijuku and people-watching. I was at least twice the age of everyone else there. OK, more than twice the age.

    Takeshita-dori, the busy hub of Harijuku

    Harijuku “fashion”

  Harijuku is such an interesting contrast to Tokyo’s much more famous high-end shopping district, Ginza. Ginza is, by contrast to Harijuku, clean, orderly, and seriously glitzy. The stores are for the same luxury brands you see in every major city in the world these days. I was there late on Saturday afternoon when one of the main streets was closed off to vehicle traffic, which at least made it pleasant to walk around.

    Ginza on Saturday, with the main street closed to vehicle traffic

  On Sunday, I traveled on the Ginza subway line to the Senso-ji , a Buddhist temple in the Asakusa district. The approach to the temple is along a narrow alleyway lined with shops, a vestige of the times when pilgrims would arrive from long distances to visit the temple. When I was there, the alleyway was mobbed with visitors, despite the steady rainfall. The temple itself was crowded as well although the gardens surrounding the temple were quiet and calm. The temple is also near the Sumida River, a busy waterway spanned by numerous bridges.

  The Senso-ji Temple

  Nakamise-dori, the long alleyway that leads up to the Senso-ji temple

  Because Tokyo is so huge, its subway system is massive as well. It is also incredibly well organized. I was able to naviagte the subway without difficulty. It helps that the sign-posting and announcements are in English as well as in Japanese. Each subway line is color-coded and designated by a letter. Each subway stop on each line is designated by the subway line’s  color and letter and by a number. The numbers run sequentially along each line, which makes it easy to identify stations and also to figure out the direction in which a train is traveling. All of that is not to say that using the system doesn’t have its challenges. The subway stations are enormous and sprawling with numerous exits. Trying to find the correct exit proved to be a challenging exercise at times. There was something about the Shinjuku train station. I was there several different times and each time I managed to get lost trying to find my way through the station. (Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is the world’s busiest train station.)

      In addition to mastering the subway, trying to figure out how and where to eat was also a challenge for me, at least on the days when I was on my own. Most restaurants only had menus printed in Japanese (not that it made much of a difference in many cases, as I am sure that I would not know what many of the offerings were even in English.) Many of the restaurants helpfully displayed plastic renderings of their meal offerings; this actually had a counterproductive effect on me, as the plastic models looked singularly unappealing to me. I generally aimed toward noodle dishes and I preferred restaurants whose menus allowed me just to point at the pictures. One afternoon, I did have an excellent sushi meal, at the Standing Sushi Bar (yes, you stand while eating your sushi), in the Shinjuku neighborhood.

  Wheat noodles with boiled pork and greens

  The sushi on the left was more or less familiar; I have no idea what several of the others were. I ate it anyway. It was good.

    I also had some excellent meals when I had local help choosing the restaurant and navigating the menu.

    A traditional Japanese lunch with sliced Mackerel, steamed vegetables, and sesame sauce.

    Shabu-shabu, with thinly sliced meat for dipping in the boiling water

  There was of course no shortage of things in Tokyo to baffle me, but one completely unexpected confounding thing was how early it got dark there. Japan does not use daylight savings time, and Tokyo is pretty far east in its time zone (Japan Standard time). So it started to get dark around 4 and the sun set just after 5 pm. The jet lag  was bad enough, but the early sunset compounded my disorientation. Trying to find your way around a massive city like Tokyo in the dark is a struggle (and the rainy conditions didn’t help either). I tended to end my evenings early.

  Japan has a national election coming up on Sunday, October 22. There were political posters on the subway trains and election coverage dominated the local news on TV. I didn’t follow all of the issues under discussion in the Japanese election but one issue that did get my attention is the proposal to amend Japan’s post-war Peace Constitution, to alter the document’s war-renouncing Article 9 in order to recognize Japan’s Self-Defense forces as its military.

  Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan and head of the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party

  Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s mayor, whose upstart candidacy as the head of the newly formed Party of Hope has made the election a lot more interesting

  Even if Japan’s war legacies were not an issue in the current election, it would have been impossible for me not to think about Japan’s complicated 20th century history while I was in Tokyo. Many of the major tourist sites in Tokyo — including, for example, the Imperial Gardens and the Meiji Temple – are associated with the imperial family. The question of Hirohito’s role in the country’s right-wing militarism before the war has long been controversial. In touring the city, there are constant reminders of the destruction the war wrought. Almost all of the historical tourist sites, including in particular the places associated with the imperial family, are reconstructions built after the war. Very few pre-war buildings remain.

  I didn’t purposefully set out this year to visit so many  sites of severe World War II destruction, but somehow during 2017 I visited Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Warsaw, Tallinn, and now Tokyo, all cities that experienced varying degrees of severe damage from the war. It has now been over 70 years since the war’s end, and the cities have all been mostly rebuilt, although in Berlin, for example, it is still an ongoing process. Cities like Tokyo and Berlin paid a terrible price for their country’s involvement in the war. Now that the cities are rebuilt and the terrible events are  a couple of generations in the past, the remaining issue now is what the war means today.

  I thought about these issues as I made my way through the crowds on Tokyo’s streets. Because of the language barrier, I didn’t get to talk to as many people as I would have liked. I will say, the Japanese are unfailingly polite and uniformly friendly, at least in a formal way.  Everyone I met was nice to me and helpful. Walking around this busy modern city, the thought that our countries fought such a terrible and destructive only a short time ago seemed unfathomable.

  Where I ended up with these thoughts is that even if we now live in a time of peace that was unthinkable then, we can’t forget what came before, as unimaginable as it all seems now.  Better to live a world where we can visit each other’s countries and experience each other’s culture. I feel as if my first encounter with Japan’s culture enriched me and expanded my horizon. I will have to come back (when the weather is nicer, I hope), to try to meet some more of the country’s people.

  More Pictures from Tokyo: 

  Here is a picture taken at a great lunch that I enjoyed with Alexander Reus of the DRRT law firm and Hiroki Ohashi of AIG.

  Here is a picture taken at a great lunch that I enjoyed with Alexander Reus of the DRRT law firm and Hiroki Ohashi of AIG.

  This awesome Torii is at the park entrance to the Meiji Shrine

  This is a statue of Hachiko, the most loyal dog in the world. He would go to the station to meet his master every day — until one day his master died while at work. The dog still continued to come to the station and wait for his master every day, for nine years, nine months, and fifteen days after his master’s death.

  Japan is a modern society and it has come up with some things that I think we should adopt. Like, for example, a vending machine for beer.

    The post Tokyo appeared first on The D&O Diary.

Tokyo published first on http://ift.tt/2kTPCwo

[alekseiw-blog]

DANM #2: Google&HTC, Laguardia Studios, and Equifax

Google&HTC:

On the 21st of September 2017 Google announced that it had signed an agreement with HTC. In a blog post published by Rick Osterloh, the Senior Vice President of Hardware at Google, he explained that Google had hired 2000 of HTC’s engineers. The acquisition also included a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property.

HTC is a Taiwanese consumer electronics company most well-known for developing phones and, more recently, virtual reality headsets. I wanted to learn more about this acquisition, as I believed it to be a defining moment in regards to the future of VR. However, it seems that Google may only be interested in the development of the Pixel brand. The newly hired HTC employees would continue to work on mobile hardware as a means to expand Google’s market share in the phone industry. Google created the Android Operating System and is installed on 89% of mobile device. This Operating System was used as a tool to provide users with various Google services. However, the android operating system has become less and less effective in doing so (going as far as having the European Union accusing google of using the OS as a means of skewing the market). Thus, by focusing on creating their own hardware, they would have no problem also giving users access to their services. Bringing in house the team that worked on the Google Pixel seems like the logical next step in improving their mobile hardware.

But what does this mean for HTC? At this point, it is sort of hard to say. HTC will remain a functioning company that will continue producing hardware for both the mobile and VR industry. HTC has confirmed again that it is currently working on another phone. However, if you were to indulge my speculation, HTC’s market share in the mobile industry has been decreasing. While it did have a 10% market share in Q3 of 2011 this has dropped to 0.9% in 2016 having only sold 13.9 million compared to Samsung and its 311 million units shipped. Considering these numbers and today’s agreement, I wouldn’t be surprised to see HTC give up on mobile and focus all of its efforts on VR. With the 1.1 Billion dollars they just earned, I see them possibly using that in two ways in regards to VR. They could drop the price of the headsets once again. Though they would most likely operate at a loss (if they are not already doing so), this could potentially increase the VR player base. They would then have more opportunities to make money through software sales. The other route would be to develop a new headset that would be more innovative than its competitors, confirming to the public the HTC is the leading brand when it comes to VR. This could potentially attract a new crowd of people to VR.

Much is still in the air. It will be exciting to see what more hardware google has to announce on October 4th and what HTC will do now that they can stay afloat for a little longer.

 LaGuardia Studios:

Last Friday, the Digital Art and New Media class went to the LaGuardia Studios. I had been to the Maker Space in Brooklyn before which also provides advanced digital media services, so I had some understanding as to what to expect. Needless to say, I was very impressed with LaGuardia Studios.

The studio is divided into two floors, a ground floor and a basement. The space itself was somewhat small, but it created a rather intimate and cozy vibe. The ground floor has around 6 sets of computers that can be used as various work stations. You can use these computers to work on almost any project as they are installed with most editing software such a Maya or Z-brush. Certain of these computers are directly linked to printers. These range from paper printers to small scale 3d printers. The paper printers are free to use, though you have to bring in your own paper. Furthermore, students also have access to wide printers to print posters. These printers could also print high quality pictures.

One thing that really set LaGuardia apart was the whole atmosphere of the ground floor. All around the space, there were various 3d printed objects displayed around. It felt like a small art gallery. It was inspiring to see all the work other students had done in the past. Furthermore, the people who work at LaGuardia were also working on various project either personal or for students. This is nice as it feels like there is always happening. The staff are also very pleasant and are eager to help. 

The basement is a whole other beast. While the ground floor works as a display and work space, the basement almost feels like a high tech art studio. The basement is filled with huge printers and many 3d printed models. The basement also had one of the coolest pieces of technology. Students have access to some sort of laser scanner. It can be used to create a digital render of a physical object. That render can then be exported to be used as a 3d object or even to be printed. 

All and all LaGuardia studios is a fantastic resource. There are many work stations, printers, and laser scanners. However, the staff working there are very pleasant and make an effort to display student work within the space.

 Equifax:

Equifax, the credit reporting agency, found itself in hot water recently after they announced that they were the victims of a cyberattack on Sepetember 7th 2017. This cyberattack led to the theft of about 143 million people’s personal information. This would include names, social security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and, for some, driver’s license numbers and credit card information. Needless to say, this was a pretty serious breach and leaves the people affected in a very vulnerable position.

This will most likely lead to one of the worst cases of identity theft in the United States. With all that information, the hackers could be able to open bank accounts in a victim’s name, max out credit cards, and more.

To save face, Equifax is providing protection packages. To get access to these packages, you would need to provide the last six digits of your social security number. The protection plan seems to offer one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection. However, it seems absurd to me that you would give the company that got all your personal information compromised a second chance at protecting more information. Furthermore, once the membership ends, if the consumer decides to continue to receive the protection, they will be charged. Thus, they are giving money and information to the company that lost all their information. But most egregious is the fact that by opting in to this protection package, you waive the right to arbitration, meaning you cannot sue the company. The only way to opt out is by sending a letter to Equifax within thirty days. This seems like a rather complicated way to opt out, when simply ticking a box online would have been much easier and way more effective.

But the story does not end there. After the breach, Equifax created a new website to help customers see is they were affected by the breach. The website itself is www.equifaxsecurity2017.com. Now the reason this is important is because by creating a new domain, Equifax is making it easier for scammers and phishers to take advantage of unsuspecting victims of the hack. The new domain provides less security than having it be a subset of their own domain (http://equifax.com/...). Scammers can emulate the new domain very easily, and that is exactly what happened. Software Engineer Nick Sweeting created a website called www.securityequifax2017.com and had it look very similar to Equifax’s own website. Equifax really managed to show their competence as they were accidently tweeting links to Nick Sweeting’ website rather than their own. This proves how dangerous this domain practice is. Sweeting has since taken the website down, and Equifax has apologized for the “confusion”. 

This Equifax controversy is far from over. The reasonable thing for them to do at this point is take the necessary steps in making their new domain a forwarding link to their Equifax website, and educate customers properly as to the nature of phishing.

 Sources:

Google deal with HTC:

https://www.blog.google/topics/hardware/google-signs-agreement-htc-continuing-our-big-bet-hardware/

https://uploadvr.com/psvr-vive-superdata-sales/

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/htc-from-riches-to-rags/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/20/eu-commission-google-android-skew-market-competition-antitrust-vestager

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/google-htc-smartphone-business-hardware

https://www.wired.com/story/google-htc-smartphone-agreement/

Laguardia:

http://www.nyu.edu/life/information-technology/locations-and-facilities/laguardia-studio.html

Equifax:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/21/552681357/after-massive-data-breach-equifax-directed-customers-to-fake-site

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6z0bEpVpM