#said brilliant scientist daughter doing what she loves and eventually learning about her father who was also a scientist

[attractthecrows]

i think the main thing that bothers me about fanon families (because i am a picky pedant) is that for the most part, they ignore things like how said families would impact the characters and overall story. like it's one thing to add siblings and other random relations just for flavor, I can't judge there, I do it myself... but you gotta keep in mind how they slot in. who are these people related to? how are they similar? what are the common learned behaviors of the family - because they're there even if said character makes a purposeful break from said family - and how do they manifest? why and where is this person even involved in the story?

like don't get me wrong, this sort of playing around is a lot of fun. but it's fun (to me anyways) because people are so complex and there's so many facets to them, so there's all sorts of ways for their bonds with others to interact and add flavor to the plot.

[blackjack-15]

Ziplines, Blood Ties, and Colonavirus — Thoughts on: The Silent Spy (SPY)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED, GTH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SPY; mentions of the “Nancy Games” (ASH-SPY); SAW; mention of National Treasure (2004).

The Intro:

It’s our penultimate meta, and this time, it’s personal.

In every way, The Silent Spy is the culmination of the Nancy Games. Ever since her trip back home in ASH, Nancy has been increasingly featured in the games, showing us more of her personality, her life, and her backstory — all in an effort to lead up to this story, where we actually delve into Nancy’s place in the world and what it means that she lives in it.

And the answer to that is a lot less wholly idealistic than the franchise would have given 20+ games ago.

I don’t mean to say that SPY is a cynical game — it’s honestly fairly neutral, edging on positive — but that SPY accepts the fundamental truth that all of the Nancy games have been leading up to: that Nancy, though talented, hardworking, and connected, is simply another fish when it comes to the sea of life. She’s not unique in any way that really matters – look at her foils in Alexei, in Jamila, in Deirdre, in Jessalyn — and yet she continues to work hard, to solve puzzles, and to right old wrongs.

At least for me, this is a hopeful message. The point of “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective” is not that no one could do what she does, it’s not that she’s the best, most experienced sleuth in the world, and it’s not that she’s the Last, Best Hope of those who call upon her for aid. The point behind her character is that she’s a relatively normal (if wealthy) girl who does what she can, and chooses to do it again and again.

There’s a wonderful part in the equally wonderful movie National Treasure when our heroes are reading a part of the Declaration — the part talking about the right of the citizens to throw off a despotic government like the British had become — and Ben (Nicholas Cage, actually in a good movie for once!) defines it in modern speech:

“If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”

In the beginning of the Nancy Drew games series, Nancy is merely an intuitive puzzle solver. She gets her cases through family connections, turns up at places where mysteries happen to occur, etc. etc. As time goes on and she practices, she eventually comes to the point where she’s being hired for bigger and bigger cases, more and more regularly — in short, she starts to live the truth of that quote. Nancy is, at her core, someone with the ability to take action against things that are Wrong. Throughout this series — and most especially, throughout the “Nancy” games (ASH-SPY), she becomes someone who recognizes her responsibility to take action.

And that’s what’s showcased here in SPY. Upon arriving and learning that she’s been led to Glasgow under false circumstances, Nancy is immediately and wholly over her head — but she’s still someone who has the ability to take action to right a wrong. When she’s working against Revenant, warning the scientist, or reading through secret memo after secret memo, she’s not doing it with the intent to Save the World; she’s finishing Kate Drew’s last task. Her loyalty isn’t to Glasgow, to Cathedral, to MI5, or any other player in this story — her loyalty is to her mother, and to the task Kate Drew died while trying to finish.

Which is, in my view, the best possible motivation in a game that’s all about family.

With that discussion behind us, I want to talk a little bit here about the other theme of this game — power. Revenant, as the terrorist group that they are, want to seize power; their goal is to run Glasgow (branching off from there into a wider sphere, of course) through seizing power during a (self-induced) state of emergency — aka, what’s referred to in-game as the Colony operation.

This is, of course, Politics 101 — whip people up into a frenzy, come in promising to Save Everyone, and entrench yourself in power that you can’t be moved from with any amount of ease. And while Revenant planned it for 2005, it would work even better in 2013, when social media and instant, 24-hour news cycles can keep the fear alive far more effectively than Revenant would have hoped for nearly a decade prior.

Both in 2005 and 2013, Revenant nearly succeeds, only to be foiled by a red-head out of her depth but who tries anyway (the difference between the two, of course, is that Kate was isolated and Nancy had backup). The most startling thing — and one of my favorite things about this game – is that it doesn’t end with Nancy ‘killing’ Revenant once and for all, or even stopping the Colony Operation once and for all. Nancy is, in every way, out of her depth here; she’s not used by either side as an agent, or even as an asset — she is, as Zoe reminds her, a tool, valuable for what she might know, not for her skills, not for who she is, or what she works for.

As the games from TOT on have worked hard to expand Nancy’s world and tie it together, SPY shows the benefit of having a wide-open world: that the world goes on, people live and die, and secretive organizations (ATAC, Revenant, Cathedral, MI5…) plot and scheme to remake the world in their image.

This, in my view, is also a great thing. The thing that Nancy Drew books (and a lot of the early games) get wrong is that Nancy fixes (or is party to fixing) all of the problems introduced. The piano-playing girl that Nancy meets ends up with a Grandmaster as a teacher; the inheritance goes to the Worthy Widow and Her Daughter; Nancy rescues her tied-up father AND solves his case for his client all in one brilliant masterstroke.

That’s not to say that every story should have all of its threads dangling by the end, but Nancy is simply a smart and resourceful girl, working (most of the time) with her own relatively meager resources. She shouldn’t be the answer to the world’s problems, and I think it’s lovely that, especially in the Nancy games, she really isn’t. Nancy is a helper, and that’s far more valuable than being an omniscient, all-powerful being who can magically fix everyone’s problems just by being there.

The last thing I want to talk about in this introduction is how good SPY is for Nancy’s own personal lore. There’s a lot of fuss every time SPY is brought up about how “Nancy’s mom actually died when she was three!!” which, honestly, tells me that the 60s re-writes (which, yes, if you’re pedantic, started in ’59) did more damage than I had previously thought.

The original Nancy Drew books were written in the 30s by various ghostwriters, and were a little different from the yellow-bound 60s rewrites that most people consider the “old Nancy Drew books”. 30s Nancy Drew was a little closer to our games-universe Nancy; brash, outspoken, punishingly independent, and incredibly capable. She’s also a bit violent and unruly, has graduated from school at 16, lost her mother at 10, and does as she pleases with the occasional call home to reassure Carson or (more often) to ask a question about the law.

Sadly, other than taking out a few racial and societal overtones that weren’t really acceptable after 30 years — mostly by taking out any non-white characters and including different forms of bias, note — the yellow rewrites weren’t an improvement to the stories or to Nancy’s character. Nancy becomes less bold, less independent, and far more focused on describing each meal in punishing amounts of detail. The words “kindly” and “sweetly” were increasingly added after “Nancy said”, she’s far more deferential to authority, and her mother instead passes when Nancy is 3, rather than 10.

In changing the form of the media to video games, rather than books, what would eventually become HER had a choice; they could align themselves with the newest Nancy Drew books — the Nancy Drew Files and Nancy Drew on Campus, both of which were known for being Hotter and Sexier (and, in the case of Campus, ridiculously stupid) — or choose what people called “the classics” — the yellow-spine 60s rewrites, as the once-famous blue books had been all but forgotten in the 90s. In the first (and still one of the last, honestly) brilliant move of the series, HER chose to mix and match the things that made for good game fodder from (nearly, given how much the Campus books suck) every written incarnation of Nancy.

And, to their credit, they chose an important fact from the 30s: Nancy’s mother died when she was 10, not when she was 3.

Losing a parent is a defining moment no matter when it happens, but the exact effect often changes based on (among other things) the age of the child. In order for Nancy to be the kind of person who is influenced by the mystery of her mother’s death, her mother had to have died when Nancy could remember — thus, 3 is right out, as Nancy might remember tiny bits and pieces of the events leading up to and right after, but nothing else.

By taking bits and pieces of contrasting (and often contradictory) lore and making their own out of it, HER (and I’m hat-tipping Cathy and Nik especially here, given Nancy’s characterization spike beginning around WAC/TOT) gives us a version of Nancy that’s similar to the sleuth we know and love from the books and movies (ignoring the 2007 disaster) and, occasionally, TV shows, while still keeping her mostly consistent and showing us a few new flashes that make this character stand out and win her place in the Drewniverse.

Now, with all of that said, let’s move on to this game in specific, shall we?

The Title:

The Silent Spy, as a title, is one that is wonderfully mysterious and really makes you want to know more — right up until the title drop within the game itself, at which point it shifts from quite alluring to desperately sad and foreboding.

After all, “the only silent spy is a dead spy.”

As the game really is about our resident Silent Spy — Kate Drew and her actions and legacy — this is really the only title that the game could have had, and it suits it down to the ground, both with its mystery and with its sadness.

In life, Kate Drew was silenced, and in death, she is obviously necessarily silent — but Nancy reads her words, remembers her speech, listens to her voice, and, of course, hears her song, whenever the world is quiet enough. And I think that’s a wonderful dichotomy for the title to introduce before the game has even properly begun.

The Mystery:

Summoned to Scotland by a mysterious message and guided by a photograph of her mother, Nancy arrives ready to retrace her mother’s steps — only to be thrown into a world of espionage, gadgets, untraceable phone calls, and deadly mishaps. Her luggage (and her best clue about her mother) having been stolen, the presence of an old family friend who refuses to talk, an evasive skiptracer, an excitable local, and a clever intelligence agent all work together to ensure that Nancy is off-balance the minute she arrives.

All, of course, is even less what it seems than Nancy is prepared for, and she spends to game gloriously off-balance trying to keep up with the larger forces pushing and pulling her. She needs to retrace her mother’s steps, escape from certain death, dig deep into the pasts and presents of the people she meets, and do some impressive sleuthing of her own to even make the change from tool to player — and even that might not be enough to keep her safe when the dastardly minds at Revenant come a-knocking…

As a mystery — or as a collection of intertwined mysteries, honestly — SPY succeeds at what a lot of other games tried (and ultimately failed, in one way or another), which is to link all the happenings in the game together under one cohesive plot that grows more and more horrifying the more you think about it. GTH has a fandom reputation for fridge horror, but SPY holds its own easily when you consider Kate’s fatal chase, Moira’s abduction and guilt, the threats that Ewan and Alec operate under, and the life that Zoe leads on the regular.

Every action that Nancy takes benefits someone — whether it be Cathedral, Revenant, herself, or an interested third (fourth?) party — without her really meaning to, and the game is great in including another question in every reveal.

The beauty of SPY’s mystery(s) is that it takes careful reading, paying attention, and honestly replaying in order to grasp the enormity of every action. No matter how many times you play or replay, there’s something new to find — a time-sensitive conversation, an implication in a note, a theory behind the presence of a clue or a piece of (what you previously thought to be) set dressing — it honestly is limitless, and it just helps to contribute to the feeling that this is a world that Nancy isn’t meant to truly be fully immersed in.

And speaking of people who are immersed in that world…

The Suspects:

We’ll begin, for organization’s sake, with our out-and-out (current) agents first, then tackle our other suspects, then our Nancy-related people, and finish off with — for the final time in this series, as this is the last “Nancy” game — Nancy herself.

A new, yet returning character, Bridget Shaw is one of the cover identities of Zoe Wolfe — aka Samantha Quick, who Nancy impersonated in VEN and who helped the Hardy Boys in Treasure on the Tracks.

Prior to SPY, I had money for a very long time that Samantha Quick would eventually come into the game, and I was absolutely delighted with her appearance in SPY — where else would she be so well situated? Zoe is snarky, disillusioned, cynical, and sometimes downright nihilistic, but she’s also someone who took up a job that, percentage-wise, no one wants to or is able to do, because she’s alone:

“I work in the field for two reasons: one, I don’t need any help. And two, because no one would miss me if I fell off the grid.”

I love watching the ND games subvert their own formula, and Zoe is a great example of the “helper”-type suspect who really isn’t like your traditional “helper” at all. She’s there to do a job, and if sticking with Nancy helps her to do it, then that’s what she does. But she’s not there to Right some Great Wrong for the warm fuzzies of it all, or even because it’s Just and Right. She’s there because it’s her job, and her job is to play the game.

“It’ll be brief, painful, and full of garbage…but that’s life, isn’t it? And that’s the metaphor I’m riding into the grave.”

Next is our (kind of) double operative and partial culprit, Ewan McLeod (real name Sean Kent Davis) is a clever operative of Cathedral who decided that he wasn’t valued or important anywhere near as much as he should have been, and reached out to Revenant to supply them with information. Summoning Nancy to Scotland, Ewan is easily able to gain a portion of her trust as the Watcher in the Wires and is her tie to the relative safety of Cathedral.

As a culprit, Ewan is — ultimately — pitiable. Not that he’s not an egotist with a victim complex a mile wide, but when you actually look at the situation he’s in, it’s hard not to feel bad for him, even though he did it to himself. Having contacted Revenant, he’s now attempting to hold a tiger by the tail, praying it can’t eat him — and his worst fears come true, as his loved ones are threatened (“trying to keep my friends and family alive”, remember) and he’s discarded and made a target by the terrorists that he tried to use to make himself important.

Given the rather chilling threats made by Revenant, I’m inclined to believe that when we find him tied up, he didn’t do it to himself. Nancy would have noticed if the knots were too loose to have been done by a third party, and we know Revenant told him several times that if he wasn’t useful, he’d be punished.

While Ewan makes terrible choices, he’s also a pawn being played by a larger force — like everyone else in the game — and that is at least worth pity, if not forgiveness.

Next up is our former Cathedral agent and all-around tough cookie Moira Chisholm. As one of the people responsible for the events that led to Kate’s death — though no one but Revenant is responsible for killing her, note — Moira lives with guilt, regret, and a powerful sense of loneliness that only the loss of everyone you hold dear can bring.

Moira’s guilty of nothing in the present-day calamity, and helps Nancy the very best she can in her own limited power, but is ultimately a character for whom the past looms larger than the present can match. She has her hobbies, but her house is filled with memories of days when people sat on her couch and broke her teacups, not of hours reading alone.

She’s an intensely tragic character, and an example of what happens when your need to know the “truth” can get in the way of doing right by those you love. Moira lost everything to her previous job for Cathedral (who is implied to have left her, an otherwise dangerous free agent, alive because they knew (correctly!) she would become stagnant and docile under the weight of her own guilt, ouch), and yet she risks life and limb to help Nancy —not because she thinks it’ll exculpate her, but because Moira, at her core, wants to help the world, no matter what it’s taken from her.

Our final suspect is Glasgow’s resident skiptracer and unwilling pawn Alec Fell, who, along with Moira, can be traced back to Kate Drew’s death. Originally, Alec investigated a mysterious car crash — the one that killed Kate Drew — and, when he didn’t stop after a warning, had his office ransacked and burned. In the few months before the game starts, he experiences another break-in and his sister is kidnapped, with a message informing him that if he wants to guarantee her safety, to comply with Revenant’s orders.

Unlike Ewan, when pushed into a corner, Alec does his best to raise a little hell while still trying to keep his sister safe. For everything that he does on Revenant’s orders, he also helps Nancy out, finds her suitcase, locates Moira, tells Nancy where the cards are, and does his best to push back in other, little ways.

Sure Alec is guilty of a few things — most notably the fake shooting scare in Nancy’s room — but he’s a very active character, riding the rails and searching for anyone who can help put an end to this situation. It’s not for nothing that he’s a fan favorite, both for this game for the series at large, and his excellent VA and charming dialogue only make up half of his appeal.

On our Nancy side, we’ve got a few returning characters and one (semi) new one, so let’s go through them before getting (for the last time!) to the girl detective herself.

Carson Drew, father and golf model extraordinaire, is here to ground (as in steady, not punish) Nancy as she goes through this mystery. As the other person besides Nancy who was most affected by Kate’s death, Carson is an invaluable source of Kate-related knowledge, but is concerned foremost with his daughter’s safety.

For my money, the most important thing we learn about Carson here is that, well…he married the wrong woman as much as Kate married the wrong man. It’s sort of simplistic to say that their story shows that, in some cases, love doesn’t conquer all, but it’s true all the same.

Carson was happy to jet off to Scotland on occasion to visit Moira and her husband, but being happy to take vacations is a very different thing from a life constantly shifting and changing. He’s a prosecutor, so he has a strong sense of justice, but also has a strong sense of stability — he chose a career with a set trajectory and clearly defined rules.

Kate Austin, however, was a journalist who occasionally consulted for a Spy Organization when life got a little too boring (it’s important to note that she wasn’t a straight-out spy like Moira — she was far too free-spirited for that). She had all of Nancy’s inquisitiveness but more people skills than Nancy will probably ever have, and made friends easily.

It’s easy to see how she would have been attracted to the All-American, hardworking, solidly intelligent, emotionally balanced man, just as it’s easy to see how the slightly flashy, clever, inquisitive, intuitive redhead would have attracted him.

If this is starting to feel like I’m describing two other characters here…well, longtime readers of this meta series already know what happens when I use a paragraph to describe characters without using their names.

Kate is important in the game in that we’re shown her differences from and —more enlightening — similarities to Nancy. Nancy’s actions in this game are reflections on what Kate did (and what she would have done) as much as they show how the daughter diverges from the mother. And while Nancy doesn’t have her mother’s people skills or ease of making friendships, what she does have is her mother’s – and I’m going to use this word purposely — flightiness.

At the end of the day, Carson couldn’t be with Kate when she flitted off around the world, and Ned can’t be with Nancy when she does the same.

(I also find it interesting that we deal in the games only with Carson’s side of the family, and never even have a mention of Nancy’s maternal grandparents. Yes, I know Kate could have been an only child and her parents could already be dead…but I do like the possibility that they blame Carson for Kate’s death (entirely undeservedly!) and thus cut off contact. But this meta is for, well, meta, not fanfic.)

Ned Nickerson plays an important role in SPY in that he tries to help Nancy the best he can, even to the point of breaking and entering in her house (though really, it’s just entering, since he has permission) to find a document for her.

Ned comes off brilliantly in this game, but it’s important to note that his big, impressive (yet charmingly understated) speech isn’t to Nancy, but to Carson. And it doesn’t sway Nancy, it sways Carson. Because, at the end of the day, Carson can relate to lots of the pieces that make Ned what he is, and the situation that Ned finds himself in.

He’s wonderful, as boyfriends go; he calls her, encourages her, offers oddly prescient hints…but he doesn’t go with her. It’d be easy enough to make that a point in the series that, though we don’t see it happen, Ned often accompanies Nancy on her escapades, but instead we’re told — often through contention — that the exact opposite is true.

Ned is solid, true, intelligent, emotionally balanced and kind, but above all, Ned is stable. He’s enrolled in college — in an honors frat — and plays sports, attends his classes faithfully, remembers important dates…the list goes on and on. These are all wonderful characteristics for a boyfriend, but he, like Carson with Kate, ultimately isn’t what Nancy needs out of a relationship — and she is certainly not, like Kate with Carson, what Ned needs out of a relationship.

At the end of the day, both would need to compromise — Ned would need to set off with her sometimes, and Nancy would need to stay close to home sometimes — in order to make the other happy. And, well…nothing we have in any of the games says that either one would do that in the long term. Sure, Nancy returns home after the fight in CAP for ASH…but is in Egypt the very next game — immediately followed by Colorado, Georgia, and Scotland.

And honestly, this is the basis on which I disagree with Ned/Nancy as a couple. It serves neither one and, as we see in quite a few games where they squabble, they can make each other worse.

And speaking of our resident sleuth, let’s talk about Nancy Drew before wrapping up this character section.

In SPY, Nancy is — as mentioned above — a tool, used by both sides to get what they want without caring how it personally affects her. The big thing we learn about Nancy in this — and one of my favorite characteristics about her — is that Nancy is pretty ruthless. To me, it makes sense that, to get the information she wants, Nancy does what a terrorist organization tells her to because 1) it’s not her home immediately at risk, and 2) most importantly, Nancy has done bad things in the name of a good end in pretty much every game.

Lying, stealing, breaking priceless artifacts, endangering others — none of these are really new to Nancy, and what SPY does is brings that to the forefront. Sure, you as the player have the option not to do what Revenant tells Nancy to do…but then you miss out on big parts of Kate’s characterization — and, more importantly, a big part of Nancy’s.

In an unprecedented move, I’m going to reference National Treasure again, and quote part of Ben’s speech before he steals the Declaration:

“[A toast] to high treason…here’s to men who did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they thought was right — what they knew was right.”

To me, that shows us why Nancy does what she does — in SPY, and in every other game where she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the truth. She does it because, at the end of the day, Nancy is a person who is ruthless in her pursuit of her goal. And that’s a valuable trait.

Especially when one is dealing with spies, terrorists, and shady government operatives.

The Favorite:

I love most of SPY, so I’ll stick here with the things that especially stick out to me.

As covered above, I love: what this game does for the lore of the ND world; ‘Samantha Quick’; the many motivations of our suspects, and the emotional resonance that this game has.

Beyond that, there are a lot of little things. I absolutely love that they got the relative of the guy who plays Carson to play Nancy when she was little — that’s adorable to me. I love the cookie-making minigame, the outfit swap for Bridget/Zoe, the voice work for all of our suspects and helpers, and the beautiful locations (especially the spy cabin, both exterior and interior).

My favorite moment in the game is a sad one, but I’m a mercurial kind of person, so you should have really expected that. It’s actually Moira’s log/diary/letter to Kate (it functions as all three) after Cathedral deactivates her as an agent. I love a lot about it — the sad, almost desperate feeling to the words, the pen color changing as the seasons do — but nothing is better done than Moira’s last entry:

“It’s winter. It doesn’t matter that it’s winter, does it?”

My favorite puzzle is probably the zip-lining one. Sure, it’s easy, and sure, the animation makes me a little motion-sick, but it’s just….zip lines are just cool. That’s all there is to it. It appeals to the spy-loving idiot in me, and I think big-woosh-go-fast is stupid cool.

I also have to give a hat-tip to Kate’s letter — turning a fandom meme into a heartwarming story? Nik, you mad genius — and Nancy’s letter to Kate at the end. Both are beautifully written and are the perfect centerpiece to their respective characters, and both always put a smile on my face (and, at times, a tear in my eye) when reading them.

The last thing I really do have to mention here is Logan’s quasi-reappearance. I mentioned this in my “Top 5 Surprising Moments” meta, but I love, love, love that Logan is a Cathedral operative, and that he reported on Nancy during SAW. Not only does this continue to open up Nancy’s world, but it also shows that there are consequences to Nancy’s actions. She’s in rare form as far as rudeness goes in SAW, and SPY weaponizes that against her, giving Cathedral (and Revenant) a way to weaponize her feelings about her mother’s death and her — to be frank — inability to let things lie as they are.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things that aren’t quite my favorite in SPY, so let’s run through those as well.

First, in the common refrain of “small visual distinctions are difficult for me personally”, I didn’t like that there wasn’t enough contrast between a plain (on the bottom half) cookie and the orange/purple jelly. The shadow on the screen makes it kind of difficult to tell them apart, especially if there’s sprinkles and/or frosting on top of it, and I found that mildly frustrating, even though I love the minigame itself.

The second thing I don’t like is the option to skip the dialogue. Yes, this is present in most of the newer games, and I don’t like it in them either, but it’s especially egregious in SPY and LIE. Both of these games really rely on hints given in the dialogue (and of course, in the written materials hidden around the game) in order to get a full, clear view of what’s going on. The option is great on repeat plays, but I really do wish that it was disabled if it was your first save file on the game.

The last annoying thing is the Jabberwocky puzzle — or rather, the percentage of the jabberwocky puzzle that the player actually has to do. The puzzle as it stands feels very confusing, and the “hints” you get are quite unintuitive.

The record tells you basically how to create the encrypted message — it’s the first letter from each green word, the second from each orange word, etc., arranged in the order they appear in the poem — but when you start the poem, Nancy has already basically completed this step, and it’s up to you to do the actual decoding just through process of elimination.

It’s a puzzle of letter deduction, like in TMB and the minigame in ASH — and these are normally my favorite puzzles! — but it’s cloaked in the disguise of an encryption puzzle, and for that, it’s incredibly irritating.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Silent Spy?

The first thing I’d do, which you can probably guess based on the above section, is to fix how the Jabberwocky poem is presented. Even a bit of dialogue establishing what the player actually has to do versus what Nancy does for the player would be helpful in working through it without bothering making the encrypted message oneself, and would set the player up to actually know what they’re doing, versus the mass of confusion that comes with the puzzle.

The only other change I would make would to put in one more flashback — that of 10-year-old Nancy’s perspective shortly after Kate’s death, perhaps after the funeral. We spend a lot of time in flashback seeing Kate before her death, and I think it would add to just a little bit more of seeing Nancy’s relationship with her mother if we could see the Drew house with her recently gone.

(And perhaps, see or hear Hannah? Please?)

The Silent Spy is a game that I find, on the whole, to be one of the best that Nik penned, and certainly a fitting end to the series of “Nancy Games” that gives us a little more perspective on our teeth sleuth. There are as many moments of joy as of sorrow, but in the end the player is left with the feeling that Nancy’s world is a little better for knowing more about her mother, and that whatever else Kate did and was, she left behind a world (both in game and breaking the fourth wall) that was better — and had ways to become even better than that — than it was when she lived in it.

[scarletgardensrpg]

UNDEAD ♦ THIRTY-SEVEN ♦ ASCENDANCY

CECILE BUCHANAN is the Resurrector of the Ascendancy and second-in-command to De Dominee. Killed and resurrected by Nikolaas in the Red Room, Cecile is the first recorded Undead to walk the Earth. The circumstances of her death and revival are peculiar and scientifically unreplicable thus far—the product of extensive experimentation prior to her exposure to the 197th iteration of PM-GRNT, her body reacted to the chemical abnormally by simultaneously killing, then reviving her as a semi-conscious rotbeest following consumption of Nikolaas' blood. This genetic anonmaly, wherein she never developed a true rotbeest state, enables her to survive without PM-GRNT 197. She and her brother, Evander, are responsible for the initial Scarlet Death.

BIOGRAPHY

tw: gore, implied animal cruelty

At fifteen, she was already vicious. The dog's fucking dead, what am I supposed to do about it? Revive it? She was still in her Sunday clothes: Valentino kitten heels and a jumpsuit the color of wet ink. Six rubies and a rosario dangled from her ears. By the quiet, seething look in Julian's eyes, she knew it was taking everything in his power not to rip them out. They stood opposite of one another in the foyer, six unbreachable feet between sister and brother. Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan were God knows where. Evander was drinking on the beach. And the Dobermann was dead. Don't be a baby, Jules, Cecile said, and turned to go, pleasure heavy in her gut. You have others. She'd do anything to hurt Julian, if it meant that pretty expression would bloom on his face: wrath, spreading like blood in water.

- ❀ -

It came down to three things: she was a bastard, she was a girl, and she was second-born. Senator Buchanan made his preferences clear, and that preference burned through every designer dress, every blank check, every Maserati and summer house in the Hamptons. What good was it to look good, live well, when every nice thing felt like an IOU to Julian? Why pander to her older half-brother when he already looked at her with cold, patronizing eyes, as if she were a particularly troublesome dog to keep on a tight leash? Maybe Evander could live like that, hanging onto his every word and lolling after him mindlessly—but Cecile could not swallow the indignity of it. Her girlhood was one turbulence after another: the burn of her cheek where her stepmother struck it, the noxious silence of every family dinner, the freezing bath tile against her knees when she would bite down on her knuckle to keep from screaming. She would grow into a cruel, mean girl. A bitch. She would prowl boarding school halls at midnight with predatory calm, one hand gripping a bucket of gasoline; the other a lighter and match. You're making it worse for yourself, Evander said, after the third expulsion. Is getting kicked out for arson your grand strategy for earning Papa's approval? But by then, she was just angry. She was just trying to kick hard before going under. Fuck Papa's approval, Cecile said, and rolled herself another joint.

Eventually, Papa ran out of ideas. He met with doctors, businessmen, then a scientist and lawyer, both young. Harvard brats, Cecile learned, one ear pressed to the mahogany door of her father's study, who were working on something that was sure to intrigue you, sir, and certainly Julian. Because, of course, Julian had a place in this room of important silhouettes; he'd soon become one himself. Cecile's twenty-first birthday present was a swig of vodka and a biochemical test subject consent form. Evander had looked so terrible, signing his own set of paperwork while Julian simply watched them from the other side of the desk, Papa's hand on his shoulder. See? Cecile leaned over in her seat to poke Evander in the cheek with a single manicured nail. We're the same in this family's eyes. Disposable vermin. Terrible, harsh silence. She was looking at Julian, and found all of it unspeakably funny. Twenty-one years of Cecile's best efforts at nightmarish behavior—and here he was, winning in a landslide. Even she couldn't have dreamed up something so cruel. She was drunk on rage. She was dizzy with fury. And yet, when she addressed him, her voice was soft as a lily. You know, Jules, I really should've killed the other two dogs.

Later, they would call her helpless. A young, naive woman, dragged kicking and screaming into the Red Room, terrified for her life. As if Cecile has not spent every waking moment raising hell and terrorizing others. They would forgive all her sins, it seemed, so as to make room for the greater one: for what was a wealthy Senator's troubled, bastard daughter to two people in pursuit of divinity? One was inappropriate; another was utterly sacrilegious. Cecile supposed it was the easier narrative to tell; Eve, tricked by the devil to bite the fruit, could still claim some morsel of innocence at the trial of God. But, of course, the truth was, Cecile had never once been interested in innocence. She would always go after what she wanted with teeth and nails. She would always worship herself before all others. Nothing frightened her anymore. Whatever elixir they were perfecting for Julian, she would taste it first. Chemicals, poisons, pain—all of it was but a symptom of eventual power. And, ah, in her did power rise. Whatever she had become under Nikolaas' guileful hand, it was heady and powerful and utterly inimitable. Half-beast and half-woman, waist-deep in death: was Cecile not single-handedly responsible for ending a world? Did she not raise rotbeest after rotbeest, and let the ones she adored most feast upon her own flesh until they were returned to consciousness? Later, they would call her helpless—and perhaps, in comparison, the spiteful little girl of her past was helpless. But not anymore. Divinity lived within her now. She had swallowed God whole.

CONNECTIONS

NIKOLAAS – LOVE DESTROYED, TOO. Is she in love? Not with him. With his jungle garden of a mind? Maybe. Maybe it's psychological delusion, wired into her for survival's sake in the Red Room. Maybe it's a product of dying and living again by his hand, of having known what his blood tasted like in her mouth. Maybe it is simply true, unadulterated friendship, forged on strange foundations. I'm your one and only? She teases him, and licks the rim of her champagne flute. He is, whether aware of it or not, afraid of her. Or, more accurately: afraid of what he is capable of creating. After all, she has him to thank for a number of things—her untempered darkness, her gift for passing that same darkness to whomever she pleases with a single bite, her freedom from a past life that would have chained her to Julian. But, in spite of the wondrous creature he has forged from blood and science, Nikolaas refuses to spawn another like her; perhaps because he can't stomach the flesh it requires, or perhaps because he sees what she is capable of. Cecile doesn't mind—she's rather possessive of him, and dislikes the idea of sharing. She has followed him to Amsterdam, as she is sure she would follow him anywhere—to hell, to the ends of the earth, to heaven with a torch. They've made something beautiful since then: an ascending legion of the restless Undead, fed on a new drug that will carry them to dizzying heights. Cecile plans to rule someday with Nikolaas by her side. I'm your one and only, she says again, and this time, it's not a question.  

BLUE, DIMITRI, & JACQUES – BLOOD HOUNDS. They carry within each of them a vicious appetite for disaster—her appetite, dark and divine enough to swallow a city whole. They are perfectly cruel, unrivaled in beauty, unmatched in prowess—and of the hundreds of Undead who call her Mother, Blue, Dimitri, and Jacques remain her undisputed favorites, all raised on her blood. They are the three she looks upon with cold pride and infinite expectation; the standard by which all her other creations are measured. Do they share Blue's labyrinthine mind, her measured capacity for torment? Can they wear violence with grace and allure, as Dimitri does? Does Jacques' bizarre madness gleam in their eyes? The collective name Cecile gives them is fitting: for they are her dogs, her beasts, her children. She commands: Kill for me. Die for me. Live for me. And like good pets, they always oblige. She does not need their love, and shows them very little of her own—but still she demands their loyalty, their fear-tinged worship, and a promise to accompany her to the ends of the world. As their Resurrector, this is an eternal debt they owe to her. 

JULIAN & EVANDER – BLOOD IS BLOOD. The funny thing is, Cecile loves them. She loves them as all families are condemned to love one another, from birth to death to beyond that, too. One simply cannot discard of convenants made in blood—as much as she wishes she could. Julian, princely and immaculate, has always inspired murderous pursuits within Cecile: some ugly roiling mix of jealousy and resentment for her older half-brother that has seized her since girlhood. He has never taken her seriously. Instead, he insists on taking care of her, on filing away her teeth so she will stop biting his hand; not understanding Cecile can never be the sort of girl to accept condescension for benevolence. Now, stronger and standing on a level playing field with him at last, she finds herself continuing to provoke him, even word from her mouth a harsh lashing she hopes will make him flinch. If she is yearning unconsciously for the nod of respect she never once received while alive, Cecile will never say it out loud.

As for the youngest Buchanan, Cecile regards her little half-brother with less hostility—but contempt nonetheless. Brilliant, handsome Evander, who could aspire to great heights, if he didn't have such an inferiority complex when it came to Julian. She had hoped to make him into someone worthier when she killed him—but if he'd rather sulk uselessly in the cementary, fine. The fact that her brothers get along with one another just fine, even now, is a source of confused frustration for Cecile—and if she must be honest, once an injury to her feelings as well. They have always seemed to get along better with one another than with her—and being the bastard daughter, Cecile used to find it hard not to feel bothered. Of course, many years have passed since then. In death, Cecile is calm and calculative, unfazed and secure in her own power. She harbors some resentment against Julian for his complicity in selling her and Evander to the Red Room—but the satisfaction in having come on top regardless outweighs it. The matter of her killing Evander is also...well. Her baby brother was not appreciative of that gesture, possibly. All in all, she wouldn't say she's on good terms with either one of her siblings—but alas, blood is blood. For all their complicated histories and intertwined grievances, Cecile suspects they will always be apart of each other, for better or—more likely—for worse.  

OPEN ♦ FC: OLIVIA MUNN

[madscientistjournal]

Fiction: Children of the Guillotine

An essay by Bernard Asse, as provided by Nathan Crowder Art by Luke Spooner

You sit there smiling, full of self-importance, bloated with secrets and my finest burgundy, and question the path that brought you here to me. Our previous interactions in the Grand Salon piqued your curiosity, made you envious, perhaps. Me, the lowly child of a Parisian ex-pat and a college professor from Senegal, the talk of the city’s elite, my designs worn by the daughters of wealth and privilege. You look upon my Haute Couture and see nothing special, nothing magical. Certainly, I must have done something scandalous, must have fucked my way into a position of influence, must know where the bodies are buried, to achieve such unwarranted acclaim. How tired your bleated protests, thinking they are unique, thinking you are the first to question my vision as a designer.

Rooting in the soft ground of my known history, you tried to dig up some dark secret. You found nothing but carrots but convinced yourself they were diamonds. Convinced yourself that my association with esoteric spiritualists makes me look mad, as if black magic could account for my successes.

If I truly were a sorcerer, then you were a fool to come to my home to confront me.

But we shared a laugh over it, didn’t we? The blow of the accusation turning instead to an introduction, a laying bare of grievances, an opportunity to expose our true selves. To a fine meal shared between new friends.

You sit before me as the daughter of wealth and privilege, striving to make an impact in the fashion world. Too late you found that real talent cannot be bought. Your money and influence cannot bring you that spark. You cannot create, only acquire. You see yourself as less because of this. If only you knew your worth, your inherent value, perhaps you wouldn’t be here.

And here I am, Bernard Asse, who came from nothing, Parisian born but raised in far off Dakar. Senegal? How can genius come from Senegal? you think. Surely this is a mistake. It illustrates your ignorance. Your lack of vision. Genius can come from anywhere. You only need be hungry for it.

My mother was hungry.

Her family was born in the blood and fire of the French Revolution, the filial ties that came before made irrelevant by the events of the time. There could be no going back. My mother’s people were reborn the children of the guillotine. They learned new paths towards knowledge and power. Or perhaps old ways. Very, very old ways.

There is magic in the meat. Surely a sensualist like yourself grasps the faintest spark of that truth. But beyond the limited edge of your understanding is a universe of possibility.

The people were starving, you see. Dire circumstances such as that, it makes the previously unthinkable a reality. The suggestion of “Let them eat cake,” cuts even deeper when you realize they were already at each other’s throats. Ghoulish, you say? Monstrous? Those were monstrous times, my sweet. And people have to eat.

Ah. I see the horror in your eyes. I see you question the fine stew I served for dinner. You have no reason to fear. It was pork loin procured down the street. You deserve nothing finer.

Speaking of pigs, have you heard the story of the three-legged pig? Your confused expression tells me that the answer is no. But where was I?

Oh yes. Heritage.

My mother was forced to flee Paris when she was young. She had been careless, a schoolmate gone missing under mysterious circumstances. As you might expect, suspicions had been raised, and she had to leave her old life behind. Senegal had been a French territory until four years earlier, and though it was not the most welcoming place, at least it was far from curious eyes and scandalous whispers. She lived quite well there once she adjusted. Dakar is a lovely city.

Shame you’ll never visit it, really. Paris has its charm, but there is a warmth and richness in Dakar that must be seen to be appreciated.

My parents met at university. He was a few years older, a medical student at the head of his class. He read obsessively, medical journals as well as Camus and Sartre in the original French. He spoke four languages fluently, and a smattering of at least four or five more. My father was a genius.

And my mother was hungry for knowledge.

So hungry.

They say that not everyone learns the same way. Some from reading, some from practice, some from lectures. The children of the guillotine, they consume knowledge. Nothing base. Not like you are thinking. Not like a wolf. Not like some animal gorging at the trough. There is ritual to the process. A holy communion. Beauty, even. Such beauty a mind like yours could scarcely conceive.

If you know how to see this beauty, there is magic in the meat. Knowledge, memories, secrets. Held fast in the fat and sinews, that spark can be transferred in the sacred act of consumption.

The pig. Yes, the story of the three-legged pig. I was going to tell you that story. I see the pleading in your eyes. Do not worry. I haven’t forgotten.

Or are you looking for something else? Perhaps your gaze snags upon the candlelight reflecting off my cutlery? Or you hope for someone to interrupt us, perhaps? You needn’t concern yourself with that. I live alone. My lifestyle requires a certain degree of discretion. Of seclusion.

Now. Where were we? Yes. The pig.

There was salesman who came upon a farm out in the countryside. In talking with the farmer, he noticed a massive hog wallowing in a pen. This magnificent beast happened to have a wooden leg. The farmer noted the salesman’s curiosity and said, “I see you eying my pig. That’s an amazing pig. One time I was fixing the tractor and the jack fell, pinning me under its weight. I would have died if that pig hadn’t come to my rescue, pushing against the tractor enough that I could get free. A magnificent pig. Then, not too long after that, my house caught fire in the middle of the night. My family would have died had that hog’s squealing not woken me up. As it was, I had enough time to rescue myself and my wife and daughter. Yes indeed, that is one amazing pig.”

“But why does he have a wooden leg?” the salesman asked.

The farmer smiled and his teeth shined, sharp and cold as a guillotine. “A pig that amazing, you don’t want to eat all at once.”

I tell that story so that you may understand this one.

A pig that amazing, you don’t want to eat all at once.

My parents met in college. They fell in love and returned to my mother’s ancestral home in Paris. Where they were married. Where I was born. And over time, my brilliant, loving father wasted away before my eyes.

Well, not wasted.

Not a bite was wasted.

Whittled away, perhaps?

She loved him so much, it took years for my mother to consume him.

My mother, she was crafty. She was clever. She was subtle. Thanks to my father, she was brilliant as well.

And I, Bernard Asse, toast of the Parisian fashion scene? I was my mother’s son.

I saw what she had, and I grew hungry.

I see you eying my knife. It is an heirloom. A final gift from my mother. They say the blade was forged with steel from the guillotine. I can’t prove this historical footnote. But I believe it, and that’s enough.

Don’t bother getting up. Not that you can. Pork loin wasn’t the only ingredient in the feast I served you. No, your bowl had something else in it as well. Something to help you relax.

It’s not your fault. I want you to know that. Your aspirations exceeded your reach. You couldn’t see your own value. So busy chasing acclaim by any means necessary that you didn’t realize you had fattened yourself on other people’s secrets. Secrets have currency. And for we children of the guillotine, there is magic in the meat.

I know you understand that. If not now, you will eventually.

We have time, after all.

Bernard Asse is a rising star in the fashion industry, known for his innovative choice of materials interpreted through a lens of classic silhouettes. He is hungry for success and his new collection will walk Milan 2020. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Nathan Crowder has a fondness for writing about superheroes and some of the darker corners of history and culture. He has seen every episode of Project Runway at least once.

Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree, he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his web site at www.carrionhouse.com.

“Children of the Guillotine” is © 2019 Nathan Crowder Art accompanying story is © 2019 Luke Spooner

Fiction: Children of the Guillotine was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

[universal-kitty]

   So I’m thinking about Borderlands again... Listening to music used in Borderlands... So I thought, why not go for it again? Explain my SI in one, comprehensive post, make another tag-series out of it (to go with my BnHA Edition one), and make it easier on us all, huh?

   So here we go! Borderlands, the Self-Insert Edition! Featuring my SI, Rena “Gremlin” Marlow...and co.

Rena Marlow, a daughter of a brilliant scientist of their galaxy and a mother known- if lesser- by her photography of various planets and stars.

Brown hair parted down the middle with strands of brown hair that fall next to her face, in later years; in childhood, she just has fringe. Dark green eyes and wears glasses.

A happy, oblivious kid growing up. Liked to believe in fairytales, love at first sight, superstitions... A whole bunch of things. Very imaginative, in that sense.

Idolized her father. People seemed to adore him and knew him wherever he went. He spent long hours in his lab, making Rena daydream of all the cool things he was inventing back there. She was never allowed back there, usually, so she stuck to waiting around and staring at his lab door.

Eventually, he did invite her in, one day. Wanted help. The idea was so cool! Helping her dad with a project?! Wow!!! What cool thing would she get to work with?

...It wasn’t at all as pleasant as she’d hoped.

What he needed help with is all she’d ever know as “The Machine”. A smooth, pure white, helmet-looking contraption with lots of cords going into it, during the early days of her father hammering out the details of it.

It hurt then, too. Not being fully worked out, it tended to shock her a lot. Strapped down to a chair, she couldn’t go anywhere... Her father would carry her back to her room and- at some point- the process would begin again.

Carried on for a few months until it didn’t hurt anymore; it started...teaching her things. Suddenly, she knew all about oceanic life and could speak of it at a college level. Write her own studies on plant life. Her father was proud of her, The Machine didn’t hurt anymore, and even her often space-case mother praised her. It felt...amazing!!

Eventually the testing stopped, though. Her father brought in a guy to help and Rena was growing up, as the years passed.

In about junior high, she met a guy. Absolutely starstruck by him and settled on them being “soulmates” within a month or two... Not that it was just her saying this, mind you; her boyfriend certainly encouraged it.

Her friends were cautious, but supportive. Be chill, girl. Still a lot more in life, you know? Besides, considering who her dad is...?

Rena didn’t pay it much heed. Instead, more plans for the future! More dreams and secrets and quiet moments...

Well, until another few years later. Wandering the town at night, heading home...and spying that- just down the street- her supposed “boyfriend” was being sweet to some other girl, said he loved her, and kissed her.

It destroyed her. Her home life had never been stellar and she’d been hoping that with him...she’d be able to get out. They’d be a “happily ever after”.....

Rena instead decided to run away. That night. Get as far away from here as possible. Pack her bags, slip as much money and a little more as seemed necessary...and as a final knife to the back, steal The Machine.

It’s no secret it’s been killing other people, anyways. They can’t handle their minds being fed so much information, so it tends to backfire and rapidly destroy their mind... Rena’s never had that issue, though. Likely for growing with it as it evolved...so hers now.

Books it off-planet that night and goes as far as she dares within the next solar cycle or two.

Stays on another planet for a few months. Fakes an ID and goes to a local college... Who calls her out for being a daughter of Dr. Marlow anyways and practically sweeps her in with excitement.

Ends up acing everything far too easily, thanks to The Machine. But it all gives her a good starting point into the world ahead and a fancy piece of paper that basically says, “congrats, you understand what a Science is.”

At this point, understands: biological science (biology, zoology, oceanology), botany, geology, chemistry, ecology, and physics. And she’s just getting started!!!

Keeps running once more ‘til the funds are running low...and that’s when she finds Hyperion.

Initially joins under Tassiter, still recruiting people for Hyperion. He’s...doubtful of her true age, but accepts upon seeing what she can do when he allows her a trial run of things he wants to see done. Fast and experienced despite her face, he lets her join.

Enters R&D from that point on, at first as an on-hand assistant...before rising up to earn her own private lab and assisting with bigger and better projects. Rena proves herself worthy of it, and Hyperion bends a little to allow her, when possible.

It’s around this time, as they move into Helios and continue to set up, that an old crew hunts down Rena. They force her to accept their black-market deals or they report her back to her father... After all, they work for him, too, but are always lookin’ to cut a deal with the better side. Rena gives in.

The events of the Pre-Sequel go down. Rena largely keeps herself locked inside her dark laboratory, hiding away in one of her cabinets. It’s a terrifying, defining moment for her...and one that also helps survive the inevitable Jack takeover.

Honestly, that goes over like day to night for her. One minute, it’s still a “Tassiter” owned company, then before she knows it, Helios is complete and “Handsome Jack” owns the place. Well, okay then. Let her have her coffee as usual, oh Jack sir, and we’re all good.

Honestly, barely leaves her lab. Too much work going on. If not a Hyperion-issued project, then one of her own designs. She’s got a lot of room to work with and she’s gonna make the best of it, dammit!

Still manages to make a friend or two; meets Leah around this time. A very cheerful young woman who’s somehow dug ABBA out of their grave and is fond of “Dancing Queen.” Helps Rena keep in touch with her “feminine side” not that she sees much point to it...

They hang out a bit, anyways. It’s the only time Rena is guaranteed to sleep. Especially in a proper bed.

(Doesn’t sleep in the employee-issued rooms. Gives her paranoia of being alone; she’d rather be close to her work than stuck in a near-permanent panic attack.)

Her first pet project? Lizards. With a whole process of breaking down other key DNA sequences from other species. Why? Lizards....into dragons.

Silverstreak is her “main” partner. Silver dragon, with blue eyes. Incredibly bossy and sassy to the others; easy to assume their leadership position.

Other dragons include:

Apophis: Big male dragon, slightly bigger than Silver. Purple and gold scales, with four eyes total. An absolute jerk who tries to harass Silver, but they have none of it. Would kill a family for a cornchip, probably. And he doesn’t even like them!!

Dymri: Forest green dragon, with brown horns and a streak of fur down his back, with tufts on the bend of his forelegs and hind legs. Is now missing his left wing, due to Apophis ripping it nearly entirely off. (It ended up being amputated.)

Munda: Dymri’s mate. Ended up sprouting a lot more fur than he did, but in a more unusual color: green. Looks like a dappled forest with blue eyes and an attitude.

Poseidon: Blue, serpent dragon. Fairly big, though not as much as Apophis. Likes hanging out in water... That with his scale color, thus, the name.

Firestorm: A red, wyvern dragon. No arms, just wings, only hind legs. Red scales with bright green eyes. Truly a charmer.

Smokey: Firestorm’s mate. Dark scales that give off a black-grey color, which inspired her name. Red eyes. Has a tuft of fur at the end of her tail.

Sugar: Another female dragon named for her brown and cream-colored scales. Also a wyvern, with her hand-wings. Very sweet and friendly to anyone she meets. Small streaks of feathers from head to her tail.

Little Angel: One of the G2 dragons, along with three others of her nest. Has a broken horn on her right side. Black and white-splotched scales. A little trooper and totally not named after a certain siren...

.....Along with many more who are still unnamed to this date. From the first set (G1s) to the babies some pairs have had (G2s).

Cue the events of Borderlands, as Rena continues to raise dragons and serve Hyperion. Depending on who-what-where, this may be where some romances start their growth...but we’ll get to that later.

People continue to bother her. A nickname surfaces... “Gremlin.” Because she’s pretty short (at 5′2″ without her trademark heels), tends to be more active when most people would feel the need to sleep, and creeps around with a hunched back, more often than not. Truly, a gremlin among them.

Nothing really happens in this time period up ‘til BLands 2, in which Rena decides to perfectly time a trip to Pandora with a small group of scientists. Nobody’s really gotten personal with studying the Pandoran landscape, have they? So... Guess Rena will do it, then!

Only to find out why nobody has ever done that; raiders and bandits. Infiltrating the camp barely a week in.

Everyone is murdered. Rena escapes with the briefcase that holds The Machine, but is otherwise alone and stuck on Pandora.

Ends up trying to blend in, after a few weeks. There’s only so much an intelligent woman could do here...but how about one who acts like your typical psycho? Worth the shot, at least.

Slowly, the good scientist slips away into a woman masquerading madness while seeping into it, at the same time.

Pops is one of her first friends on Pandora. Someone she trusts...and a father figure to her. He’s a big man who knows hacking and coding, so she learns a bunch from him. They build robots together! It’s awesome.

From there, she gets introduced to this eye-guy waaaaaaayyyyy across the way over a call from Pops to that other guy. Rena ends up making him “Fly Boy” to do deliveries without leaving home.

Said guy looks out for Rena now, getting her new glasses whenever she breaks hers.

Made a few other bots in her time. One that only screamed “fuck” at the top of their lil’ volume, a fixed Claptrap unit with no sense of direction, and a bot named Sparky. But bandits destroyed him a few days into life. RIP, Sparky....

That nickname Helios gave her? Gremlin? Others call her that, now. All know of Gremlin!! ....Well, not all, but a lot.

Including Pyrotech and Meowzer. They run a small gang of bandits and are probably dating...? Gremlin still doesn’t know, either way, but she survived meeting them, so that’s cool.

Met another person who calls himself Scabbs. Largely because he’s got CIP (can’t feel pain; a marvel that he’s still alive when Pandora is your home planet) and so has a fair amount of scars and scratches... Ever since meeting up with Rena, she’s essentially adopted him and makes sure he’s got no life-threatening injuries.

Which is lowkey hilarious, considering Scabbs has made it 17 years without dying, so he’s not exactly in need of a parent, but... He likes Rena, so it’s cool.

Stocks up on weapons, clothes, and masks. All looted from dead bodies and washed up a little. Rena herself as taken to wearing a black tank top, torn up into a crop-top look, a Marauder jacket, and altered, brown pants. Has boots for shoes. Where she got ‘em, nobody knows.

Is stuck on Pandora all the way ‘til Tales... In which she tends to join up in an attempt to get back to Helios and get all of her shit back.

With that covering the basics... Let’s get down to the AUs, then the shipping verses after that, ey...?

AU 1- AI Rena: There’s two verses for this AU. (As long as this post already is.)

Verse 1: Rena owns the Wildlife Exploration Preserve shortly before the events of Tales. However, she didn’t realize one of her pet projects wasn’t bonding to her properly. While going in for feeding and check-ups, the beast killed her and activated a failsafe that resulted in an AI version of herself being activated.

Rhys, having no concept of safety, jabs a port into his head to try and get information on more pieces for Gortys. Just like a time before with Nakayama, Rhys instead downloads a whole ‘nother AI into his noggin.

Now he’s got an Asshole and a Know-It-All Scientist taking root in his skull. The good news is Rena is much nicer to him than HJack is. The bad news is the two bicker a lot because of it.

Where Jack is blue with yellow eyes, Rena is a green holo with- at first- light, green-yellow eyes. Over time, her eyes shift to yellow, however. Nobody is sure why, but Rhys and Rena agree to blame Jack for it. (Who is proud at her matching him, but less thrilled to be blamed for something he didn’t do... Intentionally.)

Lots of Rena snarking Jack. He can touch her, being another hologram like he is, but he can’t hurt her. Turns out her processing power comes from The Machine itself, so she can easily overpower his cruddy design from Nakayama.

Has a side path where she can enter a basic, non-perfect android body to reboot the systems at the Preserve, but later needs to transfer in another, more humanlike model to function better.

....HJack is not pleased with her upgrades, considering she’s getting the better end of the deal than he’s got. Rhys isn’t impressed with that tone, either. >:/

Verse 2: The Machine takes it’s toll on Rena. Her mind could better withstand it’s power, having being an unwilling subject in the early days of it’s development, but... Even her mind can’t keep this up forever.

It starts with forgetting her name. Won’t answer to Rena, but Gremlin works.

Forgetting her nickname.

Slowly, everything she’s ever learned starts going away. Bit by bit, losing what memories The Machine gave her. Rage sets in around here, recognizing her memory is no longer perfect and putting her into a panic of self-awareness.

Memories of people slip away now. Often cries for her ex or where her parents are.

Eventually is confined to bed, where her brain is failing to the point it can’t remember to continue to make the organs function. It’s around this point that she finally dies.

Her personality and memories were embedded into The Machine; her final goodbyes to friends and loved ones. Her AI keeps people from using it after her and requests that it be destroyed soon.

Just like in the first verse, her eyes start out a yellow-green. Then a yellow... If not destroyed, AI Rena’s eyes will sometimes flicker to red, showing how deeply the corruption has started effecting her.

Either way, The Machine will be unusable. Just as how Rena believed it should’ve been.

Siren AU: An AU in which Rena was instead born a Siren. She sports green tattoos on her right side and often made them glow when she was younger, for her amusement and not understanding who she was...or her powers.

Not that her parents helped any. Her mother was just completely confused and arguments over what to do with her were had a lot. Rena’s mother wanted to get her checked out at a hospital. Her father believed she truly was a Siren and wanted to experiment on her.

The arguments eventually drove Rena away and- living on Elpis at the time- Rena began the first dip into her powers: summoning her Siren wings (in a light green tinge) and flying away...off Elpis! Taking a trip to Pandora in order to hide from her fighting parents.

Phasecommand- Her main Siren ability. When executing, her eyes roll back and it summons Pandoran beasts/animals to her side to control and fight her enemies. However, any creatures that don’t disperse afterwards can be considered enemies to her allies or her, if she accidentally hurts one.

When using Eridium, her tattoos will change into more of a teal color and glow more.

Likes the idea of people, but prefers the animals and Guardians. People are too much for her to handle...

Somehow still summoned little dragons...? Is only ever seen with ones the size of cats or lizards, but it’s presumed that- like her main verse- they’ll one day mutate to full, dragon-of-legend glorious sizing.

Dragon AU: In one of two paths, with either Rena being one of the dragons of Eridian times OR having accidentally turned into one of her own dragons.

Either way, her dragon form typically looks a little something like this.

The first verse has her being more curious and prone to friendliness...but ready to snap if she senses ill intent. Still, tries to be optimistic, at least. Rests within a cave near one of the vaults.

About the size of a two-story home, if not a little bigger.

Rena speaks Eridian, but has the capacity to learn present day English, if given the time to learn.

The runes on her body allow her to safely use Eridium. By using it, her systems can filter it properly into a variety of uses, from specialized fire to shape-shifting!!

Verse two is just...Rena being done with this bullshit. All these years of science, for what? To be stuck as a dragon?!? The only useful thing that comes of this is not only does she now understand the world through a dragon’s eyes, but their language, as well.

Turns out, the language of the dragons is actually original Eridian and not whatever mumbo-jumbo you hear most present day speakers go for. It’s an interesting bit to learn, however it’s debatable if the cost was worth it.

(Will eventually return to normal with an understanding of Eridian, but I like just putting my SIs through nonsense, too.)

otp; Science and Violence (Rena/Jack): As literally pulled out of the RP @punk-opossum and I did a few months ago!! Cause I basically consider that “canon” for this ship, now.     (Okay, with a few bits I’ve added in, but LARGELY pulled from our RP.)

They’ve been around each other since the beginning, really. Rena oblivious and never noticing Jack, but he’s seen her around. Quiet, nerdy gal who bothers nobody and does her job. Is kinda cool, but no other opinions.

Then, we truck over to the events during Borderlands 2...and things get tossed around like pizza dough. [Note: Nisha and Angel are dead at this point.]

Starting with Jack bothering her workspace. Shooting her head of department and declaring her in charge of Literally Everything R&D now. Rena is just trying to fucking work, ohhhh my god.

Not only that, but Jack casually shoves the Destroyer project from Nakayama right into her hands, as well. Rena has never been more overwhelmed in her life....!

And that’s BEFORE all of the innuendos and Jack’s husky voice getting way too close to her ears!!

...So yeah, it definitely starts as what should’ve been a fling, but attachments get all sorts of muddled. Rena’s the sort of balance Jack finds himself craving and, well... He’s fucked, but giving her the little things she thought she lost when her ex cheated on her. So maybe...it’s okay?

Lots of Jack being thirsty while Rena’s trying to work. Or him being clingy when she wants to go back to work... Far as Jack’s concerned, his job is full of free time and is so boring without her around. However, Rena can actually prioritize her work and keep this company’s science division flowing, soooo.... Hmm.

Rena has the struggle of a lifetime, but she still ends up getting her trip to Pandora to do on-planet research...much to Jack’s paranoia and displeasure. (Which ends up being right on the money, despite his best efforts.)

Can’t believe Rena would be dead. They can’t find her body either, so like... Far as Jack’s concerned, she isn’t dead. Doesn’t mean he’s any more pleased or sane about the whole situation, though.

Jack goes full-tilt into madness, sending people hunting through Pandora to try and find Rena. Hilariously, they’re always close, but either she just left her camp or they pass right by her hiding spot.

They don’t find each other until a few years later, when Handsome Jack himself is personally tearing a town apart on Pandora, still engulfed in his hatred for the planet and presumably taking Rena from him.

He aims his gun at a kid, but freezes. Something about her little tanned face, dark brown hair, and...hetrochromatic eyes....has him frozen in his tracks. Then her mother comes running up, their eyes meet, and Jack nearly roars in realization.

She’s dirty as hell, hair messed up and toting new scars from Pandoran life, but that’s Rena...!! Who’s... Who’s the kid, though?

He nearly has another freakout at her assurance this little girl- Carina- is his daughter?????

He’d want to not believe it, but Rena consistently swears off having messed around with anyone else. Oh, and the fact Carina happens to have eyes like her papa. (But unlike his heterochromia, hers is central; a different color surrounding the pupil.)

With this, they kicked off most of Jack’s thoughts for the Warrior, instead Jack now focusing a large chunk of time for the fact Rena’s back, not dead, and was badass enough to raise and protect a baby on Pandora. Mother of the Year award?? Y’all know who it’s going to.

Carina ends up being Jack’s lil’ princess. The only reason she’s not a spoiled brat is cause Pandora does shit to ya and also Rena knows the limits of taking care of kids; so really, she’s mothering both Carina and Jack.

THOUGH BEFORE I FORGET!!! There is a subset of this verse where also Angel is alive, didn’t have to keep being treated like she was, and- while it was a bit late- still managed to get a better mother figure. Oh, and Carina still happens later in this same verse, so her mood improves even more to have a little sister.

...Jack is totally a little salty that Rena and Angel get on so well. He’s an ass, but does love his daughter, so he’s like a sulky cat, knocking stuff over and hovering around, hoping for attention and acknowledgement.

Rena keeps Jack in line those days, so...eventually Angel and her father get on a better foot than before and he’s very okay with everything and clingy to his family.

otp; Rulers of Pandora (Jack/Rena/Nisha): In which Jack and Nisha take in one of the local Hyperion nerds to spice things up... Only to decide, “naaahh, she’s a keeper.”

Took her into their fray around the early events of Borderlands. Where things are fun, but could be more fun... You know?

Jack’s seen Rena around before, but never gave her much thought... His mind is simply too here-and-there to keep notice for long when he’s trying to pick at more shallow aspects to bring in.

Nisha catches her eye, though, and decides she’s curious when Rena immediately looks away, blushing up a storm.

Turns out, Rena can’t handle Nisha. At all. Immediately turns into a klutz around her. Nisha finds it fucking hilarious and proceeds to drag her off to show Jack...who also realizes how hilariously awkward Rena is. They’ve taken her in, since.

Primarily still spends a lot of time up on Helios, but on occasion, will go down to Pandora to spend time with Nisha once HJack gives her Lynchwood.

Is definitely the little “pet” of the trio and is mercilessly teased by them for it, but anyone else messes with Rena? You’ve now got two of the six galaxies most lethal minds on your ass. Start running.

Nisha: I don’t like cute things. I kill cute things. Rena: cooing over some baby skag bc she’s an idiot Nisha: .........For fuck’s sake--

In other words, both Nish and Jack both soften up a bit for Rena. Which is a mistake for anyone else to see, cause while they’ll let their favorite nerd frolic in a field of baby animals, they’d still sooner shoot an annoying pest.

Nisha and Rena are the only ones to know about Jack’s true face under the mask. Nisha doesn’t really care, but Rena? Loves it.

Two Murderers and the Embodiment of Sunshine. That’s how you sum them up.

otp; love like fools (Rena/Rhys): I don’t know what Imma do with this anymore, but it exists as a verse, so I’m gonna heckin’ include it.

Met around the events of BLands/BLands 2. Rena had overworked herself on a project and was hiding in a break room. Cup of orange juice in hand and staring at it. Rhys couldn’t sleep, so he came in... They had an awkward conversation, but not much else.

Curious, Rhys starts stopping by the R&D department more and starts realizing the issue: she never takes a break or seems to get much rest. Work, work, work, day and night. Isn’t that exhausting??

So Rhys takes it on himself to get her food and drink. Mostly snacks, but whatever works. He also tries to ask about her projects, but it largely goes over his head when she starts doing her usual round of science talk.

He tries, though. So that’s nice.

His crush is obvious as shit as time keeps going on. Even his friends notice. Leah notices. Rena? Does not. She is oblivious as heck. Rest in pieces, Rhys.

Literally nothing happens there. Just Rhys doing his best to get Rena’s full attention with no luck. Right up to her eventual trip-and-trap to Pandora.

They don’t meet again ‘til the events of Tales! While wandering around the landscape, Rhys bumps into “Gremlin”, realizes she looks familiar and...

Rhys: ...Are you Rena? Dr. Marlow? Gremlin: Who...? WAIT A MINUTE!!! YOU?!? Rhys: Y-YEAH!!! YOU’RE ALIVE?!?

Everyone else is confused, but Rhys and Rena proceed to catch up. Meanwhile, HJack is making comments that are making Rhys’ face pink and trying to mentally shut the AI up before he says something embarrassing to Rena.

Which basically happens anyways, cause he excuses himself to walk away, thud his head into the caravan, then walk back trying to act like nothing happened. Where were we? #Concern from Rena.

She joins the troupe for fun times, being surprisingly okay when Rhys admits that HJack’s AI is like...inside his head. Just chillin’ there. Well, when not being usual Jack, but you know.

(In some variations of this, AI Jack was programmed to know Rena, so he’s twice as insufferable as usual. However, this isn’t often the case.)

It takes Rhys forever and plenty of nagging from HJack before he even tries to smooch Rena. And even when he does, it was still a terrible idea, cause Jack wouldn’t shut up. Thankfully, Rena’s still pretty chill about the whole thing.

Fiona and Sasha warm up to Rena over time, Vaughn’s heard about her from before, so they all pal up while Rhys has a crisis over HJack ruining his romantic life. It’s a nice break from freaking out around other people, at least.

Joins them on the trip to Helios. She needs to check up on her babies... It’s been so long....

An expert at sneak, a duck around cameras and back up to the old employee living quarters... It’s amazing what a brush, hot water, and a change of clothes can do for a person. (Gotta readjust to heels again, though.)

While Rhys and Fiona are taking over Helios to get the next piece for Gortys, Rena makes her way back to her lab. Not everyone is gone, but... A lot of the G1s have passed away and even a few G2s. Silver and Apophis stay strong, but have been slowly getting bigger in Rena’s absence.

Encourage the trope into an old, cleaned out nesting box and start figuring out her escape plan from there, trying to get in contact with Rhys and Fiona. Only for an eerily familiar voice to pour out around Helios...and announce Rhys the new leader of Hyperion?!

Shit. Shit, shit, shitshit- Now what? She didn’t think Rhys was gonna be in cahoots with Jack! I mean, yeah, he idolized the guy.... Jack embarrassed him a lot, but he still seem to think it was pretty neat...... Awh, hell. Still! Gotta get outta here!!

Ends up smoothly making her escape in a ship with some of her more friendly co-workers: Dan [the Man] (a pilot who used to fly HJack’s private ship; trans, demisexual with a preference for men who is a coffee addict) and Leah.

...And then Helios crashes not too long later. Dan is...less than impressed (internally freaking out, however) and Leah is basically having a panic attack.

Rena tries giving them advice for surviving on Pandora, but Dan later finds Atlas (now being rebooted by Rhys) and decides with Leah that they’ll join up.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, Rhys owns the place. Dan is brought on as his personal pilot (”Sweet. So, where’s the coffee machines around here?”), Leah is hired for PR, Cassie (a blonde lesbian who’s only ever done secretary jobs most of her life) joins later as his secretary...and Rena? .....Shit, Atlas doesn’t really...have an R&D department, do they...?

Rena nervously points out that- if he finds the muscle, they could retake the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve. Take over, do some rebuilding and remodeling... Make it not only into Atlas’ new R&D, but also a way for Rena to continue her penchant of creating dubious creatures. Also because the dragons are only getting bigger as their generations continue.

Pyrotech and Meowzer decide to join in, along with Pops calling in a few favors. Bandits v. bandits to clean out the place and serve as muscle while WEP is getting remodeled. (Also, they’re getting paid, so other bandits looking for a handy buck hop on for the more beneficial side.)

Rena gets a new look to symbolize her Atlas change (a black, long cloak with a hexagon pattern on the inside, black tights, black heels, and an ombre, orange-red-to-yellow, turtleneck dress; hair is also pinned up)! Power couple of Atlas, basically everyone agrees. And kind of like in another verse, Rena keeps him in line....when he’s not having to do the same for her!!

Rhys: I’m not sure....making a monstrous, three-headed dog is a good idea, babe. Rena: I didn’t come here to make wimpy science, Rhys!! I came here to kick ass, take names, and do SCIENCE! But thank you for your opinion~ Rhys: ......oh no.

6-legged to 8-legged cats are realized under Rena’s flourishing arms. A three-headed dog. The dragons prosper and return to Pandora, honoring Rena as their Mother, as Silver- and later Apophis himself!!- have done.

She even creates an android in secret. Names them Aria and they have learning software. Everything about life, they must learn on their own. Starting with the Preserve, and then one day... Leaving home to formulate their own experiences.

Later in life, Rhys and Rena have a daughter, naming her Vela. (A reference to the trio of constellations that Carina is also a part of.)

Has about as much common sense for safety as her mother does. Rhys is terrified for her safety on the daily. Because of their lack of fear, Rhys tries to keep Vela with him at Atlas HQ more than at the preserve with Rena.

otp; nerdperion (Rhys/Rena/Vaughn): ...I mentioned it once. Then the idea snowballed from the initial idea and the “what ifs”.

Look, I can’t deny it. It’s the nerd trio that most only dream of. In their Hyperion days, you had the money man, middle manager, and the top scientist.

By the time of Tales, you have a bandit leader in his own right, an Altas CEO, and woman who is held back by only her set-in-stone morals.

Vaughn and Rena going on raids out on Pandora, protecting people and the Children of Helios. Perhaps even with the dragons as backup...?

Rhys constantly has to worry for these two dorks, but that’s why he has a steady wing in Atlas for healing stuff. A fair bit of research passed on from Rena, to be fair, but still.

Vaughn takes lessons from Rena how to ride beasts. Like dragons! Was it a good idea? Not really. But nobody got hurt, at least!!! And Rena also solidified the saddle designs for them, so that’s pretty cool, too.

Rhys is a little more boring on that side of the coin in the regard he’s mostly just running a company, but still. Vaughn helps out from time to time and Rena’s running the entire R&D division of Atlas, so.....

otp; scientific haikus (Rena/Zer0): In which my first crush from Tales lives on...and it’s a rather unlikely couple, honestly.

Starting right off the bat with the fact she never really knew about them until one of her Pandoran raids? They showed up to kill some people and then just kinda...disappeared.

That first meeting bothered Gremlin for weeks. Who?? Who????

Meeting them again...and again..... Never getting the courage to confront them out of fear. (What if they slice and dice her up, too?? She’s lived too long to get struck down now...) But despite that, she eagerly daydreams about the oddity...

Also, isn’t as sly as she thinks; Zer0′s been knowing, they’ve just been waiting for Gremlin to go first. Though, she hasn’t been...so that’s a bit of an issue.

Eventually, they make sure that their next target will be in an area they know Gremlin frequents. When she shows up...Zer0 finally gets the chance to introduce themselves.

Zer0: Finally, we meet / Finding you was difficult / My name is Zer0; pleased. Gremlin: .....Did... Are you speaking in haiku?! Zer0:  :) Gremlin: ...holy shit; nice.

They strike up an odd sort of friendship from there. Meetings become random again, though Zer0 takes time to listen. They actually are able to call her Rena in private which is...nice. Kinda easy to forget that was her name before the whole “stranded on Pandora” bit.

Zer0 ends up enabling her collecting habits, too; brings back not-too-bloody clothes and trinkets they find while out and about on jobs. She gains quite the collection, thanks to that!!

Actually wanted to offer assistance when Zer0 took on the Gortys hunt, but joined up only later on and... HOLY SHIT, HYPERION EMPLOYEES!!!

It’s wild, seeing familiar faces and talking about the past. Zer0 has...some concerns, but otherwise trusts the group with Rena.

This includes their plan to invade Helios, in order to get the final piece Gortys needs to access the Vault of the Traveler. They’re not thrilled about her involvement in the plan, but Rena still knows a lot about Helios and the Hyperion system. Her going with ensures things will go even more smoothly, so... Who are they to deny their crush friend from helping others?

....And then they hear it all went to shit. Though they showed up, trying to find Rena among the wreckage... There was no luck. They get upset over this for quite some time, but without a body... Zer0 keeps a metaphorical ear out. Won’t believe she’s dead yet. Not yet.

Eventually, when Rhys gets in contact with Zer0 for help with the vault, they meet up again. Rena is ecstatic to see him again- having since become the head of Atlas’ R&D and gone hunting to assist with this, too- and Zer0 is just happy to be right; she didn’t die back then after all...

Is surprisingly handsy from there on out, flashing the smile or heart emoticons, a hand on Rena’s waist, etc.

Everyone else catches on to Zer0′s affections far faster than Rena herself does, that’s for sure.

Rena: It’s nice... I’ve never really had a lot of platonic affection, you know? Fiona, sighing: N-No, that’s not... How do you not see what’s going on, here?? Rena: .........what? Everyone: s i g h s Rena: ????????

They do eventually ask her out when nearly everyone on the team has them to spare them the oblivious misery, cause- once again- Rena sure ain’t gonna do it.

Also cause Gortys has been trying to ask about them dating anyways, so-?? Just do it???

Zer0 still takes a while longer to get the right words to say that fit their haiku format, but the actual confession...? Well, at least it feels like the right note to end an adventure on; seeing her eyes light up, smile breaking free, and hugging the other tight around the waist was good. Great, even!

...Though with Fiona and Rhys temporarily disappeared...who runs Atlas?

Thankfully, Rena knows Cassie personally and has her and another person- Dan, a pilot for Rhys’ personal ship (and once worked under Handsome Jack, as well)- back her up on heading Atlas for a temporary period of time.

Zer0 sticks around for a time, just to make sure a mutiny doesn’t rise up and try to take Rena down. They only back off once her guard-friends from R&D make their way over... Again, just in case.

Zer0 goes back to work not long after that, though makes sure to visit more often. It not only makes them anxious to not know how Rena is doing (if she’s still alive), but also because they’ve started getting used to her touch. Touch starved? Zer0? ....A little.

Starts even exposing her face around her, Rena admits. What they look like? Well, pffftt, she’d never tell~!

otp; i ruv you (Rena/Timothy Lawrence): Oh, it started as a joke...then I was in too deep and now it’s never been better~

Thanks to both of them being workers under the Hyperion brand, they end up meeting sooner rather than later.

Much like Jack, Tim noticed Rena around: sitting in the Hub and people-watching, walking by her lab... Things like that. Didn’t pay too much mind, but then...he got hurt. On his face.

Rena, being the oldest lasting employee not killed off yet by Handsome Jack, is given the old papers for the build of Jack doubles and given some people to work with by HJack himself in order to fix up Tim right.

It’s love at first appointment; she’s gentle, knows what she’s doing, and eventually he’s looking back to the usual. The little smile she gives as he left? ...His heart was racing for an hour after, he swears by it.

He starts visiting her more, after that. Whether because he allowed himself to get hurt or it’s after a mission and he’s got some extra free time before his next one... He hurries to that lab of hers in order to chat.

Befriends the dragons she creates happily. Silver doesn’t bond to him in the same way, but they tolerate him and will let Tim hold them. It’s so cool!!!

Then Rena admitted to him one of her other projects...wanting to create multi-legged cats. Tim was thrilled at the trust, nervous over the project, but Rena assured all would be well. The dragons have done wonderfully, so that will go well, too!

He got the chance to kiss her when she was patching him up again. He’d tried to lean forward, but she stopped him a moment to finish up...then, shyly, asked if he wanted to try that again...? He lit up and they both got into a hasty, messy kiss that had them giggling in delight.

...With that, their unofficial dating started! (Which HJack quickly knew about and considered doing something to one of them to end it, but overall decided if any news got out, he’d actually take Rena as his own and make his doppelganger regret getting into a relationship behind Jack’s back; capiche? Tim nervously agreed.)

Still... Her move to Pandora made him nervous. Especially since his next assignment was on Elpis, so if anything happened...!

Rena kissed his cheek and assured him she’d be fine. It would be very in and out; no need for worry!

When even Jack was troubled by the report that came in later, Timothy was up in arms ready to shoot down some psychos.

HJack: Like, nobody reported her body. Which could be a sign she’s not dead? But it’s Pandora; who knows? Tim, sweating and shaking: Please...just fucking shut. Up.

Backtalking the boss is bold, but Tim is all kinds of done with this news and needs to ditch for Pandora in order to find Rena. HJack allows this more out of interest for the “game” than anything else.

Timothy ends up- more or less- a sort of permanent presence on Pandora while trying to find Rena. Doesn’t much notice or care when Jack’s insanity summons the Warrior...or when he’s taken down. Besides, people spook more easily to hear Handsome Jack died, but see his masked face even still on Timothy’s own.

Not getting answers on where Rena is...stresses him out, though. Makes him bitter, that maybe someone did kill her... He expresses his anger in a bit of murder and then sulks more over how this is turning him into a lesser Jack after all... Makes the guy almost sympathetic.

But with a few years passing, Atlas suddenly rises up out of the crashed ashes of Helios...and if Tim has any hope left for the lost Rena, might as well go there, right?

He scares the shit out of Rhys, walking in looking like Handsome Jack in the flesh. (Not even his secretary tried to stop him, looking like he did; dirty and murderous.)

...Though it’s actually just some resting bitch face and determination. Tim ends up explaining everything and Rhys even more hurriedly explains that she’s not dead!!! In fact, he just sent her over with a group of hired bandits to the WEP! She���s going...to be heading his new R&D department, you know...

Tim almost doesn’t want to hope, but he jolts out of there faster than Rhys or Cassie can stop him and is rushing to the Preserve in hopes to catch her there and maybe help out in the firefight.

Ends up finding her in a car just outside, all tanked up and safe as she directs everyone to where they need to go...but oh shit, handle that on your own for a bit; there’s a guy outside the car. She walks a little closer...and screeches, stumbling back.

Tim: No, no!! Rena!!! It’s me, it’s Ti- Jimothy!!!! It’s me, not Jack! Rena: ......Timothy?

She hesitantly lets him in and Tim at least proves that- despite his appearance- he is definitely not Jack by patting her over, realizing she’s alive, and then kissing her breathless.

Rena explains her situation having gone by “Gremlin” up to this point and pretending to be a psycho on occasion in order to live. The new friends she’s made up until that point. Tim tells her about the years he spent trying to find her, hoping she wasn’t dead.

As self-promised, he cuddles her in his lap for a little while longer, then kisses her again and joins the firefight outside to clear out the preserve.

Hyperion’s fallen, Atlas is a rising venture... Why not? Student loans sure don’t matter anymore.

He largely stays with Rena at R&D; her personal bodyguard and more-official-than-in-the-past boyfriend.

She also makes good on the multi-legged cats, as mentioned in the past. Tim decidedly loves them just as much- if not more- as regular cats.

ot3; ??? (Maya/Rena/Krieg): So hear me out... I will never learn. This will be neverending. I’m just as disappointed in me as you are. Also, Tumblr removing line breaks is the bane of my existence. Fuck this website. ANYWAYS!

Rena...met Krieg, first. In passing. He was a part of the slag experiments, Rena works R&D.... You hear about this sort of thing. She did, with her sharp ears and too-caring-attitude, despite working for the most monstrous corporation in the six galaxies.

Still, she was never able to help him or anyone else... Despite desperately wanting to. Despite catching his eyes once, guilt eating her up from the inside. (A pity-look from another one of them, Krieg used to think.)

They didn’t meet again until much later, during the events of Borderlands 2: Gremlin stuck on Pandora while Maya and Krieg were deadset on dethroning Handsome Jack. Y’know. Her old boss?

Krieg almost doesn’t recognize her when he’s out wandering, but it’s seeing her dirty face that strikes a chord in his sensible side. He remembers her! One of Hyperion’s own... What’s she doing out here? Alone and without company...?

Not that Krieg cares; seeing someone who was in any way involved with hurting him sends him into a fit of rage, trying to attack her with all he’s got! Rena dodges, not understanding...until she realizes who this psycho is...

It’s the worst first meeting- putting his first interaction with Maya in the dirt- as she eventually bursts into tears trying to apologize to him. It startles Krieg to stop, listening to her as she’s pitifully curled up in the dirt, hands up in a show of surrender, apologizing to...him.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you back then!! I wanted to, I really did, but I... I couldn’t! I’m sorry, Krieg, I’m so, so sorry!!!!”

Maya returns to this scene unimpressed, giving a Look to Krieg before helping the still-sobbing Rena. They both take her back to her shambling little base...and Krieg stares at the coat on the wall. The last reminder of who she was...

It occurs to him, then, that they’re in a similar spot. He lost his mind to slag, becoming a psycho, his mind barely together...and Rena is losing her sense of self, too. Going by Gremlin to blend in, faking insanity to blend in...but how long of that before it all becomes too real? Before she changes for good, even without influences like he’d gotten...?

Maya is more than content to help and leave, but Krieg...feels guilty. It’s a rare show of clarity and kindness from the big guy...and that’s when Maya realizes she’s lost the battle before it’s even begun.

They do take down HJack eventually, but frequently stop by to check in on Rena from there on out. Krieg likes poking around and laying on the stolen mattress she has. Maya finds out she’s actually super smart...and it’s fun. It’s nice.

You grow to like- even love- Krieg for his lucid moments. Appreciating his more violent ones for the defense they provide, as well as the enemy-sweeping he can do. Her powers work well with his might.

Add Rena into the mix, it’s brains, balance, and brawn. It works out even better than Maya could’ve predicted....and yeah, she kinda ends up falling for the scientist, too. Would’ve never pegged herself as the polyamrous type, but... She and Krieg share the sentiments.

Rena and Krieg keep each other balanced. Maya doesn’t have time to baby anyone; she keeps going at her own pace. Anyone who wants to keep up has to pull their weight...but Rena is a natural nurturer. When she’s a little loopy, they use a language only they can really understand. (It takes Maya some time to adjust to.) When Krieg gets frustrated, she helps him through it. To get back in touch with his old self. It’s comforting. Very comforting.

Maya and Rena, on the other hand, share a lot of conversation about....anything and everything. Maya talks about her Siren powers and pieces of her life. Rena talks about her own life- a lot more openly- and the science she used to do on Hyperion. How proud she still is of those times. Maya’s endeared to those moments.

It also later comes in handy... When Maya needs to depart from Pandora to go back to Athenas some time later, wanting to further underside her Siren lineage. Pandora only answered so much, after all...

Won’t let Rena or Krieg join, but the two keep each other company in the meantime. Waiting for Maya to come back home.

[insert-witty-comment]

Hello everyone.Last time on Hawkins Book Club, we learned what synchronicity actually is, time-traveling Neo-Nazis are sticklers for freshly cut grass, there was once a guy who flew around the US in a flying saucer with eight women to look for gold, the KKK uses magick, MK-Ultra actually was connected to Montauk, why the Demogorgon was attracted to Eleven, JFK’s brother liked to trip out on LSD with Nazi rapists, skinheads are actually kind, experienced aura-readers, Mark Hamill is literally the reincarnation of an alien from another universe, the Star Wars films are documentaries, there were Hitler-clones in existence, the Third Reich tried to access the Upside-Down (meaning that we could have had Stranger Things be about the Demogorgon murdering SS Stormtroopers and Hitler clones), Cthulhu and the Elder Gods are real, there could be a whole bunch of UFO-flying Nazis camped out in Antarctica and inside the Earth, George Bush’s dad was insane and there might be a good chance that Brenner is Eleven’s father.First of all, I would like to apologize for not updating this little review column thing last week. There wasn’t an E-book version of this book available, so I had to order a physical copy from a rather… um…. let’s just say “colorful” individual in Wisconsin. To my surprise, when it finally got here I discovered that it was signed by the author himself, so that’s a neat bonus. Speaking of which, the primary author of 1998’s Montauk: The Alien Connection is a new member to the Montauk Party; a guy named Stewart Swerdlow. Without further ado, let’s reconvene the Book Club and jump in.Our old friend Peter Moon writes the Introduction. Here he states that our education system has lied about the nature of space and time.“The biggest secret of time and space that has been unlocked is that these very components of our physicality can be manipulated. This is still a novel idea to conventional scientists, scholars and news media who are manipulated from birth. Manipulation of consciousness comes under the heading of ‘mind control,’ a subject which has never been fully embraced by major media.”Jesus Christ Moon, just let it go. I can’t believe that he’s STILL bitter over being blocked from television. Anyway, he says that mind control is integral to understanding space and time.“The human brain is actually a perfect computer which is fully capable of serving as a tool for cosmic enlightenment to its host. The problem is that this response in mankind has been short-circuited due to any number of various factors. These could include aliens, ancient priesthoods, religious indoctrination, youth groups and the CIA’s documented mind control project known as MK-Ultra. MK-Ultra was a 20th century ‘modernization’ of ancient techniques such as those employed by the ancient Assassins, a Middle Eastern cult during the Middle Ages who programmed subjects to kill through the use of hashish.”I’m starting to think that Ubisoft should be cutting this guy a check too. Anyway, Moon then goes on to claim that not only do truth serum drugs force people to spill their secrets, they also “can be used to tap the collective unconscious”, meaning that someone injected with them would suddenly have omnipotent knowledge about the entire universe… somehow. Moon suggests that we start asking people injected with truth serum about God, evolution “and the very nature of reality” because of this. He also touches on the head of MK-Ultra, Dr. Ewen Cameron and the LSD experiments, interestingly enough. He also states that Preston Nichols now believes that there were “Montauk Girls” in addition to the Boys and that there are literally hundreds of these programmed people all over Long Island. This leads into Moon introducing Stewart Swerdlow, the guy who was given the pseudo name of “Stan Campbell” in Montauk Revisited. You may remember him as the guy who shot Jesus in the face. Regardless, Duncan Cameron helpfully chimes in to say that this guy is an even more powerful psychic than he is. I didn’t know there was a sliding scale of psychic powers, but whatever.Chapter 1 talks about the 1943 Philadelphia Experiment which I’m sure you’re quite familiar with by this point, but it comes with a twist. It focuses on a Nazi named Johannes von Gruber. Why is he there? Well it turns out the Nazis were helping out the Americans with their teleportation.“Such an accomplishment would eliminate war on Earth because whoever controlled this technology would be invincible. The major governments of the world – the United States, Germany, Britain, Russian, and France – would then band together to eliminate the lesser powers and races of the Earth. They planned to beam vast conquering armies anywhere in the universe they desired. The new world government rule the known universe! For this the Reich was willing to unite with the United States. Because of the contacts that the Reich had with a certain group of ‘visitors,’ the United States was also willing to lay aside ideological differences. Each side believed that it would eventually control the entire plan.”………………………………………………………………………………There are so many things wrong with this paragraph alone that it would take an entire post just to point them all out. So I’m going to just move on.Anyway, the experiment actually starts and the shit immediately hits the fan; equipment starts sparking, men start falling overboard, people literally start melting into the floor. So von Gruber decides to jump overboard himself. He woke up at Montauk in 1960 and was immediately accosted by an American military officer and two grey aliens. They strapped him to a chair, gave him a brief update on how that whole “World War II” thing panned out, and another alien came in, tried to comfort him, and then immediately electroshocked him to death. He then rocketed up toward Heaven, complete with angelic guides (because I guess Heaven allows Nazis in now). He then experienced a life review,“Then he was told that he had to complete something on Earth. He was shown a woman in labor in a brand new hospital. The next thing he knew, he was inside a tube of light heading toward her.”Oh God, please tell me this isn’t going where I think its going.But of course, my prayers go unanswered. So cut to a woman named Eleanor giving birth to the author, Stewart Swerdlow. In an interesting synchronicity with Stranger Things, this guy was born on November 5th, 1956.Yes, you read that right, 1956.Somehow, the aliens or angels or whatever sent the Nazi back four years from 1960 to be reborn. No, that doesn’t make any sense, and I’m not going to even try to explain it. So while you’re trying to wrap your head around that, Swerdlow then claims that Yakov Sverdlov was his great-uncle. So how does the first Chairman of the Soviet Union relate to a reincarnated Nazi in the body of an American kid? Well, his grandfather helped form the Communist Party in America and his father worked on military projects in the Southwest. His mother was the daughter of a Gypsy in central Europe who had this experience;“When my grandmother was a little girl in Austria, she was playing outside with two cousins when she glanced up and saw the image of a man who looked exactly like the Jack of Spades in playing cards. Quickly, she told her cousins to look up at it. Immediately, they fell dead to the ground.”Way to go Grandma.“Shortly after that incident, my grandmother was sent to America to live with relatives. Amazingly, nearly a century later, I was involved with a group of government related individuals who were trying to understand the meaning of a message from hyperspace. Beamed from outside the Earth, the message was an image of a being who resembled the Jack of Spades!”Hey aliens, next time can you try making a message that doesn’t kill little girls? And maybe one that actually makes sense? Anyway, the rest of the chapter is just Swerdlow’s turn to recount his shitty childhood, and it’s somehow even worse than that of Nichols and Moon. First off, he said that he saw the spirits of the dead all over the place, there was a constant ringing in his ears, colors “flashed in his eyes” and he had glimpses of the future events that always came to pass. He was constantly frightened and suffering from nightmares. In addition;“Although brilliant in school, I found it slow-paced and boring. Usually I stayed home pretending to be sick, entertaining myself with psychic and mental games. Practically friendless, I found people my own age to be childish and stupid. Instead I preferred the company of the adults, particularly the elderly. For some reason, I enjoyed hearing stories about the old days, especially the 1930’s and 1940’s. I loved watching war movies, but I was ashamed to tell anyone that I always privately cheered for the Germans because my background is Jewish. Interestingly enough, I also cheered for Indians in Western movies.”So I guess this poor boy was still being influenced by his past fanatical beliefs and memories from his time as a loyal officer of the Nazi Party who was also psychic who could see the future, dead people, auras and “mind-patterns”. This seems like something that Stephen King would write, and to be honest I would probably read it. It got even worse for the poor kid as he was constantly being abducted by aliens and exposed to painful experiments by them.Chapter 3 describes one such abduction he experienced when he was six. So the aliens took young Stewart on a quick tour around the world and then brought him to an alien fleet and a council of aliens. Here, a giant butterfly telepathically explains that its species used its DNA to create Earth’s butterflies which are used to “monitor magnetism and know how to adjust it so that it has a beneficial effect on the environment (yes, really). Moths were created as a negative aspect of this by the “dark side.” The butterfly also explains that its species hitchhikes with humanoid aliens in order to populate other worlds and to adopt humanoid “spiritual students”, one of which was Stewart.“Finally, it said that it was time for me to communicate with the other beings, but it wanted me to know that for the rest of my stay on Earth, it would send Monarch butterflies to greet and comfort me. Whenever I saw a white butterfly at an opportune moment, there was a message for me. As the grand butterfly communicated with me, pulsating glows emanated from its beautiful wings.”Next time I see a butterfly, I’m crushing it to fend off these aliens. Stewart is then approached by a big white praying mantis which scares the hell out of him, and a fish person who states that humans had “marine origins”. He then passes out and re awakens in a chair surrounded by more aliens. First a lizard person explains that he is a defector of a massive empire trying to take over the galaxy. He states that thousands of years ago his people came to Earth in a ship that is now the moon. Another ship would come before the end of this century and reawaken the army currently in stasis underground after being defeated by the “Lyraen Empire”. These “reptilians” also maintain bases on Venus and other moons, reproduce mostly by cloning and state that Stewart will eventually convert them to “the Light” because his soul was already an emissary to them long ago. Next up is an alien literally described as looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He claims that his people were the original inhabitants of Earth but were devastated by humans and aliens. However, pockets of them still exist in the deepest parts of the oceans, and they worked as liaisons between the Atlanteans and the whales and dolphins. Apparently these sea mammals are advanced races from another galaxy. I don’t know how advanced they could be if they are so easily hunted down by Japanese whalers, but whatever. Anyway, the Gill-men were transported to Neptune by other aliens.“Continuing, he told me that I have dolphin DNA; therefore, I could learn to communicate with his species in order to help mankind and the dolphin/whale systems.”Oh, so I guess Swerdlow will be the one giving us the heads up when the Vogons get ready to demolish Earth. Next, a Thin Man introduces himself as a representative of “the Federation of Planets”, which is composed of 120 member civilizations, and that they’ll let Earth join if we successfully fend off an invasion by the reptilian empire by ourselves. So I guess their membership requirements are a tad bit more stringent than the UN. He also explains that all of the alien races were speaking to young Stewart because they all contributed DNA to his creation, which his “soul-personality” already agreed to and traveled to other galaxies and alternate universes as training, and that there would be further conditioning in his new life. Seeing as how Stewart is getting all of this dumped on him at the tender age of six, he responds by vomiting all over the alien ambassadors (seriously). This didn’t really seem to faze them as a grey alien then steps over the puddle of vomit to inform the terrified boy that they will be regularly abducting him to check on him, because his body contained chemicals that the greys needed. He also informed Stewart that if his mission fails, then the other alien races would probably fight amongst themselves and bring their war to Earth. Again, Stewart was six when they told him this. At the same age you were worrying about your first day of Kindergarten, this kid was being told that if he screwed up, he would kick off an intergalactic war.So you know, no pressure!So then a Ethereal) identifies himself as a Sirian and tells him that the Sirians created the Egyptian civilization and gave the Torah to the Jewish people. They also created the Crystal Skull, so I guess this means that yes, there actually is a reason for aliens to exist in the Indiana Jones movies. They also possesses the most advanced technology in the universe and intentionally create conflict between the various races to foster evolution. Also, Stewart’s “soul-personality” came from them, so he’s simultaneously both a reincarnated alien and a Nazi. This particular Sirian said that his and the poor boy’s soul-personalities were linked, and he would serve as a guide. As Stewart got older, more memories of his past lives would emerge, and when his “alternate selves come together”, his mission would begin. Stewart was then unceremoniously dumped back in his bed, where he understandably woke up screaming in terror.After this, Stewart would have nightmares about the incident and began developing his psychic abilities. Some strange force compelled him to watch literally everything in the science-fiction genre and read about space travel.“My frustration grew as I realized that there was absolutely no one on the face of the Earth with whom I could converse. Invariably, I wanted to speak about my knowledge of what lay beyond physical reality but was afraid of others’ reactions. In those days (the late 50’s and 60’s), UFOs were still considered to be from the land of the mentally ill.”You know, as opposed to now where they’re accepted as scientific fact. When he got older, he started getting abducted almost every night to be instructed about “physical reality”, time travel and other topics. He woke up extremely exhausted the next morning each time. Because of this, in school he excelled in everything, but was bored and had no patience for other kids and people in general. One day when he was eleven, he was abducted by three greys and taken to a small room with a screen showing a conveyor belt. The aliens telepathically told him to watch pictures appearing on the screen and meat slices corresponding to them and asked to determine if he would eat it or not. This test went on for a bit with all sorts of creatures appearing on screen, and every time he would answer “yes” to something, the taste of it would appear in his mouth. He eventually got incredibly sick because of this and the aliens dumped him back in his bed, pissed because he didn’t finish the test. Stewart was disturbed as he realized that the aliens would have had to kill all of those creatures to get the meat, and one of the pictures was of a man.Chapter 4 talks about his teenage years. His family moved from Brooklyn to Suffolk County Long Island (My home county) and the abductions increased, but in an astral form. He frequently woke up naked in a large room on a bench with a group of other humans and they were educated on their roles as soldiers for the aliens. When Stewart was thirteen, he started “dreaming” about being abducted to a government facility where he was chased by military personnel. When he woke up, he would always see “the face of a blond man surrounded by red light” laughing at him from his bedroom window. He felt like the man was related to him. Also at this point he started undergoing some horrifying examinations by the greys, which are so fucking disgusting that I will not be retyping them here.At this point, he started having a “deep longing for children” and felt that he was a father who missed his kids. This feeling was confirmed when at seventeen he woke up strapped to chair (fully clothed instead of naked for once) and was approached by a grey and a “blond alien”, while two humans in military uniforms watched. He was shown a baby girl that was a hybrid between a human and grey, and was informed that she was his child cobbled together from his genetics. In fact, he fathered multiple children; some of which died and the others were taken to a “safe world”. He was shown this child because the aliens wanted to see if he would form a bond. He did, so the aliens kicked him back to Earth. After this he had the uncontrollable urge to heavily exercise and keep his body in peak condition. The aliens also put in a chip in his eyes that turned them into cameras and gave the aliens some control over where the eyes were directed, which in turned messed with his eyesight. They also started broadcasting his thoughts and past memories onto a screen in order to determine what his future would look like based on his “mind-patterns” during their abductions. The chapter closes out with Swerdlow revealing that the aliens started dumping him in Camp Hero at Montauk.Chapter 5 describes what he did there. It turns out he was dumped there since he was a prepubescent child, during which he was strapped to a table where he was “examined, mentally scanned for my brainwave signature or sexually abused in ways that stored my energetics and magnified them by computer. This went on until puberty.” Seeing as how he only tried to escape once and survived the testing, he was “promoted” by being placed in charge of the younger boys.“The preparation of the children included teaching them to implicitly obey orders, without any questions whatsoever. I taught them how to mentally focus on command so that their bodily energies could be removed by the psychic/mentalist to whom they were assigned. I instructed them on how to know what colors and symbols to mentally use to facilitate any given experiment. They were also taught how to relinquish their bodies and allow themselves to die without the innate defensive reaction of resistance inherent to all living beings.”This is horrifying. He also explains that there’s a difference between psychics and mentalists; the former can only read minds, but the latter can manipulate them. The kids were used to boost the energy of both types of people. The best subjects for this were in the three to twelve age range because their minds were “pure and uncontaminated”. However, their fear led to “scattered and disjointed energy outputs” that were useless to the scientists. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were sexually abused by various project workers. You’d think the people running this place would prevent the pedos from having access to them because all of this drove many of the kids insane, and so they had to be “terminated”. So instead of giving the kids painless lethal injections, the scientists instead inexplicably shoved them into small chambers were they starved to death, and their bodies were dumped in the ocean. This just seems so unnecessarily evil and inefficient as hell. However, some of the staff would occasionally “adopt” a boy by reprogramming his memories and changing some of his physical features.Some of these boys were the children of politicians or military leaders who were abducted from their beds. They were treated differently from the other kids, and were always returned home, but not before getting implants placed in their eyes and programmed to fulfill unique tasks, which always included “tagging” other boys for use in the Project.The majority of the “expendable common boys” were taken from outside of New York, to alleviate suspicion over the disappearances. They came from all over the country.“Taken from families where they would not be missed as much as others, they were the children of prostitutes, drug addicts, and alcoholics, or they came from poor rural families with many children.”Holy shit, Monty Python was right too!Anyway, if for some strange reason the parents didn’t want to give their son up to bunch of sadistic aliens and Neo-Nazis, then Project people would arrange for an accident, ranging from cars driving into a river to house fires to full on natural disasters to fake the kid’s death. They also grabbed runaways off the street.In addition to the kids, they also grabbed a bunch of homeless people as well to travel through time and space. This tended to be a bit hit-and-miss as many of these people were lost in transit. So if someone did get through, they set up receivers to make transit easier by acquiring “vibrations”. These pathways were opened up by Duncan Cameron, and the Project people literally harnessed the kids’ imagination to boost his powers. When a boy “burned out” from being a living battery, they were exposed to a “fear program” that kicked their adrenaline into overdrive, which got a bit more energy out of them until they either died, went insane, or both. After that, their bodies were handed over to the greys, who proceeded to extract their organs and body fluids into large vats, in which they swam around in like the universe’s most fucked up pool to extract nutrients. Before humans just started handing over kids to them, Swerdlow claims that the aliens created vampires and chupacabras to extract nutrients for them. Occasionally reptilians would show up to watch the mind control experiments. Of course, Swerdlow feels completely awful over his role in all of this and is still plagued by guilt.Chapters 6-8 describe his travels around the Middle East. But first, he described how he hated with a passion, yet studied accounting because he was programmed to do so to help manage the Montauk boys. Also, he nearly died after being injected with sodium pentathol during a wisdom tooth removal. He believes this was because the anesthesia is used in truth serum as well.So he was “compelled” to take an overseas trip “sponsored by a Zionist organization that sought to bring volunteers to Israel and promote colonization of the arid land there.” Essentially, he was going to work on a communist farm called a “kibbutz”. On the way there, he stopped in Italy where the volcano at Pompeii unlocked some his memories of a past life, and a “French woman with Italian citizenship” randomly decided to try and convince him to become a medical doctor and marry her daughter, as one does. When he arrived in Tel Aviv, he was overcome with emotion, but found himself starting at departure board for Teheran, Iran for nearly an hour. He was then compelled to look at departure boards for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nairobi, Kenya and Johannesburg, South Africa until his kind-of-an-asshole program companion got his attention. They waited with three women for a while until a guy came to pick them up. He drove them to Jerusalem where the women were dropped off at a youth hostel and Swerdlow and his companion were dumped at an old, empty British army barracks, where they told to sleep in a cell. When Swerdlow fell asleep, he woke up back at the airport, boarding a plane to Teheran. What follows is a series of flashes in which Swerdlow finds himself in a cave, more naked examinations, a “hyperspace subway system that circled the globe”, a shitty Nairobi bathroom, more examinations and a Sirian who told Swerdlow that he was an ambassador to the Israelis as their ally. Finally, he woke up back in Jerusalem.The next day, a van drove him and his companion to a poor kibbutz called Gvar Am in the Gaza Strip. The trip there was awful, because in Swerdlow’s own words; “Israelis do not drive their cars, they aim them.” He slept in a crappy house and worked in pear groves until the afternoon, “but not before some of the Scottish volunteers became exhausted and passed out from the heat.” He also made a friend with a British guy, whom he later found was an agent for both British and Soviet intelligence. How that’s supposed to work, I have no idea. Regardless, Swerdlow then decides to go meet some relatives in the town of Holon. His bus driver dropped him off, but he had no idea where his relatives actually live, so he wandered around until he literally stumbled into the house of the husband of his grandmother’s cousin.Chapter 8 describes how while wandering the Negev desert, Swerdlow was abducted by the Sirians. They told him that the Hebrews were created by them, and that they were currently trying to “purify” the modern Israelis by altering their mind-patterns. They examined him yet again and showed him his true identity. He was then taken to Mars, where he saw a large group of human men shackled together and digging with shovels. A Rigel alien explained to them that seeing as how they fulfilled their service on Earth and Mars, they would be examined for transportation to Rigel. If they failed the examination, they would be “eliminated.” This whole event was apparently orchestrated just for Swerdlow. He was then taken to the Sirians home world of Khoom, a frozen and snowy world devastated by an ancient war. Here, nine beings called “the Ohalu Council” inform him that he originally sent his soul-personality to Earth and that there were nine other people on Earth like him, each directed by a council member. They remind him of the upcoming war with the reptilian Draco and reveal that just like the CIA in Afghanistan, they also gave weapons to the Draco, who proceeded to use the weapons against them. Swerdlow also discovered that the Ark of the Covenant was actually a communication device between the Sirians and the Hebrews. The Sirians then dumped him back in the desert, three days after he left.“I believe that the Sirians are trying to undermine the plans of all factions involved on Earth; the New World Order, the Draco, the Greys, the Tall Blonds, etc. Their agenda is to bring all events to a climax, then usurp all power, possibly via the Israelis. This is only speculation on my part. Time will tell.”I’m sure it will. Chapter 9 discusses his return to the U.S. Here he reveals that as a young man one of the experiments he was a part of was “The Marriage Project”, which was designed to mate the Montauk boys with specific girls to produce specific children. So the twenty-two year old Swerdlow was matched with a fourteen year old Mia from Massachusetts who “was part of my own frequency”, because their soul-personalities were once one and split off long ago. They then proceeded to have sex while a literal crowd of people watched. Two years later, this happened;“One evening, when Mia was sixteen and I was twenty-four, we were brought together in a clinical environment under the watchful eyes of scientists. Here it was explained that our genetics were perfectly aligned with sequences that were reciprocal to one another. Mia had more Pleiadian genetics; mine were Sirian. This combination would produce a child of unusual abilities. Brought naked into a white room, we made love three times in succession. The entire episode was dreamlike and almost a blur. At the end, I knew inside of myself that Mia was pregnant.”This is so fucked up.So this produced a girl named Jaime, which Swerdlow was prevented from seeing in order to “avoid contamination of her mind-patterns”. She can see the future and “all possible alternate realities”, but at the time of the time of the writing, she was a teenager who didn’t know about her potential. Swerdlow is currently trying to guide her, while she understandably tries to avoid him.Chapter 10 describes how Swerdlow got a job as an internal auditor with a pharmaceutical company. Somewhat hilariously, he actually starts complaining that he has to get up for work in the morning during one of his abductions. During this, his captors tell him that his “marriage” with Mia was over, and that he should go out and live a “conventional life”. So he met with a secretary in the company named Michele, who he detested because she was “nasty and opinionated” with a short temper. However, they were both mind-controlled to marry each other after only a month. They also aborted a child they produced because Michele “did not want to look pregnant when she walked down the aisle.” Swerdlow is sad that he didn’t stop her, and gives the “truth” about abortion;“I now believe that abortion is wrong unless the mother’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is the result of rape. I also understand that the soul-personality does not enter into the body until the first breath, but it is that soul-personality, and no one else, that must decide whether or not to continue the life-stream. People who do not want children should take the proper precautions before the pregnancy, not destroy a possible life-stream after it is created. Although this may sound fundamentalist to some, it is what I know to be the proper way.”Ah, so it shouldn’t being the choice of the mother, the father or the government as to whether a fetus should be aborted, but the choice of the fetus itself, of course!This book.The two had more fights after this and wanted to call off the wedding, but Swerdlow received a telepathic message saying that the marriage would not be permanent, Swerdlow already agreed to it, and “This woman had agreed to be the vessel for the entry of my children into the physical plane.” I have no idea why Michele agreed to marry him, but they did marry and moved to Patchogue, Long Island.Chapter 11 talks about the strange events that occurred at their house. For whatever reason, they usually happened when Swerdlow’s in-laws were staying over. Their house was broken into, but only things that had little value were stolen, they were constantly hearing footsteps in their house, young children tried to break into the house (which he responded to by setting up a six-foot tall fence and alarm system), he saw shadowy figures in the house, the abductions continued and a wire was shoved into his penis, two disembodied robot heads had a conversation over his bed, you know, the usual. He also describes how during one of his abductions a human/grey hybrid young girl was shown to him, and he was told that she was his daughter. His house was also “attacked” several times by black military helicopters that didn’t really do much other than mess with the electronics and radios in the house. His wife was also having dreams of abductions as well, during which she was checked for pregnancy. Every time she had this dream, she became pregnant soon after.This brings us to Chapter 12, which is about Swerdlow’s children, all of whom were delivered via Caesarean-section. The first, Matthew was born in 1983 and was constantly crying, and his parents both had dreams of him being abducted. A couple of months after his birth, Swerdlow was informed during an abduction that his children were “not under my jurisdiction” because they were part of the experiments, and he would have to hand them over. Swerdlow actually grows some balls for once and tells them to fuck off. However, by the time Matthew was seven, he began talking about how a tall, red-eyed man dressed in black came into his room at night and telepathically said that he came from the underground, and that Matthew came from the underground as well, and that his parents were being monitored. Matthew described to his father about how there were cities underground and was able to describe a relay system. He was also abducted by grey aliens, who handed him a space bazooka and told him that he would use it in that upcoming intergalactic war, and that he would get dragged into the same genetic experiments as his dad. Swerdlow also reveals that Matthew was the only kid who inherited his psychic abilities. His second son, Jeremy is probably the most normal person in the entire family, the only strange thing that happened to him was that a grey alien would occasionally come into his room at night and take some of his toys.Next came Daniel. During the pregnancy, the doctor informed his parents that he may be born with Down’s Syndrome. After that, Swerdlow had an abduction during which this happened;“A female grey came into the room holding a small bundle. No one told me that she was female. I simply knew that ‘it’ was a she. As she approached, a male voice said that she wanted to show me something. Slowly unwrapping the top of the blanket, the female revealed an adorable blond-haired baby. The male voice said that it was mine, and asked if I wanted to hold it. Replying that I did, the female started to unwrap the whole baby, revealing an octopus-like torso with legs instead of a human body. Screaming and crying at the same time, I told them to take it away. The same voice said that it was going to an aquatic world and that I would never see it again. Waking up in my bed, I prayed with all my might that Danny would be a normal child. I cannot describe my relief when the doctor called with the positive test results.”So Swerdlow essentially disowned one of his children just because it looked like a complete abomination against God. What a dick.“When Danny started to talk, he told me about a man with a clown face who came into his room at night to take him flying. He said that when the man put a magic wand in the middle of his forehead, they immediately were in a place that had balloon lights of different colors.”So underground inhabitants, aliens, clowns with magical powers, balloons…..…Are the Swerdlow kids getting stalked by Pennywise?)Anyway, the clown took Daniel to see his “baby sister”, who ended up scratching his face with claws. Also, the kid can talk to angels. Not aliens masquerading as angels, but real, honest-to-God angels who tell him the future. This is just casually tossed in on the last paragraph as an afterthought with no elaboration.Chapters 13-14 are about Swerdlow’s CIA application, which was already covered in Montauk Revisited, so I’ll just breeze through it. He simply answered a “Help Wanted” ad in the newspaper, was told that he would be valuable due to his knowledge of ten languages, was asked a barrage of questions during the events described in Montauk Revisited and was declined by the CIA because he was a security risk.Continued in Part 2 via /r/StrangerThings